laws
This is getting silly
I’ve been meaning to write about the Digital economy bill for a while, but life has been getting in the way and it just keeps getting sillier. Plus of course loads of other people are providing excellent commentary faster than I was getting round to it, but I’ve never let being late to the party stop me before.
The things that are wrong with this bill are almost too numerous to mention, it’s obviously written with either no technical understanding at all, or with the deliberate intent to be wide open to abuse. The current government does such things so often I’ve given up trying to work out if they’re deviously evil or just incompetent or even some odd mix of the two. The latest silliness added to this bill oddly doesn’t come from the government benches but from Lib Dem peers who want to be able to force ISPs to block “access to specified online locations“. Now not only is this silly it’s pointless. (it may be worth noting that the Lib Dem peer concerned gets money from a law firm specialising in copyright protection.
It’s pointless because it’s very easily circumvented, the internet was designed to work around points of failure. So if they block a site people will still be able to get to it using proxies, VPNs, the TOR network or various other methods. A lot of work has been done in solving the problem of blocked sites to deal with far more oppressive and organised regimes than this. Plus of course such banned sites will get more publicity than before they were blocked, as any number of banned lists in the past will testify.
It’s silly because very many “online locations” share an IP address with other “online locations”, so the usual way to block access to a site is to block the IP address. This will have huge amounts of collateral damage as such a block will also block access to all the other sites at that address. Think of it as closing down an entire shopping centre just because there’s a single dodgy shop tucked away in the corner. I imagine that the innocent sites blocked in such a manner might be a bit miffed and contemplate taking some action against the ISP’s so blocking them. Depending on how the required court orders are worded it gets sillier still. If the order says block “copyrighttheft.anonymong.org” then the blocked site can get out of that by just changing the name to “copyrighttheft2.anonymong.org” and if they make it more general and block “anonymong.org” well a new domain costs two quid.
Of course there is a way they could block a site by name and not by IP address, all they’d need to do is look in depth at your traffic, rather than just where it’s going, to see what it’s actually doing. Then they could tell which actual site on a shared server you wanted and only stop requests going to the banned site. This is called deep packet inspection and BT are currently in court about it – but on the upside it would cause the ISPs to have records of everywhere you’ve visited, and with only a tiny bit of feature creep what you’ve done on all of those sites. Such transaction records of course being subject to other legislation which requires the ISP to keep them for seven years just in case the government needs them – to stop terrorists of to protect the children or something.
All of this will of course have a cost, particularly as the bill now says that “the Court shall order the service provider to pay the copyright owner’s costs of the application unless there were exceptional circumstances justifying the service provider’s failure to prevent access despite notification by the copyright owner.“. Whilst this cost will be passed onto the end user pushing up your internet bill, the ISPs are also going to minimise the cost by just blocking things on notification rather than waiting for a court order they have to pay for. Ever since Lawrence Godfrey* ISPs have pretty much had to remove/block content on notification this will just make that situation worse. Though I strongly suspect that where someone such as Guido to ask that the BBC be blocked for violating his copyright** he’d probably not get such a helpful response. Ultimately the aim of this clause is to allow large corporate copyright holders to trample all over the net at no cost to themselves and with little or no risk.
For a more legal focused review of this clause you could go worse than reading panGloss’s take on the matter.
I may attempt to tackle some of the other lunacy in this bill later.
Many thanks to Freya for passing on most of the links referenced above.
* Yeah, sorry about that.
** It’s worth remembering that by default you own the copyright to anything you create – without having to do anything. If some corporate site, or spotty oik in college nicks your graphic/music/content you could in theory get them blocked under this bill (good luck with that though if it’s not a spotty oik in college). This potentially makes this bill an incredible denial of service tool.
Update on e-petitons
A while back I wrote asking what e-petions are good for following on from a hopeless response from the Government about the petition against the change to cost recovery for defendants. Well I have a slight update in the comments from Jeanette Miller (aka Miss Justice) which suggests that in an entirely predictable fashion people are indeed opting to accept a fine and thus guilt rather than end up far more out of pocket due to trying to clear their name.
Read on:
I was also very disappointed by the response received. Feel free to publish details from this press release. At least the fight continues!
Another disappointing day’s work for Gordon Brown.
The Government’s long awaited response to a petition backed by almost 22,000 signatures has been described as “a joke” by Jeanette Miller, aka ‘Miss Justice’. The expert Motoring Lawyer who is also the Founding Chief Executive and President of AMOL, The Association of Motor Offence Lawyers, began the petition back in September 09 in response to the government’s plans to introduce regulations to restrict the amount of costs an innocent defendant could recover after fighting to clear their name. She says, “The reason I started a petition was primarily to raise awareness of what the government’s plans were. The method that they chose to introduce the rules was very much under the carpet and an almost farcical process. The overwhelming response to the consultation was against introducing the rules that have since come into force on 31 October 2009.”
When the petition closed Jeanette Miller wrote a letter to the prime minister with 37 pages of supplementary information to enable him to produce a proper considered response that she hoped would address many of the flawed premises in the consultation process itself. In relation to the response received today Miss Miller states “I am astounded by the dismissive approach adopted by Gordon Brown and his pitiful response for the issues I tried to raise.”
The petition was launched in an attempt to stop or to repeal the regulations implemented to limit the amount of legal costs an acquitted defendant can claim back from the court once a criminal case against them fails or is discontinued.
Under the rules prior to the 31 October 2009 a defendant could expect to recover between 50-100% when acquitted or found not guilty. The government were losing too much money however, due to the number of cases they were losing. In 2007, 26 per cent of motoring offence prosecutions in Magistrates’ Courts were unsuccessful. The rules do not just extend to motorist but to all criminal defence.
Miss Justice explains that she chose to launch her campaign as she was fearful that many innocent motorists would chose to accept penalties for less serious offences such as speeding or mobile phone offences when they were not at risk of a ban.
Since the rules have changed it seems she has already been proven right. Ian Harrison a company director who contacted Miss Miller in December admitted a motoring offence he had not committed. He was issued a penalty notice but says he was using a Bluetooth device which is legal. He said he could not afford to take his case to court because even if he won he would have to pay nearly all of his legal bills of at least £2,000. The 53-year-old instead opted to accept a £60 fine and three penalty points.
Miss Justice commented “When I spoke to him I was pretty convinced we would succeed in securing his acquittal at court if he chose to contest the proceedings. I had to warn him, however, that even if he won his case he could be liable to pay nearly all of his costs, likely to reach more than £2,000. Mr Harrison said he could not afford to proceed on the basis that even if he was vindicated he would still be the loser because it would have cost him £2,000.”
Turning to the government’s response the Prime Minister argues that the government does not believe that a defendant will be more likely to plead guilty under the new regime as they claim a defendant could never be guaranteed an acquittal. There is no research whatsoever published or referred to that justifies this belief. In the wealth of experience of Miss Justice and her fellow AMOL member solicitors they find that where someone knows they are innocent under the new regime they are far more likely to give up their principals and take the punishment than be several thousand pounds out of pocket.
Miss Justice has confirmed that her firm, Geoffrey Miller Solicitors, have seen a drop of 34 per cent in the number of motorists taking their speeding claims to court in November 2009 compared with November 2008, when costs were still met from central funds. With an offence that carries points and poses no risk of a ban, most drivers seem to be admitting to offences rather than be out of pocket. A scenario Miss Justice predicted would happen when launching the petition.
The government also referred to there being no guarantee of the sum recovered if acquitted. Jeanette Miller’s response to this is ”This point is true. However, my firm Geoffrey Miller Solicitors, maintain detailed statistics of our clients’ costs recovery levels so that all of our clients are fully informed of the likely recovery they can expect at the outset of a case”
The rates the government claim to be sustainable for criminal lawyers are widely known across the legal field as nothing more than a pittance. With most plumbers charging more than the government plan to pay under the legal aid scheme, their response is likely to infuriate the majority of the legal profession.
Jeanette Miller states “The final paragraph of the government’s response is insulting not just because of the sentiments expressed but it is clear that the Prime Minister has simply dismissed all requests to review this significant issue. Mr Brown has adopted the wording of several press releases that were issued during the campaign and continues to miss the point entirely.”
Miss Justice suggested a face to face meeting with the Prime Minister once the petition had closed to be able to discuss the more intricate details relating to the campaign. Unlike the Tories met with Miss Miller, and fellow AMOL member, David Sonn, Gordon Brown chose to snub this opportunity and dismiss the concerns raised with nothing short of an extract already used during the campaign to raise awareness of the petition.
The fight is not over though as a result of Miss Justices’ petition, the Tories backed her cause and tabled an early day motion which received support from 30 MPs.
Following on from that was the Law Society’s Judicial Review Proceedings issued against the Government on 7 January 2010. One way or another, the government will have to respond with real answers rather than the nonsensical responses they continue to spout in the hope that the majority of the general public either will not understand or will not care about the erosion of the British Justice System as we know it.
For more information or to speak to Jeanette Miller, President of The Association Of Motor Offence Lawyers about any motoring issues please contact Caroline Tomlinson at Geoffrey Miller Solicitors on 0161 271 5591 or ctomlinson@motoroffence.co.uk.
Update: Almost forgot to link to this older article by Anna Raccoon about the Law Society launching a judicial review into the matter.
Snippet of Blair
Having made the long and weary trek from the basement to the fifth floor in search of coffee and a fleeting glimpse of what the weather might be doing, I happened to catch a bit of our discredited glorious leader Mr T. Blair chatting to some inquiry that seems to be happening. The gist of what he seemed to be saying, and to be fair I wasn’t paying much attention as I was in need of coffee, was that a certain Mr Hussein had done lots of nasty things to people that weren’t us and Mr Blair thought that Mr Hussein probably had weapons which he could use to hurt other people who still weren’t us quite badly. Because of this Mr Blair espoused that it was not only reasonable but in fact quite sensible to go and do something really nasty to Mr Hussein before Mr Hussein did anything else nasty to people who probably still wouldn’t be us.
I’ll admit I may be over simplifying here, but that seemed to be the basic thrust of his defence of why beating up Mr Hussein was not only right but also legal. Now I’m not actually interested in if he was right or not, but I can’t help but think that sounds an awful lot like vigilantism, after all Mr Hussein already had an ASBO and had been told that if he was naughty again the UN would think about doing something else. But if this defence of Mr Blairs is accepted how does that mesh with people being told off for merely engaging in sabre rattling (well waving kitchen knives) at people that have also done nasty things to other people and will probably do so again and that are known for being nasty people. After all if our politicians are arguing that knowing someone is a wrong ‘un and will be naughty again is a perfectly fine reason for taking pre-emptive action against them before they’ve done a thing to you, surely the case for us taking action against wrong ‘uns closer to home must be much stronger?
(I know it’s one rule for them and another for us and that it doesn’t work that way – but the parallels are I feel rather interesting).
Just in – arrest Blair
Just been pointed at a shiny new website from Cyberium/George Monbiot (hat tip : Her Ladyship at Tora Towers).
The stated aim of the site is:
“This site offers a reward to people attempting a peaceful citizen’s arrest of the former British prime minister, Tony Blair, for crimes against peace. Anyone attempting an arrest which meets the rules laid down here will be entitled to one quarter of the money collected at the time of his or her application.
Money donated to this site will be used for no other purpose than to pay bounties for attempts to arrest Tony Blair. All administration and other costs, apart from any charges added to your donations by Paypal, will be paid by the site’s founder.”
A site well worth giivng a high profile to – though if Wikileaks is anything to judge by PayPal will no doubt pull the plug fairly quickly.
Authoritarian sheep killers
It’s quite odd what you can find when looking for something else, such as a site which sells sheepskin parchment and happens to mention:
“It is a legal requirement that all Acts of Parliament are still recorded on this material.“
Which seemed unlikely to me what with this being the twentfirst century and all, so I did a bit of searching, and what do you know it’s true:
Now at a new law a day everyday since they came into power that’s an awful lot of laws, and thus an awful lot of sheep, and that parchment isn’t cheap. Which makes me wonder several things:
- Given the state they’ve reduced British sheep farming to where are they getting all those sheep skins from?
- Has anyone told the greens and if so why aren’t they objecting, especially the vegans?
- Does this explain the real reason for the various sheep culls that have occurred under New Labour?
I think I may have to find out how to make a suitable FOI request.
The new puritanism
I’ve been meaning to write this for quite a while and never quite getting round to it, but the recent post over at Devils Kitchen has prompted to actually do something. If you read Devils Kitchen and Leg Iron already you can probably just skip this as I’m not going to say anything new and will be linking to them extensively, as I’m just trying to pull a load of stuff together for my own benefit.
This thread goes back quite a long way especially over on Leg Irons, who seems to have predicted events rather well – though we’ve not yet travelled all of that road . But today Devils kitchen brought to my attention that the powers that be have taken a leaf from the SNP’s book and are in favour of minimum pricing per unit for alcohol. Setting the minimum price at around 40 or 50 pence a unit. It’s worth at this point stopping to recall that “a unit” is a measurement invented by the government, and so subject to redefinition if the minimum pricing isn’t raising enough money, sorry doing enough to prevent binge drinking. So perhaps in that regard the Tory proposal to change from units to centilitres works in our favour, though no doubt it’ll be dropped as soon as they notice that it makes things more transparent. Also notice that the minimum price also covers spirits, now what’s the betting that this will turn out to be rigged in some way to apply before excise duty? Given that excise duty already accounts for a fair chunk of the price of spirits? As this government doesn’t seem to have any qualms about banning things, and is probably stupid enough to try prohibition, one has to conclude that this is as much about getting more taxes as it is a matter of control and probably very little to do with the stated goals..
Of course it is being sold as being to protect precious NHS resources, so presumably we can soon start to see taxes on ski-ing holidays and other activities which increase the risk of injury and thus costs to the NSH. Public backing is wanted for the scheme and will no doubt be provided by the various fake charities that exist for just such a purpose.
Taxes though aren’t the only weapon they hope to deploy against drinkers bar staff have a role to play as well no longer asking “same again” but offering water instead and so “slowly” drinking will be denormalised.
There are laws already in place that would address the alleged problems if they were enforced. They could even charge fixed penalties for bars serving people when drunk or for being drunk and disorderly which would help the revenue issue. But using existing laws has never been popular with this government much better to penalise everyone even though alcohol consumption hasn’t actually risen. All of which makes me wonder, as many times before, if either the government is really that incompetent, is just addicted to making laws or if as others suggest the aim is greater control of the population.
Greater control of the population seems more likely as booze seems to be following the same path taken with smoking. Once booze is nicely unerway they seem to already have lightbulbs, batteries and food lined up to be tackled next. Not to mention driving, taking photographs and a host of other things all subject to increasing controls and heading towards being banned. Every time it’s for the sake of the children/environment/NHS and every time nothings banned out right as people would notice that, instead costs are pushed up (got to keep that tax revenue), choices are curtailed and the individual singled out for opprobrium. None of it achieves the stated objectives, it isn’t meant to, it just makes us all guilty of something, all at risk of summary punishment, all part of the “other” and thus all controlled. Fear and control really do seem to be the only aims that make any sort of sense. Not breaking the law won’t even be sufficient as they’ll just arrest you until you prove you haven’t broken the law. An obvious up shot of this would be the rise in home brewing and other untaxed activities in the home, but they’ve got that covered by encouraging children to spy on their parents (and look out for terrorists for now) and a shiny new database to track it all.
Obviously as we’re so often told, it would be nonsense to even suggest that we might be heading towards being a totalitarian sate – but there does seem to be a hell of a pattern emerging. Though perhaps it is actually just a new puritanism, a medievalist revival where it’s ok to “sin” as long as you act suitably penitent and buy your indulgence.
Withers LLP twinned with Carter Fuck
It would seem that the new fashion amongst lawyers is to try to silence Parliament, following on from Carter Fuck trying to stop Trafigura we now have Withers LLP trying their hand at preventing MPs talking about things in Parliament. This time though it’s not about dumping toxic waste in the third world but local planning issues, the full story is over at The Guardian. The key par of the e-mail sent by Withers LLP though is this gem:
“”In order to settle this matter we, therefore, require an apology in respect of both the serious allegations plus payment of our client’s costs, a substantial payment to a charity of his choice and an undertaking not to repeat the allegations or any similar allegations, particularly in parliament.
“Your threat to make a statement in the House of Commons referring to our client’s alleged ’spoiling tactics’ in this and other situations and that our client’s threatened proceedings amount to ‘bullying and an attempt to gag opponents’ is tantamount to blackmail.
“These allegations are untrue as our client is only trying to put right a serious wrong to his reputation. We note that you would only make these allegations under the cover of parliamentary privilege. My client objects very strongly to you doing this and would ensure, via other sources, that the House of Commons were fully appraised of the true situation and not misled.”
Which Withers LLP claim is not in any way an attempt to limit John Hemming MP’s parliamentary privilege. I guess he could say what he liked as long as he didn’t mention their client. On the bright side our glorious parliamentarians are actually at least thinking about doing something about it – if we’re really lucky they might accidentally become concerned about our freedoms whilst they’re at it. Maybe reform the odd bit of libel law (though at least the offence of criminal libel has gone.)
update Forgot to link to this first time round sorry.
Watch what you say
Various friends have brought my attention to this rather disturbing article on the BBC:
There is so much wrong with this story I’m not quite sure where to begin, for a change I don’t find myself disagreeing with Penny Reds take on the matter. So I shall leave much of that side of things alone.
Instead a few other things that struck me, though obviously there’s not that much detail to be sure but I do have to wonder why the MSN logs were given such credibility, where they forensically retrieved from the MSN servers? Because the logs on the local computer are just plain text files and remarkably easy to edit. My suspicion would be that these logs haven’t been handled forensically and verified, and that the prosecution should have had them chucked out on that grounds alone rather than using them as an excuse to throw the case. The judge should also have known better, and a decent prosecution surely should have alerted the jury to the possibility of a perverse verdict, if they couldn’t get the logs thrown out (or even just argued that they didn’t change a thing).
I’m deliberately ignoring the whole issue of discussing any sort of fantasy with someone does not count as consent (as that should I hope be self evident) – though I do wonder how much of a precedent this could set for wearing various items of currently fashionable clothing with various indiscreet words written on them. Are “kiss me” hats now a legal invitation?
The thing I’m really wondering though is just how far this could be extended, especially once the powers that be are monitoring everything. Would saying you’ve “had enough” be grounds for euthanasia, could you be press ganged for saying you wanted to “give <random approved state enemy> what for”. Just how much consent does discussing something hypothetical terms now provide? And I also can’t help but think that this is somewhat at odds with events in the Girls scream aloud case. Admittedly one case doesn’t make a strong precedent, but this really does seem to me to be quite a worrying development, especially if the powers that be do ever get their panopticon of internet monitoring.
Escaping from the Vatican
Having recently been reading all sorts of things on the freeman of the land and lawful rebellion front, it occurred to me that some people might also be interested in the obscure but much simpler method for formally leaving the Roman Catholic church. As they count you as a member unless you convert to another faith and even then sometimes. The whole idea of being “lapsed” is somewhat of a myth. So here for those that are interested are two rather useful links.
Firstly we have a Vatican document discussing just what the criteria are for someone to formally renounce their faith. The second a rather handy Irish website that has put the whole three step process On line.
The spoilation of Parliament
Just when you think that the mendacious scoundrels that sit in the palace of Westminster might have learnt to shut up and keep their heads down, they find new and interesting ways to dig up past scandals and heap more disrepute upon their heads. In this case we have three labour MP’s claiming that parliamentary privilege protects them from being prosecuted for fraud over dodgy claims (hat tip: Dizzy). However there may be a silver lining in this dark and stinking cloud, in that as observed by Captain Ranty it may yet test and revalidate the 1689 Bill of rights which could have very interesting repercussions (see comment thread over on Captain Ranty for a discussion).
UK terror threat status
- Severe 2010/01/25