Ross Mayfield's Weblog

The Right to Link

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is defending the right to link.

EFF's client, an anonymous citizen-journalist, posted the links on the wiki located at http://zyprexa.pbwiki.com. Eli Lilly complained, and Judge Weinstein issued his order on January 4. EFF went to court today to challenge this order as an unconstitutional prior restraint on free speech in violation of the First Amendment and to ensure that the right of nonparties in the litigation to link to publicly important information remains protected.

"Preventing a citizen-journalist from posting links to important health information on a public wiki violates the First Amendment," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann. "Eli Lilly's efforts to censor these documents off the Internet are particularly outrageous in light of the information reported by The New York Times, which suggests that doctors and patients who use Zyprexa need to know the information contained in those documents."

I made the above bumper sticker in support of this cause.  Hopefully someone will remix it (.ai file) into something cool and it will show up on skateboards everywhere.

In related news, The Washington Post covers Wikileaks, a wiki for leaking classified documents.  This is different from linking to sensitive information and I'd agree with Steven Aftergood's comment:

"I want to see how they launch and what direction they go in," he said. "Indiscriminate disclosure can be as problematic as indiscriminate secrecy."

Freedom of Anonymous Speech

Here's a scenario for you to consider on Wiki Wednesday.

Assume that John Seigenthaler gets what he wants from his criticism of Wikipedia.  He very well may gain congressional hearings on anonymity.  Purportedly in comments to a post by Larry Sanger that begs the question, his intent is to have the private sector regulate anonymity on the net.

The way he described it, you could shift the burden by changing the law so that Internet Service Providers would evaluate the plaintiff's evidence, and decide themselves whether revealing the customer's identity might be appropriate. If the decision is yes, at that point the ISP notifies the customer, who is given the opportunity to initiate legal proceedings to enjoin the ISP from revealing his identity.

Given the consolidation of telecom, this would empower a handful of ISPs, as in 5, to be judge and jury for revealing identity.  Anonymity is a critical facet of society, and it's value is more than whistle-blowing.  I wouldn't call it a right, but would call it a feature of the virtual and real worlds (we don't walk around with name-tags).  Regardless of how you value anonymity, you should agree that this would:

1. create undue costs for ISPs,
2. privatize governance and enforcement,
3. create undue legal costs for consumers, which
4. could lead to infringements on civil liberties, because
5. customers would be guilty until proven innocent.

Now, if the ISP or legal action revealed the libelous party it would resolve Seigenthaler's complaint against Wikipedia. 

Beyond this attempt to weaken anonymity on the Net, Wikipedia's open nature is also under attack.  Adam Curry edited podcasting history in his favor.  Big deal.  It's a wiki, just edit it if you disagree and let the community's practice work over time.

Consider regulating against graffiti.  You have two options:

• Guard every wall in town to prevent the infraction from occurring
• Paint over infractions and enforce the law by chasing down perpetrators

The former is not just prohibitively expensive, it kills creativity and culture.  The later is the status quo and generally works, especially where communities flourish.

So what would have Wikipedia do?  Lock down contributions through a fact checking process with rigid policy?  Or let people contribute, leverage revision history and let the group revert infractions.

Social media is disruptive.  The role of regulation significantly impacts how society will manage transition.  Today much of media is regulated through complaints (e.g. indecency).  It only takes one horror story for us to loose freedom of anonymous speech.  The easiest and most dangerous way to curb social media is to have it conform to mainstream models.

UPDATE: Cnet has a pretty good article on the liability reform sought by Seigenthaler, the first argument I made.  Mitch Ratcliffe takes issue with my second argument, about how a wiki works and how best to regulate it.  Mitch, you keep trying to fit Wikipedia into your model of how an encyclopedia should be instead of recognizing how it is different.  A print version of Wikipedia should have an editorial process bolted on to emergent practice, as it is a comparable product, frozen in time.  But instead, the evolving nature of Wikipedia needs to be recognized and celebrated for what it is.  Help people understand what it is, not what it is not.

FURTHER: Doc Searls on the first argument, "Identity without anonymity is like math without zero."

Books Banned on Flights?

En route from San Jose to Phoenix, I was told by a Transportation Security Agency (TSA) screener about a ban on lighters (cough) starting April 14th, but the book allowance has been cut from 4 to 2. I had been tagged for a pat-down, a perfectly reasonable thing considering whatsinmybag. The agent was reasonable and amicable and I knew the drill. When he pulled a cigarette lighter out of my bag he mentioned the forthcoming ban, how you could carry four packs of matches and the whole idea was to prevent quickly lighting explosives (like that idiot with evil shoes). When he pulled out two books he mentioned that right now you can only have four books and on the 14th you can only have two. He didn't have any explanation for this, and I can't even fathom the purpose.

I must highlight that this could be bad information and hearsay. I can't confirm this with the DHS or TSA prohibited items list. However, the TSA list notes it's own inaccuracy -- and the discretion of the screener to interpret policy:

The prohibited and permitted items chart is not intended to be all-inclusive and is updated as
necessary. To ensure everyone's security, the screener may determine that an item not on the
prohibited items chart is prohibited. In addition, the screener may also determine that an
item on the permitted chart is dangerous and therefore may not be brought through the
security checkpoint.

I post this story because our current administration is the only one in history to take away more rights than it gives, the policy would disturb basic freedoms, policy interpretation and enforcement is in the hands of screeners and a screener told me the story in the first place. Can anyone help me bring clarity on this important issue? Until then, it's eBooks for me.

Lenny Bruce is Not Afraid

Last night I watched a Lenny Bruce Biography on the Sundance Channel. The first obscenely popular comedian, he developed his own style of unabashed social commentary.  Arrested for using the word cocksucker (practically the subtitle of Deadwood), he found himself passionately defending everyone's speech in order to defend his own.

I couldn't help thinking, what would Joi do?  He recently commented on the difficulty of more extreme speech when anything said can be shared outside of context and privacy.  In some cases, this could be viewed as a good thing.  But generally it is harder to share what you really think.

I happen to believe that people do not exercise un-compromised speech unless their right to it and views are challenged.  As such, Joi is more likely to revel against issues like Visas he is regularly confronted with.  In other words, Ghandis arise from extreme conditions and threats, no matter how much we aspire to emulate one.