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Posts Tagged ‘ISP’

Real Names

August 4th, 2011
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representation of choices: color (The Commons) vs black and white (Business)Danah Boyd is an insightful researcher. She just wrote a post called “Real Names” Policies Are an Abuse of Power in which she takes Google to task for their changing policies and rather abrupt practice of kicking people off of Google Plus. I agree that being arbitrary is an abuse of power when it affects people so strongly (disabling an account removes the use of all services, not just Google Plus). However, there are two kinds of power: shared, and proprietary.

Google, along with Facebook, Twitter, and in fact nearly all Internet-based services (Amazon, eBay, your Internet service provider, etc.), are proprietary. These services are run by companies that:

  1. are private or beholden to shareholders (their “business model”),
  2. have one-sided Terms of Service and Policy documents that users are required to agree to, and
  3. are based on the selective delivery of their user base to their customers (usually advertisers).

A striking characteristic of these businesses is that they have a practice of reducing things to black and white. Our chosen (registered) name “is” or “is not” really us. See Doc’s post A Sense of Bewronging for more thought on this. In a simplified (business) sense, it is an abuse of social power to declare that many of us are not who we say we are, even if we’re known to many others by our chosen registered name.

Contrast this with a shared power model, like a commons, or services that are implemented according to open standards. The underlying Internet protocols (the apache web server, sendmail, TCP/IP, etc.) are not owned by anyone, everybody can use them, and anybody can improve them. These resources are shared—no terms of service is required to use the Internet or email with any device you choose, with any compatible software, from any location that has access. “Commons” is where you can be who you are, no matter what name you go by.

Coaching moment: This may be a non-issue for some. I have friends that use their name to create a “brand” for themselves—so people will recognize them everywhere, and know what they’re about. However, that’s not an option for people in sensitive situations. Think of it this way: Everyone has a moment when they choose not to disclose some bit of information to the world. Sometimes it’s a name. That’s not a bad thing, and it should be a choice.

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They will track you down like the lowly… (2003)

January 24th, 2003
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A lot of coverage on the court’s order that Verizon to hand over a subscriber’s name–someone who had made some music files available over a file sharing network. I like Wired’s coverage:

“The court should not open the door for anyone who makes a mere allegation of copyright infringement to gain complete access to private subscriber information without due process of law,” said Mike Lamb, AT&T’s chief privacy officer, in a statement.

“The statute at issue requires ISPs to disclose the identity of subscribers expeditiously in response to a subpoena issued by a court clerk,” he added. “Such extraordinary disclosure obligations should be construed narrowly to afford subscribers the opportunity to challenge the requested disclosure.” …

“This is not a debate about privacy, it’s about piracy and the 2.6 billion illegal downloads each month,” the spokesman said. “To suggest that an Internet user’s privacy is more at risk because of this decision is a red herring. Verizon never argued it in the case and there is no First Amendment protection for committing a federal crime.”

Framing the debate as privacy vs. piracy helps illustrate that it’s all about who’s in control.

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