Tech journalism : Worst than the gossip pages

Very little journalism is good journalism. In fact, calling the majority of reports journalism is an insult to proper journalism. The vast majority of journalism is shoddy, poorly researched, click-bait driver regurgitated drivel often with a biased agenda one way or the other. This is true for most media, but the internet surely takes the cake here and within this realm lives the “tech journalist”.  On par with the gossip column, but often mush more incompetent with regards to the subject.

Ow, how I hate tech journalism at large. Their lack of any form of vision or insight. The random tangents and hyperbolae they shoot forth for no apparent reason. The oblatory lack or research or citing sources. The obvious extension to the tech and ad-industry that they are.

There are very little mainstream tech article in which either a single miscomprehension nullifies the entire bloody thing or where the one-sidedness is so thick that even the fact sheets should be doubted. The stupidity of the conclusion that are drawn from various sources, often uncredited, without any form of analytical explanation.

Cultural re-appropriation : Why going after individual downloaders is wrong and misguided

This week a film distributor, Dutch film works, in the Netherlands announced that they have a list of IP addresses and will go after individual downloaders first with a warning and after multiple infraction with a “fine” or a court case. These strong arm tactics have been deployed elsewhere in Europe and are admittedly meant as a deterrent.

What is notable here is that these actions have been mostly undertaken by middleman in these industries like distributors not the authors or producers nor television and cinema companies. This is telling because it tells us something about the relation between the audience and the different parties involved in providing film entertainment. There is a very clear reason why a distributor would go after individuals whereas TV stations of creators rarely do so. Also, there is a very good reason why distributors like Dutch film works are in the wrong when they assume that they have a right to do so.

Copyright enforcers and civil disobedience : Why we have a duty to resist.

 

“I don’t even know why I would want to be on a label in a few years, because I don’t think it’s going to work by labels and by distribution systems in the same way. The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it’s not going to happen. I’m fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years, and authorship and intellectual property is in for such a bashing.”

2002 ~ David Bowie

For years around the world, especially in western nations, copyright watchdogs for the content and entertainment industry have predictably pushed and pushed to gain more rights and reduce peoples privacy and disown us of our active cultural environment. In the Netherlands we have BREIN as a shill for the industry and they have again increased their target spectrum, now by having gained the right to use intrusive, possibly fishing software, to find and match uploads.

At this time of writing BREIN claims only to go after “BIG” uploads, whatever the metric for that would be, but it is barely a slippery slope argument if one predicts that this will lead to “smaller” uploaders or even .torrent file downloads in the future. These thugs have been pushing the acceptable boundaries for years now and I do not see them having any reason to stop here.

Tim Kuik ~ Thief*

 

Sites whining about ad-blockers. Cry me a river.

Occasionally I visit the “tech” website tweakers.net. Mostly through links, but sometimes just to see what nonsense the editors and the community are whining about this time. Aptly named, for it is seemingly run by a random collection of crystal-meth addicts, this dutch tech site has been popular in the tech scene in the Netherlands for years. Now sensible people understand that popularity does not equate quality and this certainly is the case with this site. Poor and biased reporting, generally a payed lip-service site to the highest bidder, a North Korean mentality like community and not worthy of the label “news”.

Europe, unplugged

As if there weren’t anymore pressing topics to tackle, the representative in Brussels/Strasbourg have finally made a breakthrough in…. phone charge cable standards.

Yes, indeed! With a timeframe of 4 years, the EU thinks it proper to not only decide on a common standard for charger connectors, but it also thinks it best to enforce this, making it mandatory on… phones. Not tables, laptops or other portable electronic devices, just phones.