Journalistic ethics

Jay Rosen has a thoughtful essay on his blog about the ethics of journalism-as-observation. He starts with this story from the siege of Sarajevo.

During the siege a correspondent from a Western news agency is contacted by an intermediary, someone he knows, who has an offer: to go out one night with Bosnian Serb snipers and see for yourself what they do.

A deal is struck, and he accompanies the men to one of their perches in the hills above the city, where they train their rifles on civilians, who might be trying to cross the street. This is where the siege “happens,” in a sense. This is the action itself.

“Come here,” says one of the men, after he has located a target. The sniper motions to take a look. The reporter, who in his own mind had come to see, leans over and peers for a second or two through the lens of the rifle.

He sees two people who think they are out of range standing in an alley, completely vulnerable. That is when the sniper, retaking the lens, says: which one, left or right?

This alarms the reporter. “I have no answer to that,” he says. “I didn’t come to be involved in what you do.” The sniper throws back his head to laugh, and returns to his rifle. There is a pause. In two quick bursts he kills both people just seen through the lens.

“You should have answered,” the sniper says to the Western correspondent. “You could have saved one.”

Smart Water

Bruce Schneier has an amazing piece about something called ‘smart water’:

No, really. It’s liquid with a unique identifier that is linked to a particular owner.

Forensic Coding combined with microdot technology.

SmartWater has been designed to protect household property and motor vehicles. Each bottle of SmartWater solution contains a unique forensic code, which is assigned to a household or vehicle.

An additional feature of SmartWater Instant is the inclusion tiny micro-dot particles which enable Police to quickly identify the true owner of the property.

The idea is for me to paint this stuff on my valuables as proof of ownership. I think a better idea would be for me to paint it on your valuables, and then call the police.

Blogging in teaching

This semester, Ed Felten is teaching a course at Princeton on “Information technology and the Law”. He’s set up a student writing blog on which students post weekly essays on topics related to the course. Essays are 400-500 words in length, with due dates staggered through the week so that there are some new essays every day. I’ve just been reading some of the postings on the MGM v. Grokster case currently before the Supremes. Good stuff. It’s a low-key but useful illustration of how blogs can be used in teaching.

DoJ buys WordPerfect

Good Morning, Silicon Valley is reporting that the US Department of Justice will pay more than $2 million each year to buy business software from Corel — described as “a leading Microsoft rival”.

The new purchase agreement makes the latest version of Corel’s WordPerfect Office software available to more than 50,000 lawyers and other Justice employees.

That includes the department’s antitrust division, which successfully sued Microsoft over illegal efforts to dominate the software industry but negotiated a settlement later to end the company’s court appeals.

The deal is worth up $13.2 million over five years. It also represents a high-profile sale for Corel among lawyers, where it traditionally has enjoyed a loyal following.

Hmmm… I had assumed that WordPerfect died years ago. Now I discover that U.S. courts require all electronic filings to be submitted as WordPerfect documents, and the Department of Justice has thousands of programmed shortcuts designed to work with WordPerfect. For the first time in my life, I feel sorry for lawyers.

Quentin: fame at last

Fame is a funny thing. Some years ago I was walking through the centre of Cambridge and ran into George Steiner. He was looking blissfully happy. “What’s up, George?” I asked. “I have finally made it”, he replied, beaming. “You’ve won the Nobel Prize for literature?”. “No, better than that”, he replied, “I’ve been invited to go on Desert island Disks!”

Now, George is good at hyperbole, but anyone who lives in England will appreciate why he was so chuffed. An invitation onto DID is indeed a sign that one has finally made it. But there is one other sign of universal acceptance — a reference on The Archers, the venerable BBC soap opera about life in a fictional rural village. When he was a student, my friend Quentin Stafford-Fraser co-invented the Webcam. To his delight (and mine), his original webcam was mentioned in The Archers. The only remaining accolade available to him is now a MacArthur Genius Award! I’m working on the citation now.

The DNB and Wikipedia

The Observer | At £7,500 for the set, you’d think they’d get their facts right. Lovely article on how the stupendously expensive Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is full of errors. This brings to mind the ongoing state of denial about Wikipedia. As Cory Doctorow observes:

If these errors had appeared in Wikipedia entries, its likely that they would have been fixed in short order — and once they were discovered by the outraged experts quoted in this Observer article, they certainly would be fixed.

Lessig on the new US anti-communist campaign

Wired 13.03: VIEW

You’ll be pleased to know that communism was defeated in Pennsylvania last year. Governor Ed Rendell signed into law a bill prohibiting the Reds in local government from offering free Wi-Fi throughout their municipalities. The action came after Philadelphia, where more than 50 percent of neighborhoods don’t have access to broadband, embarked on a $10 million wireless Internet project. City leaders had stepped in where the free market had failed. Of course, it’s a slippery slope from free Internet access to Karl Marx. So Rendell, the telecom industry’s latest toady, even while exempting the City of Brotherly Love, acted to spare Pennsylvania from this grave threat to its economic freedom.

The er, service economy

From Wired

England’s EBay for Sex
Britain’s AdultWork website is plugging into the growing niche industry of sex-work dilettantes, people who spend a few hours a week in front of a camera, or in bed with a client, to augment their income — or maybe even just because they like it.

EU Council approves software patents

Despite being told by the European Parliament to think again, the EU Council of Ministers has adopted the software patent directive, in the face of requests from Denmark, Poland and Portugal to reject the directive. An EU Council representative said that the Computer Implemented Inventions Directive had been adopted but was unable to give more details. As it now stands, the directive would legalize software patents. This is Really Bad News because the only people really in favour of this are a number of very large and powerful software companies, including a noted abusive monopolist based in the US. The Directive now goes back to the Parliament. If you don’t know who your MEP is, now is the time to find out. This madness has to be stopped. Among other things, it could wipe out Open Source software. The European Parliament can stop it, but will only do so if its members understand the full implications of what is being proposed.

The Internet and the US Presidential election

The Pew Internet & American Life Project has just released a report and
a commentary about the internet’s role in the 2004 election. The report
is based on a post-election survey and documents how and why the
internet became an essential part of American politics in 2004. 75
million Americans – 37% of the adult population and 61% of online
Americans – used the internet to get political news and information,
discuss candidates and debate issues in emails, or participate directly
in the political process by volunteering or giving contributions to
candidates.

Report downloadable from here. Commentary by Michael Cornfield available here. His summary is:

The Project report confirms that the internet has become an essential medium of American politics. It has done so gradually, like other media. Yet, the internet’s distinctive role in politics has arisen because it can be used in multiple ways. Part deliberative town square, part raucous debating society, part research library, part instant news source, and part political comedy club, the internet connects voters to a wealth of content and commentary about politics. At the same time, campaigners learned a great deal about how to use the internet to attract and aggregate viewers, donors, message forwarders, volunteers, and voters during the 2003-2004 election cycle.