I have a short article in CIO Insight this month about the real meaning of the Writer's Guild of America strike.
The three-month strike was remarkable in that the sole issue, one the industry was willing to spend over $2 billion fighting, was when and how revenues from new and future digital channels would be allocated. What's remarkable about that is that so far there are no such revenues.
A few weeks ago, I published an op-ed opposing pending Net Neutrality legislation. The editorial appeared simultaneously on both CNet and ZDNet.
Of course there are many in the technology community who disagree with me and who believe that legislation is needed to ensure the free-flow of content regardless of its nature, source, or use. I didn’t really expect to change any minds so much as cast a shadow of a doubt for those who have already made up their minds.
This week, Microsoft dropped its appeal in the European version of the antitrust action against the company that has been proceeding for about ten years. The European Commissioner for Competition Policy Neelie Kroes notes that there are now "clear precedents" for enforcement of anti-competitive remedies levied against Redmond.
There are precedents all right. Very bad precedents, as we will see over the coming years as similar actions are brought (I predict) against other technology companies.
My column in the current issue of CIO Insight, “Battle Over Linux: When a Win May Not be a Win” , drew a lot of froth from Linux-happy bloggers who don't like to hear anything that isn't completely positive about their operating system of choice.
My crime was pointing out that partial summary judgment by a district court (in this case, in a lawsuit by SCO over the ownership of UNIX copyrights) is not the definitive victory the mainstream press made it out to be.
In my current column in CIO Insight, “The Pointless Privacy Debate” I write that the rhetoric spilled over data privacy issues is both unproductive and unreasoned.
The European Union, for example, recently hailed Google's pledge to anonymize retained search data after 18 months. Another EU directorate similarly hailed Google's earlier pledge to comply with EU requirements to retain private data for at least two years.
I write this month in CIO Insight, “IP Law vs. Moore’s Law,” that the legal fiction treating intellectual creations as a kind of property has proven less and less useful as technology for creating, reproducing, and distributing those creations has grown faster, cheaper and smaller.
As partisans on both sides line up to begin shooting at each other in a copyright war, it's worth remembering that the fiction of intellectual property law was only an approximation. IP has never been given the same degree of legal protection as personal property or real estate, and for a very good reason.
I’ve just read the opinions released on Monday by the U.S. Supreme Court in two separate patent cases, KSR v. Teleflex and Microsoft v. AT&T. Though the business press has no trouble finding lawyers eager to announce the enormous significance of these decisions (“trillions of dollars,” ad. nauseum), the truth is, as always, that these opinions have little immediate or obvious impact.
But what both demonstrate to me is the dangerous chasm between the real world and the world of law, a chasm that gets deeper and more deadly all the time.
My column in this month's CIO Insight describes a few of the big concerns I have with the Council of Europe's Convention on Cybercrime, which the U.S. Senate ratified over the summer.
The Justice Department took the unusual step of issuing a press release at the time announcing that, although in theory the treaty could lead to significant free speech and privacy issues, the U.S. wouldn't enforce it that way.
I am working in Europe this week with a large technology company, and of course everyone is talking about the filing of a $1 billion copyright infringement case against Google by Viacom. "We have rights management products that would solve the problem," one of my clients noted. "I don't understand why it isn't selling."
Maybe it's because Google doesn't think it has a problem. Maybe it's because what my client is offering isn't a solution, it's the raw material of weaponry in an escalating information war.
Viacom agreed to license some of its vast content to Joost today, only a few weeks after ordering YouTube to pull 100,000 unauthorized clips from its programs from the site. Viacom’s Chief Executive notes the company is interested in operating in any “secure environment,” adding, “This assures any potential partners that we’re open for business and that we’re able to enter into transactions with companies that respect our content and the considerations of our business.” Here’s the press
release.
