Random Arrows

6 reasons #debill should scare you

So the Digital Economy Bill passed the House of Commons last night and - assuming the House of Lords don’t reject it - will soon become law.

So what? Is it all just a storm in a teacup?

After all, while many people have downloaded pirated music, films or TV surely it’s right that the Government should try to protect the work of struggling artists, right?

Here are 6 reasons why #debill should scare an sensible person living in Britain…

1) The government now has the power to block access to a website if someone claims it breaches their copyright or if it might breach anyone’s copyright in the future

OK. So, let’s get this straight - this means PirateBay can be banned, right? Well what’s so bad about that?

Sure, it also means the following sites could be banned:

• Wikileaks
• Youtube
• Google (hey, isn’t that what China did?)
• Every national newspaper (do you think they clear every use of the Nike logo?)
• Mumsnet (can you guarantee nobody will post something which breaches copyright?) .. oh and every other forum you can think of
• Facebook
• Greenpeace (Nestle recently got a Greenpeace video banned from YouTube over copyright - do you think they wouldn’t try to ban access to Greenpeace’s site if they could)
• Every single blog that writes about the FedEx logo and shows an image.

Now, I’m not saying the next government would ban all these sites - but they could if they wanted and that’s the point. Sooner or later, if a government has the power to do something they’ll use it.

2) If a website might put pirated content on in the future, it can be blocked.

Now - just to be clear. We’re not just talking about actual, proven cases of copyright infringement. We’re not even talking about alleged cases of piracy.

Any website that is deemed likely to commit a crime in the future can be blocked.

I’m just going to repeat that…

Any website that is deemed likely to commit a crime in the future can be blocked.

So, the government can block a website that hasn’t even done anything, because it thinks it might do it in the future.

Anyone seen Minority Report?

That is like locking up all young black men because some nutter thinks they’re likely to knife someone in the future.

Again, just think about it for a second. The government now thinks it has the right to ban websites because of things it thinks they might do in the future. And it thinks it has the ability to predict the future.

If that’s not a dangerous precedent, I don’t know what is.

3) If someone uses your Internet connection to download pirated content you are responsible.

So…

• If you run a B&B or a pub and offer wi-fi to your customers - you get fined if they download some music off a Peer-to-peer site.

• If you run a small business and one of your employees decides to watch some clips of Family Guy on YouTube during their lunch hour you get fined.

• If a neighbour uses your wifi to download some movies you get fined (The government minister presenting the bill said “put a password on”, clearly not understanding that wi-fi can be hacked)

• If your kid looks at Facebook (do you KNOW how much content is on Facebook that uses other people’s logos, images etc?) and the government decides that something they were looking at breaches copyright then .. you guessed it you get fined.

Oh, and you might not just be fined. You could have your Internet connection cut off altogether.

4) You are guilty until proven innocent

If someone who claims to be a copyright owner tells Ofcom (who will be in charge of this) that you’ve been breaching their copyright, then:

• They are presumed to actually be the copyright owner
• You are presumed to be acting illegally
• You have to pay for any appeal (Hmm .. wonder how a big business could use this to harass people?)
• No account is taken of fair use, commentary etc.

Piracy happens. It’s a fact.

But copyright isn’t as simple as the government claims.

For example, this blog could be banned. I put up a post recently with a doctored KitKat wrapper. Under UK law, I can claim this was fair use - I’ve got a right to comment on Nestle and make a satire / criticism.

However, under #debill Nestle could (and I’ve no doubt will - see what they did to Greenpeace on YouTube) apply to have sites like this simply blocked. No fair use. No right to criticize a multinational company.

What about if a big business claims that a competitor’s logo looks similar to theirs and breaches their copyright? Simple - get the site pulled!

Anyone remember Magna Carta?

5) People are collectively punished

So, I’m a freelance web designer that works from home. Without the Internet, I can’t make any money.

Let’s say my girlfriend decides to download some pirated music.

I get fined and my Internet access gets cut off.

How’s that fair? If my girlfriend steals a hat from New Look I don’t go to prison!

What if some student downloads a pirated copy of Photoshop. Is it fair to punish the whole university for one student’s actions? If that student was caught drink driving would every other student and professor have their driving license taken away?

6) Internet access is fast becoming a human right

People pay their taxes online. They collect their pensions online. Newspapers are expected to online only in the near future.

Internet access isn’t the luxury it once was, it’s becoming a fundamental right of a citizen in a Western economy. Without the Internet you can’t access essential services.

Part of the process

What was especially worrying about the “debate” on the Digital Economy Bill is that the MPs who bothered to turn up (40 at the peak) clearly didn’t - with one or two notable exceptions - understand the basics of the Internet and how it works. I’m not expecting every MP to be able to write Reg Ex, but is it too much to ask that they know how you’d go about getting broadband? How can people who clearly don’t know that a password can be hacked be expected to create laws to govern the Internet?

And plenty’s already been said about the shambles of a process the MPs followed and their contempt for democracy.

I’m not saying that the Government has not right to legislate to help cut down on piracy, but #debill is not the way to do it.

Oh, and before anyone says “Oh but Piracy is hurting the creative industries” - check your facts.

Related links:

• Hats off to the awesome and hilarious Labour MP Tom Watson who defied a 3 line whip to speak out against this bill.

• http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-digital-economy-bill-quick-guide-to-all-45-measures/

• More about Clause 8 http://econsultancy.com/blog/5717-digital-economy-bill-passes-will-the-uk-get-its-own-great-firewall?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed

• The MPs that bothered to vote can be found on Hansard

• Unintended consequences of #debill http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/technology/mikebutcher/100004879/the-digital-economy-bill-a-nightmare-of-unintended-consequences/

• http://eu.techcrunch.com/2010/04/08/doublethink-the-digital-economy-bill-against-the-digital-economy/

Stop bitching about SEO and make better websites

Lots of very good web designers don’t get SEO.*

They think it’s a “snake oil” sales technique designed to trick Google into placing bad sites artificially high.

Sorry to break it to you guys, but that’s just crazy talk.

There are snake oil salesmen in SEO, but there are in web design as well.

The problem isn’t dodgy SEO companies .. the problem is dodgy web designers who produce sites that need SEO because they don’t do well in Google, due to the fact they’ve got rubbish content.

*Note: Paul Boag is a extremely good web designer who I have a hell of a lot of respect for. I’m not saying for a second that Paul’s sites need to be better. However, I do think he misunderstands what SEO is. This isn’t a personal rant against Paul or a criticism of his post. He was asking a legitimate question. It’s more aimed at large number of web designers who write SEO consultants off as snake oil salesmen, scum or anything similar.

Good SEO and snake oil salesmen

I define SEO as:

“Any technique designed to help your site appear higher in Google and other search engines”

Now, some of these techniques are common sense. For example, writing good content, using semantic markup and having friendly URLs.

Other techniques aren’t common sense and can actually make a site worse. Keyword stuffing, link farms, hidden text, etc etc.

Anyone who’s using black hat techniques like these is a charlatan .. but that doesn’t mean that anyone who does any SEO is a snake oil salesman.

Snake oil web designers

What most web designers don’t seem to get - and I’m a web designer, first and foremost - is that many business people view web designers as the snake oil salesmen.

I regularly speak at Business Link events run for small and medium sized businesses, and business owners time and time again tell me how they were “let down” and “ripped off” by a web designer who “didn’t know their stuff” and “didn’t get the site top on Google”.

This meant that they had paid out money - usually thousands of pounds - for a website that hadn’t produced a return.

These people don’t see SEO companies as snake oil salesmen - they see us, the web designers, as the snake oil salesmen. Selling them a product that promises much but delivers very little.

It’s your fault there’s a market for SEO companies - good ones and bad ones

If you produce websites which cost more to make than they bring in in revenue, then you’re not a very good web designer.

It doesn’t matter how nicely your XHTML validates or how beautiful your comps.

If you produce sites that cost more than they make, then you’re not a very good web designer.

SEO companies only exist because web designers - not all web designers, but some - create websites that don’t get enough visitors and don’t produce a return on investment.

If you don’t like SEO companies, make sure your sites don’t need SEO!!

But I’m a good web designer, my sites do make money!

Great. Well, then you need to tell your clients that.

Even if you don’t think you do SEO .. even if you think all you’re doing is just “good web design” then you need to answer the “SEO Question”.

Why not say something like this in your FAQs?

Do you do SEO?

We create sites that your customers will love and will want to visit and link to. Our sites do tend to do well in Google, but actually, we believe it’s more important to optimize for users than search engines.

Because we do things right in the first place, you shouldn’t need to pay a separate “SEO Consultant”.

Don’t judge what you don’t understand

Lots of web designers who criticize SEO don’t actually really know much about it.

That’s no better than some looney condemning a film or TV program they haven’t even seen.

Web designers should learn about SEO and what’s involved. Feel free to ignore things that you disagree with, but you might find there’s some good information among the dross which will actually make your

Alun Rowe commented on Paul Boag’s post don’t get SEO

Up until a few weeks ago I’d have agreed with you wholeheartedly placing SEO experts somewhere between snake oil vendors and just plain fraudsters. But I was given the opportunity to speak at an SEO conference called ThinkVisibility (http://www.thinkvisibility.com/) last weekend and to be honest I was amazed at the quality of information I received from the day.

That, to me, says it all.

How can you judge something you don’t understand?

Note: It’s really good that Alun has revised his opinion of SEO. It’s just a shame that lots of really good web designers and developers, like Alun, see fit to dismiss something as snake oil that they haven’t really taken the time to understand.

A lot of SEO work is correcting mistakes made by web designers

Web designers commonly create websites that don’t have friendly URLs. They create sites that contain no keywords and use “Welcome to COMPANY NAME” as the title tag and H1 on the homepage.

They create sites that have dull content that focuses on how wonderful the website owner is - because they abdicate responsibility for creating content to clients with no advice on how to do it well.

SEO consultants then get paid to offer useful advice like “had you though of having something interesting on your site?” and “had you thought of having friendly URLs” and “perhaps we should add a blog”.

And then web designers have the cheek to criticize SEO companies.

Now, I’m not saying ALL web designers produce bad sites .. but lots do .. and it’s these morons who create work for SEO agencies and consultants.

There are good SEO consultants and dodgy people who try to game Google .. but the market for SEO has been created by web designers who produce websites which cost more than they make for the website owners.

Stop bitching and make better websites

If you don’t like SEO companies .. create better websites and encourage your competitors to create better sites.