Certainly the obvious answer to this question is "what competitors?"
However, even if we had a competitive panacea - say, a commonly held, local government managed last mile over which you could connect to dozens of ISPs, all competing for your dollars - we would still not have a truly competitive environment for one reason: price signals, or, rather, the inability to communicate them. Before we conclude that a market can solve a problem, we have to make sure that the structural prerequisites for a functioning, competitive market are in place. One of them is price signals. And I mean this generally.
So, the way this argument usually proceeds is to say: "don't like a tiered Internet? Well, if Company A doesn't follow common carriage principles, and Company B does, consumers who are sensitive to net neutrality will utilize B over A, putting competitive pressure on A to discard a tiered Internet and embrace net neutrality."
But there is a simple reason that this oversimplified model doesn't work. I don't need to run a traceroute for anyone on Slashdot, but most people (especially people who make the argument above) don't realize that when data moves from point X to point Y on the web it also passes through a half-dozen networks besides. And the experience of the consumer is not only affected by their ISP, or the ISP of their content provider, but also by the intermediary networks.
The problem, from a market solution perspective, is that *there is no way for the consumer to communicate their preferences via price signals to the intermediary networks.* Perhaps the consumer opts for (network neutral) ISP B, and their chosen content provider is on (network neutral) ISP D. But if their data have to pass through non-neutral ISP C, then their access may be degraded, and *they will not have a way to choose a different competitor*.
This is emphatically *unlike*, say, contracting FedEx to pick up the package from your house and deliver it to your friend's house, with all of the intermediary travel handled by FedEx (and thus subject to the competitive pressure of your decision to use FedEx rather than DHL or UPS).
Once you begin to screw with the haphazard egalitarianism of the present architecture of the Net, you begin to run into all sorts of problems like this. So beware the arguments that "the market" will solve everything! The market is a powerful machine, but it is a machine, and when parts of it are broken or out of place, it's just as unusable as a car without an engine.
And I would point out that if you RTFA Zittrain is actually mostly disinterested in government regulation, but rather in community-based solutions to some of these problems, which is why he founded Herdict and is involved in that side of things.
Again, you've missed my point. I was speaking rhetorically in order to disprove his premise that money is not necessary for a good education.
I do, of course, agree that money is not everything. Parents are essential as well. But what we cannot do is fall into the easy trap of saying "throwing money at the problem won't fix it." That's true. However, what we should be doing is throwing money AND throwing good parenting at the problem. That's all I'm saying.
You're missing my point. I'm not arguing that we SHOULD redistribute wealth between schools (although I happen to believe that). What I'm arguing is that the premise that money doesn't matter, or that money doesn't mean anything to a good education, is utterly without merit, because it presumes money is merely ornamental and not an essential component of successful education.
It's not the technology, man. The technology isn't the point. The point is, what amount of funding do you need to provide an education commensurate with what is sufficient to produce success. The "money has nothing to do with education" argument rings hollow because no one, as I said, would be willing to have their rich suburban school ransacked in order to pay for a urban school. If money makes no functional difference to education--if it's simply a fungible ornament, like tinsel on a tree--then it shouldn't matter.
This is ridiculous. If you don't need good money, then I have a great idea for educational reform. Take all the money from the rich, suburban, white flight schools, and redistribute it to the poor inner city and rural schools. After all, if money is totally fungible and unnecessary for a good educational experience, than it shouldn't matter whether one school can afford computer labs and the other can't afford coloring books, right?
Schools like Bronx Lab, which are primarily funded by the Gates foundation, have been unbelievably successful. The SSI split a massive NYPS apart and chopped the building into sections, including this one, run by Mark Sternberg of Harvard Business.
The first high school class is graduating this year. Their high school graduation rate has gone from less than 10% under the old school to 96% in the new school, with all graduates going to college.
There are a lot of factors here of course. But that's what I'm saying. It's far, far too premature (and simplistic, and utterly reductionist) to say "well, small schools work" and "small schools don't work." Some small schools work well. Some don't. Some are more or less educationally sustainable than others.
But some Gates foundation schools have had dramatic success, and we should keep that in mind before we universally condemn that mode of education. Tagging OP as misleading here.
This doesn't make any sense. Pornography =! obscene content. Obscene content is, in theory, not allowed on the Internet as is.
You know, if this deal were taken up, it would likely have a good effect on Internet porn since the Court is unlikely to apply the Miller standard to the Internet for a variety of reasons. Huuuge risk though.
Clay Shirky talks about this alot in his new book "Here Comes Everybody." He calls it the Privacy of the Mall, noting that even in an eminently public place like the mall we still have a social expectation of contextual privacy.
He's right. Your example of the parabolic mic is accurate. Here's another:
Let's say I'm walking out to get the morning paper in my pajamas. Once I step outside my house I'm unquestionably "in public."
But what public is it? I'm in public to my neighbors, whom I may know and be friends with and be comfortable appearing in my pajamas before.
Now Street View comes by and snaps a picture of me doing this. Suddenly my photo is on the Internet in my pajamas. I expected to be "in public" in my pajamas before about fifteen neighbors that I know well. Now I'm in public in my pajamas before the whole world. And, as this facial recognition is deployed across Image Search, when people search for my name that shot of me comes up. I didn't want my boss to see me in my pajamas but now he can.
"Public" has never been "public"--it's always been a function of the technology which limited "public" to the immediate audience or the deliberate surveillance of a government entity. Now "public" is "public" outside that context to the whole world. "Public" is just one of the many existing social constructions that the Internet is currently tearing apart at the seams.
When I eventually require brain surgery to repair the damage done by idiots on the Internet, I will go see a licensed brain surgeon, yes.
But that's not the point.
I don't use Wikipedia to perform self-surgery. I use Wikipedia to figure out which season Ted Williams hit.400 or how many times Towlie, the alien weed smoking towel, appears in South Park.
You don't need gatekeepers for that. They don't *have* gatekeepers for that. And if we, as a society, decide that we *do* need gatekeepers for that, sign me up for a Ph.D. in South Park Studies.
Professionals like the author in the O.P. are squirming because they think the Internet is going to threaten their careers. It won't. It'll just change them. The Internet makes it easier for someone to fill out their will online, but it won't replace lawyers in the courtroom. We're talking about two different things. The fact that the author in the OP doesn't realize that is a much, much bigger indictment of his analysis than wikigroaning is for his students.
...when a Second Life user bought land before it went to auction using a non-linked but publicly accessible URL and he was banned and his assets seized.
He supports net neutrality; content filtering conducted by parents, not the state; reforming the universal service fund to help subsidize broadband, and a whole lot more.
This isn't exactly true. I was privy to the academic listserv that gave rise to the article in the OP. Here is a segment from the discussion that lays out the argument for both Facebook and Blockbuster's culpability here, from a cyberlaw professor who I'll keep anonymous.
"This is the reasoning:
1. Blockbuster is a "video tape service provider" under the statute.
2. Blockbuster is prohibited from "knowingly disclosing, to any person, personally identifiable information concerning any consumer of such provider . . . concerning the rental, sale, or delivery of prerecorded video cassette tapes or similar audio visual materials"
3. Blockbuster enters an agreement with Facebook under which Facebook, acting on behalf of Blockbuster, discloses personally identifiable information concerning the rental, sale, or delivery of prerecorded video cassette tapes or similar audio visual materials by one of Blockbuster's consumers to "other persons" -- the social network of that consumer in the Facebook social networking site.
4. Blockbuster presumably knew that this would happen and via its contract with Facebook caused it to happen.
5. Blockbuster has the same liability for acts done through its agent as for acts done by itself.
6. Furthermore, under law of agency an agent, who knowingly commits an act which if committed by the principal would be an offense, is equally liability with the principal. (This concept is captured under the criminal law by the idea of a conspiracy where co-conspirators all share the liability equally.)
7. Thus, both Blockbuster and Facebook appear to be in violation of the Act."
You also have to keep in mind that Facebook is not a common carrier here because it is their Beacon program which enables the transmission of information. Moreover, even if you opt out of Beacon, it appears--and this is the important part--that websites can still gather your persona information if they are part of Beacon.
For instance, under the wording in the current Facebook page, let's say I opt out of Blockbuster's program. Now Blockbuster can't send updates to my news feed. That might take care of the VPAA.
But even so, Blockbuster apparently can still grab my profile information from my Facebook cookie, whether or not I opt out of the program.
This contravenes not only Blockbuster's privacy policy, but also Facebook's, since although the Facebook TOS explicitly reserve the right to use your information to promote the Facebook service it does not allow them to use your information for the promotion of third party services.
The biggest mystery, in my mind, is why some of the larger privacy groups haven't already filed suit. It's pretty clear there is something wrong here.
You're right. I've been reading up on this in the NYT, etc.
It looks like their prototypical system would be Blockbuster. You add the Blockbuster group, and then, when you make a recommendation on a movie using the Blockbuster group, it tells all your friends.
Problem is, when you join the Blockbuster group, it says Blockbuster can't access or use your information. Which means Facebook is accessing and using your information. Which means that they're using your information to endorse other people.
Someone said earlier that you're just letting Facebook use your opinion as information--that you just let Facebook know that you like, say, an iPod, and then Facebook posts something that say "John Doe likes the iPod!", and then it's fine, because Facebook isn't promoting Apple, they're just rebroadcasting the information you've posted to the site.
If that's the case, fine. I just hope that A) the rebroadcast is not labeled "Advertisment", and B) that Apple is not paying for the slot, because otherwise that's not a rebroadcasted opinion. That's an endorsement--just an unpaid, and therefore arguably illegitimate, one.
Thanks kneejerkers for more of the same old "READ THE TOS DOOFUS".
If you actually read the TOS, you'd see this:
"When you post User Content to the Site, you authorize and direct us to make such copies thereof as we deem necessary in order to facilitate the posting and storage of the User Content on the Site. By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing. You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content."
Now, there's stuff in there about Facebook copying your content for storage. There's stuff in there about letting Facebook perform, display, or translate your content. There's even stuff in there about letting Facebook use your content to promote *Facebook*.
But can anyone in there see any sort of language that says Facebook can use your content to promote other products?
Read it carefully. I don't think there is such language, and I think there might actually be a case for misappropriation here.
If you actually watched the video, Shirky--who is a great guy, by the way--talks about how malls are public places too. But if you went around a mall with a boom microphone, recording the conversations of people near you, people would think you were NUTS, and might even sue you for invading their privacy. Why? Not because they're not in public, but because we have a social understanding that when you're in a crowd, people might hear what you have to say but they don't record it and they don't use it out of the context of the immediacy of conversation.
Now that's not a perfect analogy for the Internet, because by default everything on the Internet is recorded automagically. But the context part is still true. Even if a comment (like this one) on Slashdot is publicly accessible, if it appeared on CNN tomorrow I'd be just as shocked/uncomfortable/feel like something was slightly wrong as I would be if Anderson Cooper had hidden in a bush and used a directional microphone to catch my idle gossip in the food court.
As the kneejerkers show, we've begun to develop a social consensus that anything you put on the Internet is public and therefore you should expect that it be read by anyone anywhere anytime. That's the technological reality, and it might be the safest way to look at things.
But given our social hangups about eavesdropping--that is, observing conversations not meant for your ears and taken out of the context of the community in which they were made--in TRUE public settings, why is this the case?
There is a great book about this called "The Unwanted Gaze" by Harvard Professor Jeffrey Rosen. He gives many examples about how incomplete context can negatively shape otherwise innocuous information.
The easy, kneejerk answer is DON'T POST IT ON THE INTERNET IF YOU DON'T WANT IT TO BE SEEN! But that is too simplistic an answer to a complex social problem.
American privacy law revolves around the idea, proposed by Brandeis and articulated by the Court in Katz, that it is the "expectation of privacy" that users have that determines how much privacy they are accorded.
When I post to an open thread on Slashdot, I have no expectation of privacy, other than obscurity, and that's not defensible. No one seriously argues that open fora have a high expectation of privacy (although you can make a contextual argument; if I'm "obviously" trolling Slashdot, or making an ironic post, the community may understand my post to mean one thing while an outside observer takes it another way. Look at the 4chan bomb scare or the GNAA. But that's not about privacy, that's about incomplete information.)
But let's say I have a Facebook with my privacy settings turned all the way up. Colleague A is my Facebook friend because they know me well and I decide to give them access to my information. Now, if I have all these privacy settings turned on, and I trust Colleague A, don't I have some expectation of privacy on my "public" Facebook?
I'd say yes. But what happens when Boss B threatens Colleague A to let him read my Facebook? I didn't extend access rights to him. In fact, I took affirmative steps to deny such access. Doesn't that go against my expectation of privacy?
It's an extreme example, but the kneejerkers who just say LOL YOU POSTED ON THE INTERNET IDIOT are ignoring the larger social and legal framework that these networks operate under.
Slashdot Mirror
Certainly the obvious answer to this question is "what competitors?"
However, even if we had a competitive panacea - say, a commonly held, local government managed last mile over which you could connect to dozens of ISPs, all competing for your dollars - we would still not have a truly competitive environment for one reason: price signals, or, rather, the inability to communicate them. Before we conclude that a market can solve a problem, we have to make sure that the structural prerequisites for a functioning, competitive market are in place. One of them is price signals. And I mean this generally.
So, the way this argument usually proceeds is to say: "don't like a tiered Internet? Well, if Company A doesn't follow common carriage principles, and Company B does, consumers who are sensitive to net neutrality will utilize B over A, putting competitive pressure on A to discard a tiered Internet and embrace net neutrality."
But there is a simple reason that this oversimplified model doesn't work. I don't need to run a traceroute for anyone on Slashdot, but most people (especially people who make the argument above) don't realize that when data moves from point X to point Y on the web it also passes through a half-dozen networks besides. And the experience of the consumer is not only affected by their ISP, or the ISP of their content provider, but also by the intermediary networks.
The problem, from a market solution perspective, is that *there is no way for the consumer to communicate their preferences via price signals to the intermediary networks.* Perhaps the consumer opts for (network neutral) ISP B, and their chosen content provider is on (network neutral) ISP D. But if their data have to pass through non-neutral ISP C, then their access may be degraded, and *they will not have a way to choose a different competitor*.
This is emphatically *unlike*, say, contracting FedEx to pick up the package from your house and deliver it to your friend's house, with all of the intermediary travel handled by FedEx (and thus subject to the competitive pressure of your decision to use FedEx rather than DHL or UPS).
Once you begin to screw with the haphazard egalitarianism of the present architecture of the Net, you begin to run into all sorts of problems like this. So beware the arguments that "the market" will solve everything! The market is a powerful machine, but it is a machine, and when parts of it are broken or out of place, it's just as unusable as a car without an engine.
And I would point out that if you RTFA Zittrain is actually mostly disinterested in government regulation, but rather in community-based solutions to some of these problems, which is why he founded Herdict and is involved in that side of things.
Or, if you don't like reading, you can watch his thoroughly engaging book talk here: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/interactive/events/2008/04/zittrain
Zittrain knows his stuff. He was friends with Postel. He's got an AI background from Yale in addition to his Harvard Law degree.
Again, you've missed my point. I was speaking rhetorically in order to disprove his premise that money is not necessary for a good education. I do, of course, agree that money is not everything. Parents are essential as well. But what we cannot do is fall into the easy trap of saying "throwing money at the problem won't fix it." That's true. However, what we should be doing is throwing money AND throwing good parenting at the problem. That's all I'm saying.
You're missing my point. I'm not arguing that we SHOULD redistribute wealth between schools (although I happen to believe that). What I'm arguing is that the premise that money doesn't matter, or that money doesn't mean anything to a good education, is utterly without merit, because it presumes money is merely ornamental and not an essential component of successful education.
It's not the technology, man. The technology isn't the point. The point is, what amount of funding do you need to provide an education commensurate with what is sufficient to produce success. The "money has nothing to do with education" argument rings hollow because no one, as I said, would be willing to have their rich suburban school ransacked in order to pay for a urban school. If money makes no functional difference to education--if it's simply a fungible ornament, like tinsel on a tree--then it shouldn't matter.
This is ridiculous. If you don't need good money, then I have a great idea for educational reform. Take all the money from the rich, suburban, white flight schools, and redistribute it to the poor inner city and rural schools. After all, if money is totally fungible and unnecessary for a good educational experience, than it shouldn't matter whether one school can afford computer labs and the other can't afford coloring books, right?
Or, maybe money is a necessary but not sufficient condition for good schools!
Why would that make you stop reading?
The first high school class is graduating this year. Their high school graduation rate has gone from less than 10% under the old school to 96% in the new school, with all graduates going to college.
There are a lot of factors here of course. But that's what I'm saying. It's far, far too premature (and simplistic, and utterly reductionist) to say "well, small schools work" and "small schools don't work." Some small schools work well. Some don't. Some are more or less educationally sustainable than others.
But some Gates foundation schools have had dramatic success, and we should keep that in mind before we universally condemn that mode of education. Tagging OP as misleading here.
This doesn't make any sense. Pornography =! obscene content. Obscene content is, in theory, not allowed on the Internet as is.
You know, if this deal were taken up, it would likely have a good effect on Internet porn since the Court is unlikely to apply the Miller standard to the Internet for a variety of reasons. Huuuge risk though.
Obama is advised by Tim Wu and Lawrence Lessig.
I'd say that even if he doesn't, his campaign and his presidency will certainly have the right idea on tech issues.
Clay Shirky talks about this alot in his new book "Here Comes Everybody." He calls it the Privacy of the Mall, noting that even in an eminently public place like the mall we still have a social expectation of contextual privacy.
He's right. Your example of the parabolic mic is accurate. Here's another:
Let's say I'm walking out to get the morning paper in my pajamas. Once I step outside my house I'm unquestionably "in public."
But what public is it? I'm in public to my neighbors, whom I may know and be friends with and be comfortable appearing in my pajamas before.
Now Street View comes by and snaps a picture of me doing this. Suddenly my photo is on the Internet in my pajamas. I expected to be "in public" in my pajamas before about fifteen neighbors that I know well. Now I'm in public in my pajamas before the whole world. And, as this facial recognition is deployed across Image Search, when people search for my name that shot of me comes up. I didn't want my boss to see me in my pajamas but now he can.
"Public" has never been "public"--it's always been a function of the technology which limited "public" to the immediate audience or the deliberate surveillance of a government entity. Now "public" is "public" outside that context to the whole world. "Public" is just one of the many existing social constructions that the Internet is currently tearing apart at the seams.
When I eventually require brain surgery to repair the damage done by idiots on the Internet, I will go see a licensed brain surgeon, yes.
.400 or how many times Towlie, the alien weed smoking towel, appears in South Park.
But that's not the point.
I don't use Wikipedia to perform self-surgery. I use Wikipedia to figure out which season Ted Williams hit
You don't need gatekeepers for that. They don't *have* gatekeepers for that. And if we, as a society, decide that we *do* need gatekeepers for that, sign me up for a Ph.D. in South Park Studies.
Professionals like the author in the O.P. are squirming because they think the Internet is going to threaten their careers. It won't. It'll just change them. The Internet makes it easier for someone to fill out their will online, but it won't replace lawyers in the courtroom. We're talking about two different things. The fact that the author in the OP doesn't realize that is a much, much bigger indictment of his analysis than wikigroaning is for his students.
Since when did podcasting get sidelined? iTunes U is a huge college program now that may yet change education.
...when a Second Life user bought land before it went to auction using a non-linked but publicly accessible URL and he was banned and his assets seized.
http://secondlife.typepad.com/
Some interesting background reading. They settled, but the "hack" question was never answered by the court .
Obama is the only candidate with an *actual* broadband plan.
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/technology/
He supports net neutrality; content filtering conducted by parents, not the state; reforming the universal service fund to help subsidize broadband, and a whole lot more.
That's why Wu supports him, and why I do too.
This isn't exactly true. I was privy to the academic listserv that gave rise to the article in the OP. Here is a segment from the discussion that lays out the argument for both Facebook and Blockbuster's culpability here, from a cyberlaw professor who I'll keep anonymous.
"This is the reasoning:
1. Blockbuster is a "video tape service provider" under the statute.
2. Blockbuster is prohibited from "knowingly disclosing, to any person,
personally identifiable information concerning any consumer of such
provider . . . concerning the rental, sale, or delivery of prerecorded
video cassette tapes or similar audio visual materials"
3. Blockbuster enters an agreement with Facebook under which Facebook,
acting on behalf of Blockbuster, discloses personally identifiable
information concerning the rental, sale, or delivery of prerecorded
video cassette tapes or similar audio visual materials by one of
Blockbuster's consumers to "other persons" -- the social network of that
consumer in the Facebook social networking site.
4. Blockbuster presumably knew that this would happen and via its
contract with Facebook caused it to happen.
5. Blockbuster has the same liability for acts done through its agent
as for acts done by itself.
6. Furthermore, under law of agency an agent, who knowingly commits an
act which if committed by the principal would be an offense, is equally
liability with the principal. (This concept is captured under the
criminal law by the idea of a conspiracy where co-conspirators all share
the liability equally.)
7. Thus, both Blockbuster and Facebook appear to be in violation of the
Act."
You also have to keep in mind that Facebook is not a common carrier here because it is their Beacon program which enables the transmission of information. Moreover, even if you opt out of Beacon, it appears--and this is the important part--that websites can still gather your persona information if they are part of Beacon.
For instance, under the wording in the current Facebook page, let's say I opt out of Blockbuster's program. Now Blockbuster can't send updates to my news feed. That might take care of the VPAA.
But even so, Blockbuster apparently can still grab my profile information from my Facebook cookie, whether or not I opt out of the program.
This contravenes not only Blockbuster's privacy policy, but also Facebook's, since although the Facebook TOS explicitly reserve the right to use your information to promote the Facebook service it does not allow them to use your information for the promotion of third party services.
The biggest mystery, in my mind, is why some of the larger privacy groups haven't already filed suit. It's pretty clear there is something wrong here.
I'm not so sure about that, only because (as I read it) that language explicitly refers to the promotion of the Site itself, not third parties.
Not exactly.
You're right. I've been reading up on this in the NYT, etc.
It looks like their prototypical system would be Blockbuster. You add the Blockbuster group, and then, when you make a recommendation on a movie using the Blockbuster group, it tells all your friends.
Problem is, when you join the Blockbuster group, it says Blockbuster can't access or use your information. Which means Facebook is accessing and using your information. Which means that they're using your information to endorse other people.
Someone said earlier that you're just letting Facebook use your opinion as information--that you just let Facebook know that you like, say, an iPod, and then Facebook posts something that say "John Doe likes the iPod!", and then it's fine, because Facebook isn't promoting Apple, they're just rebroadcasting the information you've posted to the site.
If that's the case, fine. I just hope that A) the rebroadcast is not labeled "Advertisment", and B) that Apple is not paying for the slot, because otherwise that's not a rebroadcasted opinion. That's an endorsement--just an unpaid, and therefore arguably illegitimate, one.
Thanks kneejerkers for more of the same old "READ THE TOS DOOFUS".
If you actually read the TOS, you'd see this:
"When you post User Content to the Site, you authorize and direct us to make such copies thereof as we deem necessary in order to facilitate the posting and storage of the User Content on the Site. By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing. You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content."
Now, there's stuff in there about Facebook copying your content for storage. There's stuff in there about letting Facebook perform, display, or translate your content. There's even stuff in there about letting Facebook use your content to promote *Facebook*.
But can anyone in there see any sort of language that says Facebook can use your content to promote other products?
Read it carefully. I don't think there is such language, and I think there might actually be a case for misappropriation here.
...and one more thing:
If you actually watched the video, Shirky--who is a great guy, by the way--talks about how malls are public places too. But if you went around a mall with a boom microphone, recording the conversations of people near you, people would think you were NUTS, and might even sue you for invading their privacy. Why? Not because they're not in public, but because we have a social understanding that when you're in a crowd, people might hear what you have to say but they don't record it and they don't use it out of the context of the immediacy of conversation.
Now that's not a perfect analogy for the Internet, because by default everything on the Internet is recorded automagically. But the context part is still true. Even if a comment (like this one) on Slashdot is publicly accessible, if it appeared on CNN tomorrow I'd be just as shocked/uncomfortable/feel like something was slightly wrong as I would be if Anderson Cooper had hidden in a bush and used a directional microphone to catch my idle gossip in the food court.
As the kneejerkers show, we've begun to develop a social consensus that anything you put on the Internet is public and therefore you should expect that it be read by anyone anywhere anytime. That's the technological reality, and it might be the safest way to look at things.
But given our social hangups about eavesdropping--that is, observing conversations not meant for your ears and taken out of the context of the community in which they were made--in TRUE public settings, why is this the case?
There is a great book about this called "The Unwanted Gaze" by Harvard Professor Jeffrey Rosen. He gives many examples about how incomplete context can negatively shape otherwise innocuous information.
The easy, kneejerk answer is DON'T POST IT ON THE INTERNET IF YOU DON'T WANT IT TO BE SEEN! But that is too simplistic an answer to a complex social problem.
American privacy law revolves around the idea, proposed by Brandeis and articulated by the Court in Katz, that it is the "expectation of privacy" that users have that determines how much privacy they are accorded.
When I post to an open thread on Slashdot, I have no expectation of privacy, other than obscurity, and that's not defensible. No one seriously argues that open fora have a high expectation of privacy (although you can make a contextual argument; if I'm "obviously" trolling Slashdot, or making an ironic post, the community may understand my post to mean one thing while an outside observer takes it another way. Look at the 4chan bomb scare or the GNAA. But that's not about privacy, that's about incomplete information.)
But let's say I have a Facebook with my privacy settings turned all the way up. Colleague A is my Facebook friend because they know me well and I decide to give them access to my information. Now, if I have all these privacy settings turned on, and I trust Colleague A, don't I have some expectation of privacy on my "public" Facebook?
I'd say yes. But what happens when Boss B threatens Colleague A to let him read my Facebook? I didn't extend access rights to him. In fact, I took affirmative steps to deny such access. Doesn't that go against my expectation of privacy?
It's an extreme example, but the kneejerkers who just say LOL YOU POSTED ON THE INTERNET IDIOT are ignoring the larger social and legal framework that these networks operate under.