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Friday, June 15, 2007

Put your money where your mouth is

Money where your mouth is
Originally uploaded by earthdog.

Over the last couple of days I have been caught up in the thread about Flickr censoring their German users by not letting them turn off safe search. There is a long thread about the topic in the Flickr Help Forum. This story has been picked up a little by the media. It has made lots of blogs. It has gotten a lot of attention from Flickr users.

I understand that people are upset about their photos being blocked and not being able to see some pictures. I know as a user of Flickr I think the protest is good. I think it is good for people to put the heat on Flickr and Yahoo. In the end we are their customers. That is an asymmetric relationship. The customer's power is our ability make noise and leave Flickr.

There is a lot of energy on the Flickr Germany discussion. There are a lot of passionate people. I would love to see these people channel this energy to more serious Censorship issues. I know that some people will say that all censorship is serious. Honestly I think that journalists who are jailed or killed because of their work is more serious than people having photos blocked on flickr. I would love to see that energy transfered from Flickr to larger issues of Censorship.

Thomas Hawk said the he was going to put his money where his mouth was for Zooomr and adopt standards that Yahoo would not adopt. I invite Thomas Hawk, every blogger out there who has made a post about this, and every Flickr user who has protested about this to actually put their money where their mouth is. I would like to challenge all these people to donate money to Reporters without Borders or Committee to Protect Journalists. I would suggest that you donate a $1 for every blog post, forum posts, and protest picture you posted and five cents for every time you used the word 'Censorship' in this conversation.

I am not letting Flickr off the hook either. I think the company and the staff of Flickr should open up their wallets also. I think Flick should donate at least a dollar for every post on this thread. On this thread Heather said, In fact, we're all getting really uncomfortable that the words "flickr" and "censorship" are being jammed together with increasing frequency because that is _so far_ from the direction we're trying to move in. Putting down some cash to Reporters without Borders is one way to address that.

I have already donated $25 dollars to Reporters without Borders. I doubt that anyone will join me. I think that we should be able to raise $4000 for them, but I doubt that I will be able to raise $100 dollars. Tell me if you donate money in this effort.

Labels: censorship, charity, Committee to Protect Journalists, flickr, flickrpost, journalist, photo, Reporters without Borders

- Rich, 12:25 PM

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Censorship, Social Networking, Nation States, Web 2.0, and Flickr

There is currently a big hoopla over at flickr about Censorship of photos at Germany. It appears that you cannot turn off the Safe Search filter in Germany

Note: If your Yahoo! ID is based in Singapore, Germany, Hong Kong or Korea you will only be able to view safe content based on your local Terms of Service so won’t be able to turn SafeSearch off.

This has caused a big dust up at Flickr. There are lots of users that are upset about this. It seems to be going past the level of people who think "any content filtering on the internet is censorship" crowd. There seems to be a lot of average users who are up in arms about this. Flickr is all about sharing photos. It is easy to see why people are upset.

This is a great story, because there are lots of stories here. The ones that are the most interesting to me is how Flickr SafeSearch works. It is an all or nothing filtering system. You cannot mark why something should be filtered. Content is not marked for sex or violence, you cannot mark things not work safe, you cannot mark things based on appropriate age range. It is only marked for Safety Level.

1. Safety Level

* Safe - Content suitable for a global, public audience
* Moderate - If you're not sure whether your content is suitable for a global, public audience but you think that it doesn't need to be restricted per se, this category is for you
* Restricted - This is content you probably wouldn't show to your mum, and definitely shouldn't be seen by kids

The second story is how Flickr reacts to these things. With a community bases site things spread like wildfire. This fire has been burning for 18 hours. The users are all over the place why this happening. There seems to be no answer of why this happening. It is true that this has been happening while Flickr is on a world tour rolling out in new countries in new languages. It sounds like a bad way to launch a product. Right now the users are fending for themselves. There is no voice of the company saying why these things are happening.

All of the recent censorship issues at flickr seems this way. The users are on their own to speculate about why things happen. Flickr seems slow to respond of why things have happened. I think they need to show the users more of how the sausage is made. I think it would be better for the users to know how the company is going to react. At last we would not be in the dark.

The last interesting story here is about the future of world wide social networks. I think this story is just the tip of the iceberg. I think we are going to start to see the difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 in these kinds of censorship stories. If I just posted all of my photos on my website and those photos broke some German law, it would be very hard for Germany to act against me. They might block my website, but they cannot shut me down or have my message taken off the web. They would have a hard time taking me to court. If I am using a service like flickr, Germany have a much easier time using the force of law against that company. They have a much clearer path to shut them down or sue them to take action.

I am not sure what other web 2.0 companies do. I am not if any of them have a real global reach. I am not sure what would happens to people who break German laws on YouTube.

I think there are more of these stories to come. I think we are going to see more companies have to chose between their users and local laws. It will be interesting to see this play out. What will Flickr do? What will other web 2.0 companies do? What is the right thing to do and what will be done?

Labels: censorship, flickr, Germany, law, social network, Web 2.0

- Rich, 5:03 PM

Sunday, June 10, 2007

Take that FCC

I am happy to hear the The Courts Rebuff the FCC on Indecency. I am one of the people who things the FCC can only regulate the airwaves because they are a public resource. They should not be regulating the content on cable. They can be regulating other parts of the cable business, like the monopoly aspect or technical aspects. I think that the first amendment should apply to cable content.

“We are very pleased with the court’s decision and continue to believe that the government regulation of content serves no purpose other than to chill artistic expression in violation of the First Amendment,” said Scott Grogin, a senior vice president at Fox. “Viewers should be allowed to determine for themselves and their families, through the many parental control technologies available, what is appropriate viewing for their home.”

I am tired of people saying that television has to be made safe for their children. I do not want to make the world child safe. If you do not want your children to see these things, you have choices. Do not limit my choices because you want to limit when television shows air. This is what I think the true small government republican stance should be.

Labels: business, FCC, freedom of speech, government, indecency

- Rich, 10:27 PM

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