The prospect of a government of national unity* – a coalition including both the Conservatives and Labour – is conspicuous by its absence. Instead both parties are courting the support of the third force in British politics – the Liberal Democrats – to make up the numbers they need to govern.

The situation has given the Lib Dems a rare opportunity to influence Government policy directly. Top of the Liberals’ wish-list is electoral reform – changing the first-past-the-post voting system to some kind of proportional representation. Unfortunately none of the options on the table offer them a realistic prospect of achieving this.

The Tories are opposed to electoral reform, as the current system favours them (disproportionately), while Labour’s death-bed conversion to the cause lacks both conviction and the requisite mandate to see it through. A Lib/Lab alliance would still fall short of a commons majority so it would require the support of a hodge-podge of minority-party MPs in order to get anything done. Such a rainbow coalition would be unlikely to provide stable government in the national interest, would exclude from government the party with the biggest share of the vote, and might disagree with itself so violently on other matters that it could even collapse before it managed to get anything done.

The Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, has become the first for generations to catch a whiff of government yet he has been presented with an agonising dilemma: to share power with the Conservatives he would have to abandon the most cherished ambition of his party and set aside the reason he says he went into politics in the first place.

Much depends on the detail of the power-sharing offer being made by the Tories however, when it comes down to it, Clegg will have to decide whether he thinks working with the Tories or against them serves the Liberal agenda best. In other words, will he choose to join a Conservative-led Government and fight within it for that in which Liberals believe, or will he choose to sit opposite a minority Tory administration and fight against that in which they do not?

On that point I think my previous advice applies.

But oh! The irony…

* With Cameron as Prime Minister, Brown as Chancellor and Clegg as Home Secretary, what could possibly go wrong?

Frankly, I’m appalled. Any illusions I had about Britain being a representative democracy have been shattered. What’s the point of voting when the people we elect just ignore their constituents and do whatever their party whips tell them to? I find it especially hard to understand how an MP can vote on something without even bothering to take part in the relevant debates. Surely that’s a dereliction of duty? If they won’t scrutinise legislation on our behalf then what are we paying them for?

If any of these so-called “representatives” would like to explain themselves to the people of Sheffield we would love to hear their excuses in the comments.

Oh, and would the last person to leave Digital Britain please switch off the Internet?

Some video and photos of the event are online here: http://bit.ly/shefdebprotest Yes, that is me mumbling incoherently into Mikey’s video camera!

Paul Scriven at the Gagged Geeks protest

There was disappointing news from Parliament today. Despite a massive letter-writing and direct action campaign by geeks across the UK, Leader of the House Harriet Harman has scheduled a second reading of the Bill for 6 April. This is widely expected to be the day Gordon Brown goes to the Queen to ask permission to disolve parliament. If a second reading takes place before Parliament rises for the election, the Bill will be eligible for the so-called “wash-up” process, in which the Government and Opposition front-bench teams will sit behind closed doors to horse-trade our rights away. No transparency. No scrutiny. No debate. No democracy.

If you haven’t done so already, now is the time to write to your MP and protest, which you can do in two minutes at http://www.writetothem.com/. There’s a guide to writing a good letter here

If you have already written, and you haven’t received a reply, then you could write to the local paper and call them out publicly. Here’s my letter in the Sheffield Star.

You could also turn up to one of the many election hustings being held across the country and ask your local Parliamentary candidates for their opinion – both on the Bill and the underhand way it’s being pushed through Parliament.

If you’ve had a reply from your MP, and it’s a form letter or you’re not satisfied with their answers, please write back and tell them. Point out which parts of their response you disagree with or ask them to address any specific points from your first letter that they’ve ignored. You’ll often get back a much more personal and considered response to a second letter.
Please also consider contributing the correspondance to the Open Rights Group wiki

Lastly, you could join the Open Rights Group, who campaign to protect and extend digital rights in the UK.

Disclosure: I am an Open Rights Group paying supporter and volunteer.

I’m writing to ask you to represent the voice of UK citizens during the passage through the House of Lords of the Government’s Digital Economy Bill.

I am deeply concerned by the measures this Bill would introduce, and given that my MP seems unwilling to represent my views or even to engage with me in a debate about them, I’m appealing to the House of Lords for representation. I chose to write to you as members of the Lords Science and Technology committee in the hope that you will weigh the Government’s proposals against objective evidence, accounting for bias on all sides including my own, and arrive at proportionate and evidence-based conclusions where, in my opinion, the Government has not.

The main issues with the Bill as it currently stands are:

1. Problems with due process procedures and indiscriminate sanctions targeting Internet users accused of copyright infringement.
2. Extremely wide powers to amend copyright law with minimal oversight or scrutiny.
3. Reduntant powers to nationalise Nominet – the body responsible for the .uk top-level domain.

It is the provisions to tackle copyright infringement on the Internet that I find most worrying. The Digital Economy Bill says much about how those accused of illegally sharing copyright material should be punished yet it contains few measures that will actually strengthen the UK economy by enabling digital business to thrive. The digital genie cannot be put back into its 20th century bottle. Copyright infringement is wrong however businesses must adapt to a digital Britain or they will die.

1. Copyright Infringement on the Internet.

Disconnection is not an appropriate sanction for copyright infringement. The damage caused by such a punishment would be indiscriminate and collective, imposed on households or businesses rather than an individual infringer, and could be very severe, hampering people’s jobs, businesses or education. Financial sanctions proportionate to the actual damage caused, against a test of evidence, would be more appropriate.

The standards of evidence relied upon in the Bill are low. Errors in recording such evidence are common, and in any case evidence can never identify an infringer, only an account-holder. However the Digital Economy Bill currently allows punishments to be imposed on people who are merely accused of wrong-doing on the basis of this flimsy evidence. Furthermore, the Bill fails to impose a duty on rights-holders to make sure evidence and accusations are fair and accurate. No mention is made of the roles of libel, malicious falsehood or data protection law.

The Government has attempted to assuage some of these concerns by including an appeals process, however there is no obligation to tell people they can appeal, and no legal aid would be available to help with necessarily technical defences unless the matter went to court (a process that might take years). The appeals themselves do not extend to any discretion exercised in imposing a punishment, which is unreasonable. A right of appeal is not the same as a trial. Appeal presumes guilt – this is wrong. People should be presumed innocent until they are proven guilty, the accused should be allowed their day in court and only people who are proven guilty should be punished.

The government has said that introducing disconnection as a punishment is a last resort however the trigger for the imposition of so-called “technical measures” is open to abuse. Evidence from Ofcom would be supplied but the Secretary of State may order the sanctions into force in view of such a report or “any other consideration”. This would encourage lobbying by vocal rights-holders, such as media content companies with vested interests, to secure decisions that maximise their shareholders’ profits without taking into account objective evidence or the rights and needs of citizens. This may damage the valuable communications sector and discourage music and film rights-holders from innovating towards more sustainable and modern business models.

The Government proposes to introduce “technical measures” if its target of a 70% reduction in copyright infringement is not met within a year. This appears to be an arbitrary threshold. In addition, there are no accurate measurements of the current level of copyright infringement, and the Government has not said how it proposes to test whether its target has been met. An objective quantification of Internet copyright infringement is technically and legally problematic: technically because identifying and classifying all UK Internet traffic as it traverses the Internet would tax the state-of-the-arts of computer science and engineering; legally because firstly the copyright status of works depends on many complex factors so is not easy to determine automatically, and secondly, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers act makes it illegal for ISPs to employ the kind of communications interception required. Meanwhile wildly varying estimates of the cost and prevalence of copyright infringement continue to be circulated by all sides in the debate. The scientific and statistical rigour of these reports is questionable.

I mentioned that the technical process proposed to identify infringers can only trace back as far as the account holder of the connection used. The Bill sidesteps this issue by making account-holders responsible for the actions of others using their connection. This liability will adversely affect many businesses such as Internet cafés, pubs, hotels, libraries, community centres, schools, colleges and universities, all of which share their Internet connections as part of their business models. Many people extend to their neighbours and communities the use of their Internet connections as a public good. The Bill puts all of this activity in jeopardy: it may bring about the end of the wifi hotspot in the UK.

2. Statutory Instruments

The Bill allows the Secretary of State to amend copyright law by statutory instrument. This would create massive uncertainty and business risk for online service-providers with a consequential chilling effect on innovation and investment in the sector. Amending the law by SI will prevent the Lords from scrutinising changes, and by convention, the Upper House does not oppose SIs approved by the Commons. Thus the Government of the day would be able to impose changes to copyright law without proper debate or scrutiny. This would further open copyright law to “special pleading” and unbalanced, politicised decision-making.

3. Nominet

The last provision that I want to bring to your attention grants Ofcom the ability to “nationalise” the .uk domain registry Nominet. This is inappropriate for a functioning self-regulatory system such as the one that currently exists. The proposed power would lend Ofcom an undue and unnecessary influence over this independent body. Existing emergency powers to take control of vital national infrastructure are sufficient. Furthermore the current wording of the provision is so poor that any domain registry operating in the UK would be subject to these powers. The many small countries that operate their Internet domain-registries through UK providers would find them subject to UK control. They would be likely to move their business out of the UK in response.

Conclusions

I believe the Digital Economy Bill has many serious flaws that, if they are not rectified, present a clear danger to the UK economy, the future of the Internet in UK, the freedom of its citizens to express themselves and engage in society, our cultural commons and many opportunities of the digital age that are yet to be discovered.

Please will you represent my views to the House of Lords during the second reading of the Digital Economy Bill tomorrow?

Given the urgency of this matter, perhaps you could also pass on this message to your colleagues on the Science and Technology Committee – Lord Broers, Lord Cunningham of Felling, Lord Krebs, Lord May of Oxford and Lord Warner – who do not list a public email address.

I would also be interested to hear your views on the points I have raised.

Yours Sincerely, etc.

Write to a lord today!