Stanford Center for Internet and Society

I’m starting to feel like the only person who thinks the Google Books settlement with authors and publishers is a good deal. One voice that seems not to be heard, however, over the din of Google competitors, panicky law professors, and regulators who wouldn’t know a workable solution to a copyright problem (created by regulators) if it bit them, is anyone speaking for consumers.

My opinion piece today on CNET (see http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10398838-93.html?tag=mncol;title) argues that the real problem with the settlement has nothing to do with the 165-page document, which is increasingly coming to look like the sausage-making that it is.

Intel and AMD announced today that they were settling their many antitrust and patent disputes, with Intel to pay $1.25 billion and the two companies to cross-license the affected patents. Intel also agreed to “a set of undisclosed new business practrices,” as The New York Times puts it.

Let’s be clear what this agreement doesn’t do. It doesn’t erase the pending antitrust actions taken by the European Union and elsewhere against Intel, or the recently filed antitrust lawsuit filed in federal court in the U.S. by New York attorney-general Andrew Cuomo. (Recall that in May the EU fined Intel $1.45 billion, a judgment the company is appealing.)

My view on today’s Supreme Court case regarding business method and software patents appears on Slate.com's "The Big Money." (See http://larrydownes.com/the-bilski-case-not-with-my-digital-economy-you-d...)

This case, which concerns the patentability of a paper-and-pencil system for hedging weather risks in consumer energy prices, drew over sixty friend-of-the-court briefs, more than any other case this term.

The reason has little to do with the claimed method, which almost no one (except the inventors) seem to think deserves the denied patent.

The real issue here is the deeply troubled intersection of information age inventions and the badly broken patent system. Nearly all of the briefs are concerned that a ruling from the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, if left standing by the Supreme Court, will eliminate patent protection for some if not all inventions implemented in software.

Two recent articles with competing views of the fate of Hollywood content producers caught my attention. The first, by CNET’s Greg Sandoval, reiterates long-standing predictions that for current industry giants the Internet spells doom. “[T]he end is coming,” Sandoval concludes, “for DVDs, traditional movie rentals and yes, much of your cable money…..”

The second, from New York Times reporter Bill Carter, reported surprising results from a recent change by ratings agency Nielsen. In determining whether consumers are watching commercials and, therefore, what “rating” to assign a broadcast program, Nielsen now includes DVR views within three days of airing if commercials aren’t skipped.

An article in Sunday's New York Times by Chris Nicholson brings home an important lesson about digital life under The Law of Disruption. When social contracts are formed, the medium is often the message.

The story involves the Second Life virtual environment. A couple met and married online through the site, and with virtual currency called Lindens, purchased and furnished an island retreat. After the husband died in real life, the wife could not continue to make maintenance payments on the island. Linden Labs, which runs Second Life, erased all of their shared digital possessions.

If you can’t beat ‘em, sue ‘em.

Earlier this week, Nokia filed suit in the U.S. to force Apple to pay royalties on Nokia patents involving cell phone technology, patents the company claims Apple is infringing with its iPhone.

As I write in The Laws of Disruption, for better or for worse (mostly for worse) litigation has become a strategic tool in the strategy arsenal of companies trying to slow down, distract, or simply stop competitors who are eating into their market share. Litigation can be a relatively inexpensive way to put a thumb on the scales of competition. (Emphasis on “relatively.”)

More at: http://larrydownes.com/nokia-v-iphone-business-as-usual-alas/

My analysis of the FCC’s proposed neutrality rules appears this morning on CNET.

No surprise, I think the FCC’s plan is a bad idea, and I think, more to the point, that the FCC is the wrong organization to be “saving” the open Internet. Among other crimes, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation points out, the FCC is the same regulator who has ramped up the penalties and frequency of fines for “indecent” content over the airwaves.

The FCC is also the organization that has tried repeatedly to push through, at the behest of the media industries, the notorious “broadcast flag,” which would force electronics and software companies to limit the legal use of broadcast content.

For more, see http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10385865-94.html?tag=mncol

Julia Angwin’s column in The Wall Street Journal argues that identity theft is nothing but a “fear campaign.”

Not exactly.

I also have some strong words about the overuse and abuse of the term “identity theft” in The Laws of Disruption, and have written elsewhere in this blog on the subject. But I don’t think the problem is, as Angwin writes, merely a linguistic construct “designed to get us to buy expensive services that we don’t need.”

For more, see: http://larrydownes.com/identity-theft-not-dead-yet/

The Federal Trade Commission has announced plans to regulate the behavior of bloggers. Unfortunately, not their terrible grammar, short attention spans or inexplicably short fuses.

Instead, the FTC announced updates to its 1980 policy regarding endorsements and testimonials, first developed to reign in the use of celebrity endorsers with no real connection or experience with products they claimed to use and adore.

The proposed changes require bloggers who recommend products or services to disclose when they have a “material connection” to the provider—that is, that they were paid to write positive reviews or given freebies to encourage them to do so. (The FTC, of course, is limited to activities in the U.S.)

For more, see http://larrydownes.com/ftc-to-bloggers-drop-that-sample/

The fallout continues from FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s promise to initiate new rulemaking to implement Net Neutrality principles promised by candidate Obama during the campaign.

The bottom line: what proponents wish with all their hearts was a simple matter of mom and apple pie (“play fair, work hard, and get ahead” as Craiglist’s Craig Newmark explains it) is in fact a fight for leverage among powerful interests in the communications, software, and media industries. Net neutrality, if nothing else, is turning out to be a complex technical problem—technical in both the engineering and regulatory sense.

For the gory details, see:

http://larrydownes.com/net-neutrality-debate-the-mistake-that-keeps-on-g...