Portability, Traceability and Data Ownership - Part II

[return to Part I]

The Dilemma of Missing Information

Here is a four minute video interview of Chris Saad, Co-founder and CEO of Faraday Media. If you are pressed for time, just catch the first minute and a half. Chris is also Co-founder and Chairperson of Dataportability.org of which Faraday Media is a sponsor. In Part I of this multi-entry blog I began with the video clip called Data Portability – Video that is a promo for Dataportability.org.

Learning from the Future at the Next Web with Chris Saad from Maarten on Vimeo.

Right after the Facebook/Scoble incident, Dataportability.org gained momentum and membership from individuals associated with the likes of Google, Plaxo, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Flickr, SixApart and Microsoft. At Chris' suggestion I, too, have just recently joined their DataPortability Policy Action Group.

Henry Story, a staff engineer for Sun Microsystems, made the following interesting comments on the Sun Babelfish blog about Chris Saad’s Data Portability group and the Data Portability – Video.

“Will the Data Portability group [at Dataportability.org] get the best solution together? …. [O]ne wonders whether XML is not the solution to their problem. Won't XML make data portability possible, if everyone agrees on what they want to port? Of course getting that agreement on all the topics in the world is a never ending process....

But the question is also whether portability is the right issue. Well in some ways it is. Currently each web site has information locked up in html formats … [which makes] it difficult to export the data, which each service wants to hold onto as if it was theirs to own.

Another way of looking at this is that the Data Portability group cannot so much be about technology as policy. The general questions it has to address are question of who should see what data, who should be able to copy that data, and what they should be able to do with it. As a result the policy issue of Data Portability does require one to solve the technical problem of distributed identity: how can people maintain the minimum number of identities on the web? (ie not one per site) Another issue that follows right upon the first is that if one wants information to only be visible to a select group of people - the "who sees what" part of the question - then one also needs a distributed way to be able to specify group membership, be it friendship based or other. The [Data Portability – Video] … makes that point very clearly why having to recreate one's social network on every site is impractical.

Story’s comments are a good setup for what I want to address. And what I want to address is how to make a connection between data portability and what I call the ‘frayed ends and laterals’ of complex product supply chains.

Along the way I want to pay attention to those readers (i.e., the vast majority of the regular, non-techie folks in the world) who are hanging back wondering what an XML object is. Let’s weave in a little history with a simple example, shall we?

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web. W3C is headed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the first web browser and the primary author of the original Uniform Resource Locator (URL), HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and HyperText Markup Language (HTML) specifications. These are the principal technologies that form the basis of the World Wide Web.

For example, consider this product pedigree written in natural language.

Product Pedigree Document
Manufacturer ID = Safe Toy Company
Product Serial Number = STOY991
Product Description = Painted Toy
Product Info To Supply Chain = 0% lead in paint
Product Info To Govt Regulator = Less than 600ppm of lead in paint by weight

A beneficial characteristic of the World Wide Web is that you can read language like the foregoing example in a natural way but ‘behind the scenes’ (i.e., behind the web browser interface) this natural language representation can be constructed in different ways for different purposes.

The same natural language representation written as an HTML information object using an HTML authoring software application (also called an HTML editor) would read behind the scenes as follows.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN">
<body><p>
Product Pedigree Document<br>
Manufacturer ID = Safe Toy Company<br>
Product Serial Number = STOY991<br>
Product Description = Painted Toy<br>
Product Info To Supply Chain = 0% lead in paint<br>
ProductInfo To Govt Regulator = Less than 600ppm of lead in paint by weight
</p></body></html>

Because HTML objects are designed primarily for creating static websites, and not for dynamic information sharing, W3C has further developed standards for structured electronic sharing in the form of Extensible Markup Language (XML) objects for facilitating the emerging Semantic Web.

With gracious assistance from my good friend and collaborator, Dr. Marvin Stone, here’s an example of a granular XML information object created in an XML editor that would be naturally represented through a web browser as above.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<Pedigree>
<ManufacturerID>Safe Toy Company</ManufacturerID>
<ProductSerialNumber>STOY991</ProductSerialNumber>
<ProductDescription>Painted Toy</ProductDescription>
<ProductInfoToSupplyChain>0% lead in paint</ProductInfoToSupplyChain>
<ProductInfoToGovtRegulator>Less than 600ppm of lead in paint by weight</ProductInfoToGovtRegulator>
<OtherData>Document Type Definitions</OtherData>
</Pedigree>

This type of granular XML object works fine for short, vertically integrated supply chains covered by one or two enterprise systems where a small number of supply chain participants agree on what they want to port. But due to prevalent fear factors (and other policies) that prevent or otherwise affect information sharing along lengthy, complex information supply chains, there is a critical need for a more refined XML tool.

Here’s an example of a hypothetical, author-controlled XML object that would be created/authored/constructed using an extension to the foregoing XML editor that we could call an A-XML editor extension (i.e., author-controlled XML editor extension).

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<Pedigree>
<PedigreeID UniquePointer =" 99087 "/>
<ManufacturerID UniquePointer =" 00372 "/>
<ProductSerialNumber UniquePointer =" 43229 "/>
<ProductDescription UniquePointer =" 23444 "/>
<ProductInfoToSupplyChain UniquePointer =" 66221 "/>
<ProductInfoToGovtRegulator UniquePointer =" 66333 "/>
<Permissions UniquePointer =" 37911 "/>
     <!-- Manufacturer information sharing permissions -->
<OtherData>Document Type Definitions</OtherData>
</Pedigree>

In the process of being authored by the toy manufacturer, this A-XML object would be constructed to point to a central repository of uniquely identified data containing the toy manufacturer's unique ID, the unique identifiers of the painted toy’s pedigree, and a unique identifier of the toy manufacturer's information sharing permissions.

Once distributed by the manufacturer/author to a lengthy supply chain, this A-XML object would provide greater control, visibility and traceability one-share, two-shares, three-shares, etc. away from the author. As other supply chain participants access the A-XML object (using a compatible XML editor) to confirm the toy’s pedigree, the toy manufacturer would be provided with supply chain visibility never before experienced.

For instance, the data element "0% lead in paint" uniquely identified as 66221 would be accessible by any supply chain participant registered with the central repository and using a compatible XML editor. The data element "Less than 600ppm of lead in paint by weight" uniquely identified as 66333 would only be accessible by permitted government regulators also registered with the central repository. (For those of you concerned with the ethics of representing one thing to consumers while reporting something else to the government, check out Are Food Labels Reliable?)

In my first journal entry to this blog I offered this:

“Unscrupulous supply chain participants will always try to hide in the ‘fog’ of their supply chains. The manufacturers of safe products want to differentiate themselves from the manufacturers of unsafe products. But, again, fear factors keep the good manufacturers from posting information online that may put them at a competitive disadvantage to downstream competitors.”

There’s a chicken and egg effect here, isn’t there? That is, which comes first, policy or technology?

Here’s one answer.

Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Don’t get rid of the supply chain enterprise and legacy systems that are already providing useful information sharing without the data ownership characteristics of a tool like A-XML. But in the context of an emerging Semantic Web that will lean heavily upon software-as-a-service, consider the missing and incomplete information that is not being shared from the frayed ends and laterals of complex product supply chains.

And, ask yourself, could there be both a technological and socio-political connection made between data portability and supply chain traceability?

[continued in Part III]

Are Food Labels Reliable?

When 0 trans fats doesn't mean zero ....

NebuAd Observes ‘Useful, but Innocuous’ Web Browsing

Saul Hansell authored this Bits Blog on the New York Times website on April 7, 2008.

Here's an excerpt:

"Of all the companies building advertising systems based on data gathered from Internet service providers, the one that is farthest along in the United States is NebuAd.

Robert Dykes, a long time Silicon Valley executive who started the company two years ago, says it has been up and running since last fall and will soon be monitoring the activities of 10 percent of Internet users in the country, mainly customers of small and medium Internet service providers." (emphasis added)

For the complete article, navigate to NebuAd Observes ‘Useful, but Innocuous’ Web Browsing.

Can an Eavesdropper Protect Your Privacy?

Saul Hansell authored a Bits Blog on the New York Times website on April 3, 2008.

Here's an excerpt:

"I wrote last month about a new crop of companies that is likely to spawn what I called 'the mother of all privacy battles.' These companies put devices inside the data centers of Internet service providers to gather information about every Web site the I.S.P.’s users visit. Their goal is to use this data to display advertising related to what people might want to buy.

That post prompted calls from two of those companies, Phorm and NebuAd, with invitations to learn more about their systems. [....] Their messages were the same: these systems are actually designed to protect the privacy of Internet users more than most of the methods used for targeting advertising today. [...] Meanwhile the Federal Trade Commission has proposed guidelines for behavioral targeting of online advertising. Comments are due April 11."

 For the compelete article see Can an Eavesdropper Protect Your Privacy?

Portability, Traceability and Data Ownership - Part I

DataPortability - Connect, Control, Share, Remix from Smashcut Media on Vimeo.

Introduction

In early January, 2008, Ed Felten, a Professor of Computer Science and Public Affairs at Princeton, posted Scoble/Facebook Incident: It’s Not About Data Ownership on Freedom to Tinker.

“Last week Facebook canceled, and then reinstated, Robert Scoble’s account because he was using an automated script to export information about his Facebook friends to another service. The incident triggered a vigorous debate about who was in the right. Should Scoble be allowed to export this data from Facebook in the way he did? Should Facebook be allowed to control how the data is presented and used? What about the interests of Scoble’s friends?

An interesting [idea] kept popping up in this debate: the idea that somebody owns the data.

Where did we get this idea that facts about the world must be owned by somebody? Stop and consider that question for a minute, and you’ll see that ownership is a lousy way to think about this issue.”

I agree with Professor Felten that legal ownership is not the best way to think about data ownership.

Fred Von Lehmann, a senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, responded to Felten’s posting by helpfully distinguishing legal ownership from technological ownership.

“Speaking as [a patent] attorney, Felten got this exactly right — there is no “ownership” of the facts in question.

But even if there were, it wouldn’t answer these questions. Consider sites like Flickr. Unlike the facts in Facebook, the photos on Flickr are plainly copyrighted works. But that doesn’t tell you anything about whether the copyright owner is entitled to access Flickr’s servers to make copies of the photos.

Your ownership in an intangible (copyright or patent) does not come with any right to access particular copies of it that reside elsewhere. Flickr can delete all of your photos, and if you failed to make back-ups, nothing in copyright law would provide you recourse.”

Another commenter, only identifying himself or herself as Spudz, made a sage comment about the natural fear factors that keep information from being shared.

“One thing worth adding here is that Facebook has no need to police potential abuse of shared information. There’s a natural mechanism to deal with that: people won’t share information (on Facebook or elsewhere) with people they don’t trust, and people that abuse trust stop being trusted. These are ancient social mechanisms that work adequately on any site where a user gets to choose to expose information only to specific other users. Mechanisms tens of thousands of years old, if not older.”

I’m guessing that Spudz is either a political scientist, sociologist or anthropologist.

Anyway, what Scoble did was to engineer an automatic means for the porting of the names and e-mail addresses of his Facebook friends out of Facebook's database and into to the database of a Facebook competitor. On the one hand, this isn't a new news item. But it remains an everyday, omnipresent issue in that Facebook, Flickr and all other dominant social networking sites will need to solve this dilemma. They will need to solve it to survive the ever increasing expectations of their users and subscribers for information portability that are bound to come with an emerging Semantic Web.

And why not? Arguably, one of the essential purposes of the emerging Semantic Web is to empower people and businesses with the choice of more and more technological control over their information that they may aptly call ‘data ownership’ for short. Their expectations for an emerging Semantic Web have no doubt been raised from the online banking of their money, and the online purchase of products and services.

To echo what Spudz said above, what we at Pardalis have noticed is that as supply chains lengthen and fragment, the ownership and control of product information deemed confidential by each supply chain participant becomes rapidly affected by fear factors. And what we have further noticed is that the 'frayed ends and laterals' of complex product supply chains appear to look and behave a lot like social networks.

So here is the essential question of this multi-part journal entry:

Where social networks and supply chains overlap, what opportunities are there to find technological data ownership solutions that address the fear factors working against both portability (between social network websites) and information traceability (along complex product supply chains)?

[continued in Part II]

Update on Monday, June 2, 2008 at 12:42PM by Steve Holcombe

In the space of a few short months the DataPortability project claims to have "attracted a huge wave of support from vendors, standards ninjas and people like you."

Here's their latest promotional video clip -

DataPortability - Join The Conversation from Smashcut Media on Vimeo.