Holly Golightly: 7 Albums 1995 - 2003
3 hours ago
Friday, 20 November 2009
Culture - Two Sevens Clash c/w Dub 7'' (1977)
Remember buying this at Probe in Liverpool back in, yes you guessed 1977. Was I served by Pete Burns for this particular purchase?
Quite probably!
PS: Just read that Burns has two Blue Peter badges for apearing on the show. Some bastard stole my BP badge back in about 82!
UK backbencher MP Tom Watson:
It'll break the Internet. I will not support this and neither should you. http://bit.ly/Yarrrrr
Mandelson seeks to amend UK copyright law in new crackdown on filesharing
Lord Mandelson is seeking to amend the laws on copyright to give the government sweeping new powers against people accused of illegal downloading.But Labour colleagues are concerned that if he succeeds it could give a future Tory government the ability that Rupert Murdoch wants to quash Google.
In a letter to Harriet Harman, the leader of the house and head of the committee responsible for determining changes to such legislation, Mandelson says he is "writing to seek your urgent agreement" to changes to the 1988 Copyright, Designs and Patents Act "for the purposes of facilitating prevention or reduction of online copyright infringement".
By writing to Harman, the business secretary is seeking to get the change made through a "statutory instrument" – in effect, an update to the existing bill that the government can push through using its parliamentary majority.
That can be done with the minimum of parliamentary time, which is already at a premium.
The letter, which is circulating inside the government, comes as ministers prepare to publish the digital economy bill at 7.30am tomorrow. That is expected to set out a "three strikes" policy under which people who are found to be illicitly downloading copyrighted material have their internet connections withdrawn after three warnings.
Internet service providers have warned that the scheme is unworkable and unlawful.
The proposed alteration to the Copyright Act would create a new offence of downloading material that infringes copyright laws, as well as giving new powers or rights to "protect" rights holders such as record companies and movie studios – and, controversially, conferring powers on "any person as may be specified" to help cut down online infringement of copyright.
The changes proposed seem small – but are enormously wideranging, given both the breadth of even minor copyright infringement online, where photographs and text are copied with little regard to ownership, and the complexity of ownership.
Mandelson says in his letter that he is concerned about "cyberlockers" – websites that offer users private storage spaces whose contents can be shared by passing a web link via email.
"These can be used entirely legitimately, but recently rights holders have pointed to them as being used for illegal use," Mandelson writes in the letter.
But the proposal to alter the Copyright Act in this way has caused alarm within government, where some fear that an incoming Tory administration could use it to curry favour with Murdoch, head of the News International publishing group.
"They've seen that file-sharing is essentially unpoliceable, but the net effect is that a future secretary of state could change copyright law as they see fit," said one Labour insider.
In his letter, Mandelson sets out the expected reaction from the three groups who would be affected by the changes: rights holders such as record companies, internet service providers (ISPs), and consumers.
"I expect rights holders to welcome this and to support it. ISPs are likely to be neutral until it is clear what effect it will have on them in terms of costs." Consumer groups "are likely to oppose [the move] but will see it may lead to further unquantifiable measures against infringing consumers."
He also expects "a great deal of scrutiny" of the idea in parliament.
Murdoch has recently said that he believes that copyright is being abused, particularly by organisations such as Google, which uses short extracts from online newspapers to create its Google News page, and the BBC, which he has accused of "stealing from newspapers".
Earlier this month Murdoch was vituperative about how search engines have aggregated news. "The people who simply just pick up everything and run with it – steal our stories, we say they steal our stories – they just take them," he said. "That's Google, that's Microsoft, that's Ask.com, a whole lot of people ... They shouldn't have had it free all the time, and I think we've been asleep."
By giving the business secretary the power to amend the Copyright Act at will, Labour fears Mandelson could be creating a Trojan horse that under a Tory administration would allow Murdoch to be rewarded for his support for David Cameron over Gordon Brown, for example by making it illegal to use such extracts from a news site for profit.
A spokesperson for the Department for Business said the department could not comment on correspondence between ministers.
See also 'BoingBoing'
Thursday, 19 November 2009
Three strikes and THEY are out!
Author and activist Cory Doctorow argues that the Internet is too central to our lives to be taken away for three accusations of copyright infringement. Along the way he proposes that turnabout is fair play, and thus Universal (for example) ought to have its access to the Net taken away if it issues three false accusations of infringement.
@'netzpolitik.org'
@'netzpolitik.org'
Obama on terror trials: KSM will die
Americans who are troubled by the decision to send alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to New York for trial will feel better about it when he’s put to death, President Barack Obama said Tuesday.
During a round of network television interviews conducted during Obama’s visit to China, the president was asked about those who find it offensive that Mohammed will receive all the rights normally accorded to U.S. citizens when they are charged with a crime.
“I don't think it will be offensive at all when he's convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him,” Obama told NBC’s Chuck Todd.
When Todd asked Obama if he was interfering in the trial process by declaring that Mohammed will be executed, Obama, a former constitutional law professor, insisted that he wasn’t trying to dictate the result.
“What I said was, people will not be offended if that's the outcome. I'm not pre-judging, I'm not going to be in that courtroom, that's the job of prosecutors, the judge and the jury,” Obama said. “What I'm absolutely clear about is that I have complete confidence in the American people and our legal traditions and the prosecutors, the tough prosecutors from New York who specialize in terrorism.”
In another interview, Obama said he had not tried to tell Attorney General Eric Holder whether the case involving KSM and four other alleged 9/11 plotters should be heard in federal court or before a military tribunal.
“I said to the attorney general, make a decision based on the law,” the president told CNN’s Ed Henry. “We have set up now a military commission system that is greatly reformed and so we can try terrorists in the forum. But I also have great confidence in our Article 3 courts, the courts that have tried hundreds of terrorist suspects who are imprisoned right now in the United States.”
Obama also suggested that critics of the decision are unwisely building the alleged Al Qaeda operatives into larger-than-life figures who require the U.S. to abandon its usual legal processes.
“I think this notion that somehow we have to be fearful, that these terrorists are –possess some special powers that prevent us from presenting evidence against them, locking them up and, you know, exacting swift justice, I think that has been a fundamental mistake,” the president declared.
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