Today In Censorship

Filed Under: Intellectual Property, media, technology

Published On: May 17, 2012

Couple of stories have bubbled across my desk today both with a common thread that I personally disdain.

The first, a story that seemed to break in Mother Jones last night, is that the famed TED lecture series was holding back a video on what could, but shouldn’t, be a controversial topic – the impact of the income gap on job creation and economic prosperity for the middle class. I mean, the upper class has long glommed to the idea that they are “job creators” but research and analysis does not seem to bear that out. Due to the divided nature of our public discourse, TED’s founder Chris Anderson decided not to publish the video using this excuse:

“I personally share your disgust at the growth in inequality in the US,” [Anderson] felt that posting the talk would lead to “a tedious partisan rehash of all the arguments we hear every day in the mainstream media.”

This would probably have been the end of the video were it not 2012 and censorship being a trigger of what is now known as the Streisand Effect.

The Streisand effect is a primarily online phenomenon in which an attempt to hide or remove a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely.

Now that little video which might have sparked a controversy almost certainly will. The Hanauer presentation will be leaked through snippets, blogged and reblogged and tumble into the ether.

Income Inequality

The second story, is from our friends at Cuppertino. As you’re probably aware, Apple doesn’t like it when users gain administrative access to Apple devices. You might own the iPad, iPhone, or iPod, but you’re not root.

And thanks to the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), modifying the permissions of your phone to gain such access was considered a felony. However, the Library of Congress was lobbied and officially declared that “jailbreaking” your own property is actually legal in 2010.

But that exception is set to expire next summer. The EFF would like folks to lobby the US Copyright Office to allow jailbreaking. Apple? They are now censoring the word “jailbreak” in books and music that they sell through iTunes.