topic

Contributed by Mike

Tuesday, July 18th, 2006 @ 03:04AM

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Boy Scouts Told To Act As Copyright Police In Hong Kong

from the report-on-your-friends! dept

China is no stranger to using youngsters to monitor the internet. A few months ago, there was a story about students at school who spent their spare time monitoring online forums and reporting anything questionable to the authorities. Over in Hong Kong, it appears they're trying to apply a similar tactic to online copyright issues. The local Boy Scouts and various other youth groups are (at the urging of the government) instructing their members to surf the internet and report any unauthorized use of content. The kids get a private website that they can log into to report any offending content directly to the police, who will then decide whether to turn it over to the entertainment industry. This is raising some eyebrows in Hong Kong from people who aren't entirely comfortable with children policing online content. However, in the end, it appears the thing that might doom the program the most is simply the fact that it isn't particularly "cool" to rat out your friends for sharing some music. A student in the article admits to being teased by his friends -- and it's apparently a big enough concern that officials are trying to organize an event with famous movie and music stars. Meeting famous people is cool... but it's still not clear that it will make it any cooler to rat out your friends.

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Too Much Free Time

topic

Contributed by Mike

Tuesday, July 18th, 2006 @ 01:39AM

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A Child's First Car Loan, Courtesy Of Toyota

from the snag-'em-young dept

During the original dot com boom, there was an interesting company called "DoughNet" which was supposed to to be a financial site for kids -- trying to teach kids how to be responsible with money at a young age. Of course, that was the marketing spin. Others believed that it was just a sneaky way to give kids access to some of their parents' cash so they could spend it online (parents usually had to set up an account with a certain amount of money that the kids could "manage"). While it got a lot of hype, it quickly went nowhere. However, now that so many people have forgotten what happened last time around, it's no surprise that we're seeing similar ideas -- with new twists. Last month we wrote about Toyota's strategy to get kids hooked at a young age, by sponsoring many different aspects of a virtual world for kids. Of course, if you're going to get kids hooked on wanting a certain car, you might as well get them primed and ready to do so with debt. Jeremy Wagstaff notes that Toyota has now added a new feature to this children's virtual world: the ability to buy one of these virtual cars on credit. It even involves a fake credit report using "WhyCO" numbers designed to mimic FICO numbers. Of course, to get a good WhyCO number you have to be very involved in the Whyville virtual community. It's being pitched (of course) as a way for kids to better understand things like car loans -- but some might wonder why 8-year-olds really need to understand things like credit scores, debt and interest payments. Next thing you know, we'll find out that these kids are being taught the importance of purchasing the extra warranty and the virtual undercoating as well...

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topic

Contributed by Mike

Tuesday, July 18th, 2006 @ 01:21AM

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How Your Vonage Service Fees Help Fund Spyware

from the another-bad-PR-day dept

Vonage has had a pretty bad couple of months. There was the botched IPO leading to plenty of pissed off shareholder customers, combined with a few new patent lawsuits. The stock hasn't done well at all -- something many predicted well before the IPO in the first place. Now, spyware researcher Ben Edelman has released his latest article, noting that Vonage ads seem to show up in an awful lot of spyware -- including every one of the major spyware providers. And you wondered why the customer acquisition costs were so high? Now you know that a large chunk of that money was going directly into the bank accounts of some awfully questionable companies.

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topic

Contributed by Mike

Monday, July 17th, 2006 @ 06:54PM

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And Here Come The YouTube Copyright Lawsuits

from the had-to-show-up-sooner-or-later dept

Just as some were talking about how YouTube had been able to avoid lawsuits from angry copyright holders (though, they receive plenty of cease-and-desist letters), the EFF is pointing out that a news service in LA is now suing YouTube for copyright infringement. As has been pointed out repeatedly, YouTube has a pretty clear defense against such claims: section 230 of the Communications Decency Act means that a service provider isn't responsible for what its users do with the service. In other words, this guy is going after the wrong target. Rather than suing YouTube, he should be going after whoever uploaded the contested video. It's also unclear from the info available if the guy sent YouTube a takedown notice on the content.

However, the lawyers who filed the lawsuit seem to be focusing on two recent, but well known, cases to support their filing. The first is the Grokster ruling, which said companies could be liable if they were found to induce the infringement in some manner. Secondly, the lawyers claim that there's an even stronger case against YouTube than in Grokster because it's a centralized service -- which suggests they're pointing to similarities with the original Napster, which the courts had problems with due to its centralized nature. However, it may be a very difficult case for this news organization to win. YouTube can make a pretty strong case that they don't do anything to "induce" infringement. In fact, YouTube has worked to stop infringement, and generally has a good reputation for taking down infringing content when notified. Also, the sheer number of legitimate uses and content providers embracing YouTube suggests that it just doesn't have the same emotional response that both Napster and Grokster had. While the case may not go back to the "substantial non-infringing uses" of the Betamax case, it's likely that YouTube's lawyers will make a similar case. Either way, it's likely this will be an important case to watch.

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topic

Contributed by Mike

Monday, July 17th, 2006 @ 05:44PM

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An Honest Debate On Net Neutrality (Too Bad It's So Rare)

from the finally! dept

After so much dishonesty from both sides on the whole net neutrality debate, a DC think tank decided to put internet/networking pioneers Vint Cerf and David Farber into the same room and let them debate the issue. The debate isn't that interesting to those who have been vehemently pumping up one of the various propaganda campaigns about net neutrality that are designed more to appeal to emotions rather than the actual situation. That's because the debate is quite reasonable from both sides -- with both sides working to dispel the slogans and misleading statements that have been thrown around, mostly by lobbyists. That is, there's no talk of the "death of the internet" or "clogged pipes" (or "tubes," if you want). Instead, it's a much more reasonable debate that focuses on the lack of competition in the broadband world, countered by a reasonable fear that opening up the internet to regulation from Congress or the FCC is going to lead to further problems down the road. Both speakers are focused on the best way to help grow the internet and increase innovation for users (not companies) -- but just disagree on the ways to do so, and how involved the government should be. They both admit there are tradeoffs involved in all of the choices. It's never been a black and white issue -- and it's nice to hear that being recognized. For folks actually interested in network neutrality, this is a debate worth hearing. Unfortunately, most people will focus on "hurling bumper stickers back and forth at each other" rather than this useful debate. One highlight, hidden in the middle of everything: Vint Cerf's suggestion that he might create a "Congressional internet comic book" as an effective way to communicate the issues to folks in Congress.

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topic

Contributed by Mike

Monday, July 17th, 2006 @ 03:58PM

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Forget Jailing Online Gamblers; How About Jailing Online Gambling Execs?

from the whoops dept

Last week, when the House of Representatives tried to clarify online gambling laws to make it clear that poker was bad and deserved jailtime, but horse racing and lotteries were good, the various online casinos laughed it off, with BetOnSports CEO, David Carruthers, particularly dismissive of the bill in the press, noting: "We continue to believe that the likelihood of the bill passing the Senate is remote." Investors agreed, pushing the stock of many online gambling sites up, as investors laughed their way to the bank. Who's laughing now, however? Authorities apparently detained Carruthers at a US airport during a stopover on his flight from the UK back to his home base in Costa Rica today. Investors aren't quite as happy, with the stock price of many online gambling sites dropping on the news.

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topic

Contributed by Mike

Monday, July 17th, 2006 @ 03:38PM

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Misuse Trademark Law To Stop Competition And You May Owe Lost Sales

from the oops dept

Back in April we wrote about how label printer company Dymo kept forcing eBay auctions offline from a seller promoting "Dymo-compatible" labels. Dymo claimed that saying Dymo-compatible was a violation of trademark law -- which seems like a complete misuse of trademark law. It's factually accurate to say that the labels were Dymo-compatible -- and the only reason to have eBay take them down is not to protect Dymo's intellectual property, but to stop the competition. Apparently Dymo has finally recognized this. Greg Beck from Public Citizen, who was handling the lawsuit on behalf of the seller writes in to let us know that: "Dymo has backed down, reimbursed our client for lost sales, and promised not to do it again. Note for companies that wish to abuse intellectual property law in the future: you may have to pay for the damage you cause."

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topic

Contributed by Carlo

Monday, July 17th, 2006 @ 02:21PM

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Next On CBS -- CSI: Breakfast Buffet

from the over-easy-scrambled-or-with-ads? dept

This idea really doesn't sound like it's all it's cracked up to be: CBS plans to advertise its fall lineup on egg shells. Using a process typically only used to etch expiration dates on eggs, the network will imprint its eye logo and egg-related taglines about three of its shows on 35 million eggs in September and October. The eggs will be sold by one grocery company on the East Coast, so it's hard to see the campaign having much of an impact beyond the media attention it's sure to generate. Perhaps a bigger question is how consumers will respond to their breakfast and baking being interrupted by advertising. Consumers often receive some benefit from being exposed to advertising, as CBS should know, since it's the network's business model. Does that mean the ad-laden eggs will be subsidized in price? Seems like this move could leave the broadcaster with (yeah, you guessed it) egg on its face.

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topic

Contributed by Mike

Monday, July 17th, 2006 @ 12:31PM

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How Can You Fear Monger If The Stats Don't Support What You Say?

from the just-fear-monger-anyway! dept

We've written multiple times in the past about a UK-based "children's" charity called NCH that seems to go out of their way to release misleading and/or biased studies about how "our children are at risk." Usually these involve blaming modern technology and are accompanied by breathless quotes about how something must be done to stop the technology. In the past, this has included blaming the internet for child porn, blaming new 3G phones for allowing kids to see porn, falsely claiming that 11-year-olds are gambling online (when all that happened was they pushed one 16-year-old to gamble online themselves). After all of this, when they did a study showing most parents aren't as worried about all of this as they are, rather than thinking that (perhaps) it's because they're overhyping the problem, they got angry and talked about how parents are clueless and need to be educated. They're still pushing that education campaign, and did some research to try to support the fact that parents are clueless when it comes to what their kids are doing online. Unfortunately, their study barely seems to support the premise. This is doubly amusing since their past surveys had been shown to be written in a biased manner. Assuming they employed similar techniques, it's pretty impressive to find that only 10% of 11-year-olds say their parents don't know who they communicate with online. That means 90% do know -- which is pretty good. So, what does NCH do? They use these stats to claim that it's a problem anyway: "our research shows they need to increase their knowledge if they want to protect their children." This isn't to say keeping parents educated and aware of what their children are doing online isn't important. Obviously, it's extremely important. But, rather than fear mongering, why not report this as good progress?

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topic

Contributed by Mike

Monday, July 17th, 2006 @ 11:44AM

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iPods Cause Autism With Non-Existent Mercury?

from the oh-come-on dept

Rajesh writes "So you have covered iPods causing car crashes, people to be struck by lightning, and other fatalities. And now a scientist claims that iPods cause autism! From The Express in UK: "THE huge rise of autism in Britain is linked to old iPod batteries, mobile phones and other products of the electronic age, a leading scientist claimed this weekend." "If they are buried in landfill, the mercury in the batteries leaks out when it rains, and if they are burned it goes straight up into the atmosphere." Interesting! Considering all iPods are alkaline- and lithium-based batteries that do not contain lead, mercury, or cadmium (from Apple.com)." There have been plenty of stories in the past about the possible connection between mercury and autism, so that's not surprising. But the headline and the opening of that article clearly try to pin the rise in autism (which has gone on for many years) with the iPod, which has been around for less than five years. The article does mention other types of batteries as well, such as mobile phones and computers -- but it seems like a bit of a stretch to blame iPods.

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topic

Contributed by Carlo

Monday, July 17th, 2006 @ 08:55AM

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Still Looks Like Spam To Me

from the flooded-inbox dept

A major marketing company has begun offering clients a way to supposedly make their email marketing messages more effective by tracking test viewers' eye movements to determine what parts of a message they spend the most time looking at. Newspaper publishers have used similar studies for some time, but this is apparently the first time it's been used for ~~spam~~ email marketing. The technology, which is being used by such big brands as IBM and Cisco, comes amid an uptick in interest among legitimate marketers in using email. It's always been cheap, fast and easily trackable, but the increase in spam -- which hasn't exactly abated -- caused many marketers to turn away from it. But legit advertisers are faced with many of the same problems as spammers: trying to raise low clickthrough rates, as well as trying to make sure their messages don't get caught in spam filters. That's probably the biggest issue for marketers: distinguishing their messages from all the spam recipients get. Despite what the ad agency is selling them, it's doubtful that this type of user study can really help them there. The efficacy of legitimate email marketing has undoubtedly been dented by spam, and its problems have less to do with the design of individual messages than with the way many companies implement their email marketing campaigns, bombarding users with too many messages, or ones that are simply irrelevant.

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topic

Contributed by Joe

Monday, July 17th, 2006 @ 08:55AM

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Tough Times As Hollywood Actors Take A Pay Cut

from the fortuna's-wheel dept

In the past we've suggested that instead of trying to find a business model that supports films with $200 million budgets, Hollywood studios should perhaps look at reducing their budgets. They're starting by cutting the enormous salaries typically afforded to actors, or at least restructuring the deals so that actors can't walk away with a huge payday if the film flops. Part of the realization is that movie returns are random, so it doesn't make sense to spend so much on on-screen talent, when on-screen talent accounts for just a small part of a film's success. In fact, of last year's ten biggest films, seven weren't driven by a major star. While Hollywood is typically obsessed with gross numbers, it would do well to put more emphasis on the bottom line.

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topic

Contributed by Mike

Monday, July 17th, 2006 @ 03:36AM

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No, Mobile Phone Antenna Booster Stickers Don't Work

from the no,-really dept

You know those random technology claims that you know don't work, yet never seem to go away? Sometimes it's nice to see someone take on some of those claims and show why they don't work. Andy Kaiser channels his inner-Mythbusters and writes "Over time as a technology columnist, I've been exposed to various scams and impossible claims for technology. One existing scam I've not seen tacked in any serious way is cellphone antenna booster stickers. These things are sprinkled everywhere. And since many companies still sell them, I'm assuming many people are buying. But not having any existing tests to work with, I had a hard time with finding any analysis. So I did my own. In writing this, I wanted to do two things: One, it's a proper test of an electronic gadget, showing that gadget as a scam. Two, it's a way of showing proper testing methods and critical thinking, which benefits those unfamiliar with these techniques." Of course, just like on Mythbusters, I'm sure someone will take issue with the methodology...

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News You Could Do Without

topic

Contributed by Mike

Monday, July 17th, 2006 @ 12:24AM

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Network News Is Dying... So Why Not Charge People To Watch Old Clips Of It?

from the brilliant-business-strategies dept

It seems that fewer people are watching the major TV networks these days, and the network news programs know that they're increasingly battling (and losing to) the internet as the place where people get their daily news. So, what's a network TV programmer to do? Apparently, if you're CBS, it's come up with the strategy of letting people buy custom made DVDs on Amazon with 90 minutes worth of old news clips. Yes, that's right. Order now! For only $25 (plus another $3 in shipping) you can get an hour and a half of old news! That'll show that internet thing who's the boss of the news business, now won't it? If you happen to be a CBS News exec, we'd suggest that you might want to skip over the news concerning a recent study that found the half-life of a news story to be approximately 36 hours.

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topic

Contributed by Mike

Sunday, July 16th, 2006 @ 11:12PM

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Could Wal-Mart Slow Down The Video Download Market?

from the perhaps-maybe dept

A few years ago, we had a post saying that it wasn't the record labels that had slowed the move to authorized digital downloads of music, but the music retailers, like Tower Records, who were fighting to keep authorized music offline. It was only as those retailers started declaring bankruptcy, that the labels starting focusing on authorized music download sites. Well, as we move to downloadable movies, will the retailers get in the way again? Rajesh writes in to point to an interesting paragraph mixed in with an otherwise uninteresting Reuters article on various attempts at building a movie download site: Wal-Mart has made it clear to the studios that they don't like the idea of movie downloads. Of course, Wal-Mart is a huge retailer when it comes to DVDs, and the studios probably don't want to piss off Wal-Mart. So, will that mean that they'll hold off from embracing movie downloads? That might be difficult. They've already seen what happened when the recording industry resisted too long, and it seems unlikely that they'd be willing to hold back completely -- even if it upsets Wal-Mart in the short term.

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topic

Contributed by Mike

Friday, July 14th, 2006 @ 02:02PM

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G8 Agenda: Global Warming, Terrorism, Poverty... And Cheap Music?

from the priorities,-people,-priorities! dept

Apparently, the British recording industry lobbying group, BPI, isn't satisfied with the recent ruling saying they can sue Russian music site Allofmp3.com in the UK. Now, they've written a letter urging the UK foreign secretary to make sure that a discussion of AllofMP3.com will take place at the latest G8 summit. Yes, we're absolutely sure that among the talk of terrorism, poverty and energy crises world leaders are going to be concerned with a website that sells music cheaper than the industry likes. The company still claims they're perfectly legal in Russia -- and Russian authorities seem to agree so far. So, it's difficult to see why the global leaders of the some of the biggest countries in the world should really care about the matter.

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News You Could Do Without

topic

Contributed by Carlo

Friday, July 14th, 2006 @ 11:07AM

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When They Said "Get It On eBay", I Doubt This Is What They Meant

from the W32.this-space-for-rent.P@mm dept

The idea of using security exploits to make some cash certainly isn't anything new -- online extortion schemes have been fairly popular, even if script kiddies are killing the margins. But apparently discovering security vulnerabilities and selling them off to the highest bidder is a growth industry, according to one security firm, even being brazen enough to put them up on eBay. It's hardly surprising to see hackers and malware writers searching for some remuneration for their efforts, particularly with the explosion in phishing, identity theft and other potenially lucrative crimes, and their dependence on staying a step ahead of security companies. What's slightly more interesting, though, is that many security companies themselves are shelling out for the vulnerabilities, under the guise of the greater good, but really getting the information to give themselves a head start in closing the vulnerabilities, and enhancing their products and reputation. Economists love to talk about the value of incentives in motivating people to particular behavior -- perhaps giving malware authors incentives to turn their work over to software developers or security companies isn't such a bad idea.

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(Mis)Uses of Technology

topic

Contributed by Joe

Friday, July 14th, 2006 @ 10:52AM

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Newspapers' New Internet Strategy Just More Of The Same

from the come-back-in-six-months-for-another-checkup dept

Newspapers' struggles to adapt to the web have been well documented. Though they'll talk about how important the internet is, many newspapers seem to have an incurable allergy to traffic, often putting up useless registration pages or complaining about inclusion in Google News. Now a group of newspapers is in talks with Yahoo to spread their content further. It may not be a bad idea, and it's good that the papers are thinking of ways to expand their modes of distribution. But at the same time, an anonymous newspaper executive involved in the discussions said he hopes the ultimate business model for newspapers is one based on micropayments for content. This is an old idea that's never gained any traction. It's the exact opposite of spreading content further, and if getting people to sign up for free registration seems tough, imagine asking people to sign up for a payment system, buy credits, and then pay the equivalent of a dime to read an article. It's not impossible to sell internet content, but even the world's most prestigious list of columnists at the New York Times has had a hard time. And of course newspapers still want to "monetize search", by which they mean get a cut of the advertising listed against results that link to the newspapers. Here's an idea for them: build a really killer search engine for news, displace Google News, and then keep all the money. Clearly, the fact that they might do a deal with Yahoo doesn't signal any real evolution in the way these companies think about the internet.

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topic

Contributed by Carlo

Friday, July 14th, 2006 @ 10:29AM

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Fun With Stats, Or Damn, That's A Lot Of Lost Phones

from the doesn't-add-up dept

Statistics can be tricky, no doubt about that. They've tripped up many a journalist, and given that, you'd imagine that writers would be pretty careful to thoroughly check out the numbers they cite, but no. A column today from an "award-winning" UPI columnist makes the bold claim that 65 percent of Americans lost their mobile phones last year, and it cost $600 million to replace them. Wow, that's pretty amazing -- if only it were true. You see, only about 70% of Americans own cell phones, according to trade-body statistics. So if the author's figures were right, that would mean more than 90 percent of cell-phone users, or 187 million people, lost and had to replace their phones in 2005. That sounds great, except when you consider that just 105 million or so cell phones were sold in the country during the year. And if that $600 million figure were accurate, it would mean the "cost" of replacing all those handsets would be an average of $3.20 each, which doesn't make too much sense. To make it even better, while trying to do some mobile virus scare-mongering (when there's really nothing to worry about), he mentions "the 45 percent of mobile phone owners who don't lose their phones on an annual basis" -- a figure that doesn't jibe with anything else he cites at all. So while wild claims and bogus statistics might make for an exciting lead, readers probably deserve a little more fact-checking.

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topic

Contributed by Carlo

Friday, July 14th, 2006 @ 09:55AM

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Intel's $600 million Investment In HypeMAX Paying Off

from the make-the-bubble-bigger dept

Intel's throwing a lot of money at WiMAX -- not just to fund its own efforts, but to almost singlehandedly prop up the market in an effort to ensure it will have some customers. It started a joint venture with a UK ISP to build a WiMAX network there, and has even funded rival WiMAX chipmakers. Those investments pale in comparison to its most recent one where it pumped $600 million into Craig McCaw's Clearwire WiMAX operator. This huge investment negated the need for Clearwire to continue with plans to go public, after its IPO announcement raised a lot of questions. But it looks like Intel's cash injection is already having its intended effect, as BusinessWeek anoints Clearwire as the next big thing in broadband access, taking all the as yet unproven claims about WiMAX to heart, without touching on any of the plethora of questions surrounding the company, its viability and the reception its IPO was getting on Wall Street. Which is just the kind of hype Intel likes for WiMAX, and was hoping its investment would generate.

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