Stopping the Stop Online Piracy Act
Now that Congress has hit pause on its controversial Stop Online Piracy Act and nearly every argument about the merits and failings of the piece of copyright legislation has been made, it’s a good time to ask: what, in 2012, will it take to actually stop a bill like this?
Because despite the delay, the situation still isn’t looking so hot for those looking to bring down SOPA. Amendments to tone down the bill’s more disliked points have been routinely defeated in the House Judiciary Committee by numbers sufficient to pass the bill to the full House floor.
But, at this point in the process, numbers aren’t everything. In the wake of the Arab Spring, talk of censoring technology hits the ears differently. More important is that in SOPA’s short two-month life, opposition to it has catalyzed online and off. But to succeed, its opponents will have to both boost the volume of their public alarm and convince Congress that, in an Internet-soaked 2012, questioning SOPA needn’t be politically fatal.
Washington isn’t the land of Luddites it once was. Members of Congress, of course, love their smartphones; Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are political staples. (Twitter says just over 85 percent of representatives in each chamber are on the service.) But the challenge for SOPA’s opponents has been to demonstrate that the power and joys of Facebook and, say, SOPA’s questionable domain-name filtering policy are two parts of the same webby whole.
We’re seeing that understanding catalyze amazingly quickly—at least among web users. Starting with a small band of early objectors, resistance to SOPA has been spreading out, gathering steam, and popping up in all sorts of places. There’s been a tsunami of Twitter traffic against the bill, much of it tagged with the #SOPA hashtag. That chatter has driven blog posts, given journalists fodder, and provided constant commentary on Congress’s often convoluted and confusing proceedings.
And, notably, the bill has prodded the entrepreneurs who run some of the Internet’s best-known sites into creative acts of protest. The blogging site Tumblr mock-censored itself. The file-sharing site Scribd posted a SOPA button that, when clicked, disappeared documents. Wikipedia is considering a temporary block on access to its millions of entries. Beyond that, heaps of calls have been made to Congress, engineers have written letters, and SOPA-doubting editorials have been penned by such newspapers as the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.
Why the Internet is everybody’s business
By David Barroux The opinions expressed are his own.
LES ECHOS/Worldcrunch — The first-ever E-G8 summit, beginning Tuesday in Paris with a notable lineup of government leaders and a “digital Who’s Who,” has been hit by a range of criticisms, from political hijacking to state censorship. But these attacks reveal only part of the truth. Sure, Nicolas Sarkozy, struggling in the polls, sees this as a chance to “presidentialize” his image while attempting to make his mark on this subject so attractive to the younger generation. But the self-interest driving his approach doesn’t necessarily mean it is uninteresting.
Long considered a free space that could develop on principles of self-government, the Internet has become so crucial to democratic life and economic growth that today it is legitimate for political players and large industrial groups to be involved in its management. States and multinationals would be wrong to want to plan and regulate everything, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they should simply stand back and watch.
Working in tandem, states and businesses can first act on the infrastructure. In past centuries, states financed the construction of roads or railways. Today, mechanisms should be found that allow private actors to invest in indispensible broadband information superhighways.
Faced with a global online market, governments will also have to set up rules to allow competition among actors from different countries to be as fair as possible. On subjects such as management of personal data, taxation and geo-localization, they will have to reach agreement on a lowest common denominator.
Finally, it is good that heads of state are becoming aware of the importance of the digital economy. Rather than focusing on filling their coffers by taxing this booming sector, public authorities must support the digital world, a veritable motor and accelerator of economic growth. And so much the better if the foundations of this new dialogue are laid in Paris.
from MediaFile:
Should you trust Facebook with your email?
- Michael Fertik is the CEO and Founder of ReputationDefender, the online privacy and reputation company. The views expressed are his own. -
Facebook already knows a massive amount about you. They know your age, what you look like, what you like, what you do for fun, where you go, what you eat, whom you know, whom you know well, whom you sleep with, who your best friends and family are, and, again, how old they are, what they like, and so on.
On top of that, Facebook has a well-known history of privacy breaches or at least snafus. Publicly they seem committed to the notion that privacy is dead. Their CEO and Founder has said as much.
Never mind that this view is not shared by the public, which is hungry for privacy in the digital age. And never mind that the “death of privacy” would serve exactly the interests of a digital media company. It seems that it may be an honestly held belief among top leadership of Facebook that privacy is and should be dead.
Now, Facebook is expanding its reach even further. It will be rolling out a unified, cross-platform messaging system that will combine features of email, SMS, and chat. The company will offer users @facebook.com email addresses. At first blush, there’s nothing altogether new about the development from a technical standpoint. Unified messaging has been a goal since the advent of disunified messaging—more or less since SMS, IM, and chat became comparably popular and used in parallel.
But a Facebook-based unified messaging system may offer different appeal and new risks, and not just because it can instantaneously distribute its feature set to its 500 million-plus user base.
It is impossible for a digital media company to care deeply about privacy. You are the only asset they have to sell. The promise of advertising in the Internet age is that the platform can connect a brand with the individual person most likely to buy. The only way that happens is through the collection and use of huge amounts of data about each of us, followed by the sale of access to the data or the person they describe.
from The Great Debate UK:
Remembering how to forget in the Web 2.0 era
Amid ongoing debates over the hazards of excessive digital exposure through such Web 2.0 social networking platforms as Facebook and Twitter, a new book by Viktor Mayer-Schonberger extols the virtues of forgetfulness.
Since the emergence of digital technology and global networks, forgetting has become an exception, Mayer-Schonberger writes in "Delete".
"Forgetting plays a central role in human decision-making," he argues. "It lets us act in time, cognizant of, but not shackled by, past events."
Mayer-Schonberger shared his theory on how to fight back against the digital panopticon with Reuters before giving a lecture at the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce in London.
Interesting concept, even though I dont quite agree that “forgetting” is a virtue.
Since it’s easy to find information as and when we want it through Internet, that means we do not have to try our best to memorize. We can free our brain cells to focus on application of information, rather than memorizing the information.
This does not imply “forgetting”. It just means that we utilize our brain cells in other way.
from The Great Debate UK:
Internet freedom prevails over Guardian gag order
- Padraig Reidy is news editor at Index on Censorship. The opinions expressed are his own.-
Solicitors Carter-Ruck have withdrawn the terms of an injunction preventing the Guardian from reporting a parliamentary question by Newcastle-under-Lyme Labour MP and former journalist Paul Farrelly.
This has been seen - rightly - as a victory for free expression, and a demonstration of the amazing power of the web in the face of attempted censorship.
Once the Guardian had published its slightly cryptic story on its website last night, containing such tantalising phrases as: “Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret”, it was inevitable that people would go searching.
Within hours, the Internet was alive with speculation, links to leaked documents, and republication of cached articles. At one point on Tuesday morning, phrases relating to the case constituted four of Twitter’s top ten “trending topics” --- a scarcely believable profile for a story that, technically, no one was supposed to be talking about.
Carter-Ruck seem not to have noticed the mindset of an increasing number of web users: once we are told we can’t know something, modern web users will set about finding out about it with a gleeful determination --- and more often than not with neither the cautiousness nor the proprietary attitude to information that can slow down “traditional” reporting.
The Streisand Effect -- whereby attempts to censor information end up ensuring the information is only spread more widely, is something that lawyers and judges are going to have to figure out.
All this proves is that people who use social media are too lazy and/or stupid to go and find a copy of Hansard for themselves. The content of a tabled question is not, and to the best of my knowledge never has been, secret. The lawyers seeking the injunction were certainly every bit as as stupid as the people trying to defeat it without going through the courts, but the injunction itself wasn’t really that important – it did after all reportedly only name two publications. At least one of which has a record of partiality in the reporting of the Trafigura affair.
from The Great Debate UK:
The end of .com, the beginning of .yourbrand
-Joe White is chief operating officer at Gandi, an Internet domain name registration firm. The opinions expressed are his own.-
Despite the importance of domain names for companies and the extraordinary amount of money many have paid for them, the vast majority of businesses are unprepared for imminent changes to the Internet.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the international body that oversees the structure of the internet, is liberalising the market for domain name extensions – the .com or .net part of a web address – from the beginning of 2010. This means that anyone, in theory, can apply to operate an extension. So alongside .com, .net, and .org, we will see .whateveryoulike.
Historically, companies have considered their domain to be a critical part of their brand identity. Some domains have been sold for millions of dollars – sex.com was reportedly sold for $14 million – and multinational companies often register up to 20,000 different variations of their brand to try and stop opportunists exploiting it. However, despite this historic investment and interest, the vast majority (two thirds) of businesses are unprepared for imminent changes, according to some research we did a little while ago in conjunction with the Future Laboratory.
This is interesting given that there are real opportunities for companies. It will mean companies can readdress the way they communicate with customers, partners, or investors. We’ve already seen a shift in consumer behaviour where the high-street and virtual world have blended. The growth in blogging and social networking means people have also shifted their identity online. The liberalisation of top level domain names will help to blend the activities of both businesses and consumers with the potential to create a personalised brand experience.
Toyota, for example, could create the .toyota domain and register europe.toyota and usa.toyota, and set up sites for individual brands (highlander.toyota) and use targeted domains for different markets such as customers and suppliers (suppliers.toyota, dealers.toyota, buying.toyota). Or, Nike could create a personalised brand experience using yourname.nike, with training programmes, suggested products, networking pages which could link with sponsored athletes and so on. In addition, some companies could do one-off marketing campaigns or initiatives to support individual product launches. For example, Tastyhamburgersandhealthysalads.mcdonalds or Doveforrealwomen.unilever.
Indicators suggest that consumers will embrace this change. As part of the same research, we interviewed 1,000 consumers and one in five (19 per cent) said an extension such as .nike or .microsoft would be memorable. Considering only 24 per cent think .com is memorable, this shows the future potential for branded top-level domains.
Well I think it would go a long way to resolving the issues of us running out of domain names anytime soon as well as protecting users from phishing websites. One thing that will need to be done is to price these new domain extensions so that people can register these instead of just large corporations.
76% of people can’t remember .com? That’s sad.
from The Great Debate UK:
Does the Internet empower or censor?
What if the Internet is not really a utopian democratic catalyst of change?
The Web is often seen as a positive means of instilling democratic freedoms in countries under authoritarian rule, but many regimes are now using it to subvert democracy, Evgeny Morozov, a contributing editor at "Foreign Policy", proposes.
The Internet can actually inhibit rather than empower civil society, Morozov, argued in a lecture on Tuesday at London's Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce.
Social media platforms are being used by certain governments to create a "spinternet" to influence public opinion. They are also being used as part of a process of "authoritarian deliberation" to try and increase the legitimacy of authoritarian rule, he said.
Morozov spoke with Reuters after the lecture.
Sadly I missed his talk at the RSA however the issues which he raises I have thought about. Namely how non-democratic states use the web. In terms of exploiting the potential of the web to communicate misinformation and propaganda this does not surprise me at all. That they can carry out this task with a high degree of skill and creativity would also be consistent. In the 20th century both the Nazis and Communist regimes were adept at using cinema (though communist regimes produced better cinema than the Nazis) to control and subvert with propaganda. Like the web cinema was a new technology and Lenin would take cinema to the masses on a train trip throughout Russia.
What Evgeny Morozov portents is and I hazard a guess is a kind of free world web which encourages, welcomes and develops the tools for people to interact with, create content for and broadcast to anyone they wish. While on the other side a web grows up were interaction is limited and broadcast is the key feature of web use and only a limited amount of people have the means to broadcast. Morozov has highlighted an issue that I need do much more thinking and he opens up a debate that is marginally more interesting than whether we download a music track for free or not.
from The Great Debate UK:
Google juice dampens news headlines
- Mic Wright is Online News Editor at Stuff. The views expressed are his own -
Google juice – it sure isn't tasty but it is vital for anyone writing news online. The slightly irksome term refers to the mysterious combination of keywords and linking that will drag a webpage to the top of Google's search pages.
While the exact way Google's search algorithm works is largely a mystery to outsiders, news sites know it's vital to write headlines stuffed with the keywords that the search engine seeks out.
Online, the perfect punning headlines created by The Sun newspaper's super sub-editors just won't cut it. News stories on the web are all about the facts and the most successful sites are constantly checking to see what keywords will send you soaring up the Google search rankings. If you story isn't on the front page, it's not getting clicks, the less clicks you get the less likely it is that your advertisers' ads are going to get seen.
Now Google has announced that it's been working on a brand new version of its search engine and it's likely that online headlines are about to get even more straight forward. The new iteration of Google's most profitable invention is codenamed Caffeine thanks to its speediness. It has already been made available for users to test and besides the noticeable increase in speed, it appears to make search a more real time experience than we've previously seen.
The move to real time search, showing web pages in search results as soon as they appear, is a response to the instantaneous nature of Twitter which has recently got the jump on Google when it comes to breaking news. Currently there is a slight but noticeable lag with Google results – its search crawlers (programmes that scour the web to see what sites have been updated) don't grab changes immediately. But with the new version of the search engine they will.
Hi “The Bell” and Ian,
I don’t think we actually disagree on this. To put the short post into context – it was written at Schiphol airport at very short notice at Reuters’ request. I was glad to contribute but it represents a very slight comment on an issue which I could speak about for hours.
I agree that creativity remains the key in getting your news noticed. I also believe that it’s important to have a dedicated audience and to serve them well. My comment was purely on the way that Google’s search algorithms affect the craft of writing headlines. It’s moved from an art to a science in some respects.
I work on a site where quality is our biggest watch word. I have not hoisted the “white flag” nor will I ever do so. I have a background in both print and online journalism and I love good journalism. I work hard and I believe in creating great features and news stories. But as a professional working in this industry, I can’t ignore the material realities of getting things noticed online.
The Bell – I did not deny that Google search results are based on many more things than simply keywords. BUT this piece was about the affect that Google changing their approach to keywords and headlines will have. The recipe for their algorithm is a mystery in many way – very few people know everything they take in to account and how that mix is worked out. I am not afraid of Google, I am not claiming to be “with-it” or totally on the ball about everything.
However, I’m also not big on being called “mate” by anyone. You make some good points but this was a very short and quick look at a particular element of Google searches and their affect on the way news is written. I don’t make the rules nor do I believe that it’s necessary to stick to them slavishly. You clearly know your stuff but don’t presume that I’m a knumbskull. I’m not.
China’s Web filtering starts in the West
– Eric Auchard is a Reuters columnist. The views expressed are his own –
The Chinese government has backed away from mandating filtering software on all personal computers in China, in a move that averts a dangerous escalation in its censorship powers.
But however controversial and unworkable China’s plan to require Internet filters on PCs proved to be, Western firms have largely themselves to blame for creating and selling such filters in the first place.
The danger rears its head whenever technology created to solve some specific security problem is put to new and unintended use, not just in repressive regimes like China, Iran or Saudi Arabia, but professed freedom-loving countries in Europe or the USA.
“What is good and what is evil?” asks Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at Finnish anti-virus software company F-Secure Corp. “It is really a very basic problem that security people face.”
A computer password cracker in the wrong hands is considered malicious, of course. But corporate network administrators rely on the same tools to recover lost documents when employees forget computer passwords. Voice recognition software used in corporate call centres to automate and improve customer service can be used by police to wiretap suspects on a grand scale.
On Tuesday, China’s official news agency reported that a government ministry had abruptly backed down from requiring that every PC sold in China include a censorship program called “Green Dam-Youth Escort”.
So… because the Internet exists, so does the security censoring software tools required to censor the porn and malicious code… therefore, the Internet shouldn’t have been built…. right? It’s all our (the West’s ) fault. What a ridiculous article. Anybody with a brain knows that with great power comes great responsibility — just ask Spiderman. The real issue here is the cowardly Chinese government who can’t be faced with their own corruption and power-hungry dweebs, so they do whatever they can to “save face” and stop any possible route for political progress or taking responsibility. The “porn” blocking is merely a front they hoped the rest of the world would accept as reasonable — that’s why they stole the code — they didn’t write that part, they wrote the part which spies on their own people in order to squash anything threatening their comfortable nation-robbing lifestyles.
Computer industry hopes lie in the clouds
– Eric Auchard is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own –
No one can easily define it.
But the next phase of the computer revolution is busy being born out of the ashes of the current economic crisis. The new approach delivers computing power as a service over the Web, like an electric utility, instead of making customers buy computers they manage themselves.
It goes by the hazy term of “cloud computing.”
Forget your tidy distinctions between hardware and software, networking and storage, the Web and the desktop. Most disappear as they merge into the cloud.
Clouds are located in centralized data centers that can house thousands of pizza-sized boxes, networked computers that can each process millions of transactions. They take advantage of the latest software that go by buzzwords like Web 2.0, virtualization and open source.
Always in search of the next big idea, the technology industry has latched onto the cloud as its big new organizing principle, once more normal corporate spending patterns return.
There is nothing new about “Cloud Computing”. Everytime the concept dies, it seems to be reborn with a different name. Does anyome remember the ASP(Application Service Provider) Model and the SAAS (Software as a Service) Model? It’s totally the same thing as “Cloud Computing”. Every time someone comes with a flasy new name for this concept, there is all sorts of buzz around it as if it were a new idea. I wonder what the next name will be?
Ronald Reagan engineered operation Plagiarized Indigantion to get rid of people hacking the Department of Defense and pentagon and he did a great job of it, ten years after his death it still serves globally.