No Spying Without Permission
by Charlie White

RealNetworks is a company that has seen considerable success over the past few years. Now, it's a big shot. It runs roughshod over users, gathering volumes of information about their listening habits in its RealJukebox app without even telling them. As a result, some have cried out in anguish because their privacy has been invaded. Others have called the incident just plain creepy. But above all, thinking humanoids can see that slippery slope that begins with spying on your music preferences and ends with your every personal detail laid out for advertisers to scrutinize, all of which bodes ill for those who value privacy and freedom.

At least that's what a group from Pennsylvania thinks. They've filed a class-action against RealNetworks, charging that the company violated the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, state privacy laws and consumer protection statutes. The flack here is that RealNetworks has the ability to gather information from its users and did just that without telling anyone. I say, sue 'em -- I hope they take RealNetworks to the cleaners, winning vast sums of cash for each and every RealJukebox user whose rights were violated.

That phrase, "without telling anyone," is where the real problem lies. There are plenty of Web sites where I'm more than happy to give up all the information I can possibly think of. For example, the site moviecritic.com has a database of nearly every film ever produced, and asks that I rate each one I've seen. When I do, it compares my responses with millions of other visitors to the site, and comes up with an amazingly accurate prediction of how I'll like movies I haven't seen yet. That's power! And it's the only way to get such power -- revealing vast sums of personal preference information. But if LikeMinds (the maker of this comparison engine software) sold this information to advertisers trying to sell me DVDs, I'd feel betrayed.

An even scarier fact is that snooping on you from within your computer software is something that RealNetworks is not the first to do. Has this happened before? Find the answer yourself: If you're a Windows user go to your Start menu, click on Run, type "regedit" and press return. When Registry Editor opens, hit F3 and type "GUID"' into the box. After you get past lots of entries with the word "guide" in them, you'll see plenty of references to a "GUID," which stands for Globally Unique Identifier. Among many others, Internet Explorer uses them. Yes, it has happened before and will continue as long as we allow it.

It's this sneaky stuff that bugs me. And it's not just software reporting back to its maker on a daily basis, either. Another thing that's starting to get on my nerves is the software inviting itself into my Startup directory, and insinuating itself into the startup sequence with no way to remove it other than uninstalling the entire application or editing the registry. Who do these software-making dweebs think they are, helping themselves to my startup sequence without my permission? How can they get away with installing AOL Instant Messenger without a peep, or slipping in a piece of RealPlayer to run in the background so it will, according to RealMedia, "start up faster?" These annoying gadflies are like uninvited guests, barging into your party thirty minutes early and then when the party's over, won't leave despite numerous telltale hints like stretches, yawns and comments about a need to get up early the next morning.

So, as Web streaming content creators, what are we to do? Don't we need ad revenue to survive? Don't our advertisers just love to get detailed demographic information about our visitors? Sure. That's all fine, as long as we tell the users we're doing it. No more sneaking around, folks. RealNetworks issued a gigantic mea culpa for its misdeeds, apologizing to users and the world and humiliating itself over this. It may even lose a big court case because if it. We can all learn a lesson from this: If you're going to spy on someone, tell them!

Charlie White has been writing about new media and digital video since it was the laughingstock of the television industry. A technology journalist and columnist for the past seven years, White is also an Emmy-winning Executive Producer, video editor and shot-calling PBS TV director. Talk back -- send him a note!

Other Columns:
Charlie White's Webcasting Predictions for 2000
Webcasting? This Sucks. by Charlie White
Fat Pipes Change Media World by Charlie White
Casting Our Net by Frank Moldstad