Wilson Vs Boyle

Professor David Wilson writes about why he thinks Susan Boyle should pull out of the final of Britain's Got Talent.

Prof Wilson should shut his mouth, it's deeply unprofessional for him to be offering his self-declared "expert" opinion on a subject he is not familiar with (and he's clearly not familiar with her given that she gave the exact same "childish wiggle" when she came on for her first audition), in public. And what's more, Britain's Got Talent is a talent contest, not a social experiment as he seemingly interprets Big Brother to be.

Wilson's suggestion that she should pull out is actually the absolute worst advice he could possibly give her - completely unconstructive - if the "fragility" stories are true they would only make matters worse, and if she followed that advice she would regret it for the rest of her life.

It's high time the media stopped paying lip service to this quack.

Illegal file-sharing

BBC: "Seven million use illegal files."

The Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property (SABIP) warned it may be hard to change attitudes.

The government says work must be done internationally to tackle the problem.

Intellectual Property Minister David Lammy said the report put into context the impact illegal downloads had on copyright industries and the UK economy as a whole.

But he added: "This is not an issue confined by national boundaries and I am sure that other [EU] member states and their copyright industries will find this report of use in the development of policy."

My feeling is that people in the UK feel a sense of entitlement to entertainment content because they already pay a television licence fee and most of the British entertainment industry is also heavily subsidised by the taxpayer.

If the government is serious about changing attitudes so the copyright holder is respected it must scrap the licence fee and allow the entertainment industry to flourish in the free market where the general public get to decide what they want to see (and therefore what gets made) rather than some unelected quango (aka Mark Thompson).

Dancing in the Gutters

Via JibJab I assembled this video on Saturday and tweeted it at Rich Johnston, writer of "Lying in the Gutters", the premier rumour column for the comic book industry.

By Sunday he'd retweeted it, leading to Heidi McDonald highlighting it on The Beat (and then bumping it the next day so everyone got a chance to see it), Joe Quesada boasting of his new physique, and Blog@Newsarama declaring this as an example of JibJab used "for evil" and "at this point, we probably deserve it".

And I presume that Leah Moore did not appreciate seeing her father dancing around like a stripper (sorry Leah, it never crossed my mind).

The all-star cast of recent editions of "Lying in the Gutters": Alan Moore, Joe Quesada, Rich Johnston, Dan Didio and Paterson Joseph, take it away!

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