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When Profiling Goes Wrong
huskymo writes "This morning's Wall Street Journal is carrying a funny story on TiVo and Amazon's automatic customer profiling. As most Slashdot readers probably know, TiVo keeps track of which programs you record and--if you haven't told it not to--records other programs it thinks you'd like. The article describes users that TiVo's mistaken for Korean, for gay, even for "a pregnant gay man.""
Funny as hell.
I subscribe to WSJ, and every day middle-low on the front page, they have a "humor" story, I suppose for really uptight type-A people. That was today's, so I assume no anti-TiVo subtext.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
The key thing is not to profile for things that will offend people unless there's an opt-in somewhere: sexuality, religious beliefs, etc. And the filters for language are obviously way off: it shouldn't start recording stuff in Korean unless you've watched at least two or three shows in Korean.
From the article, it appears the man once ordered gay-themed material, and he later got recommendations for other gay material. Then he ordered a baby book for friends, and subsequently received recommendations for other baby/pregnancy related stuff. I don't see how this equals a computer "thinking" the subject is a gay pregnant man, or that it has any such category. And when the other guy ordered war movies and then started getting a lot of Third Reich stuff, he claims TiVo "thinks" he's a Nazi. People are reading way too much into this.
Keeping track of the "flow of information" you're handing out is a fascinating thing. I once invented a company name to reserve a domain for. This was in the dark ages, when a popular top level domains was upkept by someone using a "vi" and who was rejecting domain names he disliked. As "fantasy" names were refused, i made up a company named like the domain i wanted to get. Unluckily i used my home address.
The name and address together was never used again by me. But this company still gets magazines, advertisement, business proposals (not only from Nigeria) and (during the .boom era) once even got an offer for a takeover.
Even if i should drop dead immediately, this name would continue to live and be responsible for the slaughter of complete forests.
So be carefull when you invent names. Like ghosts they may come when you call but not leave when not wellcome any more.
Yours, Martin
This isn't all that funny. I'd even say it's serious. While the consequences in this case are little more than a strange and perhaps unexpected selection of programming, consider the consequences if say, lyin' Johnny (Poindexter) and a huge government bureaucracy drew some equally bizarre conclusions based on what you've bought, what you've watched on TV, or how frequently you've visited a certain establishment, or where you've traveled. I hope the 'suspicious' person is still laughing as they're being carted off to a Q&A session with a couple of HomeSec droids. While coercing Tivo to modify it's behavior is but a minor annoyance, I can't help but think that we're about the see the very real danger in allowing others to acquire the means to draw completely inaccurate conclusions about who we are and what we're doing.
I'd also bet that Tivo doesn't have a "Terrorist" tag...
True, and I don't think the profiling data is centrally stored either. (But I don't have a Tivo, so I wouldn't know.)
However, can you imagine the kind of bad assumptions some people might make if they knew someone regularly watched "The Quaran Today" and other Muslim religious programming?
I can spell. I just can't type.
You missed a critical phrase: Since it is the entire article.
Fair use considers how much of the text is used, and using the whole thing all at once is almost certainly to be found a violation by the judge.
Additionally, fair use considers "monetary damages" caused by the use. Since the Post has a subscription system and not just the standard advertisements, "monetary damages" could be very significant; people who might have subscribed instead just read it here.
IANAL either but most people extremely seriously overestimate the power of fair use. Posting the article was a copyright violation, to a high enough degree of certainty I don't feel the need to qualify that with any variation of "probably".
Remember... the law is not what you think it is, it is what the the law says and how a judge interprets it. The Slashdot community as a whole is very incorrect in its interpretation of "fair use".