daweaver: Past, present, and future

. (

daweaver) wrote,
@ 2005-06-07 21:19:00

Current music:

Jacko's Wackos

Past, present, and future
So, Livejournal.com is holding a "permanent" account sale to-day. I'm not bothering. I can find far better uses for the 80 quid (after adjusting for inflation) this would cost. And I have reasons to wonder what large capital project requires a sudden cashflow.

Could it be that they're adopting my cunning plan to de-centralise the servers, buy a second server farm somewhere else in the world, and ensure that there's no repeat of last January's 24-hour service outage? I do hope so, but I doubt it.

Are they planning to de-camp from the failed colonies south of Canada and set up shop somewhere where there are meaningful consumer protection laws, and meaningful privacy regimes? I do hope so, but I doubt it.

There's always been a certain irritation factor in the way the Livejournal primi inter pares would pursue their own pet projects (S2, a failing abuse policy, cosmetic changes) ahead of things that would actually benefit the community and enhance profitability (categories, splitting the Friends concept, ensuring stability.) Some of this is only to be expected from business leaders, they have to weigh competing priorities.

Some of it, I suggest, is a slight streak of arrogance. For instance, take the people who want to stop the RSS feeds from their journal? They may be small in number, they may have points that completely fly over the heads of the primi inter pares, and they may be taking their point beyond its reasonable limits. However, the only cogent reasons the primi inter pares have offered are 1) It would break the Search LJ function, and 2) We don't want to. Neither argument stands up to a second's scrutiny. Why should people have to have their work published in RSS? Why should they have to have a FOAF entry? Why should everyone authenticate using YADIS?

I can't reform livejournal.com on my own. No-one can, not since it was sold to a third party at the start of the year. However, I can exert what little pressure I have in the direction of reforms I'd like.

For historic reasons, my main paid account is due to expire in July, my extended pictures in December. It's always been my plan to bring the two into closer synchronisation this year. Therefore, I will purchase six months of paid time if:

* I am able to accept the "new" terms of service to-morrow without incident.

I will renew my paid account in December for a year if there is progress on the following:

* Splitting the "Friends" concept into "I wish to read" and "I trust".
* Providing official documentation so that someone who knows CSS well can adapt (or create) an S2 style for themself.
* Splitting the Livejournal.com servers over more than one geographic site.
* Support for pinging aggregators other than weblogs.com.
* An acknowledgement from the primi inter pares that their users are not all living in the failed colonies, and that some of their customers do not welcome the legal creep of these failed colonies.

I don't think these are particularly onerous requirements. Nor do I expect everything to be wrapped up with a bow on top in six months. I do think it's reasonable to expect some sort of progress in that time. Like Gordon Brown, I'm not going to provide a running commentary on my five tests. My judgement, taken around two weeks before the end of the year, will weigh up all the factors I've mentioned, and the perceived consensus amongst my co-writers.

See you to-morrow, I trust.

(Post a new comment)

	verlaine 2005-06-07 08:26 pm UTC (link)
	I know it's merely pedantic, but primi inter pares, please! (Reply to this)(Thread)

	daweaver 2005-06-07 08:47 pm UTC (link)
	Noted and changed with thanks. (The original construction, primus inter pares, is singular, and would not take plural verbs.) (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	thefounder 2005-06-07 11:55 pm UTC (link)
	my lords! the Moog! (Reply to this)(Parent)

	matttt 2005-06-07 10:14 pm UTC (link)
	From what I can gather, by using Semagic I sidestep having to agree the latest terms of service. At least, I didn't have to agree to the last lot. (Reply to this)(Thread)

jiggery_pokery
2005-06-08 11:18 am UTC (link)

FWIW, I haven't explicitly been asked to agree to them yet. Either that or I've just zapped past it somehow, which I don't consider likely. Perhaps another post in

news can be expected before they go ahead and start asking.

It would be nice if the LJ team would release a policy document of directions they've considered and rejected and are unlikely to change their minds upon - for instance, I guess that the number of customers they have who object to using a site whose Terms Of Service are based on US law is so small that they'll never change on this.

Iain, would you consider using a site based on LiveJournal code which wasn't based in the US and whose ToS were accordingly not based on US law? That might be the best solution for you, especially if YADIS were to permit better interoperability between sites using the LJ code. Heck, the LJ codebase is open source - no reason why you couldn't run it yourself with your own terms and conditions if it were sufficiently important to you...

(RSS feeds: I think LJ's take on this is different to what you perceive it to be. I think LJ are saying "if we were to let you not offer a RSS feed, there's nothing to stop someone from producing an equivalent one in a way that would waste our resources, and we don't want to waste our resources or theirs by forcing them to do so".)

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

daweaver
2005-06-08 05:35 pm UTC (link)

FWIW, I haven't explicitly been asked to agree to them yet. Either that or I've just zapped past it somehow, which I don't consider likely.

Nope, same here.

Perhaps another post in news can be expected before they go ahead and start asking.

Possible, though they did warn us last week. (Checks post) Ah, "...after Wednesday 8th..." Could be to-morrow, could be twenty years down the line.

It would be nice if the LJ team would release a policy document of directions they've considered and rejected and are unlikely to change their minds upon

That is a stunningly good idea, it would save so much effort on all sides. Explaining the reasoning behind these decisions would be the icing on a particularly scrummy cake. Stick it in Suggestions, take the plaudits.

I guess that the number of customers they have who object to using a site whose Terms Of Service are based on US law is so small that they'll never change on this.

One of the reasons I'm pushing for physical separation of servers is precisely to introduce this change by stealth. A server in the EEA would be bound by the far more stringent data- and consumer-protection laws we enjoy this side of the pond, and would be bound by these laws whether livejournal.com liked it or not.

Iain, would you consider using a site based on LiveJournal code which wasn't based in the US and whose ToS were accordingly not based on US law?

To be honest, I'd jump at the chance. But I think you're missing my substantive point, probably because I've not explained it as well as I ought. The legal creep is the tip of a cultural iceberg.

Remember how the permanent account sale was announced? "Graduation gift anyone?" That's a tradition specific to the anglophone North American colonies. Doesn't happen in Europe, doesn't happen in Russia, and completely the wrong time of the year in the entire southern hemisphere.

April's news went on and on about integration with one specific Handy. Last December went on about "as the holidays roll around". Last November: "Go vote!"

That, if you'll pardon the pun, is what gets my goat. The imperial nature of the legal system is perhaps beyond any individual's control. The culture of the organisation, as displayed in its official spokesblog, is totally within the organisation's control.

I rather dislike this assumption that everyone reading is a United Station, wants to be a United Station, and acts like a United Station. So much so that I'm prepared to cease funding the project if its corporate culture doesn't begin to acknowledge its international scope.

RSS feeds: I think LJ's take on this is different to what you perceive it to be. I think LJ are saying "if we were to let you not offer a RSS feed, there's nothing to stop someone from producing an equivalent one in a way that would waste our resources, and we don't want to waste our resources or theirs by forcing them to do so".

That is a far more easily defensible position, yet it's not the one the PIP were using earlier. Nor does it really address my point: stopping the RSS feed shouldn't cause the service to break catastrophically, and is a logical extension of the "disallow spiders" option.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

jiggery_pokery
2005-06-08 06:52 pm UTC (link)

Suggestions: arguably the memories of the suggestions archive - specifically, those rejected submissions - makes such a document, but I may try suggesting it anyway.

A server in the EEA would be bound by the far more stringent data- and consumer-protection laws we enjoy this side of the pond, and would be bound by these laws whether livejournal.com liked it or not.

There are those, possibly those based in the US, who would prefer to operate under US laws. (Which is, of course, why you're proposing a choice, not a compulsion.) I fear this opens interesting legal issues when using OpenID (YADIS) but don't want to open my mouth and raise the wrong ones.

The legal creep is the tip of a cultural iceberg.

Right, I do understand this better now. It's not an unreasonable point of view.

That is a far more easily defensible position, yet it's not the one the PIP were using earlier.

I think they did use just that position here (and her other posts in that thread) though unfortunately in rather a hostile fashion borne of frustration.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

Wanted: larger can to contain worms

daweaver
2005-06-08 08:26 pm UTC (link)

Blimey, you're right. YADIS may fail to meet the Safe Harbour provisions, and may be unuseable for non-personal purposes in Europe.

The background: the European directive on data protection (the Data Protection Principles, DPPs) mandates some very strict requirements on any company processing personally-identifiable data. As an over-simplified working definition, the rules are "collect no more than you need, ensure it is accurate, retain it no longer than you must, and keep an audit trail." Essentially, the information is the property of the individual, and is loaned to the company.

The legal system that livejournal.com wishes to trade in adopts a very different concept. Personal data is the property of the company, and can be treated as any other corporate asset. There's no concept of data protection as European law understands it.

To allow data-processing across the world, European companies may obtain "safe harbour" agreements with non-European companies. As I understand it, this binds the foreign company to treat the data as though it was being processed in Europe, in accordance with the DPPs. (The alternative is for the European company to explicitly declare that it wishes to process the data outside the safe harbour provisions; I've only ever seen one company use this clause.)

Now, how the hell does all this hit YADIS?

By definition, YADIS is a service to validate someone's declaration of identity. As such, it can be used to guarantee personally-identifiable data. If YADIS is not a European (or Safe Harbour) service, there is a contestable argument that its validation does not meet the data protection principles, as the European company cannot be certain that it is collecting accurate data. If YADIS is not DPP-compliant, then it cannot be used to deliver or confirm data that does need to be DPP-compliant.

This is a contestable argument; the primary disagreement will be whether, by merely validating identity, YADIS is actually giving personally-identifiable data. The question of "How did this data get to be in the YADIS server in the first place" springs to mind, along with "Well, if it's on a non-DPP server, can we trust it?" I wouldn't care to pre-judge a court's ruling, though I will note that European courts prefer to rule on the intent of the law, rather than any perceived loopholes.

If this argument is accepted, then YADIS - or any distributed identity system - would need to meet Safe Harbour provisions or risk being unusable in Europe. Quite how a distributed identity system would demonstrably meet these principles, I leave to people who understand both *DIS and the DPPs.

Is that legal scope creep from Europe I see? A worrying precedent.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Wanted: larger can to contain worms jiggery_pokery 2005-06-08 08:32 pm UTC (link)
	Crikey. I hope that Brad and company know all that. sighs This doesn't look good. Would any DIS be expected to follow European Union law for European Union users, Uzbekistani law for Uzbekistani users, Fijian law for Fijian users and so forth? I fear that's very hard indeed for any company to follow and implement, possibly unworkably so. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Wanted: larger can to contain worms daweaver 2005-06-08 08:42 pm UTC (link)
	I would suspect that the European DPP are going to be amongst the toughest anywhere in the world, so any system that's compliant with them would most likely be legal anywhere in the world. On the other point, your guess is as good as mine. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

Re: Wanted: larger can to contain worms

jiggery_pokery
2005-06-09 01:02 pm UTC (link)

Gratuitously replying to a point you raised on SITS, but replying here because it concerns Europe:

one story that hasn't received nearly as much publicity as I'd like it to have done is EU says UK needs to give £630,000,000 less. I think a satisfactory conclusion for both sides in the "UK rebate to the EU" debate would be to rescind this 1.05G€ contribution. The UK can then claim that it hasn't lost any of its rebate and the EU can then claim that the UK is contributing a billion a more than they used to.

If Britain doesn't want to contribute more when it's running better than the rest of Europe, it can hardly expect to receive more when it's running less well than the rest of Europe.

(Reply to this)(Parent)

	dumbgenius 2005-06-07 11:44 pm UTC (link)
	* Splitting the "Friends" concept into "I wish to read" and "I trust". Surely this you can do manually? (Reply to this)(Thread)

	daweaver 2005-06-08 05:22 pm UTC (link)
	Yes, one can do this manually, which shows the technology exists to not have to do it manually. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

dumbgenius
2005-06-09 01:03 am UTC (link)

I have always thought that the point of livejournal was that if there was significant demand to not have to do it manually, then someone would implement it. [Presumably until the new T&C?,] LJ documentation has been Open Source with plenty of people working on it independently.

I don't really see your points. LiveJournal is a site of convenience; as such, you are limited in certain ways (LJ significantly less than many places). If you would like to host your own journal (as you already do, I believe), you have much more freedom in your operations.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

daweaver
2005-06-09 06:04 pm UTC (link)

I have always thought that the point of livejournal was that if there was significant demand to not have to do it manually, then someone would implement it.

There has been significant demand to split "read" and "trust" for as long as I've been here. It's been a stated goal for the company for 2003, and 2004, and 2005. Not only has there been no visible progress, but there have been no updates, no "we've got so far", not even a timeline for implementation.

I don't really see your points. LiveJournal is a site of convenience

Going to have to disagree with you there. Livejournal is providing a service, for which I am paying. That makes ours the standard customer - provider relationship, whatever the people who run the business care to suggest.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	dumbgenius 2005-06-09 06:45 pm UTC (link)
	And, as a paying customer, you have surely got exactly what you paid for? (Reply to this)(Parent)

	jiggery_pokery 2005-12-02 11:57 pm UTC (link)
	Looking at the most recent news posting: while I wouldn't want you to make decisions earlier than you had intended; er, it's not really looking good, is it? Are those really the most suitable determinants of whether LJ is the blogging service for you or not? (Reply to this)(Thread)

	I don't have an icon of Gordon Brown.... daweaver 2005-12-03 09:51 am UTC (link)
	...will this comparative left-winger do? I had always intended to make a final decision on this matter in early December. A post explaining my decision, and my reasoning, will be made later this week in the usual place. The post will also include a recap of why I've set these five tests. dumbgenius pretty much nailed it first time round. (Reply to this)(Parent)

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