Using flags for language choice

I ran across a post recently about using flags in your UI as a way for a user to select the language of the text (and possibly UI direction). While I agree with the post, the main point that drives me to use text in the native language as the way to choose the native language could be emphasized more as a way to help people think about what a flag represents as opposed to what a language name represents.

A national flag represents a nation (country). A language name represents a language.

Take a look at YouTube or Google News. YouTube best illustrates this point. Take a minute and visit the homepage, and check out the country and language selections at the top. Both flags and language names are used! Google News takes a similar approach, except without the use of flags at all, instead opting to use the name of the country. This illustrates the point I think should be clearer. When I click on the flag of Germany in YouTube’s UI, I now get content primarily from Germany, but my UI is still in English. When I click on Deutsch, I get a German user interface. I can also have a German user interface with content from or relevant to France. I don’t think there’s anything necessarily wrong or confusing with switching the user’s interface to the language most likely to be used in the country that the content is primarily from, but that really depends on your users. Of course, so does everything, and if your users want flags to represent languages, that’s what they’ll get, and nobody on the internet is going to convince them otherwise :)

Summary of my personal uses:

Use the German flag when the content is German in origin or relevant to Germany
Use Deutsch when the user interface will be switched to that language

Consider also that not everyone is able to see flags, and if your site is accessible you will need to have the text explaining the flag anyway. Doing things as described above keeps things very simple, easy for users to understand, and makes clear the distinction between geographic content relevance and content language.

Are the RIAA’s DMCA takedown notices legitimate?

By now, many people are aware that the RIAA has been going after people (specifically university students) they believe are violating the copyrights of their member companies. Other people have written articles on specifically how the RIAA (or more realistically, companies the RIAA hire) do this, so if you haven’t done so, I’d recommend reading about it.

Many universities have policies, whether written or unwritten, that dictate some sort of action against students when emails are received requesting that infringing content be removed from the computers serving that content.

In most cases, universities do a variation of the following:

1. Look up the student’s information based on the IP address(es) listed in the email
2. Disable the student’s internet access
3. Follow up with the student in some way (require that some document be signed before internet access is restored, ask that they meet with a university employee or judicial officer, etc.)
4. Restore the student’s internet access

One of the many issues that I have with this process is that in almost all cases the email is never verified, nor is it verifiable. Most of the time there is a persona certificate sent along with this email, but the email itself is not digitally signed. Two different emails sent to two separate institutions contained such persona certificates that hashed to the same value. Therefore, if somebody were to spoof such an email, attaching that certificate to the email would make that email as authentic as any emails supposedly sent from the RIAA.

The problem here is that institutions are taking action against students without even attempting to verify the authenticity of the emails they receive. Universities claim that they want to avoid potential problems, and so they are complying with the text of these emails. What happens, then, when students realize their university is taking action against them from what is essentially an anonymous threat? What happens when spoofed emails result in action taken against students?

Who’s to say this isn’t happening now?