Open Rights Group

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The Open Rights Group (ORG) is a UK-based organisation that hopes to preserve digital rights and freedoms by serving as a hub for other cyber-rights groups campaigning on similar digital rights issues. Like the EFF, it will campaign against the entertainment industry's attempts to limit what people can do with digital media, as well as highlighting a variety of privacy related issues. It will also provide information to the media and co-ordinate grassroots campaigns.

1 History
2 Goals
3 Areas of interest
4 Patron, Board and Advisory Council
5 References
6 External links

[edit] History

The organisation was started by Danny O'Brien, Cory Doctorow, Ian Brown, Rufus Pollock, James Cronin, Stefan Magdalinski and Suw Charman after a panel discussion at UKUUG and the BBC's Open Tech 2005 ^[1] illustrated that there was both interest and support for a UK-based digital rights organisation.

O'Brien first publicised the organisation, and attempted to secure funding for it, with a pledge on PledgeBank, placed on July 24, 2005, with a deadline of December 25, 2005: "I will create a standing order of 5 pounds per month to support an organisation that will campaign for digital rights in the UK but only if 1,000 other people will too." The pledge reached 1000 people on 29 November 2005^[2]^,^[3].

Just as the pledge reached maturity, the organisation launched at a "sell-out"^[4] meeting in Soho, London^[5]. The same day controversial plans to surveil British road users as part of a new road taxation scheme were featured on the front page of The Times^[6].

The group has made submissions to the All Party Internet Group (APIG) inquiry into digital rights management^[7]^,^[8] and the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property^[9]^,^[10].

[edit] Goals

to raise awareness in the media of digital rights abuses
to provide a media clearinghouse, connecting journalists with experts and activists
to preserve and extend traditional civil liberties in the digital world
to collaborate with other digital rights and related organisations
to nurture a community of campaigning volunteers, from grassroots activists to technical and legal experts

[edit] Areas of interest

The organisation, though focused on the impact of digital technology on the liberty of UK citizens, operates with an apparently wide range of interests within that category. Its interests include: