Daniel // Mason

Hey all! As blog readers, I assume you all think the internet, and particularly the ability to speak your mind on it is fairly important. Please grit your teeth and bare with me through this ranty post.

The government, along with 29 other countries are trying to pass a law to reduce piracy and control the sale of illegal and fake items on the internet, called the Anti Counterfeit Trade Agreement.

Now I'm not specifically against this. I do understand that piracy isn't fair when people use it to get things for free (though I also think that copyright holders need to catch up to 21st century distribution methods or die, but thats a seperate issue). I also know how it easy it is to get hold of illegal items and how easy it is to pick up fakes (even accidentally) and there should be a way of protecting against this. So in it's raw form I'm not against the basic idea of the law.

However! If you give governments the ability to see everything you do online, look at every file you send, read everything you post or email, they will abuse it. Think I'm over thinking it? While this act was being drafted, a representative of the Motion Pictures Association of America, was caught telling ACTA government negotiators "Bring in a censoring firewall to block piracy and you can use it to shut off sites that embarrass your government, like Wikileaks".

What does this have to do with the piracy of films?

If we allow them to pass this act, it will be like putting a government camera permanently on your life. You won't be able to do anything with out the government knowing about it. You might think, well if you've got nothing to hide, there's no problem, but let me remind you that the guy in charge is not a nice person. He would (and I think is still trying to) sell your medical details to private companies for cash. Without asking you.

Please, please sign this petition.

If you can, it would also be worth trying to meet with our elected representatives to explain why this is a bad idea. Just remind them that the government will be able to see all the porn they look at, that should give them a good kick.

Thank you everyone who read this, it means a lot to me that you went to the effort. Please share this and spread the word.

Thanks

So I think everyone's heard about the governments controversial plans to build a new High Speed Rail 2 link, but what you may not know is that there was an alternative. In 2007 UK Ultraspeed, based on Mag Lev tech, was rejected in favour of HS2.

Now initially I assumed it was just too expensive, but then I started to look into it, and that's not the case. So I'm trying to put together all the facts, bellow is what I've found so far.

Expect this post to get updated with more details as I find them.