Prime Minister of Great Britain, David Cameron, is set to announce big plans for establishing East London as one of the world’s great technology centers.
Looking to spur the creation of private sector jobs to make up for public sector losses due to state spending cuts, British Prime Minister David Cameron has identified the tech industries as a safe bet for government backing and investment in the UK.
Later today, he is expected to announce that the likes of Facebook and Google are set to invest in the East London Tech City plan. He wants the area, which include Olympic Park, to give Silicon Valley a run for its money over the coming years.
“Right now, Silicon Valley is the leading place in the world for hi-tech growth and innovation,” Cameron will say in a speech to businesses and entrepreneurs. “But there’s no reason why it has to be so predominant. Our ambition is to bring together the creativity and energy of Shoreditch and the incredible possibilities of the Olympic Park to help make east London one of the world’s great technology centres.”
He will report that the response from international technology firms and venture capitalists to the plan has been overwhelming, and announce several firms that have agreed to invest in the area, including Intel, Cisco and BT.
Result for: minister david
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) being brokered by the U.S. government on behalf of the entertainment industry has caught the attention of the European Data Protection Supervisor, Peter Hustinx. He authored an opinion paper on several topics that include ACTA, and said he was concerned that it violated the legal rights of citizens in nations across Europe.
“The EDPS strongly encourages the European Commission to establish a public and transparent dialogue on ACTA, possibly by means of a public consultation, which would also help ensuring that the measures to be adopted are compliant with EU privacy and data protection law requirements,” Hustinx writes in his opinion piece. ACTA has already found itself in the line of fire from the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation for some of its provisions.
There are fears that ACTA includes measures to enable warrantless searches of citizens and destruction of devices containing potentially pirated content. Recently in the UK, Junior business minister David Lammy said documents related to ACTA will not be put in the House of Commons library, due to the desire for other countries to keep the negotiations secret.
The European Commission said recently that ACTA will not go any further than current EU policies related to copyright infringement, and dismissed fears that ACTA will lead to border searches of iPods and other gadgets in case they contain pirated multimedia content.
“EU customs, frequently confronted with traffics of drugs, weapons or people, do neither have the time nor the legal basis to look for a couple of pirated songs on an iPod music player or laptop computer, and there is no intention to change this,” the Commission said at the time.
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Result for: minister david
Expected to be the largest anti-piracy campaign ever, the MPA and other anti-piracy groups have vowed to make London a “a fake-free zone” by the beginning of the 2012 Summer Olympics.
The clearly impossible goal to completely eradicate DVD piracy was initiated by Intellectual Property Minister David Lammy.
The groups involved are The Motion Picture Association, U.K. Film Council, UK Intellectual Property Office, Federation Against Copyright Theft, London Councils, Trading Standards and the Police.
Lammy added, “Legislation alone will not combat counterfeiting and piracy. Good law is great but enforced law is better.” He noted that the campaign should send a strong message to citizens that piracy is a huge problem and will be tackled.
