the goverment take us all for granted
but we all have to hear them when they have ranted

they take our money and sent our boys to war
lets hope no one gonna knock on thier front door.

http://saccharinequeen.blogspot.com/2010/01/dont-disconnect-me.html

There is a whole universe out there, full of excitement and danger and joy, with the potential to share with me things of which I have only dreamed. There are people who want to show me how to fly, or fall, or describe to me their fondest memories, their darkest fantasies, their funniest moves or their most dangerous desires. I can grasp at the stuff of utopia and dystopia, learn languages that have been dead for thousands of years, or create new ways to communicate with the barest touch of my fingertips upon a keyboard. And if I do this, if I grasp at these kilobits of data that in themselves are the barest dots of yes/no, if I dive into this ocean of information and let my mind float on an infinity of possibilities, some grey drone in a grey office wants to pore over my choices and fit my mind into a pigeonhole according to my degree of deviant naughtiness.

I don't want the government to spy on me. I don't want monitoring just because there is a small chance that I, of all the countless billions of people on the panet, might be the one to end some mandarin's proscribed version of civilisation. I don't want my choices to be on file just because, of all those that browse and surf and download I might be the one who triggers the big red button of anarchy and catapults political thought into a maelstrom of insanity. I don't want appraising just because out there somewhere, in amongst the ways and means to become more than any other generation had ever hoped it would be possible to be, are the ways and means for me to destroy all that humanity holds dear. Why don't I want a government-sponsored numbercruncher to dissect my online activity? Because it breaches my right to privacy. Because it goes against everything that our legal system promises. Because I am grateful to fate that I can vote as part of, and engage with what has been, until now, one of the free-est and non-censorous political systems on the planet: to see the protections and privileges won by countless generations of Britons eroded in the government-defined name of 'security' goes against everything that I, as a liberal and thoughtful member of our fine democracy believe in. But also because ... while they analyse me, and suck the data that defines my life into their counting machines, what they are going to learn is that with all the boundless resources available to me, all the knowledge I could be drinking in, all the beauty and terror and fascination that the internet holds out to me, what I have actually decided to pluck from the ether is a music file of a ten minute drum solo from a 1970s prog rock concert. A stranger is monitoring my downloads? Dear God, how embarrassing. I shall have to share a file that gets me arrested just to prove I'm not boring.

Dear Mr Mandelson
please dont stop us sharing
Afterall, I voted for your party
While everyone else gave up caring

Jonathan Harker, lawyer by trade,
Travelled abroad, to go to the aid
Of a chap who downloaded The Cheeky Girls’ songs,
A deed, you’ll agree, that is riddled with wrongs.

Now the fellow in question agreed it was naughty
To download a song that was in the Top Forty,
But the way he was punished, he thought, was absurd;
The Count cut him off, without saying a word.

Now, the Count that I mentioned was a terrible creature;
There was evil to see in each twisted old feature.
He was crazy with power, and persistent as lice –
The villagers killed him; he came back to life twice.

And the mood in the town was distinctly foreboding,
The Count’s latest fancy was a ban on downloading.
No trial, no jury, just kids telling tales
And whining about their diminishing sales,

And yes, it is true that it’s theft (I suppose),
But a thief, when he’s caught, to the magistrate goes!
But the Count, in his wisdom, had other ideas,
And these were the sources of Jonathan’s fears.

The Count’s ruthless plan was to punish offenders,
Their families, neighbours and legal defenders;
He didn’t care who had committed the crime,
He punished them all, which, I’ll grant, saved some time.

Now, reader, I beg you to learn from this tale!
Ere long, for YouTubing you’ll end up in jail.
You’re safe in the daylight, but at dusk he will wake;
You must stab his proposals through the heart, with a stake.