Stephen Fry agrees to judge three strikes law protest song

Stephen Fry has agreed to judge a competition, launched by internet service provider TalkTalk, to create a protest song, poem or “other form of artistic expressions” against the proposed “Three Strikes” law.

The provider is offering a prize of £3,000 for the most creative protest. Open to anyone via the website www.dontdisconnectus/sing-our-petition any form of artistic expression will be accepted as long as it can be accessed online and is submitted before 22 January 2010.

Stephen Fry has never hidden his opinion on the three strikes law, regularly using Twitter as a soap box. Speaking on his new role as competition judge, he commented: “I’m no defender of systematic deliberate criminal downloading but in my estimation the government’s proposed “Three-Strike” Copyright Protection Law is ill-conceived, constitutionally outrageous, morally unfair and epically foolish. This is not the way to protect and strengthen the creative music, film and TV industries – it is a way further to alienate and antagonise the very people on whom those industries depend.”

Fry accused major labels and studios of possessing a “deep misunderstanding of the online world”. He explained: “Large scale criminal P2P downloaders will certainly be smart enough to avoid attention while the innocent or small-time (most of whom are good customers) will be penalised without recourse to the due process of the law. I shake my head in sad disbelief that Britain could seriously be contemplating going down a path like this. I couldn’t be more pleased to be asked to judge this competition.”

TalkTalk took it onboard themselves to run a campaign against the proposals in the Digital Economy Bill earlier in the year ( www.dontdisconnect.us) and has collected more than 30,000 petition signatures on the No.10 website.