Is Privacy an Over-Rated Legacy of the Past?

The concept of privacy is a tricky one, to say the least.  Most people, when asked for a quick response would likely tell you that privacy is very important to them and that they are concerned about who has access to what they consider “private” data about them.

However, these very same people will create Facebook accounts, wander the web without using any sort of anonymous IP cloaking, send emails without encryption and speak loudly on their cell phones at crowded restaurants.  Many people are surprised to learn that things like your home address, phone number, email and endless other data is already freely (or at least) easily accessible to anyone handy with a few search engines and a database or two.

As we willingly share more and more information about our day-to-day lives via Twitter or Facebook status updates one has to wonder if we might not be better served giving up on this false sense of privacy and just open the floodgates.

As Matt Asay at CNet says:

Think about it. My in-box already knows where I’m traveling, what I buy, etc. because my receipts go there. If someone were to merge this data with my phone records (easily had for the price of my AT&T login credentials), my e-mail log, and my Twitter, IM, and social network data, they’d know exactly who I know and where I’m likely to bump into them…I’d love to automatically be told that my good friend Mike is in London at the same time as I am, and have a service suggest a reservation at a favorite restaurant (which it would know through my past OpenTable reservations). I’d “pay” for that by giving up a lot of data.        LINK

At first glance, this sounds crazy to a lot of people but the question is whether it is more valuable to you to keep your travel plans secret or to make them widely available as a potential way to add value to your travel.  We are already targeted by advertisers for our social behavior and choices made both online and offline, so it’s not especially new, at least in concept, that our personal data could and should be used in this manner.

The larger question is whether or not the whole concept of “privacy” is really just a social concept that is undergoing a major shift.  I am sure that the views on privacy from a sixty-year-old are radically different from those of a twelve-year-old.

The Music File-Sharing Dilemma Revisited

So, here is a simple example of why groups like RIAA and groups like, say, the general public, are butting heads in and out of court over the issue of “sharing” music.

Let’s rewind to, say, 1986.  I was a freshman in high school.  My buddy was trying to school me on some more alternative tunes and made me a mixtape of stuff including things like The Dead Kennedys and Captain Beefheart.  Cool stuff.  Really opened up my idea of popular music.

Now, RIAA would not have liked my friend’s behavior but because it happened in a physical exchange between two private citizens there isn’t much anyone could or would do about it.

Cut to today.  You just heard an amazing band and you want to tell all your friends about it.  You buy a copy of their album and immediately put up a link to your favorite song on your Facebook feed.  Bam!  You are now an illegal file-sharer under the eyes of the current law, at least as the RIAA would like it to be interpreted.

Far from trying to undercut record sales, you were just trying to help promote a band you love.

That’s where heads start to butt.  Where do we draw the line between the very human (and economically beneficial) act of sharing and the clearly illegal line of distributing content to which you do not hold the rights?

This is a battle we are going to see fought in the music world first, but the same discussions hold true for film, TV and even the mainstream press.

The internet has made the act of sharing, sometime with millions of “friends” as easy as pressing a button.  The thing is, most people still feel that when they do that it is just sharing and nothing more.

How Will Major Sports Events Respond to iPhone 3GS Video Uploads?

Here’s a question – what are the major sports leagues going to do about fans recording sporting events on their sleek new iPhone 3GS and then uploading it on the spot to YouTube (or another, less monitored website)?

It’s already happening.  YouTube claims that already half of the mobile uploads last week came from an iPhone 3GS and it comes in addition to fans often updating friends and followers on scores and major plays via Twitter or Facebook updates.

How will the leagues control this sort of fan interaction?  Will they try to ban anyone from shooting a picture or video with their phones?  How will they monitor for this?  What will they do when fans are caught?  And how to distinguish between video being taken for personal use and video being taken for a homemade version of SportsCenter you are your friends have just dreamed up.

This is just one of the many challenges facing those who would like to continue to control the flow of content.  This is a losing battle for the people currently (barely) in control.

Gawker Exposes Megan Fox’s Flower-Giver on Facebook

Last week, a very popular photograph circulated of Megan Fox appearantly ignoring a sweet chubby kid trying to give her a flower:

Kodak then announced that it was offering $5000 to anyone who could identify the boy in the photo.

Earlier today, Gawker recieved an email from a young woman claiming to not only know the identity of the young boy but said she was his friend on Facebook.  Eager to confirm this tip, Gawker tried looking up his page but it was set to private.  So, what did Gawker do?

Since the young lad’s Facebook profile was set to private and can only be viewed by his “friends,” we asked Kim to send us some screengrabs of his Facebook page as proof, and she obliged. As you can see from the gallery below, which includes a pic of our boy with one of those little Jonas freaks, it looks as though we may have found the victim of Megan Fox’s smoldering disdain, an 11 year-old Brit named Harvii.

Yup, they posted the whole thing online.  His whole private collection of photos.  All of it.

Now, this is certainly not the first time someone has had their private social media profile published for all the world to see but it is troubling when a major blog, trying to make at least some stab at legitimacy, does it.  We all know that nothing on the web is private but does that mean we should all just disregard anyone’s effort  to even attempt a modicum of privacy.  It’s not like this kid is a legitimate star who’s just asking for attention.

I’d be curious to hear from any lawyers out there if publishing screengrabs of a private Facebook page is in any way a criminal offense.

“Aged News” vs. #IranElection

Everyone, including myself, is talking about the stark difference between the mainstream media’s reporting on events in Iran versus the real-time feed of citizens reporting on events via Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and FlickR, among others.

Clearly, we are reaching a tipping point, a time after which newspapers will simply not have a significant role to play in the reporting of the news.  Sure, we will always be interested in reading well-written commentary and longer, in-depth explorations of complex topics, but the idea of the newspaper as a place for actual news is becoming laughable.

As I mentioned the other day, my favorite part of the Daily Show takedown of the New York Times was when Jason Jones called said the paper was full of “aged news.” It looks like the term is catching on:

The speed of change is leaving newspapers dead in the water. While some like the Guardian have managed to maintain active blogs on the events unfolding, most seem unable to compete with realtime speed, what use is their aged news when we can’t use it today?  LINK

Iran Protests Highlight Power of Citizen Journalism

While the major 24-hour news networks were showing a speech by President Obama, the internet was on fire with reports, videos and first-hand accounts of the protests occuring in Iran following what appears to be a rigged election.

As CNN talked healthcare, Twitter was lighting up with of-the-second reports of the first gunfire from security forces and the arrival of Mousavi at the protests.

Videos are flooding YouTube and images are all over Flickr as the world reports on what is happening.

This is another landmark moment for the changing winds of news and journalism.  Sure, the newspapers will be a great place to read about what happened but the internet is where it is happening right this second.

Mashable has a very useful overview of using the net to stay on top of these events as they happen:

This guide breaks down the best new media sources for real-time information, photos, and videos of the Iran situation, as well as ways to organize and share it with others.   LINK

The Kindle is Ripe for Replacement by Superior Products

I’ve never been a fan of the Kindle.  While I have never owned one, due to the fact that Amazon never sent me a trial version, I have played with the Kindle on a number of occasions.

While the eInk screen is nice to look at, the entire experience reminds me more of my Atari 800 than a gadget for the 21st Century.  Even disregarding the obnoxious DRM that means you never truly own your purchases, the whole thing is just limiting.  Aside from being able to carry a few hundred books at once, something we all do now by hand, the device has very little use in today’s society.

PSFK’s Piers Fawkes, who actually does own a Kindle, seems to agree:

Amazon’s Kindle doesn’t work for me because it doesn’t fit my reading, sharing and working habits. Over the last five to six years the way I consume text, imagery and other content has changed. Like the most of you I spend time everyday reading content across newspapers, magazines, blogs and other news feeds. I use that news (from 850 sources). I cut extracts, I send links, I copy images, I share it to Twitter and Facebook, I just let stories hang around deep in my open tabs possibly to be looked at before. And I want to do all this in as little time as possible.   LINK

This tells me that whoever can combine the readability of the Kindle with the facility of an iPhone and price the whole thing at $199 will make a bundle.

New Balance Web Series Solid and Unseen

New Balance is behind an extremly well-made doc-reality series called SEASON IN THE BALANCE, that follows around a high school lacrosse team.  As AdRants says, “Think Friday Night Lights with lacrosse sticks.”  Also reminds me of MTV’s “Two-a-Days” series.

It appears that a great of deal of thought and at least some financial resources were dedicated to this project but it looks like it is being nearly completely ignored.  This is based mostly on the viewcount on YouTube, where the five episodes posted so far are averages something like 200 views.  Now, to be fair, there could be huge traffic to the home site or maybe on some other platform but YouTube tends to be a solid indicator of popularity and 200 views is miserably low.

Even if these numbers are lower than the actual viewership, it can’t be much lower. So, what went wrong here?

For starters, the only way I even found out about the series was via a posting in the industry-centric AdRants.  I’ve seen no promotions or press releases or ads that would create even a whiff of awareness.  Since the nature of the content is not sensationalistic or star-filled or just plain crazy, there is little chance of the videos gaining traction in the world of Facebook updates and Twitter ReTweets.

Oh, and it is about lacrosse, a sport this country has shown an extreme reluctance to embrace outside of high school and college.

What can we learn here?  First, just making a great series and putting online is not nearly enough to guarantee viewership.  TV networks spend millions to promote their shows so that they can boast of huge viewerships and raise their ad-rates.  If a brand goes it alone and creates and releases their content outside of the traditional TV network marketplace it is now up to them to do that marketing.  Otherwise, the show will go unseen as will any embedded marketing.

Second, you need to target your key audiences.  Maybe New Balance did this and I am just not part of that target (fair enough) but if they did it was clearly unsuccessful.  I wonder how many high school and college lacrosse teams have been directly contacted and made aware of a series that speaks directly to their life experiences?  Not only could these players become viewers but they could also become brand evangelists for New Balance.

As it stands, this is a great looking webseries that deserves some attention but this won’t happen all by itself.

Facebook v. The Pirate Bay Demonstrates Futility of the Fight

Recently, the much-discussed torrent-discovery site The Pirate Bay, added a “post to Facebook” button that allowed users of the social media site to quickly share links to torrents with their friends.

It didn’t take long for Facebook to act to block this ability since many corporate entities (i.e. MPAA, RIAA, et. al.) do not look kindly on the fact that The Pirate Bay facilitates the distribution of links to contents that might be copyrighted.  Of course, Facebook isn’t just blocking links that might infringe on copyright but any and all links to The Pirate Bay including those linking to completely legal torrents.

While it is disappointing that Facebook has taken such a drastic action against a single specific site it is some consolation that the efforts are likely in vain.

The Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde told TorrentFreak that this is plain censorship and said he will try to come up with a workaround so people can continue to share. “I’ll fix it later today so it will have a link to a redirect site or something,” he said.

Much like the Hulu / Boxee battle that has Boxee easily working around Hulu’s unreasonable blockage time after time.

Considering I can easily link to potentially illegal torrents with, say Google, it seems a bit silly for Facebook to block The Pirate Bay.

LINK

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• Torrent Sharing Comes to Facebook: Will the RIAA Step In? (mashable.com)
• Arrr, The Pirate Bay Invades Facebook (blippitt.com)
• Landmark Pirate Bay Trial Begins Monday (wired.com)
• The Pirate Bay adds file sharing to Facebook (venturebeat.com)

PirateBay On Facebook Forces the Issue

Like so many other sites have done, The Pirate Bay is no providing on-click links that allow its users to post directly to their Facebook streams.

As Mashable puts it:

Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 150 to 200 million people signed up already. It’s one of the best ways to share links, blog posts, and content. Many websites, including our own, have links for easily sharing content to Facebook. So it makes sense as to why The Pirate Bay would want to encourage people to share torrent links on Facebook. But because many of these files are illegal to download, it also makes sense that copyright infringement organizations are not very happy.

Since Facebook is likely to want to avoid major legal action by the friends folks at the RIAA and MPAA it seems almost definite that Facebook will move to block this feature.

The question is, do they have any real legal reason to do this and are they really helping anyone by blocking their users from posting the links?  For one thing, The Pirate Bay does not actual store or transmit any copyrighted content, they simply provide links to other places that do.  This is, in effect, no different than what Google does, just that The Pirate Bay (and hundreds of other torrent-tracker sites out there) specializes in searching only for torrent links.

While the MPAA et. al. might not like that links to freely available copies of their copyrighted content are being made all-the-more public on Facebook via The Pirate Bay feature, neither of these parties are the reason that piracy exists or that it flourishes in the face of broken business models that treat fans as criminals.

We’ll have to see if Facebook does, in fact, act against The Pirate Bay but you can be certain they’re being asked to do it.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Arrr, The Pirate Bay Invades Facebook (blippitt.com)
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