Why do I get the impression that someone somewhere has declared open season on Google? The Google Book Search deal is under scrutiny from anti-trust regulators in the US; Jeff Bezos thinks that the settlement is a bad idea; it has even been criticised for bad design decisions. Although I Read more…
The UK government has been making some interesting noises with regards to net neutrality, broadband connection as a universal service, and most importantly, about enacting three-strikes-and-you’re-out legislation. The UK government is in the final stages of preparing the final version of its Digital Britain strategy for the next 10 years; Read more…
Good news everyone! The discussion on the Telecomms Package at the European Parliament has produced a good result against “three-strikes and you’re out” policies, as some of the measures that would involve cutting internet connection have been sent back to the negotiating table.I have not been keeping up with the Read more…
The internet is growing. I know that as far as obvious statements go, this one pretty much comes on top. However, when one charts its rate of growth, one can’t help but notice that it seems to be accelerating. For example, a graph showing the number of internet hosts displays Read more…
Phorm (also known as Webwise) has declared that it is finally set to launch its service in the UK with BT’s ISP service. Phorm is a service that allocates web users a unique number, it then monitors websites that the user has visited and looks for recurring keywords related to Read more…
Before being attacked by the Lynne Trusses of the world, the title of Vernor Vinge’s Rainbows End is not missing an apostrophe. The book is named after a retirement community which was chosen by either “an everyday illiterate or someone who really understood the place.” Vinge is part of a Read more…
Continuing with the coverage of the interim Digital Britain report, something has been bothering me since I read it, so I went back and browsed through it again until I realised what it was. According to the UK’s chief technology policy-makers, we still seem to be living in the 20th Read more…
Today Britons have woken up to the fact that they are also browsing the Internet behind a firewall similar in some ways to the much maligned Great Firewall of China. Every news outlet is reporting that Wikipedia has been censored in the UK. Several UK ISPs are accused of filtering Read more…
It is a bit tired to say that Google’s stranglehold on the search engine market seems unshakeable. To offer a couple of ironic factoids, I found the accompanying image using Google Image Search, and this blog is published in Blogger, a Google-owned service. Many people have been warning us about Read more…
One of the defining characteristics of U.S. IP policy in the last 16 years has been an inevitable move towards stronger protection, while in IT the move has been towards laissez-faire deregulation of media. Many people politically classed as either liberal or progressive have come to expect nothing but bad Read more…