I’ve written to my MP today to ask for his position on the issues raised by the green paper. I’ve also asked that he challenge Ed Vaizey and the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to open up their opaque round-table discussions on the Bill, which have thus far excluded all but one set of stakeholders. The government is making choices behind closed doors that will effectively carve up digital power between private interests. Citizens and human rights lack representation in this policy-making process yet if we act quickly we can change the direction of this legislation before any politicians have to make a “U-turn”. Why not write to your MP today and make your own views known?

In my opinion, and that of a great many other technical experts, the proposals are risible and cannot hope to achieve their stated objective of reducing illicit online file-sharing. Meanwhile they will cost billions to implement – costs that will be passed on to householders and businesses – and will reserve to a few corporations monopoly control over our online experience. (I suspect this last point is the real objective of the legislation!) The Government seems to think the world-wide web is a content distribution system, similar to television, whereas in fact it’s a communications network like the Royal Mail or the telephone. It is nonsensical to try to regulate the latter class of systems in the same way as the former. Imagine how daft Ed Vaizey would sound if he proposed steaming open all our letters to check whether we’re sharing photos in violation of copyright law, or tapping everyone’s phone calls to ensure we’re not using trademarked phrases in a way that might mislead our audiences!

Perhaps the worst effect of these proposals would be the extent to which they would violate our right to privacy and freedom of expression. Automatic censorship requires surveillance, because ISPs and search engines would have to examine every webpage request we make in order to check whether we’d asked for one of the blocked sites, which would be a gross invasion of privacy. Secondly, since filtering systems are notoriously inaccurate, the owners and users of many legitimate websites would have their speech censored arbitrarily. Redress for this might prove difficult to obtain since the proposals include replacing court oversight and due process with industry-led self-regulation.

The Open Rights Group have been trying to participate in the round-table discussions being held by DCMS yet it seems their views are not welcome there. I understand they were involved initially but have been excluded subsequently. In order that we can all trust and rely on the resulting legislation the DCMS must commit to a more open and transparent process from now on. How does Mr. Vaizey intend to ensure public confidence in the Government’s copyright enforcement regime? Will he commit to setting out a clear consultation process, being transparent about with whom the DCMS is meeting and in what capacity, and ensuring that all stakeholders receive a fair hearing? Will he end the private round-table discussions that prioritise one set of stakeholders and invite organisations such as ORG to participate again? Will he commit to basing copyright policy on evidence not industry spin? Enquiring netizens need to know!

• OnoRobot.org – Educational resource explaining privacy and security issues on the web in a non-technical way.
• Tech Tools for Activism – website of the person who led the session. Documents many different tools and their uses.
• The Guardian Project – Free software privacy-aware android apps.
• Indie Web Camp – A weekend get-together that discussed self-hosting and data portability
• CrypTweet – Experimental public-key cryptography for Twitter
• HactionLab – a gathering and working project for tech-activists in the UK
• Truecrypt – Free Open-Source On-The-Fly Disk Encryption Software for Windows Vista/XP/2000 and Linux
• Off The Record – Encryption, authentication, deniability and perfect forward secrecy for instant messaging.
• Tails live CD – Linux live CD / USB distro that aims to preserving privacy and anonymity.
• RiseUp – Provides technical tools to facilitate active, confederal, and directly democratic social change networks.

I’ve tagged these up on delicious and added a few links of my own there too.

Contributions to the list would be most welcome, either as comments to this post, or using the delicious.com tag “techtoolsforactivism”.

This session was on the Communications Capabilities Development Programme Green Paper. At the time this was due to be published imminently however nobody had yet seen the details. The Government had held discussions with various stakeholders, though, and some information had begun to emerge – not all of it good!

On Sunday 1 April the Government released further details of their plans to the press (and our suspicions that they’re not good were confirmed!). I’ve posted a round-up of relevant links on my delicious account.

The panel consisted of Pete Bradwell (campaigner at the Open Rights Group), Jeff Lynn (chair of COADEC) and Theo Bertram (UK policy manager at Google UK). The session was chaired by Alec Muffett.

Theo Bertram’s introduction

Jeremy Hunt recently gave a speech in which he identified “four pillars” (presumably in the fight against illicit sharing of copyright material without a license): payment processes, advertising revenues, ISP blocking and removing sites from search indexes.

In addition rightsholders have proposed a search-engine code of conduct. There are three main areas with which Google has issues. These can be summarised by the phrase “legal sites first.”

Legal: The government thinks Google is the internet and is magical. They think that binary instructions can decide whether something is legal or illegal in a nanosecond. This whole language about “legal” and “illegal” websites is already worrying. There is only copying that infringes copyright and copying that does not. Even if Google can recognise copyrighted material it can’t tell whether a copy of a piece of content is licensed. In fact judges often find this a difficult determination to make. Google can’t be a judge.

Sites: at the moment Google removes URLs from its index if they contain infringing content. The DMCA means rightsholders can remove, in theory, every page from the net as long as every page contains infringing content. What the government wants is for Google to remove whole sites – not just pages. Necessarily this means they want to remove non-infringing content! If site-level blocking is required surely there must be judicial oversight?

First: rightsholders would like their sites to appear at the top of search results for terms associated with their content. They want Google to push the “good” sites up and the “bad” ones down. This just isn’t possible. Google can’t identify good and bad. Also, if we’d had only a small cabal of approved sites listed in search rankings four years ago, YouTube would never have made it up the rankings. There would never be a British iTunes. It would be totally anticompetitive. We would also never have another artist become successful by being spotted from a pool of unauthorised talent – successful acts could only come from within the club not without.

We need to pick our moment and be careful of crying wolf – if we say this is the next SOPA, and it turns out not to be, we’ll lose credibility.

Jeff Lynn’s introduction

I’m the chair of the coalition for a digital economy. We represent the tech city, silicon roundabout startups. We help to support conditions for the creation of the next big internet properties.

The UK is a great place to grow a business. Great things will happen here so long as the Government doesn’t stop them. The government must understand the conditions that are required for success.

The fact that we don’t have the green paper in front of us today is an encouraging and interesting sign. It’s been expected since December and it’s slipped a lot. It was supposed to come out alongside the budget but there’s a view that now the local elections are coming up we won’t see it until May. What seems to have happened is that the government has listened to a few prominent campaigners. They don’t want a SOPA like situation – which activists were threatening based on an early draft.

The mood two years ago was that the government wasn’t listening to us. The fact that Number 10 is now paying attention is encouraging however we haven’t won yet and we’re nowhere near winning the understanding of government or rightsholders.

Talent moves – if the UK gets it wrong business will move.

We’re happy with the current direction of travel but there’s still a long way to go.

Pete Bradwell’s introduction

ORG has been campaigning for about a year against the closed round-table discussions being chaired by DCMS. We’re concerned about the lack of open policy-making and evidence based policy.

The government is making choices behind closed doors that are effectively carving up digital power between private interests. Citizens and human rights lack representation in this policy-making process.

This situation risks conflating good policy with the needs of the private interests in the room. It’s also anticompetitive. It hands decisions about what we’re allowed to do online to business. It also risks endemic censorship, adding a hidden layer of for-profit power betweeen citizens and the state, undermining what’s so promising about the open potential of the net.

What sort of due process should be involved when rightsholders make an accusation? What redress do site owners have when their sites are blocked or if they’re told to take down content?

It’s critical to keep making arguments about why these loose and vague discussions, and these secret meetings, are bad.

Questions

• The main issue is cooperation between ISPs and content industries. Google and other companies are already going in this direction. If there is no intent to profit then sharing shouldn’t be illegal. When will Google step up and say this?

  Content ID is softwhere on YouTube that automatically recognises that a piece of uploaded content is music or video and allows rightsholders to notify Google that this is their content and it should be taken down. It still follows the process laid down in law – it’s just more automated. Rightsholders don’t complain about YouTube any more because in some cases it makes them more money than iTunes!

  Key is for rightsholders to monetise distribution streams not stop them!

  Google supports all of the exceptions in Hargreaves.

  Tactics need to be considered – we’ve made lots of progress through level-headed and calm education. There’s not nearly as much opposition in government as COADEC expected. It’s a process of informing and explaining and reasoning with legislators. Ideological approaches don’t help our cause as much.

  Consumer focus have created the rights alliance to try to find middle ground between consumers and artists.

• Judicial involvement is easy to demand however if nobody is nobody paid to defend the public interest in an aversarial hearing then not all the arguments will come out in court and decisions won’t be balanced. In Newzbin, BT have been penalised for pressing too hard against the case for blocking, and have been slapped with a large costs order. Is there not a case for a statutory tribunal rather than judiciary?

  One of the frustrations with not being involved in the discussions, which are closed, is that those sorts of perspectives can’t be expressed and considered by legislators.

  No assurances received that “streamlined process” != “kangaroo court”.

• There is clear support for the idea that all non-commercial copying should be legal. Isn’t it the case that the vast majority of copying objected to by rightsholders is non-commercial? Surely this would be a thumping great exception rather than a small issue.

  Difference is whether it displaces consumer activity.

• What can we and ORG do to ensure ORG is in the room when these decisions are made?

  Talk to MPs. Try to convince them that the things we’re saying aren’t anti-copyright or in Google’s pocket etc. Explain the truth.

  Continue to press the case that this needs to be evidence based, open and transparent. Ensure the whole process is transparent. We need to open up the process so that other people can contribute.

• If a court decides that a URL links to tortuous or infringing material, do we think removing its URL is a proportionate response?

  Google already does this and it’s automatic. Applies by country on the appropriate services according to local laws. There is nothing magical about the Internet when it comes to Law. Concerns come when people say the Internet needs to be treated differently.

  Not a good idea in principal to solve a problem by reducing its visibility.

If I can do this in a week you can do it in your area too. If you’re into digital rights, and you want to meet up with others to discuss the pressing issues of the day, why not start your own branch of the Open Rights Group?

Here’s what we did:

• Choose how to communicate. We took ORG’s advice and set up shop on meetup.com, which is a paid-for service but with the advantage of being an integrated solution, however there are many other tools you can use to organise yourselves. The trick is to pick one and stick with it.
• Promote the group. We did this before deciding on topics or scheduling our first meeting so that people could express general interest without committing to anything. This encouraged participation. We started off with a post to the org-discuss mailing list and by spreading the word on Twitter, IndyMedia and Postcode Gazette.
• Gather your group’s preferences. We asked everyone two questions when they signed up: when can you meet and what would you like to discuss?
• Arrange a venue. We chose a dedicated community meeting-space rather than a pub, as this allows us access to wifi, a projector and a bit of quiet in which to hold our discussions. It’s also more inclusive of people who don’t drink alcohol. We won’t be forgetting the social side though – there’s a good pub close by and I’m sure the discussion will spill out into it afterwards!
• Meet! Our first meeting will be an opportunity to meet each other, discuss what we consider to be on topic, share the issues we’re passionate about and sort out the arrangements for subsequent meetings.

For future meet-ups the plan is to take what’s worked well for the London group and mix that up with the GIST foundation‘s wealth of experience running myriad special-interest tech-groups in Sheffield.

Each meeting will have a specific topic. One of us will present a short introduction and the rest of the time will then be given over to discussion. We’ll also be mixing in some practical sessions and we’ll invite local experts to give talks whenever we can.

We’re getting some support from ORG too. They’ll be promoting our group to local sympathisers using their mailing lists and they may also be able to send us interesting speakers occasionally.

During each meeting we’ll aim to come up with a list of practical actions for people to take afterwards (if they want to) such as signing a petition, writing to their MP or attending a protest. We’ll be reporting back to the community after every session so that others can read about what we think and share their own views. When other groups get going nearby we’ll go to their meetings and invite them to ours.

If you’re one of the many ORG supporters who wishes they’d get out of London and do more in your area what better way to make this happen than to kick off a local group? It’s really easy and you could find there’s a community of like-minded activists right on your doorstep. So what are you waiting for?

If you want to start up a local group feel free to ask questions in the comments and I’ll do my best to be useful. If you run a similar group already feel free to share your advice and experience!

I was a late and reluctant convert to the network. I buckled to peer pressure because it had become the only way some of my relatives wanted to communicate. I had reached the point where the social benefits of membership outweighed the privacy risks.

I won’t pretend I didn’t like using Facebook. Once I’d removed all the adverts and games, set access limits on the things I published and figured out how to read content without using the website, it became a genuinely useful tool. The events-management feature was a particular highlight.

Since I joined Facebook the company has been relentless in pursuit of it’s business plan: to extract and sell as much personal information about it’s users as possible. Consequently the privacy risks of usage became more severe over time. Facebook made a series of unilateral changes that affected user privacy adversely. It made public information I uploaded on the understanding that it would only be shared with my friends. From that point on the only way to protect this information was to lie. (For the record: my birthday isn’t really 1 January and I’m not really 108 years old.) The system has been trying to persuade me to tell it my mobile phone number lately, first by pointing out me how useful it’d be to hapless friends who’d lost their mobiles, and second by claiming it would improve the security of my account. I think Bruce Schneier described it best when he said, “Don’t make the mistake of thinking you’re Facebook’s customer, you’re not – you’re the product. It’s customers are the advertisers.”

The third-party applications through which much of the entertainment value of Facebook is derived proved untrustworthy, even without the accidental security-holes in the platform, so I stopped using them. Later, Facebook started dismantling the boundaries between itself and other websites by sharing profile information with it’s “carefully selected partners”, and subsequently with anyone who cared to put a Facebook “like” button on their website. It became necessary to log into Facebook only in Firefox’s “private browsing” mode to prevent information from leaking out to other websites without consent.

Facebook also made a controversial rights-grab by changing it’s terms and conditions to grant itself a copyright license-in-perpetuity to do what it likes with the content people published to it. My reaction was to stop sharing most of my photos, videos and blog posts on Facebook, which limited the value of my account to the people with whom I wanted to share those things.

Other changes were prompted by competitor social-networks. Facebook reacted to the explosion in popularity of it’s rival Twitter by changing it’s look to focus on status updates. At this point my use of Facebook became limited to the events system and as Twitter for people without a Twitter account.

In summary, as the Facebook kool-aid became more poisonous over time, I compensated by drinking less of it. A few months ago I realised I was logging in so infrequently that I was missing out on even those things in which I was genuinely interested: the birth of an acquaintance’s first child, an invitation to a party, and so on. I had to ask myself whether there was any point continuing.

The trouble is, Facebook is now integral to the lives of the people in my social circle, particularly since it reached critical mass: the point at which so many of my friends use the system that it’s become a chore for them to keep in touch in any other way. Some people I know don’t just limit their social interaction to Facebook – they also assume I’ve been following their posts and behave as if that assumption is sound. Suddenly it’s my fault if I don’t understand what they’re talking about. I’m making a social faux-pas by not reading what they have to say.

I’ve realised my relationship with Facebook has become an abusive one and it’s time to end it. This feeling was confirmed the moment I hit the deactivate button when my partner noted she’d probably have to field a stream of questions from her friends about why she’s no longer listed as “in a relationship” with me on *her* profile (my one concession to publishing private information about my life). I’m sure I would not have signed up to the network in the first place if I’d realised that my subsequent withdrawal could have an adverse impact on anyone other than myself.

I expect I’ll miss out on some photos I wish I’d seen, I’ll fail to realise that important events in my friends’ lives have happened, I’ll miss out on social events and my awareness of happenings in my extended circle of family and friends will diminish. Therefore I’m making my new year resolution to put more effort into maintaining my relationships in person. I’m betting I can enjoy just as rich a social life with fewer deeper relationships than I can with hundreds of shallow ones maintained through continuous partial attention.

This previously-boiling frog figures he’ll thank himself later for hopping out of the pan before it got too hot to survive.

If you want to get or stay in touch with me, or if you want to see my photos, videos and status updates, check out my ‘contact me’ page.