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Information Poisoning
There were several submissions of this piece: "Novelist Caleb Carr (probably most famous for The Alienist ) has written an article on Salon in which he talks about the dangers he believes information technology pose to society. His contention is that the unchecked spread of information technology will allow for increased corporate control over our lives. His proposed solution? Government regulation. (This is something that he has mentioned in interviews before, and it touches on ideas explored in his near-future SF novel Killing Time ). Overall a very interesting and thought-provoking read." I suggest you read the article without any preconceived ideas of whether you'll find it "good" or "bad", just read it and see what you get out of it.
Only in the ideal case where buyers and sellers meet in the marketplace with equal power, full knowledge, and no costs externalized.
Which is not to say that more government action is necessarily the answer to corporate misdeeds. We have to remember that corporations are creations of governments!
Rather than muzzling the monsters it creates, the state simply should stop creating monsters. Revoke corporate charters of misbehaving companies (that's not a new power for the state, it's an existing one that's never used). Require corporate shares to be owned by people, not other corporations. Stop treating corporations as natural persons (the Constitution defines U.S. citizens quite clearly, and corporations don't fit). These aren't increases in government regulation, they're actually decreases in the state power to create profit-obsessed artificial entities.
(Pardon me for the U.S. bias in the above; I believe the same ideas apply in other nations, but I'm most familiar with the laws here.)
But what this twit wants isn't to stop corporate abuses. If that were the goal, he'd want more freedom of discussion, making sure that net publishing remains available to the average American, not just to AOL/Time Warner and Microsoft. Like every other pro-censorship fuckhead, he's wants his opinions of what's good information or bad information to affect the rest of us, "for our own good".
"Information is not knowledge." Sure, Zappa told us that a long time ago. But I sure as hell don't need idiots like this "helping" me by forcibly filtering my data stream.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
He actually thinks the government and corporate America are seperate entities.
-josh
The public school system has been doing this for the past 50 years at least. This is a sympton of society in general, not a net specific one.
As to the public's general apathy, how is now any different than any portion of the century in which television was available. Public interest has always taken a back seat to public diversion. Did the Romans need marketers to convince them to watch the gladiatorial matches for days on end, not even leaving to bathe or see to their homes?
"Corporate Regulation vs. Government Regulation" is just rubbish. Sure, corps are dishonest, greedy, and completely driven by profit, but unless Steve Jackson's vision of cyberpunk becomes reality, they don't have at their disposal a heavily armed force to exert their will upon you. Who does? Why our friendly government, just looking out for our best interests.
Honestly, the rest of the article doesn't even deserve comment. As soon as the 300 lb. gorilla of anti-internet propagana, the phantom pedophile, the whole thing just became sensationalistic. Most people lose all sense of rational thought when you talk about the "children". I don't blame them one bit either, but the fact remains, that when you hit upon a very sensitive and volatile subject, they will most likely believe anything they are told, regardless of how credible it is. Carr's philosophy of limited speech should be applied to him and his thinly veiled attempt to yell "fire!" in a crowded theater.
"We obviously need a new moderation category: (-1, Woo-fucking-hoo)" --Mr. AC
Oh, I'm sorry. Maybe it's the fact that the MPAA/RIAA are trying to have their cake and eat it too.
Me: "So, when I buy this CD/DVD, am I buying it or licensing it?"
Corps: "Oh, you're licensing the information on it. You're paying for the right to access that info."
Me: "So, if something happens to it, will you give me another one for free? After all, I've already paid for the right to access the info."
Corps: "No! You want another one, you pay full price."
Me: "Oh, well then, I'd better make a personal backup copy, as is allowed under copyright law."
Corps: "No! We don't want you to do that! You might distribute that copy to people who didn't pay for it! Thus, we'd better control the ability to copy any of our material."
Me: "Yeah, but isn't that punishing people who don't distribute copyrighted works? And isn't that also making it impossible for me to make my perfectly legal backup copy?"
Corps (realizing at this point I'm trouble): "You know what, screw you! We're not only going to keep you from exercising your rights under copyright law, we're going to do it insidiously, by slowly buying legislation that takes away rights you had."
Me: "What?!?! You can't do that! People will be outraged!"
Corps: "You honestly think most people will notice? We'll just use words like 'all-digital quality', and people will not only allow it, they'll welcome it! Mwahahahahahaha!"
So there. Now, I'm not saying that everyone who rips CDs to mp3 are just making personal backup copies. However, to punish everyone for those who do is just stupid.
49 20 68 61 76 65 20 74 6F 6F 20 6D 75 63 68 20 66 72 65 65 20 74 69 6D 65 2E
The question is not whether there is a problem. The question is whether you can solve it using government. The answer for most problems is "no".
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I spent months lobbying against the Smithsonian for its rejection of an Australopithecus Spiff-arino specimen. Now, sadder but wiser, I wish I'd known the provenance of that cruel hoax from the outset. Government is the only answer.
He says that although government sucks, at least it's on our side, whereas corporations have only their own interests. What he's missing is that in the race to earn profits, corporations have to please people. Only by pleasing people can corporations earn money. The ones that don't, lose money and go out of business. Government action doesn't have that feedback mechanism. It only has voting, and we only vote once a year. You vote for a corporation every time you buy or don't buy their products.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
It was this statement, however, that most struck me. In talking about how government, for instance, regulates the food industry so we know what ingredients we are dealing with, he says something similar is needed for the Net. He says: "There must be strenuous efforts first and foremost to guarantee that what is represented as fact is fact, and that what is not fact is clearly labeled as such."
This parallels an idea I had a couple years ago as a possible Web business -- providing a rating system to information sites as to how factual the information really is. A 'Consumer Reports', if you will, of information.
But the problem I came across, and one that I see in Carr's proposal, is this: Who decides what is factual?
Let's use an obvious example, creation versus evolution. See the problem? If a creationist were to evaluate a scientific article talking about evolution, might he or she be tempted to mark it down as 'Not factual'? Certainly a biologist would mark creationist writings as 'Not factual.'
So whoever provides the ratings as to whether or not information on the web is factual will either bring their own prejudices to the task, or will turn off a sizable segment of the population ('Oh, he marks that site as factual, but he believes in evolution so what does he know?')
I don't know the solution to this problem. How do you get a system that marks information sites as factual or not factual when the population-at-large can't even decide on what they think is factual?
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Private Essayist
He spends the first half of the article building his case with kiddie pr0n as the raison d'etre, and the second half failing to understand the difference between information and ideas, or at least the fact that they are made available via the net in exactly the same way, and sweeping regulation of one will undoubtable stifle the other - untolerably so.
This is a shame, since his points about the historical inability of corps to self-regulate (without the fear of government regulation to motivate them) are very valid, and his concerns about the erosion of privacy are well founded.
Further, we already have laws in place which regulate to some extent what content can be viewed by which people in which circumstances, and we will undoubtably have more in the future. Requiring passwords and some form of identity checking beyond what we already have would erode privacy even further, which he seems to be opposed to overall.
In all, his arguments, while understandable, lack internal consistancy. He just hasn't thought hard enough about the parts where the edges don't quite line up.
He should spend a couple of months reading
Don Negro
Don Negro
Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall
We'd end up in a scene from The Stand.. a few lonely souls wandering from town to town looking for someone to talk to. :)
--
All men are great
before declaring war
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Carr seems not to notice that not a single one of his concerns about the Internet could not also apply to the print media. Print was much more pervasive in its heyday, when every major city had 4 or 5 major newspapers, than the Internet is likely to be even 10 years from now, but nobody ever dreamed of regulating it. All newspapers, even nowadays, print unmitigated drivel from time to time, but they're only liable for it if it causes harm to someone. Carr offers no compelling reason to hold online content to a stricter legal standard than that.
And the brethren went away edified.
With apologies to Blair et al, there is a third option regarding "Internet vetting." I will preface this by saying that I agree with the author that there should be some kind of system to rate and interpret information. Although the raters would have some kind of control, this kind of system would allow for people who are not independent experts to get first time information from the Internet, rather than just confirming things read in far more exclusive venues of knowledge.
Ok, here is the third alternative between government and corporate control:
Popular control.
The reason we have government and corporations fighting over the domination of the Internet is most easily illustrated by imagining two lion prides fighting over a water hole while antelopes and zebras die of thirst. Although everyone, including the lions, would benefit from free access to the water for the zebras, only the lions are strong enough to wage the war.
In the case of information on the Internet, the entire system is organized towards marketing; the most valuable information, such as that on Lexis, is for pay. But, as many slashdotters are aware, freedom of information would encourage innovation.
How do we do it?
Michael Albert and others have outlined models of participatory economics (parecon) which rightly puts a high premium on knowledge, and the organization of knowledge, as something which is of very high value and is very political.
It also requires that experts abandon intellectual property and the exclusive rights accorded thereby, instead making propsperity dependent on free and easily accessible information for all people.
The model of educated, democratic input works on a small or a large scale, in capitalist or socialist economic systems, or as an economic system.
Sorry for the overly theoretical response, but I do not know enough about indexing, databases, or networks to be technical on this issue.
Goat sex free since 2001
The interaction between the gov't and the net has mostly this way. While we did have problems with CDA and kin, the end picture was that the gov't wanted those sites with inappropriate material for children to take necessary steps to make it harder for children to access them while still allowing easy access by adults. There are certainly a few stragglers of adult content sites that don't care if they push to kids, but most are intelligent enough to plaster warnings up all over their sites.
Privacy is a similar beast; the gov't has been dropping hints that consumer privacy on the net is very important to them, and corps that need privacy policies should start implementing them appropriately. But unlike the child-blocking of sites above, there a numerous examples of late where privacy was not treated highly or ignored; credit card lists thefts, aburpt changes in privacy policies without opt-outs, etc. The gov't is dropping more and more hints, but these big sites do not seem to be picking up on this. And when the gov't cannot succeed with hints, the next step is to pass legislation. Which is going to happen within the next 2 years, IMO. The technology is there to set up a privacy framework, where consumers can easily opt-out any information that they don't want a site to have, and the legislation is going to require that sites do this. And the businesses are going to complain and the like, but I think the gov't with the current political nature is going to put their foot down and tell them to do it or be punished with civil punishments.
Privacy policy WILL happen, the question is, how restrictive is it going to be -- will the net companies try to make amends now or later?
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Consider: the very first example he uses is 'pedophiles'. At the moment, there is no more hated and reviled group on the planet. (Personally, I don't really buy most of the noise -- I strongly, strongly suspect that it is nowhere near as bad as the politicians want you to believe.) There is no button that is hotter. Feelings on this matter run so strong that (so far) I have yet to see any rational discourse on the topic at all -- and that's his leadoff example. Not a good sign.
And then he goes on to say that information is dangerous, and that the state should be in the business of prior restraint of speech. Many people, he says, are incapable of separating fact from fiction, so that's why the content of the Internet should be regulated.
Well, gee. This is news? Most people I know just take the pap they're spoon fed by the media. So far, this hasn't been enough of a reason to license news agencies (to my knowledge) or to create a review board that would approve/deny any particular story or stories. We all know how quickly that would start being abused.
Consider: what if pedophilia actually isn't as bad as it's painted? (I"m not making that assertion, I'm just positing a hypothetical case.) In a system of prior restraint, that kind of topic would be very, very likely to be suppressed, or to be forced to take a label of 'fiction' rather than 'fact'. But ideas that are close to the mainstream, like 'The Internet is full of dangerous ideas and children shouldn't be exposed to them without content restrictions' would most likely be allowed to use a 'fact' tag. (heh, [FACT] [/FACT] :-) )
I can't imagine any better way to create even more of a feedback loop than we already have. Popular ideas get repeated, and dissenting ideas tend to be ignored. This has absolutely nothing to do with their actual truth or merit, just their popularity.
Any kind of governmental board would serve only to amplify this feedback loop. I can't imagine a faster way to destroy all possibility of rational discourse on truly disputed topics. It's a great way to make sure that the fundamental values remain unchallenged and that nothing ever REALLY changes.
As an aside, this guy also pisses me off. I'm perfectly capable of separating fact from fiction, and I'm quite capable of assembling a body of knowledge from disparate bits. The fact that there are people out there who cannot is simply no excuse to cripple my ability to gather information and decide for myself. It's just censorship in a slightly different form.
We can't run the Internet for stupid people. To do so will make everyone stupid.
..can be found here. The best part is, the essay is a comic strip.
I was going to submit this, along with the Salon article, pointing out how much more insightful the comic writer was (hmm... is this always the case?).
What SalonBoy misses (and ComicBoy gets) is that if you directly paid the artist, "corporate" interests are silently subverted.
And if there was a micropayment system, you would be more likely to pay the artist rather than demand free content.
The question becomes: is the lack of a micropayment system a technological problem, or a political one?
I disagree. All a government has to do is try to look like it's working toward the public good.... In the same vein as my post to earlier story on "Truth in Science" government is run by people, people who are just as likely to be bought and sold as those in the corp. life. A government's job (IMHO) is to do the minimum to preserve fundamental rights (now just what that "minimum" is is the $50K question...). Corps will, to an extent, screw with you mainly because they're run by people (I don't buy the people are better than corps line. People run corps. There are corps out there that have, in my opinion, very good ethics and there are those out there who are frigging lousy... just like people). Its the nature of the beast. At least with a corportation I can choose not to do business with them. I'm much more afraid of a government with too much power.
Just look at all of the /. favorite topics of late
DCMA - Gov't Backed, Corp Bought
UCTIA - Gov't Backed, Corp Bought
Tax on recordable media in Canada/Germany - Gov't Backed, Corp Bought
etc....
It costs a hell of a lot less money to throw some cash around to the Pols and get legislation passed to protect your market than it is to improve your product. The great paradox is the more control you give the gov't the more control you hand over to those with very large pocketbooks.
If you don't have anything nice to say, say it often.
- Ed the Sock
The power of prior restraint he speaks of essentially means that the government can choose to review each document that goes on-line, and prevent posting "because it said so" (I'm the mommy, that's why).
It should be fairly obvious after the parade of censorware blocks on legitimate sites, that any organization who gets that type of power will immediately procede to misuse it. And, were the net not protected by the first amendment, there would be no real way of defending against such things.
The odd thing is that the author appears to view the net as a read-only medium controlled by a few corporate interests. This is especially absurd considering TV and radio, being limited by the small number of channels available are necessarily controlled by corporate interests, while the Net is the great equalizer.
If I recall correctly, the reason for "balanced reporting" requirements and "operating in the public interest" broadcasters are helded were put in place for the very reason of limited bandwidth and corporate monopoly over what is transmitted on said bandwidth.
I could not escape one central dilemma: Only two forms of regulation are available in the United States: governmental and corporate.
This strikes me as similar to a religious person trying to convince an atheist that everyone should live under the rule of the Church, because after all, you're either going to live under God, or under Satan, and at least God is on your side... ignoring, of course, that the third possibility that neither God nor the Devil are on your side (much less exist at all) and that people can damn well take care of themselves.
I am continually stunned by the number of pundits (and yes, this author has firmly stepped into the realm of punditry with this fluff piece) who think that the Internet is somehow fundamentally different than any other 'legacy' information sources we utilize.
Somehow we get along just fine in the print world without his draconian governmentally enforced and verified 'truth'. People seem to sort it all out just fine for themselves. When I want good, reliable news I read the New York times, or CNN.com. These are names I have grown to trust over the course of my years of interaction with these organizations as a consumer of their content.
When I want sensationalism or schlock journalism I go to the Weekly World News or Matt Drudge, other outlets which have acquired a quite different reputation in my mind.
What is so different about the Internet as a source of information that somehow we now need to be protected from ourselves?
Regardless of the question of the need for such regulation, he utterly fails to address the consitutional issues that his regulations would create. I dare him to stop me from publishing lies on my own web site, via any law consistent with the US consitution. As long as I stay away from libel, slander, and inciting riots I think I will be well protected by the consitution.
-josh