Jan 2021 The Internet and its Discontents

 

The Internet and its Discontents

I was browsing through some of the sources I have used for this column recently and one from the  past  (September 19, 2016) caught my interest again,  “I used to be a Human Being “ by Andrew Sullivan. It was a criticism of the social outcomes wrought by, you guessed it, the Internet, but it was the subtitle that really interested me: “An endless bombardment of news and gossip and images has rendered us manic information addicts. It broke me. It 

might break you, too.” He backs up his claims that range from spread of misinformation to the mechanisms it uses that will  lead to addiction. If your search engine can find the article, I highly recommend reading it if only for the line,  ”If the internet killed you, I used to joke, then I would be the first to find out.”

My initial reaction was --- if that was true over five years ago, is it better now or worse? Well, to cut to the chase, some things are better and some are worse. 

On the positive side, the Internet has a plethora of videos from showing you how to fix your washing machine to dealing with your computer (most of the time).  It’s  an easy way to keep in  touch with friends, make travel plans, arrange your photos, shop, and, well,  you fill in the rest.  One can subscribe to receive current news on the Washington Post, The New York Times, Wikipedia  and the Wall Street Journal to check or explore source materials for their column. Just sayin’.

On  the negative side there also exist sites that can cause harm to the user and thus harm society. For example, consider  the  truly evil websites like  the “how to commit suicide” website  directed at teens which can be easily spread via the Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and  Tik Tok sites. Additionally,  the Tik Tok site has an app that recommends teens to take extreme measures to lose weight with diets ranging from 300 calories per day to taking laxatives after overeating and if they find that they just can’t adhere to the stupid and spartan diet, other teens resort to shaming them, “You realize giving up after a week. Isn’t going to get you anywhere, right? ... You’re disgusting, it’s really embarrassing.”

To be fair, Tik Tok said it would adjust its recommendation algorithms to avoid showing users too much of the same content, “as part of a broad reevaluation of social media platforms and the potential harm they pose to younger users.”

To test this out I tried typing “how to commit suicide” in google search and got 322,000,000 hits and the first page looked like this”

Help is available

Speak with someone today

---

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline

Hours: Available 24 hours. Languages: English, Spanish. Learn more

800-273-8255

Intercepting and rerouting queries like this are best handled by the operating system or browser instead of tick tock itself okay.. xxx

 

The Internet is exceptionally good at spreading most any unsubstantiated  rumour like the “Pizzagate” affair which included the outragious claims that Hilary Clinton was using a pizza shop to snare unsuspecting children that were to be sold to sex trafficers.

“ Pizzagate was so effective in convincing one man that pedophile Democrats were abusing children in the basement of a Washington pizza restaurant that in 2016, he showed up with an AR-15 to “rescue” the nonexistent children.  He was sentenced to four years in prison for@ the three shots he fired into the restaurant. Pizzagate was a cautionary tale, showing how online conspiracy theories about sex-trafficked children could lead to real-life violence. But that did nothing to stop more made-up stories from spreading.” 

For a more comprehensive analysis, search on:

“Pizzagate: From rumor, to hashtag, to gunfire in D.C 2016” on Washingtonpost.com

For another horrific example of the Internet amplifying rumors and presenting them as facts, search on “Wayfair hoax Washington Post” where a weird combination of circumstance and a propensity to believe conspiracy theories turned a harmless two-day run-away by a teen into another sex-trafficing bundle of misinformation harming many folks along the way. The article is too long to describe all of the mayhem caused, not least that the police and social services personnel were reassigned from real jobs to work on this fake one.

A less deadly but important example is from the Dec 13, 2021  article in the New York Times,  

“Now in Your Inbox: Political Misinformation” 

“At least eight Republican lawmakers sent fund-raising emails containing a brazen distortion of a potential settlement with migrants separated from their families during the Trump administration. One of them, Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, falsely claimed that President Biden was “giving every illegal immigrant that comes into our country $450,000.”

Those claims were grounded in news that the Justice Department was negotiating payments to settle lawsuits filed on behalf of immigrant families whom the Trump administration had separated, some of whom have not been reunited. But the payments, which are not final and could end up being smaller, would be limited to that small fraction of migrants.”

This is a good example of fibbing by omission. What the Inbox article omitted was an explanation of why it might actually be a cheaper and a more efficient way to control the current flood of immigrants into this country. It could cost more money for continuing to enforce the “illegal immigrant” problem we already are confronted with. But, then again we are dealing with politicians, and as the old saying goes, “The best way to tell if a politician is lying is that his lips are moving.”

 The Mathematician and Philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947)  states in his book, “The Aims of Education” a viewpoint that I have always thought as a given, “Civilization advances in direct proportion to the number of operations humanity can perform without thinking about them”. And I still believe it applies to many things today such as elevators and air 

conditioners, and automobiles, but it seems to me that this viewpoint is not entirely true about the Internet. Along with its many conveniences come unforeseen problems that can only be solved by thinking about them.

 

Facebook Redux

  Kayleigh Rogers reporting from fivethirtyeight.com has written an interesting article entitled:

“Facebook’s Algorithm Is Broken. We Collected Some Suggestions On How To Fix It.”,

Rogers interviewed several computer media experts for their suggestions on how to combat problems with misinformation, fraud and privacy on all Internet websites but focussed on Facebook's growing issues

The suggestions ranged from “Facebook can completely revamp its astronomically successful and profitable business plan” to “Facebook is irredeemable, and should be forced to fail. “ 

So what exactly is the “Algorithm” mentioned in her title?  Most generally,   the term   “algorithm” is a fancy word for any step-by-step process for someone or (something) to follow to achieve a specified result.  More precisely, “it is a set of instructions for solving logical and mathematical problems, or for accomplishing some other task. A recipe is a good example of an algorithm because it says what must be done, step by step. It takes inputs (ingredients) and produces an output (the completed dish)”. [Google search]

 

Facebook also is keeping  track of every website you visit (while you are on Facebook) and how you navigate Facebook itself, gathering data and “decides” what you will see and when you will see it.  They claim that this enhances your  “Facebook  experience”, and while that may be true, what they don’t say is that its algorithms are not just for your convenience but used primarily to maximize Facebook profits as well as the time the user will stay on its site. The longer you stay, the more ads you will see --- it’s the same reason supermarkets move items around. So, as you probably already know, using  Facebook is not actually free --- it makes its money by selling information about you to companies which allow them to aim their advertising directly at you. 

 

 The  Facebook business model is sort of like  a souped-up version of the process of using billboards you will see as you travel to and from work on an actual highway (as opposed to the Information Highway).  The owners of those billboards make their  money from businesses which display their ads on said billboards so that these businesses can make money for themselves.  For example, if and when you respond to one of the billboards, the money that these businesses will make as a result of your responding to the message on the billboard is used to pay the owner of the billboards and Capitalism goes on its merry way.  If this highway happens to run by a posh neighborhood such as Tribeca, you can be reasonably certain that the ads you will see will be for high-end products and services as opposed to farm equipment or firearm purveyors. The  maxim “Follow the Money” explains a lot about many of our behaviors as well as why something is happening.

 

While billboard advertising cannot predict what you are likely to buy,  Facebook advertising is attempting to do just that by using the information that you input, be it typing, voice recognition or brain wave analysis.  As an interesting side effect, you will see different ads than I do because Facebook's algorithm  already has our likes and dislikes tucked safely away. We hope they are safe and private because that also is becoming  a problem. 

 

 Besides the privacy issue there are problems: Facebook could be deemed to be a monopoly similar to the railroad companies in the early 19th century.

“By the late 1800s, railroad companies dominated shipping and transportation in the US. Several states had tried to curb railroad companies’ growing power and address perceived abuses. But in 1886, the Supreme Court ruled that state efforts to regulate interstate commerce were unconstitutional. That decision pushed Congress to create the Interstate Commerce Act.”

 

Unless all social media are fairly and smoothly regulated by appropriate federal government agencies as is the US Food and Drug Administration and until some sane regulation of the Internet is instituted, the future of the “marketing game” looks bright.

Following is a potpourri of juicy chunks of Rogers’ article wherein she presents the experts reccommendations:

 

“Some of the internal research found shockingly simple tweaks [to improve the algorithm],” said Noah Giansiracusa, a mathematics professor at Bentley University and author of “How Algorithms Create and Prevent Fake News.” “For example, if you limit the number of reshares, that will actually reduce the amount of disinformation.” Sharing is an effective method to engage the user and also allows that content (which, not surprisingly, contains ads) to spread quickly.” 

“Multiple experts also pointed to more prominent user controls, to allow users to decide what content they’d like to see. While Facebook does offer quite a lot of user control options, studies have shown most users are unaware of how they work, and there’s not an intuitive way for users to signal dissatisfaction with content, said Karrie Karahalios, a computer science professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who has studied user experience with Facebook. “

“Roddy Lindsay, a former Facebook data scientist who went on to co-found a startup, wants the algorithm to prioritize content that users are likely to deem “good for the world.” It’s an admittedly subjective metric, but Facebook experimented with it by having users rate content on whether they felt it was “good” or “bad” for the world. It then used that feedback to train the algorithm to prioritize only the “good” stuff. Facebook researchers found this reduced the amount of negative content in users’ feeds, but it also reduced the number of times users logged onto Facebook, so a watered-down version of it was ultimately adopted instead. ...It’s not that these algorithms can’t be improved,” Lindsay said. “The problem is that the only decision makers for what these algorithms optimize for are the companies.” 

 

“Another more dramatic change would be eliminating the ranking algorithm for the newsfeed altogether, and returning to a reverse-chronological feed. In other words, just show everybody everything people posted, rather than trying to personalize the feed just for you (and whatever the algorithm thinks you’re most likely to click, or rage-click). This notion is controversial. Some of the experts I spoke to said it would never work because it incentivizes quantity over quality — a fast road to spam — while also making it less likely that you’ll see anything relevant, interesting or engaging (in every sense of the word) on your feed.”

At the furthest end of the spectrum are two ideas, one optimistic and the other pessimistic:

1. Facebook can completely revamp its astronomically successful and profitable business plan

2.  Facebook is irredeemable, and should be forced to fail 

I have strong doubts about the feasibility of the second option as Facebook is surely no different than any other large organization in that it can easily afford a platoon of lobbyists to guarantee its survival and enhance their profitability.

Government vs Private Enterprise Consumer Privacy Protection: Pros and Cons

 Government vs Private Enterprise Consumer  Privacy Protection: Pros and Cons

This title is quite a mouthful, so let me attempt to explain:.

The latest Amazon kerfuffle has raised a more generalized question.

Last month’s column mostly discussed the issue of Internet privacy and may have left the impression that privacy is inherently a good thing as well as a citizen’s right. However, it raises a thorny issue: how to provide and enforce that right?  Can it be done with a cooperative effort by the service providers as self-watchdogs or should the government be the watchdog and provide the protection?

Like most thorny problems there are pros and cons to alternative solutions. An advantage to government regulation is that it is set up to be fair and impartial and we are protected under current interpretations of the Constitution and including its amendments known as The Bill of rights.  This can be a pro or con for Internet providers as well as service providers as they would have conflicting goals: on the one hand, most may really wish to provide privacy protection for their users but at the same time and, as anyone who has been watching the TV series “Billions” knows, corporations must make profits for their stockholders (and consequently themselves) and offtimes attempt to avoid the law in order to do so. 

Unlike the government, corporations are not elected by the people, so the government handling the issue is another plus for the government. On the other-other hand one can argue that the government has a history of being sluggish, costly and is prone to overreach making private enterprise the wiser choice. Clearly some sort of balance between the two should be worked out. Unfortunately, it is not a trivial task to balance what people say they want from a democracy to deciding how to provide that service  --- which is either through the auspices of the government or private enterprise. It isn’t even an exclusively one versus the other situation as it could also blend the rights and responsibilities of both. 

What about AI or Artificial Intelligence as a solution? It seems to be becoming a panacea for many other seemingly intractable problems. But using AI to help ensure privacy and security is also not as easy as it might seem.  AI is getting better and better at detecting and censoring hate speech but can it detect and block viruses and malware from taking over the computer’s built-in Operating system or OS?  

Oversimplifying, the OS is the boss of everything; it decides which components of the hardware will do what and when to do it. Perhaps “decide” is too much an anthropomorphic analog but the OS such as Microsoft or Chrome  (which to many are the Internet) are just programs written by programmers at a very detailed level called Machine Language that gets assembled into a format the hardware can “understand” and execute. 

Now suppose the programmer who wrote the program to steal or destroy data is smarter than the programmer(s) who wrote the OS.  It’s not going to be a happy scenario for users of the OS --- it becomes a game of cops and robbers where sometimes the cops win and sometimes the robbers get away with it. In other words, get over it or at least get used to it --- the struggle between good and evil has been a wrestling match for a long, long time.

There are three choices here: The government regulates, private industry regulates itself, or some hybrid model whereby regulation responsibility is shared. 

“One key lesson is that regulators should not be afraid of looking dumb and asking 'stupid questions'.  If something is unclear, or doesn't feel right, then you might well be close to learning something that the regulated entity doesn't want you to know. The classic example was the FBI's failure to follow up on their agents' reports that some trainee pilots had asked to be shown how to fly a plane, but not how to land it.  The result was 9/11.” (https://www.regulation.org.uk/reg_effectiveness-homepage.html”)

Once the dilemma of choosing the government, private enterprise or hybrid regulatory framework ,we would of course, have to name this agency and choose a suitable acronym for it because that’s how it works. For the sake of simplicity let us assume that we have chosen the Government-only Regulation option.

So first, what would we call this suggested “Internet Protection of Privacy and Security Agency'' ? The thought comes to mind that the simplest abbreviation is best: IPPSA. It even looks like it might be a pronounceable word (ippsuh) like many abbreviations for government agencies.  But wait, before we commit to an acronym,we must search through all of  the existing ones to make sure that we do not unwittingly reuse  one. Does there exist a list of all the agencies somewhere in the dusty corners of the Internet?  Of course. 

All one has to do is fire up their favorite Search Engine app to look for it.  When I enter the phrase “US GOVT agency acronyms” I got back a list of brief results from Google and chose the first one: https://govinfo.gov mainly because I trust websites that have the “.gov” suffix.   I got 8 pages of hits in a nice two-column table. The results range  from  ABMC standing for the AMERICAN BATTLE MONUMENTS COMMISSION to WHD for the Wage and Hour Division, whatever that means. ( I’m sure your search engine can find out.)  After a semi-intense scrutiny, we find that our proposed IPPSA choice would fit right in with no conflict). We could shorten it even further by dropping the “A” at the end to make  IPPS easier to pronounce. If you do venture to the website, it’s hard not to to get sucked in to browse the list finding edifying acronyms; for example, OJJDP stands for the  JUVENILE JUSTICE AND DELINQUENCY PREVENTION OFFICE  even though the “O” for Office seems to be misplaced. 

 The Privacy Problem Revisited 8/14/2021

 Many of us would be annoyed by the divulging of our  private information such as where you live and many others would rationalize, “Well, if I have to get these ads to support the services provided by this site, then I’d rather they be targeted to my interests instead of a random choice --- either way I’m going to get the ads so that I won’t have to pay for the services the website provides. So the choice becomes: do I want to pay for the use of the website (like any other commodity) or do I pay by sharing some of my personal information? To paraphrase an old saying that sums this up, “When a website claims to be “free” you are the customer and you pay with your private information”.

In my experience, the younger generation is less concerned with protecting their privacy than is the older generation and the older you are the more the concern. During the early days of the Internet a story circulated about a fellow on the subway handing out forms that, when filled out, would capture much of the rider’s personal data. What was the gift to the riders for providing this information? A cheap plastic ballpoint pen. So, if you’re willing to give up your privacy for a cheap pen, it would seem to follow that you would do the same in return for the services of a Google search engine or a social platform such as Facebook.

 

An article by Cameron Summerson summarizes the argument for using Google and Facebook and paying with personal data. 

https://www.howtogeek.com/353483/why-its-not-a-big-deal-that-google-and-facebook-knows-a-lot-about-you/ (If you don’t want to type that long URL, it might be simpler to search on “why it’s not a big deal that google and facebook knows about you”).

In a nutshell, he argues that you are not selling your personal data to the two tech giants.  At best, you are leasing it to them in return for using the services the giants provide. Besides , he argues, Google and Facebook provide very strong security for your data (which makes sense because it is valuable to them.). Likewise, the advertiser who pays Google and Facebook to display his advertisement in your searches or feeds has a self interest in providing strong security for your data keeping it safe and private for the same reason --- it is valuable. Once the user clicks on their ad and is taken to the advertiser’s website then any information that you give about yourself is your own personal choice. And finally both Google and Facebook as well as most Big Tech companies claim that  the data is anonymized before being distributed. “ Data Anonymization” is defined as a "process by which personal data is irreversibly altered in such a way that a data subject can no longer be identified directly or indirectly, either by the data controller alone or in collaboration with any other party." (Wikipedia). So the question becomes do we take Google and Facebook at their word?  Can they really keep our data private? But even if we choose to trust them, to  make matters more complicated, it is possible for a hacker to de- anonymize  the anonymized data to the point where your identity is discovered! “De-anonymization is the practice of matching anonymous data (also known as de-identified data) with publicly available information, or auxiliary data, in order to discover the individual to which the data belong to. “ (Wikipedia)

However, to make matters even more complex, de-anonymization is not foolproof and the name of the person can be found using simple computer techniques. For example,

” Mr. X lives in ZIP code 02138 and was born July 31, 1945. ... narrows down the population, so much so that the combination of (gender, ZIP code, birthdate) was unique for about 87% of the U.S. population. ... show that people can potentially be re-identified by these kinds of data, not that everyone will be.” (https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/09/what-information-personally-identifiable)

 

By now you might be asking: how is all this head-spinning information useful to me?  We  protect our privacy by reading  what  the experts have to say; if you search on the phrase “how to protect my privacy” you will be rewarded with a plethora of sites to visit that provide advice.  In fact I made this search and was impressed by an article in Time Magazine  entitled “11 Simple Ways to Protect Your Privacy” by Christina DesMarais.  She makes suggestions that range from  “Don’t fill out your social media profile” to “Lie when setting up password security questions”. Although these sound counter-intuitive, if you search on the title to the article, DesMarais explains why these are reasonable precautions.

How to protect our privacy is not a new problem spawned by the Internet. The issue has been around for at least 100 years. “Lewis Brandeis and his law partner Samuel Warren published “The Right to Privacy” in the Harvard Law Review in 1890, where it became the first major article to advocate for a legal right to privacy.” (Wikipedia)

Brandeis succinctly summed up his beliefs in the much-quoted phrase, “ Privacy is the right to be let alone” He was right over 100 years ago and he is right today.

 

Desktops and Laptops and Tablets and Cell phones, O’ My

While chatting with a friend we got to talking about phones and he remarked that he liked the old phones (circa 60s) mainly because they were much simpler to use ----the phone rings and you pick up and start to talk immediately and not have to tap a bunch of virtual buttons in order to accept the call and speak. I responded that it was something like a Swiss Army knife being multi-functional. It was a knife, a bottle opener, scissors, nail file etc. but it was not a very good knife,scissors  etc. --- adequate but not really good. Single function tools are always better as well as simpler.Well,it turns out the modern phone has become a multi-function tool so as a phone it’s not the best ---  it’s actually a mini computer so it can perform operations that can be programmed and offered as an application. As a result, the phone app usually leaved a lot to be desired. Of course, one could argue that a modern smartphone has many useful attributes such as keeping a shopping list and keeping a list of contacts handy as well as acting as an alarm clock, a calendar,or anything that requires a list. 

Shortly thereafter, I ran across an  article in the June 19,2021 WSJ by Christoper Mimms entitled,” ““”Why PCs Are Turning Into Giant Phones “ which seems to be saying the exact opposite to what I claim but , if you think about it, it is saying the same thing: namely that the functionality of the PC (Personal Computer) and the cell phone are converging. After all, isn’t that 4 oz cell a tiny computer? If it can perform all the normal operations that a computer can then why isn’t it at least a computer? Mimms goes on to say “For everyday tasks both at home and at work, we have long had a choice: pull out a heavy brick with a noisy fan, a pixelated display, a few hours of battery life and a tenuous connection to the internet; or reach for that instant-on, alwaysl onnected, app-stuffed supercomputer in our pockets.”

According to Intel group, “...the right choice depends on how you're going to use the device. The general division between computing devices is still based on where you use it:

• Laptops suit on-the-go users. They combine hours of battery life with the performance and responsiveness to power immersive experiences that keep you productive wherever you go.

• Desktops are ideal for power users. They offer more processing power at a lower cost and are easier to upgrade, repair, and customize for your ideal computing experience at home.”

You might say that it’s a tradeoff between power/cost and convenience. In either case, many single-purpose machines continue to be replaced and enhanced by digital devices. We have come a long way from computers that filled a room and needed their own air conditioning systems to function. As computer programmers we submitted our jobs (Fortran programs) on punch cards where they were processed first- come/first-served by the humongous IBM or Univac computers  (I remember lifting a panel of the false floor supplying the cool air  to keep my lunch fresh). Currently I have an Alexa made by Amazon and a Portal made by Facebook which can communicate and so I  have speech recognition obviating the need for a keyboard as well as 2-way television to enhance social interactions. I can ask these devices such questions as: which country a tennis player is from (very important while watching Wimbledon). I can set a timer that I turn on and off with my voice, maintain a shopping list as well as play card games like Hearts and Rummy with my daughter in Iowa and my son in Albany.

Today we are promised “quantum” computers that promise to increase their speed manyfold. 

According to the site Redshark, “Quantum computers store information in the form of quantum bits, or qubits. Like Schrödinger's cat (which would not have had the colloquial impact had he chosen an inanimate object), qubits can exist in two different information states at the same time.”

 I don’t quite understand all this, but In any case this will allow us to run programs to solve previously intractable problems. An “intractable” problem from the point of view of computer science is one that cannot be solved generally for all cases because there are no known efficient algorithms to solve them --- in other words they can be solved but it would take too much time and computer resources. These problems are usually tractable for simpler versions of the problem but as their size increases, the solution time grows exponentially or factorially.

 Here is an example of an intractable problem from: https://www.trccompsci.online/mediawiki/index.php/Intractable_Problems

“One example of an intractable problem, you have to travel from the starting city to all cities on the map and back to the starting city, for the lowest cost. The letters (A,B.C,D,E in the diagram represent the cities to be visited. The lines connecting the cities represent the cost (e.g. the mileage between cities).

                             

To calculate the number of possible routes, you can find the factorial of n-1 to tell you how many routes there are, however you can divide this by 2 because each route has an identical route in reverse:

So 5 cities will be: (4! Stands for 4x3x2x1)

• 4! = 24

• 24 / 2 = 12 routes

(For our 5 city example: if we visit each city in the order A,B,C,D.E,A we get a cost of 65 which is not optimum -- if we go A,B,D,C,E,A ---we can do better. Try it.

So 10 cities will be:

• 9! = 362880

• 362880 / 2 = 181440 routes

So 12 cities will be:

• 11! = 39916800

• 39916800 / 2 = 19958400 

WOW! That's almost 20 million paths to calculate for just five cities! 

There are many problems such as climate change which consist of looking at many interacting scenarios and need the brute force method (just trying every possibility) for solving them. According to https://interestingengineering.com, quantum computers are projected to solve the previously intractable problems concerning: Encryption and Cybersecurity, Financial Services,Drug Research and Development, Supply Chain Logistics, and Faster Data Analysis, and possibly the best ways of combating the worst effects of climate change.They also indicate that,“Quantum Computing just got desktop sized. Where it took a rackful of electronics to control the qubits, now it’s available on a chip the size of a penny...“All the functionality is on a chip, so we’ve solved the issue for the quantum era.”

Now, all we need do is make the navigation of an app simpler and easier to use.

 Copyright or Copywrong?

Every column that I write is derived from information published elsewhere along with my comments on that information. Most of the text you are reading is from me but portions are in “quotation marks” which signal to you, the reader, that I am appropriating another’s words (It can also indicate whimsey as when one uses “air quotes” to make a point.).

 In most cases, the original author of those words has copyrighted them in order to protect his or her ownership.  However, the original purpose of copyright was “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.”

(US Constitution Article I Section 8 | Clause 8 – Patent and Copyright Clause of the Constitution. ). 

Note that the phrase “To promote the progress of science and art” is the primary reason for a copyright law.  To protect the author or discoverer’s financial interests is secondary. In other words, individual rights are subservient to the rights of the people, to society as a whole. Since then, In order to balance the rights of the individual and the laws of society a compromise has been reached: the “fair-use” doctrine. It means that when an author uses another's words verbatim they must be enclosed by quotation marks as I did in the opening paragraph. There are also four more complicated requirements that must be followed in order to qualify for this as  a fair-use exemption, The two  most important requirements specify that you cannot  profit from it without an agreement from the owner. This usually means the owner will share any profit you make and the owner will not incur any costs as a result. It also means that you cannot appropriate too much of the material from the owner (the shorter the quote the better)  After all, it does not seem right for me to put your whole book in quotes and attempt to claim it as fair-use.

These requirements are discussed  in great detail these two websites;: 

https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/ https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/more-info.html

As an example of fair-use I can use the following somewhat lengthy quote,

“On February 7, 2007, Stephanie Lenz posted a blurry twenty-nine second home video of her toddler on YouTube. In the video, thirteen-month-old Holden bobbed up and down on his rubbery legs, at his mother’s enthusiastic urging, to Prince’s 1980s hit Let’s Go Crazy while his older sister ran breathlessly around the kitchen table.

The song, playing in another room, was barely recognizable. But when Lenz uploaded her video to YouTube, she titled it “Let’s Go Crazy #1”—leading Universal Music Corp. to find it with a web crawler and send YouTube a takedown notice à la the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which provided copyright owners with an efficient vehicle for quick removal of such content. For the next six months, anyone looking for the video—namely, Holden’s relatives—would find a black rectangle in its place, bearing the ubiquitous YouTube apology: “We’re sorry, this video is no longer available.”

Although the video was eventually reposted, Stephanie Lenz sued Universal in July 2007 for knowingly misrepresenting her work as copyright infringement and argued that her use of the “Let’s Go Crazy” recording was covered by the “fair use” doctrine..... At its heart is a crucial question: exactly how should the copyrights of content owners be balanced against the fair-use rights of those who post user-generated content (UGC) on Web sites such as YouTube—content that often contains copyrighted songs, film and television clips and other copyright-protected work mixed together with original work. 

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) ostensibly answered this question with its system of takedown notices which allow the owner of the content to. However, the Lenz case represents a challenge to that paradigm—one that argues for a fine-tuning of the law and the parameters of fair use.”

So, if I use this quote in my column as I already have done, then I must also indicate the source which is:

https://jitp.commons.gc.cuny.edu/lets-go-crazy-lenz-v-universal-in-the-new-media-classroom/

and in this case, explain how it is allowed under the fair-use law:  I do not profit from it and it does not diminish the value of the piece for the original author. If I did profit and it diminished the value of the piece then I would be breaking the copyright law.

The Lenz vs Universal court case had to decide who was responsible for determining whether fair-use was applicable . Universal claimed that it was not  t’s responsibility to make that determination. However, the court ruled that it was their responsibility to review the criteria for fair use before taking down (removing) the post and since Universal provided no such evidence, the EFF representing Lenz won the case establishing a modification of the fair-use law.  This case dragged on for ten years before Lenz won the suit.

To see the actual video just search on:  “Let’s go crazy #1 youtube”

Is the Internet Responsible for our current Political Divide?

For several years, my wife and I used to spend most of the winter renting a house in the Villages in central Florida, near Ocala. As you may know, The Villages is a highly developed retirement community having more activities for old-timers than is really necessary (I recall there was a BB-Gun Club) and I joined the Philosophy Club primarily to meet people with similar interests. I befriended a member, let’s call him Joe, who was of the conservative persuasion and me, being of liberal persuasion led to many interesting and amicable conversations. I remember one, in particular where I cited an article from the Associated Press because it seemed to me unbiased. He disagreed, saying their choice of words describing an event was biased to the left citing their stylebook which he claimed encouraged their journalists to use the word “protests”, or “mostly peaceful protests'' instead of the word “riots” when in fact there was clearly violence and sometimes looting. That got me to thinking about the news sources I read because I trusted them.


Currently I read the Press Republican (of course) as well as the left-leaning New York Times, The Washington Post, the Atlantic and the New Yorker magazine. The not-left sources I look at are Fox News --- while most of their not-left opinionators are a bit too much for me, their newsroom is actually, I think, pretty balanced. And Fair. I thought that Chris Wallace tried his level best to be fair and balanced as the second Presidential debate moderator. Other not left-leaning ources that I read regularly include the Wall Street Journal and the Economist. And thus I consider myself a Moderate (although I have to admit to drinking too much wine at weddings).


Returning to the question raised in the title of this column, obviously the answer is: Yes, partly. The Internet is at least partly responsible for the current political divide simply because makes it relatively easy for folks to get their news from the far left or the far right but it also makes it very easy to spread this news with a little bit of personal bias sprinkled in. Before the advent of the Internet, we got most of ou news from newspapers and TV but in order to share that news with friends and family we could use the telephone and rack up long-distance chartres or clip articles from the newspaper, putting them into an envelope, addressing them then placing a stamp on the envelope and getting it to the Post Office for delivery.


Then, if the stars were correctly aligned, the intended recipient would get delivery in three days or so. If the recipient wished, the same process could be reversed and a conversation would ensue. So how is that different from posting an email or visiting a social media site where differing opinions abound? The short answer is “reaction time”. If the recipient gets the facts on the Internet and they violently disagree, they can respond vitriolically at almost the speed of light, perhaps not stopping to consider how the original sender might react.


With face-to-face conversation, each participant can actually see and feel the reaction of one's speech and adjust accordingly. Even responding by snail mail is better because it takes more time to write a letter --- time that one could have used to cool off. As a matter of fact, psychologists recommend writing that nasty letter then immediately discarding it as a way to blow off steam. This extra time gives one the opportunity to cool off and proceed with a clearer head and certainly more civility.


Email extends the contemplation time a bit more but social sites like Facebook and Twitter and sites that present the news and allow responses do not afford the opportunity to cool down This can lead to a situation called “flaming” which as its name implies just fans the flames of disagreement. TV by itself does not allow a two-way conversation to take place; the best we can do is write a letter to the Editor of the local newspaper or the TV corporation itself and wait patiently for a reply.

The upshot is that since the invention of the printing press and newspapers we have had a relatively safe way to express our rage. Face-to-face expression is usually more civil being limited by fear of getting punched in the nose. The Internet has made it very easy for extremists on the left and the right to create protests which are much larger than the old days. And the more people you have at a protest or a counter-protest, the higher the chances of riot, even insurrection occurring. There is an interesting article in the New York Times 1/24/21 edition, “Capitol Riot Puts Spotlight on ‘Apocalyptically Minded’ Global Far Right” which describes how easily neo-nazi and white supremicist groups in Europe and the US communicate and cooperate. More insidiously, many of these hate groups allow you to join in their conversations even if you are not a member --- this makes it very difficult for law enforcement and investigative reporters to track or even estimate the size of these abominable spreaders of hate and disinformation. Speech that incites imminent lawless action is not protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution (Wikipedia)

We have reached the point where we are talking past one another and many have given up because they believe that any attempt to communicate is just a waste of time. If we continue to consider communication and compromise as impossible, both sides will lose.




Underlying the failure to converse is the lack of trust. Within our limbic brain we are still members of a clan or a tribe and we instinctively trust those in our tribe and are wary of those outside of it. This wariness is the cause of our distrust. On the other hand, it has been a useful survival strategy for our species. When confronted by something bigger with horns or that doesn’t smell right we need to make a decision fast, without the luxury of thinking about it. But this country’s division will not be healed by hasty decisions. What we need at this time are wise and intelligent leaders --- leaders who will appeal to our better angels.


My hope is that President Biden’s promise to “represent all of the people and not just those who voted for him” is realized.




May God bless Joe Biden and God bless America.