The UK government forced through the controversial digital economy bill with the aid of the Conservative party on the evening of 8 April. This meant it would get royal assent and become law – after just two hours of debate in the Commons. The digital bill is a clunking, medieval assortment of ill-informed and manipulative clauses. It fails abysmally to distinguish between civil and criminal law, property and monopoly rights. Below is a wonderfully articulate, succinct and educated letter, written by a UK resident congratulating one of the few MPs who did actually attend parliament to hear the reading of the bill and highlights the failings of the bill – most MPs ignored it of failed to attend. Quote below from Cameron Neylon.

‘Dear Don Foster,

I am writing firstly to commend you for your attendance at the Digital Economy Bill Second Reading last night. I was one of thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of people watching the reading unfold on Twitter. By now perhaps some MPs and party strategists are digesting what happened but I wished to pick out a few things that seemed particularly relevant, particularly in the context of a general election.

This was the first real exposure of many of those watching to the internal functioning of the house. A large community of highly engaged people motivated to either watch, listen, or follow blow by blow descriptions of exactly how the debate proceeded. The almost universal reaction was one of abject horror.

Representative democracy bases its existence on the assumption that the full community can not be effectively involved in an informed and considered criticism of proposed bills and that it is therefore of value to both place some buffer between raw, and probably ill informed public opinion, and actual decision making. This presumes that MPs, particularly party spokespersons take the time to become expert on the matter of bills they represent. By contrast what we saw last night was a minute by minute dissection by well informed people outside of parliament of what, with a small number of honourable exceptions, totally uninformed people within parliament were saying.

The placement of copyright infringement alongside theft (Afriye, Timms, Wishart) displays a fundamental lack of understanding of the UK legal system, and particularly the distinction between civil and criminal law, property and monopoly rights. Not things that are well understood by the public but things that the public have a right to expect parliamentarians to educate themselves about as they go to the heart of what the bill is about. These points were dissected and rebutted instantly online only to be repeated uncritically in the house.

The idea that the bill has any chance at all of reducing illegal filesharing by 70% is laughable, as is the idea that “technical measures” can protect public WIFI against unfair take down notices. Finally the notion that the “creative industries” are suffering when they have taken record profits are their own research shows that illegal file sharers are their biggest customer needs to be put to parliament.

But the UK’s real creative industry were those on Twitter last night. The people whose livelihood depends on a free and working internet, who work as sole traders or in small companies. The people who will create the media of the 21st century. The people who will bring the UK out of recession. They were out in force last night and while we disagree passionately about the details of copyright and intellectual property rights and how they should be best applied, there was one voice united in the wish that the Digital Economy Bill in its current form be buried.

Particular horror was reserved online for those MPs who stated clearly that the process of the bills progress was unacceptable. That something so important has had such little scrutiny and that something so controversial has been placed in the wash-up process. Member after member stood up to say the bill and its progress was flawed, dangerous, and “appalling” but they would nonetheless “reluctantly” support it.

Finally I would note that, while you were present, the lack of other Liberal Democrats in the house was noted. This is a natural constituency for your party. Indeed Bath has a vibrant technology community as you are no doubt aware. I hope your party strategists have seen the damage that was done last night and I hope they draw the logical conclusion. If the Liberal Democrats turn out in force tonight and bury this bill at the third reading then it will make a difference to your electoral results. If you want a hung parliament, this is the way to get it.

Yours sincerely,

Cameron Neylon

p.s. I will be posting this letter publicly on my blog at http://cameronneylon.net Please feel free to reply or comment there. I hope you will give me permission to publish any other reply you make in a similar form.’

Adidas has launched a range of men’s trainers in the US that transform into a branded virtual world held in front of a computers web-cam.

The five different trainers will enable Adidas to introduce three games developed by game developer xForm into the virtual neighborhood. The games will include a skateboard game, where the trainer acts as the controller to navigate the virtual city’s alleys, along with a Star Wars themed game and music based game.

Join The New Zealand Internet Blackout to protest against the Guilt Upon Accusation law ‘Section 92A’ that calls for internet disconnection based on accusations of copyright infringement without a trial and without any evidence held up to court scrutiny. This is due to come into effect on February 28th unless immediate action is taken by the National Party.

http://creativefreedom.org.nz/blackout.html

Having received an early, unmastered, listening CD of Graham Coxon’s utterly glorious new album [ released in Spring '09 ] I was kerfuffled by the copyright protection – which is obviously essential – but which prohibits playing the CD’s on any computer. I scoured the studio to see if anyone has a portable CD player at home…alas no. I realised they’re antique now. So in a wave of nostalgia here is the first Sony Walkman, which really makes me feel all warm ‘n fuzzy inside.

Comcast appeals the FCC’s recent Net Neutrality Ruling.
Ian Lamont over at Slashdot writes:

“Comcast has filed a court appeal of an FCC ruling that says the company can’t delay peer-to-peer traffic on its network because it violates FCC net neutrality principles. A Comcast VP said the FCC ruling is ‘legally inappropriate,’ but said it will abide by the order during the appeal while moving forward with its plan to cap data transfers at 250 GB per month.”

This is to be expected, and sadly, it would not surprise me if they win against the ruling. And If they do win it will have a terrible impact upon the individual person browing the internet. This film, posted on Radiohead’s site says it all. How can you say ‘This person should have restricted bandwith because what they are doing, in our perspective, is not as relevant as what this other person is doing’?. It baffles me. It really is just a way for Comcast to control the content and make access to their content easier. Monopolistic nonsense. Did you know they paid for people to sit in chairs at an open forum to discuss this? People who just sat in the seats to hinder free speech. For more information on Net Neutrality read in full over at savetheinternet.com.

We can all relax and continue on through the webbi’verse.  Google has reached an agreement with Viacom [in the ongoing US Case], and a class action group led by the FA Premier League, to provide them with a version of a YouTube viewership database that thankfully removes users names and IP data that would identify individual YouTube users.

According to the Guardian article:

‘Google will make user information and internet protocol addresses from its YouTube subsidiary anonymous before handing over the data to Viacom.’

Viacom have been arguing with YouTube over issues of copyright infringement for just over a year.  Viacom have been pressuring YouTube to remove all content deemed to be in breech of copyright and potentially to identify anyone uploading or viewing this content.  This case will go on way into 2010 and the outcome will seriously impact many online business models and user behaviour.  My favourite Blogger, the most splendid Cory Doctrow of BoingBoing.net, writes a fascinating regular column for the Guardian dealing with such copyright and online legal issues; the necessity to review and update outmoded approaches to copyright management  – I highly recommend giving his column a squiz.