Vort3x | Cybersalon | July 15, 2024
Vort3x, published on the 15th of each month, aims to pick out significant developments in the intersection of computers, freedom, privacy, and security for friends near and far. The views expressed in these stories do not necessarily reflect those of Cybersalon, either individually or collectively.
Prepared by Wendy M. Grossman.
Contents: Cybersalon events | News | Features | Diary
NEWS
AI Companies Ignore Robots Exclusion Protocol
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AI companies seeking data to train their models are disrupting the longstanding Robots Exclusion Protocol, which allows sites to specify what content web crawlers may copy but is a norm with no enforcement mechanism, Katie Paul reports at Reuters. At The Verge, David Pierce recounts in detail the genesis and operation of the protocol, which is implemented in the form of a file called robots.txt. At Silicon Angle, Maria Deutscher reports that the content delivery network Cloudflare has developed a new tool that identifies and blocks the content scraping bots.
Brazilians Pay for Instagram Account Retrieval
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At Rest of World, Daniela Dib and Marília Marasciulo find that Brazilians whose Instagram accounts have been hacked are paying individuals who call themselves ethical hackers to get their accounts back because Meta is so slow to respond. People typically pay $40 to $1,000 for the service, depending on the complexity of the case.
UK Court Freezes Bitcoin Claimant Craig Wright’s Assets Worldwide
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The UK’s Mr Justice Mellor, who ruled earlier this year in the case COPA v Wright that Craig Wright’s claim to be the inventor of bitcoin was based on “forgeries and lies”, has granted a worldwide order freezing Wright’s assets, Charles Thuo reports at Invezz. The ruling came in the case Craig Wright v Peter McCormack, in which McCormack, a podcaster, asked the court’s help to recover £1.58 million in costs defending against a defamation claim Wright brought against him.
OCLC Seeks Summary Judgment Against Anna’s Archive
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The owners of the popular shadow (pirate) library search engine Anna’s Archive have not responded to court proceedings launched by OCLC, the Ohio-based owner of the proprietary library database Worldcat after Anna’s scraped its data and posted it on the web, Ernesto Van der Sar reports at TorrentFreak. OCLC has moved for a summary judgment and claims it’s had to spend millions of dollars to remediate its systems. Also at TorrentFreak, Andy Maxwell reports that the Russian administrators of the large shadow library Z-Library, who were facing extradition to the US after being arrested in Argentina, have escaped house arrest and disappeared.
Suspected “AI” Reform Parliamentary Candidate is Real
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The Liberal Democrat party has challenged Reform to provide evidence that all 609 candidates Reform stood across the country are real people, Peter Walker, Ben Quinn, and Rowena Mason report at the Guardian. At least one of the suspected “fake” candidates has proved to be real: Mark Matlock, who won 1,758 votes in the south London constituency of Clapham and Brixton Hill, has emerged to explain that his photo looks AI-generated because it was altered to remove the background and change the color of his tie, and that he missed the count because he had pneumonia. Reform admits that some were “paper” candidates who did no campaigning and live many miles from the constituencies they sought to represent; however, this is not illegal, where standing fake candidates is a serious electoral offense.
FEATURES & ANALYSIS
Goldman Sachs Doubts Financial Returns from Generative AI
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In this report, Goldman Sachs doubts that the estimated $1 trillion technology giants and others will spend on generative AI in coming years will ever pay off. Experts interviewed for the report project very limited returns. In a paper published in Artificial Intelligence and presented at ACM FAccT 2024, Piotr Wojciech Mirowski et al. interview 20 comedians who do live shows and use AI as part of their creative process. The comedians largely felt that LLMs produce “bland and biased comedy tropes, akin to ‘cruise ship comedy material from the 1950s, but a bit less racist’.”
Smart Doorbells Change Political Canvassing
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In this piece at the Guardian, Raphael Boyd reports that canvassers during the recent election found that smart doorbells opened up unexpected connections. In some cases, people initiated conversations when they saw which party was at their door; in others, canvassers found themselves talking politics with people who were away on vacation.
One Million Checkboxes
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In this article at the New York Times, Callie Holtermann examines the social behavior at a website called One Million Checkboxes, which invites visitors to check as many boxes as they like. To creator Nolen Royalty’s surprise, it turned out that many visitors preferred to uncheck boxes others have checked, turning the site into a frenetic arms race.
The Legacy of Julian Assange
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In this podcast at Journalism.co.uk, Jacob Granger interviews investigative journalist James Ball, an early contributor to Wikileaks, about the legacy of Julian Assange and Wikileaks. Although Assange was difficult to work with, Ball believes that he was a catalyst for an enduring transformation of investigative journalism into a collaborative effort.
Old and New Labour Meet AI
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In this blog posting, Rachel Coldicutt summarizes this year’s Tony Blair Institute for Global Change’s Future of Britain conference. Since the new Labour government took over on July 5, Blair has been pushing for using AI to reform the NHS and a return to policies of his administration such as the national ID card. Expert speakers are more cautious, preferring more mundane, less costly approaches. In a further example, at the Guardian Anna Bawden reports that nine leading cancer specialists have published a paper in The Lancet arguing that the NHS needs to focus on basics and cancer as a systems problem rather than adopting novel technological solutions, which cannot be the magic bullet some suggest.
DIARY
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August 7-10, 2024
Katowice, Poland
Wikimania is the annual conference celebrating all the free knowledge projects hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation with days of conferences, discussions, meetups, training, and workshops. Hundreds of volunteers and Free Knowledge leaders from around the world gather to discuss issues, report on new projects and approaches, and exchange ideas.
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August 8-11, 2024
Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
Def Con is the world’s largest hacker conference.
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September 6-8, 2024
Nairobi, Kenya and online
State of the Map 2024 will bring together passionate mappers, data enthusiasts, technologists, and community members from all corners of the globe to celebrate the spirit of collaboration and open mapping. Building on the valuable lessons and experiences from the previous events, SotM is committed to making this edition even more accessible to everyone who wishes to partake in this grand celebration of open mapping, sharing passionate voices with the entire community.
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November 5, 2024
London, UK and online
This year’s IGF will include a range of fascinating keynotes on topical issues and panel discussions which will explore questions regarding digital inclusion, digital governance, the impact of misinformation and disinformation on democraccy, and ethical AI.
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November 8-11, 2024
Brussels, Belgium
Freedom not Fear (FNF) is an annual self-organised conference on privacy and digital rights. People from all across Europe meet and work towards more freedom in the digitalised world, plan actions against increasing surveillance and other attacks on civil rights.
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December 15-19, 2024 and online
Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
The 19th IGF, “Building Our Multistakeholder Digital Future”, will focus on four main themes: harnessing innovation and balancing risks in the digital space; enhancing the digital contribution to peace, development, and sustainability; advancing human rights and inclusion in the digital age; and improving digital governance for the Internet We Want.
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February 4-5, 2025
London, UK
The third annual State of Open Con will focus on Open Technology including open source software, open hardware, open data, open innovation, open standards, and the value that the open community brings to the UK and its digital economy. Alongside a diverse range of topics, the event promises to include a diverse range of speakers and participants.
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February 24-27, 2025
Taipei, Taiwan and online
Each edition of RightsCon convenes business leaders, policy makers, general counsels, government representatives, technologists, academics, journalists, and human rights advocates from around the world to tackle pressing issues at the intersection of human rights and technology. RightsCon is where the global community comes together to build strategies and drive forward change toward a more free, open, and connected world. Proposals for sessions are due June 2, 2024.
