Paul's blog

The following is a response to a post by Rob Lagesse which can be found here.

(Disclaimer: my use of capital letters below is NOT shouting, I would NEVER do such a thing. It’s my way of placing accents. There are probably more suitable typographical ways of doing that, but I’m just too lazy)

Rob,

Let me react to the various points you made:

Shreveport: Rob, kiddo, I would HATE to never hear from you again.
ESPECIALLY if you win big!

Furthermore, I think the gist of your response was:

Whatever you say or publish on the web (and I suppose you meant to include things like ‘surf habits’ as well) is

1. YOURS and YOURS only.

In principle, that premise is sufficient for the argument, but you add these derivatives (it’s mine, but if they steal it anyway, then..):

2. Noone should profit from it, unless you get a share of it.
3. You should be able to filter and correct whatever they take.

Although we need not discuss 2 and 3 if we can come to an agreement on 1 and fix it, I will briefly respond to all three statements, especially because I don’t think we WILL agree on 1 or be able to fix it.

1. It’s YOUR stuff.

Well, to a certain extent, yes, it is.
And that is all nicely covered by copyright laws.
So, they can’t take one of your stories and publish it somewhere else without your permission.
But that doesn’t mean that noone is allowed to ACT upon certain things you publish.
If I extract some information from your writings, and act upon it by, for instance, bringing you a bottle of Pacifico next time I drop by, I’m sure you won’t have any objections to that.
You may say, ‘yeah, but you’re not making any money off of it’.
So then let’s continue the argument: I now read about your MG car, and I tip off a friend of mine who sells MG parts: he sends you a list and delighted you order a bunch of parts for that old crappy car of yours. And, oh yes, now I DID profit from it: that friend got me a bottle of Pacifico for my tip, and HE made a bundle off of those parts.

I’m sure you see what I’m talking about here: data mining and targeted advertising.
Is that bad? Not necessarily.

I remember once listening to a friend’s long rant about spam and then 5 minutes later he proudly showed me a cute miniature remote controlled car he bought.
I liked it so I asked where he got it. He got it from the internet: had received some email about it!

As a side remark: THIS is the problem with spam! The only reasonable way to get rid of it (yes, I hate it as much as you), is by convincing the spammers that they should stop that crap because it doesn’t work.
But we can’t convince them of that, because it actually DOES work!
One in a hundred thousand indeed wants a bigger penis, a nicer pair of titties, lose 100 pound overnight and yes, a miniature remote controlled car.

But the point is, that information that people act on: is it yours?
I personally don’t think so.
So that makes the ‘noone can profit from it’ a moot point.

For instance:

If I publish tips on how to win at no-limit Holden Poker, then:

a. You CAN NOT copy that article and publish it somewhere else, but
b. You CAN follow my, as always wise, advice and get a MILLION times richer than by going to Shreveport and you won’t owe me ANYTHING!

By the way: you never answered my question on where you stand regarding the ‘open source’ movement!

Then about the matter of filtering and correcting.

There are already laws in place that allow you to have companies disclose the information they have on you.
There are also various ways of have them change or remove data.
The problem there is that you don’t know who has what.
But all that too is a bit of a moot point, since I don’t think it IS your private property to begin with.
If you publish a new neat invention, then anyone can use that idea.
If you don’t want that, then (apart from not publishing it in a public domain) you get a patent for it.
You can’t expect that publishing something on the net gives you the same rights and privileges as having obtained a patent for it.
If you want your stuff to remain yours: you will have to proactively MAKE it yours (patent!).

Now, as for digging up what the ‘net’ knows about me.

I don’t see the point of that excersise.

Is it to covince me that there is a lot of information to be found on the net?
No need for convincing: you know me and thus know that I both know the net and that I’m nosy. I KNOW what’s out there (and how to get at it).

Or is it to show me that one can find potentially damaging information about people on the web? I know that too (well, not about ME of course), but then, that too is not different from what we call ‘real life’. You might as well hire a private investigator to dig up some dirty secrets (which, again, I don’t have by the way).

What’s the point? People shouldn’t be allowed to store or use the information they find on the internet?
But that’s EXACTLY what Al Gore invented the whole thing for: for the storage, retrieval and sharing of information. We can’t distinguish between nice and not-so-nice information.

BUT.. if you really want to dig up dirt about me and publish it .. I don’t care. Go ahead. I just don’t see the point.
But if you do so, you should do it the way the ‘data mining’ companies do: so you can’t make use of the fact that you know me personally.

So, I expect to see things like:

– Works at Harcourt (different Paul Claessen!)
– Has construction business in Belgium (wrong Paul Claessen!)
– Is vice president of “Claessen, Peter & Sons Ltd.” (Not me!)
– Translated “Life with qmail” into Dutch (Well, ok, that’s me, but I never got around actually doing that!)
– Married Gwen in Phoenix (Nope!)
– Visits porn sites from time to time (HEY now! We’re friends!)
– Has been scuba diving in Australia (I wish!)
– Knows everything about the Linux Vortex bug, and registered Datapoint’s 802.3 MAC address (so WHAT?)
– Died May 1st, 1986 (HIGHLY exaggerated!)

And .. conversely, I may elect to dig up and publish some stuff about YOU then too, bro! 😉

Anyway … good luck in Shreveport. If you win: you owe me big time (JUST because I think you do).

(See! I can rant and rave with the best of ‘m!)