- FOI Topics and Links of the Week
The Extraordinaries Haiti Earthquake Support Center. A followup post on the Extraordinaries’ efforts to use ubiquitous human computing to help find missing people after the Haiti earthquake — a positive vision inspired by JZ’s nightmare scenario of crowdsourced secret police work. Did they succeed? “Yes and no”—but, as they detail, there’s obvious potential for future disaster relief.
Amazon Cracks Open the Kindle. Amazon is opening the Kindle to outside developers who can market their products in what sounds exactly like an App Store, down to the 70-30 revenue split and and light policing of apps. (One difference is that developers have to pay for wireless delivery.) It’s seeming like this is *the* model for the next few years. Speaking of which…
Computers Should Be More Like Toasters. The sale of the Apple Tablet could mark an important moment for generativity. Computers have been shrinking and phones have been growing—but the critical difference has been that anyone could still code for a computer, until now. The Tablet looks more like a computer than a phone, but will Apple will prescreen apps they way it does for the iPhone? Farhad Manjoo thinks that would be a good thing, but there are clear generativity costs.
The Splinternet means the end of the Web’s golden age. Josh Bernoff points out that, as we switch to appliancized computers and smart devices instead of PCs, the web becomes a “splinternet.” Websites show up and operate differently on each device. He thinks about how to handle this from a business and marketing perspective, advising: “Here’s what not to do: panic and try to unify things again. The shattering cannot be undone.”
Technology Changes “Outstrip” Netbooks. Meanwhile, the BBC considers the convergence among netbooks, smartphones, and tablet notebooks, and who the short- and long-term winners are likely to be.
Apple censors Dalai Lama iPhone Apps in China. An interesting look at how censorship works on iPhones in China. (The story was written pre-Google announcement, so some portions are out of date.) Apple, complying with local law, appears to be removing apps related to the Dalai Lama in the Chinese App Store, and a search for Falun Gong apps freezes the search page. On the other hand, it’s possible to access YouTube through an iPhone app, which isn’t always possible on a PC.
And in the crystal ball dep’t — from JZ’s book:
Imagine entering a café in Paris with one’s personal digital assistant or mobile phone, and being able to query: “Is there anyone on my buddy list within 100 yards? Are any of the ten closest friends of my ten closest friends within 100 yards?” Although this may sound fanciful, it could quickly become mainstream. With reputation systems already advising us on what to buy, why not have them also help us make the first cut on whom to meet, to date, to befriend? These are not difficult services to offer, and there are precursors today.
As usual, there’s an app for that… the “datecheck” app allows you to enter a name, phone number, or email address, and get information on your date. The categories are “sleaze detector” (check of criminal convictions & sex offenses), “$$$” (home ownership, etc), “interests” (gleaned from social networks), “living situation” (who they live with), and “compatibility”—although unfortunately, the “compatibility” check is still just a check of astrological signs. Now all they need is friends’ feedback rankings.
—By Elisabeth Oppenheimer
- Life in a clickshop
In talks about ubicomp, JZ gives an example of a worst-case scenario involving ubicomp platforms. He imagines that the Iranian government could use Amazon Mechanical Turk to identify dissidents, simply by posting pictures of protestors and ID-card pictures of the adults in the country, then asking Turkers to match protestor pictures to ID-card pictures. Voila—and the Turkers wouldn’t necessarily have to know what they were doing. In the department of amazingly cool ideas, though, the folks at the Extraordinaries reflected on the Iran example and then turned it around. After the earthquake in Haiti, they posted news wire pictures of people in Haiti (with crowdsourced help), asked others to post pictures of missing relatives, and finally asked volunteers to try to match the two up. This is v 1.0 of what could be a terrific and widely-used technology after natural disasters, allowing people at home to do more than just donate money.
As we keep thinking about ubicomp and the potential upsides and downsides, it’ll be important to keep in mind that it’s a tool—a largely undeveloped one as yet—with much room to develop in both directions. In that spirit, I wanted to comment on this piece from Technology Review that casts a skeptical eye on Prof. Zittrain’s recent column in Newsweek on cloud labor (also known as ubiquitous human computing). The Newsweek editors gave the piece the ominous headline “Work the New Digital Sweatshops,” and Tech Review bloggers question whether that’s really a fair description of the Mechanical Turk platform. I’m not sure there’s a real disagreement here—the Newsweek headline overstated the content of the piece. Much of the point, as I read it, was just that cloudwork practices are so new, dynamic, and varied that it’s hard to know what the good and bad effects will turn out to be. As they point out, this could be a boon for workers here in the US who want flexibility and autonomy, as well as creating new kinds of opportunities for workers abroad. A few specific points are worth thinking about, though.
They quote John Horton, at Harvard, who put out a HIT (“human intelligence task”) on Amazon Mechanical Turk asking about working conditions, and found that a small majority think AMT requestors treat workers better than most real-world employers. That surprised me—maybe I spend too much time reading Turker messageboards, where the theme is often discontent. I wonder, though, whether many responders use AMT for fun or small income supplements, rather than to earn a living wage, which changes the complexion of the situation. Even if Horton is wholly correct, though, it doesn’t mean requestors can’t improve. For a project I’m doing for JZ’s winter cyberlaw class, we’ve put up some AMT HITs asking about worker satisfaction. We’ve found that people do not like doing search engine optimization or creating spam, and a majority (though not an overwhelming one) likes knowing what the project is for. Disclosure of the company’s identity or the project purpose could become a much stronger norm on AMT, which would help fend off the problems of work alienation and unwittingly doing bad things with the platform, but wouldn’t detract from any of the benefits TR bloggers praise.
The other major point they make is that this type of work can be good for workers in developing countries. That’s definitely true in some cases (see, for instance, previous blogging about CrowdFlower’s GiveWork program). I certainly don’t have enough background in international development to make an unambiguous statement either way. But surely it’s worrisome that children can be made to do the work as well as adults—there’s just no way of knowing who’s at the other end of the system. Overall, for better or for worse, we live in a society where we’ve decided that paternalistic labor laws play some valuable role. Some of them can be imported into an AMT context—but maybe not internationally—and the technology means that some can’t, even if, like child labor, there’s widespread condemnation. I would agree, and I think JZ would too, that we don’t want regulators charging in with too heavy a hand. But we should be alert to what’s happening on these platforms.
—By Elisabeth Oppenheimer
- A quick cosmology question
The amazing Hubble telescope has now shown us images of galaxies from 13.2 billion years ago. That’s because the light comes from 13.2 billion light years away, and took (by definition) that much time to get here:
“The deeper Hubble looks into space, the farther back in time it looks, because light takes billions of years to cross the observable universe,” the Space Telescope Science Institute said in a statement released Tuesday.
So that makes sense on one level. But here’s what I don’t get: the light only took that long to get here if the starting point for it was in fact 13.2 billion light years away. Since the universe is expanding, if one rewinds time, it shrinks. Indeed, I thought the Big Bang to mean that at one point the Universe was a singularity, both meaning in a condition for which our laws of physics can’t say anything, and that it was essentially compressed into a single point.
But if it was compressed into a single point — apparently about 5-600 million years further back from the 13.2 billion we’re now seeing — that means that 14 billion years ago everything was, well, extremely close to everything else. So unless the universe is expanding faster than the speed of light, how could anything be 13.2 billion light years away from us, 13.2 billion years ago? Maybe something is that far now, but if so its light would only just be starting its journey to us. The whole light year calculation presumes that something was that far away from us then – a time when the whole universe was much, much smaller in diameter. Maybe it has something to do with the universe’s expansion as a matter of dark energy, e.g., the fabric of the universe itself expanding, vs. the expansion found as all the galaxies speed away from one another (countered by the actions of gravity)? Something to do with the “inflationary period” catapulting everything really far away from everything else in one swoop?
I’m sure I’m missing something here. What is it?
- Google takes on China
Google announced today that it would cease (well, phase out) censoring the results in google.cn, the Chinese-language version of its famed search engine. It’s a pretty stunning move, both in its fact and in its execution. First, the announcement of “A new approach to China” may appear to have buried the lede. The lion’s share of the post is devoted to describing a series of coordinated attacks on the accounts of human rights activists, including those who use Google. It includes a link to the amazing story of GhostNet, discovered by fellow ONI researchers when the Dalai Lama gave them his oddly-acting laptop to examine.
Companies rarely share information about the cyberattacks they experience — conventional wisdom has it that it makes the company appear vulnerable, and drives customers away. Here Google is open about the attacks, while of course assuring readers that it had tightened security as a result. Google then links these attacks to a lessening of enthusiasm for doing business in China. Eliminating censorship in google.cn is only mentioned after that.
Suppose the Chinese government acts as expected and tells Google that it may no longer operate in China. Google.cn might vanish as a domain name, since it’s hosted under the Chinese country-code TLD of .cn, ultimately controllable by the Chinese government. But the search engine found there could of course keep operating from a different location, like cn.google.com. Suppose then that China attempts to filter out traffic to and from that new location — and to and from google.com for good measure, as it has done from time to time, especially before the advent of google.cn and its agreement to censor. (We’ll be watching for such moves at herdict.org, a site where users can report Web blockages.)
What next? My hope, and expectation, is that Google engineers who might have been a bit halfhearted about implementing censorship mandates in google.cn could be full-throttle in coming up with ways for Google to be viewed despite any network interruptions between site and user. There are lots of unexplored options here. They’re unexplored not because they’re infeasible, but because most sites would rather not provoke a government that filters. So they don’t undertake to get information out in ways that might evade blockages. Here, Google would have nothing more to lose, so could pioneer some new approaches. Circumvention of filtering (or other blockages, for that matter) tends to happen on the user side of things, seeking out proxies like the Tor network, or anonymizer.com.
To be sure, many of the larger benefits of operating in China originally cited by Google four years ago — exposing the citizenry to services beyond those locally grown and monitored; engaging them beyond the “China Wide Web” to which some government officials aspire to limit them; and gaining market share that can create momentum and support for later loosening of restrictions — may attenuate. Google.cn is less known and used than, say, the local Baidu search engine, which boasts about 60% market share. That share is about to get even bigger.
But drawing a line is both the right move and a brilliant one. It helps realign Google’s business with its ethos, and masterfully recasts the firm in a place it will feel more comfortable: supporting the free and open dissemination of information rather than metering it out according to undesirable (and capricious) government standards.
- Malicious Apps in the Android Market
As we knew would happen sooner or later, a dangerous malicious app has apparently made its way into Android’s Market. The app is said to “create[] a shell of mobile banking apps” and collect users’ personal information. It’s been removed; no word on how many users, if any, were actually affected.
Offhand, I can’t think of an app with comparable problems that has gotten into iPhone’s app store. What will be really interesting about this incident, and the similar ones that are sure to follow, is how users and vendors react. I can imagine this creating hysterical urging for Google to pre-screen all Android apps the way Apple does, but I think that would be premature. Yes, an open Market(s) is going to have more questionable apps, but there are many solutions other than lockdown—a strong user ranking for apps (which already exists), a way to alert people who have already downloaded the app, sandboxing (which admittedly wouldn’t have mattered here), or a quick way to freeze the app while complaints are investigating. They’re only partial solutions, but lockdown is only partial, too.
Now that the Android OS is really starting to take off, this story is going to be repeated, and we’ll get to see how strongly committed Google is to the principles it built the OS on — and whether there are models out there for vetting third party code that do better than those of the generative PC, but aren’t as restrictive as that of the iPhone.
—By Elisabeth Oppenheimer
Update: eWeek reports that Google has removed a number of suspicious apps from its marketplace. Of course, the more generative structure of the Android market means that “banned” apps can be obtained elsewhere — unlike the iPhone app monopoly enjoyed by Apple, where the iPhone App store is the only point of distribution. –JZ
February 18th, 2009 at 7:09 pm (#)
Jonathan, sorry, I think this post completely misses the point. The Facebook users were not objecting to the opacity of the modified TOS; they were objecting to the impact. Whether in plain English or in $700/hr NY lawyer English, the modified TOS was clearly an attempt to shift control of user-generated content (the photo, the status updates) from the user to the service provider. The bloggers focused on the removal of the account deletion provision in the original TOS, but more significant was the removal of the sentence at the beginning of the same paragraph that made clear that FB needs the license to enable service delivery, not to claim of the content. The modified TOS stood the original deal on its head. The FB folks figured that out. That — not “the party of the first part” — was the reason for the protest. I also happen to disagree that the “P2P” privacy violations are significant. As I’ve written elsewhere, with FB it’s all in the defaults. Throw a switch and it impacts the rights of millions of users. Cheers, Marc.
February 18th, 2009 at 7:27 pm (#)
No one expects Facebook to be run by anyone other than its management and private owners [...] but if the communities there are truly to flourish, perhaps it’s time to experiment with forms of self-governance.
You’re proposing a solution in search of a problem. According to your post, FB has 175,000,000 registered users. How many of those people actually would have deleted their accounts rather than submit to the new ToS? Sure, FB upset the people who make a living by paying attention to these things, and there were a bunch of people on Digg getting all pissy about it, but so what? I saw a report yesterday that the ToS protest group picked up about 10,000 FB members in the first day. Should FB really be concerned that 0.00057% of their userbase and a bunch of smarty-pants internet policy wonks objected to the new terms?
The value of the site is in its users- but that value inures entirely to the site’s owners. As long as the owners don’t drive away significant portions of their user base, they don’t have anything to worry about… and given the switching cost, where are 175 million people going to go?
February 18th, 2009 at 8:20 pm (#)
[...] For a full discussion of this issue by Jonathan Zittrain, see this post on his blog. [...]
February 18th, 2009 at 9:31 pm (#)
I can only applaud a law professor who openy whishes for more plainspeak. I would personally prefer (CC)-style pictograms — but everybody always neglects the illiterate Facebook users.
Thank you even more for pointing out that, once again, Facebook and its bunch of nerdy Californians are not the culprit: if they want anything stalky, they probably know where to find far savvier then my party plans. I have yet to come across an issue with Facebook that isn’t instantly resolved by a little honnesty and integreity towards either a close relative a significant other or your boss — and neither deserve anyless, with or without Internet.
What they *are* about to be guilty of, however, is re-shaping social relations by trying to make explicitely coherent the contradictions that Mark Z. indicated in his post. I can imagine only mostly cumbersome standards and little possible generativity out of there — and I’m afraid that the main thing I’m neglecting is Facebook’s employee ethnocentism.
February 19th, 2009 at 3:41 pm (#)
[...] Jonathan Zittrain has a nice post looking at longer-term implications of this particular storm, now that it has passed. Like me, JZ [...]
February 20th, 2009 at 12:20 am (#)
I just can’t believe they went back on their TOS change. People are dumb if they think they are getting any privacy from Facebook or Myspace. All they are doing is voluntarily supplying valuable info to huge marketing mills. Although there are ways to communicate with privacy: anonymous sites like http://www.anonboard.com
February 20th, 2009 at 6:33 am (#)
It seems fascinating that the “great evil” that is DRM suddenly becomes desirable in this context. The user wants to be able to upload their data and yet retain control over who can copy it, when they can “un-upload” it, and so on. Maybe DRM isn’t so bad after all: it’s just a case of who’s got the rights and who’s doing the management.
February 20th, 2009 at 8:07 am (#)
The post makes several points, the second of which seems most salient and which I almost entirely agree with (see my related post, written in ignorance of this one). I’m not certain that we need to analogize FB or similar things to a country, but governance is clearly the issue.
Marc is right that defaults are key, but that doesn’t mean that P2P privacy problems are (relatively) unimportant. P2P defaults matter, too. This case just didn’t happen to present that question.
February 20th, 2009 at 6:15 pm (#)
Should we compare Facebook’s TOS to other similar SNSs to see on how Facebook would have been wider effects?
Shall we compare it to Myspace, Xanga, Bebo, Twitter, Fliker and who else?
- MySpace : users’ ownership but licence to Myspace for distributing etc… unless marked ‘private’ , After will cease distribution as soon as practicable,
“6. Proprietary Rights in Content on MySpace.
6.1 MySpace does not claim any ownership rights in the text, files, images, photos, video, sounds, musical works, works of authorship, applications, or any other materials (collectively, “Content”) that you post on or through the MySpace Services. After posting your Content to the MySpace Services, you continue to retain any such rights that you may have in your Content, subject to the limited license herein. By displaying or publishing (“posting”) any Content on or through the MySpace Services, you hereby grant to MySpace a limited license to use, modify, delete from, add to, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce, and distribute such Content solely on or through the MySpace Services, including without limitation distributing part or all of the MySpace Website in any media formats and through any media channels, except Content marked “private” will not be distributed outside the MySpace Website. This limited license does not grant MySpace the right to sell or otherwise distribute your Content outside of the MySpace Services. After you remove your Content from the MySpace Website we will cease distribution as soon as practicable, and at such time when distribution ceases, the license will terminate. If after we have distributed your Content outside the MySpace Website you change the Content’s privacy setting to “private,” we will cease distribution of such “private” Content outside the MySpace Website as soon as practicable after you make the change.
6.2 The license you grant to MySpace is non-exclusive (meaning you are free to license your Content to anyone else in addition to MySpace), fully-paid and royalty-free (meaning that MySpace is not required to pay you for the use on the MySpace Services of the Content that you post), sublicensable (so that MySpace is able to use its affiliates, subcontractors and other partners such as Internet content delivery networks and wireless carriers to provide the MySpace Services), and worldwide (because the Internet and the MySpace Services are global in reach).
………
6.4
…MySpace hereby grants you a limited, revocable, nonsublicensable license to reproduce and display the MySpace Content …”
…
– Xanga : Ownership of the content provider + temporary licence , content license ’shall expire either immediately or upon termination of any promotional or marketing activities ongoing at the time’
“CONTENT SUBMITTED TO XANGA.COM
(This section refers to Content that you create)
You retain all ownership rights to your Content. Except for its ownership of the collection of all content on Xanga, as described below, Xanga does not claim ownership of any Content you publish in your area of the Website (�Your Xanga Site�).
When you publish your Content on Xanga, you grant Xanga a temporary license to �rebroadcast� it. ….
By publishing Content on Your Xanga Site you grant Xanga a world-wide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, modify, distribute, transmit, publicly perform and publicly display the Content (as well as permit others – including without limitation Xanga�s co-brand, content and syndication partners – to do the same) solely for the following purposes:
* Displaying, distributing and promoting Your Xanga Site
* Promoting and marketing Xanga�s products and services and general operation of the Xanga Service
* Promoting and marketing the products and services of Xanga�s partners and affiliates
* Promoting and marketing products and services related to your Content.
This license exists only for as long as the Content remains published on Your Xanga Site and only for as long you remain a Xanga member, except that you grant Xanga a continuing perpetual license and right to maintain a copy of your Xanga Site and Content for archival purposes. This archival copy is not posted publicly on the Xanga system; it is maintained solely so that Xanga may recover content and restore accounts (in case of errors or system failure) or cooperate with law enforcement in order to make the Xanga service safer. Except for this license for archival use, in the event that you remove the Content from Your Xanga Site or in the event that your membership is terminated, this license shall expire either immediately or upon termination of any promotional or marketing activities ongoing at the time.
COPYRIGHT
Content created by Xanga or its suppliers
All content created by Xanga, its partners, or its suppliers and included on Xanga, such as text, logos, graphics, images, javascript code, HTML code, and other software, is the property of Xanga, Inc. (or its partners or suppliers) and protected by U.S. and international copyright and other intellectual property laws.
Compilations of Content
Notwithstanding the provisions outlined in �Content submitted to Xanga.com� above*, the collection of all Content on this site is a collective work under the U.S. copyright laws and is the exclusive property of Xanga and protected by U.S. and international copyright laws. The Content and software on Xanga may be used as a homepage creation or web-surfing resource. Any other use, including the reproduction, modification, distribution, transmission, republication, display, or performance, of the Content on Xanga is strictly prohibited.
*Individual Contributors retain all ownership rights to their Content. Xanga does not claim ownership of any Content you publish on Your Xanga Site.”
……..
- BEBO : no ownership claimed + limited license clearly defines the after contract termination
“Proprietary Rights
Bebo does not claim any ownership rights in any Materials that you submit, post, or display on or through the Bebo Service. ……
you hereby grant to Bebo and its agents and assigns a limited license to use, modify, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce, and distribute such Materials solely in connection with the Bebo Service or the promotion thereof.
…
This license will terminate at the time you remove your Materials from the Bebo Service, except that you agree that the license will continue solely with respect to other Members’ continued use of your Materials that are not music or videos (i.e. photos or skins); provided, however if you remove any of the Materials from the Bebo Service, Bebo reserves the right to remove all of your Materials from other Member’s pages. The license does not grant Bebo the right to sell your Materials You represent and warrant that: (i) you own the Materials posted by you on or through the Bebo Service or otherwise have the right to grant the license set forth in this section, and (ii) the posting of your Materials on or through the Bebo Service does not violate the privacy rights, publicity rights, copyrights, contract rights or any other rights of any person. You agree to pay for all royalties, fees, and any other monies owing any person by reason of any Materials posted by you to or through the Bebo Service. The hosting of certain items that you post, such as video, may require your agreement to a separate license agreement or terms of use.
Bebo, Inc. and its affiliates and licensors own and retain all rights in the Bebo Web site and Bebo Service, which contain proprietary and confidential information that is protected by applicable intellectual property and other laws, …..
We take your privacy very seriously and collection and use of personal information is governed by our Privacy Policy. Click here to review the Bebo Privacy Policy.
Information collected in connection with your use of the Bebo Service may be processed and stored in the United States, or other countries where Bebo or its parent, affiliates, subsidiaries or service providers maintain facilities. If you live outside the United States and use Bebo, you expressly consent to the transfer to the United States of the personal information you provide Bebo, or such other countries as we may disclose from time to time. Additionally, you agree that we may use your Bebo user name to authenticate you on any service provided by Bebo or its affiliates.”
- TWITTER no ownership claimed + promise that all removed after at anytime
“Copyright (What’s Yours is Yours)
1. We claim no intellectual property rights over the material you provide to the Twitter service. Your profile and materials uploaded remain yours. You can remove your profile at any time by deleting your account. This will also remove any text and images you have stored in the system.
2. We encourage users to contribute their creations to the public domain or consider progressive licensing terms.
3…….”
All these examples shows how a free service accept little liability, the service take no any liability to maintain and could disappear or be swallow at any time.
February 20th, 2009 at 8:42 pm (#)
I think the switch by Facebook is just an extension of the current governmental information grab. Sure, they changed their policy back, but for how long and will they announce it the next time. They still have the clause about changing without notification.
March 1st, 2009 at 5:33 am (#)
[...] Facebook’s privacy storm :: The Future of the Internet — And How to Stop It [...]
April 21st, 2009 at 6:42 am (#)
[...] founder, Mark Zuckerberg, responded quickly – in plainspeak rather than legalese – and I credit his view that the changes in terms of service really weren’t meant to be a stealthy way of doing [...]