In his great documentary The Century of the Self, Adam Curtis explores topics such as consumerism and social control of the masses, but at its heart it is an exploration of collectivism and individualism. It describes the second half of Read more…
Over the years I’ve had a love-hate relationship with Facebook: I love to hate it. As an early adopter, I always have felt that my interaction with the social network was very different to what other people were using it Read more…
I have good news and bad news. The good news is that the EU is not about to make linking illegal. The bad news is that the latest proposal from the EU Commission leaves open the door for the creation Read more…
Patent trolls are a blight on the tech industry, extolling licence fees for “inventions” that they never implemented, sitting on broad claims waiting until enough people are deemed to be using the technology and then suing them. These are not Read more…
A few months ago we reported on a couple of decisions by the England and Wales Hight Court declaring private copying illegal (here and here). Incredibly, before 2014 making a private copy of a legally-purchased work was illegal in the Read more…
The announcement that hacktivist collective Anonymous has declared war on the Islamic State has been received positively by the public. After the Paris attack some may think governments are not doing enough to protect civilians, so at least it seems Read more…
Depiction of computing and hacking in Hollywood has long been the subject of amusement for techies around the world. From the preposterous idea that you can hack into an alien computer, to increasingly unbelievable graphic user interfaces, film has been Read more…
You may have read that the European Commission intends to prevent hyperlinks to copyrighted material. The good news is that this isn’t true, but the bad news is that there is a real proposal to change copyright law that could Read more…
One of the most long-lasting effects of Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013 was that they presented strong evidence that national security agencies in the US and the UK were involved in serious indiscriminate mass surveillance programmes. Furthermore, one of the Read more…
I have to admit that I am not a big fan of radio. Other than the occasional listen to the always excellent BBC Radio 6, I tend to spend most of my listening time with my own music (iPods still Read more…