discourse

Graph Search and ‘Risky’ Communicative Domains

/ Christopher Parsons

Photo by Lynn Friedman

There have been lots of good critiques and comments concerning Facebook’s recently announced “Graph Search” product. Graph Search lets individuals semantically query large datasets that are associated with data shared by their friends, friends-of-friends, and the public more generally. Greg Satell tries to put the product in context – Graph Search is really a a way for corporations to peer into our lives –  and a series of articles have tried to unpack the privacy implications of Facebook’s newest product.

I want to talk less directly about privacy, and more about how Graph Search threatens to further limit discourse on the network. While privacy is clearly implicated throughout the post, we can think of privacy beyond just a loss for the individual and more about the broader social impacts of its loss. Specifically, I want to briefly reflect on how Graph Search (further?) transforms Facebook into a hostile discursive domain, and what this might mean for Facebook users.

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Piracy, Privacy, and Big Brother

/ Christopher Parsons

As an initial aside: Linux betas really are betas, nothing like the relatively polished (in comparison) betas that Redmond released.

Piracy or ‘Avast Me Mateys!’

I don’t spend a lot of time talking about software or music piracy, largely because I think that there are alternate sources that more effectively aggregate and deliver news about it. That said, I couldn’t resist commenting on Jennifer Pariser’s (head of litigation for Sony BMG) statements surrounding digital technologies. When under oath, Pariser responded to Richard Gabriel’s (the lead counsel for record labels) question of whether it was wrong for consumers to make copies of music they have purchased, stating,

When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song.” Making “a copy” of a purchased song is just “a nice way of saying ‘steals just one copy’ (source).

Her comments directly point to why fair use is under such duress. More importantly, however, even when we apply the principle of charity to her general position, her comments seem to defy the public’s position on the matter. I don’t want to suggest that because people generally believe something that the law should reflect their beliefs – if that was the case then racial segregation would be more prominent than it is – but that when extensive public discourse has been undertaken and a common position is held by the deliberative participants, that their shared consensus should operate as the basis for developing legitimated law. I think that this discourse has, and continues to, occur in North America.

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