For many years now, we've covered how music publishers have gone after all sorts of sites that post song lyrics, arguing infringement. As we've noted time and time again, this whole thing seems short sighted in the extreme. Lyrics sites don't take away from interest in a song, they only increase it. And, yes, publishers have different interests than the musicians or labels, but it still seems counterproductive to sue and take down sites that were increasing interest in the actual music, as lyrics sites do. Unfortunately, lots of lyrics sites have been forced offline because the rates the publishers want are insane. A few years ago, a bunch of publishers went after Brad Greenspan's LiveUniverse for its lyrics offerings. Greenspan -- who was associated with MySpace in the early days as its parent company Intermix's CEO -- has, well, a colorful history. He's spent many years stamping his feet about how Rupert Murdoch should have paid more for MySpace back in the day.

Unfortunately, colorful and extreme CEOs aren't necessarily what you want in a lawsuit that involves a number of important issues. From the look of it, Greenspan did a lot more harm to himself in this lawsuit with his actions, so it's little surprise that he lost and was told to pay $6.6 million a few weeks ago:

Greenspan went through three law firms. One withdrew, citing a "personality conflict." Another withdrew, citing nearly $85,000 in owed fees and a "breakdown in the attorney-client relationship." At times, he showed up in court, representing himself and failing to obey proper procedures in submitting motions. At other times, depositions were ignored upon "medical emergencies."

Later on, after the court ordered an injunction, Greenspan ignored it -- a big no-no. As a result, it's almost surprising that the final ruling was only $6.6 million. The judge, thankfully, more or less realized on his own that the $100,000 per song that the publishers were asking for was crazy talk. He specifically asked about what actual licensing rates would have been, "to avoid a ridiculously disproportionate damage award" -- even though statutory damages don't require any indication of "actual" damages. Of course, they still ended up with $12,500 per song for 528 songs, leading to the $6.6 million verdict embedded below.

The whole case, however, reminds us once again how shortsighted the legacy players in the industry are. They seek to get cash out of every single use, even if those uses make the overall work more valuable. The end result is fewer people engaging with lyrics. It's just too expensive, and that serves to generate less interest in the music as a whole. But, it gets some publishers a short term big check, and that seems to be the extent of strategic thinking in parts of the legacy industry these days: "how can we get them to pay us right now?" rather than "what actually makes the most sense?"

That may sound like an exaggeration, but it's not. Remember, when now-Sony Music (then Universal Music) boss Doug Morris basically made exactly that statement? When asked about increasing value to benefit down the road, Morris responded by telling a reporter that this just meant that:

"someone, somewhere is taking advantage of you."

The legacy music industry needs long term strategic thinking. And instead it just looks for who it can sue.

A teenaged hacker known as Cosmo the God, who was involved in a number of big site takedowns earlier this year, and who is considered a "social engineering mastermind" has been sentenced to probation. The terms include a ban on internet access until his 21st birthday, six years from now, according to a Wired article by Mat Honan. For many years, we've questioned whether or not it's reasonable (or even practical) to ban people from the internet for computer related crimes. It seems not only stupid and counterproductive, but just plain bizarre. The internet is so integrated into our lives these days that taking the internet out of your life is a lot more complicated than some might imagine.

Can you still use a voice over IP phone system to make a phone call? What about using an internet-connected kiosk at a store to order something? The terms here seem particularly broad and overreaching -- the kind of requirements that people who don't really live on the internet would think are reasonable without realizing what they're doing to him:

However, according to Cosmo, the terms of the plea place him on probation until his 21st birthday. During that time, he cannot use the internet without prior consent from his parole officer. Nor will he be allowed to use the Internet in an unsupervised manner, or for any purposes other than education-related ones. He is required to hand over all of his account logins and passwords. He must disclose in writing any devices that he has access to that have the capability to connect to a network. He is prohibited from having contact with any members or associates of UG Nazi or Anonymous, along with a specified list of other individuals. He had to forfeit all the computers and other items seized in the raid on his home. Also, according to Cosmo, violating any of these terms will result in a three-year prison term.

Since this is a plea bargain, it sounds like he's accepted those terms, but it seems fairly crazy. Honan talks with an attorney who finds the situation ridiculous:

“Ostensibly they could have locked him up for three years straight and then released him on juvenile parole,” Jay Leiderman, a Los Angeles attorney who has represented alleged members of Anonymous and LulzSec, told Wired. “But to keep someone off the Internet for six years — that one term seems unduly harsh. You’re talking about a really bright, gifted kid in terms of all things Internet. And at some point after getting on the right path he could do some really good things. I feel that monitored Internet access for six years is a bit on the hefty side. It could sideline his whole life–his career path, his art, his skills. At some level it’s like taking away Mozart’s piano.”

Furthermore, we've seen numerous such internet bans tossed out for being rights violations. Sure, the guy broke the law, and should be punished for that. But banning him from the internet for six years seems to go way beyond what's reasonable.

After the jury decision in the Apple/Samsung patent fight in the US came out, lots of people pointed to statements from the foreman of the jury, Vel Hogan, that raised serious questions about Hogan's understanding of the legal issues at play, especially pertaining to prior art. It also suggested possible bias. Still, even with all of that, it's very, very difficult to get a jury ruling thrown out on jury misconduct -- but Samsung has unveiled one bit of info that Judge Lucy Koh has now agreed to review: whether or not Hogan needed to reveal that he had a legal dispute with Seagate, a former Hogan employer, who is also a major strategic partner of Samsung. Koh is also asking Apple's lawyers to reveal if they knew this info, which Samsung's lawyers did not.

At the December 6, 2012 hearing, the Court will consider the questions of whether the jury foreperson concealed information during voir dire, whether any concealed information was material, and whether any concealment constituted misconduct. An assessment of such issues is intertwined with the question of whether and when Apple had a duty to disclose the circumstances and timing of its discovery of information about the foreperson.

While this is an interesting move, and worth watching, I doubt much will come out of it. Hogan did admit that he'd had legal issues in the past with a former employer, but no one delved into who or why.

During voir dire, Hogan did disclose that he had been involved in litigation with a former partner when the judge asked him if he had ever been involved in litigation.

Hogan has noted, in response to Samsung's allegations, that the judge didn't ask for a complete listing of all the lawsuits he had been involved with.

Again, most of this aspect is just a sideshow to the eventual long series of appeals that will come in this case -- and I doubt that the judge will find misconduct here. But just the fact that judge is considering it makes it worth following.

Who hasn't sampled some grapes at the grocery store before buying a bunch? That's a pretty minor theft, and presumably one that stores take into account when they're pricing grapes. The really big problems are when huge amounts of food go missing. Recently, there have been a few bizarre food-related heists, and in case you missed them, here they are.

• Over 80,000 pounds of walnuts were stolen in California -- possibly by a delivery driver with a distinct Russian accent. Rocky and Bullwinkle think they know who to investigate.... [url]
• A stolen food truck in Florida was recovered -- in a crazy guy's backyard as part of some kind of doomsday-type bunker. The police commented that it's okay to build doomsday bunkers in your backyard, but just don't make them out of stolen vehicles and equipment. [url]
• This summer, Canada's strategic maple syrup reserves were raided by thieves, making off with about $30 million worth of the sugary condiment. Thankfully, they recovered 600-800 barrels of it in New Brunswick and have it under police protection. An investigation is still on-going to find out who could be behind such a sickly sweet score. [url]

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

We've already covered how Apple got in a bit of trouble with a judge in the UK for its childish way of posting a statement on its website saying that Samsung didn't copy Apple with its devices. Apple then tried to claim it would take two weeks to fix, but when the court made it clear that was ridiculous, Apple miraculously figured out a way to comply -- though people quickly pointed out that it used some javascript to push the notice down the page. Then, without saying anything, Apple stopped using that javascript.

Perhaps it's because Apple is finally realizing that the UK judge was really furious at Apple for its handling of this whole situation. The full ruling from the judge that made Apple change the statement has been released, and it shows that the court sees that Apple is dragging its feet and doing everything it can to avoid fully complying. Furthermore, it directly calls out the original statement for providing "false and misleading" information. As some UK court observers noted, the judges are clearly not happy with Apple, which seemed to think its standard reality distortion field might work on judges as well as the public.

The Navy SEALs, specifically SEAL Team 6, forever cemented their already laudible place in American history when they killed former public enemy number one Osama bin Laden. Since then, their notoriety has landed the special forces group in the news several times, whether it was when Disney attempted to trademark their name (and later dropped it), or the controversey over a former SEAL releasing a book about the bin Laden raid.

Now, unfortunately, seven active duty members of SEAL Team 6, including one that was on the bin Laden raid, will effectively have their military careers ended for consulting with Electronic Arts on their recently released Medal of Honor: Warfighter game without having the work authorized by the Navy.

The seven were charged with the unauthorized showing of their official combat gear and dereliction of duty for disclosing classified material after an investigation found the seven to have worked as paid consultants for two days with the video game company Electronic Arts, according to a U.S. Navy official familiar with the investigation.

The seven, all senior enlisted sailors, received their punishment Thursday at their base in Virginia. All seven were given a letter of reprimand and their pay taken for two months. The move essentially prevents their chances for promotion and ends their military careers.

Even knowing as little as I do about being a Navy SEAL, it's difficult to critique the Navy brass for being upset. The showing of gear and unauthorized consulting may not seem like a huge deal to civilians, but SEAL Team 6 enjoys the absolute front line of the latest and greatest equipment the Navy deploys. In fact, the technical name for the group is actually the US Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU). Showing off the highly classified gear they use is a big deal.

That said, it's sad to see the careers of 7 SEALs ended over this, but it will also be interesting to see if this story Streisands EA's recently released game into skyrocketing sales.

You may recall that back when AT&T was trying to buy T-Mobile, a big part of the argument was a spectrum crunch around its wireless efforts. The company insisted -- strenuously -- that it would not be able to expand 4G LTE services to more than 80% of the population unless it had T-Mobile. That argument ran into some trouble when a lawyer accidentally posted some documents to the FCC which admitted that the company could fairly easily expand its coverage to 97% of the population of the US without T-Mobile (and, in fact, that it would cost about 10% of what buying T-Mobile would cost). Suddenly, the argument that it absolutely needed T-Mobile rang hollow -- even as the company continued to insist exactly that. Still, the FCC suddenly was skeptical and AT&T, seeing the writing on the wall, gave up on the merger.

So, it probably shouldn't have been seen as much of a surprise that just 11 months after the T-Mobile deal fell through, AT&T has announced plans to expand its LTE footprint to cover 97% of the population of the US. In other words, the internal document was exactly correct, and AT&T's public claims? Hogwash.

Even the mainstream news media is now mocking AT&T's obviously bogus claims during the merger fight. AT&T's response to this is to claim that it "chartered a new direction," doing something like 40 new deals for spectrum. However, as Broadband Reports notes, all of this seems to make clear that there is no spectrum crunch -- that's just a bogeyman story that the telcos tell the government when they want a handout. In fact, AT&T is now saying publicly that there is no spectrum crunch. It has more than enough.

Speaking to analysts, AT&T's chief strategy officer John Stankey yesterday acknowledged the company is now well-positioned on the spectrum front -- even before the company starts moving on their new plan to use WCS spectrum for LTE deployment.

"Even under ideal circumstances, getting new spectrum on the market in the next five to seven years is aggressive," Stankey said. "But what we do know is that AT&T is well-positioned now...These deals give us confidence that we can meet our LTE objectives for next two years and they will allow us to deliver competitive performance."

Of course, I'm sure the next time AT&T needs something from the government, or wants to wipe a competitor off the map, we'll be right back to that story about how they're in desperate need of spectrum.

The UN's Internet Governance Forum had a gathering to discuss rethinking copyright, in which WIPO made the case that it should lead "multi-stakeholder" discussions on how to reform copyright. WIPO, of course, has a history of having a rather one-sided view of copyright and who the "stakeholders" are. But now, it insists that it can hear all voices:

Trevor Clarke, assistant director general for the Culture and Creative Industries Sector of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), said during a workshop on “Rethinking Copyright” today that the multi-stakeholder environment is “the best and and most appropriate” when it comes to the debate on copyright in the digital age. WIPO is preparing for such multi-stakeholder discussions, Clarke told Intellectual Property Watch.

Clarke said the WIPO director general and secretariat has added their voices to the call for a reexamination of the copyright system and have not shied away from the fact that some aspects of the law need to be revisited. Not only law, but also culture and infrastructure of the system, have to be considered, he underlined. Member state positions vary considerably on the issues, and it would make sense to include the private sector and also civil society into the talks, he said, adding, “We need that dialogue.”

While it's nice to "include the private sector and also civil society," that's really ignoring the larger point. The only real "stakeholder" in copyright is the public. The private sector may be beneficiaries, but the system is supposed to benefit the public. And while "civil society" may represent the public in some areas, which is helpful, it seems that any real discussion on reforming copyright should be very, very open to the public.

Yet that never seems to be suggested by anyone.

And, really, when you look at what's happening in reality vs. what's happening in these discussions, you realize that the public has already made its position pretty clear. People are more than willing to pay for a certain amount of content if it's convenient and not hindered/locked down. They're willing to pay for content when they know they're directly supporting artists they love. They're willing to pay. But, if things are annoying and limited, expensive or inconvenient, they certainly might take matters into their own hands. On top of that, certain aspects of copyright law seem quaint or simply so unrealistic that they're consistently ignored (such as with people making mashups and videos and the like). Yet, no one seems to want to address how the public is actually dealing with all of this, preferring to try to make up new rules based on artificial claims about copyright.

There's no need for "multistakeholder" debates when the public has already said "here's the deal: offer us what we want and we'll pay and everyone's happy." The job of any governing organization right now should be to stop ignoring the public and start paying attention.

Here's a scenario for you: at some point in the the near future, you sit down in front of your Xbox 720/960/1080 and queue up a little video-on-demand from the Live Arcade selection of movies. You select a film from the menu and, before you can press the "Play" button, you are greeted with another menu giving you several price points, depending on how many people will be watching.

It sounds ridiculous, but Microsoft has applied for a patent covering a method that could make this a reality. Geekwire (via Slashdot) has the details on a patent application utilizing the Kinect (or its successor) to count noses for content providers.

The patent application, filed under the heading “Content Distribution Regulation by Viewing User,” proposes to use cameras and sensors like those in the Xbox 360 Kinect controller to monitor, count and in some cases identify the people in a room watching television, movies and other content. The filing refers to the technology as a “consumer detector.”

In one scenario, the system would then charge for the television show or movie based on the number of viewers in the room. Or, if the number of viewers exceeds the limits laid out by a particular content license, the system would halt playback unless additional viewing rights were purchased.

While it's a little early in the process to decide whether this is actually a pursuit Microsoft deems worthy of implementing or just some brainstorming put on paper, there's no denying that media companies and content providers would certainly not mind at all if an enterprising group could create something that would allow them to monetize every eyeball in the house.
 

While Kinect hackers have managed to crank out some very interesting uses of the body-tracking technology, it looks as though the in-house team has something a bit more devious up its collective sleeve. With this in place, PPV events could move to the Xbox to get the most bang for their buck during prize fights and MMA bouts. Movies rented through XBLA (Xbox Live Arcade) could rake in even more money by charging for each additional set of eyeballs, leading to Xbox owners treating their own living rooms like drive-ins and sneaking in additional viewers through piles of coats lying strategically on the floor.

Every use may not be as mercenary as the above scenario, however. The Kinect "Consumer Detector" could also prevent younger (or at least, shorter) eyeballs from being sullied by R-rated movies or, god forbid, porn.

The system could also take into account the age of viewers, limiting playback of mature content to adults, for example. This patent application doesn’t explain how that would work, but a separate Microsoft patent application last year described a system for using sensors to estimate age based on the proportions of their body.

Unfortunately, this will prevent pornstar midgets from viewing porn, but please, let's think of the children, each of whom represents a potential income stream.

The intro paragraph of the application lends itself to use for many different royalty collecting entities. In addition to the mentioned Pay Per View/Video-on-Demand possibilities, there's also performance rights organizations to be considered, because once you start talking licenses, they're never far behind.

A method of distributing content to a user, comprising: providing a selection of content available to the user; for each content, presenting a licensing option comprising associating a performance of the content with an individual user's consumption of the content at a display device; receiving a selection of one of the content and a license display option for said content; presenting the content to the display device if a number of user performances allowed for the content is equal to or less than the license option for which the selection is received; and monitoring the presentation of the content at the device to determine the number of users consuming the content during the performance.

This description, along with the methods listed below it in the filing, seem to indicate that your fully-paid and relatively peaceful viewing of a movie or prize fight could come to an instant halt and ask you to feed the meter any time someone new walks into the room. Or better yet, the new system could push already-strained friendships to the limit. "Oh, hey. I'd invite you in but I'm only got enough money for five people. Sorry, man. Maybe next time." AWKWARD.

But beyond the fact that this patent, if granted and implemented, will create a whole new level of rent-seeking across a wide swath of the "creative industries," there's also privacy issues that need to be addressed. Does any company, whether it's Microsoft or any of the upstream content providers, have the right to basically scan your living room for signs of life simply because they're the one licensing the content? For that matter, is it any of their business how many people you have watching a movie or listening to music in your private residence? It certainly never has been before, but with the advent of digital distribution (and its accompanying "licenses"), the attempts to wring every last dollar out of every bit of content will continue.

Will "buying for five but watching for ten" become the new "piracy?" Pursuing this angle isn't going to make Microsoft any friends, at least not in terms of customers. Consumers' first reaction would probably be to toss the "Consumer Detector," in which case it's not difficult to imagine it becoming a mandatory piece of equipment for certain applications. After that, for consumers concerned about this, their only option would be to toss the Xbox. I don't think Microsoft has enough confidence in the future of its console line to take that chance.

Or maybe it's got nothing to do with the console. Maybe it's some groundwork for the new "Cloud TV" service Microsoft inadvertently announced via a job posting.

 Microsoft is known for revealing additional product details in job postings, but a new round of listings has unveiled a brand new TV service. Described as a "Cloud-based TV platform," Microsoft is looking to hire engineers to build client applications for the service. LiveSide spotted several job postings related to Cloud TV recently that tempt job candidates to "get in on the ground floor of an ambitious new project."

Combining this with the above patent opens up the possibility that Microsoft could be crafting the content delivery system that watches you back, delivering headcounts to media companies and cutting off customers who violate the license terms by exceeding the limits declared by the copyright holder. At this point, the whole setup is full of easily exploitable holes. The odds of this coming to market are extremely low, if for no other reason than the potential backlash against any company involved. But it's not impossible, either. There are many rent-seekers in the content market and many of them have never shied away from a new source of income just because it might be unpopular. (At least, not at first. Many have walked back ideas due to public outcry, but they rarely seem to discard bad ideas before trying to implement them first.) Microsoft doesn't seem to share the same enthusiasm for angering the public to make incremental gains, but its design team has crafted a handy backdoor for a whole new level of IP enforcement—one that will only widen the gap between what consumers feel are acceptable limitations and what the content industries believe they should be.

Obviously some of the following may be biased by the hindsight view of who won and who lost -- but it's fascinating to see two very, very different stories emerge about the technology/data teams involved in the two major party presidential campaigns. Right after the election, Time published an account of a massive and extremely sophisticated datacrunching team working to get President Obama re-elected.

The new megafile didn’t just tell the campaign how to find voters and get their attention; it also allowed the number crunchers to run tests predicting which types of people would be persuaded by certain kinds of appeals. Call lists in field offices, for instance, didn’t just list names and numbers; they also ranked names in order of their persuadability, with the campaign’s most important priorities first. About 75% of the determining factors were basics like age, sex, race, neighborhood and voting record. Consumer data about voters helped round out the picture. “We could [predict] people who were going to give online. We could model people who were going to give through mail. We could model volunteers,” said one of the senior advisers about the predictive profiles built by the data. “In the end, modeling became something way bigger for us in ’12 than in ’08 because it made our time more efficient.”

Early on, for example, the campaign discovered that people who had unsubscribed from the 2008 campaign e-mail lists were top targets, among the easiest to pull back into the fold with some personal attention. The strategists fashioned tests for specific demographic groups, trying out message scripts that they could then apply. They tested how much better a call from a local volunteer would do than a call from a volunteer from a non–swing state like California. As Messina had promised, assumptions were rarely left in place without numbers to back them up.

Compare that, then, to the data driven efforts on the Romney side. First, the campaign ignored all the public polls that turned out to be fairly accurate and plugged in a bunch of their own assumptions when looking at key variables, all of which made them believe they had a stronger position than it turned out they had. But, much more interesting are the stories coming out about ORCA, the Romney campaign's secret computerized weapon in the "get out the vote" effort. It's like the exact opposite of the description of the Obama campaign's data tool.

Romney campaign volunteer John Ekdahl's description of how poorly planned out ORCA was is a must-read. It really sounds like the team there didn't do much testing, and failed to consider how the system would work under load. From the explanations, it also sounds like they didn't do much usability testing, or even think through some basic use cases. It sounds as though either the Romney team didn't think ORCA was ready or they didn't want to "reveal" it until the last minute to avoid tipping their hand to Obama's campaign. The night before the election, they sent volunteers who were supposed to be poll watchers a huge PDF with instructions -- expecting them to print it out, which isn't so easy for everyone these days. They also forgot to tell them they needed to get and bring their "poll watcher certificate" to polling places. And they didn't release the actual app until 6am on election day, giving volunteers no time at all to learn how it worked (or to report bugs).

Now a note about the technology itself. For starters, this was billed as an "app" when it was actually a mobile-optimized website (or "web app"). For days I saw people on Twitter saying they couldn't find the app on the Android Market or iTunes and couldn't download it. Well, that's because it didn't exist. It was a website. This created a ton of confusion. Not to mention that they didn't even "turn it on" until 6AM in the morning, so people couldn't properly familiarize themselves with how it worked on their personal phone beforehand.

Next, and this part I find mind-boggingly absurd, the web address was located at "https://www.whateveritwas.com/orca". Notice the "s" after http. This denotes it's a secure connection, something that's used for e-commerce and web-based email. So far, so good. The problem is that they didn't auto-forward the regular "http" to "https" and as a result, many people got a blank page and thought the system was down. Setting up forwarding is the simplest thing in the world and only takes seconds, but they failed to do it. This is compounded by the fact that mobile browsers default to "http" when you just start with "www" (as 95% of the world does).

By 2PM, I had completely given up. I finally got ahold of someone at around 1PM and I never heard back. From what I understand, the entire system crashed at around 4PM. I'm not sure if that's true, but it wouldn't surprise me. I decided to wait for my wife to get home from work to vote, which meant going very late (around 6:15PM). Here's the kicker, I never got a call to go out and vote. So, who the hell knows if that end of it was working either.

A different report points to similarly massive problems with other aspects of ORCA, including handing out the wrong PINs, making the app useless in Colorado (and possibly elsewhere):

Then at 6PM they admitted they had issued the wrong PINs to every volunteer in Colorado, and reissued new PINs (which also didn't work). Meanwhile, counties where we had hundreds of volunteers, such as Denver Colorado, showed zero volunteers in the system all day, but we weren't allowed to add them. In one area, the head of the Republican Party plus 10 volunteers were all locked out. The system went down for a half hour during peak voting, but for hundreds or more, it never worked all day. Many of the poll watchers I spoke with were very discouraged. Many members of our phone bank got up and left.

Once again, I'm sure that the Obama system wasn't nearly as perfect and all-knowing as the Time article describes. Nor was the Romney system a total disaster as described in those links -- but it is fascinating to see these stories emerge following the election. Given the Obama win, along with these stories about that datacrunching effort and the worldwide reverence towards Nate Silver, you can bet that everyone gunning for the 2016 nomination is going to spend some time trying to build up a killer technical/data team.

We've linked to the blog, PhotographyIsNotACrime.com (PINAC), a few times in the past (it recently moved locations). Its author, Carlos Miller, not only covered a number of cases involving photographers being arrested or harassed for photographing buildings, police or something else, but was a defendant in just such a case himself. Miller was arrested back in January while videotaping police at an "Occupy Miami" event. Not only was he arrested, but his camera was confiscated and the police deleted footage from the camera -- including footage of the encounter that led to his arrest. The police claimed that Miller had disobeyed an order by the police to "clear the area." However, the videotaped footage -- which Miller was able to recover despite the deletion -- showed a different story. It showed a clearly-aware-of-his-rights Miller making the case that he was doing nothing wrong. Furthermore, other journalists were allowed to stay in the area, and one of those journalists, Miami Herald reporter Glenn Garvin, testified at the trial about how he was allowed to stay. In fact, he went to the officer who arrested Miller and asked her if he needed to move, and she told him he was "under no threat of getting arrested."

It also turned out that police were specifically on the lookout for Miller:

An e-mail disclosed during the trial showed the police had been monitoring Miller's Facebook page and had sent out a notice warning officers in charge of evicting the Occupy Miami protestors that Miller was planning to cover the process.

Given all that, it's not too surprising that the jury wasted little time in finding him not guilty. But the case isn't over just yet. Miller is vowing to sue, claiming the arrest and (attempted) deletion from his camera violated his constitutional rights. And he's got some precedent on his side. As we've noted, Boston recently had to pay Simon Glik $170,000 after an appeals court ruled, in a similar case, that his arrest for filming police was a violation of the First and Fourth Amendments -- though that was based on wiretap laws, so it was slightly different. Either way, Miller's follow up suit should be worth watching.

If you follow the "hot viral video of the week" you probably have seen or heard about Sam Gordon, the 9-year-old girl who is pretty damn good at football, (the American kind for all you foreigners), as shown in an impressive highlight reel her father put together: As tends to happen with these sorts of things, Sam was everywhere this week, with all sorts of press coverage including appearances on morning TV shows and such.

Just one problem. The original video had all sorts of famous songs in it:

Without the music in that video — Jane’s Addiction covering The Doors’ “LA Woman” and The Germs’ “Lexicon Devil” (as part of a medley) and the Beastie Boys’ “Soul Fire” (also in a sense a cover) — this video wouldn’t be nearly as effective, and thus not as viral. Her father Brent Gordon, who originally uploaded the video, chose these songs because they are exactly what this video needs. As any Hollywood director knows, pairing the right music with any video makes it way more effective.

Normally, the Beastie Boys, Jane’s Addiction, The Germs, and The Doors could choose to get paid when a video with their music goes viral like this. But that does not appear to be the case here, at this point anyway.

Sure enough, soon after people started pointing that out -- and even though the video had something like 2 million views lined up already, it went down due to a copyright claim. It looks like ContentID showed up late, because the "takedown" mentions a bunch of possible copyright holders, without saying who made the final call: After all that, Sam's father, Brent changed the music to something that wouldn't get pulled down -- though people are already complaining that the new music is "lame."

We’re pleased to see that the video is online, because that Sam Gordon is a sight to behold, with amazing moves and no small amount of moxie, which is the main reason people liked the video so much. But it’s a shame that the music is now so bad that we couldn’t even make it through one viewing without muting it. With the other soundtrack, I ended up watching it five times in a row.

And thus it was proven for the umpteenth time that A) The right music makes all the difference in a video, and B) Copyright, while necessary, tends to rain on parades, especially when multiple rights-holders get involved.

Of course, depending on your general position in this debate, you can make one of two arguments here. The copyright hardliners will say that this proves the importance of good music and that Gordon should have paid up in the first place. Those who find problems with today's copyright system will note that it's not like your average person is going to even be able to license, let alone want to pay for, songs to stick on a video like this (especially without knowing that it's about to go crazy viral). The music industry could make this easier with a simple database / store option ("want this song for your non-commercial video? $1 -- click here to buy the license") but they don't seem to want to do that. So, instead, we get this situation where no one wins. The video has crappy music. The good music providers don't get paid. How is that a good solution?

Internal memos from large companies leak all the time. It happens. Companies don't like it, but most learn to deal with it. Sometimes, they go a bit nuts. For example, you may remember the spying scandal at HP, in which the board tried to stop leaks by spying on phone records and other info, including trying to spy on various journalists. Apparently some companies just go a bit nutty when they think they have someone to track down, where execs suddenly think they can act like they're in some sort of spy movie. Apparently this is now happening at Cisco as well. A few weeks ago, Network World reported on Cal State's decision to use Alcatel-Lucent instead of Cisco, claiming that it saved the university $100 million. As is fairly typical at companies when such bad news is in the press, an internal memo was sent around on how to respond to questions about this story. And... as is fairly typical at such companies, the internal memo leaked to bloggers who posted it. The memo itself is fairly tame and about what you'd expect given the situation.

But... then, apparently, a VP at Cisco, Mike Quinn, got upset about the leak... and proceeded to send out an angry email telling the leaker to resign, and saying if he doesn't resign, that "finding you is now my hobby." And, of course, that new letter leaked to the same sources:

This is an open response to the person(s) that sent our internal confidential memo regarding the RFP response noted in the Subject line. I want to advise you that no matter the color of your badge (blue or red), the years of service and or your CPC rating you have decided to violate the Code of Business Conduct. The company in response to a number of requests to share internally what our RFP contained once again is insulted by the lack of respect for the business and "family" internal to Cisco. The person or persons whom felt it was cool or correct to share this internal memo should now have the intestinal fortitude to stand up and admit that they did this, then resign.

I want you to remember that Cisco puts the groceries on your table every two weeks, not Brad Reese or other Slander Sheet Journalists. That you disrespected everyone else at Cisco. Now I know you do not have it in you to stand up and admit what you did, so I will now make you my "hobby." Ask around you will find out that I like to work on my hobbies.

Mike Quinn Vice President - Services Cisco Systems

And, if that doesn't sound quite threatening enough, people quickly pointed out that in the distant past, Quinn worked for the CIA.

The amazing thing about all of this is that all it's done is call much more attention to the whole thing. If they'd just let that initial leak go, it would have been mostly forgotten in a few days and people would have moved on. But now because someone went on a power trip, it's right back in the news again.

The threat posed to Germany's underground club scene by all-around IP thug GEMA is no longer just a threat. Back in July, GEMA decided to "streamline" its convoluted fee structure. Naturally, it decided to smooth things over in a upward motion, raising the fees charged to these clubs by up to 1,400%. This sparked protests against GEMA's tactics and a petition with 60,000 signatures was brought to the Deutsches Bundestag (Germany's parliament). Unfortunately, the Deutsches Bundestag punted, suggesting those unhappy with the new fee structure negotiate directly with GEMA. [However you spell "LOL" in German goes here.]

The petition itself deployed an interesting tactic, targeting the legality of the "GEMA presumption."

The petition, which began circulating in August, specifically protested the so-called "GEMA presumption," i.e. GEMA's method of deciding tariffs for clubs and festivals based on the assumption that they own rights to 100% of the music being played there. The reasoning behind this is that it would be too difficult to sort out which tracks were or weren't written by GEMA members. This method is part of what allows GEMA to decide their tariffs based purely on the amount of space in a venue and the duration of its events, without necessarily knowing what music was played.

Not much of a "method," is it? It's exactly what the protestors call it: "presumption." Rather than make any attempt to even make a ballpark guess at the percentage of music GEMA might actually be able to collect on, GEMA has bullied its way to a supremely privileged position that allows it to claim tariffs on 100% of any music played in nearly any venue. The duration of the events works against the underground clubs as well, as their extended hours drastically increase the fees GEMA collects.

The audacity of this claim (and the unwillingness to do any legwork) is astounding. Whatever hold GEMA has over the government, and by extension, Germany's music consumption, far surpasses the power of other PROs, labels and IP groups around the world.

Resident Advisor points out that this isn't the first time GEMA's "presumption" has been challenged.

The GEMA presumption has been contested before. One study by Berlin's Club Commission sampled everything that was played at Berlin clubs like Watergate and Weekend over one weekend, and found that as many as 35% of the records played were unknown to GEMA...

While GEMA could still claim that its artists provide a larger share of the records played in these clubs, it's still a long walk from 65% to 100%, that latter percentage being what determines the fees assessed. Unfortunately, the Bundestag sided with GEMA in this earlier action, stating that any alternative would be "too cumbersome" for the PRO to utilize for its collection efforts.

This second concession to GEMA by the Bundestag effectively allows GEMA to set rates with impunity and frees it from having to determine actual music usage. In addition to granting GEMA even more power, it likely dooms several iconic Berlin clubs to extinction, thanks to rate increases that reflect only GEMA's self-serving "streamlining" rather than the actual music played or the clubs' actual income.

Organizations like GEMA are supposedly "protecting artists" by imposing these fees. There's some "protection" going on here, but it's got nothing to do with art.

India's somewhat schizophrenic relationship with privacy and freedom of speech has been discussed here before. The Indian government, on one hand, seems to want to do the right thing and safeguard its citizens from censorship and surveillance... but only up to a point. Once the going gets rough (i.e., outbreaks of violence, demonstrations), the government begins ramping up its surveillance and cracking down on free speakers.

Given this background, it's a bit surprising to hear that India has only just recently chalked up its first Twitter-related arrest. After all, the UK and the US have been doing it for years already. The person on the receiving end of this unfortunate record-setting event made the mistake of criticizing a politician (of course).

On 20 October, he (Ravi Srinivasan) posted a tweet to his 16 followers saying that Karti Chidambaram, a politician belonging to India's ruling Congress party and son of Finance Minister P Chidambaram, had "amassed more wealth than Vadra".

He was alluding to Robert Vadra, son-in-law of Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi, who was at the centre of a political row after allegations over his links with a top Indian property firm.

This message ("got reports that karthick chidambaram has amassed more wealth than vadra") went out to all of 16 followers and somehow found its way to Karti himself, who responded like anyone else would when mildly insulted: by contacting law enforcement...

Karti Chidambaram (@KartiPC) did not take the tweet in good humour and filed a police complaint on 29 October.

… which immediately responded with the sort of speed reserved for appeasing angry politicians.

They arrested Mr Srinivasan early next morning, charged him under Section 66A of India's Information Technology [IT] Act, and demanded 15 days of police custody.

Srinivasan's single allegation could have been addressed through India's libel laws, but since that route takes time and money, the offended politician instead used the police department to take care of the "problem" by using the "sweeping power" of Section 66A of the IT Act of 2000.

[Section 66A] can send you to jail for three years for sending an email or other electronic message that "causes annoyance or inconvenience".

On the face of it, this protects citizens against online harassment.

In reality, the law is more often used by the state as a weapon against dissent. In each such case, police action has been swift and harsh.

In April, the West Bengal government led by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee used Section 66A against a teacher who had emailed to friends a cartoon that was mildly critical of her.

Loosely worded laws, ostensibly designed to "protect" citizens, usually devolve into tools of censorship. For some strange reason, those with the most power are the ones who feel the most "threatened" by open criticism and dissent. It's little wonder that legislators are more than willing to push through open-ended "cyberlaws" that can be bent to fit any situation. The end result is this fact, which is perhaps least surprising of all:

And, interestingly, Section 66A has never been used against politicians.

To Srinivasan's credit, he refused to back down from his statement. In addition, his arrest and subsequent appearance on television led to him gaining another 2,300 followers, many of whom are wondering if his arrest was tied to his anti-corruption campaigning. Despite the public support of the arrested tweeter, the politician behind his arrest remains unrepentant, tweeting out this amazing statement in his own defense:

"Free speech is subject to reasonable restrictions. I have a right to seek constitutional/legal remedies over defamatory/scurrilous tweets."

There's nothing "reasonable" about arresting someone rather than following the "constitutional/legal remedies" set up by India's libel law. This is simple thug tactics being deployed by someone operating without fear of reprisal. Section 66A needs to be cleaned up if freedom of speech and privacy are going to be protected, rather than just paid lip service at convenient intervals.

A few months ago, Eric Goldman wrote about a good ruling by a California court to knock out a bogus defamation claim against blog site Gawker. There were a few interesting elements to the ruling, including that it used California's anti-SLAPP law, and that it was willing to look at the context of the use of certain words like "scam." But, most importantly, it noted the fact that the Gawker piece included numerous links/citations to sources, which meant that anyone could dig deeper to understand the details themselves.

The problem with the ruling is that, as good as it was, the court decided to issue it as an "unpublished" ruling, meaning that it has limited use as a precedent elsewhere. Goldman then sought to have the court revisit that decision and, instead, to fully publish the decision. Unfortunately, in a one line ruling, the court has now rejected that request (pdf):

The request for an order directing publication of the opinion in the above-entitled appeal is denied.

That's it. End of story. No explanation. No publication. That's really kind of ridiculous. What is the court afraid of? It made the ruling. Why not stand behind it, and make it easier for similar bogus cases to be quickly shot down by the courts?