The government’s long anticipated attempt to combat web piracy has assumed something resembling reality in the form of the just-published Digital Economy Bill. Under the Bill, whose provisions are reported by the Independent, internet service providers (ISPs) will be obliged to send letters to those suspected of online piracy. The owners of illegally downloaded material will also be entitled to the name and address of serial offenders, so that they can take legal action against them.
The Indy also tells us that Andrew Robinson, the leader of the pro-file sharing party, Pirate Party UK, believes the Bill is an attack on free speech, so too that the Government – which surely will not have time to implement the Bill – faces opposition from the former digital engagement minister, Tom Watson.
Swordplay has some sympathy with these views. Without seeing the fine print we cannot comment on the evidential tests to be met – or, perhaps, ignored – before ISPs have to threaten alleged miscreants or hand over their addresses to interested parties, but we are not convinced that conferring such power via statute is desirable. The law of disclosure already provides rights holders with this avenue of redress, but surely anything that scuppers broadband access is contrary to the principle of a ‘digital Britain’. Moreover, it is also inimical to both freedom of expresion and, given how vital a communications tool broadband is, the right to a family life. Web pirates appear to have been handed some pleasingly sharp PR axes to grind.
Pictured thanks to doc rogers (i): a flyer for Talk Like A Pirate Day. What, we wonder, do ads for Talk Like a Web Pirate Day look like?
For a certain poet, an unspoiled stretch of seaside was like “the holy hush there is in the land on Christmas morning. The roads fairly empty, the sky almost free of aeroplanes and you begin to hear and see and smell once more”.
But who uttered these lines?
(It’s a Monday, and this is your starter for 10 – and yes, we’re fresh to the metropolis, from a coastal sojourn.)
The following words appeared in a Times article in 2003, about the paper’s recently departed Head of Legal, Alastair Brett. They’ve been doing the rounds in the wake of Brett’s sudden exit last week, though without attribution. Who, we wonder, wrote them? Two suspects present themselves – our own occasional scribe, Alex Wade, and Dominic Carman, son of the late, great George (an old mucker of Brett’s). Or was someone else the author? Whatever: the fact remains that Brett was a fearless, tenacious and excellent newspaper lawyer, a man whose commitment to press freedom coursed through every vein in his body. We don’t know the precise reasons for his departure, but he will be missed.
“[He] is known for his impassioned commitment to press freedom – so impassioned that he has been described as “certifiably insane”. Capable of an intimidatory snarl or two, and prepared to be stubborn, Brett is far from mad. He is erudite, charming (so the ladies say), and not known for sitting on the fence. If his sanity has, tongue firmly in cheek, been questioned, one thing not open to doubt is that Brett epitomises the old school Fleet Street lawyer”.
Pictured: Fleet Street - not the same as it used to be.
A curious observation leaps at us from Roy Greenslade’s piece about whether Conrad Black, shortly to roam the high-class hotels of the world again as a free man, will return to the UK and carry out his threat to sue his biographer, Tom Bower, for libel:
I somehow doubt that he would have the appetite, or the funds, to pursue a libel action, but Black marches to the sound of his own drummer, so he might just do that. Even if he did, my money would still be on Bower winning.
Hang on, Roy – what about suing via a no win, no fee deal? Funds or no funds, a CFA would see Conrad through – though maybe he’ll remember what happened to the last press baron who sued Bower. Anyone for Richard Desmond’s curious dalliance with libel?
Pictured: the kind of place in which Conrad Black may be spotted (if not at the Royal Courts of Justice).
Surfing and the favelas: how they’re connected
All OK for Desmond and Five
Heading for an airport tonight? Your experience may be different in future…
Released almost a year ago, Spada’s groundbreaking research report, British Professions Today, is available for free download
In this article, Gavin Ingham Brooke and Rohit Grover of Spada examine the importance of marketing and PR in a downturn.
In the latest of our series of white papers, Spada Research examines trends in environmental reporting.
A good decision is based on knowledge and not on numbers.
Πλάτων, Greek philosopher.