Just in case you were wondering where the idea for a web blocking amendment came from, we attach to this blog post a copy of the BPI’s draft, along with their justification for it.
Now, amendments often come from lobby and campaign groups, including us, not least because it’s the easiest way for them to show parliamentarians what they want. But the fact that twice, with the original copyright by diktat proposal, and then the web blocking proposal, the BPI essentially got to write what they wanted and get it proposed more or less wholesale as law, in such a tremendously sensitive area and in such a one-sided manner, shows something is very wrong with the way this debate is being conducted.
Parliamentarians need to recognize that copyright touches everyone and every technology in the digital age. It is no longer a question of inter-business regulation and deals. Getting copyright wrong has the potential to mess up our freedom of speech, prevent us from getting the benefits of new technologies, and damage society in other very profound ways.
It is therefore deeply inappropriate for such fundamental proposals to have been introduced by both the government or the opposition parties at the behest of one side of the debate. That applies just as much to disconnection, which Mandelson introduced in the summer at the last minute under pressure again from the BPI and other rights holders.
As the Conservatives launch their digital policies today – we again ask why these proposals are being supported, in such direct contradiction to their apparent aims?
Just in case you were wondering where the idea for a web blocking amendment came from, we attach to this blog post a copy of the BPI’s draft, along with their justification for it.
Now, amendments often come from lobby and campaign groups, including us, not least because it’s the easiest way for them to show parliamentarians what they want. But the fact that twice, with the original copyright by diktat proposal, and then the web blocking proposal, the BPI essentially got to write what they wanted and get it proposed more or less wholesale as law, in such a tremendously sensitive area and in such a one-sided manner, shows something is very wrong with the way this debate is being conducted.
Parliamentarians need to recognize that copyright touches everyone and every technology in the digital age. It is no longer a question of inter-business regulation and deals. Getting copyright wrong has the potential to mess up our freedom of speech, prevent us from getting the benefits of new technologies, and damage society in other very profound ways.
It is therefore deeply inappropriate for such fundamental proposals to have been introduced by both the government or the opposition parties at the behest of one side of the debate. That applies just as much to disconnection, which Mandelson introduced in the summer at the last minute under pressure again from the BPI and other rights holders.
As the Conservatives launch their digital policies today – we again ask why these proposals are being supported, in such direct contradiction to their apparent aims?
The Labour Party has released an advert which attacks David Cameron’s policies on crime. No surprise there you might say, we’re in a pre-election period after all, but what’s done in the video below is actually quite sinister. They present their authoritarian project as absolute and unquestionable – our streets are so unsafe that any human rights-breaching use of the National DNA Database or overextension of CCTV (how many actually work, and how effective is it statistically in either reducing crime or prosecuting it?) are prices worth paying. Cameron standing against Labour’s surveillance society’s and database state’s human rights breaches makes him somehow weak and pro-criminal. This video makes me absolutely furious, but it does help in knowing once and for all that their position isn’t accidental; it’s tactical.
Where’s the evidence that retaining DNA profiles of innocent people on the scale (and without any debate) perpetrated by the Home Office has actually led to more matches and more convictions? Oh there isn’t any. But hey vote Labour folks, after all they have policies which may breach human rights, but they make you safer. Except they don’t. Instead we have police forces which fail adequately to protect the public, but admitting to that wouldn’t be a vote winner in marginal seats. This started out as a government committed to human rights; its third attempt at retaining power proves it’s now more interested in power. That’s something we should be afraid of. New Labour, New Danger.
Almost four in five people around the world believe that access to the internet is a fundamental right, a poll for the BBC World Service suggests.
The survey – of more than 27,000 adults across 26 countries – found strong support for net access on both sides of the digital divide.
Countries such as Finland and Estonia have already ruled that access is a human right for their citizens.
International bodies such as the UN are also pushing for universal net access.
“The right to communicate cannot be ignored,” Dr Hamadoun Toure, secretary-general of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), told BBC News.
“The internet is the most powerful potential source of enlightenment ever created.”
He said that governments must “regard the internet as basic infrastructure – just like roads, waste and water”.
“We have entered the knowledge society and everyone must have access to participate.”
Interestingly though in Britain 55% of those surveyed believed there was also a case for some governmental regulation of the Internet. The gap between attitudes is what Mandelson is counting on in order to get the Bill through before the general election. Due process and the rule of law would continue their decline under this draconian piece of legislation, and this and successive governments would not just be allowed to censor the Internet as they saw fit (and in secret), but they would also severely damage the most important new communication resource since the telephone. For what? Appeasement of the Labour Party’s corporate friends? What’s getting lost in this argument are the facts about filesharing:
Watch these two videos of campaigner Charlie Veitch being stopped by the Metropolitan Police under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, despite having demonstrably not broken a single law. A comedian speaking loudly through a megaphone is now longer a lawful reason under the European Court of Human Rights’ ruling to stop and search people on anti-terrorism grounds, but watch the exchange. It’s quite revealing:
Watch these two videos of campaigner Charlie Veitch being stopped by the Metropolitan Police under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, despite having demonstrably not broken a single law. A comedian speaking loudly through a megaphone is now longer a lawful reason under the European Court of Human Rights’ ruling to stop and search people on anti-terrorism grounds, but watch the exchange. It’s quite revealing:
Charlie Veitch of The Love Police shows up a Police Community Support Officer (PCSO) for trying to illegally detain him merely for speaking loudly on a megaphone. The irony couldn’t have been lost on many on Camden High Street that they should have decided to exercise their power (of which arrest isn’t strictly one, and certainly not in this instance) on Veitch, when drugs pushers are walking past them and actively doing business by the dozen. Welcome to Britain 2010.
The amendment to the Equality Bill, which was tabled as a free vote by gay Muslim peer Waheed Alli, received overwhelming backing in the Lords, including from a number of prominent Anglican bishops.
Under current UK law religious venues are forbidden from holding civil partnerships, although some liberal denominations within Christianity and Judaism have been willing to bless gay unions once a partnership ceremony has taken place elsewhere.
The lifting of the ban, which still needs to be approved by the House of Commons, will now give religious venues the option of conducting civil partnerships – but it will not compel them to do so, as some traditionalists had feared.
Lord Alli denied the suggestion that religious communities would be forced to accept gay marriages.
“Religious freedom cannot begin and end with what one religion wants,” he said. “This amendment does not place an obligation on any religious organisation to host civil partnerships in their buildings. But there are many gay and lesbian couples who want to share their civil partnership with the congregations that they worship with. And there are a number of religious organisations that want to allow gay and lesbian couples to do exactly that.”
No doubt the religious fundamentalist set will denounce this as an anti-religious move, but as Alli points out this, if approved by the Commons (and how appalling would it be if the Commons struck this down?), would allow civil partnerships on religious premises, not demand them. It’s amazing how often the devoutly religious wilfully mix the the two up, but the distinction is pretty important because it’s about religious freedom for all. As Stonewall Chief Executive Ben Summerskill says:
‘We’ve argued throughout that this is an important matter of religious freedom. Ministers have known for some months that we intended to table this measure and we regret that the Government didn’t stand up to the bullying it faced from some churches on this issue. We’ll now work closely with ministers to ensure that we secure implementation of this further step towards equality. This vote is hugely important to those gay people of faith (and, as Lady Neuberger pointed out, to their Jewish mothers too!) who wish to celebrate their civil partnerships in their own place of worship.’
It should have been unthinkable to have had a ban in the first place. Why any religion should have the freedom to discriminate based purely on the grounds of the bigoted beliefs of some, is beyond me. But this government has kowtowed incessantly towards the religious lobby, and in the run-up to the general election will no doubt continue to do so. Remember civil partnerships are still only for gay people, and marriage is only for straight people. In a European Union where even Catholic Spain has marriage equality I fail to comprehend why Britain’s inequality is allowed to continue.
Two women, one a Muslim, have become the first people to be barred from boarding a flight because they refused to go through a full-body airport scanner.
Manchester airport confirmed today that the women, who were booked to fly to Islamabad with Pakistan International Airlines, were told they could not get on the plane after they refused to be scanned for medical and religious reasons.
The women had been selected at random, said the airport.
The Muslim woman decided to forfeit her ticket and left her luggage at the airport. Her companion also left the airport saying she did not go through the scanner on medical grounds because she had an infection.
The full-body scanners were introduced at Manchester and Heathrow last month after the Christmas Day bombing attempt in Detroit. The £80,000 Rapiscan machines show a clear body outline and have been described by critics as the equivalent of “virtual strip searching”.
While American transport authorities offer passengers a choice between going through the full-body scanner or going through a metal-arch scanner and a physical search, the British government has said that a refusal to go through the body scanner would bar passengers from boarding aircraft.
I’m not sure what to say, other than isn’t this the most blatant violation of Article 2 of Protocol 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights? There has been no debate about the introduction of full body scanners at airports – what advantage do they actually provide, against the level of the real threat we face after using pre-existing technologies, scanners and security procedures? Yet again we’re all presumed to be terrorists unless we prove otherwise. Hopefully a legal challenge will be soon be launched against their introduction, and to indeed to rescue the right of privacy which this government holds in such low regard.
All the fundamental questions remain. Questions about cost. About due process. About data protection. About checks giving a false sense of security. About malicious accusations and people being wrongly identified as paedophiles. And, most profoundly, about the wider implications of living in a society in which casual, freely given offers of help are met not with appreciation but with deep suspicion.
Common sense tells us that the ideal of a zero-risk childhood is untenable, if not impossible. Of course, children have a just claim for a degree of protection from harm. But when it comes to protecting them, our responsibility should surely be to tackle the most serious threats first and foremost.
So as a parent, my response to the question “how would I feel if it were my child?” is as follows. We would all want to feel that our collective efforts to keep children reasonably safe in an uncertain world were well thought through, proportionate to the risk, and effective. On all these counts, the vetting system is still wholly unfit for purpose.
It’s not just unfit for purpose, it’s unsuitable for purpose. The ISA by definition won’t be able to fulfil its remit, all the while distracting its 250 administrators’ attention from the real abuses which are committed behind closed doors, almost always by people who don’t appear on its bureucratised radar. When we rationalise the management of risk we can’t exactly be surprised when, at enormous cost, children and other ‘vulnerable’ groups continue to be abused and killed, and a culture of suspicion continues to grow. When the most likely outcome is a generation of children and young people unable to risk assess the world for themselves, we should really think again. Bureaucracy and databases are pernicious and ineffective tools with which to manage society.
The Lords laid into the government last night, in a very emotive and passionate debate. There was anger, the same anger we are feeling.
Lords doubted that an accused infringer would have sufficient legal rights to appeal. They also made clear that the music industry and other copyright holders unleashed an “extraordinary degree of lobbying” in order to get the bill through as quickly as possible. Finally, Lords complained about the impact on libraries, universities and internet cafes with (open) wifi.
The Government front bench’s reply was disappointing to say the least. They don’t want to see unis in front of a court over infringement but don’t want to exclude them from the proposed law either.
The Government has been down playing the impact on these institutions and businesses in general and keeps saying that if we all behave sensibly it will all be fine. No it won’t.
The main problem remains that the account holder is responsible for infringements, not the infringer. The Government acknowledges that this is true, but doesn’t care.
Another worrying aspect is that the government thinks that it is unnecessary to pass on the bill to the Office of the Information Commissioner for oversight. They don’t even hide their intentions: It would delay the process of passing the bill into law.
There are some very serious concerns regarding the privacy of citizens and Lord Puttnam was right to accuse the Government of attempting to push the legislation through and not allowing proper discussion.
More importantly he said that the bill as it stands is not fit for purpose. Or a total mess you might want to add. Lord Puttnam said:
“I am absolutely convinced that, within the next two or three years, there will be another bill before this house which will be created to deal with the deficiencies of the present bill.”
Lords asked the right questions, but amendments were withdrawn or votes on amendments lost. The government’s idea to rush though with the legislation became apparent once more as they ‘discussed’ a block of 5 or more amendments at a time.
A whole lot of the bill remains unclear or unspecified and opposition peers have tried to get answers from the government. It may look like a naïve question when the Conservative front bench asks what hotels should do if they receive an infringement notice for a guest, but it points to one of the major problems of the bill.
How would internet cafes, libraries, universities deal with infringers? What happens to their connection of they receive the qualified amount of infringement reports from Ofcom? If they get disconnected how would students, for instance, continue their studies?
The government has not offered any satisfactory solutions to this problem.
The debate continues tomorrow with the most crucial pieces of the legislation, i.e. clauses 11 and 17. We will be tweeting from 4pm.
What can you do?
We want to make this bill a public debate across the country as the election approaches. That’s why we are asking you to write to your local paper and let people know that disconnection is wrong. Ask your MP and election candidates what their positions on the Digital Economy Bill is.
Henry Porter makes an excellent point – neither of the Big Two major political parties in Britain is talking at all about civil liberties or human rights in the run-up to the general election the month after next. Remember this is the election where we can thoroughly repudiate this authoritarian government’s surveillance agenda, and refuse to vote for anyone who doesn’t guarantee to repeal it:
It is [also] a very dangerous government – it has attacked liberty and rights like no other administration in the past hundred years, and it will continue to do so unless stopped by the electorate in 70 days’ time, for the one area which requires absolutely no skill at all is the creation of new offences, the erosion of ancient liberties and filling our lives with endless checking, vetting and surveillance.
Cameron has spoken about these things in the past but this great issue is not apparently big enough to be one of the main themes of an election campaign in which so much is obviously at stake. The only conclusion to draw is that the Tories believe either this is not important, or that the public don’t think it is important. I am not sure which puts them in a worse light because the first displays shallowness, while the second a lack of leadership.
The Tories have rejected changing the voting system and they’re uninterested in talking seriously about civil liberties – this mustn’t be an election about personalities, nor must it be reduced to who can cut public services and how fast. It must be about repairing the social damage caused by New Labour, and proving to all the major parties that the trade-off between security and liberty is a false one.
I shall be voting Green, because they have a strong chance of removing the government minister who doesn’t represent me in any way, shape or form. You should be voting for parties which are against ID cards, think vetting the population for paedophilia before being allowed to work is unthinkably wrong, which don’t demonise asylum seekers (or lock up their children), and which couldn’t condone throwing people off the internet without a trial, or secretly banning websites they don’t like. If the Tories don’t start talking all of these abuses down (and more), you can’t vote for them merely to get Brown, Straw, Johnson, Balls et al out, because they clearly won’t have any intention to do any better. The database state and state surveillance culture must be stopped – this is your best chance to take a stand and make it happen.
I have no issue with allowing Jan Moir to have said the disgusting, hateful, homophobic things which she did about Stephen Gately after his death. Nor do I have an issue with the Daily HateMail having the right to publish them. Freedom of speech after all means you must champion speech you dislike, as well as speech you like, but it does have other provisos too, which I believe the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) wilfully ignored. Its argument was as follows:
In a ruling, the commission said it was “uncomfortable with the tenor of the columnist’s remarks” but that censuring Moir, and the paper, would represent “a slide towards censorship”. It added: “Argument and debate are working parts of an active society and should not be constrained unnecessarily.”
The PCC’s director, Stephen Abell said the article contained flaws, but the commission had decided: “It would not be proportionate to rule against the columnist’s right to offer freely expressed views about something that was the focus of public attention.”
It’s a ridiculous argument. The PCC was set up because there is no such thing as absolutely free speech, yet now they conveniently champion absolute free speech, when their code was flagrantly breached? They have it entirely the wrong way around – censoring her would be the problem, not censuring her. For speech which is constrained there have to be consequences, which the PCC was set up to enforce. Yet PCC director Abell persists with a thoroughly absurd argument – the article doesn’t just contain flaws, but untruths, and in the name of denigrating Gately for his sexual orientation. I don’t think for a moment that an article can only be homophobic if it uses outright homophobic language; the subtext of her hate-filled rant couldn’t have been more homophobic. The PCC disagrees there too:
Gately’s civil partner, Andrew Cowles, said he was disgusted by the article and claimed the Daily Mail had broken the PCC’s code of conduct on three grounds, arguing that it was inaccurate, intruded into private grief and contained homophobic remarks.
The code says that the press must avoid making pejorative references to a person’s sexual orientation, but the commission said that Moir did not use any abusive or discriminatory language.
“While many complainants considered that there was an underlying tone of negativity towards Mr Gately and the complainant on account of the fact that they were gay, it was not possible to identify any direct uses of pejorative or prejudicial language in the article,” it said.
The PCC added that a distinction should be drawn “between critical innuendo which, though perhaps distasteful, was permissible in a free society – and discriminatory description of individuals, and the code was designed to constrain the latter rather than the former”.
So a homophobic subtext is now ‘critical innuendo’? Whilst it’s entirely possible that 25,000 could be wrong, that is the biggest disgrace of all. Whilst making Moir and the HateMail pay a price wouldn’t be unnecessary constrain argument or debate – her column contained neither, just underhanded homophobic slurs, and the PCC has impressively absolved itself of its own remit. If the quick way around it is merely not to use proscribed words in combination (ie. ‘fag’, ‘poof’, ‘homo’, ‘queer’) then the Commission and its code might as well not even exist.
I have no issue with allowing Jan Moir to have said the disgusting, hateful, homophobic things which she did about Stephen Gately after his death. Nor do I have an issue with the Daily HateMail having the right to publish them. Freedom of speech after all means you must champion speech you dislike, as well as speech you like, but it does have other provisos too, which I believe the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) wilfully ignored. Its argument was as follows:
In a ruling, the commission said it was “uncomfortable with the tenor of the columnist’s remarks” but that censuring Moir, and the paper, would represent “a slide towards censorship”. It added: “Argument and debate are working parts of an active society and should not be constrained unnecessarily.”
The PCC’s director, Stephen Abell said the article contained flaws, but the commission had decided: “It would not be proportionate to rule against the columnist’s right to offer freely expressed views about something that was the focus of public attention.”
It’s a ridiculous argument. The PCC was set up because there is no such thing as absolutely free speech, yet now they conveniently champion absolute free speech, when their code was flagrantly breached? They have it entirely the wrong way around – censoring her would be the problem, not censuring her. For speech which is constrained there have to be consequences, which the PCC was set up to enforce. Yet PCC director Abell persists with a thoroughly absurd argument – the article doesn’t just contain flaws, but untruths, and in the name of denigrating Gately for his sexual orientation. I don’t think for a moment that an article can only be homophobic if it uses outright homophobic language; the subtext of her hate-filled rant couldn’t have been more homophobic. The PCC disagrees there too:
Gately’s civil partner, Andrew Cowles, said he was disgusted by the article and claimed the Daily Mail had broken the PCC’s code of conduct on three grounds, arguing that it was inaccurate, intruded into private grief and contained homophobic remarks.
The code says that the press must avoid making pejorative references to a person’s sexual orientation, but the commission said that Moir did not use any abusive or discriminatory language.
“While many complainants considered that there was an underlying tone of negativity towards Mr Gately and the complainant on account of the fact that they were gay, it was not possible to identify any direct uses of pejorative or prejudicial language in the article,” it said.
The PCC added that a distinction should be drawn “between critical innuendo which, though perhaps distasteful, was permissible in a free society – and discriminatory description of individuals, and the code was designed to constrain the latter rather than the former”.
So a homophobic subtext is now ‘critical innuendo’? Whilst it’s entirely possible that 25,000 could be wrong, that is the biggest disgrace of all. Whilst making Moir and the HateMail pay a price wouldn’t be unnecessary constrain argument or debate – her column contained neither, just underhanded homophobic slurs, and the PCC has impressively absolved itself of its own remit. If the quick way around it is merely not to use proscribed words in combination (ie. ‘fag’, ‘poof’, ‘homo’, ‘queer’) then the Commission and its code might as well not even exist.
It’s time to get worried. By way of the digital economy bill, Lord Mandelson means to punish innocent people and limit their right to a fair trial. He means to grant his successors the power to block web content by order, without restriction. His proposals are aimed at restricting copyright infringers, but in reality will damage many people who have never done anything wrong.
The reason for this is as simple as it is unjust. Mandelson and the music companies monitoring copyright infringement can perhaps identify the household, business or cafe where someone is uploading a file, but they cannot identify which person or computer did it. Their answer is to make the internet account holder – the person paying the bill – liable for everyone’s actions. And then, to disconnect the entire household.
Disconnection of whole families is not an acceptable punishment. It is the modern day equivalent of banishment: it will disrupt social lives, education and people’s livelihoods. It is designed to threaten and intimidate, and cow people into behaving, with no regard to the consequences of using the law in such a manner.
Restricting the right to a fair trial, state censorship, disproportionate state punishment against households (and businesses of all kinds) for the actions of individuals – these are the tools used by tin pot dictatorships. The Executive Director of the Open Rights Group is right – this isn’t the way our government should be behaving over anything, and we shouldn’t be fooled – the people most at risk of the bill are younger people, who have amongst the least power in society, and who are currently possibly the most ignored minority group in the run-up to the general election. The bill will affect everyone, because it’ll give the government the right to arbitrarily censor the internet as it sees fit. Abuses by such laws are already kicking off in Australia, and it would be crazy to think the same wouldn’t happen here – when laws exist which can be abused, they are invariably abused; it’s the nature of power. Killock continues:
Hardly anybody thinks this bill is a good idea – outside of the music and film lobbies; not even most musicians I have spoken to. But politicians need to hear us much more loudly if they are going to react. You can help by contacting your MP, and explaining what this bill really means, to you and to others. You can take action with Open Rights Group: do it now!
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