I thought this was going to change the world. In a way, it did
April 20, 2024 2:38 PM Subscribe
‘We went from naive, hippyish protesters to hardcore anarchists’: the criminal justice bill protests, 30 years on. The criminal justice and public order bill aimed to criminalise “sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats”. “It was almost like a surrealist prank,” Harry Harrison, co-founder of DiY sound system, says now. “I said: ‘Is this real?’ It was a crazy mixture of the sinister and the absurd.” [from The Guardian]
I like the lolz as much as the next bloke....It was fuckin' surreal. They stripped the right to silence! (or rather, they can draw "Adverse inferences from silence").
Look at RIPA - 2 years in jail for refusing to give an encryption key upon demands by the law.
or the PRA "person failing to provide a constable in uniform or designated person their name and address where they are suspected of having behaved or behaving in an anti-social manner is a criminal offence."
these are all early 2000s laws. since then it's become much much worse.
You might not have de facto rights in the USA (and thus be under the boot), but you have neither de facto nor de jure in the UK (and thus no lawyer can get you out on appeal).
See soooo many examples
posted by lalochezia at 2:53 PM on April 20 [10 favorites]
Look at RIPA - 2 years in jail for refusing to give an encryption key upon demands by the law.
or the PRA "person failing to provide a constable in uniform or designated person their name and address where they are suspected of having behaved or behaving in an anti-social manner is a criminal offence."
these are all early 2000s laws. since then it's become much much worse.
You might not have de facto rights in the USA (and thus be under the boot), but you have neither de facto nor de jure in the UK (and thus no lawyer can get you out on appeal).
See soooo many examples
posted by lalochezia at 2:53 PM on April 20 [10 favorites]
There was an entire Prodigy Song specifically about this particular law ..
Yeah, and Autechre's Anti EP had a sticker saying "Warning. Lost and Djarum contain repetitive beats. We advise you not to play these tracks if the Criminal Justice Bill becomes law. Flutter has been programmed in such a way that no bars contain identical beats and can therefore be played under the proposed new law. However, we advice DJs to have a lawyer and a musicologist present at all times to confirm the non-repetitive nature of the music in the event of police harassment"
posted by aubilenon at 3:56 PM on April 20 [27 favorites]
Yeah, and Autechre's Anti EP had a sticker saying "Warning. Lost and Djarum contain repetitive beats. We advise you not to play these tracks if the Criminal Justice Bill becomes law. Flutter has been programmed in such a way that no bars contain identical beats and can therefore be played under the proposed new law. However, we advice DJs to have a lawyer and a musicologist present at all times to confirm the non-repetitive nature of the music in the event of police harassment"
posted by aubilenon at 3:56 PM on April 20 [27 favorites]
If you want to know which forms of protest are ineffective at creating actual change, look at what forms of protest they encourage you to do.
If you want to know which forms of protest are effective at creating actual change, look at what forms of protest they illegalize.
posted by AlSweigart at 7:16 PM on April 20 [16 favorites]
If you want to know which forms of protest are effective at creating actual change, look at what forms of protest they illegalize.
posted by AlSweigart at 7:16 PM on April 20 [16 favorites]
The movie Beats is about that law. It's pretty good.
Official trailer
Two teenage boys in Scotland in 1994, best friends with no control over their lives, risk everything to attend an illegal rave, hoping for the best night of their boring lives.
posted by Zumbador at 9:20 PM on April 20 [2 favorites]
Official trailer
Two teenage boys in Scotland in 1994, best friends with no control over their lives, risk everything to attend an illegal rave, hoping for the best night of their boring lives.
posted by Zumbador at 9:20 PM on April 20 [2 favorites]
I was at The Hyde park demo mentioned in this article, and remember seeing cops just yanking people out of the queue for the tube. I was too young to really know what was happening but I do remember a) lots of really blitzed people and b) lots of fringe political groups muscling in on the protest.
This recent article in the baffler seems relevant. It’s not about the CJB protests but rather how dance music presents itself now - lots of talk of utopia but not much progressive action.
posted by The River Ivel at 12:31 AM on April 21 [4 favorites]
This recent article in the baffler seems relevant. It’s not about the CJB protests but rather how dance music presents itself now - lots of talk of utopia but not much progressive action.
posted by The River Ivel at 12:31 AM on April 21 [4 favorites]
Huh, a while back the news that Chechnya was planning to ban all music that didn't have a beat between 80 to 116 BPM was being passed around as a bizarre example of a primitive nation doing stupid shit (which, to be fair, it is).
But there's the UK, planning to ban techno/trance/electronica/whatever as recently as the mid 1990's. And then there was the US in 1985 with neo-puritan Tipper Gore teaming up with the religious right to try to ban rock'n'roll. In the US in the 1990's the stick up the ass brigade tried to ban rap music.
The war on rap continues in Australia to this day.
Children, it seems, are very very endangered by music that their elders dislike.
posted by sotonohito at 8:56 AM on April 21 [5 favorites]
But there's the UK, planning to ban techno/trance/electronica/whatever as recently as the mid 1990's. And then there was the US in 1985 with neo-puritan Tipper Gore teaming up with the religious right to try to ban rock'n'roll. In the US in the 1990's the stick up the ass brigade tried to ban rap music.
The war on rap continues in Australia to this day.
Children, it seems, are very very endangered by music that their elders dislike.
posted by sotonohito at 8:56 AM on April 21 [5 favorites]
Until they get a little older and yesterday's revolution becomes today's easy listening.
posted by klanawa at 9:19 AM on April 21 [3 favorites]
posted by klanawa at 9:19 AM on April 21 [3 favorites]
David Cameron being a Clash fan is the example that springs to mind here.
posted by Artw at 10:39 AM on April 21 [2 favorites]
posted by Artw at 10:39 AM on April 21 [2 favorites]
oi davey old bean, the album title was "sandinista!" not "junta!"
posted by lalochezia at 2:40 PM on April 21 [2 favorites]
posted by lalochezia at 2:40 PM on April 21 [2 favorites]
I was at the Hyde Park party. It was a grand day out except for the police, who kept randomly doing cavalry and phalanx charges through the park and along Park Lane, that increased in intensity and frequency until battle lines formed up and everything went mad.
posted by meehawl at 1:22 PM on April 22 [1 favorite]
posted by meehawl at 1:22 PM on April 22 [1 favorite]
« Older The Lost Symphony of Jean Sibelius | stop motion cooking Newer »
posted by Faintdreams at 2:50 PM on April 20 [5 favorites]