Slashback: Google, China, Network Neutrality

Slashback tonight brings some corrections, clarifications, and updates to previous Slashdot stories, including Google's reasoning behind rejecting the DoJ motion, more fodder for the Chinese censorship fire, one of last weeks "first computers" brought to life, the New York Times backs network neutrality, hard drive death dance tracks, Serenity enters the black, and the USPTO issues a final rejection in RIM patent case -- Read on for details.

Google's reasoning behind rejecting the DoJ motion. xandroid writes "Google's blog has an explanation of their response to the DoJ motion." They have also provided a link to the entire 25 page response [PDF] sent to the DoJ.

Chinese censorship continues to be a hot topic. Mercury News is running an interesting article about the recent scolding top tech companies received from Washington with regards to assisting in censoring the internet in China. However, the Washington Post also has an interesting article regarding a senior editor at the China Youth Daily who posted a 'blistering letter on the newspaper's computer system attacking the Communist Party's propaganda czars and a plan by the editor in chief to dock reporters' pay if their stories upset party officials.' And finally, Wikipedia remains blocked in China despite the continued efforts of fans to correct the problem.

1960's Digicomp toy computer back in production. Larry Groebe writes "With all the talk last week about "first computers" on Slashdot and around the net, I was surprised to see only one mention of the Digicomp. A group of us keep the memories alive on Yahoo's 'Friends of Digicomp' group, and one enterprising member has managed to reconstruct the computer and is now selling them again for the first time in three decades. Its' a nostalgia trip for some of us; an eye opener for people who never experienced it; and still carries more than a bit of educational value. After all, even in these days of MAKE magazine, how many other true build-it-from-scratch computer kits are there?"

New York Times backs network neutrality. joshdick writes "In a recent editorial, The New York Times voices strong support for legislation requiring network neutrality. From the article: 'Some I.S.P.'s are phone and cable companies that make large campaign contributions, and are used to getting their way in Washington. But Americans feel strongly about an open and free Internet. Net neutrality is an issue where the public interest can and should trump the special interests.'"

Hard drive death dance tracks. daithedragon writes "A while back Gizmodo awarded the prizes in a competition to make a dance tracks out of the recorded noises of hard drives dying."

Serenity enters the black. stuart1310 writes "According to sliceofscifi.com the DVD sales of Joss Whedon's Serenity have recently climbed out of the red and started making profit for Universal. Beware, these numbers are estimates and even if accurate we've still a sight to go before seeing Serenity on TV or in the theaters again. Here is to hoping we do."

USPTO issue final rejection in RIM patent case. tsalaroth writes "ABC News is reporting that the USPTO has officially rejected at least one of the patents in the Blackberry infringement case. From the article: 'The U.S. patent office on Wednesday issued its first of several anticipated final rejections of patents held by NTP Inc. related to Research in Motion's BlackBerry device, two days before a judge will hear arguments on an injunction on the wireless e-mail service.'"

Comments

Google's next request for searchs response

[OYAHHH]

I'm,

Just wondering what Google is going to do when the Chinese authorities ask for the same search information for which the US has asked.

Will they roll over and provide it, or will they actually resist?

Re:Google's next request for searchs response

[panaceaa]

Will they roll over and provide it, or will they actually resist?

Google's responses so far in the congressional hearings about their China business indicate they obey all laws within the countries they operate, including China. So if Chinese officials can legally ask for search information for Chinese citizens, Google's current stance is that they will provide it.

Google is in a bind right now because China will be one of the world's largest markets for information technology in 20-30 years. If they do not participate in the Chinese market now, local companies like Baidu will take the bulk of search engine marketshare. And it's much easier to gain marketshare in an early market than a late market (e.g. Coke versus Virgin Cola). However, obeying China's current laws is becoming a public relations nightmare for Google (and Microsoft, Yahoo) and it is tarnishing Google's "do no evil" image.

China is too large of a market for Google to pass up, though, and therefore I believe it will continue to obey all Chinese laws including providing search information in order to have a presence in China's growing economy.

Re:Google's next request for searchs response

[Mistshadow2k4]

You're missing the point. It is legal in China for the Chinese government to demand such records. The legal basis for the US government to do so is dodgy, if not downright illegal. And no, I'm not a Google fangirl - if you read some of my posts you'll see that I don't like them for obeying the government that masacred so many non-violent protesters. I'm actually boycotting them myself.

Re:Google's next request for searchs response

[StikyPad]

Personally, I think Google/Yahoo/MSN are being scapegoated in this China deal. Disobeying Chinese law is simply not an option, and abstaining from the Chinese market benefits no one. Getting their collective feet in the door is the first step toward effecting change anyway. If they're successful, it gives them bargaining power. Maybe not much, but certainly more than they have as outsiders.

Obeying the laws of the host country is simply the price of doing business. We expect visitors to the US to obey our laws when they're in our country, despite the fact that some of our laws (DMCA, PATRIOT Act, substance prohibitions) impose on the rights foreign travellers might enjoy in their home countries. There's no reason to expect otherwise when the situation is reversed. We can't have it both ways.

Sniff....I had a DigiComp....Sniff...

[GeneralEmergency]

Seeing that picture brought back alot of memories and the realization that the one decent thing my "Absentee Dad" ever did for me was to buy that thing and send it to me.

I had mine for years but finally tossed it out because of missing parts. Now I can buy a new one.

Sniff.

Google's reasoning

[MilenCent]

I found Google's response somewhat acceptable. It is true that they do notify the user that pages have been removed, which for some Chinese search users may be their first indication that the Chinese government mandates censorship (although I don't know the exact phrasing of the notification). I'm not *completely* satisfied with their move, but it is true that Google has a Chinese language version of their primary search site that they don't censor.

And need I remind you guys, Google does censor U.S. searches, although I'm sure they aren't happy about it....

Network Neutrality won't work

[cfulmer]

So, the problem with Network neutrality is that it opens up the DSL and Cable providers up to competition for their other service, and that'a a big disincentive for them to roll it out. I wrote an article about this at the Duke Law & Technology Review.

Re:Network Neutrality won't work

[cfulmer]

What's up with the personal attack? That's not cool. Did you even read the article?

The problem is not with current Internet services -- I don't think that my ISP ought to charge websites extra fee for, say, downloading music from iTunes or posting to Slashdot. After all, that's what I'm paying for now.

The bigger problem is that if ISPs roll out very-high-bandwidth networks, the are going to be opening up an entire new avenue of competition for their other services. Madison River, a telephone company that provides broadband internet, for example, blocked Vonage service unless their subscribers paid an extra fee. That got slapped down by the FCC under the old rules. Under the current regulatory scheme, however, it's not at all clear that the FCC has that authority. After all, that's why you see network neutrality proposals in Congress.

Re:Network Neutrality won't work

[max born]

From your article:

Removing the neutrality requirement allows the ISP to avoid the risk that a competitor will use the ISP's increased bandwidth to compete with it.

Ideally this would work. The problem is that there's often not much competition, many people have only one choice of ISP.

I've been building IP netwroks for nearly ten years and IMHO ISPs (perhaps like the drug companies) greatly inflate the amount of their investments in infrastructure. The Internet is cheap, it's just a bunch of wires and switches. I'd much rather see the ISPs concentrate on building fat pipes and get out of the content business.

Serenity probably not profitable

[fremen]

A common mistake in financial planning is to just add and subtract money together over time to decide whether or not something is profitable. Profit = Revenue - Costs, so this makes sense to mose people. Let's assume that Universal gets 55% of rental dollars (like ticket sales) and that they get $10 per DVD (wild guess).

($38 million in ticket sales*(55%) + $9 million in rentals*(55%) + ($10 per DVD * 2 million DVDs)) - $49 million production costs = $-3.15 million.

Surely the movie is close to being profitable, right? Well, not exactly. You also have to consider Universal's cost of capital, which is essentially the opportunity cost of making a risky investment. In layman's terms, Universal could have put their money elsewhere instead. Roughly (and with lots of guessing), let's say that the cost of capital was 15% (market average is 10.4% and movies are far riskier investments than the market).

Assuming the capital investments followed a pattern where the movie's costs came in year 0, the advertising in year 1, the ticket sales in year 2, and the DVD rentals in year 3, then the Net Present Value of this investment would now be:

(-39) + (-10)/(1.15) + ((25 + 13) * 0.55)/(1.15)^2 + (9 * 0.55)/(1.15)^3 + (10 * 2 million)/(1.15)^3 = -15.4 million

Based on some educated guess work, I think it's safe to say that Universal is still way in the hole on this one.

Re:NTP Patent invalidated?

[Karl Cocknozzle]

So is there a good legal reason why a judge would enforce an injunction against RIM if one of the patents has been rejected, and it looks like the others will be too?

I can't imagine any lawyer worth his fees not making strained, vociferous arguments for an indefinite continuance (until the Patent Office releases its final reports on these patents) to rule on the motion for the injunction.

If the patents are all invalidated, (and there are indications that very well could happen) what needs to happen is for RIM to sue the owners and directors of NTP into corporate and personal bankruptcy. The reality is that this frivolous litigation has cost RIM plenty of money in both potential business and copious resources dedicated to upgrading RIM's infrastructure and software to sidestep the patents.

The reality is that there are businesses that were formed for the sole purpose of using lawyers to extort money from other businesses with stealth-patent portfolios. These leeches need to be discouraged, and a couple financial death penalties directed at the instigators of this scheme would go a long way towards scaring companies out of the frivolous patent lawsuit game. An outcome like that for the NTP-gang would make the patent sheistering into a risky proposition instead of easy-money for the well-heeled elite who can afford to buy up patents on the sly, only to spring them on successful entreprenuers later.

This will buy us time until we can finally get the Congress to enact reasonable patent reform. Or hell freezes over, whichever comes first.

Re:Interesting math in the Serenity article

[Robotech_Master]

Actually, everybody's wrong.

Serenity will never make a profit.

Why? Because no movie ever makes a profit.

Just ask all the writers and so forth who were naive enough to sign contracts awarding them a percentage of the net profit, rather than a percentage of the gross intake--including one of my favorite fantasy novelists, Peter S. Beagle, who is still owed a great deal of money for his work on the Rankin/Bass Lord of the Rings movie. It's questionable whether he'll ever see a penny of the $200 million that was paid to the rights-holder out of the Peter Jackson movies...