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When DRM on ebooks works like a bewitched, terribly broken bookshelf

Personally, I believe that copyright has a reason to exist (1) and that copying and sharing online 24/7 every file you can lay your hands on, “just because I can”, makes it easier to pass things like ACTA and therefore is

The Bunga Bunga dictator? A (stupidly) Windows-only show, sorry

Tonight I wanted to watch on my computer, in streaming thanks to this wonderful worldwide Web that makes us all brothers and that all the Italian Political Parties who care about the future hail as an enabler of democracy and participation, an italian live show called the Bunga Bunga Dictator. Bunga Bunga is.. er, I’ll leave the definition to the Urban Dictionary. The dictator is Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who is… er, you’ve probably heard of him already and if you haven’t, ask the Guardian.

After Umberto Eco, even Franco Debenedetti gets ebooks wrong

In August 2010 Umberto Eco, a great Italian intellectual and novelist wrote something very true about traditional paper books: don’t you dare to hope to get rid of all paper books just because e-books are now available. Unfortunately, Eco gave a really dumb proof for his assertion:

Italian region asks for help to avoid software lock-in... to Microsoft

Today, after the initial surprise caused by knowing that Left party leader and president of the italian region of Puglia, Nichi Vendola, has just signed a Berlusconi-like deal with Microsoft offering an explanation that, alas, doesn’t really explain much, we started to know something about the content of the deal (because the bigger, problem in this whole business, much more of the presence of Microsoft, is lack of transparency).