Friday, January 31, 2014
Yelp and Angie's List defamation case involving home repair contractor ends in draw with zero award, but still a warning about online review posting activity
A Fairfax County jury ruled today that both the
contractor Chrsitopher Dietz and customer Jane Perez, who had written scathing
reviews on Yelp, had defamed each other than that the net award was zero. The verdict was a draw.
But legally, the case may set a precedent for the
idea that an ordinary customer may indeed be liable for unfavorable comments
about a contractor or business. The
problem remains that ordinary customers may not have the resources to defend
themselves against SLAPP suits. But
smaller contractors may also generally not have the financial strength to file
such suits anyway.
The Washington Post has a story by Justin Jouvenal
here
WJLA has a similar brief report but says that the case can affect what
people post online. Perez has taken down the Yelp posting, but the Angie’s List
posting (which might not be as graphic) will still be the subject of a further
hearing. WJLA showed pictures of what
Perez claims was unfinished work in the townhouse.
Another case in Virginia involving anonymous
reviewers needs to be watched closely.
Labels:
online reputation,
review sites,
SLAPP
Thursday, January 30, 2014
"Traffic Jam" now tests "radical hospitality" of people. was well as politicians; can a technological culture be ready for everything?
NBC Nightly News, in its “Making a Difference”
segment, documented much of the good Samaritan activity when motorists were
stuck for more than 24 hours on freeways around Atlanta (and also Birmingham)
with just three inches of snow.
There were cases reported in some media of people being
taken in by strangers.
Is this the “radical hospitality” of the New
Testament? It was more or less expected
in Biblical times.
I talked about a sermon on this topic delivered
right before Hurricane Sandy; the posting appears to be Oct. 30, 2012; it didn’t
hit very hard where I live despite the predictions. (Neither had Irene in 2011.) The derecho in June 2012 was worse. This latest situation in Atlanta, the “Traffic
Jam” (it seems as though Reid Ewing’s 2010 California freeway video -- or musical short film -- is
prescient of political mess-ups, whether intentional as in New Jersey with Gov.
Christie or just poor planning in the south)
seems to have been easily preventable.
Nevertheless, some day there could be a catastrophe so widespread that
ordinary people would be expected to house others – not just family. (Actually,
after Katrina, people were housed in Texas, and a few hundred came to DC.) Imagine what happens if part of the country
has a crippling power incident because of a major solar storm or possibly
terror EMP (or radioactivity dispersion) attack. Or what if there is major East Coast tsunami
from the Canary Islands volcanoes – that is at least possible. (By the way,
California’s undoing may not be earthquakes, but running bone dry.)
We have become dependent on technology, which
actually provides solutions to many problems and may bring us to be “alone
together”, or sometimes really be together.
Can we really prevent catastrophes if we are careful enough about our
infrastructure? Or do some of us (me)
need to learn to find alternative purpose if “something happens.”
Unpreparedness for it could make us targets for people or enemies with certain
kinds of agendas.
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
More on "email interview" invites, and a note on plagiarism
I still get a lot of requests to interview people,
review books, and the like.
Even with my measured level of “public success”, I
can appreciate what a hiring manager going through resumes deals with. The fact
is, even with non-spam, there are so many emails that with most of them I get
as far as two seconds on the subject line, and maybe ten seconds to look at the
message if I even open it. Imagine if I
were a manager filling a position.
The problem with a lot of what I get is that it is
too “narrow”. What doesn’t work, for me
at least, is “playing victim”, or claiming that some group of self-help steps
will make your life all right, or that there is some formula to save the
world. No, some trick to avoid being
seen by the NSA will not, by itself, get my attention either.
I simply don’t like to be recruited, and I don’t
recruit people. This sounds like the old
“winning converts” v. “winning arguments” – a debate within the Libertarian
Party of Minnesota around 1998. Those
days of ballot-access petitioning, which women were better at than men, come to
mind.
Of course, some people would see my original focus
as “narrow”. In the 1990s, the “gays in
the military” issue (leading to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, repealed in 2011)
seemed very narrow to most people in a world – pardon me, a country, the US,
for some other countries like Israel have it -- without compulsory military
service. But the big issues blew right
out of this core like blossoms: forced
intimacy, social cohesion, participating in sharing risks, and even “being
scoped”. A lot of that energy has moved
over to debate on key Internet issues today (like downstream liability). 9/11 and various other crises (including
financial) have certainly given value to my original attention to this issue.
One other thing.
There has been a case where a blog posting of mine just mentioning the
now ended CWTV series “Smallville” (Jan. 13, 2014) got plagiarized. The blog that plagiarized might be viewed as
a spam in some circles, or it might not be.
I can imagine rationalizations for what was done. To find more details on my take on it, go to
my new “doaskdotellnotes.com” site, which is accessed on my “doaskdotell.com”
main page (Jan. 28).
Actually, I’ve seen plenty of snippets of my movie
reviews on other sites before (finding them when I Google my name with the name
of a movie in a “long tail” search – as compared to a head search), and never
paid much attention until yesterday.
What’s clear is that “selling yourself” on the
Internet is a variable experience. Some
people have to make a living on the web, and are very sensitive to copyright
infringement, and may go close to the line in committing it themselves. They may say that they have families to
support when I don’t. Other people might
benefit from the exposure that “plagiarism” gives them. That’s particularly the case if people have income
from other sources (including conventional investments in securities) that they
can plow into self-publishing to say exactly what they want. In this sense, capitalism is still a good
thing for free speech. But the rules
seem to lie in the beholder.
Labels:
email interviews,
fixing spam problem,
plagiarism
Monday, January 27, 2014
Major "defamatory review" lawsuit by a contractor against a former customer goes on trial today in northern Virginia
A major case in Fairfax County, VA went to trial
today (Monday), and may have an impact on review sites like Yelp and Angie’s
List.
The case is between Christopher Dietz, a contractor,
and Jane Perez. The latest story seems
to be in the Washington Post, by Justin Jounvenal, over a suit by Dietz
demanding $750000, link here.
It is difficult or even impossible to determine from
the news stories who is factually correct, but the fact pattern reported in
news accounts is rather intricate and obviously could damage the contractor’s
reputation permanently. Truth is a
defense to libel, but in practice the threat of having to defend oneself
against ill-founded suits could deter many people from reviewing companies
online, so there is a risk that contractors can bully customers into silence. Some
people would say these are SLAPP suits, as I noted in an Oct. 13, 2013 posting
about an ACLU gathering in Alexandria, VA.
One observation to bear in mind is that a civil case is determined by a
preponderance of the evidence (51%), not “beyond a reasonable doubt”.
The civil complaint is worth reading, here.
It’s possible for the threat of loss and cost of
defense to create financial, credit, or even security clearance problems for a
defendant in such cases.
ABC News has a report dated Dec. 7, here.
Apparently negative reviews were posted on both Yelp
and Angie’s List. Perez is reported to have countersued (amount not specified in the media).
Forbes has a balanced account, with some advice to
consumers writing reviews, Jan 7, in a piece by Caroline Meyer.
Local contractors are probably much more affected by
bad reviews than are huge companies. The
issues (free speech, online reputation, defamation law as it has developed)
have very different impacts on small businesses and individuals in the digital
age, where digital reputation lasts forever. Apparently Perez, a retired Air Force officer, has found that the litigation affects her job hunt and clearances, according to the WJLA report tday.
This is apparently not the same case as Hadeed,
discussed Jan. 9 in conjucntion with anonymous reviews, not an issue in this case.
I don’t personally post reviews on Yelp or Angies
List, but I do belong to Angies as a member.
There is a dispute with one contractor who charged much more than an
insurance company would pay after the 2012 derecho for some roof damage. However, this sort of problem may be more
likely when there is massive damage in an area and a homeowner needs work done
quickly.
As a general rule, I tend not to discuss incidents
or disputes of economic significance if they are still open. On the other hand,
discussion of the factual (especially chronological and “forensic”) details of
past incidents where harm occurred can be helpful and very illuminating for
others.
Labels:
online reputation,
review sites
Sunday, January 26, 2014
Aaron's Law still making little progress, maybe given the distraction of the Snowden scandal
Critics of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act are
noting that very little progress on Aaron’s Law has been made. I found a
proposed text Zoe Lofgren’s bill, but cannot find an HR number for it, and the
links on her own database give 404’s.
Essentially the proposal would mean that mere violation of a company’s
terns of service, absent some specific circumvention of technological security,
would not constitute a crime. The write up
with a draft from June 20, 2013 is here. (Earlier link Feb. 5, 2013 is gone.)
Jaikumar Vijayan has an article in Computer World
noting the lack of progress more than one year after Aaron Swartz’s suicide on
Jan. 11, 2013, link here.
It should not be a crime, it is said, to lie about
age to get a Facebook account.
It still appears that the documents that Swartz
wanted to make freely available actually belonged to the public domain. Various agencies wanted to be able to charge
fees to access what amount to public legal and research documents (even
laws). These were documents that it
would not have been copyright infringement to reproduce verbatim on a website
(Jan 15), 20140.
One wonders if the government will start searching
cloud backups for infringing items, over various pretexts.
Labels:
Aaron's Law,
copyright law,
terms of service issues
Thursday, January 23, 2014
Web 3.0 could become more like the pre-WWW world in worst case scenarios, with no network neutrality, some warn
Today, I made a major posting on my Network
Neutrality Blog about some analysis of the possible consequences of the recent
DC Appeals Court ruling. It’s unclear right now how the FCC will proceed, but I
wanted to note that there are some dire predictions about how the lack of neutrality
could recreate a world where only larger companies can reach an audience with
their media.
For example, the Huffington Post has an article (Jan. 15, 2014) by
Betsy Isaacson on what the Web 3.0 world could soon look like, (website url) here , not even Web 1.0, more like “Zero”.
The problem is that telecommunications companies
could require ordinary publishers on the web to pay “ransom” to get reasonable
access for users, unless Congress or the courts further intervene. Don’t count on Congress.
But maybe there is a “silver linings playbook”,
where you don’t have to be as perfect or rich as Bradley Cooper to be noticed
online. Companies that host blogs and videos (Google, including Blogger and
YouTube, Wordpress, Tumblr, Vimeo, etc) could obviously negotiate with the telecoms
for their users. So would the big social
media companies (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Myspace, etc). A better question would be whether
conventional (whether shared or dedicated) web hosting companies (like Verio,
GoDaddy, BlueHost, Network Solutions, etc) could do so for their clients. Somehow, that idea makes the Loudoun County
Partway (in exurban northern Virginia) an important literal metaphor. Suddenly,
politicians in northern Virginia, around Austin Texas, Research Triangle Park
in North Carolina, Boston, and Silicon Valley have a job to do.
There is still an element in our culture that
believes you should prove you can sell to others before you are heard from,
because that is supposed to prove you have to provide for others. Ponder that.
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
Case of hip hop site ("Dajaz1") suggests that suits for merely linking to copyright-infringing items are possible; why did the government keep the papers sealed so long?
There is a disturbing case concerning the “hip hop
blog” website Dajaz1. The federal
government (specifically, customs under ICE) seized it and then held it in
secret for about a year waiting for details of RIAA complaints. There is a typical story on Digital Trends
here. The story goes back to May 2012 (when I was prancing around in California) but it still sounds urgent to me.
What seems striking to me is not only the secrecy,
and the government’s willingness to keep a domain shut down on possibly
unfounded copyright allegations while waiting so long for detail, but also the
fact that the site was pursued for posting “links” to “pre-release” tracks,
which might have been authorized by the plaintiffs. It would appear that the company did not actually copy the videos or music to its own servers.
Can someone be sued for copyright infringement for a
mere hyperlink? The question comes up
with embeds, which are effectively links.
Suits for embeds of infringing youtube videos don’t seem to happen, but
could they?
It's interesting to note that now, when people make comments on YouTube videos, they can cause them to become embedded in their own Google+ feeds. If the video is infringing, theoretically the Google+ member could be pursued as a co-infringer. This sounds like a ridiculous lawsuit and even "prosecution", and yet the government has kept it under wraps!
It's interesting to note that now, when people make comments on YouTube videos, they can cause them to become embedded in their own Google+ feeds. If the video is infringing, theoretically the Google+ member could be pursued as a co-infringer. This sounds like a ridiculous lawsuit and even "prosecution", and yet the government has kept it under wraps!
Dajaz1’s own statement (about the finally unsealed
documents, here)confirms this concern, giving an analogy to how the New York Times, under this
theory, could be sued for linking to an announcement of a concert where the
promoters haven’t “paid their dues”.
Before, I’ve considered the idea that it is possible
to be sued for libel for merely linking to a libelous item, although such suits
(even in a SLAPP world) seem rare in practice.
See a related posting Nov. 30, 2010 when dajaz1 was mentioned.
Note that on this blog, and several others, the
archive list was moved to the bottom because the “javascript” code would not
work without a wider column to display post names.
Labels:
copyright law,
hyperlinks
Monday, January 20, 2014
More strategic planning, and some of it needs to be in plain sight
I want to recap the upcoming work that visitors will
see, along with some behind-the-scenes stuff.
I’ll be processing any tweaking of proofs of my
DADTIII book, which I now expect to appear on e-commerce sites in a few
weeks
.
In the meantime, I am posting some critical detailed
footnotes about some specific episodes in my life on my new “Do Ask, Do Tell
Notes” site, and it will go into a few items with a degree of candor I have not
used before.
On the new medias blog, I’ll be providing some
summaries of media activity in some specific areas (like DADT itself, the
marriage issue, censorship and liability issues on the Internet, and
infrastructure security).
I have a manuscript of a novel and of at least three
feature screenplays that I think are workable.
After finishing all work on the DADTIII
book, I expect to set up a formal review and 3rdparty edit of
the novel in order to get it submitted.
Part of the review consists of looking at all my older manuscripts back
into the 1980’s (as well as “The Proles” from my Army days in 1969) and showing
the changes in plot threads, and the ways in which the stories overlap (almost
as if part of a soap opera). I
don’t have a “Sami” but I do have
something like a “Will and Sonny” although the circumstances are very different
than in thre NC Soap “Days of our Lives”.
I have put up most of music online “piecemeal”, but
I would like to set up an effort to record the 1962-1974 “Third Sonata” (it was
done crudely on DAT tape in 1991). That will require Apple and Sibelius
sofeware upgrades and the help of
others.
I also will make an informal documentary video,
outlining the “book” I would write if I were to start over and not add on to a
series.
All of this is a lot of work. The nature of the material requires open
(“everyone”) mode of publication of much material (like the blogs and Twitter
feed). Whitelists are effective in
reaching a known significant audience, but it is not sufficient to attract new
friend and potential “consumers”. Speaking
out on issues requires that my real
identity be known and open to some generic degree (as Facebook and many other
sites now require anyway), even if some would say that identification (as
opposed to anonymity) could increase security risks. You cannot be effective as a victim or as
“Mr. Nobody” (iike the movie); people have to know you (Oh, like Donnie Darko).
There is, of course, a lot of communication that is
private and more specific as to some possible sensitivities, of a business
nature or involving specific other parties. These remain out of sight and are
not posted to “whitelists” at all.
My own communications are tuned to my knowledge of various parties' interests and situations. This kind of selective selling cannot be accomplished by usual commercial cookie-cutter marketing. I know, it doesn't help other people make a living on commissions.
My own communications are tuned to my knowledge of various parties' interests and situations. This kind of selective selling cannot be accomplished by usual commercial cookie-cutter marketing. I know, it doesn't help other people make a living on commissions.
Again, there is something to self-instantiation –
becoming one’s own “java constructor” – without experiencing the risks of
taking care of others in the meantime, an activity that in a real world is not
always and should not necessarily derive from the “Axiom of Choice”. I see some issues coming that will probably
compel more attention from me than I have been giving them (or others) in the
past three years, since my mother’s passing. But I cannot be effective in
person (let alone in a “relationship”) without doing my homework (“les
devoirs”, or “la terea” or “deberes”) first, and some of it is in public more,
like at a Wifi café.
Saturday, January 18, 2014
NSA, Cybercriminals in murky tug of war that sounds like string theory; the "implicit content" problem, and chess theory!
The New York Times is reporting Saturday (story by David
C, Sanger and Claire Cain-Miller here) that the president did not give big
Internet and technology companies the reassurance they wanted that the
government would never degrade their security layers in order to do back door spying.
Google had considered moving all of its servers
overseas after the Snowden leak, and it’s hard to say how that might have
affected the services if offers, including Blogger.
And Microsoft is irked that the government exploited
known security holes (especially on “zero day”) to spy overseas.
At the same time, another report in the Times, on
the Target breach, shows how much damage very determined criminals can do. Putting this all together, NSA’s tactics
could, inadvertently, make some consumers or businesses (perhaps even
utilities)more vulnerable to attacks from criminals or even rogue states or
cyberterrorists. At least as of now, the
president doesn’t seem to have answered this idea.
The notion that the world is a dangerous place does
feed the idea that people need to accept socialization and fit into patterns
where their actions meet the real needs of others, first of all “their own”. Some of us, like me, don’t fit into this too
well, and are sometimes affected by policies intended to send message to “society”
for people to “get with the program”.
I’ll be covering a lot of difficult topics soon on
my new “footnotes” blog (in support of my DADT-3 book). Some of the material will be disturbing, some
might seem self-deprecating or even (in an implicit content sense) enticing,
given the lack of obvious commercial motivation. It write, in large part, to record the “experience”
of someone who is different and lead other to ponder to consequences, both to
sustainable civilization and to individuals along the way, of policy and
commercial choices whose consequences are Janus-faced and, like many sharp
chess positions (yes, the Sheshnikov), very hard to assess. I do get questions as to why I won’t go down
some specific road to make money with one specific, scope-limited commercial
activity. (Why won’t I help salespersons
make their commission money, or sit in their seats in my turn?) I feel, at age 70, past the point of no
return. I have only my own contribution
to make to progeny. I can never bargain away my own goals.
Labels:
government surveillance,
implicit content
Friday, January 17, 2014
Obama takes the sting out of NSA surveillance in speech today
President Obama spoke shortly after 11 AM EST Friday
morning and announced changes in data collection that he had ordered.
The NSA will not be able to obtain phone pen
registers of domestic civilians without court supervision. However, it appears that a database of the
metadata will still exist, but not be usable by the NSA without permission from
a third government party.
Normally information can be sought about calls and
Internet communications when there is some suspicion, like being within “two
degrees of separation” (down from three) from communication with a suspicious
agent overseas (like an Al Qeada safehouse).
Obama said that before 9/11, the NSA had information about calls to a
safehouse, but did not know that the third party was already in the US and it
does need to be able to find that out.
My take: as a practical matter, most of us are at
more risk from crime and terror (domestic and foreign) than the NSA, Snowden
notwithstanding. But a lot of
intelligence has to do with understanding what makes enemies tick, and
connecting the dots that probably don’t ahow up in NSA’s automated
processes. It’s amazing, and
frightening, what can show up in fully public posts in social media.
Thursday, January 16, 2014
Major academic journal publisher monopolizes copyrights of writers and professors
Reed Elsevier, connected to RR Bowker, the company
that assigns ISBN numbers for books, owns the publishers of a lot of academic
and medical journals, has been sending cease and desist letters to universities
preventing them from hosting the work of their own professors, after their work
has been published in one of their companies. Reed is claiming it has total
control over copyrights, which it does according to the contracts.
Many of these journals are rather expensive to subscribe
to online, which goes counter to the “free content” culture of the web
(somewhat retreating behind newspaper paywalls). Visitors can typically read only the
abstracts for free.
Professors, in a “publish or perish” culture, have
no choice but to submit to these exclusive publishing contracts.
Andrea Peterson has an article in the Switch Blog in
the Washington Post, Dec. 10, 2013, “How one publisher is stopping academics
from sharing their research”, link here. Sorry about that, the Post now has a paywall.
The problem makes me think about self-publishing in
books. Most self-publishing companies
now offer nonexclusive contracts. You
can compete with them or yourself. (In
the past, pre-Internet, some subsidy publishers claimed complete control of the
copyrights for books they published, not good.) However, authors are often pestered about
trying to buy services for mass-marketing their books or films, when more
nuanced approaches, involving social media and utilizing “low degrees of
separation” (a concept the NSA uses a lot in analyzing metadata!) can sell
media to people who are more likely to be interested. Yet this doesn’t help the publishing companies
make profits and keep people employed.
The cultural argument goes deeper her than it looks.
Public Knowledge has a blog entry on the "You Broke It, You Bought It" idea (actually a composition by Timo Andres) -- rather "You Bought It, You Own It", which doesn't always seem to be true, link here. I do wonder about "private use" copies of images or music, never posted, but backed up in the cloud anyway. Could a copyright owner troll clouds for infringing images? I haven't heard of that, but what will happen next? But there was an obscure, troubling case started by a company named Blizzard. More on that to come.
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
Again, there is a fight over keeping "the law" in public domain!
Electronic Frontier Foundation has an important post
Jan, 14, 2014 by Corynne McSherry about keeping the text of statutory law and
court opinions in the public domain. The
link is here. Federal court opinions generally live behind a
clumsy paywall (although some circuits and district courts do publish their
opinions) – an issue that led in part to Aaron Swartz’s activity.
Now a couple organizations trying to make these
public legal documents free (Public Resource), and the
Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton (link) have been sued by a consortium of
standards-development organizations (SDO’s) that claim that these legal texts
came from copyrighted private sources.
Imagine, had either of the two proposed constitutional
amendments in the last chapter of my DADT-1 book really been adopted, could I
still have copyrighted them?
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Are Americans entitled to anonymity, at least for the metadata? Also, chess maps to real life
Do we need a reinforcement of the right to anonymous
broadcast speech? Jed Rubenfeld argues
in the Washington Post on Monday, January 13, 2014, p. A17, for it with “A
right we need: Anonymity” (print) or “We need a new jurisprudence of anonymity”,
link here.
Rubenfeld proposes that the NSA identify a person
associated with the metadata identifier of a communication node (cell phone
number or IP address) with encrypted codes only, and then only have the ability
to identify the party when there is some probable cause, like that cell phone
made a call to an Al Qaeda point in Yemen or any similar country. The trouble with that proposal is that some
party has to manage the encryption. Who
else but the NSA (or another government agency)? That just further compartmentalizes
identification, but it still doesn’t completely protect anonymity.
Rubenfeld argues that we have, however, given up a
lot of privacy, creating dossiers of ourselves online, which in many fields are
becoming necessary to function at all. However your metadata (the identifiers of your
contacts) is not as personal as your content.
Tonight, I went to a lecture on chess pawn
structures, given by a local grandmaster.
I am struck how the perception of the way various positional
configurations (like isolated or double pawns) are viewed has changed with time
and with computers. Whole new defenses
like the Sveshnikov Sicilian go mainstream as dynamics in a position turn out to
be more important that appearances or what things “look like”. Does that correspond to our changes in social
issues? Perhaps there is some lesson,
though, that the value of a particular pawn is affected by the position of
activity of its neighbors.
It is also said that in chess, only your own
mistakes can beat you, even when you play a grandmaster. Yet, that is now how “real life” works. It did for a long time, but not as much
now.
Labels:
anonymity,
chess,
government surveillance
Monday, January 13, 2014
New blogs to support my "DADT III" book -- on Wordpress
I thought I would bring visitors up to date on the “Do
Ask, Do Tell III” book and particularly on the incremental website changes that
will accompany it.
I do have galley proofs from the publisher, and
expect to have completed reviewing them by next week. I also have to write some answers to general
strategic questions for future press releases.
I have developed two new Wordpress blogs, each
attached to a domain name, which the visitor (even if brought here by Steven
Soderebergh and Godfrey Reggio) can see at my “doaskdotell.com” site, along
with a “Content Navigation Guide”, which will enable the visitor to peruse the
books and all the detailed footnotes, accumulated over the years, in a sequence
that follows from the actual books (and closely related original essays).
The two sites will be called “Do Ask Do Tell Notes”
and “Bill’s Media Reviews”. So far, I like what I see of Wordpress, although a few features were a little obscure at first. I still would like it to show the time of my postings, and display the labels and archive lists on the iPad. Maybe I just haven't found out how yet.
The “Notes” site will contain detailed footnotes for
material that is covered in the books.
They may, for example, update major legal cases involving issues like
copyright, surveillance, or service provider downstream liability (Section 230
and DMCA Safe Harbor), or social issues like gay marriage and the “don’t ask,
don’t tell repeal” (which we hope “stays down” whatever future politics
brings). In the beginning, they will
provide more chronological details about some specific key incidents in my life
(the William and Mary Expulsion, the NIH “hospitalization”, the “Conflict of
Interest”, the “Implicit Content” issue that arose when I was substitute-teaching). They will also try to drill down to “what do “they”
want from me?”, “what do I want?” and why is the latter so disturbing to
certain other people. Answering this
will require another close-up on my original family life.
The “Media Reviews” will emphasize aggregation by
topic. In the beginning, I expect to
cover some older TV series at a high level, many of which no longer air (like “Smallville”
and “Everwood”), and some collections of films, TV series and books
(intermingled) about hot topics (DADT, NSA surveillance, Wikileaks, and
particularly technological sustainability in areas like climate change and
stability of the power and communications grid in the face of “enemy” and
natural threats (“nature” may be the biggest enemy in the end). In time, I’ll “review”
all my own efforts of writing fiction over the years (about 10 novel drafts and
5 feature screenplays) and show how to winnow it down to something
manageable.
I can hardly wait to become a “Visitor” to the Moon
in Black and White. Actually, I would
prefer to go to Titan. Light can take as
little as 69 Minutes to get there.
Labels:
downstream liability,
strategic planning
Saturday, January 11, 2014
Online reputation means more than ever, with employers, lenders, maybe insurance companies and landlords
Yesterday, as I noted on my COPA blog, the media
(Katy Couric) discussed the causes of the teen “knockout game” where people are
assaulted on public streets and videos posted on YouTube or social media. These would violate terms of service and
probably get taken down after police look at them. Nevertheless, speakers noted that many lower
income teens do not have the cognitive grasp of what is wrong with seeking
Internet fame this way. People crave
attention among their peers, but have no grasp of how this is viewed by the “real
world” in which people have to make a living, raise families, innovate, and the
like.
It is true, that the capacity for self-broadcast
without bureaucratic gatekeepers, facilitated by laws that limit downstream
liability (Section 230 and DMCA Safe Harbor, with respect to different perils) has
invited a lot of negative behavior. I
can tell that the quality of visits to my blogs has deteriorated over the past
three or four years, as more people who are “serious” get intimate news from
social media sites (so I often post the links and news items that I want the
70-100 parties who follow me on various sites to see regularly on social media
as or instead of my blogs).
There was another news story recently that can be
correlated to this. Lenders are starting
to look at social media profiles for signs of problems – like posts that talk
about impending job loss or quitting (there’s one in my Facebook feed right
now). We’ve all heard about employers
doing this – and sometimes getting the wrong person. I wonder if landlords and insurance companies
(especially property) are likely to do the same thing, concerned that "gratuitous publication" could attract hazards, even to others. We’ve even heard about doctors Googling their
patients (instead of the other way around).
A decade ago, it was about Googling a prospective date.
All of this suggests a new facility in social media: the ability of users to set posts and tweets to disappear after a certain period of time. Some users would want that. Should the Snapchat concept apply to texts (or pokes) and tweets? I wouldn't use it (and a picture isn't worth anything to me unless I can keep it), but some people really just want "conversation", not publication.
All of this suggests a new facility in social media: the ability of users to set posts and tweets to disappear after a certain period of time. Some users would want that. Should the Snapchat concept apply to texts (or pokes) and tweets? I wouldn't use it (and a picture isn't worth anything to me unless I can keep it), but some people really just want "conversation", not publication.
The issue of online reputation grows all the time,
and many younger people still don’t get it.
Labels:
gratuitous publication,
online reputation
Thursday, January 09, 2014
Yelp told by Virginia courts to give identities of anonymous posters to plaintiff (Hadeed case); implications for review sites?
A case involving anonymous negative reviews against
a Virginia carpet cleaning business may have effect on review sites in
general. The Washington Times, in a
front page news story by Kellan Howell and Phillip Swarts, reports that the
Virginia Court of Appeals has agreed with a state circuit judge in Alexandria
that review site Yelp must turn over the names of seven reviewers. The link for the story is here.
The appeals court agreed that making negative (or
perhaps false) comments about a company when the speaker had not behaved as a
customer of the company is not protected under the First Amendment.
The plaintiff (Hadeed Carpet Cleaning and Joe
Hadeed) had also argued that the anonymous posters had violated Yelp’s own
terms of service.
Review sites has encountered difficulties when a few
parties create multiple fraudulent accounts to disparage a particular business.
Section 230 is supposed to protect the site from liability
for the actual comments, but it would not protect anonymity of posters, who
still can be liable on their own.
What if a business wanted the identity of someone
who posted a defamatory comment on my blog?
I would not be able to find it, but the service provider would. It’s unlikely now, since I have automated
comment screening (for spam) and then moderate the comments, and the volume is
not that much. But in the past, until
about 2009, I did accept all comments, but found a few of the malicious or
trying to sell malware, or spam-like. I removed all such comments from my blogs
around the start of 2009, but could have missed one or two.
Update: January 27
There is more analysis of the Virginia appeals court's decision on anonymity, and how Virginia compare to other states. There is concern that Yelp reviewers could be in real danger in Virginia. The story in Mondaq by Maryanne Stanganelli is here.
There is more analysis of the Virginia appeals court's decision on anonymity, and how Virginia compare to other states. There is concern that Yelp reviewers could be in real danger in Virginia. The story in Mondaq by Maryanne Stanganelli is here.
Labels:
anonymity,
gag orders,
review sites,
Section 230
Wednesday, January 08, 2014
Nametag app ups the ante on photography of people in public
The ante is going up for appearing in public places,
maybe, as Nametag releases an app that can, using facial recognition software
in Google Glasses or some of the latest smart phones, can bring up Facebook
profiles of people whose faces it recognizes in public places, or can even
check state sex offender registries. (“Run
the other way!, the following video advises.)
There is a story on Venturebeat here.
Washington DC ABC affiliate WJLA reported about the
product on the midday news today.
Although the Google Glasses part may be a way off,
the development on mobile phones could make cell phone photography in public,
especially in bars and discos, increasingly more sensitive. (See my posting on my LGBT blog Dec. 10,
2013.
I frequently see faces that I think I recall from other locations (possibly grown students from my days as a substitute teacher, or possibly from the clubs) at various locations, as in northern Virginia. I wouldn't want my phone automatically scoping and identifying them. Would you?
I frequently see faces that I think I recall from other locations (possibly grown students from my days as a substitute teacher, or possibly from the clubs) at various locations, as in northern Virginia. I wouldn't want my phone automatically scoping and identifying them. Would you?
The back page of the January 2014 issue of “Wired”
features a “board game map” to wearable devices. Remember back in the 1990s, Omni Magazine
described a full-body skin contact datasuit.
Imagine the wearer underneath.
Tuesday, January 07, 2014
Superbowl in New Jersey heightens over trafficking and Section 230 "responsibility avoidance"
The Washington Times and Associated Press are
reporting, in stories by Katie Zizema and Samantha Henry, that authorities are
on high alert for sex trafficking, especially of minors, in New Jersey around
the time of the Super Bowl Feb. 4.
New Jersey tried to pass a law holding Internet
sites that allow ads for solicitation of trafficking responsible, and the law
was struck down under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Service providers cannot be required (to
escape civil and criminal liability, in most cases) to pre-screen user content,
because there is far too much (when it is non-selective) to be reviewed before
publication. In cases of federal law, they can be held responsible if they know
criminal violations occur, but a few states have asked for Section 230
exemptions to be removed for state criminal laws, which might require much more
pro-activity than federal law in terms of pre-publication content review to
avoid liability. Again, this is a place
where lines cannot be drawn easily, despite Backpage and Craigslist.
I couldn’t find the TWT article online, but I found
it on a Pueblo newspaper here. In TWT, it's on page A6 on Tuesday, January 7, 2013 and is titled "State to curb state trafficking for Super Bowl". The article also mentions that "responsibility" goes both ways; police will troll Internet ads that could involve forced servitude or minors. The the questions about encryption and "privacy" could come into play.
In the Section 230 issue, the sides talk past one
another.
Picture: Near the New Jersey Meadowlands from an Amtrak train.
Monday, January 06, 2014
EFF summarizes efforts to weaken Section 230 by opportunistic politicians in 2013
Electronic Frontier Foundation, as part of its “2013
in Review” series, offers an editorial perspective on attempts to chip away at
or even eliminate Section 230 protections of Internet service providers and
publishing platforms from downstream liability for what users post, without
pre-screening which would be impossible, The piece, by Adi Kamdar, is here.
The author discusses, foremost, the request by state
attorneys-general to remove Section 230 protections from cases involving state
laws. There is a Section 230 provision
for federal criminal law, especially child pornography, but liability exists
only if the ISP actually knows that a legal violation has happened. It does not have to pro-actively screen
(although the possibility of screening for digital watermarks for known illegal
images would sound feasible). However,
state laws, particularly in Washington and New Jersey, were so loosely worded
as to leave places like Internet cafes or Starbucks open to criminal liability
for what users did.
The article also discusses the case involving “The
Dirty”, a gossip site, covered here Nov. 21, 2013.
Some policy makers, at the state level, sound
oblivious to the significance of the downstream liability protection, or don’t
see user-generated conduct as connected to fundamental free speech rights when
balanced against “collective” harm to the community (especially minors and
especially women) because of the actions of some bad actors. Everyone’s speech rights should be connected
to having or sharing actual responsibility for others, they say.
Labels:
downstream liability,
Section 230
Sunday, January 05, 2014
Sacking of firearms columnist by publication raises questions about "conflict of interest" in workplace after consumers make "threats"
The front page story “Banished for questioning the
gospel of guns” in the New York Times Sunday, by Ravi Somaiya, link here certainly has disturbing implications for the
idea of personal free speech and the workplace and the idea that it can cause a
“conflict of interests”.
Dick Metcalf can no longer write for “Guns &
Ammo” after he wrote a column called “Let’s talk limits”, arguing for some
moderate gun control regulation. “Constitutional
rights have always been regulated,” Metcalf wrote. Despite the public mood following Aurora,
Sandy Hook and other tragedies, the magazine got subscription cancellations,
threats, and dropping by sponsors, the latter as long as Metcalf was associated
with the magazine. So, he was “fired”. It’s not apparent if he was an employee or
syndicated columnist, but others seemed to perceive him as “working for” the
magazine, which may not have been correct.
I wondered if this circumstance had a parallel to my
own “conflict of interest” in the 1990’s when I was authoring my first “Do Ask,
Do Tell” book. I was working for a
relatively small life insurance company that specialized in sales to military
officers, when I decided to enter the debate on gays in the military after
President Clinton (with some clumsiness, in retrospect) tried to lift the ban –
leading to the long history of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”. When the company was bought by a bigger one
with a broader base, I wound up transferring and moving to Minneapolis,
removing any potential conflict. Later, when my mother needed coronary bypass
surgery, I was pressured to consider coming back, which I did not do. It may sound far out, to wonder if it was
possible that my staying there could actually cause a loss of business, but the
idea is parallel. It is significant that
I did not make underwriting decisions about customers and did not have direct
reports.
It seems that people in many jobs have to dedicate
their entire social media and online presence to the political interests of
their own employers and not their own. I
just heard recently about a case where someone was told by an employer not to
reveal on social media that he or she worked for a particular merged company undergoing
possible anti-trust litigation.
Friday, January 03, 2014
NSA previews quantum computing in its cryptography research; facial, body recognition next; a moral paradox?
So, here we are with all the rumors that the
National Security Agency has built a quantum computer, which could break any
encryption key.
It is a rumor, and, yes, the NSA seems to be working
on it. How much could it mean to
ordinary Americans?
Timothy B. Lee has an article in the Washington Post
Switch Blog where he interviews MIT physicist Scott Aaronson, where he
discusses the concept. One idea is that
some cryptography, like lattice-based, is very difficult to break with
anything. Another is that quantum computing might be useful to private business
in defining better encryption.
Could hackers use it to bust any home user? Not
now. For one thing, a quantum computer
would be much more sensitive to the environment than ordinary laptops, tablets
and phones. Ever worry when driving with
your gear in your car about getting close to high tension power lines or power
stations? Maybe you would with this kind
of computer.
Christopher Barnatt explains quantum computing here:
Note the discussion of the D-wave.
The transcript of the MIT interview is here.
One idea of quantum mechanics, and more properly relativity,
seems morally relevant. That is,
observes can affect what they watch and gawk at. That feeds into the idea that other people’s
relationships can affect you. Or, more
properly, other people’s isolation can affect you, if it gives them the “freedom”
to monitor and judge you.
Sorry, Tim Lee, “qubits” are not the same as “binary
bits”.
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