Author: john

Ways to contol how we communicate online

Reading the news today, I came across a number of articles with one thing in common–they all in different ways (some new, some old) have the potential to impact how we communicate online:

  • Charging by the Byte to Curb Internet Traffic (Times): There are many places around the world that charge “by the byte” for internet access, and the U.S. typically hasn’t been one of them. In some ways this seems perfectly fair. Yet, as bandwidth hungry technologies like video, VOIP, and bittorrent distribution become increasingly common, moving away from a flat rate access charge could hinder their adoption. Thus pricing is one way that might impact how we communicate online
  • Verizon offers details of Usenet deletion: alt.* groups, others gone (CNet): In reaction to the state of New York’s request to restrict access to sites offering child pornography Verizon is taking out an entire hierarchy of newsgroups. Alt groups may be more likely to host offensive speech (ALT stands for ‘Anarchists, Lunatics, and Terrorists’) but by no means do all of them host offending images. Here, refusing to host a resource (not quite the same as completely removing access) is the means for controlling communication.
  • France to block porn, terror, hate websites (Sydney Morning Herald via Slashdot): France will use the help of its citizens to flag porn, terror, and hate websites to possibly be blacklisted. This is an interesting combination of social control of speech (since the public is deciding what to block) and a technical complete access restriction. As Adam Liptak wrote a few days ago, “In the United States, that debate has been settled. Under the First Amendment, newspapers and magazines can say what they like about minorities and religions — even false, provocative or hateful things — without legal consequence.”
  • Training helps bloggers hone professionalism (AP via Wired): Finally, the law and what we know (or don’t know) about it have the power the power to control speech. Bloggers and other would-be online publishers attended a session to learn some of the ins and outs of libel and other media laws. One individual hoping to start an “ultra-local,” online newspaper was “so worried about the legal boundaries of writing online that he still hasn’t started the ultra-local news site.”
    I have a long list of questions here, perhaps most importantly: is this moving these bloggers over the line into the realm of “journalists?” Should the casual blogger (who doesn’t earn income from the speech on their blog) have to know the intricacies of these laws?

Do you own the e-mail you send?

A Times columnist looks at the question of if you can be sure that an e-mail you send gets received. Turns out dropped messages are possible, but that a company called ReadNotify is attempting to make this a thing of the past. Along with receipt notification, the company will offer a “self destruct” feature which will prohibit copy/pasting and will delete itself after a specified time.

Some experts have questioned whether such technology is legal under American law, but Mr. Drake says “e-mail tracking is legal because e-mail is ‘owned’ by the author.”

Naturally, laws are open to interpretation, but I think this reading of copyright is in error. Yes, when you write an e-mail it becomes “fixed” and you own the exclusive right to do publish or distribute it (among other things).  But note this is different from owning the e-mail. Once it is sent (distributed) one would naturally expect that you lose control over the message. There may be a license and Digital Rights Management that can give you greater control, but these happen because of an agreement–not because you still own the artifact you somehow disseminated on the Internet.

ACTA – under the radar

The first official meeting of the ACTA has concluded–almost completely unnoticed.  An EU page on the agreement hints at why there has been little news on the meetings:

Q: Why are you not pursuing this agreement through the G8, WTO, WIPO or other formal structure ?
A: We feel that the approach of a free-standing agreement gives us the most flexibility to pursue this project among interested countries. We fully support the important work of the G8, WTO, and WIPO, all of which touch on IPR enforcement. The membership and priorities of those organizations simply are not the most conducive to this kind of path breaking project.

“Flexibility” is a luxury of a non-transparent process.  The more voices at the table, or perhaps even the more people that know what is going on, the more complicated things can get. The “C” for “counterfeiting” also appears to me as somewhat deceptive. While a part of the treaty addresses a need (?) for border checks for counterfeit media (pirated DVDs), a number of ‘provisions to be included’ have leaked out. Here is a sampling:

  • Criminal Enforcement: ex officio authority to take action against infringers (i.e. authority to act without complaint by rights holders)
  • Civil Enforcement: Authority to do ex parte searches and other preliminary measures [ex parte means the searches could be carried out without any notice to the alleged infringer]
  • Internet Distribution and information technology: Procedures enabling rights holders who have given effective notification of a claimed infringement to expeditiously obtain information identifying the alleged infringer; and Remedies against circumvention of technological protection measures used by copyright owners and the trafficking of circumvention devices

These “strong copyright” rules, if agreed to in a treaty or other covert agreement have the potential to covertly find their way into our law. One doesn’t how how much faith to put into a document uploaded to wikileaks, but if it is genuine the public deserves to know about it [explicitly claiming fair use here].

Digital musicals

David Pogue writes about digital musical orchestras this week.

I mean, a digital accompaniment can certainly boost a production’s professionalism, especially when the only alternative is some beleaguered piano player stumbling through the songs, or a middle-school band honking, out of tune, through a score.

But my own musical career began as precisely that overwhelmed piano player, and, later, precisely that amateur orchestra member. And I knew that every professional musician was once, at some distant past age, a squeaky, honky amateur.

He goes on to describe how this moved him towards MIDI to fill in gaps or even to take the place of a whole orchestra.

Playing in a pit orchestra is without a doubt one of the funnest experiences of my life, and I can’t imagine technology completely taking the place of the amateurs (for community shows at least). Despite squeaks and honks, live musicians will bring a quality of sound that won’t be replaced for some time. I’m reminded of a ballet I saw with canned music.  Every jump -SMACK- thudded on the stage. A real orchestra would have covered that up.