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Twitter, DMCA Take-downs & the Prior Restraint of First Amendment Speech

cgseo — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 21:58:00 +0000

Last week, the big news in DMCA takedowns was the sweeping removal of Hitler parody videos . Earlier this year, it was Google suddenly wiping out six separate music blogs . Today, it's the removal of a tweet . While this might not seem like a big deal on the surface, it leads to some much bigger questions about free speech, what content should fall under a proper DMCA take-down and whether or not the DMCA is a legal method of applying censorship by any content owner. Sponsor Here's the story as told by TechDirt: The story involves a music blogger named JP, who runs the appropriately named JP's blog . Not surprisingly, JP also has a Twitter account , where he mostly seems to post links to his blog posts. One such post was about the leak of the new album by The National. That post includes a link to Amazon where people can purchase the new album... and also a link to a download of one song (in MP3 format) from the album. According to JP's blog post on the subject, Twitter sent him a message last Thursday "in response to a DMCA take-down notice". The email, he writes, read as follows: jp917, Apr 22 03:10 pm (PDT): Hello, The following material has been removed from your account in response to a DMCA take-down notice: Tweet: http://twitter.com/jp917/statuses/12499491144 - New Post: Leaked: The National - High Violet http://jpsblog.net/2010/04/20/leaked-the-national-high-violet/ JP denies posting any link to the leaked album in his tweeted blog post, saying that he will not bother filing a counterclaim to the take-down. He also links to an article in Plagiarism Today from a year ago that alleges that Twitter's handling of DMCA take-downs and counterclaims is problematic and that "there is clearly an organization issue here and that's leading to confusion." While last weeks' take-downs of parody videos may have been "overbroad take-downs of legal content" , as the Electronic Frontier Foundation asserted, this sort take-down may go an extra step, beyond constitutionally protected First Amendment speech. With the YouTube take-downs, at least there was copyrighted content present, although it may have been used according to the law in the end. In this case, according to JP, there was neither pirated content nor a link to any DMCA-violating content. While TechDirt argues that "specifically, nothing in the tweet itself is infringing -- which means that the DMCA take-down for the tweet is bogus, and a violation of the DMCA itself", we spoke with David Sohn, senior policy council with the Center for Democracy & Technology , who said that the question might not be so cut and dry. Section 5.12D of the DMCA relates to cases involving "information location tools" and "links". "One possibility here is that Twitter has gotten a take-down notice that might not stand up as a totally valid take-down notice," said Sohn. On Sohn's advice, we asked Wendy Seltzer, founder of ChillingEffects.org , what this all meant and she explained that the burden of proof lies with the person creating the content and not the platform. All the platform, in this case Twitter, needs to know is that the complaint me be valid and that, by removing the offending content, they cover themselves legally in the eyes of the DMCA. Whether or not section 5.12 D of the DMCA actually applies doesn't really matter. The introduction to her recent paper, "Free Speech Unmoored in Copyright's Safe Harbor: Chilling Effects of the DMCA on the First Amendment" (.pdf), speaks clearly to the problem we saw when first reading this story: Each week, more blog posts are redacted, more videos deleted, and more web pages removed from Internet search results based on private claims of copyright infringement. Under the "safe harbors" of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), Internet service providers are encouraged to respond to copyright complaints with content takedowns, assuring their immunity from liability while diminishing the rights of their subscribers and users. Paradoxically, the law's shield for service providers becomes a sword against the public who depend upon these providers as platforms for speech. The problem with the current format of the DMCA, especially in the case of something like a communication platform such as Twitter, is that a DMCA take-down notice becomes an extremely effective means of silencing information for a legally mandated period of 10 days. In essence, it provides those who wish to silence a voice a quick and legal means of enacting what is called a " prior restraint ", something clearly prohibited in First Amendment law. "When non-infringing speech is taken down, not only does its poster lose an opportunity to reach an audience, the public loses the benefit of hearing that lawful speech in the marketplace of ideas," writes Seltzer in the paper. Twitter offered this response: "Twitter regularly receives DMCA takedown notices. We strive to balance the interests of our users and copyright holders by reviewing each notice. After determining whether the notice is compliant with the law, we also consider other factors such as whether the notice is abusive to our users, or fails to take fair use into consideration. You can read more about our DMCA process here: http://help.twitter.com/entries/15795-copyright-and-dmca-policy "We are always working to improve our transparency. Users are notified immediately when content has been removed from their account. In this situation, we responded to a request to remove a Tweet containing a link to download content from an unreleased album. After reexamining our decision, we believe this was the correct first step. If the affected user believes we have made a mistake or that the notice is in error, the appropriate thing for the user to do is file a counter-claim. "We believe that the reasoning of the DMCA claim and its origin should be transparent to both the affected user and other interested parties. We are working on further steps to improve access to this information." So, our next logical question here is: Since this post includes the email from Twitter, which includes that original link to a blog post that supposedly linked to infringing content, can it too be removed according to the guidelines of the DMCA? Discuss

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Twitter, DMCA Take-downs & the Prior Restraint of First Amendment Speech

Amazon Refuses North Carolina’s Demands for Customers’ Personal Data

cgseo — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 16:24:36 +0000

North Carolina has asked online retailer Amazon.com to turn over the names and addresses of every customer who has made a purchase on the site since 2003 and what they bought. The N.C. Department of Revenue is making the request in an attempt to audit Amazon's compliance with state sales and tax laws, according to a Reuters report. Amazon says revealing this data violates customer privacy and has filed a lawsuit to prevent having to turn over the records which hold the transaction details on 50 million purchases over a 7-year time frame. Sponsor Government Wants Names, Addresses and Purchase History In a lawsuit filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, Amazon states that North Carolina has no need for the personal details of its customers - details which include full names, addresses and information about exactly what they purchased and when. The Internet retailer had already given the state information on what has been sold to N.C. residents, but in the form of anonymized data, which should be sufficient. North Carolina, in turn, is now threatening the retailer with contempt proceedings if they don't hand over the requested records. The issue at hand, and likely the reason behind the request, has to do with N.C.'s sales tax laws. Amazon doesn't maintain any offices or warehouses in the state, so they are not required by law to collect sales tax on purchases. However, last year, the state passed a law that required retailers like Amazon to collect tax in the state if they ran marketing affiliate programs, which Amazon does. Amazon responded by shutting down Amazon.com Associates in N.C., the referral program that allows website owners to advertise Amazon products via links, banners, widgets and embeddable "mini-stores" on their web sites and blogs. Despite the program's shutdown, N.C. wants to find ways to collect back taxes on sales that took place before the law went into effect. Right to Privacy or Right to Tax? Amazon has already given the state order numbers, city, county, zip codes, transaction dates, prices and product codes for seven years worth of purchases - information routinely requested in audits like this. But asking for personally identifiable information goes too far, says the retailer. In the filing, Amazon says N.C.'s demands violate customers' First Amendment rights, Washington state law and federal law. Now it will be up to a federal judge in Seattle to rule as to whether or not this demand is, in fact, illegal. Beth Stevenson, the N.C. Department of Revenue's director of public affairs has not yet commented on the lawsuit Amazon filed saying the agency needed to review it first. Discuss

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Amazon Refuses North Carolina's Demands for Customers' Personal Data

ReadWriteWeb Events Guide, 17 April 2010

cgseo — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 18:00:00 +0000

Here's a little taste of the events coming up in the next few weeks here at the ReadWriteWeb events guide: Seven on Seven, eCommAmerica, DrupalCon, The Real Time Web: Imperative or Insanity?, Big Data Workshop, Future of Money and Technology Summit, and Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco. And of course, ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit 2010 ! Have you registered yet? How do you like your events guide? You can import individual events into Google Calendar using the link beside each entry, or download the entire thing as an iCal (and Google Calendar-importable) file, or even view it as a world map . Know of something cool taking place that should appear here? Let us know in the comments below or contact us . Sponsor 17 April 2010: New York City Seven on Seven Seven on Seven will pair seven leading artists with seven game-changing technologists in teams of two, and challenge them to develop something new - be it an application, social media, artwork, product, or whatever they imagine - over the course of a single day. The seven teams will unveil their ideas at a one-day event at the New Museum on April 17. Seven on Seven Participants include, on the technology side, Ayah Bdeir (artist and programmer), Jeff Hammerbacher (Accel Ventures/ Facebook), David Karp (founder of Tumblr), Andrew Kortina (of Bitly/ Venmo), Hilary Mason (of betaworks), Matt Mullenweg (founder of WordPress), and Joshua Schachter (currently at Google, formerly at Yahoo, and founder of delicious), and on the art side, Tauba Auerbach, Cao Fei, Aaron Koblin, Monica Narula, Marc Andre Robinson, Evan Roth and Ryan Trecartin. Conference attendance includes a half-day session where the seven teams will unveil their ideas, followed by a cocktail reception in the New Museum Skyroom. Find registration information here . April 19, 2010: St. Louis Missouri Social Fresh St. Louis The social media conference for marketers, Social Fresh is not about concept, but focused purely on case studies from the front lines. Learn what social media can really do for business bottom lines. Over the course of the day you'll hear from 35 speakers from companies like Ford, Best Buy, Scottrade, Hardees, CMT and many more. Register now and use coupon code RWW15 for 15% off. 19 – 21 April 2010: San Francisco, California eCommAmerica Emerging Communications Conference & Awards (eComm) is focused on what's "Next in Telecom, Mobile & Internet Communications". It's designed to accelerate communications technology and business model innovation. Participants attend to be exposed to the latest technologies, research, companies, trends and opportunities. Day three this year is being dedicated to augmented reality. AR may prove to be as significant as the introduction of the Internet itself, moving computers off desks and out of their separate modality into our lives. Use discount code 'ReadWriteWeb' for 10% discount. 19 – 21 April 2010: San Francisco, California DrupalCon DrupalCon is the premier conference focused on Drupal, the award-winning open source content management framework that is galvanizing social publishing and web development today. For a registration fee of $195, attendees get three full days of sessions led by the best and brightest Drupal experts. Drupal has been downloaded over 2 million times since its inception, and project growth has doubled annually for several years. Drupal is used to deliver a wide variety of application types including blogs, wikis, community networks, digital media portals, and web content publishing and management. 20 April 2010: Palo Alto, California The Real Time Web: Imperative or Insanity? The cost of creating, sharing and distributing data in real-time has become essentially zero, leading to an explosion of user generated content. Currently, every minute: 500,000 pieces of content are shared on Facebook, 25,000 messages are created on Twitter, and 20 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube. Over the last decades, the amount of data created by individuals has doubled every two years. How do we effectively use that data to make decisions that drive value for consumers and businesses? How much data is too much to handle? And what's the opportunity for entrepreneurs? In this event , VLAB engages with entrepreneurs, investors, and established players to separate reality from hype while examining key business opportunities. 23 April 2010: Mountain View, California Big Data Workshop As the internet approaches 1 trillion connected gigabytes, we're not in Kansas anymore. The data deluge poses important questions: How will we manage all this information? Is the relational database doomed? How will be synchronize it? Will we all need to migrate to NoSQL stores?Or will the new play along nicely with 40 years of relational history? Who will manage this information? Will we all have to own our own massive infrastructure, will we rent it, or just call the APIs of somebody else? How will we analyze this information? Do we all need to learn Erlang and Map-Reduce, or will a new set of easy-to-use tools spring up, just like the spreadsheet came to the rescue a long time ago? Who will we govern all that information? Who will keep it secure, and private, and audible? Who determines what can and cannot be correlated? Who will watch the watchmen? This event is for: owners and managers of a large amount of data, including web, social media, health, pharmaceuticals, astronomy, government etc.; developers and users of Big Data technologies, including NoSQL databases,Map-Reduce algorithms, data mining, server farms etc.; stewards and guardians of Big Data, including legal and business professionals. The agenda will be created live on the day of the event by attendees, facilitated by Kaliya Hamlin who has designed and facilitated over 100 unconferences for professional technical communities. Register here . 26 April 2010: San Francisco, California Future of Money and Technology Summit The Future of Money & Technology Summit will bring together the best and brightest thinkers around money, including visionaries, entrepreneurial business people, developers, press, investors, authors, solution/service providers, and organizations who work where cash and commerce collide. We meet to discuss the evolving ecosystem around money in a proactive, conducive to dealmaking environment. Featured speakers include Jolie O'Dell, formerly of ReadWriteWeb, as well as representatives from Wells Fargo Bank, Kiva, SharesPost, Jambool, Founders Fund, Outright.com, SoftTech VC, and many more. Use discount code "rww" to get 10% off registration . 3 – 6 May 2010: San Francisco, California Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco brings together the designers, developers, entrepreneurs, VCs, marketing professionals, product managers, and business strategists - from startups to enterprises - that are building the next-generation Web. Along with a vibrant Expo Hall and plenty of networking opportunities, four main conference tracks cover a spectrum of Web 2.0 topics from business strategy to Web design, user experience, developer hacks, community building, real-time, mobile, cloud computing, user-generated content, and more. Featured speakers include Chris Anderson, Ben Huh, Charlene Li, Kevin Lynch, Hilary Mason, and Brad Stone. Register today . 7 May 2010: Mountain View, California ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit 2010 The ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit 2010 will be an exploration of the latest Mobile development trends - both the technology and the emerging business applications. Get ready to explore, think and create the future of Mobile with the brightest in the industry, your peers! As in our last Summit, The Real-Time Web, the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit is an unconference. An unconference is a participant driven conference where the agenda is created on the day, in real-time and discussions are lead by conference participants. Read about the history of unconferences . We will have two main tracks at this Summit - Development and Business - so the Summit will be of interest to managers, marketers, developers, innovators, entrepreneurs and thought leaders alike. Here's a sample of some of the topics we'll explore in both of these tracks. Geo-location services - what can you do using location as a platform ? Commerce & Marketing - as more and more consumers use smartphones, how can businesses utilize this channel? Content, Publishing & Recommendations - the technologies and best practices. Mobile Social Networking - how to tap into communities on mobile devices. Internet of Things - the emerging opportunities from sensor and RFID data. Augmented Reality - the technology and business applications of AR. Native App vs. Browser Based - Including iPhone, Android, RIM, Palm, Windows Mobile and Symbian. Click here to register now , or to become a sponsor , or to help shape the conference . 11 May 2010: San Francisco, California FinovateSpring FinovateSpring 2010 will again showcase the most cutting-edge financial and banking technology innovations to Silicon Valley and the world. With Finovate's signature mix of short, fast-paced onstage demos (no slides are allowed) from handpicked companies and intimate networking time with their executives, this conference packs a ton of unique value into a single day. Come see the cutting edge of banking and financial technology and network with hundreds of the leading financial executives, venture capitalists, press, industry analysts, bloggers and fintech entrepreneurs. Early bird registration rates are available. 13 May 2010: Cape Town, South Africa Net Prophet 2010 Conference Taking place on 13 May, 2010 at the Old Mutual Business School in Pinelands, Cape Town, this is the second annual Net Prophet conference to be hosted by the RAMP Foundation, a non-profit entity created by the RAMP Group as a means for social investment within the local Internet based economy. After a very successful conference last year, where over 400 attendees tapped the minds of leading Internet experts and successful entrepreneurs, Net Prophet 2010 will build on the same format and anticipates on reaching many more people. May 17 2010: San Francisco, California SF MusicTech Summit The SF MusicTech Summit will bring together 700-plus visionaries in the music/technology space - the best and brightest entrepreneurs, developers, investors, service providers, journalists, musicians and organizations who work with them at the convergence of culture and commerce. We meet to discuss the evolving music, business and technology ecosystem in a proactive, conducive-to-dealmaking environment. Enter the discount code "rww" to get 10% off . 18 May 2010: Silicon Valley, California Founder Showcase On Tuesday, May 18th, 10 companies elected by over 13,500 registered CEO Members of TheFunded.com will present to an audience of 200 investors, founders, and members of the press. A panel of experts will critique the pitches, and voting from those in attendance will determine the grand prize winner, who will receive $2,500 on the spot and a host of other prizes. Founder Showcase guests will be treated to food and drinks, as well as informative talks by two leading Silicon Valley CEOs. There is also a networking and Pitch Table area for startups, service providers, and investors to convene. Previous investors that have attended include Charles River Ventures, JAFCO, Leapfrog, Polaris, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, First Round, Blue Run, and various angels. Over $250,000 has been raised by presenting companies that met investors at previous Founder Showcase events. Use discount code "RWW" to get a 10% discount. 18 – 19 May 2010: Santa Clara, California Social Media Strategies Social Media Strategies is a conference on social business, social marketing, advertising and optimization. Social media technologies are fundamentally changing the sales, marketing and operations process. Business are leveraging social technologies to acquire, market, and communicate with customers. This conference features cutting edge topics, keynotes, workshops and discussions that provided strategic knowledge, insights and real world examples on how to successfully plan, implement and manage your organizations social media efforts to achieve your business goals. Use the code "readwriteweb" when you register and get $100 off . 25 – 27 May 2010: Denver, Colorado Glue Glue is the only conference devoted solely to exploring the problem-sets facing architects, developers and IT professionals in a "post-cloud" world. Glue focuses on the APIs and protocols (Twitter, Facebook, Websockets, PubSubHubBub, XMPP), formats and standards (RDF/Linked Data, JSON, Microformats, HTML5), platforms and providers (Amazon, Rackspace, Google App Engine, Salesforce.com, Eucalyptus), Identity Protocols (OAuth/WRAP, SAML, OpenID, SPML) emerging NoSQL data models (Cassandra, CouchDB, MongoDB, Riak, HBase), and other mechanisms that are building the post-cloud world. ReadWriteCloud will be blogging live from Gluecon and CloudCamp, and ReadWriteWeb's Alex Williams will be moderating the "Managing Complexity in the Cloud" session. Please join us May 25-27 in Denver, Colorado. ReadWriteWeb readers can receive 10% off of registration by using the code "RWW12". 27 – 28 May 2010: Beijing, China Global Mobile Internet Conference The Global Mobile Internet Conference is designed specifically for entrepreneurs, executives and influencers to understand and capitalize on the growing opportunities in mobile internet. Though focused on opportunities in Asia, much of the conference dialogue is intended to compare and trade best practices across borders, especially between the East and West. Around 1000 industry leaders from Asia, Europe and North America are expected to attend. The conference will be in English, Chinese, Japanese and Korean. 28 May 2010: Beijing, China Global Mobile Internet Conference - Innovation Show & Startup Competition The Global Mobile Internet Conference Innovation Show intends to be a launch pad for innovative mobile internet startups from around the world. Innovation Show finalists will have the opportunity to present their company to an expected 1,000 investors, industry leaders, and press. Finalists will be judged by and receive feedback from a team of respected venture capitalists and angel investors. The judges will choose one company as the GMIC Innovation Show Winner. Startups must apply by April 4. 4 – 6 June 2010: Chicago, IL Blogs with Balls 3 The bright future of sports media gathers for Blogs with Balls 3 in Chicago at the legendary Wrigley Field. This third installment of the conference focuses on sports and local media, the ever-changing face of traditional media, as well as all the ways that mobile and emerging technologies are changing the world of the sports fan (and the companies trying to reach him or her) today. Feature speakers from established players like ESPN, Sports Illustrated, Yahoo! Sports & The Sporting News and emerging blogging/podcasting personalities and sports new media entrepreneurs, not to mention former professional athletes who are bolstering their brand through digital. Register before May 15 and save more than $50 off the full ticket price at blogswithballs3.eventbrite.com . Use discount code RWWxBWB 15 – 16 June 2010: New York City Corporate Social Media Summit The Corporate Social Media Summit is a two day conference focused exclusively on how big businesses can take advantage of social media to enhance their marketing/comms strategy. Featuring: Practical and relevant insights from peers who have already used social media successfully 20-plus corporate speakers (including PepsiCo, Whole Foods, Dell, McDonald's, General Motors, Citi, Johnson & Johnson), Best practice, benchmarks and practical next steps you can use to take advantage of social media in your business A tightly-focused agenda with 14 in-depth, practical workshops giving you knowledge on only the most critical business issues surrounding corporate use of social media Save $400 if you quote RWW400 when booking. Book here . 22 – 24 June 2010: Santa Clara, California Velocity Now in its third year, Velocity - the Web Performance and Operations Conference from O'Reilly Media - is dedicated to helping people build a better Internet that is Fast by Default. Join hundreds of web developers and experts under one roof from June 22-24, 2010 in Santa Clara, CA Velocity packs a wealth of big ideas, know-how, and connections into three concentrated days. You'll be able to apply what you've learned immediately for high impact results and you'll come away prepared for what's ahead. O'Reilly Velocity 2010 is the premier conference dedicated to building industrial strength sites, at internet speed. Register Now and save 25% with discount code "vel10rww". 29 – 30 June 2010: London Cloud Computing World Forum The 2nd annual Cloud Computing World Forum is the perfect event to learn and discuss the development, integration, adoption and future of cloud computing and SaaS. Building on the success of the 2009 show, this two day conference and free-to-attend exhibition will provide a focused platform for the global cloud and SaaS industry. Show highlights include: Co-located with CloudCamp London Co-located with Green IT conference Free-to-attend exhibition with seminar and scenario theatre Free-to-attend evening awards presentation Hear from leading case studies on how they have integrated cloud computing and SaaS into their working practices Learn from the key players offering cloud and SaaS services Evening networking party for all attendees 7 July 2010: Melbourne, Australia Digital Sport Summit Digital Sport Summit is Australia's premier sport and digital media event. Hear from social media pioneers who are changing the face of Australian sport. Learn how social media and mobile technology is taking fan engagement to a whole new level. Speakers on the day will cover a variety of topics including: iPhone application development for sport Convincing management of the case for social media How to monetize social media Fantasy sports Social media from an athlete's perspective With speakers representing Essendon Football Club, Cricket Victoria, Herald Sun, Football Federation Australia and more. Digital Sport Summit will take place at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. 5 October 2010: New York City FinovateFall FinovateFall will return to Manhattan on Tuesday, October 5 to showcase dozens of the biggest and most innovative new ideas in financial and banking technology from established leaders and hot young companies. The Fall event is the original and largest Finovate and features a single day packed with our special blend of short, fast-paced onstage demos (no slides are allowed) and intimate networking time with top executives from the innovative demoing companies. FinovateFall is a unique chance to see the future of finance and banking before your competition and find the edge you need in today's market. Early bird registration rates are available. Download this entire events calendar in iCal format. Discuss

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ReadWriteWeb Events Guide, 17 April 2010

Apple’s Tightening Grip: This Could Be Android’s Big Chance

cgseo — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 23:44:28 +0000

The long-closed nature of Apple's iPhone OS ecosystem is coming to a head with the addition of major new restrictions on developers. If there ever was a time when the Android world had a chance to out-innovate Apple, this could be it. Each day this week, developers have pointed out another indignity Apple's legal framework subjects them to. Could this be the pressure that gets resolved by the rise of a compelling Android offering? It seems like a long shot. Sponsor People creating applications on the iPhone and iPad platform are apparently no longer allowed to build in development environments abstracted from the preferred form of code , 3rd party analytics services are believed to be no longer allowed to track use of apps , Apple has baked in its own advertising platform and the essential requirement of winning Apple's permission to deploy apps on its platform is feeling more onerous every day. At the same time, no one else has come close to building a User Experience that can rival the iPhone and iPad. If someone could, a grand battle could emerge. Instead, right now it's looking ugly. On the positive side, the number of Android applications is growing faster and faster . The Anguish Prominant iPhone developer Dan Grigsby articulated today what could become an increasingly common sentiment in a goodbye post announcing the closure of his popular iPhone development blog Mobile Orchard : Ask permission environments crush creativity and innovation. In healthy environments, when would-be innovators/creators identify opportunities the only thing that stands between the idea and its realization is work. In the iPhone OS environment when you see an opportunity, you put in work first, ask Apple's permission and then, only after gaining their approval, your idea can be realized. I've always worked at the edge; it's where the interesting opportunities live. None of the startup I've created would have been possible in an ask permission environment.... I won't work in this ask-permission environment any longer. As Google's Chris Messina put it well in some poignant speculation this afternoon, "It occurs to me that Apple is crossing a chasm. To where, I don't know. But its early proponents seem to be being left behind." Another Perspective: Despite Its Problems, Apple's Ecosystem Remains the Best Raven Zachary, President of leading iPhone development shop Small Society , offers another perspective. Android needs a better OS before we'd even begin to see iPhone developers leave. I didn't fall in love with iPhone OS due to the elegance of Apple's legal terms. It's the platform that I fell in love with. It's the best mobile platform out there, and while I appreciate the analysis by the community and the hard questions being asked, I remain committed to the iPhone platform. Of course the most probable outcome of all this is that most developers will stay where the users, the money and the best user experience are. Some will be unhappy and some will leave - but probably not enough for consumers to notice. If only someone could build an Android device that rivaled Apple's hardware, and if the issues with different versions of Android across devices could be fixed, if the Android OS was just betteer - then there would be an incredible opportunity to lure away developers and finally get more users drawn to their applications. The iPad is really incredible though and there are a whole lot of very big "ifs" in play. An effective challenge by Android sure feels like a long-shot right now, doesn't it? Discuss

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Apple's Tightening Grip: This Could Be Android's Big Chance

Avoid Legal Tussles When Negotiating With VCs

cgseo — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 21:00:00 +0000

There is a reason why lawyers go through year of school and tests to get to the jobs that they get paid so much to do - law is a complicated beast that takes a special breed to understand all the ins and outs of it. When entrepreneurs and venture capitalists meet at the bartering table to talk over the terms of their agreement, there is often too much or too little negotiation that goes on, so here's some advice I came across that can help startup founders find the "sweet spot" for negotiations. Sponsor Matt Bartus , a Silicon Valley-based lawyer who mainly aids startups and VCs, wrote last week on his blog A View from the Valley warning entrepreneurs new to the negotiating table to not damage their relationship with their investors by over-negotiating . According to Bartus, a surplus of startup and legal advice from blogs has clogged the minds of new entrepreneurs who think they need to nit pick over every detail of a term sheet. "They sometimes feel the need to optimize every individual provision in the term sheet according to the guidelines found online," writes Bartus. "For example, a founder recently expressed his shock to me that a VC wanted an 8% non-cumulative dividend preference on the preferred stock given the historical lows of current interest rates. He didn't realize that dividends in fast growing companies are almost never paid, thus making this provision essentially irrelevant and just a relic of past practice." Bartus says that while over-negotiating and creating needless tension is a common misstep, it is just as bad to not push back enough and to accept the terms of the agreement without any discussion. When you roll over and take what they give you, you show them that you don't stand up for yourself, damaging both your credibility and the possibility of future investments. To avoid this, he provides a few suggestions for topics that are worth debating with VCs that won't necessarily damage your relationship. Of the dozens of issues that could arise between VCs and entrepreneurs, Bartus provides a list of six important issues that could be discussed during negotiations, of which three he suggests actually focusing on. These include valuation and dilution, liquidation preference, board of directors and voting provisions, founder vesting, antidilution protection, and finally, exclusivity. By knowing these important issues, you can boost your credibility with the VCs and you ensure that you can get the best results from the term sheets for you, the founder. This is exactly why hiring a lawyer with startup experience is key to doing things right. Yes, the job of the lawyer is to explain to terms to the entrepreneur so they know what they are signing up for, but mostly, that lawyer is there to take the burden of legal worries off their back. As with any position within your startup, lawyers should be chosen on merit, not based on their reputation to the founders. He recalls an issue he had when representing a VC who was dealing with a lawyer who was the father of the founder with no startup experience and who slowed the whole process down, damaging the relationship between the two parties. Just remember the real important part of a VC/entrepreneur relationship: building and growing a great product. Hire a great lawyer with startup experience and let them do the grunt legal work so as to not divert your energy and focus from your ideas and your business. For more legal resources geared at startups, check out our list compiled earlier this year . Discuss

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Avoid Legal Tussles When Negotiating With VCs

A Blow To Net Neutrality: FCC Loses Appeal to Comcast

cgseo — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 16:53:35 +0000

In a battle that's been ongoing since the fall of 2007, Comcast just won the latest round against the Federal Communications Commission. A federal appeals court announced its decision this morning to grant ComCast a petition for review, vacating the order by the FCC, which imposed a "net neutrality" on the nation's largest cable company. The decision appears to focus on the FCC's legal authority to enforce net neutrality and not on the legality of net neutrality itself. Sponsor The case began when "several subscribers to Comcast's high-speed Internet service discovered that the company was interfering with their use of peer-to-peer networking applications," the decision reads. Comcast argued that its move to block p2p file-sharing was "necessary to manage scarce network capacity", but the FCC found differently, ruling that the company had "significantly impeded consumers' ability to access the content and use the applications of their choice". When we last looked at this issue , the FCC had ruled against ComCast, enforcing a key tenet in the Net Neutrality debate - that ISPs have an obligation to serve up content regardless of type or method of delivery. The ISP should not have the power to discriminate according to source, destination or other such factors. Until now, the FCC's decision had backed this, but now the appeals court has ruled that the FCC was acting outside of its powers. According to Cecilia Kang at the Washington Post this decision could affect the FCC going forward: The so-called net neutrality rule, imposed by former FCC chairman Kevin Martin, comes just days before the agency accepts final comments on a separate open Internet regulatory effort this Thursday. And the agency will be faced with a steep legal challenge going forward as it attempts to convert itself from a broadcast- and phone-era agency into one that draws new rules for the Internet era. The decision could also be a stumbling block in the FCC's plan to implement a national broadband network . The full text of the report is available in .pdf . Discuss

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A Blow To Net Neutrality: FCC Loses Appeal to Comcast

Social Gaming: Legit Gameplay or a Play for Your Cash?

cgseo — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 04:00:00 +0000

There is a question being bandied about by people in the game industry. It effects something you do, or, if you don't, your friend, roommate, wife or fencing opponent does. Social gaming. Is social gaming - games played on social networks, like Facebook and MySpace - actually gaming? Millions of users have already given their tacit approval that there is indeed entertainment value in those games. But what puts hardcore gamers' skivvies in a knot is the idea that there has been total sacrifice of gameplay in exchange for filthy lucre - that these "games" have been so neutered that they only outwardly resemble gaming. And so the more important question is this: Are hardcore gamers simply demanding that all cars on the road be sports cars, or are they a bellwether of a shift in social gaming from click-click-click, to quality? Sponsor "Social games are making tons of money," said Karen Clark, a Project Manager at Electronic Arts. "They are like slot machines made legal and web-accessible. There's a lot of investment. Most game people think these 'games' suck because they are more like exercises in clicking and monetization of customers than they are fun." It is a burgeoning area. In December, Digital Sky Technologies bought into Zynga for $180 million. EA snapped up PlayFish for $400 million and Playdom, whose "Social City" game racked up 10 million players in about a month of existence, scored a $43 million series B . Most social games as well as some casual games make use a business model of selling in-game "currency" for the purchase of anything from fertilizer to a straight-razor and combining that with player-privileges sales and advertising. "The business model for social games worked really well," said Mark Hendrickson of Big Fish, a Seattle-based gaming company, "because there were only a few companies who could harvest all the affiliate money and swamp anyone else's efforts by putting that money right back into the Facebook ad network. I really think they should have called it 'Facebook gaming.' Social gaming is only on the radar because it is a really, really cheap way to possibly make a whole lot of money, if implemented properly. "As Facebook goes, so goes social gaming." Tami Baribeau, the producer of Metaplace's Island Life game on Facebook, sees it very differently. "Games go where people go," she said. "Social networks are clearly a hot platform right now because it's where people are spending time on the web." She attributes the fiction that gameplay is compromised to hardcore gamer prejudice more than to any pandering to a lowest common denominator. "The fact that social games are whittled down to their basic core mechanics and feedback loop mean that they're instantly understandable, casual, and the fun is easy to find. This is why they open up the market to so many people, and such a different demographic than traditional console/PC gaming. Traditional gamers don't like to admit (or simply don't realize) that games do not have to be massive, 3D, scripted, deep, and immersive experiences in order to be fun and engaging and monetizable. " Alex Swanson, Project Lead at Playdom, also disagrees with the notion that good gameplay is stepped back in social gaming. "Initially computers themselves were extremely complex and difficult to learn, so the platform self-selected for people that were tolerant of (or even attracted by) complexity," he said. "Since then computers have be come much more accessible, creating a gap in the market between the average computer user and the average 'gamer.' "Part of the reason that games like these were never very successful prior to the existence of social networks is once again an issue of accessibility. These games are built around the idea that the user has a connected identity. Trying to ask users to build out their social graph as part of entering a game would create an insurmountable barrier to entry. Fortunately, Facebook has already convinced the players to do this by providing its own unique benefits." If you play social games, you probably do not care about this argument. You play because it's fun. Maybe that's enough. Maybe it's not for one group of gamers to tell another that they oughtn't love what they love. "All I know," said one social gamer, " is I've met the nicest people playing Mafia Wars." For another view of social gaming, see ReadWriteWeb's post on Armchair Revolutionary . Discuss

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Social Gaming: Legit Gameplay or a Play for Your Cash?

Fancy Hands: Virtual Assistants, Aardvark Style

cgseo — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 03:18:26 +0000

"It's not about the value of the task, it's about the value of me not having to do it, or even think about it anymore." That's how Ted Roden describes Fancy Hands , his new side project that provides virtual personal assistants in the cloud for a low monthly fee. Need an appointment made for you? Research done on Fantasy Baseball players you might want to draft onto your team? Roden has hired more than 100 people based in the US and England who can perform almost any quick, legal task for you, within minutes, at any hour day or night. You can send them 15 emails with task requests per month for a $30 fee. An algorithm sorts the tasks and routes each one to the most appropriate person. Sponsor Roden says the people he's hired include retired lawyers, actors waiting with time to spare before going on camera and former employees of competitor ChaCha . He wrote a program to sift through piles of applications and plans on using the company's own service providers to select new hires in the future as well. Roden himself has a day job in the R&D department of the New York Times. He's a creative dynamo whose energy spills out in side projects like the visually compelling social bookmarking service EnjoysThin.gs and an O'Reilly book about building real-time websites , due out this Summer. Previously, he was the 2nd full-time programmer at art-video portal Vimeo . Roden says he built Fancy Hands because he wanted to build something big. He calls it that just because it was the filename for his first bit of code, a tradition across all his projects. He's bootstrapping it himself "and my wife says it's ok," he says. Casting The Tasks Fancy Hands is easy for customers to use. I asked the service to find where in town I could buy a "sweater bag" to run sweaters through the washing machine and got a great response, complete with multiple options online and a personal recommendation, within an hour. I asked for links to reviews of iPad RSS reading applications and the first response I got was terrible. I emailed back complaining and the person on the other end sent me back something even worse. Then Roden noticed and reassigned the request to someone who filled it beautifully. Roden says that for now he's doing the quality control himself and generally well after the tasks have been completed. He's got a complex series of tubes and pulleys rigged up to sort tasks, though. He calls it "the eHarmony of Getting Things Done." Social search Aardvark started out as a lot of manual human effort behind public facing technology, then became a search-sorting algorithmic people-connector that Google bought for millions. Fancy Hands is half human and half-machine, too. It connects your emailed task requests with the right staff members to fill them. In that way it's a little reminiscent of Aardvark , the social search startup that began as a human bucket brigade behind a facade of technology and ended up a complex web of computer science that Google acquired this Winter for millions of dollars . At its core Fancy Hands is people, though. And the people are paid by the task. Roden has created a system that ranks tasks by complexity and rewards assistants with higher pay when they complete harder tasks. Once they reach a particular pay grade, all their tasks become better paying, thus incentivizing them to dive in to harder and harder work. The people behind the scenes are often surprisingly enthusiastic. Roden says that compared to other, similar systems, Fancy Hands is more affordable, competitive on speed and often surprisingly superior in quality of results. At least at launch, the people he's hired seem relatively interested in the project and the work. This afternoon I asked Fancy Hands to make me an appointment with "Bob's Heating System Repair" and gave it my own phone number to call, just to see how it went down. I answered my next inbound call with "hello, Bob's heating repair, this is Bob." And went through a few minutes of appointment conversation before telling the virtual assistant what I was really doing. I think he felt a little bit toyed with, but he was very professional before and after I disclosed my true identity. He said he had interacted just a little bit with Ted and that he was very interested to see what kind of research he would be tasked with doing. He was very cautious about telling me anything specific about what the system was like on his end because "we're a brand new company, just starting." I thought it was charming that one of the 100 people hired to do tasks for a fee felt so closely associated with the business. These Hands Are Fancy People familiar with this kind of "human powered micro-outsourcing" will no doubt be familiar with Amazon's Mechanical Turk. All kinds of businesses bid for Turk users to perform rapid little tasks that require just a touch of human intelligence. Spammers pay Turkers to leave spammy spam around the web, podcasters pay Turkers to transcribe tiny fragments of audio files, businesses like Citysearch and Yelp pay Turkers to confirm changes to local business listings submitted by users. It's a big business, a platform that other businesses are being built on top of. These services can be taken too far, of course. Author Tim Ferriss famously paid a team of assistants to pretend to be him on dating websites. They vetted women for intelligence and appearance before scheduling a day full of short first dates all in a row. That's just dishonest, an interpersonal crime of convenience. There's something both more and less human about what Fancy Hands is doing, though. Its algorithmic task sorting could become very complex but the people on both ends are more invested, too. Roden says his model of $30 for 15 tasks per month makes people stop and ponder whether a task is really one they want to expend part of their monthly subscription on. There's something intriguing about that. For himself, Ted Roden has a simple rule for using the system he built. "If I think about anything twice, I just put it into Fancy Hands," he says. It will be interesting to see how often his customers think about Fancy Hands and whether enough of them will renew their subscriptions to make this a sustainable service. If nothing else, this mix of human and machine is thought provoking, and perhaps prescient, in the way it strategically blends the online and offline worlds. Photo by Justin Ouellette . Discuss

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Fancy Hands: Virtual Assistants, Aardvark Style

DayOne Ventures Brings Small Town Flavor to Startup Incubation

cgseo — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 23:00:00 +0000

When you think of startup incubators, you think of the more well known organizations helping companies in cities like Boulder, San Francisco, New York or Austin, but one incubator is looking to change that assumption. Based at the VT KnowledgeWorks Business Acceleration Center in Blacksburg, VA, DayOne Ventures is a program aimed at tapping the talent coming from Virginia Tech to help local startups get off the ground. Sponsor With fewer than 40,000 residents, Blacksburg is less than half the size of startup hub Boulder, CO, but the city's ties to Virginia Tech make it a fertile spot for its budding startup community. DayOne Ventures is taking advantage of the growing buzz in the area with its highly concentrated experience which will accept just 3 companies to participate this summer. Those selected will benefit from up to $16,000 in seed funding, free office space, Internet access and hosting, legal assistance with incorporating their company and setting up stock plans, and mentorship from an panel of experienced entrepreneurs. DayOne co-founder and mentor Bill Boebel has prior experience himself with starting a company in Blacksburg; in 1999 he and a pair of co-founders created Webmail.us , an enterprise email solution. "It was really awesome doing our startup down in Blacksburg because of the low cost of doing it. We were able to fail three times before we figured out the right idea," Boebel told ReadWriteWeb. "The cost of failing in Blacksburg is a lot lower than the cost of failing in Silicon Valley." Eventually, Boebel and his co-founders molded Webmail.us into a profitable company which was later acquired by Rackspace in 2007. The Rackspace presence in Blacksburg remains to this day and is a reminder of the city's most successful Internet startup. Now as an experienced entrepreneur, Boebel and others are teaming together to provide local startups (or those that choose to relocate for the program) with the mentorship and resources to get started. TechStars and Y Combinator aren't necessarily everyone's cup of tea; DayOne, one the other hand, brings a bit of small town flavor to the already close-knit startup culture - a flavor that could produce some interesting results with their exclusive incubator. Applications for the 10-week program are open now , so if you're in the Blacksburg area or wouldn't mind relocating for the summer, be sure to look into the DayOne Ventures program. Discuss

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DayOne Ventures Brings Small Town Flavor to Startup Incubation

Google Apps in China: It May Work, It May Not

cgseo — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 01:27:17 +0000

The Google break from China raises some questions for the enterprise considering cloud computing. It's one thing if the network goes down. That can be fixed. But when the government does its own blockade, that's another story. Google Apps customers face this very issue. Google has the thorny task of explaining to its customers of what they may expect when using Google Apps in mainland China. Sponsor First off, it's important to clarify that Google is not shutting itself out of the China market. Google has stopped censoring its search services: Google Search, Google News, and Google Images on its Chinese domain, www.google.cn. But Google intends to continue to do R&D in China ad it will maintain a sales presence there. But for people working in China, there can be a bit of a mixed message. What if you are using Google Apps in Beijing? What can you expect? To keep customers updated, Google has created a Google Apps status dashboard that updates daily to show what in the Google network is working on a day-to-day basis. Google Groups, Blogger, YouTube and Google Sites are entirely blocked. This could pose a number of issues. For example, a customer may use Google Sites for an intranet, project site or an employee profile page. You could go on with the issues this presents but basically it's one of the downsides when using a cloud computing service in face of a repressing regime. Google has some recommendations for those doing business in China: "... it is important to know that there are several networking configurations and associated technologies available to help ensure ongoing access to your critical business services such as Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs. These network configurations, such as a Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection, secure shell (SSH) tunneling, or using a proxy server, are already in place by many businesses with worldwide operations who serve their users from various locations. Companies should consult their own technical, legal and policy personnel to find a solution that works best for them." But then what if the applications do work? Where is the data? Who can access it? Google says it does not host a customer's data in mainland China nor do Google employees in China not have access to Apps systems or customer data. Discuss

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Google Apps in China: It May Work, It May Not