Great Timing: USPTO Gives Amazon Patent For 'Reliable Ratings'

from the that-would-be-an-oops... dept

theodp writes "Do bad patents bring bad karma? Less than 24 hours after a hacker identified as 'Weev' claimed he exploited a feature for reporting inappropriate content to wreak havoc on Amazon's product ratings (Amazon blamed a "glitch"), the USPTO issued Amazon.com a patent for the Automatic Identification of Unreliable User Ratings, an 'invention' which - you guessed it - purportedly prevents Amazon's product ratings from being gamed by providing a feature for reporting inappropriate content ('Section 244 also contains a link 254 to a display (not shown) where customer CCC can report that item review 222 contains scandalous or inappropriate material')."

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ES&S E-Voting Machines Gave Votes To A Totally Different Election

from the i'd-say-that's-a-whoops dept

You may recall last year that when we had a series of posts about the fact that e-voting companies refused to let independent security experts review their machines, we had a representative from e-voting firm ES&S show up in the comments and repeatedly berate us for not knowing what we were talking about. That individual insisted that the machines were perfectly well tested. He also insisted that elections using e-voting machines were "extremely scrutinized and very reliable." Of course, we haven't heard from that individual lately -- not since an independent review of ES&S's machines found that security was seriously lacking leading various states to quickly decertify many ES&S machines. Oops.

Reader Jose Luis Campanello writes in to point out a story we missed from last week, about how some ES&S machines used in a state primary in Arkansas didn't just screw up counting the votes, it assigned votes to a totally different election -- and those "lost" votes changed the result of the election. No one seems to have any idea how this is even possible, let alone how it happened. Somehow, I get the feeling that no representatives from ES&S will show up this time to tell us how their machines are perfectly reliable and don't need any kind of independent review. Luckily, in this case there was a voter-verified paper trail (which some insist are a bad thing), which allowed election officials to backtrack and figure out what had happened and correct the mistake. Without the paper trail, there would have been no way to have even realized this mistake happened.

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ATMs Aren't So Secure Either

from the transparency dept

Back in March, I responded to the common argument that since automatic teller machines are widely used and seem to be secure, secure electronic voting must be doable as well. I pointed out a couple of problems with this argument, but I took as a given that ATM machines are in fact, secure. But Matt Blaze recently discovered that ATMs aren't that secure either. When Blaze tried to withdraw cash from a Philadelphia cash machine, he encountered a bunch of problems. The information on the screen was screwed up, the machine gave him $10 more than he'd requested, and the machine failed to give him his receipt. Even more worrisome, when he went into the bank to suggest that they check out the machine and see what might have been wrong with it, the assistant manager actually argued with him, assuring him that the machine was working just fine and Blaze must be imagining things. Incredibly, when he tried to show her a screenshot he had taken with his cell phone, she cut him off by pointing out that photography isn't allowed in the bank.

Obviously, part of the problem here is a bank employee who has a bad attitude. But it also illustrates a couple of additional problems with the "ATMs work so why can't e-voting?" argument. First, people have a habit of trusting machines more than people. When elections are conducted with pencil and paper, everyone understands that some of the human beings might have hidden agendas and need to be watched closely. In contrast, people tend to assume that machines are completely objective and unbiased, and so they're less likely to notice problems with machines even when (as in the case of this bank manager) the evidence is staring them in the face. Second, if it turns out that the ATM screwed up, Blaze will at some point get a statement from his bank telling him how much money the bank thinks he withdrew, and he can object if it differs from what he actually got. There isn't (and due to voter privacy concerns, can't be) a similar process for e-voting. If a paperless voting machine screws up, there's no way to double-check the results after the fact.

Timothy Lee is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Timothy Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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How Reliable Are Industry Announced Piracy Statistics?

from the depends-on-your-definition-of-reliable dept

Eric Goldman sent in a link to a recent research paper that aimed to look at the reliability of industry-released reports on piracy. That sounded interesting, as we've spent plenty of posts picking apart why almost all of their released numbers are bogus. In particular, we've pointed out how incredibly bogus the BSA's statistics are. So, it was somewhat surprising to have the study say that the BSA's were the most reliable, when compared to other groups like the RIAA and MPAA. If anything, though, that really just suggested that the RIAA's and MPAA's stats were even more bogus (remember, things actually got so bad for the MPAA that it had to admit how bogus its own stats were). That actually seems likely, as the BSA is the most upfront about the methodology used.

However, reading through the actual report, it does little to vindicate the piracy numbers that the industry reports always trumpet. That's because the report actually focuses on the rate of unauthorized use, rather than the cost or impact of that unauthorized use -- which is the key point to come out of these reports. The rate of unauthorized use is fairly meaningless, so it doesn't matter that much who is the most accurate. It's the impact that matters. While reports used to do silly things like count every unauthorized copy as a lost sale, most have stopped that, and now use a multiplier. Some have started using a questionable ripple effect that counts the same loss multiple times and ignores the "ripple effects" in the other direction that benefit the industry. So, yes, perhaps the BSA is the best of a bad bunch, but even if the rate of unauthorized use is somewhat accurate, that has little bearing on the actual impact of those unauthorized copies.

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