Julianna Yau’s blog

Oh, Google, how you disappoint me. First with YouTube’s unnavigable help pages, then with a product which, despite being in beta, fails to do what its help pages claims it does.

Now that I have two (and soon to be three) laptops (!), and after discovering that free WiFi is spotty at best, I thought I should look for a feed reader which will allow me to access feeds on several computers and offline. After a bit of research I narrowed my options to Liferea and Google’s Reader. Because I didn’t want to wrestle with figuring out how to synchronize Liferea on two computers (I suspect I would need to have the user files on an SD card and transfer the card from one computer to another), or getting Liferea onto Sugar, I decided to try Google’s Reader first.

The first frustration was that, unlike Thunderbird, Google’s Reader only imported posts as of the day the feed was added to Reader. After giving it some time to play catch-up, I found that (a) it will import older posts, (b) there is no option to permanently remove a post from Reader (only an option to mark it as being read), and (c) there is no option to mark a post as unread if it’s date is prior to the date you added the feed to Reader. This means if I am not reading a blog from the day it was created, I need to use one of Reader’s other features (like starring or tagging posts) to keep track of older posts which I have not yet read.

I did find that starring items is great for “bookmarking” posts I want to revisit later, particularly for the many posts to which I want to respond in my blog. The “add tags” option has potential, but seems cumbersome. I suspect it is meant to supplement Reader being alternative to social bookmarking sites like Ma.gnolia, when used alongside the option to “share” a post (and have it show in your public profile). This would be quite good for anyone who almost only reads blogs and doesn’t have the need to bookmark non-feed webpages… but I have yet to figure out if it’s possible to integrate Reader’s sharing feature with another Google bookmarking option to be a complete social bookmarking option.

Trying to get the offline feature to work was another exercise in frustration.

Installing Google Gears managed to send Firefox into a potentially infinite loop.

When you click on “offline” in Reader, Google explains how the offline mode works, tells you that you’ll need to install Google Gears, and warns:

This installation requires that you restart your browser, so we recommend you close all other windows before you begin.

After you confirm, a window opens with the splash page for the Google Gears installation. You again need to confirm that you want to proceed with the installation of Google Gears. After confirming again, there is are TOS to be accepted and the installation will then finally begin. The instructions are to allow the installation, and again:

Close and restart your web browser (be sure to close all browser windows).

What they fail to explain is that if you simply use Firefox’s built-in restart button for add-ons, and don’t close the Google Gears installation page prior to restarting, Firefox will try to install Google Gears again when you restart. Fun. I guess that’s why they keep trying to tell you to close all your browser windows.

The offline feature itself does not allow you to “even exit your browser and open it again later while you’re offline.” If it does, it totally wasn’t working for me. I was able to successfully go into offline mode in Reader, then in Firefox, and to be able to read posts in Reader. But no combination of going offline in Reader, Firefox and/or disconnecting from my internet connection allowed me to access Reader after closing Firefox and using it in offline mode after starting it again. Their help page simply indicates that I need to navigate to http://www.google.com/reader/ and it will magically work…but Firefox disagreed, telling me that “Firefox is currently in offline mode and can’t browse the Web. Uncheck “Work Offline” in the File menu, then try again.”. After trying one too many times, Reader now tells me that “synchronization has failed” when I go from offline mode to online mode.

Trying to get help from Google was, not surprisingly, as good as impossible. Their help page for offline mode maintains that:

You can even exit your browser and open it again later while you’re offline. Just enter http://www.google.com/reader/ in your address bar the same way you do when you’re online. (Note, however, that the http://reader.google.com/ form of the address will not work when you’re offline. You may want to check your bookmarks to make sure you have the correct address there.)

If I try to provide feedback that the information was not helpful, I have a maximum of 100 characters to tell Google “how [they] can make this better”. Although it’s an interesting challenge to summarize all of this in 100 characters or less, I don’t think it’s worth the work effort.

Hopefully, testing Liferea will be a less frustrating experience.

Michael Geist picked up on an article which argues for e-petitions to have more weight in politics. And although I have signed a few e-petitions and joined many Facebook groups, I still have misgivings about the nature of click votes and petitions in general.

Matthew Ingram has reflected upon the usefulness of click votes in response to the CBC’s Great Canadian Wish List which was generated on Facebook. Even today, I marvelled at the fact that one of my friends on Facebook joined 45,853 other fans (as of the writing of this post) of the Heath Ledger Memorial page, while Geist’s heavily advertised Fair Copyright for Canada group sits at 39,470 members (and Facebook tells me that there are 374 new members…and I have yet to figure out the time span used to calculate a “new” member), and my little
Canada needs a public inquiry into copyright! group reports 1 fewer member, totalling at 114 members. Does this really mean that more people care about Ledger’s tragic death than fair copyright for Canada? Or that 39,356 people who think we should have fair copyright in Canada don’t think Canada needs a public inquiry for copyright? I certainly wouldn’t use the numbers from a Facebook group or page as the source of statistics for any real purpose.

I don’t think the issue is with fraudulent votes or signatures. Like traditional petitions, fraudulent signatures are a problem, but so is the value of the petition itself. As I have stated before, it is entirely too easy to sign something. I really do believe that, unless someone is actively against something, when asked to show support by doing something easy like signing a petition, they are likely to do so. That does not necessarily mean they understand the issues enough to be making a real decision, or that they truly care enough to do something real about it.

In the past two days, much discussion on the responsibilities of ISPs (Internet Service Providers, such as Rogers or Bell) has landed in my inbox or feed reader. This includes:

• The CCC’s platform on copyright
• A letter to the CCC from a member of ACTRA
• The Globe & Mail’s poll on whether ISPs should take a greater role in combating illegal file sharing
• Northworthy’s 2 cents

What really did get me was the poll on the G&M website. I have mostly been thinking about the ISP’s role in combating copyright infringement from the perspective that they are in the most advantageous position to do anything (and, of course, keeping in mind the problems of net neutrality, privacy and copyright holder abuse). But the question of whether it is in fact an ISP’s responsibility to do anything has, surprisingly, never crossed my mind. And if it isn’t their responsibility, where does the responsibility lie? To find out, let’s start by looking at who the players are:

• ISPs (Internet Service Providers; they provide end users with access to the internet; the internet is where the possibly infringing content is contained)
• website hosts (companies which allow persons to store content on servers; the servers may belong to the website host or to a third party; by being on those servers, the content is accessible on the internet)
• websites hosting user-generated content (sites such as YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, any discussion forums, etc, where the majority of the content is submitted by the users rather than the company running the website)
• users (the individual persons who access the internet and provide possibly infringing content; users can provide and access content either through a website or directly through their computer)
• software designers/companies (the entities which create the necessary software for computers to interact with each other and with servers; examples of relevant software are website browsers, software to facilitate peer-to-peer networking, and “webware“)
• hardware manufacturers (makes the computers used to go online and the servers where internet content is usually housed)
• copyright holder (the first copyright holders of content; often, but not always, this is the creator)

And how they play together:

Scenario 1 – User accesses content

1. User gets internet access through ISP
2. User gets software to put onto their hardware so that they can access the content on the internet
3. User accesses internet and obtains content, which could potentially have been provided to the user without permission of the copyright holder; or
   User deliberately seeks to obtain content without the permission of the copyright holder (usually, this happens by obtaining the content without payment; however, content is increasingly being provided without requirement of payment)

Scenario 2 – User only provides content

1. User gets internet access through ISP
2. User gets software to put onto their hardware so that they can provide content on the internet. This content may either be their own, or be provided without the permission of the copyright owner.
3. Content provided by the user is accessed by other users.

This is where we get into issues with the concept of “making available“. The argument is that the entity responsible for making something available is responsible for the copyright infringement; the counter-argument is that the content being made available could be used for legitimate purposes (primarily, anything falling under fair dealing). The problem with the counter-argument is that it is addressing an issue which is not related to the primary act of infringement in the act of making available.

A few weeks ago, I spoke with a colleague and friend about the concept of making available. After some discussion, we came to the very simple agreement that someone who makes a work available to the public without the permission of the copyright holder is infringing copyright…because they are publishing (making public; making available) something to which they do not have publishing rights. Someone who photocopies an entire book or reproduces artwork or duplicates software, without the copyright holder’s permission, and makes it publicly available is infringing copyright regardless of whether anyone takes the copied work or whether money is exchanged. Again, this is because that person did not have the right to copy the work. The problem of the accessibility of a work for fair dealing is an entirely valid one, but should not be solved by diluting the concept of the right to copy.

We also have to draw a distinction between the responsibility of infringement and the responsibility of policing. In most discussions where the ISPs, website hosts, software designers and/or websites hosting user-generate content have been nominated to police copyright infringement, the argument has mainly focused on the idea that they are an accessory to copyright infringement because they facilitate the transmission of content. I believe that this kind of thinking is one which is part of the administration/practice of law, and not unique to copyright law itself. The problem, in this case, is that this foursome is the easiest target for being asked to police copyright infringement on the internet because they are often seen as having mythical powers (and sometimes less mythical powers). While I think it is technically possible for that them to do the policing, I am now wondering whether that is the right decision, even without considering complications such as net neutrality, privacy issues and the mind-boggling question of how this can be implemented.

If we can agree that the goal is to prevent unauthorized distribution of works, and that the source of the unauthorized distribution is at the level of user, what needs to be done to stop that from happening, without resorting to technical protection measures? To answer that, I think we need to find out why people who do not have the right to distribute copies either are unaware that they don’t have that right or why they feel they do have that right.

You may have noticed some changes to my blog yesterday/today.

Last night, I installed the In-Series plug-in for WordPress so that I can organize my posts on deconstructing copyright. This works very well, and I have since moved the table of contents to the bottom of the posts to reduce clutter. Now, you can navigate to the previous or next post in addition to any other post in the series. I have also expanded the post titles because I found “part x” was not very helpful in finding an old post for reference.

I have been itching to use Ma.gnolia‘s blog posting job feature, which is currently in beta. They had a bit of a system glitch with it over the holidays, but it seems to be up and running again.

The blog posting job allows Ma.gnolia users to send their bookmarks to their blogs as a single post. You do need to link your blog via its API, and Ma.gnolia provides easy-to-follow instructions on how to do that.

Here are the user-definable options for the postings:

• frequency: daily, every three days, weekly or every two weeks
• blog: which blog to post to (currently, only one blog is linked, but it looks like they’re planning to allow for multiple blogs)
• post category: choose a category from your blog which will be assigned to the posts of links (currently, only one category can be assigned to the links)
• post title: whatever you want the post title to be, with the option to add the date of the post
• date format: several options for the format of the date (to be used in the post title)
• leading text: the option to preface the links with some text
• include link to your Ma.gnolia bookmarks (a yes/no option)
• remove CSS styles (a yes/no option)
• the option to include only posts with a specific tag, up to a combination of 3 tags
• the option to include or exclude: descriptions, tags, thumbnails and/or ratings

Because it’s in beta, there are still a few kinks. Overall, I find that it works very well and I’m loving the feature. I was using FeedBurner‘s link splicer for a while, but it was problematic because it only shows in the feeds and any email subscriptions sent by FeedBurner. Ma.gnolia, on the other hand, posts the links directly to my blog and the different customization options allow me to control what gets published to my blog and how it shows.

For example, I have started using the tag “blog it” for any bookmarks I want to show on my blog. This means I can bookmark all of the weird and wonderful things I find, but the readers of my blog only see what’s related to my regular blog topics because I setup the job to only send bookmarks tagged with “blog it” to my blog. By having the option of what to include in the blog postings, I can keep the clutter to a minimum by not including a thumbnail of the bookmark or the rating.

Technology in the Arts » Blog Archive » Fair Use and New Media

A study by the Center for Social Media at American University on user-generated content & copyright issues.

Tags: user-generated content, copyright, studies, blog it

Canadian artists stump for tougher copyright laws

Coverage from the National Post on the CCC platform on copyright

Tags: copyright, canada, ccc, legislation, blog it

globeandmail.com: Penticton ordered to pay artist over nude statue

The artist was awarded damages for negligence of the purchased sculpture and infringement of moral rights from vandalism.

Tags: moral rights, law suits, art, creator’s rights, sculpture, blog it

Northworthy: What is the (Next) Message?: Relationship Marketing? Try Creep-Out Marketing!

A huge privacy issue with pharmacies and marketing programs.

Tags: privacy, shoppers drug mart, marketing, pr, blog it

View all my bookmarks on Ma.gnolia