Preoccupations

Trial posting from Vox

Testing. Testing.

(Could do without the included photo/buddy icon and the 'On Vox' inclusion in the post title ... Both edited out here.)

» Read more on Vox   

Technorati tags: Vox, Six Apart, cross-posting

Trial posting from Word 2007 (beta 2)

Testing. Testing.

(Can't yet do categories from Word.)

Technorati tags: Microsoft, Word, Office 2007

Stephen Fry: Why History Matters

… it isn't exactly political correctness that dogs history; it's more a pernicious refusal to enter imaginatively the lives of our ancestors. Great and good men and women stirred sugar into their coffee knowing that it had been picked by slaves. Kind, good ancestors of all of us never questioned hangings, burnings, tortures, inequality, suffering and injustice that today revolt us. If we dare to presume to damn them with our fleeting ideas of morality, then we risk damnation from our descendants for whatever it is that we are doing that future history will judge as intolerable and wicked: eating meat, driving cars, appearing on TV, visiting zoos, who knows?  We haven't arrived at our own moral and ethical imperatives by each of us working them out from first principles; we have inherited them and they were born out of blood and suffering, as all human things and human beings are. This does not stop us from admiring and praising the progressive heroes who got there early and risked their lives to advance causes that we now take for granted.  In the end, I suppose history is all about imagination rather than facts. If you cannot imagine yourself wanting to riot against Catholic emancipation, say, or becoming an early Tory and signing up to fight with the Old Pretender, or cheering on Prynne as the theatres are closed and Puritanism holds sway ... knowing is not enough. If you cannot feel what our ancestors felt when they cried: 'Wilkes and Liberty!' or, indeed, cried: 'Death to Wilkes!', if you cannot feel with them, then all you can do is judge them and condemn them, or praise them and over-adulate them.  History is not the story of strangers, aliens from another realm; it is the story of us had we been born a little earlier. History is memory; we have to remember what it is like to be a Roman, or a Jacobite or a Chartist or even - if we dare, and we should dare - a Nazi. History is not abstraction, it is the enemy of abstraction. The Observer

UK schools and the net

BBC NEWS:

Pupils in the UK do not get enough access to the internet at school, a study by London University's Institute of Education has suggested.  Its report found pupils thought the internet was over-regulated by teachers, with an emphasis on prohibition rather than encouragement. … Researchers also found youngsters in all countries needed help in tackling more complex issues, such as understanding the legalities involved in downloading music and handling social encounters in e-mails.

The project's UK director, Dr Andrew Burn, said: "While UK schools are getting some things right compared with other European countries, there are still too many children who do not get sufficient opportunity to use the internet in lessons. Schools need to do more to harness the communicative possibilities of this powerful technology, which allows children to communicate, co-operate, play and learn online."

Dr Burn acknowledged there had been much more emphasis on creative uses of information and communication technology (ICT) in the past five years, but he said web use needed even more "freedom, spread and tolerance" in UK schools. And the focus on information retrieval had eclipsed the communication aspect of ICT, he added. "It is alarming that the secondary ICT curriculum contains 16 references to information, and none at all to communication, given that communication is what young people use the internet for," he said. "This suggests a dramatic mismatch between school attitudes to ICT and the internet, and those which students find important and need to learn about. We want to tap into children's and young people's media culture."

IoE press release here.

Technorati tags: ICT, digital natives, digital immigrants

BPI gets go-ahead to sue AllofMP3

BBC report here:

The British recording industry has been given permission to sue Russian music website allofmp3.com in the High Court. Members of the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) want to prove the site, which offers downloads for as little as five pence, is illegal. They were given the go-ahead to sue the company last week, and say proceedings will be issued in Russia this week. The operators of allofmp3.com deny the recording industry's claims that their site is not licensed to sell music.

Slashdot doubts the likelihood of this action sticking. WiredFire has an interview with with Matt Phillips, Communications Manager of the BPI. (These links all via ORG-discuss, the discussion list of ORG.) AllofMP3's press statement about recent developments (statement dated 6 June, 2006) is currently here. Earlier (also 6 June) BBC report about the BPI and AllofMP3 here.

I've posted about AllofMP3 before: AllofMP3.com: bursting the mould? (4 January, 2006); Best on-line music site? (25 March, 2004).

Some thoughts from the WiredFire interview:

Whether the BPI action is likely to be that successful is open to widespread conjecture. On the surface they would appear to have quite a solid case under UK civil law, given that their site appears to be targeting English consumers. But enforcing any judgement overseas is going to be an altogether different issue – especially if AllofMP3.com can demonstrate that they have been complying with the laws of their own country and that their export market is incidental to their primary business model.

Perhaps the biggest clue as to their future intentions is detailed within their press release:

“On September 1, 2006 the changes to the Russian copyright legislation will come into force. Since January 2006 the site has been making direct agreements with rightholders and authors at the same time increasing the price of the music compositions and transferring the royalties directly to the artists and record companies. The aim of AllofMP3.com is to agree with all rightholders on the prices and royalties amounts by September 1, 2006.

We believe in the long term and civilized business based on respecting the law, considering the customers' demands as well as the interests of both national and international rightholders”.

… Whatever the outcome, we feel that it is about time that the true cost of digital music is properly reflected in the retail price. Ridiculous statements such as those made by Mark Richardson that “the cost of distribution for downloads is actually higher than for CDs” do nothing to attract any sympathy from those of us who have spent not inconsiderable fortunes in amassing our modest CD and DVD collections. Whilst the BPI are to be commended for their more realistic approach to digital file transfers than their US counterparts, the RIAA, their curious choice of allies in the form of Mark Richardson of Independiente Records is certainly doing them no favours.

Also in the WiredFire interview:

Jamieson went on to criticise iTunes for their use of non interoperable DRM, calling on Apple to open up its software in order that it is compatible with other players. "We would advocate that Apple opts for interoperability."

Technorati tags: AllofMP3, AllofMP3.com, BPI, RIAA, RIAA,  iTunes