Month: February 2009

Pirate hotspot in Stockholm!

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19 February 2009

21:20

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Legislation, Sweden

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It’s been pretty hot in Stockholm… although not from the weather averaging at around minus 5 degrees for the last week or so 😉

Of course I’m referring to Pirate Bay. There has been a whole load of demonstrations outside of the Stockholm courthouse this week concerning this case. The Pirate Bay was launched in 2003 and quickly established itself as the world’s most high profile file-sharing website. In February 2009, it reported 22 million simultaneous users. Read detailed report (Swedish).

There are four men that run this service who had been charged with conspiracy to break copyright law in Sweden. The Pirate Bay’s servers themselves do not store copyrighted material but offer links to the download location of films, TV programmes, albums and software. The Pirate Bay’s founders are often referred to by the users as merely libertine librarians, because they only provide a directory of copyrighted material and do not host the files themselves.

On Tuesday this week half of the charges levelled at the founders of the Pirate Bay file-sharing site have been dropped relating to “assisting copyright infringement” leaving the lesser charges of “assisting making available copyright material” on trial day two.

Now’s just waiting for part 2 😉

Facebook’s vision for a new terms of service

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19 February 2009

20:48

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Social Networking

wow it’s been an amazing week so far with Facebook eventually managing their exposure quite well I light of the media explosion 😉
First there was the initial shock and disbelief at what they had done, even though it is written in the terms of service that they have the right to change these without users’ consent, they made a subtle change that was a direct flout of their users’ privacy. In fact the terms of service were pretty bad already without this change.

The changes were actually made in early February but not widely noticed until Sunday, when The Consumerist’s Chris Walters stumbled upon the subtly shifted language. The section in question explains how Facebook has an “irrevocable, perpetual” license to use your “name, likeness, and image” in essentially any way, including within promotions or external advertising. These changes made by Facebook would effectively give then eternal ownership of your personal content–even if you decide to delete your account. At the moment they only have this right so long as your account is active. Read more …

Finally Mark Zuckerberg made a blog posting yesterday stating that Facebook had reverted to their original terms of service and are working on creating a new terms of service. I really like his approach, on his blog he wrote that “More than 175 million people use Facebook. If it were a country, it would be the sixth most populated country in the world. Our terms aren’t just a document that protect our rights; it’s the governing document for how the service is used by everyone across the world. Given its importance, we need to make sure the terms reflect the principles and values of the people using the service.”

And we can be involved in building this new terms of service, check out http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=69048030774.

Smartly managed Mark!

Walled gardens for minors

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15 February 2009

21:06

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Children, Social Networking

“The European Commission has announced that 17 of the leading web firms, including Facebook, Youtube and Myspace, have all signed the code which aims to reduce incidences of cyber bullying and grooming, and to ensure the protection of personal data. The firms will provide easily accessible ‘report abuse’ buttons and tighten up the privacy settings to prevent younger users’ details appearing on search engines.”

This is a self-regulatory approach. I wonder how it will work in practice?

Then there is something going on in the U.S.  “In January, MySpace announced that it had entered an agreement with 49 state attorneys general regarding the protection of the data of minors who are using its services. The deal is supposed to complement the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which protects the data of children under the age of 13, by creating standards for the protection of data for teenagers between the age of 14 and 17. ” One of the changes includes “MySpace will create a closed section called “high school” for all users who are under the age of 18.

A choice to twitter

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15 February 2009

10:06

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Social Networking

I just love this article on Wired by Steve Levy. He talks about how he feels about social networking…i.e. he loves it, but there are some costs in that he feels guilty when he doesn’t contribute. The most important message in this article is in the last paragraph when Steve mentioned his contact with the head of Electronic Privacy Information Centre.

‘We hear a lot about privacy violations by Big Brother and Little Brother. But what if the fault lies not in our siblings but in ourselves? For a reality check, I called Marc Rotenberg, head of the Electronic Privacy Information Center and an utter hawk when it comes to protecting personal data. He told me to relax. “One aspect of privacy is the ability to project yourself as you choose,” he says. Services like Facebook and Twitter are strictly opt-in, so as long as the information isn’t divvied out to marketers, Rotenberg is OK with it: “That is freedom.”‘

Are we moving towards that transparent society as predicted in David Brinns book in 1999 (The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?)? A worthwhile read incidentally!

Does it really matter? Is it only the choice that is important, which include the option to “opt-in” rather than having to “opt-out”, and of course all of this twittering and social networking is fine so long as the marketers don’t get their greedy hands on it 🙁

Illegal in Europe to retain DNA of innocent persons

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14 February 2009

21:32

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Bodily Privacy, European Union

Did you know that in December 2008 the European Court of Human Rights has ruled that it is illegal for the government to retain DNA profiles and fingerprints belonging to two men never convicted of any crime. Jude Umeh made a posting on his blog about the “Virtual Shadows” book launch which he attended, which gave me the link for this ruling. So thanks Jude 🙂

The landmark decision could mean the more than 570,000 DNA profiles in the National DNA Database belonging to innocent individuals will have to be deleted. Police in England, Wales and Northern Ireland currently have powers to take DNA and fingerprints from everyone they arrest regardless of the seriousness of their crime, or if they are prosecuted. This includes minors. This ruling is well overdue!

In its ruling, the Grand Chamber said retention of innocent people’s DNA profile was a violation of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Article 8 states: “Everyone has the right for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.

The 17 judges wrote: “The Court was struck by the blanket and indiscriminate nature of the power of retention in England and Wales. In particular, the data in question could be retained irrespective of the nature or gravity of the offence with which the individual was originally suspected or of the age of the suspected offender; the retention was not time-limited; and there existed only limited possibilities for an acquitted individual to have the data removed from the nationwide database or to have the materials destroyed.”

Read more…

Rubbish stats available on WordPress

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12 February 2009

22:09

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Out of the Box

Well I must say that I do like WordPress look & feel, ease of use, but the statistics is quite useless, and I am very disappointed. On Blogspot I was able to include some Google Analytics code into my blog code, but this is not possible on WordPress. What’s more stats that do exist is quite poor….there is only number of hits, nothing on visitors, unique visitors, which networks they enter the site, browsers they use, etc.

If anyone knows how I can get better information on my visitors feel free to share, in case I’m doing WordPress an injustice.

Contextual search results

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10 February 2009

21:22

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Uncategorized

I just came across this search service, Silobreaker, that is quite interesting, it places into context search results. Silobreaker is an online search service for news and current events that delivers meaning and relevance beyond traditional search and aggregation engines. Its relational analysis and explanatory graphics provide users with unparalleled contextual insight into the news stories of the day.

Take a look at what I found on my book “Virtual Shadows” for example.