Internet and Responsibility: A New-ish Moral Conundrum

With the passing of Hurricane Sandy, both in real life and online, a new problem rears its ugly head: the lies spread by anonymous people, and the lifting of their anonymity.

In other words, some jerk maliciously spread lies during the hurricane, thinking he would remain anonymous behind his Twitter handle, @ComfortablySmug.  But someone discovered his real name and wrote about it.  Now the man has quit his job as the campaign manager for a New York congressional candidate and apologized online for his behavior.

Some people think ComfortablySmug should be protected by the First Amendment, and that no one should have outed his name.  Other people want to know why (a reasonable question, in my opinion), and think that ComfortablySmug should be charged for any damage he did.  Either way, the question remains - how do free speech, anonymity  and the Internet go together these days?

I don't have a definite answer to this question.  I know that in some countries, people need anonymity to protect themselves, because their government would arrest or persecute them for dissenting beliefs, thoughts, or ideas.  Even in the U.S., a person who lives outside the societal norm might want or need anonymity to protect their job or reputation.

For instance, ViolentAcrez was a Reddit user who likes looking at very young woman (16 or 17), likes incest,  promotes violence against women, and made a name for himself as a creepy old man Internet troll.  A journalist for Gawker figured out that ViolentAcrez is really Michael Brutsch, a 49-year-old software programmer in Texas with kids.  Since being outed, Mr. Brutsch lost his job.

Now, I personally think that Michael Brutsch deserves whatever he gets, because he spent a lot of time combing through Facebook and other places to find pictures of teenage girls and then repost them without getting permission.  He also started a subreddits called Rapebait, Choke a Bitch, Rape Jokes, and Pics of Dead Kids.

But after Gawker outed Brutsch, several Reddit users called foul, claiming that somehow Brutsch's activities fell under Free Speech.  Well, if Brutsch is covered by Free Speech, so is the article outing him.

Yet, ViolentAcrez and ComfortablySmug are the extreme cases of a person using the anonymity provided by the Internet in a way to do harm.  What about the moderate cases?  What if someone wants to complain about a boss at work, but doesn't want to get fired?  What is a student doesn't like a teacher, but feels scared to air his or her feelings?

When does being anonymous help a person and/or society, and when does it allow for criminals and miscreants to do harm?

(BTW, you can watch CNN interview Michael Brutsch here.)

Pirates and LendInk and Lies, Oh, My!!

The Dreaded Scourge of the Internet

Pirates and piracy periodically dominate the headlines, as the government attempts to pass new laws supposedly to protect the consumer, as the RIAA takes a teenager with clueless parents to court over alleged file sharing for outrageously large amounts of money, or most recently as a bunch of idiots decide a legitimate business is secretly a pirate site.

Last week, someone in the publishing industry noticed a website called LendInk.com.  This little business venture hooked up people willing to lend out their e-books with people who wanted to borrow e-books.  Started by a disabled vet, Dale Porter, LendInk only handled the initial exchange, sending both parties to the appropriate vendor - either Amazon or Barnes and Noble - to do the actual lending of the e-book.

It seems that the notion that a person can lend an e-book to another person, in a manner similar to the public library lending a book to a patron, is too radical, too new, and too close to piracy for a lot of authors out there.  What began as a misunderstanding on one person's part turned into several cease and desist notices to the website host and several lawsuits threats.  By August 8th, the website disappeared from the cloud.

Now, of course, comes the backlash from the rest of the world.  Indie authors who support LendInk cry foul at those who brought the website down, since people who borrow books tend to buy the ones that they like.  Readers wanting to try out new authors and authors trying to attract new readers - both groups lost out here.

But as people focus on this event, I think we need to step back and take a good look at Internet piracy.

First, let's use some common sense.  Some people will steal creative works (regardless of form factor), no matter what.  No law will stop them, nor will threat of prosecution.  It's a fact of life.  But the vast majority of people will pay money for creative works, be it books, movies, music, or art.

There is a catch though, and the catch for electronic purchases includes the following conditions:

• The item needs a reasonable price point.
• The buyer has the right to move the purchase from one digital device to another without hassle.
• The buyer can lend or give the item to a friend without jumping through hoops.
• The distributor needs to treat the buyer with respect, and not assume the person is a thief (see the image below).

There's a story among game developers about a man who purposefully did not stop pirates from getting free copies of his games.  Why?  Because the pirates wrote reviews and discussed the games that they liked online, generating more than enough revenue for the man to balance out what was lost to the pirates.

Neil Gaiman released his book, American Gods, online for free back in 2008 with no DRM.  All of his print book sales went up.  All. Of. Them.

In 2009, Wil Wheaton published a DRM-free pdf of his book, Sunken Treasure, on Amazon for $5.  Not only did sales of this electronic book explode, but the print version also began to sell again, as well as some of his other books.

There are more stories out there of people who reject DRM and trust people to be nice and who made money doing so; there is even a grassroots movement called Defective by Design that aims to rid the world of DRM.

So why are we so worried about pirates and piracy that a group of misanthropes shut down a legitimate business because of a supposed piratical threat?  Especially since pirates actually help sales and therefore the bottom line?