Rockfreaks.net

Some of you may have heard of the new "big brother" EU data rentention directive, which makes it a legal requirement for ISP's and telecommunication operators to save the following information on their servers for TWO YEARS:

-Who you called

-When you called

-How long you called

-All text messages

-When you logged onto internet

-When you logged off from internet

-Who you sent emails to

-What is in the emails

-Which websites you browsed

-Who you chatted with

among other things. Basically, if the goverment has a reason to believe you are conspiring against it in terms of terrorism, it has a right to go through two years of your private emails and text messages to find you whether or not you are guilty of a charge, and this can all be done without a single notification to the end-user (i.e. you!).

This would mean that the anonymity of 'sources' for all Media would become useless as the government could trace them back with the new directive.

Currently, the directive can only be used in terrorism-related charges. However, the RIAA (Recording Industry Association Of America), MPAA (Motion Picture Association Of America) and the BSA (Business Software Alliance) have been lobbying (=paying) the parties who are to vote on the directive to change it to be allowed in copyright-related charges as well. This could mean that everything you download stays recorded for TWO years and you can be charged for piracy retrospectively.

Among millions of other likeminded people, I use the P2P networks to check out brand new bands to PROMOTE THEM FOR FREE ON MY MAGAZINE, ROCKFREAKS.NET, and if I like their material I go out and BUY IT FROM A SHOP. Should the directive be passed in this form, it would eliminate small, non-profit magazines' operatability such as ours. Lets all hope that the EU officials have at least some intellectual ability left.