Quite funny seeing which stories followed each other on PaidContent this morning – one story is following the response from UK ISPs to Lord Mandelson’s proposal to disconnect illegal filesharers – but that immediately followed that the EC has set a two month deadline to overhaul UK rules on digital privacy.Or the UK Govt will end up in court.

Interestingly, it appears the EC are reacting fairly strongly to the UK passing of behavourial-targetting technology, e.g Phorm, but meanwhile France already has a law forcing ISPs to identify filesharers and using a three-strikes rule with disconnection as the eventual punishment, and the UK is looking likely to follow.

The conclusion is that my privacy matters when a private company wants to advertise to me, but doesn’t when private business industries influence a Lord to go against EU legislation which states access to the internet is a fundamental human right.

(For a nice, well-reasoned summary, read Hannah Nicklin’s open letter to Lord Mandelson – it includes plenty of useful links to relevant sources of information, including Ben Goldacre’s comprehensive dismantling of the claimed ‘seven million’ British people illegally downloading).