I've been thinking about this issue and I really liked the posed question:
Could you come up with a system that takes into account the incentives of parties on both sides, and that prevents huge legal bills from being generated?
What if instead of immediately taking down the content, users were given 24 hours to respond that their content is non-infringing. If the users did not respond, it'll be taken down after 24hrs, but the user still has the ability to revoke the takedown notice. Or we can even make it so the content is taken down immediately, but allow the users to revoke the takedown notice and even provide a reason why their content is fair-use/non-infringing.
The problem today with takedown notices is that there's very little recourse for the user. The user "can" re-upload their content, but most likely will be flagged the next time around with these automated detection systems. I mean do we really need a counter-notice just to restore user content that is fair use?
With this model, I'm assuming people who know they're infringing will not respond or take down the content immediately (sort of like a cease/desist order). Only those who believe they're not infringing would bother responding to the notice. This would also help further narrow down the number of cases the other side has to verify. (e.g. YouTube will send back a list of content where users have responded to claiming it's fair use/non-infringing.)
Of course the media companies can still send an immediate take down notice for particular content they're sure are infringing, but for anything using automation to detect infringing content, the user should be given an option to respond before taking down, or a chance to easily restore the content.
If you're wondering what would deter an infringer from always responding back and saying it's non-infringing when it is? Banning the user and removing all his content could be a deterrent. Another possibility is the media company now has a legit case to actually sue the user for damages.
If it was a urgent call and given that they have no way of confirming that I got the missed call notification, I would say it's upon the caller to call again or try to contact me in some other way.
I agree, especially when Google Voice's text to speech only does English at the moment.
I may be in the smaller crowd here, but I hate phone calls and use voicemail to screen calls. When I say "screen", I'm also referring to the urgency.
When someone calls me and either I don't know the number calling in nor I don't feel like talking on the phone at that particular moment (even if it's someone I know), I use voicemail to screen.
If the call is important enough, they'll leave a voicemail or try calling again later. If they don't leave a voicemail, I don't bother calling back since I deem the call wasn't really urgent/necessary.
What happened here is just that Google wasn't expecting such a huge surge in usage and had no other choice to disable for 3rd party clients for now.
It's a bit ironic that you start your post by blasting someone for reading between the lines, and then you proceed to do the same thing yourself. Unless you work at Google, you have no way to know why this decision was made.
That's because Google did in fact state:
While Google is supportive of third party apps, we've decided we can't support this particular usage of our system at this time.
I'm of course taking Google's words at face value here. Like you said, the only people who know what the real reason is are those working at Google and making their decisions.
I believe you read my post, but didn't understand I was trying to say.
The "hardly publicized" part is from the author of the article, not from Google. What does it even mean to be a hardly publicized method/API? If it's documented and on the web, it's publicized. Does Google have to spam it on their homepage to make it not "hardly publicized"?
If you remove the "hardly publicized" portion (since Google never stated that), calling it an experiment/early testing stage does NOT imply it wants to keep the number of users down. In fact, you'd might even want more testers to help you find issues with your service.
Also do note that Google could've easily controlled which users could use their SMS service. Using Google SMS required a Google account and just like any other Google service (i.e. GrandCentral, early days of GMail, etc.), access can be granted on a per user basis.
You just mashed together a bunch of unrelated statements and even made up some of your own.
rupesh (article author) stated, "Google's hardly publicized method for sending free text messages has been revoked..."
Google stated, "SMS chat is still just an experiment in the early testing stages in Gmail Labs."
Nowhere did anyone state they wanted to "test it with limited numbers of users"
Do note that "hardly publicized method" still means a public API, which I would guess is intended for others to use.
What happened here is just that Google wasn't expecting such a huge surge in usage and had no other choice to disable for 3rd party clients for now. If they can figure out a way they can support it, they would most likely re-enable this service for 3rd parties.
Google will soon block Infinite SMS and all other non-Google
software from sending free text messages.
For now, Infinite SMS will continue to work, but when the block
goes into effect, you'll start getting an error every time you try to
send a text message.
Google has claimed no grievance with Infinite SMS other than its
success. Their given reason for the block isn't abuse or wrongdoing;
it's that we brought too many users (and thus too much cost) to an
experimental service.
We acted in good faith, accessing a
feature publicly
announced by Google
over open
protocols they made available. Other non-Google apps have been
able to access the SMS feature since its launch. To us, this was no
different from accessing Gmail's near limitless storage over the open
IMAP protocol. We never could have guessed that the two of us would
write an app too big for Google.
Our first warning was an unexpected call from Google on Monday, 9
March 2009, indicating that the service might be blocked as soon as the
very next day.
We asked them to reconsider or at least give us more time to change
our program or migrate our users. We scheduled a call for the next
morning to hear Google's final time line.
We immediately removed Infinite SMS from sale, since we could not
in good conscience continue to sell a product whose lifetime was so
likely to be cut short.
This morning, Tuesday, 10 March 2009, our email is overflowing
with questions about why Infinite SMS is not available in the app
store. We've decided we need to get real information out there for
people, despite not having the complete picture yet. We will update
this page when we hear from Google again.
We hope that Infinite SMS users will see this announcement and have
some warning before they can no longer use our app for messaging.
Apple does not give app developers any way to perform
refunds. Hopefully, at 99ï people will feel like our app paid for
itself after only a few messages.
Google's free SMS feature isn't entirely gone. They've only blocked
non-Google apps like Infinite SMS. You can still send free text
messages through the Gmail web interface (but it doesn't seem like it
works in Mobile Safari). The instructions are in
their original
SMS chat announcement.
Google's Official Statement
Infinite SMS is a third party app that has been using Google
technology to provide free SMS for users, while we were paying for the
cost of the text messages. While Google is supportive of third party
apps, we've decided we can't support this particular usage of our
system at this time. SMS chat is still just an experiment in the early
testing stages in Gmail Labs. We're blocking all external XMPP clients
from sending SMS; we're not singling out Inner Fence.
Don't the first 2 sentences contradict each other?
on
FBML Essentials
·
· Score: 0
I was reading the summary and became confused after the 1st 2 sentences:
Facebook became the largest worldwide social site in the middle of last year.
If their current pace holds they will pass MySpace as number one in the US some time next year.
If they became the largest "worldwide" social site sometime last year, I assume that means they became the #1 social site last year.
The following sentence states they'll pass MySpace some time next year... The only reasoning I can come up with is that MySpace isn't considered a "social site", or maybe they're just not part of this "world".
If you don't recall the talk, it's the one about the phantom limbs and how a simple trick helped people who had their arms amputated to stop the pain from the phantom limb.
Does EXIF support an image? I'm not saying this is patent worthy, but its capabilities aren't truly covered by all of EXIF if EXIF only contains text. If I understand "scribbling" correctly, that would mean I can draw (basically append an image to my existing photo). Say I want to draw a map on how to get to this place where the photo is taken. I don't think EXIF currently supports that today.
Watching the raw video, there appears to be someone that keeps honking. Was this the google car? or was this someone else that was following them? Or maybe it was just a friendly hello.
Then you're saying managed code should not exist (i.e. Java and.NET) as there's always a way to make it more efficient and use up less resources writing it in native code.
"He sent messages from other accounts to his Earthlink address, to his aliased Blackberry address, and to his Gmail account. For every 10 messages sent, 1-2 arrived in his Earthlink mailbox, 1-2 (not necessarily the SAME 1-2) on his Blackberry, and all 10 arrived with Gmail. Swimming upstream through Earthlink customer support, my buddy finally found a technical contact who freely acknowledged the problem. Since June, he was told, Earthlink's mail system has been so overloaded that some users have been missing up to 90 percent of their incoming e-mail. It isn't bounced back to senders; it just disappears. And Earthlink hasn't mentioned the problem to these affected customers unless they complain."
The only flaw is that Sony should be taking the profit for this instead of letting third parties do it. Imagine if they used an auction-like system (hey, if google ipo can do it) then the people who value the PS3 most get one, and sony keeps all the profits.
I always thought it would be smart and nice for items with high demand on launch and not enough supply to do something like what you suggested. Auction the items off to the highest bidders. However, only take a cut of what the retail price will be and donate the rest of the money to charity. And when supply starts to match demand, then fall back to the current system.
If people want this type of rental product then let them have it. Again, as long as the rental company make it clear that you can use the product in a very limited fashion, so be it.
So you just agreed that DRM can be used for non evil purposes.
How is DRM different from Access Control? DRM in my opinion is ONLY evil if it's on files you own. That would be equivalent to purchasing a file that only gives me read access. It might even have a side effect of only working on computers running a particular OS with specific hardware. If it's a file that I don't own, then if someone gives me limited rights to it, then what's the problem? I mean if I have an http server and gave people read access to an audio file, I can easily revoked anyone's read permission to it through access control.
One place I can see DRM work is for a rental system. You do not own the content that you rent so I can see DRM working perfectly fine in that scenario by revoking your access after x # of days. Of course there's a bunch of side effects of DRM, such as limiting which players can play it, but DRM's purpose to to give certain permissions to a user on a particular file (just like access control). Maybe the media giants like the side effects, but as DRM goes, it's purpose is NOT to limit you on specific devices.
Another similar system is MMS or RTSP, which allows streaming of video, but won't let you save it. Of course there's programs that allow you to hack the protocol and save the data, just like there's programs which have cracked DRM, but similarily, owners of these the video content only want you to view and not save. That's why they are using such protocols, also limiting you to # of players.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been thinking about this issue and I really liked the posed question:
What if instead of immediately taking down the content, users were given 24 hours to respond that their content is non-infringing. If the users did not respond, it'll be taken down after 24hrs, but the user still has the ability to revoke the takedown notice. Or we can even make it so the content is taken down immediately, but allow the users to revoke the takedown notice and even provide a reason why their content is fair-use/non-infringing.
The problem today with takedown notices is that there's very little recourse for the user. The user "can" re-upload their content, but most likely will be flagged the next time around with these automated detection systems. I mean do we really need a counter-notice just to restore user content that is fair use?
With this model, I'm assuming people who know they're infringing will not respond or take down the content immediately (sort of like a cease/desist order). Only those who believe they're not infringing would bother responding to the notice. This would also help further narrow down the number of cases the other side has to verify. (e.g. YouTube will send back a list of content where users have responded to claiming it's fair use/non-infringing.)
Of course the media companies can still send an immediate take down notice for particular content they're sure are infringing, but for anything using automation to detect infringing content, the user should be given an option to respond before taking down, or a chance to easily restore the content.
If you're wondering what would deter an infringer from always responding back and saying it's non-infringing when it is? Banning the user and removing all his content could be a deterrent. Another possibility is the media company now has a legit case to actually sue the user for damages.
Just my 2 cents.
Exactly! I just did a search and the results were everything you claim it didn't have. Mod parent up and Mod grandparent as a troll.
If it was a urgent call and given that they have no way of confirming that I got the missed call notification, I would say it's upon the caller to call again or try to contact me in some other way.
I agree, especially when Google Voice's text to speech only does English at the moment.
I may be in the smaller crowd here, but I hate phone calls and use voicemail to screen calls. When I say "screen", I'm also referring to the urgency.
When someone calls me and either I don't know the number calling in nor I don't feel like talking on the phone at that particular moment (even if it's someone I know), I use voicemail to screen.
If the call is important enough, they'll leave a voicemail or try calling again later. If they don't leave a voicemail, I don't bother calling back since I deem the call wasn't really urgent/necessary.
What if one of the 2 is not true? Hardly publicized?
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22google+sms%22&btnG=Search
http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=%22google+sms%22&btnG=Search+Archives&ned=us&hl=en
That's because Google did in fact state:
I'm of course taking Google's words at face value here. Like you said, the only people who know what the real reason is are those working at Google and making their decisions.
I believe you read my post, but didn't understand I was trying to say.
The "hardly publicized" part is from the author of the article, not from Google. What does it even mean to be a hardly publicized method/API? If it's documented and on the web, it's publicized. Does Google have to spam it on their homepage to make it not "hardly publicized"?
If you remove the "hardly publicized" portion (since Google never stated that), calling it an experiment/early testing stage does NOT imply it wants to keep the number of users down. In fact, you'd might even want more testers to help you find issues with your service.
Also do note that Google could've easily controlled which users could use their SMS service. Using Google SMS required a Google account and just like any other Google service (i.e. GrandCentral, early days of GMail, etc.), access can be granted on a per user basis.
You just mashed together a bunch of unrelated statements and even made up some of your own.
rupesh (article author) stated, "Google's hardly publicized method for sending free text messages has been revoked ..."
Google stated, "SMS chat is still just an experiment in the early testing stages in Gmail Labs."
Nowhere did anyone state they wanted to "test it with limited numbers of users"
Do note that "hardly publicized method" still means a public API, which I would guess is intended for others to use.
What happened here is just that Google wasn't expecting such a huge surge in usage and had no other choice to disable for 3rd party clients for now. If they can figure out a way they can support it, they would most likely re-enable this service for 3rd parties.
Inner Fence's Official Statement
Google will soon block Infinite SMS and all other non-Google software from sending free text messages.
For now, Infinite SMS will continue to work, but when the block goes into effect, you'll start getting an error every time you try to send a text message.
If you have comments for Google, you can visit their Text Messaging Google Group.
Google has claimed no grievance with Infinite SMS other than its success. Their given reason for the block isn't abuse or wrongdoing; it's that we brought too many users (and thus too much cost) to an experimental service.
We acted in good faith, accessing a feature publicly announced by Google over open protocols they made available. Other non-Google apps have been able to access the SMS feature since its launch. To us, this was no different from accessing Gmail's near limitless storage over the open IMAP protocol. We never could have guessed that the two of us would write an app too big for Google.
Our first warning was an unexpected call from Google on Monday, 9 March 2009, indicating that the service might be blocked as soon as the very next day.
We asked them to reconsider or at least give us more time to change our program or migrate our users. We scheduled a call for the next morning to hear Google's final time line.
We immediately removed Infinite SMS from sale, since we could not in good conscience continue to sell a product whose lifetime was so likely to be cut short.
This morning, Tuesday, 10 March 2009, our email is overflowing with questions about why Infinite SMS is not available in the app store. We've decided we need to get real information out there for people, despite not having the complete picture yet. We will update this page when we hear from Google again.
We hope that Infinite SMS users will see this announcement and have some warning before they can no longer use our app for messaging.
Apple does not give app developers any way to perform refunds. Hopefully, at 99ï people will feel like our app paid for itself after only a few messages.
Google's free SMS feature isn't entirely gone. They've only blocked non-Google apps like Infinite SMS. You can still send free text messages through the Gmail web interface (but it doesn't seem like it works in Mobile Safari). The instructions are in their original SMS chat announcement.
Google's Official Statement
I was reading the summary and became confused after the 1st 2 sentences:
Facebook became the largest worldwide social site in the middle of last year.
If their current pace holds they will pass MySpace as number one in the US some time next year.
If they became the largest "worldwide" social site sometime last year, I assume that means they became the #1 social site last year.
The following sentence states they'll pass MySpace some time next year... The only reasoning I can come up with is that MySpace isn't considered a "social site", or maybe they're just not part of this "world".
This reminds me of Vilayanur Ramachandran's talk on TED: A journey to the center of your mind
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/vilayanur_ramachandran_on_your_mind.html
If you don't recall the talk, it's the one about the phantom limbs and how a simple trick helped people who had their arms amputated to stop the pain from the phantom limb.
So "CHINA ROOLS US DROOLS"?
Reminds me of the Dilbert animation about the Invisible Robot: http://unitedmedia.a.mms.mavenapps.net/mms/rt/1/site/unitedmedia-dilbert-pub01-live/current/launch.html?maven_playerId=dilbertanimationplayer&maven_referralPlaylistId=b5257a297c096a6774d21b644e21bcd8a7bed24f&maven_referralObject=c848cd0e-0f25-4296-8c67-8d64cf5a9ad2
Does EXIF support an image? I'm not saying this is patent worthy, but its capabilities aren't truly covered by all of EXIF if EXIF only contains text. If I understand "scribbling" correctly, that would mean I can draw (basically append an image to my existing photo). Say I want to draw a map on how to get to this place where the photo is taken. I don't think EXIF currently supports that today.
Ahhh, wikipedia, what would we do without it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows#Timeline_of_releases
Impeached just means he got accused and case went into trial. He was never convicted.
This was exactly what popped into my head too. I wonder if they're using similar technologies.
Watching the raw video, there appears to be someone that keeps honking. Was this the google car? or was this someone else that was following them? Or maybe it was just a friendly hello.
I'd mod you up if I had points.
Then you're saying managed code should not exist (i.e. Java and .NET) as there's always a way to make it more efficient and use up less resources writing it in native code.
EarthLink Is Losing a Lot of Email
From the article:
The only flaw is that Sony should be taking the profit for this instead of letting third parties do it. Imagine if they used an auction-like system (hey, if google ipo can do it) then the people who value the PS3 most get one, and sony keeps all the profits.
I always thought it would be smart and nice for items with high demand on launch and not enough supply to do something like what you suggested. Auction the items off to the highest bidders. However, only take a cut of what the retail price will be and donate the rest of the money to charity. And when supply starts to match demand, then fall back to the current system.
Worst Christmas Ever for People Outside USA
Or
Worst Christmas Ever for People in Europe
It looks like all of us in the good old U.S. of A is getting our share of gadgetry.
So you just agreed that DRM can be used for non evil purposes.
How is DRM different from Access Control? DRM in my opinion is ONLY evil if it's on files you own. That would be equivalent to purchasing a file that only gives me read access. It might even have a side effect of only working on computers running a particular OS with specific hardware. If it's a file that I don't own, then if someone gives me limited rights to it, then what's the problem? I mean if I have an http server and gave people read access to an audio file, I can easily revoked anyone's read permission to it through access control.
One place I can see DRM work is for a rental system. You do not own the content that you rent so I can see DRM working perfectly fine in that scenario by revoking your access after x # of days. Of course there's a bunch of side effects of DRM, such as limiting which players can play it, but DRM's purpose to to give certain permissions to a user on a particular file (just like access control). Maybe the media giants like the side effects, but as DRM goes, it's purpose is NOT to limit you on specific devices.
Another similar system is MMS or RTSP, which allows streaming of video, but won't let you save it. Of course there's programs that allow you to hack the protocol and save the data, just like there's programs which have cracked DRM, but similarily, owners of these the video content only want you to view and not save. That's why they are using such protocols, also limiting you to # of players.