Jim Killock’s blog

People get worried when censorship rears its head. Censorship is a pretty negative and blunt response. It implies that the censor does not trust you to make your own decisions. No form of censorship is ever fully effective, so we all know that the unwanted activity will carry on regardless. And the target of censorship will look like a victim, and is likely to become a cause célèbre.

The UK blocking of the Pirate Bay has followed this pattern. Even before the blocks were underway, the site had a surge of traffic; mirrors appeared, and in particular, the Pirate Party’s UK mirror tpb.pirateparty.org.uk started to draw more traffic. The mirror also places their party’s website under threat of being blocked,…

The war in the USA between the open Internet and copyright industries pushing for draconian controls took an unexpected twist in the last weeks.

The Bills – SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protection of Intellectual property Act) – were withdrawn. President Obama threatened to veto SOPA. Republican candidates were highly critical.

It looks like a straightforward victory for common sense: which would be an unexpected twist. Normally, copyright industries seem to cloud political judgements to an extraordinary extent. Internet activists don’t expect their campaigns to be easy or quick. Victories are often last minute, down to the wire affairs.

The proposals – for Internet censorship of foreign “infringing” websites, interference with DNS, possibly intrusion into…