Tag Archives: 1984

Hey I paid for that!

Posted on by Brad Heap

Interesting post on the New York Times blog site: http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/some-e-books-are-more-equal-than-others/

It turns out that when you buy an ebook through Amazon’s new Kindle ebook reader you actually don’t really buy it and furthermore at a later date they can decide to remotely delete it off the mobile device.

This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for—thought they owned.

But no, apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts for the price.

I suppose that it is a good thing that the accounts were credited. But to just go onto someones mobile device and delete things. Now that is scary. What other data do they have access too?

This is ugly for all kinds of reasons. Amazon says that this sort of thing is “rare,” but that it can happen at all is unsettling; we’ve been taught to believe that e-books are, you know, just like books, only better. Already, we’ve learned that they’re not really like books, in that once we’re finished reading them, we can’t resell or even donate them. But now we learn that all sales may not even be final.

You can’t resell or donate them, but Amazon can unsell them and delete them without your permission.

As one of my readers noted, it’s like Barnes & Noble sneaking into our homes in the middle of the night, taking some books that we’ve been reading off our nightstands, and leaving us a check on the coffee table.

You want to know the best part? The juicy, plump, dripping irony?

The author who was the victim of this Big Brotherish plot was none other than George Orwell. And the books were “1984” and “Animal Farm.”

Scary.

And ironic. But this brings up a more pressing issue. What happens if someone does something or releases something really controversial say an Album or Book no longer can you be one of the few in possession of the item because it can be removed from you. What happens when the government decides to censor our books or music, could they delete all our iTunes files overnight in secret?

Did I wake up in China?

Posted on by Brad Heap

Last night I came across this post on Geekzone: http://www.geekzone.co.nz/freitasm/6625 it is regarding the implementation of filtering of the internet in NZ.

Another good post is here: http://thomasbeagle.net/2009/07/09/nz-internet-filtering-faq/

To make a quick summary this is a very scary development. The great firewall of China is well known. There every single site that is accessed is filtered and if the content is determined to be in anyway, real or imagined, offensive to the Chinese Government then the site is blocked. It is a form of restriction on the people of the country and is heavily criticised.

So I am failing to understand why the Department of Internal Affairs wants to go down the same path in NZ. Who gave the government the power to determine which websites I visit or am allowed to visit? Now I know that there are some bad things on the net, but surely as an adult I should have the wisdom to determine which is websites are appropriate to visit and which are not. And as for kids surely this is the responsibility of the parents not the government.

Some excerpts from Geekzone:

What really worries me is that it looks like there isn’t an oversight of this process, there isn’t a publicly available list of blacklisted websites.

Internet filtering gives the government – any government – the resources they need or want to prevent people connecting to each other by the means of the Internet, one of the most liberating tools available to its citizens.

Burning books was bad. Breaking the Internet may be worse.

Some excerpts from the FAQ:

Does New Zealand have internet censorship?

New Zealand’s censorship laws forbid viewing or owning certain types of material (e.g. depictions of bestiality or sex with children) and this applies to material accessed over the internet too. A number of people have been convicted for possessing material they have downloaded over the internet.

When will the internet filtering be implemented?

The Department of Internal Affairs is intending to implement the scheme in the 2009/2010 government financial year. The exact date is currently unknown.

Who decided to implement internet filtering in New Zealand?

The decision was made within the Department of Internal Affairs.

Okay so a government department made the decision. Public Servants. Nobodies. Whoever gave them to power to determine something that will affect every single New Zealander who accesses the internet with no consultation?

Has an internet filtering law been passed?

No it is being done under the Films, Videos, and Publications Classification Act 1993. This gives the responsibility for enforcement to the Department of Internal Affairs.

Okay so why do we not get each website to have a classification you know G, PGR, R13, M, R16, R18 if we have to, but just randomly blocking sites. Now that makes no sense.

What happens if I go to a banned site?

You will see a message saying that access to the site has been banned. Your internet address will be logged. This will be able to be tracked back to your internet account.

Big Brother is always watching.

Does the internet filter only apply to web browsing or does it apply to other traffic as well?

All traffic (web, email, P2P, etc) for a filtered internet address will be forwarded to the DIA’s server.

The software only mentions filtering based on web traffic. Whether the other traffic is filtered, forwarded or discarded is currently unknown.

Does the word privacy exist anymore? How can someone trust the DIA? With everything going through it how can we be sure someone won’t steal our Credit Card Numbers, Bank A/C Details, Read our emails (oh wait they probably already do that). Do they have the power to break encryption too?

Is the list of banned sites available?

The Department of Internal Affairs has refused to release the list of banned sites. They claim that they are allowed to do so under section 6 (c) of the Official Information Act. This allows them to refuse on the grounds that the release would be “likely to prejudice the maintenance of the law, including the prevention, investigation, and detection of offences, and the right to a fair trial”.

This can be contrasted with the legal responsibility that the Chief Censor has to publish their decisions to ban films and publications.

So in other words this website could be blocked, and I would never know why.

Is it possible to check whether a website is on the filtered list?

The only way to check whether the website is filtered is by attempting to access it.

If a website is filtered is it possible to find out why?

No.

Can other types of material be censored in the future?

There is no reason why the same technology could not be extended to block websites with other types of content.

What makes me most concerned is less than six months ago we had the Internet Blackout dramas. Now it seems to have come again just in a different form.