How Google Is Being Used To Erase Web Searches - By Bad Actors Manipulating A 1998 Copyright Law

Graphic showing how bad actors are able to mislead Google into extirpating valid news, links from the internet. (From The Wall Street Journal, May 15,  p. A1)

I confess that my first reaction on reading a recent WSJ article  from May 15th:

Google Hides News, Tricked by Fake Claims - WSJ

was stark disbelief.  I simply couldn't buy that Google -  a tech company that uses a quasi IQ test to recruit - was being played  in order to scrub alleged copyright infringing material from Google Search.  If true, it meant that no searches made using Google could be trusted because any one might be absent on account of the nefarious work of a bad actor or actors - vipers misusing a particular  law known as the  Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA).  This 1998 law grants immunity to tech companies  from claims in copyright cases so long as they quickly act to take down material that indicates copyright violations - once alerted.

While the law sounds reasonable it turns out it is now being misused to go after content the enemies of truth might not like to have around, or accessible to people seeking genuine information.   To be sure, most takedown requests to Google are legitimate requests - as the WSJ piece notes - i.e. requesting that pirated copies of a movie or album be removed from search results.  

However, the Journal cites the case of one Colorado bad actor (Dak Steiert) which definitely can be regarded as a cautionary tale, e.g.

"When a Colorado man, Dak Steiert, faced state court charges of running a fake law firm in 2018, he sent Google a series of copyright claims against blogs and a law firm website that discussed his case, claiming they had copied the posts from his own website. That wasn't true, the Journal determined, but Google erased the pages from its search engine anyway."


That, of course, is beyond reprehensible, especially as last year :

"Steiert pleaded guilty to Colorado state court to one count of false advertising in his business. The Colorado  Supreme Court closed his practice.  But the articles about him in other blogs, website remained invisible in Google searches until the Journal flagged the cases to Google, which reinstated the links."

How could such a travesty occur?  Well, because the DMCA  ditches judicious process for speed, penalizing  tech companies for responding too slowly to  copyright violation claims. When what's really needed is the "pause"   button and investigations made into the claims.  Make no mistake that this is serious, given Google "has struggled to keep up with the flood of claims".  Worse,  one UC Berkeley Law professor (Jennifer Urban) "found that in 2017 as many as one third of takedown requests to Google made claims that might not stand up in court."

According to Daphne Keller, former Google lawyer and now a program director at Stanford's Cyber Policy Center:

"If people can manipulate the gatekeepers to make important and lawful information disappear, that's a big deal."

Indeed it is, and it isn't helped by the fact that  "Google has automated much of the process of reviewing takedown requests, relying on techniques that don't require human reviews to enable removals at a large scale."

In other words, DMCA-honed algorithms and 'techniques' are employed which forgo critical thinking and reasoned judgment by humans.  The situation is almost guaranteed to unleash mass removals where these aren't truly justified. How can it be otherwise when a dumb machine  or program without active,  analytical critical judgment capacity is allowed to bludgeon its way through claims?

Then there is the other aspect of the law which weights inordinately on just removing material without a fight. According to one website (techdirt.com)  that referenced the WSJ piece:

"While the WSJ article is very well researched and reported, and highlights this huge problem, my one complaint with it is that it barely acknowledges how the real problem here is the structure of the DMCA 512's notice and takedown structure -- which is heavily one-sided. Under the rules of 512, if you receive a takedown notice, you don't have to remove the content, but the legal pressure and liability is heavily weighted in that direction. If you remove the contested content, you are then (mostly) free from any copyright liability. If you refuse to remove the content, you are not. And while you might still prevail should a lawsuit be brought and you can make use of other defenses, the 512 safe harbor means that you'll get out of the case faster and easier if you just remove the content (and you're much less likely to be sued).   

What's odd, however, is how little attention people seem to be paying in most of these discussions to whether or not we need to fix the DMCA in the other direction -- to fix for the fact that the notice-and-takedown provisions of the DMCA are regularly used for censorship, even of news. Late last week, the Wall Street Journal had a very thorough article (possibly paywalled) detailing how they found hundreds of news articles that were taken out of Google's search due to what appears to be bogus DMCA takedowns. After contacting Google about this, the company said that it had found approximately 52,000 news articles that had been deleted from its index via bogus copyright notices, i.e.:

After the Journal shared its findings with Google, the company conducted a review and restored more than 52,000 links it determined it had improperly removed, she said. Google said its review identified more than 100 new abusive submitters, declining to discuss individual cases. 

 Obviously this is not good enough and one can reason that the law itself is totally defective if it can be manipulated to the degree the WSJ describes, e.g.

"Someone wanting Google to hide a webpage will find a little-trafficked blog and post a copy of the content from the legitimate webpage. After backdating the plagiarized post, the complainant will file an electronic notice with Google claiming the real article is a copyright violation."

Spurious 'backdating' indeed, appears to be a general method used to trick Google into purging web searches.  But even that barely touches the ubiquitous treachery and sketchy ploys used to defeat perceived enemies. For example, in one of its investigations of sender information tied to phony complaints the Journal identified:  "names of people that couldn't be confirmed, photos of ostensible senders that were cribbed from the internet, blogs claiming to be violated that had only a few posts, and phony claims to ties with legitimate publications."

"It's a jungle out there!"  as my nephew would put it.  Fortunately, the era of scamming and pranking and punking Google to erase searches may soon be at an end.  According to the WSJ piece the U.S. Copyright Office "will soon conclude a years long study into how well DMCA is working".

 Let us hope the Copyright Office makes new demands for better oversight, not so wed to rapid takedowns - and also -  more input from human critical thinkers rather than A.I. robots and ham-fisted algorithms.

See Also:

• An Insane New Law That Must Be Stopped!

Tim Cook's Mass Coding Jobs Push Is Misplaced And Dangerous

Kids are socially dysfnnctional as it is without adding more apps, compliments of 2 million more  app creators!

In his recent (2 weeks ago) interview on the MSNBC special "Revolution' Apple CEO Tim Cook held court before a techie audience at a Chicago tech high school. Cook made some clearly outlandish claims - at least a sensible person watching would hope they are!- including 2 million coding jobs in the pipeline by 2025.  The other was a push to integrate coding into college science subjects - which has to be the dumbest idea I've heard since some loon proposed teaching creationism along side evolution.

"Wah! Wait, Mr. Copernicus! Coding IS great, it IS science!"

No, it is not. Well, ok, there is computer science - which I also took- but it is generally taken supplementary to actual science courses,. Most college physics, chemistry and biology curricula are packed as it is and many profs are hard pressed to cover all the required material, including labs, without adding coding.   And to make this idiotic plan a reality you'd basically have to double or triple the credit hours for each subject - e.g. for a 4 hour weekly General Physics course- you'd need to expand it to 8 or even 10 hours.  Note this is if Cook's plan of doing coding along side physics (or other subjects) is accepted. If, however, the student already knows programming and can do it - say for a numerical plasma model - it won't encroach on regular class time.

At the University of Alaska- Fairbanks, all science majors - certainly in the upper levels, also took Fortran but as a separate, ancillary course.  The coding (programming) then worked along side the physics topics, without encroaching on teaching time.   If a numerical model, say to replicate Boltzmann's velocity distribution, was assigned, it could be done and enhance class learning of the material. But it didn't compete with class material and detract from it.

Cook's other preposterous claim was to describe for Chris Hayes how 2 million coding jobs are on the horizon. I sincerely hope not! Personally, I believe the coding craze is over-hyped.                             Also we've beheld this sort of emphasis from Apple's CEOs before, e.g. in the person of Wunderkind Steve Jobs.  As the website, "Having the Conversation' reminded us:

"One of the earliest corporate efforts to get computers into schools was Apple’s “Kids Can’t Wait” program in 1982. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs personally lobbied Congress to pass the Computer Equipment Contribution Act, which would have allowed companies that donated computers to schools, libraries and museums to deduct the equipment’s value from their corporate income tax bills. While his efforts in Washington failed, he succeeded in his home state of California, where companies could claim a tax credit for 25 percent of the value of computer donations. The bill was clearly a corporate tax break, but it was framed in terms of educational gaps"

Cook's theme on 'Revolution' is therefore not new, other than that now the creation of "apps" dominates and is said to hold out the promise of more employment opportunity. "Lordy be, we gotta have more apps! We need 2 million more app coders!" No, we do not! The evidence already is ample to show that the proliferation of apps is having a destructive effect on the minds  of younger Americans and the political fabric and relationships of older ones.

But for Cook to suggest  2 million more  app jobs is a nightmare world.Why? Take a look at the recent (April 23) TIME article, 'The Masters of  Mind Control',  wherein we learn  how these app techies in Silicon Valley are turning kids' brains to mush and adults into slaves tethered to their smart phones. (See also the WSJ piece yesterday, 'The Instant Message Generation Gap', on how so many 20 and 30 -something workers are "elated to use apps like Slack so they no longer have to mind spelling or grammar."  It also noted how older bosses and employees disdain IM apps, and prefer email,, but have been pushed into doing IM - which means they are now "on call" at an instant, 24/7.  Pardon me, but this is bullshit insane.

Apart from the tethering there is the addiction aspect which Cook soft soaped in his MSNBC appearance. We learn the average American (not me, I don't own one): 

"Every day checks a smart phone 47 times on average or once every 19 minutes, spending roughly 5 hours peering at screens' silvery glow."

Adding: 

"There's no good consensus yet on what all this means for children's brains, adolescents' moods, and the future of our democratic institutions."

My bet is the consensus will ultimately be that all this screen time and app use is deleterious to mental and physical well being. Most disconcerting, a 2017  University of Texas study found that the mere presence of smart phones, down on the desk in front of users, undercuts the ability to perform cognitive tasks. That is, turning users into veritable dummies.  Then we also learn Silicon Valley's business model is to "keep us in thrall to our screens". 

The longer people are glued to an app - called  eyeball time - "the more money its creators make by selling our attention and access to personal data to advertisers and others."

In other words, we are not really customers or consumers but "products to be sold"

So 2 million more app  creators will likely increase the citizen to "product" mutation by ten fold not to mention the dumbing down and addiction effects. Exaggeration?  Not when former Google employee Tristan Harris, and Facebook investor Roger McNamee, (ibid.)  have flat out accused the tech giants of "deliberately creating addictive products without regard to human or social health."

And then we behold (p. 36)  the likes of Nir Eyal author of 'Hooked: How To Build Habit Forming Products'  who also runs a "Habit Summit" workshop , where participants pay up to $1,700 for the three day conference  where they are given "practical steps to design habit forming products."

THAT is why we don't need or want 2 million more app creators! Especially, as the "market" - devoid of any moral compass -  will almost always veer toward the lowest common denominator. E.g.  cheering the  most socially inimical (but profit generating) products whether video games like Grand Theft Auto  V where users get to  virtual rape assorted females, or the stupefying, zombie-inducing game of Candy crush.

Then there are the other nefarious aspects of apps, related to tracking users, especially kids. A new study by  UC Berkeley showed that of 6.000 apps in the Google Playstore a majority were in likely violation of the Children's  Online Privacy Protection Act.  Also the study found up to 57 percent may collect data without parental permission. This data includes GPS location and email addresses. These are then shared with advertisers.   As one of the study's lead authors noted on an NBC News segment two nights ago, the data is often used to "build dossiers on individuals. "   One of these apps that transmits GPS location is "Fun Kids Racing" which has been DL'd  50 million times.

Tim Cook made very little mention of any of this in his prime time performance, but why would he? If he can get two million more app makers in the pipeline to create two million more apps  - or even one thousand - that is tons of money in Apple's  already bloated pockets.   That leaves it to consumers to put the brakes on and cease allowing the techies to raid and hobble their minds, or render them virtual "coke" junkies always needing the next screen "hit".

On the other hand, if Apple, Google and others can come up with more (non-addictive, non-invasive) math and science apps I am all  for them. Say an app that can predict the result of any given chemical equation, before a student or teacher actually performs the lab experiment.   But hey, it's doubtful such  apps would rake in the profits that the addictive apps do.

See also:

http://theconversation.com/taking-a-second-look-at-the-learn-to-code-craze-86597

Winners And Losers After Net Neutrality Has Been Trashed

I've always maintained that net neutrality ought to be on the radar screen of any blogger or ordinary person that uses the net frequently. The reason is that its existence is crucial to sustaining quality of communication and also free speech.  If I was unable to get my blog up in an expeditious and timely manner, despite a particular topic (say quantum statistics) that may only be read by 10 people - believe me I wouldn't be doing this much longer. The headaches simply wouldn't be worth it. I do it now because I don't have to pay higher than normal costs to get my material published - whether educational or political opinion..

This elicits the question of why there would be those who seek to abolish net neutrality. Well, as with most arenas in our declining land, the major  Neoliberal moguls detest little guys having any say equal to their own- so hope to buy their way to faster internet speeds at the expense of the rest of us. Or to put it more bluntly, to perhaps eliminate the rest of us.

Who can forget the stirring and robust defense of net neutrality - as well as its explication - by John Oliver some months ago? The  segment can still be seen it at this link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpbOEoRrHyU

Oliver argued the net in its current form was not broken, while noting the FCC was
pushing for a 'two tier' system.  Killing net neutrality would allow private companies to go into the fast lane leaving everyone else in the slow line. To get your streaming movies or shows then might take twice as long as it does now, while higher paying corporate entities and ISPs  like Comcast - could either afford to go into the fast lane or (in the case of ISPs) charge more to average Joes to use it.

.To refresh memories, the Obama FCC - to preserve net neutrality - ceased treating the internet as an unregulated information service- instead reclassifying it as a "telecommunications service". Thereby the FCC could assert authority to regulate the net as a utility under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. Oliver was so energized at the prospect of the new FCC chairman (Ajit Pai) overturning the Obama FCC rules that he provided viewers with a rapid link to enter comments at the FCC - supposedly seeking them for 120 days: www.gofccyourself.com. 

Last week, the unthinkable transpired and Pai represented the tiebreaking vote to enable this travesty to pass. It behooves us then to look at winners and losers and also what the 3-2 decision means for free speech.

Led by Trump  toady Ajit Pai, the FCC is now set to spend the  coming months drafting new rules that, if implemented, will slow down the net considerably for any who use DL'ing, including streaming of videos (including for Netflix and Amazon services).  Pai, like other Trump -appointed hacks (Tom Price at HHS, out to destroy Medicare, Scott Pruitt at EPA, out to destroy that agency or weaken it to the point of uselessness) is convinced the Obama era rules adopted in 2015 have "harmed the internet" by retarding investment in broad band infrastructure. 

In other words net neutrality is a no-no because it represents the continuation of "heavy handed regulation which will chill investment in a service increasingly critical to life in American society".

According to Pai, mastering the lingo of Wall Street speak (WSJ, May 20, p. A11), the small ISPs are being left out of the market because they can't compete with the big boys. Pai claimed he "heard from 19 small, government -owned, municipal broadband providers" who insisted that Title II regs stood in the way of their further investment. In effect, depriving hundreds of thousands living in those municipalities of accessing new services and the small ISPs from deepening their networks.

In Pai's mind,  the basic error of too many on the left is thinking "there is a dichotomy between the consumer and the market". No, there isn't, given consumers help to define the market - but the market so formed has to be fair: not playing favorites. After all, the bible mantra of the capitalists is that the market works best when consumer choice is maximized. But it can't be if my net speed is only 1/4 as fast as that slobby looking Wyatt Koch - son of billionaire Bill Koch, eg.

Should that rich slob, just because he's rolling in inherited money,  have more right to higher web speeds (to sell his stupid rich man shirts)  because he can pay for them? Hell no!

 According to Pai (ibid.):

"To me, markets and market -oriented policies have delivered far more value to the consumer than pre-emptive regulation ever has."

If Pai's arguments were really sound why not first do all he and the FCC can to make all net speeds much higher as opposed to "comparable to Estonia" as John Oliver joked in his piece.  The reason is that Pai and his cronies want to slow net speeds down even more for the rest of us so that private entities, that can pay a lot more, get preferential treatment in the form of much greater speed, efficiency.

What about winners and losers in the coming debacle?

After the FCC released its plan in late November, well-known telecom and media analysts Craig Moffett and Michael Nathanson wrote in a note to investors that the FCC plan dismantles “virtually all of the important tenets of net neutrality itself.”

That could result in phone and cable companies forcing people to pay more to do what they want online. The technology community, meanwhile, fears that additional online tolls could hurt startups who can’t afford to pay them — and, over the long term, diminish innovation.

Losers then will almost certainly include most millennials who consume their sports, news, entertainment via online streaming. They can expect speeds to slow to a snail's pace unless they pay more. Also affected will be those who do frequent youtube spots. With no net neutrality they will be relegated to the slow lane and take hours to upload even a five or ten minute video.   In 2007, for example, the Associated Press found Comcast was blocking or throttling some file-sharing. AT&T blocked Skype and other internet calling services on the iPhone until 2009. They also aren’t backing away from subtler forms of discrimination that favor their own services.

Of course, the deep pockets of Google, Netflix, Amazon may well be sufficient - provided their share prices remain high - to pay off ISPs to make sure consumers can access our service.

A far more likely target for loss is free speech.With this FCC ruling, corporations will have control over what content citizens can access on the internet. It could be as simple as Comcast blocking websites with negative comments on their service. Or it could be as sinister as an ISP blocking access to political content, news and writing that it opposes. Just think of it! Much of the content on this blog is highly controversial, for example the strong anti-Trump stance, and also to a degree the anti-conservative stance.

If you are a proponent of every American’s right to free speech, this should be frightening to the core. No company or corporation should be able to control what information we can consume, with a few exceptions, e.g. bomb- making manuals put out by terrorists. But no interested reader should be denied anti-Trump material such as often appears on this blog.

ISPs like Comcast have said they would never take it this far. But why do they even need the option? When Comcast is your only choice, what prevents them from extracting every penny possible from you and the online businesses that constantly inundate our lives?

This is exactly why many of us inveighed against the 1996 Telecommunications Act.  Writing in his book, The Problem of the Media, Robert McChesney had this to say (p. 51);

"The corruption in media policy making culminated in the passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, arguably one of the most important pieces of U.S. legislation. The law rewrote the regulatory regime for radio, television, cable television, and satellite communication - indeed, all of electronic communication including the internet.

The operating premise of the law was that the new communications technologies - combined with increased appreciation for the genius of the market- rendered the traditional regulatory market moot.

The solution therefore was to lift regulations and ownership restrictions from commercial media and communication companies, and allow competition in the marketplace to develop, and reduce the government's role to that of protecting private property.

There was virtually no dissent whatsoever to this legislation from either party, the law sailed through both houses of congress, and was signed by a jubilant President Clinton in February, 1996. Corporate CEOs regarded it as their "Magna Carta"."

The preceding  lesson from McChesney ought to be a no-brainer for us now: not to be fooled again by the "deregulation is good for ya" banter. Fool us once, shame on them, fool us twice, shame on US.

So far, there have been hundreds of public protests against Pai’s plan and more than 1 million calls to Congress through a pro-net neutrality coalition’s site. Smaller tech websites such as Reddit, Kickstarter and Mozilla put dramatic overlays on their sites Tuesday in support of net neutrality. Twitter on Wednesday was promoting #NetNeutrality as a trending topic. Other big tech companies were more muted in their support.

Public-interest groups Free Press and Public Knowledge are already promising to go after Pai’s rules in the courts. There may also be attempts to legislate net neutrality rules, which the telecom industry supports. Sen. John Thune, a South Dakota Republican, on Tuesday called for “bipartisan legislation” on net neutrality that would “enshrine protections for consumers with the backing of law.”

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/david-morris/76842/to-save-the-internet-we-must-own-the-networks

Excerpt:

"Pai is dead wrong that this flurry of activity has been done to advance the public interest. Indeed, as one might expect from a man who once worked for telecom giant Verizon, Pai has directed an unprecedented abdication by the FCC of its responsibility to protect the public welfare. ...The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the oldest organization defending civil liberties in a digital age, warns that allowing ISPs to monitor and manipulate data makes the web more vulnerable to attacks....

Adding insult to injury, Pai’s FCC also halted enforcement of a rule demanding Internet providers “take reasonable measures to protect customer (personal information) from unauthorized use, disclosure or access."

And:

 http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/jacob-sugarman/76774/is-fcc-chairman-ajit-pai-a-closeted-alt-right-sympathizer

All Manner of Energy Waste for Sustaining ‘the Cloud’

It’s a trope amongst internet users that ‘all manner of virtual memory is stored in the cloud’ – the apt metaphor for the vast interconnected storage infrastructure that delivers to us the results of our Google searches in seconds. But how many understand that each of those searches made, or other use – including game playing, or downloading music, apps or even lectures, constitutes a massive energy wastage?


Indeed, the energy consuming ‘cloud’ is something that has to be tamed if we are to have any chance of an energy future after we reach twenty years past Peak Oil (which occurred in 2005) and our existing oil stores are reduced to what they were in 1985. To put it another way: Can a world of some 8 billion live on the same oil as 6 billion living in 1985? The answer would seem to be ‘no’ given we are talking about high EROEI(energy returned on energy invested) oil, which means yielding 15 to 16 gallons of oil for every oil used to drill. The other side, apart from Peak Oil concerns, are the climate science issues: if we continue to use so much fossil fuels (including coal) we will speed the onset of a runaway greenhouse planet.


Consider this, given all the primary net users, from banks, to defense contractors, government agencies, media companies and the billion global Facebook users, barely 6-12% of energy available is utilized to perform computations, upload security apps or make friend-to-friend connections. All the rest is wasted, by which I mean the remaining energy 88%-94% is used merely for backup and redundancy in case servers fail. (Many large data centers actually include thousands of linked lead acid batteries – in addition to generators – to power computers in case of a grid failure as brief as a few hundredths of a second.)


The extraneous use to support redundancy and ensure servers are running, also has led to violations such as reported in the NY Times (Sept. 23, p. 20).(For example amazon.com was cited for 20 violations in Northern Virginia over 3 years for running generators without an environmental permit). Meanwhile, a few companies, i.e. Google and Facebook, are using re-engineered software and cooling systems to decrease wasted power.


Some readers, for example, may have caught a glimpse of Google’s ‘innards’ featured on ABC News three nights ago, where somewhat higher ambient temperatures are now used to reduce the need for greater cooling. Still, Google’s data centers consume nearly 300 million watts annually (ibid.) while Facebook’s consume 60 million watts. According to Mark Bramfitt a former utility company exec quoted in the Times piece:


“It’s just not sustainable. They’re going to hit a brick wall.”


Just keeping millions of users’ emails (which they refuse to delete) stored in servers takes a hell of a lot of energy. Just one company’s clients, e.g. for the NYSE, generates up to 2,000 gigabytes of data per day that must be stored for years. It is estimated that some 1.8 trillion gigabytes of digital information was created globally last year – extracting nearly 90 billion kilowatt hours from the grid. As long as that information needs storage or re-use it’s a continual energy drain.


Meanwhile, consumers haven’t processed how much they contribute to the energy drain, simply sending enormous audio files or video files back and forth, or playing virtual games.  It wouldn’t be so bad if the actual uses only required the limited amounts of energy to perform the real time actions- whether uploading, downloading, sharing audio files or whatever, but they also demand enormous backup energy held in reserve. Once this energy is tied up it's not available for other uses, including to the grid.

According to David Capuccio, a managing VP and chief of research at Gartner – a technology research firm, typical server utilizations reach 7-12%, the rest is redundant backup waste. As he puts it (ibid.):

“That’s how we’ve over-provisioned and run data centers for years. ‘Let’s overbuild just in case we need it’. That level of comfort costs a lot of money. It costs a lot of energy.”


In the latter regard, many users forget or don’t process that servers aren’t the only components in data centers consuming energy. One also has: industrial cooling systems to keep the hardware temperature controlled, circuitry to keep backup batteries charged, and simple “ohms” dissipation in the extensive wiring. All of these ‘eat’ electrical energy’. The fact is that the energy dissipated in the latter can often translate into as much as 30 times the amount of electricity used to carry out the basic purposes of the data center.

More recently, to check the extent of all this, a company called Viridity was brought on board to conduct diagnostic testing at data centers. Ironically, its engineers also found that its facility – like dozens of others surveyed – used most of its power on servers that were doing little except consuming electricity.

Viridity's exterior tests backed up what was discovered at Viridity itsellf. In one sample of 333 servers monitored in 2010, more than half were found to be “comatose” in the jargon of the monitors. Nearly three fourths of the servers in the sample were using less than 10% of their computational power on average, to process data. The other 90% was being used in reserve to prop up the servers in case of failure.

Who are to blame for a lot of these problems? We users! According to Bruce Taylor, Vice President of the Uptime Institute:

“If you tell somebody they can’t access Youtube or download Netflix, they tell you it’s a God-given right.”

That attitude permeates not only ordinary netizens but those operating large data processing centers at banks, for industry, the New York Stock Exchange and government. NO one wants to even contemplate loss of data or interruption of a transaction because of a fractional second glitch in energy available. Hence, all that waste-energy in zombie servers which do little other than to support the main servers….in case they go down.

Perhaps what we all need to do is make more conscious choices and trade-offs in our uses. If we send photos to a friend or relative on a particular day, we agree not to use Youtube to view or download videos. If we download from Youtube, we agree not to go online for hours to partake in virtual online games or whatever. In this way, if all net users make trade off decisions we can make the total usage go down and hopefully let the main server centers know they can release some of that backup power.


Of course, industry and government also have to be willing to do their share, and we need a more efficient grid system overall. The one we have is decades overdue for revamping, as I noted in assorted blog posts about the possible effects of coronal mass ejections.


Perhaps if Mitt Romney volunteered to put that extra $2 trillion he wants to waste on the Pentagon toward grid revamping and infrastructure repair, he might be taken more seriously. But on the other hand, so far nothing Romney has said makes any sense and often contradicts his earlier statements. In this sense, one has to go along with Barack Obama’s perceptive take of “Romnesia”!

Alas, we citizens, faced with an ever more frugal energy future as oil supplies wind down can’t afford to put a guy in the White House who promises to consume even more fossil fuels and at a faster rate. Perhaps leaving us with as few working computers as the characters portrayed on the new series ‘Revolution’ within a decade!