Jules Mattsson on the receiving end of Police ignorance

The following transcript is of a series of UK police officers attempting to prevent perfectly legal photography by using an amazing degree of ignorance about UK law. In the course of the conversation a series of officers attempt to stop him photographing (perfectly legally) by accusing him of breaching the terrorism act, public order act, various misc copyright and child protection laws and accuising him of otherwise being an “Agitator”. Full credit to the photographer, he kept his cool pretty well, particularly after having his camera seized and aparrently being pushed down a flight of stairs.

more here.

G20 riots – Toronto

some superb photography and intense action coming out of Toronto this weekend.

Liberty central

Henry Porter steps down from the Guardian’s liberty central blog. Maybe to focus more of his time on the Convention on Modern Liberty. If you haven’t read the blog yet, now’s the chance to catch up on some pivotal free thinking whilst you can. The liberty central blog has been one of the lynchpins of hope during a difficult ten years of Labour government civil liberties erosion.

the wave

a great vibe at the climate change protest in london today. here are the images.

the Wave

Saturday 5 December sees many LCC local groups organising guided rides to join the Wave demonstration in central London supporting climate change action at the UN summit in Copenhagen.

We will be there supporting and shooting what promises to be one of the largest climate change demonstrations ever. Part of a global series of public actions, The Wave will call on world leaders to take urgent action to secure a fair international deal to stop global warming exceeding the danger threshold of 2 degrees C.

copyright amendment plans – petition

http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/copyrightreform/

We call on the Government to abandon plans, announced on 29 October 2009, to allow free and unhindered reproduction of photographs without payment or credit on non-commercial websites.

This is completely at odds with the Government’s stance on file sharing of other forms of intellectual property (films and music) and raises the prospect of crippling thousands of small businesses while protecting large corporate interests.

The proposal uses phrases like “It must be seen to benefit all parties, not some at the expense of others” and yet the Government’s proposal does exactly that. It takes the work of photographers who have invested time and money in creating work, and gives it to people who have no relationship with that work, for free.

Photographic businesses are already under severe strain and the proliferation of digital cameras gives the impression that creating professional quality imagery is easy. This will further devalue the work of professional photographers and destroy the photographic industry.

buy nothing day…

more greenwashing

from killercoke.org:

” In 2007, facing growing opposition to its water management practices, particularly in India, Coca-Cola’s CEO, Neville Isdell came up with a brilliant idea. The Coca-Cola company, he announced, will become water neutral, replenishing every drop of water they use, and therefore, as the suggestion went, Coca-Cola would have no impact of water resources around the world. Voila! Problem solved, a company using 300 billion liters of water annually would have no impact on water resources. Sustainability doesn’t get any better than that. The only problem was that Coca-Cola knew that water neutrality was impossible to achieve.”

 

I'm a photographer, not a terrorist

FIT watch – arrested and held for 4 days for challenging officer with no badge number

Words fail me on this one.

Two female protesters who challenged police officers for not displaying their badge numbers (something they are required to do by law) were bundled to the ground, arrested and held in prison for four days, according to an official complaint lodged today.

The video is powerful stuff, draw your own conclusions here, together with the full article.

FITWatch’s website is here.