Digital Economy Act Waved through Parliament

 Illegal downloading. We’ve all heard of it, and maybe we have been guilty of it one time or another in our lives, but if you live in the UK you may want to be more wary of doing it. The UK just gave a green light to the Digital Economy Act. What is this you ask? Well, this act is giving the government the right to instruct ISPs to send warning letters to customers they feel are guilty of sharing copyrighted material like movies, music, and software. They can also have the internet connection of those who breach copyright cut off by a court order.
Copyright campaigners, the Open Rights Group said ” There is one thing the court cannot tell us: that this is a good law. This is a policy made on hearsay and assumptions, not proper facts of analysis”.  Now looking at this makes me wonder, what about public WiFi that is available almost everywhere now? What happens to them if people are illegally downloading material on their servers? Well I am assuming that they are the ones that will be in hot water because they cannot monitor all who use the free service.
I feel that this issue is important because the same type of Act could be making its way onto the United States doorstep and we may be facing the same fight that the internet providers have appealed and lost over in the UK.
I agree that is it an issue, especially for the movie and music industries but isn’t there a better way of going about this? Do you feel that the Digital Economy Act is the right way to deal with this issue? Let us know your thoughts!