Fergus Cassidy

New beat

I JUST knew last week was going to have a sting in its tale.

It started on Monday when I stuck my card into an ATM. The machine whirred for a bit before the 'Out of Service' screen appeared. As I walked away, the door of the bank opened slightly and a barely visible face whispered "it'll be back in a couple of minutes".

Five minutes later, four or five people waited patiently behind me and the ATM re-opened for business. I grabbed my card but as the money slid out and into my hand, the electricity went. Darkness on the edge and centre of town. I was the lucky one.

So it was heartening to find out that a survey held during Irish Science Week placed electricity at the top of the greatest technological achievement list. It received 41% of the vote, with mobile phones coming in at 21%. Mobiles weren't much use to those left pennyless at that powerless ATM.

The good stuff continued later that day when I went looking online for a copy of the Ferns Report. I couldn't find it and eventually came across an explanation mentioning privilege and possible defamation. You can buy a copy from the Government Publications Office but the web is off limits.

Leaving the legal ins and outs aside, not putting the report online has the appearance of not wanting the rest of world to know about what happened in the diocese of Ferns. Of not wanting to wash our dirty laundry in public.

So well done to Enda O'Carroll who went to trouble and expense of putting up fernsinquiry.com. The full report is there, along with an urging to "please inform others of this site". Done.

As the week progressed, the good stuff continued. The appearance of a spokesman for the Irish Recorded Music Association (Irma) on radio stations up and down the country would normally send me diving for the mute button, but not this time.

Armed with the usual props of a carrot and a stick, he said that his organisation was, once again, about to chastise errant computer owners by issuing legal proceedings against those supposed to be breaking copyright laws.

Is this the same record industry which includes Sony amongst its members? A company which was battered with a firestorm of criticism last week for secretly placing computer code on certain music CDs. When played, the code hid deep inside the computer and posed a threat from potential viruses. Lawsuits will follow for the computer equivalent of 'breaking and entering'.

Is this the same record industry which uses a company called MediaSentry to secretly scan peoples' computers, and which a court in the Netherlands found to be not in accordance with the European Data Protection Acts?

For too long the record industry has acted like a copyright cop in a police state. Where what it says goes and if you don't like it then tough. Well we don't like and we're not going to take it anymore.

A group which acts as an umbrella for European consumer organisations spoke out in response to the record industry refrain. "Private consumers... are not criminals and to portray them as such is insulting and counter productive", said Jim Murray of BEUC.

At the recent launch of its 'Declaration of Consumer's Digital Rights', Murray said: "The music industry insists on 'informing', or rather 'misinforming consumers on what they cannot do in the digital world. We believe it is high time to guarantee consumers certain basis rights in the digital world and to tell them what they can do with their digital hardware and content".

The six-point declaration includes the "right to interoperability of content and devices" and the "right to benefit from technological innovations without abusive restrictions". It means being able to buy a music CD and play it in a computer, car stereo or move the music to an iPod or similar.

This is against the law, bellows the Irish music industry as it wields its big stick, with nobody around to blunt its edge or say otherwise. But on The Last Word radio show during the week, Irma was challenged for the very first time by a spokesman for Digital Rights Ireland (DRI). It was a moment worth waiting for.

The emergence of DRI is a very positive and timely development. Human rights as they apply in the digital era are not some arbitrary appendage that can be conveniently sliced off and discarded.

Enforcing those rights shouldn't have to be a struggle all over again and hopefully with Digital Rights Ireland around that won't be the case.