Doom and gloom for journalists. Recent weeks have seen a number of stories about the demise of local papers prompted by the rise of the Internet. Last Sunday The Observer had a similar piece that asked a leading question: Who would you rather trust – the BBC or a blogger? Read more…
Last week I attended the 5th COMMUNIA workshop on Accessing, Using, Reusing Public Sector Content and Data. I was pleasantly surprised by the level of the presentations, the depth of the discussion, and the pragmatic approach to the topic of public sector information. I mean pleasantly surprised not because the Read more…
(First ear muffs, next headphones?) The British Performing Right Society (PRS) has been in the news recently thanks to its continuing struggle with Google. The PRS is also known for its forceful pursuit of performance fees from an unsuspecting public, such as suing companies whose workers listen to the radio Read more…
Mathias Klang has posted about an interesting development in the increasing complex interaction between the real and the virtual worlds. Swedish game developer MindArk has been granted a banking licence by Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority. MindArk are known for developing and managing the remarkable Entropia Universe, which is the “first Read more…
Computer Implemented Inventions Workshop Wednesday 1 April 2009Venue: Moot Court Room, Old College This event is the idea of Professor Philip Leith, Queen’s University Belfast, and it is organised as part of SCRIPT’s Information Technology Law Foresight Fora. The objective of the event is to bring together a small number Read more…
The hard-working organisers of the excellent and much awaited SCRIPTed conference have written to let me know that there are only a small number of places left, so get thee to the registration page ASAP! The programme is looking extremely good, but I am biased because I am chuffed at Read more…
For the last weeks I have been glued to my torrents watching the final episodes of Battlestar Galactica (two episodes to go!). In case anyone objects to the downloading, I own the entire series on DVD, save for the unaired ones of course. To me there is no doubt that Read more…
One of the most useful features of the participatory web and the user-generated revolution is that it allows interaction from consumers (gosh, how do I hate it when I start using journalistic commonplace terms such as revolution, debacle or meltdown). Now the British government is about to jump in the Read more…
Yesterday was World Day Against Cyber-censorship [insert snarky comment about the abundance of “Days against X” here]. To celebrate (is “celebrate” the right word?), Reporters Without Borders has released a report on the state of internet control and surveillance. The report labels 12 countries as “enemies of the internet”, claiming Read more…