From Neil Beynon [via Twitter] I discover that not even The Guardian - supposedly the final bastion of vaguely idiocy-free journalism in the UK - is gleefully running a “scientist says internet addiction is a disease!” article, complete with a “how to spot whether you’re hooked on the intartubes!!” checklist.

Good grief. Is there any aspect of human behaviour that isn’t a disease these days?

Look, I’m not demeaning the sometimes serious illnesses that can result from certain mental imbalances. Nor would I try to claim that there aren’t people who have serious addictions to many things, the internet being one of them - addictions which can indeed cause serious impairment to their lives.

My issue is this.

ADDICTION IS NOT A DISEASE. ADDICTION IS ADDICTION. ADDICTION IS A FUNCTION OF HUMAN PSYCHOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY.

I REPEAT - ADDICTION IS NOT A DISEASE. YOU CANNOT CATCH AN ADDICTION FROM SITTING NEXT TO ANOTHER ADDICT ON THE TUBE. UNTIL WE STOP TREATING ADDICTION AS A DISEASE AND START VIEWING IT AS AN UNDERSTANDABLE REACTION OF AN EASILY DISTRACTED PRIMATE BRAIN THAT EVOLVED TO RESPOND TO NOVELTY AND STRONG STIMULI, WE WILL SLOWLY DROWN IN “ILL” PEOPLE UNTIL THERE ARE NO “WELL” PEOPLE LEFT.

IF YOU WANT TO HELP PEOPLE WITH ADDICTIONS, THEN START BY FINDING OUT WHAT MOTIVATES THEM TO ABSORB THEMSELVES IN THEIR SUBSTANCE OR BEHAVIOUR OF CHOICE TO THE DETRIMENT OF THEIR DAY-TO-DAY LIVES. BECAUSE THE EVIDENCE SEEMS TO DICTATE PRETTY CLEARLY THAT SLAPPING THE STIGMA OF A DISEASE ON THEM AND TELLING THEM IT’S ALL THE FAULT OF THOSE NASTY GENES ISN’T DOING ANY BLOODY GOOD AT ALL, IS IT?

PEOPLE DEVELOP ADDICTIONS BECAUSE MODERN LIFE IS HOLLOW. STOP BEING HOMEOPATHIC - TRY TREATING THE ACTUAL DISEASE INSTEAD OF THE BLOODY SYMPTOMS.

Sometimes the rampant technophobia and litigatory idiocy our culture is saturated in really gets right up my nose.

The Guardian should be bloody ashamed of themselves for running sensationalist shit like this, blatantly shilling for a money-grabbing organisation that can see brass in the muck of people’s misery.

Rant over.

[ Don't take it personally, Neil - you just tripped one of my switches there.

And anyone who'd like to know what gives me the right to make sweeping statements about the effectiveness of addiction programs is welcome to email me privately, so I can explain to them - among other things - how my father died. ]

Those who were interested by the conversation between myself and A. R. Yngve on fan-fic may want to take a look at a post on Scalzi’s Whatever that shares some data from an exhaustive trawl through the licence terms of FanLib, a new start-up that has some very bizarre (and potentially exploitative) attitudes to ‘fan-created content’:

“…the company pitches the FanLib fanfic experience to content creators, and in doing so reveals that they don’t actually understand how fan fiction works in the slightest, they’re under the mistaken impression that they’re going to be able to control how stories get written, and that most fanfic writers will be pleased to have their work subsequently hijacked by others.

For example, on page 3 of the .pdf file, in the “Managed and Moderated to the Max” heading, FanLib touts to media folks “a customized environment YOU control,” in which “players must ’stay within the lines’” with “restrictive terms-of-service,” a “profanity filter” and “full monitoring & management of submissions.” And here’s the kicker: “Completed work is just 1st draft to be polished by the pros.” “

With that sort of situation, I can totally understand (and indeed support) authors being against fan-fic - and I expect the fan-ficcers themselves won’t be too keen either. With the amount of negative attention FanLib has accrued in the last week or so, I can’t see it being a project that gets very far without collapsing into nothingness … or being sued into a radioactive puddle of legalese.

***

Related to that is the news that Google have responded to accusations that they have set up exclusivity deals with the institutions whose book collections they have scanned by allowing the public to see the contracts they use - now that is transparency.

Cory Doctorow isn’t entirely satisfied, however, and points out that Google are still betting on a different kind of exclusivity - i. e. themselves as the exclusive gateway to material that is meant to be public domain:

“I’m still disappointed that Google puts restrictive notices on their public domain works (these aren’t licenses, just “polite notices”) that tell what you’re not allowed to do with these books. I know they’re worried about their competitors getting ahold of those documents, but that’s the deal with the public domain: it doesn’t belong to you, period, it belongs to all of us. Just because you scan a public domain book, it doesn’t confer the right to control it to you.”

I can’t see Google holding a virtual monopoly on that material forever - if only because some hacktivist type is bound to find a way to scrape the content and set it free. But this does highlight one of the thornier issues around public domain materials, in that the delivery system may not be as free as the material it contains. This particular debate is going to be around for a good few years yet, methinks.