Boneheaded Microsoft DRM statement
Microsoft's Amir Majidimehr said something stupid at an Informa Telecoms & Media Digital Rights Management conference today: Microsoft doesn't want to support an ecosystem of hobbyists.
Rational Rants
Mitch Ratcliffe blogs about the constantly changing boundary between media and life, the businesses that live on that border, and the meaning of all this change to society and the economy.
Latest Posts
The Friends-and-Family Era
Dave Winer wants to reform venture capital. His idea is to do the IPO first, then invest. That's bassakwards, because it assumes the challenge of a new capital investment approach is to find home runs. The future will be mostly singles and doubles.
Cowards
Reports that Google and Microsoft will not attend hearings into censorship by U.S. companies operating in China only make the companies look worse.
How bulky is your Internet?
Bill Gates wants to deliver the Net to the poor via cell phone. Nicholas Negroponte (he of the world of bits obliterating the world of atoms) wants to make the Net available to hundreds of millions of kids by laptop. What do you think would work?
For whom the tolls sound like alarm bells
There's a lot of talk about tolls taking a bite out of Internet usage and user's pockets. We've been there, done that, and it didn't work the first time around.
Bill Gates, wrong too
Bill Gates stepped up to defend Google and, by extension, his own company's support of censorship.
We have met the enemy and he is us
The U.S. Department of Defense wants to be able to bring the Net down and, unfortunately, it invented the thing.
It's the blatant hypocrisy
John Battelle asks why Congress is holding hearings about Google's China compromise and not Yahoo! and MSN's before? I answer with a variation on an old beer-selling slogan.
Jihad comes to Google Video
Turning from its network of jihadist sites, an insurgent cell delivers anti-American video on Google. What does it mean for civil liberties?
Welcome to the Soviet-style Internet
Tales of the National Security Agency's attacks on whistleblowers recall the tactics of earlier totalitarian governments. These are the people we're supposed to trust not to abuse access to domestic networks?