The powerpoint presentation and the two movies that go with it contain more information, however, including notes for each slide that loosely reflect what I was talking about in the presentation. They are all available on DICE’s publication page.

I’ll try to turn this presentation into a post in a way that makes more sense online eventually. If you’re subscribed to the AIGameDev web site you will be able to watch the presentation video online eventually as well.

Enjoy!

So what about the 3D? Well, to sum it up, my impression is that it is as immature as many new technologies tend to be, but an extremely cool technology nonetheless.

For those of you who haven’t heard of it, the nVidia 3D Vision system uses a fast display (120 Hz) and active shutter glasses that alternate what eye sees the image in sync with the display updates. This means that the 3D mode is only available in full-screen mode.

The Installation

I had a fair bit of trouble getting the whole kit to work. The driver on the CD simply complained that my graphics card driver was too new, and left me hanging. nVidia’s product page wasn’t all that friendly either, and it took a while to figure out how to download the new drivers (while there’s a direct download link to the movie player, you’ll have to select 3d Vision as the product type for drivers).

Once in the installation and setup procedure for the driver, there was a very friendly and helpful guide that told you most things you needed to know, which was a big plus.

Getting some movies running in the movie player required installation of a codec pack, which is was completely unhelpful in not suggesting, causing a fair bit of time wasted scouring the Internet for a solution. K-Lite Codec Pack eventually came to the rescue.

Setting up 3D for games was reasonably simple for most games — simply set the refresh rate for half of the maximum (60 Hz rather than 120 Hz). Borderlands was an exception as it started completely blacked out, forcing me to find the config file and manually edit the resolution in there. I imagine this isn’t a problem if you haven’t played the game before, on a different display.

All in all, the installation process could be made a lot smoother.

The Glitches

My first experience with 3D came just after the installation had ended. The last screen in the setup guide had a check box titled “Show 3D image slide show after setup”. I checked it, and then proceeded to be shown a few images side-by-side in a complete failure to do anything even remotely 3D-related. In fact, the glasses never even activated.

This was, mildly said, a bit of a let-down.

The movie viewer worked a lot better, providing a very smooth experience. Sadly, you have to specify what format videos are in quite often, which would be incredibly much easier if the viewer could have shown the first frame. This leads to a guessing game, which is a fairly minor problem in the end though.

Another problem with the movie player is that it becomes unhappy if I run certain applications. In general, anything running on my second monitor or in specific anything attaching itself to the edge of the screen like an application toolbar will cause it to simply flicker and refuse to work. This problem is even worse for the 3D Photo Viewer, which simply refuses to work at all if I have the second monitor active.

Considering that most games start without a problem, writing a working photo viewer really shouldn’t be that much of a problem.

So games then…? Almost any game can be run in 3D vision mode, but nVidia has classified games into different categories depending on how well they work. Some games have a problem where certain items aren’t rendered correctly for both eyes, which can be a bit of a strain on the eyes.

The worst problem tends to be “ghosting”. Ghosting is, simply described, a shadow of the image for one eye that “leaks” into the second eye. This is said to be due to an imperfect shutter synchronization between the glasses and the monitor and due to the monitor pixels not switching colors quickly enough. I don’t believe that explanation fully — ghosting seems to be restricted to only games (movies don’t have much ghosting problems).

In addition, some games are much better than others (more on that later). My impression is that much of the ghosting effects come from a mismatch between the rendering world size and the real world, making depth effects extaggered. This means that for many games, left-eye and right-eye images differ much more than they will for a properly tweaked game or for a movie. I also wonder if V-sync has anything to do with it.

The Content

So I’ve got this amazing 3D vision rig… what do I do with it? You can watch some example photos or download a few more from nVidia’s site. The same goes for movie clips. There are a few trailers out there, but far fewer than there should be. Youtube supports 3D content, but there is no easy way to view the youtube 3D videos using a stereoscopic viewer like 3D vision.

The best 3D movie clips I’ve seen this far are trailers, like the trailer for How to train a dragon, which is absolutely spot-on. I look forwards to watching 3D movies on this setup. The problem right now is that it’s virtually impossible to get your hands on some true stereoscopic 3D  movie content. The folks behind Avatar have said it will not be released in 3D “before November”… which could mean just about anything.

Which means that if you buy a 3D vision kit right now, it really has to be for the games. When it comes to games, the support really differs between games. There is some ghosting in some games, and it really depends on the game if it bothers me or not. In Dragon Age: Origins, it really did, so I will be playing through the rest of that game in 2D. I guess that style of game really means you spend a fair bit of time watching the environment, and that’s where you’ll see the most ghosting.

In Trackmania United, one of my favorite racing games, there was a fair amount of ghosting of distant things, but it really didn’t matter a single bit. The experience of mad racing in 3D totally made up for the ghosting, and when you’re driving at high speed you don’t even notice it.

Other games hardly manifest any ghosting at all. Borderlands was absolutely awesome in 3D, as the combination of the comic-book art style and 3D creates a really cool effect. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 has been certified with nVidia and received their top grade for 3D vision ready games and works just as well as that implies.

One more game to mention is Left 4 Dead 2. There is hardly any ghosting going on there either, and 3D in that game added a layer of immersion to an already immersive game. The full list of game support is available on nVidia’s site. I personally look forwards to playing Metro 2033 with it.

The Experience

There are some things to note with active shutter glasses. One thing is that when they activate, things go a slight bit darker than usual, since basically your eyes will be staring at a blackened glass half of the time. You also effectively half the refresh rate of your monitor. The result is something hard to describe, almost a flicker, but not quite. This takes a bit of getting used to, but is not really any worse than watching a 3D Movie at the cinema.

The shutter glasses themselves are fairly bulky but fit nicely over normal glasses which is a plus. I’ve wore them for fairly extensive periods of time without feeling tired of wearing them. The insides of the glass reflects some light though, so if possible I recommend using them with the lights off.

Summary

It is very clear that this technology is in its infancy. I’m sure we’ll see a great development of this going forwards as it picks up momentum. The most crippling hindrance right now is the lack of movie content and the glitches in some games.

That said, playing games in 3D adds a lot of immersion for me, especially for fast-paced games like racing games or shooters. If you are looking at buying a new monitor, I definitely think you should consider buying a 3D vision capable one. The Alienware model I got was fairly expensive, but has an absolutely incredible picture when used normally as well.

If you want more info on 3D vision specifics, I suggest checking out the 3D Vision blog and their new forum.

The one thing that’s always bothered me though is the App Store and conditions. A central directory of apps and central point of download is a good idea. A standardized update procedure is an even better idea, at once solving all the bullshit problems windows users have to put up with (how interested are you in updating Adobe Reader or Java all the time, really?)

The one thing I don’t agree with is the approval process. And Apple just went from tolerably bad to intolerably worse on that one. I think it’s a bad decision to restrict what you may run on the phone and how, but it’s still a decision I can respect — their rules on how you execute stuff within the context of their operating system.

However, the new terms of service for iPhone OS 4 says this:

Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs

Here’s where Apple has clearly and definitely stepped over the line. Not only must the resulting application conform to certain demands, now my development process must conform to certain demands?

Code generation is an incredibly useful technique, and they’re banning it simply to stop the Flash compiler and make a grand statement? Either way, how in the world are they planning to enforce this? Will this lead to an arms race between Apple trying to detect application code that has been compiled to C, C++ or Objective-C and a company like Adobe making a compiler that compiles Flash to those languages in a way that looks as close to human-written as possible? Unless I have to submit a full-length video of myself coding the entire thing, there is just no way to tell with a reasonable accuracy.

How much collateral damage is acceptable, Apple? How many other companies and customers will suffer over your crusade against Flash? How many developers will hate your guts before this is over? There are just so many pins the developer voodoo doll will take.

The iPhone app craze will eventually die as more people realize the gold rush is over. And at that point, Apple can keep its Objective-C Nazi corner, while the rest of us go back to using the best tools for the task at hand.

Among the programmers who love the PS3, the decision caused a scream of rage (and pain) that echoed through twitter. Considering the difficulty of programming for the platform as it is different than most other platforms out there, you could think Sony would care about the programmers that want to experiment on it. On a personal level, I don’t care — I simply don’t have the time to tinker with Linux on my PS3.

But if you want to program for a current generation console out there for real, this is your only option. The Xbox 360 with its XNA and software abstractions doesn’t really do it — coding a game on XNA is not a feat really with the distance being put between hardware and software. Coding a game on the PS3 in Linux, however, would probably land you a job.

And let’s face it: with all the bragging about how the PS3 can do things that the Xbox 360 can’t, Sony really needs programmers who can push it to it, who love the system and will squeeze the last bit of performance out of it. Those programmers are all sad puppies now.

The decision is just flat out wrong in so many ways, the most obvious being that of consumer rights. It does not matter how small a percentage of the user base that uses a feature, if you stick it on the package of a product and use it as a selling point, it’s supposed to be there when I use the product.

You could argue that I’m not forced  to upgrade, which is bogus since I am forced to upgrade if I wish to keep the functionality of my PS3 intact. Imagine a DVD player that is suddenly “upgraded” to not support the remote control anymore. You only have to upgrade if you want to be able to watch new DVDs though, if you settle for your old collection, you can opt out. Oh, and subtitles stop working too. Sorry ’bout that.

The example is absurd, but in all essential parts a direct mapping of what Sony is now doing. Come tomorrow, you may choose which way to cripple your console — no Other OS or no new games or PSN.

Laws differ, but I’m quite sure this sort of act from a company is illegal in Sweden, where I live. Quite possibly it is in several other places around the world… it would be interesting to find out.

The second interesting thing to mention is how a large international company again fails to recognize the Streisand effect. I really had no idea some dude had started cracking the system… nor any interest in it. Now I know, and now care. The Sony decision was quickly met by a promise to fix an alternate firmware version which could be used without disabling the feature:

Hacking isn’t about getting what you didn’t pay for, it’s about making sure you do get what you did. And this is about more than this feature right now. It’s about whether these companies have the right to take away advertised features from a product you purchased.

By doing this, Sony puts a big spotlight on hacking the console, essentially starting an arms race — one it is virtually guaranteed to lose. Until now, the homebrew community has had no reason whatsoever to try to crack the PS3. Now they do, and probably will fairly quickly. I think it’s likely that when it happens, Sony will end up having helped hasten the day when piracy appears on the PS3, in its flailing attempt to prevent it.

I don’t believe we should shy away from violence in games – violence is a part of life, and can make for very interesting scenarios in games. And it’s no secret that a large majority of fun video games are based on conflict, much of which is combative. But I also believe that asking fans to think as hard as they can about an innovative way to kill someone is a very regressive thing for our industry.

Just think for a second about what EA is actually asking people to do. Yes, this is what many of us do every day – there are those of us who design combat and combat scenarios for a living. But asking fans to do it is just too much.

I’m not sure what he’s trying to get at here. There is pretty much two options: either game devs are much better than everyone else, or game devs are horrible people. Neither option seems very reasonable to me.

So why can’t our fans do what we do all day? Is it because as game developers, we are much better than everyone else, and can thus stand the moral strain of thinking about how to dismember humanoid monstrosities all day, without being irreparably damaged by the ordeal?

Or is it the opposite? Are we damaged people, horribly affected by the thoughts on monstrosity dismemberment, so bad that we should take care to shield others from the horrible things we go through daily to bring the public these sinful products?

Neither option really makes sense. Sheffield argues out of the old moral high ground that game violence would somehow damage people, and should be censored. We are talking about a rated game, for adults, not a kids game — so this is not about damaging the fragile world view of children.

Honestly, do you really think that asking someone “think of ways a fictional character could attack, dismember and kill a monstrous humanoid” will have any kind of affect of them that playing the game in question wouldn’t? That is somehow an idea that using the human imagination could be bad for you.

To me, nothing could be further from the truth. The human imagination is a beautiful thing — it creates all culture and all our progress.

Get off the “games are bad for you” horse. No one on this side of the 1980s would argue that the violence in a movie causes people to go on murderous rampages. Would asking someone to design a kill for a movie be as bad? I somehow doubt it.

What about an even more imaginative media, like books? Books are highly based in the communication of imagination between author and reader. We are asked “imagine this”, when we read descriptions of events in a book. But somehow I don’t think the “write a gruesome description of a brutal murder” competition would come under any flack.

There are many things that are wrong with our society, which lead people to do nasty things to others. Taking out your aggressions on characters in a computer game instead of reality is not one of them. Imagining new ways to kill computer game monsters is certainly not one either.

I’m not much for dismemberment and blood splatter in games myself — I just don’t think it adds much. But I’ll happily let other grown up individuals make their decisions for themselves on what they’d like to play — or imagine.

And if you’re going to argue that games are bad, please do so outright, don’t try to hide it behind saying that playing games is fine, but thinking about them isn’t.

So while I’ve spent the last few years trying to find a way to get some sense into circles of business leaders and politicians, I’ve never thought much about the consumer side of the same coin. It makes perfect sense in hindsight, but I didn’t see it at the time: many consumers are just as clueless about the changes we are going through. I don’t mean that as a slight to anyone — we’re living in a social and political revolution brought on by a technological leap forwards. It’s hard to understand this new world.

So let’s take a look at that statement from the consumer side then: It no longer makes sense to sell copies of digital culture. The music and movie industry is extremely reluctant to realize this, but pioneers in those segments still have, which is why we see things like streaming music services and donation-funded movie productions, generally from newer artists not already settled in old business models.

It has excited me then to see a some of the big game publishers move towards newer business models. EA is notable with things like Battlefield Heroes and other new models. Others are hellbent on locking in their old “sell-copies” mentality by introducing DRM that requires you to be online all the time, for instance.

I mentioned in the post on Project $10 that game resales are causing much of the same problems as piracy for publishers. This is tightly related to the fact that the industry is used to selling copies of things and that consumers are used to buying copies of things.

Fundamentally, though, a game is not a tool or a utility which you are bound to keep, or a consumable that you use  up — a game is an experience. It makes sense then for the consumer to trade in the disc, since he or she has already “used up” the experience on it, but it still has value for someone else.

When a publisher fights for the right to sell copies or when a consumer is fighting for the right to resell a game, they are both doing the same fundamental mistake: they’re mistaking the game as being a plastic disc rather than as an experience. Back when copying was hard and game resales not much of a deal, the game basically became the disc (or cartridge), just like the music tightly associated with the CD it came on.

As soon as this connection is broken, old business models fail, and people inevitably complain. Publishers complain that people copy or resell their discs, consumers complain that publishers are greedy and think they have some sort of “right” to be paid more than once for each game.

What is happening now is a rough period of trying to invent new ways of making game development business work. It does not involve companies thinking they “have the right” to be paid, but the simple fact that the companies need to be paid or they will go out of business, which would be bad for everyone involved.

The problem now is that we’re in the middle of the transition. We’re in a world where we cannot expect everyone to be able to download a game from the net, which means we need to sell copies. At the same time, hyperdistribution is a fact and game resale is abundant.

From my point of view, seeing EA try to find a way forwards with a middle ground of things like project $10 to earn money off resales and more “free downloadable content” included with the boxed products to start an ever so slight move towards providing services.

To see retailers complain about the move is expected — after all, they must know just like we know that we’re moving fast towards a world where music and games are not distributed on pieces of plastic anymore, which means that there wont be a need for a store to buy the pieces of plastic in.

Still, I said this in one of the posts I started off referring to, The future of PC Gaming:

Then he fails to grasp the core points of what makes Steam popular: It gives something back to the customer. It’s that simple — the other DRM schemes are all for the benefit of the producer, while Steam has loads of nifty features for me as a consumer that have “Future” stamped all over them.

This also goes back to the other post and human nature. People have come to expect being able to trade games back in for a part of the value towards a new game.

There is a disconnect here really, since the problem for publishers is that the same disc is used twice (which means disc != experience), but the problem for the consumer is that not letting the disc be used twice would stop his or her ability to hand in the game disc, essentially making games more expensive.

I’ve suggested that a solution to this would be to include a game disable function in a Steam-like digital distribution system to fill this need. Once you’re done with a game, you could disable it for a piece virtual currency. You could then use the virtual currency to buy new games if you have enough, or fill in with regular money.

Even more likely though, I think we’ll see more transitions towards games being cheaper content platforms and that part of what you get is tied to an account. Transitioning from a producer of boxed game products to service providers needs to happen for game publishers to survive, but I’m sure we can find ways to do this with both sides benefiting.

Of course the middle men are unhappy, but as soon as they’re out of the way we can live in a happy world where the price of games isn’t so outrageous.

I would be much happier if everyone could start creating flash-free websites. Anyway, today’s ordeal made me think back to the fine old days when everything was a table. HTML wasn’t made to display layout. The nice things about HTML, hyperlinks, worked just fine in regular text documents with some simple formatting, like bold and italic, its creator figured.

The nice things turned out to be really nice though, sparking an incredible development where pages got increasingly sophisticated layouts. The original HTML text format included tables, a fact which was quickly used to hack together all kinds of pages. A table could be used as a grid to stuff things into certain places, and a table inside a table could be used to create more interesting layouts, not to mention a table inside a table inside a table.

Because tables were meant to be (you know…) tables, different browsers rendered them slightly differently. Fine, if all you want is a table of text. Not so fine, if what you wanted was a pixel-perfect design. The solution to this was to add a whole slew of properties to each table, row and cell.

So after hacking together a sophisticated web site layout using table, the result was predictably a complete mess. The tables holding the text in place was mixed in with the text itself, making sites a nightmare to update or maintain, to not even mention changing the design.

A solution was clearly needed, to separate the design from the contents of web pages. So, why not adopt a language that wasn’t meant as a design language either? Sure thing, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), a language meant for styling rather than layout was adopted during a long and slow process full of bugs, browser incompatibilities and new hacks.

Today’s standard of “good” for the web means using HTML strict (which few do) and control the appearance using CSS. The result is slightly less convoluted than the tables approach, but takes about 20 times as much effort to understand or write correctly, involves just as much hacking and is so fraught with peril that most people simply avoid it, going back to tables or mixing in horribly ugly JavaScript. Or, as seems to be extremely popular with games companies, insist on making the entire website in Flash, even though there’s absolutely no need for it.

So the page we were looking at today needed 3 columns of the same height. Let’s do it the old way with tables, for nostalgia’s sake:

<table>
  <tr>
    <td>Column 1</td>
    <td>Column 2</td>
    <td>Column 3</td>
  </tr>
</table>

Okay. Not too bad. So how to do this with CSS? Generally, you’ll need 3 DIVs next to each other, all with float: left. This makes them each have an individual length though. There are several ways to get around this, but none of them are good. The first involves stretching images across the DIVs as background images, which means you’re now bound to the color of those images instead of a color value. Also, you can’t have borders.

The second way we tried involved a very complicated set of maneuvers using three extra panes and shuffling content out the left side of the screen and then back in. The description for how to do this was about 10 pages long. And oh, it turned out to not work with borders either. Sigh.

So finally we found one way that seemed to work with borders. Only it didn’t, since you didn’t get any bottom border that way. The good part is that you could hack around that by using an image.

So for the old horrible table version, you substitute a mess of nestled DIVs and several pages of CSS, and it doesn’t even work fully without adding a picture where you essentially paint the entire bottom of the border along the page (yes, you actually paint a snapshot of your entire webpage, 1 pixel high). Way to go.

<style type="text/css">
      #container { float: left; background: url(images/example-6.gif)
          bottom center no-repeat; padding-bottom: 1px; }
      #inner { float: left; overflow: hidden; }
      #inner div { float: left; background: #ccc; border: 1px solid #000;
          width: 200px; margin-right: 5px; margin-bottom: -1000px;
          padding-bottom: 1000px; }
      #inner .col2 { background: #eee; }
      #inner .col3 { margin-right: 0; }
      .clear { clear: both; padding-top: 10px; }
</style>
...
<div id="container">
  <div id="inner">
    <div>Column 1</div>
    <div class="col2">Column 2</div>
    <div class="col3">Column 3</div>
  </div>
</div>
<p class="clear">

That seems like a great way to code! Not to mention that part of your design is now locked up in the image.

The best part about all of this is that it’s presented as “without CSS hacks”. Well, if having to use 6 nestled divs, large-number positive and negative margins and all kinds of bullshit like that isn’t an ugly hack, then I don’t know what is. The fact that the art of web design has advanced to the point where the normal thing you have to do is one big hack isn’t encuraging. And then they add the hacks on top of that…

I never liked tables, but at least they worked. In one of those memorable IRC quotes (in Swedish), someone said:

<sycon> imagine 1000 ants, tables are like the cage that keeps them in place, in the right place
<sycon> css is like a child with spasms trying to poke them all into place with chopsticks.

After spending countless hours trying to do seemingly simple things, I think I agree. Something’s still broken with the web, and no one seems to care to fix it. Well, other than inventing more workarounds.

But hey, at least you can draw Homer Simpson with it. So, ok, let the flak begin. Look, a Parrot.

Anyway, retailers have spoken out against the so called “Project $10″, saying it will cause consumer rage:

“The person you’re pissing off the most is the consumer,” McCabe told GamesIndustry.biz. “This affects [them] directly – they pay the same amount of money and yet the resale value is much reduced. From a retailer’s point of view, they’ll just readjust [the price] bearing in mind you have to buy the voucher.”

This is an interesting development. For those who aren’t familiar with the concept, the $10 project essentially puts a code in the box to unlock additional content online for the game. The code can only be used once, which means that buying the game new has additional value over buying the game used.

Consumers who buy a used copy can still choose to buy the online content, but for a fee (one would imagine $10, considering the name of the “project”, but I think it’s actually $15 for the current titles). It’s been done with a few recent games including Mass Effect 2 this far (awesome game by the way, I’ve been having a blast with it), and will be done for future titles, including Battlefield: Bad Company 2.

“EA’s project $10 move is aiming to stifle pre owned games sales, but what they don’t factor in is the damage this could have for them in relation to new sales,” said Day.

Wow, what a complete misunderstanding. This has nothing to do with publishers wanting to stop resales — it’s simply a business model where publishers can earn some money off of resales.

There are interesting parallels to be drawn for me, between the console and PC markets. Pre-owned games pose much of the same problem on the console market as piracy does on the PC market. The end result of both is the same: people play our games without a single bit of money ending up with the people who made the game. In the worst case, we end up paying a lot of money to keep servers online, while getting no money at all from the sale.

There has been a lot of whining from publishers and developers about both issues. Those of you who know my stance on piracy should not be very surprised that my stance on pre-owned games is very similar. Whining about it or blaming people for it is not going to help — yet you cannot deny that the fenomenon in itself is causing major problems for publishers and developers (just as piracy is) — there is no getting around that.

However, trying to “clamp down” on used games sales or piracy is pointless. Piracy is illegal, but unenforcably so which means that it doesn’t really matter. Resale is simply a business choice. While you might think that it is a bad business choice and that retailers would be better off long-term by staying clear of business practices that will kill their providers, they are making a ton of money short-term. There is no way they wouldn’t fall for that temptation, and in the end, any business choice that works for them is a valid one. Whining or arguing about it isn’t going to help.

This causes an interesting problem for publishers. One way would be to move to direct online sales only, but this excludes large chunks of consumers who can’t download large games or who aren’t connected at all. Another version would be to require online activation and to bind the game to a certain console or live/psn account, which simply wouldn’t be fair to the consumer and would cause a never-ending stream of problems and well-earned gamer hatred.

The middle ground, then, is to sell a full game to people through retail, but to provide extra value with unlockable content to people who buy the product new. It should come as no surprise that retailers dislike this — it will certainly cut a chunk of profitability out of the resale market. It will lower the value of a game for resale, which means it’ll be worth less to trade in. Will this annoy some customers? I’m sure it will.

Many people seem to be taking this as the publisher wanting to be paid twice, which I think comes back as the default gamer response to anything developers or publishers do to earn money being horrible and bad. It sometimes gets to me to see this kind of attitude with gamers. We can’t make games as a charity, and making these games on bleeding edge tech is extremely hard work, and the people in the industry are incredibly dedicated to their art.

The other side of things is that buying the game used will be cheaper, creating a much better “try before you buy” environment, where you can potentially buy the game used and try it. If you like it, you can buy the DLC that you would’ve got from the new version. This is sort of a win-win situation for the publisher and the consumer, but of course not that great for retailers.

To publishers, this is the option that provides the best value to consumers while moving to a new business model that allows us to actually start making proper money from games again, which could halt the current trend of studios closing and developers being fired.

I’m sorry if that takes money out of retailers pockets, but I really do think that the talented people who sweat blood making these games deserve the money more than people who only know how to push people to buy used instead of new. It may have been a good dream for you, but it was still a dream and now it’s time to wake up.

And yeah, retailers claiming to stand up for the consumer is nothing new. But just as with music labels claiming to speak for artists, they are simply middle men that are slowly losing their value.

The column seems to present a very optimistic view of the Internet, a liberal view seldom seen among politicians today. Between the urge to stop file sharing and combat terrorism and child pornography, censorship and mass surveilance among the western nations has taken our Internet connections several steps closer to what the average Chinese user sees when logging on.

Sweden has traditionally been a strong country for new technology, so why wouldn’t the fight for a free Internet take root here? Indeed, Sweden is the birthplace of a political movement focused on saving the free Internet, the Pirate Party, so why not? I feel the need to offer up a report from within the country governed my Minister Bildt’s party.

The column in the Washington Post was preceded by a similar column (google translated) in one of Sweden’s largest newspapers and a blog post on Minister Bildt’s own blog. Sadly, the Swedish columns are less clear on this issue of what freedom means.

Here is a translated quote:

“It is obvious that the international rule set is far too weak and that the means that are available to ensure adherence to the rules in place are insufficient. The users have ended up trailing far behind the abusers.”

I wouldn’t call that obvious. The summary of Minister Bildt’s columns appears to be “more freedom will be had by introducing more government control”. This matches the actions of the government he is part of as well.

It is easy to criticize the Chinese government for their surveilance and censorship, yet the last year alone the Swedish government has put in place a law breaking a long tradition of free communications, ordering a mass surveillance of all Internet traffic that crosses the nation’s borders. Knowing how the Internet works and considering the small size of the country, that works out to just about all Internet traffic — all emails, IMs, chats, you name it.

This caused a wave of protests through the country and an online protest now known as the “blog quake”. Google declared that after the law was passed, it would no longer place any servers on Swedish soil, due to concerns for user privacy and integrity.

The same government has given media companies rights that go further than the national police force when it comes to hunting file sharers, and is preparing a new law mandating that every cell phone call, text message or other communication be logged, together with the position of the device at the time, essentially turning every cell phone into a tracking device in the state’s service.

The columns caused an outcry among Swedish Internet activists and supporters of freedom. The minister responded on his blog, showing just how ignorant the government is:

I do not understand that Christian Engström and others are upset about what I have said. Do they not think it is good that Sweden has a government that wants to defend freedom on the ‘net? To whine about FRA (the governmental body tasked with the mass surveilance of the Internet, my note) and our intelligence agency has nothing to do with it. Sweden does not restrict freedom of speech on the ‘net or anywhere else.

I would applaud Minister Bildt’s call for Internet freedom in the Washington Post, had I seen it in isolation. However, all is not well in the state of Sweden. While I would love to see the Iranian attempts to silence protesters fail and the great Chinese firewall break down, an easier political target would be to respect the rights of the people in your own country.

And sadly, the Swedish government has failed to take even the slightest account of it’s citizens’ right to privacy on the Internet. I would not trust a pest control company with roaches inhabiting its offices, and I will not trust a government that censors the Internet to tear down any walls against Internet freedom — in China or elsewhere.