Twitter Making It Easier To Study The Public Discussions Around COVID-19

from the good-to-see dept

There has been a lot of talk about how this moment in history is going to be remembered -- and as Professor Jay Rosen has been saying, a key part is going to be an effort by the many people who failed to respond properly to rewrite the history of everything that happened:

There is going to be a campaign to prevent Americans from understanding what happened within the Trump government during the critical months of January to April, 2020. Many times Donald Trump told the nation that it has nothing to worry about because he and his people have the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus well in hand. They did not. He misled the country about that.

“It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control,” he told CNBC on January 22. “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China,” he told Sean Hannity on February 2. On February 24, Trump tweeted that “the Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA.”

He misled the country. This basic fact is so damning, the evidence for it so mountainous, and the mountain of evidence so public — and so personally attached to Donald Trump — that the only option is to create confusion about these events, and about the pandemic generally, in hopes that people give up and conclude that the public record does not speak clearly and everything is propaganda.

The battle over rewriting history is going to take many forms in many different ways -- and so it's good to see a company like Twitter making it easier for researchers to look at the actual history of the public conversation during these months.

To further support Twitter’s ongoing efforts to protect the public conversation, and help people find authoritative health information around COVID-19, we’re releasing a new endpoint into Twitter Developer Labs to enable approved developers and researchers to study the public conversation about COVID-19 in real-time.

This is a unique dataset that covers many tens of millions of Tweets daily and offers insight into the evolving global public conversation surrounding an unprecedented crisis. Making this access available for free is one of the most unique and valuable things Twitter can do as the world comes together to protect our communities and seek answers to pressing challenges. 

It would be interesting to see if others (cough Facebook cough) would do the same thing as well. How the history of these times is written is going to be important in seeing how we deal with the next such crisis.

Filed Under: conversation, covid-19, history, pandemic, truth
Companies: twitter

MacWorld, PCWorld Kill Site Comments Because They 'Value And Welcome Feedback'

from the this-muzzle-shows-how-much-I-love-you dept

For a while now the trend du jour in online media is to not only block your readers from making news story comments, but to insult their intelligence by claiming this muzzling is driven by a deep-rooted love of community and conversation. NPR, for example, muted its entire readership because, it claimed, it "adored reader relationships." Reuters and Recode, in contrast, prevented their own users from speaking on site thanks to a never-ending dedication to "conversation." Motherboard similarly banned all on-site reader feedback because it greatly "values discussion."

There's a number of reasons to ban comments, but few if any have anything to do with giving a damn about your community. Most websites, writers and editors simply don't want to spend the time or money to moderate trolls or cultivate local community because it takes a little effort, and quality human discourse can't be monetized on a pie chart. Instead, it's easier and cheaper to simply outsource all public human interactivity to Facebook. In addition to being simpler, it avoids the added pitfalls of a public comment section where corrections to your story errors are posted a little too visibly.

Few outlets can actually admit any of this, so instead we get bizarre platitudes about how moving bi-directional website interactivity backward is some kind of ingenious media evolution. Case in point: IDG last week joined the fun and announced that all of its media outlets (Macworld, NetworkWorld, PCWorld, etc.) would be removing news comments moving forward. According to the company, this change is a reflection of IDG's ongoing commitment to feedback:

"At IDG, we’ve always valued and welcomed feedback from our readers, and that’s something that will never change. What is changing, however, is one facet of how we get your feedback.

Again, nothing quite says we "welcome feedback" like preventing all public, on-site feedback. Just like other news outlets, IDG insists that shoving interested community members over to social media is the same thing as retaining an on-site community:

"This change was made for a couple of important reasons. First, more and more of you are already communicating with us, and with one another, via social media, where our editors and reporters are posting content and interacting with readers throughout the day.

Second, while we’ve always valued comments, we’ve also had to deal with the reality of managing spam and policing inappropriate comments—comments that don’t reflect the professional nature of our audiences and diminish the value of community interaction. Moving the discussion to social media obviates those issues."

Well for one, this idea that managing spam and trolls is some kind of sisyphean impossibility is nonsense. You'll find countless websites (this one included) where spam and trolling is minimized and public interactivity is still protected (often by the community itself). In fact, some studies have suggested that just having website employees show up and give a damn can have a dramatic, positive impact on your local community. If you see consistent trolling and spamming in news comments it means somebody, somewhere doesn't give a shit. Pretending otherwise is a cop out your readership can see through.

This pretense that social media interactivity is the same as more niche on site conversation is also problematic. As feedback is offloaded to social media, we're seeing an overall reduction in transparency when it comes to news reader interaction. Many social media users exist in cordoned off areas where they only have a limited view of the conversation (protected Tweets, etc), which harms transparency. But that's the whole point for many editors: a return to the "letters to the editor" era where you get to control the conversation, even if it comes at the cost of users spending less time on your website.

All of that said, stand still so I can kick you repeatedly in the shin out of my deep-rooted love of your ability to walk.

Filed Under: comments, conversation, feedback, macworld, pcworld
Companies: idg

Rep. Michael McCaul Proposes 'Commission' To 'Force' Silicon Valley To Undermine Encryption

from the well,-here-we-go... dept

Rep. Michael McCaul, the head of the House Homeland Security Committee has now given a speech in which he announced plans to introduce legislation that will create a committee to undermine encryption in the tech industry:

The legislation "would bring together the technology sector, privacy and civil liberties groups, academics, and the law enforcement community to find common ground," Chairman Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said in a Dec. 7 speech at National Defense University. "This will not be like other blue ribbon panels, established and forgotten."

He said the ability of terrorist groups to use encrypted applications while communicating is one of his biggest fears. "We cannot stop what we cannot see," he said in reference to recent attacks in San Bernardino, Calif., and Paris.

Yes, the idea that it will include technologists and privacy and civil liberties folks sounds good, but it still seems like the key focus is going to be around undermining encryption. You don't need a special commission to do the only thing you really need to do: which is to keep making ever more secure encryption. And, of course, McCaul has been among the leading voices in seeking to blame encryption for everything. A few weeks ago he insisted that the Paris attackers used encryption and in the Q&A portion after his speech yesterday he went even further directly claiming the Paris attackers used the Telegram app -- something that no one else has claimed to date. He first admits that a "backdoor" to encryption is a bad idea, but then basically says, "but there must be some technological solution" before claiming that the Paris attackers definitely used encryption.

It's a very complex issue. I think initially lawmakers thought there was an easy legislative fix where we just amend the CALEA statute, until we found out that providing a backdoor into everybody's iPhone was not going to be a very good strategy. Not only would it provide a backdoor for the government, but also for hackers. So you've noticed that the language of the FBI director and the language of the Secretary of Homeland Security has shifted to trying to find a technology solution to this problem.

This part is true, but that "shift" to finding a "technology solution" still involves creating backdoors to encryption -- and just not calling them backdoors. McCaul continues:

I will not tell you that it's an easy solution, but I've had very in-depth discussions that I do believe there are alternatives. There are some solutions to this problem. And I think the inherent problem, and the reason why I'm advocating the formation of this commission, is because of the reluctance of both parties to sit in the same room together. And so what this legislation provides -- in fact what it will mandate -- that all relevant parties sit in the same room together, and in a very short period of time, provide the Congress with solutions and recommendations for legislation to deal with what I consider to, as I said in my remarks, one of the most difficult challenges of this century, in dealing with counterterrorism and basically criminal behavior.

First of all this is hogwash. People from both sides are more than willing to sit together, if there was some possible productive outcome from it, and compelling them to sit in the same room doesn't change the facts that what they're asking for is impossible. I don't now how many times it needs to be said, but full encryption makes us all much safer, and you can't magically create a technology that "only the good people" can use. No one's demanding that law enforcement and gunmakers get together to create bullets that only hit bad people. And no one's demanding that automakers and law enforcement get together to design cars that only nice people can drive. Why do people magically think that Silicon Valley can determine who's good and who's bad and set up technology so that only nice people can have their privacy protected?

McCaul then continues, falsely claiming the Paris attackers used encryption:

If we don't do anything. Title III wiretaps and FISAs will become a thing of the past. When we saw the encrypted apps on the on the Paris attackers' iPhone - it was Telegram. When eight attackers and numerous co-conspirators, foreign fighters from Syria, can do something like that and it's completely under the radar screen. We know why it went undetected. It went undetected because they were communicating in the dark space. In a space where we can't shine a light on to see these communications even if we have a court order.

Of course, this is hogwash. No one else has claimed the Paris attackers used encryption. And in fact we now know that they communicated via unencrypted SMS and that they did a lot of their planning in plain sight, with the guy behind the plans bragging to an English-language ISIS publication about his plans, and the attackers booking hotels and guest houses in their own names.

Politico followed up with staffers on McCaul's committee to ask about this, and they admitted that McCaul was exaggerating -- saying he was talking "in general about terrorists' use of encryption" rather than specifically about the Paris attacks. Except, he said it pretty directly, which means he's either misinformed or lying. And, yet, now he's rushing to set up a special commission to help figure out a way to deal with this problem that he himself is exaggerating? That's not encouraging.

McCaul later went on to repeat the "this is a difficult problem" line which misses the point. It's not a difficult problem. It's not that smart people don't want to work on this, it's that law enforcement and McCaul are asking for the impossible: encryption that protects privacy, but only for good people. And, yet, he says he needs to "force people" to solve this problem (he literally uses the phrase "force them.")

While some have suggested that this commission could deal with many other issues unrelated to encryption (which could, potentially be a good thing), the timing of this, just as so many have been calling to undermine encryption by phrasing it as calling for "a conversation" between techies and law enforcement, combined with McCaul's incorrect statements on encryption is worrisome.

The only other "positive" in all of this is that he's pushing this commission as an alternative to legislation that would mandate encryption backdoors admitting (correctly) that "a legislative knee-jerk reaction could weaken Internet protections and privacy for everyday Americans...." That's absolutely true, but what, exactly, does he expect this new commission to do other than to undermine encryption and weaken those protections? And, as he made clear in his statements above, he's still expecting this commission to suggest a legislative solution in a fairly short time period. In other words, this may not be a "legislative knee-jerk" but it sure looks like a plan to lead to knee-jerk legislation, just one where McCaul can point to some committee's "recommendations" to cover up the fact that he's demanding the impossible.

Filed Under: conversation, encryption, going dark, homeland security, michael mccaul, paris attacks, silicon valley

Instead Of Fashionably Killing The News Comment Section, Medium Quietly Tries Giving A Damn Instead

from the try-trying dept

Nearly every week another website shutters its news comment section, breathlessly declaring that comments are an old-fashioned relic of a bygone era, long supplanted by the miracle that is social media. More annoying than the act of shuttering news comments sections perhaps is the disingenuous blather that accompanies these announcements; company after company proudly insisting that they're muzzling entire communities -- because they just really, really value conversation. As we've noted it doesn't actually take much work to fix comments, it just requires actually giving half a damn about the end user.

So with so many sites outsourcing their communities to Facebook and Twitter, it's refreshing to see some sites still actually trying to have a conversation and make commenting better. Medium is one of several websites bucking the trend of taking the easy way out, instead recently launching a new effort called "You Tell Me" that attempts to solicit community and expert input and encourage community interaction. There's nothing really particularly ingenious about the idea; the website's simply fielding input from interesting people and then encouraging people to have an adult conversation:

"You Tell Me is an effort by Medium to remind users of the fact that Medium isn’t just for writing posts, but also for responding. “We haven’t always been good at saying that Medium allows for conversation, debate, and dialogue,” said Medium editor Sophie Moura. “We haven’t been as good at explaining how responses work as we should be. The You Tell Me series is designed to role-model how the platform can be used.” From the top, “Tech Is Eating Media” looks a lot like a straightforward Medium post, with the addition of a You Tell Me logo. At the bottom of the post, though, are bolded questions and featured responses."

It seems inherently absurd to lavish praise on a news outlet simply for giving a shit about conversation, but that's quite an accomplishment in an era when websites are lazily shoveling all on-site interaction over to the wall of noise that is social media because (at least according to ReCode's Kara Swisher) it's "just a better place to engage a smart audience that’s not trolling." Because, you know, there are no trolling nitwits on Facebook and Twitter.

And again, it's not really all that hard to manage said trolling. A recent paper published in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication found that all it took to improve civility was someone with the vaguest semblance of authority showing up and treating people like actual human beings. Treat comment sections like unmanageable troll playgrounds, and that's generally what they'll become. And they've only become that because many editors and authors either don't want to see corrections to their stories made quite so visible, or they're too myopic to see the public's role in the fluid conversation that is modern news.

And indeed, the posts where Medium attempts to have an actual conversation (one on ageism in Silicon Valley and another by Awl editor John Herrman on how "tech is eating media") quite shockingly wind up with -- people quite civilly speaking to one another (go figure). That's in contrast to social media, where Herrman highlights users often get to enjoy the illusion of actual discourse, (quite intentionally) cordoned off from public view:

"I’m especially receptive to trying this out because we get a lot of feedback and discussion around our stories, but not the kind that really begs for response,” Herrman told me via Gchat on Monday. “This is a weird thing that has happened in a lot of places, and I think there’s an effort to rein it back in: ‘Interactions’ or whatever have skyrocketed, but they take place out of view, or in such a way that precludes further argument."

And, as noted above, social media has its own limitations when it comes to commenting and responding. “I’ve been writing these manic blogs about CONTENT garbage forever, and I hurl them out onto Twitter and Facebook and they get attention,” Herrman said. “But the sharing behavior, even for something that’s making claim after claim and argument after argument, is either like ‘yea AGREE’ or ‘shut up’…There really isn’t a natural place for the kinds of things we do to unfold into discussion."

Well there actually is, it's in the traditional comment section. It just requires the website giving half a damn.

Filed Under: comments, conversation, journalism, media
Companies: medium

Motherboard's Version Of 'Valuing Discussion' Involves No Longer Letting You Comment

from the we-like-you-better-wearing-this-muzzle,-ok? dept

Add Motherboard to the quickly growing list of news websites killing their comment section because they're so breathlessly in love with reader interaction and visitor conversation. Like The Verge, Recode, Popular Science, The Daily Beast and numerous other websites before it, Motherboard has decided that there's simply no value whatsoever to having a healthy, on-site local community. As such the website is shoving any and all reader interaction over to less transparent and noisier discourse avenues like Facebook, Twitter and e-mail because comments as a "medium" are inherently somehow unhealthy:

"We at Motherboard have decided to turn off our comments section, a decision we've debated for a year or more. What finally turned the tide was our belief that killing comments and focusing on other avenues of communication will foster smarter, more valuable discussion and criticism of our work. What percentage of comments on any site are valuable enough to be published on their own? One percent? Less? Based on the disparity in quality between emails we get and the average state of comments here and all over the web, I think the problem is a matter of the medium."

One, just because only some readers can be bothered to comment doesn't magically devalue the entire comment section, as many reader simply lurk. I'm a lurking reader quick to head to the comment section to see if there's anything a reporter may have overlooked, misunderstood, or missed entirely. Did that tech blogger screw up the Wi-Fi specs on device Y or battery size of gadget Z? Does anybody else think this story makes light of X or misinterprets Y? Does anybody else in here feel the way I do? As a writer I find comments similarly valuable, even if you sometimes have to dig through detritus.

And that's just it: news comments foster community, but they also provide transparency, accountability, and crowdsourced fact checking right below the article, and that's what many sites like least of all. They just won't admit it.

In contrast, Motherboard pretends that their reporting will become just that much better if it doesn't have to worry about pesky public reader interaction:

"Good comment sections exist, and social media can be just as abrasive an alternative. But for a growing site like ours, I think that our readers are best served by dedicating our resources to doing more reporting than attempting to police a comments section in the hopes of marginally increasing the number of useful comments. That doesn't offer any real value to other readers of the site, and we'd all wager that the scorched Earth nature of comments section just stifles real conversation."

Unlike other news websites, Motherboard at least admits that it doesn't want to spend the time and money to cultivate a thriving local community. Still, it's a bit disingenuous to suggest that weeding the troll comment garden comes at the cost of better reporting. In fact, some studies have shown that simply having a writer show up in the comment section and briefly treat site visitors like human beings raises the discourse bar dramatically. And as several websites have noted, having a healthy comment section pays dividends in the form of loyal visitors. By blocking comments, you're sending that community elsewhere (not that Techdirt minds -- Motherboard readers are welcome to comment here).

Motherboard seems to miss absolutely all of the benefits of on-site community, consistently coming back to this strange idea that as a "medium" comments are inherently flawed:

"Comment sections inspire quick, potent remarks, which too easily veer into being useless or worse. Sending an email knowing that a human will actually see it tends to foster thought, which is what we want.

Because nitwits never send barely coherent single-sentence idiot bile via e-mail, right? Comments are simply a blank slate input field. How is that a flawed "medium"? The flaw is it forces outlets to work just a little bit harder, and doesn't allow them to filter what gets said and heard. As such, Motherboard yearns to head back to the era of "letters to the editor," which it may or may not respond to or publish:

"So in addition to encouraging that you reach out to our reporters via email or social media, you can now also share your thoughts with editors via letters@motherboard.tv. Once a week or thereabouts we'll publish a digest of the most insightful letters we get."

Or hey, we might not. And that's the problem: when only outlet-approved voices are made public you've muted an entire avenue of news dialogue correction and thrown the baby out with the bathwater, all in a misguided belief that we should try and force the open Internet back into the Walter Cronkite era of audience interaction. Of course all of these news editors and authors are just so dumbstruck and dizzy with the idea of not having to interact with snotty critics anymore, they can't see the forest (news as a healthy, fluid public conversation) for the trees (bile-lobbing blowhards).

Filed Under: comments, community, conversation, discussion, journalism, motherboard
Companies: vice

Daily Dot Latest To 'Keep Conversation Moving Forward' By Not Letting Site Visitors Comment At All

from the muted dept

There's a raging trend afoot for websites to shutter their news comment sections, then insisting that they're doing this because they care so much about conversation on the Internet. A steady parade of websites have now stopped letting site visitors give public feedback, almost-proudly informing these muted site communities that this was done for the greater good of mankind. Really, companies just don't want to spend the time or money to weed the troll garden (or may not like having their writers publicly fact checked on site), and are shoving these communities toward social media to bury the "problem" permanently.

The name of the game is about being cheap and lazy without looking like you're being cheap and lazy, and the justifications being flung about by editorial staffs are equal part absurd and fascinating. Popular Science, for example, declared that on site discussion of news articles is "bad for science." The Verge recently decided to shutter news story comments to help "build relationships." Bloomberg recently killed news comments and insisted it wasn't a big deal because, hey, most people can't be bothered to comment and therefore news comments "don't represent our readership."

Few of these sites seem particularly concerned about the fact that shuttering comments makes it very clear they don't really value truly local community, and lack the willpower to nurture and protect on-site (or in app) participation. Nor do they seem to realize that data has shown that toxic comment sections can often be dramatically improved simply by engaging a little with readers.

The Daily Dot is the latest to put comments "on infinite hiatus," the site proclaiming it's basically giving up after a few of the bigger troll flare ups of the last few years:

This trend is about more than just raw engagement. It’s also about what kind of engagement we want to have. We’re at an interesting point in the history of the Web. In the wake of Gamergate, Celebgate, and the Reddit Meltdown of 2015, both publishers and social networks are grappling with the same fundamental issue: how to foster engagement and dialogue without inadvertently feeding the trolls in the process.

The solution: don't let anybody say anything publicly on your actual website. Ingenious! The site continues:

"The general consensus is that we need to detoxify the Web—to make it a cleaner, nicer, safer, and more inclusive place to live and work. Of course, at the Daily Dot, we would like to see a more civil, compassionate Web, but we want to be careful that in the name of fostering civility, we do not inadvertently kill all dissention.

The notion that you can somehow bring managed civility to the entire Internet seems like a fool's errand. You can bring civility to your own comment section, but again that takes time, money and effort that it's abundantly clear many websites aren't willing to provide. So instead we get esoteric, disingenuous, incoherent musings on how being too lazy to engage with your own readership will somehow save the broader Internet from the menacing troll hordes. Like other sites, The Daily Dot proclaims that "hey, we're still on social media" before dropping the now all-too-common line about how this is all about improving the conversation:

It’s a different route toward the same goal: to deliver the news to our readers, wherever they may live online, and to keep the conversation moving forward.

It's like putting duct tape on the mouths of everybody in town because of two jackasses at the pub, then proudly patting yourself on the back for spearheading an amazing revolution in kindness and communication. Obviously sites are free to insult and ignore on-site communities as they see fit, but it would be a notable improvement if they could do it without the nauseating hyperbolic claims that they're just trying to save the Internet from itself.

Filed Under: anonymity, comments, conversation, websites
Companies: daily dot

Reuters, Re/code Care So Very Much About 'Conversation' That They're Asking Commenters To Leave

from the baby-and-the-bathwater dept

A little more than a year ago, Popular Science announced they were shutting of news story comments, stating that comments were "bad for science." Earlier this month Reuters Digital Executive Editor Dan Colarusso also announced that the company would also be eliminating comments from news stories. Comments, Colarusso proclaimed, were no longer necessary thanks to the rise of social media. Reuters still values conversation about the news, he insisted, but the old-fashioned idea of allowing users to directly comment on stories must give way to "new realities of behavior in the marketplace":

"Much of the well-informed and articulate discussion around news, as well as criticism or praise for stories, has moved to social media and online forums. Those communities offer vibrant conversation and, importantly, are self-policed by participants to keep on the fringes those who would abuse the privilege of commenting."

That's a lovely way of saying that Reuters didn't care enough about its readers to pay for moderators. This is the same Reuters that a few years ago threw the baby out with the bathwater when they banned anonymous commenters, ignoring the fact that anonymity isn't synonymous with jackassery, and can often allow people to give valuable insight they might not be comfortable with otherwise.

On the heels of the Reuters announcement the folks over at Re/code this week announced a similar plan, again insisting that social media is a good enough replacement for direct, on-site reader feedback:

"Our writers are all active on services like Twitter and Facebook, and our official Re/code accounts on social media post our stories all day long. Readers aren’t shy about offering their opinions to us on these and other social media services, and you are likelier to be able to interact with us there. In effect, we believe that social media is the new arena for commenting, replacing the old onsite approach that dates back many years."

Should you visit Re/code now, you're informed that your comments are considered so important, you're encouraged to leave:This sudden disdain for traditional comments raises the question: is Facebook somehow immune to stupid comments? Is forcing all news conversation on to Facebook's terms really an improvement in meaningful dialogue? The rush to declare the comment section dead seems to ignore the fact that on-site comments create value by building a sense of local community, something GigaOM's Mathew Ingram recently put rather succinctly:

"The bottom line is that if the discussion and debate and interaction around a news story occurs somewhere else, then soon the readers who are interested in that engagement will start to think of the platform where it occurs as the important part of the relationship — not the site that actually created the content."

Offloading moderation costs to social media websites is of course their prerogative, but I find the pretense that this is about some kind of concern for an evolution in conversation to be disingenuous. It's like a local bar owner saying they value intelligent conversation so much they'd really prefer it if patrons held their conversation at the massive stadium down the street. It's a way to keep your readers -- both the obnoxious ones and those offering interesting insight and corrections -- at arms length. The fact these announcements tend to be dripping with disdain for site readership doesn't generate the impression that participatory feedback is actually welcome.

That's not to say comments aren't frequently a raging cacophony of nitwits, partisan blowhards and spambots when moderated poorly. However, there's a number of older tech communities like Slashdot that have been able to moderate communities and cultivate intelligent conversation for more than a decade on a fraction of the budget of Re/Code and Reuters. Sites like Reddit and Gawker have similarly tinkered with community self-regulation and systems that work to dull the boldest bullhorns in said nitwit cacophony. This sudden trend toward waving your face like a Southern belle at the overwhelming and brutish nature of Internet conversation seems dramatic. We're herding a few jackasses here, not splitting the atom.

Obviously news comments are an ongoing evolution, and it takes a little work to cultivate meaningful conversation. But offloading your Viagra spam and bile-soaked comment section to Facebook because you can't be bothered to hire moderators is a cop out and it's lazy. Pretending you're doing it because you value conversation adds insult to injury. What Popular Science, Reuters and Re/Code are really saying is that they don't care enough about their communities -- or those regulars who do stop by to have intelligent conversation -- to pay somebody to weed the garden.

Filed Under: comments, community, conversation, journalism, social media
Companies: re/code, reuters

Join The Conversation On Keeping International Agreements From Restricting Internet Freedom

from the this-is-important dept

For quite some time, we've talked about how the entertainment industry has used international agreements as a way to force their agenda through various governments. There's a great book, Information Feudalism: Who Owns the Knowledge Economy?, which details some of the history of how the entertainment industry has often driven international agreements, and then used those international agreements -- which they had a hand in writing -- to then demand changes to various laws to "meet our international obligations." Just law week, I saw Bruce Lehman (at Santa Clara University's DMCA summit), the architect of the DMCA, flat out admit that he intentionally went to WIPO to get the 1996 WIPO Copyright Treaty passed as an "end run around Congress," since Congress wasn't interested in passing the DMCA.

Just last week, we also highlighted how existing international free trade agreements make it difficult for Congress to fix something as simple as making it legal to unlock your mobile phones, even if the White House has come out in favor of it. I'll have more on this little horror story shortly, but these kinds of examples should have us tremendously worried about various international agreements, from ACTA to TPP to the upcoming TAFTA covering Europe and the US.

Given those concerns, the folks at Open Media have set up a day of discussion about how the public can stop international agreements from restricting internet freedom.

So we want your input: What do you think is the best way to stop these threats to Internet freedom? How can we best reach and engage more people in the battle to stop Big Media lobbyists and bureaucrats from censoring expression online?

They're hosting a Reddit AMA to discuss this (I'm participating for part of the day), along with asking people to discuss anywhere else they would like as well: Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, or right here in the comments. The entertainment industry has had more or less free rein in helping to craft international agreements that pressure governments into passing laws in their favor for decades. It's time we took that out of the secret back rooms, and let the internet-using public have its say in the matter.

Filed Under: acta, ceta, conversation, copyright, intellectual property, international agreements, internet freedom, patents, tafta, tpp

Iceland's MPAA Pirates Software; Tries To Defend Itself On Facebook; Runs Away

from the so-much-for-that-plan dept

Via TorrentFreak we learn that SMAIS, the Icelandic equivalent to the MPAA, was recently called out for pirating some software. The software, made by Dutch company NICAM, is apparently used for setting up a labeling/rating system for content including movies, video games and more. SMAIS agreed to license the software, which it received, but then it failed to make the payments. Any of them. At all. A NICAM exec is quoted as saying:

From the moment the contract was signed, everything went silent. There was no contact between SMAIS and us, unfortunately. We tried to contact them, but it didn't work.

This, as you might imagine, caused a bit of an uproar in Iceland, with people speaking out against SMAIS. In response, someone there (apparently without very much internet experience) decided the right thing to do would be to set up a Facebook account for SMAIS. Now, if they could actually discuss the various issues, that might not be a bad idea. But... that's not what happened. After being bombarded with critical comments from others, SMAIS shut down the Facebook account with a snarky note about how they needed to hire someone to run the account, and also about how they have "lots to learn." Though, they also claimed that "some freedom fighters think that only some voices have a place on Facebook." Probably not the right spot for a bit of snarkiness, but perhaps it's not so surprising.

Filed Under: conversation, copyright, iceland, infringement, software
Companies: facebook, nicam, smais

Time Warner's 'Conversation' Website Ditches All Comments; The Conversation Is Just Them To You

from the that's-not-a-conversation dept

Last summer, we talked about a site that Time Warner Cable had launched called Time Warner Cable Conversations, which it insisted would be a "conversation" between it and the public. As they put it, the goal was "to interact with our customers and to contribute to the on-going conversation about cable." Except... as we noted at the time, they didn't seem to want to discuss what most customers wanted to talk about. The "conversation" was limited to discussions about TV network deals, just as they were fighting with Time Warner Cable about how much the various networks would cost. If anyone wanted to "converse" about things they didn't like about Time Warner Cable, such as it's super low data caps, too bad. The comments on the site were limited and heavily moderated. Even friendly discussions about data caps were rejected.

And, now, it appears that TWC has decided to make the "conversation" even less of a "conversation." It has removed the ability to comment altogether. So, it's no longer a "conversation." It's just a marketing brochure.

This week we checked back and discovered the dialogue had decidedly turned one-way: namely from Time Warner Cable to you. The company deleted the few views that were published on cable television programming costs and removed its comment section altogether.

Of course, this is how companies like TWC view "a conversation." They talk. You shut up and listen.

Filed Under: broadband, comments, conversation, data caps
Companies: time warner cable