Bozeman, MT Returns to Reality

Ars Technica earlier this week reported on the city council meeting in Bozeman, Montana.  Normally, a relatively minor city like Bozeman wouldn’t rate an article with such a revered site.  But Bozeman managed recently to make itself quite the laughingstock of The Web when it was discovered that application for employment with the city included a background check waiver that called for login account names *and* passwords to online sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and others.  The story took off across The Web, and Bozeman city officials were inundated by emails condemning the application.  Bureaucracy being what it is, nothing could be done until the next city council meeting, which took place on Monday, June 22.  As Ars Technica reports, they quickly removed this “little item” from the application process, and released a report saying, among other things:

…[I]t had suspended the practice as of Friday, June 19 and that it would update its hiring procedures within 30 days to determine a more appropriate level of screening for employees.

It’s certainly of no concern to me that city HR departments become aware of such accounts.  But they don’t need login access to see employees bad-mouthing their superiors.  Most that would use such public platforms to express their views wouldn’t take the time to make them private.  As far as I’m concerned, if you post something to your public Facebook page, Twitter account, etc, then you might as well grab a soapbox and scream it into your employer’s face.  You can and should be held accountable for public comments like that.

But, hopefully, Bozeman’s city antics in this regard can help other bureaucracies to see the idiocy of policies like this.

O/Siris

Sony vs The Internet. Who Will Win?

Techie Web site Ars Technica is having a good bit of fun with some of what’ managed to come from the mouth, and pen (so to speak) of Sony Pictures CEO Michael Lynton.  According to the story recently published by Ars, SonyPics’ CEO started the ball rolling with statements at a conference that Mr Lynton could not, “see anything good having come from the Internet."

Apparently, that made for uncomfortable weather for the CEO, because Mr Lynton appears to have “clarified” his statements in a submission to the blog site Huffington Post.

Ars Technica provides a pretty good rundown of the whole affair up to now, so I shan’t copy’n paste what Ars has already done.  Instead, I want to concentrate on what Mr Lynton claims is his real point: copyright.  From his submission at HuffPo:

In March, an unfinished copy of 20th Century Fox's film X-Men Origins: Wolverine was stolen from a film lab and uploaded to the Internet, more than a month before its theatrical release. The studio investigated the crime, and efforts were made to limit its availability online. Still, it was illegally downloaded more than four million times.

That kind of wide scale theft was very much on my mind when I was on a panel the other day which opened with a question about the impact of the Internet on the entertainment business, and I responded, "I'm a guy who sees nothing good having come from the Internet. Period."

He goes on at some length about copyright and how the Internet has damaged the creative industries.  Not just his own movie business, but books, newspapers, magazines, music.  And that is where Mr Lynton misses the point.

There is a very real conundrum throughout the Internet when it comes to copyright.  I support an artist’s right to profit from his own creative work, and even Sony Pictures’ right to profit from distributing it.  But from Day One of what I’ll loosely call “The Broadband Age” of the Internet, the selfsame creative sources that Mr Lynton tries to champion have been completely and utterly out of touch with the new opportunities and challenges of this medium.  It is a medium that doesn’t abide capricious and arbitrary release dates, or permit a few large houses to control what content reaches the customer.  And old-world (read: Pre-Internet) minds are not going to be able to successfully fight off the loss of control.  They don’t understand the thirst for content out in the Internet.  These people could probably spend 10% of what they spend now, publish webisodes, and be champions of that hungry public.  Instead, they meet in secret in Scandinavia, Paris, allowing no consumer-oriented repesentatives within, and even convincing President Obama in the USA to declare the content of those meetings to be a matter of national security, and therefore protected from Freedom of Information Act inquiries.  Copyright is a national secret?  Wow.  That alone should show you the disdain that the so-called “creative” industries have for the very consumers they claim to be serving.

Remember, too, that Sony was the company to bring “rootkits” into the mainstream.  Look at how well *that* turned out.

Three Strikes and the French Are Out

It’s no secret that RIAA, MPAA, and all the other media entertainment companies utterly hate any customer that doesn’t do what they tell the customer to do.  We are all to be presumed guilty of illegal filesharing and the only thing they want from us is our money.

Now, it seems, France has decided to play right into their hands.  The BBC yesterday announced that France’s lower house has passed a “Creation and Internet” bill that would see French Internet users disconnected if they are, according to the BBC:

disconnect people caught downloading content illegally three times has been given final approval.

Ah, but there’s a catch.  There’s always a catch.  This provision in the bill, obviously backed by both the film and music industries (including French President Sarkozy’s wife, something of a noted recording artist herself), does NOT include language for determining guilt.  One need only be accused three times for this to happen.  No trial, no investigation, no due process at all.  Three accusations, and a French citizen can find their Internet access cut off.  Stories elsewhere report that the citizen can also be compelled to continue paying for this now-disabled Internet access.

I support copyright in general, and I certainly want artists to profit from the fruits of their labor.  I don’t even begrudge media companies the money they make with their (sometimes predatory) ways of getting music to market.  But when they start assuming I’m a criminal, just because I partake of music online, they’re hoisting a petard, and my wallet will NOT go there.  They will.  Hopefully, watchdog groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and DRMWatch.com will continue the fight to make sure this doesn’t come to the USA.

Then again, with Obama declaring the secret ACTA talks a matter of national security, it may already be here.

O/Siris

Since When Is Copyright Law a Matter of National Security?

Some UN bigwigs sitting in Europe have been, for some time now, trying to write up a lovely little ditty about Copyright Law called "Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement." I'd love to tell you what it will do. Except I can't. See, the Bush Administration refused to release the particulars of this agreement. So, of course, Barack Obama, with all his promises of greater transparency would correct that little error, right?

Nope. Instead, they took it one step further. When a FOIA Request was recently submitted by a privacy advocate, not only did the Obama Administration refuse the request, they then proceeded to declare that the details of this copyright treaty are a national security secret.

According to CNET News:

President Obama's White House has tightened the cloak of government secrecy still further, saying in a letter this week that a discussion draft of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement and related materials are "classified in the interest of national security pursuant to Executive Order 12958."
The 1995 Executive Order 12958 allows material to be classified only if disclosure would do "damage to the national security and the original classification authority is able to identify or describe the damage."

What a very intriguing turn of events. This same document is being circulated openly to Entertainment Industry executives and lobbyists of all kinds, and it's a state secret? What, pray tell, is the damage that would be caused by revealing what's being done to subvert... excuse me... "adjust" Copyright Law? Could it be provisions that mirror the 3-strikes laws that were recently attempted in both New Zealand and France? This is lovely. All it takes is someone ACCUSING you of copyright violations 3 times, and you could lose all right to have an Internet connection at home. Just an accusation. No trial, no finding of guilt, no investigation of any kind. Just the accusation.

And that, apparently, needs to be protected as a national security secret? I really, really want to hear how Obama thinks this compares with his promises of government transparency. Because right now, all I see if toadying up with corporate bullies who love suing 90-year-old grandmas for multi-hundres-of-thousands of dollars for alleged (not even proven, just alleged) file sharing.

I can't wait to see where this is going. Or, then again, maybe I should.

The Trouble with Web 2.0

It’s nice to imagine a world joined in cyber friendliness and everyone getting along.  There’s a vision there that even I like, of borders fading and of people learning to accept diversity and other lifestyles.

But the recent hullaballoo with Twitter and Facebook… especially Facebook… should teach us that The Web isn’t altruistic.  It takes resources to operate a Web presence (I’m not so sure that Web “site” is a valid term with the way these things cross boundaries, but that’s subject matter for another post).  It’s not enough to have 10,000 followers on Twitter or 1,000 friends on Facebook.  Now you’ve got them.  Now what?

That’s not an easy question to answer, is it?  Twitter’s been offered money by people wanting to be listed on its homepage.  Facebook wants to use your profile information in its ads… even if you don’t want to be part of Facebook anymore.  It’s time to find the business model that makes these presences viable, for the long haul.  Unless we’re ready for a virtual bubble to burst.

Is Government Evil? Doing This It Is!

As I make a shot at getting my voice heard, it occurs to me that technology is not an island unto itself. You cannot discuss technology without discussing the culture it can (and frequently does) create. Unfortunately, there is always a class of people left behind, that doesn't understand the new culture, and while I don't claim to be hip to that culture, I think I at least "get it" when it comes to the prevailing attitudes toward that technology and culture.

One such issue is trying to raise its ugly head. A group of genius politicians and "law enforcement" jackboot thugs has been making the rounds in Washington D.C. for some years now about the anonymity of the Internet and how hard it is to track wrongdoers online. Their "solution"? Make you keep logs of anyone and everyone who uses your WiFi.

CNET just recently ran a story on the latest efforts. Don't let the title put you at ease. See, it's NOT just ISP's these two bills will affect. From the story:

Each contains the same language: "A provider of an electronic communication service or remote computing service shall retain for a period of at least two years all records or other information pertaining to the identity of a user of a temporarily assigned network address the service assigns to that user."

Translated, the Internet Safety Act applies not just to AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, and so on--but also to the tens of millions of homes with Wi-Fi access points or wired routers that use the standard method of dynamically assigning temporary addresses. (That method is called Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, or DHCP.)

So... Quick, tell me everyone who has ridden in your car for the last two years. Where did they get on? When? Where did they go? Remember, the bills, as quote above, would require you, under federal law, to "retain for a period of at least two years all records or other information pertaining to the identity of a user of a temporarily assigned network address the service assigns to that user."

Think about that long and hard. Think about how, if your Wireless Router is turned off, those logs just disappear. That tornado that knocks out your power lines can now turn you into a federal criminal at the same time that it wipes out your house.

Lovely, eh? And why, pray tell, are some people ready to do this? According to Republican Senator John Cornyn from Texas:

"While the Internet has generated many positive changes in the way we
communicate and do business, its limitless nature offers anonymity that has
opened the door to criminals looking to harm innocent children," U.S. Sen. John
Cornyn, a Texas Republican, said at a press conference on Thursday. "Keeping our
children safe requires cooperation on the local, state, federal, and family
level."

See, the police need to catch bad guys. But now they want YOU to do their policework for them. AND, think about it, since these little wireless routers don't retain these logs, what do you think is next? Automatic Upload of that information, of course.

I hear Big Brother calling out. And he doesn't care about donkeys or elephants. There are politicians in BOTH parties wanting to do this.