Category Archives: Gadgets and Technology

The limits of GPS in the West

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Technology can be a good thing but it can also lead people astray. Hence, a warning out West regarding using GPS in certain areas:

Travelers in the western U.S. should not rely solely on technology such as GPS for navigation, authorities said, after a Canadian couple were lost in the Nevada wilderness for 48 days.

Albert Chretien, 59, and his wife Rita Chretien, 56, sought a shorter route between Boise, Idaho and Jackpot, Nevada during a road trip from British Columbia to Las Vegas…

Sheriff’s offices in remote, high-elevation parts of Idaho, Nevada and Wyoming report the past two years have brought a rise in the number of GPS-guided travelers driving off marked and paved highways and into trouble.

The spike has prompted Death Valley National Park in California to caution on its web site that “GPS navigation to sites to remote locations like Death Valley are notoriously unreliable.”

When two roads diverge in Western lands, take the one more traveled, authorities said.

Perhaps this could be read as a warning about over-reliance on technology: it is not infallible.You can occasionally find stories of people driving into retention ponds or crashing into things because the GPS told them to turn. At the same time, how bad are these GPS maps that people can get lost so easily? This would seem to be bad news for GPS makers if they don’t cover certain areas very well. Could a GPS maker ever have any liability for any of these unpleasant occurrences? Additionally, I wonder how many GPS owners also carry around a map of some kind in their vehicle or on their person.

More broadly, this is a reminder that one doesn’t have to travel very far to leave the comforts of the modern world and get lost in nature.

Facebook as “the most appalling spying machine ever invented”

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The Drudge Report has a link to a story that details what Wikileak’s Julian Assange thinks about government monitoring of Facebook:

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange called Facebook “the most appalling spying machine ever invented” in an interview with Russia Today, pointing to the popular social networking site as one of the top tools for the U.S. to spy on its citizens.

“Here we have the world’s most comprehensive database about people, their relationships, their names, their addresses, their locations, their communications with each other and their relatives, all sitting within the United States, all accessible to US Intelligence,” he said. “Facebook, Google, Yahoo, all these major U.S. organizations have built-in infaces for US intelligence.

“Everyone should understand that when they add their friends to Facebook they are doing free work for the United States intelligence agencies,” he added.

The comments were a bit strange, coming from the founder of a website best known for pushing spilling secret information.

In an email to the Daily News, a Facebook spokesman denied the company was doing anything that they weren’t legally obligated to do, saying that “the legal standards for compelling a company to turn over data are determined by the laws of the country, and we respect that standard.”

This article suggests Assange’s idea is a bit daft. And while I’m just guessing at the reason for Drudge’s link, this headline could be a sobering thought for many a Facebook user and is also evidence for conspiracy theorists who think the government is out to get them. So what should we make of such comments?

On one hand, I am skeptical that the government has to-the-minute access to everything that these websites offer. On the other hand, why shouldn’t the government be monitoring online activity? If employers routinely check Facebook in order to learn more about applicants or their own workers, why shouldn’t or can’t the government? In fact, in today’s world, wouldn’t the average Internet user expect that the government is looking at websites in order to monitor and investigate certain threats that are harmful to society? Privacy (account numbers, passwords, etc.) is one thing but if people are conducting illegal activity online, don’t we want the government to check it out?

Perhaps these comments should serve as a reminder for all Internet users: what is posted to the Internet can be found by all sorts of people, your friends and your enemies.

Using cell phone data to research social networks

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Social network analysis is a growing area within sociology and other disciplines. The Wall Street Journal reports on the advantages of examining cell phone data:

As a tool for field research, the cellphone is unique. Unlike a conventional land-line telephone, a mobile phone usually is used by only one person, and it stays with that person everywhere, throughout the day. Phone companies routinely track a handset’s location (in part to connect it to the nearest cellphone tower) along with the timing and duration of phone calls and the user’s billing address…

Advances in statistics, psychology and the science of social networks are giving researchers the tools to find patterns of human dynamics too subtle to detect by other means. At Northeastern University in Boston, network physicists discovered just how predictable people could be by studying the travel routines of 100,000 European mobile-phone users.

After analyzing more than 16 million records of call date, time and position, the researchers determined that, taken together, people’s movements appeared to follow a mathematical pattern. The scientists said that, with enough information about past movements, they could forecast someone’s future whereabouts with 93.6% accuracy.

The pattern held true whether people stayed close to home or traveled widely, and wasn’t affected by the phone user’s age or gender.

The rest of the article then goes on to talk about a lot of interesting research on topics like social contagions (see an example of this research here) and social relationships using this data.

Some may be concerned about privacy, particularly with recent reports about iPhones and iPads containing a file that records the movements of users. I have a few thoughts about this:

1. Compared to other possible data sources (surveys, time diaries, interviews, ethnography), this seems like a treasure trove of information. The article suggests that nearly 75% of people in the world have cell phones – what other data source can compare with that? Could the research potential outweigh individual privacy concerns? In thinking about some of these research questions, it would be very difficult to use more traditional methods to address the same concerns. And just the sheer number of cases a researcher could access and work with is fantastic. In order to build more complex models of human behavior, this is exactly the kind of data one could use.

2. I would be less concerned about researchers using this data than companies. Researchers don’t particularly care about the individual cases in the data but rather are looking for broad patterns. I would also guess that the cell phone data is anonymized so that researchers would have a difficult time pinpointing specific individuals even if they wanted to.

3. How much of a surprise is it that this available data is being used? Don’t cell phone carriers include some sort of statement in their contracts about using data in such ways? One option here would be to not get a smart phone. But if you want a smart phone (and it seems that a lot of Americans do), then this is the tradeoff. This is similar to the tradeoff with Facebook: users willingly give their information to enhance their social lives and then the company can look for ways to profit from this information.

h/t Instapundit

The legality of using unsecured Wi-Fi

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At the end of an article about how it is possibly dangerous to have an open wireless router (watch out for criminals and police who bust down your door at odd hours!), an interesting issue is raised: is it illegal to use someone’s unprotected Wi-Fi?

Luchetti is not charged with using his neighbor’s Wi-Fi without permission. Whether it was illegal is up for debate.

“The question,” said Kerr, “is whether it’s unauthorized access and so you have to say, ‘Is an open wireless point implicitly authorizing users or not?’

“We don’t know,” Kerr said. “The law prohibits unauthorized access and it’s just not clear what’s authorized with an open unsecured wireless.”

In Germany, the country’s top criminal court ruled last year that Internet users must secure their wireless connections to prevent others from illegally downloading data. The court said Internet users could be fined up to $126 if a third party takes advantage of their unprotected line, though it stopped short of holding the users responsible for illegal content downloaded by the third party.

Sounds like an interesting legal area to explore. The article includes comments from one person who intentionally leaves their Wi-Fi unprotected in order to provide a “common good.” And the case from Germany suggests that one could hold the Wi-Fi owner responsible for any issues rather than the person who misused another person’s wireless access.

Conclusions about PC vs. Mac users based on an unscientific web survey

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Based on the headline, this looks like an interesting story: “Mac vs. PC: The stereotypes may be true.” But there is a problem:

An unscientific survey by Hunch, a site that makes recommendations based on detailed user preferences, found that Mac users tend to be younger, more liberal, more fashion-conscious and more likely to live in cities than people who prefer PCs.

While the first part of this paragraph is treated as a clause that barely affects the rest of the text, it really is the key to the story. Hunch’s survey respondents identify as 52% PC users and 25% Mac users with 23% percent identifying with neither (and what do we do this category?). This compares to PC vs. Mac world market share of 89% to 11%. This is evidence that the online sample doesn’t quite match up with what computer users are actually buying. Voluntary web surveys are difficult to work with for this reason: even if there are a lot of respondents, we don’t know whether these respondents are representative of larger populations.

Perhaps CNN does cover themselves. The headline does suggest that these stereotypes “may” be correct and the second paragraph suggests the stereotypes may contain “some truth.” But a more cynical take regarding both CNN and Hunch is that they simply want more web visits from devoted PC or Mac defenders. Perhaps the fact that all of this is based on an unscientific survey is less important than driving visitors to one’s site and asking people to comment at the bottom of both stories.

Growing numbers of senior citizens on Facebook, SNS

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Facebook is growing all over the world but especially among American senior citizens:

Edelman is one of many senior citizens using social networking at rapidly increasing rates, according to a 2010 study by the Pew Research Center. Social networking use among Internet users ages 50 and older has nearly doubled — from 22 percent to 42 percent between 2009 and 2010, according to the study. For Internet users older than 74, that number has quadrupled, from 4 percent to 16 percent.

Indeed, women over 55 are the fastest-growing demographic on Facebook, according to InsideFacebook.com, a website that tracks and analyzes user data…

According to iStrategyLabs, a Washington, D.C., social media marketing firm that tracks user data, about 10.6 percent of Facebook users are over the age of 55, a 59 percent increase from 2010…

While Twitter and Facebook users who send out status updates may tend to skew younger, with most members under 40, the average age of a LinkedIn user is 45, said Krista Canfield, a spokeswoman for the business-oriented social networking site. One trend Canfield said she sees among older LinkedIn users is a desire to retain connections with former co-workers.

Considering Facebook is just six years old and started among college students, these numbers are remarkable.

It strikes me that today’s older generations (and future older generations) will need to be more tech-savvy than previous older generations. This could have some benefits (staying connected) and some downsides (see this recent research on problems with multitasking). Just as young adulthood (“emerging adults”) is being transformed before our eyes, what it means to be a senior citizen is also rapidly changing.

No surprise: Facebook wants to make money off advertising!

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The current economic engine for much of the Internet is advertising. This includes Facebook:

Facebook’s first experiment with paid ads was a flop. In 2007 it rolled out Beacon, which broadcast information on Facebook about users’ activities and purchases elsewhere on the Web without their permission. Facebook pulled the program after settling a lawsuit brought on behalf of Facebook users.

This time around, company officials appear to be proceeding more cautiously. David Fischer, Facebook’s vice president of advertising and global operations, says Facebook delivers ads that are relevant to users’ lives.

“This is an opportunity for brands to connect with you,” Fischer said. “When someone likes a brand, they are building a two-way conversation, creating an ongoing relationship.”

A lot is riding on getting it right. Last year, online advertising in the U.S. grew 15% to $26 billion, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau.

People familiar with Facebook say its ad revenue doubled to $2 billion in 2010, and is expected to double again this year as more major advertisers including American Express, Coca Cola and Starbucks climb aboard.

In February, more than a third of all online display ads in the U.S. appeared on Facebook, more than three times as many as appeared on its closest competitor, Yahoo, according to research firm ComScore Inc. Facebook’s moneymaking potential has wowed investors. Its market value is estimated at $55 billion on the private exchange SharesPost.

This should really be no surprise to anyone. As others have noted, the real magic of Facebook is not in the personal connections people can maintain but rather is in the information that users willingly provide. Moving forward, the trick will be for Facebook to do this in such a way that a majority of users don’t become upset.

I find the language here to be particularly interesting: users are entering a “two-way conversation” and an “ongoing relationship” with corporations. This is what corporations want but if users/consumers really thought about it, is this what they desire as well? While the user pays for particular products (and perhaps is willing to advertise a product for free), the corporation provides functionality but perhaps even more importantly, status and prestige.

I’m also struck by another thought: this article suggests that Facebook still has a lot of financial potential due to advertising. At what point does Facebook hit a wall or lose its momentum? In a short amount of time, Facebook has become a daily feature in the lives of hundreds of millions but there is little to suggest that their growth is unlimited.

A call for a sociological study of (digital) piracy

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John C. Dvorak suggests that we need more (sociological) research on the causes of digital piracy:

Understanding why piracy exists as a phenomenon needs to be better understood, but it should be up to academics, not me and other pundits, to determine the causes. Where is the great sociological study of piracy and the mentality behind it?

Dvorak briefly discusses what he thinks are the three roots of piracy: price, distribution, and marketing. At the end of the piece, he again calls for more research:

The real problem with piracy, again, is sociological. If an entire generation becomes acculturated to the free exchange of content and code, then the industry is doomed or it will have to cut back on its First Class Travel and rethink its models. Moaning and groaning about piracy will not stop it…

I’m not sure what can be done about all this, but it does need careful study, not more columns.

Sounds like it could be an interesting project. One angle would be to see how piracy has developed as a deviant (or not-so-deviant) behavior.

Some thoughts by Joel: Actually, there have been some really good academic studies of digital piracy published recently.  I wrote up some thoughts about the SSRC‘s 400+ page report titled Media Piracy in Emerging Economies in early March, and a few weeks later there was the (much shorter at 18 pages) London School of Economics paper entitled Creative Destruction and Copyright Protection:  Regulatory Responses to File-sharing.  Both are well worth reading (for sociologists, especially the former).

Righthaven’s contract unsealed; sanctions a real possibility

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Joe Mullin at paidContent has just posted a story about Righthaven’s previously sealed contract with Steves Media, parent company of the Las Vegas Review-Journal:

The contract reveals that the controversial copyright-enforcement company and the LV R-J are splitting their net earnings from suing hundreds of bloggers on a 50-50 basis. It also shows that the LV R-J is still largely in control of Righthaven’s litigation strategy—a fact that could end up being ruinous for Righthaven’s campaign of copyright lawsuits.

A link to the judge’s order and the contract is available here.  I’ll update this post when I’ve had time to read and analyze it thoroughly…

Update: After reading through the contract and order to unseal for myself, I think these are the most relevant sections:

Section 3.3

Stephens Media shall have the right to Notify Righthaven…that Righthaven should not take any Infringement Action with respect to a particular putative infringer.…Stephens Media shall only send any Declination Notice on a reasonable basis with the grounds of reasonability being that a particular putative infringer [1] is a charitable organization, [2] is likely without financial resources, [3] is affiliated with Stephens Media directly or indirectly, [4] is a present or likely future valued business relationship of Stephens Media or otherwise would be a Person that, if the subject of an Infringement Action, would result in an adverse result to Stephens Media.

I guess it’s safe to conclude that Stephens Media did not see fit to step in on behalf of the Center for Intercultural Organization (“a charitable organization”), Brian Hill (an autistic blogger who practically defines someone “likely without financial resources”), various newspaper sources (“affiliated with Stephens Media directly or indirectly”), or any of the hundreds of other bloggers (“likely future valued business relationship of Stephens Media”) Righthaven has sued.

Sections 7 and 8

Section 7.1:

Stephens Media shall effect the assignments to Righthaven of copyrights as required by this Agreement…by executing a particularized assignment with respect to each copyright and each consistent with (and in form and substance the same as) the scope of assignment….

Section 7.2:

Despite any such Copyright Assignment, Stephens Media shall retain (and is hereby granted by Righthaven) an exclusive license to Exploit the Stephens Media Assigned Copyrights for any lawful purpose whatsoever and Righthaven shall have no right or license to Exploit or participate in the receipt of royalties from the Exploitation of the Stephens Media Assigned Copyrights other than the right to proceeds in association with a Recovery.

Section 8:

Stephens Media shall have the right at any time to terminate, in good faith, any Copyright Assigmnent (the “Assignment Termination”) and enjoy a right of complete reversion to the ownership of any copyright that is the subject of a Copyright Assignment; provided, however, that if Righthaven shall have commenced an action to prosecute an infringer of the Stephens Media Assigned Copyrights, Stephens Media shall be exclusively responsible for effecting termination of such action including, without limitation, all Losses associated with any dismissal with prejudice.

Taken together, these three excerpts seem to affirm that Righthaven is essentially buying the right to bring lawsuits from Stephens Media, which is arguably impermissible under Silvers v. Sony Pictures Entertainment, Inc., 402 F. 3d 881 (9th Cir. 2005).

Section 11

Stephens Media understands and acknowledges that Stephens Media and Righthaven may be liable for an Infringer’s attorneys’ fees as required by Law in connection with an Infringement Action. Stephens Media further understands that a lawsuit brought solely to harass or to coerce a settlement may result in liability for malicious prosecution or abuse of process. If any Claim made by an Infringer in an Infringement Action results in Losses, other than Losses described in Section 8, Righthaven shall be solely liable for such Losses and shall indemnify Stephens Media from and against any such Losses but only if such Losses do not arise out of a misrepresentation by Stephens Media or other breach by Stephens Media of a provision of this Agreement.

I guess we now have incontrovertible evidence that both the newspaper and Righthaven knew “that a lawsuit brought solely to harass or to coerce a settlement may result in liability for malicious prosecution or abuse of process”!  I wouldn’t be surprised if this section gets referenced in a future sanctions order.

Conclusion:  what does Judge Hunt think?

It’s impossible to know, of course, what’s inside Judge Hunt’s mind.  However, his order to unseal the Righthaven contract strongly suggests that he is growing weary of Righthaven’s legal antics:

There is an old adage in the law that, if the facts are on your side, you pound on the facts. If the law is on your side, you pound on the law. If neither the facts nor the law is on your side, you pound on the table. It appears there is a lot of table pounding going on here.

There has been presented absolutely no basis to strike the Request to Unseal, and that motion will be denied. [emphasis added]

No doubt Righthaven is already sorry they filed this case.  The only remaining question is whether their sorrow will be measured in dollars.  And just how many.

YouTube’s copyright school

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In an apparent bid to prevent one-time copyright infringers from becoming two-timers (or more), YouTube has created a 4 minute and 39 second copyright school on its website, as explained on the official YouTube blog:

Because copyright law can be complicated, education is critical to ensure that our users understand the rules and continue to play by them. That’s why today we’re releasing a new tutorial on copyright and a redesigned copyright help center. We’re also making two changes to our copyright process to be sure that our users understand the rules, and that users who abide by those rules can remain active on the site.

If we receive a copyright notification for one of your videos, you’ll now be required to attend “YouTube Copyright School,” which involves watching a copyright tutorial and passing a quiz to show that you’ve paid attention and understood the content before uploading more content to YouTube.

Ray Dowd over at the Copyright Litigation Blog is not a fan, noting that Google:

  • fails to mention the existence of the public domain;
  • states that “[i]f you are uncertain as to whether a specific use qualifies as a fair use, you should consult a qualified copyright attorney”; and
  • fails to mention the Constitutional purpose of copyright law.

I have to agree with Ray.  The video’s section on fair use (direct link) is particularly egregious.  Unlike the rest of the video, this section adopts the sped-up vocal “style” often adopted at the end of radio commercials to breeze through legal disclaimers (e.g., “Sweepstakes only open to U.S. residents 18 or older…”)  How is this even attempting to educate and inform?

Far from providing a balanced view of copyright law, YouTube’s clear, bottom-line message is this:  Don’t remix or even approach the fair use line.  This is certainly one vision of copyright law, but there are others.  I am reminded of Christina Mulligan’s excellent blog post last June that looked at contemporary copyright law through the lens of Fox’s hit show Glee:

The absence of any mention of copyright law in Glee illustrates a painful tension in American culture. While copyright holders assert that copyright violators are “stealing” their “property,” people everywhere are remixing and recreating artistic works for the very same reasons the Glee kids do — to learn about themselves, to become better musicians, to build relationships with friends, and to pay homage to the artists who came before them. Glee’s protagonists — and the writers who created them — see so little wrong with this behavior that the word ‘copyright’ is never even uttered.

Lawrence Lessig makes the related point that such recreations benefit society, pointing to John Phillip Sousa’s early-twentieth-century fear that recorded music would eventually displace amateur performance entirely.

Google is taking a lot of heat from copyright owners these days, and it’s hard to blame them from trying to stave off any accusations of infringement that might eventually stick to Google itself.  Nevertheless, I don’t think their frenetic, one-sided “educational” video is the best solution.