Privacy advocates opposed to new privacy regulations at Facebook are attempting to get the attention of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, according to a complaint filed Thursday on behalf of the Electronic Privacy Information Center and several allied groups.
"These changes violate user expectations, diminish user privacy, and contradict Facebook's own representations," the complaint says of Facebook's new regulations, which push more content public, and make even more data available to third-party applications and advertisers. EPIC's goal is to force Facebook to restore the old settings and add additional controls for members.
"We've had productive discussions with dozens of organizations around the world about the recent changes, and we're disappointed that EPIC has chosen to share their concerns with the FTC while refusing to talk to us about them," a retaliatory statement from Facebook read. "We're pleased that so many users have already gone through the process of reviewing and updating their privacy settings, and are impressed that so many have chosen to customize their settings, demonstrating the effectiveness of Facebook's user empowerment and transparency efforts. Of course, the new tools offer users the opportunity to decide on privacy with every photo, link, or status update they wish to post, so the process of personalizing privacy on Facebook will continue."
It's one thing when Facebook users start complaining about new features that they deem excessively creepy--just look at the outrage that surrounded the News Feed, now a mainstay of the site, when it launched in 2006.
It's a bigger fish entirely when government regulatory bodies get involved, particularly the FTC, which has major sway over the advertising and marketing industries. It was only when privacy groups flagged concerns about Facebook's Beacon advertising program two years ago that participating advertisers started to pull out amid bad publicity. A class action settlement over the Beacon program was resolved recently.
Since then, Facebook hasn't had a privacy-related debacle on the same scale. Much of the philosophy behind Beacon was baked into its Facebook Connect universal log-in tool, which shares information from third-party sites on Facebook profiles and lets users log into other sites with their Facebook credentials. But with the public-relations pitch geared toward making the entire online experience easier for users (fewer passwords to remember, no more registration headaches) rather than helping advertisers exploit social-networking channels, the debut of Facebook Connect wasn't subject to the same scrutiny.
The controversial new privacy standards at Facebook have been a long time coming, considering the fact that the social network started to publicly set the groundwork nearly six months ago with a series of announcements about modified privacy controls. It's clear that the company was trying to avoid the sort of press bloodbath that came after the debut of Beacon.
That didn't happen. Facebook has already backtracked on one component of its new privacy regulations, one which made users' friends lists publicly available. It's unclear as to how much EPIC's coalition, not to mention the FTC, will prioritize this most recent controversy.
Behind Facebook's traditional willingness to make tweaks and modifications to new features and products, if they spark some kind of concern among government regulatory bodies or marketers, is a fight that the company will not give up easily. What it all comes down to is that Facebook's once-watertight log-in wall--remember the time that representatives mulled banning a blogger who'd posted Facebook-hosted photos publicly?--is getting in the way of the social network's potentially central role in one of the digital world's crazes du jour, searchable real-time information.
Search companies have been announcing big deals to pull Facebook status messages and Twitter tweets into results, and the media business has gone nuts over the potential to harness the "real-time Web."
Facebook, dependent on advertising revenues and still looking to expand its base of more than 350 million users, obviously wants in on this. But if it doesn't have enough status messages, shared links, and other information pulled into search results, it stands a chance at losing ground to the much-smaller Twitter--already the top name, in terms of a massive, searchable clearinghouse for up-to-the-minute information.
Plus, there are marketers and advertisers for Facebook to consider: more search results equals more page views and more ad revenue, and more public information on users' profiles means more ways for the advertising industry to reach them. But if those same marketers and advertisers are the ones pressuring Facebook to change course, in terms of user privacy, it could cause some friction between the social network and the businesses that have finally begun to accept it as a choice destination for their ad dollars.
Now EPIC is alleging to the FTC that Facebook's new regulations can be outright dangerous: "Dozens of American Facebook users, who posted political messages critical of Iran, have reported that Iranian authorities subsequently questioned and detained their relatives," an item in the complaint reads. "Under the revised privacy settings, Facebook makes such users' friends lists publicly available."
That's not good PR for Facebook, which has repeatedly pitched itself as a destination for open dialogue and grassroots organization across zones of political and ethnic conflict.
Several groups opposed to Google's Book Search settlement filed court briefs outlining their concerns on Tuesday, the last day such briefs would be accepted.
As expected, lawyers for Microsoft, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and a coalition called the Open Book Alliance blasted the deal as anticompetitive and detrimental to consumers. The Open Book Alliance's brief compares Google's Book Search settlement to a modern-day version of the cartel involving John Rockerfeller's Standard Oil and the railroad industry, which eventually led to the Sherman Act's antitrust laws.
Google is trying to get final approval of its settlement with book publishers and authors granting it the right to digitize certain out-of-print books. In October, Judge Denny Chin of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York will consider arguments for and against the settlement, which has inspired hundreds of pages of reading material for Chin to consider before the hearing.
Gary Reback, who helped prosecute Microsoft in the 1990s for anticompetitive behavior, authored the Open Book Alliance's brief. "Google and the plaintiff publishers secretly negotiated for 29 months to produce a horizontal price fixing combination, effected and reinforced by a digital book distribution monopoly. Their guile has cleared much of the field in digital book distribution, shielding Google from meaningful competition."
Microsoft, now finding itself on the same side of the issue as Reback, argued in a brief that Google should not have obtained clearance to scan copyright protected books through a class-action settlement. "The proposed settlement goes well beyond the legitimate role of a copyright lawsuit--resolving claims for infringement--and imposes a slew of provisions that would restructure the rights and remedies of absent copyright owners throughout the world," Microsoft said in its brief.
Google argues that anyone who wants to digitize books can cut deals with the Books Rights Registry set up as part of the settlement, but at the moment the company is the only organization in the world with a license to scan and display books that have gone out of print but are still protected by copyright laws. Google plans to display portions of those books (rights-holders can specify how much Google is allowed to show) as part of the Google Book Search product and will also provide access to the books through public library terminals and institutional subscriptions sold to university and research libraries.
The Computer and Communications Industry Association filed a brief in support of Google's proposed settlement. ""For the past 20 years, I have dedicated my career to fighting against monopolies and this settlement isn't one. This settlement will increase competition for online book sales, and among books themselves," said Ed Black, CCIA president and CEO, in a statement.
And over the holiday weekend, Google agreed to give European authors and publishers a seat at the table. However, an umbrella group involving the EFF, American Civil Liberties Union, and several authors is distrustful of Google's intent.
"Google Book Search and other digital book projects will redefine the way people read and research," said author Jonathan Lethem in a press release distributed by the EFF. "Now is the moment to make sure that Google Book Search is as private as the world of physical books."
Google updated its privacy policy for Google Books last week after it was urged to provide more details, but several groups don't think it goes far enough. Google has said it will release a complete privacy policy for Google Books once the settlement is approved and the company launches all aspects of the service.
Web sites that promise to pay for your old gadgets look bright around the holidays, when every extra dollar can count toward new gifts or even utility bills. But are the services worthwhile? How much can you earn?
We examined nine services that pay for your unwanted digital wares. These are among the newest options to help keep electronics waste out of landfills, while uncluttering your closets.
Click on this image to see what seven services quoted to pay for 11 used electronics.
(Credit: Elsa Wenzel/CBS Interactive)We looked up what each service said it would pay for working iPods, PDAs, laptops, gaming consoles, and more, with cables but lacking their original boxes. For dead devices, some offer a pittance, or will connect you with willing recyclers and charity recipients. Our chart (at right) shows what each site claims it pays for specific equipment. Keep reading for highlights of the trade-in services.
We can't yet vouch for the start-to-finish experience of mailing in products to these companies. Those that find your equipment in worse shape than you estimated will downgrade the trade-in value.
If you only need to offload an old phone, look out for our upcoming comparison of sites that specialize in refurbishing and recycling handsets, including Cell for Cash, Simply Sellular, and ReCellular.
... Read morePrivacy advocates are starting to sound the alarm over a feature in Google's Chrome that sends anything typed in the browser's Omnibox back to Google.
Google told CNET News earlier Wednesday that it plans to store about 2 percent of the data it gets back, along with the IP address of the computer that sent it. Google said it won't receive or store data if users turn off the auto-suggest feature or if they select a default search provider other than Google or if they are using the product's "Incognito" mode.
Still, EFF staff technologist Peter Eckersley said in an interview that he is concerned about Google having yet another window into what the world is browsing.
"We're worried that Chrome will be another giant conveyer belt moving private information about our use of the Web into Google's data vaults," Eckersley said. "Google already knows far too much about what everybody is thinking at any given moment."
Eckersley did point out that there are several ways to keep the data from being sent to Google, but noted that there is still a lot of data that will head Google's way.
Because Chrome is open source, Eckersley suggested that one option would be for privacy-minded outsiders to create their own suggestion engine that sits on surfers' own PCs, offering some of the utility that Google provides, without having to send the data to its servers. He noted that Chrome, itself, already does this when a surfer uses Chrome in its more stealthy Incognito mode. In that case, all suggestions are based on a surfer's locally stored history.
"The addition of Incognito is great," he said, adding that Google is making some strides with Chrome, clearly recognizing that people want to be able to surf the Web without having a record of it stored in various places.
"They are making some initial moves in the directions of that," Eckersley said, but reiterated his concerns over how the Omnibox works.
"We are genuinely really worried about the Omnibox thing," he said. "It's just one more piece of the complete puzzle of Google seeing everything that everyone is doing."
Simon Davies, Founder of Privacy International and a senior fellow with the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) also expressed concern over the Omnibox feature.
"I'm astonished that these terms are sent to Google even without the return being hit," Davies said. "That is beyond anything that Google has ever contemplated before."
Davies said the lack of attention to privacy and less-than-clear disclosure of its information use is typical Google behavior.
"This is why Google is running into trouble with regulators in Europe," Davies said. "They will trip themselves up at some point very badly. The patience of regulators is growing thin."
When Scrabulous, a popular game on Facebook's developer platform, was shut down earlier on Tuesday because of copyright infringement issues with the manufacturer of the Scrabble board game, word game fans weren't totally left in the dark. After all, Electronic Arts (which handles the digital rights to Scrabble for the game's parent company, Hasbro) had recently created an official beta version of Scrabble for the platform.
Problem is, the servers that were hosting the "real" Scrabble app couldn't handle the load of new migrants, and the application crashed on Tuesday afternoon. Oops!
"We'll be back up shortly," an apologetic error message read. "We're working on some tech problems and Scrabble will be ready to play as soon as possible!" The game is slated to exit the beta phase in the middle of next month, and some (my colleague Rafe Needleman among them) initially found it to be a better-quality game experience than Scrabulous had been.
But in the wake of a server crash, Facebook users weren't too pleased, as the message wall for the Scrabble application revealed. "Wow, does this suck," one Facebook user wrote. "Why can't you guys work out a licensing deal with the Scrabulous boys? Now we're back to square one and have to go through all of your debugging process."
Well, to be fair, rumor has it that Hasbro put out an acquisition offer for Scrabulous, only to have it rebuffed because its creators thought the amount offered was insufficient.
"Sucks, sucks, sucks," another Facebook user said. "Locks up at 30 percent loading. Sucks. Oh, did I mention it sucks? Get a grip, Hasbro."
Too bad "FAIL" will net you only seven points.
If you want more proof that software as a service and ad-supported business models are shaking things up, check out Practice Fusion. This week the small company announced the availability of its free, on-demand suite for physician practices.
Practice Fusion CEO Ryan Howard touts the software suite as Google Apps for physicians. It's a radical departure from the established and costly software packages used by physicians to manage their offices and patients records.
Practice Fusion includes practice management, scheduling, patient management (electronic medical records) and e-mail applications. The Web interface takes advantage of Flex 3, Adobe's rich Internet application platform.
Howard is betting that he can make money on free software by connecting advertisers with doctors while they are working via ads. So far Practice Fusion has about 1,000 physicians signed up for the service and about 20 advertisers, including Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca LP and Ortho-McNeil-Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
"The campaigns range between a $50 and $150 CPM, and we are starting to do a significant amount of lead generation, where there is typically an ongoing revenue sharing component," Howard said. Given how difficult it is for a drug salesperson to get a doctor's attention, Howard may have tapped into a rich vein.
Next week game publisher Electronic Arts will unleash a cleverly packaged marketing device upon masses of hungry gamers awaiting the release of one of this holiday's biggest titles--Spore. The software is a "creature creator" letting players put together 3D characters with an interface nearly as simple to use as Nintendo's Mii maker seen on the Wii. The 300MB download will be available next Tuesday, though some diehard fans and "influencers" got their hands on it last night.
The upcoming game focuses on creating a species and taking it from the microbial stage of life all the way to multi-universe exploration and colonization--a mix somewhere between a science experiment and a game of Risk. The creature creator is the first step in showing potential users what they'll be getting their hands on in just three months time.
What may be more interesting though is how publisher EA has begun to integrate the Web into its latest titles--Spore included. For instance, in this new piece of software you can take pictures of your creation and send them to buddies via e-mail. You can also record video that can be uploaded straight to YouTube--like the clip I created and have posted below. Last year's Skate (also by EA) had similar features, although all of the content was hosted on EA's servers.
Others seem to have taken notice of this trend. Last month Sony integrated YouTube into its developer tools to allow PS3 developers to code in the option to record and upload clips to the popular video host without requiring gamers to leave the couch. Microsoft has also had its own system for letting gamers grab in-game screenshots and have them post it to special mini game sites that are linked up to the user's Live.com ID.
That's not to say EA is letting other companies house all that content though. The creature creator and eventual game will go hand in hand with Spore's official site which launched with limited functionality this past Monday. The company is touting the site as a way to build out your profile and discover other people's creations, but it's essentially a photo gallery full of in-game screen shots and creations people saved.
Sporemail is pictures of your creature captured in-game which can be sent to friends and viewed on Spore.com. Some shots double as character models you can pull into your software and re-tool to make your own.
(Credit: CNET Networks)These photos have an additional use too--you'll be able to drag and drop what you see from other members into your own software be able to play with that same creature. Users will also be able to send creations to third parties to put into things like online comic books, or to print out into a 3D mold. The company is expecting this to lead to people making small changes to their in-game characters, or browsing through other people's creations while away from their home machine. These changes will sync up with their in-game characters the next time they play.
Each user-created creature is also a piece of something larger called SporePedia. Not unlike Wikipedia it's completely sourced and managed by players. They'll be able to upload their creations to the SporePedia with descriptions and bits of game data which will completely searchable both in-game and from the Web. EA is hoping it will provide a way for novice gamers to very quickly discover new creatures created by others, or simply archive what they've made without having to worry about saving it to local storage.
Also thrown into the site are widgets people can put on their blog or social-networking profile that showcase their latest creature creations and an RSS-powered news feed of what your friends have created. The site is currently the only way to view in-game screenshots, which are hosted with ratings, comments, and a tracking system that assigns special badges to popular or featured content.
In the end the creature creator is a far cry from the experience gamers will be getting in September. It's a very svelte game demo that's been packed with Web elements and the start of one of the stronger first-party community sites I've seen.
I really would not be surprised to see more games take advantage of the Web in the coming years, not just for the marketing potential, but for the extra sticking power. March Madness and fantasy sports suck up absurd amounts of time from office workers because the Web has become a gateway to some of the things we do on our off-work hours. There's not much keeping future games from doing the same if they begin to build up what players are able to do while away from their fancy hardware.
Related:
EA unveils 'Spore' tribal phase images, video
'Spore Creature Creator' to see light of day in June
Dennis Fong's new startup, Raptr, is a sort of applications-based social network for hard-core gamers.
(Credit: Raptr)SAN FRANCISCO--Dennis Fong is someone who has a lot of street cred in the world of video games. A former world champion in games like Quake and Doom, he's also the founder of XFire, a company that enabled easy instant messaging among gamers that he later sold to Viacom for oodles of money.
Now, he's got a new start-up, known as Raptr, and it seems to have some very influential people rather excited.
I got my first introduction to Raptr Friday at the Startup Showcase at the Game Developers Conference. The session, which was organized by Charles River Ventures' Susan Wu, put five entrepreneurs on the spot to give short presentations about their company. Wu and several industry experts then got the chance to weigh in on each presentation.
Essentially, Raptr is a social network for gamers, but one filled with useful applications--at least for those for whom hard-core gaming is a way of life.
But since there are millions and millions of people like that, the company has an instant and wide market.
... Read more
Admit it: somewhere in a drawer or stashed in your closet, you have an old cell phone or digital camera with no practical purpose.
Second Rotation is a Web site designed to find a home for that used and no-longer-loved electronic gear. On Tuesday, the company announced that it has raised $4.4 million in funding led by Venrock to expand its product catalog and ramp up marketing.
The Web site, which launched last July, acts as a broker between consumers and eBay or an electronics recycler.
Tired of that iPhone? Find a buyer online.
You can then print out a shipping slip and arrange a pick up. Second Rotation then rehabs the goods to be sold on eBay. A small percentage--10 percent--are sent to reputable recyclers, says CEO and founder Rousseau Aurelien. It makes money brokering the transaction.
People can sell their stuff directly on eBay, of course, but Aurelien argues that it's still too troublesome for most consumers. Only one in 30 of eBay's registered users actually sells anything, he said.
"Forty percent of car sales have a trade-in but if you look at consumer electronics, it's not a significant number--less than 1 percent," said Aurelien. "So we have our work cut out for us. There needs to be a little bit of change in consumer behavior, too."
Electronic waste is a growing problem. The Environmental Protection Agency earlier this month month launched a cell phone recycling program in an effort to raise consumer awareness.
Second Rotation already takes cell phones, digital image and video cameras, gaming consoles, digital music players, and GPS systems.
In the summer, the company plans to expand its product catalog to laptops, beyond the trade-ins for Macbooks it already offers. Aurelien said the company's ambition is to broker sales of more than just electronics.
Jammie Thomas
UPDATE: Jammie Thomas is going to have to sell a lot more thongs.
Thomas, the woman ordered by a federal court in October to pay the recording industry $222,000 for pirating music, doesn't have enough money to fund an upcoming appeal and has been forced to look for a new lawyer, according to her current attorney, Brian Toder.
Thomas was the first person sued by the recording industry for copyright violations to argue a case before a jury and was found to have illegally shared 24 digital-music files.
Toder, who represented Thomas in the civil case, told CNET News.com on Wednesday that handling her appeal on a pro bono basis would be too expensive. Thomas has been selling merchandise, such as T-shirts, coffee mugs, and women's underwear, as well as accepting donations, to help raise money for her defense. But the fund-raising efforts have "actually raised very little," Toder said.
"I'm very confident she will find representation," Toder added. "There are many passionate organizations, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), chomping on the bit to help her."
The other good news for Thomas is that the music labels have agreed to waive their lawyer fees, Toder said. After winning a judgment against Thomas, the record companies could have required her to pay their legal costs.
Toder said that because one of the plaintiffs, Virgin Records, was forced to dismiss its part of the case on the day of trial, Thomas was therefore entitled to attorneys fees from Virgin. Toder used that to negotiate with the rest of the plaintiffs and they agreed not to seek fees.
That Toder was not going to handle Thomas' appeal came as news to Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney for the EFF, which advocates for the rights of Internet users and has offered support to Thomas in the past. He said the group would most certainly try to help Thomas when the time came but that he couldn't guarantee anything.
"We've helped lots of people caught in the music industry's litigation campaign to find counsel," von Lohmann said. "But I can't say we've succeeded in every case. It's easier for me to find lawyers in San Francisco and New York than it is in Minnesota...If people think we're out there backstopping every lawsuit, they need to donate a lot more money."
Thomas' case, however, has several things going for it, von Lohmann said.
"There is a strong basis for an appeal based on the jury instruction," von Lohmann said. "There's been a lot of speculation that (Thomas) is guilty, but the thing to keep in mind on appeal is that it's not whether the jury got the facts right. It's about whether the right legal standards were applied. A lot of copyright attorneys think the jury instructions were erroneous."
Thomas won't be able to file her appeal until a federal district judge in Minnesota decides on a motion to reduce the jury award. The $222,000 award violates the Constitution, Toder said.
The blog TorrentFreak was first to report that Thomas is looking for a new attorney.
