Internet & Social Media Archive

This post appeared on on Feb 16, 2009 on my software development blog : /var/log/mind. It is one of two posts I decided to cross post into this blog as well.

Update: Facebook has since reverted the change in terms of service. Cool. On Feb 18th, a message on the home page said :

Terms of Use Update

A couple of weeks ago, we posted an update to our Terms of Use that we hoped would clarify some parts of it for our users. Over the past couple of days, we have received a lot of questions and comments about these updated terms and what they mean for people and their information. Because of the feedback we received, we have decided to return to our previous Terms of Use while we resolve the issues that people have raised. For more information, visit the Facebook Blog.

Mark Zuckerberg also blogged about the same issue in Update on Terms.

Original post begins here.

Facebook published a new Terms of Service on February 4th 2009 which has a strong implication for how internet / cloud based data privacy is likely to be viewed. This was very well publicised here – Facebook’s New Terms Of Service: “We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content. Forever.”. There was some consternation on the net especially on twitter about this change in facebook rules. While I did not use facebook much, I was sufficiently appalled at the change in rules to go and delete pretty much most of my data one line at a time. It is unclear to me if the old data is still available to facebook for sublicensing from a legal perspective (I know all the data will be there in their archives), but I decided it probably wouldn’t hurt to nevertheless to go delete most of it. I didn’t actually delete the account since Facebook still helps me keep in touch with my friends. But it is quite safe to assume that any interactions with them with an assumption or requirement of any data privacy will no longer be done on facebook.

Whats wrong with the new terms of service ?
Some people in forums argued that most of the data on internet is likely to be there forever. So one just needs to be careful and not worry about it. I don’t quite agree with that line of thinking. When I blog, tweet, post to usenet or forums, I am upfront aware of the fact that that data is going to be cached by google and other search engines and that once I press the publish button, there’s often no way to revoke it. However in case of Facebook, there is a general expectation that the data will be shared only within a network of friends, a network that I have control over. There is an expectation that that data will not get cached by search engines and short of an accidental data breach or some intentional malafide activities that data will not become public. What is unnerving with the new terms of service is that Facebook changed these rules at will without even sending me an email about the same.

Asymmetry of Privacy Expectations :

It is interesting to note how asymmetric some of the terms are. For example in the section User Content, the following is to be found.

By using or accessing the Facebook Service, you represent, warrant and agree that you will not Post:

* User Content that violates the law or anyone’s rights, including intellectual property (“IP”) rights or other proprietary rights (such as rights of publicity and privacy);
* any Contact Information or private information of any third party;

Further down in the section Licensing, it states,

You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.

As you can see, you undertake to not violate anyone else’s IP or other proprietary rights, but information about you will not be treated with the same level of respect by Facebook, though its done quite legally by documenting the same in the Terms of Service.

Moreover anything you post or any information on your stream is now sub-licensable by Facebook. Now why would I exactly want to sign away all rights on status updates, photographs etc. on content which I posted assuming that it was secure and private ?

But the earlier terms were also quite onerous. So how come you did not complain ?

Apparently under the earlier terms, facebook also had the rights on the content, so whats the big deal ? Two main issues.

1. The earlier TOS did not grant Facebook the right to sublicense the content : The possibility of sublicensing means you have no control or idea on who the eventual user of that data could be. I still get angry at so many commercial parties at having leaked my email and phone number data. The likelihood of a similar scenario where facebook sells that data for commercial purposes now cannot be ruled out, purposes on which I will have no control on that data.
2. The earlier TOS had an escape clause of deleting the account Basically Facebook did not have the right on the data once you deleted the account. This is important as can be seen by another case on Twitter Privacy Disaster At Twitter: Direct Messages Exposed (Update: GroupTweet Is Likely Culprit). In this case private messages were apparently accidentally made public due to confusing software usability. The person immediately responded by deleting the account. This is a useful kill switch to have in case one makes a terrible terrible mistake of putting out something accidentally. This kill switch is also no longer available.

Bait and Switch : By not informing users of the change in terms of service especially since these were so important, I think this creates an impression that the user is a victim of bait and switch (even though the real underlying causes of the change which I am unaware of could be different). Facebook should’ve informed the users about the change in rules, offered a button to delete all prior data / photographs / content or at least made clear that the earlier content will continue to be governed by the earlier TOS – something thats a little unclear in this situation.

Implications for Internet Web sites and users : I think sites should very clearly document how they will control and use the data that they gather. Many of them do by explicitly document the same. Moreover any substantial changes to the same should be communicated to the users. Finally users need to be now aware of potentially changes of Terms of Services on a number of web sites that they interact with. Data that they assume to be private may no longer stay so and the user may not be any wiser about the same if the Terms of Services are changed without him being explicitly informed.


Updates :

Why did I delete the data ? Seems some readers are thinking I deleted the data believing that that will get rid of it. Thats not why I deleted the data. I am fully aware the data is likely to live perpetually in facebook archives and be accessible to facebook. I deleted it because that data had been submitted and generated under the old Terms of Service. Letting it be around to me seemed like an implicit acceptance of the new Terms of Service around old data, which I was uncomfortable with. So I deleted the data at the first available opportunity on realising that the Terms of Service around that data had changed. Any new interactions I do with facebook will be under an awareness of and therefore an acceptance of new Terms of Service.

Response from Facebook : Mark zuckerberg attempts to address the issue on facebook blog : On Facebook, People Own and Control Their Information. I could not find any rationale to why Facebook needs the privilege to sublicense the content. I also thought the way the blog post was written and the way the Terms of Service are structured are very very different. In my opinion its the Terms of Service that count.

This topic has been also getting a lot of traction on other blogs. Am quoting some other interesting opinions on the topic on the internet along with link backs to the posts below

• cnet News.com : The Open Road : Facebook changes terms of service to control more user data :
  

  Google has had its own problems with user privacy, but this Facebook move calls into question the wisdom of clouds or, rather, storing one’s data in others’ Web services like Facebook. We need to come up with new licenses or new mandates for open data in the cloud. Facebook shouldn’t own our data.

• Mashable : Facebook: All Your Stuff is Ours, Even if You Quit :
  

  The possible implications of this TOS change go beyond these concerns. Sure, you can choose not to use Facebook at all, but that doesn’t mean a thing. Someone can still take your photo, slap it on Facebook, and now neither you nor the author of the photo can stop Facebook from using the photo in whichever way they please. Looking at it globally, millions of people are uploading bits of information on everyone and everything, to a huge online database, and by doing so they’re automatically giving away the rights to use or modify this information to a private corporation. And not only that; they now also waiver the right to ever take it back from it.

  Facebook should take a long, deep look into how it treats its users. Until now, users had options with regards to how the data they generated on Facebook was used. Now, they have no options whatsoever, rather than quit the service altogether. It’s a major difference; I’m not going to take it lightly, and neither should you.

• Wet Asphalt : The Facebook Freakout :
  

  You are only granting those rights “on or in connection with the Facebook Service or in the promotion thereof.” What does that mean? Well, it means that you are licensing the use on Facebook branded websites or any other media and the Facebook Platform, which is the legal name for the APIs that allow third parties to create Facebook applications. So if there was a Facebook TV show, they could use your stuff on that. Or if they launched a Facebook concert series or a Facebook magazine, they could use your stuff in that. Presumably, if there were a Facebook dogfood, they could use your content on that. Or if they wanted to make an advertisement FOR any of those things, they could use your stuff in that. Precisely WHY Facebook would want to do any of those things, I leave to the reader to speculate on. What they most emphatically CAN’T do is what Walters claims, that “We can do anything we want with your content forever.” They can do anything they want with your content ON Facebook or to Promote Facebook forever. But if they said that it probably wouldn’t cause the internet panic and generate hits for the consumerist and readers to stroke Walter’s ego with diggs and trackbacks and twitterposts either.

This post appeared on on July 23, 2008 on my software development blog : /var/log/mind. It is one of two posts I decided to cross post into this blog as well.

Just realised, have been blogging for more than 6 months now (actually I had started another blog ages ago .. but that tapered off soon then). Over this period, I believe I learnt or adopted a few practices. Just sharing them here. Feel free to comment. YMMV.

1. Treat your readers like a jury not as customers :By jury, I mean a jury as in a academic thesis not as in a court. Whats the difference ?
   • With customers you sell, with a jury you defend your perspective. You may think you are selling your views, but a jury doesn’t shell out any money to buy them. This makes a typical sales process a much more harder and onerous task than just defending. Most readers aren’t out to buy, they are out to learn more and interact more.
   • With customers you assume they may not know all about your product, so you focus on educating them in general towards making a pitch. With a jury you assume they already know far more than you do in general, but you attempt to educate them and draw them into a discussion into something specific that you have spent your time on, on something specific that you are presenting.
   • In a defense, the onus is on you to provide credible backing evidence. In a sales pitch the onus is on the customer to verify your pitch. Most readers would prefer to not carry the additional overhead of having to verify your statements. If you have provided the rationale for your statements clearly and supported it with available evidence if relevant, you have made the readers job much easier. You have increased the chances of the reader wanting to come back to your blog.

   
   

2. Make a strong statement. Avoid taking strong positions : Allow me to define this. By position I mean making absolutist statements without providing a sufficient context or a frame of reference or assuming ones own frame of reference as the only valid one. There is a wide diversity of readers out there. Some are into client side, some into server side. Some are into high usability, some into high speed processing. Some are doing graphics algorithms, some others are into CRUD and business validations. A large majority of your readers are likely to have a different frame of reference than yours. If they can’t understand where you are coming from, they will assume you are coming from the same context that they do. And they are likely to feel confused when what you say doesn’t end up matching their world view. A statement like “I found X more suitable than Y under a context Z” rather than a position like “X is better than Y” is more helpful since :
   • You get to describe your context. Your statement is a statement within a context. It is not treated as a blanket position. Readers with different contexts and divergent views can sometimes trace the differences to the context. Such readers can still suggest alternative views within other contexts easily without appearing to contradict you. Readers with similar contexts and divergent views can still choose to take you on.
   • You have lesser chances of being misinterpreted. You don’t want to get caught in an interview a year down the road when you are changing your job from writing a forms based application to one where you might be required to build say a graphics processing engine, where your interviewer might have just read your blog, and your posts actually do not make sense in the newer context.
   • When you make a strong statement without taking a strong position, readers record their agreement / disagreement with the post rather than you or your blog in general. I personally find that a much more comforting thought than readers choosing to agree / disagree with the blog in general.




3. Be prepared to update your blog soon :There is a large number of smart people out there, often a lot smarter than us, or having a difference experience set than us. As the comments start coming in, you start learning things you wish you knew before you wrote the post. If the comments indicate something useful and relevant to the post that you would’ve wanted to include in the post had you known about it earlier – go ahead, add it into the post. A convention I have seen is that all non trivial changes after the initial posting should be prefixed with the word “Update:” or “Updates:” so that readers can make out you’ve changed something after your initial post. A comment or two may be especially relevant. It helps to be able to review the comments regularly and update the post if relevant soon. If you are going to be traveling soon, either submit your post a little earlier or post it a little later – but post it when you know you will be able to review the comments and will have the flexibility to take 5 to 10 minutes off your regular work to update the blog if necessary.




4. Be prepared for surprises : Even if you write carefully you will end up making a small set of readers either happy or disappointed with you in a manner that will leave you puzzled. However hard you try there is a good likelihood someone is going to misquote you or take you on strongly in an unanticipated way. Some of this may be unavoidable and needs to be factored into your assumptions. However some of it will be avoidable, and do follow up such incidents to figure out if there are any learnings that you can apply the next time. A great way to do so is to write a mail back to the commenter or to the blogger who may have linked to your post and get a better understanding of his/her viewpoint.




5. Don’t title spam your readers : Every so often I come across a post with a provocative title, but which does not live up to the title at all. I prefer call this title spamming, since lot of the spam I receive has a provocative title, but often irrelevant content. Title is important. It influences readership strongly. But if you title spam regularly, it might help you get 2-3 posts higher readership, but its going to hurt in the longer run.




6. Understand how blog aggregators and networks work :It is important to understand the demographics of different blog aggregators. If you would like your blog to be read by larger number of people, be clear in your mind which demographics you are targeting when writing your post. Some aggregators like javablogs.com and artima.com will target specific programming languages and work off an RSS feed. Explore your blogging software and see if it offers category / tag based feeds. If it does use the categories / tags to ensure your rss feed registered with these aggregators sends only relevant posts to them. I use wordpress and it supports tag / category based RSS feeds. Networks like dzone.com, news.ycombinator.com, reddit.com, slashdot.org, digg.com have very different demographics. Don’t blanket post to all networks. Register your post with those networks where the readers are likely to find your post helpful. I have occasionally come across people wondering whether one should register one’s own posts to a network. My opinion is that it is an acceptable activity.




7. Ensure you have blog analytics enabled : Over a longer period of time you will start gleaning useful information about your readers. eg. what part of the world do they come from, which links do they come from (eg. you can get statistical information about the referrers such as google reader (RSS), blog aggregators, blog networks etc.). You can also get information about what searches led the search engines to your blog. I prefer wordpress.com stats plugin for wordpress and google analytics. The former is better at providing more immediate feedback, whereas the latter is more comprehensive.




8. Pay attention to search engines as well :Most blog aggregators and networks will drive substantial traffic to your blog for the first 24-48 hours. Search engines will send a small trickle initially. However there is a big difference. Traffic from aggregators and networks will dry up after a few days for any post. But traffic from search engines will keep on coming. Over a sustained period of time, search engines can start driving a substantial traffic to your blog. Read up about Search Engine Optimisation and see if you can help your blog. I would recommend however that you use such optimisation fairly and only to the extent that it is not misleading.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court of India in an important ruling refused to shield a 19 year old blogger from a responsibility to face the charges in a different state than the one of his residence. A few important implications stem from this which should be noted.

One important aspect which is perhaps easy to lose sight of in this debate is that the Supreme Court did not weigh in on the guilt or lack of it in this case, but on the fact that the person could not shy away from the responsibility to face the charges in a court. What should also be noted is that the underlying case is a criminal case and not for civil liability or libel, and seems to stem from an alleged death threat that was issued in the forum as per this article from The Telegraph.

The implications are relevant to bloggers, site maintainers, forum administrators, group moderators and perhaps even small commercial internet services dealing in opinions and expressions flow. In interest of brevity I use the word blogger below to be freely substitutable by any of these.

Note: I am not a lawyer and this is not a legal opinion, it is an expression of my personal understanding.

The Burden of Accountability. Imaged owned by and used under permission from Firoze Shakir. http://www.flickr.com/photos/firozeshakir/3309041065/

Is a blogger accountable for the online content including those made by others on the site ?

The Hindu offered a brief summary of the underlying issue in the case as follows.

Ajith D, a Kerala-based computer student had approached the apex court for quashing of the criminal case registered against him at Thane Police Station for allegedly hurting public sentiment by starting an online community in Orkut with an intention to launch an anti-Shiva Sena campaign.

I think this verdict does go to some extent towards suggesting that he does though I am not sure if it is a blanket conclusion one can draw at this stage. The court in its comments said :

You should not have indulged in such activity. You are a student of IT. You are doing something on internet and you should know about it.

This is a clear and unambiguous message which suggests that the constitutional rights do not cover a netizen from a responsibility to face any charges that may crop up as a result of any of his / her online expressions or facilitation of other’s online expressions. In this case many of the offensive comments were made by anonymous contributors and not by defendant himself. Thus such a person cannot shy away from having to face charges and defend himself even when the vehicle of expression he provides is used by others to express themselves.

Thats like holding the public transportation and public telephony organisations responsible since their offerings were used to conduct an activity that is now under criminal investigation. That obviously does not make sense. But allow me to introduce a hypothetical premise here. What if the public transportation and public telephony organisations used their discretion from time to time to decide who can use their services and who can’t, and what if they knew the the broad intentions of the user in using their services (either upfront or post facto). Would they now have a responsibility in this case ? That does make the situation a bit cloudy.

The equivalent situation in this case is when an online forum / site / group / blog is moderated. I am also going to assume for a moment (since I don’t know the facts) that the said orkut group allowed the group maintainer to moderate the content and the group maintainer might have used his privileges to say knock off spam on the group. This would imply that all expressions are not automatic and hence there is perhaps a case for the court to have made the moderator responsible to face charges for all the content in the group. However I would find it a little surprising if the group maintainer did not have any privileges to moderate the content or exercise his right to do so.

Should the blogger be required to face charges in any jurisdiction ?

While terribly inconvenient and perhaps with a lot of nuisance potential, the court opined very very clearly.

If a case is filed in a foreign country go and face it. You should know what you are doing on internet.

This is going to be really an issue for a lot of bloggers. In traditional (non internet) offerings, the service provider often has some kind of presence in the places where his services are consumed. Not so in the case of internet. You can reach the world without leaving your house. Also traditional service provision, requires some infrastructure or facilities investment or leasing, not so in case of blogging. The blogger often may have limited access to resources, may often have no revenues whatsoever. Yet he could be made responsible to defend himself in the furthest corners of the world. So herein lies the issue – Given the potential minimal resources and perhaps no revenue at his disposal, the blogger may have to face charges from any corner of the globe. The resultant investment in time and money alone may now seem like a punishment even if the blogger was to be eventually successful in defending himself in a court.

While the internet has delivered asymmetric capabilities to the blogger (maximum reach at minimum cost), the legal infrastructure has placed him at the receiving end of that asymmetry (maximum potential costs of defending himself while working off minimal / zero revenues). There is something clearly uncomfortable about this but I am not sure whats the right solution.

An interesting angle that will need to be looked at here is also the implication for internet based individual or small company commercial services (which often operate on a rather shoestring budget and headcount). Would this opinion lead to a negative business climate for such offerings ? Coule it be detrimental to their offerings, since often the primary commodity they deal in is information, precisely the currency whose use could expose them to (threats of) legal action.

I do think this is an issue which will perhaps need a different resolution in times to come. And especially since the Supreme Court has already weighed in on the issue, it might be the time for legislature to take a look at its implications especially by considering its implications on the business climate of small internet services as well.

Is this an attack on freedom of expression ?

In this case the charges are criminal in nature and seem to be stemming off a death threat. These expressions if made orally would’ve made the person who made such an expression equally inconvenienced, and I cannot imagine why online expression should be granted any more freedom or privileges than oral expressions. If at all, online expressions because of their reach and ability to persist, need to have more accountability. So confusing this with freedom of expression and speech is just being plain facetious. So in my opinion the answer is NO.

However the case does raise interesting possibilities about non threatening or non criminal charges. How would the Supreme Court opine in such a situation. Well we wouldn’t know until such a case reached them, but let us for a moment assume that the opinion continued to be similar. Even in such a hypothetical situation, I believe it would still not impinge on freedom of expression. All that the court has said is that one cannot escape from being accountable for expressions and thus present themselves to defend themselves. Thats perfectly reasonable. However it could indirectly hurt freedom of expression due to the burden it places in terms of defense. Defending oneself in a remote state can be an act of punishment itself which could dilute the very strengths the constitutional rights sought to promote. That part does worry me.

So what can be done about it ?
For starters I think the legislature while continuing to make people accountable for their expressions should pursue mechanisms by which the cost of implementing such accountability could be reduced. How that could be done is beyond my capabilities and understanding of the legal system. Moreover the judiciary could in the cases it handles, continue to be very proactive in ensuring that the freedom of expression is strongly defended in the cases that come to it for redressal. It should also figure out a way to deal strongly and with penalties on any frivolous use of force to clamp down on expression.

Update : I am surprised with myself for having forgot this recent tweet of mine (post the NDTV / Chaitanya kunte episode). Quite simply it says :

   Right to express is inalienable from accountability of expression. Civil liberties are strengthened by responsible civility

Disclaimer :I am not a lawyer, neither do I claim to understand law well. The perspective below is based on my reading of the two bills which was not conducted in complete rigour and detail. The following is my understanding it. For a legally valid opinion kindly consult a lawyer.

Just last month, the Indian Parliament passed the Information Technology (Amendment) Bill, 2006. The bill is currently pending Presidential assent (to the best of my knowledge) and is expected to become a law soon. Unfortunately this document is a little hard to follow since it refers to changes made to the earlier applicable version of the law as defined by The Information Technology Act, 2000. One has to read them side by side to understand the full import. This post primarily focuses on the implications of the changes to the law but may refer from time to time to the implications of the earlier version as well.

Digital Signatures and Certificates : This is a very large section of the bill. I think I shall need to read it more carefully. So I am completely skipping that section and may choose to write separately about it later.

Computer networks and their security :

This bill now brings into purview wireless networks (the word wireless got added to the definition of a network). While an intermediary earlier was someone who stored or transmitted a message, it is a far broader definition as stated below.

Note that a message has been replaced by a record which broadens the scope quite a bit, and in my perhaps lay interpretation is likely to bring under its purview all the software as a service or a network service providers.

Offenses

The earlier law had two offenses listed in this section, which now have increased. Lets take a look at them.

The first offense description related to tampering of source code continues to remain the same unchanged -

The next offense Hacking with a computer system is now far less precise, and loosely means any dishonest or fraudulent activity in the context of a number of computer related activities as described in Section 43. That section incidentally has now been supplemented by Section 43A which under its purview now requires “body corporates possessing, dealing or handling any sensitive personal data” to maintain reasonable security practices and procedures (with a two year prison sentence in case of default). I will not dwell on Section 43 since it lists out a broad range of activities which can have negative consequences on computer systems and networks.

A new offense description can now be found as follows :

This is an onerous clause requiring us to be very careful in many of our online communications. I think to the extent it brings in accountability in online communications it is welcome. It is my belief that both the prosecution or courts are unlikely to pull people up for frivolous comments unless there are strong negative consequences and / or it is a persistent activity with a deliberately negative intent. However I still feel concerned about the rather loose wording which still could get misused.

The next offense is related to pornography. The first clause of the offense continues to the best of my reading ablities to be unmodified

However it has now been further expanded by the following

I could not find any reference in my reading to either consumption or storage of pornographic content to be an offense.

Interception and Decryption : While the wordings are different I could not find any substantive changes in the clauses related to the state rights to Interception and Decryption, except that the word Monitoring has also got added. But its safe to say that the Central Government can pretty much continue to snoop on any electronic transmission as they believe necessary. Couldn’t really figure out what if any difference this bill makes.

Modifications to the Indian Penal Code : The penal code is now applicable to “any person in any place without and beyond India committing offense targeting a computer resource located in India”. So people who are not residents or citizens of India targeting Indian computer systems are now classified as offenders. Incidentally it should be noted that the penal code already applies to “Any citizen of India in any place without and beyond India”. However that seems to be now made much clearer by the explanation which states that “the word offense includes every act committed outside India which, if committed in India, would be punishable under this Code”. While I am not certain about it my lay reading seems to indicate that Indian Citizens committing violations outside India will be eligible to be flagged as offenders. If my interpretation is correct, Indian Citizens involved in publishing or transmitting pornography or in activities which could get classified as an offender as per this law, , will get classified as offenders under the act in India, even if such activities are legal in the parts of the world where they or their computer systems reside. However I must insist I am not too sure about this.

A law misconstrued and misunderstood ? I wasn’t quite sure how to react to blog posts like “India Sleepwalks To Total Surveillance“. However I really can’t respect the way the bill has been represented. Some of the bold statements in the post say, “Thou shall not author a joke. Not even forward one”, “Thou shall not surf Bollywood news” and ” Thou shall not watch porn”. I really could not find any evidence to support such views whatsoever. The sad part is that such posts get picked up in articles like Blogger Writes from Inside the Newest Police State on the Planet, discussions such as slashdot - India Sleepwalks Into a Surveillance Society and tweets such as these. I have spent about 6 years in US, and the remainder in India. I have always been very happy with the freedoms I have received in India, even though I do know that very unfortunately a small proportion of the population does get victimised or harassed due to the stringent laws from time to time. I won’t be surprised if a substantial proportion of Indian Citizens actually support the clauses against pornography. And finally the draft bill has been under discussion since 2006 so I couldn’t understand how the world’s largest democracy sleepwalked into something (though I am certain this and another bill got completely fast tracked after the Mumbai Terrorist Attacks). The fact of the matter is that this has always been a state of stringent laws, with laws which don’t always agree fully with the western world. I think we should rate our laws based on our aspirations and desires. While I shudder at the privileges the government has in terms of eavesdropping, I am quite ambivalent on the strictures against pornography and greatly welcome the enhancements related to electronic signatures and increased accountability in terms of online communication and network security maintenance. Its really a mixed bag in my opinion. If at all India is to be considered a police state as in some opinions, in my opinion it is certainly not because of this bill.

As someone who has been using usenet and the world wide web since ’94 , there was one thing I had learnt long time back. Be careful of what you write. Sure in the first year or so I wrote stuff which I wished I had a way of pulling back, and once every few years there does go out a mail I wish I hadn’t pressed the Send button so fast. But even as I am aware I often compose long winding sentences which take some effort at reading, I was feeling rather smug in the notion that I had learnt the art of being careful. I knew I could write passionately even as I maintained a sense of balance and did not take extreme positions. That I had gone past the stage of writing stuff that in hindsight sounded just plain dumb. Until today.

Today is when I realised that while I am careful when I compose emails and blog posts, tweeting is something I need to reinforce those learnings. Theres something quite easy about 140 characters which sometimes just entices you to offer your opinion – oh just so quickly. And that speed of tweeting can sometimes bend the editorial controls that one has learnt to apply on a mail or a blog post. At the end of it one wonders what it was – irresponsibility, folly, or just some mythological greek hubris (actions which negatively impact / shame both the perpetrator and the affected) slipping past editorial controls.

There was one quick tweet that I did which referred to a screenshot just a little while back. Soon enough I had people expressing their angst at me, angst that I then considered completely unreasonable since I was factually quite accurate. I actually considered myself the victim for a while. Until the last mail I exchanged on the topic required me to take a relook at my tweet – and I couldn’t believe my eyes, I had actually put the name of a website in there in a context that had some negative connotations. And the worst part was that I never really actually remembered actually putting in the name that I so obviously had done. The name was in the image also, but putting the name in the tweet amounted from moving it from the 5th page of a newspaper bang onto the front page. Try hard as I could, I just could not actually bring myself to remember how I consciously typed it in there.

And then I slowly imagined myself on the receiving side of it. I soon realised I would’ve been hopping mad. Much much more than hopping mad. It was inappropriate. It was unnecessary. It was entirely uncalled for.

I have over a period of time realised that every 3-4 years I do something incredibly stupid. The kind which requires me to ask myself “what weed was I smoking ?”. In a sarcastic vein I can take solace in the fact that as far as the law of averages can predict I shouldn’t be doing anything similar at least till 2012. I deleted the picture. I deleted the tweet. But the tweet still stays there in the ether.

Moral of the story : Just because typing in 140 chars is easy and quick doesn’t mean you can let your editorial guard be down while tweeting. In fact given the fact that it is so much easier to tweet, not only do you need to have those same guards on, they need to be more agile and sharp since a tweet can be sent far quicker than it takes to write out a subject line.

Had a fair degree of fun trying to figure out all the logos in the quiz : How Web 2 are you ? I got about 24 correct in the first unresearched pass, but then spent some time figuring out the remainder. Here’s the full set of answers (drumroll ! ! !) .. (Click on the text to go to the site)

Technorati	Twitter	Feedburner	Stumble Upon	Rollyo
Flickr	Blogger	Zimbra	Newsvine	Digg
Netvibes	WordPress	Photobucket	Del.icio.us	Skype
Boxee	reddit	Basecamp	Rapleaf	LinkedIn
edocr	Remember The Milk	Facebook	You Tube	Last FM
GMail	Yuuguu	MySpace	Slideshare	Qik
Seesmic	Bebo	Moo	Huddle

Clubhack had earlier pointed out that 51% of pune’s wireless points are open. This was talked about in a ndtv broadcast earlier today.

Had earlier blogged about it in “How can an ISP not be up to date on security” which was further reinforced in WPA cracked in 15 minutes or less, or your next router’s free. Definitely need more awareness and ClubHack is making a useful contribution.

Early Internet usage

I have always been a enthusiastic user of most of the internet capabilities. I started of learning and using ftp and archie and gopher in early 90s, had an opportunity to use the NCSA mosaic browser prior to the Netscape phenomenon, picked up most of my C++ and software design learnings on usenet in the mid 90s, and was well into application development using web technologies and distributed objects by 96. As time progressed, I started using many newer offerings such as portals, forums, groups and  eventually blogs and social networks.

Blogging

Blogging is a very intensely personal activity. Its substantially unicast nature allows one to carefully craft and customise the message that one would like to project. Early in 2008, I found myself with tons of free time. I had stepped out of my earlier assignment at the turn of the year. I was unlikely to get attracted back into the realm of the conventional commercial software development in the short term. While I knew I was wanting to really focus on developing good software, I had no clue what I wanted to do immediately in the short term. While I had worked in senior management positions, managed large size teams and what at least in my perception had built some kick ass software, I felt like I had this whole body of knowledge and experiences to share but didn’t know where or how to share it. I had started a blog earlier but it petered out after about 5 entries, the notable result out of that exercise having been the article, A beginners guide to Dependency Injection which I wrote in July 2005, which Floyd Marinescu, the then editor of TheServerSide.com asked me to put together based on my blog writings.

/var/log/mind :

While many people blog for kicks, and many others for publishing their views and commentary on a large range of topics, and some others from a commercial perspective, I started my blog with a very different purpose. I wanted it to specifically focus on issues and matters related to software engineering ie programming, design and architecture, issues I believe I have a lot of experience in and in which I can pretend to talk intelligently. My objective was to share the understandings I had internalised through many of my experiences and share them across the relevant audience.  In a very casual mood I decided that I would start blogging again, and /var/log/mind debuted on Jan 3, 2008 with the post “Nice Error Message“. At that point, I was not really clear about what I wanted to blog about except that it would be about software engineering. Anyone familiar with UNIX file system structure will immediately understand the title – its a log file of the mind. Soon I was writing quite passionately and some of the posts focused on the fact that I was wanting to move from Java to scripting languages. These included :

• “Java : if (compete with PHP / Ruby / Python) { stop fixing the syntax and start fixing the runtime }” on April.
• “How In ended up selecting Python for my latest project” on June 9th
• “Performance Comparison – C++ / Java / Python / Ruby/ Jython / JRuby / Groovy” on July 8th
• “Commentary on Python from a Java programming perspective” on September 17th,
• “Python from a Java perspective – Part 2 – How duck typing influences class design and design principles” on September 25th, and
• “Java : the perpetually undead language” on December 11.

I attempted to bring in a manager’s perspective including

• Why merging development and testing makes sense in a TDD / agile environment” on August 12th, and
• “Outsourcing does not suck. Our understanding of it does !” on August 14th,

And of course architecture was never too far from my heart

• “Factors influencing Cache Design” on August 6 and
• “Multicore for Project Managers and Junior Developers” on Nov. 26th.

I also dabbled a little bit with online media

• “Tips for Software / Programming Blogging” on July 23rd,

Focus

While I received very positive feedback on that, I quickly realised that this was an entirely different set of readers and the positive references were coming from a completely different set of sources. Hence I quickly backed off that angle being a little afraid of losing focus. /var/log/mind is intensely focused and completely non frivolous quite deliberately. However when I started it, unlike emails and groups, I wasn’t communicating with people I knew, I was simply broadcasting and hoping someone would find my views interesting enough. Soon enough there were a few people viewing it and subscribing to the feeds. This was a segment of people who were focused on software engineering to a substantial extent (or at least thats what I assume). Till date I have focused on trying to satisfy this small set of people intensely rather than reaching out to larger audiences. I must confess that while I am often tempted to either make the content a little more easier to read or focus on less intense topics, I have chosen to stay away successfully from such temptations. I would like /var/log/mind to be visited regularly by a small set of people seriously focused on software engineering. This in the overall scheme of things is not such a large audience, but its an audience I can connect with readily. Recently I did give in to the temptation of wanting to blog on a lot of internet / social media issues but only by starting a new blog – “Web N.o“.  Finally I am also resurrecting my personal blog /home/dhananjay which will focus on lesser intensive aspects of software, internet and allow me to write on other issues of interests such as Finance, Economics, Current Affairs and Humour.

On Indian readership :

Early on I didn’t quite figure out why if dzone gets more traffic from India than US, I got only low single digit percents from readers based out of India. This remained a puzzle for long. It later dawned on me that my writings were actually targeting much more narrower segment – the people who are really passionate about their programming or engineering, the kind who flock to reddit which has a predominantly higher US traffic. However I have watched the readership grow slowly in no small part due to the helpful words put out by Navin in his writings on PuneTech. In the month of december till date, Indian readership share has crept up to 5%. I can’t imagine my writings being in any way being more relevant to one geographic region than another. Over the next few months I intend to try to understand the rationale behind the discrepancy and attempt to reduce the same at least partially.

Microblogging :

One of the things I do wish when looking back is that I had paid more attention to microblogging. I simply did not realise the power and capability of Twitter till very recently. I must confess to be a very early stage user and look forward to learning how to leverage microblogging. However I have already done my first mistake, so its safe to presume that my learning process has begun. I had put all the people who I wanted to follow into one twitter handle, and a variety of people started following me back. This was a noise disaster in waiting should it be allowed to grow. There was no way that whatever I would write would make sense to a large proportion of the network. I have always believed in focus, and once again I set out to do the same. My belief is that the network is still quite small, and it is important to undo the potential damage even if it is inconvenient in the short term. So the twitter handle “dnene” now focuses on Software and social media topics exclusively. So if you are an IT / Online Media professional thats the one to follow.  The handle “idhananjay” is much more freewheeling, so if you want to see my multiple facets, my humorous side, or my views on current affairs and local issues thats the one to follow. Finally if you are a IT professional based in India, you may consider potentially following both. I shall soon be setting up a third one and thats going to be for personal friends and family. That to me seems like the most logical way to organise to minimise outgoing noise polution on the twitter streams. A similar separation is also happening on the blogging trail – /var/log/mind and Web N.o shall be serious blogs focused on the specific areas attempting to look at the various issues in depth, whereas /home/dhananjay shall be a freewheeling general blog which shall perhaps reflect a more broader, casual, lighter aspects about my views and opinions.

This is a reproduction of a post I made in a closed user group of largely young IT professionals in March, 2008. I believe it is of likely interest for many other young professionals who may want to blog in a professional capacity

About blogging
Blogging started off as an offshoot of the “individual home page” which was more of an homepage which was structured like an online diary (Blog is actually a short form of the word “web log”). However today it has grown very very substantially into a very powerful communication medium which has substantially increased the “expressivity” of individual opinion and a projection of an individual personality. The most read blogs are often those that relate to individuals offering their most private (and sometimes lurid) thoughts for public consumption on the net. Another popular category is the journalistic blogs which trade in news and opinions. This is a great platform for citizen journalism and has now become so powerful that most journalistic houses encourage their professional journalists also to have their own blogs. However what I am going to talk about is a kind of a blog with a very different focus than either of these. I intend to blog about a blog type which is more in line with the target audience of this blog – blogs that deal with professional identity projection.

Why Professional Identity Projection ?
The net is helping the world to shrink to a smaller and smaller world each day. This is a world which is now exploding in the opportunities that it offers in terms of networking resulting in each of us having a larger average professional network size than at anytime in the past. The larger network sizes and the increasing ease of communication means that we have a smaller time and attention span for each individual that we casually interact with. Thus there is a requirement to project a stronger image of oneself (think of it as you being your own brand). This helps you to be able to not only reach a wider audience of people and build stronger networks but also to be able to within such larger audiences conduct more selective targeting. By this I mean the ability to cut through a mass of people who are either not meeting the target segment that you are really interacting with, into those that will make a lot of sense interacting with

How will a Professional Blog help me ?
Potentially in a number of ways

• It creates an identity for you that others can interact with without occupying your time. People can come and read your blogs – understand you and your opinions more without any downtime for you.
• It creates a stronger and focused projection of who you are and what you are focused on. This tremendously helps others understand you much quicker. In very simple terms – as compared to not blogging, it might make you less attractive to half to two thirds of the general audience who my be not so enthusiastic about your views – but it very substantially increases your value in the eyes of the remaining one third to half – and these are probably the people you might find maximum value interacting with.
• This is really important – your blog can be an online extension of your resume. If a one pager with a reference to your blog URL can excite someone – you’ve suddenly bought yourself an increased attention span and interest from someone you want to reach out to.
• Market yourself as a serious focused and thinking person.

When you should not have a professional blog

• You do not have some views or some aspects about yourself that you would like to project to others
• You are not keen on offering either interesting commentary or narrative about something that is very original – ie. something you’ve come up with.

What kinds of blogs can I have
Theres no clear answer here – its really upto you. However some of the possibilities are :

• Technical : say a blog purely focused on Java
• Software Design
• Business : focused on Business Domain happenings in general and trends you foresee
• Project Management

I would like to try it out – where do I go from here

• If you want to offer an interesting thought related to technology, business, management etc. the [..deleted..] blog might be a great place to get started and getting your feet wet
• There are many other free blog hosting sites. jroller.com is a great one if you want to primarily blog about java. blogspot.com (from google) and wordpress.com are other good free blog hosting sites.
• Just run google searches like “introduction to blogging” or “blogging tutorial” and understand the space a little bit more.
• This is a nice introductory document.
• If you do create a blog do keep me posted about it

Important : Read ME
Many companies publish documented guidelines about what you can blog about and what you cannot. Find out if your employer has guidelines about employee blogging activity and respect the same. In general blogging about company proprietary information, plans, designs etc., about internal company news are a strict no-no and can sometimes get you into legal trouble. Bitching about your current or ex-employers or any other similar activities in poor taste are only likely to reflect very poorly on you besides the obvious damage it does to others – make sure your blogs are in a positive spirit. In some cases your employer might maintain a corporate blog – see if makes sense to participate in the same. Also many such guidelines clearly require you to clearly state on your blogs that the opinions are yours and yours alone and not meant to reflect that of your employer.