Farcebook

I'm pretty sure the Facebook hysteria now qualifies as a moral panic. We've named a problem ("loss of privacy"), identified it with a public enemy (Facebook is obviously tailor-made for this role; Google might be an even better fit, but - well, they drew a long straw this time), abused tens of thousands of innocent words on describing and discussing and distancing ourselves from The Problem. Now we're at the stage where lawmakers have got in on the act, and Congress is grandstanding at Mark Zuckerberg.

That's worrying, because moral panics generally end in new laws to crack down on some pastime that had, up to now, been classed as - if not exactly virtuous, then at least not harmful enough to be worth the loss of freedom entailed by passing laws about it. Think legal highs, dangerous dogs, alcopops, motorcycle gangs. And the pastimes at stake here - communicating with friends and family, networking, personal publishing - are, basically, everything that is best about the internet. If politicians come to see "social media" as something that needs to be clamped down on, then it's hard to imagine any result that would leave blogs like this one untouched. (The British government is already going this way: its recent changes to press regulation are clearly designed to stifle independent comment, while keeping the press barons onside. It's not, in itself, fascism - but it's one of its building blocks.)

I imagine, by now, just about every country with any kind of commercially-driven media sector has had its say on the Facebook panic. Here is what someone who passes for a media commentator in New Zealand has to say. And I think it's an instructive study in how moral panics - as well as their direct dangers - are also susceptible to hijacking by special interests.

Look at the headline: "Govt needs to protect Kiwis from Facebook's power". Explicitly calling for government action (i.e. new laws), explicitly aimed at Facebook. The writer criticises Facebook - not for collecting data, nor for slinging "targeted" ads, but for doing all this from abroad. "Fundamentally", he says, "we need to have a voice with these overseas organisations who are increasingly playing such an important role in the daily life of New Zealanders". On the other hand, you can "trust local retailers and organisations who have no agenda apart from being useful and understanding you".

Yeah right.

The author, one Ben Goodale, is a frequent contributor to the New Zealand Herald. More germanely he's described, in an easily missable footnote, as "the managing director of justONE". I didn't know what "justONE" is any more than you do, but its website describes it as "New Zealand's pre-eminent data-driven marketing, CRM and loyalty agency".

So no, the stench of self-interest that rises from this drivel is not just our imagination.

Note to every legislator: Facebook is a publisher. (Zuckerberg denies this, on the grounds that Facebook doesn't create the content, and it's "a technology company". In other words, he doesn't know what a publisher is.)

You know how to regulate publishing. You've been doing it for hundreds of years. Don't let the new technology and associated gobbledegook blind you to that simple fact: Facebook needs to be treated exactly like every other publisher. How would you react to a publisher that surreptitiously gathered data on people, then carelessly shared that data with third parties?

NZ already has a perfectly good privacy law that covers that scenario, but for some reason nobody has ever thought to apply it to Facebook. We don't need new laws, and we don't . We just need to enforce the laws we've got.

Darth Google

A few of weeks ago now, I installed a new widget on this page that records where (it thinks) my readers are located, where they come from, and what links they click when they're here.

It's fascinating reading, although slightly dispiriting that I don't get visited nearly as often as I should. But among other things, it lets me see what people were searching Google for when my blog popped up.

An uncommon lot of people - well, half a dozen at least - seem to have been drawn here by the picture included in my unflattering review of Watchmen. I wonder if they were disappointed when they didn't find a full online version of the comic. (If so, tough. I don't support digital piracy.)

Recently there was some poor sap from Miami searching for "the science of karma", and they were apparently so disappointed that they must've complained to Google, because my post of that name currently doesn't show up at all in a search for that phrase.

Then last week there was someone searching for "Mr Darcy is all politeness" (without quotes). I wonder what they were looking for.

I know what they found, though. Apparently, if you Google for a random text from Pride & Prejudice, the number one result you get is the "Google Books" edition of the text.

I don't know if you're familiar with Google Books. It's a stupid idea, the misbegotten offspring of an idiot's compromise between Google and the major publishers whereby Google gets to "publish books" online. By way of throwing a bone to the copyright Gestapo, Google agreed to leave out some pages in these works, the theory being that people should be allowed to search the text online but not able to read it. The choice of pages omitted depends on what you searched for. (It also, I've discovered in the course of researching this, varies from one day to the next. Last week I could page all the way through the book, with some random omissions such as p.145; this week, it's skipping directly from p.60 to the back cover.)

The irony being, of course, that Pride & Prejudice is not a copyright work. Not unless Jane Austen lived to be 200 years old, anyway. Anyone can reproduce this text as many times as they like; rewrite, repackage, adapt, perform, distribute, sell, loan or hire it, or any original work they may derive from it, completely at will. That's how Wordsworth Classics (Google's edition) were entitled to publish it in the first place; for them now to assert copyright over the text is indefensible, and should be illegal if it's not already.

But I digress. My real point here is that no human being in their senses would search for the Google Books edition of this work, because it's fecking useless. Instead, they could look for the Gutenberg version, which is easier to read, easier to search, and complete. And one hundred per cent legal to distribute in every country I know of, unless of course it meets someone's idea of obscenity...

And yet that page doesn't show up at all in the first page of Google results when searching for the text.

Ten years ago, Google became famous for its motto: "Don't be evil". "Evil" was always somewhat nebulously defined, but it was commonly understood as contrasting with Microsoft's standard operating practice of abusing every part of its business to give various (arguably) unfair advantages to every other part, generally at the expense of its own users. But it's hard to see the above Google result in any other light. The top result for the search is the one that's least useful for the user, and most profitable for Google.

How drunk would you have to be...?

Introducing perhaps the dumbest business idea since sliced ketchup: PersonRatings.com.

It's a website where you can rate anyone. Well, any American, anyway. You get to award marks out of five in each of ten categories: smart, sexy, confident, successful, friendly, funny, kind, classy, energetic, trustworthy. The score you see displayed for a person is based on the average rating they've received.

I don't know where to begin - but it doesn't matter, because none of my readers are demented enough to imagine for a microsecond that this sounds like a neat idea. Even the site's founder doesn't want to put his hand up to it: the only contact address given is for a "jerry.smith". Searching for "jerry smith" on PersonRatings turns up - nothing.

So whose brainchild is it? Turns out to belong to one Jeremy Stamper, of Seattle, WA. Mr Stamper, you may be reassured to learn, clocks a solid two out of five stars in each of the ten categories - meaning that, in the aggregate opinion of random people on the 'net, he's "not very" smart, successful, sexy etc.

Possibly Mr Stamper is hoping to capitalise on the Facebook Effect - that once you've got a profile, it's practically impossible to remove it, so you have no choice but to keep maintaining it for as long as the site owner chooses to hold you to ransom. Or possibly it's all some elaborate April Fool's joke that's broken early.

A Google search reveals that Mr Stamper made his first career, and name, in real estate. And now he's gone into publishing. Which, I guess, should be enough to tell us all exactly what I should think of him...

Just a couple of gems from the FAQ:

Why is Anonymous Free Speech important?

We should all be very protective of our right to express our opinions without being required to register with the government or any other entity. After all, why should governments, employers, or anyone else be tracking our personal opinions and beliefs. The American tradition of anonymous free speech is older than the United States itself. In fact, the anonymous publication of the Federalist Papers was vital to the birth of the United States. [And so on, but you get the gist.]

I swear, I'm not making this up. It gets funnier:

I see a post that isn't true. Will you remove it?

It is impossible for us to determine the legitimacy or veracity of posts. Even courts of law are seldom capable of this. With the amount of content that is posted, it is impractical for any service provider to scrutinize user generated content. We appreciate your help in trying to keep the site content legal and on topic. However, Personratings is not the author of posted content and is not obligated to remove content posted by users except in very rare circumstances. We believe that the best response to offensive free speech is not censorship, but instead more free speech. Readers will use their own criteria to evaluate the credibility of posts.

So feel free to visit Mr Stamper's profile and write - anonymously, of course - whatever takes your fancy. With a bit of determination, in six months' time, his name could be synonymous with "noted duck-rapist".

Addendum: Jeremy Stamper has added himself as a follower of this blog. Nice to see you, Jeremy - hope you enjoy it. But it does mean paragraph 3 of the above entry is probably no longer true. All the same, I'm leaving it now for the sake of Historical Integrity, or something.

Kindling controversy

The Authors Guild is alerting its members about the new version of Amazon's Kindle e-book reader, because "Kindle 2" has - get this - the ability to read a book aloud. Apparently it's not yet as good as a human reader, but (says the AG) it's a great step forward from text-to-speech mechanisms of only a few years ago.

I came to this story all ready to lambast the Authors Guild (shouldn't there be an apostrophe in there somewhere?) for trying to cripple technology in the name of soaking more money for its members. But having read its release, I'm almost sympathetic.

Almost.

The guild believes, or professes to believe, that reading a book aloud, privately, is not and should not be covered by copyright. At the same time, it doesn't want anything to damage the sale of audio books. Its present - "concern", I guess is the nice neutral word - is that Amazon will undermine the market for audio books by marketing e-books as a form that makes the audio book obsolete.

And much as I'd like to say "Suck it up! Products do become obsolete, live with it!" - I'm disarmed by the fact that the Guild is focusing its fears not on consumers, but on Amazon. If the new-generation e-book is going to double as an audio book, it suggests, perhaps authors should be asking for a better cut.

I think I can follow the logic here. How many people buy both a print and an audio version of the same book? I don't know, but my guess would be that most customers buy one or the other, not both. Now, if a single product can do duty for both sets of customers, then we've substantially lowered the costs of production and distribution, with no more than a slight, if any, decrease in the total market.

Of course that means more profit for publishers, and of course the Authors Guild wants its members to get their fair cut of that action.

I can sympathise with the wish to keep a tight rein on Amazon. I applaud the Authors Guild for keeping sight of the fact that the publisher, not the consumer, is the author's natural enemy. I can see why it'd be loth to pass up any opportunity to try to bump up its members' earnings.

But I think its present stance is more likely to have the opposite effect.

If authors stick up for their rights to a better cut if books are to be released on "Kindle 2", that can only lead to one thing: a proprietary, locked-out format that's carefully engineered to be incompatible with Kindle 2, so that publishers can justify not paying the higher rates to any but the best-selling authors. That restriction will fragment the market and frustrate consumers, even further than we already are. And it'll increase the incentives to pirate the work.

It can't be said too often: "the more sense that copyright makes to the consumers of copyright material - or, to put it in economic terms, the greater its economic value or utility to consumers - the more users value copyright material and respect the rights of copyright owners." Not my words - those of Apple, which knows a thing or two about digital publishing.

Authors have never tried to stop people from reading books aloud to one another. Even publishers have not, yet, tried to describe that as "theft". They would be very unwise to start now, merely because the reader may be a machine rather than a person.