Fourth Planet Development

A sad day for information exchange…

Film Studios Win Usenet Download Case

Please note, I am not condoning the illegal downloading of movies or music with this post.  However, with London’s High Court ruling, it essentially states that you are no longer allowed to distribute information which potentially could be used in order to conduct illegal activity.  Going by the logic of this case, it will eventually be illegal to let you know that there’s a group of illegal immigrants who often hang out waiting for work by my local 7-11 if you need cheap manual labor, and Google could be held liable for indexing sites which sell marijuana seeds.

One site I enjoy visiting is i-hacked.com, a site which offers tips and tricks for hacking electronic devices for uses other than originally intended – for instance, you can learn how to make a home-made stun gun with little more than a disposable camera.  Some of these tricks are inevitably illegal.  However, there is a clear disclaimer telling viewers that using the information provided may cause legal problems, and the information is there for educational purposes only – why not just force Newzbin to do something similar?  While it may seem at first only illegal activity could come from a site such as i-hacked, the fact is hacking devices is nothing more than exploration and experimentation, fostering creativity.  Once you learn one alternative application of a device, you can think of multiple other alternative applications.

Another problem with shutting down a site such as Newzbin is that shutting them down (or imposing a hefty fine) does not solve the problem of illegal material being hosted on the internet.  Users will just use google to find another site which indexes these movie clips.  While it doesn’t happen very often, google’s servers have crashed.  What did we do when this happened?  Switch over to ask, yahoo, bing, altavista, or some other search engine for the time being.  Stopping Newzbin would have a similar effect.

Finally, I believe the MPA is missing a golden opportunity from their end.  Clearly, they already have someone with an account set up at Newzbin (and undoubtedly at numerous other sites as well).  Why not use the information they have against the owners of the real perpetrators, the ones hosting the actual movies?  They essentially have at their disposal a directory of all the people who break the law with regards to copyright infringement and file sharing – you might as well use that list to go after the hosts.

Fact Checking is Dead

Was the media hoodwinked by Sarkozy Rumors?

It seems users of Facebook and Twitter has more credibility than the fine folks who run the tabloids. You see, various news outlets over in Europe were reporting that the French president and his wife could be cheating on each other. I love seeing politicians squirm when they get caught doing naughty things, but the fact is, there is no hard evidence of any of this. The only source of these rumors are Facebook and Twitter.

Hoaxes manage to get their way into the news all the time. As an avid reader of The Straight Dope, I learned today of “The Phantom Kangaroo” which took Chicago by storm in 1974. However, when these stories make it into (what are supposed to be) reputable news sources, there is usually a reliable source to start things off. In the case of the phantom kangaroo, two cops originally reported the kangaroo to the Chicago Tribune. If you don’t have a solid source, you sell the story to some tabloid which just wants shock value, not facts.

How is a tweet or facebook posting, two things which can be posted by anyone, a reliable source? People will copy/paste things just because they can. Shortly after Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett died in 2009, someone made a post that Jeff Goldblum fell to his death filming a movie in New Zealand, referencing the site mediafetcher. A quick look at the disclaimer on the bottom of the page will tell you

this story was dynamically generated using a generic ‘template’ and is not factual. Any reference to specific individuals has been 100% fabricated by web site visitors who have created fake stories by entering a name into a blank ‘non-specific’ template for the purpose of entertainment. For sub-domain info and additional use restrictions: FakeAWish.com
Copyright © 2009 FakeAWish.com All rights reserved.

While I can appreciate that not everyone will read the fine print on a website, you would think news outlets would do what they can to ensure something is more than just a rumor. Hell, you can actually change the URL to make the story fit your needs – apparently I am an actor who died this morning:

http://kevin.marsteller.mediafetcher.com/news/top_stories/actor_new_zealand.php

When I was in school, teachers frequently told me Wikipedia was not a source, only a starting point (at best). While I always went against that piece of advice, I now have more reason than ever to avoid traditional sources of information, given the obvious lack of fact checking which goes on in the mainstream. What most attackers of Wikipedia frequently choose to ignore is that 1) These sites have loads of volunteer editors, who do nothing more than monitor edits made in a day, ensuring fake news isn’t posted; 2) Any major pieces of information are discussed amongst editors before allowing it to be published; and 3) Most articles have a ton of sources, and those which don’t have a big fat warning at the top, letting you know the accuracy of the information could be iffy. The “reputable” news sources these days could take a lesson from Wikipedia and do the same.