Ethics: June 2004 Archive Page

U.S. investigators said on Wednesday they had arrested an America Online employee and a Las Vegas marketer for stealing the Internet provider's customer list and selling it to a purveyor of "spam" e-mail. --Andy Sullivan --US Charges AOL Worker Sold Customer List for Spam (AP|MyWay)

blind users are finding that they are spending disproportionately more time sorting through their junk e-mail than their sighted colleagues. That's because sighted users can simply scan large batches of messages for that one important piece of mail, whereas blind users must listen to the subject line of each message before they know whether it's spam or not.

It's a process that has become so unbearable that some blind users say they are giving up on e-mail altogether. --Amit Asaravala --Blind Get Earful of Spam Daily  (Wired)

The 40-year-old male teacher handed the boy a box-cutter and paper and told him to write an apology in blood. --Japanese boy writes apology in blood (CNN)

Now that's harsh. Looks like the Reuters reporter did some independent checking of a story that appeared on local news... if not for that line, I'd wonder whether this was one of those "too strange to fact-check" hoaxes that often one finds slipping past editorial filters.

Thanks for the suggestion, Jim.

Tiny, even microscopic, cameras, deployed ubiquitously, should worry us in any number of ways. Individuals will lose even more of their privacy. Companies will find it difficult to maintain traditional notions of trade secrets. And governments will confront a world in which, to some extent, people will spy on the official snoops, not just the other way around.

Technology has already led to some of these changes in what for the most part are relatively small ways compared with what's coming.

How can we respond appropriately? --Dan Gillmor
--How do we adjust when cameras are everywhere? (Sillicon Valley)

To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of "dissenting" bravery. --Christopher Hitchens --Unfairenheit 9/11: The lies of Michael Moore (Slate)

Woah... Hitchens is known as one of the few to attack pop-culture saints such as Bob Hope and even Mother Teresa, so it can't be easy to dismiss his attack on Moore. He's not a conservative who's annoyed that Moore has trumped Rush Limbaugh-style politics-as-entertainment by using images (which speak directly to our emotions, as opposed to words, which at least sometimes engage our minds).

Hitchens, who has made a few documentaries himself, sounds a bit bitter in the following quote, but I think it's an important perspective to consider:

[A] documentary must have a "POV" or point of view and that it must also impose a narrative line. But if you leave out absolutely everything that might give your "narrative" a problem and throw in any old rubbish that might support it, and you don't even care that one bit of that rubbish flatly contradicts the next bit, and you give no chance to those who might differ, then you have betrayed your craft. If you flatter and fawn upon your potential audience, I might add, you are patronizing them and insulting them.

Weblogs, Comments, and Law (Jerz's Literacy Weblog)

IANAL ("I am not a lawyer"), but here are some links I found interesting.

While a newspaper has a responsibility to check the accuracy of letters to the editor, if person A were to start a cafe, and person B walked into the cafe and made statements that the court deemed libelous, it doesn't seem likely that person A should be held responsible.

If Person A rents a hall, calls a public town meeting and invites people to walk up to a microphone to say whatever they like, and Person B makes statements that a court deems libelous, would person A be legally responsible for any offense committed by person B?

Last year, in Wired, the article "Bloggers Gain Libel Protection" described a ruling involving the re-use, in electronic form, of information taken from elsewhere. Thus, if a blogger were to quote an excerpt from someplace else, and the author of that excerpt was charged with libel, then according to this ruling, the blogger would not be responsible. Let the reader beware -- the title of the Wired article mentions blogs, but the case actually centered around an e-mail.

I missed it when I blogged the original article, but Jack Balkin quickly put it into perspective:

This does not mean that bloggers are immune from libels they themselves write. It means that they are immune from (for example) libels published in their comments section (if they have one) because these comments are written by other people and the blogger is merely providing a space for them to be published. Congress wanted to treat operators of chatrooms and other interactive computer services differently from letters to the editor columns in a local newspaper.

Balkin also notes that corrections, clarifications, and retractions are part of the weblog culture, in ways that traditional print journalism doesn't provide.

If that's so, when blogger A posts an inaccurate statement, visitors to blogger A's website can publish corrections -- by commenting on the post (and thus adding their text to the main text), or perhaps simply by sending an e-mail. The technology and practice of weblogs makes it easy for bloggers to correct their mistakes or give space to opposing views. This built-in series of checks and balances is part of what makes the online media so exciting, from a "power to the people" perspective.

We highlight U.S. prisoner abuse because the photos aren't too offensive to show. We downplay Saddam's abuse precisely because it's far worse -- so we can't use the photos. And that sets the stage for remarks like Sen. Ted Kennedy's claim that Saddam's torture chambers have reopened under "U.S. management." --Deborah Orin --Reporting for the Enemy (NY Post)

An extremely interesting argument. Two wrongs don't make a right, so if it's true that the US media are downplaying Saddam's tortures and hyping the US tortures, that doesn't make what the US did right. But it's still fascinating to consider, in terms of a media perspective, that the US torture was just outrageous enough to get coverage (after all, these photos don't document removing limbs or executions).

Rich, beautiful, coastal types are liberal precisely because their lives are so wonderful. They want to preserve their lives exactly as they are. If I were a rich movie star, I'd vote for peace and poverty relief. War and domestic insurrection are the greatest threats to their already-perfect lives?why mess with it? This rational fear of the peasantry is frequently misinterpreted as rich guilt, but that's not the case. They just want to pay off all the have-nots to keep them from storming their manors and impaling them on stakes.

Republican elites don't set off the spite glands in the same way, and it's not only because of a sinister right-wing propaganda machine. Take a look at a photo of the late billionaire Sam Walton, a dried-out Calvinist in a baseball cap and business suit, and you'll see why. If Republican billionaires enjoy their wealth, they sure as hell hide it well. As far as one can tell, Republican billionaires genuinely like working 18-hour days in offices. Their idea of having fun is a day on the golf green (a game as slow and frustrating as a day in the office) or attending conferences with other sleazy, cheerless Calvinist billionaires. If that's what all their wealth got them, let 'em have it?so says the spite bloc. --Mark Ames
--Spite! It Wins Votes! (NY Press)

Another of the "doesn't quite fit into one camp or the other" essays that I find interesting reading these days. (Starts with some salty language.)

Winer, who has offered free hosting to bloggers for the past four years, has promised to make exportable copies of blog contents available to the blogs' owners at their request. He says it will take at least two weeks to provide copies of the blogs' contents.

Meanwhile, the affected bloggers cannot access their work, a situation that angers many, who said they believed they should have been given advance notice that the Weblogs service would be terminated before their sites became inaccessible. --Michelle Delio --Thousands of Blogs Fall Silent  (Wired)

I noticed this as it was happening, and had planned to investigate and post a followup, but Clancy beat me to it.

I applaud those bloggers who remembered to thank Winer for the years of free service he provided, but I also sympathize with the bloggers who suddenly found themselves without access to an important part of their lives.

When Sandy called to tell me that she had been fired over the essay she had written for class, I felt like Joseph K. in Kafka's The Trial?arrested without charge, guilty of something, but uncertain of what. I had been teaching writing since 1971, and to my knowledge a student had never before been fired for writing an essay for class. After the phone call, I tried to convince myself that I had done nothing wrong, merely given an open-ended writing assignment. I wanted to believe that my sense of having been arrested was caused more by moral outrage over an abuse of political and economic power than by anything for which I personally could be held responsible. Now, nearly a year after Sandy's phone call, I still feel a sense of outrage; but I also recognize that I was culpable, that in my teaching I had perhaps not committed a crime of commission, but that certainly I deserved to be charged with a crime of omission: in my naivety, I had failed to tell students the whole truth about writing. --Michael Kleine, in an article co-authored by Sandy Moore
--Toward an Ethics of Teaching Writing in a Hazardous Context?The American University (JAC)

Via This Public Address.

After six years of regulations and restrictions that have cost builders, local governments and landowners on the western fringe of the Great Plains as much as $100 million by some estimates, new research suggests the Preble's mouse in fact never existed. It instead seems to be genetically identical to one of its cousins, the Bear Lodge meadow jumping mouse, which is considered common enough not to need protection.
--Research: Endangered mouse never existed (CNN/AP)

The National Crime Squad announced today that it is working with the FBI, the Canadian Mounties and the Australian Federal Police to set up what they call "patrols" on the internet.

Officers will actively monitor chat rooms used by children where they think paedophiles are likely to be.

A logo will come up in the corner of the screen to show that the police are present - the National Crime Squad quite liked the idea of a flashing blue light - and they may even join in the conversation. --Stuart Tendler

--Q&A: Cyber cops for children's chat rooms (Times Online)

Huckleberry Finn opens with a warning from its author that misinterpreting readers will be shot. Despite the danger, readers have been approaching the novel from such diverse critical perspectives for 120 years that it is both commonly taught and frequently banned, for a variety of reasons. Studying both the novel and its critics with an emphasis on cultural context will help students develop analytical tools essential for navigating this work and other American controversies. This lesson asks students to combine internet historical research with critical reading. Then students will produce several writing assignments exploring what readers see in Huckleberry Finn and why they see it that way. --Critical Ways of Seeing The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in Context (EdSiteMent | NEH)

I've taught Huck Finn numerous times... when I mentioned it during the job interview that led to my present position, one of my colleagues expressed surprise that I teach this risky book.

That colleague accepted another position over the summer, so I never did have a full-length conversation with her over the subject.

From an excellent collection of curricular resources. Blogging it in honor of Jason Rhody's new position with the NEH (and new URL for his Miscellany is the Largest Category).

Two tales of gender, politics, weblogs, and cybercultureJerz's Literacy Weblog)

Both tales are pretty sad.

One is the story of Alexandra Polier, falsely accused of having an affair with Sen. John Kerry. According to Matt Drudge:

“In an off-the-record conversation with a dozen reporters earlier this week General Wesley Clark plainly stated: ‘Kerry will implode over an intern issue.’"

Polier painstakingly traces the sloppy reporting that led to her name being splashed across headlines. Polier had her editor call up the reporter who first named her, Bryan Flynn of The Sun, who brags smugly about breaking the story, but then when the phone is passed to Polier, he suddenly becomes too busy to talk to her. --"John Kerry intern scandal - Alexandra Polier's account"

The other is the story of Jessica Cutler:

...I posted my diary on a blog - the Washingtonienne - so my friends could read it for fun. As a young single woman, the diary was mostly about my sex life. I could not believe anybody besides them would want to read such a thing. But thirteen days later, it was all over Capitol Hill.... Then I saw my name and photo all over the internet. Type my name into Google and you'll find 32,600 results. I have read some of the racist, sexist comments about me posted on the internet with utter fascination. Unfortunately, these people can post anonymously, while I had to own up to all the stuff I wrote. But that is exactly what I love about the internet: expanding the social dialogue via the unrestricted sharing of ideas. Especially the ones that nobody wants to take credit for. -- "Senator Sacked Me Over Tales of Congress"

Polier shows superhuman restraint as she demonstrates the meticulous reporting skills that were so clearly absent from global reports linking her to Kerry. Cutler seems to think she's writing a Dave Barry humor column: "I opened mail all day (which is why you should never bother to write your representatives in government: somebody like me reads your letters). And then I either threw the letters in the garbage or I would make fun of them with co-workers. In retrospect, that job was perfect for me."

Assuming both women get book deals, whose will probably sell better?

Crisfield, a crabbing hub on the southwestern tip of Maryland's Eastern Shore, and Smith Island are separated by just a dozen miles of choppy water known as Tangier Sound.

But Smith Island has a distinct identity. An archipelago of fiercely independent villages, it is so isolated that many residents still converse in an Elizabethan-era dialect descended from the British who settled there in the 1600s.

Jenny, a lover of World War II books who has her eye on a law career, walked off the stage at graduation Thursday with an armful of medals, certificates and scholarships. She was accepted by her first-choice schools - the Naval Academy Preparatory School and Salisbury University.

So the lawsuit, she says, is about something more closely resembling hometown pride. She lost the chance to become the first Crisfield High valedictorian from Smith Island. --Suit exposes cultural clash (Baltimore Sun)

Geography and class combine to make this year's valedictorian lawsuit more culturally interesting than last year's. Thanks for the suggestion, Rosemary.

Be careful what kind of art you make. The Feds may come a knockin'? --Michael Mateas --Feds can't tell art from terrorism (Grand Text Auto)

I'd heard about this story in passing, but now that I see how few degrees of separation I am away from the artists in question, I see the situation in a new light.

I recall seeing a number of my high-school teachers, all with master's degrees or Ph.D.'s, painting houses and cutting lawns during the summer. This kind of thing still happens all over the country, and it's a disgrace. When teachers are forced to tend the yards of students' homes, to clean houses, or to sell stereos on nights and weekends, the quality of education is diminished, the profession is disrespected, and we parody the notion that we hold our schools and teachers in the highest regard. --Dave Eggers --Reading, Writing, and Landscaping  (Mother Jones)

One rarely tells testimonials about the longshoreman data entry clerk or orthodontist who changed your life.

The teacher who had the most effect on my life was my high school English teacher and drama director. I had Michael Garcia for my first period freshman year, so he was my first exposure to high school academics.

• On Feb 3, 1983, Mr. Garcia gave us a homework assignment to write a journal. Maybe that was the date it was due... but it sticks in my mind because I kept writing in that journal for 10 years. While working on my Ph.D., instead of journals, I wrote long letters to friends. While wrapping up my dissertation, I started blogging.


• Mr. Garcia was also the drama club director. While my association with the drama crowd didn't exactly help my social status among the jock-and-cheerleader crowd, it was an activity that brought me into contact with upperclass students (with cars... that definitely improved my social life).


• In the summer of 1984, I wrote a Star Trek novel -- which I couldn't bring myself to read when I came across it while unpacking boxes just this past Monday. Mr. Garcia read and commented on it, though it had nothing to do with his job description.


• While directing me in the role of the theatre critic whose aunties kill old men in Arsenic and Old Lace, "G" got the idea that my character should carry around a little pad of paper all the time, and use it to jot down cutting remarks (presumably to use in future columns). I had fun ad-libbing with that pad. I started carrying that pad of paper everywhere. I've still got it (and several of its successors) in a box somewhere. When I went off to college, and started wearing T-shirts and other "civvies" rather than the Catholic school uniform with shirt pockets, I had nowhere to keep my pad of paper -- and I felt naked. Then, one day in 1997, I was walking past a computer store, and I saw a display rack that featured the Palm organizer. I found the pad I'd been missing for many years, and now I'm a committed PDA user. Mr. Garcia has no idea how profoundly his off-the-cuff suggestion of a prop affected the development of my thought processes.


• In high school, I usually worked as hard on the sets as I did on the stage, which was an early expression of my interest in both humanities and technology. I remember one year, "Mr. G." gave me a "schizoid award," and when presenting it he pretended to slap himself in the face with alternate hands, doing a Jekyl/Hyde routine: "I'm cast! (slap!) I'm crew! (slap!) I'm cast! (slap!) I'm crew!" My dual interest in the art and technology of theater eventually led to my book, Technology in American Drama, 1920-1950: Soul and Society in the Age of the Machine.


• For several years, Mr. Garcia worked a summer job at the stage door of Wolf Trap Farm Park, a national park devoted to the performing arts. The summer after my freshman year in college, I worked at the Wolf Trap stage door. Mr. Garcia wasn't working there that summer, but I worked with people who knew him well, and thus felt his influence. Stage door staff did everything from showing the stars to their dressing rooms to locking up the building at night. The job also involved keeping groupies from slipping backstage, to standing there looking contrite so that personal managers could yell at us and thus prevent the stars from thinking they weren't in control. I'd have to say the experience killed any interest to pursue a career in the entertainment industry, but that was an important thing to learn, and at any rate the job was a lot of fun for an 18-year-old. I'm not sure at the time whether it clicked that Mr. Garcia was taking this job to help pay the bills.


• On a drama club trip to New York, some friends and I managed to break a window in our hotel room. I had a great plan to steal a window from a stairwell and swap it with our broken one. Our antics attracted the attention of a room full of girls with honey-sweet Southern accents, who had been watching us from their room across the courtyard. While my buddies ran off to arrange an illicit after-curfew meeting with the Georgia Peaches (or whoever they were), my window swap plan fell apart, and I found myself choking out a confession at the front desk. At that moment, who should walk through the lobby but Mr. Garcia. He took me to his room, where I had a good cry -- not really about the window, just about adolescence in general.


• And of course, I remember all this stuff because it's all in my journal.

A couple years after I graduated, Mr. Garcia quit teaching to work for State Farm insurance. His wife was also a teacher, but obviously their salaries weren't enough to raise a family comfortably in Arlington (a suburb of Washington, D.C.). I've seen him on TV in commercials for State Farm, which show clips of him in our old auditorium, presumably volunteering with students. He's also been active in fund-raising for the school (where his kids were attending, when I last heard from him).

A history of videogames, just as a history of any software "type" or "genre," will reveal an open-source origin and a legacy of "borrowers" and "derivers" hoping to capitalize on what was originally free, whether through buying up copyrights or creating enhanced commercial versions. With an increase in the size of a software corporation comes a decrease in the level of innovation one finds there, until finally, in 2004, gamers are confronted at the videogame store with hordes of cloned videogames and programmers are threatened at the courtroom by battalions of lawyers frantically protecting someone's "intellectual property." The protection that intellectual property law affords software developers is possible only by seizing the rights of the users of that software, even those who legitimately purchase it. As corporate lawyers, CEOs, and investors further entrench themselves in the software market, gamers and programmers will find themselves in the same dismal position as the ship in a game of Space Invaders. --Matt Barton
--The Videogame in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (Armchair Arcade)

I left a few (unrelated) comments on Tetris, Galileo, and the open source philosophy on the Armchair Arcade site.

A parody helps change a corrections policy at The New York Times. An online critic's query ends a career at the Chicago Tribune. Bloggers' scrutiny is making its mark on traditional journalism. --Mark Glaser --To Their Surprise, Bloggers Are Force for Change in Big Media (Online Journalism Review)

Another great suggestion from Rosemary.