Roundups

We have a Scottish Roundup (done by me this week) and a Britblog Roundup.

Baroness Scotland

New Labour apparatchik falls foul of her own law:

Baroness Patricia Scotland broke the law when she employed a woman who, it turns out, was not legally entitled to work in Britain. A law she should know about: not just because she was one of the youngest ever QCs, nor because now, as Attorney General, she is the government’s own in-house lawyer, but because she was a minister in the Home Office when the law was passed.

She says she did nothing wrong. She maintains that she took all reasonable steps to ascertain the status of her employee. I believe her. And even if there was more that she could have done, as a private person with a very busy life to lead – what with the vast, ill-scrutinised chunks of legislation it was her job to coax through an often sceptical House of Lords – her failure to pursue her Polynesian housekeeper with the dedication of a full-time immigration officer is only to be expected. One might even call it admirable. I mean, what sort of demented control-freak naturally assumes everyone they come across is a probable criminal out to cheat the system?

Oh yes, I forgot. New Labour.

Lady Scotland did everything that might naturally be expected of her. The trouble is, under the typically mean-spirited, illiberal, guilty-until-proven-innocent law she helped put onto the statute book, acting like a rational human being is no defence.

If they was any justice in this world, Baroness Scotland would be prosecuted. But in reality, it’s one law for New Labour apparatchiks and one law for everyone else, so she almost certainly won’t be.

Britblog Roundup #239

Britblog Roundup #239 is here.

Brown ponders electoral reform

The Prime Minster is considering electoral reform:

“The idea is gaining support in the Cabinet, and Labour now looks certain to fight the next election on a firm commitment to scrap the current voting system”

So reports The Independent in a piece today.

What makes this more than idle speculation? According to the Indy:

The Government’s Democratic Renewal Council, chaired by Gordon Brown, met this week. Although no final decision was taken, The Independent has learnt that the options it is considering include:

* Rushing through legislation before the election to allow a referendum on electoral reform shortly afterwards;

* A polling day referendum on the principle of changing the system, to be followed by a second plebiscite if there were a “yes” vote;

* A polling day referendum on a switch to AV or “AV plus”, to be implemented at the following general election;

* A Labour manifesto commitment to change the system if the party retains power.

One cabinet source said: “The idea of a referendum on election day is on the agenda. It is a very live issue.”

The correct way for the ogvernment to do this would be to select one system — either AV or AV+ would do — and have the referendum on that specific system. That way, it would be hard for the Tories to wriggle out of it if the people vote for change.

PPUK overtakes Labour Party on Facebook

According to the PPUK blog, the Pirate Party’s Facebook group is bigger than the Labour Party’s Facebook group:

It appears the Pirate Party is more popular than the Labour Party, at least on Facebook. Our group there — at the time of writing — has 6364 supporters, whereas Labour’s has only 6356. And the Pirate Party has only been in existance for a month.

The only UK political party to have more supporters than PPUK on Facebook is the BNP (currently 7383 supporters). This is likely to change, with PPUK overtaking the BNP, not least because there are more filesharers in Britain than fascists.

Making imaginary property tangible

On making information more like physical objects:

Let’s play a little hypothetical. Let’s say that someone had discovered a way to automatically — without any additional cost — create all the food that the world’s population needed, and automatically have it appear wherever and whenever needed. Think of it like the “replicator” device in Star Trek, where you can just walk up to it, and it’ll create whatever food you want. The entire issue of hunger and worries about the “scarce resource” of food would go away. Who, in their right mind, would want to break such a machine, and force this newly abundant resource back to being scarce?

Yet, that seems to be exactly what’s happening in the music world. A whole bunch of folks have sent in this positively ridiculous attempt by some guy named Paul Sweazey to get the IEEE to endorse a new standard to make content act more like physical property by allowing it to be “stolen.” It’s basically a weird DRM system that would allow the content to be fully “taken away” from the original holder.

I think we can safely predict this new form of DRM will either never see the light of day, or be a big flop.

Nathan Myhrvold, Patent Troll

Tim Lee has written an exposé on Nathan Myrvold’s business model as a patent troll.

(via Slashdot)

UPDATE: Dilbert says it best:

Britblog Roundup #238

Britblog Roundup #238 is up on Suz Blog.

Musicians oppose disconnection of filesharers

The government wants to disconnect people it alleges have been engaging in illegal fileshairing. They say this is to help musicians. But what do musicians say about it? They don’t think filesharers should be disconnected:

A rift has opened between music’s creators and its record labels, with a broad alliance of musicians, songwriters and producers fiercely criticising the business secretary Lord Mandelson’s plans to cut off the broadband connections of internet users who illegally download music.

In a statement seen by the Guardian, a coalition of bodies representing a range of stars including Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Elton John and Damon Albarn attacks the proposals as expensive, illogical and “extraordinarily negative”.

The Featured Artists Coalition (FAC), the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors (Basca) and the Music Producers Guild (MPG) have joined forces to oppose the proposals to reintroduce the threat of disconnection for persistent file sharers, which was ruled out in the government’s Digital Britain report in June.

Maybe the government doesn’t really care about musicians, maybe they just care about their rich music industry friends such as David Geffen.

The Sword of Good

The Sword of Good is a fantasy story by Eliezer Yudkowsky, which plays with the genre conventions. It’s good.