/Big Mouth/ I read the news today, oh boy
20/01/2009 | Filed under Discover > Big Mouth
We need to stand up for our rights – before they disappear, says Gary Marshall
There were four interesting news stories this week. The Home Office decided that it fancied a giant central database of everybody’s internet activity, something that would be perfect for data mining in search of thought crimes. A student was detained for six days under antiterrorist legislation for downloading documents from the US Department of Justice website. A well-intentioned but badly drafted new law could put manga fans in prison as suspected kiddie-fiddlers. And Boris Johnson banned booze on the London Underground. Only one of these caused UK internet users to take to the streets in mass protest. Can you guess which one?
It’s tempting to dismiss the London booze-ban protesters as a typical flash mob –a bunch of smug, self-satisfied tossers who think London’s the centre of the sodding universe and who, in any civilised nation, would be put in the stocks and pelted with rotting fruit – but that’s probably unfair. After all, a million-plus marchers didn’t exactly affect the Iraq War, so if The Man won’t listen to anything important, you might as well take the piss out of him and have a laugh doing it.
But ultimately the joke will be on us. In just a few short years the net has become part of the fabric of our lives, and the laws affecting what we can do, see or say online are being drafted now. And that’s worrying, because there are two sides here. The people who have the power neither know nor care about the internet, but they’re indoors with the lobbyists and the tabloids. The people who do know, who do care, and the people who don’t know but whose lives could be affected by bad laws ... they’re on the wrong side of the triple glazing.
That’s why we have laws where you can be detained for downloading a document published by the US government – not, the last time I checked, a hotbed of anti-Western sentiment. That’s why our copyright laws will soon represent the interests not of consumers but of multinational corporations, and it’s why it’s a crime to bypass copy protection, no matter how ridiculous or draconian. That’s why the government is seriously considering a database of every single thing you see, do or say online and, if reports are to believed, wants it to happen in real time, presumably so it can spot people downloading documents from the US government and harass them more quickly.
It’d be hypocritical for me to urge people to take to the streets: I’m a member of Bill Hicks’ People Who Hate People Party (“People who hate people! Come together!” “No!”). But there’s a fundamental disconnect between the people making the laws and the people who are subject to them, and we don’t have a say because technology isn’t an important part of the political agenda. I think it should be. In the UK, 61 per cent of us are online; 15 million households. That’s a lot of votes.
Gary was writing for .net in the Stone Age. He’s a journo and software expert. www.bigmouthstrikesagain.com
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Comments
vps.net / 28/01/2009 / 19:51 / http://vps.net
Interesting post Gary,
In the US there was a hug online fall-out about the issue of net neutrality. See: http://wearetheweb.org & http://www.savetheinternet.com/
It's a shame there's no equivalent UK online response. Want to start something? I can provide web hosting!
tom
Shelly McGuire / 02/02/2009 / 06:50 / http://aerogarden-reviews.com
This is scary.... I don't live in the UK, but if the UK started with these types of "security measures" then other large countries will join the UK in these. That could become a scary world for all of us to live in. I hope this does not come to pass...
Tony Deegan / 10/02/2009 / 11:11 / http://www.avatar-web-solutions.com/blog/
Great article, as ever. If the government is serious, then they need only follow Google's lead - they've been storing everything we do online, and details of our contacts and friends (if you use gmail) for quite some time.
Okibi / 13/08/2009 / 01:28
Problem is the government just doesn't understand the technology, it's easy enough to mail bomb someone's PC with inappropriate material. While they had no intention of downloading/receiving/viewing this content by the letter of the law they "downloaded" something deemed inappropriate. The other issue is network security, the mum and dad users, with little grasp of technology but with the latest wireless modem open for anyone in the local area to use for their own downloading needs. Mum and dad user will be dragged over the coals, reported as terrorists or kiddy fiddlers and have to try and prove it wasn't their download, by that stage the local neighbourhood and their workplace will have shunned them and the only solution for mum and dad internet user is to hang themselves. Why not start with proper e-governance like building content standard ratings for webpages so that IE, firefox etc only allows content from sites with the appropriate ratings within their metatags and blocks out the rest. It would make it a lot easier to block inappropriate content, especially for parents. It would be easy to adopt world wide and the super upside is that most companies would have to finally upgrade IE6 to help block inappropriate content from their workers. I think most content providers wouldn't mind self regulating even if the rating system only covers nudity or graphic images.
