A Microsoft opinion on Smart Tags Website Annotation6/21/2001; 12:08:34 PM Dave link's to a Microsoft's employee's opinion on Smart Tags. I wanted to say a couple things.'When you write a piece, when any author writes a piece, he or she is always at a tremendous advantage over the reader. Theoretically at lease, you have at least familiarity if not command of the topic about which you write. The reader most likely does not. That's why they are reading, to learn something, to be exposed to new ideas that you do not yet have or understand.'This is an incredible naive (as in "unsophisticated") view. The writer is also at the mercy of the reader: No reader, no value in writing. And the power stems more from authority then authorship. Despite my familiarity with the topics I write about, my personal attacks on Smart Tags have probably not even registered on Microsoft's detectors, while Dave's obviously have.But there is a deeper and far more pernicious misconception here, one that is one of my core disagreements with the entire annotation crowd: That there is an asymmetry between writer and reader. This is simply untrue. We are all authors. Every e-mail we write, message we post, 'blog we run, all of that makes us into authors. Empowering "the reader" at the expense of "the author"'s expressive power looks good in the abstract, but in the concrete, we are all on the author's side of the relationship as well as the reader. It's a false dichotomy. You are an author.Any asymmetry between "authors" (you) and "readers" (also you) is a toehold that people with power (corporate or government) will use to gain more control (/power). This is why I think annotation for the purposes of increasing the "power" of the "readers" is a sick joke; in reality, it gives those with power the ability to start modifying messages as they see fit. Microsoft merely actualized the potential, the potential is inherent in any Smart Tag/Third Voice annotation system. There is no way to construct an annotation system that will not be co-opted or even subverted to use by the government or powerful corporations.We must defend both the idea and the ideal of the author-reader relationship being peer to peer. Everyone has the right to talk, and everyone has the right to hear no more and no less then what people are saying. Anything else is censorship... even if it's censorship gussied up as additions to content, rather then the usual subtractions. If we do not defend this peer-to-peer model, if we don't defend our integrity, then only those with power will be able to speak unmolested (you can bet anti-Microsoft messages won't show up on microsoft.com on the default install)... and people with power are the last people who need to be protected.Of lesser interest:'To suggest that the author knows best how to write effectively to each individual reader is silly, yet that's what I understand of you position.'What astonishing arrogance there is in the opposite position, that Microsoft knows how to "help" writers reach these individual readers. What astonishing arrogance on the part of Microsoft to claim that they understand us so well that they can insert themselves as in intermediary to help us poor, helpless writers get through to the people we're writing to. It may be true that the writer is ineffective, but I don't trust Microsoft or anyone else to "interpret" a message for a reader; it's utterly impossible for anyone to know exactly what I meant to say.'`Many articles, including yours, accuse smart tags as "re-editing" the work??'I do not understand why annotation supporters often think they can have their cake and eat it too. (If you're a supporter and don't think this, then of course this doesn't apply to you.) Either the content is changed, so the user experiences additional content not placed there by the author, hence "re-editing" the work, or the work is not edited... or in other words, the user experience is unchanged. Labeling the changes "meta-context" as this author does is pure nonsense; "meta-context" is an undefined and I'd say undefinable term.

Teens Shrug Off E-Pervs Misc.6/21/2001; 8:59:13 AM 'High schoolers just don't seem too bothered by the online come-ons. "The kids are generally all right," said ABCNews.com. "Kids assume it's all part of being online," said USA Today. Referring to the Pew study, USA Today reported that 57 percent of teens surveyed have blocked messages from hasslers, indicating that at least sometimes, minors can take care of themselves. Maybe a co-author of the JAMA-published UNH study said it best: "They know it comes with the territory. ... But we need to be concerned about the small group who are being frightened and upset."'Unfortunately, young people probably get more grief in real life than in chat rooms. According to the article's chief author, "one in three teenagers surveyed said they had been targeted for more conventional forms of offline abuse, such as being assaulted by students at school," Newsbytes said. None of the kids surveyed said they were sexually assaulted as a result of online doings. However, "this does not mean that such abuse does not occur, but that such events are probably not as common as others, such as intra-familial sexual abuse, date rape and gang violence, that do tend to show up in surveys of this size," the study researchers wrote. That's more depressing than any stock market news we'll hear this year.'What?!? No "Think of the children! Won't somebody please think of the children!?!?" quotes? Somebody must of slipped up and published a non-panicky article about children. The Standard, fire that person immediately! There's no place in the news business for reporting like this.

Legislation urged to protect corporate data Misc.6/21/2001; 8:52:39 AM A lot of littler interesting tidbits in this article. The one they picked as the lead story isn't even particularly interesting. I was most amused by this one:'In other testimony, trade group officials said legislation is needed to keep corporate security data that's shared with government agencies from becoming public under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). '"Companies worry that if information sharing with the government really becomes a two-way street, FOIA requests for information they have provided to an agency could prove embarrassing or costly," said Harris Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of America, an industry trade group in Arlington, Va.'That would be a novel, if slow, way of getting your competitor's secrets... charge them with something criminal, get the government to confiscate the secrets you are interested in, then file an FOIA request to obtain them. I suppose they're right to be concerned.Still, I don't see why this can't be written to apply to everybody, not just "corporations". A person shouldn't be subjected to that either.

Coming to small claims court: Roadrunner vs. Acme Rent-a-Car
Misc.
6/19/2001; 7:21:01 PM 'When Turner signed Acme's rental agreement last October, he didn't notice the warning at the top of the contract that read: "Vehicles in excess of posted speed limit will be charged $150 fee per occurrence. All our vehicles are GPS equipped."'

Another idle threat of the "technology paranoids" comes true. Automated speeding tickets courtesy of GPS. Granted, it's private sector right now, but who says that will stay true?

Smart Tags and the Microsoft Problem Revisited Free Speech6/17/2001; 11:12:24 PM 'Here’s the bad news for Microsoft: their SmartTags technology, applied to the web would likely be illegal in most countries outside of the United States.'Here’s the bad news for us: Microsoft’s SmartTags would likely be completely legal inside the United States, when applied to content that originates within the country’s borders.'Why? Something called moral rights. Most civilized countries recognize them; but the United States doesn’t.'One of the moral rights mentioned is the right to integrity. I think this right is the single most important right that we lack in this country. Without the right to integrity, our communication, both on and off the 'net, will increasingly be subjected to the whims of those with power. Microsoft's Smart Tags and other annotation technologies are frankly only the beginning of the inevitable deluge. We must fight for this right of integrity and not give it up because it appears convenient at the moment. Integrity must take precedence over whatever so-called "rights" get in its way, or none of our rights relating to communication (''free speech'') will have any meaning.What good is annotation if annotation authors have no integrity rights either? What good is any communication if there is no integrity? Even if there is a "right" to annotate or change content as Smart Tags do, it's insignificant next to the importance of integrity. Annotation is not worth the price.

Evergreen Albums
Music & MP3
6/16/2001; 3:53:14 PM 'This is a study of long-term album sales trends using data taken from the Recording Industry Association of America's web site. The data is downloadable as text files for further analysis- my primary interest in doing this study was to work out which albums and artists have been able to drive long-term sales even after record industry hype had moved on to other, newer records, and whether there were any surprises in the data. There were.'

I found this interesting. I'm not quite sure what to make of it, but it is interesting.

The Wrong Way to Do Dirty Tricks Humor/Amusing6/16/2001; 3:15:08 PM 'A startling report from the Minnesota Senate race provides a stunning example of American politics as tech-cluelessness combined with petty nastiness.'Christine Gunhus, the wife of a U.S. senator who ran unsuccessfully for re-election in 2000, pleaded no contest last week to charges of using a pseudonym to unlawfully send e-mail messages that disparaged her husband's Democratic rival.'That would be unusual enough in itself, but this look at how not to write e-mail nastygrams underscores the risks of using technology you don't understand -- especially when it can reveal your identity...'

Bar association may oppose UCITA
UCITA
6/14/2001; 6:38:26 PM 'The American Bar Association may vote at its annual meeting in August to oppose UCITA unless the controversial software licensing law is extensively revised.

'The ABA's Tort and Insurance Practice Section, a major group within the Washington-based organization, stated in a recent resolution obtained by Computerworld that UCITA should be "extensively revised" to more adequately reflect current law on licensing intellectual property, "with due regard for basic rights of consumers and the protection of licensees from unwarranted unilateral actions of the licensor." This language is included in a resolution that may be considered by the ABA's approximately 530-member House of Delegates, its national legislative body.'

U.S. judge to hear Yahoo! case of French Nazi ban Country Watch: France6/13/2001; 12:30:48 PM 'In a case with broad implications for free speech on the Internet, a U.S. federal judge has agreed to consider whether foreign courts may determine what Yahoo! Inc. sells on its auction site, a company spokesman said on Friday....'U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel in San Jose on Thursday rejected a French request to throw out Yahoo!'s challenge to a French court order last year which sought to block Yahoo's auctions of Nazi items under broad French anti-hate speech laws.'Yahoo!'s objection is that France actually required Yahoo! to comply with French laws worldwide, thus they had to remove all Nazi materials from all Yahoo! sites, even those not in France. Contrast this with the previous news story...

Harm from the Hague Misc.6/12/2001; 8:20:50 PM 'The Hague treaty is not actually about patents, or about copyrights, or about censorship, but it affects all of them. It is a treaty about jurisdiction, and how one country should treat the court decisions of another country. The basic idea is reasonable enough: If someone hits your car in France or breaks a contract with your French company, you can sue him in France, then bring the judgment to a court in whichever country he lives in (or has assets in) for enforcement.'The intersection of all activities not banned by patent, copyright, and censorship restrictions somewhere in the world is effectively a null set. It is not reasonable to assume that this tidbit of knowlege, obvious even to a computer nerd, has somehow consistently escaped the treaty writers. Thus, one must search for the motivation behind this treaty, because on the face of it, the whole idea is incredibly stupid and naive.Only two motivations seem to be in the running: Money (corporate interests) and power. Money does not seem likely to me; any company interested in using this to their advantage is just as likely to find themselves on the wrong end of a lawsuit in Nigeria or Egypt or Hong Kong or who knows where (perhaps "The Country That Always Finds In Favor Of The Prosecution, For A Small Price", recently formed off the coast of, oh, let's say France?). Then again, corporate interests are notoriously short-sighted... perhaps this is yet another example of a purchased law that will inevitable come back to haunt the purchasers.Still, I feel the only viable conclusion is that this treaty must be a power play by somebody, as it is equally obvious even to a computer nerd that all the courts in the world working 24 hours a day could not possibly service all the possible suits that could be filed should this go through. 100% enforcement is clearly not the intention. The whole point is going to be selective enforcement, which directly translates to power in the hands of whoever is doing the enforcing. (That's a powerful argument against proliferating laws, BTW; the power of selective enforcement tends to fly under the radar and remains undetected until it's in strafing range, but it's a very real power nonetheless.)Still, I can't think of a party that doesn't stand to lose as much as they might gain. Perhaps somebody can answer this for me: Who truly gains from this? The only answer I can think of is "the Third World" (giving them extensive powers over the courts of the rest of the world, notably the First World), but that's a vague answer and still doesn't explain why anybody else would sign this thing... who gains?(A truly paranoid answer: Only those countries with the maximal restrictions on speech, patents, or copyrights. For instance, Afghanistan. Afghanistan would be able to propogate its control far and wide. So, the people pushing for support of this treaty are those who want this control propogated, and are using this as a door to turn otherwise free countries into effective dictatorships in certain areas. It's paranoid, of course... but the thought has certainly crossed more then one mind.)