virtualeconomics

Big Society might almost be a good idea if he meant it

Whenever I see the phrase "Big Society" I am reminded of Andrew Martin's wonderful political satire Bilton. In it a new Prime Minister embarks on a transparently meaningless crusade for "Social Dynamism", which comes unstuck for the empty soundbite it is when an interviewer asks him on live TV whether trees are socially dynamic. (Martin's fictional PM answered "sometimes". Our own would presumably go for a simple "no", since he's selling them off).

Apparently in Whitehall the Big Society is still a big deal. David Cameron even took the time to write another article defending it at the weekend. Outside the exclusion zone, they might as well have called it social dynamism for all the seriousness with which it is regarded.

It's not about the Internet, stupid

So while access has been dramatically curtailed the Internet is still working, a bit, in Egypt, and helping the people there organise the overthrow of the US-funded dictatorship. Props to the dedicated people outside Egypt who are working to keep TOR relays up and maintain the infrastructure that people need to coordinate that protest. Most especially props to the journalists who are still reporting from Egypt - I'm keeping a list of people still tweeting out of Egypt here. 

There's plenty being written about the Egyptian revolution today, most of it from a risibly net-centric point of view (the government there is evil! Never mind killing its citizens for engaging in legitimate protest, it's actually shut down the internet too!). Hopefully what remains of the Internet there will help Egyptians coordinate their revolution and let the world know what's going on there today, and perhaps fighting to close it down will distract their government from killing them, but really the overthrow of a quarter-century old tyranny isn't about the net.

(Photo from James Buck on Flickr)

The panic of the new falconers

A few weeks after closing the purposeless petition-rejecting facility that used to adorn the Number10 website, the coalition proposes a new petition-rejecting facility via which anyone who can gather enough signatories (rumours say 100k might be "enough") can have it rejected not just by a cabinet functionary but after an Actual Debate in the Commons. It is of course faintly possible that unlike last time one of the petition will coincide with something the government was planning to do anyway and when they leap to enact it we can all bask in the glow of having such enlightened and responsive leaders. In such leaps and bounds does participatory digital democracy progress.

Should the greatest threat to press freedom in the world really be hosting Press Freedom Day?

Another day, another assault on press freedom by a clueless US government department. Just for the sake of variety though, this isn't an attack on Wikileaks, Wikileaks supporters or the allegedly free US press for reporting on what Wikileaks is doing. This is Homeland Security's seizure of four blog and forum sites that discussed and reported news about BitTorrent. 

The full debacle is at TechDirt, and Mike calls it "downright scary" and "wrong". But Homeland Security summarily seizing domains on grounds that they were infringing the bogus copyright laws made up by the MPAA is one thing; seizing those sites when in fact all they were doing was linking to news stories and opinions about use of the BitTorrent technology is a(nother) direct assault on the freedom of the press. Homeland Security needs to issue a statement, now, admitting that it made a mistake, promising to hand back those websites immediately and most importantly stating for the record that writing journalism about BitTorrent does not constitute a criminal infringement and that journalists remain free to comment on the use of technology, even on the use of technology that may itself be legally dubious in some jurisdictions.

Fighting the most hopeless battle in the world

Ed Vaizey might as well try and learn to fly.

News over the last couple of days suggests that he really thinks he can outwit the collective efforts of horny teenage geeks to find porn online.

And not just the government, but the government acting through pressure on the clearly unenthusiastic ISPs. 

So I propose to make a bet. Anyone is welcome to take me up on it. Ed Vaizey is particularly encouraged to, if he thinks his proposal is really possible rather than just political showboating.

Here's the bet. Regardless of the law (or laws) Ed Vaizey passes to block children from finding porn online, if I pick one average thirteen year old boy at random out of an English classroom, put him in front of a computer with a normal broadband connection and ask him to find a picture of two people having sex, he'll be able to show me one in sixty seconds. 

Do let me know if you think the government is better at blocking porn than horny teenage geeks are at finding it. There's free money on the table if you do.

(Picture by machernucha on Flickr)

An open letter to Helen Boaden, Director of BBC News

Dear Ms Boaden

I am not writing to join the chorus of complaints about the treatment of Jody McIntyre on your news programmes last night and again this morning. I believe in freedom of speech and in independence of editorial judgement and if your journalists choose to exercise that freedom and that judgement by treating as a hostile witness a wheelchair user suffering from cerebral palsy who has uncontestably been violently assaulted by the police in the course of his peaceful protest that is their affair and yours. There is increasingly a consensus that all journalism comes with an agenda and the best we can do is make that agenda explicit. If that is the BBC's news agenda it is undoubtedly best to have the matter out in the open.

However, this morning's BBC Breakfast News was the second time that one of your current affairs programmes attempted to conduct an adversarial interview with Mr McIntyre. For the second time, Mr McIntyre had the clear upper hand throughout the exchange. Without putting too fine a point on it, his appearance this morning was the second time he ran rings around your interviewers and left them looking not merely callous but absurd.

Your current affairs programming is rightly considered amongst the finest in the world, "noted" (as the BBC website puts it) "for its in-depth analysis and often robust cross-examination". It is trusted to report the news and in so doing wring the truth from politicians and CEOs in the name of the license fee payers it serves.

Your interviewers just got hammered, twice, on their own turf, by a guy in a wheelchair with cerebral palsy they were trying to patronise. So I am writing to inquire - just so we know whether to take your programmes seriously in future when we see you try to do the whole "talking truth to power" thing and taking down some criminal mastermind or corrupt official - who you've fired and what's going to be different next time?

It is now safe to turn off your wifi security

The failure of copyright-trolls ACS:Law to secure default judgement in their first copyright infringement case has been covered in detail elsewhere. Briefly, ACS:Law claimed to represent copyright holders (not really, says judge) in a case against eight file sharers (no they're not) and asked for default judgement against all eight ("the requests for judgment should never have been filed").

Lots of things to like about this decision, but the feature that strikes me is the clear statement that there is currently no legal basis for pursuing someone for copyright infringement merely because infringement is alleged to have occurred over their own unsecured connection.

Support for #ukuncut in unexpected quarters?

Currently running on the Daily Mail website - a poll asking the question "do you still support the students after these riots?" Never mind the phrasing of the question, which a cynical observer might even consider loaded; at time of writing respondents have voted overwhelmingly "yes", by 63 to 37 per cent of the vote.

Possibly this merely proves that the Mail's online audience genuinely supports the students' right to protest, regardless of how they are asked or the negativity with which those demonstrations have been portrayed through much of the mainstream media. If so, I take my hat off to those readers - the right to legitimate political dissent is one I am pleased to see attract such support.

Wikileaks tips over one million Facebook "likes"

Some time in the last hour Wikileaks passed the one million Facebook "likes" mark. In the world of investigative journalism, Wikileaks is now ahead of the New York Times and every other major newspaper in terms of Facebook popularity, and behind only The Colbert Report and The Daily Show, both with "likes" in the 1.5m to 2m range.  

Is it a big deal? It's a significant milestone, and one that other news organisations have so far failed to reach so nods to a shift in the journalism landscape. And if you see the Wikileaks drama in terms of power vs The Internet, which is a popular enough narrative, then of course it matters that Wikileaks can raise this level of popular support. Power vs the Internet only makes sense if the Internet is really on board and this is one of the key markers that it is (or, one should say, we are). As John Naughton wrote in the Guardian (HT Emily Bell)

"The most obvious lesson is that it represents the first really sustained confrontation between the established order and the culture of the internet."

It's perfectly clear where they stand. Let's make sure they know where we do. 

The trouble with the end of privacy, geopolitics edition

Just as Facebook and ubiquitous CCTV spell the end of privacy for the individual, the latest Wikileaks revelations look like the end of privacy for governments. Unfortunately, social proof means that enforced openness is unlikely to be any healthier for governments than it has been for individuals.

While some individual privacy has been given up voluntarily (we publish our thoughts, our locations, our moods), some has been given up without much in the way of consent (in the UK we are watched by 4.2 million CCTV cameras, one for every 14 people). And while some government privacy has been given up ostensibly voluntarily, if grudgingly, (freedom of information legislation) some has simply been taken away (Wikileaks keeps publishing the United States' secret documents). Technology makes privacy hard to maintain and if three people can only keep a secret so long as two of them are dead, what chance had three million? One of the strangest aspects of this leak - which governments terrified of embarrassment continue to claim with almost charmingly blatant ulteriority puts lives and national security at risk - is that these "secrets" were already known to three million US government officials, "a diplomatic outreach", says Simon Jenkins, "that makes the British Empire look miniscule".