Tag: rights

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Google and YOU

It’s hard to argue against the fact that Google has made the boldest moves in recent years regarding Internet-based applications, e-mail, etc.

But — as the company grows and strays from their original motto: “Do no evil,” is your personal information at risk?

Personally, I’d hate to be skeptical, but it’s a very reasonable question, especially as Dan Gillmor warns in response to this GOOG profile by Network World:

Google wants to make the information it stores for its users easily portable so they can export it to a competing service if they are dissatisfied, the company’s CEO said Tuesday.

What to look out for, Gillmor says, is:

Google will continue to reserve the right to keep the data you’ve stored in its servers forever, and use that data as it sees fit.

For all practical purposes, Google pretty much rules the world right now. It’s up to us to keep it from getting out of hand.

Or, maybe, we just shouldn’t have anything to hide?

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Google: Do No Evil?

Google (motto: Do No Evil) is now suspected of colluding with the media giants along with YouTube in an effort to use it’s bubblicious valuation to ward off copyright litigation while simultaneously putting the little guys out of competition — all at the expense of both artist and audience.

Yes, this is the very definition of evil.

Mark Cuban posted a note from a “trusted digital media business veteran” alledging the above in disturbing, though not surprising, detail. read it here.

As Google has grown cozy as the powerhouse of Bubble 2.0 it seems to have cozied up with the early 21st century corporate-political philosophy of: Trust me, I’m [Google] [the president] [your local utility company]. Are they succumbing to the weak-ass corruption at the top of the service industry food chain?

What’s even more frightening is that a majority of the old money keeping Google afloat has about as much of a clue as to what it is or will be and the service it provides as they thought they knew when they put all their money into the iOmegas and Pets.coms of yesteryear.

Worse, the biggest consumers of Google and especially YouTube’s services, belong to a generation that has grown immune to the hypocrisy of corporate leadership, practically expecting scandals to be exposed as if they are just another element of democracy in action. How many of today’s youngest voters can actually name the presidents who preceded their existence (14 years ago, Clinton became president).
happy halloween
Last, will the public and media response to Google’s endeavors w/ YouTube and big media — essentially spending billions to ensure a monopoly on the market before they become stale and “so last year” to today’s youth (see Yuki Noguchi’s piece in the Sunday WaPo) — just as the public and media responds to all other corporo-political infringements on democracy (think the ongoing Iraq war)?

BONUS COV’G: MySpace now claims to be using GraceNote to flush it’s supposed tens of millions of users of copyright-infringing files.

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Day Against DRM

Defective by Design has designated today (Oct. 3) Day Against DRM Day.

Digital Rights Management licenses, watermarks, and sabotaged appliances should be avoided at all costs today as a general statement against DRM. DRM and its growing acceptance as a “protection” for copyright holders and corporations alike, creates fear and levels creativity. The fact that Sony was allowed, last year, to get away with their rootkit, is one example of how DRM enables surreptitious corporate crime, while strangling and discouraging the freedom to express and create.

DBD notes 10 Things you can do in recognition of Day Against DRM Day here (one of which is to include this link wherever you can). Also, watch videos highlighting the problems with DRM. Check out the Day Against DRM Flickr photo pool slideshow:

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Future of the Internet: Liberty + Privacy

Among the more interesting studies released Sunday in the second installment of the Pew Internet & American Life Project’s Future of the Internet (PDF) survey, are respondents reactions to the following hypothetical:

Prediction: As sensing, storage and communication technologies get cheaper and better, individuals’ public and private lives will become increasingly ‘transparent’ globally. Everything will be more visible to everyone, with good and bad results. Looking at the big picture – at all of the lives affected on the planet in every way possible – this will make the world a better place by the year 2020. The benefits will outweigh the costs.

The mean response of 742 individuals is of uncertainty (46% agreed vs. 49% disagree). But it’s the substance of the varied & impassioned responses that set the course for what many believe is one of the most important issues of modern time and the near future.

Here is a link to credited answers. And here’s a collection of anonymous one-liners.

The answers range from amusing to asinine, but overall the essence is that transparency — while essential to and inevitable in an open society — is a double-edged sword.

In a rather oddly phrased question, a majority of respondents agree (to my dismay) with Thomas Friedman’s mostly-BS “The World is Flat” argument, aggreeing with utopian naivete, that, by 2020, “the free flow of information will completely blur current national boundaries as they are replaced by city-states, corporation-based cultural groupings, and/or other organizations tied together by global networks.”

Perhaps it’s only appropriate — in a very Sci-Fi-esque study, that there would be no more New York and China and Japan.

Other notable conclusions from the abstract:

* A low-cost global network will be thriving and creating new opportunities in a “flattening” world.
* Humans will remain in charge of technology, even as more activity is automated and “smart agents” proliferate. However, a significant 42% of survey respondents were pessimistic about humans’ ability to control the technology in the future. This significant majority agreed that dangers and dependencies will grow beyond our ability to stay in charge of technology. This was one of the major surprises in the survey.
* Virtual reality will be compelling enough to enhance worker productivity and also spawn new addiction problems.
* Tech “refuseniks” will emerge as a cultural group characterized by their choice to live off the network. Some will do this as a benign way to limit information overload, while others will commit acts of violence and terror against technology-inspired change.
* People will wittingly and unwittingly disclose more about themselves, gaining some benefits in the process even as they lose some privacy.

As Bruce Schneier said at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy tonight, “freedom equals liberty plus privacy.” Digest that…

The IEEE prefers their recently released “Bursting Tech Bubbles Before They Balloon” survey, authored by Marina Gorbis and the Institute for the Future’s David Pescovitz.

For historical reference, see PBS’ 1998 survey: Nerds 2.0.1 — a who’s-who of nerdtrepreneurs and their late 20th century musings on the future of the Internet.