Copyright and music - news

Oh this is soo amusing. I had to post it. Turns out that Barack Obama and the Queen are responsible for some shameful behaviour!!! Tut tut! This just really goes to show how complex and ineffective copyright laws with regards to the music industry are.

The is also uproaral about the "3 strikes" proposals on illegal downloading. As Billy Bragg describes this as moving the legal responsibility from the music producers to ISPs.

Billy Bragg represents the The Featured Artists Coalition. Read more about it to see what they are doing to protect artist and their stance on digital music distribution.

Freedom, privacy, democracy...

You have to wonder with the sorry state of affairs in the UK recently. I like to read some blogs on the different issues regarding privacy...

Some links you may find interesting:

• http://www.openrightsgroup.org/ - this organisation looks at the rights you have especially in the digital and media areas.
• http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/ - categorises recent Freedom of Expression requests. It's brilliant, because it tells you straight away with small symbols if the request was successful, declined or still pending. FOE requests have to be acknowledged immediately and answered in a specific time frame, the website shows how much time before the request is illegally overdue.
• http://www.idealgovernment.com/ - the blog talks about an ideal e-goverment and assess issues as ID cards, government databases and the digitisations of various state organisations, especially the NHS.

Pretty good reads. More to come...