Internet pirates! Copyright legislation! Who cares!

Just a quick note to explain why the ongoing battle about copyright infringement are important to everyone. Because it's not like we all have the right to download stuff for free off the internet, right? I mean, if someone spent a lot of money making a film or whatever, then it's fair to ask people to pay to see it.

That's the trouble with this whole thing! Any discussion about it tends to get sidetracked almost straight away into a discussion of whether or not piracy is a bad thing or not. And that isn't the important thing.

Here's what the important thing is: what you do on the internet is private. I don't mean that it ought to be private - it actually is private. What you download a file, no-one can tell what was in it.

What this means is that anything they do to "clamp down" on internet piracy is going to end up infringing everyone's privacy. Either they have to give themselves the power to - basically - read your mail, or they have to work on suspicions instead of proof. So you get these things where they can get your household's internet connection cut off if you are accused of copyright infringement three times.

Not 'found guilty of', mind: 'accused of'.

Now that's a big deal. In this country, we don't punish people because they've been accused of things. This is fundamental stuff.

And that's only if they use these powers responsibly! What if they bring these rules in, and a future government isn't so trustworthy? They have the power to cut your whole household off from the internet - that's email, websites, Skype, everything - just by sending you three letters!

And that is why you should care about this stuff even if you don't care about internets and pirates and all that stuff.

Once you do care, sign up for email alerts from the Open Rights Group. They will let you know when one of these laws is proposed, and tell you how you can oppose it. Normally you just have to send an email or sign a petition or something. It works, too - they've tried several times, in several countries, and we've been foiling them so far.