[Air-L] follow up on the suicide machine /letter to worm, the rotterdam based experimental artscenter

[Seda Guerses]

On behalf of Facebook, the law firm Perkins Coie has sent a Cease and  
Desist letter to Mike van Gaasbeekfrom WORM, the Rotterdam-based  
experimental artscenter of which MODDR_labs, creators of the Web2.0  
Suicide Machine <http://www.suicidemachine.org>, are a part of..

the letter is also made available here:
http://suicidemachine.org/download/Web_2.0_Suicide_Machine.pdf

more informaiton on what is happening can be found here:
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/49470

more information on the worm lab can be found here:
http://agenda.wormweb.nl/home.php?taal=eng

this somehow reminds me of the many over-exaggerated reactions that  
the uebermorgen project usually gets for their interventions (http://www.ubermorgen.com 
). over the years uebermorgen has launched arts projects that point to  
and make public the contradictions that a lot of bigger companies  
painstakingly hide through their marketing, advertisement and legal  
departments in order to save themselves from bad reputation due to  
their aggressive "survival" tactics.

this little spectacle with suicidemachine also coincides with  
zuckerberg's statement that privacy is dead and facebook wants to be  
more public:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebooks_zuckerberg_says_the_age_of_privacy_is_ov.php

but obviously, facebook does not really want "You [to]... have control  
over what you share" (facebook privacy policy) they want you to share  
and from there have facebook stipulate what happens with your sharing.  
they want facebook to be the ultimate vitrine of profiles.
a fan of and researcher working on facebook myself, i really hope that  
they make some changes with respect to letting their users download  
their own information (at this point, i cannot even make a back up of  
my friend's email addresses on my own computer), let people delete  
their information, if necessary in an automated manner), and allow  
people to share their information outside of facebook, just like  
facebook integrates a lot of their services on its platform. if they  
want to be more public, then maybe this should not only mean more  
control for facebook itself, but also some control rights to its users  
beyond the "privacy settings".

anyways, may the unrest continue and hoping that the arts initiative  
does not have too much trouble with the corporate lawyers.
s.





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