A Case for Internet Regulation
If, like me, you have a knee-jerk reaction whenever anyone suggests regulating the Internet, this A List Apart article on captioning/subtitling of online videos is a challenging read. Joe Clark argues that the voluntary approach to developing a good, standardized captioning system has failed, and that only governments can enforce some sort of progress:
In short, disabled people’s right to be free of discrimination trumps the belief, however fallacious, that the internet cannot or should not be regulated.
Earlier this year, the Liberal Conspiracy take on Andy Burnham’s recommendations on Internet regulation, was that it was merely a sop to the powerful music lobby and their outdated business models. Contrast this with the case of subtitling, where it is the lack of regulation which has allowed the studios and broadcasters to ignore their obligations to provide accessible content, in favour of greater profit margins.
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It Was The Sun Wot Manufactured It
The Sun crows over the Shannon Matthews case:
The prosecutor said cops recovered at [Michael] Donovan’s flat a copy of The Sun from March 11, with the headline: “£50,000 for Shannon. Sun ups reward to find lost girl.”
Police also discovered a copy of the Daily Mirror which had been ripped up and dumped in a bin.
Its bizarre that The Sun should choose to delight in this little factoid, because it draws attention to a few rather negative interpretations:
- “The Sun is paper of choice for evil scheming child abductors”
- “The Sun falls for trap set by evil scheming child abductors”
or worse
- “The Sun’s dubious track record inspires evil scheming child abductors”
2010: The Wrong Target?
A couple of weeks ago at the Labour Party Conference, Gordon Brown pledged to “enshrine in law Labour’s pledge to end child poverty” although the specifics were hazy. The Campaign to End Child Poverty staged a march in central London yesterday, urging the government to spend more on eradicating child poverty.
The campaigners said that next year’s budget is the last opportunity for the Government to invest to ensure it hit its target of halving child poverty by 2010 – A crucial waypoint en route to complete eradication by 2020. However, the campaigners (and likely Gordon Brown too) may be suffering from short-term thinking, a target mentality that makes the longer fight against poverty harder to win. In an article published on Comment is Free earlier this year, Ian Mulheirn from the Social Market Foundation makes the case for scrapping the 2010 target, in favour of a renewed focus on the 2020 goal. While the 2010 goal can be solved by another £3bn in tax credits (the policy the campaigners are marching for), the 2020 goal will be solved by more long-term measures, such as increased, targeted spending on education:
Further spending in pursuit of the 2010 target would divert precious resources into tackling the symptoms of child poverty while neglecting its underlying causes. …
…the 2010 and 2020 poverty targets now represent distinct visions of how to tackle child poverty. As money becomes scarcer, they are increasingly becoming opposing visions. It is clear that the provision of real equality of opportunity, represented by the 2020 target, rather than the palliative of tax credits, should now be the priority.
Cross posted to robertsharp.co.uk, of course.
Second Life event at Labour Conference
I’ve just had word that one of the SMF’s conference fringe events will be streamed into Second Life on Monday morning. I know that politicians in the US have held events in Second Life, but we think this will be a first in the UK.
The event is titled Public Sector 2.0: How can emerging information technologies improve public service delivery? and will feature contributions from Tom Watson MP and Jerry Fishenden from Microsoft. Watson is the Cabinet Office Minister responsible for E-Government, and of course one of the first MPs to inaugurate his own blog.
Is Labour really on its knees?
Amid the cacophony of speculation about the future of Gordon Brown’s premiership, the imminent electoral meltdown, and the future direction of the Labour party, I think one aspect is being marginalised, which is the future of the party at a local level, and in local government. It is clear that current crisis is playing out on a national level, with national and international problems catalysed by Westminster intruigue and a failure of national leadership that can speak to the concerns of the people.
Now, the fall-out from this is obviously felt at the local level, as Labour’s loss of councillors in the May elections demonstrates. But it is not clear that the existential worries currently afflicting Gordon Brown and his parliamentary colleagues are shared by their Labour friends on local councils. In Tower Hamlets, for example, the Labour group recently increased their majority after four defections from Respect, and a by-election win (after a popular Lib Dem councillor stood down for health reasons, no less).
Of course, if the local parties are not suffering from the same crisis of purpose, this is probably to do with the differences between the nature of local and national governance. Localities like Tower Hamlets have very specific problems, to which a Labour council can confidently respond within their current ideology, without having to worry about national unity, or whether the same policy would be effective in different boroughs.
So, as the columnists and bloggers search in vain for a viable alternative to Brown, and a new direction for the party, I wonder whether the most coherent and confident voices might come from local government, rather than the national scene, policy wonks, or the unions. They are ideally placed to comment on pressing issues such as community cohesion and knife-crime, and how other concerns such as the environment and immigration can be dealt with in practice.
These are purely my anecdotal thoughts – what are the thoughts and experiences of other Liberal Conspiracy readers and writers?
Burnham on Basic Principles
Culture Secretary Andy Burnham calls for regulation of the Internet to protect the “vulnerable, the poor, and the weak.” From the title of the article, “In a Lawless zone, we must protect the vulnerable” one would think he is talking about paedophiles in chat-rooms, or the 180% rise in phishing, but in fact he is talking about copyright theft.
It is also contentious that the poor are being disadvantaged by the ‘lawless’ internet – One great advantage of the medium is that it reduces the financial barriers of entry into any given business. Putting online regulation in place will surely restore those barriers. Indeed, the proposals to introduce some kind of licence fee to download music looks like a revenue generator for record companies, rather than a measure to help young and creative people who are just starting out, and giving away their music free on MySpace.
But for entirely different reasons, it was the following quote hat caught my eye:
Nothing can be accepted as inevitable. Though technology moves quickly, we can’t abandon basic principles that have stood society in good stead for centuries.
Wasn’t this the precise argument against 42 days detention!?
Fifth Estate or Democratic Tool?
When we think about blogging and the development of human interactions through the web, it is easy to assume some kind of historical determinism. The Internet is one huge sandbox, with new blogs and campaigning sites being launched all the time. Most peter out (I’ve been involved in a couple of those myself) but others persist, and grow. This trial-and-error approach suggests that we are at least inching towards a more sophisticated and empowering blogosphere, which exercises more influence over politics and therefore the direction this country is headed.
The Blog Nation event earlier this week raised some of the key issues that the Left needs to answer in order to become more effective online. As I crouched in the front row of the event, rubbing my temples and trying to think of answers, the following thought occurred to me: What if this is all there is? By which I mean, perhaps it is impossible to become much more organized. I refrained from articulating this thought at the time, but it did seem a deft, if nihilistic way of avoiding giving an answer to some of the questions posed, above. Perhaps there is no historical determinism to any of this, and we are not destined to develop anything significantly more efficient than what we have now.
Now I don’t know whether I really believe things to be so hopeless, but if its true it may not be such a bad thing. Rather than grandiose ideas of the blogosphere become some kind of Fifth Estate, perhaps we should aspire to nothing more than another tool for the people to use in checking the power of the elite (both elected representatives and others who hold positions of influence).
Of course we should ask how existing bloggers and activists can work better together, but that is just oiling the machine, rather than inventing a new one. A more important focus is to try to increase access to the new information and opinion that is appearing online. Just as increasing literacy strengthens democracy and promote equality, so computer literacy can strengthen it too. So, my suggestion for the next open source campaign – introduce one relative, friend or colleague to blogging each month. This need not mean forcing them to set up their own blog. Instead, just a gentle explanation of the power of RSS, and the suggestion that they bookmark one – just one – of the fine sites listed here.
Ever so slightly longer version cross posted at my own corner.
On ‘Open Source Campaigning’
Yesterday at the Blog Nation Event, Dan Hardie gave an account of his experiences running his Iraqi Interpreters campaign. He mentioned my post on Open Source Campaigning, but said he thought that ‘open source’ wasn’t an appropriate label, because you need a heirarchy and a leader to run an effective campaign.
To clarify, I’m not sure that the ideas of ‘leadership’ and ‘open source’ are mutually exclusive. Open Source coding projects tend to have a core team of dedicated developers, but individual tasks to code are farmed out to volunteers. Likewise with Jay Rosen’s ‘open source journalism’ – an editor or lead journalist still writes up the piece, but dozens or hundreds of other journalists are able to perform the many discrete pieces of research required.
So it is with Open Source Campaigning. You still need someone like Dan to lead the campaign and make strategic decisions, but the leg-work can be decimated if the lobbying or writing to individual MPs is shared throughout the network.
Cross-posted at my own place, obviously.
To Win, and To Win Fairly
Oh, the twists and turns of the Democrats Primary season! Now its Hillary’s turn to feel the heat, after she invoked the assassination of Bobby Kennedy in a discussion over the lengthy nomination process:
My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don’t understand it.
The implication from many quarters is that Senator Clinton is hanging in there on the off-chance that Senator Obama is murdered. However, if you watch the YouTube of her interview (with the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader) its clear that is not what she is saying. The operative word here is quite obviously ‘June’ and not ‘assassinated’.
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A Protest for Science
Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris, with parliamentary colleagues, at an event in support of the Human Fertility and Embryology Bill, which will protect and extend the right of scientists to perform crucial stem-cell research.
More about all this at the Coalition for Choice website.
BBC: Dog Whistle
Like Sunny, I’m annoyed with the BBC too.
A woman named Suzanne Holdsworth has been released from prison, after her conviction for killing a child she was baby-sitting was deemed unsafe. Apparently, it is likely that toddler Kyle Fisher had a pre-existing disorder that could have caused his death.
All this was reported in a matter-of-fact tone on the news last night, but the editing told a different story. The shot of Mrs Holdsworth we saw as she left court was of her taking a weaselly drag on a king-sized cigarette. And the interview with her partner (who made a very salient point about how, although he was delighted, no-one should forget the dead child) was spliced with a cut-away shot of his tattoos – a bulldog, with ‘England’ emblazoned below. The grammar of the shot renders the segment a dog-whistle to the middle-classes: “Chav Scum”.
Since Mrs Holdsworth is now facing a retrial, that’s unfair on her. But it also reinforces prejudices within our society. The BBC needs to get beyond these cliches.
Licenced Super-Rebels
In a bolshy defence of Gordon Brown, David Aaronovich coins an amusing alternative to the phrase “awkward squad”:
It isn’t just the 20 licensed super rebels, specific only to Labour (the Tories don’t have this hard core of perpetually oppositional MPs who get in on the party’s coat-tails and then spend all their time trying to defeat it)
The rise of these rebels is an interesting development in British politics. The phenomenon of these rebellious MPs seems to have occurred as a side-effect of New Labour’s sizeable majority from 1997-2005: The large majorities gave the Blair Government a feeling of invincibility, which emboldened it to make unpopular policies it might not otherwise have attempted… thereby prompting rebellion. Additionally, it also meant Labour MPs could rebel on principle without bringing down the Government. However, as Aaronovich points out, this has changed in the Brown-era, and these rebels threaten to destabilise a Labour Government. People should know exactly who they are – so we can help or hinder them as we see fit.
As a lunch-time example of citizen-journalism, could we conspirators and contributors and commenters compile a list of who these Super Rebels might be? It strikes me as the sort of recieved wisdom that it would be useful to record in one place. May we have suggestions in the comments, please? I will update this post when we have a long-list. Thanks.
‘The Unrecognized’ still unrecognized
A couple of years ago I was part of the team that produced The Unrecognized, a film highlighting the plight of the Bedouin population of the Negev (Naqab) desert in southern Israel. Despite having lived and worked on the land since the time of the British Mandate and before, their settlements and farms are not acknowledged by the state. Despite paying taxes, the residents are denied basic services such as water and healthcare, which their Jewish neighbours in the area take for granted.
Their story has been in the news again recently, due to a recent report by Human Rights Watch that renews the criticism of Israel’s discriminatory laws.
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Presidential Websites
While waiting for the Wisconsin and Hawaii primary results to drip in, I thought I would have a look at the various presidential candidate websites:
- HillaryClinton.com
- MikeHuckabee.com
- JohnMcCain.com
- BarackObama.com
Its striking how similar they all are in layout. Indeed, the sites for Clinton, McCain and Obama are so alike I thought they might have been created using the same software, but this isn’t so. All have the candidates name and logo in the top-left corner of the site (in common with most websites these days), an e-mail sign-up form in the top-right, and a donate button right below that. All have horizontal menus, a three column layout, with a large graphic element accorss the first two columns, below the menu. While this might demonstrate to some people that the candidates are clones of one another, I’m inclined to see it as proof that all the politicians recognise the value of good design. Following a recognised and established layout allows users to navigate the site quickly and efficiently.
There is, I think, a cliche of the ‘Presidential Candidate Logo’. The surname, of course, coupled with the year digits and then some flag-like representation in red, white and blue. Joe Biden and Dennis Kucinich come close, but its Hillary Clinton who takes the prize for the most obvious logo in the field. What’s quirky about Senator Clinton is that her logo is derived from her first name.
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Call to Prayer, Eastern Spice
Its been a while since a good multicultural conundrum came along to bother us. For a while, I thought that the issue of the mosque in Oxford that wants to broadcast its call to prayer might be one such issue, but while reading a couple of articles in order to write a blog, I came across this quote from the Telegraph:
“We want to fix a loudspeaker to our minaret to broadcast our call to prayer. We would like to have three two-minute calls a day, but if that is not accepted then we would like to have it at least on Fridays.
“In Islamic counties the call is loud so people are reminded to come to prayer. We do not need the volume to be loud, that can be adjusted because our members have a time-table for the prayers. But we want to have the call in some form because it is our tradition.”
Now this doesn’t look like a culture clash to me, so much as groups engaging in a dialogue with a local authority, just as they should in a liberal democracy.
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Moments and Momentum
I note that the last seven posts on the Liberal Conspiracy have been about the US Primaries (I’ve been posting musings at my own place too). This might seem odd for a group site that is supposedly concerned with the direction of the British Liberal-Left.
But let us have no apologies. Who can blame us for lapping up anything which undermine the cynicism of politics-as-usual? In analysing yesterday’s Democrat debate, Xpostfactoid makes some interesting points about the nature of politics and campaigning:
Politics is almost literally all talk. You’ve got to be good in the cloak room, at the negotiating table, on the debate floor. What gives a politician the ultimate strength to push through change, though, is to convince the mass of voters to support his or her effort for something major like health care reform. “Don’t discount that power, because when the American people are determined that something is going to happen, then it happens.” That says it all. That’s a real political philosophy at its deepest. (via Andrew)
It also provokes column inches and blog posts, generating a momentum that magnifies such power. As we await the next wave of primaries, it is beginning to feel as if our American cousins are about to create a historical, political ‘moment’ that has spun out of control of the spinners. The last such ‘moment’ we had in British Politics was Mr Brown’s clammy handling of the early election decision. You will excuse me if I keep my attention fixed on New Hampshire, where altogether more inspiring events are unfolding.
New Jersey Abolishes Death Penalty
The Democratic Governor of New Jersey, Jon Corzine, has just signed a bill abolishing the state’s death penalty. It is the first state to do so since the USA reintroduced capital punishment in the 1970s. (h/t Tyra).
Interfering with the Anglican Church
According to my Facebook profile, I am variously an anesthetist, and aesthete, and (less frequently) a non-practicing atheist. But whatever guise I choose for myself, I tend to look upon the tribulations of Dr Williams with the detachment of an outsider. I reason that because I’m not a church-goer, the possible ’schism’ over gay clergy should not really concern me.
But now I’m wondering whether that is the correct view. Looking again at the word ‘Anglican’, it occurs to me that this particular Communion of Churches might actually be considered an exporter of British ’soft power’ and influence, much like the British Council. The Church of England is still a formal branch of our state, and Anglican Bishops sit in the House of Lords. Furthermore, it is the British Prime Minister who effectively appoints the Archbishop of Canterbury. So I would say that the Archbishop and his Church are formal (though obviously not democratic) representatives of our country.
If The Church represents us all, is is not reasonable for atheists, agnostics and secularists to poke their nose into its affairs? Traditionalists say that Britain is still essentially a Christian country built on Christian morals. If that is the case, and while Church of England retains its privileged position in our political system, then I would say that us non-believers have the right to interfere in its policies and rulings.
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Clegg and the Digital Revolution
At the Social Market Foundation on Wednesday, Liberal Democrat Leadership Candidate Nick Clegg began a speech by outlining the technological context of 21st Century politics. It is a good approximation of my own view. He said:
… the innovations and technological advances that are already shaping and defining the 21st century – Google, Wikipedia, Facebook, YouTube – are about something very different: they are about creating the tools that will enable people to deliver services to each other.
The old model was about constructing the institutional hardware of the paternalistic state. The new model is about developing the democratic software of the empowered society. The old model was controlled by a professional elite. The new model is operated by ordinary people.
…
This is the great paradox of our times: in our private and professional lives, we have never been more empowered.But in our relationship with the state, we have never been so powerless. And make no mistake; it is the poorest and the most vulnerable amongst us who lose out the most.
Mr Clegg’s campaign website has the full text (in which he goes onto propose that LEAs and PCTs be directly elected), and I’ve quoted the introduction at more length at my own place, if you’re interested.
Clegg is often viewed as being on the right of his party, but this introduction looks like a left-wing analysis to me. As I tried to articulate in Graachi’s post (which discussed What Blogging Can and Can’t Achieve), the attraction of blogging and the wider digital revolution, is in its potential to redress the power imbalance, leaking power from the elites to the masses. Does Clegg’s talk of “delivering services to each other” spring from the Right’s affection for the free market and the choices of individuals, or from the Left’s long held belief that we can achieve more through collective action, than we can alone? Given the free and social nature of blogging, YouTube and the political campaigns we see online, I’m inclined towards the latter view.
ID Cards and the moral battlefield
For those opposed to the ID card scheme, it is easy to see the silver lining to the recent news that the taxman has lost 25 million records in the post. While the disappearance of these CDs causes grave concern for the people who’s data has gone missing, the incompetence does undermine the case for ID Cards: “We cannot afford a similar error on the national ID database,” (the argument goes) “… so, lets scrap the scheme”. Tactically, yes, I think it is an argument we in the anti-ID card lobby should be making loudly… but let us never forget that the administration of the system is a practical reason to oppose the scheme, and not a moral or ideological reason.
Even if (in some thought experiment world, some Cloud Number 10) the government could 100% guarantee the security of the data, I would still be opposed to the scheme, because the political relationship between citizen and state does not change when the State buys a better computer system. Nor, for that matter, would it change if the cost of the scheme were to rise or fall. Brighton blogger Neil Harding recently changed his mind on ID cards, based on these practical reasons. While his interlocutors crowed at his volte-face, it seemed an empty victory to me. The moral argument was sidelined.
This matters, because arguments for ID cards seem to be made up exclusively of practical reasons. Advocates in Government and the security services play down the costs, and instead cite ‘convenience’ and ‘efficiency’. The moral aspect to their argument – that the cards will offer a measure of safety from terror and crime – is unproven and untested, and has the unmistakeable allure of the post hoc about it.
Meanwhile, here in the anti-camp, the opposite is true. The moral resistance to any change in the relationship between individual and state is conceptually prior to, and transcends, the concern over costs or data-security. If we successfully communicate this to our fellow citizens, we shall win the debate. Are you reading, op-ed writers?
You can read articles through the front page, via Twitter or rss feeds.
» How bad is the feline obesity crisis?
» Why don’t MPs pay back tuition fees instead of increasing ours?
» Obama is right to slam BP – and why capitalists should too
» Why does Phillip Blond see civic cohesion as a security issue?
» So what if the Labour candidates went to Oxbridge?
» Last night’s Labour hustings: will it get interesting or turn to torture?
» It’s now down to Ken to win London for Labour
» The Labour people need
» Blog Nation: what would you like to see discussed?
» The Labour leadership’s token contender.. and it’s not Diane Abbott
» In defence of these fraternal nominations
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