from Paul Smalera:
The piracy of online privacy
Online privacy doesn’t exist. It was lost years ago. And not only was it taken, we’ve all already gotten used to it. Loss of privacy is a fundamental tradeoff at the very core of social networking. Our privacy has been taken in service of the social tools we so crave and suddenly cannot live without. If not for the piracy of privacy, Facebook wouldn’t exist. Nor would Twitter. Nor even would Gmail, Foursquare, Groupon, Zynga, etc.
And yet people keep fretting about losing what’s already gone. This week, like most others of the past decade, has brought fresh new outrages for privacy advocates. Google, which a few weeks ago changed its privacy policy to allow the company to share your personal data across as many as 60 of its products, was again castigated this week for the changes. Except this time, the shouts came in the form of a lawsuit. The Electronic Privacy Information Center sued the FTC to compel it to block Google’s changes, saying they violated a privacy agreement Google signed less than a year ago.
Elsewhere, social photography app Path was caught storing users’ entire iPhone address books on their servers and have issued a red-faced apology. (The lesser-known app Hipster committed the same sin and also offered a mea culpa.) And Facebook’s IPO has brought fresh concerns that Mark Zuckerberg will find creative new ways to leverage user data into ever more desirable revenue-generating products.
This is the way we’re private now. It’s ludicrous for anyone who loves the Internet to expect otherwise. How else are these services supposed to exist -- let alone make any money? Theft or misuse of private user data is a crime, certainly. But no social web app -- not one -- can work without intense analytics performed on the huge data sets that users provide to them voluntarily (you did read the terms of service agreement...right?).
And the issue compounds when people connect one site to another. By linking their Twitter to their Facebook to their Google+ to their Foursquare to their Zynga to their Instagram to their iOS, users are consolidating their lives, and in the process making them more attractive to marketers. While Facebook, Twitter and other services have made attempts to warn users about hitting the “connect” button, many of us hit that button with reckless abandon, without a thought of who’s slavering on the other side.
The reason social media and digital information companies want that data is because of what we refuse to give them: money. No one wants to pay for the privilege of chatting with their friends or using a coupon, and to this day, no one has to: Go ahead, ring their doorbell or pick up the free coupon book from your front stoop. But if you want to chat using Facebook or Gmail, or you want to buy a groupon for an 80 percent-off Botox service, you will have to tell those companies who you are. And those companies will use that information to tailor their offerings to you, increasing your value as a user and a customer. They will slice their data sets into a million different pieces and show those pieces to people -- advertisers -- who will pay them money for the privilege of using their service. They’ll use it to get to you.
This is an update on an old media model. Magazines and newspapers for decades could only guess at the readership of their product and the demographic of their customers. But now social and new media demand to -- and can -- know exactly who you are before they agree to let you use their free services. Even email newsletter services like the increasingly hot Thrillist -- which might innocuously start you on their service by asking only for your simple email address -- deploy click trackers, pixel trackers and other online data-gathering techniques to start to put together a picture of you as a user, both individually and in aggregate. A deceased magazine like Spy could only dream of that kind of intel.
Stop SOPA banners might morph in future protests
Getting people to add “STOP SOPA” banners to their Twitter and Facebook profile photos was more than just a message about pending legislation.
The banners, which swept the Internet in recent days, allowed people to quickly signal opposition to the antipiracy bills known as PIPA and SOPA, which many critics say are too broad. They are the brainchild of Greg Hochmuth, an engineer at photo site Instagram, and former Google product manager Hunter Walk, who created the site blackoutsopa.org.
“Profile pictures are becoming more and more omnipresent in our interface-heavy lives,” Hochmuth told Reuters in an email. “We thought: why not let people take more ownership of these pixels?” He envisions people using similar banners in the future, to get out all kinds of messages.
Between the time the site went live Jan. 9 and now, the site has attracted 80,000 users. Yesterday, at the height of the anti-SOPA blackouts that took sites like Wikipedia dark, about 30 people were changing their profile pictures every minute, Hochmuth said.
“BlackoutSOPA was so successful in large part because it took users only a few clicks to join & then spread the message,” he said. ”Changing your profile picture by yourself is a relatively arduous task otherwise. ”
Here’s what the banner looked like on Walk’s Twitter picture.
SOPA: So much to hate, so little time to stop it
(Updated 12/16/11 4 pm ET)
It may seem that Congress is getting exactly nothing done these days, with the game of chicken over the payroll tax and the possibility for what seems like the 537th time this year that the U.S. government may run out of money.
So you may be excused for not noticing that a full serious assault on the Internet is being considered by the House, and that it might actually see the light of day through the flotsam and jetsom of bigger business.
SOPA — the Stop Online Piracy Act — is the latest ill-considered attempt by some in Congress to solve a legitimate problem by creating an even bigger, totally unnecessary problem.
Here is the legitimate problem: There are crummy people out there who steal the creative work of others and peddle them as their own. It’s a good business for some, though, not a great a business overall. Aggrieved parties include Hollywood studios, record companies and news organizations, like Reuters and Wired: we all work hard to create stuff, don’t like it one bit when somebody steals our stuff, and pay lawyers lots of money to fight the problem. It’s a cost of doing business, and a price of the history-altering phenomenon of digitization and the world wide web.
The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the web is global: a site hosted in Uzbekistan is beyond the reach of U.S. law enforcement. So how do you stop someone way over there, or anywhere outside of the country, from streaming movies they don’t own?
Isn’t it strange that with all the problems the US has, the Congress finds time and money to work on protecting Hollywood. Hollywood people are the first whiners when they think their pot of gold is being tampered with but they just love to help Congress give away other people’s money. Hollywood whines and Congress jumps. Perhaps if Hollywood was putting out something decent instead of re-makes of old crap, they wouldn’t be losing money.
Tech wrap: New effort underway in Internet piracy fight
Can slower Internet speeds convince consumers to stop pirating copyrighted material online? That’s the assumption behind a new anti-piracy effort launched this week by a coalition of Internet service providers and groups representing movie studios and record labels.
Under the new initiative, AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Verizon have agreed to send customers email or pop-up alerts if it is suspected that their account is being used to download or share copyrighted material illegally. Should suspected illegal activity persist, providers might temporarily slow Internet speeds or redirect their browser to a specific Web page until the customer contacts the company. Time’s Techland blog calls the effort “fairly reasonable” but points out that “it’s only a matter of time before someone is falsely accused of copyright infringement and throttled accordingly.” Users accused can seek an independent review of whether they acted illegally.
A major hedge fund dumped its stake in Yahoo after an ownership dispute earlier this year cut the value of the Internet giant’s China holdings. Back in May, Yahoo revealed that Alibaba Group, its Chinese unit, had transferred ownership of its valuable online payments business Alipay to a company owned by Jack Ma, Alipay’s CEO. “This isn’t what we signed up for,” Greenlight Capital’s head David Einhorn wrote in a letter to investors. “We exited with a modest loss.”
Seems Google wants to play nice when it comes to social networking. Chairman Eric Schmidt told journalists at the Allen & Co. media retreat in Sun Valley, Idaho that he is leaving the door open to more co-operation with social networking giants Facebook and Twitter as his company rolls out its own alternative, Google+. Trumpeting the new network’s early success, Schmidt said he would “love to have deeper integration with Twitter and Facebook.” In separate news, it’s been confirmed that Schmidt will testify at a September hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Antitrust Subcommittee.
Apple promised a fix to a security flaw in its mobile operating software that could open iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users up to attacks by hackers. The security hole was deemed serious enough that it would allow someone to steal data off the device, a German security firm warned this week. Apple said its fix will be rolled out in an upcoming software update.
Virgin, Universal give away music, fight pirates
Can Virgin Media crack the scourge of piracy with a new music download service?
The cable provider plans to offer customers unlimited streaming and downloading of MP3 music files in conjunction with the world’s largest music company, Universal, home to artists ranging from U2 to Lady Gaga and Willie Nelson. The service, which may be launched by the end of the year, could eventually include music from other major labels.
The idea is to drive back the tidal wave of online piracy, which could appeal to parents worried that their children are downloading contraband music. More than a decade after Napster made a splash by making it easy for users to download music for free, other systems still exist that give Web surfers the same power. Many of those illegally acquired songs are downloaded over cable providers’ systems.
So would you pay $16 to $24, about the cost of two new albums, for a month of unlimited access to music?
Keep an eye on:
- These days, smaller is better in radio (The Wall Street Journal)
- Even Forbes Magazine is pinching pennies (The New York Times)
- BusinessWeek prepares another site redesign (PaidContent.org)
(Photo: Reuters)
from Fan Fare:
Piracy sinks Fox columnist Roger Friedman
In the high stakes battle over piracy in Hollywood, a Fox News columnist lost his job on Monday after he reviewed a pirated copy of the upcoming movie "X-Men Origins: Wolverine." Roger Friedman is a big name in Hollywood entertainment news, but media reports say that fact did not protect his job when his corporate colleagues at 20th Century Fox called for his head, nor did it help that Friedman wrote a positive review of the movie (which has since been removed from the Fox website).
The New York Daily News reports that an estimated 75,000 people have downloaded the free, illegal copy of "Wolverine," which stars Hugh Jackman, and the studio is concerned that the high interest in the film online could slash its box office appeal. But no one is saying that Friedman leaked the movie, he just reviewed it. In that sense, was his punishment too harsh?
The case is interesting because it illustrates how high the stakes are for piracy in Hollywood. As in past piracy cases, the studio has enlisted the help of the FBI, which is investigating the leak. This comes as federal lawmakers consider ratcheting up the pressure on movie pirates. On Monday in Los Angeles, members of the U.S. House of Representatives held a hearing in Los Angeles, where eager entertainment industry executives and filmmakers called for harsher penalties to prevent piracy, trade paper Variety reported. "Che" director Steven Soderbergh told the congressional committee that showbiz types like himself should be "deputized" to track down pirates on their own. What would socialist revolutionary Che Guevara think?
With Hollywood increasingly flexing its muscles to go after movie pirates, Friedman is one of many in the future who will be forced to walk the plank.
It is utter rubbish to claim that we cannot have a better internet than the one we have right now. Most users simply do not really understand what and how much they have given up. And what has been given up unknowingly can be reclaimed. That is what laws are for.
Europe has a much better system, and much more privacy. And we can improve on that, without wrecking the essentials of the internet.