Digital Privacy
19 Jul 2013 censorship
A few weeks ago, ORG published the website 451unavailable.org to compile and analyse website blocking orders in the UK.
Our aim is to create transparency over what methods of blocking are being authorised, what blocking is being done and by whom.
Once a judge has decided that a website deserves to be blocked under Section 97A of the Copyright Act, each ISP is sent a court order describing the actions they must take to block the website. It specifies the kind of blocking to be undertaken. The court order contains other important information, including the name of the organisation responsible for mistakes and changes to the lists of clone sites to be blocked.
Publication of the orders should benefit everyone. Courts, ISPs and copyright holders stand to benefit by having this knowledge made public. Accountability, fewer errors and less confusion about what is happening should be the result.
However, ISPs are often reluctant to share the orders with us, despite the fact they are ‘public documents’. Possibly they feel that copyright owners asking for the orders may find publication by an ISP provocative. This means we are obliged to ask the courts for the documents, in order that we can publish and analyse their contents.
Unfortunately, court officials so far have turned down ORG’s requests for copies of the blocking orders. They have done this because, they say, ‘judgment has not been entered’ or ‘service has not been acknowledged’.
We think court orders ought normally to be easily accessible to the public at all stages of litigation. At present the rules governing access to court documents only permit access to these orders as of right once the litigation has finished. The courts seem to be treating blocking injunctions as if they were like temporary injunctions made while proceedings are still going on. In fact the injunctions are the end of the section 97A process. Nothing more is intended to happen.
This week we therefore applied to have a procedural judge (a ‘Master’) in the High Court to look at our requests to gain access to the documents relating to the blocks of Fenopy, H33t and Kickass Torrents.
We hope to persuade the Master that a section 97A blocking injunction should be treated like any final judgment in court and be available to the public as of right. If we cannot do that, we will ask the Master’s permission to have access to the orders.
As the orders proliferate, it is important that 451unavailable.org keeps a record of what is happening. In due course, we hope that ISPs will also link to these documents in their blocking notices, to make it clear what the legal authority for the block is.
Related Blogs
Digital Privacy
18 Sep 2024 By Jim Killock
e-Visas: The Next Digital Windrush Scandal
Our report, “Hostile and Broken” released today, explains why e-Visas risk creating tens or hundreds of thousands of errors, with people potentially turned down for jobs, or unable to enter the country, as the result of electronic failures of the new online, real time re-checking inherent in the UK e-Visa scheme.
Digital Privacy
16 Jul 2024 By Mariano delli Santi
Meta Wants to Make Us its AI Guinea Pigs
Meta, the company that runs Facebook and Instagram, has announced plans to repurpose most of the personal data that they ever collected about you, to train their “artificial intelligence (AI) technologies” — without, of course, asking your permission to do so.
Digital Privacy
20 Mar 2024 By Mariano delli Santi
The ICO Must Toughen Up
As the House of Lords finally begins scrutiny of the UK data protection reform, Open Rights Group urges peers to support amendments that would strengthen the independence and effectiveness of the UK data protection authority, and bolster the public’s right of seeking a remedy against an infringement of their rights.
Digital Privacy
01 Aug 2013 By Jim Killock
Diane Abbott responds on web forum blocking
On a cycling forum, members who are rightly worried that their forum may be blocked by default filters, Skydancer posted a response he was given by Diane Abbott: I do not believe that the arrangements to protect children from hard core porn online will affect a forum to discuss cycling!
Digital Privacy
13 Jun 2013 By Jim Killock
Website filtering problems are a ‘load of cock’
The motion laid down by Labour says: That this House deplores the growth in child abuse images online; deeply regrets that up to one and a half million people have seen such images; notes with alarm the lack of resources available to the police to tackle this problem; further notes the correlation between viewing such images and further child abuse; notes with concern the Government’s failure to implement the recommendations of the Bailey Review and the Independent Parliamentary Inquiry into Online Child Protection on ensuring children’s safe access to the internet; and calls on the Government to set a timetable for the introduction of safe search as a default, effective age verification and splash page warnings and to bring forward legislative proposals to ensure these changes are speedily implemented.
Digital Privacy
26 Apr 2013 By Claudia Mateus
Digital Surveillance video
The Digital Surveillance report – to be launched at a public event on Monday – gives a history of surveillance policy, looks at the current state of the law, examines why technology poses a problem and offers alternative, more targeted and more accountable approaches.
Digital Privacy
28 May 2012 By Peter Bradwell
Reporting ‘over-blocking’ to mobile operators
Since we published our report ‘Mobile Internet censorship: what’s happening and what to do about it‘, jointly with LSE Media Policy project, a number of people have been in touch with us asking what to do if they discover their site is blocked incorrectly by mobile networks’ child protection filters.
Digital Privacy
23 Jan 2012 By Peter Bradwell
UK Mobile operators censor privacy tool ‘Tor’
Open Rights Group and Tor have established that UK mobile networks such as Vodafone, O2 and 3 are filtering UK users’ access to Tor’s primary website (meaning the HTTP version of the Tor Project website, rather than connections to the Tor network) on pre-paid contractless accounts.
Digital Privacy
01 Nov 2011 By Peter Bradwell
Joint letter to the Foreign Secretary
To coincide with the start of the London Conference on Cyberspace, eleven organisations and experts on freedom of expression and privacy online have today written to the Foreign Secretary stating that Britain’s desire to promote these ideals internationally is being hampered by domestic policy.
Digital Privacy
20 May 2010 By Jason Kitcat
Changing the way we vote
In the sixth of our series on the challenges facing the new government, Jason Kitcat looks at proposals for changes to the way our elections are run, including dangerous calls for e-voting.
Digital Privacy
17 Apr 2009 By Jim Killock
Wikipedia blocks Phorm
Wikipedia have announced that they are blocking Phorm as they consider the scanning and profiling of our visitors’ behavior by a third party to be an infringement on their privacy.
Digital Privacy
17 Mar 2008 By Becky Hogge
Phorm update
It’s difficult to tell which of today’s developments the UK’s major ISPs should be more worried about – the fact that Sir Tim Berners-Lee has publicly stated that he would change his ISP if it started employing systems, like Phorm, which could track his activity on the internet, or the news that UK digital rights gurus the Foundation for Information Policy Research (FIPR) have today written an open letter to the Information Commissioner, urging him to look at the legality of Phorm.
Digital Privacy
24 Oct 2007 By Jason Kitcat
Gould Review on Scottish Elections Published
The Electoral Commission and the separate review by Ron Gould that the Commission instituted have published their reports on the Scottish elections of May 2007 The Gould Review in particular identifies a number of important issues, many of which ORG addressed in our own report on the elections published this June.
Digital Privacy
03 Sep 2007 By Becky Hogge
Gordon Brown at the NCVO: e-Voting off the agenda?
In a speech to the National Council of Voluntary Organisations this morning, Gordon Brown announced he would be convening a Speaker’s conference on voting reform: Today I am proposing to the Speaker that he calls a conference to consider, against the backdrop of a decline in turnout, a number of important issues, such as electoral registration, weekend voting, and the representation of women and ethnic minorities in the House of Commons.
Digital Privacy
16 Jan 2007 By Michael Holloway
Taking the lid off e-voting
While the Department for Constitutional Affairs have left us in the dark with no news at all about the e-voting pilots due for May 2007, The Open Rights Group and FIPR have been hard at work.