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Google Bans Online Anonymity While Patenting It
theodp writes "'It's important to use your common name,' Google explains in its Google+ ground rules, 'so that the people you want to connect with can find you.' Using a 'secondary online identity,' the search giant adds, is a big Google+ no-no. 'There are lots of places where you can be anonymous online,' Betanews' Joe Wilcox notes. 'Google+ isn't one of them.' Got it. But if online anonymity is so evil, then what's the deal with Google's newly-awarded patent for Social Computing Personas for Protecting Identity in Online Social Interactions? 'When users reveal their identities on the internet,' Google explained to the USPTO in its patent application, 'it leaves them more vulnerable to stalking, identity theft and harassment.' So what's Google's solution? Providing anonymity to social networking users via an 'alter ego' and/or 'anonymous identity.' So does Google now believe that there's a genuine 'risk of disclosing a user's real identity'? Or is this just a case of Google's left hand not knowing what its right hand is patenting?"
I claim it.
...so long as they alone know who they really are so the data aggregated goes in the right buckets.
Nothing's stopping Google+ from offering a secondary ID you can become, while Google still knows who you are.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
How can they know who the real me is when I can even answer that question without having a quorum among myself.
You cycle through sockpuppet accounts faster than a d&d party through cheetos. Have you tried being less obvious about it, or does your employer not offer you that kind of training?
New Account, Google Bashing... You forgot your Visual Studio plug.
Anonymous account, Google defending...You forgot irony.
"There are lots of places where you can be anonymous online. Google+ isn't one of them."
Yes, that's why I'm not on Google+ or Facebook.
There are two basic levels of anonymity. The first is anonymity to others by using an alias. The second is being anonymous to Google, which is harder. (To be anonymous in the second case, you'd need to be behind a different IP than normal.) Google cannot prove anonymity in the second one unless they somehow help you be anonymous to them.
How appropriate that you posted the news as a dupe
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
How oh HOW is this patentable?
Simple: File it with USPTO.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
This prevents nothing from anyone, really. It's only corporations who have to play in the little corner they painted themselves into.
Meanwhile the hacker community, hobbyists and all the netizens boldly go where no man has gone before, regardless of what some lawyer says or thinks they're entitled to!
The patent system has lost its meaning. It's no longer an incentive to create. The single inventor could never afford to patent something, or to defend it in court. The big ones can. Thus patents create artificial barriers of entry and stifle innovation.
Furthermore, patents are now simply legal weapons used to cement monopolies and prevent innovation from disrupting established revenue streams from stagnated giants who output more Powerpoint fluff than actual progress.
And some situations demand clarity.
The main problem is that people use "Act like an ass" as an excuse for using anonymity (or is it the other way around?).
Of course, one person's "Act like an ass" is another person's "Saying what needs to be said".
There is probably no good democratic way to resolve many of these cases one way or the other.
(Ie, having a lot of people being offended doesn't necessarily justify exposing a poster's identity.)
To delete your profile:
Sign in to your Google profile.
Click Edit profile.
Click the About tab.
Click Delete profile and disable Google Buzz completely.
Click Yes, delete my profile and posts.
The real problem with that part you quoted is that the logic is completely backwards. How do people I want to connect with know to try to find me? If I wanted to connect with them, it should be my problem to go find them, not their problem to come find me.
So does Google now believe that there's a genuine 'risk of disclosing a user's real identity'? Or is this just a case of Google's left hand not knowing what its right hand is patenting?
Google does not believe. They do not believe in protecting anonymity, nor in advancing reliable identities. Google wants money and power. There was a time when it was reasonable to think that Google believed in things, that they wanted to do good, but those times are gone. Google wants to make money on anonymity because they want to make money, not because they believe free speech depends on anonymity. They want to make money on reliable identities because they want to make money, not because they believe identities should be reliable. They want to make money on being the only one who knows the real identities because they want to make money, not because they believe one company should be the sole authenticator.
Most sufficiently large corporations have no beliefs. "I want as much stuff as I can get" is not a belief. Beliefs are things for which you are willing to make deep sacrifices. When a company sees that the patent system is broken and its public response is that they need to get more aggressive about patents, it is a clear statement that they lack motives outside of acquisitiveness and will-to-power. Avarice is not a belief, it is our default state when we choose not to elevate ourselves above the animals. Google does not believe.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Or famous.
The executive in charge of Google+ is Vic Gundotra. But his name isn't really Vic. Mr. Gundrota is Indian and his real first name is Vivek. Yes that's right. The person mandating that you must use your real name, is using a phoney name.
Then there are the celebrities, like Fifty Cent and Lady Gaga who are allowed to use their fake names.
Google gets a +1 for hypocrisy.
Once upon a time, when I first got on the Internet (late 1980s), there was no anonymity. Sysadmins voluntarily adhered to a policy where each user's online identity and their real identity were linked. If someone ever found a way to break this link, it was considered a bug which needed to be fixed. It was staunchly enforced by admins who believed the net would devolve into a morass of misbehavior if people were allowed to post anonymously.
There were a few people running their own servers who bucked the trend, but it wasn't until AOL joined USENET that pseudonyms became a fact of life on the Internet. AOL allowed each account to have up to 5 usernames, ostensibly for families sharing a single AOL account. Obviously these extra usernames were quickly taken up by people wishing to post things online anonymously, which was good for free speech. But not surprisingly, spam was invented shortly thereafter.
All that's happening now is that the pendulum is starting to swing the away from anonymity as netizens struggle to figure out the best balance between real names and pseudonyms. The people at the pro-anonymity extreme won't like it, just like the people at the pro-real-name extreme didn't like it in the early 1990s. But as with most things the best balance is probably somewhere in between.
Really, you respond with another sockpuppet?
Is google suing over anonymity? Is this article even factual?
Answer to both : no.
If you assume his argument is even remotely valid you've simply started with an invalid premise.
You're not their customer.
On IRC nobody knew Beth14 a Detective with the NYPD Vice Squad..
Ah, the heady early days of the Internet, where men were men, so were most of the women, and those horny 14 year old virgins wanting to come out to my house to fuck me stupid were FBI agents wanting a quick and dirty arrest...
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Thank you for pointing us in their general direction.
... faster than a d&d party through cheetos. Have you tried being less obvious about it...
By what, consuming something that doesn't stain their neckbeards orange? :p
Google didn't really have much in the way of 'real' info for me....the youtube account email address, is not the one used for gmail. They did finally get my real info...from the youtube account when I had to set things up for revenue generation (I couldn't figure how to earn $$ from them and still stay anon).
Strangely enough, they have my real name now associated with that particular YT account...but they don't nag me to change it to show my real name on the account/channel.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I'm confused. Why doesn't AOL have colossal prior art on this?
They had a Master Account system with subsidiary names. For those who are too young and need to Get Off Your Lawn, it was Dad who had the Master account, and then we young'uns had all the subsidiary names. (Sometimes several per person!) This was fairly important for RP in the Red Dragon Inn, etc. I hadn't gotten into bulletin boards by then, but it still held. But if you got too nasty, one of the Moderators would report you, and it would trickle up the food chain.
So not knowing Patentese, how did poor ol' faded glory AOL not even get a few bucks of licensing rights?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Ms. Concepcion L. Garcia
1769 Clearview Drive
Centennial, CO 80111
Phone: 303-721-9441
DOB: October 31, 1929
Email Address: ConcepcionLGarcia@teleworm.us
(etc)
Yeah, right.
I just read through the patent and I can't make head or tail of what exactly is being patented. The best I can tell is some sort of system that has multiple identities that it shows to different people depending on your relationship.
And if it's difficult to tell what is being patented should it really be patented?
I'm confused. Why doesn't AOL have colossal prior art on this?
They had a Master Account system with subsidiary names. For those who are too young and need to Get Off Your Lawn, it was Dad who had the Master account, and then we young'uns had all the subsidiary names. (Sometimes several per person!) This was fairly important for RP in the Red Dragon Inn, etc. I hadn't gotten into bulletin boards by then, but it still held. But if you got too nasty, one of the Moderators would report you, and it would trickle up the food chain.
So not knowing Patentese, how did poor ol' faded glory AOL not even get a few bucks of licensing rights?
Oh, I remember the Red Dragon Inn well... I was one of the "hosts" for a few years in the mid-90s. But anyway, here's claim 1 of the patent:
1. A computer-implemented method for generating a plurality of personas for an account of a first user of a social network performed on one or more computing devices, the method comprising:
receiving, using the one or more computing devices, information for the plurality of personas from the first user, wherein the information comprises a name, a representation, and a visibility level for each persona in the plurality of personas;
associating the information for the plurality of personas to the account of the first user;
associating a particular persona of the plurality of personas with a second user on the social network, the second user being distinct from the first user;
receiving a selection of one of the plurality of personas from the first user;
determining, using the one or more computing devices, an appearance of the selected persona based at least in part on the visibility level and representation of the selected persona; and
providing the determined appearance for display.
I've italicized claim elements that I don't remember AOL having. Even if you interpreted the multiple AOL screennames as "a plurality of personas" each having their own "name", there wasn't any sort of representation or visibility level, nor did AOL determine an appearance of the persona based on the visibility level and representation.
So, AOL doesn't anticipate the patent... However, it could potentially be combined with other prior art to show that this claim is obvious. I'd look at Facebook's different visibility settings for profile items depending on how another user is related to you. That's probably a closer place to start anyway.
There's an inverse relationship between the level of authority you posted with and the level of accuracy of your statements. Defensive patents are extremely commonplace in the industry, and Google has never used a patent non-defensively to date. That is to say, they've only ever counter-sued when sued. You think a few thousand dollars is a big deal to a company like Google? Hell, for Google it's just the cost of the filing fee. Google has their own in-house legal department. They pay their lawyers regardless of whether they sit on their ass twiddling their thumbs or if they're in court fighting over patents. That means, the opportunity cost of filing a patent is minimal--just whatever the filing fees themselves are ($750 I think?).