What am I doing here?
Honestly, I have no idea.
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The Digital Economy Bill & Lobbying Transparency
Despite the overwhelming protest against the contents of the bill, open letters and personal pleas to MP's to debate and scrutinise the flawed legislation in the House of Commons fully, I watched on as did so many as our so-called elected representatives passed the legislation in a mere 7.5 hours over two nights. Most MP's didn't even bother to show up. Only 40 did and in some sections of the "debate" as little as 15 could be seen in the chamber. Debillitated has the full stats for you. In the end a number of MP's could be bothered to turn up for the final vote and it was passed anyway.
What was quite clear is that the music industries lobbyists were all over this particular bill and I can only wonder how much they have spent to get this law passed. You'd quite right to therefore question whether any of the political parties do in fact represent the public and their concerns or whether corporate lobbying is just the next big scandal just waiting to bring British politics into disrepute yet again after the expenses saga.
It's quite clear that we have to demand greater transparency in politics and accountable decision-making. 38Degrees is now campaigning for lobbying transparency and I'd urge as many people as possible to support this campaign so that further repeats of this DEBill mess do not occur. Candidates are currently scrambling ahead of the general election on May 6th. Now is the time to make our thoughts known so I would encourage you to write to your local candidates through the 38Degrees page and ask them to sign the pledge for lobbying transparency.
At the moment, we don't have a right to know who is lobbying the government or how much money they're spending. That's why we need to make it compulsory for lobbyists to open up their activities by introducing a public, mandatory register of lobbyists. Labour and the Liberal Democrats have made commitments to tackle lobbying links in Westminster, but so far the Conservatives have said they will let lobbyists regulate themselves, which won't do enough to sort out the system. Let David Cameron know this isn't acceptable too.
~ SirFFW
How Music Works
Urgh, it's been a while since I updated. This has been mainly due to lack of time and then a really shitty experience with BT who were completely incompetent when trying to fix their communications network which disconnected me from the internet for nearly 2 weeks. At this point in time I would just like to say fuck BT and their monopolistic stranglehold on wholesale communications infrastructure which leads to their shitty service.
Lots of stuff to write about and I'll probably do some new posts over the weekend but for now let's calm the mood and see how music works...
~ SirFFW
Are The Net Police Coming for You?
DJ and presenter Jo Whiley looks at how a proposed new UK law targeting millions of illegal downloaders could mean home broadband use may never be the same again.
Panorama also got the position of all 3 main political parties.
The Government's policy is set out on the Digital Britain website.
The Conservative's statement is as follows:
We will ensure that Britain has the most favourable intellectual framework in the world for innovators and high tech businesses. We recognise the need to tackle digital piracy and make it possible for people to buy and sell digital intellectual property online. That is why we broadly support the measures included in the Digital Economy Bill. However it is vital that any anti-piracy measures promote new business models rather than holding innovation back.
The Liberal Democrat's statement is as follows:
The Liberal Democrats support the creative industries, are concerned about the financial implications of illegal downloading of copyright material and recognise the importance of protecting intellectual property. However, we have opposed - and helped defeat - government proposals (contained in Clause 17 of the original Digital Economy Bill) to have almost unfettered power to act against copyright infringement.
Liberal Democrats, in the Lords, have significantly altered the government's original proposals relating to illegal person to person file sharing. As a result, no action to introduce "technical measures" (whether temporary account suspension, throttling or whatever) can be introduced until;
- there is an explicit assumption of innocence
- soft measures (letter writing) have been used
- an evaluation of their effectiveness has been undertaken
- an evaluation of the need for and likely effectiveness of technical measures has been undertaken
- consultation has taken place
- proposed legislation is brought before parliament for decision
- until proved guilty
Lib Dems hope that temporary account suspension as a very last resort will not be required. We hope that the relevant creative industries (music, film and video games) will work more vigorously to develop new business models which will make it easier and more affordable for people to legally access their products and that combined with "soft measures" and effective advertising campaigns against illegal downloading further action will not be required.
We would not support the introduction of temporary account suspension (TAS) unless all the measures outlined above (including the development of new business models by the creative industries) demonstrate that a significant problem continues to exist, that TAS is the only available solution and that appropriate judicial procedures are in place to ensure that people remain innocent until proved guilty.
Liberal Democrats have agreed at their Spring Conference to establish a working party to address these issues. With at least a year before there will be any attempt to introduce "technical measures", this will provide an opportunity for the party to consider the outcome of research into the effectiveness of the early stages of the implementation of the legislation in the Digital Economy Bill.
This is a far from perfect assessment of all the issues but as a 30 minute piece on prime time television it does at least raise awareness of this issue before it is passed into law. The Government want this passed before the general election so if you feel strongly about it do something now! Tell your local MP's that this is an issue for you and will influence your vote in the forthcoming election. The MP's may get money thrown at them by the media industries to support their parties but without our votes they have nothing.
~ SirFFW
Chromium OS
So Google announced today that it was open-sourcing its Chrome OS project to allow any interested developers to contribute and offered up some new information and videos about the project. Tagged Chromium OS, I'm finding myself quite intrigued the latest Google project. Here's Google's pitch:
I've been quite wary of Google of late and of cloud computing solutions in general but I can certainly see this as a positive step and I can also see the benefit of this type of OS on a secondary device. I'm actually someone who doesn't like notebook's as a primary device. Despite the fact that sales are obviously indicating that's what most people want, I still like my desktop computer and I won't give that up at home. I do however see the benefit of a secondary portable device and have long considered buying a netbook for this. What's put me off is the fact that nobody, in my opinion, has got this device right yet. It needs to be light and easy to carry, yes, but it also needs to offer usability improvements too and the Windows and Linux systems currently offer nothing innovative for this type of device. Maybe those much rumoured Apple tablets will bring this (and that would be great) but if not then maybe this project will.
I like the UI concept and I want a device that boots up in 7 seconds and gets me online that fast. What do you want to use a secondary device for that isn't using the internet anyway?
~ SirFFW
Revival....well sort of...
So in my infinite boredom and disbelief of things going on around me, I've decided I might give this blogging thing another go. It's true I could have revived the old blogger based site but honestly this just seems easier. I can email posts in for a start which might mean I actually post something more than once a month unlike last time.....we'll see.
~ SirFFW
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