Copyright may not be perfect, but when applied with common sense, it's the best system we've got

Cory Doctorow

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 26 January 2010 16.40 GMT

Article history

Tyre tracks in the snow – not the Peter Zabulis version. Photograph: Graham Turner

On 5 January, the Independent's website ran a photo uploaded to the Flickr image-sharing site by user Peter Zabulis. Zabulis flagged his photo of a snowed-over field as "all rights reserved," and he took exception to the Independent's use of the image without permission, and he wrote to them to tell them so.

Exception turned to outrage as a terse note from the Independent claimed that by posting the photo to Flickr, Zabulis had not asserted his copyright (whatever that means) and thus copyright had not been breached. The ensuing debate – including a public pillorying of the Independent for failing to grasp the nature of Flickr, copyright and photographer's rights – generated a lot of heat, but not much light (one bright spot: the Independent paid Zabulis and apologised to him).

Debates about copyright fall apart when they're pitched in terms of absolutes: "Copyright prohibits all copying", or "Non-commercial copying is always legal". Copyright started life as an industrial regulation that set out the rules governing the relationship between different actors in the supply-chain of the "creative industries" (originally just publishing, later music, film, software and many other industries).

Much of copyright was created by simply enshrining existing business practices into law – for better or for worse. Many artists have pointed out that copyright, even at its best, can present a playing field tilted in favour of the companies that shepherded its passage into law.

Theoretically, copyright also bound the activities of non-industrial actors – fans, audiences, readers, people who were whistling in the shower. But practically speaking, the average person would virtually never interact with copyright: first, because the personal means of interacting with copyrighted works (reading books, listening to records) did not involve making copies, and second, because when copies were made, they were invisible to the copyright industries' radar. No one was going to come by your office to look for photocopied Garfield cartoons stuck on your cubicle.

Which isn't to say that there weren't a myriad of rules, formal and informal, governing the use of creative works by individuals. Certain songs could be sung at the pub, but not in front of a nursery school.

Recounting the plot of last night's TV show to a mate was permissible, but spoiling the ending wasn't. Tracing a library book illustration for a science project was OK: cutting up the book was not. Pretending to have made up a ghost story that you read in a Poe collection was plagiarism, not culture.

Now, thanks to the internet (which runs by copying things, and which makes all those copies visible with a simple search) copyright has been stretched to cover both industrial and non-industrial uses of creative works, and what's more, the definition of industrial and non-industrial has become a lot fuzzier.

We're trying to retrofit the rules that governed multi-stage rocket ships (huge publishing conglomerates) to cover the activity of pedestrians (people who post quotes from books on their personal blogs). And the pedestrians aren't buying it: they hear that they need a law degree to safely quote from their favourite TV show and they assume that the system is irredeemably broken and not worth attending to at all.

It's an impossible situation. As an author, I depend on there being some rules of the road when I negotiate with my publishers, and it's in every commercial creator's interest to try to find a moderate, coherent copyright rule that avoid dumb absolutes in favour of nuance and fairness. I don't pretend that I have all the answers, but here's some of the principles that I think a good copyright system must embrace if is to succeed. Many of these principles are already in various nations' copyright rules as part of "fair dealing" or "fair use," but these user-rights in copyright are complex and difficult to navigate and vary from country to country.

As we on the internet create the norms that will be enshrined in future copyright, here's what I think we should keep in mind: "All rights reserved" doesn't cover commentary or reportage. If the Independent had been commenting on Zabulis's photo ("Witness the interplay of lights and darks" or "Area man sneaks into snowy field, takes photo for proof") then reproducing as much of Zabulis's photo as they needed to in order to report thoroughly on the subject should be fair game. Likewise, Zabulis was in the right to reproduce a screenshot from the Independent's website in order to show people how his image had been taken without permission.

Commercial and non-commercial are different. While there's a lot of grey area between "commercial" and "non-commercial", there are also some bright lines. Newspapers should have to pay photographers for stock images; kids working on school reports (and other non-commercial users) should be able to clip images and use them for without negotiating a rights agreement with a copyright holder.

Incidental use isn't infringement. If Zabulis's photo had included a blowing piece of trash bearing a copyrighted work (say, a copy of the Independent), he should still be allowed to sell and publish his photo without the Independent's permission. Incidental copying includes (for example), Google copying every page on the web in order to create an index of the words on those pages.

Some commercial copying is OK. For example, when a giant movie studio sits down to create a movie (whose copyright they will eventually defend with the atavistic savagery of a maddened grizzly), the designers for the film will create a series of "mood books" filled with clipped, scanned and copied text, images, even video clips, to help the design team agree on the look and feel of the movie. The studio doesn't and shouldn't need permission to make these uses, though they are commercial and involve copying. There are many other cases like this, from pasting articles into an email you send to your boss to photocopying an inspirational text and tacking it up in the break room. They share one common trait: they don't displace any revenue for the rightsholder.

When copyright cartels endanger a new medium, their copyrights should be converted into economic rights or thrown out. This principle is as old as sound recordings: when the sheet-music publishers refused to license their work for records, the state intervened and forced them to sell at a fixed rate. Today, many copyrights are relegated to economic rights: a performer has the right to be compensated for the playback of his CD in a shop, but not to stop the shop from playing the music. Copyright's purpose is to promote participation in culture: where refuseniks subvert that goal, their copyrights should be limited.

This is just a partial list, and it may strike you as radical. But before you dismiss it, consider this: most copyright systems are supposed to work this way in theory. But between corporate bullies who like to assert that "all rights reserved" means that no one is allowed to do anything without permission, and personal theories of what copyright means based on half-remembered lectures from the company lawyer, we treat copyright as absolute. And when we do, we turn a system with a real purpose (providing a framework for participants in creative businesses) into a caricature of itself, one that no one can respect.

The BBC wants to have control over the kinds of devices that can display and record its shows. Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA

Last summer, the BBC tried to sneak "digital rights management" into its high-def digital broadcasts.

Now, generally speaking, the BBC isn't allowed to encrypt or restrict its broadcasts: the licence fee payer pays for these broadcasts, and no licence fee payer woke up today wishing that the BBC had added restrictions to its programming.

But the BBC tried to get around this, asking Ofcom for permission to encrypt the "metadata" on its broadcasts – including the assistive information used by deaf and blind people and the "tables" used by receivers to play back the video. The BBC couched this as a minor technical change, and Ofcom held a very short, very quiet consultation, but was overwhelmed by a flood of negative submissions from the public and from technologists who understood the implications of this move.

Fundamentally, the BBC is trying to leverage its broadcast licence into control over the devices that can receive broadcasts. That is, in addition to deciding what shows to put on the air, the Beeb wants the power to decide what kinds of tellies and set-top boxes will be able to display and record those shows – and it wants the power to control the design of all the devices that might be plugged into a TV or set-top box. This is an unprecedented amount of power for a broadcaster to have.

As Ofcom gears up to a second consultation the issue, there's one important question that the BBC must answer if the implications of this move are to be fully explored, namely: How can free/open source software co-exist with a plan to put DRM on broadcasts?

A brief backgrounder on how this system is meant to work: the BBC will encrypt a small, critical piece of the signal. To get a key to decrypt the scrambled data, you will need to sign onto an agreement governed by a consortium called the Digital Transmission Licensing Administrator (some of the agreement is public, but other parts are themselves under seal of confidentiality, which means that the public literally isn't allowed to know all the terms under which BBC signals will be licensed).

DTLA licenses a wide variety of devices to move, display, record, and make limited copies of video. Which programmes can be recorded, how many copies, how long recordings can last and other restrictions are set within the system. To receive a licence, manufacturers must promise to honour these restrictions. Manufacturers also must promise to design their devices so that they will not pass video onto unapproved or unlicenced devices – only DTLA-approved boxes can touch or manipulate or play the video.

DTLA enforces these rules through a system of penalties for non-compliant vendors. It also has the power to "revoke" devices after they are sold to you, so that the BBC's signals will refuse to play on your set-top box if the DTLA determines that its security is inadequate and they pass it a revocation message (even though you always used your box in accordance with the law).

With DTLA devices, the integrity and usefulness of your home theatre is subject to the ongoing approval of the consortium, and they can switch it off if they decide, at any time in the future, that they don't trust it any more.

The entire DTLA system relies on the keys necessary to authenticate devices and unscramble video being kept secret, and on the rules governing the use of keys being inviolable. To that end, the DTLA "Compliance and Robustness Agreement" (presented as "Annex C" to the DTLA agreement) has a number of requirements aimed at ensuring that every DTLA-approved device is armoured against user modification. Keys must be hidden. Steps must be taken to ensure that the code running on the device isn't modified. Failure to take adequate protection against user modification will result in DTLA approval being withheld or revoked.

This is where the conflict with free/open source software arises.

Free/open source software, such as the GNU/Linux operating system that runs many set-top boxes, is created cooperatively among many programmers (thousands, in some cases). Unlike proprietary software, such as the Windows operating system or the iPhone's operating system, free software authors publish their code and allow any other programmer to examine it, make improvements to it, and publish those improvements. This has proven to be a powerful means of quickly building profitable new businesses and devices, from the TomTomGo GPSes to Google's Android phones to the Humax Freeview box you can buy tonight at Argos for around £130.

Because it can be adapted by anyone, free software is an incredible source of innovative new ideas. Because it can be used without charge, it has allowed unparalleled competition, dramatically lowering the cost of entering electronics markets. In short, free software is good for business, it's good for the public, it's good for progress, and it's good for competition.

But free software is bad for DTLA compliance.

Free software is intended to be examined and modified by all comers.

Generally, the licence terms for free software require that it is licensed for public examination and adaptation. It is literally impossible for a device to be both "open" and for it to prevent its users from retrieving keys hidden in its guts, or from changing the code that runs on it. This, of course, is totally incompatible with the DTLA requirement to hide keys and prevent modification of code.

And so, when the BBC threatens to infect its high-def broadcasts with DTLA, it also threatens to remove free/open software from consideration for any device that can play, record, or manipulate the video that the licence fee pays for. It means that you can't use a GNU/Linux phone to watch a show, or an open video player like VLC on your laptop. It means that your kids can't use free/open video-editing software to cut some of last night's news into a presentation for class.

It means that British entrants into the DTV device market can't avail themselves of the free software that their competitors all over the world are using, and will have to spend fortunes reinventing the wheel, creating operating systems and programs that do the same things as their free counterparts, but in such a way as to enforce restrictions against the device's owner.

Ofcom is meant to guard the public interest in matters such as these. If the public interest is to be upheld here, the BBC must explain how it intends to do the impossible: add DRM without banning free/open source development.

UK section to host full-length episodes of Peep Show, Hollyoaks and other shows from providers including Channel 4 and ITN

• Katie Allen
• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 19 November 2009 12.19 GMT
• Article history

Peep Show: one of the Channel 4 series being hosted on YouTube. Photograph: Linda Nylind

YouTube has launched a new shows section for UK users as it taps into rising online demand for full-length television programmes.

The new section provides the first shows from a landmark deal with Channel 4 announced last month and will include full-length episodes of Peep Show, Hollyoaks, Gordon Ramsay's F Word and Jamie at Home. Shows from other media partners include Dead Ringers, ITN News and Baywatch.

At launch, YouTube is posting around 5,000 videos, of which almost 4,000 are full-length programmes, from more than 60 partners. YouTube said it "expects this to significantly increase in the coming months" and the full range of Channel 4 shows will be available in early 2010 .

For established broadcasters, including Channel 4, partnering with YouTube is a response to the trend of both viewers and advertisers leaving television channels for the internet. Channel 4 is hoping that posting content on YouTube can bring in new advertising revenues.

All programmes on the shows section will be available free of charge and, where the content owner has enabled it, they will carry advertising. Channel 4's shows will feature advertisers including Virgin Media, Universal, Orange, Samsung and Pepsi.

Patrick Walker, YouTube's video partnerships director, said the launch would bring more big-brand programmes to viewers on top of the site's home-made clips.

"The shows section of the site will make it easier for users to discover videos from the biggest names in British broadcasting, and help our content partners reach new audiences and generate new revenues," he said.

Google, YouTube's parent company, has been working hard to convince the rights holders of music, film and TV shows to make advertising revenue from their content rather than remove it from the video-sharing site for breach of copyright.

By putting advertising with clips, YouTube makes money from revenue sharing deals with the rights holders.

That trend is bringing YouTube a badly needed increase in revenues. Three years after Google bought the video sharing site for $1.65bn, it has yet to turn a profit and there are concerns the division is devouring the internet group's cash reserves.

Daniel Radcliffe categorically denies smoking cannabis

Harry Potter actor hits back at claims published in the Mirror today that he smoked pot at a London house party

• Catherine Shoard and agencies
• guardian.co.uk, Friday 13 November 2009 13.15 GMT
• Article history

Daniel Radcliffe Photograph: Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images

Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe has categorically denied smoking cannabis at a party after photos of his alleged drug use were splashed in the Mirror today.

The roll-up being smoked by the 20-year-old actor at the flat of a friend in Camden, north London, contained merely tobacco, a spokesman for the star explained. "Daniel does smoke the occasional roll-up cigarette, but he was not doing anything more than this," he said.

"We are considering our position and will be taking all necessary action in relation to such allegations."

Pictures on the cover of the Mirror and a two-page spread inside show the actor laughing after having allowed a fellow partygoer to draw a beard on his face.

Radcliffe is currently putting the finishing touches on his performance in the final two-part episode of the Potter franchise, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

For whom the net tolls

Rupert Murdoch wants to remake the web as a toll both, with him in the collector's seat, but the net won't shift to his will

• Cory Doctorow
• guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 10 November 2009 18.44 GMT
• Article history

Rupert Murdoch "has set his sights on remaking the web as a toll booth". Photograph: William West/AFP/Getty Images

Just what, exactly, is Rupert Murdoch thinking? First, he announces that all of News Corp's websites will erect paywalls like the one employed by the Wall Street Journal (however, Rupert managed to get the details of the WSJ's wall wrong – no matter, he's a "big picture" guy). Then, he announced that Google and other search engines were "plagiarists" who "rip off" Newscorp's content, and that once the paywalls are up (a date that keeps slipping farther into the future, almost as though the best IT people work for someone who's not Rupert "I Hate the Net" Murdoch!) he'll be blocking Google and the other "parasites" from his sites, making all of News Corp's properties invisible to search engines. Then, as a kind of loonie cherry atop a banana split with extra crazy sauce, Rupert announces that "fair use is illegal" and he'll be abolishing it shortly.

What is he thinking? We'll never know, of course, but I have a theory.

First, the business of blocking search engines. Rupert has got dealmaker's flu, a bug he acquired when he bought MySpace and sold the exclusive right to index it to Google. This had the temporary effect of making Rupert look like a technology genius, as Google's putative payout for this right made the MySpace deal instantly profitable, at least on paper; meanwhile, MySpace's star was in decline, thanks to competition from Facebook, Twitter and a million me-too social networking tools.

It also put ideas into Rupert's head.

You can practically see the maths on the blackboard behind his eyelids: exclusive deals + paywalls = money.

I think that Rupert is betting that one of Google's badly trailing competitors can be coaxed into paying for the right to index all of News Corp's online stuff, if that right is exclusive. Rupert is thinking that a company such as Microsoft will be willing to pay to shore up its also-ran search tool, Bing, by buying the right to index the fraction of a fraction of a sliver of a crumb of the internet that News Corp owns.

They'll be able to advertise: "We have Rupert's pages and Google doesn't, so search with us!" (Actually, they'll have to advertise: "We have Rupert's pages and Google doesn't, except MySpace, which Google has.")

Or maybe not – MySpace is not delivering the traffic Rupert guaranteed Google in his little deal, and Google may bail if there's a likely sucker on the line.

Maybe the target isn't Microsoft. Maybe it's some gullible startup that's even now walking up and down Sand Hill Road, the heart of Venture Capital Country in Silicon Valley, showing off a PowerPoint deck whose entire message can be summarised as: "You give us a heptillion dollars, we'll do exclusive search deals with Rupert and the other media behemoths, and we'll freeze Google out." I'd be surprised if such a pitch sold, though. What's the liquidity event that would return some profit to the VC? It's not going to be an IPO (Initial Public Offering), not in today's regulatory climate. It'd have to be an acquisition, and the two most likely targets would be Google and News Corp.

Now, what about fair use being illegal? At a guess, I'd say that some Cardinal Richelieu figure in Newscorp's legal department may have been passing some whispers to Rupert about international copyright law. Specifically, about the Berne Convention – a centuries-old copyright accord that's been integrated into many other trade agreements, including the World Trade Organisation (WTO), and its "three-step test" for whether a copyright exemption is legal.

Copyright exemptions are all the rights that copyright gives to the public, not to creators or publishers, and "three-steps" describes the principles that Berne signatory countries must look to when crafting their own copyright exemptions.

Those three steps limits copyright exemptions to:

1. certain special cases …

2. which do not conflict with a normal exploitation of the work; and …

3. do not unreasonably prejudice the legitimate interests of the rights holder.

Now, arguably, many countries' fair dealing or fair use rules don't meet these criteria (the US rules on VCRs, book lending, cable TV, jukeboxes, radio plays, and a hundred other cases are favourite villains in these discussions; but many European rules are also difficult to cram into the three-steps frame). And I've certainly heard many corporate law mover-shakers announce that, with the right lawsuit, you could get trade courts to force this country or that country to get rid of its fair dealing or fair use provisions.

However, this view of international copyright lacks an appreciation of the subtleties of international trade, namely: big, powerful countries can ignore trade courts and treaty rules when it's in their interest to do so, because no one can afford to stop trading with them.

The US gets $1 trillion added to its GDP every year thanks to liberal fair use rules. If the WTO says that it has to ban video recorders or eliminate compulsory licenses on music compositions (or shut down search engines!), it will just ignore the WTO. The US is an old hand at ignoring the United Nations. The US owes billions to the UN in back-dues and shows no signs of repaying it. The fact that the WTO looks upon the US with disapproval will cause precisely nothing to happen in the American legislative branch.

And, if the WTO tries to get other countries to embargo the US, it will quickly learn that China and other factory states can't afford to stop shipping plastic gewgaws, pocket-sized electronics, and cheap textiles to the United States.

And furthermore, other countries can't afford to boycott China – because those countries can't afford to allow a plastic gewgaw and cheap textile gap to emerge with America.

Of course, the elimination of fair use would present many problems to News Corp – because, as with all media companies, News Corp relies heavily on copyright exemptions to produce its own programming. I'm sure that, if there's a lawyer wh put this idea into Rupert's head, she knows this. But I likewise believe that she would be perfectly willing to expand the legal department to the thousands of lawyers it would take to negotiate permission for all those uses if fair use goes away.

That's my theory: Rupert isn't a technophobic loon who will send his media empire to the bottom of the ocean while waging war on search engines. Instead, he's an out-of-touch moustache-twirler who's set his sights on remaking the web as a toll booth (with him in the collector's seat), and his plan hinges on a touchingly naive approach to geopolitics.

Either way, old Rupert shows signs of degenerating into a colourful Howard Hughes figure in a housecoat, demanding that reality shift to his will.

Hmm... remember this?

Today's tabloids express mock outrage at the appearance of N*ck Gr*ff*n on the BBC Question Time programme. But they have short memories.

Here's today's Star:

Hang on, though. Isn't that the same newspaper that did this?

and this?

The Express, meanwhile, is also clutching its pearl necklace, claiming that the party is going to get taxpayer-funded broadcasts at the next election. Not a big lead on Griffin, because there's apparently another twist in the Diana saga (and as ever the stock image of her wearing a seatbelt, which would have saved her life in the crash, nutjob neenaw whoop-whoop conspiracy or no conspiracy)

But it's got those because it's gained votes. I wonder why? I wonder which newspapers are read by BNP supporters? Maybe ones that say stuff like this

or this?

or even this?

And not forgetting the all-time classic:

Not some. Not five hundred. Not even a thousand. Not half. Not three-quarters. No. ALL. IN BIG RED FUCKING LETTERS SO YOU'RE MADE CLEARLY AWARE THAT IT'S ALL.

Hey, and please let's not forget this:

I almost didn't include this!

Which is almost the same as this!

But no. The Express doesn't like the BNP. They just happen to share entirely the same views on immigration, but Griffin is bad, because... well. I haven't quite worked out why he's bad. Maybe he doesn't hate Muslims enough for their tastes?

The Mail have also had a bash, but as ever they're more concerned with attacking their nemesis the BBC than they are about hand-wringing over Griffin:

Having said which, I still think

it's worth making the point

that the Mail doesn't always steer so far away

from using content

which the BNP and 'bigot' N*ck Gr*ff*n

might completely agree with

and it's not long

before you might start thinking to yourself

are they really protesting a bit too much? And what's the difference, really, between the BNP bigots and the supposedly mainstream newspaper which claims to distance itself from them so much?

And you have to start thinking: do these newspapers which select certain types of images of ethnic minorities and use them again and again

really have such different views or agendas from the likes of the BNP?

It's all very well people blaming Labour, or the BBC, or whoever, for the 'rise' of the BNP. But if there has been a significant increase in BNP support - and it hasn't translated into votes yet, despite a severe recession and growing unemployment - perhaps that might have more to do with the legitimisation and absorption of their extreme views by newspapers creating scare story after scare story concerning race and immigration, often baseless stories created simply to scare? It's one thing going to a BNP meeting but it's quite another to hear exactly the same thing over the breakfast table from a publication which purports to report the facts.

But no. It's all the BBC's fault. Let's blame them.

A great post.

I spent Tuesday night at the Barley Mow pub in Westminster, central London, surrounded by 150 people who were outraged at the state of English libel laws. The event, which is part of a series of Skeptics in the Pub events around the country, started with a misquote from Star Wars that set the tone of optimism for the entire evening: “We are more possible than you can powerfully imagine.”

The mob, clamouring for a more liberal approach to free speech, was made up largely of bloggers, academics and sceptics. They all passionately share the same belief, which is that the freedom to criticise fairly and strongly is the cornerstone of debate and progress.

One of the main fears, expressed repeatedly during the evening, was the sheer cost of a libel case. Although the damages at stake might be just £10,000, going to trial can mean risking more than £1m. This means that a blogger has to ask whether he or she can afford the possibility of bankruptcy. Even if a blogger is 90% confident of victory, there is still a 10% chance of failure, which is why bloggers often back down, withdraw and apologise for material they believe is true, fair and important to the public.

I should point out that I am being sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association. Indeed, last week I was at the Court of Appeal where I received permission to appeal against an earlier ruling on the meaning of my article. The original article was published 18 months ago, the case has cost me £100,000 and there is still a long way to go. My reason for not backing down is that I believe my article is accurate, important and a matter of public interest, as it relates to the use of chiropractic in treating various childhood conditions, such as asthma and ear infections.

Although my article was published in The Guardian, I am being sued personally. Fortunately, thanks to the success of my books, Fermat’s Last Theorem and The Code Book, I have the resources to fund my own defence. The case might seriously damage me but it will not bankrupt me. For bloggers, such a case could lead to financial ruin.

Allen Green, the event organiser, who blogs as Jack of Kent, summarised sentiment thus: “There is uncertainty and trepidation. The law currently treats bloggers as publishers, so they carry all the same legal risks of a publisher.”

For example, the website Bad Psychics has been forced to remove an article about a psychic healer. This problem was reported by Andy Lewis, who runs the Quackometer website and who is one of the most tenacious and insightful bloggers on the web. However, even Lewis fears the intimidation brought about by English libel law: “In light of what happened to Bad Psychics, I have to think seriously about what I write.”

Even if a blogger is prepared to stand by a blog, he or she can be undermined by the company hosting the blog. When the Society of Homeopaths took offence at Lewis’s criticisms of its regulatory practices, it threatened his web-hosting company. The company had no reason to put its neck on the line for a blogger who was paying just £9.99 a month, so it took down his blog. Luckily, Lewis’s blog has found virtual shelter with the Positive Internet Company, which is run by a team that cares about free speech on the web. It welcomed him with a brief e-mail: “I note your cowardly hosting company censored your homeopathy post. I am happy to offer you free hosting at my company. I hope you’ll find we’re sturdy vertebrates!”

The academic David Colquhoun, professor of pharmacology at University College London, was another blogger who dared to criticise a therapy that he felt lacked clinical support. After writing about the herbal medicine red clover, his university received a letter threatening legal action because it was hosting Colquhoun’s supposed defamatory blog. UCL removed the site after taking legal advice. Although the university later decided to welcome the professor back, partly due to pressure from academics around the world, he has also moved his blog across to Positive. It is important to note that academic journals also receive libel threats. Colquhoun himself was threatened for an article about chiropractors published in The New Zealand Medical Journal last year. Fortunately the editor was not prepared to back down, responding: “Let’s hear your evidence, not your legal muscle.”

Even academics being interviewed have to fear libel. The cardiologist Peter Wilmshurst gave an interview to an American journalist about a new device that he was testing. The company behind the device is now suing him. If he loses the case, he may also lose his house.

Few cases get to trial, but the bigger problem is that bloggers and academics are regularly censoring their own material in order to avoid litigation, and often they avoid writing about certain topics, companies and people.

Exactly the same situation exists in national newspapers. Events last week may have shifted public feeling towards a realisation that our libel laws are unjust and we are no longer a land of free speech.

There are clear ways forward, such as drastically reducing libel costs by capping fees, and introducing a public interest defence to protect those writing about health, safety and other issues. However, there has to be public support to push this issue up the political agenda.

Keep Libel Laws Out of Science has started a campaign for libel reform, which will have an effect far beyond the world of science if it is successful.

A statement already has 20,000 signatories, including the astronomer royal, the poet laureate, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Fry, Ricky Gervais and Dara O’Briain. To add your name, visit www.senseaboutscience.org/freedebate.

The problem of libel is partly about what we as journalists, bloggers and academics can write, but it is also crucially about what you are allowed to read.

You deserve the same access to information as the rest of Europe and America.

Jan Moir's rant about the Boyzone star Stephen Gately is a gratuitous piece of gay-bashing

Charlie Brooker

guardian.co.uk, Friday 16 October 2009 16.54 BST

Article history

Jan Moir's column about Stephen Gately dances on his grave. For money. Photograph: Rex Features

The funeral of Stephen Gately has not yet taken place. The man hasn't been buried yet. Nevertheless, Jan Moir of the Daily Mail has already managed to dance on his grave. For money.

It has been 20 minutes since I've read her now-notorious column, and I'm still struggling to absorb the sheer scope of its hateful idiocy. It's like gazing through a horrid little window into an awesome universe of pure blockheaded spite. Spiralling galaxies of ignorance roll majestically against a backdrop of what looks like dark prejudice, dotted hither and thither with winking stars of snide innuendo.

On the Mail website, it was headlined: "Why there was nothing 'natural' about Stephen Gately's death." Since the official postmortem clearly ascribed the singer's death to natural causes, that headline contains a fairly bold claim. Still, who am I to judge? I'm no expert when it comes to interpreting autopsy findings, unlike Moir. Presumably she's a leading expert in forensic science, paid huge sums of money to fly around the world lecturing coroners on her latest findings. Or maybe she just wants to gay-bash a dead man? Tragically, the only way to find out is to read the rest of her article.

She begins by jabbering a bit about untimely celebrity deaths, especially those whose lives are "shadowed by dark appetites or fractured by private vice". Not just Heath Ledger and Michael Jackson. No: she's eagerly looking forward to other premature snuffings.

"Robbie, Amy, Kate, Whitney, Britney; we all know who they are. And we are not being ghoulish to anticipate, or to be mentally braced for, their bad end: a long night, a mysterious stranger, an odd set of circumstances that herald a sudden death."

Fair enough. I'm sure we all agree there's nothing "ghoulish" whatsoever about eagerly imagining the hypothetical death of someone you've marked out as a potential cadaver on account of your ill-informed presumptions about their lifestyle. All she's doing is running a detailed celebrity-death sweepstake in her head. That's not ghoulish, that's fun. For my part, I've just put a tenner on Moir choking to death on her own bile by the year 2012. See? Fun!

Having casually prophesied the death of Robbie Williams and co, Moir moves on to her main point: that Gately's death strikes her as a bit fishy . . . "All the official reports point to a natural death, with no suspicious circumstances . . . But, hang on a minute. Something is terribly wrong with the way this incident has been shaped and spun into nothing more than an unfortunate mishap on a holiday weekend, like a broken teacup in the rented cottage."

That's odd. I don't recall anyone equating the death with "an unfortunate mishap on a holiday weekend". I was only aware of shocked expressions of grief from those who knew or admired him, people who'd probably be moved to tears by Moir likening the tragedy to "a broken teacup in the rented cottage". But never mind that – "shaped and spun" by whom, precisely? The coroner?

Incredibly, yes. Moir genuinely believes the coroner got it wrong: "Healthy and fit 33-year-old men do not just climb into their pyjamas and go to sleep on the sofa, never to wake up again. Whatever the cause of death is, it is not, by any yardstick, a natural one."

At this point, I dare to challenge the renowned international forensic pathologist Jan Moir, because I personally know of two other men (one in his 20s, one in his early 30s), who died in precisely this way. According to the charity Cardiac Risk in the Young (c-r-y.org.uk), "Twelve apparently fit and healthy young people die in the UK from undiagnosed heart conditions" every single week. That's a lot of broken teacups, eh Jan?

Still, if his death wasn't natural "by any yardstick", what did kill him? Moir knows: it was his lifestyle. Because Gately was, y'know . . . homosexual. Having lanced this boil, Moir lets the pus drip out all over her fingers as she continues to type: "The circumstances surrounding his death are more than a little sleazy," she declares. "Cowles and Gately took a young Bulgarian man back to their apartment. It is not disrespectful to assume that a game of canasta . . . was not what was on the cards . . . What happened afterwards is anyone's guess."

Don't hold back, Jan. Have a guess. Draw us a picture. You specialise in celebrity death fantasies, after all.

"His mother is still insisting that her son died from a previously undetected heart condition that has plagued the family." Yes. That poor, blinkered woman, "insisting" in the face of official medical evidence that absolutely agrees with her.

Anyway, having cast aspersions over a tragic death, doubted a coroner and insulted a grieving mother, Moir's piece builds to its climax: "Another real sadness about Gately's death is that it strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships. . . Gay activists are always calling for tolerance and understanding about same-sex relationships, arguing that they are just the same as heterosexual marriages . . . in many cases this may be true. Yet the recent death of Kevin McGee, the former husband of Little Britain star Matt Lucas, and now the dubious events of Gately's last night raise troubling questions about what happened."

Way to spread the pain around, Jan. Way to link two unrelated tragedies, Jan. Way to gay-bash, Jan.

Jan's paper, the Daily Mail, absolutely adores it when people flock to Ofcom to complain about something offensive, especially when it's something they've only learned about second-hand via an inflammatory article in a newspaper. So it would undoubtedly be delighted if, having read this, you paid a visit to the Press Complaints Commission website (www.pcc.org.uk) to lodge a complaint about Moir's article on the basis that it breaches sections 1, 5 and 12 of its code of practice.