It's become something of a cliché that anyone with a mobile phone is carrying a tracking device that provides detailed information about their location. But things are moving on, as researchers (and probably others as well) explore new ways to subvert increasingly-common smartphones to gain other revealing data about their users. Here's a rather clever use of malware to turn your smartphone into a system for taking clandestine photos -- something we've seen before, of course, in other contexts -- but which then goes even further by stitching them together to form a pretty accurate 3D model of your world:

This paper introduces a novel visual malware called PlaceRaider, which allows remote attackers to engage in remote reconnaissance and what we call virtual theft. Through completely opportunistic use of the camera on the phone and other sensors, PlaceRaider constructs rich, three dimensional models of indoor environments.

The use of 3D reconstructions overcomes a potential problem with ordinary spyware: there's often too much data whose significance is unclear. That makes finding anything interesting hard. The solution here is to combine all the data into a unified, virtual reconstruction that can then be navigated by snoopers looking for significant items just as they might if they were rooting through your physical space.

The full academic paper "PlaceRaider: Virtual Theft in Physical Spaces with Smartphones" (pdf) makes for fascinating reading, even if it doesn't seem to understand the difference between "theft" and "surveillance". It includes the following rather fanciful description of how this 3D-spying capability might be used. It's rather over the top, but it gives an idea of what's theoretically possible:

Alice does not know that her Android phone is running a service, PlaceRaider, that records photos surreptitiously, along with orientation and acceleration sensor data. After on-board analysis, her phone parses the collected images and extracts those that seem to contain valuable information about her environment. At opportune moments, her phone discretely transmits a package of images to a remote PlaceRaider command and control server.

Upon receiving Alice's images, the PlaceRaider command and control server runs a computer vision algorithm to generate a rich 3D model. This model allows Mallory, the remote attacker, to immerse herself easily in Alice's environment. The fidelity of the model allows Mallory to see Alice's calendar, items on her desk surface and the layout of the room. Knowing that the desktop surface might yield valuable information, Mallory zooms into the images that generated the desktop and quickly finds a check that yields Alice's account and routing numbers along with her identity and home address. This provides immediate value. She also sees the wall calendar, noticing the dates that the family will be out of town, and ponders asking an associate who lives nearby to 'visit' the house while the family is away and 'borrow'; the iMac that Mallory sees in Alice's office.

Well, maybe not. But what's more interesting is the way that smartphone malware is able to gather enough information to allow the detailed reconstruction of complex spaces. The paper includes some impressive 3D reconstructions from apparently random images that have been stitched together. These and the research project that produced them are a salutary reminder that useful as they are, smartphones also bring with them new dangers that need to be considered and, ultimately, addressed. Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

We've written about innovative car service company Uber a few times before, though mostly for its bizarre run-ins with local regulators, who often seem to think their job is to protect local taxi companies from innovative competition. Uber, for what it's worth, has used many of these attacks as marketing vehicles to get more attention to their service, and the local regulatory agencies almost always seem to back down. Of course, most people recognize that these agencies are often just doing the bidding of local cab companies. In Chicago, it appears that the cab companies have taken matters into their own hands and have sued Uber directly.

You really have to read the full complaint below, as it is a classic case of an industry being disrupted and lashing out at the disruptive player, repeatedly screaming "but you can't do that!" out of sheer jealousy and spite. It really is just a litany of claims about why they just don't like Uber. First, they whine that Uber "misleads" customers by comparing itself to taxi and livery services, even though it's somewhat innovative system is to actually empower independent drivers. But that's not actually hidden. And, um, I'm not sure why the taxi companies have any standing to complain about that.

Next, it argues that Uber charges too much, and adds a 20% gratuity. Again, all of this is clearly laid out to users of Uber's service. If they're willing to pay what Uber's rates are, then what's the problem? And again, if anyone has standing on that, it would be the users, not the cab companies -- and we'll discuss the fact that some users are suing too in a moment. There are a number of other complaints will all just seem like sour grapes.

My favorite part, though, is the claim that Uber "illegally discriminates against people without credit cards and smartphones." Did you know there was such a thing?

While Uber advertises itself as “Everyone’s Private Driver”—that is in fact a gross mischaracterization as Uber only chooses to cater to what it perceives as the technologically elite and well-off individuals. It is obvious that through Uber’s marketing it caters to young, hip, urban professionals, which is perfectly reasonable on the livery side. But using the publicly regulated (and limited number) taxis in order to create a two tier system— “high quality taxis” for the “haves” and the remainder for the “have nots”—runs contrary to the many ordinances enacted in Chicago to ensure non-discriminatory service for everyone in Chicago, not just those “cool” enough to use Uber.

The one area that does seem a little iffy on Uber's part is that it signs up cab drivers who work for some of these companies that are suing -- and Uber's website (in at least one place) seems to imply that it has "partnered" with different cab companies, when the reality is that it lets the drivers sign up themselves. I could see where the cab companies may have a legitimate beef if their brands are falsely implied to be associated with Uber's.

That said, all of this just really seems like jealous taxi companies. Uber offers a useful service for those who want it. It's actually somewhat expensive -- and that's why plenty of people I know don't use it. But if you're willing to pay for the convenience, many, many customers seem to like it. It really is quite convenient. Either way, most of these complaints seem like the ones that either consumers should be making... or that local regulators should be making. I don't see how the taxi companies have any standing on most of the issues -- with the one about the implied "partnerships" being a possible exception.

Of course, on that point about users having standing... in an amazing coincidence... some Uber users have also picked the same week to file a class action lawsuit against Uber in Chicago, claiming that its charges are "deceptive." Of course, the actual fees are not, in fact, deceptive. They're very clearly laid out on Uber's site. So, instead, the lawsuit claims that the deceptive bit is that they add a 20% gratuity (again, clearly disclosed on the site) but that the driver only gets half of that gratuity.

They're arguing that this is really charging higher metered rates. But given that what the user pays is all completely disclosed, I'm still at a loss as to what the problem is. The user isn't deceived about the rates they pay. They're quite clear. Given the timing of the two lawsuits, it certainly feels like the cab companies may have helped "set up" users to complain.

In the end, the whole thing is unfortunate, and yet another sign of legacy industries unwilling to compete in the market. Uber offers a decent product. The price is high, and some people are willing to pay that price. If cab companies competed effectively (and they already have the price advantage), then there wouldn't be a problem. But, Uber's discovered that people like to pay for convenience and these cab companies apparently aren't well set up to deal with that. Rather than adapt, they're suing.

It's always neat to see whatever creative ideas people come up with to make their various crowdfunding projects more interesting. Writer Alex Wilson recently alerted us to his own Kickstarter campaign for printing The Time of Reflection, a short comic he wrote, which recently won "the Eagle Award" at the London Comic-Con, as part of a challenge sponsored by Universal Pictures (as part of a promotional campaign for Snow White and the Huntsman). I'm a bit surprised that Universal didn't require them to then hand over any copyright on the comic (you see that happens sometimes with these kinds of contests), but it looks like Alex and Silvio (who did the drawings) are free to do what they want with the comic. So they're doing this Kickstarter campaign to do printed copies of the comic. That, alone, probably wouldn't be that interesting, but Wilson added an interesting little twist. There have been plenty of concerns about what's happening to independent comic book shops in the digital era, so Wilson is looking to use Kickstarter as a way to also "give back" to some of those shops. For anyone who pledges over $3, not only do they get a copy of the booklet, but they also get to designate a local, independent comic book shop and Wilson will send a copy to that shop as well (at no cost to the shop), at which point the shop can turn around and sell it, give it away for free, burn it, whatever (and yes, he's checking with each shop before sending it to make sure they'll take it...). Who knows how well that aspect will work, but it's a neat idea to increase awareness and distribution on multiple levels. First, it's really a way for backers to effectively buy an extra copy for the stores in question. Second, by getting the book into cool indie comic book shops, Wilson clearly is hoping to get more awareness of the book as well. The campaign is already well over its initial (modest) goal of raising $450, and it will be interesting to see how well the retail tie-in goes. Hopefully Wilson will stop by again and update us on how various retailers responded to the whole thing, and if anything interesting comes out of it.

Thanks to the receptors in our taste buds, eating is one of life's greatest pleasures. Of the five different taste sensations, sweetness is probably the most pleasing. Starting from infancy, our bodies are already programmed to seek out sugar because it provides the energy to keep us going. There is also some indication that babies can be influenced to like salt if they are exposed to salty foods early on. As part of an evolutionary survival mechanism, our bodies are programmed to avoid eating bitter tasting things because many toxic compounds taste bitter. People like to eat sour-tasting foods, like citrus fruits or pickles, but from an evolutionary perspective, sourness is generally a warning for food spoilage. Finally, umami is supposed to be a "savory" taste, which is produced when our taste buds detect glutamate, the salt of the amino acid glutamic acid. Foods that naturally have an umami taste include cheese and tomatoes, so it's no wonder that pizza tastes so good! Here are a few more tasty tidbits.

• Many animals, including cats and dolphins, can't taste sweet things. It turns out that a large number of carnivores can't taste sugars because they have non-working versions of the genes responsible for making sugar receptors on the tongue. [url]
• Researchers are working on developing artificial tongues that can mimic the human taste response to various flavors. However, to fully reproduce the experience of taste requires the development of an artifical nose, because a large part of "taste" is actually due to smell. [url]
• The elusive "salt receptor" is unlike the receptors for all the other tastes, and figuring it out is complicated by the fact that sodium is essential for life but can kill you at high enough doses. (Apparently, it takes only a few mouthfuls of salt water from the Dead Sea to kill a person.) Researchers now believe that there are two receptors or mechanisms involved in tasting salt -- one that makes salt desirable and another (the elusive one) that makes it undesirable at high concentrations. [url]

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

For years now, the big telcos have been whining and complaining about a supposed "spectrum crunch," saying how they were going to run out of useful radio spectrum and wouldn't be able to set up new wireless services if they couldn't control more and more of it. And yet... as FierceWireless has noticed, the big guys all seem to think they have plenty of spectrum now:

Executives from the nation's largest wireless carriers now seem to be pretty pleased with their spectrum positions. AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson recently said the carrier has a solid spectrum position for the next three to five years if it gains approval for its pending spectrum purchases. Verizon Communications CFO Fran Shammo said that with its recently completed $3.9 billion purchase of nationwide AWS spectrum from cable companies, Verizon Wireless now has enough spectrum to handle its capacity needs for the next four to five years. Sprint Nextel CEO Dan Hesse said the carrier's Network Vision plan will give Sprint a strong spectrum position through the end of 2014 and that date will be extended to 2016 with the addition of spectrum from Clearwire. And T-Mobile USA CTO Neville Ray said the carrier is busy refarming its 1900 MHz PCS spectrum and now has enough 1700 MHz AWS airwaves to deploy 10x10 MHz channels across 90 percent of the top 25 U.S. markets when it launches LTE next year.

The report quotes analyst Tim Farrar explaining what many had been arguing for years -- that the so-called "spectrum crunch" was basically a myth to get access to and control of ever-greater swaths of spectrum to keep it from others:

"I think it [the spectrum crunch] was overblown. And everyone had an interest in pumping up a spectrum crisis," said TMF Associates analyst Tim Farrar. He said the FCC wanted to promote itself as the agency that could spur innovation and expand broadband access; Verizon and AT&T didn't want the FCC to cap the amount of spectrum available to them; companies that speculated with spectrum did not want the market to think they had worthless assets; and smaller carriers wanted more spectrum on the market to lower the price of all spectrum. "Everybody had an interest in talking it up and no one had an interest in saying the emperor has no clothes," he said.

And yet... one area where spectrum could be really useful? New open wireless offerings. But there we're left stranded. Rather than looking for new ways to provide open spectrum, the government has continually focused on figuring out ways to give more to the big telcos. In fact, just as I was finishing up this story, I saw reports on the FCC's new plans to release more spectrum -- but most of it via auctions. Very little appears to be ticketed for openness. Unfortunately, part of the problem is that the government seems to value spectrum solely based on how much someone will pay for it -- rather than the beneficial uses it might create. Thus you have fewer advocates willing to "pay" for open spectrum, and many who don't understand the importance assume that open uses have no value. This, of course, ignores just how much open spectrum has enabled, from cordless phones to garage door openers to really powerful things like home automation and WiFi.

So, if we can see that the big telcos' current spectrum appetite is satiated, and we can recognize how much open spectrum can enable amazing new innovations with tremendous benefit way beyond the price of the spectrum, shouldn't there be a big focus on getting more open spectrum out there and available for use?

Update: As explained in the comments, this is actually a different license than the copyright collection society license -- which still needs to be paid. This is merely a form of a business operating license in order to have live music. Yes, apparently you needed special separate license to have live music. So this really isn't an advancement on the copyright side of things, unfortunately, and those kinds of licenses may still serve to scare off small venues from allowing performers to perform. It's a shame. Original post remains below.

In the last few years, we've been (pleasantly) surprised at a few attempts in the UK to make copyright law slightly more reasonable. The Hargreaves Report, for example, was surprisingly reasonable, and while there's resistance, it still appears as if the government is interested in supporting many of its recommendations. We also just reported on an attempt to move some copyright claims to a small claims court, greatly limiting the damages possible.

And now, it appears that the UK has removed license requirements for small venues playing music. Under this new law, venues with a capacity under 200 won't have to pay license fees for having live music performers, and any venue can avoid license fees if it's playing "unamplified" live music (which probably limits how large the venue can be by default anyway). This is a pretty big deal.

As we've been writing about for years, various collection societies around the globe have been ramping up efforts to collect money from pretty much any place that plays music. This has resulted in some absolutely crazy stories (especially in the UK) of the local collection society, PRS, going after a shop assistant for singing out loud while stocking shelves, demanding payments from a woman who played music for her horses, and cracking down on a children's charity for singing Christmas carols without a license. Those stories may be extreme examples, but it gives you a sense of how aggressive some of these organizations are. The real end result, unfortunately, is that plenty of venues that used to host open mic nights or allow local musicians to perform (a great way for musicians to learn how to perform) have stopped such things, as it's not worth paying a huge license fee just to let some musicians perform.

The new law only applies to live music -- so situations that involve recorded music will still have to pay up -- but, at the very least, this should free up coffee shops and restaurants and the like to let some musicians perform, without having to pay crazy license fees. And, it's worth noting, that musicians are (quite rightly) celebrating this change. Even though the various collection societies like to argue that demanding license fees from coffee shops for open mic night is a good thing, most musicians recognize that's not true at all. They need more venues to play in, and that's especially true of up and coming artists. The predictions in the UK are that this will allow an impressive 13,000 venues to start having live music performances, where they wouldn't have done so before.

While you could argue that this should go even further, it's still a rare case in which copyright law is effectively limited, rather than continuously expanded -- and it's quite encouraging that musicians realize this is actually to their benefit, rather than detriment.

Earlier this week, YouTube made some news for changing the way its ContentID program works, including improving the appeals process. Among the improvements was one in which more "borderline" cases that ContentID matched, but without as high confidence that it was definitely infringing, would go through a slightly different process:

“We’ve improved the algorithms that identify potentially invalid claims. We stop these claims from automatically affecting user videos and place them in a queue to be manually reviewed.”

I, and many others, believed this meant that Google would have people manually review those borderline cases. Some people in our comments even interpreted this to be an admission that Google could pre-check videos for infringement -- a mathematical impossibility. However, Google has since clarified the statement to note that it wouldn't be Google doing the manual review.

But what he meant to say was that some of the automatic matches will be sent to be reviewed “by the content owner” — not by Google

Of course, we've seen content owners have little qualms about overclaiming their rights at times, but perhaps this isn't a terrible idea. One of the real problems with ContentID was that it does these blocks completely automatically -- meaning that they could even be against the copyright holder's own real wishes. Pushing borderline cases to content holders to manually review is a step in the right direction, though still one that is likely to be abused.

It's amazing how frequently we see stories of copyright being used as censorship -- even in cases where the copyright claims are obviously bogus. Being on the receiving end of a threat is no fun, and it's not surprising that many people choose to cave in, rather than fight. Back in early 2011, author Patti O'Shea wrote a blog post on her personal blog about a "Human Factors Training" exercise she did for work. She talks about one of the exercises, in which the attendees were given a scenario and then had to prioritize:

You’re on a plane that crashed in the Sonora desert. The pilot and copilot are dead, but you and your classmates are unharmed. Your plane was 70 miles off the course that was filed prior to take off and you crashed 50 miles southwest of a mining camp. You have 15 items with which to survive. Rank them from most important to least important.

She then lists out the items:

The items were: a flashlight with four batteries, big jack knife, aeronautical chart of the area, big plastic raincoat, magnetic compass, compresses and bandages, 45 caliber gun with bullets, red and white parachute, bottle of salt tablets, 1 liter of water per person, book titled “Edible Desert Animals”, pair of sunglasses per person, 1 liter bottle of alcohol (96%), light summer coat per person, makeup mirror.

I've actually done this very exercise a few times in the past (I think even in junior high or high school). It's incredibly common and I've seen slight variations on it for years. You can see a very similar version on the Google Lunar X Prize site, for example. But there are others as well. The idea is hardly a unique one.

O'Shea quoted those few lines, and then detailed what her group chose (with some explanations for why or where they agreed/disagreed) and then briefly discussed how they compared to "experts" and how well her group did against everyone else (they had the best score, compared to the experts). All in all, the blog post was 12 paragraphs, only one of which quoted the scenario in question. Of course, if you go to that blog page now, you get a very different story:

This blog was removed because Human Synergistics International (the company who holds the rights to the training material that was used in the class I talked about here) sent a take-down notice claiming my quoting of four sentences violated their copyright.

I believe their take-down notice to be without merit. As an author, I respect copyright and I believe the quote was covered by the Fair Use Doctrine.

However, despite this, I’ve removed the post. It’s not worth the time or energy arguing about a blog article that was nearly two years old when the notice was received.

You see, Human Synergistics International sent her a legal takedown, nearly two years after the blog post went up:

It has come to our attention that you are displaying some text from the Desert Survival Situation™ on your website at: http://www.pattioshea.com/blog/2011/01/26/were-doomed/ without prior permission. The Desert Survival Situation is copyrighted by Human Synergistics International, which has the exclusive right to reproduce, copy, edit, translate and otherwise exercise ownership over the material. Please be advised that we have no agreement that gives you or your organization permission to reproduce this exercise in any format. Therefore, this action constitutes a direct violation of our copyright.

Yeah, let's not even get into the fact that they felt the need to put the ™ after "Desert Survival Situation." Either way, it's difficult to see how O'Shea's use is not fair use. Human Synergistics might not like it, but its claims of what its "exclusive rights" are, without recognizing exceptions like fair use is a classic case of overstating their rights, also known as copyfraud.

Yes, the company wants to try to require people to hire them if it wants to use this exercise, but they're still the ones with the "experts' responses" and who (supposedly) understand how to run the experiment in a useful team-building manner. Revealing the basic scenario doesn't do any harm to them at all. In fact, one could argue that having people who have gone through the exercise talk about it, as O'Shea did, helps make other people more interested in hiring the company to run that training exercise. But, really, who wants to hire a company that runs around issuing copyright legal threats to people who went through their program and were excited enough about it to talk about it publicly?

Either way, below is the image of what O'Shea's blog post used to look like. Even though she's confident that her use qualified as fair use, it's just not worth fighting about. And that, of course, is the real shame in all of this, and how copyright is used to censor perfectly reasonable expression -- merely by the threat of legal action.

TasMot points us to a recent blog post by Jacques Mattheij, who developed one of the earliest, if not the earliest version of browser-based streaming video back in 1995, about his experience with patent trolls. There's an initial experience with an attempt by patent trolling giant Acacia to try to shake him down, which failed mainly because Mattheij's company was mostly based in the Netherlands, making it difficult for Acacia to go after them (and, Mattheij notes, that patent was eventually invalidated... but not until 2009, by which time plenty of damage could have been done). However, he notes that a more recent troll has popped up on the scene, named Joao Control, who has apparently been busy suing a bunch of companies, including some online video operations like, Sling Media and WebcamNow, as well as a bunch of auto companies (including Hyundai, Ford, BMW, Mercedes, Toyota and Honda). You can read through the cases if you'd like, but they all seem pretty ridiculous. Joao appears to argue that it has patented "systems for remotely controlling video systems."

There are a few patents that pop up in the various lawsuits, but Joao appears to hold a few hundred patents on a fairly wide variety of areas. "Joao" is really Raymond Joao, himself a patent lawyer, who apparently realized that rather than representing others, there was tons of money to be made by getting a bunch of patents himself (represented by himself) and then going after others. For what it's worth (and without making any statement on the merits of this claim), some employees/inventors of a company for whom Joao once represented have previously accused Joao of filing for some of his patents while working for them, taking their ideas and then filing his own patents on them.

Either way, Joao has been arguing that he's patented certain forms of streaming video, and Mattheij finds the whole thing ridiculous, and has made an offer to anyone sued by Joao (or any other patent troll) over online streaming:

I’m pretty anal when it comes to data retention, I can go back 25+ years when it comes to software that I have developed. And that came in pretty handy. I provided the counsel for the defense through the defendant (which I had had prior dealings with, they were an early licensee of the software) with all the relevant data and made myself available as an expert witness. It never came to that.

If anybody out there finds themselves sued because of violation of patents regarding streaming video and payment systems then here is a standing offer to give you a full packet of data with a detailed timeline documenting the first use of streaming video on the world-wide-web, sample images from public broadcasts using this technology from well published events (such as World Media Live using the software to broadcast the ‘96 Yves St. Laurent fashion show but there were plenty of others before that, it took a while to gain traction), the first use of pay-per-view and subscription based access to streaming video and audio and many more such milestones. This offer is free of charge, if it should come to any form of testimony then I’m more than happy to go where ever it is needed if you pay my way (airfare + basic accomodation is fine) or to give remote testimony via - rich irony here - video link, in which case it is free.

It is high time that this matter is laid to rest once and for all, Joao Controls is clearly abusing the legal system in the full knowledge that their patents are of 0 value.

Of course, patent system apologists will point out that he never patented his own work, and Mattheij answers that the same way many developers I know have answered various patent questions, by noting that what they did was nothing special, and the idea that it deserves patent protection is ridiculous.

I’ve never harped on public recognition for coming up with a way to stream live video to the browser (as far as I know it’s not mentioned in places like wikipedia) because as far as I’m concerned it was a rather trivial affair software wise. Some of the stuff I have built was several orders of magnitude more work and vastly more complex than this. To register a patent for something like that to me is abuse of the patent system. There is no substantial research to invest in, it is just basic plumbing, a re-use or composition if you want of existing elements in a new but obvious form. So, in order to frustrate any further attempts at shake-down of hardworking people by parasitic patent trolls I hereby stake a public claim on the creation of the first streaming webcam software, in March of 1995, to the claim of having the first combination of streaming video and credit card payments for pay-per-view and subscription based access in May of 1995 for a customer that became very well known with the product, and for plug-in free streaming video and audio combined in July of 1996. And I’m willing to stand by that claim and defend it with documentation if challenged.

Kudos to Mattheij for making this offer and standing up for what's right, though it's simply ridiculous that he even needs to do this in the first place.

We've been arguing this for years, but the best and so far only way that's been shown to effectively deal with the "challenge" of piracy is to figure out ways to compete against it. We've highlighted this point for quite some time, but people still try to argue against it. However, the evidence keeps coming in. We just posted about some data on unauthorized file sharing in the US and attitudes towards it. Those showed that it was a mainstream activity, especially between friends and family. Furthermore, it showed that "enforcement" campaigns targeted at trying to make people think that "piracy is theft" were almost certainly going to fail for not taking context into account.

Instead, focusing on new and useful legitimate services has to be the way forward... and the data from that same Musicmetric study seems to confirm that. It showed that there was a notable dip in BitTorrent usage in countries that had good authorized offerings:

Musicmetric found that music file downloads using BitTorrent tend to increase in countries that don't have legal music streaming services such as Spotify. Among the top 10 countries with the fastest growing BitTorrent market share in the first half of 2012, only one, France, had Spotify.

Conversely, in the top 10 countries where BitTorrent activity has decreased fastest, five have access to Spotify.

Of course, it also seems worth noting that the one country that has Spotify and shows increasing BitTorrent market share is France... which has Hadopi, one of the strictest "enforcement and education" plans out there. I'm sure it's just a total coincidence...

Rep. Mike Rogers, who introduced CISPA, the infamous cybersecurity bill that was absolutely horrible when it came to privacy, is apparently trying to ramp up the FUD to get CISPA back on the legislative calendar, despite the Senate's decision to go in another direction (which eventually stalled out). In a new interview, he talked mysteriously about new threats from "unexpected sources" and even claimed he couldn't sleep at night because of them. But -- shh! -- he can't really talk about specifics:

"We think there might be one last shot here -- maybe I'm just an eternal optimist -- to get this thing sparked back to life."

Driving the interest, he said, has been a series of briefings for key legislators "on what appears to be a new level of threat that would target networks from -- I've got to be careful here -- an unusual source."

Rogers has been giving fellow legislators a "glimpse" of this new danger. "I figured if I can't sleep at night, why should any other member of Congress?" He declined to describe the threat, citing the highly classified nature of the information. "I look really bad in orange -- those orange jumpsuits with the numbers on the back," he said to laughter.

It really was just a few days ago that we wondered if the government was going to start using stories of "new threats" to try to ram through legislation. That's basically been the plan all along. Tell scary ghost stories, none of which have any actual facts behind them, until people feel compelled to pass the bills. What's never mentioned is whether or not any of this is effective or a reasonable response. Also missing: any discussion of what is the actual problem being solved today. Rogers' CISPA bill, for example, focuses on information sharing, but fails to explain why the necessary information sharing is being blocked today, or why the bill can't just target the few issues that block such info sharing.

Of course, at the very same time that he's telling scary ghost stories about monsters in our wires keeping him up at night, he's absolutely livid that no one in the White House came to talk to him about their own plan for a cybersecurity executive order. So, apparently, we're all going to die in the night if we don't let companies and the government spy on us more easily... but the White House's plan to do something about that is "irresponsible." Right.

A few weeks ago we wrote about a new "digital music index" from London-based Musicmetrics looking at the popularity of file sharing by location in the UK. The results showed that the act of file sharing was mainstream, rather than a limited activity. The same group has now released a US version of its report, which more or less shows the same thing.

Americans downloaded more than 97 million albums and singles using BitTorrent during the first half of 2012, with Gainesville, FL named as the country’s “pirate capital” in an influential new report. Of the 97 million torrents downloaded across the USA, around 78 percent were albums and 22 percent singles. Assuming an album contains 10 tracks, the total number of songs downloaded would have surpassed 759 million in six months.

The report admits that not all of the songs being downloaded were unauthorized, but suggests that since many of them are, the characterizations are fair. Of course, just as we saw in the UK, all this really seems to show is how widespread file sharing is. It's not a marginalized effort hidden away from society, as some would have you believe, but something that a very large percentage of the population engages in on a regular basis.

A much more interesting (and relevant) report comes from Joe Karaganis who is teasing a larger new report that's about to be released concerning "copy culture" in both the US and Germany. The first tease discusses the attitudes of file sharers in the US about whether or not "it's reasonable" to do certain types of file sharing. And the results suggest that the MPAA's (and many politicians') belief that all they need to do is "educate" people is based on very little evidence. The key point is that, contrary to the assertions of some, the "moral" questions around file sharing are rarely black and white. Karaganis explains that some seem to think that there are just two views of file sharing:

Let’s recall that there are two conventional ways of talking about the ethics of copying–both in relation to the theft of material property. First: that copying is not like theft because it is non-rivalrous–making a copy does not deprive the owner of the use of the good.  For short, call this the Paley position–the defense of digital culture as a culture of abundance.  Second: that copying is like theft because it deprives the owner of the potential economic benefit from the sale of that good (in the case of downloading, to the copier).  Call that the MPAA position–the defense of culture as a market that depends on the scarcity or controlled distribution of digital goods.

Then, he notes that copyright laws were really built up around a specific type of copying: commercial copying rather than personal copying. And the data above certainly suggests that the views of people on any sort of "moral" question change depending on the context. But... also (and this is important) based on age. The younger generation just seems to believe that basic sharing with friends and family should be seen as perfectly reasonable. The different ways of slicing the data certainly suggest that the blanket argument that "piracy is theft" is going to completely miss its mark in educational campaigns. People just don't buy it.

First, that strong moral arguments against file sharing mistake the structure of public attitudes. Not surprisingly, the public engages in many of the same negotiations of context as the law. For most people, like theft and not like theft are not diametrically opposed moral judgements about copying. Rather, they operate on a continuum. They depend on the context and scale in which copying takes place. Copying, our data makes clear, is widely accepted within personal networks, reflecting a view of culture as not only shared but also constructed through sharing. Outside networks of family and friends, in contrast, a commercial and property logic tends to prevail. Support for more active forms of dissemination and ‘making’ available’ through such networks is quite low. Support for commercial infringement–selling copied DVDs–is minimal.

No matter what sort of "education" campaign you create, you're not going to convince most people that constructing a shared culture is somehow immoral. Furthermore, the generation gap issue is significant, especially given that much of the "education" efforts are aimed at the younger generation which seems a lot less willing to buy the argument.

...there is a strong generational divide in attitudes, with 18-29 year olds far more likely than older groups to view a wide range of copying practices as reasonable. This shift is strongest in relation to sharing within networks of ‘friends’–a category that has become very elastic in the last few years through the rise of online social networks. Among 18-29 year olds, sharing with friends is entirely normalized and large in scale. On average, ‘copying from friends/family’ accounts for nearly as much of music file collections as ‘downloading for free.’ What are the reasonable boundaries of such a network? My siblings? My five closest friends? My 500 Facebook friends? Or the 5000 music aficionados who subscribe to a private file sharing network? This is where the rubber hits the road as people develop their own digital ethics. The law has not begun to address it, and educational efforts to convince people that sharing within communities is theft are likely doomed.

This, of course, is the point that we've been trying to get at for many, many years. No matter what your personal feelings are, you're not going to convince everyone else just by making a blanket moral argument that they just don't buy into. Instead, it's time to move to a more reasonable strategy (more on that shortly...).

The Republican Party often has trouble attracting younger voters. Perhaps they should try not attacking one of the most popular pastimes for those voters. According to an entertaining report at Ars Technica, the Maine Republican Party has gone after a Democratic candidate for State Senate, Colleen Lachowicz, by attacking the fact that she played World of Warcraft, pulling a bunch of forum quotes she made a few years ago, and taking them out of context -- such as her statement that "I love poisoning and stabbing. It is fun." Tim Lee's writeup at Ars hits on exactly the right response:

Lachowicz uses salty language in some of the comments, but someone needs to sit the Maine GOP down and explain the difference between fantasy and reality. Every day, millions of people engage in simulated video game violence without committing any real-world violence. By suggesting a World of Warcraft hobby should disqualify someone for office—and implying that voters are too dumb to tell the difference between virtual and real violence—the party is only embarrassing itself.

Later, a spokesman tried to defend the flier, arguing that it raised questions about her work ethic. How? Well, state GOP spokesperson David Sorenson used "the number of hours most World of Warcraft gamers spend playing the game (22.7 per week, on average) and the number it must have taken her to reach such a high level" as some sort of proof that her work ethic is problematic. First of all, using the average amount of time someone plays WoW is meaningless in looking at how much any individual plays. Also, isn't achieving a high level a sign of a strong work ethic?

Once again, Lee's response is perfect:

It's worth noting that the average American watches more than 30 hours of television per week. Many other Americans spend their evenings and weekends at the golf course. Yet it's hard to imagine anyone suggesting that devoting 22 hours per week to those hobbies made a candidate too lazy to hold elected office.

I realize it's election season, and with that comes really, really dumb campaign ideas from nearly every political party and/or candidate, but it's difficult to see how this particular strategy is good for anyone -- especially if you want younger people to vote for you. The younger generation tends to respect and look up to gamer politicians. Attacking them for doing something that millions of people enjoy just doesn't seem particularly smart.

Techdirt has been following the important story of the kidney and liver cancer drug marketed under the name Nexavar since March, when India granted a compulsory license for the first time since re-instating patents on pharmaceuticals. Naturally, the patent holder, Bayer, fought back, and appealed against that decision. Now we learn from Intellectual Property Watch that Bayer has lost:

Last Friday (14 September), the Chennai-based Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB) which is responsible for hearing appeals on patent applications, rejected a petition by German pharma major Bayer AG, seeking a stay on an order of India’s Controller of Patents granting a compulsory licence (CL) to Indian generic drug maker Natco Pharma Limited, for a drug used to treat liver and kidney cancer.

It's quite possible that Bayer will try to appeal to a higher court, but what's noteworthy is that this is just one of several other important pharma cases in India at the moment. For example, the Delhi High Court held that Roche’s patent on the cancer drug Tarceva was valid, but that an Indian generics manufacturer had not infringed on it because it had only been selling a variant of the drug. Another high-profile case concerns the blood cancer drug Gleevec, sold as Glivec in India, whose manufacturer, Novartis, is fighting India's refusal to grant it a patent. Here's the background:

The legal dispute in the Glivec case centres around a provision of India’s 2005 patent law, called Section 3(d), which states that "the mere discovery of a new form of a known substance which does not result in the enhancement of the known efficacy of that substance or the mere discovery of any new property or new use for a known substance or the mere use of a known process, machine or apparatus unless such known process results in a new product or employs at least one new reactant." The dispute brings to the fore a fundamental question: what is an "invention"? Or more precisely, how much innovation is required to obtain a patent in India?

Novartis insists that it is not fighting in order to get more money, but to vindicate its "honor". What this probably means is that it is trying to establish the principle that patents can be given for new forms of drugs, even if they provide no enhancement over earlier versions. If it loses the Gleevec/Glivec case, that could have serious repercussions for future patent applications by the company in India.

More generally, this current round of high-profile drug patent cases may well have major knock-on effects in other regions of the world. Western pharma companies are probably worried that their recent failures in India to gain certain patents or block local manufacturers of generics could be repeated elsewhere as emerging countries wake up to the flexibilities within the TRIPS agreement that India is currently exploiting. The Intellectual Property Watch article mentions three nations that are already considering this -- Botswana, South Africa and Swaziland.

An article in the leading medical journal The Lancet agrees that India's growing success might well encourage others:

In trying to limit compulsory licences and avoid efficacy tests on products, the Bayer and Novartis cases are seeking to undermine public health considerations aimed at improving access and therapeutic advantage. The TRIPS Agreement does not limit the grounds on which compulsory licences can be granted, and does not prevent patent applicants from having to demonstrate enhanced efficacy for their allegedly new and useful inventions. There are many problems facing access to and rational use of medicines in India but the provisions within the country's patent laws, if more extensively and properly applied, should help rather than hinder such access. India's laws and experiences could provide a useful example for low-income and middle-income countries worldwide.

Watch this space.

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As Techdirt has reported, after a year of amazing successes, the German Pirate Party is going through something of a bad patch at the moment. One reason is that it seems to spend more time squabbling in public than on crafting policy documents that will win over the public. That makes the recent appearance of proposals for copyright reform particularly significant.

To be fair, one reason for the delay in producing them is that the Pirate Party has been involved in a major series of consultations with artists and publishers (original in German). These are also described at some length in a new brochure (pdf in German), whose last third consists of examples of new business models that seek to exploit rather than fight the shift to digital -- none of which will come as any surprise to readers of Techdirt. More interesting is the section detailing of the Pirate Party's core ideas for copyright reform, which aim to strike "a fair balance between creators and users" according to the text, and include the following proposals:

No online surveillance, blocking technologies or data retention

The reduction of the term of copyright

Legalization of DRM circumvention tools

More rights for creators when negotiating with publishers

Legalization of free, non-commercial copying of all creative works online

Digital archives for libraries

Exemption of educational establishments from copyright licensing fees

Open access to all publicly-funded academic work and broadcasting

Legalization of open wifi networks

It's a pretty restrained list, although it will doubtless be met with howls of disapproval from the usual suspects. Whether it's enough to win the German Pirate Party more favor with voters, especially the younger ones that are its heartland, remains to be seen. Moreover, now comes the even trickier task of drawing up a coherent political program for topics outside the world of copyright, where there is far less consensus about what -- if anything -- the Pirates are fighting for.

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