How it happened
There are a painful number of embarrassing videos on the
internet today. But there was a time not too long ago when Star Wars Kid (<-
Watch this before reading) was among only a few. More than 30 million views since
then, the video survives, and its lifespan has brought numerous parodies, as
well as considerable pain for the sole star, Ghyslian Raza. Raza’s lightsaber
twirling home video landed him in the center of the internet’s all pervasive
gaze, sparking a lawsuit, a campaign against cyberbullying, and—as I’m sure
you’ve guessed—a continuing debate about our privacy.
The video was discreetly recorded over the middle of a
homemade basketball video in the Raza family’s basement when some of Ghyslian’s
school mates found it. The Raza family sued the families of those children for
publishing the video online without permission, on the grounds that they had
invaded Raza’s privacy. The
Katz test tells us that Raza has a right to privacy because Ghyslian showed
an expectation of privacy by hiding the video, and I’m pretty sure we’ve all
hidden some photos that we wouldn’t want shared around, so his expectation
seems reasonable to me. Hence, Raza’s privacy was obviously infringed—but the Raza
family didn’t even recuperate their own expenses from the settlement
of that lawsuit, and the video has haunted Ghyslian ever since.
Who’s to blame?
A camera shot the video, then the VHS was converted into a
digital format with some sort of software, then the internet did the rest, sharing
non-discriminately around the globe. So, when exactly was Raza’s privacy
harmed? It obviously wasn’t the camera that invaded Raza’s privacy, as he
captured the video intentionally, for himself. Digitizing software was just
becoming popular in 2003, as DVD’s stole the market from
VHS, and converting the video to a digital format was instrumental in the defeat
of Raza’s privacy. Between the digital format which was easy to share, and the
internet which made sharing trivial, Raza’s “friends” made quick work of their
sabotage. Today there are thousands of embarrassing home videos scattered about
the web—in 2003 there were only a handful. Today, these sorts of videos appear
and disappear in a day, for Raza however, the timing was impeccably bad, and
even now his story is revived by special effects, and university
discussions.
I have a hard time pointing a finger at the video
technologies, and the internet that made the breach in Raza’s privacy possible.
Ghyslian’s anxiety was at the hands of bullies
and cyberbullies who made fun of him for the video—and if I’m entirely
honest, it’s funny, not hilarious, but worth a chuckle. That said, the internet
is full of all types of people—but the most memorable are always the rudest,
and that’s just part of being a member of the internet village. Trying to
regulate the internet with legislation is fraught with difficulties, and
typically only succeeds at making
people mad, and regulating video conversion is downright impossible when anyone
with a VHS-DVD player can do it from home.
Are privacy breaches like Raza’s simply a part of this
internet age? I hesitate to say yes, because we can see from Raza’s plight what
that could mean for the rest of us. On the other hand, it’s very difficult to
implement useful legislation when it’s not clear how to solve the problem, and
any solution is bound to be met by vehement resistance. The internet is largely
free, and exceptionally useful; perhaps our privacy is the price we pay for its
power and convenience.
Can we forget?
The EU, has a policy known as the “Right
to be Forgotten” which enables citizens to ask their search engines to
remove links to personal information about them when that information is
“inaccurate, inadequate, irrelevant or excessive.” On paper, it seems like a great
rule to have. It’s exactly the kind of thing that Ghyslian would have used to
deal with Star Wars Kid. One court
case, and then nobody would be able to search for Raza’s video, right? Wrong. With
sites like Internet
Archive backing up every video, sound clip, and page that’s ever
existed, there will always be ways to find content that has been “forgotten.” I
remember an incident not long ago where UC
Davis tried to cover up a video in which some students were pepper sprayed
for protesting. Trying to hide the video backfired on UC Davis—their actions
generated considerable interest and caused the video to go viral. While Raza
could have tried to invoke a right to be forgotten, doing so could have caused
the video to blow up just as much as it did, or even more, on social media
websites, blogs and forums.
What does it mean?
Despite all his strife, I have a hard time feeling bad for
Raza. I’m reminded of a similar YouTube video that aired a couple years after Star Wars Kid. The video featured a Live
Action Role Playing (LARP) battle, where one player hilariously shouts “Lightning Bolt” as he
pelts the other contestants with bean bags. The electric mage, Brandon Boucher,
received the same sort of criticisms that hit Raza so hard, as well as
opportunities to appear on late night shows or in comedy central skits. Where
Raza declined all the television spotlights he was offered, Boucher stood up
for himself and appeared in one of Tosh.0’s web redemption skits—a move that I
think worked really well for Boucher. The conviction that he would not be embarrassed
by something he enjoyed doing saved Brandon Boucher’s image from perpetual
mockery.
I put some serious thought into the idea of emailing Raza
some questions, but undoubtedly he just wants to move on. Now a law school
graduate, Raza speaks
out against cyberbullying, talking about how painful it was for him. Had Raza
stood his ground, and embraced his Star Wars alter ego, I think the incident
would have blown over quickly—but trying to hide from his internet footprint,
ironically, just made things worse. Wrong was done to Raza, without a doubt,
but at some point, you’ve just got to roll with the punches. Raza's story reminds us about what our privacy is worth, and the price we might pay for abiding in this internet age.
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ReplyDeleteWhile I sympathize with your argument that directly confronting the invasion of one’s privacy can in some cases be the means to a positive end (such as that of Boucher), this idea has troubling implications. First is the idea that one must give up a right to privacy in order to defend a previous breach of the right to privacy. We see this all the time- a private file of some sort is presented to the public for judgement, frequently at the gain of newspapers, Facebook advertisers, and media outlets. This starts the perpetual motion machine which is cyberbullying. If someone tries to defend their image publicly, it will spark another wave of curiosity and interest. For example, I definitely remember seeing various renditions of “Star Wars Kid,” but had entirely forgotten them until today, when I watched that video again. So in a way, I believe that trying to defend oneself publically may offer some sort of path of least resistance to being forgotten. But that’s a hard pill to swallow for someone wanting only to be forgotten who had no intention of being in the public sphere.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Raza's story reminds us what our privacy is worth to us and teaches us valuable lessons about what consequences we might face in the digital age. Although I also do see validity in saying that Raza has subjected to far more torment that he could have imagined by filming a video he thought no one would ever see. Just because you make a video doesn't mean you always can anticipate the public reception of the material correctly. It is possible to want to be a member of the online community and also not be okay with blatant cyber bullying, there's not reason you have to accept both or none. You say it's hard to feel bad for him, but the perks of humiliation like being on a late night T. V show or getting paid, cannot really change the psychological damage he might have suffered. There are many different personalities out there and while you might try to prosper from the benefits of a bad situation it can can easily destroy others. The point of privacy is to protect people not just teach them hard lessons. While I don't fully agree with the system in place for "the right to be forgotten," and it's possible negative backlash, I do think that people deserve a way to remove information about themselves that they didn't personally publish and harms their image.
ReplyDeleteThe Internet provides a strong outlet for people to release videos such as these, and as in this case it is too easy to spread videos to embarrass someone. I don't know if the kids who posted Raza's video had the intent to hurt Raza as they did, they were likely after a few laughs, however they are still responsible for their mistake. Those kids, and many others, likely fail to realize how quickly information can spread through the Internet and how it remains accessible essentially forever. Unfortunately bullying isn't something that will disappear, and neither will the Internet (I assume), which means that we have to become more careful about "hiding" information about ourselves that we don't want others to see. The Internet doesn't mean the end of privacy, but makes some information harder to hide.
ReplyDeleteI don't agree that the incident would disappear more quickly if Raza had 'accepted' being the Star Wars kid. I think the Internet will remain interested in the video until it gets bored and moves to the next viral video or trend. Once the Internet gets a hold of something it finds funny or interesting, it spreads it around until it finds something better. There isn't much that can be done once that information is posted.
I really agree with your points, Valerie. I think that the best way to get the Internet to move on is simply to lie low and wait it out; if you respond in any way, that's likely to only encourage further publicity. I also wanted to touch on your point about the kids who spread the video initially. Alex raised the interesting question of where along the line Raza's privacy was violated, and thus how he could have possibly protected his privacy. For most of the kids sharing the video, it's already public, so they see no harm in showing it to their friends or posting it on a blog/website. And even for the first few kids who saw the video, they were probably just sharing it with close friends, and as you said, likely failing to realize how quickly that would spread.
DeleteAs for how Raza could have protected his privacy in the first place, I think the only solution would have been to disallow anyone else from viewing or copying the video in the first place. Once the video has a digital form, it can spread much more easily, as Alex discussed.
I think the important issue here is consent about who is viewing the information and how it is used. Finding out that information about you (or something you were doing on your own time for a desired audience of you, and potentially your friends and family) was shared, without your permission or knowledge can feel like a personal attack. When I was fifteen, I had an experience where I participated in a performance (as an audience member). I was embarrassed by some of the content the performers subjected me to, but overall, I considered it a good experience. Months later, I had people approaching me (in many settings of my life) and saying they recognized me from somewhere. Then my friend told me he had seen me in a commercial at a movie theatre. He described what it was for and I realized where the footage was from: the audience participation. I tried to find the commercial but couldn’t. I felt violated, somehow. Even though I had consented to perform in front of the particular audience that night, I didn’t consent to or know it was being filmed, and I didn’t consent to it being shared to a greater audience. I probably would have agreed to sharing it, if they had asked. Finding out that something that contained my image was being viewed by other people, and I was being recognized and connected to that without knowing what it contained or the message it shared, was unsettling. I think it is easy to say that information sharing is inevitable; I agree that it probably is. However, I think there should be public consideration about consent and the effect of mass sharing and manipulation on the victim of such non-consensual sharing.
ReplyDeleteI think that the "right to be forgotten" policies by the EU are a step in the right direction for combating privacy problems that arise from the internet. I don't think that such policies fix all of the problems, but I think that they at least help and that efforts in the right direction should not be discarded just because they do not fix everything. I would think that "the right to be forgotten" would work best if requests are kept confidential. That would help keep more attention from being brought to that which an individual is attempting to have "forgotten." Information can be posted online without an individual's consent and can be very damaging to that individual. What is posted online may never be able to be fully erased, but it can be made to be significantly harder to access. I think that in cases such as Raza's, where an innocent victim has had private information maliciously spread about him, there should be means and efforts made to make that information as hard to access as possible. Cyberbullying is a very serious and dangerous problem that is becoming all too prevalent. I don't think it should be discarded as something that is just going to have to be accepted as inevitable. I support legitimate efforts to combat it, and I think policies like "the right to be forgotten" could help.
ReplyDeleteI believe the EU's "Right to be Forgotten" is a somewhat good idea to combat cyber-bullying, or a breach of privacy to a certain extent. Of course, Internet Archive's will always have access to videos, comments, or other such information; however, the ability to reduce the chances of personal information becoming viral seems beneficial to a digital age (even if there are some who still retain access.) Although your one example of the pepper-sprayed students does indeed pose a valid issue, I doubt that every video, blog post, comments, etc., would be at risk of going viral if they employed the "Right to be Forgotten."
ReplyDeleteI disagree with your less than sympathetic perspective towards Raza. Raza's privacy should have received protection due to the Katz test. Even though he had opportunities to increase his fame, that cannot make up for the cyber-bullying and abuse Raza should never have experienced. For you, and for people like Boucher, using embarrassment to your advantage may be logical and easy. Other people, like Raza, value their privacy, and breaches like the one he experienced cause significant damage that fame would only be exacerbated by fame. Ultimately, you seem to say that we should accept that privacy breaches are commonplace, and that we must make the best of them. What will that logic then mean for society?
I completely agree with Molly that it is not fair to expect Raza to react to the humiliating effects of his viral video with good humor or to perpetuate the ordeal on TV. You're probably right; it would have blown over more quickly had he reacted to the Star Wars video in a similar fashion Boucher responded to his LARP video. But he's under no obligation to do so! His rights were violated, and his standing up for the video wouldn't have changed that. It's not fair to blame the trauma on Raza just because he didn't react to the privacy invasion more favorably.
ReplyDeleteI do think your argument against the "Right to be Forgotten" was brilliant. How tragic and even a little ironic it is that such careful measures to remove unwanted information from the internet can have such catastrophic results. Internet content seems to be hopelessly permanent.
I'm with Molly and Emily on this, Raza was the victim here and doesn't deserve any added public scrutiny. While there is certainly a lack of consensus on what exactly the right to privacy does and does not entail, it is a commonly held belief that there is some kind of a right to privacy. Therefore, recommending someone who is the victim of a privacy-breach to step forward for the sake of "damage control" is akin to telling a victim of assault that they should step forward and publicly acknowledge it. Although it could be considered noble that they would stand up and be an example to others, it is not the place of people unaffected by the harassment to make that judgement.
DeleteThe entire "you've just gotta roll with the punches" line of thought is distressingly similar to arguments that claim people "need to grow thicker skin" and that these things are "just a joke." The idea that the victims of harassment ought to accept this sort of behavior, and that it is their best interest to accept it, is just a way for the harassers/onlookers to absolve themselves of guilt for laughing at someone's misfortune. I understand the appeal of schadenfreude, and I too have laughed at videos that I'm sure involved people who wouldn't want to be associated with it, but that doesn't mean that I can't also recognize that these people deserve to remain private, nor that the harassers/attackers/bullies/privacy violators should go unpunished.
I do believe that it was a violation of his privacy for this video to be uploaded without his consent. Since there was not consent, Raza could have YouTube take down the original video, but more likely than not, this is already part of countless 'Try Not To Laugh' compilations, and been uploaded many more times to the YouTube platform. But once a video goes viral, there isn't much that YouTube can do to take down the video as it moves to other platforms as well. It is also no secret that the YouTube comments section is cruel and unforgiving when it comes to embarrassing videos, or just videos in general. Two days ago somebody commented on "Me at the zoo," the very first video on YouTube this: "This video is lame. The only thing that makes this video special, is that it was the first video ever." Many others commented the morbidly popular "kys" on the same video. I can guarantee that there are not videos on the YouTube platform with approximately 32,000,000 views that don't have negative comments. The internet, and especially the YouTube comments section is just another tool for bullies. And what is worse is the anonymity of the bullies.
ReplyDeleteHowever, as we have discussed in class, we all have the right to an opaque username. In essence, by having this right, we are perpetuating the problem of cyberbullying because there is no easy way for people to be held accountable on the internet, especially in a YouTube comment section. When you can comment anonymously, you turn into something that discriminates indiscriminately. It has a panepticon effect where the shared content is in the cell and everybody that sees it are watching. They think they are invincible.
Even with the European Union's "Right to Be Forgotten," I agree that Raza most likely would have seen results similar to what happened. The "Right to Be Forgotten" only covers delinking from online search results. Raza's video was circulated around his high school before being posted on a website. The right wouldn't help Raza because it takes a while for link removal requests to be processed. Moreover, the requests are only granted to those living within the European Union, and Raza resided in Quebec. Furthermore, the original video was spread mainly through emails at first, so the right would not apply.
The real issue here is that his privacy was violated; the video in question was uploaded to YouTube without his knowledge or consent, and he was harassed for it. The Right to Be Forgotten, if it had been possibly for its use in this case, of course wouldn't have made the video go away, but would at least have made the video a little harder to find. Finally, maybe afterwards he should have owned it, but he dealt with the issue in his own way, and in the end, it really doesn't fall to us to make a judgement call. However he should or shouldn't have reacted, he still had to experience a lot of pain because of one simple privacy violation.
ReplyDeleteI am partially in agreement with Alex's final thought and partially not. In 2003, I was 8 years old, and had been playing online games for quite awhile. I knew that you could google search nearly anything and come up with an answer. And, as my dad liked to joke at the time "If you're looking to buy something, and it isn't on eBay, it doesn't exist". This is to say that, even at age 8, I had the understanding that the Internet was both prolific and uncontrollable by nature.
ReplyDeleteIn this case, there was a clear violation of privacy. Quite aside from digitizing and publishing the video, Raza's friends were rooting through his VHS tapes. The story is most likely more complicated than that, but it is reasonable to conclude that Raza's friends were looking for something they weren't invited to look for.
Put these two thoughts together, and I see a world where information can get from Nowhere, New Mexico to Makeanything, China in under a second, and where you can search that information back up years later. Even though this was early on in the history of embarrasing online videos, it should be been clear to Raza's (High-school) friends, as it was clear to myself, that YouTube videos had the potential to travel quickly, and that a quick laugh wasn't worth the risk.
At the same time, if Raza had wanted to keep his hobbies a secret, it seems weird to record them. Perhaps he was interested in looking at the videos himself -- from watching the clip, it looks like he has spent some time practicing -- but the only certain protection to privacy is to watch once and then erase.
I am unusually paranoid, but I believe that anything that exists outside of my mind is insecure and susceptible to discovery. It was stupid of Raza's friends to publish the video online - but who didn't do stupid things in High School? I wish the whole situation could have been avoided by the video never existing in the first place.
There is one interesting question that is most likely unanswerable. What is inherently embarrassing about the video? As could be observed from my profile picture and from the hooded sweatshirts I wear, I enjoy Pokémon. It could be argued - and I have been directly told that - I shouldn't wear Pokémon on my chest because it's "for kids". However, I am able to ignore these jabs because they have no history. If I had grown up being bullied, the situation might be different. I argue there is nothing inherently embarrassing about the video - just Raza doing something he enjoys - but that he probably suffered some background of being the victim of more traditional bullying which would mean his hobbies were fed back into that fire.
While re-reading this, I remind myself of the wording surrounding the Brock Allen case by saying "everyone makes mistakes" and "victims should delete their own videos".. I hope that a distinction is clear: This was the early days of online videos, so while if Raza's friends had sat down and thought about it they should have realized that sharing the video was a bad idea, but it really couldn't have been predicted just how viral the video would go, while rape has been going on for thousands of years and the negative effects are well-known. Deleting - or not filming in the first place - are my defense mechanisms, and come from an intense paranoia (I wrote my own password manager because no other sufficiently convinced me that my data wasn't getting shipped off to "bad guys")
DeleteI agree with the decision that the court made that this was a violation of his privacy. I also agree that the “Right to be Forgotten” policy is a step in the right direction when it comes to protecting one’s privacy online. Although it will not completely erase the video from the internet, because that would be nearly an impossible task, it would make it more difficult to find the video online. I also agree that with embarrassing videos sometimes it is best to just “roll with the punches,” because by making a big deal out of a video one will bring more attention to it. In addition, when a video does become as widely viewed as this one was it does present opportunities for the one in the video. I agree that one should make the best out of the situation and take advantage of these opportunities if they present themselves. I do not however believe that these opportunities in any way justify uploading embarrassing media of another person to the internet.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree that Raza's privacy was violated, and that we should create some system to prevent these things from occurring again. I realize that nothing on the internet can be erased entirely, but I like the point a few others brought up about making things harder to access.
ReplyDeleteI realize that cyberbullying is a severe issue, but I don't think that it can be stopped without infringing on people's rights of free speech. Nobody SHOULD be saying such hurtful things towards others, especially kids. However, they have the right to do so. All that I can control is my own personal feelings and actions. I think that the EU's "Right to Be Forgotten" is a great tool that we could implement here as well, but it still will not end these issues altogether.
I agree with your point that while Raza’s privacy was definitely infringed upon, once something is out there on the internet it really can never be erased. I think that the internet age has caused a massive loss of privacy. Thanks to the internet we often give up our privacy involuntarily (being recorded and put on YouTube like the Star Wars Kid) as well as voluntarily (showing your location of Facebook).
ReplyDeleteI also agree with your point that the Right to be Forgotten is a decent concept in theory, but I would say, impossible to actually implement in its entirety. First off there are the issues you mentioned, things really can’t just be removed from the internet and also if something is removed (or made harder to access), then people will notice. The second point is especially poignant, because of the nature of viral videos and images. If someone asks for an embarrassing thing including them to be removed, they probably want it removed either at its peak or while it was still “going viral”. But at this point people are searching for it and are bound to notice its removal. If you want to more discreetly remove it, it has to be done well after the viral popularity of the video has died down, but at that point why even bother since millions have already seen it.
I like what the EU has done to combat cyberbullying, but you do bring up the point that nothing is ever really removed from the internet. In a situation like this one, the video is shared through multiple social media platforms on many devices. It would be impossible to get rid of the video entirely. It also can cause problems when a video gets deleted when it is so popular.
ReplyDeleteI agree that Raza's privacy was violated. In today's world, almost everyone has had an embarrassing or ugly picture posted of them. While it is hard for me to say that this situation is just something that comes along with using the internet, I do not necessarily think that Raza's friends and others are completely innocent. Like Zoey said, there is a right to free speech and there is a right to privacy. These two can contradict each other and creates a very gray area on where to draw the line. While we want everyone to only say nice things on the internet, that is not often the case. While some people stay away from the limelight, it is hard for me to have sympathy from Raza because of all of the fun opportunities that come with it, however I understand how that can be embarrassing and hard for him.
There are two ways in which I sympathize with Raza's outrage. First, the feeling of invasion when something you thought was done in secret and was never intended to be distributed (although it is unclear what Raza intended to do with the video, lets assume he thought it was for his eyes only,) is understandable. Knowing that anyone, regardless of the number of people, has seen something you thought was personal is something to be upset about. This emotional appeal, however, is not the basis for legal retaliation. The second point I can see Raza making could inaccurately be called "defamation" though the more accurate description of the situation is harder to distill down to one word. The easiest way I can describe the offense is a violation of anonymity. Raza had no intention of becoming famous, at least not for this. Although as others have stated the video itself is not inherently embarrassing, the type of attention the posters intended to attract was not positive. The friends who shared Raza's video were not doing it because they wanted to impress people with his sick moves, their intent was much more mean-spirited. Did they present the content in any false light? No. Did they misappropriate his image? Not necessarily. What they did do was encourage people to ridicule him for doing something that looked silly. Raza might have had a case against his friends for an invasion of privacy by using something that was clearly kept hidden (as the information was taken, not given to his friends); though, the upset we can all see in the situation is more intangible and less subject to litigation. Making someone look dumb by showing others them doing something silly is mean, but not, I believe, a chargeable offense.
ReplyDelete