Ever since the failure of SOPA, MPAA boss Chris Dodd has been making the rounds, giving the same damn stump speech over and over again. We've reported on it before, but he's done it again, this time at the National Press Club. As the transcript shows, it's the same old story.

Play up just how amazing the movie industry is because it "tells stories." Then, transition into just how many "jobs" the industry creates -- and focus on how those jobs aren't the glamorous ones, but those everyday people (the "little people" if you will) -- and always claim that there are over 2 million of them, even if that's massively exaggerated. At least this time he put in the caveat that he was including people who are both "directly and indirectly" in the industry (plus he admits that he's including TV people, as opposed to just movies) -- such as the people who "prepared our lunch today." Of course, I would imagine those people would likely be preparing lunch for someone else even if the movie industry disappeared. He also highlights that the industry creates jobs across the country, naming New Mexico, Georgia and North Carolina. Don't think those are by accident. Those are three states that have provided significant subsidies to the Hollywood studios, and are some of the very few such programs not rated as a dismal failure for the local economy. He claims that "You can go down a list of states all across the nation and find one economic impact success story after another." He conveniently leaves out that the evidence actually shows that most of these are actually not economic success stories at all, but dismal failures that funnel taxpayer money from states to Hollywood studios which bring in their favorite crews, and hire few locals.

But, then, of course, there's the key section on "technology" and innovation. At first he tries to play up all of the "innovation," but again, leaves out how many of these "innovations" wouldn't actually exist if the MPAA had its way in the past:

Because movies matter—to more people, in more places, who want to watch them at more times, across multiple platforms—the film and television industry is continuously innovating to meet that demand.

Today movies and TV shows can be viewed in theaters, on the big screen, or at home on TV screens, laptops, iPads, Kindles and smart phones.

There are more than 375 unique licensed online distribution services around the world that provide high-quality, on demand film and television shows, offering the easiest, fastest, safest, highest quality product and viewing experience possible.

That the industry was dragged, kicking and screaming, to support many of these things is sort of left out. Also, the fact that the industry has worked ridiculously hard at crippling many of these services, making them way too expensive and annoying (how many services require you to watch a video within 24 hours, because, apparently, no one in the MPAA has kids and recognizes you might want to start a film one night and finish it the next?) seems kind of important, but not mentioned.

There is one thing we agree on:

These innovations are great for consumers. I'm not exaggerating when I say a new golden age in television and film is being ushered in. You can watch more content than ever, through more channels, and the quality of the movies and TV shows is outstanding.

So why did the MPAA fight nearly every one of these changes all along? And why is it still trying to do so? Well, then we get to the usual talk about how the next wave of "innovation" isn't about providing more value to those consumers. It's not about extending the golden age. It's about how can Silicon Valley help the MPAA stop piracy:

This is why it's so crucial that we protect this content from theft. Because consumers deserve to enjoy first-generation versions of their favorite films—not secondhand, pirated films-of-films shot and recorded inside a movie theatre on a mobile phone.

First off, it's not theft. Stop saying it is when it's not. It just makes you look totally out of touch. Second, you know what helps consumers get good works? Making them available in convenient ways at reasonable prices -- something the big studios frequently work against, despite his list of services. Finally, you know how to beat the "secondhand, pirated films-of-films shot and recorded inside a movie theater on a mobile phone"? You offer more convenient ways to view the actual product. I don't know why Dodd and the MPAA think that anyone really wants to watch a crappy cammed version of a film shot from a mobile phone. They don't. Give them legitimate reasonable options and they prefer that.

We must strike a balance between the desire for a free and open internet and the protection of intellectual property. The future cannot be about choosing one over the other—between protecting free speech OR protecting intellectual property—it must be about protecting both

There is no "balance" needed here. What we need is a free and open internet, period. Protecting IP is a fool's errand. Focus on providing more legitimate services with better service, more convenience and reasonable pricing and there's no need to protect things. People pay for Netflix, Spotify and others because they're simply more convenient. Do more of that and stop worrying about piracy.

We can and must have an Internet that works for everyone, and we can and must have protection for the creative industry’s genius that intellectual property represents.

This assumes that protection is a reasonable goal. It's not. It will always be costly to protect and will always have collateral damage. Considering you can solve the problems merely by providing better services, stop worrying about piracy, and just start helping more companies innovate cool additional value.

There should be no confusion. For the more than two million Americans whose jobs depend on the motion picture and television industry “free and open” cannot be synonymous with “working for free.”

I'm sure whichever staffer wrote this line thought it was really clever, but what does it even mean? No one is asking anyone to work for free. Just moments before in the speech, Dodd was talking about how the industry was doing great and growing. More movies than ever before are being made and there are all sorts of new opportunities. Focus on those.

To protect IP, and the openness and freedom of the Internet, we must together innovate our way through these challenges. Fortunately, Silicon Valley and Hollywood are making some progress on this front.

No, the challenge is not how to "protect content." The challenge is "how can we make money" and the tech industry has been providing answers to that over and over and over again, creating new and useful tools and services that help the creation, promotion, distribution and monetization of movies. And the industry has either fought to block or simply looked down upon nearly all of them, until suddenly they're "big enough" to matter, and then they take credit for those innovations. Don't "work together" on the useless goal of "protecting content." Focus on innovating in a way that makes consumers better off.

It's a simple thing: are you adding value to the consumers, or are you trying to stop them from doing something? If you're doing the first thing, you're moving in the right direction. If you're doing the latter, you're throwing money away on the impossible. While Chris Dodd represents the movie industry, the joke around here for a while has been that industries fighting the future "sound like a broken recording industry." Dodd's been telling this same tall tale for a year now, and it's time he got some new material. Stop focusing on ways to stop people from doing stuff, and start looking for ways to help them get more value.

A little over three years ago, we had a discussion concerning whether or not Sherlock Holmes was in the public domain. By our understanding of the law, the character absolutely is in the public domain. There is one remaining book -- The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes -- which contains a few stories that are still covered by copyright, but the characters and most of the written works are in the public domain. However, the legal representatives of the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Estate use the fact that one book is still held under copyright to argue that the character is still protected until (at least) 2023. Of course, as with things like Happy Birthday, even if it should be in the public domain, if there's some corporate entity insisting that it's covered by copyright, you'd have to go to court to prove otherwise. And most people don't want to bother.

Thankfully, that just changed when it comes to Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock Holmes scholar, Leslie S. Klinger, was working on a book (with Laurie R. King) called In the Company of Sherlock Holmes, detailing "major mystery/sci-fi/fantasy authors inspired by the Holmes tales." However, the Conan Doyle Estate contacted their publisher, Pegasus Books, demanding a license fee, and saying if they weren't paid, they'd make sure that no major distributors would sell the book. Specifically, the estate directly threatened that:

If you proceed instead to bring out Study in Sherlock II unlicensed, do not expect to see it offered for sale by Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and similar retailers. We work with those company's routinely to weed out unlicensed uses of Sherlock Holmes from their offerings, and will not hesitate to do so with your book as well.

Like too many publishers, Pegasus freaked out and refused to publish the book at all, so Klinger has taken it upon himself to file for declaratory judgment. You can see the full filing posted here (and embedded it below).

The lawsuit points out that Sherlock Holmes characters have long been in the public domain, and even that remaining book of stories includes two that are clearly in the public domain, as they were published prior to 1923. But, most importantly "none of the Sherlock Holmes Story Elements first appeared in any of the stories that were collected in The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes." In other words, the entirety of copyright protected elements in the character were published outside of that one book, and are now in the public domain.

The lawsuit also notes that Klinger and King's publisher on an earlier book, A Study in Sherlock, did, in fact, pay a license to the estate, but they did not concede any of the legal arguments. When the estate threatened Klinger, he correctly explained that no license was needed, but he's still dealing with the fallout from his publisher getting cold feet. Thus, he's asking the court to state, definitively, that the character is in the public domain. Kudos to Klinger for taking this on. We need more people willing to stand up for the public domain. Also, jeers to Pegasus for not being the one to take this on and for freaking out over the bogus threat.

It's no real secret that one of the many problems with the way patents work in the United States is what happens when two or more people produce the same invention independent of one another. Unfortunately, with the USPTO's seeming inability to judge what is obvious to those skilled in the arts and what isn't, the result is typically the guy who got the patent first wins. We've discussed before how inventions that are likely inevitable shouldn't be patented, as there's little progress to reward if the progress was simple eventuality. Still, recognition is sorely lacking for how common this kind of thing is.

So, when a popular (and hysterical) site like Cracked.com decides to dedicate one of their famous lists to 5 odd cases of simultaneous invention, including well-known inventions, we hope that injecting that into the common bloodstream gets people thinking. In the process, they get in a few digs at the patent process as well.

That's not necessarily how invention works. Aside from the fact that these scientists and inventors often work in teams, even those teams aren't working in a vacuum. They read the scientific literature, and attend conferences, and exchange correspondence with their peers, and in general absorb the thoughts and ideas of their day, thoughts and ideas accessible to everyone else. Indeed, it turns out that many of the biggest inventions and discoveries of all time haven't been made by a single person, but by many people, working more or less independently, in some cases barely finishing their research before they make comical sprints to the patent office, trousers hanging around their ankles.

Indeed. More over, it's not as though these are obscure, trivial inventions that you've never heard of. We're talking about things like the Polio Vaccine, the theory of relativity, and calculus. My personal favorite on the list is an invention hallmark, the telephone. It turns out that Alexander Graham Bell walked into the patent office not only on the same day as a guy named Elisha Gray, but with the intention of patenting a nearly identical invention.

What happens next is complicated. It involves lawyers, and shadowy visits to the patent office, and bribed patent clerks, and probably some great 19th century insults. The end result of it all being a huge controversy about whether Bell read Gray's preliminary patent paperwork and copied parts of his invention. Understand that this was all before either of the men got their damned inventions to work. Indeed, Bell's famous first words on the telephone occurred while he was testing a device that looked an awful lot like Gray's patent application.

The point isn't that Graham didn't contribute. It's that when two or more people invent the same thing simultaneously and independently of one another, the result shouldn't be one of those people getting the kind of monopoly that could result in gold-plated testicles for all the household pets while everyone else is relegated to polishing said testicles to make a little cash. That the patent system can't handle this kind of thing shows a clear flaw. One that hasn't been dealt with since before the telephone, apparently.

Potable water is an extremely valuable resource, even though most people take it for granted. Not too many people are concerned about "peak water" yet, but there are some folks looking into the feasibility of towing icebergs to places where clean water is scarce. There are numerous ways to get clean water, but most of them are fairly energy intensive (and thereby expensive). Here are just a few notable projects for purifying water.

• Saudi Arabia is planning to build the world's biggest desalination plant, capable of processing 158 million gallons of water in a day, by 2018. Exporting fresh water could be Saudi Arabia's next valuable product. [url]
• Dean Kamen (the inventor of the Segway) has been working on a device called a Slingshot that purifies water and generates electricity. Over a billion people don't have access to clean water or electricity, so that's a lot of people who might benefit if this device works out economically. [url]
• A desalination battery uses electricity to separate sodium chloride from sea water. This technology isn't quite ready to generate tons of cheap, potable water yet, but it's a nice first step towards more cost effective ways of making sea water more useful. [url]

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

You don't want to live in a town where the police and the mob work together.

In a completely unrelated note, the Second Circuit recently heard arguments from the SEC — the federal agency statutorily charged to enforce the nation’s securities laws — and Citigroup — a company targeted for securities laws violations that it refuses to admit or deny committing — on the SAME SIDE.

This should be a red flag.

They wanted the Second Circuit to spank Judge Jed Rakoff for having the audacity to ask the SEC to kindly do its job. The nerve of some people.

Well, securities law may not be as sexy as drone strikes, but I watched the SEC try to pull off just as naked an executive power grab.

So it was my first return in my new capacity as a journalist to the federal courthouse that I’ve visited time and time before as a lawyer. It’s a different experience walking in without a suit and without drilling yourself to make sure you remembered everything you needed for the hearing. Almost relaxing in a way.

The courtroom was an absolute zoo, built far too small for a hearing that had the attention of the media and every financial institution worried about the future of their relationship with their regulator. Add in the army of clerks dropping in to watch, and the courthouse had to set up an overflow room with folding chairs and a TV simulcasting the event (and even that room was eventually standing room only).

When I first got there, the TV only showed the floating face and torso of Judge Rosemary Pooler, joining the proceedings from the Northern District of New York, in a courtroom that looked eerily like the backdrop to a hostage video with sparse, utilitarian walls, a light switch and a flag. I felt bad watching her sit like an interviewee in a green room with a hundred lawyers and journos watching her every move. It felt like Legal Big Brother.

The background of the case is simple enough. In 2011, the SEC and Citigroup brought a consent decree to Judge Rakoff. The judge felt obliged to ask for some factual backup before rubberstamping a decree that basically let Citigroup off the hook for activity that, at the time, public opinion thought pretty severe. When the SEC and Citigroup failed to meet this basic standard to Judge Rakoff’s liking, he declined to approve their consent decree. Basically, if the SEC really has gathered enough evidence to reach a reasonable settlement with someone, they should be able to provide the judge with some evidence to back up its reasonableness. In math class you have to show your work.

This isn’t the first time Judge Rakoff has issued a controversial ruling challenging accepted government policies. Remember, this is the guy who made the death penalty unconstitutional for a hot minute. Now he’s questioning the SEC’s chummy totally professional and arms-length relationship with Wall Street.

Interestingly, because the subsequent acquittal in the Stoker case brought to light facts that the SEC and Citigroup originally failed to provide Judge Rakoff, he no longer believes that he must deny the consent decree and would almost assuredly approve the agreement on remand. No harm, no foul, right?

But Michael Conley for the SEC and Brad Karp for Citigroup weren’t thrilled with this possible result, asking the Second Circuit instead to reverse the lower court decision.

Why? Well, the money exchange came when Judge Raymond Lohier (the final judge on the panel was Judge Susan Carney) asked about deference and why an Article III judge would question the judgment of an executive agency that presumably reached its decision based on a sound review of the evidence.

The lawyer for Judge Rakoff, Rusty Wing [disclosure: I used to work with Rusty at LSW, though I had no involvement whatsoever with this matter], pointed out that the SEC is entitled to deference — but that doesn’t mean they aren’t wrong, eliciting laughter from the audience and a snarky “No! Really?” from Judge Lohier himself.

It sounded a lot like the SEC was going to the mat on this one because they didn’t want “deference” as much as they wanted “tyranny” — a ruling affirming that any decision they reach is subject to zero judicial review based on their status as part of the executive branch because we should all just trust the executive branch without any transparency. Sounds a lot like drone strikes to me.

Depending on the outcome of the hearing, when Mary Jo White gets there and starts kicking tail, as Elie suggests, she will have a couple drones at her disposal.

Judge Rakoff Rejects SEC’s “Contrivances” In Citigroup Settlement [Forbes]

More stories from Above The Law:

• California Law School Claims Free Speech Right To Offer Piss-Poor Education And Be Accredited For It
• Mom Hires Lawyer to Force Son to Go To The U. Amateurs!
• A Law School Scarier Than The Job Market?

For media watchers, the very public argument this week between Tesla and the NY Times has been quite fascinating. In case you happened to not be obsessively following each back and forth (what, you have lives?!?), it all began with a NY Times' less than enthusiastic review of the experience of trying to drive a Tesla S (the company's flagship electric car sedan) between a pair of Tesla's new "superchargers." You can read the full review yourself, but the short version is that it did not get the mileage expected, and at one point a flatbed truck needed to come pick up the totally dead car. I will admit that I'm impressed by the Tesla car in general, and most of the reviews have made it out to be about as close to a perfect car as you can imagine (which is pretty impressive considering that it's the first year of the car's existence and it's the first "mass" produced Tesla vehicle). But this review was less than thrilled, since the whole point was to test out the ability to drive between these "superchargers."

Upon publication, Tesla's famous CEO, Elon Musk, began tweeting up a storm about how the article was "fake" and that he had the vehicle logs to prove it. The author of the review, John Broder, responded to many of the tweeted charges, arguing that Musk was misrepresenting things -- leading many watchers to suggest that Musk was making a big mistake in attacking the NY Times.

Then, Musk published a blog post with a graphical representation of the log data they had, in which he argues that Broder lied and even purposely tried to run the car out of juice in order to write a negative story. Musk claims that after their dispute with Top Gear, they now keep logs on any media test drives (though it's unclear if they tell reporters that before giving them the cars). And, suddenly, a lot of people flipped sides, arguing that the data won and clearly the NY Times and Broder had some answering to do. After all, there were charts like this one: Except... then some people started to look more closely at the data and realize that perhaps Broder's story wasn't so crazy and Musk made a number of assumptions that aren't necessarily backed up by the data. For example, Musk insists that Broder claimed he turned down the climate control to low to conserve energy at 182 miles, and points to the fact that at 182 miles, Broder actually increased the temperature over 72 degrees. However, as Rebecca Greenfield points out, in her piece (linked above), it really looks like Musk may have simply assumed incorrectly that the point where this happened was 182 miles, and at about 250 miles it's quite clear that Broder does turn the climate control way down and keep it that way for a while (Greenfield added the purple box below). Then Broder chimed back in as well explaining away most of the accusations, including the charge by Musk that Broder drove the car around trying to run it out of energy:

When he first reached our Milford, Connecticut Supercharger, having driven the car hard and after taking an unplanned detour through downtown Manhattan to give his brother a ride, the display said "0 miles remaining." Instead of plugging in the car, he drove in circles for over half a mile in a tiny, 100-space parking lot. When the Model S valiantly refused to die, he eventually plugged it in.

Except, Broder notes, the "unplanned detour through downtown Manhattan" was not "unplanned" and had been communicated clearly to Tesla beforehand, did not actually go into "downtown" Manhattan, was partially recommended by Tesla employees who thought that the "regenerative braking" might help increase the range and only added two total miles to the trip length. Furthermore, as for the charge of driving around in circles in a parking lot?

Mr. Straubel said Tesla did not store data on exact locations where their cars were driven because of privacy concerns, although Tesla seemed to know that I had driven six-tenths of a mile “in a tiny 100-space parking lot.” While Mr. Musk has accused me of doing this to drain the battery, I was in fact driving around the Milford service plaza on Interstate 95, in the dark, trying to find the unlighted and poorly marked Tesla Supercharger.

Ouch.

In the end this is a fascinating story on many different levels. Dan Frommer makes an excellent point that "everyone's a media company now," noting that it's possible for companies to speak out on their own behalf if they disagree with a story. That used to be a lot harder. He compares that to the Quirky / OXO story we recently covered as well.

But, of course, if you're going to rebut charges made in a newspaper review, the information had better hold up, and it's not clear that it does here. Even worse, it really seems like Musk is making a much bigger deal of this than ever needed to be made. Sure, the initial review wasn't great, but it really didn't strike me as that bad. It basically said that if you try to drive it too far, or if you're unable to charge it enough, you might run out of juice. You know what? Same thing is true of a gas-powered car as well. But Musk has called much more attention to the story in a manner that doesn't necessarily lead to Tesla coming out on top. Carl Malmud's summary seems instructive:

Musk was offended that a reporter didn't operate the hardware properly. Blame the manual, tech support, PR, but not the user.

Musk is obviously quite passionate about the companies he runs and their products. And that's something that's actually quite appealing. Having followed his work for a while, you know that he really is striving to build "insanely great" products. So I can absolutely understand how his first emotional reaction is to lash out at someone who wrote a less than kind review (I've been there myself too many times). But, in the end, it seems like there would have been much better ways to handle this. I'm still a huge fan of the Tesla, and still dream of one day actually getting one, but I'd say that Musk's response probably made me more skeptical of the company than Broder's original article ever did.

When "everyone is the media," amazing and powerful things can happen. And, certainly, the ability to correct the record against questionable stories is something that really changes the game. But, at the same time, everyone is now a fact checker, and that makes for an interesting dynamic for both traditional media companies and those who wade in to respond to them.

Nearly two years ago, we had a post pointing out that it was silly for people to complain when the "rich and famous" made use of platforms like Kickstarter. That story was about Tom Hanks' son Colin looking for funds to complete a documentary. As we noted, it made perfect sense to use Kickstarter, since it's also a nice marketing platform and a way to connect with fans. I don't understand why this seems to get people up in arms, but it continues to this day. You may have heard about the high profile failure of Bjork's Kickstarter campaign. She sought £375,000 not for a new album, but to make a port of her last album's app, Biophillia, from iOS to Android and Windows 8. The original Biophilia won some rave reviews for pushing the boundaries of what an album was... but also was widely criticized for being platform specific to iOS. When it came out, Bjork said she hoped that those on other platforms would just "pirate" it, but we never understood why she didn't release it on multiple platforms.

Apparently, the answer was that however the app was designed, it would be insanely expensive to port to other platforms. That seems like much more of a design mistake than anything else. It seems likely that her project failed for a few key reasons, including that it was just about porting an app that came out years ago, rather than anything new. Also, the "rewards" were somewhat unimpressive. And, of course, Bjork fans who were iPhone users had little reason to contribute as well. There's also the big one: unlike some other stars, Bjork really hasn't embraced connecting and communicating with her fans. That's her choice, of course. No one says she needs to. But, it's much harder to raise a ton of crowdfunded money that way.

Still, many are saying that the project failed because she's rich and famous and could have just paid for everything herself. But that seems silly. There are plenty of ways that the rich and famous can make use of crowdfunding and plenty of reasons why it makes sense to do so. The project failed because it was a bad project for crowdfunding, and because Bjork isn't necessarily connected with her fans in a way that makes sense for crowdfunding.

Amanda Palmer, who remains an example of "doing Kickstarter right" has weighed in on this issue, making some really good points about why anyone should be able to use Kickstarter, even the rich and famous. Here are a few snippets, but the whole thing is worth reading:

crowdfunding should, by its very nature, be available to EVERYBODY....

here's what i think: THE MARKET IS EFFICIENT.

if ANYBODY wants to give a go at having the community help them with a project, that’s the ARTISTS prerogative. if it fails, then the interest wasn't there.

it should't matter if it's justin bieber, obama, the new kids of the block reunion project, lance armstrong, oprah, or the friendless 18-year old down the street who's been hiding in his bedroom making EDM music.
ANYBODY CAN ASK. that's democracy.

and since crowdfunding is – by definition – in the hands of the community: THE COMMUNITY WILL DETERMINE WHETHER A PROJECT IS SUCCESSFUL.

And yet, people still get upset. To some extent, this feels a bit like "hipsterism." People feel that these platforms are special because the rich and famous haven't necessarily discovered them yet. But why is it so wrong if they do find them and do use them? If people want to support the projects they will, and if they don't, they won't. That's what makes these platforms so useful.

Here on Techdirt, one of the things we look forward to each year is the comedy production known as the 301 Report, where the US makes the world line up in a row, and then names and shames all the naughty countries whose intellectual monopoly laws aren't outrageous enough. In advance of the official naughty list, there are helpful suggestions from the fans of monopoly maximalism, including the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), which has just released its 2013 demands. Mostly it's the usual suspects -- China, India, Russia etc. But there's an interesting change from the previous year's list: Canada has moved from the really naughty "Priority Watch List" to the only slightly naughty "Watch List".

As Michael Geist points out, far from being good news, that's outrageous:

Those that thought passing Bill C-11 -- the Canadian copyright reform bill that contained some of the most restrictive digital lock rules in the world -- would satisfy U.S. groups will be disappointed. The IIPA wants Canada back on the piracy watch list, one notch below the Special Watch List (where the US placed Canada last year).

Despite the praise for Bill C-11 last year, the groups are right back in criticism mode and demanding reforms. The IIPA is now unsure if the enabler provision will help stop sites that facilitate infringement (despite the fact that its members have yet to use the provision) and concerned with the prospect of new exceptions to the digital lock rules. In fact, its criticisms of the rules for Internet providers (it wants a notice-and-takedown system, tougher rules on search engines that link to infringing content, and new rules to target repeat infringers) are so strong that the organization implausibly claims possible non-compliance with the WIPO Internet treaties.

Nor is Canada the only country that might be surprised to find itself on the naughty step again. As Mike explained last year, Spain was removed from the official Special 301 list for being an obedient little vassal state and bringing in the punitive Ley Sinde, as instructed, despite huge public and business opposition. And now, guess what? The IIPA already wants Spain back on the list for not doing enough in this area (pdf):

Contrary to the expectations surrounding the implementation of ley Sinde that led to Spain's removal from the Special 301 Watch List last year, Spain saw no positive developments in 2012.

Let's hope Canada and Spain -- and everyone else -- draw the obvious conclusion from the IIPA's latest calls: that no matter what countries do, no matter what legislation they bring in, and no matter what disproportionately harsh punishments they inflict on their own people, it will never, ever be enough, and there will always be further demands, and further threats to put them back on the naughty lists. The only solution is to stand up to this blackmail once and for all, and to treat the Special 301 list with the contempt it deserves.

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The general rule of thumb is: once something's on the internet, it's there for good. But this simple fact eludes a great many people, many of whom demand the internet erase all the bad stuff or they'll sue/pass legislation. But you simply can't do it. There are millions of people interacting with everything everyday, and there are millions of places to hide stuff someone else wants to have disappear.

The latest entity to believe it has a shot at bending the internet to its will is Epic Records, which is now making efforts to 'erase' a remix of Future's "Karate Chop" from the web. Why? Well, apparently an "unauthorized" mix leaked into the public ear with a particularly offensive Lil Wayne lyric attached. (I hear you asking: "In terms of Lil Wayne, how does one define "particularly offensive?" Well, read on.)

Lil Wayne caused controversy with a lyric on Future's"Karate Chop" remix where he raps, “Beat that pussy up like Emmett Till," eliciting a fiery response from Till's family.

If the name Emmett Till doesn't ring a bell and you're wondering why anyone would care, here's a bit of Till's bio which, tragically, has a whole lot more to say about his death than his life.

Emmett Louis Till (July 25, 1941 – August 28, 1955) was an African-American boy who was murdered in Mississippi at the age of 14 after reportedly flirting with a white woman. Till was fromChicago, Illinois, visiting his relatives in the Mississippi Delta region when he spoke to 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant, the married proprietor of a small grocery store. Several nights later, Bryant's husband Roy and his half-brother J. W. Milam arrived at Till's great-uncle's house where they took Till, transported him to a barn, beat him and gouged out one of his eyes, before shooting him through the head and disposing of his body in the Tallahatchie River, weighting it with a 70-pound (32 kg) cotton gin fan tied around his neck with barbed wire.

His murderers were acquitted by an all-white jury and admitted to the crime several months later, protected by the "double jeopardy" shield.

Understandably, Till's family isn't happy with Wayne's choice of sexual metaphor, and with Rev. Jesse Jackson weighing in on the issue, Epic is feeling a little heat. So, its heart is in the right place and the offer to rid the web of the offending remix is noble, but there's no way it will ever accomplish that.

"We regret the unauthorized remix version of Future's 'Karate Chop,' which was leaked online and contained hurtful lyrics," the statement said. "Out of respect for the legacy of Emmett Till and his family and the support of the Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr. ... we are going through great efforts to take down the unauthorized version."

Great effort will no doubt be made, but I can imagine there's going to be some collateral damage. We've already observed (several times) that many companies who attempt mass takedowns often remove legitimate content, up to and including their own offerings. Going into panic mode only exacerbates the problem.

Not only that, but is there any real reason to make this version nonexistent? I understand that many, many people will find Wayne's lyric incredibly offensive (because it is), but does erasing it from the web really serve any purpose? The information is already out there, in the form of posts like the one at HipHopDX. Killing off the remix, even assuming it were possible, changes nothing. The lack of aural evidence won't erase the written evidence. An official statement from Epic disowning this version should be all that's needed.

Let the "unauthorized" remix stay live. Bring this story to the front. This isn't anyone's problem but Lil Wayne's. He wrote it. He said it. He can live with it. No one needs to be tilting windmills on his behalf or on the behalf of those offended, and in the process, potentially taking non-offensive (OK -- less offensive) legitimate content offline.

While the US Supreme Court will soon be weighing in on whether or not genes are patentable in the Myriad Genetics case, we've also been following a similar case in Australia. There, a bunch of cancer patients took Myriad to court, arguing that the patent on BRCA1 is invalid (this same gene is part of the US case). Unfortunately, the court has decided that genes are, in fact, patentable if they've been isolated. This is always the key point of contention with gene patent supporters. They claim that it's the fact that they can separate the gene that makes their work patentable. In some ways this is an odd sort of "sweat of the brow" argument for patents -- and here, the judge is buying the argument completely. He says that patenting genes in the human body would be a problem... but isolating them magically makes it a different story.

There is no doubt that naturally occurring DNA and RNA as they exist inside the cells of the human body cannot be the subject of a valid patent. However, the disputed claims do not cover naturally occurring DNA and RNA as they exist inside such cells. The disputed claims extend only to naturally occurring DNA and RNA which have been extracted from cells obtained from the human body and purged of other biological materials with which they were associated.

This still seems ridiculous to me. If others figure out how to get an isolated gene as well, why should that be subject to a patent? Hopefully this is not a preview of the US Supreme Court's upcoming ruling.

It's well known that the big telcos and the federal government have an all-too-cozy relationship when it comes to handing over data on telco customers. This has included ignoring all the rules and going so far as handing over information based on a post-it note given to them by the FBI. The telcos general standpoint has been that they're happy to let the government reach deep into their data -- more or less adding a direct tap on all of us. Congress, however, gift-wrapped them immunity to any lawsuits from all of that kind of stuff. Still, these days, the telcos sure do like not being liable for coughing up their customer's private info to the government, so it should come as little surprise that they're practically shoving each other aside to support CISPA.

Two major trade groups, CTIA and US Telecom, each issued short statements saying that CISPA is a good thing. US Telecom claimed that the bill would make it more efficient to detect, deter and respond to cyberthreats. That would be nice if true, but no one's yet explained how that actually would work in practice. CTIA knows how to play the press, and started its press release by hyping up recent hack attacks. That CISPA likely would have done absolutely nothing to stop those attacks is conveniently ignored.

Meanwhile AT&T and Verizon each offered their own support for the bill, making it clear that protection from liability is the most important thing to them.

The telcos, of course, have nothing to lose and everything to gain from CISPA. It gives them even more freedom from liability in sharing your info, but doesn't present any specific regulatory burdens on them. Of course, shouldn't we be a lot more concerned about the views of the people whose privacy would be violated, than the views of those violating their privacy?

Ben Huh points us to a Wired Magazine article from its very first issue back in 1993 (20 years ago, which makes me feel old, since I had that magazine!) concerning the accusations by software company INSLAW that the Justice Department had made illegal copies of its software, which it then sold to many other countries. Huh suggests that this is a situation where the DOJ did decades ago what it was accusing Aaron Swartz of doing more recently. Actually, it was almost certainly much, much worse. If you're unfamiliar with the Inslaw case, it's a wild roller coaster ride of government corruption, espionage and coverups spanning many decades. Oh, and there are even some random accusations of murder thrown in as well, though those get mighty close to pure conspiracy theory territory. The Wikipedia entry is not a bad place to start, though that Wired article is good too. The only issue is that so much happened after the Wired article as well.

The story is so complex that you really ought to explore not just the Wikipedia version, but some of its sources, which will take you down quite a rabbit hole (warning: it may take a lot of time). While there remain some denials of wrongdoing, and there were (along the way) findings that the software in question was actually in the public domain, it seems pretty clear that what the government was doing was significantly more questionable than any action by Swartz. Swartz was seeking to download a vast trove of academic research. It has been suggested, though never confirmed, that his intention was to release them to the public (some have argued this might not have been his plan at all, or he might have only released the portion that was in the public domain). At no point has anyone -- even the Justice Department -- suggested that he sought to profit from the plan.

That is not true of the accusations that were made against various Justice Department officials, some of whom were accused of getting their hands on an unlicensed copy of Inslaw's PROMIS software and then selling it to other countries, sometimes for personal profit. Furthermore, accusations were made (and at least one court agreed) that the DOJ then sought to force Inslaw into bankruptcy, forcing it to liquidate, so that it couldn't take them to court.

I had read about the Inslaw case many years ago, but it's been a while since I've been reminded of it, and I had really forgotten most of the details until recently refreshing my memory. While it was actually a very, very different kind of case than the Swartz case, it is fairly incredible when you think about just how much the Justice Department itself was able to get away with... and then think of how minor Swartz's own activity was in comparison. It really does seem like yet another example of the high court/low court principle in action.

Over the past few years, we've seen various stories about Iceland really trying to position itself as a free-speech-supporting, internet-loving hub. There has been support from various government officials about more strongly keeping the internet open and allowing for innovation to bloom, hoping to encourage other countries to follow suit. However, it appears that not all politicians agree. Ogmundur Jonasson, Iceland's interior minister, is apparently putting together legislation that would build a great censorship firewall in Iceland similar to China's. Of course, as is typical with attempts to censor the internet, they're saying it's all about blocking porn.

"At the moment, we are looking at the best technical ways to achieve this," an advisor to Jonasson told the Mail. "But surely if we can send a man to the moon, we must be able to tackle porn on the internet."

Last I checked, Iceland did not send a man to the moon. But, even ignoring that, this whole idea is silly. Any attempt to ban porn (or really access to porn) will fail in two important ways. First, it will not actually block access to porn. People can and will always find a way around the filters and will continue to access porn. Second, it will, undoubtedly, lead to non-porn information being falsely classified as being porn and blocked. Both of these are problematic.

But, more problematic is even opening the door to a government mandated censorship regime. Even if you believe that pornography is horrible and damaging and needs to be stopped, this is not the way to do this. You are only guaranteeing further censorship. It is inevitable. Providing tools for censorship always results in eventual mission creep, as someone who doesn't like some other kind of information points out that "if you can do it for porn, why not for..." It's a very dangerous slippery slope.

Furthermore, plans like this completely undermine all of the efforts that people in Iceland have put into promoting a free and open internet. Those claims of building an Iceland built around principles of a free and open internet look somewhat laughable when the government's interior minister is looking to craft a blatant internet censorship bill.

Techdirt covered the WCIT circus in Dubai in some depth last year, since important issues were at stake. As many feared, after a moment of farce, it became clear that a serious schism in the ITU was opening up -- between those who wanted the Internet largely left alone to carry on much as before, with the possibly naïve hope that it might act as a vehicle of freedom, and those who wanted it regulated more closely, certain it could become an even better instrument of control.

Although WCIT is over, the ITU journey continues, and a fascinating post by Anthony Rutkowski on the CircleID Web site gives us a glimpse of where exactly it's heading -- and it doesn't look good. The ITU's "Internet/cloud" Study Group 13 is convening soon, and as Rutkowski points out, the provenance of the contributions submitted to this meeting reflect what is happening to the organization: 70% of them are from China or Korea.

Almost everyone has fled the organization except for a few established participants from China and Korea and their partners. Pretty much all of industry together with the G55 nations [who refused to sign the WCIT treaty] have left.

Just as telling is the subject-matter:

The contributions predominantly deal with the mechanics of pervasive surveillance and content control. This includes DPI mechanisms and use cases, filtering of content to local networks, control of individual user mobile phones, controls on peer-to-peer services, extensive regulatory controls on cloud computing facilities, and Big Data Analytics for extracting every nuance about individual users from real-time communications and stored data.

As Rutkowski rightly notes, given this continuing descent into police-state territory, there are now two paths for the ITU. The first is to pull back from the brink, and to return to a consensus-based approach that allows the G55 nations to participate in the development of basic Internet standards -- not those predominantly designed for surveillance.

Alternatively, the G89 nations who did sign the WCIT treaty may decide it is more important for their sections of the Internet to be firmly under their control than for there to be a single, unified set of Internet standards for the world. The schism would be formalized, with a more open G55 Internet linking up as best it could with the more closed G89 network. That would be a tragedy for humanity, but on the basis of the WCIT conference and the developments since then, it's certainly not something that can be ruled out.

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As Kickstarter continues to mature as a viable platform for funding creative projects, there are still audible whispers expressing concern over fraud and scams on the site. Leigh previously noted one such case, in which the internet community outted a fake game's funding attempt, detailing how that community was responsible for getting the project removed from Kickstarter entirely. At the same time, he discussed how fraud can be found in the more traditional arenas, as can failures. But Kickstarter stories like this seem to garner, what is in my estimation, an undue amount of fear over frauds and scams.

So I expect more of the same as we learn of another case of a Kickstarter project claiming false affiliations and making promises it couldn't hope to keep. Dirty Bird Sports, as the group was called, claimed that it was raising funds to put out an NCAA football game for the PS3 and Xbox 360, and claimed to have the backing of several well-known names in the football world, all of which turned out to be false.

Boasting a backing from well-known Atlanta Falcons running back Jamal Anderson, the project claimed that it was hoping to create a competitor to EA's NCAA Football game and only needed the relatively paltry sum of $500,000 to develop a PS3 and Xbox 360 title.

However, many of the 3D models and assets compiled by the group, calling itself "Dirty Bird Sports", were found to have been lifted from sites selling other artists work, a roundup of which can be seen at Kotaku.

While some might freak out over this, that last bit is what's most interesting to me, and is the proper evidence for pushing back against those claiming the sky is falling. Once again, a vibrant internet community has assisted in outing the liars and scammers, proactively preventing any actual financial harm from occurring. While that same community may not end up with a 100% success rate in stopping such cases, I see these instances as an indication of the maturing of the platform and a direct result of the growth of interest in Kickstarter as a whole. As with any other aspect of crowdsourcing, the benefits rise as the size of the crowd increases. That the internet community is so successful in warning the rest of us of these dangers should be taken as a selling point of Kickstarter, not some scary boogeyman.

The European Patent Office (EPO) is a curious body. Despite its name, it is not the patent office for the European Union (EU) in the same way that the USPTO handles patents in the US. As its history page explains:

In addition to all 27 EU member states, Albania, Croatia, Iceland, Liechtenstein, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Monaco, Norway, San Marino, Serbia, Switzerland and Turkey belong to the European Patent Organisation.

This gives it an independence from the European Union that is problematic for patent law there. For example, back in 2005, the European Parliament voted definitively not to allow software patents in Europe. And yet as an excellent analysis published on the IPKat site explains, the EPO has continued to move steadily towards granting more and broader software patents in Europe.

Given the largely uncontrolled way the EPO has been issuing patents, this story in Intellectual Property Watch is noteworthy:

The European Patent Office Administrative Council in December agreed to award a controversial bonus of tens of millions of euros to EPO staff at the end of 2012, with 24 positive votes and 8 negative votes. Several stakeholders had protested the proposal and encouraged contracting states in the Administrative Council to vote against the measure.

The reason for the bonus? Because of all the extra money the EPO had made recently as the result of granting so many patents. But as a letter written to representatives of the 38 EPO contracting states in the Administration Council, and obtained by Intellectual Property Watch, pointed out (doc):

[The bonus] contributes to adverse incentive structures and conflicts of interest for the employees of the EPO. In linking the staff's wallet to the Office's surplus, it undermines the efforts to raise the bar in patent examination and fosters a mentality to increase fee revenues for the EPO by granting applications of low quality.

The bonus is effectively rewarding the fact that the EPO's employees issued a particularly large number of patents in 2011. Human nature being what it is, the danger is that this will encourage them to issue even more patents in the hope of receiving another similar bonus.

As the letter goes on:

The EPO should not celebrate increases in patent filing rates as a success story but react to the worldwide critique of a global overheating of the patent system jeopardizing innovation and the proper functioning of the social contract with society upon which the patent system rests.

That is, rather than implicitly making the false equation that more patents automatically mean more innovation -- something that Techdirt has written about several times -- the EPO should strive to reduce the number, but increase the quality, and maybe offer bonuses for those who achieve that.

Sadly, it's in the EPO's interests to have more patents issued, regardless of their quality, since this will encourage yet more companies to apply for patents so as not to get "left behind" in the Great Patent Race. And that will produce yet more surpluses for the EPO, and presumably more bonuses for its staff. Everyone wins -- except, of course European businesses and citizens who have to suffer the knock-on effects of yet more unjustified intellectual monopolies.

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