On 2nd Sept, Torrent Freak reports that Sajid Javid notes that central government is funding the City of London Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit. Javid’s speech is posted on gov.uk, and he says,
We’ve given £2.5 million to support the City of London Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit, PIPCU.
The first unit of its kind in the world, PIPCU is working with industry groups – including the BPI – on the Infringing Websites List.
They really don’t get it. Earlier this week, again in a response to a Torrent Freak article I looked at the democratic control of the City of London Police and noted that when the Tories introduced their flawed Police and Crime Commissioner positions, they ensured that both the Met and the City police were excluded. There is a reason that the UK has historically denied the central government the powers to manage the police. It’s because we have always tried to create a segregation of duties between those that write the law, those that search for evidence of wrong doing and the decisions to prosecute and judge. Our observation of the way in which tyrannies run their police suggest that this is a better approach.
Anyway, the City of London Police have no citizen elected controller, and so both business and now a business controlled government are funding a set of highly dubious police actions.
ooOOOoo
He also reported that the UK was the 2nd biggest music exporter in the world. The interesting fact would be the Balance of Trade figures, and I first heard this last year although at the time, it was said that Sweden sold more music then the UK, based presumably on Spotify’s performance, and maybe Abba, although they broke up in 1982, over thirty years ago. I wonder what the numbers are.