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Should using the Web be a crime?

(cross-posted from my Globe and Mail blog)

I think it’s safe to say that the Internet is the greatest tool for the distribution of ideas ever invented. Unfortunately, that means it is also the greatest tool for the distribution of bad ideas — including the idea that people should be killed for their beliefs (for more on dangerous “viral” ideas, check out this video of a talk philosopher Dan Dennett gave to the TED conference).

But should posting those kinds of ideas on the Web be a crime? It looks as though it has become one in Britain.

snipshot_e414n6f4963t.jpgIn the first case of its kind, three young men in Britain have been sentenced to as many as 10 years in jail for being what the court called “cyber jihadis” — engaging in a sophisticated campaign to convince other radical Muslims that they should kill non-believers and conduct various acts of terrorism. The three ran a network of websites from London, and were found with CDs and other material that instructed would-be terrorists in how to build pipe bombs, as well as films that showed kidnapping victims being beheaded.

Inciting people to commit acts of violence, or fomenting hatred against an identifiable group, is seen as a crime in many countries (including Canada). But what constitutes incitement to violence or inciting hatred against a group?

There are literally tens of thousands of websites, blogs, e-mail newsletters, IRC groups and chat forums in which people spew all sorts of hatred towards identifiable groups — homosexuals, Jews, Palestinians, Muslims, you name it. Should all of those people be convicted of crimes and sentenced to prison time?

snipshot_e4r6ruo5m4t.jpgThe judge in the British case said in his decision that none of the men in question had even come close to carrying out any acts of violence themselves, although they did their best to stir up violent feelings among others and encourage them to engage in violence. Referring to one of the young men, the judge said that he “came no closer to a bomb or a firearm than a computer keyboard.” Two of the men involved in this conspirary had never even met. Early on in the trial, the judge admitted that: “The trouble is I don’t understand the language. I don’t really understand what a website is. I haven’t quite grasped the concepts.”

The charge against the men is also worded in an almost bizarrely roundabout way: they admitted to “inciting another person to commit an act of terrorism wholly or partly outside the United Kingdom which would, if committed in England and Wales, constitute murder.” In other words, they admitted to trying to convince someone to do something somewhere outside the UK that — if done inside the UK — would have constituted murder.

That’s a pretty large legal net, in which you could catch a lot more than just a few “cyber-jihadis.” Jailing the men in question didn’t require such a charge either: all three admitted to engaging in a $3.6-million conspiracy to defraud banks and credit-card companies to finance their operation, a crime that would have been enough to put them away for some time.

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“Live-blogging” a military operation in Pakistan

This is fascinating: from BoingBoing.net via Sean Bonner comes a link to a blog in Islamabad that has been reporting live on the capture of a radical Islamic leader who tried to escape — disguised as a female relative of some young women — after the bloody siege of a mosque:

Update: 2:40

1. 600+ Students (male and female) came out of jameya and surrendered. Parents are outside Lal masjid in a huge number and are not willing to give 20-24 years of their upbringing in hands of the admin of lal Masjid. 2. Ghazi brothers are thought to be fled away from the Lal masjid – They cannot be contacted; neither any students who have come out could give an indication of their presence inside. Their families can’t be seen in as well, including Um e Hasan (Principal of Jameya and Wife of Ghazi Abdur Rasheed). 3. Deadline extended to 3 PM – relaxation given to have maximum number of students out from the Lal Masjid, before the REAL OPERATION.

3:00

1. 750+ Students come out and surrenders.
2. Dr. Amir Liaquat resigns (??)

3:15

APC’s are in action again; Media asked to get away as far as possible from the site. Deadline is extended till 4 PM. The Ghazi Brothers may be inside premises of lal masjid.

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Eric Schmidt on Google and media

Google CEO Eric Schmidt talks to Pat Mitchell of the Paley Center for Media during the World Economic Forum in June. Schmidt talks about Google’s efforts to expand into newspaper advertising, radio and TV advertising and other areas, and discusses what he sees as the company’s successes and failures — including the first trial of newspaper advertising and the difficulty of striking partnerships with big media companies like Viacom.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc43ERgjg_w&w=425&h=350]

 

(hat tip to Howard Owens for the link)

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McAlister on media as a platform

Matt McAlister has a great post up about the idea of media as a platform, which I encourage anyone interested in the future of media online to read. He says that in his view it isn’t really about “openness” or “walled gardens” and other popular metaphors:

It’s not about stopping bad behavior or even embracing good behavior. It’s about investing in an architecture that promotes growth for an entire ecosystem. If you do it right, you will watch network effects take hold naturally. And then everyone wins.

McAlister says that the most successful media platforms, broadly speaking, are those that give their users the power to impact the experience for themselves and to improve the total experience for everyone as they use it.

“When you look around the Internet media landscape today you see a lot of successful companies that either consciously or subconsciously understand how to make media work as a platform.

MySpace created a fantastic expression platform, though perhaps unwittingly. Wikipedia evolved quickly into a massive research platform. Flickr and del.icio.us, of course, get the network effects inherent in sharing information…photos and links, respectively.

Washingtonpost and BBC Backstage are moving toward national political information platforms.”

There are lots of other good examples and smart thoughts from Matt. Go on and read the whole thing. I’ll wait 🙂

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Newspaper of the past — and future

Jack Shafer of Slate.com, a veteran journalist and all-around smart guy, has a great piece in which he looks at what newspapers were like decades ago — in terms of size, coverage, layout and staffing levels — and asks the provocative question: After the staff cuts, will the newspapers of the future look like the newspapers of the past? What you think of the answer may depend on whether you work at a newspaper or not:

“By my personal measure, the national and foreign news published in the summer of 1972 by the Times and Post matches the current product, even though it is less “featurey.”

That both papers did fine work with half the current manpower should encourage serious readers—even though it may depress journalists.”

(Thanks to Rob for the link)

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Rolling Stone’s “most annoying song ever” awards

snipshot_e4d0mbwp706.jpgRolling Stone magazine has released the hotly-awaited (by me at least) list of the top 20 most annoying songs. Number one: My Humps by the Black-Eyed Peas. Yup, that sounds about right. Glad to see Who Let The Dogs Out and My Heart Will Go On in there as well, although I think Celine should have tied for first. The Crash Test Dummies (a fine Winnipeg band) also make an appearance for Mmm mmm mmm mmm or whatever it’s called, and so does Wham! for Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go (hat tip to ListeNerd for the link)

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Rusting “Tesla towers” found in Russia?

From the blog Dark Roasted Blend comes word of a bizarre, high-voltage electrical installation in Russia, which were apparently discovered by a Russian photographer who goes by the name Master, and happened to be wandering around in the bush about 50 kilometres from Moscow when he saw a series of gigantic, rusting towers with strange circular structures on top.

According to the site, they appear to be related to a little-known Russian high-voltage power research facility, and could have something to do with experiments that genius Nikola Tesla — the inventor of alternating current power — conducted on the idea of broadcasting “wireless power.” Click on the picture for more, or click here (thanks Steve).

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Does Craigslist care about Kijiji? Unlikely

Online auction behemoth eBay has decided to bring the fight over online classifieds to Craigslist’s backyard — even though it owns a 25-per-cent stake in the San Francisco-based site — by launching its Kijiji service in over 200 U.S. cities. Kijiji, which is just as hard to read as it is to say (it supposedly means “village” in Swahili, so maybe eBay can buy Jason Calacanis’s search engine Mahalo.com and have a matching set of incomprehensible Web 2.0 names), has until now been focused on overseas and non-U.S. markets.

snipshot_e4q48uh7xc8.jpgAccording to eBay, in fact, it is the leading online classified service in Canada, having overtaken Craigslist.org last fall in number of visitors (with about 1.5 million unique visitors a month as of November) and the Canadian version of the site — which is split into local sub-sites, much as Craigslist is — now has about 500,000 listings. Kijiji.com has built itself up in part by buying other online classified services with equally weird names (including Gumtree, LoQuo, Intoko and Marktplaats) and is now in 300 cities around the world.

So is Craigslist quaking in its boots at the thought of competition from eBay — a giant Web player and part-owner of craigslist.org? Er, no. According to CNet, CEO Jim Buckmaster says he isn’t too troubled about Kijiji or about eBay owning part of a company it is now competing with:

Buckmaster said in an e-mail… that because of Craigslist’s public service mission and disinterest in things like “market share and revenue maximization,” the company doesn’t really care who hops into the classified business.

“I’m not a legal expert,” Buckmaster wrote, “but I think it’s safe to assume (eBay) will continue to conduct themselves appropriately with respect to their responsibilities to Craigslist.”

I distinctly recall Jim Buckmaster responding to a question about competitors during his keynote at mesh (video of which can be found at mDialogue.com) by saying that Craigslist doesn’t really pay much attention to competitors, and that if someone else came along who could serve users better, Jim would feel it was his duty to encourage them to use the other service. How do you say “best of luck” in Swahili?

Update:

Tony Hung at Deep Jive Interests says he hopes Kijiji succeeds, if only so that someone can challenge Craig and Jim on what he calls “their hippie ethos.”

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Can you “crowdsource” a record album?

(cross-posted from my Globe and Mail blog)

The answer to that question appears to be “yes,” although there are a number of other questions raised in the process. A site called Sellaband.com, which has been up and running for almost a year, has now helped seven musicians raise enough money to make a professional-quality CD, by giving them the tools to set up a site where fans can donate money to the cause. It works like this: An artist uploads music to the site, and fans — known as “believers” — can effectively buy shares in the future CD for $10 each.

When the artist raises $50,000 (U.S.), Sellaband helps them find a producer, studio time and the other things they need to make a CD — and everyone who donated gets a free copy, as well as a share in the revenue from downloads of the music, and from sales of the CD. The site, which is based in Holland, was created by Johan Vosmeijer (a former Sony BMG executive), Pim Betist and Dagmar Heijmans.

After just six months, the site had more than 2,700 bands and musicians signed up, according to a post at TechCrunch, and now has about 4,000. The latest artist to hit the $50,000 mark is Australian singer Mandyleigh Storm (yes, she says that’s her real name), whose Sellaband page is here.

Jeff Howe, who wrote a piece for Wired magazine about the phenomenon of “crowdsourcing” (and is now working on a book about the same topic) wrote about Sellaband after they launched, and wondered whether the deal made sense for artists, since it appeared that the site owned the artist’s works and had control over who produced the album as well — but an update on his blog with comments from one of the Sellaband founders makes it clear that this is not the case. The money is held in escrow (although Sellaband earns interest on it), and the artist gets to choose who the producer is, and retains the performance and distribution rights. Sellaband takes 40 per cent of the publishing rights.

Eamonn Forde, writing for The Guardian’s music blog, says that he doesn’t see much merit in the Sellaband model, in part because the site is helping artists make CDs, and the industry is moving away from CDs to downloads — and even a $50,000 investment isn’t enough to get traction for a new CD without the backing of a major label. In a comment on his post, one of Sellaband’s founders disagrees, saying: “Once believers and artists have raised their budget, both parties are happy [even] with the worst-case scenario. Believers get their CD for 5 pounds and artists get to record it with professionals. On top of this both parties might be able to make some money.”

This Bloomberg story has some more details about Sellaband and its model and so does this story from The Guardian. A digital media site called Master New Media also has a good overview.

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Will Google index your voicemails?

snipshot_e4137ubjgjwt.jpgAs pretty well everyone probably knows by now, Google has in fact acquired GrandCentral, the mobile-telephony startup, for a rumoured $50-million. Most observers seem to see Google integrating the “one number” approach taken by GrandCentral — which Canadians and other non-Americans can’t make use of, unfortunately — with GMail and GTalk, and possibly with the entire Google Office suite. But others have darker visions: Venture capitalist Josh Kopelman says he is concerned about Google indexing your voice. Some (including those commenting on his post) see Josh’s criticisms as sour grapes from someone who has invested in competitor 1-800-Free411. Maybe Google should buy this thing as well.
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Playing Whack-A-Mole with Allofmp3

snipshot_e4kepbash8n.jpgSo the World Trade Organization seems to have finally convinced the Russian government to take action on one of its favourite bugaboos: the existence of “pirate” music site Allofmp3.com, which has been happily charging people pennies to download millions of mp3 files from popular artists from around the world for several years now. According to the Times Online, the site was quietly closed — about six months after Visa and MasterCard cut off service to the site — but as the same story points out, another site called Mp3Sparks.com popped up the same day, offering virtually the exact same service, and apparently run by the same outfit (the company says that it abides by Russian copyright law, which allows companies to collect royalties on behalf of copyright owners, without the copyright owners’ permission). As TorrentFreak suggests, downloading of digital music has effectively become a hydra. And apparently I’m not the only one that is fond of the Whack-A-Mole metaphor.

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Now that’s religious devotion — or something

snipshot_e45rdgkd7m5.jpgI just love Metafilter — I’m always coming across something I have never heard of before, which is one of my favourite things to do, and there are always lots of links to find out more about whatever it is. This time it was Sokushinbutsu, the mummified monks of Japan. Apparently hundreds of years ago, Buddhist monks would occasionally try to mummify themselves while they were still alive, by eating a special diet for several years and then drinking a special herbal tea that effectively embalmed them. Near the end, according to this article, the monk would be buried alive in a stone tomb with an air tube and a small bell, and when the bell stopped ringing they would be exhumed and then reburied for another few years before being put on display. Fascinating. More details here.

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Light posting alert

Since I am at the Ingram family homestead in the wilderness of northern Ontario, where cellular service is spotty and Internet access is of the dial-up variety, posting will likely be light — possibly even non-existent — for the next couple of days. If you look at the picture below and concentrate really hard, you can probably imagine me lying in a hammock somewhere.

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Facebook appears to be down

I haven’t been able to log in to the site for the past few hours, and it seems as though some other people have had trouble too. Growing pains?

and… we’re back. Life can return to normal 🙂

Update:

Just got an email from Matt Hicks, who’s in communications with Facebook, and he said there was a power failure at one of their data centres this morning, but everything is back to normal now. That’s pretty fast — not the server repair, but the PR response. Impressive.

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Can MySpace change its spots?

In an interview with the Financial Times, one of the founders of MySpace — Chris DeWolfe, the one who isn’t everyone’s friend as soon as they sign up (that’s his partner Tom Anderson) — hinted that the social network might open itself up further to developers, in the same way that Facebook has with its F8 Platform initiative. Among other things, his comments have sparked a heated debate (some of which is visible at Mashable) over whether MySpace is copying or following Facebook, or vice versa.

snipshot_e41fxbgdht9o.jpgHere are the facts: MySpace came first, and is still substantially larger than Facebook in terms of unique visitors, users, page views (about 3 billion a day) and pretty much any other metric you want to use. MySpace has also had widgets that can be embedded in MySpace pages for some time — in fact, it was that ability that helped YouTube develop such a large following so quickly (maybe Chris and Tom should ask their pals Chad and Steve for a little of the excess cash from the Google transaction, instead of trying to squeeze $50-million or so out of Rupert Murdoch).

However, MySpace has not had an open API, nor has it allowed widget developers to build in ways of monetizing the traffic they get — in fact, when Photobucket tried that, MySpace gave it the smack-down and then after it was weakened, acquired the company. Facebook, by contrast, has said that developers are welcome to monetize their apps, and that the social network would be happy to help them do so.

Whoever is running MySpace would have to be a moron not to see how much traffic — and attention — Facebook has been getting since it opened up and became (or tried to become) a platform. But as Marc Andreessen has pointed out, what Facebook did was a lot more than just an open API. Can MySpace turn over a new leaf and stop acting like the network is a dictatorship? That remains to be seen. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that the company was making it sound like widget developers were the enemy.