Author: schloss

but nobody thought to ask why…

Usually I’m not so fast with responses to current events, but this one has me pissed off. Really pissed off.

A Chinese blogger’s site was taken down — a blogger living in China who wrote in Chinese about highly political Chinese events. What makes this newsworthy is that apparently the takedown was done by Microsoft. The blog was hosted on MSN Spaces. One day, it’s there. The next, "This space is temporarily unavailable."

Most folks are complaining about Microsoft . Apparently it was MS, not the Chinese government, that shut down this blog.

That, however, is not why I’m angry.

I’m angry because of the huge jump-to-conclusions attitude of the blog world. I’ll offer two points that explain why MS did what they did:

First, read the MSN Spaces Code of Conduct. In there, it clearly states (my emphasis):

Violations of the MSN Spaces Code of Conduct may result in the termination of access to MSN Spaces services or deletion of content without notice.

You will not upload, post, transmit, transfer, disseminate, distribute, or facilitate distribution of any content, including text, images, sound, data, information, or software, that:

… is illegal or violates any local and national laws that apply to your location; including but not limited to child pornography, illegal drugs, copyright material and intellectual property not belonging to you.

Like I said, this blogger is from China. While I’m no expert on Chinese laws, I imagine the Chinese government would find that blog or its content illegal. I also imagine Microsoft is not super savvy about Chinese laws but they’re not looking to get in trouble either. If the Chinese government has an issue with that individual blog, they’re more likely to stop traffic to MSN Spaces altogether rather than stop traffic to that one blog.

MS plays it safe, decides it would rather let all the other Chinese blogs stay up, and pulls the one offending blog instead. That way when the Chinese government goes to MS and asks why they shouldn’t block all access to MS Spaces, MS can say they would much rather do this on a blog-by-blog case.

The other reason why MS did this is because they’re trying very, very hard right now to make business inroads in China. The US Government is trying to get China to do more to enforce their intellectual property laws; MS is probably losing a bundle to counterfeit software overseas, and China is a huge offender in software, movie, and music bootlegs. To win China’s favor, MS is watching China’s back too. MS already censors Chinese ‘net searching (so does Google), so censoring an individual blog is a far cry from the worst that MS could have done.

Let me be clear — I am not defending MS’s decision. In fact, I think that the smart folks in Redmond had several other options they could have chosen instead:

• Block China IP addresses from accessing that blog
• Remove individual offending posts
• Change phrases, words, or sentences to make the content acceptable

And for each of those, inform the blogger and the readers about why. I’m sure most bloggers out there will take offense to these ideas. "How could you even suggest that a company censors the posts of its bloggers?" Well, MS offers this service with terms, and it’s up to MS and NOT YOU to determine how they’re enforced. (Don’t like their terms? Take your blog somewhere else.) Second, it’s better that MS does it than the Chinese government who use much harsher tactics than MS would (say, by blocking all MSN Spaces access in China).

For all of you complaining about MS, calling them complicit in the Chinese government’s censoring — yeah, they are. That’s the price of doing business in China. I say MS made the right call this time; not even MS can make a stand against the Chinese government, no matter how high the ideal is.

This is just one small part about how the international nature of the ‘net is going to cause many, many more problems in the upcoming years. We’ve already seen the US resist turning over ICANN — a wise move in my opinion. What you see China right now is a small example of what could happen worldwide if other countries are given control over portions of the Internet. However, this is the only reason why the US should resist turning over ICANN.

But the international issues are not over. Remember that France said Yahoo can’t sell Nazi goods to French net users; those sales are banned by French law. The US court said Yahoo doesn’t have to listen to France. ICANN, MSN Spaces, search censoring — these are isolated examples of a terrible dilemma. Governments should work together to make these decisions. Unilateral action, like the actions of MS or the Great Firewall of China, just piss off the bloggers. Take a chill pill, go curl up with your favorite international relations book, and think about this a little bit more before you give MS the verbal smackdown.

UPDATE:  Maybe MS read my post.  This link goes to a nice summary of the MS response. Quote the MSN PR folks:

"MSN is committed to ensuring that products and services comply with global and local laws, norms and industry practices. Most countries have laws and practices that require companies providing online services to make the Internet safe for local users. Occasionally, as in China, local laws and practices require consideration of unique elements."

"Microsoft is a multinational business and, as such, needs to manage the reality of operating in countries around the world."

I also recommend this post from the MSN Spaces product manager.  Maybe even the Scobilizer has come to his senses:

"I have been talking to lots of people today, though, inside and outside of Microsoft. In every instance they asked me to keep those conversations confidential. Why? Cause we’re talking about international relations here and the lives of employees." (emphasis mine)

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

It’s harder than making lemonade without lemons

A friend of mine once worked for the EPA where he was privy to the meetings and conversations they had with companies, experts, and special interests. He summed up those meetings like this (paraphrasing):

The environmentalists would come in and say, "You need to end X now," where "X" is any issue you can think of. "We want the EPA to stop 100% of X immediately and assess huge fines to anyone who doesn’t comply.

The companies would come in and say, "We know that the EPA has tough decisions to make, but it would really help us if you would let us do 5% more of X."

If you were the EPA and those were the arguments presented, whose side would you choose?

How to make friends (when you would otherwise be enemies)

The first time I really got angry at the digital freedom movement (groups like the Creative Commons, EFF, EPIC, etc.) was when Cory Doctorow spoke at Microsoft. This speech was given to MS Research in 2004 and after he introduced himself, he said this:

Here’s what I’m here to convince you of:

1. That DRM systems don’t work
2. That DRM systems are bad for society
3. That DRM systems are bad for business
4. That DRM systems are bad for artists
5. That DRM is a bad business-move for MSFT

Note all the negative words in that — "don’t work", "bad for society", "bad business move for Microsoft". I’m not the best public speaker, but I do know that opening yout speech by telling your audience that they’re doing the wrong thing is a bad move. Making that the subject of your entire speech is doubly so. (Making claims like DRM is bad for artists, society, etc. without strong evidence to back it up is equally a bad idea, but I’ll cover that later.)

That was the moment I put the pieces together. No wonder these groups can’t get anything laws passed that reflect their ideals. They complain, fight, and argue rather than offer help, set examples, and above all make friends.

You have to make friends to build your movements, no matter what the cause. And so I offer this advice to any group who wants to take it so that they might be more successful in executing strategies that lead to their goals.

Step 1 – Find your friends

The first step in any attempt like this is to locate allies. They’ll help you recruit others to your movement, or at the least hold your bags when you need to tie your shoelaces. And you can always buy more bags for people to hold, so the more people you have, the better.

You find your friends by going public with your opinions — but carefully (more on "carefully" in a moment). You’ll never know who is on your side until you let them know what you think. And even then, those supporters may be in a place where they can’t publicly show their support of you. You must be the pied piper of sorts, playing your flute to draw out all your friends.

So go to meetings, conferences, parties.  Write a blog, send letters to the editors, and take part in the community.  Do whatever you can to get your perspective out, then latch onto the people who respond.

Like I said, you must be careful. In this process of going public, you can’t offend or turn off potential allies. That’s why you need to…

Step 2 – Show understanding

When Cory went to MS and chastised them for their business move, he made no attempt to show empathy, understanding — in fact, I didn’t even see a single nice statement about MS in the entire speech. Worse, he didn’t even address the problems that MS was facing as they were developing DRM solutions.

In my speech to MS, I’d open with something like this:

You’re in a tough situation, Microsoft. You have this new DRM technology, but you’re getting lots of pressure from big Hollywood to do it their way. You also know there’s a potentially huge market of businesses who will purchase MS DRM technology, so there’s lots of money at risk too. You’re also dependent on customers to buy DRM media and use MS products to play that media.

It’s a tough situation to be in, and I’m sure you’ve faced many difficult decisions while building this technology.

And so on. It doesn’t matter who you meet with — your next door neighbor, a politician, a room full of ravenous MS researchers, or me. The first thing you must do to win them over is show empathy and understanding for their problems.

A little while after the discovery of Sony’s CD root kit , the EFF sent this letter to Sony. Add "sending an ultimatum" to the list of things you don’t do when trying to make friends:

But if you truly intend to undo the harm you have caused, your company should immediately and publicly commit to the following additional measures:

<list of changes>

We look forward to hearing that you are in the process of implementing these measures by 9:00am PST on Friday, November 18, 2005.

On one hand, I have to hand it to the EFF for clearly defining what they would like Sony to do. On the other hand, this hardly shows that the EFF understands what Sony is going through.

Think of it like this: You are an ant. Your audience is the 800-pound gorilla. You will take that gorilla, put him on his back, and start rubbing his belly. It’s hard. But you absolutely must disarm them. Do not give them any reason to tune you out, like telling them their business strategy is terrible. Or that they smell funny.

Step 3 – Make them understand you

You have an agenda. Your next goal is to make that audience understand your point of view. This is yet another difficult task. And again, I’ll demonstrate this by example.

In response to the EFF’s demands, Sony sent this letter (PDF warning) explaining their side of the issues. Read it. You’ll see that Sony sounds pretty reasonable in their response, calling out the EFF’s inflammatory language (like calling them "infected" CDs). Sony also explains in pretty clear language what they’re is doing to correct the problems. I think Sony’s response makes the EFF look like a big ass for their huge list of demands.

The EFF obviously didn’t see it that way, and three days later they filed a lawsuit against Sony.

You must clearly communicate your point of view to the audience in a way that doesn’t offend them. Show that you understand the concerns you’re representing. And above all…

Step 4 – Find common ground

Show that you and your audience have a common goal. For the EFF, tell Sony you want the best for Sony’s customers just like Sony does. Sony has built a brand around high quality, and this fiasco has really battered their name. You don’t need to rub it in any more. Instead, make it clear to them that you also want what’s best for consumers.

This isn’t easy. It takes a great deal of humility to say that you have a common goal with someone who would be your enemy in other situations. However, this is the first step of compromise. If you can find these common goals, communicate them to your audience, and get them to agree with you, you’ve just overcome the biggest hurdle.  If you can’t find any common ground, then you’re not looking hard enough.

Step 5 – Help them help you

The last step is to ensure that you and your new ally will work together to reach your common goals. Put yourself on the table. For MS, I’d say the following:

I know we’ve had our differences, but I think we’re both committed to making sure that the consumers have the best experience possible while using technologies including DRM media. I want to help you however I can — offer advice, provide experts, give you research — so that when we’re done, you’ve created a technology that I can endorse whole-heartedly. We’ll be better off for it, you’ll be better off for it, and everyone who uses it will be better off for it.

How can you argue with that?

Find a way to help them. For MS and Sony, point to the bottom line. Say that you can make MS more money if they include first sale rights in their DRM technology by creating secondary markets for music since those companies will then have to buy more MS products. Tell Sony they’ll really be champions of consumers if they let anyone swap their old CDs for new, unprotected ones.

These steps are really a framework to keep in mind when you’re trying to champion a cause. I’ve got some other guidelines that you should pay attention to as well…

Look for an olive branch.

At the end of Sony’s letter to the EFF, Sony thanks the EFF for the opportunity respond and offers the EFF a chance to speak directly to Sony about these issues. That’s the perfect opportunity for the EFF to make peace with Sony.

Take those opportunities any time you see them. Even if you can’t come to an agreement, at least you tried. And I’d much rather have those discussions face-to-face across a conference room table than in a courtroom. Or yelling at the TV from my couch.

Reward good behavior

This brief article in Forbes describes how Wal-Mart just opened their first eco-friendly store. This is the Sierra Club statement. It’s short and pretty mixed in response. A good line from the statement:

More companies should take these positive steps towards safer and healthier communities.

Nice. Tell them they’re doing a good job. Let others know that this is the example you want them to follow. But then a bad line:

While this announcement shows that Wal-Mart can be leader, it also demonstrates that they should be able to take equal steps to protect workers.

Not so nice. Say something like, "We look forward to the opportunity to work with Wal-Mart and other companies to reduce their environmental impact," and leave it at that. Don’t throw your politics into it, and stay on the point. You’re an environmental group, not a labor rights organization. Be their ally in their efforts, and let them know it.

Don’t overreach

Do not claim you speak for a silent majority or otherwise represent a group that you don’t. Do not stretch your claims where they don’t need to go. Stick to your guns and your goals, and make sure you’ve got the evidence to back your points.

And under no circumstances do something that lets me make a fool of you. In their paper (PDF warning), two lawyers I once worked with at UC Berkeley made the following claim. The paper was about DMCA takedown notices — the kind that Google gets from Scientology when the Scientologists want to remove an accusatory web page from Google’s search results.

The specifics of our data set may limit the ability to neatly generalize our findings. Yet the findings are troubling, and seem to indicate a need to further study, and perhaps revisit entirely, the DMCA takedown process.

Let me get this straight… You say you need to do more research and at the same time suggest that your research warrants revisiting the DMCA. Shouldn’t you do that further study first, then decide whether or not you want to revisit the DMCA? Total overreaching. And even worse, it’s a dead giveaway about their political perspective.

Don’t be that guy. Don’t be that guy that I make fun of when you say something stupid.

No fearmongering

This is the ultimate sin. Do not ever scare people into being your allies.

A student was suspended for something he did in his blog (what it was, I’m not certain). The description of the story includes the line:

Perhaps now is the time to consider joining the EFF if you attend a private university and have a blog.

Statements like that make me want to join the NRA. "Oh no! Something bad happened to someone somewhere! Let’s all join the ACLU!" Fuck no.

Don’t cave into fearmongering like that. And absolutely, positively do not use fearmongering to bring people to your side. In the end, you’ll only drive away people who might otherwise be your allies if you instead treated them nicely.

Take part in the community

Sometimes actions speak louder than words. That’s why I was amazed that Microsoft has applied to make their XML Office formats an open standard, that they adopted the Mozilla orange RSS icons, and that their RSS extensions are under a Creative Commons license. Lots of people have been badmouthing MS for this, seeing it as a sign that MS wants to take over RSS and Office.

I say it’s the right move and a big departure from old MS tactics. Old MS would take RSS then add extensions in a way that nobody could figure out how they changed it. New MS makes those changes public and free.

Be a part of the community. Speak on panels. Write papers. Go to conferences. Release your goods to the public. Sure, people can be suspicious of MS, but I’d much rather see this behavior than any other. And best of all, it doesn’t give others an excuse to badmouth you for the same old tactics.

Don’t give up

Above all, never give up. Not like the EFF did. Every three years, the DMCA is reviewed, and the Copyright Office can add exemptions to the DMCA’s rules. Rather than take part in the process and offer ideas for what works should be exempt from the DMCA, the EFF wimped out and decided not to participate. They say their efforts were futile. I say they’re wimps.

Those wimps.

Never give up. If you believe in the cause, this should never be a problem.

Afterthoughts

I’m not convinced that the EFF, Sierra Club, etc. actually want to find a compromise to their organizations’ problems. Their actions show they would rather fight than work together with the people they have problems with. This is understandable in part; I wouldn’t want to work with someone who I perceive as my enemy either.

But part of solving problems is rising above the fight. You have to be willing to extend your hand, turn the other cheek, whatever — as long as you make it clear to the other side that this gesture signals a true change in your relationship. Be genuine, candid, and flexible. If the other side has any sense at all, they’ll see you’re serious about working together.

Of course, this is a pretty idealistic view. Some issues, like abortion rights or the death penalty or what’s the best movie ever, stir so much passion that it may not look like there’s room for compromise. And even if you don’t think Die Hard is the greatest film, you may still like it a little bit. So start from that, and the scene with the fire hose and the window… You never know when the person you’re talking to may become your new best friend.

Scuttlebutt. Heh…

The future of new media is in registration

I love keeping up with the news. I also love news about news media, and for that there’s no better place than Editor & Publisher. They report on the news industry, including TV, print, and even new trends like blogging and digital news distribution (well, it’s new to this industry).

E&P covered a Columbia University panel about new media held a couple of weeks ago. Among the participants were five people from Internet sites of various TV and print media companies and Craig of Craigslist. This panel came shortly before reports of print newspaper circulation declines and Internet newspaper reading increases.

The article is well worth reading to see the various perspectives in the news industry about where it’s headed. The one comment that really stuck with me was this from Andrea Panciera of projo.com about user registration:

"We have to explain to [readers] better what value they are getting from us to get them to cross that registration wall," Panciera explained. Another way to draw them in is to focus on what they want specifically online. For instance, classified ads, movie listings, or a specific article about a family member from 10 years ago.

I’ve heard and read similar comments from other sources — that user registration is an essential part of keeping newspapers alive in the Internet age. Part of requiring registration is to track the users through the site — what do they read, how often do they check the site, plus getting demographic information is always helpful. Like Panciera said and other commenters mention, registration lets papers target users with articles, ads, or other content.

Registration is the sin qua non of the Internet. IM handles, blog accounts, email addresses, shopping sites, domain names — they all require some form of registration. While you keep some registrations to yourself like a blog account or your Amazon login, others you make available to anybody who doesn’t want to waste the time to register. On most news sites, I see no benefits to registering except that the site can track me and what I click. If the future of newspapers or any industry depends on registration, then they’re in much deeper trouble than they want to admit.

In the future, let’s resolve not to use the word "scuttlebutt"

Despite the terrible title of this article, one of the biggest problems for companies has been solved. IBM will offer services for companies to keep track of their image in the information age. Sifting through news articles, blogs, and other crud on the Internet is hard enough without having to deal with spam, porn, and spam. Imagine PayPal’s surprise when they find this site. I bet the CEO will go nuts! Just kidding — I’m sure that any savvy company already knows who is badmouthing them and where to find news about themselves.

Who would use this service? As the article suggests, financial institutions. I bet stock trading companies would love to know the latest headlines about WalMart in the blogosphere. In all honestly, this will make no difference to financial institutions because stock prices are determined by profits, not practices. And other companies have little incentive to track their own image unless they’re trying to quell protests.

But the most important question is this: What editing genius let the word "scuttlebutt" slip into this article? Nobody in my generation uses that word. And "scuttlebutt" hardly applies to news. I think "digital detritus" is a much more appropriate description.

The future of file sharing is in jail

For those of you worried about getting sued for copyright infringement when you download music tracks, the penalties may get much stiffer. The Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2005 proposed by the Attorney General would make copyright infringement a felony, with the potential of jail time, among other changes like making intent to infringe illegal and letting the government seize any equipment involved in such infringement. The bill has not been sent to Congress yet.

While this would harmonize copyright law with, say, murder laws (where "intent" is planning or lying in wait, not just having a motive), I wonder what these changes mean to individuals. Would the act of downloading a file sharing program be considered intent to infringe copyright? Signing up for a Usenet account? Surfing to a site that offers torrents of unauthorized, copyrighted material? Using lots of bandwidth? There’s already the No Electronic Theft Act, signed in 1997, which deals with this issue in part.

What about designing a file sharing program? I look at this law in light of the Grokster ruling. Intent is absolutely a consideration now when determining the legality of file sharing applications. Several P2P companies are rolling over as a result — either going legit or closing down altogether. If it passes, this law would ensure that any company entering the P2P market and any existing P2P services would have to play by the rules or else find their CEOs in jail. If this law does pass, I guarantee that every P2P system that distributed copyrighted material illegally or sites associated with it (like BitTorrent trackers) will be shut down within a year. And the ones that open after those close. And the ones after that. And only those hosted in the United States.

Tag this and get 1% off your order

Amazon.com is adding tagging features — letting users add words and phrases that describe the items for sale. Tagging is supposed to help people find content by letting them choose descriptors and searching for them, and it’s one of the defining buzzwords of Web2.0-speak. I can run around the web and look for all the pages that are about slacking, tag them with some program, then my tags and the slacking tags made by others can be searched by anybody. Then multiply that by the number of words in the English language and all the web pages out there and you’ve got a huge amount of user created searchable information.

I’m not really fond of tagging yet. It suffers from two fundamental problems. First, you need lots of people to tag lots of pages/images/information for tagging to be really useful. Anything that doesn’t have a tag is hard to find, just like any web page not searched by Google might as well not exist. You need to provide incentives for people to tag. Otherwise the many people who don’t tag will freeload off the few who do, and large amounts of useful content will never get tagged.

The other problem is a vocabulary and technology problem. I may tag a photo of young people with the word "children" while someone else might tag it with "kids." Both words are right, but the mystery person and I use different words to describe it. Tagging exacerbates the differences in individual vocabularies.

To solve this, you can use smart technology. If we both tagged the photo with "children" and "kids" and other photos use those two words together, then maybe there’s a connection between the two words and one can substitute for the other. But then the words "kids" and "disneyland" might also appear together often, and they are not the same thing at all. If computers understood the meanings of words, then maybe this problem would go away (search for "kid" and see how close "child" is).

I had a great time tonight… Can you drop me off at Yahoo Headquarters?

Yahoo and Match.com are being sued for fraud because they send employees on dates for their dating services. There’s even a term for it — "date bait."

Idiots…

I’m ahead of our time. The problem is I’m only about 2 months ahead.

Bob Cringley has a decent weekly article where, like me, he tries to see through the fog of business, technology, and trends to get a glimpse of the future. Unlike me, Bob actually has "connections" and "good information" while I merely stab in the dark. This week, he wrote an article about Google’s latest move — putting mini-supercomputers at locations where Google recently bought high speed, fiber optic Internet connections.

Quote Bob, Nov 17, 2005:

Google hired a pair of very bright industrial designers to figure out how to cram the greatest number of CPUs, the most storage, memory and power support into a 20- or 40-foot box… The idea is to plant one of these puppies anywhere Google owns access to fiber, basically turning the entire Internet into a giant processing and storage grid.

…

And remember the Google Web Accelerator that came and disappeared? It’s back! Only this time the Web Accelerator will have the proper hardware and network infrastructure to make it worth using.

Quote me, Sept. 21, 2005:

I was thinking about Google’s plans in relation to their web accelerator product before their Wifi plans were announced… I thought Google was going to push their search engine and web acceleration to WiFi access points, making for the fastest damn Internet you’ve ever experienced. In return, they would then record all your traffic and [use that information as a basis for making new services].

Sometimes I get things right. Sometimes.

Apologies to George Carlin for bastardizing his joke in this section’s title.

Do not stare directly at void. If void begins to glow, seek shelter immediately.

The stories of the week are tied together, in some way, with the absence of law or policy — a policy void. Policy void is the state where something — in these cases, some kind of socio-technological interaction — is not regulated by the government. During that time, individuals, companies, and organizations are free to do whatever they want in that space with little or no legal repercussions. The social, business, and other effects of these actions is another story.

Take RFID for example. No law has been written (at least not that I know of) to regulate the use of these devices. Companies have rolled them out into products, like Gillette who put RFID tags into razors and then took pictures of people who bought them. It was completely legal for Gillette to do that, but they felt the repercussions afterwards from people concerned about their privacy and that use of RFIDs. The US Government is putting RFIDs into new passports, which has some security experts worried that malicious people could retrieve the data contained in those chips. How will incidents like these shape the laws that will undoubtedly be written in the future to regulate RFID use?

Keep that example in mind with these other stories which have their own policy void implications.

Word of the day: pseudonymous

The facts of this case really terrify me. If you make harsh public comments about your employer (or let out a company secret) and they find out, you deserve to be fired. That, in a word, is stupid. Yeah, I’ll cut out an exception for whistle-blowers and other extenuating circumstances. However, if you make those kinds of comments and expect to get away with it, you are deluding yourself.

Take the case of an employee at some random company. He degrades his employer, including the ‘n’ word, and gets fired because of it. Big whoop, right? Not exactly. This guy posted those comments on a Yahoo message board using a pseudonym — a name which included his company’s stock symbol. The company saw those comments, sued "John Doe," then subpoenaed Yahoo to disclose the poster’s identity. A month after getting his identity, the company dropped the suit and fired the guy.

Again, I have no problem with an employee being fired for badmouthing his employer publicly. You just don’t do that. However, I have a real problem with this case. It sets a bad precedent that any company can subpoena the identity of any pseudonymous Internet user, like our now unemployed Yahoo user. The company defended its actions saying they had to determine whether the poster was a "high-ranking employee" of the company. Does that matter if he had been one or not? (He wasn’t.) What if it was some poor slob who owned stock in the company and was only complaining about its fall from $50 to $10 a share, looking for catharsis? What if the person was unrelated to the company altogether and was making up those comments? Could they have identified the guy without sending Yahoo a subpoena? Could Yahoo have refused to turn over the identity of the guy?

Now this unemployed fool is suing his ex-employer for wrongly using a subpoena to unmask his Yahoo identity. I don’t know how he’ll put this on his resume, but a quick search in Google for his name will turn up this story, and that doesn’t bode well for his future employment prospects. Who would hire an employee that’s going to trash talk the company he works for?

As long as companies can subpoena the identities of anyone using Yahoo, MySpace, Blogger, AOL Instant Messenger, or any other Internet service just because they said something nasty, the Internet will be a much colder place for everyone. In short, we need better privacy laws.

MS Pushes Crack Privacy

As much as I’ve been critical of Microsoft in the past, they’re really on to something now. First, they just announced their plans to unite many of their services and make them available online, including MS Office, XBox Live, and more, showing that MS might actually get this Web2.0 thing. Also announced this week, MS is pushing Congress to enact federal privacy laws which would include, among other things, improved transparency about how your data is used, who it’s shared with, and standards for its secure storage and transportation.

Of course MS has an interest in this, and I’m certain that they would love to see some of their security technology become part of new federal data privacy standards. Remember that US citizens have no explicit right to privacy — just a kludge of privacy-like rights regarding your health information, financial data, and who you’re fucking. As Sun CEO Scott McNealy famously told reporters years ago, you have no privacy so any improvement is a win for consumers, right?

Unfortunately, we’ve already seen what happens when we have no laws regarding the privacy of our data. (I have more links but you get the point.) The funny thing is that the EU countries have a guaranteed right to privacy, but it comes with its own pains like the trouble GM had making a phone book that included the numbers of their European employees. Privacy is something that gives individuals confidence in commerce and in their everyday lives, and I would welcome any step in ensuring digital privacy rights as long as those laws let me badmouth my employer on Yahoo message boards.

And by the way, my privacy is still for sale. Cheap.

Dibs on the one where the guy goes to sleep for 30 years and wakes up and tries to reclaim his life… oh… it’s taken already?

The US Patent Office published the first of what will certainly be thousands of storyline patents — a patent on, you guessed it, the storyline of a novel, play, movie, or whatever. As my former Professor Braunstein taught me, there was a guy who once invented a new kind of novel. It had to do with espionage and governments and military and they sold really well. However, Tom Clancy does not have the right to sue other people who use espionage, governments, and military as the primary elements of their novels.

Patents have gotten a bad rap lately. With patents for online shopping carts, tire swings, or html links, it’s easy to complain about the USPTO. You can look for your own opinion about why this is happening, but I think it’s mostly because of the huge growth of patent applications and patents granted in the last 20 years. More patent applications means more crap will get through. I wonder if the USPTO’s staff has increased in the same proportion to the number of patent applications.

Anyway, the beauty of copyrights is that they’re really narrow so infringing a copyright is really hard to do without outright plagiarizing a work. These patents seem to flip that on its head, so that anyone can patent a plot then go nuts suing everyone who even comes close to it. This is wholly the realm of copyright law. Anyway, I can’t see how this promotes the progress of science and useful arts at all.

The patent has not been accepted yet, and I can only hope it’s rejected soundly (which will almost certainly result in a lawsuit, which I can only hope gets dismissed too). As a post-modernist friend of mine said, there are only three kinds of novels anyways — man vs man, man vs nature, and man vs himself — so doesn’t that mean that every story is unoriginal?

If the patent does get accepted, I’m going to patent a story about a man who gets into an altercation with an animal, then another man, then himself, and once I have the patent I’ll file my first lawsuit against Ann Rynd because her writing sucks. And then I’ll go after the estate of L. Ron Hubbard and see if I can shut those Scientologists up once and for all.

I’ve changed my mind. I do want storyline patents. And I want them all.

Pistachios?

Patenting Humans

National Geographic got the scoop that 1/5 of human genes have been patented. Some people think that patenting genes is a gross overstretching of patent laws. People in the bio-chemical and drug industries don’t, considering the huge invesetments it took to find what these genes do in the first place. I’m somewhere in-between. If these companies are taking active steps to solve these genetic issues, then let them patent away and fix these problems. If not, then there’s no reason to offer the patent, is there?

I like to imagine that someday somebody with a genetic disease that has been patented sues one of those companies claiming prior art. "Yes, your honor. I have Type I Diabetes, have had it for 50 years, and those people think they invented it five years ago." Heh..

But even moreso, I remember something that happened to the OpenGL board… (OpenGL is a 3D programming language.) Microsoft claimed that they had patents on certain 3D rendering technologies that were going to be incorporated into OpenGL. Rather than extort the other board members for money, MS said that they’d licence the patents as long as other OpenGL board members would recipricate. About a year later, MS quit the OpenGL board claiming (rightfully) that OpenGL was moving too slow for them without explicitly saying that.

To this day, I still think that an all-out patent war could break out in the computer graphics world. Or better yet, a new computer graphics company could come along, then all the other patent holders could sue them out of existance before they even produce a piece of silicon. And then I think the same thing could happen with this human gene patenting thing. I really don’t like that thought at all…

By the way, if you want a different look into the world of patents, check out The Patent Files by David Lindsay. It’s a great book, and you can join in his adventure while he describes his failed patent attempts including patenting himself. (No, his parents didn’t claim prior art on his DNA.)

Chip This!

The Australian Supreme Court ruled that modding your PlayStation 2 console is totally legal, throwing another curve into the question of, "Do you control it if you own it?" Modding or chipping your PS2 is often used when people want to play illegal copies of games, even though it does have some legal uses like running home-brew software. In the UK, chipping your console is illegal. In the US, nobody has tested it in court. Yay conflicting rulings! I’m certain this will be resolved by WIPO in the near future to the detriment of chippers everywhere. In the mean time, start stockpiling those chips. If you’ve ever wanted to become a black market entrepreneuer, let me tell you about your future in the mod chipping market…

Adopt This!

According to USA Today, 29% of US households are first adopters of new technologies. After I stopped laughing, I checked their graphic which shows that large and tech cities are most likely to have the highest proportion of first adopters. (If someone has the skills, I’d love to see that chart correlated with the 2004 election results by county.)

What’s a good measure for determining first adopters? USA Today chose wireless Internet and TiVo which shows why they got 29%. By comparison, a Yahoo survey showed that 28% of Internet users (presumably Yahoo users) know what a podcast is, and 2% actually listen to them. Two percent of US Internet users is about 4 million Americans. This oddly correlates to a Pew survey (those badasses of surveydom) that said 11% of Americans have MP3 players and 29% of those have "downloaded a podcast or Internet radio program," which comes out to about 6 million Americans. Podcasting is probably a better measure of "first adoption" but I guess that eluded USA Today.

By the way, I’m still not convinced about the longevity of podcasting — at least not until more than 11% of Americans get MP3 players. And computers. And Internet service. And given the price of gas these days, I think that may be a while.

Gimme gimme gimme!

Everyone wants in the profits from an iPod — from hardware to downloads. Now five Hollywood unions, including the Screen Actors Guild, are calling for a bigger cut of the iPod Video royalties pie. I’m sure this is partly because they’re pissed about the deal they got over DVD royalties. (Look for an article about "DVD Sales Figures Turn Every Film Into a Mystery" in the LA Times.) Funny… Apple has about 75% of the music sales in the market but a smaller percent of the hardware market. (iPods are big in the US, Japan and UK and that’s about it.) You might think that it’s in everyone’s best interest to diversify — make some new video download services — but to me, I just like the visions of vultures flying over the carcass of Apple… Or is that Apple flying over the carcasses of the entertainment industry? Who knows…

MS shows the future

The Daily Princetonian has an insightful interview with Bill Gates — insightful in the sense that it shows what Bill is thinking. Take a close look at his comments about Blu-Ray and Apple for a peek at what MS and the entertainment industry have in store for us. And make sure you read what he has to say about drug pricing. Right on, Bill. Right on…

Oh my god… Did I just agree with Bill Gates? Fuck… Is the enemy of my enemy my friend?

Google’s Master Plan, the next phase

Google updated their privacy policy earlier in October. As if to confirm my suspicion after I saw their WiFi privacy policy, the new policy clearly shows that Google is collecting info about you across their varied services. First, I want to know how I can opt out of Google’s information collection. Don’t I get a choice about whether or not my Google use is recorded? Second (and this is a compliment), I’m glad that they’re being honest about what they’re doing. Now if every web site was as blatantly up front with their privacy policy, I’d be a lot happier.

iPod Video is officially not the next big thing

The porn industry is the bellweather of new technologies. If the porn industry likes it, you can be certain the that technology has a bright future. They were way ahead on VHS, DVD, and the Internet — so far ahead that when those technologies came into the mainstream, a bountiful supply of porn was there waiting for us. And I personally want to thank them for their foresight.

But not the iPod video. Wired says that the porn industry is staying away from the iPod video. This is an absolutely clear sign that the iPod video has a dark future. And quite frankly, I couldn’t be happier.

By the way, if you want a tip, I hear that mobile phone porn is gonna be huge.

That is, if you care about this stuff…

China goes big time

Not to get too political, but The Newshour with Jim Lehrer aired an interesting series recently about the rise of China’s economy. One part of the series included Wu-Mart, China’s home grown version of Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart offers American style shopping. Wu-Mart is more like the Chinese expect it, including people barking out the prices.

However, there’s one more big difference that separates the two. Wu-Mart contracts out their services locally, while Wal-Mart has tried to re-create their U.S. operations overseas. Chinese regulations require that stores use local suppliers for many goods, such as fresh produce, requiring Wal-Mart to learn some new tricks to operate in the Chinese economy. If Wal-Mart acted like Wu-Mart in this aspect, I wonder if people would be so angry at Wal-Mart.

A new global IP plan?

The Bush Administration recently announced a new initiative to curb IP infringment, infringement which costs an estimated $250bn and 750,000 jobs a year. Part of this would include sending US intellectual property experts around the world to "advocate improved intellectual property rights protection." Another is to train IP enforcers on the US way of dealing with IP infringement.

Where the hell did they get those monetary and job loss numbers from? My guess — the Business Software Association, who thinks that, much like the music industry, that every infringed intellectual property work is a lost sale. Let’s not forget there are plenty of people who will never pay for those things in the first place because it’s too expensive for them or because they don’t want to support some overpaid executive’s third cabin in Aspen and the H2 that will get him there.

The misconception here is that you can’t compete with piracy except by harsher punishments for IP protection. Thankfully, Warner got a clue and is now going to release DVDs at or near the price of pirated DVDs in China. I seriously hope it succeeds, but Warner is only doing this half-heartedly — they’re releasing just 125 titles this way.

As my former professor Yale Braunstein once said to me in class (or something like this), you can’t sell a textbook in India for $80 since many of them don’t even make that much in a year. Instead, publishers sell books in black and white for much less with big stickers on them that say "not for export" which still somehow make it into the US for dirt cheap. Same applies to any intellectual property protected stuffs like movies, music, drugs, and software — prices are different around the world because people have different abilities (and willingness) to pay.

Why do we pay tons for drug prescriptions, $80 for textbooks, $20 for DVD, and $15 for music albums? Because we can afford to. Why do IP holders go livid when they find out we want to import drugs from Canada, buy books from India, and DVDs and music from China? Because we’re supposed to buy the U.S. priced versions…

An iTunes war lurks

The big labels in the record industry, taking 70% of the gross from iTunes song sales, still aren’t satisfied with the money they’re getting. First, they are subtly suggesting that when their contract with iTunes is up, they’re going to demand that Apple charge more for songs (and send them an appropriate increase in per-song royalties). Next, they’re insisting that digital radio providers XM and Sirius pay royalties for producing players that can record broadcast music.

Meanwhile, Archos, Creative, and other manufacturers producing media players that can record FM radio are not being demanded to pay royalties. The RIAA is after anyone with a subscription model, because they think they deserve part of the subscription fee even though they’re not the company providing the subscription. Even worse, some music execs want a cut on anything that produces revenue, like from advertising that accompanies downloads. I don’t think I need to point out the hubris and greed that this exhibits.

I do want to point out this: The success of Apple’s iPod video will almost entirely be whether or not you can play movies on it, and Apple and the MPAA have not yet come to terms on fees and royalties. (If they had, I’m certain that Steve Jobs would have announced it at the grand unveiling of the iPod video last week.) In other words, the MPAA is listening to the RIAA’s complaints and will demand more from Apple. Apple can’t say ‘no’ because without the MPAA and feature length movies, the iPod video will be just some other video playing portable device. But if the MPAA’s demands are too extreme, then movies will cost too much for most people to pay.

If the RIAA gets their price increases, Apple will have several million pissed off customers because no other online stores provide big label downloads (read as: Apple’s DRM) that are compatible with iPods. In other words, Apple has a locked-in customer base which may see big price increases for buying tracks next year unless the RIAA has a big change of heart or Apple can stay profitable making less than $0.30 a track. And Real, who reverse engineered Apple’s DRM to allow iPod users to play Rhapsody DRM tracks on an iPod, is in court with Apple over DMCA violations. I smell potential for disaster, or maybe an opportunity for some upstart music service to figure all of this out and make a mint by solving this problem once and for all…

There can only be six

I was going to write a full, extended length rant on the iPod and rumored iPod video, but instead it got mashed up into this post. This is a paragraph that I cut from the longer version (emphasis added):

This is not the end of Apple’s video migration. Apple is not stupid, and I can’t imagine they’re going to start selling video and not develop a version of their operating system specifically for TVs. Think of an Apple PVR or media center, because what good is it if you can’t play all your paid for music videos on your TV? Complete with the $100 Apple remote control which will have only one button. (Yeah, that’s a mouse joke.) I bet this is what Intel had in mind when they signed a deal with Apple to supply CPUs and such, especially with Intel’s new Viiv marketing — an Intel hardware based, Apple software powered media center. If I’m right, you heard it here first. If I’m not, then I’ll deny I ever wrote this.

Imagine my chagrin when I saw this: Apple announced that they’re releaseing a media center application for OSX with a remote control. The remote control will have… six buttons. Is it me or does that look conspicuously like the iPod Shuffle?

Aren’t you tired of this by now?

Oh bright and joyful day! Fiona Apple’s new album has hit the stores! There are two reasons why you might care about it. First, it’s her first album since 1999. Second, it’s receiving tons of free press because the album was leaked to the Internet last year among rumors that her record label was unhappy with it. I would not at all be surprised if this was intentional — an attempt to dredge up more publicity for the album. Commentators have made remarks like, "of course it’s a great album. The record label was stupid to shelf it; those companies want nothing but top ten hits, not serious music. They wouldn’t know a good album if it fucked them all night long and left a benjamin on the nightstand." Or something like that.

Funny thing is… I haven’t seen any kind of statement from Epic about what happened other than one they made while the spat was ongoing — something like, "the album will be ready when it’s ready." According to Fiona, she wasn’t happy with the album, had a spat with her label, quit, then went back when Epic ponied up more money following the album’s release on the Internet. I’m sure Epic Records wouldn’t like that made public, so they instead opt for the silent treatment? Hmph… As much as I appreciate artistic integrity, most bands would get dropped from their label for that kind of maneuver faster than you can say, "my contract says Poland Spring bottled water, not Evian!" All in all, free publicity. And now I’m a part of it too. Damn…

In less exciting news, a virtual plague has broken out in the World of Warcraft. Because I can’t make this shit up any more, here it is straight from the source:

In his death throes Hakkar hits foes with a "corrupted blood" infection that can instantly kill weaker characters.

The infection was only supposed to affect those in the immediate vicinity of Hakkar’s corpse but some players found a way to transfer it to other areas of the game by infecting an in-game virtual pet with it.

This pet was then unleashed in the orc capital city of Ogrimmar and proved hugely effective as the Corrupted Blood plague spread from player to player.

The day that a story about the happenings on World of Warcraft makes it to the front page of the BBC News web site is a very, very sad day in the history of humanity. Of course, what I want to know is who had unprotected sex with the infected pet to transfer the disease from pet to human… Fine, so they didn’t have sex with their virtual pets, but if virtual disease isn’t perfect material for parents who worry that their kids might be having cybersex, I don’t know what is.

The disconnection between DRM and musicians is making the big time. CNN reports about musicians helping their fans to break DRM methods used to prevent people from making MP3s from thier CDs. What most people don’t realize is that some copy protection schemes break the red book standard — the appropriately named book produced by Philips which describes the format of a CD Audio disc in verbose detail. Philips has warned companies about this almost three years go now, but that hasn’t stemmed the tide of DRM protected CDs, including CDs that won’t play correctly in some CD players.

I know a lot about CD protection methods from my work on CDRMooby – a plugin that lets people use CD images (on your hard drive) as though they were real CDs in PlayStation emulators. PCs, game consoles, DVDs — really any kind of media — they all use different methods to prevent you from doing things that companies don’t want you to do, acts that may be legal or not. So as a public service to my readers, in future posts I’ll go into unnecessary detail about how some of these systems work so that you can take that knowledge and spread chaos into the world. Or copyrighted music. Or movies. Or porn, whatever you prefer.

Lastly, our US Patent and Trademark office has decided to make youth targeted anti-piracy videos, complete with appearances by Jon Dudas – Director of the USPTO, pop star Margot, an innocent yet stupid-looking youth, and *ugh* even a pirate. How they ever got Margot to sign up for this is unknown to me, but apparently her rider includes private dressing room, two scantily clad male models, and a crate of Reddi Wip. (The Reddi Wip trademark is "Let the fun out.") Seriously though, if this is the future of our anti-copyright infringement efforts, we are in deep, deep trouble. Remember to use my instructions for dealing with the rtsp links on that page, and try your favorite search engine for a copy of Real Alternative to play it back. Or better yet, don’t watch the video. It’s crap. It’s almost as bad as the video made by the Software Publishers Association back in the 90’s.

Silver lining… thunderstorm… *zap*

Googlers everywhere were overjoyed with news of a Google WiFi offering. As you probably know, I’m increasingly sceptical of Google’s motives — throwing new things into the wild without much foresight. Today, I’m happy to say that I’m wrong about the lack of foresight. It is, in fact, much worse than that.

As part of using Google’s WiFi service, you also can download their VPN client — a secure connection between your computer and Google so that other people can’t see your traffic while you use your wireless connection. But PLEASE read Google’s privacy policy more carefully:

Google may log some information from your web page requests as may the websites that you visit. We do this to understand how Google Secure Access is being used and to improve our services (ed: note the words "our services" can refer to anything Google makes, not just Google Secure Access). Google Secure Access does not log cookies and strips potentially sensitive query data from the end of requests to help better protect your privacy.

Google also logs a small set of non-personally identifiable information — such as routing information, session durations and operating system and Google Secure Access client version numbers — in order to create your Google Secure Access connection, understand how people are using Google Secure Access and help us maintain the Google Secure Access client.

I was thinking about Google’s plans in relation to their web accelerator product before their Wifi plans were announced. The Wifi announcement is what solidified their plans for me. In all honesty, I thought Google was going to push their search engine and web acceleration to WiFi access points, making for the fastest damn Internet you’ve ever experienced. In return, they would then record all your traffic and do something with it that I’ll talk about in a moment. Instead, Google will encourage you to use their VPN software (or web acceleration software, or whatever their next invention is), but still not tell you up front that they’re recording you’re usage.

But about my lack of foresight… Google has a plan, same one they’ve always had: to be the source of all information everywhere, especially the Internet. Their new means to accomplish this is to capture your Internet traffic and analyze the hell out of it. They’ll use that data to keep track of how people use the services of their competition and generate new services based on emerging ‘net uses — all that and they won’t even have to leave their cushy offices in Mountain View to do it. They already track how you use their search results without your permission, have access to your emails and email use habits, social networking, and instant messaging too. Why not take the next step and record everything you do on the net?

Fuck Google.

I take that back. Fuck all those search engines because they’re all probably doing the same thing. Isn’t there an open source, fully anonymized search engine yet? Now is the ideal time for that and other marketing-free or blatant-marketing-disclosure services to emerge…

Boy am I lazy…

Here are some stories you probably missed. They’re from over the last several months, if that’s any indication (once again) of how far behind I am on my postings. Remember — shiny new administration system means faster turnaround time to you.

iPod Video: You know, for kids!

The iPod Video, mentioned in many places by now, has been the talk of the town. Ok, maybe not the town, but at least the music industry is drooling over. Apple is in a unique position right now. They rule the high end MP3 player market, and they have no intent of giving it up. The only problem is they’re running out of market, and the low-end MP3 players are getting better and cheaper.

Apple, however, is not changing course. They need rich people to buy iPods and iTunes and eventually trade up to iMacs and PowerBooks to make up for the lack of profitability on iPods and iTunes. And poor people can’t afford iPods, much less a computer to hook it up to, an Internet connection, iTunes songs, or even a bus ticket out of New Orleans. Hence, there’s only one viable market left.

Kids.

Kids watch MTV, music videos, listen to music, talk about music… They’re a music marketer’s dream. Kids also have time to watch these videos — riding on buses, getting driven around town by their parents, at recess, and so on. And the first iPod video sales will certainly include music videos. Hence, Apple will now start marketing the hell out of the iPod video to youngsters, hoping to make it the next cool thing for them to have. Even though kids can’t afford iPod Videos, their parents can, and Apple will bank on that for the success of their new gadget.

Remember two things about this. First, Apple will need one hell of a pricing strategy to make this work. Bundle the video, a few songs, and maybe extra stuff together (interviews, exclusive music, etc) to encourage kids to buy those videos. Second, convert the kids to Apple so when they get a computer for college or can afford a computer of their own, they buy Apple. Yes, Apple is about to start brainwashing a generation of our youth to buy Apple. And you thought they were a good company… (I say our youth because the iPod has only been a hit in the US, UK, and Japan. Everywhere else in the world, they’re struggling against (better) cheap Korean and Chinese players.)

Since iPods are an audio medium, they don’t take up much attention while walking around. Watching videos, however, absorbs much more of your attention. This attention-grabbing doesn’t prevent people from walking and texting at the same time, but it will be interesting to watch how peoples’ behavior changes when using an iPod Video given the norms of activities that can be done while walking. What I mean is that we’ve already got handheld game systems, portable TVs, PDAs, and other devices that presumably can be used while walking around but people don’t use them whether because of social norms of walking, fear of having it stolen, or fear of tripping and breaking the incredibly expensive device when you step off the curb that you weren’t watching because you were paying attention to Eminem’s latest release on your iPod Video. Can the iPod Video buck that trend?

MS and IBM settled

In a story that didn’t get near enough attention, Microsoft and IBM settled their lawsuit regarding MS’s antitrust violations harming IBM’s OS/2 sales. Included in this is $775 million in damages a $75 million credit of MS software for IBM, which I can only hope they use to turn Windows CDs into frisbees.

Now why would they settle? Easy. They both have some dirt to hide about the breakup. Remember when IBM and MS were in cahoots with each other? They were going to develop compatible next-generation operating systems and everyone was going to be happy, right? Nope, they parted ways and IBM was left to eat MS dust. I’m certain there’s something in those moments that neither company wants to have aired in court, and so we’ll never find out what really happened that caused the breakup of these giants. Keep in mind that in two years IBM can sue MS for damages done to IBM hardware sales, which will result in another settlement from which we will learn nothing about their short lived marriage.

Baptists mend their differences… with Disney?

In the surprise story of the year, the Southern Baptist Convention called off its boycott of Disney. Said one Disney executive, "Someone was boycotting us? For eight years? I didn’t even notice." From one of the chairmen of the Southern Baptist Convention, "We fought a good fight, and we know our boycott was responsible for Disney’s lackluster performance in their releases of Mulan, Tarzan, The Emperor’s New Groove, Atlantis, Treasure Planet, Brother Bear, and Home on the Range. And Test Track at Epcot. But not Lilo and Stitch. That was a good movie." One seven year old Baptist boy said, "Now I can see all those cartoons and learn why those Disney Satanists are going to hell." Kid, for that you only need to look as far as the censored lines from Alladin.

Good things come when I get around to it…

The good news is that the site is now running on a shiny, new, entirely written by me PHP and MySQL backend. You probably won’t notice it, but I will because it makes life much easier for me to manage the site, which translates to more posts and irreverence from yours truly. The bad news is that some things are likely to be broken, such as the comments which are now disabled. Since there aren’t many comments to begin with, you probably won’t notice that either. After some sleep and consulting with my Perl manuals, hopefully the comments will be working shortly along with everything else on the site.

Update: Things appear to be working fine again. And now back to our regularly scheduled web site…