Wellingborough MP Peter Bone can't handle web critics

Enjoying your internet connection? Like browsing the web? You've been let down.

"You can be punished for the actions of a friend or even a neighbour who has used your Internet connection." - OpenRightsGroup on the Digital Economy Bill.

"Essentially translating as “We can, via the secretary of state for business, take down any website we don’t like simply by citing a connection to some form of copyright infringement” - Jamie Thompson on the Digital Economy Bill.

The UK is ready to get China-style censorship of the internet, with the forthcoming Digital Economy Act that was voted in against the tens of thousands of wishes expressed by ordinary computer users. A despicable collection of MPs voted in favour of online censorship.

Politicians are a breed of people who have a lowly reputation, wedged somewhere between a orphanage arsonist and a commercial radio DJ. With the shameless expenses scandal, and a national economy so broken not even Cash Converters would accept it, there appears to be no hope for MPs trying to prove they share the same DNA as us.

It's no wonder that over half the population would rather vote on Big Brother or whatever Simon-Cowell-fronted sneer-fest is running at the moment. If you're in the company of friends and mention that you take an interest in politics, you may as well have sprayed concentrated halitosis in their faces.

There's simply no interest in Parliament these days, and I think the MPs rather like that. With the heavily articulate wordings of proposed laws, the endless exchange of statistics and monotone speeches, it's no surprise Joe Sixpack doesn't tune in.

Besides, when have you had a politician actually LISTEN to you? They don't do that, do they?

Recently, the Digital Economy Bill was proposed by the Labour government to impose censorship on UK internet services, all in the name of "reducing piracy". Unsurprisingly, it didn't take long to realise that the bill had been lobbied for by the BPI - the UK's record industry. In fact, large portions of this censorship law had been written by the BPI.

We know the record industry is angered at the millions of MP3s available illegally on the internet, and have pushed an anti-piracy agenda so heavily that they ignore the bigger picture - why piracy occurs in the first place.

Digital files are easy to copy and distribute, they cost almost next-to-nothing, they don't take up physical space and are theoretically infinite in supply. Compared to the physical product (such as a CD or vinyl record), there's a lot of convenience.

Yet the record industries still persist in selling their downloads at equivalent prices to the CD. They get a bigger margin, refusing to pass on any of the cost savings to the consumer.

Let's not forget the record industry tried to ban MP3 players back in 1999, so I don't have sympathy for the wailing dinosaurs. Imagine if they got their way! We know they spent most of the noughties coming up with rival formats, all of them were cumbersome and highly restrictive. No wonder they failed!

However, one small victory for the record industry is that Peter Mandelson recently holidayed with record boss David Geffen. And just by pure "coincidence", Mandelson later decided to put forward a law forcing all UK ISPs to regulate what you look at online, in the interests of copyright.

Those of you who've read this blog will know how I exposed Lily Allen for her copyright-infringement, along with Lily's response to me falling flat on its face.

Well, last week I discovered that Peter Mandelson has followed in Lily's footsteps as a copyright hypocrite. Again, I reported the story to techdirt.com, who are always keen to showcase the "do as I say, not as I do" arrogance of politicians and musicians who insist copyright should be stronger, despite masses of economic studies showing that lighter copyright laws benefit both publishers, creators and consumers alike.

My local MP is Peter Bone from the Conservative Party. In the run up to the Digital Economy Bill being debated (and I use that term loosely), various online compaigns were set up encouraging us to contact our local MP.

Thanks to the wonderful TheyWorkForYou.com website, it's easy to write a letter to Peter Bone. As my friends know, I'm not exactly a fan of the Conservatives, but I did vote Tory in protest at Labour's support of the ongoing illegal and unethical wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There you have it, I'm admitting to having voted Tory. (Well, in the ward I lived in at the time, it was just Labour vs Conservative, no other options.)

I confess to having not known much about Peter before. I do recall my friend Kat Fiction a few years back, stating her shock at how the Tories prepared an election leaflet for Mr Bone, using the fact he resembled then-England-manager Sven Goran-Eriksson as a positive campaign point.

Oh hang on, there is something quite disturbing about Peter Bone. He opposed the minimum wage, and continues to oppose it. Such was his conviction that Peter Bone paid just 87p-an-hour to one of his workers back in 1995. "The minimum wage would condemn hundreds of thousands to the dole queue", he was quoted as saying.

However, when it comes to Peter Bone employing his wife, he thinks she deserves £40,000 a year.

So, should I have anything to do with this hypocritical charlatan? Something else stirred the memory banks. Drinking buddy Richard Lockwood wrote to to ask why the MP supported the laughable bunkum known as 'homeopathy', which would clearly be a waste of NHS money. The reply he got back from Peter Bone was, er, minimal to say the least.

Still, I felt so strongly about the Digital Economy Bill (and still do), that I decided to write to Peter Bone and see where it would take me. It wouldn't matter if I didn't like the man, what would matter is him speaking against it. After all, a lot of businesses in Wellingborough do depend on an open web to do commerce. I'm affected by any such changes, being a local web-designer, web-programmer and SEO consultant.

A look at Peter Bone's voting record shows some signs of a soul. He wanted an investigation into the Iraq war, voted against the government's draconian 'anti-terror' laws and is heavily against ID cards. Pretty commendable, I have to say.

However, with his stance against gay equal rights, he shows himself up as an embarrassing social dinosaur, no better than the US politicians who denied civil rights for black people. The Conservatives try to position themselves as a modern party, but the homophobia isn't far away.

Still, I announced my intention to write to Peter Bone, urging him to vote against the Digital Economy Bill, and a few of my friends followed my lead. I even got a reply:

One of my key roles as your representative in Parliament is to listen to my constituents and campaign on your behalf - in fact, this is the whole philosophy behind my "Listening to Wellingborough and Rushden" campaign.

You have raised an important issue and I have accordingly forwarded it onto the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport so that the government can fully take your opinions into account. I have also requested a response from the Department and I will, of course, forward on to you any that I may receive.

Sounding very nice indeed. Unfortunately, Peter Bone could not be bothered to turn up to the second reading of the bill. Actually, to be fair, 95% of MPs - our so-called 'public servants' - also could not be bothered to attend this essentially important debate.

And thus, we entered the next step as the technically-illiterate MPs present outnumbered those who actually understood the importance of a free internet for the UK's economy.

Yeah, cheers Peter Bone. Well done for your apathy. Well done for ignoring such an important issue. Obviously sitting in a £15k-a-year rented flat paid for by us taxpayers was a much better option?

I wrote back, airing my disappointments on his lack of action, and my intentions to blog about his failure to represent his constituents' views. His response:

Thank you for your e-mail. You will know that I have one of the best voting
records of any Conservative Member of Parliament and my attendance in the
House of Commons is second to none. You will also know that I fully support
the Conservative Party on the Digital Economy Bill. I am sure you will also
appreciate that sometimes Members of Parliament have to be in their
constituency and not in the Palace of Westminster. Unfortunately, Members
of Parliament are not able to be in two places at once.

With regards to your attack on me for being anti-gay-rights, you are
entitled to your opinion, but it is not correct. You may be interested to
hear that I was recently voted by Liberal Democratic Voice to be one of the
62 most Liberal non-Lib Dem MPs.

The "you are entitled to your opinion" statement is such a poor cop-out. A terrible cliche that is a verbal white flag. It signifies the fear of his old-fashioned views being held up to rationality.

In a similar fashion, he states that he supports the Bill (Conservatives back it) yet will not even dare discuss why he supports it.

I'd like to put it to this pauper-wage-loving technically-illiterate gay-despising taxpayer-money-wasting waste-of-space that he dare not enter into any debate, because he knows he will lose. He's backing whatever the Conservative Party say, because that's his easy career - claiming huge expenses from hard working people, denying them rights, imposing censorship and wishing he could cut their wages to a fraction of what they are.

Naturally, I won't be voting for this knowledge-lacking tosswit, and since his views have been spread via Facebook, other locals agree...

"I'm not voting for that useless twat, who didn't have the honesty to admit, on his first reply that he had no intention of voting against the bill."

"it is HIS JOB to be entitled to MY opinion. So the oily, lazy waste of space can drop dead."

"I've emailed him 6 times. Had 3 responses, two of which were pretty much stock letters and the third was a little more detailed, but boiled down to "I'll be talking to the secretary of state about it". My question was explicitly about his behaviour, nothing to do with the government or anyone else.

Now, my understanding is that an MP is supposed to represent their constituents. Ignoring them is not representation.... See more

I want him gone, unless he learns to
1) Read
2) Turn up on debates that matter instead of the pointless ones that just bump up his numbers"

"make all the candidates in a constituency work as a waiter in a 'Frankie n Bennys' for a month....whoever gets the most tips in that time obviously has the right work ethic and becomes the MP.....shimples!!"

"if they could be in two places at once they'd be claiming expenses for both"

To conclude, I've just realised why Peter Bone is in favour of a law that censors the web.

Lily Allen: My Part In Her Downfall

So, I get into an argument on the internet - nothing new there - but this one ends up as worldwide news, and what seems to be the end of a pop star's career.

It's been about 24 hours since I sent an e-mail to an influential website which has seen Lily Allen called out for being a hypocritical lying music pirate. This morning, Lily responded to my revelation with a factually inaccurate statement.

I'll have to explain this one in full. I'm a huge fan of TechDirt.com - a technology news-and-commentary blog that keeps us geeks up-to-date on how the digital revolution is ripping up the rulebook, and how luddites continually strive to pass backward outdated laws to keep things the same. Naturally, the articles are strongly against persecution of P2P filesharers.

But this is no pro-piracy blog that offers "l33t nu moviez and albumz". TechDirt is simply acting as the messenger boy, pointing out the old ways of selling overpriced plastic shiny discs are over, and that the record industry should not fight digital, but embrace it, accepting that the infinite supply of MP3 should really drive down the price of recorded music.

There's no point in trying to stuff the genie in the bottle. Even the most dense of computer users knows where the Pirate Bay is. DRM - the unwanted protection scheme on some CDs and DVDs - has been nothing but a huge disaster for the media industry, causing legitimate customers to complain about their purchases not playing on various equipment. Treating the very people who pay your wages as potential thieves is never going to work, and yet, the pirates have the last laugh by offering the same media in a superior format - free of all hassle and easily copiable, just like we've always had in the past.

Besides, how is copying music equal to "theft"? Pro-copyright lobbyists always insist it is "stealing", and I'm sure we've seen that patronising "you wouldn't steal a car" trailer at cinemas and on DVDs.

Thing is, it's completely false. A copy of something is not theft, has never been theft, and never will be theft. Even the law stipulates it is different to theft.

If I nick your car, you don't have a car any more. If I sat outside your house and somehow made a 100% exact copy of your car, you wouldn't be deprived of anything. No crime committed.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we should download copies of all music out there just because we can. I go to gigs, I go to festivals, I certainly put my fair share in. I used to be very anti-filesharing about 10 years ago.

After having seen the way the record industry has been reacting to filesharers, and, through having worked for a couple of labels and befriending quite a few artists, I've learnt just how much mark-up there is to the labels and how bands just get ripped off.

It doesn't have to be this way. The real money is in live performance and genuinely scarce goods. CD singles and music videos have always been a loss-leader anyway, they have since before the internet was in nappies.

I am totally not convinced about the piracy fearmongering from famous people who are clearly not educated in the subject. I'm sick of it, that's why I did something about it.

Lord Peter Mandelson - the non-elected government minister who twice had to resign because of his financial scandals - is proposing a disgusting law that criminalises almost every internet user in the UK, usng a guilty-before-proven-innocent basis.

It sickened me to see Lily Allen backing such a terrible Orwellian policy. On top of this, she cited support from the likes of James Blunt, Elton John and Take That's Gary Barlow. That's right, the big names she has on her side consist of a guy whose only positive contribution to society is a new piece of Cockney rhyming slang based on his name, a dreary ballad performer who once stated the internet should be shut down for five years and the songwriter for Steps. If filesharing didn't look good before, it sure does now!

Not that this is good enough for Lily Allen, who this week, launched her own blog dedicated to fighting digital piracy and slurring filesharers as "thieves".

This has been nothing short of a disaster for the feisty ska-tinged popstrel. With the mundane and moribund queueing up to slap her on the back, music fans started questioning her stance. The comments on her blog were filled with criticism.

On Monday, the following report about rapper 50 Cent appeared on her blog:

Famed rapper 50 Cent (Curtis Jackson) was apparently on CNBC recently talking about his "business acumen." I have to admit that having three different people all trying to interview him at once is rather annoying -- as they almost never let him complete a thought. However, when they ask him about piracy, and whether or not it makes him angry (around 2 minutes), he responds that: he sees it as a part of the marketing of a musician, because "the people who didn't purchase the material, they end up at the concert." He says that people can fall in love with the music either way, and then they'll go to concerts. He notes that you can't stop piracy either way, so why try to fight it? He also talks about other business opportunities for musicians.

this is particularly selfish in my view, he seems to only be thinking of how piracy effects him. What about the guys that work in the studio and the kids that run around town putting his posters up,the people that designed his artwork, the people that run his website. Is he giving them a cut of his live fee?

Now, that first paragraph - expertly written, and just one of many reasons why filesharing MP3s is actually good for musicians - gave me a sense of deja vu. The second paragraph is obviously Lily's own commentary. You can tell by the patronising tone and logical flaws. But what's particularly galling is... well, the attribution? Who wrote that first paragraph? Ah yes, it was lifted from TechDirt, without permission, despite being copyrighted.

So there we have Lily Allen breaking copyright. I guess that's "strike one" under the Mandelson Regime. Luckily for Lily, Michael Masnick at TechDirt doesn't take copyright infringement as a massive problem, happily reporting on the incident, and the obvious irony surrounding it.

With the attention focused on Lily's infringement, especially as TorrentFreak reported on her copyright hypocrisy, she eventually had to issue attribution...

I THINK ITS QUITE OVIOUS THAT I WASNT TRYING TO PASS OF THOSE WORDS AS MY OWN , HERE IS A LINK TO THE WEBSIITE I ACQUIRED THE PIECE FROM. Apologies to Michael Masnick.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090914/0348436181.shtml

The insincere tone didn't go down too well, and when she posted two scanned newspaper articles later on, the mocking nature of her critics went into overdrive.

Here's where I come in...

Sick of the way she shamelessly ripped off TechDirt without so much of a linkback or a credit, I did some digging around. I am actually a fan of Lily Allen, although I can't say I like her much as a person any more.

I remember Lily popping up on the radio back in 2005-6, when she was an up-and-coming artist with a rebellious tone and fairly witty and incisive lyrics that compare to some of Jarvis Cocker's best work.

The internet was cited as her way of doing promotion at little cost. She kept up with the then-popular MySpace fad, and she posted 'mixtape' MP3s where her songs would be sandwiched between ska/pop/rave/rock/indie classics...

Wait a second, she did what? Oh yes, she uploaded the digital equivalent of C90 compilations. Beautiful creations, yet copyright-infringing.

Surely these have disappeared into the digital ether by now? Well, no! I reckoned that a few might pop up on places like rapidshare.com.

Imagine my surprise when I stumbled across this blog posting about her second mixtape, with a tracklisting of some pretty damn famous songs, such as:

Dirt Off Your Shoulder - Jay-Z
White Rabbit - Jefferson Airplane
Cosmic Dancer - T-Rex
(There's) Always Something There To Remind Me - Sandie Shaw
Gangsters - The Specials
Waterloo Sunset - The Kinks

I hovered over the link to the MP3, and I was stunned - it begins with www.lilyallenmusic.com - her official website! Yep, that's where it is hosted, and at time of writing it is still there, along with her first mixtape MP3. That's three strikes now, isn't it?

Well, I did what any decent-thinking citizen would do, and so I e-mailed Peter Mandelson so that her internet connection could be cut off, that freeloading harlot should be burnt alive in oil TechDirt, so that could expose the story.

10 minutes later, and my revelation is on the front page of TechDirt. You have no idea how much my ego expanded at that moment. It was at Kanye West proportions. I had always wanted to submit an exclusive to that site for years, and here I was with my first submission accepted in a near-instant.

It meant even more to me, knowing that Lily herself would actually see it. I hoped she would respond. In the meantime, it was quickly picked up by the P2P supporters at TorrentFreak.

What an embarrassment. Lily Allen exposed as a complete hypocrite and a liar. What would her record label, EMI, make of it? And would we get a response?

In the late morning, my exposure had reached Lily, who blogged about it. Except that I can't link to this blog entry nor can I quote it in full, because she deleted the entire blog within half-an-hour of learning how we caught her red-handed, indulging in copyright infringement.

Luckily, it's TechDirt who are again the heroes, because Michael quotes some of what she said about my dirt-digging.

I've been dying to respond to her, yet have been at work, and busy with the ATVLand.net site so here goes, with Lily first:

i made those mixtapes 5 years ago, i didn't have a knowledge of the workings of the music industry back then...

Yet it worked in your favour, didn't it? Can you honestly tell me that it wasn't a factor in connecting with your fans? They're bloody good mixtapes by the way, so even if you do claim you're quitting music, please continue making them. I'm especially chuffed you stuck in a Specials B-side and 808 State's Cubik. You do note that on the blog that lists the tracks, there are people there commenting on how they're off to buy the music? I don't think anyone lost out, there's certainly no evidence of it.

As your article clearly states , lilyallenmusic.co.uk is an EMI run website, which is exactly why i don't acknowledge it (i think theres a link to it on my myspace(which i do run), thats purely because, my record contract states i cant sell my merchandise online anywhere else on the net . i don't post on there, i dont even look at it. the record company run it.

I can spot a contradiction in that first sentence, but aside from that, you came up with those mixes. You distributed them, and although the recordings from Dizzee Rascal, The Specials and SL2 are legally held by EMI, there quite a few non-EMI artists on there, such as the Kinks. Jay Z and 808 State. Now, what about "the guys that work in the studio and the kids that run around town putting [...] posters up,the people that designed [...] artwork, the people that run [the] website." Are you "giving them a cut" of your live fee?

Think about what you are proposing now. The Lily Allen of 2009 wants to see the Lilly Allen of 2005 prosecuted. That's it. That's the sheer insanity of it all. Would you like some ketchup on that foot of yours?

Anyway the snippets of songs you hear on those mixtapes are about 30 seconds to 1 minute in length, in traditional mixtape style, it is infringement, correct, but it's not my site, it's EMI's.

Lily, you are lying about "song snippets". That second mixtape is exactly one hour long, and contains 19 tracks. A quick bit of maths reveals that splitting 60 minutes in 1/19 gets you 3.16 minutes - that's the mean average of each song. And many are in there practically in full, with the closer - the Kinks' Waterloo Sunset - being 100% complete.

I do like the way you state "traditional mixtape style". Yes, tradition, style - that's what it is about! You know it's been going on for years, we know it's been going on for years. Yet now you've become a bit *cough* richer, you want to criminalise this activity! You're pissing on your very own roots.

The term "sell-out" isn't used as much as it used to be in music fan circles, but right now I'm calling you out as one.

i am not a hypocrite, i don't illegally download music, and i still think unauthorised file sharing is wrong.

It's not about the downloading of music, which is virtually impossible to trace. Record labels go after uploaders, they can see the IP address quite easily when there's a 'supplier'.

You're a total joke to state that filesharing is wrong, because as I have proven, you have indulged in it yourself. This "do as I say, not as I do" attitude is EXACTLY what a hypocrite does. This is what you have become.

Don't worry about filesharing, as to cite a certain album title - Everyone's At It. Including you, Lily.

Regrettably, some of the critical comments on Lily's blog were very juvenile and spiteful. This was cited by Lily as a reason why she deleted the blog. I don't believe that for a second, it's pretty obvious her copyright infringements did her no favours, but I do distance myself from the personal insults hurled at her. Thankfully there were many many viewpoints that ripped apart Lily's argument in a civil manner.

So, Lily deleted the entire blog, and even stated she's quitting music because of piracy.

The story has gone wild. Google News have it on their front page, with at least 140 articles related to it. The Daily Telegraph are reporting it. DigitalSpy are talking about her mixtape piracy.

A Facebook friend of mine urgently wanted my e-mail address, as his friend is an editor of a national music magazine, and I'm to be interviewed about this debacle.

I've had celebrity blogger Perez Hilton e-mailing me with "love it!", though to be fair, he's definitely no fan of the white-trainer'd songstress.

Plenty of my friends are finding it hysterical, that me, some unknown podgy guy with an opinion, has just managed to cause havoc for a well-known A-list pop star. I wonder if she's summoned in for a carpetting at EMI Towers?

To be humble though (I can sometimes manage it), this isn't about me. It's about the power of the internet, the digital democracy. If I didn't report it, someone else would have done. I'm very much in favour of the story continuing to spread.

As it stands, I've had a hand in severely damaging the dinosaurs' pro-copyright campaigning, I am so chuffed at that. I started embracing MP3s 12 years ago, when I ran a fan site about the Prodigy, and ended up on the receiving end of a £500 legal settlement bill from the BPI's solicitors because we had live concert recordings (commercially unavailable ones) online. Despite the fact none of this ever harmed the finances of The Prodigy or XL Recordings - quite the reverse in fact!

So I'm quite happy the record industry is running around like a headless chicken, losing money everywhere because they just cannot satisfy the market with the same old same old. No amount of remastered Beatles albums is going to save the day. Give up on the plastic discs, and concentrate on providing VALUE for the consumer.

If you want further positive reasoning why MP3s should be priced at virtually zero pence, and why record labels should actually gear themselves up as PR services rather than the outdated shifters of CDs, please pop over to TechDirt.com and take their advice on all matters digital.

My thanks to Ryan Lambie for the rather egotistical subject line suggestion!