What could it mean?

Gawker has an article today about how Julia Allison may have broken the law by converting 2,500 of her Facebook ‘Friends’ into ‘Fans’ without their consent. Apparently, this violates laws against commercial appropriation – “simply put, the right to control whether one’s name and likeness is used in an advertisement to give the appearance of an endorsement.” Consenting to be friends with Julia Allison isn’t the same as consenting to publicly endorse her as a ‘Fan.’

The article quotes privacy expert Daniel Solove, who has written that the way that Facebook uses the ‘Become a Fan’ feature is actually against privacy law in all cases:

Suppose Michael Jordan says on national TV that he likes Wheaties. Does this allow Wheaties to use his image on its cereal box or in a commercial? The answer is no. The fact that Jordan says he likes Wheaties can be used in a news story; it can be used in a biography of Jordan. But it cannot be used in a commercial advertisement.

By extension, Solove argues, if Michael Jordan decides to ‘Become a Fan’ of Wheaties on Facebook, that information cannot be used in a commercial advertisement either – but on Facebook, it often is.

I’ll be speaking at a symposium at the Columbus Museum of Art on May 1 and 2. Tying in with the CMA’s George Tooker exhibition, the symposium “addresses the ways in which the visual arts confront or collude with surveillance, and the particular effects of surveillance that the visual arts might be best at revealing or manifesting.” I am super excited; the lineup includes artist Julia Scher and a keynote by David Simon (creator of The Wire).

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Paddy Johnson has an interesting post about privacy today:

A need for privacy, however– also listed by psychologist Gary A. Davis as an attribute amongst creative people– seems much more dubious, particularly in the age of Facebook.  In fact, as it pertains to creativity, nobody’s discussing the matter at all.

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The Sun reports that police in the UK are using Facebook to find young people with knives and guns. Superintentent Bob Hamilton from Strathclyde Police says,

He said: “We show the parents their pictures, recover the weapons and make sure they know that behaviour is unacceptable.

“We have large kitchen knives, axes, samurai swords, baseball bats, a huge number and different type of weapons – in simple terms weapons that can kill.”

Samurai swords?

Strangely when a friend of mine got stabbed at a New Years Eve party in Austin, TX several years ago, the police found his assailant because he was posing with knives on MySpace.

Murtaza Vali wrote a nice review of The New Normal in the Fall 2008 issue of Bidoun Magazine:

Right click to download the full review:

(Page 1 of review -900K JPG)

(Page 2 of review – 850K JPG)

Vali, Murtaza. “The New Normal: Artists Space, New York.” Bidoun Magazine. Fall 2008: 190-191.

Donations to the Yes on Prop 8 campaign are a matter of public record. Since the passing of the bill, it has been widely noted that the CEO of Cinemark made a large donation to the campaign. Ironically, Cinemark is soon to be releasing a biopic of Harvey Milk, which now faces a boycott from the No camp – a large percentage of its audience, one might think.

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CNN took a page from the Cabinet magazine playbook today. In this video, they have graphologist Sheila Kurtz analyze doodles by Obama and Palin that have found their way into the public record. (Download Palin’s drawing here, Obama’s drawing is after the jump).

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A write up from The New Normal exhibition in Huarte, Spain that I finally got around to scanning is after the jump. The online version is here.

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The NY Times reports that Obama is going to have to give up his Blackberry when he becomes President. How will he cope? The article also reveals that George W. Bush’s pre-Presidential email address was G94B@aol.com.