A service for its ad customers?

Schmidt: G+ 'Identity Service,' Not Social Network

"Eric Schmidt has revealed that Google+ is an identity service, and the 'social network' bit is just bait. Schmidt says 'G+ is completely optional,' not mentioning that Google has admitted that deleting a G+ account will seriously downgrade your other Google services. As others have noted, Somewhere, there are two kids in a garage building a company whose motto will be 'Don't be Google.'"

(Related)

http://www.bespacific.com/mt/archives/028146.html

August 28, 2011

The PII Problem: Privacy and a New Concept of Personally Identifiable Information

The PII Problem: Privacy and a New Concept of Personally Identifiable Information (July 8, 2011). New York University Law Review, Vol. 86, 2011. Paul M. Schwartz and Daniel J. Solove.

• Personally identifiable information (PII) is one of the most central concepts in information privacy regulation. The scope of privacy laws typically turns on whether PII is involved. The basic assumption behind the applicable laws is that if PII is not involved, then there can be no privacy harm. At the same time, there is no uniform definition of PII in information privacy law. Moreover, computer science has shown that in many circumstances non-PII can be linked to individuals, and that de-identified data can, in many circumstances, be re-identified. PII and non-PII are thus not immutable categories, and there is a risk that information deemed non-PII at one point in time can be transformed into PII at a later juncture. Due to the malleable nature of what constitutes PII, some commentators have even suggested that PII be abandoned as the means to define the boundaries of privacy law. In this Article, Professors Paul Schwartz and Daniel Solove argue that although the current approaches to PII are flawed, the concept of PII should not be abandoned. They develop a new approach called “PII 2.0,” which accounts for PII’s malleability. Based upon a standard rather than a rule, PII 2.0 is based upon a continuum of risk of identification. PII 2.0 regulates information that relates to either an “identified” or “identifiable” individual, and it establishes different requirements for each category. To illustrate their theory, Schwartz and Solove use the example of regulating behavioral marketing to adults and children. They show how existing approaches to PII impede the effective regulation of behavioral marketing and how PII 2.0 would resolve these problems."

It's like eye-witnessing, but with augmentation. Police cameras in their cruisers and Red Light or Speeding cameras are just the reverse...

Mass. Court Says Constitution Protects Filming On-Duty Police

Even in a country and a world where copyright can be claimed as an excuse to prevent you from taking a photo of a giant sculpture in a public, tax-paid park, and openly recording visiting police on your own property can be construed as illegal wiretapping, it sometimes seems like the overreach of officialdom against people taking photos or shooting video knows no bounds. It's a special concern now that seemingly everyone over the age of 10 is carrying a camera that can take decent stills and HD video. It's refreshing, therefore, to read that a Federal Appeals Court has found unconstitutional the arrest of a Massachusetts lawyer who used his phone to video-record an arrest on the Boston Common. (Here's the ruling itself, as a PDF.) From the linked article, provided by reader schwit1: "In its ruling, which lets Simon Glik continue his lawsuit, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston said the wiretapping statute under which Glik was arrested and the seizure of his phone violated his First and Fourth Amendment rights."

...but what if it's all a marketing ploy, like changing the Coca Cola formula?

Ex-Board Member Says HP Is Committing 'Corporate Suicide'

"If Apple's looking for a seamless transition, advises the NYT's James B. Stewart, it definitely shouldn't look to Hewlett Packard. In the year after HP CEO Mark Hurd was told to hit-the-road-Jack, HP — led by new CEO Leo Apotheker — has embarked on a stunning shift in strategy that has left many baffled and resulted in HP's fall from Wall Street grace (its stock declined 49%). [Would the people who get huge stock price based bonuses do that to themselves? Bob] The apparent new focus on going head-to-head with SAP (Apotheker's former employer) and Oracle (Hurd's new employer) in enterprise software while ignoring the company's traditional strengths, said a software exec, is 'as if Alan Mulally left Boeing to join Ford as CEO, and announced six months later that Ford would be making airplanes.' Former HP Director Tom Perkins said, 'I didn't know there was such a thing as corporate suicide, but now we know that there is.'"

How about that! My extensive reading of SciFi has made me an IP resource!

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20097889-38/sci-fi-tech-as-prior-art-tablets-are-just-the-start/

Sci-fi tech as prior art: Tablets are just the start

Samsung's latest salvo against Apple and its attempts at barring the company from selling its line of Galaxy phones and tablets in the U.S. involved a bold trick earlier this week: saying Apple's iPad design patent should be tossed on the grounds that others have gotten there first.

The proof for that claim? Science fiction, of course.

Samsung last week cited Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film "2001: A Space Odyssey" wherein two of the astronauts watch video on two separate tablet devices while eating a meal. In its brief, Samsung says those tablets share design similarities with the tablet depicted in a granted Apple design patent, and the patent should therefore be tossed from Apple's effort.

That very idea opens up a wealth of other gadgets to scrutiny of "what came first?" Without further ado: a handful of gadgets that could be targeted for trailing their fictional media counterparts.