In case you hadn’t noticed all the nerds and beatniks frothing at the mouth, there is much concern over the UK’s proposed Digital Economy Bill, which has just undergone its second reading by around seventeen of the six hundred and forty six members of parliament (the others were all terribly busy). It is now likely to hit the statute books by way of the “wash-up”, a period at the end of a parliamentary session in which the political class buries the bodies, burns the papers, and chucks through as much legislation as it can, bypassing all the tedious bits of representative democracy like committees, reports, third readings and so on. (Note: John Redwood’s contribution to the debate is worth reading).
The particularly egregious bit of the DE Bill for most people is the potential for media license holders to demand that Internet Service Providers suspend a broadband connection if it is suspected to have been used for copyright infringement (which is still a civil, not a criminal offence).
Unfortunately, the response to this bill has missed its mark, in that the campaigns encourage people to write to their member of parliament (MP). But these guys are no more likely to have an effect on the passage of this bill than your local Parish Councillor.
Intellectual Property is a de facto European Competence, and the soon-to-pass 20XX Digital Economy Bill, and its predecessor the Communication Act 2003, are largely implementing the philosophy of 2001’s Council Directive 2001/29/EC of 22 May 2001 on the harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society, also touching on Council Directive 93/98/EEC of 29 October 1993 harmonizing the term of protection of copyright and certain related rights [Europe’s version of the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension]
So if you’re going to write to anyone, try your local MEP. If you live in the South-West of England, try Ashley Fox MEP. He’s alright. Ish.
Anyway, as an exercise in the analysis of the impact of the DE Bill (and an excuse to link to this video series), here are two playlists representing over two hours of brilliant, entertaining commentary from Red Letter Media about why George Lucas should be physically restrained from ever touching the Star Wars franchise ever again. Ever.
These videos rely heavily on brief clips from the Star Wars films, and other media. They are educational, satirical, informative, commentary and analysis. But are they fair use? Are they infringements? They’re bloody funny, though. And seriously, George Lucas: No. Just…No.
Mr Plinkett reviews Star Wars: Episode I. The Phantom Menace
Mr Plinkett reviews Star Wars: Episode II. Attack of the Clones
Well that wasn’t the most uneventful blood donation I’ve ever made, however it was jolly nice to have all the nurses making a fuss over me, along with the offer of a post-exsanguination upgrade from orange squash and a biscuit, to a cup of tea and a cream cake.
I also got my National Blood Service Bronze award for ten donations, which comes with a certificate and a spiffy lapel pin. I need twenty five pints for my Silver pin, which suddenly seems like a rather daunting target. The blood service only has around 8-10 days of stock for most blood groups, thus if you’ve got some spare it’s worth finding a donation session near you. Best to book an early session, as the chocolate bourbons go quickly.
On a techy note, the Blood Service appears to have opted out of the Government Gateway “joined up” single-sign-on platform, which was supposed to be a service where one would authenticate for all UK government services. I suspect the constraints of belonging to the Government Gateway scheme dramatically outweighed the benefits. The new Blood Service website is a nimbler creation, with lots of Google Maps integration and JQuery, instead of a big centralised user-authentication service. And it seems to work rather well.
When we first discussed developing our web presence with people from the local digital community, they asked us for usage data for our current website. It seemed fair enough that if we are keen on evidence-based decision making, we let people at the evidence to help them advise and steer us in the right direction.
Google Analytics
To get access to the full, detailed Google Analytics info for www.bristol.gov.uk go to the Google Analytics web site, and use these access details:
email: bccguest.analytics@googlemail.com
password: bccwebstats
So – you asked for the full data, warts and all – there you go. Any questions, comments or advice for us?
Totally Brilliant. You’ll get nothing but praise from me for this decision. [And it saves me sending in an FoI request]. I suspect there might be a bit of spam coming from this address, as the google account is automatically active for Google Mail. But I’m not aware of any other method of giving direct access to the data, so that’s a reasonable trade-off, and there’s no shortage of spammers setting up Gmail accounts.
I’ve extracted a few interesting figures [interesting if you’re a stats/analytics geek] which are available in various forms at Scribd.
Interesting Facts:
In the last four years, Bristol Council got 11,000,000 visits, from 5,000,000 unique visitors
77% of visitors to Bristol City Council’s website used a Microsoft Operating System and Web Browser.
43% of visitors had a screen resolution of 1024x768
Even in March 2010, BCC still receive around 4,000 visits every month from users with dial-up networking, rather than broadband connections.
BCC currently receive 8,000 visits a month from mobile devices. The most popular mobile device is the iPhone, and the most popular mobile network is o2.
After English, the most common language used by visitors to BCC’s website is Polish
During the snowy period in the first week of 2010, traffic to the BCC website doubled.
60% of all traffic to BCC came from search engine Google. 3% of traffic orignated from Yahoo and 1.5% from MSN/Bing.
The most popular type of content on the Bristol City Website is that relating to jobs and careers with around 2,000,000 page views over the last four years. The next most popular content categories are – in order – Libraries, Museums & Galleries, Recycling, Horfield Leisure Center (?!), Planning.
Note to Editors: I’m currently pondering joining the National Union of Journalists, so if I see this list of facts repeated in the local press without a link to my website or equivalent attribution, then I shall be very grumpy.
