Tom Watson MP is fast becoming one of the heroes of social media circles. He has a blog, has a Twitter account, and is generally considered “one of us”, he clearly gets the online environment, and most importantly, I think that it shows that he is genuine, as opposed to Read more
I have been following with growing interest the online debate between Lily Allen and Techdirt with regards to file-sharing and three-strikes. If you are unfamiliar with the debate, here is a brief introduction. You may have heard that Lord Mandelson has put forward proposals to have our own version of Read more
There were many reasons to believe that the UK would not be seeing any three-strikes legislation against file-sharing. First, the European Union had declared that it was a bad idea. Second, HADOPI had been declared unconstitutional in France. But most importantly, the Digital Britain report had considered that the proposal Read more
The adoption of the French version of three-strikes legislation has been filled with more plot twists than a Brazilian soap opera. First it got rejected by Parliament, then it passed, and now the French constitutional court has rejected it on the grounds that access to the Internet is a human Read more
The UK copyright industry has hardened its position on 3-strikes-and-you’re-out policy, calling for the measure to be included in the government’s final Digital Britain strategy. An alliance of content owners, including the film and music industries, has asked the government to force ISPs to disconnect users who have been involved Read more
Good news everyone! The discussion on the Telecomms Package at the European Parliament has produced a good result against “three-strikes and you’re out” policies, as some of the measures that would involve cutting internet connection have been sent back to the negotiating table.I have not been keeping up with the Read more
(via ORG-discuss list) Pirates, pirates, pirates. it’s all there is in the news lately. Pirates in Somalia, pirates in Sweden, pirates online, pirates in culture. We have pirates jumping out of our breakfast cereals it seems. Last week saw the pinnacle of hyperbolic coverage of piracy of the Internet sort Read more
Edited February 2012: This old entry is getting a lot of hits from Google, so I have decided to update it. There was an appeal to the sentence described below on October 2010, which reduced the sentences. On January 2012, the Supreme Court of Justice of Sweden denied another appeal Read more
The Wall Street Journal has published an excerpt provocatively named In Defense of Piracy from Lessig’s new book Remix (out tomorrow). It seems like Lessig is still very much involved in the copyfight, highlighting the almost farcical story of Holden Lenz and Prince. One could be forgiven for thinking that Read more
A bit early on Sunday morning to try to organise an uprising, but this is what Lilian Edwards is doing this weekend. On Friday she wrote a long and detailed post about the way in which the 3-strike rule is going to be introduced by stealth this Monday July 7 Read more