It is to be hoped Nick Clegg's transformation from supposed progressive champion to special interest lacky does not extend to other equally vital issues of government policy.
The hopes of those campaigning for the repeal of the digital economy act were dashed a few weeks ago by Jeremy Hunt, the new culture, Olympics, media and sport secretary, when he conclusively answered “…we’re not going to repeal it” when asked about the act in an interview with Paid:Content UK.
Not only does such intransigence represent a myopic position with regards to the interests of both an innovative sector of British business and digital prosumers (those who simultaneously consume and produce online content) but also illustrates the vacuity of the previous ‘against’ position adopted by Nick Clegg.
Central to the Liberal Democrat leader’s philosophical understanding of the modern liberal tradition are the ideals of autonomy, capability, community and de-centralisation, with his understanding of the contemporary British liberal narrative being perhaps no more clearly articulated than in the Demos publication he authored in 2009, ‘The Liberal Moment’.
It is these same values that are also expressed by Richard Reeves and Philip Collins in their own Demos publication, ‘The Liberal Republic’, which understands the capability and autonomy of the individual as being profoundly interdependent with their ability to collaborate with their communities – understanding that the state mediates and impacts the ability and agency of the individual to be ‘big citizens’. It has been said that the latter text is protean for understanding the sort of society that Nick Clegg and his Liberal Democrats will seek to build in office.
It is with these values in mind that many of those technologically savvy individuals who followed the digital economy debacle during the course of wash-up believed that Nick Clegg was the only leader of any parliamentary party to really understand the new zeitgeist of online collaboration and the possibilities that Net 2.0 endow upon the individual in order to share, create and collaborate – some of the very fundamentals that could help to build the ‘big citizens’ that Clegg opined for during the course of his general election campaign.
For such individuals the volte face collectively performed by the Liberal Democrats during the second reading of the bill represented an irritation with the undemocratic nature of the wash-up process – or as Clegg called it a stitch-up – but also seemed congruent with the ethical stance advocated by both Clegg and Reeves regarding capabilities, autonomy and liberty within the Liberal ‘Yellow book’ tradition.
It seems, however, that such an interpretation of events was wrong – if there is any phenomenon likely to achieve the end of ‘big citizens’ that Clegg so consistently asks for it is the kind of sharing and online collaboration that the new act will directly repress and that Clegg now appears to seem entirely indifferent toward.
Consequently if our new deputy prime minster wishes to seem to progressives among online communities as an individual of integrity and intelligence instead one of vacuity he must challenge his Tory partners in government about the potential repeal of the digital economy act otherwise his positioning over the issue in the run up to the election will seem to have been born entirely of political expediency rather than any conviction as to the preservation of liberty and enlarging the scope of individual agency and autonomy.
As Left Foot Forward has previously highlighted, there is plenty to be worried about in the coming digital economy act. What is perhaps more worrying for progressives is that in retrospect the manipulative use of the digital economy saga in the lead up to the election by Mr Clegg now seems the act of an incredibly shrewd and calculating electioneer who sought to hijack a vacant progressive bandwagon rather than the that of a man of principle who is in tune with some of the more noble fibres of his own party’s philosophical and intellectual traditions.
It is to be hoped his transformation from supposed progressive champion to special interest lacky does not extend to other equally vital issues of government policy.
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20 Responses to “The progressive vanishing act of Clegg & co on the digital economy act”
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JoshC
“Alternatively: the Lib Dems aren’t able to get the Tories (the biggest of the coalition parties) to shift on the issue of abolishing the Digital Economy Act. Should they break the coalition over this single issue? ”
This might be an acceptable reason if not for the fact that both the Tories and the Lib-Dems have made a great deal of noise about abolishing policies they say infringe on civil liberties such as proposals for rolling back CCTV, DNA and NHS databases etc.
All of the things they’re against have good uses. The ‘Crossbow Cannibal’ for example was caught largely due to CCTV. The controversial parts of the DEBill have no use whatsoever. Technology already exists that circumvents all the technical means of identifying copyright infringement and will be widely used by the people who are supposed to be targeted by the Bill. The same Bill can however still be used to monitor every person online and to censor anything a government might wish to pretend doesn’t exist. If either party actually cared about civil liberties it should have been high on their list to abolish. I guess that their list only includes things that are vote-winners to abolish.
And Labour might have introduced the Bill to start with but it was the Tories who chose not to block it when they had the power of veto in the second reading, despite the pleas of a number of Labour MPs, and the Lib-Dems who introduced Chinese web-censorship which is why their words about restoring civil liberties are hollow.
Dave Levy
A Lib Dem peer introduced the web site blocking clauses
No Lib Dem front bencher opposed anything other than the Henry VIII clauses and web blocking which they introduced.
The cynical would say the Henry VIII clauses were introduced to keep the Lib Dems busy while allowing disconnection to go through.
The Lib Dem manifesto was silent on the DE Act.
Calling the washup a stichup is not principled opposition to the DE Bill. It is posing and grand standing.
“…the manipulative use of the digital economy saga in the lead up to the election by Mr Clegg now seems the act of an incredibly shrewd and calculating electioneer who sought to hijack a vacant progressive bandwagon”
Seems right to me, so thank you to every Lib Dem who blogged and tweeted, untruthfully, that the only way to repeal the DE Bill was to vote Lib Dem. You’ve been made lairs of. My question to you is, will you now, like the 23 Labour MPs who voted against the Bill, work with like minded people to campaign against your government to repeal the whole act, site blocking and disconnection.
By the way Duncan, the article authors argue that a Liberal society, as defined by the Lib Dem leadership needs Web 3.0 and the DE Act prohibits it, i.e. the Lib Dems have sacrificed an important platform of their vision of a new society for the coalition. So, Yes, it should have been a sticking point if the Lib Dems are a party of principle.
aaron peters
Thats exactly it Dave. As Clegg puts it in his ‘Liberal Moment’ “…in our society it is clear that power – and thereby freedom – is unfairly distributed. Power has its own gravitational pull; it accumulates among elites – political, social and corporate – and they each exercise that power in their own interests, acting against the interests of, and thereby diminishing the freedom of others. The job of a liberal government, therefore is to disperse power, acting as a countervailing force to excessive concentrations of power.”
There is no greater conduit for the redistribution of power be it with regards to unmasking existing media elites and usurping their authority or providing zero cost information and communciation possibilities to the poor than net 2.0 and the networked information economy (see the work of Y.Benkler).
Until the Lib Dems are not the champions of this cause they WILL not be the party of redistributing power as Clegg himself articulates it.
aaron peters
Thats exactly it Dave. As Clegg puts it in his ‘Liberal Moment’ “…in our society it is clear that power – and thereby freedom – is unfairly distributed. Power has its own gravitational pull; it accumulates among elites – political, social and corporate – and they each exercise that power in their own interests, acting against the interests of, and thereby diminishing the freedom of others. The job of a liberal government, therefore is to disperse power, acting as a countervailing force to excessive concentrations of power.”
There is no greater conduit for the redistribution of power be it with regards to unmasking existing media elites and usurping their authority or providing zero cost information and communciation possibilities to the poor than net 2.0 and the networked information economy (see the work of Y.Benkler).
Until the Lib Dems are the champions of this cause they WILL not be the party of redistributing power as Clegg himself articulates it.