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<title>Haaze.com / rleisersir / Published News</title>
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<pubDate>Thu, 12 May 2011 07:10:50 +0000</pubDate>
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<title><![CDATA[Leahy's Protect IP bill even worse than COICA]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=leahys-protect-ip-bill-even-worse-than-coica</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=leahys-protect-ip-bill-even-worse-than-coica</comments>
<pubDate>Thu, 12 May 2011 07:10:50 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>rleisersir</dc:creator>
<category>Politics</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=leahys-protect-ip-bill-even-worse-than-coica</guid>
<description><![CDATA[Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) today introduced a revised version of a controversial bill that would give the Department of Justice and individuals new powers to enforce copyright and trademark law against &quot;rogue&quot; and &quot;pirate&quot; Web sites that offer unlicensed copies of protected content or which sell illegal knock-offs of brand-name goods. The new bill was long expected. A late draft leaked out last week.The proposed law, &quot;Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property&quot; or Protect IP, includes several revisions to a draft introduced last year, known then as &quot;Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act,&quot; or COICA.Responding to criticism of COICAThe drafters of Protect IP have tried to respond to some of the most severe criticisms of COICA, which was seen as dangerously vague on its definition of the kinds of Web sites that, under the proposal, can be condemned by the Department of Justice. Critics included public interest groups on both the left and right, the Consumer Electronics Association, domain registries, and operators of large university computer networks.Members of Congress also objected. In particular, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), kept the bill from reaching the Senate floor in the last Congress.Criticism of COICA included concern that it gave far too much power to the Department of Justice to block non-U.S. domains without adequate due process protections. Critics also noted that more precise tools were already available to protect copyright and trademark holders from wholesale abuse of their rights by rogue sites, such as the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act.Registries and other Internet infrastructure providers were especially concerned with provisions that could have required any provider of domain name look-up services to comply with court orders to block access to the underlying IP address of a condemned domain name. Lawmakers didn't seem to appreciate that domain name address resolution takes place throughout the Internet, not just by larger ISPs and registries. Indeed, there are as many as a million worldwide domain names &quot;resolvers,&quot; and it is unlikely U.S. courts could or would order all of them to comply with a blocking order. But incomplete blocking could seriously undermine the integrity of this key feature of the Web's architecture, incentivizing truly rogue Web site operators to use shadow registration systems or simply forgo domain names and rely solely on IP addresses. (A domain name is merely a shorthand to the underlying IP address of the server, and isn't necessary to reach the domain.)Protect IP responds to some of these concerns. For example, under the revised bill the Attorney General cannot bring action against the domain name directly until first trying to sue the registrant or owner/operator. Suing the domain name itself is a shorthand legal technique that features prominently and notoriously in the Department of Homeland Security's on-going &quot;Operation In Our Sites&quot; antipiracy efforts, which deals exclusively with U.S. Web sites.And under the revised bill &quot;nonauthoritative domain name system servers&quot; need only take &quot;the least burdensome technically feasible and reasonable measures&quot; available to block access to condemned sites. The revised law's dangerous new provisionsBut critics have already condemned the new version, noting that it not only failed to remove some of the most dangerous features of COICA, but has also added expansive provisions that the earlier draft didn't include. TechDirt's Mike Masnick, for example, notes that the narrower definition of an &quot;Internet site dedicated to infringing activities&quot; in Protect IP is still both broad and vague. And the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Abigail Phillips wrote earlier today that &quot;Despite some salient differences...in the new version, we are no less dismayed by this most recent incarnation than we were with last year's draft.&quot;Some concessions by the drafters of Protect IP turn out to be chimerical. For example, forcing the government to sue the owner/operator rather than the domain name itself, which reduces the likelihood of domain names being condemned without giving notice to the registrant, is an improvement that evaporates on closer inspection. That's because the attorney general can still go after the domain directly if the owner/operator does not have &quot;an address within a judicial district of the United States.&quot; But Protect IP applies only to nondomestic domains--that is, domains registered outside the U.S. Most such registrations are likely to be by companies or individuals without a U.S. address.Like COICA, Protect IP expands the web of enforcement techniques by requiring advertising networks and financial transaction providers to cut ties to domains found to violate the law. But the new version now adds search engines and others to the list of providers who can be conscripted into complying with court orders. Protect IP would require &quot;information location tools&quot; to &quot;take technically feasible and reasonable measures, as expeditiously as possible,&quot; to remove or disable access to the site associated with a condemned domain, including blocking hypertext links to the site.Another new provision encourages advertising networks and financial transaction service providers (though not search engines), to cut ties voluntarily with domains it believes are &quot;dedicated to infringing activities.&quot; As long as such actions are undertaken in good faith and with &quot;credible evidence,&quot; Protect IP immunizes those providers from liability for damages caused by erroneous actions against domains.Perhaps most worrisome of all, Protect IP adds a provision that allows copyright and trademark holders to sue the owner/operator of a domain directly. Again, the provision applies only to nondomestically-registered domains, but it allows the private party, like the government, to sue the domain name itself if the registrant does not have a U.S. address. That's important because in all cases, once a suit is initiated, the plaintiff can ask the court to issue an injunction or restraining order effectively shutting the site down. Private parties, like the government, can also use the court order to demand cooperation from financial transaction providers and Internet advertising services. Setting dangerous and possibly illegal precedentsThus, with minimal court proceedings and perhaps without any opportunity for the defendant to respond or participate, the draft law would enable the Department of Justice or a private party to effectively shut down a nondomestic Web site, putting the burden on the owner/operator to prove that the site is not &quot;dedicated to infringing activities&quot; as defined in the law.Preemptively shuttering a Web site is certainly one way to curb illegal distribution of copyrighted materials and black market goods, but many see it as a blunt instrument that could ban other, legal content on the site. And, as has already occurred in the Homeland Security seizures, condemning a domain name can have fatal consequences when a site is accidentally blocked even though it is not operating illegally.By comparison, rights holders already have the ability, under the DMCA, to force site operators to remove particular content that infringes copyrights. The &quot;notice and takedown&quot; regime, increasingly automated by large-scale content hosts including YouTube and eBay, has been generally successful in protecting licensed content without suppressing legally-protected speech.So why expand those tools so broadly and dangerously under Protect IP According to rights holders, additional tools are necessary to curb wholesale copyright piracy, especially of movies, and counterfeit goods including medication. The Software and Information Industry Association, for example, applauded the introduction of Protect IP. &quot;The importance of this bill,&quot; according to an SIIA spokesman, &quot;lies in the fact that it will eliminate critical technical and financial resources that are used to move pirated and counterfeit goods.&quot;For sites that operate entirely outside the U.S., &quot;notice and takedown&quot; and private lawsuits are legally difficult to pursue, and are largely ineffective. But the need to forcibly &quot;enlist&quot; the support of registries, search engines, advertising networks and financial transaction processors underscores both the difficulty and danger of expanding existing legal tools to deal with non-domestically registered domains.For one thing, condemning nondomestic domains for their failure to abide by U.S. copyright and trademark law sets a dangerous precedent. Though copyright and trademark are largely uniform in the developed world, there are still important differences that could whipsaw Web site operators and the service providers who would be required to help enforce the new law. &quot;Fair use&quot; and other authorized uses of protected content are not uniform.Moreover, other governments might use similar techniques to enforce their own laws, some of which would surely conflict with deeply-held American principles. According to David Sohn, senior policy counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology, &quot;Domain name blocking raises tricky cybersecurity questions and would set a dangerous international precedent for using the domain name system to try to impose domestic laws on foreign Internet activity.&quot; If the U.S. can block domains that violate its copyright and trademark laws, in other words, other countries would feel free to do the same to enforce laws restricting political or other speech that would be protected in the U.S. Protect IP does not affect ongoing domestic domain seizuresIt's worth emphasizing that Protect IP, even more so than COICA, applies to nondomestically-registered domains. That's in part because the U.S. government believes it already has far more expansive and effective powers to condemn rogue U.S. Web sites under the 2008 PRO IP Act. That's the law that the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement division has recently been using to seize domestically-registered domain names and reroute them to an ICE page indicating the underlying site was operating illegally.In particular, ICE has been using PRO IP to invoke &quot;civil forfeiture&quot; laws, which allow the government to seize &quot;property&quot; used in the commission of certain crimes without ever getting a conviction of the underlying crime.Protect IP does nothing to curb ICE's use of civil forfeiture law to interrupt domestic Web sites the agency believes are criminally violating copyright law. Under PRO IP, the agency has applied in hundreds of cases to seize a domain name without notice to the registrant and with minimal investigation of whether the domains are in fact violating the law. The agency has been frequently embarrassed to find it has seized domain names that are not violating copyright law in any way, underscoring the danger of allowing such actions to be taken with minimal procedural safeguards.A number of serious legal questions have been raised about ICE's use of forfeiture law to seize domain names, but so far no legal challenge has been brought. When it does, the agency's practices will be exposed to even more scrutiny, and may be found to fail a variety of constitutional requirements.Indeed, the existing evidence of ICE's poor performance should have given pause to Senator Leahy and his co-sponsors. Protecting copyright and trademark are of course important objectives. But doing so by trampling due process rights, tinkering dangerously with the mechanics of the Internet, and impressing into police duties an expanding set of Internet service providers, hardly seems the best solution.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA['Inception' is the Oscars' big tech winner]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=inception-is-the-oscars-big-tech-winner</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=inception-is-the-oscars-big-tech-winner</comments>
<pubDate>Sun, 27 Feb 2011 08:10:19 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>rleisersir</dc:creator>
<category>Marketing and advertising</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=inception-is-the-oscars-big-tech-winner</guid>
<description><![CDATA[The Academy Awards aren't really the place for high technology' a set of awards commemorating film-industry engineering are relegated to a separate ceremony and only briefly acknowledged, after all. It was an unprecedented event, and likely to remain a rarity, when James Cameron's 3D adventure &quot;Avatar&quot; took home Best Picture last year. Digital innovation can only really claim one category as its own: Achievement in Visual Effects.Christopher Nolan's film &quot;Inception,&quot; a film that managed the dual feat of being both technologically impressive and thematically brainy, took home the Visual Effects award Sunday night at the 83rd Annual Academy Awards. It was up against &quot;Alice in Wonderland,&quot; &quot;Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part One,&quot; &quot;Hereafter,&quot; and &quot;Iron Man 2.&quot; More specifically, the award went to the visual effects crew for &quot;Inception,&quot; Paul Franklin, Chris Corbould, Andrew Lockley, and Peter Bebb.The fact that Nolan himself had not been nominated for Best Director was considered by many film fans to have been one of the nomination roster's major oversights. But Visual Effects was the fourth win of the night for &quot;Inception&quot;: It earlier took home Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing, and Best Cinematography.The Visual Effects category was kicked off, appropriately enough, with a holograph-like re-creation of a vintage Oscars telecast hosted by the late Bob Hope, and announced by actors Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr., who co-starred in last year's aesthetically sensational rendition of &quot;Sherlock Holmes.&quot; (Downey also starred in one of this year's nominees, &quot;Iron Man 2.&quot;)<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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<title><![CDATA[My6sense filters Twitter for the most relevant tweets]]></title>
<link>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=my6sense-filters-twitter-for-the-most-relevant-tweets</link>
<comments>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=my6sense-filters-twitter-for-the-most-relevant-tweets</comments>
<pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov -001 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
<dc:creator>rleisersir</dc:creator>
<category>Latest News</category>
<guid>http://www.haaze.com/story.php?title=my6sense-filters-twitter-for-the-most-relevant-tweets</guid>
<description><![CDATA[My6sense, the maker of mobile applications that help users find the most personally relevant content, is expanding beyond smartphones today with a service that offers a new view on Twitter.The product is an extension for Google&amp;'s Web browser. After you&amp;'ve installed it, when you visit Twitter.com you&amp;'ll see a new &amp;''my6sense&amp;'' tab to the right of the timeline, retweets, and all the other standard features. If you click on the tab, you&amp;'ll get a rearranged view of all the tweets in your timeline, a view that prioritizes the content that&amp;'s relevant to you.So for Twitter users who follow thousands or tens of thousands of other people and have an overwhelming amount of information flowing through their tweet stream, this could become the default way to view Twitter. But even if your Twitter usage is less intense, this could be a nice supplement or catch-up tool. For example, if you&amp;'ve been stuck in meetings for hours and want to see what happened on Twitter, rather than trying to skim through an entire day of tweets, you could just view the most relevant ones in My6sense.One of the coolest things about the extension, and about the company&amp;'s approach in general, is that users don&amp;'t manually enter their preferences. Instead of explicitly telling My6sense that you&amp;'re interested in tweets about the iPhone and Facebook that come from a specific subset of the people you follow, you just behave on Twitter as you normally would, clicking on and responding to the tweets and links that you think are interesting.The extension starts out with a basic understanding of your interests based on what you&amp;'ve tweeted already. When I installed My6sense last week, it was already doing a decent job of highlighting tweets I found interesting from people whose opinions I care about. Vice president of marketing Louis Gray said that the longer the extension is installed, the better it understands your behavior and the better its recommendations become.You can let My7sense cull your entire tweet stream or just focus on tweets with links. (It&amp;'s harder to figure out your preferences for tweets without links, so you may read and like a tweet without interacting with it in any way.) The extension also tailors its recommendations to the time of day. If (like me) you&amp;'re mostly interested in tech and business news during the day but prefer to click on politics- and culture-related links in the evening, My6sense&amp;'s recommendations should start to reflect that.For now, the extension only affects your Twitter experience, but the broader vision, according to founder and chief executive Barak Hachamov, is to eventually tailor any website to your interests. The mission sounds similar to Gravity, a startup founded by former Myspace executives.After playing with the Twitter service for a week and finding that, yes, interesting tweets keep floating to the top, I think that vision looks believable.Next Story: Live from HP&amp;'s WebOS event: HP Veer, Pre 3 phones and HP TouchPad tablet revealed Previous Story: Visa approves this transaction: PlaySpan for $190MPrintEmailTwitterFacebookGoogle BuzzLinkedIn      DiggStumbleUponRedditDeliciousGoogleMore&amp;8230'          Tags: digital intuition, personal relevanceCompanies: My6sense, TwitterPeople: Barak Hachamov, Louis Gray          Tags: digital intuition, personal relevanceCompanies: My6sense, TwitterPeople: Barak Hachamov, Louis GrayAnthony is a senior editor at VentureBeat, as well as its reporter on media, advertising, and social networks. Before joining the site in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. (All story pitches should also be sent to tips@venturebeat.com) You can also follow Anthony on Twitter. Have news to share Launching a startup Email: tips@venturebeat.comVentureBeat has new weekly email newsletters.  Stay on top of the news, and don't miss a beat.<br/><br/>0 Vote(s) ]]></description>
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