My _Guardian_ column on "Access Denied" World Censorware Book
"If you block online porn, you'll surely block dissent in China"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/apr/17/internet.censorship
"The issue of whether the internet can be censored, and how governments are trying to do it, continues to be fought around the world"
[Sigh ... remember, I don't get to write the titles ...]
This column is about the OpenNet Initiative's book "Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering", and what it might portend.
[For all columns, see the page Seth Finkelstein | guardian.co.uk.]
My _Guardian_ column on Wikipedia / Jimmy Wales scandals
"Wikipedia's school for scandal has plenty more secrets to reveal"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/mar/27/wikipedia.scandal
"In reality, Wikipedia is a poorly-run bureaucracy with the group dynamics of a cult"
Readers of my blog may find this column well-trod ground. Keep in mind that the goal was to put some recent scandals in context for a general reader, not those who have already heard me at length. In particular, Rachel Marsden got significant coverage in the British tabloid press, so there are likely now many newspaper readers who think of Wikipedia as the so-called encyclopedia that can be used to publicize a break-up (some of that tabloid stuff was pretty funny: "Jimmy would continually be on this website called Twitter where you write one-sentence updates on what you are doing at that moment, even small things like "I'm making a sandwich". I couldn't understand it.").
Bonus link: Wikipedia contributor "Durova" made a hilarious "Nymphs and Satyr" parody (nudity, but artistic). She meant it as a jab at the gossip blog Valleywag's writing of Wikipedia, but art sometimes carries a message different from the intent of the artist.
[For all columns, see the page Seth Finkelstein | guardian.co.uk.]
My _Guardian_ column on lessons from the "Draft Lessig" campaign
"In politics, being determined counts more than being online"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/mar/06/law.internet
"The role of intellectuals in politics is an age-old issue"
More relevantly, "a healthy respect for all previous failure is sometimes a prerequisite for any success".
For all columns, see the page Seth Finkelstein | guardian.co.uk.
My _Guardian_ column on Internet and political campaign counter-examples
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/feb/14/politics.internet
Great internet campaigns don't guarantee success in politics
Internet evangelism shares a marketing technique with sellers of quack medicine, in that the promoters are eager to emphasise any successes and ignore any failures.
Internet President Howard Dean, meet Internet President John Edwards (not to mention Internet President RuPaul).
My _Guardian_ column on Wikia Search and Google-FUD
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/24/searchengines.wikipedia
Even search engines have an axe to grind
"Wikia Search tries to draw on the fear and doubt stemming from the dominance of Google"
I've tried to pack a lot into this column, everything from the $50K price for the "Grub" crawler" to pointing out how the politics of search can be used for free labor. I also bent over backwards not to even seem to be using the column to retaliate against Jimmy Wales's conduct, and he ends up only being mentioned in specific for identification (sadly, as far as I've ever seen, it's never done me any good to be morally better my attackers in terms of not abusing power, but I think I read too many comics books as a kid with Good triumphing over Evil - it doesn't work that way in real life).
My _Guardian_ column on the Writers Guild strike, and the Net
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/03/internet.digitalvideo
The writers, not the internet, will decide who wins their strike
"If anyone thought there's no money to be made from internet content, the Writers Guild of America strike refutes that idea once and for all"
The title's not too bad, but again, not quite what I was saying. The point was more that social and legal support for unions matters much more than "The Internet", and no outcome is predestined.
I've attempted to pack a lot of technology-positive social criticism into this column, basically trying to advocate against the view that the natural order of things is a multiple prisoner's dilemma game where corporations set all the rules. I'm struck by how little support there is for the strike on some A-list blogs, and I think there's an obvious business reason at work.
My _Guardian_ column on Wikipedia Scandal As Dysfunctional Cult
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/dec/06/wikipedia
Inside,
Wikipedia is more like a sweatshop than Santa's workshop
"Wikipedia is frequently touted as a model of selfless human collaboration but it may be more instructive as a hotbed of social pathologies"
I didn't pick the title, but I like this one a lot :-).
I feel like it's anticlimactic now, that my take will get lost as an also-ran. It's really quite a different perspective, and worth reading even if you're tired of all the discussion about cabal and secret mailing list.
I didn't even mention the mailing list, and tried to avoid personalizing it to the administrator "Durova". To my mind, this is not an individual "bad apple" story, but an example of a systemic failing that underlies that drives Wikipedia.
In the past few days I've noticed a backlash, roughly that Wikipedia is run by people, so what did you expect? The problem is that Wikipedia is extensively marketed as some sort of harbinger of novel social organization that produces collective good. The reality is it's just a very old sort of social organization, one that gets people to work for free in part by pandering to their group impulses. And that's the point which I'm trying to get across. Maybe that's too complicated to get to Slashdot or Digg (or ironic).
My _Guardian_ column on Yahoo / China / journalist Shi Tao / network data
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/nov/15/comment
Do you know who's using your data?
"As search engines and social networks collect more and more user data for business purposes, governments will find that data more and more useful for their investigatory purposes"
I didn't have a good title in mind myself, so this time I'm fine with the one they created :-)
I rather like this phrase I coined for the column:
"The price of total personalization is total surveillance."
My _Guardian_ column - a letter to Lessig on "corruption"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/oct/25/comment.intellectualproperty
"A modern version of snake-oil hucksterism is invoking 'the internet' as a cheap simplistic remedy for political malaise."
This time around, I can live with the title they gave it - "We have nothing to fear, except those who have something to sell". Though the column is really more about my own fear that Lawrence Lessig's corruption studying would fall victim to the siren song of net evangelism.
"When US-made 'censorware' ends up in iron fists"
Excellent article: When US-made 'censorware' ends up in iron fists, not the least because I'm quoted
"Some people say [censorware] is ineffective because dissidents can get around it," says Seth Finkelstein, a programmer and anticensorship activist. "I say political control doesn't have to be 100 percent to be effective. Controlling the ability of the vast majority of the population to see outside information is still very effective for the goals of the totalitarian regime."
And it's an accurate quote. In the course of conversation, I gave a version with parallelism "Some people say censorware is ineffective because dissidents can get around it, some people say censorware is effective because only dissidents will get around it". But the version used is just fine.
It's good to see that the connections between censorware companies and repressive governments is continuing to make news.
My _Guardian_ column on Dan Rather "Killian Memos" CBS lawsuit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/oct/04/guardianweeklytechnologysection.blogging1
"In war, truth is the first casualty. And that's being proven many times over in ongoing controversies about George W. Bush's Vietnam-era military record."
I think I made some reasonably original points. Unfortunately, this is another case where the title they gave it ("Is it easier to believe the bloggers now rather than the journalists?") was askew from the point I was actually trying to make in the column. It's about the issue of finding truth (not the nature of truth). And an attempt to dig into what really happened with the CBS scandal, rather than echo bloggers-vs-journalists.
Free Press: "WiFi filters raise worries of city censorship"
Free Press: "WiFi filters raise worries of city censorship"
Banned site result of glitch, Boston official says
By: David Brand
As the city advances its plans to expand wireless Internet service to all of Boston, some website operators and civil liberties advocates say the city-sponsored network is censoring some sites -- but city officials have attributed this to glitches on the network's filter.
Lots of quotes in this piece, including me (accurately):
Anti-censorship activist and server programmer Seth Finkelstein, who maintains a website that provides information about censorship cases, said the site was blocked as the result of an arbitrary "dumb computer program," adding it is likely many less popular sites also get caught in Boston's network filter.
"We only heard about this since BoingBoing is very popular," he said. "What else was banned [but] didn't have the ability to publicize it?"
That point is key - Boing Boing is one of the absolute top blogs, and they have the power to make a media fuss when they're affected. But it's like cockroaches, if you see one of these, it's virtually certain there's many more which are hidden.
There's also been some discussion about the legality of Boston Wireless censorware. I'm not sure anything will come of it all, but it does seem that there's ways to make a good argument against it.
My _Guardian_ column on COPA and the censorware effectiveness argument
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,2044595,00.html
"Would you be surprised to hear US civil liberties groups arguing that Internet censorship is cheap, easy, relatively effective and difficult to circumvent? While in reaction, the US government claimed that such efforts had an unacceptable amount of collateral damage?"
My _Guardian_ column against the .XXX domain
I have a column in The Guardian, opposing the .XXX domain.
Quoted in Mercury News about COPA Censorware Report
Study: About 1 percent of Web pages have sexually explicit material
Seth Finkelstein, a programmer and civil-liberties activist, said Google's stance was "horribly self-serving."
"There were no privacy implications in the sense that the data was restricted to a very small set of researcher who were under various sets of protective orders," Finkelstein said.
Finkelstein said Stark's findings about the prevalence of pornography on the Internet are similar to other academic studies.
"What we are learning about the Internet is that it reflects life and that the Internet is not -- contrary to what some people might think -- more sexual than people are in general."
The quotes are accurate, though of course it was a small part of a much longer conversation.
I'm climbing the pundit-ladder! :-)
[h/t: Catherine Crump]
"I'm on Wikipedia, get me out of here"
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1882027,00.html
"I'm on Wikipedia, get me out of here"
Seth Finkelstein
Thursday September 28, 2006
The Guardian
[Read the whole thing ... :-)]
"Race to the Bottom" - Corporate Complicity in Chinese Internet Censorship
Human Rights Watch has released a new report "Race to the Bottom" - Corporate Complicity in Chinese Internet Censorship
It's a thorough examination of the topic. I won't attempt to extensively summarize, since that'll be done by many others.
I'm mentioned (with regard to Google censorship) at the bottom of page 61, in very good company:
For more on this issue see Bill Thompson, "The billblog: Google censoring web content," BBC News, October 25, 2002 [online], http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2360351.stm; Jonathan Zittrain and Benjamin Edelman, Berkman Center for Internet and Society, "Localized Google search result exclusions," October 26, 2002 [online], http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering/google/; Seth Finkelstein, "Google Censorship - How It Works," Sethf.com, March 10, 2003, http://sethf.com/anticensorware/general/google-censorship.php; and Philipp Lenssen, "Sites Google Censors," Google Blogscoped, January 25, 2005, http://blog.outercourt.com/archive/2005-01-15-n50.html (all retrieved July 12, 2006).
[Hat tip: Philipp Lenssen
Quoted on "DOPA"
National Journal's section Technology Daily August 1 roundup had a small quote from me (regrettably behind a subscriber wall)
Blog Bits
Bloggers Blast Lawmakers Over Various Tech Bills
...
Another pending measure, one the House passed last week, also sparked blog criticism. The bill would require schools and libraries to block student access to online social networks. Seth Finkelstein at Infothought argued that the measure "[legislates] against interactivity."
That's an accurate quote, as far as it goes. Though the excerpt didn't fully convey that I playing off the expression "legislating morality". The full sentence was: "But "DOPA" is dramatically beyond legislating morality - it's legislating against interactivity."
Not that I'm complaining, merely elaborating. All (positive) mentions gratefully accepted. Though I received perhaps two referer hits from National Journal, so my tech pundit status remains down in the Z-list.
Quoted About Deleting Wikipedia biography
I'm quoted in The Register: School sues over Wikipedia posts (by Andrew Orlowski) - thanks:
Wikipedia's problems with vandalism have percolated to the top of the hierarchy within the organization. One of the most prominent evangelists for the site, Angela Beesley, recently resigned from the board of the non-profit that runs Wikipedia, the WikiMedia Foundation, in the hope of having her own entry removed from Wikipedia. "I'm sick of this article being trolled. It's full of lies and nonsense," she wrote recently. "Given that this was previously kept on the grounds I was on that Board, there is no longer any reason for this page to be kept. This has already been deleted on the French and German Wikipedias."
(With co-founder Jimmy Wales, Beesley remains on the board of the for-profit corporation Wikia, which recently received $4m in venture capital)
Seth Finkelstein, who recently tried to have his own entry from Wikipedia removed recently, described it as "a pretty stunning vote of no-confidence. Even at least some high-ups can't eat the dog food."
I should note, to explain again my reasoning, that in certain cases I consider Wikipedia biographies to be a kind of "attractive nuisance":
What is an "Attractive Nuisance"?
A widely-known legal principle is that landowners have no duty to keep their land in a safe condition to protect trespassers. The "attractive nuisance" doctrine, which most states have adopted, is considered an exception to this rule.
An "attractive nuisance" is a potentially harmful object on or condition of the land that, by its features, tends to lure children. Children, because of their age, do not appreciate the danger and can be at risk. "Attractive nuisances: are typically not natural land conditions found on the land, such as a pond, but rather are conditions created by someone. Over the years, a classic example has been a swimming pool.
Very apropos, especially - "by its features, tends to lure children ... conditions created by someone".
"Extraordinary delusions and the Wisdom of Chimps"
I'm quoted in The Register article on Wikipedia, "Junk science - the oil of the new web", by Andrew Orlowski:
But even when this appears to work, so what? Seth Finkelstein notes that in some situations, throwing darts at a dartboard produces excellent results. Citing the Wall Street Journal Dartboard Contest, he writes,
"People are fascinated by ways in which data-mining seems to represent some sort of over-mind. But sometimes there's no deep meaning at all. Dartboards are competitive with individual money managers - but nobody talks about the 'wisdom of darts'"
And later:
Seth Finkelstein points out an immediate consequence which is already taking place. Wisdom... gained such traction on the net, because of its cultural distrust of expertise. This stops where the net stops, however - it's hard to envisage even the most militant Wikipedia fan choosing to be operated upon by amateur heart surgeon. But it's accelerated the process of deskilling, and the new flood of cheap (but wise!) amateur labor promises to depress wages even further.
Thanks.
Welcome "Daily Rotation" Readers
"Daily Rotation" ("Quick Loading Headlines From 300+ Tech Sites") has added InfoThought to its list of tech headlines ("we think highly of Infothought"). Thanks!
[Disclaimer/disclosure: One of the people who runs the site is a net-friend from way back, but he never said anything about it to me before, and I never heard of it before, or asked anything related.]
"The Chris Pirillo Show" appearance
Last Thursday, the "The Chris Pirillo Show" graciously had me as a guest for a half hour segment, discussing China and the Internet:
To get a better handle on the situation, we talked with Danny O'Brien of Electronic Frontier Foundation about their proposed Code of Conduct for Internet Companies in Authoritarian Regimes. We also talked with censorware expert Seth Finkelstein about censorship online, how it works, how it doesn't work and why blogs are a lousy tool for online activism.
My articles on Google and privacy, elsewhere
I've got an article The Google Search Subpoena in Perspective as a guest-post on Google Blogscoped (a widely-read blog about Google). It's a longer version of the points I've made earlier.
I also seem to have done some good in the world, as comments I made about the issue at the popular liberal blog Hullabaloo ("Digby") were graciously incorporated into a post.
Quoted about Howard Stern
I'm quoted today, in a Houston Chronicle article about Howard Stern:
Jan. 9, 2006, 12:16AM
Let the fight begin
Will the FCC let the shock jock speak his mind?
By EYDER PERALTA
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle
The print ad for Howard Stern's new show on satellite radio is illustrated with the clenched fist of a revolution. It declares, unabashedly, in black and white: Stern uncensored only on Sirius.
...
Seth Finkelstein, a programmer serving as an expert witness on a federal case involving the definition of "community standards" in the digital age, said that for decades now, courts have been concerned more with images of sex than with hard-core verbal depictions of it.
"I wouldn't go so far as to say it's utterly impossible (to prosecute Stern for obscenity). But if such a thing happened, it would be purely for the harassment and PR value of the case," Finkelstein wrote in an e-mail.
[An accurate quote. For those interested, the case is Nitke v. Gonzales]
Quoted
Don't Let the GENI Out of the Bottle
http://www.publish.com/article2/0,1895,1855037,00.asp
By Sean Carton September 1, 2005
"Opinion: A new initiative, dubbed Global Environment for Networking Investigations, wants to build censorware into the Internet."
But what if the Internet changes? What if it becomes possible to control access to content at the infrastructure level? "What if," as Seth Finkelstein said in a retort to Gilmore's aphorism, "the censorship is in the router?" Up until now that really hasn't been the case. GAIN might change that and, by extension, might change the freedoms and anonymity that most know and love, even if sometimes while cringing at the consequences.
"Who -- and Where -- are the New Media Gatekeepers?" - IEEE DSO
Greg Goth, "Who -- and Where -- are the New Media Gatekeepers?"
IEEE
Distributed Systems Online, vol. 6, no. 7, 2005.
http://dsonline.computer.org/portal/site/dsonline/index.jsp? pageID=dso_level1_article&TheCat=&path=dsonline/0507&file=o7003.xml
The questions surrounding who will ensure that online information remains accessible and authoritative have received much attention in recent months. Concerns range from European unease that a new book digitization partnership might result in an American-skewed repository of digital books, to apprehension over the Chinese government's near-ubiquitous control of search engines and Web sites. This debate over ensuring freedom of access and accuracy of information -- and who will assume the role of gatekeeper -- has raised old problems in new technological contexts.
I'm quoted:
How effective the unofficial bloggers' efforts will be in maintaining a window into China is a matter of debate among Western China-watchers. Longtime blogger and anticensorship activist Seth Finkelstein doubts that blogs alone will significantly alter the Chinese power structure.
"There are always people who win some victories under the present system, but I'm very much against technological determinism -- the idea that blogs are going to overthrow the government of China, -- Finkelstein says. "The idea that suddenly technological change will give a huge advantage to one side is [an] extremely dubious proposition."
"Neat New Stuff" (Marylaine Block)
"Neat New Stuff" by Marylaine Block is a weekly collection where:
The sites I include are usually free sites of substantial reference value, authoritative, browsable, searchable, and packed with information, whether educational or aimed at answering everday questions. I'll also include one or two sites that are just fun
My blog has been graced by a mention in this week's edition. Thank you.
[Numbers: The mention seems to have sent maybe 200 readers my way, of which perhaps 5 or 6 subscribed. But all contributions gratefully accepted]
AP Article on XXX domain
I'm quoted:
Will a virtual red-light district help parents curb online porn?
Saturday, June 11, 2005
By ANICK JESDANUN AP Internet Writer
NEW YORK -- A red-light district tentatively cleared for construction on the Internet -- the ".xxx" domain -- is being billed by backers as giving the $12 billion online porn industry a great opportunity to clean up its act.
...
But given the limited effectiveness of a voluntary ".xxx" for filtering, Internet filtering expert Seth Finkelstein calls ".xxx" no more than a mechanism "to extract fees from bona fide pornographers and domain name speculators." (ICANN also gets an unspecified cut of each registration fee.)
Quite an extensive collection of sources in that article. I'm in interesting company.
Online Journalism Review - "Companies subvert search results to squelch criticism"
Companies subvert search results to squelch criticism
http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/050601glaser/
"It's not illegal, but it's SEO gone bad. Companies such as Quixtar are using Google-bombing, link farms and Web spam pages to place positive sites in the top search results -- which pushes the negative ones down."
Echoed for the following:
CNN has denied any wrongdoing. "There is absolutely no truth to any speculation that CNN was involved in blog spam," CNN spokeswoman Christa Robinson told me via e-mail. Programmer/blogger Seth Finkelstein theorizes that the person spamming the blogs was more likely trying to help get noticed by search engines by doing amateurish keyword stuffing, rather than an elaborate anti-optimization attack.
"The Net is filled with people who go around and spam blogs to get their message heard, with various degrees of skill at it," Finkelstein wrote on his Infothought blog. "So by the saying 'When you hear hoofbeats, think of horses before zebras,' when you see weird spam, think marginal people before elaborate PR campaigns. It's a much better fit."
[Which quoting, note, did not "just happen", but was due to the grace of an A-lister to whom I flacked my post, and found it worthy, so I was approved by a gatekeeper]
"The Net Effect" - On The Great Firewall Of China
The Net Effect
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/publicfeature/jun05/0605cnet.html
"As China's Internet gets a much-needed makeover, will the new network promote freedom or curtail it? - By Steven Cherry [IEEE Spectrum Online]
Highly recommended. But I'm biased:
How will censorship work with four different companies' products? According to Seth Finkelstein, a Cambridge, Mass., network programmer and an expert on Internet censorship, router-based censorship can and does take place at any point in the network. Each of the routers in the CN2 contract - in all three rings - can be expected to access a database of banned names and words, either within the router itself or in a subsidiary server connected to the router. ...
And in conclusion:
"The Internet is fairly centralized in the United States, too," notes Finkelstein, the Cambridge, Mass., programmer. "Not for political reasons but for economic ones." It turns out that the largest Internet providers push all their packets of data through large regional routers connected to proxy servers that already examine packets for evidence of quality-of-service or other problems.
"Our political system is vastly different from China's," Finkelstein says, "but if we had a national panic, if we felt we had to censor the Internet, it's scary how easily it could be done. There's a famous saying, 'The Internet considers censorship to be damage, and routes around it.' I say, what if censorship is in the router?"
Mentioned in New York Times: CBS News Draws Ire of Bloggers
CBS News Draws Ire of Bloggers
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/17/business/media/17rather.html?ex=1106629200&en=f5a80779730e2e61&ei=5040&partner=MOREOVERNEWS
By TOM ZELLER JR.
Published: January 17, 2005
"I'd written a couple of pieces on the document earlier in the week," said Ernest Miller, a fellow of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School who writes a popular blog on Internet law (www.corante.com/importance). "Then I noticed that I couldn't copy and paste from the report as I did in days past."
With the help of Seth Finkelstein, a programmer and fellow blogger (sethf.com/infothought/blog/), Mr. Miller found that the document's encryption settings had been changed and, as a result, the text could not be copied. Anyone who downloaded the panel's report from either the CBS News servers or those of the law firm would have to retype any passages they wished to include in, say, an e-mail message or a blog post.