Sunday, December 30, 2012
Search engines are paying more attention to content substance than just to link popularity; good for small publishers?
The PR Factor offers an article (Aug. 9, 2012) on “AdAge”,
by Yarom Galai, about how search engines (especially Google’s) are placing more
emphasis on uniqueness and depth of content rather than just links and
popularity. The title is “How Google’s ‘Penguin’
update will change publishing, for the better”, link here.
Is this a good development for people who like to
publish for any audience? The article
says “focus more on Facebook than Google”.
Does that mean to focus content on specific lists of audiences who know
you? I would think it’s the
opposite. I would say, offer original
content for all, but try to add something new and original with each posting,
rather than just aggregate the work (and links) of others. Try to say something constructive that you
don’t think anyone else has said in that next movie or book review. Also, try to focus on specific points or
details that you don’t think that many other speakers have yet covered, but
that you think others are going to want to know about soon. (I can see how the “Fiscal Cliff” could
generate those opportunities for writers.)
There is an obscure way that tax negotiations in
2013 could affect small publishers and their relationships with big service
providers. That is, the “carve out” for small businesses using S-corp filings
and the like. There could develop more
concern (both within the iRS and within service providers themselves) in determining just which publishers are “profitable”
in an accounting sense, than in the past.
Somehow this PR article showed up on my smartphone yesterday when I was searching for stuff about the fiscal negotiations.
Saturday, December 29, 2012
"Fiddling" Congress still is working on FISA extension; practical implications for ordinary citizens seems minimal
Apparently, while Congress is supposed to be working
on the Fiscal Cliff under emergency year end conditions, it has been working on
other things, like surveillance."
The Business Insider reported early Dec. 29 that the
Senate has approved a five-year extension of the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act (FISA). The law appears
to allow the government to tap into communications (including emails and
probably social media under privacy settings) with foreign nationals suspected
of terrorist activities, especially when Americans are abroad. It is less clear that it would apply at home
(without a warrant).
The link for the “Agence France Presse” story is here.
Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) has supported the
bill, and admitted that it sometimes could listen in on calls to American
citizens at home. She claims several
major attacks have been stopped by the warrantless searches.
It is probably unlikely that Americans ordinarily
are wiretapped, except by happenstance or unusual coincidence. Yet, once I walked into a bar in Baltimore
and overheard a dangerous conversation. The “Ice Man” scenario can sometimes
happen.
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Publication of gun owners online (based on permits) in NY State causes controversy
A small newspaper in suburban Westchester County, NY
published the names and home addresses of holders of permits for handgun and other weapons in its coverage area,
going all the way into New Jersey and Connecticut. The “outcry” was reported today by David
Goodman in the New York Times on p. A17 (website url here ).
The link (“Where
are the gun permits in your neighborhood”?) at “Lohud” Journal News (Gannett)
is here. The maps are divided by county and are
color coded as to the aging of the gun permits.
The site does not say that the address actually has a gun, just that there is a permit.
The site does not say that the address actually has a gun, just that there is a permit.
A North Carolina television station had published a
similar list in July.
The information is available manually from public
record and available (apparently with no restrictions) under Freedom of Information Act provisions. (Whether personal purchase decisions should be available sounds like a good policy question, but "licenses" have always been public -- to the chagrin of libertarians.) But an ethical and perhaps a
legal question remains on almost cost-free Internet distribution of information (maybe intended as a shaming online "scarlet letter") that could lead to targeting of people. One comment at the Times notes that
criminals can also figure out from the maps who is unarmed (although that says
nothing about security systems, cell phone access, camera systems, and other weapon-free measures). Is the law going to change in this area? We’ve seen similar concerns over no-consent
photos of people in bars and discos.
There has been some blowback, publication of names and addresses of the newspaper management.
There has been some blowback, publication of names and addresses of the newspaper management.
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Details on Sandy's aftermath will increase debate on effectiveness of volunteerism, preparedness, "personal responsibility"
On Saturday, December 22, 2012, the New York Times
ran a detailed story by David M. Halbfinger, Charlges V. Bagli and Sarah Maslin
Nir, about the “truth” about Sandy devastation and the real needs of residents
and property owners. It’s On Ravaged Coastline, It’s Rebuild Deliberately v.
Rebuild Now”, link here.
The article has detailed maps of the New Jersey, New
York City , Long Island and southern New England coastlines, as to the extent
of damage.
Generally, most damage in New Jersey was within a
mile of coastal water. Much of it was on the coastal isthmuses. But some was along bays and rivers going
inland, and the largest was in an inland but low lying area near the
meadowlands, Hoboken. Except for
Hoboken, much of the property belonged to higher income residents and tended to
be insured.
New York City and near Long Island are another matter. The inventory of low-lying areas of Staten
Island and Brooklyn are not complete, and losses were extensive, as we know, in
the Rockaways, other areas of southerm Queens, and Long Beach. The resort area of Fire Island was heavily
damaged. Except for Fire Island, many of
the homeowners were “blue collar” and working class.
The windspeeds where the eye moved onshore were “only”
about 80 mph, and most of the severe damage occurred more than 40 miles away,
from storm surge combined with tide, not from wind. This kinds of damage could have happened from
a cold-core “Noreaster” in the “wrong place” at high tide. It’s not as clear that it really couldn’t
happen without climate change. Nevertheless,
lower and medium income residents in the New York areas said they had
never experienced anything like this in decades, but had always “tolerated”
smaller flooding.
So where does this leave the issue of volunteerism
and shared goals vs. “personal responsibility” as discussed here Nov. 17? It’s mixed.
In most of the New Jersey areas, this is sounding like a problem locals
should solve themselves with engineering (which could need federal help) and
careful building codes. New York is a
different matter. As widely reported,
the worst hit areas depended on volunteers, some of them from Wall Street
firms, and government and institutional response was slow and badly
insufficient for a long time. This
involved people with fewer resources and less opportunity to anticipate a
disaster like this on their own, and a public infrastructure not ready to
handle it. If I had been living in Manhattan at the time in the Village, I
might have been without power for a number of days myself.
It strikes me that a disaster like this makes us
ponder how we should handle the policy debate over the “fiscall cliff”. The basic, centrist answer is that the safest
thing is to do a little of everything (tax hikes, care outs, gradual benefit
slowdown, increased eligibility ages, and “doing the math”). That means you can’t protect any one person
or group from some sacrifice and some harm.
You can try to prevent smaller groups or individuals from big harm or
catastrophe, which really can happen if Congress is so paralyzed that it can’t
do anything. But that is what some “deconstructionists”
want: a world where people have to take
care of one another, as the government and public infrastructure withers
away. It’s a scary thought.
Wikiepdia attribution link for track of Sandy.
Monday, December 24, 2012
Christmas: How to meet the "real needs" of others?
After I “retired” at the end of 2001 (from my
31-year “professional” IT career) I started getting a lot of entreaties and
pressure from people regarding what should be expected from someone like
me. Specifically, a lot of parties tried
to recruit me, if I would only give up my self-created, low cost soap box. The
tone of these approaches resembled the pressure that I used to get as a boy and
a teen, to “conform” to the shared goals of others, and not get noticed too
much for being different, particularly when I did not quite measure up as a
fighting man or contingent guerilla fighter.
The estate left after my mother’s passing at 97 at
the end of 2010 would seem to leave me (now 69) in reasonably good shape. There are many ways for me to get into
trouble, and I can come back to that.
But I do wonder about questions now:
why am I so insistent on being “noticed” now for my content (as I
discussed here Oct. 17), and not doing more directly (and “personally”) for
others?
There are specifics that can be said. The “house” (“Drohega” from “The Thorn Birds”)
could shelter an entire family with children.
I could give more “time” to people with specific needs. I won’t go on with the obvious examples
(starting with Sandy, Newtown, cancer, veterans, hospices, underpaid
caregivers, Alzheimer’s, even HIV, etc). Indeed, we hear about this every January with
the upcoming “national day of service” on MLK weekend. But I
think that, for me, for service to really do other people good, it has to be
related to the substance of my own life, with what I can personally
accomplish. What I find that hit-or-miss
volunteering with organization, while it may add to standby social capital,
doesn’t do that much for those who need it.
Sometimes I’ve found that organizations want me to cowtow to their own
personal ego struggles, and sometimes they have clients who have much less
legitimate need than others. This kind
of experience did work out for me in the 1980s with AIDS, because relatively
speaking I had a lot to add then with the clinical aspect. This has become much less so since then. I’m not the sort of person who likes to ask
other people for money for causes. I don’t “convert” people to religious or any
other set of beliefs. And I don’t think
I can accomplish much by picking up a hammer and driving a few hundred miles
(see comment on the TV blog, reaction to both me and Anderson Cooper with
respect to Katrina, Aug. 29, 2007).
For the effectiveness to come from me, I really have
to get my own projects done (up to some semipro level where others can really work with them). I would
expect all of this to relate to music,
media, or even chess, but I would have to be good at these to function as a
role model. (“Winning” a rated chess
game again -- even with the “two bishops”
-- recently helps.) So it’s not easy to
break away, and get involved in a lot of very short term efforts or
solicitations that really don’t go anywhere.
The nature of the approaches that have come my way
since “retirement” is quite remarkable.
Some are quite personal and seem to invite me to become involved in
situations in which I would have previously been unwelcome. Some of this came up unexpectedly during the
substitute teaching. A lot of it
concerns “OPC”, that is, “other people’s children”. Some of it considers openness to sharing
emotions with people who cannot comprehend what is really happening except in a
very “momentary” way. Compassion and
love are really not the same things for me.
All of this loops back to an essential problem for
those of us who grow up “different”. We
want to accomplish our own agendas and be noticed for them, regardless of the “real
needs of other people” immediately around us.
Of course, no content distribution can be “productive” until real human
beings benefit from it. Modern society
and globalization technology gives those who are “different” more leverage
because of the potentials of asymmetry (again, the idea of world where bishops
are better than knights). This may all
seem to come from the Internet, but it was actually starting to happen as I
grew up in the Fifties. Music was always
a way to do this. In the nineteenth
Century, Beethoven really practiced asymmetry!
In fact, I often see classical music as a predictor of the course and
effect of future innovation.
The moral hazard is that the “outlier” will take
advantage of the previous sacrifices of others, and produce unusual economic,
cultural, and psychological imbalances.
A major example, of course, is provided by the way society has tended to
react to male homosexuality, even when private – seeing it as a major
psychological (and possibly judgmental) distraction
to “normal” people from sexual and emotional “complementary” l commitment
necessary to form and raise families – a view that, when looked at closely –
seems nebulous and irrational now in an era that emphasizes individualism. But, yup, it was really about having kids and
maintaining lineage. I can, of course
say, that as the “outlier” ready to “step on your toes” I’m “keeping you honest”. Oh, I’d really like to get interviewed on
AC360!
The moral responsibility of the person who is
different – and of those around him – is for me “the central issue”. It’s the moral dimension that interest me. I resist trying to evade it with appeals to
immutability, which (even when scientifically supported now) seem like cop-outs and which don’t work
consistently when applied in different areas.
I come back, then , to the question, “What do you
want from me?” That was a painful
question during the last years of taking care of Mother, but it was also a
painful question early in my life, particularly the college years (and earlier
in middle school). Some of it seems to
be, you wanted me to “pay my dues” and go through the same rites of passage and
tests as everybody else. That was rather
a lot of the mentality of the male-only military draft during my own
youth. You wanted me to take my turns
with accepting the risk of manhood, to protect others, from enemies if
necessary (which sounds suddenly like NRA mentality today). You wanted me to have the skills it took to
not only take care of myself and hold down a job (and that I did) but also to
look after others, with some degree of complementarity. And with some degree of real emotion and faith in shared purpose, which
is dicier. I can speculate, of course,
that the feeling and emotion would come with the prerequisite skills and capability. That would normally lead to the interest
(even necessity) of raising a family of my own.
(We can have a layered discussion of how that ought to work in a modern
world that accepts same-sex marriage, but in practice that came too late for
me, that was not a valid path in my generation). When one starts a family, one has a personal and generative, not just "professional" stake in the future after he or she is gone -- and accepts the idea of not wholly predictable differential sacrifice. One puts his own skin in the game -- as long as one still has it.
As I’ve noted before, I made a kind of truce with
all this, pretty much operating as a “team of one”. That was possible throughout most of my adult
life (more than it could have been before the 60s), but the capacity of “another
me” (sci-fi movies, please) to do so in the next generation could be
compromised by sustainability concerns and by a resurgent emphasis on the “common
good”. The recent NRA flap is indeed an
iceberg; we can have the same
discussions about the Internet. I cannot
dismiss Wayne LaPierre so easily.
During the recent (until the end of 2010) period of
eldercare, I sometimes found myself pressured to behave in a more proactive and
assertive manner with respect to other provider in taking care of Mother. This would have been much easier to deal
with, emotionally, we I in a home I had bought and developed myself and in a “marital”
relationship preferably with sequel.
Looking back farther into my own past, it seems to me that this might
have been possible if I really believed others would or “had to” do the same. This was a very disconcerting train of
thought to follow.
I get the idea that it is important and vital to
find emotional value on providing for others, even for some people who are not
always intact. I’ve said that my concern
with the “affiliation value” of the other person goes down when what I give
comes from my own set of expressive skills – but we can’t always count on that “luxury”
in a sustainable world where we have to be prepared to live together, not
always on our own terms of choice.
Generally, in a “democratic” society, we’re supposed to learn this value
of constructive attachment through “family first”. That means loving people in your orbit
because they’re family, even flesh and blood, not because you are personally
dazzled by them.
That observation, however, takes us back to the “recruiting”
problem. If my emotional and expressive
life is to be subdued by the real needs of others, there is a real risk that it
will be wrongfully exploited, for morally illegitimate ends. I don’t like the idea of being on the “wrong
team”.
Indeed, it seems that in general the New Testament
somewhat plays down the idea of family for its own sake, and places a lot of
value on reaching out to people around, “neighbors”, unconditionally and
uncritically. We can see this in stories
like “The Rich Young Ruler” (with its scoffing at pandering to upward
affiliation, and its natural extension to looking at the differences between
motherly, fatherly, familial and neighborly love – as in a 1972 sermon given by
Reverend Sanks at the First Baptist Church of the City of Washington DC). Jesus seems to accept essential inequality, of
capability, as inevitable. There will
always be “the poor” and there will always be those less capable than
others. This is not just about the
modern embracement of diversity and different ability. Salvation is for all. Other stories contribute to the mix, like the
Prodigal Son, and particularly the workers in the vineyard. And, indeed, the religious model for natural marital
procreation does not always work perfectly that way in the Bible, considering
how Jesus himself was to be conceived.
Joseph did not choose to be a father just through the usual consummation
of marriage vows.
I think that the capacity to bond to others with due
respect for just plain need is a survival skill. For I am presently left in the uncomfortable
position of “watching my back” (maybe to the cackles on both the far Left and
Right). There are a lot of ways to “lose”.
It can come from criminal or indignant acts by others. It can come from the neglect of Congress,
some of whose more radical (“Tea Party”)
members would rather see the country go down into chaos to prove an ideological
point (the scary criticism made of my book – as I noted yesterday). It could from gross disasters, either
terrorism or nature. Now, cataclysm is
less likely here than in many other areas of the country, but I can’t be
complacent. The biggest dangers do come
from climate change (meaning bigger and unprecedented storms like wildfires, derechoes
and tornadoes, even in areas too high for flooding), and unprecedented solar
storms. In the past, the dangers could
come from fuel shortage and peak oil, but very recent changes in the domestic
energy picture (Pickens) can change that.
For me, the scariest threat of all probably has to do with the
vulnerability of the power grid. I woudn’t
have much to offer a world with no power for a year. You get where this is headed.
Likewise, in the demographic area, I see there is
much more that can be done to prolong the lives of the elderly, and that can be
done for those with many other medical issues, but only if others will
personally bond with them. This was not
an idea that was apparent (given older medical technology) when I was growing
up. So it is hard to see, at age 69,
another act for me after this one if some sort of calamity, whether medical
(the usual) or external (like crime, war or disaster) occurs. When something “bad” happens, there is no way
to make it “all right” after the fact.
My own personal impression of Salvation in my own case is to start over,
probably in simple poverty, on another world, because I will have come to
nothing on this world. Salvation for
grace? How can that work if I can no
longer do anything?
So, that’s why, at a certain element level, it’s
important to become a capable social being when you’re young. I really didn’t. Afterwards, there is only truce, détente, accommodation,
assimilation, or grace. But it is no
longer “about you”. "Personal responsibility", the way we have talked about it as political libertarians, has become an inadequate concept.
I’ve always believed in the idea of “Karma” – that one
can “keep score” on someone, as to whether he or she “paid the dues” and really
earned his recognition without undue dependence on others. I think a lot of people, particularly in
socially conservative cultures, believe that – but they do see family as a way
of regulating the individual in his journey through moral challenges, as if on
a board game. Yet, it seems that the
Gospels tend to dispel even the idea of “karma” in the sense of it being a school
grade that a person gets on this life or some sort of moral score that
well-orders him in a rank compared to others.
Sunday, December 23, 2012
Amazon cracks down on fake ("Argo") or contrived reviews
Amazon is cracking down on nepotism and “review
farming” of its products, according to a Sunday (December 23, 2012) front page
story in the New York Times by David Streitfeld, link here. The title is “Giving Mom’s Book Five Stars?
Amazon May Cull Your Review”. And that doesn't just refer to the movie "Argo".
I guess some people really do buy books or DVD’s
based on in-house reviews. One person
has reviewed over 25000 books. I prefer
to do my reviewing media on my own sites, although I do give star numbers on Netflix
(and I haven’t heard that Netflix will implement a similar policy.) I often look for reviews of books and movies
online, but I typically look at other blogs and at newspaper review, and, yes,
Roger Ebert.
I will mention here a particular 2006 review (link) of my first book by “Fed Up with Amazon”, who titled her review of me “Incoherent”. I had addressed some of her comments in my
Jan. 2, 2007 posting here (“I Have a
Screed”), and her question about “why we should care about what he thinks” is
answered by the first chapter, the whole William and Mary Expulsion event. Now that, as I have written, was linked to
the “gays in the military” debate 35 years later by the “privacy in
circumstances of forced intimacy” argument, but over time I’ve come to see that
link as more about social cohesion (not just “unit cohesion”) and social
capital.
I went back today and looked at my text on “deconstruction”
(from Chapter 5 in the 1997 book) – maligned in her review. Indeed, back in the 1990s, libertarian “ideology”
often said that federal (libertarian)
elected officials would become dedicated to dismantling programs that aren’t
authorized by the Constitution, so the
term does describe what libertarians said “we” wanted. I think, however, you have to be careful what
you wish for. You might get it, or
officials might try. For evidence, look
at the Tea Party and how, over ideology, it almost drove the nation into
default on the summer of 2011 and could do so again in 2013. In some scenarios that could mean that some
social security beneficiaries in circumstances like mine suddenly no longer get
benefits. (I’ve talked about that on the
retirement blog.) Imagine what it would
be like if someone like Sarah Palin (John McCain’s running mate in 2008) really
got into the White House. So yes, we’ve
seen politicians take this idea to heart – maybe they’ve even read my passages
online and felt “inspired” – and the results were not what I had intended. Remember, it was Karl Marx who predicted that the
state would gradually wither away. That
as in 12 grade government class!
Saturday, December 22, 2012
Commenting, following has moved from blogs to Facebook and Twitter; a note on "Summly"
I have indeed noticed a change in reader and visitor
behavior in recent months. True, my own
page visits are down, and there are fewer comments. And people generally don’t seem to sign up as
followers of blogs.
Instead, it seems as though the energy of commenting
and following has moved to Facebook and Twitter, especially during the past
year, at least in my own experience. I
have to admit that I do the same thing myself.
It’s easier to comment on who the Washington Nationals should re-sign
(like LaRoche and Morse) on Facebook (the MASN thread) than look for blogs on
it (although I guess I could check MLB).
It’s easier to get into conversations with people angry at Piers Morgan
over his positions on gun control on Twitter than anywhere else.
I do realize that over time, I will need to look at
how my content is organized, spread out, and drawn together – especially the
latter, so readers can find info on the things I know that really attracts them
because I cover it and not many sources do (these topics include filial
responsibility laws, and protecting the power grind from solar storms and EMP,
particularly).
All of this is what we expect in the change from the Web 1.0 world (which was so good to me) to the Web 2.0 and 3.0 planets of today. I guess people need to learn to live in transition zones (or termination zones) of tidally locked alien planets.
This is a good place to mention a text and news summarization service for some mobile devices, "Summly", created by the newest teen innovator, the Brit Nick D'Aloisio, as discussed on Piers Morgan tonight. I'll have to see how that fits into my world. I like to create original text, not massage that of others.
Thursday, December 20, 2012
New FTC rules on children's privacy probably don't present a downstream liability hazard, but will be expensive for some small app developers
The new rules from the
Federal Trade Commission regarding how COPPA (The Children’s Online Privacy
Protection Act of 1998) is interpreted when applied to third-party situations,
probably do not represent a significant danger of third party downstream
liability to social media sites, blogging plaftorms and shared hosting
providers.
I wrote about the rules
Wednesday (December 19) on my COPA blog (motivated by the now unconstitutional
Child Online Protection Act). There was
a concern that when a site like Facebook allows its hooks to be embedded in
other sites that collect information about minors, the third party site
(Facebook) could be held partially liable if the other site collected information
without parents’ permission. That
information could include geolocation (as from a cell phone or digital image)
or even IP address parameters widely available on server logs and used to track
Web reporting statistics. The FTC has
decided, according to the most recent accounts, that a company like Facebook is
liable only when it knows that a partner site is acting inappropriately. This sounds like a “don’t ask. don’t tell”
policy that might become unstable. Or
call it “Hear no evil, see no evil.”
Websites accepting
programmed advertising might also have become liable if the FTC didn’t insist
on “actual knowledge”. So the FTC seems
to have respected the basic advertising business model for the user-generated
content on the web, for now.
The FTC rules mentioned
a “safe harbor” provision, echoing the concept from the DMCA. It’s not clear
yet how it would work.
The COPPA debate (as
did COPA a few years back) shows that you can only go “so far” to protect
children, without vigorous parental engagement.
A similar paradigm problem exists in other areas, like gun control (first
posting Tuesday December 18). The whole
issue can dhow a wedge between people who have and who do not have children.
The Los Angeles Times
offers this video:
It mentions the legal
expenses faced by apps developers developing products for minors, especially
those with special needs. The FTC even admits that each educational app
developer would have to spend about $9500 to comply with the law. There is a
need to use analytics to figure out how minors interact with the apps, and using statistics-gathering may have trouble not skirting the law. Allen Simpson, vice president of policy
at Common Sense Media, (link ) speaks.
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
FTC to take a hard look at data brokers, issues subpoenas to nine companies
Consumers may one day need to have access to reports
that data brokers collect and resell about them, based on web-surfing habits,
according to a Business Day story by Natasha Singer in the New York Times on Wednesday,
December 19, 2012. The Federal Trade Commission has issued administrative subpoenas
to up to nine data brokerage companies.
The link to the story by Natasha Singer is here.
One of these companies is “Acxiom” in Little Rock.
AR (link), not to be confused with a public relations firm “Axicom”. When I worked for Univac, I worked at an
account in northern New Jersey in the early 1970s called “Axicom” as part of ‘Transport
Data”. I don’t know if that company is
related to either of these now, but I thought that the company collected
consumer data. A couple of other companies
are eBureau in St. Cloud, MN (interesting to me because I lived nearby in the
Twin Cities for six years), and Inttelius. In Bellevue WA, which sells
background reports on people. PeekYou
also analyzes social media “sentiment”.
By and large, many of these companies collect data
more on purchasing habits, surfing, and consumption, rather than on trying to
analyze the nature of level of someone’s postings on social media, but the
latter possibility is obviously on the table in the minds of some people.
“Do not track” could of course inhibit data
collection from companies. Let me note
another oddity: On a few sites (such as
CNN and MLB), one of my Windows 7 computers (converted from Vista) halts for thirty
seconds or so to start another service, and it seems to related to tracking ads
that I see. I don’t experience this
problem in a Mac environment. In a
mobile environment (I have a Verizon Motorola Droid), a few sites (such as NFL)
disrupt my browsing (checking scoreboards) with requests for surveys or ads to
view. I suppose that if I went along
with it, data would be collected. Sports
sites seem especially prone to this behavior.
Consumers might find that not only are offers sent
them affected, vendors might treat them disparagingly. Insurance companies could charge higher rates
or refuse them, and the same, say, for prospective landlords, or even employers. This idea could be particularly ominous if it
spread to analyzing someone’s social media presence (such as volume of postings
in relation to followers or friends, or use or privacy settings). The FTC might well pay attention to this
possibility. But it now seems that "hidden online reputation" can invoke consumption and surfing habits as well as posting activity.
How could all of this affect college and high school students?
The FTC has its own press release on the issue, here.
Here is a hearing by Rep. ED Markey (D-MA), with his
owns story on data brokers here.
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Instagram re-use of photos could violate rights of people photographed; competitors jump in
There has occurred a recent flap, as Instagram, recently
bought by Facebook, apparently has instituted a policy that requires posters to
give consent to Instagram’s subsequent reuse of their photos for commercial
purposes.
Other photo services, like Picasa as a part of
Google, allow users to keep total intellectual property ownership of
photos. It would seem that Instagram and
Facebook will probably have to change in this regard.
One obvious problem is that if someone else’s
picture is taken and then reused by Instagram, that could result in a violation
of that third person’s right of publicity or sometimes a misappropriation of
that person’s privacy rights. Instagram
is complicating an already escalating problem with photos of people which could
sometimes affect their online reputations, as has been pointed out on Anderson
recently but has gotten little legal traction so far.
The Washington Post has a story by Craig Timberg,
link here.
And the CNET story by Declan McCullagh points out
the possible effect on photo subjects who did not give consent.
Is it time for us to rethink our attachment to "our fundamental rights", for the good of others?
On Sunday, December 16, 2012 at the Trinity
Presbyterian Church in Arlington VA, in a sermon titled “Images of Salvation,
Good News Proclaimed”, Rev. Judith Fulp-Eickstaedt made of couple of startling
statements that go beyond any obvious knee-jerk reaction to the recent tragic
events in Newtown, CT.
She drilled down to the way we look at individual fundamental
rights (almost reminding me of my own father’s concern of my obsession with “rights”
as a teen). At one point, she said, “Sometimes,
we need to give up cherished rights for the sake of others.” Yes, “give up”, or “sacrifice”. Later, she got back more on the mark when she
modified this statement with. “We need to exercise rights in a way that doesn’t
harm others.”
This does go to the “wordmarks” that characterized
my first two books (“Do Ask, Do Tell: A Gay Conservative Lashes Back” in 1997,
but more specifically, the little 96-page booklet, “Our Fundamental Rights, and
How We Can Reclaim Them: A Psychological Approach”, at the end of 1998.
I don’t think her comments are to be seen just in
the limited context of gun control, any more than are President Obama’s remarks
Sunday night from an interfaith service in Newtown, when the president said
that “We are all parents for all of our children”, and that would include the
childless. That’s getting closer to the
point that concerns me.
I did, Monday, on the “Bill on Major Issues” blog,
make some remarks specifically about the gun issue. For many middle class people living in
populated areas in relatively securable homes, I don’t think that reasonable
gun legislation has any significant effect on their ability to defend
themselves, their families, and their property.
Most people probably don’t need to own weapons.
I’m more concerned about the way other fundamental rights
play out – particularly speech and self-expression, and the way this loops back
with the degree of connection people really have with others. The obvious place to start here is to wonder
about violence in media – video games, movies, etc. That debate will surely go on. But I’m concerned about the way media use is
related to our sharing of the relative risks and burdens among
generations.
I became a media person in the years that my former “information
technology” career came to a close – through self-publication. The legal tradition that built up quickly was
to facilitate the deployment of user-generated content and self-publication by
relieving intermediaries of downstream liability for harm done by users of
these networks. Speech is a fundamental
right, but low-cost unsupervised distribution was a right that we invented or
evolved. In today’s environment, it is
very difficult for parents to protect their children from all the different
kinds of perils, including cyberbullying, pornography, violence, stalking and
the like.
I have to admit something else: media for me became
a surrogate for “real interaction” with people at some intimate level. I don’t have the personal “stake” or my own “skin”
in the future that others have, because I wouldn’t take the “risk” of having a
family. Could that mean that I should have less of a voice now? This gets complicated and can go in different
directions. I withdrew because
conventional social competition as a male in the 1950s as humiliating. I came to a personal truce with this whole
idea and lived a productive life – leading into media and publication – without
the usual social contacts and ability to share emotion that people now
expect. (Actually, the expectations of
social capital and social solidarity are growing today precisely because of
presentation of need in the media, as well as longer lifespans.) It’s becoming apparent, though, that
intergenerational responsibility (including some of it that gets very personal
at times) doesn’t wait for pregnancy or just deciding that you want children or
a lineage (maybe it does on “Days of our Lives”). Eldercare, for example, is becoming the
responsibility of everyone anyway. It
can be particularly troubling for someone who did not raise his own family. Of course, how to get everyone “engaged”, as a
“policy” matter, gets complicated. For example (as just one question), should we
encourage same-sex couples (“Will and
Sonny”) and singles to adopt “Wednesday’s
children” just out of the huge volume of need?
Fulp-Eicksataedt also mentioned the idea, “If you
have an extra coat and someone else needs one., you give it to him”. (Actually, a gay club, TownDC, is having a
coat donation Dec. 22.) The Gospels do
seem to call for a lot of unconditional, uncritical generosity without much
critical screening of the “personal responsibility” of the needy person – like you
don’t stop to wonder if the aggressive panhandler at the Metro stop is a
scammer. (We got into that discussion
Michelle Singletary’s column about one family’s impact from Hurricane Sandy on
Dec. 12, “radical hospitality for those who don’t do the right things”. Modern classical liberalism – most of all
libertarianism – place a tremendous moral (and sometimes legal) investment in personal responsibility and
personal control of one’s own fate (most of all, Ayn Rand’s brand of
objectivism). This development in
Judeo-Christian nations in the West has always seemed a bit of a paradox, making the Gospel, at least among early Christians, seem Marxist. Personal “moral hazard” has become a modern
buzzword.
In my own life, I’ve had to come to terms personally
with what I always knew intellectually – I can remain distant, aloof, even
indifferent when others try to demand my attention. When I was working in information technology
as an individual contributor, I was sheltered from the “social demands” of the
real world. Since “retiring”, I’ve been
surprised by what people have approached me with, to get involved in mentoring
situations where in the past I was not welcome. (This has happened in conjunction with substitute teaching, and with various unsolicited job calls.) That is a very difficult sea change.
I cannot make something or someone (perhaps a victim) “all right” and I
cannot always share the emotions of other families with any real
integrity. I know someone could look at
my circumstances and ask me why I don’t “do more”. I can only tell you that I need to finish the
personal media projects that I have started, without disruption. It is not as easy to be effective by “grabbing
a hammer” and going to the shore, or by sheltering people, as some would think.
(I think back to the Cuban refugees n 1980, as well as today’s people displaced
by storms, on that one.) What I do like
to think about is solving these problems by preventing these disasters in the
first place.
Friday, December 14, 2012
Pundits recommend trimming social media contacts during economic hard times -- a puzzlement? a paradox?
Here’s an off story on NBC Today’s site, “Prepare
for the Fiscal Cliff” by purging Facebook friends (and maybe Google+, maybe
Myspace, maybe Twitter followers). Only
keep the friends who can take care of you (or that you can take care of) in hard
times.
I think the whole idea of the article is a bit
hyperbolic, but here is the (Lifeinc) link anyway.
It’s true, Facebook “Likes” won’t get the power back
or clean out mold from the basement, or restore a condemned house.
I’m rather reminded of Dr. Mehmet Oz, who says (on
Oprah and other places) that he doesn’t like to do extensive surgery on people
who are socially isolated. He means,
able to love somebody who loves you back.
That’s what he said. I never
thought you love people just to be loved right back!
As in the Singletary article that I mentioned
Wednesday, it’s hard to see how far people can go with “Prevent defenses” and
how much more interdependence we need to accept.
But I wouldn’t voluntarily live less than 200 feet
above sea level (or a river) right now.
But there isn’t always a choice. And maybe 200 feet isn’t enough. What of there were a tsunami from the Canary
Islands volcano?
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
"Radical hospitality" means sacrifice, even to help those who didn't do the right things
I’ll have to carry on yesterday’s post about
volunteerism with a note about Michelle Singletary’s column on p. A15 of The
Washington Post today, “Doing the right thing, even for those who didn’t”. Online the title is “We are our brother’s
keepers” (and sister's), link here. Life is about a lot more than "fairness", she says.
This one is worth a real debate. Michelle describes a letter from a woman
whose sibling became homeless after Hurricane Sandy (living somewhere in
coastal New Jersey or Long Island) and
wants help. But the sibling had behave foolishly, financially speaking ,and had
not insured the property for floods, etc.
The woman would have to sacrifice paying for her own kids’ education to
help the siblings; kids – challenging the idea that we should be absolutely
responsible for our own kids, if we had them – but then there’s “Raising Helen”,
isn’t there!
Michelle takes the compassionate position, much more
collective in principle. It’s almost
Biblical. I’d love to see opposing or at least developmental viewpoints on this
one, maybe from Cheryl Wetzstein of the Washington Times.
I have to say, that as somewhat a “singleton” and
socially isolated (to the dismay of Mehmet Oz), I’ve had to be very careful all
my life about making “mistakes”. I don’t
make as many as people who have more social capital to fall back on. And the problem is, if I had to “sacrifice”
here, I’d never amount to anything, "on my own". I can't tolerate letting others toy with my life (especially the GOP).
But as we saw from yesterday’s post, even people who
did the right things in that area are having a hard time. Both corporate and governmental bureaucracy
seems not to be working (note the NBC news story late yesterday on FEMA
trailers). The LDS Church, for example, has a very good
record of taking care of its own, and taking care of others after disasters -0
look at how much LDS chipped in after Katrina.
There’s something else about the “radical
hospitality” issue. A singleton like me
could be forced into sharing his life with others, regardless of making good
choices. That’s a good secondary reason
for “family values”. Not all moral
obligations are just about consequences of choices; values when totaled have a
bit effect on people, especially those who do need more help (and sometimes those individuals will give up on the idea of law and order altogether because it never "worked" for them). That gets much harder for someone who stayed
out of the game entirely for years because of earlier social humiliation.
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Slow recovery of coastal NYC, Long Island raises questions about volunteerism as well as policy
A detailed front page story Monday December 10, 2012
in the New York Times, “Housing agency’s flaws revealed by storm”, by Eric
Lipton and Michael Moss, shows the inability of “the system” to protect the
lives of the poor or disadvantaged after a major catastrophe, like “Hurricane”
Sandy. The link is here.
The article describes how the Housing Authority had
placed a lot of people in apartment buildings in low-lying areas. Salt water from the storm surge badly damaged
the underground power, phone and Internet cables; all of this greatly
complicated getting food and medicine (as well as heat) to residents on upper
floors. In addition, in the outer
buroughs, many of the most vulnerable areas are blue collar neighborhoods,
differing from the practice in Florida and other southern coastal states where
luxurious condos are built on the beaches.
The piece goes on to describe how “ragtag teams” of “volunteers”
tried to help the residents when government agencies or companies could
not.
Some of the severe damage is said to have gone into
Zone B in NYC.
Small businesses in extreme lower Manhattan and in
many of the beach areas of Brooklyn and Queens still don’t have reliable
Internet restored.
Much of southern Queens (not just the Rockaways),
Brooklyn (not just Red Hook and Coney Island) and Manhattan is low-lying, a fact not immediately apparent most of
the time to residents and visitors.
The housing authority has talked about helping
residents develop “grab bags” for evacuations for storms in the future.
It’s not clear from media reports if the major
damage to NY and NJ is mainly limited mostly to immediate coastal areas
(including isthmuses) and inlets, or whether it goes farther inland than the
public would expect.
And it’s not clear how much good rebuilding efforts
(even by volunteers) would to unless there are projects to control storm
surges.
How much good would garden-variety or church
volunteerism really do? It would seem
that some of it could come from the tech community, to make the communications
systems more robust (even as it is upgraded, say, to FIOS).
Wikipedia attribution link for northeastern Staten
Island picture.
This topic was also addressed here Nov. 17, 2012. There are some stinging comments about lax volunteerism on a review of an Anderson Cooper broadcast on my TV blog, Aug. 29, 2007, regarding Katrina. By the way. Anderson says he lives in lower Manhattan (Greenwich Village?) and was without power a week. But, of course, he just went to a hotel uptown (or hung out at the Time Warner Center). That's OK, he's paid his dues overseas.
NBC News also reports that FEMA is not using available mobile homes. What, is FEMA waiting for volunteers with their own hammers?
NBC News also reports that FEMA is not using available mobile homes. What, is FEMA waiting for volunteers with their own hammers?
Monday, December 10, 2012
Yelp, Wordpress attorneys tell EFF what would happen without (or with a weaker) Section 230
Continuing its coverage of Section 230, Electronic
Frontier Foundation today tweeted and and posted interview with Yelp
counsel Aaron Schur, which can also be reached on a “CDA230
Successes” page. That link also presents comments by Paul Sieminski , counsel of “Automattic”
(it’s spelled with two t’s), owner of Wordpress, which now sponsors over 38
million blogs. The east access to both
is here. The acronym “CDA” refers to the 1996 “Communications
Deceny Act”, which was really another section of the 1996 Telecommunications
Act, but the “decency” portion was struck down by the Supreme Court in 1997 (as
would COPA later).
Both attorneys give similar answers to what might
happen were Section 230 to be “repealed” or gutted. They seem to believe that the sites might
still operate, but would have to put in a “safe harbor” system similar to what
is used for copyright infringement under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
(DMCA). Of course, that idea presumes that, if Congress were to modify 230, it
would even put in a “safe harbor” process for libel and similar torts (like
false light in conjunction with invasion of privacy, or even cyberbullying).
The attorneys do say they take down postings (not
necessarily whole accounts or whole blogs) if told to do so by “courts of
competent jurisdiction”. Wordpress also
says that most of its defamation takedowns come from overseas, where downstream
liability protections are weaker or non-existing. But they still allow blogging from these
countries.
Both attorneys suggest that some censoring must
happen when there is insufficient downstream liability protection, and Yelp
says that consumers would have much less access to prospective information
about substandard contractor (or medical professional) performance. Before the Internet came along, consumers had
to use the Better Business Bureau.
I have thought that blogging and review services could not exist at all without Section 230 protections, and shared web hosting might be much more expensive or harder to get for ordinary people.
The attorneys also say that they do have terms of
service provisions that go beyond the literal requirements of the law. For
example, Wordpress does not allow the deliberate publication of identifying personal
information (like people’s SSN’s). They
will take down postings that violate TOS when notified.
Section 230 also protects bloggers who allow comments on their blogs, for liability for what is in the comments, and doesn't seem to be weakened by comment moderation (usually). I do moderate comments, however, to avoid spam and gratuitous problems, like intentional links to malware.
On the street, people have talked about downstream
liability for years. I recall a
discussion at gay pride in Minneapolis in 2000, at the Libertarian Party booth,
when an AOL consultant who said he expected downstream liability to come
roaring back as a political issue. But
it has not. Conservative justices (and
the Bush administration) have been more sympathetic to free speech than many
expected.
Sunday, December 09, 2012
Fertik's "Reputation management" company wants to expand into the virtual vault business: good for consumers, or another challenge to speakers and businesses?
The New York Times has a big story in its Business
Section today (Sunday, December 9, 2012) about the expansion of Michael Fertik’s
company, “Reputation.com” (originally called Reputation Defender). Fertik, whose life has taken him from New
York City to Louisville KY now to the Silicon Valley, wants to offer people the
opportunity to manage their own “data vault”, as he expands way beyond his
original ideas about online reputation. My first story about “Reputation Defender”
appeared here Nov. 30, 2006, during the first year that online pundits were
starting to talk about the effect of “digital dirt”, especially on job
seekers.
The tile of the story (by Natasha Singer) in print
is “Your digital Switzerland: An entrepreneur builds a virtual vault to secure
personal data”. Online, the title is “A
vault for taking charge of your online life”, link here.
The consumer could authorize different sectors of
his vault for different kinds of businesses, like health care providers (does
that mean “Clear Choice” for me?), banks, insurance companies, ordinary
retailers, and media retailers like Amazon.
I just thought of something: if someone wears a pacemaker or Holter
monitor (an idea I may use in my screenplay), would this kind of data be there?
One suggestion was that big purchases could go into
the “insurance information” vault for coverage purposes. So could changes in titling or trusts, I
suppose. But the idea sounds to me like
it could go dangerous. People could get “Web
FICO” scores on their reputations that could affect insurance rates or
availability, employment, or even leasing
an apartment. For example, could an
insurer or potential landlord become concerned that a person could become a
target? Indeed, the end of the news
story notes that both Equifax and Trans Union are working out deals with
Reputation.com. I didn’t see mention of
Experian (the descendant of TRW and Chilton, the company in Dallas that
provided my steady work income in the 1980s – in the days that programming the
interface to “risk predictor” [Fair Isaacs] employed a lot of
programmers).
There’s a difference between “Reputation Management”
and “Reputation Marketing”.
I still think that the “online reputation” issues
(as discussed in the last couple of posts about litigation over review
postings) could lead to pressure on Section 230 of the 1996 Telecommunications
Act. CNN discussed this litigation
Saturday (several attorneys, including Richard Herman and Avery Friedman) and
the general view was that the ambiguity was troubling but in most cases the “opinion
rule” and “free speech” would prevail in court.
Friday, December 07, 2012
EFF reminds Netizens of the importance of Section 230 with a textbook-like illustration
Electronic Frontier Foundation has disseminated an
infographic diagram (like you would have seen in a high school government
textbook) on why Section 230 is so important for the capacity of ordinary
people to self-publish their content on the web.
The link for it is here. It was tweeted yesterday.
Historically, it seems a bit remarkable that
Congress, with the Telecommunications Act of 1996, offered downstream liability
protections to service providers while at the same time trying to censor speech
with the “Communications Decency Act” portion, which the Supreme Court would
overturn, 6-3, in 1997. I actually heard
some of the oral arguments on March 19. 1997 (after waiting in the three-minute
line in a late winter Washington snowstorm).
The recent lawsuits concerning Yelp postings might
stimulate more calls to remove Section 230 protections, as would concerns about
cyberbullying and “reputation extortion” that have been aired on some
television shows recently (especially by Anderson Cooper, see March 12, 2012
including comments). One aspect of this
discussion to keep in perspective is how things were back in the mid 1990s,
when I was writing my first “Do Ask Do Tell” book. Self-publishing in books was possible then
and the cost of desktop publishing (and “webpress”
book manufacturing) had just started to come down, but print-on-demand didn’t
exist yet. It “meant something” to get
published, and literary agents had a real presence. That’s all changed now. The Supreme Court has been more supportive of
self-distribution and self-publishing (as opposed to the speech itself) than I
might have predicted, given the course of both the CA and COPA. One factor is that “conservatives” have
generally felt that unlimited speech is very important to them, too.
It’s also noteworthy that the Washington state has
agreed to stop trying to enforce its law against facilitation of sex
trafficking (partly over Section 230 issues).
That problem had been discussed here on June 15 in conjunction with a
lawsuit brought by the Internet Archive.
In another matter, the SEC has warned Netflix about a
public Facebook posting that Reed Hastings, CEO< made regarding the company’s
sales performance, without notifying investors through established
channels. Arguably, a Facebook posting
in “everyone” mode is public disclosure.
The Business Day New York Times story (Friday December 7, 2012) by
Michael J. de la Merced is here.
Wikipedia attribution link for Mt. Rainier
approach. I was on this road in
1976. I do know people (including challengers to DADT) who have done the supervised climb (getting up at 1 AM).
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