There are only a few places around the world where the vice of art of consumerism is having a good day. Suffice it to say that the holiday season will be celebrated; it just won’t be full of so much…stuff. And maybe a bit less happiness to show for it, too.

So Scrooge wins this time around. But here’s a glimmer of hope to nibble on. In the media world, in an industry dominated by the RIAA and the MPAA, diminished sales matched with increased P2P “naughtiness” may tip the scales in favor of the change that people have long been hoping for in the land of “fair use” and fair pricing.

It’s Worth a Shot

Of course, the cards remain stacked against what everyone fond of music and movies familiar with copyright law and media titans’ business practices believe in. You can teach an old dog new tricks, but it sure as heck ain’t easy, as the last few years of relative chaos has made clear. It’s hardly guaranteed that we’ll see greener pastures anytime soon.

But, and this is a pretty big but, there’s a possibility that what goes on on the Web between the present day and whenever the moment is that this global “economic downturn” goes in the direction most of us wish to go will cause the Sonys and Universals and Warners and EMIs of the world to shift course. In three ways, this means:

Taking DRM entirely out of the picture, which continues to be an annoyingly persistent reality, despite its philosophical and practical absurdity for associated software and hardware markets (i.e., iPod/iTunes vs. Zune vs Sandisk, et al.);

Allowing for streaming services like Last.fm and MySpace Music to actually host on-demand playback options for full tracks from full albums and EPs with no limits;

And attaching costs to purchased copies of singles, albums, and movies that more accurately reflect production and modern distribution costs. Simply put, having to pay upwards of $10 for a 10- to 12-track album or $12-15 for a film that involves little or no petroleum in the effort to get it from the seller to the listener is ridiculous and dishonest.

All About Bang for Buck

Let’s face it, the path for a continued physical presence in consumers’ lives is a finite one. CDs and DVDs sell, but that won’t forever be the case. And in light of that expectation, the media industry would be off to quite an improved position in these murky times if it 1) enticed consumers with a largely irresistible cost structure for retail downloads, and 2) made it easier for consumers to actually play their preordained part.

It’s pretty logical, I think. If you as a producer would like people to consume more of your content, make your content available in ways and at prices that don’t scream “here’s the premium to pay to watch this on your television set or hear that on your portable player this very minute if you prefer not to gas it over to Wal-Mart or wait for super-slow Super-Saver shipping by Amazon for the tangible thing.”

Yes, the convenience of near-instant gratification is a definite plus. But with infrastructural savings on the part of producers and distributors should come a substantial financial benefit for the consumer as well.

Imagery provided by iStockPhoto/DNY59; HappyBirthdayBilly

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:If It’s On The Internet, It Must Be TrueGot $80,000? You Can Buy SimpleWeatherDesperate Brokers are the New LolcatsWill Aggregation Ever Go Mainstream?Australian Ad It Last Comes To AmericaYahoo: Microsoft’s Bid Undervalues The CompanyLiveblog: Is Broadcast Media Co-opting Citizen-Powered Media?

…and by randomly, I mean without a legal process. You may remember that the European Parliament (most notably French socialist Guy Bono) has asked individual countries of the European Union to “avoid adopting measures conflicting with civil liberties and human rights … such as the interruption of internet access.” This was a reaction to the proposal of a three-strikes law, under which the ISPs could send two warnings to file sharers and completely ban them from the internet on third “offense.”

Now, the European Parliament has made it official, adopting an amendment, drafted by Guy Bono and others, which says that “no restriction may be imposed on the rights and freedoms of end-users, notably in accordance with Article 11 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union on freedom of expression and information, without a prior ruling by the judicial authorities, except where dictated by force majeure or by the requirements of preserving network integrity and security, and subject to national provisions of criminal law imposed for reasons of public policy, public security or public morality.”

In other words, you cannot ban someone from the internet unless you have a damn good reason - and file sharing is not a good enough reason.

What’s important about this amendment is that now the European Parliament is not just giving out directives against the three-strikes law (the stupidity of which we’ve written about before) - they’re actively forbidding any action to that effect, and hopefully the member states of the EU will comply.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:YouTube Announces Enforcement Policy ChangesTerrorists Using Google Earth to Target IsraelHulu: News Corp’s YouTube Rival Gets a NameDoes the MLB Care About Us At All?Vizu Adds Google Map Mashup to Voters PollsGoogle’s New Strategy: Spray and PrayPicli, the Digg for Photos, Gets a Whole New Look

The past week in technology has been packed with launches. Lots of names coming out of the DEMOfall 08 conference. Google bought itself another property outside the US, called TNC. Facebook finally got forceful with the implementation of its redesign. Apple spread as much buzz about its new iPod lineup as its iTunes 8 software, complete with HD television downloads and Genius music recommendation engine. And the long-awaited release of Spore occurred. The last one of the bunch is what I want to focus on here.

To sum up, the debut of Spore was met with ample applause and plenty of discussion about the Johnny-play-god element of the evolutionary process. All in good fun, of course. The last several days of Spore’s official real-world introduction have also been chock-full of a pretty astonishing level of spite leveled at Electronic Arts for presenting buyers of the $50 title with restrictive DRM. It’s been reported that EA has allowed for a total of 3 unique activations per consumer for use of the product.

The backlash has been so pronounced that, despite the critical acclaim for the gameplay itself, the game ranks among the most lowly reviewed video games listed in the Amazon store. Some 2,016 out of 2,127 reviewers have chosen to give it a single star. The juxtaposition of this figure against its current #4 sales rate is remarkable in and of itself.

This fact is only compounded by Spore’s performance not only on store shelves but the proliferation of illicit downloads on BitTorrent websites. On Friday morning, Andy Greenberg and Mary Jane Irwin of Forbes reported figures released by Big Champagne that estimated some 170,000+ transfers had been made through to Thursday afternoon since it had first been made available on September 2. And if Ernesto at TorrentFreak is at all accurate in stating that far more substantial 500,000 copies have been pirated in total as of the close of the week, the financial impact on its publisher is indeed very pronounced.

The opposition to DRM is of course understandable, as it leaves little or no room for variables such as failed storage drives, damaged installations, and so forth. It is certainly a Draconian limitation in that respect. On the other hand, should there be no restrictions whatsoever? Unlike less interactive forms of media such as music and movies, video game creators have little additional revenue than that delivered through game sales. Musicians commonly go on tour to generate income to reap a profit from their time in the studio. Film producers take to theaters before delivering discs and downloads. Apart from product placement within their respective virtual environments, game developers have their titles and one primary route through which to net the customary returns on investment. So it seems some precaution on the part of the supplier would be sensible.

The question is, how much caution is suitable for today? 5 PCs? 10? Too little, and you threaten to stifle consumer enjoyment. Too much, and you devalue the product. A safe balance must be established. In the case of Spore, the lock seems to have proven too tight. And this brings another point into the fray, albeit very glass-half-full in its premise. Is it possible that purchases of Spore licenses will correlate at least a little with BitTorrent distribution? In other words, might consumers buy the packaged installation, only to place a pirated copy on their machines in order to facilitate reinstalls if/when desired? Would it be too absurd to think so?

I figure the logical answer is no, sales will not follow the line laid out by the peer-to-peer world. EA will either have to rough this challenge with steadfast conviction or ameliorate the protesters with a re-design of its user contract. The latter will prove less damaging. The Amazon reviews, and those published elsewhere, meanwhile, will stay, unless EA can manage to convince a collective retraction, at least for most responses. How that is conducted will be thoroughly complex, but it isn’t an impossibility. Whatever the case, it really must be addressed. I for one imagine the Amazon review system to stand akin to the eBay feedback program in terms of buyer influence. If enough people speak ill of an item, that item will not move shipments so quickly.

Would you buy Spore and pirate it, too? ( surveys)

—Related Articles at Mashable - All That’s New on the Web:Blue Mars Looks Pretty SweetThe Future Of Linden Lab Following Executive ShuffleMy Last Post About Twitter, EverONLINE GAMES 2.0: 90+ Social Games, AJAX Games and Mashups

Metallica’s new album has leaked out a week or two early, unsurprisingly.  It isn’t surprsing because it’s Metallica, but that it happens to most every artist these days.  Some record store somewhere will sell a copy or two earlier than they should, one of those folks will share it with their friends, and lickety-split, it’s all over the Intertubes.

In this case, that’s almost exactly what happened, according to Blabbermouth

METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich has commented on the premature release of the band’s new album, ”Death Magnetic”, via a French record store. A shop in Paris reportedly sold a number of copies of the CD this morning well ahead of its official September 12 worldwide release date — with illegal ”Death Magnetic” MP3 files making their way online by this afternoon.

During a guest appearance earlier today on ”The Woody Show” on the San Francisco, California radio station Live 105 (KITS 105.3 FM), Ulrichstated about the French leak,

“Listen, we’re ten days from release. I mean, from here, we’re golden. If this thing leaks all over the world today or tomorrow, happy days. Happy days. Trust me. Ten days out and it hasn’t quote-unquote fallen off the truck yet? Everybody’s happy. It’s 2008 and it’s part of how it is these days, so it’s fine. We’re happy.”

This is the happy face that Metallica seems to be putting on this particular leak, and I’m not buying it for even a minute. Consistently since their role in the demise of Napster, they’ve maintained an adversarial role with their fans that continues to this day.  

If you remember, they were handed accolades in the blogosphere several months ago when they agreed to release their album free of DRM in digital format. Sean P. Aune wrote a post on his personal blog that at the time I thought was a little harsh, essentially saying the band was still clueless, and was nowhere close to “getting it.”

Their cluelessness a few days later was futher confirmed when they had their management issue takedown requests to all who reviewed the album based on invited advanced listenings.

I think our president once said something like “fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.” With eloquence like that, you have to wonder, but I think even he would be a bit wary of Metallica’s true feelings on this.  

I’m guessing they aren’t going to get involved in another ridiculous lawsuit or criminal pursuit against the pirates of the world, but mark my words: if Metallica’s album sales aren’t simply spectacular, look for an irritated and enraged Lars Ulrich coming soon to a press conference near you to blame all the pirates of the world for preventing Metallica fans from keeping his private jet fueled up.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:RCMP Says: Piracy OK (for Personal Use)Metallica Has Smoked Themselves RetardedDon’t Download Illegally in France AnymoreDRM-free MP3s from Warner Music Now Available on AmazonStudy Confirms: Piracy Is Better Than The Real ThingHey, I Know A Way To Get Windows XP After June 30NBC Exec Heats Up Battle Against Piracy

While YouTube remains partially embroiled in a clash with copyright giant Viacom, its success in serving increasing numbers of Web users with content of all varieties has apparently convinced some in the media world to stop fighting and start capitalizing. Or at least attempt to glean some revenue from the activity happening at all hours of the day on the video site.

Now, it’s no major revelation that such revenue sharing deals have been struck. It was reported in recent months that a number of copyright owners in the music, television, and movie industries determined it would perhaps be more effective to distribute content on the Google-owned video site, rather than devote resources dishing DMCA takedown notices for any legally offensive uploads - arguably to wasteful effect. Even as early as 2006, Universal Music Group was seen making a “strategic partnership” that 1) published material direct from Universal and 2) allowed Mr. or Mrs. YouTube User some incorporation of media taken from Universal’s archives into content uploaded by Mr. or Mrs. YouTube User.

But a report by Brian Stelter of The New York Times is explicitly naming “CBS, Universal Music, Lionsgate, Electronic Arts, and other companies” as having “stopped prodding YouTube to remove unauthorized clips of their movies, music videos and other content and started selling advertising against them.”

What this means is those parties have essentially done what Web video analysts and evangelists convinced of YouTube’s promotional qualities have spent countless hours advising them to do. After having established ardent opposition to the idea that consumer impulses, aggregated en masse, could in fact help their brands and portfolios survive in new and largely unregulated landscape, they’ve gone and reversed course. A pretty significant plus for viewers, no doubt.

Leaving aside what may be the most outstanding peculiarity pointed out by Stelter - that CBS, a subset of Viacom, joins the group of content producers hungry for ad revenue resulting from spots placed aside ordinarily unsanctioned and unapproved video uploads - this recent shift, unfortunately, is really something that could have been made long ago, and to the benefit of all involved. That goes for YouTube as well as CBS and the rest.

While it’s been made clear that users uploading copyrighted content without the permission of the owner(s) “will not share in the advertising revenue generated by their posts,” the negative PR, solidified over time by ardent opponents of an aged and cumbersome legal framework, is something that may well linger, despite media owners’ change in tactic. With news of courtroom battles and what technically might be considered class-action-style bribery by media corporations to induce relatively small-scale payments from consumers under threat of full-fledged, no-holds-barred legal proceedings, bad blood isn’t simply washed away. Stains have set. The picture painted of Big Media is now a complex one. Some especially vociferous folk might say the days for Big Media are incredibly forlorn, even. (Direct attacks against consumers isn’t occurring within the YouTube paradigm, but consumer opinion most certainly carries across website lines, so to speak.)

To be fair, there naturally are levels of infringement that warrant staunch opposition by media owners. But how such companies have tried to conduct their “cleanup” of the digital space is really what has driven the YouTube set to become the force it is today. They have been forced to see their takedown letters for what they are - unproductive and illogical - and now must take a different approach. An approach that, again, should have been sought by their respective executive circles as soon as any illicit activities on YouTube, et al., went from petty to troubling to potentially quite severe.

We’re now at that last stage. We’ve been here for quite some time, actually. The question is, is it too late to make a massive monetary splash? According to an SAI report referenced by NYT, YouTube sales manager Brian Cosack said marketing efforts “appeared on less than 3% of video pages.” If YouTube itself isn’t performing as it should, despite the wealth of data it serves to consumers, what’s to say big-name copyrighters will make much use of the service? Is it a simple flip of the switch? Cooperate with consumer demand, after years of opposition, and see milk and honey flood the digital streets? Doubtful. But what’s the saying…. Hey, you never know?

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Mobile YouTube Now Includes Most YouTube VideosYouTube Launching Chinese VersionLG To Release YouTube Phone with Direct UploadDownload YouTube VideoMandolin Player Sues YouTubeThai King Has Cooties, Drops YouTube SuitNew YouTube API Released

Say you were to step back in time, to the moment before you were aware that copying and sharing music, either through tangible media or virtual transfer, was illegal - and could be a crime prosecutable with steep fines and perhaps even a jail term (if you happened to be convicted of particularly heavy violations). Would you prefer to see damages conditioned to fit considerably less intense profile? One described as “innocent infringement,” perhaps? That’s what the defendant in Maverick v. Harper is hoping to realize.

The case takes place in San Antonio court, and involves what originally was a 16 year old girl (now college age), who admitted to copyright infringement but has sought “‘innocent infringer’ status,” according to Ray Beckerman of the website Recording Industry vs The People.

The RIAA, according to Beckerman, aimed for summary judgment in light of the defendant’s plea of ignorance about her transgression(s). But interestingly enough, the court has “denied the RIAA’s motion…unless (it) agrees to accept $200 per infringement.”

That number is rather meaningful, actually. The court details its position thusly:

The damages provision of the Copyright Act provides that a plaintiff may elect to seek

minimum damages of $750 per work. 17 U.S.C. § 504(c)(1). However, it also provides that “where the infringer . . . was not aware and had no reason to believe that his or her acts constituted an infringement of copyright, the court in its discretion may reduce the award of statutory damages to a sum of not less than $200.” 17 U.S.C. § 504(c)(2). The defendant has the burden to prove the lack of intent necessary for innocent infringement.

The court then explained the defendants stated position on the matter:

Defendant admitted that she owned compact discs. However, both in her affidavit and in her deposition, Defendant claimed that she believed using KaZaA and similar products to be akin to listening to radio over the internet and did not know that the Recordings were being either downloaded or distributed. She further claimed that prior to this lawsuit, she did not have any understanding of copyright infringement.

Insofar as the defendant’s need to “prove the lack of intent necessary for innocent infringement,” the court had this to say:

At the summary judgment stage, all factual disputes must be construed in the light most favorable to the non-moving party—in this case, Defendant. Anderson, 477 U.S. at 255. Defendant has the burden of proving by a preponderance of the evidence that her actions constituted innocent infringement. 17 U.S.C. § 502(c)(2). Plaintiffs have not introduced any evidence to contradict that Defendant did not have an understanding of the nature of file-sharing programs and copyright sophisticated enough to have reason to know that her actions infringed Plaintiffs’ copyrights. Therefore, the Court finds that a fact issue exists as to whether Defendant was an innocent infringer.

There you have it. A lesser charge for the defendant, it seems. But I must say, even with the -$550 “voucher” put up by the court, $200 per work still puzzles me. If we’re to take $0.99 as the generally accepted price for a digital music track today, a 2,000% premium is peculiarly high for an infraction. Yes, the real damages to the RIAA could be quite high, given the amount of illegal proliferation of music on the Web. But one could perhaps just as convincingly argue the opposite. That they are not so high on an individual basis. As it goes in the peer-to-peer realm, the number of seeders, like leechers, is high. Given the fact that there is room for “doubt,” as it were, at least in a legal sense, damages could do with a major decrease. All the more so if a defendant is judged an “innocent infringer.”

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:RIAA Trial Over: Thomas Found Guilty of InfringementRIAA’s Sacrificial Lamb Appeals Damning Court RulingEMI and RIAA To Call It Quits? Me Thinks No.EMI to Cut RIAA Funding; Death of RIAA Near?RIAA’s Sacrificial Lamb Brought to TrialMan Defeats RIAA In Copyright Case. Who Should Pay His Legal Bill?In Your Face, RIAA. The University of Oregon Takes A Stand.

One might think it a stretch to take a label given to Mussolini by history and place it atop Silvio Berlusconi’s head, but that’s precisely what The Pirate Bay have done. Why for? The Italian government’s organizing of a clean sweep of Italian ISPs to prevent access to the BitTorrent website.

Indeed, Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde is annoyed, according to TorrentFreak, and is claiming discrimination by fascism. The block put in place by ISPs is said to have been implemented with a formal government request issued Friday. TPB presented a brief explanation on its blog concerning the matter, and is for the moment asking Italian users to redirect their browser to another .org address, dubbed “La Baia.”

Berlusconi, Italy’s Prime Minister between 1994-5, 2001-6, and now 2008 once more, has a particularly strong desire to do away with copyright infringement on the Web. He is the founder and majority owner of Fininvest, a media and finance conglomerate that controls much of the nation’s television market within the Mediaset empire, as well as the film company Medusa.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:PirateBay Now Operating From Sinai DesertPrince Gears Up to Battle YouTube, Pirate Bay and eBay tooGoogle Transit Route Planning Now Works In EuropeMySpace Blocks Revver?Turkey Blocks YouTube for the Zillionth TimeNewsFlash: Internet Porn Parts Can Prevent Certain Career PathsRecord Label, Claiming Losses To P2P, Closes; Uploads Music Library To Pirate Bay

This is the second of two posts written by Dr. Mark Drapeau about government 2.0. Click here to read his first post, “Government 2.0: An Insider’s Perspective.”

In June 2008, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Congress’ investigative arm, released a report stating that, “more than 4 years after September 11, the nation still lacked the government-wide policies and processes called for in law to provide a framework for guiding and integrating a myriad of ongoing efforts to share terrorism-related information critical to protecting our homeland.”

Simply put, people in the government aren’t talking to each other enough. As one person, I cannot pretend to solve this problem, nor even understand all of the issues involved. And understandably, the details of some of the workings of government are shielded from public consumption. But for our purposes here, I ask a slightly different question: Given that governments are inherently reactive, rather than proactive (I need give no examples), how can this be compatible with the rapidly evolving world of social software?

In what I think is a good trend, people associated with the government are using Web 2.0 (whether they know it or not). Increasingly, senior officials in the national security community have LinkedIn accounts and curiously dip their toes in the Facebook and Twitter waters, if only because they hear about these sites from their daughters or research assistants. The only way to truly understand the power of Web 2.0 is to participate in it, and even the smallest foray should be applauded.

Ironically, however, many government agencies block such sites for use at work. For example, I cannot access MySpace or YouTube from the computer in my office at the Department of Defense, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) blocks most social networking sites besides LinkedIn. At least one part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) blocks Google Chat. Not only do these policies make little sense (there are legitimate research uses for all of these sites, while email, iTunes, and non-blocked websites are ‘abused’ daily), the policies are inconsistent.

Despite this, there are overt sprinklings of Web 2.0 influence all over the federal government. For example, in mid-2007, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) sponsored a public blog about pandemic influenza, which I contributed to due to my work on global health security. This was a great early example of a government agency engaging with an interested, and in many cases, expert audience.

Contemporary government blogs include very solid efforts by two agencies that people love to hate: the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), and the U.S. Postal Service – the latter of which is a very creative effort. NASA has multiple Twitter-streams in the realm of micro-blogging, and they utilize YouTube and other new media to publicize their exciting work. More budding efforts abound.

There are also promising extra-governmental efforts. Perhaps most notable among them, GovLoop was built using Ning and in only seven weeks has attracted over 500 users from federal, state, and local governments. There was also an event entitled Social Media in Government, with the goal of the conference to “capture the power of social media in your organization, along with helpful tools, tips and techniques to get started.” Activities like these are already making it easier for public servants to share ideas and knowledge.

At a recent Washington, DC-area conference entitled ”Defense 2.0,” Opening Keynote speaker Michael Nelson pointed out that the Internet has ceased to be a tool, and has evolved into a place. And Marketing 101 teaches that you want to be in the places where your target audience is. For the government, whether interested in recruiting employees, talking to subject-matter experts, or collecting counter-terrorism intelligence, using “rich media” to participate in discussions on the Internet and get people to engage with their “brand” will be increasingly important.

But Defense 2.0 is still in its infancy, with a large gap between vision and reality. Thus far, Web 2.0 efforts, while some of them are very promising (for example, Intellipedia), have mainly occurred in isolation, with lack of coordination and no overall Government 2.0 theory, strategy, or framework for using these new social tools to best serve the American people. Here, I begin to describe the beginnings of such a framework.

Mainstream media coverage of the national security community largely involves “guns and ammo,” but increasingly U.S. armed forces leverage the power of other elements of government including diplomatic, intelligence, and economic components to conduct complex, “low-intensity” operations that involve far more than combat. These efforts also regularly involve groups outside the federal government, whether they are state and local responders, military forces of other nations, or global non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

“It’s the notion of unity of effort without unity of control,” says Dr. Linton Wells II, who has a background in the Navy, previously acted as the CIO of the entire U.S. military apparatus, and is now heavily involved with efforts to provide “transportable infrastructures” including inexpensive communications technologies to disaster-relief zones (see STAR-TIDES, below).

Because modern governments now think about military missions for national security in a much broader context, opportunities to use social software can best be divided into three very broad – and diverse – arenas. They are: (1) government internal information sharing, (2) creating and nurturing relationships with non-governmental entities, and (3) empowering people, particularly those in post-disaster, post-war, or impoverished situations. Understanding the pros and cons of incorporating Web 2.0 tools into each of these circumstances is the goal of a research project I have started at the National Defense University called Social Software for Security, or S3.

Internal governmental information sharing means different things to different people. The most commonly-stated objection to the incorporation of social software into national security operations is that malware could be implanted or the social tools could otherwise provide access into government systems, thereby reducing network integrity. However, a good deal of government information, while perhaps private, is not necessarily so much so that off-the-shelf Web 2.0 sites cannot be utilized – they do typically come with some security features.

Examples of such “less secure” information exchanges include Office Directors polling staffs about coordinating schedules or planning social events, Naval Postgraduate School students using iPods with audio/video to supplement lectures, Public Affairs monitoring media feeds about topics of interest, or Human Resources bringing soldiers’ families together using social networks that provide information about local areas. Paraphrasing what Maverick might say about this information, “If I told you, I would not have to kill you.”

In the realm of developing and nurturing a social network of government employees and non-governmental entities, social software also has numerous applications. Sites like kluster can enhance communication and not only help to promote organization within an amorphous and changing coalition, but also help groups discuss problems and arrive at actionable conclusions. Some very important entities, like the Defense Science Board and the Highlands Forum, involve groups of subject matter experts from inside and outside government interacting in various ad hoc ways to solve challenging problems in national security.

A global social network along these same lines is called STAR-TIDES, or Sustainable Technologies, Accelerated Research – Transportable Infrastructures for Development and Emergency Support. STAR-TIDES is a network of governmental, non-profit, academic, and other individuals dedicated to providing low-cost, transportable infrastructure for post-disaster, impoverished, or post-war individuals; including cheap mobile communications technologies.

In the social software space, STAR-TIDES has a Twitter stream detailing conferences attended, sponsored events, daily meetings, and the like. The network may also begin using sites like kluster or DeepDebate to go through an organized, collaborative decision-making process to arrive at actionable conclusions.

Finally, STAR-TIDES is utilizing mashups in their humanitarian efforts. One, constructed by InSTEDD (Innovative Support to Emergencies, Diseases, and Disasters), is called Contacts Nearby. This program interfaces your Facebook biography with Google Maps (geographical information) and Twitter (archivable communications), allowing (say) a refugee to read about, geo-locate, and chat with a U.S. Marine unit, members of an Africa-based NGO, and other refugees with recycled, donated mobile phones. There is now similar software for the new iPhone which concentrates mainly on tagging and auto-tagging geo-located photographic information using mashups with other programs like your Google Calendar. All of these data can then be shared on blogs, wikis, and other social sites.

Related to this, online social communication – particularly scalable micro-blogs like Twitter – can also behave as an “early warning system” to rapidly detect natural disasters, and even localize their origins. As someone who researches the connection between infectious disease and international security, I have been thinking about its uses in the event of a pandemic outbreak. Could Twitter power users like Robert Scoble help to disseminate information on government posters like the one I recently created?

In the end, diverse missions will require differing social software. Many novice end users will probably know their mission requirements, but will not know which Web 2.0 tools are the best fit. As a first step towards helping such users, my Social Software for Security project has funded an effort by Desarae Veit to catalog more than 1,000 social networking sites and describe their properties that may be of use in government and humanitarian efforts – like whether they are mobile-enabled, if they are high or low bandwidth, if they are free to use, and so forth.

This information has now been incorporated into a public website that we have named Sniki, for Social Networking Wiki. To my knowledge, such a public, interactive database has not heretofore existed. I’m happy that the National Defense University could help to provide this resource to the Web 2.0 community, and in the spirit of social software I encourage you all to register on the site, edit it, and consider it yours!

Dr. Mark Drapeau is the 2006-2008 AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow at the Center for Technology and National Security policy of the National Defense University in Washington. These views are his own and not the official policy or position of any part of the U.S. Government. He can be reached at mark.d.drapeau@ugov.gov via email.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:What Happens When the Government Goes Web 2.0Facebook Banned For Ontario Government EmployeesGovernmentdocs.org Adds Social Twist to the Freedom of Information ActGranicus Gets $10M for Government Webcasting ToolsFootnote.com Releases Digital Copies of US Government UFO Findings