Vogel Internet, Information Technology and e-Discovery Blog : Texas Internet, Information Technology, eCommerce & E-Discovery Lawyer & Attorney Peter S. Vogel : Gardere Wynne Sewell Law Firm : Dallas TX

A proposed law in Germany will restrict employers from using Facebook, and other truly social Social Media sites, when recruiting. However the law would allow employers to search business Social Media sites such as LinkedIn. Since there are no current guidelines in Germany about employer’s use of Social Media content these new laws will help establish guidelines. Of course there are no specific guidelines in the US where about 30% of the estimated 500 million Facebook users reside. Currently most employers review Social Media postings to make hiring decisions and until judicial reviews and statutes are enacted this will continue. However what people post of Facebook, and other Social Media sites, is often quite amazing which is why Eric Schmidt (Google CEO) recently opined that “people will one day change their name and reinvent themselves in order to escape their digital past.”

Most People Don’t Want to be Located

Facebook’s new location based Places has sparked new privacy issues about disclosing one’s whereabouts from the GPS cell devices that we carry. However according to Forrester Research only about 4% of Americans have adopted these location based services notwithstanding a recent report indicated that venture “capitalists have poured $115 million into location start-ups since last year, … and companies like Starbucks and Gap have offered special deals to users of such services who visited their stores… Shopkick, which became available this month, offers coupons to people when they walk into stores like Best Buy and Macy’s.” Nonetheless many people feel that their privacy is compromised by disclosing their location, so location based Social Media will be an interesting social evolution to watch.

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Google CEO Eric Schmidt “fears that too much information is shared online, and predicts that people will one day change their name and reinvent themselves in order to escape their digital past.” Not a very surprising observation given the explosive growth of Social Media, and proliferation of information helps and hurts trial lawyers. There were an estimated 1.5 trillion text messages in 2009 and estimated 210 billion emails each day… but how many in 2010 and thereafter? If people change their identities our ability to find evidence and witnesses will change, but finding meaningful evidence may be the greater challenge given the volume of electronic information which continues to grow a phenomenal pace.

Google Expands its Retail Presence

Google recently acquired like.com which increases its Products engine to sell retail products whether its clothing, computers, or snacks. Like.com founded in 2004 provides a “visual search engine focused on shoes, clothes, jewelry and décor,” and also owns covet.com which is a personal shopper from hundreds of online stores. Covet.com offers Stylyzer to learn about the shopper’s preferences. Since Google retains all search engine queries for 18 months one might wonder how Google will marry retail shopping preferences into search engine results.
 

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Plagiarism is alive and well on college campuses however it is no wonder since the Internet and Social Media have changed communications. Without question Wikipedia has become a reliable source for students and at least 16 US intelligence agencies. Many question the authenticity of Wikipedia, but if the US intelligence community can rely on Wikipedia I guess the information’s reliable. But plagiarizing Internet information is part of a larger social issue that college students today believe that any information on the Internet is free game to include in their course assignments. Perhaps this is not a new phenomenon, rather professors can use Internet search tools to determine if students are plagiarizing which was not available when information only available in books when I was a college student.

Who Needs eMail or a Watch?

As Social Media morphs it’s no wonder that college students rely on cell phones for knowing the time and sending text messages in lieu of email. Remember that in 2009 there were 1.5 billion text messages sent, and with Facebook’s estimated 500 million friends the shift of communications probably indicates more postings on Facebook and that eMail will to decline from the estimated 210 billion sent each day….of course 70% are probably SPAM.  Interesting to see how Social Media evolves.

Where’s the Evidence?

Without question courthouses in the US have changed forever as a result of Social Media and the increase in text messages and eMail. However for more than 30 years my clients’ litigation has been limited to disputes about computer technology and Internet services which means that every lawsuit has had eEvidence. Recently I participated in a webcast with US Magistrate Judge Paul Grimm who wrote the well respected opinion in Lorraine v Markel (about the admissibility of eEvidence) and Judge Grimm pointed out how much more education is necessary to raise the water level for Judges and lawyers. Courthouses will never be the same, so Judges and lawyers have to understand more about Social Media communications.

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A court recently ruled that the use of GPS tracking data in a drug distribution case violated the defendant's constitutional rights and the police needed a warrant. The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a brief in support of Antoine Jones that his expectation of privacy was violated by the GPS device placed on his vehicle. The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia overturned Jones conviction in the case of US v. Maynard. One may wonder if the GPS was tracked from a cell phone if the outcome would have been different. Since our cell phones have GPS data, it is any wonder that police might use the GPS cell data to track us? This court decision apparently protects us, at least for the time being.

Facebook About to Release Geolocation Features

A recent report indicates that Facebook will provide “location-aware data to become a part of existing platform applications,” which will compete with Foursquare and Twitter Places. Facebook already owns Hot Potato which is a check-in service and offered to buy Foursquare for $120 million which was rejected. Clearly Social Media is using geolocation data, and this will definitely grow! How courts rule about the use of GPS and geolocation data in Social Media in the wake of the the Maynard case will be interesting to monitor.

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Why Congress banned Internet gambling in the US in 2006 is a great mystery particularly since one major result of the ban was Internet gambling went offshore as did the possible tax revenues to the US. By lifting the ban Congress will have a new source of revenue. The Congress is considering legislation would direct the Treasury Department to license and regulate Internet gambling operations and allow the Internal Revenue Service to tax Internet gambling. Since my home state Texas cannot figure what to do about gambling the neighboring states (New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Louisiana) have all created havens for gambling, and a result gambling revenues from Texas are sent offshore to web-based gambling and our neighbors. Surely the Internet gambling tax revenue could help the economy, and I hope our elected representatives get this message.

Is an Internet Sales Tax coming?

Where a taxable transaction takes place on the Internet has always been a challenge. In 1992 the US Supreme Court ruled that retailers only had to collect sales tax in states where they have a physical presence. Congress is now considering Internet sales taxes as local government have lost significant tax revenues from Internet transactions. However, if I buy a book from Amazon which is in Washington state, the book may ship from Kansas, and the server on which I purchased the book could be in California. How can anyone figure out where the taxable event took place?

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A new report shows that customers are not that happy with Facebook and MySpace also showed that social media was ranked lower than property & casualty insurance. Also not a surprise that airlines were lower in customer satisfaction than social media. The 2010 American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) was produced in partnership with ForeSee Results is described in the Annual E-Business Report. ACSI scores for Wikipedia topped the Social Media score with a 77, followed by YouTube (Google) 73, Facebook 64, and MySpace 63. IRS scored a 65. Not a surprise that the primary reasons for low rankings for Facebook were: “privacy and security concerns, the technology that controls the news feeds, advertising, the constant and unpredictable interface changes, spam, navigation troubles, annoying applications with constant notifications, and functionality, to name a few.” Interesting customer results at a time with Facebook announced that it had 500 million users and Mark Zuckerberg is sued over an ownership claim!

Facebook a Utility?

In a recent interview on National Public Radio (NPR) Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg described his company as a utility for its subscribers “….When I say utility, I mean we are trying to provide people with utility,...Our goal was never to build something cool. It was to build something useful." As part of this interview it was pointed out that Facebook has the largest private database of personal information in the world. When pressed about why Facebook wouldn’t disclose the contents of the database, Zuckberg responded that people would no longer trust Facebook if the database was disclosed. So if Facebook is a utility used by 500 million people, why is it not regulated?
 

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Growth at Facebook has been unbelievable and not a surprise that its user rolls will get to 500 million, but last fall a childhood friend died, and a few months later I was taken aback after Facebook asked me to post on his wall. Since so many new Facebook users are grandparents and over 60 more and more Facebook members will be dying sooner rather than later. A recent article questioned how Facebook determines that some members have died so they can be removed from Facebook, or whether pages should be saved as a memorial. Interesting issue, but then again, if members are never deleted how can one be sure that there are really 500 million members… once someone joins Facebook maybe they stay forever.

On Facebook, Telling Teachers How Much They Meant

One nice benefit of Facebook and Social Media is the ability to find old friends, and a recent article in the New York Times told the story of a 49 year woman who found her high school teacher on Facebook. This teacher apparently had a significant impact on the student’s life and former student spent years searching the Internet to find the old teacher. Social Media allowed this connection to take place.

Do You Have a Phone Book?

A couple of years ago an older woman was lost in my neighborhood, so she stopped me to ask for directions. Unfortunately she did not have an address, only a name so she asked me to look in my white pages. She seemed amazed that I didn’t have any white pages, let alone yellow pages. The Internet has changed so much, it seems like not all that long ago people looked in phone books to find people, and now most of us rely on the Internet and don’t have white pages or yellow pages. Without question Social Media is transforming communications even more…stay tuned for more change.

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Purportedly Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave the original web designer 84% of the company and a New York Judge issued the designer’s TRO (Temporary Restraining Order) which has been challenged by Zuckerberg and Facebook. Paul Ceglia’s lawsuit alleges that he was paid $1,000 by Zuckerberg for 50% of the company, plus 1% per business day from January 1, 2004 until till the website was completed. Although New York Judge Thomas Brown issued the TRO, Facebook requested that the case be moved to federal court. Why Ceglia waited this long is unclear since he and his lawyer are not responding to the media, but now that Facebook has an estimated 500 million users and is worth more than $11.5 billion I guess claims of ownership are not a big surprise. However, in New York the statute of limitations on contract breaches are 6 years so Ceglia probably will lose on that issue alone.

What’s The Standard for Issuing Injunctive Relief?

It does seem strange that a TRO was issued because in order to prove to a Judge that a TRO should be issued there needs to be evidence of imminent and irreparable harm to the moving party, and it seems strange that Ceglia could have carried that burden. Also to get an injunction one must prove that money damages won’t suffice and there is no other remedy available, and in this instance it seems that money damages would suffice and there are other remedies. Of course an interesting wrinkle to this case is that the Wall Street Journal reported that about Ceglia:

In 2009, New York's Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo accused Mr. Ceglia of defrauding customers of his wood-pellet fuel company, according to a news release from the Attorney General's office. The state claimed that he took more than $200,000 from consumers and then failed to deliver any products or refunds. The wood-pellet case is ongoing.

This will be interesting litigation to follow. Stay tuned

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At the same time Lady Gaga takes over the Social Media spotlight from the President, Prince announces that the Internet is nowhere and his next album will only be a CD. No surprise what Lady Gaga is doing since “Gaga’s Facebook fans organized “National Lady Gaga Day.” The accompanying Event had more than 100,000 attendees.” So I guess Prince has missed this big picture altogether since Prince proclaimed “all these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can't be good for you." Hard to imagine that the formerly known music star can be so far off base. Given all the negative impact from the proposed Presidential “Internet Kill Switch” it seems to me that the economy of the world would suffer by shutting down the Internet. Culture today depends on a vibrant Internet, and I guess it makes more sense to follow Lady Gaga rather than Prince….not too hard to figure out!

Music Infringement Verdicts Reduced

At the same time Lady Gaga sets the gold standard and Prince doesn’t get it, Judges are reducing jury verdicts for music Copyright infringements significantly. After a second Recording Industry Association of American (RIAA) trial against Jammie Thomas-Rasset’s for Copyright infringement, a jury ruled that the damages were $1.92 million for distributing 24 songs. US District Judge Michael Davis reduced the verdict to $54,000 ($2,250 per song) in January, 2010. Earlier this month US District Judge Nancy Gertner reduced the jury verdict against Joel Tennebaum by 90% ruling that $22,500 per song infringement that there “is no question that this reduced award is still severe, even harsh.” In the trial against Tennebaum, a Ph.D. student at Boston University, the RIAA proved that he downloaded 30 online songs. Judge Gertner wrote:

It not only adequately compensates the plaintiffs for the relatively minor harm that [Joel] Tenenbaum caused them; it sends a strong message that those who exploit peer-to-peer networks to unlawfully download and distribute copyrighted works run the risk of incurring substantial damages awards.

My experience in copyright infringement litigation is that proving damages is not simple. Each case is unique, so the jury must make a determination how willful the infringement is, and then can penalize an infringer up to $150,000 per infringement. Courts will continue to grapple with Copyright infringement constitutional size of damages.  The Tennebaum and Thomas-Rasset cases are important to help understand how juries and judges value online music. Perhaps Prince should spend more time with Social Media so he can get with it, because otherwise he may disappear entirely!

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Google plans to buy ITA Software who provides airline travel utilities to American, Continental, Hotwire, Kayak, Orbitz, Microsoft's Bing, among other companies. Of course this purchase for $700 million will require federal scrutiny given the antitrust implications, but as my friend Erika Morphy reports “Google says it plans to honor all the agreements the firm has with its customers and does not intend to sell airline tickets. Instead, CEO Eric Schmidt said, the company plans to build new flight and fare search tools for travelers.” Google’s attempt to take control over the travel industry is an interesting evolution, but one must wonder if the acquisition of ITA Software will give monopoly power in the travel space to Google.

Google Reviewing My Final Exam Questions?

Since 2000 I have taught courses on the Law of eCommerce at the SMU Dedman School of Law and Google must have gotten the idea about taking over the travel industry from my 2008 Final Exam:

Google hired you to give e-Commerce business advice immediately after announcing that Google bought Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, IBM, Symantec, Adobe, AOL, Amazon, Yahoo!, American Airlines, Delta Airlines, United Airlines, US Air, Southwest Airlines, British Air, Cathay Pacific Air, China Air, Korean Air, Japan Airlines, Airbus, Boeing, Hilton Hotels, Marriott, Starwood, Hyatt Hotels, Hotels.com, Orbitz, and Travelocity. The combined company plans to operate from one main website located at www.google.com.

The government agencies that regulate each of these companies have not approved these mergers, regardless Google intends to begin the new website located at www.google.com  on January 1, 2009.

Assume that each of the acquired entities will continue conducting business in their current field of business.

(1) TERMS OF SERVICE. Write one set of terms of service that will apply to www.google.com.
(2) PRIVACY POLICY. Write one privacy policy that will apply to www.google.com.
(3) ASSUMPTIONS: State all assumptions.

Google got the idea from me. Right? What do you think?
 

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Tweets a plenty were posted announcing that Wikipedia and LinkedIn were down, but one tweet wondered what would happen if Twitter also went down! We are so dependent on these Social Media tools that when these sites go down the communications also disappears….except probably text messages, phone calls, or even face-to-face conversations. If Social Media sites going down for a short time cause shock waves just image what would happened if the President flipped the “Internet Kill Switch?” Or if a Cyber War totally disabled the Internet and Social Media? These events only re-enforce how vulnerable the Internet is and how critical it is that our government does everything possible to protect the Internet.

We All Know that Computers Will Fail

After working with computers for more than 40 years one thing is absolutely clear to me, every computer will fail since that is the inherent design…that is, every component will fail at some point since each component has a mean time between failure. So Internet system designers take into account system failures to avoid Internet down time, or at least minimize down time. Because of the nature of computer technology and its inherent design that they will fail it’s not really much of a surprise that Wikipedia, LinkedIn, and other Social Media sites are reported down from time to time. However we have become so dependent upon Social Media that we are all at a loss about how to communicate during down times!

Good News - More US Broadband

Recent reports announced “that $795 million in grants and loans for broadband deployment projects across the US in all 50 states from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and the US Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service (RUS). The Texas Department of Agriculture recently announced that “More than 96 percent of Texas households have access to home broadband service; however, a quarter of a million households in the Lone Star State - more than all of the households in Vermont - lack access to this critical service.” However if that were really true then it’s unlikely that the NTIA and RUS would be spending so much money. Rural Texas and US do not have broadband services as I know my own personal experience in central Texas, just check the ConnectedTexas.org website to see. We will have 100% broadband coverage in the US someday, and it’s great that the federal government is helping expand broadband.

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Without much public fanfare recently a Senate Committee unanimously approved the bill dubbed “Internet Kill Switch,” which among other things would allow the President to take over civilian networks in case of an emergency. The Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee unanimously approved the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010 (S. 3480) and now moves to the Senate floor for a full vote. Given our economic dependence on the Internet and the amount of energy devoted defending major cyber attacks one might wonder if a more public debate would be wise. Many Internet based companies I represent would simply cease to exist if the President hit the “Internet Kill Switch”!

Who Supports the “Internet Kill Switch”?

Microsoft, Verizon, EMC, Symantec, and others support the proposed law, so there must be something to the proposed Act.  You can be your own judge by reviewing the Senate Committee’s report entitled “Myth v. Reality of Cybersecurity Legislation.” Whether the proposed Act is best for the US is still in debate, however given threats of Cyber War to the Internet something must be done to protect the Internet.

Senator's Interview about the “Internet Kill Switch”

Sponsor of the proposed Act Senator Lieberman recently told CNN’s Candy Crowley about the whether the proposed Act was an “Internet Kill Switch”:

… total misinformation. I don't know whether people are intentionally pedalling misinformation. Here is the fact. Cyber war is going on in some sense right now. Our civilian infrastructure, the Internet that runs the electric grid, the telecommunications grid, transportation, all the rest is constantly being probed by nation states, by some terrorist groups, by organized criminal gangs.

And we need this capacity in a time of war. We need the capacity for the president to say, Internet service provider, we've got to disconnect the American Internet from all traffic coming in from another foreign country, or we've got to put a patch on this part of it.

The president will never take over -- the government should never take over the Internet. Listen, we've consulted, Senator Collins and I, who are proposing this bill, with civil liberties and privacy experts. This is a matter of national security. A cyber attack on America can do as much or more damage today by incapacitating our banks, our communications, our finance, our transportation, as a conventional war attack.

And the president, in catastrophic cases -- not going to do it every day, not going to take it over. So I say to my friends on the Internet, relax... take a look at the bill. And this is something that we need to protect our country. Right now, China, the government, can disconnect parts of its Internet in a case of war. We need to have that here, too.

Seems pretty clear to me that we need public debate and scrutiny of Cyber protection since our culture has become so dependent on the Internet.

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President-Elect Obama’s Twitter account was hacked “offering his more than 150,000 followers a chance to win $500 in free gas.” Twitter settled the FTC’s charges that “that it deceived consumers and put their privacy at risk by failing to safeguard their personal information, marking the agency’s first such case against a social networking service.” In my recent testimony before the Texas Senate I highlighted the problem with violating FTC privacy laws, and obviously this is just the beginning of Social Media claims that we will all deal with about Internet privacy.

FTC Settlement Terms

Here’s what Twitter agreed to as part of its settlement:

Twitter will be barred for 20 years from misleading consumers about the extent to which it protects the security, privacy, and confidentiality of nonpublic consumer information, including the measures it takes to prevent unauthorized access to nonpublic information and honor the privacy choices made by consumers. The company also must establish and maintain a comprehensive information security program, which will be assessed by an independent auditor every other year for 10 years.

Twitter Adds Location to Messages

Recently Twitter announced that it would allow “users tag their messages with their location.” So given the FTC settlement it seems that adding location would seriously impact privacy if one can easily learn when the tweets are originating.

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Viacom lost its $1 billion lawsuit against Google and YouTube for alleged copyright infringement when a judge granted summary judgment. YouTube’s defense was that it used the “safe harbor” protection of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) where YouTube would remove allegedly infringing videos after being notified, and after three offenses a poster would be banned from YouTube. On June 23, 2010 US District Judge Louis Stanton granted YouTube and Google’s motions in defense of claims brought by Via and other plaintiffs. In the 30 page Opinion Judge Stanton pointed out that “over 24 hours of new video-viewing time is uploaded to the YouTube website every minute.”  I know that YouTube is responsive to the DCMA takedown requests because YouTube has removed videos which have infringed copyrights of my clients.  The DCMA takedown procedures rules are part of YouTube's Terms of Service.

Viacom to Appeal

Viacom plans an appeal, but at this moment this appears to be a monumental ruling for Google and YouTube which helps define Copyright law on the Internet. As a trial lawyer my experience is that Judges rarely grant summary judgment (there are no facts in dispute, and the moving party wins on the law without a trial).  It is more likely than not that Google and YouTube will prevail on the appeal since the trial Judge granted summary judgment.  This case is important given size of YouTube and its role in changing Social Media.

YouTube Turns 5

When YouTube celebrated its fifth birthday in May, 2010 it announced that it passed “two billion video views a day.” YouTube has perennially lost money so there were many analysts who criticized Google’s $1.65 billion purchase of YouTube in 2006, which was made worse when Viacom brought its Copyright infringement lawsuit in 2007. YouTube has been developing partnerships with music labels to compete with "Hulu.com, the joint venture of Fox, NBC and ABC." So Judge Stanton’s Order should help clear Google and YouTube’s path for success and bring clarify about the DMCA.

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On Tuesday, June 15th I will speak on the “Social Media Impact on Law” at the Dallas Bar Association Franchise & Distribution Section meeting at noon at Belo Mansion. My speech will include the following topics:

• How Businesses Use Social Media – LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Yelp, Blogs
• Search Engines – Google, Yahoo!, Bing, WolframAlpha
• Privacy and Anonymity
• Terms of Service Jurisdiction
• Protecting Domain Names and Trademarks

Please join me at Belo and I welcome comments about my talk.

Kevin O’Keefe Addressed the State Bar of Texas (SBOT) Annual Meeting

Lexblog founder/CEO and good friend Kevin O’Keefe spoke on Thursday, June 10 in Fort Worth at the SBOT Annual Meeting about his favorite topic – “You Online Presence: Getting it Right, Ethically, with Twitter and Other Social Media.” Also my friend and SBOT web manager John Sirman spoke, and you can read more on Kevin’s blog “Real Lawyers Have Blogs.” Kevin has been an outstanding Social Media leader and I greatly appreciate his enthasiam and sage advice.

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On June 8th I attended Mashable and CNN’s conference about the intersection of digital media, news, and entertainment. Among other notable presentations was CNN’s medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Guptap’s (renowned neurosurgeon) interview of Mashable’s founder Pete Cashmore and CNN.com’s general manager KC Estenson. You can watch the video of the interview about the how CNN collects citizen journalist news from Social Media in addition to its world-wide news professionals, and the merger of Social Media with 24/7 TV. Another fascinating presentation about the “Science of Social Media” was given by Duncan Watts (Yahoo!’s Principal Research Scientist). Clearly the merger of Social Media, TV, and news has happened, but predicting the future is the next challenge.

NEAT BADGE FROM THE EVENT!

Former eBay and HP’s CEOs Win Primaries

Also on June 8th Meg Whitman (former eBay CEO) and Carly Fiorina (former HP CEO) won primary elections for the fall’s election for California governor and US Senator. Of course having high-tech leaders in the US Congress is not entirely new since New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg founded ADP (the payroll processing giant) and was first elected in 1982. But with the advent and growth to Social Media these primary wins are not a surprise.

High-Tech Politics

OpenSecrets.org reported that individuals and political action committees in high-tech businesses increased their donations “43% between election cycles in the last decade” to $41.4 million in 2008. Last year Google increased its lobby expenditures to $4 million. One can only expect more Social Media leaders to pursue elected offices since clearly President Obama proved that Social Media is the most powerful communications tool available today. Be assured that Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and other major Internet and IT companies are involved in future of politics!

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Google demonstrated its new entertainment hub for TV with a browser which includes a joint effort with Sony, Intel and Logitech. As part of the announcement Google explained that “Google TV is a new experience made for television that combines the TV you know and love with the freedom and power of the Internet.” No surprise since it seemed inevitable that the Internet and television would merge a some point and it’s little wonder that Google a first mover!

IT Teams Up with Dairy Farmers

A recent report indicated that manure “from 10,000 cows could provide the power for a small computing center at a bank,” so Google, Microsoft, and HP are building more data centers in more rural areas to capitalize on dairy farmers’ use of cattle waste. “Information technology and manure have a symbiotic relationship,” said Chandrakant D. Patel, the director of H.P.’s sustainable information technology laboratory. How refreshing to see that IT can really be GREEN!

Google’s Woes Continue in the EU About WiFi Data

Things seem to be getting worse in the EU as Spain, France, and the Czech Republic announced plans to investigate collection of WiFi network data which raise the likelihood of EU sanctions. Of course Google takes the position that unsecure WiFi network data is not private and that other companies collect this data in the EU including Skyhook and organizations like the German Fraunhofer Institute. This will be interesting to follow and may have world-wide implications!

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Please join me for a Social Media webcast which will be an update about Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, Yelp, Google, and much more on Wednesday, May 26, 2010 from 12:30-1:30pm CDT. You can sign up for the webcast at TexasBarCLE.

Google Update: Wi-Fi snooping earns it a class-action lawsuit

As a follow-up to my recent blog about Google's Street View Cars captured WiFi network information it is no surprise that many people are mad, but for folks who do not have secure WiFi networks….what should they expect? Stay tuned to see how this develops.
 

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I was honored to be asked by the Texas Senate to testify how Social Media impacts Open Government at a hearing on May 11, 2010 and you are welcome to read my Statement concerning Charge #13 for the Senate Affairs Committee:

Study the Public Information (Open Records) Act and the Open Meetings Act to ensure that government continues to operate in a way that is open and transparent. The study should consider how advances in technology and the emergence of various forms of social media (e.g. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter) have affected communications by and within governmental bodies.

The questions from the Texas Senators were very interesting since the first question was whether governments should do anything to regulate Social Media at all or just let things happen. You can listen to the hearing on the Texas Senate website and the testimony and questions begin about Charge #13 at about 2 hours and 3 minutes into the hearing.

Social Media Activity by Texas Senate Affairs Committee

It seemed like a good exercise to see what the Committee members were doing with Social Media so I prepared this chart as part of my Statement:

Ironically enough the Committee Chair Senator Robert Duncan was unaware that he was on Twitter until his staff advised him during the hearing. This only proves that elected officials have to be active with Social Media because it’s part of deal today and also why 430 Members of Congress have YouTube pages. Social Media is the way the world communicates and elected officials are participants.

Should Blogs and Social Media be Public Meetings?

The Texas Senate hearing was very timely since it was on the heels of the April 7, 2010 White House Memo declaring that posting blogs and Social Media are public meetings. This Memo is interesting and perplexing in that few people who post on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc really think that everything about the public consequences. However when government employees post items on Social Media using government computers or during the workday they are not private citizens and there are consequences to what they say. Legislators in the US Congress and in the States need to be mindful about Social Media, however Social Media changes is not static nor can any laws to attempt to regulate Social Media.

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No surprise that Google’s search engine continues to grow at the expense of Yahoo! and Microsoft’s Bing. Hitwise now reports April 2010: Google at 71.4%, Yahoo! down 1% to to 14.96%, Bing down 2% to 9.43%, Ask down 37% to 2.18%, and the remaining 78 search engines accounted for 2.03%. As these search engine wars continue it seems pretty clear where we are headed. However antitrust issues are on the horizon!

EU confirms Google antitrust probe

The EU Commission confirmed that 3 complaints were filed and Google’s blog indicated that:

The complaints filed with the Commission came from U.K. price comparison site Foundem, a French legal search engine called eJustice.fr, and a German search site called Ciao that was recently acquired by Microsoft Corp. Google pointed out in its blog that Foundem is a member of a trade group called iComp, which is largely funded by Microsoft.

Given Bing decline it’s no wonder that Microsoft is pushing the EU to try to reduce Google’s control over the search engine market.

New Look: Google Search Engine Reults

To make Google even more user-friendly Google has evolved and morphed into a new look again. Check out Google’s new search engine results:

However, look closely since Google is now asking if users want Google to access to their location...privacy redflag if ever there be one!  Stay tuned for more Google in the market as Google dominates the search engine market and much more!

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Is HP’s purchase of Palm for $1.2 billion seems too little too late for HP to compete in the smart phone market? As the largest manufacturer of computers in the world it does seem like HP should be in the smart phone market, and yet few people realize that HP already sells the iPaq which isn’t even in the top 20 in the smart phone market and falling rapidly. The iPaq is primarily sold to businesses and relies on the Microsoft operating system. Which is not where the market appears headed. So HP’s purchase of Palm may have saved the brand for a while, but the odds are not great for success against the power of Apple and RIM (iPhone and BlackBerry) to name a few. However, it’s definitely worth watching given HP’s market power. Remember HP acquired Compaq and EDS  and Dell acquired Perot Systems to grow hardware and services markets, and the smart phone is critical.

Apple Purchases Fast Chip Manufacturer

While HP purchased Palm, Apple announced its purchase of Intrinsity “known for making zippy versions of a computer chip often found in mobile devices.” Surely this gives Apple more power for its future while making HP’s seem even later to this dance.

No Surprise – Now a Degree in Video Game Design

George Mason University now offers a video game design. Given the size of this market it’s no wonder that such a degree is now offered. It’s a marvel that video game design degrees are just getting started and surely more schools will offers degrees in this space. No doubt HP and Apple will have a role in the video game future, and between smart phones, iPads, and computers this evolution is interesting to observe.

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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerman recently announced significant changes to Facebook expanding 100’s of websites with "open graph" and  “like” which may revolutionize the Internet. At the annual f8 Facebook outside developers’ conference on April 21, 2010 Zuckerman demonstrated "open graph" and how the use of “like” on hundreds of websites (including Yelp, CNN, Pandora, ESPN, and IMDb) will allow the 400+ million friends to share their likes which in turn will be posted to their Facebook pages. According to Mashable.com Facebook “has created a platform that allows sites and apps to share information about users in order to tailor offers, features and services to each one’s interests and tastes — even if that individual has never visited the site before.” Zuckerman explained how most information on the Internet is lost in time once posted, referring to a tweets, text messages, and the like, but the new Facebook "open graph" and "like" will permit information to live forever on the Internet.

Microsoft Docs on Facebook

In conjunction with the f8 conference Microsoft announced a new beta for Docs on Facebook to facilitate access to Microsoft apps through Facebook that “allows users to create, edit and share Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents via the new Docs.com Website. Users can then share those documents with their Facebook friends, as well as give them editing privileges.” Microsoft’s collaboration with Microsoft is clearly competition for Google, Google apps, and the new Google Buzz.

Senator Doesn’t “Like” Facebook’s Instant Personalization Features

Under the new "open graph" and "like" Facebook automatically changed the privacy features, so within days of Facebook’s announcement Senator Charles Schumer of New York wrote a letter to the FTC “urging them to create privacy guidelines for Facebook and other social networking sites.” We need to watch closely to see what, if anything, the FTC may do. My blog on January 14, 2010 included a link to an interview with Zuckerman where he commented that the age of privacy is over. So perhaps he was referring to the new "open graph" and "like" features may be part of his plan to actually make that happen

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On Thursday, April 22, 2010 the TexasBarCLE will present my webcast from 12:30-1:30pm CDT about Internet Intellectual Property (IP) issues. Actually these topics are also found in the syllabus and PowerPoints from my Law of eCommerce class at SMU Dedman School of Law which I will teach again in the fall of 2010. Interesting how much the Internet and the law have changed since I first taught the class in 2000. Certainly we can expect more change in Internet IP law since we are awaiting the US Supreme Court’s ruling about software patent in a case heard in November 2009 -in re Bilski.

Please join me on Thursday for the Internet IP webcast.

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A Chinese graduate student’s “paper on how to attack a small U.S. power grid sub-network in a way that would cause a cascading failure of the entire U.S.” was recently reported to the US House Foreign Affairs Committee. The paper entitled “Cascade-Based Attack Vulnerability on the U.S. Power Grid” was published in Safety Science a year ago. American scientists who read the paper agreed that there was no way that the power grid could be taken down as explained in the paper. Famous last words! The US is barely managing Cybersecurity and this paper should give us all pause to consider the implications.

Google Set to Depart

China is demanding that Google obey Chinese law as it departs which seem imminent now. Since Google entered China in 2006 it has been censoring content just as “China routinely blocks Internet content, shutting off access to sites such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.” The dominant search engine in China, Baidu continues to be successful albeit with Chinese censorship. Time will tell about other US based Internet companies such as Microsoft and whether they will stay in China and participate in Chinese censorship.

Chinese Media Furor

A recent report about a Chinese provincial Governor’s response to a scandal led to “rare display of unity, journalists, lawyers, academics and activists posted a letter of protest on the Internet demanding the Governor’s resignation.” Li Hongzhong, the Governor of Hubei Province, was incensed that a reporter had the gall to question him about a waitress at a karaoke bar killed a government official in self-defense. The waitress was later released and the Governor got a lot of heat on the Internet. Given the economic power and population, the Internet will continue to impact China whether the Chinese government wants the Internet impact or not.

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Hitwise reports that Facebook became the most visited website in the US for the first time. Kind of takes your breath away that a social media site is getting more traffic than the largest search engine in the US. Since Facebook just went over 400 million users this was probably inevitable, but since Facebook is also starting its own email system, Titan, it’s likely Facebook traffic will continue to expand.

Internet Jurisdiction Makes Life Interesting

My friend Victoria Van Buren blogged about my Texas Bar Journal Article for March about Internet Jurisdiction, but the March 2010 issue is entitled “The Attorney and Social Media” and here are other articles of interest:

My friend John Browning organized these articles which I think are most timely and interesting.

3rd Circuit Bars Child Porn Prosecution of Teen in Sexting Photo

Some headline in the ABA Journal that “upheld an injunction that bars the child pornography prosecution of a teen girl in Pennsylvania who appeared topless in a photo that ended up on high school students’ cell phones.” The court did reach the question whether sexting photos are free speech protected under the First Amendment because the prosecutor over-reacted and threatened the teenager. Unfortunately we will continue to see more sexting cases as Web 2.0 grows whether we like it or not.

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The recent conviction of 3 Google executives in Italy for a video posted on Google which showed the bullying of a disable teenager captured many headlines. No question that the video was in poor taste and Google took the video down within 24 hours of its posting after Google got 2 complaints. The conviction of the Google’s global privacy counsel, Peter Fleischer and two other executives raises significant issues. A fourth Google executive was acquitted, and Google plans to appeal these convictions. Does it make sense that Google, or any other ISP (Internet Service Provider), be liable for content posted over which the ISP has no control? The US Communications Decency Act of 1996 protects ISPs from liability since they have no control over content posted. How Google fares with these convictions may have an interesting impact on ISPs around the world.

Google Street View May Breach EU Law

Only to make things more complicated recent reports that the Google’s Street View violates EU Data Protection laws since they retain the images for too long. As well it was reported that “Switzerland’s data-protection agency in November sued Google for allegedly failing to comply with proposals to make it harder to identify people and cars on Street View.” Of course disputes regarding Street View are not new since claims of breach of privacy have been under way since at least 2008 in Japan.

Google has More EU Antitrust Problems

ComScore recently reported that Google has about 79% of the searches in the EU and the EU renewed its investigation about Google anticompetitive behavior. Google claims that Microsoft may be the source of the investigation since Microsoft owns one of the companies that complained. It seems reasonable to assume that the search engine wars will continue, but how the EU ultimately rules may have a far reaching impact.

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The Robert S. Mueller III's (FBI Director) warning is not a surprise but how the IT community deals with these threats impact us all. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano “admitted there is an urgent need to step up efforts to protect Americans from cyber attacks.” Also Ms. Napolitano’s predecessor Michael Chertoff, former DHS secretary, under President George W Bush, agreed. "We are seeing in the intervening time the adversaries, whether they be criminals or nation states or terrorists, are not taking time off. So with each passing year, the need to move faster becomes greater." So far new the Cyber Czar as been low profile, but based on these presentations at the recent RSA Conference that low profile cannot continue.

Cyber Crime: A Clear and Present Danger

Deloitte’s recent white paper is the result of the 2010 CSO (Chief Security Officer) CyberSecurity Watch Survey in conjunction with the CSO Magazine, the US Secret Service, and the CERT Coordination Center at Carnegie Mellon. The white paper concludes that:

Data is more valuable than money. Once spent, money is gone, but data can be used and reused to produce more money. The ability to reuse data to access on-line banking applications, authorize and activate credit cards, or access organization networks has enable cyber criminals to create an extensive archive of data for ongoing illicit activities.

There is a clear message about how vulnerable businesses are and how every business must be vigilant or risk great damages.

Tweet this: Social Network Security is Risky Business

With the recent report of 50 million tweets a day it’s no wonder that a panel at the RSA Conference devoted a great deal of discussion to how vulnerable social networks are. Cybercrime is so easy because users of Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace are easy marks since the feel at ease communicating with their “friends.” However cybercriminals can more easily Web 2.0 commit cyber crime because most “…users are willing to click if they think, 'It's my friend. I'm OK, because I'm inside my network and that's Fred. Only it's not Fred, it's Fred's hijacked account." So all in all, things are becoming more dangerous and apparently businesses and web 2.0 social networkers are still not getting the scope of their risk!
 

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Computerworld reported that 600 tweets are sent per second - 50 million per day which is significant for many reasons. Not the least of which is that 3 years ago Twitter handled 5,000 tweets per day! As well, in early 2009 Twitter raised $35 Million in its third round of financing with no business plan. What’s not clear if 10% of those sending tweets account for 80% of the total volume. Obviously something is happening to cause Twitter’s amazing growth, and it bears watching.

Yahoo, Twitter in deal to share content

A report from the LA Times states that Jim Stoneham, vice president of communities for Yahoo! described the Yahoo! deal with Twitter:

…will enable users to take material from both sites without having to leave either one. Specifically, users will be able to access their Twitter feed on Yahoo's sites. They will also be able to update their Twitter status and share content from Yahoo. And Yahoo search and media properties will include Twitter updates.

Hopefully this will help revive Yahoo!’s fortunes and expand Twitter’s reach.

Doonesbury Character Roland Hedley Tweets with 14,000 Followers

Followers of tweets was made a little more interesting in a recent National Public Radio story of “Roland Hedley, a fictional Fox News correspondent created by cartoonist Garry Trudeau, has attracted more than 14,000 followers since he began "tweeting."” As a matter of fact, Garry Trudeau wrote a book about tweets from Roland Hedley entitled My Shorts R Bunching. Thoughts?: The Tweets of Roland Hedley. So maybe all 50 Million tweets a day are not all that serious if a cartoon character tweets regularly! Nonetheless this is worth watching given these astonishing numbers.

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After the news reports about the cyber attacks in China it’s no wonder that that more than “75,000 computer systems at nearly 2,500 companies in the United States and around the world have been hacked in what appears to be one of the largest and most sophisticated attacks by cyber criminals discovered to date.” Unfortunately those computer systems hacked included the US government, “educational institutions, energy firms, financial companies, and Internet service providers. “ Included were access to “e-mail systems, online banking accounts, Facebook, Yahoo, Hotmail and other social network credentials, along with more than 2,000 digital security certificates and a significant cache of personal identity information.” Doesn’t sound much security given these facts, and this is pretty scary since we now have a Cyber Czar to protect us.

Kneber bot

Amit Yoran, NetWitness's chief executive reported how the Kneber bot was launched in this attack on the +75,000 computer systems:

The hackers lured unsuspecting employees at targeted firms to download infected software from sites controlled by the hackers, or baited them into opening e-mails containing the infected attachments, Yoran said. The malicious software, or "bots," enabled the attackers to commandeer users' computers, scrape them for log-in credentials and passwords -- including to online banking and social networking sites -- and then exploit that data to hack into the systems of other users, Yoran said. The number of penetrated systems grew exponentially.

Clearly educating employees is critical to avoid such attacks in the future, but what’s the likelihood of avoiding these kind of disasters? Not good!

Privacy at Home? - School Official Defended in Webcam Spy Case

The Lower Merion School District (in suburban Philadelphia) acknowledged that the District remotely activated webcams inside students’ homes, but the District claimed it was only to find missing, lost or stolen laptops. However a student and his parents filed a federal civil rights suit alleging violation of wiretap laws and violation of privacy. Among other problems created was that allegedly the District thought a piece of candy was a pill and that the student was selling drugs. This reminds me of Big Brother from George Orwell’s 1984. he just missed the year!

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EPIC (Electronic Privacy Information Center) filed a complaint with the FTC that Google’s new Buzz significantly breached “consumers' expectations of privacy.” Many complaints were made after Google’s recent launch of Buzz, because Buzz automatically created “public circles of friends for users based on their most frequent Gmail contacts.” EPIC wants the FTC to order Google to make Buzz “opt-in.” What this means to Google’s social media evolution will be interesting to watch.

HEADLINE: “Facebook directs more online users than Google”

At the same time that Google’s social media is taking center stage a report was released that indicates that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is being replaced with Social Media Optimization (SMO):

“According to Web measurement firm Compete Inc., Facebook has passed search-engine giant Google to become the top source for traffic to major portals like Yahoo and MSN, and is among the leaders for other types of sites.”

There’s no rocket science to understand that Facebook’s 400 million friends have changed communications forever and SMO’s impact of search engines and SEO cannot be ignored. As Facebook rolls out its Titan email system SMO is certain to expand.

Aardvark joins Google!

At the same time of this Buzz controversy Google purchased Aardvark which is interesting since Vark.com “has defined a new kind of social search: sometimes you want a person, not a web page, to answer your question.” SMO and SEO are in the middle of Google’s evolution. This is a lot to digest at one time. Stay tuned.

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Hard to believe that Facebook turned 6 with another milestone- 400 million friends! According to Facebook 50% logon on any given day and 35 million update their status each day. Since it took Facebook 4 ½ years to reach 100 million friends in August 2008, the current growth rate is pretty incredible. What this portends is hard to image, but growth sure seem likely.  Just look at these statistics from Facebook:

Facebook’s Project Titan – Gmail Killer?

In the meantime reports came out that “Facebook is completely rewriting their messaging product and is preparing to launch a fully featured webmail product in its place… unofficially and perhaps over-enthusiastically, the Gmail killer.” Whether Titan is the Gmail killer is probably beside the point as the critical issue here is that Facebook is expanding into webmail to help its 400 million friends communicate more efficiently.

Gmail Adds New Features

Not so fast for Titan being a Gmail killer as reports also came out that “Google Inc. is taking a swipe at Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. with a new feature that makes it easier for users of Gmail to view media and status updates shared online by their friends.” One might wonder if Google was watching Facebook’s Titan and needed to offer new Gmail services to compete. Interesting dynamics for Web 2.0 which this blog will continue to monitor!

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My “Pool Ball Theory” is that if pool balls are not moving on a pool table the probabilty that a ball will fall in a pocket is ZERO, and my business opportunities will be ZERO if I don’t continually network. The Internet has expanded networking, and thankfully I started this blog in 2008 as part of networking. As well I actively participate in LinkedIn, Facebook, and other Web 2.0 activities….so the pool balls keep moving on the table!

Real Lawyers Have Blogs

While in New York this week for LegalTech I had breakfast at my favorite deli, The Stage on 7th Avenue, with my blog host Kevin O’Keefe (CEO at LexBlog) and Jake Ludington (VP of Product Development at LexBlog). Over breakfast we discussed the “Pool Ball Theory” and lots of other topics about how Social Networking is changing the practice of law and society. Overall LegalTech was a great experience as I got to see many old friends and make many new friends.

Pool Ball Theory Not Related to Mike Shamos

Dr. Michael Ian Shamos is a graduate school colleague and friend of many years who teaches eCommerce courses. Mike is the Distinguished Career Professor, Institute for Software Research International and Language Technologies Institute, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University. But Mike is also a world renowned Pool and Billiards expert who houses the largest library in the world about Pool and Billiards in his home. As well he is the author of a number of books on the subject including The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Billiards. Just so there’s no confusion, Mike had nothing to do with my “Pool Ball Theory!” Nonetheless Mike’s participation in the evolution of the Internet has been longstanding and I know that he uses the Internet to network as much as I.
 

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Google added two new links for “My social circle” and “My social content” that permit Social Networking searches! This blending of the most popular search engine in the US with social networking is getting more interesting since “Google is striking real-time deals with both Facebook and MySpace. Updates from public pages on Facebook will appear in Google real-time search, as will any publicly posted comments on MySpace.” In the future hundreds of millions of friends on Facebook and MySpace will use Google to search.

Google “Show Options”

Many people may not have noticed that when you do a Google Search the results displays “Show options” which includes the following:

So whenever you do a Google search you can click on “>Any time, Latest” and you will find information that just happened seconds before. This service now permits real time searching rather than purely historical.

Twitter on Google and Bing

To make things a little more interesting Google just announced that it will add live results from Twitter searches. However Bing already has an early version http://www.bing.com/twitter. With the tremendous growth of Social Networking now blending into search engines seems logical and inevitable. Even though Google gives pointers on how to protect oneself with these new social network searches, Google still keeps searches for 18 months. It makes one wonder how private everyone’s information really is on Social Networks or Google.
 

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With all the press about the disaster for Google in China somebody had to benefit, and it turns out the predominant search engine Baidu will be the big winner. Baidu had 63.9% and Google had about 31.3% of China’s search engine’s market before the December attacks. Ironically Baidu was started by Li Yanhong, a.k.a. Robin Li in 2000 when he raised $26.2 million in venture funding including a modest investment from Google. Today Baidu has 7,000 employees and market value of $16.2 billion, however Google sold its stake in 2006. Google entered China in 2006 with an agreement to censor certain topics.  But whether Google departs or not, Baidu is sure to grow since many users of Google are worried about security. Of course that is ironic since many in China believe that Baidu censored a great deal more than Google.cn. 

Attack on Google

Apparently the attack on Google was through a security hole in Microsoft’s browser Internet Explorer (IE) including these versions:

IE 6 Service Pack 1 on Microsoft Windows 2000 SP4 has the bug. Moreover, the flaw exists in IE 6, IE 7 and IE 8 on supported editions of Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7, plus Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

Some pundits are wondering why Google was using IE rather than Google’s browser Chrome, which is an interesting issue aside from the attack.

Microsoft's Ballmer: We're Staying in China

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer committed to stay in China even though Google appears to be ready to leave. “Google has been in China since 2006 operating under an agreement with the government that has the search giant purge banned topics from its Chinese search results. But the recent attack has Google saying it will no longer censor results per Chinese law and the company is threatening to pull out of the country altogether. “ Since Microsoft recently announced its plan to grow its search engine Bing in China it’s no wonder that Microsoft may stay notwithstanding censorship and vulnerability with IE.

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My good friend Kevin Campbell (CIO at Hunt Oil) told me recently that about 5 years ago he removed the TVs from his home with great protest from his kids, but they did keep 2 computers hooked up to the Internet. One evening last fall Kevin’s wife asked him to check on the pending storm on the western horizon Kevin checked on weather.com. Kevin reported back a few minutes later about the latest radar report. In the meantime Kevin’s 20 year daughter reported about strong winds, lightening, and heavy rain which was not part of the weather.com’s website report. When asked where his daughter got her information, of course she just pinged friends on Facebook who lived to the Campbell’s west where the storm was brewing. I guess Kevin’s reliance on going to a website rather than use a Web 2.0 social network source shows a different perspective on getting current information!

2010 Election Year

Adding to the reality of 2010 Web 2.0 politics that 430 Members of Congress are now on YouTube, the Washington Post reported that a Facebook lobbyist is now tutoring Members of Congress:

Inside the headquarters of the National Republican Congressional Committee, 25-year-old Adam Conner -- registered Facebook lobbyist, poster of multiple Obama attaboys and a guy whose Facebook photo is a grizzly bear wielding two chainsaws -- sits down to teach a course. The subject: How to use Facebook better. His student: Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.).

Not much of a surprise given President Obama’s successful campaign and the reality of the down economy means fewer political contributions. So if candidates want to get re-elected (or just elected) they have to use Web 2.0!

Texting is for Real

A former partner recently told me that his daughter sent a text to his wife – “OMG!!!” So his wife called their daughter, and when there was no answer she sent the daughter a text “What’s this about?” The daughter sent a text reply “I’m marrying Jim next summer!” All text, all the time. Web 2.0 will mean be a different year for politics since so many people now rely on texting, Facebook, MySpace, et al. It will be interesting to see how 2010 elections turn out.
 

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The EU finally concluded its antitrust case against Microsoft by allowing customers to select browsers from a variety of 12 options including Google (Chrome), Apple (Safari), Mozilla (Firefox), and Opera. Under the plan “in March Microsoft will issue an update that enables the more than 100 million European users of Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 to choose among a variety of browsers available for installation in addition to -- or instead of -- its Internet Explorer.” Since Microsoft will remain liable for fines it is likely that Internet Explorer’s market share will decline to the benefit of others.

How Can Bing Compete in China?

Microsoft recently announced that it planned to enlarge Bing (its search engine) in China:

"Microsoft is committed to the China market and the search market in China is the most important strategic market for Microsoft," Microsoft told Reuters on Dec. 29. "We specifically set the search technology center in China to get a deeper understanding of what Chinese users need, to be able to deliver the best product to them."

However:

“According to research company Analysys International, as cited by Reuters, Chinese search engine Baidu currently leads the country's search engine market with 63.9 percent, followed by Google with 31.3 percent. Meanwhile, another research company estimated that Bing (which launched in China in June, and is still technically a beta) occupied less than 1 percent of the Chinese search engine market in the second quarter of 2009.”

So the likelihood of a Bing’s success seems remote any time soon.

Google Still Dominates

Since Google’s search engine continues to grow in the US and China it seems unlikely that Microsoft can make any inroads unless Microsoft changes its business plans. There is an increase in the use of cloud computing for business around the world which makes it debatable if users need new operating systems to replace older systems whether Microsoft, Apple, or Linux. Right now it is hard to tell how Microsoft’s new operating system Windows 7 will fare. If it is not a fabulous success, maybe Microsoft will only get smaller throughout the world.

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Web 2.0 must be for real, how else can anyone explain Members of Congress find YouTube, Twitter, Blogs, and Facebook the most effective way to communicate in 2009? Today NPR (National Public Radio) interviewed Republican strategist Mindy Finn (a partner and blogger at the political consulting firm Engage who helped Virginia Gov.-elect Bob McDonnell) said that "Members who don't have a lot of say or don't have much of a voice in Congress can use social media to talk directly to their constituents, to voters and to activists." Finn went on to say “"In the past, they might put out a press release and nobody picks it up. But now if they build up a network of blogger support, if they have a presence on Facebook or on Twitter, and they put out that same information, it can go virally across the Internet."

YouTube Offering Text Captioning

Google recently announced that it is making YouTube accessible to deaf and hearing impaired Internet users. Since the captions are English-language speech only the power of Google’s 51 languages will allow for automatic translation to millions of people around the world who do not speak English. This technology is not new and Google currently uses it to transcribe voice mail messages into .wav files with Google Voice. Of course this technology is not perfect but offers a dramatic impact on world-wide communications.

Federal Trade Commission Examining Google Acquisition of AdMob

What will happen if AdMob, one of the top sellers of iPhone banner ad apps and web pages, becomes part of Google’s empire? This acquisition would position Google to be a major player in the mobile advertising ecosystem and expand Google’s market power. It does not take rocket science to see that Members of Congress are taking advantage of YouTube and Web 2.0, so surely they will capitalize on mobile ad which Google can see. Without question President Obama’s use of Web 2.0 vaulted him into the White House, and clearly Members of Congress depend on Web 2.0 to be relevant and communicate with their constituents. Wonder what will happen with Web 3.0 in the future and its impact on politics?

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Months after declaring the importance of CyberSecurity as a national priority President Obama will name Howard Schmidt as Cyber Czar today. “Schmidt served as special adviser for cyberspace security from 2001 to 2003 and shepherded the National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace, a plan that then was largely ignored. He left that job also frustrated, colleagues said.”

Not the Rock Star that the President Was Looking For

Schmidt appears to have the right credentials. Before he joined the Bush administration he work as Chief Security Officer at Microsoft and later VP and Chief Information Security Officer at eBay.  Before the appointment Schmidt was head of the Information Security Forum (ISF) a cybersecurity research consortium. “In addition to his role leading the ISF, He's the chief executive of R&H Security Consulting and serves on the board of several security companies including PGP, Fortify, and BigFix. He's served as vice chair of the President's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board and as chief security strategist for the US CERT Partners Program under the Department of Homeland Security.”

Cyber Czar Not Part of Cabinet

Based on the May 2009 Cyberspace Policy Review Schmidt will report to both the National Security Council and National Economic Council, but will not part of the President’s Cabinet. There were many reports that no one wanted the Cyber Czar job and that’s probably because there are so many federal agencies in the mix including NSA, CIA, Justice, and DOD. It will be interesting to see how well the new Cyber Czar will succeed. Time will tell and everyone will be watching!

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No surprise that a judicial ethics opinion would restrict Judges from becoming Facebook friends with lawyers who appear before them as it might give the impression of bias, but actually the opinion is broader and extends to any social networking site.

The impact of this Florida Ethics Advisory is difficult to predict, because the Florida Ethics Opinion stated “This opinion should not be interpreted to mean that the inquiring judge is prohibited from identifying any person as a "friend" on a social networking site. Instead, it is limited to the facts presented by the inquiring judge, related to lawyers who may appear before the judge.”

Where Is Social Networking Headed for the Judiciary?

Judges are elected to office in many states and in Texas (my home state) Judges run in partisan elections, however in the larger metropolitan communities few citizens know the Judicial candidates, only the lawyers. So lawyers are the normally the only ones to support political campaign and we even publicly endorse Judicial candidates. Contributing money in support of Judicial candidate sounds more biased that merely being a friend on Facebook.

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In 3 months Facebook grew another 16.7% to 350 friends worldwide which has led Facebook to create a simpler privacy policy to allow users to control who sees “each individual piece of content you create or upload.” All the more amazing since Facebook grew 200% between August 2008 and August 2009. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s recent blog that stating among other things that 50% of Facebook friends are member of regional networks, and today there are networks for the entire countries of India and China. The new plan is to remove these regional networks and hopefully create a simpler network and improve its privacy policy.

Facebook Statistics Are Amazing

The current Facebook statistics are pretty incredible and particularly that 35 million (10%) of the Facebook friends update their status every day:

• 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day
• More than 35 million users update their status each day
• More than 55 million status updates posted each day
• More than 2.5 billion photos uploaded to the site each month
• More than 3.5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each week
• More than 3.5 million events created each month
• More than 1.6 million active Pages on Facebook
• More than 700,000 local businesses have active Pages on Facebook
• Pages have created more than 5.3 billion fans

So is it any wonder that Facebook needs to be vigilant in managing personal information of its friends and users. Time will tell how Facebook’s privacy policy works out.

Google Searches for 2009 - Facebook is Number 2!

As 2009 ends Computerworld announced the top search engine hits for the year and of course Michael Jackson was number one, but Google’s number two search of the year was Facebook! Also on Google’s top 10 list of searches was “Twitter, Windows 7 and Tuenti, which is a Madrid-based, invitation only social networking site that some call the Spanish Facebook.” AOL and Yahoo! also listed Michael Jackson as the top searched name, but from the lists varied widely- “AOL and Yahoo! lists popular search terms like '70s icon Farrah Fawcett, who also died this year, socialite Kim Kardashian, singer Rihanna and actress Megan Fox.” Interesting message about the search engine wars that Google, AOL, and Yahoo! would be so different.

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Google just announced that will it “will find full-text legal opinions from federal and state courts.” It had to happen at some point, so it’s not a tremendous surprise that Google would expand its services to include legal research. However will courts rely on Google as a cited authority? Maybe not, since few Judges rely on Wikipedia as authority. However  Wikipedia currently has more than 3.1 million articles (and growing) maybe that will change. Also since more than 65% of all US searches are made on Google, maybe Courts will soon rely on Google as an authority.  Time will tell!

Google - More Mapping

Google’s recent announcement of free turn-by-turn navigation including maps in the US certainly sent shockwaves throughout the navigation world. However since Google does not have maps throughout Europe there are also reports that Google is teaming with Automotive Navigation Data (AND) “a Netherlands-based digital map provider, to get detailed mapping data of Europe.” However there are disputes in a number of countries including Japan and the UK that are up in arms that Google is collecting pictures of neighborhoods and streets.

Future of Google in the Courts

With its value increasing to more than $32 billion is it any wonder that Google continues to offer new services? Where this is ultimately headed is really the great question. It was not very clear that when Google purchase Postini a few years ago that Google was posturing itself to enter the eDiscovery fray. However since virtually every Judge knows of Google surely how far wrong could a litigant go by relying on Google and Postini to manage eMail for eDiscovery?

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The National Public Radio (NPR) interview of Thomas Bleha last Saturday should be a wake-up call the US government. Bleha’s recent book entitled Overtaken on the Information Superhighway was the subject of the NPR interview and actually not a major surprise. The Internet may have invented in the US, but today the US lags behind in providing high speed broadband access. Among other things, Bleha commented that Clinton Administration made the Internet a high priority but went on to blame the Bush Administration that was just not interested and relied on private business to build a high speed Internet network in the US, but that never happened.

US Government Appears Paralyzed

The US National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) just reported to the Congress that there are about 2,200 grant applications to fund broadband infrastructure which total about $28 billion although only $4 billion is currently available (of the total $7.2 billion allocated). So the NTIA is wading through these grant applications and as result delaying the process even further. The Federal Communications Commission issued a report about the same time that “a lack of a broadband subsidy program… contributed to gaps in broadband adoption in the U.S.” In the meantime nothing is moving ahead!

What’s Going Elsewhere?

The UK still plans to bring broadband internet service to every home by 2012, but it does not seem likely in the US in foreseeable future at all. Bleha pointed out that the average Internet speed in the US is 5 megabits per second, but in Japan the average Internet speed is 60 megabits per second…a whopping 12 times faster. As a result Japan can provide great Internet services of all sorts. Clearly something has to change to improve broadband Internet in the US, but when?

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No major changes in the war over search engines in past two months, first place Google grew to 65.4% (+.5%), second place Yahoo! declined to 18% (-.8%), and third place Bing (Microsoft’s newly named engine formerly “Live Search) grew to 9.9% (+.5%). Interestingly the two greatest search increases are for YouTube (+7%) and Bing (+8). So messages can we get from the US search engine competition? Well for starters Google’s and Bing’s growth make sense, but what about the decline for Yahoo!? These numbers may make a Microsoft Bing alliance with Yahoo! more likely.

Wolfram|Alpha -Bing’s New Ingredient?

Microsoft recently announced that Bing would add an enhancement that relies on the computational information from the relatively new search engine named Wolfram|Alpha. There is a video interview of Stephen Wolfram on a Microsoft blog in which he says "What we’re seeing with Microsoft and Bing now is a first step toward taking computational knowledge and deploying it in an application, in this case a search engine."

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

I assume everyone knows that the SEO industry has grown dramatically over the past 14 years (since the 4th Big Bang of free Internet Explorer with Windows 95), and one can even get a SEO Certification. Of course SEO is a success because Google and most search engines save all user inquiries for 18 months so that search engines can monetize this information and also as by-product maybe help improve the value of searches for users and websites. Stay tuned as SEO and search engines continue to evolve.

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Alarming Headline: Eight indicted for $9 million hack

No one is really surprised by this recent headline that 8 individuals (at least three of whom were in Estonia, Russia, and Moldova) were indicted in a $9 million hack within 12 hours after breaking into a computer network operated by credit-card processing vendor RBS WorldPlay. Allegedly counterfeit debit “cards were used to withdraw more than $9 million from more than 2,100 ATMs in about 280 cities worldwide, including cities in the U.S., Russia, Ukraine, Estonia, Italy, Hong Kong, Japan and Canada.”

Daily Computer and Internet Threats

In the meantime headline after headline show how vulnerable our computer networks and the Internet are, but to add more complications the federal government also has budget restraints. Clearly we have to improve the protection our financial and defense systems. Without question the public deserves better than what’s going on now. Something has to change otherwise everyone is at risk. However just appointing a person as Cyber Czar is not enough, as it will take commitments from governments around the world. Computer and Internet crime is not new, but it's time to get control over it because it seems we are more vulnerable than ever!

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With a barrage of antitrust headlines it hard to know which one has the greatest impact on the Internet and IT community. But clearly New York’s antitrust filing against Intel in Delaware is near the top of the list. Why Delaware? Apparently NY is using the on-going Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) antitrust suit against Intel as a form of piling on, not to mention that AMD is building a new $4.2 billion plant in NY. NY’s antitrust claims are a lot like the EU antitrust findings that Intel’s business practice of paying computer manufacturers rebates and incentives for using Intel chips rather than those of AMD (or anyone else).

Oracle’s Plan to Acquire Sun Hit an EU Roadblock

Apparently the EU is not pleased that Oracle, the database market leader, intends to acquire Sun which owns the open source database product MySQL without selling off MySQL. The EU is concerned about Oracle’s competitors Microsoft and IBM even though Oracle is the dominant database company. But some think that Oracle’s acquisition of Sun and My SQL will be transformational to the IT industry by providing a different market against Microsoft.

Challenge to EU Browser Settlement

Google, Mozilla, and Opera are still concerned about the Microsoft settlement even though the EU approved Microsoft’s plan to allow customers a choice of browsers, not automatically only provide Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Net Applications recent market share reports indicates that “Internet Explorer has a 67 percent share of the global browser market,... Firefox has 24 percent, Apple’s Safari, 4.4 percent, Google’s Chrome, 3.5 percent, and Opera, 2 percent.” On the surface it seems that Microsoft’s competitors should be able to increase their EU market share based on the settlement, but stay tuned to see how the EU reacts to these new complaints.

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Great news and I guess the FBI is following my blog! The day following my blog about large scale phishing attacks the FBI reported that “law enforcement authorities in California, Nevada and North Carolina arrested 33 people Wednesday as part of an international crackdown on "phishing," e-mail scams that trick people into giving personal and financial data to counterfeit Web sites.”

Phishing Scam Spooked FBI Director Off E-Banking

Really great to know that even the FBI Director Robert Mueller almost fell for a phishing scam. So clearly if Director Mueller is susceptible, isn’t everyone? Everyone needs to be careful.

Good Advice- Read the Phishing Emails

As I blogged that Paypal contacted me, but I didn’t fall for the scam…it was pretty obvious because the email I got was misspelled:.    (ending with a capital eye rather than a small l) so look closely at the email I received and decide if you would respond to an email like this:

If people read emails and see that PayPaI is misspelled or the content doesn’t add up…they should think twice before responding...and hopefully advoid falling for the latest phishing scam!
 

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Apparently large scale phishing attacks resulted in compromises to tens of thousands of webmail accounts, hardly a surprise. However it is pretty amazing that so many individuals fall for the phishing tricks. As a matter of fact this morning I got an email purportedly from PayPal indicating that my account had been hacked and if I would only provide personal information including credit card information, social security number, date of birth, well you get it. Of course it would be incredibly stupid for me, or thousands of these phishing victims to believe the emails that come to our inboxes. What can we do to protect ourselves?

OnGuard Online

Apparently few people take the time to review OnGuard Online before they get duped by phishing and spam attacks. However the OnGuard Online is a great website hosted by a number of federal agencies and non-profits including: Federal Trade Commission, Department of Commerce, Department of Homeland Security, Internal Revenue Service, Computing Technology Industry Association, National Crime Prevention Council, Better Business Bureau, and Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG). OnGuard Online provides cute videos and games to educate consumers about the risks associated with: phishing, computer security, email scams, spam, VOIP, among other topics. The OnGuard Online site also provides publications and allows consumers to file complaints.

Federal Government to the Rescue?

If the CAN-SPAM (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing) Act of 2003 is any indication it’s probably unlikely that the US government can do much to protect citizens since there seems to be an increase in spam and phishing since 2003, not a reduction as was hoped when the 2003 law was passed. There are estimates that 80% of all email is unsolicited which should be reason enough for individuals to be more leery of suspicious phishing emails. Hotmail claims it has 400 million accounts so the number of compromised accounts could be huge and reports from the APWG estimate that phishing attacks will continue. Since the US government does not seem capable of managing cyber security and the White House cannot get anyone to be Cyber Czar is it any wonder that the webmail accounts are compromised by the thousand?
 

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Watching the world economy meltdown in the past year it’s not much of a surprise that Google value increased by about 25% to number 7 in the world with an estimated value to an $32B! Other technology companies did not fare as well as reported by BusinessWeek and Interbrand:IBM increased by about 2%, Microsoft lost about 4%, Intel declined by 2%, and Oracle lost 1%. So Google’s growth during the down economy means that Google must be doing many things right.

Google Could Become The Leader Source of News

With the announcement of Fast Flip Google now has a site where users can get all the news they need without ever leaving Google. Google reports that the “service is being initiated with the cooperation of about three dozen publishers, including major news outlets like BBC News, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Newsweek; magazines like Cosmopolitan, The Atlantic, Esquire and Good Housekeeping; and Web-only publications like TechCrunch, Salon.com and Slate.” In the meantime Microsoft added a service to Bing called Visual Search which adds a new way to view news and expand the uses of Bing search engine. Given the troubles in the newspaper world is any wonder that Google and Microsoft have new plans to take greater roles in news?

Google Finally Using DoubleClick to Boost Display Ads

After making a fortune on small text ads now Google will make redirect its energy to boosting display ads. No one should be surprised by Google use of DoubleClick to migrate to displays ads and be in direct competition with Yahoo! Yahoo! is the current king of display ads and Google’s move will definitely impact Yahoo!’s advertising revenue. We need to stay tuned to see how things play for Google and Yahoo! Stay tuned.
 

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On the same day Facebook reported that it finally became cash flow positive after 5 ½ years, Facebook also announced that it grew to 300 million users. Of course that’s all relative since in August 2008 Facebook reported that it had 100 million users, but also an almost unbelievable growth of 200% in one year! Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a blog post that the goal of being free cash flow positive in its most recently ended quarter ahead of its 2010 target.

How Much is Facebook Worth?

A few months ago Digital Sky Technology’s $200 million investment meant that the estimated value of Facebook was about $6.5 billion. It seems likely that the private investors stand to profit nicely from Facebook’s tremendous success as Web 2.0 continues to grow wildly!

200% Grown in 1 Year, What Will Happen in the Next 12 Months?

What an unbelievable time in which we live to witness the past two years of Web 2.0 social networking. As I like to say the “Internet is the greatest social change that has ever happened in the history of humans….there are no boundaries of time and geography!” However since we are in the middle of this great social upheaval it is all the more difficult to see exactly where we are headed. Surely if Google, AOL, Yahoo!, or Microsoft had foreseen Facebook’s wild success , wouldn’t at least one of more of these giants created their own version of Facebook? What do you think?

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No surprise that dozens of filings were made in opposition to the proposed settlement of the lawsuit between the Google and the Authors Guild and Association of American Publishers which was filed in “2005 by the authors and publishers against Google over its plan to digitize millions of books from libraries without authorization from rights holders.” Although Google has received the support of Sony, civil rights groups, and antitrust experts, there were notable opponents to the settlement including “individuals, rival companies like Amazon and Microsoft, advocacy organizations, groups representing authors and publishers and even some foreign governments.”

EU Opposition of Google’s Settlement

Many voices in the EU complained at a hearing that the proposed settlement would give Google more power to exclusive rights to sell million of out-of-print works even though the copyrights are still valid. Not much of a surprise that Microsoft is backing the anti-Google settlement groups in the EU. Many groups in the EU feel that since they did not participate in the settlement that they were discriminated against.

What’s Next in the Lawsuit?

Federal District Judge Denny Chin must now sort through the filings to try to determine if the proposed settlement properly protects the authors, or else the case may continue on to trial. Among other issues for Judge Chin to consider are antitrust concerns that Google’s control over these works would give Google too much market power. There are many antitrust issues on the horizon for Google it seems with many opponents, not just with books but more broadly in the entire space known as eCommerce. Stay tuned as we see Google and eCommerce evolve.
 

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Wikipedia is without doubt the model for online collaboration, so it should be no surprise that the 16 US intelligence agencies would use Wikipedia’s software to connect dots to protect our country. Obviously the availability to Intellipedia is limited to users with proper government clearance and has grown since the 2006 launch to “and now averages more than 15,000 edits per day. It's home to 900,000 pages and 100,000 user accounts.”

Wikipedia Continues to Grow, or Not?

Recent reports are that Wikipedia which now has over 3 million English articles is one of the 10 most popular sites on the Internet, and roughly 60 million Americans visit Wikipedia every month. But at the same time at the recent Wikimania Conference in Buenos Aires reported that Wikipedia now has 330 million users and is in the top five websites. It doesn’t matter which statistics are more accurate as there is no question that Wikipedia is essential in today’s use of the Internet. But the Wikimania participants spent a lot of time bemoaning a major slow on Wikipedia’s growth.

Wikipedia Finished?

Much has been said about Wikipedia’s demise, but it continues to grow. So as the Internet morphs and changes, it’s also possible that more creative uses of Wikipedia software will be found, which is clearly what’s going on with Intellipedia. However since no one wants to be the US Cyber Czar one might wonder if we will ever have a Cyber Czar and whether the use of Wiki tools, and specifically Intellipedia really helps.

What do you think? 

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Tim O’Reilly coined the term Web 2.0 in 2002 and in a recent report O'Reilly encourages more social networking for the government. Of course he’s not the Lone Ranger on Gov 2.0 as there are plenty of advocates including my good friend Ellis Pines who blogs about Gov 2.0 and encourages the use of GovLoop – a social network for Gov 2.0.

Are We Cybersecure?

Okay so great, Gov 2.0 encourages more social networking. But a recent report that the White House’s senior aide on cybersecurity resigned because she was “not empowered” is alarming since it is clear no one wants to be the Cyber Czar. In the meantime there are never ending reports of widespread Cyberattacks in the world, and hackers apparently have no problems breaching commercial websites.

Enlarging the use of social networking only compounds the problems of cybersecurity, so at this moment none of us should feel so safe. What do you think?

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Only July 31, 2009 the Texas Department of Information Resources (DIR) signed a contract with NIC to manage TexasOnline 2.0 for 7 years. As outside counsel to DIR this contract this was a rewarding conclusion to a 17 month process to succeed the current TexasOnline contract which was signed in 2000. TexasOnline currently has more than 2.4 million visitors monthly and processed over $12 billion in transactions. “The new contract calls for maintaining these services and enhancing TexasOnline with new services and “next-generation” Web design and Web 2.0 tools to give citizens easier access to government services.”

DIR’s Plan

Brian Rawson, executive director of DIR and Texas’ Chief Technology Officer said that we “… are pleased that Texas NICUSA will enhance the public-private partnership that is already providing a robust group of services to Texans. The exceptional track record of success, proven leadership and the legacy of innovation NIC brings to the project will strengthen the state’s ability to serve citizens, and set TexasOnline apart as the most successful state Web portal in the nation.”

Who is NIC?

NIC provides eGovernment portal solutions in 23 states and for more than 3,000 federal, state, and local agencies that serve 97 million people in the United States. NIC succeeds BearingPoint who operated TexasOnline since 2000, and many of the individuals who made TexasOnline a great success will work with NIC to develop TexasOnline 2.0.

eFiling in Texas Courts

As Chair of the Texas Supreme Court Judicial Committee on Information Technology (JCIT) from 1997 until July, 2009 one project that provided significant benefits to the Texas Courts was the implementation of eFiling in Texas trial courts. TexasOnline has been the Electronic Filing Manager for that project, and currently has more than 25,000 filings each month. Mike Griffith (Senior Manager for the eFiling Project at NIC) has done an outstanding job managing eFiling for TexasOnline for many years. Earlier this year Mike and I participated in webcasts for the State Bar of Texas entitled: “E-Filing in Texas Courts: How to Save Time and Money”

I am very honored and privileged to represent Brian Rawson and DIR and pleased that I was able to assist Texas in helping construct the RFO and negotiate the 7 year contract in support of the effort to build TexasOnline 2.0, and am certain that the citizens of Texas will be the beneficiaries.
 

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When Amazon remotely deleted George Orwell’s 1984 from the Kindle reading devices last week I’m sure that George Orwell rolled over in his grave. Orwell’s novel written in 1949 predicted that Big Brother’s censors would erase anything that the government found objectionable by sending down a “memory hole.” I’m happy to report that my paperback copy that I read in junior high school is still on my library shelf!

What Happened? 

When Amazon discovered that its source of the Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm did not have the rights to the books, Amazon remotely deleted copies from the Kindles. This got some headlines and irritated many, but since Amazon did not have the right to distribute the books it did the next best thing, it deleted copies. 

 Where Are We Going With This? 

The Free Software Foundation is soliciting support from many sources (including librarians, publishers and major authors and public intellectuals) to present a petition to Amazon asking that Amazon reconsider its use of software called digital rights management (DRM). DRM is software that restricts the use of copies and devices so for instance the version of 1984 that Amazon distributed could only be viewed on a Kindle and Amazon could delete copies. This runs against the grain of the Copyright Act’s "first sale doctrine" that permits a purchaser of a copyrighted book to sell that copy, but not make other copies. Many individuals are concerned about users of copyrighted materials are losing their rights guaranteed under the Copyright Act. It also seems that George Orwell’s predictions may have come true, not necessarily in 1984, but in 2009.
 

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In May when President Obama released a 40 page “Cyberspace Policy Review” it seemed pretty clear that the appointment of a Cyber Czar was imminent, however recent reports are that no one wants the job! In spite of three-year study report from the National Academy of Sciences that stated that the US was not Cybersafe released a few weeks before the President released his “Review”, we still cannot find a Cyber Czar. Without question Cyber Czar is a great title, but the individuals who turned down the job had good reasons which include a lack of clarity about how much power the new job would really have and to whom the Cyber Czar would report.

Shortage of Cyber Experts

While Cyber attacks persist we just got a report from the US government that there is a shortage of Cyber experts which only makes things worse. Because many of the Cyber expert jobs in the US government are classified and what job titles these people vary, it is not clear how many individuals are employed in this arena. However the Pentagon claims to have more than 90,000 individuals involved with Cyber security, and there are estimates of up to 45,000 other non-defense Cyber security workers. But yet there is a shortage given of the scope of these cyber attacks.

Our Future’s At Stake

In May the President stated that “America economic prosperity in the 21st century will depend on cybersecurity,” but not much progress has been made. Clearly it’s time the President to give the new Cyber Czar clarity on the job’s power and reporting authority. The US needs a Cyber Czar to take a leadership role. The world has become dependent on the Internet and as a result it is essential that we have adequate Cyber security to protect the economy now and in the future.
 

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National Animal Identification System (NAIS)

Here are the NAIS objectives: “To protect the health of U.S. livestock and poultry and the economic well-being of those industries, we must be able to quickly and effectively trace an animal disease to its source. When a disease outbreak occurs, animal health officials need to know:
* Which animals are involved in a disease outbreak
* Where the infected animals are currently located
* What other animals might have been exposed to the disease”
All laudable, but are these objectives practical?

RFID (Radio Frequency Identification)

Although below public radar the use of RFID has been around for decades, and used in a myriad of applications including US Department of Defense (DOD), healthcare, CPG (consumer packaged goods), manufacturing, and retail. Healthcare uses RFID to help track wounded troops in war zones and keeping up with specimens in hospitals. As well a few years ago DOD mandated that all suppliers use RFID, but what really got more public scrutiny was when Wal-Mart began testing RFID on all products. As a result in 2004 the Federal Trade Commission conducted a workshop to explore RFID as many consumer privacy and security concerns got more visibility.

So it seems reasonable to track livestock to avoid major disease outbreaks if we can track DOD supplies and hospital patients. However at what cost and who pays? Ultimately consumers will pay higher food prices if the livestock tracking is required, but the need for high speed Internet in rural America is also essential for this proposed tracking system to work.

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Google is always making news, but the report that the Google Apps have new features to compete with Microsoft Office is interesting as more users rely on free Google Apps. It’s hard to fathom that Wikipedia could be used as a news source, but Google is trying that out since so many users rely on Wikipedia as a source of reliable information. Without question Google continues to grow and evolve in interesting directions, clearly something we all have to watch.

Google vs. Microsoft (including Free Windows 7)

Notwithstanding the ongoing search engine wars between Google and the universe, Google Apps are apparently improving at time with Microsoft users are unhappy with the additional features in Office 2007 which causes new complications for users. Specifically the new features in Google spreadsheet are an improvement over Excel, and with the general unhappiness of Microsoft Vista clearly many users are awaiting Windows 7. So Microsoft’s original game-plan to move the PC world from XP to an new operating system, and of course related revenue from upgrades to the Office Suite, got a major stall since Vista has been such a major dud. So it’s not much of a surprise that Microsoft has revealed that users can get Windows 7 free or very low cost when released later this year if they buy a new computer now with the upgrade.

Wikipedia As A News Source?

Often Wikipedia shows up at the top of many Google searches and as result users tend to rely on Wikipedia has grown to over 2.9 articles. But recently Google News has also been including Wikipedia links so that users can read more about topics. Interestingly enough no one at Google asked Wikipedia and the folks at Wikipedia learned of the new Google News service use of Wikipedia by reading the Nieman Journalism Lab. With this evolution Google News has positioned the collaborative written source Wikipedia in direct competition with the New York Times, Washington Post, AOL, CNN, and other news sources.

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A Minneapolis jury awarded a number of recording companies damages for willful infringement of 24 songs in the only trial for file-sharing by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) of the estimated 30,000 lawsuits they filed before ceasing litigation last year. The RIAA settled most lawsuits for about $3,500 and now the RIAA stopped filing suits and is working with ISPs to stop file-sharing.

Second Trial

The first jury trial in 2007 resulted in a verdict of $222,000 but the federal judge vacated the verdict as result of improper jury instructions. Apparently the second jury was also convinced that Jammie Thomas-Rasset willfully infringed 24 songs by file-sharing and awarded damages of $80,000 per song. Ms. Thomas-Rasset, a single mother of four, asserts that she cannot pay these damages.

Willful Infringement

Under the 1976 Copyright Act damages for willful infringement damages could be as high as $150,000. So in both of Ms. Thomas-Rasset’s trials the juries concluded that she was a willful infringer. The fact that the RIAA stopped filing lawsuits was based on the large number of alleged infringers bespeaks volumes about the fact that file-sharing is a very large problem on the Internet, and litigation may not be the best way to solve the problem.

Apple to the Rescue

In 2001 when the 9th Circuit upheld infringement claims for contributory and vicarious copyright infringement against Napster under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DMCA) there were many requests for the US Congress to reform the Copyright Act and the DMCA since that the Internet had changed the way people listen to music, however neither the Copyright Act nor DMCA were changed. Actually Apple solved the problem by introducing the iPod and allowing people to inexpensively downloading music, tv shows, and movies. Not only did the iPod solve this copyright problem it also improved Apple’s financial circumstances and market share.

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Apparently the US Justice Department is investigating anticompetitive behavior concerning among others Google, Yahoo! , and Apple since many Internet companies restrict recruiting and hiring of one another’s employees. Since anticompetitive employment agreements in the technology industry are the norm it’s particularly interesting that the Justice Department is pursuing these companies. Internet and IT companies rely of these non-competition provisions to protect trade secrets and Intellectual Property so it will be interesting to see how this develops.

EU Unhappy with Microsoft for Not Distributing a Browser

Following the antitrust dispute in the EU regarding Microsoft’s alleged monopolization of the browser market, Microsoft recently announced that when it distributes Windows 7 there not be any browser. The EU regulators are unhappy with this solution, even though on the surface it does seem that the complaining browser companies (Google, Mozilla, and Opera) should be pleased since they claimed that Microsoft’s embedded Internet Explorer violates antitrust laws.

Are Antitrust Laws Out of Touch with the Internet?

Since antitrust laws evolved from the need to try control monopolies in the 1800’s how much sense does it make to still use these concepts in the Internet world of 2009? Microsoft’s deployment of its operations systems took over the PC market was great for the users since before Microsoft there was no operating system standard on PCs. My Internet Third Big Bang was the 1981 advent of the PC, not just because IBM and Microsoft got into the market, but as result of the PC Clones using Microsoft operating systems a de facto standard developed on Microsof. As a result users could depend on continuity and consistency between software and applications. So maybe the US and EU should re-evaluate antitrust laws for the Internet and IT world that we live with today and in the future.

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No surprise that the Chinese government blocked social networking on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the military crackdown at Tiananmen Square. As a matter of fact just before the Olympic Games began in August 2008 China limited Internet access as the government wanted control over information before and during the Games. Many people from the West were surprised since China was hosting the international Games, but it seems logical that a totalitarian government would not change its behavior in such a circumstance.

More Social Networking

It’s about time that smaller businesses got the clue that they need to use social networking to promote their activities, so it’s no surprise to read reports that small businesses are directing their efforts to attract traffic with social networks. Targeted advertising works even better on the Internet, but learning how to identify potential customers has always been a primary goal of marketing.

In February 2009 the Federal Trade Commission issued its FTC Staff Report entitled “Self-Regulatory Principles For Online Behavioral Advertising” following public hearings and “sixty-three comments on the Principles from eighty-seven stakeholders, including individual companies, business groups, academics, consumer and privacy advocates.” Since the US relies on self-regulation of privacy these comments were all considered before releasing the Principles. One need merely review Google’s Analytics site to how much information about is captured about our activity on the Internet. The fact that this monetized is one thing, but the potential loss of privacy has many alarmed.

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When President Obama spoke about cybersecurity last week the Whitehouse also released a 40 page “Cyberspace Policy Review” that included a thorough analysis concluding that the world’s economy is dependence on the Internet. The Cyberspace Policy Review reinforced my Five Big Bang Theory of the Internet and is detailed in an Appendix (see chart below) which includes a reminder to the US about the October 1957 launch of Sputnik got the US started on its space race. Sputnik led President Kennedy to his 1961 promise to put a person 'on the moon by the end of the decade.’ President Kennedy’s promise directly led to funding of DARPA in 1962 that started to the Internet.

How Secure is the Internet?

Recent blogs questioning the state of Internet security and how well the US manages cybersecurity reinforce the need for an improvement in cybersecurity not only by the US, but other countries around the world. To improve cybersecurity countries around the world will have to unite, it is not possible for the US to succeed without partnerships with its allies which is stressed in the Cyberspace Policy Review. Last year there were reports that the Russian Business Network hijacked the websites of the Georgian government, and there continue to be headlines in that vein with militants and countries with political unrest.

Partnerships Required

The Cyberspace Policy Review makes the point that partnerships of all sorts are required between federal, state, and local governments, as well as private enterprise. Ironically enough the Cyberspace Policy Review points out that most of the Internet infrastructure is owned by private enterprise for commercial reasons. Accordingly if the new cybersecurity plans are to be successful surely all the players will have to work together as partners. Appointing a Cybersecurity Czar will not solve the problems identified in the Cyberspace Policy Review, rather hopefully the Cybersecurity Czar will allow the US to focus energies to help protect the Internet and its infrastructure.

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Social networking remains headline news as Facebook got a $200 million infusion from a Russian based company while at the same time Iran changed its blocking policy and unblocked Facebook in the midst of a heated June 12th election. Both of these reports demonstrate important messages about social networking in spite of the fact that Facebook, Myspace, and YouTube are not generating the revenue expected given their size and evolution. But at the same time reports of phishers harvesting Facebook passwords for profit should be a sobering reminder that social network users are very vulnerable since they trust their friends, who may be taking personal identities and passwords.

$200 Million = 1.96% Equity

When you do the math and see that Digital Sky Technologies (DST) paid $200 million for 1.96% of equity of Facebook that translates to a $10 billion valuation, which is a third less than Microsoft’s October 2007 $240 million invest for 1.6%. These numbers can make anyone dizzy, notwithstanding that Facebook doubled in size between August 2008 and April 2009 to 200 million friends. Since Facebook reports that more than 70% of its users are outside the US it makes lots of sense for DST as it invests mostly in Internet companies in Russia and Eastern Europe.

A World Message

DST’s Eastern Europe reach reinforces social networking’s power, but Iran’s concern about Facebook influencing an election is an even bigger message. Since the Facebook ban in Iran lasted only a few days the social pressure forced the change. Surely Iran will not be the only country to limit access to social networks which was worried that anti-government groups could band together on Facebook to impact the June 12th election.

You would have to live on Mars to not be aware that President Obama maximized the use of social networks to raise funds, support, and ultimately election. No wonder the White House has a YouTube page. We should all keep an eye on political uses of social networks as we watch the evolution of the Internet.
 

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There are reports that Microsoft’s new search engine known as Kumo is about to be released (ultimately it may be called “Bing”) which will replace “Live Search.” Apparently Microsoft leaked copies of Kumo recently and from all reviews there’s nothing too radical, but what is radical is the Wolfram|Alpha search engine which was seen on TV news last week. The Wolfram|Alpha search engine provides users very different information, however since it is so radically different it remains to be seen how successful its approach will be.

Update on Search Engine Rankings

comScore just released its new search engine rankings without much surprise- Google increased slightly from 63.7% to 64.2% of all Internet searches between March and April 2009 while Yahoo!, Microsoft, Ask, and AOL were relatively flat. Since Microsoft (20.4%) and Yahoo! (8.2%) searches combine for 28.6% of all Internet searches, there has been renewed speculation that Microsoft and Yahoo! will form an alliance to try to get a larger market share and be more competitive with Google.

Microsoft vs. Google- Search Engines and Browsers

From earlier blogs you will recall that Google is complaining about Microsoft’s deployment of Internet Explorer in the EU as anticompetitive. Interestingly part of Microsoft’s defense is apparently that by expanding competition in the browser market in the EU will only encourage more Google Internet searches which will be anticompetitive to Microsoft. So it will be interesting to see how Microsoft’s deployment of Kumo may allow Google to argue to the EU that Microsoft’s defense should fail since Microsoft is aggressively competing with Google in the search engine market.

What do you think? I welcome comments.
 

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Since Google accounts for more than 63% of all Internet searches, it’s no wonder that Google’s stock fell last week when Google users had significant problems when Google’s servers were overloaded and Google services were operating at a crawl. Google claims that there were problems in 3 of their Asian data centers (out more than 30 data centers worldwide) which affected about 14% of Google’s users. Many Internet users rely on Google for services beyond searches, including gmail, Google Apps, and Google Latitude to name a few. Google’s server failures meant many users could not conduct business during this outage period.

Protecting Privacy Google

A recent article in Computerworld gives Google users 6 tips about protecting privacy:

1. Know your privacy rights: Use the Google Privacy Center.
2. Protect your content on the services you use.
3. Turn off the suggestion feature in the Chrome browser.
4. Turn off Web History.
5. Opt out of interest-based ad serving.
6. Add SSL to Gmail.

However, since most Internet users do not take the time to review privacy policies it’s unlikely that this advice will be heeded by many Google users.

More Google

Google announced a number of new services for desktops and mobile phones which includes search capabilities in multiple contexts so that when searching from a cell phone, Google will take into account the GPS location and what other mobile users have searched in that locale. Also Google will offer a new tweak to search on Search Options that allows a user to drill by topics, time, or images. About to make its debut is a much hyped search engine known as Wolfram Alpha.

Google Too Successful?

A big question may now be has Google been too successful? As Google offers these new features to sell ever more ads space, surely Google hopes to draw more users. Without question the recent system slow-down is an ominous sign of potential bad news on the horizon. No doubt Google’s search engine competitors like Yahoo!, Microsoft, and AOL are watching with great interest to see if they can capture Google users who may abandon Google if the system outages become a pattern.
 

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Ted Ullyot, Facebook’s General Counsel, reported the governance vote results that 74.37% of the 665,654 cast ballots in support of the new Statement of Rights and Responsibilities and Principles (Statement). The new Statement was adopted with less far than 1% even of Facebook friends casting ballots. It’s refreshing that there was a democratic vote on the largest social network in the world, but amazing that so few voted.

Statement Requires 30% to Vote

Well that was the plan, but with such a small turn out Facebook decided that the 30% cannot even be the threshold. Facebook will go back to the drawing board to determine what percentage should be the minimum, and it will be a low percentage.

Democracy Web 2.0 Style

The reason for the governance vote to begin with was that Facebook was changing policies only to get Facebook friends vocal pushback. Facebook provided democracy by allowing the New Statement to be vetted in virtual town hall forums and a vote of the friends. As the Internet evolves in the future perhaps we can look back at this governance vote as a sea change that social network users should have a say in the governance. However, since so few individuals ever read terms of service or privacy policies this may also be the only vote ever conducted on social networking governance.

What do you think?
 

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From April 16 through 23, 2009 the 200 million Facebook users have a chance to vote on their own governance, but the new governance will only be adopted if 30% of the Facebooks friends vote. This vote follows a virtual town hall meeting that allowed comments on the proposed governance terms. It seems to make sense that the users should have some control over their own social networking activities.

Friends Complain

Hundreds of thousands Facebook friends sent emails complaining about a new privacy policy in September 2006, and as a result Facebook decided not to adopt the new privacy policy. Earlier this year Facebook decided to retain all items posted forever, and another ground swell of opposition stopped these changes. These messages indicate a sense of ownership that Facebook users have about Facebook, which led Facebook to promise to be more transparent, and as a result the right to vote on governance.

All Facebook Users Should Review the Proposed Governance

Since few individuals ever bother to read terms of use, privacy policies, or click agreements, this is a novel opportunity for Web 2.0 to encourage the users to establish policies. This may have an impact on future policies for the Internet, so stay tuned for the election results.
 

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Merely spending $19B to spur the use of electronic health records (EHR) does not guarantee that the plan will succeed. A study funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation reports that only 9% of the US hospitals have EHRs. As well, the American Medical Information Association reports that there is need for about 70,000 medical informaticians who are trained in medical records and claims, and clinical care. It seems unlikely that EHR will succeed without properly trained individuals since they are critical to the success of implementing EHRs.

Big Divide

With only 9% of the US hospitals who actually have EHRs that means millions of people in rural US are currently “have nots.” However no question that there are many hospitals implementing EHRs since there are major medical systems from EPIC Systems, Eclipsys, Cerner, GE Healthcare, McKesson, and Siemens AG being implemented throughout the US. These various medical systems provide EHR for millions of patients. For example Epic claims to have 175 customers representing about 22% of the US population, approximately 70 million patients. So clearly there are a significant number of patients who either have EHRs now, or will soon.

HIPAA Connection

I have never been a big fan of HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996) given the cost and benefit to patients. It seems pretty clear that the 18 elements protected by HIPAA are easily available from various sources on the Internet. It’s not hard to find home addresses, phone numbers, social security numbers, birth dates, email addresses, to name a few. It’s not clear how much money was spent on HIPAA, and to what end? Medical care providers spent a fortune, and many vendors profited, but it’s not clear that medical privacy is any better today than it was when HIPAA was created in 1996. Without question the growth of the Internet has made personal information a greater challenge to protect.

So it seems highly unlikely that just spending $19B will ensure that EHRs will be a success.
 

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Speculation that Wikipedia has run out of ideas is an amusing headline. It’s hard to believe that in 8 years Wikipedia has more than 2.8 million English articles since the Encyclopedia Britannica started in 1768 and has about 250,000 articles. Wikipedia’s growth is quite astonishing since in March 2006 (three years ago) the 1 millionth English article milestone was reached! Today Wikipedia has more than 75,000 active contributors who write the articles in 260 languages with more than 684 million visitors a year. Because of Wikipedia’s dominating success, even Microsoft just announced it is withdrawing its encyclopedia Encarta (with 42,000 articles).

What’s a Wiki to Begin With?

As recently as yesterday an experienced business person asked what the heck a wiki was anyway. Wiki is Hawaiian for “quick,” and the wiki concept is part of the Internet web 2.0 (my 5th Big Bang of the Internet) for content collaboration.  IBM and Microsoft (and many other companies) have thousands of wikis they use for the development of new technologies. That is, developers on new projects use wikis as a tool to contribute ideas and edit content. These private wikis allow teams within companies to work together to solve problems, but a public wiki is different.

Wikimedia Is More than an Encyclopedia

Wikipedia is a 501(c)(3) tax-deductible nonprofit Internet encyclopedia and also has sister projects hosted through Wikimedia Foundation which includes among these services: Wikiquote (Collection of quotations), Wikispecies (Directory of species), Wikinews (Free-content news), Wikibooks (Free textbooks and manuals), Wikiversity (Free learning materials and activities), Wikitionary (Dicitionary and thesaurus), and Wikisource (Free-content library).

Wiki Legal Issues

Who owns wiki articles and the content makes is interesting. Clearly contributors to internal private company wikis expect the content owned by the companies. However if an employer fails to establish contractual terms with their employees about ownership, it becomes less clear about who owns the content in a wiki. On the other hand, when individuals post on public wikis such as Wikipedia they are contributing all intellectual property to the wiki (under the terms of service) and all Wikimedia materials are available under the GNU Free Documentation License (Open Source). To make things more interesting Wikipedia expressly disclaims the validity of it content. Yet millions of people around the world rely on Wikipedia as authority, when the articles are just a collaborative encyclopedia that may be changed or edited at any moment. As the Internet evolves clearly the sharing of information in wikis will continue to affect the future of information available.
 

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After teaching the Law of eCommerce since 2000 I have established my own perspective of 5 Big Bangs which propelled the Internet, three of which were described in a recent blog:

1st Big Bang- Invention of the punch card for the 1890 census by Dr. Herman Holerith (which led to the IBM);

2nd Big Bang- World War II invention of the first modern day computer for monitoring the tides to help with the June 6, 1944 D-Day invasion of Normandy;

3rd Big Bang- Launch of the IBM Personal Computer in August 1981;

4th Big Bang- Distribution of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer in July 1995 with Windows 95; and,

5th Big Bang- Web 2.0 with the advent of social networking as predicted by Tim O’Reilly in 2002.

Where is the Internet Going?

It’s very difficult to tell, but when Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876, no one could have predicted that I would use my cell phone to make a phone call atop the Great Wall of China in 2005. So where the Internet is going is not easy to predict, but as we observe changes it’s clear that the direction is not entirely what we may expect. In 1998 when Google launched no one could have predicted its success and that would account for more than 63% of all Internet searches, have vast wealth, and that Google would provide an Operating System among many accomplishments.

Web 2.0: FaceBook at its 200 Million User, Doubles Membership in 8 Months!

Big celebrations in August 2008 FaceBook when it registered its 100 million user, now about 8 months later about to register its 200 million user. Web 2.0 (my 5th Big Bang of the Internet) must be for real, but why has FaceBook been so successful? It must be fulfilling a social need. Without question when FaceBook when started in February 2004 it was aimed at college students, but today the fastest growing segment of its membership is the 35 year and older category. As social networking evolves other Internet activities might replace FaceBook, but for the time being the growth is mind-boggling. Please stay tuned for the 6th Big Bang!
 

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No surprise at all that the New York Times reported that there has been a rash of mistrials because jurors are searching Google and Wikipedia about the parties, lawyers, and subject matter of the trials. As well, jurors are sending texts, emails, and Tweets (on Twitter) during trials. The traditional rules of trial require that judges admonish jurors to do no independent research about the dispute and to only rely on the evidence presented during trial and argument of the lawyers, and not discuss the case with anyone, even other jurors until deliberations. Actually in days gone by it was relatively impossible to stop jurors from doing their own investigations of going to crime scenes or reading about parties in newspapers, or watching television stories about trials in process. There was virtually no way to police jurors from discussing among themselves the issues in dispute before deliberations. But in today’s Web 2.0 world it’s not possible to restrict jurors at all.

Power of Cells

Without a lot of imagination it is easy to realize that our cell phones allow jurors to text, send emails, post blogs, and send Tweets, not to mention search the Internet while sitting in a jury box or room. So even if courts were to confiscate jurors’ cell phones during trial, surely when the jurors go home at night they can use their cells and the Internet to their hearts’ delight.

Evidence Present in Court

Lawyers spend most of their time in preparing for trial by examining trial witnesses in depositions and reviewing documents to determine what evidence will be presented during trial. The opposing parties do everything possible to restrict bad evidence under the rules of evidence and procedure, and it’s the job of judges to determine what evidence may be shown to jurors. Actually evidence is presented in trial by asking witnesses to identity and authenticate, and then it’s up to the jury to weigh all the evidence and the credibility of the witnesses who vouch for the evidence.

Accuracy of Information on the Internet?

One of the sharp realities of the Internet is that there is no assurance that just because information is found on the Internet that it’s true and accurate. This has been one of the challenges of the Wikipedia in that the articles are posted and updated by individuals who may, or may not want the truth to be portrayed. As a matter of fact many judges will not allow lawyers to cite Wikipedia as legal authority because of skepticism of the authenticity of the content. On the other hand just because Google, Yahoo!, or other search engine happens to push a particular link, pdf, or website to the top of its search list does mean that there is any truth to the content found at that url.

Where are we Headed?

It’s likely that the mystique of a jury trial where jurors only rely on evidence presented in the courtroom will never be the same. Without question the number of mistrials will only grow and cause great difficulty for the judicial system.
 

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This recent headline story about Google’s Operating System (OS) is significant as Google also announced, among other things, that it will also offer a phone service. It is interesting to observe Google’s growth and evolution in the Internet, but also now to see what other creative services it will offer. As pointed out in a recent blog, Google’s purchase of Postini a couple of years ago has propelled Google into the e-Discovery arena.

OS Competition

What a fascinating development that Google will offer an OS to compete with Microsoft and linux. Microsoft’s stumble with Vista and race to deliver System 7 potentially puts Google in the middle of the every user’s desktop/laptop. Apparently Google’s OS Android is being migrated to the Asus eeePC’s and will be marketed by year’s end.

Grand Central Phone Service

Google’s purchase last year of Grand Central was interesting since Grand Central offered its customers consolidated voice mail and text messages. Google phone service system assigns new phone numbers, so if you call a Google Grand Central number all other assigned phones will ring – home, office, and cell. If you don’t answer, a voice mail will be recorded and sent to you by email. In addition to free domestic calls there will be a charge for international calls, and the service will permit 6 way conference calls. Google says there will be no advertising associated with domestic calls.

Where is Google Going?

Good question, world Internet domination or what? It seems pretty clear that Google’s evolution has been characterized by one success after another. Notwithstanding failed projects, Google successful developments have been a poster child for the creative change. But many users do not bother to appreciate that Google is built on advertising and so by using Google’s various services Google users are providing Google more information about themselves. Desktop/laptop users have a great deal of personal and business information on their systems and when Google’s OS is applied is there any wonder that Google will use the data on the computer for some commercial purposes? Consider that Gmail searches email content and provides users advertisements accordingly, so if you send an email to a friend about going to the World Series, along-side the email the recipient will get hotel and travel ads. While users know and appreciate what they are getting, many individuals fail to realize that Google uses the content of Gmails and no doubt with the Google Grand Central product also uses the content of voice mails. Users should review Google’s terms of service and understand what they are getting for free!
 

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A report that Roman Catholic bishops in Italy are urging Italian Catholics to give up texting for lent sends a very interesting message. This suggestion is more than a no-meat Fridays, to stop communicating with texts for 5 weeks. However there’s more at play than it seems. Most Millennials communicate by text rather than phone or email, so one might wonder if this message was directed at trying to get Millennials more involved with their religion.

Political & Social Issue

All cell phone and many other chips rely on Coltan, short for columbite tantalite, and 80% comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo. So the political side of the no texting for lent is to highlight the years of conflict in the Congo where apparently farmers and children have been enslaved to dig for Coltan and the monies have been used against the citizens.  As well many of the wildlife preserves are being destroyed. There is even a “No blood on my cell phone” campaign as part of a requested embargo against the use of Coltan.

Web 2.0 Issue

Without question the Web 2.0 world has changed the way in which we communicate, and hundreds of millions of individuals regularly spend time texting, sending emails, and posting information on FaceBook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and/or Twitter. So giving up texting for lent does not seem like a very pragmatic proposal since such a proposal is not much different than giving up talking to for lent. Actually FaceBook just announced that it was expanding the amount of information about each friend and instead of a 5,000 friend limit, there will be no limit. So clearly Web 2.0 will only expand and giving up any Web 2.0 for lent seems impractical.
 

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When DARPA started in 1962 as part of the US’s reaction to Russia launch of Sputnik in 1957 no one could have foreseen its evolution to 2009 with FaceBook, YouTube, and Google. A recent article questions whether we need a new Internet since the current hodgepodge is not designed for the future. Clearly there are people working on re-tooling the Internet, but how it will continue to evolve is interesting but unclear. The UK and US are busy trying to provide high speed Internet access to the every home, but the Spectrum changes for TV for HD broadcast will free up the old Spectrum and will provide new cell and Internet services unknown before.

4G is Coming

AT&T announced its plan to roll out 4G by 2011 which would replace the spotty 3G network now in use. AT&T, Verizon, and the other providers will use the Long-Term Evolution (LTE) wireless broadband which is supposed to handle downloads at 100 Mbps and uploads of 50 Mbps for every 20 MHz of spectrum…which will clearly change the way we operate today.

Do We Need a New Internet?

With the new high speed access in cell phones and at our desktops this should be a clue that it’s time to rethink the entire Internet structure. Maybe the UK and US plan for broadband access to every home will be revised based on 4G, and surely there will be an evolution in desktop computing. Not just that Microsoft and Open Source developers will offer new operating systems or browsers, but rather a major transformation about how technology is used. When in graduate school in 1972 I took a course on the computer as a public utility which was an interesting idea at the time…however it does not look like that ever happened. However the juxtaposition of 4G with the Internet may require a whole new approach to what how we operate. This should be an interesting evolution for the Internet…not Web 2.0 or Web 3.0, rather maybe Internet 2.0.

I welcome comments on this Blog.
 

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Notwithstanding all the .com failures over the past 15 years it’s unusual to see an Internet phenom change the waterfront so much as twitter. If you were otherwise not aware, twitter with a member base of about 4 million is a micro-blogging service which limits its messages to 140 characters and it just announced that it raised $35 million in third round of funding. However twitter has never had a marketing plan, and as a matter of fact twitter just hired its first director of business development. There was a lot of media attention on twitter when President Obama planned to use twitter to announce his running mate in 2008.

Is twitter on its way to being an Internet giant?
 

A recent article speculated that twitter is replacing Second Life as a business tool because of twitter’s ease of use on cell phones, takes little time to set up, and requires no software. On the other hand Second Life and other virtual worlds, require substantial time and resources to set up. Not to mention that one cannot conduct business in Second Life on your cell. Many B2B marketers are using twitter including BearingPoint, British Air, and McKinsey & Co. Dell Outlet sold hundreds of refurbished computers in a couple of hours by merely sending tweets (a twitter message).
 

Security Concerns for Social Networks
 

At a recent security conference researchers reported that apparently, without much surprise, individuals who use social networks are naïve and as a result have absolute trust in communications they receive from friends in twitter, FaceBook, MySpace, and LinkedIn. As we are all aware, with the growth of Web 2.0, millions of individuals around the world are spending vast amounts of time and energy with to these social networks. However, these security researchers demonstrated how imposters using these various Web 2.0 networks can steal identities and personal information with great ease. Given these warning of security issues we need to stay tuned for the continued evolution of twitter and the other social networks.
 

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The UK’s plan to bring broadband Internet service to every home by 2012 is a very bold plan since based on recent reports only about 68% of the UK population are currently Internet users. In the meantime about 72% of the population of the US are Internet users. However these are not exactly apples to apples comparisons since these statistics do not tell what percentages of homes have broadband, rather these statistics shed light on the number of users. In the US cable television is a major provider of Internet access, and there are still dial-up users who are primarily outside of the heavily populated regions in rural America.

What about Rural America?

The FCC (Federal Communications Commission) and USDA (US Department of Agriculture) are working on a joint initiative to bring high speed Internet access to the rural US over broadband over power lines (BPL), satellite, wireless, and other means. However for the most part this effort not speeding along. Specifically this Blog is being written on a computer in the rural Texas (Milam County, Texas) which has dial-up only, not WIFI, or any other broadband Internet option available. This is reality for rural America where citizens still have white and yellow pages, which is something my home in Dallas has not had for many years.

Internet in More Homes

As we look to the future of the Internet more high speed Internet access is a necessity given the proliferation of eCommerce, and expansion of Web 2.0 into Web 3.0. Of course there’s also the age divide which is changing the use of eCommerce, now that FaceBook has more than 150 Million users, the demographics have changed so that a larger and larger percentage of users are 35 or older. It seems pretty clear that as our younger generations rely on the social networking and texting, everyone has to get with it, even in rural America. Not a surprise that on January 21, 2009 (day after the Inauguration) President Obama launched his YouTube site, but equally as interesting was the following week that the Pope launched his YouTube site. Clearly both the President and Pope know that the primary way to communicate is through the Internet. The UK is on the right path, and hopefully the US will not be far behind in having high speed Internet in every home by 2012.

What priorities should America have to bring high speed Internet access to rural citizens? To every home?
 

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Check out this WatchIT video about virtual world legal issues. Since major IT businesses (including IBM and Dell) and lawyers now have a presence in Second Life, it’s time you thought about some legal issues.

Post comments about this WatchIT video.
 

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Reports that the EU regulators have now formally accused Microsoft of antitrust charges for including Internet Explorer as part of the Windows operating system is hardly a surprise. Apparently in December 2007 the Opera Software the Norwegian browser developed filed a complaint with the EU that Microsoft violated EU antitrust laws. Opera’s 2007 complaint jump-started the EU’s Competition Commission and only a few months earlier Microsoft ceased appealing the EU’s 2004 antitrust violations related to the Media Player that included fines of $1.3 billion.

What Happens Next?

Microsoft has 8 weeks to respond to the EU why Internet Explorer should not be removed from the Windows operating system. But it seems clear that the EU wants Microsoft to change it marketing practices or risk more fines. Stay tuned for more rulings from the EU on these charges.

Historical Perspective

The Internet’s been around since the 1960’s as an academic research platform to help the space race in response to Russia launch of Sputnik in 1957. Until the browser was available the Internet was not user friendly. The Internet was a lot like MS-DOS before the advent of the mouse and GUI (graphic user interfaces) and using the Internet required users to know arcane and alien instructions. What changed the Internet and allowed it to take off was that Microsoft started giving away Internet Explorer with Windows in about 1995. Of course other browsers existed before 1995, but had it not been for Microsoft embedding Internet Explorer as part of Windows it is debatable whether the Internet would have taken off when it did and with such gusto.

Irony of Ironies

It seems ironic that Microsoft is now being penalized for including the Internet Explorer with Windows, since had Microsoft not embedded Internet Explorer with Windows in the mid 1990’s, the Internet may never had developed at the pace it has.
 

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A report that 11 people were convicted in China of violating Chinese copyright laws is most significant because of the cooperation and joint efforts between the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and China’s Ministry of Public Security. These convictions are a good sign that software counterfeiters are risk which is critical to Microsoft who estimates it global sales at more than $2 billion. Unfortunately it appears that these 11 individuals who were convicted did not have millions in sales, but did account for about $200,000 of products. There is still a separate trial in China against other alleged counterfeiters of software products from Symantec and Microsoft.

Selling Counterfeit Software on eBay

The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) is actively pursuing sales of counterfeit software on the Internet in what it calls the Auction Litigation Program. In July 2008 the SIIA reported that Jeremiah Mondello pled guilty to counts of copyright infringement, mail fraud and identity theft for sale of counterfeit software on eBay. He was sentenced to 48 months in federal prison in addition to the confiscation of his computers and $220,000 in cash.

How Big is Software Piracy?

In 2008 the Business Software Alliance (BSA) and International Data Corporation (IDC) issued their 2007 Global Software Piracy Study. The BSA/IDC Study has a breakdown country by country, and some regions of the world are worse than others. The bottom line is that this BSA/IDC Study estimates that in 2007 about 38% of all software used in the world was counterfeit which accounted for approximately $47 billion.

Can the Software Pirates be Contained?

Counterfeit software is an enormous business and these convictions in China and the US should have an impact on other software pirates, but not all countries around the world are willing to pursue software counterfeiters. Given the percentage of illegal software in many countries it seems unlikely that it is possible to ever stop this software piracy. For instance the BSA/IDC Study indicates that about 21% of software in the North America is counterfeit with a value of $9.1 billion which is accounts for about 19% of all of the counterfeit sales in the world.
 

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A recent annual report from Ponemon Institute and TRUSTe ranks the top four most trusted companies as American Express, eBay, IBM, and Amazon. However Google did not make the top 20, yet Yahoo! and Facebook made the top 20 for the first time. This makes for interesting news, but given the search traffic and size of Google it seems strange.

Google IS The Main Search Engine

The latest rankings of search engines shows that Google accounts for 63.1%, Yahoo! 20.5%, Microsoft 8.5%, Ask 4.2%, AOL 3.7%. Since Yahoo! and AOL are in the top 20 most trusted companies and account for only 12.2% of the searches, it makes the Google’s 63.1% seem even more peculiar that it is not in the top 20. Apparently the overwhelming majority of searches are made on a site that is not as trustworthy as Amazon.

Who’s Complaining about Google Now?

A group of academics and lawyers in Japan is demanding that Google stop making pictures of streets in Japan and delete all images already captured. You may not be aware that Google maps has driven vehicles around the world with cameras taking 360 degree pictures at ground level. Which is fine of course if you are looking at someone else’s property or planning a trip, but do people really want to have their homes displayed for the world to see? Another big question is, how is Google monetizing this? Perhaps this is partially the reason that Google is not one of the top trusted companies.
 

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An estimated 140 million folks use Facebook worldwide, but this is the first story about legal notice of a lawsuit through a social network. The law has never been fast to move, and there’s no reason to believe that any other country will adopt Facebook as a means of legal service, but this is an interesting story. Since the plaintiff had no success with direct service at the home of defendants, or by defendants’ email, apparently there was a match from the mortgage application with both defendants homeowners to their Facebook pages. The judge ordered that the notice be a private message and after posting this message the defendants have 7 days to respond.

Legal Service and Default

Most people are familiar with personal service where a party actually receives a written notice, and that’s easy to follow. Depending on state and federal laws in the US, service may be accomplished by leaving written notice on some one’s door, publishing a newspaper notice, or sending a certified letter with return receipt. So if the defendants do not respond after proper legal notice, courts will issues default orders against them for failing to participate in the lawsuit. That means the defendant loses by failure to respond. Of course most defaults orders can be set aside if the defendant can show that they were not properly served and given notice of the lawsuit.

Social Network Service?

Since so many people regularly visit Facebook and other social networks this service of legal process may be the beginning of a new phase of the law adapting to use of the Internet. Given all the trends, it seems likely that more and more individuals will participate in social networks. As well, the age of social network visitors has changed from being primarily for college age to middle age, so a broader spectrum of the population is using social networks. One can wonder if we will see service of legal process to avatars in virtual worlds such as Second Life. As the Internet evolves clearly legal process will have to keep up, and where else can we be found except sitting at our computers/laptops/PDAs attached to the Internet?
 

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Although not much of a surprise to read this headline that the US is not ready for a cyber attack and I guess Yogi Berra was right with his famous “It's like deja-vu, all over again.” Clearly the September 11th attack was a wake-up call, but not a surprise that the US was vulnerable and has enemies foreign and domestic, but given our growing dependency on the Internet headlines of this sort do not portend well for the future. Last summer’s conflict in Georgia when Russia hijacked websites was not a surprise, and only reinforced how easily cyber attacks can occur.

How Easy it is?

A couple of years ago I attended a conference where a world renown hacker was the keynote speaker. He explained that because of known problems with Microsoft wireless software that he managed to access the hard drives of every passenger who was using their computer on his airplane flight a few days before. In spite of the fact that he had reported the flaw to Microsoft they failed to acknowledge or fix the problem. When I spoke at the next session I saw him in the back of the room using his computer, he told me that he was able to see the contents of everyone in the room who had their computer turned on except for those of us who had their wireless feature turned off.

What’s at Risk?

The economy is suffering badly enough and about the last thing the US needs is a cyber attack on our banking and/or electric energy systems. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff recommends the appointment of a White House "cybersecurity czar,” but that has not happened yet and we are vulnerable. Without doubt the Obama administration will have to deal with this sooner rather than later, but hopefully not after a major melt-down following some disastrous cyber attack.
 

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Dell charges a premium for customers to call US based support, and other companies are relocating call centers to the US so that customer service agents will speak “American.” Apparently even though the economics make a great deal of sense for call centers to be based off-shore, there appear to be a great deal of dissatisfaction. It doesn’t take rocket science to get this picture since everyone who reads this blog has spent more time than they would ever want to quantify on the phone with some support person for a computer failure or loss of Internet access.

YouTube Aplenty

There are a number of amusing videos on YouTube about what’s going on the other end of the service representative's phone, but little imagination is required. A recent Bollywood movie even made light of training Indian based call center representatives learning to speak "American."

Where’s the Disconnect?

There are two problems with off-shore support that leap to mind. The first problem is that for the most part Americans tend to speak in idioms and even though individuals from other countries learn English they generally do not learn idioms. However the training in off-shore call centers is supposed to provide skills that permit a dialogue that permits the unhappy customers to get answers they want. The second problem is that most people who call for support are unhappy, frustrated, and mad. Unfortunately the service representatives get the brunt of the unhappiness.

How Important is Internet Access to You?

Let’s say that you lost Internet access and as a result you cannot complete some critical business from home. Yelling at a service representative half way around the world will likely not solve the problem, and to make matters worse if the service representative does not understand the caller's language, how can a problem ever be resolved? So Dell and other US based companies tried to solve to the language problem by providing US call centers. The frustration that you lost Internet access is not improved, but the likelihood that the customer and the service representative will communicate increases…and hopefully a resolution is more likely.
 

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A recent report that the Pulitzer Prizes will now be accepting submissions from Internet publication is clearly a sign of the times, but what took so long? Without question there’s no rocket science to see that dramatic decline in newspaper publication. As someone who cannot let a day go by without reading a newspaper it’s clear that newspaper readership is in a sharp decline.

What are the numbers?

Even the newspaper organizations report a decline, but it still interesting that many of the daily newspapers like USA Today, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal are printing more than 6 million copies daily. In the meantime the daily eyeball visits to their websites exceed 13 million. As a daily reader of the washingtonpost.com, newyorktimes.com, and the dallasnews.com it’s easy to get a news fix. But the trends portend badly for newspapers in the future.

Where are we headed?

With a generation of youth who rely on cell phones in lieu of wearing watches and use text messaging rather than talk to others, it seems unlikely they will ever read newspapers. At the same time news is on the decline, there is also a sharp increase on people participating in virtual worlds like Second Life. So if people live in virtual, non-real worlds….how does real news even apply? These social issues are changing dramatically by the dramatic growth of use of the Internet. It seems that we cannot really predict exactly where we are headed, but it’s sure interesting to observe these changes as they occur.
 

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Facebook claims to have more than 120 million active members and it is the 4th most trafficked site in the world. Of course there are many other popular social network sites including LinkedIn and MySpace to name a few, and only to make things more interesting a recent report indicates that more than half of MySpace visitors are 35 or older. Not much of a surprise that more mature individuals are getting into social networking as the Internet evolves.

What about the Content?

The terms of use vary between Facebook and other social network sites, but one common provision in the terms of use is that the users grant these sites a worldwide license to the user content that is irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferrable, royalty free to use, copy, or just anything they want. Facebook also limits its liability to the amount of monies paid (if any) or $1000. Even users of Google Apps grant Google a license to their content.

Web Universal ID?

Facebook recently announced Facebook Connect which is an Universal ID that will allow its users to only logon once and then navigate to third party sites. Not much of a surprise that Google, Yahoo!, and MySpace are also developing similar technology. However, it seems that either few individuals don’t care or understand that they are providing Facebook, MySpace, Google, and the all the rest with licenses to their personal content. Regardless of what users understand the growth of the social networking websites will be based on increased data from their users’ content which will generate more online advertising revenues.
 

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What a sad story that an email sent by Josh Evans (who did not exist) led to the suicide of Morgan Meier (a 13 year old). Actually Josh Evans’ emails were sent by Lori Drew, the mother of a former friend of Morgan, who “cyberbullied” Megan with a make-belief identity. How tragic for Morgan’s family and after a trial, a federal court jury found that Lori Drew committed a crime, but it will not end here. In December the federal judge will consider motions to set aside the verdict. Depending on what the federal judge does, this may continue in the appellate courts for some time to come.

Will Failure to Read the Terms of Service be a Defense?

Lori Drew’s attorney has filed motions to set aside the verdict because she did not read the MySpace Terms of Service which obligates users to provide “truthful and accurate” registration information. Prosecutors alleged that Drew’s phony profile was unauthorized access and a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986. That law was created to protect violations of federal and bank computers, and has been expanded to include most computers and the Internet.

How do Courts View Terms of Service?

Generally most courts tend to accept the Terms of Service (or Terms of Use) for a website as a binding agreement even though few individuals ever read them. Terms of Service are most often found below the fold of the front page of most websites…Google does not even have a Terms of Service on its front page. But courts rely on the fact that users have a choice to use the website and so should realize they are bound to whatever the website says the Terms of Use are. As we all know many websites also require a “Browse-Wrap Agreement” which asks the user to “Click Agree.” Virtually everyone does “Click Agree” without reading a single word of the “Browse-Wrap Agreement.” So it will be interesting to see how Lori Drew’s failure to read MySpace’s Terms of Use will be any kind of defense.
 

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A recent a Google announcement of Wiki services in Google to improve the search experience and allow users to rank search results has a number of individuals questioning exactly what’s going on. Just like most wiki projects, this project did not in a straight line. Apparently this new service came from a Google Wiki Search Team rather than Google Labs.

How does the new Google Wiki work?

The new Google Wiki will allow users to conduct searches, and then permits them to reorder or delete certain results. That way when users return for future visits to Google they get their search results in the order they want. Only the user has access to their own search results with its Google Wiki reorganization, so they can keep this private.

What’s really going on?

Some skeptics complain that Google’s run out of ideas and that they are fixing something that wasn’t broken. Maybe, but perhaps there’s more method to this madness – since users’ can control the priority of their search results, won’t Google have even more powerful advertising data about users? Google users are more likely to spend more time on Google, which can only help Google’s business. Privacy of personal information should be a major concern to Google users since Google will have a personal insight about search priority of search results, not to mention the deleted search results. Stay tuned for future developments!
 

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A ruling in Quon v. Arch Wireless in June, 2008 in the 9th Circuit may influence how much privacy individuals may expect with text messages and eMails that they send. The same month the opinion was issued there were an estimated 75 billion text messages processed in the US. That’s an astonishing number, but no more astonishing that the estimated 97 billion daily emails sent (see my September 4, 2008 blog).

What happened in Quon?

The Ontario, California Police Department issued pagers to its officers and purchased 25,000 characters per month for each device and then paid an overage fee in excess of the 25,000 characters. The Department had employment agreements that stated that the text messages were covered by the Internet and eMail Policies. However, the Department told the officers that if they would just pay the overage fees, then the Department would not bother to read the text messages to see whether they were personal or for police business. Ultimately the Department tired of being a bill collecter and asked Arch Wireless to send copies of the text messages for review. The officers filed suit saying that the messages were private to them, violated their Fourth Amendment rights of unreasonable search and seizure, and ultimately the trial court and jury agreed.

Privacy of Text Messages and eMails

Generally in the US eMails and text messages are not private to the employees so employers can review them if they wish, however in the EU and Canada text messages and eMails are private to the employee. In Quon the 9th Circuit interpreted the Stored Communications Act (18 U.S.C. §2702 “Voluntary disclosure of customer communications or records”) in that Arch Wireless was providing an “electronic communication service” (ECS) rather than a “remote computing service” (RCS). However, even the 9th Circuit that this ruling was very fact specific. So if employers want to have access to employees’ text messages and eMails it would be wise to state that specifically in the employment agreement, which should be updated and resigned annually, and then the employer should also follow its company Internet and eMail Policies regarding enforcement of the policies.
 

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The saga of where Yahoo! is headed took another turn when Google decided that it was not worth the federal scrutiny for Google and Yahoo! to work together. Clearly to the two largest search engines working together meant an increase in revenue for Yahoo! Microsoft a spurned suitor made it clear that it did not want Google and Yahoo! working together. As well, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has been reviewing this joint marriage since it was first announced.

How Did the Elections Impact the Cancellation?

Google’s decision to abandon the Yahoo! deal happened a few days after the election. However, Google CEO’s Eric Schmidt campaigned for President-Elect Obama, so one might have concluded that Google would have continued with this deal. In an unrelated event Thomas Barnett, Assistant AG for the Antitrust division of the DOJ, who was skeptical of the Google deal, resigned the day following Google’s decision to abandon the Yahoo! deal. What’s the message here?

What’s Going to Happen Now?

All indications are that Yahoo! has to do something for economical survival and maybe a new deal with Microsoft will be more appealing since the deal with Google ended. Google is the 800 pound gorilla in the search/ad business and everything it does to expand will continue to anticompetitive scrutiny, not unlike virtually every move that Microsoft makes leaves it subject to court scrutiny. However a deal between Microsoft and Yahoo! is anything but a sure thing since the DOJ will want to scrutinize any proposal that may be anticompetitive. As a matter of fact, a DC District Judge still gets reports about Microsoft’s compliance with the 2001 Antitrust Settlement.
 

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Since millions of individuals play online games, and many virtual characters are killed daily it’s hard to image exactly how someone could really be found guilty of killing a virtual character. However, apparently this news story from Japan indicates that the defendant was so angry with her Maple Story online husband that she killed his digital persona. Actually according to the story the defendant found that she was divorced without warning and so she logged into the virtual Maple Story world using her ex-husband’s ID and password to kill him.

How can one kill a virtual person?

This seems a little goofy except that Maple Story and all online virtual worlds, including Second Life, require all users to agree to terms of service (TOS). So it’s not much of a surprise that the TOS restrict what users can do…but neither Maple Story nor Second Life have TOS that even mention killing or murder. So that‘s why the Japanese authorities are charging the defendant with illegally accessing a computer which is a crime in most states and countries.

Where are we going with virtual law?

As mentioned in an earlier blog, the American Bar Association published a book entitled Virtual Law in which Chapter 10 is entitled “Criminal Law and Virtual Worlds” and states that the most common virtual law crimes include money laundering, fraud, gambling, and stalking/harassment. As well, some virtual worlds have tried to deal with sexual behavior which is pretty difficult to regulate. But it seems appropriate that the virtual worlds try to protect children from sexual behavior, so all TOS generally do not permit anyone younger than 18 from participating. However, as my favor New Yorker cartoon indicates with one dog sitting in front of a computer talking to another dog and says “on the Internet no one knows you’re dog.” No one really has a clue who is users really are. But defining pornography is not so easy, even when the US Supreme Court tried to define pornography Justice Potter Stewart’s famous statement in Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184 (1964) was that he could not define it, ‘but he knew it when he saw it.’ So how can pornography in virtual worlds be regulated?
 

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A recent report from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that they were successful in getting a preliminary victory by shutting down a huge international spammer is great news since we receive so much spam. As the consumer watch dog for US citizens the FTC has been pursuing claims against spammers under the CAN SPAM Act of 2003, but the ability to shut down a foreign operated spammers is more complicated than just getting a judge to sign an order in Chicago. The CIO at SpamHaus claims that the defendants in this lawsuit delivered up to a third of all spam.

What was going on?

These defendants used spam to market male-enhancing pills, prescription drugs, and weight-loss pills, notwithstanding that apparently the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) tests indicated serious problems for individuals who used these products. Also the defendants misrepresented that the prescription drugs were licensed by US pharmacies when in fact the drugs were shipped from India without licenses. Also the FTC investigators found that there was no security for credit card purchasers so in addition to everything else there is a concern about identity theft.

Who has jurisdiction?

In order for courts to take lawsuits there has to be proper jurisdiction, and in this instance the FTC brought its case simultaneous with charges by officials in New Zealand. But the scope of these spammers was larger than New Zealand and the US, and apparently included spammers in China, India, Russia, Canada, and the US. So it’s easy to see how the Federal Court in Chicago could seize assets in the US, but not so easy to see how effective that might be in the other countries other than New Zealand. How courts reach across international boundaries is not entirely clear including whether the French Courts really has jurisdiction over the US Yahoo! website, but since the 2000 French injunction is still in place to preclude the sale Nazi materials.
 

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It’s hardly a passing fancy, virtual worlds abound. Second Life boasts virtual property owned by IBM, Dell, and Manpower. Gaming giants Sony and Microsoft have announced virtual gaming communities where avatars will compete but using their specialized equipment rather than just personal computers. Since law is the glue that holds society together, it’s no wonder that there are unique laws in the virtual worlds and a number of lawyers. As a matter of fact, the American Bar Association recently published a book entitled Virtual Law. Also there was Virtual Law Conference was held concurrently with the Virtual Worlds Conference in New York. Even US District Judge Richard A. Posner made an appearance as an avatar in Second Life.

Modern Day SciFi?

It’s hard to tell whether Virtual Worlds are a form of SciFi computer-Internet recreation. That is, living through avatars in an imaginary Internet world. Not being much of a SciFi reader I vividly I remember reading 1984 when I was in the 8th grade and was pleased with the year 1984 came and went without Big Brother running our world. Also I remember reading Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land in 1972 while in graduate school studying computer science and being impacted.

Lawyers Abound in Virtual Worlds

There must be a connection point that interests thousands of individuals since Second Life and other virtual worlds operate in a number of languages around our earth. Virtual residents own property and conduct commerce, so lawyers naturally have a role. Nonetheless when Linden Labs took some property away from a Second Life resident, the litigation ended up in federal court Pennsylvania. Linden Labs was unsuccessful in moving the dispute to California because the judge acknowledged when Second Life founder Philip Rosendale’s Avatar held a “town hall” meeting in Second Life and residents from Pennsylvania were invited and attended, and so the defendants should have known that they could been dragged into court in Pennsylvania.
 

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When Google purchased YouTube for $1.65B a few years ago there was in expectation that the site would be a money maker, not just a magnetic for video traffickers. Of course Google did not expect the troubled economy that we live in today nor that Viacom to file a $1B lawsuit for copyright infringement. Google’s new offering will allow YouTube users to purchase digital goods from Apple’s iTunes or Amazon.

AdSense for Games

Google also announced beta software called AdSense for Games which allows video, image or text ads to be placed at the start, end, or change of level for online games.

It’s About Advertising

Notwithstanding these complex economic times, recent estimates of global online advertising revenue are an astonishing $81.1B by 2011, and Google is obviously one of the greatest movers. Since the estimates of revenue from YouTube are a measly $200M for 2009, Google’s new sale of digital goods should significantly increase Google hope to generate $27B which they estimate. It’s also hard to image that Google’s 10th birthday will be in November and it is one of the richest companies in the world. In the meantime the US government doesn’t know what to do about Google proposed advertising partnership Yahoo! so that deal is now on hold. We all need to stay tuned, but be assured Google will generate more data about visitors to their kingdom which clearly translates into ad revenue.
 

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When Google recently launched its beta version of the Chrome browser, it was at a point in time when Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) had approximately 70% of the browser market (with Mozilla’s Firefox, Apple’s Safari, and Opera the other major players). Amazingly enough Google claimed that it captured 1% of the browser market with the initial launch the first day…and since this was Google pushing out another product, that’s probably a good guess. It seems that the statistics are difficult to assess, because all of these vendors offer their products free and because many users have multiple browsers loaded on their systems.

Did We Need a New Browser?

Google’s market power and built-in user base maybe more important than did we need a new browser. Nevertheless Google claims that they built Chrome using today’s tools, and don’t have any legacy system problems from old versions. Clearly a reference to Microsoft’s various versions of IE and Mozilla’s various versions of Firefox and previous versions of Mosiac. Now that Netscape dropped out of the browser market, at least that’s one less vendor. However, Netscape’s departure brings back memories of the Microsoft Antitrust lawsuit which started in the late 1990’s where the forced tie-in of IE to Windows helped prove Microsoft’s anticompetitive behavior.

Google Continues to Grow

Also Google claims that Chrome is faster, but of course most users would not be able to determine faster performance on most systems because there are so many other variables. As well, Google declares that Chrome has better security which is high on the list of most users. Chrome will likely be a success because Google seems to have a magic touch with marketing, and as well it does not take rocket science to conclude that using the Google search engine and tools could only be improved by using Google’s browser. Or at least that’s what Google would like its users to conclude!
 

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As a big fan of Microsoft it seems to me that the PC user community has benefited over the years by the standardization of computers, it seems very strange that the first TV commercial with Jerry Seinfeld was just like his TV series….about nothing. When Microsoft first let it be known that Seinfeld would help promote the Vista operating system, it was hard to image. Now that that the first commercial has aired things can only get more confusing.

Microsoft Vista

One would have to live on Mars to have missed the fact that Vista has not been the box office success that Microsoft envisioned, and since most corporate users have stayed with XP as their operating system at the current time it does not seem likely that we will see much wide-spread growth for Vista anytime soon. From all reports Vista requires more hardware resources that XP, and unfortunately much of the XP software does not run on Vista. However there are many reports that indicate that more applications will run with Vista.

Marketing Software

It does not seem like that long ago that Apple announced the Lisa (the first GUI computer system) during a multi-million dollar commercial during the 1980 Super Bowl, and with the proliferation of the Internet most computer users are pretty numb to advertising for software systems. So it seems even more intriguing that Microsoft would hire Seinfeld to promote Vista. Even more intriguing since the first commercial was so obtuse and failed to mention Vista in the least. I for one will stay tuned with great interest to see Seinfeld and Bill Gates do goofy things in commercials…which I assume is expensive.
 

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The use and evolution of the Internet has changed social behavior in a number of ways. It is unlikely that anyone could have foreseen the explosive growth and development of Google since it launched in 1998 and is now worth more than $200 billion. So when Google purchased YouTube there was a rumble about Google figuring out a way to commercialize and monetize YouTube in ways not contemplated. At the same time the copyright laws have been in turmoil over the Internet and it's not clear who the real winner has been. The demise of Napster and song sharing in 2000 led the Apple's unbelievable success with the iPod. Another unforeseen evolution of the Internet.

Recently a federal judge ordered Google to hand over 12 terabytes of YouTube data including IP addresses, and many privacy groups are fretting over which they should be. When YouTube visitors watch videos on YouTube they do not expect to be identified, and even though Viacom is suing Google for a $1 billion in copyright infringement that does not justify personal information to be disclosed. So the federal judge order the YouTube data to be subject to a protective order so that the data may not be used except for limited purposes. Since we are all aware of inadvertant mistakes and leaks of private information, any violation by Viacom, whether intentional or inadvertant, would put millions of individuals at risk. Watching these event unfold may lead to some changes in federal laws to protect individuals.

Few individuals review Privacy Policies on any websites, but the Federal Trade Commission requires that US companies follow whatever Privacy Policies that they have on their website. However, there are users of YouTube from other countries as there are not international boundaries for use and access of YouTube. In the EU (and Canada) there are very different privacy laws. Particularly the 1995 EU Data Directive which allows individuals access to any computer which has data about them which they can correct. The YouTube Privacy Policy states that YouTube agrees to the US Department of Commerce Safe Harbor Policy which means that YouTube complies with the 1995 EU Data Directive. So EU visitors to YouTube may have an entirely different perspective on the federal judge's action last week regarding privacy of their use of YouTube's data now being provided to Viacom.

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