I read through the Wikepedia on this, and it reeks of "best case" distortion math. "Best case Solar Cel Efficiency with 'current' technology' " + "Best Case Transmission with 'current' technology' " + "Best Case Weather Patterns" + "Best Case The Middle East won't self immolate in yet another political upheaval" + "Best Case consortium of European Governments/Societies agree to set aside 1500 years of pissing on each other, get along, saddle themselves with massive government debt to fund all the construction in the firm belief that the Wogs won't rise up and steal it after we've paid to build the thing."

This is Blue Sky engineering at it's best (worst). If you remove any one of the "best case" propositions, the whole thing falls apart.

Spinning disks are yesterday's war. It's all just data, and there are better ways of moving it around. Let the behemoths slug it out over patents and DRM. They can fritter away their accumulated wealth on armies of lawyers in the courts until they get broken up and swallowed by the rapidly growing companies that understand that the medium is now broadband, not some overpriced, over-packaged chunk of plastic.

Not exactly sure about the UK, but I know here in Canada that FOIP (Freedom of Information and Privacy Act) has provisions that mean that ISPs aren't allowed to give out that info without a court order, and would be subject to Federal criminal prosecution if they did hand out the info to private 3rd parties. I had thought the laws were similar in the UK. It would be interesting if one of these users sued their ISP for unlawful disclosure of personal information. The privacy act in the UK can be nasty to those who break it. It all depends whether that information is protected or not. FOIP is the big reason why you don't see these types of lawsuits in Canada, that and a long history of the Canadian courts telling rights holders "tough noogies" when they sue people who make copies for personal use - we pay a blank media tax that gets divvied up amongst rights holders as a hedge against piracy.

You're IP has been noted and the Men In Black will be visiting shortly.

The current state of the political scene is working against the Conservatives here, so hopefully this will die another death.

The NDP will vote against this as a matter of policy. Heavy handed copyright just doesn't fit with their philosphy, and they know they would be in deep trouble with their core supporters if they played nice with the Conservatives on this. There really isn't any middle ground for them on this.

The Grits, in theory, could go either way. They've tried to push through copyright reform when they were in power as well (an failed). But they're lagging in the pols, so I would suspect they'll take the expedient, populist route (in fine Grit tradition) to try and close the gap a bit. Iggy's an academic, and the academic circles are almost universally opposed to this reform, so it would fit with his background to oppose the legislation. It might just be the podium he's been waiting to pound on the get some good press for a change.

The Bloq... Aww, heck, who knows. I suspect they'll oppose this just for the populist support in Quebec, but you never know. The Bloq is brutally unpredictable when it comes to national policy.

Overall, I'd say the chance of this passing is 51/49 against. But it's slim. If the Tories make this a confidence vote, it will really put the other parties against the wall, because a snap election works in the Tories' favour at the moment.