Techdirt. Stories filed under "headlines" Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us Techdirt. Stories filed under "headlines"http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Fri, 1 Feb 2013 16:22:31 PST FTC Still Seems More Interested In Making Headlines Than Really Protecting Privacy Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130201/13143921857/ftc-still-seems-more-interested-making-headlines-than-really-protecting-privacy.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130201/13143921857/ftc-still-seems-more-interested-making-headlines-than-really-protecting-privacy.shtml announcing a high profile "settlement" with social networking startup Path. You might think that this is entirely about the news that came out a year ago, about Path uploading entire user address books to its server. If you don't recall, that story got a lot of press coverage. Basically, Path, like tons of social networks and mobile apps, had a feature which was "see if your existing friends already use this app and connect to them." But, to do that, it needed to know who your friends are. The process it used to do this was to upload your address book in the background and then compare it to their user base. This was, certainly, a somewhat questionable practice on privacy grounds, but it was something that lots of companies did, because it was a simple way to use the "find your friends" feature.

Of course, as soon as the story about Path went viral, most companies who were doing this very, very quickly dropped the practice, and figured out other, less privacy-invasive ways to connect you to your friends. That's a good thing. So, does the company need to be punished? It seems like negative publicity and the market took care of everything.

Well... if you look at the details of the Path "settlement," it wasn't even really about that issue at all. Yes, Path agreed to have outside privacy audits for the next 20 years (which is the FTC's go to "punishment" plan), but the hyped up $800,000 payment actually had nothing whatsoever to do with the uploading address books. Instead, it dealt with a different issue. During the investigation, the FTC also found that Path likely violated COPPA, the silly and misguided law that basically means most sites put in their terms that they don't allow anyone under 13 to use it. Of course, in practice this has significant unintended consequences, including not letting perfectly reasonable services be available to kids and (more likely) parents teaching their kids to lie about their age.

It turned out that for a brief period of time, Path did not exactly follow the COPPA rules, and actually let a few thousand kids under the age of 13 sign up. So, they may have violated the rule. But... Path had discovered and fixed this well before the FTC investigation began. The company claims it was just an oversight that their system did not automatically reject users under the age of 13.

So... the company made a mistake, caught it and fixed it, without having the FTC get involved at all. And there's no evidence, at all, that it misused the data it collected here. And yet it needs to pay $800,000? Why? For a big company, $800,000 may be small beans, but for a startup, that's significant money.

Oh, and even more bizarre: as noted earlier, lots of companies did similar things to Path, but the FTC only went after Path. When asked why they only went after Path, outgoing FTC boss Jon Leibowitz gave a non-answer, saying that they're just a small agency and so they have to "pick and choose which malefactors you want to go after." So they chose the one most likely to create headlines -- and forced them to cough up $800,000 over a "violation" that was the result of an accident, which the company had already discovered and fixed, and for which no abuse was found. That doesn't seem like good policy. It seems like vindictive choices by the FTC focused on the maximum potential to create headlines, rather than actually protect people's privacy.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
]]> picking-on-the-headline-winners http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20130201/13143921857 Tue, 4 Oct 2011 12:07:39 PDT Amanda Knox Is Guilty... Of Making Newspapers Jump The Gun On Guilty Headlines Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111004/04314816195/amanda-knox-is-guilty-making-newspapers-jump-gun-guilty-headlines.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111004/04314816195/amanda-knox-is-guilty-making-newspapers-jump-gun-guilty-headlines.shtml 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.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
]]> dewey-beats-truman http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20111004/04314816195 Thu, 17 Feb 2011 15:57:00 PST Three Headlines About The US Government And The Internet Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110217/11175913156/three-headlines-about-us-government-internet.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110217/11175913156/three-headlines-about-us-government-internet.shtml Paul Keating points us to an amusing (if somewhat disturbing) juxtaposition of three headlines -- one after the other -- on the CircleID website:
In case you can't see the image, these are the three headlines: So, yes, Homeland Security wants nearly a billion dollars for its internet activities, which involve "accidentally" removing tens of thousands of perfectly legitimate websites... while the State Department pledges a grand total of $25 million for "internet freedom." Priorities?

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
]]> read-'em-and-weep http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110217/11175913156 Thu, 9 Sep 2010 02:21:32 PDT Australian Court Says Headlines Aren't Copyrightable Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100908/05285510936.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100908/05285510936.shtml newspaper headlines don't deserve copyright protection. The specific lawsuit was over the use of Australian Financial Review headlines in LexisNexis, which also summarized the articles in question. It appears the judge also said that the use of the headlines constitutes "fair dealing," but I'm a bit confused about the combination here. If the headlines aren't copyrightable... then fair dealing shouldn't even come into play. Not surprisingly, the publisher of AFR, Fairfax Media, is not at all happy about the ruling, making the totally laughable argument that copyrights on headlines is necessary:
Gill described the judgment as "disappointing", adding: "It is not consistent with what is necessary to protect intellectual property in the digital media environment... We are considering our appeal opportunities."
Seriously. If you're relying on copyright protection of your news headlines as a part of your business model, you've got the wrong business model.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
]]> good-news http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100908/05285510936 Thu, 29 Oct 2009 06:33:15 PDT GateHouse Media Strikes Again: Claims Headlines, Ledes Are Covered By Copyright, Threatens Forum Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091028/1834176710.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091028/1834176710.shtml sued the NY Times for linking to it, claiming it was copyright infringement to include the headline and a brief snippet along with the link (you know, like Google...). Amusingly, it turned out that GateHouse Media was doing the same thing. Eventually the two companies settled, and apparently that's convinced GateHouse Media that complaining about such links is a good idea.

Via CitMediaLaw we found out that GateHouse Media has sent a cease & desist letter to an online forum, claiming not just that its stories are covered by copyright, but that its headlines and ledes.
We wish to advise you that the stories, headlines and/or ledes that you are copying are the copyrighted property of GateHouse Media... and that your copying constitutes infringement of GateHouse's rights under U.S. Copyright law. This infringement is not excused by links to the original stories or by indicating the name of the publication in which the content originated.
Of course, it's not clear that copyright law actually agrees with that. And, even if GateHouse is correct, this makes no sense whatsoever. It's not as if people reading the Masscops forums are doing so as a substitute for some GateHouse Media news sites. If anything, Masscops is sending traffic to them, and helping new readers discover GateHouse's sites. What sort of company turns down links and traffic? Not one that's long for this world...

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
]]> they-never-learn http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20091028/1834176710 Wed, 21 Oct 2009 01:02:13 PDT UK Newspapers Threatening Aggregator: Like Donkeys Suing The Inventor Of The Wheel Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091020/1617276610.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091020/1617276610.shtml Mathew Ingram points us to the news that some UK newspapers are apparently threatening UK-based news aggregator NewsNow. I've used NewsNow in the past, and I can't see what the complaint is -- at all. NewsNow provides headlines and links. That's it. At least when I was using it, it didn't even provide summary text. I actually discovered a lot of useful new sources when I used it, and that's because NewsNow always struck me as one of the best aggregators out there. It found a lot more than most of the others. To be honest, my big complaint with NewsNow is that they limit their free feeds significantly -- and there's no RSS or anything. After a while, I just gave up on using it, because without RSS, it just didn't fit into my daily method of following the news, no matter how useful the site is. However, it's really difficult to see what sort of complaint any newspaper could have with such a service whose sole purpose is to drive more traffic. It is, as the link above so colorfully describes:
the equivalent of a herd of donkeys filing a class action suit against the inventor of the wheel....
Unless there's something more to these legal threats -- and, admittedly, only one side is weighing in on what happened here, the whole thing just seems like a stretch by at least some UK newspapers to try to intimidate online sites into paying them.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
]]> how-nice-of-them http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20091020/1617276610 Thu, 2 Apr 2009 16:55:00 PDT Fun With Headlines: Is Social Networking Good Or Bad For Friendship? Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090401/1516134344.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090401/1516134344.shtml Social networking, not for real friends, which certainly seems attention grabbing, if it were not for the fact that her research doesn't say that at all. What the research actually notes is that you may have weak relationships focused on a narrow topic, with folks you connect with on various social networks -- but it also notes how that's a good thing. She doesn't say that social networks aren't for real friends, even if that's what the headline reads.

Amusingly, another article covering the exact same bit of research runs with a different headline: Facebook friend collectors 'are normal' -- (suggesting the opposite of the Marketwatch headline) and quoting Baym:
"You can ask somebody, 'Of your 300 Facebook friends how many are actually friends?' and people will say, 'Oh, 30 or 40 or 50.' But what having a lot of weak-tie relationships is giving you access to are a lot of resources that you wouldn't otherwise have.... They can really open up access to resources that we wouldn't have otherwise."
That doesn't sound like "social networking isn't for real friends" at all. But, apparently, accuracy doesn't make for as good a headline sometimes. Then we've got USA Today, which seems to totally contradict the Marketwatch headline, by noting: For teens, a friend online is usually a friend offline, too. Apparently, the people at Marketwatch and at USA Today seemed to think they were reading different studies.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
]]> how-about-neither... http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20090401/1516134344 Tue, 13 Nov 2007 07:31:00 PST Lots Of Parents Playing Video Games With Kids... Though, That's Not What The Headlines Say Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20071112/164017.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20071112/164017.shtml family activity involving parents (and even grandparents) playing video games with their kids. This seemed like a good thing. A common activity over which families can bond seems positive. That's why it was a bit surprising to see a bunch of headlines trumpeting the news that "Many Parents Avoid Video Games With Kids." So when you get down into the article, you see that the headline is seriously misleading. What the report actually says is 43% of parents with kids who play video games never play with them. That would mean that 57% do play video games with their kids, which seems like quite a large number, especially compared to earlier reports. Yet, that apparently doesn't support the story line that the headline writer wanted to tell. While it is true that another 30% say they spend less than an hour a week playing video games with kids, that is still some bonding time, and shows that many, many parents are quite aware of what kinds of video games their kids are playing -- meaning that perhaps politicians can stop claiming they need to act as parents when it comes to video games.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
]]> details,-people,-details http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20071112/164017