U.S. government changes its stance on gene patenting

The U.S. government, which formerly allowed genes to be patented, has now reversed its position, stating that genes should not be eligible for patents because they are part of nature. The Department of Justice filed a brief on Friday in its capacity as a friend of court in a case dealing with human genes linked to breast and ovarian cancer. In March, a district court judge ruled in the case that the two patents which had been held by Myriad Genetics and the University of Utah, are invalid. It is unclear whether or not the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office will implement this extreme policy change, having already issued thousands of patents on genes, including approximately twenty percent of human genes. If the Patent Office discontinues issuing patents on genes, it is likely to provoke the ire of biotechnology companies, who state that gene patenting is essential in the development of personalized medicine.

Microsoft acquires IP patents: including 3D sensing technology

As Forbes reports here (http://blogs.forbes.com/briancaulfield/2010/10/29/paving-the-way-for-kinnect-microsoft-scoops-up-motion-sensing-intellectual-property/), Microsoft has just bought Canesta – a smaller company. Canesta is particularly known for single chip “3-D sensing” or “electronic perception” technology. Microsoft, in its deal, has acquired at least 44 more patents. As a result of acquiring this new technology, Microsoft may be advancing the motion-sensing capacity of the X-Box 360 (a Microsoft videogame console).

Facebook files for patent to refine ad-targeting

Facebook recently filed for a patent which would allow it to target the ads that appear on an individual user’s page using his or her friends’ interests. Facebook currently targets advertisements based on users’ interests and other information, but if a user does not post such information on his or her page, Facebook cannot target ads to the individual user. With this type of targeting, if enough of a user’s friends are interested in something, ads will appear on the user’s page as well. The patent application mentions that advertisers may be able to determine primary and secondary targeting criteria, and how such criteria will be weighted. Not surprisingly, this has brought up further concerns about Facebook’s sharing of users’ data with third parties.

The lime has finally run dry

After a four year long battle with the Recording Industry Association of America over copyright infringement accusations, Limewire is the latest peer-to-peer file sharing network to fall. A “permanent injunction” was issued by a New York federal court against Limewire for intentionally perpetuating a “massive scale of infringement” by allowing immense volumes of copyrighted material to be shared by its 50 million monthly users. The courts will conduct a trial in January to determine the amount of damages to be paid to the record companies for the illegal downloads facilitated by the Limwire platform. Limewire was among several file sharing services, including Kazaa, WinMX, i2Hub, eDonkey and BearShare, who were issued cease and desist letters by the RIAA in 2005. Though Limewire is now down, file sharing is not, as users are already turning to alternative p2p services. For the RIAA, this battle may have been won, but the war continues.

The policy implications of a social media based political culture

There has been quite a bit of chatter on the blogosphere of late on the topic of Malcolm Gladwell’s recent piece on the effectiveness of social networks as tools of political organization. Gladwell takes the position that these social networks are characterized by so called “weak ties”. These online relationships are not characterized by the depth that relationships in the real world are. This distinction between “weak ties” and “strong ties” informs Gladwell’s analysis of the virtues of political movements which organize themselves using social media. One of the main advantages that Gladwell offers are that social networks are able to quickly send out vast amounts of information and utilize large numbers of followers very efficiently. This diffuse organizational structure based on “weak ties” has its drawbacks though. The lack of hierarchy can fail to deliver the kind of coordinated action that may be required of political movements. Furthermore because the underlying relationships in social networks are somewhat lacking in depth they fail to deliver on the kind of perseverance and moral fibre that can be found in traditional social networks.

This of course raises some important legal and policy questions as the public square moves increasingly into the world of social media. It was just over a decade ago that Robert Putnam, a prominent Harvard social scientist, produced his opus on social capital: Bowling Alone. Putnam made the rather shocking discovery that social capital had been declining significantly in the United States since the 1950s. The civic culture which had once thrived was shrivelling as people withdrew from social organizations that they had once formed a part of. The internet age has seen the rise of social media which is doubtless a form of social capital. The question for society at large is whether these social media can act as an effective substitute for their real world counterparts and to what degree the earlier legal protections afforded to real world association can function in world of social media.

The modern liberal democratic states of the world have long afforded protection to freedom of association and conscience. These freedoms are enshrined in Canada’s own constitution in section two of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and are similarly enshrined in the US Bill of Rights. Recent experience seems to indicate that social media based organizations rely just as heavily upon those legal protections, or perhaps more heavily, than do the traditional models of political organization. Speech and organization on the internet is just as easily silenced by threats or violence as speech in the real world. Google pulled out of China as a result of that government’s censorship of its content. Turkey has recently moved to ban Facebook and during the previous year’s uprising in Iran the government actively suppressed online expression. The fragility of online expression is not limited to the ability of governments to suppress it. One of the main weaknesses of social media based organization is that the content providers themselves are market entities capable of intimidation both by governments and by other citizens. Blackberry was recently pressured to grant access to its encrypted emails in some areas of the world. Free speech which is dependent upon the rational profit seeking calculations of corporate entities is particularly vulnerable to censorship and intimidation. Business will generally not fall on the side of principle if their profits are threatened. Take one simple hypothetical example. Imagine a large and sprawling political movement which based its operation on Twitter and Facebook. Now imagine that they offended a majority of the sites user. How long before that organization is seeking alternative premises?

As much as we might long for the days of old, when speech occurred in the actual street and content was provided on actual pieces of paper, those days are gone. The real question is what protections could or should be put in place to protect free speech and organization on the internet in a world where the public square is built and maintained by private entities. Surely private entities like Facebook and Twitter have no obligation to host any movement they find harmful to the interests of their owners. Should they be mandated to provide universal access in light of their quasi public function? That question is fraught with difficulties but I suspect that the answer is no. The internet is sufficiently like a public square that online political organization will have to either create its own organizational software or risk being the victim of corporate censorship. For this reason I think Malcolm Gladwell may have been right: the social media revolution may not have been as revolutionary as it first seemed.

HADOPI hits 25,000 strikes a day

HADOPI, the French organization in charge of administering the country’s new three strikes law is reportedly handling 25,000 reports of infringement each day. ISPs have 24 hours to act once notified of the report. This has increased from the 10,000 daily reports when the system came into effect but below the projected amount (variously given as between 50,000 and 150,000 notices per day).

YouTube wins in Spanish copyright case

A Spanish federal court ruled in YouTube’s favor on Thursday, which YouTube’s owner, Google, lauded as a “clear victory for the internet and the rules that govern it.” The court dismissed the action by the Spanish broadcaster Telecino, which claimed that YouTube should be held liable when its users upload content that violates the broadcaster’s intellectual property rights. Agreeing with YouTube’s argument that the volume of content posted by users makes it impossible to screen every video, the court referred to the mechanisms already in place to encourage content owners to report violations to the site. This landmark case is the first of its kind in Europe involving YouTube.

244,000 Germans opt of Street View

In an effort to address privacy concerns, Google recently offered an opt-out option to Germans that would blur their houses on Google Street View. This agreement was made in the wake of the Wifi privacy breach (regarding which the Canadian Privacy Commissioner has recently released preliminary findings). 244,000 Germans exercised this option. Google points out that this represents only 3% of German households and thus “97% of German households have no problem with Street View”. However, in a world where almost everyone values privacy, but doesn’t take the time to diligently guard it, 3% seems like a big number to me.

Online privacy breach: Facebook “Apps” transmitting information to Third Parties

As reported on by www.ipblog.ca, a Wall Street Journal investigation has uncovered ”Apps” on facebook leaking facebook ID numbers to third parties.

“Apps” can include games and small-time programs on facebook. Using these “Apps,” in some instances, has been linked with transmission of user IDs. This can allow, in some cases, for transmission of names, photos and activities to outside companies which then sell this information to other advertising companies who want to know about user habits.

In Praise of Copying

A York University English professor is convinced that copying is good for society.

In his new book, In Praise of Copying, Professor Marcus Boon argues that copying is necessary for the advancement of society and has long contributed to cultural progress. Boon asserts that the philosophical concept of copying is still poorly understood and must be revisited in today’s knowledge-driven economy. He uses a comparative perspective, analyzing various cultures and time periods, to examine what copying has come to mean and why it both intrigues and frightens people. He looks not only at economic motivations for preventing copying, but also at more fundamental social norms that reinforce the notion that copying is a bad thing, such as the fact that people frown on copying another person’s actions or gestures.

Read the rest of this entry »