DataPortability Community Invited to Semantic Technologies Conference in San Jose, CA June 14-19th, Free and Discounted Options

We are hosting a DataPortability get-together at SemTech 2009, the Semantic Technology Conference, at the San Jose Fairmont on Monday, June 15, 2009, 6:00pm – 8:00pm.  As an added bonus, when you register to attend this meetup, you will get access to Chris Saad’s conference session which takes place immediately prior (5:00pm-6:00pm)!

You need to register so to register for both opportunities, please use the link below:

https://www.regonline.com?eventID=677058&rTypeID=142122

FREE Access gets you:
–5:00pm – 6:00pm It’s Time for Social Media to Become Personal Media
with Chris Saad, JS-Kit
–6:00pm – 8:00pm Community Discussion : Data Portability and The Semantic Web with Daniela Barbosa DataPortability Project/Dow Jones
and Chris Saad  among other DataPortability Project members
–Ability to network with Semtech attendees!

If you would like to see other attendance options, including tutorials and over 220 hours of educational content, please visit: http://semtech2009.com/2009/registration/

Interested in attending the full conference? Use the DataPortability Discount code: ST9DP
It will give the user $200 off a “full event” or “conference only” registration fee and $100 off a “tutorial day only” fee.

For example: If you are also interested in attending a full Semantic Search Day on Wednesday. Use the code to get you $100 off the day price of $195! http://www.semantic-conference.com/2009/semsearchday/

Questions? What to host a conversation during our community discussion? Please drop me a line at danielavbarbosa [@} gmail.com .

Thanks and see you in San Jose!

Open Arms: a data portability approach

Caveat Lector: this is a rough draft of my thinking on what a Portability EULA/ToS should say/do/include. Please comment. In the EULA/ToS task force, we are exploring ways of explaining portability with simple analogies. - Phil

We’ve discussed Graceful Exit, the ability for people to control their departure from a site or service.

Open Arms starts at the beginning of your relationship with a service. Let’s summarize it, break it apart, and explain why this is a powerful way to do business.

Open Arms is a combination of policy and technology.

The policy says:

When you come to our site,
bring all of yourself.
We’ll help you put it to use
in our context.
We’ll make it easy to come.
We’ll keep it safe.
We’ll respect ownership as you see it.

What you add while you are here
will join your collection
and be portable in turn.

The elements.

All of yourself.

Bring your identity, your contacts, your history with your contacts, your photos and videos, your playlists, everything digital.

We’ll ignore what we cannot use.

Put it to use in our context.

Every site has a context.

• Things it does
• Purposes people share
• Community standards of behavior.

For example:

• Monster brings work and workers together.
• Flickr helps people manage what comes out of their cameras.
• YouTube is a community of video.
• QuickBooks helps you manage your business.
• Chemistry helps you find true love.
• Amazon and eBay bring buyers and sellers together.

We need your data. These sites could help you do more and do it smarter with more and fresher and truer information from you. Monster could create team job search features if it knew your social graph. Chemistry could be more accurate if it had your music and video playlists.

Our sites are verbs. We do things. The more data you bring, the richer the data, the fresher and more standardized the data, the more we can do, the more creative we can be.

Most people don’t try new sites because it’s hard to recreate data. Especially for every site you visit.

Easy.

So for Open Arms to work,  bringing your onlife to each site you join must be fast, simple, easy, and obvious. And correct.

Safe.

We will protect everything you share. We will protect it from damage, theft, natural disaster, financial ruin, legal physical threats, from legal threats, from Martian invasion. As best we can. And we’ll explain the threats we perceive and how we’re protecting you and your onlife from them.

Ownership as you see it.

“Ownership” is a tricky word: it means one thing to lawyers, something else to most people. Our online and mobile social experiences are a little ahead of the law. So all we can do is try to the right thing for you and for all of our guests.

We’ll respect that your stuff is only “mostly” yours and that you may not have permission to share them with strangers. You may not have permission from the subject of a photo, or their parents. You may have clipped a blog post to share under fair use, but not for general distribution. You may have a confidential email that could endanger lives if leaked.

We will assume everything you bring is private to you and that you will tell us what can be shared, with whom, and under what conditions.

We’ll make it easy for you to re-use your choices, so you don’t have to explain yourself everywhere you go.

Portable in turn

Reciprocity works. So we’re going to share with other sites the part of your onlife you spend with us, as you see fit. So you never feel we’re holding your data hostage.

What’s next?

So, we’ve “Open Arms” at the start of our relationship and “Graceful Exit” at the end. Next up “Ever Fresh” in between.

“Open Arms” written by Steve Perry and Jonathan Cain, Journey (1982)

Lying beside you, here in the dark
Feeling your heart beat with mind
Softly you whisper, you’re so sincere
How could our live be so blind
We sailed on together
We drifted apart
And here you are by my side

So now I come to you, with open arms
Nothing to hide, believe what I say
So here I am with open arms
Hoping you’ll see what your love means to me
Open arms

Living without you, living alone
This empty house seems so cold
Wanting to hold you, wanting you near
How much I wanted you home

But now that you’ve come back
Turned night into day
I need you to stay.

(chorus)

So what has the DataPortability Project been doing?

Tomorrow, we will be holding first quarterly plenary meeting – where the community at large can question the DataPortability Project’s leadership. As a member of the plenary (membership is free – contact the Steering Groups Secretary Steve Repetti for more information), you can make binding decisions as well.

So since this is our first meeting, here is a summary of what we have been working on; what we are working on; and what we will be working on. Feel free to  look also at our weekly Steering meeting minutes if you wish to dig into the detail.

Governance and workflow taskforce
- Time frame: May 2008 – July 2008
-Purpose: to reboot the Dataportability Project, and convert it from a mailing list that generated discussion, into a structured organisation focused on deliverables. While the output looks small, it required over 50 man hours to determine it.
- Status: Completed
- Task force homepage: http://wiki.dataportability.org/x/EgsR
- Final output: http://wiki.dataportability.org/x/ooUj

Governance task force
- Time frame: August 2008 – September 2008
- Purpose: to revise the governance framework with subsequent issues identified and rewrite it with a fresh perspective looking at it as a whole
- Status: Completed
- Task force homepage: http://wiki.dataportability.org/x/OIEt
- Final output: http://wiki.dataportability.org/x/OIAt

Vision and mission
- Time frame: August 2008 – October 2008
- Purpose: to provide a policy DNA for the organisation that would allow subsequent work to be built on
- Status: Completed
- Task force homepage: http://wiki.dataportability.org/x/XIAt
-Final output: http://wiki.dataportability.org/x/SoA0

Logo and branding task force
- Time frame: August 2008 – March 2009 (scope of work was extended in November 2008)
- Purpose: to create a logo and associated branding for the DataPortability Project, including an upgrade of the website. On two previous occasions,we have received law suits due to our logo, so this third time, we had a much more robust process
- Status: Completed.
- Task force homepage: http://wiki.dataportability.org/x/XYUj
- Task force output: Everything (literally) that can be seen on http://dataportability.org as of today

Legal entity taskforce
- Time frame: Started November 2008, still open
- Purpose: Investigate and prepare for the incorporation of the DataPortability Project as a non-profit entity
- Status: Work completed, documents signed, waiting for clearance
- Task force homepage:  http://wiki.dataportability.org/x/JoBE

EULA and ToS task force
- Time frame: Started November 2008, still open
- Purpose: to create a set of outputs that can be incorporated into legal documents, reflecting the vision of the DataPortability Project
- Status: draft report will be available in April 2009
- Task force homepage: http://wiki.dataportability.org/x/mIRE

Standards landscape task force
- Time frame: Started March 2009, still open
- Purpose: to create an analyst report that can contextualise all the standards that advance data portability, with recommendations to improve identified weaknesses as well how they all fit together
- Status: recruiting for contributors, work has not begun yet
- Task force homepage: http://wiki.dataportability.org/x/BgJg

Healthcare taskforce
- Time frame: started November 2008, still open
- Purpose: To provide analysis on how data portability will impact the health sector
- Status: Use cases have been identified, currently assigning work for more focused research
- Task force homepage: http://wiki.dataportability.org/x/C4A8

Service provider grid tool
- Time frame: August 2008, still open
- Purpose: An API enabled web service that allows the community to monitor what companies/web services use what standards
-Status: Prototype done. Delays due to required developer staff to complete version one.
Task force homepage: http://wiki.dataportability.org/x/YIAt

Volunteer positions task force
- Time frame: November 2008, still open
- Purpose: to recruit, train, and fill open positions for a community manager and a set of analysts
- Status: have recruited a community manager, currently training a half dozen “analysts” around the world on a variety of topics in different jurisdictions
Task force homepage: http://wiki.dataportability.org/x/P4I0

Other activities not reflected in the task force work above.
Believe it or not – talking and meetings take up a lot of time!
- discussions over IDTBD membership
- discussions over creating the W3C Social Web incubator group
- discussions over Identity Commons membership
- first actual elections (for vacancies) since the enactment of the governance framework
- podcasts, regular reports, blog (you’re looking at it!), RSS feed of the best data portability posts on the web (note: due to the Magnolia crash, we lost all our bookmarked items. However we have now started a new friendfeed room as a temporary way to share links), and conferences (upcoming ones available here)
- as part of the new website, we have also recently (this month) done a massive reorganisation of the wiki which took 20-30 people hours to do
- we also have three “unofficial task forces” which will emerge when/if they are ready: one on publishing, another on business models, a third on market research.
- We are about to create a dedicated group that can focus on governance, with its first task to determine a more efficient voting system

As you can see, we’ve made a heavy investment in the administrative side of things to prepare us, which is why we are now emerging and reaching out again to the community. We are now embarking on work we have been wanting to do for months, and hope to get a lot achieved this year in output, to be ready for 2010.

We are focused this year on a set of strategic goals, and our core activities going forward are on policy formulation and communications (which includes education).

Facebook and Lumpy policy decisions

Rethinking your TOS/EULA is a pain in the neck. Nobody wants to divert attention, money or energy thinking about it. It seems like a serious distraction from making money and serving customers.

Looking at the 2009 Facebook policy hubbub, it’s a big deal. It sucks up attorney fees, management, press, even engineering into a big, risky, bothersome pile of unhappiness.

So a reasonable company wouldn’t volunteer for exercises like that. Maybe, at most, an annual review. It might look like this.

Lumpy.

Huge piles of politics.

What if you smoothed it out?

Would that reduce the icky parts of policy review and enhance the charming parts?

Because policy review has its charming parts.

• It lets you re-engage your customers on what matters to them.
• It helps you restate what you need from customers their language.
• It helps turn your policy from a just-click-through-it to a loyalty building selling opportunity. Maybe even a competitive advantage.

And a smoother, more continuous approach has its tasty bits too.

• Fewer surprises.
• More continuity, less forgetting of why.
• Less distraction, cost, effort.
• Smaller changes, more easily absorbed.

Smoothing might have parts like:

• An internal TOS/EULA lmailing list that any employee can join.
• Annual policy summit. A little bit of briefing. A few workshops. A lot of Open Space unconference.
• A public TOS/EULA listserve/bbs for policy advocates, concerned citizens and partners.
• Ongoing communications (blog posts? videos?) about the state of your policy thinking, inviting participation in that thinking.

Should DataPortability.org help companies engage in that conversation? To move from lumpy to smooth. To avoid the icky bits. To enjoy the tasty and charming parts of policy definition. We already are – join us!

Special Election results

FROM: Elias Bizannes, DataPortability Project vice-chair, election
returning officer
TO: DataPortability Project Members and Supporters
RE:Special Election results

Voting for the Special election of the Steering Group has closed.

A total of 30 votes were cast, of which 28 that were recognised. Two votes were disqualifed for Givotovsky as the voting member had not fulfiled the requirement of joining the plenary one week before voting per section 4.16 of the by-laws.

The results were as follows

Dan Brickley: 8
Anthony Broad Crawford: 7
Nicholas R. Givotovsky: 5
Willem Kossen: 3
Jeremy LeBard: 2
Chris Lunt: 2
Mark Lizar:1

Congratulations to Dan Brickley and Anthony Broad-Crawford who have been elected by the DataPortability Project’s plenary as the two newest Steering Group members.

These positions are to fill the vacancies left by J.Trent Adams and Brett McDowell, who had resigned due to roles taken in other organisations that presented a conflict of interest.

A full election of the 12 person Steering Group will occur at the end of this year.

DataPortability Conferences

Catch the DataPortability discussion continued at upcoming conferences…

April 15-17: The Next Web – Amsterdam

I will be on an Alumni panel. The exact topic is yet determined but count on it being overarching and focused on the changes to the social web over the last year. Joining us on the panel will be Khris Loux, CEO of JS-Kit, Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon as well as other alumni from Next Web 2008.

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May 12 – 13: GlueCon – Denver Colorado

Join members of the DataPortability project (the group that kicked it all into high gear) to discuss the current state of play, the future of distributed social networking and why data portability is not only important but pivotal to reducing network fatigue, increasing revenue and driving innovation.

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May 19 – 20: Web 3.0 Conference – New York

Similar to GluCon, join members of the DataPortability project (the group that kicked it all into high gear) to discuss the current state of play, the future of distributed social networking and why data portability is not only important but pivotal to reducing network fatigue, increasing revenue and driving innovation for the next generation web.

Redefining and Standardizing ‘Ownership’

Facebook, by virtue of its sheer size and scope, is often the first to run into issues that the rest of the social web will need to address sooner rather than later. To its credit, Facebook seems to be trying to address these issues in a way that protects their short and long term business while balancing the needs of the community.

By observing these actions the DataPortability project, and the wider community, can learn lessons on what works and what doesn’t so we can all adopt clear community endorsed best practices.

The latest Facebook step (misstep?) occurred last week when they made some changes to their Terms of Service and one of the items of contention by many is the following statement:

“You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content. “

“So Who Owns Your Data” is always a question that myself and other members of the DataPortability Project (DPP) have grappled with for some time. No doubt ‘ownership’ of data is top of mind to people who are interested in data portability.

We have said in the past that Ownership without Control is worthless. Scope of Control, however, seems to stem from ownership. That is, you should only be able to control what you own. So the fundamental question of Ownership is still important.

‘Ownership’, however, is tricky when you are talking about bits and bytes that are getting shared, indexed, replicated and mixed together by multiple services and participants.

Perhaps Ownership is not the right metaphor at all? Late last year, fellow DPP co-founder Elias took the time to address some thoughts on ‘ownership’ of data with a post titled “You don’t nor need to own your data” that I would recommend reading. In it, Elias discusses traditional concepts of ownership and goes on to suggest that perhaps we need a new term to describe our relationship to social data.

Here is a large section from his post:

First of all, let’s define property ownership: “the ability to deny use of an asset by another entity”. The reason you can claim status to owning your house, is because you can deny someone else access to your property. Most of us have a fence to separate our property from the public space; others like the hillbillies sit in their rocking chair with a shot gun ready to fire. Either way, it’s well understood if someone else owns something, and if you trespass, the dogs will chase after you.

The characteristics of ownership can be described as follows:

1. You have legal title recognising in your legal jurisdiction that you own it.
2. You have the ability to enforce your right of ownership in your legal jurisdiction
3. You can get benefits from the property.

The third point is key. When people cry out loud “I own my data”, that’s essentially the reason (when you take out the Neanderthal emotionally-driven reasoning out of the equation). Where we get a little lost though, is when we define those benefits. It could be said, that you want to be able to control your data so that you can use it somewhere else, and so you can make sure someone else doesn’t use it in a way that causes you harm.

Whilst that might sound like ownership to you, that’s where the house of cards collapses. The reason being, unless you can prove the ability to deny use by another entity, you do not have ownership. It’s a trap, because data is not like a physical good which cannot be easily copied. It’s like a butterfly locked in a safe: the moment you open that safe up, you can say good bye. If data can only satisfy the ownership definition when you hide it from the world, that means when it’s public to the world, you no longer own it. And that sucks, because data by nature is used for public consumption. But what if you could get the same benefits of ownership – or rather, receive benefits of usage and regulate usage – without actually ‘owning’ it?

Property and data – same same, but different
Both property and data are assets. They create value for those who use them. But that’s where the similarity’s end.

Property gains value through scarcity. The more unique, the more valuable. Data on the other hand, gains value through reuse. The more derivative works off it, means the more information generated (as information is simply data connected with other data). The more information, the more knowledge, the more value created – working its way along the information value chain. If data is isolated, and not reused, it has little value. For example, if a company has a piece of data but is not allowed to ever use it – there is no value to it.

Data gains value through use, and additional value through reuse and derivative creations. If no one reads this blog, it’s a waste of space; if thousands of people read it, its value increases – as these ideas are decimated. To give one perspective on this, when people create their own posts reusing the data I’ve created, I generate value through them linking back to me. No linking, no value realised. Of course, I get a lot more value out of it beyond page rank juice, but hopefully you realise if you “steal” my content (with at least some acknowledgement to me the person), then you are actually doing me a favour.

Ignore the above!
Talking about all this ownership stuff doesn’t actually matter; it’s not ownership that we want. Let’s take a step back, and look at this from a broader, philosophical view.

Property ownership is based on the concept that you get value from holding something for an extended period of time. But in an age of rapid change, do you still get value from that? Let’s say, we lose the Holy War for people being able to ‘own’ their data. Facebook – you win – you now ‘own’ me. This is because it owns the data about me – my identity, it would appear, is under the control of Facebook – it now owns, that “I am in a relationship”. However, the Holy War might have been lost but I don’t care. Because Facebook owns crap – as six months ago, I was in a relationship. Now I’m single and haven’t updated my status. The value for Facebook, is not in owning me in a period of time: it’s in having access to me all the time – because one way they translate that data into value is advertising, and targeting ads is pointless if you have the wrong information to base your targetting on. Probably the only data that can be static in my profile, is birth-date and gender – but with some tampering and cosmetics, even those can be altered now!

With their change of terms, Facebook is essentially saying that they will ‘forever own’ a copy of your data as part of their archives to do with what they wish. I will go so far as to sympathize personally with the team there and give them an approving nod for some of Zuckerberg’s comments especially acknowledging that they are indeed trying to address some serious questions around how we live our digital lives. It’s not easy and they certainly don’t have to go it alone.

I would invite them, and anyone else interested in the topic, to join one of our most recent TaskForces – the EULA & ToS Taskforce.

Following the example of  Creative Commons, the goal of our task force is to identify and name key concepts that help users and service providers understand what each other expects . The intended output will be a set of documents that can be referenced or included in EULA and TOS agreements and simple descriptions for users to understand what it means when they upload and share data with services providers.

As part of this taskforce, we seek to provide a standard way of describing the relationship between the user and site that is easy to understand and provides both sides with the control that they need.

If you are interested in the subject – now is the time to join us and help define some basic principles that services providers should support by joining and supporting the work that the EULA & ToS Taskforce is conducting.

And another kudos to Facebook for starting a discussion topic immediately on the “People Against the new Terms of Service (TOS)” Facebook Group. Some real use cases and concerns are being captured in that discussion that will help us all as we work towards our common goal.

Some additional posts on the subject of Facebooks New Terms of Service:

• Where the buzz started on the Consumerist Blog (a consumer advocacy blog) Facebook’s New Terms Of Service: “We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content. Forever.”
• Caroline McCarthy CNET: Facebook: Relax, we won’t sell your photos
• An interesting overview of the various terms of service out there by Amanda French : Facebook terms of service compared with MySpace, Flickr, Picasa, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Twitter
• web.tech.law What Facebook’s revised terms of use mean for your content
• There are plenty of other posts and suspect more to come so here is a link to posts via Techmeme
• Comparing the Terms and Conditions of Facebook, Myspace, Flickr, Picasa, YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Is Facebook’s Move to “Openness” Setting a de facto Standard?

Yesterday, Facebook took a further step in opening its network by introducing enhancements and new features to its developer APIs. Facebook’s new APIs make it easier for applications to update user statuses, links, and upload videos from outside of Facebook. This effort will likely generate a flurry of activity in the developer community as new applications are created and existing ones enhanced to take advantage of these new capabilities.

[Add to this the earlier announcement of Facebook’s support of OpenID and things are definitely starting to get interesting]

But beyond the power and convenience of integration and data portability from external sources, the real story lies just below the surface.  Facebook is striving to become the ultimate repository for all of your social-media information and this is another step along that path. Their platform is becoming a global data-store and their APIs are empowering developers and users with standardized methods of interaction.

On the one hand there is very little about this that is open.  Facebook controls the data, its access, and its availability. Facebook defines the integration, they determine the protocols, and the APIs, and even who can and cannot use any of this. This “openness” is all under the oversight, control, direction, and whim of the giant.

Yet, when you think about it, Facebook has made huge strides in extending its world beyond the looming walls of their garden. And, while I don’t think this was their original intent, they have nevertheless listened to their user base and observed the opportunity the market presents. 

Some may call it baby steps, others an attempt at world domination. But the winner today is the user (and yes, it’s pretty good for Facebook too!); and the benefits continue to evolve. Along the way, these initiatives will provide new and innovative methods for interaction with users and data that may lead to de facto standards for data portability. Will that actually happen?  That depends on Facebook’s “real” position on openness, the user’s tolerance and acceptance of that position, and the response from the other great giant seeking dominance in the global data-store market – Google.

– Steve Repetti
steve@radwebtech.com
www.radwebtech.com
Data Portability board member

Graceful Exit: Yahoo!’s flickr evicts Shéhérazade

Flickr deleted a popular photographer’s collection. Thomas Hawk reports this eviction from start to finish. Arbitrary justifications, no notice, no appeal, no ability to restore the photos, deletion of third-party intellectual property (thousands of comments). It seems the justification was without merit.

Does your city give landlords this much power?

Should you have the power to fight eviction?

Graceful Exit: facebook evicts Nakedjen

Excerpt from a tragic exit, a story of online eviction from Facebook, without notice, merit, or recourse: 

All was definitely not well.

Facebook obliterated Nakedjen.

Obliterated.  Deleted.  Made me disappear. 

And they did it without any warning or even a simple email telling me that I had done something wrong.

My email to them asking what I might have done to cause such a brutal outcome was just met with an automatic reply telling me that I must be in violation of the TOS and to read it carefully.

Which I did.  Every single word.  Carefully.  There is absolutely no term or stipulation that I even came close to violating other than that my name is Nakedjen.  However, as I mentioned, that is MY name.  And it has been my name on Facebook since day one.  The email that I used for the service is even nakedjen@nakedjen.com  Could I be more clear or obvious?  I don’t think so.

What I also learned, while reading each and every word carefully, is that my account on Facebook is at will and can be terminated by Facebook at any time for any reason they deem “reasonable.”  Basically, our accounts are being hosted for free on their servers.  So this actually does make sense.  If someone in their offices wakes up today and decides that the word Naked is pornographic or even just decides that my photo of Buddha wearing a ski cap is offensive, that person can just hit the delete button and bye bye Nakedjen.

In addition, all content that is published by me (or anyone else) including photos, blog posts, and videos becomes the property of Facebook.  You may own it, but so do they because they are now hosting it on their servers and they have claimed rights to it in their TOS.

Nakedjen’s full post challenges definitions of data “ownership”. She concludes:

This is a lesson in our digital rights and freedoms.  I know it may seem like a trivial thing.  A Facebook profile being deleted because I call myself Nakedjen.  However, if they can obliterate me (and my entire group of friends and family and all my files) just because I have Naked in my name, how long before they obliterate you because your name vaguely sounds Islamic?  Or Muslim?  Or even just American?

Think about it.