Julianna Yau’s blog

If you can believe it, I’ve been busy for the past two days with things other than copyright or arts advocacy (one of them being the production and administration of my sculptures!).

This meant I missed the live broadcast of the arts budget cuts discussion on Q, which is thankfully available as a podcast. I also received an email from Hedy Fry (the second member of the Heritage Committee to respond to my email):

Dear Ms. Yau:

Thank you for your letter protesting the recent cuts to Arts and Cultural programs by Foreign Affairs and Heritage Canada.

We, Liberal MPs all remember that Stephen Harper was a member of the Reform Party, which took the ideological stance that Arts and Culture was an inconsequential frill. We should not be surprised that as Prime Minister he would implement that ideology.

What is appalling is how it was done, with no announcement, surreptitiously inserted in the Departments’ websites, during the summer, when no one was supposed to be paying attention. This is a ploy the Harper government has used on many occasions, this summer.

Of course, there were explanations for the cuts. The Minister of Heritage called them efficiencies while the officials in Foreign Affairs were at least more honest. They did not approve of “lefty” writers or the immorality of certain titles and artistic subject matter. Such censorship by any other name would be called McCarthyism.

When the federal government does not understand the value of Arts and Culture to national identity or social cohesion; when a government does not have the foresight to see that in a 21st century global economy, the only hope for survival in a country as small as ours is to encourage human creativity and innovation; we should have grave cause for concern.

Even in the crassest of terms, funding of Arts and Culture could be seen as a smart economic investment. After all the creative sector is statistically the 4th largest industry in Canada; contributing 43.2 billion dollars annually to our GDP; responsible for almost 800,000 jobs and levering 2.7 billion dollars in trade.

Liberal governments under Chretien and Martin increased funding to Arts and Culture, initiated innovative Programs like Tomorrow Starts Today, and strengthened the International arts Programs seeing them as key to Canada’s trade, as well as our diplomatic efforts in promoting Canadian values abroad.

Stéphane Dion is on record as promising to increase the international Programs to $22 million and he sees a strong creative sector as key to Canada’s competitiveness in a 21st century world of innovation, creativity and human capital.

I urge you will take a bold stance against the Harper government’s damaging tunnel vision and attempt to censure and impose its own ideology on Canadian society under the thinly veiled guise of ‘efficient public policy.’

Thank you for writing.

Sincerely,
Hon. Hedy Fry, M.P.
Vancouver Centre

A bit heavy-handed with the pre-election jargon, and I wonder what will be done on Fry’s end to compliment the bold stance I’m urged to take.

Also, Penn Kemp of the Save Prom-Art: Promote Canadian Arts and Culture Facebook group received an email from Jack Layton:

At 04:59 PM 30/08/2008 he wrote:

“Absolutely!!

We are on it. We have many artists running for us [like Tom King!] and we will present a strong programme and fight like hell to re-establish the arts funding. These cuts are terrible and wrong. The latest cuts to Telefilm, for example, are horrific, short-sighted and nasty!

Just so that you know, when you’re communicating with your arts network, I am a member of the Writers’ Union with three published books: Speaking Out Louder (Key Porter, 2006) and Homelessness (Penguin, 2008) and Les ideés pour les gens d’ici (2004). Also, the director of our national campaign is Brian Topp, Exec Director of ACTRA.

These facts can give some comfort.

See you on the campaign trail and keep on fighting the good fight.

Thanks,
Jack”
“Layton, Jack – M.P.”

Yesterday, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada wrote about Facebook’s laxness on privacy and third-party applications. I was a bit surprised by the quality of the post, because their blog typically provides a good amount of relevant information. However, even after following the links in the post, I found it difficult to piece together (a) how the applications can “steal” your information, or (b) what the applications can steal.

It wasn’t until I followed a link from one of the BBC articles to Click’s advice for worried Facebook users that I understood what the concern is. Applications can have access to your name, networks and lists of friends, plus your selection of the following:

• Profile Picture
• Basic Info
• Personal info (activities, interests, etc.)
• Current location (what city you’re in)
• Education history
• Work history
• Profile status
• Wall
• Notes
• Groups you belong to
• Events you’re invited to
• Photos taken by you
• Photos taken of you
• Relationship status
• Online presence
• What type of relationship you’re looking for
• What sex you’re interested in
• Who you’re in a relationship with
• Religious views

This was certainly not news to me (particularly after I wrote a Primer on Privacy & Facebook, available as a PDF or OpenDocument download. Although I agree that it would be good for Facebook to more actively promote usage of their privacy settings (someone suggested that they include a privacy setting walkthrough in the post-setup activities), I more strongly believe that users need to start taking accountability for learning to use the privacy controls at their disposal.

Michael Geist has launched iOptOut, a free online service to send opt-out requests in bulk to companies. It’s an interesting service and I commend Geist for continuing to respond to issues about which he’s passionate (even if it comes with much flair and self-promotion). I do wonder how necessary the service really is. I don’t get too many unsolicited calls or emails, and it’s few enough that it’s easier for me to opt out of them individually. But, of course, that may a result of me being careful about how much information I give to companies and diligent about responding to their updates to privacy policies.

Last week, Facebook launched their new privacy control settings. Soon afterwards, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada picked up on a supposed flaw of the update. Although the flaw is true, it is (as many have pointed out), not a new flaw.

This weekend, I have updated my Primer on Privacy & Facebook, available as a PDF or OpenDocument download. The primer is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Canada licence. If you have any feedback on the primer, feel free to leave a comment on this post or contact me directly.

My mind has been brewing with some of the refocused perspectives I’ve gained in the past few weeks. While those thoughts collect into something substantial, I thought I would take my mind-map of creators and concept of creators’ rights (instead of copyrights) and propose a…

Creators’ Charter of Rights & Freedoms (draft)

1. Right to attribution to works
2. Right to association with works
3. Right to anonymity
4. Right to integrity of work
5. Right to publication of work
6. Right to distribution/dissemination of works
7. Right to duplication of works
8. Right to adaptation of works
9. Right to translations of work
10. Right to freedom of expression
11. Right to creative reuse (PDF warning)/appropriation of others’ works
12. Right to financial renumeration for creation & dissemination of works

And while I’m at it, here’s something to counter-balance creators’ rights:

Readers/Listeners/Viewers‘ Charter of Rights & Freedoms (draft)

1. Right to access public works (to address TPM issues)
2. Right to format-neutrality (to address format-shifting and compatibility issues)
3. Right to privacy
4. Right to cultural appropriation
5. Freedom of choice

I realize the proposed RLV’s charter is much shorter than the creators’. This is not because I feel RLVs should have fewer rights & freedoms, but because I haven’t spent nearly as much time thinking about those rights as the rights of creators’.

What else should be on those charters?

Last week, I was reflecting on the fact that my cynicism actually protects me from quite a bit of frustration. This reflection came just in time for me to be aware that because I don’t expect anything to be done for the right reasons, I am not shocked to find capitalists behind the bubbly front of social networking sites. I do, however, still experience quite a bit of frustration because I maintain that things should still be done properly, and am often called an idealist for that reason…but that’s a whole other discussion.

Tom Hodgkinson’s article on the “shady” inner workings of Facebook sound, to me, like the lamentations of someone who is more naive than insightful.

I totally respect the fact that there are many people out there who choose not to participate on websites like Facebook (even though I give some of them a hard time, just for fun). Like phones, email, post mail, VOIP, instant messaging and “the rest”, a social networking site is merely a tool, and doesn’t work for everyone.

Personally, I like maintaining regular contact with friends and colleagues through Facebook because it allows me to do it on my own time. Of course, it’s no substitute for in-person interaction but I find it very handy for keeping abreast of my friends’ more mundane events. By doing so, I’ve noticed that when I have lunch with a friend, we can have more [frequent and valuable] meaningful conversations without having to play catch-up firstly.

If someone else wants to use it as a make-shift dating site or homage to themselves, do I really care? Not so long as I continue to be able to ignore their requests to be my friend. Like in a high school or any other social space, cliques form naturally and most people gravitate towards others who are there for similar purposes. I’m sure the people who are merely on Facebook to boost their self-image think that people like me are taking the fun out of Facebook by using it to network professionally, but don’t really care because there’s enough space for us all.

Hodgkinson’s profiles on the brains and finances behind Facebook were actually a very interesting read. I’m sure he had intended for the information to show how that Facebook is really being operated by “The Man”, but I found their histories to be quite cool. I had not known about Peter Thiel prior to reading Hodgkinson’s article, but found his work to be extremely exciting. I know my affinity towards Thiel is mostly due to “The Diversity Myth”, which he co-wrote, because it seems to be a more expansive version of the same realization I reached in high school during one of our many assemblies to “celebrate multiculturalism”.

Although I don’t think Facebook is perfect (far from it; I agree with Hodgkinson’s, and most other people’s, dislike for the recent fiasco over the opt-out/opt-in problem with Beacon), many of the problems Hodgkinson has with Facebook are not unique to Facebook.

1 Everyone will advertise at you

Facebook doesn’t charge for membership, and instead uses advertisement as its main source of revenue. Even newspapers like The Guardian, in which Hodgkinson’s article was published, use advertisement. Not only do many other businesses use ads, and targeted ads, as part of their revenue source, not all of them are transparent about their ad targeting practices.

2 Nothing ever gets deleted on the internet

Maybe not nothing ever gets deleted, but data retention is a huge issue which is not limited to Facebook. You’ve got to be very new to the internet if you aren’t aware that anything you put online will probably exist until the end of time (or at least the end of the internet), either online, on a backup, or on someone’s personal computer.

3 Privacy isn’t guaranteed anywhere anymore

Social networking sites may make private detectives a thing of the past, only to be relived in Film Noir, and are certainly making people realize that privacy is an illusion. While I don’t agree that privacy should be allowed to be an illusion, I also realize that anyone who really wants to know about my most intimate confessions will find a way to do so, whether I’m on Facebook or not. Luckily, I don’t think anyone really cares to do so.

4 Facebook only knows what you tell it

Most of the information you give Facebook for it to build a profile on you is optional. Users need to take responsibility for how they share their information. If you’re going to do it through Facebook, of course they’re going to use that data. Duh. Many of the fields, like your gender and marital status, are optional. So are the bajillion applications which harvest more information about users. Just because you’re presented with a field doesn’t mean you need to complete it. Social networking sites need to be responsible for how they use the data they have, but the users who provide that data share that responsibility and need to start owning up to it.

5 Opting out doesn’t mean closed communication…ever

If Hodgkinson ever read any other privacy policy (like the one for a financial institution or utilities company), he’s probably likely to find that they also indicate that opting out of notifications will not cease all communications. I assume those clauses exist so that the company with which you’re doing business can still contact you if there’s a problem with your account—whether they abuse that is a whole other issue, and I have yet to be spammed by Facebook. They actually deliver fewer direct mailings (via email) to me than my credit card companies, opting instead to broadcast updates on their blog.

6 The CIA would probably look at your stuff anyway, if they really needed to

Does anyone really think that the CIA, or any other homeland security organization, would not be able to access your information on a social networking site just because that site’s TOS didn’t say that they could? I don’t.

The Privacy Commissioner blog has a great post about privacy rights and data portability, pointing to the Privacy Manifesto for the Web 2.0 Era drafted by Alec Saunders and the Data Portability project.

Yesterday, Facebook issued an apology for the poor product launch of Facebook Beacon and added the option for users to block all Beacon updates in the “Privacy Settings for External Websites” portion of their privacy settings page.

I’m sorry that Beacon was so poorly launched. I enjoy sharing my activities with my friends (to their amusement or annoyance), sending updates on the movies I’ve watched, blog postings I’ve written, books I’m reading and websites I’ve visited, and creating about a bajillion status updates. Being extremely concerned about privacy,  I also enjoy having full control over exactly what is shared with my friends. It seems Beacon could have been much better received if they were more transparent about how it works, and more proactive about giving users control over the updates from day 1.

Facebook finally decides to make Beacon an opt-in program rather than an opt-out program.

Canada’s Privacy Commissioner blog points to a report from the Information Commissioner’s Office in Great Britain on youth, privacy and the internet.

Although the report focuses on British youth aged 14-21, I doubt the results would be drastically different for a different demographic.