Nerd News Again

Some interesting stuff going on in the news lately:

Facebook changed its TOS, and everyone is freaking out.

The NYT sums it up thusly:

This month, when Facebook updated its terms, it deleted a provision that said users could remove their content at any time, at which time the license would expire. Further, it added new language that said Facebook would retain users’ content and licenses after an account was terminated.

But the real reason that Facebook did this doesn't appear to be all that nefarious. They updated their TOS to reflect the fact that comments a user makes on other's profiles, pictures, etc. may remain there even after they delete their account. (Sidenote: If you wanted to, while you still had the account, couldn't you manually delete the comments yourself? I'm not sure about this, and I realize that this could be quite labor-intensive if you wanted to wipe everything, but it's a possibility.)

Of course, the TOS change allows FB to do a lot more with our information, but will they? The thing is, people get very wound up about the privacy policies of the Googles and Facebooks of the world, but even with the expansive rights they give themselves in their contracts, these companies are somewhat reticent to do anything too bad just because they know that everyone is watching. Especially when they're on the record as saying "We certainly did not — and did not intend — to create any new right or interest for Facebook in users’ data by issuing the new terms." (Grammatically incorrect placement of dashes noted -- I wonder whether that is FB's fault or NYT's?) I think we should probably be more worried about privacy policies and TOS's of little tiny websites, and maybe ultimately figure out what constitutes unconscionable terms across the board. Because the little tiny websites are going to be way worse.

EFF wants to add a couple classes to the list of exceptions from the DMCA's general prohibition on circumventing technological protection measures (TPMs -- or "TMPs" if you're a blogger for the NYT) that protect copyrighted works.

The details of EFF's campaign are available here, and there is an NYT blogpost about it (and Apple's response) available here. At the moment, there are six exemption classes to the DMCA, and the two new ones that EFF is proposing involve liberating cellphones, as Zeb might say, and bypassing the TPMs on DVDs to use clips from them in non-infringing ways. At the moment, Apple is worried about the first one.

The author of the NYT blogpost takes issue with the fact that this will be decided by the Library of Congress (which is in charge of aspects of copyright law) because "the copyrighted software is really a small part of a cellphone and not really part of the fundamental issue." (The idea is that the fundamental issue is the more generic locking down of the phone.) But the author doesn't really expand on this point. I think, though, that this just illustrates the fundamental problem with the DMCA -- it really doesn't have much to do with copyright law. TPMs and other access controls are digital locks -- they're not intellectual property themselves. So yes, it's obviously silly to go down this avenue and try to get the Library of Congress to unlock iPhones -- but if you're going to work within the confines of the DMCA as it currently exists, that's what you have to do.

The comments on the blogpost were fun to read. Lots of them wanted us to just "buy another phone" if we didn't like Apple's EULA for the iPhone. Of course, the market for phones isn't unlimited, and there is tons of regulation of consumer devices in other spheres (if China is producing poison children's toys, should we just go buy other toys and not worry about it?), but whatever. A lot of comments seemed to get distracted by, and focus on, the headline (go to jail for jailbreaking!), even though this wasn't really what the article was about, nor is it particularly a concern in real life. One person (comment #8) thought that EFF should drop this fight and instead focus on developing a cellphone their parents could use (Jitterbug?). And comment #2 made a good point that was already made much better in the recent Mapple Simpsons episode. (No link; I'm sure if you've read this far you can find it on your own.)

The 1990s are over, and Apple is so the worst monopolist now. Compare the release of Windows Mobile 6.5, and its general openness.

Finally, the Pirate Bay trial began yesterday, and by today "half" the charges had been dropped.

My biggest concern with this is that there is a criminal trial being held alongside the civil one -- do the big media companies really need to eat up Sweden's resources with a criminal trial? Aren't they better suited to simply pursue a civil trial?

Of course, if TPB goes down, I'm sure there are many other torrent search engines/aggregators that are going to replace it. This is really just an ineffective way to pursue the problem. And, of course, if Swedish law prevents sites like TPB, there will always be somewhere else they can hide. Basically, if you want to run a site like TPB, you need some remote country somewhere with few laws and lots of internet bandwidth. The problem is, these two requirements don't overlap all that well. But the internet is spreading faster than TRIPS is, and I'm sure there will be potential Sweden-replacements. So this really is not a good solution for media conglomerates in the long run.

So that's todays news!