ORG Law Fund campaign update

We launched our campaign to fund a new legal position for ORG on the 2nd November with two main goals:

Goal 1: 150 new supporters

This will allow us to launch our legal project and hire a part-time Legal Officer to work in ORG’s office

Goal 2: 300 new supporters

This will allow us to fund a Legal Officer full-time

We are now 25% of the way towards Goal 1!

Thank you for sharing the campaign with your friends and getting involved, but there is still a long way to go. Please join if you haven’t already.  

We’re asking for new supporters right now because it has become clear that we must be able to defend digital rights on a legal front, not just by way of thorough policy work and active campaigning. Just this week we saw yet another case of an arrest made for an offensive image online. The term offensive is being tied up into harassment and other laws. The cluster of these arrests shows how important it is to be able to fight these cases – like Paul Chambers and the Twitter joke trial, like Atos shutting down a forum for hundreds of disabled people – and challenge the validity of the arrests, accusations and of the laws themselves.

Unfortunately we don’t have the capacity yet to take these cases on. We need to expand to hire a legal officer who has the expertise to lead on legal work. This is why we are asking for you to take this opportunity to join ORG, if you have any concerns about the erosion of your civil liberties online.

As part of the ORGLawFund drive we’re also organising many other projects across November.

We’ll be running Stop the Snoopers’ Charter’: an event co-hosted with Index on Censorship to explore the Communications Data Bill and plan joint campaign actions with civil liberties groups. Cory Doctorow will be presenting the headline speech explaining the Bill. There’ll be further presentations from civil liberties groups and technical experts, followed by workshops and group discussions. It’s a great opportunity to get involved directly in ORG’s work and learn more about the details of Government proposals for mass surveillance of the nation.

Neil Gaiman, Cory Doctorow, Charles Stross, Hugh Hancock, Becky Hogge and others have agreed to talk to ORG about their personal interest in digital rights. In a series of videos that will be released soon they encourage others to think about how your rights online are central to life. The internet is where everything takes place, dating, shopping, social interactions – and not just techies or digital rights campaigners should care about defending it.

 

What you can do:

Please do share, encourage others to join and even sign-up yourself if you haven’t already.

  • Persuade a friend to join ORG and we will give you a free gift
  • Join ORG, if you haven’t already! As part of ORG Law Fund we are offering a free copy of Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross’ Rapture of the Nerds as a thank you.
  •  Make a video about why you support ORG and join in the discussion