It *is* mine, dammit!

[tyggerjai]

SO this time, entrippy has said a lot of what I was going to, but I figured out last night what was bothering me about madi's position in this thread .
It's the mention of "public spaces". Because the WWW, and more specifically my LJ page isn't a public space. I know, you're all saying "He's gone *crazy* !". But it's true.

Madi and kitling are invoking the laws of Netiquette, which were begat by Usenet. And Usenet is a genuinely public space, for the following reasons.

You can always rely on the kindness of strangers
Usenet is co-operative. It's built on co-operation between strangers. When I post an article, it gets propogated to a number of machines (many of which are or were owned by Universities, governments, private individuals, etc). Other people are providing their resources as a co-operative. If I want my article to be read by other people, it has to be carried off into the Ether on other peoples machines, and other peoples bandwidth. SO a lot of the Usenet rules are built around the concept of respecting other peoples bandwidth and diskspace. Because if I don't have peers, I don't have an audience. Now, that may sound like LJ, but there's a crucial difference, that erudito can probably explain better than I. LJ servers are provided by "other people" , and you my reader may well be a random stranger. But in each case, there's a contract, be it explicit (I bought an LJ account) or implicit (you're choosing to view my page). There just aren't that many hops, and all of them are covered by a contract. Usenet is utterly different - the article may pass through a zillion servers , whose admins have contracts only with *other* admins, not with the people providing content. The contracts are all very loose and groovy, but admins say " I agree to carry traffic for *this group*, with the following understandings ...". If you are a member of that group, there's a much higher obligation to respect those admins you have never met. And to make it easier to be sure that you are respecting them, there's a central set of rules, to avoid having to negotiate each relationship individually. (And LJ is a private company. Never forget that. My contract is with them.)

The other thing that makes Usenet public is that the cost of my stupidity is unavoidably borne by other people. As soon as my message propogates, I've cost someone money - someone who has no contract with me and who never asked for my individual article. They carry a group, that group has rules, they expect me to obey those rules because otherwise they have to bear the cost (that's what made Usenet spam so popular - someone else bears the cost). Sure, as a news admin or even as a user I can explicitly configure my server not to accept posts that contain binaries, or that don't have a certain header, and as a user I can configure my killfile so I ignore you. But in each of those cases, the effort is on the part of the *recipient*. Other people. On the Web, I'm either "posting" to a forum like an LJ community, or slashdot (in which case yes, similar rules are probably relevant), or I'm posting to *my* LJ page, or *my* webpage. And that's not public. You have to come and ask for it.

And while we're on the topic of "public infrastructure", the internet isn't running on Uni servers as a public good anymore. The routers and proxies that webpages go through are largely owned by big private ISPS and carriers, and paid for by commercial arrangements with ISPs at the next tier down.All commercially negotiated and provided, so "public infrastructure" just isn't a powerful argument anymore.Here's a brief example:
9:30am@fatcat~>traceroute tyggerjai.livejournal.com
traceroute to livejournal.com (66.150.15.150), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 lioness (192.168.1.1) 0.715 ms 0.583 ms 0.571 ms
2 BNG-144-132-0-1.vic.bigpond.net.au (144.132.0.1) 23.373 ms 26.961 ms 17.797 ms
3 CPE-61-9-129-7.vic.bigpond.net.au (61.9.129.7) 5.834 ms 8.960 ms 57.607 ms
4 GigabitEthernet3-1.exc1.Melbourne.telstra.net (139.130.94.125) 15.682 ms 10.057 ms 12.788 ms
5 GigabitEthernet2-1.exi-core1.Melbourne.telstra.net (203.50.77.1) 17.094 ms 14.626 ms 11.014 ms
6 Pos6-0.chw-core2.Sydney.telstra.net (203.50.6.17) 20.867 ms 36.477 ms 26.781 ms
7 Pos2-0.pad-core5.Sydney.telstra.net (203.50.12.18) 25.465 ms 24.097 ms 28.766 ms
8 GigabitEthernet0-1.syd-core02.Sydney.net.reach.com (203.50.13.254) 26.213 ms 21.755 ms 24.932 ms
9 i-1-0.syd-core01.net.reach.com (202.84.143.133) 30.117 ms 22.012 ms 41.537 ms
10 i-9-2.sjc-core01.net.reach.com (202.84.143.13) 252.036 ms 268.516 ms 243.162 ms
11 i-13-0.paix-core01.net.reach.com (202.84.251.49) 225.446 ms 210.451 ms 255.196 ms
12 f0.pao1.verio.net (198.32.176.14) 218.594 ms 208.943 ms 213.181 ms
13 p16-1-1-0.r21.plalca01.us.bb.verio.net (129.250.3.84) 214.820 ms 234.946 ms 212.324 ms
14 p16-0-1-1.r20.sttlwa01.us.bb.verio.net (129.250.5.82) 233.818 ms 234.801 ms 264.640 ms
15 ge-0-1-0.a12.sttlwa01.us.ra.verio.net (129.250.28.20) 235.375 ms 239.552 ms 288.689 ms
16 d3-1-2-3.a12.sttlwa01.us.ra.verio.net (204.203.3.30) 228.952 ms 246.326 ms 231.826 ms
17 border6.ge4-1-bbnet2.sef.pnap.net (63.251.160.75) 252.464 ms 231.434 ms 242.631 ms
18 livejournal.com (66.150.15.150) 231.938 ms 232.788 ms 229.839 ms


That'll mean more to some of you than others, but what it says is this.
When I, at home, request a livejournal page, the request and subsequent serving of the page passes through machines belonging to the following:

Telstra. Private ISP, these days, with whom I have a commercial arrangement at their standard rates.
reach.com, a Hong-Kong based private ISP with whom Telstra presumably have commercial peering arrangements. Verio.net, a US based private ISP (NTT) with whom reach presumably have commercial peering arrangements.papnet, who are presumably livejournal's ISP, and finally livejournal.
Each and every hop bought and paid for on the marketplace by companies in it for the money. Not a whole lot of "public" there.No struggling individuals doing it for the love of it (except livejournal, and hey, I paid for my account). No university servers groaning under the load. No public infrastructure. Even if the infrastructure is public, my house isn't "public space" just because you have to drive on public roads to get there.

So how does this apply to LJ? It doesn't, which is my point. LJ servers are privately owned and run by a private company, and provide a service. Now, I don't think they're making much money, and they're giving their service away an awful lot, but that's not enough to make them "public". So when it comes to my LJ page, I've bought (in my case) or taken advantage of (in many cases) a service provided by a private company. It happens to be publically accesible by default, but that's not the same thing as a "public space". Someone else, who has purchased a service from their ISP, then browses my page. Think of art galleries, though that drags the whole "what is art" debate into it. I'll try and steer clear of actual artistic debate, and just point out the following.
The Australian National Gallery, or the National Gallery of Victoria are public spaces. Government owned, largely taxpaye funded, public galleries. So you, as a taxpayer, have input into what goes in them. You can write to your local member, complain to the board, whatever, and they have a certain level of obligation to listen. Fair enough. But there's a privately owned art gallery on Smith St, just around the corner from my house. Every morning it opens its doors to all comers. Publically accessible - everyone can wander in and look at the art. And sure, you *could* complain about it, or write letters to the board, but see how far it gets you. They have absolutely no obligation to listen to you about *anything* unless they are breaking the law. Usenet may well be a public gallery - it's a co-operative, the cost is borne by others, etc. But my webpage, on a server I paid money for, with a privately negotiated contract, is a whole other story.It's publically accessible, but it ain't a "public space". It's mine. I let you look at it, and you can look at it or not, as you like. But if you don't like my blink tags, tell you what, you can sod right off.

The Web, in short, is not a "public space" the way Usenet was. I'm not pushing my webpage out to dozens of servers and relying on the politeness and resources of their admins. I'm buying me a piece of a server somewhere, and waiting quietly for someone to come along and read what I have to say. And that changes the rules dramatically.

sol.
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Comments

Circles are fun

[madigrrl.livejournal.com]

This is a bit lame but ... having a contract with LJ does specifically mean that it ain't
yours, no way, no how. They state in their TOS that 1) all content is your responsibility and
2) thou shall not post bad stuff. It's a bit like the vurt TOS, really :) My LJ, my rules
doesn't work when someone has the power to cancel your account because of your use of it.

And yes, technically LJ is very different from Usenet. Trying to say that Netiquette can go
jump because of this doesn't wash. If I invite someone into my house and they piss on the
carpet, saying "Well, you weren't forced to invite them into your house" means you
get a kick in the gob, along with them. FFS, they just shouldn't have pissed on my carpet!
The argument "everyone is doing it" has never held anything that even looks like credibility.
The technical argument? Technical, schmechnical, we're talking about behaviour, not
connections. And hell, LJ was designed for you to add people to your friends list.
You described yourself as a tool maker before, by adding people to my friends list I'm using
the tool for what it was made for. I don't have to add people, no, but that's the
whole point of the exercise! Is it so much to ask that people respect that?

Apparently so. You're right, I can't come up with a single compelling reason why people
should stick to rules of netiquette. But I also can't come up with a single
compelling reason that I shouldn't clap my hands loudly and continuously whenever anyone talks
to me. It doesn't harm them in any way but it's bloody annoying. And maybe that's how I
want to talk to people but that's not how they want to talk to me. In a medium designed to
bring people together, even if only an ethereal sense (and I remember you specifically
promoting the idea of not restricting yourself to people you know on LJ) then yeh, I think
people should stick to some kind of set of behavioural rules. Of course, what those
rules are is another matter entirely.

Re: Circles are fun

[tyggerjai.livejournal.com]

And the LJ TOS means I have an contract with LJ.
Not *you*
I'm bound by their definitions of Bad Stuff, absolutely. Not *yours*.
The point here is that on USENet, because of the technical structure and the group structure, my contract is, with every admin and every reader. *That* is the basis of Usenet style Netiquette. And it just doesn't wash on LJ, because I'm not *pushing* my page to you via 73 other peoples servers, you're *pulling* it directly. Completely different dynamic. And it means that I have absolutely no contract with the *reader* unless the reader comes to me. And in doing so , they're accepting my rules about my page, so long as I'm not contravening my contract with LJ. It may not be "my" page, unless I'm Brad, but it sure ain't yours. It has, in fact, nothing to do with you.
You're not "inviting" someone into your house. It is, in a real sense, the other way around. In Usenet, or in Email, it all gets pushed on you. On the Web, or in LJ, you have to go looking for it. On Usenet, I come over and redecorate your house. On the Web, and on LJ, you come over to my place and start bitching about the color of my curtains.

My LJ page is not a "public space", and my LJ page is not *your* house. If you want a house analogy, it's much more *my* house - if you come visit, it's by my rules.

It's like coming to my party and complaining that my guests are drunk and abusive. So leave.

And yes, one of the LJ tools lets me add people to my friends list *because I want to*. What's missing is tools for me to then format my friends page (by, say, not showing pictures on my friends view, or restricting views on my friends page to 5 lines.). That's a limitation of the tool, but the fact that your client doesn't let you customise your view of the friends page doesn't mean you get to tell me how to post. It's like saying "Can you keep it down a bit guys, I don't have a killfile ...". but you subscribe to USEnet groups because you want to, and you then accept them *as is*. If you want to impose any rules on that group beyond it's charter, you do it *at the client*, not by asking people to post differently.

So you're using the friends page tool for what it was designed for. But it has tensions with the design of LJ. LJ is designed for me to write my journal. The friends page is designed as a tool to make it easier to read large numbers of journal pages. the "friends" page is, in a very real sense, subordinate to the actual tool known as LJ. It's there to *facilitate* your access to LJ, as with all other LJ clients. So again, the metatool of LJ-as-expression trumps the tool of the friends page as a viewer of that expression.LJ was designed for people to write. It has tools to help people read. One of them is the web interface "friends" view.

The clapping hands analogy falls down for the same reason. Initial posts are not "you trying to talk to me". They're "me trying to talk to you.". There are effective ways and ineefective ways of communicating, absolutely, and it's a given in our group that posts are, more often than not, a prelude to a conversation, but again we have this tension of push vs pull. If I come and stand next to you and start clapping my hands at you, and interfering inyour other conversations, then that's rude. But if you've come and stood next to me, because you have in the past appreciated my conversation, and I start clapping my hands, well, go somewhere else. Especially if it's my goddamn party.


So in terms of "The point is to communicate", well, sure, maybe. But history is full of artistic and literary movements that seemed utterly incomprehensible to people. Joyce. Picasso. Stravinsky. If you don't get what I'm trying to say, where does the problem lie? I'm communicating. Which is the point of LJ. You can read it or not, as you like. But if you don't like how I'm saying it, well, cope, or don't read.

sol.
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Re: Circles are fun

[tyggerjai.livejournal.com]

And with regards to the technical argument, again, no.
The rules of USENet, the fundamentals of this Netiquette you're clinging to are the way they are in no small part *because* the technical implementation of USEnet demands more social co-operation. So the rules are affected by the technical protocol, and that's no longer appropriate. Your behaviour on a network where your actions unavoidably affect and cost others has a whole different set of consequences than on a network where there is no such unavoidable cost. It's a technical difference, but it's the technical difference that spawned the social rules. So differences in technology do matter, because you use this word "Public spaces". USEnet is a public space, by technical design. But the Web isn't, at all, so I'm not bound by the same need for consideration.

sol.
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Re: Circles are fun

[entrippy.livejournal.com]

The clapping hand analogy is, in fact, perfect.

If you do so, I will ask you to cut it out. If you don't, I won't listen to you.

Making it just like LJ, except on LJ there are easy ways of making sure you don't follow me around clapping in my ears if that's not what I want. Which would constitute harassment in the real world if you took it that far, regardless.

Re: Circles are fun

[tyggerjai.livejournal.com]

The bit I'm quibbling with is "While you're trying to talk to me.".
An initial post isn't halfway through a conversation. You're not talking to me. *I* start clapping. I'm not interrupting an existing conversation, you're not trying to talk to me (except if you then go on to ask "Why are you clapping?"), and you don't have to stick around and listen. You can look at me and say "Dude, that's so lame.", and then you can stop listening and leave me in the corner to clap.

All analogies suck, though, I've decided.

Re: Circles are fun

[tyggerjai.livejournal.com]

Actually Madi said "Whenever anyone talks to me.". I'd be far happier with the analogy if that said "listens to me". "talks to me " implies that the person approaching me wishes to initiate a conversation, rather than hear what I have to say. Adding me to your friends list implies that you want to listen to what I have to say. And sometimes, that's just clapping. So by posting long LJ posts, I'm not compromising your ability to communicate with me, I'm compromising my ability to communicate with you. Thank you for drawing this to my attention, but that's my choice.

*shrug*

sol.
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Re: Circles are fun

[madigrrl.livejournal.com]

You g oto it. Not the other way round. That's what HTTP "request" means.

That is, you approach me, I start clapping. You request contact, I respond. Just
explaining the analogy :)

Re: Circles are fun

[tyggerjai.livejournal.com]

Yes Madi.
You request my LJ page.
You say "Hey, give me what you got. Oh, it's clapping. Boring."

The key point is that if you request my page (you approach me), you're doing it to *listen*.
Not to talk.
Talking may come later if I give you a form and say "fill this in" (and yes, that's a large part of the LJ experience. Duh.). But you've listened. I'm not stopping you talking. If you don't like clapping, don't *ask* for it.

But, as I've said, the analogy still sucks. If all I do is clap, on my LJ page, then all I'm doing is interfering with *my* ability to talk to you. I'm not interfering with your ability to talk to me, or your ability to talk to anyone else.


sol.
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Re: Circles are fun

[madigrrl.livejournal.com]

If you do so, I will ask you to cut it out. If you don't, I won't listen to you.

Zigactly. But this still makes me the arsehole. I may be expressing my right to freedom of
expression but I'm still being an annoying prat. What I'm saying is that there are rules in
the online world as to what is reasonable behaviour just as there are rules in the real world.
If I break those rules then sure, I'm free to break those rules if I want and people are free
to not talk to me but I'm still breaking the rules. My bad!

Re: Circles are fun

[tyggerjai.livejournal.com]

No.
For the reasons above.
I'm sitting here clapping, and you're *listening*.
That's what adding me to your friends page *means*.
The analogy isn't "talks to me", it's "listens to me.".
Which again changes things completely. You're not trying to talk to me. That's what *your* journal is for. You wanna talk, do it there. If you're adding me to your friends page, it's because you want to *listen*. And then you're complaining about the fact that I communicate by clapping, not talking.

The passive vs active, listening vs talking thing is really, *really* important here, and I don't seem to be communicating that.

It's like going to study with a Zen master and asking him to please stop hitting you over the head with that stick. That's how he teaches what he has to teach, and if you don't like it, *you* are in the wrong place. He doesn't need to stop hitting you, you need to go study with someone who doesn't hit you.

sol.
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Re: Circles are fun

[madigrrl.livejournal.com]

Yup. I'm gonna complain that you're communicating by clapping, not talking, if there's a
rule that says "people communicate by talking". Let's argue the existence of that rule, 'coz
I think that's what it all comes down to.

...except I find myself drastically incapable of doing so. I need an ethicist, a
sociologist, Steve Crocker, Stephen Jay Gould and a goodly amount of beer to collate my
argument properly, which I suspect means that what I'm resting on really is personal
opinion rather than anything else. However, I'm gonna throw down the gauntlet (consisting of
mashed up bits and pieces of all of the above) and say that I don't think you can prove the
non-existence of that rule without a similar set of input.

Re: Circles are fun

[tyggerjai.livejournal.com]

Ain't no such rule.
Cos I can be standing in a lift with Damien and Thorfinn, and suddenly have them in fits of laughter by humming _The Girl from Ipanema_.
Humming, not singing. No words.
People communicate in a zillion different ways - people have different ways of expressing themselves, people have contexts you don't share.

Again, I reject the clapping analogy, but people communicate by sharing mutually meaningful data. Often, that's words. Sometimes it's glances, sometimes it's music, sometimes it's physical contact. But even here on LJ, there's no such rule. If, instead of my "I found a computer" post, I'd posted "No dear, you have enough computers.", that would have been understood and hilariously funny to three people. If that's all the people I care about, that's my choice. And if you don't get it, that's neither my problem, nor my fault. If I'd posted a picture of the computer room, I would have been conveying a slightly different message. And *I* am choosing how to impart that message, because *I* am the one communicating. Not only *what* I say, but *how* I say it is my choice.

If I choose to use clapping because I really, really think that I can only get my message across by clapping, then I have to live with the fact that maybe you don't speak clap. If it really matters to me that you understand, then maybe I'll try another way. But no, even (especially) on Livejournal, there's no rule that says people communicate by talking. Let me open your eyes to a whole new way of communicating. And if you sit there long enough, hey, maybe you'll understand what I'm trying to communicate. And maybe that'll enrich us both. But if you say "clapping weirdo", and walk off, then you're making the assumption that I'm not trying to communicate *with you*. And that may very well be true. But so what? You may not be my intended audience. I may be trying to attract people who have become so disillusioned with speech that they want to clap.

And if we persist in the silly analogy, I invite you to think about your social group for a second. Imagine what *would* happen if, at Renees midsummer party, or Doc and Leah's New Year, what would have happened if I hadn't spoken to anyone all night, but only clapped. Care to lay odds on the chances of an impromptu human percussion groove happening? I don't find it dificult to see one of our parties turning into a little drumming circle and totally going off, just because I didn't feel ilke talking much.

sol.
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Re: Circles are fun

[meleah.livejournal.com]

Man, that would have been sweet. THat's it, next party I expect an impromptu percussion group, or else!

[spark-au.livejournal.com]

Since I'm only flicking through all of this, I have to ask, 'what's yer point?'.

Essentially you're saying that people can spam/troll themselves without the moral/ethical obligation to get their arses flamed, yes?

Or is their something I'm missing? Because this *is* a public place unless specified and can be viewed by anyone exercising their index finger, and probably the equivalent to placing something in the newspaper Public Notices. So, if someone posts defaming sort of stuff, the defamee can have some sort of recourse. Just thought I'd point that out.


*goes back to flogging his own dead horse*

Pretty much.

[tyggerjai.livejournal.com]

It's certainly "public" in terms of defamation.
But if I want my webpage to be black text on a black background, that's my decision and my loss, and I don't want to hear no steenking *user* whining about how unfriendly that page is to the user, and how rude I'm being by not considering others.

Similarly, if I want to put big flashing animated gifs and blink tags on it, that's *my* prerogative, and I don't want to hear "Won't somebody think of the 56 modem users!". Thought about them, don't care about them, move on. And that's my prerogative. Am I being a dickhead? Hey, maybe. Is that my right? Hey, sure.

Go read kitling's journal - there's an amount of leadup to this thing.

sol.
.

sol.
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Re: Pretty much.

[entrippy.livejournal.com]

It's also possible to embed code that screws with the *other* posts when someone displays their friends list.

That's bad form. Possibly right out there in the realm of "wrong" - but even so, the couple of examples I've seen have been quite amusing. So they can go for it and if I don't like it, I'll cut them off my list...

Just thought I'd throw in the "worst case scenario" because I just remembered it - and Jai, stop being so fucking reasonable. One day we're going to have an actual online disagreement, as opposed to you saying all the stuff I wanna say - c'mon, we must passionatly disagree on something, surely? Beyond, of course, the stuff where I was wrong. That was a passionate disagreement, but then, I was wrong. So you're still reasonable. Cut it out!

Re: Pretty much.

[tyggerjai.livejournal.com]

I dunno, Brain, but your taste in women sure sucks.

sol.
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