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Monitoring MySpace?

We’ve all read the coverage about MySpace’s teen users, "safety czars" and education campaigns to warn about the existence of sexual predators prowling the site.  Check out this story in Wired about reporter Kevin Poulsen’s 1,000 lines of computer code and an investigation that saw law enforcement nab a New York sex offender on MySpace. Read more here.

The article and this ongoing concern about teen safety begs the question: Should MySpace be doing more to protect users? In theory, it would be great if the site could cross-reference sex offender databases state-by-state with names, email addresses and locations, automating the process to ultimately block offenders from logging in or contacting teen users. But in practice, considering that it’s common for people to have multiple email addresses/accounts and that offenders may use fake names, this idea may prove difficult to implement. What should be seriously examined is establishing an automated system that screens for key words or photo content between users of specific ages, thereby IDing potential sex offenders.

On the flip side, federal watchdogs had no trouble finding and flagging the profile of a Sacramento teen frustrated with President Bush. The student was recently questioned at school for threat-related content in her profile. Something to ponder: if “the law” is scanning profiles for threats against political figures, shouldn’t it also “watch” for sexual, inappropriate messages from predators to teens? Or is all this monitoring too Big Brother-ish and invasive? Or not the responsibility of MySpace at all? With more members signing on to the site by the minute, these are very real issues to address.

Google -- the Privacy Leader?

Google wins major PR points for resisting the DOJ's request for information in the now-famous COPA case.  The DOJ has filed a motion to compel Google to hand over the info, but Google is hanging tough.  Whatever the motivation -- Google needed those PR points to make good with privacy advocates -- consumers will reward Google for at least trying to stall what could become a rapid descent down a slippery slope for privacy rights. 

But in the end, that may not be enough.  And "don't be evil" may be a too simplistic motto to live by given the realities of the privacy-free world that Google has helped to create.  In an editorial today, The New York Times framed the problem perfectly:

The battle raises the question of how much of our personal information companies should be allowed to hold onto in the first place. Without much thought, Internet users have handed over vast quantities of private information to corporations. Many people don't realize that some innocuously named "cookies" in personal computers allow companies to track visits to various Web sites.... When pressed on privacy issues, Google - whose informal motto is "Don't be evil" - says it can be trusted with this information. But profiling consumers' behavior is potentially profitable for companies. And once catalogued, information can be abused by the government as well.  Either way, the individual citizen loses.

It does matter that Google understands that it can do good or "be evil."   But it matters more that it understands that evil can be forced upon it.  We like Princeton Professor Ed Felton's recommendation that Google elect itself as the "privacy leader," just as Microsoft devoted itself to security back in the 90's.   It would be good behavior and good business.

Mr. Chief Justice

For those of you who know me personally -- or know enough about my resume -- at one time I was a theater person.  And at another time, I was a marketing person for law firms.  Those two odd bullet points got me invited to make a pitch for promoting one of Stanford University's most interesting events in the late 1990's:  the public acknowledgement/thank-you to the Crown family, for making a spectacular gift to the Stanford Law School.  It was a big moment for the University and the law school, which boasts a great number of celebrity alumni.   I won the job through a combination of ideas and connections -- how else does anyone find work? -- and I got my first and last experience working with the two alums that made the event a great success:  Justice (now retired) Sandra Day O'Connor, and, as I was instructed to say by the protocol police, "Mr. Chief Justice Rehnquist."

For those of you who know me personally -- or know enough about my resume -- you will know that this was a funny moment for me, for my personal politics run counter to the two justices. But it was one of my favorite experiences as a communications professional, and I thoroughly enjoyed my short brush with the Supremes (confession:  Sandra was by far the tougher of the two).  Turns out that the Chief and I had one thing in common:  a love for theater.  In fact, the robe he wore at all official court appearances was designed after a costume he admired from a production of Gilbert & Sullivan's Iolanthe.  That he liked low drama also helped with the overall concept for the Stanford event, the retrial of Lizzie Borden (I was the producer and writer, not PR person), in which both justices played the part of the original bench, and the audience played the part of the jury (Ms. Borden was acquitted again).   At the end of it all, backstage, Mr. Rehnquist lifted a glass ... and nodded.  It was a gentle gesture, from a gentle person, whose differences with his many collaborators that evening were bridged for a short but memorable moment.

First Amendment Media Blitz

The right to free speech is getting lots of ink these days as two interesting books make the rounds. Check out Anthony Lewis's review of "Inside the Pentagon Papers" in the April 7 issue of The New York Review of Books, and Jeffrey Rosen's look at Floyd Abrams' "Speaking Freely" in today's issue of the New York Times Book Review. Rosen, who also contributed the cover story in today's issue of the New York Times Magazine (on the conservative/libertarian movement known as "the Constitution in Exile"), finds the focus on free speech to be timely:

Abrams is surely correct that, as a constitutional matter, the law is almost always too crude and ineffective an instrument to provide a remedy for the genuine harms that speech can cause. (As a technological matter, in the age of the Internet, the harms are real and may continue to grow.) Today, the principled defenders of free speech are a small but hardy bipartisan coalition of civil libertarian liberals and libertarian conservatives, while its antagonists include mainstream liberal and conservative politicians who forget their former scruples as soon as they win power. (Abrams is especially scathing about former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's crusade against the Brooklyn Museum.) Happily, liberal and conservative judges today are increasingly libertarian in First Amendment cases. For this improbable and surprisingly recent consensus, Floyd Abrams deserves his share of the credit.

Phishing and Bogus Blogs

From ZDNet:

Malicious virus writers are attempting to lure people to malicious blogs using enticing e-mails and instant messages, according to a new report from Websense. Once a person arrives at the blog, which can be posted on a legitimate host site, the victim's computer becomes infected with software designed to steal sensitive information, such as passwords and bank account information.

"These aren't the kind of blog Web sites that someone would stumble upon and infect their machine accidentally," Dan Hubbard, Websense senior director of security and technology research, said in a statement. "The success of these attacks relies upon a certain level of social engineering to persuade the individual to click on the link."

Creative Commons Inspires U.K. Group

From today's edition of the Guardian -- an experiment in the U.K. based on the Creative Commons copyright scheme.

The BBC, Channel 4, the British Film Institute (BFI) and the Open University have joined together to create the creative archive licence, which launches later this week. The new licence grew out of the BBC's online archive project, first announced by the corporation's former director general Greg Dyke in 2003 as a visionary plan to make thousands of hours of BBC content available to the UK public on the internet for non-commercial use.

The new initiative is meant to create a legitimate way for people to get free access to the archive material of the BBC as well as material from Channel 4, the BFI and the Open University but within certain prescriptions. "This isn't just the BBC looking to do something for us but actually a framework for many organisations in the UK," says Ashley Highfield, the BBC's director of new media and technology. "We have started with a group that has a clear interest in this, but this does not preclude others from coming on board."

The Media Versus Apple

Tom Foremski: numerous news orgs have filed an amicus brief in the Apple blog case. The lower court's decision, on appeal, held that Apple could force three blogging sites to reveal their sources because bloggers do not enjoy the protections afforded to journalists.

The old bloggers vs journalists debate was turned on its head yesterday when major media corporations and publishers' associations filed an amicus brief [PDF] with the Court of Appeals in the Apple v Does case. In their filing, the media companies consistently refer to the websites as "journalists," drawing no distinction between traditonal media and online reporters.

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Signing on to the brief were the Associated Press, Los Angeles Times Communications, San Jose Mercury News, Hearst Corp., (publishers of the San Francisco Chronicle), Copley Press (publishers of the San Diego Union-Tribune), McClatchy Co. (publishers of the Sacramento Bee), and Freedom Communications (publishers of the Orange County Register).

Yahoo in the Commons

This is one of the latest innovations from Yahoo -- a search service for content protected by a Creative Commons license. Creative Commons provides an alternative, Internet-friendly model for copyright based on the concept of "some rights reserved" rather than "all rights reserved. " The model has been gaining acceptance in some circles, partly as a result of the influence of founder Lawrence Lessig, a prominent Stanford law professor.

In the coming months, we expect to see more examples of specialized filters. It's one way -- among many -- that Internet vendors are learning to make the Web a smaller, more manageable place.

Googles Bows to AFP

Slashdot reports that Google has begun removing AFP copyrighted content, as a result of AFP's recent action against Google. Interesting -- and swift -- outcome to a dispute we thought would escalate. One poster on Slashdot observed: "Good move Google but what happens if every news organization sues or threatens to sue? Where shall we get our news from?"

Agence France-Presse Sues Google

The international news wire is suing Google for crawling and republishing copyrighted material. This may become one of the more interesting Internet legal battles in 2005, the year of the lawyer.

Has the AFP been wronged, or is it out of step with the rest of the publishing world? Google spokesman Steve Langdon: "We allow publishers to opt out of Google News but most publishers want to be included because they believe it is a benefit to them and to their readers."