Home / techdirt.com rss archive / October-03-2007


GAO: FCC Gives Preferential Treatment To Lobbyists, Company-Sponsored Data
It's well known that folks at the FCC have a rather chummy relationship with the telco industry. After all, many of them either worked in the industry at one point or (more importantly) expect to get lucrative jobs in the industry after they leave the FCC. So it probably should come as no surprise to find out that the FCC tends to favor industry lobbyists and industry data to that of the consumers whose interests the FCC is supposed to be safeguarding. This is according to the GAO who has been doing a fantastic job highlight questionable government activity -- specifically with the FCC. In this latest report, there are two key things, both of which are quite troubling. First, the FCC often reveals important information to industry lobbyists, including information on new rulemaking efforts, votes and even how Commissioners intend to vote. This information is often not equally shared with consumer advocates, leaving them at a tremendous disadvantage. Second, in doing research...

The Doctr Is In
Back in the day, when you were sick, you would call the doctor, and they make a house call to diagnose your condition and provide care. In this modern age of managed care, where doctors are evaluated on the volume of patients that they are able to process, house calls are now but a distant memory. Now, Dr. Jay Parkinson, a Brooklyn doctor, brought the house call back -- but it's been updated for the times. Parkinson has started a new medical practice that centers around instant messenger, email and house calls. During regular business hours, he is available to his patients for online medical consultations. Dr. Parkinson then pays the patient a house call only if it is really necessary (you get two included house calls in the fee), but most issues can be addressed virtually. This is not surprising since studies confirm that online chat with your doctor is nearly as effective as an in-person visit. Specializing in young adults age 18 to 40 without traditional health insurance,...

Invasion Of The TV Snatchers? White Space Devices Will Kill Us All!
The debate over white space spectrum has gone on for quite some time. Basically, the FCC handed out a ton of spectrum (for free, mind you) to TV broadcasters years ago. In order to prevent against interference, there's always been a requirement for some "buffer" space. However, as technology has improved, the need for this buffer space has decreased, and plenty of tech companies would be interested in making use of some of that basically unused spectrum by having it set aside as open spectrum. Earlier this year, some of those companies, led by Microsoft and Google, delivered a device to the FCC to test. Unfortunately, the device had some problems. However, the concept is sound -- and with some tweaking, it's quite reasonable that such a device could work without interfering with TV signals. But you wouldn't know that from broadcasters, who love to hoard their spectrum. Matthew Lasar writes in to note that in responding to the device, the broadcasters have gone way over...

Airline Innovation Could Take A Bite Out Of Delays
It will come as no surprise to air travelers that this year has been the worst on record for flight delays and cancellations. Since technology failures played a role in some of the year's worst headaches, it's a fair question to ask whether better technology might fix what's broken with air travel. There's little debate that the nation's air traffic control system needs updating; contentions arise over who will take responsibility for it. Yet, while the FAA and the airline industry might spend another decade hashing out major infrastructure upgrades, the airlines should be investing now in technology that can provide relief to their customers in the short term.Investments to improve areas such as crew management, gate management, and flight scheduling, would take compounding bites out of the problem of delays.Yield management systems, technology in which airlines already invest substantial sums, could be tweaked to account for goodwill lost to cancellations and delays. Most...

Techdirt Extends Promise To Pay Up To $1 Million For Proof Of BSA $1 Million Reward
You may recall that, over the summer, the Business Software Alliance, got a lot of press for supposedly offering $1 million to folks who reported their employers to the BSA for using unauthorized software. A $1 million reward seems like a big deal -- the type likely to generate lots of press and (the BSA hoped) get more people to snitch on their bosses. Except, when you looked at the fine print, you realized that the BSA had all sorts of conditions, and the reward was really "up to" $1 million, pretty much entirely at the discretion of the BSA. So they could claim a $1 million award, and then pay out a lot less. In fact, when a CNET reporter went searching for how much the BSA had actually paid out, she could only find awards of about $5,000. So, that prompted us to promise "up to" $1 million to anyone who could prove the BSA gave a single person a $1 million reward -- with how much we actually pay out entirely up to our own discretion. Anyway, it would appear that the...

Media Uncritically Cites Flawed Piracy Studies, Again
The Washington Post has a story about the never-ending lobbying campaign for more draconian penalties for copyright infringement. It's extremely one-sided, quoting several industry executives but not a single person on the other side of the copyright debate, who could have pointed out that Congress has passed "tougher penalties" repeatedly in recent years and the results haven't exactly been good. The report also cites the widely discredited series of piracy reports that, as I explained here and here, dramatically overstate the effects of piracy on the copyright holders by double- and triple-counting uncaptured revenues by adding in "ripple effects."Those previous studies covered the movie and music industries, and both made the same basic error: after they counted some amount of CDs or movie tickets unsold as "lost revenue," they then counted the same lost revenue again by calculating how much less the movie and music industry is paying their suppliers due...

Google, AOL, Yahoo And Microsoft All Sued Over Excessively Broad Auction Patent
In the latest silly patent lawsuit to be filed in Marshall, Texas a company holding a patent on using gaming to determine the final price of an auction system. The company is now claiming that Google, AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft are all violating the patent with their ad auction models. The interesting thing here is that the patent is clearly talking about a very different system. It describes a process of setting a range for a price, and then allowing some sort of game ("a video game, electronic board game, sports bet, card game") to determine what the actual final price is within that range. Of course, that doesn't sound at all like what the various companies listed here are doing. However, that's where whoever drafted the patent earned his or her money. Rather than limiting it to games like those listed, the following phrase was also added: "or any other activity." This is right out of the standard patent attorney's playbook for creating super broad patents -- though...

Fooling Computers With Optical Illusions Is A Step In The Right Direction
Just a few weeks ago, computers were learning to understand knock knock jokes. Now, computers take another step towards being human; they are fooled by optical illusions, just like us. By creating a computer program that learns how to comprehend different shades of gray similar to the way that an infant learns, the computer also falls prey to White's Illusion, an illusion in which bands of gray appear different even though they are the same shade. This is an important step in computer vision since this illusion is not a physiological one, where optical sensors send the brain the wrong image, but rather, a cognitive one, where perception of an image is misinterpreted. As we get closer to true artificial intelligence, what other kinds of human faults will computers be able to emulate? And, considering that computers are already better than us at certain tasks, will those faults be amplified? After all, "to err is human, to really screw up you need a computer." ...

Yes, Using Free In Your Business Model Works For Small And Large Bands
With Radiohead's new business model getting so much attention, we're hearing a bunch of folks start to claim that this kind of business model only works for big, established bands. Funny thing is, when we point to smaller artists doing similar things, people say that such a model may work for no name artists, but couldn't possibly work for big pop stars, who would inevitably lose money. The fact is that a business model that involves using the music as a promotional good can work for both small and large bands if you understand the economics of infinite goods and how to apply the appropriate business model based on the stage of the musician's career. So for all those claiming that the Radiohead situation is unique because they're so well known, can you please explain why other, significantly less well known artists have done quite well using similar models? The simple fact is that these types of business models allow some less well known musicians to have a career in music...

Court Slaps Down Software And Business Model Patents
It seems like barely a week goes by without another good story of the courts reigning in the worst abuses of the patent system. While patent reform issues languish in Congress, the courts are doing an excellent job correcting a lot of patent abuses. Just as the Supreme Court is looking at yet another patent case, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) seems to be putting some limits on business model and software patents. This is somewhat amusing, as it was a CAFC decision about a decade ago in the State Street case that opened the floodgates to business model patents. Prior to that, it was widely believed that you couldn't patent "business methods," but the ruling at CAFC said that wasn't true at all. The real travesty of the situation was that the guy who wrote the decision had been a former patent attorney who had written the last major update to patent law -- with almost no Congressional oversight. In other words, one patent attorney almost singlehandedly...

Payments By Touch Reaching Out For You
The promises of contactless payments consistently seem to fall a bit short. The hardware costs for merchants sound hard to justify, and the benefits to the consumer are usually minimal -- since credit cards aren't exactly a painful process to begin with. However, wireless technologies are cool, so NTT DoCoMo has demonstrated a prototype phone that uses human conductivity to transmit data for services such as payment-by-touch -- so that you can keep the phone in your pocket and simply touch other devices to transmit your personal information. But if the irrational fears of cell phone radiation weren't enough for you, then imagine the possibilities of using skin conductivity. How will users fill up at the gas station? And consider how many more stories about high-tech pickpockets there will be... when thieves just have to touch you briefly in order to get your payment information. NTT DoCoMo admits that it'll be several years before this payment-by-touch system will be...