The Ballad of George and Sony

“Christ you know it ain’t easy,
You know how hard it can be.
The way things are going
They’re gonna crucify me.”

John Lennon, The Ballad of John and Yoko

George Francis Hotz is a highly regarded 21 year-old who first came onto the scene by jailbreaking iPhones, causing a great deal of hullaballoo amongst the population. 

In the end of 2009, Hotz announced his efforts to hack the Sony PlayStation 3, a console widely regarded as being the only fully locked and secure system of the seventh generation era. He blogged about his progress, announcing that he had successfully hacked the machine by enabling himself read and write access to the machine’s system memory and having hypervisor level access to the machine’s processor. Sony announced firmware updates; Hotz then announced plans of a custom firmware, similar to the custom firmware for the PlayStation Portable, to enable Linux and OtherOS support, while still retaining the features of newer firmwares.

I will take a step back here to say at this point, Hotz was simply a home-brew hacker showing off all this gee-whiz stuff to the public. This was not anything major, nor should it have been.  In fact, the pool of those people who would actually do such a thing within the entire pool of PS3 users could fill an auditorium.  A small auditorium.  Given the fact that this population is mainly dedicated enthusiasts, what happened next is a lesson in how not to run a business.

On January 2, 2011, George Hotz posted the root keys of the PlayStation 3 on his website. Sony immediately filed a lawsuit and demanded social media sites, including YouTube to hand over IP addresses of people who visited Geohot’s social pages/videos. Paypal granted access to Sony for them to view Geohot’s PayPal account. The judge of the case has given permission to Sony to view the IP addresses of everyone who visited geohot.com (George’s website).  Two things here.  Yes, Hotz was wrong to post the keys on his website.  But Sony forgot the one law of the internet: once it’s out there, it’s out there. Better to contact George and, I don’t know, hire the kid in order to make a better product.  After all, he’s doing more for the product than their engineers at that point. 

People were outraged over the heavy handedness of Sony’s lawsuit and contributed to George’s legal defense.  Then Anonymous (that band of merry internet pranksters, God love ‘em) got into the act, pronouncing

"Your corrupt business practices are indicative of a corporate philosophy that would deny consumers the right to use products they have paid for and rightfully own, in the manner of their choosing," continues the pronouncement. "Perhaps you should alert your customers to the fact that they are apparently only renting your products? In light of this assault on both rights and free expression, Anonymous, the notoriously handsome rulers of the internet, would like to inform you that you have only been ‘renting’ your web domains. Having trodden upon Anonymous’ rights, you must now be trodden on."

And then, as they say, it was on.  It really looked like this was going to be a real fight.  Add then this article from Ars Technica this morning:

“The legal action between Sony and George Hotz has come to a close, with both sides seemingly happy with the results. Sony has Hotz agreeing not to do bad things to its hardware, and Hotz gets to be left alone and continue with his life. Neither side has admitted any liability in the matter…”

What happened?  Two things.  This was going to be a legal Battle Royale. Could you see the next five to ten years of your life being consumed by this?  I can’t.  If you’re Sony, even though you have a room full of lawyers, you have just take a massive hit publicity-wise, right when you really did not need it.  Are you willing to throw what little reputation you have left on the altar over some smart kid showing you up?  Doubtful.  Is it better that both sides take a step back, and take a breath?

Yes and no. 

The fact is, while George can now go back to his life, some of the legal questions that needed answering will not be answered.  The fact is there are lawsuits of this nature every day. The non-fight only goes to show the world that Sony will spare no expense in suing anyone over their product.  But it points to a larger problem.

I still think the worst part of this is that the copyright owners come down on relatively law abiding citizens like a ton of bricks, while the real criminals remain free to pursue their criminal enterprises. Regardless of whether you think George’s actions were right or wrong, he’s basically a regular citizen – works, goes to school, pays taxes, etc. He was there for Sony to sue, operating under his real name and with real contact information available, and not living on the proceeds of illegal activity.

On the other hand, the guys who run illegal factories turning out millions of counterfeit games, DVDs, or whatever generally go free. What is worse is that these people are known to officials who claim to be protecting copyright.  Sony is pursuing regular people like Hotz, who almost surely lost money on this whole venture, while seemingly not even attempting to pursue the acutal criminal violators who are driving around in Bentleys.

That is the real criminal act here.

Sue First And Ask Questions Later

If you maintain a blog or website, and you post blockquoted text, photos, or images from copyrighted sources such as newspaper websites, you could unknowingly find yourself served with a lawsuit from a firm called Righthaven. 

In case you didn’t know, Righthaven is a company based in Las Vegas that sprang to life last spring for the sole purpose of suing blogs and websites that repost, or even excerpt, Las Vegas-Review Journal articles without permission. It has filed a large number of  lawsuits, and settled dozens of them in its favor.  Righthaven’s tactics are pretty straightforward and extremely legal:  it purchases the copyright to an article or image and then searches the web for anyone who has published the article or image in question without authorization.  It gets the information concerning the person who has posted said information and then proceeds to sue them into oblivion.  While most out there would ask the blogger or group to take down said article before resorting to lawsuits, Righthaven goes straight for the jugular like a school of hungry piranha.  Most or all of their  lawsuits have demanded the statutory maximum of $150,000 in damages as well as surrendering ownership of the domain name. That’s a lot of money for the bulk of bloggers out here, so most of the cases have settled out of court. Basically when you are served by Righthaven, you either have to pay thousands of dollars in court costs to defend yourself if you think your use of the material was fair use or you have to settle the case and still lose hundreds or thousands of dollars. It’s what they call “instant litigation”.  Apparently it works pretty well.

“But what about Fair Use?”  you may ask. 

Oh yes, that.  Recently, Realty One Group fought back and was awarded a summary dismissal based on the finding that eight of 30 sentences from a Review Journal story about the real estate market qualified as fair use of the material.  Righthaven came out afterwards and say they would not pursue “instant litigation” against those whose use is less than seventy five percent of a copyrighted work. 

They also stepped ino it when they decided to sue the Democratic Underground site for a publication of four paragraphs from a 34 paragraph article about Senate hopeful Sharron Angle.  The Electronic Frontier Foundation stepped in to defend Democratic Underground and counter-sued Righthaven for abusing copyright law.  Righthaven backed off, asking U.S. District Judge Roger Hunt to dismiss its original claim, but maintaining that that it still could win if it really wanted to.  The problem here is that there really is not any amount set by the law that tells you how much is fair use and how much is too much.  In that respect it’s kind of like pornography: you know it when you see it. 

So continue blogging folks, but watch your sources and your backs.  Lawyer infestations are worse than bedbugs.

Now That’s What I Call Infringement! Volume 2!

I do love the smell of Schadenfreude in the morning.

About a year ago, I wrote about a little trouble brewing in Canada between the record companies and recording artists.  Now, there is a longstanding practice of the recording industry in Canada, described as “exploit now, pay later if at all.” It involves the use of works that are often included in compilation CDs (you know, those “That’s What I Call Total Crap”) or live recordings. The record labels create, press, distribute and sell the CDs, but do not obtain the necessary copyright licenses.  Instead, the names of the songs on the CDs are placed on a “pending list,” which signifies that approval and payment is pending. This pending list has been going on since the late 1980’s. 

The list was supposedly up to 300,000 songs. 

And that, as they say, is when the lawsuit started.  I mean, this wasn’t as if these were bad hipster bands you never heard of before.  These were unknown artists like Beyonce and Bruce Springsteen.  And in the original class action lawsuit, the artists  were asking for $20,000 per infringement - the same amount the record companies ask for when bringing a lawsuit against little Betty Jo Stingray for illegally downloading the latest Justin Bieber album.  The phrase “hoisted by one’s own petard” applies here.

Apparently after a year of legal wrangling, the four major record labels that comprise the Canadian Recording Industry Association – EMI Music Canada Inc., Sony Music Entertainment Canada Inc., Universal Music Canada Inc. and Warner Music Canada Co. – have agreed to pay $45 million.  That comes out to about $150 per song, or as the the lawyers call it, chump change.  It certainly beats dishing out about six billion. It also establishes a new mechanism to help ensure that artists are paid more promptly.  Apparently everyone is happy, though it is striking that it took a class action settlement to get the record labels to address their own ongoing copyright infringing practices in paying artists for the use of their works.

After all, these are the folks who are supposedly fighting for the rights of the artists they were ripping off.

Everything Has Its Price

Interesting story on CNET news.  What is interesting about it is the reactions.

Here’s the story.  Last month, executives from two music-industry trade groups, the RIAA and the IFPI, asked Google if it could provide a means to help them track down pirated material more efficiently. Normally, copyright owners are responsible for finding pirated links and alerting Google, which is then required by law to quickly remove the links.  This has been happening with no problems; after all, Google is following the law by doing so and has been doing so for some time. 

What happened next is what set people’s knickers on fire. James Pond, a manager for Google said sure, they’d be happy to help, but of course that help would come with a price tag.  I’ll let CNET take it from here:

“Pond wrote that after discussing the music industry’s request with the team "that runs the Web search API product," Google planned to provide three options for third parties to access the API. The first one was designed for third-party services that display Google ads alongside search results. The second was for developers and would include only a very low number of searches.

The third was a paid product called Site Search, Pond wrote. "The only option for the IFPI/RIAA to access our Web search API will be the third option," Pond wrote, according to the source who had seen the letter.

"I understand we charge a standard rate of $5 per thousand queries, which is charged to recover our costs in providing this service," Pond wrote.

A music industry source estimated that such charges could add up to several million dollars a year.”

Several million dollars a year.  Gee, that’s almost half of what they pay Angelina Jolie for one film.

To say the least, the industry was not happy that Google refused to roll over.  This points out a rather contentious relationship that Google has with the entertainment industry.  In fact some in the industry accuse Google of everything from bankrolling piracy to fencing stolen goods.  The fact that Google actually wants to charge for infringement searches merely adds insult to injury, they claim.  

To which I have to call bullshit.  Though slightly different, but parallel enough to compare, consider the following: RIAA / IFPI / etc… would like the content that they own or represent to be paid for. To assist them in enforcing this, they expect Google to find infringing material and links, then determine that these are, in fact, infringing (not fair use cases, licensed material) and that Google do this without any compensation. Google assisting content creators or owners with finding pirated material is not a legal requirement. Why should Google do it for free?  Especially since the law puts the onus on the creator to find infringing material.  Besides, the real point of charging them is so they don’t sit there and run millions of queries a day and clog up Goggle’s server.  There’s a cost with that as well.  Google is taking care of their own business.

Now piracy is wrong, but apparently, the entertainment industry loves to try to force other to do their job for them.  Just look at the case of Viacom vs. Youtube.  Of course, the record labels could build their own Web crawlers instead of leaching off of Google’s work in order to find those who are violating their copyrights. Then when they find a violator, they can check with a much smaller query volume to see if Google indexes that violator, then they can send a legitimate take down request. But that would require time, money, common sense and less lawyers than a full frontal against Google.

Yes, searching for infringing material costs money. And Hollywood, if you want to find infringed material, you have to go out and do so.  Not the ISPs.  Not YouTube.  Not Google.  You have to do the legwork.  It’s what they call the cost of doing business.

WordPress Tags: Google, Entertainment, Hollywood, Business, Lawsuits, Copyright

Now Playing: Arcade Fire – The Suburbs – Month Of May

Object Lessons

While school is out for many people, there are still plenty of lessons to be learned. Like these. 

The Object: The new iPhone. 
The Lesson:  Wait a few weeks until it is in the store.  At least that way your credit card information will not be broadcast over the web.  AT&T strikes once again.  Apparently, Titanic has nothing on these guys.  From Gizmodo:

The first iPhone 4 pre-order day was a total disaster, with collapsed AT&T and Apple servers unable to take any orders, multiple incorrect purchases, reservations that didn’t reserve anything, physical stores closing or having to take order with pen and paper, and, the worst of all, people entering into AT&T’s account servers and seeing different customers’ information on screen.

By itself, that’s a major security problem. But it gets worse. According to emails sent by readers, the ordering system is mistakenly showing and using the wrong customers’ personal information.

AT&T: Your world delivered…to the wrong person.  P.S.  This is not attributable to hackers.  This is attributable to the larger problems the hackers were trying to point out.  You know, the guys the FBI just threw into in jail. 

The Object: Bebo
The Lesson: Buy low, sell high.  Not the other way around, morons. 

AOL finally got rid of Bebo, for the fantastic price of …swoosh… ten million dollars.  That’s just a bit less than the $850 million AOL paid for the social network in 2008.  Yes, you read it right.  AOL bought the social networking site Bebo for nearly one billion dollar and just sold it for peanuts two years later.  As someone said, AOL is a place where ingenuity goes to die. Apparently, one can add the phrase “business sense” in that as well. 

The Object: LinkedIn
The Lesson: Just because your network is virtual, it does not mean your contract is any less real.  Take the case of TEKSystems vs. Hammernik currently being argued in federal court.  Case in point from IDG:

The lawsuit alleges that after Hammernik left TEKsystems in Nov. 2009, she "communicated" with at least 20 TEKSystems contract employees and "connected" with about 16 of them using the LinkedIn professional network.

TEKsystems contends that Hammernik’s actions were on behalf of her new employer and constituted a violation of the non-compete and non-solicitation contracts that she signed when joining TEKsystems as a recruiter in Jan. 2007.

The lawsuit raises the interesting legal question of whether the mere act of connecting with other professionals on a social networking site constitutes a violation of non-compete and non-solicitation contracts.  This is an interesting case that so far has flown under the news radar.  Depending on the ruling this could be huge for some folks who use social networking sites for business purposes.

Well, there’s the bell.  Class is out for the day.  Remember, read chapter three and there will be a test on it tomorrow…

 

WordPress Tags: Failure, AT&T, AOL, TEKSystems, Lawsuits

Now Playing: Stone Temple Pilots – Shangri-La Dee Da – Days of the Week

Cry Havoc and Let Slip the Dogs of War

This has been a long time coming.  After months of bobbing, weaving, Apple finally said enough and went to court with guns blazing. Sort of.  In its passive aggressive way, Apple is suing Google by not suing Google. They are rather, suing HTC, the company that makes exquisite phones with Google brains. 

Yeah, I know it is gutless, but there is a strategy behind it.  First, size.  HTC is not large.  The threat of a patent lawsuit that could take years to complete is not something a company the size of HTC really wants to fight.  Its the reason Apple did not go up against Motorola, a company that has a room full of lawyers who are quite knowledgeable about these things and lots more patents to draw from.  Who would you rather fight in the Octagon – Randy Couture or Randy Couture’s mom? While Randy’s mom could probably kick your ass as well, you stand a better chance of surviving. 

Second, the discovery phase.  If there is anything they can stick onto Google, they’ll find it here.  That is really what this fishing expedition is for.  They are looking for smoking anythings at this point.  If it sticks in the first lawsuit, it will be front and center for the main event.

So about those patents – Nilay Patel at Engadget did some investigating to see what kind of patents we are talking here, and the review:

So here are the takeaways: as of right now, it’s impossible to predict what’s going to happen in this case — Apple and HTC could settle tomorrow, or it could turn into a ten year courtroom monster. But what we do know is that Apple’s specifically gone after HTC’s Android devices, and it’s organized its attack very carefully: it’s gone before the ITC with a collection of older patents on very deep OS-level functionality, which traditionally would be considered stronger patents, and it’s gone before the federal court with a different set of patents that include some very new claims on user interface features. Both courts have the ability to stop HTC from selling devices and issuing fines, but none of that is going to happen anytime soon. The real question now is how HTC is going to respond — and whether or not Google is going to get involved.

If this does turn into a years-long slog (and it could, quite easily), the world will not end.  The government will not shut down your Android phone.  Apple will not take over the world and really, neither will Google.  Fanbois aside, there are lots of people out there who could care less about the outcome and will continue to use their non-iPhone, non-Adroid phones as simply phones.  Not sexy, certainly not cutting edge, but there you have it.  Even Apple and HTC have to appear before a judge and have a hearing to determine exactly what these patents mean before the case can go to trial.  Meanwhile, Apple is already tied up in a patent lawsuit with Nokia, claiming Nokia is stealing Apple technology. Nokia says Apple is stealing its technology. Kodak is also suing Apple claiming technology theft.  So it looks like there are jobs in the tech sector-if you’re a lawyer. 

WordPress Tags: Applestan, HTC, Google, Lawsuits, Sue Sue Sue-dio

Now Playing: Dead Kennedys – Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables – Kill the Poor

There’s a Lawsuit for That

Oh my.  Apparently AT&T finally got tired of Verizon’s claims that AT&T’s 3G coverage is, well, spotty.  AT&T took matters to federal court claiming Verizon Wireless’ latest TV ads are misleading, and falsely indicate that AT&T has gaps in wireless coverage.  AT&T is seeking an emergency injunction to stop the ads. It also seeks unspecified damages, accusing Verizon of false advertising, and claims the ads harm AT&T’s ability to compete. AT&T also said Verizon’s ads are causing AT&T to lose "incalculable market share" and goodwill with customers.

Of course the questions concern the maps in the Verizon ads.  If you have seen the ads, Verizon’s map  of the US is almost all Verizon red.  The AT&T map, however, has a lot of white and very little AT&T Blue.  The ads concerns itself with 3G coverage only, which is quite different from regular phone and texting service.  After all, why buy an iPhone if you can’t use most of its features?  Unfortunately, some people have taken the white voids as meaning that AT&T has no coverage at all.  Then again, there appear to be a large supply of people in the US who think that Sarah Palin could run the country.   I’m guessing it’s the same bunch. 

But back to the maps in the commercials.  Gizmodo, being a site that prides itself on getting all things mobile right, compared the 3G maps for themselves.   And guess what?

The maps that Verizon chose do seem to represent the same thing—3G coverage only. Yes, AT&T lawyers, if I’m right about this, it means that had Verizon cheated, their map would have been even redder than the one in the ad. So what’s say we spend more of that iPhone subscription money on fixing the network (near my house, please!) and less money on frivolous lawsuits.

Ouch.  Now, I loves me some technology and I know that AT&T’s problem has been a network that is as ancient as it is untrustworthy.  And as much as they would love to think otherwise, suing your competitors for the public’s stupidity is well, par for the course for Ernestine Tomlin’s employers.  As for improving their service?  I’m pretty sure there are some applications for that, but AT&T doesn’t want to seem to want to use them.  I guess they’re too expensive for the shareholders. 

Now Playing: The Main Ingredient – The Main Ingredient – The All-Time Greatest Hits – Everybody Plays the Fool

WordPress Tags: Phones, Lawsuits, Lawyers, AT&T, Stupid people