Thinking about de Grucht’s prospects of retaining his position on the Commission, led me to think what’ll happen to Cathy Ashton’s position. The Commissioners are appointed by each of the National Governments, and their term expires in 2014. I can’t see the coalition agreeing without splitting the Tory Party in Parliament. It might make this week’s House of Lords spat between the Tories and Lib-Dems look like hand bags at dawn.
Can this be brought to Parliament? …
In Ed Miliband’s recent speech, which Labour’s web site entitles, “To deal with people’s concerns on immigration, we must change how our economy works”….you give massive hostage to our opponents. The headlines horrified me, so as so often during the Blair and Brown years, I return to the original text. It’s a nuanced speech on subject where nuance gets lost.
What you say is reasonable, most of your analysis of the failings of the Labour market are sound, and reading the speech, where you propose, genuinely effective border controls, enforcing the current laws on wages, introducing recruitment agency regulation, and a more responsible capitalism, I can’t complain. …
So it seems that the next big Parliamentary drama is going to be House of Lords reform. …
Tomorrow/Today we elect a Mayor and Council in London.
Labour’s candidate is Ken Livingstone, he is fighting to replace the right-wing tory, Boris Johnson.
I was planning to summarise my feelings but if you check out my internet spore, I think you know how I feel. Nicky Gavron, a GLA Assembly Member summarizes brilliantly, why Ken is right for London, and Johnson is wrong in her blog article, Ken v Boris.
The key powers of the Mayor are Transport, Police and Planning. Ken’ll reduce the fares, bring stability to the Police and use the planning powers in the interests of Londoners to build affordable housing.
Johnson will increase fares at above inflation, sack policemen and Comissioners and built 56 houses in the last six months.
There’s only one sensible choice. Vote Labour for London. …
Should have been out on the #labourdoorstep tonight with people, but had family things to do. So I watched last night’s London Mayor debate on bbc iplayer.
I can’t believe that Boris stated the Thatcher Government had to abolish the GLC and that Ken’s original Fares Fair was in some period of pre-history. If he want the pensioner vote he’d better get his London history right, but then he’s not a Londoner. The comment/fact that Boris isn’t a man for detail shone through on the transport/police debates. He hasn’t a clue. He’s increased fares and cut the police. He claims that the money isn’t there to meet Ken’s Fare deal; only TfL who work for him say this, every independent expert says that its do-able. I hope so, every time I pass an oyster card reader, I am reminded of what Johnson’s making me pay. …
Yesterday, I read and commented on Judge Purdy’s judgement as to why Richard O’Dwyer had committed a serious crime in the this country and hence was liable to extradition to the USA. Here’s the source of my outrage,
he is due to face charges of copyright infringement while no-one claims he has copied anything
Not right! …
It seems the Liberal Democrats are gearing up to oppose the extradition of Richard O’Dwyer. Good. He shouldn’t be extradited; it’s not the asynchronous nature of the Anglo US extradition treaty which is the problem here. In order to be extradited, you need to have a case to answer that you have broken a serious law in both jurisdictions. …
The queue to get into Parliament last week was a bit long, so long I missed the first presentation at Pictfor’s Consumer’s and Creators in the 21st Century Copyright World, although I did take some good pictures. Saskia Wetzel was the first person on, and it’s a shame I missed it; she was the only speaker designated as a consumer representative. … …
I attended the PICTFOR meeting on Tuesday, having prepared for it by researching the state of politics in relation to “Orphan Works”. I have been pointed at this issue by Dr James Boyle in his Orgcon 2010 speech and more recently by this paper, called “Orphan Works: Mapping the Possible Solution Spaces” by David Hansen. …
The UK’s Serious Organised Crime Agency, part of the UK’s small national police force and a Home Office QUANGO, undertook a US Government style raid on the web site of rnbxclusive.com, which was reported by Techdirt in an article called “UK Now Seizing Music Blogs (With American Domains) Over Copy Right Claims”. The most startling part of this, for Brits, is the amazing splash screen factoids that greeted visitors to the site, which among other things states that the people behind the site have been arrested under suspicion of fraud, they know who you are (or more accurately, who your ISP is), the penalties for conspiracy to commit fraud and the quote below. The most startling part of this for Yanks and their law enforcement officers is that a foreign law enforcement agency can take down a .com i.e. a US site.
Glyn Moody in a an article called “Serious Organised Crime Agency Takes Down Music Site”, after talking to SOCA states that SOCA are pursuing enquiries to prove, to the point of arrest, that some, their notice said most, of the sound tracks previously available had been obtained pre-release by hacking. This is a crime under UK law and the copyright owners and licensees deserve the protection of the law, as the accused deserve a fair trial.
Arstechnia also comments in an article, entitled “Police: download a file, go to jail for 10 years and pay an “unlimited fine”. They clearly examine the notice and deconstruct the lies and disinformation. The notice includes statements about theft and the economic impact of the downloaders actions. i.e.
“As a result of illegal downloads young, emerging artists may have had their careers damaged. If you have illegally downloaded music from this site, you will have damaged the future of the music industry.”
It’s a disgrace that a law enforcement agency is publishing the BPI’s propaganda. The interests of a copyright licensors and the interests of artists are not synonymous!
Why are the police using our taxes to fund such bullshit? Why use British taxes to fund a free advert pointing at an american registered web site for so-called legal music? How much would that cost on google?
Innocent until proven guilty means that even the most egregious, industrial scale pirates are innocent until proven guilty.
Others have made the point that this notice may well prejudice any trial. I am also informed that the scary spyware doesn’t work with Mac or Chrome. Also IP addresses are private data under UK and European law, the use of the program code that displays the IP address requires a number of compliance actions. Perhaps I’ll check if SOCA registered this use of private data under the Data Protection Act. …