Slashdot Mirror
An Interview with Ben Edelman
Chuck Talk writes "Orange Crate has an interview with Ben Edelman, a Harvard Law student and PhD candidate in Economics. Ben is noted for his work in studying issues of privacy, spyware, internet content filtering and the global supporters of those actions."
Some guy is a student with opinions about spyware.
He gets interviewed.
Article is a bit wordy.
Not worth reading.
Sorry.
I found that the student's site was better written than the article.
The site has a point: spyware software writers are evil and make spyware hard to uninstall, and the legal claims by spyware companies are different than his findings.
http://www.benedelman.org/
Thanks Ben.
The site has a point: spyware software writers are evil and make spyware hard to uninstall, and the legal claims by spyware companies are different than his findings.
I believe this conclusion was commonly held on Slashdot as far back as 2001, and probably before that.
In other news, US oil companies (legally) claim global warming is overstated, Japanese fishermen (legally) claim catching whales is OK and McDonalds (legally) claim Latin American cattle rearing doesn't damage the rainforests.
If you wade around the site, it has the odd interesting point r.e. legal agreements in spyware EULAs and who invests in spyware companies (clickable link), topics recently posted to slashdot. The content on the site is hardly partisan, while this fits in with the mindset of the lawyer, I'm curious how it aligns itself with a PhD student (given research should be as unbiased as possible).
In all fairness, this is not such a bad article. Just because everyone that reads Slashdot has the oppurtunity to be well informed about these issues, doesn't make his interview any less valid for the millions of non-slashdot readers that are not so well informed. Slashdot readers just assume that when they open up a new story, they're going to read something groundbreaking, and that just wasn't the case this time.
Sure he's just a student. But he's a phD student, which means he's been accepted into a program where his life will consist of academically monitored research in this ares.
Cut the kid some slack; he's the closest thing there is to an expert in his field.
Sure people can have many backgrounds, and a fresh-faced enthuastic, perhaps naive one approach is fantastic. It would be a disaster if everyone had this approach, but here we have someone clearly enthusiastic (check out his site), clearly intersted, and very establishment ('Harvard Expert' gets a lot of cred r.e. 'professional journalism'). So what if he's just starting out (cut your teeth somewhere, would you prefer it if he kept his mouth shut and had no feedback about his approach until graduation?!).
31337 h4x0r5 may write anti-spyware programs, reverse engineer viruses and edit the Windows Registry (!) - something extremely valuable in treating the symptom, but that's always reactionary to something that's happened. This guy is going after the cause - he had a story posted a couple of days ago about who invests in Spyware companies (valuable in 'outing' the 'villans'), he is looking at the legal agreements and increasing awareness to how they subtly change (for example, he browses through and highlights points from Gator/Whatever its called now, in their 63 page EULA (who removed a print option), he is beginning to look at the incentives these companies are subject to.
So thanks for your first ever post, but how about getting off your self appointed high horse and realising that to tackle a problem it takes all sorts, and Ben is spearheading the legal and academic approach to the Spyware problem, a problem which 31337 h4x0r5 writing anti-spyware tools or even Microsoft cannot solve alone (given ilknowledgable users, etc).
This guy obviously has some brains. Read just part of that, and you realize that.
IMHO here's what he should be researching and perfecting:
Visual EULA's
Just like creative commons has iconic easy to read licenses (link goes to LGPL sample).
Why? Because they are easy to read, use, analyze.
The US would benefit so much if we required electronic licenses to follow such a format. EULA's, TOS, AUP's, SA's, etc.
A standard of icons, and formatting.
So anyone, can have the option of viewing in that format, or the legal jargon.
Some more useful additions to the Creative Commons icons:
- Monitors Traffic or Usage
- Commercial Mailing
- Advertising Included
You get the idea.
Every program, with the option to view the license in an easy to read visual format.
Then everyone knew what they were installing or signing up for.
Would be much better than the "canned spam act", or "anti-spyware" bills in progress.