Here’s something you don’t see that often: blog posts of Slovenian, Croatian, Bosnian and Serbian bloggers, gathered around blog aggregator Blogorola, will be assembled and published in the form of a printed magazine. All included bloggers will be able to actively participate in the editing of the 32-page weekly, which will be freely distributed all around Slovenia. Readers will also be able to subscribe to the printed edition and receive it at home.

The authors’ work will be financially compensated, which will probably sound like El Dorado for many of the participating bloggers, who are used to churning pages upon pages for free. This is another proof of the strength of the blogging scene around these parts of Eastern Europe; of course, one cannot be sure that this initiative will last, especially since printed magazines are struggling to survive everywhere in the world. But sometimes going against the grain pays off.

www.blogorola.com

I’m not calling anyone out here, but I hate it when some technology that’s been around for a while is suddenly touted as a new thing in conjunction with the iPhone.

AppleInsider talks about Google’s new feature called My Location, which shows your location on Google Maps by calculating your position based on the mobile base unit you’re currently connected to. It’s a cool feature if GPS is not essential to you, and it could be used as a “poor man’s GPS” on the iPhone, but it’s not new. It’s called Assisted GPS and it’s already incorporated in some GSM phones, for example Nokia N95.

As far as My Location goes, it’s a clever implementation of the same principle. Check out the video presentation below:

Let me get this straight. If you download something that might turn out to be pirated in France, you will lose the right to use the internet. On the other hand, if you drive recklessly, or too fast in France, which might result in someone’s death or serious injury, you get a fine, or even prison time, but you don’t permanently lose the right to drive; e.i. your driving license. I won’t pretend to be an expert on French traffic laws, but I bet that even if you get caught driving a stolen car, you will still keep your right to drive (after you get out of jail, that is).

So why then is the right to use the internet - in my opinion, one of the most basic and most important human rights today - being revoked to people because of piracy? 90% of my income comes from internet. I entertain myself online. I inform myself online. Perhaps I’m not the average Joe now, but trust me, 10 years from now, I will be. Taking someone’s right to use the internet - forever - is like taking their right to ever again drink tap water. It’s stupid, it’s too harsh, it’s insane.

Now, one can always say the oh-so-often used argument: well, if you want to keep your right to use the internet, don’t pirate stuff. Well, it’s not that simple. By that line of reasoning, you can electrocute people for smoking a joint. Or torture them for stealing pennies from a vending machine.

Piracy is not good. But piracy is not synonymous with file sharing. It’s not the same as BitTorrent. It’s different from P2P. You can’t simply forbid all these things on account of piracy. Bad stuff happens in dark alleys, but you cannot forbid people to meet in dark alleys.

I have to admit that the implications of this new deal between the French government and ISPs aren’t completely clear yet. A person caught pirating will get their account terminated by the ISP; but will they have the right to sign up again through another ISP? Or will the government and ISPs keep some kind of black list and make sure you never use the internet again?

Unfortunately, these are the least of the French internet users’ worries. The issues go far deeper. What about users who don’t know they’re downloading pirated material? What about hackers breaking into WLANs and pirating stuff just to get accounts terminated? Huge companies like Google and Universal can’t agree on what is pirated, how to stop it, how to monitor it, but sure, the little guy has to know all this or else his internet pipe gets cut off. Great idea.

The internet is becoming a place I like less and less each day. William Gibson, in his Sprawl Trilogy, envisioned a sort of an underground internet; a secret network behind a huge wall, not connected to the regular matrix. I hope we don’t have to resort to that in the end.