... Except that nobody get their legs broken

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/mar/02/adblocking-protection-racket-john-whittingdale

What utter tripe from the Culture Secretary (who apparently believes that free is just another term for socialist).

Adblocking does threaten the business model of online newspapers and probably harms music and dvd sales. However, a large majority of the content available on the internet is provided by unpaid volunteers doing it for the fun of it or by organisations that have more sensible business models than simply beaming visuals at your unwilling eyeballs.

Many of the organisations that do make heavy use of advertising have slightly dubious claims to the propriety of their output anyway. Why should Youtube profit from copyrighted content that has been uploaded by a user? Similarly by what right (except for 'deal with the devil' terms and conditions) does Facebook harvest user details for personalised advertising hints?

More innovative internet entities go in one of two directions. The first is to keep it specialised, loyal and thus supported. Sites like Wikipedia and Board Game Geek sustain inherently useful communities that can be replied upon to put in a couple of quid whenever in a fundraiser comes round. Even freeloaders are likely to share the ethos and interests of the community and will help to create content that keeps the community vibrant and attractive. This approach is unlikely to be attractive to investors and shareholders.

Alternatively the more confident commercial operations can set up subscription models in the fashion of the Economist and Murdoch's evil (but savvy) empire. You don't have to sign up. The BBC will happily provide you with news for free. However, if you do you get access in a convenient way for an arranged fee.

John Whittingdale should read his job title and encourage such canny emergent strategies for internet management. Sticking his thumb in the dyke and griping about adblockers won't change things unless he is willing to back it up with tough legislation.

Checks and balances

So Snowden's revelations continue to show what the American intelligence services are getting up to in their strenuous efforts to protect us from all those pesky terrorists.

I especially like the NSA's response to the Guardian in response to the latest information about XKeyscore, a program that allows them to browse huge databases of online activity. Reassuringly the NSA stated:

"Allegations of widespread, unchecked analyst access to NSA collection data are simply not true. Access to XKeyscore, as well as all of NSA's analytic tools, is limited to only those personnel who require access for their assigned tasks … In addition, there are multiple technical, manual and supervisory checks and balances within the system to prevent deliberate misuse from occurring."

The first and second sentences may well be true, although in the wake of the Wikileaks scandal and Snowden's inconvenient honesty the Americans should perhaps be learning that even those they trust with their powerful gadgets and technological toys may have their own thoughts and agendas.

However, the last claim really made me seethe and froth at the mouth. So they had checks and balances in the system that they didn't even reveal to the people that they supposedly protect and serve? We have our own set of checks and balances in the form of representative democracy. Covert operations that breach rights to privacy are clear attempts to circumvent such democratic responsibility and the perpetrators shouldn't try to tell us that they know better when they are caught out.

Insomnia and social networking.

Can't sleep. The cup of black tea before bed on top of the coffee and jelly babies earlier may have been a bad idea as my caffeine and sugar levels are now haywire. Hopefully I'm not keeping the whole house up with my typing.

Anyway, sleeplessness means I have time to type out some of my thoughts on 'The Social Network', which I recently got out of the wonderful Blandford Forum library for the princely sum of 50p. I had an inkling it was going to be a good film before I started watching it. While I hadn't seen any reviews, the general conversational buzz I've heard about it has all been positive. This was fairly extraordinary considering that at first glance it has the dullest premise in the world - students invent Facebook and get rich. However, they managed to make it infinitely more engaging than watching a group of Harvard entrepeneurs sit around coding and eating pizza in their free time.

The main strength of the film was the characterisation. From the first scene where Mark Zuckerberg is dumped by his girlfriend and retaliates by hacking the entire Harvard computer network, you are gripped by the characters and really care about what happens to them. Zuckerberg's arrogance and single mindedness make him obnoxious but simultaneously and intersting character to watch as you want to see what he does next. The structure of the movie helps with this process of identification and audience attention grabbing. You know from the beginning that Zuckerberg ends up founding Facebook and being sued by both his best friend and the Winklevoss. This helps sustain the tension at the beginning of the film as you want to know how his childish initial actions lead to these monumental outcomes.

Jesse Eisenberg puts in a stellar performance as Zuckerberg and Andrew Garfield is equally good as the unfortunate Eduardo. The Winklevoss brothers add some much needed comedy to a film that could have been a bit dry and business-minded-y. Their upper-class hatred of the much smarter Zuckenberg becomes increasingly obvious as the film goes on. Their pristine mask slips further and further into violence and incomprehension as they become convinced that Zuckenburg has stolen their idea and is snubbing them deliberately. Hilariously their clone-like physical similarities are compounded when they start using the first-person singular to describe themselves ("We can [beat him up] ourselves. I'm 6'5, 220 and there's two of me" made me chortle a lot). Justin Timberlake is better than I thought he'd be as the cool Napster founder who intrigues against Eduardo.

All in all a very good film with an extremely satisfying if slightly over emphasised ending. Zuckerberg is left mechanically refreshing his Facebook page to see if the girlfriend from the beginning of the film has accepted his friend request. This wraps up the theme that has been running through the movie, that, while he is a genius who achieves great things he is constantly let down in social relationships by his naked ambition and clear disdain for others less able than himself. The indications that underneath it all he really wants to be liked turn him into a much more likable character than he originally appears to be. A minor character sums it up perfectly by telling him that he isn't an asshole but he's trying damn hard to act like one.

Factual accuracy is highly questionable but as a morality tale for the driven and ambitious it works exceedingly well. If I had one problem with it it would be something that was mentioned in a Rotten Tomatoes review. Like a Facebook relationship the film is ultimately shallow and vacuous at everything above the personal level. Zuckerberg takes a few choice digs at his prosecutors but these are based mainly on the weakness of their claim that he has stolen their idea. There is no broader critique of the way a couple of rich kids can use their family lawyers to extort money on false grounds from a successful entrepeneur. The conflicts in the film are all scaled down to the personal level and there is little consideration of what this story can tell us about the vagaries of copyright law or the ability of vested interests in capitalist society to appropriate the work of others. However, it would have been very difficult for the film to keep its abundant charm had it ventured into these tricky intellectual concerns about technology and society.

My take on the Wiki Leaks controversy

I've been poring my grubby little fingers over the Wiki leaks cables just like all the other misanthropes on the Internet. I must admit I'm not too fussed about the political implications that are getting the correspondents with the Times letters page hot under the collar. The gentlemen states have been reading each other's mail since at least the Second World War and I doubt that global civilization is going to collapse because a 14 year old from Nigeria can read what the diplomats of the world's most powerful (or at least aggressively obnoxious) nation have to say.

The real gems are the snarky little wise cracks and in jokes of these officials. Most of the political content is dull and familiar. The US distrusts Russia? Israel thinks Hamas is a threat? Khazakstani anti-corruption drive was politically motivated and targeted those out of favour with the government? No shit.

What I enjoy is finding out that American diplomats are just as obsessed with gangster movies as the rest of the nation. It made my week to read a cable deciding whether President Aliyev of Azerbaijan is a Michael or a Sonny Corleone. I had not known until that moment that there was an academic paper (which sadly I can't find anywhere on the web) distinguishing these two fictional characters as paradigms of different types of political leadership.

Similarly it gives me a strangely voyeuristic thrill to read a blow by blow account of the visit to a night club of some central Asian (post-communist) apparatchiks. In what world could the information that there were 50 people on the dance floor that night or that the officials brought their middle aged wives with them be of political significance?

If the agents of the usually deathly serious government of the United States have the same eccentricities and peccadillos as the rest of us it gives me a little more hope for the future of mankind. How can you fear a state that collects information in such a gimmicky and human way. Especially one that can be made to blush in such a public manner by the creepy Assange and his mildly sociopathic, hacker friends.

Ps - If you want a more measured and complex analysis you should read this article by Bruce Sterling. He's a bit too cyberpunk to be surprised by what has happened and takes a very jaded view but also makes some interesting points. http://www.webstock.org.nz/blog/2010/the-blast-shack/