WIKICurrent events
Information about current issues, consultations and events.
Current Issues
Digital Rights Issues: What's going on at the moment? What's coming up? Add your concerns and suggestions for action that can be taken.
- Electronic Voting The Open Rights Group declared no confidence in the results for the May 2007 electronic voting pilots. We are observing the e-count for the London Elections in 2008
- Intercept Modernisation Is the Government planning to store communications traffic data of all UK citizens in one giant database?
- Discgate The lost data from HMRC and other government data losses.
- DRM Defective By Design. Losing functionality you’ve always taken for granted.
- IPRED2 Making IP infringement a crime rather than a civil offence.
- Computer Misuse Act IT pros criminalised
- RIP Act Part III UK Government Wants Private Encryption Keys return of the Crypto Wars.
- Net Neutrality the clear separation between Internet access and Internet content.
- Internet Censorship people do not want the government to censor the Internet for them.
- Copyright Term Extension - With Gowers and Hugenholtz in our back-pocket, we're campaigning in both the UK and European Parliaments
- Children's Digital Rights creating dossiers on children.
- National Vehicle Tracking Database recording the movements of every vehicle on the road.
- Trusted computing who should your computer take its orders from?
- OpenDocument Did you ever receive a document you could not open?
- Identity cards and Biometric passport.
- Software Patents the divisive issue over whether to allow for the patenting of software.
- DNA database.
- Internet privacy.
- Access to public sector data
- RFID
- TV Without Frontiers Directive Regulate TV on the Internet, Ofcom think it could affect podcasting.
- BPI telling ISPs to freeze the accounts
- Copyright Education in schools
- UK Podcast Licence
- WIPO Broadcast Treaty
- NHS Care Records Service Centralising patients' medical records
- Freedom of Information - changes to the regulations that would make it easier for FOI requests to be refused
- Graduated response Rightsholders are pressuring governments to enact laws which make ISPs cut off the internet connections of suspected illicit filesharers
- Bloggers rights after the Night Jack unmasking
- Free software respects people's rights, encourages formation of user communities, and helps people use their rights
Current Consultations
Forthcoming Events
There are no meetups planned in the near future - if you know of one, please add it.
In the meantime, why not get involved some other way:
- Contribute to the Wiki, building a database of knowledge to help both our campaigns and the public - see Editing the Wiki for help.
- Volunteer with the Open Rights Group, helping us campaign on issues you care about.
- Join; our activities are entirely funded by individuals who care about digital rights. Your donations make our work possible.
- Sign Up to one of our mailing lists, so we can let you know what we're working on and how you can help out.
- Edit and help write our internal research projects to improve the free coverage of open rights issues.
- Help us reply to public consultations so the government takes into account your views
- We need volunteers to edit the Orgzine, a digital rights magazine.
- Help us expose websites that have been wrongly blocked by ISP's by using the Blocked.org.uk tool
Past Events
- Digital Rights in the UK: Your Rights, Your Issues - notes from the meeting.
- Second ORG networking evening - information, and sign up to attend!
- Third ORG event: Copyfighters' Drunken Brunch and Talking Shop
- Copyfighters Drunken Picnic and Talking Shop, 23 Apr 06
- Manchester Meeting (2nd May 2006) - Suw visits Manchester for evening ORG discussion +
- Copyfighters Drunken Brunch and Talking Shop, 21 May 06
- Copyfighters Drunken Brunch and Talking Shop, 16 July 06
- Copyfighters Drunken Brunch and Talking Shop, 27 August 06
- Come support the Open Rights Group in Scotland! 5 September, Edinburgh.
- ORG Volunteer Meeting Wednesday 14 September 06
- Copyfighters Drunken Brunch and Talking Shop, 22 October 06