The European Court rules to balance the rights of copyright holders against citizenship rights. Finally some sense from the courts. The SABAM vs Scarlet case from Belgium has finally reached the end of the road. The European Court of Justice has ruled that EU Law prohibits national courts from forcing Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to filter and block all users, including alleged and proven copyright infringers. …
And for our next trick, we’ll make the Pirate Bay disappear
The Guardian ran a story yesterday which states that a coalition of music publishing corporations have threatened BT with court action to get them to “block” the Pirate Bay since they feel they have a legal precedent in the newzbin2 judgements. …
More on the Newzbin2 affair
Last week, BT and the Movie Studios returned to court to discuss the terms of the newzbin2 injunction. The judgement is a pretty much a victory for the Studios. BT must use Cleanfeed to block notified sites, they must use it to block all addresses notified by the applicants, the proposal that only sites that ‘predominantly’ induce copyright infringement should be blocked was rejected, they can’t turn the blocking off for operational reasons without the permission of the applicants, they can’t terminate the injunction in circumstances where the applicants don’t injunct BT’s competitors in a reasonable time frame, BT have to pay for the enforcement, BT have no right to claim damages against the studios for consequential liability, BT have to pay the studio’s court costs to the point of the initial newzbin2 injunction, costs incurred after the injunction are born be each side. …
Three Wise Men, caption competition
The London Evening Standard ran this picture, with some rubbish about how Cameron brought his intellectual friend along to get Obama to lean on Merkel and Sarkozy to rescue the Euro (and lets face it, the Pound). Perhaps you can do better…
Please comment… …
A Free Digital Society, with Richard Stallman
So I went to hear Richard Stallman speak at an ORG meeting. He was late, and couldn’t be contacted because he doesn’t use a mobile phone, or not one that you can make calls to.
He started with the recording rules and distribution rules. Any films must be open format friendly, and published under CC-ND terms. There are to be no pictures posted to Facebook, of him presumably, anyway his advice is to “Unfriend Facebook Today”. …
Royal Equality and Digital Freedom
So the #CONDEM government plans to introduce a “Royal Equality Act” before the next General Election. What do you suppose that’ll do then. Make the Royals equal to the rest of us? Levy taxes on their private income, Remove the Prince of Wales veto on UK politics? Nah! It’s about who succeeds King William!
I suppose that @Nick_Clegg will have to let the Tories bang on about this and agree to the use of parliamentary time, but I remember his promise to Repeal the Digital Economy Act, so in my mind and that of many others, I can think of much better things our politicians should be doing. The “Great Freedom Bill”, this ain’t. …
Some thoughts on censorship and the internet
Earlier this week, the MPAA and BT returned to court to agree subsiduary terms around the court injunction that BT is to use its Cleanfeed technology to block the newsbin2 web site. In considering the events in court and the judgement, I found an article I had written but not posted about the case and the politics, including the governments announcement to back the Hargreaves Review and Ofcom’s reticence in pursuing the use of the Digitial Economy Act’s web site blocking powers.
I have now published the article, called Censoring the Internet as at the 7th August, which is roughly when I finished it. …
The Tories have no (economic) clothes
Earlier in October, the week of the Tory Party Conference, was an awful week for George Osbourne and the Tory run Treasury. I wonder if it’s his “Black Wednesday”. Moodys, the credit rating agency downgraded most of Britain’s banks, which was also covered in the Guardian, and he gave permission to the Bank of England to launch a £75bn Quantitative Easing programme, covered with varying degrees of approval in the Guardian, the FT, and Reuters. …
Just one more cadre
I recently wrote to Loz Kaye, the leader of the UK Pirate Party, to congratulate him and his party on their brother’s and sister’s victory in Berlin. I pointed out that in Europe they were at a cross roads. As they grow in maturity and power as a political party, something yet to occur in the UK, it will become harder to talk to and work with supporters in other political parties. There is a mature balancing act to be taken in advancing their ideas, most of which I agree with, and winning political power. In my mind, they have to find a route between supporting the growth of broad campaigning groups such as the ORG or building their own organisation. There is a tendency in both the Liberal Democrats and the British Trotskyist movement to consider each new party member a victory for the cause. Both parties often win these cadres at the cost of those they create, dispirited by defeat who give up on politics. Each person who gives up on politics and hope is a loss to democracy, and we are not winning. …
Mendacity, Malevolence and a future fair for all
Polly Toynbee in the Guardian comments, more eloquently than I on Vince Cable’s Conference speech. She ends her article with the following quote,
…It’s time for grown-up politics from the Lib Dems. A measure of rapprochement with Labour and an end to mendacious attacks is the best way to distance themselves from their Tory captors.