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Julian Huppert’s “One-Speed Internet”
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Lib Dems are appealing to the vital online pirate vote at this year’s party conference, putting the membership on collision course with LibDem ministers in the coalition government. In a new IT policy paper called “Preparing The Ground”, a team of party activists led by Cambridge MP Julian Huppert calls for the Digital Economy Act…
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Free Ride: Disney, Fela Kuti and Google’s war on copyright
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Wars over creators’ rights are pretty old – much older than copyright law. In one of the first “copyfights”, in 561AD, about 3,000 people died, writes Robert Levine in his new book Free Ride. St Colmcille and St Finnian clashed over the right to make copies of the Bible, with the King castigating Colmcille for…
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Panic in The Chocolate Factory
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Is Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility is good for Android, or an expensive mistake for Google, made in a moment of irrational panic. Columnist Matt Asay thinks it “spells iPhone doom“, and he’s not alone. John C Dvorak thinks it’s “pure genius“. This supposes that Google performed a cost-benefit analysis and calculated that the cost…
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Murdoch and Mythology
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Keyser Sose If children didn’t believe in Santa, thousands of grown men wouldn’t dress up in fur-trimmed red jumpsuits, put on false beards, and give children unwanted gifts in tents every year. Perhaps some would, but they’d probably be arrested. For the past fortnight, TV and newspaper editors in the UK have pushed aside stories…
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The Cube: Apple’s daftest, strangest romance
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Ten years ago on Sunday, Apple called it quits on one of its oddest products ever, the G4 Cube. The Cube was a strange and wonderful machine that continues to fascinate today – but it was widely perceived to have failed. Some people thoroughly enjoyed the failure, thinking it served Apple right. Dull people will…