Digg Takedown, Obama Takeover, Army Blog Squeeze (Jerz’s LIteracy Weblog)
This is the last week of classes, and I’ve got deadlines galore (3 conference proposals, an annual report, a departmental proposal, and an article submission that I’ve been sitting on for a week).
So I won’t have much to say, but I still thought it was worth noting the story of Digg’s attempt to silence user-submitted articles about cracking HD-DVD security. Since Digg is made up of user-supported content, Digg users have responsed by submitting a flood of articles that express their unhappiness with the fact that Digg tried to suppress the HD-DVD security information (and most of those articles probably duplicate the protection information that Digg was supposed to be protecting by taking down the article in the first place).
I also note the story of how the Obama campaign was initially happy that supporter Joe Anthony volunteered to keep the Obama MySpace page. But then the Obama campaign pushed Anthony off the site, taking it over from and refusing to pay him what Anthony thought it was worth. (I don’t know whether they offered a lower figure and Anthony was holding out for more, or whether they just figured it was their right to take over the site.) At any rate, Anthony says the campaign has lost his vote.
Just think of all the money that has gone into the development of complex software with digital content protection schemes that bloat the size and blunt the usability (Vista) , and that will go into litigation that will attempt to extend the economic lifespan of the 19-th century models of cultural production. Imagine if that money had instead been spent on think-tanks that aim to work with the cultural tide, rather than against it.
And while I appreciate the desire of the US Army to crack down on the possibility of leaking military secrets, wouldn’t the blogosphere be a useful place to engage with public opinion and recruit new members? The military crackdown on soldier blogs suggests the public at large will lose a valuable avenue to interact with the men and women who make life-or-death decisions that affect global stability. If you think of what the US Army Corps of Engineers can do in an emergency, think of an online strike team that might be ready to swoop in the event of a Katrina-like crisis, or a Darfur-like morass, engaging the good will of people around the globe, drawing on their first-hand observations.
Am I naive? Probably. Regardless, today was not a very good day for social networking.
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Yes, I do often link to the negative consequences of posting information about yourself that others can use against you (or simply stuff that makes other people nervous).
Re the military question... I agree that the stakes are high, and I understand why the military feels it should crack down. Loose lips sink ships, went the advertising campaign in WWII, and it dramatized women gossiping in public over their sons' deployments, and showed a sneaky spy listening in and reporting to enemy forces what he learned. That *was* a bit heavy handed -- but one expects that from the military.
One reason I keep linking to the negative consequences of blogging is simply because I want to keep track of mainstream media coverage of such issues. The main point I want to get across is simply that netizens should be aware of what the people in power over them are likely to think of their online activities.
After reading post after post by you about how bad of an idea it is to post anything personal online...I would think you might be all for what the army is doing. If an individual posting pictures of drinking online is poor judgement, and a student posting pictures of themself drunk is clearly and rationally grounds for no one to hire them, then surely soldiers ranting online about their work online must be an even worse offense? What if they gave away valuable information to the enemy? What if they posted photos from some prison which enrages the arab world against us troops? Surely the fact that people might die as a result is even more important than drunken pictures of college students, so surely they shouldn't be let out?