Tag Archives: Lessig

Pseudonymity and Anonymity II

Posted on by

Yesterday I gave an extensive overview of the debate that is ongoing between “Real name” supporters and “Pseudonym/Anonym” supporters. If you haven’t read it I suggest you check it out. There are quiet a few different groups of people discussing it, American and International.

Why do I think it’s a big deal though? I mentioned yesterday that I made a personal choice to use my real name instead of a pseudonym. This is partially because I’m really bad at coming up with them, but also because I try to speak with my real voice as much as possible. I’m also aware that this is could have some repercussions depending on what I try to do after I graduate. I haven’t also been the most supportive of the US government. At  one point when I was debating with a hardcore conservative he pointed this out to me as well.

The problem is that we don’t know who has our information. We lose control of it as soon as it’s put on the internet. I have no idea who has access to the conversation I’m talking about. I know that Facebook and the people involved in the conversation do, but I don’t know if that information got passed onto any sort of governmental body.

This is a huge change from what has happened in the past. We had control over who we gave our information to. It was easy because it had to be face to face or perhaps through a letter. Once that conversation was finished unless notes were taken or it was recorded most of the information would only be remembered only imperfectly by the people involved. This is not the case now. it can be stored and recalled perfectly through the internet and web records.

This permanence is dangerous, as the past will haunt people for decades to come instead of only a few years and only with their friends. However, that is not all. Forcing people to use their real names in all cases causes a chilling affect on activism as governments try to stamp down on it. Twitter will be a more popular communication tool for activists than Google + or facebook because of their pseudonym policies.

Regardless of if we like it or not, Facebook, Twitter, Google + and other social networking sites have become our public forums. We don’t have a town square to meet and discuss life. We don’t have the community unity that once used to pervade life so we use the tools that we have. However, all of these new meeting places are controlled by corporations that are required to give data to the US government and other governments as well. The ability to protect your identity from the government, other organizations and from people you don’t want to have find you is important. It allows people to be honest and investigate different parts of themselves or try to fight to bring down repressive regimes.

Pseudonyms are part of the internet’s social norms, a method to protect free speech and to protect yourself. They are very important and we need to fight to keep them. The US government should be seeking to protect our ability to have pseudonyms and not fighting against them. The State Department claims they support internet freedom. Supporting pseudonyms and the ability to be anonymous on the internet is the best way to do so.

Pseudonymity and Anonymity

Posted on by

There are so many different things going on right now that I don’t even know where to start. There’s tons going on with patents, software patents and copyright, there’s been many things going on with internet freedom and Anonymity/Pseudonymity that I’m not sure where to even start. However, you have to start somewhere. So I’ll start with this: Randi Zuckerberg said pseudonyms should go away. What’s the big deal with that?

Well, Google and Facebook both require real names on their website. There are a few links that have commented on why this is a big deal. Tom from Myspace thinks it’s a bad idea, he has a friend that is an expert in social media privacy policies, Danah Boyd, and she claims that forcing real names is an abuse of power, Tech Dirt agrees withBoyd’s assessment indicating that there’s a great amount of danger in moving away from pseudonyms. The Atlantic also notes how different with normal speech tying all actions to a single person online has become.

One of the common reasons for banning pseudonyms, which Zuckerberg argues, is that it changes online behavior. It basically forces users to comply with offline social norms. Norms that the person may actually be attempting to escape for whatever reason. Boyd also argues that Google + originally had a cultural norm without “Real names.” She pulls in Lessig’s Code book that I’ve mentioned on here a few times to support her claim. It’s a really important point she’s making. Cultural norms are established by early adopters. The early adopters of Google + didn’t go with real names. They liked their nicknames.

While Zuckerberg claims that it’s the users fault and their pseudonyms that cause the problem, others claim that the person who owns the website needs to control this. Basically by creating cultural norms that prohibit the ability to be an asshole/troll online. So when my friend bpost over at KBMOD talks about avoiding feeding the trolls, he’s either reinforcing or preventing trolling behavior. A set stance by the moderators of KBMOD should be established to control trolling behavior.

De Spiegel notes that the actions of governments and corporations amount to a war on anonymity on the web.
Which has lead to the arrest of many members of Anonymous and other hacking groups like that. This war has a few benefits like the recent ring of 72 child pornographers that were caught. Unfortunately for most users the days of freedom to untag your photos may be passed. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon have developed off the shelf products to analysis people freely from pictures pulled from facebook. To me, this is really scary, as we have no control over the privacy settings of our friends. If I’m drinking a tasty beer in a picture it could have employment ramifications. Two years ago a teacher was fired for having pictures of beer while in Europe. This is one example there are many others. While, third parties will likely create applications to determine who is whom in a given facebook picture, Germany is suing facebook over their ability to do say, and are saying it’s illegal.

So, what’s all of this mean? There’s been a lot of people talking about this and why should people care? Well, personally I have made a choice to use my real name. Well, it’s still a nickname, but I made a choice to do that. However, since I was aware of the choice when I set my handle as my last name I am conscience of what I should and should not say on the public record online. The first three Google searches for “Kapsar” are for me. Sadly, none of them is for my blog. Thus my online activity easily follows me.

That being said, I fully support the right and the ability of people to use any different name or no name online. It’s the right thing to do morally, and for freedom of speech.

In my next post I’ll discuss some of the speech issues a little bit more. Many of the people I’ve linked too have commented on these issues as well.

YouTube Copright School

Posted on by

Since I’ve been posting recently about copyright and infringement and YouTube, I figured I should watch the video they have posted for “Copyright School.” Although I tried to embed the video into this post it appears it’s not working. So you can find the link here.

The video itself is moderately annoying. The song used through out the video kind of reminds me of this song.  It explains the bare bones basics of copyright works and how copyright can work on YouTube. It shows how copying a video is copyright infringement, and how potentially filming a live concert can be considered copyright infringement. Although they didn’t explain it was infringement because of the song not because of the video itself.

The fair use part is rather deplorable. However, this is to be expected. I’m sure whenever the writers got to this section the lawyers heavily edited it. I’d argue that it’s overly protective of YouTube. By stating that most remixes are likely to be outside of fair use, the video makes it very safe for YouTube itself. Youtube can point to this video and say, “See we told them those remixes weren’t allowed under fair use.” However, this is not entirely accurate. In fact the very video they use to explain this problem most likely is covered by fair use. Realistically, there’s no difference between the video Youtube uses and Numa Numa.

I’m not an expert at fair use, so I decided to post some commentary from one person who is. Here’s a pretty good discussion between Colbert and Lawrence Lessig. In this they discuss how remixing is and should be ok under fair use. It can benefit both parties. Here’s a blog post written by Lessig describing some of the failures of the fair use system as well.

So what can we gather from these two discussions and the YouTube video? First, YouTube is clearly putting itself in a position to not be liable for any work that may not actually fall under fair use. Second, it’s difficult to determine what is and what is not fair use. Lessig also points out that there is a dividing line between commercializing the work and keeping it for free. I’d suggest as much as possible to clearly understand these issues before attempting to commercialize any remixes.

In the terms of the internet commercialization isn’t the same as it used to be. Placing ads on your blogs or within your videos basically commercializes your work.

Btw here are two remixes from the Colbert Lessig Inteview.

Copyright’s History and what’s gone wrong

Posted on by

I’m not going to go into a super deep history of copyright here. What I plan to do is outline the general idea behind copyright and how it’s shifted over time. If you want an in depth discussion on this I suggest reading it from Lawrence Lessig’s book Free Culture which the link to a direct download isn’t working right now. I can email it to you if you’d like, I believe.

Basically, the idea of copyright came about around the same time as patent protection. The idea, which is rooted in the same theories as patent protection, is to give just reward to people who created creative works, without fear of someone stealing it, and selling it for their own gain. This worked extremely well in a time when to listen to a great piece of music you had to listen to it live. This is where the public performance aspect came into affect. Of course, books were much more difficult to copy en mass as it’s really expensive to print a run of books. Copyright was originally much shorter in length of time than it is currently. At the longest it was until the creator of the work died. Now, as we know, copyright can persist significantly longer. We have more interaction because the material is more accessible. In the early 1900’s there was a big congressional hearing about sheet music. If sheet music should be allowed at all. Today, I think our version of sheet music is the video or musical remix, al a GirlTalk. I feel like I’m really pimping Lessig today, but he also wrote a book specifically about this topic called simply enough Remix. In this book he interviews GirlTalk about this very topic.

So, how does this shift in copyright really impact us? Well, as we can tell from the O’Dwyer case, RIAA, MPAA, and their equivalents in other countries, we interact with copyright on a daily basis. Not enough of us have a clear understanding of how we’re actually interacting with it. It’s conceivable that the video commentary out on Youtube for video games is technically copyright infringement. However, it would be stupid for video game publishers to go after the Youtubers, like my friends at KBMod, because they are effectively giving free advertisement for these games.

I suggest people that are active in posting videos online on Youtube become aware of the copyright issues that you may be interacting with. Sadly, ignorance is not a defense. The books I’ve mentioned above are easy to read. Lessig writes in a very clear way that non lawyers can understand easily.

Copyright and the O’Dwyer case

Posted on by

So, I’m not sure how many of you out there have heard about this O’Dwyer case. Tech Dirt has a nice article about it today check it out here. If you don’t feel like reading it I’ll summarize it. An UK student is being extradited to the US over a website he set up which links to streaming content. The website had already been ICE’d, or seized by the US government. Apparently that wasn’t enough now the Southern District of New York wants to bring this kid over to the US and try him, for something. However there are some problems:  “a) perfectly legal in his home country and (b) probably legal in the US.” (tech Dirt article). So, this is a bit of a problem. O, and by what he means by legal in the US is that it’s not criminal, and you can only be extradited for a criminal offense.

So, this really brings into focus some of the activities of ICE in general. There are a lot of people that are concerned with the overly broad approach to seizing domain names as there is not much judicial oversight. What that means is that these actions could have a chilling affect on freedom of speech, destroy businesses, and in some cases lives. One of the seizures involved a false accusation of child pornography. That can completely destroy a person’s reputation. The other problem is that it’s not even clear that these actions are completely illegal.

The US copyright laws are getting progressively more difficult to understand. This comes at a time when users are interacting with copyright in their daily activities. To enjoy media people should not have to concern themselves with a byzantine set of laws. I plan in the upcoming weeks to write some posts about the history of copyright and how it has changed over time. I’ll also discuss some of the Creative Commons “Copyleft” movement that’s been founded by Lawrence Lessig.