Under the threat of losing their benefits, which amount to a paltry £53/week, young people in the UK are being bullied into working for no pay for supermarkets and budget stores. The stupidity of this boggles my mind.

Not only are these young people being given a deeply negative working experience but the roles they are filling could (and should) be paid positions. The UK has instituted a low-wage top-up scheme called Working Tax Credit largely to make these marginal jobs viable and now they are forcing people to work there for nothing.

The advertised carrot, with the threat of penury being the unadvertised one, is the chance of an interview at the end of eight weeks unpaid work, and several stores have multiple unemployed young folks competing to be the best floor sweeper in order to win the job at the end of this farrago.

The young woman in the picture above has recently received a BSc in geology and the best we can offer her is unpaid work in a Poundland store. What message are we sending out to our young people with this kind of treatment?

Stefanie Gordon took a striking picture of Space Shuttle Endeavour's recent launch from an aeroplane window. When the plane landed she uploaded the image to Twitpic, tweeted it and (as far as she was concerned) that was that. It's a great image and several news organisations started to use the image to illustrate their coverage of Endeavour's last outing.

This has lead to a secondary issue, Gordon owns the copyright in the image and many of the organisations using didn't license it they just downloaded it and published anyway. Gordon could have made a decent pile of coin for the image and there's some tub-thumping going on about how it's disgusting that she didn't.

The key point is evidently Gordon doesn't care about the money. She took the image, shared it and then went on with living her life. If she were a professional photographer no doubt she would have contacted an agency immediately and started trying to wring as much commercial advantage as possible from this, but she's not and it seems she doesn't want to be.

This is where folks like Bob Sullivan of MSNBC get a bit uncomfortable. Not everyone wants to be a professional photographer. Not everyone wants to go through the hassle of licensing everything they snap. That said it would not be hard to contact Gordon and offer her payment should they wish to.

Not everything that is created is about money and nor should it have to be.

The people being assaulted by the armed and armoured police are protesting about the financial crisis in Spain and elsewhere and what it will mean for Catalan society to deal with the consequences of the Euro collapse. Evidently a tent city had just been forcibly dismantled and the people were sitting to prevent municipal cleaning trucks leaving Plaza de Cataluna.

The police behaviour shown here is disgusting to me. It is not just the fact that peaceful people are being attacked. The most disturbing thing to me is that the malice is being doled out by the police in such a calculated manner. This looks to me like incitement to riot and I wonder to what extent this is a conscious tactic?

Young people in Europe are often derided for not being interested in politics. Solutions like allowing voting by SMS are the kind of thing that gets touted as potential solutions. You know 'cause kids are down with their phones like.

These young people are very engaged with politics though, but not in the manner of previous generations who just sat back and took the crap they were fed. These people are angry enough to sleep on the street to try to find a voice in a crucial time for their country and they are being confronted with a stark metaphor for what their country thinks of their opinions.

It warms the remaining cockles of my cynical jaded heart to read stories like this. A US cafe chain Panera Bread has switched to a donations-only model and it's working well.

I'm sure it helps that excess funds go towards a community kitchen project but it seems that given the choice most people will opt for the choice that benefits everyone.

Hard on the heels of the Free Software Foundation's Day Against DRM earlier this month, the advocacy organization last week launched a new campaign targeting the Nintendo 3DS.

"The Nintendo 3DS comes with Terms of Service (TOS) that should not be accepted," wrote the group's campaign manager, Joshua Gay, in a recent blog post. "In fact, the TOS are so unbelievable that we have included a more detailed summary of them on a separate page."

Top of the FSF's list of complaints, for example, is that the device's TOS "makes a threat that Nintendo will brick your device if you use your 3DS in a way that they do not approve," Gay explained.

Specifically, wording in the document states that Nintendo "may update or change the Nintendo 3DS System or the Nintendo 3DS Service in whole or in part, without notice to you," he wrote.

Following such an update, "any existing or future unauthorized technical modification of the hardware or software of your Nintendo 3DS System, or the use of an unauthorized device in connection with your system, will render the system permanently unplayable," he explained, quoting Nintendo's wording.

Personal Data Recorded

The Nintendo 3DS also keeps track of the games users play along with any data or information created while using the device, the FSF charges, including personal data such as any name, address or other information they enter as well as "age, gender, geographic area, game play data, online status, Nintendo 3DS System serial number and device ID, device certificate information, cookies, Friend Codes, wireless access point information, Internet Protocol ('IP') address, and Media Access Control ('MAC') address," the group explained, quoting the Nintendo 3DS System Privacy Policy.

Such practices are particularly worrisome when children use the devices, the FSF notes.

Nintendo also collects "User Content," the group adds, "which they define as all 'comments, messages, images, photos, movies, information, data and other content'," it explains, quoting the Nintendo 3DS End User License Agreement.

Nintendo then goes on to assert that users "grant to Nintendo a worldwide, royalty-free, irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive and fully sublicensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display your User Content in whole or in part and to incorporate your User Content in other works, in any form, media or technology now known or later developed, including for promotional or marketing purposes," the FSF points out.

An 'Absurd' Claim

That, indeed, is another point of serious contention for the FSF.

"Please note just how absurd this claim is when you consider something like the photos taken with the 3DS camera," the FSF explains. "Can you imagine Canon or Nikon claiming the right to use pictures taken by you with one of their cameras? Can you then imagine them calling you a criminal for modifying the software on the camera to keep them away from your pictures?"

In short, "this combination of legal and technological restrictions make the Nintendo 3DS dubious, devious, and defective," the FSF charges.

A Campaign of 'Bricks'

The group actually called and spoke to Nintendo, Gay told me, and "they confirmed that in fact, they could brick a device with a firmware update.

"Further, they stated that they are unsure that they could repair a device to make it so that it could run again," he added. "And, that if they did brick a device, they would void the warranty; therefore the person would have to pay for the attempt to service and repair the device -- e.g., unbrick it -- which they are not sure would work anyhow."

The Free Software Foundation encourages users to send cardboard "bricks" to Nintendo as a protest. You can do that either independently or through the FSF site. As of Friday, about 70 bricks had been sent to far.

Indeed, restrictions like these are all too common in the software many of us use every day. Besides rejecting agreements like these, business and individual users alike are much better off using open source software.

This is astounding. I wonder on what basis Nintendo can claim to be selling the 3DS when they retain both control of the device (in terms of being able to brick it whenever they want) and ownership of anything you create using the device.

The article points out the dangers of this kind of contract for a device aimed at children. I don't want images that my kids might have taken of their friends used in an advertising campaign, but that would be allowed under the Nintendo terms of service (TOS).

The TOS also include the right to change the TOS (presumably to claim rights over your kidneys) without any notification.

So Nintendo want you to buy a device that they will tell you how you can use or they will brick it (render it useless). They will monitor what peripherals you use and brick the phone if you use unauthorised ones. They will retain ownership of any images taken with the camera and indeed anything made with the device. They will track your location too.

Given how well Sony have protected its network members data. I would be very worried about owning/renting/licensing a 3DS indeed.

It seems really unfair to make lawyers think, but it seems that's what the world of digital media is doing. Camelot Distribution Group filed a shakedown lawsuit against 5,865 alleged dowloaders only to have their suit copied by Incentive Capital who claim they own the rights to Nude Nuns With Big Guns.

The suit is almost identical and is filed against the same alleged downloaders. It's like Inception is being remade as a courtroom farce. I do hope the two plaintifs end up suing each-other.