Tag Archives: Control

The carrot and the schtick?

The current debate on file-sharing in Sweden presents two strands of corporatist state intervention which go in two different ways. One proposes allowing totally free file-sharing, while the other implements a repressive policing system against uploaders/seeders. The two proposals – albeit similarly interventionist – clash with each other, appearing entirely incompatible. Continue reading

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MySpace censors its own users

MySpace censors the internal messaging service of its own users. When sending messages through the network’s own mail service, certain words are automatically deleted. This is but one example of how the arbitrary impositions of corporate actors in fact comes with grave political potentials, only held back by lines ultimately drawn by governmental laws and regulations — lines that are often arbitrary or contested in themselves. Continue reading

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Supervision without the promised security

The harsh legal stronghold besieging our digital commons, that leading European politicians are currently arguing for, is not only putting the personal integrity of citizens at risk – it is also symptomatic for how allegedly democratic measures can in effect be jeopardizing democracy. What is worse, it is a strategy which cannot keep what it promises, thus amounting to hypocrisy. Continue reading

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The video iPod: Apple restrains the consumer choice of content

The new video iPod is not only a lauded status symbol, but also the ultimate symbol for how there in recent years has been a reformation in the multinational media conglomerations’ strategy for getting consumers to exclusively download conventional content. With the new iPod, hardware controls the selection of media content in subtle ways. Continue reading

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