Stars Blink Out: the Struggle for Relevance

Golan v. Holder and SOPA: A Lesson In Civics

2012-01-18T21:56:00.001-06:00

(A favorite protest sign, captured by Phillip Stearns)

Today is apparently destined to be a really important day in the history of intellectual property law in the modern age. Two things happened that impact the public as consumers of art and media, and when seen in the context of each other, these two events highlight what might be the real problem in getting the law to match with what these consumers actually value.

I'd be willing to wager that if you're here, you noticed today that Wikipedia (and countless other sites) went dark or changed their usual look to protest something called SOPA. (Interestingly, the references in this post are nearly all to Wikipedia, so those won't be visible until presumably after midnight.) SOPA (and its cousin PIPA) is very complicated, and you should go learn all about it. But something you might not have noticed also happened that is a little arcane and tangential to the more pressing issues of internet censorship and modern copyright. But you should still know about it. So here's the rundown.

Some time long ago, America signed onto a complex international agreement so that we could get the benefits of other nations doing what we wanted with respect to copyright law. But we didn't really do the same for them; for years, international works sold in America had shorter copyright terms than American works sold here.

The result was that a bunch of these international works fell into the public domain before they would have had they been afforded equal treatment under our laws. People started using them free from copyright restrictions (not a TON of people, but it's kind of unclear exactly how many works, let alone important ones, are affected).

Anyway, America one day decided to get their act together and start doing what they were supposed to have already been doing under their international obligations. So, they extended the length of protection for these international works up to the same length as their American counterparts.

But what, you might ask, of all of those works that fell into the public domain before they were supposed to because of our lapses as an international partner? Aren't the people who created these works being deprived of what is rightfully theirs (i.e. a number of extra years' worth of profits)? Simple, says congress: these works would now be pulled OUT of the public domain and become protected again!

Today, the United States Supreme Court held that this was a perfectly acceptable solution.

This, on its face, could strike you one of two ways. One, you might say that it's obviously fair for international works released in America to get the same protection as American works released at the same time. Anything else would be unjust and might also be a symbol of America's hubristic visions of superiority, the same visions that allegedly have started wars and ruined our economy. In short, this result could be seen as an important step in America's realization that we need to be team players with all of the other people on this planet.

But then there's the other view: this new law stands for the proposition that congress can take public property and reclaim it for private individuals if they think it's necessary (and not even necessary, maybe just rationally related to the government's interests). I recognize the scariness of this, and I do feel that this is a bad sign. But not for the reasons you might think.

Obviously, this issue is complex, and I think both of these approaches to what is happening here are legitimate. But at first blush, I think it's worth recognizing that if congress had taken seriously America's promise to the rest of the world, we'd never have had this problem. These works would just still be under copyright law.

But that's beside the point. There's a more important fallacy buried here. The idea that this ruling finally removes the sanctity of the public domain is a confusing one. It implies that there was any sanctity in the first place. In this instance, the international works that fell into the public domain did so accidentally, not because of some sort of altruistic principles. In fact, they fell into the public domain because of America's greed and attitude of exceptionalism. That's not exactly the purity that some critics of this ruling would wish were at play.

Essentially, the problem of this constriction of the public domain is a problem of our own making, and not even a copyright problem, but a POLITICAL problem.

This quote from Techdirt captures this pretty well:

The truth is that Congress is the one who could fix this by actually fixing copyright law and making it clear that the Court's interpretation was wrong. But, instead, because Hollywood pays the bills, they only make copyright law worse.

And that's important. This case, and cases like it, stand for the principle that the constitution doesn't limit congress's power to delineate the boundaries of the public domain as long as they are doing so to reasonably achieve their goals. We can't expect the court to fix copyright; it's just plain NOT THEIR JOB. And we apparently can't trust congress to do it, because we can't trust congress to do ANY of the things we think are important.

That's the heart of the matter. Today's decision is not the court abdicating its duties as the paragon of good copyright policy; it's the court reiterating that it's not their job to make policy at all, so we need to get our congresspeople to make good policy.

And that's also what is at the heart of the SOPA and PIPA protests.

SOPA-protest-like mechanisms and mentalities to fix things like this, not our faith in 9 people in robes.

This case isn't a disaster of copyright policy, it's a civics lesson. I hope we're all paying attention.

What LulzSec Actually Did (And Why It's Important / Not Important)

2011-08-08T20:56:00.000-05:00

So. A lot of really interesting things have been going on. From day to day, it's hard to tell which stories are going to actually be important in the long run, so I try to resist the urge to blather about everything I find interesting in a given day (that's what the SBO News Tumblr is for). But it's been a while, and one story has surfaced as having a seemingly lasting importance. It's the story of LulzSec. Some call them nefarious hackers, and others call them vanguards of a new way of thinking, white-hat jokesters exposing weaknesses without doing too much lasting damage. The truth is (surprise!) more complicated.

There are a lot of angles from which to approach this story, but I'd just like to highlight some of the misconceptions that the public and the media seem to have about what LulzSec actually did.

For starters, people act like LulzSec did something unprecedented by exposing all of this private information. And while that's partially true (in that they are probably the most organized effort to do what they did), it's also a kind of misdirection regarding what it is they actually exposed.

Here's what I mean: to me, LulzSec exposing the weaknesses of networks of information is not that different from the series of Facebook privacy mistakes that exposed increasing amounts of personal data. There just isn't that huge of a difference between having your private information exposed on the open web because you wrongly trusted Facebook's default privacy settings and having your login information displayed publicly because you wrongly trusted Sony's encryption policies.

The (already nearly-forgotten) Anthony Weiner story is actually a pretty good example of this. Weiner was just a normal guy who didn't understand how Twitter's architecture protected (or didn't protect) his privacy. This led to his junk ending up all over the internet. Should we cut him more slack than, say, the FBI, who's protection of their website was easily circumvented with some simple hacking scripts? Weiner exposed himself (haha) the same way that the FBI did: because they didn't understand how the technology they relied on worked.

And that's what's really at stake here. Network technology has become centrally important to our everyday lives, but it's also become increasingly sophisticated. And we have a duty to understand that sophistication.

Then again, no matter how high the stakes are, we can't pretend that changing technology hasn't created high risk before. There existed a time when people uniformly left their front doors open, a time when having credit in a store just meant telling them your name. Those are technologies (doors, loose credit systems) that have became outmoded for their purposes (keeping intruders out of your home, keeping tabs on your purchases).

And that happened because people exploited those technologies; they stole from homes and used false names for credit. The unsophisticated and ineffective nature of these types of systems was exposed, requiring better systems. That's how these things have always worked. And that's how they've worked with LulzSec, too.

But here's the thing: the people that took advantage of the system and displayed its weaknesses in those cases were called "criminals," not jokesters or revolutionaries or white-hats. Having a high-minded reason for stealing and trashing things doesn't save you from consequences. Maybe LulzSec deserve the criminal treatment quite a bit more than they deserve the white-hat treatment.

Now obviously it's more complicated than "you're either a criminal or you're a sheep." I wrote a while back about WikiLeaks, which I sort of praised for wanting to change the way information is kept by governments but also sort of criticized for the dangerous way they are going about creating that change. I'd say the same here: I'm all for people using better passwords and companies using better crypto and more secure networks. But that doesn't mean I'm a fan of giving out huge amounts of personal information about otherwise innocent bystanders.

This whole thing is even more confusing when you try to come up with off-line analogs. Imagine a band of jokers wandering around suburban neighborhoods and stealing valuables from homes without alarm systems just to prove how vulnerable these houses are. This is not how social change is made. This is how moderately smart people get their jollies at everyone else's expense. That is what is happening here, possibly not much more.

Though even that analogy breaks down when we realize that LulzSec isn't really hacking deeply sophisticated servers. They're hacking websites, the public-facing, loosely-protected internet billboards for these companies.

For example: not too long ago, LulzSec took down the CIA's website. But the CIA doesn't keep its secrets on its website; the CIA's website is likely slightly less secure than, say, the Huffington Post. It takes very little work to steal the furniture off of someone's front porch, but it takes more work to steal from their safe. LulzSec basically only stole porch furniture, even if it was the kind of porch furniture we'd rather not be left out.

The bottom line is that the whole LulzSec situation demonstrates the imbalanced interaction between our understanding of our own technology, our expectations of privacy, and our desire to trust the companies that hold our information. That's the same imbalanced interaction that was exposed by the Facebook privacy flap, the Anthony Weiner fiasco, password phishing scams, and every privacy crisis in internet history.

And the solution isn't angry prosecution or sting operations. The solution is trying to understand these interactions better. Technology isn't likely to entirely outmode the social contract any time soon. We still have to make our society work. And only more education and more understanding will make that happen.

(More about LulzSec at the SBO News Tumblr!)

NEW: The Stars Blink Out Tubmlr!

2011-06-05T19:17:00.000-05:00

I know this isn't usually the place for news. So, I've decided to start a blog that IS a good place for news. Surprise! It's the Stars Blink Out Tumblr. Check it out! And if you tumbl, maybe reblog some stuff!

Osama bin Laden, Online Social Networks, and Authenticity

2011-05-09T11:56:00.001-05:00

Osama Bin Laden was killed last week.

Yeah, I know, not exactly breaking news. But I know you don't really come to this blog for "news." Instead, as you might expect, I have something to say related to how people responded to this news, specifically on the Internet and on online social networks (surprise!).

Slate's "Culture Gabfest" provided a pretty interesting discussion about how online social networking has effected the reactions to Osama bin Laden's death. I'd like to expand on it slightly.

The always-enlightening Gabfest crowd discussed generally our new-found societal inclination to publicly declare our personally felt sentiments. The argument is that we now live in a society so fixated on authenticity that everyone now feels compelled to share their feelings on this momentous event publicly and immediately, no filtering.

The Gabfest's major misstep is evident in the final moments of the segment: they essentially finish the story with each of them saying that they didn't do this themselves, but everyone else did, so it's a reflection of a cultural force. If it IS a cultural force, why are they immune to it?

I think understanding our obsession with authenticity as some sort of uncontrollable urge to share our feelings is to misstate what social networking actually does accomplish here.

It's certainly true that online social networks make it easier to reflect authentically our own feelings to our friends. But the online social network can do only that: facilitate the offline social network. In other words, the only people who take to Facebook or Twitter to publicly share their emotional reactions to bin Laden's death are the same people that were disseminating these sentiments through their own offline social networks before these websites even existed.

The result is that, while it might look like people are having an unprecedented emotional response to some global piece of news (be it joy at the death of an enemy or shame at the public celebration of a person's death), that emotional response is essentially the same as it has always been, just more visible.

The real novelty in this situation is not that more people are sharing their opinions; it's that more people are seeing each other's opinions. Back on September 11th, 2001, for instance, I could only get the reactions of those people that I saw around me on a daily basis. And believe me, they were vitriolic and extreme and numerous. But they were limited in number by the amount of people in my social network that I saw on any given day.

All online social networks have done is expanded the functional, accessible size of this social network, making these opinions LOOK more common, even though they are as common as they always have been.

But online social networks have also, to a certain extent, democratized the response to situations like this. Offline, the people with whom I correspond most regularly and sunstainedly are those that tend to agree with me. That is the nature of friendship. But online social networks make friendship something a little more broad. A more diverse group of people now have access to my attention, people that I do care about but I wouldn't have heard from in a previous era of information sharing. Essentially, instead of getting the somewhat limited viewpoints of those friends that I already most closely agree with, I get the diverse perspectives of the broadest circle of my friends.

Authenticity is at war with artifice every day. We want to authentically represent ourselves, but we also wear slimming clothes and make-up and only say the things we think won't disrupt or offend those around us. Maybe some of us maintain less distance between impulse and action, but in the end, we shape our actions to what we want those actions to be, not some deep sense of who we are. (Sure, what we want our actions to be is influenced by that deep "who we are," but even if the animus is deep, the agency is at a higher level.)

That war between impulse and control, between authenticity and self-definition still exists online. Online social networks have not achieved some unprecedented level of authenticity in social interaction; they've achieved an unprecedented AMOUNT of social interaction. The nature of that interaction is essentially unchanged, still as authentic or inauthentic as it always has been.

In my opinion, that's probably more useful. How much do we desire a society where people say whatever is on their mind all of the time? How much to we desire pure, unadulterated authenticity? I'd argue that the authenticity that we now have access to is the more useful variety: people can easily, quickly and accurately represent how they see themselves, not necessarily what they objectively are. That, to me, is the bedrock upon which social interaction is built. I'm glad it's the kind of authenticity brought out by such an ambivalence-breeding event like this one.

(Image from this informative post on BlazoMania)

Applied Semiotics and Nuclear Disaster! Wotta Headline!

2011-03-13T19:37:00.000-05:00

I love a story that combines really fundamental issues about how people apprehend meaning with the complexities of anticipating how our own technology will impact our cultural future. And no story combines these elements so elegantly and so surprisingly interestingly as the story of the Department of Energy's 1991 waste isolation report, as reported by Slate.

First, a brief summary of the problem the plan anticipates, as reported by the article: our nuclear waste and nuclear materials are going to last longer than us. That's just a fact of the chemistry of these materials. These hazardous materials will remain hazardous long after the possible collapse of all of society, or even the death of all man-kind.

So, in an effort to protect future human societies (and possible non-human ones) from the waste, we'd have to find a way of labeling this material as hazardous for a people whose language might look nothing at all like ours and whose society is entirely unpredictably organized.

The solution hatched by Sandia Labs, in a report commissioned by the Department of Energy, is a surprising but sensible one: hire a bunch of people that are experts at conveying information symbolically to come up with some immediately-recognizable sign or some information transfer mechanism to alert future societies of the hidden dangers we have created.

For those unfamiliar with it, semiotics is a branch of philosophy that deals with symbols. It's a study that seeks to explain how symbols indicate other things, how that indication is created, how the brain dives through layers of symbols almost automatically, and all of the different ways these symbols are manifested.

So expert semioticians are essentially people who are experts at how things MEAN other things. It makes sense, then, that these are the people hired to devise something lasting and language-independent that indicates danger to any observer.

The solutions they propose are just mind-bendingly clever. One proposal: build a lattice of sharp, dangerous looking rocks on top of the waste, discouraging exploration of the area. Another plan calls for building giant stone structures with pathways through them that are too narrow for people to set up camps and live there, thus discouraging settling in the polluted area.

Some rely on more complex systems not directly linked to the symbols themselves, but to how symbols gain meaning. One such proposal is the setting-up of a priestly class of sorts that would know of the dangers of the nuclear sites and would transmit this information in a form more akin to religious dogma than to scientific learning.

The whole discussion smacks of junk futurism and conspiracy theories, like Project Bluebook or a set of secret orders for the president on how to deal with an alien invasion. The difference is that the problem anticipated here is essentially a certainty, something guaranteed by the physical laws of the universe.

This is a forward-thinking approach to something that is essentially a predictable result of our current actions. We've created dangerous waste that, as long as it is on this earth, is dangerous to humanity for generations upon generations to come. The waste already exists. It is something that we KNOW will exist for a predictable time into the future. We're just attempting to mitigate against its ill effects.

I don't know how well the idea of an atomic priesthood is going to work. But I really do love the idea of landscapes constructed to be difficult to live in just to warn people off from nuclear waste sites. What if the darkest, most uninhabitable depths of the ocean are actually created by a long-dead advanced civilization to hide the technologies that became their very undoing?

I know it sounds like an INSANE stretch, but this plan seems to suggest that this scenario might be the reality of distant-future generations.

(Image from the original report, depicting a "menacing earthworks" approach to deterring people from disturbing a nuclear waste site.)

Lady Gaga's Surprisingly Sophisticated Understanding of Copyright Law (Insert Your Own Gaga-Related Pun)

2011-03-09T20:39:00.000-06:00

Those of you that know me (and those that don't but have been reading my posts for a while here) certainly have seen that I'm not a fan of modern copyright law. I think it's too complex to work, too restrictive on first amendment rights, and generally gets used in a way that is anti-art, not pro-art. But that's only the first version of myself. You probably also know that I'm not a copyright abolitionist or copyright-basher. Version two of myself thinks that copyright is necessary, and it can be used reasonably and in a huge variety of ways to actually make the world of culture a lot better.

Now if I were solely that first version of myself, I'd look at a story of an artist doing something weird with copyright law and I'd say "AHA! Copyright is broken! This is endemic of the deeply flawed system!" But for this critique of a recent story involving Lady Gaga, I'm going to be entirely that second version of myself. The tech and law blog Techdirt recently posted a story that's all about how Lady Gaga's recent actions betray just how horribly flawed copyright law is, which is a story that the first version of myself would praise the hell out of, but the second version of myself is just too riled up by the whole thing to let that happen.

The article suggests that, if we look at how Lady Gaga uses copyright law, we can see just how broken copyright law is. The article asserts that Lady Gaga uses copyright in a way that does not at all match with the actual reason for copyright law's existence. Copyright law is meant to incentivize creation of new art, and the article says that Lady Gaga's attempts to use these laws for herself show just how far from this original goal the actual uses of copyright law have strayed.

Specifically, the article cites two major examples: Gaga's recent suit against "Baby Gaga" for the use of her image and her brand, and her treatment of photographers at her concerts, specifically that she requires them to sign agreements that give her copyright in their images. Let's take these one at a time, then talk about why the whole endeavor of criticizing Gaga's use of copyright law is actually really deeply flawed, even more flawed than the actual modern copyright system.

So the article only mentions in passing that the Baby Gaga thing is probably not copyright. But that's really important, so let's not conflate. Gaga sued on the use of her name and on the use of her personality rights, things like her sensibilities and her style. I don't think anyone's arguing that Lady Gaga doesn't have the right to control her image and her brand, which are the EXACT TYPES of things that trademark and personality rights are meant to protect. In other words, the Baby Gaga suit is not an example of Lady Gaga's twisted understanding of copyright law, it's a sign of her ACCURATE understanding of trademark and personality rights law, two fields of law that are actually surprisingly sensible compared to copyright law.

The slightly more sticky example is the photographer contracts. I don't like what Gaga is doing with these, but she's certainly within her rights to do it. Those contracts include terms about how they can use the photos, something that's pretty NORMAL for photographer agreements. These photographers sign agreements when they go to her concerts, so it's not like she's affecting their first amendment rights or something: they are essentially her employees when they contract with her.

The bottom line is that if she wants to put limits on the scope of these photographers' agreements with her, they still have to AGREE to those limits if they want the access she's agreeing to give them. They give something of value up and receive something of value in exchange. If they want to retain copyright of their images, they should photograph a different event, let someone who doesn't care about who owns their art become Lady Gaga's shill for that gig. This is a contracts and competition issue, not a copyright one.

The point of the Techdirt article is essentially that copyright has morphed into something terrible because people like Lady Gaga use it in unanticipated ways. But most of the unanticipated ways they list here aren't even copyright related: they're contracts and trademark related.

But let's not forget the real reason that copyright law is structured as it is, with lots of very small things declared the rights of the artist. It's designed to control the use of an artist's work, no matter what that art is and no matter what the use is. It's supposed to be flexible in the direction of rights-holders, ideally artists. And this flexibility is in place to allow for emerging markets.

Here's what I'm saying: if the purpose of copyright law is to incentivize art by creating ways in which artists can control the use of that art and therefore profit from it, then isn't allowing an artist who's show is a spectacle worth seeing the ability to contract with photographers carefully just another way of incentivizing creating these kinds of shows? Isn't Lady Gaga just taking advantage of one of those incentives with this kind of deal, not going against the incentive-based intentions of copyright law?

That's not to say that she's making a GOOD move or that she's doing something that is good for the legal landscape of art (she probably isn't). But she IS doing exactly what copyright law would have her do: she's monetizing her art using controls on distribution. It's what the founders would have wanted.

(Image: Lady Gaga Screen Print Painting, a CC-licensed photograph of a copyrightable screen print painting, probably a non-licensed derivative work of a surely-copyrighted, duly licensed image of Lady Gaga. IT'S COMPLICATED.)

Unpacking The Heart-Shaped Box That Is The Cultural Experience of Valentine's Day

2011-02-14T18:22:00.000-06:00

It's that time of year again. That time when we remember romantic love, and how glorious it can be. Where we send cards to our loved ones explaining how unqualifiedly wonderful they are. There are no "If you would stop snoring you'd be perfect" cards or "I wish you were more self-confident" cards, only "I Love You" and "Be Mine."

Yes, it's Valentines Day, the heart-shaped box of treacle that so oversimplifies the complexity of relationships. And that can be kind of nice, enjoying the simple things, remembering the good, and celebrating people we care about. But when we start to unpack that heart-shaped box, we start to see the cracks in the veneer on this love-fest and the complicated troubles of this yearly remembrance.

The trouble starts when you consider the origins of this holiday. Because "holiday" is a laden word, and it's not clear if it applies to Valentine's Day.

The event first started as a classic Catholic saint's day, a day reserved for remembrances of the holiest Christians and how they (usually) gruesomely gave their lives in martyrdom to the cause. In St. Valentine's case, no one really knows what happened to him, but it's pretty clear it probably had nothing to do with love (interestingly, because of the uncertainty around the story of St. Valentine, his official Catholic saint's day was removed from the calendar in the 60s).

Somehow, this religious observance morphed into a celebration of romantic love. It started as far back as the 1700s, and British hand-made valentines were popular throughout the 1800s, but the whole practice turned a corner into mass-production and commercialization at some point.

The blame is usually cast on the greeting card companies. The term "hallmark holiday" was invented for Valentine's Day. These companies had finally created a wholly novel celebration of romantic love, which led to years and years of cards, commercials, movies, and television, filled with plastic portrayals of what is ostensible a very dynamic and heated emotion.

The whole Valentine thing smacks of historical disconnect, exaggerated sentiment, and irrelevance. But when we look at the cultural reaction to that disconnect, instead of seeing a wall of uniform disdain, we see something pretty varied and complex.

On the one hand, a lot of people still really like this holiday. Aside from couples that always make a big deal out of the holiday, there's still that universal grade school experience of making valentines for your classmates (in my school, we had to make one for each student in the class, but anecdotes from others would have me believe that some schools allowed a little bit of selection, and therefore pre-teen heartbreak). Maybe that experience catches some of us and carries over to adulthood, because there's still a pretty solid market for Valentine's Day candy and cards.

There's also the yearly Valentine's episode, a staple of most television shows. By no means are these specials all good, but they are ubiquitous, expected by audiences, and even looked forward to by some critics. For better or for worse, our culture is one in which the mainstream has embraced February 14th as a day to celebrate candy, hearts, pink and red, paper cards with superheroes or puns on them, and, not least, love.

But let's not forget that there's a tremendous amount of backlash against this holiday. Of all of the holidays on the calendar, it's the one people most love to hate. Mother's Day, an equally invented holiday, is pretty universally seen as a good opportunity to thank our mothers, not as the crass commercialization of a complex relationship (even though it basically is just that, to the same extent as Valentine's Day).

Maybe that's the cultural power of this holiday. Valentine's Day is, if nothing else, a versatile holiday. Getting together with your single friends to get drunk doesn't sound like a romantic evening, but it IS a celebration of the holiday. People celebrate by burning their ex's stuff, or by drinking wine with friends, or by watching action movies to rebel against the whole thing. Even those that love to hate Valentine's Day still are getting some serious utility out of its existence.

But the list of hypothetical V-Day activities does seem to focus a lot on the ample dark side of the holiday. I think NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour said it best when they said that Valentine's Day tends to have at least some negative emotional and social effects, no matter what your situation is. The unhappily single person is reminded of their single-ness, the new couple is reminded of the complexity and pressure associated with serious relationships, and even stable, long-term couples still sometimes run into mismatched expectations over the holiday.

On St. Patrick's Day, everyone is Irish. Valentine's Day offers no such out: single people remain single, unhappily married couples continue to be unhappily married, and gay couples remain marginalized and unable to marry.

Romantic relationships are complex, but Valentine's Day is, at its heart, a holiday celebrating simplicity. To that end, those that revel in the simplicity of the whole thing (television shows, the rare adoring couple that gets SUPER into it, greeting card writers, jaded V-Day rebels, etc.) can revel in this holiday. But any reminders of the underlying intricacy and incomprehensibility of romance make this holiday empty and galling.

So from all of us at Stars Blink Out, where we are dedicated to highlighting the complexity in even the most simple situations, have a strange, confusing, complicated, crass, and maybe a little sweet, Valentines Day.

(image adapted from Pink Love Heart Box)

Xbox Hacking Case: Finally, A Judge That Stands For Innovation!

2010-12-15T19:40:00.001-06:00

If you are at all interested in copyright law and new technology's effect on innovation, then this article will give you chills. As Anton Ego put it in the classic pro-innovation manifesto, Ratatouille, "The world is often unkind to new talents, new creations. The new needs friends." And it is with great pleasure that I report how upliftingly a District Judge in Los Angeles embodies this notion. I'd like to briefly summarize what the case is about, then talk about why the things this judge said are so exciting.

The defendant in this case is charged with breaking digital mechanisms that protect copyrights, in this case, the Xbox's controls on what kinds of games can be played on it. The defendant developed a way to hack into the Xbox and play pirated, non-officially-licensed games on his system. Arguably, the main purpose of the hack is to let illegally copied games run on the system. But our defendant argues that there are a lot of non-infringing uses for this kind of hack, including developing new technologies for the machine and for playing your own legal back-up copies of your games, to name just two.

So this case went to trial, and while there have been a lot of cases about reverse engineering technologies and hacking them (the semi-recent iPhone jailbreaking rules, for instance), this is the first about the Xbox. Very exciting, but also potentially dangerous.

Because the judge presiding over the case could happen to really likes the rule against circumventing these technologies, maybe because he thinks that protecting large companies that develop these technologies is more important than letting tinkerers break their machines open and try to innovate. If a judge like that presides over the case, then we remain where we have been since the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was put into action in 1998: copyright law prevents a very important (in my opinion) type of innovation.

But lo and behold, the judge in this case is not the kind of pro-DMCA hard-liner that some of us were afraid of. During opening statements just a few weeks back, the presiding judge, Philip Gutierrez, realized that the prosecution's case had some problems. He pointed out, as the article linked above says, problems with witness credibility and with the prosecution's characterization of the defendant's intent. Even more importantly, the judge reversed his earlier decision to remove a fair use defense from the defendant's arsenal, essentially saying that the law must allow some experimentation on this kind of technology.

That is key: according to this judge, allowing tinkering, home-brewing, and hacking is IMPORTANT, and anyone who does it is allowed to try to prove that they did it with good reason, reason more important than the arbitrary strictures of the DMCA.

It also signals a big step forward in how judges think about these issues. To a certain extent, the prosecutors made all of these mistakes in this case because they thought they could get away with it. And if they got a judge like a lot of the other circuit judges out there, who maybe don't understand the role of hacking in innovation, they WOULD have gotten away with all of this. It's supremely uplifting to see a judge making it clear that you can't just rely on judges liking your policy aims to win cases against hackers; when you want to curb innovation, your case better be pretty strong.

(Brief notes: First of all, since this incident, the prosecution decided to dismiss the hacking incident, essentially giving up, for now, on trying to prosecute this kind of thing. Victory! For now. Also, for a great overview of how this kind of hacking works, check out famed Xbox hacker Bunnie's overview.)

What Gawker's New Design Means For The Internet

2010-12-05T17:44:00.000-06:00

Gawker Media is a pretty large, pretty influential blogging network, which includes a lot of different types of content. They are responsible for Lifehacker (a sort of productivity blog / DIY hub), io9 (a place for sci-fi nerds), Gawker itself (a sort of gossip / politics tabloid-blog?), and many more. Essentially, they've become a platform for a certain type of content. So their choices design-wise not only indicate the way the Internet has been heading, but they also influence the future of other sites. So here's some stuff about the most recent redesign.

(Incidentally, you can scroll to the bottom of this post to read a brief disclosure about my relationship with Gawker if you are worried about my journalistic integrity. Short story shorter: I've freelanced for them, but that shouldn't matter here.)

First, a brief overview of what has happened. As you can see at this post and in the video there, the list of posts is on one side, organized with most recent first, and the content is on the other side. The new set-up also gives Gawker a way to highlight interesting media and pictures, not necessarily the text of a given post. In short, they've redesigned to emphasize interesting visuals and information, not necessarily in-depth writing.

Which is fine! That's sort of been Gawker's model for a while. The in-depth writing is an added bonus on top of what is essentially a collection of tabloid-y news scoops, oddity roundups, and short tips, highlighted by eye-catching media. That's what it does, and it does it extremely well, in addition to the occasional in-depth writing pieces.

Anil Dash, Internet genius and trend-analyzer (and more!), has a lot to say about this redesign, including a roundup of other commenters speaking out. He's right on the money when he says that when this is the kind of information you want to put out there, this new set-up is exactly what Gawker needs. You should go there to read more, but here's a little snip:

In this way, blogs are emphasizing the trait that's always defined them, the fact that they're an ongoing flow of information instead of just a collection of published pages. By allowing that flow to continue regardless of which particular piece of embedded content has caught your eye, Gawker and Twitter are just showing the vibrancy and resilience of the format.

Exactly!

But I just wanted to add one more possible thought to this whole jumble. Another reason why Gawker can afford to do a design like this is that they're already famous. From a search-engine-optimization standpoint, this would be a weird choice. Only a site with a devoted audience, a clearly defined niche, and a built-in expectation for quality can afford to have such a busy front page with only one actual textual piece on its front page. A start-up blog would have to think very differently. It'd have to have a LOT of text on its front page and make a lot more effort to welcome new readers.

Dash is basically right on point when he says that this marks Gawker borrowing from the design of web-based applications like Twitter, mostly because web-apps don't have to advertise themselves on every page like blogs do. But maybe the better way to think about it is that all web-based information or media platforms are all starting to prioritize the same kinds of things, much like cable channels slowly did over the course of their development.

In the end, we're headed to a different version of the same place that we always do with this whole Gawker thing. Gawker is an established brand, a trusted news aggregator, and the internet is dividing itself into fewer and fewer recognized platforms for this kind of thing, with the independent blogger / startup personal brand having a more and more difficult time making an impact. Essentially just as television operates now.

If we think about what makes the Internet special, this would still preserve a lot of its strengths: the easiest platforms for making an impact (YouTube, for example) are those that will more fully develop and become popular, and those platforms will still allow interesting things to happen. But I think we're kind of past the days when new platforms can become giants. I have a post brewing in my head about the difference between networks, platforms, and applications in the world of media, but that'll have to wait. For now, I think Gawker's new design is a hint of the implications of this platform-centric approach to Internet media.

(Brief disclosure: I sort of work for Gawker. I write for their sci-fi blog io9, and they pay me, but as a display of my limited involvement, I heard about this redesign from Anil Dash, not from my ties to the company. I'm basically a long-term freelancer for them, so I have absolutely nothing at all to do with big decisions like this redesign or mission statements or anything. As much as I believe that my ties to the company have not influenced this post at all (since I am writing generally about structure and the purpose of Gawker), I'll leave it to you to discount what I have to say if you disagree.)

The World After WikiLeaks

2010-11-29T19:00:00.000-06:00

The recent leaks from the website WikiLeaks have been pretty big and pretty far-reaching in their scope. The site has made strides to change the way governments think about transparency. But i think it's worth asking: is this an unqualifiedly good thing? This isn't going to be a full-on essay or anything, I just think it's important to ask a few questions about this whole WikiLeaks thing.

Some background first. WikiLeaks is essentially a place where would-be leakers from all over the world can make their leaks available. It provides a forum for people with sensitive information that they think the public should know to make that information available to the public anonymously. Now, obviously this anonymity isn't going to last in some cases, but it does encourage otherwise hidden documents to make their way to the public.

The site made their biggest headlines yet when they leaked a few waves of United States military documents portraying the US's efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan in a somewhat poor light, including footage of US military accidentally firing on civilian reporters. And just this week, the site leaked a giant cache of diplomatic cables. The big accomplishment wasn't leaking the information; it was making the information a headline. In other words, most of it was stuff that was already publicly known or could be inferred from available sources. WikiLeaks just offered a platform for organizing and sharing this information with the news and the public.

So the role of the site in war diaries case was mostly one of a journalistic nature: the information was there, and the site just provided an organized way to source that information. In that sense, WikiLeaks is a way to facilitate transparency and accountability for organizations like, in that case, the US military or, in the most recent case, the US's international diplomacy. We haven't gotten to a point where the site is leaking actually dangerous top-secret information, but we've presumably created a world that is comfortable with that happening in the future.

That brings us to the question I wanted to ask. What kind of world is the WikiLeaks mentality leaving in its wake? Should governments and militaries be subject to the same kind of strategic transparency drops that happen to, say, Enron? It's obviously good to encourage transparency, but it's kind of a universal principle that a certain degree of information-privacy is very important.

It sort of links into the debate over privacy on social networking sites, such as Facebook or, more importantly, Google. These sites have this transparency agenda for the people that join the network, because they believe that more information surrendered to the company translates directly into a better user experience. Google has, in fact, made this a cornerstone of their business model: you let our robots skim your email for information, and the ads on your inbox better match the things you like. Or, even more usefully, on sites like Amazon.com, we retain information about what products you like and look at, and we in turn deliver suggestions for things you will also like.

On a larger scale, you've also got the whole world of proprietary business information, like patents and trade secrets. A patent is a way of trading disclosure for exclusive use, and a trade secret is a way of preventing disclosure to retain exclusive use. They illustrate two models for balancing privacy and transparency, but the balance is in favor of transparency: you get more government protection if you disclose more.

More transparency = better user experience: that's basically WikiLeaks's philosophy as well. WikiLeaks represents a force for a policy change, and they've decided that they favor a patents-like, Google-like approach to information policy. The mission of WikiLeaks is to make the most information possible available, and in exchange, the government and the news media can respond to that information with explanations and publicity materials and news stories, etc. More transparency is better for the system.

And I basically agree with that. But I also think it's dangerous to inflict dramatic policy changes on functional structures that rely on the older policy. We saw what happened to basically all of the record store companies when the apparent policy change happened in the public (this policy changed because of a technological development, which is how these things usually DO happen). And record companies dying or changing to harness policy changes to make better money (the iTunes store, Radiohead's pay-what-you-want model, etc.) is obviously a good thing.

But do we want the US military to have to adjust so dramatically so quickly? Do we want delicate international relationships to have to adjust to new policies overnight, risking some serious upheavals not that different to what happened to Virgin Megastore? Is the benefit of revealing the nuclear potential of a foreign nation worth the risk of them deciding it's time to use it?

Again, I want to stress that I think the policy shift WikiLeaks represents and is fighting for is a beneficial one. But the volatility that a dramatic policy shift represents can bring down very big infrastructures. It's dangerous when these infrastructures are military organizations or governments.

So I guess the short version of my question is this: given that transparency is almost always the right policy, is the WikiLeaks method of changing transparency policy an overall beneficial one? Is it worth the risk?

(Photo: AFP. It's Julian Assange, the man behind WikiLeaks, holding a paper talking about his handiwork.)

Fluffy Bunny's Adventures in Internet Content Monetization!

2010-10-05T19:02:00.000-05:00

There is always a lot of buzz in the online community about content monetization. It's become a trope in parodies of "social networking gurus" (like this one), but it still poses a pretty real problem for people who make things on the Internet. You may not have heard the term, since it doesn't always go by that name, but people are often talking about how to make money off of the things they put on the web.

Here's a sort of illustration of the problem. Say you run a web-cartoon called "Fluffy Bunny." You make animated videos of the bunny being adorable and silly, and you write stories about the bunny. You're so into your Fluffy Bunny creation, in fact, that you sometimes make little felt Fluffy Bunnies and decorate your desk with them. Now, others seem to have taken to Fluffy Bunny, and a bunch of people watch your cartoons and read your work.

The next question is: how can I turn those viewers into enough money to let me quit my job as a desk-jockey and just bask in the loving glow of Fluffy Bunny? Well, you do have options, but some of them aren't obvious.

The scope of the problem isn't immediately evident to those that primarily do business (and therefore perceive of "business") via off-line models. Scott McCloud attempted to encapsulate the most common current models for internet content monetization as selling either atoms or eyeballs (he discusses this here). Selling atoms is taking money in exchange for physical goods, and selling eyeballs is selling to a third party the guarantee of people looking at a certain space. In the traditional, IRL sense, the former is selling shoes at a show store, and the latter is selling ad space on billboards.

These models are actually surprisingly resilient, too. They remain accurate when talking about television, for instance (selling DVDs vs. selling ads during shows). They even remain accurate when applied to the internet in a variety of cases (selling a printed collection of comics via the internet vs. selling ads on a web comic's page). You could even put adds on TheAdventuresOfFluffyBunn.com, or you could sell a DVD of Fluffy Bunny's exploits.

As the internet changes, though, there are new, creative monetization schemes cropping up on the internet as well. Let's explore some variations on McCloud's "eyeballs and atoms" dichotomy.

Selling atoms on the internet gets complicated quickly. For instance, in the realm of web comics, people are still selling actual atoms as t-shirts using their comic characters' likeness or printed collections of comic work. This is still a reliable way to make money and is a big part of most of webcomics artists' arsenals. But comics creators are experimenting with a new approach to selling atoms on the internet, what McCloud calls selling bits.

Some examples: James Kochalka has a daily web comic, and for a while, you couldn't see all of the comics unless you subscribed, for a small fee. Gordon McAlpin sold a high-resolution eBook of his popular "Multiplex" series. Various comics creators make custom comics for money, their quality varying directly with how much a buyer pays.

In short, you are paying either for custom online content or for access to online content, like a subscription. In all of these cases, the "atoms" are purely online content, pure bits, but the money is still real money. The atoms approach, therefore, shows signs of adapting. These models exist, but they aren't often used as permanent solutions (Kochalka now makes all of his strips available for free, and McAlpin released an actual printed book.)

The "eyeballs" portion of the discussion is a bit more complex. People are certainly still coming up with clever ways to sell ads (anything from simple link exchanges to networks for bidding on ad-space). These all work for bigger creators, but a new breed of social media creates a new wrinkle in the eyeballs model.

Think of sites like YouTube. They let anyone post videos onto their network, and they host and display them for free. But anyone that visits your posted content also sees ads posted by YouTube themselves. The size of YouTube's network makes it possible for them to create nothing, but still offer "eyeballs" to ad servers. They use others' content to draw in those "eyeballs" then sell them to third parties. (In some instances, YouTube's partners get this ad revenue, but in a lot of cases, it goes straight to YouTube.)

It's a good model for YouTube, of course, but it's important to keep in mind that those ads are not paying for content, but merely the way the content is presented. It's a model that many sites have all tried, and the most current word is that this model isn't making them enough money to remain profitable. It's a model that doesn't feel sustainable. (In a spirited and informative interview on The Colbert Report, Lawrence Lessig briefly commented on this "monetizing someone else's content" model, but Lessig notoriously focuses on the really great societal and policy implications without really acknowledging the financial or logistic pitfalls.)

The final method of turning creativity on the Internet into revenue is probably my favorite, because the trade that is actually happening is not immediately evident. The website Kickstarter offers creative people and people with visions to set up pitches to the public for their visions. People can then view the pitches and pledge money to these works. The pledge often comes with an "atoms" reward (supporting a book gets you a copy of the book, for isntance), but other rewards include having your name on a "credits" web page or, in some extreme cases, musicians offering personal concerts in your own home for you and your friends in exchange for large contributions. And it works, too; the aforementioned Gordon McAlpin turned one such campaign into a print book (the book, by the way, is really great).

This one's really interesting, because having your name in a book is certainly neither atoms nor eyeballs. It's not even bits. It's something more ethereal, but also more personal. Call it connection to creative people, call it feeling good about yourself. It's a way for people to turn their money into things they want to see happen and into support for projects they like. Things like Kickstarter truly display how monetizing your efforts on the Internet can be an entirely different endeavor than in any other medium. It turns purchasing into participating.

And these aren't all of the examples. But they show how sticking to old models, while it offers some modest successes, doesn't really harness the truly unique character of the Internet. Creators working with purchasers to offer things people want is how markets have always worked. But only now can creators interact directly and personally with their customers to truly tailor the market experience.

You'll notice that this post doesn't really propose answers. The goal is really just to get a lay of the land in online advertising and start talking about which of these things are working. I hope to have new posts about this topic in the future. But the bottom line is that, with a little ingenuity and adaptation, the days of the Internet bubble-burst can be behind us, and Fluffy Bunny can maybe start to become the Cash Cow you always hoped it would be.

(image: David Barrie's "Don't get left in the dark.")

This discussion is taking place in the real world

2010-09-15T11:46:00.007-05:00

One of the web's most awkward articles.

I do not know why I choose to read articles like this, but I frequently do and they never cease to annoy me. Of course communication on the internet differs from direct face-to-face communication. In the same way that all written communication differs from verbal communication.

This article is not making a distinction between the internet world populated by the "people who don't sit in front of their computers tweeting about how "Eating pancakes makes me feel like death now that I'm 30 #notakidanymore"" and the "majority of society." It is highlighting the distinction between any communication in one context and communication in another context.

The most egregious part of the article for me is the finale. "The day that LOL becomes common parlance, my friends, will be the day that this whole internet Bard-penned comedy will become a complete and utter tragedy."

LOL IS common parlance. A very large subculture of the world uses it in conversation with regularity and it needs no explanation for the majority of people who are not part of the subculture. It has meaning just like any word in any language.

"We Are Living in a Totalitarian Dystopia, and Other Fictions," by The National Media

2010-08-26T20:07:00.001-05:00

("No Trespassing" by Dru Bloomfield on Flickr)

Back in January, the 9th Circuit Court made a decision, in a case called United States v. Pineda Moreno, that some media outlets are calling a "worst nightmare" scenario. This nightmare decision was just published recently, and the media is panicking. After this ruling, according to the press (Time, CNN, etc.), "Government agents are now legally able to sneak onto your property, put a GPS tracking device on your car and track your movement without you ever knowing" (NBC4i). If you read some of these articles, you'll find that there are more Orwell references in the press around this ruling than in an Apple ad.

In fact, from press descriptions, it sort of does sound like a dystopian, science-fictional prospect: a government gone horribly wrong and violating individual privacy rights. But that's because the descriptions are often wrong; that's not at all what is happening here. The reality, as evident to anyone with at least a little legal training, is certainly interesting, but a lot less alarming than this.

The case is divided into two pieces: putting the GPS device on a car in a driveway and the government using the data. Here's why neither part of this ruling is as surprising or as threatening to our civil liberties as these stories might have you believe.*

First of all, there's the placing of the device. The press is making it sound like the government now has a license to sneak onto your private property and put trackers on your car. This is a horrible misrepresentation of what this case stands for. What the case at issue did was categorize peoples' freely-accessible driveways as not private property, but semi-private areas.

The fact of the matter is that the court decided, in 1999, that putting trackers on cars was not an illegal search and siezure if the car was in a public place (US v. McIver). All this case did was affirm the determination (again, made over ten years ago) that a driveway is closer to a public place than to a private place.

And even this decision, which still has a semi-ominous ring to it, comes with a lot of protections; the court, in this case, was careful to say that if there had been a "no trespassing" sign or some sort of barrier, the case would probably come out differently.

The court indicated that, in order to stop this horrifying invasion of privacy, you don't need to resort to illegal signal jammers. All you need is a bit of cardboard, a marker, and a nail. Or to be safe, a gate on your driveway. That's all. Your private property is still as safe and private as it has been for the last ten years.**

And then there's the matter of using the GPS data against someone. In 1982, the US Supreme Court decided that putting a tracker in a bottle of chemicals purchased by a suspected narcotics manufacturer was legal without a warrant (US v. Knotts). This court decided that the same logic should apply to cars traveling public roadways. If this is a violation, it's a violation that has been happening since 1982, not just because of this "nightmare ruling," but because the highest court in the country thought it was constitutional.***

The cautionary tale buried in this saga is not one of civil liberties or privacy. It's one of reporting. Media outlets are often a little quick to paint new rulings as dramatic departures and usurpations of civil liberties. In reality, new rulings like this one would function better if reported as reminders to the public that they aren't thinking carefully enough about their own privacy.

The privacy lesson of this case is that if you care about things being private and keeping the government's prying eyes off of your business, keep that business in the garage, since you can't reasonably expect your driveway to be private property. This is maybe a challengeable prospect, and it probably will be challenged in the supreme court. But despite what some would have you believe, the only way this case relates to Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four is that the rule codified here has essentially been the law since the mid-80's. Any innovation is only in how it's being reported.

---
* The ruling could still be troubling if you think the government is moving in a bad direction, but it's important to remember that there isn't a whole lot of innovation in this ruling. Also, a lot of my discussion here was informed by the LLRMI analysis of the case, which is farily representative of what the case actually says.

** The ruling is, however, maybe symbolic of a class divide (between people that can afford gates and people that cannot). This is discussed in the dissent to the case and is a very interesting issue. It's not, however, that indicative of the actual privacy implications of this ruling.

*** Don't mistake this for an argument that, since it's been going on for a long time, it should be legal. Again, I'm complaining about how the ruling is being presented. The ruling itself will get the challenge it deserves when the case goes to the supreme court.

"Glee" and Intelectual Property Attitudes

2010-06-29T18:23:00.000-05:00

I've spent a lot of time thinking about how the attitudes of the public intersect with the current regime of copyright law. It seems like a lot of people acknowledge that copying CDs and downloading illegal mp3s is a morally questionable (or even morally wrong) activity. But most of these same people engage regularly in the activity. There's a gulf between the sort of logico-moral approach and the actual activity.

But that's just one illustration of the kinds of thoughts-action duality copyright law can create. In the realm of remixing, reposting and reusing cultural property, the dichotomy isn't really centered in the public. It manifests itself in the activities of large media companies. The most common form of the dichotomy is a large music company playing into the public's love of remix by selling interesting remixes but then cracking down litigiously on those that create unauthorized remixes.

I guess it wouldn't be too challenging to explain this away; the music companies, of course, own the materials they are remixing, and a lay-remixer does not, so the company's remix is legally allowed. But the bottom line is that the anti-remix stance of big media companies is not consistent with their exploitation of the fact that remix sells.

I think the best example, though, is one that was recently explained at the blog Balkinization. The article outlines how the popular television show Glee uses the idea of remix culture to show a group of kids bonding over shared cultural experiences and musical expression, essentially by performing "remixes."* But the show doesn't once mention that if someone were to engage in these activities in the real world, they'd be slapped with giant fines, most likely including some fines from 20th Century Fox, the producers of the show. The media industry is putting out a show glamorizing remixing with one hand, and slapping remixers with the other.

So my take is that the real problem lies with this big media industry; it's an industry that made most of its living in a traditional anti-remix culture that is now trying to sell to a modern pro-remix culture. It leads to inconsistency in both their behavior and in the laws they lobby for, thus creating a big cultural rift that will take major copyright overhauls to heal.

It takes a special kind of hypocrisy to appreciate the market for, and cultural appreciation of, something that you are fighting to destroy. It takes a special kind of day-job book-burner to write novels by night. The big media industry is adept at this kind of hypocrisy, and U.S. copyright law makes it possible.**

____________

* I'd just like to clarify that "remixing" isn't only the activity of slicing up music and recombining it to make new songs. It's also changing the context of some bit of media to comment on it, or recreating that bit of media slightly differently to change its effect, etc. Lawrence Lessig talks a lot about the various ways of doing "remixing" and the cultural implications in his book, Remix.

** This is, of course, an oversimplification. The article I linked to has a much more sophisticated discussion of the role of U.S. copyright law in this discussion, specifically in creating the balance between promoting cultural development and rewarding past creators.

TED and moot and 4chan

2010-06-03T23:55:00.004-05:00

Above is an embedded video from the really great site, TED.com, which collects talks from their conferences on big ideas and fascinating topics. The one I've pinpointed here is the one buy a guy named Christopher Poole, known on the Internet as "moot." He's the notorious founder of 4chan, the cesspool that fuels the complex memetics of the Internet and creates the dominant cultural stance on what the Internet finds "funny."

There's no denying the power that comes with a position as a pretty prominent taste-maker on the Internet. But Poole recognizes that this isn't a power he has. It's a social power he's unleashed. or maybe concentrated. He knows that he's just some guy, and the real hilarious and terrible and important and damaging work that 4chan makes possible is actually self-organizing, perpetrated by a band of no-names that wander onto his web page and use his site as the structure on which they build their antisocial social network.

I've written about 4chan and "anonymous" before (once to extol the virtues of the subgroup "Anonymous," and once to discuss what anonymity does to social organization and norms) . But I wanted to respond briefly to some things in this TED talk.

First of all, I think that Poole does a good job side-stepping the questions about accountability for terrible things found on his site. He essentially says that, for all of the child pornography and violent images and racism that 4chan can be littered with, it's clear that there is a certain social value to allowing people to express their true selves anonymously and find a community that appreciates the same things as them.

But I also think that Poole doesn't really need to sidestep the issue; he can confront it head-on. The horrible things that characterize 4chan are not really there because people want child pornography or violence or racism. They are there as a sort of rebellion against the restraints of the Internet's legal structure.

If you outlaw something on the Internet, sure, it'll move into the sort of "black servers" on the Internet, the spaces where regulation is extremely difficult or impossible. But unlike "black markets" in real space, the actual focus doesn't seem to be the provision of these illicit materials; it seems to be demonstrating that no matter how harshly you outlaw things, smart and dedicated people that don't like your laws will find a way to rebel. Essentially, it's a crude, simplistic version of the Boston Tea Party.

Though I don't want to sound like I am justifying this terrible behavior. I just think that painting 4chan as a haven for depraved people and criminals is counter-productive; it's more like a haven for anti-establishment types and anti-authority teenagers. Treating anti-authority tendencies requires a very different approach than treating anti-social criminality and depravity. Poole's best response to allegations of harboring illegal activity and depravity is to remind people that the pursuit of liberty, not pornography, is the driving force here.

I also wanted to briefly say that the presenter could have done a better job with not sounding like he's patronizing Poole. This guy understands the importance of anonymity and ideological freedom better than almost any other TED speaker, and to ask simple questions about pornography and hate-speech is to miss the point of what Poole's site has actually accomplished.

All that said, the video is a good watch as an overview of what 4chan is all about and how it has impacted the discussion of Internet life and how the Internet works. I'll hopefully have more to say about 4chan soon. But remember, no one speaks for 4chan, so let's just all try to speak coherently and intelligently and non-condescendingly about it.

The Open Internet In Limbo: An Update On My Goings-On Cleverly Disguised As A News Post About Network Neutrality

2010-04-08T17:49:00.000-05:00

I'll start this post as I start a lot of posts about internet regulation and structure: with an illustration. Imagine you're a BigNet internet service subscriber. You pay a monthly service to connect to the internet through their pipes. You also really love the show "Small Wonder" So, you watch this show on a popular video streaming site pretty regularly.

But today, it turns out, BigNet has decided to start selling a video subscription service, one that will bring "Small Wonder" via cable to your television on demand. Now, you have no need for this service, because you can get all of the "Small Wonder" you need from the free video streaming site.

Now imagine that BigNet caught on to your free "Small Wonder" watching and decided to make their service more appealing by blocking or slowing down your access to the free video streaming site. Then, deprived of your full-quality streaming "Small Wonder" episodes, you'd be forced to buy into BigNet's new on-demand streaming service.

Or how about this: you've come up with a revolutionary new technology called TalkBingo that could change the way people have face-to-face conversation on the internet. This technology, though, uses a lot of bandwidth, so BigNet decides you should have to pay them a premium to make this sleek, awesome technology available to people. You can't afford that; you're just a programmer in a garage. So, TalkBingo never sees the light of day, and the conversation revolution doesn't get the kick-start it needs.

The possible examples go on and on: blocking access to politically objectionable content, slowing voice-over-internet services to favor phone plans, etc. But. Examples of what? It's clear something similar is happening in all of these cases, which might be described as internet service providers (ISPs, like Comcast, AT&T, or BigNet) discriminating against different kinds of traffic as it goes out to end users, either charging more for that content to be transmitted or slowing down or stopping certain kinds of traffic. And this kind of discrimination feels wrong, doesn't it? Like it doesn't fit with our vision of an open internet?

Well, the FCC agrees. And so does Lawrence Lessig and President Obama and Google and Microsoft. All of these people and companies agree that ISPs should treat all lawful internet traffic equally. They all believe, in short, in network neutrality.

Net neutrality is the principle that the providers of the internet and of connection to the internet should not be allowed to meddle with the traffic that flows to users, with the way the internet looks to someone who connects to it. This is hopefully accomplished by banning all ISPs from discriminating between different kinds of traffic.

But that puts us in a weird position. Because since the beginning of the internet, discrimination has been a pretty important part of keeping the whole mess working. When there is a surge in traffic that an ISP can't handle, the ISP is forced to block that traffic to protect its network. Or if someone is illegally sharing files or trading in child pornography or hacking the network itself, ISPs should reserve the right to stop these kinds of illegal and harmful activities.

That's where "reasonable network management" comes in. Most versions of rules about net neutrality include an exception for reasonable network management, in the interest of complying with the law or maintaining quality of service / preventing congestion on the internet. The exceptions take various forms, and I'm writing a very sizable paper about one such version of these exceptions, which I'll get to later.

The important next question is, who gets to decide what net neutrality regulation will look like? The answer has traditionally been the Federal Communications Commission, who started regulating the internet back in the mid-00s. The FCC classed broadband internet as an information service in 2005, thus entitling them to regulate it differently than telephone services and the like. From that point forward, the FCC experimented with internet regulation, culminating in a ruling against Comcast on a set of policy statements and some proposed rules codifying those policy statements into law.

It sounds complex, it's true. But the gist is that the FCC first unofficially made it clear that they would not tolerate discriminatory handling of internet traffic, then ruled against Comcast for violating these unofficial rules, and finally tried to make the unofficial rules official. It sounds shakier than it is, and the big problem isn't the unofficialness of the rules; it's the FCC's jurisdiction to make them that's really problematic.

The DC Circuit Court recently heard both sides of the Comcast / FCC battle on appeal and officially decided that the FCC didn't have the explicit authority from congress that they needed to make rules about net neutrality. That means that the FCC can't actually make their unofficial rules official unless they either win a further appeal or lobby congress for the authority they need. As of now, that puts the proposed official rules in a strange limbo, both very near being officially codified and very far from it.

It also puts my paper in an interesting position. As I mentioned, I'm writing about how the "reasonable network management" exception is likely to be enforced and interpreted, specifically in the context of these proposed rules. The rules are stuck in this weird place, but decisions still have to be made about how best to protect reasonable internet practices while preserving the best, most fair experience for end users. So I'm hoping that my paper still has some interesting stuff to say about that balance.

And that's also why I'm not writing as much here these days. I'm mostly absorbed with carefully poring over hundreds of comments on the proposed rules and trying to get a handle on what the exceptions might look like when the dust finally settles. It's clear that the dust has to settle eventually, and when it does, I'll be here to help navigate the messed-up terrain the fracas leaves behind. See you then!

(Image: WWIII Propaganda: Support Net Neutrality, a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike (2.0) image from doctabu's photostream)

Hey Copyright Abolitionist Movement: Copying Sometimes IS Theft

2009-12-16T00:53:00.013-06:00

Earlier this year, a woman named Nina Paley released an upbeat little ditty onto the internet called "Copying Isn't Theft." It's a catchy tune, and the message is exactly what you'd assume it would be: copying something is not the same as stealing it. The song's argument: when you steal a bicycle, someone is left without a bicycle. But when you copy a movie, there's still a movie left, so no one is disadvantaged!

It sounds Utopian, I know. But in reality, as I will explain, it is a very frightening, very disingenuous message for an artist to be sending to their audience, and I am sure Paley is aware of exactly how much of an oversimplification it is. It ignores some fundamental problems in "copying" both bikes and digital files, it misunderstands the purpose of copyright law, and it misrepresents the kind of copying permitted by the creative commons. In the end, it's nothing more than misleading propaganda for an anti-copyright movement.

But before I get into that, some background, both about Paley and about the creative commons.

Paley and the Creative Commons

Nina Paley, about whom I have written previously, is a great example of someone who had an artistic vision and decided that sharing it was more important than profiting from it: she released her film, Sita Sings the Blues, in full, under a creative commons license, a mechanism for making artistic content more available.

As regular readers (and also annoyed friends who I have subjected to long-winded, highly nerdy rants) already know, I am a huge fan of the creative commons. The creative commons, in short and without getting too nerdy, offers a way for content creators (artists, writers, musicians, etc.) to make their content available without the specific restrictions of copyright. In other words, instead of protecting their content from copying and use, they give up some of their rights, allowing people to more freely distribute, transform, and in general enjoy their work.

In a lot of cases, this is a win-win-win situation: artists get more exposure, viewers get easier access to the things they want to see, and other creators get new stuff on which to base their own creative efforts. It's this kind of situation for which the creative commons is designed.

And Paley's situation was exactly this kind of win-win-win. She's now quite well known, her film garnered a significant audience, and her treatment of both old blues songs and Indian myths has certainly impacted other creators.

But as wonderful as her story is and as shiny and happy as the message of "Copying Isn't Theft" is, both taken together leave us with some problems.

Bikes and Files

The first major problem is the comparison between bikes and files on a computer. This little song asserts that copying someone's movie, for instance, still leaves them with their movie, much the same way that copying someone's bike still leaves them with their bike.

In reality, comparing copying a file to copying a bike does the opposite of what the song would like: it suggests quite a few reasons to discourage this kind of copying.

Because the thing is, we sort of do punish people for copying bikes. If I were to copy your Schwinn bike and then sell it, I would be directly stealing from Schwinn the price of one bike. I'd be guilty of counterfeiting goods; I may not be stealing from you, but I am certainly stealing from Schwinn. Taking a bike is theft of property, and copying the bike is theft of intellectual property (in this case, their bike design and their brand name).

That's what's happening when you copy a film: you're stealing from the film company the price of one of their films. It may not feel like stealing the same way taking someone's bike does (because you are stealing something intangible, the amount actually taken is quite small, and you aren't actually looking the victim in the eye), but there still is a victim, and that victim is still harmed.

So despite what this video indicates, copying really can be theft. The two actions (stealing a bike and "copying" a bike) are both wrong. One is a crime because it deprives someone of their property, and the other is a crime because it deprives a third party of their rightful reward for making that property in the first place. Both take something of value from someone else.

The Purpose of Copyright Law

Fine, I hear you saying, so copying a movie does deprive a movie company of the revenue from selling you that movie. But maybe they shouldn't even be getting that revenue from you in the first place.

That's problem number two. This film really does want you to believe that copyright law is an unnecessary criminalization of what could just be a victimless act: freely copying art. But the film doesn't mention that copyright law is based on an array of already established aims.

These aims are evident even from the very beginning. Our forefathers, the writers of the constitution, believed that movie creators should be getting revenue from creating movies. We provide movie companies with copyright laws so that they can get paid for their creative efforts; if they couldn't, they may stop making movies altogether. Copyright law seeks to incentivise creation.

On a smaller scale, a person who makes films to put food on the table can't afford to give away their product. They make their money by selling copies of their art, and if copying isn't theft, there's no incentive to make that art. The only incentive they have left is to just build their reputation as an artist, but even then, at some point, that reputation has to become a revenue stream. No artist, not even Nina Paley, would commit now to release all of her future work for free. It's just not a supportable business model.

In fact, money as an incentive for creation is almost as old as creativity. The old masters had their patrons (they were paid to create if a rich family liked their work), and the new masters have theirs (they are paid to create if the public likes their work).

The internet maybe changes some of this, considering the low cost of creating things for the web, but sites like Hulu prove that even online content very often needs ad revenue to exist, a prospect made possible by restricting the viewer to only one location at which to view this content. That restriction is achieved using copyright. A successful, copyright-free way of monetizing creativity has yet to be proposed.

So copyright law really is grounded in some very reasonable purposes and seems to actually be in service of artists by design. And judging from the content that actually does get created, the system is at least partially working. This is all conspicuously absent from "Copying Isn't Theft."

Creative Commons Copying

The third problem with the song is that it pretty fundamentally misrepresents what kind of copying the creative commons allows.

Here's what I mean: Nina Paley is pro-copying. As a result, she wants you to copy this "Copying Isn't Theft" video. So, she's put it under a creative commons license. But this license requires any copy to attribute it to her. That means that every copy of this video that is made must refer back to Paley's original. The question is, if copying Paley's cartoon doesn't leave her any worse off, why would she ever place restrictions on what kind of copying can be done?

The fact of the matter is that a creative commons license isn't a mechanism for wholesale copying. It's meant to be a tool for building a creative community. Under the creative commons, if you take Paley's video and chop off the credits sequence with her name in it at the end, you have stolen from her. Copying without crediting actually IS theft. It's theft of an idea.

And I'm not talking about claiming you are the creator of the video when you copy it; that's lying, not theft. I'm referring to the much more common problem of a picture, video, or song being freely copied absent any mechanism for discovering the true creator. Not only does this deprive the creator of rightful compensation (as discussed above), it also deprives the creator of the only other possible incentive for creation: reputation.

The Real Issue

And that's the biggest problem. "Copying Isn't Theft" can pretend all day that copying someone's movie is harmless, but in the end, the video itself (and the legal and philosophical context surrounding it) recognizes that there really is a harm associated with copying without restriction.

We all really do wish we lived in a world where artists created just for the sake of creating, never to expect praise, credit, or compensation. But that world is and always has been a fiction. And so, therefore, is "Copying Isn't Theft," a song set in that fanciful world.

All that I've said in this essay is well established in the world of copyright legal scholarship, so to ignore it and instead make a fun little video unqualifiedly extolling the virtues of copying is reckless at best and deceitful propaganda at worst. The site that hosts this video offers a bit more serious discussion of these issues, but standing alone (the way most viewers will see it), the video's message is just not sophisticated enough.

I'm not trying to argue that copyright isn't broken. I'm not saying that copyright is the best way to encourage creativity. I'd be all for this video if it were instead called "Remixing Isn't Theft" or "Century Long Copyright Terms Are Ludicrous." But copying often IS theft, and to say otherwise, no matter how sweet, catchy, and Utopian it sounds, is to politicize and oversimplify a complex discussion. And that's harmful to artists and consumers everywhere.

More info on the organization behind the video: QuestionCopyright.org

I'm Feeling Lucky

2009-11-10T00:26:00.006-06:00

I was looking for a definition when this came up. Rarely does a search engine accidentally capture the zeitgeist of a nation so well. We are a country of deep mythos, that, at this moment, have no clear definition. It’s a poignant reflection of my American experience.

I present to you,

"I'm Feeling Lucky."

I Dream Of Viral Marketers

2009-10-13T21:51:00.006-05:00

This week, a new bit of viral content hit the internet. It's called "ThisMan.org." If you click through, you will discover that this website claims to be a hub for a growing number of people that have all seen the same creepy visage in their dreams.

The site brings together a lot of evidence that This Man is appearing in dreams on a global scale. There is a gallery of artists' renditions of the guy, a display of "Ever Dream This Man?" posters from all over the world, and a few anecdotes about particular dreams featuring the weird face.

It all sounds so interesting, so fantastic, so science-fictional. You might even say it sounds "too interesting to be true."

Turns out, that just might be the case. A Google search of "ThisMan.org" reveals first this website, but second this article explaining why the thing is probably viral advertising or guerilla marketing and not a legitimate creepy phenomenon. Specifically, the domain name is owned by a semi-renowned Italian guerrilla marketer and prankster named Andrea Natella.

Which is bad news for Natella. If this site looks like a hoax (or even not a particularly interesting fiction), why would anyone feel motivated to share it with their friends, aside from the impulse to mock it? This site doesn't promote anything yet, and when it finally does, it's not going to have an interested audience left.

That is the pit that viral marketing is always in danger of falling into. A viral ad has to be interesting enough to be passed around and still maintain enough of a connection to the advertised product that it still promotes it without feeling like a hoax or a waste of time.

So how can marketers provide an interesting story that is connected to their product but still offers something as a motivation for those that have the burden of passing it around to friends? We need look no further than the first giant viral marketing apparatus, one that ran its course in the early days of the era of the internet meme. It's called The Beast, and its scope and appeal are still surprising to this day.

In an upcoming post, I plan on waxing nostalgic about this little game while talking about just why it was such a huge success, but you can read up on it here before then.

In the mean time, keep an eye on ThisMan.org. I'm betting it'll be outed as an ad within the week.

What "Battlestar Galactica" Did Wrong, What "Lost" Does Right

2009-08-20T00:00:00.001-05:00

I'd like to start by apologizing for the slowed rate of posting on this blog. But I think it's time I explained why. I'm interning for a science fiction blog called io9. I've been a follower of this blog pretty much since the day it launched, and to be able to get involved and write for them is a huge honor. I've been posting pretty regularly over there, and if you check out my profile page over there, you can peruse the things I have written for them.

One thing I wrote not too long ago was a reaction to an essay about the finale of the re-imagined "Battlestar Galactica" series, discussing how much danger there was of "Lost" making some of the same mistakes. The essay about BSG is here, and it's well reasoned and well organized. My response and analysis of LOST is here. Both those links and this post have spoilers for both shows.

It was fun to write that post for io9, but I also wanted to take a moment to explain here on the home blog three things that I thought about while researching and writing this particular post: what BSG did wrong in its final few episodes, why I still love the show, and what LOST has been doing right.

I'll start with why I think BSG's finale was such a colossal letdown. The essay explains this really well, but the bottom line is that the finale takes a complex, interesting show and reduces it to two or three simple principles. The show dealt with warfare, guilt, redemption, religion, alienation, and all of the other big issues that good science fiction touches on. The finale wraps it all up into a pretty neat little package, the bottom line of which was simply that we need to be nice to our robots.

So the show decided that its ultimate purpose was to tell humanity that god (or whatever he likes to be called) wants us to be nice to our robots. This is already pretty demeaning compared to the idea that the show has been flirting with about humanity's callousness balanced against their ability to create life. It's clear the show is aiming for a universal message, but it comes across as saying "be nice to your Roomba, because it might one day try to annihilate society."

Of course, a critic of my position would say that I'm oversimplifying. But even if I am, I only do so to echo just how overly-simplified BSG's final message is.. The complex struggle between human and robot played out in the end like a cautionary tale, and that's the kind of "Red Asphalt" pandering we expect a great show to stay away from. If the semi-pandering "be good to the environment" sub-message of Wall-E is its weakest point, the pandering "be good to your robots" message of BSG seems to be the finale's only point.

That's only one major problem. Another chief problem with the finale is how it saddles god with pretty much the entire path of our fleet. The "head 6" that became probably the leading path maker for the surviving humans was actually an emissary of god. So, probably, was the reincarnated Starbuck, the one that led the fleet to their ultimate earthly end. The whole of the last season, in retrospect, is all a process of reducing the epic scale of the fleet's journey further and further, until we're ultimately left with their free will diminished and their journey nothing more than the result of divine providence.

The most disappointing thing is, of course, that the finale seems to betray that the writers had no idea what they were doing all along. The finale does a good enough job pulling together the patchwork of unfinished leads that cropped up throughout the show, but it's clear from what this patchwork looks like that the creators of the show never really planned where most of those leads were going.

And these major flaws in the anatomy of the BSG finale don't even count the loose ends, the vast improbability of the fleet's end, and the scientific mistakes. The finale seems to be essentially a big ball of contradictions and oversimplifications. I admit that I found parts of it moving and very fitting for the show's legacy, but the overall message of the show seems so carelessly subverted by the shoddily constructed ending.

So now the question becomes, what does the finale change about how I feel about the entire run of BSG? The answer is, not much. I still love the show. I still think that, over the course of its journey, the show got really close to revealing fascinating truths about humanity, fully exploiting the sci-fi nature of the show to project humanity now into a portrait of humanity in the future. The show is still brilliant. It's just really disappointing to see the whole run of the show discredited as leading inexorably to a witless religious fictional piece at best, and a pedantic, simplistic cautionary tale at worst.

So I would still count it among the best science fiction shows ever made. It's still filled with compelling characters, it still develops some fascinating ideas, and it still has some really great space battle action. In fact, if you discount portions of the last season, it still hangs together as a coherent whole. It just didn't know how to end in any reasonable way.

And that is why LOST, even if its finale is a colossal failure, will not self-destruct. It will still hold together for a lot of the same reasons that BSG will. Its discussion of faith, reason, fate, and choice will all still be there, even if the finale sucks.

But the finale, I think (and hope), will not suck. LOST already has a few things going in its favor. For starters, unlike the show-runners at BSG, the LOST producers have demonstrated time and time again that they have a plan for the show. It may not be a detailed plan, but it is a plan, and it's being implemented. As a clear, concise demonstration of this fact: BSG was canceled in its 4th season; LOST negotiated 3 seasons ago just when it planned to wrap up.

Furthermore, the LOST producers have made all sorts of statements about tiering which mysteries get answered and which will not get any more screen time. Of course I do not like the idea of any mysteries left unsolved, but I am much happier to hear that the producers are planning carefully how they will wrap up the show.

Also, when BSG approached its final moments, the viewers were all wondering essentially the same thing: will it be the past, the present, or the future on our Earth when the colonials find it? LOST offers no simple multiple choice question. The show keeps taking chances and doing really strange and risky things, so even the most devoted fans can't begin to guess how the show will wrap up. To me, this will help the wrap-up feel fresh regardless of how it happens.

Even if you don't buy all of that, though, remember that LOST always had a plan, if not from day one, at least from the beginning of season 2. The writers have been working on reaching a pre-determined point for 5 years, whereas BSG was working towards their ending for about a half of a season. The BSG intro in season 1 said that the Cylons had a plan, but somewhere in season 3 the producers admitted that they didn't really know what that plan was. The ultimate comfort for LOST fans is that their show-runners have always had a plan.

In short, BSG is still one of the greatest science fiction television shows ever made, despite its ending, but LOST stands to be even greater, partially because of its ending. Here's hoping the LOST producers don't prove me horribly wrong.

Phew. Glad I got that off my chest. I promise the next post will be a lot less nerd-tastic.

(Note: I, of course, invite feedback, and I imagine that anyone who cares enough about both of these shows to read this whole article will also care enough about them to formulate an opinion, very possibly different from mine. Please share it.)

Won't somebody please think of the children

2009-08-19T19:00:00.000-05:00

PETA and millions of decent football fans around the world are disappointed that the Philadelphia Eagles have chosen to sign a man who hanged dogs from trees, electrocuted them with jumper cables, held them underwater until they drowned in his swimming pool, and even threw his own family dogs into the fighting pit to be torn to shreds while he laughed. What sort of message does this send to young fans who care about animals and don't want to see them be harmed?

That, my friends, is the official statement from PETA after Michael Vick signed a contract to be the back up quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles. A spokesperson from PETA later stated that Michael Vick "fit the established profile for anti-social personality disorder (APD)," more commonly referred to as a psychopath. There is no denying that Vick did some terrible, terrible things. Dogfighting is a brutal and dangerous sport. For this, he was sent to prison for two years, and is currently on probation.

If I may answer your question, PETA, the message to "young fans who care about animals" is that being the organizer of a dogfighting ring will earn you years in prison and cost you millions of dollars in legal fees and lost wages. And kids, if you're a professional quarterback who would be lucky to play 8-10 years in the NFL, then you should count on forfeiting about 20% of your lifetime earning potential. You should also expect to be treated as a morally inferior child by those who profit from a different brutal and dangerous sport.

The question that I have for PETA and everyone else showing such moral indignation about a football team signing Vick is this: What sort of message does this send to young fans who believe that human beings can change and should be given a second chance after they have been punished for their crimes? I'm not saying that Vick is or is not a psychopath or that he won't participate in a dog fight again in his life. I have no idea if those things are true. Nonetheless, he has been deemed eligible to return to work by our legal system. It would be a shame if we decided that an ex-convict could never work in his chosen field again.

I would be very happy to hear PETA's answer to these questions: Should someone convicted of harming animals never be allowed to participate in society again? Should we cut them off from all legal sources of income or just extremely high paying jobs in sports? I don't know the answers to these questions either, but I am fairly certain that if I operated a lucrative underground dog fighting ring and had a lucrative legal job and I was told that I was no longer morally eligible to return to my legal job, well, I would only have one choice left, wouldn't I?

The High Line Park

2009-06-15T21:37:00.005-05:00

I wanted to do a very quick post to share a really interesting project that has been in the works for a very long time. It's called the High Line, and it's a park above New York City. The park has its origins in an abandoned section of overhead train tracks. The guys who developed the park got the idea from the little ecosystem that seemed to form itself over time in the abandoned space.

Now, the High Line has become something welcoming and engaging, a park for the public. Only one section is apparently open, but SBO friend Aviva paid this section a visit. The photo above is from her post about her visit. Read it here.

It's interesting to see how the remnants of a phase of societal development become the backbone for a later one. Off the top of my head, I can only think of a few other examples: the ritual center of a religious group becoming a pastoral must-see, an orchard becoming a loose collection of free fruit trees, or a prison becoming a tourist attraction. It also makes me wonder what of our current age will become the repurposed relics of the next generation.

Anonymous Revisited: Anonymity and Societal Norms

2009-05-21T01:42:00.004-05:00

Patton Oswalt once said that the fuel of the nerd mafia is disappointment and exclusion. This isn’t only true of the nerd mafia: it’s true of any socially disaffected group that doesn’t have access to the well of societally granted superiority and therefore must fabricate their own. In any group that is mostly filled with nerds (or any other sort of socially less-accepted individuals), the people that craft the agendas and lead the pack are those that are best at fabricating superiority.

The most common method of fabricating superiority is to lambast anyone that doesn’t contribute in the desired way with personal attacks and derision. The nerd mafia don gets his power from being the meanest, most alienating member of the group, thus crafting his group only of people that will give in to his superiority.

But what happens when such a nerd society goes leaderless? What happens when, say, a group of anonymous individuals band together to have a laugh and pour out their derision on those less quick-witted than them?

If you are a regular reader of this blog (or if you are an informed Internet citizen), you have probably already pieced together that I am referring to the Internet’s most famous nerd mafia, Anonymous. In a previous post, I described some of the higher goals of this loose collective: the goals of free speech, of critical thinking, and of challenging social norms. All of these are noble goals, and Anoymous takes them seriously. But as a result of their structure as a largely unorganized group of aspiring nerd mafia dons, Anonymous is also a hotbed of bullying and hate.

Since every member of Anonymous is inherently anonymous themselves, each encounter they have with the group is a new chance to feel that surge of nerd power, to cut down another faceless individual with ridicule. The ridicule, then, is much more potent, vitriolic, and terrible than it would be if normal reputational factors were at work; people can say and do the most horrible things when neither they nor the objects of their ridicule are even clearly defined as actual people.

So any given thread on 4chan, Anonymous’s home base of a sort, is filled with faceless rage, meaningless hate, racism, sexism, cruelty of many kinds, and jostling competition for the reward of even one post declaring one nerd mafioso’s contribution “win.” This fleeting declaration of the worth of someone’s contribution is the only reward Anonymous offers.

Such fast-paced, quick-turnover work among tirelessly approval-seeking nerds breeds innovation, but of a certain kind. Rickrolling is the perennial perfect example: it’s clever, it’s hilarious for a while, and then, after what seems like mere weeks, it’s tired and played out. Anonymous is a breeding ground for this kind of viral content. Anonymous is innovative, but their innovation is fleeting, transitory.

Which brings us to today. Remember when Anonymous struck out against the actually quite harmful tactics of Scientology? They rallied around a cause, and their efforts were not unrewarded, since as a result of their protests, new documents came to light and new organizations jumped in to help those imprisoned by the more cult-like directives of Scientology. But in an organization that prizes quick-wits and competition for attention, a movement like Anonymous’s anti-Scientology campaign is bound to fizzle before it makes the desired impact. In fact, among the 4chan boards, those people who still protest at Scientology centers and still sport goofy costumes and pithy signs are considered the lowest of the low. They are slaves to the last big thing, and Anonymous only appreciates the next big thing. Within what passes for the social circles of Anonymous, these people are referred to as “the cancer that is killing” 4chan. Any progress this campaign was making is now halted by a wall of disapproval.

While I agree with the fundamental tenets of free speech and Internet anonymity, this factional split and continuous member alienation within Anonymous demonstrates what we lose when we do become entirely anonymous. What we lose is the benefit of societal organization. We lose social norms, the incentives to make a lasting change, and the deep rewards of long-term interpersonal relationships. While we don’t lose what it means to be human, we do lose what it means to be humanity.

Unfortunately, I am in no position to propose answers or clear solutions. For now, I merely seek to demonstrate the problem. Before any laws on privacy or anonymity are enacted or enforced, there must be a careful analysis of what we gain or lose when the Internet trends towards more (or less) anonymity. I value anonymity on the Internet, but such severe anonymity has its price. When society is a collection of flashes in the pan competing to see which can flash brightest, we’re just burning through useful social capital.

(image credit: cc licensed (by-nc-nd) image by JacobDavis)

Steroids and Lasik Eye Surgery

2009-04-29T18:21:00.005-05:00

Bobby Baun.

I know that for Americans, there is little meaning to that name. Bring it up in Toronto though and people will immediately free associate words like "heroic" and "selfless." Bobby Baun had one of the most iconic moments in hockey history. In game 6 of the Stanley Cup final between his Toronto Maple Leafs and the Detroit Red Wings, the largely defensive defenseman broke his ankle in the first period. He went to the locker room, got taped up, took some painkillers, and returned to score the overtime winner to force a game 7, which the Leafs also won. He is in the pantheon of sports heroes (Canadian sports heroes, but still).

Barry Bonds.

Barry Bonds is one of the most reviled figures in sports history. Bring up his name and people will immediately free associate words like "cheater" and "disgrace." As his career began to take a back seat to the home run record chase between Sammy Sosa and Mark McGuire, he allegedly used steroids and put in some of the best numbers in the history of baseball. Books have been written about how he defiled the game along with every other person from the steroid era of baseball.

I am not entirely certain why, as sports fans, we worship the players who use pain killers to get the most out of their bodies, who enhance their physique through painful and unnaturally long hours of body building, who get corrective eye surgery so that they can see the pitch better, while cursing the players who use steroids to get the most out of their bodies.

The uproar surrounding HGH is even more confusing to me than decrying steroids. Malcolm Gladwell has already written a perfect post on this issue and I do not need to reiterate his points. I wonder if the real problem is that the public generally do not have any idea about what HGH is. They are just scary initials to most people and have been lumped with steroids in the minds of the people. HGH speeds recovery so that a player can get back on the field after an injury as quickly as possible. Why is that different than what Bobby Baun, the hero of the Toronto Maple Leafs, did?

I was reminded of the topic of steroid and HGH use after reading a recent excerpt in Sports Illustrated for a new book detailing Roger Clemens' alleged steroid use. I don't care to link to the article because I don't think Clemens did anything newsworthy. He used then legal means to improve his ability to play the game that he loved. At worst, we should be indifferent. At best, we should see him as heroic, like we do Bobby Baun and all the other players who showed “guts” and “heart” by “sacrificing their bodies” and “playing through the pain."

Ancient vs. Modern Cultism: Is That a Thing?

2009-04-07T03:22:00.007-05:00

earlier today, i was reading a pile of interesting wikipedia articles about all of the "messiahs" that have cropped up over the existence of judaism, and i noticed that a few of them spurred their own sects of judaism that persist even until today.

shabtai tzvi is probably the best known (aside, possibly, from jesus) of the jewish messiah claimants. he started his little campaign in the 1600s. the wiki describes him as basically bipolar, possibly a sociopath. he was well-versed in jewish mysticism, and he used this knowledge to craft a set of practices and doctrines that appealed to a surprisingly large number of jews at that time. he was, it seems, a smart, talented young man who felt self-important enough to call himself the leader of a people, a religious figurehead.

but isn't that a fair assessment of any of the charismatic, messianic figures at the top of any religious sect?

like, is jesus a possible example of that model? muhammad? moses, even? any of those people? couldn't we just see ANY of them as people with some good ideas and the will to push those ideas?

and it seems the current distrust of these types of religious figures might be a difference between modern and ancient attitude, not modern and ancient religious figures. is it just a coincidence that religious figureheads and leaders slide down towards the "levelheaded patriarch" end of the scale the farther back in time they started their religious teaching, but closer to the "mentally unstable cult leader" end of that same scale the more modern they are? older religious leaders, in general, seem more reputable to us, but newer ones, in general, seem less so.

the problem is that we have no way to directly inspect or experience any of the revered ancient religious leaders under modern standards; all we get is the minimal inspection done by their credulous followers.

in other words, would a modern outlook on the religious figureheads of the past convince us they are just as much charismatic sociopaths or attention lovers as, say, j.z. knight's ramtha? would our society's distrust of modern religious figures maintain its potency when turned on the religious figures of antiquity?

i don't see why we can't look critically at the genesis of our deeply held ancient religious convictions using a similar standard that we use for "modern religions" but still see the value in those convictions. for instance, if we really think about the beginnings of judaism (or christianity or islam or any ancient religion), we might ask: was moses a revelator? an emissary of god? or was he just a man with a still relevant and fulfilling message, with the self-importance and will to push that message onto a group of followers?

that's not to say that religion doesn't offer us something fascinating, helpful, personal and deeply fulfilling. that's also not to say that moses wasn't, as depicted, an exceedingly humble voice of reason. that's not even to say that moses's message lacked any sort of divine inspiration or godly spirit (however we choose to define any of those terms). any of those things can still be true. we can still get a ton out of religion even if we are skeptical of the "cult of personality" aspects of our own personal religious affiliations.

unfortunately, this way of thinking about religion implies all sorts of value judgments. it implies dichotomies between "primitive" and "enlightened" thinking, between "religious fervor" and "skepticism," between "smart" and "not smart." that's not the point, though. the point is to remember that religion isn't a set of answers to questions, it's a framework to appreciate and think about those questions. religion can offer us a TON when examined and practiced critically. it's just our job to make sure we actually DO examine and practice our religions critically.

(i, of course, invite any comments anyone has. i don't realllllly know what i'm talking about, even moreso in this post than in a lot of my previous ones, so feedback, questions, and challenges would be awesome. remember, i'm not challenging the validity of any religion, i'm merely challenging the rigidity of thinking about religious leaders. also, that image: public domain. also, no caps: is it distracting?)

Selling Your Neighbor's Lawnmower: The CC and Personality Rights

2009-03-24T19:18:00.007-05:00

An interesting situation resulting from creative commons licensure on Flickr has cropped up relatively recently. A church youth leader posted a picture of one of the kids in his group on his Flickr account, and he chose a CC license (specifically the one that requires mere attribution for commercial use) for the photos in his photostream.

Half way around the world, Virgin Mobile in New Zealand grabbed the photo and printed up (rather large) advertisements, insinuating that the girl pictured was a pen pal that someone would finally be able to "drop" once they got a Virgin Mobile phone. That's not a nice thing to say about a pen pal, and the girl, who's name is Alison Chang, was reasonably kind of upset about her depiction on these ads.

So, she sued. Or rather, someone sued on her behalf. The interesting thing about this case is that the guy who took the photo has no copyright infringement claim against Virgin. His license gave Virgin every right to use the photo in their ads. The theory in this suit isn't a copyright one; it's a "right to publicity" or "personality rights" case. It's more akin to a model who hasn't signed a release form than to a photographer who's work has been stolen.

But aside from the claims against Virgin, the suit also names the Creative Commons as a defendant. That makes no sense to me. The license worked exactly as it was supposed to: the photographer released any rights to the photo (conditioned on attribution) to anyone who wanted to use the work. The Creative Commons didn't make any mistakes here. The photographer, however, might have. He released a right to use Alison's likeness that he never had in the first place. It's similar to if I sell you, via eBay, my neighbor's lawn mower, and my neighbor gets mad at you for using it. If the photographer did anything wrong, it was that.

But he probably didn't do anything wrong. The issue has to be re-defined: a reasonable person knows they can't sell their neighbor's lawn mower to a third party without consent. Does a reasonable person know they can't give their neighbor's likeness to a third party without consent? In general, probably yes: anyone knows, for instance, that people in the background of a reality television shoot have to sign releases. So does a reasonable person know that posting a photo under a CC-atrib license is the same thing as giving it away to anyone who is willing to credit them, to use it however they like? Maybe not.

This is a failure of individuals to try to understand their licensing, not a failure of the license. Flickr, by default, puts all new uploads under a traditional "all rights reserved" license. An individual has to actively switch their photos from "all rights reserved" (what this photographer probably wanted) to "some rights reserved" (the license that allowed this supposed misappropriation). Things like this wouldn't happen if people took a moment to think about what switching their license gives up. Should courts protect people who don't understand what they are giving away? Or should they incentivise learning what they are giving away? Maybe some combination of the two?

This case will help define how "personality rights" and model releases work for alternative licenses like a CC license. Either way, as alternative licensing structures become more commonplace and are more fully understood by the public, cases like this will likely become a lot less frequent. And according to CC, education about these licenses is one of their main goals. That means, at least in regard to the Creative Commons, that as time goes by there will be less litigation and more education, with reasonably understood copyright policies and rules eventually taking shape.

(Note: the image at the top is from Joe Pemberton's photostream, used under a CC license. It's a clever little image, but unlike the guy who created it, I don't think any of this confusion is the CC's fault.)

"Sita" Tries Very Very Hard to Finally "Sing the Blues"

2009-03-09T01:01:00.005-05:00

New York based animator Nina Paley has done something remarkable in her film Sita Sings the Blues. The film is an elegant combination of a few disparate elements: animated dramatizations of the tales contained in the ancient Indian Ramayana, a hilarious retelling of those stories by three Indian shadow puppets, the titular Sita singing old blues standards to her mistreating husband Rama, and the story of Paley's own mistreatment by her husband while he was away in India.

It sounds complex, but the two narratives, as embodied in Paley's true breakup story and in Sita and Rama's story in the Ramayana, are pretty coherently presented throughout the film. The two tales also have a lot of parallels, and Paley deftly uses these various stylistic elements to draw them together in interesting ways. Even the blues song interludes resonate with meaning parallel to the two stories being told. The particular songs Paley chose for her film are all performances by early 20th century jazz singer, Annette Hanshaw, and her voice complements the film exceptionally well.

But there's a problem.

You see, song recordings like Hanshaw's are often, even now, still under their copyrights. Even more troubling is that the rights to a song can be divided between the copyright holder of the recording itself and any number of co-composers. The handful of songs that Paley used in her film for example, it turns out, were under copyrights owned by a long list of different people (you should check out that list... it's kind of daunting). And the amount of money this list of people required Paley to pay in order to use the songs proved prohibitive.

The short version of the contorted copyright fiasco is that Paley couldn't afford to get the required licenses to exhibit the film in theaters. She couldn't afford to release the thing she had worked on for so long solely because the songs she used were tied up in America's absurd copyright system. Her own expansion and reinterpretation of the meaning of these songs was held back by a backward-looking system of giant copyright terms.

Eventually, the critics caught wind of the film and watched their screener copies. The consensus was that the film was at least fun to watch, and at most a masterpiece (here's Ebert's take). The hype ball started rolling, and eventually Paley's plight was public enough that people started demanding to see the film, one way or another.

Paley has responded. Over at thirteen.org, the film is streaming in full. In fact, this site offers this list of places to see and download the movie for free all over the internet. All Paley asks is that people share and respect her art, and maybe even donate. She is concerned about money, of course, but she first and foremost needs this work to finally be seen. In her own words, "I hereby give Sita Sings the Blues to you. Like all culture, it belongs to you already, but I am making it explicit with a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License."

So I recommend that you go watch the film, but even if you don't, at least think about what this means for the future of entertainment: we all own our culture, and if someone wants you to pay for it, in this increasingly pirated and remixed media world, they need to make it worth your while. Not only does Paley offer one example of a film that would be worth your while, she also shows that it isn't worth the while of ancient copyright holders to imprison the culture of the past; if we want it, it's already ours anyway, and we're going to use it.

Indifference to Darwin

2009-03-08T10:16:00.004-05:00

On February 12, 2009, many participated in Charles Darwin’s birthday, aptly named “Darwin Day,” to celebrate his contributions to science and to celebrate science in general.

Darwin’s evolution theory, a process by which inheritable changes in a population are spread over many generations, is the cornerstone of biology, providing vast insight into the history of our world and our species.

America is often criticized as one of the few secular countries where a majority of its citizens do not believe in evolution. Many argue that misconceptions about evolution are to blame, and to be sure, there is plenty of misinformation about the subject widely available on the Web. But recent surveys show that people really just don’t know anything about evolution in general, and frankly, they don’t care.

A Gallup Poll taken an early February shows that 46% of Americans could not name what Darwin was famous for. While 25% of Americans do not agree with evolution, 36% did not care either way. In June of 2007, a USA Today/Gallup Poll asked Americans whether a presidential candidate’s belief in evolution affected their vote. 54% of Americans said it made no difference, while 70% believe that is not even relevant.

As Darwin Day came and went on my campus, there weren’t public argument over the merits of evolution. There were the few that celebrated and then there was everybody else, the people who probably couldn’t care less.

Panic! at the Facebook Terms of Service

2009-02-18T15:28:00.003-06:00

Another item for the "your media isn't yours" file, but probably this belongs more in the "needless histrionics" file.

Some background: when you use most interactive internet services, you have to agree to a set of license terms and general terms of service before you are granted access to the site. These terms define what rights you have in using the service, but also what rights the service has in dealing with you.

Now the story: Facebook changed it's terms of service a little while back. The new terms included an item that said something along the lines of "anything you post is our property / licensed to us in perpetuity, even if you delete your account," which sounds reasonably alarming at first blush. This tiny little term seems to imply that if you post a poem or photo on Facebook, you give up your rights to it forever.

So naturally, people were very concerned when this change first took effect. Or, I guess, saying "very concerned" sort of undersells it: people went insane, started myriad protest groups (example), and flooded the blogosphere with alarmist, high-strung panicked missives. The internet collectively flared up in anger over Facebook's new policy.

But this policy, on reflection, seems to be pretty right minded. Facebook says that this term only aimed to more accurately reflect how their system actually works: when you delete your account, you can't delete the things you put on other people's wall or in their inbox. Those things remain the property of Facebook, but not for dark, illicit reasons; this is merely to keep the site operating the way its users, like your friends, expect it to, even if you delete your account.

And of course a situation like this isn't simple. Facebook probably was overstepping their traditional proprietary content boundaries with the term, but they probably only meant it for the best. It's a murky gray area that is different in every case. The Trademark Blog points out, though, that there is one constant in "terms of service" change cases: overreaction. Like the 5 stages of grieving, the blog outlines the common pattern of public outcry in cases like this.

The blog's "theory" is astonishingly dead-on in this situation, and I think it might be generalizable to nearly any situation related to intellectual property and cyberlaw. People have pretty concrete expectations for how their cyber-life should work, and they pretty much uniformly panic when they find out that these assumptions have no basis. And, for better or for worse, any change in how people interact with each other over the internet will always include this panic stage.

Facebook has apparently reverted their terms since the outcry, so this panic certainly serves a normative function, at the very least; if people are going to go nuts over any change, companies will be more likely to explain changes and less likely to make unfair ones. At the worst, though, and possibly more likely, this demonstrates just how little people understand their rights (and the rights of other entities) on the internet.

(I've got a post brewing about how little people understand their rights under a Creative Commons license, too. Stay tuned! Image cred: TylerIngram)

Keeping the Waters of Research Fresh with Open Access

2009-01-29T00:44:00.008-06:00

It seems that in the field of law, as in, I am sure, many other fields, professors, academics, and practitioners often develop specific pet issues that they talk about and advocate for more than any other issues within their field of expertise. As an example, Lawrence Lessig is well-known for his defense of the commons in an increasingly IP-rights-encumbered creative sphere on the web, but he recently switched to advocating for publicly funded elections and a less money-driven congress.

Professor Michael Carroll is no exception. He sits on the board of the Creative Commons, teaches law in D.C., and keeps a well written, well thought out blog. But his pet issue right now, it seems, is open access to scholarly journal material.

It's not a hard issue to understand. Academic and scientific research is imperative for the growth of society, so it gets funded, often, by a mixture of corporate money and government grants. But then the fruits of that research can get locked up, sometimes in patents, but almost always in copyrighted journal articles. Carroll recognizes this for the impediment to progress that it is, and he is advocating for open access to scholarly journal articles, particularly those that are funded by the very same public that is denied access through scholarly writing copyrights.

Carroll's blog touches on this issue often (here, for example), but a recent post offers a great example of this open access being offered by people who understand very well the monetary incentives behind copyrights: economics scholars. In this post, Carroll profiles a company that offers a platform for open access to economics journal articles. They offer this platform freely to any takers, not charging a premium or a licence fee for those that choose to implement the platform. An excerpt from their "about page" begins, "As economists, you should be asking: why is “ free” a sensible business model? There are several reasons...."

And the several reasons are all economically sound ones (and actually relatively easy to understand, even as a non-econ person). The most persuasive to me, of course, is that this group, called Access Econ, "sincerely want[s] open-access to spread as rapidly and widely as possible, especially in economics. To nickel and dime people who share this vision seems completely self-defeating."

Indeed, Carroll loves that last bit, too. But can you blame him? Sure, offering economic incentives in the form of copyright to those doing the research is what keeps the research going, but sometimes the very long copyright duration on these kinds of things forces the pool of available literature on a scientific or scholarly topic to stagnate.

No innovation or progress can live healthily and flourish in such stagnant waters, so it's not hard to see why new ideas flowing into this pool all the time is clearly a good thing.

(photo cred: Interestingly enough, IP and cyberlaw Renaissance dude Joi Ito took the photo of Prof. Carroll I used above. Ito is the CEO of the Creative Commons, so naturally he made this image available under one of that company's most permissive licences.)

Privacy Controls vs. Digital Rights Management

2009-01-22T02:55:00.004-06:00

("Locked away" from t3mujin)

Fantastic blogger Anil Dash asked an astute question the other day about digital rights management. To quote him,

"[H]ow are privacy settings on social networks different than DRM restrictions placed on media content files from companies? Is it because I'm not a corporation? Is it because the DRM technology is provided by Flickr or Facebook instead of by Apple's iTunes or Microsoft's WIndows Media? Is it because I only (theoretically) grant permissions to dozens or hundreds of people, instead of millions?"

Superficially, the two electronic control methods are similar. Both involve code controls on the dissemination of information. But there are clear differences as well, and it isn't, as Dash suggests, based on the size of the corporation or the size of the excluded population. In fact, it's more fundamental: the set of rights protected by DRM is drastically different from the set of rights protected by social network privacy controls.

DRM is traditionally a way of controlling property rights. So to compare social network privacy to digital rights management, you'd have to characterize people viewing your profile on Facebook as a transfer of property rights, with a need to control the consequences of that transfer. Sharing information is never a distribution of property; it is a bedrock principle of copyright that one cannot have personal property rights in information, only in expression.

As a counterexample, flickr does offer a transfer of property rights, in that someone can take a copy of your photo off of flickr and make it their own. Your expression through photography creates a property right for you in that expression, and it is therefore easy to see why you want to protect that property. Flickr does have privacy controls, as described in Dash's post, but it doesn't have DRM; if it did, there'd be a way to control who can download a copy of your photo, not just who can view it.

In other words, to compare the two is to compare you controlling your private information to someone controlling how you can use your property. It's like comparing someone reading your mail to someone stealing your empty mailbox.

While DRM and privacy controls are clearly in service of different legal interests and rights, Dash mentions the more key distinction: people don't like DRM, but people do like privacy controls. DRM traditionally takes money, apparatus, and architecture to implement. Those are things that big media companies tend to have, while private consumers tend not to. So, as a collective of private consumers, we, the people, are against it. It's something "big business" is doing to us, whereas privacy controls are something we are doing for ourselves.

And that is the heart of the DRM issue. As I've said a few times, giving creators the ability to control how the fruits of their creative labor are sold (i.e. how they are rewarded for expressing themselves) is in service of a real, fundamental, even constitutional concept: we want people to want to keep creating. Anyone can get behind that concept. But people feel cheated when they are deprived, as a group, of some right by a company, even in service of this noble goal. By contrast, people feel empowered when they do the depriving in a privacy context.

The only way to get past this creativity-incentive / corporate-animus dichotomy is to make DRM look a little more flawless, a little more elegant, but we are nowhere near doing that. Take, for instance, that ever present Spore case. A class of spurned Spore purchasers has initiated a suit against the company behind the game, on theories of interference with their computers via un-asked-for DRM applications.

As long as DRM looks more like a malformed fence interfering with our property and less like an amicable, neighborly border defining our media ownership, no one is going to accept it. It's not the existence of DRM that people are fighting, it's the architecture.

Masculinity, 2k9 Edition

2009-01-13T21:54:00.002-06:00

Original post here

There have been a couple of articles online lately that have hinted to a new breed of masculinity emerging just in time for 2009. In a Videogum post titled "Bromance Is The Most Important Examination of Modern Masculinity Ever" from a few days ago the new MTV series Bromance is described as Women-Studies-PhD-thesis-worthy. I don't have cable so I haven't actually seen the show, and even if I did have cable I wouldn't have watched already anyway. From what I gather, Bromance is a reality series/pseudo-game show about a dude (MTV's The Hill's Brody Jenner) getting another dude to be his best friend (al la The Bachelor but with best friendship instead of marriage). In theory, the premise sounds noble-- there is a common, almost primal need for good friend. But in reality, it's a lot harder for the machismo male that's celebrated in American MTV culture to have a special platonic same-sex friend.

The reason Videogum calls this series out as a major player in gender theory is the interaction between contestants vying to be Brody's new Best Friend. Apparently the interaction between contestants and with Brody is kind of, well, gay. In the short Videogum recap video they posted of the show (seen above) the contestants are almost laugh-out-loud uncomfortably funny. The video clip is a lot of dudes trying to show how not gay they are while simultaneously showing a whole lot of tender, genuine emotion in order to snag Brody's attention.* At first I thought the uncomfortable humor on an MTV spin off of a spin off of a reality show was coincidental or maybe just a side effect of the cooky premise but now I don't think it is. On Brody's personal website he (or his publicist, or whoever blogs for him) calls attention to the Videogum post. He even calls it a"bomb-ass" (which, I think means, REALLY AWESOME in bro-in-a-reality-show speak) post. For the main character to point out to his biggest fans these theories as positive and important must mean he's in on the joke. I like that he's being playful in his role as a MTV reality star and his acknowledgment of the idea of homoerotic tension between EXTREMELY STRAIGHT bros is appealing and new for the type of dude that's usually hanging around on MTV.

The other article that's potentially changing masculinty is the MSNBC discussion on Mantyhose. The product mantyhose is being discussed everywhere now and has blown into this huge internet meme (and yes, I'm adding fuel to this fire. you're welcome). Mantyhose is described as a pantyhose (or probably a lot more like tights) for construction workers, athletes and business men (the very manly positions they list is not an accident) that men use for "support, comfort and aesthetic purposes". The market for mantyhose is probably TINY at most and even smaller when you take out those that buy this product as a gag gift, a prop in a sexual fetish, or an actual legitimate product for the cross-dressing/drag queen population (this group of consumers is purposely left out of this discussion saying, " (the) trend has no connection to men who wear hose to cross-dress, since they prefer to wear pairs that are more feminine"). To be honest, if you buy good quality tights they actually can be really comfortable and warm even though a lot of people wouldn't agree. I actually have a pair of tights that I wear when I know I'm going to be in the cold because they have fleece on the inside I can understand why a dude might want to do the same thing.

The disappointing thing about all the buzz about mantyhose is that it only is buzz. One mainstream media outlet needed something wacky to talk about so their research department found the one online mantyhose shop and reported about it. Then a bajillion other outlets picked it up because they know they'll get hits. They think people are all like OMG GUYS WEARING WOMAN'S CLOTHING? I HOPE THERE ARE PICS. SO ZANY. And people probably are like that. That is why something like this isn't really doing much damage on the general concept of masculinity. The only reason this product is subversive at all (and it's bordering on being something that just exudes a new type of sexism instead of a new kind of masculinity) is actually because it is a product that was originally created for females but a few men have discovered its positive qualities.

Mantyhose has had its fifteen minutes and will probably never catch on to any mainstream population. Bromance, on the other hand, might actually be making some people think. There have to be guys that take their social ques from television and after watching an entire season of Bromance they might be willing to interact with their guy friends a little bit more intimately. Or, maybe not. What's important is that the option is being explored and allowed on a bro-centric channel. Who knows, it might pave the way for more important changes in thought in the future.

*Note: I don't think that when guys show emotion they're gay. But I do think the type of guys on this show typically think it's gay if they show that much emotion.

All That Glitters is not Gold

2009-01-05T19:56:00.015-06:00

During volatile economic times, investors and traders go back to conservative positions. If the stock market looks risky, money markets, government securities, and even commodities (“hard assets”) look attractive. The phenomenon is called a “flight to quality” and is common during bearish markets. Gold, one of the first stores of wealth, has received much attention as a way to guard against inflation and market volatility.

A friend and proponent of the new “Gold Rush” (having sold most of his stock to finance his investment into gold) explained, “Gold has intrinsic value and that’s why it will always be a valuable investment.” This couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, no commodity has intrinsic value—stocks and bonds do: they are tied to the performance and potential dividends of a company. Commodities, on the other hand, being the fungible assets that they are, are linked to fluctuations in global supply and demand. And often, their market values are reflective of what investors think they are worth, not now, but in the future.

Yet the Gold Rush has caught on among the crowd that believes we should move back to the “gold standard,” where the American money supply is linked dollar-for-dollar to a store of gold. Our current system uses a floating money supply, or “fiat” system. American dollars are backed in part by foreign currencies but not hard assets. There is no intrinsic value to paper: the US Dollar is worth what we believe it is worth—or what we believe it can buy us. This may sound ridiculous, but collectively, it’s a system that works.

From what I’ve gathered, gold investments sound appealing for two reasons. One—there is a common misunderstanding about its worth, that as discussed above, gold has an intrinsic, even monetary, value. This commonly held view, in my opinion, has its basis in antiquity, when gold was the primary form of currency. The Bible commonly mentions gold as a standard measure of wealth. Gold back then had an almost supernatural quality to it—it was used in the building of religious artifacts and was also a symbol of majesty and grandeur. Today, gold has less utility in the way of building religious items but maintains its symbol of luster in the form of jewelry. The power of this symbolism and its subsequent perceived value is still a matter of faith; in other words, gold is fiat too.

The second reason builds upon the first. During economic downturn, doomsayers prophesize the end of the US Dollar. A common misconception is that gold is not as volatile as the stock market and has even out performed it. If you follow this line of thinking, what better way is there to safeguard your money then by putting it into something with hard intrinsic value? But even in a complete economic meltdown, few items maintain their value. As pointed out an article in The Economist, during such times, jewelry could maintain some value; however, totalitarian governments emerging from the crises are usually quick to snag such items. Think of the treasures taken by Nazi Germany or Saddam Hussein. In these cases, gold jewelry may be valuable as property—but not as an investment. And you’d better have a good hiding place for it too.

But even a careful look at the history of gold (since its value began floating in 1971) shows the stock market has greatly and consistently outperformed it. After reaching an incredible peak (yes, gold is also subject to wide speculation too) in the 1980s, it has yet to even come close to this high.

In 2001, gold yielded about as much as the US Dollar, making it a rather lackluster investment. Accordingly, $10,000 in gold invested in January 1980 would be worth $10,600 today. Conversely, $10,000 in the S&P would be worth $279,000

To those pushing for a return to the gold-standard: if the idea of an investment is to outperform inflation, then returning to gold-backed money would mean the end to gold as an ideal investment.

The reality is that declining prices make stocks a better deal. Diversification is important—including into commodities—but gold does not provide the protection against inflation and the stock market that the proponents purport. Don’t buy the hype.

Sources:
1. Zweig, Jason. “Why to Steer Clear of the New Gold Rush.” Money, v. 37 issue 4, 2008, p. 66-66.
2. “Apocalypse now?.” Economist, v. 386 issue 8572, 2008, p. 84-84.

Public Domain Day 2009!

2009-01-05T02:41:00.000-06:00

(above: a beautiful illustration, now in the PUBLIC DOMAIN, of Raggedy Ann)

Let me start by wishing you a belated Public Domain Day! This is a joyous day for many, and I celebrated by reading a Raggedy Ann book.

First things first, you might wonder what Public Domain Day actually is. The story starts with some rudimentary copyright law: copyright protection for some works extends for the life of the author plus 70 years. That means that, for instance, if I wrote a children's book, the book would enter the public domain and be freely available, no limitations, 70 years after my death, on January 1st of that 70th year.

Things get more complex immediately after that in the story of copyright (for instance, if a publishing company owned the rights to my work, or if any part of the work became a trademark, or even if the work were created between certain years more recently, there are tons of extra protections). But in general, on January 1st each year, a new crop of artists' 70-years-after-death protection lapses and their self-published work enters the public domain.

The biggest names in this year's Public Domain Day celebrations are Raggedy Ann and Popeye the Sailor. Granted, most of the material associated with these characters is still under protection via other companies and not the creators, but the first self-published stuff concerning these characters is all free and clear now!

I know you might find it hard to get excited about a new Raggedy Anne book finally entering the public domain. But Public Domain Day might one day make a difference in your life.

Imagine a party scene, maybe in a film, with a rousing rendition of "Happy Birthday To You," the classic birthday ballad. Most people don't know that "Happy Birthday To You" is still under copyright. Anyone who uses it in a film has to pay to do so (apparently, according to the Wiki, something like $10,000). Any film in which you have seen this song had to pay a royalty to use the song, and you had to pay the (admittedly very small) increased ticket price associated with higher film royalties.

That's why Public Domain Day is so exciting: on Public Domain Day in 2030, any filmmaker or songwriter or performer can freely use "Happy Birthday To You." That song will finally enter the public domain in approximately 20 years.

So this Public Domain Day, take a moment to celebrate the newest additions to the public domain (a somewhat comprehensive, complex list is here), but also take a moment to consider the arguably lousy state of copyright in the U.S., where an original artwork or composition can be off limits for the better part of a century after its creator has passed on.

Now go out and raise a can of spinach in celebration of Popeye's recent partial liberation into the public domain. Happy Public Domain Day!

Your Media Isn't Yours: DRM as a Culture Limiting Force

2008-12-09T01:03:00.000-06:00

(credit to Thomas Hawk, under a CC-Attribution-Non-Commercial license)

So imagine one day you walk into your home after a long day of work and decide you want to read, say, “Harrison Bergeron,” by Kurt Vonnegut. You head into the living room and towards the bookshelf to grab your copy of the excellent short story collection, “Welcome to the Monkey House.” But you are surprised to find that your entire bookshelf is no longer in your home. All of your books have disappeared along with it. The door was unmolested and nothing else has been taken, but for some reason, your entire book collection (and all it represented in spent money, intellectual feats accomplished, and personal development) has simply disappeared.

It sounds like an entirely impossible situation. You’d be as surprised to see your entire DVD collection vanish or your stack of Wired Magazine back-issues cease to be. But the modern media industry wants you to believe that something like this could happen to your entire purchased digital music collection. In fact, the media industry thinks that this is not only reasonable, but that it’s their right.

It sounds like a company is robbing you of your right to own your own property, which can mean only one thing: you can bet digital rights management (DRM) is to blame. I’ve written about this subject before (here), but it hasn’t gotten any better.

Here’s a recent example. In September, The iTunes music store was faced with a possible royalty hike from the music industry. This royalty hike would have been mandated by the federal government, and it would have cost iTunes something like 66% more per track to operate its digital music store. This left iTunes with only one possible course of action: shutting down their music store. It’s true; iTunes was within one government ruling of choosing to no longer operate their successful digital music store, all because the music industry, in concert with the government, could condition rights to that music on higher royalties.

Markets opening and closing because of price fluctuation is nothing new. But one unfortunate side effect of closing down a DRM-controlled music store is that purchases from that store become useless. Crippling the rights management system for a digital music file turns it from a purchased asset into a meaningless pile of ones and zeros.

Nowhere was this more evident than in the late-September WalMart digital music fiasco. WalMart made an announcement that, since it no longer sold DRM-controlled music, they were shutting down their DRM servers. The backlash was instant, of course, because the early adopters of the WalMart digital music store, who still had some DRM-controlled music, stood to be punished for purchasing this music. Because of the backlash, WalMart soon backed down from this radical decision. But from there forward, the ability of companies to literally wipe clean a customer’s digital purchases was not just a slippery-slope possibility. It was a close call.

The list of DRM-crippled technology is long (this blog series details 35 products that sacrifice customer satisfaction for rights management, and this feature counts down 25 reasons why DRM as it exists is bad for the consumer). But there are some success stories in between the horror stories (Mac and Netflix have finally worked together, for instance, to seamlessly integrate the Apple DRM platform with their own Watch It Now service). DRM isn’t an inherently bad thing; it gives creators a way to stop their customers from freely distributing products to the point of saturating the market and rendering the artists’ work meaningless.

Back to the bookshelf analogy. When you buy a book, its inherent physicality makes it impossible to let three people read it at once. The rights management on books is built into the nature of the books. But if we could instantly reproduce those books into identical copies, we’d need a new way to make sure that those copies aren’t replacing purchased versions in the homes of possible purchasers. Being able to manage rights is good.

The way that DRM works now, however, is akin to allowing a band of rights enforcers to break into your home and take all of your books if they start fearing for their profit margins. If the rights granters decide that it’s not profitable to be a book company anymore, they would be able to make all of the books they have created disappear right out of the hands of those that have purchased them. Until DRM is fixed, your digital files are in this kind of danger.

And in a culture that is moving quickly toward nearly entirely digitally distributed media, we suddenly find our access to creative endeavors limited by the will of a small group of media conglomerates. It’s starting to look like our culture itself is under the stranglehold of outdated laws and outdated media companies, and not controlled by our collective will to grow and push forward as a society.

I don’t know about you, but that scares the hell out of me.

The more things change

2008-11-27T11:30:00.000-06:00

“I would never date a Republican. They’re all religious fanatics that think they can tell me what to do with my own body. They’re racist homophobes and think that is how God wants them to be. All they care about is tax cuts for the rich and want to abolish social programming because they think poor people are welfare crack-whores who deserve what they get. How can I let someone like that touch me? I mean, what if I got pregnant and they made me keep the baby? It’s about time that we had someone in office who will bring change and not use people’s fears and prejudices to drive his own agenda.”

All right, I made that conversation up. Kind of. I have been told all of those things by various supporters of the Democratic Party, just not in succession. There seems to be a strong belief among liberal, educated youth that they are tolerant, generous, and righteous while Republicans are not. The argument goes that Democrats support social programming; Republicans don’t. Democrats believe in individual rights; Republicans don’t. Democrats are all educated and intelligent; Republicans are rich and greedy or stupid, backwater bible-thumpers.

This is pure, old-fashioned stereotyping and prejudice often coming from the very people who decry racism and prejudice of all (or most) forms and proclaim Obama’s victory as the victory of enlightenment over prejudice. The mistake they make is in assuming that racism is only about skin color. Today, the bigger issue is one of class and geography. Democratic youth believe that they are in the educated elite and look down upon those who come from Southern states who are stereotyped as uneducated and ignorant. This is, incidentally, untrue. Republicans are actually more likely to have a 4-year degree and equally likely to have a graduate degree.

Offensive stereotypes don’t need to be proven wrong, of course, but I will bring just one more example of how ridiculous some of this stereotyping is. The belief that Republicans do not care about the poor is mind-bogglingly (is that a word?) absurd. In fact, there is evidence that Republicans give more of their income to charity, on average, than Democrats . There is clearly a belief that Government should be less involved in social programming, but the rationale is that the private sector is better equipped to provide these services. You may disagree with this philosophy, but you can’t say with any sort of intellectual honesty that it means Republicans do not care about the poor. Unless, of course, you are letting your prejudices speak for you.

This was a historic election and Americans should be proud of the choice they have made, but in no way does this signify the end of racism and prejudice. It just reminds us that prejudice goes much further than skin deep.

SBO Roundup 1: Bond vs. Barack, and more

2008-11-24T00:54:00.000-06:00

(above: obama bond, from worth1000.com cotributor sudiptatatha)

This is a new feature I'm trying out. I see a lot of things in my daily life that I want to talk about on this blog but that don't amount to enough content for a full post. Some things just don't get at the heart of the unwavering inertia of our complacent society confronted with the equally unswerving momentum of technology and culture moving inexorably forward.

So, this feature, the "SBO Roundup," will be a chance to briefly hit on the things that wouldn't otherwise get covered on Stars Blink Out. This time, I'm going to be talking about the new James Bond movie (particularly what makes it both a product and victim of some current and dated movie trends), Barack Obama's new approach to the "fireside chat," Michael Chabon's "The Yiddish Policemen's Union," and a quick comment on Kanye West's new record.

This weekend, I had a chance to see the newest James Bond movie. It's called "The Quantum of Solace" (arguably the worst Bond title yet). I'm not a huge Bond fan by any means, but to some extent, the Bond formula has permeated our spy movie viewing experience: campy, a little sex, and good old smooth James Bond. But a new paradigm has sort of eclipsed that one. It's the paradigm of the "Bourne" movies: grittier, darker, and with a more conflicted protagonist. Arguably, the first Bond reboot, "Casino Royale," delivers on the Bond premise with touches of grit and realism; "Quantum" seems to have strayed pretty far into "Bourne" territory by its still edifying, but certainly not scoring-a-Bond-girl-edifying, conclusion. It's a strong, interesting action movie, but I recommend caution for Classic Bond fans.
Barack Obama, as President Elect in a transition period, has, as previously mentioned, started the conversation with the American people already. A week or so back, that conversation took a new step. Obama posted a video on YouTube that was essentially a fireside radio chat, but instead of a fire there are some law books, and instead of radio it's the Internet. It's an intriguing new approach to getting the executive's core aims and values in front of a national audience. Watch it, and see what you think.
The premise of Michael Chabon's "The Yiddish Policemen's Union" is that, after WW2, a not-so-well-known, entirely non-fictional plan to make a portion of Alaska into a Jewish state, instead of being thrown out as ludicrous like it was in reality, has been enacted. The world's Jews all converge on a little portion of Alaskan wilderness and continue their already-tenuous interactions with the world. The novel uses the plan (and the eventual rise and fall of a sort of messiah figure) to discuss what homeland, isolation, guilt, sin, and salvation mean in today's world. I highly recommend this book for any Jew who can feel, somewhere inside of them, buried deep, a disconnect between their identity as a Jew, their expectations of salvation, and their duties and hardships as a human. I also recommend it to anyone who recognizes that conundrum within themselves.
Kanye West. What a crazy dude. His last album, "Graduation," was dripping with synthesizers and samples, surprising the listener with unexpected sounds around every corner. His new record, called "808's and Heartbreak" does some sonic surprising, but the premise sort of curtails the possibility for any real shock: every single track features nearly zero sample, but instead vintage 808 drums and synths; every track features not a single rap from Kanye, but melodies sung through an auto-tune device. It's strange to hear a sample-heavy rapper turn into a synth-heavy pop vocalist, but the result is at least new and intriguing. Any unevenness present on "Graduation" is smoothed out on "808's." More importantly, master of mashup and surprise Kanye West has managed to mash together disparate instruments and styles instead of disparate samples. The result is a more subtle, more progressive approach to mashup. The record also serves as a sort of comment on the fact that as Kanye moves farther from hip-hop and closer to straight-forward pop, his fame (or infamy) grows. This might also underscore how rough, angry hip-hop will always be outsold by straight-up pop. Listen to my favorite track, Robocop (until the RIAA finds this YouTube clip).

So that's what's crossed my mind recently. Stay tuned for more full-fledged, traditional Stars Blink Out posts in the near future, featuring our new expanded line-up.

Intellectual Psychosis

2008-11-10T00:10:00.000-06:00

The hallmark of psychosis is the inability to decipher what is real - or, to believe something is real even when some (or all) evidence proves otherwise. Real things are consistent, and the reality that the psychotic perceives is very inconsistent. Without going into too much detail about my own mental illness, in my psychotic state, I perceived things that never came to fruition. And I'm not the only one: Pete Early, author of Crazy, chronicles the lives of many individuals suffering from mental illness. Most, if not all, had at least some sort of psychotic thought; one even believed he was a prophet, needing to tell the world of the Messiah's return in 2007. The movie A Beautiful Mind, for example, tells of a scientist that finally recognizes his artificial reality when one of his psychotic beliefs proves anachronistic.

If Dr. John Nash, entrenched in his pseudo-reality, could make such a discovery, then why can't most people, who do not suffer from such illnesses, do the same? We can laud Hollywood's portrayal of this schizophrenic man, but rarely do we - the audience - scrutinize our beliefs the same way.

For instance, a recent conversation with my Rabbi proved futile: of course the dinosaurs existed, he proclaimed, they just died in the flood! This is in stark contrast to Kent Hovind or Ken Ham's view, where the dinosaurs were saved in the Ark and actually lived with people. Never mind that the fossil strata and geological column prove both claims erroneous.

But if you've presupposed your conclusion (regardless of its correctness), any valid syllogism will do: the premises may not be falsifiable - or, if you want, you could even try to prove your premises true by backing into them using your conclusion inductively (e.g. that dinosaurs are now extinct is because god's obviously perfect word predicted an irrefutable flood). Though such arguments may on their face appear valid, they aren't. Strictly speaking, they are best described as dogma.

Inevitably, the dogmatic person will see evidence contrary to their beliefs. Faced with rejecting what might be a lifetime of teaching (and even perhaps a culture based around such teachings), the person will fall back on their intuition: "I've got to go with my gut." I've therefore coined a neologism for such faulty thinking: intellectual psychosis.

It's not psychotic, though, to have grounded faith, or to even use your gut. As an auditor for the government, people trust me, but no amount of testing could prove that I am, and will always be, an honest person. When we begin a relationship, we may have no personal experience with which to predict the relationship's success. But we, nonetheless, try, and hope for our partner's requited love and fidelity. We need our gut instincts. Many relationships don't work out, but we still have faith that, one day, one might. Grounded faith, intuition, conviction - these things are important.

Equally important, at least when figuring out why our gut tells us to do something, is critical thinking. We're afraid of being wrong. But it takes more guts to admit that you're wrong than to brainlessly assume you're right. Intellectual psychosis is a treatable malady. Try some critical thinking, it's good for both the head and the stomach.

Meet Our Newest Staff Members!

2008-11-06T19:59:00.000-06:00

I don't want to say too much, but you might have noticed that the "contributors" section has two new names in it. It's true: I've invited two new individuals to join me in writing for "Stars Blink Out." The names listed there are not, as is no surprise, their real names, as I'm going to leave it to each of them to regulate how they are known on this blog. And no promises that both have things lined up to post in the nearly near future (one does, I think). But they are here to bring us some variety, a break from me, etcetera.

One is a guy that I've known for maybe a year and a half (feels like longer), and the other is a guy that I've known for my whole life (feels like longer), my brother. Each has their own outlook on the world and their own perceptions of what constitutes "relevance" in this rapidly changing world.

But enough with the boring stuff. Let me just say that I look forward to having them on board and to giving you the reader, and also me, more to read and more to think about.

-Stephen

Change.gov: It's Starting To Look Like Yeah, We Maybe Can

2008-11-06T19:41:00.000-06:00

(a background wallpaper from http://obama4thewin.com/)

A lot of people out there are starting to wonder. How many times can we say "Yes We Can" before we have to start actually doing something? How often can we call for "Change" before the absence of that change starts to show?

President-elect Barack Obama is listening to those people. He is faced with an in-between period, during which he has been elected but not inaugurated, he has support but no way to leverage it just yet. He has responded by doing something unprecedented. He has set up Change.gov.

A website for a president-elect certainly doesn't sound too impressive. But that's before you dive in and see what the site actually does. Not only does it document the obvious media attention, it calls for submissions on what the average American thinks our vision should be. It asks for average American stories. It outlines policies, plans, and specific methods for effectuating the change for which we have all been calling. It even has a blog. An American president-elect running a blog!

I know, it's not a fixed economy or a solved health care crisis. But it certainly is a giant step in an entirely changed direction. I like where this is going so far.

NOTE: I also have a straight up Obama entry working, so be on the lookout for that.

John Green's "Paper Towns," And Then Some

2008-10-23T17:00:00.001-05:00

(above: Paper Towns covers)

Any discussion of John Green almost invariably includes his brother, Hank Green, and the project they started on the first of January in 2007. The project was called "Brotherhood 2.0." The two brothers made a video blog entry every day, alternating each day, for one whole year. The result was a conversation had in public about what it means to grow up and to be brothers and what it means to be in a community. The result was a fellowship of young people, self-named Nerdfighters, with the common goals of thinking and appreciating each other and appreciating themselves. This unintended result of the project is likely the most impressive.

But another stated impetus for the project, the one on which I wish to focus, was for these two brothers to get to know each other as adults. Hank and John really only knew each other as their younger selves, the two brothers who grew up together. This project was a way to learn how each of the brothers had grown up, what kind of adult person each one had turned into.

It's a lofty goal, and it's one that the brothers Green took seriously. The project lasted the whole year, and Hank and John still make videos to this day. Over the course of these videos, the full architecture of each of their personalities came into full relief, and we got to know them as well as they got to know each other.

That brings me to John Green the young adult author. He's written some award winning books (An Abundance of Katherines! Looking for Alaska!), and over the course of his videoblogging project, he has been writing his newest book. It's called Paper Towns, and I'm here to discuss a really important thematic similarity between the book and Brotherhood 2.0.

In essence, a teenage boy called Q finds himself drawn into the enigma of a teenage girl named Margo, his next door neighbor and the object of his desire. The two share a night of pranks (inarguably a classic "night of passion" without the classic trappings of a "night of passion"), and then, as in all of John Green's books, we make camp inside of our male narrator's mind and examine what happens when an important figure in his world disappears.

Also as in Green's previous works, the absent female cornerstone becomes far more important in our protagonist's mind than in the narrative. Put differently, the male lead's conception of the absent female leaf is far more important throughout the novel than the actual female lead. In point of fact, calling Margo a female lead is pretty hugely misleading, as she is thought about more in this novel than she is actually in it.

That said, Paper Towns can be seen as a capstone on some of the important ruminations in John Green's previous works. In Paper Towns, more so than in those previous books, people are misunderstanding each other, and it's having serious consequences for their development and interaction. People have these thin versions of each other in their minds, and the book chronicles those thin versions filling out.

Paper Towns is an engrossing, witty, real-feeling book. It crackles at times with the same intensity and clarity that characterized Alaska and Katherines. But it finally grabs some of the side themes of those works and hammers at them. It describes something we have all done. We have all deified or vilified others. We have all underestimated the complexity of those around us. The book shows us, in a pretty visceral way, the effects of this kind of drastic misapprehension.

This is clearly the textbook that informs all of Brotherhood 2.0. John Green and Hank Green had these thin versions of each other in their minds, and throughout their video project, these versions filled out. Maybe even more impressively, the thin versions of the band geeks, literature nerds, and D&D dorks inside of us all fill out, and we learn to appreciate each other more completely through the connection of good books, inside jokes, and even charity projects. I recommend the book highly, but I recommend the Brotherhood 2.0 and Nerdfighting experience even more highly.

If you believe that people are complex and important and awesome, and thinking otherwise is dangerous, check out Brotherhood 2.0. If you need more proof of that danger, read Paper Towns.

Where We Should Put Our $700 Billion: NPR

2008-10-08T00:37:00.001-05:00

(above: Michale Slatoff's disorienting photograph)

I understand so little about this recent financial crisis. In fact, as with most things I know anything about, most of my knowledge comes from reading, listening and asking questions in conversation. But in this case, one source has made these conversations a little easier. That source is NPR.

Earlier this year, approximately May-ish, NPR's "This American Life" did a story called "The Giant Pool of Money." This story explained, in clear, concise, and engaging language, the genesis of the mortgage crisis. When I heard this story, while I didn't become an expert, I was finally able to start thinking about the issue in 3 dimensions, turning it around and pulling it apart, examining even the internal consistency of NPR's account.

And that's what the story meant to do. It didn't mean to explain it all or to make us all understand. It meant to get us thinking about the complex issues, to get us talking about them.

If that wasn't enough, as the global financial crisis developed, "This American Life" followed their first financial story up with another one called "Another Frightening Show About the Economy." This hour-long episode updated the financial story and tackled the substance of the bailout plan that's been floating around. The two minds behind these shows also started their own podcast on money matters, called "Planet Money."

Again, these NPR stories and podcasts don't want to clear the whole thing up or make it sound simpler than it is. All of this careful, enlightening work by the NPR staff merely seeks to make us talk, to make us think. NPR's coverage encourages, above all else, conversation.

As I said, nearly any pseudo-expertise I have comes form conversation. And for my money (bad pun!!), NPR is doing more for that conversation than even economists and politicians right now. You should give it a listen. And if you are a financial expert, you should let me know if NPR got anything really wrong. You know, we'll have a conversation.

Spore: A Case-Study in DRM

2008-10-05T23:03:00.001-05:00

(above: the title card of sorts for "Spore")

Recently, "Sim City" pioneer and creator of "The Sims," Will Wright, came out with a new simulation game. This one is called "Spore." It's meant to be a sort of Sim-everything, in that you start the game playing "Sim Amoeba" and end up with "Sim Interstellar Diplomacy," hitting every Sim-step in between.

I'm not here to talk about how well the game achieves this rather lofty goal. Instead, I'm here to talk a bit about "Spore" as a case of bad DRM or, at the very least, people finally noticing DRM and responding to it.

Let's start from the beginning. When you buy "Spore," you throw the disc in your computer and install the game. But before you can play it or get involved in the Sim-circus, you have to register online. You submit some information on yourself and you get the game essentially unlocked. Basically, your right to access your digital copy of spore is granted.

But let's say that you have three computers, and you want to install "Spore" on all three. Well and good, the "Spore" team says. You can register online up to three times for different rights to different digital copies. Now let's say one computer malfunctions and you want to install "Spore" again. Without getting a specific dispensation, your crack at the digital right of playing "Spore" is gone.

Another hypothetical: say the Sim-team decides that "Spore" isn't as popular as it used to be, and say they decide to stop running their registration service for "Spore." In this case, you can't unlock your digital rights to play "Spore" anymore. At all. Your copy of the game has become, as one Amazon review says, a colorful plastic coaster.

And speaking of Amazon reviews, that brings us to the response to "Spore." You'd think that Amazon would be a wealth of information on how good the game actually is. Instead, the people who have bought "Spore" have lashed out against the DRM on the game. There are tons of 1-star reviews of the game already posted, and nearly every one cites the DRM as the reason for the bad review.

So what do we take away from this? I suppose we learn that, yeah, a game can be revolutionary and do things games have never done before, but people won't buy it if they can't use it the way they want to. As CBC podcaster Jesse Brown said on his program, "Search Engine," consumers of Will Wright's games love the idea of creating your own world and your own players, but they also demand playing those games on their own terms. They want to expand Wright's idea of making your own rules within the game to how the game is distributed.

The key point to take away from this is that even though fighting oppressive DRM is a geek concept now, it is a) spreading into the mainstream consumer environment, and b) it becomes pretty serious when your target audience is a geek audience.

We have a right to get pissed when a company wants to turn our "purchases" into lease agreements. It's time for copyright rules to reflect our understanding of what "copy" means. And what "right" means.

(lots of info from Fred Benenson's blog, via BoingBoing)

Laurie Anderson PSAs

2008-09-26T00:31:00.001-05:00

Laurie Anderson has been a favorite of mine for a long time. She's great at mixing the goofy with the enlightening. The above clip is a great example: something totally absurd that barely makes sense as a sort of illustration of her worldview.

Check out this one for something related to current events, even though it's approximately 20 years old. Or this one about women and money.

(credit to smashing telly for getting me on the right track for this one)

New Facebook: My Take

2008-09-24T22:39:00.001-05:00

(above: my actual Facebook page, available through a link to the right)

New Facebook does the following very good things:

Forces you to prioritize your applications: you can only keep a small number of application boxes on your main profile page, and the rest of them must go on your "boxes" tab. This finally eliminates the MySpacey ugliness of poorly designed and ugly-graphic-heavy application boxes all over a profile.
Tabbed browsing of relevant profile information: if you only want someone's information or favorites, it's all neatly collected in their "info". If you want their pictures, you hit the "pictures" tab. And the news feed also has a tab. Oh, speaking of...
Combines all recent friend information in one place: gone are the days of checking news feed, wall, posted items, and so on just to see what is happening with your friends (or yourself!) at a given time. The combined feed gives you an overview of ALL recent activity.
A comprehensive, organized right sidebar on the main page: I watched a pointless little YouTube video mocking this specific feature and contesting that the internet is ALWAYS left justified. Turns out, interestingly enough, that some of his rant was in his video's info sidebar, which was on the (you guessed it) right side of the YouTube video page. And not only that, Facebook's sidebar has all the relevant info you might want, including a late-breaking addition of an application link menu, a change made as a result of constant and meticulous refining by the Facebook development team.
Generally cleaner, without wasted space: yeah, the pages take up more space in a browser window and gest rid of the white space on the two sides, but I always thought that screen efficiency and clean design were good things.
The ability to comment on everything: the dialogue-starting ability to comment on, for instance, stati is awesome; I have commented on quite a few people's stati and received reciprocal comments on my own. It's instant, compact, and it stays current and easy to use.

That's just an at-a-glance list. But even if you don't buy that new Facebook is superior, it's time to clam it, 'cause Facebook isn't about to host two separate architectures for their site just so that a few change-averse people can avoid getting used to something new. I myself am usually change-averse, but this time, even if the change isn't, in your eyes, far superior, it sure is permanent!

Andrew Jarecki's "Capturing the Friedmans"

2008-09-16T21:49:00.001-05:00

The name "Jarecki" should jump out to fans of the modern documentary. A man named Eugene Jarecki made a movie called "Why We Fight," which is, in my opinion, the finest documentary I have seen. Apparently this knack for documentary is a family trait: Eugene's brother Andrew Jarecki made his directorial debut with his documentary, "Capturing the Friedmans."

The film captures a family in turmoil. In a semi-affluent New York neighborhood, a father and son, the Friedmans, are accused of molesting multiple children at a computer class taught in their basement. The film, though, starts with some benign, almost endearing footage of the family joking with each other and just acting like a family. It's not until about ten minutes in that we realize the film is not about how the family functions, but how the family falls apart over the course of the investigation and trial of the father and youngest son.

It's an absurd premise. Making a documentary about a trial is not unheard of. Neither is making a documentary about a family, or making a documentary about a failing marriage or about a troubled individual giving in to temptation. What this film does is blend all of these together to arrive at a complex, interwoven portrait of the nature of truth in an American family and an American court.

And that's what sets this film apart from a lot of the pack of modern documentaries. It does tell a story or two (or more), but it's main premise is to expose the ambiguity of truth in our legal system and in our lives. The question is not whether the father and son are guilty of the molestation charges against them. The question is, who else might be guilty, and of what? Or even, what is guilt?

In one expert scene, a lawyer relates a touching account of his client finally admitting to having a problem and deciding to plead guilty. But intercut with his account is the client's story of being manipulated by that very same lawyer into pleading guilty against his own better judgment and out of desperation. The truth probably hovers somewhere in between, and Jarecki does an expert job of letting us sort of wander around this in-between-ness of truth and come to our own conclusions (or even be satisfied by the roundness and symmetry of this lack of conclusions).

One similarity between Eugene Jarecki's expert "Why We Fight" and Andrew Jarecki's "Capturing the Friedmans" is the nearly entirely absent hand of the filmmaker. Every once in a while, you can hear the director ask a question in an interview, but by and large, there are no voice-overs or on-screen appearances by the filmmakers. These films appear self-organizing, as opposed to the products of the directors.

"Why We Fight" was a clean, impactful, persuasive film essay, while "Capturing the Friedmans" is a messy, ambiguous, emotional nonfiction narrative. But both, for entirely different reasons, feel like they sprang fully formed from reality. And that's basically what I feel a great documentary is meant to accomplish.

LHC: Fictional Crisis Not Actually Averted!

2008-09-11T01:34:00.001-05:00

(above: there it is, folks. the LHC's detector. no idea where i got the image from)

The LHC started yesterday. Nearly every blog I read that has regular updates had a post today saying something along the lines of "The LHC Started! We're Not Dead! Crisis Averted!" This is nonsense, and not because I think the world is going to end and we are in danger, but because the LHC hasn't C'd any H's yet.

That's right, the Large Hadron Collider has not even collided anything yet. The "tiny black holes" and other unpredictable, beautiful, GIANT DANGEROUS SCIENCE doesn't happen until things start smashing into each other some time next month. All that was tested today is the LHC's ability to get particles up to speed and spinning inside of the array. I certainly do not believe that the LHC will destroy the world, but even if it is going to accomplish this task, it can't happen until collisions start next month.

I know that bloggers are often rigor-averse (are they? are we? am I allowed to say that? etc.), but a little science knowledge would prevent misleading posts like the rash of posts I saw today. Without getting into too much sciency detail, saying that we averted a crisis today when nothing went wrong is like saying you averted the crisis of your car's engine blowing up by checking the tire pressure before leaving the garage. Or maybe even preventing a nuclear meltdown by checking that your pen works first before starting the reactor. Pure nonsense.

Almost as much nonsense as thinking that the LHC can destroy the world. But that is a subject for a later date.

Nonsense-purveyors: boingboing, io9. Nonsense-destroyers: WWdN.

Making Fun of Hipsters is the Hip Thing to Do!

2008-09-09T10:48:00.001-05:00

(above: Toothpaste For Dinner, on hipsters)

The magazine, “Adbusters,” is one that I had no contact with before now. After doing a little research, I see that the magazine shoots for small press but big change, something I certainly can get behind. It’s slickly designed and has features on how you can feel like you are changing the world. It appears the magazine harnesses the hipster aesthetic to try to sell to a niche independent market of hip young people.

Notice that I used the word “hipster” to describe the magazine. That’s a term that gets thrown around a lot these days without really having a definition. In this case, all I really mean is that the magazine uses the current trend of sleek, sexy design and style to hock its substance to a young demographic. But really, all that my stilted definition of “hipster” does is show just how poorly-defined the term actually is.

Enter, once again, “Adbusters.” The magazine recently featured an article called “Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization.” The article, by Douglas Haddow, tries to delineate exactly what a hipster is and how this current trend of hipsterism means the downfall of the legitimacy of culture. Since his article has these twin aims, I will discuss each in turn, first his definition and second his claims about the significance of hipsterism.

As far as the definition of “hipster” is concerned, Haddow makes a valiant effort. His essay is interlaced with vignettes from the “hipster” world, including clubs, all-night parties, and the like. These little scenes really do establish just which crowd he means when he talks about hipsters. That Haddow equates hipsterism with a shifting sense of brand and self, in order to facilitate instant relevance, is certainly a large part of what hipsterism is all about.

This, I think, does get at a fundamental commonality among all of those that we might call hipsters. Hipsters are strongly interested in being on the cutting edge, on being the trendsetters and culture creators. There is an emphasis on recentism inherent in hipsterism. (Incidentally, this same recentism motivates most articles on hipsterism, but that would be a digression.)

But something is missing from Haddow’s definiton. Most people you might call a hipster would bristle at the insinuation. Hipsters rarely self-identify (Andy Warhol likely was the closest to self-identifying as a hipster). The term isn’t a general description of a culture. It inherently only reflects the negative side of this culture. Inasmuch as “hipster” is a pejorative term, Haddow nails what it means.

This brings me to Haddow’s second point. He argues that hipsters, because of his definition, are leading to a dead end in cultural and societal development. This claim is flawed for two main reasons: it imputes a negative trait to a largely indefinable group, and it ignores a good amount of history in marketing and culture.

Firstly, hipster, as I understood it and explained it above, is a negative quality of culture that is currently pretty dominant. It would be fair to say that this negative trait is bad for culture, but so is the vapidity that made “Epic Movie” profitable and the selfishness that lets 3rd world children starve. In other words, while self-interested superficial recentism is certainly a bad thing, it, more often than not, comes in concert with many other things, like political awareness, political action, and the development of art and culture. Hipsterism is just a rather unfortunate side effect of being young and trying to be cool.

Which solidly introduces my second point: the emphasis on recentism and superficiality is not new. It is what drives advertising and marketing. But even if you don’t care for advertising and marketing, you need look no further than the politically influential movements of the past to see hipsterism at work. The beat movement, arguably, had elements of hipsterism. So did the hippie movement (no surprise there) and the grunge movements. That the modern era has elements of this does not eliminate its relevance or spell doom for culture. If anything, the current election serves to demonstrate the influence of young voters and young, politically active students, despite the fact that some of them evince some elements of hipsterism.

So in essence, Haddow’s article is first and foremost well written and a good read. It even gets a lot of things right about hipsters. But the article arrives at some false dichotomies and some false conclusions. Haddow has fallen pray to the common belief that things are totally different now than they ever have been before. The call has gone out many a time in the past that Western Civilization was being threatened by “those crazy kids” and their “rebellion without a cause.” But 50 years has shown us that many of these movements weren’t death knells, but cultural cornerstones.

All that said, unfortunately for Haddow, this article will likely be forgotten long before the political influence of hipsters is forgotten.

NOTE: Thanks, Melanie, for the article. And also, see hipster runoff for examples of why hipsterism is hilarious, interesting, important, goofy, meaningless, and ridiculous.

J.J. Abrams Talks "Fringe," Shark Jumping

2008-09-07T01:48:00.001-05:00

(above: press image for "Fringe," yoinked from io9.)

J.J. Abrams did a conference call with press about his newest show, called "Fringe." He's the guy who sort of jump started "Lost," "Alias," "Felicity," "Cloverfield," and is now working on the new "Star Trek" film. So he's got some serious geek-cred and is well-established as a relevant voice in modern television.

That's why a conference call with him about his upcoming television work is a big deal. And in this particular call, he said something that I thought said a lot about what people expect from television and how he delivers it. Specifically, he said that "Fringe" was going to be "jumping the shark" early and often. What he means is that the show will take the things we see as indicating the outlandishness of television and bring them out early.

For example, as Abrams says about "Lost," he brought out a weird, supernatural monster and a polar bear very early in that series to establish just how far the show was willing to go. He doesn't mention "Alias," but in that show, he, within the first episode, killed off a character that was shaping up to be a main force in the show. Both are great examples of doing really stupid, really strange things very early in a series to shake up expectations of the show.

After seeing the pilot cut of "Fringe," I can verify that Abrams does take similar risks and shows you stuff you do not expect from this show within this first episode. It starts like a police procedural and drifts quickly into "X-Files" type territory, hitting some big twists and unexpected plot points, even within the first half of the pilot.

I guess this might be the thing that makes an Abrams project unique. Most shows establish early in their first season they have set boundaries that they are going to live within. They do this by not surprising us too much in those early episodes. Abrams never really goes this route. The reason "Lost" blew up was that we never really did establish what the show exactly was about, let alone what genre it was. We still haven't really found this out.

"Fringe" is set up in a similar way. It hovers through a few genres and shows us a number of things that just can't make sense yet. It leaves us only comfortable enough to accept the confusion it creates. While this is a great strategy for making intelligent, challenging, ground-breaking television, "Lost" might have been the first time this strategy translated into giant viewing numbers. ("The Prisoner," for instance, via similar techniques, had some followers, but didn't score the same share and revenue as "Lost" has managed to score.)

It's nice to get a little insight into how Abrams exploits this tension between the comfort of the expected and the thrill of the unexpected in his shows. Even if it's not as brilliant as "Lost," "Fringe" pays off on this philosophy. You settle into the rhythms of the show just long enough to be really pleased with the syncopation.

Head over to io9 for their coverage of the conference call about "Fringe."

A Brief Note: J.J. Abrams also tried this approach much less effectively with the ill-fated show "6 Degrees." I personally liked it, and I could tell it was struggling to get out of it's drama-rut and into more interesting Abrams territory. I guess it just never got a chance to get out of that rut before it was cancelled.

"Stuff White People Like" in a Special Feature Called "Stuff Stephen Sorta Likes Now"

2008-08-25T21:09:00.002-05:00

(above: "Stuff White People Like" founder, Christian Lander, with a bunch of things that white people like)

Ok this site is growing on me. Very seriously. I stand by what I said previously, but after reading the Onion A.V. Club interview with the creator, the site makes more sense. And also hits home a bit more. I think "Stuff White People Like" is still a stupid name, and the idea that this is how white people behave is ridiculous. But I think the idea that the website is criticizing the things that its creator recognizes are ridiculous about him is much more fascinating.

The guy describes his site as a mirror for himself, to see that most of the stuff he likes is ludicrous and deserves a little lighthearted making-fun-of. In this context, a site called something closer to "Stuff We Like" might give his message more force. That so many people find it's stereotyping legitimate and funny is still a little disconcerting. The site's popularity still relys on a culture that loves simple and easy categorizations or generalizations.

But the creator seems less concerned with overgeneralization and stereotyping than with a little self-deprecation. When I see the site as he describes it, as the mirror that its creator intends it to be, the content is really growing on me.

An example, from the article on "The Wire": "In white culture, giving away information about a film or TV series is considered as rude as spitting on your mothers grave. It is an unforgivable offense."

Again, I'd prefer something like "In our culture..." or "For many people...", and I would also prefer some more elegant prose, but there is no denying the humor in this ridicule of an obviously idiotic, and obviously quite wide-spread, attitude.

OK, I admit. I am now almost a fan of "Stuff White People Like." Crap.

HP Ads: Celebrities and their Data

2008-08-21T16:37:00.002-05:00

Over at Global Nerdy, a blog I do not follow (I found the link through BoingBoing), they've collected some great YouTube videos of celebrity endorsements for computers. Above is the Jerry Seinfeld clip from HP, which is pretty funny. The rest of the collected HP clips are at the bottom, and they stand out from most computer ads in that they show people interacting with data, not props. Usually, they don't even show the faces of the celebs, they just let the data about them speak to who they are. The photos, music and information of these people is presented in a literally hands-on fashion. It can be pretty fascinating to watch.

I could go on about identity thgouh data, the increasingly "personal" nature of computers, or even a personal favorite topic, information aesthetics, but I'll just let you watch and enjoy these clever ads.

LINK!

More Joss Whedon Fanboy Ranting: Buffy Episode "Family"

2008-08-21T00:18:00.001-05:00

(above: a still from the "Buffy" episode entitled "Family")

I will apologize up front for going off in a very fanboy direction in this post, focusing on specific details of a specific episode of a specific television show. I just happened to really like the "Buffy" episode I saw tonight. It's called "Family," and it gets right what a lot of teen dramas get wrong.

Let me first do a short, spoiler-free post, and then I will move on to the bigger stuff. Basically, now-regular cast member Tara is celebrating her birthday when her family shows up and reminds her of some troubling things in her family history. The way that Tara and the gang of other regular Buffy supporters, known affectionately as the Scooby Gang, deal with Tara's uncertainties and her family reveals a lot about what makes the show work: the genuineness of the interaction between characters. The episode contrasts Tara's real, backwards family with her much more accepting and loving "family" in Sunnydale. "Buffy" excels as a "Doctor Who" style mythology-driven show as well as a high school drama, but when those two elements combine to bring out fully-developed characters and their interactions, as in this episode, that is when the show is at its best.

Ok. There is the spoiler-cleansed version. Now below, spoilers follow, so do not read this unless you have seen the episode. I mean it. It's some MAJOR spoilerage for people that have not seen the episode or the ones leading up to it. It will ruin your experience of the episodes leading up to this one as well as this one itself. Please return after watching.

In the previous few episodes, the recent arrival of Dawn in the regular cast and in Buffy's life have challenged the notion of family in the series. Buffy's recent discovery that Dawn isn't actually family shook up Buffy's perception of what family is supposed to be. In the previous episode, however, Buffy expresses her feelings to Dawn that she will always see her as a sister, even if her actual status as family isn't entirely legit.

So when Tara's witchcraft-hating family shows up in Sunnydale, Tara has to deal with the same kinds of issues. Her father tries to oppress her into leaving her now-close friends so as not to expose them to her dark side or her more insidious practices of witchcraft. Of course Tara feels pressured by her family, thus setting off the more conventional Buffyesque plot, including spells to hide this demonic side, development of the season's major plot, and some stuff with Spike and Harmony, etcetera.

The heart of the episode, however, is not in the witchcraft and slaying plot, but in the story of Tara slowly realizing that an oppressive family is no family at all in the end. The Scooby gang, through a touching and pitch-perfect confrontation with Tara's father, show that Tara has found a new, more supportive family with her friends and the love of her life, Willow.

I'm sort of glossing over the obvious parallels between a family that is unsupportive of a witch daughter and a family that is unsupportive of a lesbian daughter. Cousin Beth (deftly played by clearly brilliant actress Amy Adams) even accuses Tara of living "G-d knows what kind of lifestyle." But the fluidity of romantic relationships crops up a lot in Buffy (and Doctor Who and Torchwood), so I'll deal with that, possibly, in another post.

Besides, this fluidity of romantic love is outshined in this episode by the fluidity of the concept of family. The capstone on the episode comes when Tara has chosen her supportive Sunnydale family over her paranoid and somewhat abusive actual family. In the final scene, Willow acknowledges that she is proud of Tara for becoming a fully formed individual, a woman of power and individuality, despite coming from a pretty messed up family. Tara seems to attribute this new found inner strength to her Sunnydale family, specifically Willow, in the final dialogue of the episode.

Whedon has stated that a lot of "Buffy" is about self-actualization, specifically with his female leads. He has acknowledged that he developed the concept as a response to the horror movie cliche of the helpless girl who screams a lot and is run down and killed. As a result of this impetus for the series, some of the strongest moments in "Buffy" consist not of big boss fights or killing, but of characters finding comfort with themselves and with the important people in their lives. "Family" is no exception; seeing Tara come into her own and find a new "family" is a very rewarding experience.

"Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog" Better than LonelyGirl15

2008-08-06T18:51:00.001-05:00

(Above: promo image for Dr. Horrible)

Ok. "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog" is a super hero story. It's also a sort of drama-adventure. It's a love story. It's certainly a comedy. And it's generally pretty awesome.

And even while "Dr. Horrible" is pretty brilliant and genre-defying, it's also format-defying. It's a video diary, a weblog, a 3-episode internet television series, a movie, and a musical. It's available for paid download on iTunes. It's available streaming free from Hulu. It's coming out on an extras-laden DVD, including musical commentary. It's even going to be a soundtrack CD.

And all of this from master of teen sci-fi and fantasy Joss Whedon as a diversion during the writers' strike. Whedon and his pals (including Neil Patrick Harris and Nathan Fillion) had nothing to do during the strike, so they did this. It was released in three parts with 2-day intervals between each part, and now that it's done, it's modestly sweeping the entertainment world, online and off. "Dr. Horrible" was inexpensive to produce, it's high quality, and it has reached a wide audience over the internet alone. Not bad for people who were just out to make each other laugh at a stupid super villain story.

Something like this has to have an impact on how television is made and distributed, doesn't it?

Go watch the trailer at YouTube, then the whole thing at Hulu. You won't be disappointed; this internet-only series created by a group of friends is clearly leaps better than most television series created by leagues of professionals and executives. And stay tuned: I mentioned an upcoming DVD and CD, but there are also whispers about a possible Act 4...

NOTE: I also mentioned LonelyGirl15 in the title of this post, and since that prototypical blog-fiction series just came to an end, expect a post about it in the nearish future. Or maybe about blog-fiction in general...

mwesch's Digital Ethnography Introduction to YouTube

2008-07-29T20:20:00.001-05:00

(above: screenshot from MadV's "One World" campaign, via the wikiwiki)

One of my personal favorite thinkers working with emergent technology and culture right now, Professor Michael Wesch, has posted a new video on his YouTube account. He has previously tackled topics such as the meaning of Web 2.0 and technology's role in involving students in learning. His work inspired me to do my final senior thesis on Web 2.0 in secondary education (I can post that if there is an interest...).

And now Professor Wesch has released a new video, over here. This lecture and accompanying video presentation is intended to be an overview or introduction to the community that YouTube supports and has created. It makes sense, the video seems to be saying, that if YouTube is a community, anthropologists should be able to examine and think about this community. Thus, Prof. Wesch and his digital ethnography group tackled this task, and the result is summed up in the video. It's an hour long, but it's one hell of an hour.

The video also references some other fascinating user generated content in its exploration of YouTube as a culture and community. Some of the best examples are a cut-up tribute to remix and DIY culture set to a Regina Spektor song, a compilation video of various YouTubers displaying their distilled philosophies and mantras on the palms of their hands, and a particularly touching message from a community member that has found support within this community in a time of hardship, a time soon after the death of his infant child.

These examples are touching, life-affirming and often brilliant. The things that I love about YouTube are summed up in Prof. Wesch's talk on the community.

I offer one final entry to the overwhelming bestiary that is the multitude of flavors of community-building on YouTube: the Vlog Brothers. In a subsequent entry, I will talk more in depth about these guys, but here is one example. In this video, over here, writer John Green geeks out over "The Catcher in the Rye" and calls for an English-lesson-style online book club to talk about it. Not just an "I like it / I don't like it" discussion, but a literary analysis.

What is amazing about the video is not that John Green has the audacity to suggest that a group of people do a non-mandatory summer reading project on a classic book, but that people, as indicated in these video responses, will actually do it. People are looking forward to it.

So even Professor Michael Wesch can't begin to imagine the ongoing effects of our emergent technologies becoming our culture. That's why it's so fascinating; none of us can imagine it, but it's happening anyway, it's making a difference in how people live.

New Radiohead Video Claims It Uses No Cameras, But...

2008-07-17T21:49:00.001-05:00

(Above: a shot from Radiohead's new "House of Cards" video)

Radiohead claim their new video for "House of Cards," available here, uses no cameras. Let's first recap what cameras are, then talk about their process, and, if it still seems necessary after both of those discussions, talk about why "no cameras" may not have been the best choice of words.

A camera is a device that collects reflected light, then structures the collected information into a two dimensional portrayal of three dimensional space.

The device used for Radiohead's video, as explained in the behind the scenes clip here, is a device that collects reflected light (in this case an array of lasers), then structures the collected information (using computers) into a three dimensional-seeming two dimensional portrayal of three dimensional space.

So in other words, the "non-camera" used here is still basically a camera, but saying "a music video made with no cameras" sounds better than "a music video that uses fancy new and complicated cameras."

The whole thing also reminds me of this Polyphonic Spree video, a music video made with "no video whatsoever." In actuallity, it's just succesive still images shown quickly one after another to create the illusion of motion. Or, wait, that actually sounds a lot like the definition of motion pictures.

In both cases, the processes are noteworthy for being creative approaches to film, the former reaching forward to 3-d imaging and the latter reaching backward to the early days of film, but both using different types of cameras, despite being hyped as camera-less. Another lesson in never believing the hype, I suppose.

Don't get me wrong, both come out looking pretty cool.

But here's the fascinating part about Radiohead's video: granted the whole thing had to be created from a giant data set, one that could be used for many possible applications and visualizations. As a result, over at Google Code, Radiohead have released their entire data set from which their video is constructed. The data set is available for free, and now anyone can use the data to construct their own version of the 3-d imaging video. Best part is, people are actually doing it!

NOTE: Stereogum brought this video and its circumstances to my attention.

The Philosophy of the Possible: Why "Solaris" Succeeds

2008-07-10T20:11:00.001-05:00

Above: an image from "Solaris"
A quick warning: this review contains no major spoilers, but it does contain minor ones.

I finally saw Steven Soderbergh's version of "Solaris," my first exposure to this story. While many critics saw the film as succeeding or failing in various degrees, many agreed that the film was essentially a space-bound love story. But for those of you that felt the love story was rather undeveloped or that the ideas in the film seemed more complex and interesting than the plot let on, I can assure you that you are not alone.

The story is simple enough science fiction: a new planet dubbed "Solaris" has been discovered, but something strange is happening to those researching it. The something strange, in this case, is that people who are important to those researchers begin appearing in the flesh on the research satellite above the mysterious planet. In George Clooney's case, it's his long-dead wife. For another researcher, it's his still-alive but earthbound son. And for some, it's far more complex.

The thread uniting these apparitions is that the resurrected individuals are among the most important in the lives of those to whom they appear. They also remember their lives as their counterparts remember it, whether that memory is accurate or not.

With the current position of scientific discovery in mind, there are many right answers (and many wrong answers) to the question of how these beings actually appear. Even a little scientific forecasting can give us an interesting story about Higgs bosons and Higgs fields holding these new creatures together (this is the route the film goes, in fact). But eventually that science can be proven wrong or right. Eventually the science becomes no more than MacGuffin, nothing more than the "Higgs field" holding the movie together. And finally, as science catches up to science fiction, something remains beyond those predictable scientific explanations, something more lasting and more intriguing.

That remaining something in "Solaris" is a series of questions, some about humanity and some about things above and beyond what humanity can see or figure out.

Regarding the former, the obviously captivating question is whether these apparitions are "life," are "human." The film asks whether these newly-created individuals, whose experiences are limited to those remembered by other people, are actually people themselves. Sure they are facsimiles of the dead or departed, but are they just new copies? What does it mean to kill them? What does it mean to love them?

But even while these provocative questions about memory, loss, guilt, humanity and psychology drive the film's narrative, an even more fascinating question from the second category hangs just behind the veil of the space opera: What are these people? How are they formed, apparently, out of something so ephemeral as memories? And why do they pop into existence in this place alone?

In short, the driving question, the question that drags "Solaris" out of pulp sci-fi territory, even out of psychological thriller territory, and into the philosophy of the possible, is Why?

The location and mechanisms of the apparition phenomenon implies that the planet, Solaris, is creating them. The planet is apparently receiving something from the people studying it from above, decoding it, and sending back something else, something it has encoded. In short, Solaris is trying to communicate.

And that is what fascinates me most about "Solaris." While some science fiction amounts essentially to stories told in space, great science fiction proposes fundamental questions about the world and ourselves and then ventures a guess as to how they might, or might not, be answered. "Contact" did this in a similar manner. "2001" did, too. Even "Sunshine," while not universal loved, attempted this kind of ideological exploration.

In one telling exchange, George Clooney's character asks one of the apparitions what Solaris wants. The film recognizes the inherent human bias in expecting any intelligence to want something from us, and the apparition responds, "why do you think it has to want something?" "Solaris" is willing to get past the trappings of conventional science fiction and ask this difficult question, among a plethora of other equally interesting questions.

This kind of fundamental exploration of what it means to be alive, this kind of casting off of our human biases in favor of something inexplicable, is what makes "Solaris" a truly lasting, truly invigorating science fiction movie.

NOTES: Stanislaw Lem, author of the original novel from which "Solaris" is adapted, has also expressed concern at calling the film a "love story." The ideas he discusses in this article serve to underscore just what makes "Solaris" far more interesting than your average pulp science fiction story.

"Stuff White People Like" in a Special Feature Called "Stuff Stephen Dislikes"

2008-07-09T19:46:00.001-05:00

Above: the McDonald sandwich, at one point the Most Expensive Sandwich.

You know what white people love nowadays? They love "Stuff White People Like."

Here's some background. This website has been gaining popularity over the course of almost a year now. It purports to chronicle the things that every white person likes. This includes fancy sandwiches, graduate degrees, and girls with bangs. The site has been emailed around from white person to white person, each one laughing more than the last. The site's popularity culminated with the release of a book by the same name early this month.

But something is wrong. Sure, the site has become more and more popular, but a vast majority of white people have probably never heard of it. For instance, a portion of the white community doesn't even have internet access in their homes. An even larger portion can't afford "fancy sandwiches." In fact, the number one thing that white people like is not "outdoor performance clothes" like "North Face." It's probably NASCAR.

It's true, the white people that send funny emails to each other and spend most of their days on the internet and drink Starbucks love the things that "Stuff White People Like" tells them they love. But the white people who live in small towns and know how to care for cows and can't afford a latte every day wouldn't even understand the appeal of "Stuff White People Like."

Maybe the site is just misnamed. Maybe it means "Stuff Upper Middle Class / Yuppie White People Like," but that also might prove to be untrue. But I think the problem goes to something deeper, something more human than just the name the creators chose.

The problem comes from another thing that a lot of people, white or not, like: a lot of people like oversimplifying things. A lot of people like categorizing each other. They like other races to be homogenized, separate. They like stereotypes.

And nowhere is this more evident than on "Stuff White People Like." The site even mentions the white person's apparently hypocritical love of diversity, saying that white people think having easy access to multinational restaurants is the height of diversity. This article explains the tendency to view other cultures as something to "Experience," something definable, something purchasable. But the site's very premise is to oversimplify the white population in a similar manner, reducing the individual to a stereotype.

The black population in America has worked long and hard to overcome society's pressure on them to fit into categories, to be simple and to be what we expect them to be. Their struggle is not over, and it remains one of America's lasting problems. But a problem like that cannot go away in a society that lets our desire to describe and simplify our world affect the way we see and treat each other.

I would like to think we live in a world that celebrates diversity, not makes a sham of it, not discourages it. Sure, "Stuff White People Like" is good for a laugh. But then again so were blackface minstrel shows back in the day. Does that make either one less damaging?

NOTE: for a much more well-thought-out article hitting on some of the same themes as this post, see here. Here's a quote: "The reason the phrase 'it's funny because it's true' has become a shorthand for things that are neither (a) funny nor (b) particularly true is because humor is rarely truly satirical when its targets also make up the bulk of its audience."

Commentary on Audio Fidelity in the Form of a Coldplay Review

2008-07-08T20:35:00.001-05:00

Above: Coldplay's newest record.

I am a Coldplay fan. I am unashamed to admit it. I consider my "guilty pleasures" to simply be "pleasures," and Coldplay has been one of those pleasures for many years, dating back to early high school.

And whether you are a fan or not, it'd be hard for you to get through the months preceding a Coldplay record release without hearing about it. Mainstream media covers it, YouTube offers sneak peeks, posters go up, and eventually an epic Mac ad comes out featuring those doe-eyed british songsters.

This burst of market exposure, Coldplay-related or otherwise, is certainly a product of our times. Widely available media translates directly to widely available marketing planks. It also translates to widely available digital bootlegs and pre-release streamed copies of records. But another unfortunate side effect of the explosion of exposure space is the diminished fidelity of any audio this exposure brings us.

Let me illustrate this general principal with the specific case of Coldplay's newest record. The record was made available as a stream a few weeks before release, so many people got their first taste of the new material from a low-quality streaming music player on Coldplay's website. I personally got my first taste this way. Which is too bad.

After getting my CD copy of the record and taking some time to climb inside it and explore the space it creates, I found that Coldplay's songwriting abilities have not improved drastically since their inception. I found, instead, that this new record (entitled "Viva La Vida or Death and All of His Friends") was a sonicly complex and invigorating album.

From the opener, called "Life in Technicolor," the blippy synthesizer serves as a sort of beacon in the middle of a cavern of other sounds, the waves of other synthesizers crashing all around as the dulcimer-sounding rythmes and acoustic guitar push the song wider and wider.

The opening instrumental song is a macrocosm for the rest of the record as well. Every track finds a way to carve an interesting sonic territory and then proceeds to push to the edges of that territory. The Brian Eno production is no doubt to blame for most of this, but the band manages to provide some fascinating sounds and texture for Eno to work with. The songs are essentially as well-written as anything on "A Rush of Blood to the Head" and certainly better than almost all of "X&Y," but the febric of these songs is something new for Coldplay; the band is using the bricks of its arena-rock and adult contemporary image to build something more intricate, more expansive.

Now flash back to my first taste of the record. I was sitting in front of my computer, Coldplay.com widget loaded and mouse on the play button. The suspense was killing me. Then came my first audio taste of "Life in Technicolor."

What a dissapointment. Through that compressed audio stream, "Life in Technicolor" sounded like a muddled "X&Y" outtake. It flitted by, leaving little to no impression. And the rest of the album delivered nothing spectacular, with the wide expanse of "Lost!" sounding more like a drone and the punch of "Violet Hill" sounding like a listless, empty pop song.

Imagine my surprise when I finally got my hands on the full quality CD. The album came alive, expanding in size and scope. The songs were still a little bit of a dissapointment, but the sound and the structure revealed the sonic spelunking expedition the record actually was.

I'm not going to claim that my experience is typical of the average Coldplay listener. On the contrary, most people probably don't care what level of fidelity their music comes in, they just want the music. Good on those people. I just hope that this trend of low-quality YouTube videos and crappy record streams doesn't change the sound of my music any more than it already has.

NOTE: I had the same experience with Sigur Ros's new record, which I now believe is one of their finest. If anyone has had similar experiences, I would love to hear them.

Fine, Then Jack Kerouac Isn't a Writer Either

2008-07-01T02:08:00.001-05:00

(image source: the Sports Oasis)

The Bissinger vs. Deadspin adventure is basically over, and Deadspin has marked the occasion with a level-headed email exchange with Mr. Bissinger. This one is not nearly as interesting as the video I posted about a few weeks ago, because a) there is not nearly as much swearing and yelling, and b) the two parties have already made their positions clear. But, as I told my friend Hudi (thanks for the link again, by the by), the email exchange serves the important purpose of showing that, even without the histrionics, Mr. Bissinger is no less wrong.

Check it out here.

Also note, Mr. Bissinger says that what bloggers do "isn't writing. That is just vomiting on the page." But great classic writer Truman Capote once said that Jack Kerouac's writing style in "On The Road" was not writing, just typing. Kerouac is now considered by some to be as entrenched a classic writer as Capote...

This Post is Entirely Safe For Work

2008-05-29T14:13:00.001-05:00

(Drew Curtis, founder of Fark)

The popular trademark blog Trademork covered a story about the phrase "not safe for work" late last year. Apparently, popular news blog / forum Fark.com applied for a trademark to protect their use of the acronym "NSFW." The application was filed in November of 2007 and was denied in March 2008.

I guess there are three ways to view this. One is that Fark wanted to protect their use of the mark, that they wanted to be the only ones permitted to use the acronym. This seems pretty unlikely, since the mark is so widely used that Fark would have a hell of a time trying to sue all of them. Fark also officially issued a statement that this was not their intention (here).

Another possibility: Fark had an elaborate joke planned that uses the trademark. Even if this is true, as they hint in their statement, I can't imagine it being very funny.

The way I see it, this case is an example of the trademark process at work successfully. The mark is so widely used by internet forums and blogs that it has no association with Fark. Maybe Fark thinks that when people think of content that is "not safe for work," they think immediately of Fark. But it seems to me Fark just doesn't understand the real function of Trademarks. Trademark isn't a method for getting "squatter's rights" to a phrase just by being the first to use it. It's a method for protecting brand.

People sort of see trademarks as a big stick to hit people with if they use your trademark. But trademark should probably operate more like a wall, a structure that separates companies and their brands from each other. It grows naturally from the culture of branding in modern commerce, and it operates in the marketplace as walls operate in a mall; the stores are separated for the benefit of customers to choose which they will use. This is the ostensible function of trademark law, too.

That's why a trademark on such a functional phrase just doesn't make sense in this context. The name "Fark" and any symbols associated with it are trademarkable but "NSFW" isn't, in the same sense that "Starbucks" is trademarkable but "hot coffee" isn't.

References:
Trademork Article
Trademark Office Documents

Bissinger Vs. Leitch: How to Look Like a Fool to a New Generation

2008-05-14T14:22:00.001-05:00

Above: Buzz Bissinger, a man about to have no job.

From what I understand, and from what my friend Hudi tells me, Buzz Bissinger is a reputable commentator and writer in most respects. He writes about sports in many conventional newspapers and magazines, or old media outlets. He is also responsible for the sports-media steamroller, "Friday Night Lights," which, in addition to being a book, became a movie and then a television show. The man is arguably making a lot of money off of the fact that subjects transcend media and can find incarnations in at least three different forms of media.

But why would I bring up that last bit? Why does it matter that Bissinger's money and fame depend at least in part on his ability to create something that can succeed in multiple different media?

The answer lies in a prominent viewpoint that he frequently expresses, most vitriolically on a sports show called "Costas Now" with well-known sports blogger, Will Leitch. In this segment, Bissinger expressed what Wikipedia calls his "self professed 'abiding hatred' of blogs" via personal attacks on Leitch, the founder and operator of popular sports blog Deadspin.

You can watch the video for yourself to get a taste of the kind of hateful, personally-directed language Bissinger used. And new media bloggers and news outlets have had a field day criticizing his rhetorical methods. Indeed, apparently even people who agree with him feel his message is lost in his caustic speech methods. But I'm here to tell you that, even if Buzz Bissinger were level-headed and even remotely likeable, he would still be on the wrong side of this issue, intellectually and, interestingly enough, morally.

First of all, from an intellectual standpoint, Bissinger finds himself arguing an indefensible point. His argument is that the print media and traditional sports coverage methods are superior to blogs, most notably because the blogs are mean and focused too much on entertainment and not on sports analysis. He insists that blogs are just plain wrong. Here are the three reasons why this viewpoint cannot be sustained:

1. Sports are entertainment. Sports analysis and coverage are to increase that entertainment. People who think it is fun to analyze the numbers and talk seriously about the coaching and managing decisions of their favorite teams go to sources that do precisely that. And they go to those sources because they are entertaining. People who go to blogs that talk about how stupid certain coaches are and how certain players are behaving off the field/court/ice/etc. go there for the same reason that people go to Bissinger's old media: to be entertained. The goals of the two media are no different; they are there to make sports more entertaining in whatever way works for their audience. Without this goal, sports writing wouldn't exist.

2. Blogs are mean, but so is traditional sports coverage. Bissinger complains that blogs waste time spewing "hate." But what should blogs be using this time for? The same thing that, for instance, "Costas Now" does, which is often registering distaste for people in the sports world? The only distinction between television and magazine sports coverage and blog sports coverage is a matter of degree, not a matter of one being hateful and the other not. And that degree is, again, determined by what their audience can stomach or even what their audience wants. And that brings me to...

3. Blogs, unlike most old media, are interactive to the level that modern media consumers demand. Books were fine as dominant media for a generation that didn't expect immediate results from their media. Newspapers were more immediate next, but that wasn't good enough for the television generation, which came to expect "breaking news updates." Now, in the post-breaking-news world, people expect to be able to comment on their news and to link people to it and to have an almost infinite selection of choices for how they get their news, be it sports news or otherwise. In Bissinger's world, this normal upswing in demand for interactivity should stop with his generation. What he needs is a dose of reality; his generation will eventually not be alive anymore, and the generation that he keeps criticizing will have the option of dismissing his generation's output, an outcome that looks increasingly certain the more he demands that media not evolve and audiences stop having expectations.

And that's only on the intellectual foundations of Bissinger's argument. He even has shaky ground to stand on from a moral standpoint. Remember how I mentioned that Bissinger's most succesful property was "Saturday Night Lights," something which gets him book royalties, movie royalties, and even still-running television show royalties?

Well, the natural development of the "Friday Night Lights" story from true events into book, then into movie, and finally into television, is a result of the precise new media conventions that he is criticizing. His high-minded story of triumph book became a populist drama story of triumph on the big screen, and it wound up a pretty straight populist drama on television, all because this is what the audience wanted. In essence, the kind of audience-driven content that Bissinger criticizes is what lines his pockets on a daily basis. There is a moral hipocricy in saying that his method for audience exploitation is somehow better than a blog's method to the same ends.

All told, Bissinger, in addition to coming across as a blowhard with a chip on his shoulder, comes across as an ill-informed relic of an almost-gone era of media. His tirades in support of the finer quality of print sports coverage and old media sounds more like the cries of a man that fears his job is almost gone. He has his supporters, but, thankfully for anyone that likes their media responsive to their demands, those supporters are dwindling. The world of blogs like Deadspin is growing, and the world of magazines, newspapers, and fossils like Bissinger is shrinking fast.

If Bissinger still wants to have a job in five years' time, maybe he should start a blog.

Related: a sweet post from the Washington Post, old media giants, via their blog. This particular writer has the unique position of having written for the newspaper and for their blog. It's great. Here it is.

Housekeeping!

2008-05-11T23:21:00.001-05:00

- andrew at "radio free tobias" did a sort of commentary on the Anonymous protests in columbus. go read it.

- i have entries brewing concerning a recent blogs-meet-old-media fiasco and a trademark disaster waiting to turn into a fiasco. stay tuned.

- i also wanted to do an overview of some of the movies i have seen recently. but i might not.

- i also wanted to write a little about daniel tammet, though i recognize that intrepid readers will not need to read a blog entry by me on the subject now that i have mentioned the guy's name (that's what google's for).

- i'm thinking of striking capitalization from my blog, as a statement on the entrenched conventions of old media and their possible irrelevance in a new-media world.

so stay tuned for better, more interesting updates as soon as i finish school and get my job sorted out.

The Perfect Woody Allen Film

2008-02-14T03:22:00.001-06:00

It's called "Manhattan." And it was made in 1979.

It's one of the most beautifully shot films I have ever seen. Woody Allen has always been a source for easy laughs as well as some pretty complex gags, but until I saw this film, I never thought of him as a high visual artist. His economy of space is Wellesian. His sense of balance and tone is on par with the finest noir films as well as the most affecting of classical emotional dramas.

The whole thing just exudes beauty and confidence, two things that Woody Allen has arguably made a career of avoiding.

But maybe that's what makes it such a brilliant film. Finally we get the nebbish, weak-willed, unjustifiably egomaniacal Woody character presented in a coherent, confident manner. This is a film that is, at it's heart, a story of love and loss and the desire for simplicity and the eventual acceptance of complexity. It's got as many layers as "Annie Hall" did, but it surpasses that film in its visual acuity and sheer cohesiveness of vision.

Honestly, I realize I'm heaping praise on this film. But the things that I love about Woody Allen are all here, but without the things I didn't like. It's like a director I like finally made a film that I love.

Maybe modern romantic comedy directors can take a hint from this one. Maybe modern romantic comedies can afford to slow down, take their time, and try to engross the viewer in the world of the story, instead of just invite some chuckles and go for the easy emotion. "Manhattan" is a film that stands as a tribute to New York City as it was when the film was made, but it just reaches so much deeper into what it means to be American, what it means to grow up, what it means to have integrity and to feel love. This is one that, despite its age, remains relevant today.

Try saying that about "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days" when about 30 years have passed.

This Is What Anonymous Actually Believes

2008-02-12T02:12:00.001-06:00

"Anonymous" is in the news a lot recently. Last Sunday (the tenth) marked an internationally coordinated cacophony of protests outside of Scientology headquarters buildings. Staggering numbers like 600 protesters in Los Angeles and over 9000 protesters worldwide appear to be exaggerations, but these figures are, in fact, verified. Whoever "Anonymous" are, they really spurred people to act on their "war against Scientology."

But who are "Anonymous?" News organizations have called them everything from "internet hate machine" to something closer to subversive vigilantes. The most common description pegs them as a loosely organized "band of hackers." And, honestly, this description is not far from where "Anonymous" starts.

A slew of "image boards" are peppered all over the interwebs, places where people can post pictures and write comments to go with them. One such very popular image board is called 4chan, and one reason why 4chan is so popular is that it requires no registration to post. People with no real identity can freely dump images onto this board with no fear of repercussions. In essence, posters on this site, regardless of how stupid, insipid, or vile their posts may be, can remain anonymous.

The power of such a gathering of entirely anonymous people with little else to do was realized by this group rather quickly. The group tried a few small excursions into other internet societies, and even executed some large-scale havoc in a place called Habbo hotel. Through the course of these raids, these collected individuals, with their sometimes asinine wit and often grotesque folderfulls of jpegs, became known as "Anonymous."

And so some think the story is essentially over. These computer-savvy, so-called "hackers" trolled around the net (and, more recently, in real life and in front of Scientology buildings) and became the "internet hate machine" now known as "Anonymous."

But I know better than to believe that marked the end of the story. That was only the beginning. And I know this because I am a "member" of "Anonymous."

I bet you are all shocked to hear this. Stephen? That wuss? Part of an internet hate machine? A hacker? A member of a group being called an international terrorist organization by Scientology? There is no way, I hear you sputtering.

But it's true. I am part of "Anonymous." But here's the part that will shock you even more. You probably are, too.

"Anonymous," as an organization, is a misnomer, a myth. Calling "Anonymous" an organization is much like calling the crowd at the mall an organization; the mall crowd just happens to all want the same thing, namely, Cinnabon.

In the case of Anonymous (without the quotes; this is the real Anonymous), the one thing that the whole group wants is the ability to express themselves without fear of repercussions. Much like they did on 4chan and Facebook and Ebaum's World and in hallways and restaurants and schools, Anonymous just wants to find friends and humor in the world without fear that their search for humor will get them harassed or injured. In short, they, or more accurately we, just want to pursue our life, liberty and happiness (in the case of 4chan, happiness often means a particularly shockingly offensive brand of potty humor, but who are we to judge?).

The point is, if you find yourself thinking that people have a right to all of the facts of a situation before they make a decision, you are a prime candidate for Anonymous. And if you support that feeling by telling people that they need to start sharing that information or you might tell all of your friends and maybe start some trouble, you already are Anonymous.

And that is all it takes: a realization that the fundamental rights that we all want for ourselves and each other deserve to be protected, and the willingness to come out in droves to make that message clear. Literally all it takes to become a functioning member of Anonymous is to read a book here and there and give a shit about the world around you.

So we all are Anonymous to some extent. And some of Anonymous think that the rest of Anonymous are twats for putting on masks and trolling Scientology buildings. But we all agree that people deserve the truth about major religions before they start giving them all of their money, not after. And that is what makes us part of Anonymous.

Did you ever see that movie "V for Vendetta?" That iconic mask that V and his followers wear has become a symbol for Anonymous. And it's no surprise when you look at the substance of the film. One of the most powerful messages of that film is that, even when we all fear for our individual safety to the point of having to hide behind masks and become anonymous, as long as we stand as a unified society of anonymous believers in higher ideals, those ideals will triumph.

And this is what Anonymous actually believes.

Reference: Project Chanology on Encyclopedia Dramatica
It's convoluted, but all of the details and press coverage are there.

tl;dr: we are all Anonymous.

Managing my Online Presence

2008-01-17T02:12:00.001-06:00

I am all over the internet.

I've got a facebook for myself, a facebook for The Economists, a myspace for the same, this blog for writing, my vox blog for the Chicago Mixtape Project, my last.fm page... it's more than I can handle at this point. I didn't even mention the fact that I am registered at flixster, linked in, xanga, photobucket, and more. I kind of want to reign it all into one place, but no such place exists.

So for now, this blog will be importing into my facebook feed and the vox blog will continue updates, just not via the facebook, unless I specifically want to mention one of its posts. I'd like to combine blogger's ease of text-based use and pretty, personally designed template with vox's ability to host streaming audio and facebook's handy, offline-interaction-modeled social network, but as of now that option does not exist.

All of that is a complicated way of saying that I have reorganized the way my interaction with the internet is made manifest, most noticeably through facebook, and created a more cohesive platform for writing (one that holds together my posts and my ideas a little better than the facebook notes feature and allows for more writing, something I have been neglecting during law school). I'm essentially trying to channel as much of my internet information through facebook, my preferred social network.

Here's a good question that you either are asking or should be asking: what the hell am I talking about? Why does this matter?

Well, for starters, do other people think about this? Do people think about how their online persona is constructed? Or even worse, do people perceive their multiple ports for internet interaction as organs in the internet self, as I do? Do people try to reorganize these organs to better serve how they want their internet self to be perceived?

Ok think of it this way: I decide that my ability to juggle is more interesting or important to me than, say, my ability to dance (I, in actuality, do not at all posses the former and rarely showcase the latter). So, I redesign my body in a way that my legs fade into the background as my arms take center stage and become the more important aspect of my being. I, as you may be well aware, have no ability to prioritize how I present my physical body. I do, however, have the ability to prioritize my online body. Which is what I am trying to do with this recent switch-up.

Anyone wanna share some thoughts on this internet body that we all possess, whether we think about it in those terms (as I do) or not?

Children of Men

2008-01-15T16:42:00.001-06:00

I was riding the subway home today and an idea struck me. It was a stupid idea, but I think I might run with it anyway.

I was thinking about film, about some of the movies that I have seen recently. It occurred to me that, in many cases, the things that I felt some movies tried to develop or the methods they tried to use were cool, but "Children of Men" did them better. This is true of a lot of things: the commitment to a single character in "Juno" and the reliance on that connection for emotional development, the subjective sound in nearly every war movie, the camera angles and motions in "Cloverfield" meant to immerse us in a world, the commitment to realism and grittiness totally missing from "The Golden Compass" and halfway done correctly in "I Am Legend," the bleak dystopia with rays of hope so idiotically mishandled in "Escape from New York" and "The Omega Man," and so on.

What this left me with was a sense of how "Children of Men" tied together some of the most interesting things in the world of cinema, did them expertly, and innovated to make them work even better. It also left me with the notion that I should try to tackle some of these elements in micro-specific movie reviews, or, as some people know them, essays.

I know, I am in no position to be able to commit time to such an endeavor, an endeavor that could end up the size of a critical treatise. I also have no formal training in cinema, it's critical analysis, etc. But when I watch this film (something that I do relatively regularly), these big ideas pop out and I feel like I want to develop them.

For instance, shoes. Watching what shoes Theo wears as the movie progresses gives us insight into his character. Or staging: Theo's physical position mirrors his emotional position in relation to other characters in many scenes. The use of negative space, the one-scene encapsulated commentaries on art, medicine, or education, the scenery as analysis of the relationship between man and his world...

It's all there. And I want to write about all of it. So... time permitting, I'm gonna. You know, at some point. Not necessarily soon, but in general.

Quality in terms of Relevance

2007-06-20T21:09:00.001-05:00

In my last entry I wrote:

"A note before we begin: 'Quality in terms of relevance,' as discussed in this entry, is not a full appraisal of the quality of some creative endeavor. I link “quality” with possible viewing audience in this article, but only for the purpose of simplifying the discussion. By my definition of “quality in terms of relevance,” a brilliant, touching video that can only draw an audience of ten people is of less “quality” than, say, Die Hard. I know, not true, but for this discussion, in a blog about relevance, this somewhat warped definition of quality is necessary.

Doesn't anyone take issue with this? I essentially claim that the argument that "Weekend at Bernies" is of higher quality than "Rear Window" is a valid one. No one wants to react to this in even a knee-jerk fashion? Highlight a flaw? Agree? Come on.

Creative Impulse pt 1: Internet Creativity and Quality

2007-05-06T19:55:00.002-05:00

(A note before we begin: “Quality in terms of relevance,” as discussed in this entry, is not a full appraisal of the quality of some creative endeavor. I link “quality” with possible viewing audience in this article, but only for the purpose of simplifying the discussion. By my definition of “quality in terms of relevance,” a brilliant, touching video that can only draw an audience of ten people is of less “quality” than, say, Die Hard. I know, not true, but for this discussion, in a blog about relevance, this somewhat warped definition of quality is necessary.)

In my first entry on this weblog, I began discussing the change we have seen in recent years concerning creativity and self-expression. I noted that, given new, easy forms of expression, the sheer volume of personal accounts and weblogs has exploded, let alone the variety of subjects. What I did not spend as much time on was the reason for this explosion and its correlation with the quality of this new output.

In addition to blog posts increasing in number, though, I might add to this discussion the explosion of new music, movies, and visual art content on the internet and, indeed, in offline life (more on this in a later entry, though).

For example, YouTube, as I have also previously mentioned, shows new content continuously that is changing as fast as it is being posted. The subjects of these constantly new videos change as rapidly as the presentation methods, creating an almost real-time mode of expression. This holds true for Flickr (and sites like it) in terms of visual art and for Myspace (and similar sites) in terms of music.

The obvious concern in these situations, given a constant stream of user-generated, amateur-crafted entertainment content, is the quality (in terms of relevance) of such an output.

Let’s look to some examples before we move on. A search on Flickr, the popular photo-organizing site, for the term “art” yields this, this, and this, but it also yields this, this, and this. Value judgments aside, I would say photos of cats hiding under things, baby pajamas and pixilated flags are not necessarily equivalent to the stunning landscapes and sweeping angles of the first three photographs.

Now there may be a market for all six of these examples, but I would wager that the traffic to, for instance, the photo of the Korean outdoor art installation is significantly higher than the traffic to, say, the “America the Beautiful” photoillustration.

So we have established that, in some sense, the presumed quality (as defined by possible market share, at least) of the output on public sharing sites for creative works varies all the way from very low quality (or relevant to a very small audience) to very high quality (meaning relevance for a significantly larger audience).

Put more simply, some internet creativity is just not as relevant or interesting as other internet creativity.

So my question is, how did we get from a point where only products that maintained at least rudimentary relevance could see the light of day to a point where totally irrelevant creative output is more easily found than the relevant stuff? Or has popular art always been mostly irrelevant, but not as obviously so?

Is our society now encouraging crappy art over well put together art? And if so, how did that happen?

I invite your responses on this topic before I post my theory in a follow-up to this entry. Please share your thoughts, be they about internet creativity and the general decline in quality of this content, or even about my definition of quality in terms of relevance.

The Blasphemy Challenge

2007-04-11T23:00:00.001-05:00

In the Christian tradition, faith in the holy spirit can save any person from the pain and suffering of eternal damnation. Only one sin, however, according to the “Blasphemy Challenge,” cannot be forgiven in such a manner. This is the sin of denying that holy spirit, of denying the power of the Christian savior. Of blasphemy.

Of course this idea rubs many people the wrong way. Some deny the fundamental ideas behind it, others rally around it in support, and still more claim it’s just not that simple. An idea like this can create ripples on the pond of human interaction. And what better way to monitor these ripples (or even amplify them) than to use the tools that society uses to express themselves and their ideas?

Enter Web 2.0. This is how some specialists and thinkers refer to the form the internet has taken in the recent past; the internet as social tool, interactive medium, and socially-structured entity. YouTube is a particularly good example of a Web 2.0 application, as it is structured, run, and filled with content not by developers, but by a band of normal people.

In the first of many forays into Web 2.0 territory, I plan to discuss a short video called “The Blasphemy Challenge.”

As I said above, a religious conviction as described tends to encourage people to speak out. When someone claims that the way to salvation is to accept one specific god, or the way to damnation is to deny that specific god, people are bound to get excited. Be it in support of such believers or in rampant denial of any of their claims, voices are bound to rise.

In this short YouTube video, entitled “The Blasphemy Challenge,” one group tried to coax out the dissenters. They offered a free copy of an atheistic documentary film for any individual willing to publicly, on YouTube, deny the holy spirit. They ask people to make a video of them denying the Christian savior in exchange for a free DVD.

Or as they so succinctly put it in the video, a $30 DVD in exchange for your soul.

It is no shock that the responses poured in. People immediately had things to say, as would be expected. The social network that is YouTube went into full action, with deniers as prevalent as dissenters. People were denouncing the holy spirit just as often as they were renewing their conviction to their Christian faith. The outpouring of immediate response was, of course, no surprise.

What was more surprising was the slow but sure incorporation of this simple challenge video into the YouTube cannon. Now, even some of YouTube’s comedy programs were referring to the Blasphemy Challenge and integrating it into their normal comedic videos. (Infamous zombie-slaying preacher “Father Fearless” led the pack.)

What started as a publicity stunt for an atheist documentary became a regularly cited footnote in the YouTube world. It became a springboard for the usual YouTube comedy, drama, and personal video blogs.

This leaves me to wonder. Is YouTube the next frontier for divulging important issues and encouraging debate? Or is it merely the newest vehicle for meaningless arguments, narcissism and popular entertainment?

Is YouTube more akin to the printing press, or to the Jerry Springer Show?

I invite comments. Please share your opinions on this topic and on the Blasphemy Challenge in general.

Stars Blink Out: An Introduction

2007-03-12T14:15:00.000-05:00

“February 5^th – Made a peanut butter sandwich. Only had chunky peanut butter. Can’t let Sally do the shopping anymore. The sun was too bright today. Now my eyes hurt. February 7^th– Apricot jam. Not as tasty as it may sound. Found a quarter walking in the park…”

In the modern age of immediate communication and independent, online self-publication, journals of this nature are like dandelion seeds scattered in the wind. Everyone has a chance to make their voice heard. Middle school girls can talk about the latest clothing style. Angst-ridden teenagers can pour out their emotions in the form of online journals. Even professionals in every field now have an opportunity to make their opinions known about their work and their lives.

And still, countless online writers confine themselves to such trivialities as what kind of condiments are going on their sandwiches that day.

It is obvious, then, that in such an age of prolific content both wonderful and abysmal crowding the internet and our lives at large, the relevance of this content to our lives and our thoughts becomes increasingly important.

Famous science fiction writer (and thinker) Arthur C. Clarke wrote once of a group of monks that thought the world’s purpose was to recite every possible name of G-d. They commissioned a computer that was programmed to print every permutation of a set of letters with all of its processing power. The result, these monks claimed, would be the fulfillment of earth’s destiny and the end of life as we know it.

A skeptical engineer was hired to set up this computer. He checked in periodically with the monks to see how their “fruitless” endeavor was coming. On one such checkup, as the engineer was leaving, the computer was set to finish its run within the hour, thus supposedly fulfilling the world’s purpose and ending all of existence. The engineer, of course, maintained his skepticism.

Even as he rode away, however, “overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.”

Our world is a giant computer, slowly and steadily counting out the names of our various gods, until, one by one, certain stars of relevance blink out. We mine the depths of the world’s creation, and one of many stars of mythology blink out. We invent a system for hearing voices from thousands of miles away, a radio, and one star among many of classical theater blinks out. An automobile is born, and the star for travel by horse blinks out. Here we are, men and women adrift in a world of blinking out stars.

But as these stars fade, new ones are fixed in the firmament. The stars for film, experimental literature, and cleaner environmental technologies are all on the rise. Some of the remaining stars in that constellation we call “theater” are being preserved for future generations. These new and revamped stars become our new standard for relevance.

This is what I strive to chronicle in this weblog. I wish to follow humanity’s continued struggle, in entertainment, science, religion, or even jam choices, to find the relevance in their thoughts and lives. Every week, new films come out that show just how relevant the medium is in today’s world. Companies arise to allow people a new freedom to use technologies in new, progressive, globally relevant ways. Every week, the global struggle for relevance wages on, with people like me on the sidelines, watching the individual victories and setbacks.

I seek to report on this phenomenon. I hope to demonstrate that, even as stars blink out, we find a few shining constellations to preserve as our own.

Stars Blink Out: Coming Soon

2007-03-06T00:59:00.001-06:00

This blog is going to be starting up as soon as I have the time to actually write for it. Please watch this space carefully in the near future. It could get interesting.