I wasn’t kidding when I said in May last year that I was a bit busy. The last eight months have seen me focus mainly on the Open Rights Group, the NGO that I started along with a bunch of other digital rights activists in July 2005. Now, 18 months down the line, ORG has a new full-time Executive Director, Becky Hogge, who has taken over the reins from me. I have one last week working part-time for ORG before I move to a position on the Board and refocus myself on my business.
It has been an astonishing time, working as ED of ORG. We have successfully lobbied the Government on, amongst other things, digital rights management and the term of copyright protection given to sound recordings, which we believe should stay at 50 years. Our big project last year was to prepare a submission for the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property, and to deal with a huge amount of press surrounding the Review’s release. We did really well, but it took a lot of focus and a lot of time and effort.
Now I’m soon to be released from my ORG duties, and so I’m celebrating having a bit more time on my hands by updating my poor, neglected Blogiculum Vitae. You’ll see in the sidebar now a selection of the columns I wrote for Linux User, and the Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein case study I wrote for Socialtext last year. And I’ll be adding more over the coming weeks.