Let me say that I believe in freedom of speech, but it has to be balanced with responsibility.
I believe in responsibility, but it has to be balanced with free speech. Unexpurgated, offensive speech. The alternative is stagnation and stupidity.
I am no fan of honorifics, but congratulations to Sir Salman Rushdie.
LimeWire is supposedly installed on nearly one in five PCs. “Current installation share” for filesharing programs according to BigChampagne and PC Pitstop:
1. LimeWire (18.63%)
2. Azureus (3.43%)
3. uTorrent (3.07%)
4. BitTorrent (2.58%)
5. Opera (2.15%)
6. Ares (2.15%)
7. BitComet (1.99%)
8. eMule (1.98% )
9. BearShare (1.64%)
10. BitLord (1.38%)
It’s a little odd to include all those BitTorrent clients, given their very different nature. All but LimeWire, Ares, eMule, and BearShare are BT-only (their P2P download component — Opera is mainly a web browser, with built in BT support). Recent versions of LimeWire and Ares also support BT, so another provocative headline would be “LimeWire the most popular BitTorrent client?”
Most recent (for surveys publishing numbers in 2007) usage share for Firefox ranges from 11.69% to 14.32%. Of course usage share is very different from installation share (compare Opera installation share above at 2.15% and recent usage share between 0.58% and 0.77%) and P2P filesharing and download clients have different usage patterns, so any comparison is apples to oranges. However, if one could extrapolate from the Opera numbers for installation and usage, LimeWire is not more popular than Firefox.
LimeWire is still impressively popular. This probably is mostly due to open source being less susceptible to censorship than proprietary software (which has a half-life shortened by legal attack in the case of P2P). Still, I’d like to see LimeWire gain more recognition as an open source success story than it typically gets.
The really interesting speculation concerns how computing (and ok, what may or may not have been called Web 2.0) would have been different had P2P not been under legal threat for seven or so years. Subject for another post. We can’t go back, but I think it’s very much worth trying to get to a different version of there.
Yes, I know about significant digits. I’m just repeating what the surveys say.
76% say “No. Dirty election tactics will reach new depths.” in a San Francisco Chronicle online poll (no permalink, see image at right).
The article linked from the poll concerns a video mashup of Apple’s 1984 advertisement with Hillary Clinton as Big Brother and Barack Obama as Apple.
Fortunately the article does not mention calls to suppress speech, but they will doubtless come as this form becomes more important and opportunists see polls such as the above. It may have been possible to suppress speech in the broadcast media without tremendous collateral damage. On the net, I doubt it.
Hillary 1984 works about as well as the original and captures Clinton saying nothing. But neither ad works for me — both scream “same as the old boss.” The woman with the sledgehammer needed inside help to get so close and is either part of an elite faction or the dupe of one. Apple is just another proprietary vendor and I’m sure Obama can say nothing as well as any politician.
For the record I prefer Obama over Clinton though Bill Richardson is my preferred Democrat candidate for temporary dictator of the U.S.
I hate John Edwards (the whine plus the drawl really gets at me), but in truth it’s a narrow field.
On Blogging Where Speech Isn’t Free, moderated by Jon Lebkowsky…
Robert Faris of the OpenNet Initiative showed a worldwide filtering map and a Venn diagram grouping jurisdictions according to whether they filter for political, security, or social content. Most that filter do so for all three. Filtering is very hard, so excepting a few jurisdictions that disallow net connectivity period, most attempt to induce a climate of self-censorship.
Ethan Zuckerman showed the Freedom House map of press freedom and pointed out that blogging takes off in moderately repressive jurisdictions that restrict the formal press, sending journalists to the net.
Shahed Amanullah said there are many Muslims in the US who want to debate radicals on their websites but are afraid to because merely visiting those sites will catch the eye of US security. He also said that among other things we can do is to highlight the persecution of bloggers in the Muslim world.
Shava Nerad took on a number of FAQs about Tor.
Jasmina Tesanovic mentioned the popularity of Blog B92, which has a very impressive Alexa rank (1,376) considering its small and relatively poor potential audience (Serbia). The site is hosted in the Netherlands.
A questioner gave examples of the importance of expatriate media about repressive jurisdictions, which Zuckerman reiterated, using the term “fourth world” to describe expatriates and the stateless.
I completely forgot to ask a question about the overlap between filtering for political and economic protectionist (i.e., copyright) purposes.
Update 20070313: Read Zuckerman’s in-depth panel writeup.
Kareem Amer is an Egyptian blogger jailed for pathetically moderate reformist writings. Check out his blog (Arabic), freekareem.org and sign the petitions for his release.
Anti-scientology activist Keith Henson is in custody again and subject to scientology death threats. Vist Operating Thetan (Keith Henson News) and Digg the story.
Wikileaks, currently vapor, may be a joke. If Wikileaks is not a joke and if it successfully exposes a large number of secrets, I’d find it hilarious to see this happening on a public website and without financial incentives. P2P, digital cash, information markets, and crypto anarchy? Nope, just a wiki and a communinty.
WikiLeaks will be the outlet for every government official, every bureaucrat, every corporate worker, who becomes privy to embarrassing information which the institution wants to hide but the public needs to know. What conscience cannot contain, and institutional secrecy unjustly conceals, WikiLeaks can broadcast to the world.
Untraceable Digital Cash, Information Markets, and BlackNet (1997, but these ideas spread widely in the early 1990s):
One of the most interesting applications is that of “information markets,” where information of various kinds is bought and sold. Anonymity offers major protections for both buyers and sellers, in terms of sales which may be illegal or regulated. Some examples: corporate secrets, military secrets, credit data, medical data, banned religious or other material, pornography, etc.
Why is more information not leaked on the net already? The technology exists to do so anonymously and has for a long time. Why is there not (or to what extent is there) a market for secrets? Again, the technology exists.
Perhaps lack of the relevant institutions in each case. One could email secrets or post to a blog anonymously, but what then? Will anyone notice? One could want to sell secrets, but how to find a buyer?
If Wikileaks succeeds it will be because it will provide, or rather its community will be, the relevant institution. Again from the Wikileaks FAQ:
WikiLeaks opens leaked documents up to a much more exacting scrutiny than any media organization or intelligence agency could provide: the scrutiny of a worldwide community of informed wiki editors.
Instead of a couple of academic specialists, WikiLeaks will provide a forum for the entire global community to examine any document relentlessly for credibility, plausibility, veracity and falsifiability. They will be able to interpret documents and explain their relevance to the public. If a document is leaked from the Chinese government, the entire Chinese dissident community can freely scrutinize and discuss it; if a document is leaked from Somalia, the entire Somali refugee community can analyze it and put it in context.
I have not read the Wikileaks email archived at cryptome.
Do you eagerly await confirmation of rumors and surprises from on high, despite abuse?
You have a problem. When it comes to controlling your computing environment (i.e., much of your communication, your work, your life), you’re stupid.
Sniff the wind in Cupertino or trust those who claim to have seen top secret documents? Or read the code, developer mailing lists, wikis, planets, or trust those who have? Your choice.
When conformists’ slogan is “think different” (the white collar version of “no fear“), it’s time for revolution.
…
Each time Macworld rolls around I remember, too late, to organize a zombie flash mob for the occasion. Or rather mention the idea to cacophony people.
An observation I’ve wanted to make for awhile, given the right occasion, is that the common practice of nothing that something is not safe for work is the bottom-up, liberal, mature, and responsible analog of content rating (e.g., MPAA ratings).
NSFW is a friend telling you that viewing a link may not be appropriate in some contexts, but use your judgement. Content rating is a bureacracy telling you that viewing of some content by certain people is prohibited and perhaps enforced legally or technologically.
Of course content rating may be used to aid in making an informed choice and NSFW hints could in theory be enforced, but nevertheless I think each’s common use and source is illustrative of something.
The occasion for mentioning this is someone proposing machine-readable NSFW annotation. I don’t have an opinion of the utility of this yet, but it is fun to see a much improved (technically) proposal come just five hours after the first.
Last month I watched The Bridge, a scientology docudrama, after hearing about it on Boing Boing. It is a pretty well done and low key film, considering the nuttiness of scientology.
Copyright is one of the weapons scientology uses to hide the hilarious absurdity of its beliefs, so it is no surprise that The Bridge has has been taken down (at least some of the copies) from YouTube, Google, and the Internet Archive.
I remember that it was published to the Archive under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license. Sadly http://www.archive.org/details/BrettHanoverTheBridge is not in the Wayback Machine nor WebCite, so I can’t demonstrate this. If I am correct, the filmmaker has no cause to stop non-commercial distribution, as CC licenses are irrevocable.
If you can’t find the film on the lightnet fire up a filesharing client (I recommend LimeWire) and click on the magnet link below to start your P2P search and download.
I was surprised for a moment to see that sex and porn related articles are among the most popular on Wikipedia. From a list of the 100 most viewed articles on Wikipedia this month:
| Views per day | Percent | Rank and Title |
| 18500 ± 134% | 0.0724% | 7. List of sex positions |
| 18000 ± 136% | 0.0705% | 8. Pornography |
| 17000 ± 140% | 0.0666% | 10. List of gay porn stars |
| 15500 ± 147% | 0.0607% | 13. Sexual intercourse |
| 14500 ± 152% | 0.0568% | 15. List of female porn stars |
| 14500 ± 152% | 0.0568% | 16. List of big-bust models and performers |
| 13000 ± 160% | 0.0509% | 19. Kama Sutra |
| 12000 ± 167% | 0.0470% | 24. Masturbation |
| 11500 ± 171% | 0.0450% | 34. Human sexuality |
| 10500 ± 178% | 0.0411% | 38. Oral sex |
| 9000 ± 193% | 0.0352% | 56. Category:Female porn stars |
| 9000 ± 193% | 0.0352% | 63. Breast |
| 8500 ± 198% | 0.0333% | 70. Anal sex |
| 8000 ± 204% | 0.0313% | 78. Sex |
Of course I shouldn’t have been surprised. Wikipedia content should more or less mirror that of the Internet, media in general, and human thoughts and conversation: sex is big, but not dominant.
I haven’t looked at a normal encyclopedia in ages, but I suspect sex would be seriously underrepresented.
Now I want to know whether Arabic Wikipedia has articles on sex (there is currently no interlanguage link to the Arabic Wikipedia from the English Sex article) and if so are they relatively even more popular than their English counterparts. If not I smell opportunity for Arabic-literate Wikipedians.
Scientology-The_Bridge.mp4