Apathy and ignorance from dying UK Parliament

The UK Parliament has just put in place legislation demonstrating clearly that its members largely do not understand the way that knowledge and culture is fostered.

While they still apparently support the rights of creators to receive legal protection for their work, they do not understand that this right – copyright, in other words – is not something that is best either defined or policed by corporations who market such work (aka ‘publishers’).

They also showed that themselves happy to take the easier path, ignoring the vast body of complaints they have received from constituents, rather than the harder path of conscientious scrutiny. Most MPs were absent from the debate, which itself was rushed through on the last day of business. I was shocked by the complacent ignorance of Sion Simons, the minister responsible for the Bill, and sad to see so few of his colleagues take an interest.

But there were exceptions – Tom Watson MP, John Redwood MP and Fiona Mactaggart MP prominent amongst them – who took the time and trouble to explain clearly (if only to those of their colleagues who were present) the flaws in the Bill and to highlight the foolishness of rushing it through. Let’s hope that the electorate returns a new Parliament that has more conscientiousness, more intelligence and a better understanding of the society that surrounds it.

Otherwise the UK is going to lose out.

Fiona Mactaggart MP sums it up

Letter to Harriet Harman about the Digital Economy Bill

Dear Harriet Harman,

I am writing to express my concern about the Digital Economy Bill.

I am worried by reports that this Bill will be rushed through the Commons without the scrutiny it deserves. I do not believe that the allegations about undue influence from commercial lobbyists can yet be refuted, since clauses drafted by such lobbyists remain in place in the Bill as it stands. Such unquestioning acceptance of lobbyists' material is disappointing and at a time when politicians are under such grave suspicion of corruption it does not help to restore confidence.

The current provisions of the Bill (especially clauses 11-18) also threaten to have a severe negative effect on the freedoms we currently have in the UK to use public internet access and public file transfer services, while also threatening users with disconnection following allegations of copyright infringement: both these objectives represent a massively disproportionate response to the offences purported to occur.

It should not be possible for a conviction for infringement of copyright to result in curtailment of the defendant's access to something as fundamental as the Internet now is. That is like switching off the water supply to someone who has not paid their TV licence. Copyright is extremely important but this is not the way to encourage society to understand and respect it.

It is very difficult to prove accurately who is responsible for a copyright-infringing file transfer and this might lead to the most vulnerable users - those who do not understand the technology - being exploited by unscrupulous individuals who use their networks to perform such infringing file transfers. The passing of the bill will certainly drive determined individuals to make more concerted efforts to cover their tracks and it seems likely that innocent people will suffer at the least the pain of being unfairly charged and having to fight their case, even if they are not eventually convicted.

In addition, disconnection seems to restrict fundamental human rights, such as freedom of expression. Such rights can not be infringed by a democratic government without exceptional reasons. The infringement of copyright has not attracted such draconian penalties since the days of the Court of Star Chamber - a long-past era of oppression in which freedoms were not valued as we value them now.

Please take note of these concerns, which I share with so many others, and resist the call to rush through this inappropriate Bill.

Yours,
Ben Weiner

Running 14k, sterling

Just need to get this off my chest.

I’m self employed, work pretty hard: no holidays, no luxury, no TV. I do have a car but I walk, cycle or train it when I can. I keep the heating low and shop in the most meagre fashion. I’ve got two pairs of presentable trousers. It’s not just long habit, this miserly behaviour, it’s become necessity — don’t ask me how or why but I always thought I was doing the right thing recording income and expenditure and meekly handing the numbers to HMRC.

So a tax bill for £14,076 hasn't made me feel particularly well loved. It’s about half of a really good year’s net income for me (and about three quarters of this year’s). Suffice to say it’s far, far beyond what I can afford.

The moral of this is don't do your own tax return unless you know what you're doing. Regardless of whether I can crawl out of this one, the ongoing corrosion of tax has cramped my style for far too long. It hasn't made me happy, it hasn't made me productive, it's just given me grey hairs.

Thats all, cheers.

Call/response on climate monitoring station records an opportunity for open data?

Nature’s editorial of 2 December called for various measures to make it easier for climate scientists to produce the analyses that are used to model the world’s climate. These underpin the current thinking on the probability and effects of a warmer climate in the near future, and the essential ingredient is data. According to the editorial the data is subject to international agreements on its publication. So it is good to see an announcement from the Met Office on 5 December to the effect that data from 5000 temperature monitor stations should be available from ‘early next week’. The agreement has been influenced by the World Meteorological Organisation, the UN’s weather body.

To a layman, the two obvious questions are how accessible, and how useful, this ‘subset of the full HadCRUT record of global temperatures’ will be.