Pardon the inflammatory title, but I think people are missing the point with the latest “jailbraking”, lawsuit and Anonymous-action debacle with Sony.
Quick summary:
A guy buys a Playstation 3. He then plays with the internal workings of the machine in order to get it to do even more stuff than it could before. Sony sues him for it… an action that, frankly, is hard to morally justify even if you can show paperwork that makes it legal to do so. Anonymous attacks Sony websites and starts harassing Sony executives.
In case you missed it: Sony is suing him for modifying a product that he owns. He didn’t “license” or “lease” or “rent” that product. He owns it. Apparently, that doesn’t mean what it used to, because even though he owns that product he isn’t allowed to do with it as he pleases. That’s like a food manufacturer suing you for distributing a unique recipe, or an auto part manufacturer suing you for using car parts in a different brand car.
That’s it in a nutshell.
Ars Technica recently covered the story with a focus on how people have been able to get information on these executives. To me, this focus is completely uninteresting. Detectives have been able to get personal information on other people since before electricity was discovered, and always will.
Others have focused on the specific actions of Anonymous, and whether “they” went “too far”. That’s a fun philosophical debate if you really want to kill a few hours, but doesn’t actually have anything to do with what happens next.
That’s the key: what happens next?
This latest round of attacks by “Anonymous”, the general banner for “whatever random people got ticked off enough to target Sony executives for being a bunch of jackasses”, is becoming par for the course. You can’t stop it. Anonymous isn’t an organization. It’s just the phenomena of a bunch of people acting out. They don’t know each other, they don’t “keep in touch”, and there is no leader. YOU are Anonymous.
So, if a corporation tries to hurt random people, the members of that corporation can expect backlash. This is the world we live in.
While I’m not crazy about “mob mentality” or “mob rule”, I understand why it’s starting to happen. After Enron demonstrated to the world that corporate executives are above the law even when they seriously harm people, the notion of random people being sued for doing things that hurt people only in the vaguest and most esoteric sense is more than the average Netizen is ready to handle. People who do real harm are immune to punishment, and people who do largely theorhetical harm are lynched by the system.
Since there is no government mechanism for maintaining the balance, mob rule rises.
I don’t have a solution to the problem, but I do know that we’ll see more and more of this. It will go a bit further every time. Executives responsible for random smack-downs on the public can expect more and more backlash.
For those of us that have nothing to do with this conflict on either side, expect to be caught in the crossfire. You will be able to do less on the Internet tomorrow than you can today in order to keep executives safe from being held accountable by Anonymous. Corporate services you wanted to use will go down occasionally due to Anonymous attacks. The trend will continue.
The solution? Maybe more transparency in the corporate structure, more accountability… or maybe a completely new model under which to build a business. Ah, but this is my stop folks… I’m not really the “ingenious solutions” guy, just the “understanding what the hell is going on” guy.
If you haven’t seen this movie, you are missing out on a major piece of Internet culture’s history. Here’s the trailer:
We Live in Public – 2008, 18A, 88 minutes
Ondi Timoner’s documentary chronicles a decade in the life of Internet pioneer Josh Harris, who instigated an “artificial society” experiment in which more than 100 artists lived under 24-hour surveillance in an underground compound in New York City. After FEMA broke up the project, Harris turned the cameras on himself and his girlfriend. Timoner’s provocative film (winner of the Grand Jury Prize: Documentary at Sundance) includes clips from Harris’s projects as well as her own original footage.
Keep it digital and catch it on Netflix. It’s scary and awesome, although the ending is a little weak. The point, through, is this notion that we are all encouraged to make our lives public. It is the way forward. “Web 2.0″, “User-created content”, “Social media”, assorted buzzwords yadda yadda…
Now that we’ve lived with these ideas for a few years, the hipster movement makes sense. After all, you can’t be cool all the time, and in an age of constant surveillance and recording you’re bound to do something stupid that people will take notice of. As a result, people claim it was “supposed to be ironic”.
That, or your idiotic status update was “just trolling lololollol”… sure, we believe you. No, really, I’m not typing sarcastically or anything.
The older generation got flinchy about public perception by doing what they always do: hiding behind “professionalism”. The number of dry, sterile public profiles that tell you nothing about the person in question is staggering. People have thrown themselves into mediocrity enthusiastically in order to keep the all-seeing eye of the Internet from making them look like an ass. So, instead, they look ignorable.
Now, if “ignorable” is part of the job description, then your resume is perfect. For the rest of us, its time to just be guileless and let the chips fall where they may. Either you’ll run your business yourself, or you’ll let the world run it for you.
China’s perverse blanket censorship of the Internet was one thing – if the Chinese people want their thoughts to be controlled by a bureaucracy that’s their business. Public opinion influence and control by political entities is old news. But this is something startlingly new. This is them saying: “keep your filthy stinking money!”
Are they honestly that rich already?
Apparently China’s online games were worth over $900M in Q2 alone. So sure, maybe that’s enough… if there is such a thing as “enough” in modern economies. Still, can anyone really afford to slow down when things are moving so fast these days? Won’t this make foreign investors from a variety of industries flinch a little?
Morality (however you define it) is expensive, and it looks like they’re willing to pay the price. While I’m not entirely certain I agree with their particular philosophies, I have to admit: xenophobia in the digital age takes guts.
It will be interesting to see how this all shakes out five years from now.
Caught this bit of terror and horror from the Twitterstream, although I’m sorry I’ve since lost track of specifically from whom. YouTube description below:
New Media is the tipping point where Good finally beats Bad
About This Video: Gary Vaynerchuk sounds off for 120 seconds on The fact that our technology is moving so fast and it is actually helping one major thing, it is allowing good people to wine
By the way, I’m pretty sure “wine” is a typo on his part even if it is, ironically, appropriate.
Why is this the most horrific thing I’ve heard about since a soldier tossed a puppy off a cliff? I’ve blogged about this before under the context of Halloween and along the lines of deleting my old work, but it’s worth saying again.
The problem with people “knowing who you are” is that you’re constantly checking yourself for presentability and consistency. Over and over you clamp down on your creativity, restrict your passion, and censor your thoughts because the world is watching and you’re never, ever allowed to change. You are what the record says you are. There’s no escape, and to hell with what “feels right” for you at the moment.
It also means that, ironically, people will accuse you of being “fake” or “lying” if you try to grow or if, god forbid, you merely change your mind about something. Favor will be granted toward those who’ve been consistently pleasant. Mediocrity be praised!
Pretty soon, you’ll have to look like this to be trusted:
Oh wait, that’s already true and I kind of do look like that. Damn. We’re screwed.
I guess it’s true what they say: the more things change, the more they stay the same.
I’m not about to dive into a censorship debate. If you’re interested in that, go find another blog. There’s really only one thing you can count on when it comes to opinions: everybody’s got one, which means that there just isn’t much of a market demand for them. I’ll just save it for now.
So recently a US soldier tosseda puppyoff a cliffon video. If you feel the need to see it for yourself most “legitimate” media has done you the favor of making it easily accessible for your viewing pleasure. Lucky you, I’m sure you’ll thank them. For the record, I have decided to spare myself the trauma… but it’s up to you whether or not you think you “should” see it… or whatever…
As usual everyone is being (deleted) about it (long stupid rant deleted) …
That’s the other thing about opinions: if you’re a betting man, put your money on the average opinion being whatever makes people feel good about themselves rather than anything that could be arrived at if one were to bother thinking about what one was saying.
So while I don’t have an opinion on censorship here I am sharing my opinion on opinions, oh how droll and clever why don’t I know when to quit oh god oh god…
I could go on, but I’ll let Sean Bedlam sum up my thoughts on the matter. Warning: he swears. Of course, if you’re honestly going to complain about that after watching a puppy get thrown off a cliff, you have bigger problems than I am qualified to address…
