Whether you want to target politicians, your employers, or companies that have done you wrong, there are a variety of sites across the Web that will help you voice your complaints. But beware that not all of them will actually solve those problems.
Lodge your complaints
Anonymous Employee Those having trouble at the office should try out Anonymous Employee. The service allows you to create a user name and password without requiring an e-mail address. After that, you can input the name of your employer, the person you want to contact, and the issue you want to make them aware of. Anonymous Employee automatically sends the message to the recipient without identifying you.
Unfortunately, Anonymous Employee was buggy and at times, it took too long to send a message. That said, I was impressed by the number of options it offered, including complaints about age discrimination, harassment, or wrongful termination. Once it fixes those bugs, Anonymous Employee will be an even more compelling service.
Anonymous Employee keeps you private when you make issues public.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)Better Business Bureau The Better Business Bureau site is one of the best places to lodge complaints. Right from the home page, you can access the organization's complaint tool, which allows you to take issue with your vehicle, your cell phone carrier, a product or service outside of those two categories, or a charity. After inputting information about yourself, you can describe your issue on the site. It's then filed with the Better Business Bureau and investigated.
The Better Business Bureau wants to know the nature of your complaint.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)CongressMerge If you're unhappy with what's going on in your state, CongressMerge can help you out. The site provides you with a search field to find all of your elected representatives. Once you find the politician you want to contact, it gives you a listing of all their phone numbers, a map to their office, and even their fax number so you can be sure to get in touch with them. You can also check out your elected representatives' voting records on the site. It's a great way to find all the means of communication you need to have your voice heard in the political process.
CongressMerge helps you contact your representative.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)The Electronic Frontier Foundation has released an open-source, cross-platform program designed to track your packets and determine if your ISP is throttling your connection to torrents, VoIP, and other legal, high-bandwidth consuming communications. Called "Switzerland" and licensed under the GPL, it's very much in an alpha state and is only a command-line tool at the moment. Also, you're going to have to compile it yourself--that's not the most challenging task, but this isn't a simple self-extracting app.
According to the EFF, Switzerland works by spotting IP packets that have been forged or modified between clients, informing you of the change, and providing you copies of the modified packets. "The software uses a semi-P2P, server-and-many-clients architecture. Whenever the clients send packets to each other, the server will attempt to determine if any of them were dropped, forged, or modified," says the Switzerland Web site.
As far as usage goes, the EFF says that Switzerland is compatible with NAT firewalls, although some NAT firewalls may have to be disabled to test the ISP in front of it, because of the modifications that some firewalls make to packets.
I do wonder at the logic of the name, though. Referencing the "neutral" country is cute, but what's going to happen when somebody tries to find the program through a search engine? Googling "Switzerland" returns 234 million results, give or take.
Anyway, Switzerland is not the first packet-testing program around. What is special about it, though, is that unlike, for example, the plug-in for the Vuze/Azureus torrent client, Switzerland isn't tied to any host program. The open-source license, combined with the backing of a visible group like the EFF and the building awareness in both politicians and the general public of what Net Neutrality is about, could have serious ramifications for combating false promises of Net Neutrality from ISPs like Comcast.
Think Secret, the Apple rumor Web site, will no longer be published, under the terms of an undisclosed settlelment with Apple Inc. The site issued a small press release on the matter late last night, with Think Secret's publisher Nick Ciarelli noting, "I'm pleased to have reached this amicable settlement, and will now be able to move forward with my college studies and broader journalistic pursuits."
The site was sued by Apple in 2005 regarding leaks about upcoming hardware and software products that later came to fruition, including an updated iLife software suite and the Mac mini desktop computers that were showcased at the Macworld Expo in 2005.
Think Secret was being represented by attorneys in conjunction with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and in March, the site had attempted to get Apple's lawsuit dismissed on the grounds of it being a First Amendment violation, although to no avail.
The news is certainly a big hit to other large Apple rumor sites including 9to5Mac, Mac Rumors and AppleInsider. Sites like these encourage news tips and leaks about upcoming or unannounced Apple products, which is what got Think Secret into trouble in the first place.
I got an email from Fred von Lohmann of the Electronic Frontier Foundation yesterday. It began, "Half the companies you blog about have copyright or privacy legal issues simmering just under the surface. Since most of them are thinly capitalized, when they get into trouble, they're likely to call EFF for legal advice. Several already have."
I called von Lohmann right away, since I've had a nagging feeling for months that too many of the interesting products I've been seeing were legally shaky. So I talked with him to come up with this list: 9 Fun Ways Web 2.0 Startups Can Commit Legal Suicide.
For more information than can fit in a blog post, you might want to check out the EFF's upcoming Compliance Bootcamp on Oct. 10 in Mountain View. I told von Lohmann I'd link to the event in exchange for this preview.
1. Ignoring the rules of Safe Harbor
Many media sharing sites, like SimplifyMedia, exist in a narrow legal framework carved out of the DMCA. But you can't take advantage of the Safe Harbor provisions of the DMCA if you don't register as a "copyright agent." All that's required is filling out a form and paying an $80 fee. You can't get protection without registering. As von Lohmann said, "The difference between you and Napster might be this form."
2. Ignoring the Terms of Service chain
This applies to sites that collect or aggregate data--like Mint, which collects its users' financial information. The sites where the data are coming from may have terms of service that prohibit their users from sharing them with third parties. Sites that collect this information may be seen as encouraging breech of contract, which is a legal exposure.
3. Falling for a sob story
If you're collecting personal information from or about people, there will be other people who want it. They may call up your company and give someone there a convincing story to get it. If your team falls for this "pretexting," or social engineering, users can sue you for exposing their information.... Read more
Up for a do-it-yourself project this weekend? Rarely does Web site swag get as intricate as the Digg button from Adafruit Industries. The $20 kit gives you everything you need (sans soldering tools) to put together a slick, working Digg button that has a three-digit counter on it to keep track of Diggs. Every time you click the tiny, red button, you get a nice "dug" message on the LED display, and the count goes up by one. The real-world possibilities for this are endless.
The kits were first made available at last month's Digg 1 million user party, where partygoers could purchase and put them together on the spot. Many were soldering for the first time--in the dark, with loud music playing, while potentially under the influence of alcohol. You get the benefit of being able to do this in your home. Also, $1 from each purchase goes to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
While the button doesn't actually link to Digg.com in any way, it makes for great office kitsch and was a lot of fun to make. It took about 20 minutes for CNET's very own soldering guru Donald Bell to melt put it together . We've condensed that down into the three-minute clip below.
- Viacom sued over Colbert parody on YouTube. A takedown notice for a parody video clip of The Colbert Report was the cause for a lawsuit against Viacom by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The video featured several short clips from the popular late-night TV show, along with user-generated content. Viacom said it doesn't mind the video being shown on the service.
- MySpace photos upgraded. MySpace rolled out an update to its photo service last night, giving users the option to create albums and manage shots en masse with a batch uploading tool. Size limits on uploaded photos have also doubled to 1200KB per photo, up from 600KB. The update was long overdue; competitor Facebook's photo service has had batch uploading and album support for over a year now. (Found on Mashable.)
- Wii browser delayed until April. The full version of Opera's Web browser for the Nintendo Wii was originally scheduled for release this month. Opera issued a press release this morning that said it would be available in April. The current trial version of the browser has fairly limited features that we've complained about before. Opera originally offered Wii users the full version for free until June and for $5 thereafter. That offer is expected to be extended given the release delay.
(Credit:
CNET Networks)
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