the corner office

I read this article this morning and was planning to blog about it, but when I came back to it this evening, the content had changed somewhat. The original mentioned that Peter Mandelson had jumped into the "cut off pirates" row after having dinner with David Geffen (as discussed in this article in The Times). The BBC article now makes no mention of Mandelson's involvement and skips various issues about how cutting off users might infringe their rights (see below). It may be that the original article is still floating around but I can't find it, and it isn't linked to by the current article.

Dodgy if you ask me...

But anyway, quoth The Times:

Internet companies have suggested that suspending connections may constitute a breach of human rights.

It goes on to say that legal advice (I think that means 'some lawyer') says that's untrue, which makes sense. As I say, the original BBC article rambled on about this, with someone suggesting that cutting off people's Internet connectivity was a violation of free speech rights, etc. Slippery slope, this. First of all, it's specious to suggest that access to a technology is a 'right' (as cool as it may superficially sound). Second, if it comes down to 'rights' then there's surely no difference between suspending an account because of 'piracy' and suspending an account because the bill hasn't been paid.