November 14, 2005
| Copyright |
copyright
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| Free software |
free_software
|
From dewinter.com: The spyware that Sony installs on the computers of music fans does not even seem to be correct in terms of copyright law.
It is simply great. While Sony claims that it installed software secretly on the computers of unaware customers in order to protect the copyright of its musicians (while everyone knows that Sony is just trying to perpetuate its dying
business model), Sony itself does not care about not respecting the copyright of the author of the software LAME that is licensed under the so called Lesser Gnu Public License (LGPL).
It turns out that the rootkit contains pieces of code that are identical to LAME, an open source mp3-encoder, and thereby breach the license.
This software is licensed under the so called Lesser Gnu Public License (LGPL). According to this license Sony must comply with a couple of demands. Amongst others, they have to indicate in a copyright notice that they make use of the software. The company must also deliver the source code to the open-source libraries or otherwise make these available. And finally, they must deliver or otherwise make available the in between form between source code and executable code, the so called objectfiles, with which others can make comparable software.
November 08, 2005
1) Creator of Melissa Computer Virus Sentenced to 20 Months in Federal Prison
NEWARK - The New Jersey man accused of unleashing the "Melissa" computer virus in 1999, causing millions of dollars in damage and infecting untold numbers of computers and computer networks, was sentenced today to 20 months in federal prison, U.S. Attorney Christopher J. Christie and state Attorney General David Samson announced.
2) Pathogen Virus Perpetrator sentenced to 18 months in prison
On 15 November 1995, a judge sentenced Pile to 18 months in prison. The judge declared: "Those who seek to wreak mindless havoc on one of the vital tools of our age cannot expect lenient treatment."
3) Sony installed spyware on the computers of anyone who simply inserted some of Sony music CDs into her Windows-based computer. Users were not informed of this installation. [Paradox: you buy the CD, you get the virus. At least Pathogen and Melissa were free!!!]
So simple question: if Melissa brought 20 yearsmonths in jail to his creator and Pathogen 18 yearsmonths, how many yearsmonths you think Sony managers should spend in jail?
And I don't even want to believe that one of the world's largest software and information technology companies, Computer Associates International Inc. says the truth. They claim that the antipirating software also secretly communicates with Sony over the Internet when listeners play the discs on computers that have an Internet connection. The software uses this connection to transmit the name of the CD being played to an office of Sony's music division in Cary, N.C. The software also transmits the IP address of the listener's computer, Computer Associates said, but not the name of the listener. But Sony can still use the data to create a profile of a listener's music collection, according to Computer Associates. and confirming its new status, Computer Associates yesterday reclassified Sony's software as spyware and will begin searching for and removing XCP with its anti-spyware software.
Sony says that's not true and I believe Sony, that would be astonishingly criminal behaviour, just think about it for one second! No, that's not even thinkable! I could not believe they would do this.
In the meantime, PcWorld reports that an Italian digital rights organisation has taken the first step toward possible criminal charges over the XCP software which, it was recently discovered, cloaks itself on users' computers and communicates with Sony servers over the Internet. The group, calling itself the ALCEI-EFI (Association for Freedom in Electronic Interactive Communications - Electronic Frontiers Italy), filed a complaint (in Italian, babelfished) about Sony's software with the head of Italy's cyber-crime investigation unit, Colonel Umberto Rapetto of the Guardia di Finanza. The complaint alleges that XCP violates a number of Italy's computer security laws by causing damage to users' systems and by acting in the same way as malicious software, according to Andrea Monti, chair of the ALCEI-EFI. "What Sony did qualifies as a criminal offense under Italian law," he said.
I hope Sony will be submerged by Legal investigations. Sony managers should start reading Cyber Criminals on Trial.
So what you can do? Of course stop buying anything related to Sony. Precise information can be found on Boycott Sony blog in which I just read this pearl:
Sony President of Global Digital Business Thomas Hesse dropped the most outrageous statement to date on their DRM nightmare during an NPR interview, in which he stated that “Most people, I think, don’t even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?” (...) Some day someone will write a marketing case study about what not to do and say when dealing with a customer revolt, and that statement will be its epigraph.
UPDATE: I miswrote "years of jails" instead of "months of jails" and this of course was a big mistake.
November 07, 2005
This is really shocking! A collegue of mine just explained to me this root-kit sony thing and I can only say I think I got it wrong because it is so unbelievably evil that I cannot think I understood it correctly: so Sony was inserting since few years a root-kit in your Windows machine just if you happened to listen any cds (also legally bought!) on the pc!
Wikipedia definition of Rootkit: A rootkit is a set of tools frequently used by an intruder after cracking a computer system. These tools are intended to conceal running processes and files or system data, which helps an intruder maintain access to a system for malicious purposes.
Sony is THE definitive cracker, they install a software on your computer without telling it to you, a software that is designed to hide itself! Sony's executives who ordered the projects should go directly to jail, they installed on millions of computers for years a malicious software of which the computers' owners were not informed of. This is criminal behaviour! On mass scale! For years! I'm almost sure I got it wrong. It can't be a so madly deviated behaviour!
From CNET article:
So, let's make this a bit more explicit. You buy a CD. You put the CD into your PC in order to enjoy your music. Sony grabs this opportunity to sneak into your house like a virus and set up camp, and it leaves the backdoor open so that Sony or any other enterprising intruder can follow and have the run of the place. If you try to kick Sony out, it trashes the place.
September 30, 2005
From Lessig Blog:
Google has been sued by the Authors Guild, and a number of individual authors. (...)The authors and the publishers consider Google’s latest fantastic idea, Google Print — a project to Google-ize 20,000,000 books — to be “massive copyright infringement.” They have asked a federal court to shut Google Print down.
(...)Google wants to do nothing more to 20,000,000 books than it does to the Internet: it wants to index them, and it offers anyone in the index the right to opt out. If it is illegal to do that with 20,000,000 books, then why is it legal to do it with the Internet? The “authors’” claims, if true, mean Google itself is illegal. Common sense, or better, commons sense, revolts at the idea. And so too should you.
This is a point I always make: the fact that Google caches sites is illegal (at least accepting the restricting copyright rules that are currently valid). Google by caching is doing a copy of my site and it has no right to do the copy (no copyright). Then, is Google cache a valuable service? Absolutely, I used it very often. Is it fair use? I think so, other may think differently. Google does not get sued about copying sites because is so big now. Google Print is not yet so big and Author Guild is trying this preemptive attack.
Well, Lessig says it better, so read Lessig post or even better read Lessig's book "Free culture" or even better listen Lessig's book "Free culture".
September 14, 2005
| Copyright |
copyright
|
| Free software |
free_software
|
However FEMA announced that online applications for Federal Disaster Assistance would only be accepted from victims who use Microsoft’s Internet Explorer web browser.
On grokster you can find this great article When Open Standards Really Matter - The Katrina Factor. I really suggest you to read it and to pass it on to your friends (especially the non-tech-savvy ones!). Starting from post-Katrina communication efforts, it makes good points on why communication formats MUST be based on open standards.
Isn't it time, after so much suffering, to recognize that keeping people alive is more important than allowing private companies to lock in customers into proprietary systems that don't then work in an emergency? And why does the Internet always work, no matter who you are or what operating system you use? Because it was built, not on proprietary standards, but entirely on open standards. That's why you can send an email to me, even if you are using Microsoft Outlook. I don't run any Microsoft products currently, but because of open standards, I can still read your email, and in an emergency, we will not be disconnected because we are on "different communication systems." (...)
I shudder to think what Microsoft would have done, if it had invented the Internet. Every bit of it would be patented, and we'd all be paying through the nose and would be restricted to whatever Microsoft chose to let us do. (...)
If Microsoft is successful in persuading the powers that be to establish emergency communications based on their proprietary XML, it will shut out millions of people. That is too big a price to pay. And there is no reason why Microsoft can't follow the same XML standards as the rest of the world. They may feel it is in their best interest to have proprietary extensions on XML, patented to boot, but it isn't in the public's best interest to be forced to use it, and frankly, why would any government wish to reinforce a monopoly's monopoly position? How is that good for the marketplace? For that matter, how does it build faith and respect for the law?
Anyone should really tell me a reason for which a closed, proprietary, secret format is better than a public, published, standard one. It is like someone telling you "it is better if you forget English, Italian, etc and communicate only using the language I inventend. You cannot understand how to utter words (the language is secret) but you can use our tools to do it (of course other people cannot create other tools for uttering words because, you know, it costed a lot to us to develop this language and, you know, we must get some money to buy food, you know). It will be much much better, for everyone". By the way, Massachusetts is requiring open standards for all government documents. If your software does not save documents in open standards, Massachusetts's agencies cannot buy it, as simple as that.
August 26, 2005
| Copyright |
copyright
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| Free software |
free_software
|
| Programming |
programming
|
This still amazes me. I released some slides under Creative Commons licence time ago and I got some emails with a improuved version of the slides and some comments about typos, errors. I released IdentityBurro under Creative Commons (I would have preferred GPL but the original code of BookBurro was under CC as well because the a snippet of code Jesse used was under CC, I guess this is what virality of licences really means) and I received 2 emails of people using the code in different ways.
Jeremy wrote me "Because I learn by tinkering, I was able to pick through your script and adapt it to provide this functionality.". His greasemonkey script, The Flickr Tag Convergence Script, allows you to search for any tag on a Flickr photo page on either del.icio.us or Technorati with one mouse click. The script places small icons (one for del.icio.us and one for Technorati) in front of each photo tag (see the screenshot). The script is also available on UserScripts.org, another shiny creation of Jesse, BookBurro's creator.
On the other hand, Daniel was so kind to improuve the Identity Burro code by looking over the Todo list. He added some of the other sites I listed as wanting to include (Cite-u-Like, Last.fm (+audioscrobbler now that it's completely incorporated into last.fm), 43things, 43ideas@43things, 43places, 43ideas@43places, 43.allconsuming.net, Rojo and LJ). He also added the shrink/collapse button I mentioned. So I played with it again, added some more funcionalities and there will be a 0.3 version of IdentityBurro in minutes.
I just want to mention that I created Identity Burro tinkering with the code of Book Burro. I met Jesse, Book Burro's creator at AAAI, and I was amazed to meet him and I thought I had a lot to learn by looking at his code, I was right. [During his AAAI invited talk, Jay Tenenbaum showed one slide about Book Burro, and at the end of the presentation, Jesse showed up saying "you showed a slide about Book Burro, well, I created Book Burro"]. That's amazing, I want something like that happening to me as well in future! By the way, Jesse is now visiting Commerce.net and he ponders about Trust - Since userscripts operate outside of the security model, a malicious userscript could send every keystroke to the bad guys. A combination of peer review, and automated testing will be used to help secure end users.. UserScripts.org aggregates scripts but the actual code stays on the creator's site, so I think the idea is that, say, Mark Pilgrim trust/approuves a certain Greasemonkey script and I trust Mark Pilgrim, I can install the script without examining the code line by line. What if the bad guy's web server, mine for example, serves 90% of the time a "good" script and 10% of the time (or only to people using Windows that are probably not going to look at the code) serves a "malicious" script? Should Mark Pilgrim just trusts a generic URL or it is better to tie his trust action to a specific file content, for example associating an MD5SUM to the trusted file? More clearly, the trust action should be "I trust the script served at http://example.com/script.user.js" or "I trust the script served at http://example.com/script.user.js whose MD5SUM is 34GFGF94RU..."? The second provide more security but every time you release a new version, people have to restate their trust in your script by re-reading the code. So Jesse, what do you think?
August 07, 2005
I was discussing with a collegue friday about putting the slides we prepare on the Web. In fact, our job contract states that everything we "create" during work hours belongs to our employer. This means the total copyright on the slides I create is not mine but of my employer, but this also means that the total copyright on the emails I create is not mine (sometime there is much more value in an email than in a presentation). This means I have no right to let other people see my emails (I don't have the copyright over them), so basically I cannot send emails dealing with what I produce during job hours to anyone!. Do you see any error in this line of reasoning or copyright is just creating some insane situations? [Needless to say, blogging about stuff related to job is totally out of question, especially releasing words under a Creative Commons licence, as I do. Anyway, as you can see, I'm for intelligent interpretation of rules and I do blog about what my research is about.]
July 06, 2005
| Copyright |
copyright
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| Free software |
free_software
|
Great day for European Computer Industry! And for Democracy! Ane one less reason to leave "old Europe"....
Europe Parliament nixes software patent law
STRASBOURG, France Jul 6, 2005 — The European Parliament on Wednesday rejected a proposed law to create a single way of patenting software across the European Union, a blow to big tech companies who had pushed hard for its adoption.
The so-called software patent directive, turned down in a 648-14 vote with 18 abstentions, would have given companies EU-wide patent protection for computerized inventions
April 21, 2005
1) Stallman was in Trento and I got the chance to be pictured with him.
2) Gavin Hill found the picture and emailed me asking to use the picture for a video he was making. I release everything on my blog on a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 1.0 Creative Commons Licence but he preferred a more strict one and so I re-released this photo to him under a Attribution Creative Commons Licence.
3) He created a video about "How Software Patents Actually Work" with the picture. [He wrote me in first email that he would release the video under CC licence as well. At the moment, I think he forgot to write it on the video page so I emailed him about this] [UPDATE: he told me that "The video itself has details of the CC license at the end"]
4) I'm in the "thanks list" at the end of the video.
Everything thanks to CreativeCommonsLicenses, the copyright for the 21th century!
Napo is the guy that appears in the picture (and the guy I ask to when I have a problem with my GNU/Linux and the guy I share the office with every single day) and wrote about it on his blog on persone.softwarelibero.org an entry in Italian.
You can also translate the video in your language, if you like.
March 05, 2005
| Copyright |
copyright
|
| Free software |
free_software
|
| Future |
future
|
| Italia |
italia
|
San Remo is the most known Italian Music Festival. Millions of people watching TV these days. So 3 Italian Ministers had the good idea to show off in TV signing an agreement against piracy and for protecting music authors; in reality it just defends big Music Labels and not citizens. Anyway this is normal: we have a media govern, they govern via television.
What is more interesting is that the Ministry for Innovation and Technologies released a report about Digital Rights Management (2.9 Mb Pdf file in Italian). I come to know via an article by Emanuele Somma (you can try the automatic translation in English if you don't master Italian) that this report, besides being full of errors, also stole a sentence about Copyleft from the magazine "Il Mucchio Selvaggio", n. 526, march 2003, precisely from an article titled "Il copyleft spiegato ai bambini" (copyleft explained to children) written by Wu Ming Foundation. Of course they didn't cite the original article. So here we are at the incredible paradox: the government commision, that wants to regulate e-content, copies the copyright-protected e-content of someone else without even citying it!!!
Moreover the sentence contains a lot of errors and it is not at all precise. They copied and they copied from a wrong report! Geniuses! They also refused to hear the Free Software Foundation (there was no time!), while they were happy to listen all the Music Labels lobbyists.
The copied sencence is:
"Si è andata affermando negli ultimi anni la filosofia del Copyleft. Il termine (denso gioco di parole intraducibile in italiano) si traduce in diversi tipi di licenze commerciali, la prima delle quali è stata la GPL- GNU Public License ([in nota] La licenza GNU/GPL è stata realizzata dalla Free Software Foundation), nata per tutelare quest'ultimo e impedire che le grandi case di software si impadronissero, privatizzandoli, dei risultati del lavoro di libere comunità di utenti. Il software libero è a «codice-sorgente aperto», il che lo rende potenzialmente controllabile, modificabile e migliorabile dall'utente, da solo o in collaborazione con altri."
You can find all the articles that use the copied sentence by searching in Google for "denso gioco di parole intraducibile in italiano" (that means "pun overloaded of meanings, untranslatable in Italian"). The first article is the original, the last one is the goverment's one shamelessy stealing the sentence. The copied sentence is at page 81 of the Commission report.
Just to let you know: based on current law, in Italy, someone caught downloading copyright material off the Internet could go to jail.
February 04, 2005
| Alternative Economy |
alternative_economy
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| Copyright |
copyright
|
| Free software |
free_software
|
| Trento |
trento
|
Today I received a package from Ubuntu. It contains 50 cardboard folders containing both an UbuntuLinux Install CD and an UbuntuLinux LiveCD. And Ubuntu sends it for free. This is very timely since there will be Stallman (father of GNU and Free Software Foundation, the one who started it all) in Trento on February 28, 2005 and the intention is to give away hundreds of CDs with free software (ubuntu GNU/Linux, mandrake Linux, but also free software for Windows such as theopencd and gnuwin2) and creative-commons-licenced music. Most people still don't understand that copying and giving away free software is totally legal, actually it is what people creating that software want you to do! Anyway, I want to thank Ubuntu, to invite you to order some free Ubuntu CDs as well and, if you feel like, to donate to Ubuntu.
January 27, 2005
| Copyright |
copyright
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| Free software |
free_software
|
(via TeledyN) An alliance announced today between MSN Music and Smithsonian Folkways Recordings will make tens of thousand of historic songs from legendary performers of folk, blues, jazz and world music available online for the first time, allowing music fans to discover a diverse world of music and sound. But from the archive I can get nothing, since the System Requirements are screamful and I don't use the crappiest operating system ever. This is an example of e-exclusion: since I choose not to use that operating system, I am cut out of this experience. File formats (and songs formats obviously) MUST be open so that everyone can be free to write a program able to read them! Just try to imagine if Microsoft was more smart and understood earlier what the web could have been. We would have now: closed protocols (no TCP/IP, no HTTP, but M$TP!), no open formats for web pages (no HTML but M$ML). Of course you would not be able to use whatever program to communicate over the internet or to create a page but you would have been forced to pay for highly-unuseful and dangerous and closed-source M$ software! I'm so depressed that most people just don't see it: the future Microsoft wants for us is a future of darkness. Following you can find the System Requirements for listening to "historic songs from legendary performers of folk, blues, jazz and world music":
System Requirements
These are the minimum requirements to play radio or purchase music from MSN.
Hardware and Software Requirements
* Windows 98 SE, Windows 2000, or Windows XP
* Internet Explorer 5.01 (or later), which supports 128-bit encryption
* Windows Media Player 7.1 (or later), we recommend the latest version
* A 233 megahertz (MHz) processor (such as an Intel Pentium II or Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) processor) or faster
* 64 megabytes (MB) of RAM or more
* Speakers and sound capability
* Payment with a valid credit card with a U.S. billing address
* To enjoy high-quality audio as a Radio Plus subscriber, you will need Windows Media Player 9 Series (or later)
SETTINGS REQUIREMENTS
These settings are already appropriately set for most users. If you are experiencing problems with MSN Music, please make sure the following settings are configured inside Internet Explorer:
1. Enable cookies:
Your privacy settings in Internet Explorer need to be set to accept first-party cookies.
You can change this privacy setting this way:
On the menu, go to Tools-> Internet Options -> click the Privacy tab -> click the Advanced button -> check "Override automatic cookie handling," and then choose to "Accept" First-party Cookies.
2. Choose "enable/prompt" for some security settings:
Your security settings in Internet Explorer may prevent the installation of MSN Music Assistant. Without MSN Music Assistant, you will not be able to purchase and download music.
These security settings are usually set appropriately for this activity by default. If you have adjusted your settings, you can change these security settings in Internet Explorer this way:
On the menu, go to Tools -> pull down to Internet Options -> click the Security tab -> click the Custom Level button. Where you have the radio button set to "disable," you will need to choose either "enabled" or "prompt," as appropriate, for the following items:
ActiveX controls and plug-ins -> Download signed ActiveX controls: choose "enabled" or "prompt"
ActiveX controls and plug-ins -> Script ActiveX controls marked safe for scripting: choose "enabled"
Scripting -> Active Scripting: choose "enabled"
Miscellaneous -> Navigate sub Frames across different domains: choose "enabled"
3. Turn on BITS (Background Intelligent Transfer Service):
Your setting with regard to BITS may prevent the installation of MSN Music Assistant. Without MSN Music Assistant, you will not be able to purchase and download music.
BITS are turned on by default. If you have altered your settings, you can turn on BITS on this way:
Go to Start -> open Control Panel -> choose Performance and Maintenance (skip this step if you're in Classic View) -> Services, select Background Intelligent Transfer Service, right-click and select Properties. Make sure startup type is set to "manual" or "automatic," not "disabled."
4.
You must be an administrator on the computer in order for the ActiveX control to install properly. You need not be an admin to use the service once the control has been installed.
(next time you'll find)
5.
Sell your soul.
January 25, 2005
| Copyright |
copyright
|
| PhD |
phd
|
| Recommender Systems |
recommender_systems
|
| Trust and Reputation |
trust_and_reputation
|
Interesting NYTimes's article (if you don't want to register, use BugMeNot where you can find shared login and password pairs). Mikhail Gronas discovers that "reviewers gave more five-star reviews than two-star reviews, creating an upward sloping curve". (...) "But the most telling variable is the one star rating. Professor Gronas found that books high on what he called the "controversiality index" are given almost as many one-star as five-star ratings, creating a horseshoe-shaped curve. As it turns out, these books also tend to have high sales."
I've found these patterns analyzing Epinions.com ratings and trust statements (chech the graphs' on the paper (pdf)) but actually I don't think they are that surprising: they seem pretty obvious and I just reported them passing by.
What is really depressing is that Dartmouth is now in the process of patenting software that will be used to determine the "controversiality index".
I'm happy that in Europe we are still fighting against a so-stupid-policy of being able to patent everything, no matter how trivial it is. In this case the controversiality level of a book is something like "if a book received as much 5 ratings as 1 and if the 5 and 1 ratings together are the vast majority of ratings and if the number of received ratings is over a threshold (probably depending on release time), then the book is controversial" (putting it in formula that produces a controversiality value would require 10 minutes at most).
By the way, I'm currently working on the concept of controversiality of users and hopefully a paper is on the way. Controversial users are users who are trusted by many and distrusted by many. (Bush is a good example, but this can happen to highly visible persons in general). The idea is that Local Trust Metrics make sense expecially for highly controversial users (for example, users who are trusted by more than 200 users and DIStrusted by more than 200 users in the community). For those users, it does not make sense to predict a trust value of 0.5 saying that you should trust this user as 0.5 but, instead, to predict you should trust this controversial user as 1 if, for example, all your friends trust her and 0 if all your friends distrust her.
January 19, 2005
Creative Commons Italy is proposing a simple law: "everything that is funded with state funds must be public domain" (ciò che è finanziato con soldi pubblici deve essere di dominio pubblico). A Creative Commons licence would be better than public domain but I guess this is just a first step for igniting a nation-wide discussion ... and anyway laws in Italy cannot be that simple, they must contains tons of words that you can't understand (without a lawyer). ![[winking face]](http://moloko.itc.it/paoloblog/images/smilies/wink.gif){kind=small}
(via punto-informatico)
January 15, 2005
| Alternative Economy |
alternative_economy
|
| Copyright |
copyright
|
| Free software |
free_software
|
From BoingBoing, I come to know that billgates consider people that believe in free culture as communists. Such a comparison is so deeply wrong, I'm almost speechless. Free culture and communism are 2 completely different topics.
"There are fewer communists in the world today than there were. There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don't think that those incentives should exist."
Anyway I had a small glimpe of what americans on average think about communists (should I say "they don't think"?) when I was there for some months. I guess billgates'strategy is simple: call them communists, have your media broadcast the idea and let televisions-truths-swallowers get the concept and burn the communists.
Making fun of this nonsense sentence, some people have created wallpapers, t-shirts and other gadgets with this "creative commies" propaganda. Check some of them on BoingBoing.
Anyway, the arrogance of the richest man in the world, head of a global monopoly, is overwhelming and disgusting. The future he draws for us is a dark one (read the entire article on news.com). He also says (speaking of security on InternetExplorer) that "The key message we have for people is they should turn on auto update because if you turn on auto update, without you having to think about it and go through a bunch of user interface or know about this or that or the other thing...".
The reality is the opposite: users who are not aware of what is going on in their computers will never be secure, and they will also be forever forced to do whatever Sauron wants them to do (Yes, the analogy billgates=sauron is very easy, one created the rings to keep people in the dark and control them, the other created windows to keep computer users in the dark).
Are you happy with the future he draws for you? If not, start leaving Windows for GNU/Linux (or at least InternetExploder for Firefox). This could be a first step to tell the richest guy in the world, head of a global monopoly, you don't agree with him and you are taking a different way. Doing tomorrow could be too late. Do it now. If you need help in dropping Windows, I'll be happy to help you, just leave a comment or email me.
December 16, 2004
| Copyright |
copyright
|
| PhD |
phd
|
| Trust and Reputation |
trust_and_reputation
|
I would love to attend the Reputation and Trust class of Understanding Online Interaction course by david wiley! It seems he always writes down a short funny story for introducing the weekly topic (and the assignment...). I might borrow the idea if I'll ever teach a class. Unluckly, from Italy, Utah is a bit too far away.
And since he releases the content of his blog under a Creative Commons Attribution - Share Alike license and i do the same for content of this blog, I happily and legally post here all his post, of course giving credit.
Reputation and Trust
B. Have you ever bought anything from Amazon.com?
A. Sure.
B. And you felt comfortable giving them your credit card information because...
A. [incredulously] Because they're Amazon.com!
B. But what about before they were "Amazon.com"?
A. Are you going to talk about walking uphill both ways through deep snow?
B. No, no. That would take us in the wrong direction. [thinking] How about Ebay? Ever buy anything from Ebay?
A. Sure.
B. [with delight] A ha! Caught you in my little trap! You've actually never bought anything *from* Ebay. You've bought things from sellers who used Ebay as a front for their goods.
A. [unimpressed] Fair enough.
B. I understand that you feel comfortable giving your money to Amazon.com, but why are you comfortable giving it to jimbob-roadkill-03?
A. I don't know. Because he's on Ebay??? [looking around for help from other students]
B. It's an interesting phenomnenon, isn't it? Why do we trust people online?
A. Well, with some of them you get to know them really well even though you never meet them face to face.
B. True enough. There are people I feel like I have known forever that I've never seen face to face. We exchange emails, post comments on each others' blogs, read each others' writings, etc. After a while you really do feel like you know them.
A. I guess its the same way you come to trust people in the "real world."
B. Which is... how? How do you know you can trust someone?
A. [with great pride] Well how do you really *know* anything?
B. I think that question leads us down a different path. [thinking again] At what point do you begin trusting someone?
A. After they earn my trust.
B. Okay. Keep going with that. How does someone "earn your trust"?
A. [pauses] Well, I guess through chances to do me wrong. I mean, if someone has an opportunity to really take advantage of me, and they don't, then I start to trust them.
B. What's the difference between that person and another who you might trust with something extremely important to you - say your car, house, or spouse?
A. I guess the person I trust more has had more chances to take advantage of me, but has proven over and over again that he won't.
B. So trust is somehow the product of a person's past interactions with you?
A. Something like that.
B. Would knowing the record of a person's past interactions with *other* people influence your willingness to trust them?
A. You mean like if it turned out they had been stealing from their boss or cheating on their wife or something?
B. Or if they won a Nobel Peace prize, etc.
A. Well, sure. If I've never met a person before, then I don't have that history of interactions with him. I guess finding out how he had interacted with others in the past would be all I had to go on.
B. So knowing a person's reputation can be a substitute for your own personal history of interactions with them?
A. To some extent. I don't think I would trust other people's experience as much as I would trust my own, but it's better than nothing.
B. Let me recast the discussion a little. This all started with the question "would you be comfortable giving your money to someone?" If we change the question to "would you be comfortable taking somone's answer to your question as authoritative?" does it change your answer at all?
A. You mean like in the newsgroups, when people would ask questions and then have them answered by total strangers? So the question is why take their word for it?
B. Sure.
A. Well, if they answer, they must know what they're talking about.
B. [grinning] Think about what you're saying a bit more.
A. I don't know. A lot of times you can get a clue from the words they use. To be simple about it, if they use big words like they know what they're talking about, I guess I think that they probably do.
B. So if a person uses one set of words instead of another (to say *exactly* the same thing) it can come off as more believable?
A. Yea. Actually, I tried this approach in most of the essay questions in history as an undergrad. [general laughter and head nodding around the room]
B. Well, hopefully we can agree that the decision to enter into a financial transaction with a stranger is generally an important one. So is the decision to believe an opinion expressed by a stranger on questions where the accuracy of the answer is important.
A. Granted.
B. So...
A. [cutting in] Ok, I get it! You're going to say something like [clearing throat, and then proceeding in an unnaturally deep voice] 'people don't interact very effectively if they can't trust each other - always watching their backs, etc. So for social software to really let people interact effectively, the software has to deal with the problem of trust.'
B. [bowing to A.] Herr Professor.
[applause from the rest of the class for A.]
[to everyone] You won't be surprised to find out that lots of people have thought about this problem.
A. Or to find that they've written articles about the topic that we have to read...
B. Thanks for the segueway. Try these articles first:
* Kollock's The Production of Trust in Online Markets
* Reputation Systems by Resnick et al.
* Trust Among Strangers in Internet Transactions: Empirical Analysis of eBay's Reputation System, also by Resnick and Zeckhauser
A. So let me guess. Those were the readings for the week, which means that next is...
B. The week's assignment!
Assignment: Synthesis 1
Write a brief piece describing the relationships between cooperation, incentives, reputations, and trust. Focus on connecting the concepts and frameworks in the articles you have read for this class with your own personal experiences. Questions you could answer INCLUDE BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO: In what manner are reputations and trust incentives in and of themselves? Are reputations any more important in facilitating cooperation online than offline; why or why not? Et cetera.
Don't forget to post your short piece on your blog.
A. [sarcastically] Could you possibly ask a broader question, please?
B. That's part of the point. I want to give you a fairly broad license to show that you're really doing some thinking. Synthesize. Connect your experiences to what you've read.
A. Ok. I'm off to think.
November 11, 2004
| Alternative Economy |
alternative_economy
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| Copyright |
copyright
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| Songs |
songs
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The WIRED CD: Rip. Sample. Mash. Share.. First example of creative commons cd, I hope many will follow this bright example. You can listen to the songs streaming the related WebJay compilation (once there, just click on "play page").
Songs are released under 2 creative commons licences:
Sampling Plus: Songs under this license allow noncommercial sharing and commercial sampling, but advertising uses are restricted.
Noncommercial Sampling Plus: Songs under this license allow noncommerical sharing and noncommercial sampling.
Buy Wired if you want the cd. The front cover says: "Fight for your right to copy".
UPDATE: I started reading Wired and found this great article: We pledge allegiance to the penguin, and the intellectual property regime for which he stands. One nation, under Linux, with free music and open source software for all. Welcome to Brazil!. Every day I found one more reason to move to Brazil, when I'll finish my PhD.
June 22, 2004
| Alternative Economy |
alternative_economy
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| Copyright |
copyright
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Daypop today tells us that the most linked URL is Cory Doctorow's Microsoft Research DRM talk. Cory released it under a Creative Commons licence and people start doing creative actions with the content. In fact, you find an MP3 version and even an Italian translation on a Wiki (by Luca Lizzeri)! Fantastic!
A must read (or a must hear?!? I cannot wait to listen Cory uttering the "arrr"s you find in the text
February 23, 2004
At Rolan the Datapimp, Alex asks himself if collecting orkut.com data automatically with a script is legal or ethical.
Actually I scraped Epinions.com site for data and I don't care too much about this nonsense copyright mess.
I really don't understand these strange licences (or ToS, Term of Service). Could I say that this site can be accessed only on thursday if the humidity is above 3 something? That the email I send you can be read only with a certain program and only between 3pm and 4pm?
I totally agree with Alex when he says
... I could pay a few students minimum wage to record this data manually. Would that be acceptable? What if I had them sit in a lab and hit each page, saving a local copy? This would appear exactly the same as a scraper to Orkut, and would yield exactly the same results, but would presumably be acceptable.
Basically, I think noone can tell me how I can experience some digital content. I agree with World of Ends
You are never going to prevent us from copying the bits we want.
Reminder for myself: I need to open a webpage with "impossible-to-accomplish licences and ToS".
January 27, 2004
| Copyright |
copyright
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| FOAF |
foaf
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| Social Software |
social_software
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| Songs |
songs
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| Trust and Reputation |
trust_and_reputation
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Yes, YASN (Yet Another Social Network). Have you noticed that Add as a friend is the most common link in websites created these days?
Anyway, this time we have SongBuddy. Social software + online music: an explosive pair!
SongBuddy is a new way to find music that's already available on the Internet. By finding songs on bands' and labels' sites and sharing the address of those songs with your friends, you can explore music you'll love that you wouldn't hear anywhere else. So sign up, make some friends and list some music. You won't even need to install any software, SongBuddy works with your current media player.
Here my profile.
SongBuddy also produces a FOAF file representing your friends and uses the MusicBrainz RDF namespace.
The term of service is also very good!
Unless otherwise specified, all content on this site is copyright SongBuddy LLC. You may use the data on this site under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 1.0 Creative Commons license.
Another similar site worth mentioning is Webjay by Lucas Gonze but I haven't had time to try it yet.
This post also appears on the open channel playlistlogging
| Alternative Economy |
alternative_economy
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| Copyright |
copyright
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| Wiki |
wiki
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Since I spoke of WikiTravel, I like to mention World66. That seems a lot more advanced.
I'm wondering if my next holidays will be based on a work licenced under a Creative Commons licence. That would be great!
| Alternative Economy |
alternative_economy
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| Blogging |
blogging
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| Copyright |
copyright
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Even if I'm more interested in the World Social Forum 2004 (see also on Rediff), it is worth noting that the World Economic Forum 2004 included a session on blogs!
It is good or bad that this group of people started to speak in public about blogs? We'll see but I'm very unconfident.
Read more on Whiskey Bar or read some quotes I extracted from the article (since its content is released under a Creative Commons licence, it is perfectly legal to reproduce it here and to share it):
[Joy] Rosen [the chair of the department of journalism at NYU]'s point, I think, is that communications technology may be moving in a great historical cycle. The invention of the printing press—followed by radio and then television—created a progressively more capital-intensive media industry, with an increasing division of labor among reporters, editors, printers, advertising whores, um, I mean, salesmen, etc. The invention of the Internet, however, has shifted the balance back towards the individual writer/publisher, doing his/her own thing, reporting or commenting on events they find through their own research, either on the web or off.
The difference, of course, is that what was once limited to a small literate elite in the 18th century is available to millions of people the world over in the 21st. This is a revolution by anybody's definition, and could even, in time, spell the end of the mainstream media as we know it. Or, as Rosen put it: "The age of the mass media is just that—an age. It doesn't have to last forever."
The net is capable of deciding—in a completely democratic way what topics it wants to explore. In effect, the news agenda is put to a continuous vote, with Google counting the ballots. Everyone and anyone is free to contest the results, but if the blogosphere wants to talk about, say, Dean's scream, then that will become the metaphorical equivalent of the lead story on page one—until something comes along that attracts more votes. This is what terrifies the mass media: the threat of losing control of the news agenda.
One guy from Business Week was particularly outraged about the whole thing. He waxed eloquent about the importance of the news "filter" (in my day we called it the gatekeeper function) as mankind's last best defense against the barbarian hordes. I felt like I was listening to a buggy whip manufacturer, circa 1910, talking about the growing threat of the automobile.
Actually, there was a time when I probably would have agreed with the guy—back when I was on his side of the fence and thought journalists played a valuable watchdog role. But after watching the steady deterioration of the profession over the past ten years or so, I have no patience for such self-serving crap. Yeah, there's a lot of misinformation and just plain nonsense on the web, but a mass media that gives us Bill O'Reilly and Michael Savage on a regular basis, and that devotes more coverage to Michael Jackson's legal problems than the Iraq War, isn't in a position to lecture anyone about standards. The truth is that the blogs are getting better and better, and the mass media is getting worse and worse. If the credibility lines haven't crossed yet they soon will.
The more serious problem, I think, was raised by Le Meur, the French blogger, who argued that blogs have the potential to become for the news media was Napster was for the music industry.
One of the worst moments at the Davos session was when some twinkie from a New York advertising firm stood up and described how her firm has started turning first to blogs to place ads for certain products. "What I don't understand," she said, "is why the big media companies don't swoop in and buy up some of these blogs while they're still cheap."
But if the thought has occurred to her, it's probably already occurred to others. Just the fact that blogging showed up on the agenda at Davos this year is probably a bad sign. I can't shake the suspicion that the golden age of blogging is almost over—that the corporate machine is about to swallow it, digest it, and regurgitate it as bland, non-threatening pablum. Our brief Summer of Love may be nearing an end.
