We already wrote about how various states' attorneys general (AGs) are seeking to get Congress to give them an exception to Section 230 of the CDA, which would let them pin liability on internet companies for the actions of their users. Now, more details are coming out, as reported in TechHive. The effort is apparently being led by South Dakota's attorney general, Marty Jackley, with help from AGs Bob Ferguson of Washington and Chris Koster of Missouri. Ferguson being included is a bit of a surprise, since Washington state has some big internet companies, and it's bizarre that he'd push for a law that would create so much harm to the internet. In the article, Jackley is quoted as complaining about:
the unintended consequence of Section 230 in that "you've essentially given these guys immunity" when state criminal laws are broken.
Except, that's wrong. Section 230 does not grant them immunity if they broke state criminal laws. It gives them immunity if their users broke state criminal laws. And that's perfectly reasonable, because the AGs should be going after the actual criminals, not the company who made the tools they used. In fact, since many companies will cooperate with legitimate law enforcement requests, having a good relationship with these companies should help these AGs catch criminals. That is, rather than blame Craigslist for criminals using it, they should be working with them to use information on the site to catch criminals. But I guess actually catching a pimp is less exciting than falsely calling Craigslist a pimp-enabler and attacking them in the press.
Meanwhile, some other AGs are looking to completely reinterpret section 230 to their liking. We already noted just recently that Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood is trying to blame Google because he could search and find counterfeit goods for sale (by others). In comments, at the NAAG meeting, Hood is now trying to argue that because of Google's "autocomplete," it shouldn't be subject to 230 safe harbors.
One avenue prosecutors may seek to explore is the statute’s vague definition of an intermediary versus a content provider, Reidenberg suggested. During discussion after the panel presentations, Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood pressed that angle, asking the panelists what acts by a site operator might be sufficient to categorize it as a content provider, not simply an intermediary.
Hood zeroed in on autocomplete in particular, saying, “We know they manipulate the autocomplete feature.” He is concerned about search engines, particularly Google, where for example a user entering “prescription drugs online” is given “prescription drugs online without a prescription” as an autocomplete option.
Except that if Hood actually understood how autocomplete worked, he'd know that's ridiculous. Google is not creating that content. It's just showing you what terms others are searching for. That is, it's providing factual information. That information could actually be useful to Hood, if he wanted to actually do his job and go after those who are selling the counterfeit drugs, rather than stupidly attacking the platform that would be a big help in tracking down the criminals. But, apparently, stopping truly rogue pharmacies is less headline grabbing than going after Google, even if Google has nothing to do with the actual sale of the counterfeit drugs.
We've been writing about the crazy world of pay for delay agreements by big pharmaceutical companies for years now. The short version of it is that big pharmaceutical companies pay off small generic pharma companies to prevent them from offering generic drugs. The actual process by which they do so is really convoluted, often involving the big company suing the small company first (yes, this is a case where the plaintiff is suing the defendant to get the defendant to accept money from the plaintiff). Courts have mostly said that this was a perfectly okay practice, while the FTC has been pushing back on it for years. The big pharma companies tried to argue that there was no antitrust issue, because (basically) its patents make any such drugs immune from antitrust laws (for those of you who still insist that patents are not monopolies, well, the claims by the patent-holding drug firms helps prove you wrong).
Thankfully, earlier this week, the Supreme Court ruled that the FTC can sue drug makers over pay-for-delay deals, allowing the FTC to argue that it violates antitrust law. The Court noted that just because you have patents, it doesn't mean it's a "get out of antitrust jail free" card:
For another thing, this Court’s precedents make clear
that patent-related settlement agreements can sometimes
violate the antitrust laws. In United States v. Singer
Mfg. Co., 374 U. S. 174 (1963), for example, two sewing
machine companies possessed competing patent claims; a
third company sought a patent under circumstances where
doing so might lead to the disclosure of information that
would invalidate the other two firms’ patents. All three
firms settled their patent-related disagreements while
assigning the broadest claims to the firm best able to
enforce the patent against yet other potential competitors.
Id., at 190–192. The Court did not examine whether, on
the assumption that all three patents were valid, patent
law would have allowed the patents’ holders to do the
same. Rather, emphasizing that the Sherman Act “imposes strict limitations on the concerted activities in which
patent owners may lawfully engage,” id., at 197, it held
that the agreements, although settling patent disputes,
violated the antitrust laws. Id., at 195, 197. And that, in
important part, was because “the public interest in granting patent monopolies” exists only to the extent that “the
public is given a novel and useful invention” in “consideration for its grant.” Id., at 199 (White, J., concurring). See
also United States v. New Wrinkle, Inc., 342 U. S. 371, 378
(1952) (applying antitrust scrutiny to patent settlement);
Standard Oil Co. (Indiana) v. United States, 283 U. S. 163
(1931) (same).
Similarly, both within the settlement context and without, the Court has struck down overly restrictive patent
licensing agreements—irrespective of whether those
agreements produced supra-patent-permitted revenues.
We concede that in United States v. General Elec. Co., 272
U. S. 476, 489 (1926), the Court permitted a single patentee
to grant to a single licensee a license containing a minimum resale price requirement. But in Line Material,
supra, at 308, 310–311, the Court held that the antitrust
laws forbid a group of patentees, each owning one or more
patents, to cross-license each other, and, in doing so, to
insist that each licensee maintain retail prices set collectively by the patent holders. The Court was willing to
presume that the single-patentee practice approved in
General Electric was a “reasonable restraint” that “accords
with the patent monopoly granted by the patent law,” 333
U. S., at 312, but declined to extend that conclusion to
multiple-patentee agreements: “As the Sherman Act prohibits agreements to fix prices, any arrangement between
patentees runs afoul of that prohibition and is outside the
patent monopoly.” Ibid. In New Wrinkle, 342 U. S., at
378, the Court held roughly the same, this time in respect
to a similar arrangement in settlement of a litigation
between two patentees, each of which contended that its
own patent gave it the exclusive right to control producÂÂÂ
tion. That one or the other company (we may presume)
was right about its patent did not lead the Court to confer
antitrust immunity. Far from it, the agreement was found
to violate the Sherman Act.
While this ruling basically just says the FTC can sue over antitrust, and doesn't rule directly on whether or not these kinds of agreements definitely do violate antitrust law, it's a good start -- and also opens up the very real possibility that the FTC (who has been expressing concern about patent trolls for some time) can now go after many different kinds of abuse of patents on antitrust grounds. While some had viewed this as a narrow case really just concerning these wacky pay-for-delay deals, it'll be much more interesting to see if the FTC now starts getting much more aggressive in using its antitrust powers against all kinds of patent shenanigans.
It seems like we keep hearing people insist that the internet, and things like Twitter and Google, are making us dumber because we're no longer really delving into anything with any depth, but rather just finding and spreading short snippets of text. There's never been any real support for that concept, but leave it to good old xkcd to put it all in perspective with a bunch of historical quotes that show people saying basically the identical things more than a century ago.
TL;DR: People have pretty much always insisted that "back in the day, we spent much more time thinking/digesting/experiencing" and that "the kids these days just rush around." Maybe, just possibly, that's not actually true. Perhaps it's just that, as we all get older, time seems to move much faster, and the complaints are really people who are getting older (and, yes, this includes me) recognizing that we can't always keep up.
I have to admit that I'm still a bit surprised that pop-up/pop-under advertisements still exist. The concept is so annoying and so anti-consumer that pretty much all browsers figured out ways to build in pop-up blockers many, many years ago. Every so often one gets through (almost always advertising Netflix, by the way), and I get annoyed and try to remember never to visit that site again. However, Paul Keating alerts us to the news that a company called "ExitExchange" now claims to hold a patent on pop-up ads, and has sued seven porn sites and two travel companies for using them without a license. The patent in question is US Patent 7,353,229 for a "post-session internet advertising system." It was only granted in 2008, but its priority date goes back to May of 2000. I tried to look up a history of pop-up ads, but was unable to find any definitive source on when the first pop-up ad was used. Still, just because it wasn't done back then doesn't mean the patent is valid -- perhaps people were just smart enough not to do something that annoyed the hell out of everyone. The company has sued Travelocity and Kayak along with a variety of porn sites.
Of course, this is hardly the only company claiming a patent on pop-ups. Years ago, there were multiple stories of others claiming patents on pop-ups and suing over those patents -- and it appears that most of those patents were filed long before the patent above. And, if you were hoping that maybe something good would come out of patents on pop-up ads, that they might be forced to go away, this history of patents and lawsuits over pop-ups suggests that it hasn't helped very much in stopping them.
Most people in the US still associate government use of drones with far away places. But they might want to start paying more attention to what's happening over their own heads. The FBI has now admitted that it uses drones for surveillance purposes domestically. Though FBI director Robert Mueller said that it was done in a "very, very minimal way, very seldom," this is still the first admission that it has happened. Mueller seemed open to having Congress legislate how it can use drones. Oddly, members of Congress who seem unconcerned about the NSA's mass dragnet of information, are apparently concerned about domestic drone use:
Dianne Feinstein, who is also chair of the Senate intelligence committee, said the issue of drones worried her far more than telephone and internet surveillance, which she believes are subject to sufficient legal oversight.
I would argue that both are worrying, in large part because the use of both have been secret to the American public until recent revelations. At the very least, these kinds of surveillance deserve a very public debate about whether or not they are appropriate.
We've argued for years, that there are different kinds of middlemen involved in making markets. Some are efficient, leading to better reach, easier access, and more convenient transactions, while some are inefficient, blocking access, keeping prices inflated, and generally limiting a market. We tend to separate these into two camps: gatekeepers, who limit efficiency, and enablers, who increase efficiency. In truth, there's a pretty big spectrum between those two endpoints, and a single company can shift back and forth along the spectrum between being a gatekeeper some of the time and an enabler at other times. Historically, it's generally (though not always) been true that disruptive innovators are enablers, breaking down the walls set up by the gatekeepers, making markets more efficient, and generally distributing power away from a central gatekeeper out to the end points (the actual participants in the market, rather than the middleman). However, I had thought that it was at least generally recognized and accepted that gatekeepers tend to be bad for markets, and enablers tend to be good.
Obviously, you'd expect some who work for gatekeepers to disagree, though they tend to disagree by arguing that they're not really gatekeepers. However, perhaps I overestimated some of those who support gatekeepers. I was somewhat shocked to hear, recently, that when Public Knowledge's Gigi Sohn spoke at the World Creator's Summit, she was hissed at and booed for suggesting that gatekeepers are a problem. Apparently, the attendees of the World Creators Summit like gatekeepers who hold back actual creators, set up barriers to reaching a market, and only provide a winning lottery ticket to a very small number of creators. Weird.
I'd thought that perhaps that was a one-off situation. However, the "director of legal policy" for the Copyright Alliance -- a front group for the music labels and movie studios -- Terry Hart, has now written a blog post that could be entitled a defense of gatekeepers controlling artists' works. The article is really a summary of a new paper by a law professor, Guy Pessach, who argues that disintermediation is bad in the copyright realm. I will note that this is not a research paper or a study. It's an "essay." And the central theme is to take the rather contrarian position that "disintermdiation" (i.e., doing away with gatekeepers) in the copyright market will "undermine cultural diversity, decentralization and authors' welfare." This, despite all evidence to the contrary -- so it's worth a read.
Frankly, the paper is a mess. It more or less misinterprets the whole "disintermediation" argument, saying it's about getting rid of middlemen entirely, rather than moving from gatekeepers to enablers. The paper instead turns into an ill-informed and confused attack on internet companies as the problem. It actually seeks to argue that artists have less power and control when using internet services than they do in signing deals with major labels/studios. Bizarrely, and incorrectly, it tries to argue that internet intermediaries are locked in and static, while suggesting that traditional intermediaries (record labels, publishers, movie studios, etc.) are not.
Additionally, it is both anticipated and apparent that markets for
Internet intermediaries are highly concentrated, with very few entities
dominating. Since much of the cost of producing an Internet intermediary
(design, technological innovation) is unrelated to the number of users of the
service, the average cost of providing service to each additional user may fall
as the number of users increases. Economies of scale reduce the level of
competition. Cost of entry is rapidly rising while strong network effects give
advantages to large-scale intermediaries
But, of course, that's false. Anyone who's paid even the slightest attention to the dynamic in both markets knows that's false. The major labels have dominated the recorded music business for many decades. Ditto the major studios. In the internet world, it's constantly changing. A decade ago, Yahoo was on top. Apple was just starting to return to being interesting. Facebook didn't exist. YouTube didn't exist. Even MySpace didn't exist a decade ago. Kickstarter didn't exist. Twitter, Tumblr, Hulu, IndieGogo, SoundCloud, SongKick, Bandcamp, TopSpin, TuneCore, Pandora, Spotify -- none of them existed. And that list could be much, much bigger. To argue that the internet world is stagnant and unchanging as compared to the recorded music or movie worlds is dumbfounding.
Then there's this bit of insanity:
I begin by referring to authors and creators while presuming that it is
authors and creators, rather than traditional corporate media, who are in control
of their copyrights. Even so, the bargaining position of originating authors and
creators, versus a handful of Internet intermediaries, may be weaker than it was
for traditional distributors and corporate media.
Really, now? With traditional intermediaries -- i.e., gatekeepers -- if you weren't able to sign a deal, you basically didn't have a career as in music or movies. And so those traditional intermediaries signed ridiculous contracts, in which you gave up your copyrights and nearly all of the royalties. The new enabling companies don't act as a gate. They let anyone make use of them, and they tend to give you full control and ownership of the effort -- you retain your copyright, and you tend to get a much larger percentage of the money earned.
Amusingly, the paper also seems to argue that the wide open internet is somehow less egalitarian than when you had an A&R guy at a major label deciding who the next big music act would be. Really?
It is now apparent and documented that
due to network effects and power law distribution, 40 the typology of the
Internet is such that there is a “a complete absence of democracy, fairness, and
egalitarian values on the web . . . . [T]he topology of the web prevents us from
seeing anything but a mere handful of the billion documents out there.”
Whereas, the old record label system basically cut that off much earlier. It wasn't egalitarian at all. It would sign a very small number of artists, and tell the rest to go do something else with their lives, and then it would select a very few acts each year, put all of its marketing muscle behind a payola scheme to convince the public "this is what you like this year."
Pessach also doesn't seem to understand the nature of promotion, and the concept of multiple revenue streams. Take, for example, his "case study" around YouTube, which he trots out to "prove" that artists suffer under the success of YouTube:
YouTube operates a content partnership program that enables creators
who upload content to YouTube to earn revenues from advertisements that
appear along with their video clips. This is YouTube’s main and only option
that enables creators to get remuneration for making their content available to
the public.
Actually, no, that's not the only option for monetization. First, YouTube allows links directly to buy the songs in question, on at least iTunes, Amazon and Google Play. YouTube also pays ASCAP/BMI and others a license for streaming, and so artists make money that way, contrary to Pessach's later claims that YouTube never pays for direct usage. To leave all that out suggests Pessach simply is unfamiliar with the site he's critiquing and basically removes all credibility from the argument. Second, it leaves out entirely the nature of indirect benefits to widespread attention on YouTube, which leads to sales, concert tickets, opportunities for licensing and much, much more. And, even if we assume that Pessach is accurate in claiming that the only option is to monetize through ads, the deal still tends to be better than most record label deals, where they take 85 to 90% of any royalties. He suggests it's unfair that artists get a "take it or leave it" deal from YouTube on the revenue sharing, but apparently he's never spoken to an artist who gets a record label contract. It tends to be the same thing, unless they're already a huge star.
If we recognize that YouTube is really the equivalent to radio, rather than a label, as Pessach seems to be trying to analogize, then the deal is so much better with YouTube. On radio, first of all, most artists never get any airtime. The few that do often have to have massive payola behind them, and then there are no performance rights royalties (in the US) for the musicians, though there are songwriting/publishing fees to ASCAP and such (but, again, that's true on YouTube as well). On radio there's no choice. On radio there are no direct links to buy as there are on YouTube (which Pessach apparently never noticed). On radio there's no ease of sharing with friends, no embedding to promote the artists you like to your friends. Oh, and there's no revenue share at all, a la YouTube's partner program. Pessach's argument, in short, is to compare apples and oranges, and then misrepresent the apples. Yikes.
He later gets to the crux of his argument, which is basically that the "new intermediaries" "don't finance or invest in the production of content." But, again, he's making a false comparison, pointing to YouTube or Facebook or whatnot, as if they're supposed to do advances. But that's silly, because we're talking about totally different types of intermediaries, ones that are more like radio, than a label. And, it's not like radio ever financed or invested in the production of content either. But if we want to talk about financing the creation of new production of content, let's talk about crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter, IndieGoGo, PledgeMusic and more. Kickstarter is never mentioned in the paper. Not once. Or how about direct to fan models? TopSpin? Not mentioned. Bandcamp? Not in there at all. And yet, all of those services are used by thousands of artists to finance and "invest" in the production of new content by allowing artists to go directly to their fans and get support.
Instead, the paper keeps going back to YouTube as the problem. But, again, if you compare YouTube to terrestrial radio, using the same "metrics" that Pessach keeps going back to, it seems like YouTube wins every single time. Take, for example, the following:
Finally, in addition to authors’ and creators’ economic welfare,
YouTube’s model may also give rise to long-term alienation that creators and
authors may feel against their almost only effective channels to exposure and
audience attention. Ironically, or not, it is the psychological and sociological
motives of creativity (the same ones that underlie the disintermediation
movement) which make creators and authors disadvantaged. Creators’ desire
to be exposed and gain as much audience attention (and love) as possible to
their creative works is a parameter, which further undermines their bargaining
position against a handful of dominant networked intermediaries who control
the bottlenecks to audience attention.
Beyond the fact that this paragraph is entirely speculative, rather than based on even the slightest bit of evidence, radio is a much much much bigger bottleneck for artists reaching their audience, in that most artists can never, ever get on the radio at all. Yet, somehow Pessach wants to believe that YouTube is worse for artists? Tell that to the growing number of artists like Alex Day, Jack Conte, Dan Bull, Macklemore and others who have built success stories around their YouTube videos.
Pessach's other "examples" of bad internet intermediaries are just as laughable. He points to the widely debunked story about Huffington Post being able to sell for $300 million and not giving any of that money to the bloggers who "made the site popular." Except, most of that story is a myth. HuffPo pays for a large editorial and reporting staff, and many of its most popular stories come from paid staff. For unpaid contributors, it's a tradeoff between whether they want the promotion of the platform. If not, they have a myriad of other options, including setting up their own damn blog. Unlike with the record labels where it used to be either "get signed to a label or go home," those who wish to blog could go in all different directions to make money.
His next example is what he says was "Instagram's failed attempt to commercially utilize, for advertisement purposes, photos that were uploaded by its users." That, again, is a total bastardization of reality. There was a lot of hype about this, but Pessach's interpretation of what happened is wrong. The reality was that a bunch of people didn't understand some boilerplate language used on tons of sites, and assumed, incorrectly, that Instagram was going to put your photos in ads. As the company explained, that had never been its intention at all -- but it was some boilerplate language in the terms, which it quickly changed to clarify for users. Again, when Pessach seems to continually misrepresent things, it really detracts from the argument. No wonder the Copyright Alliance is such a huge fan of the paper.
In the end, the paper is basically just an attempt to tar and feather new enablers that have given many new artists new ways to create, to promote, to connect and to monetize their art -- while bizarrely suggesting, absent of any proof -- that the old gatekeepers were somehow better for artists. About the only explanation it presents is "advances." Yes, the labels gave out advances to a very small number of artists... and then basically holds them as indentured servants as they seek to recoup that money, piling on more and more "expenses," and only counting the tiny fraction that is their royalties towards recouping. Or they could make use of the new platforms, retain control over their work, and only have to pay small fees (between 5 and 30% at the top) for the services provided. Furthermore, the suggestion that these new enablers have meant less diversity in content creation is simply laughable on its face, and deserves no further comment.
If the various RIAA and MPAA front groups are going to try to push support for gatekeepers, one would hope that they'd come up with slightly more competent arguments that can at least pass the laugh test.
Last year, we found it absolutely bizarre that the DOJ would seize all of Megaupload's servers, and then, just weeks later, tell its hosting partners that they could wipe those servers clean. Considering that the servers held key evidence that might exonerate the defendants in a criminal trial, it seemed insane that the DOJ was advocating for the destruction of evidence. A judge later told hosting company Carpathia that it needed to preserve the data, rather than delete it. Carpathia was annoyed at the expense, and Megaupload asked the government to free funds for the purpose of keeping the data maintained.
Even though the DOJ both supported this destruction of evidence and refused to release the funds to maintain it, it really seems like this could come back to bite the DOJ badly, because Dotcom and the other defendants can now point to the fact that the DOJ allowed for the destruction of key evidence that might prove their innocence. What a bizarre move by the DOJ.
There's a really good point in a recent Washington Post article talking about how nearly 4 million people have top secret clearance in the US these days. The problem isn't necessarily that so many people are given that clearance, but that so many people need to be given that clearance because the US government reflexively overclassifies things, meaning that basic banal office work sometimes can't get done unless you hire "low level" people with top secret clearance:
One reason for this trend is that the U.S. government has become so reflexive about classifying information, much of which is not nearly as sensitive as an NSA spying program, that clearance are required even for totally banal work.
One effect of this classification of nearly everything, and subsequent granting of clearances to nearly everyone, is that all it takes is one or two loose cannons among those 4 million clearance-holders to spill out government secrets.
As many people have pointed out, both Ed Snowden and Bradley Manning were relatively "low level" employees, but had access to all sorts of classified materials. While some spin around and attack them, given just how many people have top secret clearance and access to these materials, it's quite likely that this information has already spread widely -- including to foreign governments. I'd much rather these things be discussed in public and via the press, than finding out later that they were just passed along to foreign governments. If the content of these classified files is really so secret and sensitive to national security, then the government needs a better way of handling that information.
As it stands, the overclassification of files leads to more people needing top secret clearance, and that means about 4 million with such clearance, including all sorts of low level employees, doing basic office work, including "packing and shipping." And, rather than keeping that material secret, by exposing it to so many more people, this overclassification is almost guaranteeing that the content is less secret.
Last fall, we noted the absolute hypocrisy of the major Hollywood studios, who repeatedly argue that they're fighting for copyright to make sure "the little guy" on the movie set gets paid. However, as we pointed out, it appeared that they were violating labor laws by not paying their interns. Lots of companies do unpaid internships, and they're almost always illegal. There are some very specific rules you need to follow to have an internship be legal if it's unpaid. Most internships, by law, are supposed to be paid -- but it appears the Hollywood studios didn't bother to follow the rules. They just wanted the free labor.
And, now they may have to pay, as an early ruling in the case has gone against Fox Entertainment Group and its Searchlight Pictures subsidiary, meaning a class action lawsuit for all its unpaid interns can move forward. Fox, cheap as always, tried to claim that it wasn't the employer, but rather the fake company it sets up for each movie was the real employer. If you're familiar with Hollywood accounting, you know that each movie is set up as its own "company" whose sole purpose is to lose money. That is, the studio -- which owns the company -- "charges" the company tons of fees for basically nothing, and then the "movie" can be seen as losing money, even as the studio makes a ton, and then the movie never has to pay out residual checks to the silly people who agreed to get a cut of the net. There's almost never a net.
Of course, since this is effectively a sham company, the judge quickly saw through that claim, and properly noted that Fox is the real employer. Now, as I've said before, I think laws against unpaid internships are kind of silly -- and if people can willingly come to an agreement where an unpaid internship makes sense, it should be allowed. But, it does seem ridiculously hypocritical for Hollywood to parade up and down the streets of DC insisting that its main focus is to make sure all the people who work on its movies get paid, including releasing propaganda commercials highlighting non-acting movie staff, and then go out of its way to not pay people doing work on films. If Hollywood wants to say that it's trying to get people who work on its films paid, it might want to start by not trying to screw many of them out of salaries. But that's what it's going to do. Fox has announced plans to appeal the decision. Remember that next time the MPAA is on Capitol Hill talking about all the "jobs" it creates.
At the end of May, we wrote about the Taiwanese government's bizarre proposal to create a copyright bill that was like SOPA, but even worse. Apparently, the folks at the Taiwan Intellectual Property Office (IPO) had slept through the whole SOPA thing. Thankfully, the Taiwanese quickly did their own version of the SOPA blackout, with Wikipedia Taiwan and Mozilla Taiwan set to participate. However, seeing the writing on the wall (and, perhaps, someone showed the IPO folks what happened in the US), and the proposal was abandoned before the protest was even needed.
Of course, it's not completely over:
In the face of these criticisms and the planned blackout, the Taiwan Intellectual Property Office abandoned this severe copyright law. In its announcement, the office stated that this plan would be “adjusted.” It’s clear that the government intends to introduce another copyright enforcement initiative in the future. Still, it’s enormously encouraging to see how users in Taiwan have organized to defend their rights and successfully stopped this draconian blacklist law.
The unfortunate reality is that many government authorities around the world still buy into the belief that the health of the Internet is acceptable collateral damage in this manufactured war on copyright infringement. Lawmakers need to understand that creativity and innovation can only thrive when our platforms remain open, where users are free to share and experiment with content. While it’s clear that the Taiwan Intellectual Property Office did not learn from the mistakes of SOPA and PIPA in the U.S., let’s hope others see the defeat of this latest copyright blacklist law and recognize that users will not put up with efforts to censor the Internet.
Still, it is good to see that whenever something SOPA-like pops up, the public quickly jumps up to protest it.
One of the most important laws that has enabled innovation on the internet to thrive is Section 230 of the CDA. We've written about it many times. What it says is fairly basic: a website cannot be held liable for actions by its users. There are a few exceptions and caveats, but that's the basic premise. And it makes perfect common sense -- so much so that it's almost amazing that you need a law to say it. But, we do, because when grandstanding and moral panics come around, politicians and people with pitchforks love to blame third parties and intermediaries as if they're the problem. And, having intermediaries be liable for how users are using their services creates all sorts of problems. It makes it that much more difficult for companies to innovate, because they're taking on tremendous potential liability if anyone misuses their service. So, they then either don't develop an open service, or they have to invest heavily in services to filter/monitor/block any potential misdeeds (which also will lead to blocking legitimate uses as well).
Of course, the grandstanding politicians who jump on moral panics absolutely hate Section 230. They always have. As we've discussed in detail over the years, the type of politician that focuses on grandstanding on moral panics the most is always a state attorney general. They make grand public pronouncements against companies they don't like, often with absolutely no legal basis, and then browbeat them into a "settlement" just so the companies can stop having to deal with the AGs lying about them in public all the time. Chris Tolles, the CEO of Topix, gave a great detailed explanation of how various AGs ganged up on him, basically issuing a press release accusing him of doing horrible things, totally misrepresenting what the company did, but without naming a single law they violated (because they hadn't). In response, Tolles did what most people would think you should do in that case: explain to the AGs what Topix actually did, and why it was perfectly reasonable. In response, the AGs (more of them this time) issued another press release, taking direct statements that Tolles had told them further out of context, and making the company sound even worse. Eventually he "settled" because fighting them was costly.
Of course, the lack of a legal basis often stymies these attempts, and a big thing that gets in the way: Section 230. So it should come as little surprise, as noted by Eric Goldman today, that the states Attorneys General are planning to ask Congress for an exemption to Section 230 when (you guessed it) states AGs bring a case. He heard it today while on a panel at the annual meeting of the National Association of Attorneys General, where he was on a panel about Section 230. During the discussion, Goldman says that an unnamed Attorney General (he didn't catch which one) made a comment about the plan.
Section 230 has been under attack for some time, but going to Congress to try to make that kind of exception would be a huge disaster. It would allow these AGs to continue with bogus grandstanding campaigns, but actually with the ability to create massive problems for companies actually trying to offer usable, open platforms for users. Nearly every company would need to proactively filter any kind of user generated content, and would be at risk of tremendous legal liability if "bad stuff" got through. This would be a huge attack on internet innovation, all so some ambitious politicians can try to make more headlines by attacking tech companies. The state Attorney General position is considered the classic "stepping stone" position, which many politicians use to run for Governor or Senator in their state, and one way to help with the campaign is to get lots of headlines around "protecting the children" and whatnot. So, basically, these politicians would be breaking one of the key elements that has allowed internet innovation to thrive, to help them get a few more headlines in their quest for higher office.
Google appears to be stepping it up a notch in trying to fight back against the claims that it is somehow opening up its system to the NSA or other law enforcement folks. As you now know well, one of the leaks from Ed Snowden a few weeks ago was about a system called PRISM, which is associated with how tech companies provide information to the federal government in response to FISA court orders. The initial reports, claiming that the NSA had full direct access to servers and could see what people were doing in real time, appear to have been extremely overblown, as it now seems clear that this was much more narrow. But there's still a big question of how narrow. Google sent an open letter to the DOJ, asking for permission to reveal basic numbers on how many FISA requests they receive and how many people have had information passed along to the government under the program. The government then gave "permission" in a way that actually further obfuscated things, only allowing the release of numbers when combined with all sorts of other government requests.
Nothing in this Motion is intended to confirm or deny that Google has received any order or orders issued by this Court.
Of course, that might lead some to suggest that Google can't actually have standing, but there's an interesting legal argument here. Basically, Google is arguing that the perception that it's opened up its network to the NSA, as suggested in various reports, and which it cannot refute fully without revealing some details of FISA orders it has received, has caused it harm.
Google's reputation and business has been harmed by the false or misleading reports in
the media, and Google's users are concerned by the allegations. Google must respond to such
claims with more than generalities. Moreover, these are matters of significant weight and
importance, and transparency is critical to advancing public debate in a thoughtful and
democratic manner.
Given that, Google is seeking a declaratory judgment from the court that it has a First Amendment right to publish the total number of FISA requests it receives and the total number of users associated with those requests, though obviously not anything more. I'm sure the government will come back with all sorts of excuses as to why this is horrible, but it certainly presents an interesting legal challenge to the FISA court's gag orders.
Greenwald’s crime is violating 18 USC § 798, which makes it a criminal act to publish classified information revealing government cryptography or communications intelligence.
The law is absolutely clear. It states: “Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates, furnishes, transmits, or otherwise makes available to an unauthorized person, or publishes, or uses in any manner prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United States or for the benefit of any foreign government to the detriment of the United States any classified information— (1) concerning the nature, preparation, or use of any code, cipher, or cryptographic system of the United States or any foreign government; or (2) concerning the design, construction, use, maintenance, or repair of any device, apparatus, or appliance used or prepared or planned for use by the United States or any foreign government for cryptographic or communication intelligence purposes; or (3) concerning the communication intelligence activities of the United States or any foreign government; or (4) obtained by the processes of communication intelligence from the communications of any foreign government, knowing the same to have been obtained by such processes— Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.”
Of course, there's also that fancy First Amendment, which Thiessen would prefer to ignore:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
It would appear that 18 USC 798 is exactly what is forbidden by the First Amendment. It is a law abridging the freedom of the press and freedom of speech. Defenders of Thiessen and the NSA will point out that there are lots of times the courts have said this is okay, but I'm not sure what kind of defense that is, other than nitpicking why the First Amendment is something to ignore. Personally, I think that the First Amendment is fairly important, and worry about any laws that appear to push back on the basic concept of it.
The US Chamber of Commerce, the giant lobbying organization who led the fight for SOPA/PIPA, is apparently so invested in "must have stronger copyright laws" that it doesn't even bother making sense any more. It's released a bizarre statement claiming that India needs stronger copyright laws, because Bollywood is so successful. Right upfront, it notes how successful things have been:
You'd think those are signs that copyright law was working (largest film industry in the world, largest employment sectors, over 1,000 films produced annually -- about double Hollywood) and that this would imply that whatever level of copyright there is in India -- which is supposed to be an incentive to creativity -- was doing a decent job. But, no, apparently it's all broken.
The government, however, must improve national intellectual property (IP) laws and enforcement if it is going to seize on this opportunity and gain recognition in the global market and further empower local creators.
Hmm. Wait, you just said that it's the world's largest film industry and an unqualified success. So, why does it need to improve those laws and enforcement?
Specifically, Indian copyright law is unclear with the 2012 Copyright Act amendments further complicating and contradicting previous rule of law. Furthermore, the 2012 Act provides for broad exceptions that are incompatible with international norms. Also measuring relatively loware enforcement efforts, which are weak in application and don’t provide widely available civil and procedural remedies for copyright infringement.
And, yet, this laxity incentivized the creation of nearly double the films that Hollywood produces. Perhaps -- and I'm just suggesting things here -- the "international norms" and the higher levels of enforcement are holding back the industries elsewhere. If anything, this report seems to suggest that other countries should move towards broad exceptions, since it appears to have been quite successful in India.
Furthermore, much of the paper seems to suggest that India needs to fix its copyright laws to embrace the international opportunity for its films -- but that (again) makes no sense. India's IP laws don't apply outside of India, so they have no impact on the international opportunities, which are governed by other IP laws. And, again, if the industry is doing great in India (with little enforcement and greater exceptions), doesn't this indicate that India should push for the same elsewhere to better embrace that international opportunity?
It's quite a world in which the US Chamber of Commerce seems to be arguing that an example of a success story should lead to that successful model emulating less successful markets. I don't know how much money the MPAA pays the US Chamber of Commerce for these kinds of pieces, but it's not getting its money's worth.
We recently mentioned that Senator Lindsey Graham said he was happy that the NSA was collecting the data on his calls, because he doesn't speak to terrorists. Of course, that's an incredibly ignorant statement in many, many ways. However, Senator Graham is continuing to make very silly statements about the NSA surveillance program. During an appearance on Meet the Press, Graham defended the program because, he explained, we should be tracking terrorists:
"I believe we should be listening to terrorists, known terrorist emails, following their emails and following their phone calls. And if they're emailing somebody and the United States or calling a number in the United States, I would like to get a judge's position to monitor that phone call," Graham said on "Meet the Press" on NBC. "If we don't do that, another attack on our homeland is very likely."
That's nice and all... but the things he discussed -- listening to terrorists, and getting info on their emails -- have nothing to do with the new programs that have been revealed. That kind of stuff was possible well before all of these new things came along. The NSA has long been able to do surveillance on such things. And, law enforcement has been able to go to a judge and get a wiretap order on phone calls. But that's not what has everyone concerned: it's the fact that this program collects data on everyone. It's not just collecting data on terrorists, and much of it doesn't require having to go to a judge to monitor specific information. Rather, broad collections of data are being pulled, so that the NSA can later go through them.
It's shameful that Senator Graham would so misrepresent what this debate is about. Either he doesn't understand it (which is horrifying) or he's deliberately misleading the public about it (which is worse).
In a hearing before the House Intelligence Committee today, NSA boss Keith Alexander once again claimed that the big NSA surveillance programs had stopped terrorist attacks. Rather than the "dozens" he stated last week, today it became "more than 50 potential terrorist events." Of course, as is typical, both the questions (asked by NSA supporters) and the answers were pretty carefully choreographed. Digging in, you find out that Alexander was specifically referring to PRISM, and not the (much more worrisome) dragnet of all phone records. On that program, there doesn't appear to be any actual data on what it was used for. On top of that, when asked about whether or not these programs were essential or necessary to stopping those attacks, as compared to other programs, no one would say that they were necessary or essential.
The other careful choice of words was people would ask about whether or not phone calls had been recorded under these particular programs, but not other programs. When Deputy Attorney General James Cole was specifically asked about other programs, he responded that that was classified information. Make of that what you will. Cole also claimed that the program to collect all phone numbers "is not a program that's off the books, that's been hidden away." Of course, if that were true, why are so many people -- including politicians who supposedly have oversight over the program -- so surprised about it? How come there has been no reporting on it? How come, when asked about it, Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper said "no" to whether or not information was collected on millions of Americans? It certainly sounds "hidden away."
Meanwhile, the really shameful performance came from Rep. Mike Rogers, who led the hearing, who again claimed that Ed Snowden both was lying and that his revelations weakened American security by revealing secrets to enemies. And then he pulled out this whopper:
"It is at times like these when our enemies within become almost as damaging as the enemies on the outside. It is critically important to protect sources and methods so we aren't giving the enemy our playbook."
So, again, no one understands the programs revealed, because Snowden's leaked info is wrong... and now our enemies know what we're doing... and Snowden is "almost as damaging" as those who wish to attack us. None of that makes any sense at all.
In the end, though, it's more of the same. Even if we could say that these programs were useful in stopping a potential attack, what we don't know is if the program was necessary to do so. We don't know what sort of collateral damage was caused. We don't know if traditional methods of investigation would have worked just as well, with no violations of privacy for Americans. We're just being told on faith to "trust the NSA."
One of the key points that officials have been making in defense of the NSA surveillance is this idea that even if they're collecting all this data on your communications, they can't actually do anything with it, because they keep it safely locked up in a lockbox, and only check it if they have some bit of data they want to find out about later. That was the crux of the claims made by former NSA/CIA boss Michael Hayden who seemed to think that "data mining" and "asking the database questions" were two different things. However, as William Saletan is pointing out at Slate, the lockbox is a lie. There is no lockbox. He quotes officials including NSA boss Keith Alexander and Congress's number one NSA apologist, Rep. Mike Rogers, both suggesting strongly that even if the NSA is collecting all your data, it's safe because it can't be explored without a "very specific court-ordered approval process."
Except... what they conveniently left out, is that the court doesn't review any of this. It appears that it probably set some very basic rules up front when it gave the okay on collecting the data, which no one else gets to know about, and no one carefully checks up on the NSA later to see if they really follow any of those rules. What the claims most certainly do not mean, is that the NSA needs to get a court order to search the database. Senator Dianne Feinstein admitted as much directly:
Q: Is a court order necessary to query the metadata database? Feinstein: Is a court order necessary to query— Q: The metadata database under 215. An individual court order for each query. Feinstein: A court order—well, I don't know what you mean by a query. A court order— Q: To search the database. Feinstein: To search the database, you have to have reasonable, articulable cause— Q: Certified by a judge? Feinstein: —to believe that that individual is connected to a terrorist group. You cannot— Q: But does that have to be determined by a judge? Feinstein: Could I answer? You may not like it, but I'll answer. Then you can query the numbers. The only numbers you have—there's no content. You have the name and the number called, whether it's one number or two numbers. That's all you have. Then you can get the numbers. If you want to collect content, then you get a court order. Q: So you don't need a court order for the query itself. Feinstein: That's my understanding.
And yet, as the article notes, most of the defenders of the program strongly imply otherwise, highlighting the "court-approved" process that people need to go through to query the database. But if there's no real oversight, and no court reviewing each query, then, as Saletan points out, there is no lockbox.
There's no lock on the lockbox.
That hasn't stopped current and former government officials from repeating the lockbox line. Yesterday Rogers used it again on Face the Nation. Dick Cheney, appearing on Fox News Sunday, backed him up. On Meet the Press, Michael Hayden, the guy who ran the NSA when it began collecting phone records, assured Rep. Bobby Scott, (D-Va.,) "The only way you can access the metadata is through a terrorist predicate." When Scott asked, "Where is that written?" Hayden replied: "It's in the court order." Really? Where's the court order? When is it applied, and how?
If the court isn't screening data requests, that leaves two possibilities. One is that nobody's screening them. The other is that some other, unknown entity is doing it in a way that nobody has explained. Either way, the answers we're getting are unacceptable. They betray privacy, public trust, and national security.
If there's no public standard, and no official oversight or review process, then the probability that the database is being abused approaches one very, very quickly.
We've already had a few posts discussing why the whole "if you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to hide" argument is bogus, but this weekend's edition of the radio show This American Life had a fantastic short section in which the host, Ira Glass, spoke to lawyers for detainees at Guantanamo Bay, who are all pretty certain that every one of their phone calls is being recorded and listened to. What's amazing is the emotional response you hear from most of these lawyers, who recognize that they can no longer comfortably speak freely to anyone on the phone ever again. The stories of them not being able to be emotional with their children when speaking to them on the phone, or in which their friends accuse them of being especially curt and officious whenever they call are somewhat heartbreaking.
These are the things that many people simply don't recognize about the psychological impact of a surveillance state. When you have no real downtime -- no time when you can be free from prying eyes, it messes with your brain in a really profound way. This short segment (just 8 minutes long) really highlights how much a little thing like the inability to ever speak to someone privately changes your entire way of speaking and communicating. As we seem to be drifting rapidly towards such a surveillance state, these are the issues that we should be thinking about and understanding. There may be certain benefits to being able to do widespread surveillance, but we should not and cannot ignore the costs.
This seems a bit wacky. MPAA boss Chris Dodd has been named the chairperson of the "advisory council" for "free speech week" in 2013. Now, I'm assuming that most people have no clue what "Free Speech Week" is, but it's supposed to be a "celebration" promoting the First Amendment. That's why it strikes me as completely ridiculous that Dodd would be put in charge of it. While the MPAA was a major proponent of the First Amendment a few decades ago (back when there were efforts to try to censor movies -- which saw the MPAA stepping in to create a self-censorship regime known as the movie rating system), Chris Dodd's contribution to the MPAA has been to push SOPA, a bill whose main purpose was directly in contrast to the First Amendment and free speech by setting up a system for internet censorship. As Constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe pointed out at the time:
The notice-and-termination procedure of Section 103(a) runs afoul of the “prior restraint” doctrine, because it delegates to a private party the power to suppress speech without prior notice and a judicial hearing. This provision of the bill would give complaining parties the power to stop online advertisers and credit card processors from doing business with a website, merely by filing a unilateral notice accusing the site of being “dedicated to theft of U.S. property” – even if no court has actually found any infringement. The immunity provisions in the bill create an overwhelming incentive for advertisers and payment processors to comply with such a request immediately upon receipt. The Supreme Court has made clear that “only a judicial determination in an adversary proceeding ensures the necessary sensitivity to freedom of expression [and] only a procedure requiring a judicial determination suffices to impose a valid final restraint.” Freedman v. Maryland, 380 U.S. 51, 58 (1965). “[P]rior restraints on speech and publication are the most serious and the least tolerable infringement on First Amendment rights.” Nebraska Press Assn. v. Stuart, 427 U.S. 539, 559 (1976).
It seems rather ironic that someone who was the main person behind a bill designed to take away free speech rights would then be put in charge of "free speech week."
The latest to speak out against NSA surveillance is "every geek's uncle," Steve Wozniak, who explained that "this is not my America." The video is worth watching:
He makes a ton of great points about things that, when we were kids, we learned that the US did not do. And now, we do lots of them: spying on everyone, secret courts, secret prisons, etc.
When I was brought up, my dad taught me, other countries, when they got prisoners in a war, they tortured them. But we Americans didn't torture them.... And I was so proud of my country. And now I find out it's just the opposite. I just wish, all these things that I talk about with the Constitution -- which made us so good as people -- they're nothing. They were all dissolved with the Patriot Act. There are these laws that just sort of say we can secretly call anything terrorism and do anything we want.... And I read the Constitution, and I'm not even sure how all this stuff happened. It's so clear what the Constitution says. It's extremely clear in the Bill of Rights. One thing after another after another that got overturned. That's what a king does. A king just goes out and rounds anyone up, has them killed, put in secret prisons.
When I was brought up, we were told that Communist Russia was the ones that were going to kill us and bomb our country and all this. And Communist Russia was so bad because they followed their people, they snooped on them, they arrested them, they put them in secret prisons, they disappeared them. These kinds of things were part of Russia. We're getting more and more like that....
It's a bit hyperbolic, but more and more people are beginning to recognize how problematic the governments' actions have been of late.
The greater the persuasive force of third party papers mentioned here, the longer the TD articles mocking same.
You say that as if there was some persuasive force in his paper. There is none. I made a detailed critique. If you have a response, I'd like to see it.
i dont understand. are these different from the carpathia servers? who is leaseweb, why have we never heard anything about them before?
Megaupload used multiple hosting partners. Carpathia was a US hosting firm. Leaseweb is Dutch, I believe. They each hosted some parts of Mega, but not the whole thing.
If you're worried your being spied on stop committing crimes. Otherwise go on with your lives and stop being dramatic chicken littles.
Cool. Then, feel free to post your name, age, social security number, bank account details, credit card numbers, past sexual partners, your medical files, every website you've surfed... etc.
Yeah, these sponsored posts seem to be doing the lead balloon thing. I have no particular beef with either Insightly or with you guys, but trying to force geeks to talk about things that benefit a sponsor is just not going to work. I've seen two of these posts, and in neither one did any useful conversation happen.
We've had tremendous success with some of these posts, and others haven't caught on. We're definitely learning and adjusting as we go. Just a couple weeks ago, one of our sponsored posts was the top post on Reddit tech and reached #5 on the front page of Reddit as well. So, sometimes people quite like them.
Also, in the past, we've held similar discussions to this one that have gone quite well and been very interesting, including on topics like enterprise storage, enterprise printing, data models, and the like.
But, yes, this particular post clearly did not catch people's interest, and we're learning from that as well.
You'd probably raise more actual revenue if you came up with better price tiering. I wanted to give you $50/year, but that wasn't easy to do; it was either $15 once or $10/mo. So you got $15 from me instead of $50.
Hmm. Perhaps the organization of the site isn't that clear, but we've always had a lot more options than you suggest, including a $5 month option (http://rtb.techdirt.com/products/watercooler/) and a name your price option, that even has a single check box for $50 (http://rtb.techdirt.com/products/friend-of-techdirt/).
We'll look for ways to make that clearer.
I think you're falling away from your own major drives, the ones that got me to sign up in the first place... engaging your users and giving them something excellent.
Again, as noted above, most of what we've done has worked. Sometimes it doesn't -- and this may be a case where it doesn't, which we're learning from.
Talk about Insight.ly because they are interesting, not because they pay you.
Honestly, nothing in this post said anything about talking about insightly. It asked people to discuss ways to deal with a very real problem that many of our users do discuss regularly. It was sponsored by Insightly to create a general discussion on the topic -- not to have anyone comment about Insightly.
So if Pandora buys a radio station and they simulcast ONE broadcast so what? If they do the same thing the radio stations do they should get the same rates. But if they do something different... I dunno, say allow user defined algorithmically generated personal playlists per user... well, then, that's a different service and requires a different rate. Pretty simple really.
No, they're asking for the same rates that ASCAP gives iHeartRadio for *ITS* algorithmically generated personal playlists.
It amazes me how you folks keep spewing off about this without even knowing what you're talking about.
They're not asking for the same rates that *radio* pays. They're asking for the same rates that radio stations pay FOR THEIR ONLINE STREAMING SERVICES THAT ARE JUST LIKE PANDORA.
It would be nice to read this on a more usable reader than scribd... is there a direct link?
We don't use scribd. We use document cloud, which does post the PDF directly. If you click the little box in the lower lefthand corner you can download the pdf directly.
Unfortunately for the piracy-loving Mike Masnick, the US Supreme Court itself already stated that digital piracy was "no different than garden-variety theft."
They have NEVER said that you can charge someone under traditional regulations regarding theft rather than copyright...
I believe Clear Channel has already worked out a deal with most of the labels to begin paying performance royalties.
Clear Channel is leading the lobbying campaign against paying performance royalties, so... that's interesting.
Apple's new radio service looks to be doing the same.
All internet services have to pay performance royalties. You seem to be confusing the rules for terristrial radio and internet radio.
So, Pandora is going to be left in the lurch on this desperate move, I suppose.
Pandora already pays performance royalties. The move in buying a radio station is not to get out of paying those, but to get the same rates that radio stations already get for their online streams.
It'll be hard to claim they can't make money when the majors will be able to point out that others are doing so just fine, and raking it in, presumably.
Why does anonymity/privacy lover Mike Masnick have the moderation filter catching posts of users utilizing TOR? Hmm....
We don't. We use a variety of anti-spam filters to catch spam, and it sometimes catches legitimate comments, which we tend to free up within hours (a bit longer over the weekend and late at night). It is true that tor-based comments are slightly more likely to be caught in the filter because (shockingly) tor is often used by spammers. However, if the comments are legit, we free them pretty quickly. Also, it does not catch all tor comments. Many of them get through no problem. The system uses a variety of heuristics to figure out what is and what is not spam.
The system that catches those comments catches approximately 1,000 spam comments per day. It tends to catch very, very few legitimate comments, and those it does catch are put live on the site pretty quickly.
Well that was quick. Seems both problems are gone again. Also, the text on the expander-tabs had changed to "Read More" and has reverted to "Expand". Did you guys click "undo" after trying something and realizing it had unwanted side effects?
Nope. Made no changes to the site tonight at all. Expand/collapse has been working fine for me. Not sure if what you saw was a hiccup, but we'll look into it.
As for some of your other points, we decreased the number of articles on the front page after we received numerous complaints of load times for the full page. The expand/collapse stuff was also due to people complaining that they had to scroll through long articles they didn't want to read to get to the ones they did want. This way you can scroll and *very easily* open up the full article if you want to.
Also, if you want to keep the articles expanded, there's an option for that in your preferences, so if you really don't like the collapsed stories, no problem, you can have it appear the old way -- and that works whether you're logged in or logged out.
So, no, most of these changes have been focused on improving user experience, giving you more choices. Sorry if you don't appreciate them, but we're trying our best to accommodate a variety of ways in which people read.
Peter King is missing just one detail. The reporter is living in England, as a lawful permanent resident, working for a British newspaper, and paying British taxes.
He's a US citizen living in Brazil, actually. So, not sure your comment applies. He does work for a UK paper, though, so you got that point right.
Re:
The greater the persuasive force of third party papers mentioned here, the longer the TD articles mocking same.
You say that as if there was some persuasive force in his paper. There is none. I made a detailed critique. If you have a response, I'd like to see it.
Re:
i dont understand. are these different from the carpathia servers? who is leaseweb, why have we never heard anything about them before?
Megaupload used multiple hosting partners. Carpathia was a US hosting firm. Leaseweb is Dutch, I believe. They each hosted some parts of Mega, but not the whole thing.
Re:
Bah. Fixed...
Re: Who cares
If you're worried your being spied on stop committing crimes. Otherwise go on with your lives and stop being dramatic chicken littles.
Cool. Then, feel free to post your name, age, social security number, bank account details, credit card numbers, past sexual partners, your medical files, every website you've surfed... etc.
After all, you've got nothing to hide, right?
Re: Okay, it's BROKEN. Now how do we fix it?
Seems like getting rid of a secret court would be step one. If specific information needs to be filed under seal, then allow that.
Re:
Yeah, these sponsored posts seem to be doing the lead balloon thing. I have no particular beef with either Insightly or with you guys, but trying to force geeks to talk about things that benefit a sponsor is just not going to work. I've seen two of these posts, and in neither one did any useful conversation happen.
We've had tremendous success with some of these posts, and others haven't caught on. We're definitely learning and adjusting as we go. Just a couple weeks ago, one of our sponsored posts was the top post on Reddit tech and reached #5 on the front page of Reddit as well. So, sometimes people quite like them.
Also, in the past, we've held similar discussions to this one that have gone quite well and been very interesting, including on topics like enterprise storage, enterprise printing, data models, and the like.
But, yes, this particular post clearly did not catch people's interest, and we're learning from that as well.
You'd probably raise more actual revenue if you came up with better price tiering. I wanted to give you $50/year, but that wasn't easy to do; it was either $15 once or $10/mo. So you got $15 from me instead of $50.
Hmm. Perhaps the organization of the site isn't that clear, but we've always had a lot more options than you suggest, including a $5 month option (http://rtb.techdirt.com/products/watercooler/) and a name your price option, that even has a single check box for $50 (http://rtb.techdirt.com/products/friend-of-techdirt/).
We'll look for ways to make that clearer.
I think you're falling away from your own major drives, the ones that got me to sign up in the first place... engaging your users and giving them something excellent.
Again, as noted above, most of what we've done has worked. Sometimes it doesn't -- and this may be a case where it doesn't, which we're learning from.
Talk about Insight.ly because they are interesting, not because they pay you.
Honestly, nothing in this post said anything about talking about insightly. It asked people to discuss ways to deal with a very real problem that many of our users do discuss regularly. It was sponsored by Insightly to create a general discussion on the topic -- not to have anyone comment about Insightly.
Re: Re: Re: So then...
So if Pandora buys a radio station and they simulcast ONE broadcast so what? If they do the same thing the radio stations do they should get the same rates. But if they do something different... I dunno, say allow user defined algorithmically generated personal playlists per user... well, then, that's a different service and requires a different rate. Pretty simple really.
No, they're asking for the same rates that ASCAP gives iHeartRadio for *ITS* algorithmically generated personal playlists.
It amazes me how you folks keep spewing off about this without even knowing what you're talking about.
They're not asking for the same rates that *radio* pays. They're asking for the same rates that radio stations pay FOR THEIR ONLINE STREAMING SERVICES THAT ARE JUST LIKE PANDORA.
Re:
Isn't CA in massive debt and having to cut back on all sorts of things for citizens?
Believe it or not: no. We're currently rolling in money.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/us/californias-new-problem-too-much-money.html?_r=0
Re: pdf link?
It would be nice to read this on a more usable reader than scribd... is there a direct link?
We don't use scribd. We use document cloud, which does post the PDF directly. If you click the little box in the lower lefthand corner you can download the pdf directly.
Re:
We posted that story this morning. No need to repost it.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130614/02110223467/microsoft-said-to-give-zero-day-exploit s-to-us-government-before-it-patches-them.shtml
Also, if you want to submit articles, please use the submit option.
Re:
Unfortunately for the piracy-loving Mike Masnick, the US Supreme Court itself already stated that digital piracy was "no different than garden-variety theft."
They have NEVER said that you can charge someone under traditional regulations regarding theft rather than copyright...
Re:
when copyright law is enforced.
If copyright law were being enforced, you might have a point. But since they weren't actually charged with copyright infringement, what's your point?
Re: Re: Re:
I believe Clear Channel has already worked out a deal with most of the labels to begin paying performance royalties.
Clear Channel is leading the lobbying campaign against paying performance royalties, so... that's interesting.
Apple's new radio service looks to be doing the same.
All internet services have to pay performance royalties. You seem to be confusing the rules for terristrial radio and internet radio.
So, Pandora is going to be left in the lurch on this desperate move, I suppose.
Pandora already pays performance royalties. The move in buying a radio station is not to get out of paying those, but to get the same rates that radio stations already get for their online streams.
It'll be hard to claim they can't make money when the majors will be able to point out that others are doing so just fine, and raking it in, presumably.
Who's making money from online streaming today?
Re:
Why does anonymity/privacy lover Mike Masnick have the moderation filter catching posts of users utilizing TOR? Hmm....
We don't. We use a variety of anti-spam filters to catch spam, and it sometimes catches legitimate comments, which we tend to free up within hours (a bit longer over the weekend and late at night). It is true that tor-based comments are slightly more likely to be caught in the filter because (shockingly) tor is often used by spammers. However, if the comments are legit, we free them pretty quickly. Also, it does not catch all tor comments. Many of them get through no problem. The system uses a variety of heuristics to figure out what is and what is not spam.
The system that catches those comments catches approximately 1,000 spam comments per day. It tends to catch very, very few legitimate comments, and those it does catch are put live on the site pretty quickly.
We have no problem with people using tor.
Re:
Pandora is just trying to get wealthy on the backs of musicians.
By asking for the same rates others pay? Really?
Re: Re: Re: Congratulations, Techdirt engineers -- once again you've broken something.
Well that was quick. Seems both problems are gone again. Also, the text on the expander-tabs had changed to "Read More" and has reverted to "Expand". Did you guys click "undo" after trying something and realizing it had unwanted side effects?
Nope. Made no changes to the site tonight at all. Expand/collapse has been working fine for me. Not sure if what you saw was a hiccup, but we'll look into it.
As for some of your other points, we decreased the number of articles on the front page after we received numerous complaints of load times for the full page. The expand/collapse stuff was also due to people complaining that they had to scroll through long articles they didn't want to read to get to the ones they did want. This way you can scroll and *very easily* open up the full article if you want to.
Also, if you want to keep the articles expanded, there's an option for that in your preferences, so if you really don't like the collapsed stories, no problem, you can have it appear the old way -- and that works whether you're logged in or logged out.
So, no, most of these changes have been focused on improving user experience, giving you more choices. Sorry if you don't appreciate them, but we're trying our best to accommodate a variety of ways in which people read.
Re: Dianne Feinstein: NSA needs no court to query database
“Dianne Feinstein: NSA needs no court to query database”, by Tim Mak, Politico, June 13, 2013
Same thing Hayden said earlier this week:
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130611/18344823416/former-nsa-boss-we-dont-datamine-our- giant-data-collection-we-just-ask-it-questions.shtml
Re: underestimating how easy it can be to invalidate software patents
*** If any key part of a patent requires the use of software, then such patents are should be deemed as ineligible for patent protection. ***
Define "software."
Re:
Dead Google open letter link.
Bah, stupid CNET. They used relative path, rather than the full URL. Lame. But fixed.
Re:
Peter King is missing just one detail. The reporter is living in England, as a lawful permanent resident, working for a British newspaper, and paying British taxes.
He's a US citizen living in Brazil, actually. So, not sure your comment applies. He does work for a UK paper, though, so you got that point right.