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Kumbaya is not a legal defence

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Maybe photographers have a guardian angel, after all. The Stop 43 campaign to throw out the orphan works clause may be the only part of the vast Digital Economy Bill where activists have achieved their goal – rather than made things worse. With the Tories pledging to drop the clause, it’s unlikely to survive the … Read more

Digital Economy marathon reaches Wash Up

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The Mandybill looks set to become law, with its teeth and gold fillings intact.

Conservatives have vowed to oppose three controversial clauses of the Digital Economy Bill in the next 48 hours of legislative horse trading, but will keep the online file sharing portions intact. Photographers have been more persuasive than the anti-copyright lobby: Clause 43, involving collective licensing and orphan works, is one of the three that Tory culture secretary Jeremy Hunt has said must go.

The others are Clause 1 and Clause 29, both of which involve adding expanding the role of uber-quango Ofcom.

Hunt slammed the Bill, calling it “a digital disappointment of colossal proportions”. He said the government had ducked the issues of the digital radio switchover and the provision of local news, and failed to clarify the role of the BBC or strengthen independent TV production. The Tories said they may review these issues if the Mandybill becomes law. The piracy measures, while not perfect, reflected the Commons consensus that something needed to be done to deter online copyright infringement and protect jobs.

To the surprise of the music business, it means that the illiberal Section 18, giving Courts powers to block access to sites that exist largely to deliver infringing material, will survive. The section, previously Section 17, was introduced in response to industry concerns about cyberlockers such as Rapidshare.

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Open Rights Group musters Flash Mob… of 7

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Sorry ORG

Music House — HQ for a number of the UK music industry’s trade groups — was in a lock-down situation this lunchtime as an Open Rights Group Flash Mob descended, protesting against the Digital Economy Bill.

As many as seven protesters could be seen outside the Berners Street offices, according to staff who phoned us from beneath their desks. This is slightly down on the nine who had pledged their support on Facebook.

Twitter was a hive of activity, too. We’d counted two Tweets on the protest in an hour. Photographic evidence below suggests that after an hour, the number had swelled to almost double figures.

In a simultaneous gesture, over at the BPI’s HQ, three protesters handed in a “disconnection notice” to chief executive Geoff Taylor, who apparently wasn’t in.

Music House, the focus of the main protest, is home to the PRS For Music performing rights society, the Music Publishers Association, the Musicians Union, the Music Managers Forum, the British Academy of Composers Songwriters and Authors, and umbrella trade group UK Music.

The ORG’s FlashMob was trailed as a “Stop Disconnection April Fools Flashmob” with the question “Are we being made fools of?”

But with a turnout of less than a dozen, that’s a question that answers itself, really.

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Associated Newspapes, GMG to pool newsrooms

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Marketing teams at both newspapers discovered a new super-segment of the declining newspaper market they have informally dubbed ‘the new authoritarian’. According to one circulation manager, this is a reader who “wants to find out what everybody is doing, and stop them doing it” Read more at The Register

BBC, big business leer creepily at orphan works

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Big publishers and the BBC have come out to lobby for the controversial Clause 43, that part of the Mandybill that strips photographers of their historical rights.

Is that surprising? It should be, because Clause 43 is the section that deals with ‘orphan works’ – and according to the Business department BIS, the only people who are supposed to benefit from the unique powers it confers are special parties: copyright libraries, such as the British Library. These are non-commercial operations. Clause 43 was never intended act as a leg-up for tight-fisted publishers.

But here they are.

As we noted recently, Clause 43 gives new powers to use an image for which the owner can’t be found. And the prospective user doesn’t really have to try too hard. Effectively the state “nationalises” orphans and gives a free collective licence to anyone who asks.

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Web-blocking returns

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The government has been circulating revised web-blocking powers for the Digital Economy Bill with industry and activist groups, and The Register has seen a draft. This version is believed to have won the backing of the Tories, and could end up in a Second Reading. The revised Clause 18 we’ve seen is a hybrid of … Read more

Lords: Analogue radio must die

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Digital radio isn’t great and the public doesn’t want it, but you’re going to get it anyway. So recommends the House of Lords Communications Committee today. 90 per cent of the UK listens to radio, and 94 per cent of listeners are happy with what they’ve got. The Lords accept most of the points made … Read more

Pirates and the politics of spite

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If “digital rights” becomes reduced to gesture politics, only one group can win: the one with the biggest, boldest, daftest gesture

A clear winner is emerging from the Digital Economy Bill – and it’s the UK Pirate Party. The penny only really dropped for me yesterday, after the Open Rights Group’s big demonstration at Westminster.

“What was all that about, Andrew?” someone asked me in the pub afterwards. He’d been at the Commons for a meeting, and walked past the demo too. The confusion was understandable: the ORG’s clever wheeze of blank placards and a silent protest meant anyone walking past had no idea what it was about. The glorious exceptions were a beautiful banner and a large flag from the Pirate Party. The logo is very cool, as you know.

As an exercise in communicating, the Pirates were the only success of the event. At least the logo will have got on TV, and made an impression with passers-by.

Nobody particularly likes the Bill, but as long as the sheer joy of filesharing remains an illicit one, and not part of the legitimate music market place, then Piracy will have a lustre, and the Party will be in with a chance. You may find them childish, ignorant and selfish – as I do – but they have a simple message that eludes other digital campaigners. But I think the Pirates may flourish for a few other reasons. I’ll try and explain what they are.

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Greatest Living Briton gets £30m for ‘web science’

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As an alliance of the desperate, this one takes some beating. The Greatest Living Briton (Sir Timothy Berners Lee) has been thrown £30m of taxpayers’ money for a new institute to research “web science”.

Meanwhile the Prime Minister waxed lyrical today about the semantic web – how “data” would replace files, with machine speaking unto machine in a cybernetic paradise.

It’s really a confluence of two groups of people with a shared interest in bureaucracy.

Computer Science is no longer about creating graduates who can solve engineering challenges, but about generating work for the academics themselves. The core expertise of a CompSci department today is writing funding applications. And the Holy Grail for these paper chasers is a blank cheque for work which can be conducted without scrutiny for years to come. With its endless committees defining standards (eg, “ontologies”, “folksonomies”) that no one will ever use, the “Semantic Web” fits the bill perfectly.

Of course, most web data is personal communication that happens to have been recorded. Most of the rest is spam, generated by robots, or cut-and-paste material ‘curated’ by the unemployed or poor graduates – another form of spam, really. The enterprise is doomed. But nobody’s told the political class.

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