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Although on this occasion, yes, the government want to make the Stasi feel like amateurs.

Labour wanted this when they were in power, the coalition only didn't do this because the Lib Dems are happy flower people and the Conservatives would have done this irrespective of the incident in Manchester.

See also the unpublicised consultation that ended last week: https://www.openrightsgroup.or...

Theresa May was previously the Minister for the Home Office and therefore responsible for the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and the failure of IT governance in that made the NHS vulnerable to attack last week.

The conservatives also passed the Digital Economy Act 2017 Described as 'unacceptable', 'unaffordable', and 'infeasible' by the UK Open Right Group which an erosion of consumer Digital Rights and considered by many to be quid pro quo to old media barons for their support.

They already have, link.

So parliament is basically just passing a new law with those restrictions in it to satisfy the ECJ.

That's completely false. The new law extends the powers over the previous law: https://www.openrightsgroup.or...

Furthermore:

DRIP ignores the main part of the CJEU ruling - that blanket data retention severely interferes with the fundamental rights to respect for private life and to the protection of personal data. The government has claimed that other aspects of the Bill will strengthen oversight and transparency. For example, they claim it will restrict the number of public bodies that can request communications data. Yet this concession does not appear in DRIP or the secondary legislation that will implement it. There has been no acknowledgment of the legal requirement to preserve UK citizens’ right to privacy.

Executive Summary

"There is insufficient evidence available to allow independent observers to state reliably whether the results declared in the May 2008 elections for the Mayor of London and the London Assembly are an accurate representation of voters’ intentions. Given these findings, the Open Rights Group (ORG) remains opposed to the introduction of e-counting in the United Kingdom, unless adopting ORG’s recommendations for increasing the transparency around e-counting can be proved cost effective."

http://goo.gl/U5Eb87 https://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/cameron-stop-sleepwalking * https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2013/sleepwalking-into-censorship?utm_campaign=Buffer&utm_content=bufferbb116&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=buffer https://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/cameron-stop-sleepwalking * http://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/Campaign_against_online_porn

http://goo.gl/U5Eb87 https://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/cameron-stop-sleepwalking * https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2013/sleepwalking-into-censorship?utm_campaign=Buffer&utm_content=bufferbb116&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=buffer https://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/cameron-stop-sleepwalking * http://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/Campaign_against_online_porn

http://goo.gl/U5Eb87 https://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/cameron-stop-sleepwalking * https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2013/sleepwalking-into-censorship?utm_campaign=Buffer&utm_content=bufferbb116&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=buffer https://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/cameron-stop-sleepwalking * http://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/Campaign_against_online_porn

http://goo.gl/U5Eb87 https://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/cameron-stop-sleepwalking * https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2013/sleepwalking-into-censorship?utm_campaign=Buffer&utm_content=bufferbb116&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=buffer https://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/cameron-stop-sleepwalking * http://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/Campaign_against_online_porn

The article isn't very trustworthy and that image is quite misleading. The image is of an optional filter that has existed for a while ( http://www.talktalk.co.uk/security/homesafe-demo.html ).

The original source is this: https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2013/sleepwalking-into-censorship
In that article this is said:

After brief conversations with some of the Internet Service Providers that will be implementing the UK's "pornwall" we've established a little bit about what it will be doing.
[...]
The essential detail is that they will assume you want filters enabled across a wide range of content, and unless you un-tick the option, network filters will be enabled.
[...]
EDIT NOTE: the category examples are based on current mobile configurations and broad indications from ISPs
[...]
The precise pre-ticked options may vary from service to service.
[...]
We can't say precisely what categories each ISP will provide – but they will be (as I say something like this above.

The key is the first screen, with the pre-ticked "enable parental filters" box: you will be encouraged to walk through to enable filters across a range of content, not just porn."

I imagine the 'brief conversations with some of the ISPs' went like this:
- "So how are you going to implement the porn filter?"
= "Well, I guess we'll make a webpage where people can opt out of the filter."
- "Something like TalkTalk Homesafe?"
= "Yeah, something like that."

https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2013/nsa-affects-responsible-disclosure

At least from now on, the only responsible disclosure is full disclosure.

All that said now is still a great time to join the Open Rights Group - just to make sure.

The ORG have suggested an amendment to the bills words to explicitly exclude any "small business" from this law, which was really intended to be targeted at mass market newspaper owners only - ie: those with the financial resources to behave above the law against victims who couldn't afford to bite back. Link is http://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/leveson. If folks sign, it sends an email to three key MPs which gives a specific sentence to add as an amendment to the bill as it goes through Parliament. Very nicely done.

What should have happened was a motion for discovery be granted before the case was dismissed.

Based on what? An IP address? If all you have is an IP address, you don't have enough to go through a discovery motion is what the judge is telling them.

I would expect the burden of proof to be much higher than "we have an IP address" before they drag in all of his stuff and do discovery on it.

We know from past news coverage that their way of gathering this evidence cab be suspect and not always accurate.

There's no way someone should have all of their computers confiscated and examined based on a tenuous bit of evidence that hasn't been objectively evaluated.

Especially when the best they can say is something to the effect of "since your name is on the account, you're the most likely infringer".

A motion for discovery needs more evidence than "we say so", because it's expensive and disruptive for the defendant, and there hasn't been enough evidence presented to support it. Letting them do it on the thin evidence they've been using gives them the power to conduct fishing expeditions and go straight to the intimidation tactics.

Get off the grass, Junior. When we were kids, the only porn available were stained copies of Playboy and Penthouse.

The research suggests more British children see sexual material on DVDs or TV than on the Internet.

(I read that in the Open Right's Group's response to the survey: http://www.openrightsgroup.org/ourwork/reports/response-to-dfe-consultation-on-parental-controls )

Not quite sure, perhaps http://openrightsgroup.org/

There are many organisations already working on behalf of ordinary people in cases such as this...the summary already has highlighted one such in the most excellent EFF but there are a number of others who are charitable donation funded and the like so negating your belief that huge wealth is needed to have voices on our side in this, and other, conflicts with the corporations who seek to enrich themselves by removal of our freedoms and liberties. I'll offer a small selection of such organisations below: https://www.eff.org/ http://ffii.org/ http://www.publicknowledge.org/ http://keionline.org/ http://infojustice.org/category/trade-agreements/ http://www.article19.org/ http://www.openrightsgroup.org/ http://www.edri.org/ http://www.michaelgeist.ca/ The last link is to Professor Michael Geist a prominent a noteworthy intellectual and activist in the field. All the above worked diligently to stop ACTA.

In English law it is "reasonable grounds" but it is pretty much the same. But yes, there is a strong risk of the IP address being given to law enforcement, who raid the place, carry off all computer equipment and assume that they can sort through things later (there's a case referenced in the document below, at paragraph 82). Obviously this can take months or years, with the computer equipment ending up with the copyright enforcement groups.

For a more detailed look at identifying people online in criminal or civil investigations, Richard Clayton's witness statement to the DEA judicial review is worth a read, particularly paragraphs 49 to 90.

Really, what were they thinking on the 10 legitimate websites that often get unfairly blocked pdf? It's horrible trying to read it on a screen, and I'm using a desktop. Good luck to anyone on a smartphone...

Seems painfully ironic that they're excluding mobile users in this way.

We use HTML for a reason, ORG...

Actually, they DID want this 20 years ago. Fortunately it was not technically feasible at the time, so they settled for being able to tap specific conversations.

Since then Labour's RIP Act lets a huge range of organisations request your data and get it with very few safeguards. The Liberal Democrats are committed to repealing most of that, but the security services want even more, hence the manoeuvring - and also the fact that this is a draft bill, and is EXPECTED to change a lot before it's passed. Unfortunately there are a lot more Conservative MPs than Liberal Democrat ones, and a lot of them think spying on the rest of us is a Good Thing, so the outcome is uncertain. With a big enough campaign against it, the Government can be persuaded to make this a good bill that repeals part of the RIPA and increases liberty. Without such a campaign, it will likely turn into a snoopers charter worse than the RIPA.

tl;dr version: join ORG and other groups campaigning for net freedom. See http://www.openrightsgroup.org/

"Insightful". Oh please. Yes, the UK has a ridiculous number of CCTV cameras, both government-run and private. Even here in the London panopticon, though, I don't believe that there is a camera situated directly over my computer keyboard. Not yet, anyway.

If you live in the UK, please be brave, stick your head up over the parapet, and sign here, here, here, and here.

to free our data. http://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/Discgate

This is sheer idiocy.

It's not the body of the communications that can be trawled, but the headers. The government want to be able to see who is communicating with who, and when. The plan was written about in The Telegraph last monthbut the plans are much older than that. The last Labour government, lover of all things authoritarian, came up with the Interception Modernisation Programme which in its original form would have had details of all electronic communications sent to a central government database. When the government eventually realised that this would be completely impractical they shifted the work to the service providers, who would all have to keep the details of the communications travelling through their networks and give the government access to their database at all times. The service providers realised just how much this would cost and so the government committed £2 billion to cover those costs over ten years. The plan was heavily criticised by the Conservatives, who published a paper titled Reversing the rise of the surveillance state. (Which is still on their website.) It was also criticised backthen by the London School of Economics.The plan was shelved in 2009 after opposition from communications service providers and a realisation that it would not be popular with the public.

After the election, though, the Conservatives decided to resurrect the plan, giving it a new name, theCommunications Capabilities Development Programme. (CCDP) Questions were raised in 2010 bythe Information Commissioner's Officeand it was mentioned in The New Statesman. Now the government are pushing ahead with the CCDP and the queen's speech will say that they intend to introduce legislation to implement the programme as soon as possible.

There are many things wrong with this programme of spying. It is impractical, expensive, a huge violation of our privacy, it places too much power in the hands of government, a government who we cannot trust. Making the full details of who talks to who available will allow security personnel to trawl through our data on fishing trips instead of requiring some basis for suspicion. Combined with the database for Universal Credit, which will be almost as comprehensive as the National IdentityRegisterthat was criticised so much by the Conservatives, and the centralisation of medical records, this provides private information about us all to the government on anunprecedentedscale with huge scope for abuse and for life-destroying mistakes.

If these plans scare you, please write to your MP to tell them your objection to the Communications Capabilities Development Programme. You can use WriteToThem.com to send it if you don't have their details. Pleasesign theOpen Rights Group's petition against government snooping and maybe consider joining the group too.

I also did something, I wrote to the MEP's in my area, outlining my position and asking their opinion. They need to know this is important. My local government web site had a link to my MEP's.

The Free Software Foundation provides the following page of contact details for all the relevant EU politicians: http://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2011/acta:-signed,-not-yet-sealed-now-its-up-to-us Those on the Development Committee are the most important and are listed on the following link: https://memopol.lqdn.fr/europe/parliament/committee/DEVE/ For the FSF views on ACTA see: http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/acta

No, most British laws are written in Britain. Why would Brussels write laws that primarily give powers to the home secretary, council binmen and so on? A small fraction of laws originate from Brussels and are mainly for international trade. Britain even sends its unpopular writings to Brussels first so they can say "Brussels made us do it" to rubes like you.

It's not all good. The proposed "orphaned works" solution seems to be fundamentally flawed in that it mandates "voluntary" registration for *every* copyrighted work.

Read more...

If this angers you then join the Open Rights Group (the UK equivalent of the EEF).

http://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2010/open-internet-enhances-our-freedom-of-speech/

Well then here you go.. http://www.openrightsgroup.org/

I may be wrong, but I think you're referring to the Intercept Modernisation Program or the "Snooping charter" here in the UK rather than Europe as a whole.

For a country that is apparently crippled with deficit, it's amazing that after having been abandoned by the previous Labour government, it's crept back in, sneekily being announced by the Tories in the spending review a couple of weeks ago. Bear in mind that one of the reasons the previous government abandoned it because it was likely to cost far more than the original £2 billion estimate.

Oops, sorry for the dupe. While I'm here, here's a link to an interesting article on the kind of approaches creative engineers have been taking to restore old and largely out of copyright recordings:

http://www.stokowski.org/March%2011%202001%20Philadelphia%20Inquirer.htm

And here are some suggestions about what to do if you're not a fan of EU copyright term extension:

http://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension

Enjoy your free WiFi - it won't last, most likely. Governments around the world are tightening the screws on copyright infringement, and open WiFi is in the cross-hairs - see one example here: http://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/2010/the-death-of-open-wifi

This is part of 'graduated response', also known as 'three strikes', which is the copyright owners' term for various actions to discourage infringement short of lawsuits - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graduated_response or http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/tag/graduated-response/

I'm written to my MP, and I suggest writing to David Cameron, since the Conservatives have a big say in the "wash-up" process now that this bill passed its second reading yesterday in just 90 minutes. Yay, democracy...

The UK government has bypassed the normal line by line debate in committees etc and there is a strong chance this bill will become law in the next few weeks, in closed meetings between party leaders as part of this "wash-up" process - already, the Conservatives have got a specific broadband tax (to fund fiber to the home) removed, in return for a concession on an unrelated bill. So it's quite possible to get specific clauses removed even now.

The proposed law will essentially enable the copyright holder to get warning letters sent to those who are believed to be illegally sharing files - these go to the broadband account holder, and if the incidents continue, they can be disconnected (or other unspecified "technical measures" may be taken). It doesn't matter if a family member or guest did the file sharing, or someone freeloading on your WiFi.

Oh yes, this also means the death of open WiFi hotspots, because the hotspot may well be disconnected when someone using it does illegal filesharing. So they either need to sign up users individually (imagine a cafe doing that), outsource to a paid hotspot service, or close their hotspot.

Another provision makes it possible to have websites blocked by ISPs if they are deemed to be breaching copyright - Youtube will be an interesting example.

See http://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/disconnection/why-care for more details and what to do about this.

If you live in the UK, write to your MP or David Cameron now via 38degrees - it only takes a few minutes, just put in your postcode. I think it's pointless to write to government ministers as they will toe the party line.

For those who are not in the UK: Similar laws are being passed or planned in many other countries - search for "three strikes" or "graduated response" plus "broadband" and the name of your country.

In related news: The UK government is rushing through a law on filesharing in the last week of parliamentary business before the general election. It's bypassing the normal line by line debate in committees etc and will become law shortly after next Tuesday April 6th on current plans.

The proposed law will essentially enable the copyright holder to get warning letters sent to those who are believed to be illegally sharing files - these go to the broadband account holder, and if the incidents continue, they can be disconnected (or other unspecified "technical measures" may be taken). It doesn't matter if a family member or guest did the file sharing, or someone freeloading on your WiFi.

See http://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/disconnection/why-care for more details and what to do about this. There are only a few days left to try to stop or at least delay this.

If you live in the UK, write to your MP now - it only takes a few minutes via the link above, just put in your postcode.

If you have mod points, please consider modding this up so that more people will write to their MP (member of parliament), and if you agree, then blog/twitter/Facebook/etc about this issue. Similar laws are being passed or planned in many other countries.

The UK government is rushing through a law on filesharing in the last week of parliamentary business before the general election. It's bypassing the normal line by line debate in committees etc.

The proposed law, which will become law shortly after April 6th on current plans, will essentially enable the copyright holder to get warning letters sent to those who are believed to be illegally sharing files - these go to the broadband account holder, and if the incidents continue, they can be disconnected (or other unspecified "technical measures" may be taken). It doesn't matter if a family member or guest did the file sharing, or someone freeloading on your WiFi.

See http://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/disconnection/why-care for more details and what to do about this.

The relevance to this story is that the UK students that Warner is recruiting might well uncover the "filesharing incidents" that would feed into this heavy handed enforcement mechanism.

Why not form a pressure group or thinktank?

You mean like the Open rights group (who we're developing close links with)? Or perhaps the business coalitionCoadec? Don't worry, the pressure and lobby groups are there as well.

Is fielding candidates the best course, for a single issue group like yours?

As well as the PPUK there is a lobby group: Open rights group & a business coalition: Coadec. To change policy we need to work through all these channels.

That pressure group already exists, has done for a couple of years now, and does some excellent work.

http://openrightsgroup.org/

Why repeat that organisation's activities instead of doing something else, such as giving the disenfranchised population the chance to vote against the mainstream parties?

I recently saw Neil Gaiman give a talk at which someone asked him how he felt about piracy of his books. He said, "Hands up in the audience if you discovered your favorite writer for free -- because someone loaned you a copy, or because someone gave it to you? Now, hands up if you found your favorite writer by walking into a store and plunking down cash." Overwhelmingly, the audience said that they'd discovered their favorite writers for free, on a loan or as a gift. When it comes to my favorite writers, there's no boundaries: I'll buy every book they publish, just to own it (sometimes I buy two or three, to give away to friends who must read those books). I pay to see them live. I buy t-shirts with their book-covers on them. I'm a customer for life.

Neil went on to say that he was part of the tribe of readers, the tiny minority of people in the world who read for pleasure, buying books because they love them. One thing he knows about everyone who downloads his books on the Internet without permission is that they're readers, they're people who love books.

People who study the habits of music-buyers have discovered something curious: the biggest pirates are also the biggest spenders. If you pirate music all night long, chances are you're one of the few people left who also goes to the record store (remember those?) during the day. You probably go to concerts on the weekend, and you probably check music out of the library too. If you're a member of the red-hot music-fan tribe, you do lots of everything that has to do with music, from singing in the shower to paying for black-market vinyl bootlegs of rare Eastern European covers of your favorite death-metal band.

Baen with Webscriptions and its Free Library has been making e-books in multiple formats available for years. They've found that after an author puts a few books into the Free Library the sales of that author's backlist (including the freely-available books) rise. I suspect that they get more sales & readers for Webscriptions as well - if I can buy individual ebooks for $6 or the entire set of releases for the month (up to 4 "frontlist" new publications plus some backlist) for $15, I might as well cough up the couple of extra books and see which writers I like.

My MP received a telephone call followed up by an email from me 3-4 weeks ago on this matter.

The Open Rights Group (at http://www.openrightsgroup.org/) have promoted a campaign for their members and supporters to raise this not only to MPs but also to members of the House of Lords.

This is yet another draconian and easily abused piece of legislation that is declared as addressing something that isn't an issue, in a manner that allows its use for other purposes while failing to address the underlying issue in the first place.

I'm fucked off about it, but frankly there's not a whole lot more I can peacably do.

Cory Doctorow -- who in his novel "Little Brother" had an obvious axe to grind against Homeland Security and law enforcement, to the point of suggesting "9/11 was an inside job". (Says one of the leaflets dropped by the novel's heroic protesters.)

I thought the 9/11 troof reference in that scene in Little Brother was to show how every protest movement can attract crackpots and others with an axe to grind; also specifically to show how Marcus's protests were being portrayed as anti-American by the DHS.

Awesome book by the way, I got a free signed copy when I joined the Open Rights Group.

[Mandelson is] an out-of-control power-crazed sociopath and should never have been allowed back into government.

We didn't allow him back in. In fact, he resigned twice already under dubious circumstances. Then he got appointed to Europe, and now he's been appointed to a very senior position in Parliament after being appointed to the House of Lords. Note that the term "appointed" here implies that the people never got a vote, he was put into those positions by the Prime Minister and his chums. Oh, and the Prime Minister was appointed as Tony Blair's successor, in direction contradiction of a Labour Party manifesto promise to voters at the last general election, which they won with such a huge majority because of funny electoral math and not popular support (having actually lost the popular vote in England to the Conservatives, in fact).

Basically, these guys don't even have a shadow of a mandate for what they're doing in the first place, but since they're already a lame duck administration they seem to feel they have little to lose by wading in with the most illiberal, draconian legislation they can shove through in the final parliamentary session before the general election. Thus we get resistance to court rulings on cleaning up the DNA database, a roll-out of trials for an expensive ID card scheme that both the major opposition parties in England have long since pledged to scrap, and now this.

My personal favourite from this week's Queen's Speech was the bill to make it a legal requirement to half the budget deficit within four years, which would conveniently mean that having destroyed our economy themselves, they could then pass a poison pill to their successors when they inevitably lose the next general election. Presumably they will then claim in four years that whoever won the election has broken the law by being unable to do the impossible, and pretend that in some alternate reality Labour would somehow have been able to fix the problems they were unable to prevent in the first place.

The various extreme anti-copyright-infringement policies flying around at the moment sound like much the same thing: having mostly ignored or actively gone against the recommendations of their own Gowers Review when it comes to IP laws, they are now setting up back channel ways to suck up to big business while they still can, knowing that if they tried to push these things through Parliament properly they would face stiff opposition (not to mention probably losing even more votes, since post-Gowers they pretty much know that people overwhelmingly oppose things like copyright term extension).

As a final note, the Open Rights Group are pretty dumb if they think invoking the recent XBox cut-offs supports the case against this. I haven't seen a single report that suggests there were people cut off by Microsoft inappropriately (i.e., not after breaking the rules), the cut-off only affected their use of the XBox and not unrelated Internet services, and even the BBC carried an article based on one such person, who admitted freely that he was ripping off games illegally because it saved him money, which is exactly what the cut-off was intended to obstruct.

If by "year-after-year" you mean two years* then yes, you are correct. However, I get the feeling that's not what you intended to imply.

* Or 5 years in terrorism-related cases

I've contacted my MP. The open rights group has a brief PDF to send to them so they are clued up. Ask them to back EDM 1997.

More info here: http://www.openrightsgroup.org/campaigns/ask-your-mp-to-help-protect-our-freedoms-on-the-net

It is not an "ad hominem" argument if I merely point out that your own words demonstrate that you were swindled, utterly and completely.

An ad hominem is where you attack the person, rather than their argument. You didn't merely anything, you said that my argument was based on my boundless greed in your first post. And when I pointed out that if I were greedy I wouldn't be paying quite a bit of money each year on purchasing movies and music, you then attacked me again by trying to say that I'm only defending the system because I hope to profit by it later. That's a second ad hominem. The part about being swindled, etc. etc. was a minority of your posts and doesn't address what I say anyway since it simply states your opinion that someone who pays for a copy of a film, music or ebook is being swindled. You don't back it up with any reasoning, just repetition in various forms and excessive use of "quote" marks for pseudo-emphasis.

Then in your third post to me, the one I'm replying to now, you again resort to ad hominems implying I am gullible or prone to excessive submissiveness to authority. You waste a lot of words simply accusing me of things and very little deconstructing what I say. As an aside on the excessive submissiveness to authority, I have previously petitioned my local MPs and MEPs on various issues of digital rights, was one of the founder members of the Open Rights Group, backing it with a significant amount of my own money (another counter to your accusations of my "boundless greed", incidentally), financially support WikiLeaks and have been photographed numerous times by the friendly UK police on various protest marches. I don't know what you require of someone to not be excessively submissive to authority - throwing bombs, maybe - but I think the odds are that if I qualify as excessively submissive, then you rank lower still. That's not an ad hominem, btw. That's simple likelihood posted in defence of myself against your accusations. I don't pretend that the personal qualities of either of us are a substitution for argument. So on that note, let's address the one position you have stated that isn't a personal attack on myself:

I only have to point to your own laughable admission that you are under a silly illusion that you are actually "purchasing" music.

I give money to someone. A file downloads in return. In what way have I not just purchased a copy of that file? Why is that a "silly illusion" ? Money given in exchange for them giving me a copy of the file I want. If you have trouble with that, perhaps go and look up the word 'purchase' in a good dictionary.

There are numerous examples of "hideous logical contortions" in the comments on this page. I'm not going to start copying and pasting large amounts of texts from my other posts in order to provide examples. Go and read through my other comments here if you like. But I suspect you're about to provide your own contortion in an attempt to explain how my giving money in exchange for a copy of a file isn't purchasing something.

As regards "demanding my detractors prove me wrong" well, I made a statement and you attacked me with accusations of bias, greed and a slavish addiction to authority. I think you jolly well should have to try and prove me wrong with actual logic if you're going to be like that. If I was as completely incorrect as you say I am, it ought to be pretty easy. But we're several posts in and you haven't done it yet. Just posted personal attacks and unsupported statements that you think buying a copy of a file is an "illusion."

Regards,
H.

So performers will collect for 20 more years from the date of performance

Really? Or do the record companies collect more money? There was an attempt to ensure that extra profits went only to artists, but it was defeated. From the Open Rights Group article:

A key amendment to ensure benefits accrued only to performers was also rejected.

I am one of the original founding members of the Open Rights Group in the UK and I've several times debated with my elected representatives about protecting various freedoms on the Internet. I don't have "battered wife syndrome" and I do take active steps to try and protect my freedoms. I don't know anything about you, but there's a good chance I've done more than you have to try and keep the Internet free. But that doesn't mean I need to disregard facts that seem inconvenient. Wide-spread piracy provides a powerful justification for attempts to stop it. And I don't know of any methods of stopping it that don't have the rights of innocent people stepped on as collateral damage, or that don't allow an opening for the government to insert a little scope-creep for political purposes. So in addition to fighting against infringements of my freedom, I (like the earlier poster) point out the flaws in the arguments of piracy proponents who are provoking a lot of these measures for the sake of not paying for music or movies or books.

How great that the Robin Hoods of the copyright industry are stealing back. Schweden is part of the European Union. And someone sent me per mail this invitation here to an open conference in the European Parliament, feel free to join and/or spread:

Who wants to control the internet ?

The Greens in the European Parliament have the pleasure to invite you to a conference on internet policy concerning the Telecom package and the Medina report.

The European Parliament is about to take very important decisions that will affect the every day use of the internet by europeans : the telecom package will be adopted in second reading in April, and the Medina report on copyright recommends a very restrictive vision of the web. What is at stake is no less than net neutrality : will MEPs allow discrimination on the internet ?

Net neutrality means that the network should be neutral and can be only be managed for technical or security reasons. Some companies dream of being able to manipulate access in order to restrict or give preference to certain services and websites, so as to block access to their competitor's services. They want to use net management as a tool against competition. This debate will have a global impact since the new US administration is expected to take crucial decisions on this issue over the next year.

This hearing aims at revealing what is really at stake behind the complexity of several European Directives up for consideration by the European Parliament in the coming weeks.

Please join us for this important and informative conference.

Rebecca Harms, Helga Trüppel, Eva Lichtenberger, David Hammerstein

Members of the Parliament 's Green/Efa Group

Draft Programme

Who wants to control the internet ?
A conference organized by the Greens/Efa in the European Parliament to look into how the Medina report and the Telecom package can affect the internet

18 February 2009
16.30-18.30 Room 1G2
Interpretation : EN-FR-DE-Nl

Academic speaker
Dr.Monica Horten, Communications and Media Research Institute, University of Westminster (Website: http://www.iptegrity.com/ )

Free Software
Alix Cazenave, APRIL (Associaton for the promotion of Libre Software)

Industry speakers
Angelique Broux, IBM
You Tube
Benjamin Bayard, French Data Network (French internet provider)

Civil Society & Consumers
Charles Simon, ISSOC (The Internet Society is an independent international nonprofit organisation which provides leadership in Internet related standards, education, and policy)
Anne-Catherine Lorrain, TACD
Graham Taylor, Open Forum Europe
Jérémie Zimmermann, La Quadrature du Net

Registration is free but mandatory as to be allowed access to the European Parliament
Please send you full name, birthdate and address to Laurence.vandewalle@europarl.europa.eu

Here are some links for you guys to check out. Please get out there and get involved: The Open Rights Group look to promote your rights in a digital age: http://www.openrightsgroup.org/ Tom Watson (a labour cabinet minister who has a blog) recently encouraged debate about a proposal by the culture secretary Andy Burnham concerning internet censorship. Here is a link to that post, and be sure to bring up this is issue and the proposed issue of a wider internet database: http://www.tom-watson.co.uk/2008/12/andy-burnham-and-internet-site-classification/ Try getting in contact with the Home Office directly and make your views heard: Address: Home Office, Direct Communications Unit, 2 Marsham Street, London SW1P 4DF. Tel: 020 7035 4848 Email: public.enquiries@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk The Labour Party can be contacted at: Address: The Labour Party, Eldon House, Regent Centre, Newcastle Upon Tyne, NE3 3PW. Tel: 08705 900 200 And above all else, keep up the pressure. Governments are concerned with one thing and one thing only. Power. If they realise this is an issue that could cost them an election, they will have very little option but to rethink. Thank You.