Midnight News 25th February 2008

Phorm - Why O Why?

Boys and girls what will Virgin Media, BT and Talk Talk bring you for this coming easter season and it will not be an easter egg.
There is a good chance that Phorm will be added to your net service but what is Phorm some of you's might be asking?.
Phorm is a technology company in partnership with the above ISP's to help deliver a safe browsing advertising experience when we the users use the net to browse a page.

By using both Webwise and Open Internet Exchange (OIX) features to help deliver relevant adverts to user interests by gathering our everyday browsing surfing style, how they do this remains to be seen.
An example of this feature is when a user is browsing the net for holiday destinations it replaces the recent ads with the chosen destination Ones of hotel accomodations etc.

Phorm claims that no personal data is stored nor is the users IP is logged so user anonymous is guaranteed or is it?.
If we check out the muppet UK government of the Labour party recently they lost thousands of peoples personal data on disks, can we realy trust this data to be secure? and do we have a choice?.

Phorm claims that on the Webwise site there is an option to opt out of this service and installing a cookie onto your PC.
(more junk for the grinder:)).

There is good sides and bad sides to Phorm with partnerships of certain ISP's to deliver a service regarding advertising to user interests, let us get real it is for Virgin, BT and Talk Talk interests.
I wonder on how much ching ching they will receive from the companies the adverts relate to when we browse a page and will we see any of it with deductions on monthly subscriptions prices?.

I let you's make up your own decision if this Phorm is a good idea or is it a money making scheme by visiting the following links: -

Phorm Site (Noob Design) - http://www.phorm.com/
Webwise Site - http://www.webwise.com/index.html

links relating to discussions and anti Phorm FTW: -

BadPhorm (anti Phorm site with some interesting info) - http://www.badphorm.co.uk/page.php?2

Techdirt (cool IT gathering info site) - http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080218/024203278.shtml

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Since there was no update last week there was something that realy got me mad that was on the news not so long ago.
The green paper proposal from the muppet UK labour party and Kermit Gordon Brown to clamp down on piracy and the method used.
He wanted ISP's to monitor their customers data packet streams and see if any illegal content or not is being streamed, well for starters this can be an invasion of privacy on users net usage.

Recently some ISP's said it is not their job to do the Labour party's dirty work and I can not blame them.

I do not agree with piracy nor do I agree with the RIAA and MPPA trying to kill file sharing and missing out on an opportunity that would benefit both artist, company and customer.
The RIAA, MPPA and companies moan about poor sales on CD's, DVD and cinema ticket's, well wake up, smell the air by making the products cheaper and adapting to online format sales by working with peer to peer legit companies or embracing online formats.

With Gordon Brown, what I see is that he went with a top of the mind approach like he has been doing recently and not seeing the bigger picture, instead he wants us to go back to the era of clay.
If Gordon Brown stops listening to corporate pressure and work with the people has his party was elected to do then Gordon Brown would not be such a noob....full stop.

I will admit I am strongly against the green paper proposal and phorm has the net shoud remain with some of its freedom like today instead of being turned into a big brother cybernet.
My advice to Brown is work with the people and wake up to the cyber age instead of the victorian time smoking pipes.

IKAJ