Update 2: Statement from UKIP added to the end of the article.

Update: Three Netherlands MEPs have changed their vote, leaving UKIP as the ONLY party that supports ACTA.

Opposition to the secret ACTA treaty is spreading like wildfire. Today the members of the European Parliament had their say, as on a resolution against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, arguing that it flouts agreed EU laws on counterfeiting and piracy online. MEPs will go to the Court of Justice if the EU does not reject the leaked proposals which include draconian powers to censor the internet and disconnect net connections.

The result was a massive landslide in favour of open government and internet freedom. 636 MEPs were on the side of freedom, and just 10 voted in favour of ACTA.

I can now name and shame those 10, people who were elected to represent us, but who want us to be ...

While catching up on local news, I was shocked to read that a school near my home town of Worcester has installed CCTV in the children's toilets.

I wasn't shocked that it happened, because I have read so many stories recently about people in low level positions of authority who assume they have a 'right to spy' that trumps any else's right to privacy. What shocked me was the headline itself. It didn't say "Headmaster arrested for installing CCTV in children's toilets", or "Headmaster resigns after being caught installing CCTV in children's toilets." It didn't even say "Headmaster apologises after installing CCTV in children's toilets." Instead the headline was a plain and unadorned "Chelmsley Wood school puts CCTV in pupil toilets."

It's time for us to decide what sort of world we want our children to grow up in. Do we ...

Today, the BBC published a survey on worldwide public attitudes to the internet. The results are a loud and clear wake up call to political parties that thought they were safely in the middle of the road.

75% of UK adults agree, or strongly agree with the statement "Access to the internet should be a fundamental right of all people." To put this into some perspective, that's a wording that we, the Pirate Party UK, thought was too extreme to put in our manifesto. All the major political parties in the UK are collaborating on a Digital Economy Bill that will give copyright holders an unprecedented new power of collective punishment, a power to cut off people's internet connection. They will be able to do this to you even if you can prove that that you are innocent of any copyright infringement, and prove that somebody else is ...

Being interviewed can be a mixed blessing for any politician. It's never easy to tread the fine line between being bland and being outrageous, it's often tough to steer the interview towards the political points you want to make, there is the constant worry of inadvertently putting your foot in it, and in the Pirate Party's case it's nearly impossible to talk about anything other than file sharing without that section of the interview hitting the cutting room floor.

Today, I faced a longer, more intensive, but also more friendly grilling than usual, as I was being interviewed by party activist and former treasurer, Eric Priezkalns, for his newly launched Pirate Podcast site.

As you will hear, he didn't give me too much of an easy ride, although he did give me a rare chance to talk about more than just filesharing.

Visit Pirate Podcast ...

There has been much speculation around clause 17 of the Digital Economy Bill, the part that would give the unelected Lord Mandelson powers to rewrite copyright law whenever he chooses, grant powers to others at a whim, or impose duties or fines on anyone who offends him.

The Financial Times are hinting that the government may back down on clause 17, and some commentators are referring to it as a "legislative sacrificial goat" that the government will agree to drop in return for the other parties backing the other controversial (to put it mildly) proposals in the bill, such as ending the legal right to be considered innocencent until proven guilty, and punishing people who are provably innocent for the actions of others who share their wifi connections with or even without their permission.

The problem for the government is that they know file sharing is simply not going to ...