Update (10/19/2009): Nexus has closed down! “We shut it down because we no longer have time to maintain or operate it. We’re working on a lot of new things, but they’re unrelated to Nexus.” The source code is posted on their notice at http://apps.facebook.com/_nexus_/ if you want to give it a try.

Think about the people you consider to be your friends. Chances are, some of them know each other, right? If you tried to write down how they were connected to each other, you’d get a form of “The Chart” from The L Word. You can probably guess that it’d be split up into a few groups; your high school friends would be separate from your college friends; if you’re in a greek organization, those friends would be clustered; if you did an out-of-state internship, those friends might be off by themselves, possibly because nobody loves them.

Chances are you may have seen an application that does something like this for you. It’s certainly not a difficult problem to imagine, given our propensity to visualize things. My personal favorite, by far, social graph application is the facebook app Nexus.

Why do I like it so much? First of all, let’s look at what it doesn’t do:

• It doesn’t spam your friends with wall posts
• It doesn’t spam your friends with notifications
• It doesn’t spam you with emails
• It’s not a quiz app
• It doesn’t use java

After that little list, I bet you’re surprised that it’s a facebook application, right? It simply reads in your friends and how they’re connected and renders them as a spring graph and allows you to easily and logically navigate this graph. The only downside is that the graphs are somewhat computationally intensive (read: time-consuming) to generate, so it could take several minutes to generate yours. The time to generate the graph scales in proportion to the number of friends you have and presumably the connectedness of your friends.

If you want to see my graph to get a taste, it’s right here for your viewing pleasure, no installation or login required. Some patterns for you to analyze: I have a high school cluster and a college cluster; most of my convention friends (Dragon*Con and MomoCon) are somehow linked to people I know from Georgia Tech. Even my friends from FIRST are somewhat precariously linked back to my Georgia Tech network.

Some obvious uses for this include file sharing (provided it is enabled); multiplayer PC gaming (Age of Empires 2 comes to mind), and the point of this post, remote access. There are a few methods; if I am the only one using a computer, I prefer Remote Desktop. If you’re viewing someone else’s computer while they’re using it (to troubleshoot, share things, etc) I prefer VNC. Now you can share your desktop with anyone, no matter what crazy network setup you have. Download TightVNC

I’ve tried to categorize it a little bit instead of having fifty embeds in a row. If you particularly enjoy a track, or find this post especially informative, I’d like to know!

Pop/rock/alt

Apparently, these guys have been on Letterman?

This song is in a rather clever Bacardi commercial, I believe.

Electronic/dance/instrumental

This one’s amazingly catchy, IMO.

Folk/Filk/Nerdcore

This is the song that really got me interested in t61.

Included for the lulz.

Remix remix remix

Different versions of the same song:

First and foremost, this is a music website, not unlike mp3.com in days of yore. Playing music on it “just works” and their interface is very slick. The site integrates several clever social dynamics to keep you engaged and the site interesting. Artists on the site are generally independent musicians or groups, although there are certainly some recognizable names such as Daft Punk, Ratatat, Arcade Fire, CSS, etc.

Popularity

The heart of the site is a voting system where users promote music by, yes, hearting it. That was a horrible pun. The most popular music is featured on the front page in the “top songs” and “hot right now” sections. That in itself is not that unusual; it’s only logical that a digg/reddit-style voting will be applied to pretty much every concept ever.

Special sauce

The real charm of TheSixtyOne, though, is its game-based design. As a user, you have a certain amount of “rep” (think experience) that determines your level. As you level up, you unlock site features, a clever way of introducing the various features. In addition, each level confers additional hearts per daily login. Rep is gained primarily by hearting music that is subsequently hearted by other users; this rewards users for picking “good” music, under the assumption that if it’s good, then other people will like it as well.

Rep and hearts are also gained by completing a wide variety of quests, which generally prompt a user to listen to songs in a certain part of a site or perform a certain action (ex: heart a song, subscribe to another user, etc). The combination of these two systems make for a particularly addicting site. Additional hearts and rep can be gained by listening to “the rack,” music that has “gone under the radar” (sometimes for good reason; sometimes, it’s worth your ear).

Bread and butter

That said, good web design is nothing without content. Given the focus on independent artists, you may be concerned that there isn’t anything to draw you in. On the contrary; the site has a significant music library, encompassing a wide variety of genres. I am most interested in electronic, rock, and pop, although I have dabbled in some of their other offerings and found them acceptable. That said, everyone has different music tastes and I can’t guarantee that you’ll find what you’re looking for here.

Try it yourself

Go forth and give it a try yourself; my userpage is thesixtyone.com/disavian and you can subscribe to me or listen to music I’ve hearted (”listen to radio” next to my picture). I’ve found it worth my time in a way that traditional radio could never be.

A surprisingly large number of people in my senior-level computer science class had never heard of the DMCA. If you are guilty of this crime of ignorance, it is imperative that you educate yourself on this topic one way or another. Disclaimers: I have given money to EFF, a party involved in this debate. I do not have a law degree. Nevertheless, I am confident in my analysis.

Problem

How have the United States’ Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and related court cases affected intellectual property since that law was enacted in 1998? Has the act helped or hindered modern innovation and the internet?

Introduction

Long, long ago, the delegates to the Philadelphia Convention wrote in the constitution: “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” Thus is the ultimate basis for the copyright law under question (Delegates to the Philadelphia Convention, 1787). Its writers had no idea of the technological changes yet to come, nor the direction that copyright law would eventually take.

The creation of the DMCA was initially inspired by copyright holders that felt that their works were not sufficiently protected from new, developing and future technologies by existing laws and court rulings. This initially took the form of a white paper published in September 1995, Intellectual Property and the National Information Infrastructure, by a group led by Bruce Lehman, who was the Commissioner of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (Robinson, 2008).

In particular, it was feared that content owners, creators, and distributors would “be willing to put their interests at risk” if systems were not available for them to enforce the conditions under which their content is available. To this end, he proposed that a section be added to the United States’ copyright law that prohibits the circumvention of access controls (Lehman, 2005). There was certainly some dissent from this view among the legal scholars of the time (Boyle, 1995), and some suggestion that Lehman was acting solely on the behalf of content providers such as Disney and CBS (Rothman, 1996).

In 1996, the Clinton administration (represented by Bruce Lehman) brought this white paper to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), a United Nations agency created in 1967 to protect intellectual property internationally. The white paper served as a central basis for the WIPO Copyright Treaty and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty, both signed in 1996 (Robinson, 2008) and designed to standardize copyright protection internationally and protect copyright from technology.

These treaties were subsequently enacted by the “WIPO Copyright and Performances and Phonograms Treaties Implementation Act,” also known as Title I of the DMCA. It expands copyright protection to any work created in a country that has signed a copyright treaty (of which there are several) which the United States has also signed (United States Copyright Office, 1998). It expands copyright protection to computer programs and databases. Most notably, it includes language (now §1201 through §1205 of US Copyright Law) known as the “anti-circumvention provisions” (United States Government Printing Office, 2008). This law prevents the creation or sale of programs or devices that circumvent technological restrictions that copyright holders include in their product (Chilling Effects Clearinghouse, Anticircumvention, n.d.). In particular, Section 103 (17 U.S.C. §1201(a)(1)) of the DMCA states:

No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title

17 U.S.C. §1201(a)(3) clarifies this (United States Government Printing Office, 2008):

(3) As used in this subsection—
(A) to “circumvent a technological measure” means to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate, or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner; and
(B) a technological measure “effectively controls access to a work” if the measure, in the ordinary course of its operation, requires the application of information, or a process or a treatment, with the authority of the copyright owner, to gain access to the work.

When consumers purchase a product, they have various rights, most of them established by the “First Sale Doctrine.” For example, a consumer has a presumed right in the United States to view, trade, rent and lend a product such as a DVD or CD. The issue is murkier with software as companies have tried to establish that consumers are sold a license to access the work instead of being sold an actual copy of the work, but courts have firmly disagreed with them on that issue, even when the EULA specifically prohibits resale (Timothy S. Vernor v. Autodesk, Inc. 2008).

The law is less clear as to creating a backup (or temporary copy) of intellectual property; the Copyright Act of 1976 allows a consumer to back up a copy of a computer program. At concern is when the anti-circumvention clause of the DMCA prevents consumers from expressing the rights enumerated in this section (Chilling Effects Clearinghouse, Anticircumvention, n.d.). There is some consideration of this issue in a report commissioned by DMCA Section 104 (United States Copyright Office, 2000). Note that the distribution of tools that circumvent copy protection is also prohibited (Electronic Frontier Foundation, 2008).

The DMCA is not limited to the anti-circumvention clause, however. Title II is the Online Copyright Infringement Liability Limitation Act, which seeks to limit liability by websites and internet providers when they are hosting content; it is most commonly known as the “Safe Harbor” provision of the bill, and implements the WIPO Copyright Treaty’s directive to “maintain a balance between the rights of authors and the larger public interest, particularly education, research and access to information” (World Intellectual Property Organization, 1996).

Under DMCA Title II, Section 512, an online service provider is not responsible for hosting copyrighted content so long as they 1) have no knowledge that content on their system is copyrighted; 2) have a clear policy for dealing with copyrighted content (such as removing repeat offenders); and 3) provide a way to submit copyright complaints. If a user of the website (perhaps the one that uploaded the content) believes that the content is either not owned by the complainant, or that the content is sufficiently covered by fair use, a counter-notice can be filed to the copyright owner (Chilling Effects Clearinghouse, DMCA Safe Harbor Provisions, n.d.).

There are three additional titles, none of which have come under much, if any, contention. Title III (the “Computer Maintenance Competition Assurance Act”) allows individuals repairing computers to make temporary copies of software; Title IV (“Miscellaneous Provisions”) added an assortment of minor provisions; and Title V (the “Vessel Hull Design Protection Act”) added copyright protection to boat hull designs, which were not previously covered as their form was clearly related to their function.

Thus the DMCA, unanimously passed by the United States Senate on October 12, 1998 and signed into law by President Clinton on October 28, 1998 (Public Knowledge 2008), is clearly far-reaching. It significantly changed not only United States law, but international intellectual property law via the World Intellectual Property Organization (Robinson, 2008).

It is the author’s opinion that this change has been detrimental to technology; that the anticircumvention clause has been unsuccessful in its stated purpose of preventing piracy, and that the safe harbor provisions would have evolved over time through the justice system.

Supporting Evidence

First, we shall consider the negative effect that the anti-circumvention clause has had on free expression, scientific research, fair use, competition, and innovation. An exhaustive list of relevant court cases has been compiled by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and is updated approximately every two years (Electronic Frontier Foundation, 2008). A few notable examples of such are presented here; but an exhaustive list is beyond the scope of this paper, as is a discussion of the relatively ineffectual anti-circumvention exemption process (Lohmann, 2005).

As mentioned in the introduction, a consumer has a right to view, loan, rent, or sell intellectual property as they please (especially if that property takes the form of a song, album, or movie; the law is less clear in certain cases). CDs and DVDs have attempted a wide variety of copy protection methods, sometimes rendering the media unplayable in some devices (for example, certain copy-protected CDs cannot play in car stereos that lack later hardware.

The best example of this limitation of use is the DVD, which uses a form of copy protection known as the Content Scramble System, or CSS. In CSS, a 40-bit stream cipher was used to obscure the content of the DVD; in order to build a DVD player that played these secure DVDs, one must license a key from the DVD Copy Control Association (and contractually, implement the entire copy control system). This was a hurdle that most likely discouraged independent device manufacturers; for example, Diamond created an mp3 (digital music) player without the restraint of a system such as CSS or the consent of the RIAA, and their device that was ruled legal in RIAA v. Diamond Multimedia (Dabeau 2000). Without the DMCA or CSS, many more manufacturers may have been tempted to support the format. Also consider the evolution of the digital music player; without this ruling, the iPod might never have been invented. Would a similarly ubiquitous DVD-playing device have been invented (other than the Video iPod) if the DMCA did not exist?

Introduced in 1996, CSS was broken by Jon Lech Johansen and two additional anonymous individuals in October 1999, and released as DeCSS (Warren, 2000). The source code was leaked soon thereafter, and quickly spread across the internet (Vogt, n.d.). The first legal test of the DMCA was based around this; in Universal v. Reimerdes, the DMCA was upheld as constitutional, and the distributors of this protection-circumventing application were prevented from continuing; in part, because they openly admitted to distributing the program to promote piracy rather than claiming to support fair use (Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Reimerdes).

For these reasons, DVD playback was initially difficult in the open-source operating system Linux; however, there is an “unofficial” library to add this functionality, libdvdcss, which has not been legally challenged. Note that the DMCA and this lawsuit did not actually remove the program or its source code from the internet; it is still widely available (Warren, 2000). (Vogt, n.d.).

If the law was not effective at protecting their system, as is stated above, what has it accomplished in this instance? It restricted the speech of the program’s creators, who did not directly engage in piracy. Jon Lech Johansen was tried after a complaint by the DVD Copy Control Association and the Motion Picture Association; he was ultimately acquitted, but lost approximately two years of his life to litigation. It was, however, made clear that using DeCSS (or similar programs) is a crime (Warren, 2000), even when it is used under one’s fair use rights.

In 2006, Vijay Raghavan’s company, Load ‘N Go, was sued in Paramount Pictures v. Load ‘N Go Video for violating the DMCA (Lewin, 2006). This company sold consumers a Video iPod and several DVDs, and performed the time-consuming process of loading the legally purchased movies onto the iPod for the consumer (Jayasuriya, 2008), a process that clearly falls under fair use (DeJean, 2006). Because the company technically violated the DMCA’s anti-circumvention clause in their primary service, what would otherwise be a legitimate, innovating company was driven out of business, contrary to the stated goals (piracy reduction) of DMCA anti-circumvention provisions (Jayasuriya, 2006).

It is also important to note that piracy has risen dramatically since the enactment of the DMCA, not decreased; in particular, “The Motion Picture Association (MPA), the international arm of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), estimated worldwide losses because of piracy to be US $2.2 billion in 1997 and $3.5 billion annually in 2002, 2003, and 2004” (Lohmann, June 2006). Thus the DMCA anticircumvention measure is effective at criminalizing piracy (because theft was obviously not already a crime), many consumer technologies are missing from the marketplace (or available but technically illegal) as a result of the anti-circumvention provision.

While the DMCA’s safe harbor provisions do a reasonable job of protecting websites, little concern is given to whether a complainant is justified in their DMCA takedown notice. One particularly notable example of this was presidential candidate John McCain’s YouTube channel; various media organizations that the McCain campaign used clips from (under a legitimate claim of fair use) had McCain ads taken down by various media organizations (Stirland, 2008). The most famous recent example was a 30-second clip of a baby dancing with Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy” playing in the background, almost certainly a fair use (Rasch, 2008). In a positive move, the judge ruled that content owners must consider fair use when sending takedown notices (McSherry, 2008).

Refuting Evidence

The DMCA is not without positive effects and supporters, however. The safe harbor clause does a sufficient job of keeping content-hosting websites out of much legal trouble (Kravets, 2008). It is again difficult to make a comparison, as most modern-day examples of these sites did not exist before the DMCA due primarily to bandwidth reasons. In 1998, the internet was almost entirely populated by Americans (GVU Center, 1998), AOL was still growing rapidly, spam wasn’t as much of a problem, and Facebook wouldn’t be a sparkle in David Zuckerburg’s eye for another six years. However, it is unclear if these companies would have existed in a world without the DMCA Title II to protect them in a clear manner.

Veoh, a video hosting website, has been involved in two recent examples of the protection afforded by DMCA Title II; in Io Group v. Veoh, the court ruled that even though Veoh performed additional processing on videos (such as converting them to flash, indexing them, and generating a representative thumbnail) all of these actions were performed at the bequest of the user, and therefore Veoh did not necessarily have knowledge of infringing content (Raysman, 2008). In UMG v. Veoh, UMG’s lawyers attempted a variety of “novel” arguments to convince the court that Veoh didn’t fit the definition of a safe harbor; so far, the courts have ruled along the same lines as the previously mentioned case (Goldman, 2009).

The other particularly notable safe harbor case is the ongoing lawsuit, Viacom International Inc. et al v. YouTube, Inc. et al, the largest test of the DMCA safe harbor provision (Bangeman 2007). Viacom sued YouTube and its owner Google for hosting around 150,000 videos to which Viacom claimed some sort of intellectual property ownership, asking for a billion dollars in punitive damages. During discovery, Viacom was granted access to an immense amount of data related to user activity on the site, which both parties agreed would remain anonymous (Opsahl 2008). In March 2008, the court denied the punitive damages, although statutory damages remain a possibility (OUT-LAW.COM, 2008). There have been some suggestions that Google bought YouTube anticipating such a lawsuit, given that a poorly defended YouTube might have established a poor legal precedent that would affected Google’s primary business (Kono 2007).

There is also an argument to be made that the anti-circumvention clause has encouraged speech (Nimmer, 2005); in particular, it has been suggested that the DMCA does not regulate substantially more speech than is necessary, and as such is constitutional; and without the DMCA, less “speech” would have been created due to reduced incentives and additional piracy (Nimmer, 2005).

Proposals

There have been a wide variety of proposals as to how the law should be changed given our retrospective on the DMCA’s effects, most of them concerning the anti-circumvention provisions. A popular suggestion is to simply repeal it and let courts judge based on the many existing laws (McCullagh, 2001), largely because of the effect that anti-circumvention has had on fair use (DeJean, 2006), and that the courts were producing reasonable rulings in this field before the passage of the DMCA (Lee, 2006).

One attempt to amend the DMCA to remedy the problems discussed here was the Benefit Authors without Limiting Advancement or Net Consumer Expectations (BALANCE) Act, proposed by Zoe Lofgren in 2003 (Richmond, 2003). It would have allowed consumers to “make backup copies and display digital works on devices of their choice… prohibit non-negotiable, “shrink-wrap” licenses on digital content … [and] … allow consumers to bypass copy protection technologies if those technologies “impede” their fair-use rights” (Gross, 2003).

The most serious and well-enumerated proposal has been the Digital Media Consumers’ Rights Act, or the DMCRA, first introduced in 2003 and reintroduced in 2005. This act seeks to remedy most of the aforementioned problems with the DMCA while preserving some of the benefits; in particular, it would require clear labeling of copy-protected CDs, make circumvention of copy protection legal provided that it is fair use, and decriminalizes scientific research into copy protection (Boucher, n.d.).

Neither of these two laws made it out of committee, but the DMCRA may have a reasonable chance for success if it is introduced again, given the current political climate. It will doubtlessly be opposed by content providers, and how such a battle would play out is anyone’s guess.

The safe harbor provisions are not without their problems, however. Some recommendations to this end include increased transparency in the process; centralized reporting of DMCA takedown requests; stronger punishments for false notices; and an addition of a system to request attribution instead of entirely removing the work (Bailey, 2008).

Conclusion

Above all else, the establishment of the DMCA should serve as a cautionary tale. Taking potentially controversial legislation and turning it into an international multi-party treaty, signing it, and then presenting it to congress and the American public as fait accompli is extremely undemocratic. There is a significant danger this will happen again with the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) which, according to a leaked memo, has measures just as draconian as the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions (Robinson, 2008).

It is also clear via John McCain’s difficulties with DMCA takedown notices that John McCain (one of the senators that voted for the DMCA) had no idea of the real implications that the DMCA would have on John McCain (candidate for president) (Stirland, 2008). This shows the need for clearer and increased communication between policy-makers and technologists capable of understanding the various impacts of relevant legislation.

It would also be helpful if everyone, including the media conglomerates most responsible for much of the recent intellectual property legislation and DMCA abuses learned and respected the well-established concept of fair use. In one reasonably recent example, the Recording Industry Association of America attempted to claim that ripping CDs to an iPod was not fair use (Lohmann, February 2006). The willingness to criminalize an action that their entire consumer base undoubtedly engages in shows an almost willful ignorance that is not conducive to the creation of a body of law (be it the DMCRA or any other suitable remedy) that is truly fair to content creators, device manufacturers, and consumers.
 

References

Bailey, Jonathan. (August 5, 2008). 5 Ways to Improve DMCA Safe harbor. Retrieved April 11, 2009 from Plagarism Today.

Bangeman, Eric. (May 1, 2007). Google cites Safe harbor, fair use in Viacom v. YouTube defense. Retrieved April 11, 2009 from Ars Technica.

Boyle, James. (November 14, 1995). Overregulating the Internet. Washington Times, A17.

Boucher, Rick. Digital Media Consumers’ Rights Act. Retrieved April 11, 2009 from The Online Office of Congressman Rich Boucher.

Chilling Effects Clearinghouse. Anticircumvention (DMCA). Retreived April 11, 2009 from the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse.

Chilling Effects Clearinghouse. DMCA Safe Harbor Provisions. Retrieved April 11, 2009 from the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse.

Dabeau, Jocelyn. (February 20, 2000). Recording Industry Ass’n of America v. Diamond Multimedia Systems, Inc. Retrieved April 11, 2009 from the Berkman Center of Internet & Society at Harvard University.

DeJean, David. (November 20, 2006). Dear Democrats: Please Repeal the DMCA. Retrieved April 11, 2009 from InformationWeek.

Delegates to the Philadelphia Convention. (1787). Constitution of the United States. Retrieved April 12, 2009 from the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.

Electronic Frontier Foundation. (October 2008). Ten Years under the DMCA. Retrieved April 11, 2009 from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Goldman, Eric. (January 5, 2009). Veoh Gets Another Nice 512(c) Win–UMG v. Veoh. Retrieved April 11, 2009 from Eric Goldman Technology & Marketing Law Blog.

Gross, Grant. (March 5, 2003). Bill would ‘protect’ consumers from DMCA. Retrieved April 11, 2009 from Infoworld.

GVU Center. (October 1998). GVU’s Tenth WWW User Survey: Major Geographical Location. Retrieved April 11, 2009 from GVU Center.

Io Group Inc. v. Veoh Networks Inc., 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 65915 (N.D. Cal. Aug. 27, 2008)

Jayasuriya, Mehan. (October 27, 2008). 10 Years of the DMCA Part One: Vijay Raghavan. Retrieved April 11, 2009 from Public Knowledge. Web site:

Kono, Michi. (March 14, 2007). Maybe Google Wanted to be Sued: YouTube and Plan B. Retrieved April 11, 2009 from Michi Knows.

Kravets, David. (October 27, 2008). 10 Years Later, Misunderstood DMCA is the Law That Saved the Web. Retrieved April 11, 2009 from Wired.

Lee, Timothy B. (March 21, 2006). Circumventing Competition: The Perverse Consequences of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. CATO Institute.

Lehman, Bruce. (September 2005). Intellectual Property and the National Information Infrastructure. Retrieved April 11, 2009 from the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Lenz v. Universal Music Group, 2008 U.S. Dist LEXIS 91890 (N.D. Cal. 2008)

Lewin, James. (November 18, 2006). Should Ripping Videos To iPod Be Illegal? Retrieved April 11, 2009 from Podcasting News.

Lohmann, Fred von. (November 30, 2005). DMCA Triennial Rulemaking: Failing Consumers Completely. Retrieved April 11, 2009 from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Lohmann, Fred von. (February 15, 2006). RIAA Says Ripping CDs to Your iPod is NOT Fair Use. Retrieved April 11, 2009 from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Lohmann, Fred von; Seltzer, Wendy. (June 2006). Death by DMCA. IEEE Spectrum. Retrieved April 11, 2009 from the IEEE.

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McCullagh, Declan. (July 25, 2001). Congress No Haven for Hackers. Retrieved April 11, 2009 from Wired.

McSherry, Corynne. (August 20, 2008). Judge Rules That Content Owners Must Consider Fair Use Before Sending Takedowns. Retrieved April 11, 2008 from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Nimmer, Raymond T. (February 2005). First Amendment Speech and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act: A Proper Marriage. Jonathan Griffiths, Uma Suthersanen, eds., Oxford University Press. Retrieved April 11, 2009 from the Social Science Research Network. Also available here.

Opsahl, Kurt. (July 3, 2008). Viacom’s Statement on YouTube User Data Controversy. Retrieved April 11, 2009 from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

OUT-LAW.COM. (May 27, 2008). Google claims YouTube is exactly what DMCA was made for. Retrieved April 11, 2009 from OUT-LAW.COM.

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Richmond, Robert. (March 21, 2003). Balance Act Seeks to Resturcture DMCA. Retrieved April 11, 2009 from TechIMO Hardware.

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First, it’s important to know what classes I need to take to graduate, and to create a list. When I was earlier in my degree, it was also important to consider which classes were prerequisites to which. The College of Computing has a handy list on their website. First, the core requirements are always good to have a look at; if you can knock out any of those, they’ll count if you switch majors, threads, et cetera. I always like to take at least one core req each semester if I can.

The next step in compiling your list of potentials depends on which path you’re on. If you’re on the “old system” (pre-threads) then go here to see the relevant “course plan.” If you are on threads, a study plan for your combination of threads is available here. For examining threads, I find their description pages to be relatively useful.

Now that you’ve got a list of potential classes (and for those of you on the old system, I recommend glancing at a couple threads – you may be closer to graduation that you realize), write it out simply. For example, I have this in a text file:

GENERAL REQUIREMENTS
MATH 3215 – Prob/stat
LCC 3401 – Technical writing
CS 4980 Research Project or CS 4911 Studio Project
—
OLD SYSTEM
CS 2200 – Assembly/C
CS 3510 – Algorithms
CS 3240 – Languages and Computation
—
PEOPLE THREAD
PSYC2015 – Research Methods and Practices
PSYC2210 – Social Psychology
CS3790 – Introduction to Cognitive Science
+ electives?
—
THEORY THREAD
CS3510 – Algorithms
MATH4032 – Combinatorial Analysis
CS3240 Languages and Computation OR CS4510 Automata and Complexity Theory
MATH4640 Numerical Analysis OR MATH4305 Topics in Linear Algebra
+ electives?

You know how many hours you’d like to take in a semester, so now that I’ve compiled this list, you now have to pare it down to what you’d like to take this semester. Obviously, the core requirements are more important, so I’ll add all of those to my priority list. Algorithms is in both the old system and the Theory thread, so it’s probably important as well. To round out my list of potentials, I’ll toss in CS 3240 (Languages and Computation), CS3790 (Intro to Cognitive Science), and PSYC2210 (Social Psychology) as they might fill in my schedule better than some of the core classes may. At this point you should also consult the prerequisite chart as it may limit what you can take. A class higher up the prereq food chain should be taken earlier on to broaden your options later in your degree.

My short list is now the following:

PROPOSED FALL SCHEDULE
MATH 3215 OR MATH/ISYE/CE 3770 – Prob/stat
LCC 3401 – Technical writing
CS 3510 – Algorithms
CS 4980 Research Project or CS 4911 Studio Project
OTHER POSSIBLE CLASSES
CS 3240 – Languages and Computation
CS3790 – Introduction to Cognitive Science
PSYC2210 – Social Psychology

At this point I like to fire up my favorite calendar application; I am most experienced with MS Outlook and Google Calendar, although I am sure others will work just as well. I like to go to OSCAR and look up all of the available times for each of the classes on my list and put them all on a calendar. I find using different colors important; in Google, this means using multiple calendars, and in Outlook this simply means changing the category for the event.

It is also at this time that you may wish to compile a list of available professors and ask around to your friends/mentors/advisors about them. They may not know, or they may have strong opinions on a professor. You should also check SGA Course Critique for class GPAs and feedback. Be especially cautious of classes with low GPAs (obviously) and high drop rates (not as obvious). It’s also helpful to Google the professor to find their website. Also be wary of the course feedback if the number of respondents is significantly less than number of students that took the class. Be concerned if they don’t have one, and be concerned if it’s difficult to read or hasn’t been updated since 1994.

So, I’ll show you how my calendar is doing; by the way, Fall 2009 starts on Monday, August 17, 2009.

It’s pretty crowded, but I can easily see some ways to weed it down. First, the different colors let me pick out which blocks belong to which classes. I really want to take algorithms, so I’ll copy that to my main calendar (Google) or change the color to my “normal” calendar color (Outlook). Next I had a certain statistics professor recommended to me, so I’ll copy his block to my main calendar and hide all the other ones of that class by hiding that Google calendar. Using this process of elimination, I arrive at a fairly good schedule for me:

I don’t actually intend to take all of those classes, though. It is always nice to have a few backups handy in case one of the classes you intend to take fills up before your time ticket begins. Once you’re satisfied with your list, look up each of the CRN numbers so that as soon as your time ticket opens, you can register for all of these classes at once.

Norton

When I got my laptop, it came bundled with Norton Internet Security. Anyone familiar with either Norton or McAfee know that they make the most annoying, intrusive products known to man (outside of actual malware). Well, I figured since it was free I’d give it a try, as I hadn’t used a Symantec product in a few years. Well, they’re tricky bastards. When it comes time to ‘register’ you are presented with the following screen. Everything is fine until you get to the ‘country’ box.

Interestingly, everything is just fine for ANY country except the United States. Here’s an example of selecting the UK; everything looks as it should, yes?

As soon as you select ‘United States,’ the program quietly rechecks the ’spam me’ check boxes. Since they’re on the left half of the form, you probably won’t notice, and you’ll look straight down to the ‘Next’ button without realizing that you’ve ’selected’ to receive their email.

Funnily enough, after going back and forth and consciously noting this ‘feature,’ I forgot to uncheck it the last time through. It’s an evil use of well-known UI design concepts, tricking you even if you’ve noticed it!

myYearbook

I’d received an email to try out this site. I like to make profiles on every website ever, so I decided to give it a try. My advice: don’t. It’s worse than MySpace, which is saying something. Don’t even touch it.

So my particular problem here is the ‘friend finder,’ which caused me to spam all of my Gmail contacts. Please disregard these emails. I am so sorry I got caught by this!

So you start out with a perfectly normal form:

It checks your contacts and tells you there are two matching ones. Your instinct is to click the button above to add these. But wait!

If you scroll down, you’ll note that they’ve also included all of your other contacts and will spam them with deceptive emails encouraging them to join this stupid site if you click that button.

Emails, last names redacted

What I actually did was click the button, immediately realize what they had probably done (an oh-shit moment), hit the stop button like five times, and then set my twitter/facebook/IM status to inform my friends to disregard the message. And yes, I changed my password. Do you have any examples of deceptive design such as these? Were you caught by it?

I’m no stranger to image sharing websites, having used deviantART and Facebook extensively and Photobucket occasionally. How does Flickr stack up to those sites, and other similar services?

Focus

It’s important to make the distinction between images, art, and photos. DeviantART is above all else an art website. Photography is art, yes, but so is a crappily drawn stick figure. Flickr is above all else a photography website. They make good use of EXIF data, even having detailed statistics on what cameras are being used. You can certainly upload images that aren’t photos, but they’re generally discouraged by the interface. Photobucket, on the other hand, is all about images, no matter what they are. There’s no central community there, as opposed to the other two websites.

Free account

Note that Flickr does have a ‘free’ account, which is limited to 200 total photos, 20MB of uploads per month, and only three sets. Given that I have over 2000 images on my Flickr account (and probably single sets that almost reach that limit) spread across 46 sets and single images that are almost 20MB (larger panoramas) these limits are definitely achievable. If you simply want to share pictures with your existing friends and don’t mind the fixed photo size and 60-photo set limit of Facebook, it’s probably better to stick with that.

Web design

If there’s one thing that Flickr has going for it, it’s good web design. If you’re looking at a picture on Flickr, it’s the focus of the page. There are minimal (at most) ads, and a good focus on the most interesting content. Facebook has a similarly focused design when using pictures, but lacks many of the options available in the flickr UI.

Usage level

To get some good usage comparisons, I hopped over to Alexa. It’s not the end-all-be-all of popularity, but it is a good metric. Somewhat surprisingly, Flickr is near the top of the pile, recently overtaking Photobucket and leaving deviantART in the dust. Facebook is more popular than god, but there’s no simple way (that I know of, at least) to separate out its photos application in Alexa statistics.

Comparison of Alexa ranking for popular image sharing sites

From personal experience, I know that this traffic does in fact translate to actual views on your photos. From Flickr’s built-in statistics utility (more on that later) I’ve had almost half a million views on my photos, sets, etc. That’s orders of magnitude more views than anything else I’ve ever done online, with the possible exception of the Wikipedia articles I’ve worked hardest on (ex: traffic statistics for the Georgia Institute of Technology article; Pi (traffic statistics) is probably the most popular wiki article that I’ve had a significant impact on).

Ease of use

Due to Flickr’s open API, there are plenty of applications that make it easy to upload photos. I prefer Syncr, another application developed at the Hack U! event. It lets you drag a folder onto it, hit upload, and makes a set for you. Very snazzy, and miles better than the upload process at deviantART, which was nothing if not painful. Browsing images couldn’t be easier due to their clean design and intuitive structuring. The search is also fairly robust. Because public images are indexed fairly well by both Google and Yahoo, it’s easy enough to use those engines to search as well.

Miscellaneous Features

Licenses

As with many photo sites (DA in particular), Flickr allows you to specify the license on your image as Creative Commons, and has a good restricted search for when you’re trying to find a free image to use on Wikipedia, in a presentation, etc.

Photo Management

One of Flickr’s main selling points is its impressive ‘Organize’ web app that lets you easily perform batch operations on your photos such as set/collection management and batch tagging and grouping. For all intents and purposes this is the best photo management software I’ve come across.

Statistics

One of the nicest features (in my opinion) is Flickr’s built-in statistics. A pro-only feature (similar to DA’s statistics utility) it can give you daily, weekly, monthly, all-time pageviews for your entire photostream or for specific photos, and has very detailed referrer information. The only missing feature is to find out where users from a specific referrer visited; if you view a photo, you can see the referrer information for that photo, but there’s no way to know which photo a referrer listed on the overall stats page visited without going to the referrer and looking for a link of some sort.

Summary

Each site has its strengths and weaknesses. I realize that I am horribly biased in favor of Flickr, so that’s what I reccomend that you try, especially if you take photography seriously. I simply feel like I’m getting more with Flickr than I ever did on deviantART. By all means, I encourage you to try each of them; and as traditional with the internet, each of them will change and improve. In the comments, I encourage you to tell me how you share photos with friends and strangers.

You could get complex and use multiple colors for different types of friends if you wanted to, but I’m keeping it simple for now.
(cross-posted at LiveJournal)