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Raw Bytes Computer News KPBX FM 91.1 Radio National Public Radio Network Frank Delaney Producer Broadcast on Wednesday Morning 7:35 AM During Morning Edition Support Public Radio ! The Theater Of the Mind |
In computer news this week 03/21
/2007 |
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Youtube and the web goes political .... The big
news story these past few days has been the anti-Hillary
Clinton video on Youtube – which appears
to be a pirated remake of the famous Apple Computer advertisement shown during the
1984 Super Bowl. The
original ad was pro Apple computers, but this ad is definitely anti-Hillary
Clinton and pro
Barack Obama. Much of
the original video is used unchanged, but the soundtrack and key screens have
been edited. What’s
interesting about this is that it seems to have been done by private parties
not claiming any political party affiliations, but the impact of this ad is
obvious – in less than a couple days it’s been viewed over a
million times on Youtube itself. That doesn’t
count the obvious fact that it’s probably been captured and downloaded
and sent via emails to thousands of other people, and probably posted on
thousands of websites. So in the new world
of the world wide web – sometimes referred to as Web 2.0 – such
is the nature of things. Aside
from creating havoc with political campaign contribution laws, designed to
reveal all contributions to campaigns for political advertising, this gets
into internet privacy issues, copyrights, and a Pandora’s box of other
issues. Anyone
can open a Youtube account and post their own videos. To do so,
you say who you are, and provide some information about yourself, and then
you have a forum to talk to the entire world via the internet. The problem
with this is that it’s so easy to create an account with false
information. So despite the fact that you have given a screen name and some
personal information for identification purposes, that
could all be bogus. What it does is give you an uncensored electronic bully pulpit not
only to say anything you want, but to show it in online video format with
sound. A recent
lawsuit against google revealed that when people were doing keyword searches
online, google was secretly recording the information they were looking for,
and tracing their identity through their IP addresses, and archiving all this
information. This means it might be possible for someone to lookup google
searches you have done online, and be able to identify you as the person
seeking the information. I think
this is illegal in our libraries – you can’t look up what books
someone checked out – but on the internet – which is the
equivalent of the Wild West in terms of lawlessness - anything goes. But of
course there are programs which will let you surf the internet and hide your
IP address so you can’t be traced. I’ve even reviewed products like this on Raw Bytes –
because I and most people are concerned about their internet privacy. Then
there’s the copyright issue – obviously Apple owned the original
ad – and someone copied and edited it – and now the original
anti-Hillary Youtube ad has been copied and
re-edited into many permutations with different messages, now posted on youtube and other sites. Who’s
doing all this ?? Let’s get these bad
cyber-outlaws. So if
this disturbs you and your reaction is to say “Call the police !! “ – the bad news is - there are no internet police. For Raw Bytes This is Frank Delaney (C) 2007 MTA Micro
Technology Associates http://www.mtamicro.com/kpbx.html PO Box 31522 Spokane, Wa 99223-1522 (509)624-7230 |
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