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Sir Ken McDonald, former director of public prosecutions quoted in today’s Guardian talking about the Home Secretary’s plans to introduce measures designed to seriously reduce personal liberty in Britain:

“‘Authorisations for access might be written into statute. The most senior ministers and officials might be designated as scrutineers. But none of this means anything,’ said Macdonald. ‘All history tells us that reassurances like these are worthless in the long run. In the first security crisis the locks would loosen.’”

…

“‘The tendency of the state to seek ever more powers of surveillance over its citizens may be driven by protective zeal. But the notion of total security is a paranoid fantasy which would destroy everything that makes living worthwhile. We must avoid surrendering our freedom as autonomous human beings to such an ugly future. We should make judgments that are compatible with our status as free people.’”

Short of explicitly calling for mass protests on the streets, I’m not sure what else Ken McDonald can do to stir the politically lazy, apathetic population of the UK. We’ve been warned by enough senior figures, most of us studied history at school, and we have our common sense. The rest is up to us.

My old friend Deverill Weekes sent me some links for a documentary project he worked on last year with Juliet Landau and fellow Londoner, Gary Oldman. Much of it was shot using three Nokia N93-1 mobile phone handsets. The next time you moan about your cheap camera limiting your creative potential you might want to remind yourself of this project. On the technical side, film industry professionals, lighting and post-production facilities of course got the most out of the Nokia’s capabilities, but even so, the project shows what can be achieved with consumer grade equipment.

… you know, in case there’s anything “illegal” on their players?

MPAA asks Obama for More Copyright Surveillance of the Internet

For “Big Content” and copyright holders, the advent of the digital consumer age was akin to walking off a Road Runner-style cartoon cliff. Despite the fact that there is no longer any solid ground beneath its feet, the industry is demanding that governments, ISPs and hardware manufacturers lay down paving slabs as it walks out into the void in order to stop its outmoded business model from crashing down to the foot of the cliff below (which is where nature thinks it should be). If no one co-operates in the laying down of those slabs, the business will fall, not to its death, but it will take a big hit. Its current model, that of treating digital information as if it were a “physical” product, is incapable of defying gravity without plenty of artificial support.

The situation of the traditional copyright holder model is obviously very precarious. Nature wants it down on the valley floor, and copyright holders are naturally afraid. If they are going to defy nature, they’re going to need something less precarious than ad hoc slabs, they’re going to need some serious, gravity-defying structure. And so Big Content is lobbying governments, hardware manufacturers and ISPs around the world to persuade them to contribute to the building of a huge, solidly engineered bridge, designed with the express purpose of preventing its out-moded business model from crashing and burning.

In itself, this wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing perhaps, but the problem is that the bridge can only be built by forcing consumers to contribute by surrendering computing power, their consumer rights, and their right to privacy, all of which are needed to build and maintain that bridge. What’s more, all consumers need to be forced to acquiesce, including those that have no interest or involvement in the business model that needs the profit support life-support machine. Moreover, there is no destination for the bridge, no “far side” of the canyon, it will just extend out into space and will need to continue on indefinitely — and it will need to be extended at the speed at which the traffic it carries travels, no mean feat of engineering! How realistic and sustainable does this sound to you?

The destiny of computers as a technology is not to serve copyright holders, the functionality of computers should not be limited in order to protect their financial interests. Putting your copyrighted material on my computer is a privilege, and if you ask me nicely I’ll let you do it. If you start wagging your finger in my face,  telling me what I can and can’t do with your precious content when it’s on my machine, then frankly, you can shove it. I don’t want anything on my property that gives someone else the legal right to tell me what to do with that property. Go and build your own self-serving machines, and leave those of us who want a computer rather than a proprietary media player, in peace. Copyrighted material is just one of many types of content. It is selfish, greedy, presumptuous and authoritarian of the content industry to attempt to rein in and cripple the power of two of the most awesome tools (the computer and the Internet) mankind has yet devised. The tail shouldn’t wag the dog, after all.

I’ll go further, if the “information economy” can only function if consumers are stripped if their rights and routinely threatened with legal action and arrest, then the information economy (at least in the form that Big Content wishes to see), will cease to be viable. Engaging in continual guerilla war with your customers is not a sustainable business strategy!

We salute you Craig. Despite the fact that the British state would have denied you your most fundamental human right, that of being in control of your own life, you managed to preserve that right to the end.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/north_yorkshire/7774652.stm

The documentary examining your illness and death airs this evening on a British TV channel, and the media here is full of predictable objections from authoritarian and reactionary forces that want to take that right away from people in your situation, forcing them to spend their final months, years or decades in a living nightmare of terrifying helplessness and dependency. You were destined to suffer a fate that many consider to be one of the most horrific of all, namely, becoming a “brain in a vat”, utterly helpless and eventually destined to lose even the means to communicate your most basic needs to the world around you (and even that would have required that the world around you remained compassionate and attentive to your needs, things you would have been powerless to ensure). It truly is the stuff of nightmares, but the British state was going to prevent you from taking the required steps to avoid it.

Craig was faced with an utterly horrendous ordeal that could have lasted decades. To those who would have preferred to have seen him forced to endure such a horrific, drawn-out fate in order that their inherited superstitious beliefs be appeased, I say shame on you. It’s unconscionable to allow such hangovers from the primordial mental swamp to override the very real desires and needs of a man in such a desperate personal situation.

To those who object on utilitarian grounds, believing that a liberal approach to euthanasia creates the  potential for too much abuse, I’m less dismissive and I share your concerns to some extent. However, I do not accept that any theoretical concerns override the very real situation that Craig faced. And they certainly don’t override the most fundamental human right of all, that of self-determination.

As for the televising of Craig’s death, well, it was his decision, no one forced him. If you don’t want to watch the program, it’s quite simple, don’t.