Copyright industries want the net regulated, and they’re willing to spend huge sums to make it happen: SOPA is a battle, but the lobbyists are waging a war.

You don’t fight that by turning sites black. You fight it by supporting the EFF, and the ACLU, and the ORG, and by lobbying your elected representatives, and you fight it it in the ballot box. In the last general election just 55% of 25-34 year olds voted, while turnout for the 18-24 age group was a pathetic 44%.

We need to do better, because the best way to fight bad laws is to stop clowns from getting into power in the first place.

According to somebody on Twitter, that’s akin to telling women of the 1960s to shut up and know their place. I’m a bit baffled by that.

On the face of it, Internet Explorer doesn’t have much in common with Sugababes: IE isn’t beautiful, doesn’t sing and isn’t likely to dress in a primary-coloured PVC dominatrix outfit to perform at G-A-Y.

However, they’re not as different as you might think.

“Our ambition is to surprise you at every turn,” said Kevin Shields, a man whose job title – senior vice president of program and product management for the smart device – is longer than many people’s lives.

And then he started shouting.

“It looks AWESOME!” he bellowed, channelling his inner Ballmer and scaring the hell out of the first six rows. “It feels GREAT in your hand!” he added, frightening everybody again. “It SCREAMS premium!” he screamed.

It’s Apple’s new iPhone event tomorrow, and we know what that means: most of the internet is publishing “ten things Apple will announce tomorrow” articles, most of them split into eleventy-nine pages to rip off advertisers.

As a gadget fan, I’m well aware that closed ecosystems such as iOS or the Kindle deliver the best possible end user experience. But I can’t shift the nagging feeling that when we welcome our new retail overlords we’re buying into something we might later regret.

I’m not sure I’ve quite nailed what I wanted to say here, but it’s close enough.

In times of great excitement, I like to paraphrase Noddy Holder – and today is one of those times. Ready?

So here it is, Merry Christmas

Everybody’s Having Fun

Apart from all the Android firms

Who are probably chucking themselves off bridges right now

The BT ruling is worrying because it turns ISPs into censors, and of course copyright infringement isn’t the only kind of content people would like to block.

We’ve had calls to ban sites that espouse extreme political views, sites that promote anorexia, sites that discuss ways to commit suicide. If BT can block Usenet archives, why can’t it block everything that anybody thinks is unpleasant or undesirable – like WikiLeaks, or anti-Scientology sites, or anything that isn’t appropriate for under-fives?

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Social networks also benefit from lock-in. I hate Facebook: I hate its horrible UI, its overly complex privacy settings, its photo albums, the algorithm that seems hell-bent on hiding important and interesting updates. Given the choice, I wouldn’t use it. Unfortunately I don’t have a choice, because for now everybody I know does use it. Cutting off Facebook would mean cutting them off.

Sooner or later, though, a strategy of “ha ha! We’re the only game in town!” will bite you in the backside.

Ah, says Samsung. “With nothing stored directly on the Series 5, malicious spyware, trojans and viruses are a thing of the past.” They’re a thing of the past on my Windows 7 PC too, because I’m not an idiot who opens unsolicited files that claim to be details of tax refunds or photos of Pippa Middleton’s arse.

Amazingly, I have an opinion about that.

“Shareholders and customers of BT and TalkTalk might ask why so much time and money has been spent challenging the act to help reduce the illegal traffic on their networks,” BPI boss Geoff Taylor said. “You’re all our bitches now.”

OK, he didn’t say that last bit. But it’s true all the same. If BT and TalkTalk don’t appeal, we’re stuffed.

I was in Glasgow’s famous Sauchiehall Street on Saturday night. If you haven’t been recently, it’s like a Hieronymus Bosch painting where the demons wear too-short skirts or G-Star Raw. It’s genuinely unpleasant, a seething mass of drunken, vomiting and occasionally fist-fighting imbeciles.

If you need proof that a significant part of the human race is as dumb as rocks, I can give you the postcode to prove it.

Or I can let you see Twitter on my phone.