Jon DiPietro is Domesticating IT

Weekly High Five lists the most interesting, compelling, and/or useful links of each week.

Amazingly, this week’s High Five largely ignores the iPad announcement.  This is a reflection of how important I believe it to be, since I’ll be blogging about that in the upcoming week.  Instead, this week’s links are focused on digital rights and net neutrality.

#5: Settlement Rejected in ‘Shocking’ RIAA File Sharing Verdict

I’ve been following this case for quite some time, and the defense team seems to feel like they have the courts on their side.  Having the judgement reduced from $1.92 million to $54,000 is still not enough for them, as evidenced by their decision to reject a settlement offer of $25,000 from the RIAA.  That the settlement was even offered seems to indicate that the RIAA is also concerned that the courts are on the side of the defendant.

Link: Wired

#4: iPad is iBad for freedom

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has organized an online petition named “Defective by Design,” asserting that Apple’s implementation of Digital Restriction Management (DRM) goes too far and will restrict the distribution of free software by disallowing applications to run on the iPad unless they are downloaded from the Application Store.

Link: Free Software Foundation

#3: Mozilla leader worries about Internet limits

Mitchell Baker, leader of the Mozilla Project, expressed concern over “the increase in laws that make it difficult to run an open network,” and especially over rules concerned with policing content.  She spoke at the opening of athree-day conference on digital innovation and creative ideas in Munich, Germany.

Link: Yahoo! Finance

#2: Netflix to FCC: scary loophole in net neutrality rules

While they generally support the proposed nondiscriminatory rules put forth by the FCC, Netflix‘s general counsel is expressing concern over a potential loophole. “In short, if left unchecked, the ‘managed services’ category could engulf the Commission’s open Internet policies altogether” and let ISPs end run any regulations.  This is no small matter given blurring between content providers and Internet service providers as exemplified with the sale of NBC Universal to Comcast.

Link: ReadWriteWeb

#1: Australia bans graphic games … sort of

The final story in this theme is a cautionary tale of unintended consequences.  Australia has passed a series of laws attempting to restrict adult content from children.  This story shows that the laws have, in fact, increased the amount of adult content reaching children age 15 and under in games like Call of Duty 2: Modern Warfare.

Link: Global Post

Feel free to provide your thoughts and/or contributions…

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Note: This post is part 3 of 4 in a series of posts. The parent article is “ISA: One Member’s Vision.”

Content is the fuel for this new paradigm’s engine. A wide variety of interesting, thought provoking, authoritative, and even mundane content will increase member engagement and improve search engine results, driving more and more web search results to ISA. However, under the current publication infrastructure this is difficult if not impossible to realize. That’s because the current approach is to filter, then publish. In other words, a centralized group of staff and volunteers decides what content would be valuable to members, assembles, edits, and then publishes it in a “one size fits all” format. Incidentally, it may sound like I’m referring specifically to InTech, but it includes any means of disseminating information. There are several problems with this approach. First, it bombards me with information I don’t care about. I have too many other options available to me that make it dead simple to zoom in on the information I care about than to spend time sifting through information I don’t. Second, it costs lots and lots of time and money to orchestrate. Third, the information is devalued by making it hard to index (Google), find, bookmark, share, or re-purpose.

The alternative is to distribute, then filter. In other words, the long tail of the membership should be enabled to become content providers. This may or may not involve intermediary review and/or editing – that’s an implementation detail. Then, the content is published using categories and tagging so that it is easily searched subscribed to. Now, Sally can very easily focus on any content tagged with “cybersecurity” without the distraction of having to wade through “flow sensors” or “thermocouples.”

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