UK Gov't Launches 'Your Freedom' Website To Seek Laws Worth Repealing 332
Firefalcon writes "The UK Government launched Thursday the 'Your Freedom' website, headed by the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, to 'identify laws that should be repealed.' In a recent tweet, Police State UK pointed out an article in the New Statesman which appeals for people to call on the Government to repeal the ill thought-out Digital Economy Act that was rushed through Parliament without sufficient scrutiny. While part of the Act is regarding the digital TV switchover, other sections allow for users to be restricted or disconnected from the Internet at the behest of copyright owners, which goes against the principle of 'innocent until proven guilty' that has been in place since the Magna Carta."
Too late for "innocent until proven guilty" (Score:2, Informative)
Shooter licensing and gun registration, imposing penalties for refusing to divulge passwords, default penalties for people who refuse drug and alcohol testing all go against the principle of 'innocent until proven guilty' that has been in place since the Magna Carta.
Re:Too late for "innocent until proven guilty" (Score:3, Informative)
Gun registration, no. Background checks on the buyer, yes. Actually, to apply for most jobs you have to submit the same papers you need to get a gun (clean criminal record, valid ID) and guns are not "designed to kill", they're designed to shoot bullets. Guns are actually a most inefficient way to kill humans, poison is better and you can make very nasty stuff with commercially available chemicals.
And who said "Average Joe" needs to be "protected"? In the UK, what the population needs is less protection, more education, less classism and less alcohol.
Re:Sounds great, but... (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately, that still allows a lot of idiocy to be on display.
But there is also plenty of good highlighting of idiotic laws and regs. Have a read - you might enjoy it.
Re:This is a bad idea. (Score:2, Informative)
And it is indeed possible Stop and search laws were successfully challenged in the European court.
By the way, does the UK has jury nullification?
Yes, and no. Jury nullification isn't actually an explicit legal right as such in the UK or the US. It's a de facto power. The Jury has a duty to make a judgement on the law and the facts of the case. The thing is they don't need to give a reason and if they don't there's absolutely nothing that can be done.
So yes, the Jury may pass a judgement of not guilty because the law is stupid. On the other hand, they can also pass a judgement of guilty because of the result of a coin toss.
Re:Sounds great, but... (Score:3, Informative)
The interent is a powerful tool, but having access to unlimited and unmediated information is not always the best thing possible when you need specific ideas.
There's been some good stuff going on wikiversity [wikiversity.org] since way before the election. What gets posted to the government website, likely 99% junk.
Re:Too late for "innocent until proven guilty" (Score:4, Informative)
Since when is gun registration violating innocent until proven guilty?
Is it the same way as driver and vehicle licensing violates it?
That is... not at all?
Just because the courts have ruled that vehicle licensing doesn't violate the principle of "innocent until proven guilty" doesn't necessarily make it so. After all, there was plenty of precedent that slavery didn't violate the principle of "all men are created equal" too.
It may have been reasonable to require license tags on vehicles when the only real application was for identifying drivers who have been involved in an accident. But now that cameras are pervasive and the databases linking license tags to owners/drivers are too, license tags of people who have not committed a crime are routinely abused by both the government and private entities. The scope has creeped far beyond the original justification and thus what once was considered a reasonable trade-off between the public good and individual rights is no longer so.
The Digital Economy Bill isn't going anywhere (Score:4, Informative)
Thank you for your email of the 8th April about the Digital Economy Act. I share your concern about this piece of legislation and I want to make clear the approach that my Party has taken.
As you will be aware the Bill received Royal Assent yesterday.
Britain has been made to wait too long for legislation updating the regulatory environment for the digital and creative industries. I regret that once the Government got around to considering these issues, it did not allocate sufficient time in the House of Commons for proper legislative scrutiny. It says a great deal about the Government's support for the creative industries that despite considering many of these issues as far back as 2006 they only just brought this piece of legislation forward.
My Party took the decision to seek to remove those clauses of the Digital Economy Bill that we did not support or feel received proper legislative scrutiny, while supporting the Bill as a whole. Rejecting the Bill would have been an unacceptable set-back for the important measures it contains.
We supported the Bill's efforts to tackle online copyright infringement. This is an extremely serious issue that costs the creative industries hundreds of millions of pounds each year. We want to make sure that Britain has the most favourable intellectual property framework in the world for innovators, digital content creators and high tech businesses.
The measures in the Bill aimed at tackling online copyright infringement received robust scrutiny in the House of Lords. My Party was concerned about the lack of Parliamentary oversight of the original clauses and as such the Act now has a super-affirmative resolution in it. This means Parliament will debate any order that the Secretary of State lays that would allow people to be disconnected. These measures can also not be introduced for 12 months [ie 12 months after it became law]. This means that we are by no means rushing in to these decisions and that the next Parliament will be able to consider them beforehand.
The measures in the Act designed to tackle illegal peer to peer file sharing set up a proportionate regime that would, only following public consultation, repeated warnings and due process, lead to people having their internet connection temporarily suspended. It will not, as many have suggested, lead to people being disconnected without an appeal. Even if people are disconnected they will be able to sign up to another ISP immediately without penalty.
While I have no doubt that these measures could have been improved if the Government had allocated time for this Bill to be debated in Committee, blocking these measures in their entirety would have risked hundreds of thousands of jobs in the TV, film, music and sports industries and was therefore not something we were willing to do.
Once again, thank you for taking the time to contact me.
Yours sincerely,
Nicholas Soames
Fun fact: Nick Soames is Winston Churchill's grandson.
Re:thousand and one laws (Score:3, Informative)
Pure democracy isn't that great of an idea.
The average person isn't well educated on the meaning, purpose and ramification of laws.
The average person is also easilly swayed by emotional appeals and the sway of a charismatic personality.
It wouldn't take long for a pure democracy to turn in on itself and repeal freedom in the name of "think of the children" and impose tyranny on its minorities.
Re:Libertarian is best (Score:3, Informative)
Congratulations, you've attacked me with an ad hominem while completely bypassing my main point. So let me reiterate it for you:
Race, gender and sexual orientation equality were not the cultural norm in the 19th century. They are in the 21st century. So if we were to go back to the 19th century way of government, we would not have to take back the inequality found in 19th century life. We can have the best of both worlds.
Re:I knew things have changed in britain (Score:1, Informative)
Yeah, and then after that they raised the biggest regressive tax in the UK to 20%.
Re:Note to America (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Too late for "innocent until proven guilty" (Score:3, Informative)
The Bill of Rights of 1689 included the right of British subjects and permanent residents to bear arms for self defence as long as they weren't Catholic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_Rights_1689 [wikipedia.org]