Streisand effect

The Streisand effect is a phenomenon on the Internet where an attempt to censor or remove a piece of information backfires, causing the information to be widely publicized. Examples are attempts to censor a photograph, a number, a file, or even a whole website, especially by means of cease-and-desist letters or other chilling effects. Instead of being suppressed, the information sometimes quickly receives extensive publicity, often being widely mirrored across the Internet, or distributed on file-sharing networks.Canton, David. [http://www.lfpress.ca/cgi-bin/publish.cgi?p=111404&x=articles&s=shopping "Today's Business Law: Attempt to suppress can backfire"] , "London Free Press", November 5, 2005. Accessed July 21, 2007. The "Streisand effect" is what happens when someone tries to suppress something and the opposite occurs. The act of suppressing it raises the profile, making it much more well known than it ever would have been."] [Mugrabi, Sunshine. [http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=20872&hed=YouTube%E2%80%94Censored%3F "YouTube—Censored? Offending Paula Abdul clips are abruptly taken down.] , "Red Herring (magazine)", January 22, 2007. Accessed July 21, 2007. "Another unintended consequence of this move could be that it extends the kerfuffle over Ms. Abdul’s behavior rather than quelling it. Mr. Nguyen called this the “Barbra Streisand effect,” referring to that actress’s insistence that paparazzi photos of her mansion not be used."] Mike Masnick said he jokingly coined the term in January 2005, “to describe [this] increasingly common phenomenon.” [ [http://techdirt.com/articles/20060713/0332234.shtml “Is Leveraging the Streisand Effect Illegal?”] , techdirt.com, July 13, 2006.] The effect is related to John Gilmore's observation that "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." [Philip Elmer-Dewitt. " [http://www.chemie.fu-berlin.de/outerspace/internet-article.html First Nation in Cyberspace] . Time International, 6 December 1993, No. 49. See also .]

Etymology

The term "Streisand effect" originally referred to a 2003 incident in which Barbra Streisand sued photographer Kenneth Adelman and Pictopia.com for US$50 million in an attempt to have the aerial photo of her house [ [http://www.californiacoastline.org/cgi-bin/image.cgi?
] ] removed from the publicly available collection of 12,000 California coastline photographs, citing privacy concerns. [cite web
url=http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCulture.asp?Page=%5CCulture%5Carchive%5C200305%5CCUL20030530e.html
title=Streisand Sues Environmentalist Photographer for Website Photo
date=May 30 2003
accessdate=2007-01-25
author=Steve Brown
publisher=CNSNews.com] [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20050105/0132239.shtml Since When Is It Illegal to Just Mention a Trademark Online?] , techdirt.com] Adelman claims he was photographing beachfront property to document coastal erosion as part of the California Coastal Records Project. [http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/barbrahouse1.html The Smoking Gun] ] Paul Rogers of the "San Jose Mercury News" later noted that the picture of Streisand’s house was popular on the Internet.cite web|url=http://www.californiacoastline.org/news/sjmerc5.html |title=Photo of Streisand home becomes an Internet hit |accessdate=2007-06-15 |last=Rogers |first=Paul |date=2003-06-24 |publisher=San Jose Mercury News, mirrored at californiacoastline.org]

Examples

Andy Greenberg of Forbes mentions three prominent incidents as examples of the Streisand effect:

*An attempt at blocking an HD-DVD key from being published on Digg — “The online uproar came in response to a series of cease-and-desist letters […] demanding that the code be removed from several high-profile Web sites. Rather than wiping out the code, […] the letters led to its proliferation on Web sites, in chat rooms, inside cleverly doctored digital photographs and on user-submitted news sites. […] The ironic thing is, because they tried to quiet it down, it’s the most famous number on the Internet.” [cite web
url=http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/03/technology/03code.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
title=How a Number Became the Latest Web Celebrity.
date=May 3 2007
quote = Sophisticated Internet users have banded together over the last two days to publish and widely distribute a secret code used by the technology and movie industries to prevent piracy of high-definition movies.
accessdate=2008-02-29
author=Brad Stone
publisher=The New York Times ] “ […] at this writing, about 283,000 pages contain the number […] There’s a song. Several domain names including variations of the number have been reserved.” [cite web
url=http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/07/05/02/0235228.shtml
title= Digg.com Attempts To Suppress HD-DVD Revolt
date=May 1 2007
accessdate=2007-05-01
author=kdawson ]
* Bhumibol Adulyadej, the King of Thailand, was portrayed with feet superimposed over his head in a video posted by a YouTube user named "Padidda". “The Thai government charged the site with "lèse majesté", insulting the monarch, and […] banned the site altogether. YouTube users around the world responded by posting a series of Bhumibol-bashing clips, some even more offensive than the originals […] . Each clip has been viewed tens of thousands of times”cite news
url=http://www.forbes.com/home/technology/2007/05/10/streisand-digg-web-tech-cx_ag_0511streisand.html
title=The Streisand Effect
date=May 11 2007
quote = The phenomenon takes its name from Barbra Streisand, who made her own ill-fated attempt at reining in the Web in 2003. That's when environmental activist Kenneth Adelman posted aerial photos of Streisand's Malibu beach house on his Web site as part of an environmental survey, and she responded by suing him for $50 million. Until the lawsuit, few people had spotted Streisand's house, Adelman says--but the lawsuit brought more than a million visitors to Adelman's Web site, he estimates. Streisand's case was dismissed, and Adelman's photo was picked up by the Associated Press and reprinted in newspapers around the world.
accessdate=2008-02-29
author=Andy Greenberg
publisher=Forbes]
* Video clips portraying paparazzi footage of Brazilian television personality Daniela Cicarelli having sex with her boyfriend on a beach in Spain were uploaded to YouTube. Court injunctions, which culminated in the blocking of YouTube in Brazil, proved unsuccessful in preventing the spread of the video, and only raised the ire of fans.

Other examples

* In addition, the Church of Scientology's unsuccessful attempts to get Internet websites to delete a video of Tom Cruise speaking about Scientology resulted in the creation of Project Chanology [cite web
url=http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080118.WBmingram20080118144345/WBStory/WBmingram
title=Scientology vs. the Internet, part XVII
date=January 19 2008
accessdate=2008-01-19
author=Mathew Ingram
publisher=The Globe & Mail] . The church's attempt to remove a series of OT document leaks onto Wikileaks during early April 2008 prompted Wikileaks to respond by vowing to "release several thousand additional pages of Scientology material next week." [cite web
url=http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Church_of_Scientology_warns_Wikileaks_over_documents
title=Church of Scientology warns Wikileaks over documents
date=January 19 2008
accessdate=2008-04-07
author=Various Sources
publisher=Wikinews] [cite web
url=https://secure.wikileaks.org/wiki/Church_of_Scientology_collected_Operating_Thetan_documents
title=Church of Scientology collected Operating Thetan documents
date=January 19 2008
accessdate=2008-03-24
author=Various Sources
publisher=Wikileaks]

* On October 1st 2008 the popular internet personality Pat Condell had his video 'Welcome to Saudi Britain' removed from YouTube by site administrators. This led to outrage from users of the site and resulted in hundreds of copies of the censored video being uploaded in protest, file sharing downloads being set up, and links to the video published across the internet.

ee also

* Unintended consequences
* Herostratus
* "MBTA v. Anderson"

References

External links

* [http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displayStory.cfm?story_id=11622401&subjectID=348963&fsrc=nwl} ] Blog standard, "Economist" magazine, 26 June 2008