June’s about done and the chaff accumulated through the spring is about gone.

It is a curious effect of copy and paste, of quote and translation.  Today, one can easily find fifteen minutes of fame, in the most literal of senses.  This is not news.

The oddity is that you can find that you were famous months after the fact.

Back in February, when Facebook was considering some controversial TOS changes, I was (apparently) early in joining one of the the Facebook protest groups.  Now admittedly, I did care about the TOS issue: I posted items and used my status message to try and raise awareness.  I made one or two wall posts in said protest group.  Mostly, I wanted to clarify that the TOS wasn’t seizing copyright ownership, but the distribution license had onerous consequences.  I then said that in response, I deleted my uploaded photographs, save a profile picture or two.

Now, mind you, I have no precise idea what I said : after Facebook abandoned the proposed terms, I quit the group.  With many such Facebook groups having been formed, and hundreds of thousands of users joining them, and in turn, generating thousands of posts and threads, my original is sufficiently misplaced.

None of this would be of any interest to me – or to any right thinking individual – but for the curious addendum.  A couple of weeks ago, I googled variants of my name to see where this site was showing up.  Lo and behold, by page three, nearly all the links were in Spanish.  This was of particular curiosity to me, as my Spanish aptitude never progressed beyond some Fs and Ds in high school classes.  (Immersion methods do not work well with me, unfortunately, it took me years to figure this out and learn what does.  Another story for another time.)  Apparently, some tech writer for the EFE news service needed a quote for his piece on the TOS changes – and the user response – and quoted me.  In turn, this article was reposted and quoted by aggregators and blogs across the Latinternet.  This happens, nothing special.  However, since the original quoting was translated into a language I don’t speak or read, I had no idea until May, despite the EFE being the fourth largest news agency in the world.

Now, I cannot be certain why the original author quoted me (and I should point out, that while I don’t recall the precise wording, the translation entirely correlates with  my recollection of what I wrote) but I suspect it is because:

• I wrote with a reserved, educated tone.
• I separated my understanding of the situation from my response.
• I sounded like I knew what I was talking about.
• I am from New York.

To invoke a bit of Cialdini, the first two strike me as social liking through identification.  The first point results in a tone similar to modern journalism, and not only garners the sympathy of a writer accustomed to the style, but in using a similar style, it fits smoothly into a newspaper piece.  Similarly, the second is akin to an editorial response or, more liberally, the conclusions of a reporter.

Coupled with the a writing style, (I’m glad the reporter kept the “permissive and perpetual” bit in Spanish – I liked it enough to remember) simply sounding like I had read the new TOS and was capable of calmly correcting others probably secured me a air of authority.  Finally simply being from New York (my primary Facebook network), which the reporter did specify in the quote attribution, is both identifiable and desirable from a global perspective.  This is certainly liking and authority at play – a well spoken, informed, urbane “expert” from an international city says… – but also maintains a smooth flow for the reader who already has some idea where New York is, as opposed to stopping to wonder what or where Buffalo is.

Still, this story is just a an anecdote, a curiosity of a google search, and the subsequent analysis somewhat facile and obvious.  The lesson is not:  if you choose to write with a certain style, you will “speak” louder than others in a written medium.  Make sure that you want those words repeated: if you write well-formed drivel or masterful and erroneous prose, you may find the echo much louder than expected and the ringing criticism deafening.

This is the burden of educated speech, whether educated in fact or in tone: if you write with care, have a care with what you write.

For fuck’s sake, it’s bad enough you wreck the KJV, but seriously?
I mean, Jews go through the bother of making these wonderful texts, some nice goyim translate them reasonably well, and then the evil goyishe masses have to ruin them.

Well maybe Prussian Blue can put it in song form. Oh, wait…

The children are right.  It is not an indictment; it is reconciliation.

The academics are right, albeit inadvertently so:  German is beautiful; the fault lies in those to whom its legacy is bestowed.

(D)er schreibt wenn es dunkelt nach Deustschland.

While letting a friend use my computer to log in to NYU home, I saw this (publically accesible) document, asserting NYU’s stance in assisting RIAA with going after NYU students and network users. You can find it here. In it, NYU pretty much stipulates its complete compliance with RIAA and not the law (judging by the actions asserted, not the apologia presented). Worse yet, this Provost bandies about the fallacious “you wouldn’t steal a CD” argument, all the while wrapping herself and her argument in the American flag, invoking Abraham Lincoln, and academic responsibility, misrepresenting intellectual history.

There is an apparent divide here – better schools (Harvard in particular) have voiced opposition to these abuses and lesser schools toe the DMCA line. It’s sad to see my alma mater fall in the latter class, especially in such a poorly argued fashion.