I saw this ACLU-produced video the other day and had to share it. It is guaranteed to make you giggle uncomfortably, look around the room awkwardly, and squirm in your seat. Promise.

Leave it to Google to add an eerie dimension even the above video didn’t think to include: “We’re tracking your every step…literally.“

Imagine connecting to the internet via your mobile device while you are walking down a city street and the first thing that pops up is an ad for a sale at the store immediately to your left. Oh, man.

Drop your Blackberry; head for the hills.

[Google article via Red Herring]

Facebook users, let this article on FB’s new marketing tool “Beacon” be your beacon of warning.

I bet you didn’t even know this was going on…and that’s the whole point.

[via ars technica]

This isn’t the first time this has happened, and it will not be the last.

Welcome to the internet, New School of Orlando.

Demonbaby has a really damn fantastic little piece about the ongoing “record industry suicide.”

It chronicles the journey many millions of us have made in the wake of digital filesharing technologies: So I can download this stuff for free? Let me try it. Damn, this doesn’t feel right. I should still pay something. What the hell? CD’s still cost damn near $20? Fuck this. *Click*

I also appreciate the passing treatment of copyright law in the essay:

At the top of all this is the rigged, outdated, and unfair structure of current intellectual property laws, all of them in need of massive reform in the wake of the digital era. These laws allow the labels to maintain their stranglehold on music copyrights, and they allow the RIAA to sue the pants off of any file-sharing grandmother they please. Since the labels are owned by giant corporations with a great deal of money, power, and political influence, the RIAA is able to lobby politicians and government agencies to manipulate copyright laws for their benefit. The result is absurdly disproportionate fines, and laws that in some cases make file sharing a heftier charge than armed robbery.

If iPods are outlawed, only outlaws will have iPods.

[via Sivacracy]

For those of you following the Hollywood writer’s strike, check out the “Speechless Without Writers” campaign. Some of the videos are alright…

…but wouldn’t this one have been better served by a song that had no words? And the Susan Sarandon one plays like black and white footage of all the Peanuts’ parents we weren’t supposed to actually see…ever. Unless, of course, all the Peanuts parents looked like despondent housewives.

Just what we need…

…more copyright law.

Jeez.

So…wireless companies are kind of like fascists.

It is important to remember that freedom of expression is not only the ability to freely communicate ideas, but also access those ideas. Ben Scott (in the above video) tackles this issue from a consumer standpoint.

[via Sivacracy]

Interested in digital divide/equity of access issues? It’ll be interesting to track how OLPC’s “Give One, Get One” program will pan out through the end of the year.

Now if we could only export entire technical skill sets, one for one.

Hey there, sd&if readers. I hope you have all recovered from what some might call the biggest drinking day of the year.

As you settle in to enjoy your dinners, here are some thoughts on turkey from a blog over at Achewood:

Turkey sucks the dong. All boring, all crappy drumsticks. Hate that animal. That animal is a crap-face repeater.

Happy Thanksgiving!

This commentary on the meteoric (err, sort of) rise to celebrity of Jade Raymond - producer of Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed, a video game set in the crusades - is really quite amusing.

As you scroll through the article, you might wonder why sd&if would care. Apparently, Ubisoft wants to sue the pants off of the creator of a (fairly graphic) little comic that poked some crude fun at the whole situation.

Regardless, I’d like to thank Scott Jennings at Broken Toys for this quote:

Yeah, whatever. This is the Internet. We break everything.

Just goes to show ya - sometimes freedom of expression can be pretty, sometimes it can be ugly, but sometimes it’s pretty and ugly.