Tim Berners Lee invokes Magna Carta #freeculture #hadopi

Tim Berners LeeMartyn Warwick of TelecomTV reports

Speaking in London at an event to mark the 350th anniversary of the founding of the Royal Society, Sir Tim, a long-time and passionate advocate of net neutrality and freedom of speech on the Internet said governments all over the world are intent on imposing controls on the web and censoring its content.

Referring directly to the provisions of Britain’s Digital Economy Act, the “three strikes and you’re out” legislation in France and the draconian proposals contained in the “amalgamated” Cybersecurity Bill about to be voted on in the US, he said, “Governments are granting themselves the right to turn off the internet.”

Delving back into medieval history Sir Tim added that an Englishman’s right to freedom as enshrined in Magna Carta are as relevant and important today as they were back in 1215 when the barons forced King John to sign the document – or else!

Sir Tim Berners Lee says, “It is constitutionally very serious to deprive someone from the web – it requires consideration in the law and Magna Carta says that no free man shall be deprived of liberty without due process. When you commit a crime you lose rights. If you think about the class of crime for which you’d be imprisoned, stealing a DVD for the first time would certainly not be one. Yet we’re talking about potentially disconnecting a whole family because a child has downloaded something. It seems to me to be unreasonable and impractical. The things which are being proposed at the moment are dangerously crossing the boundaries of people’s net rights.”