Once upon a time, Britain had a working draft of a new bill that was primarily meant to help improve the country’s broadband infrastructure. It was being spearheaded by the British Business Secretary Lord Mandelson, and many in the media though it sounded pretty good.

But then something odd happened. Entertainment industry kingpin David Geffen invited Mandelson down to the Greek island of Corfu for a little all-expenses-paid mixer. They presumably ate some moussaka, drank a little retsina and talked. And soon after that meeting, the Digital Economy Bill underwent a few minor tweaks. News of those tweaks recently leaked to the media, and have provoked a growing storm of reaction. Mostly because the bill now has nothing to do with broadband infrastructure improvement, and everything to do with giving the entertainment industry free rein to investigate and punish illegal file sharers by cutting off their internet access, fining them enormous sums of money and possibly even throwing them in jail.

Some of the highlights of the new bill include:

• Fines of 50,000 pounds if someone in your household is accused of illegal file sharing.
• A requirement by internet service providers to spy on their customers in order to look for evidence the entertainment industry can use to sue illegal file sharers.
• Fines of 250,000 pounds for ISPs who refuse to take part in this spying.
• “Deputizing” entertainment industry groups with the power to investigate and impose punishments.
• And, best of all, the ability for the British Business Secretary to just make up new punishments and enforcement systems whenever he wants. And yes, that ability is actually written into the bill. There’s no review or oversight built into the bill for these new punishments.

For those who believe in a free internet, it certainly raises some ugly questions around freedom and privacy issues. And the bill’s seeming disregard for due legal process and that whole innocent-until-proven-guilty thing raises some red flags. But at least David Geffen’s happy with it…

It’s interesting how lately there has been a little bit of a backlash against social media in the workplace and traditional media. Most especially if your workplace is on a football field, basketball court, hockey rink or baseball diamond. While the NFL has banned Twitter from being used within a certain time span on game days, the other leagues are hot on its heels with their own clamp downs. And it’s not just pro sports franchises that want their employees to keep their head in the game. (no pun intended) The majority of companies in the US ban social media in the workplace; including Facebook, Twitter, Myspace and Linkedin. (Seriously…that one was made specifically for business networking was it not?) This according to recent research from Robert Half Technology, the international IT staffing firm. The problem supposedly lies in businesses not seeing the profitability of social media. It is seen now by some as a distraction from the many tasks at hand instead of a tool to aid in connectivity. Or at the very least, employers are challenged by the new platforms and technologies, finding the utility of social media to be ambiguous. “How does this make me money?” The business owner will ask. To which the accountant will respond “It doesn’t appear to” but that’s a narrow way of looking at things. In fact a recent study done by Citibank shows that a minority but increasing number of small companies entering the social media sphere have found these platforms to be useful in generating business leads or revenue.

Small business have been timid in joining the party because of these traditional ways of looking at media, advertising and concerns about the valid role of social media in productivity and profit. But if social media didn’t generate profit then why did the American Federal Trade Commission roll out the first major piece of advertising legislation since the 1980s specifically to deal with issues related to companies using blogs and social media to market products? Advertising has adapted to the point where the old rules hardly apply to the new media and methods. And though social media and word of mouth can work for small business in Vancouver or elsewhere, it is the scalability factor that makes the tool so powerful for larger companies. Viral advertising is a great example. The FTC is continuing to work closely with the industry so it can better understand viral marketing and issues of legality. You can make a viral ad campaign for…well you can make it for free. And then you can send it out for…free. And it can reach millions and millions of people. Your overhead? Free. Your ROI on that piece of media if successful? About as good as it gets.

Viral campaigns are most powerful when they reaches millions, like grapeshot from a cannon. And it also works best when it includes a call to action that draws consumers into sites and stores; geographically dispersed and numerous like chains or franchises. They are also great if you generate ad revenue based e-commerce or by the number of unique visits to your content driven site. Mom and pop stores with a single location don’t benefit from social media grapeshot, they benefit from using it as a more focused and directed tool to engage their clientele and local market. So for the accountants that look at the numbers and say social media isn’t making money, just because the Facebook account isn’t attached to the cash register- they need to assess how it’s being used. This goes for both geographically dispersed companies and locally focused ones- because obviously it’s making money for a lot of other companies. It’s become such a powerful force in our world that it is being re-assesed by managers of companies, major sports leagues, our highest legal institutions and even entire countries as was the case of Facebook and the Canadian Privacy Commission. So unless a business owner or manager wants to exist in splendid isolation from the rest of the world, people such as myself suggest they work with the forces of nature rather than against them. If a business is anti-social media, they are being anti-social-period. And we all know how successful anti-social people are in the marketplace.

When Google Street View was introduced, privacy advocates had a field day on their hands. Hundreds of trucks roaming the country photographing everything in their sights even sounds Orwellian. Even with Google’s automatic blurring of faces and license plates, there were still cases where StreetView was leaving people’s lives a little too transparent.

New technology from the Georgia Institute Of Technology blows StreetView out of the water. It allows information from live camera feeds to be inserted into Google Earth. Literally, cars move on the virtual freeway in sync with reality. Multiple camera angles can be merged to create smooth and detailed motion. Look in the video below to see how they can capture a soccer game in a public park, and include a virtual representation of every pass and kick on Google Earth. The system can even handle large gaps between cameras (for example, two highway traffic cams half a mile apart) and will extrapolate motion between them.

Dynamic mapping does make for a more interesting experience on Google Earth. Clouds move, rivers flow, and the roads hum with traffic. Some of this may be extremely useful. I’d love to get a 10 second fly-by of my morning commute before I left the house to see what traffic is like and check for road-work.That doesn’t mean this is worth the huge privacy cost.

This technology doesn’t require custom camera equipment or installations, which makes it compatible with existing CCTV systems. In the camera-happy UK, there are 4.2 million security cameras covering both public and private property. Just take a second and think about what it would mean if each of those cameras were connected to this software. Every step taken on a public street could be uploaded to the web in realtime – and made highly accessible. That last point is perhaps the most important. Much of our time spent in public is captured on camera, but the footage is only seen by a handful of eyes (and if the statistics are true, not very attentive ones). Technology like this would merge all of the disparate, isolated, information into one easy-to-access place. With a little facial recognition software thrown in, and some links to various social networks, this really could be the last nail in the coffin of anonymity.

Sure, there would be an uproar over sharing security camera data this way – but ultimately, technology always moves forward and information always wants to be free. Somewhere, sometime soon, a system like this will cover entire cities and towns – and having an affair will never be the same.

There’s a piece of news that is dominating headlines in Canada today – our best hockey players, assembled in Calgary for an Olympic team orientation camp, will play their first actual scrimmage this evening. Oh wait, that’s not it. No, the really big news, at least for us avid netizens, is that Facebook has declared they will make privacy changes after a bit of an ass whupping from Canada’s privacy commissioner.

It isn’t new news that Facebook sometimes plays a little fast and loose with the privacy of its members. According to the American Civil Liberties Association, the social networking site provides too much access to your data whenever you take part in Facebook quizzes or play other games on the site. These third party developers, of which there are hundreds of thousands in 180 countries around the world, are given access to startling amounts of data about you. And there’s nothing anybody can do about those companies then turning around and sharing selling your data to anyone they want.

Currently, the problem lies in the fact that users who want access to these third-party apps and games do, by virture of signing up for them, give Facebook permission to share that data. And that’s where Canada’s privacy commission stepped in. They ruled that some of Facebook’s practices contravened Canada’s private sector privacy act. And they stated that Facebook had 30 days to comply with their new recommendations curtailing the practices, or be taken to court on Monday.

Happily, they have agreed to follow the recommendations and stop sharing the private data of Canadians, and everyone else, to these third-party developers, thus avoiding a court case and all the negative publicity that goes along with it. And with that news, Canadians can relax and go back to worrying about the really important stuff…like whether Sidney Crosby and the boys will kick butt at the 2010 Winter Games.

Privacy. Many believe it is a thing of the past, like horses. Some believe it is simply reserved for the outrageously wealthy, Masonic Lodges, and the Pope. But we in Canada are fortunate enough to have a government that believes we still have privacy, and have given Facebook a serious rap of the knuckles for violating it.

The young social media giant is accused of having “serious privacy gaps” according to our privacy commissioner, and is in direct violation of Canadian law. But AS IF you didn’t already know that. I mean why would they offer all those social media apps and things? For fun? You think it’s all about fun? You’re telling me that every time you clicked on that app or filled out some personal info that you didn’t think you were tagged in a demographic consumer study. I mean COME ON, why do social media sites like Facebook exist? For our amusement alone? The Canadian government is just catching up with this now? Do I have to say COME ON again? It was noted almost 20 years ago that the age of the private citizen was over as the Globe and Mail’s Mathew Ingram reminds us. Talk about bureaucratic lag.

Third parties have been sniffing in our garbage and peeking in our windows for years. Our subscriptions to magazines, our coupons sent in from Captain Crunch boxes, and phone calls received at 9pm asking us how we felt about random colours and phrases? If you were born after 1990 you probably think that’s just the way the world has always been. And I believe the CEO of Facebook was. Which perhaps speaks to the company’s feelings on privacy. But how else are these crucial third parties supposed to know what we want? This is their way of asking us, they mean well but are too shy to approach us face to face. They only want to make us happy. Don’t you want to be happy?

The fact still remains that we willingly put this information up about ourselves, and we have become quite accepting of the fact that we are on CCTV cameras throughout our cities, with our complete personal information in numerous consumer databases, numerous government databases, and are all renters of linkedin, Facebook, Myspace, and other profiles for anyone to see with absolute ease. If I don’t want someone to know something about me I don’t put it online.  That being said- everything about me is available online or through a third party.  So what on earth the privacy commissioner hopes to do besides make a name for herself in the altruistic cause of protecting our non-existent privacy I say good luck. I’m glad there’s a modern day Don Quixote looking out for us all.