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Hugh Pickens writes "The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has issued an opinion affirming a ruling that will be cheered by digital fair use proponents for allowing a fair use of students' work when their teachers electronically file students' written work with the turnitin.com Web site so that newly submitted work can be compared against Turnitin's database of existing student work to assess whether the new work is the result of plagiarism. The court stepped through the fair use analysis, dropping positive notes that affirm commercial uses can be fair uses, that a use can be transformative 'in function or purpose without altering or actually adding to the original work,' and that the entirety of a work can be used without precluding a finding of fair use. Techdirt suggests that all of these points could have been helpful to Google in defending its book scanning efforts, 'since it could make pretty much the identical arguments on all points.' Unfortunately Google caved in that lawsuit and settled, 'denying a strong fair use precedent and making Google look like an easy place for struggling industries to demand cash.'"

Techdirt has an interesting look back at some of the more interesting predictions on copyright. The article looks at two different pre-DMCA papers and compares them to what has happened in the world of copyright. "The second paper is by Pamela Samuelson, and it discusses (again, quite accurately) the coming power grab by "copyright maximalists" via the DMCA, entitled The Copyright Grab. It clearly saw the intention of the DMCA to remove user rights, and grant highly questionable additional rights and powers to copyright holders in an online world. Samuelson lays out many concerns about where this is headed -- including how these proposals appear to trample certain fair use rights -- and in retrospect, her fears seem to have been backed up by history. Samuelson, by the way, has just written a new paper that is also worth reading pointing out how ridiculous current copyright statutory rates are -- an issue of key importance in the ongoing Tenebaum lawsuit, which (thankfully) the judge in the case is going to consider."

Upstart online brokerage site Zecco had an unfortunate April Fool's day snafu that they are claiming was an honest mistake. Users logged on to find larger balances than they should have, sometimes millions of dollars extra, and many of those users started trading with the nonexistent money. Happy April Fool's Day. "... when Zecco realized it, the company apparently started to force sell, even at a loss, charging the losses to the customers along with a '$19.99 broker-assisted trading fee.' Oops."

TechDirt has an interesting look at some of the questions arising about the copyrightability of Twitter messages. I haven't seen any actual copyright lawyers weigh in yet, but it certainly will be interesting to watch the feathers fly until someone nails down the answer. "[...] it seems like there would be two issues here. The first is whether or not the content is covered by copyright — and, for most messages the answer would probably be yes (there would need to be some sort of creative element to the messages to make that happen, so a simple 'hi' or 'thanks' or whatever might not cut it). But, the more important question then would be whether or not ESPN could quote the Twitter message. And, there, the answer is almost certainly, yes, they could, just as they could quote something you wrote in a blog post."

TechDirt is reporting that the ACLU has stepped in on behalf of several teens facing the threat of child pornography charges in Pennsylvania for sharing nude pics of themselves. Unfortunately for a girl in New Jersey, she is facing much more than just a threat, as she was arrested yesterday for posting almost 30 explicit pictures of herself on MySpace for her boyfriend to see. "...the ACLU has sued the prosecutor on the girls' behalf, saying he shouldn't have threatened them with baseless charges — which haven't yet been filed — if they wouldn't agree to probation and a counseling program. The prosecutor says he was being 'proactive' in offering them a choice, but the ACLU says he shouldn't be using 'heavy artillery' to make the threats. As its attorney points out, teaching kids that this sort of behavior can bring all sorts of unwanted and unforeseen ramifications is a good idea, but threatening them with child-porn charges isn't the best way to do it."

newtley writes "TechDirt's Mike Masnick writes that the Warner Music Choruss licensing scheme amounts to a Bait-And-Switch operation. Not so, says Jim Griffin, the man charged to put it together. Masnick's story is 'factually incorrect in every respect,' he states. But Griffin 'refused to name a single factual mistake,' Masnick says, noting, 'He fails to address the key problems that we outlined: 1. Why is this program even needed when plenty of musicians are coming up with business models that work today and don't need a new mandatory license (er... 'covenant not to sue') plan? 2. Why do we need a new bureaucracy and won't that divert funds? 3. Will the industry continue to try to shut down file sharing sites? 4. Will the industry continue to push a 3 strikes plan?'"

An anonymous reader writes "A few months back, Warner Music Group started pitching universities on the idea of a new program where they would pay a chunk of money to an organization named Choruss to provide 'covenants not to sue' those students for file sharing, leading many in the press to claim that the record labels are looking to license ISPs to let users file share. Even the EFF has called it a 'promising new approach.' However, the details are quite troubling and suggest that the plan is really a bait-and-switch idea." (More below.) "The industry still plans to demand three strikes and try to shut down file sharing networks, and it's already giving up on lawsuits. So... it's basically going to keep doing everything the same as before, but force your ISP or your university (who in turn will raise your rates) to just hand over a bunch of money. Oh yeah, also, since the 'covenant not to sue' isn't a license and only covers the rights of the record labels, it means that you can still get sued by the publishers or songwriters whose rights aren't covered by the deal at all. Unfortunately, the press is just repeating the claim that this is a 'file sharing license' when the details show it's anything but that. It's just a way to get people and companies to hand over large chunks of money to the record labels."

TechDirt pointed out a recent bit of foolishness as a followup to California Assemblyman Joel Anderson's push to force Google and other online mapping/satellite companies to blur out schools, churches, and government buildings. When pushed, apparently his justification was that leaving these buildings un-obscured is the same as shouting fire. "News.com ran an interview with Anderson, where he attempts to defend his proposed legislation as a matter of public safety. He claims that there is no good reason why anyone would need to clearly see these buildings online, and that it can only be used for bad purposes. [...] Apparently, Anderson is the final determiner of what good people do and what bad people do with online maps."

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Lawyer Scott Harris, one of the inventors of the concept of a 'marketing company devoted to selling/marketing products produced by other companies in return for a share of their profits,' is appealing the USPTO's rejection of US Patent Application No. 09/387,823 which was intended to patent that 'invention.' This court action is important because it directly challenges the In Re Bilski ruling, which tightened the rules to get rid of most so-called 'business method' patents. One of Mr. Harris's legal theories is that a 'company is a physical thing, and as such analogous to a machine.' If the name seems familiar, it's because Mr. Harris has a long history of inventive legal maneuverings. I'm honestly surprised that SCO never tried to hire or sue him."

TechDirt is reporting that in response to the frustrations with Apple's app store dictatorship, a few developers are looking to set up their own alternative app stores. Alternate app stores would only work on jailbroken phones, making their adoption scope limited, so the question is whether Apple will go after these start ups on the legal battlefield. "Apple, which collects a 30% commission from sellers on its store, doesn't break out the site's revenue. Brokerage firm Piper Jaffray estimates the site generated about $150 million in sales last year and projects total sales will grow to $800 million this year. Apple did not respond to requests for comment. But it has said in the past that with the iPhone it was trying to strike a balance between a closed device like the iPod and an open device like the PC."

It has been reported for a while that the RIAA was suffering some cutbacks and dwindling support, but techdirt is reporting that the cuts may be even deeper than most originally suspected. Who knew suing potential customers would ruin your business? "I'm sure some will somehow 'blame piracy' for this turn of events, but it's hard to see how that's even remotely the issue. The real issue is that the RIAA has basically managed to run one of the dumbest, most self-defeating strategies over the last decade. Rather than helping major record labels adjust to the changing market, it continually, repeatedly and publicly destroyed its own reputation and the reputation of the labels — each time shrinking their potential market by blaming the very people they should have been working to turn into customers."

Techdirt points out an interesting query in Slate asking why book publishers appear to be making the same mistake that record labels did with the iTunes service with DRM, and single-vendor lock-in. "Back in 2005, we noted that Apple's dominance over the online music space, which upset the record labels tremendously, was actually the record labels' own fault for demanding DRM. That single demand created massive lock-in and network effects that allowed Apple to completely dominate the market. If the record labels had, instead, pushed for an open solution, then anyone else could have built stores/players to work as well, and it could have minimized Apple's ability to control the market. Yes, everyone is now opening up (including Apple), but it took a long time, and Apple had already established its dominant position. So why are book publishers doing the same thing?"

TechDirt is reporting that the Associated Press is poised to be the next in a long line of news organizations to completely bungle their online distribution methods by making their content require payment. While this wouldn't happen for a while due to deals with others, like Google, to distribute AP content for free, even considering this is a massive step in the wrong direction. "Also, I know we point this out every time some clueless news exec claims that users need to pay, but it's worth mentioning again: nowhere do they discuss why people should want to pay. Nowhere do they explain what extra value they're adding that will make people pay. Instead, they think that if they put up a paywall, people will magically pay -- even though the paywall itself is what takes away much of the value by making it harder for people to do what they want with the news: to spread it, to comment on it, to participate in the story. Until newspaper execs figure this out, they're only going to keep making things worse."

Techdirt has a wonderful summary of how hard it is sometimes to stay upbeat when faced with some of the complete idiocy that intelligent, tech-savvy readers often have to deal with in their day-to-day lives. While the frustration will probably never go away, nor will the news calling attention to it, it does seem that opening people's eyes to problems helps things move in the right direction, so keep it up. "Yes, we're in the midst of a brutal financial mess — but that won't stop innovation. Yes, incumbent forces, with short-sighted plans and a desire to hold back the tides are annoying and disruptive (not in a good way) in the short run. But even they are finding they can't hold back progress. Robert Friedel has a wonderful book called A Culture of Improvement that details how we, as a society, are constantly looking to improve on what we already have. We add ideas and ingenuity to old concepts and build something better — not because of the desire to grab some "intellectual property," but because of the desire to improve our own lot, to build a better tool that we want to use. Incumbent short-sighted players have been able to hinder and harm progress, but they can't keep it down completely. That culture of improvement can't be stopped entirely."

TechDirt is spotlighting a call by Michael S. Malone, a columnist for ABCNews.com, for letting Silicon Valley create jobs once more. Malone argues that Sarbanes-Oxley and other attempts at accounting reform have done little to prevent fraud, but in fact have managed to kill off an entrepreneurship-venture capital-IPO cycle, centered in Silicon Valley, that has taken 30 years to nourish. Here's TechDirt: "...it's time to roll back SarbOx and other accounting rules that have acted more for theatrical purposes rather than any legitimate reason. Basically, all they've done is create new reporting requirements that do little to nothing to either prevent fraud or clarify a company's actual financial position (its intended purpose). I'm all for radical transparency in financial info, but that's not what has been done. Instead, we've made it burdensome to actually grow a company — and that doesn't help create jobs. It helps kill them."

An anonymous reader writes with a followup to the story posted last week about Warner Music's plan for a music tax for universities. "There's been some debate about this plan and Techdirt has a detailed explanation of why a music tax is a bad idea, noting that it effectively rewards those who failed in the marketplace, punishes those who innovated and sets up a huge, inefficient and unnecessary bureaucracy. Meanwhile, plenty of musicians who are experimenting with new business models are finding that they can make more money and appeal to more fans. So, why stymie that process with a new bureaucracy that simply funds the big record labels?"

An anonymous reader writes "Warner Music is pitching the idea of a 'music tax' for various top universities. The idea is that students would be free to file share, but the university needs to monitor and track everything, create a pool of money, hand it over to a recording industry entity that promises to distribute the proceeds fairly. In exchange, the university gets a 'covenant not to sue' from the music labels. It's not a full license, just a basic promise that they won't sue. It's also claimed that this is 'voluntary' but the Warner Music guy says that they need to include all universities and all ISPs to really make it work. It's basically a music tax, where the recording industry gets to sit back and collect money."

TechDirt is reporting on a disappointing development out of Canada. An Ontario transportation board has fined PickupPal, a Web-based service for arranging carpools, because a local bus company complained of the competition. (TechCrunch apparently first broke the story.) "[The transportation board has] established a bunch of draconian rules that any user in Ontario must follow if it uses the service — including no crossing of municipal boundaries — meaning the service is only good within any particular city's limits. It's better than being shut down completely, and the service can still operate elsewhere around the world, but this is yet another case where we see regulations, that are supposedly put in place to improve things for consumers, do the exact opposite."

theodp writes "TechFlash reports that Microsoft bigwigs like Craig Mundie and Bill Gates (when he still worked there) have been secretly moonlighting at Intellectual Ventures (IV), the 'patent extortion fund' run by Bill's pal Nathan Myhrvold. A Microsoft spokesman confirmed that its technologists have been sitting in on IV-sponsored 'innovation sessions,' where their pearls of wisdom were captured and turned into patent applications for Searete, an IV shadow corporate entity. And if all goes well, Searete will soon enjoy exclusive rights to the fruit of the brainstorming, which includes processes ranging from determining and rewarding 'influencers' to treating malaria, HIV, TB, hepatitis, smallpox, and cancer."

An anonymous reader writes "Halliburton, the company many folks know as Dick Cheney's previous employer, has apparently taken an interest in methods of patent trolling. In fact, according to Techdirt, the company has applied for a patent on patent trolling. Specifically, it's applied for a patent on the process of finding a company that protected an invention via trade secret, figuring out what that secret is, patenting it ... and then suing the original company. Hopefully, the patent office rejects this patent, because I somehow doubt that Halliburton is trying to get the patent as a way to block others from patent trolling."

An anonymous reader writes "We've all heard Weird Al Yankovic's 'Don't Download This Song,' which came out a couple years ago, but did you know that MTV is apparently so afraid that kids listening to the song will discover for the first time that file sharing offerings exist that in its video of the song, MTV bleeps out their names? There's a line in the song that lists out Morpheus, Grokster, Kazaa and Limewire (most of whom don't really exist any more), but for some reason MTV considers those names to be bleep worthy." Unless this is all one grand inside joke from Weird Al.

Techdirt makes note of some problems cropping up already for early voters in the presidential election. CNN covers some of the issues, including machines in a West Virginia county which recorded some votes incorrectly because of an alignment error. A lengthy discussion of the problems was also featured on NPR. Reader Rooked_One points out a related story at NPR about a voting program called PVOTE, written in Python and only 500 lines long. "Pvote is not a complete voting system. It is just the software program that interacts with the voter. Other necessary functions, such as voter registration, ballot preparation, and canvassing, are not part of Pvote. It is especially important that the voter interaction be correct because it is the only part of an election that must take place in private, whereas all other parts of an election can and should be subjected to public oversight and verification."

TechDirt notes the publication of the New Jersey voting machine study, the attempted suppression of which we have been discussing for a while now. The paper that the Princeton and Lehigh University researchers are releasing, as permitted by the Court, is "the same as the Court's redacted version, but with a few introductory paragraphs about the court case, Gusciora v. Corzine." What's new is the release of a 90-minute evidentiary video — the researchers have asked the court for permission to release a shorter version that hits the high points, as the high-res video is about 1 GB in size. See TechDirt's article for the report's executive summary listing eight ways the AVC Advantage 9.00 voting machine can be subverted.

TechDirt is reporting that those all-too-familiar "stats" surrounding the cost of piracy are being trotted out in an attempt to push through a new "Copyright Czar" position. "In urging President Bush to sign into law the ProIP bill, which would give him a copyright czar (something the Justice Department had said it doesn't want), the US Chamber of Commerce is claiming that 750,000 American jobs have been lost to piracy. Yet, it doesn't cite where that number comes from."

palegray.net writes "The National Center for State Courts, a nonprofit organization, has sent file-sharing propaganda to thousands of students. The supposedly 'educational' materials, presented in the form of a comic strip, are intended to frighten students with gross exaggerations of the legal consequences of sharing music online (lose your scholarship to college, go to jail for two years, and more). From the article: '"The Case of Internet Piracy," however, reads like the Recording Industry Association of America's public relations playbook: Download some songs, go to jail and lose your scholarship. Along the way, musicians will file onto the bread lines. "The purpose is basically to educate kids — middle school and high school-aged about how the justice system operates and about what really goes on in the courtroom as opposed to what you see on television," said Lorri Montgomery, the center's communications director.' I'm not encouraging anyone to break any laws, but this is ridiculous. What's truly discouraging is the fact that several judges appear to be in full support of this sort of 'education.' The propaganda material is available in PDF form, and it lists the judges and others involved in its creation. Wired's post has a summary of the story (which is good, since the story is awful), and Techdirt notes a couple of the legal inaccuracies.

TechDirt is reporting that one airline is planning on canceling all flights booked through third-party systems. This isn't the first time that an airline has fought against the inevitable wave of easier-to-search third party websites, but certainly tops the stupid scale. "We were already confused enough by American Airlines' desire not to be listed on the sites where people search for airfare, and easyJet's plan to sue the sites that send it customers, but Irish-based airline Ryanair is taking this all to a new level. Beyond just being upset about those 3rd party sites (i.e., sites that send it business!), it's planning to cancel the flights for everyone who booked through one of those services."

TechDirt has an insightful article on the recent push for ISPs to turn off Usenet access under the guise of fighting child pornography. Unfortunately, the "stand against child porn" isn't actually a stand at all, it seems — more like ignoring the issue while trying to snag some headlines and good will. "Taking a stand against child porn wouldn't be overly aggressively blocking access to internet destinations that may or may not have porn (and there's no review over the list to make sure that they're actually objectionable). Taking a stand against child porn would be hunting down those responsible for the child porn and making sure that they're dealt with appropriately... Also, this sets an awful precedent in that the ISPs can point out that it's ok for them to block "objectionable" content where they get to define what's objectionable without any review."

Techdirt is reporting that while we all know privacy policies may not matter much in the grand scheme of things, a recent study shows that it may be even worse than originally surmised. It seems that the real issue is with who has access to personal data and what they are able to do with it. "of course, it's not just the people reading the policies that don't seem to understand them -- it's those in charge of living up to and enforcing the policies. A new study surveyed a bunch of executives, including both marketing execs and those in charge of enforcing the privacy policy, and quickly discovered that marketers have a very different concept of 'privacy' than privacy officers. Not surprisingly, they don't see anything wrong with sharing all sorts of data that seems to horrify privacy officers."

99BottlesOfBeerInMyF writes "AppleInsider is running an article about Apple's new SproutCore Web application development framework, utilizing Javascript and some nifty HTML 5 to offer a 'Cocoa-inspired' way to create powerful Web applications. Apple built on the OSS SproutIt framework developed for an online e-mail manager called 'Mailroom.' Apple used this framework to build their new Web application suite (replacing .Mac) called MobileMe. Since SproutCore applications rely on JavaScript, it seems Apple had good reason to focus on Squirrelfish for faster JavaScript interpretation in Webkit. Apple hosted a session last Friday at WWDC introducing SproutCore to developers, but obviously NDAs prevent developers from revealing the details of that presentation. Apple has a chance here to keep the Web becoming even more proprietary as Silverlight and Flash battle it out to lock the Web application market into one proprietary format or another. Either way, this is a potential alternative, which should make the OSS crowd happy." TechDIrt's writeup on the browser evolving towards acting as an OS expands on the theme AppleInsider raises.

An anonymous reader writes "Good news out of the UK! Techdirt reports that an appeals court has overturned a lower court ruling and has now said that mod chips do not violate copyright laws. The case involved a mod chip seller, who imported mod chips for the XBox from Hong Kong and would sell the chips or mod the Xbox's himself. He was charged with copyright infringement and found guilty by a lower court. The appeals court has dismissed all charges, however."

Goobergunch and other readers sent in word that Sprint, Time Warner, and Verizon have agreed to block websites and newsgroups containing child pornography. The deal, brokered by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, occurred after Cuomo's office threatened the ISPs with fraud charges. It's of some concern that the blacklist of sites and newsgroups is to be maintained by the Center for Missing and Exploited Children, an NGO with no legal requirement for transparency. Here are two further cautions, the first from Lauren Weinstein: "Of broader interest perhaps is how much time will pass before 'other entities' demand that ISPs (attempt to) block access to other materials that one group or another feels subscribers should not be permitted to see or hear." And from Techdirt: "[T]he state of Pennsylvania tried to do pretty much the same thing, back in 2002, but focused on actually passing a law ... And, of course, a federal court tossed out the law as unconstitutional. The goal is certainly noble. Getting rid of child porn would be great — but having ISPs block access to an assigned list isn't going to do a damn thing towards that goal."

TechDirt is reporting that former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has moved into the one industry that I don't think anyone might have expected, video games. Not only did she speak at a recent gaming conference, she is also working on creating a video game about the courts. "There have been many similar 'civic education' video games out there, like the UN video game to teach kids about world hunger and, my personal favorite, a video game to teach kids how to gerrymander voting districts to get political support. It's not clear how successful any of these sorts of games really are, but it's nice to see a former Supreme Court Justice taking an interest in these sorts of things. Though, some might point out that this could be seen as something of a gimmick, and students might just be better served by adding a decent civics curriculum back into school (it's apparently gone thanks to No Child Left Behind)."

amplt1337 writes "Debates about the profitability of 'free' continue to rage, but at least one major media conglomerate — Viacom — is pushing forward with releasing paid-for content for free on the Internet. Of course, the prospect of free and easy full-length Daily Show episodes has caused some tension with cable providers, who pay a hefty premium for a heretofore-exclusive right to distribute the conglom's content (there are obvious parallels with the conflict between labels and musicians). What strikes me as really interesting is that even an old, entrenched company like Viacom has enough vision to see the opportunity for increased profits through free distribution — provided they can control that distribution (see their YouTube lawsuit) and have discretion over just how free they go. Of course, the NYT itself has had its own experience with expanding access to previously fee-based content ..."

While "free" seems to be an increasingly popular business model, there are quite a few people who seem to be completely bungling what to do with "free" and then complaining when it doesn't work. Techdirt takes a look at some of the arguments surrounding why free as a business model may or may not work and why many of these arguments, while prevalent, just don't hold water. "you give away the infinite goods, not the scarce goods. Your time is a scarce good. No one is saying that everything needs to be free -- they're saying that infinite goods will be free, because of it's very nature in economics. In fact, Poole's argument is particularly weak when it comes to programmers, because most programmers don't earn any kind of royalties for the software they write. They are paid a salary, for their time -- but not for the software itself (which is an infinite good). And, I won't even get into the number of programmers who work on open source projects for free ... or the fact that Poole is blogging for free ..."

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Why is a 5th Circuit product liability case getting interest from lawyers all over the country? Because it might put an end to forum shopping by 'non practicing entities' (patent trolls) who prefer to file in the Eastern District of Texas, no matter how little relevance that forum has to their case. Thanks to the rules involving 28 U.S.C. 1404(a) motions and patent cases, people who get sued in Marshall, Texas usually can't get the case transferred elsewhere, even though that forum is seen as unreasonably favorable for patent plaintiffs. But, if the panel of judges in In Re: Volkswagen rules the way some anticipate, that could all change, and there are no less than six amici curiae who have filed briefs arguing both sides of it."

Techdirt called our attention to an interesting video of patent attorney Stephan Kinsella's presentation on 'Rethinking Intellectual Property Completely.' It's a long presentation, but well worth the time to watch. There is also an ongoing series of posts discussing intellectual property rights on Techdirt for additional reading.

Techdirt is reporting that Jon Dudas, head of the US Patent Office, is lamenting the continuing quality drop in patent submissions. Unfortunately, while this problem is finally getting the attention it deserves, the changes being implemented don't seem to be offering the correct solution. "When you set up a system that rewards people for not actually innovating in the market (but just speculating on paper), then of course, you're going to get more of that activity. When you set up a system that rewards those people to massive levels, well out of proportion with their contribution to any product, then of course you're going to get more of that activity. When you set up a system that gives people a full monopoly right that can be used to set up a toll booth on the natural path of innovation, then of course you're going to get more of that activity. When the cost of getting a patent is so much smaller than the potential payoff of suing others with it, then of course you're going to get more of that activity. The fact that Dudas is just noticing this now, while still pushing for changes that will make the problem worse, is a real problem. Patents were only supposed to be used in special cases. The fact that they've become the norm, rather than the exception, is a problem, and it doesn't seem like anyone is seriously looking into fixing that."

Techdirt is reporting that there has been a rash of reports indicating that red light cameras are being used to generate revenue rather than to promote safety. "Time and time again studies have shown that if cities really wanted to make traffic crossings safer there's a very simple way to do so: increase the length of the yellow light and make sure there's a pause before the cross traffic light turns green (this is done in some places, but not in many others). Tragically, it looks like some cities are doing the opposite! Jeff Nolan points out that six US cities have been caught decreasing the length of the yellow light below the legal limits in an effort to catch more drivers running red lights and [increase] revenue."

TechDirt is reporting that the New Jersey e-voting troubles are even worse than originally thought. Apparently the "minor bug" which was supposed to be fixed is still not corrected, suggesting that Sequoia still doesn't know what is going on. "Ed Felten has received a bunch of 'summary tapes' from the last election in New Jersey, and while many of them do have the vote totals matching up correctly at the end at least two of the summary tapes simply don't add up, meaning that Sequoia's explanation of what went wrong is incorrect. Given how often the company has denied or hidden errors in its machines, despite a ton of evidence, we shouldn't be surprised that it was inaccurate in explaining away this latest problem as well. However, we should be outraged that the company refuses to allow third party researchers to investigate these machines. It's a travesty that any government would use them when they've been shown to have so many problems and the company is unwilling to allow an independent investigation."

Techdirt is reporting that the mainstream press may finally be "getting it" when it comes to how the next generation of news readers consumes and shares news. One student summed it up very succinctly by saying "If the news is that important, it will find me." "According to interviews and recent surveys, younger voters tend to be not just consumers of news and current events but conduits as well -- sending out e-mailed links and videos to friends and their social networks. And in turn, they rely on friends and online connections for news to come to them. In essence, they are replacing the professional filter -- reading The Washington Post, clicking on CNN.com -- with a social one."

Techdirt's Mike Masnick is writing a series of short articles on topics around intellectual property. His latest focuses on the term itself, exploring the nomenclature people have proposed to describe matter that is neither intellectual nor property. The whole series (starting here) is well worth a read.

Techdirt's Mike Masnick is writing a series of short articles on topics around intellectual property. His latest focuses on the term itself, exploring the nomenclature people have proposed to describe matter that is neither intellectual nor property. The whole series (starting here) is well worth a read.

An anonymous reader writes "It looks like Trent Reznor's new Nine Inch Nails album experiment is a success. Among the various options he gave fans, the most expensive was the $300 Limited Edition Ultra Deluxe Package. It took just over a day for that package to completely sell out, earning Reznor $750,000 in revenue from just that option alone."

Wired's editor-in-chief Chris Anderson is working on a new book, to be published next year, about the idea of "free" in the old and new economies. Wired is running a long excerpt from the book and some sidebars about the economics of giving away, e.g., CDs and directory assistance. Techdirt has a few quibbles about Anderson's ideas — mostly areas in which he may be shading the argument to sell more books — but mostly buys that the equations of economics continue to work when zeros are plugged in in judicious places.

TechDirt has an interesting article about a UK-based company that is trying to work with ISPs to make use of user surfing data to serve targeted ads. "Late last year, we heard about a company that was trying to work with ISPs to make use of that data themselves to insert their own ads based on your surfing history -- and now we've got the first report of some big ISPs moving into this realm. Over in the UK three big ISPs, BT, Carphone Warehouse and Virgin Media have announced plans to use your clickstream data to insert relevant ads as you surf through a new startup called Phorm."

TechDirt has an interesting article about a UK-based company that is trying to work with ISPs to make use of user surfing data to serve targeted ads. "Late last year, we heard about a company that was trying to work with ISPs to make use of that data themselves to insert their own ads based on your surfing history -- and now we've got the first report of some big ISPs moving into this realm. Over in the UK three big ISPs, BT, Carphone Warehouse and Virgin Media have announced plans to use your clickstream data to insert relevant ads as you surf through a new startup called Phorm."

An anonymous reader writes "It looks like the courts may finally be gearing up to overturn the ruling that opened the floodgates for both software and business model patents. It's been nearly ten years since the US courts decided that business methods were patentable and that most software could be patentable — and we've all seen what's happened since then. With all the efforts to fix the patent system lately, it appears that the court that originally made that decision may be regretting it, and has agreed to hear a new case that could overturn that ruling and restore some sanity to the patent system."

TechDirt is reporting that the recent block placed on The Pirate Bay torrent site is not only relatively ineffective, but actually driving more traffic to the site because of the attention. "The news from The Pirate Bay appears to confirm this suspicion. According to The Pirate Bay's new Court Blog, Danish traffic has not dropped since the implementation of the block. '...the number of visits from Denmark has increased by 12% thanks to IFPI,' the blog post reads. 'Our site http://thejesperbay.org is growing more because of the media attention than people actually coming to learn how to bypass the filter - our guess is that alot of the users on the site now run OpenDNS instead of the censoring DNS at Tele2.dk.' 'We also started tracking some stats before and after the block. There's no noticeable difference between the number of users from Tele2.dk before and after.'"

BlueSalamander writes "Tim O'Reilly just did an interview with Devin Wenig, the CEO-designate of Reuters. With no great enthusiasm I started to read yet another interview on how the semantic web was going to make everything great for everybody. Wenig made some good points about the end of the latency wars in news and the beginning of the battle for automatically detecting linkages and connections in the news. Smart news, not just fast news. Great stuff — but just more words? Nope — a little searching revealed that Reuters just opened access to their corporate semantic technology crown jewels. For free. For anyone. Their Calais API lets you turn unstructured text into a formal RDF graph in about one second. I ran about 5,000 documents through it and played with a subset of them in RDF-Gravity. The results were impressive overall. Is this the start of the semantic web getting real? When big names and big money start to act, not just talk, it may be time to pay attention. Semantic applications anyone? The foundation appears to be here."

BlueSalamander writes "Tim O'Reilly just did an interview with Devin Wenig, the CEO-designate of Reuters. With no great enthusiasm I started to read yet another interview on how the semantic web was going to make everything great for everybody. Wenig made some good points about the end of the latency wars in news and the beginning of the battle for automatically detecting linkages and connections in the news. Smart news, not just fast news. Great stuff — but just more words? Nope — a little searching revealed that Reuters just opened access to their corporate semantic technology crown jewels. For free. For anyone. Their Calais API lets you turn unstructured text into a formal RDF graph in about one second. I ran about 5,000 documents through it and played with a subset of them in RDF-Gravity. The results were impressive overall. Is this the start of the semantic web getting real? When big names and big money start to act, not just talk, it may be time to pay attention. Semantic applications anyone? The foundation appears to be here."