Last month, I attended the Open Web Vancouver conference. Without a doubt, I thought the most interesting talk at the whole conference was Rick Falkvinge's keynote session about the Swedish Pirate Party.

You may have heard of the Pirate Party. Founded in 2006, the popular image is that of an anarchist movement that grew out of the sense of entitlement of media pirates on the internet. It is said that these people want to abolish modern copyright for purely selfish reasons. Unfortunately this is not just a tired old stereotype, but completely wrong.

Thankfully, Rick's entire session is available online. In one hour, he calmly and intelligently explains his vision. He shows that the Pirate Party's agenda is about civil liberties, and part of a discussion that has been going on for centuries. By tracing back the history of copyright, he shows a clear pattern: when new technology threatens established powers and businesses, those powers try to use legislation to protect themselves and maintain control. It started with the printing press, and continues today with the internet and file sharing technologies. He shows how we've already allowed the establishment to create legislation that tries to control its true potential, and how we need a political countermovement that represents all the interests of a free, digitally liberated society.

You can watch the entire presentation below. The slides with illustrations and stats are available as well.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Lately the debate over fonts on the web has flared up again, and I find myself reading the same arguments over and over again. In particular, a lot of people seem convinced that widespread font embedding on the web would kill font foundries instantly. As a child of the internets, I respectfully disagree.

Think about it: we find ourselves in a world where, somehow, web designers are still making a living. They produce a product which consists entirely of unencrypted HTML, CSS and images, made available via a simple HTTP request. Ripping and hotlinking of design is frowned upon, and mostly limited to amateur users who use free services like Blogger and MySpace. Plus, we all know that often pirates are the kind of people who would not pay if the ripped material was not available for free, so there is very little actual revenue being lost here.

In fact, if we look at the actual professionals, we find that generally they treat each other's work with the utmost respect, and actively inform their colleagues of blatant abuse and stealing. We have a perfect example of a thriving industry which revolves around free distribution of copyrighted-but-DRM-free assets and which polices itself.

We're not that far from having something similar for fonts. Part of the problem is that the foundries are trying to protect their fonts by bringing out the lawyers. But so far, they've only managed to inconvenience and annoy their legitimate customers, for example with embedding restrictions on PDFs for screen vs print.

As you may know, I'm a sci-fi nerd, hence I've been pretty excited about the reimagined Battlestar Galactica series coming to a close. So, me and my fellow connoisseur of the awesome, Greg, put together a quick survey on Google Docs to get predictions about the end of the show. The internets filled it in.

The Battlestar nerdery was all in good fun, but more interestingly, I also asked a question about how people watch the show: via live broadcast, recorded or downloaded? Legally or illegally? Depending on your point of view, these results are either entirely obvious, or quite surprising. So far, 313 people filled in the survey, which was advertised only through blogs and Twitter for two days:

Given the circumstances, the people who answered this fit two descriptions. One, they are fan enough to actually fill out a survey about a show on TV. Two, they read blogs, talk on Twitter, hang out in forums, i.e. they know and use the web intimately. So, SciFi channel SyFy, NBC Universal, all big name media: do you see that big green chunk of people who download your shows illegally? These are merely potential customers that you haven't reached yet.

In case you missed it, digg has a user revolt on their hands. After a story containing a key to crack HD-DVD encryption was removed, angry users started reposting it more and more, to the point where it overwhelms all normal stories on the site.

Personally, I think this is fascinating to see in action and I've never seen anything quite like it, at least not on this scale. An interesting quote that was thrown around was that "You can't take something off the Internet. It's like taking pee out of a swimming pool."

Obviously digg has little legal choice in the matter, but I can't help but sympathise with the disgruntled mob. As someone who's moved to another continent, I experience every day the walls brought up by DRM, both online and offline.

For example, I can't play any Canadian DVDs on my Belgian laptop, and I can't lend my own DVDs to friends or colleagues. Similarly, my Belgian credit card only grants me access to the Belgian iTunes Music store, so I can't buy TV shows that are shown locally.

It's pretty obvious that DRM is a bad measure against piracy, but still a great way to squeeze money out of unsuspecting consumers and inconvenience them at the same time. So I'll just be sitting here, enjoying how this plays out, rooting for the right team :).