Posts by SleepyJohn

.eu is a Euro domain, for Euro people - top legal bod

Re: A Euro Domain for Euro People

I suggest we give meat-pies.eu a miss.

'Oppressive' UK copyright law: More cobblers from IP quangos

Re: Fashion business

I'm sure the Amish have a place in the world but I don't think it is the current 21st Century one.

I wonder if there is any connection between the 12 million extra hits on The Pirate Bay the day after it was censored by the UK government and the 36% increase in sales of media? Perhaps if the government was capable of genuinely censoring this website there would be a further correlatable increase in the purchase of media? Those 12 million must surely have deprived the MAFIAA of three or four times the total world's GDP.

If one extrapolates this over a year, using MAFIAA accounting methods, the sum total owed by the people of the world to the multi-billion dollar criminal conspiracy masquerading as the American Media Industry must very closely approximate to googolplex, which as we all know is such a large number that there isn't sufficent matter in the Universe on which to write it, even allowing for unused CDs. Perhaps this explains why the MAFIAA has not sued the UK government for allowing such rampant piracy - they don't have enough paper to write the figures on.

Personally I put more faith in the rational observations of a highly-respected international author than in the hysterical assertions of a bunch of universally loathed international racketeers. And this:

“Thanks to the High Court and the fact that the news was on the BBC, we had 12 MILLION more visitors yesterday than we had ever had before,” a Pirate Bay insider informed TorrentFreak today. “We should write a thank you note to the BPI,” he added.

There is a clue here somewhere for those prepared to look. As TorrentFreak said: "t’s not possible to buy advertising “articles” from leading UK publications such as the BBC, Guardian and Telegraph, but yesterday The Pirate Bay news was spread across all of them and dozens beside, for free. The news was repeated around the UK, across Europe and around the world reaching millions of people. The results for the site were dramatic."

As many have said, artists have more to fear from obscurity than piracy, and from the thieving morons so many of them have been tricked into signing extortionate contracts with (one long established musician described them as "legally close to slavery"). I think Thomas Jefferson is closer to this than David Icke. http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20070503/012939/grand-unified-theory-economics-free.shtml

PS: Where is the link to my free Gucci handbag? I couldn't find it on The Pirate Bay.

Re: Fashion business

Please provide us with a link to free software that enables us to copy a Gucci handbag for nothing.

The whole point of this problem is that digital items, unlike material ones, can be copied and distributed a billion times by almost anybody for virtually nothing. This clearly poses a major problem for those who create them, and also for those who consume them, as the only way to prevent such copying is to herd the whole human race into a global totalitarian state controlled with an iron fist by the MAFIAA and its political enforcers. And we all know who would vote for that. And who wouldn't.

So, unless we are happy to bequeath such a social structure to our children, we must find a way for creators of digital content to make money without having to sell individual copies of the item. As King Canute might have said to his courtiers: "Don't try to stop the tide coming in, use it to generate power."

And the more intelligent artists are starting to do precisely that: the author Paolo Coelhas uploads his books to The Pirate Bay and finds that the resultant publicity increases his paperback sales by literally miiions of copies a year; musicians are finding that global distribution of free songs hugely increases sales of Tee-shirts and concert tickets; if my TV station showed a grey logo of Coca-cola in the corner of the screen instead of TV3 they might make quite a few bob out of it; if film-makers put something similar on their films then, like Google, they could use massive free distribution to coerce more money out of the advertiser, and so on.

Yes, some of these ideas are less than perfect, but perhaps somewhat less imperfect than a dictatorship controlled by the MAFIAA, with the streets clear for their black limos as all the ordinary folk are in prison. So, yes, copyright law IS a social problem, a massive one. And it requires a total rethink of the very concept of copyright, not just fiddling with the edges of it. We should devote our energies to altering the ship's course to avoid the iceberg, not just moving the deckchairs around so the company can charge more rent for them.

Artists should be exhilaratingly surfing these huge waves of change, not obediently kneeling at the feet of sour-faced 'rights-holders' who sprawl in golden deckchairs screaming at their politician employees to abolish the waves as their feet are getting wet. And there is the nub, isn't it? 'Rights-holders' are the problem, not artists. Get rid of copyright and you will get rid of them. Artists can then engage directly with the public, as described above, to the massive benefit of all.

The internet market is so mind-numbingly huge that an artist only has to obtain money from an almost unmeasurably miniscule proportion of it in order to make a fortune; he can use the ones who won't pay, to publicise him to the ones who will. Copyright needs to be abolished in its entirety in order that such exciting developments can take place without the hindrance of jack-booted rights-holders standing in the way with their greedy little parasitic hands permanently open and an army of lawyers brooding like vultures in the background.

Dad sues Apple for pushing cash-draining 'free' games at kids

Re: iBabysitter

NO. This is more akin to them picking a toy out of a box marked FREE TOYS FOR CHILDREN then you discover when your wife gets home that she was charged a tenner at the checkout for enabling the toy to be used. Would you berate her for being an awful parent, because this was explained somewhere upside down at the back of the shop in 1point white cursive script on pale yellow, and accept that the shop behaved perfectly responsibly? Or would you demand a full refund and apology or you will never shop there again? With copies to local papers and your solicitor.

PS: If your children are to live in the 21st Century and not the 19th then I think playing with a smartphone is likely to be more use to them than playing with a cornflake packet.

Little sympathy for either side, but least for Apple.

Inclined to agree up to a point. It is very easy to criticise parents in a situation like this, but if Apple is deliberately using children in order to make money out of the imperfection of their parents then yes, they should 'have their arse nailed to the wall'.

I wish I were a perfect parent. My daughter knows my PIN number because she stands next to me in the shop. She knows my credit card number because she has eyes. And I want her to face decisions and learn to make them rather than have reality locked away. And I do not want her feeling I don't trust her.

So, personally, I hope Apple gets nailed over this, as I have no truck with any organisation that cynically preys on the weakness of others, especially children. This is quite clearly not a straightforward case of "Dad, can I buy this game for ten pounds?".

Nature ISN'T fragile nor a bossy mother-in-law - top eco boffin

Animals, of course, care deeply for their environment.

From where comes the romantic notion that animals do not damage their environment? The modus operandi of an animal is to consume its immediate environment then starve or move on; any 'natural balance' is an accidental by-product of death or enforced migration. The only creature on this planet that I am aware of that makes the slightest attempt to consciously ameliorate its effect on the environment is, dare I say it, Man.

I do not think we need headline-grabbing notions of 'Mother Nature's fragility' or 'bossy mothers-in-law' to see this; just a pair of eyes. We are all trying to survive, and Man's intelligence gives him the undoubted ability to avoid killing the 'golden goose' that gives him food and shelter. And for all his imperfections I think he is doing a better job than anything else on the planet. Not with an ideological 'silver bullet', but with an uneasy, but necessary coupling of the dreamers' dreams and the capitalists' capital.

Dr Who scores new companion from Emmerdale

Re: Dr No

And me. When the Doctor's flippancy was a protective mask for deep feeling it worked well. Now that it simply masks infantile stupidity it does not. And as for the Debilitating Duo; well, they all suit each other, don't they?

I tried to like it, and persevered until I was expected to believe that the gormless Amy had a greater understanding of a deep, most complex cosmic issue than a 900 year-old Time Lord. Then I reached for the OFF button.

The prospect of a new companion who not only looks like the Awful Amy but sounds even more obnoxious is not likely to encourage me back.

Is Google liable for unlawful web graffiti on its walls?

Will this give me the 'right to be forgotten' by the EU?

"Political slogan" - quite. This 'right to be forgotten' nonsense is just that - a typical piece of ill-thought-out Euro-pomposity designed to make it seem like the EU is looking after the little people. It is not. It is just creating yet another useless, taxpayer-funded bureaucracy that will have the usual exact opposite effect of what is claimed, in order to prey on the fears and foibles of ordinary folk and make them think the EU is wonderfully protecting them. Tell that to the Greeks.

Will the Euro High Court show the same commonsense interpretation of the law as this UK judge, or will it, as it was instructed by the Maastricht Treaty, 'return a judgement that furthers the cause of European Integration'? Perhaps someone should spray graffiti on the walls of the court and see who gets arrested - them or the judges?

Megaupload honcho sprung from slammer (for now)

Re: Re: Let me add some food for thought here...

If Megabox can pull off a system that provides the public with easily-accessed free music while paying remuneration directly to the artists and nothing to the existing middlemen, it seems to me that the big labels would have to be drunk not to be terrified.

Perhaps the US will have to 'prove his guilt' after all

From Stuff.co.nz --

"Prosecution acting for the United States Government had said that because Dotcom was "very wealthy" it was probable he had more bank accounts.

"However, Judge Dawson said this put Dotcom in the position of having to "prove a negative" and that assertion was not enough to imply his flight risk."

Who knows, maybe the US will be forced to prove his guilt. How quaint: just like the law used to have to do in the old days, before the MAFIAA took it over.

Germany stalls over ACTA treaty ratification

Can the European Parliament bind the Executive?

Talking of votes and politicians, I keep reading here and there that if the European Parliament votes against ACTA it will be thrown out. Now, the last time I checked the legislative rights in the EU I read that all proposed legislation had to be passed to the Parliament for approval, BUT the Parliament's decision is NOT BINDING on the Executive (ie the unelected Commission).

I have tried to check this but without 16 years of specialist EU law training I simply haven't the foggiest notion of what any of it actually means in real life. Can anyone enlighten me? I accept I am not a fan of the EU, mainly because I think its lawmaking is not only outwith the mandate of the people but also so deliberately obfuscated that the EU can interpret it any way it chooses. But if there is a guaranteed, cast-iron certainty that the elected Parliament really can throw out legislation proposed by the Commission I will be pleased to hear it.

Can anyone find an actual fact behind all the smoke and mirrors that will clarify the real power that the Parliament has, or doesn't have over the Commission in this matter? But please, no romantic tosh about 'elected representatives', if in reality their expense accounts are greater than their power.

When cockroaches invade your kitchen ...

Very few of us ordinary folk have the time to read these things in detail or the legal expertise to understand precisely what they mean or HOW THEY MIGHT BE INTERPRETED IN THE FUTURE. However, experience tells us that when media corporations get together with governments it is unquestionably for the sole purpose of destroying our liberties in order to line their pockets.

I think we are wise to rebel against anything that stinks of a government/media corporation stitch-up without feeling the need to read it. Discussing the details simply gives them an excuse to shout us down as 'thieves' or confuse us with lies and quasi-legal bullshit. The world belongs to us the people, and when corrupt, greedy, authoritarian bullies try to take it over we should stamp on them hard. That's what I do when cockroaches invade my kitchen; I don't engage them in conversation.

Politicians need our votes more than the MAFIAA's money, and the MAFIAA needs our money more than the politicians' votes. We are in the driving seat here. There used to be an old-fashioned notion in England that the government existed to serve the people, and I think it is high time we reasserted that simple principle - by fair means or foul. Without our tacit support these people are NOTHING: no votes from us = no politician; no money from us = no media baron. They should beware the Ides of March.

Reding's 'right to be forgotten' bill polarises Euro biz world

"Oyez, Oyez, Hear Ye ..."

"I hereby demand that all knowledge of me be erased from the minds of the villagers, or I will dob them in to the Lord of the Manor. For His Lordship decrees that all citizens have a 'right to be forgotten'."

Meanwhile, in the real world I suspect most citizens are more concerned about businesses losing their data than keeping it. I believe the Hindus have something to say on this, although I doubt the EU bosses have consulted them. Anyway, more sinecures for their pals in yet more glutinous layers of spider-web bureaucracy, plus a vocal mob of surface-feeding Euro-citizens cheering for the EU, will please the unelected Euro-bosses. And who are we to question that?

Kiwis collar Megaupload kingpin, Anonymous exacts revenge

The Ratnerisation of the US Media Industry

I have just thought of a new word - ratnerise. It means to destroy your business by showing contempt for your customers.

Beware the Ides of March

There seems little difference to me between what Megaupload does and what the Media Industry does - by and large both take the work of artists and sell it, giving little or nothing to the artist.

I don't see the Media Industry having the moral high ground here, especially as the sole reason they want to destroy Megaupload is clearly jealousy - they can read its balance sheet and want it all for themselves. It is a pity they are not equally capable of reading how the UK government finally solved the 'problem' of pirate radio ships in the '60s. Here is a clue: they allowed legal stations to supply the public with what the public wanted - as the pirate ships did.

If the cretinous US Media Industry could run an operation as efficiently as Megaupload seems to have done there would be no need for Megaupload. Or if Megaupload could devise a simple way of recompensing artists for their work, there would be no need for the Media Industry. Either way there would be happy customers paying fair sums for their entertainment. Instead of which we have millions of ordinary, law-abiding folk throughout the world who utterly despise and revile the US Media Industry, to the point where the slightest excuse will have them kill it off like cockroaches in the kitchen. Incompetent management or what?

In the meantime the most incredible marketing opportunity the world has ever known, or could even have dreamed of a few short years ago, is being thrown down the pan by people too blinded by short-term greed and a criminal's contempt for the customer to muster a single coherent thought on the subject. And the likes of Google trundle quietly on making mega-fortunes by giving people what they want, simply, efficiently and freely, without feeling any need to imprison babies or bankrupt old ladies. The mind boggles. Monty Python couldn't dream it up.

Good luck to Y Combinator - http://ycombinator.com/rfs9.html

SOPA is dead. Are you happy now?

Like an old, tired dog that's gone rabid

It is ironic, is it not, that every day the pea-brained execs of the Media Industry sit down at their computers to continue astonishing us with their extraordinary ignorance of the digital world, and disgust us with their rabidly vindictive treatment of customers, they see a shining example of how it should be done.

Google may have its faults but perhaps those charmless Media execs should ask themselves how it manages to provide anyone in the world, instantly and for free, information that could potentiallly be more valuable than the sum total of the whole entertainment industry's annual turnover. And has never, as far as I know, sued old ladies, cats, single mothers or babies for copying it.

It really is not rocket science. Rather than frantically and futilely trying to stop the world from disseminating its products, it effectively encourages them to do so and then rents out the incredible, world-wide network that all those 'pirates' have freely and enthusiastically built for it. Was that really so difficult to grasp? Sadly, yes apparently, for people with the mentality of street-corner drug-peddling thugs.

And yes, I know about privacy and being the product etc, but really, whose model would you rather pass to your children? How would they feel about typing a TV show, song or movie name into Google and just have it play? And only have to see adverts that genuinely might interest them; small, unobtrusive ones tucked away at the side? Do you see them whingeing about Google knowing which sites they recently visited? Or what country their computer is in?

Or would they prefer to risk being extradited to a hideous American prison for 16 years whenever they overhear a car radio at the traffic lights? Frankly, the Media Industry needs to be put down, like an old, tired dog that has gone rabid and keeps attacking the children. And leave the internet to those with the brains to use it properly.

See Canute and Clausewitz

Neither the original concept of copyright nor its current bastard offspring is even remotely suitable for protecting or encouraging artistic works now that they can be digitally copied perfectly then distributed at effectively no cost, and no amount of corporate bullying and extortion will change that. The fact that the Media Industry is so mentally addled from its years of riding a gravy train with rampant greed and dishonesty that it is too stupid and lazy to see this should not be our concern. Unfortunately, because of their appalling behaviour towards we ordinary mortals they have made it so.

No-one should be surprised then that, until a new model is developed that actually works, most of the human race will simply treat the school bully with contempt when he comes demanding their dinner money, and will proceed through life as if he didn't exist. And there it is really, as I see it. Other than to note that the most commercially successful businesses on the internet seem to be quite capable of making money without charging we peasants for anything. In stark contrast the Media Bosses, exhibiting the mentality of petty street corner drug peddlars, are so consumed with hatred for anyone who doesn't pay them that they are quite incapable of coherent thought.

We should pity them really. They must be feeling like turkeys when the farmer rips November off the calendar. They certainly display the same intellectual prowess, apparent incapable of grasping that only extinction awaits those incapable of evolving to suit a changing environment. But frankly, I think most of us are sick of their nasty, bully-boy antics and look forward to them meeting Christmas.

Blighty's film biz asks gov to hurry up pirate crackdown

We should make the Media Biz 'Beware the Ides of March'

@ Graham Wilson - "Where users still have some leverage is through their sheer numbers"

I think this has to be the key. It clearly is not possible to rationally discuss the need for a changing business model with what seems to be just a bunch of avaricious gangsters whose brains have been addled by noxious greed. Who needs them, for heaven's sake? Well, we don't, for a start. They need us though - without us they are nothing. We are the ones in the driving seat, and there is a very simple way of making them realise that - we can STOP BUYING THEIR PRODUCTS; as customers did to Ratner's Jewellers when the boss insulted them - and it collapsed overnight.

Not a single law, just or unjust, was broken; just no-one bought from the shop. And no-one was sued, no solo mums imprisoned, no children bankrupted, no old ladies arrested, no business destroyed, no websites shut, no students extradited like baby-killing terrorists. Ratner could not point a figure at a single one of his destroyers, yet destroyed by them all he most surely was. Remember - WE PAY THESE PEOPLE'S WAGES. And we have the power to not do so.

Perhaps Blackout Day, which I think has been successful in making the media mob's political lackeys wake up to how truly pissed off an awful lot of people who ultimately control their salaries are becoming, should be developed further. There is only one thing these racketeers understand and that is money. We must make their bankers wake up to the same reality as their politicians. I have no idea of the figures, real or MAFIAA-invented, but if a tiny handful of 'pirates' can 'destroy all their livelihoods' by not buying for a couple of days things they would not buy anyway, just think what effect could be had by millions of ordinary folk not buying for a couple of weeks things they normally WOULD buy.

One day of minor but noticeable internet blackout seemed enough, in conjunction with a crescendo of complaints, to start the mob's politicians back-pedalling. I wonder what their bankers would think of 14 days with no sales of any music or movies? Perhaps the bastards would come crawling to us on their knees begging for mercy only to find the vacuum filled by independents producing good quality work and wooing their ex-customers by serving them instead of sueing.

This would only require folk to stop buying a few things they do not need, and would be very easy to implement - just start a snowball rolling around the big snowy internet. And here is one: A soothsayer predicts the Ides of March will see me lose interest in music and movies and stop buying them for a fortnight. I wonder if anyone else will feel the same on that historically fateful day, not known for its kindness to despots. Perhaps some influential websites will bring attention to this worrying prediction by displaying a black banner depicting a Jolly Roger next to BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH.

Or am I alone in being so concerned about the future of OUR internet? Which belongs to all of us, not just to a self-anointed, indelibly corrupt few. We must show these gormless thugs that the internet is a modern, multi-faceted Hydra - cut off one head and it will grow a hundred more, each with the fresh power of its youth and the cunning of its parent; cauterise the stump and it will explode into a thousand, every one with a different power and raging with anger.

@ Graham Wilson again - we already have a "global organization to counterbalance the powerful copyright industry". All we have to do is mobilise it.

STOP PRESS: Media Industry changes tack to outwit pirates

I just spotted this announcement in another Reg article. It seems the Media Industry is utilising its remarkably sensitive, state-of-the-art skill at customer relations to go up against Google. Perhaps the moguls will now become so rich that they won't have to worry about Johnny Silver & The Parrots nicking their coffee break cash.

-------------------------------------------

Media Industry Search Engine challenges Google!!

Welcome to RACQUETS, the great new alternative to Google. We promise to bat your searches back and forth until you have no money left. Enter your search term and have your credit card ready!

- You have entered 9 words. The cost of your query will be $99.99. Read these conditions then call a premium number on your cellphone at peak time and wait a while if you do not want to continue; otherwise your credit card will be automatically charged shortly after you have finished reading:

1 - Your search term, the displayed results, all your family photos and any rectangles with rounded corners will become the Intellectual Property of Bagman Extortion Racquets inc. If you look at them we will sue you.

2 - Your eyes will be tracked as you read the results. If you want to read them again you will be charged again, and again for successive views of all or any part of the results. If you remember results we will sue you.

3 - You are not permitted to read results aloud where others might overhear, or leave them on the screen facing a window. If you do we will sue you.

4 - You are not permitted to copy results to your hard drive or a usb stick or the cloud or your brain without paying Bagman Extortion Racquets an extra fee. If you don't cough up we will sue you.

5 - Failure to comply with any of the above will result in immediate disembowelment without anaesthetic, together with a fine of $666 for each of the bits and bytes involved. We will not tolerate online piracy. Piracy is theft. Piracy is evil. If we run short of caviar in our penthouse garrets we will sue you. Stop Online Pirac ...

8 - You have now exceeded the time limit for this search. Your credit card will be charged again. Our legal advisors (Fuckyou Fuckwit & Payme) have noted where your children go to school. This is to ensure that our service is not abused by pirates. If your children sing Happy Birthday we will sue you.

9 - You have failed to cancel the search so your credit card will be charged again. To stop further automatic payments every 13 seconds go to a library computer in a nearby town, load this page and press CANCEL (Windows Vista only, 0200-0215 local time). If you succeed we will sue you.

-------- Be a HIT MAN with RACQUETS! --- --- HIT the online PIRATES!! --------

RACQUETS had three searches on its very first day, two from bored cats and one from a very fat Bluebottle. Analysts warn Google to beware of this ground-breaking, polished commercial challenge to its airy-fairy hippy business model. The Media Industry warns that if the human race continues to communicate amongst itself without paying the MAFIAA extortion money it will do its damnedest to prove the Mayans right. And finally a Mayan pops up and says that a more accurate analysis shows that only the Media Industry will end in 2012. So the rest of us will live even more happily ever after than we could possibly have hoped to.

Flog secondhand MP3s at your peril - law guru

Media Industry Search Engine challenges Google!!

Welcome to RAQUETS, the great new alternative to Google. We promise to bat your searches back and forth until you have no money left. Enter your search term and have your credit card ready!

- You have entered 9 words. The cost of your query will be $99.99. Read these conditions then call a premium number on your cellphone at peak time and wait a while if you do not want to continue; otherwise your credit card will be automatically charged shortly after you have finished reading:

1 - Your search term, the displayed results, all your family photos and any rectangles with rounded corners will become the Intellectual Property of Bagman Extortion Racquets inc. If you look at them we will sue you.

2 - Your eyes will be tracked as you read the results. If you want to read them again you will be charged again, and again for successive views of all or any part of the results. If you remember results we will sue you.

3 - You are not permitted to read results aloud where others might overhear, or leave them on the screen facing a window. If you do we will sue you.

4 - You are not permitted to copy results to your hard drive or a usb stick or the cloud or your brain without paying Bagman Extortion Racquets an extra fee. If you don't cough up we will sue you.

5 - Failure to comply with any of the above will result in immediate disembowelment without anaesthetic, together with a fine of $666 for each of the bits and bytes involved. We will not tolerate online piracy. Piracy is theft. Piracy is evil. If we run short of caviar in our penthouse garrets we will sue you. Stop Online Pirac ...

8 - You have now exceeded the time limit for this search. Your credit card will be charged again. Our legal advisors (Fuckyou Fuckwit & Payme) have noted where your children go to school. This is to ensure that our service is not abused by pirates. If your children sing Happy Birthday we will sue you.

9 - You have failed to cancel the search so your credit card will be charged again. To stop further automatic payments every 13 seconds go to a library computer in a nearby town, load this page and press CANCEL (Windows Vista only, 0200-0215 local time). If you succeed we will sue you.

-------- Be a HIT MAN with RACQUETS! --- --- HIT the online PIRATES!! --------

RAQUETS had three searches on its very first day, two from bored cats and one from a very fat Bluebottle. Analysts warn Google to beware of this ground-breaking, polished commercial challenge to its airy-fairy hippy business model. The Media Industry warns that if the human race continues to communicate amongst itself without paying the MAFIAA extortion money it will do its damnedest to prove the Mayans right. And finally a Mayan pops up and says that a more accurate analysis shows that only the Media Industry will end in 2012. So the rest of us will live even more happily ever after than we could possibly have hoped to.

Is this a trailer for a new Monty Python Series?

I don't know whether to laugh or cry at this ludicrous situation. How much longer is the greedy, lazy and cretinous entertainment industry going to be allowed to plod along with a red flag in front of the rolling digital revolution before we all get so pissed off that we just slam down the throttle and run over them? I think they have had long enough now to adjust to the fact that it is no longer the nineteen fifties.

I have just stood and watched a hedgehog snuffling in my garden and it seems to me that even he has a greater grasp of reality than these people. If it is impossible to prevent the copying, streaming and general spread of their products, which it quite clearly is, then it should not take a genius in business studies to figure that the way to make money is to utilise that free distribution rather than futilely attempt to stamp on it, in the process so pissing off your customers that they will do anything to thwart you.

Here is a simple thought: whenever I turn on my TV there is a small, unobtrusive grey logo at the top right of the screen telling me which channel I am viewing. It doesn't irritate me, but I sort of constantly notice it. If that was on a movie then it seems to me that certain large companies might pay quite a lot of money to have their logo there, the precise sum being directly proportional to the number of people viewing it. I repeat, the number of people viewing it, not the number who have bought it. But that's probably too simple, too rational, and will not give them the sadistic pleasure of extorting their defenceless customers, which is now clearly an ingrained habit.

They can hardly claim there is no precedent on the internet for making oodles of money out of giving valuable things away for free. I would love to see someone calculate what it would have cost in time and money, back in the nineteen fifties, to research the information that Google will now give us for free in about 2 milliseconds. And Google is hardly on the bones of its arse, is it?

UK student faces extradition to US after piracy case ruling

"Manufactured financial collapse is rather old-school" ??

@ThatHairyCanadian -- interesting post from someone apparently at or near the coalface. But we Europeans should not feel too smug about it all.

- "Then there is the massive increase in the IMF funding aimed at garnering financial control of any smaller State they may be able to get hold of. Manufactured financial collapse is rather old-school ..."

Not too old for the EU apparently, which seems to be pulling it off with ruthless efficiency at the moment. We should not be misled by its patronising, emotive brainwashing into believing that this authoritarian behemoth is any more answerable to, or concerned for the people than the USA. Ask the Greeks or Italians, who have just had their elected governments turfed out by the unelected Eurocrats and replaced with appointed bagmen (on the excuse of imminent financial collapse!); and these are not Mickey Mouse drug-running Third World States.

None of these major governments is on the side of the people. Which brings me back to my early post about mass worldwide civil disobedience. I really see no other solution. We need to somehow reassert the notion I grew up with in England that the State is the Servant of the People, not their Master. And the internet is probably our best tool for doing this, which is why things like this matter.

The questions of copyright or profit are trivial. The really important thing is for the people to wrest control of the internet from the governments and corporations, by any means possible. And for such anarchy to work we must tolerate some things we perceive to be bad on the basis that we do not know what good might ultimately spring from them. We must also be seen to thumb our noses at authority whenever we possibly can. The object of the exercise should not be to agonise over commercial morality but to abolish authoritarian manipulation of the internet.

An internet that is allowed to evolve freely and naturally could effectively become an independent entity far beyond the control of any organisation - as free, I argue in a later post, as the very air we breathe. I think most of us here would benefit from and applaud that.

The web is not the media industry's private warehouse

I suspect that like many others he 'violated copyright law' because deep down he knows that it simply does not work in this digital age, and that far from protecting artists it just lines the pockets of greedy, racketeering Mafia-style middlemen.

After years of controlling content distribution with a thieving iron fist these people have developed the curious notion that the internet is their own private warehouse, and anyone who enters it is a thief who has broken one of their windows. Like Canute's courtiers they cannot grasp the simple fact that life changes and if you try to stop it it will just roll relentlessly over you - laws and morality have nothing to do with what is happening here. Those with brains will accept the rolling waves of change and use them to float their boats. Those who are so addled with charmless greed that they behave like educationally sub-normal street corner gangster drug peddlars, will drown at no great loss to society.

The internet is not the entertainment industry's private fiefdom and no amount of quasi-legal thuggery will make it so. It is the people's 'digital atmosphere' and should be as freely available to us all as the physical one that we currently walk, talk and breathe in. Sueing folk for playing or listening to music in it will soon be seen as ludicrous - like sueing someone for playing music with their car window open, or sueing someone for walking past and hearing it, or even sueing someone for breathing in the air that you breathe out. (Sshh - don't give them ideas!)

Future generations will scream with laughter at the thought of these defective corruptoids trying to control the very 'digital air' that everyone will then be 'breathing'. And although we may find the idea of a 'digital atmosphere' radical our children certainly will not. They will view these ranting Luddites as rather inadequate buffoons peering round the back of a TV to see where the people are.

It all reminds me of the dockers kicking up a stink over the change to containerised shipping - not because they would lose their jobs apparently but because they could no longer thieve from the customers.

Why me?

I am not entirely sure why you are effing and blinding at me. Are you implying that I have no right to comment on the injustice I see here unless I have already solved all the other problems in the world? I think you are asking rather a lot.

Remember Gerald Ratner

I think the apologists for the true criminals here - the racketeering thugs of the entertainment industry - should get things into perspective. As I understand it nothing was stolen or damaged, no-one was tortured or murdered, no little girls raped, no peasants set afire with napalm, no national economies destroyed, and probably no-one even out of pocket. In fact, it is increasingly becoming apparent to those with more than half a brain cell that such free distribution and publicity is actually beneficial to practically everyone involved.

By any normal human standards of morality the treatment of this young man, and increasingly thousands of others, is clearly outrageously vindictive and unjust - whatever the law may say. Of course we should rail against it, as loudly as possible. If the politicians who support this copyright protection racket can be made to feel more threatened by an angry mass of ordinary folk than by their media pals' lawyers then perhaps some sanity will prevail.

Do you really want to live your life in mortal fear of a cat wandering across your keyboard and clicking a link that will send you to prison? Are you happy that the entertainment industry has managed to turn 1000 years of carefully evolved Common Law on its head so that you are now presumed guilty of a crime merely on the unsupported accusation of a foreign record company? Then be cut off from what some enlightened societies are beginning to view as a fundamental human right - the means to communicate with your fellow men? Or even imprisoned for something that clearly does not pose a risk to the public?

Do you want your children growing up in such a repressive and unjust society? Do you want them living in fear of being dragged out of their beds at 3 am and thrown to the snarling, rabid dogs of the American media industry? With no hope of protection from a government whose sole purpose for existence should be to protect the people it governs?

If you do not want those things, then rail against this media mogul monstrosity with all your might. If a law is not made by those chosen by the people, for the benefit of the people, then it has no validity and should not be respected. And think on this: virtually every penny you spend on mainstream entertainment goes into the coffers of the very sickos who are trying to force this wickedly unjust society onto your children. So don't pay them. Starve them out of the equation. Then we can tell them who is allowed to make the law and who isn't. Remember Gerald Ratner.

Mass worldwide civil disobedience might work

It is beginning to seem as though virtually all the authorities throughout the world are in the pay of the odious racketeering 'entertainment' industry, which appears to be little more than a bunch of thugs with the morality of the Mafia and the foresight and intelligence of a dead Bluebottle. "There is a kid in England doing all our advertising for us for nothing - let's cut his legs off with a chainsaw and hang the remains from the Brooklyn Bridge. Here's your cheque, Senator".

The only solution I can see is mass worldwide civil disobedience. If a couple of billion people stopped paying for any form of mass-distributed media and helped themselves off the internet these creeps might even run out of money for paying off politicians. Then things might change. Hopefully the current scum will be swept into the gutter and replaced with those having the intelligence of entrepreneurs rather than brain-damaged Bluebottles.

Even the Americans might jib at locking up billions of people for the heinous crime of living in the present rather than the past. For all the emotive hysteria we are battered with, 'Copyright' and 'Intellectual Property' have nothing to do with any of this - quite simply the world is changing and as Clausewitz might have said: "We must change our plans accordingly."

I don't know whether to cry at the crazed vindictiveness of these loathsome yobs or laugh at their state-of-the-art stupidity. I do know if I found them crawling around my kitchen I would boil a kettle sharpish. I also know they have completely demolished the guilt I once would have felt over helping myself to freebies, which would, paradoxically, have slowed down my acceptance of the changing, and improving face of entertainment. For that I must thank them. But: "You have done your job, now go!"

Doctor Who girl Amy Pond axed in 'heartbreaking' exit

Donna Noble - yes

I seem to be in a minority here but personally I thought Donna Noble was one of the best ever assistants. She was a down-to-earth girl from a very ordinary background who managed to raise her game enormously when confronted with impossible situations. When she helped the Doctor it was by exhibiting Earthly commonsense with verve and determination, not by claiming preposterously to be wiser than the Dr, like that silly Pond teeny-bopper kept doing. She was a true companion in the best sense of the word, a real foil for the main character. Removing her memories and returning her to her previous state of suburban vegetation was a sad, but curiously good ending.

But frankly I have almost stopped watching altogether as I find the new Doctor to be all flippancy and no depth, and the whole Amy/Rory thing irritating to the point of being quite unwatchable. If it was not for the occasional appearance of the truly delicious River Song I would not turn it on at all.

World's biggest music streaming service launches - for tech idiots

"It takes a genius to make it simple"

Who was it said: "Any fool can make a thing complicated, but it takes a genius to make it simple".

To suggest that people are stupid because they appreciate simplicity and have no time for complexities that are irrelevant to their lives is quite breathtakingly stupid.

Eurozone crisis: We're all dooomed! Here's why

Four possible simple explanations ...

It seems to me there are four possible, simple explanations for this mess:

1 - The EU bosses did not know this would happen, because they have no idea how human communities function.

2 - The EU bosses thought this would not happen, because they have no clue how banking works.

3 - The EU bosses knew this would happen but did nothing, because their "Grand Design" is more important to them than the lives of the people.

4 - The EU bosses made this happen, because it gives them an excuse to increase their control over the 500 million people living in what is already a de facto dictatorship.

So the results are --- Incompetence - 2 : Malevolence - 2.

Would you vote for them to run your country? Oh wait ...

Monty Python's dead parrot could have foreseen this

Instead of arguing about something that Monty Python's dead parrot could have foreseen with ease we should perhaps ponder on the strange case of a democratically elected Prime Minister being elbowed aside by a has-been Euro-Bank boss with no political experience and no mandate from the people.

The front men of the EU strutting on the world stage may be babbling buffoons but the silent ones beavering away in the bowels of Brussels, who pull their strings, are clearly not. If an ex-parrot could see this coming then they certainly could. So why did they allow it?

Standard political tactic #1 - engineer a crisis (encourage feckless idiots to borrow too much money) that appears to be caused by someone else (the banks - hated, easy target), then step in as a White Knight to rescue the people.

And guess what? An EU big-wig has hinted that the disparate economies make it impossible to deal with the crisis properly, so it can only be resolved by handing central control of all the nations' affairs to an unelected EU 'politburo', neatly sidestepping the fact that the EU caused the problem by sucking in all those disparate economies knowing full well what would happen, and is going to use the resulting mess to justify taking even more unaccountable, authoritarian control over the people than it already has. See para 1 for the thin end of this wedge. You don't have to be a 'racist pig' in UKIP to worry about that.

I began worrying when I saw roads and bridges all over Scotland plastered with political logos and Orwellian slogans, and people slurping up handouts from Brussels that clearly deliberately circumvented the policies and control of the elected government. I worried even more when I discovered posters all over my children's school telling them their milk came courtesy of the wondrous EU, and that Euro-police could now drag me off to prison on the Continent without trial or proof of any wrongdoing. And when the Euro court decreed that criticism of the EU or its bosses was akin to blasphemy I decided it was time to leave.

We escaped to New Zealand pretty pronto. NZ is a nice place, 12,000 miles from Brussels. There is no euro-brainwashing, no foreign police with the power to imprison you abroad without trial, and you can actually elect your government, which brings nostalgic memories of old England. But it is sad seeing my home country being turned into a Soviet-style satellite, ruled by strangers over whom the people have no control.

Virgin Media, TalkTalk snub kind offer to block Newzbin2

Pay BT or blag your neighbour's WIFI?

I wonder how much BT (or Virgin Media or Talktalk) earns per month from providing its customers with a service they can get for free by simply parking outside a neighbour's unsecured WIFI with a laptop on their knees?

If you know, do please tell the witless morons controlling the entertainment industry. And if they are too stupid to register the significance of it you can give them this clue with my compliments: the customers think that the added-value service and convenience that BT provides are worth its charges.

There now, was that so difficult to grasp?

PS The copyright of this idea is mine and mine alone. Any attempt by anyone to use it in order to earn money for themselves, and many employees and peripherals and associated other businesses such as taxis, restaurants, clothes shops, motor manufacturers etc, not to mention artists, actors, writers and musicians, will be greeted with enthusiasm by myself and doubtless many others.

Upcoming EU data law will make Europe tricky for Facebook

They clearly need cash (not to mention legitimacy)

Good point. The EU does seem a bit short of cash at the moment. This action also makes the EU seem wonderful and noble in the eyes of the peasants, creating the illusion that it actually operates for their benefit rather than its own self-importance. I seem to recall the 'brave stand' they took against Microsoft achieved in reality precisely nothing, apart from a loud fanfare of Euro trumpets and a large hole in taxpayers' pockets.

"Look Mildred, we can choose a browser, thanks to the noble and wondrous EU."

"What's a browser, Stan?"

"That thing you go on Facebook with."

"I thought it was called Windows."

Actually Mildred, it is called unutterably pompous stupidity. And this seems much the same. And your Stan's paying for it, so bang goes your new winter coat. Still, look on the bright side - how much worse it would be if idiots like you were actually allowed to vote for who runs this noble and wondrous EU.

Preceding a Ferrari with a red flag

One day the EU might wake up to the fact that while it can confidently dictate life to the 500 million folk held captive in its lumbering, illegitimate oligarchy, if it tries the same with the rest of the world it will be like walking ahead of a Ferrari with a red flag.

We can see this clearly in the fallout from the EU's cynical efforts to bribe its smaller 'States' into subservient allegiance with obscene handouts and manipulated, unrealistic loans, creating an eventual economic disaster that could have been easily foretold twenty years ago by Monty Python's ex-parrot.

Sadly for the self-appointed commissars' grandiose ambitions, the real world wants a return on its investment; it is not interested in propping up their collapsing 'superstate' construct. Neither, I suspect, are the 500 million inmates who have never given them a mandate to build such a thing.

I cannot see Facebook and its multi-million worldwide followers obediently kow-towing to this clapped-out bunch of strutting buffoons. What will they do? Ban it? Perhaps they are already following orders from the very large country to the east that they are currently on their knees to for money to bail them out of the financial mess they have got themselves into. The '800lb gorilla' might soon be dancing to the tune of an inscrutable organ grinder.

This issue is best resolved by those who really do have power over Facebook - its customers. And the myriad web-based forums that can advise them. "More laws, less justice" my Mother used to say. And there are certainly plenty of laws in the EU.

Why do these traders get billions to play with, unchecked?

Accurate details tend to obscure understanding

While not entirely technically accurate in its details, as some have noted, this article manages to bend the truths just sufficiently to make the basic principles of the operation clear to a layman while not actually being entirely wrong. It may not be accurate enough to teach someone how to do the job but it is accurate enough to explain to someone how the job is done. And it explains that well. The ability to do so is quite rare. Well done.

UK will obey Euro unisex-insurance rules from 2013

[SOLVED] - Let the people elect their government

Surely the real issue here is not whether male drivers cost insurers more than female ones (statistics, anyone?), or whether insurers should treat everyone the same regardless of statistics, but rather whether unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats should be allowed to dictate the actions of a democratically elected government.

Next time you see a Third World nation throw off the shackles of dictatorship, giving its people the power to elect those who make their laws, ponder on the fact that after eons of democracy the people of this First World nation have had that power taken away from them.

Refusal to unveil scuppers French refusal-to-unveil trial

Travelling on the husband's passport as 'luggage'

It seems to me that religion and culture are just convenient smokescreens for the fact that these women are treated as chattels by their men. I believe that in England, at one time way in the past, it was legal to sell your wife in the market if you got short of beer money. For all their faults I do think both England and France have moved on a bit from those days.

We should ponder on the possibility that all the social and legal difficulties the secular French authorities are having over this is actually a reflection of a considerate and civilised society: many devoutly religious countries would simply behead or publicly stone to death anyone transgressing a vague cultural more, never mind a democratically approved law.

There are plenty of countries I would rather not be in than France if I wanted to claim that my somewhat indefinable culture was superior to their laws.

Fukushima one week on: Situation 'stable', says IAEA

So what do the locals in the front line think?

I do feel this comment from Jonathan White bears repeating:

'Mayor of Minamisoma, the town 20km north of Fukushima, speaking earlier today is quoted on the BBC as follows

"They cannot deliver relief goods because of high radiation? No! The level of radiation here is only a few micro sieverts per hour. We do not blame lorry drivers. We blame media and journalists. They are crying out "dangerous! dangerous!" but we live here. They are cutting off the supply of food and goods to us and let us starve to death."'

I imagine that neither Lewis Page nor this Japanese Mayor, nor indeed most of us, are fully qualified nuclear reactor experts, but the simple point that both the mayor and the journalist make - that often the fear of a thing is more dangerous than the thing itself - seems eminently justified here. Both men should, I feel, be judged on how well they make that point, not on how well they analyse the technical risks of generating energy with nuclear reactors.

Chicken Little report: Sat-nav dependency spells DISASTER!

"Take off your hat, Midshipman"

So goes the apocryphal, but in my experience true to reality, response of the Royal Navy Captain when he inspected a young Midshipman's sextant fix in the middle of the ocean. "According to your fix, Mid, we are currently steaming up the nave of Canterbury Cathedral".

Speaking as an ex-Naval Officer and professional yacht skipper from the days when a landfall accuracy of ten terrifying, nail-biting miles was sometimes considered quite good, I can only agree with the commenter who described GPS as 'the dog's bollocks'. Protect it from dangerous interference certainly, but 'switch to traditional methods'? I don't think so.

Few people seem to grasp how much skill, and continual practice, is required to get anything like half-reasonable position fixes from traditional methods. What is that saying about knowing enough to get into trouble, but not enough to get out of it?

In the early days of GPS in yachting circles there was much alarmist discussion about what to do if your GPS fails. A well-known magazine editor put this to rest with the simple statement that GPS is so cheap now that you should just carry three of them.

Ex-UK spy boss says WikiLeaks sparked Egyptian revolution

Poverty may fuel revolution but it is nothing without a spark

I have no doubt that hopeless poverty under the jackboot of a nasty dictator is the fuel for most revolutions but its very dispiriting hopelessness means it is rarely capable of providing the spark needed to ignite an actual uprising. The downtrodden peasantry may never have encountered these Western websites but I think it is safe to say that those with the drive to foment them into revolution most certainly have.

I don't think we should mock the capacity of freedom-loving websites to inspire such people to actually overthrow their tyrant 'leaders', nor underestimate the encouragement given to the next wave of revolutions by the global publication of the previous successes.

Every tiny bit of encouragement from anywhere will gradually accumulate and tip the balance. I think the current crop of thuggish despots has a lot to fear from the proliferation of modern communication systems, as witnessed by their desperate, but ultimately futile attempts to turn off the internet.

Euro court slaps down insurers over gender risks

The role of the ECJ is not to interpret the law

It may be of interest to note that the ECJ was quite specifically instructed by the Maastricht Treaty to return verdicts that would "further European integration". No mention, as I recall, of dispensing justice or interpreting the Law.

Insurance companies calculate premiums based on the average cost of claims. To improve accuracy they put customers into groups based on average claims history - not perfect, but with the aid of NCD it rumbles along. If they grouped people for political or ethnic reasons rather than economic statistics (Group A average claim is 3x that of Group B) they would go bust in a week.

All this ruling does, at the EU's usual obscene cost to taxpayers, is make groups larger (on the basis of sex rather than claims history), and therefore even less representative of economic reality than before. I fail to see how this can in any way improve the lot of careful drivers or reduce premiums overall.

We might usefully ponder on the legitimacy of a 'court' that has been given such a blatant political remit; a 'court' that not long ago decreed that any criticism of the EU or its bosses was on a par with blasphemy. Big red animals that bounce about Australia would be quite at home here, I think.

German Foreign Office kills desktop Linux, hugs Windows XP

Probably not, but wait till she is 16

By which time she will be way ahead of my 12 year old (brought up on Linux) who can already sit in front of any computer running any operating system using any word processor, browser, font designer etc and just use it - because she was not taught to mindlessly "press the red button when the bleeper goes three times".

That is the crux of the problem, isn't it? "Where is the blue E that gets the internet?" says my mother-in-law if I move the IE icon a couple of inches across her screen. If I replaced my daughter's Linux Mint Debian with Slackware's KDE she might make some vague comment about the colours, but it wouldn't slow her down for a minute.

All these problems will go away if children are simply taught that you access the internet with a web browser, not with a 'blue E'; and write letters with a word processor, not with 'Word'. When they grow up they will then be able to decide what program or O/S will best suit for what job.

Coping with what you describe will likely be less taxing for them than making a decent cup of tea.

Assange fights extradition in court

@david wilson -- It is often the little things that count

"Yeah - it's not as if any *real* journalists have ever published things which embarrassed the US government, is it."

I think the interesting thing about Wikileaks is not so much that it exposes major, headline-grabbing corruption scandals in powerful organisations, but that it shows the everyday behaviour and attitudes of the people who control those organisations. Beneath the public evasions, back-slapping and general insincerity lie thousands of cables showing what they really think behind closed doors.

Very little of it actually surprises us, but a lot of it gives we ordinary folk some quite powerful sticks with which we can berate those who, with varying degrees of deceit, control our lives. We little 'uns can now keep an eye on Big Brother. And I think the style of Wikileaks enables us to do this more effectively than conventional investigative journalism can.

Instead of ordinary folk walking in fear of being overheard by the Fat Controllers, it could now become the other way round.

Believe the Chinese?

I find it hard to imagine any North or South Korean leaders believing anything the Chinese said or implied about anything. It seems to me that an awful lot of these leaks have simply confirmed what the peasants have always known about the masters - that they uniformly lie, cheat and ruthlessly manipulate in order to get what they want.

Let us just throw him to the dogs, why not?

Julian Assange has clearly upset a lot of powerful people by revealing dubious actions on their parts to the peasants, information that arguably the peasants who pay their wages should have a right to know. Whatever the truth of the rape allegation (and it sounds very dubious to me*), or the legal technicalities of the extradition, or the likeability or otherwise of Mr Assange, I think we need to be very careful about allowing him to be manipulated into the clutches of a mob that is baying for his blood, for no reason I can see other than to shut him up and extract vengeance. There are good reasons for making extradition quite difficult.

* Woman spends night with man - wakes up with penis inside her !?

Holiday snaps? Er, no - criminal porn

But would you have him as a babysitter?

It seems this man had a legal right to store on his computer nearly 500 pictures of other peoples' little girls in scantily-clad, sexualised poses, and a number of unspecified ones of humans and animals engaged in sexual activity. It also seems that an awful lot of people here believe, with some loud conviction, that he had an equal moral right to do so.

I wonder if they would show the same self-righteous enthusiasm at the prospect of their own little girls going off camping with him, if he taught at their school? In the absolute certain knowledge that his apparent liking for partly-undressed little girls, not to mention bestiality, could not possibly pose any risk to their own daughters?

Hands up all those who would hire him as a babysitter for the weekend, to look after a precocious ten year old daughter? Invite him to bring his computer and plug it into the widescreen 50 inch TV? Take her for a nice walk in the woods Saturday afternoon? Well, would you? Risk sacrificing your child on the altar of 'unproven connections'?

I don't care who calls me a bigoted old buffoon: my children's right to be not put at risk overrides by a very long way this man's right to keep such pictures on his computer. And the shrill, glib assertions of those who claim that such behaviour cannot possibly bring harm to young children leave me cold.

Think of the children!!! Yes, let's do that. And let's not allow hatred of the police to cloud our judgement over simple, commonsense ways to protect those vulnerable, utterly dependent children. "No, M'Lud, I had no inkling whatsoever that this man could be a risk to my child. His 484 indecent photos of provocatively clad little girls were only classed as Level One, and there were a mere 28 bestiality photos and videos classed as 'extreme pornography'; oh and there was an Emperor with no clothes on, but he was an adult."

As one commenter said, the police will not find his missing son in the computer. They may, however, find in there a clue to his disappearance. And you can take that whatever way you want.

UK.gov smiles and nods at commentards

This is the nub of it

There is an awful lot wrong with politicians but the fact is we hire them to do a job that simply cannot be done by 60 million people all meeting in the local pub. We do not hire them to 'do our bidding', but to 'run the country'; and faced with 60 million variously motivated discontents the latter is unlikely to mirror the former.

Every few years we get the chance to sling them out if we are not satisfied. In the meantime we must let them do what we hope is their best, bearing in mind that running a 21st Century highly developed Western civilisation is a bit more complex than running the local youth club. We can keep them in line somewhat by constantly heckling and harrying so that they walk forever in fear of being slung out.

And we should be thankful that we live in a country where every few years we CAN sling out the government. Fans of the EU might think carefully about that statement, bearing in mind that a de facto government has all the power of an elected one, but is a damn sight harder to get rid of. Ask yourself who makes the laws of this land - CLUE: it is not the democratically elected British Government.

The British 'government' may move the deckchairs about, but the EU's Titanic, on which we now blithely sail, is steered by faceless, unelected, unaccountable, unsackable bureaucrats somewhere on the Continent, over whom we people have absolutely no control whatsoever.

Hollywood claims Aussie ISP promoted BitTorrent use

Piracy? - check the definition

Seems to me that the behaviour of the MAFIAA and its cohorts fits the definition of piracy far more closely than that of a web-savvy teenager who finds a song on the internet and listens to it.

Well done that judge. Do I detect justice and commonsense beginning to rise up against this ludicrous campaign of extortion - by a bunch of greedy bullies who have historically treated their artists with even more contempt than their customers?

If a Rottweiler goes berserk on having its juicy bone taken away, it should be put down, not protected by the courts. It should most certainly not be allowed to dictate the fundamental rights of the people, and access to the internet is rapidly becoming accepted, in civilised countries, as just such a right.

If the media industry really needs to lie, cheat, bribe, bully, extort and cynically subvert the law in order to make its business model work, then perhaps it should be told to develop a new one. Or walk the plank. Life really is too short for we ordinary folk to have to put up with this immoral and vindictive claptrap.

BT and TalkTalk threaten court to kill Mandybill

Not parody - realism

@AC:

If cleaning your toilet could be imaginatively turned into conceptual art that thousands of people would pay to watch, and rich advertisers pay to be associated with, then lead me to it.

"Providers with more than two or three neurones between their ears will soon figure out a way to make money from their free content"

A man in the US apparently made over $150,000 from airing a free video on YouTube of his small son looking woozy after a visit to the dentist!

Art is not produce, like bags of sugar, whose material value can simply be calculated from the cost of production.

Make all internet content FREE

It seems to me that this is a very simple solution to all these problems, both the real ones and the ones invented by the MAFIAA for entirely their own benefit. Providers with more than two or three neurones between their ears will soon figure out a way to make money from their free content. The grasping, mindless middlemen will eradicate themselves, thus supporting Darwin's theories, and will be missed by no-one except their bank managers.

The world's art will then throw off the millstone of 'material value' and become freely available to the world's people, and mankind as a whole will benefit enormously - even those who have no money. One small step for the media industry; one large step for mankind.

The only other alternative I can see to the current shambolic, mogul-driven mish-mash is for the internet itself to be totally controlled with an iron fist by the MAFIAA and its minions in government. And I do not think many of us would vote for that.

BT boss brands Britain illiterate

Good job there are no Pandas in Britain

A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then pulls out a gun and shoots the waiter. "Why?" groans the injured man. The panda shrugs and walks out, tossing a wildlife manual over his shoulder. The entry for "panda" reads: "Large black and white mammal native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

I believe this inspired a book, which itself inspired this riveting piece in the New Yorker:

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/06/28/040628crbo_books1

Language certainly must be allowed to evolve, but grammatical rules are generally there for good reason. A misplaced comma can be more dangerous than a loaded gun:

A woman, without her man, is nothing. A woman: without her, man is nothing.

And see this: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6383383