The blog has dutifully read the manifestos of the three main parties and can report that only one has anything at all to say about the internet:
Digital Challenge
We will deliver our cross-government strategy for closing the digital divide and using ICT to further transform public services:
* By 2006 every school supported to offer all pupils access to computers at home.
* A Digital Challenge for a local authority to be a national and international pathfinder in universalk digital service provision.
*A new National Internet Safety Unit to make Britain the safest place in the world to access the internet.Copyright in a digital age
We will modernise copyright and other forms of protection of intellectual property rights so that they are appropriate for the digital age. We will use our presidency of the EU to look at how to ensure content creators can protect their innovations in a digital age. Piracy is a growing threat and we will work with industry to protect it.
From the Labour tome, p99.
The bit about getting kids onto computers is noble enough and the bit about getting digital provision of public services is relatively long-standing government policy. (We recommend the Institute for Public Policy Research for background reading on that sort of thing.)
We're not sure what the 'National Internet Safety Unit' would actually do, so we have to reserve judgement on that. Perhaps it will marshall handsome government resources in an effective campaign against spam, child porn, viruses and other online badness. Or perhaps it will publish reports that no-one reads and promote flimsy AOL-style internet nannying.
But we are interested to see intellectual property issues in a manifesto. Digital rights are a favourite theme in the Observer geek pen. John and I have both blogged about it, although print journalists' eyes tend to mist over when we talk feverishly about EU copyright directives and the legacy of a particular US Supreme Court ruling in 1984 on home taping.
But if there's appetite we'll lobby the paper for more reporting on the subject. And we'll certainly come back to it on the blog.
