VOICE
re...@ecn.ab.ca
You may soon discover your Web site really sucks.
Third Voice, a new browser utility, enables users to publicly annotate the
face of any Web page. That allows a page's audience to say what they want
about anything they see online.
The radical communications tool has already earned an army of enemies.
"Our goal is to stop this software from being distributed until they can
redesign it so [that] you have to ask permission from a Web site before
you can post to it," said Teddy Pastras, a Web designer in Sonoma County,
California, who hosts her own site o n page design.
Pastras is also an active member of Say No to TV, a spontaneous group of
Web-site hosts that is fighting Third Voice to alter or stop distributing
the software.
The group rushed into action -- to a current force of at least 400
concerned Web hosts -- after Third Voice was launched on 17 May.
The free browser utility "snaps onto" the side of a Web browser window,
inviting users to post their views on news, products, and politics.
The comments look and feel like Post-It notes stuck onto a Web page. If
posted as public notes (private notes are also an option), comments can be
seen -- amid highlighted areas of text and footnotes -- by any other user
that has installed Third Voice. Re aders can comment on each other's
postings, leading to what Third Voice calls "inline discussions."
Pastras and her cohorts consider them "inline violations."
"The notes can be hyperlinked," said Pastra. "We have a screenshot of a
note attached to the AOL site that was hyperlinked to a pornographic
site."
The postings are rife with familiar forum topics comparable to those on
Usenet newsgroups. "Hands-on personal attention/especially if you are an
intern," reads a note posted at the official White House site. "This is a
great site. Hillary rocks!" reads an other. At the CNN site: "Milloivige
sucks big d**s!"
Not all of them are random flames and spam, however. Apparently responding
to a story on China, one Third Voice user wrote, "This is what I, an
average American, have felt all along.... Good luck to you and your
people," wrote poster "Obiwan."
On Tuesday, for example, notes on AOL's directory site contained links to
a porn site.
"If somebody attached such a note to my site and a visitor is running
Third Voice, they will see that note," Pastras said. "Because most general
surfers are ignorant, they will think I'm supporting pornography."
She said that all 200 pages of her site are being "infected" daily by
notes -- some constructive, some not.
Pastras and Say No to TV say the ability to affix notes is an invasion of
privacy and violation of copyright law, which could be grounds for future
legal action against Third Voice by the group. "You cannot alter
somebody's creation in any way, shape, or form. That is the law, and the
law is very clear on that," Pastras said. The fact that the software does
not alter the actual code of the page itself -- nor affect the hosting
server or its conte nt in any way -- is irrelevant, according to an
attorney advising the group.
Third Voice said the free-speech issues are the same as those confronting
discussion forums everywhere. And Leo Jolicoeur, the company's vice
president of business development, said the laws are the same.
It's up to the community of users to police Third Voice, according to
Jolicoeur, not the sites or the software company.
"We are not violating copyright law because we're not making a copy," he
said. "We do not believe we're altering content. The user has the ability
to turn off Third Voice and not see the [notes], and the control is in the
hands of the user."
The company's slogan for the service reads "Third Voice: It's Free ...
Speech."
While Third Voice isn't yet publicizing download numbers -- the software
is currently only available for Windows Internet Explorer 4.0 users -- the
company said hundreds of sites have been annotated by thousands of users.
Jonathan Zittrain, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet &
Society at Harvard Law School, said he loves the software and that it
represents a new communications medium for the Net. He compares it to
protesters taking their message to the v irtual location of their protest.
In fact, Zittrain is incorporating study and discussion of the software's
implications into a syllabus for his course, Internet and Society.
"It will be interesting because you can say in a sense that they [Third
Voice] are creating a derivative work," he said. The creator of a work
derived from a particular work needs permission from copyright holder to
generate.
"Arguably, this is a way to draw a mustache on the site. On the other
hand, if all you're doing is painting a mustache on a transparency and you
look through it, is that a derivative work?"
Without a legal precedent, Zittrain said it may be up to a "bemused judge"
to figure out the issue.
Meanwhile, a letter-writing campaign by the group has targeted a range of
government and private organizations from Attorney General Janet Reno to
webmasters at community sites such as Xoom, GeoCities, Microsoft, Lycos,
and AltaVista.
Pastras said the sites are all responding the same way: "They're taking it
very seriously and their legal departments are looking at it."
Her group has also targeted state legislators. In Oregon, state senators
are responding to complaints sent to them by Say No to TV.
Third Voice's Jolicoeur said the company will step in if it determines
that posters are harassing a site and its host. It also plans to let users
exercise more selective control, via filters, over which posts they see in
future versions of the software.
But as in "community-oriented chat rooms, the community stands up and does
the work of filtering and policing the room," he said. "I've seen that
happening already with this tool. The community will police the activity
of those members."
Linda Graham, an Oregon-based Web designer and a member of Say No to TV,
said she is pro-free speech and acknowledges that the group's opposition
forces a "sticky issue" to the fore.
"I'm not exactly sure what the answer is, but I don't like it," said
Graham. "I would like to see it used strictly for personal, private use,
not for public use. I just don't think it has a place."
Zittrain said banning the tool is no solution. "The real answer is going
to lie in balancing accountability and the ability to say things without
being punished for it in a speech environment. That's going to be a hard
task."
--
Graham-John Bullers
moderator of alt.2600.moderated
email : re...@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca | ab...@freenet.toronto.on.ca