As the Bradley Manning court martial trial moves forward, Manning has apparently submitted a plea notice more or less looking to speed up the process by effectively admitting to the fact that he leaked the info to Wikileaks, without pleading "guilty" to any of the charges. The idea appears to be a procedural move to try to take a shortcut to focusing on some lesser charges by admitting some factual things, and leaving some of the most serious charges off the table. This isn't a "plea bargain" in which both sides make an agreement -- but rather an attempt to effectively say "here's what we agree to, without having to go through the effort of proving it, and then let's focus on these lesser charges." The judge does not need to accept this offer, however.

Manning did not plead guilty to the charged offenses in the plea notice. However, significantly, he did indicate with this notice that he is willing to admit to the fact that the act of providing information to WikiLeaks did occur or that the government has evidence that would prove he did commit the act and so he is willing to plea to it.

The notice was a plea to lesser-included offenses—charges with different elements that the judge could agree upon if there is no evidence for the more severe charges. Pleading to lesser-included offenses makes it possible to not plea to committing offenses under the Espionage Act or Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). Importantly, he can plead guilty without accepting the government’s charge that he “aided the enemy” or “exceeded authorized access” on his computer

Notably, that report, from Firedoglake's Kevin Gosztola, points out that even if this goes through, Manning could still end up with life in prison for "aiding the enemy."

Meanwhile, Andy Greenberg notes that merely making this offer does not bind Manning into this admission -- especially if the government doesn't accept the deal (the judge has to accept it first). He can rescind it, and it can't be used against him. It's basically an attempt to speed up the process, along with the recognition that Manning almost certainly is going to be found guilty of something, so the attempt is to narrow down the possible charges to things that aren't quite as severe.

Scientific publishing has been a lucrative industry in recent years, even though scientists have faced increasing competition over limited funding. The publish-or-perish academic model may be contributing to an increase in scientific fraud, but maybe the increased accessibility of digital journals is simply making it easier for honest mistakes to be caught. The scientific method is supposed to weed out incorrect conclusions, but there may be a lot of wasted effort as scientists try to replicate experiments that are just completely fictitious. It gets harder and harder to make decisions based on evidence -- if there is growing uncertainty that any evidence can be trusted....

• The number of retractions from scientific journals has increased tenfold over the past decade. But it's not clear how much is misconduct and how much is honest scientific mistake... [url]
• Data detective Uri Simonsohn has published his statistical methods for exposing the suspicious data of social psychologists. Lies, damn lies and statistics... but at least statistics can be used to ferret out the lies. [url]
• Apparently, the UK is notorious for its bad science journalism. We're talking "labvertisements" -- industry/product-funded science stories about (possibly fake) studies conducted by questionable scientists with dubious methods. But at least they're honest about it and take their research with a huge grain of salt. The US just re-packages many of these reports as serious news. [url]

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

Yesterday, we wrote about a questionable ballot measure in California that, in an attempt to create harsher penalties for human trafficking, also included numerous problematic components, including banning anonymous speech for anyone on the sex offenders list -- which you can get on for a very broad list of offenses, many of which the public does not associate with being a "sex offender." As we noted, since the core argument in favor of the proposition is such an emotional item, and is well-intentioned, it was likely that the measure would pass -- and it did, with 80% of the vote. Unfortunately, you can now expect the internet provision to be abused -- and likely challenged in court, leading to a wasteful legal fight spending California taxpayer dollars to defend an almost certainly unconstitutional provision. Wouldn't it be nice if we could focus on actual problems instead of lumping in all sorts of other things?

This one is just funny. First noticed by folks on Reddit, former Presidential candidate Rick Santorum -- perhaps most well known among internet kids for the Google bombing of his name to associate it with... something unpleasant -- apparently has a picture of Chris Poole, better known as moot, the creator of the web's most popular home for internet trolls, 4chan (and yes, there's much more at 4chan, but... ). The folks over at Betabeat investigated and confirmed that a web design firm built the site, though it's unclear if moot's picture was the work of a sneaky, trolling web designer... or just an attempt to find "regular-looking" people to populate Santorum's site.

Patriot Voices used the startup Nation Builder, a web tool kit for community organizers, as a platform for the site. A representative for Nation Builder told Betabeat that the site was designed by an outside designer at the Pittsburgh-based political consulting and advertising firm Brabender Cox.

Dubbed “the premier Republican spin doctors,” Brabender Cox has a longstanding history of working to promote Republican candidates. In addition to doing work for Mr. Santorum, they’ve also created viral videos and advertising content for politicians like Republican Senator Tom Coburn and Republican Mayor of Indiana Greg Ballard.

Betabeat reached out to the organization but hasn't heard back yet.

Oh, and if you're wondering, it seems likely that the use of the work is copyright infringement. It was pulled from Poole's Wikipedia page, and the image is Creative Commons licensed, but part of that license is that attribution is required. There doesn't seem to be any such attribution. Oops.

A story from Atlantic Wire has been making the rounds recently, with a headline forcefully declaring that There's No Money in Indie Music. Why? Because one particular indie sensation is broke:

You know times are tough for indie musicians when even Chan Marshall—who released a Top 10 Billboard album and played sold-out concerts this year—is bankrupt. The singer known as Cat Power has announced a likely cancellation of her upcoming European tour because of financial and health problems.

Now, there are a lot of things I could say about this. I could point out that the financial troubles of one musician, no matter how popular she is, are not a barometer for the entire industry. I could point out that "bankruptcy" says nothing about revenue or earning potential, and is almost always caused by bad money management—or that plenty of highly successful people have gone bankrupt one or more times throughout their careers. But those points would just lend credence to an idea that is fanciful speculation at best, and total bunk at worst. Why? Because the source of this sad news about Cat Power's bankruptcy is nothing more than a single message posted to Instagram (which appears to have been since removed from the photo it was attached to, but Pitchfork has the full text):

I MAY HAVE TO CANCEL MY EUROPEAN TOUR DUE TO BANKRUPTCY & MY HEALTH STRUGGLE WITH ANGIOEDEMA. I HAVE NOT THROWN IN ANY TOWEL, I AM TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHAT BEST I CAN DO. HEART BROKEN. WORKED SO HARD. GOT SICK DAY AFTER "SUN" CAME OUT & BEEN STRUGGLING TO KEEP ALL POINTS OF ME IN EQUILIBRIUM : MIND, SPIRIT, BODY HEALTHY CENTERED & GROUNDED. I AM DOING THE BEST I CAN. I FUCKING LOVE THIS PLANET. I REFUSE TO GIVE UP. THOUGH I MAY NEED TO RESTRATAGIZE FOR MY SECURITY & HEALTH.

Marshall is obviously struggling with her health problems, and her fans reacted by offering lots of support—but what does this message really tell us about her finances? She used the word "bankruptcy" once, off-hand, and it doesn't even look like she meant it literally. Even if she did, it takes a huge leap to get from there to "there's no money in indie music"—statistically about as sensible as concluding that indie music causes angioedema. But, it's almost certain now that she didn't mean literal bankruptcy, just unforeseen expenses. A more recent Instagram post announced:

EUROPEAN TOUR IS ON. WITHOUT STAGE PRESENTATION. HARD MONEY WASTED.

Then, a few days later, another post announced that the European tour would be postponed until early next year—primarily for health reasons, and to get some more time to potentially find a way to bring the full production to Europe.

The stage presentation in question is a huge gorilla-themed light show that, one imagines, would be quite expensive to ship overseas. Whether the "money wasted" refers to the sunk costs on the display that now may be staying behind, or to her new medical expenses, is not clear, and neither her nor her label offered any additional information. But what is clear is that this is a pretty unsensational story that says nothing about the indie music world as a whole: international tours are big, complicated operations, and sometimes money runs low and plans have to change; our bodily health is a ticking time-bomb that can derail anyone's career in any walk of life. It's sad to see the naysayers brigade exploiting her personal struggle to spread doom and gloom about the modern music industry and the huge variety of opportunities that exist for the independent artist.

Let me start off by saying that I've been a longterm Nate Silver fan, back before he was the "fivethirtyeight" guy, and when he was just some random guy whose statistical models were helping my fantasy baseball team kick ass. And let me follow that up by noting that even more than being a Nate Silver fan, I'm a huge fan of statistics in general. I think that statistics should be a required class in school and that a combination of statistics and economics (the two go hand in hand) literacy (or lack thereof) is a major problem today, leading to numerous bad policy decisions. Finally, I've never been a fan (at all) of political punditry that focuses on the "horse race" aspect of politics. So, given all that, it has certainly been fun to follow the secondary storyline from last night -- which is how Nate Silver and his statistical genius "crushed" the pundits in predicting the election -- to the point that every single major press "pundit" was flat out wrong, and it looked like Silver had a perfect crystal ball. And, given how much Silver was attacked for being a "stats guy," (or for being biased, rather than neutral) you can certainly understand why it's tempting to wish he'd do something like Whitney McNamara's mock blog post: In many ways, I agree that yesterday was the "moneyball moment" in politics, in which the prognosticators were shown to be faulty, while the number crunchers were shown to be accurate. Hell, it was a much stronger example than the Moneyball case in baseball, which never had a "victory" quite as clearly aligned with the numbers.

Of course, if you look at what's happened to baseball since "Moneyball" and the success of the first statistical analysis guys, it should be a reminder that statistical prognostication is still about the probabilities -- and not about true predictions. And this is where the "suddenly-in-awe" pundits are still getting confused. They seem to think that Silver or other statistical modelers suddenly have a magic crystal ball with which they can predict the future. But probabilities and predictions are different, and Silver himself would likely admit (and, actually, did admit) that when you're dealing in probabilities, you're still going to be completely wrong some percentage of the time (he can even tell you what percentage of the time!) Even if the probabilities show a 90% likelihood that a certain event will happen, it still means that one time out of 10, you're going to be wrong.

Unfortunately, our brains don't deal that well with probabilities. We don't think in probabilities. Because we're dealing with a (mostly) binary situation, we assume that as soon as the probabilities tilt in our favor, it means that a "win" is somehow assured, and mentally, the probabilities turn into a prediction. It's very, very difficult for our brains not to think that way.

So I'm thrilled to see statistical analysis "win" over the moronic pundit-class who thinks that "storylines" or "momentum" (or, um, the ultimate in believing in anecdotes over data, "my friends see more yard signs" for one candidate) are valid methods for prognosticating. But it seems that the press, by going on to insist that Silver and his ilk are the new magic prognosticators, are missing the point just as much as those who thought the election could be predicted by political pundits.

Statistics is a tool for highlighting the probabilities. I'm sure that Nate Silver clones are going to be appearing a lot more on TV during the next major election cycles -- and I think that's a step forward. But now it seems like some people are expecting Silver and other stats guys to be right every time. And that's going to lead to backlash, just as the "failure" of Moneyball-type analysis to always get it exactly right resulted in some backlash in baseball. There will be data analysis in future election cycles -- likely from Silver himself -- that is wrong. That's the nature of probabilities. It will happen. And, unfortunately, people will then suddenly go back to arguing the opposite: that the stats geeks were "wrong."

But, as they say in the stats world, these are small sample size issues. Believing that statistical analysis is a perfect tool for predictions based on a single election is almost (though not quite) as weak as some of the traditional political punditry methods for predictions.

Hopefully, as with baseball, after a few years, the whole idea that these are entirely separate worlds will melt away. In baseball, every team now uses detailed statistical analysis as a tool, and most seem to understand that it suggests probabilities that help them find underexploited opportunities. But no one relies on it as a crystal ball that predicts the absolute future. Hopefully we'll reach that same sort of equilibrium in political analysis as well.

A few different folks have submitted variations on this story of singer Taylor Swift copying a single lyric from a singer for whom she'd long expressed admiration. That singer, Matt Nathanson, responded the way any normal person would: by being happy about the homage and recognizing how it might draw more attention... I'm sorry, what was I saying? I meant that he called one of his biggest fans, who just happens to be a hugely popular singer with a ridiculously loyal following, a thief. In case you were wondering:

Here’s the Taylor Swift line:

“And I forget about you long enough to forget why I needed to”

Here’s Matt Nathanson’s:

“And I’ll forget about you long enough to forget why I need to”

Considering that Swift has admitted that Nathanson is a personal favorite, and that she sometimes scribbles his lyrics on her arm before performing (?!?!?), it's unlikely to be a case that both of them came up with the lyric independently, though it's not exactly the most original lyric.

Either way, welcome to the latest edition of "ownership society" in which even an homage is attacked as "theft."

As we've noted, we've been avoiding stories about whatever "new" service Kim Dotcom is launching, because it all sounds like hype and vaporware to us. Until there's something real, it's all just rampant speculation, and it's a little silly how much adoration people have for an idea whose details have not been released at all. However, we will cover factual information related to the effort, and as was widely reported by others, the plan had been to use the domain name Me.ga. This had a few useful "features." First, it plays on the "mega" prefix that is so closely associated with Dotcom's offerings. Perhaps more importantly (at least, it's a key thing that many in the press covered), the .ga domain is not technically subject to control or seizure by the US (though, of course, SOPA/PIPA were intended to deal with just that kind of situation).

However, even without SOPA/PIPA, there is still the power of diplomatic pressure, and it didn't take long for the Communications Minister of Gabon to announce that the domain was being suspended:

"I have instructed my departments... to immediately suspend the site www.me.ga," announced Communication Minister Blaise Louembe, saying he wanted to "protect intellectual property rights" and "fight cyber crime effectively".

"Gabon cannot serve as a platform or screen for committing acts aimed at violating copyrights, nor be used by unscrupulous people," the minister said.

Of course, that seems pretty presumptuous on a number of levels. Since the service has not been launched -- and the actual details have not been revealed -- it's a bit premature to declare that the site must somehow violate intellectual property rights or be useful for cybercrime. And if government officials are stepping in to kill off cyberlockers based entirely on rumor and innuendo, will .ga block any other cyberlocker as well? Considering how popular such services are -- including those run by well-established companies like Amazon, Google and Dropbox -- it makes you wonder how Gabon decides who gets to use a .ga domain.

There may also be a separate issue at play here. As some have noted, the .ga top level domain is administered by Gabon Telecom, which just so happens to be a wholly owned subsidiary of Vivendi... the same company who owns the world's largest music label, Universal Music. I'm sure that's just a coincidence.

While people who just got into Congressional issues during the SOPA fight may have thought that Rep. Lamar Smith was Hollywood's favorite representative, that honor much more likely fell on Rep. Howard Berman -- who, for many years was Hollywood's guy in Congress (somewhat literally, as parts of Hollywood were covered by his district). There was, of course, no chance that Lamar Smith was going to lose his re-election campaign, as there were no serious challengers, but Berman was definitely a different story. Due to redistricting, his district was merged with another longterm Congressional Rep., Brad Sherman -- and the two had to face off. It turns out that Berman lost and Sherman won. Sherman, not surprisingly, also tends to support the entertainment industry's position on a lot of things, but never quite to the level of Berman over the years.

Another longterm favorite of the entertainment industry, Rep. Mary Bono Mack, who ushered in the ridiculous Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension and has been a regular supporter of the entertainment industry's crazier plans, has lost out in a very tight race.

As for Smith, he won his election to no one's surprise -- but the margin was actually a lot lower than I expected. He took it with 60% of the vote. In 2008 he had 80% of the vote and in 2010, 69% of the vote. It may not have been enough to tip the election, but perhaps young people in his district voted for internet freedom.

It was about five years ago that we first wrote about best selling author Paulo Coelho revealing that he was eagerly helping create pirate foreign translations of his books, and noting that sales of legitimate copies always seemed to increase whenever he did this -- initially pretending to be someone else, under the username "pirate coelho." The first time this happened was in Russia, where the Russian translation resulted in his books -- which had almost no market previously -- suddenly shot up into huge sales (from less than 1,000 to over 100,000). While he's seen similar success stories elsewhere, it really seems like the Russian ebook market is an interesting one to observe.

A bunch of you sent in a more recent story, written by author Peter Mountford, who published his first novel, A Young Man's Guide to Late Capitalism, in the spring of 2011. Not surprisingly, he had set up a Google alert about the book to see what people were saying about it. Eventually it led him to an online forum where a person in Russia kept asking for help translating key words and phrases -- sometimes with comic attempts to decipher idioms:

At one point, he indicated that he was struggling with “white-liberal guilt.” (Me too!, I wanted to chime in.) He postulated that white liberal guilt meant: “the guilt for consuming white substance (cocaine).”

At at first he assumed that it was a Russian speaker trying to understand the book, but when another forum member suggested the Russian guy (going by the name AlexanderIII) just enjoy the book without trying to understand every last word, AlexanderIII admitted that he was working for a publisher doing a translation. Mountford went through a range of emotions:

Holy crap, I thought, my book is going to be published in Russia! Then I remembered that no Russian publisher had acquired the rights, and realized that AlexanderIII must be translating it for some kind of book-pirating outfit.

In the U.S., book piracy is a growing problem. But Russia, I learned, has a remarkably mature black market for literature—particularly for ebooks, no doubt in part because the overhead is so low. Pirated books reportedly compose up to 90 percent of Russian ebook downloads. According to Rospechat, the state agency that regulates mass media, Russians have access to more than 100,000 pirated titles and just 60,000 legitimate titles, with illegal downloads costing legitimate vendors several billion rubles a year.

Of course, I wish one of Russia’s two major ebook publishers had given me a couple thousand dollars for the rights, but neither did. Like many novelists I know, I’m just happy to have people reading my work, whether they’re paying me for it or not. I’m also heartened that Russians care enough about reading to sustain a robust literary black market. In the U.S., you get the feeling that hardly anyone is creating pirated ebooks because—well, who’d buy such a thing?

He then became a voyeur of the translation attempt, debating whether or not to chime in on particularly bizarre guesses, though he's impressed that the rest of the community seemed to do a pretty good job. He actually expresses disappointment that AlexanderIII -- well before finishing the book -- moved on to another book:

In late March, a couple weeks into his work, AlexanderIII unceremoniously dropped my novel and began translating Dennis Lehane’s Gone, Baby, Gone. (A sample query: “Could you please help me out with a difficulty ... ‘you are on fucking angel dust.’ ”) I was shattered. Even my pirate translator had lost interest in my book. But in early July, Google Alerts informed me that AlexanderIII had dropped Lehane and returned to the good stuff.

Eventually he did reach out to AlexanderIII and offered help wherever needed. At first, as Mountford feared, AlexanderIII disappeared, but he did eventually email. It's unclear if Mountford then did assist AlexanderIII very much, but what's fascinating is that Mountford seems equally interested in understanding AlexanderIII's experience of puzzling his way through the book:

At one point in the novel, I describe my protagonist’s mother as having “a sentiment born of her cloying, overly maternal side.” AlexanderIII hypothesized that I had meant “a sentiment born of her memory about hardships of solitary life.” Though completely off base, he was drilling toward the character’s psychological core. I loved that. He misread the text, but he was wrestling with the sentences, much as I had wrestled with them originally.

The whole story is interesting, and it'll be worth seeing if Mountford follows it up with additional reporting on AlexanderIII or other translations in other countries.

As I've noted before, when I was first eligible to vote, the voter registration card required you to check off party affiliation. Along with the various parties, it had an option for "Independent." I actually found even that term to have certain connotations, and so I just left that section blank, and wondered what would happen. Eventually the state sent me confirmation of my voting status, and in the space for party affiliation it had typed out, in all capital letters: "BLANK." I thought that was great. Since then I've generally considered that to be my party affiliation: BLANK.

I tend to think that partisan politics is a big problem, and am always interested in truly independent politicians -- a few of whom always pop up every election season. This year, for example, we've got Angus King in Maine, who ran (and won) as an independent for the US Senate (as he had formerly done in winning governor of the state). I got to meet King earlier this year, and without being beholden to partisan lines on things, he seemed a lot more reasonable than many politicians on key issues. Plenty of other politicians I've met seem reasonable on certain issues, but also are often pressured to toe the party line on certain issues, even if they're apologetic about it.

In the end, the horse race "us vs. them" becomes more important than good governance, and that's a problem.

Google founder Sergey Brin seems similarly concerned about the state of partisan politics these days, noting that his "dread" about the latest election round had more to do with partisan politics, rather than any particular candidate. As such, he's urging politicians to drop out of their parties:

...no matter what the outcome, our government will still be a giant bonfire of partisanship. It is ironic since whenever I have met with our elected officials they are invariably thoughtful, well-meaning people. And yet collectively 90% of their effort seems to be focused on how to stick it to the other party.

So my plea to the victors -- whoever they might be: please withdraw from your respective parties and govern as independents in name and in spirit. It is probably the biggest contribution you can make to the country.

Wouldn't it be nice if we had politicians governing based on principles rather than on what will harm the other guys?

In a situation eerily similar to "always-on" DRM schemes, Razer mouse and keyboard purchasers are finding their high-end peripherals bricked by software that requires an internet connection to function.

So, why would a mouse need an internet connection to be usable? Well, it's supposed to be a feature, but it's behaving more like a bug. A forum member at Overclock.net explains the problem with his new ~$80 mouse:

This really took me by surprise. Just bought a new Naga 2012 mouse, installed the software and get greeted by a login screen right after. No option to bypass it to use the software to configure the mouse, set the options, sensitivity, shortcuts, macros etc.

So I go ahead and create an account and try to log in. Nothing. Try several more times, and still nothing. Try to make new accounts with different email addresses and it still wont work.

Finally call Razer who tells me the activation server is down, and I wont be able to use the mouse until it goes back up and will only be able to use it as a standard plug and play mouse til then. I ask about a workaround to use the mouse offline and they say there is none. Supposedly once the mouse is activated on the computer offline mode will work, but it needs to upload my profile and activate my account first and since their server is down its not going to happen. I ask for a supervisor to confirm this is the case and ask again for a workaround to use it offline. He said sorry theres nothing they can do, tells me the call center is closing and hangs up on me.

I'm pretty shocked Razer thought it was a good idea to do this to customers. Nowhere on the box does it say anything about needing an internet connection to "activate" a mouse. If the servers go down in the future, anyone who buys this mouse is out of luck.

The idea behind this unfortunate requirement is to save your gaming preferences for supported mice and keyboards to the cloud so the next time you're at a LAN party (assuming your LAN party lets you "dial out," so to speak), for example, you would just log in and retrieve your settings, rather than start from scratch on a new computer. Unfortunately, the execution is all effed up.

Synapse, the software driving the cloud setup, has both an online and offline mode. Unfortunately, you can't access the offline portion until you've registered your new hardware. This is a problem, especially when the company forcing you to create an account before you can use your mouse can't keep its servers up. Furthermore, if you're away from your own computer (with its offline settings synched) and without an internet connection, your mouse becomes useless again. And it's not just spotty internet connections that cause a problem. It's also other software.

If you work somewhere that has a network behind firewalls, chances are even though you can download the Synapse software, the firewall may also block you from activating and using the software as well.

As for Razer's suggested workaround ("standard plug and play")? No one spends $80 for a "plug and play" mouse (or over $300 with the keyboard -- which also requires a connection and an account). The FAQ for Synapse (required going forward for Razer's products) suggests that once your setup is complete, moving between online and offline modes will be a "seamless experience." The definition of "seamless" seems to vary from person to person.

If your connection drops out for any reason, the Synapse software will make a habit of locking up on you while it transitions to offline mode. During that time your settings may revert or possibly not be saved.

Google disagrees with Razer's definition of "seamless" as well. Searching for "Razer Synapse" autosuggests the following, which hardly inspires confidence.


Reviews of Razer hardware requiring Synapse haven't been too kind either (at least not to the software). Here's what the person shelling out nearly $400 for just a Razer keyboard has in store for them:

As of this writing the Razer Synapse driver software is easy to download and frustrating to use. Conceptually, it's great: download Synapse and create a free Razer account, then customize your peripherals and your settings will be saved to Razer servers automatically, meaning you can take your Razer gear anywhere and simply download Synapse to have access to your custom configuration. In practice, Synapse runs slowly and sports an unintuitive interface.

Most frustrating of all, during testing Synapse had a hard time reliably detecting Razer peripherals; while testing the DeathStalker Ultimate I had to install Razer Synapse three times across three different PCs, and each time I had problems convincing the software that I had in fact connected our review keyboard. I was able to solve the problem on all of our test machines by either rebooting the PC or reinstalling the software, but it was always a headache.

Fun stuff. All this hassle for a "seamless experience." Min-Liang Tan of Razer had this to say in defense of the Synapse software (via a Facebook post):

We invented onboard memory for gaming mice many years ago and called it Synapse to allow gamers to bring their profiles with them on the go. However, we realized that we ran into another issue where we had to keep increasing the amount of memory onboard to provide for more storage and this resulted in higher and higher prices for gamers.

We then invented Synapse 2.0 where we could provide almost limitless amount of storage for profiles, macros, etc in the cloud as opposed to being limited by physical memory.

We wanted to avoid raising prices to gamers for higher memory space onboard (think about it like having to buy bigger and bigger hard drives as opposed to having all your storage on the cloud) and provide a much better service for our users.

Synapse 2.0 is NOT DRM. Our products work perfectly well out of the box without Synapse 2.0. Synapse 2.0 provides ADDITIONAL functionality of almost limitless memory in the cloud as opposed to taking away functionality (which is what DRM is).

We recognize that gamers will want to be able to use their gear without an online connection, and that's why Synapse 2.0 has an OFFLINE mode. Basically you have to register, create an account, save your initial settings and if you so prefer, you can stay in offline mode all the time without going online.

I realize that we have had issues with the activation server, and we're making sure we get that sorted out.

First off, it would appear that Razer's products don't work perfectly well out of the box, seeing as they require activation and a registered account before settings can be tweaked. They make work as well as much, much cheaper plug-and-play peripherals but people don't buy Razer devices with the intention of using them like a $10 Kensington vanilla mouse. Second, claiming additional functionality is a bit rich when the software itself is too flaky to guarantee this additional functionality. "Limitless memory in the cloud" is only as good as the software connecting it to the user and, so far, it looks like Synapse 2.0 isn't getting it done reliably.

Third, while it's true that Synapse has an offline mode, it's completely unusable until everything else has been connected via registration. It would be preferable to have a choice before all the extra steps (register, create account, save settings, etc.), rather than be forced to utilize the online version first. (One helpful user of Overclock.net has helpfully posted a real workaround that allows Razer purchasers to use their peripherals and preferred settings, rather than settling for plug-and-play limitations.)

Last, if internal storage is so expensive, why are competitors able to keep their peripheral prices in line with Razer's while still offering the same options and functions? If the price is an object, why not give users the option to store their settings on something else equally portable, like a USB drive?

And then there's the data harvesting. This post at Overclock.net goes on at great length about Synapse's terms of service even though there's nothing really unusual about them. Razer wants as much data as it can get ahold of, much like any other company or online service. The difference here is that registration is forced, with the device pretty much held hostage until the purchaser jumps through all the hoops, hopefully dropping lots of usable information along the way.

Registration for computer hardware is nothing new, but for the most part, people could just indefinitely delay the process if they so chose, or eliminate it completely. I've installed hard drives, DVD writers, printers, etc., all of which asked me to register and voluntarily hand over personally identifiable information. Whether I did this or not had no effect on my usage of these products. Sure, anyone can fill out a form with a bunch of fake information, but Razer will still collect usage data and specific computer information from every computer it comes in contact with. Bringing your mouse with you to a LAN party and downloading the Synapse to access your settings just gives Razer more data to work with.

While some people are referring to this internet-connection-required aspect as "DRM," it really isn't. What it is though, is a consumer-unfriendly choice. If your customers are going to shell out $300+ for a keyboard, wouldn't you think they deserve more than one badly implemented "option?"

Perhaps its Razer's lack of an online help forum that has shielded it (until now) from the complaints of Synapse users. Sure, it has an email address for technical support, but most people probably consider that a last-ditch option at best and a customer service black hole at worst.

Bottom line: people loathe software that requires internet access to use. Pushing Synapse going forward doesn't necessarily make Razer a bad company, but the insistence that users log in and register first certainly plays right into its desire to collect information on its customers. Compounding this misstep with a party line that basically states "Synapse is great and works great" is a large step in the wrong direction. Razer claims to crafting a better user experience, but perhaps it should actually listen to its users, rather than telling them what they'll like and getting defensive when users express their displeasure.

Usually when I have the godly duty of writing about porn on this site, it has to do with a pornographic company acting (shockingly) nefarious. Maybe they're reaping millions in a judgment over a handful (unintentional innuendo) of films. Or else they're attacking speech using IP laws to silence critics of their jack-ass-ery. It might be very easy for readers to assume that pornographers as a whole (still unintentional, I swear) would be aligned against the philosophies and economics that we discuss every day. They're an easily painted "bad guy" for a host of social reasons.

But, as reader Flix alerts us, in the diverse population of pornographers, some of them do see the opportunities in the digital revolution. Such is the example of Peter Acworth (possibly NSFW, check your local listings), founder and CEO of Kink.com, who took part in a Reddit AMA. One of the first topics discussed was the impact of piracy on his business and what he plans to do about it.

Q: When its as easy as typing "the name of the movie" + torrent into google and getting at least a dozen sites that have the torrent. How do you deal with piracy of your videos?

PA: Good question!! We are investing heavily in live and social aspects of our products and then integrating them together. I.e. in the future you will join divinebitches.com, and that gets you the material, but also live shows with models, interactivity on their blogs, etc.

Note that he doesn't list off all the reasons why piracy is such a huge problem for him and his business. He just goes straight to how he's improving his business model to inoculate against piracy by supplying un-pirateable content, like live shows and connections/interactivity with models.

This is CwF + RtB at its core. Moreover, assuming the content he's supplying is of a quality that his customers enjoy, it's unbeatable. Sure, you can pirate the films if you like, but you forgoe the rest of the product. It's a wonderful response to all the boobs (okay, that one I did on purpose) shouting "you can't compete with free!"

Of course you can. Sell the customers something scarce in a way that also connects with them.

Last month, through all of the secrecy shrouding the Canada-EU Trade Agreement (CETA), it was revealed that the treaty called for the same criminal copyright sanctions that European citizens widely rejected when those same sanctions showed up in ACTA. This was just as people feared, and those who noticed were furious that the EU would try to quietly undo the public's ACTA victory so quickly and brazenly. Of course, the reaction to CETA is so far nowhere near the critical mass that led to the ACTA protests — but it looks like the negotiators are afraid of recent history repeating, and may just have gotten the message that they can't do whatever they want behind the public's back. TechCentral reports (found via The 1709 Blog) that more recent CETA documents reveal a weakening of the ACTA-like criminal provisions. There has even been some stance-softening from pro-ACTA powerhouse Karel De Gucht:

...according to documents from the Cyprus Presidency of the EU seen by IDG News Service, the CETA text has been greatly watered down in order to avoid a similar outcome [to ACTA]. The intellectual property protection chapter is now understood to say that countries "may" provide for criminal procedures and penalties.

Even European Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht, who pushed hard for the ACTA agreement, admits that changes must be made. "Since the negative vote of the European Parliament on ACTA, we have been changing the language obviously," he said in an interview with Vieuws.eu. "We should have no illusions, there are still a number of difficult issues to tackle."

Interestingly, though, there is still a strong push for CETA to include criminal sanctions for video recording in movie theaters... championed by Canadian negotiators. We've had a specific criminal law against recording a movie without permission of the theater owner in Canada since 2007 — a law that, like many of Canada's anti-piracy efforts, was primarily the result of U.S lobbying. This is typical of U.S. tactics when it comes to intellectual property law: push your closest friends and neighbors to adopt the strictest laws possible, then put pressure on international negotiations to export those laws around the globe and enshrine them as the norm. Thankfully, these latest leaked negotiation documents suggest that the EU is against Canada's proposal.