From: craig
To: Gareth Buttrill
Sent: Friday, July 07, 2006 2:56 PM
Subject: Re: Infringement of Crown Copyright: letter before claim
Mr Buttrill,
As no court has ruled on anything, I would like to know by what power you, acting for the government, can tell me what I “must” do in this respect. I am putting that question formally to you as a government servant and it is not rhetorical; I require an answer.
I find the increasing authoritatianism of government in this country deeply disturbing. I will consider carefully your points once I can get proper legal advice, and not before. It should not take too long.
I am now late for collecting my duaghter.
I've done a couple of supporting blogg entries and expect to do more as this thing develops. Took delivery of the book from Amazon this morning.
Good entries Sabrtetache.
I see one Richard at Medialens thinks I am barking up the wrong tree, and the government has the power to do this under the Freedom of Information Act.
That may be true – they also have the power to detain me for long periods under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. But should they?
The provision to retain copyright under the Data Protection Act and Freedom of Information Act was designed to protect the government's revenue interest. Was it the intention of the Freedom of Information Act that information divulged should be solely for the specific individual who requests it, and not for the public at large? No, plainly it was not the intention. The government is seeking to abuse the copyright provision to obtain a power to arbitrarily suppress information for political purposes.
There is no excuse in this case because there is no revenue – the documents are freely available on the web. Nor are they seeking to protect their own revenue stream – they want to suppress the documents, not to publish them.
So the question to ask is not does the government have the power to do this, but, in doing this are they abusing that power?
Craig
You seem to be talking about a corporation, Craig – the government protecting its revenue stream.
I really despair at this corporate worship. MPs don't think of themselves as civil servants anymore, but rather as CEOs.
How is living under a corporate monarchy a good thing? Corporations don't care about anything but profit; they will work with any regime, however odious.
It's a fallacy to think that what's good for corporations is good for democracy.
If the government arrests Craig, they will be running the risk of turning me into an extremist. Quite an achievement for Labour ministers, given that I'm white, British, and agnostic.
I'm sick of this government's bullying.
Things are going to boil over if the government doesn't start to back off.
On the back of the Labour Party Membership card is written this:
"The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party. It believes that by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone, so as to create for each of us the means to realise our true potential and for all of us a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many not the few, where the rights we enjoy reflect the duties we owe, and where we live together, freely, in a spirit of solidarity, tolerance and respect."
–
To quote Mark Curtis: "Never in British history has there been such a gap between government claims and the reality of policy." <a href="http:// (www.markcurtis.info)” target=”_blank”> <a href="http://(www.markcurtis.info)” target=”_blank”>(www.markcurtis.info)
Presumably if someone copies the documents on a server outside the UK and all you do is link to them they won't be able to touch you. Perhaps this is the way to go.
I've been beavering away this morning. There won't be many of the larger non-MSM sites in the US unaware of all this by close today. It's also beginning to appear on some of the larger Yahoo political group lists too.
On Richard II's point: A bit of creative auto-redirecting to non-UK hosts and maybe domain/IP address ownership changing should do the trick and keep the book url references accurate.
In case something happens to Craig's web site or to other UK based mirrors, I've put the 15 FCO documents on the eMule/eDonkey network. Please download and share.
The main thing i have trouble with is WHY release this in the first place? "RELEASE" folks. Get that? Is not the WHOLE point of going through the FoiA balony IS to PROVE somthing? Prove with documents in the governments hands? You still own the government you live under don't you? Well tough cookies Mr Gareth Buttrill this temptist is NOT going back into the bottle. If you did not want this out in PUBLIC then you should have found some LEGAL remedy at FOIA time NO?
If you look hard enough you can see this CANCER growing steadly in UK/USA.
Go get em' Craig!
A related case, to the extent of the Labour Party pursuing a vendetta. This guy could go to Guantanamo Bay for torture:
http://blogs.download.com/Spyware-Hunt/post.php?p…
Extracts:
"Gary McKinnon was hoping again hope that UK Home Secretary John Reid would break with the extradition treaty binding him, a British man accused of hacking into NASA and the U.S. government, to an American court.
"Reid's decision to go ahead with extradition represents the latest level of appeal made by McKinnon and his supporters in a long legal struggle for a UK trial since McKinnon was first arrested in 2002.
"According to his lawyers, McKinnon fears shipment to Guantanamo Bay as a terror suspect and feels that if extradited, he's already as good as 'hung and quartered.'"
–
Let's just remind ourselves what's on the back of the Labour Party Membership card, shall we:
"The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party. It believes that by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone, so as to create for each of us the means to realise our true potential and for all of us a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many not the few, where the rights we enjoy reflect the duties we owe, and where we live together, freely, in a spirit of solidarity, tolerance and respect."
Sabretache, you meant "Freddy F" not me:
"On Richard II's point: A bit of creative auto-redirecting to non-UK hosts and maybe domain/IP address ownership changing should do the trick and keep the book url references accurate."
Blair is a cold-blooded murderer.
And so are all those gutless individuals in the Labour Party who have kept him in power.
It appears that a US website doesn't fear Foreign Office threats:
http://cryptome.org/murray-docs.htm