Lord Mandelson seems hellbent on stifling online creativity, writes Bill Thompson on Index on Censorship.

These days history repeats itself three times, first as tragedy, then as farce and finally as an ill-considered and illiberal proposal from Lord High Executioner Mandelson, the unelected Minister for Stuff in Gordon Brown’s government.

We saw it recently when he decided, against all evidence and in direct contradiction of the proposals in the Carter report on Digital Britain, that rights-holders or their representatives should be able to kick people accused of sharing copyright material without permission off the internet.

Then Mandelson, who owes his position in the government to the patronage of Gordon Brown rather than the mandate of the electorate, called for the ability to make up new copyright laws without having to go to the trouble of getting elected MPs to debate them. Perhaps he reckoned that operating without full democratic accountability was working so well for him that it might be useful if the music and movie industries could benefit from the same flexibility.

Read the full piece on Index on Censorship.