Elliott C. Back: Internet & Technology

I just finished reading this Ars Technica article detailing the case Capitol Records v. Jammie Thomas, where a jury delivered 24 guilty counts of infringement after four hours of deliberation and two days of testimony. Because the infringement was determined willful, they awarded $9,250 in statutory damages per song, for a total of $222,000 in damages.

Jammie Thomas, a single mother, was identified by MAC and IP address, and her KaZaa username tereastarr which she used with other websites. Interestingly, the plaintiff’s made the argument that the “eclectic musical tastes” reflected in the KaZaa shared music folder were consistent with Jammie Thomas’s actual tastes.

The New York Times reports the actually scary, precedent-setting part of this case:

Michael J. Davis of Federal District Court, ruled in the industry’s favor on a hotly contested technical question, saying that for jurors to find her liable, the record labels did not have to prove that songs on Ms. Thomas’s computer had actually been transmitted to others online. Rather, the act of making them available could be viewed as infringement, the judge ruled.

I hope this is appealed, as loaning a CD to a friend is also an act of making “music available for copying,” and the precedent is both technically incorrect and stifling to freedoms Americans take for granted.

Reading about the poor MIT student who was recently arrested at submachine gunpoint on BoingBoing I saw a few comments that interested me enough to write a brief rebuttal. For example, comment #63 by Jacob Davis:

On another note, to everyone saying, “It’s obviously not a bomb, they should have known better!” : that’s really condescending. My mother doesn’t know what a breadboard is. My neighbors don’t. Several of my friends don’t. I’d wager the great majority of the US doesn’t know, for better or worse. Don’t pretend that everyone else knows what you know, especially when you are judging circumstances after being given all the facts at once in hindsight.

See the problem is that security personnel, if expected to guard against bombs and bombers, should be able to positively recognize bombs. Your mother and neighbors are not airport security officers, military police, or Boston police for exactly that reason; they don’t know what bombs look like.

Then there are comments #7 and #8, which feel like the police brutality (they arrested her outside the airport with force) is justified:

Wow, she sure put the “mor[on]” in sophomore! Maybe for her next art project she can run around the airport screaming “I’m Al Qaida! Look at me! I’m Al Qaida!”

I’d have wished the above moron had written “more[on] in sophomore;” it would have bee more funny. That said, there’s nothing wrong with a geeky girl wearing a hoodie with some blinking LEDs. As far as I know (and I think the statistics support me here) no one has ever died or been injured, directly or indirectly, by an LED. And, I fully support her right to voice her political opinions, even in the airport. Unfortunate the climate these days means wearing we will not be silent arabic / english t-shirts will probably get you detained.

I thought MIT students were supposed to be a bit more intelligent than the rest of us. Walking into an airport with an electronic device strapped to her chest ….. a very stupid action. She is lucky to just be in a cell, but I have a feeling a lot of people (including her) will never understand why, this time, the Boston Police are in the right.

This one is begging for me point out that 99.99998% of people walk around airports with iPods tucked around their chest or body somewhere… and I’m not even going to start counting people with pacemakers, who actually have an electronic device embedded in their chests! An electronic device isn’t a bomb, and if you think airport security can prevent terrorism, you’re wrong.

Finally, on a lighter note, Rob Cockerham’s comment #27 takes the cake, and eats it too:

I can’t believe NBC is promoting Bionic Woman like this. What a terrible idea.

If you’ve ever bothered to read any of the comment threads on this site which extend over, say, 30 comments you’ll realize the internet is full of idiots. And not just idiots, but all the kinds of truly disgusting people you would rather not know exist. Take the recent highly-publicized example of blogger Kathy Sierra who claims to have been harassed by death threats (we’ll set aside the legal considerations of whether the material showed sufficient intent, even though she repeatedly claims without proof that the material broke “federal law”). She articulately makes the point that the mere creation of material this offensive shows a perversion of bloggers:

It really doesn’t make much difference whether the person intends to act on the threat… it’s the threat itself that inflicts the damage. It’s the threat that makes you question whether that “anonymous” person is as disturbed as their comments and pictures suggest.

The Wrong Reaction

We should be tempted to fall into despair, for human nature is evil. This is exactly what Robert Scoble has done, turning to blogo-Solipsism and taking a week off. Both strong emotional reactions and withdrawing from the blogosphere produce more harm than good. After all, if you’re affected by the cruelty present on the internet, hiding will only make it worse.

The Right Reaction

I usually read Shelly and wince, but she’s right on here:

Frankly, calmer heads are needed when responding to this event. Webloggers are not very good at maintaining perspective. I know, I’ve been one for too long.

This is not something new. People are irresponsible and rude in real life, and the situation is only exacerbated by the internet and the so-called shield of anonymity. We are living in the world of that metaphorical question “if you were invisible would you steal?”

The Irony

Seth Godin suggests that “Anonymity hasn’t made the web a better place. Instead, it has allowed some of the worst ideas ever to get published.” He’s almost right. While the Internet surely allows anonymous slanderers to publish the worst ideas that exist, those ideas are powerless without an audience. And, Kathy Sierra’s public tantrum today gave her attackers more audience than they could have ever hoped for. It’s interesting that by specifically decrying offensive material we draw more attention to it. Creators of hate speech don’t mind bad publicity.

Take It All Away

Still, taking away anonymity (Discouraging Anonymity is Key to Protecting Visibility) is not going to solve any of these problems. First, there is the wee technical problem that it’s totally impossible. Second, and more importantly, people will always exist for whom hate speech is a normal way of life. Only the broadest social reforms can decrease the incident of this kind of thought. You cannot police what people feel in their hearts, but over time you can mold it.

The Only Solution

Remember the racism of the 60s? I don’t, but having heard the stories, it’s quite obvious that incredible leaps have been made to bring black Americans to the same social acceptance level as their white counterparts. Even so, there still remains work to be done wherever racism, sexism, nepotism, ageism, etc are found.

That work will not be accomplished by stifling speech (that means you, Wordpress), but rather by changing the way we are educated, and therefore the way we think.