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."
Well that's not a surprise... (Score:5, Insightful)
The UK doesn't have a policy on civil rights anymore. Those were eroded away over the last few years.
Re:Well that's not a surprise... (Score:4, Insightful)
The interesting thing is that none of the parties (with the exception of us Pirates, of course) even has a solid position on civil rights. With almost any other issue, Labour will go one way, Conservatives the other, and the Liberals will suggest a compromise. Membership of the European Union and the legal status of fox hunting are the only other issues that the big parties can't seem to make up their minds on, and falling out over both has caused a lot of internal damage to the parties.
On digital (and to a lesser extent civil) rights, all the other parties are flip-flopping or in internal disagreement. The really odd thing about this is (unlike fox hunting or EU membership) it doesn't represent the mood of the general public, who either don't care or are strongly in favour.
I'm shocked that neither of the 2 big parties have jumped on to the digital and civil rights bandwagon, forcing the opposition to take a less popular stance against them. It's a sure-fire vote winner, that doesn't have a economic big cost to implement.
Re:Well that's not a surprise... (Score:4, Insightful)
That assumes the big two parties give a shit about votes, and not their paymasters. The electorate are also highly malleable. Recently, the Tories sold them the idea that the current electoral system is better than AV.
I'm coming round more and more to the idea that we should just scrap the veil of 'democracy' altogether.
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Not really, PR and AV solve two different problems. Either is better than the current system though.
Proportional representation ensures that every vote is equal, and ensures that the result of an election is proportional to the will of the people.
AV doesn't ensure proportionality but it does ensure more balanced representation. Under FPTP (the current system), an MP generally only has to appease 25% - 30% of their electorate to get elected, with the other 70%+ of their electorate being potentially entirely
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Why's it a pointless compromise? It's still better than the current system as I pointed out.
On the contrary, having AV would increase the chance of PR because it'd mean MPs would have to be more representative of the people and less representative of vested interests, and vested interests are firmly against PR.
MPs would HAVE to change their politcal stance or they wouldn't get elected- it's that simple, and it's laughable to suggest it could consider tactical voting because that's precisely the problem we h
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I'm coming round more and more to the idea that we should just scrap the veil of 'democracy' altogether.
So your argument is that because we don't have a pefect democracy, we might as well just say "fuck it"?
With your attitude, we'd never have got votes for women, the abolition of slavery and child labour, protection for workers against the extremes of capitalist exploitation or any other of the improvements over the last couple of hundred years.
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Wouldn't we? Or would those things, driven as they were by the changing moral zeitgeist, simply have happened by some other means?
My argument is that because we have a fucking useless unrepresentative democracy in which half the people don't even vote, we might as well just say "fuck it".
You clearly don't understand politics (Score:2)
Watch Yes Minister, not as a series on a specific subject but to get a feeling for the general atmosphere that exists in politics. Is it exaggerated for comedy effect? Not as much as you might think to some politicians of the time who commented on it.
If you jump on an issue and use it against the other side, the other side will use it against you when it comes time to deliver. take for instance the police. The Tories want safety BUT they are firing a record number of police officers and Labour is just teari
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!
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and then whoops, they didn't win, so all bets are off! I'm not a Lib Dem supporter, but really, their election promises were for if they won the election and however you cut it, they didn't win!
The did get to decide the terms of the coalition though, and they apparently agreed to ditching all their major policies and getting thoroughly screwed by the Tories. The signed a contract saying they wouldn't raise tuition fees so I don't think it is unreasonable to expect them to have made that a condition of any alliance. If the Conservatives wouldn't agree to it they could always have gone with Labour, or just let them form a minority government.
The Lib Dems were supposed to be the party with principals
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A known criminal was shot while in possesion of a loaded weapon, something that is rather worse in a country where most police is not armed. the outcry? A black leader claiming that yes, this known dangerous criminal had a loaded weapon but surely that is not a reason to shoot someone... eh yes it is?
While I have little sympathy for professional armed criminals who get killed, the fact remains that the police here aren't allowed just to shoot them just because they have a weapon.
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Almost none of them mention Human responsibilities.. What they seem to propose is limiting people's 'human rights' if the don't meet their end of the bargain.. The system works well as long as everyone plays by the rules.. But when an increasingly visible win strategy is to dump on everyone, ignore all rights for others yet force them to meet their obligations, something is very wrong..
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The No to AV campaign a few months ago was probably the most cynical, underhanded and intellectually dishonest political campaign I have ever seen in this country, and I suspect a campaign pledge against digital and civil rights would be equally bad.
And the british public swallowed it hook line and sinker. After having lived here all my life the recent governments and elections we have had have convinced me it is a complete joke. The british system is based on the idea that government can do what it likes providing the majority of the populace will not be so up in arms that the take to the streets. It is not democracy, it is a dictatorship that you get a small say in once every 5 years when elections are due.
I am actually starting to like the Chinese s
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I am actually starting to like the Chinese system
Well why don't you just fuck off and live there and leave us poor plebsd with our imperfect "democracy" to suffer here in the Uk then if it's so great?
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With the internet everything is changing. Those abuses that were hidden and becoming more and more public. Every internet discussion about human rights, no matter where in the world about the small working together to challenge and defeat the big and about the inherent ugliness of those who think they are still in charge.
The size of the audience that accepts the lies of corporate mass media and, it's puppet politicians is shrinking by the day. While we might be disturbed by the machinations of the corpor
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The UK doesn't have a policy on civil rights anymore. Those were eroded away over the last few years.
I know that's the knee jerk libertarian response here on slashdot, but curiously enough the right to riot and arrange looting is secondary to the right of everyone else not to have their houses burned down and their businesses wrecked.
While I don't suppose blocking blackberries, twitter or whatever would actually work, the idea does not seem so appalling to anyone who has watched mobs at work in their home town.
There is, in any case, no country in the world where there is a "human right" to riot viole
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That's a fancy line of thinking. In the real world though, the UK had civil rights as in, an as much as the magna carta [wikipedia.org] gave rights to the US, Canadians, Aussies and so on.
Re:Well that's not a surprise... (Score:5, Insightful)
canadians as long as they were queens canadians. aussies as long as they weren't aboriginals, people of the great isles as long as they weren't scottish or irish and the english as long as they weren't against the state's ever changing policies. fine civil rights right there..
you do understand the difference between a free man and a serf? magna carta isn't as much about civil rights as it's about who has the right to fuck the common men up as much as they want, come industrialization and the mechanics changed just a little bit - for the better a bit as anyone could theoretically climb up, but magna carta is a lot about how all men are not equal.
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"as in, an as much as"
I'm guessing you missed those words.
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TFA makes out like the Internet is a minority issue that the masses don't understand. A shutdown of Twitter et al was never on the cards because most of the electorate uses those services and would cry foul.
The article seems to focus on the main political parties, as opposed to the "masses". The Prime Minister said something along the lines of "we will look into whether it would be right to temporarily stop access to site such as twitter", so while it was never really on the cards, it was briefly thought about.
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The PM made it clear that he was talking about stopping specific individual's access to social networking, not the whole population's access to it.
First they came for the subversives?
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Someone needs to write a Chrome/Firefox extension that automatically checks 404 pages via Tor to see if they really are down or just being censored.
This feels a lot like (Score:5, Insightful)
1984
A Brave New World
We see it coming and just don't give a damn, it seems. Where are the times governments were afraid of their people? Or at least had some respect for their people?
Re:This feels a lot like (Score:5, Funny)
No way dude. If twitter and facebook are inaccessible for even one minute because they are rebooting their servers it is way worse than 1984 or V for Vendetta because access to twitter is a basic human right. Not having access to them would be like if North Korea was run by Hitler disguised as Big Brother. And like you know how everyone is smoking dope and shit. Well that's exactly like soma in Brave New World. We should totally legalize it. And if you like put on a mask and try and blow up Parliament people call you a terrorist.
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If the government is deliberately taking down the most popular communications media for the purpose of stifling free speech, that is a big deal.
The "War on Drugs" is actually the "War on Some Drugs". It is first and foremost a money maker. In particular relation to this conversation, it keeps the demand for pharmaceuticals up. Misprescription of drugs is one of the largest killers in this country. They just almost killed a friend of mine who went into the hospital for meningitis, she would probably be dead
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I would never come clean to an AC. That's like putting your nuts in the dictionary and asking onlookers to flip to their favorite definition of pain.
Re:If twitter and facebook are inaccessible (Score:2)
So it is Brave New World after all. Those sites are the new Soma. They soothe the populace. Yes, some care must be taken down to delete the really dangerous threads, otherwise all is nice and dandy with cat pictures.
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But there were over a 100 injured and 5 killed! When social order breaks down to that extent some drastic measures might be called for. If a social media service like twitter is helping to fuel the riot then when would you say it's okay to suspend it till cooler heads prevail? After 10 people die? 20? 30? There has to be a point where some sort of action is taken right? If not then a person's basic human right to feel safe in their own homes and communities is in jeopardy. And I kind of think that basic human right trumps twitter, maybe just a bit eh?
My main concern with shutting down any form of communication in a situation like a riot is that now anyone nearby not participating in the riots have a lot less information about what is happening where (I'm sure a service like twitter would be helpful in finding places where riots are happening and avoid them as much as possible). They will also find it harder to contact their loved ones to ensure them that they are OK or check that their loved ones are OK (I would imagine that if a riot is happening and y
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My main concern with shutting down any form of communication in a situation like a riot is that now anyone nearby not participating in the riots have a lot less information about what is happening where (I'm sure a service like twitter would be helpful in finding places where riots are happening and avoid them as much as possible). They will also find it harder to contact their loved ones to ensure them that they are OK or check that their loved ones are OK (I would imagine that if a riot is happening and you can't get through to someone, a lot of people will start panicking).
A point that David Cameron himself made, which is why he did not suggest shutting down twitter, he suggested cutting off access for the instigators of the trouble. Doesn't make for such a sensationalist headline, though, does it? (And no, I am not a Cameron supporter, I see his policies and those of his party as damaging and divisive. But there are plenty of real things to criticise him for, there's no need to invent stuff like this.)
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he suggested cutting off access for the instigators of the trouble.
And how would they easily accomplish that, I wonder?
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he suggested cutting off access for the instigators of the trouble.
And how would they easily accomplish that, I wonder?
When some stupid cunt starts tweeting "everybody bring balaclavas and baseball bats to the junction of the High Road and Bonfire Lane in Shagsbury, Twitter find out who sent it and inform the police, who "cancel his account", if you know what I mean.
Re:This feels a lot like (Score:4, Insightful)
That is why any kind of censorship has to be fought as if it was "North Korea was run by Hitler disguised as Big Brother" because that is what all those things has in common.
They're also run by people who breathe, so by your argument we should put a stop to breathing. Ever heard of affirming the consequent?
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I am ok with this, as long as it is the ruling class here in the U.S.A. that has that restriction. In less than five minutes, we could solve the whole problem that is "Congress."
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Totally dude. When my grandfather was storming the beaches at Normandy I'm sure one of the rights he was sure he was defending was the right to say publicly "NE1 ELSE FEEL LIKE JOINING ME ROBBIN JB SPROTS IN TEH EAST END AN STEELIN XBOXEZ AN PSFREES(LOL) FROM CURRIES?!?". Also as someone who was not exactly a teetotaller but was not keen on alcohol I'm sure he'd be very keen to allow kids to smoke heroin around the subway station instead of going to school.
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"NE1 ELSE FEEL LIKE JOINING ME ROBBIN JB SPROTS IN TEH EAST END AN STEELIN XBOXEZ AN PSFREES(LOL) FROM CURRIES?!?"
Yeah. As long as you don't find that type of speech important, it must not be! It's factually okay to censor any speech you deem as unimportant.
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"NE1 ELSE FEEL LIKE JOINING ME ROBBIN JB SPROTS IN TEH EAST END AN STEELIN XBOXEZ AN PSFREES(LOL) FROM CURRIES?!?"
Yeah. As long as you don't find that type of speech important, it must not be! It's factually okay to censor any speech you deem as unimportant.
You really are a fucking retard. There is no right to free speech to plot criminal acts. If the police intercept your snailmail postcard to your mate saying "meet at Currys midnight, bring bolt cutters" that's just tough fucking shit when you get caught.
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The main use of both Twitter and Facebook is to communicate with other people
No, the main use for these systems is to build large databases of connections between people and between people and things for data mining by encouraging communications to flow via a single choke point. As a side effect, they also make it trivial for a single entity to restrict and censor communication. The fact that they provide some communication is a side effect of their main purpose.
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The point is that the common denominator for all abusive governments, be it in Libya, USSR, NK or country of your choice, is that they prevent people from communicating freely.
The right to communicate freely does not extend to using any medium to plot criminal activities without any come back.
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Is there some Godwin's Law equivalent for mentioning 1984/Orwell when discussing the UK government? If not, there should be.
More specifically, people saying: "I didn't think 1984 was meant to be an instruction manual!" or similar.
If you have a problem with the policy - explain why you think it's a bad policy.
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If you have a problem with the policy - explain why you think it's a bad policy.
Which policy? My understanding of the article is that the three main political parties in the UK either have no policy (regarding digital rights), or don't understand the issues well enough (which has led them in the past to say something, then later backtrack because they realise it is unworkable or infeasible). I would say that an inconsistent and contradictory policy is a bad one.
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Brave New World? (Score:3, Interesting)
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]
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BNWs model kept people in their place by making them so happy there that they would not want to consider rebellion
The vicious fucking bastards!
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Where are the times governments were afraid of their people?
They are afraid, that's why they're freaking out.
Possibly what you actually want is a government that isn't afraid of its people, but enjoys a courteous and respectful two-way relationship based on mutal trust and honesty?
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There were major differences between each vision of the future.
1984 - The whole world is going to pieces with three major superpowers always forming truces, alliances and then going to war with each other. Information (or propoganda) has become so common that they are desperately trying to control it through NewsSpeak, but the system feeds on and ends up contradicts itself, so the population stops paying attention and the powers in charge get paranoid. Based on what remained of the bombed-out city suburbs i
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V for Vendetta - Based on life in London under New Labour.
Interesting, as the comics were originally published in the 1980s at least ten years before New Labour came into power.
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"1984" is the story of a middle-class dissident choosing to assist the deceit and theft conducted by a totalitarian regime.
Yes and Kafka's "The Trial" is a satire on being too poor and stupid to hire a proper lawyer. Can you actually not read?
That was a party political broadcast on behalf of. (Score:3)
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Is this a new service that ./ is trying? Will the other parties also get their statements posted word for word?
Quite a lot of article summaries on slashdot are usually a word for word extract from the source (which are often press releases).
It's not a power grab, that's a side effect (Score:5, Insightful)
The UK government folks probably genuinely believe that shutting down social media would be usful to stop waves of criminality like the recent rioting. The fact it hands enormous power to the government is a side effect that they either don't see or (more likely) welcome, but it's not the aim.
This ranting and posturing about evil people in charge is misguided. The point is that through good intentions both people and government can slide into sinister and easily abused situations. Not that the politicians at the top are already aiming for them.
This is why the people who notice this stuff must be extra vigilant, because it is all done with semi-good intent, but it takes us to the same bad place.
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The free flow of information is one of the greatest threats to governmental control. They tremble in fear that the mob could actual organize on the fly. If you notice the first thing the Libyan tryrant did was to try to shut down the internet and cell phone access. Government is a necessary evil and that government that governs least is the least evil.
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And if you think that applies to the situation in which the current UK PM suggested shutting down social media, then you've been misinformed.
Don't get me wrong, the curtailing of communication freedoms is evil, but in this case it's evil done with misguided (mostly) good intent. This (IMHO) makes it all the more dangerous and would make it all the easier for Qadaffi's to take over the UK in the future.
I don't believe that UK politics is in the stage where communication of the people scares it, I believe the
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I don't think that the riots were in any way political. They were comparatively small and all about stealing stuff.
The misguided but mostly good intent here is to stop them being able to organise. You'll notice that later debate focussed on taking away the ability for the instigators of this criminal activity to cause more trouble through these services.
"Immediately quit afterwards, because you helped govern the country into the mess that required extreme measures.
This is basically true anywhere in the worl
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In the UK we currently call the people that caused the deep financial suffering of many in the UK "The Labour Party".
All they were guilty of was not immediately reversing twenty years of Thatcherite butchery, sory modernisation. But sadly the "New" part of New Labour wasn't that different from the Tories anyway.
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Takes too sides to cause a riot.
OK Johnny, let;s try again.
One, FUCKING TWO, three, four, five...
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They tremble in fear that the mob could actual organize on the fly.
Well, either that or they're doing their job to preserve public order and they noticed that idiots organised not peaceful hippie protests but riots using Facebook, and the evil lazy conservative middle-class population have a funny habit of disliking riots. Very regressive of them, I'm sure.
Just because somebody is against the government doesn't mean they're actually for anything good. Sometimes the enemy of your enemy is just a jerk.
Nah (Score:3)
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Believe me, they're shitting bricks about the interwebs, and not just because of the Copyright issues that their corporate donors have been harping on about. The past 50/60 years has been littered with minor revolutions that have been cracked down on because they were getting out of hand, specifically The Misuse of Drugs Act and The Criminal Justice Act. Both a cover, frankly, for bashing down hippies and other people who thought "Wouldn't it be great if we were all just nice to each other?" movements that
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More than four hundred years ago a great citizen wished to embed the fifth of November forever in our memory.
The Gunpowder Plot was a failed attempt by reactionary Catholics loyal to Spain to install their version of the Inquisition-loving bastards in control of Britain. Luckily, Guy Fawkes and his fellow fascists were caught and executed.
If that's your idea of a freedom fighter, there's something wrong with you.
Propaganda? (Score:2, Interesting)
Seriously, is /. pushing political parties now? /. community (and mine).
Yes, the UK government has problems. But that's no reason to blatantly promote another political party. Even if it aligns with the general opinion of the
Re:Propaganda? (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, I'm no wiser about the submission system policy than you, but I guess that any other party that submitted something coherent and relevant would probably get it featured too. Any pro-Pirate bias probably comes from the fact that we're submitting stuff and the others are not.
Personally, I'd love to see the other parties engaging with the Slashdot crowd, talking to a well informed non-partisan audience about digital matters could really help them make good decisions on digital (and civil rights) issues.
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I'd love to see the other parties engaging with the Slashdot crowd, talking to a well informed non-partisan audience about digital matters could really help them make good decisions on digital (and civil rights) issues.
Your second clause bears no logical relaion to the first.
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What exactly do you suggest are the "real issues"?
IMHO, the "real issues" are that copyright trolls are working hard to ensure that no copyrighted material ever arrives in the public domain. Copyright in perpetuity is what they are aiming for. More, they are working to ensure that those copyright "laws" are enforceable around the world.
The 1984 posts may amuse you, but I consider them to be words of wisdom. As for the UK, it's been a police state for quite a long while now. Brits have an entirely differ
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The UK is a police state but the US isn't?
Have you ever seen "Cops"?
You know, the show that's supposed to show the best of the US police but instead ends up showing people harassed and arrested for looking at an officer the wrong way?
The uk may be a surveillance state like no other, but it's not half the police state the US is turning into.
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Uhhmmm. I think it's a matter of degree, really. The US is not yet a police state, IMHO. But, some cities in the United States are working hard to become police states, and Washington is aiding those cities. Away from the cities, we have varying degrees of the problem.
I could argue with you about how much the United States has become a police state - but as I sit here typing, I'm reminded that the United States incarcerates a greater percentage of it's citizenry than any other nation in the world. I mi
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So - WHO, exactly, has the authority to maintain surveillance over it's people?
Who has the authority to arrest people? Who has the authority to imprison peple? Who has the authority to pass laws that everyone must obey? Who has the authority to insist on children going to school rather than working up chimneys? Who has the authority to conscript people in times of war? Who has the authority to collect taxes? Who has the auithority to do anything?
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The uk may be a surveillance state like no other
You're under surveillance in a public place? So fucking what?
Every cloud has a silver lining ;-) (Score:3, Interesting)
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Except that the rationale used for shutting down FB and Twitter is exactly the same as the one that would be used to shut down a communication service that is FOSS, respects privacy, has no censorship (you're missing a citation for that, btw - sounds to me you're mistaking reporting pages by the community with actual filtering) and otherwise farts unicorns and lives on rainbows.
That's the problem here. This is where a slippery slope argument is not a fallacy, but a valid argument: the argument used is one o
Why should digital rights be any different? (Score:3)
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We need the Pirate Party in the USA (Score:3)
Being a Democrat or Republican is so 90's. In fact, when it comes to corporate ass kissing, I see very little difference. Either the Democrats are "in charge" and our President can't wait to roll over to the Republicans demands, or the Republicans are and there is one less step in the process loop. I'm tired of all of it.
I want the Pirate Party! They stand for fairness.
I know, it's "throwing away my vote" but in reality our county has Diebold electronic voting machines so what I choose is changed to fit "our owners" wishes anyway.
I'm done!
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Yeah but have you actually read their manifesto [pirateparty.org.uk]? They have some great articles, and I do support the direction they desire but look at the craziness:
They want copyright to be 10 years. Yes, the current term is ridiculous, but so is 10 years! To put this in perspective, Windows XP, and the first Lord of the Rings film would now be out of copyright. That seems a little ridiculous. In fact it is even more ridiculous when you consider whether expensive software (CAD, video editing, etc) could compete with their
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The Romantics are spinning so fast in their graves, we could solve our energy problems just by sticking Victor Hugo's casket in a generator.
Yes, it's well known that the only money Hugo earned during his lifetime was from selling Quasimodo dolls to McDonalds.
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The economic argument behind copyright is we get more software, books, movies or whatever because of it. The balance becomes one of making copyright long enough to the producers of works so they an economic incentive return to produce more works, but no so long that they earn money from old works and have no produce not ones. We are after all a society built upon continual incremental improvement of things we have built before. Interfering with some
Wrong choice (Score:2)
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Is this a surprise? (Score:3)
Cameron has no coherent policy on anything.
He's a PR weenie, 'policy' is determined by whatever will get him the best press at the time.
Or, a more important alternate headline... (Score:2)
The UK Government's Struggle with basic law and order.
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Anyone thinking that the Pirate Party UK are in any way relevant to the debate are entirely mistaken. The leader of the party stood at the last election here in Worcester and
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Uhh - what about those stories we heard, about people being fined for playing a radio in a place and manner in which OTHER people might hear the radio? Those individuals ran afoul of copyright and licensing laws. Preposterous, I say.
I'll grant that the BBC is a superior broadcasting enterprise. I watch and listen to as much of the BBC as I can, because they are better than our American mass media, and usually get a better angle on the news around the world. All the same, the entire Western world is unde
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Uhh - what about those stories we heard, about people being fined for playing a radio in a place and manner in which OTHER people might hear the radio? Those individuals ran afoul of copyright and licensing laws. Preposterous, I say.
You do not have a right to use music from the radio in your place of business for customers to listen to for free; in theory at least you need to pay the Performing Rights Society (PRS) a royalties/fees for that. It's nothing to do with the BBC.
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Anyone thinking that the Pirate Party UK are in any way relevant to the debate are entirely mistaken. The leader of the party stood at the last election here in Worcester and lost his deposit.
It's OK, it was just the transfer of a few bits from one account to another, nothing was actually lost.
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Plus they force all the commercial broadcasters to raise their game. Without the BBC, British media would long ago have descended to the same level as the USA.
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Everyone, from the sovereign to the common serfs has rolled over
The Middle Ages just called and want their national sterotype back.
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Rights exist
Only in the collective imagination of mankind.