ARTS & FARCES internet

Clay Shirky is one of those people that think deeply about the implications the net has on our lives. Earlier this month he released his latest thoughts, “Weblogs and the mass amateurization of publishing,” in which he makes the point that weblogs “make publishing a worthless activity.” I don’t believe that any more than I believe the advent of mass-produced and mass-marketed books made publishing worthless. It’s a hyperbolic statement, probably intended to engage the reader. And it does that quite well.

Shirky makes some interesting and important points in his essay, but I think he’s off-base on some of his conclusions, including generating direct and indirect revenues from writing on the web.

I’ll have more to say about this in the future, but it’s going to take some thought. I wanted to mention it here so it doesn’t slip off my radar.

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Remember the “Freedom to Innovate Network” launched in the late 1990s? It initially appeared to be exactly what it described itself to be: “a non-partisan, grass-roots network of citizens and businesses” opposed to the U.S. Department of Justice’s actions to restrict Microsoft’s abuse of its monopoly in computer operating systems and software.
As it turned out, the Freedom to Innovate Network wasn’t non-partisan or grassroots at all. Rather, it was an astroturf public relations campaign, funded and conducted by Microsoft itself. Astroturf, in this context, is a phony grassroots organization constructed by a company or industry consisting of generated “citizens” who lobby government and become media sources, parroting the interests of the company or industry. It happens all the time, although the astroturfing is usually much harder to spot because it’s usually much better done by big-gun public relations firms like Burson Marstellar and Hill & Knowlton.
By now, everyone on the planet is familiar with Apple’s “switch” advertising campaign, designed to entice Windows users to convert to the Mac OS. One thing that makes these advertisements so successful is that they use real people to tell believable stories.

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Washington University, Saint Louis is using some sort of statistical forecasting model and expert predictions as a sort of nonmonetary sports book for the Eldred v. Ashcroft case.

While there’s currently no statistical forecast available, and only two of the three expert predictions have been recorded, early indications are that the Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) of 1998 will be overturned.

Unidentified Expert 2 predicts a 5 - 4 reversal with Rhenquist, Stevens, Souter, and Breyer voting to affirm; O’Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, and Ginsberg voting to reverse.

Unidentified Expert 3 predicts an even more decisive 6 - 3 upset for the entertainment industry, with Rhenquist, Ginsberg, and Breyer voting to affirm; Stevens, O’Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, Souter, and Thomas voting to reverse.

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In the momentum that’s building to a mid-term election—which pitifully few of us take seriously enough to even vote—it’s interesting to take a look at some things we take for granted.

We’d never, for instance, allow our government to require permission before allowing anyone to set up a web site.

We’re dangerously close to holding service providers responsible for their customers’ behavior on the net. Witness the sad case of the entertainment industry threatening university officials because of the file-sharing activities of students. This is more likely the death rattle of an industry too stubborn to evolve than a move toward government monitoring, but we have to remain vigilant.

Similarly, we don’t tolerate arrests for posting non-obscene material on the web. Nor does our government unilaterally shut down online political forums that contain information that is critical of the government.

Citizens of Vietnam, according to an Associated Press story, aren’t so lucky. Neither are the Chinese, whose government recently demanded that Internet cafe operators keep records of customer activity. In fact, if you’re Chinese and want to access the Internet, you have to register with the government.

The Internet, like libraries and individual conversation, is subversive. Repressive governments don’t much like that.

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Mitch Ratcliffe has a bifurcated blog. One side covers social and political issues and the other takes on business technology investing. I don’t quite get the split, but whatever works for you is fine by me.

Turns out Microsoft paid the travel expenses for some weblog authors to attend and cover its Mobius 2002 conference. Ratcliffe raises the ethical question of webloggers accepting these trips, pointing out that “... professional journalists, who, as a general rule, would not accept a trip at the expense of a company they were covering.”

During the years I spent as a freelance writer for the computer industry trade press, I was only offered a trip like this once. When one of the still-entrenched software companies that serve the publishing market was trying to transition its products to the web, its media relations department offered me a junket. The company’s product, as well as the strategy behind it, were quite complex and the software company wanted to train me before I wrote about it. Even though the offer to cover expenses for the trip and training were cleared by the publication which had contracted with me for the article, I turned it down on ethical grounds.

Ratcliffe asks the necessary question: it’s time for us to think and talk about the ways companies might try to manipulate webloggers to get favorable coverage.

Ratcliffe’s analysis of five websites that “apparently received airfare and hotel expenses” reveals that only one disclosed this conflict of interest.

Yet another burning question is also revealed. Ratcliffe writes that wrestling with such ethical conflicts caused him to christen himself “ConflictBoy.” When he disclosed this at Jerry Michalski’s Retreat in 1996, he remembers Chris Locke saying, “Oh yeah, well, I’m RageBoy.” I always thought Esther Dyson named RageBoy at the same conference, chanting “Go, RageBoy, go” during Locke’s rant. It’s certainly possible that both recollections are true.

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