What a day. Here’s a rundown.

Apple Announced iBooks2 and iBooks Author

The news came, as expected from early rumors, Apple was going to revamp their eBooks to support more interactive elements. The software is nice, feeling a lot like a robust Keynote that outputs Epub files. I haven’t had time to dig through the output code yet to see just how good it is (I have serious misgivings about code produced by WYSIWYG editors after seeing work done by Front Page and Dreamweaver). However, before jumping head long into pumping out books via iBooks Author, there’s some sneaky BS hidden in the EULA.

Perhaps people really did learn from the Human CentiPad episode of South Park?

Perry Out, Endorses Newt. Newt Attempted to Endorse The Wrong Open. Iowa Flipflops

Perry, after a lifetime of swearing he has never quit, well, quit. On his way out, he endorsed Gingrich. Almost at the same time, news leaked that Gingrich essentially asked his second wife to have an open marriage, admitting that he was sleeping with his now third-wife. And, 8 districts in Iowa’s votes showed up, switching the winner from Romney to Santorum. Fantastic.

Who Needs SOPA?

Remember on Wednesday when everyone really expressed their concern with the government attempting to enact Hollywood-written legislation which would allow for easy censoring of the internet? Well, the DOJ proved they don’t even need that just the very next day by taking down cyberlocker site MegaUpload, indicting 7 and arresting 4 individuals all the way in New Zealand.

So…if Hollywood needs new legislation because they can’t get rogue sites, I think reality showed that either they currently have those powers or they’ve got enough pull with the DOJ and DHS (by way of ICE) to carry out broadscale censorship without new laws.

At least Archer comes back tonight…

I’m a fairly ardent media collector. My living room is walled by shelves which, from left to right, hold books, DVDs and CDs, each of which number in the hundreds of units.

However, as bandwidth has dropped to near-zero cost*, I have taken to streaming music. At first, streaming was just a means to listen to my music while at work. Then, streaming became a quick and easy means of new music discovery, where good albums would be either enjoyed until saturation or purchased if they were really good.

Eventually, streaming came home with me.

Now I pay for and use rdio and Pandora on both my work and home computers. I stream Pandora on my alarm clock and Boxee. Last.fm scrobbles the hell out of my 360. And I can’t even imagine downloading a podcast thanks to apps like NPR and Stitcher.

I’ve even worked myself into a new music discovery routine Tuesday through Thursday. rdio has a convenient New Release browsing option that rearranges itself based on popularity of new albums. I normally browse through on Tuesday and find albums of interest on the first four or so pages. I listen from back to front, as the most popular albums will be discovered and pushed to the front page by the end of the week.

But, today marked a change there. The new Snow Patrol album, which my girlfriend enjoyed, was available for streaming (and launched in the #1 slot on rdio) on Tuesday, was no long available for streaming on Wednesday.

Mind you, I know there are a lot of forces at play when it comes to copyright law and streaming licenses, but the whole “stream today, gone tomorrow” scenario smacks of a money grab. It’s not any different than windowing in the film or book industries – that is a means to erect an artificial barrier in an attempt to get the most money out of people possible.

And in the 21st Century where media converts on convenience over price, that’s just a douche move.

We already won the DRM war with music. How about the music industry not cripple the best alternative to piracy by playing games with streaming availability?

*except for mobile phone providers, who prefer to lower demand through fear of overage costs, rather than providing a compelling and rich bandwidth experience that would require, you know, building a realistic infrastructure.

An Honest Attempt

I first joined Facebook in 2005. I was going through my second attempt at college as an outsider in a school where everyone knew everyone else. The service, which was barely a year old, had already exploded across college campuses, with current and former students still being the only ones allowed to join and long before the dawn of the Facebook API. At the time, Facebook was simply a closed, visually generic version of MySpace. That every profile was the same seemed to force the ability to differentiate (the real use social networks isn’t to connect, but rather to stand out) not on horrendously designed profiles, but rather on the content in those profiles.

I was okay with that. I slowly started populating my Facebook profile. I searched for other friends be they online or off, and did what I could to connect with them. I uploaded a few photos of my apartment. I scribbled a few notes. And then I was done. I didn’t generate enough content to actually make going to the site worthwhile. The bulk of my good stuff ended up here, on my website. Or on Flickr. Or on another site that did the myriad little things that Facebook tried to do, but you know, did them well. So, for the first two years or so that I was on the site, my profile largely languished.

You'll use the internet his way

And then the news of Beacon hit

Despite the plethora of data that Facebook connects from users, Facebook still has no means of actually generating a profit. Yes, they do run advertisements, and yes, they can target exactly whom they show those adverts to by frighteningly precise demographics. But, this hasn’t helped them make anything close to a profit as Facebook has some of the lowest click-thru rates of any service on the internet.

In Zuckerberg’s attempt to milk his idea for a profit, he decided to team up with numerous online shops, turning purchases that users made into implied endorsements. To accomplish that, an item purchased from eBay would appear in a user’s feed with an implied endorsement.

Or Fandago. Or Travelocity. Or Blockbuster. Or numerous other services. The new advertising scheme was called “Beacon”.

The outrage was quick and deserved. Why? For a few reasons. One, Facebook didn’t notify users in a clear and timely manner that they were going to use this service. The service, which was launched in November of 2007, was suddenly broadcasting potential Christmas presents to friends and family on Facebook.

Second, Beacon was opt-out, not opt-in. This is a major no-no online, and something that the Facebook people should have perhaps realized. But, the arrogance of the service assumed that everyone would want this, in much the same manner as it assumed everyone would want to use the same generic profile.

And finally, Facebook committed the largest social faux pas of all, it lied about the service. Facebook gave misleading information about Beacon not only to partnering sites, but also news organizations.

But you can’t quit

I, like many other users, decided that this was enough. Even though Facebook backpedaled on Beacon rather quickly, they didn’t quite backpedal far enough. Yes, Facebook made Beacon opt-in, but they only made the publishing of results as optional. Whenever you made a purchase from any of their partner sites, Facebook still knew. And they likely still do. I decided to try and quit. At the time, Facebook wouldn’t actually let you quit the service. They would simply deactivate your account. Their logic was eventually, you’d want to come back, and when you did, all of your content should still be there.

From Facebook’s point of view it made sense. Why? Because their terms of service claimed full copyright over everything you submitted until you deleted your account. If you couldn’t delete your account, they were free to use all of your materials in any way they saw fit, forever. It was a win-win for Facebook.

The first blogging example of this hit the ‘sphere in July of 2007, causing a general uproar. So much of an uproar that the New York Times ran an article about it in February of 2008, right on the heels of the Beacon Fiasco. I know because I was one of the people trying to quit at the time. After the Times article, Facebook made it easier to leave.

A smarter return

Several months later, I was working on a startup idea and decided to try and use Facebook to try and give it legs. This time, however, I was determined to play things smarter. Because Facebook had engaged in dubious acts in the past, I used an email unassociated with any other online activity. I uploaded only a single photo, and didn’t give Facebook any original content. Just for fun, I would occasionally pump in gobs of bogus status updates to make myself a non-desirable marketing target. I was too vague, going in too many directions at once.

And so, my account largely languished, as I mentioned in the introduction. But, many of my friends and family and countless strangers saw the ease of centralization and filled up Facebook with blog posts, photos, and videos. At the time, they were rather safe in doing so. While your content was on Facebook, the service technically held total copyright control over them. But, you could regain control over your baby photos simply by deleting your content. A bit severe, but still a manageable out.

Fool me once

Or it was, until February 4th of this year, when Facebook plugged that out by removing a few lines from their Terms of Service statement, the binding legal contract that users agree to when they join, specifically the lines that say that deleting your work terminates their license to it. Furthermore, the termination section of that same statement now says that even if your account is removed, they still claim the same “irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense)”.

Reality Check

For most people, this probably won’t be a deal breaker. For most people, allowing Facebook to use their photos in advertising is a rather fair trade off in exchange for free hosting. But for others, it’s it’s the end. For me, this is Facebook’s third strike. I’ve personally unhooked all of my info that fed into my account, removed Facebook Connect from the comments on this site, and took the Facebook app off of my phone. It’s not a breakup, it’s a starvation.

Yes, it seems that Facebook really doesn’t understand the Internet, at least not like I do. Users want empowerment, not enslavement. We want transparency, not obfuscation. After well more than a decade online, I realized it’s not me that doesn’t understand Facebook, it’s Facebook that doesn’t understand the Internet.