Frustrated with the lack of progress from gentle dialogue with the parliamentary authorities, those marvellous chaps at mySociety have launched their Free Our Bills campaign, which I’ve just signed up to support.
They want to see Parliament publishing bills in an improved electronic form that will allow more automated processing by services like TheyWorkForYou (which helps power the LibDems’ new Iraq site, Hold Them to Account), making the issues being debated by MPs and peers more accessible to normal people like you and me.
mySociety estimate the programming work required would cost around £10,000, so it only needs one MP to sacrifice a new kitchen to pay for it.
While we’re having a go at online news stories… The Telegraph demonstrates the problems that can come from updating an existing news story.
Last night, they posted the welcome news that missing boy Ben Smythe had been found ‘safe and well’. In a story about the search for him and his recovery, a photo caption that previously provided useful information suddenly goes a bit Private Eye:
The Channel 4 News website has an article about a new IPPR report on children’s use of teh internets (Young people ‘are being raised online’). The news story avoids much of the usual scaremongering, although it’s typical of the IPPR to suggest that because “parents need to be reassured about what they are looking at” the Government must intervene.
There’s some high class, in depth research in the report too:
The researchers found that on YouTube, a search for the term “happy slap” delivered 117 videos posted in the last week and “street fight” 312 videos.
My motivation for highlighting this story, though, is to draw attention to Channel 4 News’s own bizarre interpretation of the law online, as revealed in the final paragraph:
Unlike television programmes, internet content is not subject to any legal restrictions such as the Obscene Publications Act, Sexual Offences Act, and laws relating to race hatred, defamation and libel.
Really? I mean, really?
Some of these laws may be enforced in different ways, and some specific to other media (for example, video classification laws) may not apply, but the idea that I can state that Jon Snow eats newborn babies in order to feed his unquenchable bloodlust (important legal disclaimer: he doesn’t) and not be risking a libel action is absurd.
Of course internet content is subject to legal restrictions, although these will vary from country to country. That’s how file-sharers swapping copyrighted material have been prosecuted; that’s how a UKIP parliamentary candidate won a libel action over posts on a Yahoo! forum. To suggest that these laws don’t apply is pretty irresponsible.
*Just to be clear: I have no reason to think TV treasure Jon Snow eats babies.
Recent comments