http://www.machine-envy.com/blog/2006/07/12/cease-and-desist-alive-and-well-in-the-uk/ Thu, 20 Nov 2008 14:59:52 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.1 http://www.machine-envy.com/blog/2006/07/12/cease-and-desist-alive-and-well-in-the-uk/#comment-383 unbound Wed, 25 Oct 2006 14:38:10 +0000 http://www.machine-envy.com/blog/?p=37#comment-383 David Shayler, whislteblower on MI6's shady and illegal operations suffered a more insidious de facto censorship than either Wright or Murray. Publication of his insights were held up for a year while they were vetted, but subsequently no major bookseller would stock the heavily blacked out final text. With the majority of booksales now in the hands of a few multinational companies, the gurus of the free market have been proved right again: there is nothing which can't be privatised- even the job of suppressing free speech. http://www.machine-envy.com/blog/2006/07/12/cease-and-desist-alive-and-well-in-the-uk/#comment-2 machine envy :: The Crown’s copyright con Tue, 18 Jul 2006 13:38:24 +0000 http://www.machine-envy.com/blog/?p=37#comment-2 [...] My fortnightly column for openDemocracy has just gone live, an extension of this post of last week: “It is nearly two decades since the British government tried to ban Spycatcher, and you would expect them to have learned their lesson. After throwing £2 million in legal expenses after the biography of former MI5 operative Peter Wright, her majesty’s government was forced to admit defeat in October 1988, leaving ministers red-faced and Wright seriously in the black, thanks to the free publicity afforded his book by his repeated trips to courts across the globe. Eighteen years on, it’s the turn of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) to have a go. But this time they have a new weapon in their armoury – the vagaries of the British copyright system.” [...]