Tech subcontracting and working conditions in China

Some really interesting comments from Chinese readers on the New York Times’ article about working conditions in Apple’s subcontractors:

If not to buy Apple, what’s the substitute – Samsung? Don’t you know that Samsung’s products are from its OEM factory in Tianjin? Samsung workers’ income and benefits are even worse than those at Foxconn. If not to buy iPad – (do you think) I will buy Android Pad? Have you ever been to the OEM factories for Lenovo and ASUS? Quanta,
Compaq … factories of other companies are all worse than those for Apple. Not to buy iPod – (do you think) I will buy Aigo, Meizu? Do you know that Aigo’s Shenzhen factory will not pay their workers until the 19th of the second month? If you were to quit, fine, I’m sorry, your salary will be withdrawn. Foxconn never dares to do such things. First, their profit margin is higher than peers as they manufacture for Apple. Second, at least those foreign devils will regularly audit factories. Domestic brands will never care if workers live or die. I am not speaking for Foxconn. I am just speaking as an insider of this industry, and telling you some disturbing truth.

Is this really how we want our tech toys to be made?

So much for “there’s no copyright in ideas”

Words can’t express how ridiculously, ridiculously stupid this verdict is:

Photographers who compose a picture in a similar way to an existing image risk copyright infringement, lawyers have warned following the first court ruling of its kind.

The images in question are here (PDF) if you fancy a look.

Tabloid-fuelled Twitter hate

The parents of missing child Madeleine McCann appeared at the Levenson inquiry into newspapers’ bad behaviour yesterday, and Twitter proved beyond doubt that it’s the original story, not the retraction, that many people remember. As the McCanns described some extraordinarily evil behaviour by newspapers and their hired help, all kinds of apparently respectable people posted all kinds of appalling allegations on Twitter. Where did they get such ideas? The Guardian’s Esther Addley knows:

Kate and Gerry McCann… do not appear to be afraid of the press. What, after all, is it going to do to them? Accuse them of killing their three-year-old daughter Madeleine and transporting her corpse in their hire car? They’ve done that already, many times over. Report that they were undergoing IVF to get a “new” child to “replace” Madeleine? Done that too.

Suggest they were taking part in orgies and swingers’ parties? That they had kept Madeleine’s body in their freezer after murdering her? That they had sold their daughter into slavery to pay off family debts? They’ve seen it all before. Each one of those allegations appeared in a British newspaper in the months after this ordinary couple from rural Leicestershire became the victims of the most terrible crime any parent can imagine, the kidnap of their child.

I’m no fan of media regulation, but you can’t read that and think “yes! Self-regulation and the Press Complaints Council really does work!”

The slippery slope: now BT’s being urged to block The Pirate Bay

It’s not a surprise, but it’s still deeply worrying: BT, the UK’s biggest ISP, is under pressure to block The Pirate Bay. 

The BPI chief executive, Geoff Taylor, said The Pirate Bay was “no more than a huge scam” defrauding the global creative sector.

“We would not tolerate Counterfeits R Us on the high street – if we want economic growth, we cannot accept illegal rip-off sites on the internet either,” he said.

You know this bit already, but it’s worth reiterating: The Pirate Bay doesn’t host anyone else’s content – the torrents it provides are essentially maps that tell your computer where to get content – and not all torrents point to illegally copied content. Oh, and The Pirate Bay isn’t based in the UK, let alone on BT’s servers.

Counterfeits R Us? I lost my favourite headphones – a pricey pair of Sennheisers – the other day and had a look on eBay for replacements. There were dozens of listings, of which the overwhelming majority appeared to be for counterfeit copies. Should ISPs block eBay too?

I understand why the BPI and its pals are annoyed, but “the global creative sector” can go after The Pirate Bay in the courts. That may be difficult, expensive and ultimately pointless, but that’s the global creative sector’s problem, not ours.

Kindles and iPads are the Tescos of tech

A wee Techradar piece about something that’s been nagging at me for a while:

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.

78% of burglars are not using Twitter and Google Street View to plan crimes

There’s a news story doing the rounds today: in the words of Metro, “A massive 78 per cent of ex-burglars” believe that other burglars are using social media and Google Street View to commit crimes.

I’ve nothing against advising people to be careful – the survey’s part of a national crime awareness week – but the survey that’s being reported here (and by Sky, and by others) simply found that 39 of 50 ex-burglars interviewed “believe” that other burglars probably use social media to identify targets. Three-quarters of the ex-burglars also think it’s “likely” that the baddies use Google Street View too.

What people believe and what is actually true aren’t necessarily the same thing.

R Kelly believes he can fly. He’s wrong.

Ticket rip-offs strike again

I thought I’d seen every booking fee rip-off going, but apparently not: this morning I discovered that if I want to buy four concert tickets from Ticketmaster, I have to place two orders for two tickets apiece – which, on top of the booking fees, means I’m paying eleven quid in postage for four pieces of paper instead of the already ridiculous five-something quid.

Meanwhile, FlyBe’s price for a flight doesn’t include the seat, which is £6 extra. I know what you’re thinking, and no, you can’t just say you’ll stand.свети георги

It’s not child labour if you don’t pay them

Unbelievable. AOL’s Huffington Post and Patch are recruiting unpaid bloggers as young as 13.

 ikoni

Column: here come the internet police

BT has been ordered to block newzbin2, a Usenet archive site largely devoted to sharing movie rips and other infringing content. I don’t think this can end well.

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?

икони

A plague on all their houses

Simon from No Rock’n'Roll fun does a typically excellent job of skewering Microsoft and Apple for their blatant attempts to capitalise on Amy Winehouse’s death:

Arguably, acknowledging people would have been searching the store for her music anyway and making it easier to find is slightly less ghoulish than using her death to try and market your entire store as a way of “memorialising” Winehouse, but it’s a slim distinction and neither Microsoft or Apple have come out of this with their dignity intact.

Meanwhile, the Huffington Post sinks ever lower in my estimation with this appalling piece of business bullshit:

Amy Winehouse’s Untimely Death Is a Wake Up Call for Small Business Owners
…whether you are a pop star, a plumber or a business consultant, the same rules still apply: you are the product. And if that’s the case, you are going to need to take really good care for yourself if you want your business to succeed.

And Mashable shows that the definition of tech journalism will happily include terrorist slaughter and the untimely death of addicts if there are clicks to be harvested. As PostDesk puts it:

initially, there was no attempt even to add a ‘tech angle’ to the story – it was a case of simply getting the story out for a cheap and nasty traffic boost.