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Archive for the ‘UK’ Category

Massive Protest Against UK Anti-Piracy Bill | TorrentFreak: “Massive Protest Against UK Anti-Piracy Bill
Written by enigmax on March 19, 2010

As Feargal Sharkey, head of UK Music, speaks of his confidence that the massively controversial Digital Economy Bill will be passed before the general election, the Open Rights Group has revealed that in the last 3 days more than 10,000 outraged citizens have written to MPs demanding a debate on the issue.

The UK Government continues to push forward the Digital Economy Bill (DEB) that aims to protect copyright holders from online pirates. On 15th March the House of Lords approved the bill and handed it over to the House of Commons.

To the absolute dismay of most outside the music and movie industries, some of the most controversial elements of the Bill are unlikely to receive any major scrutiny and will be dealt with quickly under the so-called ‘wash-up’, a short period between the announcement of an election and parliament being closed down.

‘It’s a deeply unsatisfactory and very worrying development,’ a senior executive from an ISP told The Guardian. ‘The fear is that no one will know what is being cooked-up before it becomes law. It’s legislation on the hoof.’

But this situation suits the BPI just fine. This week a leaked memo from the BPI fell into the hands of Cory Doctorow which showed that the ‘LibDem amendment’ – a proposal under the DEB which would allow for websites to be blocked if, essentially, the BPI didn’t like their activities – was in fact written by the BPI. Very cosy.

But the controversies don’t end there. Doctorow also received an internal document prepared by the BPI’s Director of Public Affairs and prospective Labour parliamentary candidate, Richard Mollet. In the document he admitted that the only reason the DEB had a chance of passing is because MP’s are resigned to voting on it without debate.

‘Translation: if MPs got to debate the Bill, they would tear it to unrecognizable pieces as they realized what terrible rubbish it really is,’ wrote Doctorow. The scandals go on and on, but we have to stop somewhere.

Nevertheless, UK Music head Feargal Sharkey says that he is confident that the DEB will be passed before the general election, although others are not so sure.

‘It will still be nip and tuck to get the Digital Economy Bill onto the statute book before the election so the battle is not won yet,’ wrote Shadow Culture Minister, Jeremy Hunt, on his blog this week.

According to Jim Killock at the Open Rights Group, UK citizens aren’t leaving anything to chance with 10,000 of them having written to their MPs in the last three days to demand a debate on the Digital Economy Bill.

‘It is outrageous for corporate lobbyists including the BPI, FAST and UK Music to demand that MPs curtail democracy and ram this Bill through Parliament without debate,’ says Killock, adding: ‘The British people did not elect UK Music and the BPI to write our laws.’

Killock says that what is making the 10,000 so angry is the pushing through of the DEB without debate, an act he describes as ‘undemocratic and dangerous’.

If you’d like to add your dissenting voice, please email your MP, write to your local newspaper, and attend the planned demonstrations”

Ed Balls Warns OnJames Bulger Killer Jon Venables Sent Back To Jail On Suspected Child Porn Offences | UK News | Sky News

2:12pm UK, Sunday March 07, 2010

Alison Chung, Sky News Online

The Children’s Secretary has told Sky News the media is getting close to breaking the law over reports about James Bulger’s killer.

The latest claims by the Sunday Mirror are that probation chiefs revoked Jon Venables’ licence because of child pornography allegations.

Justice Secretary Jack Straw will say only that ‘extremely serious allegations’ caused Venables, 27, to be returned to prison last week.

Newspaper speculation about those allegations includes claims of drug use, violence and sex crimes.

The murdered toddler’s family have called for full details of the allegations to be disclosed – but the Government has insisted Venables’ anonymity must be protected.

Ed Balls said some newspapers are getting too close to revealing Venables’ identity which would undermine the integrity of the criminal justice process and could prevent prosecution.

‘If we responded to the desire for people to know the facts in public in a way which ends up prejudicing a legal case, we would look back and think we made very irresponsible decisions,’ he told Sky News.

‘At the same time we will do nothing that would put children or adults at risk, now or in the future.’

Venables was controversially released on life licence in 2001 with a new identity after serving eight years for the toddler’s murder.

James’s mother Denise Fergus believes Venables should lose his anonymity if he is charged with new offences.

Her spokesman Chris Johnson said: ‘If after that, depending on the outcome of the court case, the powers that be decide that he should have some new identity yet again, then we’ll deal with that when we come to it.

‘But she can’t understand why he doesn’t appear in a dock under his own name, if that’s going to be where he ends up.’

Mrs Fergus does not believe Venables should be at liberty and should have served closer to 15 years.

‘In her mind, if there has been an offence committed, it means that that could have been avoided,’ Mr Johnson said.

Mrs Fergus has demanded to know why Venables was put back in jail, and is meeting Mr Straw this week.

She found out about Venables’ recall only on Tuesday, shortly before the news became public.

She told a newspaper that when a probation officer told her she ‘threw question after question at her, but she blocked every one’.

‘My fear was that he’d hurt another child, or any human being,’ she said.

Venables and accomplice Robert Thompson were just 10 when they battered two-year-old James to death in Liverpool 17 years ago.

They were both released on lifelong licence in 2001, requiring them to obey strict conditions such as not contacting each other or returning to the city where James was killed.

Bulger killer Jon Venables jailed again ‘for child porn’ | News.com.au

By Alison Chung and Tom Bonnett, Sky News
NewsCore, March 08, 2010 5:44AM

JON Venables, who killed two-year-old British toddler James Bulger in 1993, was reportedly sent back to jail last week on suspected child pornography offences.

British newspaper the Sunday Mirror claimed probation chiefs revoked Venables’ parole licence once the allegations were made, but UK cabinet officials refused to reveal the exact reasons.

The 27-year-old was recalled to prison after what Justice Secretary Jack Straw described simply as ‘extremely serious allegations’.

Venables and his accomplice Robert Thompson were just 10 when they tortured and battered James to death in Liverpool, northern England, 17 years ago.

They were both controversially released from jail on lifelong parole in 2001 with new identities after serving eight years for their crimes and were made to obey strict conditions, such as not contacting each other or returning to the city where James was killed.

James’s mother Denise Fergus believes Venables should lose his anonymity if he is charged with new offences.

Her spokesman Chris Johnson said: ‘If after that, depending on the outcome of the court case, the powers that be decide that he should have some new identity yet again, then we’ll deal with that when we come to it.

‘But she (Fergus) can’t understand why he doesn’t appear in a dock under his own name, if that’s going to be where he ends up.’

Fergus did not believe Venables deserved early release from jail and said he should have served closer to 15 years.

‘In her mind, if there has been an offence committed, it means that that could have been avoided,’ Johnson said.

If Venables returned to court, it could cause a potential security nightmare for the authorities trying to preserve his lifelong anonymity order.

Mr Straw, the police and the UK Director of Public Prosecutions all said revealing Bulger’s new identity would undermine the integrity of the criminal justice process and could prevent prosecution.

Reports last week said Venables visited nightclubs and a pop concert in Liverpool and even watched Premier League soccer club Everton in the city.

He also reportedly worked as a nightclub bouncer and had a history of drug abuse.

(Entry by Dr. Yaman Akdeniz)

Good news and bad news at the same time. Glad the Lords thought the government’s plan was no good but at the same time they offered “court ordered blocking powers” as an alternative measure. Website blocking is a crude measure and it is not even half a preventative measure. It does not address the “problem” and by blocking access to websites the alleged infringements d o not disappear. What happens is that users are punished rather than the offenders who uploaded the allegedly infringing materials in the first place.

I have recently addressed the problems associated with regards to blocking access to websites within the Turkish context and my analysis can be found in an OSCE report: Akdeniz, Y., Report of the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media on Turkey and Internet Censorship, January 2010, at <http://www.osce.org/documents/rfm/2010/01/42294_en.pdf>.

BBC News – Lords force rethink of government’s online piracy plans

04 March, 2010

The government has been defeated in the House of Lords over measures to tackle online piracy after opponents said the plans could hamper digital innovation.

Ministers want the power to change laws on online copyright in future without the need for further legislation. The Lords said the ‘blanket nature’ of the clause was ‘objectionable’.
But their chosen replacement – giving courts the right to block internet sites which are infringing copyright – has also prompted criticism.

The government argued that the new Digital Economy Bill should include the power to amend copyright law to ensure legislation could cope with more technically advanced forms of piracy in the future.

But Google and Facebook were among the firms to express ‘grave concerns’ about the provision, saying it could allow ministers to ‘increase monitoring of user data even where no illegal practice has taken place’.

‘Swift recourse’

And on Wednesday, Lords voted to support a Conservative and Liberal Democrat amendment to the bill which paves the way for the clause to be scrapped. Lib Dem spokesman Lord Clement-Jones said it would be replaced with a measure allowing courts to use injunctions to force internet service providers (ISPs) to block certain websites. He said the ‘more proportionate, specific and appropriate’ measure, approved by 165 votes to 140, would tackle websites offering films or music illegally.

‘There are several sites out there on the web, many of which are based outside the UK, which refuse to stop supplying access to illegal content – indeed whose business plan depends on supplying illegal content,’ Lord Clement-Jones said.

“We cannot rely on the front bench of any major party to respect or understand the internet and modern technology” Pirate Party UK

‘At the moment it is not explicit what could be done about such sites.

‘This site-blocking remedy would give rights holders an explicit, swift recourse to courts to block access to those sites.’

He added: ‘I believe this is going to send a powerful message… that we do not believe in censoring the internet, but we are responding to genuine concerns from the creative industries about providing a process whereby their material can be satisfactorily accessed legally.’

But the amendment has caused just as much concern in some quarters.

Search engines

The Internet Services Providers’ Association said it would lead to ‘blocking based on accusation rather than a court injunction’.

“I don’t think it would be sensible or appropriate to adopt this approach” – Lord Young of Norwood Green, junior innovation minister, on site-blocking

The Open Rights Group said the industry was ‘faced with an appalling sight’ – a choice between the government’s flawed stance, and that of the Lib Dems and Tories, who are ‘pushing an approach likely to produce straightforward threats, bans and withdrawals of sites with user generated content’.

Pirate Party UK, which campaigns on the issue, said the new measure does not require offending websites to be hosting the infringing material, only that such material is ‘accessible at or via’ the location.

Therefore, it said it could affect search engines like Google and sites like YouTube, adding: ‘Today’s events clearly demonstrate that we cannot rely on the front bench of any major party to respect or understand the internet and modern technology.’

Junior innovation minister Lord Young of Norwood Green said blocking websites was an ‘enormous step’.

He said it would be hard to block sites offering illegal content without also blocking legitimate material, and agreed that sites linking to other sites – such as search engines – could be adversely affected.

‘I don’t think it would be sensible or appropriate to adopt this approach,’ he warned during the debate on the bill.

Racist content on US server is within UK jurisdiction, says Court of Appeal: “The law of England and Wales applies to material published online, even if it is hosted on a server in another country, the Court of Appeal has ruled. As long as a substantial measure of the activities takes place in England, its law will apply, it said.”

(Via OUT-LAW News.)

MPs, Lords question human rights compatibility of Digital Economy Bill: “The Government must provide more detail on exactly how alleged copyright infringers will be cut off from the internet before a file-sharing disconnection law is passed, according to a parliamentary committee.”

(Via OUT-LAW News.)

Government denies Wi-Fi operators copyright exemption: “Cafes, pubs, universities and libraries that offer wireless internet access will not be granted a special exemption from measures aimed at tackling copyright infringement, the Government has said.”

(Via OUT-LAW News.)

UK Lord Provides Overview of File-Sharing Threat Schemes | FreakBits

UK Lord Provides Overview of File-Sharing Threat Schemes
March 2, 2010, by enigmax 2

In yesterday’s House of Lords debate on the Digital Economy Bill, Lord Lucas provided a rather accurate summing up of the ‘pay up or else’ scheme being targeted at alleged file-sharers in the UK by ACS:Law and Tilly Bailey & Irvine.

Summary of the ACS:Law and now Tilly, Bailey & Irvine schemes to chase alleged file-sharers, as published yesterday by Lord Lucas.

The game works roughly like this. You find an owner of an obscure bit of copyright that is available on the internet, preferably something pornographic and extremely nasty.

You then employ a piece of software whose innards have never been exposed to the public, or tested in a court, to produce allegations that a particular set of IP addresses have made that copyright material available for upload over the internet.

You then take tens of thousand of these cases to court and, using a Norwich Pharmacal order, obtain the details of the relevant subscribers from their internet service providers. You then write them a letter, which has basically three elements to it.

First, it says: ‘You have committed this transgression of copyright’.

Secondly, it says: ‘If you force us to take you to court, we will pursue you for a very large sum of money’.

Thirdly, it says: ‘But we offer you this opportunity to settle for a mere £500 or £800″ – or whatever the figure is – ‘and we will forget all about the perils of court and the vast sums for which you might otherwise be liable, because basically we are very good people, and all that we are seeking to do is to protect our copyright’.

This scam works because of the impossibility of producing proof against this allegation. How can you prove that you did not do this thing?

You have an internet connection, and they say that it was done over that internet connection. It is no good producing your computer, because you committed the offence using a different computer. It is no good saying that you are a 97 year-old widow and that you hardly know how to use the telephone, let alone the internet, because, nevertheless, you have an internet connection and they say that it was abused.

It is extremely difficult to produce evidence to gainsay this. All you can do is deny it, and one of the things that they say in the letter is, ‘Don’t bother to deny this without producing evidence that you didn’t do it’.

The result is that a very large people of number pay up, as a result either of the first letter or of the letters that follow. As far as I can discover, despite the tens of thousands of orders that have been granted, the solicitors involved have never taken a seriously contested case to court, because getting money out of people on the basis of the compromise offer is actually what is lucrative.

There may or may not be truth at the root of this, but this is a route for obtaining redress for copyright abuse which has been neglected, and with good reason, by the reputable end of the copyright industry. It produces a great deal of distress and indignation among many thousands of our citizens, and it ought not to be allowed to continue now that we are producing a better and proper route for redress for copyright owners, particularly where we are looking at volume cases-where we are looking at large volumes of infringement. That is exactly what the Bill aims to deal with.

My Amendments 15 and 31 look at a couple of possible ways of dealing with this. We could act on the internet service providers and give them a defence against revealing the details of their subscribers – we could say that either they or a court must be satisfied that a fair and accurate process was being used – or we could give the court the power to say, ‘No, here is this Act which provides a proper remedy for copyright owners who are suffering from the sort of abuse which is alleged in these letters. Let them use that route because that is fairer for consumers and a fairer basis on which to operate, which is what Parliament has decided, and lay off the techniques which are being used to extract money at present’.

Mostly, to date, one firm has been involved, but now a second firm is getting involved. The news of how lucrative this is has spread. If we do not do something about it, we will have more firms creeping into this business. There is plenty of copyright in unpleasant material. There are plenty of opportunities for these firms to make money.

It is high time that we do something effective to put a stop to it.

I do not mind which of the amendments the Government choose. I suspect that if I was forced to choose between them, I would choose the one put forward by the Liberal Democrats. It might not be perfectly drafted, but if we get it into the Bill now, the Government will have an opportunity to redraft it for Third Reading. But this must not be allowed to continue. I beg to move.

(Via TorrentFreak.)

UK Says ‘No’ To Disconnecting File-Sharers, Sort Of: “

In November 2009, details finally became public concerning the UK Digital Economy Bill, which aimed to turn elements of Lord Carter’s Digital Britain report into law.

Part of the proposals indicated that Internet users would face being monitored by the music and movie industries. Their ISPs would then be required to pass on copyright infringement notices based on evidence supplied by anti-piracy tracking companies.

If file-sharing wasn’t reduced by 70% in 2 years using these ‘educational’ measures, alleged persistent infringers faced the ultimate sanction of being disconnected from the Internet.

The proposals were met with massive opposition, with ISP TalkTalk going as far as threatening legal action over what it says amounts to a breach of human rights.

Adding to the pressure, a petition against the proposals was launched on the Number 10 website demanding;

‘We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to abandon Lord Mandelson’s plans to ban individuals from the internet based on their use of ‘peer to peer’ file sharing.’

The Government has now responded, and for TalkTalk and the countless others who share their views, on the surface it seems like good news, but a closer look reveals a somewhat disappointing result.

In its response the Government says that it wants as many citizens as possible to enjoy the benefits of the Internet and recognizes that technology has changed the way people access media content, in some cases ‘faster than products and services commercially on offer have developed’ – an apparent reference to the superior accessibility of unauthorized downloads.

The Government goes on to say that they take the interests of artists and creators very seriously and have been working hard to find solutions to online copyright infringement. Nevertheless, they will not require ISPs to monitor their users to detect infringements and downloaders will be pretty safe, as is the case now, with detection being focused on those who upload material without permission.

On potential disconnections for persistent file-sharers – the key issue for many – the Government goes on to say:

‘We will not terminate the accounts of infringers – it is very hard to see how this could be deemed proportionate except in the most extreme – and therefore probably criminal – cases.’

What categorizes an infringement as ‘criminal’ is open to interpretation, but is likely to mean very large-scale infringement, infringement for profit, or both. So good news then? Well, not quite.

Despite throwing out absolute permanent disconnections as a measure against file-sharers, the Government is still considering other ‘technical’ solutions if the ISP warnings aren’t effective including ‘band width restriction, a daily downloading limit or, as a last resort, temporary account suspension.’

So we’re back to disconnections again. In terms of time, ‘temporary’ is not defined. Of course, anything less than ‘permanent’ fits the wording. A day? A month? A year?

Another part of the response which has been mentioned several times before and still remains puzzling is this section:

‘In the cases of the most serious infringers, if a rights holder obtains a court order, the ISP would have to provide information so that the rights holder can take targeted court action.’

As anyone who has followed the activities of Davenport Lyons and ACS:Law will tell you, the personal details of anyone alleged to have shared a single file can easily be obtained by rightsholders.

Sadly, despite the headline-grabbing statements, it seems that little has changed with this response from the Government.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

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UK – Facebook takes down 30 prisoners' pages after victim taunts: (Guardian)
Thirty Facebook pages have been taken down because prisoners were using them to taunt their victims, Jack Straw, the justice secretary, has revealed. Straw was speaking after a meeting with victims’ campaigners to discuss prisoners using social networking sites to hound families. The minister said the 30 offending pages brought to the attention of Facebook had been removed within 48 hours. He said he was ‘what we have to do is set up a better system with Facebook. ‘So essentially if they get a notice from us that this site is improper then all they have to do is not make a judgment about it, but press the delete button.’

(Via QuickLinks Update.)