Filesoup
Among the concerns was the news that the goods seized during the operation were no longer being held by police, but had instead been handed over to the Federation Against Copyright Theft (Fact), an accredited private group that often assists law enforcement with inquiries in such cases.
taken from
the BBC news story is a worrying development. FACT is clearly setting itself up as a quasi-police body and I hope the Police have enough sense to do something about it.
Federation Against Copyright Theft Limited
Useful info that has been collected..
Federation Against Copyright Theft Limited
Directors: British Sky Broadcasting Limited, British Video Association Limited, Film Distributors Association Limited, Motion Pictures Association Incorporated, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Limited, The Walt Disney Company Limited, Twentieth Century Fox Film Company Limited, Universal Pictures Limited, Video Standards Council Limited
Registered Office: Europa House, Church Street, Old Isleworth, Middlesex, TW7 6DA. [Google Map]
Purpose: To protect and advance the interests of its Members (the movie industry) in any and every possible way. This includes (but is not limited to) taking legal action, conducting surveillance, intelligence gathering and keeping records of anything that may affect those interests.
We say: Ex-Police officers acting like they always wanted to in the force but couldn't because of the rules. Now there are no rules this private company openly brags of conducting RIPA type surveillance on UK citizens, keeping databases and other activities that by rights should be illegal unless you are a public body. Many believe this sort of behaviour by them is just the tip of the iceberg and FACT have been branded as acting unlawfully and illegally in a recent court case.
Known Employees
The list below is what has been gleaned using open source intelligence however we have been promised a full staff list from our source inside FACT.
Brian Robertson - Chairman
Kieron Sharp - Director General
Jim Angell - Director of Operations
Colin Tansley - Director of Intelligence and Internet
Eddie Leviten - Head of Communications
Howard Lamb - Internet Industry Liaison Officer
Mark Kempster - Internet Investigator
Neil Gardiner - Senior Investigator
Alan Haskell - Investigator
Justine Crawford - Intelligence Analyst
Paul Archer - Consultant
Structure and Ownership
The Federation Against Copyright Theft Limited (FACT) was created in 1982 with the intention of fighting "video tape piracy". Up until 16 April 2008 FACT had the registered address of 7 Victory Business Centre, Worton Road, Isleworth, Middlesex, TW7 6DB. FACT have changed their registered office but still use Victory, as the staff call it, for office space. This is the identical address that Motion Picture Association Incorporated used as its office until 31 December 2008.
FACT is a normal private company, it is not a law enforcement agency or a prosecuting authority (despite its claims that it is). It was set up and is funded by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). The companys stated objective is to protect and advance the interests of its Members (the movie industry) in any and every possible way. This includes (but is not limited to) taking legal action, conducting surveillance, intelligence gathering and keeping records (databases) of anything that may affect those interests.
The board of directors for FACT are all corporate entities involved in film production and distribution with the majority of the board containing the US movie studios (Sony, Universal, Walt Disney, and Twentieth Century Fox) and the MPA. In addition to the MPA controlling the majority of the board at FACT, the members of the MPA also have substantial control over the other directors of FACT, this is quite obvious to see as follows:
British Video Association Limited – BVA is one of FACTs directors however Sony, Universal, Walt Disney, and Twentieth Century Fox and Warner Brothers all sit on the BVA board of directors. The MPA's über lobbyer and government ear bender Lavinia Carey also chairs the BVA.
Film Distributors Association Limited – FDA is one of FACTs directors however Sony, Twentieth Century Fox, Walt Disney, Warner Brothers all sit on the FDA board of directors. The FDA is also seen by many as a company setup to simply parrot the MPA messages of the day (eg. we need 3 strikes, we need camcording made illegal in cinemas etc).
In a presentation on 29 October 2008 the Head of Communication for FACT, Eddie Leviten, stated that the MPAA were the parent body of FACT. It is undeniable, given the evidence above, that the FACT operation in the United Kingdom is owned and controlled by the MPAA in the United States.
Copy, Rip, Burn: Reviewed in THE
Copy, Rip, Burn: The Politics of Copyleft and Open Source12 February 2009
The production of non-proprietary software, more commonly known as free/libre and open-source software (FLOSS), has taken parts of the academic, activist and governmental world by storm. It has not only forced an intellectual reassessment of theories of human nature and creativity that help justify the expansion of intellectual property regimes, but it has also inspired academics, journalists and activists to craft similar endeavours.
David Berry, mindful of these developments, has written a persuasive account on the politics of copyleft and open source. Copy, Rip, Burn stands apart from its cohort because of its overtly critical bent. Berry offers a rich discursive analysis of FLOSS, but also situates it within the backdrop of capitalist forces that ultimately blunt, he argues, its radical potential. Within this general frame, he also builds - and this is the intellectual heart of his book - a typology drawn from the Roman legal system, which he uses to explode the binaries between private/public and property/commons commonly used to describe FLOSS. Given Berry's fresh intellectual contribution, this book is a must-read for any scholar or activist interested either in FLOSS or the general politics of IP regulation.
read more here...
Damian Green Arrest - Letter to my MP.
Below is a letter I sent to my MP regarding the constitutionally important issue of
Damian Green's arrest by the Metropolitan Police. I have finally received a letter from the Home Office - which essentially states it cannot comment about an ongoing police investigation (no surprise there then). More disappointing was the fact that my MP,
Alan Williams, didn't bother to comment directly on the affair or appear interested in taking up the issue within the institution of Parliament (he merely forwarded the letter to the Home Office). He stands down at the next election and I will be interested to see if his replacement shows more interest in representing constituents concerns *within* Parliament.
Friday 28 November 2008
Dear Alan Williams MP,
I write to express my concern that Metropolitan Police officers, namely
members of its counter-terrorism command, arrested and searched the
offices of an acting MP, Damian Green. More worryingly I wish to
express dismay that it appears that they searched his office within the
Parliamentary Estate. I think it is unacceptable that police officers
submit any MP to this kind of search without clear reference to
Parliament. This is essentially that State interfering directly within
the workings of Parliament and as such shows that the police are
developing a worrying disregard for the sanctity and preeminence of
Parliamentary privilege. It is reported that Speaker Michael Martin
had authorised the search, if this is so, then I would expect you as my
MP to call for his resignation and for a full inquiry into the way in
which this matter was handled. More so considering the justification
was an obscure and little-used offence under common law 'aiding and
abetting, counselling or procuring misconduct in a public office'.
I am even more surprised and shocked that members of the Government
were not informed in advance of the decision of the police to conduct
this inquiry (more so when the police are required to enter Parliament
to search for information).
Parliamentary privilege exists to safeguard our democratic rights from
incursions from either the State, the Monarchy or any other threat to
our democracy. Parliament must assert itself and ensure that any search
or activity by the police or security services within its boundaries
are carefully monitored and subject to the authority of Parliament in
the last instance. Increasingly the rights of Parliament appear to be
considered anarchonistic or out-dated by too many members of the
security services or the police. In fact, it appears that this is also
the opinion of too many of the sitting parliamentarians. It is about
time for the dogmatic slumbers of MPs to be disturbed and Parliament to
take a severe and critical look at the attitudes towards Parliament by
government and State institutions, such as the police.
I hope that you will raise this matter in Parliament and with the Home
Office.
Yours sincerely,
David Berry
George Monbiot calls for New Great Depression
It seems they are all at it. George Monbiot has
thrown caution to the wind and called for Detroit to fall into bankruptcy. We live in strange times when President Bush has enough sense to see that in effect throwing 2 million people out of work in the middle of a financial crisis is a bad idea. And our noted intellectuals do not.
One would think that more thoughtful heads would consider the grave consequences of the move. What does Monbiot think all these poor people would do, how would they pay for their mortgages, their car loans, their childrens healthcare, etc. He is right in saying:
It's not often that I find myself on the same side as right-wing Republican politicians.
Yeah well maybe that should give serious cause for self-reflection Mr Monbiot.
Labels: Bailout, Depression, Guardian, Madness, Monbiot, Recession
Lawrence Lessig Calls For New Great Depression :-)
Brilliantly mad piece by Lawrence Lessig. I wonder, if
Lawrence Lessig is revealing his early republican tendencies here?It reminds one of Andrew Mellon (Treasury secretary 1921-1931): "Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate...People will work harder, live more moral lives".
This is the language of neoliberal/Ayn Randian economics that got us into this mess. It didn't work in 1929 and it won't work now. Even Greenspan admits that his Randian ideology has
a flaw.
Its a good time to reread
The Great Crash of 1929 by J K Galbraith and make sure we don't make the same mistakes again.
Time for Lessig to stop hanging out with the
Objectivists with their weird right-wing ideas for Creative Commons.
If you haven't already, I suggest reading Paul Krugman's excellent piece in the
New York Review of Books. And
this and
this important article.
Labels: Bailout, Depression, Detroit, Economy, Lessig, Objectivists, Recession
Swansea Open Edutainment Declaration
Objectivists, Entrepreneurs, Web Gurus, Corporates and Libertarians Launch Campaign to Transform Education, Call for Free, Adaptable Learning Materials Online
Swansea, January 23rd, 2008—A coalition of edutainers, foundations, free-market capitalists, adult-entertainment providers, corporates and internet "pioneers" today urged governments and publishers to make publicly-funded educational materials available freely over the internet so that it could be sucked up into huge corporate-funded databases.
The Swansea Open Edutainment Declaration, launched today, is part of a dynamic effort to make learning and teaching materials available to everyone online, regardless of income or geographic location. Providing resources for bundling, advertising, service-based income and free-market exchange it encourages teachers and students around
the world to join a growing movement and pay to use the web to share, remix and translate classroom materials to make educators' labour cheaper more pliable, and more easily replaced if they happen to disagree.
"Open edutainment allows every person on earth to access and contribute to the vast pool of knowledge on the web," said rich person Jimmy Walls, Objectivist and founder of Wikipodia, and one of the auteurs of the Declaration. "Everyone has something to 'teach' and everyone has something to 'learn'."
According to the Declaration, corporations, web gurus and internet pioneers would benefit if publishers and governments made publicly- funded educational materials freely available online. This will give entrepreneurs unlimited access to high quality, constantly improving course materials, just as Wikipodia has done in the world of reference materials.
Open edutainment makes the link between teaching, learning and the capitalist culture of the Internet. It includes creating and sharing materials used in teaching as well as new private-sector approaches to learning where people create and shape "knowledge" together. These new practices promise to provide students with edutainment materials that are individually tailored to their learning style encouraging the growth of an individualist and consumerist notion of education. There are already over 100,000 such open edutainment resources available on the Internet. Of course, the rich people will still continue to get first class "traditional" education at expensive private schools and Ivy-League universities, these open edutainent resources are meant for the plebs who, let's face it can't concentrate for more than five seconds and so find it easier to have their teaching delivered via shoot-em-up video-game, or in super-small bite-sized chunks that don't challenge them. This also handily makes them into the ideal 21st Century consumers of web-content, downloadable iPod-games and shiny
and sparkly facebook applications.
The Declaration is the result of a meeting of 1 open edutainment leader in Swansea, Wales, organized late last year by the Capitalist Society Institute and the Shuttleworthless Foundation. Participants identified key strategies for developing privatised education. They encourage others to join and sign the Declaration.
"Open sourcing edutainment doesn't just make learning more accessible, it makes more money and people do it for free so we don't need to pay employees or pesky teachers," said really rich Linux Entrepreneur Mack Shuttletree, "Linux is succeeding and generating huge profits exactly because of this sort of adaptability. The same kind of success is possible for open edutainment."
Open edutainment is of particular relevance in developing and emerging economies, creating the potential for the swamping them with US influenced "affordable" textbooks and learning materials supplied on One Laptop per Child (OLPC), expensive gadgets and the Internet. It opens the door to a small elite class to use the labour of local content producers likely to create more diverse offerings than large multinational publishing houses. Of course, then the large multinational publishing houses are freely able to use it.
The Declaration has already been translated into over one language and the growing list of signatories includes: lots of rich people, some people you have never heard of, the usual suspects and, of course, our dear leader Lawrence Lessig.
To read or sign the Swansea Open Edutainment Declaration, please
visit: http://www.swanseadeclaration.org.
Whiter than white...
A rendition of the improvements that we would see to the Swansea City Council building.
Of course, this is only a photoshopped projection, but I think it
gives an idea of the difference.
