12 December, 2009
After announcements by Google’s Eric Schmidt around privacy, which I think can basically be summed up as ‘act like your parents/god/all-powerful being of you choice can see what you are to at all times and you’ll be fine’ approach. Followed by Facebook’s tightening up of privacy settings, which could potentially be summed up as a ‘sheesh you people are too dumb to protect yourselves, let us do it for you’ arse covering manoeuvre. My thoughts have turned to privacy in general, online in particular and the question running around my head right now is, why does privacy matter?
Earlier in the year I had a natter with a psychotherapist of some renown about online privacy, they firmly believe that in 10 to 15 years time that they will be seeing clients present with a whole new set of issues based on our increasing online use. Their fears were based around the importance of non-verbal communication and what will happen when the vast majority doesn’t include it. My concerns were more based on the rather huge likelihood of something stupid that you had done in the past coming to bite you on the arse at a crucial point in the future and what that would do to your self-image and esteem.
In a handily timed example, the wife of current Common speaker, Sally Bercow, announced her intention to stand as a labour MP in the upcoming election along with a slew of revelations about her younger self, which was regarded as an unusual step. It is possible that the decision was made to be so transparent after the media accused her of losing a job after lying about her degree but whatever the impetus, it was a brave and interesting move. Brave in that she has put herself up as the centre of judgemental gossip and voter derision, interesting in its unusualness. It will also be interesting to see what will happen in the run up to the election. Will her move have taken the sting out of any potential attacks by rivals or will her confessions be thrown in her face repeatedly?
Now it is possible that in twenty or so years, when the upcoming bunch of millennials are running the show no-one will care what you did in the past and if there are pictures of you as a teenage goth three sheets to wind hanging around the inernet, then that just adds colourful detail to your general windswept and interesting self and no more. Currently though we have the Boomers and Gen X in charge, and to them thought of (over)sharing every element of your life seems to border on insanity. Now as a society, we excel at accepting behaviour that previous generations held to be beyond the pale*, for example abortion, female suffrage and homosexuality. Perhaps these are overly weighty examples to support my hypothesis that potentially at some stag in the future we will accept that people do do stupid things in their youth, or indeed at any age, that we are not all beige clones dedicated to a future work self’s protection
Pale is the noun meaning ‘a stake or pointed piece of wood’. It is virtually obsolete now except in this phrase, but is still in use in the associated words paling (as in paling fence) and impale (as in Dracula movies).
The paling fence is significant as the term pale became to mean the area enclosed by such a fence and later just the figurative meaning of ‘the area that is enclosed and safe’. So, to be ‘beyond the pale’ was to be outside the area accepted as ‘home’. Source: The Phrase FInder
30 November, 2009
A British man has been arrested and cautioned for stealing 
virtual goods, in a case believed to be the first of its kind within the UK. The man is believed to have used phishing techniques to steal passwords and access user accounts and steal characters from popular online game RuneScape, reports the Times today.
That virtual goods have real value has long been known, have a look at this excellent paper from the University of Manchester on the phenomenon of gold farming, the practice of slavishly creating goods for sale, for more background. China recently banned the sale of virtual goods for real money and two men were arrested last year, having made around £150,000 gold farming for World of Warcraft. It looks like virtual crime is being taken seriously by the UK with the setting up of the Police Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU) in September 2008, a spokesman for which is quoted in today’s Time piece stating:
People who seek to destroy others online gaming experience could be committing criminal offences, leaving themselves liable to prosecution. The PCeU will continue to work with the industry and investigate these allegations where appropriate.
Though one could ask how effective PCeU has been if it’s taken a year for one person to be cautioned for the misuse of computers, one assumes that if he hadn’t got account access via a phishing attempts that there would have been no grounds for any action to be taken at all. The crux lies in how can you value something which is virtual in nature, many of the items in online games are the product of time spent in-game, either completing missions to win loot or through the acquisition of skills to create objects. What would be the real life equivalent, a piece of art has material value in that it is tangible, though of course a great piece has its price set way above the cost of paint and canvas but that is set by the well established Art market. A great piece of literature is similar, plus if stolen the tools for recreation lie in the original artistes head. Which is true to some extent with virtual goods, though there are the odd limited edition pieces that can never be recreated or won again.
I think one could also assume that if it were possible to put a price on virtual goods, you’d be able to get insurance already to cover them. A quick scoot of the net found a defunct company called You Play or We Pay, that opened in Jan 09 and was shut in April by the company behind World of Warcraft due to intellectual property infringement. It offered compensation for downtime, rather than lose of characters or goods.
So until there can be a financial figure, can there actually be a crime and do online users have any recourse to the law, or is losing a character or goods just to be viewed as a rather large inconvenience?
Also posted on Clicking & Screaming
20 November, 2009
…not me.
But I did come third, out of 12, from an inital long list of 100, which is fanfuckingtasticly amazingly wonderful, if you’ll pardon my tmesisic anglo saxon. There are many reasons why this is so, so I shall list them in easy to digest bullet points.*
- I’ve only been blogging since August 2008, a mere 15 months
- I don’t actually write that much
- When I do write, it’s normally about the spam comments I receive
- Or a rant on something bollocky in the social media sphere
- I think this ws the only short-listed blog that has a b(l)og standard wordpress theme
- Definitely the only one that features a picture of Bagpuss in the header.
- Most of the shortlist were company related
- I have an embarrasingly small readership**
You get the drift.
The most amazing thing is that the award brought together a couple of disparate factors in my life. Like, I suspect, many of you, most of my family and friends don’t quite understand what I do. I think to them having a blogger aroundthe place is like having a train spotter as a mate. You think it’s a bit weird and can’t see the attraction yourself, but it makes them happy so you don’t take the mick (too much), you occasionaly try to make small talk about it but quickly lose the will to live once they start talking and contemplate murder when they start drawing diagrams.
However the blog nomination proved that some people within the digital world like what I do and that my colleagues, family and friends, care enough for me to vote on something that makes no or little sense to them. Better still, they cared enough to pester their friends to vote for me too. How blessed am I?
So a huge thanks to all that voted and a massive thank you to the person who nominated me in the first place.
*also easy to write, for I has a few cobwebs this morning on which I am blame Chris Kempt’s hearing defect which translates, ‘No thanks, I’m fine.’ into, ‘a large rum and coke you say? Why, that would be spiffing!’
**not the size matters, t’is quality not quantity though it would be nice if one of you buggers left a comment every now and then to let know you’re still awake
So about this time last year I created a list of five social media wishes for Social Media over the coming 12 months, as the year now draws to a close I thought I should review them and make some new ones.
, more of this 
and this 
, hopefully doing this in the summer 
and this 
in the autumn, and the odd bit of this
on grass as well as on sand. Oh and blogging more, mebbe. And world domination.Natch.
