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The UK Government's Struggle With Digital Rights

Posted by Soulskill on from the regulating-a-series-of-tubes dept.

With his first accepted submission, Ajehals sends this excerpt from a post by the UK Pirate Party: "... at every turn, the coalition has been exposed as having no coherent policy on digital rights. Nothing illustrates this better than its zig-zag course on Internet filtering and website blocking. ... As if any further confirmation was needed that the government's policy on digital rights, and freedom of speech is entirely made up on the fly, along came the riots and a classic knee-jerk reaction to the use of social media. ... one of the few concrete parts of David Cameron’s statement to the recalled House of Commons was a full on attack on social media. It was carefully worded, but the thrust was that the Prime Minister thought further action is necessary to combat the 'ill' done by status updates. At this point things took a turn for the authoritarian, with MP Louise Mensch saying it was 'acceptable to shut Twitter and Facebook off for an hour or two.' ... Worse still, it has been recently revealed that the Government actually asked Ofcom to make Digital Economy Act appeals harder. It also wants to rule out a public consultation – once again trying to do deals away from the public eye. I suspect it is actually this fear of the power technology can give us to hold our representatives to account that drives alarm about the Internet in the corridors of power."

9 of 155 comments (clear)

  1. Well that's not a surprise... by Mashiki · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The UK doesn't have a policy on civil rights anymore. Those were eroded away over the last few years.

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    Om, nomnomnom...
    1. Re:Well that's not a surprise... by Andy_R · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The interesting thing is that none of the parties (with the exception of us Pirates, of course) even has a solid position on civil rights. With almost any other issue, Labour will go one way, Conservatives the other, and the Liberals will suggest a compromise. Membership of the European Union and the legal status of fox hunting are the only other issues that the big parties can't seem to make up their minds on, and falling out over both has caused a lot of internal damage to the parties.

      On digital (and to a lesser extent civil) rights, all the other parties are flip-flopping or in internal disagreement. The really odd thing about this is (unlike fox hunting or EU membership) it doesn't represent the mood of the general public, who either don't care or are strongly in favour.

      I'm shocked that neither of the 2 big parties have jumped on to the digital and civil rights bandwagon, forcing the opposition to take a less popular stance against them. It's a sure-fire vote winner, that doesn't have a economic big cost to implement.

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      A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
    2. Re:Well that's not a surprise... by gl4ss · · Score: 5, Insightful

      canadians as long as they were queens canadians. aussies as long as they weren't aboriginals, people of the great isles as long as they weren't scottish or irish and the english as long as they weren't against the state's ever changing policies. fine civil rights right there..

      you do understand the difference between a free man and a serf? magna carta isn't as much about civil rights as it's about who has the right to fuck the common men up as much as they want, come industrialization and the mechanics changed just a little bit - for the better a bit as anyone could theoretically climb up, but magna carta is a lot about how all men are not equal.

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      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    3. Re:Well that's not a surprise... by jez9999 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That assumes the big two parties give a shit about votes, and not their paymasters. The electorate are also highly malleable. Recently, the Tories sold them the idea that the current electoral system is better than AV.

      I'm coming round more and more to the idea that we should just scrap the veil of 'democracy' altogether.

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      == Jez ==
      Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
  2. This feels a lot like by Zsub · · Score: 4, Insightful

    V for Vendetta
    1984
    A Brave New World

    We see it coming and just don't give a damn, it seems. Where are the times governments were afraid of their people? Or at least had some respect for their people?

    1. Re:This feels a lot like by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Is there some Godwin's Law equivalent for mentioning 1984/Orwell when discussing the UK government? If not, there should be.

      More specifically, people saying: "I didn't think 1984 was meant to be an instruction manual!" or similar.

      If you have a problem with the policy - explain why you think it's a bad policy.

    2. Re:This feels a lot like by digitig · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That is why any kind of censorship has to be fought as if it was "North Korea was run by Hitler disguised as Big Brother" because that is what all those things has in common.

      They're also run by people who breathe, so by your argument we should put a stop to breathing. Ever heard of affirming the consequent?

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      Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
  3. It's not a power grab, that's a side effect by Nursie · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The UK government folks probably genuinely believe that shutting down social media would be usful to stop waves of criminality like the recent rioting. The fact it hands enormous power to the government is a side effect that they either don't see or (more likely) welcome, but it's not the aim.

    This ranting and posturing about evil people in charge is misguided. The point is that through good intentions both people and government can slide into sinister and easily abused situations. Not that the politicians at the top are already aiming for them.

    This is why the people who notice this stuff must be extra vigilant, because it is all done with semi-good intent, but it takes us to the same bad place.

  4. Re:Struggle with digital rights? by Rhodri+Mawr · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That's not accurate. The licence fee pays for the BBC (advert free), and some subsidy of Channel 4 and S4C (which are also funded by advertisments). You only need a television licence to receive live broadcasts. Non-live services like iPlayer do not require a licence. There is no requirement at all to have a licence to receive radio.

    Anyone thinking that the Pirate Party UK are in any way relevant to the debate are entirely mistaken. The leader of the party stood at the last election here in Worcester and lost his deposit. The real debate about digital rights should be about why the Labour Party were allowed to push through the Digital Economy Act 2010 (UK equivalent of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act) right at the end of the final Parliamentary session before the General Election without it receiving anything like the amount of scrutiny it needed or deserved in Parliament. The Liberal Democrats promised to repeal many parts of the act in their manifesto, however the act was not mentioned in the Coalition Agreement. The Conservative Party promised a 'bonfire' of bad legislation passed by the Labour Party; this has not yet materialised and the DEA 2010 appears to be off the political agenda at the moment.