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Romantic intermediaries and algorithmic normativity
Unsurprisingly, it turns out that online dating websites make algorithmic choices that strongly influence influence (and are tailored to) their users’ behaviour. But are they better?I asked Yagan...
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Information monopolists as cyclic products of network effects: Tim Wu
Tim Wu’s excellent new book, The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires, chronicles a history of communications policy and the long-term behaviour of firms in information industries....
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Network neutrality dead in the UK?
Ed Vaizey, the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, has made comments in a speech which suggest that he favours abandonment of the neutrality (non-discrimination) principle in...
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Bankers as intermediaries and the tension between regulation and profit
Financial intermediaries are little more than rent seekers, says a thought-provoking article in this week’s New Yorker magazine:One is the role of financial intermediaries, such as banks. Rather than...
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The blocking barb in today's Pirate Bay appeal
As has been widely reported, the three co-founders of file-sharing website The Pirate Bay have lost their appeal before the Stockholm Court of Appeal against criminal convictions imposed in April...
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Ed Vaizey clarifies UK government's position on net neutrality
The recent controversy about Ed Vaizey’s purported abandonment of network neutrality was probably overhyped. In Parliament today, Andrew Smith (Labor MP, East Oxford) asked the following question:To...
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The Great Cyberheist: Inside the life of an identity thief
The New York Times has a fantastic writeup of the criminal activities and investigation of Alberto Gonzalez, a black-hat hacker who masterminded the TJX and Heartland Payment Systems credit card data...
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British ISPs to face regulatory pressure over internet pornography
Representatives of the Her Majesty’s government will meet with ISPs and lobbyists to discuss whether, and how, access to internet pornography should be controlled.The meeting comes days after Tory...
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Survey finds free internet downloads primary music source for teenagers
A survey of 47 000 teenage internet users has found found that 33 per cent nominated ”downloading from the internet without paying” as their primary source of music. While this doesn’t necessarily...
View ArticleGoogle bookstore: closed platform or platform innovator?
Has openness become a mere buzzword?I’m not arguing that “openness” is a bad thing in the tech business. What I’m saying is that it is not an unmitigated virtue, and it’s not necessarily the first...
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WikiLeaks roundup: a selection of the best analysis
The WikiLeaks controversy continues to capture headlines and provoke vitriol from governments around the world. Most reactions, however, have been surprisingly unsophisticated. Commentators repeatedly...
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European Electronic Communications Package moves closer to UK transposition
The UK government is preparing to transpose Directive 2002/21/EC on a common regulatory framework for electronic communications networks and services (the Framework) into UK law. The Framework is a new...
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Digital avatars as risk-free social substitutes: Scruton
Philosopher Roger Scruton offers this Hegelian critique of our growing digital lives:This process of raising ourselves above the animal condition is crucial, as the Hegelians emphasized, to the growth...
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Guardian interview with Professor Tim Wu: the Internet as a teenager
The Guardian is running an interview with Professor Tim Wu, who recently published The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires . I’m about three quarters of the way through the book,...
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High Court of Australia grants leave to appeal iiNet ruling
Today the High Court of Australia granted leave to appeal against the decision of the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia in Roadshow Films Pty Ltd v iiNet Ltd. I haven’t been able to uncover...
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FCC adopts new network neutrality rules on unstable jurisdictional ground
After months of consultation and over 100 000 submissions, the Federal Communications Commission has adopted an order which requires providers of a “broadband internet access service” to comply with...
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Facebook and the 2011 London riots
Be careful what you write. In R v Blackwell [2011] EWCA Crim 2312, Lord Judge CJ offers this blunt description of the role played by “modern technology” (principally Facebook, Blackberry’s BBM...
View ArticleThe Dictator
MR WILSON: Down in Canberra they have erect the Magna Carta monument. Have you been to see it? You will not answer? Mr Callinan, have you seen it?CALLINAN J: Look, you cannot really ask me questions,...
View ArticleThe Lesson
GAUDRON J: Now, would you like to read section 80 of the Constitution, Mr Wilson?MR WILSON: Read section 80?GAUDRON J: Yes, that is what - and see exactly what it relates to.MR WILSON: I will read...
View ArticleFree choice and compulsion
GLEESON CJ: What do you mean by “free choice”? TEHAN QC: What we mean by “free choice”, your Honour, is a choice unconstrained by any pressure, hope of advantage or benefit or force or coercion or...
View ArticleOrder me a pizza, mate
HIS HONOUR: The trial——- DEFENDANT: Look - now listen here, mate, you don’t know what you’re fucking talking about. HIS HONOUR: Now you listen to me——- DEFENDANT: No, no. HIS HONOUR: No, you listen...
View ArticleA wayward Chevy struck a tree
A wayward Chevy struck a tree Whose owner sued defendants three. He sued car’s owner, driver, too, And insurer for what was due For his oak tree that now may bear A lasting need for tender care. The...
View ArticleSwiftly dismissed
“At present, the Court is not saying that Braham can never, ever, ever get his case back in court. But, for now, we have got problems, and the Court is not sure Braham can solve them.As currently...
View ArticleSelfless dedication
Lord Grabiner advances this argument with some force. He says that any other view is heresy and that he is incontrovertibly correct. Indeed he goes as far as to say that he is prepared to go to the...
View ArticleNot one to be looked to in an emergency
“I suppose the wife communicated the proposition and her misery in some way to her husband (what passed was not and could not be given in evidence); but at all events, the effect on the man was simply...
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