digital economy – Page 2

Britain’s over reaching content filters

The UK’s Web site blocking rears its ugly head again. I was pointed at Der Spiegel who reports that Three and Vodafone are blocking the Chaos Computing Club‘s domain. The Chaos Computer Club is a grass roots technology association most well known outside Germany were it is based for its annual Congress held in Hamburg. Equally well known for not being a porn site. The Spiegel article is in German and I translated it using Google translate. I have hosted a copy here, and you can see google’s rendering here. The remainder of the article looks at over-blocking, including IT security resources as obscene, and the market share of the various UK carriers. …

Campaiging with Politicians

Still at orgcon14, the first session in the afternoon was titled “Campaigning with Politicians”. I wasn’t going to report this since on the whole it wasn’t that good, but it does set the scene for what may be coming and so I changed my mind. The chair opened the session by stating the session would be best used as a campaigning symposium and not treated as a hustings, he might have saved himself the trouble. The three speakers, Jullian Huppert MP (LibDem), Natalie Bennett (Green Party) and Claude Moraes MEP set out their (Parties’) stalls. …

Three Laws, Doctorow at orgcon14

Orgcon14 was opened by its keynote speaker, Correy Doctrow, one of the UK’s leading digital liberty campaigners. This presentation was a bit of a reprise although he concludes by addressing recent developments in the politics of surveillance in the UK. …

The German Commissioner, Oettinger

Earlier this week Germany’s appointment to the Commission, Gunther Oettinger, allocated the Digital Economy portfolio blotted his copybook by blaming the celebrity victims of a porn leak as stupid prior to his EP confirmation hearings, at which he also didn’t do too well. However, if second division, and appointed for domestic reasons, he isn’t the only one. …

@LabourDigital

I left Manchester and travelled home on Tuesday Morning, i.e. 23rd I reckoned I could catch up on Ed’s speech and the only fringe of any interest was the @LabourDigital policy launch planned for 4:00 p.m. I checked it out on the web, but it didn’t really come to my notice as anything other than a minority interest until it was reported in the Register on Sept 28th by Andrew Orlowski, not to be confused with Aleksandr Orlov, who seems to have picked up the territory. The @LabourDigital’s policy statement is here. It contains 82 recommendations, which they summarise with four headlines and seven additional teaser policies. …

Data, democracy & power

On to an early morning meeting called “Data, democracy & power”, hosted by the Fabian Society. This was chaired by Jemima Kiss of the Guardian who alluded to the pervasive nature of modern ICT. Chi Onawaruh MP spoke combining a statement of inclusive values with insight into the nature of progressive change; how only a movement informed by visions of socialist equality can ensure that the internet act as a tool for freedom and empowerment. Digital Government needs to continue, and she spoke of the feelings of frustration raised by her constituents …

Pragmatic Radicalism’s Top of the Policies on the Digital Revolution

As promised I popped over Pragmatic Radicalism’s the Top of the Manifestos event run by @LabourDigital. I proposed that “the regulator’s code must be open” and this can be seen at their updated event page. I presented a pitch entitled, “The regulators code must be open” but sixty seconds isn’t long. It didn’t win, or even make the final cut! …

An internet accountable to private contract

The BBC ran a story yesterday about the impending agreement between the UK based industrial content and the ISPs to adopt a warning system whereby the top four ISPs, will on notification from the industry trade associations write and warn their customers who allegedly download potentially copyright infringing material. The BBC covered this scoop in the morning on the Radio 4 today program and later in the evening on News Night. …

Policy for Labour on the Digital Economy

The Labour Party’s proposed policy programme only mentions the digital economy once, and this is to promise more speed, everywhere it can go. There are two internal pressure group style swarms/groups/initiatives looking to do better. The first is launched by the front bench incubated if not commissioned by the impressive Chi Onawaruh MP, currently shadow spokesperson for the Cabinet Office. This has it’s home at this site, Chi publicised the initiative at in an article at Labour List called How can we make Digital Government work better for everyone?. A great deal of thought has been undertaken in launching this initiative. The second initiative is @LabourDigital, …

Supporting the EDRi Charter

Earlier this month I wrote about the 10 Point Charter for a Digital Society and the voting exchange supporting it. Claude Moraes, Labour’s 1st place candidate on the London List, an incumbent and a leading member of the EU Parliament’s LIBE (Civil Liberties) Committee has already signed it as has Ivanna Bartolleti, who is also on Labour’s London list. Two days ago, I wrote to the remaining London Labour candidates and asked them to also support it. The rest of this article is a synopsis of the argument I used in favour of all 10 points. I said something like this, …