The UK Government's Struggle With Digital Rights 155
With his first accepted submission, Ajehals sends this excerpt from a post by the UK Pirate Party:
"... at every turn, the coalition has been exposed as having no coherent policy on digital rights. Nothing illustrates this better than its zig-zag course on Internet filtering and website blocking. ... As if any further confirmation was needed that the government's policy on digital rights, and freedom of speech is entirely made up on the fly, along came the riots and a classic knee-jerk reaction to the use of social media. ... one of the few concrete parts of David Cameron’s statement to the recalled House of Commons was a full on attack on social media. It was carefully worded, but the thrust was that the Prime Minister thought further action is necessary to combat the 'ill' done by status updates. At this point things took a turn for the authoritarian, with MP Louise Mensch saying it was 'acceptable to shut Twitter and Facebook off for an hour or two.' ... Worse still, it has been recently revealed that the Government actually asked Ofcom to make Digital Economy Act appeals harder. It also wants to rule out a public consultation – once again trying to do deals away from the public eye. I suspect it is actually this fear of the power technology can give us to hold our representatives to account that drives alarm about the Internet in the corridors of power."
Re:Brave New World? (Score:4, Informative)
Brave New World showed a society controlled by luxury and trivia - the bread and circuses approach. Rather than keep people in their assigned place through the threat of violence, BNWs model kept people in their place by making them so happy there that they would not want to consider rebellion. The system gave them food, comfort, a culture of sexual liberation, and all the shallow and vapid entertainment they could ever want - even the promise of a recreational drug to relieve any feelings of futility coming from living a life pre-scripted by the government. As dystopias go, it's one of the better ones - even those who are most 'oppressed,' the deltas, are manufactured and conditioned in such a manner that they are happy. There are almost no need to stop people from rejecting the society of that world, because very few people had any reason to.
Or just look at the image: http://www.recombinantrecords.net/images/2009-05-Amusing-Ourselves-to-Death.png [recombinantrecords.net]
Re:You clearly don't understand politics (Score:4, Informative)
The Liberals made plenty of pledges... like education and then whoops ...
I'm more annoyed about both Lib Dem and Con MPs who said they'd repeal the Digital Economy Act if they got into power and they haven't done so. That's a far more heinous crime because there was really nothing to stop them just cutting it dead in the water on day one after the Nu-Liebour unelected mandarin, and multi-expelled from government for sleaze, Lord Mandlemort rail-roaded it through at the last minute.
It will be interesting to see what the parties are willing to promise next time around, but of course we haven't actually held them to their word this time, so I guess we're just back to business as usual!