

From the you'd-have-to-laugh-or-you'd-have-to-shoot-yourself department:

The Right Honourable Stephen Timms is the UK's "Minister for Digital Britain." He's the guy behind the Digital Economy Bill, which makes the US DMCA look good by comparison. Seriously, this is some terrible, terrible lawmaking.

Here's what appears to be a letter the DigiMini sent to another MP, explaining why the Digital Economy Bill needs to go forward. It reads, in part, "Copyright owners are currently able to go on-line (sic), look for material to which they hold the copyright and identify unauthorised sources for that material. They can then seek to download a copy of that material and in so doing capture information about the source including the Intellectual Property (IP) address…"

If this letter is genuine (and it seems to be), it means that the guy who's in charge of Britain's digital future thinks that the "IP" in "IP address" stands for "Intellectual Property."

The Rt Hon Stephen Timms MP doesn't know what an IP address is

(Thanks, JP!)