As Bessen and Meurer's book "Patent Failure" points out, one of the biggest problems with software patents is their lack of well-defined boundaries. This makes it very hard to tell whether newly-written code is infringing on existing patents or not. The threat of treble damages for wilful infringement removes any incentive to try to find out.

On the other hand, many software patents have been issued for basic programming techniques that are obvious to most competent coders, which makes it almost impossible not to infringe on them. Their obviousness means that it might be possible to find prior art to have them invalidated, but that takes time – and lots of money.

Put these two facts together, and you have the perfect situation for patent bullying. Holders of software patents will claim that some of your code infringes on their ideas, and that they could, if they wished, sue you and/or get your product withdrawn from the market. But generous types that they are, they will instead offer a licensing deal that solves all your problems.

The great thing about these licensing deals is that no details need be given afterwards – indeed that's usually a condition of them. So the patent holder can use them to insinuate to the rest of the world that fabulous sums are involved for multiple patent infringements, and that other people had better sign up quick before they get sued for even more.

Back in 2007, Microsoft tried to deploy this approach against companies – and users - using free software, which represented an increasing threat to Microsoft's dominance:

"We live in a world where we honor, and support the honoring of, intellectual property," says Ballmer in an interview. FOSS patrons are going to have to "play by the same rules as the rest of the business," he insists. "What's fair is fair."

Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith and licensing chief Horacio Gutierrez sat down with Fortune recently to map out their strategy for getting FOSS users to pay royalties. Revealing the precise figure for the first time, they state that FOSS infringes on no fewer than 235 Microsoft patents.

Significantly, though, Microsoft would never reveal what exactly those 235 patents were, despite repeated calls for them to be detailed so that people could examine the validity of Microsoft's claims. Because of this, the free software world called Microsoft's bluff, refusing to enter into licensing deals; no one was sued.

More recently, Microsoft has tried again, this time approaching manufacturers with products based on Android, which has free software such as Linux at its heart. Once more, claims that Android infringed on Microsoft's software patents were never specific, but this time it's been more successful in lining up licensing deals with major players, including one with HTC in April 2010, one with Casio, a few weeks ago and one with Samsung this week.

Most news outlets have been proclaiming the latter in particular as a huge blow against Android. But let's just look at what the press release actually says:

Microsoft announced today that it has signed a definitive agreement with Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., to cross-license the patent portfolios of both companies, providing broad coverage for each company’s products. Under the terms of the agreement, Microsoft will receive royalties for Samsung’s mobile phones and tablets running the Android mobile platform. In addition, the companies agreed to cooperate in the development and marketing of Windows Phone.

Everyone has focused on the part about Microsoft receiving royalties for Samsung's Android products, which would imply that Android does, indeed, infringe on Microsoft's patents. But the press release made no mention of the figures involved, or what precisely they were for. Samsung might have agreed to pay $5 per unit, or 5 cents. And for all we know, that “development and marketing of Windows Phone” might even involve Microsoft paying, say, $5 or 5 cents per Android unit back to Samsung.

In other words, this might well be much ado about nothing, the main purpose of which is to provide Microsoft with more “evidence” that it can wave at other companies when it goes calling for more licensing deals. A separate post by Microsoft's Brad Smith and Horacio Gutierrez spells that out for us:

In the context of all the attention intellectual property matters have received in recent months, it’s worth taking a moment to reflect on the meaning and impact of these agreements. The Samsung license agreement marks the seventh agreement Microsoft has signed in the past three months with hardware manufacturers that use Android as an operating system for their smartphones and tablets. The previous six were with Acer, General Dynamics Itronix, Onkyo, Velocity Micro, ViewSonic and Wistron.

These agreements prove that licensing works. They show what can be achieved when companies sit down and address intellectual property issues in a responsible manner. The rapid growth of the technology industry, and its continued fast pace of innovation are founded on mutual respect for IP. Intellectual property continues to provide the engine that incentivizes research and development, leading to inventions that put new products and services in the hands of millions of consumers and businesses.

In other words: “Look, all these companies can't possibly be wrong. There's clearly a big patent problem with Android, and anyone basing products around it had better sign up too.”

Why might Samsung go along with this kind of thing? Well, because we don't know the details of that licensing deal, it might be receiving more than it pays out – unlikely, but possible. More likely is the situation where Microsoft agreed to help it in various ways with the Windows Phone products that it also produces – after all, Samsung just wants to sell hardware, and doesn't really care which software it runs. There are plenty of legitimate ways in which Microsoft could make Samsung's acquiescence in this licensing game attractive.

And let's not forget that Samsung is currently embroiled in a much more serious dispute around the world with Apple over its Android products. It's a basic rule that you don't fight wars on two fronts if you can help it, so settling with Microsoft – especially if the terms were favourable – makes good sense from a business point of view.

To summarise, then, this high-profile deal tells us nothing about the real terms of the agreement; all we have is a reinforced appearance that Android infringes somehow on Microsoft's (unspecified) software patents – pure FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt).

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We've seen a few other cases like this and never can understand how a court thinks it's reasonable for a third party service provider to know how to block its system from being used for infringement, but that's exactly what's happened in the Court of Amsterdam. Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN has apparently won a lawsuit against Usenet provider News-Service.com (NSE). The court has ordered NSE to magically make all infringing works available via Usenet disappear. Of course, if you understood how third party systems work, you would know that the only way to do that is to no longer be an open platform, which takes away all the value of such a service. NSE responded pretty much as you would expected -- in shock about the impossibility of the order:

We are very disappointed with the Court’s verdict. It is technically as well as economically unfeasible to check the contents of the 15 to 20 million messages that are exchanged on a daily basis. Added to which, there is no automated way of checking whether Usenet messages contain copyrighted material or whether permission has been obtained for the distribution of such material.

It's kind of amazing that a court of law can't understand how the internet works. For its part, BREIN claims that this is "a breakthrough step." Yeah, taking down major communication platforms because the organizations you represent refuse to adapt. That's a "breakthrough"?

As you may recall, Psystar was a company that tried to make Apple Mac clones by legally purchasing Apple operating systems, and figuring out how to install them on other hardware. Apple sued the company in 2008 for violating its license. Psystar went through a variety of (often questionable) defenses before settling on the one I thought had the best chance: the first sale doctrine -- basically claiming they legally purchased the software, and that they should be able to install it wherever they want. Psystar also claimed "copyright misuse," against Apple, arguing that its EULA restricting installation to only Apple hardware was a form of copyright misuse to stifle competition. Two years ago, though, the court granted summary judgment to Apple, rejecting both arguments.

Psystar appealed, focusing on the copyright misuse argument and, while it took some time, the always slightly wacky 9th Circuit has upheld the ruling. The court, tragically in my opinion, buys Apple's argument that its EULA does not unfairly restrict competition, because Psystar could go find a different operating system, rather than Apple's. Here, the court relies on the awful Vernor v. Autodesk ruling that basically said, "as long as a software company claims it's leasing the software to you, rather than selling it to you, your first sale rights disappear." This is true even if the "sale" really is a sale rather than a lease. It all depends on what you call it.

So, in this case, the court ruled that the copyright misuse claim must fail, because it's really an attempt to create a "right of first sale" for software -- and because Apple pretends its software sales are licenses, there is no right of first sale. So, without that... no copyright misuse. If you think this logic is circular, you should see if you can become a judge on the 9th Circuit, since they appear to need help. Furthermore, it argues that since Psystar could just go write its own operating system there is no copyright misuse:

Apple’s SLA does not restrict competitor’s ability to develop their own software, nor does it preclude customers from using non-Apple components with Apple computers. Instead, Apple's SLA merely restricts the use of Apple’s own software to its own hardware. As the district court properly concluded, Apple's SLA has "not prohibited others from independently developing and using their own operating systems." Apple I, 673 F. Supp. 2d at 939. Psystar produces its own computer hardware and it is free to develop its own computer software.

As with the Vernor case, the reasoning here is convoluted. It's really just another court decision that chips away at first sale rights, which are (were?) an important part of copyright law.

Food packaging technology has come a long way from tin cans and glass containers. Packaging material is thinner and lighter and keeps food fresher for longer. And now that some plastics can be more easily recycled or composted, there are nifty new containers that could be slightly more environmentally friendly. Maybe food packaging hasn't been perfected just yet, but here are some interesting examples of progress in food distribution.

• It took three years to develop a successor to the ubiquitous ketchup packet. Maybe they should have also designed ketchup dispensers for mini-vans that just attach to the back of the headrests. [url]
• Someday kids won't know what a cereal box is -- because cereal will come in bags? And while cereal makers are trying to improve their packaging, how about making those bags compostable, too? [url]
• Compostable packaging is supposed to degrade. This seems like a job for Mythbusters, but it would take some patience to verify that a SunChips bag actually decomposes over 13 weeks. [url]
• To discover more food-related links, check out what's floating around in StumbleUpon. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

As Righthaven is desperately trying to avoid paying legal fees to Marc Randazza in the Hoehn case, it appears that the company has caught a very slight and brief reprieve. Judge Philip Pro has given the company a little bit more time, saying that Righthaven doesn't need to pay attorneys fees while the case is on appeal -- but it must post a bond to show that it can pay the $34k within 30 days. The judge then rejected the attempt to have Righthaven declared in contempt, and to allow the US Marshals to seize Righthaven assets. That's pretty understandable, given the appeal. Requiring Righthaven to post bond seems quite reasonable, even though I'm sure Righthaven will try to get out of it. Judge Pro also made it easier for Righthaven to post bond by saying that it only had to post bond on the $34k, rather than a much larger sum, including additional legal fees for the appeals process. This basically gives Righthaven a very, very brief respite, but isn't going to help. Even the judge makes it clear that Righthaven "does not enjoy a reasonable probability of success on the merits of its appeal."

We've already discussed whether Amazon's Kindle Fire 'Silk' browser is a copyright lawsuit waiting to happen, for the way it apparently is going to cache and modify content from its own AWS servers. It seems that people are realizing some other potential issues with it as well. Keith Dawson points us to a couple of interesting stories looking at the data mining implications. The first, by Chris Espinosa, summarizes the issue succinctly:

The “split browser” notion is that Amazon will use its EC2 back end to pre-cache user web browsing, using its fat back-end pipes to grab all the web content at once so the lightweight Fire-based browser has to only download one simple stream from Amazon’s servers. But what this means is that Amazon will capture and control every Web transaction performed by Fire users. Every page they see, every link they follow, every click they make, every ad they see is going to be intermediated by one of the largest server farms on the planet. People who cringe at the data-mining implications of the Facebook Timeline ought to be just floored by the magnitude of Amazon’s opportunity here. Amazon now has what every storefront lusts for: the knowledge of what other stores your customers are shopping in and what prices they’re being offered there. What’s more, Amazon is getting this not by expensive, proactive scraping the Web, like Google has to do; they’re getting it passively by offering a simple caching service, and letting Fire users do the hard work of crawling the Web. In essence the Fire user base is Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, scraping the Web for free and providing Amazon with the most valuable cache of user behavior in existence.

So there's that. Of course, there are a few caveats here. In theory, your ISP could have much of the same info -- though you can get around it with encryption. Furthermore, your ISP isn't caching everything, so there are some limitations there. Of course, on the flip side, the Silk browser is only on the Kindle Fire, meaning Amazon is only getting such data based on what people surf over that particular tablet device and its 7-inch screen. It might be interesting to see some data here, but I'd bet the sort of browsing done on such a device is not representative of how people surf the wider web.

Of course, things could get more interesting if Amazon decides to enter the browser wars in a bigger way... such as by releasing Silk as a desktop browser as well. That theory is posited in another article highlighted by Dawson, this one by Joe Brockmeier, which delves deeply into the implications of the Silk browser on a variety of fronts. He's the first person I've seen bring up the idea of Amazon entering the larger desktop browser wars:

But does it seem likely that Amazon will put that much emphasis on Silk just for the Fire? I don't think that's likely. Amazon has several jobs posted for Silk engineers, and while mobile is mentioned, it's not exclusive. I strongly suspect that Amazon is going to be releasing a Silk desktop browser eventually. Probably not in the near future – Amazon needs to make sure that its infrastructure can handle the onslaught of all the Kindle users before trying to scale to an unknown number of desktop users.

Remember when people said the browser wars were over and Microsoft had won? Yeah. Anyway, Brockmeier's article also notes that Amazon won't just have all this aggregate info, but in theory can tie the info specifically to the Amazon account holder:

Each Kindle is tied to an Amazon ID, which gives Amazon a great deal of information about you already. Introducing Silk into the mix and Amazon is going to be in a position to know a great deal about your Web browsing habits along with your buying habits and media habits. Now Amazon is in a position to know what books you buy, what shows you watch, the Web sites you visit and much more.

Perhaps it's not just copyright lawsuits that Amazon will be facing with Silk.

While the EU, Mexico and Switzerland are apparently not yet ready to sign ACTA, a lot of others are apparently planning to sign the document this weekend, despite questions about its legality. Because of that Sean Flynn has written up an analysis suggesting that, even if the document is signed it's not clear that the treaty can actually go into effect anywhere. Whether or not that's accurate, what I wanted to focus on was a separate tidbit of info suggesting that, while the Obama administration is very much aware of the very serious Constitutional questions raised by the signing, it's going to issue a "signing statement" that defends its right to ignore the Constitution here.

In the US, there is no plan to constitutionally ratify the agreement. Indeed, this will likely be the main focus of the US signing statement. The document will be an argument to Congress that the executive can pass this agreement alone – legally binding the US to a trade agreement without no congressional authorization – because, according to the Executive, ACTA is fully consistent with current US law.

Thus, the administration argues that there doesn't need to be a Senate review because no laws will be changed. This is, of course, wrong, since ACTA (1) does not align itself fully with US laws and (2) massively constrains Congress's ability to change certain intellectual property laws in the future. Furthermore, this basic argument is ridiculous. The President is only allowed to sign executive agreements that cover items solely under the President's mandate. Intellectual property is not. It's clearly given to Congress under the Constitution.

Of course, I'm quite curious as to how the Administration, with Joe Biden as VP, can defend this action. After all, as well chronicled, when Joe Biden was still Senator Biden in 2002, he went ballistic against then-President George W. Bush for trying to sign an arms control agreement with Russia as an executive agreement, rather than a treaty with Senate ratification. He actually sent a letter to the President demanding that the agreement be submitted as a treaty for ratification in the Senate. The letter apparently "defend[ed] the institutional prerogatives of the Senate." Of course, if we had any real reporters out there who actually asked the administration real questions, they might question this obvious hypocrisy within the administration. But, instead, expect almost no one to cover this story.

While we know that Facebook collects a ton of data on people, and we absolutely agree that the way it implemented some of its frictionless sharing is ridiculously unclear, does that mean it should be illegal? The privacy group EPIC, who has such a low opinion of all of human kind that it feels that only it should decide whether or not you can share your own info, is asking the feds to ban Facebook's frictionless sharing -- even though it's entirely optional.

Again, we agree that the implementation is poor, but EPIC takes this to a whole different, and absolutely ridiculous level, suggesting that merely encouraging people to choose to share info is a violation of their privacy:

Encouraging or prompting users to share personal information is detrimental to consumer privacy

Wait, what? That makes no sense. I would agree that tricking people into sharing personal info is detrimental, but merely providing services and encouraging people to share info they want to share? How is that possibly detrimental? It's only deterimental in the eyes of organizations like EPIC, who think that they need to block people who want to share from doing so.

We've discussed a few times just how ridiculous it is that the US government still pretends that the State Department cables available via Wikileaks are somehow classified and secret. It's a head-in-sand approach, in which government employees have to pretend that information, which the rest of the world knows about, isn't actually known. This makes no sense. In the business world, if you sign a non-disclosure agreement, and content becomes public through other means, you're free to talk about it. The way the government does it is crazy... and opens up the possibility of abuse, such as in the following case.

State Department employee Peter van Buren has written a book that apparently criticizes the US's efforts in Iraq entitled: We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People. Not surprisingly, the State Department isn't happy about the book. While it did review the manuscript before it was published, it can't stop the publication.

So, instead, it appears to being coming up with other ways to be vindictive. Such as investigating him for "disclosing classified information." And, no, it's not because of info in the book, which was pre-vetted by the government. It's because he wrote a blog post, where he dares to link to a Wikileaks cable, which is public to the whole world.

But, in the vindictive little minds of folks in the State Department, since such info is still technically "classified," they can go after van Buren for "disclosing classified info." And, making it even better, the investigators who interrogated him over this told him that if he wrote about the interrogation, he could also be charged with "interfering with a government investigation." It makes you wonder if the people involved in this recognize how petty and childish they appear in their actions. No one who can think straight thinks that van Buren linking to a very public document reveals classified information -- and on top of that, speaking publicly about State Department bullying is not, in any way, interfering with a government investigation.

Tragically, this is not an isolated incident. Despite the President's insistence that he wants to see more whistleblowing, every time we see whistleblowing in the federal government it seems like it's followed up by vindictive attacks by the federal government.

Last year, we discussed whether or not things like Operation Payback by Anonymous (DDoSing sites of organizations they didn't like) was really the equivalent of a modern-day sit-in protest, rather than a criminal hacking, as law enforcement (and victims) wanted to allege. It appears that this may be a question that courts are going to need to answer. Nick points us to the news that the lawyer for a homeless guy accused of setting up a DDoS on the City of Santa Cruz (he was pissed about a law) is claiming that DDoS attacks are legal and protected speech in the form of a protest:

“There’s no such thing as a DDoS ‘attack’,” Leiderman said. “A DDoS is a protest, it’s a digital sit in. It is no different than physically occupying a space. It’s not a crime, it’s speech.”

Leiderman said the crimes shouldn’t be prosecuted at all. “Nothing was malicious, there was no malware, no Trojans. This was merely a digital sit in. It is no different from occupying the Woolworth’s lunch counter in the civil rights era.”

In this case, the case has nothing to do with Anonymous, Lulzsec or any of those high profile groups, but they might want to pay attention to the case. It seems that some of those already arrested in various sweeps against Anonymous and Lulzsec have indicated that they're considering the same defense strategy. In that last one, involving Mercedes Haefer, who was charged with being a part of Anonymous, her lawyer is pointing out that President Obama has asked supporters to overload the switchboards of Congress -- and that's a form of a denial of service attack:

"I think this is a political persecution, end of story," Cohen said. "This administration wants to send a message to those who would register their opposition: 'you come after us, we're going to come after you.' That's what has happened in the Eric Holder Department of Justice."

"When Obama orders supporters to inundate the switchboards of Congress, that's good politics, when a bunch of kids decide to send a political message with roots going back to the civil rights movement and the revolution, it's something else," Cohen told TPM, stipulating that he was not indicating that his client was even involved. "Barack Obama urged people to shutdown the switchboard, he's not indicted."

Not surprisingly, I'm sympathetic to this argument, though I do wonder how well it'll play in court. In both of these cases, I think a decent case can be made that the actions are a form of speech, in that they were both designed to protest certain actions. The question is whether or not the courts will recognize them as legitimate and protected protests. And that may very well come down to the judges in the cases.

With Illinois planning to appeal the Michael Allison case, in which the state wants to put Allison in jail for 75 years because he recorded an interaction with the police, it's worth pointing out that this is not the only such case in Illinois. A few people have sent over this ABC report about another guy, Louis Frobe, who was arrested and told he was facing 15 years in jail for daring to turn on his Flip cam during a traffic stop. You can see the video of the traffic stop in the news report below. Yes, note the irony: the whole thing was recorded (without Frobe's permission) by the police car camera, but the second the officer sees the Flip cam, he tells Frobe he's committed a felony and arrests him: The key part:

Frobe calls it the worst experience of his life. He was on his way to a late evening movie on an August night last year when he was stopped for speeding in far north suburban Lindenhurst. He didn't believe he was in a 35-mile-an-hour zone, and he figured if he was going to get ticket he wanted to be able to document his challenge with video evidence, so he got out his flip camera, which he was not very adept at using.

At one point he held it out the window trying to record where he was. When the officer, being recorded on his squad dash cam, walked back to Frobe's car, the officer saw Frobe's camera.

Officer: "That recording? Frobe : "Yes, Yes, I've been... Officer: "Was it recording all of our conversation? Frobe: "Yes. Officer: "Guess what? You were eavesdropping on our conversation. I did not give you permission to do so. Step out of the vehicle."

Louis Frobe was then cuffed and arrested for felony eavesdropping.

Yes, eavesdropping. On himself.

In this case, prosecutors eventually dropped the charges, but Frobe turned around and sued them for the arrest in the first place. The Illinois Attorney General -- who still insists there's no First Amendment right to record the police -- has said Frobe's case should be dismissed since he has no standing. Of course, this is a nearly identical fact pattern to the Glik case in Massachusetts, where the court not only allowed Glik to sue but found 1st and 4th Amendment problems with the arrest. These are different circuits, so the ruling in Massachusetts doesn't directly act as precedent for Illinois, but it certainly can be cited and discussed.

We've discussed this a few times in the past, but the FBI's main counter-terrorism initiative these days appears to be centered around creating its own terrorist plots to thwart. First, they find clueless, easily manipulated people (frequently young and Muslim), who have no actual connections with terrorists. Then, they concoct entire terrorism plots, where every other person is an FBI agent, and any tools, "weapons" and money are supplied by the FBI. Finally, they "bust" the guy just before he carries out the plot that never would have happened anyway, because it's not like the FBI would supply the actual weapons. We see this pattern again and again -- and each time the press uncritically hypes up how the FBI successfully stopped a real "homegrown" terrorist.

Of course, it's happened once again, and the basic plotlines are identical to ones in the past. And, of course, the press is describing it like it was an actual terrorist plot, pretending that people was actually at risk. Glenn Greenwald's summary of this and other cases is pretty spot on:

None of these cases entail the FBI's learning of an actual plot and then infiltrating it to stop it. They all involve the FBI's purposely seeking out Muslims (typically young and impressionable ones) whom they think harbor animosity toward the U.S. and who therefore can be induced to launch an attack despite having never taken even a single step toward doing so before the FBI targeted them. Each time the FBI announces it has disrupted its own plot, press coverage is predictably hysterical (new Homegrown Terrorist caught!), fear levels predictably rise, and new security measures are often implemented in response (the FBI's Terror plot aimed at the D.C. Metro, for instance, led to the Metro Police announcing a new policy of random searches of passengers' bags).

Now, I'm sure some will argue that these efforts highlight those who may be pre-disposed to taking part in such activities if given the chance for real. But in the US, I thought we didn't believe in arresting people for crimes that they're pre-disposed to doing if they haven't actually done them. On top of that, with the FBI providing most of the actual plot here, it's difficult to see how this isn't a classical case of entrapment. Finally, it's not clear what good this really does. Putting people who had no real means of attacking the US in jail isn't likely to scare off anyone else.

It also makes you wonder if the FBI shouldn't be spending more time trying to stop actual plots that involve people who have the means to actually hurt people, rather than these plots which have exactly 0% chance of causing any harm.

This isn't much of a surprise, given our earlier stories. As we noted when the Justice Department indicted five people for their roles in the Ninjavideo community, they appeared to have a pretty strong case against them. So it really wasn't a surprise that one of the defendants, Matthew Smith, agreed to a plea bargain, which we noted almost certainly involved him agreeing to testify against the rest. For the Justice Department, that's pure gold. They can then use that to pressure everyone else into plea bargains as well (and each one down gets worse terms). So, it looks like Hana Beshara -- who was "the face" of NinjaVideo -- was the second to fall, taking a plea bargain deal in which she also pleads guilty. Those two were the big fish. I'd be surprised if the other three don't fold quickly as well at this point. Of course, as with the Smith plea, you should take what they admitted to with a pretty big grain of salt. If you want an obvious sign of how the agreement and reality may differ, just look at the details of the Beshara plea, in which she claims that she personally got $200,000 out of the alleged $500,000 the site made. We're skeptical that the site ever made anywhere close to $500,000 or that Beshara made $200,000. So notice that the $200k number is mentioned in how much she made, but no amount is stated in how much the government took from her:

Beshara admitted that she and her co-conspirators collected more than $500,000 in overall proceeds during the website’s two-and-a-half years of operation, with Beshara personally receiving more than $200,000. As part of her plea agreement, Beshara agreed to forfeit assets seized by ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in June 2010, including cash, an investment brokerage account, two bank accounts, a Paypal account and one Internet advertising account.

If ICE got anywhere near $200,000 out of those accounts, they would have said so. They didn't, probably because that money never existed.

With the Justice Department believing that it can get all sorts of data from telcos without any oversight or without a warrant, it seems rather important to know what kind of info your mobile operator is keeping -- and for how long. The ACLU, via a Freedom of Information Act request, was able to get a "for law enforcement use only" document that shows how long the carriers hold on to what data (Wired also notes that the document could already be found online if you knew the title). The document itself is a pretty weak scan: Thankfully, however, now that the data is out there, we can show it friendlier formats. Michael Robertson was kind enough to take the data (minus the "for law enforcement use only" part, and put it into a Google docs spreadsheet: Additionally, the folks at Wired put together a nice infographic from the data: What it seems to show is that Verizon holds onto your texting data for the least amount of time, but also retains the actual text of your text messages -- something no one else, outside of Virgin Mobile, does. How long until we see a push for a mobile data retention law to "standardize" what these companies have to hang onto and for how long?

Via betajames, we learn of some research being done on a computer system that's trying to predict political unrest by looking at press coverage.

In a recently published paper, Culturomics 2.0: Forecasting Large-scale Human Behavior Using Global News Media Tone in Time and Space, [Kalev Leetaru] shows that by feeding millions of news articles from around the world into an SGI supercomputer, you can analyze the tone of media coverage and pinpoint moments of unrest: a revolution, riots, or even when a despotic ruler will relinquish power and flee his country.

Of course, so far, the system has only been used on past events, and as it says on the box: past results are no guarantee on future performance. Separately, looking at the examples in the article, it sounds like it notices stuff... well... about the same time a human paying attention would notice stuff. It talks about how right before Pearl Harbor the Japanese press dropped all talk of peace and ramped up criticism of the US. It also discusses Mubarak leaving office and how the press turned really negative right before that. But it wasn't like you needed a computer to tell you that the protests were having an impact and likely leading to the end of Mubarak's reign.

The project sounds interesting, but it seems like Leetaru is overly optimistic about what it'll show. Until there's evidence of it picking out things that you couldn't pick out yourself just by reading the news, I'm not sure there's really any breakthrough.