The Streisand effect

More by Ashton Mills

Latest Opinions

By Ashton Mills
17:25 Jul 30, 2008

It’s more than a little intriguing in this day and age, where the internet is no longer a Hot New Thing, that people, companies, and sometimes even entire countries (here’s looking at you, big C) are still unaware of the impact it has on human communication.

This is the information age. Let’s just mull on that a moment – the age of information. In all of human history there has never been anything like it, it is whole and complete and filled with the data of our existence, our very being digitised and made manifest.

The net has its own life, it breathes. And information is its lifeblood.

So what do you think is likely to happen when someone tries to censor information, no matter how small? What happens when someone or something tries to forcibly remove a little part of this here internet thing?

People don’t like being silenced, and they don’t like others being silenced. When this happens, rather than having the information removed, the opposite occurs – it spreads. It spreads much farther, and much faster, than if it had been left alone in its own little pocket of the universe.

It’s a phenomenon that even has a name: the Streisand effect.

The origin of the term comes from a news story that hit in the web in 2003 about Barbara Streisand who, as is the American way, sued a photographer for posting a picture of her beachfront home on the web with the aim of having it removed. The photo itself was just one of thousands buried on a site documenting coastal erosion.

But after news broke she was suing the photographer, the site with the picture became an internet hit and Ms. Streisand’s attempt to have less people see the photograph led to hundreds of thousands more seeing it instead.

The most recent example of this, or at least most techy recent example, was when Creative deleted posts and removed files from Brazilian programmer Daniel_K (Daniel Kawakami) who had in recent times, and as a Creative user himself, been fixing Creative’s drivers for the community. Creative isn’t exactly known for good driver support, so Daniel_K took it upon himself to do what Creative wouldn’t and upload improved drivers for others to use. And use they did – by the time Creative came knocking with a cease and desist order, along with removing his files and deleting his posts, he’d had over 100,000 downloads.

The Creative forums didn’t take kindly to this and within the space of two days the story hit Slashdot, Digg, and then mainstream news sites including Wired. Suddenly, the story was everywhere and Creative’s behaviour came under worldwide scrutiny. A day later, the thread where Creative posted its message to Daniel_K was over 200 pages long, and a dozen new threads had been created, all filled with users expressing their displeasure at Creative, many of whom created accounts just to do so and included customers who now said they would no longer buy Creative products. Here the company made its second mistake – it pulled the original post down, replacing it with a less than satisfactory apology – but the original post was mirrored and can still be found online (see creative.edited.us).

The irony probably hasn’t been lost that if it had let Daniel_K do his thing, or even supported him, that the company would be in a better position. Instead it managed to trash its reputation around the globe in less than a week. The Streisand effect had hit.

In the words of John Gilmore, “The net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” Users will mirror information under threat of censorship – posting it on websites, image sites, email, YouTube, torrents, and any other medium they can find to keep it in the open. The more it’s suppressed, the faster and further it spreads – a lesson many individuals and companies have yet to learn.

Now if only the Government can get a clue about it, too.

Ads by Google

Latest Competitions

Thermaltake kicks off your gaming year with a BANG
Thermaltake has started off the new year with a bang by giving away a Tt eSport Theron Laser mouse to not one or two, but TWENTY lucky Atomicans!

Atomic Magazine

Issue: 133 | February, 2012

Atomic is a magazine aimed squarely at computer enthusiasts, gamers, and serious PC upgraders.

Every month we bring you the latest reviews of new technology and PC components, in depth features on everything from overclocking to console hacking, and gaming previews and interviews.

What's in this issue?