I love xkcd
Beautiful animation based on xkcd comic 442. Sharing through CC can create some amazing derivatives, but we already knew that. I Love xkcd from NoamR on Vimeo.

Cookie Law: regulatory failure
Need prior consent to eat cookie? There are some things in life that are so wrong at every level that as soon as they see the light of day deserve a big fat “FAIL” caption. That “Mission Accomplished” banner. Boy bands. Any movie bearing the words “A Film by Michael Bay”.

The Great Intermediary War
When the history of the Internet is written down (again), the annals of the years 2009 and 2010 will describe the consolidation of social media, the rise of Twitter, but more importantly, it will be known as the period when regulators and industry tried to tackle intermediaries. This has been some time coming. At some point in the past three years, content owners discovered that suing their customers was not such a good idea after all, and while keeping up the pretence of conducting the War Against Piracy, their sights were set on another front, much like Hitler giving up on the Battle of Britain and looking at the Soviet border longingly (

Freedom to be obnoxious?
Nobody knows how it happened, but Stephen Fry was declared sometime last year the King of the Internet. However, His Royal Tweetness seems to have lost some of the vibrant love for all things participatory during a social networking conference. He is quoted as saying: “I don’t know about you but whenever I read a blog I do not let my eye drop below half the screen in case I accidentally hit the bit where the comments reside. Of all the stinking, sliding, scuttling, weird, entomological creatures that inhabit the floor of the internet those comments on blogs are

Digital Economy Bill and orphan works
So, the Digital Economy Bill has been unleashed upon an unsuspecting public (if we exclude the twittering and blogging classes of course). The Bill is already being scrutinised by various parties, and the veredict seems to be worrying, as it implements three strikes disconnection, as well as other seemingly abusive provisions. I will be going through it in more detail in the next couple of days, but initially I was pleasantly surprised to find that the bill contains a section related to orphan works. As I