The Dalek Relaxation Tape (by Peter Serafinowicz)

By Xeni Jardin at 5:36 pm Monday, Apr 2 • Comments • Share

[Video Link] Created by Peter Serafinowicz.

BBC News mashup finds parallel universe between lines

By Rob Beschizza at 5:37 pm Wednesday, Feb 22 • Comments • Share

Cassetteboy vs. The News: "There's been a shocked response around the world to video footage appearing to show U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urinating on Boris Johnson." [YouTube via Metafilter]

Laurie Penny talks #OWS with a Goldman-Sachs mouthpiece, totally crushes it

By Cory Doctorow at 3:00 am Monday, Nov 21 • Comments • Share

In this clip from BBC Newsnight, Boing Boing pal Laurie Penny (who's in NYC covering the Occupy demonstrations) takes on a former Goldman-Sachs partner who tries to concern-troll the #OWS movement, saying that they're flacid, decentralized, and have the wrong target, because the problem isn't banks, it's those damned liberal governments who incurred huge debts with their deuced social spending. Laurie wipes up the floor with the bloated plutocrat, without breaking a sweat.

Goldman Sachs view on crooked banker protests (17Nov11) (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

Secret documents reveal the flimsy case for Ofcom to give into BBC's public TV DRM demands

By Cory Doctorow at 5:03 am Monday, Nov 14 • Comments • Share

The Guardian just published an investigative piece I've been working on since the summer: "How the BBC's HD DRM plot was kept secret … and why." It contains the previously secret text of a memo that the BBC sent to the UK telecoms regulator, Ofcom, explaining why they wanted to put DRM on publicly funded broadcasts.

The British public overwhelmingly rejected this approach, as did archivists, tech companies, activists, scholars, disabled rights groups and others. But Ofcom granted permission anyway, saying that the BBC's secret memo made a compelling case for DRM being in the public interest. Both Ofcom and the BBC refused to disclose what the BBC's arguments had been, declining both press queries and Freedom of Information requests.

Essentially, the BBC and Ofcom were saying that DRM was in the public interest, but it wasn't in the public interest for the public to know why. I acquired a copy of the secret text and, as I think you'll see, it does not contain any sort of compelling evidence in support of DRM. Rather, it makes flimsy and sometimes laughable arguments (for example, the BBC says HBO demands DRM on its programming, but HBO has an exclusive deal with BBC rival Sky, so it won't be licensing new programming to the BBC, with our without DRM). What's more, the BBC's claim that this material was "commercially sensitive" doesn't bear up to scrutiny -- is it really "commercially sensitive" for the BBC to publish the fact that people like to watch movies on TV?

At the end of the day, I'm left with the impression I got the first time I met with Ofcom about this: that Ofcom wanted this and the BBC wanted it, and regardless of the public interest, the evidence, or the law, they'd get it. In my opinion, the secrecy that Ofcom and the BBC deployed here was only there to allow them to say, "Well, it seems difficult to understand why we're doing this, but that's only because we can't tell you about the important, secret stuff."

Here the BBC discusses its plan to accommodate educators, critics and archivists. It plans on establishing a confidential marketplace for more powerful "professional" TV receivers and recorders that can defeat its scrambling system. This bizarre system – creating an entity that would have to manufacture and distribute these devices, after approving the credentials of archivists, critics and scholars – is meant to be kept secret because it makes it clear that it would be easy to defeat the scheme.

So here you have the BBC claiming in one breath that its partners want effective protection from copying, and in the next breath saying that this won't be very effective protection.

Funnily enough, "this will be easy to defeat" is a point that many of the individuals and institutions who formed the majority opposed to this plan made in their statements.

How the BBC's HD DRM plot was kept secret … and why

HOAX: Trader dreams of Euro crash, tells BBC: "Governments don't rule the world, Goldman-Sachs does"

By Cory Doctorow at 9:21 am Thursday, Sep 29 • Comments • Share

Update: Alert readers point that that this gentleman isn't a trader, he's a self-described "attention-seeker"

Update 2: The Yes Men deny responsibility: "If you’d like to see the human face of the human perspective—the perspective of the 99% victimized by our demented and out-of-control financial system—come join the occupation of Wall Street"

In this telling BBC clip, a news presenter is rendered virtually speechless as a stock-trader explains that for traders like him, a Eurozone crash would be a godsend, since someone always makes money in crashes; he then goes on to state that it doesn't matter whether governments intervene in the Euro or not, because "governments don't rule the world, Goldman-Sachs does."

(via Memex)

1968: when Britain's Daily Mirror tried to overthrow Parliament

By Cory Doctorow at 3:29 am Friday, Aug 12 • Comments • Share

Ben sez, "This Adam Curtis documentary (he posted the rough cut of his new one) is pretty incredible. It features the story of the head of the Daily Mirror in 1968, attempting to organize a coup of the British Parliament, partially by spreading financial panic rumors through his newspaper. He is abetted by the head of the Bank of England, and his psychic wife who convinces him that he has super powers.

Many in the Labour Party have believed ever since that Cecil King was conspiring with members of MI5 to destroy the democratically elected government, but there appears to be no hard evidence for this.

The truth is that King was in league with more familiar "rogue elements" - senior City of London bankers, including the Governor of the Bank of England, who wanted to force the Labour government to slash the financial deficit. But the Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, was refusing to bow to their demands.

At the same time as this was happening, many of the journalists in Fleet Street were filled with a terrible doom about the future of newspapers. As a result the BBC got excited and went and made all sorts of films about newspapers - recording Fleet Street before it died. Some of the material they filmed is just wonderful - it is full of both touching and silly moments of an old world of journalism.

EVERY DAY IS LIKE SUNDAY (Thanks, Ben!)