Sunday, December 29, 2013
Various news sites and Internet services try to clean up user comments
Major news and Internet service sites are trying to
“clean up” the quality of user comments, according to a story in the Washington
Post Saturday by Barbara Ortutay, link here.
Facebook may have enjoyed an edge in this area by
requiring real names as user-ids.
YouTube has started requiring Google+ accounts and being signed on to
make comments, which then show up in the Google+ feed, with the videos often
embedded automatically. This seems to
have been working for the past two months or so. It is true that it makes Google+ an effective
way to publish some viewpoints to an already interested audience.
Many customers of shared hosting services find that
they do attract enormous amounts of spam comments, which requires bulk
moderation. Blogger already pre-screens
comments as likely to be spam, particularly anonymous comments, to the point
that they don’t show upon the Blogger’s screen at all; on the other hand,
comments made by those signed on with Google accounts are much more likely to
pass preliminary screening and wind up in the Blogger’s moderation queue.
The article notes that some sites, like Popular
Science, no longer accept comments at all.
On my older sites (see posting Dec. 26), comments
could be made only my sending me emails, which many people did; and practically
all of these emails did get published in a separate directory, including those
critical of me.
The tone of comments on controversial stories is
quite interesting. Of they are quite
blunt, particularly on crime stories or dealing with issues like gun
control. Many Internet visitors do seem
concerned with inequality as an existential issue and seem to feel it is an
area where personal action matters.
Comments on characters in soap operas (like “Revenge” and “Days of our
Lives”) are often interesting to me. The series of comments last winter on the New York Times about Social Security and the debt ceiling were instructive, as a couple of California law professors explained how the Trust Fund really works.
Saturday, December 28, 2013
Federal Judge in New York rules in favor of NSA, contradicting earlier federal court ruling in DC
A federal judge in New York has issued a ruling
opposite (more or less) of a previous ruling from the DC court, on the issue of
NSA meta-data spying based on the “pen register” concept for telephone (and
possibly other electronic) communications. The New York Times story by Adam
Liptak and Michael S, Schmidt is here.
The New York case is called ACLU v. Clapper (filed
against the NSA head).
The pen register idea goes back to a 1979 case
before the Supreme Court, Smith v. Maryland (Findlaw link ).
Judge William H. Pauley III ruled that an pen
register system had to be omnipotent to be effective, and needed a record of
all “degrees of separation” to find genuinely suspicious activity. He noted that before 9/11, the NSA had
intercepted calls to a safe house in Yemen by Khalid al-Mihdhar, but did not
have the capability to determine that the potential terrorist was in San Diego rather
than overseas.
Pauley referred to a 2012 opinion on U.S. v. Jones, which had considered the limits of
technology in tracking drug dealers or other criminals, link here.
The White House has a paper “Liberty and Security in
a Changing World: Report and Recommendations of the President’s Review Group on
Intelligence and Communications Technologies”, link here.
Jim Scuitto and Evan Perez of CNN write “Review: NSA
snooping program should stay in place”, link here.
The Pauley court opinion is here and the link was provided by attorney Paul Volokh.
On CNN Saturday, the "Legal Guys" said that the New York opinion (rendered in a courtroom near the World Trade Center) applies to many more people. Appeals courts will hear both cases next.
On CNN Saturday, the "Legal Guys" said that the New York opinion (rendered in a courtroom near the World Trade Center) applies to many more people. Appeals courts will hear both cases next.
Friday, December 27, 2013
Did Rap Genius cross the line with its search engine games? It's a potential trap for any site
Search engine strategy is always an important issue
for me. Today, the media reports how
Google "punished” Rap Genius by pushing it way down in its search engine
results, putting articles about it ahead.
For example. Tech Crunch has a story here. ABC News has a story by John Chang yesterday here.
For example. Tech Crunch has a story here. ABC News has a story by John Chang yesterday here.
Actually, the Wikipedia listing scores pretty high,
and you can go to the URL from there, but you won’t see security company
ratings then first. Here’s the link It calls itself a “Wikipedia of hip-hop”. Slate has a story that says, "if you have a lot of traffic from one source, it's not yours," link.
The problem reminds me of another issue, “link
farming”, a practice which can cause blogs to be classified as spam.
One potential issue is that individuals often have
different sites and blogs with different vendors. A person could use Blogger,
Wordpress, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, maybe even all of these. He or she could also have multiple domains,
on different platforms (especially Windows v. Unix) in order to get different
technical features. I do that, as I
explained yesterday, because the effectiveness of service providers and ISP’s
and of various technologies varies with time.
It’s often necessary to cross-link between these entities to help users
navigate. That’s not done to improve
search engine ranking; it’s done for users.
One idea would be for Google (or Bing, Ask, or Yahoo) to provide a way
for an entity to list all of its sites in order to tell search engines that it
will not try to unfairly game the system with links.
I get automated emails offering SEO all the time,
and I ignore them.
Thursday, December 26, 2013
"Meta-Blogging 101": I start restructuring, with two new Wordpress blogs
I am gradually restructuring my websites to guide the
visitor’s focus on two major areas. This
activity is commensurate with the process to publish my “Do Ask. Do Tell III”,
which I discussed on my Books blog on Dec. 12.
The first of these is “primary content navigation”, which is
best followed from a single link on my main site, here.
The various books and essay collections that I view as
primary content (going back to 1996) can be tracked to footnotes. Newer materials (the “III” book above will be
maintained with a new “Do Ask, Do Tell Footnotes” blog, which I have created
today with Wordpress, with “Blue Host”, primary link here.
The general concept is that one should be able to navigate
through my writings and drill down to detailed supporting notes, and that these
notes on newer materials will be maintained on this blog. Most issues of concern to me have been
addressed in one of my books or primary issues, so this view of navigating my
work should take the visitor through most of my issues in quite a lot of detail. I have one post to introduce the blog, and
the domain is here.
The other blog will give me the ability to correlate books,
movies, television series, musical works, and various other live performance
events by issue topic. Starting in
January 2014, many films or books that are heavily topical (as to political or
social issues) will be reviewed here instead of on Blogger. A webpage will be provided (on doaskdotell)
to enable to visitor to easily correlate posts by topic or label among the various
blogs and sites. I expect to cover the “treatments”
of my own new media projects (music and video, and “the novel”) on this blog,
also, link here.
Since I have so many
different domains and sites, I find it is necessary to organize material “logically”
rather than physically (much like a database, especially the old IMS mainframe
product). There is no one vendor that is
optimal in all parameters (stability, speed, ease of use, reputation, etc) at
all times in all circumstances, and different services and vendors have
opposing strengths and weaknesses. So I
find I need to take this approach.
I spent a couple hours today setting this up on Wordpress
with the BlueHost service (in Utah).
There are some teething problems, and there is a learning curve, because
Wordpress (as implemented by webhosts) has quite a different look and feel than
Blogger. For example, on the “Notes”
blog, the first post title doesn’t appear because of some issue with the WP “aside”
feature which I don’t get right now. It looks like I have to download the stats
package from the “Jetpack” plugin set (link).
I will have more details on how to use this once I have done
a couple of “meat and potato” postings and ironed out some issues. I’ll spread a little good cheer about this on
Twitter, Facebook and Google-plus soon, too.
Over time, I expect fewer “small” postings on Blogger, and
more use of the “Book Navigation” concept to cover all the issues. One reason is, frankly, pressure to work
better with the commercial side of the media industry which does have to make
money, even from me.
Wednesday, December 25, 2013
Do book self-publishers want to distribute through a Netflix-like service?
New publishing services may do for books what
Netflix does for movies: allow readers
e-book or pdf access to a catalogue of books for a subscription fee, and
sometimes send authors or publishers feedback on which sections of a book were
actually read or loaded. The New York
Times has a story by David Streitfeld Christmas Day, “As new services track
habits, the e-books are reading you”, link here.
Self-publishers, the article says, will love
this. Something like Urchin statistics
or Google Analytics on e-books!
It’s always been assumed that when you publish a
book through public distribution companies, you have no right to know who
bought or read it. Advertisers, though,
seem to want authors, on both the web and in print, to know their audiences.
Smashwords looks like an interesting service and I’ll
probably get into it later on my Books blog.
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
Edward Snowden claims a "won position" in his own chess game
Edward Snowden appears in a garish front-page
picture in the Washington Post Christmas Eve, with the headline “I already won”. He has a silver laptop open with an
Electronic Frontier Foundation banner “I support online rights”. He reclines, his coat jacket retreated to
reveal a hairless forearm. Perhaps he
has already paid his price. How ironic!
Barton Gellman’s big story today in the Washington
Post is, “His leaks have fundamentally altered the U.S. government’s
relationships with its citizens, the rest of the world.” The link is here. That revealing photo was taken in
Russia.
Gellman talks about the PRISM program that developed
after 9/11, and how major tech companies had to share user communications with
government agencies. But the special
metadata analysis of NSA went even beyond what PRISM does, and apparently was
illegal within the US without FISA supervision. The NSA did not most of this
snooping overseas but apparently couldn’t resist doing so at home. And it’s dubious, given the experience of the
Bush years, that FISA provided much real supervision.
Gellman also reports that Snowden says that he did try to work through the system at first.
Gellman also reports that Snowden says that he did try to work through the system at first.
The Washington Times used the AP version of the
story here.
It appears that the NSA can triangulate with almost
any electronic communication made by anyone in the world, including
domestically. The mathematical process
ferrets out unusual patterns that could show terrorist activity. It works on a “degrees of separation”
concept. Is this process likely to stop
a catastrophic EMP attack plot if one ever develops? Probably so.
Could it catch an innocent civilian with unusual but legal and harmless
connections? As my own father would have
said, “Highly unlikely”, but, like so many things in life, “it can happen to
you.” The fear of the snooping could
have a big effect on the business models of social media, as has come out in
recent meetings at the White House between Obama and tech companies.
All the linear programming (hint: my first job in
1970, at RCA) and data collection in the world doesn’t change the fact that to
solve crimes and stop potential attacks, you have to interpret “human” behavior
ad hoc. Many clues are hidden in plain
sight, in social media available to all, without snooping. There’s a 2008 case involving a national security
employee where I still don’t think police fully understood the clues available
on Myspace and even Blogger (I’ve actually discussed it with them, can’t say more
here). You have to do more than collect metadata
and run it through supercomputers; you have to know about controversies and
understand how people behave.
Monday, December 23, 2013
"Affluenza" raises deeper questions about commitment, to family and only then to something else
James McAuley has a commentary on “affluenza” (and
its conceptual use as a defense of a teen in a tragic DWI homicide and maiming
by a spoiled teen near Ft. Worth, TX) in the New York Times today. The pundits
have moralized enough, but there’s one interesting point that McAuley
adds. That was about the white flight to
the suburbs. His link is here.
I lived in Dallas from 1979-1988, and the whole time
worked in or near the Oak Lawn area.
That was lucky and fortunate enough, but precarious. Employers felt the
constant pull of the far north suburbs.
In Texas, school districts did not have to lie within city limits. Some of “far North Dallas”, above I-635, had
been annexed to the City, but was in the Richardson School district. Parents felt an incentive to move north of
I-635 for presumably better schools.
Your kids come first, right? How’s
that for socialization? It cuts both
ways.
In fact, EDS, which had been a bastion of
military-style social conservatism when Ross Perot founded it, had been located
in Exchange Park, near Oak Lawn and Love Field, then moved to a campus on
Forest Lane, but still within the LBJ Freeway.
(Even the woman who leased my first apartment there, on Cedar Springs,
said to me that she wouldn’t live below LBJ, back in early 1979.) Eventually, EDS built a bigger data center in
Plano, the next suburb north of Richardson, with an even more prosperous school
district. It seemed odd that in Dallas,
prosperity increased as the distance to Oklahoma decreased.
McAuley paints a picture of suburban Dallas that
sounds accurate, an area of conformity and conservatism, where strictly
religious sexual values (which have certainly loosened in recent years there
just as everywhere else as times change) cover up economic inequality and seem
to provide an excuse for it. It doesn’t
seem that putting “family first” will teach you everything.
Sunday, December 22, 2013
Christmas sermon brings back the "other peoples' children" issue
Today, the advent service before Christmas, at Trinity
Presbyterian Church in Arlington, offered a sermon by Judith Fulp-Eickstaedt,
“Season of Longing: for the Child”. The
sermon brought back a topic at First Baptist a few Christmases ago: Joseph,
betrothed to Mary, had some explaining to do when Mary was with child. Either he had broken his vows, or Mary had,
or something miraculous had certainly happened.
There’s a moral lesson in this we sometimes gloss over. People wind up being responsible for children
they didn’t bring into the world. Is
that what it means to “be a community”?
This year, on the soap opera “Days of our Lives”, we say gay character
Sonny (Freddie Smith) deliver the baby of bad girl Gabi in the wilderness in an
escape situation, and wind up acting in many ways as the baby’s father
anyway. And in a whimsical twist this
past week, it really “cost him” (on my TV blog).
We often talk about the problems of the poor and of
inequality as if they could be solved by public policy changes and money “above
us”, when we all know solution comes down to earth, like upper level jet stream
winds brought to the ground by heavy rain, with personal involvement. I talked about that today a little on the
Issues Blog (in response to a Fareed Zakaria article) and a previous event at
Trinity.
My biggest concern in all of these blog postings (or a big
concern) has been, how those of us who are “different” (oh, we all are) should
behave with respect to these problems.
Now, to me a discussion of “personal ethics” makes sense when the
surrounding society is stable enough and serious enough about human rights that
personal actions really become relevant.
Yes, American society certainly “qualifies”, for me at least. But if I lived in a society with “real persecution”
(say, Uganda, or of course North Korea or tribal Pakistan or Afghanistan) I
don’t think these musings would have much relevance. I find it hard to contemplate “eternal
reward” if the surrounding society is so evil as to make any creative endeavor
irrelevant. I’ve talked about my own
idea of afterlife before elsewhere, but I think sometimes we have to start
over.
Once the surrounding society “passes”, then I think the idea
that someone us may have benefited from the sacrifices of others without
realizing that, and enjoy “ill-gotten comforts” starts to become relevant. If we don’t deal with that, we can wind up
paying a price – that is, paying for the sins of others.
This follows up on a discussion I had started last Sunday
(Dec 15) here while in North Carolina.
Thursday, December 19, 2013
Local news blogs seem to do well for "amateurs"
I recall that a woman tried to start a local LGBT
newspaper in Minneapolis around 2002 and pleaded, from writers, for strictly
local stories. I even covered the LGBT
content in a Twin Cities film festival in a submission.
Amateur bloggers are turning to local news and
providing a tremendous amount of coverage. According to a news story on the
Switch Blog of the Washington Post on Thursday morning by Timothy B. Lee, list
here. An example is the “Prince of Petworth” blog
by Dan Silverman, link here.
I sometimes cover local stories in my blogs when
they illustrate issues that can occur anywhere.
For example there have been stories in Washington DC about closing bars
(usually “straight”) after violent acts occur on the premises or nearby, and
there have been stories about resistance of neighborhoods to new liquor
licenses. These could obviously have an
effect on clubs that I do go to in the future.
Another issue of concern to many residents is redevelopment – the eviction
of tenants when leases end so that buildings can be converted to condos for
people with “more money”.
Can someone make a living off a “local blog”? That would be hard to tell from what I see,
but it seems that local advertisers (especially real estate agents) like
them.
I don't agree that all news is local. But "morality" starts with the individual and moves out.
I don't agree that all news is local. But "morality" starts with the individual and moves out.
Picture: Not the greatest, but it's a new McDonalds (shot to not get people in the picture) off I-95 near Thornburg VA, north of Richmond, from a recent trip. The chain has been rebuilding a lot of its restaurants. Why?
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Forensic psychiatrist warns that young men need "resilience" in the face of hardship even when caused by others
Monday night, forensic psychiatrist Michael Welner,
MD, appeared on Anderson Cooper’s AC360 to talk about what motivates young men
into particular kinds of violence such as school or public space shootings or
terror. Welner runs a “Depravity Scale”
website and is not inclined to use mental illness as a reason not to punish destructive
or criminal behavior.
Welner made a comment about the recent perpetrators,
particularly for the Dec. 13, 2013 incident in Colorado. He said that these young men actually have “high
self-esteem” but do not have the “resilience” necessary to bounce back from
adversity or challenge. Welner said specifically
that some of the need for resilience derives from bad luck caused by the
wrongful actions of others. People
should not use the fact that others can stiff them or cause them harm as an
excuse for turning to nihilism, which seems to be a pattern in terrorism. Welmer extended this comment also with
respect to the elder Tsarnaev brother, although other factors (and possibly
schizophrenia, as reported in the media Tuesday) may have contributed to his “radicalization”. The Boston Marathon incident seems like the
school or theater incidents in that individuals were attacked directly, rather
than “decadent western society”, as in 9/11 or with scenarios involving WMD
use. So the personal motives really do
vary quite a bit.
The comment on resilience in the face of adversity
seems to link, logically, to my discussion of aloofness and insularity
Sunday. When I lived in Dallas in the 1980s, I "dated" a forensic clinical psychologist, who always said one could be guilty and crazy at the same time. (when speaking about John Hinckley).
Monday, December 16, 2013
Federal judge says NSA "meta-data" surveillance on cell phones and Internet contacts violated 4th Amendment
Federal Judge Richard J. Leon of the Washington DC
circuit has ruled, on Klayman v. Obama, that the NSA “metadata” surveillance
program based on citizen phone records is an unconstitutional abuse of the
Fourth Amendment. He ruled that it was an unreasonable extension of an earlier 1979
Supreme Court ruling that allowed the government to keep “pen registers”. The concept is no longer reasonable in the
age of mobile communications and Internet.
The link for the opinion is here.
The judge stayed the implementation of his ruling
during the appeals process (for six months).
The ruling
seems to have been influenced by the enormous volume of material released by
Edward Snowden, and the trivial nature of almost all of it.
The judge said that he was not persuaded that the
government had stopped any terrorist attacks that wouldn’t have been detected
by more conventional “pre-crime” investigation methods.
It does seem reasonable, though, that metadata might
find an attack in possible planning, such as a recent plot to explode a truck
bomb at the Wichita, KS airport, which was stopped by an FBI sting. Imagine a plot to detonate an EMP device! How would it be detected in advance?
As for my own low-volume phone calls, the NSA is too sinful to notice. So was Snowden.
On Dec. 18, various media outlets reported long meetings at the White House between Obama and CEO's of telecommunications and web hosting companies, who warned that surveillance (and government's expecting complicity in doing so) can undermine business models. IBM, ATT, Verizon and Cisco were particularly vocal according to reports. I haven's seen much yet in my interaction with these busiensses.
On Dec. 18, various media outlets reported long meetings at the White House between Obama and CEO's of telecommunications and web hosting companies, who warned that surveillance (and government's expecting complicity in doing so) can undermine business models. IBM, ATT, Verizon and Cisco were particularly vocal according to reports. I haven's seen much yet in my interaction with these busiensses.
(First) picture: Bizarre purple color in clouds in sunset Dec. 15 near Raleigh, NC. (25 miles east of town). Second picture: Hawaii (estate photo).
Update: Dec. 27
A federal judge in New York has made a ruling contradicting the DC court ruling. CNN story is here. I've have more detailed coverage (with links to new court opinions) on a new posting soon. This looks headed for the Supreme Court, pronto.
Update: Dec. 27
A federal judge in New York has made a ruling contradicting the DC court ruling. CNN story is here. I've have more detailed coverage (with links to new court opinions) on a new posting soon. This looks headed for the Supreme Court, pronto.
Sunday, December 15, 2013
Philosophy 101, revisited: Is pure meritocracy ethical at all?
Here are some thoughts I’m trying to put into
logical sequence.
I don’t get the “joy” out of “helping others” for
its own sake that others would like to see me experience. I can’t stand being
recruited to other peoples’ causes unless I have already made a chice to have a
direct stake in them. If anyone can be a
victim then no one is. There are so many
pleading for dire needs, that no one need seems more urgent than another.
I agree my attitude is a bit Calvinistic, but that
seems to come from logic, not faith.
We say we are different from most other animals
because we want to regard every human life as intrinsically sacred. But to carry out that belief, we need
rules. True, in a democracy people make
the rules, indirectly. But someone needs
the power to enforce the rules.
Therefore there is a risk of corruption. So we say that the law should do as little as
possible, be hands off. That is
essentially the basis of libertarianism.
Inevitably, in any system, some people do better (or
at least “look better”) than others. A
Calvinist says that’s because some people are intrinsically better than others,
as a simple mathematical postulate – any finite or countable set with a measure
or metric can be well-ordered. What we
don’t like to admit is that fortune and luck (sometimes turning on small incidents) play a much bigger part in how
people turn out than we (libertarians) want to admit. And we don't like to see that some of us who are better off depended on the unseen sacrifices of others, sometimes under coercion, and possibly inviting huge payback. The pure libertarian position would let the
weaker ones die off, which creates a cultural, although not legal, impulse and
obligation from others to step up, even when it costs something. Such a capacity is supposed to comport with the permanent complementarity of traditional marriage. The alternative could be an accidental
redirection toward fascism. Religious
systems try to get around this paradox by just claiming some rules of human
behavior (especially with regards to sexuality and family) are simply
scriptural edicts, determined to please a higher power, a God or Allah.
Logic alone
could make pure individual meritocracy seem moral, but that would seem to
contradict a dedication to the value of human life. Anyone could suddenly be in need, and need to accept attention from others that could have previously been unwanted/
While inequality, unfairness and poor "performance" of many people does have roots in public policy choices (particularly encouragement of extreme capitalism, or sometimes the opposite in collectivism) ultimately the only place we can start addressing all this is with out own attitudes and behavior choices, and values.
Saturday, December 14, 2013
Corporate sponsorship is the rule in the think tank and policy writing world
The Center for American Progress is downplaying the
importance of corporate donors, particularly regarding its papers on
healthcare, even there is concern about the role of subsidy of think tanks on
both the left and particularly the right, according to a New York Times article
Saturday on p. A13 in the New York Times, link here.
Journalists are supposed to be objective, and
syndicated columnists have some leeway on the right or left, according to the
newspapers that run their op-eds. But
most think-tanks and lobbying support research companies have to depend on
biases sources for funding.
When I worked for Lewin ICF in 1989, most of the
reports were sponsored by lobbying groups and trade associations. At the time, we worked on a shoestring (it’s
different now), but I got the idea that one could produce a lot of important
output with few resources.
Typically, all of this means that if you are paid
opinion consultant (even for a libertarian place like Cato), you really can’t
just express your own personal views.
The very most prominent journalists do get to inject their own moral
tone into the coverage of issues (Anderson Cooper likes to do this, having
scolded a couple guests on not having “moral compass” before). It does seem to me that the work from Pew seems very objective.
I don’t advocate that writers follow the path that I
did, putting out reams of material that can’t pay for itself. But I do have an unusual, or “a different
life” to report, one with particular paradoxes and ironies that span decades
and that map to important policy issues.
It’s hard to see, for example, how corporate
sponsorship of research could bear on an issue like “don’t ask, don’t tell”, an
issue that spoke to the capability (and permission from society) to participate
in some shared risk-taking and possible sacrifice to protect others, and
particularly future generations. The same might go for the marriage issue.
In the speech areas, though, it’s clear that there
are different corporate stakes, even within the technology world, when it comes
to issues like piracy, downstream liability, and tort reform (encompassing
abuses by trolls).
Friday, December 13, 2013
Entertainment site showing Prince Harry's South Pole "walkabout" actually requests permission to install tracking cookies
For the first time that I can recall, a website has
asked me for permission to install tracking cookies. It did so in all three of my browsers in
Windows 8 (Google Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer 10). On all three, I got a message that I had to
approve the site’s use of its cookies.
Webroot Secure Anywhere did not object. The message refers to a government rule passed in 2011 (I think from the UK).
The site was Entertainmentwise, an article by Esi
Mensah on Prince Harry’s blog of his fund-raising hike to the South Pole in
Antarctica. The link is here.
The purpose of the trip is to raise money
for disabled British military veterans.
Does this example show how a stricter implementation of "do not track" would work in practice? Do US webmasters need to look at this now?
You can try the site, to see if you get the “opt in”
permission. You will be bombarded with
ads and sound, even though this looks like a perfectly legitimate and wholesome
news story.
By the way, I just found a trove of my late mother's pictures of her trips to Panama, Hawaii, Northern Ireland, London, Copemhagen, and Madrid, all in the 1990s. Tomorrow, Dec. 14, marks the third anniversary of her passing on 2010.
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
NSA exploitation of user cookies might be bad for Internet business models
The National Security Agency has been using web “cookies”
planted by advertisers to track potential targets, especially those for
government hacking. Recently, more
information has appeared that the FBI plants malware on target computers and
the NSA or other clandestine services do so with targets, mostly overseas. There is a major “Switch blog” story in the
Washington Post on Wednesday December 11, 2013, front page, by Askhan Soltani,
Andrea Peterson, and Barton Gellman, link here.
There could be a practical effect on companies like
Google and Facebook whose revenues and enormous profit generation come from
advertisers, and whose business models would seem to be threatened if consumers
are even more wary of allowing tracking.
But some of the cookies used don’t contain personal
information but do identify a browser and computer or mobile address.
What is the practical effect of all this on ordinary
home users and small business owners, or especially bloggers or other artists
who publish adventurously on the Web?
It sounds mixed.
The tracking perhaps does reduce the risk of foreign terrorism and some
kinds of domestic crime. But it might
increase the risk, however slight, that an ordinary person could be wrongfully
accused of a crime. The risk is mixed,
as it could be mitigated by even more surveillance. But if it “happens to me” it’s over.
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
Journalist reporting on Holmes case tests how shield laws work going among states
The New York State Supreme Court sided with a Fox
News journalist, Jana Winter, and ruled that the reporter does not have to
reveal her sources to Colorado authorities trying James Holmes for his July
2012 rampage at a theater in Aurora.
New York state law is more protective of
professional journalists than is Colorado, but here there seems to be a “Full
Faith and Credit” issue, as to whether another state could use its own laws to
force an out of state journalist to disclose sources inside the state.
The Fox version of the story, involving drawings
that Holmes had shared with a university psychiatrist about his destructive
fantasies, is here.
An “amateur” blogger in New York would not have been
protected by the ruling.
It seems that there is a real issue here, in that a
state in Colorado’s position needs extreme deference from the (other states’) courts
in subpoenas for critical evidence in murder or death penalty cases, to prevent
any possibility of wrongful conviction, a subject I have covered on my movies
and TV blogs lately.
Monday, December 09, 2013
"Upworthy" does have an interesting way to get attention -- play up karma
I saw tweet from a music friend about a curious and venturesome site
called Upworthy last night during the “ice storm” – everything for me stayed
up, but it ddn’t for some people, so life is “unfair”. These are "things that matter", to be passed along.
Upworthy trolls the Web for good motives, it
seems. It looks for morally compelling
content, tests it on an audience, and then blasts the best “performers” onto
social media, attracting visitors to its own site.
I looked at a couple of the Vimeo videos. One of them was about children under 12
working in produce fields in Mexico, and has a headline to make us believe that
when we buy and eat healthful fresh vegetables, we are exploiting the slave
labor of children overseas. Another
video took off on the theme of the movie “Inequality for All” (Movies, June 24,
2013), showing that the skewing of wealth is much greater than people either
know it to be or believe it should be.
The site is also using funds from the Bill and
Melinda Gates foundation to distribute content on global poverty.
Atlantic has an article (by Derek Thompson)
describing how the site works.
I must say here that, given the pressure I get from
bean-counters to try harder to “sell” my own issue-oriented content, the
concept of the site is interesting,
Sunday, December 08, 2013
Online bullying case in Texas stirs debate on legal (criminal and civil) liability -- (Sharkeisha)
Legal questions about photographing bullying and
then posting it online have arisen after an incident where a teenage girl “Sharkeisha”
beat “ShaMichael Manual”.
There are questions as to whether the person who
photographed the incident, which occurred in Texas, could face criminal and
civil liability, as well as those who posted the video online on many
sites. Most major sites like YouTube
took the video down as TOS violations, for fortunately there is no legitimate
link to give. But the legal question is
troubling. What if someone links to
it? What if someone embeds it in a blog?
The question was discussed on CNN and the general
impression was that a person would have to be an intentional participant in the
original bullying to be criminally liable, at least in most states.
The comments was offered that every viewing of the
incident online was like another “sucker punch”. Embedding it could be viewed
as “intentional infliction of emotional distress”. Yet I found many legitimate
news sites had apparently embedded videos of the incident.
The incident could be related to the “knockout game”
where people are punched in public and videotaped. The comment was made that, in the Internet
world, some people crave attention and “fame” so much they will do anything “bad”
to get it.
Huffington Post has a story (Dec. 6) and video about
the incident here. Rolling Out has a story “5 facts” that
seems helpful here.
It’s obvious that this will cause more questions
about Section 230.
Friday, December 06, 2013
Ethical controversy over "paying" for book and even movie reviews continues
Is it all right for self-published authors to pay
for reviews? Some companies sell the
service. The same question could be
posed for small independent filmmakers, too.
There’s another question, should you review authors
or filmmakers you know? I sometimes do
that, by only on my own initiative, in my “informal” blogs. More often, I pick content to review based on
the importance or timeliness of any issues the media takes up. It really doesn’t matter whether I “know” or “like” the creator or not, but sometimes I do.
I should mention that I do get invited to watch
screeners from a few independent film distributors. I always note if I reviewed a screener, and
the invitation does not affect what I will say about the film.
The Alliance of Independent Artists (AIA) hosts a
debate between Amy Edelman from Indie Reader (IR) and Orna Ross, link here.
And here’s a column from “Lit Reactor”, by Erick
Wecks, from Dec. 7, 2012, “Why I Paid for a Book Review and Why I Won’t Do It
Again”, link.
A quick check on previous reports on this issue (back in 2012), suggest that Yelp and Amazon have indeed tried cracking down on "opinion fraud".
A quick check on previous reports on this issue (back in 2012), suggest that Yelp and Amazon have indeed tried cracking down on "opinion fraud".
I know the “DADT III” book coming down the pike (a
lot more details soon) is dense. It has
to be, for the record. I know a lot of
reviewers would question my “motives”.
We’ll see.
Thursday, December 05, 2013
Case of Washington DC cop pimping with backpage might put more pressure on Section 230
An incident with an apparently bad cop in
Washington DC has probably put a little more future on Congress to pay
attention to the proposal of state attorneys general to exempt state criminal
laws from the downstream liability exemptions provided by Section 230. Of course, Washington DC law is essentially “federal
law” and is prosecuted by United States attorneys, rather than county DA’s as
in “real life”.
A copy was apparently helping run prostitution ring
or pimping girls from his SE Washington DC apartment. WJLA reports he was using “Backpage.com” for
ads, and Backpage is one of the sites that many DA’s claims hides unfairly
under Section 230.
If the girls were not of legal age, however, there
might be other ways to involve a web operator in prosecution, particularly if
the operator knew they were underage.
ABC Affiliate WJLA’s story is here. It just aired on television a few
minute ago.
Remember Ashton Kutcher’s campaign. “Real men don’t
buy girls” or anyone.
Tuesday, December 03, 2013
Facebook will allow friends to "unfollow" pseudo-blog posts, making news posting on Facebook (and Twitter feeds) less effective as a "broadcast" technique
Facebook will soon announce a change to allow
members to “unfollow” specific friends whose posts they don’t want to see in
their own tailored newsfeeds. They could
still keep them as “friends”.
This could pose an issue for bloggers who stream
their tweets to Facebook. I do that, as
well as streaming them to the home page of my own site (doaskdotell.com). I find that doing this puts my own news items
before a large number of persons, companies and org’s each day, even if they
don’t find me by search engines (which is how it had worked in the past before
Facebook re-invented the news streaming business).
My own practice with Facebook is that when I sign
on, I typically see about 30-50 new items.
Usually, I can thumb through them very quickly on a computer and read
the two or three that are most interesting, all in two or three minutes. Sometimes I do “like” posts and comment on
them. It’s also possible to contact some
media entities (like NBC’s SNL) with Facebook messaging more easily than with
normal email.
Facebook seems to limit the length of a post (to
about 450 characters), more than Twitter (140).
In the past, some people blogged on both Myspace and Facebook, but put
longer postings on Myspace. Ashton
Kutcher, in his pre-twitter days, often did this, and had a very interesting
blog on Myspsace.
I plan to create another newsfeed, as a simple HTML
table, on my “doaskdotell.com” site as part of my restructuring. This will be very simple to access, have no
advertising, load very fast, and allow any user to see the recent news items
that I think are the most important. It
would have the author, title, periodical or website, and url, and date, and
label classification of the story only.
This should be available in about a week.
Monday, December 02, 2013
"Politically incorrect" post on another's Facebook page viewed as "hate speech", results in temporary suspension of account
Maria King’s Facebook post, essentially saying that
people with certain physical attributes (have to do with body mass index)
should not be proud of their bodies, created quite a furor over political
correctness – or inversely, when political incorrectness gets perceived as hate
speech.
King wrote a comment to that effect on the page of
Curvy Girl Lingerie. There seemed to be
an issue that CGL objected to the comment on its page, even of the comment
would have been acceptable elsewhere, as on King’s own page. Nevertheless, King’s Facebook was suspended
for two days. It was restored, but the
comment was removed. But she was told she could post it on her own page if she
wished.
The Examiner has a story about the incident here.
Sunday, December 01, 2013
More dire warnings about state attorneys general and proposal to weaken Section 230 appear - but still aren't noticed much
Derek Khana has a dire warning about the possible
consequences of the proposal by state attorneys general to exempt state laws
from Section 230 protection (most recently discussed here Aug. 13, 2013, but
first mentioned Aug. 9). The article
appears Sept. 20, 2013 in Slate. It says
bluntly “By trying to hold service providers responsible for the actions of
their users, these exceptions would effectively eliminate public space on the
Internet”, link here. The article adds “It may take only two words
to bring down an empire.”
This article may represent a bit of hyperbole. Civil liability is not included (that’s the
main risk), and to some extent service providers are already exposed to some
liability, as in cases of child pornography and perhaps trafficking even
now. The key would be, in today’s law,
whether they abet “knowingly” in violation of laws.
But I do see the point. Service providers could not know in advance whether
a particular posting could break a law in one state. However, there would exist a risk of downstream liability in a state only when that state passes a law saying so, and, as just noted, most states use the word "knowing" (like the movie title) when passing laws like this. Some states (Virginia) have many fewer problems with opportunistic prosecutors than others (North Carolina), and a lot hinges on how criminal procedures are spelled out in each state.
The writer also makes the point that innovation that
doesn’t exist doesn’t get represented by lobbyists.
I have not heard much about this issue lately in the
major media. I haven't seen any mention of a bill's being introduced. If it does get written up, will it stoke an outcry like SOPA did? The idea has gotten overshadowed
by a case in the 6th Circuit.
I rather expect to hear a loud fight over this “modest
proposal” soon.
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