Mashable Media Summit 2010 - News and Politics

Posted on June 10, 2010 by Peter Vogel

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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Cyber Czar Finally

Posted on December 22, 2009 by Peter Vogel

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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Conviction of Software Pirates in China is Significant

Posted on January 5, 2009 by Peter Vogel

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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