Yet Another #StopKONY Post...

In case you've been living under a rock for the past two weeks, a video profiling Joseph Kony - a rebel warlord from Uganda who's been on a murderous rampage for the last 20 years - has become the single most viral video in the history of cyberspace.

Here it is...



The first stage of the viral process was characterized by legions of social media users, inspired by the video, sharing links and posting statuses to raise general awareness about Kony.

The second stage was a traditional media critique of the video, reporting on the inaccuracies of some of the video's details and highlighting the journalistic flaws and financial interests of its creators. Others began arguing that the video was promoting slacktivism - the idea that tweeting or sharing on social networks will somehow solve the problem, sucking away people's motivation from doing more.

Finally, a third stage has most recently arisen whereby another wave of social media users is expressing its cynicism about the entire issue. As one Twitter user put it, "One more week and everyone will forget about kony2012". Some have even wondered aloud if KONY 2012 was a scam.

I'm going to take this opportunity, for once, to NOT play devil's advocate. Why the need for such cynicism?

Dan Pallotta from the Harvard Business Review hit the nail on the head with his critique of the critics. It's absurd that the organization that produced the video, Invisible Children, is being criticized for 1) not also highlighting more bad guys in Uganda, 2) not injecting the fact that Kony's forces are rather weakened at the moment in Congo, 3) spending too much money raising awareness about Kony instead of diverting it towards other things, and 4) making it harder to capture Kony by spotlighting him.

Let's get a few things straight. No one - not a single voice on the planet right now - is actually questioning whether the actions the video attributes to Joseph Kony are true. They are, and that's indisputable. Also, the criticisms being thrown at Invisible Children are akin to giving someone who just donated to charity a hard time because they should have written a bigger check. Or criticizing someone who just helped an old lady cross the street for not moving fast enough. It's ludicrous. Invisible Children made it their mission to raise awareness about a still-active war criminal, and they've wildly succeeded. Good for them. We should all be so fortunate in our lifetimes to do something as meaningful.

And being an armchair critic doesn't qualify.

  

Is Pinterest Legal?

If you haven't heard of it yet, you will. The latest Internet craze centers on Pinterest - a digital bulletin board site that allows users to "pin" various images from around the Web onto their own personal page. What it's generally used for is to share arts-and-crafts ideas.

As soon as The Nerfherder Gal was spending her usual nightly Facebook time on Pinterest instead, for hours on end, that's when I realized it had hit the big time.

But, here's something for all of you Pinterest addicts to consider... the website itself might not be legal.

Consider the basic idea at the heart of the website - to enable users to easily copy photos from around the Web and re-post them onto Pinterest. Without permission. Without attribution. Just taking someone else's content and using it at will.

Is that not the exact definition of copyright infringement?

Well, it isn't exactly that simple. First of all, the images displayed on Pinterest tend to be thumbnails - something that even Google does, and is considered legal fair use. Sometimes. Second, Pinterest does let content owners opt-out of allowing their photos to be pinned. But the Web's an awfully big place, and all photos can still be copied without permission by default.

Nevertheless, all users of the site ought to at least exercise some caution. One lawyer named Kirsten, who is (or was) a regular Pinterest user, recently deleted her account out of fear of the legal consequences.

She highlighted three things in her narrative. First, the Pinterest Terms of Use state that members are solely responsible for what they pin and repin, and that they must have explicit permission from the owner to post everything. Truthfully, no one using the site does this.

Second, the Terms of Use state in all caps:

YOU ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT, TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THE ENTIRE RISK ARISING OUT OF YOUR ACCESS TO AND USE OF THE SITE, APPLICATION, SERVICES AND SITE CONTENT REMAINS WITH YOU.

So should any copyright lawsuits arise, you're on the hook; not the website.

Third, the cost of any legal fees also falls on backs of users. Again, the Terms of Service state:

You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold Cold Brew Labs, its officers, directors, employees and agents, harmless from and against any claims, liabilities, damages, losses, and expenses, including, without limitation, reasonable legal and accounting fees, arising out of or in any way connected with (i) your access to or use of the Site, Application, Services or Site Content, (ii) your Member Content, or (iii) your violation of these Terms.

So basically, if the owner of a picture you pinned sues you for copyright infringement, not only do you have to pay for your lawyer and any subsequent charges, but also for Pinterest's lawyer and subsequent charges.

It's interesting that, when faced with these copyright questions, many Pinterest users are putting forth the same defensive arguments that we've seen in the realm of digital music piracy - "It shouldn't be illegal since, rather than stealing, I'm actually driving traffic to the photographer's or merchant's website", or the ever-amusing, "How can it be illegal when it's so easy to do, and a website lets me do it?".

Many observers have been looking to music piracy as a reference point in order to gauge Pinterest's legal fate. But don't be surprised if the reverse ultimate holds true - that the fate of Pinterest in the courts will have a lasting effect on the music piracy issue instead.

  

How Twitter Helps Authoritarian Governments...

During last year's Arab Spring - which saw the demise of authoritarian governments in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Yemen, as well as mass protest movements in Bahrain, Syria, and other countries - the Western world was quick to notice the role of the Internet in fostering such uprisings. Journalist Andrew Sullivan declared, "The revolution will be Twittered". This followed a longer trend of philosophical thought that the Internet would be a democratizing force in the world against which totalitarian regimes stood little chance.

But if this is the case, how do you explain that China and Iran are as stable and repressive as ever? Is the hype about the Internet as a pro-democratic force overblown?

Evgeny Morozov answers, decidedly, yes. In his book, The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom, he argues that we're all being naive in thinking that if we simply let the Internet run wild and unfettered, somehow authoritarian governments will be magically toppled. He points out that, on the contrary, these governments are becoming quite effective at using the Internet to suppress free speech, hone their surveillance techniques, disseminate propaganda, and pacify their populations.

In this context, the Internet is actually a helpful tool for such regimes. His term of the "Net Delusion" refers to 1) a flawed set of cyber-utopian assumptions about how online communication is emancipatory by nature, and 2) a flawed methodology - labeled Internet-centrism - which prioritizes the tool over the environment. What results is a Western world believing so much in technology as a force for positive change that it dangerously overlooks other avenues for supporting dissidents and toppling authoritarian regimes, which would ultimately be far more effective.

As Morozov says, "Tweets don't topple governments; people do".

Examples abound. Twitter's coming-of-age moment came during the Iranian Green Movement in 2009, when it was lauded for mobilizing and organizing mass protests. However, in retrospect, this was largely overhyped. Only 19,2235 Twitter accounts were registered in Iran on the eve of the Green Movement, which is exactly 0.027 percent of the population. It's quite hard to argue that Twitter was so instrumental if virtually no Iranians were using it. Instead, it's more likely that the bulk of Twitter activity at the time consisted of outsiders raising global awareness. One Al-Jazeera study could only confirm 60 active Twitter accounts in Tehran at the time, and that number fell to six once the authorities began their crackdown.

Regardless of the hype, the Iranian government's response was nevertheless instructive. A high-level cybercrime team was formed, tasked with seeking out any "insults or lies" on websites, and identifying and arresting those disseminating such "false information". Meanwhile, the police began scouring social media sites like Facebook and YouTube for photos and videos of the protesters, re-publishing them on Iranian media, asking the public for help in identifying the perpetrators. Ahmadinejad's supporters also posted a few videos of their own online, demonizing the protesters. Additionally, the police went searching through Facebook profiles and email addresses of Iranians living abroad, sending them threatening messages not to support the Green Movement unless they wanted to hurt their relatives back in Iran. Finally, the government turned to text-messaging, warning Iranians to stay away from street protests...

Dear citizen, according to received information, you have been influenced by the destabilizing propaganda which the media affiliated with foreign countries have been disseminating. In case of any illegal action and contact with the foreign media, you will be charged as a criminal consistent with the Islamic Punishment Act and dealt with by the Judiciary.

Morozov is right that the value of Internet technology as a democratizing force is often over-hyped, yet it's possible that he's simultaneously under-hyping it as well. Yes, it's just a tool - one among many - for political dissidents, and real purposive change has to come from actions on the ground. However, in my opinion, he overstates its dangers. It's quite often benign on both fronts - the positive and the negative - and not exceedingly relevant as a force for either democracy or for authoritarianism.

  

Protocol Politics and IPv6...

What's going to happen when the Internet runs out of addresses? It may seem far-fetched to the casual user, but there is a finite supply of 4.3 billion IP addresses built into the current system, and we're on pace to reach that number within a few short years. Will it be cyber-doomsday?

Not likely. This problem was recognized, and a solution was put in place, over a decade ago. A new system of Internet addresses - called IPv6 - was designed to replace the current system - IPv4 - that would expand the address base from 4.3 billion to 340 undecillion. As always, when speaking in mathematical terms, if you haven't even heard of such a number, that means it's unfathomably large.

The problem is that the world is dragging it's feet in deploying IPv6 (which, by the way, is NOT backwards-compatible).

Why? This is the question pursued in Laura Denardis' book, Protocol Politics: The Globalization of Internet Governance. In it, she details the process behind how IPv6 was created, but her main argument is that such protocols are political in nature, and that their ultimate design reflects the values of the winners in the conflict that preceded them.

This is not a new argument. Scholars such as Lawrence Lessig and Milton Mueller have written books on the politics of code and how decisions over technical standards and protocols are inherently political, embodying certain core political values at the expense of others. Entering that ongoing conversation, Denardis is simply adding a new supporting example into the mix. In my opinion, her main contribution is not the rehashed argument, but the research she presents on how certain civil liberties - privacy, chief among them - is architected into the code itself. Her IPv6 case study profiles the various actors and conflicting interests that characterized the conflict during the formulation process, and that is the book's most valuable contribution.

It seems that there are two issues at play here: First, the politics over designing the protocol; and second, the politics of its deployment (or lack thereof). It's worth noting the distinction between the two when conceptualizing the roles of the various actors and conflicts involved.

Who knew a technical protocol like IPv6 could be so riveting :-)

  

One Thing Congress Can Agree On... Wireless Spectrum

Who says the spirit of bipartisanship in Washington is dead? On Thursday, both Republicans and Democrats were able to agree on auctioning off wireless spectrum.

Ho-hum, right? Not so fast. This is actually pretty important.

The way it works is that, for decades, the FCC auctions off broadcast licenses to radio and television stations. But these days, with television being transmitted principally by cable and satellite, reserving such a large swath of the wireless spectrum for television is unnecessary and grossly inefficient.

Thus, this new policy aims to reallocate spectrum away from television broadcasters (who will be compensated for voluntarily giving it up) and instead grant it to the highest bidders at auction. Most likely, these will be major players in the digital space like AT&T and Verizon, or even potential new entrants like Google. The auction is expected to raise about $25 to $30 billion for the government's coffers, helping to offset the cost of extended payroll tax cuts included in the bill.

Some other nice perks of the plan... First, part of the auction proceeds will go towards finally building a dedicated public safety network that police and fire departments have been clamoring for since 9/11. Second, new bands of unlicensed airwaves, or "whitespaces", will be created for building more expansive and robust Wi-Fi networks.

From a political perspective, President Obama and the Democrats get a job-creating program that serves the president's goal of increasing the nation's high-speed digital infrastructure (plus, of course, the payroll tax cut extension), while Republicans get what they also see as a job-creating program based on private market-based mechanisms (and, of course, a way to offset the cost of the aforementioned tax cuts).

Reading some of the comments and reactions, a lot of people are expressing concerns about the government "selling the airwaves" which are a public good. However, these concerns are missplaced. What is at auction is not ownership of the spectrum, but only licenses to use it for a limited and specified amount of time. The public still owns the airwaves; the licenses are merely switching hands from one set of corporations to another. And really, nobody thinks that leaving spectrum in the hands of television broadcasters makes any sense.

What should result from all this is: 1) better high-speed wireless broadband for consumers, 2) more robust WiFi networks, and 3) a sorely needed public safety network for emergency first-responders. Throw in a glimmer of hope on the bipartisanship front and you almost have to wonder how members of Congress made this one look so easy.

  

Chertoff's Take On the Clash Between Cloud Computing and Privacy...

The European Union has always had far stronger data privacy laws than the United States, for better or worse. Michael Chertoff, the former Secretary of U.S. Homeland Security, writes in a Washington Post op-ed today that we are now on the brink of a major "clash" in privacy laws between the two sides.

At the heart of the debate is how to handle extra-jurisdictional cloud-based services. See, these days, when companies store their data, they don't do it primarily on their own hard drives or within their company's own private network. They increasingly use cloud computing - meaning they pay a third-party firm to store their data for them. This can be a problem from a privacy perspective because the protection of people's private information is normally regulated by national laws, but if that data is located in a cloud based outside of a given nation's territorial borders, it's often a mystery as to which nation has jurisdiction and which laws even apply.

Here's why Chertoff claims we are on the brink of a major clash over this issue. A recent E.U. press release asserts that "companies who direct their services to European consumers should be subject to EU data protection laws". This might not seem so significant except that it's a fundamental shift that essentially sets forth a policy of: we don't care where your company is based, nor where you store your data; if you want to make your service available to European consumers, you will have to follow E.U. law.

Simply put, the fundamental question about international Internet governance over the next decade is going to be whose law dictates control — and the Europeans are making a bold play to say that the answer is "Europe's."

The big fears whenever there are such conflicts between competing legal regimes are that 1) regulatory uncertainty could lead to a stifling of innovation and entrepreneurship, 2) the Internet could be balkanized with ever-more fragmented regulations, and 3) a "race to the bottom" could occur as countries compete to attract commercial cloud services by minimizing privacy protections.

Chertoff argues that the solution is for "U.S. diplomacy [to] urgently focus on dissuading Europe from unilateral action while developing a comprehensive 'Western' approach to cloud privacy."

He doesn't say anything more about what this "Western" approach might look like. Would it more closely reflect U.S. or E.U. privacy legal traditions (which are significantly different from each other)? How would you overcome the political obstacles of convincing citizens the benefits of favoring the other's tradition, or set of cultural preferences, over their own? This is no small task.

Lacking more detail, Chertoff's main point seems to be, simply, that we should avoid conflict in this arena.

It's a point well taken, but in the meantime we're left in the muddle, searching, with no resolution in sight.

  

The Digital Divide Lives On...

As the Internet continues to become increasingly essential to the global culture and economy, those with Internet access - and the skills to maximize benefits from it - are at an ever-greater advantage than those without. This distinction between the Internet haves and have-nots is what is referred to as the Digital Divide, and new statistics from the McKinsey Global Institute show how the U.S. is lagging behind other countries.

Consider...

• The Internet is responsible for 21% of all economic growth in developed nations.
  
  
• 100 million U.S. households lack high-speed Internet access.
  
  
• 46% of the poorest households don't own a computer, but only 4% of the wealthiest go without one.
  
  
• Minorities have lower rates of Internet access than whites by roughly a 72% to 57% margin.
  
  
• More than twice as many rural households use dial-up as urban households, and nearly 1 in 10 Americans in rural areas have no broadband available at all.
  
  
• Globally, the U.S. ranks 12th for Internet access and 14th for broadband penetration.
  
  
• This last statistic is often explained by a lack of competition. 96% of Americans have access to two or less service providers, resulting in higher costs.
  
  
• Emerging technologies are far more expensive in the U.S. than abroad. For example, Verizon Fios service costs 2.5 times as much as comparable service in Amsterdam, 5 times as much as in Paris, and 6 times as much as in Hong Kong.
  

  

StockTwits and the "Wishdom of Crowds"...

Here are some new fun phrases to whip out at your next cocktail party... "the crowdsource investing movement", "the facebook of finance", and "news dissemination in a social finance world".

All have been used to describe StockTwits, a website that aggregates Twitter messages about individual stocks and displays them on a single organized screen.

A fuller description as written by SmartMoney Magazine...

Various parts stock-market news feed, rebel community and investor kvetch-fest, Lindzon's free service essentially plucks out Twitter messages focused on individual stocks and other investments and streams them across its home page (or the user's Twitter feed) as though it were a stock ticker. But here, instead of mere price updates, the ticker ticks off snippets of gossip, prediction and raw information, all of it coming from StockTwits members -- many of whom, in turn, are shrouded in anonymity.

For a quick example, take a look at the StockTwits page for Google (ticker: $GOOG). You'll get the idea.

What's particularly interesting is that this entire business - a website with over 150,000 regularly posting members - is essentially little more than a content filter for Twitter. Again, all StockTwits posts are actually Twitter posts, just harnessed in one place.

But here's where things get problematic. Four in 10 StockTwits users self-identify as novices, and this often makes financial regulators wary. As Dyan Machan's article points out, "online investing communities, say experts, are ideal environments for market manipulators to engage in schemes like 'pumping and dumping': repeatedly hyping a stock to lure in gullible investors, then selling the moment the price rises".

StockTwits says it addresses that problem by 1) banning discussion on ultralow-priced "penny stocks", 2) kicking off anyone peddling products or posting repeated messages on the same stock or other tweets that don't "offer members value", and 3) maintaining three paid, full-time editors who troll for tweets that violate the rules or spirit of the site and award star ratings to certain "helpful" members. Above all, as its passionate members will quickly tell you, the community of StockTwitters keeps a vigilant watch on itself - akin to the Wikipedia model of self-regulation.

But I see other problems besides just the pumping-and-dumping threat. How about with the business model itself?

StockTwits has been proud to highlight the fact that, unlike most social-networking companies, it doesn't try to earn revenues through advertising, nor does it offer a paid, premium version of its product. Instead, StockTwits plans to make its money by offering an Investor Relations package to the companies profiled on the website - the StockTwits IR Suite - will give an investor relations team access to the company’s page on StockTwits and to a dashboard that lets those companies push their updates directly to Twitter and Facebook, and then measure the results.

One has to wonder, then, is StockTwits just a promotional, marketing tool for publicly-traded companies? Furthermore, add in the fact that StockTwits makes it a practice to share revenue with bloggers. You don't have to be a conspiracy-theorist to see potential conflicts of interest here.

All of this belies the point that the website is really a lot of fun! It's just that when you have this confluence of money, information, and anonymity, everybody just really needs to maintain a healthy dose of skepticism and to pay close attention to who's writing what.

  

How States Are Using Online Cloud-Based Voting Systems...

For the past decade there has been a gradual, but hesitant, move towards Internet voting in elections. During this 2012 presidential primary season, several states including Virginia, Florida, and California have enabled such online balloting for U.S. citizens living overseas.

If you were making a pros and cons list of Internet voting, it generally looks something like this... Internet voting is great because it makes voting more accessible, but not-so-great because it can lead to electoral fraud. There are other issues that arise as well, such as the importance of a paper trail, aiding voter intent, and requiring transparency in the software's code. But the discussion usually hinges foremost on the conflict between these two core values of increasing accessibility and preventing fraud.

How does the current system work in those states? According to Information Week, an application named LiveBallot - based on Microsoft's Azure cloud infrastructure - ensures the ballots are from legitimate voters by having people use unique identifying information to access their ballots online. Once received, the signature on the ballot is matched with registration records to further verify identity.

The system allows voters registered to vote in primaries who live overseas to have access to ballots 45 days before the election. It also helps solve previous problems with absentee ballots, where often voters did not receive their ballots in time to vote or where their ballots didn't arrive back in the U.S. in time to be counted in the election results.

To get a sense of some opinions on this matter, check out this Slashdot thread. Theories abound from the conspiracy-minded, as to be expected, but there are also some genuinely thoughtful questions being asked about, for example, why such an application needs to be cloud-based at all.

Will it matter? In Virginia, Florida, and California we'll see soon enough. Granted, this is just for the primaries, not the general election, and the number of registered primary voters living overseas who will participate is considerably small relative to those states' populations. For now, this is really just an alternative to absentee ballots. Nevertheless, it's worth following how the states fulfill their role as policy laboratories, experimenting with new ideas. Let's see what works and what doesn't before anything goes national.

  

The SOPA/PIPA Blackout: How Much Does Cyberactivism Really Matter?

In case you haven't noticed, thousands of websites today are voluntarily shutting down as a show of protest against two bills before Congress - the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA).

As described here before, both bills seek to protect copyrights on the Web by taking draconian measures that would severely curb free speech and enable the federal government to shut down any website even suspected of contributing toward copyright infringement, without a court order or due process. Both are the product of the music and movie industries' heavy lobbying muscle.

Thus today's Internet blackout. But not wanting to just rehash links to explanatory videos or online petitions which are proliferating all over the Web, I'd like to just highlight an observation about cyberactivism more generally. See, bloggers and cyberactivists have been ringing the warning bell over SOPA and PIPA for many months now, basically to no avail. It wasn't until a small handful of large websites like Google and Wikipedia made an effort today to highlight the dangers of the proposed legislation that any real meaningful awareness has been raised among the public. As I've argued many times before, despite what you might hear about the democratization of the Web and how it levels the playing field by empowering the little guy, the truth is that a small number of large and powerful actors are still more significant in affecting political change than are the large numbers of the mass public.

Even online, the grassroots be damned, at least until they get large institutional support.

  

The Bloggess Confession: The Most Commented Blog Post Ever?

Two weeks ago, The Bloggess - one of the most popular bloggers in existence - posted a confession of "self-harm" that has caught absolute wildfire in cyberspace. As of this writing, the post has 2480 direct comments, 4963 tweets, and 4630 Facebook "shares". These numbers do not even include indirect comments on external social media sites like Reddit or Digg.

The crux of her post...

I self-harm. I don’t do it all the time and it’s not enough to put me into an institution or threaten my well-being, but it’s enough to make it frightening to live in my body sometimes. I’m far from suicidal. I do it to self-sooth, because the physical pain distracts me from the mental pain. It’s one of those things that’s impossible to explain to people who don’t understand impulse control disorder. Honestly, I find it hard to understand it to myself and I’m working my ass off to fix it now before my daughter is old enough to see the things I don’t want her to see. It is one of the hardest things I have ever done.

The response was immediate and remains ongoing. Readers posted thousands of comments, almost completely positive and supportive, sharing their own stories of self-destructive behavior. On Twitter, a new hashtag was created, #travelingreddress, where people could show support for a project that The Bloggess created last year seeking to empower women.

All of this is a feel-good social media story, but I'm particularly curious about that astronomical number of comments directly on her site - 2480 for a single post. As any blogger can tell you, that is so ridiculously above the norm of even the most highly successful posts that I spent the better part of this morning trying to determine if it may, indeed, be the single most commented-on blog post ever.

What did I uncover? Only how frustrating it is to get that kind of information. Why does no one keep meaningful statistics about social media? To support this point, The Nerfherder once did a blog post almost three years ago on the top-earning blogs in cyberspace, and it remains one of the most-visited posts to this day, despite being outdated.

Here's a challenge to any amateur researchers out there... how could one go about collecting such statistics? There are some inherent difficulties, but it's pretty clear that there has to be a market for this information for which a simple Google search doesn't provide an answer. Any ideas?

  

Is Internet Access a Human Right?

A few days ago, Vint Cerf caused some waves by writing an op-ed in the New York Times exploring the question of whether Internet access should be considered a human right. Yes, it is THAT Vint Cerf, generally recognized as one of the founders of the Internet itself. He concludes that it should not be considered a human right, and that we should be careful not to mistake actual human rights like free speech and free assembly, which the Internet certainly helps facilitate, as being on the same level as the enabling technology. The Internet is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

Truer words have never been spoken. In the stated context of the Arab Spring protests, people put their lives at risk to protest authoritarian governments and totalitarian dictators and corrupt regimes; not restricted access to Twitter. This isn't to say that restricted Internet access isn't part of the equation - it is - but it's only a symptom of the larger problem, and not the problem itself. We shouldn't lose sight of the forest through the trees.

Perhaps this doesn't seem controversial, but if you read comment threads like this one on Reddit you'll see some strong disagreement. The most valid point made by a dissenter is that Cerf's analogy with the horse is false where he claims that, in traditional terms, owning a horse is not a human right, but making a living is. However, the more apt issue in a contemporary Internet context is whether the government could take away one's right to obtain a horse. In other words, framing the question "Is Internet access a human right?" may lead to a far different answer than framing the same question as "Should the government be able to restrict people's access to information and communication with others?".

Is Internet access a human right? No. But should governments be able to restrict people's access to information and ability to communicate with others whenever they choose? No. Maybe some folks believe these two positions run in conflict with each other, but my reading of Cerf's piece leads me to believe that they do, in fact, support each other. Governments should not be able to restrict people's access to communicative technologies, not because access to those technologies is a human right, but rather because doing so would infringe upon the actual human rights of free speech and free assembly. Those are the big picture rights that Internet access only serves.

People often get carried away with a belief in technology. Heck, Cerf himself currently holds the title at Google of "Chief Internet Evangelist". But it's vital to remember that technology is just a tool to be used in pursuit of other ends. Let's inject a little bit of perspective here.

  

Social Media and Presidential Politics: 2012

Our inaugural post for this upcoming election year has to, inevitably, focus on today's Iowa caucuses.

Four years ago, The Nerfherder began a series of posts examining to what extent online social media could be a meaningful predictor of electoral outcomes. The results showed that it was, in fact, pretty poor at doing so. Read this post from just after 2008's Super Tuesday for primaries and caucuses and see just where things stood. In retrospect, it's quite fascinating.

We're going to research this question again over the next 10 months and see if we get the same results. But, oh my, how the cyber-times have changed since 2008. In that election cycle, we used as our metrics MySpace friends, Digg friends, Facebook fans, and Technorati blog posts. Isn't that quaint?

Obviously, some updating is in order. This time around we're going to keep track of Facebook fans, Twitter followers, Twitter mentions, and occasionally even sprinkle in some Google+ fans.

So here we go. On this day of the Iowa caucuses, here's how things currently stand in online social media among the Republican presidential candidates...


Facebook fans:

Mitt Romney	1,259,515
Ron Paul	672,483
Michelle Bachmann	460,336
Newt Gingrich	223,558
Rick Perry	179,966
Rick Santorum	40,895
Jon Huntsman	30,622

Twitter followers:

Newt Gingrich	1,386,258
Mitt Romney	224,598
Ron Paul	151,899
Michele Bachmann	127,312
Rick Perry	112,272
Rick Santorum	57,520
Jon Huntsman	67,168

Twitter mentions in the past week:

Ron Paul	276,948
Mitt Romney	67,597
Rick Santorum	57,183
Newt Gingrich	46,087
Rick Perry	41,695
Michele Bachmann	16,798
Jon Huntsman	7,166

  

Digital Shoplifting and Amazon's Price Check App...

I'm a bit puzzled over the latest firestorm with Amazon. At issue is the company's release of a Price Check app for smartphones. The app is yet another price-comparison shopping tool out of dozens already out there, but what's generating buzz is that Amazon is publicly encouraging users to go into physical bricks-and-mortar stores and scan barcodes by offering an extra 5 percent off purchases, up to $5, so that users can see if Amazon offers the same product at a cheaper price.

What's the big deal? Well, none other than the Wall Street Journal has labeled this "Information-Age Shoplifting". The New York Times joined the chorus as well, pointing that although Amazon's campaign was geared more against Wal-Mart and Best Buy, it incited a monster backlash from small independent bookstores.

Apparently, many prominent authors (who, by the way, earn considerable income from Amazon sales) were also dismayed by the app, describing it as "scorched-earth capitalism" that would turn users into "Droid-packing spies" and would ultimately "further devalue, as a cultural and human necessity, the book itself".

Great material. That's why they're writers.

But am I missing something here? This is just a price-comparison tool, and there are so many out there, and they've been around for so many years, what's the issue? Is it simply that Amazon is (gasp!) offering an incentive for people to actually use their software? That hardly seems worth all the commotion.

I'm a big proponent of small, local, independent retailers. But the role they play in fostering real-life communities and culture is not mortally threatened by this one schmucky app; it's under threat by a myriad of forces occurring over a several-decades-long time span. And, yes, I realize that Amazon isn't exactly a countervailing force in that movement. But this is not doomsday.

  

The U.S. Copyright Office Legalizes Hacking (again)...

Despite what intellectual property owners would have the public believe, hacking encrypted digital products is not always illegal. In fact, every three years the U.S. Copyright Office creates new exemptions from the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) so that people can, legally, circumvent such encryption on various media products.

This is how, just last year, it became legal to "jailbreak" smart phones so that iPhone users could install apps that Apple didn't approve.

Up on the list this time around... creating an exemption which would make it legal to hack or jailbreak 1) gaming consoles like the XBox, 2) tablets like the iPad and Kindle Fire, and 3) decryption software like Handbrake that enable people to make copies of DVDs.

You can imagine that the intellectual property owners fight these exemptions tooth-and-nail. But what's surprising is that, rather than harming their businesses, these exemptions often actually enhance them by exposing more people to their products, allowing the companies to generate greater derivative revenue. For example, as Wired describes...

Apple cried foul prior to the Copyright Office granting the mobile phone exemption, saying the loophole would ruin its business model. Jailbreaking allows phone owners to run any apps on their phone they want, even if they’re neither approved by Apple nor sold in iTunes.

Following Apple's 2009 claim, however, more than 18 billion apps have been downloaded from Apple. In 2009, there were 1 billion app downloads.

This is an issue that raises emotional passions. Many people, no doubt, find it inconceivable that such exemptions to the law, effectively enabling mass piracy, are ever granted. Meanwhile, plenty of others find it equally ridiculous that it's against the law in the first place to be prohibited from "opening the hood and tweaking the engine" of products which they already own and legally purchased.

But whenever you have two sides opposed in such stark contrast to each others' positions, an arbiter is necessary to find the middle ground - and in this case that arbiter is the U.S. Copyright Office (whose bureaucrats can hardly be mistaken for a bunch of anarchist hackers). Thus, this holiday season, when it becomes officially legal to hack iPads and XBoxes and Kindles and movie DVDs, just remember... this is the way the process is supposed to work.

  

The 'Occupy Flash' Campaign...

Looking for some nonsensical news today? Try the emergence of an "Occupy Flash" movement. Adobe Flash, that is. The group's goal is to get the software firm to abandon Flash altogether - not just for the mobile web, as Adobe already did two weeks ago - and instead push Web developers to HTML5.

To most readers, this needs a bit of explanatory context. See, critics have knocked Flash for several years now as making the Web less functional. Sites that use it as a design tool, while very nice-looking with all the bells-and-whistles, then cannot be properly displayed on computers or devices without the magical Flash plugin. It created a situation where much of the Web was basically inaccessible for people who didn't want to download the sometimes-buggy software. And to cyber-ideologues, that flies in the face of the "Open Web" concept.

But what's really behind the "Occupy Flash" campaign is a nerd-based devotion to promoting HTML5 - an open language developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). HTML5 handles multimedia in some similar ways as Flash, but because it's not a proprietary corporate-owned software product, the push is on for its widespread adoption.

Ummmm... some problems with the "Occupy Flash" movement...

First of all, there are still some things that Flash can do that HTML5 cannot, and as long as this is the case, Web developers will probably still want to occasionally make use of it. And if they want to, they should be able to.

Second, why is there a need for Adobe to suddenly just stop distributing Flash altogether? If what critics say is true, then why not just let Flash die off gradually on its own? It's happened before. Remember "RealPlayer"? There's no need to be so heavy-handed.

Third, users also have a capability to "flashblock-by-default". As long as that's the case, it seems like a decent compromise solution.

In the end, the massive push by HTML5 supporters (of which I actually consider myself one) comes across here as rather maniacal and definitely unnecessary. "Occupy Flash", really? Just let better open technology run its course. The writing's on the wall anyway.

  

Dot-BIT and Alternative Domain Name Systems...

There is only one scarce commodity on the Internet - domain names. The one-and-only official Domain Name (DNS) System is run by an organization called ICANN and they are responsible for maintaining the Internet's basic functionality. After all, imagine the chaos that would ensue if there were a thousand different websites that all used the domain name "www.google.com". ICANN makes sure that doesn't happen.

The ways in which ICANN makes decisions about the DNS system are very political and creates winners and losers. But the losers never had any recourse. There is only one DNS system run by ICANN and the buck stops with them.

But does it have to be that way? Can new top-level domains (TLDs) be created outside of ICANN's control?

Why not?

The prevailing wisdom for years has been that opening up domain name adminstration to mutiple organizations would lead to that aforementioned chaos. However, there is a growing hacktivist trend to circumvent the existing DNS system.

On a technical level, this is accomplished through the use of proxies. The most well-known example is Tor, a software suite that creates a virtual anonymizing network, also called a "DarkNet". As this Ars Technica article explains, there is now another...

Called Dot-BIT, the effort currently uses proxies, cryptography, and a small collection of DNS servers to create a section of the Internet's domain address space where domains can be provisioned, moved, and traded anonymously.

So far, over 4,000 domains have been registered within Dot-BIT's .bit virtual top level domain (TLD). Those domains are visible only to people who use a proxy service that draws address information from the project's distributed database, or to those using one of the project's two public DNS servers...

Dot-BIT is derived from a peer-to-peer network technology called Namecoin, derived from the Bitcoin digital currency technology. Just as with Bitcoin, the system is driven by cryptographic tokens, called namecoins. To buy an address in that space, you either have to "mine" namecoins by providing compute time (running client software that uses the computer's CPU or graphics processing unit) to handle the processing of transactions within the network, or buy them through an exchange with cash or Bitcoins. All of those approaches essentially provide support to the Namecoin distributed name system's infrastructure.

You can also get an initial payout of free namecoins from a "faucet" site designed to help bootstrap the network. The cost of entry is pretty low: currently, registering a new domain costs about 1.6 namecoins, which can be had for about five cents.

Your registration isn't associated with your name, address, and phone number—instead, it's linked to your cryptographic identity, preserving anonymity. Once you've registered a domain, you can assign it by sending out a JSON-formatted update request, mapping the domain to a DNS or providing IP addresses and host names to be distributed through Dot-BIT's proxies and public DNS servers. That information is then spread across all of the network's peer systems.

Simple, right?

Personally, I don't see Dot-BIT as being a meaningful tool for evading censorship. The existing DNS system remains, what Marcus Franda has called, a "single controlling point" on the Internet, and as such, websites with Dot-BIT domains can still be shut down from the primary root servers.

But what's really interesting is the mere possibility of an alternative domain name system. It seems so absurd, and such an anomaly, that the democratizing force of the global Internet is still controlled, essentially, by one organization with monopoly power and no public oversight. Eventually, as hacktivist groups keep trying to develop alternative domain name systems, ICANN will inevitably be faced with a choice - to reform their processes or be circumvented.

  

Can the Police Install GPS Tracking Devices on People's Cars Without a Warrant?

A case was argued before the Supreme Court last week - U.S. v. Antoine Jones - which strikes at the heart of the Fourth Amendment right to privacy, specifically the prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures.

In 2005, D.C. police, working with the FBI, installed a GPS tracking device on Jones' car without a warrant. Eventually, acting on information they had gathered, the police then did obtain a search warrant and found a huge stash of cocaine, firearms and cash.

Jones' lawyers argue that, under the Fourth Amendment, a warrant is necessary before installing GPS tracking devices on citizens' cars.

On the other side, the police argue that it's not necessary because the authorities could have tracked the suspect's car under existing law simply by assigning enough police officers to follow him. Justice Kennedy told the defendant's lawyer: "What you're saying is that the police have to use the most inefficient methods." As L. Gordon Crovitz of the Wall Street Journal points out, to put it another way, "wouldn't most Americans think it unreasonable to lock law enforcement into earlier generations of technology when criminals use the latest technology?"

This case highlights the evolving nature of privacy rights in the context of rapidly changing technology. Most of us instinctively cringe at the thought of GPS devices being installed on our cars whenever authorities might feel like it, but then again most of us already opt for GPS tracking devices in our cars voluntarily. And the police make a good point: How different is it, really, than just having a squad car follow a suspect around?

They're both reasonable arguments, which is why, in the end, it all comes down to defining social norms. It's those norms that the justices must ultimately ascertain in order to define what constitutes "reasonable".

Crovitz is right that, culturally, Americans are more and more frequently choosing to give up their privacy in exhange for technological benefits - whether it be Facebook, Foursquare, always-on smartphones, etc. - and to a large extent this is, indeed, the norm these days.

However, I'd like to make a counterpoint... the social norm here is more nuanced than simply, "people don't care about privacy". I would argue that there is still a cultural expectation against technology in many cases. For example, this is why in baseball there remains no instant replay for calling balls and strikes, or why many municipalities still don't issue traffic tickets completely based on cameras. Somehow, even though it's technologically possible, people nevertheless don't quite think it "seems fair". The public finds it undesirable. There is a social norm that electronic surveillance can still go too far, and that's particularly true when it comes to the authorities as opposed to private websites that allow you to opt-out. Of course, there is no opt-out from the police.

This isn't to argue that GPS tracking devices shouldn't be used at all on suspects; only that public law enforcement, in order to avoid a dangerous slippery-slope, ought to still get a warrant first.

  

When Hackers Battle Mexican Drug Cartels...

The hacker group Anonymous is highly controversial. At times they have been a force for good - for instance, when they assisted Iranians protesting their authoritarian government. Other times they've been a force for the not-so-good - like when they launched cyberattacks against a wide array of legitimate businesses that opposed Wikileaks last year.

Suddenly, the cyber-world of hackers is clashing head-on with its real-world counterpart. According to InfoWorld, the Zeta Mexican Drug Cartel recently kidnapped a member of Anonymous for making critical statements about them. The Zeta Cartel is known to have murdered and dumped the bodies of dozens of people on the side of one Veracruz highway.

Members of Anonymous responded by posting this YouTube video threatening to publicize the names of all Zeta collaborators unless the Anonymous member was freed - claiming they could identify journalists, police officers, and even taxi drivers.

What happened then?

Zeta has not shied away from targeting its online critics. In September the crime group hung two people from an overpass with a nearby sign warning bloggers and "online snitches" to beware, according to Wired. Later the same month, the decapitated body of another social media reporter was found with a similar warning.

Worried about the impact on both misidentified people and Anonymous followers, other supporters of the Anonymous movement worked to dismantle the operation over the weekend. In effect, the group canceled the attack, according to online news site Milenio.

So Anonymous is retreating. Wow. The hacker group that has reveled in its anarchic role in cyberspace has apparently met its match... that match being "reality". Keyboards versus shotguns is quite the wake-up call.

It's one thing for indivuals to try and wreak digital havoc from the safety of their living rooms, anonymously, with little concern for the consequences. Usually there are none. However, take those same individuals, remove them from their safe confines, and make them accountable for their actions, and it's a whole different ballgame.

To be clear, in no way, shape, or form should the Zeta cartel's actions be even remotely condoned or justified. They are, in fact, despicable, and downright frightening. It's just interesting to observe - as someone who's been following the misadventures of Anonymous for several years - how these folks aren't nearly as brazen when their actions might reap consequences back upon themselves.

  

The PROTECT IP Act: Why Can't They Get Copyright Right?

The history of the copyright issue on the Internet basically boils down to the music and movie industries trying to permanently shut down any website that contributes to copyright infringement, while the courts have repeatedly held them in check saying that doing so would be a violation of the First Amendment and, in effect, an institutional form of censorship.

And here we go again...

The PROTECT-IP Act (also known as the E-PARASITES Act) is the latest bill that lobbyists for the music and movie industries are pushing through Congress. The bill seeks to protect the interests of copyright holders by forcing ISPs to block access to any site deemed by those industries to be "contributing towards infringement". No one quite knows what this means, and it can be interpreted quite broadly. The icing on the cake... such sites can be shut down with no adversarial hearing. That's right; if this bill passes, websites can now be shut down without any involvement or ruling from the courts.

The problems are the usual suspects. First, the vague language used to define "contributing towards copyright infringement" is overly broad and can be applied to almost any website. Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and YouTube could all theoretically be shut down based on this language if, even once, someone posts anything deemed by the industries to be "contributory".

Second, the prescribed solution of forcing ISPs to prohibit access to such websites preemptively without going through the courts amounts to censorship without due process, and has to make any American who supports free speech and free press recoil. Could you imagine if the same standard was held to newspapers? Where the New York Times could be shut down - the entire newspaper SHUT DOWN(!!!) - because Hollywood claimed it once - once(!!!) - violated copyright with a specific movie review? And where it would be shut down without a court reviewing the case?

Mike Masnick from Techdirt offers a scathing critique of the bill where he points out...

And while defenders of this bill will insist it's only designed to target truly infringing sites, let's just recall a small list of sites and technologies the industry has insisted were all about infringement in the past: the player piano, the radio, the television, the photocopier, the phonograph, cable tv, the vcr, the mp3 player, the DVR, online video hosting sites like YouTube and more.

Here's the thing. The problem of online copyright infringment is real and many people are at least somewhat sympathetic. However, by the music and movie industries reacting, over and over again, with such ridiculous Draconian solutions, they lose any credibility - and that filters in to the public's perception of the problem as well. If, for once, these industries would stop trying to create an Internet blacklist and censor half the Web, and instead formulate something - anything - even slightly reasonable, people might not be so quick to brush them off as out-of-touch lunatics.

The PROTECT-IP Act is a travesty.