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Category: Distribution Page 10 of 15

Friday Notes: Double Stack Edition

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On June 27, 2008

In Distribution, Law, Society, Tech

Missed this last Friday, so you get double the helping of trivial matters:

First up – I’m big in China!  Yes, if you use the Chinese Google to search for “false statement“, I’m right there on the first page of results.   Ahead of Bush, Cheney, and the “Criminal Tax Manual”, no less. I couldn’t have done it without Mark Ellmore.

(Oh, okay, Mark Ellmore and oppressive governmental control.)

(Update: Sigh. Being big in China is such a fleeting thing.  Already, I’m on the second page.  Maybe I’ll have to settle for being big in Belgium.)

~

If you haven’t been reading Pro Publica, you should be.  Start with this story about the half a billion dollars the US has spent on a failed propaganda station.  Looks like the US worked very hard to ensure that no one in the Middle East ever takes anything that comes from the US government seriously.

~

Atrios noted what I thought was a pretty sobering reality check, yesterday – GM’s market cap is (take your pick): the same as H&R Block’s, half that of Avon’s, and one fifth of Ebay’s.  I know things have been rough for them for a while now, but . . . wow.

~

Speaking of Google – Nicholas Carr asks whether it’s “making us stupid?” It’s a long article, but well worth your time if you’ve ever wondered about the real effects on your thinking of having Google at your finger tips for years.

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You know how the rightwingers are always going on about the coming Islamic invasion and subjugation of America?  Well, in case you missed it, one of their cultural heroes – the mercenary company Blackwater – is trying to avoid responsiblity for the deaths of three American passengers on one of its charter flights by arguing that Shari’a (Islamic law) should apply, since the crash occurred in Afghanistan.

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The Burn Rate as performance art.  Good thing he’s in Ethiopia.

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Neal Stephenson’s new book is coming out on September 9th.  I cannot possibly finish the Baroque Cycle by then.

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The FCC wants to auction off a slice of the airwaves so you can get free wireless Internet!*

*And by Internet, they mean access to pre-approved content, excluding anything that isn’t “family-friendly”, in order to “protect children and families.”

I wish I could tell you that it’s the tidal wave of mockery and laughter that’s going to kill this proposal, but it’ll be the telecoms that prefer to charge you a hefty monthly fee to access your porn.

401: Please Swipe Your Online ID Card Again for Access

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On June 24, 2008

In Distribution, Law, Politics, Society, Tech

If you ever sit down with me and we talk about why I’m in communications law and why tech fascinates me, you’ll probably hear about my theories on communications infrastructure and how greatly they influence the type of society in which we live. You’ll also hear that I am fairly certain that we are living in a time during which all the tools that are needed to strictly control access to (and thus things learned from) that communications infrastructure are being built. Not as part of any particular grand conspiracy, but in the service of separate self-interested industries and institutions. Once those tools are in place, however, I think it won’t be too long before a lightbulb goes off somewhere, and it will become almost irresistible to use them as a whole for commercial and political ends.

Here’s an example:

SAN FRANCISCO — Microsoft, Google and PayPal, a unit of eBay, are among the founders of an industry organization that hopes to solve the problem of password overload among computer users.

[ . . . ]

The idea is to bring the concept of an identity card, like a driver’s license, to the online world. Rather than logging on to sites with user IDs and passwords, people will gain access to sites using a secure digital identity that is overseen by a third party. The user controls the information in a secure place and transmits only the data that is necessary to access a Web site.

So here’s a seemingly innocuous (at first glance) solution to the practical annoyance of multiple user IDs and passwords. Cool, have at it. But note that it is also, by definition, a proposal to tie everything you view online to your physical body, and pass that information through a single database (which also has the capacity to control what you view in the first place). What could possibly go wrong?

I mean, it’s not like the government would ever have any use for a centralized data repository. Or that a presumably-private “third party” in control of this database would ever cede access to the government for anything illegal.

Watch this. Whenever you hear about the development of tools – or adoption of laws – that make it easier to identify and control access to online content, ignore the stated purpose (it’s all piracy and terrorists, these days) and imagine how those mechanisms might be used to control the flow of information in general. And I hope that after 7 years of the Bush Administration, and about as many of lawsuits by the Recording Industry Association of America, there’s no question that there are very motivated entities – private and public – that would like to control exactly what you can see.

Controlling Your World

By

On June 17, 2008

In Distribution, Law, Society, Tech

And yes, I mean yours.  You are probably aware of the recent Associated Press-instigated skirmish, and if not, well, here’s a mostly decent summary.  The short version is that AP threatened small web sites with lawsuits for quoting the headlines and ledes of some of its stories.  While the the AP is being fairly aggressive about it (pushing for a licensing fee to quote up to 25 words of any AP story) right now, I suspect they’ll find that it’s more trouble than it’s worth.  But this story is just another reminder of where we’re heading.  Nielsen Hayden gets to the quick of it:

Welcome to a world in which you won’t be able to effectively criticize the press, because you’ll be required to pay to quote as few as five words from what they publish.

Welcome to a world in which you won’t own any of your technology or your music or your books, because ensuring that someone makes their profit margins will justify depriving you of the even the most basic, commonsensical rights in your personal, hand-level household goods.

The people pushing for this stuff are not well-meaning, and they are not interested in making life better for artists, writers, or any other kind of individual creators. They are would-be aristocrats who fully intend to return us to a society of orders and classes, and they’re using so-called “intellectual property” law as a tool with which to do it. Whether or not you have ever personally taped a TV show or written a blog post, if you think you’re going to wind up on top in the sort of world these people are working to build, you are out of your mind.

If you think he (and I) are overreacting, look a little deeper into what’s going on with our information infrastructure.   The network is transforming to enable pervasive monitoring and technical control over content, the control over that network is consolidating into a group that appears to be more willing to adopt common policies, and the laws are being rewritten to criminalize any attempts to avoid the exercise of this emerging control.  That chokehold by a few may not matter to you (or at all) when it’s the next Miley Cyrus single, but it certainly should when we’re talking about the details of the next corruption scandal or natural disaster response.

Uphill. Both ways.

By

On April 30, 2008

In Distribution

The NYTimes.com folks handcode.

Mike Wallace Interviews from 57-58

By

On April 5, 2008

In Distribution, Society

Boing Boing tips us off to this great online repository of television interviews conducted by Mike Wallace in the late 50s.  Long form interviews with thoughtful people speaking in full sentences as if there were an intelligent audience listening.   Lots of interesting people to pick from (Eleanor Roosevelt, Orval Faubus, Frank Lloyd Wright, etc), but I especially recommend the Aldous Huxley interview.

(The interviews are all conducted in a haze of Winston cigarette smoke.  I’d trade today’s clean screens for that in a heartbeat, if it meant we could get smart news and analysis back on the small screen.)

Changes at Al Jazeera English

By

On April 4, 2008

In Distribution, Society

If you look to the right column and a little further down on this page, you’ll noticed that I’ve got Al Jazeera English linked. And I don’t link anything here that I don’t find useful and/or read regularly.  I’ve found it to be a good source of information and perspective,  not just on issues important to the Middle East, but globally.  For the most part, it’s been really top quality stuff, and I recommend it for regular reading/viewing.  So it’s with that background that I found this interview with Dave Marash so interesting.   Dave Marash, a former ABC correspondent (and occasional Nightline host) joined Al Jazeera English as an anchorman in 2006.  He recently left, and explains why in this interview with the Columbia Journalism Review:

[O]ver the first two years of the channel’s existence, I have made myself effectively the American face of the channel and vouched for its credibility and value. And over the last seventeen months there have been several changes at the channel which put things on the air that, frankly, I could not vouch for. If I had just been another employee I might have just dropped my head and let it all wash over, because it is the nature of our business that every place you work occasionally does things that embarrass you. But I felt an extra measure of responsibility.

He goes on to explain that he feels like the channel has retracted into being more of a regional voice, perhaps as a result of pressures to counterbalance the influence of the US.  If you’re like me, and you make a serious effort to draw your news from places with different perspectives, I think you’ll find it a fascinating (but short) read.

Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company C(NN)?

By

On March 19, 2008

In Distribution, Society

CNN’s Kyra Phillips was doing her best John McCain impression – implying that Iran is training al Qaeda – during an interview with Gen. Petraeus. So TPM’s David Kurtz posted a clip:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kps7kxnhjLU[/youtube]

And what struck me wasn’t the usual babble emanating from Ms. Phillips, but what she was wearing. Fatigues. Did she just return from an audition for the part of the Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy? Will CNN’s sports reporters be donning a helmet and pads when football returns? Scrubs, when interviewing a doctor? Insane.

London Police: Turn In That Odd Fellow With a Camera

By

On March 5, 2008

In Distribution, Society, UK

The above poster comes from London’s Metropolitan Police Service. It seems they’re not so comfortable with the idea of someone taking photos of them. Which is rich, considering the 10,000 cameras the Met has focused on the citizens of London.

And seriously, turn in a photographer who “seems odd”? In London? (Careful on your next trip, Gwadz) Just another ridiculous effort at turning photography into a matter of permission, instead of right.

(Image courtesy Thomas Hawk)

US Gov’t: No talking about Cuba travel on the Internet

By

On March 5, 2008

In Distribution, Tech

I’m in the habit of collecting examples of government attempts to control content on the Internet. Places like China or UAE provide easy pickings. There are plenty of examples from other places, but they’re usually couched in terms of voluntary filtering for “obscenity” – Australia’s latest proposal comes to mind. But this is something I didn’t expect to see:

Steve Marshall is an English travel agent. He lives in Spain, and he sells trips to Europeans who want to go to sunny places, including Cuba. In October, about 80 of his Web sites stopped working, thanks to the United States government.

The sites, in English, French and Spanish, had been online since 1998. Some, like www.cuba-hemingway.com, were literary. Others, like www.cuba-havanacity.com, discussed Cuban history and culture. Still others — www.ciaocuba.com and www.bonjourcuba.com — were purely commercial sites aimed at Italian and French tourists.

[ . . . ]

It turned out, though, that Mr. Marshall’s Web sites had been put on a Treasury Department blacklist and, as a consequence, his American domain name registrar, eNom Inc., had disabled them. Mr. Marshall said eNom told him it did so after a call from the Treasury Department; the company, based in Bellevue, Wash., says it learned that the sites were on the blacklist through a blog.

So, advice to everyone on the planet: make sure what you’re talking about on the Internet doesn’t bother the U.S. Treasury Department, lest they try and shut you down.

Be Afraid! (Part 8127)

By

On February 26, 2008

In Distribution, Society

Just dropped into Slate.com for a quick read, and my the entire page gets blacked out.   White text comes up:

Sometimes a blackout is a blackout.  In the future, it could be a cyberattack.

Then the black retreats to an ad box saying that “It takes Air Force technology to defend a changing world.  Learn how.”  I presume it’s a recruiting ad, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to reward what has to be one of the most annoying ad ploys ever with a click to find out.

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