Residents in 19 USA states now have an extra line on their tax return form – asking them how much they’ve spent on online purchases for the financial year. States in the US are eyeing the $52 billion spent online, and wanting their share through sales taxes. Other legislation in the US prevents States levying taxes on out-of-state retailers, so the only way they can get their hands on the money is to ask the taxpayers to confess.
An exhibition on the fine art of hacking has opened in Madrid, Spain.
“Hackers: The Art of Abstraction explores the connections between hackers, artists and anyone engaged in any kind of creative work, an idea that the curators of the show say was inspired by McKenzie Wark’s The Hacker Manifesto. “
The musuem’s management is pretty ethusive about the exhibition’s subjects:
“I very much like Wark’s idea that everyone who creates anything is a hacker — programmers, artists, musicians, writers, engineers, chemists and so on are all hackers and, no matter how culturally diverse we may be, as creators we have convergent interests,” said Berta Sichel, director of the department of audiovisuals at the Spanish museum.
“I believe that hackers are the great intellectual adventurers of our time, but in mainstream culture hacking often has negative connotations,” Sichel added. “With this show we hope to refute the negatives and make people aware that in an age of increased surveillance, hacking can be a vital countermeasure and a commendable act of self-defense.”
A nice story from Iran about the intrinsic power of the internet. “Take one exasperated Iranian woman. Add a computer. Hook it up to the internet. ‘And you have a voice in a country where it’s very hard to be heard'”
“Initially created to defy the nation’s tight control on media, these web journals have turned into a cyber-sanctuary – part salon, part therapist’s couch – for the vast pool of educated, young and computer-savvy Iranians. “
The world never ceases to amaze. We think nothing of sliding a computer game disk in and playing whatever games we like. Spare a thought for the geeks in Greece. Playing computer games in public – particularly internet cafes – is illegal, after a law was passed a couple of years ago aimed at cracking down on illegal gamling. Unfortunately, what we would consider perfectly legitimate games wound up also being banned due to the wide embrace of the legislation.
“The law targeted rogue game hall operators who illegally turned arcade games consoles into gambling machines. But the blanket ban led law enforcement officers to start random raids on internet cafes in which customers played run-of-the-mill games such as chess, flight simulators or car races. “
Well it in’t just teenagers in trouble for using music without permission. Seems Apple may have a problem. The computer legend is being sued by music star Eminem for using one of his songs in a tv advertisement, apparently without asking him first.
A glitch on the Amazon web site last week had an unfortunate effect – it revealed the real names of some of the people writing reviews of books. Perhaps not such a big deal, except it became rather obvious that 5 star rating reviews were being written by authors about their own books!
The music industry made much of research a couple of months ago suggesting there had been a marked decrease in the number of people downloading songs, and citing this as evidence of the effects of their ongoing legal battles against the evil downloaders.
“But some experts and users say that file sharers are only being more secretive, and that file swapping is actually increasing. At least two research firms say more than 150 million songs are being downloaded free every month. “
It’s being suggested that the downloaders have just moved underground – they don’t own up when surveyed. Which makes a lot of sense.
Perhaps the final comments should be from a 26 year old financial planner in Boston, who says the lawsuit publicity has stopped he and his friends sharing, but not downloading:
“No matter what they do, it’s not going to work,” Spurr said. “To me the lawsuits are useless because the Internet is about sharing.”
Pepsi in the US is giving away 100 million free songs from the iTunes music download site. (You may remember they launched the campaign during the Superbowl using people who had previously been sued for downloading songs illegally). It seems Pepsi hasn’t quite got it right:
“One in three bottles is a winner, but it turns out that the markings can be read without removing the cap. Not only is it possible to pick out winning bottles in advance, but careful scrutiny can reveal the full 10-digit redemption code, meaning that no purchase is required to get a free iTunes single, courtesy of Pepsi. “
Oops.
“The Record Industry Association of America, RIAA, who recently issued another 532 lawsuits against file sharers, are now being sued by one of the file sharers they are targetting. Michele Scimeca is accusing the RIAA of extortion and racketeering offences, which fall under Americas 1970 Organized Crime and Control Act.”
Sounds like someone the RIAA targeted decided enought was enough. You have to be careful in the land of litigation, the USA. Sue someone, and inevitably someone will sue you. And with hundreds of lawsuits pending, it was only a matter of time before a defendent decided to turn the tables.
Love this media release on the FBI web site. Nothing like overstatement. “Does the number TWENTY THREE BILLION DOLLARS get your attention?”
It explains:
“That’s how much money was lost last year as a result of criminals swiping copyright-protected digital copies of music, movies, software, and games… and distributing them through websites, chat rooms, mass email, FTP, and peer-to-peer networks.”
Weeellll, maybe. If, and a big if, everyone who ‘swiped’ (lovely turn of phrase from the Bureau) turned around and paid for the material instead. Which is extemely unlikely. And therein lies one of the core issues. The copyright content industry makes a great deal of noise about ‘lost’ revenue. But is it really lost? Losing it implies it can be found. And I haven’t seen anything which suggests that’s true.
David Eedle 