Swihart, Chen, Zhao, Karlsson 1

Tim Swihart, Ze Chen, Yuanyua Zhao and Cameron Karlsson

Professor Melanie Kohnen

English 1101

17 November 2010

Ownership of Information in the Digital Age

This manifesto is designed to help you, the reader, understand where our society is headed in terms of

both privacy/ownership of personal information and Copyright/Intellectual Property. It is written to

help you understand why where we are currently sliding along a slippery slope towards a possible

Orwellian future (if the current abusers of our copyright system get their wishes), and what needs to be

done to change things before we're past the point of redemption.

“Publicly Shared” should not be synonymous with “Privately Owned”. Scandals involving the

sale of personal information to corporations abound. Why should we, as the user and embodiment of

this data (the facts about whom we are), be required to sign over the rights to a copy of it in order to

access so many services of the internet? Our copyright system, while protecting content creators,

should foster creativity and innovation, and not suppress it. The Digital Age has enormous implications

on our society. It is revolutionizing the way we access information, distribute and create content, and

interact with our peers. So too should it revolutionize our draconian copyright system, which is in

desperate need of reform. The internet is a paradigm shift in how we deal with content and information,

yet our copyright system refuses to adapt itself to the times. Instead, special interest groups such as the

Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America, henceforth

referred to by their acronyms of MPAA and RIAA respectively, use our broken system to impose iron-

fisted regulations and limits, restricting the people's rights to create, remix, reuse and innovate unless

they pay heavy fines. As Lawrence Lessig wrote in Free Culture, “Never in history have fewer had a
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legal right to control more of the development of our culture than now”(170). “Common sense revolts

at the idea”(2), you would think. Why should websites own a copy of who we are? What right do they

have, to market our information or track us without our explicit consent? Why should representatives of

creators from bygone times have such expansive control over the creation of new content? “They

shouldn't” is the answer to all of these questions, as we hope you the reader will agree by the time this

argument is concluded.

We begin by taking a look at recent developments and events in the world of privacy and

personal information. Facebook and its many privacy debacles come quickly to the mind when those

words are mentioned. To quote the article Public ≠ Property of Facebook “the new 'enhanced pages'

which allows third-party websites, approved by facebook, to access your public information and your

connections — what you like, how you identify yourself, and who your friends are. In fact, Facebook

will happily share with external websites of their choosing anything shared under your 'everyone'

option, which of course, is the default setting.” The biggest problem, besides Facebook's continual

infringement upon the privacy of its users, is that by default everyone is opted in to these new services

(in this case, a form of “Facebook Connect” that shares personal data with partners chosen by

Facebook itself). A user isn't asked “Do you wish to opt-in to this service? X information from your

profile will be provided to Y service as a result.”, instead their “General Information” is automatically

shared with these websites without their express consent, and if they want to change it they must dig

through their privacy settings until they find the appropriate switch more or less. Facebook defines

General Information as “...your and your friends’ names, profile pictures, gender, connections, and any

content shared using the Everyone privacy setting.” (Welcome to Facebook). Not only that, but these

newest privacy “measures” allow your data, including sensitive data such as relationships and personal

photos, to be accessed by any application or quiz you run but by any application that one of your

friends run as well. Recently a group of apps were banned from Facebook for selling users data to a
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data broker, further highlighting how little control users have over their own data (Fowler

“Facebook says user...”). As soon as you sign up for Facebook, your data is no longer yours. The

users have placed their trust and their information into Facebook's dubious hands, and it isn't respecting

their wishes.

Facebook is not the only infringer of privacy on the net, however. The company Cisco recently

unveiled software designed to track customers and prospects on social media sites (including, but not

limited to Facebook, Twitter and many blogging sites) (Duffy “Cisco rolls out...”). This software, aptly

named SocialMiner is designed to allow the corporation to monitor status updates, blogs, and forum

posts of customers and be alerted of something pertaining to their brand. They then use this data, taken

from monitored conversations, to “engage those that require service”. While this may not sound overtly

awful, finding consumers in need of help and addressing their needs, but it has large implications on

our rights to privacy. Asking to be heard is not the same as asking to be recorded, categorized and

subsequently mined for relevant information. Without the poster's or user's consent. This is the key. If

the service asked consumers if they wished to be stalked online by the corporation, that would be a

different story. There is no such question however. In some cases, corporations will choose their

personal profit over their user's privacy, as was the case when Microsoft Internet Explorer developers

wanted to add increased privacy settings as the default in the newest edition of the browser and were

shot down by executives afraid of that making it tougher to profit from selling online ads(Wingfield,

“Micorsoft quashed...”), trading the privacy of their users for their own private profit.

Along the same vein as Cisco's software are web trackers, which many (even most) websites

install as you peruse the web. Some sites install more than 100 tracking tools at a time, according to a

study done by the Wall Street Journal(Angwin, “Personal Data...” “The New Gold...”). These represent

an emerging industry of data-gatherers whose business model is based around intensive surveillance.
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Not only recording their browsing habits and preferences, some of these tracking files can record

keystrokes and transmit them to a data-mining company to mine them for content and clues about

social connections. Many trackers can also recreate other trackers that a user may have purposefully

deleted, expressly against their wishes! Many of these profiles are so detailed as to be anonymous in

name only: they included age, race, marital status, gender, zip code, income, health concerns and even

recent purchases and favorite movies or TV shows. Senator Georgie LeMieux said in a Senatorial

hearing on privacy “[if] you were in the Gap, and the sales associate said to you, 'OK, from now on,

since you shopped here today, we are going to follow you around the mall and view your consumer

transactions,' no person would ever agree to that," and he is correct. Such an intimate tracking of the

customer amounts to stalking, and no consumer would ever agree to that. And so the websites aren't

asking. These files are installed without the user knowing, and all of this happens under the hood or

under the guise of “providing consumers with relevant ads”.

A personalized experience on the web isn't what's at stake. Our right to privacy is at stake here:

the user's right to go where they wish on the internet without the fear of corporations or other entities

following along behind them every step of the way. The right to know that our data is safe and not

being sold without our consent, or used for purposes which we do not agree to. This needs to change.

This information belongs to the users, and as such, sites like Facebook , products like SocialMiner, web

trackers, and any service that takes personal data for private use should have the express consent of the

individual from whom the information originated. There need to be dialogs, popups or signs that ask

the visitor “We would like to collect and sell to other businesses data about your use of our site. May

we?” Much of this personal information is required to be submitted before web services can be used,

and Terms of Service are often written in such verbose, mind-numbing language as to render the

average user helpless if they wish to understand what their data is going to be used for. Information

ownership in the digital age is becoming more and more corporate centric, at the expense of the
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common user and this needs to change.

Paralleling the decline in user control of their own personal information is the centralization of

the control of content by corporations or large media groups. The internet's cut and paste architecture,

where everything is a copy, has given us extraordinary freedom to create new content from old. There

are websites and groups dedicated to taking content, such as political speeches or clips from movies

and the like, and remixing them to provide new insights on these older pieces of media. They are

oftentimes used to create something entirely new altogether. However, these productions are

technically illegal: youtube videos remixing popular songs or movies, remixes designed to criticize, or

provoke new ways of thinking about events, etcetera. The problem? The impossibly high fines are

required to comply with copyright law. As stated in Free Culture “Therefore, for the law-abiding sorts,

a wealth of creativity is never made. And for that part that is made, if it doesn’t follow the clearance

rules, it doesn’t get released.”(106). Our copyright regulations were set up in a time when only large

corporations had the means to effectively replicate and remix content, but now any person with access

to a computer to do all that and much more.

Not only are there absurdly high fines in order to use some copyrighted content, but

organizations such as the RIAA and MPAA use bullying tactics to intimidate the populace into

compliance with our copyright 'laws'. They abuse a broken copyright system for their own benefit,

while instilling fear into the public. While piracy is a real concern, special interests such as the two

groups named above are abusing our copyright system in order to get what they want, without regards

to what is best for our culture at large. Piracy 'trials' make a mockery of justice. A woman in Minnesota

who illegally downloaded 24 songs was found liable for $1.5 million dollars in copyright damages

(Musil, “Jammie Thomas...”). This paper does not condone or support piracy, but this sentence is

ridiculous: 24 songs can be bought for approximately $24. This woman was found liable for damages

of $62500 per song. While piracy is against the law, such inflated fines go against reason. The RIAA
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and groups like it are waging a war on piracy by destroying individuals who may or may not be guilty

(many of the defendants have been found innocent, but so many can't afford to fight in court that the

settle outside of it), making use of our broken copyright system to do so. They are using a campaign of

fear and oppression of individuals, almost along the veins of a public execution, to make an example of

“pirates”.

In response to the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator's request for comments on the

forthcoming Joint Strategic Plan for intellectual property enforcement, these groups submitted a

“wishlist” of policies they want enacted. Included among their wishes were: mandatory industry

spyware that would invasively scan a user's files for any slight infringement of copyright, pervasive

copyright filtering on the internet itself, the propagandizing and intimidation of travelers at the borders

of the US, and even bullying countries that have less restrictive intellectual property rights (Esguerra,

"The Entertainment...”). This is where the dystopian prediction of our future comes from: a widespread,

irrational fear that “pirates are destroying the country”. The RIAA's most absurd demand was for

federal agents to enforce copyright: “Enforcement agencies (notably within DOJ and DHS) should plan

a similarly focused preventive and responsive strategy. An interagency task force should work with

industry to coordinate and make advance plans to try to interdict these most damaging forms of

copyright theft, and to react swiftly with enforcement actions where necessary.” This is the

entertainment industry's ideal dystopia: where all activity is tracked and scanned for any slight

infringement of copyright, backed by federal agents acting as paid muscle. While (hopefully) none of

these wishes will ever become proper policy, the fact that these are the goals of our entertainment

industry is a chilling thought. These examples highlight just how broken our current copyright system

is, and what those who have the power wish to do with it.

Not only is this system being abused by the entertainment industry, but a fairly recent court case

determined that Congress has a right to remove something from the public domain and put it back
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under copyright if it deems that taking away from the public domain was “in its best

interests”(Masnick, "Terrible News...”). A lower court had previously ruled that this expansion of

copyright law could constitute a violation of the First Amendment, but an appeals court overturned the

ruling because copyright law "addresses a substantial or important governmental interest.” Congress

now has the power to violate the First Amendment in deference to copyright law and the wishes of

agencies such as the RIAA when it comes to copyright and the public domain. So far this power has not

been exercised, but the repercussions could be great if it were.

Our current copyright and intellectual property system is archaic and responsible for smothering

and pushing underground much of the creativity of the people. While The Library of Congress issues

exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act every 3 years (Fitzpatrick, "Planned

Obsolescence...”), such as allowing movie clips etc. to be used freely for “educational purposes”, they

are not nearly enough. A new, better system needs to be put in place that fosters creativity, encourages

derivative works, and prevents groups from oppressing the freedom to express ourselves. Media should

be available to the general public for use in new works for a nominal sum (such as Lessig's suggestion

of 1% of the revenue from the derivative work, used in an anecdote(106)) so that we may prosper as a

culture. The public good and the benefit of all should always come before the private benefit, especially

in such appalling instances as expounded upon above.

Yet so few nowadays see the inherent wrongs that are being inflicted upon us. Our inaction is

causing both of these massive shifts, both in the private ownership of personal data and the current state

of copyright. We need to open our eyes as a society and observe these happenings, and stop it before it

becomes too late to turn back. Reform is desperately needed. Our right to privacy is being disregarded

on the internet as websites stalk their users and corporations mine their conversations for everything

they hold. Our copyright system is using obsolete practices to keep digital age content in the iron fisted

grip of large media corporations. Both are in desperate need of reform, so that we may guarantee
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ourselves a culturally prosperous and free future..

The multimodal portion of this essay is intended to compliment the arguments stated here in our

manifesto. We are using a website as a visually appealing way of organization this paper, and breaking

it up into chunks based on the main arguments the sections address, as well as a place to link to our

videos and any relevant sources of more information. Our full bibliography and links to every article

covered will be provided. Two short videos will be used to highlight certain points of our arguments, as

well as (hopefully) amuse the viewer and help demonstrate our position better. The first video, shown

in the Privacy page of our website highlights and parodies how corporations track web consumers and

sell the user profiles they generate to advertising companies. The initial data is taken from a text

message about wanting a soda, and the web tracker “Agent K” begins following the user. While the ad

starts off somewhat subtle and in the background, as the video goes on (and the user's 'profile' is built

up) the ads become more and more pervasive (and even invasive at the end), paralleling how ads are

not only everywhere on the internet, but becoming more and more an integral part of the business

model of many websites. Examples are commercials during Hulu videos, and audio advertisements

while listening to the radio through Pandora. Our second video, a satire of copyright enforcement in the

U.S. shows how restrictive our current system is, and how media corporations abuse it. The “suit” who

pops in each scene and stops the alleged 'copyright infringement' represents groups such as the RIAA

and the MPAA cracking down on piracy. However, our video shows how, in the process, they actually

end up stopping many legitimate uses of said content, while not actually harming piracy in any

meaningful way. The ending of the video also mocks the high fines required to use copyrighted content,

which stifles the individual's ability to create an distribute content. We also have remixed various

pictures, many stemming from George Orwell's 1984. These images relate corporations such as Google

and Facebook, along with agencies such as the RIAA and MPAA to the Big Brother from the novel, a

totalitarian dictator whose party constantly observes their constituents. Videos are located on YouTube,
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and are linked from our website.

Works Cited

Angwin, Julia. "Personal Information Exposed Via Biggest U.S. Websites - Protect Your Privacy -

WSJ.com." Business News & Financial News - The Wall Street Journal - WSJ.com. 30 July

2010. Web. 20 Nov 2010.

<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703977004575393173432219064.html>.

Angwin, Julia. "The New Gold Mine: Your Personal Information & Tracking Data Online - WSJ.com."

Business News & Financial News - The Wall Street Journal - WSJ.com. 30 July 2010. Web. 20

Nov. 2010.

<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703940904575395073512989404.html>.

Deleon, Nicholas. "RIAA, MPAA Would like to Scan Your Hard Drive for Infringing Content."

CrunchGear. 16 Apr. 2010. Web. 20 Nov. 2010. <http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/04/16/riaa-

mpaa-would-like-to-scan-your-hard-drive-for-infringing-content/>.

Duffy, Jim. "Cisco Rolls out Social Network Monitoring Software." Network World. 3 Nov. 2010. Web.

20 Nov. 2010. <http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/110310-cisco-social-network-

software.html?hpg1=bn>.

Esguerra, Richard. "The Entertainment Industry's Dystopia of the Future | Electronic Frontier

Foundation." Electronic Frontier Foundation | Defending Freedom in the Digital World. 14

Apr. 2010. Web. 20 Nov. 2010. <https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/entertainment-

industrys-dystopia-future>.

Fitzpatrick, Kathleen. "Planned Obsolescence » Fair Use." Falling Indelibly into the past » Planned

Obsolescence. 26 July 2010. Web. 15 Nov. 2010.

<http://www.plannedobsolescence.net/fair-use/>.
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Fowler, Geoffrey A., and Emily Steel. "Facebook Says User Data Sold to Broker - WSJ.com." Business

News & Financial News - The Wall Street Journal - WSJ.com. 31 Oct. 2010. Web. 20 Nov.

2010.

<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704477904575586690450505642.html>.

Lennon, Mike. "Nevercookie Eats Evercookie With New Firefox Plugin." Information Security News,

IT Security News & Expert Insights: SecurityWeek.Com. 10 Nov. 2010. Web. 20 Nov. 2010.

<http://www.securityweek.com/nevercookie-eats-evercookie-new-firefox-plugin>.

Lessig, Lawrence. Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock down Culture

and Control Creativity. New York: Penguin, 2004. Print.

Li, Xiaochang. "Public ≠ Property of Facebook: Another round in the Facebook Privacy Rigmarole |

Canarytrap.net." CanaryTrap.net. 30 Mar. 2010. Web. 18 Nov. 2010.

<http://canarytrap.net/2010/03/publically-shared-still-means-privately-owned-another-round-in-

the-facebook-privacy-rigmarole/>.

Masnick, Mike. "Terrible News: Court Says It's Okay To Remove Content From The Public Domain

And Put It Back Under Copyright." Techdirt. 22 June 2010. Web. 18 Nov. 2010.

<http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100621/2320049908.shtml>.

Musil, Steven. "Jammie Thomas Hit with $1.5 Million Verdict." CNET News. 03 Nov. 2010. Web. 18

Nov. 2010. <http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20021735-93.html>.

"Privacy Policy | Facebook." Welcome to Facebook. 05 Oct. 2010. Web. 20 Nov. 2010.

<http://www.facebook.com/policy.php>.

Wingfield, Nick. "Microsoft Quashed Personal Privacy Features of IE8 Browser - WSJ.com."

Business News & Financial News - The Wall Street Journal - WSJ.com. 2 Aug. 2010. Web. 20

Nov. 2010.
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<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703467304575383530439838568.html>