Into Tech

The Associated Press “conversation” with bloggers keeps getting more bizarre. Yesterday, it met with the guy that Rogers Cadenhead from the Drudge Retort asked to represent him in dealing with the AP. This was the guy that the AP falsely suggested was going to help them set up “guidelines” for bloggers. That was never true. He was merely there to represent Cadenhead’s side of the story. And the result? A statement from the AP saying that the matter is now closed. Seriously. No details. No “conversation.” Just wiping its hands of the whole thing:

In response to questions about the use of Associated Press content on the Drudge Retort web site, the AP was able to provide additional information to the operator of the site, Rogers Cadenhead, on Thursday. That information was aimed at enabling Mr. Cadenhead to bring the contributed content on his site into conformance with the policy he earlier set for his contributors. Both parties consider the matter closed.

In addition, the AP has had a constructive exchange of views this week with a number of interested parties in the blogging community about the relationship between news providers and bloggers and that dialogue will continue. The resolution of this matter illustrates that the interests of bloggers can be served while still respecting the intellectual property rights of news providers.

Let’s unpack this a bit. First off, and most importantly, I’m quite happy that the AP and Cadenhead have worked out their differences. It’s never any fun to be on the receiving end of a legal threat — and the most important thing of all was making sure that the situation was settled. However, the rest of the AP’s statement is troublesome.

First, for an organization claiming that it wants to be a part of the conversation (and some have noted that “conversations” rarely begin with a legal threat), never actually coming out and talking in public seems quite problematic. So far, the public communication from the AP has been (1) identical cut-and-pasted comments on a number of blogs, (2) a couple of quotes given to reporters, (3) possibly some private discussions with unnamed bloggers, and (4) a private meeting with a representative for the Drudge Retort. There wasn’t a single attempt to have a public discussion. There’s no explanation of the resulting “agreement” or how it might impact other bloggers who quote the AP. There isn’t even a single indication from the AP that it recognizes why so many people are upset.

That’s not a resolution. That’s denial.

Update: Rogers Cadenhead has posted his thoughts on the discussion with the Associated Press, and while he does seem relieved that his involvement is now cleared, he doesn’t seem optimistic about the future:

If AP’s guidelines end up like the ones they shared with me, we’re headed for a Napster-style battle on the issue of fair use.

In other words, so much for the “conversation” that the AP has supposedly been having. It still won’t acknowledge what fair use clearly allows and it still won’t admit that it was wrong — or openly discuss its position in public.

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We mentioned the rumored “compromise” bill concerning telecom immunity earlier this week, and now it appears that leaders of both the House and the Senate have agreed to wording in the bill which will be brought to the floor today. From the sound of it, it’s exactly what we feared: Congress has effectively given in to the administration, allowing it to grant immunity to any telco. Apparently, all that talk about not allowing the worst of this bill to go through was just talk. It’s difficult to know where to begin in reviewing this “deal.” It’s hardly a compromise — it’s a get out of jail free card.

To summarize: it appears quite likely that various telcos broke a very clear law in providing wiretaps to the government without a warrant (as required under FISA). Despite what you might hear, this has nothing to do with emergency wiretaps where there wasn’t time to go the warrants. Under existing law, in such cases, it’s possible to get the wiretap and get the warrant within a few days. However, in many cases, it appears no warrant was ever sought. The fact that the telcos approved these wiretaps is almost certainly against the law — and it seems that it should obviously be tried in a court of law to determine that specifically.

However, under this new law, Congress has basically given the President (who ordered the wiretaps in the first place, and doesn’t want these trials to go forward since they may reveal that he broke the law too) “get out of jail free” cards he can hand to each telco, saying that since he told them that the wiretaps were legal, the lawsuits no longer can proceed. Basically, this puts the President above the law, lets him avoid trials that might prove that his activities broke the law and to reward telcos who broke the law at his command.

Even worse, the bill basically grants the administration the right to keep on spying without getting warrants. Intelligence agencies will be able to demand various communications providers hand over communications without court approval and without naming the target, so long as they claim that the communications are “reasonably believed to involve a non-American who is outside the country.” Seems rather wide open for abuse doesn’t it?

This whole thing is fairly stunning, considering that it’s an opposition Congress facing off against a weak administration. Yet Congress basically gave the President exactly what he wanted, and made a mockery of the checks and balances our government was supposed to include. This is allowing a President to say the law is whatever he says is the law, while destroying basic due process and civil liberties along the way.

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The fourth piece in the Cato Institute’s Future of Copyright series is a bit bizarre. Written by Tom Bell, who we’ve mentioned before for his efforts to get people to start calling “intellectual property” “intellectual privilege”, it attempts to take a look at the “other” future of copyright. It’s sort of the opposite scenario to Rasmus Fleischer’s opening piece imagining a world without copyright. Bell’s piece tries to get into the mindset of a Hollywood exec, explaining why it seems to make sense to make copyright more and more draconian in an effort to make the “costs” of infringement go up by attacking infringers with everything they’ve got. Of course, this isn’t surprising, and even Bell sort of makes the half-hearted case for it, as he admits at the end. If anything, Bell comes to the conclusion that because we haven’t already seen even more draconian copyright laws put in place, it may mean that even Big Content execs recognize the differences between copyright and real property. Still, I’m kind of surprised to find out that Cato couldn’t at least get a Big Copyright exec to put up their opinion for this particular piece.

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In recent years, we’ve seen the entertainment industry suddenly embrace mobile as a platform, incorrectly believing that its more locked-down nature would mean that it wouldn’t face the same “threats” (which they should see as opportunities) of file sharing and open networks and services. However, as is always the way, more open systems are catching on and getting more usage, and more closed systems are having trouble getting traction. Rather than embracing that, however, it appears Nokia is pushing to hold back the tide.

Ben S writes in to highlight a rather unconvincing talk given by a Nokia VP trying to explain to open source developers why they need to embrace DRM, intellectual property, digital locks and subsidies in the mobile world. However, his reasoning basically amounts to “because I say so.”

“Why do we need closed vehicles? We do. Some of these things harm the industry but they’re here [as things stand].”

In other words, there’s no actual reason to use these things, other than that Nokia says you must — even though it knows such things harm the industry. Way to show leadership in the mobile industry. No wonder it seems like most innovation in the mobile space is coming from folks other than Nokia.

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Back in April, the NY Times had reported that former US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was having trouble finding a job. However, it appears that he’s now found at least a temporary one: sorting through a patent mess. Against Monopoly points out that Gonzales has been hired as a “special master” to help sort through the legal issues in a high profile patent lawsuit.

This particular lawsuit is doubly interesting, because politicians have gotten involved. On the face of it, it looks like a typical patent holding lawsuit, where a company (that doesn’t do anything) holds a very broad patent on the concept of automatic check scanning. It’s suing a whole bunch of banks for their use of automatic check scanning without paying a big licensing fee for permission to do so. Where it’s gotten ridiculous is that politicians dumped some language into a bill to exempt banks from having to obey this patent. That may create the right result (not forcing banks to license this unnecessary patent), but in a very, very bad way. Congress shouldn’t be creating exceptions. It should be fixing the patent system.

In the meantime, given Gonzales’ already seriously skewed view of intellectual property law (he wanted to make “attempted copyright infringement” a criminal offense and pushed for other laws that would greatly increase the coverage of copyright law), it seems unlikely that he’s going to recognize just how damaging patents are in these sorts of cases.

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Everyone thinks they’re good at First Aid until the blood starts spurting and kids are running around screaming their heads off.

The Intelligent First Aid Kit is designed to take the mystery and fear out of tackling the basics of First Aid by including everything you need, along with an audio guide. The kit, designed by doctors and educational experts, has lots of individually labelled and colour-coded packs, with colour chart instructions and the audio guide to talk you through different incidents.

It had been speculated but Toshiba finally brought the curtain down on the high-definition (HD) movie war with Blu-ray today by announcing it’s pulling the plug on HD DVD.
“We carefully assessed the long-term impact of continuing the so-called ‘next-generation format war’ and concluded that a swift decision will best help the market develop,” said [...]

It had been speculated but Toshiba finally brought the curtain down on the high-definition (HD) movie war with Blu-ray today by announcing it’s pulling the plug on HD DVD.
“We carefully assessed the long-term impact of continuing the so-called ‘next-generation format war’ and concluded that a swift decision will best help the market develop,” said [...]

Following on from the surprise success of its cheap and wee ‘Eee’ laptop, Asus is planning to rollout some additions to the range during the year.
These will include the E-DT [a desktop PC], E-TV and E-Monitor. The E-DT PC will be sold without a monitor, run on a Celeron processor and cost somewhere between [...]

Fujifilm has launched a bag full of digital cameras this week, including the new FinePix F100fd, a 12MP compact.

The F100fd not only pushes the up the pixel count but features a Fujinon 5x wide angle optical zoom, wide dynamic range, dual image stabilisation, face detection 3.0 technology with automatic red-eye removal and ISO settings of up to ISO 12800.

The face detection technology promises speedy face focusing, detecting up to 10 faces in a scene in .035 seconds, and automatically correcting focus, exposure, and white balance.

David Troy, senior product manager, Consumer Digital Cameras, Electronic Imaging Division, Fujifilm says: “The features packed in to this camera like ISO ranges and wide dynamic ranges are unprecedented for a compact consumer model – they first appeared in our Professional line. Combine these advances with our new Face Detection 3.0’s faster, 360 degree detection ranges and Dual Image Stabilisation and you have the ultimate consumer digital photography experience.”

The camera will hit the US first in March with a price tag of around £160. Jump now for the full feature set.-Martin Lynch

FinePix F100fd key features:

* 12 megapixel Super CCD HR VIII and RP (Real Photo) Processor III: Ultra high resolution for razor-sharp results and unrivalled dynamic range
* 5x Fujinon zoom lens: Powerful and versatile shooting options
* Face Detection Technology 3.0 with intelligent red-eye removal: Even more capable, even faster than before
* Dual Image Stabilisation: Combine mechanical image stabilisation with the effects produced with higher ISO (up to an amazing ISO 12,800)
* Continuous Shooting: Top/Final 3 at 1.7 frames per second at full resolution and Top/Final 12 at 5 frames per second at 3 Megapixels
* Full manual photographic control: Gives users total control with full manual adjustment of numerous camera functions including resolution, ISO, aperture, shutter speed, etc, a desirable feature for the photo enthusiasts/advanced photographers
* High speed playback: No waiting for high-resolution images to load during play back. The FinePix F100fd can display images at full resolution at 10 frames per second
* Portrait Enhancer Mode: Mimicking a professional photo studio setting, by using Face Detection and preset camera settings, Portrait Enhancer minimises fine lines and small skin blemishes for smooth, natural looking portraits
* Dual Shot Mode: In this selectable mode, the FinePix F100fd quickly shoots two images in rapid succession – one with the flash and one without – and saves both. This convenient function lets users perform a comparison at their convenience and select the most pleasing image
* Special scene modes: The FinePix F100fd has 16 pre-programmed scenes, including a special underwater scene mode for use with a special underwater casing and a Blog mode that automatically reduces the size of copied images for easy posting to a Blog, Web page or email attachment
* Micro Thumbnail: A playback feature that allows for viewing an index-style print on the LCD. The FinePix F100fdwill show up to 100 images in micro form, then the control buttons are used to select specific images. An innovative wheel navigation dial makes it easy to quickly find a single image by being able to jump to particular segments of images in the time sequence
* IrSimpleâ„¢: Infrared communication via IrSimpleâ„¢ technology for fast, easy wireless image transfer to a compatible device
* xD/SD/SD-HC compatible slot: The FinePix F100fdfeatures a xD/SD compatible slot which accepts not only Fujifilm’s traditional xD-Picture cards but also Secure Digital (SD) and SD-High Capacity/SD-HC cards too

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