Help Stop SOPA/PIPA

Jan 122012
 
 January 12, 2012

Posted  by Jane Wells on January 10, 2012 @ www.WordPress.org

You are an agent of change. Has anyone ever told you that? Well, I just did, and I meant it.

Normally we stay away from from politics here at the official WordPress project — having users from all over the globe that span the political spectrum is evidence that we are doing our job and democratizing publishing, and we don’t want to alienate any of our users no matter how much some of us may disagree with some of them personally. Today, I’m breaking our no-politics rule, because there’s something going on in U.S. politics right now that we need to make sure you know about and understand, because it affects us all.

Using WordPress to blog, to publish, to communicate things online that once upon a time would have been relegated to an unread private journal (or simply remained unspoken, uncreated, unshared) makes you a part of one of the biggest changes in modern history: the democratization of publishing and the independent web. Every time you click Publish, you are a part of that change, whether you are posting canny political insight or a cat that makes you LOL. How would you feel if the web stopped being so free and independent? I’m concerned freaked right the heck out about the bills that threaten to do this, and as a participant in one of the biggest changes in modern history, you should be, too.

You may have heard people talking/blogging/twittering about SOPA — the Stop Online Piracy Act. The recent SOPA-related boycott of GoDaddy was all over the news, with many people expressing their outrage over the possibilities of SOPA, but when I ask people about SOPA and its sister bill in the Senate, PIPA (Protect IP Act), many don’t really know what the bills propose, or what we stand to lose. If you are not freaked out by SOPA/PIPA, please: for the next four minutes, instead of checking Facebook statuses, seeing who mentioned you on Twitter, or watching the latest episode of Sherlock*, watch this video (by Fight for the Future).

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

Facebook forced to admit breaches of confidentiality

Nov 302011
 
 November 30, 2011

Facebook was officially reprimanded on Tuesday for mis-representing their stated policy on privacy (& security) of it’s users personal data, by the FTC (Federal Trade Commission).

According to FTC’s statement, Facebook is:

  • barred from making misrepresentations about the privacy or security of consumers’ personal information;
  • required to obtain consumers’ affirmative express consent before enacting changes that override their privacy preferences;
  • required to prevent anyone from accessing a user’s material no more than 30 days after the user has deleted his or her account;
  • required to establish and maintain a comprehensive privacy program designed to address privacy risks associated with the development and management of new and existing products and services, and to protect the privacy and confidentiality of consumers’ information; and
  • required, within 180 days, and every two years after that for the next 20 years, to obtain independent, third-party audits certifying that it has a privacy program in place that meets or exceeds the requirements of the FTC order, and to ensure that the privacy of consumers’ information is protected.

According to Peter Pachel (Mashable), the effects of the settlement will likely have more to do with other social networks than the original one. The message from the FTC to social media is now clear: If you put the desires of advertisers before the privacy of users, you will be stopped.

Just because you’re sitting on a ton of personal information that would make marketers drool, it doesn’t mean you can monetize it in any way you like.

“Opt-in i think is where everything is going,” says Lou Kerner, a social media analyst with Wedbush Securities, a Los Angeles-based investment bank. “Most people will opt-in to almost anything. A lot of younger people assume all the information is freely available anyway. And there are many people who think that using your data to see marketing that’s actually relevant to you is a good thing.”