Even as the issue of privacy continues to confound much brighter people than me, the related problem of securing the Internet has also been getting a great deal of attention. This is in part due to the widely-reported announcement from Google that its servers and the Gmail accounts of Chinese dissidents had been hacked, leading the company to threaten to leave China altogether if its government continues to censor search results.
The Center for Internet and Society (CIS) at Stanford Law School is looking for volunteer Summer Interns to work on public interest issues involving technology, privacy and the Internet.
I'm very happy to announce National Robotics Week, an effort by leading robotics companies, research universities, museums, and others to raise awareness of U.S. robotics. In this inaugural year, NRW will take place all over the country April 10 through 18, including three great events in the Bay Area.
The website is nationalroboticsweek.org. You can follow NRW on Twitter (#roboweek) and Facebook.
PS: The NRW logo is available under a Creative Commons license.
I’ve just posted my paper on information as IP subject matter. The paper addresses some basic questions about the idea of property-like rights in “information” at the abstract level. Beyond theory, the conception of information developed there has various applications to a host of more specific questions of IP law, e.g., copyright policy and judicial interpretation of statutory subject matter provisions. Comments are welcome.
This video was UTTERLY MEZMERIZING to watch. Really an incredible event in modern American politics.
Partial transcript:
"Part of the reason I accepted your invitation to come here was because I wanted to speak with all of you, and not just to all of you. So I'm looking forward to taking your questions and having a real conversation in a few moments. And I hope that the conversation we begin here doesn't end here; that we can continue our dialogue in the days ahead. It's important to me that we do so. It's important to you, I think, that we do so. But most importantly, it's important to the American people that we do so.
Our President, last night:
"I know how unpopular it is to be seen as helping banks right now, especially when everyone is suffering in part from their bad decisions. I promise you – I get it.
But I also know that in a time of crisis, we cannot afford to govern out of anger, or yield to the politics of the moment. My job – our job – is to solve the problem. Our job is to govern with a sense of responsibility...
The Brits nail it better than the Daily Show:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtGSXMuWMR4
Amazing how a couple edits and on-the-street interviews can transform fuzzy thinking into something that seems insightful.
This morning I received an email from ICAP - Ocean Tomo informing that they are the exclusive broker for about 700 patents in the Walker Digital portfolio. Presumably in the portfolio is the Priceline 'name your price' patent. I wonder if William Shatner, television advertising persona for Priceline and formerly Captain Kirk of Startrek, is going to be doing some 'patent price chopping.'
I published the first of two pieces on CNET today about interesting and even encouraging developments in Washington over Internet policy. (See “New Year, New Policy Push for Universal Broadband")
In short, I believe that over the past year the Obama administration has come to see Internet products and services among the best hopes for economic recovery and continued competitiveness for U.S. businesses. At least as a matter of policy, this is the first administration to see digital life as a source of competitive advantage.
What is so amazing about the news that Google will stop censoring search results in China and may pull out altogether, is that the impetus for this has nothing to do with search. Gmail accounts were hacked. IP may have been stolen. The China/Google arrangement on search results appears unaffected by the recent events.
What happened today is that Google declared China is no longer fit to be their partner. Five years ago the argument Google made was that it was appropriate for companies to respect the local laws in jurisdictions they operated in, and while China’s were distasteful, the benefits of engagement and increased information flow made the censorship requirement worth it. At the time I thought this was a really hard question and I still think it is: Where is the line between engagement and appeasement? Could complying with a requirement of censorship ever be appropriate?
Today, Google gave us one vision of how to draw the line. By (allegedly) hacking human rights activists’ email and stealing private assets, in cyberspace the Chinese government has shown themselves to be more closely akin to a criminal enterprise than a legitimate government partner. And so a compromise between speech restrictions and increased information flow that was reasonable with a legitimate partner is no longer legitimate, even though nothing about the terms of the original compromise on search has changed.
Google says “trust us” a lot and it usually drives me crazy. For today they’ve won my trust. This decision is a game changer. It will be interesting to see what happens next.
