Assange and the He said She said

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.

Kill Bill: Stopping the Digital Economy Bill

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.

Protect children - but not like this

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.

MPs challenge the UK government on file sharing

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.

Privacy & Justice on the front line

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.