Should we go tit-for-tat? Suppose we have already hacked China and this is their response? Where is Clausewitz when we need him? Anyone drafting “On CyberWar?” What “other means” are possible once politics fail?

http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/244901-obama-under-pressure-to-retaliate-for-hack

Obama under pressure to retaliate for hack

The massive digital theft of millions of federal workers’ data is mounting pressure on President Obama to take a tougher stand against state-sponsored cyberattacks.

Since the infiltration of the Office of Personnel Management by suspected Chinese hackers, lawmakers, experts and 2016 hopefuls have pushed for a range of responses, from economic sanctions to currency restrictions to aggressively hacking back at Beijing officials.

The OPM hack is believed to be part of a broader Chinese cyber espionage scheme to construct a comprehensive database of millions of government workers that could allow hackers to imitate, blackmail and digitally exploit high-ranking officials.

… “I don’t know that frankly, in this case, in the absence of any independent evidence that doesn’t rely on [classified] intelligence sources, that it would make sense to do that,” said Chris Finan, a former Obama administration cybersecurity adviser. “What do you get in return?”

Finan and others believe such sanctions would simply provoke China and do little to change its hacking behavior.

Sounds like we need law professors with experience in both antitrust and privacy. I know there one at the Sturm College of Law (DU), are there any others?

http://www.bespacific.com/problems-and-perils-of-bootstrapping-privacy-and-data-into-an-antitrust-framework/

Problems and Perils of Bootstrapping Privacy and Data into an Antitrust Framework

by Sabrina I. Pacifici on Jun 14, 2015

Manne, Geoffrey A. and Sperry, Ben, The Problems and Perils of Bootstrapping Privacy and Data into an Antitrust Framework (May 29, 2015). CPI Antitrust Chronicle, May 2015. Available for download from SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2617685

“Increasingly, people use the internet to connect with one another, access information, and purchase products and services. Along with the growth in the online marketplace have come concerns, as well, particularly regarding both the privacy of personal information as well as competition issues surrounding this and other data. While concerns about privacy and data are not unique to the internet ecosystem, they are in some ways heightened due to the ubiquitous nature of information sharing online. While much of the sharing is voluntary, a group of scholars and activists have argued that several powerful online companies have overstepped their bounds in gathering and using data from internet users. These privacy advocates have pushed the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) and regulators in Europe to incorporate privacy concerns into antitrust analysis. Here, we focus on the two most-developed theories of data-related antitrust harm: first, that privacy should be considered in mergers and other antitrust contexts as a non-price factor of competition; and second, that the collection and use of data can be used to facilitate anticompetitive price discrimination. In addition, we analyze the underlying conception of data as a barrier to entry that is a necessary precondition for supporting either proposed theory of harm. We argue that there are no plausible harms to competition arising from either non-price effects or price discrimination due to data collection online and that there is no data barrier to entry preventing effective competition.”

Google get full access to patent information because the USPTO can't do what Google can do?

http://www.bespacific.com/45392/

USPTO Teams with Google to Provide Bulk Patent and Trademark Data to Public

by Sabrina I. Pacifici on Jun 14, 2015

News release: “Under Secretary of Commerce and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) David Kappos announced [June 2, 2015] that the USPTO has entered into a no-cost, two-year agreement with Google to make bulk electronic patent and trademark public data available to the public in bulk form. Under this agreement, the USPTO is providing Google with existing bulk, electronic files, which Google will host without modification for the public free of charge. This bulk data can be accessed at www.google.com/googlebooks/uspto.html (link is external). The USPTO does not currently have the technical capability to provide this public information in a bulk machine readable format that is desired by the intellectual property (IP) community. This arrangement is to serve as a bridge as the USPTO develops an acquisition strategy which will allow the USPTO to enter into a contract with a contractor to retrieve and distribute USPTO patent and trademark bulk public data. The contractor will be capable of acquiring this bulk data and providing it to the public.”

Perspective. This is likely to be implemented by all content providers.

http://www.securityweek.com/wikimedia-rolling-out-https-encrypt-all-wikipedia-traffic

Wikimedia Rolling Out HTTPS to Encrypt All Wikipedia Traffic

The Wikimedia Foundation announced on Friday that it’s in the process of implementing HTTPS by default in an effort to encrypt all traffic on Wikipedia and other websites operated by the organization.

By deploying HTTPS for all traffic, the Wikimedia Foundation wants to ensure that users can surf its websites without sacrificing safety and privacy. HTTPS creates an encrypted connection between the user’s computer and the website to protect data against snooping governments and other third parties that might be monitoring traffic. In this case, the secure protocol also makes it more difficult for ISPs to censor access to certain Wikipedia articles.

In addition to rolling out HTTPS, a process that is expected to be completed within a couple of weeks, Wikimedia also announced the use of HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) to provide protection against attempts to break HTTPS and intercept traffic.

I'll say it again. There is a real business opportunity here for someone to create online, interactive journals (and textbooks), particularly in fields that change rapidly. (Note the profit margins)

http://www.bespacific.com/the-oligopoly-of-academic-publishers-in-the-digital-era/

The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era

by Sabrina I. Pacifici on Jun 14, 2015

Larivière V, Haustein S, Mongeon P (2015) The Oligopoly of Academic Publishers in the Digital Era. PLoS ONE 10(6): e0127502. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0127502

“The consolidation of the scientific publishing industry has been the topic of much debate within and outside the scientific community, especially in relation to major publishers’ high profit margins. However, the share of scientific output published in the journals of these major publishers, as well as its evolution over time and across various disciplines, has not yet been analyzed. This paper provides such analysis, based on 45 million documents indexed in the Web of Science over the period 1973-2013. It shows that in both natural and medical sciences (NMS) and social sciences and humanities (SSH), Reed-Elsevier, Wiley-Blackwell, Springer, and Taylor & Francis increased their share of the published output, especially since the advent of the digital era (mid-1990s). Combined, the top five most prolific publishers account for more than 50% of all papers published in 2013. Disciplines of the social sciences have the highest level of concentration (70% of papers from the top five publishers), while the humanities have remained relatively independent (20% from top five publishers). NMS disciplines are in between, mainly because of the strength of their scientific societies, such as the ACS in chemistry or APS in physics. The paper also examines the migration of journals between small and big publishing houses and explores the effect of publisher change on citation impact. It concludes with a discussion on the economics of scholarly publishing.”

For my students (and others) with cluttered computers.

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/find-everything-pc-quickly-easily-lookeen-free/

Find Everything on Your PC Quickly and Easily With Lookeen Free

Windows has features that allow you to search for files, but let’s be honest, they’re not very good.

If your computer is packed with files that you need to get to, and Windows search is leaving you wanting more, Lookeen Free is the solution for you. You can download it right now for free and find everything on your computer with ease.

If nothing else, my students should check the LinkedIn book.

http://smallbiztrends.com/2015/06/top-social-media-books-list.html?google_editors_picks=true

Ten of the Top Social Media Books for Your Enjoyment

Social media continues to play an increasingly important role in the marketing of a small business today. No longer is it deemed enough to only have a website for your business. You now MUST engage with your clients, provide interesting and valuable content, and build a brand that clients are happy to recommend to others.

For this reason the various social media platforms available to do this are continually changing as they compete to be the platform of choice. This means that business owners have a need to regularly revisit and amend their social media marketing strategy.

… The Small Business Trends editorial team has sifted through volumes of social media books and picked out a list of 10 that we believe will help you stay on top of your social media marketing game.