This Week In The Fight For Digital Culture

Much in the way of interesting and infuriating has gone on this week in the areas of intellectual property, privacy, digital rights, open source and Googlization. A lot of it comes down to the rights of citizens and businesses in a networked society both parties helped create, the crucial need to protect the public domain, where innovation lies and the golden rule: he who has the gold (in this case, money and political power) makes the rules.

IP ALLIANCE TO OPEN SOURCE: YOU’RE PYRATES. ME: YARRRR! Like anti-healthcare legislators who take money from insurance companies, the US-based International Intellectual Property Alliance and its friends in congress should not have any say in determining the future of copyright and intellectual property, and how other countries set their own IP laws. Instead, the IP Alliance wants the United States to consider a Pirate or Enemy Of The State any nation that uses and encourages free/open-source software. Indonesia is the latest nation on the Alliance’s 301 watchlist for having the audacity to give “preference to free/open-source software because it will cost less and reduce the use of pirated proprietary software in government.”

That’s Apache, Blender, GNU packages, Linux packages, Perl, Python, Ruby, Thunderbird and WordPress, for starters. While I fully agree with Cory Doctorow that “this is like crack dealers campaigning against having a laugh with friends because happiness reduces the need for intoxicants,” what angers me about it is the sheer hypocrisy of the IP Alliance and the businesses it represents. Any technologist or R&D person will tell you that an astonishing number of these same companies use free/open-source software to maximize their technology budgets, innovate using these free tools and then slap patents and all kinds of proprietary-IP stickers on their final products. You think I’m kidding? The Recording Industry Association of America website runs on Apache and PHP. *facepalm*

No, kids, Walt Disney did not invent Cinderella and Snow White. Just like Disney built its fortune by copyrighting works in the public domain, the IP Alliance fosters this unethical business model: Build on or monetize free or cheap ideas and technologies that have come before, and then shut off these alternatives by buying yourself several congresspeople. (And people wonder why the Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission decision was so dastardly and wrong.) When the technology world clamors for automation, standardization and interoperability, i.e. different systems of different capabilities playing together more efficiently, is not the time to make useless noise against open standards and technologies. During a recession when innovation is key, charging $1000/lb for a sack of shit top dollar for clunky, mediocre products and enforcing these as preferred solutions with political bribery, in lieu of free, shared and open source technologies, is stupid and tantamount to the communism Real Americans so fervently dread.

SPYCAMGATE Schools spy on kids through webcams. This shocker made it into the mainstream news, so I’m sure all of you know about the class action lawsuit filed against Pennsylvania’s Lower Merion School District and associated offenders by now. What you probably don’t know is that this is not an isolated incident. In the PBS Frontline Digital Nation documentary, which aired earlier this month, a Bronx school administrator boasts that he regularly monitors students remotely through their school-issued laptops. Parents: This is an egregious violation of privacy, especially using property purchased with your taxes. Take this opportunity to check your kids’ equipment, know your rights and read Cory Doctorow’s Creative-Commons-published Little Brother before he is thrown in the brig with the Indonesians.

PLEASE ROB ME & SCRUB MY KITCHEN FLOOR WHILE YOU’RE AT IT Despite being an IT professional or perhaps exactly because of it, my husband has no social media accounts. He can be contacted solely via email, phone or the occasional private IM. D’s rationale is that there is enough information about him out there, should someone choose to search hard enough or pay enough, that he doesn’t need to feed the beast. Conversely, Twitter Queen (someone at work actually called me this today) here is still not afraid that someone is going to rob my house when I’m gone and tweet from the road because they have to a) know where I live and b) say hello to aforementioned big, burly husband if he happens to be home. Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. You’ll just have to find out. Big, burly Neighbors 1 and 2 and crazy hunter dude with shotgun may be around, too, so take your chances.

Patrix comes closest to pointing this out, but if you are smart about what social media outlets you pick, employ the highest privacy settings and don’t declare your street address or UTM coordinates, you can tell the whole world you’re leaving your jewelry and electronics on the back porch and are going away for a month and folks will not be able to use social media to locate your home. Unless they bribe your crappy friends, in which case you’re screwed anyway and it’s not Twitter’s or FourSquare’s fault.

MORE BAD NEWS FOR GOOGLE Google’s Top Executives Defied Italy’s Privacy Laws Except this time, I’m on Google’s side. They did not act quickly enough to pull down a YouTube video that showed kids bullying an autistic/handicapped boy, which violates Italy’s privacy laws, but this may be the only chance for justice for the assaulted child. Should the kid’s guardians sue, the video may be thrown out as evidence for being fruit of the poisoned tree (assuming Italy does assault lawsuits & has similar legal code). This is a tough one: Do we allow Google to flout international laws in humanitarian ca(u)ses, but complain loudly that we don’t want a large corporation in our business when it comes to our email and Buzz? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

BOOK Tarleton Gillespie, law-technology-media-culture professor and blogger, was at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on February 23rd to speak about the politics of online media platforms. I wasn’t able to attend but am waiting on responses from friends who did attend. Gillespie’s book Wired Shut: Copyright and the Shape of Digital Culture nicely sums up the fight for digital culture and the links in this post. From the Wired Shut website:

… the enforcement of copyright law in the digital world has quietly shifted from regulating copying to regulating the design of technology …

… this approach to digital copyright depends on new kinds of alliances among content and technology industries, legislators, regulators, and the courts, and is changing the relationship between law and technology in the process. The [print,] film and music industries are deploying copyright in order to funnel digital culture into increasingly commercial patterns that threaten to undermine the democratic potential of a network society.

That’s it for This Week In The Fight For Digital Culture. Keep thinking. Keep fighting.

February 26, 2010 | Filed under: computing & internet,digital rights,government,public domain,science & technology,social media | 4 Comments »

Tweet Of The Day

A friend recently complained, “Yeah, I still read your blog, but it’s getting a little too techie for me.”  Say it isn’t so!  I thought I’d moved a lot of that writing over to VizWorld.  It is true that I haven’t written many posts of a general or personal nature lately, but that’s because a LOT has happened in the past year and I am nothing short of overwhelmed.  All you would get is garble while I slowly stir the inner oatmeal.

To jazz things up a bit, I’m starting a new VatulBlog segment called Tweet Of The Day.  Twitter is where all the interaction went, it seems, and I am a lot more me over there, almost everyday.   And I read some pretty original, bizarre, funny and poignant tweets almost everyday.  Share the wealth, I say!  So, here goes the first one, from New Orleanian crime watcher @robschafer:

Woman next door moved out but came back with a can of gas to torch her BF. Stood chatting with nabes while NOPD/NOFD sorted it all out.

Wow. You wanted not techie?  You got it!  With that, ladies and gentlemen, we conclude the inaugural broadcast of Tweet Of The Day.  Come back for more!

December 30, 2009 | Filed under: social media | Comments Closed

A Decade Of Blogging

The blog turns 10 this week apparently. Perhaps in its current template form, given that the whole concept of logging ideas, updates and rants on the web in plain, vanilla HTML pages definitely predates 1999.  Whenever and however it exploded, I am glad it did, as seen in how the weblog and forthcoming social media tools have helped people all over the world get stories out alongside reporting by the mainstream media. Especially these folks in India, where the social web is not flat:

Peter Griffin’s and Dina Mehta’s South East Asia Earthquake & Tsunami Blog expertly coordinated mounds of information about the globe-spanning tragedy and from a variety of sources. “Without any hesitation, discussion or question, Rohit Gupta and I began blogging, working in real-time with real people wearing their hearts on their sleeves.”

Gaurav Mishra’s role in Vote Report India, a citizen-powered election monitoring tool. “An idea that started off with the Mumbai terrorist attack has come full circle to be realized during the Lok Sabha elections. We are far from done, however.”

Two days before the fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina & The Federal Flood, I don’t have to tell you how important blogs and their bloggers have been in “[collaborating] to post information and resources for the larger community” as well as helping keep that community together emotionally and spiritually, if not in the geographic sense. We are far from done, too.

August 27, 2009 | Filed under: blogging & bloggers,desi / india,new orleans,recovery,social media | 5 Comments »

Liveblogging From RT4: Net2NO Presentation

This entry is part 2 of 8 in the series Rising Tide Conference 4

Liveblogging as usual, so keep checking back here for updates.  Also follow the #risingtide and #rt4 hashtags on Twitter.

Jessica Rohloff, of Net Squared New Orleans (@NewJess on Twitter), up there talking about social media in New Orleans.  Call themselves “nerds* getting together for a project.”  Attended last SXSW conference to show that “New Orleans is on the map, New Orleans is not under water, people live here, there are tax credits perfect for startups.”  20th Net Squared meetup group in the world, preceded Net Squared Austin by a day.  One of the largest Net Squared groups in country.

Meetings ==  First Tuesday of every month at the Bridge Lounge.

Links: Net Squared, TechSoup

* You’re geeks, not nerds.  There’s a difference.

August 22, 2009 | Filed under: blogging & bloggers,new orleans,recovery,rising tide conference,social media | Comments Closed

We Are With You

Best depiction of today's protest in Tehran on Twitpic

June 15, 2009 | Filed under: citizen journalism,global,government,photographs,social media | 2 Comments »

“A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy”

While reading about Metcalfe’s Law, I stumbled across this vintage Clay Shirky talk on group dynamics of social media. With the exception of the Project Gutenberg discussion list (where I’m a lurker and which is its own brand of strange), what he said in 2003 still holds true for every single community forum, listserv and user group to which I have ever belonged.

You’re sitting at a party, you decide “I don’t like this; I don’t want to be here.” And then you don’t leave. That kind of social stickiness is what Bion is talking about. And then, another really remarkable thing happens. Twenty minutes later, one person stands up and gets their coat, and what happens? Suddenly everyone is getting their coats on, all at the same time. Which means that everyone had decided that the party was not for them, and no one had done anything about it, until finally this triggering event let the air out of the group, and everyone kind of felt okay about leaving.

This effect is so steady it’s sometimes called the paradox of groups. It’s obvious that there are no groups without members. But what’s less obvious is that there are no members without a group. Because what would you be a member of?

… So even if someone isn’t really your enemy, identifying them as an enemy can cause a pleasant sense of group cohesion. And groups often gravitate towards members who are the most paranoid and make them leaders, because those are the people who are best at identifying external enemies.

The third pattern Bion identified: Religious veneration. The nomination and worship of a religious icon or a set of religious tenets. The religious pattern is, essentially, we have nominated something that’s beyond critique. You can see this pattern on the Internet any day you like. Go onto a Tolkein newsgroup or discussion forum, and try saying “You know, The Two Towers is a little dull. I mean loooong. We didn’t need that much description about the forest, because it’s pretty much the same forest all the way.”

So, why not just give up and walk away from blogging and flogging and twittering and figgering?

… the first answer to Why Now? is simply “Because it’s time.” I can’t tell you why it took as long for weblogs to happen as it did, except to say it had absolutely nothing to do with technology. We had every bit of technology we needed to do weblogs the day Mosaic launched the first forms-capable browser. Every single piece of it was right there. Instead, we got Geocities. Why did we get Geocities and not weblogs? We didn’t know what we were doing.

Not much has changed, but it has. The article was written six years ago, thought, which is still millenia on the internet, and Mr. Toulouse The Wet brought up an excellent point yesterday: “SM software has perhaps existed for 40 yrs but how long in real use?” As Shirky answered, “[We're] just finding out what works. We’re still learning how to make these kinds of things.” One of the nice things about Twitter is its decentralization, i.e. unless your tweets are protected, everyone in Twitterverse can read your thoughts and respond, which allows fresh air into the room ever so often, so to speak. Then, is following only certain people, forming twibes and other groups in Twitter then counter-productive to true social media?

May 5, 2009 | Filed under: computing & internet,social media | Tags: | Comments Closed