Kathlyn Clore

Why didn’t I think of this?

After reading the first paragraph of this Advertising Age story about a pharmaceutical company petitioning the FDA to use its logo as a marker for social media posts that contain safety information from the Food and Drug and Ministration, I see the first possible solution to the FTC blogger restrictions has been suggested.

Kitemarks . As defined by Paul Bradshaw of the Online Journalism Blog, they are:

“… a symbol (expressed visually, and electronically as metadata) to convey to audiences, bloggers, journalists and others that a piece of news content had been intelligently labelled with relevant information and that it is open to derivative checking/use… similar in a sense to the Creative Commons ‘mark’ that travels with media content across the web.”> “… a symbol (expressed visually, and electronically as metadata) to convey to audiences, bloggers, journalists and others that a piece of news content had been intelligently labelled with relevant information and that it is open to derivative checking/use… similar in a sense to the Creative Commons ‘mark’ that travels with media content across the web.”

Could bloggers or other online creators who have received free products or services to review use a kitemark on Twitter, Facebook or their blog to indicate that they received payment?

Inserting a kitemark seems like an easy standard operating procedure for folks who craft and who read sponsored reviews. And it should be easy enough for regulators to search for this.

If it could work, by what procedure would society learn about this mark? And could someone make money by creating and marketing such a mark?

Money, maybe not… But reputation, probably. This seems like a good project for the Creative Commons folks, like Joi Ito, to discuss.

A few days ago I read a Global Voices Advocacy post that has really been bothering me.

The post talks about users in Syria who have been indicating lately that their Linked In profiles are inaccessible in Syria.

One user got frustrated and wrote to Linked In. He was told that Linked In is “… ’subject to export and re-export control laws and regulations. This includes the Export Administration Regulations maintained by the United States Department of Commerce and sanctions programs maintained by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control. Under the User Agreement, LinkedIn Users warrant that they are not prohibited from receiving U.S. origin products, including services or software. As such, and as a matter of corporate policy, we do not allow member accounts or access to our site from Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, or Syria.’”

A snipped from Linked In’s user agreement verifies this:

On the one hand, I get it. The United States does not allow its citizens do business in certain places. That’s just part of being a business operating from the United States.

But obviously, that Linked In has not registered/based part of its business in another country in a way that would legally circumvent this policy is an endorsement of the idea that people in some nations should not, in fact, be linked in.

Isn’t a big part of this World Wide Web thing all about bringing people together to network and discuss ideas? And isn’t a big part of Linked In about making professional contacts? I don’t see why professionals working in Syria or Cuba are not worth contacting.

Even understanding that business can choose to do business in whatever way they see fit, this still does not sit with me. After all, we as consumers have just as much right to decide where to bring our business. So the big question is: Are Linked In users OK with being “linked out” of some places?

Another question: How does Linked In handle users who are not citizens of Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, or Syria but happen to be traveling in those areas when trying to log in to Linked In?

UPDATE 23 April: Facebook has updated its terms of service and will also block countries the U.S. has embargoed. Obviously, they read questions and comments made during the ongoing period of Facebook community voting on the terms of service. Their response to quesitons about blocking certain countries was, “As we state in the Principles, our principles are constrained by limitations of applicable law.”

Here’s a clip from their “Statement of Rights and Responsibilities”:

Yesterday I edited a synopsis of a most disturbing bill working its way through the Italian legislature.

A center-right Italian senator from Sicily is backing a bill that would give the country’s Ministry

of the Interior the power to demand ISPs in Italy block sites which host content seen to incite or condone crime.

Facebook seems to be the primary target. The American social networking platform allows registered users to form fan groups around just about any idea. Among the most offending groups to these Italian lawmakers are groups honoring big-name Mafia bosses.

Unless Facebook would agree to take those groups down - and the Ministry of the Interior would indeed have to give sites like Facebook time to take down the offending content - the entire site would be blocked inside Italy.

Deleting entire websites because of a bit of offensive material seems an entirely arcane practice for 2009.

But the situation does for me beg the question: In today’s linked-up world, should multinational sites like Facebook (and, to be clear, while all websites have the potential to be multinational, few truly are) have to abide by the laws of countries other than the nation in which their servers sit? Which is to say,should a website based in the United States, like Facebook, have to regulate its content with Italian law in mind?

I’m reminded of a November, 2008, New York Times article about censorship at Google.

In the Republic of Turkey, a nation of 71 million people, it is illegal to insult Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. He is the founder of modern Turkey.

Google, apparently, has dedicated the hours of many staffers to screening the contents of YouTube videos that are reported to violate Turkish law. The videos which Google decides are in clear violation of Turkish law are then blocked in Turkey.

The article chronicles similar cases in Europe. In France and Germany, for example, Google blocks Holocaust denial sites because it is illegal to deny the Shoah in those countries.

But is a California-based company like Google - or a Ministry of the Interior in Italy - the best body to decide what to censor?

Germany has a government agency whose responsibility it is to gather URLs of sites that host illegal content (content including hate speech, for example, would be illegal in Deutschland). Is this a better way to go? Why not get a judicial system involved? Or would that take too long, particularly when considering the warp speed that dominates the World Wide Web?

These questions become even more difficult - or perhaps just less relevant? - when considering the many initiatives to circumvent censorship. One of the best initiatives is the Tor project, which helps Internet users surf the web anonymously.