From: Michael Wiik (mwiik@messagenet.com)
Date: Wed Aug 21 2002 - 15:21:29 MDT
Adrian Tymes wrote:
> The problem is, the sheer number of individuals doing it. We're talking
> thousands of people, easily. If there was one central organizer who
> paid the individuals to do this (say, the review aggregation site's
> owner), then that organizer could certainly be sued. This kind of thing
> is very unlikely to happen without such an organizer. If it did, of
> course, there'd be no one to sue, but the law leaves that loophole
> because it knows it's practically impossible to exploit.
What if it becomes simple instead of practically impossible? Consider
the original scenario as only an easy to parse introduction to the
concept. Now, do away with the initial email requesting the review.
There is no such email. There is no organizer.
There is never any money; what you get out of writing a review is an
on-line copy of the book. Or maybe access to a site which contains
thousands of such mini-reviews of lots of books. Even if you paid for
the book, there might be advantages to having an online copy. All a site
would have to do is accept one review from you and you might have access
to their content.
It's easy. Here's how:
1) You post your review of any book. You might pick a contemporary book,
perhaps one being discussed in newspaper editorial pages for example,
books which might be reasonably expected to be in the current reading
selection of many people.
2) Since you syndicate your site (via RDF files), aggregators who scan
for book-review sites like yours quickly and easily find your review.
All the aggregator sites do is provide a consistent linking mechanism.
Like they do what my forwarder at http://messagenet.com/fw/ does but
give such links a parsable URL which has the review's book title, page,
and paragraph in a standardized format.
3) At this point, nefarious foreign webloggers make a site which perhaps
uses an outer frame to provide navigation thru an entire book. Maybe
they even modify the original review page to make your original review
text ('It was really cool') very very dim when viewed in a browser (but
still plainly there when printed out for courtroom use).
How could this be fought?
Well, you find on http://politechbot.com court cases in Washington state
and (I think) Massachusettes which involved aggregation of publicly
available content (in Washington state some guy was giving out the home
addresses, phone numbers, and SSN's of police officers).
Given that one could reasonably argue that aggregation and differing
public viewpoints promote accountability in an alledgedly democratic
Government, I would think that laws against such aggregation would be a
plain and simple message from the goverment to the people: 'INDIVIDUAL
DATA AGGREGATION IS NOT ALLOWED. WE WILL NOT BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE'. One
this message gets out to enough people they might begin to think they'd
be better off with an accountable government. Wouldn't you?
Thanks,
-Mike
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