• state databases of our information are growing, yet our access to public information is being eroded,
• copyright is becoming more restrictive, making a criminal out of a bedroom DJ who creates a mashup of old songs,
• the songs, films, phones and hardware we buy are so crippled with copy protection and DRM that we sometimes can’t even use the damn things legally.

None of this is necessarily the government’s fault. In the absence of their own technical knowledge, legislators regularly turn to Big Business for advice. Unfortunately, some of Big Business (not all) profits by keeping these very restrictions in place. The customer, the end user, the public misses out.

The Open Rights Group was set up as the voice of the other side of the debate. They don’t want anarchy and piracy on the open internet seas; just a chance to protect civil liberties wherever they are threatened by the poor implementation and regulation of digital technology.

Of course, ORG is a volunteer organisation and needs funds. As they’re on a big recruitment drive, they’ve asked supporters to help spread the word: so, without wishing to be too brazen, I do recommend you check them out if you’re not familiar with them, and maybe consider whether you could support the consumer side of an often under-reported and one-sided debate.

But my modest (615 CD, according to iTunes) collection pales into insignificance compared to this astonishing 3,000,000-strong record collection being sold on eBay. Reserve price: $3 million. Beyond my means – until, that is, eBay generously decided to offer $10 cashback.

Plus, I recommend someecards.com for heart-warming St. V’s D schmaltz:

At the moment I’m just taking the entire RSS feed, which will obviously become unmanageable once the userbase grows. No indication yet of whether there’ll be any easy way to navigate pictures in future (there isn’t yet), but for now it’s populating my /Inspiration folder magnificently.

It’s not that I’m opting out of Christmas. I’m just doing it my own way. A little selfish, yes, but really all I want to do this year is relax, walk around North London on Christmas morning, and spend some time in a quiet office working on interesting ‘big picture’ stuff (thus saving myself time off for when it’s hectic and stressful).

I also plan to catch up on my blogging and guitar playing, two things I’ve rather neglected this year. Still haven’t recorded Letter From Don Quixote To Dulcinea Del Toboso, still haven’t posted my thoughts on the new BBC site (in short, a good effort given the undoubted politics of that organisation). All in good time.

Some stocking filler links:

• Assessing your team’s UX skills
• The nine most badass Bible verses
• Portal: a feminist subversion of the first-person shooter genre? (see previous post)
• 50 Cent: Filesharing doesn’t hurt artists (who knew he had a brain?)
• How much punishment can a robotic dinosaur take?

• How To Be Ugly – the rise of New Brutalism in design
• Google v Yahoo homepages over the last ten years
• Why percentages don’t add up – which is scarier: a medical procedure with a 95% survival rate, or one that kills 1 in 20 people?
• Spam One-Liners – “experiments in hand lettering… an ongoing series based on spam subject lines in my mailbox” (see below)
• The Red Rings Of Death t-shirt – Xbox 360s as HAL

• Incomprehensible intersections – road design gone horribly wrong. I know the Americans denigrate the fine British roundabout, but at least we don’t often end up with monstrosities of this scale.
• Airport – a neat little Flash animation made from AIGA’s public domain transport symbols
• Thames Valley Police have set their computers to say “D’oh!” when they encounter an uninsured driver.