machine-envy

A little story that might be of interest to the “Piracy funds terrorism” crowd…

BBC news reports allegations today against Silvio Berlusconi and his lawyer David Mills that Mills, the estranged husband of UK Culture secretary Tessa Jowell, set up a network of offshore companies for the former Italian prime minister:

“Prosecutors say these offshore companies were used to buy American film rights which were sold at hugely inflated prices to Mr Berlusconi’s television company, Mediaset.

”It was a complex system designed, they allege, to ensure the former prime minister avoided paying tax.”

If found guilty both men face 4-12 years in jail. Read the report here.

In all likelihood, the Gowers Review of intellectual property is already written. But, as it bounces between government departments for consultation, what it is going to say is still very much up for grabs. Which makes it all the more important, if you believe copyright in sound recordings shouldn’t be extended from 50 to 95 years, that you go over to Releasethemusic.org and sign their petition.

Classic clip from this week’s UN internet governance forum in Athens. Art Reilly, Cisco’s senior Director for Strategic Technology Policy, wriggles just a little under questioning from the audience about Cisco’s business dealings with the Chinese authorities, who use Cisco routers to filter internet traffic passing through the “Great firewall”.

My favourite part is the exchange between the chair and Reilly at the end:

Chair: “Do you ever say no?”

Reilly: Looks questioningly at chair

Chair: “Do you ever take a view ‘we must not sell’”

Reilly: “Obviously there are business conditions that are important with regard to the sale, establishing a price, and our ability to actually deliver…”

Watch the clip here (via IPJustice)

It had to happen. After months waiting for my Second Life contact to get around to writing a piece for openDemocracy on theories of innovation in virtual worlds, I have been forced to rehash his thesis in the New Statesman:

“Those who have not yet heard about Second Life, the online virtual world, can’t have read a newspaper for the past six months. Since May, when Business Weeksplashed the story of Anshe Chung, an in-world entrepreneur who dominates Second Life’s virtual real-estate market, all branches of the UK media have featured specials outlining the machinations of this playground of the imagination. Now Reuters has set up its own Second Life bureau, promising to break stories from the virtual frontiers.

”The media orgy was predictable. Here is a world that exists only on a rack of web servers in California. Yet more than half a million people (a population that’s growing furiously) log on for more than a week per month, on average. Could anything do more to confirm our fears of technology disconnecting us from reality?”

Read the rest here. One small note: it appears the subs at the New Statesman make no distinction between a “working week” (35-40 hours) and a “working week” (168 hours), rendering a reference in the article wildly inaccurate. The rest of us get to go home after dark, but poor sods, John Kampfner must have his subs on the “stay awake” pills, turning round copy through the night in anticipation of the launch of their new website. For reference, then, the Wired travel guide to Second Life has excellent figures.

This fortnight’s column for openDemocracy is on the fate of “professional journalism” in the new media age. Since newspapers generally devote forest-loads of copy to their own fate at the hands of the internet, this is a topic I’ve steered clear of for a number of years. But here’s my tuppence worth.

“”We’re Google. So sue us”. Thus read the headline in The New York Times, atop a story highlighting the number of legal cases brought against the maverick search-engine company in its short history. From pornographers to parenting directories, Google has seen more people in court than most of its rivals.
“When Google’s purchase of YouTube was announced on 10 October, many commentators believed the company was just buying itself more legal woes. YouTube had been hailed as a revolution in citizen webcasting, but it was unclear how many of the staggering 100 million videos downloaded each day featured original content, and how many were simply copyrighted material uploaded illegally by other users.

“The copyright argument against (for example) entire episodes of The Smurfs appearing on YouTube without any compensation to the original creators would seem clear. But Google’s ownership of the successful social-networking site adds a new dimension to the evolving relationship between Google and other information-providers - a relationship leading the company to face an increasing number of legal challenges focused on disputes over the frontiers of intellectual-property law.

“Google’s stated mission is “to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. It’s unsurprising, then, that as the company moves ever-nearer towards its goal, and starts making considerable income in the process, those previously in the business of information might get a little tetchy…”

Read the rest here.

Missed this news when it broke last month, but intrigued to hear today that Google has inaugurated it’s own political action committee (PAC) to support candidates seeking electoral office in the United States. According to Google’s chief communications bod Ricardo Reyes, Google will use the PAC to lobby on issues such as net neutrality. This detailed article in today’s Guardian summarises the PAC, and details some of Google’s other lobbying efforts.

openDemocracy’s Deputy Editor, David Hayes, points me to this excellent article from The Nation, which predicts that media megacorps will use the new web 2.0 environment to pollute our mental space in ways we cannot yet imagine:

“Advertisers are harnessing technology that targets and follows Internet users on their journeys through cyberspace, collecting data and tracking behavior. Virtual software marketing tools will be deployed across the digital landscape so that wherever we go, whatever we do do–e-mail, instant messaging, mobile communications or searches–we will be immersed in enticing content for the lifelong sell…”

Read the rest here.

It’s been a while since anybody posted here. Sorry. After the New Statesman gave away my column for advertising space last week, I was put into an enchanted sleep deep in a forest in Somerset, a spell which could only be broken by Google buying YouTube.

This week’s column for the New Statesman focuses on botched government IT projects, and suggests that code commissioned by the government should be open.

“The recent announcement that the Financial Services Authority is investigating iSoft, the troubled computer software company charged with delivering a large part of the new, centralised patient records system for the National Health Service, is just another sorry episode in the government’s Connecting for Health initiative.

”In June 2005, Fujitsu, winner of the contract for southern England, changed horses midstream and dumped its software supplier…”

Read the rest here.

When I was a kid, I used to think working in the music industry would be, like, the coolest thing ever. In my early twenties, I started doing music writing, and started having my doubts. Then, as a tech journalist, I started meeting people from the BPI and I knew the mirror had cracked.

At twelve, this kid is never going to have that experience. She already knows the industry sucks. That’s why she flash-mobbed BPI headquarters on Tuesday, after they took her single off the fledgling “kiddie-chart”. The BPI’s logic? Her single was released on Flowerburger records, a label currently petitioning the BPI to stop suing filesharers. From The Inquirer:

“12 year-old singer-songwriter Amy Thomas staged a protest outside the headquarters of the British music industry yesterday, following a decision to ban her from a new school kids’ music chart because of her views on downloading.”

Read the rest here. (via Techdirt)