February 3, 2012
We're supporting a demonstration against ACTA, which will take place in central London a week on Saturday, on 11th February. It has been planned to coincide with demonstrations across Europe, when a chorus of thousands of discontented voices will speak as one against over-reaching Internet laws.
The aim will be to tell as many people as possible what's going on by distributing leaflets and asking...
January 31, 2012
For three days last week, a group of technicians and lawyers at W3C – the World Wide Web Consortium, headed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee – has debated how to protect user privacy from ‘third party’ tracking websites.
The meetings started with an introduction from European Commission Neelie Kroes, emphasizing the...
January 27, 2012
Kader Arif, rapporteur for ACTA in the European Parliament, has quit his role as rapporteur. Thanks to La Quadrature Du Net, here's his statement in English:
I want to denounce in the strongest possible manner the entire process that led to the signature of this agreement: no inclusion of civil society...
January 26, 2012
We wrote last year, many times, about the discussions being hosted by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport between rights holders and various 'intermediaries' - which to normal people means companies like Internet Service Providers and search engines. One of the most recent roundtables saw the group of rights holders present search engines with a paper on how they should help tackle copyright infringement.
...
Today the EU and member states including the UK signed the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement in Japan.
You may remember the healthy debate held here about whether this international treaty was something that the UK should commit itself to, helping policy makers arrive at a collectively taken decision. No? Good spot - there was no such debate! It was waived through the committees responsible for scrutinising...
January 23, 2012
Open Rights Group and Tor have established that UK mobile networks such as Vodafone, O2 and 3 are filtering UK users' access to Tor's primary website (meaning the HTTP version of the Tor Project website, rather than connections to the Tor network) on pre-paid contractless accounts.
Tor helps people stay anonymous online. Some examples of how it has been used include those trying to avoid oppressive state censorship in places such as...
January 18, 2012
Open Rights Group today blanked out its landing page in support of protests against two IP-related laws currently being discussed in the USA. Similar black outs and protests are happening on US websites such as Wikipedia, Wordpress, Reddit and Google.
The two bills in question, which ostensibly aim to tackle internet piracy, are called the Stop Online Piracy Act...
January 9, 2012
Today, we're launching a website and campaign calling for a new exception to copyright law for parodies and pastiche. Here's why.
Late last year we heard about a video parodying the Olympic mascots Wenlock and Mandeville. It featured the two cycloptic cartoons flying off a rainbow into the middle of a riot. Having become the number one comedy...
January 5, 2012
To coincide with the London Conference on Cyberspace last November, Open Rights Group and nine other Internet freedom advocates, including Cory Doctorow and Index on Censorship, wrote to the Foreign Secretary about censorship and privacy in the UK.
We were concerned that some fine words about international obligations to freedom of...
December 21, 2011
For the last four months, and despite repeated complaints, O2 has blocked the website of a Sheffield church, claiming it features adult content.
Now it’s Christmas, the time when we expect churches to be exercising their freedom of religion and expression to bring their message to those of us who are perhaps a little more Scrooge-like.
But not if you’re an O2 customer, it seems. O2 have settled firmly on the Scrooge side of things, denying their customers not just access to...
