Richard's Kingdom

Europe wants to monitor what you search for on the Internet. Under the misleading guise of protecting children against sexual abuse (sigh) Written Declaration 29 calls for the Data Retention Directive to be extended to cover search engines. This would force national Governments to record everything you type into Google, Bing, Yahoo! et al and [...]

The Digital Economy Act 2010 is now law. Last week thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, watched the tragedy unfold on Twitter and via the live stream from Parliament (starts at 20:51:25). Many of those people were seeing the internal mechanisms of the British political system for the first time. Their reaction was almost universally one [...]

The Gagged Geeks protest against the Digital Economy Bill in Sheffield yesterday exceeded all my expectations. Around thirty protesters handed out 300 leaflets – our entire stock – in less than 20 minutes. We were joined by Paul Scriven, leader of Sheffield Council and Lib Dem PPC for Sheffield Central, who handed out leaflets and [...]

I’ve never even been to a protest before, let alone organised one, however given how wrong the Government’s proposals on the Internet are I’ve decided I can’t just sit back and let them happen.
There will be a flash mob protest outside Sheffield Train Station at 5:55pm on Wednesday 24 March. It’ll only take 20 minutes [...]

The Open Rights Group calls attention to a proposed Digital Economy Bill amendment that, if accepted, would allow the Government to censor the web in the name of enforcing copyright law.
I have put fingers to keyboard once again, therefore, resulting in the following missive to the noble Lords who came up with the idea.

Dear Lord [...]