Techdirt. Stories filed under "contractors" Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us Techdirt. Stories filed under "contractors"http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Fri, 14 Jun 2013 08:19:42 PDT Congress' Response To Leaks? Stop Contractors From Access To Classified Material Rather Than Stop NSA Spying Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130613/15394723464/congress-response-to-leaks-stop-contractors-access-to-classified-material-rather-than-stop-nsa-spying.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130613/15394723464/congress-response-to-leaks-stop-contractors-access-to-classified-material-rather-than-stop-nsa-spying.shtml to try to ban contractors from having access to highly classified material. This is straight out of Senator Dianne Feinstein's playbook: focus on demonizing the action of whistleblowing, rather than what was revealed by the whistleblower. And, of course, as always, that's a really stupid move. It may generate some headlines, but it does nothing to deal with the underlying problem of abuse of the law (which has been done with full knowledge of Feinstein) or the fact that plenty of people have access to this information. Locking out contractors won't stop the next insider from leaking information -- and it will actually likely inhibit the NSA from using the best technical talent out there in building and maintaining its computer systems. Either way, it's a weak attempt at treating the symptom, rather than the actual problem.

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]]> closing-the-wrong-door http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20130613/15394723464 Tue, 26 Feb 2013 11:19:23 PST Sheet Metal And Air Conditioning Contractors Use Bogus Copyright Takedown To Block Publication Of Federally Mandated Standards Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130223/02505322081/sheet-metal-air-conditioning-contractors-use-bogus-copyright-takedown-to-block-publication-federally-mandated-standards.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130223/02505322081/sheet-metal-air-conditioning-contractors-use-bogus-copyright-takedown-to-block-publication-federally-mandated-standards.shtml Carl Malamud has done, helping to make public information actually available. Among his many, many, projects is one important one in which he buys up (often expensive) publications of standards that are built into federal requirements, and makes them public. If you're wondering why he should have to buy publications to access standards that are federal requirements, you've quickly understood the big problem. About a year ago, On The Media actually did a fantastic segment about this particular project of Malamud's.

Of course, sooner or later, you knew someone was going to flip out, and apparently it's the Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors of the world. Malamud's organization purchased the federally-mandated 1985 standard on air-duct leakage and posted it online as a part of this project. But the Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors National Association (SMACNA) claimed that the document violated its copyright and demanded it be taken offline, both by an initial DMCA notice (via Attributor) and then via threat of a lawsuit directly from a lawyer representing SMACNA. Malamud's Public.Resource.Org, with help from the EFF, have filed for declaratory judgment that posting such information does not infringe on SMACNA's copyright.

In the filing, the case is made that since these standards are incorporated into federal regulations, they have the force of law, and thus cannot and must not be held in secret.
Technical manuals like the 1985 manual at issue in this case, explicitly adopted by federal regulation, have the force of law and impose affirmative obligations on citizens. As much as landmark health care acts or Supreme Court civil rights decisions, these technical requirements—for building, electrical, plumbing, transportation—touch the lives of Americans every day. Business owners, workers, and consumers need to know these directives in order to operate their businesses lawfully, to avoid penalties, and to determine whether neighbors, contractors, or competitors are in compliance.
The crux of the argument is that as the standard is incorporated into law, it is no longer infringing to make that work available, as one cannot comply with the law without having that information. No matter what happens in the end, this should make for an interesting case to follow.

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]]> shameful http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20130223/02505322081 Thu, 10 Jan 2013 12:26:55 PST Contractors Lining Up Against Free Speech Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130108/08214421605/contractors-lining-up-against-free-speech.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130108/08214421605/contractors-lining-up-against-free-speech.shtml tremendously helpful, even if you know to take reviews with a grain of salt (in both directions). At the very least, they provide some good fodder for understanding strengths and weaknesses. Recently, we wrote about a case in Virginia, in which a contractor named Christopher Dietz took a woman, Jane Perez, to court for $750,000 because she wrote negative reviews about him on Yelp and Angie's List. A lower court had initially told Perez to change her reviews, but the Virginia Supreme Court overturned that, saying that it could not require changes under the 1st Amendment until a full hearing was held on whether or not the content was defamatory.

It's worth noting that Perez only posted her negative reviews after Dietz had already sued her in small claims court, a case that was dismissed (some of the defamation claim concerns Dietz disagreeing with how Perez described the end result of that court case in her reviews). Dietz has also suggested during a video interview on MSNBC that he wanted to go after both Yelp and Angie's List, and that they shouldn't hide behind Section 230 of the CDA. At this point, it would appear that Dietz either does not understand or underestimates the power of the Streisand Effect as well as the importance of free speech and the importance of secondary liability protection for service providers. It's a trifecta!

Perez has pro bono legal help from Public Citizen and the ACLU, but there are still substantial legal costs that she needs to cover. To help pay for it, she's put up an IndieGoGo campaign in which she notes that some comments on a popular site for home builders suggest that an association for home builders may be backing Dietz's lawsuit. The site in question does have a running update on the case, which includes one post where a spokesperson for the National Association of the Remodeling Industry claims that they "support [Chris Dietz] in the quest to right this wrong" and that the organization is "reviewing the case and will determine next steps." It's not clear if this means that NARI is actually financially supporting Dietz's lawsuit, but either way, "supporting" Dietz's misguided lawsuit still doesn't seem like a particularly smart stance, for reasons we'll get to below. NARI could do a lot more good for contractors by teaching them how to properly deal with negative reviews.

That same page includes a couple different reports from other contractors, insisting that contractors need to support Dietz and stop this scourge of people saying bad stuff about them. There's one post that insists the lawsuit is a good thing, saying it will take a "perfect storm" to lose (unlikely), while also mocking review sites claiming most of his customers have never heard of them. Then there's another one that mocks both review sites and the ACLU for daring to think that this was an important case.

I can certainly understand why contractors are upset about negative reviews -- just as lots of other businesses are worried about negative reviews. It's no secret that not all reviews are accurate, and it really does suck, emotionally, to see a negative review that's not true. But there are ways to deal with negative reviews that don't make the situation worse. Jumping straight to defamation lawsuits generally are the opposite of that. They do make the situation worse. SearchEngineLand has a great post in response to this very case, in which they point out that there are much better ways to deal with negative reviews online. Suing only creates news about those negative reviews -- and having it become widely public news that you sued a customer about their negative review seems likely to have a lot more damaging impact on a business than those negative reviews might have had in the first place.

Yes, we live in a legalistic society, where it is the first response of many people to "go legal" when they feel wronged, but in a world where information is widely available, there are often much better ways to respond to "negative" information than going legal. If these contractors really wanted to "support" Dietz, they should encourage more of their colleagues to read the SearchEngineLand article, rather than supporting a dangerous lawsuit that could undermine key principles of free speech or secondary liability.

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