For years now, I've talked about the importance of some sort of startup visa for immigrants starting companies in the US. Lots of people in the government agree with this idea, but they haven't passed it because it's about "immigration." And no politician wants to take on immigration as a whole, because then it turns into nationalism about how those crazy foreigners are taking our jobs -- even when that's empirically not true. Canada, however, has now put in place a new startup visa that is somewhat similar to the various proposals floated down here in the US: entrepreneurs can get a visa if they have funding from a venture capitalist.

While I think that such a law would be a step forward in the US, in Canada it seems like it might actually be a step backwards. That's because Canada already had very open borders to job-creating immigrants. Its old rules allowed an immigrant a visa if they opened a business that would hire one person for one year. But those visas are no longer being offered. And that seems like a problem. My big complaint over plans for a startup visa that require venture capitalist investment is that it assumes that entrepreneurs require venture capital. But that's not true. Yes, for certain types of business, including capital-intensive, high-growth businesses, it often (though not always) makes sense to raise venture capital, but for many other successful types of businesses there are alternative sources of funding -- including (these days) things like crowdfunding and (*gasp*) revenue funding.

Imagine a couple of entrepreneurs want to build some new gadget, so they put it up on Kickstarter and it raises $1 million. Does it then make sense to also require them to get a VC to "bless" them by giving them money... and taking a ton of equity and control? Or does it make sense to just say "hey, these guys are likely to have a legitimate business that will create jobs, let them in." My other fear with linking a startup visa to VC funding is that it gives that much more control and power to VCs in negotiations. They now know that their money and investment isn't just a ticket to funding the company, it's a ticket into the country where they want to live. They can extract much more favorable terms under those conditions. While I'm not in the camp that thinks VCs are "bad," there are some who clearly take advantage of entrepreneurs, and a startup visa linked to venture money only makes that more possible.

So, yes, we need a startup visa, and Canada should have one too. But it seems like Canada is going backwards with its efforts, taking away from a visa plan that works for all kinds of companies, and instead giving venture capitalists the ability to choose who gets into the country.

Wearing glasses can be annoying at times -- especially when wearing them in inclement weather as they fog up or get wet. But it's also nice to see clearly. Sure, contact lenses and LASIK (and other eye surgeries) can correct a lot of vision deficiencies, but for some people, wearing glasses is the best solution. Here are just a few other kinds of glasses that could be worth wearing -- even for people with 20/20 vision.

• Folks with red-green color blindness might want to check out sunglasses that could help them discern the color red a bit better. EnChroma lenses have a coating that filters light in a way that can accentuate certain colors. [url]
• EmPower eyeglasses use liquid crystals to change the optics of the lenses -- creating bifocals on demand. Presbyopia hits just about everyone over 40, but charging eyeglasses could be a bit too annoying for many quadragenarians. [url]
• The Google Glass project might look too dorky for most people to wear, but fashion models can make anything look good. And perhaps Google's $1,500 glasses could help Derek Zoolander turn left? [url]

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

A few years back, we noted an ethics opinion in Florida that stated that judges cannot be Facebook friends with lawyers who may appear before them in court. As we noted at the time, this seemed to go pretty far, as Facebook friends didn't mean "personal" friends, and there are lots of people who use Facebook just to connect with anyone they know. Furthermore, there are plenty of reasons why judges and lawyers might know each other through other paths as well. Either way, because of that opinion, a judge in Florida has been disqualified from a case for being Facebook friends with the prosecutor. The other party in the case sought to disqualify the judge claiming that on his Facebook, his "friends" were "only [his] closest friends and associates, persons whom [he] could not perceive with anything but favor, loyalty and partiality."

Oddly, as Venkat Balasubramani notes in the link above, the ruling to disqualify the judge did not focus on the facts around friendship, but around the claim that it's sort of announced publicly. As Venkat notes:

I'm still struggling to see how this is different from other forms of social interaction between lawyers and judges. Social interaction between judges and lawyers happens all the time and is not a basis for disqualification. I think there may be a bit of Facebook exceptionalism going on here.

Related to this, and at the same link, Eric Goldman points out that if we're weighing two different issues: (1) having a judge that understands Facebook and how social interaction commonly works today and (2) the "small possibility of apparent impropriety" it seems that having judges who understand social networking is a more important goal in today's society.

As was expected, despite not knowing the details of how the feds interpret the FISA Amendmens Act, which grants massive spying and surveillance power to the feds -- in fact, while proactively stopping any efforts to find out more about the interpretation, the House of Representatives today approved Lamar Smith's FISA Amendment's Act by a vote of 301-118. You can see which representatives voted which way at that link. The bill would extend the current rules (and the secret interpretation) for another five years. Republicans, who are supposedly against bigger government, only had 7 members vote no, while the remaining 111 no votes came from Democrats.

There had been an attempt to introduce amendments, but that was shot down procedurally. And an hour debate did little to get to the heart of the matter. Rep. Zoe Lofgren fought the good fight, pointing out that "I think the government needs to comply with the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution all the time... We can be safe while still complying with the Constitution of the United States." However, Rep. Dan Lungren -- who previously had insisted that there was no evidence that the NSA was abusing its powers, while refusing to even ask the NSA for basic info on how it was using the powers -- insisted based on absolutely nothing that "this is critical to the protection of the American people."

Even worse, Rep. Terry Gowdy made a ridiculously ignorant statement in response to Lofgren's highlighting of the 4th Amendment:

”Intelligence is the lifeblood of our ability to defend ourselves,” he said. Moments later, he added: “Are we to believe that the Fourth Amendment applies to the entire world?”

But, uh, the concern isn't with the rest of the world. Even without the FISA Amendments Act, the NSA already had the right to seek info on foreign communications. They have no 4th Amendment rights, so that's not even an issue. The issue is that the FISA Amendments Act appears to include some weasel words that have been twisted by the government to suggest that it can spy on Americans too. But Gowdy misleads the public by pretending, falsely, that this is about foreigners? It's not. Has he asked the NSA how many Americans it's spied on? Even the NSA has admitted that it's violated the 4th Amendment under the act in spying on Americans... but Gowdy pretends this is just about foreigners? How do you stand up and call yourself a "Representative" when you can't even get the very basics right?

Of course, House approval is just one step. The Senate version remains on hold thanks to Senator Wyden, who is one of the only elected officials who is actually asking the NSA and the Obama administration to (a) reveal the secret interpretation and (b) disclose how many Americans are being spied on under the rule.

As Julian Sanchez explained recently a former DOJ official has basically revealed part of the secret interpretation, which more or less says that if the target is al Qaeda, then anything goes:

For example, an authorization targeting “al Qaeda”—which is a non-U.S. person located abroad—could allow the government to wiretap any telephone that it believes will yield information from or about al Qaeda, either because the telephone is registered to a person whom the government believes is affiliated with al Qaeda, or because the government believes that the person communicates with others who are affiliated with al Qaeda, regardless of the location of the telephone.

Take that and expand it, and you've basically given the feds and the NSA a blank slate to spy on Americans by claiming that if it believes the spying will yield information about a threat, then it's fine. And our "Representatives" are standing up and -- either through ignorance or straight-up dishonesty -- are pretending that this is about spying on foreigners only. Shameful.

While I just wrote about the difficulty Google has put itself in with its selective enforcement of banning autocomplete terms, the search company also recently removed one such term from its oft-referred to "dirty words" list, which de-prioritizes results in its search algorithm.

The Advocate has the story of how, at the urging of bisexual advocacy organization BiNet USA, Google has dropped the word Bisexual from the results-altering list.

At the urging of bisexual advocacy organization BiNet USA, Google unblocked the term “bisexual,” and phrases such as “bisexual quotes,” “bisexual rights,” and “bisexual parenting” are now automatically suggested to Google users as of this month.

According to the article, since 2009, the word "bisexual" has been considered to be of the same ilk for Google search results as such fun terms as: bestiality, baby batter, gang bang, goatse, and many more (hat tip to 2600, and fair warning: if words can be NSFW, some of those are). While not all of those demoted search terms are treated equally, the idea that "bisexual" ranks as a banned word is ridiculous.

No matter what you think of bisexuality, the word "bisexual" is not a "dirty" word. To have "bisexual" on the list when "heterosexual", "homosexual", "trisexual" and "asexual" are not was just stupid. Fortunately, the Goog has reversed policy and dropped the word from the list completely. As BiNet USA notes, it will take some time for the search results to catch up, but at least the bisexual community can begin to be heard.

“It’s not every day one of the biggest companies in the world changes its mind, but we are thankful that Google now sees bisexual people just like everyone else,” said BiNet USA president Faith Cheltenham. “It will take time for bisexual search terms to be ranked as they were before the ban, but now bisexual people and their allies have a fighting chance to be seen, heard, and understood.”

If you needed proof of politicians’ sensitivity to, and encouragement of, persistent terrorism fears, look no further than today’s hearing in the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Transportation Security. It’s called “Eleven Years After 9/11 Can TSA Evolve To Meet the Next Terrorist Threat?” and it’s being used to feature—get this—a report arguing for a “smarter, leaner” Transportation Security Administration.

Could the signaling be more incoherent? The hearing suggests both that unknown horrors loom and that we should shrink the most visible federal security agency.

Lace up your shoes, America—we’re goin’ swimmin’!

Our federal politicians still can’t bring themselves to acknowledge that terrorism is a far smaller threat than we believed in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks, and that the threat has waned since then. (The risk of attack will never be zero, but terrorism is far down on the list of dangers Americans face.)

The good news is that the public’s loathing for the TSA is just as persistent as stated terrorism fears. This at least constrains congressional leaders to make gestures toward controlling the TSA. Perhaps we’ll get a “smarter, leaner” overreaction to fear.

Public opprobrium is a constraint on the growth and intrusiveness of the TSA, so I was delighted to see a new project from the folks at We Won’t Fly. Their new project highlights the fact that the TSA has still failed to begin the process for taking public comments on the policy of using Advanced Imaging Technology (strip-search machines) at U.S. airports, even though the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered it more than a year ago.

The project is called TSAComment.com, and they’re collecting comments because the TSA won’t.

The purpose of TSAComment.com is to give a voice to everyone the TSA would like to silence. There are many legitimate health, privacy and security-related concerns with the TSA’s adoption of body scanning technology in US airports. The TSA deployed these expensive machines without holding a mandatory public review period. Even now they resist court orders to take public comments.

TSAComment.com has gotten nearly 100 comments since the site went up late yesterday, and they’re going to deliver those comments to TSA administrator John Pistole, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, and the media.

The D.C. Circuit Court did require TSA to explain why it has not carried out a notice-and-comment rulemaking on the strip-search machine policy, and assumedly it will rule before too long.

Getting the TSA to act within the law is important not only because it is essential to have the rule of law, but because the legal procedures TSA is required to follow will require it to balance the costs and benefits of its security measures articulately and carefully. Which is to say that security policy will be removed somewhat from the political realm and our incoherent politicians and moved more toward the more rational, deliberative worlds of law and risk management.

Hope springs eternal, anyway…

There could be no better tribute to the victims of 9/11 than by continuing to live free in our great country. I won’t shrink from that goal. The people at TSAComment do not shrink from that goal. And hopefully you won’t either.

Cross-posted from Cato-at-Liberty.

We've pointed out in the past that Twitter has sometimes been overaggressive in suspending accounts based on questionable DMCA claims. So I was a bit surprised to learn that Twitter is being sued by a photographer for failing to take down images. The Jon Brodkin writeup at Ars Technica, linked here, is incredibly thorough, so it's worth reading the whole thing. The short version is that photographer Christopher Boffoli got a lot of attention recently for some of his photographs depicting little people next to giant food items. Not surprisingly, a lot of folks shared those photos around, and one popular way to do so was via Twitter. Boffoli claims that he sent a bunch of DMCA notices, including some over images that were hosted directly by Twitter (Twitter used to just allow third party photo hosting services, but launched its own a while back). I'm a bit surprised that Twitter didn't respond to the DMCA notices by taking down those works.

However, as lawyer Evan Brown correctly explains in Brodkin's article, failing to take down works upon receipt of a DMCA notice does not automatically make one guilty of infringement. It just means they can't directly avail themselves of the safe harbors in the DMCA. They can still make plenty of other arguments for why they have not broken the law. And Brown suggests that there are many reasons why they're likely to prevail:

"If I were Twitter, I would not necessarily be all that concerned about Boffoli's claims, based on the facts as they appear in the complaint," Brown said. "It doesn't look like Twitter has materially contributed to the alleged infringement. Courts have held that just providing a website is not enough to lend material support in another's infringement. And I don't see how Twitter is obtaining any direct financial benefit from the alleged infringement. Moreover, I doubt Boffoli will be able to point to any statements on Twitter's part encouraging its users to infringe copyright. If he can't show any of these things, his secondary liability claims would appear to be dead in the water. But the lawsuit is just beginning—maybe he has some great facts that will come out later. I'm skeptical, though."

Part of Boffoli's claim is that Twitter's terms of service implicate the company, but I think he's misreading that:

...he said that Twitter hosts a large volume of his work in violation of his copyright, and under Twitter's terms of service the company claims a "worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license" to reproduce and distribute that content as it pleases.

That's not quite accurate. The terms of service just say that the user who is doing the upload is granting Twitter such a license to display the work. If that user does not have the right to grant such a license, than the focus should be on that user and their own infringement.

And it's here where Boffoli's arguments get kind of weak. He's suing Twitter because they're a big company... but at the same time he claims that he doesn't mind when people post a few images:

"I'm genuinely humbled and grateful that people are enthusiastic about my work and want to share it," Boffoli told Ars. "If somebody puts a couple of my pictures on a Tumblr page, thats totally fine."

So why sue Twitter? Well he claims it's because "Twitter hosts a large volume of his work." But... right before that he says that it's fine for people to post a few images to Tumblr, meaning that Tumblr, too, almost certainly hosts a "large volume" of his work. And his complaints to Twitter focus on four specific users, who each posted images. But he's not suing the users. And... again, he seems to say that it's okay for the users to share a couple images via a platform like Twitter and Tumblr. But then... in the same breath he claims that those platforms are then liable? That seems to undermine his case.

Finally, Boffoli and his lawyer seem to both complain about his inability to make money on the images... while also being happy that the images went viral, admitting that they've helped raise his profile.

"He gets a ton of notoriety but he doesn't make a lot of money off it yet," [Boffoli's lawyer Keith] Scully said. "He does all his own copyright policing because he can't afford to hire a legion of lawyers and staff to take care of it for him."

"I'm just a working artist, trying to support my studio and myself," Boffoli said. Numerous websites do contact him to ask permission to distribute his work, "which I really appreciate," he noted. "It gives me a chance to provide the work in context, and even to provide images that aren't out there yet."

So... his complaint is that the viral nature of the images made him famous and has created buzz that has resulted in legitimate requests, and he doesn't mind when individuals post up his work, because that helps him. But for some reason he's then suing Twitter. As for having to do all of his own policing, perhaps the better answer is to look for more ways to leverage the viral nature of these images. He notes at another point that some of the images don't link back to him as the original photographer (while others do). Wouldn't it be a lot more productive to send friendly notes to those who shared his images by just asking them to also promote a link to his website and maybe a way to license or commission works? That would actually keep his works viral and encourage sharing, while also driving more people to potentially give him money.

The more the details come out, the more this feels like a "Steve Dallas lawsuit," in which he's suing Twitter not because the company has actually infringed... but because they're a big company with money who might just pay him.

As promised, around noon today, we'll be doing a live chat with Andrew "K'tetch" Norton, who assembled No Safe Harbor, the book of essays about issues related to the Pirate Party. We'll be broadcasting the video live -- it should show up below this paragraph around noon, and should run about half an hour. We'll be chatting about Andrew, about the Pirate Party, about the book (and its upcoming sequel), as well as a variety of issues covered by the book. Please come join us for the live interview, or check out the recording after we're done.

Piracy has been a part of the entertainment industry for as long as content has been released on copyable media. Whenever piracy is around, content creators have attempted to fight the actions of fans sharing their favorite movies, music, games and other works with their friends. While some creators have learned to cope with piracy and have succeeded in spite of it, there are still many more that feel the need to do something. However, many of those creatives have that "something" wrong.

In an article over at Euro Gamer, Robert Florance shares his thoughts on piracy and what goes through the mind of a consumer when making a buying decision, and where content creators should target in order to maximize sales. Robert introduces us to what he considers to be the thought process of a consumer as he makes a choice to buy something.

1. HERE IS A THING I LIKE

2. DO I WANT IT? (YES)

3. DO I HAVE TO PAY FOR IT? (NO)

4. DO I WANT TO PAY FOR IT? (YES/NO)

5. YES: PAY FOR IT

6. NO: JUST TAKE IT FOR FREE

END

That's it in a nutshell. And here's the fundamental problem with the whole piracy issue. Publishers are focusing on dismantling Stage 6 of that process when they should be analysing decisions made at Stage 4.

We have written many times about how content creators can affect the result of the decision made at step four. We have written in the past about how consumers don't just look at price when making a purchasing decision, but weigh a number of currencies. By adding value through these and other currencies, a content creator can make it far easier for a consumer to choose to purchase over getting the content for free. However, if these content creators fail to add the value the consumers want, those customers will have a far more difficult time making the choice to purchase. As a result, the company making the content could fail.

"But these giant companies would have to close down. People will lose their jobs!" And yes, that's horrible. No one ever wants to see people lose their jobs. But if these companies can only stay in existence by charging their customers extortionate prices for bland, safe product, should they even be there in the first place? Are they not living on a lie? And the creative people at these companies, people who currently spend every day texturing guns and other guns and extra downloadable guns, might they not do greater work on their own? In small groups? Forming daring little companies? Working to progress gaming and earning goodwill from people who will pay and pay again to see their work?

Over the years we have seen companies lose creatives who then go on to create the content they want to make without the interference of gatekeepers. These creatives have moved on to work with enablers that help them add the right kind of value to their content, which in turn sells more to the end consumer. Will larger companies die off? If they don't adapt to changing trends in the market, yes they will. Is that a bad thing? Of course not. 

Finally, Robert explains just what a pirate actually is. He lead up to this in his intro, but it deserves its own little plug down here.

Let me tell you what a pirate actually is. It's just a word. And that word is a weapon. Corporations and governments will use that word to try to destroy our freedom and halt progress. They'll use it to try to turn us against each other. When big business talks about a pirate, it's creating a bogeyman that will be used to justify the continuation of its worst practices. We have to reject it, every time. There are no pirates. There's only me and you.

We can see these actions by corporations and governments all over the place. Whether it is SOPA, or excessive DRM, or the DMCA with its anti-circumvention clause and heavily abused takedown process, they have been used and promoted as a way to fight pirates even though there is little evidence that such measures are effective in any way. Even a company like Ubisoft, with its strong history of DRM use, has backed away from its previous position. Music rarely if ever comes bogged down by DRM anymore. However, DRM has been replaced by other excesses in copyright enforcement.

Yet, all those actions target the wrong part of the consumer decision making process. They all focus on step six when they should be focusing on adding value that leads the consumer to move to step five. Those pirates that will take content for free no matter what, if they do exist, are just not worth the hassle and burden of actions that negatively affect those who are willing to pay.

There's been plenty of talk about HBO and its ongoing refusal to offer a standalone internet offering for its content (unless you happen to live in the lovely Nordic region). A few months ago, this discussion took something of a viral turn with the website TakeMyMoneyHBO.com, which tried to calculate how much people would pay for standalone internet/mobile access to HBO content -- which suggested people would be willing to pay an average of about $12 per month. Now, we can all take online internet surveys with a pretty big grain of salt, but there clearly is a lot of interest in people getting such a service. The straight math says that at $12, it would be a good deal for HBO, which is rumored to actually get about $7 or $8 per subscriber via cable and satellite. But... as Ryan Lawler at TechCrunch wrote at the time, it's not that straightforward, and you can show how the math doesn't quite add up:

More importantly, it wouldn’t include the cost of sales, marketing, and support — and this is where HBO would really get screwed. Going direct to online customers by pitching HBO GO over-the-top would mean losing the support of its cable, satellite, and IPTV distributors. And since the Comcasts and the Time Warner Cables of the world are the top marketing channel for premium networks like HBO, it would be nearly impossible for HBO to make up for the loss of the cable provider’s marketing team or promotions.

Think about it: Every time someone signs up for cable or satellite service, one of the inevitable perks is a free six- or 12-month subscription to HBO. And those free subscriptions are rarely, if ever, cancelled once the trial period ends.

Lawler insists the math doesn't add up because without that marketing push, the number of subscribers would be much lower. HBO claimed that Lawler's math was right. And it may be. For now. But that's really dangerous thinking.

We've pointed out before that it's quite tempting for legacy players to think that they can wait out disruptive innovation. They talk about how the new products and services aren't good enough or don't make enough money to bother getting into that space. Often they'll directly talk about how the new services don't make the same amount of revenue as the old ones (or they'll make some crack about "dollars into dimes.") And, of course, they insist that when the money is there they'll make the switch. But, if you understand anything about the history of disruptive innovation, you know that if you wait until that point, you're already behind. Someone else has already taken over that market, and your "switch" is often seen as way too little, way too late (not to mention that it's often accompanied by massive bungling, as the slow entrance also means not really understanding enough about how that market works, while all your competitors spent all that time perfecting their solutions).

MG Siegler has a great post talking about this very concept as it relates to HBO, responding to Lawler (again) and his recent interview of an HBO exec during a panel at TechCrunch Disrupt. Once again, HBO insisted that Lawler was right and that "the math didn't make sense." But Siegler points out, correctly, that innovation beats math every single time. Siegler basically highlights the key point of Clayton Christensen's Innovator's Dilemma: it's really really tough for legacy players to eat their own cash cows and bet on something new. He points to another excellent article, by Farhad Manjoo at Slate, about how Apple actually does this really well, specifically how it totally cannibalized its cash-cow iPods with the iPhone:

Put it all together and you get remarkable story about a device that, under the normal rules of business, should not have been invented. Given the popularity of the iPod and its centrality to Apple’s bottom line, Apple should have been the last company on the planet to try to build something whose explicit purpose was to kill music players. Yet Apple’s inner circle knew that one day, a phone maker would solve the interface problem, creating a universal device that could make calls, play music and videos, and do everything else, too—a device that would eat the iPod’s lunch. Apple’s only chance at staving off that future was to invent the iPod killer itself. More than this simple business calculation, though, Apple’s brass saw the phone as an opportunity for real innovation.

That, in a nuthsell, is what most companies fail to do. It's why Clayton Christensen's book sells so well, even though very, very few companies have any idea how to do what Apple did and "eat its own." But the point is there. If you focus on "the math," you're going to miss the market and be way, way too late. Back to Siegler:

Moore's statement about HBO is correct. The math is not in favor of selling HBO access directly to consumers. But if we're just thinking about this from a pure product perspective, I don’t think anyone would disagree that this is what we all want. HBO is choosing not to build the service we will love, they're choosing the short-term money. The safe bet. The math.

But if they don’t diverge from this path, it will lead to their demise. Innovation always beats math, eventually. That, you can take to the bank.

He's right. And the more you look at the economics of innovation, the easier it is to understand why innovation always beats math. It's because "the math" that people do is of a static world, for the most part. They use past performance and metrics built on a different market. They don't understand how quickly a new market grows, and how much larger its overall potential is. And that's because we have difficulty in mentally dealing with non-zero sum markets, preferring to think that it's a one-for-one switch. But, it's not. Innovation expands markets in new and unexpected ways, often quite rapidly (though also, deceptively slowly at first, because the growth is often in a tangential market that people don't even recognize).

So they come up with spreadsheets and "models" that try to predict when the math says it's time to switch. And all of that time they're not innovating. But since the disruption is brewing in a much faster manner, and in a different spot than they really think it is, the time to switch is usually as soon as you realize the innovation is happening, not when the spreadsheet tells you to. It's not just about choosing "the safe bet" vs "the service we love." It's about how disruptive innovation guarantees that those who don't build for the markets of tomorrow, don't really have much of a market tomorrow.

Most of the time, it seems our "representatives" in Washington simply don't care what their constituents want. The DC thought process is that constituents are not to be trusted, much less listened to. Of course, all bets are off during election cycles. Suddenly, everyone cares.

Karl Bode at DSLReports has been following the FCC's "National Broadband Plan" since the first draft was made public back in March. He noted then that an additional $1-5 was to be added to existing customers' monthly bills in order to help fund the USF (Universal Service Fund) and expand broadband coverage.

Now, after asking for public comment and realizing that election season is in full swing, the FCC, along with pretty much everyone in both parties is pointing fingers at each other for daring to hit the poor consumer with yet another tax, all while insisting that they weren't the ones who proposed it. It seems this "proposal" magically appeared without anyone's support, if you believe the sudden backtracking from, well, everyone.

Neil Grace, a spokesman for Chairman Julius Genachowski, said the commission only made the proposal “following the urging of Republican Commissioners and members of Congress."

"The Chairman remains unconvinced that including broadband is the right approach,” he said. Robert McDowell, the only Republican on the commission when the proposal was floated earlier this year, flatly rejected that he ever supported the idea. "I have never suggested taxing broadband Internet access," he told The Hill.

The Hill's Technology Blog has a few more details, including this bit of interesting bit of skepticism from McDowell, who is first in line to head the FCC if there's a party shift this November :

McDowell said he is skeptical that the FCC even has the legal authority to tax Internet service.

So, if I'm reading this right, no one on the FCC supports this proposal that the FCC put forth and is now considering, even though no one wants it. Got it.

Of course, this wasn't the only suggestion the FCC considered, but the others weren't much better.

In April, the FCC suggested a number of ideas for reforming the fund's contribution system, including adding a fee to broadband Internet service. The commission also sought comments on taxing text messages, as well as levying a flat fee on each phone line, instead of the current system, which is based on a portion of the revenue from interstate phone calls.

Between now and November, this plan will have no support from previously interested politicians. An FCC official has referred to the idea as "politically toxic." Once the elections are over, though, it will probably be placed right back on the table.

The "internet tax" does have some support, though.

A number of companies, including AT&T, Sprint and Google, expressed support for a broadband tax in comments filed with the FCC.

Now, there's a good reason for these companies to support the funding of the UCF through these fees. For starters, this gets passed along to the customers so it's no money out of their pocket. (And it appears on the bill as a below-the-line charge, in order to allow both the government and the phone company to avoid calling it a "tax.") Even better, the UCF has become a loosely-regulated "slush fund" which dumps collected "fees" directly back into the pockets of the same companies collecting it in the first place.

What started as a program with important goals (making sure rural farmers can make phone calls and ensuring the poorest among us can dial 911) turned into an unaccountable corporate slush fund. Today USF is an $8 billion annual program, nearly quadrupling in size since its inception, with the bulk of that increase going to landline and wireless phone companies.

Maybe this massive growth would be no concern if USF were a model program with a sterling reputation for efficiency. But it’s not. One recent study found that 59 cents of every USF dollar raised for rural networks was spent on administrative expenses and general overhead. A 2010 audit of the rural USF program found that one out of every four dollars sent to participating phone companies was an “overpayment,” with nearly a billion dollars unaccounted for.

The corporate supporters of this plan to "expand the USF contributions base" have no constituency to worry about and have boldly stated that they'd love to have additional fees levied, presumably for noble reasons, like providing 911 service for rural farmers or helping lower income individuals acquire broadband services.

AT&T says that “retail mass market broadband Internet access should be included” in the FCC’s tax, and Google “strongly supports expanding the USF contribution base to include broadband Internet access services,” even as it begs the FCC to exempt Google’s own voice telephony services from the USF tax.

Conveniently ignoring the fact that adding additional fees does nothing to encourage broadband adoption by the low income population, the companies who stand to benefit the most from having more money dumped into a big cash pool are also first in line to make generous offers with other peoples' cash. The government is always more than happy to "pick up the check" on grandiose gestures, but at least every two-to-four years they remember whose wallet they're actually using. But these companies, with a hand stuck in both your back pocket AND the till don't have a periodic attack of conscience. This "broadband tax" will return to the table again and again as long as lobbyists still roam D.C.

Back when Google decided to be the arbiter of what words were strictly for infringement in its previously useful autocomplete function, some of us saw the looming danger of such a move, in that it opens up Google to requests for all kinds of autocomplete modifications. The theory was that Google could placate movie studios and record labels by refusing to let autocomplete add words like "torrent" to searches, because lord knows that there isn't a legitimate use for those damned things.

But the problem with the permission culture is that it lives by that old adage: give an inch and they will take a mile. So, as was inevitable, what began with "torrent" and media files soon became fights over autocompletes like "jew" and non-infringing search results. And, as Google opens the door another inch each time it caves in, the floodgates continue to threaten. It would be problematic for Google to assert selective moderation of autocomplete. If they will block autocomplete terms for media files, why not defamation? If they'll block defaming terms, why not parodies? If they'll block parodies, why not controversial negative articles?

That's how we've arrived in a world where the wife of a disgraced former German President is suing Google because autocomplete offers suggestions like "escort" and "prostitute" to complete a search of her name. Bettina Wulff is the wife of Christian Wulff, who resigned the Presidency amid allegations of corruption earlier in his career. For whatever reason, there have long been rumors that she had a colorful past and those rumors spread like wildfire on the internet.

"My pseudonym is supposedly 'Lady Victoria' and my workplace was apparently an establishment called 'Chateau Osnabrück,'" Wulff writes, according to Bild. She continues: "I have never worked as escort." The rumors have been very hurtful for her and her family, Wulff writes, describing her concern that her young son Leander might discover the speculation while surfing the Internet.

Wulff, working with her lawyers, has successfully sent a myriad of cease and desist notices to bloggers and television personalities, some of them quite well known in Germany. Assuming the allegations are as false as she claims, that's all good. But now she's bringing Google into the mix because autocomplete...you know...works the way it's supposed to.

But last week they took on Internet giant Google too, filing a defamation suit with the Hamburg district court to force the search engine to remove a long list of damaging terms recommended by its "Autocomplete" function in connection with Wulff. Google, which has refused to comply, claims that the search suggestions are simply the result of an algorithm. The company seems confident about the lawsuit, having won similar cases in court with claims that the search engine only reflects what people search for most often online.

But... thanks to Google's double standard in editing for copyright, it's making it easy for some to argue that it should also do the same for stories like this one:

Simply put, Google's position is this: In response to pressure from a powerful lobby, the company will block search terms and hits, forcing undesirable results lower on their list of links. But when it comes to individual people, Google unscrupulously links users to websites that violate their personal rights.

[....]It would appear that Google's position on intervening in search results and suggestions depends on the influence of the parties involved. It hides links to pirated material, but not those that violate personal rights, and it places links to its own products prominently in its supposedly objective results.

Google appears to choose what is objectionable based on what might be bad for business. The company may well come through Bettina Wulff's suit legally unscathed. But ethically, questions will remain. Google's choices in the matter seem opportunistic. Given the quasi-monopolist's powerful position in the market, that is unsettling.

Whether or not you agree those claims are accurate, you can't deny that Google made such arguments much, much easier when it started editing autocompletes and search results in favor of copyright holders.

Despite what I think is a common sense notion that Google shouldn't need to bend its autocomplete algorithm under notions of comfort, the fact that it's opened the door to doing this before will make replying to this and other suits more problematic. A Google spokesperson is quoted in the article saying that the company won't give in this time because its autocomplete suggestions are objective. That may have once been the case, but it simply isn't any more.

We've linked to the Photography Is Not A Crime (PINAC) blog on Pixiq.com many times in the past. To be honest, I had no idea that the site was actually owned by Barnes and Noble -- I had assumed that it was just an independent blogging operation. It turns out, however, that B&N hired Carlos Miller, who had written PINAC as an independent blog, and "moved" the blog to Pixiq two years ago. However, it recently chose not to renew his contract, and agreed to transfer the blog back to being independent. Except... that now it's claiming that it cannot transfer all of the comments on the site because that would somehow violate B&N's privacy policies (note that link goes to PINAC at Pixiq... but I have no idea where it will go in a week when the "transfer" takes place). At best, B&N says it can transfer the comments but only as "anonymous."

At first, Pixiq was asking me to sign a document, which stated that the migration of my blog would not include a single comment because of its privacy policy.

But when I protested, Pixiq attorney Gillian Berman said they would make an exception in my case and migrate the comments, but turn every username into “anonymous,” which would make every single comment over the last two years appear to have been left the same person.

This makes no sense. We're not talking about handing private info over to a third party, but the actual names that people chose to display publicly. Perhaps B&N would have an argument if there's concern about transferring email addresses or IP address info with the comments -- but even that seems like a stretch. People commented on a blog. Transferring the entire blog to a different site doesn't change any of that -- but it's especially stupid when it comes to public info like commenters' chosen display names.

It seems like the only explanation I can figure out is that B&N is being incredibly lazy here, and doesn't want to do the bare minimum amount of work to return the blog to Carlos. We've seen a few other blogs "join" different sites in the past, and it seems worth highlighting how the separation can create ridiculous problems like this when a big company decides to make claims that just don't make any sense.

Over in the Insider Chat, Leigh recently taught us that it's a myth that carrots improve your eyesight... but if your mother tries to pass that off on you as a reason to eat carrots, perhaps you should tell her you're better off getting in a bit more time playing the latest first person shooter, instead (not that you shouldn't eat carrots, they're delicious, but they won't help your eyesight). However, it seems that researchers keep showing that first person shooters really are good for your eyesight. The latest, as sent over by Rob Hyndman is about a study done up in Canada showing eyesight improvement for people playing Medal of Honor.

Participants were all born with cataracts that were removed — but because of their condition, their vision never developed to 20/20. Six of the seven were not gamers.

They played the game for 10 hours straight in a controlled environment, and then two hours a day only until they reached 40 hours of play.

"We brought them back four weeks later and they all had improved vision," Lewis said.

10 hours straight seems excessive...

That said, this is hardly new. We first noted a study like this nearly a decade ago. Then again five years ago. And, for good measure, three years ago. Whether or not the improved eyesight cancels out the urge to kill (rising) that such video games also provide is left to future research to determine (and because people are humor impaired: that's a joke).