james holden

RMS vs EU Software Patents

Richard Stallman, founder of the GNU project, has written an editorial piece in the Guardian in which he illustrates the dangers of software patents by making a comparison to hypothetical literary patents – using the same example as Patrick Devedjian, who was until recently the French minister for industry. RMS illustrates that if literary patents [...]

New Music

Well OK, I’m quite sure they’re not exactly new to an awful lot of people, but today I stumbled across ‘Lacuna Coil’ on special sauce. I’m pretty impressed to be honest. They seem to fall somewhere between NIN and Garbage and I like them a lot from my first 30 minutes of listening. Anyone care [...]

Register your protest against the ID card

No2ID have set up a pledge list on pledgebank for people to protest against the national ID card scheme. Once 10,000 people sign up, you pledge to donate £10 to a legal defense fund. Add your name now!
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Double Royalties Please

Aparrently the music publishers think they’re entitled to double (or even triple) royalties for ‘copy protected’ audio CDs that have an extra copy of the music in some DRM’d format for playback on a computer. Heh, that’s funny! They shaft you out of the ability to play full CD quality music on your PC and [...]

Crazy Frog

The crazy frog is fantastic. What? Yes, you heard it right. The crazy frog is fantastic.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few months, you’ll have come across the crazy frog, possibly the most irritating ringtune ever. So why do I think the crazy frog is fantastic when everyone else is being [...]

Moral Retards

My goodness, has it really been that long since I last posted? Bah, I’m crap. Things have been a bit busy over the last few weeks – I swear I’m going to write a book on what could possibly go wrong when trying to move house. We’re alledgedly exchanging contracts next week, but that’s four [...]

The Lincolnshire Poacher

I caught the tail-end of a facinating programme this morning about number stations, which broadcast encrypted messages on short-wave all around the world. The broadcasts begin with some sort of signature, like a series of notes on a xylophone, and consist of a recorded human voice slowly reading a list of single digit numbers in [...]

A Good ISP Should…

The IFPI and MPA have produced a code of conduct which they hope ISPs will adopt. Some highlights are:

“remove references and links to sites or services that do not respect the copyrights of rights holders”
“require subscribers to consent in advance to the disclosure of their identity in response to a reasonable complaint of intellectual property [...]

Ethics are the new craft

BoingBoing’s Cory Doctorow has written a fastastic editorial for Edinburgh University’s law department on how the tech companies have rolled over and played dead in the face of pressure for the entertainment industry, producting crippled products for fear of getting sued for ‘contributory infringment’.
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Dancing In Silence

There’s a few people at the office with wireless headphones, with which they are able to wander to the coffee machine and back taking their music with them. This year, the organisers of the Glastonbury festival are taking the idea to a new level with a silent rave. Revellers will be given wireless headphones and [...]