Technically Speaking

The big news today is the fact that Robert Scoble was banned from Facebook because he violated the terms of service (TOS) of the social network. Now even though he was doing some testing for Plaxo, the fact remains he still violated the TOS. Now some of you feel sorry for Scoble, but in a sense he knew the TOS doesn’t allow this kind of activity.

This brings up an interesting point about social networks. Once you join and click the “I Agree” box on their TOS page, you are bound to their service. Even though the majority of social networks are free, you are freely giving them data to do as they deem by their TOS. TOS is an interesting escape clause created solely for the company that binds you, the user of their free service, to them.

If you don’t read the TOS, it’s just like the old saying of buyer beware. Scoble bought into the whole social network of Facebook, but he thought he was above the law. He found out today he isn’t, and even though it’s a shame that he can’t port his own contact information (his own data, which he gave up his rights to by putting them in Facebook via their TOS), he should have known better than to try to circumvent their TOS. Even though he may have been NDA locked down by Plaxo in the testing phase, this still is only a mild excuse; such as “I was going 40mph in the 35mph zone because no one else was on the road.”

Many of you are probably in some sort of denial at this point in time. Some of you may even consider following Scoble to a data free zone that he is looking for. Good luck is all I can say.

This is an interesting question of privacy in some sense. In 2008 we are going to see more and more issues of this crop up. It’s not something that people have really given a lot of thought about until recently. There is probably billions of bytes of data online, private and public. In a sense, all of the data you put on the internet is public. There really is not a private place you can have data online.

One of the key items that will be leveraged here this year is advertising and data. My #1 prediction for 2008 was that there would be more money spent on advertising online. With this being said, the only way to truly maximize the ad dollar (or Euro) would be for the people doing the advertising to recoup their money spent. This will be done of course with targeting the customer base.

This gets into your data being used. We have heard reports of Google changing up the way Gmail works. But do you really blame some of these companies for starting to mine the data that is there? See above. Billions of bytes of data online. Floating out there in cyber la-la land for decade plus now. The thing is, most of the data floating around is not organized enough to make any sense of it. Someone (Google, Facebook, MySpace, etc… ) will be the ones organizing it this year. If not already, they are making plans to do so. What they say on one hand can easily be changed with - you got it - a simple change of their TOS! Didn’t believe me when I said the above - did you? TOS is an interesting escape clause created solely for the company that binds you, the user of their free service, to them.

What I see happening is there will be a big round of privacy advocates taking one side or another. This data snafu or being Scobled won’t go away anytime soon. This is only the first of many questions that will be raised in the data privacy wars in 2008. While the data may have been his in one sense, in another sense the conversation that Allen of CN had with Steve Poland sheds a bit more light on “who’s data” Scoble was really taking. I happen to agree, it’s a touchy subject - a gray area at best.

I say that because there is no safeguard’s in place where you can’t download one of your friends or anyone’s photos. There is no disabling feature on Facebook preventing you from going on a photo hunt. In fact there are a few fb applications that take your friends pic and use them in some cool way. Inside of Facebook, again the TOS keeps that cool. But what prevents you from taking it outside of Facebook and downloading it to your desktop. Nothing. As far as TOS goes, I see a new improved one coming from Facebook in the near future.

Technically Speaking, whether or not Scoble finds his own data-TOS-free for all place to play is going to be up to him. I personally don’t believe such a place exists unless you find or start your own social network that is invite only; private island of people that agree that TOS’ville and data hostage keeping is against their policy. Good luck on finding that place. It’s a Utopian dream at best. Vegas hotel

No idea why this is still in the news this morning. I talked about it Saturday morning before I headed out to the lake. Ok, I guess it is only Monday, so it deserves to be talked about.

Basically, pay attention - “When you go to buy a Rolex watches, don’t settle for looking at hamilton watches.” What do I mean by that statement? It is quite simple. Everyone keeps looking at this like they are really surprised by all of this. Why? Wasn’t I clear with the links in the above Saturday morning post I did?

The government has been watching your internet usage and habits for years. There are no secrets online. If it’s online, you better not be “private mode“. Do you understand now? This is almost comical at best. I bet there will be a few thousand words written on Privacy and other issues that are at the top of everyone’s thoughts this morning.

If you truly want online privacy, then set up your own network, off the grid. That is how the BBS (Bulletin Board System) worked. Yes, it was slow and archaic by today’s standards, but you could be rest assured that your messages would only be shared within your network (FIDOnet is a good example). But even than, you still are using the communication lines of a public phone system.

Technically Speaking, privacy online is really truly just an oxymoron when you sit down and think about it. Piracy on the other hand could be stopped if the companies that harbor the illegal copyright infringing activities chose to do so.

On one hand, yes, e-mail is like a postcard that can be viewed by anyone seeing it. There are no envelopes to open so I can see where the government would say that. On the other hand, how do you get into the e-mail? The most obvious scenario is with a username and password.

There is your “envelope”. I think that a search warrant should be required. The Fourth Amendment is still law is it not? Why should the FBI, NSA, FTC, and other 3 letter government authorities have carte blanche on your e-mail? I can see them wanting access to this person’s e-mail, but they should have to go the proper route. I mean, the guy is not a terrorist or anything. He is a con artist. A con artist that is out to make money on the internet should not be treated the same way as what the United States government has termed as an “enemy combatant”.

Technically Speaking, the government here in the United States tries too hard to sometimes to protect our rights, while trampling the rights of others. Two wrongs never make a right.