Dominik’s Blog

I’ve closed my Facebook account. Or, rather, since one can’t close a Facebook account per se, I’ve deleted friends and removed all that I could from my profile. Finally, I set my account to ‘inactive’ in Facebook, which is as close as one can come to deleting it.

I opened my account back in March 2004, when Facebook was a small, quiet, private site open only to few colleges around the country. I never amassed more than 400 friends (I think my final tally was somewhere in the low 300s), but it was a nice way to vaguely keep in touch. I found myself checking in on the site perhaps once or twice a month, if that.

Back in September 2006, I defended Facebook’s mini-feed, with the tagline of “If you aren’t comfortable now, you shouldn’t have been comfortable before.” My logic there was that the mini-feed didn’t expose any information that wasn’t available before, it just made it far more accessible. I did find it bad marketing on Facebook’s part to launch it without even so much as an opt-out option available, but I figured they’d learn from that mistake in the future. Finally, I found it a touch ironic that all the “Stop the New Facebook” groups grew virally in large part thanks to the very mini-feed they were railing against. In the end, Facebook made it possible to opt-out and control what was posted in the mini-feed, restoring the option to maintain the security-through-obscurity regime that many of its users had accustomed themselves to.

Facebook didn’t learn from its mistakes. Beacon, which differs from the mini-feed in the important aspect that it reveals previously non-public information to the public (and select Facebook advertisers). Where the mini-feed merely made what was already knowable easier to know, Beacon published previously unknowable information for all to see. Once again, without even so much as an opt-out provision at the start, though this has since been added.

Beacon, combined with Facebook’s slow slide towards something resembling selling out, convinced me that the small, quiet, cool way to keep in touch with friends online that I knew from March 2004 was gone forever. I “closed” my account, as best I could, having to put up with the final indignity of having to delete each of my 300+ friends one by one.

Fundamentally, Facebook is trying to reconcile its revenue model with what makes people use its site. The weakness of its traditional banner ad model is that people ignore the banners and instead look to see what their friends are up to. Beacon tried to one-up this by putting ads into what their friends were up to. Rent a movie from Blockbuster? Facebook will let your friends know what you rented and when, so they can rent it from Blockbuster too, which conceivably gives Facebook a cut. An ingenious idea, except, as Seth Godin puts it: “People don’t truly care about privacy . . . What people care about is being surprised.” Had Facebook allowed people to opt-in to Beacon from the start, those people who wanted to then could do so, and they would not be surprised to find their rentals being broadcast to their friends. In fact, they’d be happy that the service they opted into was working. Instead, we have a nasty shock to all Facebook users who suddenly find that their previously private actions on Facebook advertisers’ sites are suddenly — without clear warning or any action on their part — being broadcast to all their friends. Worse: without a way to turn it off. This caused the uproar and backlash.

Farewell Facebook.

Steve Jobs’ Thoughts on Music, specifically in reference to DRM (Digital Rights Management, or Digital Restrictions Management, depending on your perspective) music files. It’s a good read, as is the Economists’ analysis of the essay.

Because suing 12 year-old girls isn’t right.

EFF: RIAA Petition

Once they get 100,000 signatures they’ll take it to Congress. When I signed they were at 93,000 some, so they’re almost there!

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is on a rampage, launching legal attacks against average Americans from coast to coast. Rather than working to create a rational, legal means by which its customers can take advantage of file-sharing technology and pay a fair price for the music they love, it has chosen to sue people like Brianna LaHara, a 12 year-old girl living in New York City public housing.

Brianna, and hundreds of other music fans like her, are being forced to pay thousands of dollars they do not have to settle RIAA-member lawsuits — supporting a business model that is anything but rational. This crusade is generating thousands of subpoenas and hundreds of lawsuits, but not a single penny for the artists that the RIAA claims to protect.

Copyright law shouldn’t make criminals out of 60 million Americans, and it’s time for a change. Tell Congress that it’s time to stop the madness!

Text of the petition:

To The United States Congress:

We are the customers and former customers of the member labels of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). We love music and will gladly pay a fair price for it, but we are outraged by the RIAA’s tactics in suing ordinary Americans for filesharing.

We condemn the RIAA’s choice to force the family of a 12 year-old girl to forfeit $2,000 - money that could have gone to feed, clothe and educate this honor student. We stand with the retirees, parents, children and others who have been caught in the RIAA’s line of fire.

We respect reasonable copyright law, but we strongly oppose copyright enforcement that comes at the expense of privacy, due process and fair application of the law.

We urge you, as our representatives in Congress, to stop this madness.

We oppose the recording industry’s decision to attack the public, bankrupt its customers and offer false amnesty to those who would impugn themselves. We call instead for a real amnesty: the development of a legal alternative that preserves file-sharing technology while ensuring that artists are fairly compensated.

In signing this petition, we formally request that the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), as representatives of the public interest, be included in any upcoming hearings regarding the proper scope of copyright enforcement in the digital age.

We sincerely thank you for your time.

If you agree, go sign the EFF: RIAA Petition.

There is an increasing number of artists who are speaking out about this:
Canadian Music Creators Coalition: A New Voice
(includes Barenaked Ladies, Avril Lavigne, Sarah McLachlan, Chantal Kreviazuk, Sum 41, Stars, Raine Maida (Our Lady Peace), Dave Bidini (Rheostatics), Billy Talent, John K. Samson (Weakerthans), Broken Social Scene, Sloan, Andrew Cash and Bob Wiseman (Co-founder Blue Rodeo))

Suing Our Fans is Destructive and Hypocritical

Artists do not want to sue music fans. The labels have been suing our fans against our will, and laws enabling these suits cannot be justified in our names. We oppose any copyright reforms that would make it easier for record companies to do this. The government should repeal provisions of the Copyright Act that allow labels to unfairly punish fans who share music for non-commercial purposes with statutory damages of $500 to $20,000 per song.

An even stronger DMCA is in the pipeline…

For the last few years, a coalition of technology companies, academics
and computer programmers has been trying to persuade Congress to scale
back the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Now Congress is preparing to do precisely the opposite.
…
The proposed law scheduled to be introduced by Rep. Smith also does
the following:

• Permits wiretaps in investigations of copyright crimes, trade secret
  theft and economic espionage. It would establish a new copyright unit
  inside the FBI and budgets $20 million on topics including creating
  “advanced tools of forensic science to investigate” copyright crimes.

• Amends existing law to permit criminal enforcement of copyright
  violations even if the work was not registered with the U.S. Copyright
  Office.

• Boosts criminal penalties for copyright infringement originally
  created by the No Electronic Theft Act of 1997 from five years to 10
  years (and 10 years to 20 years for subsequent offenses). The NET Act
  targets noncommercial piracy including posting copyrighted photos,
  videos or news articles on a Web site if the value exceeds $1,000.

• Creates civil asset forfeiture penalties for anything used in
  copyright piracy. Computers or other equipment seized must be
  “destroyed” or otherwise disposed of, for instance at a government
  auction. Criminal asset forfeiture will be done following the rules
  established by federal drug laws.

• Says copyright holders can impound “records documenting the
  manufacture, sale or receipt of items involved in” infringements.

Read this in the Tech earlier this week; turns out it is now making the rounds on Slashdot and the ilk…

Run Over by the RIAA: Don’t Tap the Glass by Cassi Hunt

“Bowie even had the audacity to say, “In fact, the RIAA has been known to suggest that students drop out of college or go to community college in order to be able to afford settlements.”"

I don’t think any students here at MIT — or very many students across the country for that matter — like the RIAA…

You can read the first part of Cassi Hunt’s two-part article here:
Run Over by the RIAA by Cassi Hunt