Andrew Orlowski

Collected Journalism

  • Web-blocking returns

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    The government has been circulating revised web-blocking powers for the Digital Economy Bill with industry and activist groups, and The Register has seen a draft. This version is believed to have won the backing of the Tories, and could end up in a Second Reading. The revised Clause 18 we’ve seen is a hybrid of…

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  • Lords: Analogue radio must die

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    Digital radio isn’t great and the public doesn’t want it, but you’re going to get it anyway. So recommends the House of Lords Communications Committee today. 90 per cent of the UK listens to radio, and 94 per cent of listeners are happy with what they’ve got. The Lords accept most of the points made…

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  • Freetards storm Westminster

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    Some words to go with some photos from the Open Rights Group demonstration at Parliament. Read more at The Register… Read More

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  • Pirates and the politics of spite

    Pirates and the politics of spite

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    If “digital rights” becomes reduced to gesture politics, only one group can win: the one with the biggest, boldest, daftest gesture A clear winner is emerging from the Digital Economy Bill – and it’s the UK Pirate Party. The penny only really dropped for me yesterday, after the Open Rights Group’s big demonstration at Westminster.…

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  • Greatest Living Briton gets £30m for ‘web science’

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    As an alliance of the desperate, this one takes some beating. The Greatest Living Briton (Sir Timothy Berners Lee) has been thrown £30m of taxpayers’ money for a new institute to research “web science”. Meanwhile the Prime Minister waxed lyrical today about the semantic web – how “data” would replace files, with machine speaking unto…

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  • Google knew YouTube ‘did evil’ – but bought it anyway

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    Andrew Orlowski

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    Do no evil? Google execs knew YouTube was in the wrong, but swallowed hard and bought it anyway, emails disclosed to a US court show. In 2006 execs at the Chocolate Factory were aware that the startup was less than wholesome, describing it as a “rogue enabler of content theft” whose “business model is completely…

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