LibertyVoice

NDP MP Charlie Angus has launched a new Facebook group called ACTA: End the Secrecy.

The Privacy Commissioner of Canada has launched a new investigation into Facebook's privacy practices.  The new investigation stems from a complaint filed in the wake of Facebook changing its privacy default settings.

David Akin does a nice job of tallying up the numbers from this weekend's Facebook-inspired anti-proroguing rallies.  I wrote about the impact of the Facebook group and digital advocacy last week.

With the Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament Facebook group now over 200,000 members, my weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) looks at how its success provides the clearest indicator yet of how poorly the Canadian political community understands social media and digital advocacy.

When the Prime Minister announced he was proroguing parliament in the midst of the holiday season, political commentators applauded the tactic, confident that few Canadians would notice or care.  In less than three weeks, Christopher White, a university student from Alberta, proved the experts wrong, building the largest Facebook group in the country, one that's the focal point for national discussion and voter discontent.  

As the group began to take flight, it was surprising to see political leaders and analysts blithely dismiss the relevance of Facebook advocacy. Editorials pointed to other large groups to demonstrate the group's irrelevance, noting that joining a Facebook group was too easy - just click to join - to mean much of anything.

This represents a shocking underestimation of the power of digital advocacy, which today is an integral part of virtually every political or business advocacy campaign.

First, the criticism is particularly surprising since Canada has experienced this form of advocacy before and it has proven effective.  In 2007, the Fair Copyright for Canada group I launched grew to 90,000 members and was credited by some with convincing the government to more carefully examine its proposed bill.  The following year, a group opposing proposed changes to Ontario's rules for young drivers reached 150,000 members and persuaded Premier Dalton McGuinty to drop the amendments.  

Second, anyone who tells you that building a 200,000-person Facebook group is easy has never tried to do it.  Indeed, Stephen Harper, Michael Ignatieff, Jack Layton, and Gilles Duceppe, the four national party leaders, have less than 100,000 members combined on their respective Facebook pages.  

In fact, much like Facebook, the political parties all make it as easy as possible to become members.  In the case of the Conservative or Liberal Parties, completing a form with just your name and address along with a $10 payment makes you a party member.  Not a particularly onerous burden, yet party membership numbers are regularly trumpeted as evidence of popular support.

Third, attempts to marginalize Facebook users as outside the mainstream is difficult to reconcile with the fact that Canadians are among the most active social network users in the world.  Recent estimates found 42 percent of Canadians have a Facebook account with more than 50 percent under the age of 45 on the social network.

Fourth, the dismissal of social media as a useful tool for rallying support fails to recognize what marketers have long understood - word of mouth from a trusted source is always the most effective means of spreading a message. Political parties invest millions in ad campaigns trying to garner public support, but Facebook advocacy is potentially more effective because it's all about word of mouth.  Joining a group may require little more than a mouse click, but behind that click is a trusted network of friends and colleagues providing their personal recommendation.

Skeptics have pointed to rallies planned for this week as the litmus test for the effectiveness of the anti-proroguing Facebook group.  But with polls finding mounting interest in the issue, the battle has already been won suggesting it is long past time to cast aside doubts about the importance and effectiveness of digital advocacy.

With the anti-proroguing Facebook group now past 100,000 members, there is still a surprising debate about the merits of online advocacy.  Blayne Haggart rightly points out that we've seen this before in Canada and it is somewhat surprising that there is such doubt that this form of advocacy can be effective.  Experience suggests that it can - Canadian examples such as Fair Copyright for Canada or Young Drivers Against New Ontario Laws demonstrated that social media is a remarkably useful tool for bringing together tens of thousands of people with a common view.  While some dismiss Facebook group membership as too easy (and therefore not representative of much), the ease with which people can be educated about an issue, express an opinion by joining, and ultimately asked to do more is a feature not a bug. 

None of this is to say that Facebook or digital advocacy alone will change the decision to prorogue.  It won't.  But in tapping into the underestimated exasperation with political leaders who think that the public could care less about political games, it holds the potential to keep the issue alive in the public's mind.  Polls already suggest that may be the case and if the people behind the Facebook group can maintain the momentum by branching out both online and offline [update: NoProrogue.ca launched today in an effort to go beyond Facebook], this could go on for awhile.  For what's worth, I discussed digital advocacy in an @Google Policy talk in June 2008. 

The past twelve months in law and technology were exceptionally active, with new legislation, Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission hearings, national consultations, and very public battles over digital issues. My weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) takes a look back at 2009 from A to Z:

A is for the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, the secret copyright treaty that generated opposition at home and abroad as details on proposed language leaked out.

B is for Chet Baker, the former jazz great and current lead plaintiff in a $6 billion copyright class action lawsuit filed against the Canadian recording industry for its failure to pay artists for the use of their work.

C is for the Conference Board of Canada, which withdrew three intellectual property reports after acknowledging they contained plagiarized material.

D is for drugs for Africa legislation, which unexpectedly passed second reading in the House of Commons and will be considered by a committee next year.
 
E is for eBay power sellers, who faced an aggressive campaign by the Canada Revenue Agency to collect unpaid GST.  The campaign followed a successful legal effort to force eBay to disclose the sellers' identities.
 
F is for Facebook, which agreed to make significant privacy changes following a well-publicized investigation by the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

G is for Google Street View, which launched in Canada this fall, but not before a House of Commons committee probed the likely impact of the new mapping feature.

H is for Louis Rene Hache, who was convicted on charges under the Criminal Code for the illegal reproduction of the film "Dan in Real Life" at a Montreal movie theatre.

I is for i4i, the tiny Toronto firm that scored a big patent victory over software giant Microsoft.

J is for Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore and Industry Minister Tony Clement, who presided over Canada's first national copyright consultation since 2001.

K is for CRTC chair Konrad von Finckenstein, who was in the spotlight with hearings on regulation of new media, Internet traffic management, and broadcast fees.  

L is for Lawful access legislation introduced by Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan in June.  Bills C-46 and C-47 languished, however, and have yet to be discussed at committee.

M is for marketing claims on network speed and reliability, the subject of multiple lawsuits that forced Bell and Rogers to drop claims from their advertising campaigns.
 
N is for net neutrality, which made regulatory and political progress with the release of new CRTC guidelines as well as garnering political support from both the federal Liberal and NDP parties.  

O is for one-click, the controversial Amazon.com business method patent that was denied validity by the Canadian Patent Appeal Board.
 
P is for Psion, the Toronto-owned firm that threatened Dell over the use of the term “netbook.”

Q is for the Queen v. Vasic, a criminal case in which an Ontario court ruled that combining Internet provider customer name and address information with IP address data could render the information sensitive.

R is for Heather Robertson, the freelance writer whose longstanding copyright class action lawsuit neared a conclusive settlement.

S is for spam legislation that was introduced by Tony Clement in April. Bill C-27 is currently before the Senate.

T is for the TV Tax and Local TV Matters marketing campaigns that irritated Canadians from coast to coast.

U is for unwanted telemarketing calls that kept coming despite the existence of a national do-not-call list.

V is for Joanne Veit, an Alberta judge who ruled that Alberta Information and Privacy Commissioner Frank Work was wrong when he concluded the City of Edmonton can't force pawnshops to upload personal client details to an outside company's database.

W is for WindMobile, the operating name of Globalive, a new wireless carrier that was told by the CRTC that it did not comply with foreign control restrictions, only to have the federal Cabinet overrule the regulator weeks later.

X is for the future “X” on electronic voting technologies, which Elections Canada reported it is considering.

Y is for YouTube, which received a video takedown demand from Canada Post.  The crown corporation objected to a union-inspired video about the mail carrier's CEO.

Z is for Zoocasa, the real estate search site that was sued by Century 21 Canada for scraping listings from its website.

A New Brunswick court has ordered a plaintiff in a disability insurance claim to obtain “a history of her computer account use” from her ISP and “request” her ISP to generate a record accounting for her FaceBook use.

Facebook is once again clashing with its users over privacy. As a user myself, I was pretty unhappy about the recently changed privacy control. I felt that Facebook was trying to trick me into loosening controls on my information. Though the initial letter from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg painted the changes as pro-privacy — which led more than 48,000 users to click the “I like this” button — the actual effect of the company’s suggested new policy was to allow more public access to information. Though the company has backtracked on some of the changes, problems remain.

Some of you may be wondering why Facebook users are complaining about privacy, given that the site’s main use is to publish private information about yourself. But Facebook is not really about making your life an open book. It’s about telling the story of your life. And like any autobiography, your Facebook-story will include a certain amount of spin. It will leave out some facts and will likely offer more and different levels of detail depending on the audience. Some people might not get to hear your story at all. For Facebook users, privacy means not the prevention of all information flow, but control over the content of their story and who gets to read it.

So when Facebook tries to monetize users’ information by passing that information along to third parties, such as advertisers, users get angry. That’s what happened two years ago with Facebook’s ill-considered Beacon initiative: Facebook started telling advertisers what you had done — telling your story to strangers. But perhaps even worse, Facebook sometimes added items to your wall about what you had purchased — editing your story, without your permission. Users revolted, and Facebook shuttered Beacon.

Viewed through this lens, Facebook’s business dilemma is clear. The company is sitting on an ever-growing treasure trove of information about users. Methods for monetizing this information are many and obvious, but virtually all of them require either telling users’ stories to third parties, or modifying users’ stories — steps that would break users’ mental model of Facebook, triggering more outrage.

What Facebook has, in other words, is a governance problem. Users see Facebook as a community in which they are members. Though Facebook (presumably) has no legal obligation to get users’ permission before instituting changes, it makes business sense to consult the user community before making significant changes in the privacy model. Announcing a new initiative, only to backpedal in the face of user outrage, can’t be the best way to maximize long-term profits.

The challenge is finding a structure that allows the company to explore new business opportunities, while at the same time securing truly informed consent from the user community. Some kind of customer advisory board seems like an obvious approach. But how would the members be chosen? And how much information and power would they get? This isn’t easy to do. But the current approach isn’t working either. If your business is based on user buy-in to an online community, then you have to give that community some kind of voice — you have to make it a community that users want to inhabit.

3 completely different privacy articles taken together illustrate how privacy is really about informed choices.
First, a Techdirt post by Mike Masnick about a musician from Saskatoon that sought out the Google street view car to get his photo taken to promote his band.   The point is that he wanted the publicity and sought it out.   [...]

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