Facebook, Google, and Intellectual Property

Scott Jaschik sends us to Inside Higher Ed, where a librarian explains why the tradeoffs we're facing with social networking sites — e.g. privacy vs. a space to build one's personal "brand" — echo issues faced years ago by academics who publish in journals that their institutions' libraries can not then afford. The author argues that, as the Open Access movement is busily restructuring academic publishing, we need to find a way of retaining the personal value to the individual of social networking and Web 2.0 sites, and not allow that value to be eclipsed by the commercial worth of the data the sites obtain about us. In the author's view, the tension is in "...the fundamental relationship between the individual's desire to share their thoughts and experiences with others and the commercial entities that provide the distribution channel for that act of sharing."

Not wanted here...

[GNUPublicLicense]

"intellectual property" is crude evil. A basic human right is to be able to express your smart.
You cannot "sell" your smart. It's above any reasonnable freedom threshold.

Your neurons are patented!

Re:Not wanted here...

[Brian Gordon]

It's amusing to see people exclaim "but the government can't control that!" Well why not? Hume wrote that the universe doesn't bend to ensure people's rights aren't violated- there's not really any such thing as human rights.. there's only how governments agree to protect their citizens. And if the US legislature wants to make IP laws, then there's nothing stopping them until the next election.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a gross oversimplification of the whole argument surrounding human rights. Human rights have been noted to spring up of themselves in many societies around the world, even in complete isolation to more advanced societies. This, at the very least, demonstrates rights at a base level of, for instance, the right to defend yourself from attack, or to not fear you will be murdered, tortured, etc. The problem is a lot of things are called "human rights" when in fact they're just rights, or often even just

Re:Not wanted here...

[Potor]

I certainly espouse the ideals of human rights, but the gp points out that these rights are only as strong as any given government's will to protect them. Not only that, but it is possible to read this sort of protection as imposition (see the problems with Islamic head-scarfs in secular countries such as the Netherlands and Turkey).

I also disagree that the content of certain human rights spring up spontaneously. What we know as human rights is a Western import, and thus inspired by Christianity (not even stemming from Greco-Roman philosophy, which had no concept of the universal rights of human beings, only citizens).

I do believe that what we consider human rights are simply the embodiment of a 'beneficial' swing in the movement of what Nietzsche called the will to power. I mean (to put in the least technical language possible): the strongest wins, and luckily (for us) the winning side espouses human 'rights' that concur with our opinions, which is only natural because these our the basis of our culture.

Re:Not wanted here...

[SpecTheIntro]

What we know as human rights is a Western import, and thus inspired by Christianity

This is not entirely true--the first declaration of human rights [wikipedia.org] was written by a Zoroastrian [wikipedia.org], not a Christian.

That empire was the first in the world to guarantee liberty and religious freedom, and was not again matched until much, much later. (The legal abolition of slavery in any empire would not be repeated again until the 2nd millenium AD, to my knowledge.)

There is a compelling case to be made that Christianity gave birth to capitalism, which in turn spawned democracy and legal recognition of human rights. (Rodney Stark's book The Victory of Reason is perhaps the flagship of this philosophy.) And while Christian theologians certainly touched on the idea of natural rights, as afforded by the Creator, their integration into legal systems occurred in Islamic empires before they did in the Christian world.

It is very interesting, though, that you can directly trace the concept of human rights to monotheistic religion. Ultimately the doctrine of free will is the precursor to any philosophical recognition of human rights, and Zoroastrianism and Christianity are perhaps the two religions that focus most heavily on free will. (Personally I believe Islam does too, but the theology surrounding human will vs. God's will inspired a very fatalistic bend to modern Islam, which is unfortunate.)

Re:

[Amilianna]

It is very interesting, though, that you can directly trace the concept of human rights to monotheistic religion.

Hm... this makes me wonder: can you really trace the concept of human rights to monotheistic religion, or is it just the formal declaration of such? I don't have any references handy, but I've read in many places about various different polytheistic cultures that believed in everyone's right to defend themselves from harm and some other of the basic human rights that we believe in (although, admittedly, not all of them). It was never set down in law because it just was. There was no declaration needed.

Re:

[SpecTheIntro]

Hm... this makes me wonder: can you really trace the concept of human rights to monotheistic religion, or is it just the formal declaration of such?

I think, for some rights, you can--or at least the universality of those rights. Often a tribe would recognize its members right to life or liberty, but a conquered people were not afforded those same dignities. Monotheistic religion generally makes absolute statements about the equality of all people. That's what makes the Cyrus Cylinder so impressive: in it, Cyrus declares that all people, regardless of race, creed, or even gender (women's rights were remarkably progressive during the Achaemenids), have

Re:

[Amilianna]

I think, for some rights, you can--or at least the universality of those rights. Often a tribe would recognize its members right to life or liberty, but a conquered people were not afforded those same dignities. Monotheistic religion generally makes absolute statements about the equality of all people. That's what makes the Cyrus Cylinder so impressive: in it, Cyrus declares that all people, regardless of race, creed, or even gender (women's rights were remarkably progressive during the Achaemenids), have the right to live freely (not be enslaved), choose their ruler, and worship as they please. Now it's doubtful that Cyrus is promoting absolute democracy in this case, but he did allow his subjects considerable autonomy in determining their own governments. He collected a tribute, but in exchange he provided a great deal of protection (and ultimately prosperity, thanks to his organization of the empire).

Interesting... in the context of this conversation all I can think of is the way the Romans (after adopting Catholicism) treated some of their conquered peoples, which was admittedly not with universal rights. I guess that no religion or people is perfect in the enforcing/recognizing human rights. I still feel that there were recognized and enforced human rights before monotheism, but perhaps monotheistic cultures were the first to put them down so that now, many many years later, we can examine them.

Re:

[WingedEarth]

Well, there are the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, which form the cultural basis of this country, which would imply that the government's role is to maximize LIBERTY (and not just corporate profits). Government moves to control and restrict thought and information are anti-American, because they're anti-liberty.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

I also disagree that the content of certain human rights spring up spontaneously. What we know as human rights is a Western import, and thus inspired by Christianity (not even stemming from Greco-Roman philosophy, which had no concept of the universal rights of human beings, only citizens).

Christianity tries to coerce people into submission, by threatening them with eternal suffering. Christianity is thus not the "inspiration" for modern human rights, but the very opposite.

Re:

[dreamsofcaffeine]

Christianity is thus not the "inspiration" for modern human rights, but the very opposite.

That's not entirely true. Not that I'd like to promote any form of religion, but often religions at least restrain themselves by placing things we like to call "human rights" into their holy texts, e.g. the Bible or the Qur'an. Religions surely didn't place them into their texts to be nice, it's more likely that they were added to gain more followers because rights weren't such a common thing if we look back in history. Of course, the people who have invented religions were smart; otherwise, they would hav

Re:

[Hognoxious]

Human rights have been noted to spring up of themselves in many societies around the world,

As have highly repressive and autocratic regimes.

Re:

[strabes]

The fact that governments are able to make IP or other laws does not make those laws just, fair, or correct. I can think of a few laws in America's history that are generally considered unjust.

Re:

[NickCatal]

Intelectual property itself is worthless, it is everything around it that has at least some worth. Think of IP as being in a big container, surrounded by things like 'costs to create' and 'man hours spent'

Re:

[AndGodSed]

HAHA! I copyrighted mine! And since there is a great similarity in our brain structure - you, sir, are being sued for copyright infringement!

And so it begins...

BTW, you're slave to my meme:

[wild_berry]

Great minds think alike -- small ones seldom differ.

Re:

[Crystalmonkey]

Prior Art!

Personal Brand

[smittyoneeach]

Personal brand!
Facebook look: grand.
With wave of the hand,
Appear spontaneously planned:
Burma Shave

Re:

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

A basic human right is to be able to express your smart.

Aside from patents, I can't think of any form of IP that infringes on that right, and patents only prevent you from "expressing" yourself by creating and marketing a product using your "smarts" that someone has coincidentally created before you. It's not much, but it certainly makes patents the most questionable of IP forms. Still, I see little justification for calling all IP a "crude evil" without resorting to sloppy over-generalisation and irrationa

Re:

[Richard_at_work]

Sorry, there is no such thing as a 'basic human right' - every right afforded to you is artificial, otherwise the only rights you would have are those you can protect yourself. Your right to property ownership (physical or otherwise) is artificial, you right to free speech is artificial, your right to life is artificial - all artificial limitations that society has placed on themselves in order to attempt to better the over all experience.

Re:

[spamking]

You can have my basic human rights when you can pry it from my cold, dead hands . . . oh wait.

Right to speak freely

[Anonymous Coward]

You CANNOT know what I will say next. Therefore until YOU shut me down physically, I can say anything I want. If you cannot force me through raw power I CAN say whatever I want.

Therefore it takes an effort to stop me saying what I want.

That says "natural right" to me.

"IP" however, requires force to make exist. That's not a natural right. That's an enforcement of a right.

Room to shape personal brand

[davetd02]

The thing about Facebook is that it only knows the information you tell it. If you want to shape your "personal brand [reputation...erblog.com]" (to use the author's term) on Facebook so you appear to be a sophisticated scholar of the finer things in life, then you're free to do so. Similarly, you're free to make yourself appear to be a slacker, an emo kid, an anarchist, or whatever other image you can come up with.

The commercialization is to some degree inevitable--after all, it's unlikely that Facebook would have ever been launched but for the hopes of striking it rich--but as long as the data is limited to what YOU provide then it's hard to complain about Facebook doing exactly what it promised it would do (namely, using that data to support the servers, coders, tech support, etc).

I don't see why it has to be zero-sum. The author suggests that we need to avoid the personal value of the data being "eclipsed" by the commercial data, but they seem totally synergistic: If Facebook can afford to hire more coders to come up with more innovative new ways to connect to each other, then it doesn't matter to me if they make more use of my data for commercial purposes, so long as EACH commercial use is not harmful. This is like the debate over ad targeting all over again -- a lot of people prefer targeted ads ("commercial value") over broadcast ads because sites can recoup their costs with fewer and less intrusive targeted ads, and targeted ads are far less annoying than the v--gra sp-m that we all get by email.

In sum -- there's no reason why commercial and personal uses are in opposition to each other. If each commercial use is not harmful (i.e., my data isn't revealed or mis used) then it supports the personal use. Synergy, not parasitism.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Synergy is when something NEW and greater than the sum of its parts is created.

I fail to see how targeted ads based on the user's preferences is synergistic when
it only serves to enrich ONE side of the equation - the seller.

If perhaps they offered exclusive offers with such (lets face it, spam) marketing,
THAT might be synergy. As is, it's marketing targeted at one's privacy ignorance.

The user stands to gain nothing more than carefully selected spam. It's still spam.

Re:Room to shape personal brand

[davetd02]

But if the service wouldn't have existed at all but-for the commercial use?

Do you think Google could support 5 gig of storage for every Gmail account if it couldn't target ads? That's an indirect synergistic effect -- a service that wouldn't exist but-for creative commercialization.

And would Amazon be half as useful if it didn't provide the "users who viewed this product also bought ___" feature? That's a direct synergistic effect -- a service that is made more useful by creative commercialization.

I'm not saying every use of data by Facebook is great. They've gone way too far sometimes. But there's no inherent reason why, done RIGHT, commercial use of data can't make the service better. The ground rules still stand---each commercial use must not cause harm, nor may the aggregate---but if we assume that it's done right there's no reason why there must be tension between commercial and private. I want to use the best possible Facebook/MySpace/LiveJournal/etc service and I don't care if Zuckerberg makes a million or two in the process, so long as he doesn't do so by harming me.

Re:

[QuantumG]

You mean other than free access to a site which would otherwise not exist?

Re:

[chatgris]

The user stands to gain the use of the services! Servers, coders, managers (you generally need at least one to keep track of things) don't come for free.

Josh

Re:

[edittard]

I fail to see how targeted ads based on the user's preferences is synergistic when
it only serves to enrich ONE side of the equation - the seller.

Maybe that's because you don't know the difference between synergistic and symbiotic?

The former is about combining inputs, the latter is about dividing the output.

Re:Room to shape personal brand

[wall0159]

Nice post. However, I disagree with this:
"there's no reason why commercial and personal uses are in opposition to each other"

if a user values privacy, and it's profitable to sell/market users' data (as is generally the case now), then there's a fundamental opposition here.
At minimum, it is not in most companys' interest to invest large sums of money protecting users' data...

Also, I think there's a vast difference between targeted ads, and taking user generated content, packaging it, locking it down, and selling it back to everyone. It seems to me that the main point of value in sites like eBay, MySpace and facebook is simply that everyone uses them! It's not like the services they provide are that great. The same is true with academic journals. Academics write (and nowdays often render) the articles, other academics review the articles. What exactly are the journals even doing? Printing the damn thing - that's all. And institutions pay thousands of dollars per year to read the articles. What a racket!

To say it again - it's _only_ the users that give these companies value. They're on a total gravy-train, and they know it.

Re:

[Dada Vinci]

But there's another gravy train pulling up right behind: reputation management companies [wired.com] that clean up the messes left behind by data breaches. Maybet hat's the real "synergy" the grandparent was talking about?

Re:

[Hognoxious]

reputation management companies that clean up the messes left behind by data breaches.

You know, I accidentally squeezed too much toothpaste out this morning.

Think they could help?

Coming up after the break, genie escapes from bottle.

Re:

[QuantumG]

To say it again - it's _only_ the users that give these companies value. They're on a total gravy-train, and they know it.

Wow, sounds like Slashdot.

Re:Room to shape personal brand

[wall0159]

Hmm. It sounds like you're trying to be a smart-ass. I'm not totally sure what you're trying to say, but I'll attempt to clarify myself:

I've got no problem with companies making money out of user-generated data/effort/networking/etc. Jamendo, Google, MySpace are good examples. But.. I think it's really important that standards and sites are open. eBay/facebook/skype lock-in are (I think) bad for consumers, and those companies are leveraging their position/lockin to remain on top and stifle competition.

For example, compare skype to gizmo. Gizmo uses SIP (hence is open and operates with any other SIP phone. Skype operates with... Skype. I think consumers should consider inter-operability more when making their spending decisions.

Re:Room to shape personal brand

[QuantumG]

I think consumers should consider inter-operability more when making their spending decisions.

Yes, when choosing a free service it is important to get your money's worth.

Re:

[wall0159]

"Yes, when choosing a free service it is important to get your money's worth."

You are very clever - well done.

Skype and Gizmo both have paid services. As does google. As do academic journals.
Users of facebook, while not paying cash directly, are paying with their privacy.

Re:Room to shape personal brand

[mr_matticus]

if a user values privacy, and it's profitable to sell/market users' data (as is generally the case now), then there's a fundamental opposition here.
At minimum, it is not in most companys' interest to invest large sums of money protecting users' data...

On the contrary, if information gleaned from personal data has a commercial value (i.e. generates revenue), there is an inherent interest in keeping it secure. There's not an interest in keeping it private, but that is a wholly separate issue.

Controlling the flow of data and making sure that your investment and your proprietary information doesn't give a free ride to your competitors sits at the very heart of an information-based economy.

They will invest a considerable amount of money protecting access to data, because if you make money from selling something, it doesn't do well not to build any fences or locks. Why would anyone enter into a financial partnership with, say, Facebook, if they could access that same information without doing so? You can bet they'll go to the mat for your privacy from unauthorized parties. The only conflict arises from who has the power to authorize.

Re:

[wall0159]

good point - thanks. :-)

Re:Room to shape personal brand

[Hognoxious]

There's a difference between data you provide to be published, and data you provide in order to be published.

For example, the email address you use to sign up to slashdot may be shown or it may not - at your option. But would Aunt Mary, Joe Sixpack or Ditzy Teen grok that? And would the site make much of an effort to clarify it, given that from the site's POV more data is better?

Re:

[Sax Maniac]

If you want to shape your "personal brand" (to use the author's term) on Facebook so you appear to be a sophisticated scholar of the finer things in life, then you're free to do so.

...until someone uploads a photo of you doing a keg stand. And tags you.

Basic hosting.

[palegray.net]

It seems obvious to me that people who care a lot about their privacy won't be terribly quick to hand over their personal information to any "social networking" system. Whatever happened to the "good old days" of people paying a few bucks for a basic hosting account, slapping up a few pages of basic HTML describing themselves and their interests, with maybe a few photos? Anyone can do this for a few bucks a month, or for free if they're willing to put up with ads on their pages.

Re:Basic hosting.

[Dada Vinci]

Basic hosting doesn't come with the interactive feaures -- you can't easily see what your friends are up to, browse pictures of events you attended, etc. Yes, it's possible to remember/bookmark the URL of each of your friends' home pages, and then click from each one to each page to see if it's changed, but Facebook/MySpace/Xanga/Orkut(deadpool?) does all that for you. You can easily see which friends have added pictures, see the "status" messages (the modern .plan for all the terminal warriors out there) and all that. Yeah, it's "possible", but Facebook is popular for the same reason that LiveJournal/Blogspot/Blogger replaced manual HTML editing of the first-generation blogs -- it's easier and more interactive.

Re:

[rainhill]

>>or for free if they're willing to put up with ads on their pages.

Or completely free with no ads whatsoever http://pages.google.com/ [google.com] ;)

Re:Basic hosting.

[davetd02]

There's nothing inherently private about posting on the open Internet. If anything, Facebook provides at least a plausible privacy shield against employers finding embarrassing photos [reputation...erblog.com]: Don't join networks and set your privacy settings high. Something on the open Internet is out there for Google to find and the world to know. Of course you could robots.txt, but then you lose the "personal brand" aspect above. Or you could give out usernames/passwords to your friends, but that's a giant pain and doesn't scale well. There are some benefits.

Re:Basic hosting.

[Psychotria]

Perhaps I am misinterpreting the article. I thought TFA was about a person (or persons) in academia (or whatever) being able to openly (freely as in beer) share their research; which is in opposition to the journals that publish the cream-of-the-crop and then hide the research away from the rest of the world (including possibly the authors). This seems a little out of whack, but it's how it's been for years. There should be a reversal--research needs to be available. If the author(s) institute cannot even afford the journal subscription, something is wrong. How would I as an individual get access to research?

Re:

[repapetilto]

So if a journal publishes your work your not allowed to share it elsewhere?

Re:

[Psychotria]

Generally that is the way it goes, yes. Although, of course, you can produce derivative works (expand etc) and publish in yet another journal...

Re:

[repapetilto]

Really? I mean so I can't even keep a copy for myself and give it to people who might be interested, or just put them all up on a webpage and then link to the journal abstract to prove it was published? That seems ridiculous that its like selling your ideas to the journal.

Re:

[Psychotria]

Well, of course you can share the ideas. You just cannot share the article (_usually_ in practice the sharing does happen... just not on a webpage). You could even share the whole lot if you rewrote it. The problem comes when somebody else wants to cite your original article. Dodgy people could of course just cite the article after reading only the abstract. The body of the article usually contains a bit more than the abstract/synopsis though. I am not disagreeing with you... I am just suggesting that, poss

Sorry...

[Psychotria]

...to reply to my own post. I don't think many people would take you seriously if you cited, for example, a MySpace webpage as a primary resource. I think that is what I've been trying to say.

Re:

[repapetilto]

Yea I meant put up the full text on a site somewhere but link to the official abstract so they could cite that.

Re:

[Hognoxious]

As someone taking his first tentative steps into the postgraduate world, I was quite surprised to learn that it is indeed so. You sometimes get a free copy of the edition it's printed in and/or a few copes of your article - which you aren't allowed to copy.

Sucky system, seems to me there must be some way to cut out the middlemen.

Re:

[repapetilto]

The older generation has allowed things to go to shit, its up to us to change it!...shit I don't want to have to deal with that.

Re:

[mdwh2]

Whatever happened to the "good old days" of people paying a few bucks for a basic hosting account, slapping up a few pages of basic HTML describing themselves and their interests, with maybe a few photos?

You're saying that if people are worried about privacy, they should put their information on a completely public webpage, rather than making use of features on sites like Facebook and LiveJournal that allow you to restrict access to certain people?

OSN: An Open Source Social Network

[gordoni2]

This syncs with what I am trying to do with OsnLive.com [osnlive.com] - pull control of the social networks away from proprietary websites and host them on a open source network that give users the freedoms to do what they want with their profiles. So far however OSN has yet to achieve a critical mass.

Obligatory marketing blurb follow: OSN [osnlive.com] is a shiny new open source open protocol distributed social network. From a user perspective all the individual sites in the OSN federation appear as one. Users can search, browse profiles, send messages, and link to each other without regard to which sites other users are using. S/MIME public key cryptography is used to unambiguously identify senders and is combined with the social network to make the system resilient to spam. Spammers get voted off the island. User profiles are based on the FOAF [foaf-project.org] XML file format and users can migrate their profile from one site to another. OsnLive.com [osnlive.com] is the first site running OSN.

Great work mate, but...

[biscon]

Unfortunately after watching my sister refreshing her inbox and online list on facebook for weeks
and interacting with other fb users, I really don't think that demographic gives a rats ass about
the whole proprietary vs open debate.

We care about that, but is there anything worthwhile for us to do on facebook? (other than finding all
the hot girls we used to know :). Social networking is kindda boring to me, probably it is the total
lack of topic or direction, or the superficialness (if thats a word) of it all.

It's so dweebish

[Animats]

The only person on this "social network" seems to be the above poster. The "about" page is mostly a discussion of the cryptosystem, and the paper is worse. This is social networking designed by a crypto dweeb.

Peer to peer social networking may be a good idea, but it needs far better marketing than this.

Aren't there ample precedents that cover this?

[serutan]

Do phone companies get a cut of any business deals made over the phone?
No.
Do UPS and FedEx get a share of the goods they ship?
No.
Do ISPs and carriers have a claim on the value of web content?
No.

Moving bits around entitles network providers to their monthly fee and that's all. People have been carrying, packing and storing other people's things for centuries. The fact that it's the Internet doesn't add any new complicated twists. The plumber has never had the right to use your bathtub.

Re:

[sqrt(2)]

But that wont stop them from trying to establish a new precedent, especially since it would create an INCREDIBLY large new revenue stream for them where there was once none. It's quite the incentive for them but offers no benefit for the user. Which is why this needs to be fought hard, NOW, so that sanity and common sense will be maintained. It's a shame that we even have to fight for common sense on the internet but technology has a way of making normal intelligent people completely dumbfounded and unable

Re:

[RobBebop]

Which is why this needs to be fought hard, NOW

I'd cancel Facebook and move to an Open solution with a Mission Statement that included statements about never advertising (I support Wikipedia for the same reason that they don't generate revenue from adverts). I also want to be able to (a) Show a certain amount of content to public browsers, (b) Show a certain amount of content to registered users of the service, (c) Show a certain amount of content to "friends", and finally (d) Show a certain amount of content on a user-by-user basis. Of course, I wo

Re:

[secondhand_Buddah]

Your analogy is flawed. All of the above charge a service fee. Facebook etc don't. An option would be that you could subscribe and have extra privileges, but the question is, would enough people do this to provide a sustainable revenue stream for the companies in question?

Re:

[Dekortage]

Isn't advertising the "service fee" you pay for? My ISP doesn't advertise to me while I use the Internet, although some companies have tried that (remember NetZero?).

Inevitable escalation

[kahei]

(small timid voice) Is it ok if I don't have a personal brand?

It's just that when *everyone* has one, you know, you're kind of back to square one. And similarly, when *every* commercial player has a hip social networking solution, they do kind of blend into background noise. I'm going to wait until the inevitable next step, 'social networking site networks' in which networks of social networking sites will busily build *their* brands. And three months later when that brand space is crowded, venture capitalists will eagerly announce netwros of social networking site networks and all the social networks (by that time everyone will have their own social network) will crowd to build their brands in this new tier...

*wakes up in a cold sweat*

Well lets take a look at slashdot

[SmallFurryCreature]

The stories are submitted by the READERS (that is you), the comments are submitted by the READERS, the moderating is done by the READERS, the testing of new features is done by the READERS, the polls are suggested by the READERS, the new layout was created by a READER!

Who earns money from this site? NOT the READERS!

Normally you would expect a site to present content the site owner produced and then display it for money. Social sites, wether it is slashdot, youtube or facebook don't have any content of their own, instead they provide a space for the readers to present content to other readers. This is NOT that new. The letters page in any newspaper gives the paper "free" content as well, but it is nonetheless an odd thing.

There is an unspoken agreement that in exchange for giving you a space to voice your opinion, you allow the space provider to use your comment to make a profit. But slashdot trained monkeys who call themselves editors do occasionaly come up with their own stories, and add idiotic conclusions. Newspapers have other pages then the letter page.

But sides like youtube or myspace have NO content at all of their own. It then becomes a rather difficult question of exactly how much you own them for giving you a space to express yourselve. Remember "free" homepages? The one you probably still have with your ISP subscription? It seems pretty clear there that YOU own the contents of the page. Why should it be different for a social website?

I agree with the article, we seriously need to question just who owns what. Remember the writers strike? One of the things a lot of people mentioned was that reality shows would be on the increase because they don't employ writers. Actually reality shows are written as well (writers do more then just write dialogue), but you might even ask yourselve wether these "real" people that create content through their lives for the TV stations to sell don't qualify as writers as well.

Could the maintainer of a myspace site be listed as a writer? Why is a columnist a writer, but not a blogger? Who owns your content? When do you go from a letter writer to a journalist?

Just how much do you own the hoster of you content in exchange for this service. Myspace has a lot of nudie pics, say it decided to host all these pics on a pay-per-view portion of the site. You agreed for it to be public, but there is a difference between a flasher pic on your own page and it being displayed on a site with nothing but nudie pics. Just how far can myspace go with your content?

Intresting questions, and I fear that sooner or later we will find a story where a site owner goes to far.

Re:Well lets take a look at slashdot

[YourExperiment]

The stories are submitted by the READERS (that is you), the comments are submitted by the READERS, the moderating is done by the READERS, the testing of new features is done by the READERS, the polls are suggested by the READERS, the new layout was created by a READER! Who earns money from this site? NOT the READERS!

Yes, but who diligently scans the summaries for typos? Who checks that the submitted articles are relevant and well-written? Who ensures that we aren't subjected to dupes? Oh wait...

No "tension", they won before the first shot

[pla]

the Open Access movement is busily restructuring academic publishing

Well, let's see... With scientific journals, the author pays to publish, has to pay if they want to receive the journal, and the journal retains all the copyrights. So...


and the commercial entities that provide the distribution channel for that act of sharing

I'd say this sounds pretty clear-cut - If you want your personal data to stay personal, pay for your own hosting with a privacy-friendly (which usually also means spammer-friendly, unfortunately) comapany. If you want free hosting, all your base are belong to Facebook.

I have an idea

[ThirdPrize]

I could start an Social Networking website with no adverts and no creepy big brother stuff. Only thing is, I would have to charge. Do you think I would get many takers?

Intellectual property?

[overcaffein8d]

"I Don't Believe in Intellectual Property Writes:" [insert story here]