Very sad. When I read the headline I thought they might be going after _real_ pirates like the ones off the coast of Somalia. Seems like that would be a more worthwhile use of taxpayer's money.

Seems like we should wait till we have some kind of actual confirmation of whether the UK government is planning on doing something like this before we jump to conclusions. Actual confirmation, not just someone on the internet syaing they know someone who says they're planning something. I don't think this would pass muster with Labour back benches.

Somalian pirates have to play a careful game with opportunity cost: the ransoms they demand have to be less than the cost of eliminating them, and on top of that they have to not kill people. As long as they stay "reasonable", there's no reason for national governments to actually do anything about them.

The days of "millions for defense, but not a penny for tribute" are long gone.

I doubt anything is really going to happen. This is a typical "anonymous source" article. Low-quality newspapers have been using those for a while to create a controversy where none exists. When the plans don't happen, they can claim "well, we called it and thereby averted it", or - if that's too obvious - that they misjudged their source.

But those pirates are actually killing people and holding British citizens hostage, as opposed to reducing the profits of dinosaur vested interests, so obviously going after them isn't going to be a priority for Her Majesty's Government.

I'd like to think that the more draconian they make laws like this, the faster they'll fall.

I'm just not so sure...

They're already all but gone. There will be an election by next May and they are expected to lose heavily - there is currently a spate of legislation they're attempting to shove through in a rush before they're booted out.

However, I can't see the next (Tory) government being particularly sympathetic to the interests of file-sharers. We can expect more of the same, if not worse.

Isn't the cat already out of the bag?

I mean, creating laws like "three strikes and you lose internet access" might have worked years ago, but now everyone is used to downloading media online.

Laws that effectively make the majority of citizens into criminals (America's drug laws, for instance) tend to just be ignored, no matter how draconian.

They may be ignored, but they can still do a lot of damage. Consider all the folks languishing in prison for possession of small amounts of the wrong neurotransmitter agonist.

This mess -- if it goes through -- will do for your ability to keep information private what the war on drugs did for your ability to keep your home life private: that is, it'll give the cops not merely the power (which they already have) but the incentive to carry out intrusive searches.

I doubt this would be unilateral action, perhaps this is the UK's part of ACTA? http://www.eff.org/issues/acta

Sensational headline, righteous tone and an anonymous source. It has all the markings of a ... cough ... reliable article.