Earlier this year, there was a lot of attention paid to the popular radio program This American Life (TAL) having to retract its episode based on storyteller Mike Daisey's one-man show, in which he claimed to be telling a story about his own trip to visit Apple factories in China, but which it later came out was partially fabricated. As we noted soon after that, when it comes to pure storytelling, it's not always clear that fact checking makes sense. Storytelling is a tool for entertainment, not journalism. Where those two things come into conflict is when people begin to blur the lines between entertainment and journalism.

Since then, of course, TAL has become, shall we say, a lot more vigilant about fact checking. In a recent episode of another radio program, On The Media, TAL host Ira Glass talked about the importance of fact checking and how they realize they can't get caught again. Glass says the audience will likely forgive them once, but not twice. In a Reddit AMA that Glass did a few weeks ago, he explained that TAL has hired professional fact checkers:

We used to fact check the way they do on the daily NPR news shows (where I worked before doing this show): editors and reporters consult about questionable facts, rundown stuff in an ad hoc way.

Now we have professional fact checkers for everything, including the personal essays.

However, he also notes that, when it comes to "storytelling" it's not always so easy, using regular TAL contributor David Sedaris as the example:

Still a question is what to do about David Sedaris. He doesn't pretend the stories are true. He says to everyone they're "true enough for you." I assume the audience can tell, he's a funny writer, there may be exaggerations for comic effect. We have three choices: 1) assume the audience is smart enough to tell; 2) label his stuff on the air as possibly non-factual (hard to figure out a way to do that which doesn't kill the fun but there probably is one); 3) fact check him the way the New Yorker does. I honestly don't know where I stand on this one. When I pose the Q to public radio audiences, at speeches and events, they overwhelmingly vote #1, with a vociferous tiny minority who feel strongly in favor of #2.

But, as an avid TAL listener, in the past few weeks, I've noticed that they do seem to be going overboard with the fact checking. In episode 476 from a few weeks ago, there's a story of a teenager bitten by a shark and the aftermath (it's a somewhat horrifying story). And yet, in the middle of the story, there's a break where they admit that they could not confirm she was actually bitten by a shark -- and some think it was a different sea creature responsible. No one denies that she was attacked and bitten and came close to dying, in part through a series of mishaps. But they feel the need to fact check the possibility that it wasn't a shark. I'm not sure what that adds to the story (other than immediately making me think of Mike Daisey).

Then, in the very next episode, from last weekend, there's the hilarious story from comedian Molly Shannon, which I'd first heard on Marc Maron's (insanely brilliant) podcast, WTF, about how, as a kid, she and a friend -- with the active encouragement of Molly's father -- successfully stowed away on a flight from Cleveland to NYC. But at the very end... Glass chimes in to say that TAL fact checkers reached out to Molly's friend -- who had no idea Molly had told the story publicly, but who confirmed all the details in the story. Once again, all I could think of was... "Mike Daisey strikes again." The story is hilarious, whether or not it's true, and I wonder if it really needs fact checking.

It may just be a case of "once bitten..." but fact checking minute details of random entertaining stories really feels like overkill. And it actually has me thinking about another recent podcast/radio show (also associated with NPR), Radiolab, which recently had an entire episode on the nature of facts, and trying to figure out what is a fact. The episode has since been marred in its own controversy over the segment called Yellow Rain, in which they sought to try to understand the "truth" behind whether or not there were really chemical attacks on the Hmong in Laos in 1975. The segment culminates with Kao Kalia Yang (who is translating for her uncle Eng Yang) getting extremely angry at the Radiolab crew, as the Yangs felt that they were set up by the radio program, somewhat as stooges, because Eng talked about the "yellow rain" chemical attacks, and Radiolab wanted his response to the research of scientists who argue no such chemical attack ever existed. It's very intense -- and a situation that I felt really did make their point pretty strongly that "truth" isn't always as easy to discern as people think, because it's often not quite as black and white as people imagine.

Radiolab had to clarify and later offer an apology to those who felt that the interview was unfair, overly confrontational, insulting or minimizing the plight of the Hmong. Unfortunately, I think that obscures the much more interesting point that they were actually making with that story -- which I don't think did minimize the experiences of the Hmong at all, but rather highlighted how, even if the actual explanation of what happened differed from how they viewed it, what they did experience was horrific.

However, unlike the TAL stories, perhaps you could argue that Radiolab effectively took fact checking too far in a different direction -- in that they were using it to challenge some of the life-defining moments of some people. I actually side with the Radiolab folks there, in that I think they did exactly what they should have done as journalists, in coming across facts that go against the narrative, though the way it was handled could have been done more sensitively.

Either way, this handful of stories and events, once again, seems to highlight how fact checking isn't quite as simple a proposition as some would like it to be. We all have fun calling out stories where reporters make mistakes -- they happen all the time. And often, it's because of lazy or sloppy journalism -- in which case it's quite reasonable to call things out. But not everything is a black and white issue all the time, even when it comes to fact checking.

Back in 2008, News Corp (owners of satellite providers DirecTV) was sued by DISH Networks for allegedly hacking their competitors satellite smartcards and flooding the market with them. News Corp (sort of) lost that lawsuit. Following News Corp's more recent high-profile hacking scandal related to News Of The World, more accusations of satellite hacking emerged, this time in the UK.

But amidst all the lawsuits and accusations, it turns out there are some other fascinating stories to be found in News Corp's world of competitive corporate hacking and private security. A new book by Neil Chenoweth, Murdoch's Pirates, digs into that world and turns up some pretty fascinating results. From an excerpt published in the Sydney Morning Herald, we get the story of some befuddled inter-agency espionage between News Corp and its own subsidiary, complete with aliases, informants, moles and a cross-border escape gambit by a spy on the run.

The story is complex, but I'll attempt to summarize. In the late 90s, NDS (the branch of News Corp that deals with private security and anti-piracy activities) sent top hacker Oliver Kömmerling undercover to Toronto, under the pseudonym Alex, with a mission: pose as a satellite pirate and infiltrate the rings selling hacked DirecTV smartcards. Oliver was also one of the hackers directly involved in the hacking of competitors' smart cards, but in this case he was being put to work defending News Corp's own satellite operation. But NDS made one big mistake: they never told DirecTV, which had its own security/anti-hacking division led by a former FBI agent, and they believed Oliver was still a bonafide satellite pirate at large. They had no idea he was now working for NDS—and one of the Canadian hackers Oliver met with turned out to be working for DirecTV, and ratted him out to them. Moreover, no matter NDS or Oliver's intentions, he was breaking the law by hacking and selling smart cards to track down the "real" hackers—so he ended up facing potential arrest or detainment at the border.

As a result, the two security divisions (both ultimately owned by News Corp) played spy-games with each other, and for the details you really should just read the whole story. It's fascinating, and quite funny—and it also raises some interesting questions about how big corporations should approach this kind of security. In one way, I actually think some of the principles here are the right way to approach things—investigate the biggest commercial pirates until you have enough evidence to either bring a lawsuit against them or pass the case along to a criminal prosecutor. That's better than having the government act as corporate police. However, big problems arise when companies start breaking the law in the course of their investigation—as much as they might want to play spy, they don't get the exemptions that law enforcement and intelligence agencies do. It's also highly troubling when their investigations are intertwined with law enforcement, such as when FACT in the UK joined the police raid on the SurfTheChannel offices—that's crossing a line between private interests and government. But then, on top of all that, you have the potential for a comedy of errors like this one: News Corp spending lots of resources to put a man in significant danger in a foreign country, for the sake of hacking its own products, and spurring its own property to put more resources into tracking down a hacker that was supposed on be on their side. At some point you have to ask: what is security worth? And how likely is it to be effective against hackers if it is disorganized to the point of farce?

For a few years now, we've covered the situation with Paul Ceglia, a guy who once hired a young Mark Zuckerberg to do some programming work for him, claiming that Zuckerberg did a deal to provide half of Facebook to Ceglia. The details were a little weird, but Ceglia was able to bring on some high powered lawyers, the types who usually don't take on bogus cases. Of course, then that law firm eventually looked at the details and dropped him. In fact, it seemed like he had trouble keeping lawyers. Facebook grew progressively more aggressive in arguing outright fraud and presented ever increasing evidence that the whole thing was a complete sham.

While the case was clearly flopping, the last week has not been a good one for Ceglia. Late last week he was arrested by the feds for the supposed fraud in the case, and if that wasn't enough to deal with, his case against Facebook & Zuckerberg looks to be (unsurprisingly) closer to falling apart completely after the court has decided that the extremely damning evidence of fraud can be discussed in the case.

Food science has come a long way and makes a lot of incredibly delicious foods that last longer and stay fresher and provide more vitamins/nutrients than previously thought possible. But just as any technology is a tool that can be used for either the benefit or to the detriment of humankind, there's also the dark side of modern food production that has produced some of the most unhealthy foods in history. Here are just a few examples of sketchy food stories that you might want to avoid.

• A factory making counterfeit ketchup was found in New Jersey -- where thousands of plastic bottles labelled 'Heinz ketchup' leaked and caused a foul stench. The would-be counterfeiters apparently gave up on trying to pour out the ketchup and abandoned their ketchup scheme, leaving it all to rot. [url]
• Schools are cracking down on Flamin' Hot Cheetos for being too high in calories, salt and fat. These Cheetos are almost addictive because they're spicy, and kids who eat too many of them suffer from stomach pains and leave a trail of dusty red fingerprints.... [url]
• Monster Energy drinks are being investigated after reports of deaths from possible caffeine poisoning. Energy drinks are sold as nutritional supplements, so they're not subject to the FDA-mandated limit of 71 milligrams of caffeine for typical soft drinks. Some estimate the amount of caffeine in these drinks supplements is over 200 mg. [url]

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

When it comes to trademark bullies, Apple is one of the more prolific muscle-flexers in the arena. For some time now, they've been known to be extremely aggressive over their trademarks. From the idea of having an apple in a company's logo, to the name of one's store for mobile applications, all the way to how you offer their products in your own company's contests, Apple defends their marks the way a jealous puppy defends a rawhide.

That's why, while we may agree that aggressive trademark enforcement is at times overblown and unnecessary, it's really rather fun to watch Apple have the trademark stick wrestled from their grips and get beaten over the head with it, such as when Mexico invalidates their use of the "iPhone" mark in commerce within their country. And just in time for Christmas, too! The following is a wonderful story about how a Mexican telecom company already had a mark for iFone, but even more interesting is the long history Apple has of arrogantly bullying everyone else over their attempt to validate the iPhone mark.

The Mexican company registered the trademark iFone way back in 2003, full four years before Apple filed to trademark the name iPhone (which was already owned by Linksys in US, more about that later). Apple, despite fully aware of the fact that the Mexican company owned the trademark since 2004, sued them in 2009 to invalidate the iFone trademark. So Apple wanted iFone brand to be invalidated, which was filed in 2004, because it was similar to iPhone name which was filed in 2007.

Apparently, Apple's argument for invalidating the pre-existing iFone mark in Mexico went something along the lines of, "Hey, we're Apple." This, as the article goes on to note, is something Apple did that adds to their longstanding history of not giving a damn about anyone else's trademarks. You may recall that the iPhone mark was originally owned in the US by Cisco, who settled with Apple on use of the mark. But back to iFone.

It turns out that the Mexican courts were understandably unimpressed with Apple's possibly trademarked "Hey, we're Apple" legal argument. They upheld the iFone mark and now Apple can't use the iPhone term inside of Mexico.

It means a lot of trouble for "sue first talk later" Apple which is engaged in dozens of lawsuits around the world. This decision will have a huge impact on Apple's market in Mexico and they now won't be able to use the name iPhone in the country - this decision coming before the holiday season is nothing short of A Nightmare At The Mexico City for Apple.

Apple needs to hold its horses back. It needs to stop its "sue everyone else" drive as it has started to come back and bite them.

Which is the problem with lawsuit-happy companies like Apple. They escalate the war to the point where their own extremism is met with opposite extremism to combat it. Is this whole trademark nonsense necessary? Probably not. I can't claim to be an expert on how the average Mexican citizen associates something that says iFone with Apple, but I'm guessing they're smart and in-tune with technology enough that they know the two aren't related. I could be wrong about that, but there's one thing I'm not wrong about.

It's immensely entertaining to see aggressive IP folks get bit in the ass by their own tactics.

As we begin to move into the aftermath stage of Hurricane Sandy, folks are beginning to look back on various aspects of communication during the storm and what occurred. Mike already touched upon this, discussing one dead-ender who decided to tweet a bunch of false reports under the name "@comfortablysmug". As Mike noted in that piece, the Twitter community appeared to do a fairly nice job of labeling those reports as false, eventually, and even with some major news groups re-reporting bad information, the damage they did was minimal. However, that one instance isn't the whole of false reporting during Sandy. Most of us saw the myriad of fake photos that were posted of New York City in the midst of the storm. Some were fairly convincing while others were undeniably silly. Still, most of the fake photos were quickly debunked on social media as well, which is why it's interesting to see the takeaway some people are having to the role social media played during what was an historic event.

For instance, take senior editor for The Atlantic Alexis Madrigal, who clearly seems to think there should be concern in how the public reacts to social media posts purporting to be news amidst ongoing events. Madrigal notes that because of the way platforms like Twitter and Facebook work, the opportunity for disseminating false information and/or pictures is great. He says this is particularly the case on Facebook, whose algorithm for what users view favors pictures (real or fake) over anything else.

I'm not one for writing GET OFF MY LAWN posts about the social web. People have been creating and spreading bullshit since language was invented. But the way that the sites work is part of the problem. Right now, social networks are platforms of decontextualization. They could make creating chains of attribution easier. They could preserve the data embedded in photographs better. Instagram and Facebook, especially, in their closedness, make it more difficult to find any given source of information. Sooner or later, all the networks are going to have to take on the responsibility that comes with being millions of people's window on the world. Facebook, in particular, optimizes what you see for what you're most likely to click on. Is that the appropriate way to deal with news about a massive, dangerous storm?

While on the face of it, his argument about how we consume news differently on social media makes a great deal of sense, but I also think there is a major flaw here. That flaw is that Madrigal is confusing the platform and the usership of the platform. Is there authoritative weight to professional news media when it comes to trust? Of course. Does that weight disappear when we move the platform off of the television and onto social media? Of course not. Why would it? Facebook's algorithms may, as Madrigal goes on to say, favor photos, whether they are real or fake, but that's the platform, not the public consuming from the platform. In the same manner, one could say that television as a platform wants vibrant, explosive video when it comes to news. It's what the platform is built for. But that doesn't mean we discount video news footage as being universally overblown or exploitative. There is good, trustworthy footage, and there is bad footage. There are good, trustworthy social media follows and their pictures, and there are bad ones. It's simply a platform change.

Not only that, but the social media platform is particularly adept at mass-debunks of fake news and photos. Mike detailed as much in his post on one false reporter, but I'm sure most of us experienced this on Twitter and Facebook as well. For every Facebook picture post or tweet showing one of those false photos, there were 10 comments or responses debunking them. To his credit, Madrigal himself was instrumental in this, as he notes.

The first decision we made was to focus on photographs. Those are relatively easy to debunk or confirm. And we could take advantage of the preference for visuals that I noted above. Then, we realized that we needed a way to post the photos without adding to the problem. So, anytime we posted a fake photo, it had a prominent (digital) red sticker on it that said, "FAKE." And I put, in text overlaid on the photos, how we knew it was fake with a shortened URL to that information. That way, even if people did cut and paste those images, the key information would remain attached to them. In fact, the branding practically encouraged people to take the images and post them to social media.

He, of course, wasn't the only one. There were a great many trusted news sites, both digital and paper, that worked quickly to inform the social media universe what was real and what wasn't. Which is why, on the larger scale, all the hand-wringing is a completely moot point. Madrigal makes the argument that all social media pictures are the same, as though users don't consider the source. This is obviously nonsense. We follow sources we trust because we trust them. There is an incentive to not post blatantly false information: trust and followers. Becoming a known source of bullshit means you won't be paid attention, which is the opposite goal of social media.

Another take on this situation sees this clearly. As Jared Keller of Business Week writes:

Twitter proved effective not just as a newswire, but as a medium for distributed fact-checking. As quickly as the falsehoods emerged, journalists and city officials moved to swat them down. BuzzFeed’s Jack Steuf quickly revealed the identity of @ComfortablySmug, who issued a public apology Tuesday night.

After the storm passed, BuzzFeed’s John Herrman argued that Hurricane Sandy established Twitter is a truth machine that, under the right circumstances, systematically vets and destroys rumors as quickly as it propagates them. “Initial misinformation has consequences, and a consensus correction on Twitter won’t stop any number of these rumors from going viral on Facebook,” Herrman writes. “There, your claims are checked by your friends; on Twitter, if they spread, they’re open to direct scrutiny from people who might actually know the truth.” In the echo chamber of social media, truth is louder than fiction.

This is because, as I mentioned, the incentive for factual reporting is abundantly clear: followers and trust. Can a single line or picture of nonsense go viral? Of course. But the more viral it is, the greater the community of fact-checkers to which it is subjected. This is an important continuation of thought that many critics of social media never complete. There are some that love to claim that anybody can make something up on the internet. That's true, but the point is that anybody else can then debunk it. It's true of Wikipedia, it's true of Facebook (amongst friends), and it's true of Twitter. People love something sensational, but ultimately they're bigger suckers for the truth.

The Washington Post has an interesting story about Facebook's admission that it erroneously took down a widely shared image posted by an anti-Obama group over the weekend. The somewhat viral image (which, as the article notes, isn't exactly the most truthful of images -- but perhaps par for the course when it comes to political speech) was removed after Facebook said it "violated Facebook's Statement of Rights and Responsibilities." However, people going through Facebook's official list of Rights & Responsibilities didn't turn up anything that the content violated.

Leaving aside the question of exaggerated political speech, this raises the same question that we've wondered in the past: why do so many people rely on closed platforms today, that allow somewhat arbitrary removal of speech? While Facebook eventually admitted its error, this is hardly the first such case of Facebook deciding what you can or cannot talk about. That's a tremendously powerful position that Facebook's users have granted to Facebook in making it their communications platform of choice. Many people will say that this is "the price" that people pay to be on a platform where everyone else is -- and that the convenience of Facebook outweighs such costs. But it's also why so many people are a bit nervous about Facebook these days.

A little while back, Techdirt wrote about a rather brave French company that tried to trademark the Anonymous logo. Now Der Spiegel is reporting that someone wants a German "wordmark" on the "@" sign (original in German). The company involved has the rather unusual name "@ T.E.L.L.", where the initials apparently stand for "Tradinghouse for Exclusive Luxury Labels". Although it's not really clear what the connection is, it is seeking to protect its use of the @-symbol for various classes of luxury goods (application in German), including the following:

shoes, hats, belts, fish, dried fruit, eggs, milk, coffee, tea, tapioca, bread, sugar, honey, syrups, alcoholic beverages (excluding beer), cigarettes, cigars, cigarette lighters and ashtrays

Despite this limitation to certain luxury items, and despite a press release (pdf in German) emphasizing that the company has no intention of sending out warning letters to people using the @-sign in their email addresses, you do have to wonder how wise it is to hand out control, no matter how circumscribed, over something so fundamental to the working of the modern world.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

The latest in a long series of stupid trademark bullying lawsuits comes to us courtesy of The Village Voice (who should know better than to file bogus lawsuits). The Voice is suing Yelp for trademark infringement. The Village Voice somehow convinced the USPTO that it deserved a trademark on the phrase "best of [place name]" for certain locations -- such as "Best of Seattle" or "Best of San Francisco." Yelp, quite reasonably, also uses the term of "best of" to describe certain places: Village Voice is claiming that Yelp's infringement is "willful" because it notified the company, and Yelp apparently told them to go away. It's also ridiculously claiming that Yelp's usage has "irreparably harmed" the company. I realize that's standard language used in such lawsuits, but seriously?

The EFF points out that the US Patent and Trademark Office is partly to blame for allowing registrations on such trademarks:

What is going on at the Patent and Trademark Office?  For decades, folks have been complaining (with good reason) that the patent examiners need to do a better job of screening out bogus patent applications. It’s clear that the problem extends to the trademark side as well. The PTO has allowed companies and individuals to register marks in any number of obviously generic and/or descriptive terms, such as “urban homestead” (to refer to urban farms), “gaymer” (to refer to gay gamers), and “B-24” (to refer to model B-24 bombers).

Once a mark is registered, it is all too easy for the owner to become a trademark bully. And while companies like Yelp have the resources to fight back (as we expect it will), small companies and individuals may not. Just as dangerous, the trademark owner may go upstream, to intermediaries like Facebook who have little incentive to do anything other than take down an account or site that’s accused of infringement.

Separately, the EFF asks the most important question: who is actually being deceived here? There is no confusion. No one associates "best of" with the Village Voice. Everyone reads it as a perfectly normal descriptive term, rather than a trademark belonging to any single party.

For a while now, there has been a bit of a kerfuffle at Amazon over so called "sock puppet reviews" or reviews purchased by an author to help pad their books' rankings. We hadn't been covering any of it because, frankly, it was a non-story. There never was a threat to the publishing industry and it was always questionable how widespread the problem really was. Additionally, the idea that a writer would have to pay to get reviews was just a sign that those writers held no real confidence in their work.

Unfortunately, Amazon took these complaints a little too seriously. It would seem that those complaining were loud enough that Amazon heard them and did a couple of things to tackle the non-issue. First it revised its rules for review writing. to make such purchased reviews against the rules. Then it removed a bunch of reviews seemingly at random. Joe Konrath shares his experience upon reading about this:

I've been buried in a book deadline for all of October, and haven't been paying much attention to anything else. When I finally took some time to catch up reading email, I noticed I had many authors (more than twenty) contacting me because their Amazon reviews were disappearing. Some were the ones they wrote. Some were for their books. One author told me that reviews her fans had written--fans that were completely unknown to her--had been deleted.

I took a look at the reviews I'd written, and saw more than fifty of them had been removed, namely reviews I did of my peers. I don't read reviews people give me, but I do keep track of numbers and averages, and I've also lost a fair amount of reviews.

Why did Amazon go nuts deleting reviews? Well, Konrath assumes, based on his responses from Amazon, that this was the result of a new automated sock puppet detection program. Apparently, it works in much the same way as Google's ContentID: flag anything and everything and see what sticks. Actually, no. This is way worse than ContentID. At least ContentID has some kind of -- admittedly weak -- notification, human review and appeals process. That is entirely absent from Amazon's deletion program, as Konrath explains in his letter to Amazon.

My reviews followed all of Amazon's guidelines, and had received hundreds of helpful votes. They informed customers, and they helped sell books. They represented a significant time investment on my part, and they were honest and accurate and fully disclosed my relationships with the author I reviewed if I happened to know them. And these reviews were deleted without warning or explanation.

Next, in his letter, he explains just why Amazon's actions were the wrong thing to do. Primarily because this action harmed more authors than sock puppet reviews ever did.

Obviously Amazon can do whatever it wants to on its site. It isn't up to me to dictate policy. It's your company, your rules, and I fully respect that. But I believe Jeff Bezos is very much about treating customers fairly, and I've heard it said many times that Amazon considers its authors to be valuable customers. So you should know that I'm just one of dozens of authors who are saddened by this, and those are just the ones who have emailed me.

The community you're trying hard to nurture is upset by your actions. They feel those actions are unwarranted and harmful.

Please express our disappointment in Amazon to anyone who needs hear it, and let them know I'll be blogging about it. People are seriously disappointed in how Amazon handled this. It was a knee-jerk, inappropriate reaction to a ridiculous case of unjustified moral panic, and a Big Fail.

Admittedly, this act by Amazon was in response to a number of authors who complained about the problem. However, as I wrote above, it was a problem of egos, not actual harm to any specific authors or group of authors -- or as Konrath put it, an unjustified moral panic. Authors freaked out over news stories of people being paid to write reviews and it ballooned from there. And just like every other moral panic before it, this one did tons of unnecessary collateral damage.

So not only do a bunch of legitimate reviews just up and disappear, there is also further damage to Amazon and the authors it works with. Readers will be less likely to write thoughtful and meaningful reviews in the future. If your review that you spent an hour writing could just up and disappear, why bother? Is this really what Amazon and these authors want -- people less willing to review books they read? That would seem to be a far worse situation than an unconfirmed number of sock puppet reviews.

Torrentfreak has the story of a default judgment against someone for infringement of some porn videos, in which Kywan Fisher has been ordered to pay $1.5 million for uploading 10 movies. Default judgments are basically what happens when the other party doesn't show up in court. Many judges will then enter a judgment against them, more or less accepting everything that the plaintiff says and asks for. Courts don't have to accept the plaintiff's claims in default judgment cases, but too many judges just rubberstamp such requests, and that seems to be the case here.

Unfortunately, copyright trolls will now use this ruling to threaten more people into paying up. They'll ignore that the facts here are a bit different than ordinary cases. Here, beyond it being a default judgment, the copyright holder, Flava Works (whose name you might recognize from another case where they haven't fared well) has additional evidence against Fisher. Apparently Flava Works watermarks files that paying customers access. In this case, Fisher was a paying customer who then took the works -- with watermarks intact -- and posted them online for others to download. So, there's significantly more evidence against Fisher, beyond just an IP address.

Even so, it's a bit disappointing that the judge simply accepted what Flava Works asked for in terms of the award. Flava Works justification for the $1.5 million figure is tremendously disingenuous:

Plaintiff seeks statutory damages for willful infringement of $1,500,000 for the willful infringements of 10 videos that were downloaded 3,449 times. Exhibit “E”. Defendant caused 3,449 infringements of the Plaintiff’s videos. Plaintiff is seeking the maximum statutory damages of $150,000 per infringement. $150,000 times 3,449 infringements is over $517,000,000. Thus, Plaintiff, Flava Works, Inc.’s request for an award of $1,500,000 is very reasonable.

Except... Flava Works is being misleading. The statute on statutory damages (17 USC 504) makes it clear that statutory damages are to be awarded per work, not per infringement. So the whole point about 3,449 infringements and a possible award of $517 million is way outside of what the law actually says is allowed. Yes, others have tried this "per infringement" argument rather than "per work" before, most memorably in the Limewire case, where the judge outright rejected that request, noting that statutory damages are to be awarded per work infringed, not per infringement. In the end, the court in this case goes with $1.5 million, which is the upper bound for what it can really provide as statutory damages, so it doesn't appear that the court went beyond what was allowed, but hopefully it wasn't influenced by that ridiculous $517 million claim into thinking that $1.5 million "is very reasonable."

In all likelihood, as often happens, the fact that it was a default judgment situation led the judge to just go with $1.5 million -- the maximum possible amount under the law. The problem, of course, is that this number isn't "very reasonable" at all. It's way way out of line with the action. Even if we grant that 3,449 people downloaded the work, and each would have paid, say, $20 otherwise (to choose an arbitrarily high number) we're still talking less than $70,000. And that's even assuming that everyone who downloaded would have bought at such a ridiculously high price -- an obviously laughable assertion. In other words, while statutory damages don't need to relate to actual damages, it's not difficult to look at this and think that the award is still ridiculous, even if you feel that there's sufficient evidence to suggest Fisher did break the law.

And, once again, we're left with a situation that creates even less respect for copyright law. From the (one-sided) evidence presented by Flava Works, it certainly seems much more likely that Fisher broke the law, and as such I don't think there's any issue with him losing the lawsuit (though, as a default judgment we have no idea if he has a legitimate defense). But a $1.5 million award just seems so out of proportion to reality that the court really ought to have gone with something slightly more reasonable. Not that Flava Works will ever collect from Fisher, but it's doubtful anyone really cares about that. The whole point of this is to get the judgment on the books so that Flava Works and others can now use it on tons of others.

The DMCA notice and takedown system was considered to be a significant concession on the part of the content industries when it debuted. Over the intervening years, it has become a very powerful weapon, one that is brandished carelessly by many copyright holders. In order to protect their safe harbors, hosting companies have lapsed into a state of kneejerk overreaction, shutting down sites and pulling legitimate content with little to no warning, leaving those on the receiving end of these actions to clean up the mess.

Most sites don't have the luxury of investigating takedown notices to determine the veracity of the claims. It's easier (and safer) to kill everything off than to sort out what's infringing and what isn't. The content industries are perfectly fine with killing off legitimate content and operate without fear of reprisal.

But as the number of DMCA notices increases, content providers are frequently placing this weapon in the hands of underqualified third parties who either don't know or don't care what's infringing and what isn't. We've seen several examples of other people's content being claimed by these companies.

The third party DMCA patrolbot featured today first made its name known by claiming malware uploaded by a computer security researcher as its own, resulting in a shutdown of the researcher's Mediafire account. LeakID, the "company" (and we'll explore those scare quotes in a moment) behind the takedown practices what many other sketchy content enforcers do -- bulk keyword searches. This results in false positives that get swept up with all the actual infringement, such as in the case linked above. LeakID also ordered a Microsoft Office patch (freely available at Microsoft's website) be removed from this user's account.

That was the big news. But that's not the end of it. During LeakID's sudden burst of activity, all sorts of content was falsely claimed and removed by the overeager autobot.

• May 30 - A Tumblr user's podfic taken down subsequent to a claim by LeakID. Mediafire suggested it was the material that was being read. Aethel (the podfic reader) sent back this response:

I was reading a story called “What Not To Expect When You’re Not Expecting It” by thehoyden. I emailed thehoyden in advance and obtained permission to make and distribute the recording. Trust me, she is not the origin of this claim.

On June 4th, the file was deleted again, without notification, this time at Sendspace.

• July 15 - LeakID issued a takedown notice on a blogger's own 28-page PDF he offered at his chess blog.
• June 25 - A PDF containing a reading list of Dr. Charles Pecher's published papers is removed from Mediafire at LeakID's request. The list did not contain any actual published papers.
• July 15 - Acting on behalf of Citel Video, LeakID takes down a set of user-made batpacks for a cricket simulator. (?)(!)

The action heats up in September. The famous malware takedown was reported on September 6th. But there's more.

• September 5 - Fan-made commentary tracks for a 25-year-old British children's show called "Knightmare" are taken down at 4Shared thanks to a claim by LeakID.

A company called LeakID is claiming to have copyright on The Dunshelm Players' recordings... Specifically, and very bizarrely, this DMCA has been placed on the Commentary Tracks recorded by Jake Collins, Rosey Collins, Andy Marshall, Ross Thompson, Ricky Temple and myself.

How LeakID have managed to conclude that the Commentaries have anything to do with themselves is quite beyond comprehension, as the Commentaries are in fact the material on the website that is furthest from breaching copyright; to the best of my knowledge, we have never breached copyright with any of our work, but the Commentaries don't even include sound effects or music in the mix, they're just recordings of a few KM fans talking about a TV show.

• September 5 - A blogger has several files deleted from his Mediafire account after another LeakID takedown, including free Bandcamp downloads and an unreleased CDR-only demo. Contact with some of the bands whose tracks were removed from his account confirmed that they had nothing to do with the takedown.
• September 6th - A Day-Z (Arma mod) fan has beta patches and an archived, older version of the Day Z code taken down by LeakID, apparently on behalf of "Metropolitan," Hervé Lemaire's ("CEO of LeakID") own company. ("I am legal representative of lemaire which does business under the name Metropolitan." Wha...?) The fan in question actually held a brief conversation with Mr. Lemaire, which turned out about as well as could be expected:

I did finally manage to get hold of Mr Lemaire on the phone. I began by asking (in French) if he was an agent or representative of Bohemia Interactive or Dean Hall. He said "Non." Although I had introduced myself, I didn't explain why I was contacting him, so perhaps he thought I was a prospective client. I then asked why he had filed an incorrect DMCA claim against the files I had hosted on Mediafire. He ummed for a second or two and then hung up. When I called back later on, his mobile phone was turned off. I haven't been able to contact him since.

• September 11 - A worksheet featuring results and rankings for the Fantasy Premier League (online non-American football fantasy league) dumped because of LeakID.

There's more out there. LeakID does most of its work for Microsoft. The only other companies listed are Citel Video, Midi Libre and a vague entity called Metropolitan. Metropolitan alone is responsible for 118,807 URLs being removed, all in a little over a month. Citel Video takedowns tend to be targeted to specific TV shows and movies, like Naruto and One Piece. Midi Libre is a French newspaper and LeakID has only sent two takedown requests in that name. Unfortunately, neither of the requests are posted online.

In fact, a majority of LeakID's takedowns have not been posted at Chilling Effects. The few that have are very specific takedowns for Microsoft and Citel Video. (Even the specfic takedowns have some anomalies. Here's a takedown for Microsoft that lists an album by Skinny Puppy and a copy of Minecraft as items to be removed. Interestingly, both are hosted at Mediafire.) There are some strange ones where LeakID lists itself as the copyright holder, which clearly isn't true. The carpet bombing requests that takedown anything and everything have not been posted at Chilling Effects. Instead, only the account holders being hit with a takedown get to see these scattergun notices.

However, one of these super-vague takedowns has been posted online. It's only a partial list of URLs, but the list of links covers all sorts of territory. It begins by stating that Hervé Lemaire is "representing" Metropolitan and is "authorized to act on behalf of an owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed." It lists "The Expendables" and "Trespass" but the URLs listed include links to files with names like "Expendables Trailer," "Great Teacher Onizuka Remake," "English Football 2011-2012 Downloads," "Max Payne Mobile," "American Reunion Unrated," "OS X Mountain Lion," "Desperate Housewives Season 14," "Daily Show Featuring Herman Cain," "Grey's Anatomy Sea. 3," "SQL Server 2008 Update," etc. The list literally goes on and on.

So, what's going on here? Is Lemaire taking submissions and compiling them all under the "Metropolitan" name? It does look like LeakID's site does have something akin to a "link dropoff" spot, according to this post written about the company. Another possibility is that LeakID is being retained by multiple copyright holders. If so, he's doing a lousy job vetting his search results. All sorts of legitimate content is being taken down. The last possibility is that Lemaire is freelancing in order to drum up business. If the last is true, then LeakID's takedown requests are not valid. He's representing no one and does not have the authority to request a takedown, no matter how blatantly infringing the content. It seems rather unlikely that he's representing a variety of movie studios, software companies and Apple itself. The more you look at the last couple of months of takedowns (and the resulting collateral damage), the more it looks like LeakID is going "vigilante," and issuing takedowns for anything infringing it can find.

Let's meet LeakID. 

"Managing You Content." There's a confidence builder. Let's see what's inside.

"LeakID is the first digital agency and was founded by experts from the world of radio, television and internet." 

The whole site is filled with approximate English and, no kidding, an mp3 that autoplays upon arrival, just like a Geocities page from a decade ago. (To stop it, press the button next to the "Privacy Policy" link at the bottom of the page.) Speaking of Privacy Policy, let's take a look at that.

"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet adipiscing elit.

Pellentesque sed dolor. Aliquam congue fermentum nisl..."

Yep. Placeholder text. This "company" has no privacy policy. Apparently, it was too much trouble to copy and paste one from any number of websites using barely modified boilerplate. But let's not worry about that. How about LeakSearch, the signature anti-piracy tool?

"Leaksearch has been developed in php This tool is connected 24 hours a day to more than 30 sources that are updated every day.

Several days, even several days can go by before your product makes its way onto 'public' networks. With Leaksearch, you can make the most of this precious timelag to implement counter-measures and adapt your anti-pirating strategy."

And so on. Then there's Hervé Lemaire himself. His bio on the LeakID website paints him as someone with years of experience in the music business, including seven years in EMI's digital department. So does his entry at Wikipedia France, which resembles a copy-paste resumé dump job more than it resembles an actual Wikipedia article. (Speaking of resumés, here's a more thorough version, which helpfully points out that his position at EMI was "Head of Digital and Antipiracy.")

LeakID's official Twitter account is a mystery as well. Every tweet is a link to a Torrentfreak post, leading one to believe that Lemaire either possesses a twisted sense of irony or that the account has been hacked. If it's the latter, there's been no attempt to reclaim it or get it shut down.

Are companies like Microsoft willing to entrust their DMCA process to a company/person whose website is littered with butchered English and autoplays bog electronica upon entry? Even if English is not your native language, as is probably the case with Hervé Lemaire, if that's the language you've chosen to communicate with, you should probably get it right. One would think that companies would be more selective when handing out their legal legwork.

And what about the numerous other companies LeakID is issuing takedowns for? If these companies listed have hired LeakID to handle their DMCA requests, it shows an appalling lack of respect for internet users across the board. Piracy, to them, must be too important to ignore, but not important enough to handle competently. If everything is above board and LeakID has been retained to handle these takedowns, the companies represented must be satisfied with quantity over quality. Collateral damage is not only acceptable, it's considered the "price" of doing business. However, this price is paid by users who have legitimate content removed and accounts shut down.

The same companies that criticize file lockers for operating offshore to dodge US laws are outsourcing their anti-piracy efforts to offshore companies, which have little fear of being held responsible for perjuring themselves with bogus DMCA notices. It's nearly impossible to hold anyone responsible for a bogus takedown and handing off the DMCA duties to a French company makes it that much harder. The likelihood of anyone pursuing legal recourse is virtually zero. This leaves companies like LeakID, Degban and others to serve up bogus takedowns crafted by automated processes. Those on the receiving end will just have to get used to having accounts closed and files deleted for the foreseeable future.

We've had plenty of stories concerning open WiFi, and there seems to be a general opinion among some that open WiFi is "a bad thing." Some have even tried (and failed) to argue that having an open WiFi network makes you negligent. In some areas, law enforcement has even gone around telling people to lock up their WiFi. Those who argue against open WiFi are generally conflating different issues. It is true that if you use an open WiFi network without securing yourself you do open up yourself to snooping from others. Similarly, if others are using your open WiFi, it it could lead to at least an investigation if your access point is used for nefarious purposes. But combining those to claim that open WiFi itself is bad or illegal is a mistake. It is entirely possible to secure your own activities, and to set up an open WiFi network in a reasonable manner that minimizes any such threat.

The EFF and others have been trying to remind people that there are also tremendous benefits to open WiFi in increasing connectivity for everyone. As part of this, they've launched the Open Wireless Movement encouraging people to purposely leave their WiFi networks open (and to take appropriate security precautions). They're pointing out that especially in times of crisis, such open networks can be tremendously useful.

The Open Wireless Movement envisions a world where people readily have access to open wireless Internet connections—a world where sharing one's network in a way that ensures security yet preserves quality is the norm. Much of this vision is attainable now. In fact, many people have routers that already feature "guest networking" capabilities. To make this even easier, we are working with a coalition of volunteer engineers to build technologies that would make it simple for Internet subscribers to portion off their wireless networks for guests and the public while maintaining security, protecting privacy, and preserving quality of access. And we're working with advocates to help change the way people and businesses think about Internet service.

We're also teaching the world about the many benefits of open wireless in order to help society move away from closed networks and to a world in which open access is the default. We are working to debunk myths (and confront truths) about open wireless while creating technologies and legal precedent to ensure it is safe, private, and legal to open your network.

Hopefully we can finally get past the myth that open WiFi is automatically bad and get people moving towards a better understanding of how to use the internet safely while still offering up open access in a reasonable manner.

The laws governing intellectual monopolies in the UK are in a state of flux at the moment. After the previous government in its dying hours rammed through the shoddy piece of work known as the Digital Economy Act, the present coalition government took a more rational approach by commissioning the Hargreaves Review into the impact of digital technologies on this area. One of its key proposals was that policy should be based on evidence, not "lobbynomics"; the fact that this even needs to be mentioned says much about the way laws have been framed until now.

As a result, the UK's Intellectual Property Office (IPO) has been trying to gather evidence in order to help politicians draw up new policies that correspond to the data, not just dogma. Not surprisingly, perhaps, those that have done well under the previous evidence-free approach have been mounting a rearguard action against the changes.

One of the people unhappy about both the Hargreaves Review and the IPO's response is the UK MP Peter Wishart, who made the following comments about them in Parliament earlier this year:

Ian Hargreaves was notionally in charge of that process [of looking at digital copyright], but having observed evidence being taken, and the report and recommendations be delivered, I suggest that the hand of the Intellectual Property Office was all over it. I believe that Ian Hargreaves was perhaps a figurehead, because the IPO seems to have driven the agenda. We will discuss some of the exceptions to copyright that the IPO proposed as part of its consultation, but it has been steering the process all the way through.

What is that predicated on? It is predicated on the belief that economic evidence should be at the heart of every initiative and everything that we do concerning intellectual property law. Ian Hargreaves has been perhaps a little cavalier when it comes to intellectual property, and we could say that he has made heroic assumptions about the value of some of the proposed recommendations and exceptions.

Wishart is also the Vice Chair of something called the All Party Parliamentary Intellectual Property Group. Here's how it describes itself:

The Group was launched in 2003 as a response to this and to create a resource for parliamentarians of both Houses interested in learning more about intellectual property (IP), its role in stimulating creativity and economic growth, how new services are developing to serve consumer needs, and the harm that can be caused when IP is not properly respected and protected.

As that makes clear, the All Party Parliamentary Intellectual Property Group is not an official UK government body, but more of a club for like-minded individuals. Earlier this year, the group announced its unofficial inquiry into how the UK government was handling intellectual monopolies:

The Group will seek to unpick the tangled web of cross-departmental responsibilities in this area by considering how policy has been developed, the effectiveness of the current approach, and whether the machinery of government can be improved for better policy formulation.

It's hard not to see this as an attack on the IPO and its new approach -- one of the six questions posed was "How effective is the Intellectual Property Office and what should its priorities be? (pdf)". That suspicion is confirmed by the recent publication of the results (pdf).

The group's philosophy is made plain early on in the document:

The fact that IP attracts so much interest reflects its increasing importance in our economy. Clearly IP on its own does not generate economic activity, but as a property right, it enables innovators, creators, manufacturers and designers to protect their innovation and monetise their work.

Except that copyright and patents aren't property rights, but "a government grant of a costly and dangerous private monopoly over ideas." Indeed, the increasing recognition that it makes no sense to treat copyright and patents as a property right really seems to stick in the craw of the parliamentary group. Here's what it says on the subject:

We were also concerned that officials from the IPO find it difficult to describe intellectual property as a property right. It was described as a framework by one official which immediately undermines it. If the IPO sees IP as a framework then it suggests they see it as something that can be shaped and altered at will. We question whether such a laissez fair[e] attitude would be taken to other property rights and if they were, whether senior Officials and Ministers would allow such an attitude to pervade.

Note that the IPO is blamed here for simply conveying a truth that is unpalatable to the group. Elsewhere, the report tries really hard to find other reasons to blame the IPO; unfortunately, the facts keep getting in the way:

The evidence we received and heard was varied in this respect. Certainly the IPO's role as a registration body for patents was seen as very positive as was its role in educating both consumers and business about IP.

Whoops, sounds like the IPO is doing a good job for patents, so what about for copyright?

People's criticisms of the IPO's policy making process appear to have been ignited by their most recent recommendations in relation to copyright. There were many groups who supported these recommendations and the process by which they came about, however a very large number did not.

Oh dear: "many groups" supported the IPO again; but luckily, others did not. That is hardly surprising, since some of the ideas being considered by the IPO would try to put a modicum of balance back in UK laws governing copyright. That's never really happened before, thanks to the ratchet effect that has ensured the public domain has been constantly impoverished when the law is changed.

The idea that stakeholders might have to give something back to the public in the form of minimal exceptions may be unheard of, but it's hardly unreasonable. Arguably, we need to run the ratchet back much further in order to obtain anything like a fair balance between the rights of stakeholders, and the rights of the public.

But the latter are rarely considered. Indeed, it's significant that the world "public" isn't mentioned once in the Parliamentary group's new report. The nearest thing we get is "consumers", notably in the following paragraph, which betrays a typical lack of understanding about how formerly passive consumers are morphing into active co-creators:

When the officials from the IPO gave evidence, they were very clear that they saw their role as providing balance -- they see this balance as ensuring consumers can have access to content. We believe the IPO should look more carefully at how the IP framework stimulates the creation and development of new content, services, designs and other IP rich innovation as much as how existing content can be accessed. Only if they do this, will consumers of the future continue to have access to the content, products and services they enjoy.

That paragraph sums up why the All Party Parliamentary Intellectual Property Group so dislikes the IPO: the latter is trying to provide balance, and that is really the last thing that the copyright maximalists and their allies want to see here.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

One of the main forces driving the move to open access is the idea that if the public has already paid for research through taxation or philanthropy, then it's not reasonable to ask people to pay again in order to read the papers that are published as a result. The strength of this argument is probably why, in part, open access continues to gain wider acceptance around the world.

But the same logic could be applied to the commercialization of publicly-funded research. Why should people be asked to pay often elevated market prices demanded by companies for these products -- which naturally try to maximize profitability -- when it was the public that funded the initial work that made those products possible in the first place?

As with open access, the challenge here is to come up with an alternative approach that allows new medical treatments to be made available as widely as possible. A recent paper by John Frangioni in Nature Biotechnology, pointed out by @MaliciaRogue, offers a novel solution based on open-source development managed by a non-profit foundation:

In this open-source model, sublicensing to for-profit entities is encouraged but is nonexclusive. For-profit companies licensing the technology are encouraged to innovate on the platform, which will provide protectable IP for them, help lower the barriers to market entry and provide patients with even better versions of the technology. Open-source information exchange and evolution of the technology is encouraged rather than discouraged, with the premise that knowledge will empower for-profit companies that want to carve out IP-protected niches while empowering academic scientists with a firm grasp of the state of the art.

It's a detailed, fascinating piece that explores the current problems with the commercialization of research, including the following thoughts on why the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 has failed to boost technology transfer from the academic world to industry as originally hoped:

In the wake of Bayh-Dole, the technology transfer policy of many AMCs [academic medical centers] has been to pursue the broadest patent rights for as many inventions as possible (all at great expense), sometimes without sufficient regard for whether there is enough validation of a discovery for assets to be licensed and/or commercialized; similarly, too often, startups are spun out of AMCs without sufficient due diligence, resulting in many enterprises that fail to receive sustainable funding from the investment community.

Frangioni's approach is quite different. Since the non-profit foundation is funded by the public, the focus is on maximizing patient benefit rather than financial return. On novel way of doing that is requiring reciprocity from those using the foundation's knowledge:

enablers [researchers, surgeons and technology licensees] can purchase technology but only after signing an agreement to deposit knowledge gained with the technology into the Knowledge Bank [a publicly accessible database], through what we call the knowledge feedback loop. Here again is the principle of giving something when getting something: the purchaser must create new knowledge for the public good to have access to the technology.

This is exactly how open source software works: anyone can take the code and build on it, but they must give back their additions to the community so that others can build upon them in exactly the same way. The results in the software field, where open source dominates the Internet, supercomputers and -- thanks to Android's underlying Linux foundation -- smartphones, speak for themselves. Whether Frangioni's experience of putting these ideas into practice with his FLARE Foundation can be generalized, remains to be seen. But it certainly seems an approach worth exploring.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

We've written a few times about innovation in education, and I've pointed out that I think the real breakthrough opportunity is in figuring out ways to get "students" to teach the subject matter themselves. As I noted, it was only once I had to teach certain subjects that I fully understood them -- because my students kept probing and asking more questions, which forced me to go beyond "just getting by" with my knowledge of the subject, and to dig deeper and gain better understanding. And it feels like there's an opportunity to use technology to make that possible -- and to somehow flip the equation, so that education is less about being "lectured" and more about students learning by teaching themselves and each other.

So, I found it fascinating to listen to a recent episode of economist Russ Robert's EconTalk podcast, in which he spoke with economist Arnold Kling about the future of education, based on Kling's recent article reviewing what educational technologies he thought were overhyped, and which really had a chance to change education for the better. In the discussion, they raise this same concept of learning by teaching, but the key takeaway was slightly different: it's that so much of the focus on technology in education today is figuring out how to take a lecture or a lesson and distributing it much more widely to many more students.

You can understand, in theory, why that seems desirable. After all, if you can find the absolute best teacher of a subject, wouldn't it be great to allow anyone and everyone to sit in on his or her lectures? But, of course, the problem with this scenario is that it assumes that it's from the lecture that we learn -- and there's little evidence to support that across the board (that's not to say that people don't learn from lectures, but it may not be the key aspect of learning). Instead, Kling suggests, the true breakthroughs come from more personalized situations in which a teacher and a student work together though a problem.

And, of course, Kling's optimism is in the idea that such customized and personal teaching may be more possible with technology today -- allowing for more adaptive learning. But, for the most part, all the big stories we hear about technology in education seem to be about just reaching more people, and he worries that this is the wrong approach. From the article:

To put this another way, I believe that the future of teaching is not one-to-many. Instead, it is many-to-one. By many-to-one, I mean that one student receives personalized instruction that comes from many educators. To make that work, technology must act as an intermediary, taking the information from the educators and customizing it to fit the student's knowledge, ability, and even his or her emotional state.

I do think that this doesn't exclude those broad distribution efforts, however. In fact, he more or less admits this in the podcast, in talking about the Khan Academy which we've written about before. While initially he suggests that he's not that impressed with that kind of thing because it falls into that "one to many" approach, he later admits that when you use it as a teaching aid to flip the equation so that lectures are done at home at your own pace, and classroom time is used instead for problem solving and greater one-to-one interactions between teachers and students, the results are much better.

No matter what your opinion on this is, if you're interested in the future of education, I highly recommend giving a listen to the podcast discussion between Roberts and Kling.