1. Reality does not easily comply with numbered lists. 2. They are created mostly to attract easy traffic using SEO-friendly keywords. 3. They are the hallmark of lazy thinking. 4. Arbitrary number choice. 5. They are shallow. 6. After the first couple of entries, it becomes clear that the writer Read more…
Back in 2010, Wikileaks was at the peak of its power and influence. The release of the Collateral Murder video, of the Afghanistan logs, and of the US diplomatic cables have to be seen as the zenith of the struggle between the Internet and the world powers. Although I was Read more…
For years Eben Moglen has been warning about potential dangers of proprietary software in embedded computers, from trusted computing to chips running software nobody can access. Moglen’s warnings are more relevant, as builders and architects are racing to implement intelligent buildings and smart grids, which are widely heralded as a Read more…
The latest issue of SCRIPTed, A Journal of Law, Technology & Society, is now online. Plenty of good things on this issue, including an excellent article on the Chilean Free Trade Agreement, several on Internet regulation, and an interesting take on patent claims. (2012) 9:2 SCRIPTed Issue DOI: 10.2966/scrip.090112 Read more…
Keeping local information is a thing of the past. Nowadays everything is in the cloud, haven’t you heard? From Dropbox to Google Drive we keep our files stored in some nameless data farm in Iowa, and any Apple user will have lots of information stored in the iCloud. While these Read more…
Two cases in the news have been prompting questions about the way in which we interact with social media, and how it affects everyday life. In the UK, a teenager has been issued with a harassment order after he made a decidedly offensive tweet to British diver Tom Daley when Read more…
Habitual readers may have noticed that I am not a fan of software patents. From time to time one reads attempts to defend them in comments, blog posts, and with less frequency in scholarly articles, but as time goes by more evidence comes to light to demonstrate that they Read more…
Whenever the music industry complains about decreasing music sales, the usual culprit is piracy. The jury is still out with regards to the effect of piracy on music, but let us concede for the sake of argument that it has had some negative effect on sales. Whatever the figures are, Read more…
The Costa Rican legislature has just passed Law 9048, which includes reforms to the country’s Criminal Code to create new cybercrime offences. Some of these bring the country in line with anti-hacking provisions present in international standards like the Convention on Cybercrime, such as rules against illegal access and interception Read more…
If you took a random sample from news items dating from the first half of the year, you would be forgiven for thinking that piracy was dead, and copyright maximalism was the victor in the Copyright wars. Megaupload had been shut down, its data shredded and scattered to the winds, Read more…