Given all of the mistakes made by both US and New Zealand officials in the raid on Kim Dotcom and Megaupload, there are a series of appeals going on in the case in New Zealand concerning some of the evidence as well as what information Dotcom is allowed to see. While the extradition hearing was set to occur next month, it's now been pushed back until at least March 2013 and could get extended longer. The idea is to give some time to let the appeals process run its course.

Dotcom seems pretty pissed off about this, as every moment of delay means more time during which his business has been shut down without a single adversarial hearing -- and during which it can't be re-established. For pretty obvious reasons, this is immensely troubling. There was no reason why Megaupload couldn't have been brought to court under a normal civil lawsuit process, like so many other companies over the years -- including Napster, Morpheus, Grokster, Aimster, Veoh, YouTube and others. After the judge was able to hear both sides, they would have been able to determine if an injunction (and eventually, a complete shutdown) made sense or not. Megaupload didn't have that luxury. Instead, the US government simply decided to shut them down on what increasingly appears to be extraordinarily weak evidence. And as the legal process draws out, that business is gone.

What happens if the entire case falls apart? The US government then will have destroyed what turned out to be a legitimate business on no basis. This way, Hollywood gets to be happy, because the US government took out (at its own expense) a service they hated (but which many artists loved). That doesn't seem right at all.

Having lost its patent/copyright case against Google in somewhat spectacular fashion, Oracle is now facing the possibility of having to also pay Google over $4 million in legal fees. Google has submitted its calculation of legal fees that it's seeking from Oracle, and it totals up to $4,030,669. Of course, this case is heading for appeal, so this number may be meaningless. However, it does suggest that Oracle -- which once seemed to believe this case might bring it billions of dollars -- may quickly discover that it's costing an awful lot instead...

Advertising is a tricky business. Not only do you not know where half your marketing budget goes, but it's possible to waste 100% of your advertising with an innocent mistake. It's tough to try to make funny and catchy ads, and not everyone has the same sense of humor. Here are just a few examples of some ads that have backfired.

• Automatically serving ads without a human editor to judge the appropriateness of the content can be a really bad idea -- especially when placing ads on news items. Yahoo News recently inserted ads for Express clothing on a news photo -- unfortunately the photo pictured a distraught man who survived an attack by Taliban militants. [url]
• KFC ran a commercial in the UK a few years ago that set a record for complaints -- because viewers thought it encouraged bad manners and mocked people with speech impediments. This commercial has held on to its record to this day, but there probably aren't many agencies vying for the title. [url]
• Pizza Hut knows its customers love pizza, but does a love of pizza correlate with disliking math? This commercial needs to show its work on how it arrived at its conclusion. [url]
• Kenneth Cole is trying to raise "awearness" with some edgy ad campaigns. But one of its billboards generated some backlash from teachers when it suggested that teachers' rights were at odds with student interests. [url]

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

While the judge in the US banned Samsung's devices claiming it was likely that Samsung violated Apple's patents, there was a different result in the UK... where a judge has decided that Samsung didn't violate Apple's design patent, because it's obvious that Samsung's Galaxy Tab is just not as cool as Apple's iPad.

"They do not have the same understated and extreme simplicity which is possessed by the Apple design," said Judge Birss.

"They are not as cool," he said. "The overall impression produced is different."

Amusingly, of course, this puts Samsung in the position of celebrating its lack of coolness.

In the end, this is the right result, but the reasoning is a bit odd, frankly. When patent disputes are being determined based on a judge's determination of "coolness," it seems like perhaps something is wrong with the system itself.

Slashdot points us to a bit of irony, in which it appears the Australian government ended up exposing the personal info of a bunch of citizens who had signed up for "stay smart online" alerts. Apparently, one way to stay smart online is to not sign up for "stay smart online" alerts from the Australian government. The issue was that a contractor who was running the program, AusCERT, had put all of the info -- including "usernames, email addresses, memorable phrases (used as password reminders) and cryptographically hashed passwords" -- onto a DVD and mailed it to another contractor who was taking over the program. And... it got lost in the mail. At least the passwords were hashed. But, you'd expect to be a bit safer than that when giving your information to the government for a "stay smart online" program...

We've had plenty of stories lately about police overreacting to people filming them -- and multiple courts have ruled that filming the police is perfectly legal. Even the Justice Department has spoken out and warned police departments that they need to let the public photograph and video tape them if they want.

And yet, we keep hearing of new incidents of police going after people for filming them. Slashdot now points us to a story that takes that to a different level. It involves the NY Police Department creating a "wanted" poster for a couple who have been regularly filming them and posting the videos to a YouTube channel. While the poster did not technically say "wanted" it sure looked like a Wanted poster, and the couple worried that anyone who saw it would think they were sought for arrest. The poster did describe them as "professional agitators." After calling police about the posters, they were told that they had been taken down, but the police still have not explained why they created them in the first place.

While it didn't get nearly as much attention as other parts of SOPA, one section in the bill that greatly concerned us was the massive expansion of the diplomatic corp.'s "IP attaches." If you're unfamiliar with the program, basically IP attaches are "diplomats" (and I use the term loosely) who go around the globe pushing a copyright maximalist position on pretty much every other country. Their role is not to support more effective or more reasonable IP policy. It is solely to increase expansion, and basically act as Hollywood's personal thugs pressuring other countries to do the will of the major studios and labels. The role is literally defined as pushing for "aggressive support for enforcement action" throughout the world. A few years ago, we detailed how, at a meeting of these attaches, they bitched and complained about how copyright "activists" were making their lives difficult and were a "threat" who needed to be dealt with.

In other words, these people are not neutral. They do not have the best interests of the public or the country in mind. Their job is solely to push the copyright maximalist views of the legacy entertainment industry around the globe, and position it as the will of the US government.

It was good that this was defeated as a part of SOPA... but now comes the news that Lamar Smith is introducing a new bill that not only brings back this part, but appears to expand it and make it an even bigger deal. Politico has a short blurb:

SMITH, OTHERS UNVEIL IP BILL -- House Judiciary Committee chief Lamar Smith and other members are unveiling today their new Intellectual Property Attache Act, which realigns the Commerce Department a bit. The measure as proposed would move the current attache program housed with the USPTO to the full agency, complete with an assistant secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property. The proposal is slated for full committee markup on Tuesday. Named as supporters on the measure are a number of panel Dems and Republicans: Reps. Bob Goodlatte, Mel Watt, Darrell Issa, Howard Berman, Howard Coble, Steve Chabot, Jason Chaffetz and Adam Schiff

You can see the current draft of the bill (pdf and embedded below), but it has not yet been officially introduced. However, the House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to mark it up in the morning, suggesting that it's on the fast track, with almost no public scrutiny. In fact, I've heard from people worried about this bill that they were only told of its existence on Saturday.

The specifics of the bill appear to go further than the version in SOPA. It is clear that the bill itself is framed from the maximalist perspective. There is nothing about the rights of the public, or of other countries to design their own IP regimes. It notes that the role of the attaches is:

to advance the intellectual property rights of United States persons and their licensees;

The bill also "elevates" the IP attaches out of the US Patent and Trademark Office, and sets them up as their own agency, including a new role: the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property. Yes, we'll get another IP Czar, this time focused in the Commerce Department.

When even the USTR is recognizing the importance of limitations and exceptions to copyright, to have Congress push a bill that basically ignores limitations and exceptions and only looks to expand Hollywood's special thugs within the diplomatic corp. seems like a huge problem.

But the even bigger issue is a simple one of process. Shouldn't Lamar Smith have learned by now that you don't try to sneak through SOPA or any of its components without first getting widespread public opinion on these things?

For many years, US companies and government officials complained publicly and privately that China just didn't "respect" patents. They would point to how various Chinese companies were famous for making knockoffs of various products as evidence of this, and they'd put strong diplomatic pressure on China to both "respect" foreign patents more and beef up its own patent system. Of course, for years, we've been warning about just how stupid this is. China recognizes that patents are really a protectionist tool, and is using them as such. It has certainly increased its patenting effort... but nearly every single major patent lawsuit in China has been about punishing foreign companies and blocking competition to domestic Chinese companies.

So it should come as little surprise to find out that a company in Shanghai, Zhi Zhen Internet Technology, is now suing Apple, claiming that voice-controlled virtual assistant Siri violates its patents. No one seems to know specifically what's in the patent, but I do wonder if it matters. Like so many Chinese patent lawsuits this one just seems likely to end up with a foreign competitor being kept out of the market in favor of the domestic version.

And yet... American companies and politicians will still continue to insist that China needs to "strengthen" its patent system, even as Chinese companies and politicians must be laughing at just how self-defeating the Americans are. We're literally urging them to set up a system that helps Chinese companies block American companies from their market.

USTR negotiators have basically acted as if they represent the interests of big businesses in their negotiations on various trade proposals. That's why we get things like ACTA, TPP and various "free trade agreements" (FTAs) that all seem to focus on carving out protections for specific special interests who just happen to sit on the USTR's "advisory committees." What they often forget is that they're supposed to be representing the public. But, at times, they're so disconnected from the public that what's best for the actual country rarely seems to enter into the thought process. Of course, with the uprising against ACTA, perhaps some people at the USTR are beginning to wake up to the fact that their roles aren't just about making special interests happy. The recent admission that limitations and exceptions are important in copyright is a sign that this kind of thinking may be filtering through.

Last week, a group of public interests organizations also hand delivered an online petition that was signed by over 90,000 people raising concerns about TPP. I generally don't think much of online petitions like this, but in this situation, where's it's incredibly important for the USTR to recognize that the public and internet users are watching -- and are concerned -- something like this seems like it could be helpful in at least making the USTR negotiators recognize that the public matters.

Of course, for them to prove that they really understand that, they'd need to start being a hell of a lot more transparent, such as by releasing the US recommendations that are being negotiated. Until that happens, it's difficult to trust the USTR to really be looking out for the public's best interests.

Last week, I noticed that former Pirate Bay spokesperson Peter Sunde had posted the letter that he sent to the Swedish Administration as part of his plea to be pardoned. It was written in Swedish, and I wasn't comfortable that the Google translation was accurate enough. Thankfully, however, Rick Falkvinge has posted a full translation in English. Many of the points Sunde raises came out during the trial, but the key points -- on why he didn't actually do the things he was convicted of -- were new to me, and should concern anyone who actually believes in the rule of law and an impartial judicial system.

The serious conflicts of interests of many involved in the case have been covered before. The fact that the lead prosecutor was hired by the entertainment industry while he was still prosecuting the case, remains an astounding point that should have resulted in a clear mistrial. That multiple judges had strong connections to copyright maximalist groups or even competitors to The Pirate Bay should also be of great concern. However, even if we ignore all of that, Sunde's detailed explanation for his conviction is really quite incredible. He notes that he was specifically convicted of three things... which he did not do. Remember, Peter's role was as that of a spokesperson. He did not actually work on the technology of the site at all, but the prosecution needed to show that he did -- so Peter accuses them of concocting a story about how he set up a "load balancer" for the site, because he admitted that he knew what a load balancer was. However, as Peter notes (1) he did not set up a load balancer, (2) the server in question was put there by someone unrelated to The Pirate Bay and (3) it was never connected to the internet anyway. And yet he was still convicted because of it.

Among other things, I’m supposed to have installed a computer that operated as a so-called load balancer – a computer that makes it possible to distribute the workload of big web services among different computers. It reads clear as day in the Appeals Court verdict that I’m responsible for configuring this computer. Such a computer did indeed exist in one of the racks that The Pirate Bay was located in. On the other hand, it wasn’t connected with a single wire or cable in any way. Some computers have been investigated at the National Forensic Laboratory (Statens Kriminaltekniska Laboratorium). Some computers have been combed for details. In some cases, the prosecutor has called owners of computers to ask them if they want to press charges of electronic trespassing against Gottfrid Svartholm, as they found that he has had access to computers. Computers he has been maintaining for clients. The computer I’m supposed to have been responsible for isn’t mentioned with a single line of text, except in the seizing protocol from the raid. I cannot find the configuration I’ve been convicted of creating. The configuration I have created, beyond reasonable doubt, according to the Swedish Appeals Court. The configuration I can say with 100% certainty would have proven that this computer had never been used for The Pirate Bay. The owner had placed it in the rack by themselves just a few weeks prior to the raid.

During the Appeals Court proceedings, prosecutor Hakan Roswall confirmed my story of this, that this machine had never been used in the operations of The Pirate Bay. Therefore, my lawyer put no energy into bringing it up in his final statement. And yet, Roswall said after this, that I had been responsible for it. And in the end, I was convicted because of it. There is not a shred of evidence anywhere that this computer has been in use, not for anything at all

I know that some who dislike The Pirate Bay won't care about the specifics here. They'll argue that the site itself is pure evil, and he was deservedly convicted. I think that, if you agree with the court's basic reasoning for the convictions, you might be able to make a credible case against the two actual founders of the site who ran it. But Peter wasn't one of those guys. He was just "the spokesperson," and it appears that he got railroaded here, based on a very questionable use of the law.

Of course, he admits that it's unlikely his plea will work, and he fully expects to spend some time in jail. However, as for the fine that's been levied against him, he notes that the 11 million euros he will owe is "fantasy numbers" that he knows is unpayable, meaning that he's likely to be effectively banished from Sweden, noting that "this debt is equivalent to exile, to deportation."

Separately, Peter posted a much shorter blog post, which I'm trusting the Google translation feature on -- so I warn you that accuracy may be slightly sketchy. In it, Peter notes that the prosecution has effectively admitted that he didn't actually do the stuff he was convicted of, but claims that doesn't change his responsibility. Seriously. Here's the rough automated translation:

That the work of the Court of Appeal found Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi begun in late 2005 may not have resulted in actual service until the time of the raid against TPB, does not affect the responsibility of the act for which Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi convicted.

In other words, he didn't provide the actual services he was convicted of, but that doesn't make him any less responsible for the things he didn't actually do. Swedish justice in action.

Even in the face of a resounding rejection of ACTA by the European Parliament last week, the European Commission seems determined to keep pushing for its eventual adoption. Techdirt noted some ways in which it might try to do that, but an important article by Michael Geist lays out what seems to be an alternative approach that is already close to fruition:

According to recently leaked documents [pdf], the EU plans to use the Canada-EU Trade Agreement (CETA), which is nearing its final stages of negotiation, as a backdoor mechanism to implement the ACTA provisions.

Here's how that would work:

The European Commission strategy appears to be to use CETA as the new ACTA, burying its provisions in a broader Canadian trade agreement with the hope that the European Parliament accepts the same provisions it just rejected with the ACTA framework. If successful, it would likely then argue that ACTA poses no new concerns since the same rules were approved within the Canadian trade deal.

What's extraordinary is how slavishly the CETA IP chapter follows ACTA -- Geist's post provides a table comparing the two in detail, and for many key issues, CETA adopts ACTA's wording exactly.

This includes requiring the promotion of "cooperative efforts" that could see ISPs taking down content on a "voluntary" basis; the use of the meaningless term "fair process"; disclosure of a subscriber's information "expeditiously" upon accusation of infringement; civil damages that consider "any legitimate measure of value that may be submitted by the right holder, including lost profits"; the use of the vague term "commercial scale" for both civil and criminal enforcement measures; and criminal liability for "aiding and abetting" infringement.

What that means is that practically all of the key stumbling blocks that persuaded the European Parliament to vote against ACTA are also present in CETA. As Geist observes;

The backdoor ACTA approach creates enormous risks for Canada's trade ambitions. Given the huge anti-ACTA movement, the Canada-EU trade deal could face widespread European opposition with CETA becoming swept up in similar protests.

After all, if those proposals were problematic in ACTA, they are equally problematic for CETA, and so it seems likely that the European Parliament will vote against the entire Canada-EU trade deal just as it threw out ACTA. The obvious solution is to remove the intellectual property chapter from CETA altogether to avoid this risk. Geist points out there's an important precedent for this:

the U.S. and EU recently announced their own plans to negotiate a trade deal but agreed to keep intellectual property issues out of the talks. If CETA becomes known as ACTA II, the future of the Canada-EU trade deal may hinge on adopting a similar approach.

That would not only be a good idea for CETA, it would be sensible for all trade agreements, since it would return them to their original aim of promoting trade between nations, not regulating the domestic laws governing things like copyright.

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What is it about people who can't take criticism and suddenly think that anyone criticizing them either (a) defames them or (b) infringes on their copyright? We see it over and over again. It almost makes you wonder if we can't spread a basic message that screaming about those two laws, when it's clear that you're actually just pissed off that someone is mocking you, is going to backfire badly. The latest case study on all of this: a political cartoonist I'd never heard of named Donna Barstow. The long-standing internet community Something Awful had a forum thread in which they were criticizing political cartoons which they felt were, well, something awful... and some of Barstow's one-panel cartoons showed up and were roundly criticized.

Barstow, apparently unfamiliar with the "sticks and stones" adage, decided to lash out at the Something Awful community, accusing them of copyright infringement and defamation. She did this mostly on Twitter, where she made accusations against Something Awful that were at least on par with the criticisms the community made about her cartoons. This set off a big back and forth, which BoingBoing covered in great detail, including her insistence that those posting her cartoons and commenting on them were "stealing" and that their arguments of fair use did not apply. Her reasoning doesn't make much sense. She just insists that fair use doesn't apply to Something Awful.

"You steal my cartoons (read definition of Fair Use - NOT on SA) and ignore my takedown & DMCA notices. That's evil," she wrote.

To bolster her case, Barstow evoked the Federal Trade Commission, the U.S. Copyright Office and the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, and cited today's story in the LA Times describing how Twitter gets 80 percent of requests for user information from U.S.-based police forces.

As it escalated from there, Barstow also claimed that the Something Awful forum "defamed my work," which got Ken from Popehat and Adam Steinbaugh (two of the best chroniclers of the Charles Carreon affair) to jump in and ask for what she meant. Ken recorded the details of the "conversation" (if you can call it that) in a few screenshots, reposted here:

By the way, her response to Ken's question... was to block him on Twitter. Classy.

Of course, none of that makes any sense. The fair use claim is pretty strong. It's so strong, in fact, that Donna Barstow has a history of taking one panel comics from other artists and posting them to her own site for the purpose of criticism. Here she is posting and commenting on a comic by Ted Rall. Fair use for me, but not for thee... apparently.

Ken, as he is known to do, wrote a blog post in which he presented what the law actually says and why Barstow's claims of both infringement and defamation are totally bogus. Here's just a part of it, though I recommend reading the entire thing at the link above.

Similarly, if Barstow thinks that she can sue Something Awful and its goon squad for defamation for calling her a racist, she is similarly badly mistaken. First, Something Awful is completely immune for the comments of its forum visitors under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Second, calling Barstow a racist based on her comics is classic pure opinion absolutely protected by the First Amendment. This is not a case of opinion premised on false unstated facts, as if someone said "based on what I overheard Donna Barstow say, she is a racist." Rather it's pure opinion based on disclosed facts — the very cartoons she complains they posted. (Note that this strengthens the fair use argument.) Partington v. Bugliosi, 56 F.3d 1147, 1156–1157 (9th Cir.1995) ("when an author outlines the facts available to him, thus making it clear that the challenged statements represent his own interpretation of those facts and leaving the reader free to draw his own conclusions, those statements are generally protected by the First Amendment.") Such accusations of racism are routinely protected as opinion by the courts. See, for instance, Rambo v. Cohen, 587 N.E.2d 140, 149 (Ind.Ct.App.1992) (statement that plaintiff was “anti-Semitic” was protected opinion); Stevens v. Tillman, 855 F.2d 394, 402 (7th Cir.1988) (Illinois law) (accusations of “racism”); Smith v. Sch. Dist. of Phila., 112 F.Supp.2d 417, 429–30 (E.D.Pa.2000) (granting judgment on the pleadings after concluding that the accusation of racism was an opinion); Martin v. Brock, No. 07C3154, 2007 WL 2122184, at *3 (N.D.Ill. July 19, 2007) (accusation of racism is nonactionable opinion in Illinois); Lennon v. Cuyahoga Cnty. Juvenile Ct., No. 86651, 2006 WL 1428920, at * 6 (Ohio Ct.App. May 25, 2006) (concluding that in the specific context of the accusation, calling a co-worker racist was nonactionable opinion); Puccia v. Edwards, No. 98–00065, 1999 WL 513895, at *3–4 (Mass.Super.Ct. Apr. 28, 1999) (concluding accusations of racism are nonactionable opinion); Covino v. Hagemann, 165 Misc.2d 465, 627 N.Y.S.2d 894, 895–96 (N.Y.Sup.Ct.1995) (concluding statement that plaintiff had “racially sensitive attitude” is not actionable). By contrast, cases finding that accusations of racism were actionable defamation usually involved implication of false facts. See, for instance, Overhill Farms v. Lopez, 190 Cal.App.4th 1248 (2010) (accusation that business fired workers for racial reasons was a statement of fact distinguishable from a mere opinion that farm owners were racist). And those are just the cases I found in about five minutes whilst distracted by yelling at an associate.

Now, most people might read that and think that, perhaps (just perhaps), Ken knows a thing or two about what he's talking about. Instead, Barstow apparently looked up his contact info and called him. Ken's summary of the call was appended to his post:

Thanks to someone on Twitter who pointed Ms. Barstow to my contact information, she just called me at my office. I would characterize the conversation as surreal. Among the things she said: (1) she saw that I didn't list copyright as an area of expertise, so how could I write about this, (2) she hadn't threatened to sue anyone, (3) she shouldn't have to put up with defamation, (4) how can I say bad things about her, (5) Obama created some sort of new copyright department but it was useless, (6) she was just trying to reach out to me person to person, and (7) she thought it was suspicious that I did not "sign" my post.

It certainly is true that no lawsuit has been filed here, but Something Awful does say that she sent them a note demanding they remove her "stolen works." Furthermore, regularly accusing them of "stealing" and of "defamation" certainly implies that she thinks she has a legal claim.

Either way, this seems like all too common a practice. Someone doesn't like being criticized (or mocked) online... and out comes the accusations of copyright infringement and defamation, even if they have no basis in reality. Yes, the copyright claims would need to be judges within the specific context of how the cartoons were used, but it does seem like there's a high likelihood of fair use, given the context. The defamation claims just seem silly. But, beyond all that, what seems clear is that Barstow isn't really concerned about infringement or defamation, but about the criticism of her work -- and resorted to using these two laws as a weapon to try to remove criticism.

This practice is not unique to Barstow, and it's why we end up covering so many cases of chilling effects that come about due to the misuse of both copyright and defamation threats. My general sense is that a lot of people don't understand either law very well, but recognize that both can be used to demand criticism be silenced. I'm not sure what the solution to all of this is, other than continuing to educate people how these interpretations of the law are wrong -- but also hoping they recognize how throwing around such accusations quite often leads to even further criticism and ridicule.

We've talked for a while about just how often law enforcement seeks information from mobile operators -- often without getting any actual warrant -- knowing that it was astounding. But after an article from a few months ago in the NY Times noting that it was both routine and a big business for mobile operators, who charge law enforcement for each request, Rep. Ed Markey asked all of the major mobile operators just how often they get requests from law enforcement for subscriber info, and discovered that last year they responded to an astounding 1.3 million requests for subscriber info -- including location info, text messages and other data. And, apparently, this number likely undercounts the true size, because it notes that there was "incomplete record-keeping" in some cases. Oh yeah, and also, this just requests, not individuals -- a single request might include multiple people whose information was being sought. So, an awful lot of people were spied on this way.

Not surprisingly, the number of requests continues to rise drastically, with AT&T admitting that it had seen a tripling in requests in the last five years. As the report notes:

AT&T alone now responds to an average of more than 700 requests a day, with about 230 of them regarded as emergencies that do not require the normal court orders and subpoena.... Sprint, which did not break down its figures in as much detail as other carriers, led all companies last year in reporting what amounted to at least 1,500 data requests on average a day.

This isn't a huge surprise, but does raise significant questions about how reasonable these information trawling operations are. Do we honestly believe that law enforcement needed all of that info? This seems like a case where, of course, if the info is easy to get, law enforcement wants it. But is that reasonable?

And, telcos have little incentive to stand up for the rights of their users. They actually make money from these kinds of requests:

AT&T, for one, said it collected $8.3 million last year compared with $2.8 million in 2007, and other carriers reported similar increases in billings.

For a company that large, this isn't a major cash cow, but it is something. It's unclear how carefully the telcos review the request. At least one (smaller) telco, C Spire Wireless, reported that it had rejected about 15% of the requests, but most of the other operators didn't provide any info on rejections (and it makes you wonder if they ever rejected any requests at all).

None of this is surprising. When such a tool is available, it's almost impossible for it not to be abused. It's just too easy for law enforcement to snoop on anyone's location or text messages, and they can't resist doing so. It seems like telcos (1) could be a lot more transparent about this. While Google and Twitter both have voluntarily opened up to provide data on law enforcement requests, the only reason this info became public from the mobile operators was because of Markey's request. On top of that, it seems that the rules concerning an individual's privacy rights should also be a lot clearer, to give the telcos more ammo to push back against bogus requests.

I've been meaning to write about Blueseed for a little while, and I was reminded as News.com has a new article on this "floating metropolis for startups." If you haven't heard about it, it's a plan to basically park a cruise ship in international waters -- twelve miles off the coast of Silicon Valley, and use it as a place where a bunch of foreign workers can help build local startups without having to get a work visa, since the US makes those impossibly hard to get. As the article suggests, this sounds a bit horrifying for those workers, even as the goal is to make the boat as awesome as possible:

The ship will have pools, massage areas, gyms, rock climbing walls, and indoor soccer fields according to Marty. His model is very Google-esque--the fostering of creativity through colors, aesthetics, and food.

But, of course, you're still stuck on the boat. And while there will be ferries back and forth to the mainland, I'm not entirely clear on how those foreign workers get there in the first place.

The more I hear about this effort, the more I'm convinced that it's more about the statement than the plan: the fact that the US continues to have ridiculously restrictive immigration policies for skilled, technology-savvy workers who can and do help create new jobs and build the economy. Instead, we send them back to their own countries to help them compete against American companies. That seems like a shortcut to economic problems.

Just the fact that someone needs to float the idea (pun only slightly intended) of putting a cruise ship offshore to help startups find reasonable talent highlights the nature of the problem, even if the cruise ship never sets sail. We're fundamentally turning away talent that grows the economy and creates jobs. From a policy perspective, from an economic perspective and from a moral perspective, it makes no sense.

Normally, we think of the US as the champion of patenting "anything under the sun that is made by man," while the UK is generally more reticent. So it's rather surprising to find the roles reversed in the following story about a new standard for the GPS navigation system:

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is weeks away from approving a controversial British patent that could force American consumers to pay more for GPS navigation devices and even affect the operations of the American military.

The patent is one of dozens filed around the world by the British defense establishment asserting ownership of technology developed jointly by the United States and the European Union (EU). The patents lay claim to a signal structure crafted by American and European experts to make Europe’s still-emerging Galileo satellite navigation system interoperable with GPS and improve service for users of both systems.

This is no ordinary patent spat -- it could have global consequences: according to the article quoted above, US officials are so incensed about this unsporting move that they might drop the interoperability plans altogether. What's ironic here is that the US was assuming that the new standard's technology formed a kind of commons -- available to all, but owned by no one -- and it was the UK that decided to enclose part of that commons using patents, a move which now risks destroying it for everyone.

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