ORG is four: we need your help
Four years ago, the ORG story began, with 1,000 digital activists signing up on Pledge Bank to pay £5 a month to create a Digital Rights campaign.
Spurred by the example of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, activists asked at OpenTech where the ‘British EFF’ was.
Four years later, as we detail in this year’s Annual Report, published today, the Open Rights Group is growing at an unprecedented rate, in the face of new threats to our digital rights. 25,000 people have signed a petition in defence of those rights: the right to fair trial, to be presumed innocent and for punishments that fit the offence.
Instead of following these principles, the government threatens arbitrary and collective punishment in the name of protecting copyright online.
There has never been a time that we have been busier, or more needed.
This year, we have fought Phorm, Intercept Modernisation and government snooping on the internet and copyright term extension. By and large, we have won the battles. We may not stop copyright term extension, but we have delayed it and continue to fight. Intercept Modernisation has been kicked into the long grass – until at least after the coming election. And Phorm have ceased to promote their Webwise technology in the UK, while the EU Commission continue to threaten the UK government with prosecution over the failure to enforce our privacy rights brought to light by the technology.
Most recently, we helped knock back BBC proposals for encryption of HD programming data that would have caused unwarranted restrictions on HD content and devices.
ORG has been part of a wider movement that has tapped into a public mood that is rejecting unnecessary erosions of privacy. Equally, citizens know the value that the digital age has brought to our creativity, access to knowledge, freedom of expresson and association, and are ready to protect those rights in the face of legislative threats.
ORG’s founding supporters have given us an amazing opportunity to mobilise and defend our rights. Please support us by joining today.