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Lawrence Lessig Reviews The Social Network
Hugh Pickens writes "Lawrence Lessig — author, Harvard law professor, co-founder of Creative Commons — reviews The Social Network in The New Republic. Although Lessig says the movie is an 'intelligent, beautiful, and compelling film,' he adds that as a story about Facebook, it is deeply, deeply flawed because the movie fails to even mention the real magic behind the Facebook story, and while everyone walking out out of the movie will think they understand the genius of the internet, almost none of them will have seen the real ethic of internet creativity that makes success stories like Facebook possible. 'Because the platform of the Internet is open and free, or in the language of the day, because it is a "neutral network," a billion Mark Zuckerbergs have the opportunity to invent for the platform,' writes Lessig. 'And that is tragedy because just at the moment when we celebrate the product of these two wonders — Zuckerberg and the Internet — working together, policymakers are conspiring ferociously with old world powers to remove the conditions for this success. As "network neutrality" gets bargained away — to add insult to injury, by an administration that was elected with the promise to defend it — the opportunities for the Zuckerbergs of tomorrow will shrink.' Lessig laments that the creators of the movie didn't understand the ethic of Internet creativity and thought that the real story was the invention of Facebook not the platform that made such democratic innovation possible. 'Zuckerberg is a rightful hero of our time,' concludes Lessig. 'As I looked around at the packed theater of teens and twenty-somethings, there was no doubt who was in the right, however geeky and clumsy and sad. That generation will judge this new world. If, that is, we allow that new world to continue to flourish.'"
...is that anyone can write apps that will suck the remaining privacy we have out of us and sell it to the highest bidder.
that he stole this idea from people that hired him to develop it?
that there exist people that want to see the movie in the first place....
Of course! Every movie having anything to do with the internet should be an op-ed piece supporting net neutrality. That'll work.
Since when is it "narcissism" to "see" bits of ourselves in characters we read about, or see in film?
Audience identification with characters in artistic works is as old as the media those artistic works have been presented in. Those works with the most timeless, universal themes are generally considered to be some of the best, most durable & long-lasting works - in other words, the ones which MANY people can "see" bits of themselves in.
Empathetic characters are nothing to be scared of or ashamed of. Do you really want films & books about nothing but outsized caricatures of humanity as characters, or filled with people who we are so utterly incapable of identifying with that they might as well be aliens from a civilization antithetical to our own? Because those types of stories might be fun one-trick ponies, but the thought of them doesn't hold much appeal for me.
Network neutrality isn't about unabated access to download copyrighted content, it's about keeping the Internet a level playing field. Without network neutrality, big companies like Microsoft, Google and Apple can pay ISPs to put their sites on the premium tier so that you get fast access to them, while poor startups and normal people with brilliant ideas will be relegated to the slower tier. I've even seen concern about ISPs one day offering packages a la cable TV - you can get Google, Yahoo and MSN with the basic package but then you'd have to add a sports/tech/music/etc. package to access those sites. It's not even limited to websites. ISPs could grant you HTTP access with the basic package and then you'd have to add FTP, NNTP, VOIP and other "value add" services". I realize that's hyperbole and possibly FUD but it's not the type of Internet I'd like to use. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality
This sig is in another castle.
Facebook may be the next Windows -- a dominant, proprietary platform on which everyone else's apps run. Add the absence of end-user control of the applications and data (including privacy), and it's antithetical to the free, open, and end-user controlled Internet on which it's built. How will the next Zuckerberg build his application? Not so easily, since he'll be dependent on the closed, proprietary systems and data of Facebook, doing only the things that they permit and only when, where, and how they want it.
Mozilla helped save us from a closed, proprietary web browser (one reason Facebook could blossom). With that battle won and a proliferation of browsers and Microsoft adopting open standards, they are struggling a bit to find a mission. I wish they would turn to their attention to the next issue of the open Internet, a free and open social network.
He used the open internet and tools to make a walled garden. Not exactly a triumph of openness.
No, this is part of the problem with the network neutrality debate. It actually got started after CEO of some big American telco whose name I forget said things like "Why should Google make money by using my pipes? I paid for those pipes, they should share the costs", ignoring the fact that he was already being paid by his customers. ISPs charging companies for priority access to customers purely on the basis of wanting more profit would clearly be both new and bad, thus network neutrality was born.
Somewhere along the way the debate seems to have got hijacked by those you describe, aka "people wanting free stuff", and somehow bandwidth shaping got lumped in too (sometimes). ISPs controlling how their customers use limited, overcommitted bandwidth isn't new nor particularly alarming, as you point out it can even be seen as a feature by others who aren't sitting on BitTorrent 24/7 and want fast access. Also, anyone can buy dedicated, non-overcommitted bandwidth if they want it by renting a leased line from various providers, so it's not even a matter of lacking choice.
The result is quite a mess. The original principles are sound but what the debate morphed into no longer bears much resemblence to them.
Since when do entertainment and profitabilty make for a deeply flawed movie? Focusing on net neutrality and packet priority would have bored the audience and interfered with the arch of the story. Just because something is ethically (and socio-economically) compelling, does not make it good theater.
Zuckenberg was portrayed as a "hero" ?
When I left the movie, I had the impression that Zunkenberg was portrayed as a thieving, condescending, misogynistic, little twerp. He stole everybody else's ideas, idolized a child molesting drug abuser, and betrayed his best (only?) friend. His only redeeming value is that he was a talented programmer.
Not my idea of a hero, but then, I don't idolize Bill Gates either.
Do you really want films & books about nothing but outsized caricatures of humanity as characters, or filled with people who we are so utterly incapable of identifying with that they might as well be aliens from a civilization antithetical to our own?
We call that Atlas Shrugged.
"In the U.S., morality is praised over quick wit."
You new here or something?
You mean like ESPN360 / ESPN3, or whatever they're calling it now?
Good one, claim you are not a troll when trolling.
Guns are only wanted by criminals.
Cars are only wanted by speeders.
The article links net neutrality to Facebook. You link it to copyright infringement, completly ignoring the case of Lessig.
Net neutrality means ANYONE, no matter their status has the same access to the web. That means that if I start a website tomorrow, it will be transported around the web with the same speed as Facebook, the ISP's own home page, Apples iTunes, CNN or someone's homepage.
This means I get the same breaks. This is REVOLUTIONARY about the web. BEFORE the web, the only way to be published big was to publish big. ONLY the largest newspapers could afford to distribute cross country, nevermind distribute globally. With the internet, MY website can be accessed ANYWHERE!
This allows me to compete. Imagine if Myspace had simply been able to buy special access. If ISP's could demand of every website a fee to be distributed like with Cable TV. Can't pay the fee? Then you don't get on their network. How was Facebook to startup then? How can you start a new tv network without millions in backing and the lockin that brings?
How CAN I start a new news network that broadcasts to every home independent of the powers that be if I need the powers that be to pay for the access?
If you don't get this, if you think it is about copyright infringement then you are the person who wanted presses banned because it allowed books to be owned by poor people. Either you are too stupid to get freedom, or you hate freedom.
There is no middle ground in this. You can't put restrictions on who can access a media and expect everyone to be able to use it. Unless of course you think only those with enough money should have a voice.
What the press did for political freedom, the internet is doing a thousand times over. But then, if you take your freedom for granted, or worse are willing to sell it, then I suppose none of this means anything.
Perhaps you are not a troll after all. There are worse things then trolls. People who do not value freedom. A willing slave.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
It's a movie...based off a an actual event but injected with LOTS of fiction and creative juicy bits to make the story interesting and dramatic. The movie isn't flawed because it fails to mention the "magic behind the facebook story," as most people watching the movie don't give a shit about that stuff! It would be nonsense that distracts from the movie.
The openness and magical qualities of the internet was not the plot of the story. The [fictional] movie was about friendship, betrayal, and the abrasive personality of Mark Zuckerberg. Rating the film down because it was lacking an explaination of the internet is stupid, and it seems more like an opportunity to talk about something Lessig cares about.
It was an interesting movie btw. After watching it I went home and Google'd Sean Parker info because I didn't know he had a hand in facebook. I also wanted to find out whether he was as big a douchebag as they played him out to be on the movie.
It's ironic that you chose Prometheus as the dubious divinity because he's been adopted by our culture as the patron saint of progress. You'll find his image everywhere that human ingenuity is celebrated, from the famous statue in the Rockefeller Center to Ayn Rand's paean to Prometheus in Atlas Shrugged. As a god he celebrates the best part in all of us, the cleverness that separates us from the animals.
Nothing gets a Monday started like a great joke. Thanks man!
The problem with a non-neutral network is that it quickly becomes a tool to increase lock-in. If youtube and hulu start paying major ISPs to prioritize their traffic, then the barrier to entry becomes that much higher for the next product which, on a level playing field, could have competed with them.
Mind you, there's another aspect to this as well, which is the whole "double dipping" problem. Because what I, you, and every other ISP subscriber out there are paying for is (at least used to be) a connection that would deliver whatever we requested at the speed we paid for. We're still doing that, but the providers are trying to take a cut from the people on the other side of the connection as well, and that's where we get into problems. See, if I want to go to "watchingpaintdry.com" and stream it 24 hours a day, I should be able to use just as much bandwidth as if I were watching Hulu. Because I paid for it. Because it's good for competition. Because if my ISP limits watchingpaintdry.com to a lower bandwidth in an attempt to extort them into paying them off, they degrade the utility and quality of the service I paid for.
Like Lessig said, the beauty of the platform is its openness. All the ISPs have to do is route bits to your home at the rate you paid for. And because those bits can come from anybody, the platform is incredibly useful as a multi-purpose tool. Except if all they're doing is routing bits, they lose all those money-making goodies like advertisements and service add-ons, and they don't want that. It's greed, pure and simple.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
If nothing else he's a little bit obsessed. Not every motion picture about WWII is about the Holocaust. That doesn't make those movies crashing rhetorical failures, it just means they had a different subject.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
how can you tell the difference between a library and a bathroom? the bathroom is where the ayn rand books are located.
I just had a Jon Katz flashback! Does he have a new identity now? All the summary needed was a post columbine reference.
Oh, you've just not heard from Google and others...
Net Neutrality is about not dinking with traffic- just deliver it.
Net Neutrality is about not interfering with bittorrent traffic- I don't pirate, I get Linux distributions and other things that're a LEGITIMATE use of that protocol.
Net Neutrality is about not interfering with SIP traffic from a competing telecom interest so that the ISP can sell their own SIP or h.323 service.
Net Neutrality is about not interfering with HTTP traffic going to/from Google and all of those others you mention.
It's all of that. And it DOES affect you. You're wrong like you surmise at the end of your post.
The fact that Obama and the Dems promised something along these lines, haven't done much WITH it, and what they've done is much like what they did with Healthcare "Reform", makes for interesting discussion- but that's not really germane to the thread you started here and would just merely start up a flamefest from the liberal and conservative crowd on /. :-D
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
You mean illegal downloads, not "free stuff". Youtube is free last time I checked. Net neutrality has little to do with copyright violations, and everything to do with normal websites.
Imagine that now a new (completely legal) Netflix competitor appears that you actually prefer over Netflix. It has more features, or a better selection of certain movies, or cheaper prices.
Yet, if you try to use it your experience will be shitty (slow streaming, high latency) because Netflix has an established player has the money to pay the ISPs' bribes and prioritize itself over their competitors.
This is lead to a huge barrier on entry for new competitors on established sites, and a general lack of innovation, which is the thing that makes the Internet so great.
What if Yahoo could have paid to keep Google unusable? What if Microsoft could have paid to prioritize traffic from IIS servers over Apache servers? What if Apple could pay to squash great services like Spotify for the iTunes service?
Dilbert RSS feed
Network neutrality is not about "free stuff" at all, it's about no discrimination based on source and destination. If a cartel of major ISPs is paid to promote YouTube, say, at the expense of everyone else's video site, small businesses everywhere will feel the sting. And the other big thing here is censorship. Without network neutrality, a Christian lobby, for example, may be able to block or throttle down A LOT of stuff. And, considering how much money they have, you can be sure that the network content will become more similar to the day-time cable.
Your point about wanting to access movies and music without paying for it is without merit. We are all paying for data transfer, and without network neutrality in place, even the free-as-in-freedom content which artists created with the intention of sharing freely will be marginalized, because it will compete with a handful of extremely well-funded commercial offerings.
A car analogy really works here, I think. The internet is kind of like the road system: it is designed from the ground up so that any host can communicate with any other host, as long as they pay for data transfer. Just like the roads are designed so that anyone in the USA can travel anywhere in the USA, as long as they have a car or can afford a bus. Imagine that almost all good roads in the USA are private and that there is no law which amounts to "road neutrality". The road barons would be able to isolate whole states and prevent the workforce from moving to a place with better employment opportunities. In this context, your opposition is similar to saying that we don't need road neutrality because some people would use it to drive to a titty bar. Who cares, there is much, much more at stake: our freedom to express ourselves, to educate ourselves, and our economic freedom.
My real concern is that the proponents of network neutrality just want to be able to have unabated access to download music and movies and porn without paying for them - that there's no real "freedom" issues at hand; it's just people wanting free stuff.
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all. (H. L. Mencken)
With the first link, the chain is forged.
I guess the affect for someone like me is that most of my internet viewing is something like youtube, netflix, hulu, etc, and whether or not the cost of streaming media should be passed on to me as the end user.
For me the big deal is that my local monopoly is comcast. I can go on hulu and watch a show for free, or I can pay 99 cents to get it on demand. I have a vonage phone that I pay $15 a month for, or I can pay comcast $40 per month for their VOIP phone. I can pay 8.95 per month for netflix, and be able to stream movies and shows on my terms, or I can pay comcast $LARGE_AMOUNT for slightly better TV service ($45 for digital, plus $6 for DVR/HD, plus extra for premium channels).
So, the question is, with all these online services cutting into their profits, is it unreasonable to have a concern that they will use throttling/prioritization to give themselves an unfair advantage over all their competitors?
Yes, I wonder why someone would use popularity as a guide to choose a social network.
Dilbert RSS feed
Oddly enough given my comment (what's life without some self deprectation?) I actually quite enjoyed some of Ayn Rand's work. Take out the 80-page soliloquy at the end of Atlas and I thought it was a pretty solid book.
The characters are rather outsized and undersized though! Interestingly enough, I read that Rand had intended to include a priest character--a sympathetic character, somebody who was on the side of good, yet sided with the "looters" for misguided reasons. Rand apparently felt the character wasn't believable!
Since about 1995, it's not a big deal to score 1600 on the SAT--a good fraction of 1% of test-takers manages this. In prior years, with different scoring adjustments in place, only a handful in a million would score so high.
None of the programming Zuckerberg was portrayed as having done in the movie required great ability, except perhaps to do it while drunk. The programming required to produce facemash was minimal, however.
The movie omits other Zuckerberg evil antics.
http://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerbergs-and-privacy-crimes-2010-3
"...(they) thought that the real story was the invention of Facebook..."
Perhaps the makers of the movie knew what their "real story" was, while some internet talking head (hey! I'm "internet famous!") is simply flogging his personal dead horse?
-Styopa
This post is wrong but useful. Since it shows what many "non-techies" (including politicians) think net neutrality is.
That's the great thing about this movie as a work of art. The characters were complex and no one was a perfect hero or perfect villain. They were real people, real people with real personality issues and real quirks and real greed. I think that's the key thing here.
Mark Zuckerberg - dick, computer geek, had some vision to make something cool
Eric Parker - dick, computer geek, thinks he's awesome but when confronted he scampers like a scared mouse and then uses paranoid delusions to explain what went wrong without owning up to his own mistakes.
Winklevoss twins and that other guy - all dicks, guys with money who think they deserve a hoard of cash because they are good looking, come from money and have high GPAs. And yet their vision was limited basically to a Facebook limited to Harvard and had no real vision for the features to add to it.
Eduardo - not really much of a dick, nice guy, wanted to help, wanted to help run the business, and in the end got screwed despite being the original funder, but compared to everyone else had no real vision, he was just trying to do as he was taught. Nice guy but if he had had his way, Facebook would probably not be nearly as big as it is.
I loved the characters as characters, but the only character I actually liked as a person was Mark's ex-gf. Everyone else was foolish or a dick. And that's what happened here, a bunch of dicks met at one point, soap opera ensues, and because this was such an explosively good idea everyone thinks they deserve a chunk of money. If you think that any of these characters other than the ex-gf is portrayed as a 100% hero or villain, you have a seriously warped and false sense of black and white and you don't belong in the discourse of this movie.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
I mean, come on. It was everything I could do to keep the Star-Spangled Banner from playing spontaneously through my speakers when I read that summary. I appreciate that he is an advocate for Freedom with a capital "F" and all that good stuff, but Christ Almighty, Lessig, learn to pick your spots. It's a movie review!
you can't put a price on cool. Damn I miss the .com days. So sick of business getting cheap.
-Xen
Sure, and Rand's goal with Atlas Shrugged was to portray 'romantically ideal' heroes and heroines... and I thought it was an all right story, though I could have done without being bludgeoned over the head with her philosophy quite so much - subtle she wasn't. You know you're supposed to hate Jim Taggart, Wesley Mouch, Orren Boyle, et. al. from the moment you meet them in the book, and you know you're supposed to see John Galt, Dagny, and Hank Rearden as heroic from the moment they're introduced. Francisco is slightly more nuanced, but she spends so much time talking about his insane degree of talent & capability that you can't help but see he's also one of the "good guys," and spends most of his time mocking (unsubtly) the people we are told (but do not believe) he spends most of his time around.
I don't think anybody reading Atlas Shrugged would say that the characters in it are particularly amenable to being identified with, though - they are (by design, but still...) outlandishly one-dimensional, almost to the point of monomania. Rand suggests that we SHOULD aspire to be like her heroic characters, but I think it's difficult to say that most of us would see much in them to identify with.
We're talking about two different things here. You're talking about the end user's connection. Net Neutrality is about the content providers' connection.
I have no problem with tiered bandwidth plans. I play online games and stream movies and TV shows over Hulu and Netflix so I gladly pay for the top tier service to have the most available bandwidth. My parents check email and read the news online so they have the basic tier. There's no need for everyone to have a 30/10 Internet connection.
To quote SaveTheInternet.com
"Net Neutrality means no discrimination. Net Neutrality prevents Internet providers from blocking, speeding up or slowing down Web content based on its source, ownership or destination....The free and open Internet brings with it the revolutionary possibility that any Internet site could have the reach of a TV or radio station. The loss of Net Neutrality would end this unparalleled opportunity for freedom of expression."
Since you cite Comcast as the example, they just bought NBC. Without Network Neutrality, what's to stop Comcast from throttling the ABC and CBS websites unless they pay for top tier service? The lack of neutrality undermines competition and traps us in a system where a few powerful corporations control the content we see and hear. When was the last time you heard independent music on a radio station that wasn't in a college town? ClearChannel decides what music you want to hear and then puts it on repeat.
The success of the Internet itself and the countless success stories that have arisen from the Internet are because of the unfettered access it gives you to the rest of the world. Anyone can create something and share it with everyone without a corporation deciding to charge them or even prevent them from sharing because it doesn't agree with the corporation's viewpoint.
This sig is in another castle.
People don't want to see a hollywood take on the creation on how a student became mega rich and created a piece of software they use every day. They want to watch a 2 hour lecture on a subject they probably wouldn't care about even if they knew what it was about.
I know I was angry when the Lord of the Ring movies didn't at all explain how Tolkien's orcs and elves were inspired by other stories and folk lore! Where was the explanation of how he created Elvish? These films were completely impossible to enjoy without all this background information that gives context on how it was possible for the books to have been written!
Well said. Every review I've seen coming down on the film for not understanding its subject, seems to come from a reviewer who didn't understand the film.
+0 Meh
Somewhere along the way the debate seems to have got hijacked by those you describe, aka "people wanting free stuff", and somehow bandwidth shaping got lumped in too (sometimes).... The original principles are sound but what the debate morphed into no longer bears much resemblence to them.
The debate has not been 'hijacked by people wanting free stuff', the telcos are deliberately muddying the waters in order to prevent the public from clearly understanding what is at stake, and preventing the government from playing his role regulating the industry.
The people you cite as hijackers are not the one controlling the PR firms and the lobby money. Follow the money.
Be fair, though. However he earned his money, Bill Gates as an individual has done at least eight metric shit-tons more good in the world than Mark Zuckerberg ever has.
Gates has also done at least eight metric shit-tons more harm in the world than Mark Zuckerberg ever has.
But then, Zuckerberg is a lot younger.