Feeling silly
And now for something silly…
Thanks to Burkard for the link. It’s strangely contagious.
DRM
New DVD DRM revealed
DRM protection in DVDs is laughable at most. That is the reason why there is new protection being planned. Blu-Ray is just one of the competing DRM standards being discussed for DVDs. The protection will have three steps, content protection so that users cannot use the DVD in certain ways; Read more
Popular Culture
The Box Office is dead
(Via Copyfight). If asked about the main source of profits for the movie industry, you would probably assume that ticket sales are near the top, otherwise, why is there so much emphasis on ticket sale figures for the latest blockbuster? And why do we have to put up with the Read more
Cybercrime
Spyware and identity theft
Spyware is back in the news with some chilling warnings regarding a vicious keylogger spyware application called CoolWebSearch. This program used to be mostly an annoyance, it is a browser hijacker, which installs dozens of bookmarks to porn sites, changes the home page and continually changes it back, which can Read more
Creative Commons
Snaparazzis and copyright
(Picture from Flickr) After the London bombings we are all becoming familiar with seeing snaps from passers-by using their increasingly sophisticated mobile phone cameras to take stills or even video of newsworthy events. With so many images out there – many of them with considerable commercial value – the question Read more
Creative Commons
CIE preliminary report
I just realised that I have not publicised this enough. The preliminary report of the study about the use of Creative Commons for the Common Information Environment(CIE) is now online. This report is asking whether the member institutions from the CIE can adopt CC licences. These institutions include Becta, the Read more
Web 2.0
Technological adoption: Firefox
French research firm Xiti Monitor has released some data about Firefox’s share of the market (if you haven’t been using Firefox, what are you waiting for?). Global figures for Firefox remain low, while Europe is the continent with the highest percentage of Firefox users at 14%. Of those European countries, Read more
Enforcement
IP Criminal Enforcement Directive
The proposed EC Directive on criminal measures aimed at ensuring the enforcement of intellectual property rights has been making the news and blogs recently. I have finally managed to read it, and it is scary. The Article 3 of the proposed directive states that: Member States shall ensure that all Read more
Privacy
On the net, nobody knows you’re not a girl
Playing City of Heroes over the weekend I came across an odd conversation from two fellow players from Spain. They were talking about a female character who had admitted to them that she was a man in Real Life (RL is that place where players go to eat). They were Read more
Software patents
FFII domain taken down
After their success in bringing down the Computer Implemented Inventions Directive, the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) has managed to become one of the best examples of a powerful and influential civil society organisation that has managed to educate and inform the public with regards to a complex Read more