Dear Mr Renton,

Thank you for your email about the Digital Economy Bill.

I note the various concerns you have expressed which are shared by the Conservative Party and can assure you that the Conservative spokesman for Culture, Media and Sport has taken them up with the Government. The Government have said that they will bring forward some changes for the Report Stage of the Bill and we shall be examining them closely to ensure that they address these concerns.

My Party and I are keen to move amendments that address the problem of people stripping out identifying information from a digital image. We want to clamp down on this and ensure that the Bill does not encourage such activities. We also want to see in the legislation specific requirements for a search for the rights holder and a system in place if that rights holder comes forward at a later date. In no way should this Bill actually harm content creators.

I am very hopeful that we can get this right, as sorting out the current system will unlock a whole host of content that can be used for the public good. I really believe that the BBC and British Library archives for instance will be much easier to access under these proposals.

Yours sincerely,

John Butterfill

Dear Sir John Butterfill,

Since a number of websites have pushed the issue of late, I’m sure I’m not the only constituent writing to you about this, but nevertheless I am writing to you to register my concerns regarding the Digital Economy Bill.

The contents of the bill worry me on many levels, from the possibility of disconnecting innocent users from the Internet without proper investigation, to the technical challenges that will be faced by the ISPs, the cost of which will naturally be passed on to their customers.

But regardless of these issues, I am more alarmed at the possibility that the Government and Lord Mandelson may be attempting to force this bill through before Parliament is dissolved prior to the election, without proper scrutiny and debate by the House.

I would like to know your and your Party’s views on the content of the Digital Economy Bill, but moreover I would ask you to do all you can to ensure that this important and far-reaching bill gets the scrutiny it deserves rather than being forced through by a desperate Government.

Yours Sincerely,

Ian Renton

Dear Sir,

I am writing to you regarding the document entitled “Enquiry to Ofcom from BBC Free to View Ltd concerning its DTT high definition multiplex licence”, which I have just been made aware of via an online news source.

As a Briton and a licence-fee payer, I would like to register my distress that, from this document, it looks like content providers are pressuring the BBC to protect content via a Digital Rights Management (DRM) scheme that would require all end-user equipment in people’s homes to have the ability to decode it. This is a clear step backwards from the freedoms that the BBC introduced with the iPlayer, and a step away from the licence-fee payers being able to access the content they pay for in any way they want.

Furthermore, I use a custom-built PC as a digital video recorder in my living room, using open-source software. These open-source applications generally do not have a corporate sponsor or a pot of money from which they could pay to licence the decoding technology that is being suggested, which would render my and similar devices useless for recording these signals.

I am strongly of the opinion that the BBC should be working to make its broadcasts more widely available, not less, and thus that the introduction of DRM on BBC broadcasts is not in the public interest that the BBC attempts to serve.

Thank you for your time.

Regards,

Ian Renton

Result: Success!

Dear Mr Butterfill,

The content of the Government’s proposed Intercept Modernisation Programme and discussions regarding the creation of a central government database for recording internet traffic data have been brought to my attention by the Open Rights Group. I am writing to you to express my concern and to ask that, if you are in agreement with my points below, you oppose any such motions if and when they arise.

Firstly, the expense involved in maintaining such a central database would be enormous – compared to the current level of information the government holds on its citizens, the amount of internet traffic information generated by each person is vast. This information is currently gathered and stored for some time by Internet Service Providers (ISPs), but a single central database would be much more expensive to set up, maintain, and search. I’m sure in the current recession the majority of Britons could name any number of things they’d rather their tax revenue was spent on!

The second issue that concerns me is privacy. Though this kind of data is currently stored by ISPs, I do not believe civil servants have free (or even easy) access to it. The Police can have access to data on specific individuals given due cause, and I have no issues with that system. However, one central database or easy government access to existing ISP databases implies “data mining” – analysing large data sets, including data from individuals who are not suspected of any wrongdoing, in order to pick out suspicious behaviour. I do not believe that individuals who are overwhelmingly likely to be innocent ought to be routinely monitored in this way.

Furthermore, the more freely this information moves around, the more easily it can be lost or stolen or hacked into and make its way into the hands of those who could use it to steal identities, steal money or simply sell lists of e-mail addresses to spammers.

Lastly, I do not believe that there is even an advantage to these plans. I’m sure the given purpose will once again be anti-terrorism, but I do not believe the proposed plans are likely to reveal any evidence of serious terrorist activity being planned. For a fairly tech-savvy user (as we must assume terrorists who conduct operations online are) with the motivation to do so, encrypting one’s e-mail or even one’s entire internet traffic is not difficult. This degree of internet traffic monitoring will only affect those innocent people who either don’t know how to encrypt their communications, or don’t believe that they ought to have to do so just to stop their own government snooping on them.

Yours sincerely,

Ian Renton

Dear Sir John Butterfill,

The Internet has been buzzing today with the news that the Guardian newspaper was prevented from publishing a question that is due to be answered by the Secretary of State for Justice tomorrow (Wednesday 14th October). This action was brought about by solicitors Carter-Ruck on behalf of their client, Trafigura.

Regardless of the nature of the question and of the Guardian and Trafigura’s less-than-amiable relationship, I’m concerned about this clear attempt to restrict a fundamental freedom of the press – to report on activities at Westminster – by lawyers acting in the interests of a large multinational corporation.

Although Carter-Ruck have (as of about 1.30pm today) dropped their gag order, this kind of thing could easily happen again in the future, and next time the legal challenge may not be dropped so quickly.

I would like to know if you or your Party would support a proposal strengthening and clarifying the right of the press to report on parliamentary activity, to ensure that this situation does not happen again.

Yours sincerely,

Ian Renton