Except Viacom might have a little less contempt for you than it might originally be thought.  The General Counsel at Viacom (the entertainment behemoth responsible for Showtime, MTV, Comedy Central, BET, Paramount Pictures, and a slew of other holdings) recently addressed Yale law students, and he let them know that suing infringers felt like terrorism, and that he’s a big fan–really!–of fair use. What he’s most interested in, he says, is copying the entirety of a particular content.  (Source)  (He’s also a fan of DRM–though not in the way it’s been implemented, and of three-strikes laws, which is something’s I’m planning on taking up a little later.)

There’s a video of the talk on YouTube, and it might be worth taking a look-see.

It’s a been a fun ride, but it looks like Psystar’s quixotic efforts to let users install OS X on non-Apple hardware (or buy Apple clones) are pretty much over.  To refresh, Psystar (which is oddly reviled among the digerati, who are not known for their love of DRM and locked-down content) …

…

… You know what?  Groklaw’s got a great writeup.  Why I don’t I just let you mosey on over there for the info.

I was under the impression that municipal Wi-Fi was a dead idea that municipalities had abandoned a couple of years ago.  Apparently, Coshocton, Ohio didn’t get the memo, because it’s municipal Wi-Fi network has been shut down by the MPAA.

Well, that’s what Gizmodo’s saying, based on a BoingBoing report.  Apparently, the town’s entire network was shut down due to a single user downloading something that was copyrighted.

But really?  How did this happen?  The way things are written, it sounds like the MPAA discovered the illegality and pulled the plug on the network.  Can things actually go that way?  Hmmm… even as powerful as private entities are, surely they don’t have the power to summarily wipe out a public service.  Right?  More digging is necessary!

BoingBoing got the tip from the Coshocton Tribune, which carries a headline: “Illegal Movie Download Forces Shutdown of Free Wi-Fi.”  Apparently what happened is that the ISP (OneCommunity) was notified by Sony Pictures Entertainment that a movie was illegally downloaded over the network.  In turn, the ISP notified the county’s IT Department.  And I guess the IT Department yanked the plug?  It isn’t clear from the article; after explaining the chain of events, it goes into how piracy is bad.  So don’t pirate things, kids, okay?!?!?!

I’m not entirely sure why the decision to pull the plug was made.  ISPs were given safe harbor protections under the DMCA to protect them from the infringing activities of their customers.  (See 17 U.S.C. § 512; see also this Chilling Effects FAQ.)  The requirements for staying in the safe harbor are many, but suffice to say, if the ISP keeps its hands off stuff, then it’s pretty much in the clear. And that means that the town overreacted by pulling the plug, and–based on the scant information I’ve seen on this–I’d say it’s as much to blame as the MPAA is in this situation.

Oh well, I guess that’s why we’re not allowed to have nice things.

Intel has been fighting an antitrust suit in Europe for years (recently getting hit with €1.06bn in fines) and now it must deal with essentially the same allegations in the United States.  According to the NY Times (found via Gizmodo, but there are more here), New York’s Attorney General–Andrew Cuomo–has filed a federal antitrust claim in the District of Delaware alleging that Intel “used bribery and coercion to maintain a stranglehold on the market.”

A copy of the 87-page complaint can be found here (PDF), and the first 77 pages or so lay out the alleged acts which led to the case being filed.   There are actually only four claims in the complaint, and only one of which is covered by the Sherman Act.  The other three claims involve New York state laws.  The Sherman Act claim alleges that Intel exercises monopoly powers, and by virtue of those powers, it “willfully maintained, and unless restrained by the Court may continue to willfully maintain, that power by anticompetitive and unreasonably exclusionary conduct.”

15 U.S.C. § 2 makes it a felony for a company or person to monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, any part of trade or commerce.  It’s punishable by up to ten years in prison, up to a million dollars in fines, or both.  But you’ll notice that this is a civil complaint, and not a criminal indictment.  This is because 15 U.S.C. § 15 gives an injured person the right to bring suit in federal court, and seek treble damages plus reasonable attorneys fees.

Naturally, Intel disputes the claims and promises to defend itself against the allegations.  (Link)

Barnes & Noble’s new ebook reader, the nook, is widely considered a Kindle killer.  (Full disclosure: I was once an employee of Barnes & Noble, but that has nothing to do with this post.)  But a California-based company is suing Barnes & Noble, claiming the publishing and retail giant stole its ideas to make the nook.  (Source)

This company is called Spring Design, and it alleges that it met with Barnes & Noble in February of this year to show the company a product they called “Alex.”  This meeting occurred 5 days after a nondisclosure agreement was allegedly negotiated.  And it is alleged, through the filings, that the features found in the nook were all things envisioned by Spring Design.  So Spring is suing for “breaching the non-disclosure agreement, misappropriating trade secrets, and violating unfair competition laws.”  In addition, Spring would like production of the nook to be ceased.

We’ll see.

It appears that at&t doesn’t like Verizon’s snarky “There’s a Map for That” commercials.  You know, the ones that somewhat inaccurately equate Apple’s “There’s an App for That” slogan with at&t’s native 3G service.  (Kinda shows you just how important the iPhone is to at&t’s viability, doesn’t it? Once that exclusivity is gone, I wonder what will happen to at&t…)

Anyway, at&t has filed suit against Verizon, in Georgia of all places, alleging false and deceptive trade practices. (source)  The ads are pretty aggressive, really, showing that at&t has pretty anemic 3G coverage while Verizon’s is quite extensive.  What at&t doesn’t like is the insinuation that somehow at&t customers aren’t able to access voice and data in the areas not covered by the 3G map.  at&t’s 3G implementation isn’t quite as robust as Verizon’s, but it does have the EDGE network in many places, so at&t customers get a sort of half-fast data network in the places where 3G isn’t available.

That’s why at&t is suing Verizon, because it feels that Verizon is insinuating that at&t customers don’t get any service in the areas where 3G has not been implemented.  Verizon is having none of it, saying that the ads are accurate because they clearly state that they are talking about 3G technology and that at&t data and voice access are still available in many places.

What’s funny is that the whole case has the potential to be completely moot if it actually goes to trial.  By the time that happens, 4G will be the new standard, and 3G probably won’t matter one whit.

It was only a matter of time, really, before Google Maps became a turn-by-turn mobile application.  And now it has.  Gizmodo has a good write-up on its features and abilities, and of course it looks polished even in beta form.  (What isn’t beta in Google-land, besides GMail?  Oh.  Google Apps, actually, and a few other things.  Drat.  It was always fun to joke about how long things stayed in beta with Google.  Oh well, I guess I’ll have to fall back on making jokes about how no one knows you’re a dog on the internet.)  For right now, the application is available only to Android 2.0 users, but there are plans afoot to get it on the iPhone.

Anyway, what surprised me about the Gizmodo review of the application is this:

My fears on zero pricing, for the long term: If Google sells this in the App Store for zero dollars, those millions of bucks Apple makes off of GPS app sales will likely disappear. It’s not for us to worry about until there’s no more GPS competition except Google, and we’re dependent on their pace of progress, but no competition is a bad thing. And it’s a little strange that Google’s search money is going to pay for a free map app that is competitive with stuff that costs $100 a year from full-time GPS makers like TomTom. Unfair is the word that comes to mind. But I can’t say I don’t want this app.

I’ve written about my concerns regarding the freeconomy before, and this Engadget link essentially proves the point.  TomTom’s shares are down about 20% as of the time of this writing, and Garmin isn’t faring much better, down about 15%.  Free is nice and all, but it does have a cost.

(Sure, yeah, fine, in the long run all the buggy-whip manufacturers eventually ended up making something else, right?)

I mentioned a while ago that ASCAP was suing AT&T over ringtones, saying that royalties were owed every time someone’s phone rang.  Public performance and all that.  Well, in addition to suing AT&T, ASCAP sued Verizon for the same thing, and PC World (via Yahoo!) is reporting that District Judge Denise Cote of the Southern District of New York has tossed the suit against Verizon.

Judge Cote’s reasoning is refreshing:

“Despite the accusation that Verizon enjoys revenue from publicly played ringtones, Verizon makes no revenue from the playing of ringtones, in public or elsewhere,” Cote wrote. “It makes revenue from selling ringtones, and it already pays a mechanical licensing fee in connection with those sales.”

The Center for Democracy and Technology, which is hosting a copy of the Order, also notes that the Court relied partly on common sense in making its ruling.  It always seemed somewhat strained to argue that Verizon should be liable for a public performance (even to the extent that a ringtone could constitute a public performance) when it had no control over when or how that public performance would occur.

Not really, because there are an awful lot of people committed to making sure that you do your computing remotely, but halfway reading this PC Magazine article (via Yahoo! News), I started thinking, “hey, this sounds like Dvorak.”  No surprise, it was written by him.  He’s been very, and loudly, critical of the Cloud over the years, and the Mass Sidekick Annihilation of 2009 is the perfect opportunity for him to take another swipe at it.  As I am on the record as being pretty anti-Cloud, I of course like the article.  But this post isn’t about his article (which even takes EULAs to task), but about the damned Cloud.

I think the lesson to take from the Sidekick meltdown is that this may be the first time, on a large scale, that a failing Cloud has actually caused serious loss of data.  Whereas previous failures of the Cloud yielded irritation (such as GMail outages and Amazon down-time) this is a failure that actually hurts people where it matters: for a business person using a Sidekick, contacts are money.

Some people, it must be noted, are saying that the Sidekick data loss should not be considered a failure of the Cloud.   Tony Bradley, for example, says:

When Google News or Gmail experience outages the media ([he] included) cries that the cloud has failed. When Danger loses Sidekick data synced online from a million users the media declares it another failure of the cloud.

But, Google is not the cloud. Claiming that a failure by Google is a failure of cloud computing in general is like claiming that New Coke was a failure of all soft drinks. Declaring the loss of Sidekick data a failure of the cloud is like claiming that the failure of the Yugo was a failure of automobiles in general.

He rightly points out that the problem appears to have been improper server maintenance and the failure to adequately back up the remotely-saved data.  And it’s true that–for right now–things like Google Apps and remote synching of phone data are somewhat like New Coke and Yugos: the tech is not yet in wide enough adoption for one to be able to say that New Coke is the only soft drink choice (not that I ever had a problem with New Coke, but I guess I’m a little cola ambivalent when it comes down to it) or that Yugos are the only car choice.  But the impetus behind Cloud computing and SaaS is that it is intended to supplant rather than supplement local storage and computing. (See, e.g., this article in Australia’s The Age.)

The Sidekick has about 1,000,000 users, according to the articles discussing the outage, and apparently there isn’t a convenient way to store the data locally.  Contact info and calendar entries can’t possibly take all that much space on a server, so it should be relatively easy to maintain server health for such a small amount of data.  Think about the problems inherent in trying to maintain server health when hundreds of millions of people are storing much larger amounts of data in a remote location.  And that’s assuming a benign ecosystem, one where there aren’t constant attacks on the storage facilities.  As I noted the other day, however, that isn’t the reality as the Cloud is a prime target for malevolence.

Slippery slope?  Yup, in a way, but by the same token it’s a real problem and I still can’t get behind the idea of giving up local computing.

Airline travelers are quite used to metal detectors and x-ray machines by now.  And they may be getting used to what I call “the puffing thing,” but is referred to as a trace portal machine by the TSA.  (That’s the device that you walk into, and it puffs air at you, analyzes bits of debris it has dislodged, and lets you go on your merry way.)   Travelers are probably not yet used to the millimeter wave scanner, which I experienced over the weekend in DC.

For the uninitiated, the millimeter wave scanner is essentially radar for your body, and it allows the government to see through your clothes.  Supposedly, if you don’t want to let them do that, you’re supposed to be able to say, “No, I’d rather you pat me down instead, thank you,” and there’s supposed to be a sign saying so:

In my experience, though, I didn’t see that sign.  I could have been distracted, though, and I just wanted to come home.  So whatever, I went into the thing, and someone somewhere got to look at me through my clothes.  Hope they had a good time.  I did think that the machine, apart from being irritating and an invasion, had some flaws.  For one thing, at the end of the scan (which did go quickly) they asked me to put my arms out in front of me.  The problem with that, though, was that my hands would extend outside the machine.  Not sure if it matters, but it led to awkward movements.

Anyway, this post is titled “Biometrics and the TSA,” not “Adventures with MMW.”  This is because, in addition to the puffing thing (which costs about $160,000 a device, and which apparently don’t work very well) and the MMW scanner (which costs about $120,000), CNN is reporting on a brand new way of screening passengers:  The Wii Fit.

“Researchers took a Wii balance board — a device people stand on to interact with certain Nintendo Wii video games — and altered it to show how someone’s weight shifts. Studies are now under way to determine whether there is a level of fidgeting that would suggest the need for secondary screening.”

There’s a reason why polygraphs aren’t generally admissible as evidence in trial, and that is because biometric data is unreliable to interpret.  See, e.g., Frye v. United States, 293 F. 1013, 1014 (D.C. Cir. 1923) (“the systolic blood pressure deception test has not yet gained such standing and scientific recognition among physiological and psychological authorities as would justify the courts in admitting expert testimony deduced from the discovery, development, and experiments thus far made.”)  Frye isn’t the best case to cite, however, as it has been overturned, questioned, and superseded on a variety of grounds, and it is true that polygraphs and other technologies (such as the plethysmograph) are used in other aspects of prosecution (such as supervised release and the like). Nonetheless, it states pretty clearly the problem of using the body’s biometric functions to determine guilt or innocence.

All in all, biometric interpreters are dicey things to start implementing at airports, where stress levels are undeniably higher than in the controlled environment of a trained polygrapher’s office.  How accurate will the Wii’s Balance Board (or whatever extrapolation of the technology is devised) be when the subject needs to pee, is tired, is irritated at her husband for forgetting to make car rental reservations, and is angry at little Timmy for swallowing that penny he found on the floor?  It’s just one more impediment to the vast majority of us who aren’t doing anything wrong.

As an interesting aside, it does make me think of a story in Wired from March of this year, where defense attorneys wanted to introduce evidence from an MRI to establish a defendant’s innocence.  (The request was apparently withdrawn later that month.)  In short fMRI works this way:

Laboratory studies using fMRI, which measures blood-oxygen levels in the brain, have suggested that when someone lies, the brain sends more blood to the ventrolateral area of the prefrontal cortex. In a very small number of studies, researchers have identified lying in study subjects with accuracy ranging from 76 percent to over 90 percent. But some scientists and lawyers like Greely doubt that those results will prove replicable outside the lab setting, and others say it just isn’t ready yet.

(Source is the Wired article, with internal linking omitted.)