I emailed the three TDs in Cork South West (2 FG, 1 Lab) two days ago about #stopSOPAIreland. Noel Harrington’s office (FG) replied within a few hours by email in a pretty generic but still positive way.
This morning I got a letter in the post(!) from Jim Daly (FG) with a very detailed response giving the official line as expressed by Seán Sherlock. Kudos to whoever in his office wrote the letter, it had all of the pertinent information. Sidenote: If they replied by email the country would be less broke.
According to the letter (see below), consultations were had with these mythical fifty stakeholders that Seán Sherlock keeps referring to, last June/July.
Is the Minister of State able to identify even one “stakeholder” who represented the interests of webhosts like Blacknight, web infrastructure providers like Amazon, major Social Media companies like Facebook, Search/Video companies like Google/YouTube, online Gaming companies like PopCap, Enterprise Ireland, the IDA or the average internet user? We have already confirmed that he never talked to the Irish Internet Association.
I’ll still waiting on the Minister’s Labour colleague in Cork South West to reply.
UPDATE: Several people on Twitter have pointed out that I’m not reading this correctly. There were 50 submissions but we have no idea how many Stakeholders. It could be 2. Much more disturbing is Steve White’s comment below. His post highlights that the submissions were not specific to the Statutory Instrument at all.
I asked Eoin O’Dell who is on that consultation review board and he insisted the they two entirely separate process, he coudlnt’ distance himself from the SI further
sherlock deliberaltly conflated them in the dail twice and this is where jim daly is gettign it from http://dublinstreams.blogspot.com/2012/01/sherlock-lies-and-evasion-re.html
Great post, Steve, thanks. Now I get it! And it’s even more shocking now.
I think this was the consultation, actually: http://knowfuture.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/proposed-amendment-to-irish-copyright-law/
‘ten days ago the Department of Enterprise and Innovation (the Irish ministry with legislative initiative in the sector), published a draft amendment to the Copyright Act of 2000, in an apparent attempt to provide the legislative basis for such judicial orders. A consultation period regarding the proposed amendment will continue until the end of July’
Is that a different one? I think it was…
but that’s not on government site, I searched and searched for the SI consultation on the djei it and could only find references to the other one, I explain that i got it wrong, there was a brief consultation most missed it here http://dublinstreams.blogspot.com/2012/01/sherlock-lies-and-evasion-re.html :/