Canada attempts new copyright law

By Kathleen Kalk on June 3, 2010 | Tagged with citation, Copyright, intellectual property, Publish, social_network, works cited

The Canadian government is about to enter round three of amending its outdated copyright legislation after two prior attempts, Bill C-60 and Bill C-61, died on the parliamentary floor.

[linebreak]

It is difficult to wade through the jingo of the proposed on-line copyright changes, but in a nutshell the bill legalizes existing practices like personal format transferring (copying a CD to an ipod – which is technically illegal at the moment), and outlawing cracking of digital devices (with the exception of cell phones) and digital media that has been locked by the producer in order to restrict ‘unlawful’ use and distribution.

[linebreak]

The potential law will also differentiate between file sharers for personal use and file sharers for commercial use. Infamous Canadian file shares like, Geremi Adam, who recently got a two and a half year sentence for film piracy, would still be liable for extensive fines and jail time, whereas little Jimmy sharing with his friends at elementary school won’t face hard time for uploading the latest Hanna Montana single – though little Jimmy could face a fine up to $5000.

[linebreak]

The proposed bill has plenty of critics, as did the last two bills that entered cardiac arrest, and no doubt there will be a fight over this piece of shoe leather just as there was over the last. One proposed alternative to the bill is taxing digital devices, ipods specifially, in the same way as blank DVD’s and CD’s are taxed to make up for lost revenue due to pirating and file sharing.

[linebreak]

Check out the various links in this entry to figure out how the law will affect you, and how it could change the Canadian copyright landscape.

Read More | No Comments

Privacy! Privacy! Privacy! Who Cares?

By Kathleen Kalk on May 19, 2010 | Tagged with Connect, facebook, privacy, social_network

In the past few months Internet users have been bombarded with stories about government espionage and privacy loopholes on the most popular social networking sites and search engines. While we can be assured that our on-line banking purchases and credit cards are safe (unless you get phished), the information about what we buy, where we shop and who our friends are, is not. The recent Facebook privacy settings row has brought the issue of privacy front and centre once again. The question to ask here at Digital Tattoo, is do you care?

[linebreak]

Facebook is the call center of the Internet age. Advertisers no longer have to dial house to house, developing advanced methods to keep ahead of call-display technologies, they can profile broad generalizations about social groups, (age, sex, relationship status, travel map apps etc.), from social networking sites and beam back the same information via personalized advertising to the users who have unknowingly volunteered it. If unaware about how this cycle works, change your facebook status from ‘in a relationship’ to ‘single’ and see for yourself how your ads change. This type of privacy leak is only one of many uses of stored private information that industry watchdogs are weary of. They are also weary of users being unaware of what their privacy settings are due to default ‘everyone’ status, and that FB citizens are unknowingly sharing personal information while thinking they are protected.

[linebreak]

While here at DT we focus on getting the word out about on-line rights and digital identities, we have to also recognize the Internet is a place of profit and money must be made to keep it going. While FB founder Mark Zuckerberg might want to promote a so-called ‘social web,’ I have a sneaking suspicion that the back room reality is no doubt that advertizing revenue goes through the roof when personal information is disseminated.

[linebreak]

But do you care?

[linebreak]

Is it a reasonable exchange to trade broad personal information for access to the web and the social tools it provides to enrich our lives? By logging on to the web we have all answered ‘yes’ to this question whether we know it or not. Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, recently took advantage of this defacto human response by making FB privacy settings default to social rather than secure.

[linebreak]

As a cautious believer in the ‘open’ society, social default as it is called in the FB world, I must ask for a default setting myself, that choice remain paramount to any technology or institution bandying around concepts of an open and social world. Users should not have to ‘opt-out’ in order to save their personal info from getting broadcasted. Negative sales so-to-speak, like cable companies charging viewers for extra channels unless they decline their use, is a dubious marketing practice at best, and down right criminal at worst. While I am tempted to believe the benevolence of web pioneers like Zuckerberg, a line must be drawn when third parties without consent make personal decisions about individuals and have access to unceded information. A web based on openness and information freedom must also be a web based on consent for it to avoid contradiction. Consent is the basis of free society and it should be the same in web society. Implied consent, the notion that using the web equals consent, does not cut it when that ‘consent’ is used for unknown purposes of third parties. Moreover, a social web that does not allow use unless users agree to unnecessary terms is not a very social web. Visit the Protect section on the Digital Tattoo site to see how to adjust your FB privacy settings.

Scaling the Great Fire Wall one donation at a time

By Kathleen Kalk on May 13, 2010 | Tagged with Connect, privacy, Protect, social_network

The United States government is set to donate 1.5 million dollars to a Falun Gong affiliated Internet freedom organization, Global Internet Freedom Consortium (CIFG), a recent story on the BBC has claimed. CIFG provides free technologies to people living within Internet repressing states, allowing users to circumnavigate censor code and access outlawed sites.

[linebreak]

China has long been at odds with the Falun Gong religious movement, whose pages are routinely banned in China for ‘seditious’ content, and the report is part of a larger ongoing row between the PRC and idea of a politically free Internet. Google recently pulled out of China due to privacy and hacking concerns after the Peoples Republic of China was accused of infiltrating the search engine to gain access to Human Rights groups working in China. While all governments reserve the right to restrict access to undesirable Internet webpages, few cast the net as widely as the PRC.

[linebreak]

The US ‘donation’ is about as coincidental as drunk driving and a car wreck, and is a not-so-subtle statement about leading global opinion on China’s firewall. The GIFC is a very interesting website with an assortment of resources and articles about Internet freedom groups in states that restrict access to the net. Have a look at the GIFC website and give us your thoughts on the matter.

Read More | No Comments

Cows on Twitter

By Kathleen Kalk on May 4, 2010 | Tagged with Connect, social_network, Twitter

“Dying to get into the pen for a milking. Not happening yet.”

[linebreak]

That’s what Jersey cow, Charge Mabel, tweets as she waits with the rest of the bovines to get into the milking pen. One-third art, one-third gimmick, and one-third awareness campaign, an Ontario farmer has allowed a group of students and faculty from the University of Waterloo to tap into the hypothetical thoughts of dairy cows as they go about their mechanized milking lives. This is no doubt a case of anthropomorphism at its finest, however, the point of the project is to get consumers thinking about where their food comes from and the processes involved, not simply the average pet loving tweeting on behalf of their manicured Yorkshire mini terrier.

[linebreak]

Will these cows need to consider their Digital Tattoo? Probably not. But it would be interesting to get an animal with greater cerebral cortex activity, like a chimp for a Pacific Western Octopus, to tweet themselves about their experiences.

[linebreak]

There is a social metaphor/cultural critique in this latest Twitter development, but I suspect it involves a doctoral treatise rather than 140 characters in reply. What are your thoughts? Visit Mabel’s tweet page here.

Read More | No Comments

How not to impress your boss

By Kathleen Kalk on April 28, 2010 | Tagged with employee, employer, Work

Information spreads fast in the social media era. So if you are going to show off your new top-secret prototype gadget like show and tell at elementary school, you might want to think twice about taking it to the local tavern. Apple’s, Gray Powell, found this out the hard way after losing his precious iPhone 4.0 prototype during a momentary lapse of judgment over a few pints of brew. Others at Apple have lost their bread and butter for less significant infractions, but so far the dust has not settled on the fate of Powell as an Apple employee.

[linebreak]

The lesson highlighted here is that intellectual copyright is viral these days making technological secrets harder to keep than ever before. For Apple, what was to be a highly anticipated Fall release has turned into a digital legal row of he said she said that has made the tech savvy blog, Gizmodo, a villain and hero in its wake. At the end of the day, the leak will probably build the hype for the new gadget and make it more coveted than it already is. For Powell however, despite a flood of web sympathy for his simpleton gaff, his desirability as an employee may be far less certain as his tattoo will forever be the ‘guy who lost that iPhone.’

Read More | No Comments

Knowing what they don’t want others to know

By Kathleen Kalk on April 25, 2010 | Tagged with digital tattoo, privacy, Protect

A recent development in Internet openness by a major search engine may forever change the partnership of secrecy between state searches and net giants. Google recently published a list of government requests for information and pages to be censored from the Internet. This list includes over 40 countries writes the BBC, with Brazil leading the way in number of requests. One notable absence from the list: China.

[linebreak]

In a public statement after the release of requests to censor and hand over information earlier this month, Google stated that the search engine would be in breach of law in China if it were to hand over so-called ‘state secrets,’ which in this case would be the numbers and content associated with China’s requests for removal and censor. Private citizens also have the right to request information and for items to be removed from Google, but government eavesdropping always sets off alarms. To see the Google list, click here. It is worth a look.

Read More | No Comments

The First Tweet and the American Declaration of Independence

By Kathleen Kalk on April 14, 2010 | Tagged with Connect, social_network, Twitter

You know you are in the Information Age when a historical infant, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s first tweet from 2006, is shelved next to a historical giant, the American Declaration of Independence, at the US Library of Congress in Washington D.C. The revelation of Twitter’s rapid rise through history has been covered in media outlets across the globe, most gawking in awe, with a few dissenting voices, (well okay one – me), feeling a little uneasy about where in the world Twitter will lead us next. It seems that every day since its inception there is some new achievement for the ‘social media’ tool: Obama’s first tweet, the first tweet from outer space, and the first novel published via twitter, 140 characters at a time (a modern emulation of Dr. Seuss’s 50 word vocabulary in Green Eggs and Ham), to mention a few. Perhaps tweeting is getting out of hand, though out of hand of what I cannot say. As of April 2010, Twitter has a whopping 105,000,000 users worldwide and each 24-hours another 300,000 sign up – but I am not one of them.

[linebreak]

I have seen the rise and fall of several social networking phenomena, friendster for example, to question whether Twitter will stand the test of time. Will it become a historical anecdote that future generations make fun of like teenagers looking at graduation photos of their parents, or will it replace inventions like the telephone as a dominant form of human communication? Will the first tweet be as ‘revolutionary’ as the document it now sits beside, or will it flop like mini disks? In addition to its new hallowed home next to the Whitehouse, every tweet since 2006, including yours, will also be held in an electronic database at the library. Another reason to perhaps hold off on tweeting a little while longer.

[linebreak]

One last thought, in George Orwells’ 1984, a language called Newspeak was created by the ruling party to limit the ability of citizens to think abstractly. By removing words from the language and shrinking vocabularies, the hypothetical regime hoped to ensure unquestioning support of its rule and limit the very ability of human’s to question. While by no means is Twitter’s 140 characters a government conspiracy to stupify us all and hold us down, it certainly poses some food for thought.

Read More | No Comments

Work and browse without getting caught

By Kathleen Kalk on April 11, 2010 | Tagged with employee, employer, Work

Anyone who has been busted surfing the net at work will surely find some value in this. While we don’t want to encourage any substandard work behavior at DT, a new program, Decreased Productivity, gives browsers the technology to stay one step ahead of an overzealous over-the-shoulder looking employer, and gives us an interesting cultural insight into the information age workplace.

[linebreak]

The concept is simple. The program takes flashy eye catching pages like Facebook, YouTube, and Flickr, strips them of coding, and disguises them as bland early nineties amateur webpages. In theory, when the boss walks by unexpectedly and catches you on a gaming site while stacks of work tower on your desk, you need not worry as your screen and its dubious whereabouts will not catch the managers’ eye. Popular internet icons like the Google header or the Twitter logo are dead give-aways of non-work related browsing, but with the help of a little icon camouflage one can carry on comfortably with their distractions.

[linebreak]

Similar technologies like, Magic Boss Key, which is basically a panic button that hides all info on your desktop (making it irretrievable except to you) and replaces it with ‘work related’ windows, market themselves as privacy wear though no doubt their most popular application is hiding a lackadaisical work ethic.

[linebreak]

While serendipitous and errant browsing has become part of the information age work force, it should not come as a shock as it is simply a new way of doing an old thing. Programs like Decreased Productivity are no different than the advice a co-worker gives on how to pass off water cooler talk as work.