Google Chrome is Bad for Writers & Bloggers

So Google has released a new browser called Chrome. But I’ll never use it. And it’s because Chrome’s EULA wishes to take anything that I type into my browser window (which would include, ahem, this blog entry, any email I access through the Web, and just about anything else involving the Internet) and give it to Google for them to use for any purpose. From the EULA:

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

I should note that “Services” is defined as “your use of Google’s products, software, services, and web sites,” but this is, to say the least, disingenuous. Anyone who uses Chrome will technically own the copyright, but who needs copyright when the Chrome user effectively gives up her right to distribute this content in all perpetuity and without royalties? So if Joyce Carol Oates is using Chrome and types an email to someone, she “owns” the copyright. But Google has the right to use anything that Ms. Oates types into Chrome for any purpose. And if someone reveals highly personal information through Chrome — like, say, the details of one’s sex life, an early draft of a novel, or some very embarrassing incident — Google has the right to reprint this anywhere. And not only do they get to reprint this content, but they can likewise generate revenue from it. Revenue that should, by all rights, go to the person who authored the content in the first place.

You have to hand it to Google. They’ve hit upon a way to take what’s out there on the Web, monetize the content for their own purpose while screwing over the person who labored over the words. Will we see new clauses in publishing contracts contain provisos requesting authors not to use Google Chrome as a web browser? After all, if Google can reprint it, this pretty much eliminates intellectual property rights.

Is this Google’s crafty way of getting around all the YouTube lawsuits and angry publishers? After all, if the content was submitted through Google Chrome, well, Google can reuse it. So if Stephenie Meyer slips up again and she was using Chrome, well, she’ll have no grievance against Google when Google “reprints” it for its “Services.”

So use Google Chrome if you’re perfectly happy watching your words taken by Google. Use Google Chrome if you don’t value your work.

[UPDATE: Based on the public outcry, Google has amended Section 11.1 of the EULA to read as follows:

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.

The offending sentence has been removed. It's very heartening to see that Google takes these concerns seriously. And because of this, I shall probably take Chrome for a test drive sometime this weekend.]

“Am I Being Detained?”

The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

A Tumultuous Privacy of Storm

The Register: “This appears to be more than a mere argument in support of the constitutionality of a Congressional email privacy and access scheme. It represents what may be the fundamental governmental position on Constitutional email and electronic privacy – that there isn’t any. What is important in this case is not the ultimate resolution of that narrow issue, but the position that the United States government is taking on the entire issue of electronic privacy. That position, if accepted, may mean that the government can read anybody’s email at any time without a warrant.”

And They Wonder Why We Raise a Stink About Habeas Corpus

Washington Post: “The U.S. government is collecting electronic records on the travel habits of millions of Americans who fly, drive or take cruises abroad, retaining data on the persons with whom they travel or plan to stay, the personal items they carry during their journeys, and even the books that travelers have carried, according to documents obtained by a group of civil liberties advocates and statements by government officials.”

Oh, and, by the way, as of February 2008, if you leave to and from the United States by air or by sea, you will need special clearance from the same Automated Targeting System listed in this article. Your name will be fed into a computer and, before you can get your boarding pass, your name will be checked against a “risk factor” saved for forty years in the computers. The DHS, of course, has been sketchy about what details it has been collecting.

Take Care with the Noun Phrases You Type Into the Ether

Siva Vaidhyanathan: “Google’s not required to ensure that the search engine that would guide people to these books actually delivers good results. Google is not required to make sure that the scanning process actually gets every page of every book and makes it all clear. There are no requirements that Google use metadata effectively or the metadata certainly already attached to books. There’s no guarantee that Google will offer people the best possible results for their queries. And most importantly, Google does not do anything to protect user confidentiality and in the world of book searching this is a really important factor. It is an essential part of librarianship. It is an essential part of the ethics and policies of libraries. Users should not feel that their use of any sort of research material might someday come to light and be misinterpreted as some sort of nefarious activity. We should feel comfortable in our information seeking habits. And I’m afraid that Google corralling so many of our information seeking habits puts us all at risk.” (via Ron Silliman)

Google: Enabling Stalkers, One Feature at a Time

Google: “Starting today, Google Maps users can add a map to their website or blog just by copying & pasting a snippet of HTML. This new functionality enables Google Maps users to share and disseminate geographic information in the same way that YouTube users share videos. Bloggers and webmasters no longer need an API key or knowledge of Java Script to put a Google Map on their website or blog.”

I’m sure J.D. Salinger and Thomas Pynchon will really appreciate this new feature once some bozo copies and pastes a snippet of HTML somewhere.

A Special Message from Google

Our Business Referral Representative program has proven so successful that we are, at long last, launching our Total Information Acquisition program. In our ongoing efforts to expand the Google database and invade the privacy of everyone, and leave nothing whatsoever left to the human imagination, Google wants to know everything about you, your friends, your peers, and it’s all fun and profitable! As a Total Information Acquisition Representative, you’ll visit local residences to collect information. It doesn’t matter if you break into these homes or befriend people. We’ll simply need you to collect data. What kind of furniture do they have? What’s in their refrigerators? When are they likely to be awake? Boxers or briefs? Are they slobs or neatniks?

We’ll then use all this information for Google Maps, Google AdWords, and a new social network called Google Humiliation. Just be sure to take a few digital photos of the residences that will appear in the Google Maps listing along with physical measurements and personal secrets that might be interesting. After the visit, you submit the residences’ info and photo(s) to Google through your Local Homeland Referrals Office, and we’ll pay you up to $10 for each listing that is approved by Google and verified by at least three of the Resident’s acquaintances.

In fact, if you met a Resident at a bar and secure your way into the Resident’s apartment (what you do with the Resident sexually is really none of our concern, although it would help Google tremendously if you could tell us how they are in the sack!), we’ll pay you extra!

All you need to be a successful Total Information Acquisition Representative is a passion for helping the world know more about Residents, a love of the Internet (some knowledge of how paparazzi photographers invade the lives of celebrities is great, too), and access to a computer and a digital camera.

Remember that Google is your friend. Forget the Fourth Amendment. As we all know, this quaint notion of being “secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects” is on the way out. This is the wave of the future! Together, we will disseminate every bit of knowledge about every person on the planet!

Privacy Invasion Spills Over Into Print

The Google Maps Street View was one thing. But a certain magazine, which I will not name or link to, has offered a map of New York for literary enthusiasts. The map in question contains both an address and a photo of a notable author’s house. I’m fairly certain that the magazine did not obtain permission from the author to do this. And I have a problem with this. Are not authors — or anyone, for that matter — entitled to some reasonable privacy? Granted, the true stalker lunatic will go to any lengths to discover a phone number or an address. But how is aiding and abetting a stalker a good thing? Is Gawker Stalker responsible for this trend? Who benefits by the dissemination of such private information? Or are we simply becoming a less private society and am I the only guy who gives a shit about it?

Sudafed Users Are Terrorists!

I went to pick up some Sudafed this morning and was shocked that I had to show my photo ID. Apparently, thanks to the PATRIOT Act, your driver’s license is taken, with all of the information recorded into a computer, and only then, after this five minutes of nonsense, are you able to purchase your Sudafed. The effort was initiated in October to go after methamphetamine labs. But this is an utterly debasing thing to go through when you’re standing in line feeling like shit and all you really want to do is rest up and get better. The other thing: does my name go into a fucking database because I had the temerity to want to cure my fucking cold? And is this really the best way to fight meth labs when these drug cooks are going to get their ephedrine elsewhere?

When Revelations Go Bad

When Simon Owens tried out his Craig’s List social experiment, he was discreet and respectful enough to edit out names, phone numbers, and photographs out of the responses.

Unfortunately, as Andy Baio reports, Jason Fortuny (a blogger who I will not link to) conducted the same experiment, but published his unedited results to a public forum. They contained photos, contact information, and the like. As a result, many of the men who responded to Fortuny’s stunt have begged him to remove the entries. Fortuny has refused. Here then is the moral question: How many marriages, relationships, and professional lives will be uprooted because of Fortuny’s antics? Because Fortuny derives great pleasure in ruining people?

This is unconscionable and invasive. But it is also, unfortunately, well within the law. Unless the victims of this hoax might somehow prove that they were misled or coerced, or suffered considerable emotional distress, I cannot see any restitution here. Further, even if a prosecuting attorney obtains a protective order, what is to prevent the information posted by Fortuny from being disseminated or mirrored somewhere else?

My own policy with emails and comments is to keep any personal information conveyed to me along these lines private or, should someone post a public comment with this kind of information, I will replace the numerals with Xs after I have approved it and released it to the public. I do this out of courtesy to any and all individuals who may not understand the virulent nature of the Internet.

It is Fortuny’s ethics here which must come into question. The Internet has long been a place where people have trusted the confessional timbre of email, shooting off incredibly personal messages and information through IMs and messages. But sent to the wrong party or through the wrong conduits, an innocuous revelation or a step forward at intimacy might prove to have serious ramifications.

Someone was going to come along and do something along these lines, exposing the dark underbelly of this mostly amicable beast. But this may set an unfortunate precedent. Will Fortuny’s stunt apply to online journalism? Will personal information extend to the infamous Apple case?

I will be watching these results with interest and concern.

Today in Investigative Journalism: A Widow Who Loves Her Micturating Dogs

New York Times: “No. 4417749 conducted hundreds of searches over a three-month period on topics ranging from ‘numb fingers’ to ‘60 single men’ to ‘dog that urinates on everything.’…It did not take much investigating to follow that data trail to Thelma Arnold, a 62-year-old widow who lives in Lilburn, Ga., frequently researches her friends’ medical ailments and loves her three dogs.”

One Step Closer to Bester’s “The Demolished Man”

Forbes: “Carnegie Mellon researcher Tanja Schultz says one possible application is a “silent” cell phone that can detect and translate unuttered phrases like ‘I’m in a meeting’ and ‘I’ll call you later.’ Japan’s NTT Docomo is working on a subvocal mobile phone operated by sensors worn on the fingers and thumb. A speaker grips his face, putting the sensors in contact with the cheekbone, upper lip and chin. So far Docomo’s system recognizes the five Japanese vowels 90% of the time.” (via MeFi)

Books Subject to Governmental Approval

The Book Standard reports that the House of Representatives have added a clause to the Children’s Safety and Violent Crime Reduction Act of 2005 in which books which offer “any visual depiction of simulated or sexually explicit conduct” or are “produced in whole or in part with materials which have been mailed or shipped in interstate or foreign commerce, or is shipped or transported or is intended for shipment or transportation in interstate or foreign commerce” must, as with pornography, report every performer portrayed in a visual depiction. In other words, if a photograph appears in a book depicting anything considered “sexually explicit” (a term that isn’t even defined by H.R. 4472, which suggests that this could apply to an innocuous image of two men kissing), the government wants to track your participation.

Of course, such a Stalinistic tactic does not, in fact, run directly counter to the First Amendment, but this does raise serious questions about whether certain performers might be audited or “investigated” simply because their work is considered “sexually explicit” by the U.S. government. Consider an author like William T. Vollmann, who regularly features provactive photographs by Ken Miller in his work, in an effort to chronicle the poor and the prostitutes. Will future editions of The Royal Family now have to be eviscerated of these photos?

Note to the Government

I am not afraid, you bastards. Accuse my friends and me of terrorism all you want. But I will not let it sully the sting of my pen. If that means going to jail and being tortured by atavistic goons without due process, all because I called Bush a moron (is that really terrorism?), then so be it.

Blind Zeal as Expertise

Timothy Naftali, a so-called “expert” in the history of intelligence and spying, has no clue what he’s talking about. The following interview is intended to be a discussion attempting to understand the complexities on why the U.S. government would need to skirt around the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, but Naftali’s gushing tone, to say nothing of his lack of nuance in examining the issue in question is baffling in its stupidity. Coming across as a big-time NSA booster on Morning Edition, Naftali let loose the following priapic monomania this morning. Amazingly, he’s an associate professor.

A: If you accept, and I do, that there is the possibility of al Qaeda or its affiiates having cells in this country, how do you monitor these people? If they’re changing their cell phones and if they’re moving from computer to computer. How do you do that?

Q: The PATRIOT Act appeared to address that very problem.

A: No, it didn’t.

Q: Made it possible to give a warrant that will follow an individual from one telephone to ano–

A: But what if you don’t know the individual, Steve? What if you’re looking for patterns of behavior? What if you don’t know the individual’s name?

Q: What if you don’t know the number? How do you follow one person around? From going into Wal-Mart and buying a cell phone?

A: You don’t follow one person around. What you do is you listen to conversations.

Q: You mean you listen to a million random conversations hoping to hear this guy?

A: The White House is saying that it is very careful not to listen to point-to-point conversations in the United States. From one point in the United States to another. But there is a way through data mining to analyze where calls originate and where they go. This is a — basically an attempt to look for patterns, use of words, length of telephone calls, length of email, frequency of these communications, both voice and data, and then to look for suspicious patterns. And how do you define suspicious? I don’t know. But the now Deputy Director of National Intelligence, Michael Hayden, has talked about there being a subtle soft trigger. A computer learns what’s suspicious and then it will act on its own. So what we’re talking about is a higher order — a smarter Google if you will.

* * *

In other words, the hard line being espoused here is a technological miracle for an unspecified and unproven pattern for unspecified profiles. Not even Naftali can determine what patterns might constitute “suspicious” behavior and yet he’s gung-ho to micturate on the Fourth Amendment entirely on speculation. I mean, am I suspicious because I happen to enjoy shopping for groceries at 3 AM? Or because I send emails at odd hours? Or, for that matter, have the courtesy to reply to people with lengthy emails? (Insomniacs, of course, are the most suspicious Americans of all.)

What makes Naftali sound even more like an insouciant fundamentalist is his notion that a self-learning computer that will magically stumble upon the right formula. In the interview, he doesn’t cite a single example why we should subscribe to this methodology, although he offers oblique references to John Poindexter’s TIA project (addressed in this letter).

Make no mistake: this is blind zeal masquerading poorly as analysis. It fails to offer a multilateral take on the subject. It fails to offer a solid benchmark on the current state of intelligence, whether there’s too much spying or not enough. It fails to consider the American concern for privacy or Plamegate or the considerable intelligence that the Bush administration failed to check up on before 9/11, well before the PATRIOT Act. (Could it be that the DOJ, the FBI and the CIA was doing just fine before any of this craziness went down and that the incompetence from top-level administration is the cause? Why is it that nobody bothers to dwell on this question?) It is exactly the kind of dangerous “expertise” that doesn’t even scratch the surface of what’s wrong.

Why Current MTA Procedures Operating In Clear Violation of the Fourth Amendment Are a Terrible and Invasive Idea

Languor Management: “He was getting more and more suspicious of me, and aggressive. I couldn’t for the life of me think of anything I could have possibly done but I was scared to death about what would happen to me. I didn’t even want to move because I thought any sudden movement might give him a reason to shoot me….Why was he putting me through this? Why should I have to tell him that I hoping to have sex tonight? “

Reason #426 Why Ohio Sucks

EXHIBIT: The Ohio Patriot Act

When You’re a Fink, You’re a Fink All the Way

If you have a Yahoo email account and you eventually find yourself writing about something that might be considered inexplicably dangerous (if not now, then perhaps in the not-too-distant future), you may want to ensure that your personal information is fabricated. Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang has confirmed that Yahoo provided journalist Shi To’s private information to Chinese authorities. The journalist was then sentenced to ten years in prison. What was Shi’s crime? He dared to spell out media restrictions in place within China. Former President Bill Clinton also weighed in at an Internet forum, saying, “The internet, no matter what political system a country has, and our political system is different from yours, the internet is having significant political and social consequences and they cannot be erased.” He then went into a panegyric about how none of this had any negative effects on e-commerce.

It’s good to know that in the Clinton and Yang vision of the Internet, business comes first and that political extradition and freedom of speech is as expungable as a spam message.

And So the Invasiveness Begins…

The FBI has issued the first demand for library records under the Patriot Act. The library in question is apparently somewhere in the Bridgeport, Connecticut. The ACLU said that it was barred from disclosing the identity of the specific location or the details of the FBI demand. But if the ACLU can’t get this out into the public, perhaps some enterprising citizen journalist (who has more time than I do today) might want to start making some calls. Here are some places to start.

Big Google is Watching You

Google Scholar is a very helpful resource. Say you need to find an obscure or out-of-print book. Well, punch it into Google Scholar, type in your ZIP code, and, shazam, a listing of libraries shows up. Even so, given that Google is the top dog search engine and has been criticized for its very serious privacy concerns, one wonders why Google would introduce a feature that bears such a striking correllation to related attributes within the PATRIOT Act.

The PATRIOT Act authorizes the Department of Justice (and its related entities) to keep track of booklists that citizens check out at libraries or buy from bookstores, presumably based on the silly logic that anyone who reads A Catcher in the Rye (which would include a sizable cluster of high school students) is going to transform overnight into Mark David Chapman.

But Google Scholar fits the bill so exactly that one wonders what relationship the company might have with the government. If Google’s infamous cookie (which resides on a system until 2037) remains in play through Google Scholar, the big question is why does Google need this data? To service its users or to profit while compromising an individual’s privacy? What happens when a teenager trying to come to terms with his sexual orientation looks for a book on the subject to see if his urges are biologically normal? None of these very sizable concerns is addressed in the FAQ.

Harbingers of Horrific Plans

Bad reviews? Shoddy placement? Nope. Bruce Stockler says the biggest obstacle to publicizing a book is obituaries

The University of Michigan has launched a 20,000 volume digital collection. It uses a system similar to Amazon’s Search Inside the Book feature (minus the page limitation) and you can search through the entire collection for a specific word or phrase. But, unfortunately, there isn’t an author search. Some of the gems I’ve found include Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s Rienzi, The Last of the Roman Tribunes (with such sterling prose as “Rienzi made no reply; he did not heed or hear him — dark and stern thoughts, thoughts in which were the germ of a mighty revolution, were at his heart.”), Seward Hilter’s Sex Ethics and the Kinsey Reports (”The females of the lower educational levels, Kinsey notes, had more often been afraid that masturbation would mean physical harm and also that it was abnormal and unnatural. We should note, however, that the women of the lower educational levels tend to marry at earlier ages, and that more of them might masturbate eventually if they postponed marriage to later ages.” Oh really?), the complete works of Coleridge, Guizot’s The History of Civilization, and some Thackeray.

De Niro and Scorsese are set to write a joint memoir. The director and star report that they have a unique writing approach. Before they begin each chapter, the two of them duke it out over who gets to sit in front of the computer. So far, Scorsese reports that he’s only lost one ear and three fingers.

Slightly old news, but the FBI reports to be on the lookout for almanac carriers. Anyone carrying an Information Please may very well be plotting terrorist activities, especially if the books are “annotated in suspicious ways.”

edrants