Richard's Kingdom

First they came for the child abuse images, but I did not speak out, because I am not a vile criminal. Next they neutered newzbin2, yet I said nothing, because usenet is for dweebs. Presently they prohibited the Pirate Bay, and I did not protest, because I’m not a fan of TV or film. When [...]

The Government may be about to propose some misconceived, illiberal and anti-competitive copyright-enforcement policies in a Communications Bill green paper. The Open Rights Group has a briefing up on the proposals and their concerns about them. In summary the suggestion seems to be that UK web-surfers should be prevented from accessing websites that major corporate [...]

UPDATE 2012-04-05 16:00 BST: I had my legislative proposals confused. Turns out there are two separate sets of measures being proposed at present. This session was on the forthcoming Communications Green Paper not the Communications Capabilities Development Programme. I’ve updated the post title and content accordingly. My thanks to the [org-discuss] mailing-list subscriber who pointed [...]

I attended the local-groups session at ORGCon last weekend. I made a few notes. Then I set up a local ORG group in Sheffield. We’re holding our first meeting on Monday (and if you’re able to you should come!) If I can do this in a week you can do it in your area too. [...]

Content-industry lobbyists know that language is important. That’s why they use words like ‘theft’ and ‘piracy’ to refer to copyright infringement. Despite the current trendiness of the P-word, lamented recently by one industry insider, conflating these terms with illicit downloading has allowed organisations like the BPI and the Federation Against Copyright Theft (which abbreviates to [...]