No one claimed they were seeking out parties. The point is that they heard about an event, and then went looking for more information about it on the Internet. We also have a direct police quote saying "we were extremely concerned how the event had been advertised on the internet as an all night party and it was therefore necessary to take the appropriate steps to stop the event.", so even if their original source was elsewhere, it is entirely accurate to say that they took action base on what they found on Facebook - in particular, the "all night" tag.
If you want to make pedantic quibbles about TFS, please go ahead. But it is misleading yourself to claim that the summary was misleading, or that they weren't searching the Internet for information - because they were.
Do you have reliable sources that show that raves caused more disturbance than other more publically acceptable forms of entertainment, such as pubs playing loud repetitive beats where people get shit-faced on alcohol? Or are you just reporting the tabloid scaremongering of the time, which was having a moral panic about drugs?
Both have rights but they can't both excersise them fully without restricting the other.
This issue had already long been handled with the correct balance, with laws that cover noise disturbances.
Want to protest that? Then don't say "it shouldn't be illegal". You should made sure when the laws were introduced that it didn't become illegal by doing the same thing the petitioners did. Make your case and show that YOUR case benefits the greater good (gets the most people to vote for you).
Um, they did. Thousands of people protested. Perhaps their voice wasn't heard by you, because the tabloids weren't willing to give them a say?
- a neighbour who wants a quiet night, who thinks this law is mad.
By "different spin", you mean the police's version of events. If the article was updated with new information, don't you think we should take the original version with more of a pinch of salt?
We have no idea if the previous events were held by the same people, or if this guy was unlucky to be having a barbecue in the same place. The point you are missing however is that this is completely irrelevant. The law allows them to be dispersed whether or not they are having a rave, whether or not they are causing a noise disturbance. Evidence or guilt doesn't matter.
No one is defending the right to noise disturbance, that's a straw man - there are other laws to cover that, and that's not what happened here.
Apparently, they had caused problems before and were told to get a license before having the next party.... They knew they had caused problems before, and were told they had to get a license befoe having another party. They failed to observe the warnings. Enough is enough. I would have them boiled in oil.
You RTFA. Whilst the locals may have also reported it, the police made it clear that:
"On this occasion, we were extremely concerned how the event had been advertised on the internet as an all-night party and it was therefore necessary to take the appropriate steps."
It's unclear what happened first - perhaps it was reported, then they searched for it, or perhaps both happened coincidentally, but the articles linked, and many other media sources, are reporting the Facebook angle here.
The Register also use the word "dispatched", so blame them if you like - it's not a problem of not RTFA (the only one who didn't read the article is you). The BBC use the word "deployed". I'd argue that both terms are accurate, even if the helicopter had also been on a previous job. Note that it still cost the police £200, so your comment is misleading to suggest that the helicopter merely looked as it was passing back on a normal route. The police still had to divert resources of the helicopter, at a cost of £200, so "dispatch" is perfectly reasonable.
The civil liberties issue isn't defending people who are causing a noise disturbance, it's about how the police can break up any party, or even preparations for a party, held on legal privately-owned ground, whether or not there is noise disturbance, or even likely to be a noise disturbance.
Er - maybe because the Slashdot summary was linking to more than one article, and the summary contained information from all of them? You do realise that different news reports may report different things?
TFS linked to the Register, which stated "Riot police stormed a man's 30th birthday barbecue for 15 guests because it was advertised as an "all-night" party on Facebook.". The Telegraph also claim "police feared it was to turn into a large-scale rave prompted by the internet invitations." Andrew Poole himself claimed that "But they kept on insisting I had advertised it as an all-night rave on the internet."
They also have a quote from the police:
"On this occasion, we were extremely concerned how the event had been advertised on the internet as an all night party and it was therefore necessary to take the appropriate steps to stop the event."
So yes, the police were aware of it being advertised on the Internet.
Knee-jerk stupidity, that's how
Perhaps you should RTFA before making your own knee-jerk stupid statements.
But in cases where a weapon is suspected, there are clear reasons to take action, because lives are at stake. I don't think that is true with repetitive beats, somehow. There is also the point that this example applies to entering someone else's private property. If we had a story about police swooping in on someone's own private property because they had a few swag bags and fake weapons, we would rightly be more concerned.
And even there, there are not broad laws that criminalise someone for carrying sacks with "swag" on them. As opposed to this law, which criminalises gatherings and preparations for parties, even on their private property where no noise disturbance is taking place.
Frankly I am old enough and bitter enough to just want kids like that off my lawn, my neighboors lawn,
Sure - trespassing is illegal.
and if they are loud enough, the field next to it as well for that matter.
Of course - we have laws against noise disturbances.
Why didn't the police show up with their helicopters when the noise disturbances were taking place? The problem with this law is that it criminalises a party in "the field next to your neighbour's law", even when it doesn't break any laws on noise disturbances.
Where I live, there's far more disturbance from people who take drugs all night - of the alcohol and cigarettes kind - and stand around outside talking to the late hours. But that's fine. Heaven forbid a bunch of people take some pot (or have a barbecue), and play some repetitive beats in a field they own somewhere.
two or more persons are making preparations for the holding there of a gathering to which this section applies,
ten or more persons are waiting for such a gathering to begin there,
It doesn't matter whether they really were preparing for a rave, only that a "superintendent reasonably believes" it. This is a typical theme with both the Conservative and Labour Governments - it's no longer about being guilty or innocent, instead the grant powers to criminalise everyone, and let the police choose who to use it against.
Well heaven forbid someone might want to set up a stereo to play some repetitive beats at his 30th birthday party. Yes, he didn't have a licence - the idea that you need a licence to play repetitive beats on your own property for a private birthday party is what people are criticising here.
(If they were causing a noise disturbance to others, there are laws to deal with that. And no, I still don't think helicopters are needed - something which would create a noise disturbance in itself.)
As an earlier comment joked, strictly speaking he never said it was another person everytime:) I mean yes, I suppose someone's life can't be ruined twice, but an arrest every 18 seconds would still be scary, even if it's sometimes a repeat. To be honest I don't think the exact numbers really matter, the war on drugs is batshit whether it's 18 seconds, minutes or hours.
How are the good folks in the UK not in the streets about all this?
They did - in 1994, thousands of people protested (one source claims 40,000). Sadly protests don't stop laws (as millions marching against the Iraq War showed) - though I still think it's worth doing out of principle, and for raising awareness.
Although I can't help thinking, thousands protesting laws like this as happened in the 90s seems much bigger than anything that's done now against the various restrictions that Labour have brought in, as you mention. I'd have hoped that the Internet would make organising activism like this easier. OTOH, perhaps the long term effect of laws like this is that it breaks up people's ability and will to organise and protest.
Note that it was the 1994 Act that allowed the police in this case to disperse people gathering on their own private property. But yes, things have only got worse - the so-called anti-terrorism search powers are now happily used to catch people carrying small amounts of cannabis for personal use.
One day recently, the police were stopping and searching everyone getting off the train - no one dares speak up or ask what law you are being held under, out of fear of being pulled aside for extra attention. (Afterwards I decided to take a photo of the events, and an undercover policeman who happened to be in my shot revealed himself to me, and claimed I wasn't allowed to take a photo of him!)
You're right about a slippery slope. It's one law here, one law there, and it all adds up.
They can keep you locked up for days!
28 days in the UK, far longer than many other countries. And let's not forget that the Government keep pushing it further, wanting it to be extended to three months. The Commons succeeded recently in getting it to 42 days, but it was thankfully defeated in the Lords.
In the UK possession for personal use is illegal. And the police love the opportunity to get people on something easy - I don't know about the paperwork, but it helps their numbers. I'd say that's the real reason they want to be notified of outdoor parties and gatherings, so they can set up blocks and stop and search everyone on a fishing expedition for drugs (this is fairly commonplace for festivals - they like to do it at public transport exit points, so they can effectively keep people detained without needing a law to do so, and then sniffer dog them all as they are let out one by one through the ticket machine). In some cases now, they even charge the event organisers for the privilege of doing this "policing".
If they weren't legal, why was a new law needed then?
The point is that, no matter what proportion were previously legal, this law criminalised legal raves that were held on legally owned property. Now if you want to have fun, you need permission from the Government. And even if the police think you're just planning on a rave, they can disperse you, as happened in this article.
He means economic liberalism (and presumably neoliberalism), which is right wing, not left wing, and describes the Conservative's economic policies during the 80s. I'm not sure if their economic policies can be described as being the reason for their actions on non-economic issues such as criminalising raves though.
Basically this is the problem of vague terms where "liberal" is overloaded to have a lot of meanings. Some people equate it with being left wing, as you did. I mainly think of it as meaning "pro-civil liberties" or the opposite to authoritarianism - i.e., an independent axis to economic views (you could be liberal left, or liberal right), and certainly the complete opposite to authoritarian actions such as criminalising gatherings of people, and using police resources to stop people having a barbecue!
E.g., the Liberal Democrats in the UK (our third party) are generally the party most likely to oppose things like these, that the other two parties love to do when they're in power.
It became illegal about 15 years ago - from TFA, it states Section 63 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. This basically criminalised raves (which at the time were being demonised from hysteria and moral panicing from the tabloids and the politicians), even if they are held on legal ground.
AFAICT, it criminalises any gathering of over 100 people in a public place where music is played (defined infamously as "sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats"), unless they have obtained the appropriate entertainment licence, but furthermore, any it allows the police to disperse any gathering of 2 or more people if the police think they're preparing a rave, or 10 or more people if the police think they're waiting for a rave.
No evidence, no courts, no right to appeal.
Of course, the police deserve criticism for applying the law in a case that was clearly not in its original spirit, but let's not remember the law they used to do it is broad and draconian. The worrying thing is that the police haven't backed down and acknowledged it as a mistake - they still believe that anything advertised on the Internet as an "all-night party" should be illegal. What is this, a curfew? Telling us when bed time is? Talk about nanny-state - it's like the strict rules my college used to have about parties, where you needed permission, and parties had to be over by midnight.
From TFA, the polic: "far more resources would have been used to police the event". In my experience of Cambridge's Strawberry Fair, these resources would predominantly have involved the police doing a fishing expedition in order to catch people with cannabis on them (I experienced this first hand when travelling through Cambridge Train Station that day - even though I wasn't going to the fair, every single person getting off the train that day was detained for about 30 minutes for stop and search for drugs).
Defenders of the NPG say the images are aren't in the public domain (even though they are under US law)
Fixed that for you.
If all museum images were simply appropriated by file-sharers under the rationale that they *should* be in the public domain, pretty soon there wouldn't be any museum willing to pay for the digitization of important works, and we'd all be worse off.
Wikimedia are more than willing to cooperate with museums - the NPG just doesn't want to. That isn't an argument for granting copyright to public domain images. Copyright is about originality, not effort. Museums have plenty of ways to make money - changing world-wide laws to grant copyright to images that have been in the public domain for hundreds of years is not one of them.
And whilst it's plausible to think that people downloading an mp3 do so instead of buying a CD, do you really think that "filesharers" with portraits are going to result in people no longer visiting museums?
I'm not sure it's that simple. At least the RIAA are dealing with material produced by their artists, as opposed to trying to make a quick buck from paintings done by people who are long dead.
Whilst what Wikipedia have done is almost certainly legal in the US, they are distributing it in the UK (where we might say it is presumtively prohibited).
And? I'm sure all sorts of things on Wikipedia are illegal in various parts of the world, such as China, Iran, North Korea and so on.
Of course, the thing is that this is a legal gray area in the U.S.. Photographs are very much copyrighted, but if the museum had pulled the paintings off the wall and ran them through a big color copier, the result would not be copyrighted in the U.S.. The only argument is whether a photograph of a painting is a "straight-up copy" in the first place, as far as U.S. law is concerned, as you point out.
Surely Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp. involved photographs, not a photocopier? How does it differ to this new case? I'm not sure there's any grey area here.
Slashdot Mirror
No one claimed they were seeking out parties. The point is that they heard about an event, and then went looking for more information about it on the Internet. We also have a direct police quote saying "we were extremely concerned how the event had been advertised on the internet as an all night party and it was therefore necessary to take the appropriate steps to stop the event.", so even if their original source was elsewhere, it is entirely accurate to say that they took action base on what they found on Facebook - in particular, the "all night" tag.
If you want to make pedantic quibbles about TFS, please go ahead. But it is misleading yourself to claim that the summary was misleading, or that they weren't searching the Internet for information - because they were.
Do you have reliable sources that show that raves caused more disturbance than other more publically acceptable forms of entertainment, such as pubs playing loud repetitive beats where people get shit-faced on alcohol? Or are you just reporting the tabloid scaremongering of the time, which was having a moral panic about drugs?
Both have rights but they can't both excersise them fully without restricting the other.
This issue had already long been handled with the correct balance, with laws that cover noise disturbances.
Want to protest that? Then don't say "it shouldn't be illegal". You should made sure when the laws were introduced that it didn't become illegal by doing the same thing the petitioners did. Make your case and show that YOUR case benefits the greater good (gets the most people to vote for you).
Um, they did. Thousands of people protested. Perhaps their voice wasn't heard by you, because the tabloids weren't willing to give them a say?
- a neighbour who wants a quiet night, who thinks this law is mad.
By "different spin", you mean the police's version of events. If the article was updated with new information, don't you think we should take the original version with more of a pinch of salt?
We have no idea if the previous events were held by the same people, or if this guy was unlucky to be having a barbecue in the same place. The point you are missing however is that this is completely irrelevant. The law allows them to be dispersed whether or not they are having a rave, whether or not they are causing a noise disturbance. Evidence or guilt doesn't matter.
No one is defending the right to noise disturbance, that's a straw man - there are other laws to cover that, and that's not what happened here.
Apparently, they had caused problems before and were told to get a license before having the next party. ... They knew they had caused problems before, and were told they had to get a license befoe having another party. They failed to observe the warnings. Enough is enough. I would have them boiled in oil.
Citation needed?
You RTFA. Whilst the locals may have also reported it, the police made it clear that:
"On this occasion, we were extremely concerned how the event had been advertised on the internet as an all-night party and it was therefore necessary to take the appropriate steps."
It's unclear what happened first - perhaps it was reported, then they searched for it, or perhaps both happened coincidentally, but the articles linked, and many other media sources, are reporting the Facebook angle here.
The Register also use the word "dispatched", so blame them if you like - it's not a problem of not RTFA (the only one who didn't read the article is you). The BBC use the word "deployed". I'd argue that both terms are accurate, even if the helicopter had also been on a previous job. Note that it still cost the police £200, so your comment is misleading to suggest that the helicopter merely looked as it was passing back on a normal route. The police still had to divert resources of the helicopter, at a cost of £200, so "dispatch" is perfectly reasonable.
We already had laws against noise disturbances.
And I don't see anyone caring when I'm kept awake by all the Government-approved drugs and repetitive-beat playing that goes on in my street.
And of course, if they were really "illegal raves", why was a new law needed. They were legal raves criminalised by the law...
(It's a shame we don't seem to have these sorts of marches and protests over the even-increasing authoritarian laws we have now.)
The civil liberties issue isn't defending people who are causing a noise disturbance, it's about how the police can break up any party, or even preparations for a party, held on legal privately-owned ground, whether or not there is noise disturbance, or even likely to be a noise disturbance.
Er - maybe because the Slashdot summary was linking to more than one article, and the summary contained information from all of them? You do realise that different news reports may report different things?
TFS linked to the Register, which stated "Riot police stormed a man's 30th birthday barbecue for 15 guests because it was advertised as an "all-night" party on Facebook.". The Telegraph also claim "police feared it was to turn into a large-scale rave prompted by the internet invitations." Andrew Poole himself claimed that "But they kept on insisting I had advertised it as an all-night rave on the internet."
They also have a quote from the police:
"On this occasion, we were extremely concerned how the event had been advertised on the internet as an all night party and it was therefore necessary to take the appropriate steps to stop the event."
So yes, the police were aware of it being advertised on the Internet.
Knee-jerk stupidity, that's how
Perhaps you should RTFA before making your own knee-jerk stupid statements.
But in cases where a weapon is suspected, there are clear reasons to take action, because lives are at stake. I don't think that is true with repetitive beats, somehow. There is also the point that this example applies to entering someone else's private property. If we had a story about police swooping in on someone's own private property because they had a few swag bags and fake weapons, we would rightly be more concerned.
And even there, there are not broad laws that criminalise someone for carrying sacks with "swag" on them. As opposed to this law, which criminalises gatherings and preparations for parties, even on their private property where no noise disturbance is taking place.
Frankly I am old enough and bitter enough to just want kids like that off my lawn, my neighboors lawn,
Sure - trespassing is illegal.
and if they are loud enough, the field next to it as well for that matter.
Of course - we have laws against noise disturbances.
Why didn't the police show up with their helicopters when the noise disturbances were taking place? The problem with this law is that it criminalises a party in "the field next to your neighbour's law", even when it doesn't break any laws on noise disturbances.
Where I live, there's far more disturbance from people who take drugs all night - of the alcohol and cigarettes kind - and stand around outside talking to the late hours. But that's fine. Heaven forbid a bunch of people take some pot (or have a barbecue), and play some repetitive beats in a field they own somewhere.
You missed subsection 2, which covers:
two or more persons are making preparations for the holding there of a gathering to which this section applies,
ten or more persons are waiting for such a gathering to begin there,
It doesn't matter whether they really were preparing for a rave, only that a "superintendent reasonably believes" it. This is a typical theme with both the Conservative and Labour Governments - it's no longer about being guilty or innocent, instead the grant powers to criminalise everyone, and let the police choose who to use it against.
Well heaven forbid someone might want to set up a stereo to play some repetitive beats at his 30th birthday party. Yes, he didn't have a licence - the idea that you need a licence to play repetitive beats on your own property for a private birthday party is what people are criticising here.
(If they were causing a noise disturbance to others, there are laws to deal with that. And no, I still don't think helicopters are needed - something which would create a noise disturbance in itself.)
As an earlier comment joked, strictly speaking he never said it was another person everytime :) I mean yes, I suppose someone's life can't be ruined twice, but an arrest every 18 seconds would still be scary, even if it's sometimes a repeat. To be honest I don't think the exact numbers really matter, the war on drugs is batshit whether it's 18 seconds, minutes or hours.
How are the good folks in the UK not in the streets about all this?
They did - in 1994, thousands of people protested (one source claims 40,000). Sadly protests don't stop laws (as millions marching against the Iraq War showed) - though I still think it's worth doing out of principle, and for raising awareness.
Although I can't help thinking, thousands protesting laws like this as happened in the 90s seems much bigger than anything that's done now against the various restrictions that Labour have brought in, as you mention. I'd have hoped that the Internet would make organising activism like this easier. OTOH, perhaps the long term effect of laws like this is that it breaks up people's ability and will to organise and protest.
Note that it was the 1994 Act that allowed the police in this case to disperse people gathering on their own private property. But yes, things have only got worse - the so-called anti-terrorism search powers are now happily used to catch people carrying small amounts of cannabis for personal use.
One day recently, the police were stopping and searching everyone getting off the train - no one dares speak up or ask what law you are being held under, out of fear of being pulled aside for extra attention. (Afterwards I decided to take a photo of the events, and an undercover policeman who happened to be in my shot revealed himself to me, and claimed I wasn't allowed to take a photo of him!)
You're right about a slippery slope. It's one law here, one law there, and it all adds up.
They can keep you locked up for days!
28 days in the UK, far longer than many other countries. And let's not forget that the Government keep pushing it further, wanting it to be extended to three months. The Commons succeeded recently in getting it to 42 days, but it was thankfully defeated in the Lords.
In the UK possession for personal use is illegal. And the police love the opportunity to get people on something easy - I don't know about the paperwork, but it helps their numbers. I'd say that's the real reason they want to be notified of outdoor parties and gatherings, so they can set up blocks and stop and search everyone on a fishing expedition for drugs (this is fairly commonplace for festivals - they like to do it at public transport exit points, so they can effectively keep people detained without needing a law to do so, and then sniffer dog them all as they are let out one by one through the ticket machine). In some cases now, they even charge the event organisers for the privilege of doing this "policing".
If they weren't legal, why was a new law needed then?
The point is that, no matter what proportion were previously legal, this law criminalised legal raves that were held on legally owned property. Now if you want to have fun, you need permission from the Government. And even if the police think you're just planning on a rave, they can disperse you, as happened in this article.
He means economic liberalism (and presumably neoliberalism), which is right wing, not left wing, and describes the Conservative's economic policies during the 80s. I'm not sure if their economic policies can be described as being the reason for their actions on non-economic issues such as criminalising raves though.
Basically this is the problem of vague terms where "liberal" is overloaded to have a lot of meanings. Some people equate it with being left wing, as you did. I mainly think of it as meaning "pro-civil liberties" or the opposite to authoritarianism - i.e., an independent axis to economic views (you could be liberal left, or liberal right), and certainly the complete opposite to authoritarian actions such as criminalising gatherings of people, and using police resources to stop people having a barbecue!
E.g., the Liberal Democrats in the UK (our third party) are generally the party most likely to oppose things like these, that the other two parties love to do when they're in power.
It became illegal about 15 years ago - from TFA, it states Section 63 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. This basically criminalised raves (which at the time were being demonised from hysteria and moral panicing from the tabloids and the politicians), even if they are held on legal ground.
AFAICT, it criminalises any gathering of over 100 people in a public place where music is played (defined infamously as "sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats"), unless they have obtained the appropriate entertainment licence, but furthermore, any it allows the police to disperse any gathering of 2 or more people if the police think they're preparing a rave, or 10 or more people if the police think they're waiting for a rave.
No evidence, no courts, no right to appeal.
Of course, the police deserve criticism for applying the law in a case that was clearly not in its original spirit, but let's not remember the law they used to do it is broad and draconian. The worrying thing is that the police haven't backed down and acknowledged it as a mistake - they still believe that anything advertised on the Internet as an "all-night party" should be illegal. What is this, a curfew? Telling us when bed time is? Talk about nanny-state - it's like the strict rules my college used to have about parties, where you needed permission, and parties had to be over by midnight.
From TFA, the polic: "far more resources would have been used to police the event". In my experience of Cambridge's Strawberry Fair, these resources would predominantly have involved the police doing a fishing expedition in order to catch people with cannabis on them (I experienced this first hand when travelling through Cambridge Train Station that day - even though I wasn't going to the fair, every single person getting off the train that day was detained for about 30 minutes for stop and search for drugs).
Which does not matter, as the person they are suing, and the website hosting the images, are in the US, and most likely don't give a damn.
Hello? I'm talking about the topic. The moderation's really gone downhill recently...
Nice strawman. Just because I am willing to show you a work of Shakespeare if you come visit me doesn't mean I get to claim copyright over it.
And if they give them away for free, why are they worried? What happened to the "but but, they need the money to survive" special pleading?
Defenders of the NPG say the images are aren't in the public domain (even though they are under US law)
Fixed that for you.
If all museum images were simply appropriated by file-sharers under the rationale that they *should* be in the public domain, pretty soon there wouldn't be any museum willing to pay for the digitization of important works, and we'd all be worse off.
Wikimedia are more than willing to cooperate with museums - the NPG just doesn't want to. That isn't an argument for granting copyright to public domain images. Copyright is about originality, not effort. Museums have plenty of ways to make money - changing world-wide laws to grant copyright to images that have been in the public domain for hundreds of years is not one of them.
And whilst it's plausible to think that people downloading an mp3 do so instead of buying a CD, do you really think that "filesharers" with portraits are going to result in people no longer visiting museums?
I'm not sure it's that simple. At least the RIAA are dealing with material produced by their artists, as opposed to trying to make a quick buck from paintings done by people who are long dead.
Whilst what Wikipedia have done is almost certainly legal in the US, they are distributing it in the UK (where we might say it is presumtively prohibited).
And? I'm sure all sorts of things on Wikipedia are illegal in various parts of the world, such as China, Iran, North Korea and so on.
Of course, the thing is that this is a legal gray area in the U.S.. Photographs are very much copyrighted, but if the museum had pulled the paintings off the wall and ran them through a big color copier, the result would not be copyrighted in the U.S.. The only argument is whether a photograph of a painting is a "straight-up copy" in the first place, as far as U.S. law is concerned, as you point out.
Surely Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp. involved photographs, not a photocopier? How does it differ to this new case? I'm not sure there's any grey area here.