Digital Britain promises to ‘tackle piracy’ online. Extensive powers of blocking, filtering and reducing access to the internet will be put in place if anti-infringement letter writing campaigns are not successful.
If ‘secondary legislation’ (rubber-stamped papers to parliament) is passed, new powers would be given to Ofcom to require ISPs to restrict access of alleged infringers.
There [...]

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Virgin have today announced that they are on the way to providing an ‘all you can eat’ music service, although they have so far only secured a deal with Universal.
It’s encouraging to hear that labels are now working to bring their content online, as they have also with Spotify. What’s less encouraging is the clear [...]

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News that Lord Carter will quit government in July raises serious questions about the future of the Digital Britain proposals, which are due to be released next Tuesday.
Minimum - if minimal - standards for broadband; hopefully, additional thinking about privacy online; and the controversial and much disliked Digital Rights Agency are all expected in the [...]

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Stand back from the media frenzy concentrating on Labour’s woes for a moment, and ask yourself what these elections mean for digital rights.
Several parties that broadly supported digital rights concerns did well in this election, including, in the UK, UKIP and the Greens. The Liberal Democrats also had a fair showing.
Across Europe, the Green Party [...]

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ORG is non-partisan, and the quality and chances of your candidates vary from region to region, so we are not recommending any party over another. Hopefully, the candidates’ pledges on key issues and their track records will help you decide who it’s best to vote for.
What is clear is that Labour have unfortunately refused to [...]

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Update: We have now had a reply for all Conservative candidates.
The Open Rights Group is publicising the positions of MEPs on several key digital rights issues that Europe will be legislating on. These include copyright, data retention, personal data and the open internet.
Around half of the candidates from the Lib Dems, Greens, SNP / Plaid [...]

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Six million UK citizens are infringing copyright daily by downloading material via P2P and other file sharing services, according to the government’s Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property.
Let’s not however fall into the trap of assuming that the choice is between massive infringement bringing industries to their knees, and clamping down on users.
What we are [...]

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(This urgent call to action was originally posted by La Quadrature du Net)
ALERT: last minute trick to prevent European Parliament to vote on amendment 138/46 by changing the order of votes. A dedicated campaign page regarding the issue below has been put on the wiki, including arguments, counter-arguments, and advice on how to contact MEPs.
Paris, [...]

Read the rest of "Ask MEPs to adopt Citizens’ Rights Amendments on 6 May."

Against widespread dissent and controversy MEPs in the European Parliament voted this morning to allow copyright term extension to pass a first reading.
4 out of the 7 main groups (ALDE, GREENS/EFA, NGL, IND/ DEM) together with a cross party platform of MEPs voted to reject the proposal. Internal opposition threatened the group positions of the [...]

Read the rest of "Parliament buckles: copyright extension goes through to Council of Ministers"

Wednesday is the last full day to lobby your MEPs in Strasbourg before this Thursday’s vote on copyright term extension.
A cross party platform of MEPs have tabled an amendment to reject the proposal to extend the term of sound copyrights beyond 50 years. Contact your MEPs in Strasbourg and ask them to support [...]

Read the rest of "Last day to tell your MEPs: Do not enclose the cultural commons"