ARTS & FARCES internet

Christopher Allen has been thinking a lot about privacy lately, especially in relation to social networking software. Allen understands the concepts of privacy related to networked environments at a very deep level, noting that even when he was developing products that used encryption technologies, he spoke precisely about confidentiality and authentication, but not privacy. “Promising privacy was too much.”

While at this year’s Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference in Berkeley, Allen’s thoughts about privacy congealed, and the result is his most excellent “Four Kinds of Privacy.”

According to Allen, when we speak about privacy we’re actually speaking about four distinct forms that, while related, are not the same (although they do intersect) :

1. Defensive privacy is information about me that I don’t want revealed because it makes me feel vulnerable in some way.
2. Human-rights privacy is what most Europeans mean when they talk about privacy-the levels to which governments, rather than individuals, can abuse personal information.
3. Personal privacy is somewhat peculiar to the United States and is embodied in what Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis recognized in 1890 as “the right to be left alone.”
4. Contextual privacy is related to an “inappropriate level of intimacy,” according to Allen, or what Danah Boyd has identified as the “ickiness factor.”

Take the time to read Allen’s essay; it doesn’t take long to read, but it’ll keep you busy for a good long while.

According Karen Holt’s “And Now, For A Little Bloggery” in Folio, the time may be right for magablogs—magazine weblogs—as both a brand enhancer and a source of revenue.

“For now, magazine blogs tend to work as brand enhancements, not as moneymakers. ‘It is another way for us to get our name out there in a different venue, the blogosphere, and try to become part of that conversation,’ says Amy Bernstein, senior editor at Business 2.0, which launched its first blog, B2day, in January. ‘It runs on a completely different heartbeat from a monthly magazine, and it gives us an opportunity to respond to events on a daily, hourly, minute-by-minute level.’ B2day is open to postings from any member of the magazine’s editorial staff.”

Although some magazine weblogs are beginning to show signs of revenue life:

“At The American Prospect, a blog called Tapped, by Matthew Yglesias and Nick Confessore, reaches a whole network of computer users who might never otherwise visit the magazine’s site, says executive editor Michael Tomasky. Now the magazine is experimenting with political advertising on the blog. ‘We decided that the time was right with election season upon us,’ says Tomasky. Yglesias, who also runs his own blog independent of Tapped, says he took ads for the first time in March and brought in about $1,000 in revenue.”

Holt goes on to write that direct sponsorship is culturally incompatible with the weblog community. She bases this on a 2003 survey by Blog Search Engine that found “only 13 percent of the sites take advertising and half of the 610 bloggers surveyed said blogs and ads don’t mix.”

Magazines—both mainstream and alternative—should be exploring stand-alone micro-publication niches that complement their core print publications. Non-invasive direct sponsorships of these online nanopublications will be enormously successful for everyone involved. Time’s a-wastin’ and it’s only a question of who’s going to be first and who’s going to get the business model right.

Tomorrow, 12 May 2004, the Digital Media Consumers’ Rights Act (DMCRA), H.R. 107, finally gets a hearing in front of the Trade, Commerce, and Consumer Protection subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

The DMCRA is a legislative attempt by Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Virginia) and Rep. John Doolittle (R-California) to right the wrongs of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) which has done little or nothing to curb the “piracy problem.” The problems associated with the DMCA are most eloquently articulated in EFF’s “Unintended Consequences” report.

The DMCRA, if passed, will restore the balance in copyright law through two main provisions:

1. Reaffirms fair use by removing the prohibition against technological circumvention of a copy protection scheme so long as such use does not infringe the copyright in the work. In short, moving the works on your DVDs to a computer hard disk for viewing in another room will be legal again.
2. Reaffirms the “Betamax standard” by removing the prohibition against the manufacture, distribution, or use of a hardware or software device capable of enabling significant non-infringing use of a copyrighted work. In short, the technology industry will be able to develop non-infringing products without the oversight of the American entertainment cartel.
3. Reaffirms the right to research by allowing researchers to investigate “scientific research into technological protection measures.” In short, engineers will be able to research copy protection methodologies and develop the tools they need to conduct such research.
4. Requires the labeling of copy-protected audio CDs, allowing consumers to know that the disc they’re about to purchase may not work on their computer CD player

At about 3:15 this morning, Michael Moore sent out a message to his mailing list entitled “Disney Has Blocked the Distribution of My New Film…” At about the same time, the New York Times was publishing Jim Rutenberg’s “Disney Forbidding Distribution of Film That Criticizes Bush.”

Nice timing, Mike. I mean, your new film, Fahrenheit 911 makes its debut at the Cannes Film Festival next week and all. And shucks, this is just like when HarperCollins tried to censor your book, Stupid White Men. Gosh, why is the corporate media always picking on you?

Except that Rutenberg’s piece in the New York Times makes it clear that Moore—or at least his agent, almost certainly knew that Disney would block the film’s distribution a year ago:

“‘We advised both the agent and Miramax in May of 2003 that the film would not be distributed by Miramax,’ said Zenia Mucha, a [Disney] company spokeswoman, referring to Mr. Moore’s agent. ‘That decision stands.’”

This is a carefully coiffed publicity prank, plain and simple, and I can’t believe that Disney is collectively stupid enough to follow in the footfalls of HarperCollins. Except those footfalls lead all the way to the bank.

If you’re not from Chicago or haven’t spent a good amount of time there, move along to another post; there’s nothing for you here….

I spent a goodly portion of my formative years on Chicago’s south side, so by all rights I should be a southsider. But for some inexplicable reason, I’ve always been a northsider and always will be. Actually, the reason is explicable—P.K. Wrigley’s generosity to Chicago schoolkids. That generosity doesn’t come through in this, but John Carney’s “Northsiders vs. Southsiders” animation pretty much sums up the difference between the two sides of town. Even if it doesn’t investigate the crosstown series a few years ago when the southsiders somehow caused the Wrigley center field ivy to rot (thanks Jacob).