This one is just amusing -- so please don't try to pull any sort of "serious" statement out of it. Apple announced its voice activated Siri assistant feature, which is a bit more advanced than similar attempts at this kind of thing: It's definitely a step closer to the science fiction of our past and things like the "Computer" on Star Trek (though, perhaps many steps away from it being that useful). So, the idea itself isn't that impressive. People have been talking about this kind of holy grail for years. The question was just always when would the technology be good enough to make it work. And, amusingly, it looks like Apple may have predicted the timing much more accurately than anyone could have guessed.

Back in 1987, Apple put out this video showing a future with a tablet-based virtual assistant called the Knowledge Navigator: But where is the prediction of the timing in there? Well, I'll let Andy Baio, who figured this all out, handle the explanation:

Based on the dates mentioned in the Knowledge Navigator video, it takes place on September 16, 2011. The date on the professor's calendar is September 16, and he's looking for a 2006 paper written "about five years ago," setting the year as 2011.

And this morning, at the iPhone keynote, Apple announced Siri, a natural language-based voice assistant, would be built into iOS 5 and a core part of the new iPhone 4S.

So, 24 years ago, Apple predicted a complex natural-language voice assistant built into a touchscreen Apple device, and was less than a month off.

Nicely done, Apple of the past.

I had the pleasure this week of being on KUER's RadioWest program talking about the patent system. However, the much more interesting part of the show is the first segment (without me), which features Alex Blumberg and Laura Sydell, the two reporters who did the amazing "When Patents Attack!" report for This American Life earlier this year which received so much attention and has helped drive more mainstream recognition of the problems with today's patent system.

Alex and Laura, with the help of host Doug Fabrizio, go through the backstory behind the "When Patents Attack!" episode, discussing how Alex originally intended it to be a short segment on this crazy idea of "patent trolls," with the idea of having a patent troll discuss why they do what they do. But, from there, the story kept getting more interesting -- especially after Intellectual Ventures simply could not credibly point to a single situation in which they'd helped to better society by helping bring new products to life or even of any inventors who they'd helped, beyond just getting their patents into litigation. It's a fascinating story in part because of how it developed, and how the deeper these two reporters dug into the subject, the less and less the patent system made sense. One telling point in the discussion is when Laura points out that so many of the people they talked to who defended the system never seemed to be able to credibly explain the larger picture. Instead, they were just focused on the narrow "trees" rather than the full "forest." And that, of course, is because they're making money off those trees, and the concerns for the fact that they're cutting down the larger forest are ignored.

I'm reminded of the famous Upton Sinclair quote:

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"

Laura had to leave around the 26 minute mark, at which point I got to join the discussion and discuss some of the history around the patent system, and how little the patent system actually has to do with innovation. There were a variety of topics we covered, and I was tempted to dig deeper on each and every one of them -- especially Alex's brief discussion of James Bessen's work about patents and pharmaceuticals, which is an entirely different debate than tech-related patents, but no less troubling. However, in the interest of time and keeping the show flowing I tried to keep the comments as straightforward and simple as possible. Either way it was fun to be on the show and I enjoyed talking with Doug and Alex about the patent system... and was happy that the problems of the patent system are continuing to get more mainstream news attention.

Gamification is a nice buzzword for "tricking" people into doing useful things. Players can be rewarded with badges or points or just the satisfaction of winning the game. And in return, the game designer filters out spam or translates text or discovers a genius who can unlock the ninth chevron. Here are a few more examples.

• The game Foldit gets players to predict the structure of protein molecules, and it actually helped solve the structure of a protein-cutting enzyme in about 3 weeks. The cheat codes for the game probably helped... [url]
• DARPA has a game that lets players track down submarines -- essentially teaching software for autonomous anti-submarine robots while they play. Sounds a bit like The Last Starfighter, but for submarines. [url]
• From some of the same folks who brought you reCAPTCHAs, there's a game that helps you learn another language, and at the same time, help translate websites into almost any other common language. "I am a jelly donut" -- for everyone! [url]
• To find some cool online games, check out what StumbleUpon has found to play. [url]  

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

None of this will come as much of a surprise, but a former "anti-piracy" private investigator who worked for the MPAA's anti-piracy shell operation in Australia, AFACT, has explained to Torrentfreak how he helped inflate "piracy" numbers, was used to imply a non-existent link between infringement and drug trafficking, and how he basically handed police targets for raids. The guy was focused on physical counterfeiting of movies, and actually lost his job as the MPAA/AFACT started focusing more on online, rather than physical. But, still there are some tidbits that highlight pretty much how the MPAA twists things:

"He was adamant that we needed to boost our statistics to make the media sit up and take notice and that the large numbers would make it easier to get the local Police interested. This was especially difficult to do as local police had no jurisdiction over copyright infringing product and the AFP were desperately short on manpower. We were encouraged to find links to drugs and stolen goods wherever possible."

"We discussed the formula for extrapolating the potential street value earnings of 'laboratories' and we were instructed to count all blank discs in our seizure figures as they were potential product. Mr Gane also explained that the increased loss approximation figures were derived from all forms of impacts on decreasing cinema patronage right through to the farmer who grows the corn for popping."

[....]

"Funded solely by MPAA, AFACT lobbies hard for changes to Australian law and enhance the sexiness of their case by making vague references to links to terrorism. Sometimes not so vague. I was instructed to tell police officers that the profit margins were greater than dealing heroin. It was bizarre. A twisted logic that AFACT spewed out with monotonous regularity," Warren says.

One of the examples Warren gives is that they assumed that all burners and DVD replicators would run 24/7, making these operations appear very lucrative.

"Each burner cranking out ten discs an hour, multiplied by ten dollars per disc is potentially a hundred dollars an hour, multiplied by number of burners by hours in a year gives a yearly potential…. Very pumped up statistics."

There's a lot more in the story -- none of which is particularly surprising, but just interesting to see someone who was there come out and admit what most people knew already.

We recently wrote about a new patent troll called Innovatio, which was suing a bunch of coffee shops, restaurants, supermarkets and hotels, claiming that by offering WiFi hotspots, they were infringing on its patents. Glenn Fleishman reminded us of a very similar story from seven years ago, when Acacia (one of the biggest patent trolling operations out there), got some patents and went after various hotspot providers, similarly asking them to pay (relatively) small amounts ($1,000/year) to "license" the patents in question. The patents in question are different from the patents being used by Innovatio. However, if you think these two companies are the only ones to hold patents that cover some aspect of WiFi, think again. While, as far as I know, Acacia eventually gave up on this strategy, if Innovatio continues, just watch various patent holders come out of the woodwork. Operating a WiFi hotspot may mean getting hit up weekly to pay off the next round of patent trolls.

We had just mentioned the infamous decision in the Vernor v. Autodesk case last week, in discussing the Psystar decision. If you don't recall, the court in the Vernor case effectively decimated the concept of "first sale" in software, making it questionable if you could ever resell software that you'd bought. To make that work, the court argued that software sales (even though it's "bought" in stores) are really "licenses," similar to rentals, rather than product sales and, thus, you can't resell. Of course, as someone noted in our comments, then why does Apple have a "How to Buy" page for its software, in which it is entirely described as a product you are purchasing.

In the Vernor case, the court gave a recipe for effectively destroying first sale. All anyone has to do is claim that they're licensing you something, even if it has every indication of being a full purchase. This seemed to contradict with the entire First Sale doctrine (and numerous other cases), but apparently the Supreme Court doesn't want to be bothered with this. It refused to hear Vernor's appeal, meaning the existing ruling sticks. This is one case where I could definitely see another appeals court coming to a different conclusion, meaning that, hopefully, the Supreme Court will revisit this issue at some point in the future. In the meantime, the first sale doctrine is severely limited to the point of near non-existence in software.

One of the striking features of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is that it is mainly being signed by Western/“developed” countries – with a few token players from other parts of the world to provide a fig-leaf of nominal inclusiveness. That's no accident: ACTA is the last-gasp attempt of the US and the EU to preserve their intellectual monopolies – copyright and patents, particularly drug patents – in a world where both are increasingly questioned.

Much of the challenge to the old order is coming from the BRICS group of emerging countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – none of which has been involved in ACTA. Of those, the one in the vanguard of adopting innovative approaches to making knowledge widely accessible in the Internet age is Brazil.

For example, the federal government has actively supported open source software by creating a Public Software Portal. The country has also been at the forefront of open content use: just this week, the city of São Paulo specified that all educational materials produced for it must be released under the Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA license.

It's true that there have also been some mixed signals recently, notably the re-surfacing of the punitive “cybercrime bill”, which Techdirt reported on a couple of months ago. But here's some positive news coming out of the country, in the shape of a draft of a bill for a civil rights-based framework for the Internet:

The draft bill proposition for a Civil Right’s Based Framework for Internet in Brazil has just reached Congress. The English translation of this version is available here.

It is the result of an initiative from the Brazilian Ministry of Justice, in partnership with the Center for Technology and Society of the Getulio Vargas Foundation (CTS/FGV), to develop a collaborative online/offline consultation process in which all the actors from Brazilian society could identify together the rights and responsibilities that should guide the use of the Internet in Brazil. The process, which resulted in a Bill of Law, is an example of the importance and the great potential of multistakeholder involvement on policy-making.

NGOs, universities, internet service providers (collectively though associations, as well as individually), business companies, law firms, law enforcement agencies, individuals, Brazilian Embassies from all over the world, and many other participants have joined the online public hearing. The participation of several stakeholder groups has promoted the diversity of opinions and the availability of high quality information and expert advise, which have helped the government to draft a balanced bill. The openness and transparency of the process, entirely conducted online, in the public eye, has improved the legitimacy of the bill. Marco Civil was introduced in Congress with the political weight and the legitimacy that the Bill would be expected to have after a complex multistakeholder discussion.

Among its fundamental principles:

I – safeguarding freedom of speech, communication, and manifestation of thought, in the terms of the Constitution;

II – the protection of privacy;

III – the protection of personal data, in accordance to the law;

IV – the preservation and safeguarding of net neutrality, in compliance with further regulation;

And this is *real* net neutrality, not the compromised US kind:

Article 9. The party responsible for the transmission, switching or routing of data has the obligation of granting equal treatment to every data package, with no distinction by content, origin and destination, service, terminal or application; any traffic discrimination or degradation that does not arise out of the technical requirements necessary to the adequate provision of services is prohibited, in accordance to further regulation.

It also comes out strongly in favor of guaranteeing access to the Internet, respect for personal privacy online, and against any kind of “three strikes” laws cutting off users for alleged copyright infringement:

Article 7. Access to the Internet is essential for the exercise of citizenship, and the following rights are secured to its users:

I – the non-violation and secrecy of communications on the Internet, except under judicial order, in the hypotheses and form established by law, for criminal investigations or the gathering of evidence for criminal procedures;

II – the non suspension of Internet connections, except for debts directly related to their use;

It has plenty to say on the vexed issue of keeping users' access logs, including:

Article 10. The storage and disclosure of the connection logs and Internet application access logs regulated by this law must preserve intimacy, private life, the reputation and image of the parties directly or indirectly involved.

§1 The Internet service provider responsible for the storage of logs will only be constrained to disclose the information that allows the identification of the user under a judicial order

Nor is ISP liability overlooked:

Article 14. Internet connection providers shall not be responsible for damage arising from content generated by third parties.

Article 15. Except otherwise established by law, Internet application providers can only be responsible for the damages caused by content generated by third parties if, after receiving a specific judicial order, they do not take action to, in the context of their services and under the established time frame, make unavailable the infringing content.

And the crucial issue of judicial requests for logs is also spelled out in detail:

Article 17. Interested parties may, for the purpose of gathering evidence in civil and criminal proceedings, of either accidental or autonomous nature, request a judge to order the party responsible for storing Internet service access logs, or connection logs, to disclose these logs.

Sole Paragraph. Without prejudice of other legal requirements, the application shall contain, under penalty of not being admissible:

I – solid evidence of the occurrence of an illegal act;

II – a motivated justification for the utility of accessing the requested logs, for the purposes of investigation or the gathering of evidence;

III - the period that the logs refer to.

Article 18. It is the obligation of judges to take the measures necessary to guarantee the secrecy of the information received, and the preservation of the intimacy, private life, honor and image of Internet users. Judges are capable, for that purpose, to constitute the information as secret, including with respect to requests for the storage of logs.

All-in-all, it's a remarkable document, forming in effect an "anti-ACTA" that guarantees many of the protections for Internet users that ACTA seeks to eradicate, and forbids repressive measures that ACTA aims to introduce.

However, two big questions hang over the draft. First, whether it will be passed by the Brazilian Congress in its present form (or at all), and, second, how it can be squared with the harsh penalties proposed in the “cybercrime” bill mentioned above if that too comes into force. But whatever happens, Brazil has already shown leadership by drafting a bill that dares to question and oppose the copyright maximalist orthodoxies underlying ACTA – something signally lacking in other countries.

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

Almost certainly the most famous case of incorrect headlines by a newspaper trying to rush to press early goes to the infamous Dewey Defeats Truman headline in the Chicago Tribune, published on November 3, 1948... which was, of course, actually the day that Truman defeated Dewey. In our more "real time" news world, the quest to be "first" with a breaking news story can lead newspapers to do interesting things. It's no secret, of course, that many news organizations will pre-write certain stories, but it appears that a bunch of UK papers, in getting ready for the verdict over Amanda Knox, were so desperate to get the scoop out first, that they must have loaded up two versions of the story with their fingers poised right over the publish button as the verdict came out. Unfortunately for "the press," the court first noted that Knox was "guilty" of defamation, and then cleared her on the murder charges.

But it appears that the eager button pushers in various newsrooms simply heard "guilty" and hit "publish" on the "guilty" versions of the story. Malcolm Coles' blog presented a bunch of evidence of various newspapers going live with the "guilty version."

He notes that the Daily Mail version of the story had all sorts of totally falsified details: Of course, that opening sentence didn't happen. The story also included other made up details:

As Knox realized the enormity of what judge Hellman was saying she sank into her chair sobbing uncontrollably while her family and friends hugged each other in tears.

A few feet away Meredith's mother Arline, her sister Stephanie and brother Lyle, who had flown in especially for the verdict remained expressionless, staring straight ahead, glancing over just once at the distraught Knox family.

Prosecutors were delighted with the verdict and said that 'justice has been done' although they said on a 'human factor it was sad two young people would be spending years in jail'.

Following the verdict Knox and Sollecito were taken out of court escorted by prison guards and into a waiting van which took her back to her cell at Capanne jail near Perugia and him to Terni jail, 60 miles away.

The various newspapers that published the "wrong" story quickly updated to the "correct" one -- almost certainly also pre-written with similar details of "reactions" that hadn't actually happened at the time of writing. But that also resulted in some interesting juxtaposition while Google News had competing headlines from the same sources:
Nice to see that getting the story right is very much secondary to getting the story first. Nice work by Coles to catch all of this and highlight it on his blog.

A few years back, patent troll FotoMedia sued dozens of companies that hosted photos online for patent infringement. Many were small mom-and-pop outfits who could barely afford a lawyer to deal with this sort of thing. Some even talked of leaving the country, since running a business in the US became too expensive due to such patent trolling lawsuits. Still, many firms settled, because that's cheaper than fighting. The FotoMedia shakedown got extra attention this summer, as it was the opening vignette on This American Life's story about our broken patent system.

The "company" has apparently been quiet for a while, but recently targeted a big fish: it's now suing Facebook for patent infringement for the mortal sin of letting people create photo albums online. It's also suing MySpace, as if that site still exists, and some others. Obviously, the main target is Facebook. Facebook has been hit with a bunch of patent suits, as has any tech company that has been moderately successful, and has tended to fight back. Hopefully that continues in this case.

It's amazing how frequently legacy entertainment industry companies look to screw up a good thing. Cartoon Network and its alter ego Adult Swim launched iOS apps in the last year that received a ton of praise for offering full streams of shows in their free apps. This made them useful apps for plenty of fans of cartoons (and, really, who isn't a fan of cartoons?). But, it appears things have changed. A practicing intellectual property lawyer, who prefers to remain anonymous (he apparently doesn't want the world to know of his cartoon obsession), alerted us to the news that the two apps have now removed the free streams. The deal is you can now only get free streams if you subscribe to a partner cable/satellite provider. In fact, they're even pitching it as if they're doing something new -- totally ignoring that the free streams used to be available for everyone, and now are limited to just people who have cable/satellite subscriptions.

Yes, this is weak attempt by everyone to try to hold back the flood of people cutting the cord -- but it's the absolute wrong way to go about it. Rather than providing more value, they're trying to take away value from others, and in the process pissing off a lot of people. It's not going to make cord cutters any more interested in re-subscribing to cable or satellite TV, but may make the Cartoon Network and Adult Swim lose some of its most valuable audience -- the young, employed, well-educated folks that advertisers crave... who have been leading the charge in cutting the cord. Here's what the attorney wrote to me:

I do not have cable. and, just to make it clear, I am a late 20-something, practicing intellectual property attorney, and I cut my cable not because the economy is bad, but because it is an outrageously overpriced, single direction service that forces me to choke down a ton of content I do not care about, in addition to forcing me to watch ads.

I was happy to watch my favorite cartoons, for free, but with ads, ostensibly, the profits of which go directly to the stations with less dilution than if they had been broadcast, but now I will probably go back to doing what I did before my iPad: not watch stuff, wait for it to come out on DVD and Netflix/Qwikster it, or, potentially, even 'infringe' it.

The way to compete in this market is to add value, not take it away. That just pisses people off.

Julian Sanchez points us to a bizarre 4th Amendment ruling. While we've seen courts regularly pick away at the 4th Amendment, and allow things like warrantless wiretapping and tracking individuals via their phones without a warrant. In this case, the court ruled that touching a mousepad, thereby taking a laptop out of screensaver mode, constituted a "search" and was subject to the 4th Amendment. While I'm happy to see courts actually recognizing the importance of the 4th Amendment, and the need for law enforcement to obtain warrants, I'm having trouble understanding how this is a 4th Amendment search when those other -- much more invasive -- actions are not.

The details of the case involve someone who posted a threat to Craigslist about bringing a gun to a mall. Police tracked the guy down at his house, and while there, one of them touched his mousepad, changing the screen from the blank screensaver mode to fully on, displaying some information that was used to arrest the guy. Since stuff seen in plain sight is not considered a search, the question is whether or not this uncovered things that were not in plain sight, and thus constituted a search. I can understand why the court ruled the way it did in this case (though I'm a bit surprised). I'm just struggling to understand how that's not a legal search, but something like scanning the entire contents of a mobile phone during a traffic stop is a legal search.

Sheri Candler points us to this fascinating story, where the Finnish producers of a "sci-fi Nazis-on-the-moon spoof" movie called Iron Sky have decided to try to work with a Chinese company who turned the movie into an unauthorized "pirate" video game for the iPad, to see if they could turn it into the official version of the game.

Rather than sue the company, "Iron Sky" creators are now in talks with Ziiso to make a legitimate iPad game.

"The people at Ziiso apologized to the 'Iron Sky' team in an interview conducted by the largest newspaper in Finland, Helsingin Sanomat," said "Iron Sky" director Timo Vuorensola.

"The apology and Ziiso's willingness to correct their error convinced me that we could co-operate with them on the game project. We are currently negotiating with Ziiso about revamping the game and publishing it as part of the official 'Iron Sky' merchandise."

Of course, we've talked about the Iron Sky producers in the past, and their history suggests that they're really open to embracing such things, rather than freaking out about them. They're the same folks who created the amazing Star Wreck film years ago for free. They then turned the massive success of that into Iron Sky, which was funded with $10 million in a hybrid funding model that combined some traditional financing along with a ton of fan support by allowing fans to buy "War Bonds" to crowdfund part of the movie.

These are clearly folks who always look to embrace what people out there want... rather than freak out and try to block others.

There's been plenty of press attention on Bitcoin over the last six to eight months, and many talk about how Bitcoin came about in a rather secretive manner by someone going by the name "Satoshi Nakamoto," who then basically disappeared. No one seems to know who Nakamoto is. However, in a new New Yorker article (mostly hidden behind a paywall), reporter Joshua Davis may have tracked down Nakamoto. While the New Yorker is going to lose traffic and interest in this story by not putting it online, it's opened up the opportunity for others, such as the folks at Planet Money, who have the key details: including the belief that "Nakamoto" is likely a guy named Michael Clear.

So Davis, the author of the New Yorker story, emails Clear.

"I like to keep a low profile," Clear replies. "I'm curious to know how you found me."

Davis eventually cuts to the chase:

Finally, I asked, "Are you Satoshi?"

He laughed, but didn't respond. There was an awkward silence.

"If you like, I'd be happy to review the design for you," he offered instead. "I could let you know what I think."

"Sure," I said hesitantly. "Do you need me to send you a link to the code?"

"I think I can find it," he said.

In the end, Clear says he's not the guy — but his denial leaves the door open just a crack:

"I'm not Satoshi," Clear said. "But even if I was I wouldn't tell you."

The other key point is that Clear points out a weakness in the Bitcoin code: encryption for wallets. When Planet Money's Jacob Goldstein asks another Bitcoin expert about what's new in Bitcoin, the guy points out that the latest version... has wallet encryption.

Just how many patents can cover a single piece of technology? I think we are looking to break a record with the Wii Remote.

Today's entry come to us via Gamasutra, which was alerted to the news that UltimatePointer is suing Nintendo and various retail outlets -- including Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Target, Kmart, Gamestop and more -- for violating their patent, number 7,746,321, for an "Easily Deployable Interactive Direct-Pointing System and Presentation Control System and Calibration Method Therefor" (what a mouthful). Much like ThinkOptic's patents, this one was filed in the same year Nintendo revealed the Wii to the world. Not only that, it was filed the very same month. Not implying anything, just pointing out some facts.

According to the court filing (pdf and embedded below), which was done in East Texas, of course, Nintendo is guilty of manufacturing a technology that was designed and finalized prior to the filing of UltimatePointer's patent. Which of course would mean that Nintendo and all those retailers are willfully infringing on this patent. So now, according to UltimatePointer, Nintendo owes them treble damages and licensing fees.

There is a major difference between this patent and the patents filed by ThinkOptic: the Wavit is actually available for purchase. UltimatePointer's product, the Upoint, is still under "testing", so many years later. Why bother building an actual product if you can just score a patent and sue those who really understand the technology? Once again, we are left to ponder the process that allows a company to be sued for independently developing similar technology to another prior to it being patented. This really does not breed confidence in the technology market.

We've seen this time and time again. The various music collection societies around the globe have been trying to squeeze out more and more cash -- either by extending what counts as a "public performance" or by massively jacking up the rates on existing licensees. We saw this recently in Australia, where rates went up by ridiculous amounts. To a lesser extent, we've seen something similar in Canada with its 1,300% fee increase. And, now, something similar is coming to the UK, where PPL massively increased a bunch of its fees:

Bills for a typical ­wedding bash will soar from £30 to £380. Pubs which can now pay as little as £8 a night will have to fork out around £10,000 a year up front for a public ­performance licence.

The fee for nightclubs will zoom from £167 to a mind-boggling £6,667 for each event.

If you're playing along at home, that last case describes a fee increase of 3,900%.

Now, for the most part, such collectives are passing money on directly to musicians, and not to record labels or the like. So you could argue that this means that musicians make more money, so perhaps it's okay. But that's not taking into account the overall impact of such fee increases. They actually harm musicians in multiple ways. First, as you would expect with such a massive increase in fees, many venues simply stop agreeing to pay a license to play music. Many may just not play music at all any more, and what good does that do any musician? Fewer venues playing music isn't helping anyone. It also means that a lot more of these kinds of venues end up going out of business. We keep hearing stories of people complaining about fewer venues being around for music these days, and you can blame ridiculous price hikes like this one for that.