Monday, February 27, 2012


I am extremely disappointed that Google didn't have a doodle recognizing 200 years of Luddites.
Feb. 27, 1812: Rage, Rage Against the Industrial Age


Did the founding fathers fear anything but a vengeful God? All bureaucracies want everything their way – few can make a compelling argument, but even legal logic is subject to death by a thousand cuts.
On the Colloquy: The Fourth Amendment and Airport Screening Issues
February 27, 2012 by Dissent
From the Northwestern University Law Review:
The online companion to the Northwestern University Law Review is proud to feature companion essays on the Fourth Amendment and newly invasive airport screening methods.
In Revisiting “Special Needs” Theory Via Airport Searches, Professor Alexander Reinert examines the controversy surrounding the Travel Security Administration’s new airport search regime by reference to the Fourth Amendment jurisprudence that developed in response to the first instantiation of mass airport searches in the early 1960s. While the Fourth Amendment approaches developed in the 1970s remain relevant today, Professor Reinert argues, TSA’s new search regime is more difficult to square with traditional Fourth Amendment principles than were the FAA’s initial airport screening procedures; and precisely because of the pressure on courts to adjust Fourth Amendment doctrine to meet the perceived needs of the TSA and the traveling public, it is all the more important that new doctrinal limitations accompany any judicial acceptance of the TSA’s new search regime.
In his companion piece The Bin Laden Exception, Professor Erik Luna complements Professor Reinert’s Essay on the Fourth Amendment and airport safety by providing context on terrorism and the decade of Osama bin Laden. Specifically, Professor Luna argues what is at play in the airport search context is not a previously recognized exception to the Fourth Amendment, but instead an entirely new exemption from otherwise applicable requirements, driven by an abiding fear of al Qaeda and its now-deceased kingpin rather than a reasoned assessment of terrorism-related risks.
Read both pieces online at the Northwestern University Law Review Colloquy.


Makes me wonder how many cases did not “require” GPS tracking? Not to mention, how many successful applications for warrants to resume tracking were made?
"The Supreme Court's recent ruling overturning the warrantless use of GPS tracking devices has caused a 'sea change' inside the U.S. Justice Department, according to FBI General Counsel Andrew Weissmann. Mr. Weissmann, speaking at a University of San Francisco conference called 'Big Brother in the 21st Century' on Friday, said that the court ruling prompted the FBI to turn off about 3,000 GPS tracking devices that were in use. These devices were often stuck underneath cars to track the movements of the car owners. In U.S. v. Jones, the Supreme Court ruled that using a device to track a car owner without a search warrant violated the law. After the ruling, the FBI had a problem collecting the devices that it had turned off, Mr. Weissmann said. In some cases, he said, the FBI sought court orders to obtain permission to turn the devices on briefly – only in order to locate and retrieve them."


“We can, therefore we must!” but we haven't gotten around to it yet...
Facebook denies reading personal text messages
Facebook is back in the privacy crosshairs this week after a report in The Sunday Times suggested the social media titan’s official Android software app is capable of accessing and reading personal text messages crafted by phone users.
However, Zuckerberg & Co. have offered up an official statement in which they claim the report “is completely wrong when it says Facebook is reading people’s SMS. Wrong on the terminology, and wrong on the suggestion that it has been implemented.” [Not “We can't” or even “We won't” just “We haven't, yet” Bob]


Apparently, parents and school officials thought they had a major drug problem at the school. 750 students and three “less than half ounce” charges later, I guess they do! Looks like they'll have to try strip searches next time.
Police sweep Colchester high school for drugs
February 26, 2012 by Dissent
Ryan Blessing reports:
Police cited four Bacon Academy students for drug-related infractions Thursday after the Colchester high school was locked down and searched for two hours by state police drug-sniffing dogs.
Contraband was found in lockers in the school and in vehicles in the student parking lot, Superintendent of Schools Karen A. Loiselle Goodwin said.
Three students were cited for possession of less than a half-ounce of marijuana. One was cited for possession of alcohol by a minor, and all received an infraction for possession of drug paraphernalia related to less than a half-ounce of marijuana.
Read more on The Bulletin.
Doesn’t sound like they found much after all that. Of course, they didn’t search the students themselves.
So what next?
[From the article:
Goodwin’s office sent an email to parents at about 9:30 a.m., when the search began.
… “I personally had no problem with it,” said Shawn Moody, whose daughter, Erica, is a senior at the school. “I saw the email the school sent out this morning. I’d heard they’ve had problems for years with drugs at Bacon.”  
The search was conducted in accordance with Board of Education Policy 5145.12, “Search and Seizure,” as published in the District Parent Policy Handbook and the Bacon Academy Student Handbook.
“No specific incident prompted this action,” Board of Education Chairman Ronald Goldstein said. “Our community has made clear its concern about the possible presence of drugs in our high school.”
The board had heard concerns from parents at meetings, Goldstein said, and a schoolwide survey of students showed that 43 percent of those who responded believed drugs are available in the school.


For my Statistics students... What is wrong with Government's place on the chart?
February 26, 2012
McKinsey - Will 'big data' transform your industry?
"The volume of data that businesses collect is exploding: in 15 of the US economy’s 17 sectors, for example, companies with upward of 1,000 employees store, on average, more information than the Library of Congress does. New academic research suggests that companies using this kind of “big data” and business analytics to guide their decisions are more productive and have higher returns on equity than competitors that do not. As big data changes the game for virtually all industries, it will tilt the playing field, favoring some over others. The financial and information sectors rank among those with the highest potential to create value in the near term."


This could get you drummed out of the RIAA (if they had every allowed real legal scholars in)
February 26, 2012
Paper - Disentangling Property and Contract in the Law of Copyright Licenses
A License is Not a 'Contract Not to Sue': Disentangling Property and Contract in the Law of Copyright Licenses - Christopher M. Newman, George Mason University School of Law, February 24, 2012, George Mason Law & Economics Research Paper No. 12-23
  • "The assertion that a “license” is simply a “contract not to sue” has become a commonplace in both copyright and patent law. I argue that this notion is conceptually flawed, and has become a straightjacket channeling juristic reasoning into unproductive channels. At root, a license is not a contract, but a form of property interest. It may be closely intertwined with a set of contractual relationships, but its nature and consequences cannot be satisfactorily explained from within the world of contract doctrine alone. In this article, I seek to explain the complementary but parallel roles played by property and contract doctrine in creation of the various forms of legal interests we refer to as “licenses.” Each doctrine has its own set of governing formalities that afford titleholders various means through which to create and protect use privileges granted to others, while still retaining residual title for themselves. I argue that clarifying the extent to which licenses are exercises of powers conferred by property rather than contract law provides a key to proper application of Section 204 of the Copyright Act of 1976, which has been (erroneously) construed as a statute of frauds governing contract formation, as opposed to one governing a specific form of property conveyance."

(Related) Automating the Copyright-lawsuit process means never having to say “Oops, I made a mistake.”
"I make nature videos for my YouTube channel, generally in remote wilderness away from any possible source of music. And I purposely avoid using a soundtrack in my videos because of all the horror stories I hear about Rumblefish filing claims against public domain music. But when uploading my latest video, YouTube informed me that I was using Rumblefish's copyrighted content, and so ads would be placed on my video, with the proceeds going to said company. This baffled me. I disputed their claim with YouTube's system — and Rumblefish refuted my dispute, and asserted that: 'All content owners have reviewed your video and confirmed their claims to some or all of its content: Entity: rumblefish; Content Type: Musical Composition.' So I asked some questions, and it appears that the birds singing in the background of my video are Rumblefish's exclusive intellectual property."


Why Johnny can't e-Read?
February 26, 2012
Report - Youth and Digital Media: From Credibility to Information Quality
Youth and Digital Media: From Credibility to Information Quality - New Report and Infographic, the Berkman Center, by Urs Gasser, Sandra Cortesi, Momin Malik, & Ashley Lee.
  • "Building upon a process- and context-oriented information quality framework, this paper seeks to map and explore what we know about the ways in which young users of age 18 and under search for information online, how they evaluate information, and how their related practices of content creation, levels of new literacies, general digital media usage, and social patterns affect these activities. A review of selected literature at the intersection of digital media, youth, and information quality — primarily works from library and information science, sociology, education, and selected ethnographic studies — reveals patterns in youth’s information-seeking behavior, but also highlights the importance of contextual and demographic factors both for search and evaluation. Looking at the phenomenon from an information-learning and educational perspective, the literature shows that youth develop competencies for personal goals that sometimes do not transfer to school, and are sometimes not appropriate for school. Thus far, educational initiatives to educate youth about search, evaluation, or creation have depended greatly on the local circumstances for their success or failure.


So is now the time for a “Complete Guide to Being e-Social” by e-Mily Post?
February 26, 2012
Pew - Most users choose restricted privacy settings while profile "pruning" and unfriending people is on rise
Privacy management on social media sites, by Mary Madden, Feb 24, 2012
  • "Social network users are becoming more active in pruning and managing their accounts. Women and younger users tend to unfriend more than others. About two-thirds of internet users use social networking sites (SNS) and all the major metrics for profile management are up, compared to 2009: 63% of them have deleted people from their “friends” lists, up from 56% in 2009; 44% have deleted comments made by others on their profile; and 37% have removed their names from photos that were tagged to identify them. Some 67% of women who maintain a profile say they have deleted people from their network, compared with 58% of men. Likewise, young adults are more active unfrienders when compared with older users."


Dilbert illustrates one of the finer points of Social Media etiquette...


What did the French mean in the 1630s when they used the word “computer?”


Al Gore is responsible for the fall of Mayan Civilization?
"The collapse of the Mayan empire has already caused plenty of consternation for scientists and average Joes alike, and we haven't even made it a quarter of the way through 2012 yet. But here's something to add a little more fuel to the fire: A new study suggests that climate change killed off the Mayans."


What we could do if we wanted to… (I'm running at 1.4MBPS, they get 1,000MBPS)
Gigabit Internet for $70: the unlikely success of California's Sonic.net
While some other cities can also brag about gigabit access, in this Sonoma County town it costs only $69.95 a month.
The service comes courtesy of Sonic.net, the18-year-old Internet provider based in the neighboring city of Santa Rosa. And Sonic even throws in two phone lines with unlimited long-distance calling when you sign up.

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