Comments on: When Google’s the library, who’s the librarian?

By: Daniel Edlen

Daniel Edlen — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 17:05:08 +0000

When you check out a book at the library, there’s a record tied to your library card. Are there any laws regarding access to that information? Can the feds find out you checked out Catcher in the Rye and Bombs for Dummies?

Peace.

By: Uncontrolled Vocabulary #50! - How we can get good things done | Uncontrolled Vocabulary

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 04:19:21 +0000

[...] When Google’s the library, who’s the librarian? (BuzzMachine) Dear facebook and Google, I love libraries more. [...]

By: Episode 50 tonight! | Uncontrolled Vocabulary

Episode 50 tonight! | Uncontrolled Vocabulary — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 10:47:40 +0000

[...] When Google’s the library, who’s the librarian? [...]

By: James

James — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 12:19:02 +0000

The Video Privacy Protection Act should be extended to cover online histories, including viewing and searching histories.

By: alexschmidt

alexschmidt — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 03:48:27 +0000

jeff i thought you voluntarily included your IP on all blog comments, etc. is there some friction here between the transparency you seem to value so deeply on the Internet, and corporate paranoia when your identity is not used in a way that’s to your liking?

By: Links

Links — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 12:44:52 +0000

[...] The Times (and most all other media) has the story this morning of an American court ruling against Google/Youtube. Viacom has sued for infringment of their copyright. Oh, I’m tired of hearing the big media companies going on about Artists’ Rights. It’s not really the artists’ rights they care about, but their own sources of income. And very often they - mysteriously - are biting the hand that feeds them. For instance, the many, many clips in Youtube from Britain’s got Talent and all the other similar shows. Do those clips give the shows more viewers or less viewers? More interest or less interest? Your guess is as good as mine… It really is worrying that Viacom can look into the viewing habits of every single Youtube user and maybe even access their IP-address. In a statement Viacom says that they are not going to do that, but only time will show. Reading about this led me on to this honourable organisation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation. How glad I am that people have the time and energy to found and run such organisations. It’s for the benefit of us all. More on this issue from Jeff Jarvis. [...]

By: Bob Wyman

Bob Wyman — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 21:17:27 +0000

You ask “What should the law be?”
The law should concern itself with the nature of the data and the user’s expectations of privacy rather than the specific location of the data. Thus, data about my private actions should be treated the same whether it is stored under the mattress of my bed in a sealed diary or on a service provider’s servers.

The test here should be one of equivalence… One way to find out who has watched which videos is to get the data from the service provider. This is what Viacom is trying to do. An equivalent method would be to search the homes and computers of all the millions of people who might have watched videos. Clearly, the first method is “cheaper”, however, the second method, a mass search of every home in the USA, would be be denied as an invasion of privacy even if it could be done at reasonable cost. Since the information produced using the two methods is identical, the first method should meet the same requirements as the second. The two methods of information retrieval have the same end result and should be judged the same.

As the internet becomes a more important part of our lives, that space which is our “private home” should be seen to extend to include the private storage places that we establish on the Internet. There is nothing about them other than location that distinguishes them from similar storage places in our own homes. In fact, in many cases, we’re now seeing that private local storage is “backed up” to remote locations for safety. The use of such remote storage cannot be seen to reduce our ownership of or rights concerning our data and data about us.

The law or constitution doesn’t need to change here. Rather, what needs to change is how we interpret the concept of “home” “private space”, etc. These concepts need to extend to reflect that our “homes” are no longer contiguous spaces — they extend across the network to include virtual spaces on remote servers.

bob wyman

By: Bob Wyman

Bob Wyman — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 21:00:20 +0000

PaidContent was spun… They are wrong. Viacom claims that they will receive no “personally identifiable information” because they managed to get the judge to accept that “login id is a pseudonym … which … ‘cannot identify specific individuals’” (See pages 13-14 of the ruling). The judge granted Viacom’s demand to receive “all data from the Logging database” — including login id.

I don’t know about you, but I sure think my Google “login id” does a pretty good job of identifying me…

Would a “real” journalist have checked the facts here?

bob wyman