Forget Porn, Your Boss Is Now Worried About Basketball, Apparently

CBS' decision to stream NCAA tournament games for free, rather than charging for subscriptions, looks to be paying off, as it says it's delivered more than 14 million streams since the tournament began last week. But despite the excitement of March Madness, and the success of the online offering, somebody's got to rain on the parade, and this time it's somebody decrying all the "lost productivity" businesses suffer due to employees watching online. Of course, this guy happens to sell equipment to companies that want to block their employees from accessing particular kinds of online content, so he probably doesn't have a bias.

Interactive TV Lives Again, This Time On Mobile Phones

While interactive TV services have been available in other countries for several years, they're still largely stuck as the next big thing here in the US -- as they have been for a while. With a new twist on the old idea, now a company wants to offer the same types of services like games related to what's happening on screen over cell phones instead of the TV itself or the internet. It's unclear how using the phone will make these services any more attractive to users, but the company's CEO says it's because "Chances are, the cell phone is right next to them already." Okay, but isn't the remote control, too? Usability also seems like it could be a major problem, given the high latency of mobile networks. Interactive TV has failed to catch on not because of the medium over which it travels, but because people just don't seem to care. Until the underlying services are changed to incoporate something that strike's people fancy, the device they use to access them won't matter.

CD Player Dropped From Inflation Data, Phonograph Next?

In the UK, the Office of National Statistics has decided to remove the personal CD player from the basket of goods which make up the RPI, the equivalent of our CPI, a measure of inflation. Nobody buys them anymore, the thinking goes, so the more popular and expensive mp3 player has replaced it. In the US, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, often make similar decisions. But does this make sense? Measures of inflation, when placed against wage measures, are supposed to indicate whether consumers are getting ahead. If prices go up, while wages stagnate, then that's a sign of trouble. Now, the reason that consumers buy mp3 players, and not CD players, is that they're better quality and a better deal. Or, put another way, consumers could still buy a high-quality CD player, and save a lot of cash for later. Either way they benefit. But, inflation data doesn't reflect this, it only notes that mp3 players are more expensive and thus the basket of consumer goods doesn't seem to go down in price. It seems that intellectual property isn't the only area in which the government has failed to adapt to new technology. Economic measurements need to show that consumers benefit from the rapid obsolescence and constant price deflation that marks the high-tech world.

What Are The Long Term Effects For A Generation Of Multitaskers?

It seems that there have been any number of news articles recently trying to stir up lots of worries over technologies kids use today -- such as MySpace, instant messaging/SMS text messaging and other such tools. For the most part, these articles often seem overblown, in the same way that people fretted about what rock music was doing to kids a few decades ago. While there is some of that in this week's Time cover story, the article does raise a few interesting questions about the long term effects of constant multitasking. It's been repeated so many times by now, that many simply take it as a fact that today's kids are able to multitask constantly -- watching TV while they IM, surf the web, upload photos and maybe (if there's time) do a bit of their homework. While it may be true that many do this, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're really better at multitasking. They've just gotten used to it. Recent studies suggest that while they may not get overwhelmed like their elders, there are downsides. They don't do a much better job of processing information and may have a lot more trouble processing complex information. Obviously, it would be good if there were a lot more research to back these findings up (and, no doubt, plenty of it is on the way). So far, though, while being better at multi-tasking certainly is likely to have some advantages, the research suggests it comes with a very real cost.

Credit Agencies Working To Keep Your Info Available Far And Wide

It's no surprise at all that the big credit reporting agencies are pushing hard to get new laws put in place that would wipe out certain state laws that try to give consumers more control over their credit reports. At one end, the credit agencies do have a legitimate argument: having fifty different state laws, each of which with very different requirements, is a bureaucratic nightmare. Standardizing any law across all fifty states makes sense. However, the details suggest that the state-by-state issue is the least of the credit firms real worries -- and they're actually hoping to use the law to stop people from being able to "lock" their own credit reports (which some recent state laws allow). The agencies are worried, of course, that locked credit reports will greatly harm their business -- and they could be right. However, this wouldn't be such an issue if the agencies had done a better job protecting people's information in the first place. Remember, of course, this is the same industry that last year claimed it was "un-American" to let people know what info the agencies had on themselves, in order to make sure it was accurate. So far, these agencies have shown little action in really protecting people, and so it's tough to take their reasons for pushing this legislation at face value.

Judge Tells RIAA They Don't Get To Randomly Hunt Through Everyone's Computers

One thing that's become clear in all of the recording industry's lawsuits against file sharers, is they feel they pretty much have free reign in what they should be allowed to do. That's why they originally wanted ISPs to just hand over names without having to file a lawsuit, and why they tend to take a "guilty until proven innocent" point of view. However, it appears some courts are finally pointing out to the RIAA that they don't have the right to do some of these things. The latest example involves one of the lawsuits, where the accused claims she never was involved in file sharing. The RIAA demanded full access to her computer -- which she rightly felt was a violation of her privacy, as there was a lot more on her computer that obviously had nothing to do with the case. A judge has agreed and told the woman she can hire her own forensics expert, and bill the RIAA for any expenses.

Recording Industry's Own Study Shows File Sharing Not A Big Deal

There have been plenty of academic studies over the years that have suggested that file sharing (a) doesn't hurt the music industry, and may help it and (b) the reason music sales are down often has nothing to do with file sharing. However, every time this evidence is presented, the recording industry ignores it, and trots out its own, often questionable, studies instead. Well, now the Canadian equivalent of the RIAA has done one of their own studies -- but released the details very quietly. Perhaps that's because the study pretty much disproves much of what the recording industry keeps claiming. It shows that those who download music from file sharing services are the people who tend to buy the most music. It also shows that teenagers (who we're told repeatedly never buy CDs) are actually the biggest purchasers of music CDs. It shows that those who don't buy much music don't do so because it's freely available -- but because there are other things they can do with their money, they find it to be too expensive, or they just feel they have enough music already. In other words, the study supports what many, many people have been telling the recording industry for ages. So, will the recording industry wake up and admit any of this -- even when it's their own study? Of course not. It pretty much boggles the mind to realize that the industry has a study that shows their own strategy is hurting their market, and they refuse to believe it. That takes a special kind of business cluelessness.

Supreme Court To Consider Bad Patents Again

We've been discussing many of the reasons why the patent system is broken for quite some time -- and while a few people who benefit from the system always show up to defend it (usually with tautological arguments that amount to "the system works, because it's the system we have"), it appears that more and more people are recognizing that the system is fundamentally broken. The latest is author Michael Crichton who discusses how the patent system has expanded far too broadly to protect things that should never be protected -- and how it's harming innovation in many ways by making it prohibitively expensive. The focus of his article is on a specific case that is going to the Supreme Court this week, where a company was able to get the patent on the correlation between a certain amino acid and a certain vitamin. They now consider even publishing the details to be a violation of their patent -- even if it's simply factual information. Over the past few decades, patent lawyers have pushed for expansions in what patents can cover, well beyond what the system was ever intended to do. Granting a patent is giving someone a monopoly -- and that should only be done in the rarest of cases where the market has been shown to be insufficient in rewarding innovation. From the earliest days of the patent system, Thomas Jefferson made it clear that there was an inherent downside to patents, and they should only be granted under special circumstances. Why that should include things like correlations or business models (or software) has never been adequately explained.

Town Not Really Sold On eBay To Actually Be Sold On eBay?

Okay, following the bouncing publicity attempt here... Back in 2002, we noted how you could buy a small, mostly deserted, town on eBay, and how selling odd things on eBay was becoming a way of getting extra publicity. Except... it didn't work. That town that supposedly sold for $1.8 million didn't really sell on eBay, highlighting the downside to using eBay as a platform for publicity: you get a bunch of bogus bidders. Whoever bid $1.8 million never actually showed up to claim the town (and certainly never provided the money). Instead, a year later, the town had to be sold via conventional methods for about $700,000 -- much less than the original eBay bid. A couple of years have gone by, and the new owner has made some improvements and is betting that this time he can actually sell the town on eBay, and has put it up for bid. Once again, this move is attracting the attention of the press... and we'll find out soon if it also attracts the attention of the bogus bidders.

Suing Google Because Your Google Site Ranking Sucks

A few years back, you may recall the "SearchKing" case, where Google penalized a search engine optimizer for gaming its system -- a fairly common practice in the company's ongoing attempts to keep search engine spammers out, while making searches more relevant. Well, in this case, the guy wasn't too happy (and it certainly didn't reflect well on his optimization technique), and he eventually sued Google. It didn't take long at all for a judge to dismiss the case, noting that Google's ranking was their opinion and, thus, protected free speech. However, with so many sites relying so much on Google, and the constant shifts in rankings, you knew it was only a matter of time before such a case popped up again. Google has now been sued by a firm that is upset at its ranking. While the article isn't entirely clear, it sounds like this was a site that was entirely blacklisted, probably for its own aggressive search engine optimization techniques -- and so they're trying to set up a class action suit on behalf of all sites blacklisted by Google. This seems just as silly (and as likely to succeed) as the original case, but the lawyers this time are trying a slightly different argument. They're suggesting that Google is an "essential facility" and by penalizing sites with no explanation and no recourse, they're unfairly hurting businesses. Of course, proving Google as an "essential facility" may take a bit of work -- and could open up the floodgates. The real issue is that, even though many companies do, relying on a single source as a way of driving business is always a risky position to be in. It's a business decision to rely on Google, and not look for other methods of driving traffic. Google is an outside party and can do what they want. While many people do rely on Google, that doesn't mean they have to do anything for other sites, other than try to keep their index as relevant as possible to keep their users happy.

When Mobile Phones (Could, Maybe If It Benefits Us) Maim

A stunning new piece of research from the UK says that 78% of mobile phone users aged 16-24 "reported backache, neckache and headaches". What's stunning aren't the results, after all, everybody gets headaches once in a while, but rather the way the survey's being used. Apparently some unnamed experts say all that can be caused by "holding your mobile phone between your ear and neck while trying to do other tasks simultaneously". Did we mention the research was sponsored by a company that makes hands-free headsets? Notice they don't say the people who answered the survey didn't say that holding their phone in such a way caused them problems, they just tacked that expert bit on in the next sentence of their press release to try and indicate some causality that they probably never even tested. Biased surveys are nothing new, but this one really is scraping the bottom of the barrel. It's even got the requisite quote from a company manager saying how everything would be okay, if just every young person in Britain would buy one of their headsets. Bet they'd still get the occasional headache, though.

Starforce enforces DRM by instant reboot (without warning)

Despite all the problems DRM has been causing lately, it seems like companies involved in copy protection just keep trying to create more dangerous copy protections. Originally, they were more of a nuisance causing compatibility issues, installing wanted software, etc. Next came Sony Rootkits which used cloaking to hide its DRM processes and files, but with the side affect of being able to cloak spyware & viruses, thus causing a serious security risk. More recently, the Settec Alpha-DVD protection has been reported to cause DVD writers to malfunction. Now, Futuremark has uncovered a very dangerous anti-piracy system Starforce is now using. This copy protection system installs a driver that runs at the highest level of access on the system, which gives it low level access to the PCs hardware and any drivers and processes. This driver runs regardless of whether the game runs; keeping an eye out for any suspicious activity such as attempting to copy a protected disc. If something suspicious is detected, it forces the PC to make an immediate reboot, regardless of any other applications running and whether or not the user has any unsaved work. To make matters worse, this copy protection interferes with DPM readings from software that is designed to allow the playback of copied game discs, which means that any game backups that rely on this Data Protection Manager will no longer play with the Starforce protection driver in place. Finally, as the Starforce protection has been found to interfere with certain device drivers, some drivers will run in legacy PIO mode instead of DMA, which not only slows down the PC by hogging CPU resources, but also slows down the data transfer to the affected hardware.

With the reported side effects of this copy protection system, this is one thing I would not trust on any system. For example, if one wanted to make a copy of a disc and didn’t realise they had a Starforce protected game in their DVD-ROM drive, their PC is rebooted without even being given a chance to save any work! Worse still, this is likely to give some people a major headache trying to figure out why one or more of their device drivers are acting up, certain hardware cause the PC to run sluggish when used and so on. However, for those who get affected or lose several hours of unsaved work due to an unexpected reboot, chances are that they are not going to get any compensation or sympathy from Starforce or the game publishers using the copy protection.

Judge Orders Google To Turn Over Gmail Account To Feds

For all of those worried about the Department of Justice forcing Google to turn over search data, it seems there's another case that may be even more interesting. A judge has ordered Google to comply with a subpoena to turn over someone's complete Gmail account records, including any deleted messages they still have on a server. This isn't surprising. The guy was charged with a crime by the FTC and eventually settled, but the FTC is trying to track down where he hid his assets. It's pretty standard for them to subpoena anyone who might have such info -- in this case Google, since the guy used Gmail. The guy tossed up some reasons why Google shouldn't turn over his Gmail account (revealing confidential info and attorney-client privileged communications, along with the idea that this was unfair since he'd have to pay his attorneys to sift through all the data as well, and that would cost too much). However, in the end, the judge didn't find any of his reasons very convincing. Not a huge surprise, but a reminder for those of you using your Gmail for criminal activity.

Digging A Little Deep On This One

We recently noted the false rumor that Sun CEO Scott McNealy was retiring and the company would get bought out by Google, which then got spread around like a game of telephone, and amplified when it hit the front page of Digg. Now, SiliconValleySleuth is alleging that something much more sinister than a children's game is going on, that the author of the rumor is using Digg to manipulate the share price of Sun Microsystems. Four times, the original author has penned a speculative piece on Sun and Google merging, and each time the story was pushed to the top of Digg, always by the same users. While it's surprising that the rumor keeps getting pushed around, this doesn't seem to rise to the level of stock manipulation. There's no evidence that the stock's recent rise is due to Digg, whle trading volume has remained steady, the stock has been volatile for some time. It's latest run actually started before the original rumor was published. As for the same users pushing the story, it could just be that they read the author's blog. Still, this does raise some interesting issues. Digg seems vulnerable to being gamed, which when combined with the enormous traffic from getting to the front page, makes an inviting site for tricksters. It seems like only a matter of time before the Digg mob does cause real harm.

Senators Pushing For .xxx, The Sequel

For years there's been an ongoing argument over whether or not there should be an additional designated "red light" district for the internet, usually suggested to be under the .xxx domain. After years of debate, it was a bit surprising that ICANN actually allowed the domain. Very quickly, two different groups started fighting it. One was the group who fights every random extension of the top level domain system as being unnecessary and only designed to force companies to pay more for domains they absolutely don't need or want (which makes sense). However the other group fighting it, surprisingly, were a group of "family values" types who felt that somehow setting up a red light district online legitimized online porn. This seems like some strange thinking, as early on, many similarly minded people supported such a domain in an effort to block out online smut. However, whatever lobbying campaign they cooked up worked, and discussions over the .xxx domain were put on hold... until now. Apparently two senators are trying to get Congress to force through an online redlight district, even though we always thought it was ICANN's job (no matter how badly they might handle things). What's odd here, though, is that the Senators are saying such a top level domain would "confine adult sites to one location," and "prevent hapless Internet users from inadvertently stumbling onto sexually-explicit websites." That, of course, only makes sense if they were planning to force all adult content sites into this new domain -- something that just about everyone who's looked at the issue has decided is a bad idea. However, looking through some other articles, it appears that's exactly what the new bill is proposing. All adult sites would be required to move into this new domain. This opens up a ton of difficult questions. How would they fairly compensate sites with good .com domain names that they were forced to abandon? Much more importantly, how would they possibly define what qualifies as having to go behind the fence? Given the recent controversy over BoingBoing being blocked in many countries due to a widely used filtering program calling it out for "nudity," you have to wonder who gets to decide what has to go over to the .xxx side.

Judge Won't Blame Google For Usenet Postings

While some courts are still a bit confused concerning the liability of service providers online, it appears that one court had no problem at all dismissing a lawsuit against Google, concerning whether the company was liable for defamatory Usenet postings. As the judge quickly noted in dismissing the case, the Communications Decency Act pretty clearly carves out protection for service providers -- as it should. Google is simply providing a platform. If this guy is upset about the comments made about him, he should be going after those who made the comments -- not Google. You don't get to just sue the biggest or easiest company. You have a much better chance of winning if you actually sue those who did you wrong. Of course, the guy is vowing to appeal, so we probably haven't seen the last of this case.

DRM Hurts In More Ways Than One

While some music-industry execs are slowly realizing the downside of DRM, a new report says there's a downside for consumers: tests found that Microsoft's PlaysForSure DRM hurts MP3 players' battery life by up to 25%, while iPod users get 8% more play time listening to unprotected files than ones protected with Apple's FairPlay DRM. So in addition to being a general nuisance, copy-protection also helps users get less out of their MP3 players -- and don't forget how it doesn't help artists either -- yet record labels continue to somehow believe it's a necessity.

This Makes Me Feel Secure

For the third year in a row, the Department of Homeland Security has been awarded an F for its cybersecurity. Remember that this is the government agency charged with protecting, you know, computers and stuff. Perhaps it's really not that surprising, given how DHS doesn't use backups, but has an exec from an adware company on a data-privacy board and employs begging as a security technique. The results were to be revealed at a hearing today called "Is the Government Ready for a Digital Pearl Harbor?" With the DHS' F, and the federal government overall getting a D+, the answer appears to be a resounding no.

Don't Play Our Record, You Canadian Bastards

I'm almost thinking that this "controversy" is half-drummed up to get attention for a famous musician's side-project... but, Cliff writes in to let us know about a radio station in Victoria, British Columbia (that's Canada for those who failed geography) that was playing a song that had been released in the UK and was available for sale on the internet. They apparently got the song and have been playing it on the radio. Part of the confusion is that it's not at all clear how they got the song. In the submission, Cliff claims the radio station bought the song. In the video on the site, the radio station claims they downloaded it from the band's site -- but as of right now, the band only offers a streaming version, not a download one. Either way, the record label putting out the album has demanded the radio station stop playing the song, and according to the submission, today sued the station -- even though they had decided to stop playing the song (along with other songs by the musician). It would be nice if there were a few more details to back up this story. However, it does highlight another issue that record labels seem to be having trouble understanding: the internet makes your business global pretty quickly. Trying to set up different release schedules for different geographies doesn't work. Plenty of radio stations have been known to play songs released in other countries -- so this could just be a record label overreacting, a quirk of Canadian copyright law... or a weird publicity stunt. Either way, we'd like to see some more info on what's really happening here.