Lib Dems are appealing to the vital online pirate vote at this year’s party conference, putting the membership on collision course with LibDem ministers in the coalition government. In a new IT policy paper called “Preparing The Ground”, a team of party activists led by Cambridge MP Julian Huppert calls for the Digital Economy Act to be gutted of its copyright measures. It also threatens new legislation to ensure all “traffic flows at the same speed”, and wants the IR35 contractor tax suspended.

Senior party figures speaking on condition of anonymity expressed dismay at the proposals. The LibDems are in government for the first time in 70 years, and have attempted to leave behind the Party’s old “sandal-wearing” image as a haven for single-issue-fanatics.

Two options are proposed for the Digital Economy Act: removing all the copyright legislation from the DEA, or calling for an additional vote on most of it. The second proposal also calls for the repeal of web-blocking powers, but Ministers say they won’t implement them anyway. The Digital Economy Act was passed by 189 votes to 47 last year.

The bearded, bicycling Huppert, a former UN youth organiser, told us he thought copyright legislation that existed prior to the DEA is sufficient for today – and he had never seen an online copyright enforcement measure he liked.

“Nobody has yet suggested one that is workable and proportionate,” he said.

That’s a pretty hard line, and one sure to bring cheers from hardcore downloaders. In the absence of sticks, Huppert told us he wanted education and better services. “There are already laws,” he told us, “people get prosecuted under these existing laws for copyright infringement online.”

The activists also call for the return of Clause 43 orphan works legislation, bringing in extended collective licensing for photographs and illustrations where a publisher can’t be arsed to ask permission can’t find the creator.

One speed for all

Also on the boilerplate list of digital activist grievances is a threat of new controls on network operators (aka “net neutrality”), with the paper insisting that more regulation “is liberal”. TV and video users and producers might be dismayed to read that “it is better to provide a level playing field – where traffic flows at the same speed“.

Video and gaming packets need to travel considerably faster – with lower latency and jitter – than bog-standard web-pages. Surely this was a typo?

“I can see the argument for some kind of traffic-shaping,” Huppert says. “That’s already done. That’s fundamentally different from stuff from the BBC going at a different bitrate.”

But wouldn’t that outlaw me paying for a premium movie service over IP? What harm was a private transaction like this doing to anyone?

That was “less” problematic, he said. “There’s nothing wrong with paying for a faster connection, or Channel 4 charging for movies, or dealing with an ISP to transmit them faster. What I don’t wish to see is Google paying money to an ISP to make Bing run slower.”

Huppert said the precedent was charging road users for premium services – fast lanes. “We don’t have roads you have to pay for,” he told us.

[Actually, we have several.]

But hang on – aren’t toll roads pretty common everywhere in the world already? The justification shifted once again: Facebook shouldn’t be able to withhold its service from an ISP by demanding money. Maybe they should try it, I suggested, as they wouldn’t need to scrape and hoard so much personal information. It almost sounds like an honest business model.

Nevertheless, the paper threatens that “privileging certain types of content or throttling download speeds on certain websites will lead inevitably to regulation”. Perhaps this is somewhat optimistic.

negative effect on creative industries, and proposes a new study to produce the answers desired. A move to allow the free public access to “the BBC archive wherever possible” was dropped from the published draft, El Reg understands.

I asked Huppert if the LibDems had done a costing of the suspension of IR35? “We don’t have the resources,” he said.

“In an ideal system there wouldn’t be such loopholes. I can understand why IR35 was invented. But it clearly doesn’t work very well, causes a large number of problems, and doesn’t collect very much revenue. ”

A bit like the 50p tax, then?

Julian laughed.

The LibDems will vote on a Policy Motion (F28) on Monday, 19 September

[link]

Politicians are becoming increasingly familiar with sudden squalls of email filling up their inboxes, and policy makers with responses to public consultations arriving via a web intermediary. But not surprisingly many of these can be phoney, inflating the true size of what purports to be "grassroots" campaign.

The shortcomings of the web-based approach were illustrated here recently. Photographers on a shoestring budget successfully mobilised against Clause 43 – but internet campaigners concerned about file-sharing who used a site to send 20,000 emails about the Digital Economy Act failed to make an impression, resulting in a triumph for the BPI.

Earlier this month Obama’s internet guru, Harvard academic Cass Sunstein, warned departments that internet opinion shouldn’t be used as an opinion poll or focus group. He advised that:

Agencies exercise good judgment and caution when using rankings, ratings, or tagging. Specifically, agency use of the information generated by these tools should be limited to organizing, ranking, and sorting comments. Because, in general, the results of online rankings, ratings, and tagging (e.g., number of votes or top rank) are not statistically generalizable, they should not be used as the basis for policy or planning.

That’s pretty conclusive. Four years ago, Sunstein published a love letter to Web 2.0 called Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge that praised Wikipedia, blogs and prediction markets. But this is an altogether more sober assessment. He seems to have had second thoughts.

A vivid illustration of how a few single-issue fanatics can skew the results of an opinion poll is currently being digested in Canada. Lawyer Richard Owens has investigated the responses and found something quite interesting.

In response to a copyright form paper, over 8,000 responses were submitted, but 65 per cent of these were an identical form email from one IP address, the "Canadian Coalition for Electronic Rights". Owens notes that these:

…Included Submissions in which: no names were used; only first names were used (there were, for example, sixty-eight “Chris” and seventy-two “John” who made Submissions); and, suspect names, such as – “D Man”, “El Qwazo”, “pr0f1t”, “Cereal”, and “Eagle” – were used. Given the ability to submit anonymously or under false identification, is highly probable that there are multiple Submissions from the same persons.

The CCER form letter had been circulated around Bittorrent P2P fan sites. But most of the visitors to these sites aren’t Canadian. Quantity overruled quality.

Observers wondered whether something similar might have happened in the UK. When the Open Rights Group ventured into the real world, the numbers were small: it mustered just over 100 bodies for its main demo, and only single figures for its "flash mobs". The ORG’s "Your Message To Mandelson" campaign launched last year rapidly gathered 300 anonymous messages – but stalled at around the 500 mark.

Such disparities led people to question how representative the online activity really was. "Is this a particularly well-focussed campaign by a relatively small group of activists?", asked the BBC’s Rory Cellan Jones.

Read more at The Register

Back in January, a senior music business figure explained to me that Clause 17, which gave open-ended powers to the Secretary of State, was unlikely to survive the wash-up. But he didn’t much care; the other sections which compelled the ISPs to take action against infringers were good enough. Anything else was a bonus – possibly even a distraction. Yet to the amazement of the music business, web blocking is now legislation.

I think this is a watershed in internet campaigning. It’s not just a tactical defeat, it’s a full-on charge of the light brigade…

Read more at The Register

The segment on Monday’s Simon Mayo drive time heard Madeley, who is filling in for Mayo, say:

“What a pain! I only got computer literate three years ago, just as I get wised up to it, they take it away.”

We don’t yet know how many car accidents were caused by the news of mass confiscations.

Madeley was following a segment of the show about the Digital Economy Bill (now Act). The sole ‘expert’ was Professor Lilian Edwards. Edwards was simply billed as “a Professor of Law” at Sheffield University.

Edwards made some curious statements about “disconnections” (not mentioned in the Act) and how libraries might have to put passwords on their PCs. Libraries already operate a pretty strict lock-down regime: requiring password authentication, firewalls, and prohibiting the installation of Third Party software. But she insisted: “Even if you do password protect it, policing it may get very expensive.”

Even this didn’t raise any suspicions amongst the show’s presenters. But then, why would it – Edwards presented herself an unbiased expert.

Asked why some Twitterers were upset about the Bill, Edwards replied:

“I’ve been thinking about this. It’s a hard thing to say on a music station, but the House of Commons thinks most important thing here is the music industry – which is of course important – but these people think the most important thing is the future of the internet, and I tend to agree with them.”

The problem for Radio 2 is that the show breached the Corporations’ editorial guidelines. Edwards is a member of the Open Rights Group’s Advisory Council, and she relentlessly blogs about the coming armageddon – not always accurately – here. As an ORG advisor her duties include to “Fundraise and/or make fundraising introductions” and “Be available for media contact if required”.

By failing to declare Edwards’ partisan affiliations, the show fell foul of the guideline, which states:

…we should not automatically assume that academics and journalists from other organisations are impartial and make it clear to our audience when contributors are associated with a particular viewpoint

A spokesperson told us on Friday:

“We are aware of the issues you have raised with us and are currently looking into the matter.”

It’s amazing what the title ‘Professor’ can do.

TalkTalk boldly promised today to fight disconnection requests in court, at least until after the election. Carphone Warehouse strategy director Andrew Heaney made the pledge on his blog.

The fact that ISPs don’t get any disconnection requests, and if they did, they would (rightly) throw them in the bin along with other junk mail, isn’t mentioned. Such a request would currently have the legal validity of a request to paint your house pink, scribbled on a fag packet and thrown from a passing car.

Heaney’s pledge is only good until “after the Election”. If account suspensions are eventually approved, it won’t be for a long time.

Maybe Heaney thinks we’re all extremely stupid. Or maybe he’s just found his audience.

“I’m impressed. Well done,” comments Stef Lewandowski, a marketing guru who has advised quango Nesta and the Department of Culture Media and Sport, and is a Cultural Leadership Fellow at the Arts Council-sponsored Clore programme, studying “Accelerated Serendipity“.

“Seven Years of Donations Fighting, Brothers…”

Meanwhile Open Rights Group’s Maximum Leader, Comrade Jim Killock, was crowing about the success of the appeals drive, launched to capitalise on the ORG’s spectacular success (are you sure? – Ed) with the Digital Economy Bill.

The ORG’s entire front page was replaced with a “Fuck You” graphic, soliciting donations. This prompted dismay from supporters, according to emails that fell into our inbox.

“Someone – please – say that the ORG server has been hacked by some script kiddies,” wrote one supporter. “Oh, for heavens sake are we in the school playground? Who are we trying to attract?” asked another. “Yes, we lost a round – there’s no reason to become petulant and offensive.”

Killock eventually obliged, but then noticed something:

“Hum guys, since we took the graphic down, nobody’s joined up (from 16.50 till now) – that’s cost us about £2000* assuming they’re not joining because we’re not pushing them as strongly”

So he put it back up again.

Comrade Jim explained that five people an hour were joining while the front page had displayed the middle finger – which indicates what an impressive mass movement the music industry is up against. That’s almost enough for an ORG Flash Mob. The average pledge was £60, which Jim multiplied over seven years.

(Obviously he expects the ‘copyfight’ to go on… and on… and on.)

“I’m very understanding of the issues people have raised, but a strong reaction – one that will offend some people while making other people agree violently – is required to make people part with their cash.”

That’s the spirit, Jim.

The invitation to start work on the initial code, then, is the starting pistol – and it may go off in mid-May, when the next Parliament convenes, or later.

Ofcom is then invited to spend six months drawing up the code for handling copyright infringement notifications. During this time it is expected to consult widely: the Act mentions rightsholders, service providers, subscribers and anyone else interested. Clearance with the EU is also required for this code, as BIS explained here.

The UK government must show the measures are consistent with “Convention Rights, with European Directives on subjects such as copyright protection, Internet Service Provider liability and privacy and in a way that is consistent with principles of administrative law.”

Don Foster MP didn’t think it could be done in less than three months, speaking in the Commons this week.

The code agreed will be put into practice for a year, during which the outgoing government hopes lots of new music services will appear, and casual infringement will fall. As BIS wrote in an explanatory note earlier this year:

“The ultimate aim of the legislation is to shift people’s behaviour from the unlawful to the legal.”

One view is that up to now people have used P2P because they know they’re not being watched, and 12 months of monitoring may be enough to change that. Another view is that they may not care that they’re being watched, and are willing to take their chances.

If the former view turns out to be nearer the mark, then the story ends there. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief. The government says it expects that the volume of CIRs, or Copyright Infringement Reports to be high – but generating these is expensive for copyright holders, and processing them even more expensive for ISPs. It’s not what either of them should be doing.

If people don’t stop downloading illicitly the full 12 months must elapse before the Secretary of State can draw on powers to act further.

If at that point infringement has not fallen sufficiently in his judgement, the Secretary can order Ofcom to draw up “technical measures” to be introduced by the service provider. Ofcom has a palette of four options, as the Act defines a technical measure as something that does one or more of the following:

1. Limits the speed or other capacity of the service provided to a subscriber
2. Prevents a subscriber from using the service to gain access to particular material, or limits such use
3. Suspends the service provided to a subscriber
4. Limits the service provided to a subscriber in another way

The technical obligations are then presented to Parliament for inspection, and must pass a vote in each House.

So if you add it all up, then a code can’t be put in force any sooner than early next year, 2011, and even then 12 months must elapse before any technical obligations are sharpened. We’re looking at Spring 2012 for the first technical measures being put in force.

Remember that the subscriber has two tiers of appeal – to the ISP or to an independent appeals body. This is where the important Lib Dem amendments, now almost forgotten, become important. Rather than a Star Chamber, as originally envisaged, the appeals body is obliged to presume innocence.

For anyone determined to be the first Mandybill Martyr, the first bandwidth throttling or account suspension won’t then take place before Summer or Autumn 2012 – well over two years away.

A lot can happen in two years. Then again, we had high hopes in July 2008, too. All we’ve had since then is Spotify.

Bootnote

What about the old Section 18, you ask, the bit about web-blocking? The future of this can of worms is so uncertain we’ll defer discussion on that for the moment. It may not survive scrutiny in the 60-day eyeballing opportunity promised in the new Parliament.

Live TV and internet coverage allowed the nation to feel grubby as the Mandybill was shunted through the House of Commons late last night. The government’s replacement for Clause 18 – a catch-all illiberal web-blocking measure that few in the music business ever expected to survive – was approved, and the photographers cemented a spectacular victory by crushing the orphan works clause.

But not before a bit of spirited resistance – or token posturing – take your pick, for it in truth it was a bit of both, to the copyright infringement clauses by Tom Watson, Austin Mitchell, Bill Cash and other backbenchers.

Almost universally the MPs who spoke objected to the bill being rammed through in a sort of procedural speed-dating, at the very death of Parliament. Even stalwart copyright supporters such as John Hemming, a BPI member, and LibDem frontbencher Don Foster condemned the scheduling. Foster said the government’s whips could have timetabled a Commons debate three weeks earlier, but had left MPs kicking their heels.

Watson proposed a number of probing amendments – ie ones designed to be withdrawn – before duly withdrawing them all. The first of these, which would have decriminalised online file sharing except for commercial infringers, took almost an hour to debate. While it gave MPs a chance to vent before a sizeable crowd following on Twitter, it exhausted most of the time available.

Foster said that it “was disgraceful a bill of this complexity is given so little time” to be debated, explaining: “That’s why so many of us are in such a difficult position. [Watson] has raised important probing amendments.”

He regretted the time didn’t allow orphan works to be discussed, but then nobody mentioned the ludicrous timetable for radio switchover. Or radio at all. Not once.

The government’s promise of a “superaffirmative” procedure in the next Parliament (commencing mid-May) may not have won over any rebels, but perhaps staunched any defections. The procedure means leftover legislation is subject to a further 60 days’ scrutiny.

So the Digital Economy Bill was passed by 189 to 47 votes at 11:18pm. The web-blocking provision was the only clause to go to a division, where it was carried 197:40. Clause 43 fell on a voice vote.

Apart from blaming the Labour Party for rotten scheduling, the Conservatives were quiet. Tory spokesman Ed Vaizey mocked the “extraordinary bleating” of the Labour worrywarts, and didn’t think much of Watson’s amendments, which he said were “scribbled on the back of an envelope at 100 mbits/second.”

“It is pathetic for the Labour benches to say that the three hours is nothing to do with them. They are responsible for the lack of scrutiny.”

In turn, Watson wasn’t impressed with The Honourable Edward Vaizey, and said he could have done some scrutinising of his own.

Watson, who was in no way playing to his Twitter gallery, said he feared the tyranny of the “lickspittle media oligarch who gives instructions from his tax haven”. If Twitter was an electorate, Watson would have won by around 3,000 votes to one by this point. Those are the kind of numbers a dictator would be comfortable with.

Watson said he thought a statutory license would solve the problem – a confiscation of private property (from the lickspittle media oligarchs) to be handed over to the People of a Free Freetardia – and said that’s how a Labour government had solved the problem of Pirate Radio in the 1960s.

(The analogy doesn’t quite scale, obviously.)

Unfortunately, with a few open goals to aim at, many of the backbench objections were about as coherent.

One MP said the trawl would only catch children, the inference being grown-ups don’t use Bittorrent. Another MP said the legislation was unenforceable, because people could change their internet providers as easily as they could change an email addresses, and if disconnected they’d just create another Hotmail account to get on the internet instead.

Hemming said that publication of FOIA requested-material that had stamped with the crown copyright could be blocked. This was not in the Amendment the government countered with last week, it must be said, which would permit publication in the public interest.

Foster scored some better points, wondering why on earth web blocking could be applied to sites “likely to infringe”, and why an injunction needed to be “indefinite”?

These are terrible amendments, but in their haste to pursue fictional grievances that catch headlines, such as Open Wi-Fi and disconnections, the Open Rights Group is guilty of incredibly naive tactics, and has helped unleash some really dangerous legislation into the wild.

(They could take a leaf out of the Stop43 group’s successful campaign. Rather than trying to get their names in the papers as Freedom Fighters, using enviro-scare tactics, the photographers quietly stopped the bad legislation through rational persuasion and did so using fewer resources – and less time.)

Now what?

It’s back to the Lords. For a more detailed update see here.

The Mandylaw may not survive the cooler appraisal of ‘Superaffirmative’ scrutiny in the next session, but Ofcom – which has the task of devising the “technical counter measures” – may get cold feet.

The timetable is for a six-month consultation period over Ofcom’s Code. This is likely to stretch to nine months when the EU is included. Then Ofcom implements the code for at least one year, with no further action against users or ISPs. Only a year after that, the throttling can begin.

Maybe photographers have a guardian angel, after all. The Stop 43 campaign to throw out the orphan works clause may be the only part of the vast Digital Economy Bill where activists have achieved their goal – rather than made things worse. With the Tories pledging to drop the clause, it’s unlikely to survive the wash-up – although we won’t know for sure until very late tonight.

Eleventh-hour validation for the photographers came thanks to Labour’s obsession with Web 2.0 gimmickry, which delivered them a gift last Friday.

Labour launched a Photoshopped poster of David Cameron as Gene Hunt, which the Guardian soberly reminded us, showed “a recognition that the best ideas do not always belong to ad executives in London”.

Two Milliband brothers were on hand, looking extraordinarily pleased with themselves. Just one problem: they didn’t ask for anyone’s permission. Image rights for Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes belong to the BBC. Cameron’s mugshot is also under copyright.

“It demonstrated every point we had been making,” a Stop43 campaigner told us today.

It’s not the first time Labour has used images to which they have no rights. And to demonstrate that they’re 100 per cent fail-compatible with Labour, the Webtastic Tories followed suit.

It didn’t go unnoticed by MPs.

Yesterday Peter Luff (Con.) pointed out it was a “spectacular demonstration” of Stop43’s points.

Tom Watson MP, currently with Labour but also the First Minister of Freetardia, disagreed. He arose to gave the boilerplate Web2.0rhea perspective:

“That message was mixed by Labour spin doctors, then remixed by Conservative spin doctors. He is proving the point that mixing culture and the power of sharing are new in the internet age”

“That is precisely why the Bill is so incompetent. We are not going to stop people sharing content with each other and using it creatively to create new things. He should be proud that young people are mixing up these images to engage in political debate.”

Maybe.

But the problem with Freetards, even Freetard MPs – is that they don’t just miss the point, they close their eyes and run as fast as they can past it, screaming.

It was left to Luff to apply the lethal injection:

“Ah, that is a very interesting point,” he said. Luff pointed out that a quick search showed how easy it was to find the BBC original and contact the photographer. There was even a telephone number. He continued:

“We should not forget that the BBC, as this blog says, is one of the main proponents of a Bill to allow use of other people’s images in ways they did not envisage without permission or payment, yet it is furious that without permission or payment someone has taken a BBC image and used it in a way that the BBC did not envisage.”

Moral rights, or droit d’auteur, isn’t mentioned very often in Professor Lawrence Lessig’s books. That’s undoubtedly why Watson hasn’t heard of it.

Conservatives have vowed to oppose three controversial clauses of the Digital Economy Bill in the next 48 hours of legislative horse trading, but will keep the online file sharing portions intact. Photographers have been more persuasive than the anti-copyright lobby: Clause 43, involving collective licensing and orphan works, is one of the three that Tory culture secretary Jeremy Hunt has said must go.

The others are Clause 1 and Clause 29, both of which involve adding expanding the role of uber-quango Ofcom.

Hunt slammed the Bill, calling it “a digital disappointment of colossal proportions”. He said the government had ducked the issues of the digital radio switchover and the provision of local news, and failed to clarify the role of the BBC or strengthen independent TV production. The Tories said they may review these issues if the Mandybill becomes law. The piracy measures, while not perfect, reflected the Commons consensus that something needed to be done to deter online copyright infringement and protect jobs.

To the surprise of the music business, it means that the illiberal Section 18, giving Courts powers to block access to sites that exist largely to deliver infringing material, will survive. The section, previously Section 17, was introduced in response to industry concerns about cyberlockers such as Rapidshare.

Introducing the Bill on second reading, the Minister for Culture, Media and Sport Ben Bradshaw said, “The creative industries have grown at twice the rate of the economy as a whole over the past ten years, and they should do so again over the next ten, thus helping to create many of the jobs of the future.”

Bradshaw said the 20,000 emails received from anti-copyright campaigners needed to be weighed against the “hundreds of thousands of jobs” in the copyright sector.

Several MPs expressed support for the principles of the Bill, but disquiet about its passage through the Commons without greater scrutiny. John Whittingdale, chair of the Culture Media and Sport Committee, was one of several.

“It cannot be right for us to cut off the whole of Starbucks just because one person went in for a cup of coffee and illegally shared files,” he said.

“I hope that the Secretary of State is right and the vast majority of people will mend their ways on receipt of a warning that they are doing something illegal, but I am not wholly confident. In the long term, we will have to look for other solutions,” he added.

Austin Mitchell MP said a three month delay was nothing to fear – the creative industries would not collapse in that time. Referring to the ORG’s email campaign, he said:

“These people may be nerds, fanatics or zealots for all I know, but they are concerned and worried, and they will not be bullied into accepting the Bill. We have to weigh their voices, listen to what they are saying and discuss their concerns.”

Bradshaw teased his frontbench shadow Don Foster, saying Foster had written Section 18, but disowned it.

Foster said LibDems had won important concessions to make the bill more palatable:

“No so-called technical measures, such as bandwidth shaping or temporary account suspension, will be possible unless copyright infringers are notified by letter, without there being any risk of their internet connection being affected for at least a year.” He said technical countermeasures should never be necessary and proposed a revised amendment to be considered after the election.

He said site-blocking was too draconian, putting even Google at risk.

“There is no indication that rights holders must take reasonable steps to notify the site owner before seeking an injunction. The proposed injunction would be indefinite, which is inappropriate. Injunctions, it appears, do not cover all service providers, allowing infringing customers to move to different providers,” he said.

MPs of both parties challenged leading dissenter Tom Watson MP, who has said copyright law should be scrapped, to agree that piracy cost jobs. “If they do not accept there is a problem, I am not with them,” said Foster.

Music business sources have told us for months that they expected that section – whatever shape it finally took – to be horse traded away in the wash-up. The industry focus was on making downloading of unlicensed material have consequences for the user. Copyright holders are not powerless today, but enforcement requires taking an individual to court, an expensive business and with six million people sharing files, a pretty pointless one.

A third reading will give opponents the chance to make last-minute amendments. The Bill merely gives Ofcom the power to take some kind of action – nobody knows if it’s three strikes or 50, or what the strikes will be – and the government has promised a 60-day review period when Ofcom finally devises these. The Liberal Democrats are broadly supportive of the file sharing sections but say they’ll oppose site-blocking.

Snappers rejoice

The photographers’ campaign against orphan works isn’t easing up. Today Stop43 campaign published a letter to LibDem Spokesman for Culture, Media and Sport Don Foster restating its position and expressing alarm about the proposed 50-year modification.

Clause 43 was designed to give copyright libraries a chance to archive photographs whose owners can’t be traced – but it’s become a cost-saver for large publishers, who have been engaged in last minute lobbying for the clause.

Whatever survives from the wash up, the passage of the bill establishes a milestone for online copyright enforcement in the UK. Whether the music business is able to honour its part of the bargain explicitly set out by Lord Mandelson and offer radically new music services remains to be seen. Right now it seems so happy with its new stick, it’s forgotten about the carrot.

Music House — HQ for a number of the UK music industry’s trade groups — was in a lock-down situation this lunchtime as an Open Rights Group Flash Mob descended, protesting against the Digital Economy Bill.

As many as seven protesters could be seen outside the Berners Street offices, according to staff who phoned us from beneath their desks. This is slightly down on the nine who had pledged their support on Facebook.

Twitter was a hive of activity, too. We’d counted two Tweets on the protest in an hour. Photographic evidence below suggests that after an hour, the number had swelled to almost double figures.

In a simultaneous gesture, over at the BPI’s HQ, three protesters handed in a “disconnection notice” to chief executive Geoff Taylor, who apparently wasn’t in.

Music House, the focus of the main protest, is home to the PRS For Music performing rights society, the Music Publishers Association, the Musicians Union, the Music Managers Forum, the British Academy of Composers Songwriters and Authors, and umbrella trade group UK Music.

The ORG’s FlashMob was trailed as a “Stop Disconnection April Fools Flashmob” with the question “Are we being made fools of?”

But with a turnout of less than a dozen, that’s a question that answers itself, really.

Last week, a much-trumpeted demo in London at Parliament saw around 100 activists leave their garden sheds — although we spotted many journalists and even music business spies in the huddle.

The point is that numbers don’t always matter, though, if the organisers are media savvy. A few protestors can go a long way, if a group’s core communication skills are imaginative enough.

Alas, the Open Rights Group seems completely bereft of these. It timed the event for Budget Day, so there was no coverage in the papers the next day. ORG had made 150 blank placards, and taped up their mouths. Passers by were perplexed: they had no idea what it was about.

High concept, low impact.

More fail is due next week: the ORG has raised some cash to run anti-Mandybill adverts — but wants them to go out on Tuesday. That’s the date of the announcement of the General Election.

Anyone want to guess the media impact that will have?

Maybe you if you think the Mandybill is rubbish, you should consider lending your weight to someone competent: ISPA, for example. Or you could start your own digital rights campaign.

The ORG can’t seem to organise a pissup in a brewery.