The free riding that underpins some Internet fortunes

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There’s an interesting post on Quartz about the fragility of a complex system — in this case the Web. The gist of it is that there’s a small piece of Javascript code written by a 28-year-old open source programmer named Azer Koçulu which was hosted on npm, a well-known package-manager for open source javascript code.

kik_code

As Quartz tells it,

One of the open-source JavaScript packages Koçulu had written was kik, which helped programmers set up templates for their projects. It wasn’t widely known, but it shared a name with Kik, the messaging app based in Ontario, Canada. On March 11, Koçulu received an email from Bob Stratton, a patent and trademark agent who does contract work for Kik.

Stratton said Kik was preparing to release its own package and asked Koçulu if he could rename his. “Can we get you to rename your kik package?” Stratton wrote.

There then followed some fairly acrimononious back-and-forth between Stratton and Koçulu, who was irritated by a private company wanting him to rename his package.1 In the end, Stratton went to npm, who agreed to take his package down.

A few days later, JavaScript programmers around the world began receiving a strange error message when they tried to run their code. For some, the issue was severe enough to keep some of them from updating apps and services that were already running on the web.

It turned out that lots of applications actually needed Mr Koçulu’s tiny snippet of code if they were to function properly.

This is just the latest illustration of one of the most conveniently-overlooked aspects of the Web (and indeed of the whole Internet), namely that many commercially-profitable enterprises are built on the back of open source code — stuff written by programmers who are willing to put their work into the public domain.

This is one of the dirty secrets of digital technology: some Internet fortunes are the result of free riding on the backs of other people’s (unpaid) work.

  1. To be fair to Mr Stratton, he offered to buy the name ‘kik’, but Mr Koçulu priced it at $30k, which I guess is a bit steep for 11 lines of Javascript. ↩

Online comments and the polluted public sphere

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From Engadget:

Now, clearly, not every comment or commenter is the same. But we’ve increasingly found ourselves turning off comments on stories that discuss topics of harassment, gender or race simply because so many of the replies are hateful, even threatening. Articles that mention Apple deteriorate into arguments of iOS vs Android, replete with grade-school name calling. Articles that don’t make mention of Samsung often include comments claiming that we are shills for Apple. Some commenters plain attack our writers or editors or other commenters. Some are outright threats. And that’s not even getting into the spam problem.

The thing is, we like having a comments section. It gives our readers a place to share their experiences, point out mistakes we’ve made, offer up different perspectives and provide more information. Our comments section can be an incredible place to visit, and we value that our readers take the time out of their day (often repeatedly) to participate. But we can’t take pride in a comment system that isn’t offering you the features you need to participate; that runs amok with racist, sexist or homophobic slurs and threats; or that takes joy in in-fighting and provoking fights.

A quality comments section should make it easy for users to contribute. A good comments section has users who feel a sense of duty and kinship, who act as a community. An exceptional comments section informs its readers, corrects authors and provides worthwhile insights in a polite and constructive manner.

This is not, by and large, what is happening in our comments section today. In order to reassess and push forward with a better system, we’re going to take a comment break…

And this from the Observer‘s Readers’ Editor:

Extreme points of view made it impossible to have any comprehensive online debate on race, immigration and Islam long before any moves were made to limit commentary.

While there is a general desire to open comments on as many subjects as possible, moderators are made aware in advance of opinion pieces that are likely to need careful handling.

Last weekend, after consultation, comments were delayed on several Observer articles, including Nick Cohen on becoming a Jew, Victoria Coren Mitchell on the Adam Johnson underage sex case and Barbara Ellen on Jamie Oliver’s advocacy of breastfeeding.

Comments opened once moderators were in place, but within minutes antisemites and Holocaust deniers were hounding Cohen, apologists for sex with teenagers were appearing in the Coren Mitchell thread and misogynists were busy insulting Ellen. It had to stop.

Yep.

Why the Apple vs. the FBI case is important

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This morning’s Observer column:

No problem, thought the Feds: we’ll just get a court order forcing Apple to write a special version of the operating system that will bypass this security provision and then download it to Farook’s phone. They got the order, but Apple refused point-blank to comply – on several grounds: since computer code is speech, the order violated the first amendment because it would be “compelled speech”; because being obliged to write the code amounted to “forced labour”, it would also violate the fifth amendment; and it was too dangerous because it would create a backdoor that could be exploited by hackers and nation states and potentially put a billion users of Apple devices at risk.

The resulting public furore offers a vivid illustration of how attempting a reasoned public debate about encryption is like trying to discuss philosophy using smoke signals. Leaving aside the purely clueless contributions from clowns like Piers Morgan and Donald Trump, and the sanctimonious platitudes from Obama downwards about “no company being above the law”, there is an alarmingly widespread failure to appreciate what is at stake here. We are building a world that is becoming totally dependent on network technology. Since there is no possibility of total security in such a world, then we have to use any tool that offers at least some measure of protection, for both individual citizens and institutions. In that context, strong encryption along the lines of the stuff that Apple and some other companies are building into their products and services is the only game in town.

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Blood sacrifices, a century on

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In Dublin today, my countrymen and women are marking the centenary of the 1916 Rising. The London Review of Books is marking the anniversary with a long, thoughtful piece by Colm Ó Toibín, which quotes this passage from a 1913 article by Patrick Pearse, who was one of the leaders of the insurrection.

“I should like to see any and every body of Irish citizens armed. We must accustom ourselves to the thought of arms, to the sight of arms, to the use of arms. We may make mistakes at the beginning and shoot the wrong people; but bloodshed is a cleansing and sanctifying thing, and the nation which regards it as the final horror has lost its manhood. There are many things more horrible than bloodshed; and slavery is one of them.”

Stirring, not to say bloodthirsty stuff, eh? Which perhaps explains why it has always been popular with Gerry Adams and his Sinn Féin comrades.

Ten years later, The Plough and the Stars, Sean Ó Casey’s play about the Rising, was staged in the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. As Ó Toibín tells it:

“In the play, Irish nationalists carrying the tricolour mix with prostitutes, one of whom, Rosie Redmond, is in a bar in Dublin where the voice of Patrick Pearse comes from outside; the speech he is making includes the lines: ‘Bloodshed is a cleansing and sanctifying thing, and the nation that regards it as the final horror has lost its manhood … There are many things more horrible than bloodshed, and slavery is one of them.’ At one point, a character who has been using the Rebellion as an excuse to loot goods from posh stores runs onto the stage with ‘a new hat on her head, a fox fur around her neck over her shawl, three umbrellas under her right arm, and a box of biscuits under her left’. She describes the looting with immense comic relish. All this irreverence resulted in a riot at the Abbey …, causing Yeats to tell the audience: ‘You have disgraced yourselves again.’”

I’ve always loved that “again”.

Trump as you’ve never heard him before

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Extraordinary, hour-long conversation between him and the Washpo’s Editorial Board. Plausible bedside manner in conversation, but no sign of a deep understanding of anything he might be called upon to address. Speaks in sound-bite, ‘common sense’ generalisations. He’d fix stuff, do deals, get a fairer whack for the good ol’ USA. A bit like George W. Bush, in an odd way — in that he passes the folksy test of a guy the average voter might like to have a beer with. Still a climate-change denier, but clothing that view in a relativist narrative about nuclear weapons posing a bigger threat. Scary and fascinating at the same time.

Quote of the Day

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“While it takes as much skill to make a sword or a ploughshare, it takes a critical understanding of human values to prefer the ploughshare.”

Walter Lippmann, in his first Editorial for the New Republic, 1918.

Donald Trump Berlusconi

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Nice piece by Bill Emmott who — as a former Editor of the Economist — was twice sued for libel by Berlusconi. Sample:

The reality is that, while Berlusconi certainly has his charm, Trump’s swelling base of support seems to see a certain charm in him, too, even if it is a less seductive version. Moreover, while Berlusconi undoubtedly possesses business acumen, he has, like Trump, cut plenty of corners along the way. The ties of Berlusconi’s close aides and friends to Italy’s various Mafia clans are well documented.

But none of this is particularly important, in terms of its implications for the United States today. What is important is that both Trump and Berlusconi are ruthless and willing to resort to any means to achieve their (self-serving) ends.

Given this, underestimating Trump would be a huge mistake; he will always prove stronger, more slippery, and more enduring than expected. The only way to avoid Berlusconi-level disaster – or worse – is to continue criticizing him, exposing his lies, and holding him to account for his words and actions, regardless of the insults or threats he throws at those who do.

Too many Italians shrugged their shoulders at Berlusconi’s lies and failings, figuring that he would soon go away, having done little harm. But he did not go away, and he did plenty of harm. The US cannot afford to make the same mistake. The price of liberty, Americans are fond of saying, is eternal vigilance. In confronting Trump, there can be no discount.

Yep.

Europe and the US: two continents divided by a common technology

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This morning’s Observer column:

Three years ago, Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman (aka adult supervisor) of Google, spent some time in Cambridge as a visiting professor. He gave a number of lectures on his vision of what a comprehensively networked world would be like and then at the end took part in a symposium in which a number of academics commented on his ideas. As the discussion converged on the question of the new kinds of power wielded by the great internet companies, an increasingly puzzled look came over Schmidt’s countenance. Eventually the dam broke and he intervened in the debate to say that he had suddenly realised that the difference between Europe and America was that “in Europe, people tend to trust governments and are suspicious of companies, whereas in America it’s the other way around”.

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What the butler saw

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So it begins. As the media establishment wakes up to the realisation that this Trump nonsense might really be serious, so its organs begin to burnish the clown’s image. First up is this NYT piece about the property that will be “the Western White House” if Trump were elected President. It’s a three-sickbag piece, so be warned. Sample:

“You can always tell when the king is here,” Mr. Trump’s longtime butler here, Anthony Senecal, said of the master of the house and Republican presidential candidate.

The king was returning that day to his Versailles, a 118-room snowbird’s paradise that will become a winter White House if he is elected president. Mar-a-Lago is where Mr. Trump comes to escape, entertain and luxuriate in a Mediterranean-style manse, built 90 years ago by the cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post.

Few people here can anticipate Mr. Trump’s demands and desires better than Mr. Senecal, 74, who has worked at the property for nearly 60 years, and for Mr. Trump for nearly 30 of them.

He understands Mr. Trump’s sleeping patterns and how he likes his steak (“It would rock on the plate, it was so well done”), and how Mr. Trump insists — despite the hair salon on the premises — on doing his own hair.

And so on, seemingly ad infinitum.

And the headline over this farrago? “A King in His Castle: How Donald Trump Lives, From His Longtime Butler”.