We Own Everything, So You Don’t Have To

April 21, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Google logo render - Mark Knol
Creative Commons License photo credit: mark knol

As the startlingly rapid movement to digitize everything on earth marches on, questions ranging from the legal to the political to the philosophical continue to arise. One recent such instance came in the form of a lawsuit filed by the American Society of Media Photographers and other visual artist organizations, who are suing Google for its massive digital book-scanning project, arguing that Google is committing large-scale copyright infringement.  This article in the New York Times details the lawsuit and includes information on a possible settlement that will allow Google to continue scanning virtually every book in existence while providing artists with new ways to profit from their work.  Whatever the outcome of the case, though, it is clear that the current model of copyright law is being forced to evolve rapidly to keep pace with the tremendous legal issues that accompany a technological transformation as large in scale as the digital revolution.  Google’s seemingly inevitable goal, in the words of a University of Colorado professor quoted in the Times piece, “to control…virtually all information in the world,” may end up redefining the entire concept of intellectual “property.”  Essentially, no one will own anything, because Google will own everything.

Google’s dystopic implications are tempered by the insane practicality and amazing access it can provide to the world’s information.  As a historian of twentieth century America, I am in awe of Google’s book and magazine collection, which includes the entire run of LIFE magazine (advertisements and all) on top of hundreds of other titles.  Seriously, it’s amazing; go check it out.

An unavoidable part of living through this peculiar digital stage of human evolution is the growing sense that everything is online. This of course can’t be true, but it’s not going to stop Google from trying to keep an infinity of information within its control.  My own political orientation influences my deep pessimism about the direction of this inarguably necessary enterprise. How comfortable are you with Google’s stewardship of information?   The clip below, from HBO’s brilliantly prescient 1990s sketch comedy series Mr. Show with Bob and David, obscenely captures my perhaps irrational fear that Google is our Globochem…(warning:  adult language, which is kind of the point).

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uco5Ed-5y2U[/youtube]

Filed Under: Copyright, Search Engines, Technology Tagged With: ,

Lessig at Educause

November 11, 2009 By 2 Comments

Below is Lawrence Lessig’s keynote at last week’s Educause 2009: “It’s About Time: Getting Our Values Around Copyright.”  This 60 minute presentation is well worth the time of anyone who’s interested how antiquated copyright laws are impacting ecologies of freedom, access, education, and science in the digital age.  After delineating how we got to where we are, he advocates that rather than reforming existing laws, we instead challenge them by building alternative structures that will more flexibly, appropriately, and ethically govern information use.  Technologists and educators have specific and crucial roles in this: technologists must “build the code” for sanity by making it easier for others to effectively play by new rules, and educators must perform and encourage in our students skepticism towards rules that simply no longer make sense.

Also: as always, Lessig provides a captivating model for integrating text, images, and art into a presentation.

Filed Under: Copyright, Powerpoint and Presentations Tagged With: , , ,

Facebook Owns You(r Original Content Produced On or Shared Through Their Tubes)

February 17, 2009 By 10 Comments
Image for Art courtesy of Facebook.com.

Image for art courtesy of Facebook.com

Rest easy, Cacophoners; I just removed the “Share on Facebook” option from the “Share This” widget that appears beneath every post.

For those who don’t know, Facebook changed its Terms of Service last week, asserting a perpetual claim to use however it wishes certain content that you post on FB or that is shared on their network via a hosted “Share on Facebook” button.   A similar policy was in place prior to the change in terms on February 4, but Facebook’s claims to your  content used to expired when you deleted items or deleted your account.  That option ultimately gave users control over their content.

No longer. Here’s the key passage from the new ToS:

You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.

Here’s the clause that was removed:

You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.

This has produced no shortage of outrage, as well as a totally inadequate response from FB honcho Mark Zuckerberg that essentially asserts the ToS does not reflect Facebook’s true feelings about user generated content (to which friend of the Institute Matt Gold responds: “What matters is what they *do* with user info, not how they “think” about it!”).

Amanda French of NYU posted a really helpful run down of various ToS’s on other user generated content web sites, which highlights just how off-base and egregious Facebook’s claims are.  Boone B. Gorges of Queens College wonders about the pedagogical ramifications of this change, and also about what Zuckerberg’s response teaches us about the concept of  “sharing” in the digital age.

Ultimately, I hope Facebook sees the error of its ways, because it provides a unique, valuable, and often elegant service.  I have a network on FB which is almost entirely separate and serves a different purpose for me than my networks on Twitter, Ning,  LinkedIn, or BuddyPress; I’d hate to see that diminished.  At the same, anyone who blogs on Facebook’s blog utility should think long and hard before continuing.  Photographers who share their photos through Facebook should reconsider, or at least start watermarking the hell out the images they share.  Musicians shouldn’t upload MP3s of their compositions.  Faculty should reconsider any educational uses of Facebook.  Our students should be informed (though that’s nothing new).  Web masters should zap those “Share on Facebook” buttons from their sites (for clarification, if you post a link directly into Facebook, the claim doesn’t apply).  And those of us who have posted pictures of our kids on Facebook so that cousins abroad and childhood friends can follow their growth should be prepared to see those images used without our notification or permission.

Filed Under: To Ponder, Web 2.0 Tagged With: , ,