Blog
14 Jan 2006 By James Cronin
Sign up to support the Open Rights Group
Whether you pledged to support this project or whether you didn’t.
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04 Jan 2006 By Suw Charman Anderson
IPPR white paper: Markets in the Online Public Sphere
Will Davies of the IPPR publishes a paper examining the politics and economics of online information:
This paper looks at some of the politics and economics surrounding online information.
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04 Jan 2006 By Suw Charman Anderson
James Boyle on the Database Directive
James Boyle writes in the FT about the EU’s empirical evaluation of whether the Database Directive, which gave intellectual property rights over the creation of database, is actually helping stimulate the industry.
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03 Jan 2006 By Suw Charman Anderson
Radio Five Live’s Up All Night – the year in review
Went into BBC Television Centre last night to record a review of 2005 with Neil McIntosh, Tim Worstall, Chris Vallance and Kevin Anderson.
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03 Jan 2006 By Suw Charman Anderson
APIG DRM Inquiry white paper
The white paper that we prepared before Christmas for the All Party Parliamentary Internet Group’s public inquiry into digital rights management is now up on the ORG wiki.
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02 Jan 2006 By Suw Charman Anderson
Gardening the ORG wiki
Spent a bit of time today working on the ORG wiki, so if you have a bit of time to add more information to it, that’d be superb.
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20 Dec 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
The ORG website – we need a designer!
We had one of those moments last week when we realised that, because almost everyone involved in ORG has bucketfuls of experience of designing and launching websites (indeed, I started working as a web designer/developer in ’98, and I can do this shit with my hands tied behind my back), the one thing that had escaped our attention was, in fact, the website.
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19 Dec 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
What next for data retention?
If you’ve been following the data retention directive’s progress through the EU, you’ll have heard long since that the directive was voted in by 378 in favour to 197 against and 30 abstentions – which totals 605 of the 732 MEPs who make up the European Parliament.
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09 Dec 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
Slowly the pieces of the jigsaw fall into place
I spent an hour today talking to people at the Radiator Film Festival about digital rights and putting together an activist group, referencing directly my own personal experiences organising the Open Rights Group.
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09 Dec 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
Fighting data retention
Word coming out of the EU Parliament is not good for data retention.
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06 Dec 2005 By Ben Laurie
France Gets Set to Ban Open Source
And anything else that doesn’t enforce DRM.
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04 Dec 2005 By Ben Laurie
Telecoms and Television
“john” writes, in a comment to an earlier post:
data retention; the LIBE report is being voted on the 12th and all the Parliamentary groups meet on Tuesday to decide their positions.
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02 Dec 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
APIG DRM Inquiry: Overview
The All Party Parliamentary Internet Group (APIG) has launched a public inquiry into DRM and is looking for written evidence from anyone interested in copyright and digital rights management.
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02 Dec 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
APIG DRM Inquiry: Does DRM make copyright law unbalanced?
Point 1: Does DRM distort traditional tradeoffs in copyright law?
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02 Dec 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
APIG DRM Inquiry: Should legislation be changed to make Creative Commons effective?
Point 2: Do new types of content sharing license (such as Creative Commons or Copyleft) need legislation changes to be effective?
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02 Dec 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
APIG DRM Inquiry: Should copyright deposit libraries be treated specially?
Point 3: How should copyright deposit libraries deal with DRM issues?
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02 Dec 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
APIG DRM Inquiry: What happens when DRM systems are discontinued?
Point 4: How should consumers be protected when DRM systems are discontinued?
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02 Dec 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
APIG DRM Inquiry: How important is access?
Point 5: To what extent should DRM systems be forced to make exceptions for the partially sighted and people with other disabilities?
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02 Dec 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
APIG DRM Inquiry: Legal protection for DRM
Point 6: What legal protections DRM systems should have from those who wish to circumvent them?
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02 Dec 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
APIG DRM Inquiry: Unintended consequences
Point 7: Can DRM systems can have unintended consequences on computer functionality?
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02 Dec 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
APIG DRM Inquiry: The role of the UK Parliament
Point 8: What should the role of the UK Parliament be in influencing the global agenda for DRM issues?
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02 Dec 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
Digital Rights in the UK: Your Rights, Your Issues
The slightly strange thing about trying to write up the inaugural ORG event is that having spent my time arranging it, and being the person MCing it, my experience of it wasn’t the same as that of the people who came and who made it such a success.
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29 Nov 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
ORG digital rights event update
We are pretty close to full on the event, but if you either can’t come and previous had said you could, or if you want to come, let us know before 4.
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29 Nov 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
ORG pledge matures
The Open Rights Group membership pledge has finally matured, just in time for our inaugural event tonight and, coincidentally, just as we are about to get our membership database online for you to join up!
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24 Nov 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
Data retention another step closer
Today the LIBE Committee – that’s the committee of MEPs who have been ‘looking after’ the data retention directive – voted on whether or not they liked the amendments that have been proposed in the backroom meetings which have been going on between the various interested parties in Brussels.
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23 Nov 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
Music industry tries to hijack serious crime legislation in Europe
When the UK Presidency suggested to the EU that telecoms service providers and ISPs should be forced to retain information about the telephone calls you make and the sites you visit, they stated that it was an essential “balance” struck between liberty and security: a grave compromise necessitated by the threat of terrorism and serious crime.
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16 Nov 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
Invitation to attend ‘Digital Rights in the UK: Your Rights, Your Issues’
The emergence of new communications technologies has radically changed the civil rights landscape in our society.
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11 Nov 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
Illegal Arts EULA
ELECTRONIC END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT FOR VIEWING ILLEGAL ART EXHIBIT WEBSITE AND FOR USE OF LUMBER AND/OR PET OWNERSHIP NOTICE TO USER: BY METABOLIZING YOU ACCEPT ALL THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF THIS AGREEMENT INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, USE OF YOUR HOME AND CAR BY THE AUTHORS OF THIS AGREEMENT.
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02 Nov 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
Remix Commons
Remix Reading, the group dedicated to promoting free culture and Creative Commons locally in the Reading area is expanding into four cities across the UK and establishing a new project, Remix Commons, to bring Creative Commoners together.
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26 Oct 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
New web host and URL
You might have noticed a bit of funkiness with the blog recently.
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15 Oct 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
Launch of the RSA’s Adelphi Charter on Creativity, Innovation & Intellectual Property
Professor James Boyle John Howkins Sir John Sulston Paul Crake, Chair These are my notes from the speeches given to introduce the Adelphi Charter at the RSA, on Thurs 13 October.
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08 Oct 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
Links for 8 Oct 05
Time to clear out my browser and pass on a few URLs: Your Right To Know: Why we must cut the costly Crown copyright – Heather Brooke from The Times on why Crown copyright has just got to go.
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01 Oct 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
Should the term of copyright protection be extended or shortened in the UK?
RSA, IPPR, PCMLP Lecture Prof.
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27 Sep 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
But what about Scotland?
Just spoke to a group of ISPs at the UK Network Operators Forum conference about ORG (Ian spoke about data retention), and from the audience came a very important question.
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26 Sep 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
Briefing for members of the European Parliament on data retention
Privacy International have put together an excellent open letter to all members of the European Parliament, addressing the current proposals on communications traffic data retention.
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24 Sep 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP: No justification for data retention
On her website, Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP worries that there has been no serious cost-benefit analysis of the UK’s data retention proposalsfor Europe, and calls on other MEPs to question the necessity for such ‘sloppy’ legislation:
“[S]torage of everyone’s phone, email and website use is costly as well as a massive invasion of privacy and increase in state surveillance, so the threshold for justification is a high one.
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23 Sep 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
The implications of wrongful arrest
Yesterday’s Guardian ran the story of the wrongful arrest of David Mery on its front page, a story he’s written up in a lot more detail on his site.
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17 Sep 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
Mapping the digital rights landscape
A while back, when we first started talking about setting up ORG, I thought it would be a good exercise to explore the existing digital rights landscape in the UK.
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16 Sep 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
The Register: Phone cos and rights activists round on Clarke
i was so caught up in the conference I was at last Friday that I entirely failed to notice that we were in The Register, on data retention.
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14 Sep 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
Expanding the public domain
A transcript of James Boyle’s remarks on the public domain, copyright and Creative Commons, given at the Association of Research Libraries 146th Membership Meeting, May 26 2005.
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13 Sep 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
Framing DRM
Kevin Marks uses Lakovian frames* to explain what’s wrong with DRM to five different audiences, of which the first two:
Computer Users: DRM turns your computer against you I know sometimes it seems like your computer has it’s own agenda, when it refuses to print or copy or find your documents.
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13 Sep 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
ZDnet: Digital rights group to fight data retention
Had an hour-long conversation with Karen Gomm from ZDNet UK yesterday, which resulted in this piece about ORG and data retention (page 2, page 3).
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11 Sep 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
The mother of all ‘to do’ lists
Louise, James and myself spent a good chunk of time yesterday going through the Memorandum of Association and the Articles of Association.
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08 Sep 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
BBCi: UK digital rights group sets up
Spoke to the BBC yesterday, and the results are up online today.
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08 Sep 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
Clarke fails to understand his own data retention proposal
Charles Clarke manages to misunderstand his own EU data retention proposal and thinks we have too many rights anyway.
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06 Sep 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
Introducing The Open Rights Group
After six weeks locked in the shed at the bottom of the NTK garden, wherein much deliberation, discussion and a small amount of bodily harm (non-grievous) took place, we finally have a name.
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25 Aug 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
BBC Radio 5 interview now up online
The interview I did with Kevin Anderson for BBC Radio 5 Pods and Blogs show is now up online, for a limited time only.
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21 Aug 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
BBC Radio Five (not quite so live)
Have to pop over to BBC TV Centre tomorrow to record an interview about this digital rights group that I’m helping set up, and data retention.
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16 Aug 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
Data retention in 15 words
40,000 terabytes of useless, illegal communications traffic surveillance data, paid for by you, the surveilled.
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16 Aug 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
Data Retention in the EU – Your Digital Rights at Risk
OK, so here’s the data retention story, which I’m going to try to write without recourse to (too much of) the EU jargon that seems to choke these sorts of things.
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14 Aug 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
Grokking data retention
I can’t quite believe that it’s 1.
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10 Aug 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
Big Brother is tracking you
Wired reports on a Department for Transport pilot scheme to test RFID chipped car numberplates here in the UK, with battery powered chips that can broadcast their identity up to 300ft.
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28 Jul 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
The right to digital freedom
Danny O’Brien writes about our UK digital rights project in The Guardian today.
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23 Jul 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
Defending digital rights in the UK
I’ve had a few meetings with Danny O’Brien from the Electronic Frontier Foundation over the last few weeks, talking about the possibility of starting some sort of EFF-like organisation in the UK and generally volunteering myself to assist.
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23 Jul 2005 By Suw Charman Anderson
OpenTech 2005
Here at OpenTech 2005, feeling very much in my natural habitat: surrounded by fellow geeks.
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