[Originally published in Het Parool; translation by Anonymous, at Enturbulation.org.]
The unexpected effect of the internet is, organizing becomes easy. The costs of gathering information and getting people together have been reduced alarmingly: no printing is required, no shipping, no “snowball” list of phone numbers, no member administration, no desk clerk. Apart from that, internet enables [...]
Critique of Andrew Keen’s The cult of the amateur
Deciding upon the manner of my response to Mr Keen’s book required much, much more time than composing the response itself. It’s truly seductive to be scathing about the The Cult of the Amateur. Making an inventory of the book’s sloppy argumentation, its fallacious reasoning, its myopic [...]
[translation of my column for Het Parool: Kinderporno: niet bestrijden maar verstoppen of February 19, 2008.]
Last year October, Dutch Parliament demanded that the Department of Justice would legally bind ISPs to implement a filter that would block sites containing child pornography. ‘Providers can no longer look the other way; they should be forced to take [...]
by staff writer Karin Pankhurst
Metaverse Messenger, March 21 2006
The sheer amount of casinos and clubs present in Second Life suggest that there is quite some money to be made by owning one. After all, a slot machine typically coughs up less dollars than it swallows, and additionally, popular places get so-called ‘presence money’ from the [...]
On-line friend networks such as Friendster and Friend-of-a-friend have fallen somewhat out of grace. Orkut however is different. It is soaring: less than a month after it was launched (on January 23), Orkut can boast almost 100.000 members and it seems to be discussed everywhere, both on the net and In Real Life.
Basically, it is everybody’s own responsibility to assess how much they want to disclose. Many of these on-line communities or interfaces, however, also affect other people’s privacy. Orkut however takes things a few steps further: it is a real privacy pirate. And it claims the legal right to all your content.
Interview about media freedom and internet censorship on the occasion of the OSCE/FOM internet conference in Amsterdam, June 2003. ‘Censorship on the net does not merely copy censorship of the classic or traditional media: it is more diffuse, less centralised, more wide-spread, and far less tangible than older forms of censorship.’
» Article FOM: ‘Censorship on [...]
New medium, same old problems - plus a few new ones
[Essay written for the Yearbook 2001/2002 of the Freedom of the Media office of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE / FOM).]
The internet is a medium unlike any other. While it embodies aspects of different more old-fashioned media, it not only combines [...]
Carrying water from the desert to the sea
Stockholm, January 26-27, 2001
[Previous installment: Unacceptable truths.] WHEN WE ARRIVE AT COURT for the final day, two women approach us. Zenon shakes hands with one of them; they speak for a short while, Zenon introduces her to me - it is the bailiff who was responsible for the [...]
Unacceptable truths
Stockholm, January 24-25, 2001
[Previous installment: Child games.] THE COURT HAS ADJOURNED for two days. Friday we will resume: that day, pleas are to be held and that’s it. Afterwards, all we can do is wait for the ruling (and pray to Xenu).
McShane’s vehement assertion that no Class IX auditor ever pays for the ‘privilege’ [...]
Child games
Stockholm, January 23, 2001
[Previous installment: Magnusson becomes helpful.] ZENON HAS NEW EVIDENCE and presents it to the court; it is a result of my transcript of McShane’s testimony as posted to the internet. Zenon got an e-mail from somebody [thank you! You know who you are] who claims that the NOTs are also studied [...]