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Cybersen: Chile’s left-wing Internet from the 1970s
Recently, the file-sharing company Kazaa discovered that some hackers had made a copy of their software, and were circulated it online as “Kazaa Lite”. The normal Kazaa program includes adware and spyware; the program serves up ads and spies on your online activity, the better for Kazaa to sell you to advertisers. With Kazaa Lite, the hackers stripped out all spyware and adware, so that users could now download Xtina MP3s without any commercializing extras.
As you might imagine, Kazaa is trying to quash Kazaa Lite, because it’s eating into their revenues, and constitutes an illegal hack of their program. But how precisely do you stop people from downloading a program that’s already posted a few dozen of web sites, for free?
By making it invisible on Google, that’s how. A few weeks ago, Kazaa fired off a nastygram letter to Google, demanding it remove links to any sites hosting the Kazaa Lite program. So if you search for Kazaa Lite, you’ll find several results removed, and a message from Google:
In response to a complaint we received under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 10 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint for these removed results.
I have to give Google props. They’re hardly ethically perfect, but they consistently resist outsiders mucking with their search engine, and when they’re forced to comply, they usually protest. And they do, after all, have enormous power and thus enormous responsibility to keep their results clean. That search engine is the ontological basis of online reality: If you can’t find something on Google — son, it probably don’t exist.
Here’s something weird, though. I originally heard about this via a story on Cnet — but when I went back to try and find the story, it was gone. You can read the story on — touché — a cached copy of the story I found on Google. But Cnet never removes any old stories from its archive, to my knowledge, so this is kind of odd.
I'm Clive Thompson, a writer on science, technology, and culture. This blog collects bits of offbeat research I'm running into, and musings thereon.
Currently, I'm a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired magazine. I also write for Fast Company and Wired magazine's web site, among other places. Email or AOL IM me (pomeranian99) to say hi or send in something strange!
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» visit the Collision Detection archives
September 26, 2008 » 01:57 PM
From an interview with ethnobotanist and anthropologist Wade Davis:
One of the cultures you celebrate in Light at the Edge of the World is the Inuit. What do you most admire about them?
Davis: The Inuit didn’t fear the cold; they took advantage of it. During the 1950s the Canadian government forced the Inuit into settlements. A family from Arctic Bay told me this fantastic story of their grandfather who refused to go. The family, fearful for his life, took away all of his tools and all of his implements, thinking that would force him into the settlement. But instead, he just slipped out of an igloo on a cold Arctic night, pulled down his caribou and sealskin trousers, and defecated into his hand. As the feces began to freeze, he shaped it into the form of an implement. And when the blade started to take shape, he put a spray of saliva along the leading edge to sharpen it. That’s when what they call the “shit knife” took form. He used it to butcher a dog. Skinned the dog with it. Improvised a sled with the dog’s rib cage, and then, using the skin, he harnessed up an adjacent living dog. He put the shit knife in his belt and disappeared into the night.
September 25, 2008 » 11:21 AM
“Video from a camp north of Toronto in December 2005 shows a car spinning around in a nearby, snow-covered parking lot. Prosecutors characterized that as special driver training but the defense, and many outsiders, said it was nothing more than “cutting doughnuts,” a favorite winter pastime of young Canadian motorists.” - A key piece of evidence submitted in the trial of a gang of alleged young Canadian terrorists.
September 24, 2008 » 11:21 PM
“Life imitates art imitating life: just thought a gnat crawling across my monitor was part of a Flash-based ad. I clicked it.” - A Tweet from Bill Braine.
September 24, 2008 » 02:37 PM
“Funniest FB friend request ever: “Twitter friend hoping to get to second base (Facebook!) ;-).”” - A recent Tweet by Pistachio
September 24, 2008 » 12:28 PM
Chinese powdered-milk crisis creates a new market: The return of the wet nurse
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