bitbol

Round-up:

• Google is being sued for their use of sponsored links. From what I can tell, it is a suit that should not even exist. Perhaps I am missing details, but there are two ways that the "problem" occurred. The first is that a company googlebombed the competition to get their name first. The other is that people are too stupid to know what the "sponsored links" box is. I bet on the latter. As far as I can tell, Google isn't even involved in the conflict (other than the search result).
• What Google is involved in is a matter of comedy. Google wrote a bad check. An Adsense publisher found that the check bounced when trying to cash it- not what you would expect from a billion dollar company. The publisher also reached phone hell in Google's computer handling of calls.
• Police brutality on video. While I don't approve of what the fans did in this video, I don't blame them. Police these days seems to believe that they can do anything. If they officers had simply carried the man off the field, everything would have been avoided, but they repeatedly hit the man with the nightstaffs (of all things). There was no reason for what they did.
• The republicans are not big fans of civil rights.
• Edwards: Bush's remarks border delusional.
• Optimum copyright period, as determined by economics: 14 years.

I have a feeling that I am going to be busy this summer.

Labels: America, Bush, Copyright, Edwards, Google, Iraq, Legal, News, Politics, Video

Politics. The more you know, the more you despise the general public:

• The White House lip-mover (Tony Snow) said today that Bush's commutation of Libby's sentence was "what he does normally." Yes, ignoring the supreme court and protecting political allies, however corrupt, is what Bush normally does.
• Oh, but the grand-daddy of them all: 1 in 5 americans believe that the sun revolves around the earth. This makes me think, there should be some basic questions on the ballot similar to this. If someone doesn't even know that the earth does the revolving, their vote should not be counted. We need not just voters, but educated voters. How many people go to the polls and vote by the name of the candidate, not what they actually know about them?

Sadly, I only have one more day in New York, then I am heading off to see the rest of my relatives. I'm going to miss New York and all the fun I had this year.

Labels: America, Bush, Collections, Legal, News, People, Politics

A day's round-up:

• Bush could very well be facing contempt charges for ignoring a subpoena.
• Of course, the "traditional" media is completely ignoring the impeachment movement. There are 10 co-sponsors, and it has not made a single headline. This is why the internet is so great. You are not spoon fed by corporations.
• The majority (72%) says that if the founding fathers were to see today's current government, they would be disappointed. It's nice to see one thing that the country agrees on.

When you follow politics, especially in the "traditional" form, you are disgusted in many ways. The AP had a story a few days ago about Giuliani's stop at a bagel shop. Who Fucking Cares?

Labels: America, Bush, Collections, Giuliani, Legal, News, Politics

It's just smoldering in NYC, but it's nice where there is air conditioning.

• The RIAA buffoons are at it again, but in some of the most disgusting ways. This time, the cronies called a 10 year old's school to intimidate her. The target was the mother, but it is simply gross to see a collective of jackasses that are so disrespectful of everyone. And the other thing I don't get is why congress or judges won't do anything to stop them; oh wait- bribes.
• Trying to fight copyright infringement, an Aussie ISP regularly deletes media files: any file ending in .mp3, .avi, .mov, and .wmv. This is a prime example of how stupid people ruin things for everyone else. And by people, I mean recording industry goons.
• Cheney decides that he really is part of the executive branch.
• Ann Coulter claims that the Edwards are using her attacks as a way to raise money. I think her logic is a bit backward: when she attacks, Edwards' name is all over the news, thus people notice him and then donate. I may offend many with this, but anyone who listens to a word that woman says I deem a babbling moron.
• Google is complaining about Microsoft, people are saying Google is just jealous, but everyone has a point. I don't like that Google is being so aggressive to get their claim to fame, but I also think that Microsoft is still a monopoly. I mean, not like Vista's market share is large or anything, but Microsoft cannot lock you into their product in the way that they do. Microsoft deserves to be called a monopoly for life because of the way they treat consumers.
• Warren Buffett, the world's third wealthiest man, asks for a tax raise for the rich, citing that all rich pay a smaller proportion into the system.
• Giuliani praises Regent University for their "wonderful" influence.
• The bald eagle is about to be delisted from the endangered species list. While there is no longer a threat of extinction, there is no reason to stop protecting it. Perhaps we need another list for animals that must be protected. Why do people think that it is alright to trample animals and their environment? Cows, sure, we eat them. Eagles on the other hand are simply birds that have no reason to be shot.

I'm beginning to love New York.

Labels: America, Cheney, Collections, Copyright, Giuliani, Google, Internet, Legal, Microsoft, News, Politics

Roy Pearson, a judge, sued a Korean couple running a dry-clean business in DC for losing his pants. Not only is suing over pants ridiculous, he wanted $65M. Now, the worst has happened: he cried over his pants in court. A disgusting example of a man abusing the legal system. From the article:

As Pearson explained that those weren't the pants for the suit, he choked up and left the courtroom crying after asking [Judge] Bartnoff for a break.

This guy does not at all sound like a stable enough person to effectively preside as a judge. Because of this case, he is making a very mockery of the system he is supposed to be upholding. Based on this, I would suggest that someone from that region push for his disbarment. You can't have a loony like this and expect anything to be fair.

Labels: America, Legal, News, Stupidity

Alberto "I-don't-recall" Gonzales has announced a new bill that would make a crime of "attempted" copyright infringement. Of the many things that the bill does is to extend the penalties of the already controversial DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act). The bill is severely one-sided in favor of the recording industry and motion picture industry. It does nothing to protect fair use, which is the one thing that consumers should get out of these laws.

It is fairly obvious that the bill is partially intended to make wiretaps and warrants easier to get. "Attempted copyright infringement" is wide-open to abuse. For all anyone knows, "attempted" could mean anything, even the possession of LimeWire with no other files. I want to see this shot down quickly, as it would ruin fair use, and criminalize almost everyone.

Labels: America, Copyright, Legal, News, Politics

Microsoft is making their first step against Linux as they say that Linux violates 235+ patents. Microsoft wants to collect royalties from all Linux users for the patents that they allegedly violate through their use of the software. Still, nothing has been proven to be in violation.

The way I see this, Microsoft is trying to compensate for their lack of Vista sales by begging for money. I would expect that if this were to go to court, half of the patents would be thrown out as obvious. Others still would likely be ignored because Linux used the technology prior to the filing. This would only leave a few to fight over. But here is an interesting quote from the article:

The Redmond behemoth asserts that one reason free software is of such high quality is that it violates more than 200 of Microsoft's patents.

How is it that if Linux is stealing from Microsoft, that they are so much better? Linux is a much more stable platform than Windows. The only thing that Microsoft has going for them is their marketshare, pocketbook, and not much else.

Labels: Legal, Linux, Microsoft, News

Media Rights Technology is issuing cease and desist letters to Microsoft and Apple for not using enough DRM in their players. They argue that not using their technology is the same as circumvention and are using the DMCA as a basis for their suit. I expect that this will be thrown out.

An HBO CEO says the reason that users are so resistant to DRM is the fact it is called DRM. They suggested that it be called Digital Consumer Enablement, or DCE. The name is ironic in and of itself seeing as how they are actually disabling the digital consumer. Lunacy.

Labels: Apple, DRM, Legal, Microsoft, Technology

"Dubya" Bush is threatening to veto a bill^[1] that would extend the definition of hate crimes to include crimes based on sexual orientation and gender. From the article:

Just two days after the second veto of George W. Bush's presidency, the White House has threatened a third.

This time it involves a bill that expands hate crime laws to include violent attacks against people because of their sexual orientation or gender, passed by the House Thursday on a 237-180 vote. Current law applies to acts of violence on the basis of race, religion, color or national origin.

The Whitehouse defends themselves saying that such laws already exist at the local level, but that is hardly an excuse. As if denying marriage to gays wasn't enough, the Bush administration doesn't even want to protect them from violence. Who cares if it exists at the local level, make it national; it's not like it will damage the legal system.

Footnote: [1] The page is a composite of multiple stories. Headline is: "House passes hate crimes bill that includes sexual orientation, gender."

Labels: America, Gay, Legal, News, Stupidity

Google is confident that they are protected by the law in the Google vs. Viacom lawsuit. Google says that they are protected by copyright law because they have done everything that was required of them. From the article:

Viacom said that by the time it filed the lawsuit, it had identified over 150,000 clips on YouTube that infringed its copyright and asked for them to be taken down. Viacom also argued that YouTube's reliance on rights-holders to notify it of cases of infringement places an unfair burden on them.

Wait! It's unfair to Viacom that they have to notify YouTube? It's unfair that YouTube is 100% responsible for monitoring the thousands of videos uploaded every day. It's not as if Google is a pain to work with; they remove all the clips that they are sent notices for. What are they complaining about?

Labels: Google, Internet, Legal, News, YouTube

One lawyer has the idea. This lawyer was able to fend off the RIAA with a wordy, yet convincing, letter. The letter, basically, says that the RIAA has no evidence other than the IP address. Sample of the letter:

In an age of Wintel-virus created bot-farms, spoofs, and easily cracked WEP encrypted wireless home networks (among other easy hacks), the only tech-savvy response to such a request is, "You've got to be kidding." The extensive press that has been generated over computer security (and the insecurity of Windows XP and its predecessors) underscores the complete absence of facts on which probable cause to sue my clients could be established and your clients' willingness (even insistence) that others be implicated in Big Music's speculative, "driftnet" litigation tactics.

I like how they incorporate the fact that all the RIAA has ever had is the IP address, and they live on the fact that many people think that that is essentially your name, which it is not. The letter also incorporates the insecurity of Windows and a hijacked machine as the possible cause. This is the lawyer you want if you get sued.

Labels: America, Legal, Music, People, Technology

After the initial lawsuit against Google/Youtube, the dirt is out against Viacom. One of their own properties, iFilm, could potentially hamper their copyright lawsuit. The site in question, iFilm, also contains copyrighted material to which Viacom doesn't not own the rights.

This is turning into one of those sorts of things where the verdict is practically expected before any progress is made. In this case, Google is in the best position. Viacom is already looking like the antagonist because of their overly aggressive attack on the video-sharing site. Everything comes down the the media companies demanding the far-reaching control of everything.

Viacom admits that they want to "show our content in an environment we control" (read in TIME). TIME magazine makes a point that people enjoy the neutral platform that is YouTube. YouTube works with all operating systems, typically free of annoying ads, and lets you share them. Media companies don't want any of that. They don't wan to share.

Labels: Google, Internet, Legal, News, YouTube

Microsoft and Google are starting a battle over copyright infringement, but the kick is: neither infringes on the other's copyrights. Microsoft is suing because Google makes money from other people's work by adding advertisements or affiliate sales for books. The way I see this, Microsoft is saying: "I don't think it's fair that you are making more money than us." I see nothing wrong with the way that Google does business.

Google searches shows snippets; a whole article requires you to go to the site to read it. You can tell Google not to cache your site easily with robots.txt. Book searches only show a few lines at a time; Google also gives a link to Amazon where you can buy the book- they are promoting further sales of the book!

In other Google news: Google CEOs take $1 salaries like Steve Jobs. They make more than enough money in stocks.

Labels: America, Google, Legal, Microsoft, News

The teacher who was accused of "risk of injury to a minor" is now getting a better lawyer to help clear her name (news posted here: newest, oldest). The whole story is outlined quite well at downloadsquad. Hopefully, the teacher can get a jury that understands computers, and will send her home innocent.

She has also started a blog. The blog currently has post on how to contribute to the cause, to help cover the legal costs. It also lists all the contact information for the people involved: principal, superintendent, prosecutor, judge, detective, etc. The internet is now free to attack the clueless individuals involved. One juror has already been taking the abuse:

For certain, this case has gotten ugly. In some instances, it's even become deeply personal. Fred F. has reportedly been berated by an angry public, and been the subject of ridicule for his former 435 pound plus frame, since the public outing.

I must say that I am intensely interested in how this turns out. Technology and law have never been friends, so I want to know if this all fixes itself with time, or if the legal system will fail (again).

Labels: America, Legal, People, School

Today has been a long day, and unfortunately it is not yet over. I don't have much time for anything today, so here is a brief story of my day, along with the news:

I am currently buried under a report due tomorrow, and am having difficulty thinking. But, my day has been both good and bad. It started bad with a school-bus driver nearly running over my car. I was in the middle of a turn when the driver lunged out in front of me. If I had more time to think about it, I would have gotten a bus number to report the driver. She nearly caused an accident, and I would very much like to see her disciplined in some way for it. The day did get better when I got to pick up my new car. We don't have the title yet, but we only paid half of the money, with the rest to be paid on receipt of the paperwork.

Todays news in brief:

• Shirts made after bomb scare - Shirts have already started be made reading: "Aqua Teen Hunger Force is the Bomb."
• Installer of "bombs" arrested - Boston has arrested the two men who installed the ads, but ironically, there was another person in town who put in two fake pipe bombs; that person was not arrested.
• Bill Gates claims you could run life support on Vista - The last thing that I would want to do is trust my life to Vista. Right after that, a security whole is found that permits a website to delete files from your computer.

Hopefully tomorrow will be a better day for things.

Labels: America, Car, Legal, Life, Microsoft, School

Cisco says that they have all the rights to the name "iPhone" and that Apple Inc. is now infringing on that. This all seems like a bunch of tactics for Cisco to sue their way into profit. As I thought, Apple was in negotiations, but Cisco resisted. From the article:

"Cisco entered into negotiations with Apple in good faith after Apple repeatedly asked permission to use Cisco's iPhone name," said Mark Chandler, Cisco senior vice president and general counsel, in a statement. "There is no doubt that Apple's new phone is very exciting, but they should not be using our trademark without our permission."

You can tell that Cisco is trying to make money on this because they resisted giving Apple rights to the name. The Cisco iPhone has been out for only three weeks, meaning that they probably launched their product so that they had a case against Apple. No one will ever associate the word iPhone with Cisco, so they should just give it to Apple already.

Labels: Apple, Legal, News, Phone

Ars technica says the RIAA has admitted that 70 cents is in the range of how much they make per song. Meanwhile, they are going after allofmp3 with full vengeance. Allofmp3 is being sued for $150,000 per song, totaling $1.65 trillion.

If the RIAA were to get that (ignoring legal fees), that would be a profit of $149999.30 per song. By millions of songs that is feeding that company too much. I want to see the RIAA strictly limited to what they lose (under a dollar).

Labels: Legal, Music, News

Michael Arrington at TechCrounch has news that a bankruptcy court wants to publish all of the firm's files in a public archive. While the court may see "historical value" in all of those documents, I see (among many other people) all those files as being private. The stupidity doesn't stop there either. Former clients are free to opt-out, but doing so will only place you in a closed, but still accessible, archive which screws clients no matter what they choose.

As if that weren't enough legal stupidity for one day, a judge has rules that linking is not permitted if copyright holder objects. This is also one of the worst possible decision that could come out of this. The fact that the copyright holding company took this to court because the advertisements weren't being shown from the link is unbelievable. I may not know much about server configuration and the backend, but I do know that it is possible to rectify the situation without all the legal mumbo-jumbo.

Labels: America, Internet, Legal

In a very much mocking fashion, The Consumerist has a little bit on Verizon and math. In the past few days, they has been covering the Verizon math trouble. This is just the icing on the top to poke fun at them. Not even I could solve that, and I know the difference between dollars and cents.

The Consumerist also reports that the state of Florida sued AOL and won. The Florida Attorney General filed suit on behalf of the consumers after AOL's abusive customer treatment. They say that they are suing because AOL refused to cancel accounts, bad charges, and unauthorized account reactivations. Perhaps it's just me, but I think that AOL is going to go out of business in the somewhat near future.

Labels: Legal, News, Oddities, People

Senator John McCain (R-AZ) wants to push a proposal that would require bloggers, website owners, and just about anyone who has anything to do with the web to report "illegal" images to authorities. This has caused quite a ruckus on many fronts. From the article:

Millions of commercial Web sites and personal blogs would be required to report illegal images or videos posted by their users or pay fines of up to $300,000, if a new proposal in the U.S. Senate came into law.

I can see this failing for many reasons, the most obvious of them being that nobody wants to deal with all that. I would expect that if everyone reported everything that was even questionable, the officials handling that would be too overloaded to do anything about it. Also, anyone who publishes on the web, and anyone who doesn't, would agree that it would make everyone's life easier if it could just be removed and ignored. Sure, blatant disregard for the law should be reported, but the websites themselves should not be held responsible.

Slashdot is how I first came across this article, and as if everything to do with Slashdot, there is some good coming through the comments. The first that I came across is about how the United States needs to get its priorities straight. No Slashdot article would be complete without sarcasm. And one of the logical reasonings behind this, regarding censorship and tolerance. I hate politics.

Labels: America, Internet, Kids, Legal, People, Politics