Ghosts in the machine

My previous blog was about the privacy stolen by the Web 2.0, while writing that, I came across several pieces of the news that pointed toward another growing concern, not only Internet is wreaking havoc with the things we once considered our personnel dominion, but the growing number of connected devices are also in on the act.

The basic premise of this article would be to focus on how consumer entertainment appliances and mobile devices store and communicate data back to the companies, also the new definition of owner ship in the age digital media and DRM

Since start of public radio programming and broadcasting, a lot of focus is on the home entertainment, the things which we used to get only in the theaters or cinemas, delivered right to our home, and in continuously increasing quality. Home entertainment is a multi billion dollar industry, with increasing competition, increasing market saturation and as a result decreasing peace of profit pie. How they would continue milking the cash cow, what innovations that they need to do, how much more hi def and hi-fi video and audio will become when it will hit the proverbial glass ceiling so that It makes no difference to the user. Well the new twist is Internet enabled devices.

The concept of connected entertainment is not only limited to the home but also moving to the automobile and the 21^st century of bling bling personnel entertainment devices like portable media players and the like.

But just like with the services you are given online, you are Id'd and tracked same is the case in this brave new world of connected devices and connected people.

Live updates, a concept introduced with operating systems, where critical updates are directly delivers to your machine. As the mobile networks progressed from 1^st Gen to 2g and then to 3g with increasing data speeds, mobile device makers incorporated the same concepts of online updates to mobile devices also . Iphones and Blackberries the most popular smart phones now a days both support online updates. But you can never tell what the recent updates will contain. A recent news Etislalat in UAE updated the firmware onnet for several of its black berry service. After the update batteries started being drained, on investigation it was found out that Etisalat included a Trojan in the update which sends the data about the users email and text messages and location back to the company servers., though it reissued the update after enforcement from blackberry USA and pointed finger at security agencies, but suppose if the glitch has not drained batteries this snooping would never have been found. In another case the newly launched palm pre has also been found to send the GPS data back to the users, including the data on the application use.

Besides spying the connected world has turned the concept of owner ship on its head. In the older days when you bought a movie or a book you owned the media on which it was. You could ave gifted it, passed it to the next generation or store it for all eternity. But now in the world of DRM(digital rights management), you have no control over your media,. The vendors decided for how much time and on how many devices you are allowed to use that media. If you want to gift it or share it take permission from the master, you are enslaved in the world of digital rights. Suppose that a company handling DRM goes bankrupt, what will happen to you media, hat you have paid for and rightfully belong to you. It would become useless. Just a collection of 1 and 0s. Then you may ask why the sudden flourish in online media sites like netflix, hulu etc and the itunes phenomenon. Well by offering reduced prices and taking out the inconvenience associated with commuting to the brick and mortar store, they make profit on a large number of micro transactions.

But do you really own the media, not quite. Amazon sell its own book readers Kindle, and are earning a pretty penny on the sale of electornic readers and the book for these readers. Since kindle 2 readers are continuously connected to the mothership thorough 3g network, you can purchase books and download them where ever you are. Recently amazon deleted two of the books remotely from the users kindles, these ironically were 1984 and animal farm by George Orwell :). Though by reason they should not have sold the books in the first place becuase by mistake they purchased only the rights to books printed version not the electronic one. As soon as they realized this mistake, they send universal delete command and refunded the money. But imagine if the same books would be printed ones, any one breaking in to your house and taking those books would be considered a thief.

Same is the case with itunes gift cards, Apple are tracking that only the original user to whom the itunes credit was gifted use the gift cards, not any third person. In real world you could have gifted the card to any one you like, even further passing on the card.

Till now we were discussing the connected mobile devices, but the same trend has moved on to consumer devices. What we see are Televisions with built in channel guides that recommend you the programs based upon your viewing habits, which means that your details are sent to the servers, you have the option to link your TV to your open id account, it has the ability to see your favorites in the youtube accounts, photos you have uploaded and marked on flicker.

To add another interesting twist you are not safe even in your automobiles. Many vehicles come now with GPS enabled systems, and increasingly with some sort of cellular network connection too, whether for data only or for voice calls too. Example of an instance where a popular car maker incorporated the remote activation of microphone built in to cars telephony system, to transmit in car conversation to FBI, along with you location. Same thing is being done with the mobile phones too

RESISTANCE IS FUTILE, YOU CANT RUN, YOU CANT HIDE

Again the question is of trust

The easiest way is to turn off always on connectivity, choose and install your own updates instead of leaving it to the vendor. And if you really like to own media for generations for God sake keep to the physical one, even now we can get VHS, and audio cassette players, mean while many digital formats have come and gone. How many gifs can we find on todays web pages ???