The Times: Tech column - Unfair small print/Web Archive/Biometrics
By David Rowan
This column has been stolen. Somewhere between the laptop on which it was composed and Times 2's e-mail inbox, ownership of these words has been rudely snatched by an uninvited third party. And short of calling in the Office of Cyberspace Security, there is little we can do.
The theft, officer, took place somewhere along a cable controlled by blueyonder, the Internet service provider owned by Telewest. Simply by filing these words from a blueyonder e-mail account, I appear to have fallen victim to the Internet's most pernicious crime: the scandalously unfair small print that technology firms impose on unwitting customers.
Here is how it happened: To connect to blueyonder, I needed to install the software disk that came through the post. But before clicking the "I Agree" box, natural caution led me to skim the 128 paragraphs - yes, 128 - to which I was agreeing. By paragraph 33, I was ready to call Crimestoppers.
By installing the software, it said, "you grant us a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive right to use, copy, modify, adapt, translate, publish and distribute worldwide any material transmitted by you via the service". In other words, anything that passed out of my computer - this piece included - would automatically become the property of blueyonder, "save where such material is transmitted by way of private correspondence". It's rather like saying that by driving to work along the M25, you give the Highways Agency the right to borrow, race, customise or crash your car anywhere on Earth, for ever and irrevocably.
The lawyers can argue whether such an absurd clause is enforceable; of greater concern to Telewest, and other companies that use small print to steal rights or breach privacy, should be the potential for some PR humiliation. Microsoft learnt this the hard way in April, when it faced a tirade of condemnation over the terms of use for its "Passport" applications such as Hotmail. These gave Microsoft control of whatever users transmitted through its site "by posting messages, uploading files, inputting data, submitting any feedback or suggestions, or engaging in any other form of communication".
And what might that control involve? The right to "use, modify, copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, publish, sub-license, create derivative works from, transfer, or sell any such communication". Heavens. Some day this firm could become rich.
In fact, protests forced Microsoft to drop the clause. As for other companies - and if you have read this far, you probably owe Telewest some hard cash - it's time to come clean. The small-print police are watching.
++++
How will history remember the online response to September 11 when, by its nature, the Web does not archive itself? It has, after all, been an extraordinary period of online activity, with more than 53 million people visiting news sites, memorial pages and e-mail communities. Now a project commissioned by the Library of Congress offers an answer. The September 11 Web Archive was launched last Thursday to preserve thousands of transient Web pages, from Afghan Info to Z magazine, as a free, permanent library. So far it has stored five terabytes of data, offering a fascinating snapshot of how official bodies, news organisations and Web communities were thinking on any given day. When e-commerce is a distant memory, sites such as this - at http://web.archive.org - will remind future generations what the Web was meant to be about. Provided, of course, that someone keeps a back-up in case the servers crash ...
++++
Finally there's a technology sector that's prospering again. In the past month companies that can reduce you to a digital DNA code - a sector known as biometrics - have seen, wait for it, rising share prices. Security worries have created a new buzz around "hand-geometry verification", "face retrieval", "live-scan fingerprinting" and other technologies designed to monitor strangers. Get used to them: amid all the current hype for costly screening packages, and some valid privacy fears, useful workaday applications are starting to emerge.
Networked computers that let your face log you on to read your e-mails, for instance; or the ATM machine that scans your voice, face and lip movement before deciding to issue your cash. BioID, a German company that has been working with some Australian banks, believes the first such ATMs will be live within six months: you will simply look into a video camera and say your name, and your biometric data will be matched with a template on a database.
Yet the software's greatest hope - beyond controlling access to airport high-security areas, and perhaps recognising the occasional terrorist - lies in its ability to end that scourge of the wired world: the infuriating inability of some of us to remember our PINs and passwords.
(The Times, October 15 2001)
This column has been stolen. Somewhere between the laptop on which it was composed and Times 2's e-mail inbox, ownership of these words has been rudely snatched by an uninvited third party. And short of calling in the Office of Cyberspace Security, there is little we can do.
The theft, officer, took place somewhere along a cable controlled by blueyonder, the Internet service provider owned by Telewest. Simply by filing these words from a blueyonder e-mail account, I appear to have fallen victim to the Internet's most pernicious crime: the scandalously unfair small print that technology firms impose on unwitting customers.
Here is how it happened: To connect to blueyonder, I needed to install the software disk that came through the post. But before clicking the "I Agree" box, natural caution led me to skim the 128 paragraphs - yes, 128 - to which I was agreeing. By paragraph 33, I was ready to call Crimestoppers.
By installing the software, it said, "you grant us a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive right to use, copy, modify, adapt, translate, publish and distribute worldwide any material transmitted by you via the service". In other words, anything that passed out of my computer - this piece included - would automatically become the property of blueyonder, "save where such material is transmitted by way of private correspondence". It's rather like saying that by driving to work along the M25, you give the Highways Agency the right to borrow, race, customise or crash your car anywhere on Earth, for ever and irrevocably.
The lawyers can argue whether such an absurd clause is enforceable; of greater concern to Telewest, and other companies that use small print to steal rights or breach privacy, should be the potential for some PR humiliation. Microsoft learnt this the hard way in April, when it faced a tirade of condemnation over the terms of use for its "Passport" applications such as Hotmail. These gave Microsoft control of whatever users transmitted through its site "by posting messages, uploading files, inputting data, submitting any feedback or suggestions, or engaging in any other form of communication".
And what might that control involve? The right to "use, modify, copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, publish, sub-license, create derivative works from, transfer, or sell any such communication". Heavens. Some day this firm could become rich.
In fact, protests forced Microsoft to drop the clause. As for other companies - and if you have read this far, you probably owe Telewest some hard cash - it's time to come clean. The small-print police are watching.
++++
How will history remember the online response to September 11 when, by its nature, the Web does not archive itself? It has, after all, been an extraordinary period of online activity, with more than 53 million people visiting news sites, memorial pages and e-mail communities. Now a project commissioned by the Library of Congress offers an answer. The September 11 Web Archive was launched last Thursday to preserve thousands of transient Web pages, from Afghan Info to Z magazine, as a free, permanent library. So far it has stored five terabytes of data, offering a fascinating snapshot of how official bodies, news organisations and Web communities were thinking on any given day. When e-commerce is a distant memory, sites such as this - at http://web.archive.org - will remind future generations what the Web was meant to be about. Provided, of course, that someone keeps a back-up in case the servers crash ...
++++
Finally there's a technology sector that's prospering again. In the past month companies that can reduce you to a digital DNA code - a sector known as biometrics - have seen, wait for it, rising share prices. Security worries have created a new buzz around "hand-geometry verification", "face retrieval", "live-scan fingerprinting" and other technologies designed to monitor strangers. Get used to them: amid all the current hype for costly screening packages, and some valid privacy fears, useful workaday applications are starting to emerge.
Networked computers that let your face log you on to read your e-mails, for instance; or the ATM machine that scans your voice, face and lip movement before deciding to issue your cash. BioID, a German company that has been working with some Australian banks, believes the first such ATMs will be live within six months: you will simply look into a video camera and say your name, and your biometric data will be matched with a template on a database.
Yet the software's greatest hope - beyond controlling access to airport high-security areas, and perhaps recognising the occasional terrorist - lies in its ability to end that scourge of the wired world: the infuriating inability of some of us to remember our PINs and passwords.
(The Times, October 15 2001)
posted by David Rowan at Monday, October 15, 2001
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