Tonight was the big “debate” on Sean Sherlock’s special instrument (a way in which a government minister an change law without a parliamentary vote). Sherlock put forward his usual lines which gloss over the fact that the European Courts of Justice say this type of block are illegal, that users & pirates can bypass a block in 5 minutes, and that the text is so open ended is relies on judges (not the elected parliament) to define the details of the law.
Every opposition party objects to this new law. Two representatives, Willie O’Dea (Limerick – Fianna Fail) and Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow – Independent) offered excellent arguments against this rush to a new law without due diligence and consideration. I didn’t know Donnelly, and O’Dea has a certain “reputation” at the national level, so this was quite a pleasant surprise.
However, as expected, Sherlock (North Cork) announced he was ploughing ahead with his plans to shirk his duty and not allow our democratically elected parliament define this law that is critical to our ailing economy.
Note: the proposal is that judges can pass injunctions against ISPs or content hosters to block websites that a plaintif claims contains copyright infringements. Anyone with 30 seconds of Internet experience can tell you that this can be bypassed, or that BitTorrent was designed to defeat this by using infinite seeds.
To make things worse, a Fine Gael TD, Jerry Buttimer (@jerrybuttimer, Cork South Central) claimed that he was inundated by emails by anarchists and keyboard warriors. Oh the misery! Well frak him! We’re letting this bog hopper (I am a culchie but this moron’s performance was a shame on our nation) know what we think. If you’re from Ireland, then tweet out
My name is <insert name here> and #IAmAKeyboardWarrior
We want these people who think they know better than us to know that we are watching, we are legion, and we are not anonymous. And we vote.