Have you had an embarrassing or worrying moment with communication technologies? Are you concerned about online privacy? If you answered yes, then you may be happy to know that you are not alone, the number of people concerned about online privacy is increasing. Of course, this is not the exclusive Read more…
The air of inevitability surrounding three strikes legislation in the UK came to its fruition yesterday with the announcement by Lord Mandelson that the government will seek to pass legislation that will force intermediaries to disconnect users involved in file-sharing. I hate to say “I told you so”, but I Read more…
There is a growing sense in copyright circles that something needs to be done about orphan works. In many ways, we can thank the Google Book Settlement for jolting policy-makers into action by including a clause in the agreement that deals with future orphan works legislation. In case you missed Read more…
During the early years of the decade, the topic of the digital divide received more coverage than it does now. As the Internet took off in Western developed nations, there was a deep preoccupation that developing countries would be left behind in the digital environment, condemning these economies to an Read more…
Interesting piece in TechDirt about watermarking content. The associated Press has convinced Boston newspaper Town News to adopts its watermarking service to stop people from copying and pasting content because the biggest threat to online news editions is widespread copying and plagiarism. The article says that they hope to adopt Read more…
I’ve been reading some of the fascinating research coming from Technorati’s State of the Blogosphere, and a couple of things have jumped out at me immediately: Two-thirds are male 60% are 18-44 The majority are more affluent and educated than the general population 75% have college degrees 40% have graduate Read more…
Press gag orders in the UK have a deservedly bad reputation, they are some of the worst examples of repression of freedom of speech through draconian legal measures. While one could argue that they may be justified in some cases with regards to human rights and privacy, they are currently Read more…
Nowadays I am very sceptical about reading government consultation reports. After all, recent events would lead us to believe that consultation and evidence-based advice appears to be systematically ignored by decision-makers, and that the commercial interest will always prevail. So I was almost ready to ignore the report from the Read more…
Tom Watson MP is fast becoming one of the heroes of social media circles. He has a blog, has a Twitter account, and is generally considered “one of us”, he clearly gets the online environment, and most importantly, I think that it shows that he is genuine, as opposed to Read more…
I recently bought a Blu-ray DVD player for my home PC. I didn’t really need a Blu-ray player as the PS3 does the job admirably, but I was looking for a fast CD ripper and decided to go for the Blu-ray disc option as it was cheap and fast. I Read more…