An open letter to David Kidney MP re: Mandelson's Digital Economy bill

[Wookie]

Dear Mr Kidney,
One presumes that you have not been living under a rock for the last few weeks. Doubtless then you are aware that your party colleague Peter Mandelson, after a dinner with David Geffen (as reported at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/17/lord_mandelson_digital_policy/), now has the bizarre idea one of the effects of the new Digital Economy bill should be that he should be allowed to act outside the law to protect the rights of copyright holders, as reported at http://www.eff.org/action/uk-alert-stop-pirate-finder-general and http://www.boingboing.net/2009/11/19/breaking-leaked-uk-g.html .

I am writing to ask that you do everything in your power to stop this power-mad reptile from getting this bill through in its current form. I assure you that if you do not, I will not vote for you in the upcoming general election next year. Furthermore, I shall urge all my friends and family to vote for your opponents, and I shall make the maximum possible donation to the opponent that I judge has the best chance of beating you and your party.

This letter has been openly published on http://www.staffordforum.com/ .

Yours sincerely,
Me.

 

[My Name is URL]

Nice letter... let us know if you get a response.

 

[dylanf]

Why do we not all email our dear MP and tell him there is a letter for him on Stafford Forum.

His email address is: kidneyd@parliament.uk
Westminster Office Manager: hardym@parliament.uk
Stafford Office Manager: wakefieldd@parliament.uk

 

[Wookie]

Shall do.

 

[dylanf]

My email below.

Dear David,

I am a member of Stafford Forum and an open letter has been published for you, our elected member of parliament, to reply to.

We would be most grateful for a response.

Regards

Dylan

 

[dylanf]

Bugger forgot to put a link to the forum in. Thats major stupid

 

[tek-monkey]

If this bill goes through I suspect many an MP may find their home networks compromised, with hilarious results.

EDIT: And I suspect Alan Johnson will be a favourite target, over his handling of Gary McKinnon. It would be very interesting to see him weasel out of a charge, without getting the whole thing scrapped.

 

[My Name is URL]

If this bill goes through I suspect many an MP may find their home networks compromised, with hilarious results.

As is normally the case, "the law" only applies to the man in the street.... police, politicians, famous people etc are all above the law (on security, safety and in the public interest grounds obviously)

 

[Wyred]

As is normally the case, "the law" only applies to the man in the street.... police, politicians, famous people etc are all above the law (on security, safety and in the public interest grounds obviously)

Couldn't agree more!

 

[tek-monkey]

Now what if a rights holder was already privvy to the information that a product of theirs was being downloaded by a certain person? Maybe an adult movie company, preferrably in a niche market, who happened to be tracking a torrent of one of their films? And whilst this was being tracked, a certain member of parliment started to download it?

I suspect the logs of such an event would appear rapidly on pro file sharing sites, and the MP involved would have no right to trial. As long as the information is made public, its hard for them to deny. I even suspect the ISPs would not help cover up, as they are also against the plans.

Could be interesting, should it happen.

 

[Wormella]

He's on Twitter too:- http://twitter.com/davidkidney

 

[Wookie]

Thank you for your e-mail to David Kidney MP. E-mails are treated in the same manner and with the same level of importance as all other communications, like post, telephone and fax. The office is very busy and all items have to be prioritised. Please do not be offended if you do not receive an immediate response. Parliament has a strict rule that a Member of Parliament should not take up the individual cases of the constituents of other MPs. Please ensure that you have included in your e-mail your name and full postal address. If this was not included in your e-mail please re-send your full e-mail with your postal address and full name. Yours sincerely, DAVID KIDNEY MP Labour MP for Stafford Constituency

Hmm... an autoresponder, eh?!? Maybe he should sack it and use one THAT ISN'T AFRAID TO PUT A CARRIAGE RETURN IN SO I CAN READ THE BLOODY MESSAGE EASILY?!? I'll tell you why. HTML email. (I blame HTML email for a lot of things...)
(I'm onlyjustnotquite 30. Why have I turned into Victor Meldrew?)

 

[db]

Thank you for your e-mail to David Kidney MP. E-mails are treated in the same manner and with the same level of importance as all other communications, like post, telephone and fax. The office is very busy and all items have to be prioritised. Please do not be offended if you do not receive an immediate response. Parliament has a strict rule that a Member of Parliament should not take up the individual cases of the constituents of other MPs. Please ensure that you have included in your e-mail your name and full postal address. If this was not included in your e-mail please re-send your full e-mail with your postal address and full name. Yours sincerely, DAVID KIDNEY MP Labour MP for Stafford Constituency

Hmm... an autoresponder, eh?!? Maybe he should sack it and use one THAT ISN'T AFRAID TO PUT A CARRIAGE RETURN IN SO I CAN READ THE BLOODY MESSAGE EASILY?!? I'll tell you why. HTML email. (I blame HTML email for a lot of things...)
(I'm onlyjustnotquite 30. Why have I turned into Victor Meldrew?)

says the man who missed a few linebreaks out of his original post, not to mention not putting two spaces after a full-stop, as convention would dictate

get with the times, girlfriend - HTML emails are hardly new! lol.. let me guess - you still use Eudora for your email, and Forte Agent for USENET?

 

[Wookie]

Thunderbird and Xnews, as it happens. Although I did use Eudora, I gave it up when it stopped being free. I will *not* use Outlook (Express) by choice, for one very simple two-word reason: top posting.

Go on DB, where should I have put the linebreaks in the original? I've gone back and reread it and it looks like a reasonable sample of my writing.
And two spaces after a full stop?!? Is that usual? I'll be visiting my typing tutor soon if it is. With an axe.

Hmm...

And two spaces after a full stop?!? Is that usual? I'll be visiting my typing tutor soon if it is. With an axe.
Nah, you see, to my eyes, that looks wrong. Too much space between the words for me.

 

[db]

Thunderbird and Xnews, as it happens. Although I did use Eudora, I gave it up when it stopped being free. I will *not* use Outlook (Express) by choice, for one very simple two-word reason: top posting.

yeah, i used thunderbird myself.. i hate it, but there don't appear to be any alternatives on the mac.. since i just ordered a shiny new imac, i'll wait until the new version of office comes out, complete with the first version of outlook for mac

Go on DB, where should I have put the linebreaks in the original? I've gone back and reread it and it looks like a reasonable sample of my writing.

after "Dear Mr. Kidney," and "Yours sincerely,".. basically, when composing text on a computer, one uses a linebreak to signify a new paragraph innit, rather than an indentation..

And two spaces after a full stop?!? Is that usual? I'll be visiting my typing tutor soon if it is. With an axe.

Hmm...

And two spaces after a full stop?!? Is that usual? I'll be visiting my typing tutor soon if it is. With an axe.
Nah, you see, to my eyes, that looks wrong. Too much space between the words for me.

unless you're french, it's one space after a comma and two after a full-stop.. i would have thought an old-school netizen such as yourself knew that!

 

[shoes]

Oh so they are going to release outlook for Mac? Thank f**k for that, I absolutely despise Thunderbird (firefox is going the same way) and the mail application in osx only supports exchanger 2007 and later, which isn't really all that useful right now.

DB is right about full stop spacing, thats been the norm since my mother learned to type on an ancient old typewriter!

Also double spacing between paragraphs is the way forward, indentations no longer exist, lose the comma after "Dear Mr Kidney", and also "yours sincerely" and add an extra line in between yours.. and ... me (or wookie or whatever).

Now if there's on thing this old moaning self righteous anti-everyone stick in the mid can do it's write a letter!

 

[tek-monkey]

DB, I thought the 2 space thing was only for print? The typing teacher at the college said that you can use either in elctronic communications, as long as you are consistent?

 

[Wookie]

unless you're french, it's one space after a comma and two after a full-stop.. i would have thought an old-school netizen such as yourself knew that!

An old-school netizen such as I believes in wasting as few bytes as possible Probably outdated given modern bandwidth speeds and storage quotas, but dang it, I just can't break the doggone habit.

Shoes, I must disagree with you over the losing the commas; that's how I was taught at school to write salutations and closings in formal letters back in 1992, and it's far too ingrained to change now.

Extra lines - bleh. I still use "-- " as a sig separator in emails, but it looks wrong in formal letters. (Original posted via TheyWorkForYou site, rather than in regular email.)


**EDIT: extra line or two and tidy up rong speeling.




Admin edit: Removed pointless "news flash" to avoid potential thread derailment.


And thank you, Admin - should have spun off or tweeted that

 

[shoes]

Thats how I was taught at school also but if you look at a letter with and without these extra (and unnecessary bits of punctuation) the letter without looks much cleaner, sharper and more modern. It also reduces wear and tear on the comma button

You'll also notice that pretty much everyone else omits these in formal emails / letters although sometimes (especially in the industry I work in now) I do have to wonder whether thats a conscious decision, laziness or they just couldn't care less.

 

[Wookie]

After a poke in in the inbox, I checked my email and found this:

This is not a proposal that has come about because of a recent dinner Peter Mandelson attended. For some time now there has been considerable public debate about and also significant pressure for change to our Intellectual Property Rights laws. A Government has the responsibility for having to try to balance the legitimate rights of people who invest their own talent or their own considerable time and expense in producing products or services that they expect they will be able to sell (and in the case of upfront investment enable them to recover their own cost as well as make a living from the income)on the one hand and the expectation of internet users that the convenience of using internet services should continue to expand. This is what the whole Copyright, Design and Patent protection law exists to regulate, but it is fair to say that in modern times the pace of change in, for example, media technologies is such that the law is increasingly in need of adjustment. The new Bill for example puts forward a new regime for peer to peer file sharing. However, where more change is foreseeable, but not necessarily which change and when, it is not uncommon for an Act of Parliament to make provision for future changes in law by secondary legislation. It is understandable that MPs and the public take a close interest in not allowing a procedural device to become the means for sweeping law changes in the future without adequate public and Parliamentary debate - I can remember heated debates in recent times over proposals in Bills for revoking "burdensome" laws by a special procedure and for allowing more data sharing by public bodies at the direction of the Secretary of State. In the former case, the eventual provision was approved but with many additional safeguards in place. In the latter case the Government backed down and withdrew the provision entirely. So there is a need for debate and scrutiny of this provision in the new Bill and I welcome input from you and other contributors to Stafford forum and I look forward to continued involvement in this issue.
I hope this is helpful.
Regards, David

I shall be commenting when my hangover recedes a bit.

*** EDIT: *Very* carelessly left something in there that should really have been deleted... That's what happens when I post without being able to see.