There's been a growing movement among some to suggest that it would be a lot more practical and useful for students to learn how to code as a part of their education, rather than some other "mandatory" curriculum items. It looks like the House of Representatives is working on a cool little plan to at least incentivize some code learning in schools: a nationwide technology contest for students, encouraging them to develop brand new apps for mobile devices. The hope is that it will help more students not just learn to code, but to learn that they enjoy it and are interested in learning more and going into the technology field. While this may be a "small" program, it's good to see general encouragement towards having people learn to code at a young age.

On the other end of the spectrum, three of Silicon Valley's richest techies, Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin and Yuri Milner, have teamed up for a much larger program a "Breakthrough Prize" for life sciences that will award 11 grants of $3 million each year for major breakthroughs in science.

These are two different approaches towards encouraging more innovation in technology and sciences -- one at the "low" end and one at the "high" end -- but it will be interesting to watch how these kinds of incentive programs develop over time. It would be great to also see more "innovation prizes" that offer up rewards for reaching specific goals, rather than the sort of random "we pick a list of winners" that the Breakthrough Prize functions under. Still, more incentives for innovation can only be a good thing.

I think that every lawyer feels that they have been employed by Satan at one time or another. It’s just like how criminals end up working for Keyser Soze without knowing it. Whether he’s running your firm from a corner office, or he’s a client you end up representing, most lawyers end up working for the devil at one time or another.

Usually, Satanic jobs and assignments try to appear normal. But that job market is really tight. Evidently, it’s such a buyer’s market that Satan doesn’t feel like he has to hide his true nature anymore. He’s now openly advertising to hire some new associates on Craigslist….

To some, it might appear surprising that the devil needs help securing water rights in flood-soaked Nashville. But as I see it, Nashville is pretty much a hellhole, and Satan is much more likely to need water than, say, fire. From Craiglist:

My principal place of business has experienced unusually aggressive expansion as of late and this has resulted in a number of significant legal problems. Consequently, my current legal staff is unable to complete all the electronic discovery necessary for an upcoming class action riparian rights lawsuit…

As you may know, my business has been around for centuries and I work very diligently to ensure that as FEW new attorneys as possible are able to get their feet in the doors in this city or any other city for that matter. However, given these unique circumstances, I am willing to make an exception or two.

Kind regards,

Satan

There's a screen shot of the full ad below.

Alas, the devil is in the details:

Compensation: Your soul and your student loans (also, jellybeans).

They say that the devil’s greatest trick was to convince the world he didn’t exist. But I think it’s more impressive that the devil is able to get so many people to do his bidding even when he tells them the truth. Let’s be honest, there are thousands of unemployed attorneys who would gladly sell their soul for a chance at a good job. There are people waiting in line to sell their souls. Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven? Unemployed lawyers will settle for serving in hell rather than waiting for heaven to grant them a job.

And since I have nothing else to add, let’s all watch Al Pacino physically blow Keanu Reeves off the screen in the scene that totally redeems this movie:

“Lose? I DON’T LOSE, I win. I WIN. I’M A LAWYER, THAT’S MY JOB, THAT’S WHAT I DO.” Trust me, every time I talk to a prospective law student, I hear a very confused Keanu doing a bad southern accent as I slowly explain to him what is obvious to everybody else. I’M A FAN OF MAN.

More stories from Above The Law:

• Today at the Supreme Court: Mistakes Were Made
• New Birthday Song To Make You Even More Depressed To Get Older
• From the Career Files: What to Expect If You’re Planning on Applying to Law School

Humans aren't the only animals on our planet that can communicate with other members of our species. As we study more of our fellow creatures, we continue to find surprising instances of intelligence and thought and problem-solving abilities. Here are just a few examples.

• Japanese scientists have created images showing how a thought moves through the brain of a zebrafish. The brain activity doesn't look particularly complex, but it's a start -- and it could lead to a better understanding of how other brains work. [url]
• Slime mold doesn't have a brain, but it can figure out complex problems -- if we give set it up under the right conditions. The slime mold Physarum polycephalum can navigate a maze and find the shortest path when given a map made of carefully-placed food. [url]
• Almost anyone who has observed ants closely knows that ants can communicate via trails of chemicals (pheromones) and by touching each other -- but some ants can also communicate using sounds. Researchers have recorded some of the sounds, and they've seen ants respond to the recordings as if their fellow ants were calling to them. [url]

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

We see stories like this one over and over again, but that's because they're not exceptions. The Washington Post has a profile of two MIT postgrads who have created a water-decontamination system that was dubbed by Scientific American as a world changing idea, based on the fact that it could revolutionize the controversial practice of fracking by decontaminating all of the contaminated water that is output by the process. Such technology is in high demand, and the two engineers, Anurag Bajpayee and Prakash Narayan Govindan, are trying to create a company that will hire an awful lot of people (beyond cleaning up our water). They have people willing to give them millions of dollars to do this.

There's just one simple problem. They're about to get kicked out of the country because their student visas are expiring, and the US has no reasonable system for keeping such highly skilled engineers here, rather than sending them back to their home countries.

But their student visas expire soon, both before summer, and because of the restrictive U.S. visa system, they may have to move their company to India or another country. "We love it here," said Bajpayee, a cheerful 27-year-old in an argyle sweater and jeans. "But there are so many hoops you have to jump through. And you risk getting deported while you are creating jobs."

Stories like this are so prevalent these days, and yet Congress remains unwilling to take the most basic steps to fix the problem -- in part because the wider immigration debate raises so many other issues. Yet again, it seems that we're letting silly politics get in the way of actually doing what's right.

And, of course, the more that we fail to keep these skilled folks here, the more other countries are opening their arms to them:

Countries from Canada to Germany to Australia to Singapore are enthusiastically courting foreign entrepreneurs with relatively easy visas. Some offer cash.

China has given bonuses of up to $150,000 to thousands of highly skilled expatriates who have come home to work or start businesses. Chile is luring top talent with $40,000 in capital, free office space and a quick visa through its "Start-up Chile" program.

We're training the best and the brightest, and helping them to make breakthrough innovations that can change the world... and then kicking them out of the country and into the open arms of other countries. Can anyone explain how that makes sense? In the article, the only person they could find to argue against letting these kinds of skilled immigrants stay is a guy who works at an anti-immigration "think tank," whose argument is so empty of substance that, well, you just have to read it.

"It's a stupid idea," said Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports tighter immigration controls. "What is an entrepreneur? Businesses come and go."

Yeah. The Center for Immigration Studies might want to look into bringing on spokespeople who can communicate complete thoughts in the future, because that argument seems to amount to "we hate it because bad." Hopefully, people who actually understand the impact of entrepreneurship and startup businesses have on the economy can finally get these kinds of needed reforms through Congress, and we can stop kicking skilled job creators out of the country.

Looking back, I think I saw my first Playboy magazine when I was roughly ten years old or so. That would put us somewhere in the early 90's. My friends and I stopped on our way to school and huddled around each other, all trying to get a glimpse of the in-depth article on Operation Desert Storm and it's long-reaching implications for the Middle East, American foreign policy, and the rest of the world. No...wait...now I remember. We wanted to see the naked girls, because these were the days before wide internet adoption would put roughly all the porn at everyone's fingertips and President Bush's name still made us giggle (it kind of still does, actually). That said, amongst older generations, you would occasionally hear the laughable excuse from men that they wanted their Playboy magazines so they could read the articles, I suppose because Time Magazine, The New Yorker and Newsweek didn't exist (psst! They did!).

Well, now it appears we'll get something of a test for that excuse, with Playboy releasing a mobile app for Apple's app store, which of course had to nix all the nipples and vaginas to get it past the tech company's Quaker-like regulators.

This winter, the company, long barred from Apple's digital storefronts because of its pornographic associations, will package a nudity-free version of its content together for the launch of its first iPhone app, featuring lifestyle tips, articles from the magazine and, of course, photos of beautiful women.

Those beautiful women will be clad in lingerie, under Apple's strict no boobies policy. Now, here's why this probably won't work. Nobody is going to download this app to see women in lingerie. There's a couple of reasons for this. First, we've long been able to get that elsewhere. Victoria Secret has an iOS app, after all. Also, there's that handy browser option for viewing all the images one could want on the internet. As for the articles, we have a couple of problems. Jumping into the news content business this late in the game and having success in it would require really compelling articles. The good news is that Playboy still has this. The bad news is that all those people who claim their allegiance to Playboy for their articles are full of crap. As the article summarizes:

So, mobile readers will have to actually read Playboy for the articles, with a little lingerie on the side. This could totally work. What could go wrong?

The answer, of course, is everything.

You might have heard about last week's Russian meteor strike. The news, which broke quickly and was so odd that many initially suspected a hoax or even a viral marketing campaign, was rapidly realized as legitimate. Part of what helped the news spread so quickly was a ton of videos uploaded to YouTube very quickly, the vast majority of which came from dashcams in cars -- showing the fiery trail through the sky from a variety of different angles and distances. A bunch of publications covered the fact that having a dashcam has become almost a necessity in Russia to use as evidence concerning accidents and to prevent scams, which are unfortunately common.

But, of course, when people drive, they're often listening to music. And so many of the dashcam videos of the meteor include music playing from car radios. And, as we've discussed many times, in Germany, most popular music is blocked from any YouTube video due to a longstanding (and ridiculous) legal fight between YouTube and GEMA, the German music collection society. GEMA wants rates that are simply laughable, so throughout Germany, most videos that contain music get blocked.

And yes, this means that a large number of these videos are being blocked in Germany, as noted by Cyrus Farivar over at Ars Technica. The text there says:

Sorry, this video, which includes music from SME [Sony Music Entertainment], is not available in Germany because GEMA has not granted the publishing rights thereto.

Amusingly, when Farivar asked GEMA for its response to all of this, it answered (via Twitter):

YouTube blocks apparently randomly.

Which is an... interesting interpretation of that ongoing fight. And by "interesting," I mean completely wacko. Another part of that conversation included GEMA trying to blame YouTube further for this, and then defending this whole thing by saying:

GEMA is obliged to all users who give of their perceived rights for a reasonable allowance d copyright.

And, apparently, that includes incidentally overheard radio music in videos which have tremendous importance in news coverage.

DarkCryo is a somewhat controversial operation that has been trying for a while to build an "unofficial" multiplayer online game based on the Joss Whedon TV-show/movie/cult classic Firefly. As we've discussed in the past (directly about Firefly, even) we think that this kind of fan creativity should be encouraged, as it's these kinds of fans that have kept the brands and communities together while the big companies let them wither. Of course, Fox Entertainment wasn't too happy and shut it down. The recent controversy came over attempts to resurrect it, with slightly vague suggestions that they had Fox's permission. As people dug into the story, they realized it was something significantly less than permission.

Among the leading critics of DarkCryo is the site FuriousNads by Christopher Frankonis. In particular, Frankonis quite rightly called out DarkCryo for running an IndieGoGo crowdfunding campaign that pretty clearly violated IndieGoGo terms and (much more importantly) securities law by offering a form of an "investment" with "returns" at certain levels. That's a big no-no, even though it would be legalized in the US if not for heel-dragging bureaucrats.

While I think that these kinds of games should be allowed, Frankonis' criticism is completely on target. In response, it appears that DarkCryo -- a company that is really skirting a pretty fine line concerning copyright -- decided to abuse the DMCA and file a takedown notice on FuriousNads posting of a DarkCryo logo image. For the record, this appears to be the image that FuriousNads had on its site: Though, looking at Google cache, it looks like they also used modified version of that image, superimposing other images on top of it (which, likely, would make the use even more protected). This is clearly an abuse of the DMCA. Such a usage of a logo is about as clear a case of fair use as you could imagine. Frankonis was clearly reporting on DarkCryo, and using the logo in a way that it would be hard to see as anything but fair use.

The site has since replaced all images of the graphic with the following instead: For what it's worth, Frankonis' hosting firm overstates its reasons for taking down the image:

“We’ve received a DMCA complaint regarding content hosted in your account,” came the late-night email from Acorn Host. “As you are probably aware, web hosts do not have much leeway in responding to complaints like this. We do not get to judge fair use or anything of that sort; we are required to remove anything someone submits a claim about, until which time as you submit a counter-complaint.”

That's not quite true. Acorn absolutely can analyze the situation and could determine that it believes with very high probability that the use would be called "fair use" by a court and then leave it up. The issue is that leaving it up just removes the easy safe harbors that would get Acorn out of any lawsuit. So there are certainly good reasons for it to do what it did, but they are not "required" to do so. They just have to do so if they want to keep the safe harbor protections. That said, we've heard of so many stories of hosting firms completely shutting down entire accounts based on a single DMCA notice that Acorn's position is hardly that egregious. The response is better than many others.

It's unclear if Frankonis intends to file a counternotice, as he suggests he's content with his replacement graphic instead. Given the subject matter, he's probably right. Still, this is yet another case of people abusing copyright law with the clear intent of silencing criticism. That it's coming from an operation that is trying to rely (heavily) on exceptions to copyright law for its own project just makes it doubly ridiculous.

Some guy trying to sell his book about how copyright infringement is all a big, bad plot of big, bad companies has a silly and ill-informed article trying to tarnish Aaron Swartz's reputation by making statements about what he believed and what he fought for that have little basis in reality. The article is chock full of confused statements, most of which aren't worth addressing (though, I will note that it is absolutely hilarious that he says that copyright "enabled" Bob Dylan -- given Dylan's famous penchant for blatantly copying of lyrics, melodies and even photographs and claiming them completely as his own).

I do, however, wish to call out one ridiculously misleading claim, which I've seen repeated all too often by copyright maximalists, whenever anyone points out where copyright law and the First Amendment conflict:

First Amendment and copyright have co-existed—without terrible controversy—since the founding of the republic. Our Founding Fathers included a copyright clause in the Constitution (Article I, Section 8, clause 8), and in 1790 approved the first federal copyright law—before the Bill of Rights was even adopted. There are free-speech exceptions to copyright, such as Fair Use provisions, but Swartz's idea that the Supreme Court had some obvious "blind spot" was quite wrong. As described by the Supreme Court, copyright "is the engine of free expression."

The idea that the two coexisted for over 200 years is an exaggeration bordering on an outright falsehood. The original Copyright Act of 1790 applied only to "maps, charts and books" and specifically covered "printing, reprinting, publishing and vending." Oh yeah, and you had to register the work. And the copyright only lasted for 14 years, renewable for another 14 years, if the copyright holder chose to do so. Oh, and we shouldn't forget that it really was only a violation if you printed the entire work. You could copy large segments of the work. So, basically, copyright covered a very small number of works, in very limited ways, for a fairly limited period of time. And, it's probably also worth noting that, at that time, the most successful US publishers weren't printing books by Americans, but rather books from English authors, which were considered public domain under US law.

Compare that to today. Since 1978, copyright in the US now applies to everything new and creative the instant it is in fixed form. That means pretty much everything, from that email you just sent your boss to the lovey-dovey note you direct messaged your significant other on Facebook, is technically covered by copyright. No registration necessary. It covers way more that maps, charts and books. It goes way beyond just printing, reprinting, publishing and vending (all ostensibly commercial activity) to any form of reproduction, distribution, performance or creation of derivative works. And it no longer just applies to the entire work, but also to tiny snippets of the work, with the marginal and extremely limited exceptions put forth by fair use -- which the courts have (incorrectly, mind you) stated is merely a "defense" rather than a "right." Oh, and it lasts the life of the author, plus another seventy years. And, yes, it covers foreign works as well.

These two things are not the same. At all.

Then, combine today's copyright with the massive technological change that is personal computing, mobile devices and the internet, which has created a massive amount of personal communications in digital "fixed" form (thus making much of it copyrightable) and we are talking about two situations that are not even remotely comparable. For most of the history of copyright law, there were very few circumstances under which it would interfere with basic expression and communication. Yet, with the 1976 Copyright Act and the rise of the modern internet / connected device era, nearly all basic communications are now covered by copyright. To suggest that there is no inherent conflict between copyright and the First Amendment today is to be willfully ignorant of reality.

Finally, Swartz was absolutely correct that the Supreme Court has a massive "blind spot" on this issue. It's glaring because the Supreme Court has refused, through multiple cases, to understand the differences described above -- even to the point of suggesting that "the traditional contours" of copyright law have not changed that much over time. If you'd like to read an unfortunately sobering, but incredibly detailed, analysis of the Supreme Court's blind spot on this issue, I highly recommend reading chapter 4 of No Law: Intellectual Property in the Image of an Absolute First Amendment. The authors of the book, David Lange and Jefferson Powell walk through, step by step, every mistake made by Justice Ginsburg in her ruling in the Eldred case, which directly takes on this particular issue. Here is just a brief snippet, though it goes really deep:

Justice Ginsburg's treatment of the plaintiff's threshold claim, that the Court should apply some sort of heightened scrutiny, is nothing less than bizarre. Unless she (and the other members of the majority) failed to see the Act as having any cognizable impact on any constitutionally protected expression at all, a student of the First Amendment cases would expect that the Court's initial response would be to determine which level or form of heightened scrutiny was appropriate, and then apply the proper scrutiny. The opinion takes a different approach, however -- one that appears essentially indifferent as to the reasoning the Court customarily uses in deciding First Amendment claims. Despite acknowledging (a bit later on in the opinion) the plaintiffs' reliance on a case, Turner Broadcasting Systems, Inc. v. FCC, which did employ intermediate level scrutiny, Ginsburg restates their argument as a "plea for imposition of uncommonly strict scrutiny" to the Act, implying (incorrectly) that there is something "uncommonly strict" about the use of intermediate scrutiny in reviewing content-neutral laws. (We presume she was not, more simply but even more strangely, mischaracterizing, as "strict scrutiny" in the doctrinal sense, the plaintiffs argument that Turner -- thus, intermediate scrutiny -- was the appropriate mode of analysis. If we are wrong about this, it would reenforce, in a different way, the air of inattention that hangs over the First Amendment discussion in Eldred.)

Having set up, however inaccurately, the threshold inquiry into the proper level of scrutiny, Justice Ginsburg then immediately drops the issue. Instead, she continues with a number of observations amounting to asserations, each apparently meant to undermine the need for any sort of judicial scrutiny of the Act.

It then goes on to discuss each of these assertions, and break down, very specifically, how they make little, if any sense. There are five assertions in all, but a few more snippets hopefully give you a sense of the issues. In discussing Ginsburg's suggestion that, since copyright law and the First Amendment both came at about the same time and involved the same people, there was no conflict, they point out that merely putting two laws in place at the same time does not automatically solve the issues:

Nor can mere chronological proximity take the place of actual evidence in making claims about the Founders' views. The infamous Sedition Act of 1798 was enacted "close in time" to the First Amendment's adoption, but it has long been settled that the Sedition Act, rather than bein a valuable early interpretation of the First Amendment, was a violation of the amendment. As the Court observed many years ago, "[a]lthough the Sedition Act was never tested in this court, the attack upon its validity carried the day in the court of history." In other words, the founding generation, or many members of it, were capable of making a mistake about the implications and application of the First Amendment and, in the case of the Sedition Act, actually did so, even after a full debate on the constitutional issues. In the First Amendment context, it is clear that the "free speech principles" that the Founders constitutionalized cannot be narrowly defined in terms of the Founders' practices.

Later, they rip to shreds the argument that the courts must defer to Congress on this, combined with the idea that fair use acts as a proper valve to "protect" the First Amendment. The problem there, they note, is that here's the Supreme Court basically saying, "it's not us, it's all on Congress," when the system itself specifically relies on the courts to determine the contours of fair use.

The opinion does not acknowledge, however, that the case law to which it refers also reveals a central attribute of the fair use doctrine, which is that it entrusts the decision about what counts as fair use (and thus may be included in expression) not to the individual (which is the norm ordained by the First Amendment), but to the courts.

No matter how you slice it, the Supreme Court has a very clear "blind spot" to the areas where the First Amendment conflicts with copyright law, and part of that is a complete failure to acknowledge that the two have not actually "co-existed" for centuries, but that a massive change and expansion to copyright law, mixed with the fact that nearly all communications these days are covered by copyright, has created a very real problem -- the problem that Aaron Swartz kept trying to highlight, and which folks like the author of the column seek to ignore.

Earlier this month, we wrote about a White House Petition, asking to make unlocking mobile phones legal again, since it had been made infringing again, thanks to the Librarian of Congress omitting it from the list of DMCA exceptions last year. As we noted, the White House had recently bumped up the number of signatures needed for it to respond from 25,000 to 100,000, making it difficult to get over that barrier.

However, overnight, that petition finally got over the hurdle, hitting 100,000 signatures. I believe this may be the first petition to hit that threshold under the "new" system. Of course, getting it to that point is merely step one. The real issue is in how the White House will respond, and they have an incredibly easy out: they just point out that the exemption process happens on a schedule, and that those who are concerned about this issue should file to have the Librarian of Congress reconsider in three years...

This adminstration is having a hard time reaching its goal of being the "transparentest place on earth," what with its executive orders, state secrets and a whole lot of "as you were" in reference (deference?) to existing Bush-era policies. To make matters worse, Obama's appointees are proving themselves to be "team players" and blocking out much of the remaining sunlight.

Justice Sotomayor is pitching in with the "new transparency" (now available in black, charcoal and midnight slate!), reversing field on her previously stated opinions on cameras in the courtroom.

At her confirmation hearings in 2009, she said she was in favor of letting citizens see their government at work. “I have had positive experiences with cameras,” she said. “When I have been asked to join experiments of using cameras in the courtroom, I have participated. I have volunteered.”

Apparently, much like the rest of the administration, transparency is a great talking point in theory. In practice, however, it's a very different story.

She was singing a different tune a couple of weeks ago, telling Charlie Rose that most Americans would not understand what goes on at Supreme Court arguments and that there was little point in letting them try.

“I don’t think most viewers take the time to actually delve into either the briefs or the legal arguments to appreciate what the court is doing,” she said. “They speculate about, oh, the judge favors this point rather than that point. Very few of them understand what the process is, which is to play devil’s advocate.”

Now, while Sotomayor may be correct that many Americans don't understand the nuances of the Supreme Court, it's rather insulting to believe this ignorance should preclude them from observing the inner workings. After all, many Americans are ignorant of ins and outs of the entire political process, and yet, no one's suggesting (at least not legislatively) that they have their right to vote revoked. Not only that, but C-SPAN offers wall-to-wall coverage of the legislative process, something few people in their right minds would claim to understand in its entirety, but no one seems concerned that viewers drawing the wrong conclusions will somehow harm that process.

In fact, she doesn't really make an argument as to why cameras shouldn't be allowed into the courtroom. All she does is claim that the proceedings would fly over the heads of viewers. If she's concerned some of the real-time "devil's advocating" will be misconstrued, her fears are misplaced, to say the least. The public can misconstrue the intentions of the justices without a live feed, thank you very much.

And, if it's the public's understanding of the process she's worried about, wouldn't it make more sense to make the process easily accessed? It's pretty hard to increase knowledge without observation. It seems counterintuitive to dismiss the public as ignorant and think you're going to improve this by locking them out.

Unfortunately, it's not just Sotomayor making a 180 when actually faced with making a theoretical situation a reality. Justice Elena Kagan has also reversed her stance.

At her confirmation hearings in 2010, she said video coverage “would be a great thing for the institution, and more important, I think it would be a great thing for the American people.” Two years later, she said she now had “a few worries, including that people might play to the camera” and that the coverage could be misused.

Once again, we have fake fears covering for the government's natural tendency to do its "best" work behind closed doors. C-SPAN has seen its share of "playing to the camera," and yet, the American public is still better off having access to this coverage. And, if Kagan's worried the courtroom coverage might be "misused," she's apparently unaware that anything can be misused, whether it's press releases, public statements, speaking engagements, interviews, C-SPAN footage, etc. Worrying about potential "misuse" is an incredibly weak argument for opacity. Of course it will be misused. But it will also be beneficial to the general public. An open feed shows the whole story, which can then be used to punch holes in the arguments of those who misuse the information.

Oddly enough, the home of free speech and democracy is lagging behind countries like Canada and the UK in terms of cameras in these nations' highest courts.

The Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, which was formed in 2009, allows camera coverage. Last month, Lord Chief Justice Igor Judge, the head of the judiciary for England and Wales, announced that cameras would be allowed in appeal courts starting in October, after judges receive media training.

Lord Judge agreed with Justice Sotomayor, to a point. “I suspect John and Jane Citizen will find it incredibly dull,” he told a committee of the House of Lords. But that did not seem to him a reason to prevent them from trying to make sense of the proceedings.

Arguments in the Supreme Court of Canada have been broadcast since the mid-1990s, and more recently they have been streamed live on the Internet.

Owen M. Rees, the court’s executive legal officer, said the experience had been positive.

“The filming of the Supreme Court of Canada’s hearings has increased the public’s access to the court and its understanding of the court’s work,” he said. “Of course, each court must make its own evaluation of whether introducing cameras in the courtroom would be appropriate.”

So, we've heard the excuses (they're not actually "reasons") presented for keeping cameras out of the Supreme Court, but what's the real reason behind this resistance to cameras in the courthouse? According to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., the problem may be with the justices themselves.

Chief Justice Roberts said he worried about the effect that cameras would have on lawyers and, perhaps more important, on the justices, who may have less self-control than their counterparts abroad.

“We unfortunately fall into grandstanding with a couple of hundred people in the room,” the chief justice said.

If true, then the American public is being cut out of the process in order to save the justices from themselves. This is completely backwards, to say the least. If cameras provoke this sort of response from the highest court in the land, then something needs to be fixed within the court itself. Trying to place the blame on the public for a perceived lack of comprehension or tendency to misuse information is wholly disingenuous. Our Supreme Court can, and should, follow the lead of Canada and the UK and stop treating US citizens as though they have no (comprehensible) horse in this race. 

When Google first caved in to the legacy entertainment industry's demands to start modifying search results to downrank sites that received a lot of DMCA notices, we quickly warned that the RIAA and MPAA would never think that it was enough, and would continue to whine and complain. Yesterday, we pointed out that the RIAA was bitching and complaining about how many DMCA notices they could submit (which turned out to be a case of the RIAA failing to RTFM). But that was just the prelude for today, when the RIAA would release a "report card" on how Google's new filtering was going. Guess what? They're not happy, and apparently they won't be happy until Google magically makes all infringement disappear (*poof*).

Six months later, we have found no evidence that Google’s policy has had a demonstrable impact on demoting sites with large amounts of piracy. These sites consistently appear at the top of Google’s search results for popular songs or artists.

For everyone else in the world, if they're not satisfied with how the sites they favor rank in Google, they learn a little something about search engine optimization. But, noooooooo, not the RIAA. They think that it is a requirement that Google be tailored to them directly.

Well-known, authorized download sites, such as iTunes, Amazon and eMusic, only appeared in the top ten results for a little more than half of the searches. This means that a site for which Google has received thousands of copyright removal requests was almost 8 times more likely to show up in a search result than an authorized music download site. In other words, whatever Google has done to its search algorithms to change the ranking of infringing sites, it doesn't appear to be working.

Well, that's one interpretation. Another one (the right one) is that whatever the industry itself has done to raise the rankings of those sites by effectively competing in the marketplace "doesn't appear to be working." iTunes, in particular, is locked up in its own little walled garden with few people "linking in" (a big part of how Google determines relevance). Do people still use eMusic any more? The problem seems to be that those other sites just aren't where people look for stuff when they're searching Google for the music. That's not Google's fault.

Of course, what all this continues to demonstrate, beyond the fact that the RIAA will never, ever be satisfied until Google wipes out all infringement with the magic "piracyBgone" button, is that the RIAA still just doesn't understand search. The methodology here is suspect:

For this analysis we performed searches for [artist] [track] mp3 and [artist] [track] download over a period of several weeks starting December 3, 2012

First big mistake: the RIAA simply does not seem to know that Google does not deliver the same results to everyone. That change a while back. They try to tailor specific responses to specific users, based on what those users are searching for. So, if the RIAA is seeing those sites ranked higher, perhaps it says something about where the RIAA is commonly looking for stuff...

Also, here's the thing that the RIAA just doesn't seem to get. Google's entire business and algorithm are built, ground up, around the idea of understanding what people are looking for when they search, and then taking them to that place. The RIAA might not like it, but the simple fact is that when people are searching for [artist] [track] mp3 and [artist] [track] download, chances are they're not looking to buy, but to download for free. So that's what Google is showing them. That's not Google's fault. That's what the person is searching for. Even if Google magically did show them Apple, Amazon and Emusic as the top results for every [artist] [track] mp3 and [artist] [track] download, the people doing those searches wouldn't go there, because they're not looking to buy. If they did a search on "[artist] [track] buy" perhaps there would be different results.

If you actually compare apples to apples, and look at the kinds of sites that people are probably looking for, the RIAA's own "data" seems to suggest that Google is, in fact, demoting sites that receive a lot of takedowns. Note that in those last two categories, sites that have received more than 10,000 DMCA notices appear less frequently than those with closer to 1,000 DMCA notices. The other three categories are red herrings, because those aren't where people are looking for when they do searches on either [artist] [track] mp3 or [artist] [track] download.

Basically, this just reinforces two (completely unsurprising points):

1. The RIAA will never, ever be satisfied, no matter what Google does. Which again, reinforces the idea that it was probably a bad idea to even cave in in the first place.
2. The RIAA still doesn't understand how search works, nor does it seem to have any interest in learning. It doesn't understand that every single other website in the world has to work hard to lift themselves up in Google's search rankings. They don't get to specifically call out sites they don't like and automatically force Google to lower their rankings. The RIAA gets a massive headstart on every other site in the world... and they still haven't figured out how to take advantage of this.

Of course, it's not just the RIAA. Musically points out that the RIAA's complaints are only the latest in a long line. The MPAA and BPI have already made similar complaints. And they'll continue to complain, because it gives them an excuse for not doing what they should be doing, which is helping the companies they represent adapt to the internet era. It's much easier to just blame a third party -- especially when doing so without understanding the very fundamentals of how a search engine works.

Techdirt has been tracking for some time the worrying moves in India that have involved censoring the Twitter accounts of journalists and political groups, or blocking sites. But this bizarre story from the Times of India goes beyond these in a number of ways:

Ordered by a Gwalior district court, the government on Thursday asked internet service providers (ISPs) to a block 78 URLs or web addresses, of which 73 were linked to articles and blogs about the Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM) and its director, Arindam Chaudhuri.

As the Times of India report notes, the range of material blocked is disturbing, since it includes newspaper and magazine articles, as well as the following:

Remarkably, the list of 73 URLs includes a public notice of July 2012 issued by the University Grants Commission saying that "IIPM is not a university within the meaning of section 2(f) of the UGC Act, 1956".

For the government to censor itself, is odd, to say the least. But what's really worrying is the fact that Section 69 of India's Information Technology Act seems to have been invoked here to stifle criticism:

"A poor law has given IIPM the ammunition to use state machinery to go after its critics. This was entirely expected given the way the law is drafted. The next step in this ladder would be booking people for blasphemy," said Nitin Pai, founder of think tank Takshashila Institution, who has been tracking the developments around the IT Act.

It's not really clear how a private actor was able to get this blunt instrument applied to so many sites -- including news outlets and one run by the Indian government itself -- but it certainly creates a dangerous precedent. It also shows how a censorship law that supposedly allows blocking "in the interest of the sovereignty or integrity of India, the security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States or public order" can be put to rather different uses.

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There are plenty of stories about children under the age of 13 having to lie (often with the assistance of their parents) to get on Facebook. This is due to the ridiculous COPPA law that the FTC supports strongly, despite it doing close to nothing to actually "protect children." But what's the excuse for people lying at the other end of the scale? A 104 years old woman is forced to be perpetually 99 years old because Facebook apparently refuses ages higher than that. It makes you wonder if they just never thought someone with three digits in their age would use the service and only set up the database to handle two digits. Oddly, rather than defaulting down to 99 years old when Marguerite Joseph tried to enter her birth year of 1908, the system automatically took 20 years off her life and said she was born in 1928. Either way, just as parents are helping children lie about their age at the youth end of the spectrum, in this case, it's Marguerite's granddaughter who's the accomplice here, since Marguerite is legally blind, but still likes to keep in touch with people via Facebook.

Universal Studios seems to have some trouble establishing concrete ideas and positions when it comes to copyright on its own products. In recent iterations, this has manifested itself in the form of their protesting a parody of 50 Shades of Grey while conveniently ignoring that work's birth in the form of Twighlight fan-fiction. Alternatively, there are times when Universal doesn't even seem to know what it holds the rights to and what it doesn't. Well, it turns out that these stumbles aren't exactly a new experience for Universal.

Chris ODonnell writes in with the historical and hysterical case of Universal suing Nintendo over Donkey Kong shortly after Universal itself had argued that the property the dispute was based on, King Kong, was in the public domain. See, back when Michael Jackson was still best known for his music, Nintendo came up with their iconic Donkey Kong character, admittedly in some part inspired by the famous King Kong character. This inspiration, it turns out, came after the fact, but that didn't stop Universal Studios from filing suit against Nintendo, because they had released a remake of King Kong a few years earlier. While some within Nintendo wanted to simply settle with Universal and move forward, others within sought out the words of a key ally to fight against them, and that ally was Universal Studios.

Universal’s King Kong movie debuted in 1976, but it wasn’t an original story. Rather, the movie was a remake of a movie with the same title made in 1933 by RKO General. The 1976 remake came with its own round of litigation, with many parties claiming to have at least partial rights over the name, characters, and plot of the movie. Universal, however, argued that no one did, and that the characters and plot were in the public domain. In the subsequent litigation with Nintendo, the court noted this inconsistency, using it as part of the basis for finding that Nintendo’s Donkey Kong game did not infringe upon Universal’s rights (if any) over King Kong. Nintendo prevailed, and, when Universal appealed, the next court admonished Universal for its inconsistent legal logic.

Ah, sweet, sweet hypocrisy. With one hand, hitting Nintendo over the head with the IP hammer, while holding a shield against another IP hammer with the other. The court was not pleased, noting that Universal's president, Sidney Sheinberg, was clearly well versed in the intellectual property status of King Kong via the earlier lawsuit, and to then pretend the company held rights in it was clearly a move to abuse the law:

Finally, Universal's conduct amounted to an abuse of judicial processes, and in that sense caused a larger harm to the public as a whole. Depending on the commercial results, Universal alternatively argued to the courts, first, that King Kong was part of the public domain, and then second, that King Kong was not part of the public domain, and that Universal possessed exclusive trademark rights in it. Universal's assertions in court were based not on any good faith belief in their truth, but on the mistaken belief that it could use the courts to turn a profit.

As noted, Nintendo was victorious and Donkey Kong was released, since becoming its own franchise and propelling Nintendo so such status that it can initiate its own legal action based on its intellectual property.

Such a wonderful web intellectual property tends to weave.

Two years ago, I actually found it somewhat encouraging that the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) had hired an economist, since so little of the policy debate over patents deals with the economic issues. In fact, that first hire, Stuart Graham, had done some pretty good work highlighting some problems with the system. Since then, however, it wasn't that clear from the outside that his work was doing very much. So I found it interesting to see, via Wayfinder Digital, that a new paper in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, written by Stuart Graham and Saurabh Vishnubhakat, who worked for Graham at the USPTO, argues that the USPTO actually does a perfectly good job in handling software and smartphone patents.

Principally, the article highlights how the US Patent Office acts responsibly when it engages constructively with principled criticisms and calls for reform, as it has during the passage and now implementation of the landmark Leahy–Smith America Invents Act of 2011.

What was odd, the folks at Wayfinder noted, was that the bio lines for Graham and Vishnubhakat significantly play down their connection to the USPTO:

Stuart J. H. Graham is an Expert Advisor at the US Patent and Trademark Office. He is an Assistant Professor, Scheller College of Business, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, and is an attorney licensed in the State of New York. Saurabh Vishnubhakat is an Expert Advisor at the US Patent and Trademark Office. He is an Adjunct Professor at the Northern Virginia Community College, Alexandria, Virginia, and is an attorney licensed in the state of Illinois.

Notice that they are named as "advisors" to the USPTO, but their full-time roles are not mentioned. In response to the Wayfinder piece, the Journal explained that the roles had changed "at the last minute." That is, right before publication, they apparently went from being full-time employees to mere advisors:

Ms. Ann Norman Assistant Editor, JEP relayed the following, "Stuart Graham was Chief Economist at USPTO and now is an Expert Advisor. That status changed only at the last minute, apparently, at the last stages of preparing to send this paper for printing…

"So the authors did disclose their potential conflicts of interest to us, and it was/is an editorial decision as to whether these conflicts were significant enough to post online. We can, in-fact still post the full disclosure statements with the paper, though of course it is too late to mention in the paper itself that the online disclosure statement exists."

From the sound of that, it certainly appears that the paper itself was written while they were still employed by the USPTO. Given that, it seems highly appropriate for the paper to make their former full-time employment clear. While it's good that Graham and Vishnubhakat disclosed the proper info, it's unfortunate that the Journal of Economic Perspectives more or less tried to bury this important piece of information.

As for the report itself, it seems rather meaningless: they point out that it appears that patent examiners covering "software patents" (and they work up a definition) more or less treat them similarly to other patents. And the USPTO's "internal" quality review suggests they mostly get it right. Also, they point to courts generally ruling disputed patents valid as if somehow everything is working just right. Those don't exactly seem like the right metrics for determining if a patent really is good or bad, or if it's causing various innovation-killing issues such as in the smartphone wars and in the wider software ecosystem.

In the meantime, if you talk to anyone actually working in these spaces, all you hear are horror story after horror story about how patent trolls with completely bogus patents are effectively killing off businesses every day. So, while it's great that the USPTO wants to pat its own back, picking self-serving but meaningless metrics hardly helps to convince the world that the patent system is actually working.