Boing Boing Video on Virgin America: now with new EFF PSAs!

When you fly Virgin America Airlines, you can enjoy original Boing Boing Video episodes (and short films, animations, remixes, and music videos from creators whose work we dig) on our in-flight entertainment channel. We're somewhere north of CNN and south of Fox News on the free satellite TV dial. And starting this month on the Boing Boing channel, you can see some fun PSAs from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I think they're great, and I'm proud to run them!

The EFF's Richard Esguerra explains: "Earlier this year, EFF worked with Bucknell University Professor Eric Faden (of A Fair(y) Use Tale fame) to create these two video PSAs about important, cutting-edge digital rights issues. Hopefully, viewers are reminded of the very important idea that many of the rights and protections we have in the physical world should apply to the digital world as well."

More about "the making of," and a full list of credits, at the EFF blog. Above, the Digital Books and EULAs spot. Below, the PSA for Online Behavioral Tracking.

• [kleer001]

  Sorry EFF, I just don’t care. Advertisers can be as shrill as they like, I just block them out and feel sorry for the poor schlebs that can’t. It’s really the best way to navigate the world wide jungle.

  Imagine you’re a native in the Amazon. That’s some dense visual information right there. When you’re out hunting you can’t stop at every colorful beetle or flower (unless that’s what you’re looking for). Wait a second, don’t bright colors in the wild warn predators away?

  • [qubitsu]

    Hi kleer001! Perhaps the shrillness of the advertisers depicted in the PSA overshadowed the more worrying issue we’re trying to present, which is the ubiquitous observation and tracking that takes place online.

    Page outlining the issue of behavioral tracking generally:
    https://www.eff.org/issues/online-behavioral-tracking

    A more specific blog post discussing tracking techniques and technologies:
    https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/09/online-trackers-and-social-networks

    A round up of the WSJ’s well-constructed series on online advertisers’ data harvesting:
    https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/08/what-they-know

    Ultimately, we think people should be very concerned about the stunning breadth and depth of personal data that’s being collected by advertisers, and the effect that such a “data shadow” has on their privacy.