The Archives
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The News
All’s Well that Orwells
I confess that I own a copy of George Orwell’s 1984. I’ve read it, and enjoyed it. I will also confess to going through a bit of an anti-authoritarian phase in my youth; my hair was shaggy, I wore flannel shirts with holes in them, and I referred not infrequently to a vague consortium of evildoers known collectively as “The Man.” But here’s the important thing: I learned more about the world, and subsequently stopped spouting insipid nonsense. Some people have yet to do that.
But first, Dear Reader, let me tell you a story. Amazon sells a device called the Kindle. The Kindle is like an iPod, but instead of playing music, it displays books. (In point of fact, the Kindle also can play music, but this ubiquitous feature is built into practically any consumer electronics you can think of today.) Kindle owners put books on their device by connecting it to a computer and either (1) purchasing books from Amazon directly, or (2) “finding” the full text of books somewhere else.
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The News
Who’s the Man? Wu’s the Man.
07.08.09 | Permalink | 2 CommentsA while back, I wrote about Lori Drew. She’s the woman who was indicted for violating a federal anti-hacking statute prohibiting the “unauthorized access” of MySpace’s computers by lying about her age and gender when she signed up for an account. Of course, tons of people do that on a daily basis; Ms. Drew was indicted not primarily on the basis of her dishonesty, but on what she did with her account. Under the guise of a teenage boy, Ms. Drew harassed 13 year old Megan Meier until the teenager committed suicide.
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The News
A Magical Wonderland
The internet is a funny place. In the very first days, when it included computers at all of four universities, the internet was very clearly an extension of the “real world.” For a great number of years, people just used their actual names on the internet: see the 1982 Usenet discussion of the creation of the emoticon. (This discussion quickly deteriorated into arch-nerdery, because the guys on the internet in 1982 were arch-nerds.)
At some point, (perhaps the Eternal September?) the internet took a turn for the anonymous.
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Legal Theory
Federal Felony-o-matic!
Courtesy of Harry Lewis, author of the very insightful book Blown to Bits:
Ethical or not, it looks like using [fake names to protect your privacy online] could set you up for doing some hard time in a federal penitentiary. Lori Drew was convicted of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act because the jury deemed that by creating a fake identity as a boy, she had gained “unauthorized access” to the servers of MySpace, whose Terms of Service state that registration information must be truthful. By that logic, anyone using Bug Me Not is setting themselves up for indictment on the same charge.
The rest of the post, including some context if you’ve never heard of the wonderful web service Bug Me Not, is available at Mr. Lewis’s website here. And if you’re a little shaky on the technological side of some of these issues, I recommend Blown to Bits to help you understand the issues of the day.
Almost Legally
Not sued out of existence since 2008
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I don't know what's worse. Being too sick to make it to school to turn in your homework, or having to hand-write it in 2010.
