I am amazed at the difference a decade at CES can make. More than a third of the world’s population currently has access to the internet and we’ve seen both the good and bad of this - and I’m not just talking about bandwidth issues. 2011 began with the Arab Spring and ended with Occupy Everything.
Through connected tablets, ultrabooks, laptops and phones people took to the web to express their discontent and took to the streets to enact change. There were demonstrations in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Libya, Algeria, Spain, Greece, India, Manhattan and even Oakland. Through blogs, file streaming, file sharing and status updates, regular people were mass distributing their frustrations. While there is far more diversity as new voices speak out, oppressive authority groups have also taken the decade to learn how to quell and track some of the best and the brightest.
ENSURING YOUR ONLINE FREEDOM OF SPEECH
This post isn’t about CES, there’s already plenty of that coverage here. This post is about protecting online freedom of speech and privacy in an age where technology launches have preceded best practices and acknowledged consequences.
In this 3 part post, I want to talk about three stop gap measures to ensuring freedom of speech including:
1. Protecting Against Site Bans;
2. Circumventing Service Outages; and,
3. Maintaining your Online Privacy.
SITE BANS: A CAT AND MOUSE GAME
So let’s talk about site bans. While countries like Egypt and Syria have certainly had their fair share of site bans in the last year, the Chinese government is the most notorious for site bans to the point that many refer to its online environment as the Great Firewall of China. In 2008 I had the pleasure of working behind the scenes on an interview with Chinese activist and often banned artist Ai WeiWei.
It was a great experience, but we as Americans made one critical error. We’d taken site bans for granted and chosen to offer embed codes to our interview instead of taking the time to upload source files. This makes it easy for the Chinese government to ban a single URL and stop others from watching the stream. Many audience members were afraid to embed us knowing that they might find their links dead by morning. Our faith in YouTube-style technology had screwed us.
If we’d provided downloadable files to viewers, we would have decentralized the message source and the government would have scrambled to identify multiple distribution nodes rather than just the one. The lesson here is to offer your content in its entirety to as many people as you can before others can attempt to suppress it.
Rather than making it a cat and mouse game, it’s best to make it one cat to many mice.
Next Post: SERVICE OUTAGES - PART 2/3
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is brainstorming with his community in opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) - an act that will be voted on later this week by the Senate’s House Judiciary Committee. Also known as H.R. 3261, SOPA would allow the US Department of Justice and copyright owners to seek court orders against websites accused of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. Those determined to be so-called piracy enablers may find themselves cut off from ad networks, search engines and ISPs. What’s more, unauthorized streaming could resort in felony charges. Facebook, Google and the all-powerful Justin Bieber have all spoken out against the bill and Jimmy Wales is currently considering blanking out Wikipedia’s pages in protest of the Act. Wikipedia’s users appear supportive of operation blank out as proven by this thread, but SOPA proponents have moved quickly to enact the bill and it’s tough to say which way the pendulum will swing.
To weigh in on Wikipedia’s opposition strategy visit the contributor thread and leave your comments. If you’re a tech entrepreneur in opposition to SOPA, send a letter to your representatives and senators through the newly launched Engine Advocacy site.
I’ll admit it. I like pushing buttons both physically and metaphorically. I have been known to disappoint children by forcing them to wait while I boggart the interactive exhibits at the Exploratorium and I’m visibly giddy by the internet of things. That being said, I’m not so easily amused as to push the same button continuously unless I’m incentivized by a fake Mayoral inauguration or jellybeans. This is why I’ve had such a hard time understanding how barcode campaigns can draw in repeat users. But then again, perhaps I’m just not the target user.
In 2009 I wrote an article about QR Codes for Mashable and the story is still receiving comments despite the fact that QR codes themselves rarely see use in North America outside of the shipping industry. The funny thing is that every year a new version of the QR code seems to pop up in marketing articles in the hopes that it will help brands further promote, amplify and sell their messages. So clearly, someone out there believes that
A few years ago it was the Microsoft’s Aztec-looking Tag and today it’s the Social SnapTag — something Glamour Magazine claims generated over 500,000 impressions and 50,000 Facebook fans.
From a technical perspective, the one thing that makes Social SnapTag more appealing than Windows Tag or the traditional barcode or QR Code is that in addition to using their iPhone or Android apps, users can also scan tags by photographing them and sending them via text. Glamour plans on rolling out a March issue where readers will have the option of buying a product via the SnapTag and clicking on the FB like button to receive free shipping. The question is, can Glamour sustain reader enthusiasm for the tags even after they become a regular occurence in the publication?
