Thursday, August 30, 2012
Can bloggers realistically charge for their content?
There are packages out there that would allow
bloggers to charge selectively for access to content.
There is, for instance, Wordpress-member (or
wp-member), which says it does not block out a whole site, but can be applied
selectively. The link is here.
There’s a 2011 article on “four ways to charge for
content” which is more like, “four questions to ask yourself before charging
for content”, (website url) here.
And from Social Mouths, in March 2011, there is a
blog post saying that “free is boring” but you can still make your free content
“remarkable”, on the way to deeper goals, link.
It’s pretty unlikely that “ordinary blogs” could
make a go of charging. But it sounds like the “paywall” model is working for
some newspapers, especially the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.
Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Once a journalist, no more partisan employment (and no more hucksterism)
Recently, I’ve noticed an interesting, if torn,
poster near my UPS store pickup, “Campaign Jobs”, offering “full time career
positions” and saying “work for clean air”.
The organization was the League of Conservation Voters, link here.
At first glance, the site would appear to be quite
partisan.
And that brings up a sore point for me. After “what I did with my life” in the 90s
and 00’s, it’s really not feasible for me to become a paid employee selling any
particular cause.
I used to think this was OK if I were just a paean,
as I was calling for contributions to the Minnesota Orchestra when I worked
there in 2002-2003 after my “career ending” layoff at ING at the end of 2001.
But, I became a (self-appointed) journalist, perhaps
a “know it all” – and it’s surprisingly hard to help other people in a more
direct way, particularly if it is paid.
It really strikes me now how the apparent self-sufficiency offered by the Internet (it's all "do it yourself" online) is breaking down social capital, and making old-fashioned community fundraising calls unwelcome.
Although, by way of comparison, I guess Anderson
Cooper “paid his dues” when he started his own career (which I admire).
Another little photo from my recent excursions “out
and about” was a trademark sign on the back of a utility truck for a contractor
named “Handyman”.
That’s interesting to me, perhaps because of
coincidence. In my novel, there is an “Academy”
in West Texas set up to retrain laid off workers, set up by a rightwing group
under the umbrella or penumbra of a company named “Handyman” – with a tagline, “There
is no ‘they’”. It’s the old “we won,
they lost” paradigm.
I also propose several other sequestered communities
(sometimes called “intentional communities”).
One of them, south of Charlottesville VA, is indeed a low-tech
intentional community adjacent to an abandoned estate run by the CIA, to
conduct “remote viewing” experiments to contact “the” extraterrestrials (or
angels). But the participants have to
remain earthy and unplugged. There’s
also a religious ashram in Montana, and a test facility in Arizona, near the
old “Understanding” saucer-house community. And finally, at a reclaimed “mountaintop
removal” site, there is a landing strip for the saucers.
I’ve got to put all these pieces together.
I shot the following micro-video in an “extratropical
storm” in Williamsburg (Saturday). The point of it
will become clearer later. But it’s no “Sunday in the Park with George”.
Sunday, August 26, 2012
A road trip to Mars, and then on to Titan (no long losing streaks, please)
I made a visit to the Virginia Air and Space Museum
in Hampton, on the tip of the Peninsula, Friday. I was intrigued by the possibility that the
“interplanetary” exhibits might be more detailed than those at the National Air
and Space Museum with the Smithsonian in Washington.
The main attraction, on the second level, was
probably the simulated trip to Mars, which then opens up onto a “walkthrough”
of the Mars surface.
Would social media be available to settlers on the
Moon, or Mars, in the future? It would
take light only a bit more than a second to reach the Moon, so response to
tweets and Facebook posts and “likes” wouldn’t be so challenging. For Mars, light would take perhaps a half
hour, depending on the orbital position.
One major challenge would be that advertisers would not be able to sell
much to settlers.
There was a station, where you could weigh yourself
on all the other planets, and there were photographic dioramas, rather small,
of the surfaces (as imagined by artists) or Mercury, Venus, Mars, Europa, and
Titan. I don’t recall seeing the Titan
surface being shown at the museum in DC.
But why not have a diorama based on the Cassini probe photos from 2005?
The same ought to be dome for Io, Europa, and Triton.
There was a panel that explained how the gas giant
planets are constructed, but what would be interesting would be an animated
video showing what the hydrogen would “look like” as it changes gradually from
gas to liquid and then to metal under tremendous pressure.
There were artist’s renditions of possible
extrasolar planets, but nothing about a planet that is tidally locked. However. There is a diorama showing the space
museum in a “termination zone” that could be interpreted as an environment on a
tidally locked planet.
In one of my screenplays, “69 Minutes to Titan”
(based on the length of time light might take to reach Titan, the largest and
most “alive” moon of Saturn), angels are recruiting people to go live on their
base on Titan and become angels themselves.
There is a computer game where you design a “solar
system” and then watch the planets collide or fly out because what you design
isn’t stable.
If you go, you park at the Crown Plaza hotel (free
only if you stay at the hotel).
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Does Facebook present the penultimate challenge for monetizing "free" content?
The Washington Post has a front page story Wednesday
Aug. 22 about quick decline of Facebook’s stock price (FB), with a very
handsome portrait online (hoodie included) of founder Mark Zuckerberg.
I’ve said before, I think it’s his creation; but I
did not bite (although my own financial planner at Wells Fargo actually rather
liked it before the IPO). I share one trait:
a liking of building recognition and global public presence before worrying
about monetization.
The story, by Craig Timberg, has link here.
Note the FB finance page on Yahoo! here.
The hooker seems to be “free content”. Broadcast channels had to wrestle with this
as they went online, and a few newspapers have found they can sustain
themselves by actually charging for it online (I subscribe to both WSJ and New
York Tmes; it works economically if you get both online and print). Companies that started as search engines
(Google) benefit from the fact that many visitors actually are looking for
services or products (for example, as I do, before going on the road to a
particular city). But readers of content
(about politics – gay rights, free speech, Arab spring, etc) often feel
intruded upon by ads. (I can’t
say whether I saw my Ford Focus online at a Washington Post site before I
bought it in 2009 – I think I did.)
Facebook’s advantage may be the chance to monetize
and sell “Likes”, but it’s going to be hard to do that within acceptable
practices of privacy. The scariest part
of its plans may be those dealing with facial recognition.
Over time, the expectation of users to have content
for free without intrusion or loss of privacy could become a serious business
model problem for all service providers.
Those who provide free content with little income (to gain visibility)
are riding on the backs of those who make money, perhaps. That can’t be sustained forever. Or can it?
It’s like saying credit card holders who pay off full balances every
month freeload on those who pay interest.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
The Nationals v. Braves: a baseball "morality play"
Last night, I got to see a bit of (major league)
baseball’s morality play, as I went to a Nationals game and saw them reach 30
games over .500. Columnist George Will
would have loved this game.
Baseball seems the test laboratory for balancing the
idea of individual performance against team play. Last night proved the point.
The walk-off winning run scored in the bottom of the 13th inning when pinch hitter Chad Tracey hit an
ordinary ground ball to second baseman Dan Uggla. On first was utility catcher Kurt Suzuki, who
had reached on a Baltimore chop base hit, and Danny Espinosa had raced to
third. (Power hitter Ramos, the normal
catcher, is out for the year with a knee injury.) On Tracey’s grounder, Espinosa broke for the
plate. Uggla’s brain froze, first wondering if he could get Espinosa (he could
have with a perfect throw), or should try for the double play? But, twenty feet
from first base, Suzuki stopped and froze, making Uggla take another half-second
to make up his mind. Suzuki’s quiet distracting maneuver was as deadly as
getting the opposition in a Chess endgame.
He made Uggla, in zugzwang, do something. Uggla’s normal biologically conditioned
reflexes were short-circuited, and he
dropped the ball trying to get out of his glove. There was no play at all. Original reports of an error were incorrect,
as Uggla wasn’t even charged with an error. (Watch the MLB video here.)
This may have seemed like a game where home-field
advantage and walk-off were critical.
Perhaps so. But earlier this year, the Yankees had won a game here with
a similar stunt on the bases on a potential double play ball, leading to a four-run
inning. Good teams win games with the
little things as much as with slugging and homers. Good teams get opposing teams to commit more
errors, both physical and mental.
The game had been delayed by 56 minutes, with only a
sprinkle. The Nationals didn’t want
their pitchers distracted by delays, and management is getting more careful
about how wet grounds can lead to injuries.
As it turned out, Jordan Zimmerann (the “John the Baptist” of Tommy John
patients) was ineffective, being taken out after five innings, his pitches
staying too high. Braves ace Tim Hudson
survived shaky first and was mowing the Nats down. The Nats would have to get him out of the
game. The Braves had the advantage of
having used fewer players and pitchers in the extra innings – again, a teamwork
thing. But this one defensive “mistake”,
induced by clever base running, changed everything.
We saw some more “teamwork” earlier when Bryce
Harper (no more “clown questions,” please, about underage drinking) tried to
beat out a bunt, just after Hudson came out.
He even gave notice.
I’m thinking of returning to some occasional
competitive chess. I’m impressed by how
much World Senor Master talks about teamwork among connected pawns and multiple
minor pieces (especially the “two bishops”) in assessing the chances in a
position in his new book on chess openings (Books blog July 3, 2012).
Update: Aug. 28:
No, baby, Adam LaRoche's fly ball off the top of the scoreboard railing Sunday in Philadelphia PA was not a homer. Jayson Werth, of all people, should have known better. Surely, all of these players experienced "ground rule" issues playing neighborhood ball as boys. As kids, when we made our back yards into "stadiums", we argued over ground rules all the time. Some kids didn't realize that a ball caught on a carom off the wall (like the brick side of a house) without hitting the ground is not an out. We often used shrubbery hedges as outfield fences. Was a ball that grazed the top of a hedge a homer or a ground rule double?
Last picture: Minor league ballpark in Richmond, VA.
Update: Aug. 28:
No, baby, Adam LaRoche's fly ball off the top of the scoreboard railing Sunday in Philadelphia PA was not a homer. Jayson Werth, of all people, should have known better. Surely, all of these players experienced "ground rule" issues playing neighborhood ball as boys. As kids, when we made our back yards into "stadiums", we argued over ground rules all the time. Some kids didn't realize that a ball caught on a carom off the wall (like the brick side of a house) without hitting the ground is not an out. We often used shrubbery hedges as outfield fences. Was a ball that grazed the top of a hedge a homer or a ground rule double?
Last picture: Minor league ballpark in Richmond, VA.
Sunday, August 19, 2012
"Facedeals", despite requiring signup and consent, could raise concerns about public photography in general
There’s a new facial recognition app being beta
tested, called Facedeals.
The idea is that the shopper is recognized by a
Facedeal camera when “out and about” and subsequently offered bargains and
deals.
Given the rather superficially obvious concerns
about privacy, one wonders how many people would sing up for it.
There is a story about it on Popai, here.
Facedeals has a vimeo video “Check in with your face”
There are various local television stories on the product, such as this one from KPLR in St. Louis, link.
The biggest concern is indirect: even though the
service cannot be used without a person’s signing up (and it’s being tested
only in three states so far), it will make a lot of people more skittish about
their activity in public, and the possibility that employers or spouses could
see them where they don’t want to be seen.
As for Facebook, yes, it’s Mark’s “baby” and he
should keep running it. Sink or
swim. I wouldn’t moan losing half of a
$40 billion fortune on stock prices. (“Facebook”
is his, just like “Doaskdotell” is mine; it’s all about orders of magnitude in
the numbers -- exponents in Algebra I.) But it’s hard to see how
much money there can be in mobile advertising.
But the television networks went through all of this 60 years ago, when
I was just growing up. I remember “friendly
sponsors” only too well.
Saturday, August 18, 2012
Former Michigan assistant attorney general assessed damages for defamation in blog; was this a "conflict of interest"?
A federal jury in Detroit has ordered a former
Michigan assistant attorney general, Andrew Shirvell, to pay $4.5 million in
damages to recent University of Michigan graduate Chris Armstrong, for several
torts: defamation (libel), invasion of privacy, stalking, and intentional
infliction of emotional distress (that last one is open to abuse in my
thinking).
Shirvell had written the defamatory comments about
the student (who was president of the student body and openly gay) in a blog,
and had been interviewed by Anderson Cooper on AC360. Shirvell would subsequently be fired from the
attorney general’s office.
Of course Shievell’s conduct was boorish (to say the
least), but in my mind, the real question is whether it is appropriate for
someone in public office and having powers to make decisions about others, to
rant about his views on anything in public forums.
One could ask the same question about the behavior of
the “Chick Fil A” CEO, given the presumption
that his company is part of the American mainstream. (Maybe it isn’t.)
When I was working for a company that sold life
insurance to military officers, back in the 1990s, we all felt that a transfer
to an acquiring company (and away from a possible “conflict of interest”) would
be a good idea, although some of the discussion was “under the table”. But even so, I had not in a position with
direct reports (subordinates), or with the ability to make underwriting
decisions about customers (which the company had said could be a real legal or
ethical concern).
The CNN news
story on the Shirvell civil judgment is here.
Friday, August 17, 2012
Internet freedom issues seem unlikely to become partisan
The "rag" US News has a story about the partisan implications
of “Internet freedom” issues. A story by
Jason Koebler is titled “Democrats consider officially supporting Internet
freedom; GOP to ‘discuss” issue”, link here.
Yet, according to the piece, some companies in
Silicon Valley (including Facebook) have given more to GOP candidates than
Democrats, despite the generally “liberal” nature of the political views of
most executives in the business. They
are likely to believe that the GOP may be less intrusive with surveillance laws
and will listen a little less to “liberal” Hollywood in the wars over piracy.
The article also linked to another US News story
reviewing the goings-on a few months ago with SOPA and PIPA. The writer
believes that many politicians were awakened by the one-day Wikipedia protest
blackout.
GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan had backed
away last January from supporting SOPA, originally introduced by a Republican,
Lamar Smith (CNET story here).
Here’s an interesting fact (maybe a good subject for a “Millionaire”
question of the day) from a site called “vice”: Lamar Smith apparently had
violated copyright law himself on his own site before introducing SOPA, as in
this analysis by Jamie Lee Curtis Taete, link.
Also, late Friday night, ABC NIghtline covered Customs sting operations to catch counterfeit goods, which have sometimes caused a few websites to be shut down, as covered here previously.
Fareed Zakaria's "accidental" copying illustrates challenges for professional journalists
CNN journalist Fareed Zakaria, who hosts “Global
Public Square” and is well known for sensible, generally moderate policy views
on issues like health care, has fought off an accidental “plagiarism scandal”
himself, according to a “Media Decoder” story in the New York Times Friday, p.
B2, by Christine Haughney, link here.
Zakaria, in a long article for Time on gun control (timely
given the Colorado and Wisconsin incidents) apparently copied sections from an
article by Jill Lapore (of Harvard) for the New Yorker, and forgot to give
attribution. A smaller blog post for CNN
had the same problem ( website url link).
Zakaria, 48, has apologized and says the error was
unintentional.
Lapore’s article “Battleground America: One nation,
under the gun”, from April 23, 2012 in the New Yorker, is here.
Newspaper ombudsmen often discuss plagiarism
problems with readers, and also other issues such as pressures on reporters to
have stories “cleared” by political candidates (July 29). Bloggers don't have to deal with readers' ombudsmen. Should they?
The story reports that Time and CNN have reinstated
Zakaria after brief suspensions, and the Washington Post, while reviewing
Zakaria’s work, is not likely to take any adverse action.
Professional journalists are under considerable
scrutiny with regard to the accuracy of their work, avoidance of factual errors
or misstatements, and unintentional simulations of “plagiarism”. If I were ever invited to join forces with
any such group, I would be subjected to the same scrutiny.
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Facebook mistakenly rejected "political speech" ad on marijuana law reform; don't make too much of the end of "lock-up" on shares
Electronic Frontier Foundation has a brief story
about Facebook’s reversing itself and accepting ads that, while on the face
supporting legalization of marijuana use (perhaps beyond medical purposes),
merely said (directly) that citizens should register to vote and support drug
law reform. The ad did not actually promote or facilitate marijuana use.
Facebook (as does many services) does have a policy prohibiting ads for tobacco
or similar products themselves. But it
was a little surprising to see cognitive confusion on the actual substance of
an ad wrongfully prohibited.
The EFF story is here.
Analysts are saying not to make too much of the end
of the “lock-up” on Facebook Thursday. Most of the problems with its share price
have to do with fundamental questions on how to monetize mobile use of the
site. That’s ironic, because mobile use
(rather than content-centric use on conventional PC’s) really is closer to the
meaning of “social networking” anyway. The Yahoo! link for the story byChris
Ciaccia of “The Street” is here.
No, I do not have any Facebook shares, yet. Don't know if I'm even eligible.
Monday, August 13, 2012
Once you're a blogger journalist, it's hard to trump for other people's causes, or to act partisan
I heard part of President Obama’s speech from
Chicago last night. He did ask “ordinary
people” to call Biblical neighbors, to raise money, to get out the vote, for “all
of us”.
Since I present myself as an independent blogger
journalist, can I reasonably wear a second cap and hit other people for money
for specific causes?
Even though I am journalist by self-appointment, I
would say, generally no. And I certainly can't behave is an partisan way. And, no, I can't run for office and get other people to raise money for me! (I almost did so in 2000 in Minneapolis, however.)
Having entered the world of self-publishing the way
I did in the late 90s and painting with such a wide brush, I kind of took
myself out of the game for anyone else’s specific cause. I can’t “always be
closing” (and I don’t have a 100 Mile Rule, even for just men). Even the repeal of “don’t ask don’t tell”, which
I think I played a critical part in, grew as a concentric issue to swallow up
everything, as if a moral sinkhole (and not just in Louisiana or Florida).
I get lots of calls daily for specific, narrow
causes and I really don’t have the time for each one of them. No one is more important than all the others,
unless it matches one specific aspect of my life (by talent or social
connection) and I’m in an unusual position to address it.
It’s a shame, perhaps. We all used to be a lot more
sociable.
Friday, August 10, 2012
Do media companies really have an incentive to solve the "piracy problem"?
I have to note this op-ed on Aug 5 by Nick Bilton of
the New York Times, “Internet pirates will always win”, link here.
One of Bilton’s most important points is that
material not available legally online is indeed more likely to be pirated. But big media companies make so much more
money from cable operators that they have little practical incentive to offer
the material legally in other forms.
I might disagree somewhat with Bilton’s
observation. I like to watch major
series on a big plasma screen the night they air. The night of the crushing finale of ABC’s “Revenge”,
I was in an airplane. So I played it,
legally, at the ABC website on my computer the next day. Not as satisfying personally, but a
satisfactory way to see it. (It’s not
practical to set up shows to record on long road trips, because equipment
should be unplugged.) Most networks
allow most of their episodes to air afterwards online, although the replays are
punctuated by long commercials, which apparently pay for the service. And film distributors have become more
pro-active about having YouTube rent many films for $3.99 or so for a 24-hour
viewing window.
Bilton describes in detail the way some “thieves”,
especially Pirate Bay, have “retaliated” against attempts (as through ICE) to
shut them down.
Is it that young people, who can’t afford to pay
full cable price on their own, are clever enough to figure out all the ways to
steal the stuff – with programming skills that should make them employable? The
people who “can” afford to pay for cable are paying for everyone else. Sounds like socialism!
For myself, I can’t see the point of watching a “Dark
Knight Rises” in any environment less than the way it was intended to be
seen. As Regal says, “go big or go home”.
Solar storm, EMP risks: lack of preparedness threatens basis of individualism
Recently, on my Books blog, I’ve reviewed a “future
history” novel about the possible aftermath of a huge EMP (electromagnetic
pulse) attack on the United States, and yesterday I reviewed a National Academy
of Sciences booklet on the danger from solar storms.
The NAS makes the strong point that our economy is
based on short-term profitability, and that businesses and individuals
generally do not take into account preparedness for rare but “high consequence”
events. Even now, the conventional
property insurance industry is having trouble coping with unpredictable
asymmetric risks as well as a gradual upscaling of losses that may well
accompany climate change.
Although there is a lot of talk of family disaster
preparedness, which is taken seriously in parts of the country regularly
exposed to torndoes and hurricanes, many people would find fielding the effort
to be prepared for everything as too distracting from the focus they need on
their own priorities in their own individual lives.
Despite the grim scenarios suggested by the books
mentioned above, a large but still largely regional catastrophe is much more
likely (in practice) to happen than the total destruction of the entire country’s
power and technology grid. For example,
solar storms would probably affect northern latitudes more and do the most
damage in the population centers of the northeast and perhaps Great Lakes area.
Government policy makers would face
unprecedented issues in handling the very unequal burdens faced by different
parts of the country, on the scale of perhaps ten Katrinas.
How would the infrastructure for the commercial
Internet as we know it function if there were major regional damage to the
power grid? Many large companies, like
Facebook and Google, say that have built redundancies into multiple server
farms all over the country. Many of the
newer servers tend to be located farther south, like in North Carolina or
nearby in Ashburn, VA, which may make them a bit less vulnerable specifically
to the solar storm risk.
Still, the banking system would be challenged to
continue operating properly. And Silicon
Valley companies, predicated on media streaming and user-generated content,
could be unable to continue supporting their “free services”. The whole paradigm of UGC could change, and
eventually new legal challenges (like to downstream liability exemptions) could
arise.
Individual content generators need to think about specific ways they can
prepare to safeguard their work. Optical
storage (CD’s) is safer than thumb drives or the “Cloud” in guarding against
any EMP risk.
There is something to be said by having some
investment in the “bricks and mortar” world.
Maybe authors would do well to maintain an inventory of their published
works in print form, and the idea of “just in time” production should not be
carried too far. Maybe we have gone too
far in investing in instant gratification technologies that are rather trivial
in long-term importance. The dot-com
bust proved that once, and the concept of electronic social networking may have
been taken so far already as to become essentially a way to feed compulsions.
For many people, today’s culture supports the idea
of “proving yourself” on your own before offering yourself in a committed
relationship with someone and starting or maintaining a family. It also
supports being choosy or “selective” about the relationships you expect (or
allow). All of that is predicated on a stable public infrastructure that has
been hardened or made robust against sudden stresses, even though short-term
economic thinking often undercuts making the investment it takes to protect infrastructure
from rare or improbable risks. It’s also
predicated on the notion that stability will enable one to purse one’s own
particular talents, and not be burdened with adaptive demands requiring
rarely-used real world skills. Yet in
most cultures, where privacy expectations are less or not possible to meet, people
accept the idea that they need to accept people into their lives and need
others in a practical way to survive, and need to be open to the idea of
possible sacrifices so that others (usually lineage) can carry on after them. Today, to some people, like me, such an idea
seems humiliating.
See related post July 17.
Wednesday, August 08, 2012
Anderson guest touches on public photos of people; are Facebook "Likes" really a form of "speech"?
Tuesday, Aug. 7, there were a couple of incidental
points about Internet web effectiveness made on Anderson Cooper’s daytime show,
although not as magnified as in an earlier episode in March regarding online
reputation extortion” (Marc 12).
The little couple “Jennifer and Bill” made a point
about photography of people drinking in bars.
Yes, when the pictures wind up online, it could cause some people to
lose or not to get jobs, Jennifer said.
It needs to stop. Indeed, there were cases a few years ago where
people were excluded or teachers fired when pictures of drinking showed up on
Facebook, sometimes taken by others. Sometimes the focus was specifically on
underage drinking. (That issue caused National’s
teenage outfielder Bryce Harper to chide a reporter for asking a “clown
question” in Toronto.)
On the other hand, people have been taking photos at
discos for years, particularly since cameras became standard features of cell
and smart phones. But the issue has
become more sensitive in the last eighteen months or so with the attention the
media has placed on Facebook tagging and possibly on facial recognition
software. In New York City, in March,
the “Black Party” required customers to check in cell phones before entering
the space.
Things have come a long way since it was a big deal
for people to walk in front of TV cameras at gay pride events (a contractor
co-worker in Dallas was freaked out when I did so in 1980), or when
Metropolitan Community Church would set up no-TV areas for congregations,
particularly for AIDS information forums.
People who work for so-called “Christian” employers (much worse than
Chick-Fil-A – say, Cracker Barrel restaurants back in the early 1990s) have
been fired for accidental media appearances at gay spots. That doesn’t seem to happen much any more.
Anderson also covered the idea of an Internet blog
going viral – the restaurant reviews by 85-year-old Marilyn from Grand Forks,
ND. And yes, she understands “Google
hacking”.
There’s another issue brewing, which I covered on my
“IT jobs blog” yesterday in an employment case, whether “Likes” on Facebook or
YouTube constitute protected speech. “Likes” may have commercial value (almost
as a kind of bit coin or currency), but one can make the case that “Likes” are
more like social chatter than real “content”.
But they do bear on reputation and popularity, and can be relevant in
politically sensitive employment situations.
Update: Aug. 11
Update: Aug. 11
The matter is now before the Fourth Circuit in Richmond (it has a reputation as a conservative circuit). On CNN on Saturday, Richard Herman noted that a simple "like" (or dislike) doesn't make a substantive statement of public concern, often the standard applied in free speech cases.
Tuesday, August 07, 2012
Is Congress going too far with the Intellligence Authorization Act?
Now, civil libertarians are warning against the new
Intelligence Authorization Act, which. Among other things, is supposed to keep
classified information away from the press.
The heart of the bill seems to live in the idea that
only a very small cadre of government officials would be able to discuss
sensitive information with the press, and the lines between legally classified
and merely sensitive information seem blurred.
The New York Times ran a major editorial against the
bill Aug. 2 (website url), here.
The bill appears to be S 3454 (or HR 5743) with
govtrack link here.
The bill should not be confused with S3414, which has to do with cybersecurity (Aug. 1).
Most of the major media concerns over the bill seem
to focus on whistleblowing by government officials who may suspect things are
going wrong with domestic surveillance, such as with Jane Mayer’s story about
Thomas Drake, “The Secret Sharer”, May 11, 2011, in the New Yorker here.
I wondered what would happen if a blogger repeated
information that was “leaked” in violation with the act. Could the government go after parties that
republish protected information, or only the sources of the original leak?
There have been a very small number of situations
where information has come to me that I have not republished, but in a couple
of cases I have actually called authorities.
I use my own judgment. There are
some things one sees that should not be published indiscriminately.
On the other hand, I had no compunction about
embedding a Wikileaks video (from Bradley Manning?) of friendly fire in Iraq
(the CF blog, April 7, 2010; the YouTube
still works.) Am I violating an
anti-espionage law?
I found a PC World story by Nancy Gohring, reprinted in the Washington Post, May 1, 2007, about how a major ISP Verio had cut off service to Cryptome after repeated complaints from intelligence services (especially Britain), and found supporting the customer too risky or costly, link here.
This older story suggests that even western democratic governments can manipulate major corporate webhosts into not supporting "nuisance" customers who threaten to publish leaks. Yet Cryptome is "out there" now.
I found a PC World story by Nancy Gohring, reprinted in the Washington Post, May 1, 2007, about how a major ISP Verio had cut off service to Cryptome after repeated complaints from intelligence services (especially Britain), and found supporting the customer too risky or costly, link here.
This older story suggests that even western democratic governments can manipulate major corporate webhosts into not supporting "nuisance" customers who threaten to publish leaks. Yet Cryptome is "out there" now.
Saturday, August 04, 2012
Silicon Valley "Minority Report": Technology (plus asymmetry) can make us vulnerable
Silicon Valley companies “collectively” already
operate a “Singularity University”, which could probably be called an “Asymmetry
University”. Marc Goodman is the Chair
of Policy, Law and Ethics at this university, as well as founder of the “Future
Crimes Institute”, a group that sounds like it comes out of the movie “Minority
Report.” And, no, Marc doesn’t
particularly resemble Tom Cruise.
He has an opinion piece on the CNN Ideas Series, “How technology
makes us vulnerable”, today, link here. There is an accompanying video which is
particularly chilling, regarding the way “operations centers” and simple
searches were used by the attackers in the 2008 Mumbai attacks in India.
The article gives several important links, including
a 16 minute video by Avi Rubin, “All of your devices can be hacked”, on Ted.
There are two big problems, it seems. One is our increasing dependence on
technology, especially solid-state – there has been a lot of discussion in the
media about vulnerability to solar storms and even deliberate EMP attacks,
although there is a lot that can be done to harden our technology (even in the
chip design itself) that we haven’t made the commitment to doing yet. Another is the way hyper-individualism,
originally (and still somewhat correctly) viewed as an antidote to cronyism and
organizational corruption, works psychologically and exacerbates the dangerous
potential of asymmetric actors. As a
result, basic questions in our culture – about equality, individual rights, narrow
personal responsibility, and rationalism as put against belief, relational
commitments, generativity, sustainability, and “karmic fairness” –could be up
for grabs, some day, and maybe sooner than we would want. We could backtrack to the mentality of the
50s.
Friday, August 03, 2012
Senate lets Cybersecurity Act die, but better privacy protections likely in future bills
The US Senate effectively “killed” the Cyber-Security Act of 2012 when it mustered only a 52-46 simple majority Thursday. The bill,
S3414 before the 112th Congress, would have needed 60 votes to pass.
WebPro has a story by Zach Walton on the vote here.
This means that there probably won’t be a similar
bill this session.
The bill, however, might have entertained amendments
that would have allowed a lot more consumer privacy protection, according to
Walton. There might have been provisions added to stop warrantless GPS
tracking, some kinds of ISP surveillance, and interference with video sharing.
Electronic Frontier Foundation had strongly opposed the bill.
Wednesday, August 01, 2012
With user-generated content, service providers need reliable due process; a Twitter case
One sensitive topic in the “user generated content”
world is “due process” by service providers when deactivating accounts after
complaints, perceived TOS violations, or perhaps automated spam detection
procedures. Because of the huge numbers
of users and content items, appeals and due process procedures themselves are
very automated and proprietary, and sometimes things can fall through the cracks.
The Center for Democracy and Technology has a position
paper on the issue, authors Erica Newland, Caroline Nolan, Cynthia Wong, and
Jillian York, bridge link to PDF here.
The paper suggests, for example, that when other
visitors report abuse, they should have to cite specific policy reasons. Another is to provide a vehicle for data
export or liberation.
The existence of due process can be an important
issue for users who may want to package their content for business deals with
other media outlets.
Electronic Frontier Foundation has an article
yesterday by Jillian C. York, arguing specifically that Twitter needs to have an
appeals process. The specific incident
has to do with the deactivation of the account of Guy Adams for publishing an
email address of an NBC executive, when it had been available for over a year. The Deeplinks story is here.
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