Category: Policy

BB Gadget’s Joel Johnson talks about AT&T’s plans w/r/t internet filtering on an AT&T show. The other shoe has not dropped on this one yet, but I salute Joel for bringing up a very important issue.

All Facebook discusses the story of a dust up between Facebook and blog publisher Gawker, which posted information and pictures found in a well known New York socialite’s Facebook profile.

Is information found in a Facebook profile public? It seems to me to be pretty clear that it’s not. Emily’s public profile on Facebook has none of the information Gawker published. The real question seems to be whether Emily is a “public figure” and therefore subject to a different standard. The author at Gawker got access to Emily’s “friends” profile, which had much more information, and published that. Is that so different than gaining access to, say, a private party where a reporter sees Emily, and reports on what she does? That’s privileged information, but no one would have an issue with a gossip reporter covering a party full of socialites.

Regardless, it’s clearly a violation of Facebook’s terms of service. Will be interesting to see if Emily or Facebook pushes on this.

I’m kidding, but last week (and several times previously) I lectured Facebook to open up, and predicted it would. Today, Facebook (and Google, but we’d expect that) have joined the Data Portability group. What I cannot figure out yet is whether this really *means* anything other than, well, they joined a group. But it’s a great first step.

From my post on January 4:

With one move, Facebook can change the face (sorry) of this debate by making it falling-down easy to export your social graph. And I predict that it will.

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Ars has the story:

It’s not every day that a senator takes to the floor to defend “Internet blogs and other Web-based forms of media,” but Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) has done just that in his recent push to pass a Freedom of Information Act reform bill he has coauthored with two Republicans.

The Senate passed the OPEN Government Act last week (which builds on previous reform attempts), and the House followed suit on Tuesday of this week. The reforms in the bill make it easier for bloggers and other Internet journalists to make FOIA requests without paying fees, and they strengthen deadlines for agencies to respond to requests. Contractors who work for the federal government are now explicitly covered by FOIA rules, and a new FOIA Ombudsman will help resolve disputes outside of court. The legislation awaits President Bush’s pen.

Emailed to me this AM:

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (December 20, 2007) – Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) today welcomed the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s clearance of its planned acquisition of DoubleClick Inc., a premier provider of display ad serving technology and services. Google announced in April 2007 a definitive agreement to acquire the company for $3.1 billion in cash from San Francisco-based private equity firm Hellman & Friedman along with JMI Equity and management.

“The FTC’s strong support sends a clear message: this acquisition poses no risk to competition and will benefit consumers,” said Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO, Google. “We hope that the European Commission will soon reach the same conclusion, and we are confident that this deal will deliver more relevant ads for consumers, more choices for advertisers, and more opportunities for website publishers.”

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And I suggest, regardless of politics, we all focus and really think about this.

…it’ll happen.

From SEL:

Ask.com has launched AskEraser, giving searchers the ability to search anonymously. Ask.com told us about this tool back in July, and six months later, it’s now live for all searchers to use.