People Picked A Pirate Parliamentarian
Tim Berners-Lee, the man who is responsible for the internet came to the European Parliament to deliver an impassioned plea to keep the internet open, free and available to all. He described the internet as a medium that didn’t discriminate on national or political grounds and that he hoped that industries involved would allow a neutral space that countries or companies wouldn’t try to control it.
“Democracy is getting more participatory and it was important that people got their information from a neutral source”, but he insisted that monitoring people’s use of the internet was a real source of concern, “people use the internet in very intimate ways, for example if I had cancer I would look for information, if I was a teenager, wondering if I was homosexual or not, and I was visiting sites to work out what I was, I wouldn’t want to think that every click was being monitored.
To spy on my information to build a profile of me could be incredibly damaging. To use this information is much more valuable for a company, but more dangerous to me. It’s more dangerous than having a TV in my room, monitoring my every move”.
This call for electronic civil liberties was echoed by Pirate Party MEP, Christian Engström (Green/EFA) is launching a campaign to create an Internet Bill of Rights, using web collaboration to write it. “This is something that we will be putting forward and we want as much input from citizens as possible.”
Is access to the internet a human right? “Oh yes, definitely.” He sees this as an extent of Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights, which states that “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers.”
Engström sees the electronic frontier as the new battleground, “This is what the internet is all about and these are the freedoms they are trying to take away from us by talk of filtering, limiting what users can do etc. Article 10 is at the centre of the struggle for a free internet.”
Reducing these rights on an all pervasive platform like the intenet, reduces rights for everyone, “fundamental rights are called that because they are fundamental”. The solitary Pirate has achieved an important change in the recent telecoms package, guaranteeing disconnected users a right to be heard. How did he achieve this? By engaging in the process and making connections with other MEP’s and groups.
“There are protest groups who just shout and then play the martyr, but we are here to actually change things.” The next change they look to introduce is the Bill of Rights, “The discussion of the document is almost as important as the document itself, it’s about opening the eyes of states and politicians.”
Engström holds up a copy of the ACTA response, that has been leaked on the net, “If you turn this 180% then it actually becomes a pretty good Bill of Rights. I think the EC should just say no. it’s completely incompatible with European Human Rights.”
As he says, “It is not acceptable that new legislation that restricts both our fundamental rights and the free and open internet is being drafted in secret negotiations by non-elected officials together with representatives of a foreign power.This simply not how laws should be made in a democratic society. It’s embarrassing to have to point out something so obvious.”
