Whatever your views on the value of Wikileaks, one of its useful side-effects has been the appearance of other sites that have tried to do a similar job of calling the powerful to account using leaked information, but at a more local level. One of the most successful of these is BalkanLeaks, created by the Bulgarian investigative journalists Atanas Tchobanov and Assen Yordanov. In fact, it's been rather too successful for some, and is now on the receiving end of some legal threats, as a column in Forbes explains:

Earlier this month, Tchobanov and Yordanov’s news outlet Bivol.bg, which publishes documents from their WikiLeaks-like leak site BalkanLeaks, received a letter from Bulgaria's central bank threatening to fine the news organization for publishing "false information and circumstances" that undermine the "reputation and credibility" of four Bulgarian banks that filed the complaint with the government -- a violation could carry as much 150,000 Bulgarian lev ($100,000) in penalties.

As Reporters without Borders notes, the "false information and circumstances" originated in a US embassy cable obtained by WikiLeaks, which was published by Bivol.bg back in June:

The article consisted of an analysis of a US embassy cable published by WikiLeaks about "bad apples" in the Bulgarian banking system, but it corroborated the US ambassador's comments with information from its own sources.

It's some of those alleged "bad apples" that have complained to the Bulgarian National Bank (BNB), accusing the news site of violating Bulgaria's Credit Institutions Act. But as Reporters Without Borders comments:

"The Credit Institutions Act concerns only the banking world and cannot be used against the media or to defy the constitution, which guarantees media freedom. Moreover, the BNB has no jurisdiction over media law and cannot be allowed to impose heavy fines on news outlets."

This seems likely a clear case of bullying, using banking laws and the threat of a big fine to silence a small news organization. As the Forbes article points out, this isn't the first time that the Bivol.org journalists have chosen to take on extremely powerful groups:

Using the same anonymity tools as WikiLeaks, the group has obtained leaked documents exposing judicial bribery, former members of the Soviet-tied secret police, and blackmailing between Bulgarian prosecutors. After obtaining and publishing a State Department cable on Bulgarian organized crime the group received from rogue WikiLeaks ex-associate Israel Shamir last summer, Bivol partnered with WikiLeaks to release the rest of the Bulgaria-related cables. One accused Bulgarian prime minister Boyko Borisov of close mafia ties, a claim he vigorously dismissed in a Bulgarian TV interview as "yellow journalism."

At a time when many people are wondering whether WikiLeaks is a spent force, it's heartening to see BalkanLeaks and Bivol.org continuing to expose wrongs through the use of leaked information, despite the very clear risks.

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

If you're looking forward to Halloween, it's coming up in a couple days -- and there will probably be plenty of zombies roaming around your front lawn (if you have a front lawn). Just give them some candy when they come to your door, and they'll go away. If they keep coming back, start handing out rolls of pennies, maybe? Here are a few zombie-related links to help you prepare for this Wednesday.

• Some zombies aren't the undead, they're just unthinking folks who might be "in the zone" and focused on other things. Aren't we all zombies in a way? [url]
• ZAICO is the Zombie Apocalypse Insurance Company for all your post-apocalyptic needs. Don't get caught unprepared -- but maybe choose a low deductible plan because cash might be a bit tight after the zombies take over. [url]
• A mathematical model of how zombies spread tells us that we need to deal with the zombie apocalypse quickly or else things will get out hand rapidly and bring the end of civilization as we know it. But how would different kinds of international relations policies deal with a zombie threat? [url]

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

I almost didn't post this story, because we've seen nearly the same thing so many times -- but seeing the surprise that some have expressed about musician Andy Othling's post about giving away his music for free for a day (with a pay what you want campaign via his Bandcamp page), it seemed worth mentioning. As in other cases, he found that he ended up with many new listeners and much more attention... but what surprised him was that he also made more money. He expected to make less, assuming that people would just take the content for free. And, of course, some did. But when you expand your audience tremendously, and give them the option and the tools to support you, amazing things happen:

I was anticipating a drop in revenue, because that’s usually what you expect when you start giving things away for free. But what happened was that in a single day I made more than 2x what I normally do on music sales in an ENTIRE MONTH. Yes, you read that right. More in a day than in two months of regular sales.

I don’t quite know how to explain this, but I think a lot of it is based on reciprocal generosity. People seemed to really appreciate that I did this and responded by paying more than they normally would. I was blown away by people who decided to give more for an album than it would have cost them the day before.

Of course, we've seen this exact thing over and over again, so it shouldn't be at all surprising by this point. Andy points out that he greatly increased his fanbase too:

There you can see that in one day, I added almost 450 email addresses to my mailing list. That’s 450 more direct connections that I can make in the future, and 450 more people who can spread the news when I do something like this again. This is way more exciting to me than money.

Of course, he chose to only do this for 24 hours... and then took away the free option. We've seen some others do this as well, to mixed results. More than a few musicians I've talked to who have run similar experiments later switch to leaving the free option up permanently, but it's not uncommon for people to try it as a limited-time experiment at first. There may be some value in the "it's only free today!" aspect to get people to act, but I do wonder if it limits long term potential. For example, with this post, some people here might want to check out his music -- but I'd bet a lot more people would be interested if the music were still free.

It's also important to note that while people often get blinded by "free" and forget about everything else, Andy didn't just do "free" and leave it at that. He (1) strategically promoted that it was free and urged others to pass that info around and (2) provided a clear way for people to support him monetarily as well, if they so chose. Free is a piece of the puzzle, but it's not everything.

Recently, we highlighted the success of the first Humble Ebook Bundle by noting that with over 84,000 bundles sold, all those authors should be on best seller lists. That is fine and dandy on its own, but what does that mean in terms of money for the authors? With the bundle bringing in over $1 million in sales, what do the authors get out of that?

In response to that very question, one Humble author, John Scalzi, wrote up his back-of-the-envelope calculation of how much his book, Old Man's War, could earn him.

Let’s say for the sake of easy math that when all is said an done my default amount of the bundle was something like 6.5%. That would mean that my default gross cut of the Bundle would be something on the order of $78,000.

Keep in mind that this is a gross earnings. He then factors in a number of other variables, including his publisher Tor's cut, and comes to a much smaller net amount.

When all is said and done, if I end up with $20,000 (before taxes) then I figure I will have done well.

He goes on to explain what he would likely make selling the number of copies he estimates he sold during the bundle, if those copies were sold at full price.

...let’s say OMW was in 42,110 of those bundles. For electronic books, I make 25% of the net to the publisher, and Old Man’s War currently sells as an eBook at $7.99. Unless I’m doing my math incorrectly, my cut is about $1.40 per eBook for OMW (no, $1.40 is not 25% of $7.99; remember, I’m working off of net). If those 42,110 copies were sold straight up, I would gross $58,000.

So, basically, if I gross what I expect to gross from the Humble Bundle, I’ll be taking a roughly two thirds cut in my income per unit than what I usually do.

That's quite the difference. However, he is very happy with what he will make from this bundle for four reasons.

1. The volume sold may compensate for the reduced price.
2. Old Man's War is the first book in a series and will likely bring in new readers who will buy the sequels at full price.
3. He went in to the bundle knowing full well that he could make as little as $0.
4. Whatever bundles were sold because of his book were benefiting some important non-profits.

He then closes out his comments with some advice for authors considering getting involved in a bundle. All of it is great advice and I will let you delve into it yourself.

Looking at this whole thing, John makes some very important points that we have highlighted many times in the past. For instance, we have argued many times, with Paulo Coelho as a recent example, that selling in volume at a lower price has the potential to make far more money in a shorter span of time. Additionally, selling at a discount, or even giving it away, is a great way to provide publicity in order to sell other products or scarcities tangential to the product.

What is most impressive is John's understanding and attitude about this whole promotion. He knew full well that this promotion was not an end in and of itself, but a way to expand his audience and reach. By taking this risk, he will potentially see a lot more success in the future. This is an attitude that we praise on a seemingly daily basis--an attitude that too many people in the legacy industries deride and belittle. Hopefully, more creators will learn from this and embrace, as John did, the power of tools and promotions such as the Humble Bundle.

For many years, we've pointed out that the research shows that patents are not a proxy for innovation. In fact, they're not even clearly correlated. There is no link between the amount of innovation and the number of patents received. The only thing that patents seem to spur is... more patents. But... because patents are often falsely associated with innovation and because they're easy to count, it's a very easy way for the lazy press (and politicians) to assume that they're showing how innovative a certain geographic region might be. We've actually called CNN out on this lazy trope before, but it hasn't stopped them from coming right back and posting a silly article about the "most inventive states" based entirely on patent counts.

Unfortunately, this only serves to reinforce the bogus narrative that patents are a reasonable proxy for innovation, and ignores the true nature of innovation. It's no surprise that lazy journalists would do this kind of thing, but it is a reminder that we really need much better metrics for measuring innovation.

Larry Downes has a good piece over at Forbes discussing how it's often best for innovation if regulators stay the hell away from innovative industries. He notes the very different paces (innovation quick, regulation slow) and how that leads to bad outcomes:

The wildly different clock speeds of Moore’s Law and Washington law, however, make for increasingly damaging collisions at the intersection of technology and public policy. Even with the best of intentions, lawmakers, regulators, and judges can’t possibly anticipate tomorrow’s innovative products and services. Nor can they guess how specialized legislation, thrashed out over the course of years and infected by lobbyists and special interests, will return to haunt us when technology inevitably changes.

Faced with the unknown unknowns of dramatically new products—social networks, location-based ads, driverless cars–the best advice for governments is simply to leave them alone. Don’t just do something, stand there. At least until it’s crystal clear that the market has failed, consumers are being harmed, and that lawmakers have a remedy that won’t make things worse.

However, regulators often don't understand this at all. They think that the quick pace of innovation means that companies themselves should slow down -- and that it's their job to force them to do so. Downes shares this troubling story:

At a conference I attended over the summer, on the other hand, the Federal Trade Commission’s Julie Brill got it dangerously wrong. Given the novelty of policy problems in privacy, cybersecurity and competition in the fast-changing Internet ecosystem, Brill argued, both Washington and Silicon Valley should proceed with caution. “Regulators need humility,” she said, “but so do companies.”

The dynamism of the Internet ecosystem certainly calls for more humble trade policy. But the last thing we want is for companies to slow down so Washington can catch up. In Silicon Valley, we have a special name for humble start-ups. We call them failures.

That's not to say that there isn't room for any regulations -- but as Downes notes, the thing that DC should be most focused on is "fixes to previous government efforts that tried but failed to fix a problem that turned out not to need a regulatory solution." Other industries seem to want handouts and investments and the like, but you don't see that much in Silicon Valley.

I was recently on a call with some entrepreneurs and some government officials, in which we were discussing a few laws -- and the government folks kept asking the entrepreneurs if they needed help protecting against copycats (generally foreign ones). The entrepreneurs kept ignoring the question -- and it kept getting asked. Eventually, someone on the call said: "Um. No. Look, someone's going to copy us. We know that. But we don't care because we know we can innovate faster than anyone who copies us." The government folks seemed confused, with one saying something to the effect of "that's great if you can do that, but..." But that really is the difference in mindsets. Entrepreneurs really just want to build stuff and are confident (sometimes too confident) in their own abilities to compete. We don't want government handouts -- we want government to get out of the way.

That's not to say companies should be free to do absolutely anything, but as Downes notes, we don't need the government fiddling around where there is no evidence of real harm. If there is harm, then you can understand why it can make sense to get involved -- but too often government officials seem to think they should get involved just because there's a possibility of harm, or because a competitor got beaten. But that's not good for innovation and it's not good for the public.

2012 has been yet another year filled with meritless lawsuits filed solely to chill First Amendment free speech rights -- so-called Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP). As websites relying on user-generated content continue to increase in popularity, we also see a rise in SLAPPs targeting online speech, from the everyday blogger to the one-time online reviewer. Some of the most talked about SLAPPs this year include:

The Oatmeal SLAPP -- Matthew Inman wrote a blog post condemning FunnyJunk for posting hundreds of his comics without crediting or linking back to his website, The Oatmeal. Through attorney Charles Carreon, FunnyJunk sent Inman a threat letter over the blog post, claiming it was defamatory and demanding $20,000. Inman’s response? To publicly post the letter with a hilarious critique and start an online fundraising campaign to raise $20,000. Yet, instead of reaching his $20,000 goal and sending the money to FunnyJunk, he raised over $200,000 and gave all of the money to charity. Carreon couldn’t let it go and filed a lawsuit to try to derail the fundraising campaign, but later voluntarily dismissed it.

SLAPP 4 Jesus -- Even churches are SLAPP happy, as evidenced by a SLAPP filed by Beaverton Grace Bible Church in Oregon against former church members who had blogged and written online reviews of their experiences at the church. The judge ruled that the case was a SLAPP and ordered the church to pay the defendants' attorneys fees.

Rachel Maddow SLAPPed 4 Jesus -- A defamation suit against Rachel Maddow was filed by Bradlee Dean, an anti-LGBT preacher from Minnesota. Dean sued Maddow after she ran a story on The Rachel Maddow Show, where she aired a segment from Dean's radio show where he said that Muslims were "more moral than even the American Christians" because they were "calling for the execution for homosexuals." Luckily for Maddow, Washington D.C. enacted a strong anti-SLAPP law last year. The judge ruled that the case was a SLAPP and ordered Dean to pay Maddow's attorneys fees.

"The Pink Slime" SLAPP -- Beef Products, Inc., a South Dakota beef producer, recently filed a defamation lawsuit against ABC News, seeking at least $1.2 billion in damages, claiming the broadcaster unfairly disparaged its beef additive by labeling it "pink slime." The Complaint was filed last month and ABC has not yet responded.

Fortunately for Inman, the church SLAPP defendants and Rachel Maddow, California, Oregon and Washington DC have all enacted anti-SLAPP statutes. Unfortunately for ABC, Beef Products filed their defamation lawsuit in South Dakota, which does not have an anti-SLAPP law. What this means is that they will not be able to bring an anti-SLAPP motion and potentially get the case dismissed early and have their attorneys’ fees awarded. However, South Dakota is not alone -- almost half of the states have not enacted anti-SLAPP laws, demonstrating the need for a federal law to protect against meritless SLAPPs.

2012 marked the second time federal anti-SLAPP legislation was introduced in Washington DC. In 2009, Congressman Steve Cohen introduced the Citizen Participation Act in the House of Representatives, which ultimately died when it was referred to committee. This year, retiring Senator John Kyl introduced the Free Press Act of 2012. Unfortunately, Sen. Kyl's bill has a very narrow anti-SLAPP provision that only applies to representatives of the news media. But hopefully Senator Kyl's bill can be a starting point to build bi-partisan support for strong and robust federal anti-SLAPP legislation after the November elections. With a recent endorsement of federal anti-SLAPP legislation from the American Bar Association, a national association of attorneys and the world's largest voluntary professional organization, a fresh session of Congress in 2013 looks promising for the future of anti-SLAPP legislation protecting all Americans' right to speak out.

Evan Mascagni is an Organizer with the Public Participation Project, the only organization in the country whose sole mission is to enact federal anti-SLAPP legislation.

By now you've probably seen the paraphrase of a Ben Franklin quote that those who give up liberty for security, deserve neither (he said similar things a few different ways, but the standard actual quote is: "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.") Whatever the actual quote is, there is quite a lot of truth to it. Giving up liberty for the sake of security rarely works out as planned. Either way, it appears that the editorial board of the Washington Post is either wholly unfamiliar with the quote, or believes it to be untrue. It has come out with an editorial arguing in favor of extending the FISA Amendments Act (and against an ACLU/EFF challenge to the law, to be heard today at the Supreme Court, even with the crazy weather) saying that it is perfectly fine to "give up liberty" for security:

Discomfort with the government’s capacity, technical or legal, to collect and retain massive amounts of personal information is understandable. But the 2008 FISA amendments sought a compromise between two essential goals: preserving American liberty and robustly defending Americans’ lives and property. We favored the law and believe that it should be extended.

That's somewhat ridiculous. After all, as we've noted over and over again, almost no one seems to understand what's actually in the FISA Amendments Act, in part because there's a secret interpretation of it that only the government knows. This means that many, many people, including those in Congress, are clearly misrepresenting what's in the law. The fact that the NSA refuses to say how often it has used this secret interpretation to spy on Americans should be a pretty big warning sign -- especially as politicians who are either clueless or ignorant claim that it can't be used to spy on Americans.

And really, this is the root of the "don't give up liberty for security" quote. Once you do that, you're cooked, because it's a situation that only expands in one direction. Those who seek to hold back liberty will always make use of scare stories and FUD to seek to be able to spy further. You would think that the editorial board of the Washington Post, which has been covering this kind of mess for quite some time, would actually have some sort of ability to look back at history. Apparently its historical knowledge is close to nil.

We've written about the Wiley v. Kirtsaeng case many times already, but it's an important one to follow. While everything else in DC closed down to bunker down for Hurricane Sandy, the Supreme Court Justices decided to soldier on and actually hear the case today. Joe Mullin has written up the most thorough and detailed examination of the case, including the fact that Kirsaeng is merely the first, and most well-known case brought by copyright holders trying to stop them from reselling legally purchased works made outside the US. Copyright holders love the fact that Kirtsaeng is the central case here, because he earned a lot of money -- so they can argue that he's somehow "unfairly" profiting from international arbitrage. But, as Mullin notes, lawsuits have been brought against many others who were selling a lot less.

Copyright holders keep trying to downplay the "horror story" scenarios that many of us worried about a ruling in favor of Wiley could lead to. However, if the Supreme Court says that it's copyright infringement to sell a copyright-covered work made outside the US, but legally imported in, you can bet that all sorts of companies will seek to take advantage of this fact. We've already talked about the predecessor case here, Omega v. Costco, in which merely putting a copyright image that no one would see on the back of a watch could open up the ability to block resale of physical products. While Omega eventually got smacked down in the lower court, that was for copyright misuse -- the first sale issue stuck. So, all companies need to do is slightly modify the way they use copyright, and they can ban your ability to resell products.

If you believe in basic property rights, this should freak you out. It's kind of funny to see the MPAA and RIAA -- who like to pretend they're in favor of property rights -- right upfront in arguing against it here.

While it's pretty rare to see "activism" around a Supreme Court case, the folks at Demand Progress have put together a campaign called You've Been Owned to speak out about this. While that won't impact the Supreme Court, they're right that this issue is going to matter in Congress eventually. Whichever side loses this case is going to run to Congress with pre-written legislation to "fix" the Court's ruling. If you believe that you should own what you bought -- even if it's made in a foreign country -- then this is a case to pay attention to, and to be ready to speak out about when the inevitable legislative "fix" is introduced.

It's no secret that the "War on Terror" has resulted in little more than steady paychecks for those in the loop and plenty of rights erosion everywhere else. As was detailed earlier this year, the New York Police Department has decided to follow in the clumsy footsteps of the FBI's anti-terrorism efforts, crafting its own "elite" agency (with the help of the CIA) to infiltrate the Muslim community and smoke out terrorists. The end result? Not a single lead generated.

Via Reason comes this Associated Press story about another NYPD anti-terrorism failure. Shamiur Rahman, a 19-year-old American of Bengali descent, was put to work by the NYPD's intelligence unit as an informant, earning $1000 a month in exchange for "baiting" Muslims into making inflammatory statements.

Shamiur Rahman... who has now denounced his work as an informant, said police told him to embrace a strategy called "create and capture." He said it involved creating a conversation about jihad or terrorism, then capturing the response to send to the NYPD. For his work, he earned as much as $1,000 a month and goodwill from the police after a string of minor marijuana arrests.

There's nothing like a little leverage in the form of dangling prison sentence to "motivate" your informants into giving you as much "information" as possible, even if most is unverifiable, exaggerated or simply made up. Rahman was no exception:

Police recruited Rahman in late January, after his third arrest on misdemeanor drug charges, which Rahman believed would lead to serious legal consequences. An NYPD plainclothes officer approached him in a Queens jail and asked whether he wanted to turn his life around...

In an Oct. 15 interview with the AP, however, Rahman said he received little training and spied on "everything and anyone." He took pictures inside the many mosques he visited and eavesdropped on imams. By his own measure, he said he was very good at his job and his handler never once told him he was collecting too much, no matter whom he was spying on.

He said he sometimes intentionally misinterpreted what people had said. For example, Rahman said he would ask people what they thought about the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya, knowing the subject was inflammatory. It was easy to take statements out of context, he said. He said wanted to please his NYPD handler, whom he trusted and liked.

"I was trying to get money," Rahman said. "I was playing the game."

That wasn't all Rahman did. In order to avoid the sentence constantly hanging over his head, he went above and beyond. According to the AP article, Rahman took pictures inside mosques and at events, eavesdropped on imams, spied on the Muslim Student Association at John Jay College, wrote down license plate information and collected cell phone numbers. All of this activity resulted in Rahman drawing this conclusion:

Rahman, who was born in Queens, said he never witnessed any criminal activity or saw anybody do anything wrong.

NYPD spokesman Paul Browne refused to comment but has denied widespread spying in the past, insisting that "police only follow leads." It's the sort of statement you expect from a spokesman, even in the face of so much evidence to the contrary. Even the "targeted" Demographics Unit cast a very wide net, assembling databases on where Muslims lived, shopped and worked and cataloguing every Muslim who adopted an Americanized surname.

Furthermore, former NYPD officials confirmed that the tactics used by Rahman were common. Rahman received little training or instruction, something that may have helped focus his efforts. Of course, if his handlers wanted a wide net cast, the last thing they would have done is give him some guidelines.

The assault on constitutional rights continues, and privacy continues to be violated, all under the dubious heading of "anti-terrorism."

Earlier this year, we wrote about how a minority owner of the Miami Heat, Ranaan Katz, was so upset about an "unflattering photo" that a blogger/critic had posted of him, that he apparently bought the copyright on the photo and sued the blogger, claiming copyright infringement.
For the sake of understanding the story, this is the photo in question. Katz also threatened to sue one of the blogger's lawyers directly, which is always a classy move.

However, in a somewhat surprising move, both the blogger and Katz, together decided that, even though this case was filed in court -- which is supposed to have a public record -- they both wanted the details kept secret and filed under seal. Thankfully, even though both parties were asking for such secrecy, the judge clearly rejected the request.

After a review of the parties' Joint Motion and proposed order, the Court finds that the parties have offered no compelling basis to overturn the Court's long-standing principle and practice of maintaining Court proceedings and documents public. "The Federal Judiciary has zealously protected the right of all citizens to free, open and public trials.'' Dorsman v. Glazer.... Open judicial proceedings are "rooted in the 'principle that justice cannot survive behind the walls of silence,' and in the 'traditional Anglo-American distrust for secret trials.'" Sheppard v. Maxwell.... Except in rare instances, it is the right of every American to see the public's business conducted in an open forum.

And, the judge notes, despite both of the parties wanting it, this is not one of those "rare instances." "lndeed, the parties have provided no evidence even suggesting such need." Even more ridiculous, the court notes, is the fact that the defendant in the case joined the plaintiff in asking for things to be sealed. As the court notes, there's some irony in a defendant who is worried about her free speech rights being stifled, then seeking to keep her arguments secret:

Moreover, the Court notes an inconsistency in Defendant joining the instant motion. In her Second Motion to Dismiss, Defendant argued at length that Plaintiff's lawsuit was directed at preventing her from publishing online news articles critical of Plaintiff's business; this case was allegedly no more than an attempt to silence her speech. But with this Joint Motion, Plaintiff and Defendant want to keep the factual development of this case secret.

In the end, the judge says too bad to both parties, noting that they were the ones who went to the public court system to fight this out, and now they need to live with the consequences:

ln addition, the parties elected to seek (and defend) relief in a publicly operated forum, namely the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida. The proceedings held in federal and state courts are open to public observation by any interested party. Pursuant to Local Rule 5.4 for the Southern District of Florida, absent some extraordinary need for secrecy, the judicial acts performed should be open to public scrutiny

That statement may be a little unfair to the defendant, who didn't really have that much "choice" in the matter, but it still seems odd to want to keep the proceedings secret.

We've been talking a fair bit about the UN's International Telecommunications Union (ITU) -- the legacy group that's been around in one form or another for over a century and a half, trying to regulate how telco systems work across national borders. Much of the concern has been about its plans to expand its purview over the internet. As many people have noted, it really seemed like the ITU was realizing that its primary function was losing relevance, as basic telco issues become less and less important as they are superseded by the internet. So, without any reason, need or mandate, the ITU is just looking to force itself into a position of internet governance as well -- with potentially horrific results. Of course, that's not the only arena in which the ITU is trying to shove its weight around and assert relevance where it has none. We've already pointed out that it also wants in on internet security, despite near complete ignorance on the topic.

And that's not all... Back in July, we wrote about the ITU's plan to host a patent summit to respond to the various patent thickets and disputes, with a main focus on the smart phone patent thicket. Now, having discussed problems with patents, and the smartphone patent thicket in particular, this might seem like a good thing, but when the summit was announced, we wondered if the ITU really understood the issue, and whether it would even have the right people participating. While the full details of the summit were apparently off the record, Nick Ashton-Hart's report on what he could say about the event suggests that, once again, it was entirely about the ITU inserting itself where it doesn't belong and where no one wants it to go. He notes that all of the ITU's public statements about the summit positioned itself as "riding to the rescue" of various patent disputes. But there were significant problems with this... in that no one wants the ITU's "help" here:

1 - First, the was an overwhelming lack of support for action at the ITU by the participants. I’ve been to many international meetings over more than two decades. You can tell, through the often exaggerated politeness in which positions are inevitably couched, when a group is willing to continue to discuss an issue and when it is not. It was completely obvious long before the end of the day that there was insufficient interest in the room to take forward the discussion – at the ITU, at least.

2 - Secondly, the ITU had clearly decided in advance what was going to happen, and expected the participants to rubber-stamp their conclusions. This was obvious when an ITU official read out a pre-prepared speech at the end of the meeting, including the following:

“I believe that providing market players with clear, transparent, effective and up-to-date patent policies works for the benefit of the industry as a whole…As the Secretary-General stated in the opening, ITU has a determination to take a leading role in the development of effective RAND based policies in the ICT sector…”

Followed by this bombshell:

“I will therefore request the TSB Director’s Ad Hoc Group on Intellectual Property Rights, which will meet tomorrow, to begin work on a recommendation aimed at providing high level principles clarifying the meaning of reasonable, and the issue of injunctive relief, in the RAND context.”

In other words, ‘we’re going to do what we want and we expect you to go along with it.’

Basically, before the meeting even started, the ITU had decided what the problem was. But, since it's jumping into a space where it doesn't understand the issues, it's suggesting a "solution" that doesn't make sense, and which was clearly not supported by others at the summit. Nick explains further:

I recall only one of the 100 participants asking the ITU itself to do anything as an outcome of the meeting – though a few did suggest that standards organisations in general – of which the ITU is one of many – could usefully look at various technical issues (such as transparency of ownership of SEPs).

He goes on to point out that the focus on standards-essential patents is misguided, and was not a main concern of the attendees. In fact, he even notes one participant who got there thinking that SEPs were a problem, but left with his mind changed -- further evidence that the ITU had decided well before the meeting what the "result" would be -- and the fact that the summit didn't support its position was simply ignored.

Once again, it appears to just be a situation where the ITU has little knowledge, no experience and no mandate... but where it's trying to shove itself in, as it tries to remain relevant in a world that no longer needs it.

One thing we know for sure is that the internet has become a growing part of everyone's lives. People are connecting to the internet for a variety of everyday activities including watching tv and movies, listening to music, reading news and gaming. With the internet becoming so ubiquitous in people's lives, would it be a surprise to see that the number of people who identify such activities as "being online" is dropping?

That is exactly what Forrester Research has shown in its latest study on people's media habits. In a blog post, Forrester Analyst Gina Sverdlov points out that especially among younger internet using adults, being online is a fluid concept.

One of the biggest revelations in this year’s data was the change in attitude of consumers — particularly younger ones — toward the Internet. Since we started tracking this information in 1997, we have only seen the amount of time spent online increasing. But Forrester’s 2012 data shows that US online adults are now reporting a decline in the amount of time they spend using the Internet compared with 2011 and 2010.

What’s going on? Our analysis revealed that “being online” is becoming a fluid concept. Consumers no longer consider some of the online activities they perform to be activities related to “using the Internet.” In fact, given the various types of connected devices that US consumers own, many people are connected and logged on (automatically) at all times. The Internet has become such a normal part of their lives that consumers don’t register that they are using the Internet when they’re on Facebook, for example. It’s only when they are actively doing a specific task, like search, that they consider this to be time that they’re spending online.

You can see this trend in this graphic, along with falling trends in offline activities such as watching TV and reading newspapers among adults. As you can see, there is a drop in the amount of time people spend using the internet. However, as Forrester points out, that doesn't actually reflect people's true online activity. People are using more services and devices that are connected by default to the internet which doesn't resonate as online activity for many people. When people use smart phone applications, for instance, those applications may connect to the internet, but it is not a conscious "I am connecting to the internet" activity. It is just "I am checking Facebook/listening to Pandora/Watching Netflix/etc." With online connectivity as the default for the media choices people make, it would be expected that people would be less likely to consider that "online" behavior. As the rising generation grows up with such online-by-default choices, they will be even more likely to not consider it online activity.

What this means for those media companies that are showing a steady decline in the above graphic, and others not listed, is that if your services do not take advantage of the connected devices the current and rising generation own and use, then you might find yourself out of business. We see this happening now. Despite what some legacy industries might believe or want, that decline in offline activity is not going to reverse itself. The more the legacy industries fight that shift in consumer behavior, the faster they will find themselves irrelevant. The best thing for these industries to do is to embrace that fluid online concept and capture the attention of the rising generation.