A couple of weeks ago I went along to a meeting of the Open Rights Group.
Cory Doctrow gave an interesting talk about some of the issues surrounding the debate over digital riglts management, in which he pointed out, amongst other things, the futility of trying to prevent the copying of bits - it is something that will only get easier with time. Cory is a good speaker, and it was an interesting talk, although as is so often the case with these events, there seemed to be a large element of preaching to the converted.
The second talk was on the campaign against identity cards, an issue that I think is more controversial. One of things that worries me about ORG is that it will attract people with certain views, and an orthodoxy will emerge to the exclusion of others - I suspect that the ID card debate might be a case in point.
It’s not that I’m particularly in favour of the government’s scheme, it’s just that i think that most of the debate about identity - tracking of information, dna databases, identity theft, civil liberties - is the wrong way round.
There are good analogies with the DRM debate. Just as it is futile to attempt to prevent the copying of digital information, it seems equally unrealistic to believe that we can prevent the storage and tracking of personal information.
