Web Advertisers Want To Cut Spam Down Spam & E-Mail9/26/2000; 9:36:22 AM 'The Responsible Electronic Communications Alliance, which includes DoubleClick, 24/7 Media, Bigfoot Interactive and ClickAction Inc., says [their proposed] standards will cut down on the number of unwanted emails, or spam, that Internet users receive.'OK, correct me if I'm wrong, because I could be, but isn't the primary business of the four mentioned companies web advertising? Do we really care if the web advertisers make noises about reducing spam? I don't know about you, but doubleclick.net hasn't sent me much spam lately.Something tells me this won't affect anything.

CueCat profiling potential described Privacy from Companies9/26/2000; 9:26:38 AM 'Freebie bar-code scanner CueCat, which enables users to swipe bar codes in print media and have their browser immediately directed to related information on the Web, uses software which transmits all the information that maker Digital:Convergence would need to record every bar code that every user scans, and which could be used to profile users, an advisory by the Privacy Foundation explains. 'Another feature enables users so inclined to connect their PC sound card to their TV audio output. The CueCat software then listens for signals encoded within the audio of television programmes and advertisements that convey information comparable to a barcode.'Normally, I'd have linked directly to the report, but I wanted to reward The Register for being clueful enough to include a link to the report at the end of their article!Anyhow, the article in question is here.

A Watchdog With Some Bite Privacy from Companies9/26/2000; 9:16:19 AM 'Based at the University of Denver, the Privacy Foundation joins a dozen or so other watchdogs – including the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the Center for Democracy and Technology and the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse – guarding consumer privacy. But as an independent foundation, it should have more clout than industry groups such as TRUSTe and the Network Advertising Initiative, which police their own members. Barton's foundation has one other distinction: Concentrating on technology rather than on public policy, it will sharpen the debate between companies that gather private information and the groups that monitor them.'Let's hope it works as well as they hope.Also don't miss the "Defenders of Data" table at the end.

Little bit o' Javascript helps site scanning Fun Stuff!9/25/2000; 8:13:14 PM For those who scan the same basic set of sites daily it can be easy to miss one or two in a day. So I added in a bit of Javascript on my sources page that will pop open a window easily for each source in the list. It's easy to add sources with Manila (though there's nothing Manila-specific about the script).If you want to steal, errrrr, use it on your own site, look in this site's Javascript (http://static.userland.com/gems/irights/site.js) for the OpenAllChildLinks function. There's a lot of stuff in that .js file, but this funtion is independent of everything else (except a global variable it uses).Have fun!

Secrets & Lies: Digital security in a networked world
Misc.
9/24/2000; 1:07:40 PM 'The following is an edited excerpt from "Secrets and Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World" by Bruce Schneier.'

This is a good chance to read some very good material without buying the book. Please do read this.

How do you make online privacy policies stick? Privacy from Companies9/24/2000; 1:00:18 PM 'So perhaps it's time to look at privacy policies and opt-in agreements as legal contracts or license agreements. Digital signatures have been around for years and the law is starting to recognize them. So why couldn't a company draw up a virtual contract on privacy that's binding on both sides? Every time I click on a licensing agreement, I'm warned how I might be subjected to imprisonment, fines, and fierce noogies from the Feds should I violate it. Can't those stipulations work both ways?'Lets work some numbers here:

  • Number of lawyers the company drawing up the policy has: Tens - Thousands
  • Number of lawyers the person agreeing to the privacy contract has: Zero.
It's wrong to set customers against that many lawyers. The corporate lawyers could write contracts with every loophole imaginable, thus not really affecting the status quo, and then for bonus points, they could (and would) bind the customer in this new contract to any number of things in the fine print. The clause that leaps to mind as plausible would be "Thou Shalt Not Say Nasty Things About This Site". UCITA allows software manufacturors to put the equivalent into software licenses.Creating privacy contracts is a good thought, but the two-way nature of the contracts is scary. I'm not going to sign the equivalent of a EULA just to use your e-commerce site, sorry. What we need to do is either make companies stick to their original promises (which has problems, as that could drive companies out of business if they start by promising too much), or, ideally, create a legally binding system that restricts what all companies, Internet or otherwise, do with customer data. And we need to not be sidetracked by arguments like this:'It's a fundamental law of Internet commerce that privacy and convenience are at loggerheads: To gain one, you must sacrifice the other. 'E-commerce companies find themselves in a bind. E-commerce is plagued by complaints of a cold, nonpersonal experience. Where's the love? But a company can't very well give you a personalized experience without knowing something about you. 'Hence the privacy policy, which is the company's promise to only gather data about you in the interest of serving you better -- never to sell as marketing or demographic data.'The third paragraph flatly contradicts the first paragraph, and it's the third that's correct. I have no objection to sharing data voluntarily with a company so they can provide me service, but that just does not require that they sell that data. There's two 'privacy' issues here, not one: 1. Customer sharing with company and 2. Company sharing with company. We need to not be mislead by people trying to lump them together and propounding logic that boils down to "Customers need to share data with companies to get service, therefore privacy is not possible (therefore companies must share with companies)."I hate to rag on the article so hard, because it's good to play with ideas like this and see where they lead; it's how progress happens . However, the author should have played with it a bit more before writing a story.

Universities Snub Napster Ban Request Music & MP39/22/2000; 3:17:15 PM 'In a broad rebuke to attorneys representing the artists Metallica and Dr. Dre, four prominent universities rejected the request to ban Napster access on their campuses yesterday.'The Boston Globe reported yesterday that Harvard is expected to respond similarly next week.'Excellent. (This is a follow-up from a Sept. 8, 2000.)

Thousands Sign Up to Sell Votes Political Speech9/22/2000; 2:27:06 PM 'Boasting of the more than 6,000 Americans who have signed up to auction off their presidential votes to the highest bidder -- illegal activity under the laws of every state in the union -- Voteauction is now detailing its plans to begin an outreach campaign. 'Using its "Voter Empowerment Kits" and "Action Teams," the company claims in a press release that it can reach more potential customers and facilitate voter fraud without the intervention of an online middleman.'I really don't know how to react to this site's antics... amusement? disgust? horror? Most (post-)modern art attempts to provoke that reaction, and fails miserably, so by the art community's standards, Voteauction.com is one of the best pieces of art I've seen in a long time. (I suppose this is a relatively unusual way of looking at it )I found this tidbit interesting:'The profile of both sides of the Internet auction does jibe with the history of vote-buying in America, said Larry J. Sabato, a University of Virginia political scientist and author of the 1996 book Dirty Little Secrets: The Persistence of Corruption in American Politics. 'Especially telling is the fact that the payoff-per-vote, as tallied on the site, is settling into the $10-$20 range -- the amount of cash an individual vote tends to command in other, non-Internet-based schemes. '"It always seems to be about $20," Sabato said. "That must be the going rate. And when you think about it, it makes sense. Because 10 bucks is not what it used to be. With 20 bucks you can get a pretty good meal, if you know where to go. And I think that's how some people conceive of it. Their vote may be worth a meal. It's sad, but that may be true."'At that price, it is still feasible for the rich to buy votes. If we all would value our votes at say $1000, nobody could buy off enough people to matter (since not every voter represents a voter who would not have voted that way on their own). In decision theory, you might look at vote fraud laws as an attempt to force people to value their vote at more then anyone will pay, as the act of selling a vote might include paying the price of significant jail time.Another interesting note... of all the topics we've seen that will require international agreements on how to handle, this is the most immediately importent I've yet seen. Free speech, patents, and all the rest I cover is importent, but we can muddle along for a while. Wide-scale vote fraud tears countries apart; just look at the countries it occurs in to see that. How the US government reacts could serve as a defining moment in the Great International Internet Law question.

Rio's Pyrrhic victory
Music & MP3
9/20/2000; 3:24:41 PM 'But 15 months after Diamond's victory, as Napster and MP3.com fight for their lives in court after suffering a string of lopsided judicial defeats, observers are wondering whether some in Silicon Valley read too much into the Diamond win. The landmark case may instead have provided, as Emusic chairman Bob Kohn puts it, "a false sense of security" among pioneering online music players -- thus setting up the current litigants for a big fall.'

You could summarize the article as "The Rio case taught the music industry a lesson about being specific in lawsuit complaints and focussing on their strengths in the case, which they learned, and have used to good effect against MP3.com and Napster."... but that would be a short Salon article