Talk Talk filter is not politically neutral

I was doing some late night checking of Twitter in relation to the fact that the LGBT+ Lib Dems Website was blocked under Talk Talk's porn filter and came across this converstation.

Fortunately for Talk Talk we are outside an election period at the moment or else there could be implications from the fact that they are blocking both the Lib Dems and UKIP's LGBT websites but not that of Labour or the Conservatives. It means that they are able to differentiate sites and someone should have spotted this for the other political parties assuming that the Conservative and Labour sites had to be exceptions for the use of the language especially in relation to same-sex marriage, transgender issues and the like which are the key words that would automatically have been flagged up.



Of course the issue is far wider than this, these filters by the ISP providers are not good enough to differentiate what is health, education and public awareness sites and what is pornography etc. This was the crus of the debate at Lib Dem conference in Glasgow this September when we referenced back the motion on internet safety as it failed to address these issues in a way that the majority of the internet literate members of our party were already aware. The fact that our LGBT+ website is now parked behind such a porn filter is a case in point.

Earlier today someone else Tweeted this showing the BT definitions of what is blocked:

Some of the implications of this especially in relation to sex education have implications that some of our young people may be kept in ignorance as a result of parents not lifting the filter. This is especially true of LGBT youth whose parents are opposed to their child being LGBT and don't want them to find out about help that can be provided for them.


As a Liberal Democrat I don't believe that anyone should be enslaved by ignorance. But when the filters by two of the largest internet providers in this country can block access to some of the LGBT groups of our political parties, or information on sex education, including respect for a partner, STDs and LGBT lifestyle then there clearly is an issue. Thankfully the mainstream media are catching up with something that I know many Lib Dems have been shouting about for years. Some of our LGBT bloggers have found our own websites blocked on certain connections in internet cafes or wifi hotspots.All we are doing is talking about the issues, using language that can be used in good as well as for porn.



On an issue of porn, even notice that the emails selling you sex good get around your spam filter in your email by not using the actual words in full, but use punctuation and spaces to get around this. Guess what some porn does exactly the same.

Read also Alistair MacGregor's piece on Lib Dem Voice about this.

Has the BBC have mislaid the USA

You know the way that when you move some paperwork always seems to get mislaid or hard to find.

Well the reason that the USA has taken so long to come up with a budget agreement may be for just this reason. "Why?" you ask, well according to the BBC the USA is now part of the Middle East.

F17 Alternative Motion: Protecting Children from High Street Coffee #talknottech #ldconf

Lib Dem conference is going to be debating Protecting Children from internet pornography. However, over a coffee decided to slightly reword the motion based on something close to hand.

 

Conference welcomes the fact that:

A.Caffeine has the power to transform our society by empowering citizens, improving and extending

services, and enabling innovation.

 

B. It is vital both for our economy and our society that we teach children how to use caffeine from an

early age.

 

C. Liberal Democrats have a long tradition of protecting free speech and the right for adults to make

informed choices about their own caffeine habits.

 

However, conference believes that:

 

i) It is the role of government to protect those too young to make an informed choice from potentially

damaging experiences wherever possible.
ii) The long term effects on young minds of early exposure to often strong and highly-caffeinated blends is

highly damaging to impressionable young people and may significantly alter their attitudes to sleep and drink.

iii) The growing danger of children accessing high street caffeine is of increasing concern to parents,

teachers and children’s organisations.

iv) In addition to the problems posed by high street coffee shops, there are also significant concerns about other caffeine access points such as supermarkets and canned drinks that often actively target young people.

 

Conference notes:

a) That the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children has recently found an increase in the number of cases of children sleep deprived from over consumption.

b)The increasing number of cases of children being bullied or coerced into sampling caffeine drinks by their peers.

c) That the National Association of Herbal Tea Manufacturers has found that nine out of ten parents want a default setting on coffee machines to be a single shot.

 

Conference therefore calls on the Government to:

1. Work with the coffee retails industry to introduce coffee filters to explicit excessive caffeine on all new caffeine-enabled coffee devices.

2.Ensure that those adults wishing to drink extra-strong caffeine material should be required to opt in to machines containing such extra strength by providing verifiable proof of age.

3. Work with Caffeine Service Providers (CSPs)  to police actively their platforms and filter out

explicit caffeine which is currently easily accessible to children.

4.Support parents to take a more active role in how their children use caffeine and to understand the

risks involved.

5.Ensure that teaching about the dangers of coffee and the distorted view of caffeine provided by

coffee shops forms part of drink education teaching.

You know you're on the right side of civil liberties when...

...Jack Straw, David Blunkett and Alan Johnson are on the other. These were the men who felt it was alright to hold people for 90 days without trial in this country. A figure that if I recall at the time would have left us only behind Russia, Georgia and China (I stand to be corrected on these facts) and the unfortunates at Guantanamo Bay.

One advantage of having a blog that is almost 8 years old is that I actually blogged about the result of that vote on 90 days back in 2005. It was of course under their successor Harriet Harman that the Digital Economy Bill got rushed through Parliament in the dying days of the last Government.

So the debate now is should we allow a snoopers charter. Or at least publicly acknowledge on as it appears that America's National Security Agency (NSA) has already been doing just that in operation Prism.  Of course the really determined could probably still access information without having to go online, apparently there are places called libraries that have information on all kinds of stuff. As for planning meetings with co-conspirators. A text saying meet you at X, is innocuous. But then I doubt terrorist planners are likely to text

"Gentlemen, meet me at the Duck and Drake Sun 20th, we need to discuss blowing up Parliament. GF x"

or the equivalent.

Just like with tapping phones, police already have the ability to acquire warrants to follow everyone's text and emails. With mobile broadband and wireless connectivity these days it is harder to keep track on individual computers and what they are seeing. Something that the snoopers charter still fails monumentally to address.

Knee-jerk reactions, like the Digital Economy Act 2010 show that Government is willing to blame things on the internet, whether through lack of knowledge or understanding. But at time fails to grasp the complexities and also the fact that those who want to hide can actually do that very well online.

Save the Aggregator

Come on guys!

At the time of writing Ryan Cullen needs £20 of donations to keep the Lib Dem Blogs Aggregator alive. For many of you today is payday so make a little contribution.

I already had earlier in the month, the joys of being back in paid employment.

Update over lunch and we're back on the web. Thanks to whoever it was that made the necessary donations.

BSD better buck up their online strategy

 I was rather horrified earlier to read this line from the Daily Telegraph coverage of the Better Together (campaign against Scottish Independence) launch today.

"The campaign has brought in Blue State Digital, the US political experts who ran President Barack Obama's web campaigns, to build a website and oversee its online strategy."

The reason being that throughout most of the Yes to AV campaign whenever Blue State Digital were mentioned it was often followed by the phrase "forgive me for swearing".

I have no doubt that they are very good at running US nationwide campaigns but when it came down to the dynamics of the recent yes campaign they failed miserably to adjust to the requirements of UK based campaigns. Indeed throughout the whole campaign despite me mentioning it from when I first got sight of their software it was impossible to search using any Northern Irish postcode. This is a common enough error in a lot of postcode based software, but one that I always checked on updates of the software I've used in any job that requires it.

But it was worse than that. Trying to develop delivery walks, or even to access the data to make the telephone campaign was incredibly difficult and took far too long to sort out when the issues were raised. Indeed issues were usually within hours of the latest update and took weeks to rectify if at all.

Therefore to have them oversee the online strategy terrifies me. I'm hoping the chain to get stuff updated online isn't as cumbersome as the Yes 2 AV leadership made things. I hope that rebuttals can get out there swiftly when need and leading the debate rather than constantly rebutting is the name of the game, taking Alex Salmond into areas that he isn't willing to have looked at too closely should be the battle ground.

For example over the weekend Joan McAlpine claimed "Scotland's future should be in Scotland's hands. We have 8.4% of UK population but contribute 9.6% of UK taxes." so in other words being part of the UK makes Scotland better off than the rest. So how is this plus the giving back with the Barnett formula of more per capita a keeping down of the Scots?

Further to my earlier blog post, here is some good news about Lib Dems standing up for civil liberty. In a letter to the Guardian fifteen of our MPs have spoken up for the party. Not just over the last 48 hours but over the last months and indeed the years that I have been a member of supporter, in other words since the Lib Dems were founded.

They say:

It is absolutely vital that the public get a chance to see and debate the details of any proposals to extend state surveillance, not just being presented with a Home Office fait accompli. It is also essential that the initial plans include adequate safeguards – which should be stronger than the current weak controls.

They talk about the "duty … to safeguard basic freedoms against the encroachment of state power" and that at the recent conference (and it was only last month not months ago) conference "called for stronger safeguards on existing surveillance measures to guarantee that the balance of power is firmly in favour of ordinary citizens".

They got it and these are just the sort of firm messages that Nick Clegg and other Lib Dems should have been saying since Sunday when this story reared its head again.

Indeed when the coalition agreement already states  "We will end the storage of internet and email records without good reason." We shouldn't be talking about extending police powers in this area but working out what comes under good reason and how to delete the storage of the rest.

Speaking in The S** today (and I apologise for this link) Theresa May says:

"I'm not willing to risk more terrorist plots succeeding and more paedophiles going free."

Just how does further encroaching on personal freedom achieve this. As Trefor Davies from the Internet Service Providers' Association states these groups will just go ahead and use proxy servers. As he say by doing so

"You could send emails back and forth to al-Qaeda to your heart's content, the Government wouldn't know."

And as for paedophiles:

"There is a danger we are driving people to an underground culture."

As anyone who uses certain websites whether global LGBT ones or other things for certain human rights discussions will tell you, mirror sites to proxy servers exist even for some of these and you would have no clue simply from the traffic that it generates what is going on. If you even could see the traffic report.

So why haven't us Lib Dems been standing up against this as a matter of principle not merely saying we will make sure that any extension of powers is highly safeguarded. The worry is that extension of powers will be given to the police without supervision. We are looking for greater safeguard on the existing powers while Mrs May says that the police cannot afford to lose any of their existing powers.

There is a red line there, one that is marked out in the coalition agreement. If we don't stand firm on this one, what will become of our party? Worryingly although these 15 have now stood firm, why haven't our frontbench team done it already?

US Department of Homeland Security claims the Interwebs for Barry O and his heirs

Apparently because this website is hosted by a dot.com not a dot.com.xx everything that happens here is owned by the USA.

It has therefore come to my attention that I have failed in my patriotic duty, therefore please all stand for the national anthem of the interwebs.

SOPA Blackout

This site is blacked out today in support of the SOPA Protest. Come have a look at the header.

Poke me by the name I call myself Facebook

Have you seen Fahrid Abraham acting. Or have you heard of the exploits of John Hoover or read the books of Francis Fitzgerald. You may well have but until Ahmed Rushdie suddenly found his Facebook page blocked as it wasn't using his real name then there were issues. He raised the issue with them listing the three gents above as examples of why the policy didn't make sense*. No doubt Clive Lewis or Joanne Murray would have considering some witchcraft was afoot.

You see none of the above famous people use their first given name, just like our last Prime Minister James Brown. But the same applies to people who are not famous. My mother uses he second given name. Her uncle did with the family but not in the Forces so his funeral was an interesting combination of those who knew him as Cecil (family) and David almost everyone else. My brother is not alone in the Jonathan's I know who use Facebook as Johnny, indeed we very rarely refer to him as anything else, even on birthday and Christmas cards these days. My late father was Roy despite never having that name on his birth certificate as with many others who shorten or take a nick name.

Of course if Facebook insisted that our kings took their real names we would have ended up since Victoria with Albert I, George V, Edward VII, Albert II, Elizabeth II.

The policy that only real names should be used seems in the case of Rushdie to be as slap stick as an Arthur and Norvell scene. The award winning author, for it is he, first had his Facebook page blocked as they did not believe it was him. So he sent a photocopy of his passport picture and details to prove it was the real knight of the realm. Only for Facebook to reactivate the page as Ahmed Rushdie despite the world knowing him by his second given name, maybe they should have been in charge at the height of the fatwa against the writer.

All I can say it is a good job that Rushdie got this sorted out or else we'd have to send Jeremy Ashdown around to sort them out, he is a trained killer after all.

* For the record these gents are F. Murray Abraham, J. Edgar Hoover, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Salman Rushie. Plus C.S. Lewis and J.K. Rowling. The Prime Minister of course in J. Gordon Brown and Arthur and Norvell are better known as Stan and Ollie, Laurel and Hardy. Jeremy Ashdown of course is Paddy.

H2G2 reopened and under new management

Last night was finally the time that H2G2 completed its trip through the etha and landed after testing from a dedicated team of, well put honestly, friends. The doors were flung open at the new, old address of www.h2g2.com easy to remember.

After 10 years with the BBC the collaborative effort (how very h2g2) of Robbie Stamp, Aly and Brian Larholm, and the h2g2 Community Consortium. Robbie was a close friend of Douglas Adams and helped set up the site back in 1999 as well as producing the Hitchhikers' movie. Aly and Brian have a decade of social media expertise and wanted to bring that to an already existing community site and the Community Consortium were just a bunch of guys you know, and guyesses who didn't want to see the place they had known for up to 12 years disappear without a fight once the BBC decided to sell it off.

In the end all three banded together and offered the BBC a deal that would maintain the integrity of the site which had existed before the BBC lifeboat came along to rescue it from the Digital Village, after the period known to researchers as Rupert.

The much shorter transport phase has been far easier for researchers to deal with, they knew the site was coming back after the BBC shut the doors and turned out the lights at the end of September. Rupert really was a period of the unknown, with little cells of researchers setting up all sorts of groups to keep each other informed of what was going on. This time we  moved en masse aware of where we thought we were heading and hoping that when the switch was pressed to turn the lights back on, that well. It would work.

Well it has, and the researchers are already gathering to start once more on yet another new home. Not so much journey of the sorcerer but at least journey of H2G2.

Crossing Dublin without alcoholic temptation

In Ulysses (set on 16 June) by James Joyce the character Leopold Bloom said:

"A good puzzle would be to cross Dublin without passing a pub."

Well a computer engineer, with way too much time on his hands, and way too much sobriety, thinks that he has come up with the solution. Read his explanation for more of how he used modern technology to chart his route.

However, there is a caveat. When Joyce wrote Ulysses serialised from 1918-1920 and printed in full in 1922, there were probably more pubs in Dublin. So does anyone else want to map the known pubs of that time and see if it is possible?

Although why anyone would want to be in Dublin and totally miss out a pub is anyone's guess. Sláinte.

Time to Save the Hitch Hikers' Guide to the Galaxy #SaveH2G2 #H2G2

 PEOPLE OF EARTH YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE

 Don't Panic there is not a Vogon constructor fleet poised above us in the ionosphere, at least I hope not. But there is axe axe being wielded by the BBC over some of its online content. One of those sites is a quite remarkable site, it is a social media that was popular before Facebook reared it's head, it was an online encyclopedia of Life, the Universe and Everything before Wikipedia became the de facto font of all knowledge. It is a place where people have made friendships, many have then taken that online relationship offline into real friendships at meet up, some have fallen in love and even produced small people as a result of sexual co-joining. After all as Douglas Adams once wrote, most of the rest of the Hitch Hikers' Guide to the Galaxy is full of sex.

This is story of one of that Guide's researchers.

Back in December 1999 a fan of a the books, Radio and TV series (there was no film back then) of Douglas Adams's opus saw a link from the online edition to The Times to a site that purported to be the online edition of the Hitch Hikers' Guide to the Galaxy. He was hooked, he started to write articles about things he knew, get involved in the community, write for the community news paper. He was mildly dyslexic and the people around him helped him overcome the embarrassment of the occasional mistakes in what he wrote, correcting it with love.

He eventually became one of the first researchers to write 100 solo approved entries for the guide, under the nom de plume of Demon Drawer. He also wrote for over 100 collaborative entries and 100 articles for the H2G2 Post. He certainly gained an confidence in getting his written words out there on public display. However, in recent years his contributions to the guide have been less frequent, he still has works on progress that he revisits from time to time, but that doesn't mean that he has not been writing.

You are currently reading the words from the same person, one of the over 3,000 online pieces that he has written in various formats and on various sites including almost 2,700 blog posts on here.

H2G2 was difficulty once before, in the early days of this millennium when the Internet bubble started to burst. The lifeboat was picked up by the BBC. But on 24 January the BBC announced that it was making radical cuts to its online presence, the community, especially the old hands, felt here we go again. The result however is that the BBC is prepared to set H2G2 adrift again rather than merely turn it off at the switch, but it needs someone else to come by in the 'virtual' sense like the Heart of Gold and pluck us from the etha. The Community has set up its own Community Consortium to look after the needs of the community in that transaction, as one of the ancients (although not quite a 5 figure user number*) I wholeheartedly back this campaign and will do what I can to help Save Our Site.

It has changed my life not only through the confidence in my writing, but it was through finding love with a fellow researcher that I ended up in Scotland, it was through that I became so heavily involved in politics once more, it is through the site that a lot of who I am today has bizarrely come to be. H2G2 is more than just a mangle of words on a screen it is a community, it has a heart, it has a soul, it is a family.

Long may it continue.

(Aside) Can someone check, are the dolphins still around? (Pause) Good.

Yes it is too early for so longs, even the Delphinidae and Platanistoidea agree on that. There must be plenty more fish in the sea ready to keep H2G2 alive.

Your normally Hoopy Frood Demon Drawer

* A sign of great seniority in the early days, which us young upstarts having a six figure user number, mine is all the even number 104268.

Bo'ness Hustings Online #LEF #GE2010

Just before I took to the platform for this evening's hustings I was told that it was to be broadcast live to the internet. I just had time to tweet the url before taking my seat.

I was going to blog up the hustings but I was wondering when I might have the time. You may want to take a look here while I find the time to get around to a blog entry. Apparently it will be available all week.

But well done to St. Andrew's for getting their hustings out there beyond the confines of the building.

By the way, there was a question about the gaffe of the day from the Prime Minister.

Digital Economy Bill How Michael Connarty Performed

I've been kind of busy since the Digital Economy Bill was discussed and sadly passed in Parliament during the week.

Readers may remember that I stressed my concerns, and those of a number of constituents who had written to me about the various clauses in the Bill. On the day of the rushed committee stage of the bill many amendments were raised, spoken about and then withdrawn by the proposers purely as an expediency of time. That was the shameful way in which this complex bill was rushed through the elected house. If there had been sufficient times these amendments would have been properly discussed at committee stage and where there was dissent put to the vote.

I'd also stressed those concerns to my Labour opponent in the election, who is of course also my own MP. He responded initially with the response 'I agree'. When I wrote to him again earlier this week, he replied 'this is something that [he] will leave up to the front benches'. So how did he perform in the debate.

First up after a little bit of back of forth of pointless identifying which Star Wars © 1977 character various members of Parliament were he got called to make his first intervention.

"I am listening with great interest to my hon. Friend and I am a great follower of Star Wars. I realise now, however, that my hon. Friend has identified himself as Yoda [© 1981]."

You wonder just how much interest he was paying to the concerns of the bill or of his constituents that his first intervention was that.

I too am a great fan of Star Wars © 1977 , I also love the number of parodies that are available through YouTube etc. Heck even Doctor Who last night was again full of references to Star Wars © 1977 and indeed other other science fiction. You have to wonder would the BBC have to be shut down for blatantly stealing copyrighted material. The line "Help me Doctor, you're our only hope." being a prime example.

Ok Pete Wishart, got up to speak soon after. Pete is one of the few MPs of whom I have bought some of his copyrighted material, both as CDs and indeed to see him perform live. Other's do include Charles Kennedy, William Hague and Vince Cable, although theirs are merely books and haven't been copied unto my laptop, like Runrig, so I can listen to them wherever I am.

During Wishart's speech Connarty rose again to say:

"I am grateful to another vice-chairman of the Performers Alliance group in this House for giving way. Is it not a myth that co-operation, as we have heard, could somehow solve this? People are not talking about co-operating and sharing their own thoughts and content, but are stealing someone else's content and sharing that. There is an Armageddon, which has partially arrived in Sweden, where the Pirate party, whose leader is in jail, won seats in the European Parliament on the basis that everybody's work-including MP4's-should be free."

Therein lies an issue, these two are part of a Parliamentary group protecting performers rights. Thing is I am a performer, I've played in bands, I've written songs, poems and written a lot of stuff to which I hold the intellectual property rights and copyright. A lot of that I have given freely to public use. Some of it I still make a small amount of revenue from. But we see that Michael has sort of declared an interest there, he's also the chair of the Parliamentary Jazz Appreciation Group, another vested interest in this debate.

His final intervention came during on of Tom Watson's contributions.

"I respect my hon. Friend's forward thinking, but he obviously has not studied his history. The enclosure movement took away the enclosures around small fields to make larger fields so that larger technologies could be used. When all enclosures were taken away in America, the ultimate result was that the wind blew the topsoil off the land and the people starved. I think that he has got his analogy entirely wrong."

I'm not sure but is Connarty telling the farming community that they better replant their hedges and make their fields smaller again here. He's also missing one thing that our whole world depends on, diversity. Options of what needs to be done has to meet the needs where the situation exists. Using the analogy of the American plains where the larger fields in tornado alley did have this effect does not apply to East Anglia where the vast fields still thrive. Thus it is with the move to a digital economy.

There are arguments that the technology that powers up most computers Microsoft's own operation system is actually stolen property from the University where the founders first came up with the idea. The same could be said of the largest search engine Google. In the enclosures that these projects first started out they were small and unlikely to get anywhere, once however they were unleashed by whatever means they have become essential to our everyday existence.

That folks in why the Digital Economy Bill fudge in the wash up period is bad for all of us. Also why my Labour opponent in 4 weeks time has clearly not got it over digital economic matters. He clearly should have sought better counsel than his own front bench.

In the end he voted for the Bill, hardly agreeing with me about the concerns within it as he emailed me initially.

The Question of Our Online Past

The removal of Labour's Moray candidate< Stuart MacLennan over comments he made last yearon Twitter whilst a student leads to an interesting dilemma for current and future campaigns. Candidates above a certain age don't have a history on online digital communication from their youth.

Indeed it is possibly candidates around my age who started to use email at University with our tiny allowance on the server that may well be the eldest to possibly have some of our youthful comments retained for posterity on some server or someone's hard drive. Not counting University my online presence goes back for over 13 years, there is a lot of backlog. I've been quite respectful about comments I've made about others, either on my own spaces or in comments on others. But I know many others are not so careful in the language that they use Stuart being one example, but many of my student friends involves in politics of all parties are not always a careful in what they post through Facebook, Twitter or whatever.

It leads to the question are such comments about other parties a new phenomenon or it is merely that the new generation converse in public rather than behind closed doors like their predecessors? The thing is having played chess in the Surbiton club for a while, or the occasion short mat bowls event in a working mans club I've heard the same sort of language used about opponents by Tory grandees and Labour politicians, I'm also not excepting my own party some of the discussions over a pint at a conference hotel can be bawdy as well. The thing is these conversations have always taken place, I suspect even in the Cabinet Room at Downing Street, they just haven't appeared on Twitter.

People use language in different ways, the generations communicate in different ways. Stuart had apologised for those comments made before he was a candidate, that should be enough. But Labour have gone to the extent of sacking him, possibly after he had gained the 10 signatures required to nominate him and will now be seeking a swift installation of a new candidate before close of nominations.

If this really is the first general election of the Internet age the party hierarchies really need to under the 7 ages of the children of the age of the Web. They are going to make many comments in public through social media that in the past were confined to closed doors. But they develop into an age of respectability (possibly) want to get more involved in political life and maybe even stand for election. Very few under 40s do not have a traceable online history, much of that is not the homogenised, controlled outpourings of some of our senior politicians who are trying to keep up rather than stay ahead.

Guess what the future is here.

We have people who have gone on uncontrolled, uncontained, unchecked, online rants in the name of their party, who now are seeking selection for that party. They haven't alwaysbeen careful with the language used and quite possibly may even have been tame compared to others in the discussion. However, if they are contrite and promise to be more careful in the future why should that hold them back?

People are wanting honesty in their politicians. Stuart MacLennan could have easily gone and deleted his Twitter account making is less easy, though not impossible, to find. He didn't and is now paying the price for such honesty not from the electorate but from his own party.

The Wikio MacBlogopshere Rankings April 2010

I'm doing to just give you the list of Scottish blogs in the top 100 political blogs this month. No padding as I'm busy. Though I will apologise in advance that next months will be late, the 5h May will be the eve of poll it appears.

1. 8 (7) And Another Thing....Tom Harris
2. 16 (21) Cute Greek Baby
3. 30 (29) Subrosa
4. 33 (27) Alex Massie
5. 43 (32) SNP Tactical Voting
6. 49 (48) Stephen's Linlithgow Journal
7. 58 (49) Bishop Hill
8. 61 (79) Rantin Rab
9. 62 (62) Caron's Musings
10. 77 (65) Andrew's Running Blog
11. 89 (68) Scottish Roundup
12. 90 (86) Two Doctors
13. 91 (74) Andrew Neill's Blog
14. 97 (NE) Underdog Bites Upwards
15. 98 (88) Yapping Yousuf

Digital Economy Bill Now On the Agenda - Take Action Now! #DEB #DEBill

Yesterday at 11:35 am Harriet Harman announced in an almost throw away line to the commons:

The business for next week is as follows:

...

Tuesday 6 April-Second Reading of the Digital Economy Bill [ Lords ], followed by consideration of Lords amendments to the Equality Bill.

With recent events the letter from 25 Lib Dem PPCs Bridget Fox, Islington South & Finsbury, Julian Huppert, Cambridge, Martin Tod, Winchester, Farid Ahmed, Walthamstow, Jon Ball, Ealing Central & Acton, Alan Beddow, Warwick & Leamington, Mike Bell, Weston-super-Mare, Duncan Borrowman, Old Bexley & Sidcup, Sal Brinton, Watford, Belinda Brooks-Gordon, West Suffolk, Alan Bullion, Sevenoaks, Adrian Collett, Aldershot, Andrew Dakers, Brentford & Isleworth, Sue Doughty, Guildford, Helen Duffett, Romford, Merlene Emerson, Hammersmith,
Gareth Epps, Reading East, Ed Fordham, Hampstead & Kilburn, Steve Goddard, Oxford East,
Simon McDougall, Bognor Regis & Littlehampton, Jo Shaw, Holborn & St Pancras, Sandy Walkington, St Albans, Peter Welch, Southend West, Munira Wilson, Feltham & Heston, Simon Wright, Norwich South. Which I, and I know others, would happily have added our names to. Although I hadn't been selected back when it was written.

Then the passing of the Freedom, Creativity and the Internet motion at Liberal Democrat conference in Birmingham. But then yesterday in the comments about the business of the House nothing from the Lib Dem Members of Parliament. I have the feeling we need a large intake of fresh Lib Dem MPs who understand the complexity of this issue as those who were there yesterday didn't catch on to the urgency. That sense of immediate action that had taken us through conference about this one Bill before the House and how we didn't want it in the wash up. Sadly it now looks like being likely where it could end up now judging by the timing announced by the leader of the House and when we all expect Gordon to go to the Palace just before this is due to be debated.

As Bridget Fox one of the architects of the motion and the letter pointed out our MPs currently only deserve two cheers. As she points out our Department of Culture, Media and Sport team have said:

"The controversial parts of the Bill will need to be scrutinised and voted upon by the next parliament before they can be brought into law. Liberal Democrats MPs would not support these sections of the Bill without this process."

On web-blocking they are emphatic

"We do not believe that measures to address site blocking can reasonably be included in the Digital Economy Bill and we will not support any such measures."

On disconnection without proof less clear, which I like Bridget am a little concerned about.

"The Liberal Democrats are unconvinced of the merits of measures such as temporary account suspension or bandwidth throttling"

Please don't tell me they want to be convinced. They do propose a set of technical measures, to be met before any disconnection would be possible; the main ones are that copyright infringers would be notified by letter, without any risk of their Internet connection being affected for at least a year, and that any process to disconnect users explicitly assumes their innocence until they are proven guilty.

They did also pick up on the issue of open access sites being vulnerable to such actions:

"We believe there is inadequate protection in the Bill for schools, libraries, universities and other businesses offering Internet access to the public.....We will take further action in the Commons to improve the legislation."

The third cheer will only occur if we don't get a washed up decision on this issue. We need to get proper scrutiny on some of those complex issues that the time allowed currently or in a wash up is not worthy of the issue at hand. If you haven't written yet to your MP please write, if you have already do what Scott at Love and Garbage has done and write again.

The Times They are a Chargin' - The Musical

When my Uncle first found out I was learning guitar my Christmas present that year was a Bob Dylan songbook. It didn't get much use from me before, I think, I swapped it while at University for a couple of tickets for a new up-coming band called Seymour, you may know them better as Blur. However, one of those songs, indeed it is probably the only one I actually learnt how to play, does seem rather appropriate for a little Stephen Glenn alteration today.

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
A click on a Times link
Will soon make you groan
And accept it that soon
You'll be charged to the bone
If your Times to you
Is worth skimmin'
Then you better start spendin'
Online your news fix to own
For the Times they are a-chargin'.

Come writers and critics
Who spread the news with your pen
>Keep keyboards active
And news free from the pain
And don't link from blogs
For the readers won't win
And there's no tellin' who
That it's readin'
The Times loser now
All the others will win
If the Times they go a-chargin'.

Come Guardian, Telegraph
Please heed the call
Don't charge for your content
Don't put up paywalls
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who installed
A charge to look inside
And it is ragin'
And we'll not open windows
For others we'll fall
When the Times they start a-chargin'.

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the world
And don't charge what's free
That's so very absurd
Your sons and your daughters
Are being charged for words
Your old way is
Rapidly agin'
Please get the new way
Where you widen web's world
But the Times they are a-chargin'.

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
Backward step now
Will later be blast
As the present row
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'
The Times of London
Is stuck in the past
So the Times they are a-chargin'.

Music of Bob Dylan, words rearranged by Stephen Glenn (with no assistance from William de Worde*)

* A little mention to the editor of the Anhk-Morpork Times for all my Discworld fan readers. Actually I'd like to see Terry Pratchett's take on this whole situation of the online media overtaking the as yet young and fledgling newspaper industry. A sort of Web 2.0 version of Moving Pictures.

The Times They are a Chargin'

Or why the Times Online business model is turning me off

Or after 22 years readership the grand divorce

Younger readers may not realise this but when I first attended an institute of Higher Education my day started in the University Library in the newspaper and periodical sectio scanning the newspapers. Back then they were all broadsheets none of this Berliner or Tabloid format. The reason being that 22 years ago the papers were not online. Their archives where available on microfilm or microfiche after a few months, or in a filing cabinet in the Library until they were available.

I was studying Economics and in our first week we were told, no instructed, no make that ordered to read the Financial Times plus at least two other papers from different parts of the political spectrum. I chose all three of the The Times, The Guardian and The Independent but for the one I used my student discount to buy and have as my own I chose The Times. One of my shelves in my bedroom became my own catalogue of the back issues for that year and I had a card index or relevant stories. Oh how Google would have made my student days easier.

The reason I'd chosen the Times was not because of its 'balanced' reporting, nor was its political view closest to my own, but because it had the fullest sports section. I even got to see the Northern Irish football results on a Monday morning, almost collapsing one morning in my first year when Bangor where third in the league. I called home to clarify this wasn't an early April Fool joke.

Therefore as Caron has pointed out the news that News International are going to charge for their online edition is making me rethink. I still buy a morning paper every morning and skim the others online. My morning blog post in usually inspired from what I have read or seen on the early BBC breakfast news.It normally gets written up on the bus, it usually includes some quote or other. Obviously I'm cutting and pasting those and linking to the source material

Now if I'm already paying a pound a day for a paper copy of the Time I'm loathe to pay an additional pound a day or £2 a week for an occasional (actually frequent) quote. I only visit the pages online I generally have read in the paper copy for the reason of capturing a quote. I'm also not going to direct my readers to a subscription only service.Therefore now that the Time is not cheaper than the Guardian, and is actually more expensive than the Scotsman now in paper form I'm likely from June to switch my reading habits.

You will have already seen a shift in my linking habits as New International have flagged this potential online charging service. I suspect many other bloggers will follow suit and you wonder just what sort of impact that will have on the Times' online footfall. Knowing the number of out clicks that I get that go to the news sources quoted multiplied by the number of blogs out there it would be quite high I imagine, plus the casual reader will not be willing to chip a pound for browsing.

It is a pity that the Times don't seem to get the media in the 21st Century. The Scotsman only have some articles that premium subscribers have to pay for. Thinks like editorials and comments and certain columnists for example, the bulk of 'the news'is freely available online.

Maybe the Times are wanting us all to go back to that image of huddling in the library to read our newspapers in the online sections. Instead of wrestling with broadsheets and newsprint struggling with the indexing system.