This is why some of us worry about copyright cops

When people like me get worked up about ISP censorship, national firewalls and other wonderful ideas, it’s not because we condone theft. It’s because the people who do the censoring are often idiots. Here’s yet another example: the UK Music Publisher’s Association (MPA) managed to get an entire public domain music site taken offline because it – wrongly – believed that the site was hosting an illegal music score.

“You’re all our bitches now”

Good news for the BPI: BT and TalkTalk’s appeal against the Digital Economy Act has been rejected. It turns out that the Act is perfectly fair and decent and nothing to worry about whatsoever.

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.

Record labels demand all the money in the world. Literally

Here’s one for fans of idiocy and greed: in their case against file sharing network LimeWire, record labels are demanding sums of money that could exceed $75 trillion.

The entire planet’s gross domestic product is $69 trillion per year.

What are they thinking? Let The Register explain.

The idea that the industry could ask for trillions in damages apparently springs from a previous success against Usenet in 2009, in which copying of a relatively small number of works (878) was multiplied by the maximum penalty to arrive at a damages bill close to US$6.6 million.

Will Twitter get shitter?

Twitter is five, and like all good five-year-olds it’s about time it paid its way. Me, on Techradar:

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.

Why should you pay more to use your iPhone as a portable hotspot?

The latest iOS update enables you to turn your iPhone into a wi-fi hotspot, sharing your 3G connection with other devices – and even though iPhone data plans are capped, you still need to pay extra to use the feature. Why could that be? I think I know the answer.

There are only two possible explanations.

One, iPhone data is a different shape from Android data. It’s triangular, or maybe octagonal, and it gets stuck in the internet tubes.

Or two, the networks are bastards.

‘Contribute to my website’ is the new pay to play

The nice people at .net magazine have a spanking new website, and one of my pieces is on it: “What are words worth”, where I… well, you saw the headline.

In the age of social media and user-generated content, suggesting that your name on someone else’s website is “exposure” is like suggesting membership of the HTML Writer’s Guild will boost your chances of getting a well-paid agency job.

Content farms and Google results

A wee piece by me on Techradar:

Google’s success has created a new kind of industry. Content farms are firms who produce what Google’s Matt Cuts calls “shallow or low-quality content”.

Cutts is a funny guy, and his screenshots show the parody site The Content Farm, but the point is a serious one: often, when you search Google for something, you don’t necessarily get content that’s been created for you; you get content that’s been created for Google’s search algorithm.

There’s nothing unethical or illegal about content farms – they’re not wicked, or dishonest, or evil – but their prominence in Google results means they can be an enormous pain in the backside.

You can’t trust tweets

Me, at Techradar:

Social media Chinese Whispers and thoughtless retweets tend to be more innocuous than tales of crazed gunmen, but they can still be annoying: a few days ago otherwise sensible people were retweeting “an actual letter that was sent to a bank by a 96-year-old woman”, a newspaper humour column that has been floating around the Internet for the last 12 years.

Still, it made a change from hoaxes claiming that X person had died in a hangliding/gardening/snowboarding accident: this year’s crop already includes Justin Bieber and Nelson Mandela, both of whom are very much alive.

More sadness

Dave Pell:

I think about a lot of things before I share online. But here’s one thing I never think about:

The unthinkable.

Daniel Miller didn’t think of that either. So he shared photos on Facebook and Flickr, wrote anecdotes in his blog, and managed his finances using Mint. And then his one year-old daughter died.

And the machine wouldn’t turn off. Every now and then he just wanted to take his mind off his grief and focus on something happier. But he was constantly reminded of his daughter by the sites and tools that were so integrated into his connected life.

Daniel explains what he calls the “infinitely connected triggers of her memory and the dumb machines” in a blog he writes to share experiences related to his family’s loss.

Thoughts on the proposed Firewall For Filth

If you haven’t heard, communications minister Ed Vaizey is asking ISPs to consider adopting an opt-in system for online porn. Essentially ISPs will filter unless you specifically ask them not to.

Me, over at Techradar:

There’s some awful stuff out there, and I don’t think kids should see it any more than I think The Human Centipede should be shown on cBeebies.

I think I’m pretty consistent on this. I don’t think seven-year-olds should play Call of Duty: Black Ops, and I don’t think Frankie Boyle is the best choice of entertainer for your four-year-old’s birthday party.

The problem, I think, is that attempting to filter out porn isn’t going to work. Any attempt to create a national firewall is both doomed and dangerous.

And of course, there’s the biggest problem of all, the hole in the digital dyke nobody can plug.

Other parents.

As a parent, I’m well aware that it’s my responsibility to keep my kids away from filth. The problem is that I can’t ensure that you keep your kids away from it.

I can’t help thinking that the first couple of commenters are missing my point.