It’s always fun when the people in charge are hypocrites. While the UK government bitches about freedom of speech in the likes of China, Open Rights Group confirms Ed Vaizey, Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries, is now in discussions with ISPs regarding:

self-regulatory measures to tackle online copyright infringement through site-blocking

If you want to sift out the bullshit, he’s talking about a national firewall, where IP owners would have sites blacklisted, for rights infringement. It’s a far cry from blocking Tiananmen Square protest pictures and entire social networks, but it’s a slippery slope. And we all know how mental the media industry is regarding rights infringement. (Boing Boing adds that the list would, naturally, be ‘secret’ and likely wouldn’t be transparent nor open to judicial review.)

The silver lining, according to Open Rights Group:

[Vaizey] has promised to invite civil society groups to participate in future discussions on the matter

Yeah, I’m sure that’s going to go swimmingly and that Vaizey and co. won’t ignore the protests of civil liberties advocates and technology gurus entirely, in order to appease their rich chums who own or have a huge stake in multinational media companies.