There's an absolutely awesome comic by Jorge Cham of PhDComics (which you should read whether or not you're a PhD student) about the science news cycle, in which a nuanced scientific result showing a slight correlation is turned into a causal relationship by the press, leading to a flat out frenzy of others in the press who don't even bother to understand what the original research was about.
Click image to see full version I'm reminded of this particular comic as the folks at On the Media point us to a story, told by Moran Cerf at The Moth (my favorite storytelling operation), about how, as a grad student, he got some research accepted for publication in Nature, the top of the top in terms of scientific journal prestige. His rather interesting research was about sticking electrodes in patients brains during brain surgery, having them think of certain things, and being able to have a projector project an image of what they were thinking. Cool, right? You can watch the video to see what happened once the press got hold of the story. In case you can't watch the video, the short version is that Cerf had put together a short video about the research, and at the very, very, very end, when talking to a colleague about how this kind of research might advance in the future, the research mentions something about studying and recording dreams. Now, nothing in the actual research is about studying or recording dreams, but... the BBC picked up on this part of the story, and then everyone picked up on this part of the story, and things only got worse from there. And no matter what Cerf did, everyone was just focused on these claims about dream recording -- even to the point that director Chris Nolan asked him to come on tour in a discussion about the movie Inception.

You can see the original Nature story here, followed by the BBC piece that focuses on dreams, even though that's not in the actual research. At least it admits that such things are far, far away. Others in the press weren't so careful. There are plenty of other such reports, but my favorite may be Metro in the UK that claims we're on the "brink" of recording people's dreams, despite that not being even close to true. For what it's worth, it appears some sources, such as Reuters did not parrot the dream recording angle, but plenty did.

It's a pretty good reminder that, especially when it comes to scientific research, you really shouldn't believe everything you read.

Oh, and as a random aside, while this story from Moran is entertaining, it does not come close in entertainment value to this other story that Cerf told at a different Moth event about his life as a bank robber. Seriously. No matter what you're doing today, find ten minutes to watch this next video:

Australia's been an interesting country to follow on the copyright front. In terms of court decisions, there have been some good ones and some awful ones. On the lawmaking front, we've seen ridiculous ideas floated and good ones as well. The current regime is, unfortunately, supporting some of the bad parts of the TPP, but the Australian Parliament has argued for rejecting ACTA. All in all, it's a mixed bag.

However, Australia is about to undergo a copyright reform process, with the Australian Law Reform Commission focusing on how copyright reform should work in the digital economy, and releasing a very encouraging set of questions that it is seeking to answer as a part of the process. Unlike the typical "and just how awesome is copyright?" type of questions we see in some other places, the ALRC's questions raise many of the key issues -- noting that copyright law absolutely has an impact on the introduction of new and innovative business models and that it "imposes unnecessary costs or inefficiencies on creators or those wanting to access or make use of copyright material."

Furthermore, it has some specifics that show whoever put together the questions has a pretty deep understanding of some of the key upcoming issues, including how copyright law should handle things like caching and cloud computing. There's a push among copyright holders to change or clarify laws to say that temporary or cached copies can violate copyright, but that that leads to some serious problems for all sorts of online activities. Some of the ALRC's questions show a recognition of the potential problem:

Question 3. What kinds of internet-related functions, for example caching and indexing, are being impeded by Australia’s copyright law?

Question 4. Should the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) be amended to provide for one or more exceptions for the use of copyright material for caching, indexing or other uses related to the functioning of the internet? If so, how should such exceptions be framed?

Question 5. Is Australian copyright law impeding the development or delivery of cloud computing services?

Question 6. Should exceptions in the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) be amended, or new exceptions created, to account for new cloud computing services, and if so, how?

There's also a whole series of questions looking at how private copying should be dealt with, as well as "online use for social, private or domestic purposes." A few more of the questions:

Question 7. Should the copying of legally acquired copyright material, including broadcast material, for private and domestic use be more freely permitted?

Question 11. How are copyright materials being used for social, private or domestic purposes—for example, in social networking contexts?

Question 12. Should some online uses of copyright materials for social, private or domestic purposes be more freely permitted? Should the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) be amended to provide that such use of copyright materials does not constitute an infringement of copyright? If so, how should such an exception be framed?

The questions even specifically call out how samples, remixes and mashups should be handled. I doubt that the majority of US politicians even know what any of those three things are.

Furthermore, the questions explore known issues with copyright law today, such as how to deal with libraries, archives and orphan works (though we still think they should be referred to as hostage works). Towards the end, there are a whole bunch of questions around fair dealing (what Australia currently has) and fair use. They specifically ask if Australia should switch from fair dealing -- with its specific exceptions to copyright law -- to fair use, with its much more broad and flexible look at whether or not uses should be allowed without permission.

Who knows how this will turn out in the long run, but from a starting point, it certainly looks like the ALRC is actually asking a lot of the right questions, rather than trodding down the well-worn path of simply expanding copyright law over and over again. Of course, the really tragic part is that if Australia does sign onto ACTA and the TPP, they may not be able to make many of the changes suggested by these questions. That's one of the major concerns with both agreements. They lock governments into certain ways that copyright law must act, and it wouldn't allow the kinds of exceptions that these kinds of questions would likely lead to. That's one of the reasons why we're so worried about both agreements. They don't necessarily change the laws today in some places (in others, they make some changes), but the real problem is they lock in clearly broken parts of the system and make it impossible for them to evolve. Clearly some people in Australia recognize the problems with copyright law in the digital age -- but ACTA and TPP might limit their ability to fix those problems.

Storing digital data can be unreliable if you want it to last a really long time. But there are many ways to store vast amounts of data, and if you're not in a hurry to retrieve the data, it can be somewhat cheap to maintain an enormous amount of information nowadays. Here are just a few examples of storing LOTS of data in somewhat unconventional ways.

• Printing at about 100,000 dots per inch in full color has been achieved by researchers at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) in Singapore. As a proof of principle, a test image of Lenna was formed on a silicon wafer covered with a nanoscale metal coating. [url]
• Amazon is starting to offer archival storage for just $0.01 per gigabyte per month. This Glacier storage service is aimed at replacing old tape archives and geographically distinct facilities, but retrieving the data isn't so convenient: data retrieval requests can take hours (hence the name Glacier) and there's also a retrieval fee after you've accessed more than 5% of your data vault in a month. [url]
• Geneticists in Boston have stored a 5.27-megabit book (containing 53,246 words, 11 JPG image files and a JavaScript program) on DNA. This is the highest density of non-biological data ever encoded by DNA, and a gram of material could store 455 exabytes of data. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Picture yourself on vacation. You leave your hotel room, listening to the fully-licensed music in the lobby on your way out. You make sure not to ask the hotel staff for anything as you leave, lest something called a PARFF come after you. And as you're out frolicking on the beach, sucking in that gut and puffing out your chest (asexual insults FTW!), Zero Cool takes a small electronic device that costs less than your average Electronic Arts videogame and hacks your hotel room's lock, giving him access to all the tourist crap you bought in the past three days.

Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that this couldn't possibly happen. After all, Johnny Lee Miller is probably still too busy spinning in place from the speed with which Eli Stone was cancelled after two seasons (and again, I'm reminded that Firefly lasted one. Sigh...) to be stealing stuff from your hotel room. And besides, it can't be that freaking easy to hack into a hotel lock, can it?

Yes, it can. Forbes has the story of hotel lock-maker Onity's reaction to Cody Brocious revealing at a Black Hat security conference how to hack the company's locks (found on over 4 million hotel room doors) with $50 worth of equipment.

The company’s response to that epic security bug has two parts–a quick fix, and a more rigorous one, both of which it plans to make available by the end of August: First, it’s issuing caps that cover the data port Brocious’s hack exploited, which can only be removed by opening the lock’s case. To further stymie hackers who would try to open the locks and remove that cap, it’s also sending customers new, more obscure Torx screws to replace those on the cases of installed locks.

The second fix is more substantial: Onity will offer its customers new circuit boards and firmware that ostensibly fix the problems Brocious demonstrated.

Not bad, right? We've certainly seen companies in the past react poorly when shown the security flaws in their products, attempting to silence those that point them out rather than just fixing the problems. So this would seem to be a step in the right direction, yes? Maybe, except for this:

But Onity is asking owners of some models of its locks of some to pay a “nominal fee” for the fix, while offering others “special pricing programs” to cover the cost of replacing components. It’s also asking its customers to cover the shipping and labor costs of making hardware changes to the millions of locks worldwide.

That's ridiculous. Onity sold hotels a product that had one job to do: keep the wrong people out of hotel rooms. The product does the job so poorly that $50 worth of equipment and a little technical know-how defeats it entirely. And now you want customers to pay to fix your bad device?

Even Brocious himself pushed back on Onity's statement.

Brocious criticized Onity’s move to put the financial onus for the fix on its customers after selling them what he’s described as fundamentally insecure products. While the free mechanical cap solution could create hurdles for hackers, he says that’s only a partial fix replacement until the lock’s circuit boards are replaced–something that’s not likely to happen if it requires millions of dollars in costs for Onity’s customers. “This will not be insignificant, given that the majority of hotels are small and independently owned and operated. Given that it won’t be a low cost endeavour, it’s not hard to imagine that many hotels will choose not to properly fix the issues, leaving customers in danger,” he writes.

It's an especially bizarre move in terms of public relations. How quickly do you think word will get around to other hotel owners, particularly small independent hotels, about how Onity designs their locks and treats their customers? This could be a win for Onity, if they go out of their way to properly fix their flawed product, but instead they appear to want to turn this into a double-dip of bad business.

The world of video game publishing is being turned upside down. Much like other entertainment industries, more and more game developers are learning that publishers offer little additional value for the costs they come bundled with. This realization is following other recent events in which game developers, who could not find a publisher interested in their game, ended up crowdfunding and raising the needed money that way. The primary crowdfunding tipping point for video games was Double Fine and its adventure game. That was followed by a number of other successes such as inXile's Wasteland 2 project.

Now it seems that even with publisher interest, some developers are choosing to stay independent by crowdfunding their new games. Of this group is Revolution Software, which makes the popular adventure series Broken Sword. Charles Cecil told Edge that his company was approached by a publisher to strike a deal for the 5th game in the series, but Cecil had turned them down.

In an extensive interview, Cecil says the industry's "biggest third party publisher" was interested in taking the new Broken Sword. Instead he decided to seek $400,000 in funding for his new point-and-click adventure through Kickstarter.

"The publisher approached us and asked ‘what do we need to do to publish Broken Sword?' I was enormously flattered, but decided it was better if we self-published," he tells us.

Cecil continues to explain that staying independent allows him and his company to control the development and schedule of the game, something lost when signing a publishing deal. He continued to explain that after a publisher takes its cut of the revenue, there is little, if anything, left for the developer.

Publishers take all the risk when they fund a project, but they also take what a developer would see as a disproportionate cut of the revenue. At Revolution we had not made royalties on a game for over a decade until digital distribution which pretty much saved us.

This is something we see regularly in just about every industry. The publisher, label or whatever used to hold all the cards and were able to pull off such deals. Very few of those deals have turned out to be all that profitable for the actual creator. Now, we continually highlight numerous cases of artists pushing back, even to the point of lawsuits. However, the most common method of pushing back is to go independent, much like Cecil here.

Taking a look at the Broken Sword Kickstarter page, it seems that this independent attitude is resonating with fans. This campaign was launched on August 23rd and as of this writing is nearly halfway to its $400,000 goal. Much like the other Kickstarters I mentioned above, this one looks as it will go well beyond that goal.

With all these independent successes happening throughout the games industries, the question must be asked, "Is there a place for publishers?" That is a question those organizations will have to ask within themselves. We have written before that in the future, those companies will have to move away from being gatekeepers and into being enablers. Those companies that refuse to adapt to that reality will find that they will have a tougher time of staying successful in the future. Until then, those enablers that make things happen, such as Kickstarter and other crowdfunding services, will continue to gain ground and enable successful careers for artists.

Kal Raustiala and Chris Sprigman, continuing their excellent blogging (soon to be in book form) about markets succeeding in absence of intellectual property, have taken a look at the question of whether or not different brands of marijuana can be covered by trademark. With the increasing legality of medical marijuana, it's not uncommon for different strands to get their own brands. However, as the two note, plant varieties cannot be trademarked, but you can build a brand on top of one. So, as an example, Fuji apples cannot be trademarked, because that's a variety -- but Rainier Brand Fuji Apples is a trademark.

Of course, if you were dealing with a pot brand rather than a variety, could you trademark it? Well, you don't need to register a trademark to get protections. There are common law trademarks which get you pretty far without registering -- though it doesn't appear that anyone's tested such a pot trademark in court. As for a registered trademark, the USPTO apparently created a medical marijuana category for trademarks... very, very briefly. And then someone apparently realized this might be a political nightmare and that category suddenly disappeared.

Amusingly, the pair note that someone did try to trademark "Marijuana" for a drink, but it was denied with a bit of moralizing from the PTO: "the term MARIJUANA refers to an illicit drug that is associated with illegal behavior and adverse health consequences. The proposed mark is therefore immoral or scandalous and thus unregistrable." Personally, I think it's kind of awesome to have a trademark rejected for being "scandalous." I'm impressed.

Either way, the end result is basically that there doesn't appear to be much in the way of legal protections for the various brands of pot that are found in medical marijuana dispensaries. While Raustiala and Sprigman don't get into it, it would seem like this creates another "pure" market to study, to see what happens in a brand-based market without trademark protections. Is copying of brand names common? Do less potent forms of pot try to draft off of more famous brands? Or does the market have a way of working itself out? It seems like a worthwhile market to study for someone enterprising.

Update: By the way, if you find this interesting, Raustiala and Sprigman's new book, The Knockoff Economy: How Imitation Sparks Innovation is now available for pre-order...

From early on in the Apple/Samsung dispute, I pointed out that Apple's reaction really seemed to indicate to the world that Samsung's devices were the ones they were most scared of. And, of course, for those looking for alternatives, it was possible that it would act as really, really good advertising for Samsung. It's still early, but there's some anecdotal evidence that the verdict only emphasized that fact even more. Via Mashable, we learn of a post from Enrique Guitierrez, who was in a Starbucks over the weekend and overheard people talking about the verdict -- and they seemed to indicate that it was making them more interested in buying Samsung products:

Guy: "Wait, so what they're saying is, Samsung is the same as Apple?"
Friend: "I know, right? Makes me think twice about how much I paid for my Mac Book"
Guy: "Seriously"

Not 10 minutes later, a husband and wife, same newspaper:

Husband: "... Samsung's iPad is the same as Apple's iPad, and I paid how much for the Apple one? Honey, I told you they were a ripoff", after looking up the Samsung tablet on his iPhone.
Wife: "Oh wow," looking at the screen, "... that's a lot cheaper. Think we can return it?"

Those aren't the only examples in the post either. He notes that these people don't understand the details, but they seem to have gotten the message that Samsung makes at least an equivalent product for a lot less money... and that's making them a lot more interested in Samsung. Once again, it makes you wonder why Apple didn't just focus on competing in the marketplace, where they had a tremendous brand advantage.

Another day, another overreach by the legacy players in the entertainment industry. Hot off its highly questionable win in the SurfTheChannel case, the "Federation Against Copyright Theft" (FACT) has forced torrent tracker UKNova to shut down. Now, some people will assume that this is just another torrent tracker, but the details raise some serious questions.

First of all, UKNova appears to have vigorously policed its listings, and was quick to take down content when it was shown to be infringing. The site also had strict rules about what could be listed, stating that it would not allow anything that was available commercially. So if it's available on DVD or on pay TV, it wasn't allowed and was blocked on the site. When FACT contacted them about some content, UKNova immediately removed the links. While this is the UK, rather than the US, this seems to follow the type of "good practices" found under the DMCA's safe harbors that indicate a site willing to act in good faith to prevent infringement. But... not according to FACT. With FACT, you're guilty until proven innocent:

“We immediately removed the alleged offending links to content that could be [connected to] the two companies and replied to FACT assuring them of our cooperation in the matter, but asking them to point out examples of potentially offending links,” a UKNova admin told us.

“ALL links or access to content provided by UKNova are infringing, unless you can prove that you have obtained explicit permission from the copyright holder for that content,” was FACT’s response.

Of course, under such rules, pretty much no user generated content sites could exist. And, given who backs FACT, perhaps that really is their goal...

Following the news that the RIAA's revenue was cut dramatically in the past few years, TorrentFreak has also posted the MPAA's 2010 tax filing, showing that it, too, has taken a pretty massive beating in terms of revenue from its gatekeeper members.

In just three years the revenue generated by the anti-piracy outfit reduced from $92.8 million to $49.6 million. The decreased budget is a direct result of the major Hollywood studios cutting back on their MPAA funding. In the same period membership dues dropped from $84.7 million to $41.5 million, more than a 50% decline.

The filing (embedded below) includes some interesting tidbits. It's not at all surprising to see that the MPAA funds the Copyright Alliance, but I had not seen before that it funds ITIF. ITIF was the think tank who was the major "intellectual backer" of SOPA/PIPA. They had published the first paper that more or less suggested the approach found in SOPA/PIPA, and when the MPAA was absolutely desperate for technology "experts" who could argue that SOPA wouldn't break DNS, the only people they rolled out were ITIF staff members. It's not surprising that the MPAA funded them, but I don't recall that being disclosed anywhere previously.

Also, as with the RIAA's salaries, it's pretty ridiculous to see the MPAA complaining about being rich as proof that someone must be breaking the law, when its top execs are all making pretty large salaries. Nearly every person listed in their list of key employees/highest compensated employees is clearly way far north into the 1% of most highly compensated Americans.

And all that while its budget keeps getting slashed. Perhaps the studios are recognizing that they're better off no longer throwing good money after bad. Of course, it's noteworthy that a number of people on the list ended up leaving the MPAA. Former CEO Dan Glickman left earlier than expected, apparently due to dissatisfaction from the studio heads, and a number of others left as well. So it will be interesting when the 2011 report finally comes out to see if they studios fed money back into the MPAA once Chris Dodd was brought in.

Late Friday afternoon, the jury in the Apple/Samsung patent dispute surprised just about everyone by telling the court it had reached a verdict. Given the number of complex issues it needed to go through, most experts expected it to take well into this week. According to observers in the courtroom, one of Apple's lawyers was so surprised and unprepared that he had to rush back to court without a suit, and showed up in a polo shirt. The quickness of the decision certainly resulted in some questions about just how thoroughly the jury reviewed the instructions and then considered each of the approximately 700 questions it needed to answer (initial jury form is embedded below). As we noted in an update to our post on Friday, about half an hour after the ruling was read out -- and long after most of the press stopped paying attention -- the judge announced at least two problems with the ruling, where the jury had awarded damages, despite not finding infringement.

As we said on Friday, that certainly raised significant questions about how carefully the jury actually reviewed the issues in question. While some said it could have just been a clerical error in answering all the questions, that appears not to be the case. Because after the judge instructed the jury to fix the mistakes, they didn't reassign those damages elsewhere, they just wiped them off the slate. Besides, even if you were to argue it was merely a mistake, that's no excuse. This "mistake" could have ended up costing millions of dollars. That's quite a "mistake."

Over at Groklaw, they're discussing this and other evidence of jury misconduct. The awarding of damages for things they found didn't infringe was already pretty bad, but some of the other details highlight how the jury clearly did not read the jury instructions (or bother to comprehend them).

A Reuters interview with the jury foreman demonstrates conclusively that the jury ignored the rules. Foreman Velvin Hogan told Reuters that they wanted to punish Samsung:

"We wanted to make sure the message we sent was not just a slap on the wrist," Hogan said. "We wanted to make sure it was sufficiently high to be painful, but not unreasonable."

That sounds nice, except... patent awards are only supposed to be about making the patent holder whole, not about punishing the infringer. And, in fact, the jury instructions clearly stated this:

The amount of those damages must be adequate to compensate the patent holder for the infringement. A damages award should put the patent holder in approximately the financial position it would have been in had the infringement not occurred, but in no event may the damages award be less than a reasonable royalty. You should keep in mind that the damages you award are meant to compensate the patent holder and not to punish an infringer.

And yet here's the jury foreman flat out admitting that they decided to use the award amounts to punish Samsung. Elsewhere, it becomes pretty clear that Hogan was hardly an impartial juror. He has his own patent, 7,352,953 on "recording and storing video information." That, by itself, does not automatically make one biased in favor of the system (I know plenty of people with patents who hate the patent system), but he admitted elsewhere that he ended up making decisions based on how he would feel if it was his patent at stake, rather than on what the law actually says -- and then said he needed to rule as if he were speaking out "for all" patent holders. In an an interview with Bloomberg, he made that bias clear:

“When I got in this case and I started looking at these patents I considered: ‘If this was my patent and I was accused, could I defend it?’” Hogan explained. On the night of Aug. 22, after closing arguments, “a light bulb went on in my head,” he said. “I thought, I need to do this for all of them.”

He then told Bloomberg that "he explained his thinking to his fellow jurors" and that seemed to drive the discussion. An interview with another juror, over at News.com, confirmed that Hogan's views focused the jury, with one juror admitting that they just started ignoring prior art, because that question was too time consuming. Seriously.

"It didn't dawn on us [that we agreed that Samsung had infringed] on the first day," Ilagan said. "We were debating heavily, especially about the patents on bounce-back and pinch-to-zoom. Apple said they owned patents, but we were debating about the prior art [about similar technology that Samsung said existed before the iPhone debuted]. [Velvin] Hogan was jury foreman. He had experience. He owned patents himself...so he took us through his experience. After that it was easier. After we debated that first patent -- what was prior art --because we had a hard time believing there was no prior art."

"In fact we skipped that one," Ilagan continued, "so we could go on faster. It was bogging us down."

Yeah. Read that sucker again. The jury instructions are again clear that the jury needs to consider the prior art, but according to this juror, Manuel Ilagan, after foreman Hogan talked about his own experience with patents, they decided that prior art was "bogging us down" and they might as well "skip" it.

In the long run, the jury verdict probably won't matter much, because this case would have been appealed no matter what. But these kinds of stories certainly give Samsung plenty of fodder to ask the judge to toss out the jury verdict already. It also raises questions, yet again, about why we allow juries on patent trials. This has been a big problem for a long time and the results here only serve to emphasize that fact.

There's a rhetorical question that often gets thrown our way here at Techdirt: "If you remove the protection of copyright, how are artists supposed to make a living?" Despite many, many answers having been given, the question persists. Here's another look at a possible answer in progress.

Via Plagiarism Today comes the news that Shuho Sata, the author of "Burakku Jyakku ni Yoroshiku" ("Say Hello to Black Jack"), is getting set to fly without the copyright safety net. He's freeing his 10-million selling manga from the limits of copyright as a form of "second use."

This means that after 15 September anyone in the world will be free to novelize, televise, create merchandise, or in any way adapt the original work for either commercial or non-commercial purposes without having to pay royalties. This is the latest move in the writer's quest to find alternatives to the “outdated” model of intellectual property rights.

Earlier this year, Sato ended his relationship with the original publisher of the Black Jack series and started his own publishing website, where his works are currently uploaded. That was the first step in Sato's quest to discover how artists might make a living without relying on exclusivity and enforcement.

“The traditional model of making profit by holding onto a copyright is gradually going stale” he said. “I want to explore the possible benefits to authors beyond this system.”

To this end, Sato will also be displaying his work at the pixiv Zingaro in Tokyo and providing a copier for visitors to use to "replicate whatever they want." A few more details of his plan are available at the pixiv Zingaro site. Sato will not actually be renouncing his copyright. Instead, he has chosen to not enforce it, in essence granting the entire world free rein to use his work to create foreign language adaptations, applications, commercial films, TV series, produce merchandise or anything else the "second users" can come up with. 

The fine print on the deal reads as such (translation a bit wonky -- via Chrome):

Terms of Use: do not need to contact us in advance.
Royalty others: we do not require any reward.
You are happy if you can use the work freely.

Sato admits he has no idea how this will turn out, but is clearly interested in observing the results. His feeling seems to be (again, translation issues) that there has to be a better system than the current one and the only way we'll find something better, or one that fits more in line with today's technology, is to head in the opposite direction and see where that leads us.

Someone is sure to point out that Sato is only doing this after selling 10 million copies thanks to existing copyright laws, as if that somehow negates the effort he's making. I invite those particular someones to observe all the other artists out there who have sold millions but still clutched that copyright close to their chests for the remainder of their lifetimes and well into the lives of their heirs. 

We have discussed the futility of banning cell phones while driving for some time at Techdirt. The evidence keeps pouring in and all of it seems to suggest that a driver capable of driving distracted while on his phone will dutifully seek out other ways to be distracted if the phone is no longer an option. However, it's worth pointing out this continuous deluge of evidence because, for whatever reason, both national and local politicians just seem to love flailing their arms about cell phones mixed with cars.

That's why we'll point out a new study done by MIT researchers which has found, yet again, that people who regularly use cell phones while driving also exhibit other risky driving behaviors, even when no phone is present. If nothing else, the method for this study is interesting:

The study involved 108 people, equally divided into three age groups: 20s, 40s, and 60s. For each person, the researchers correlated answers on a questionnaire with data collected from on-board sensors during a 40-minute test drive up Interstate 93 north of Boston. The drivers commanded a black Volvo SUV tricked out with an eye tracker, heart and skin monitors, video cameras facing out the front and back windows, on-board sensors, and other research gear.

No phones were allowed to be used during the study obviously, and yet researchers found some interesting correlations with the people who admitted regularly talking on their phones while driving: they were more likely to drive faster, to spend more time in the left hand lane, to brake harder, and to change lanes more often. None of these are as drastic as, say, upending the SUV and falling over the rail off a cliff and landing in fiery fashion on a school bus filled with nuns, but the changes do suggest an increased likelihood of danger.

"These are not 'oh-my-god' differences," says study leader Bryan Reimer, a human factors engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge. "They are subtle clues indicative of more aggressive driving." What's more, he says, other studies have linked these behaviors to an increased rate of crashes. "It's clear [from the scientific literature] that cell phones in and of themselves impair the ability to manage the demands of driving," Reimer says. But "the fundamental problem may be the behavior of the individuals willing to pick up the technology."

In other words, crappy drivers are crappy drivers. If they aren't chattering away on their phones, they'll be singing Carly Rae Jepson with their eyes closed, or putting on their deodorant, or reaching into the backseat for that bag of Cheetohs they left there last weekend. But do we ban cheese snacks in cars? Do we outlaw Old Spice-ing while driving? Should pop music be banned in the car (resist...temptation...to say...yes...)? Of course not, particularly when these studies continue to show that distractable drivers will find another way to run us all over.

At least if they have their cell phone out, it'll be that much easier to dial 911 when they make us roadkill.

As the world and its accompanying technology continue to hum along at the pace of life, the Authors Guild is apparently of the mindset that being firmly entrenched in the realities of yesteryear is the only rational response. If anything, the trenches should be deeper. After hearing the various frontmouths proclaim everything from text-to-speech to lending e-books to be detrimental to the interests and income of all authors everywhere, one is hardly surprised to hear it decry another new service as "violating authors' fundamental rights."

Nate Hoffelder at The Digital Reader has the details on the latest "threat" to the Authors Guild, a scanning service that converts customers' books into PDFs:

Publisher’s Weekly is reporting the Author’s Guild, publishing’s own rearguard Luddites, is now objecting to the services provided by 1DollarScan.

1DollarScan offers a cheap book scanning service. You mail them the book and they scan it and email you the PDF. Their process usually results in a destroyed book, so it isn’t of much use for rare and valuable books. But it does offer an opportunity to get an ebook for a title that might not be available digitally.

According to the Author’s Guild, what 1DollarScan is doing is illegal. PW reached out to Author’s Guild executive director Paul Aiken, and this is what he said: “If the information on its website is accurate, this is a copyright infringement service. Their fair use defense is laughable.”

I love it when someone in power spouts off about topics they clearly don’t understand, and Paul proceeded to dig himself a deeper hole: “There are differences between digitization projects of 1DollarScan and Google and HathiTrust, but they share this: each is subverting the author’s fundamental right to choose whether or not to make a work available digitally, and under what terms. Though it makes sense for most authors to enter the digital book market, digitization has clear risks. It’s not up to unlicensed third parties to choose whether to take those risks with an author’s work.”

Laugh all you want at the "fair use defense," Paul, but I don't even think that's the real issue. This also sounds like it might involve the "right of first sale," which is completely out of the authors' hands. I'm pretty sure that if I buy a Scott Turow hardcover, I can then rip it from its binding, shove it through the scanner and make my own PDF. From that point on, I can paste it all back together, cross out Turow's name and write "BY TIM CUSHING" all over the cover and put it in the 25-cent bin at the next garage sale, all without fear of litigious reprisal.

And what exactly is this phrase supposed to mean: "subverting the author's fundamental right to choose whether or not to make a work available digitally?" The authors can "exercise" this "right" all they want, but it doesn't change the fact that the technology exists and is cheaply available. And I love love love the irrational fear of piracy contained in "digitization has its clear risks." Third-party services should just stop because sometimes bad things happen. Nice.

Hoffelder points out that, despite all the Guild bluster, it's really got nothing to stand on, legally:

What’s more, I seriously doubt that any copyright infringement suit against 1DollarScan will succeed. A basic reading of the website will tell you that the customer gives up the original book in order to get the PDF. As I see it, to show that a copy was made you’d have to show the judge the original book as well as the PDF. That’s going to be a little hard, given that the original book was likely destroyed as part of being scanned.

I don’t claim to be a lawyer, but I will bet dollars to donuts that so long as 1DollarScan maintains a process that’s one to one it’s going to be rather hard to convince most judges that they’re committing copyright infringement. But more importantly, it’s going to be hard to convince most readers... After all, no one would blink if the reader did it themselves. How could a service that does the exact same thing be illegal?

Once again, the Guild's almost-willful ignorance has reduced 1DollarScan into a vehicle for piracy. At the very least, the Authors Guild has convinced itself that a service many readers would find useful is "subverting" authors' "rights." Being completely at odds with what your customers find both useful and morally acceptable isn't going to win you any new readers. Resolutely taking a hard line against technological advances only puts you further behind the curve.

The more the Authors Guild speaks up on issues like this, the more out of touch they appear. Its batting average at this point is so low that attentive readers are having a hard time remembering the last time it made contact. From the comment threads at the Digital Reader:

Yeah. That sounds about right. 

It never fails. Whenever more and more people start discussing what a downright dangerous company Intellectual Ventures is, and how its massive trolling operations are a huge hindrance to actual innovation, IV's PR people invite some journalists to "take a tour" of the part of the building where they have people "inventing" stuff, hoping they'll talk about what a miraculous special company IV is. It happened two years ago with Gizmodo, and this year, they had News.com take a tour. Thankfully, unlike the piece a couple years ago, News.com doesn't ignore the elephant in the room, and makes sure to point out much of the criticism surrounding Intellectual Ventures. However, it also lets claims like this one slide:

"We think of the problem we want to solve," says Tim Londergan, Intellectual Ventures' senior director of investment strategy. "[We] find great inventions and get them to market."

Um. And how many of them have they been able to "get to market"? The answer is exactly zero over twelve years. Despite $5 billion in investment money (using something of a pyramid scheme to get companies to pay up early to get some upside) and 70,000 "intellectual assets" (many of which were bought at fire sale prices from university tech transfer offices who were desperate to prove that tech transfer offices work, and who needed to get them off the books). A grand total of two companies have spun off, but neither has anything on the market, nor will they for many years. There's something to be said for not rushing ideas, but $5 billion and twelve years... if you're really looking for problems you want to solve and bringing the solutions to market, you'd expect a slightly higher hit rate.

Of course, given that investors in IV are also beginning to realize that their returns suck, you have to worry that IV is only going to ramp up the one part of its business that actually does make money: either shaking companies down by claiming they violate broad patents, or selling off patents to smaller shell firms that will do the same thing for them.

For all of Nathan Myhrvold's ridiculous talk of doing God's work, the company can't try to hide the fact that it's become a giant tax on companies who actually innovate, by hiring some scientists to do crazy experiments in fancy offices, none of which seem to have any likelihood of being useful. Innovation is about bringing products to market. Trolling is about forcing actual innovators to pay up for succeeding. IV has never been about innovation and is focused almost entirely on trolling. Having some scientists working on dopey projects that look good for the press doesn't change any of that.