Internet freedom has a new name, and it is BlackBerry. It is hard to know when it happened, but at some point in the last month the BlackBerry became the enemy number one of those countries with strong Internet filters. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates will ban BlackBerries, Read more…
The Turkish Internet has been crippled in recent weeks due to an unprecedented conflict between the Turkish courts and Google. If you are not familiar with the background to this case, you will find some excellent write-ups in various places (such as this BBC summary). In short, Turkey passed a Read more…
So, what many suspected has come to pass, our deepest fears confirmed and one of the worst possible texts adopted. The Digital Economy Bill has gone through the wash-up process in the very last day of this Parliament. I am expecting others to go into the detail of what is Read more…
The International Chamber of Commerce has released a report entitled “Building a Digital Economy” (full report here). The report is getting a lot of press because it makes some spectacular claims about the creative industries in Europe. According to the study, by 2015 digital piracy will have cost the industry Read more…
While in the UK we are immersed in heated debate regarding the Digital Economy Bill, and the threat of ACTA looms large, I have read with interest an article by Peter Grundy in Wired UK about beta testing legislation before it is released to the public. Everyone familiar with web Read more…
The House of Lords debated yesterday the Digital Economy Bill, and I use the phrase “debate” in the loosest possible sense. What we got was a depressingly one-sided affair replete with misrepresentation, misunderstanding of the core issues, swallowing the industry’s figures without question, and corroboration that the House of Lords Read more…
There are some things in life that are so wrong at every level that as soon as they see the light of day deserve a big fat “FAIL” caption. That “Mission Accomplished” banner. Boy bands. Any movie bearing the words “A Film by Michael Bay”. Misplaced CCTV cameras. The latest Read more…
When the history of the Internet is written down (again), the annals of the years 2009 and 2010 will describe the consolidation of social media, the rise of Twitter, but more importantly, it will be known as the period when regulators and industry tried to tackle intermediaries. This has been 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…
There were many reasons to believe that the UK would not be seeing any three-strikes legislation against file-sharing. First, the European Union had declared that it was a bad idea. Second, HADOPI had been declared unconstitutional in France. But most importantly, the Digital Britain report had considered that the proposal Read more…