Informationoverlord

It’s has been a while since a really good internet patent case came along - remember BT wanting to claim they invented hyperlinking (the Court didn’t agree) - well now a small Singapore based company, called VueStar Technologies, has started sending out invoices the websites informing them that they need a licence if they use pictures or graphics to link to another web pages.

There claims are based on a patent granted in 2006 (applied for in 2001) for a system that “provides a web-page (or web-site) search results list which includes images from the actual web-pages or web-sites identified in a user’s search, or images associated with the actual organization operating a web-site. This assists a user to locate web-pages of interest or relevance to the user by providing images to assess the relevance of web-pages identified in a search, prior to the user having to hyperlink to the actual web-page itself.”

So, search engine image searches, such as Google Image Search will sooner, or later, be getting their invoices in the post. Indeed, depending on your reading of the patent a high percentage of all websites (including this one) will be infringing on the patent in some form. On the company’s website FAQs they claim that clicking, scrolling or streaming over a visual image to connect with a website or Web page is an infringement, and invite companies “to view and make their own assessment and then make a democratic choice. To use visual images or revert to text only options.”

At the moment the company is targetting sites based in Singapore, but it intends to expand this to Australia, New Zealand, and the US in the coming months.

It seems likely that, at some point, the courts will be called upon to rule whether or not VueStar can enforce the patent and if so how wide an interpretation will be allowed. VueStar are apparently confident they would win any court case - so were BT, but I’d be very surprised if this didn’t go the same was as the BT case, with the Court’s finding the scope to wide and much of it unenforceable. Still, one to keep an eye on in the coming months.

Twitter has been its usual self of late - which means down or crippled - so I have decided the time is right to re-examine the competition and ask: Do I really need Twitter??

The reason I am still a user of Twitter (like many others) is not necessarily because it is the best of class as far as microbloging goes, but more because the blog people and friends I know are all there - not on Pownse or Jaiku. However, next week I am planning an experiment and am going to have a Jaiku day.

Obviously, I’d rather not be on my own, so please join me/follow me if you’re already a Jaiku member, I’m there as Informationoverlord. If you follow me on Twitter and need a Jaiku invite to come and play, leave a comment, and I’ll try and invite you and we can all have a ‘not twittering’ day  on Monday 2nd June.

Spread the word - Monday is official non-twittering Jaiku day.

Remember AllofMP3.com? We have covered the Russian music downloads site a number of times over the past two years. This week, the RIAA announced it had dropped its lawsuit against the site and the company behind it, MediaServices LLC, stating “the site is now defunct and out of business, the result of a successful anti-piracy initiative.”

The site has effectively been closed down since July of last year when the Russian authorities ordered it to close in time for President Bush and Vladimir Putin to hold bi-lateral talks on Russia’s entry into the WTO. This was a follow on from bi-lateral agreement signed by the US and Russia in December 2006 where Russia agreed to close down music download site AllofMP3.com, and any similar sites that “permit illegal distribution of music and other copyright works.”
By similar sites they probably meant sites such as Mp3Sparks, created by AllOfMp3.com’s owners, MediaServices LLC (which went live just before AllofMp3 closed down) Mp3Feista, Mp3sale, and others, all very much still in existence.

AllofMp3 always maintained that it offered a legal service under Russian law - at least for those downloading material within Russia. AllofMP3 claimed it paid royalties to the Russian Multimedia and Internet Society (Roms), and that it was the record companies who were a fault for not collecting those monies on behalf of their clients. However, most Western copyright authorities do not recognise this organisation, and the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers expelled ROMS from its ranks in 2004 because royalties were not getting through to rights owners. Interestingly, MP3Sparks claims to operate under at NP FAIR license (AllofMp3 had added licencing under NP fair before closing down).

Last year the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) got Russian prosecutors to file suits against Mediaservices’ head, Vadim Mamotin, and old boss Denis Kvasov. Whilst the case against Mamotin has yet to see the light of day, Moscow judge, Yekaterina Sharapova, dismissed the case against Kvasov stating that “the prosecution did not succeed in presenting persuasive evidence of his involvement in infringing copyright law”. She stated that the law (as of 2005) stated that money had to be paid to rights holders, and accepted that Media Services had shown they had done so to ROMS. The IFPI brilliantly summed up the judgment by saying the ruling “in no way affects the illegality of allofmp3 and similar services”. Yes … if you ignore the Court’s view, then the illegality is obviously in no doubt.

The Russian Courts also ruled against the credit card companies and the Russian agent of Visa last year, in particular, Visa’s decision to disconnect the Alltunes’ (allofmp3 desktop client) payment system, after deciding the site/service was illegal. The Moscow court apparently found Visa acted illegally by not fulfilling the business agreement it had with Alltunes, when no ‘court’ had ruled the site breached copyright laws.

I have said this before on this site, but AllofMp3 remains the best online user experience I have ever had (via its Alltunes desktop interface - which still actually works if you have any credit - although currently no means to add more) for buying digital music. Easy to use, a choice of format and compression quality, and of course very attractive prices. I would still love to see someone copy their model ‘legally’.

What follows is not meant to be a collection of reviews, more some basic and quick comments on a number of things I have been trying out in the last few months.

Mento

Mento describes itself as a link sharing service. Unlike social bookmarking sites such as delicious, which thy feel are great for saving links, they do not think they’re good for sending links to someone or adding a personal message or having a conversion around those links.

This is probably true, to a point - obviously you can share links on delicious, diigo etc and have groups sharing things, and indeed on diigo annotate and comment on any page - but is it enough to want need at add another tool to your sharing?

It is very good for saving video (which it embeds in your saved links page) and it the bookmarklets have worked well, but whilst I’d love to see sites like Diigo and delicious add the ability to better save other file types, such as video - that ability alone is not going to be enough to make me a regular user of Mento. [I have invites]

My Mento

ZigTag

Zigtag is another social bookmarking site, but what is interesting is that it is exploring the idea of tags have defined meanings, so when you tag a page, you are assigning it a definition rather than a simple word that could have multiple meanings - U2 the band and U2 the bomber, for example. A side bar add-on presents you with automated suggested tags to any page you are on

I like this idea. There is no doubt this is the next step in social bookmarking, and a good way to let it and traditional taxonomies to combine too.

As well as tagging, you can share and comment on pages, clip content to send to others via email and more.

Import of delicious bookmarks was a bit clunky but worked fine, and if you choose to then manage your tags/bookmarks you can start to re-assign your tags to make them defined (if the term/tag is define at all that is.) Terms/Tags having no description and where those descriptions come are minor issues.

I’m going to keep with Zigtag for a while and see how it develops, although once again I’d prefer Diigo to take the idea and add it into their product. [I have invites]

Twine

Twine is one of those site that wants to be all things to all (wo)men add any kind of content, make ‘twines’ to share and collect content with people with similar interests etc.

For example as well as adding some bookmarks, I added an organisation - Clifford Chance, including some copied text about what CC does. I now have Clifford Chance listed under organisations. I also have Resolution listed (which also links to the CC record) Why? No idea. It seems to have picked a random word from the description to create a new Organisation. It has also added Clifford Chanc and Clifford Chance under people for me (also linking to the CC record). Hmm, I am starting to see problems here already, especially as I don’t seem to have any means of removing these connections/mistakes. Not that impressed.

According to Twine their aim is to add metadata and semantic to improve search & finding data. “we’re moving into AI automatic data analysis and metadata generation, the focus is on using search as our powertool instead of categorization.”

Twine is another one of these things that could become to best thing since sliced bread or it could be toast in 12 months. I will keep an eye on it and try to play some more, but so far so not sticky. [I have invites]

FriendFeed

Friendfeed is current media darling with many of the web 2.0 thought leaders. FriendFeed enables you to keep up-to-date on the web pages, photos, videos, blogging, microblogging (twitter etc), music etc that your friends and family are sharing. It also allows you to comment on what has been shared - and if it was originally shared via Twitter, gives you the option to reply directly to twitter too.

I like Friendfeed, but I have not bought into it, and it does leave me with a less is more feeling when I log on and feel I am swamped by updates.

Interestingly, Facebook has just made changes to its mini feed to allow users to import updates from Hulu, Google Reader, blogs, Last.fm, YouTube, pandora and others. This is clearly a response to FriendFeed and an attempt by Facebook to try and get those people who might be tempted by Friendfeed to stay within Facebook

Social Thing

Social Thing has been lumped in with Friendfeed and others in the ‘Lifestream’ field, but it is trying to make itself more a tool for updating your social media networks/platforms.

What I like about it is that it automatically detects who your friends are on the social services to which you belong (so you don’t have to go hunting them or adding all ,their details for the umpteenth time. Add in your Facebook details, twitter details and it will automatically pull in updates by your friends on these sites.

You can also post updates to both Twitter and Facebook directly from Social Thing. Support for more services is being added soon, inc Youtube, delicious etc [I have invites]

ReadAir

Readair is a desktop googlereader application build on adobe air. A classic three pane email look. Not much you can do with it from a preferences/options/functionality point of view. It is fine, but not as good as feeddemon if you are after a good desktop option for reading rss, and not a lot of reason for not just logging into googlereader itself for more functionality.

Hahlo

Hahlo is a twitter client for iPhones/iTouch which combine a twitter client with summize twitter search. Whilst I have still not been convinced that just logging onto twitter via a shortcut on my iTouch is not just as quick, I have to say I do really like Hahlo. Some great little things under the menu setting tab, like displaying inline replies. The summize search worked pretty well, and the whole app was pretty speedy. If you twitter and have an iPhone/iTouch it is certainly worth a try.

The latest issue of Computer and Telecommunications Law Review has an excellent overview of the new EU Audiovisual Media Services Directive. Stephen Ridgway of Denton Wilde Sapte skilfully outlines: the main aspects/scope of the new law; how it differs from the Television without Frontiers Directive which it replaces/updates; and the challenges member states face in implementing the Directive.

He points out that the lack of clarity in the wording of the Directive ( a fault common to a number of EU Directives) means that a measure aimed at harmonising regulation across member states could have the opposite effect - the ill conceived Data Retention Directive is already heading this way. He correctly, in my view, highlights the main problem for this as the introduction of a new two-tier regulatory framework and the already blurring lines between what are linear (TV Broadcasts) and non-linear (On-Demand) services.

Services such as YouTube were (rightly in my view) exempted from regulation as video sharing sites were classed as user-generated content that is non-commercial in nature. However, this does cause potential problems. Ridgway points to the examples of Lonelygirl15 and Kate Modern as the kinds of short on-demand clips that could find themselves seen as sufficiently ‘television-like’ to be covered by the Directive.

Along with Elizabeth McEneaney’s article - The Audiovisual Media Services Directive - Ent.L.R., Issue 3, 2008 (p59-61), the best yet for helping lawyer and non-lawyer alike get a understanding of the AVMS. Recommended.

The Audiovisual Media Services Directive - what does it mean, is it necessary and what are the challenges to its implementation? - Stephen Ridgway. C.T.L.R. 2008, 14(4), 108-113

was reading through Taylor Wessing’s lastest Brands Update newsletter on the tube earlier and came across an interesting Trade Mark case from January this year involving Playboy. Playboy had filed an opposition to the regislatration of Playboyskool by the wondefully named Hot Sheyt Management & Music Publishing. Playboy, of course, won out except in relation to “security services for the protection of individuals”. What was more interesting was that the Hearing officer tossed Playboy’s objection that as it has a reputation in the UK, the applications should be dismissed, stating Playboy’s “evidence did not establish a reputation in the European Community at the relevant date and the Section 5(3) [Trade Mark Act 1994] objection failed accordingly.” Playboy were employing the ‘do you know who I am’ approach to evidence production.

I just got a 2 question survey from Lexis:

1. How likely are you to recommend LexisNexis News & Business* (Inc Nexis, LexisNexis Professional, LexisNexis Executive, KYC) to a friend or colleague? ( to be answered on a number scale).
2. What is the single most important thing that we could do to make you more likely to recommend us? (and a box for comments).

Seriously, where do you start to point out what is wrong here? Surely the answer to question one will depend on a number of variables that Lexis has decided do not exist, or has just ignored.

Would/Could I recommend Lexis? Of course, but it would depend very much on what the information requirements were of the person asking me, their budget, and a host of other things. It would be the same for recommending Westlaw or any other legal database (although outside of Thomson and Lexis finding ones they don’t own is a challenge).

Cost will obviously big a big consideration is deciding to recommed or not ( a close friend in a Arts related business had to say no when the cost offered was too prohibative). There are now many excellent free sources of legislation and case law out there (Bailli, Statutory Law Database, Precydent etc) that mean - for a lot of people and organisations - you do not need to have Lexis and Westlaw. Yes, Lexis and Westlaw do add value, but is that value worth the additional cost? (and I realise that there is a ‘cost’ in the time it takes finding information on free services/databases, that can sometimes make the most cost effective solution the ‘pay’ option).

I use Lexis, but not as much as I did. I use their news search even less - hard to believe but I miss having Factiva, which gave better results. Of course, as a result of a deal between Lexis and Factiva a few years back Law Firms suddenly found out they could no longer subscribe to Factiva directly. Progress? Competition?

I do applaud Lexis for wanting to ask questions and improve their services - I’ve meet many nice people from lexis over the years - but maybe they should make things more interactive and do a wiki or something similar. We know from their Company Law Forum experiment that they can be forward thinking, so why not a Lexis Services Forum site??

In a post last week I spoke about the UK government’s plans for new communications retention legislation as part of their Draft Legislative Programme. They also decided to provide us - the UK citizenry - with the opportunity to comment on the bills because the government is interested in our views. Only, it isn’t.

Apparently, the government doesn’t REALLY want to hear your comments, it wants your sound bites. This can be the only reason why you are limited as a commenter to 100 characters - even Twitter gives you 140. Just how insightful and constructive are you meant to be in 100 characters exactly? I tried to say “We should all be worried that the gov are not just issuing an amending SI’s for the DR regs 2007 and RIPA.”, only to find even that was 106 characters. So stripped out a ‘the’ and an ‘are’ and posted away. I then got the nice message telling me “Thank you for submitting comments on this bill.Your contribution to this process is valuable”.

Valuable as long as I can phrase it in 100 characters or less. To be fair my comment should have asked why the government were not just issuing amending legislation, but the BBC has an answer for that one - a nice big database combining all our phone and internet records - and the Information Commissioner’s office an answer for that too.

“If the intention is to bring all mobile and internet records together under one system, this would give us serious concerns and may well be a step too far …we are not aware of any pressing need to justify the government itself holding this sort of data.” [Since when did that stop this government].

I see RIM are about to release the latest Blackberry. This one called ‘Bold‘ will be the first to add 3G/UMTS support. It also comes with inbuilt wi-fi to help cover all bases. It should hit the shops in the next month, and will be quickly followed by Apple making the iPhone more business friendly (and also 3G), and then the battle for the business world can commence.

The problem for Apple is that the Blackberry has become part of the furniture in the Corporate world, and it knows that as the ‘crackberry’ name suggests, it has its users hooked. Are these users (and those in charge of procurement for those user in the corporate world) going to be tempted by the nice iPhone … of course they are, but: try tapping out an email, on the go, on a Blackberry, and then try it on the iPhone. The touch thing is great (I own an iPod Touch), but for speed and accuracy I would wager that the vast majority are going to get less pissed of with the Blackberry, and email is still the killer app in the mobile world as it is in the office environment in Corporate Europe and America.

This is not to say the iPhone will not make some headway into the corporate sphere, but I think Blackberry is going to be King for some time to come. The question for RIM is can they now make any headway in the consumer market. Whilst recent changes have, of course, been in response to others in the mobile sphere and in particular Apple, they have also been in an attempt to get the likes of you and me to trade in our current phone and seriously consider a Blackberry. Like Apple ,they have realised that - esp in Europe - having the phone 3G enabled is now a must, and as a result I think the 3G iPhone and the Blackberry Bold will both get more normal phone users attracted to the products. Blackberry are also set (if rumours are to be believed ) to go head to head with Apple with a full touch product, the Blackberry ‘Thunder’.

We should not overlook HTC in all this. They have been the main ‘touch’ competition for Apple thus far, and whilst they have yet to set the world alight, do have some fans. They are about to launch the HTC Touch Diamond which with its 3G and HSDPA connections, and sleek looks should also help it make more of an impact.

I like the look of the Bold and the Diamond (and of course should anyone want to give me either to test/review - well, if you don’t ask..) and for the first time these would come into my thinking when getting a new phone - although the tariff you’d need to be on to get one could be the real killer.

The UK government has announced its new Draft Legislation Programme. The programme includes plans to bring forward a Communications Data bill. According to the government the purpose of this Bill is to allow communications data capabilities for the prevention and detection of crime and protection of national security to keep up with changing technology by providing for the collection and retention of such data - including data not required for the business purposes of communications service providers; and to ensure strict safeguards continue to strike the proper balance between privacy and protecting the public.

The main elements of the Bill are:

• modify the procedures for acquiring communications data and allow this data to be retained
• transpose EU Directive 2006/24/EC on the retention of communications data into UK law

The UK has already transposed part of the directive through the Data Retention (EC Directive) Regulations 2007. Those regulations introduced a retention period of 12 months for data generated by fixed and mobile telephony providers. The UK, like many other EU member states, excepted the limited opt out offered by the directive relating to the imposing of retention rules to internet access, IP telephony and email. They have until 15 March 2009 to implement these rules.

The intention of the government to bring forward primary legislation is an interesting one. If their intention was to merely extend those aspects of retention already covered in the 2007 regulations to cover email and the internet, they need merely have introduced amending regulations. The fact that they are choosing not to, may be a sign that the government plans to push beyond what is required by the Directive. It also seems logical that in doing so, they will revoke the 2007 regulations so as to include all the relevant law regarding communications data retention in the one act.

Should be some interesting debates and discussion ahead when this one hits parliament towards the end of the year.