Blog Archives
Twitter, Amazon and a wacky week of lawsuits
By Kenneth Corbin | July 31, 2009What a litigious week it's been. Sure, people get sued all the time. In tech, real estate, every industry. But this week brought a pair of cases that seem especially bizarre, even for today's standards.
Start in Chicago, where a real estate management firm has sued a tenant over what it claims was a libelous tweet. That's right, a tweet!
Horizon Realty Group filed suit against resident Amanda Bonnen for her post to the microblogging service that read:
"You should just come anyway. Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment is bad for you? Horizon Realty thinks it's okay."
Bonnen posted the tweet in May, when she had all of 20 followers. (Her account has since been deleted.) But Horizon discovered the tweet some time later, and didn't take kindly to her words (even if no one read them), and sued.
From the lawsuit, via the Chicago Tribune: Bonnen "maliciously and wrongfully published the false and defamatory tweet, thereby allowing the tweet to be spread throughout the world."
A "defamatory tweet"? Indeed.
Lawmaker adds his name to P2P reg movement
By Kenneth Corbin | July 30, 2009In what was by all accounts a feisty event (one attendee told me I missed "fireworks"), a House hearing yesterday saw lawmakers renew their calls for a bill that would set some baseline security requirements for peer-to-peer networks to prevent against people inadvertently exposing files on their computer that weren't meant to be shared.
Edolphus Towns, the New York Democrat who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, opened yesterday's proceeding noting that sensitive information like schematics of the president's helicopter and financial information from Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer had been discovered on the peer-to-peer network Lime Wire.
Those instances have been well documented, but Towns wasn't content to base his attack solely on media reports. He said he had his staff poke around on Lime Wire, and said they turned up some appalling things, ranging from the copyright music and movies that one would expect to medical records and tax returns.
And the list went on: social security numbers of military personnel? Terrible. The location of a safe house for the first family? Awful.
Telecoms balk at broadband mapping requirements
By Kenneth Corbin | July 30, 2009It would seem that the push and pull between government officials trying to get sound data about broadband deployment and the providers who aren't too eager to divulge their trade secrets continues.
Dow Jones is reporting that leading industry associations, including US Telecom, NCTA and CTIA are appealing to the director of the National Telecommunications Information Administration to relax the level of detail the agency is requesting from the providers.
Those are trade secrets, they claim, sensitive, competitive data.
Curiously, mapping is one of the more controversial aspects of the broadband fracas. Just try mentioning the name "Connected Nation" around a group of open Internet activists. It's a "telecom front group," they claim, run by former telecom execs for current telecom execs.
As part of the economic stimulus package, Congress allocated $350 million to fund the Broadband Data Improvement Act, which directed federal and state agencies to get better data about who the prices and speeds of service are available in different regions, information which is pivotal to any sober assessment of broadband competition.
What's riding on Obama's open e-gov plans?
By Kenneth Corbin | July 28, 2009How important is the success of President Obama's open government initiative?
Pretty darn important, according to a new study that applied the well-known American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) methodology to government Web sites.
The ACSI, a 100-point scale developed at the University of Michigan, is a way of gauging how well businesses, Web sites, government agencies and others are doing when it comes to making their customers and constituents happy.
In the new study, research firm [ForeSee Results](http://www.foreseeresults.com/) proffers a strong correlation between easily accessible and navigable government Web sites and important things like how much trust citizens feel in their overseers in Washington and how likely they are to engage in government.
And they've got some numbers to back it up.
OECD: Global IT economy bouncing back
By Kenneth Corbin | July 27, 2009Could the worst be behind us?
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is set to deliver some hopeful news to the IT industry this week, when it plans to release a report highlighting some early signs of a recovery, according to the New York Times.
The OECD, a multinational economic forum based in Paris, has surveyed production levels of high-tech equipment such as semiconductors, mobile phones and PCs and found that, while they're still well below the pre-crash mark of 2008, they're looking up.
The Times quotes a hopeful OECD economist saying that the findings of the study "could be the turning point."
Of course, we're not out of the woods yet.
AP clamping down on online content
By Kenneth Corbin | July 24, 2009The blogosphere isn't going to like this one.
In an effort to tighten the screws on how its content is used on the Web, the Associated Press is planning to develop what it's calling a news registry that will track news articles to "ensure compliance with terms of use."
AP promises to bundle its news in a digital "wrapper," essentially a bit of software that would accompany its stories on their travels around the Web, complete with a notification mechanism to tip off the news cooperative when its content is being misappropriated.
Initially geared for its own content, AP is hoping that its members (newspapers) will sign on to the system and adopt the technology.
"What we are building here is a way for good journalism to survive and thrive," said AP Chairman Dean Singleton said in a statement. "The AP news registry will allow our industry to protect its content online, and will assure that we can continue to provide original, independent and authoritative journalism at a time when the world needs it more than ever."
This could get very litigious.
Final two FCC nominees clear Senate
By Kenneth Corbin | July 24, 2009The Senate today voted to confirm Democrat Mignon Clyburn and Meredith Attwell Baker, a Republican, to serve on the Federal Communications Commission, filling the last two open spots on the five-person panel.
Both confirmations were expected.
Clyburn and Baker join the FCC at a time when the agency is headed for what many critics hope will be a sweeping reform. Throughout the confirmation hearings for each of President Obama's nominees, members of the Senate Commerce committee pointed out some of the past shortcomings of the agency, focusing on its secretive climate and cozy relations with members of the industry it regulates.
One of the biggest tasks ahead of the commissioners is a national broadband plan due to Congress next February.
"I challenge both to show us that the American people can have access to first class communications, no matter who they are or where they live," Commerce Chairman John Rockefeller said in a statement.
On the subject of reform, recently confirmed Chairman Julius Genachowski has pledged to launch a Web site, Reboot.FCC.gov, soliciting input from the agency's employees and eventually opening it up to the general public.
Report warns of federal cybersecurity shortcomings
By Kenneth Corbin | July 23, 2009A new study from the Partnership for Public Service and Booz Allen and Hamilton has warned of severe shortcomings in the federal government's defenses against cyber threats, highlighting a critical shortage of skilled security professionals and a lack of coordination among the agencies.
"With most Americans, it would hardly set off alarms to hear that our federal workforce faces significant challenges, such as difficulty in recruiting and retaining highly skilled
workers, a reliance on contractors to fill talent gaps, poor management and arcane processes that undermine employee performance, and a lack of coordination that leaves some agencies competing against one another for talent," the report said.
"What should get people's attention is the fact that these government-wide problems are particularly acute within the federal cybersecurity workforce, creating potential for major vulnerabilities for our national security."
The private sector, in the form of government contractors, often steps in to fill the talent void. In the Department of Homeland Security, for instance, contractors account for 83 percent of the workforce in the office of the CIO.
"Government not only needs to recruit and train more people with cybersecurity expertise, it needs more people who can effectively manage the blended cybersecurity workforce," the report concluded.
Leahy trying again with data breach bill
By Kenneth Corbin | July 23, 2009Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) has reintroduced a data breach bill that would set tougher rules for government agencies and private sector firms regarding consumers' personal information.
This will be the third time around the block for the Personal Data Privacy and Security Act, which has cleared the Judiciary Committee, but never come to a vote on the Senate floor.
The bill would preempt the more than 40 state laws laying out requirements for notifying consumers in the event of a data breach, a long-deferred legislative goal that has the general support of the IT industry.
But Leahy's bill is about more than just data breaches. Among other things, it would set baseline security information standards for government agencies, something that the Obama administration has begun to work on with the early steps of an overhaul of the government's cybersecurity apparatus.
"This is a comprehensive bill that not only deals with the need to provide Americans with notice when they have been victims of a data breach, but that also deals with the underlying problem of lax security and lack of accountability to help prevent data breaches from occurring in the first place," Leahy said in a statement. "Passing this comprehensive data privacy legislation is one of my highest legislative priorities as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee."
Official FCC reform Web site coming
By Kenneth Corbin | July 21, 2009Julius Genachowski took over the Federal Communications Commission at a time when many lawmakers, advocacy groups and employees of the agency were convinced that it was in dire need of repair.
Genachowski today reiterated his commitment to reform the organization, writing in a letter to Chairman Robert McDowell that overhauling the agency is "a matter of great urgency."
This week, he said a new Web site, Reboot.FCC.gov, will go live, calling for input on how, exactly, the agency should clean up its act. Initially, the site will only be available internally, soliciting feedback from employees, but Genachowski said it will eventually be open to the public so any interested party can offer suggestions.
This follows a long list of government Web sites introduced by members of the Obama administration, which has made the notions of openness, transparency and government accountability key pillars of many of its policy announcements, ranging from tracking stimulus funds to cybersecurity.
In the case of the FCC, the expert agency with regulatory authority over the nation's communications sector, critics have seized on its consumer-facing Web site as a symbol of how far out of step it has fallen with the industry it oversees.
Icahn cheers on Yahoo-Microsoft deal
By Kenneth Corbin | July 20, 2009Carl Icahn, the billionaire investor who made so much trouble for Yahoo last year, has spoken out in favor of a deal with Microsoft, which reportedly could be announced as early as this week.
"I've been a strong advocate of getting a search deal done with Microsoft," Icahn told Reuters. "It would enhance value if a deal got done, because of the synergies involved."
Icahn won himself a seat on Yahoo's board last year after amassing millions of shares and threatening a proxy war to wrest control of the company of then-CEO Jerry Yang and Chairman Roy Bostock to force a deal with Microsoft.
Essentially, the deal would be an advertising partnership, likely involving Microsoft paying billions up front and more down the road in a multi-year play for Yahoo's search business.
Pooling their resources would, in theory, better position Microsoft and Yahoo to compete with Google for the money advertisers spend on search ads. Currently, both suffer from a market-share problem. By the latest comScore rankings, Google performed 65 percent of all U.S. search queries, compared to Yahoo's 19.6 percent and Microsoft's 8.4 percent.
Verizon pledges to curb handset exclusivity deals
By Kenneth Corbin | July 17, 2009There's been a lot of hand-wringing in Washington lately over the exclusivity deals wireless carriers sign with device manufacturers. Lawmakers have been holding hearings on the subject, and a number of smaller carriers and advocacy groups have been asking the Federal Communications Commission to enact regulation to curb the arrangements.
Verizon Wireless, the nation's largest carrier, today moved to take some of the heat off with a letter to lawmakers announcing that it will lift its exclusivity restrictions after six months, but only for small carriers with fewer than 500,000 subscribers.
That means that the devices Verizon rolls out as exclusives would still be off limits to the larger carriers until the agreement with the device maker expires, which can be years.
Still, the move is likely to placate lawmakers and regulators somewhat, particularly if AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile follow suit, according to Stifel Nicolaus analyst Rebecca Arbogast.
Much like the carriers' moves to rein in early termination fees, another sore spot for consumer advocates, Arbogast expects Verizon's move to pressure the other big providers to enact similar policies as they seek to stave off regulation.
But that doesn't mean that the issue is going away.
Court hears Tiffany's appeal in eBay fakes case
By Kenneth Corbin | July 17, 2009Upscale jeweler Tiffany had its day in court yesterday, leaning on an appeals judge to overturn a ruling that cleared eBay in a spat over trademark infringement.
By some accounts, Judge Robert Sack of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals didn't seem wholly sympathetic to Tiffany's argument that eBay doesn't do enough to keep counterfeit goods off its site.
"If we were to send it back," Sack said, "what would you want eBay to do?" AmLaw Daily reports.
Tiffany's attorney responded that eBay should be required to implement more rigorous anti-counterfeiting controls, and take a tougher stance against users who are found peddling fake merchandise.
In a decision delivered one year and one day earlier, District Court Judge Richard Sullivan ruled that "Tiffany must ultimately bear the burden of protecting its trademark."
FCC picks Clyburn, Baker differ on Net neutrality
By Kenneth Corbin | July 15, 2009We're almost there.
The two nominees to the Federal Communication Commission who have yet to secure confirmation appeared before the Senate Commerce Committee today, a hearing that offered no indication that either Democrat Mignon Clyburn or Republican Meredith Baker will have any difficulty winning approval either from the committee or the full Senate.
Instead, much like the recent [confirmation hearing for Chairman Julius Genachowski](/government/article.php/3825401/Genachowski+Glides+Through+Confirmation+Hearing.htm), the proceeding was an exercise in drawing out the nominees' positions on the many issues on the FCC's plate, ranging from broadband and Net neutrality to media policy.
And, of course, there was the customary grousing from John Rockefeller, the West Virginia Democrat who chairs the committee.
"In my judgment the FCC is a broken agency," Rockefeller said. "I think that it should rely on facts. It should accept bad news. It shouldn't be ideological. I think it has been."
Indeed.
Hutchison bill seeks tax credits, bonds for broadband
By Kenneth Corbin | July 14, 2009After Congress set aside $7.2 billion for broadband projects in the stimulus package, Internet advocates heralded the bill as a welcome first step for bringing the country's digital communications infrastructure up to speed. But only a first step.
Count among those Kay Bailey Hutchison, the Ranking Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee, who this morning introduced the Connecting America Act of 2009, a bill that would create tax credits and a bond program to encourage private and community investment in broadband networks.
Much like the first tranche of the stimulus money, Hutchison's bill favors development in areas where broadband service is slowest or nonexistent.
One section of the tax incentives, for instance, offers a 15 percent credit for qualified investments that increase service speeds by 50 percent, and a 30 percent credit for projects that deliver networks with at least 10 Mbps downstream speeds to unserved areas.
Net neutrality advocates are likely to take issue with the bond program in Hutchison's bill, designed to spur community investment in new broadband projects.
Schmidt rethinking role on Apple's board
By Kenneth Corbin | July 10, 2009Google CEO Eric Schmidt may be moving toward stepping down from his role as a member of Apple's board of directors, a relationship that has come under federal scrutiny for conflicts of interest stemming from the areas in which the two companies compete.
Speaking at a press briefing at Allen & Co.'s annual conference for media and technology moguls in Sun Valley, Idaho, Schmidt said he would talk to Apple about his board seat following the unveiling of Google's plans to launch an operating system, according to a Reuters report.
Prior to the OS announcement, the Federal Trade Commission had opened an inquiry into Schmidt's role on the board of a company that already competed with Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) in mobile (iPhone v. Android OS) and Web browsers (Safari v. Chrome).
Now that Google is developing an operating system geared for netbook computers, the two companies seem headed for competition in a more fundamental level.
What happened to Ray Nagin's e-mail?
By Kenneth Corbin | July 07, 2009The Times-Picayune, the newspaper of record in New Orleans, has called for a criminal investigation into Mayor Ray Nagin and his staff. A criminal investigation into a New Orleans politician? Yes, yes, there's a first time for everything, right?
But this isn't about nepotism or payola (although Nagin might be on the hook for that one, too). No, no, nothing so conventional. This is about e-mail.
In February, a large swath of Nagin's e-mail went missing. Nagin called the disappearance "inadvertent," claiming that a storage problem caused them to be deleted from the city's overloaded mail servers.
From the Times-Picayune's editorial:
"Even now, he clings to that explanation.
"But as New Orleanians learn details about the e-mail's disappearance, Mayor Nagin is sounding as plausible as if he were claiming that the dog ate his e-mail."
Overstock joins Amazon's online tax revolt
By Kenneth Corbin | July 02, 2009Overstock has added its name to the list of online retailers taking their protest against new tax laws to the people.
The Utah-based firm has terminated its affiliate advertising programs in California, Hawaii, North Carolina and Rhode Island as those states edge closer to passing statutes that would require it to being collecting sales taxes.
The move closely follows similar announcements from Amazon and Blue Nile, who are protesting states' redefinition of tax codes that would equate affiliate marketers -- Web site owners who post ad links to online merchants and receive commissions for the referrals -- with full-fledged employees of the company, thus triggering the tax-collection requirement.
When New York became the first state to enact the affiliate marketing tax provision, Amazon and Overstock both sued in cases that are still working their way through the courts. Amazon kept its affiliate program and began collecting the tax. Overstock terminated its affiliate program in New York.
With yesterday's announcement, Overstock warned it would sever its affiliate programs in any state that moved ahead with a similar statute, blasting state lawmakers for essentially taxing their way into economic ruin.
"It's awful to have to terminate these relationships with affiliates, simply because they live in states where unconstitutional laws are being passed," Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne said in a statement. "However, politicians have to remember that a tax is a price that government charges for a service, and when they raise their prices, we're going to buy less of their services."
Needless to say, the termination of affiliate advertising programs is a significant departure from a strategy of litigation. It seems that Amazon, Overstock and others are aiming to whip up protest from their local affiliates, who can fairly claim that they're getting shafted in the process. After all, a statehouse passes a law, the large online retailers react, and a source of revenue for the little guys in those states evaporates.
Now, as has been argued here in the past, this debate too often focuses on rhetoric about new taxes, when what's really happening is a shift in the burden of collection for an existing tax.
