The Danger of Social Computing or Publishing Maps

by Tom Koltai at 10:25AM (EST) on April 30, 2009
 
On Neil Diamond's Album, Hot August Night, he calls out… Hello out there Tree People…..

His words – which impressed me over thirty years ago are obviously an acknowledgement by Neil, that even the non-paying tree people had a value, by adding to the carnival atmosphere of the concert and just by being there, were therefore worthy of his recognition.

He didn’t chastise them for being free-loaders – everyone knew they were freeloading. He merely acknowledged them warmly as part of the event of a Hot August Night. (The Album became the number one seller in the US for a considerable time).

Could it be that part of the reason for his success was his treatment of the freeloaders and the subsequent public understanding of his comment to the the tree people?

However it was also those words that in my mind justified the actions of myself and three friends jumping the fence at the Western Springs Stadium in Auckland New Zealand a few years later to watch Led Zeppelin.

Did we break the law, obviously, so why did we do it ?

Well at the time – we were poor starving students that couldn’t afford the $7.00 concert entry ticket price.

Hell, for me, $7.00 equaled 2 loaves of bread, 2 dozen eggs, a ½ pound of  butter and a jar of coffee and bag of sugar for two weeks (Basically I lived on a variation of poached egg on toast for breakfast lunch and tea). In other words – the price of the concert tickets was two weeks food bill but I had serious conflict. From a higher power than that which employed the security guards around the Western Springs venue - my girlfriend wanted to see “Stairway to Heaven“ being performed live.

Can you imagine me saying no? (Especially when we were staying at digs only 800 meters from the Western Springs Stadium fence-line.)
The peer pressure was to jump the fence.

Now imagine if we had been strangers to the area and the four of us had driven there by car and stopped to ask a lone walker for directions to the Concert.

Hi, can you give us directions to the Zep concert please.
Sure, the average citizen would answer – and then they would proceed to give directions.

Then we would proceed to jump the fence and enjoy the concert for free.

Can you imagine the following Newspaper story in 1976 …..

Individual giving directions to Rock and Roll concert freeloaders gets 12 months Jail and $50,000 fine.

No you can’t because in 1976 – jumping the fence wasn’t much of a crime.

The judges would have laughed it out of the court…. And on the question of jailing the signpost, the directions giver, the guidebook, the UBD map, the community pin board, the search engine;
well I think on that question, thirty years ago, our Judiciary would have said – no – that’s quite impossible.
Giving directions to people that you suspect might jump the fence is certainly not a crime.

So – tell me. Am I growing crazy or did we with the Pirate Bay case just see the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms  get overturned in Stockholm.

What happened to the right to give directions without being automatically associated as a criminal?

Here’s the link to the Translation of the Courts ruling in the Pirate Bay Case – now translated to English  http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2009/04/piratebayverdicts.pdf

Here’s the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works.
http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/berne/trtdocs_wo001.html
Keywords:  Berne, Hot August Night, Neil Diamond, freedom of speech, Human rights, tree people, P2P, pirate bay