Stand up diggers all

Falklands . Whose rock is it anyway?

2012-01-22T18:37:00.001+01:00

The Falklands are back in the news again. More than 25 years have gone since Margaret Thatcher saved her government with a gungho war in the South Atlantic.

Now, once again Argentina are pursuing their claim to sovereignty. Nationalism is being stoked again to lay claim to a few small islands that for twenty years or so were part of the young Argentina.

That they want them back, and that Britain wants to keep them is no surprise. With the islands come undersea oil, and a claim to a slice of Antarctica.

Who did what 180 years ago seems a bit irrelevant... particularly as I hold that primitive view of land that it's really the people that belong to the land rather than the opposite. The islanders are for better or worse the people that should decide. ... And two nations greed for resources really shouldn't be a factor in making a choice. Should it?

Sharing is caring, Ideas are divine

2012-01-10T19:52:00.001+01:00

I guess you may have seen that kopimism (Copy me ism) is now a recognised religion here in Sweden.

The basic tenet seems to be that to share knowledge is sacred, and no surprise then that the church's 3000+ members see file sharing as a good thing. Now you may think that sharing knowledge is a strange thing to revere, but is it? Is it more strange than believing in an all-seeing non-corporeal immortal that sits on a cloud casting thunderbolts?

If you want to think of something intangible and invisible that can live for ever and have huge influence over our lives what have you got?

An idea.

While you can debate the existence of god the idea of god clearly exists and has clearly had huge influence on mankind over innumerable centuries. Immortal. All powerful.

Ideas

On the bus

2012-01-10T08:25:00.001+01:00

The new year finds me with a new phone and I've finally got the knack of working multiple windows on it so now just maybe I have what I need to blog on the go. Like now... on the bus

Good times?

2012-01-09T07:22:00.001+01:00

"How can a world be good in which Money is the moving power, and Self-interest the guiding star? The wonder is not that it is so bad, but that there should be any good left in it."

H. Rider Haggard, 1887

The bard and copyright

2011-02-15T20:43:00.000+01:00

The New York Times have a well twittered piece on the value of copyright - that has a central tenet the role that closed theatres had in Shakespears time in stimulating creativity.

The argument is curious as a basis for supporting copyright... there was no copyright back then ... and the monopoly held by the Stationer's company is probably not a shining example of a system designed to stimulate creativity. On the other hand you could point out that it was performance not writing that was the source of revenue and draw useful parallels to the situation today where live performance is proving increasingly important for artists as a source of revenue - including of course in the cinema where showings remain strong.

And as for their closing remarks on the fate of Shakespears Globe - pulled down by authorities in the 17th century to stem the flow of unsettling ideas reaching it's audiences? Doesn't that sound more like a warning about defending an uncensored internet than a call to constrain it in the name of monopoly?

Gaiman on copyright piracy

2011-02-15T09:06:00.000+01:00

I saw this clip on BoingBoing and couldn't resist copying it here.... Neil Gaiman explains why letting people take his work has been good for business.

Joining the Twitterati

2010-12-18T10:25:00.000+01:00

Since #Cablegate hit the news I've been dipping into Twitter to catch the latest news. At the same time I've been wondering about my blogging. It seems harder these days to find the time to sit down and write - but at the same time there is lots of good stuff going on that I want to share.....

So now I can. As from yesterday you can find me on Twitter ... @DiggersAll.

Wikileaks: What the good book says

2010-12-08T21:32:00.001+01:00

“There is nothing concealed that will not be revealed, nothing hidden that will not be made known. Everything you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight; what you have whispered in locked rooms will be proclaimed from the rooftops.” – Luke 12:2-3

The Bible is not really my cup of tea but this quote is spot on.. so too is the article where I found it -on Daniel Ellsberg's blog, citing a press release by the 'Institue for Public Accuracy' about Wikileaks and the American government's problem with integrity, justice and accountability.

It was Ellsberg that leaked the Pentagon Papers on the Vietnam War - and the press release is signed by list of heavy weights all familiar with the predicament Julian Assange & Private Manning now find themselves in.

All power to their elbow... Go read!

Climate change - ostriches and a train crash

2010-12-05T09:52:00.000+01:00

[image: NOAA]

"For January–October 2010, the global combined land and ocean surface temperature was 0.63°C (1.13°F) above the 20th century average of 14.1°C (57.4°F) and tied with 1998 as the warmest January–October period on record."

"Sitting here shivering at the end of the coldest late November in living memory (well, in this living memory at any rate) it's somewhat surreal to contemplate the assembled panjandrams of the climate alarmism industry sunning themselves in Cancun while delivering apocalyptic pronouncements of the doom that will befall us should a sufficiently draconian regime of carbon control be imposed upon the world."

Under the title 'Rhetoric and Reality on Climate Change' the Heresiarch kicks off a discussion on whether it would be better to give up any attempt to limit man's climate impact and just start learning to live with the consequences.

"Advocates of action to forestall global warming" are we learn in a "state of desperation".

It's strikes a disappointingly sceptic tone, but is an interesting read - not least for stating the obvious, that politically we globally don't have our act together. We are all on board the same train.. and we are heading full speed at the buffers.

Now the little guy at the back of the carriage has tried.. "er, excuse me, but maybe we should slow down?" (many times).. and the train drivers union has called a meeting to discuss what to do.. And now it's too late to stop the train... we are going to crash. And the little guy is standing on his chair shouting. "Use the f****** brakes".

Hitting the buffers slowly will always be better than charging at them full speed. Learning to live with the consequences is clearly a something we need to do... but what we have to live with depends very much on how hard we manage to brake the train.

Full speed ahead is not the right answer...

Wikileaks: the messenger and the hydra's teeth

2010-12-05T00:16:00.000+01:00

You can understand that it is uncomfortable for some to find their dirty washing hanging out in public. I am all for privacy...

But whose privacy? Do we want privacy for government and surveillance of the individual? Or the opposite. Transparency in government and privacy for the individual?

Governments, senior politicians and powerbrokers everywhere are leaning hard to close down Wikileaks... their DNS servers, their Paypal account. One is struck by the effort going into closing down the source of the leak - rather than admit to or address the issues raised..

But why shoot the messenger? Whistleblowing is a recognised and protected principle. Journalistic sources are protected - for instance in the Swedish constitútion - and in many countries including the US, there are laws protecting individuals rights to blow the whistle on misdoings and get protection for it... In Britain for instance the Public Interest Disclosure Act covers dicslosure of

a criminal offence;
the breach of a legal obligation;
a miscarriage of justice;
a danger to the health or safety of any individual;
damage to the environment; or
deliberate covering up of information tending to show any of the above five matters

Do the cablegate leaks count? Well judging by the international coverage of them I'd say the case for public interest is proven....

So do we want THEM to put the genie back in the bottle? To go back to feeding us a massaged variant of the truth? Well... mixing my metaphors a little - it looks like it is not going to happen. Wikileak mirrors are springing up all over to carry the torch. Cut off a head and another grows in its place.

The truth will out... inconvenient or not...

For information on Wikileaks mirrors check here...

Britannia in chains....

2010-11-14T10:24:00.001+01:00

"Rule Brittannia, Britannia rules the waves,
Britons never, never shall be made to slaves"

"It is inconceivable to me that a waking nation in the full consciousness of its freedom would have allowed its government to pass such laws as

the Protection from Harassment Act (1997),
the Crime and Disorder Act (1998),
the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000),
the Terrorism Act (2000),
the Criminal Justice and Police Act (2001),
the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act (2001),
the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Extension Act (2002),
the Criminal Justice Act (2003),
the Extradition Act (2003),
the Anti-Social Behaviour Act (2003),
the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act (2004),
the Civil Contingencies Act (2004),
the Prevention of Terrorism Act (2005),
the Inquiries Act (2005),
the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (2005),

not to mention a host of pending legislation such as the Identity Cards Bill, the Coroners and Justice Bill, and the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill. " after Philip Pullman

Just a reminder...
Not mentioning it doesn't make it go away

Kinsella: Intellectual property hampers capitalism

2010-10-23T08:58:00.001+02:00

Author and patent attorney Stephan Kinsella talks on the incompatibility between intellectual property and capitalism.. or put another way - why patents and copyright are bad for business....

Stoneage copyright?

2010-10-20T06:51:00.001+02:00

You might think that if there is something that is out of copyright this is it... Stonehenge. Erected more than 4000 years before copyright was even thought of it's hard to think of anything that is more in the public domain.

So it's strange to hear that English Heritage are stomping their way round online photo image libraries to tell them that "all commercial interest to sell images (of Stonehenge) must be directed to English Heritage."

Now it may be that the law gives some support to their claim.. presumably because they own the land it stands on, and photographers were on their property at the time... If it does though, I can only sat that the law is an Ass.

Aristotle on ideas...

2010-10-17T06:54:00.000+02:00

"It is not once nor twice but times without number that the same ideas make their appearance in the world."

Patents enslave my creativity....

Seven or point seven? Pirate voting...

2010-10-03T15:56:00.001+02:00

Well... that was the election, that was. The Swedish parliamentary election I mean....

And for Piratpartiet it was a generally disappointing 0,7% of the national vote. Nowhere in the realms of the 7% that the party took in the EU elections. And so, both in the press and in the party there is some reflection ongoing on what happened and what it means for the future....

Not to be left out, I'm here to draw my straw to the stack.. with of course the clear benefit of hindsight.

So what is different?

Firstly a lot of the burning issues that were on the table at the EU election are now done deals.

the FRA legislation is on the statute book and the state can (and we assume does) routinely monitor calls, mails and surfing across the national border.
IPRED also made it onto the statute book... ignoring privacy of communications & allowing copyright groups to get personal details on IP addresses suspected of copyright enfringement.
The Pirate Bay trial reached a conviction for those in the dock - apparently signalling that linking to copyright material is a no no in the eyes of the law.

Yesterday's news. Done deals don't make for good press, so without something of current interest it's hard to get airtime to re-open the questions.  More than that though... the lack of clear targets to oppose leaves PP campaigning on principles rather than issues - and that is both harder to get across, and also harder to generate motivation around internally.

Out in the news though it did seem that PP core issues were left on the sidelines.   Piratpartiet did get exposure on topics like child pornography being used as the thin end of the wedge for net censorship but that is such a sensitive topic that it's hard to think that you could ever expect to win votes with it.

My perception was that the party's image in the press was too closely linked to downloading and copyright, and not enough to privacy and integrity issues. It's an impression reinfoced by the party's choice of issues... Hosting servers for the Pirate Bay may sound cool, but has zero relevance for most voters. Likewise hosting Wikileaks... people are choosing a government not a new data park.

And of course, EU elections are different to national elections. National questions are perceived as much more about things that affect our daily life - schools, healthcare, and the money in our pocket at the end of the month. It was always going to be a challenge to attract voters on the same scale as for the EU election. Still, for me the party didn't get across how far the threat to our privacy has come - and why it matters enough to put all your vote on that topic.

0,7% is pretty close to the party's result in 2006 - and a good way from the 4% needed to get in to parliament. Does a party have a role that can't break past the post?

The EU election showed that it does... when a significant minority of people put their vote behind the PPs principles. Those people are still out there - perhaps with different priorities for a national election -but still out there to be reached. And more to the point the other parties have seen how the issues can affect their result. This time both blocs chose to keep integrity off the agenda - but at the same time perhaps some parties have taken on board copyright, integrity and patent issues in a way not seen before.

The green parties have been influentual in making the environment a part of mainstream politics - no one can chance not having a policy on it. Piratpartiet - even without breaking into parliament - has the same role for privacy, integrity and the information society. Everyone needs to be ready to talk about it.. and maybe that's a first step to getting a recognition that things need to change...

Meanwhile, from the outside at least, Piratpartiet is proving it's worth in Brussels. Great credentials to bring to the next fight....   In four years it's both EU and national elections.  Seven or point 7. Which is going to be?

We are now entering the Live Age: P2P and the music industry

2010-09-07T12:30:00.014+02:00

Matthew David of Brunel University takes an erudite look at Peer to Peer and the Music Industry - the history of the distribution monopoly and the legal, technical, cultural and economic options going forward - both for artists and the recording industry.
From March 2010

Piratpartiet & The Pirate Party - Working for copyright reform

ACTA: Treaty without a cause?

2010-09-06T22:11:00.001+02:00

The latest leaks on the ACTA treaty show that negotiations have gone a long way to resolving outstanding issues with some ground given by the US.. but some of the worst of the treaty still stubbornly in place. ACTA watchers are not impressed that three strikes still seems to be on the agenda, and that US led pro-DRM measures are included that go beyond the WIPO treaty and even existing US law.
(More details from Michael Geist and Boing Boing.)

But do we really need an anti-counterfeiting treaty at all?

Well perhaps not. The Telegraph reports on a study that shows that the impact of counterfeiting on luxury brands isn't the disaster that it's made out to be... most consumers buying counterfeits aren't being ripped off- they know it's a fake, and they would never have bought an original.... meaning that fashion houses are not losing those sales to counterfeiting. Counterfeiting is big business -but if it's not done to defraud who is it hurting?

The article is cited in many places... but the original report seems to be more elusive. You can find it though at the British Journal of Criminology - with the pithy title of:
Jailhouse Frocks: Locating the Public Interest in Policing Counterfeit Luxury Fashion Goods
by David Wall & Joanna Large

Amongst other things it looks at the links between counterfeiting and organised crime ...and has an interesting section on the 'aspirational hierarchy' that binds together both the fashion houses and the counterfeiters.

Read it.. and see if you can find the public interest in ACTA....

Piratpartiet : Building the information society. Vote Pirate!

Putting principles first. Why a 44-year old who has never downloaded music will vote for the pirates.

2010-09-06T07:49:00.003+02:00

It is two weeks to the election here in Sweden.. and social democrat Henrik Brändén and centerist Markus Berglund have writtin an article in the national press to explain why they are leaving their parties and will vote Piratpartiet instead. Henrik writes in length on his blog about why after 29 years as a socialdemocrat activist he is placing integrity first and going Pirate. His article is very good.. and reflects a a great deal of the thinking that led me to see the political importance of the pirate movement in opposing the threat to our privacy and integrity. Here is just a short translated extract... (the highlight is mine)

How can a 44-year old who has never downloaded music to vote for the pirates?
When I meet young people today, I see that they, just as we did in my youth, love to talk to each other: about life and love, about politics, philosophy and existential issues. Like when I was young that many make music, poetry, short stories and diaries. But the way is different. My discussions in cafes and on the telephone takes place today with Skype and various instant messaging functions. Where I wrote a letter on paper to send young people today send an e-mail. Where I and my contemporaries had notebooks and loose-leaf with personal notes and literary experiments many of today's young people's have materials in a data space on an external server, so that wherever they find themselves they are be able to access it over the net.

The combination of IPRED-law, the FRA-law and data retention directive does for young people today exactly what it would have meant for me and my friends if there sat microphones under the tables in all Uppsala cafes, our phone calls were tapped and letters ripped up, and also book and music publishers agents always had the right to rummage through our bags. What has happened in recent years is simply that we have taken great strides straight into a surveillance society. Things are a reality today in Sweden and many other Western countries, that in my youth led us to distance itself from East Germany and other Communist states"

Henrik also explains how he squares his choice with his principles.. and not least how as an author he can support a party seeking copyright reform.

Which just remains for me to add my belated welcome to Henrik..

Arrrrrr!! Welcome on board

Piratpartiet : Vote Pirate - Make your voice heard.

Assange and the He said She said

2010-08-25T17:12:00.001+02:00

The press is full of it....

..sexual misconduct by Julian Assange that is. And, while this is a great spectacle it is ultimately not that interesting. Any trial is going to come down to a simple 'He said, she said' and while there may well be plenty of testimony it's unlikely that we will end up with a a full unbiased opinion of what actually took place.

To be honest I don't care. The ladies in question, driven either by the trauma of their experience, their virtuous desire for justice or a 'hell hath no fury' desire for revenge have reported an incident they believe breaks the law. Julian Assange almost certainly has a different interpretation of events... and a court will decide if he either did, or didn't do something that breaches Sweden's laws. It will sell a lot of papers....

Neither outcome has any particular bearing on the activities of his brainchild Wikileaks.

The fact that the case seems to have been badly handled by the Swedish authorities is largely a sideshow. It seems likely that the way it has been handled falls short of the standards here for legal protection of information on a suspects identity - something they will no doubt get mauled for - but as far as I can see that all hinges on the original prosecutor who, when asked on the phone by a journalist if they had raised a warrant on Assange stupidly said 'yes' rather than 'no comment'. Journalists we should remember are professionals in weedling information out of people...

In fact the most interesting thing from my point of view is who tipped off the press? .. and with what motive? (...since it resulted in unproven but serious accusations about someone's private life becoming front page news around the globe)

But being Sweden, the press's sources have full legal protection... so I'm not likely to find out anytime soon.

New technology threatens democracy: European commission reports

2010-07-23T10:53:00.005+02:00

"The new technologies inherently tend to shift the balance of power away from the individual towards those who hold data on them: the terms “data subject” and “controller” are gaining deeper, more sinister meaning. Some technologies can sometimes be used to counter some of this - but they are much weaker and often inherently less effective than claimed or believed. Unless we tame the new technologies, their unimpeded use will undermine democratic society itself. And the tool to tame the machine in this respect is data protection."

When a European Commission report talks about impending changes undermining democratic society itself then it's definitely time to sit up and take notice...

Over at The Lift I found a reference to a recent report commissioned by the European Commission on the coming challenges for Data Protection (and by implication privacy). The report is well balanced and erudite and makes interesting reading... looking at issues like authorities sharing data across international boundaries, data mining and profiling, privacy concerns with social networking, and securing data protection when your web activity itself is not limited to national boundaries. Or more simply put... how the law needs to evolve to protect your rights to privacy.

The report 'has been kept short' and is only 57 pages... Good bedtime reading

Let's play privacy invaders: EU, ACTA and the Digital Economy Act

2010-07-22T20:54:00.002+02:00

When I think of privacy I think of going about my business unhindered and unmonitored by the state.. or anyone else for that matter. It's a right.. and curiously I expect the law to not only respect that right but also to protect it. But expectations and reality don't always match up.

This week though these are some positive signs that privacy concerns are starting to be taken more seriously.

First off, the Electronic Frontier Foundation reports that EU data protection officials have been looking into the EUs Data Retention Directive and how it has been applied in the member states. Their findings are depressing reading ...

Service providers retain and hand over data in ways they shouldn't.
data retention often exceeds the maximum allowed under the directive - in some case by as much as eight years!
More data is being held than the directive allows - including in some cases message content and not just traffic data.
Callers locations are being monitored continuously under a call - contravening the directives provisions

They conclude that
"The provisions of the data retention directive are not respected and the lack of available sensible statistics hinders the assessment of whether the directive has achieved its objectives."

The good news is that it's not until abuses are visible that you can do something about it. The timing here is also good as the directive is up for review and this can contribute to revision or repeal of the directive which, in my view, inherently is a gross violation of people's privacy.

Meanwhile, the same Article 29 committee has also raised concerns about the privacy implications of the ACTA agreement (see Michael Geist for excellent coverage on ACTA).

"WP29 emphasizes that any form of large scale monitoring or systematic recording of data of EU citizens would be contrary to the provisions of Directive 95/46/EC since that would affect millions of individuals, regardless of whether or not they are under any suspicion."

After a critical look at other provisions - including making service providers hand over personal data to copyright holders they conclude:

"Copyright infringement needs to be dealt with on a global scale and requires international cooperation. However the way things stand now, several of the proposed measures are in the end bound to interfere with the private life of many citizens.
In the EU, any such interference is subject to EU fundamental rights and must be proportional. Given the aspects of ACTA currently under negotiation and outlined above, the WP29 remains to be convinced that this will be the case."

The third piece of good news is really a consequence of the above... or at least a supporting document from the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) giving a full analysis of objections to the three strikes principle. The Open Rights Group highlight that this expert opinion should have implications for the UK governments Digital Economy Act - at least the parts dealing with combating copyright infringement .

In the words of the EDPS:

"...the monitoring of Internet user's behaviour and further collection of their IP addresses amounts to an interference with their rights to respect for their private life and their correspondence; in other words, there is an interference with their right to private life. This view is in line with the case law of the European Court of Human Rights. "

The bottom line seems to be that letting copyright holders loose as private police with powers to request private details on anyone they choose is likely to end up the wrong side of EU rights legislation.... which would be a welcome victory for our collective privacy.

Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party - Putting privacy first.

Copyright: How long is long enough?

2010-07-13T07:38:00.000+02:00

Last week there was a ruling in Australia on what Men At Work get to pay out for having copied a riff from an Australian folk tune published over 70 years ago... It's actually a folk tune that I learned i school when I was a kid and I have to say I've never even thought about the similarity to 'Down Under'.

It's an interesting reminder though of what it means to have copyright terms that stretch long after an author or artists lifetime. The band clearly made a fair bit of money from their hit - and now have to take a 5% cut from their royalties to pay... well who exactly?

The value for society in copyright lies in the ability to stimulate creativity by giving limited monopoly rights to creators. But here we see that the active creators, the band, are penalised to the benefit of a publishing house who are milking the benefits of someone else's creativity (Marion Sinclair- who died 22 years ago).

Are long copyright terms really serving society's interests? Even within a songwriter or artist's lifetime there is a clear disincentive to create new material if existing material continues to enjoy protection for the rest of their life. The more talented and successful the creator the less incentive they have to work again. Aren't they just the people that society wants to be most active?

Shorter copyright terms increase incentives to bring out and market new innovative material - and will hugely increase the free availability of older materal to be used in new creative ways. It should mean a richer world for all of us... though we might hear some complaints from beyond the veil....

Global warming making a comeback.

2010-06-16T18:48:00.001+02:00

Here in Sweden January was a remarkably chilly month, even for Sweden, and with cold winters gripping much of the northern hemisphere there were no shortage of voices ready to use it as evidence that global warming is a myth. The global temperatures really haven't been rising since the end of the nineties, and a good cold winter is yet more proof that... isn't it?

Sadly it's easy to see what you want to see - the accusation that climate deniers often make against the scientific community. Equally sadly the cold winters unfortunately don't mean that the climate is cooling. The latest global measurements show the opposite - the year to date (january to may) is the warmest on record.

Worse... solar output has been declining over the last decade as part of a known solar cycle that has now turned. The sun is going to be increasing output again which will lead to higher temperatures. Nothing you read in scientists emails is going to change that.....

Thinking 'After Intellectual Property'

2010-06-11T11:00:00.001+02:00

I know. I'm behind the times... but wisdom doesn't age. If you've not seen Steal This Film, do. A great perspective on the intellectual property debate...

"These are strange times indeed. While they continue to command so much attention in the mainstream media, the 'battles' between old and new modes of distribution, between the pirate and the institution of copyright, seem to many of us already lost and won. We know who the victors are. Why then say any more?

Because waves of repression continue to come: lawsuits are still levied against innocent people; arrests are still made on flimsy pretexts, in order to terrify and confuse; harsh laws are still enacted against filesharing, taking their place in the gradual erosion of our privacy and the bolstering of the surveillance state. All of this is intended to destroy or delay inexorable changes in what it means to create and exchange our creations. If STEAL THIS FILM II proves at all useful in bringing new people into the leagues of those now" prepared to think 'after intellectual property', think creatively about the future of distribution, production and creativity, we have achieved our main goal."

India goes in to bat against ACTA

2010-06-10T19:08:00.000+02:00

Trade is a two way street... and if you decide to make a private club to rewrite the rules it's maybe not surprising that the people you choose to leave out don't have the same rosy view of your club as you do. At the latest meeting of the World trade Organisation India has been speaking out about ACTA.

"ACTA could short-change legal process, impede legitimate competition and shift the escalated costs of enforcing private commercial rights to governments, consumers and taxpayers. They also represent a systemic threat to the rights of legitimate traders and producers of goods, and fundamental rights of due process of individuals."

Right on the wicket..... More on India's objections to ACTA over at Michael Geist.

Britannia regains her pride...

2010-05-12T22:06:00.000+02:00

The LibDems report on the proposed programme for the new coalition government.

Under Civil Liberties
"The parties agree to implement a full programme of measures to reverse the substantial erosion of civil liberties under the Labour Government and roll back state intrusion.

This will include:

A Freedom or Great Repeal Bill.
The scrapping of ID card scheme, the National Identity register, the next generation of biometric passports and the Contact Point Database.
Outlawing the finger-printing of children at school without parental permission.
The extension of the scope of the Freedom of Information Act to provide greater transparency.
Adopting the protections of the Scottish model for the DNA database.
The protection of historic freedoms through the defence of trial by jury.
The restoration of rights to non-violent protest.
The review of libel laws to protect freedom of speech.
Safeguards against the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation.
Further regulation of CCTV.
Ending of storage of internet and email records without good reason.
A new mechanism to prevent the proliferation of unnecessary new criminal offences."

More commentary at Heresy Corner.

Can we get Habeus Corpus back too....?

Big boost in online income for UK Music

2010-05-09T10:14:00.002+02:00

(resurrected from my drafts folder...)
PRS for Music - the UK Performing Rights Society has reported on their income for 2009. It's timely as UK MPs prepare to vote on Digital Britain's future to see what dire warnings it gives about the state of music today... what with all that piracy and all....

So what do we find?

income from digital music downloads is up by over 70%
income from performances is up by 2,5%
income from overseas is up 19%
income from recorded media is down 8,7%
the rise in income from downloads exceeds the drop in CD sales for the first time.

It underlines two themes that have been seen before.... that income from live music will be an increasingly important part of an artist's - or songwriter's - income - and that the music industry needs to provide good commercially attractive online offerings if they want to capture the interest of online music consumers.

Napster was a decade ago... Did it have to take this long?

Piratpartiet & The Pirate Party - Make your voice heard.

Britain falls into the democracy gap

2010-05-07T23:39:00.000+02:00

Another UK election, and this time it's clearer than ever that first past the post system really doesn't deliver a democratic result. That anyone can defend a political system that delivers such skewed results frankly beggars belief.

Skewed? Well lets see now... The Libdems polled over one fifth of the vote and received about one in twelve of the seats in the house (57) - about 75 seats short of the number that they might expect. Labour's extra six or so percent brought them an additional 200 seats. If it happened in the Ukraine there would be protests on the streets....

Britain though is more worried about a hung parliament. It's better, apparently, to put up with a flawed and biased electoral system than to contemplate that politicians might, perish the thought, be required to co-operate and find what is actually in the national interest.

Language speaks volumes. The very phrase, the Opposition, defines an adversarial role across the benches. Some good old fashioned compromise will do them good...

Whoever ends up wooing the liberal democrats to form a government will do something quite unusual for modern times and actually have a government that represents the majority of the electorate - something that neither the Labour party or the Tories have a habit of achieving in their own right, regardless of how crushing a majority they have in the house. That makes this hung parliament the most legitimate form of representative government in modern times. Is that something to be scared about?

It is at times like these that the 'others' come into thier own - and yes, if you need their support they are going to expect sometrhing in return... but if you can't find a majority of members to support you without those concessions maybe you should wonder if your policy is really what the best thing for the country?

Digital Britain down the drain...

2010-04-08T10:32:00.001+02:00

The Digital Economy.. that needs openness and innovation to thrive and grow today lies fettered by the Digital Economy Bill... a bill drafted to serve the interests of vested media industry interests, not to provide vehicle to stimulate and nurture all that the web could provide. It's a bill that sets economics above rights and political machination above open democratic debate. It's a bad bill.. and a bad day seeing it on the statute books.

"I've heard arguments that I should be responsible for the Internet connection I pay for, just as a business is responsible for its network activities. Please! Let's put this into perspective - I'm a working mother of four children aged between 14 and 21. I'm not a network administrator, and pardon me if I'm too busy being a mother to commit my time to monitoring the home Internet connection. Also, even if I somehow managed to look over all four of their shoulders whenever they were online, I wouldn't know what I'm looking at..." Vanessa.. Mother of four

...taken from the comments on an article in the Daily Record where the Scottich Law Society comment the bill...
"This in our view raises serious concerns with the European Convention on Human Rights, which provides that everyone is entitled to a fair and public hearing within a reasonable time by an independent and impartial tribunal established by law." Law Society of Scotland

The possibilities for injustice are legend.

I hope our MPs are proud?

"As a twice ex-Whip, I am rather embarrassed by the fact that the Bill is being railroaded through in the wash-up. Frankly, there has been a squalid deal between the three Front Benches, and they should be ashamed of themselves. The people who care about this Bill -and there are many out there -will see that for what it is." Tom Watson MP

Of course... politicians are ultimately answerable to us the electorate.... so you might be interested to know which of our representatives had the spine and the vision to vote against the whips in the interests of our digital future... The full list here

No compromise on Digital Rights..
It's time to vote Pirate!

Piratpartiet &; The Pirate Party - Make your voice heard.

Vote Pirate!: Pirate Party UK issues it's manifesto

2010-03-23T18:58:00.000+01:00

The Pirate Party have now launched their manifesto for the forthcoming UK elections. There are LOTS of good stuff on the list - including tackling many of the UKs biggest shortfalls in building a free and fair society for the digital age.... in the areas of privacy, surveillance, data protection and intellectual property. It's a manifesto aimed at protecing and strengthening the rights of the individual.

Here is the shortform version..

"We will give the public the following new rights:

The right to share files provided no money changes hands.
The right to format shift and time shift data.
The right of access to government funded data.
The right to compensation for government data loss.
The right to safely encrypt private data.
The right to apply to a court for compensation where data protection laws have been broken.
The right for constituents to force a by-election.
The right to pay only for the fraction of the claimed broadband speed that an ISP actually delivers.
The right to be a whistleblower.
The right for photographers and filmmakers to go about their business without persecution under anti-terror laws.
The right for disabled people to demand an unrestricted version of DRM protected content where that is necessary to allow them to access it.

We will reform outdated laws:

We will abolish drug patents, replacing them with subsidies.
We will reduce the length of copyright to 10 years.
We will provide exemptions to patent law for non-commercial use, personal study and academic research.
We will introduce system of compulsory patent licensing
We will reform libel law.
We will prohibit the abuse of RIPA powers.
We will remove loopholes in copyright and patent law.

We will protect the public from abuses of new technology:

We will forbid third parties from intercepting or monitoring communication traffic
We will introduce a mandatory warning label on products that include DRM.
We will introduce laws on the acceptable use of CCTV and DNA samples.
We will legislate in favour of net neutrality.
We will introduce stronger data protection laws
We will not allow government censorship of the internet
We will put into action the government's Open Source Action Plan.
We will require the BBC to release all their content under a Creative Commons licence.
We will prevent the BBC from using DRM technology.
We will ensure better computing education in schools."

Piratpartiet &; The Pirate Party - Make your voice heard.

Seeing what you want to see. The ICC Digital Economy report.

2010-03-20T12:19:00.000+01:00

Thirty two billion euros and six hundred thousand jobs by 2015. Those are the losses due to piracy projected by the ICC report "Building a Digital Economy". Scary stuff...

The report is interesting reading but not totally convincing. If it were a climate report it's the type of publication that would have climate sceptics baying for blood. I'll give some comment here and if you want more analysis read on at Technollamna, Tumbled Logic, and Open.... Overall the authors I think have done a good job of setting out what they have done, and importantly what they have assumed - and in that sense it's a valuable input to the debate that bears study.

My first and biggest problem with the report is that it sets out to evaluate the damage done by piracy - and as such finds the result it is looking for. It isn't a holistic view of the economy and doesn't consider balancing factors - like increased bandwidth usage from non-commercial sharing stimulating the telecoms sector.

The basic premise of the report is that the creative industries and supporting sectors are a major part of the economy and are at serious risk from piracy. They then present figures that show that piracy as they evaluate it amounts to around a 2% of creative industry value. Noticeable but not at a level that supports the premise that piracy is killing creativity. Moreover, they include in their assessments non core industry sectors like paper production (and production of physical recording media) which are much more at risk from the rise of the digital economy than they are from piracy.

They then evaluate piracy losses based on two scenarios - one based on forecast growth of file sharing traffic (+18% p.a) - and the other based on overall growth of consumer IP traffic (+24% p.a). This second scenario, professionally speaking, I consider pure fantasy as consumer IP traffic is likely to be driven by legitimate online and IP-TV rather than an explosive growth in piracy.
Both scenarios miss an important element in a holistic view - which is the consumer's ability to pay. Predictions of traffic growth are based on significant reductions in cost per bit. There is no assumption that consumers are prepared to pay 18-24% per year more for bandwidth - and there clearly is no rationale to think that the value of pirated content conversion to legitimate sales would rise at those rates either.

Put another way - the study assumes a constant percentage of pirated content is lost revenues. Households don't have limitless pockets though, so realistically if content piracy increases the hypothetical conversion is likely to fall. Without some validation of what consumer spending trends are for entertainment content the numbers given are just wishful thinking.

In fact, Tumbled Logic suggests why current trends on Torrent downloading could mean conversion of downloads to sales could be as low as 0,5% - which would cut the estimates in this study by a huge 95%. Assumptions are crucial in reaching a trustworthy result.....

Next we hear how piracy is having huge impacts on the music industry and that reductions in physícal disc sales have collapsed and that piracy must be to blame. This is supposition not supported by the evidence... There is clear evidence that revenues from live performances have substantially increased and that the total music industry revenues including these are stable - and further evidence that shows that there is a switch in buying behaviour from music and other passive media to games - a sector that shows significant growth. Less piracy may have inhibited that shift to live performance and games, but where's the evidence that less piracy would grow the overall available market?

Again, unless a study can substantiate a growth in consumer spending on media over and above existing levels (with for instance cinema attendances at record levels) how can you project huge losses? Here in lies the rub.... as a consumer if I spend more on music, or TV or video, then I spend less on something else. So just where is the economy going to be hit if consumers are buying all their content instead of taking a share online?

Lastly, in this whistlestop critique, is the figures for lost jobs quoted... the hypothesis is that if we increase sales on video 'X' we have more money to employ more people and to create more content. But is that a realistic view? Media companies want to maximise their profits, not maximise their output - and at the end of the day consumers have a finite budget and a finite amount of time to consume content. Is it a given that higher sales will generate employment? Better sales per production could even have the opposite effect... we don't need to create as many films/songs to generate our sales (and profit) targets - so why dilute the market by creating more content?

Seek.. and you shall find. But don't believe everything you read!

Piratpartiet &; The Pirate Party - Make your voice heard.

ACTA under fire at the EU Parliament

2010-03-10T08:06:00.000+01:00

There have been rumblings for some time at the EU Parliament about the negotiations on the ACTA counterfeiting and trade negotiations. Parliament doesn't like being told they are not allowed to see what the negotiators are agreeing on their behalf and for the benefit or otherwise of Europe's citizens.

Now the decks are cleared and the cannons rolled out and the parliamentarians are taking action. Christian Engström, Piratpartiet's MEP is one of the movers behind a motion that in fine words tells the Commission to stop fannying around and put all their cards on the table. Pointing out among other things that
"the Commission has since the 1 December 2009 the legal obligation to immediately and fully inform the European Parliament at all stages of international negotiations"

But it's not just an armlock to get visibility of what the negotiators are up to - the motion goes further, and places concrete limitations on what the negotiators can sign up for.

"..no to three-strikes Hadopi-type legislation, and no to searches of laptops, cell phones and other digital devices at the borders by customs officers".

Representation in parliament. Isn't it wonderful. Voting on the motion is today... though it sounds like it has broad cross party support which sounds promising.

All quotes from Christian's blog.

(PS: life's kind of busy right now... so blogging is on a bit of a low tide.)

Pullmans malevolent voices: Freedom is too hard for you

2010-02-15T19:27:00.002+01:00

"And the new laws whisper:

We do not want to hear you talking about truth
Truth is a friend of yours, not a friend of ours "

The quote above, and below, are from "Malevolent voices that despise our freedoms" by Philip Pullman, on Times Online. Written for last years Convention on Modern Liberty, it is the best thing I've read all year... This is just a snippet ... I encourage you. Go read it all...
(My friend in serendipity was Charles Pooter, at Little Man, What Now?...)

"It is inconceivable to me that a waking nation in the full consciousness of its freedom would have allowed its government to pass such laws as the Protection from Harassment Act (1997), the Crime and Disorder Act (1998), the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000), the Terrorism Act (2000), the Criminal Justice and Police Act (2001), the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act (2001), the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Extension Act (2002), the Criminal Justice Act (2003), the Extradition Act (2003), the Anti-Social Behaviour Act (2003), the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act (2004), the Civil Contingencies Act (2004), the Prevention of Terrorism Act (2005), the Inquiries Act (2005), the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (2005), not to mention a host of pending legislation such as the Identity Cards Bill, the Coroners and Justice Bill, and the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill.

Inconceivable.
And those laws say:
Sleep, you stinking cowards
Sweating as you dream of rights and freedoms
Freedom is too hard for you
We shall decide what freedom is
Sleep, you vermin

Sleep, you scum. "

But let's say you are not asleep? What are you going to do about it???

Piratpartiet & The Pirate Party - Make your voice heard.

Privacy in public places... and for whom?

2010-02-14T16:16:00.001+01:00

There's been an interesting piece in the news here recently .. and to be honest I'd missed it until Rick Falkvinge mentioned it on his blog. It's about a guy, Jesper Nilsson, that sees two men coming on strong to two teenagers in the underground and decides to take pictures of it. The men, as he suspects, are plain clothes policemen, and - in a move that perhaps is strangely familiar to brits reading this -they don't take kindly to having their pictures taken (not least when they hear that the guy in question - Jesper Nilsson - runs an on-line newspage.)

Jesper reports the whole thing in length on his blog - and I have to say it's only his version of events that is fully reported. What Jesper goes on to tell is how he is put between a rock and a hard place - delete the pictures or get taken in on suspicion of being under the influence of drugs (or a breach of the peace -"ofredande"). In the end he gives in and deletes the pictures.... and a video film that's been recordig while the 'discussion' has been going on.

But.. being a resourceful chap - when he gets home Jesper manages to recover the image files from the phones memory - and even to get a (slightly garbled) section of the the film after sending the damaged file off for repair.

These all posted on his blog. He has reported the policemen and enquiry has been started - and, meanwhile, he policemen have reported him for breach of Swedens PUL - data protection legislation that limits the publishing of individuals personal details (including photos).

The story raises all sorts of interesting questions about public life and privacy.

Are you allowed to photograph policemen doing their job in a public place?
In Sweden at least the answer to this seems to be implicitly yes.. In Sweden you may photograph anyone anywhere, as long as you are in a public place or are not forbidden by the owners of whereever you find yourself.

But is the underground a public place?
Stockholms underground is a public sector utility, run on a day to day basis by a private contractor. Despite being used by hundreds of thousands of people everyday I suspect it doesn't count though as a public place - there are for instance guidelines on when you need to ask permission to take pictures or film.. but for non-commercial private use you don't need permission. (Bear in mind that in a recent IPRED case a password protected server was considered not to be private because it could be accessed by around 20 000 people)

So Mr Nilsson may take pictures as long as he doesn't intend to use them commercially.. or publish them (which begs the question of what happens if you change your mind after you've taken a picture?)

But it seems he thought of publishing them from the start, and has in fact now done so...

So, if he wasn't allowed to photograph, can a policeman tell him not to?
Assuming they understood the details of the photography policy, shouldn't it still be an employee of the underground that objects to them taking the photo?

Mr Nilsson now has pictures in his phone that he perhaps had no permission to take. Can a policeman order him to delete them? Well clearly they can - but in Sweden at least they have no right to.... uncomfortable as it may be to be caught on film in the course of duty, they can't ask you to delete them.

Now the next part is interesting... because the rules for PUL are different if you are a journalist publishing in the news than if you are an individual posting to an unofficial news channel like a blog. So..

You've had a bad day and decide to write about it on your blog. Do you have to censor it to protect the privacy of individuals that have the main role in the events? On his blog Mr Nilsson risks running fóul of data protection rules - whereas on his online paper he wouldn't. Nor do all the mainstreams that have since reported the case - including the names of the policement concerned. Should there be different rights to publish what very much seems to be a topic of real public interest if you choose an unofficial channel?

Now interestingly Mr Nilsson never names the policemen concerned - in fact he complains that they never showed him any identification to show they were in fact policemen. So - in the context of a public official carrying out their duties in a public place - is there an issue in reporting on their behaviour? What's the balance between accountability of public officials and their right to privacy ? - when that right is being invoked as a threat intended to censor? While it may be right for a spokeperson for the state to remain anonymous - because it is their official position not their private life that's in the public view -in this case it is just that their alleged behaviour doesn't match up to the expected standard of behaviour that makes publishing the event of public interest.. and even in the state's interest. Faith in the police depends on just and fair dealing with ALL the public.

And of course... most importantly, what sort of world are we coming to if policemen are using intimidating threats against a member of the public just because they don't like what they are doing?
Which is not to say that this is common behaviour in the police - but if what's alleged is true it's an horrific abuse of power.

.......................................................

Lastly.. by way of a footnote.. reading the conditions for taking film and pictures in the underground I spotted that it's not allowed to take commercial pictures of graffiti, people jumping the turnstiles and a range of other things that might show the underground in a negative light.

"Det är heller inte tillåtet att filma eller fotografera vandalisering eller graffiti, så kallad plankning, våld mot resenärer eller personal, rökning eller användande av illegala droger eller personer som vistas i SL-trafiken utan giltig biljett."

Doesn't that smack a little of censorship???

Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party - Putting privacy first.

Privacy, Copyright & Integrity: Steps in the right direction..

2010-02-12T19:57:00.002+01:00

I've been a bit busy recently - but things are happening out there in the big wide world...

You no doubt saw that in Australia they've ruled that an ISP shouldn't be held to account for the content carried... a revalidation of the 'pure carrier' doctrine with it's analogy in "don't shoot the messenger". A great commentary on the judgement by Technolama

In the UK, the parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights were not at all happy with the provisions of the governments proposed Digital Economy Bill - which is hardly surprising but reasuring to hear. Meanwile the EU parliament think the privacy of their citizens merits protection and have said no to the Swift agreement that gives the USA bulk access to european banking data. Thanks you guys (& gals)!

The EFF today reports on a victory in the US courts that confirms the 'first rights' principle that if you buy something it's yours to enjoy, share and sell as you like - no matter what small print a company may add on the box. You bought it, you own it.

..and Cory Doctorow explains how if you look into the issues with IP, copyright and innovation you come to very different conclusions than if you crib your research from lobbyists... (from the tireless Michel Geist).

And of course Christian Engström, Piratpartiet's MEP, celebrated making it to the big 50. Congratulations Christian - keep up the good work!

What makes a pirate?

2010-02-05T18:30:00.001+01:00

In an election year in both Sweden and Britain it's interesting to understand - what is a pirate anyway? Or more to the point - what does the Pirate Party stand for? And that's just the question that Michael Davies has put on his blog with an open letter to Andrew Robinson, leader of the Pirate Party. He asks a number of pertinent questions, on politics and pirates, on copyright and patents and on the importance of the rights that copyright enforcement increasingly infringes.

The entry has seen promises from both Andrew and Piratpartiet leader Rick Falkvinge to answer in more depth - responses I look forward to reading. In the meantime, on The Pirate Party Forum, JohnB has given a long and full answer of his own... and maybe, in the fullness of time I might try and add my view on these questions here...

Put simply... the internet has brought huge changes in how we communicate - and equally huge changes in the possibilities to track and monitor our everyday lives. How society decides to use or constrain these forces, for better or worse, is an intensely political question and one which demands focus and attention by us, the populace - otherwise other interests in industry, law enforcement and in government will do what they can get away with. They will do what they can - not what they should.

If you want it any other way you need to make your voice heard.

Shouting louder, means shouting in unison....

Welcome on board.....

Old Bill and the Geraniums: A digital fable

2010-02-03T18:56:00.000+01:00

Old Bill the pirate woke up one fine sunny morning and looked out his window. The view was nice but something was missing. "What I need" he thinks "are some flowers for my windowboxes". And so, after breakfast, Bill went down to Mr Warmer's nursery and bought a dozen big geranium plants.

"They're a beautiful colour" said Bill.
"Aren't they just. " said Mr Warmer warmly "I call them 'Copper riots'. I bred them myself."

Old Bill took his geraniums home and soon had the finest windowboxes in the village... Everyone that passed said how nice they were, and everyone that asked he told them how he'd got them from Mr Warmers.

The plants thrived in the sunshine and pretty soon they were big and bushy. "I could take some cuttings" thought Bill .. and so that's just what he did. But he didn't need lots more geraniums really so when the cuttings were ready he put them in a box on his veranda with a BIG sign saying 'Geranium cuttings, Help yourself'. His neighbours, and his friends and even a few folk he didn't know did just that.

It happened though that Mr Warmer was passing by and he saw the box of cuttings and stopped and said "You can't do that Old Bill - you've copied my geraniums and now you're giving them away. That's stealing! If you don't stop that at once I'm going to call the police." Poor Old Bill didn't know what to say..... but as it happened he didn't need to say anything for just then the vicar came by and overheard their conversation.

"But Mr Warmer, what an extraordinary thing to say...." he chimed in cheerfully. "Those are the geraniums that came from your nursery" - pointing to the window boxes "..and Old Bill paid you for those. These are his cuttings... anyone can see that. I think it's really public spirited of him to share them like this. Don't you? Think how it will brighten up the village with a nice splash of colour!"

"But they're my Copper Riots! He copied them! " said Mr Warmer, getting hot under the collar...

"But Mr Warmer", said the vicar - "he just grew new ones... with a bit of sunshine and water and some tender loving care... (and a little help from the Almighty) .. That's hardly stealing now is it?"

"How would it have been for our Lord if he'd stood there with five loaves in his hand feeding the multitude and the baker came and said 'You can't do that, you're copying my bread...'"

"You do see don't you?"

Mr Warmer looked at his shoes, and shook his head and went on his way mumbling... about how he was going to stop selling physical geraniums and just licence digital copies, and ask the mayor if he couldn't send the police round to check that no-one else was growing cuttings without him knowing, and wondering if he could get someone to watch Old Bill's house just in case he was 'up to something'.

"What a funny character" said Old Bill.
"Oh he's all right really" said the vicar. "He just gets these funny ideas...
By the way... my wife's got some fuschia cuttings on the go if you'd like some?
.. and you don't happen to have the recipe for those lovely scones you did for the church fête do you? They were very good...."

And the moral of this story?

The Vicar says.... 'Sharing is Caring'...

Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party - Working for copyright reform.

Difficult choices?

2010-01-29T20:42:00.000+01:00

I enjoyed this too much not to post....

Spies in the sky

2010-01-24T21:38:00.000+01:00

Back from a Christmas break, John Lilburne is back with a pithy snippet on UK police plans to use surveillance drones for ”routine” monitoring of antisocial motorists, protesters, agricultural thieves and fly-tippers".

But surely... isn't "routine" monitoring an invasion of privacy?

Their Lordships on the Digital Economy

2010-01-14T21:10:00.000+01:00

The Pirate Party wiki has an interesting page with extracts from the second reading from the House of Lords on the Digital Economy Bill. Some of the quotes I have to say (but not all) are perceptive and spot on the mark...

"There is a huge danger here. A huge group of our people are doing something that they do not think is wrong or a crime. It is dangerous for us to be putting into effect legislation that puts a whole lot of people in a criminal situation when they do not think that they are committing a crime." Lord Mitchell

"On the whole, the small people will not be protected by patent law because they cannot afford it. There will be no one on the internet looking for their songs being downloaded and no one interested in pursuing those cases. The small people are already putting their stuff out through other methods." Earl of Erroll

"The information obtained by copyright owners, and in a sense laid before ISPs, is allegations of breach of copyright, not infringements in themselves." Lord Clement Jones

"Checking on other people’s internet traffic to see whether file-sharing is taking place is akin to opening somebody’s post in envelopes to see whether they have illegally photocopied books" Baroness Miller

There are lots more - interesting reading...

Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party - Working for copyright reform.

Urgent: Tell Parliament what you think about your rights

2010-01-14T07:39:00.002+01:00

The Joint parliamentary committee on human rights are currently looking for submissions on human rights issues relating particularly to proposed legislation. I came across it quite by chance - but it is a superb opportunity for interested citizens to get their views across - but you need to act now!

From the press release:
"The Joint Committee on Human Rights scrutinizes every Government Bill for its compatibility with human rights, including common law fundamental rights, the Convention rights protected by the Human Rights Act 1998 and the human rights contained in other international obligations of the UK. The Committee's scrutiny of Bills for compatibility with the requirements of human rights law includes consideration of whether the Bill presents an opportunity to enhance human rights in the UK. The Committee is actively seeking to encourage more input from civil society into its legislative scrutiny work.

Further to the Committee's press notice of 28 July 2009, on the Government's draft legislative programme for 2009-10, the Committee has now identified the following nine priority areas for scrutiny in 2010, based on the significance of the human rights issues involved and the likelihood of legislation being passed before the end of the parliamentary session. The Committee would welcome short submissions of up to 1500 words from interested parties by Monday 18 January."
(my highlight)

The areas for submission cover:

lllegal File Sharing
DNA & Fingerprints
Domestic Violence
Stop & Search
Enforceable Entitlements for parents and pupils
Mandatory Sex and Relationships education
Reporting of family court proceedings
Entitlement to personal care at home
Asylum support and destitution

The press release includes more details on the rights implications of each of these topics. It also says where to send your submission. There is a mail address but you are also asked to send a signed hard copy (which hopefully can be accepted after the submission date).

Time is short, so if you have views on the above - and several of them have privacy issues and issues areound respect for your private life - then you need to set aside some time during the next few days to put down your views.

Resources to help formulate your submission:e.g on copyright policing

Open Rights Group on Digital Economy Bill
Liberty on the Digital Economy Bill
Latest News on the Digital Economy Bill

There are I'm sure others - I welcome constructive additions in the comments.

PLEASE SPREAD THIS TOPIC!

Updated: now with the link to the press release! Damn....

Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party - Putting privacy first.

The right of the people to be secure... against unreasonable searches and seizures,

2010-01-13T23:45:00.001+01:00

Keeping on the subject of the European Court of Human Rights decision on the powers to stop and search under the UKs Terrorism Act 2000 the Heresiarch has a superb piece on why the Act isn't in any way fit for purpose. The statistics he gives are scary... 100 000 searches a year or more... and not a single terrorist related charge. ..just a well oiled machine for intruding on people minding their own business. Search without probable cause... means you're probably not going to find anything doesn't it?

Curiously enough powers of random search were just one of the things that sparked discontent in the colonies across the pond way back when, prompting the American Fourth Amendment. Is it so hard to remember the lessons of history?

We've not learnt much in two hundred years have we?

The right to defend your rights...

2010-01-13T19:07:00.000+01:00

Since 2010 opened its doors there has been an interesting debate going on here in Sweden about the ethics of breaking the law. It all started, as things often do, with an idea...

In this case it was Peter Sunde, of Pirate Bay fame, who mooted an idea to circumvent Swedens FRA surveillance legislation by getting operators to bundle cross border traffic in encrypted tunnels... Meaning in simple terms that operators can comply with the law by handing over all cross border traffic - but that they at the same time make life very hard for anyone trying to eavesdrop.

Journalist Andreas Ekström took umbrage and criticised Peter's position because it's undemocratic for people to choose which laws they (agree with) and want to follow. ...which in this case means it's undemocratic to want to find a way to not have your mail, telephone calls and SMSs intercepted and snooped on. Our democratically elected representatives have decided that's how it's going to be... and so our is but to dutifully follow.

There has, perhaps unsurprisigly, been much written on rights and wrongs of finding 'work arounds' to the law. Although perhaps I'm a little surprised. As far as I can tell Peter's idea is entirely legal - even if it would severely handicap th FRAs ability to keep tabs on things. As any accountant can tell you there is a big difference between tax planning and tax avoidance. If the law doesn't prohibit you doing something how can it be against some 'democratic principle' of compliance? Though it's worth asking yourself the question of do you consider it your democratic duty to follow all laws even if they are against your own personal moral principles?

(I'd just add at this point that laws don't actually forbid you from doing things - they define things you shouldn't do and the penalty you may suffer if caught........ then it all omes down to choice...)

However... the one piece that caught my eye in the whole affair was an article by Rick Falkvinge on democracy and human rights (which for me at least was related to the same debate). In this case Rick explores why democracy and human rights are not the same thing - inspite of an oft shared view that democracy implicitly works to protect your rights. If a law is democratically introduced that infringes on your (or someone elses) rights - like your right to privacy. What then. Are you just going to quietly comply?

Politicians have a habit of drafting laws that are implicitly in violation of our rights - like surveillance by the FRA - and like the protection of Terrorism Act. We implicitly can be expected to defend our rights...

And fortunately, with a little help, we can also see our rights vindicated as in this weeks judgement that:
".. the Court of Human Rights ruled that section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 (the broad police power for stop and search without suspicion) violates the right to respect for private life guaranteed by Article 8 of the Convention on Human Rights." (Liberty)

But wouldn't it be nice to have politicians that actually worked in your interests to protect and defend your rights in the first place?

Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party - Putting privacy first.

Information politics. Share the news.

2010-01-13T07:46:00.000+01:00

There is a new site for all your 'infopolitics' news..... set up by Piratpartiet and the Greens in the European Parliament Infopolitics.eu is a news aggregation site for english language news on information politics. Awareness is an important part of getting our message across so this I see as a great step forward.

Spread the news.....

Hot and cold... Climate games

2010-01-06T18:04:00.001+01:00

It''s chilly... Snowstorms in the UK and a seriously whiite winter here in Stockholm. europe is getting a taste of siberian weather, and perhaps unsurprisingly commentators are already queuing up to say that chilly winters shows global warming is a sham...

Strange then that while we are casting round for another sweater Australia is is the grip of a heat wave - after the warmest decade on record..

Global warming is just that- a global phenomenon. A little weather here doesn't in any way change that...

A thought for the New Year

2010-01-06T11:25:00.001+01:00

"För vem vågar man lita på i ett samhälle vars värdegrund bygger på misstro?"

Who can you depend on in a society who's basic values are built on mistrust?

Comment to an article on new surveillance powers in Bulgaria...

Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party - Putting privacy first.

OiNK - news or propaganda?

2010-01-06T10:34:00.002+01:00

Andrew Norton at Politics and P2P has been reading the news... specifically coverage of the soon to restart trial of Alan Ellis for running BitTorrent tracker OiNK. But as Andrew points out the piece is full of inaccuracies and misinformation - particularly the popular fallacy that trackers store and copy copyright material.

Andrews criticism was pointed first at the Northern Echo, who were quick to respond and correct their article... but it was based on information from the Press Association - which means that it will be spread all across the news.

Inaccurate reporting is misleading...
Misinformation is propaganda....

Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party - Working for copyright reform.

Snowbound

2009-12-24T10:09:00.001+01:00

Time to put the feet up and enjoy a little seasonal good cheer.... Back for more after Yule....

Censorship on the loose in Oz

2009-12-22T20:29:00.000+01:00

While the snow lies thick and even here... things are getting hot down in Australia. John Lilburne writes about new plans for net censorship which will force ISPs to blacklist sites. As Electronic Frontiers Australia puts it, Australia is "gaining a reputation as the Iran of the South Pacific".

This took a new turn on Friday when a satirical site set up in the name of Australia's broadband minister Stephen Conroy has been taken down at three hours notice for not following Australia's domain name rules. This has led to allegations of a political motive for the take down and complaints that the domain name rules are being used to stifle political comment on net censorship and of the Australian government's policy to restrict freedom of communication.

Needless to say... the affected site can now be found on a new domain while they fight to get their domain back....

Who is deciding what you surf? Say NO to network censorship.

Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party - Putting privacy first.

What goes round comes around... EU, Canada and IP law

2009-12-22T09:00:00.000+01:00

Michael Geist has what for me is a depressing post on ongoing negotiations between the EU and Canada on trade.... including big changes in IP law. Depressing because it is the EU that are pressing Canada to implement more stringent measures on copyright including measures against circumvention of digital locks, and copyright term extension from 50 to 70 years. The EU aligns with the US... and then the EU presses Canada to align with the EU.

How about a new process for 2010? The EU aligns with Canada.. and tells the USA that they need to get their act in order and liberalise their IP laws?

Some of the things that are in the proposals include things I didn't even know existed under EU law... like that prohibition on circumventing digital locks - and a resale provision providing royalties for artists on second hand sales of portraits and statues... (When did that arrive???)

Christian, HAX..... what's the low down??????

Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party - Working for copyright reform.

Song birds decline

2009-12-22T08:35:00.000+01:00

Spring starts two weeks earlier than it did 25 years ago.... but do the birds know that?

Figures from the Netherlands show big declines in song bird populations which they attribute to migratory birds missing the spring food peak for feeding their young. ... though I'm sure there must be other factors too...

When people talk about climate change not happening they are ignoring the evidence - that nature is already changing in response to climatic variation. And when people talk about not trying to stop change, but just adapting to the change, they ignore the fact that for many species that's not an option - at least not any time soon....

Stand Up Diggers All... Every Human Has Rights

2009-12-09T20:29:00.003+01:00

"From the men of property the orders came; they sent the hired men & troopers to wipe out the Digger's claim"

Tomorrow is Human Rights Day.... it's a time when all of us should reflect on the privilege we enjoy in the rights we have, and the struggle of people around the world to live their lives without those rights. I write a lot about the rights if privacy, and of free speech and what is happening in the digital world that may impact on all of us in the future - but there are more basic rights being ignored and flouted all over the globe.

Today I'd like to highlight just one case - not because it's the worst rights abuse I could find - but because it stands square in the cause that the diggers fought for three hundred and sixty years ago. Today in Venezuela
people are fighting for their basic right to protest against the vested interests of the state and the landowners

"On the one hand, police officers, the prosecutors and judges, on the other, hired killers led by landowners and business sectors, plus shock troops allied with national, regional and local governments regardless their political orientation, all form the triangle of repression to the social fight."

What are each of us doing to defend their rights against those that would deny them?

Streaming.... the answer to an industry's prayer?

2009-12-09T19:58:00.001+01:00

According to industry figures digital music sales are rising.. the result they say of increased legislation and the introduction of new services like Spotify that meet users needs .. And to be honest it is not a bad thing if commercial music services do appear that provide what consumers want. About time you might say.

That streaming can be the death of pirating is the subject of an article by Mercedes Bunz in the Guardian - pointing to the possibilities that streaming services can bring. But streaming comes at a price - and in any case is not the panacea it seems. Cory Doctorow has an excellent piece on why streaming might make the industry happy, but ultimately won't make copying go away. Basically, from a technical stand point, saving a streaming film or music track is a very small step.... (think radio and tape recorder)

The risk is that this sparks another technology war between the user community and the copyright lobby - with ultimately the only way to enforce copyright being through gross intrusions on your privacy.

More though - streaming is a bad solution when it comes to practical use of the Internet - particularly streaming when on the move. It places very high load as everyone wants to stream at the same time.. Stored tracks on your MP3 player are much more effective.

That last issue is one I've been thinking about for some time. Peer to peer trafiic - downloads - happen in the background. It doesn't matter if they take a bit longer - and you don't need the traffic to get there in real time. It can be low priority in the operator's network - and operators can and do throttle p2p traffic to keep their networks running.

Streaming traffic is live, and time sensitive, and needs to be high priority in the network to get an acceptable service. Not only that but downloading is a 'do once use many' activity, whereas streaming takes bandwidth every time you want to play something - even if you've heard it before. So total traffic will rise - and traffic mixes will shift to make handlling peak loads much more difficult. Streaming is bad news for telecom operators - it is likely lead to them needing to build out capacity to cope with streaming traffic - or disasterous impact on network quality.

Which means that, on top of the bill for monitoring user traffic and policing peer2peer use operators are likely to be stuck with significant costs for network upgrades as streaming music, and particularly video, becomes more popular. They (and we the subscribers) take the cost for the media industry's gain.

Is that how it's going to be in the Digital Economy?

(When I get the time I'll try and make a guesstimate of just how much that extra investment might be.... but it's not going to be small...)

Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party - Working for copyright reform.

300 000 strikes.... Record labels in court for piracy face $6Bn bill

2009-12-08T07:43:00.020+01:00

Truth they say is stranger than fiction....

..so while record companies are complaining around the world about the costs of piracy, hiring lawyers to demand money from alleged offenders and lobbying anyone who will listen to draft new draconian legislation against file sharers, they are meanwhile quietly ripping off artists by publishing tracks without permission and forgetting to pay the royalties.

Michael Geist reports on a case in Canada where since the eighties record labels have been issuing compilation discs without getting prior permissions and never getting round to settling their dues. Three hundred thousand tracks later they are now in court facing a class action suit by artists... and bearing in mind this is not non-commercial file sharing we're talking about, but out and out commercial exploitation, the artists are seeking statutory damages of $20 000 per track... a cool six billion in total*.

The companies in the dock are Warner Music Canada, Sony BMG Music Canada, EMI Music Canada, and Universal Music Canada - the four primary members of the Canadian Recording Industry Association. Now if I was a shareholder in a company that through ineptitude and bad practice exposed itself to the risk of damages on that scale I would expect heads to roll...

Resignations gentlemen? And don't forget to switch off your Internet as you leave.....

(via Rick Falkvinge)

* Don't forget that $6Bn is around 20 times the recording industries estimates of the annual losses to music piracy in the UK. (..if you believe them?)

Errata: corrected from $60Bn to $6Bn... sloppy maths - sorry!

Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party - Working for copyright reform.

Record label head resigns to oppose Digital Economy Bill

2009-12-07T22:10:00.000+01:00

CMU reports in an article that Anthony Hall, head of record label Pure Mint, is resigning from both the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) because of their support for the Digital Economy Bill. Significantly Mr Hall, who is also a lawyer, has been both a member of the BPI's rights committee and IFPI's International Legal Committee.

His resignation letter is strongly critical of the bill and BPI and IFPI's support for it. His complaints are precisely those that have been raised loudly in other quarters... The bill, the article says "is in danger of disregarding some sacred legal principles (regarding process, presumption of innocence and burden of proof) and ... it won't solve the record industry's piracy problems anyway."

The proposal for new ministerial powers he describes as "wholly undemocratic and contrary to centuries of good practice regarding the forming of our copyright legislation."

Top marks to Mr Hall for showing that integrity and principle matters more than profits. But are government minister's really so blind that they can't see this for themselves???

Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party - Working for copyright reform.

Telia stick to their guns in IPRED case

2009-12-07T21:42:00.000+01:00

Telia have decided to appeal a judgement that they should hand over details of who is behind one of their IP addresses to film companies investigating a torrent search site..

'Protection of customer's integrity is important' they say. It's a pity UK ISPs are not as dedicated to their customers interests (as they hand over thousands of IP addressees details...).

Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party - Working for copyright reform.

Think tank says think again on Digital Economy

2009-12-07T07:45:00.001+01:00

The Adam Smith Institute is the latest to come out with criticism of the UK Goverments plans for the 'Digital Economy'. They have released an online briefing paper on Digital Britain - which is described in brief on their website under the title Leave 'Digital Britain' alone.

Aside from a key message that the digital economy is doing very well thank you without government interference it takes the government to task for not taking privacy issues seriously. It also makes this superbly simple suggestion.
"The report suggests that personal identity and all data associated with it should be defined in law as private property owned by the individual. Any use of that personal data without the owner’s consent would thereby become unlawful."

Yesterday would not be soon enough....

Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party - Putting privacy first.

Sue, Grabbit and Run: copyright solicitors?

2009-12-06T18:22:00.003+01:00

Just this week in the news is that a UK legal firm is preparing 15 000 letters for what I would best describe as judicial blackmail - pay up or we take you to court. Lawfirm ACS:Law requested and are now getting user details from ISPs on 30 000 IP addresses. Many of the alleged infringements apparently relate to pornography and it is thought many people will pay up rather than go to court and defend themselves. An example of this type of threatening letter is available on Wikileaks

To gather the 30 000 IP addresses they used German firm Digiprotect - a specialist in this area renowned from allegations that they seeded copyright material with rightholders permission to then 'catch' people downloading it. In fact only last week their relationship with a German law firm was under investigation for fraud for basing claims for this type of payment on legal costs that don't actually exist.

Previous rounds of this sharp practice has raised hundreds of cases of wrong accusations - but as information from other firms involved in the same business shows- chasing pirates is more profitable that selling music games and videos legally...

(Personally I intrinsically question any process where the costs to recover money for rights holders exceeds the money recovered by a factor of four.... that's a business for making money from litigation, not from creativity)

If you have received this type of threatening letter you could start by reading the advice here from Gareth Halfacree (via Amused Cynicism). If you need help pleading your innocence you may be interested in Torrentfreak's article on a UK law firm that is giving free support for this type of case (dated last year). This thread at Consumer Action group is on the same topic.
Update: also checkout Beingthreatened

More reading:
Extortion Is Profitable Too, Doesn't Mean That It's A Fair Way To Profit Off Piracy
If you think the RIAA sucks check these guys out

Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party - Working for copyright reform.

Standards of justice - rights, wrongs and copyright infringement

2009-12-06T16:35:00.000+01:00

Non-commercial copying of copyrighted maerial is a long established practice - covering everything from sharing recipes, photo copying course notes and taping material from the TV or radio. What has changed in recent years is not that it happens - rather, that technology has made it easier to do -while at the same time technology makes it practical in many instances to see that it is happening.

What is legal - and how infringement is addressed - differ in different countries. In Britain (as I understand it) it's still an infringement of copyright to copy your LPs onto tape - or your CDs onto your media server. As for making a compilation from your records collection to give to your girlfriend.... Hots coals and the lash await...

Enforcement is the proof of the pudding - putting individuals in the firing line for having shared copyrighted material.

This week has seen two interesting court cases in Sweden. First a court in Södertorn decided that Telia Sonera were obliged to hand over details of who runs the Torrent search engine SweTorrents to Antipiratbyrån - a lobby and enforcement organisation for the media industry. The judgement included in it's rationale both that SweTorrents had a large number of copyright works uploaded onto the site - and that the site has been used to download material.

Now it's hard for me to comment on whether providing a search engine counts as abetting copyright infringement under the letter of the current law.... but those aren't legal judgements - they are matters of fact. It's a search engine.. there are no files on the site to download - and nor can you upload to the site... so if that's the basis of the judgement it's a pretty dodgy one. No surprise then that Rick Falkvinge pulls it apart in an article that argues that information politics and it's importance for economic development are too important to leave media industry lobbyists to set the agenda.

Another judgement came this week - this one from the Swedish High Court - saying that broadband operator Portlane is not required to shut off access for a tracker site, Opentorrent. Here they stated
"För att medverka till upphovsrättsintrång krävs mer av en mellanhand "än tillhandahållande av en internetaccess".
namely:
" in order to contribute to copyright infringement an intermediary needs to do more than provide an internet access".

This judgement is interesting to contrast with the the current proposals in the UK's proposed Digital Economy Bill which will put specific responsibilities onto operators for policing copyright. And notwithstanding the lack of technical knowledge shown in the first case - both cases show considerably more interest in the individuals rights and a just process than we see in the UKs current legal and political arena .

Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party - Working for copyright reform.

Rice, SUVs and climate sceptics.

2009-12-05T08:02:00.000+01:00

"Vietnam is planning for a one-metre (3.3 feet) rise in sea levels by 2100, which would inundate about 31,000 square kilometres (12,400 square miles) of land -- an area about the size of Belgium... The inundation threat is greatest in the Mekong Delta," (the country's main rice production and export area)

John Redwood describes four main groups of climate sceptics. One of those is the 'of course the climate is changing but it is too hard to stop it - we need to just adapt'.

What that line fails to trake account of is that we are talking about a moving target. Not acting means more and more emissions - and that means climate issues will continue to get worse.. The climate is changing, and we need to adapt to that. But giving up and saying let it happen is to me a hugely irresponsible way to react to what is a global issue. The meat eating, holiday in the sun, gas guzzling SUV driver is probably not the one if food supplies get scarcer that will face malnutrition or starvation.

Vietnam, as you of course know, is the world's second biggest exporter of rice....

Iran targets activists on the web.

2009-12-04T19:48:00.000+01:00

Read this disturbing account in the Wall Street Journal about Iran's tactics for tackling growing criticism of the state among the large global expatriate community - photographing demonstrators, logging people's Facebook activity, imitating dissidents on Facebook, and most chillingly threatening people's families in Iran to stop their activist relatives abroad.

If true it is intensely cynical and distasteful.. On the other hand, what better warning over state misuse of the internet for surveillance do you need? States do what they can.. not what they should.

Blogging Swedish politics

2009-12-03T19:16:00.000+01:00

A new site with hopefully a good future is Politometern. Basically a swedish political blog portal with great search functions and statistics. Over 130 pirate blogs listed - and all at the click of a link. (Knowing a bit of Swedish helps ;-)

Not surprisingly the site shows Pirate bloggers way out in front when it comes to covering rights, privacy, copyright, ACTA and the FRA.

Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party - Putting privacy first.

A photographer's view of the Digital Economy Bill

2009-12-03T18:50:00.000+01:00

Following this morning's post on the Digital Economy Bill I came across two sites of interest if you want to follow it's progress...   The first is a twitter stream on the bill - clearly a good spot to head for for up to date comment.

The second is Pro-imaging - a site 'supporting professional image creators' who are following the bill's progress because online intellectual property is a clearly of interest for people making a living from photography. Apart from some useful links on submitting comments and following the bill's progress in the house they raise some points on what they see the bill misses.

The first is a proposal to add compulsory school education in Intellectual Property...  I understand where they are coming from - but it's something I personally am against.  Firstly if it's not already mandated after two hundred years of copyright it is hard to see it as a 'must have' - and secondly it's a topic that could easily turn into indoctrination rather than education. That's not to say that I don't think there is value in school students debating intellectual property issues - but since principles of intellectual property have a clear political dimension we should be very wary of mandating what students should be taught to believe..

The second though I do support - an artists right to attribution - in principle at least. Clearly passing someone else's work off as your own is fraud and shouldn't be condoned. On the other hand their proposal of making it an offence to tamper with metadata in a file...... sounds like a big sledgehammer for a pretty small nut. I'm not sure it's practical - how would you prove who made changes to the meta data on a file? And I have no idea what is lodged as meta data if I edit or crop a file and then save it. (When does it become a secondary work?).   If I change format and the meta data is not transferred is that an offence.... Nya. Not such a great idea......

Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party - Working for copyright reform.

Kill Bill: Stopping the Digital Economy Bill

2009-12-03T08:24:00.000+01:00

You must have heard about the Digital Economy Bill... the UK government's proposals for regulating the Internet. It's been widely criticised - particularly for continuing to promote the governments line on excluding users from the Internet and for obscene new powers for ministers to make up copyright enforcement as they go along. The leaders in the digital economy are firmly against it - including both ISPs and industry heavyweights like Google, Yahoo and eBay. The EFF describes in no uncertain terms that this bill will fetter the digital economy and stifle innovation.

Don't like it? Then don't accept it. Here's some simple steps to take to help stop this unacceptable legislation.

Write to your MP ... or visit them. Tell them in simple terms why this is a BAD proposal.
Write to a Lord. The bill has to pass the Lords. Yesterday was the second reading but it will be back. Details here from the Open Rights group. Note - choose one of the Lords listed as a speaker in the debate (listed in the comments)
Join the Open Rights Group. Strong membership (and financial support) help them to lobby on this and other digital rights issues.
Join the Pirate Party. Britains only political party dedicated to protecting users rights on the Internet and creating a forward looking digital economy. Becoming a pirate shows that the digital economy matters to voters - and there is an election coming up.
Sign the petition against the bill at Number10.gov (now almost 29 000 signatures)
Join the Facebook group - I won’t vote for any MP who supports Mandelson’s Digital Economy Bill -and remember to tell your MP!
Blog about it...
Make sure all your friends do too (all of the above!)

Don't sit back and let them... Do something. and do it now!

More on the DEB:
Open Rights: The Digital Economy Bill - a first critical look
Liberty: Disconnection is disproportionate and indiscriminate
Mandy and Me: Some thoughts on the Digital Economy Bill
Britain's new Internet Law - as bad as everyone has been saying, and worse.

Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party - Working for copyright reform.

I wonder who's watching me now....?

2009-12-02T16:30:00.014+01:00

"I'm just an average man with an average life
I work from nine to five, hey hell I pay the price
All I want is to be left alone in my average home
But why do I always feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone

I always feel like somebody's watchin' me
And I have no privacy
I always feel like somebody's watchin' me
Tell me, is it just a dream?"
Rockwell.. and the late Michael Jackson.

Hear it again here....
............or do I mean here?

"And I don't feel safe anymore, oh what a mess
I wonder who's watching me now?
Who?"
The FRA?

Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party - Putting privacy first.

Swedish bloggers look to Telia to stand up for their rights

2009-12-01T22:03:00.000+01:00

I don't usually blog in Swedish - not because I can't - but because I want the world to read about what is being done here in defending our rights. Right now though - all across Sweden bloggers are putting up this.. or words like it. (translated below). Read it please... and if you want to stand up for your rights and ours, blog it and spread it further. Join us too on Facebook..

Upprop: Telia – ta FRA-lagen till domstol

Från och med den första december 2009 är Sverige en övervakad nation. Det är då som FRA får tillgång till en stor del av vår Internet- och mobiltrafik.

Detta kommer att få ett antal konsekvenser. De mest påtagliga är att flera grundläggande rättigheter i praktiken kommer att sättas ur spel. En självklarhet som brevhemligheten kommer efter den första december 2009 inte att existera på Internet. Även andra grundlagsskyddade rättigheter som källskyddet är starkt hotat. Många organisationer har skarpt protesterat mot FRA-lagen, bland andra Journalistförbundet och Advokatsamfundet. En majoritet av svenska folket är emot FRAs avlyssning.

Flera juridiska experter uttrycker dessutom stor tveksamhet till om FRA-lagen är förenlig med Europakonventionen, dvs. den europeiska konventionen angående skydd för de mänskliga rättigheterna. Sverige har förbundit sig att följa den konventionen och rimligtvis bör lagen alltså prövas i Europeiska domstolen för de mänskliga rättigheterna. Telia ansvarar idag för en majoritet av den trafik som FRA kommer att vilja avlyssna. Därför uppmanar vi Telia: ta FRA-lagen till domstol.

Telia har nu en chans att vinna goodwill genom att stå upp för demokratin

Appeal: Telia – take the FRA-law to court!

"From the first of December 2009 Sweden is a nation under surveillance. It is then that the FRA has access to a large part of our Internet and mobile services.

This is going to have a number of consequences. The most notable is that several fundamental rights will in practice be eliminated. Obviously confidentiality of correspondence does not exist on the Internet after the first december 2009. Other constitutional rights such as protection of (journalistic) sources are highly threatened. Many organizations have strongly protested against the FRA law, including Journalists and the (Swedish) Bar Association. A majority of Swedish people are against FRA's interception.

Several legal experts also express considerable doubt whether the FRA law is compatible with the ECHR, ie. the European Convention on Human Rights. Sweden has undertaken to comply with the Convention, and the law ought therefore to be tested in the European Court of Human Rights. Telia is currently responsible for a majority of the traffic that FRA will want to listen to. We therefore call on Telia: take the FRA law to court.

Telia now has a chance to win goodwill by standing up for democracy."

This is an open and common blog entries - copy, enhance and publish to your blog....

Sweden's FRA are monitoring all traffic passing Sweden's borders and monitoring in particular international transit traffic. Lift this and copy it....

Bloggers making the call include....
Tantrikbloggen, Annarkia, Scaber Nestor, Sossar mot Storebror, Den Nya Medborgarrättsrörelsen, Archangel, Darkangel och Mumma, Signerat Kjellberg, Den digitala parkbänken, Sagor från livbåten, Piratpartisten, Thorlin, Sandrability, Bloggvärldsbloggen, Aspiebloggen, Farmorgun, Pesptraktelser, Humblebee.net, JensO, Beelzebjörn, Röd Libertarian, Calandrella, ProjO, Christian Engström, Webhackande, Liberal & Långsint, Osmidigt, Solid Block of Ise, Johan Ronström, Personlig Utveckling?, Bandhunden Skäller, Infallsvinkel, Hearts of Joy, Primarys Blog, Alliansupproret, Integritet & frihet, Tieowbeijas, The Pheleroxian Blog, Mattias Bjärnemalm, Skivad Lime, OlofB, OlofB, OlofB, Enligt min Humla, Daniel och de små tomtarna, hannes2peer, Beelzebjörn, Exiled Pirate, Henrik Alexandersson, Den Digitala Parkbänken
(this list mostly lifted from Tantrikbloggen..)

Piratpartiet & The Pirate Party - Putting privacy first.

Translated by Google.. with a little help from me...

,

Have a Big Brother Christmas...

2009-12-01T07:15:00.001+01:00

Today's the day... It's finally happening.....

Today is the day that FRA get connected in to cables carrying ALL Swedens cross border e-traffic and the Swedish state gets to monitor anything they fancy from traffic passing through the kingdom (though the king I don't think gets much say in things). Since bits aren't all that fussy which route they take that's just as much an issue for the rest of humanity as it is for the few million herring eaters out here on the continental fringe - in fact they are intending to primarily focus on monitoring international traffic not sourced from Sweden.

So... Happy Christmas.. Big Brother Sweden is giving all of us a big slice of state surveillance to chew on. Pour another glass of glögg and... Skål!

Still Big Brother does have a sense of humour.... check out this at Techbelly...
Merry fucking Xmas, Love Big Brother

Piratpartiet & The Pirate Party - Putting privacy first.

ACTA update - Things afoot in EU, US, NZ & AUS

2009-11-28T09:22:00.000+01:00

There has been a lot of vocal opposition to ACTA over recent days - some of it against the secrecy of the process and some of it against the content of the treaty itself. EFF already have a good round up so take a stop by there as well....

In the US, two senators have sent a letter to the US trade representative asking for ACTA documents to be made public. Meanwhile Swedish Minister for Communications Åsa Torstensson is on her way to Washington to lobby for opening up the negotiations to more public scrutiny - and to express the Swedish governments view that ACTA opening up for a three strikes policy for internet access termination is unacceptable.

Michael Geist is a good source as usual - reporting amongst other things that the EU has filed it's responses on the ACTA internet chapter - available here. ...that the kiwis are waking up to why ACTA is no good thing - and an analysis of the impact of ACTA in Australia. And he also links to a MUST READ piece from the american Library Copyright Alliance on the scope and implications of ACTA.

"ACTA could alter ways in which intellectual property infringement is discovered and penalized;
expand the reach and activity of courts in prosecuting intellectual property infringers; alter the scope of civil and criminal infringement; lower the threshold at which criminal infringement is defined, thus increasing cases of criminal infringement; increase remedies, including monetary damages and reimbursement of legal fees and costs in cases of infringement; increase border searching; and increase instances of confiscation and destruction of goods."

The EFF meanwhile highlight the ongoing double standard, with action to harmonize on the 'best practice' for copyright enforcement, without similar harmonization on best practices for fair use and educational and other exemptions.

"In the U.S. Copyright Office's WIPO treaty consultation, they are claiming that such a harmonization of standard copyright limitations would "begin to dismantle the existing global treaty structure of copyright law, through the adoption of an international instrument at odds with existing, longstanding and well-settled norms."

What comes through is that the world is waking up to the carve up that's taking place behind closed doors and that the ACTA train is starting to see some obstructions on the rails.....

Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party - Working for copyright reform.

Legalise filesharing: Wise words from that William Bloke

2009-11-22T09:38:00.000+01:00

Billy Bragg.. a leading figure in the Featured Artist Coalition .. has made a press release in conjunction with a concert in Ottawa urging Canadian legislators to legalise filesharing.

"Mr. Bragg.. joined NDP MP Charlie Angus Friday to press Ottawa to avoid criminalizing music downloading when it updates copyright protection law.

The British singer and the New Democrats are calling on Ottawa to let artists find a way to make music file swapping a legitimate part of promotion and sales.

Mr. Bragg and other artists want to see new ways to pay performers for music available online while protecting downloaders. He said record labels will often sell entire catalogues to websites without giving the artists a cut."

Billy is also one of the founders of a2f2a - a blog site aiming to provide a forum for debate between fans and artists.

A2F2A blogging about the press conference quotes Billy as saying:
“The internet brings fans and artists closer together than ever before and brings great benefits to both. Let’s not allow the record industry to keep us apart in order to protect their old broken business model.”

I can't argue with that...

Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party - Working for copyright reform.

ACTA under fire from EFF

2009-11-22T09:18:00.000+01:00

The EFF level their sights on ACTA in 'Stopping the ACTA Juggernaut' with a piece that highlights the way process has been manipulated to avoid serious debate on a trade agreement that has significant implications for national legislation on Intellectual Property.

It's hard to have confidence in a process that seems to be entirely based on avoiding any form of critical scrutiny. It's not consulting stakeholders (for that would include the public) - it's pandering to interested parties...... which may be politics... but sure ain't justice.

Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party - Working for copyright reform.

Musicians and the Mona Lisa effect

2009-11-15T11:12:00.001+01:00

The availability of music as digital files has made recorded songs a commodity. Reproduction costs are low and there is a huge and ever expanding choice of artists and titles to choose from. Market economics say that prices should fall - and consumers clearly expect that to be the case. It's not unsurprising then to hear that revenues from selling music are falling...

As a consumer I see it as what I call the Mona Lisa effect. Leonardo's masterpiece has world renown - everyone knows what it looks like. The original is worth a fortune - (more probably several fortunes) - but a printed copy in a newspaper, or a jpeg image on the web, is practically worthless. Seeing the copy in the consumer's mind is not the same as seeing the original.

And that's the way it's going in the music industry. Listening to the record is not the same as seeing the original. Musicians are artists - performance artists - and it is in performance that the public value what the artist does. With that in mind it is interesting to read the figures on the Times Labs Blog showing that artists revenues are increasing thanks to live performances - while record label incomes are falling. They have a telling graph that highlights this well - also copied and with comment on Boing Boing, and Christian Engström's blog. The raw data is available here.

Artists income from recordings has fallen 27% over four years - but during the same period artist's income from live performance has gone up 70%, giving artists a net gain of 45% over four years. Not many industries can point to the same good news in the midst of a recession.......

As the Mona Lisa shows - the value lies in the original... remember that next time you see that enigmatic smile ;-)

Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party - Working for copyright reform.

Danish Anti-pirates give up

2009-11-09T16:34:00.000+01:00

In a moment of prescience I mentioned last week the difficulty in providing an adequate standard of evidence to find people guilty of copyright infringement on the web – something that makes the concept of guilty until proven innocent particularly distasteful.

Now the Danish Anti-Pirate group have officially given up. After seven years they conclude that the chance of getting a conviction without a confession are too low to continue working to prosecute infringers.

But it's still OK to cut off peoples internet on the basis of an accusation... isn't it?

Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party - Working for copyright reform.

Internet users take privacy into their own hands

2009-11-06T17:35:00.001+01:00

The (UK) police and intelligence services are calling on the Government to drop plans to disconnect persistent internet pirates because they fear that this would make it harder to track criminals online
Source: The Times via ORG

If evidence from Sweden is anything to go by it could soon be the case that that horse has bolted. Torrent Freak report on an article ths week in Dagens Nyheter (in swedsh) on the rapid growth of 'anonymising' services - mostly the use of 'virtual private networks' (VPNs) to hide a user's IP address. A survey of 15-25 year olds found that an estimated 130 000 users in this age group are already using privacy services to surf online. The survey authors estimated that as much a 6 or 7% of the populaton at large could be doing the same - and the survey also showed that up to 55% surveyed intend to use this type of service if laws against filesharing are strengthened.

There are many reasons for wanting privacy in your communications - and users don't need to justify why they want privacy - it is a right. Equally clearly, when users see that government is not protectig their rights they will take the ball into their own court at take steps to protect it themselves.

So if you are not doing it already... what's it all about?
Using a VPN provides an encrypted secure connection from your PC to a server on the net - at which point the IP address you got from your internet service provider is changed for another anonymous one. Which means.

Your ISP can't see where you surf - or what type of traffic they are carrying for you -surfing, VOIP, filetransfers - all look the same - encrypted...
Unless you register on sites you are anonymous when you surf. (Most sites collect the IP addresses of people using the site).
You get safer surfing from WiFi hotspots and on your home wireless LAN. Encryption means your traffic can't be read 'off air' - to e.g to snoop or hack passwords.
VPNs can usually be used from within firewalls - letting you surf to sites that might otherwise be blocked.
If you choose a supplier from another country you will appear to be surfng from that country.... useful if you regularly use sites that restrict content depending on where you are. (Some suppliers give the option to switch)
and it only costs around £5/50kr a month..

Finding a supplier is easy. Searching for Anonymous surf VPN gives lots of hits. Here is a very small selection... (but you need to find one that suites you)
UK UKiVPN
Sweden VPNtunnel.se Relakks
or for a bit of everything.... Hide My Ass

You might want to check

what encryption do they use?
where are they based?
is my account or payment traceable back to me?
underwhat circumstances can they be obliged to release data to authorities?
what data do they store that they could be asked to hand over?

Privacy is your right

Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party - Putting privacy first.

UK Culture Minister - filesharers to be guilty until proven innocent.

2009-11-05T22:42:00.001+01:00

MP Tom Watson has an interview with UK Culture Minister Ben Bradshaw on government plans for cutting off illicit filesharers. Right at the start he answers the question:

" Given ... the proposals to temporarily cut people off as a result of accusations of illicit file sharing by some sections of the music industry, do you think that those people deserve to prove their innocence in a court of law."

To which the answer was " Absolutely, Yes". He then goes on to explain how court orders will be taken out on the basis of accusations - and only then will accused copyright infringers be given the opportunity to prove their innocence.

I was gobsmacked.... How is this an acceptable and fair judicial process? - the burden of evidence (not accusation) ought to lie in proving guilt - not in proving innocence. What sort of tin-pot country are you running over there?

It does of course get around the problem seen in countries like Denmark where prosecutors have more or less given up because providing evidence that stands up in court has proved almost impossible to get.

This neatly sidsteps that issue and instead puts the defendant in the tricky position of proving they weren't the one making downloads....

Reading on in the interview we hear that he doesn't know how much the new systerm will cost to implement, and he doesn't know how much artists can expect to gain as a result. He does however know that the music industy is losng £200m a year from piracy - because they told him.

Then in a wonderful piece of double talk he goes on to tell us that illicit filesharing is potentially devastating for the creative industries - industries that are growing much faster than the rest of the economy. Strange that - if they have such strong growth given the current levels of file sharing, doesn't that kind of say there is no problem???

Some days I wonder what planet these people are on.....
(There's no date on the blog post so I don't know when it was posted - it is reported on P2PNet as being from Novemeber)

Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party - Working for copyright reform.

EU Parliament sticks to it's guns - 138 text agreed...

2009-11-05T08:29:00.002+01:00

"A camel - is a horse designed by a committee"

Christian Engström, Piratpartiets MEP, reports that the negotiations over the wording of what was amendment 138 are now complete. The full text is available on his blog. I dare say lawyers on all sides are now going over it to see what it will mean in practce but on the face of it it provides the main safeguards that parliament had agreed were needed - including a guarantee of a prior, fair and impartial procedure.

The text is not bomb proof. I suspect in practice that much will depend on an interpretation of whether it is "fair and impartial" to cut someone off and only allow them to test it in a court afterwards. .. and an interpretation of what is a 'duly substantiated case of urgency' as a reason to circumvent due process.

I for one though want to take the opportunity of thanking Christian, Phillipe Lamberts and all the other members of the parliamentary committee for sticking to their guns.

I hope now their camel is fit for the course....

Piratpartiet and The Pirate Party - Putting privacy first.

Behind closed doors - more on ACTA

2009-11-04T19:03:00.000+01:00

Michaels Geist's update on the latest discussions on ACTA brought forward this pithy comment.

"Our silly cops here are concerned with trivial things like gang murders, armed holdups, stabbings, crystal meth, tracking rapists etc. I'm sure they would really appreciate being diverted to hunt down unlicensed Mickey Mouse dolls, and infringing mp3s of the latest Metallica album."

The topic under discussion was criminal penalties for copyright offences...

When governments get together behind closed doors to protect the interests of big business against the winds of change - and aginst the interests of their voters - you start to wonder where democracy went...

Can't we please just cut the terms for copyright back to something sensible (thereby simulating more new work, instead of letting companes live off back catalogs) and decriminilise non-commercial file sharing.

Piratpartiet & The Pirate Party - Working for copyright reform.

Internet enforcement under ACTA

2009-11-03T23:42:00.001+01:00

Michael Geist blogs on the details of the latest chapter of ACTA under debate in Korea. His top level take:

"it is clear that there is no bigger IP issue today than the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement being negotiated behind closed doors this week in Korea."

Covers enforcement of intellectual property
Eliminates sovereign choice of domestic copyright policy

making Canada's recent copyright consultation a little pointless

Focuses on copyright, not counterfeiting
Goes beyond the terms of WIPO

Measures in the text include

Third party liability for copyright infringement
Restrictions on carriers limitation of 3rd party liability for infringement
Termination of subscriptions
Notice & takedown to become a requirement
Anti-circumvention legislation with ban on DRM circumvention
Rights management
statutory damages
search and seizure powers for border guards
anti camcording rules
mandatory disclosure of personal information

Cory Doctorow gives his take on it all here....

Piratpartiet & The Pirate Party - Working for copyright reform.

Protect children - but not like this

2009-11-03T22:46:00.000+01:00

Sweden, it's proposed, should have a law that bans looking at child pornography - ostensibly because if no one can look at it no one is going to make it. (It is of course already illegal to make and spread child pornography).

Is that a good idea? A number of bloggers have already come out to say that it's not - including PP stalwarts Rick Falkvinge & Anna Troberg who go further and say it should be a political issue for Piratpartiet.

So is it a good idea? And does it fall into the scope of pirate politics?

OK - Is it likely to be effective? Consider that Sweden's population is a fraction of a percent of the global population - and that child pornography is an international problem. That means unless Swedes are prolific consumer's of child porn it's unlikely to have a noticeable impact on the supply side. Unless this legislation impacts on the creation of child pornography it is ineffective in improving life for those caught up as children in it's production. It seems that it will fail in it's primary objective.

Then there is the philosophical question - how does someone know you have looked at something pornographic if they haven't looked at it. And if they have seen it haven't they themselves committed a crime?

..which leads to the practical problem of how do I avoid committing this crime if I have no way of knowing what is in an image - or on a web page - before I've seen it.

..and what constitutes a pornographic image of a child?   That's undoubtedly defined somewhere for those working in enforcement - but will a layman know? .. this last is pertinent as the legislation will apply for images of models under 18. How can you tell from an image how old the person is??? ..before you've even seen the image?

But, practical issues apart - there is a big issue with the scope. You see there is one group of people that take lots of pictures of semi-clad teenagers - doing innocent and not so innocent things, and that is teenagers themselves.   Now you might think it unseemly and immodest - but what happens legally between consenting young adults is more than likely going end up on camera sometimes. Fine - but this law would make it illegal to ever look at those pictures....

And if you think this is improbable you don't need to look further than the USA in March this year where teenage girls were threatened with being convicted of 'sexual abuse of children' for sharing semiclad photos - of themselves....

Fighting child porn is, or should be about working to protect the innocence of the child victims of that industry. Legislation that would make criminals where there are no victims is bad legislation - and criminalising teenagers for doing something that their elder peers can do legally is hypocritical, and an injustice.

Add to that the question of enforcement. How do you know who has looked at what? Legislation is pointless if it's not enforceable.    What kind of surveillance powers are going to be needed to ensure compliance - monitoring everyone's surfing? Police trojans on every desktop?

So if we sum up: Ineffective, disproportionate and with serious risks for our rights to a private life...
not least for millions of teenagers who deserve the right to grow up unmolested by intrusive legislation.

Guilty until proven innocent - if they can decide.

2009-11-03T09:05:00.000+01:00

Democracy.... You all cast your vote and all these reprsentatives gets together and decides things. They vote.. and that's how it's going to be.

EU democracy.... You all cast your vote and all these representatives gets together and decides things. They vote.. Then they choose a number of representatives who may or may not agree with what parliament decided and go and talk with nominees from national governments. The representatives change what parliament has already decided on and then change it again until the nominees are happy that what parliament has decided doesn't affect them any more.....

Tomorrow is the day... when the representatives from the EU parliament meet the Council of Ministers again to discuss new wording for amendment 138- and unless the representatives find some backbone the will of the parliament is going to end on the cutting room floor.

Innocent until proven guilty. NOT negotiable....

HAX on this weeks EU proceedings

Piratpartiet & The Pirate Party - Putting privacy first.

Who is reading your mail?

2009-11-03T07:41:00.003+01:00

I think most of us take t for granted that email works like the post. What you write gets sent by the postal (email) service and delivered to the recipient . and no-one is going to read it alnog the way.

EFF reports on two court cases in the US should make you think again. Both are about government investigations getting access to emails stored with third parties. The cases make interesting reading - but to cut a long story short they reach different conclusions on whether handing your mail over to be stored on a third party server means you have given up your right to privacy - in american terms, are you protected by the Fourth Amendment.

The EFF do their usual professional job of explaining in chapter and verse why the good guys got it right. Of course you can expect the same protection of your privacy of communication on the web as you can on snail mail or on the telephone. Isn't that want we all want and expect?

What these two different cases mean for American legal precedent is not clear to me - but it is clear for me that if the law doesn't protect our privacy it is the law that needs to change. And of course it's really convenient for police forces and government agencies to be able to gather information on criminals, political activists and undesirables (by whose definition) - but respecting our rights is fundamental to the society you are there to protect. Don't go there!

Piratpartiet & The Pirate Party - Putting privacy first.

A trillion tons: The clock is ticking...

2009-11-02T22:10:00.001+01:00

Continuing the theme of BIG numbers - Climate Feedback has links to a new site giving an estimate of the cumulative carbon dioxide emissions over the last 250 years (now somewhere past 530 000 000 000 000 tonnes)- and predicting when this figure will exceed 1 trillion tonnes - a limit calculated to keep average temperature rises below 2 degrees.

The point of course is that we need to see radical change NOW to head off an otherwise inevitable warming of the climate. Change here meaning global cuts in emissions of between 2.1 and 4.5% per year . What it doesn't say - but is important to understand - is that the earlier cuts are made the more effective they will be.

What are you doing for your 4.5% cut???

For the spy that has everything?

2009-11-02T21:42:00.000+01:00

What do you give to the spy that has everything? Somewhere to keep it all....

In this case the spy in question is Uncle Sam, in the form of the National Security Agency, who needs somewhere BIG to put all that data they are eavedropping. Estimates of the storage they need range from a mere couple of hundred petabytes (200 000 000 000 000 000 bytes) to a mindblowing yottabyte (1 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 bytes).

And I thought it was the citizens duty to keep a watch on government - not the other way round.

Wisdom and justice are not found in a database......

Piratpartiet & The Pirate Party - Putting privacy first.

Watching you: Surveillance and the EU.

2009-10-28T19:06:00.000+01:00

Open Europe has published a new report taking stock of how the EU is impacting our civil liberties.... Everyone should read it: "How the EU is watching you: the rise of Europe's surveillance state"

Quoting the Open Europe blog: "There are lots of juicy proposals in the pipeline including: a target to train a third of all police officers across the EU in a “common culture” of policing; the mass collection and sharing of personal data including DNA records into an EU-wide database; controversial surveillance techniques including ‘cyber patrols’; the creation of a fledgling ‘EU Home Office’ with powers to decide on cooperation on police, border, immigration and criminal justice issues; an EU “master plan” on information exchange; the transfer of criminal proceedings among EU member states; a three-fold increase in the number of controversial EU arrest warrants; access to other member states’ national tax databases; and EU laws on citizens’ right to internet access."

The road to hell is paved with good intentions...

Also on: HAX & The Telegraph

Piratpartiet & The Pirate Party - Putting privacy first.

Talking privacy in person - How worried should we be?

2009-10-28T17:45:00.000+01:00

If you're in the UK you can take the opportunity to catch these seminars on privacy....

First, Cory Doctorow is talking about privacy at the Battle of Ideas in London on Saturday - trying to answer the question "How worried should we be?"

That's 'Rethinking Privacy in an age of Disclosure and Sharing'
on Saturday 31 October, 1.30pm until 3.00pm, Upper Gulbenkian Gallery

Then, a little further down the line, the Open Rights Group is organising a talk by cryptographer, technologist and author Bruce Schneier on the title of: 'The Future of Privacy: Rethinking Security Trade-offs'
on Friday 4 December 2009 at 18:30. St Albans Centre, 18 Brooke St, London

That looks like two interesting topics.... Can't someone get those onto Youtube???

Piratpartiet & The Pirate Party - Putting privacy first.

Bad habits, bad government - Fudging the figures

2009-10-22T00:37:00.001+02:00

You may remember the fuss about government statistics on piracy being based on adjusted, interpolated figures sourced from industry lobbyists.

Heresy Corner has a super piece on 'Abusing the evidence' (about amongst other things, sex trafficking) that shows that the use of selective statistics to support UK government policy making is endemic. As the Heresiarch puts it..
"The government has loudly proclaimed its commitment to "evidence-based policy-making" while instead pursuing policy-based evidence making."

Statistics is only evidence if it is honestly presented - and scientifically valid. Fudging the figures will just lead to bad policy - and bad government.

Do I mean will - or has?

An Open Letter to the Music Industry

2009-10-21T00:34:00.000+02:00

Rick Falkvinge, leader of the Swedish Pirate Party, Piratpartiet, has issued an open letter to the music industry - following a speech he made at a music industry event in Manchester. While reports of the event are interesting for the reaction the speech generated, Rick's letter is a 'must read' for anyone interested in digital rights and the future of copyright. Right on the button....

Piratpartiet & The Pirate Party - Working for copyright reform.

UK Government out of touch on copyright

2009-10-19T19:13:00.002+02:00

The UK is one of the main movers behind the Council of Minister's refusal to accept 'innocent until proven guiilty' as a guiding principle for cutting internet access to suspected copyright infringers... However, at home things are far from quiet in opposition to the government's plans.

Tom Watson's early day motion on illicit file sharing continues to gain MP's support, while the Open Rights Group has published the results of a survey that shows that supporting cutting people off from the internet for filesharing is a clear vote loser. Sixty eight percent thought that internet users should be disconnected only once evidence had been considered by a court - a pretty resounding chorus in defence of our rights to 'innocent until proven guilty'.

If you are one of those sixty eight percent then write to your MP and tell them so... and also write to your MEP (right away!) and tell them to put pressure on the Council of Minister's to accept Amendment 138 as proposed by the EU parliament - it's the first and best way to ensure just due process is protected in law.

Meanwhile the government get a knocking too in the recently published report by the UK All Party Parliamentary group on Copyright. It has lots of interesting reading, with details of the evidence from a wide range of parties on both sides of the debate. On illicit file sharing the group concludes

"We conclude that much of the problem with illegal sharing of copyrighted material has been caused by the rightsholders, and the music industry in particular, being far too slow in getting their act together and making popular legal alternatives available.

We do not believe that disconnecting end users is in the slightest bit consistent with policies that attempt to promote eGovernment, and we recommend that this approach to dealing with illegal file-sharing should not be further considered.

We think that it is inappropriate to make policy choices in the UK when policy options are still to be agreed by the EU Commission and EU Parliament in their negotiations over the “Telecoms Package”. We recommend that the Government terminate their current policy-making process, and restart it with a new consultation once the EU has made its decisions."

Which is pretty blunt, given that this is a cross parliamentary group.

Piratpartiet & The Pirate Party - Working for copyright reform.

A royal view on copyright...

2009-10-18T23:17:00.002+02:00

I was reading the paper at the weekend and came across an interesting article by Pelle Snickars, head of research at Kungliga Biblioteket - the Swedish Royal Library. The article discusses the Google books project and the ramifications of the internet on the availability and distribution of our common culture - in particular it draws attention to the majority of the books being scanned which are not in the public domain - but not commercially available either. Orphaned works that are effectively lost to our collective online heritage. It is a state of affairs that he ascribes to over-extensive copyright..

"A series of independent studies have shown that cultural products such as books, music or films have a commercial value on the market during a five-to ten-year period. With some extremely few exceptions – and Google Book Search is about the General rather than the particulate – then demand drops dramatically. Even if the "long tail" in the long term will perhaps extend the commercial potential for various cultural products, it is a consumption pattern that will continue for a further period. For example, when American copyright demanded that copyright owners extended their rights after 28 years, it was less than 15% that bothered to. The incentive to extend rights to a commodity that no longer generates profit was fairly negligible.

That almost nine out of ten copyright owners did not find it worthwhile to renew their rights ought to be a cause for reflection, but developments have rather gone the other way. As several network activists and progressive law professors have said, the extension of the terms of protection over the past decades have been unusually narrow-minded given how the Internet developed during the same period. Future historians will in all probability be asked how the lawmakers were thinking that could lock in the whole cultural production of the 20th century at the same time as the Web was developing as a global distribution channel available to all citizens."
(translated by Bing.. with a bit of help from me..)

Laws should be about getting the best deal for society - but clearly today copyright fails to deliver. It's no coincidence that Piratpartiet are advocating greatly reduced copyright duration to bring back the balance between creators and society. If you don't believe me, go to the library and look it up...

Piratpartiet & The Pirate Party - Working for copyright reform.

MPs challenge the UK government on file sharing

2009-10-15T00:16:00.001+02:00

A parliamentary early day motion on illicit filesharing is challenging the governments position on how to tackle filesharing. It highlights that alleged offenders can easily conceal their (IP) identity, that not-for-profit downloads don't necessarily cause financial loss, and that cutting people off the net is unjust for others using the same connection. Pretty obvious stuff - but the government clearly don't get it. Great anyway to see the mainstream parties waking up to address the issues.

So far eighteen MPs from five partys have signed up.... More please!
(so much for two party politics!)

Update: now 26 MPs

Tips: Pirate Party blog " MPs start to get it"

Piratpartiet & The Pirate Party - Working for copyright reform.

Morons on copyright? Tell it like it is..

2009-10-14T23:31:00.011+02:00

Boing Boing & Michael Geist report on a submission to the Canadian consultation on copyright by Access Copyright - an organisation that collects copyrights for writers. As BB reports - they came out as opposing the right to record TV shows at home, and the right to "format shift" media (e.g., load a CD on your MP3 player, or put an old ebook on a new reader or phone). They also say that almost all commercial use, no matter how trivial, should require a license and not fall under fair dealing.

I would comment on how stupid this is - but I found I don't need to... this quote from BoingBoings comments says it all...

"What a bunch of well-intentioned albeit deluded and ignorant frickin' morons. As a Canadian writer I am stunned and embarrassed by their comments. They neither represent the true needs of creators nor reflect the reality we are now living in. Excuse me now whilst I go back to pounding my head against the desk and mutter: "What the fuck were they thinking?!" - Robbo

Piratpartiet & The Pirate Party - Working for copyright reform.

Tips on living under Surveillance: Stockholm Edition....

2009-10-14T20:13:00.000+02:00

I've blogged about it before but just today I thought Swedish readers might find themselves in need of advice on how to communicate securely in repressive environments.

Actually.. it's not just - or not even Sweden - that is under surveillance now that parliament here has for the second time given the thumbs up for the FRA to tap all traffic passing Swedish borders. It's enough to piss you off.... Whatever happened to principles?

Piratpartiet & The Pirate Party - Defending your privacy

Human Rights & Culture

2009-10-14T19:53:00.001+02:00

Spend the time to look and learn.....

Privacy & Justice on the front line

2009-10-14T07:30:00.029+02:00

It's one thing to write laws... And quite another to see them tested through the courts...

The week's big news - which admittedly got a bit lost here in the Swedish blogoshere with FRA in the news- is that a court in Romania has ruled the Data Retention Directive to be a breach of individuals' right to secrecy of communications. Which is GREAT news. It's not immediately going to affect the legal position in other EU countries, but in the long term it's untenable that an EU country can conclude that EU law is in breach of our civil rights and that not propogate up to an EU wide judicial test. More on this at the Open Rights Group.

Meanwhile, closer to home, the Swedish appeal court has ruled against five publishers in the first case under Sweden's controversial IPRED legislation (Allowing media companies to demand details from ISPs on who uses which IP address). The court overturned the previous ruling concluding that the prosecution had failed to show that e-books on a password protected server were 'available to the public'. If nothing else this is going to drive up the standards of evidence required to show a copyright infringement has taken place - which is no bad thing. Congratulations to ephone that have stood up to protect their customer's privacy.

The third legal news this week is that the boys from the Pirate Bay are back in the news with allegations that evidence used in a trial in the Netherlands is fabricated. Peter Sunde has a long explanation on his blog on why a company credit search presented to tie them to ownership of the Pirate Bay is a fake - and an official complaint has now been lodged. Amongst other things the company that are supposed to have created the search record have no record of making the search... Is the media industry so desperate for convictions that they are fabricating evidence? It will be interesting to watch this one...

Piratpartiet & The Pirate Party - Putting Privacy first.

Secret Affair: This is the time for action (FRA edition)

2009-10-13T00:33:00.000+02:00

"This is the time for action, this is the time to be seen"

Sadly I missed the demonstrations on Saturday against the FRA legislation - up for review in the Swedish parliament on Wednesday. This legislation - which is in force since the first of January this year - allows state monitoring of ALL traffic passing Swedens international borders (mail, telephony, SMS, surfing etc, etc). There are specific provisions to limit surveillance on traffic originating in Sweden - but all other traffic is fair game....

Which means if you don't live in Sweden THIS AFFECTS YOU! Your right to privacy? Those nice guys in Riksdagen are about to screw you over....

If that concerns you then write to them and tell them. Lobby them to respect your privacy and vote against this legislation.

Write today... write now........ do it.

Contact details here. Supporting the bill and in need of your persuasion are Moderaterna (m), Kristdemokraterna (kd), Folkpartiet (f) and Centerpartiet (c)... click through for lists of names and mail contact details..

Piratpartiet & The Pirate Party - Putting Privacy first.

Edwyn Collins & Featured Artist Coalition: trouble with copyright

2009-10-08T08:02:00.006+02:00

Cabalamat blogs on The Pirate Party blog about the case of Edwyn Collins - who was barred by MySpace from uploading his own music because he didn't own the copyright - but he does. The story was also covered in the Guardian but origininates from Edwin's wife and manager Grace on the blog on Edwyn's MySpace page..

According to the Guardian the villians of the piece are Warner Music group - who have been contacted by Grace but months later failed to resolve things.. (It's nowhere explained if Edwyn also owns the copyright on his recordings..) The savvy Grace also comments "Warner's were one of the lead petitioners in the attempt to put those three stoner lads in Sweden in prison recently, remember."

What the Guardian doesn't mention (nor Cabalamat for that matter) is that Grace's original blog post is a response to the Featured Artist Coalition's "Air statement". This statement of support for Lily Allen also includes this curious statement:

"Our meeting also voted overwhelmingly to support a three-strike sanction on those who persistently download illegal files, sanctions to consist of a warning letter, a stronger warning letter and a final sanction of the restriction of the infringer’s bandwidth to a level which would render file-sharing of media files impractical while leaving basic email and web access functional."

They are trying to play the nice guy by stopping short of an outright ban - but it misses the point.... Leaving aside whether file-sharing for non commercial use should in fact be an offence -

If you commit a crime in the street you are not banned from the street, if you rob a bank you are not banned from banks, and if you commit a crime on the internet you should not be banned from the internet. Moreover, a group punishment - affecting anyone in a household - is inherently unjust.

Besides which.... What level of bandwidth stops you downloading a 3Mbyte .mp3 but let's you happily surf around bandwidth hungry websites?

So basically FAC. Your position sucks.

Grace hits the point...
"The gig's up. You might as well take a position about when you want the sun to come up in the morning. It's over. Now let's get on with working out a wonderful new way for music lovers to enjoy music for free or for a small subscription that makes it legal and easy to hear ANYTHING and allows the artist to reap the rewards of such freedom of access. Viva la revolucion! "

Edwyn ROCKS!.. and get's my best wishes...

Piratpartiet & The Pirate Party - Working for copyright reform

Don't read me, read this

2009-10-07T08:05:00.000+02:00

For up to date and informed information on what's happening across the pond with the Patriot Act check out Julian Sanchez' blog.. covering "the intersection of privacy, technology, and politics".

Latest entries include this video fact check on Fox News reporting on Patriot reforms, and a great round-up of the state of play - which is not so great....

(Discovered through Privacy Digest)

Julian also blogs on this topic at Cato on Liberty.

Piratpartiet & The Pirate Party - Putting Privacy first.

FRA, 138, Drowning dogs and heavy British Boots...

2009-10-06T22:18:00.001+02:00

It's an interesting week in parliament this week... at least for those with an eye for justice and individual rights and privacy.

In Sweden the FRA legislation (that means state monitoring of all international traffic (voice, mail, sms, email etc) passing Swedens borders is up for review.  It's already on the statute book.. but all it needs is four MPs from the ruling alliance to vote against, or eight to abstain and the law will be torn up. The stakes are high... not least as it will be a hot topic for next year's parliamentary elections if the opposition don't succeed in getting it stopped.

Meanwhile, over at the EU discussions on the Telecom Package and the famous amendment 138 come to a head tomorrow with another meeting between ministers and the parliamentary representatives (Piratpartiets MEP Christian Engström among them). Much to the disgust of the Green group the parliamentary delegation have already agreed not to press ministers on other areas like net neutrality, but still they still want to see the parliaments proposals implemneted - making judicial review a necessary condition for disconnecting people from the Internet. 'Innocent until proven guilty' doesn't sound like such a controversial position now does it?

I've been impressed by the degree of communication both of the issues and the process and progress in the Swedish blogosphere - not least from pirates HAX, Christian and Rick. Communication even when the Council of Minister's hide their negotiating position behind a 'Confidential' stamp.

Latest from HAX is a report on how the British have been lobbying Eva-Britt Svensson - a left wing MEP - to support their position on cutting people off from the internet without trial. Apparently, according to the Brits it's all a question of child pornography. Eva-Britt, feminist, and chairman of the equality working party, doesn't agree....

"..it's instead the possibility for powerful capitalist interests within principally the entertainment industry to drive enforcement work, and through Internet suppliers stop those that are copying music and games on the web through e.g The Pirate Bay and similar search engines. It's all about putting a stop to consumption of culture by those that can't or don't believe they can afford the prices that the industry decides."

If I can steal a quote...
"When you want to drown a dog you say it has rabies."
                                                          Jean-Pierre Brard (Parti Communiste Français)
...from the French parliamentary debate on 'HADOPI 2' when the French justice minister started to talk about child pornography.

Update: the vote on FRA is in fact next week, weds Oct 14th.

Human Rights - Churchills legacy

2009-10-06T21:08:00.001+02:00

"Conservative parliamentary candidate Jesse Norman and political columnist Peter Oborne today launch ‘Churchill’s Legacy: The Conservative case for the Human Rights Act’. The short book, published by Liberty in support of the Common Values campaign, recommends that the Conservatives reclaim their historic position as a party of British liberty and the rule of law by dropping their opposition to the Human Rights Act."

Liberty issued a press release yesterday announcing this new book -which also includes a synopsys of the arguments contained in the book. Interesting to see the Conservatives moving towards a more humanitarian position. The site also has a link to the book in .pdf . I could link to it but then you'd never go look at what else you can find at Liberty now would you..?

Redefining piracy

2009-10-06T20:52:00.002+02:00

Christian Engström, Piratpartiet's MEP reports on proceedings at JURI, the EU committee on legal affairs, who have been debating counterfeiting and piracy - specifically this document:
Enhancing the enforcement of intellectual property rights in the internal market
- which contains plans to set up an 'observatory' on counterfeiting and piracy.

It's an initiative that PP blogger Mikael Nilsson describes as "a comprehensive campaign to, together with the copyright industry, find the best methods to chase and brainwash the population"

Christian, who sits on JURI as part of his work at the EU parliament, took the chance at the meeting to point out that counterfeiting and piracy are not at all the same thing - and that piracy is is not a judicial term and they in fact mean copyright infringement.

He's only partly right since (maritime) piracy is defined in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) of 1982 as "any criminal acts of violence, detention, or depredation committed for private ends by the crew or the passengers of a private ship or aircraft that is directed on the high seas against another ship, aircraft, or against persons or property on board a ship or aircraft." (It must be true... Wikipedia says so...). ..which begs the question what does that have to do with intellectual property and copyright?

Christian's point though is that lumping non-commercial file sharing, which Piratpartiet wants to legalise, with counterfeiting, which we don't, muddies the waters - and really only to the benefit of the copyright industry.

In the comments to the article 'Daniel' points out that use of the term piracy is most probably because it's stigmatising meaning has taken root. ..and of course he's right. Talking about 'Piracy' is intended to imply that something bad is happening and the term can't be considered neutral or impartial.

Which set me thinking... we need a campaign to take back what is ours. Conservatives have conservatism. Liberals have liberalism, and Pirates have piracy. In a political context Pirates now means the pirate movement, and piracy by analogy properly ought to mean "following pirate ideology" - sharing culture, opposing intellectual monopolies and above all respect for civil and human rights (like privacy).

In which case... an observatory on 'piracy' would be a good thing... (We need more people looking out for our rights and principles)

Anyone care to sign up?

Immigrant abuse: Uncle Sam, shame on you

2009-10-06T10:40:00.007+02:00

If you were living in a police state you might expect at anytime that knock on the door in the dead of night.. and to be dragged off without warning and without charge.. But you live in a democracy right? ...and we have the forces of the law to defend and protect our basic rights.

Not it seems if you live in the US.

Steve Lendman has a long and disturbing entry on how US Immigration and Customs Enforcement ( ICE ) - part of the Department of Homeland Security - are routinely using police state tactics to detain immigrants in violation of their rights. (It's that fourth amendment again)
Quoting from a report on how the raids are conducted...

"..a team of heavily armed ICE agents approaching a private residence in the pre-dawn hours, purportedly seeking an individual believed to have committed some civil immigration violation. Agents, armed only with administrative warrants, which do not grant them legal authority to enter private dwellings, then push their way in when residents answer the door, enter through unlocked doors or windows or, in some cases, physically break into homes.
All occupants are then seized and interrogated with no legal authority, and often "no target is apprehended..."
York City Cardozo School of Law Immigration Justice Clinic (IJC)

Around 320 000 are put into detention each year highlighting the scale that this abuse can encompass - and yes, they may be illegal immigrants, but as this video explains - they have rights too....