I can’t quite believe that it’s 1.30am and I’m sitting here reading up on data retention and the new directive/framework being proposed by the UK for Europe. It’s really ugly stuff, and I’ll blog more on it once I’ve got my head round it.

What amazes me - in a way, although also not - is that one can go through life quite unaware of the crap that goes on. Quite blissfully unaware. Then you start to think a bit harder about what’s happening, and it’s like picking the scab off a wound, only to find out that it’s deeper and more badly infected that you had originally thought. Suddenly, you not only feel compelled to pick off the rest of the scab, but you also start to have visions of scalpels and maggots.

I’ve had an interest in digital rights for a while now, but with the birth of our new digital rights organisation, I am doing much more research into what’s going on in the UK and Europe, and it’s not pretty. Our civil rights are being eroded away from under our noses, and yet there’s hardly a mention of it in the press. Everyone has learnt to call people who download music as ‘pirates’, even though the real pirates are the ones that run their own pressing plants in Asia and produce millions of fake CDs and DVDs. But only a tiny minority of people are aware that our right to privacy, to freedom of expression and association, our civil and human rights, are being attacked by the very people who should be protecting them.

We’re working pretty hard at the moment, in between such minor things as earning a living, to get our digital rights organisation into a position where we can launch when the pledge matures, and the more I look at what’s going on the more eager I become to start taking action, to do something about the abuses visited upon our rights by our government, by the European Union, and by big business. Just let me at ‘em.

Originally posted on Chocolate and Vodka.

digital rights, data retention, europe