Few things annoy me as much as media corporations try to strangle culture in any possible way. I thought this behaviour would be limited to the large, multi-national corporations, so color me surprised when I tried out SVT Play, the on-demand streaming service, the other day. Now mind you, SVT is public service TV, funded by the taxpayers. And believe it or not these incredible weasels have the nerve to put an expiration date on the material available on their site! Are you freakin' kidding me???
Sure I could understand this with movies or shows that have been bought with certain licensing conditions, but the thing is SVT is doing the exact same with the material they produce themselves.
As a public service broadcaster SVT should be forced to release all material they create into the public domain. That's only fair as the public has paid for it.
(Filed under "...and you still wonder why people pirate?").
There is a debate in Swedish media these days on whether to ban the use of burqa in school, for both teachers and pupils. The latter one seems to be the most infected.
Those opposing the ban point out that it violates the personal integrity of the pupils. Fair enough, I'm all for personal integrity as you may know. However what I want to know is, if anyone can hide their face at school, how are teachers expected to know who was hiding behind the veil on last weeks math exam? Was it Lisa, who belongs in this class or perhaps her older math-genious sister Vera?
I was driving along E18 outside Stockholm today at around 9:30 am, on my way to a customer meeting, when a complete maniac in a dark blue Volvo V70 2.5T almost hit me doing a poorly executed maneuver in which he squeezed in between myself, in the right lane, and another car driving in the left lane, only to continue his journey of insanity. The speed limit on this part of the road is 70 km/h and this complete moron was doing at least 110-120. Enough to lose your drivers licence and get sentenced to jail.
Why this insane behaviour, you might ask? Easy. The licence plates were blue and had the license number BT002B. In case you don't know, that spells diplomatic immunity. This raving lunartic could do whatever he want, speeding, causing accidents, killing innocent people, and there will be no legal reprecussions against him.
Now I do understand the reason for diplomatic immunity, don't get me wrong. In some countries a diplomat could risk all kinds of nasty stuff if he or she weren't immune to prosecution. However I do have a problem with this beeing a carte blanche for people like the driver of this Volvo to do whatever they want without there being any consequences.
How about any legal matters would be transfered to the homecountry of the diplomat, and he or she would be subject to his or her country's laws - by default? Sure the system opens up for that possibility, but how often do you actually see it being used?
A five year old boy was wrongly accused of stealing a bag of crisps at a Lidl store in Dublin, and won 7,500 Euros in damages. Fair enough, being wrongly accused of a crime can be pretty traumatic, and at that age you're pretty sensitive. Apparently he's also suffering from stress and inconvenience. All good reason to award damages.
What amazes me though is that these damages weren't awarded due to any of that, they were awarded for "defamation of character". Apparently this little kid had "suffered injury to his reputation". Say what? What reputation can this kid possibly have at the age of 5? Is he frowned upon by the other kids in kindergarten? Unable to get a job? Estranged by his neighbors?
The computer game Starcraft 2 was released today, and color me surprised when I noticed Blizzard is actually selling the downloadable version of the game for 59.99 Euros (mind you there are virtually no costs involved with this kind of distribution!) on their website, whereas you can get pick up the dvd's from any number of game stores considerably cheaper than that:
Play.com sells it for 48.00 Euros.
Amazon.com sells it for 59.99 Dollars, also around 48.00 Euros.
Most computer stores in Sweden sell it for around 42.00 Euros.
Please tell me that the 59.99 Euro pricetag for downloading this game from battle.net was a mistake that has been corrected by Blizzard now. If anything it should be a way below 40 Euros.
Speaking of celebrities, or rather semi-celebrities, the former boyfriend of Heidi Montag, Spencer Pratt showed up smiling to the paparazzi wearing no less than two watches. What's up with that? Is it some strange way to keep track of two different timezones? Perhaps the watch on his left wrist shows Pacific Standard Time and the one on his right wrist shows Eastern Standard Time?
If so, here's a newsflash for you, Spencer, there are watches out there that will show two timezones. That way you can keep track of your time without looking absolutely clueless:
It appears mold might have been a contributing factor to the death of actress Brittany Murphy and her husband Simon Monjack. Unfortunately mold is a common occurrence in a lot of poorly constructed houses, but I'm surprised that a $7.25 million Hollywood Hills mansion would be so infested by it that it killed its occupants!
Let this be a warning to the rich and famous: Do spend some of your fortune on proper building maintenance. It could be the best investment of your life.
Well I guess it's pretty obvious now why Swedish politicians are so reluctant to change today's destructive copyright legislation. The Christian Democratic party, Kristdemokraterna, for instance, are abusing the copyright legislation by registering catchphrases and slogans such as "Verklighetens folk", "the real people".
Remind me again, why the f*ck should anybody at all be able to copyright a phrase, a sentence, a collection of words that are used in everyday speech?
Clearly a revision of the copyright legislation is desperately needed. Unfortunately we can't rely on the traditional political parties to take any action as they're too busy taking advantage of it.
"There's no room for Internet censorship in a democracy. The EU should impose Internet censorship."
In other words, the EU should not be considered a democracy. This might not be what Folkpartiet politician Cecilia Wikström meant to say, but it's the message she's communicating in this letter, where she promotes Internet censorship as a means of fighting child pornography despite of her own reasoning that censorship will have little or no effect. That's like saying "we know banning action films from TV won't stop the violence, but we still want to do it". Why?
What's with these Folkpartiet Cecilias who are hellbent on Internet censorship without being able to present any credible argument that it is in fact a good idea? Stop hiding behind the ridiculous "think about the children" tactics and just come out and tell us who's paying you to stick to a stance that you don't even believe in.
The alternatives to Internet censorship have been discussed a million times before, so I won't go into details, but keywords are due process, shutting down and prosecute the offenders if they're found guilty. That's the way of a democracy.
There is a debate in Swedish media these days on whether to ban the use of burqa in school, for both teachers and pupils. The latter one seems to be the most infected.
A five year old boy was wrongly accused of stealing a bag of crisps at a Lidl store in Dublin, and won 7,500 Euros in damages. Fair enough, being wrongly accused of a crime can be pretty traumatic, and at that age you're pretty sensitive. Apparently he's also suffering from stress and inconvenience. All good reason to award damages. 
It appears mold might have been a contributing factor to the death of actress Brittany Murphy and her husband Simon Monjack. Unfortunately mold is a common occurrence in a lot of poorly constructed houses, but I'm surprised that a $7.25 million Hollywood Hills mansion would be so infested by it that it killed its occupants!
