taint.org: Justin Mason’s Weblog

Wow. The IFPI’s strategy of “divide and conquer” by taking individual ISPs to court to force them to institute a 3 strikes policy, as successfully deployed against Eircom this week, is possibly marginally better than this insane obsolete-business-model handout proposed by the UK government in their Digital Britain report:

Lord Carter of Barnes, the Communications Minister, will propose the creation of a quango, paid for by a charge that could amount to £20 a year per broadband connection.

The agency would act as a broker between music and film companies and internet service providers (ISPs). It would provide data about serial copyright-breakers to music and film companies if they obtained a court order. It would be paid for by a levy on ISPs, who inevitably would pass the cost on to consumers.

Jeremy Hunt, the Shadow Culture Secretary, said: “A new quango and additional taxes seem a bizarre way to stimulate investment in the digital economy. We have a communications regulator; why, when times are tough, should business have to fund another one?”

Well said. An incredibly bad idea.

By the way, I’ve noticed some misconceptions about the Eircom settlement. Telcos selling Eircom bitstream DSL (ie. the 2MB or 3MB DSL packages) are immune right now.

They are, however, next on the music industry’s hit-list, reportedly…

Tags: copyright, filesharing, ifpi, labour, piracy, quangos, uk

Well, that was quick!

Right after posting this, I hear about Labour’s new transport strategy for Dublin. Here’s the top 3 items:

• Labour will increase the Dublin Bus fleet by 50% (500 buses), significantly increasing frequency and reducing waiting times.

• Will complete the Quality Bus Corridors, and greatly reduce journey times.

• Will introduce a EUR 1 per-trip fare for adults and a 50c per-trip fare for children.

The flat-rate fee structure makes a lot more sense than the confusing and rip-off-ish current model, whereby if you don’t know in advance how much a particular journey is going to cost, you’re given a useless receipt instead of change. This wierd and rip-off-ish policy has certainly stopped me from catching buses in the past. In general, flat-rate pricing models appear to encourage use in other fields. And the increase in the fleet is obviously a fantastic idea. Fantastic stuff!

Read the full policy paper here (as a PDF).

Tags: dublin, ireland, labour, politics, public-transport

So, the bad news — it appears that the European Parliament has passed the ‘Data Retention’ Directive, introducing requiring EU states to introduce mandatory electronic surveillance of all European citizens.

Tuppenceworth.ie has looked up how the Irish MEPs voted on the Directive. I was appalled to discover that Proinsias De Rossa (Labour) was the only Irish MEP to vote for this surveillance.

I generally give a high preference to Labour when voting, and before that, Democratic Left, and I’ve voted for him several times in the past. However, I think this may be the deal-breaker. I’m extremely disappointed.

By the way if party line was the issue — that didn’t stop Gay Mitchell (Fine Gael), who broke party line on this, saying:

I do not know why this proposal was rushed. The extremely accelerated legislation procedure has meant that there was little time for discussion, and translations were sometimes unavailable. There was also no time for a technology assessment or for a study on the impact on the internal market.

Major credit to him.

Tags: data-retention, digital-rights-ireland, european-parliament, fine-gael, gay-mitchell, ireland, labour, meps, proinsias-de-rossa, voting

Passing this on for readers in Ireland — this sounds like an interesting event. From the FSFE-IE mailing list:

On the morning of Friday November 18th, IFSO is organising an event hosted by MEP Proinsias De Rossa about preventing software patents in the EU. Topics covered will be:

• An analysis of the software patent directive;
• a discussion of Free Software and computer security;
• an introduction to IFSO/FSFE and their work;
• the future of legislative obstacles to the development and distribution of software.

The event will be held in the European Parliament Office in Ireland, and spaces are limited. Participants are therefore asked to register their intent to attend. See here for more details.

Tags: dublin, free-software, fsfe, ifso, ireland, labour, open-source, patents, swpats