In the wake of the Charlottesville violence this past weekend calls to take a serious stand against white supremacy have abounded. And some companies have complied–GoDaddy and Google have refused to provide hosting services for the Daily Stormer; Twitter has suspended a number of accounts; and Apple has cut off its services to white supremacists.

The Daily Stormer previously had domain registration through GoDaddy. When GoDaddy decided to drop the popular white supremacist site, it attempted to move to Google, which also rebuffed it. Now, the site has apparently moved to the dark web. That means that it doesn’t have to work with any sort of mainstream provider, and can only be accessed through a software called Tor.

Twitter suspended some accounts linked to the Daily Stormer yesterday. For many, that was a welcome surprise–Twitter doesn’t necessarily have the best track record when it comes to dealing with harassment and inappropriate usage.

Apple cut off services like Apple Pay for white supremacist websites selling merchandise. Apple’s CEO Tim Cook also sent out a memo to all the company employees, affirming:

We must not witness or permit such hate and bigotry in our country, and we must be unequivocal about it. This is not about the left or the right, conservative or liberal. It is about human decency and morality. I disagree with the president and others who believe that there is a moral equivalence between white supremacists and Nazis, and those who oppose them by standing up for human rights. Equating the two runs counter to our ideals as Americans.

Other tech companies that have, at least in part, shut off service to white supremacists include PayPal, which cut off more than three dozen white supremacist groups, and popular dating site OkCupid, which has banned at least one known white supremacist.

We were alerted that white supremacist Chris Cantwell was on OkCupid. Within 10 minutes we banned him for life.

— OkCupid (@okcupid) August 17, 2017

Airbnb actually banned white supremacists from using its platform ahead of the Charlottesville rally, a decision which was reaffirmed by its CEO after the fact. Brian Chesky wrote:

The violence, racism and hatred demonstrated by neo-Nazis, the alt-right, and white supremacists should have no place in this world. Airbnb will continue to stand for acceptance, and we will continue to do all we can to enforce our community commitment.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Tech Companies Dump White Supremacists appeared first on Law Street.

Welcome to RantCrush Top 5, where we take you through today’s top five controversial stories in the world of law and policy. Who’s ranting and raving right now? Check it out below:

North Korea is Threatening a Strike on Guam After Trump’s Warning

North Korean officials say they are considering a missile strike against Guam, a U.S. territory, after President Trump issued a warning against the North that any threat to the U.S. would be met with “fire and fury.” After Trump’s harsh words, experts warned against taking part in rhetorical arguments with Kim Jong Un. North Korea has also claimed that the U.S. is planning a “preventive war” and if that becomes reality, Pyongyang will begin an “all-out war wiping out all the strongholds of enemies, including the U.S. mainland.”

About 163,000 people live on Guam, but it’s also the base of a submarine squadron, an airbase, and a Coast Guard group. U.S. officials have said they would prefer to use diplomatic means to solve any conflicts, but would not hesitate to use force if needed. However, Guam’s governor, Eddie Calvo, dismissed the threat and said the island is prepared for “any eventuality.”

North Korea says seriously considering plan to strike Guam: KCNA https://t.co/XLxpImmfG4 pic.twitter.com/qOiy7PJ0i0

— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) August 9, 2017

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post RantCrush Top 5: August 9, 2017 appeared first on Law Street.

YouTube is facing renewed pressure from musicians and their lawyers over the share of revenue that artists receive from the site compared to other music platforms.

The issue stems from the fact that artists receive $1 per 1,000 plays on YouTube, but $7 per 1,000 plays from companies like Spotify or Apple Music, according to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

Earlier this Spring the RIAA claimed that YouTube, which is owned by Google, “wrongly exploits legal loopholes” to minimally pay musicians, according to NBC News. It is able to do this because of its standing as a third-party resource, which is protected by federal laws that distance the company from what its users post on the site.

YouTube is not liable due to the “safe harbor” rules, which state that platform sites are not liable if someone uploads a copyrighted song until the copyright holder files a complaint.

“It isn’t a level playing field,” said one music executive who spoke with Washington Post on the condition of anonymity. “Because ultimately you’re negotiating with a party who is going to have your content no matter what.”

The issue has become particularly relevant since the European Union decided to crack down on the issue within its territory. Noting the “value gap” between music services, the E.U. plans to release new regulations that can close the gap and provide artists the royalties that they want. So, the battle against YouTube is heating up.

YouTube’s main argument against these claims is that it provides exposure to musicians who wouldn’t normally get that publicity. The company also notes that it already spends $1 billion in royalties each year. The company claims that if it removed music from its website 85 percent of people would flock to services that offer even lower, or no, royalties. One issue with the validity of this claim is that it is based on a study that was commissioned by YouTube.

YouTube mainly generates its revenue from advertisements and sponsored content, but that money stream has dried up to some degree in recent months. Mega corporations such as Verizon, AT&T, and Enterprise recently pulled ads from YouTube after being displeased with their ads coinciding with videos they didn’t approve, according to Recode. So even though the company has had the money in the past to pay for expensive royalties, they may not have that much extra cash in the coming years.

Artists and those representing them have ample evidence that they are being ripped off by YouTube. Irving Azoff, who has represented musicians like Christina Aguilera, told the Washington Post that one of his other clients gets 33 percent of her streams from YouTube but that yields only 10 percent of her streaming revenue.

Another example: Cello player Zoe Keating showed the Washington Post that she earned $940 from 230,000 streams on Spotify and only $261 from 1.42 million views on YouTube. She said that the YouTube money is so negligible she barely pays attention.

Another issue is that even when YouTube signs licensing agreements with music labels they are signed begrudgingly. When Warner Music Group signed a new deal with YouTube, a memo from chief executive Steve Cooper leaked out revealing his feelings on the “very difficult circumstances”–his company caved instead of continuing to pay $2 million to remove its music from the site.

“There’s no getting around the fact that, even if YouTube doesn’t have licenses, our music will still be available but not monetized at all,” the memo said.

Just as the music industry struggled to adapt to emerging software in the 1990s with the emergence of Napster and Limewire, artists are once again trying to navigate a murky situation with music and video streaming services. Whatever the European Union chooses to do going forward could pave the way for what the American industry will do.

For now, you can still enjoy your favorite music on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, or any number of other services, but it’s worth noting how the service you choose affects the money going into the pockets of your favorite musicians. It may not make a difference for well-known artists like Pharrell or Arcade Fire, who have both complained, but it certainly matters for less popular artists like Keating.

Read More: Streaming Music: Good Business or an Attack on Artists?

Josh Schmidt

Josh Schmidt is an editorial intern and is a native of the Washington D.C Metropolitan area. He is working towards a degree in multi-platform journalism with a minor in history at nearby University of Maryland. Contact Josh at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post YouTube Faces Pressure From Music Artists To Pay Up appeared first on Law Street.

The European Union’s antitrust regulators recently levied a 2.4 billion Euro fine on Google for favoring its own shopping service while demoting competitors in online search results. The fine, which amounts to about $2.7 billion, is the largest antitrust penalty in E.U. history and reflects a more aggressive trend in European antitrust enforcement. While the decision will certainly have important consequences for Google, it also illustrates how regulators are increasingly concerned with the rise of large technology companies and how they may affect competition and innovation.

Europe’s approach is also decidedly different than the one taken in the United States, which has generally allowed businesses to experiment with new business strategies unless such practices harm consumers. But when it comes to the internet, particularly free services like Google, drawing a line at the point where behavior becomes competitive has been difficult. Read on for a look at the details of Google’s case, the arguments on both sides, and its implications for the larger debate about antitrust law.

What Did Google Do?

When searching for a product on Google, you’ve likely noticed a bar at the top of the search results with pictures and links to places where you can buy the product underneath a link to use Google’s shopping service. Margrethe Vestager, the Competition Commissioner on the European Commission, looked into Google’s practices and concluded in June that the company was promoting its shopping service in a way that violates the law. The case started back in 2015, but Vestager says that Google’s anti-competitive behavior dates back as early as 2008. Vestager says that by promoting its own services to the top of search results, while demoting other comparison shopping websites, Google used its market dominance to hurt its competitors in violation of European law.

When announcing the decision, Vestager made note of Google’s important innovations but said that the promotion of Google Shopping didn’t just seek to improve the service it provided to customers, rather it harmed the overall market. She said in a statement,

Google’s strategy for its comparison shopping service wasn’t just about attracting customers by making its product better than those of its rivals. Instead, Google abused its market dominance as a search engine by promoting its own comparison shopping service in its search results, and demoting those of competitors. What Google has done is illegal under E.U. antitrust rules. It denied other companies the chance to compete on the merits and to innovate. And most importantly, it denied European consumers a genuine choice of services and the full benefits of innovation.

At the core of the E.U.’s case is its finding that Google has a particularly large share of the market, more than 90 percent in most European countries, and that it has used that market share to reduce the visibility–and as a result, the ability to compete–of its competitors, which Vestager says are alternative comparison shopping sites that function like Google Shopping.

Regulators found that search rankings have profound importance on the attention that a website gets. The vast majority of all clicks go to results on the first page, and the comparison shopping sites that the EU considers to be Google Shopping’s competitors are ranked much further down. In her statement, Vestager notes, “The evidence shows that even the most highly ranked rival appears on average only on page four of Google’s search results. Others appear even further down.” While the full details of the European Commission’s report will be released after it reviews it with Google to avoid disclosing any trade secrets, the summarized findings provide a clear look at where the case is going.

Google’s Argument

In a blog post after Vestager’s announcement, Kent Walker, a Senior Vice President and General Counsel at Google, challenged the notion that its practices are anticompetitive. Walker argued that people tend to prefer direct links to products when searching with Google and that the E.U. undervalued the service it provides its users. Walker also argues that the comparison shopping sites that Vestager is most concerned about are not actually Google’s direct competitors, rather major shopping platforms like Amazon and Ebay are a more appropriate comparison–and those sites tend to appear at the top of the first page of results. The company also touts the innovation that was involved in creating and adapting the shopping service, arguing that it creates a better experience for its customers.

Beyond Google, there is also a group that argues that the European Commission may be doing more than just enforcing competition laws by targeting Google. Namely, they note that many of the companies that face E.U. skepticism are located in the United States, and that what Vestager is doing may amount to a form of protectionism. Even President Obama argued that European antitrust regulations have gone too far in that they protect European companies from U.S. competition.

The video below describes the charges against Google in more detail:

What’s next?

Now that the European Commission has made its ruling, Google has 90 days to respond or it could face a fine of up to 5 percent of the average daily revenue of Alphabet, its parent company. In Europe, it’s the company’s responsibility to come up with a plan to ensure it is complying with the law, not the regulator. If Google is unable to get the commission to reverse its decision, it will likely need to change how it provides product-related search results in Europe. There are two additional probes–into Google’s Android operating system and its AdSense advertising platform–that remain ongoing and Vestager indicated that the recent findings will provide a model for those pending cases.

A New Approach to Antitrust

Beyond the facts of the recent decision, efforts by E.U. competition regulators indicate a broader change to antitrust enforcement–one that is notably different from the approach taken in the United States. In fact, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission actually considered pressing a case against Google for similar behavior several years ago, but decided further action was not necessary. What was particularly striking about that decision was the fact that an unreleased report indicated that FTC staffers thought there was enough evidence to bring a case against the company, but people at the top of the agency decided against it.

The new framework put forth by European regulators–which focuses on the importance of market power and competition, and how they can impact innovation in the longer term–looks a lot like the one that has been rising in popularity among Democrats in the United States. Addressing rising concentration and corporate power is one of the most important components of the new thinking in antitrust law. Proponents of aggressive antitrust enforcement argue that a proactive approach will help ensure that large tech companies like Google and Facebook do not use their market share to harm competition and stifle innovation. While the modern U.S. approach to antitrust, which generally dates back to the 1970s, tends to place a lot of focus on how concentration affects consumers. U.S. regulators have been reluctant to intervene absent clear proof that monopolistic behavior is directly harming consumers, typically in the form of price changes. But the thinking on the left argues that the health of the market, and innovation that comes along with it, can be harmed by concentration without direct consequences for consumers. Whether antitrust regulation should focus primarily on competition rather than benefits to consumers remains open for discussion, but Europe is pushing ahead with an aggressive enforcement as the debate in the U.S. unfolds.

Conclusion

The European Commission’s decision to fine Google a record-breaking 2.4 billion Euros is a sign of the new direction that the European Union is taking when it comes to regulating competition. As large internet platform companies become the focus of intense debates about market power and concentration, there has been a growing debate over whether existing laws and regulatory frameworks are sufficient to protect the health of the market and the welfare of consumers in the long term.

While political parties in the United States are divided on antitrust enforcement, Europe seems to be forging a new approach to deal with the large internet companies that have become integral components of daily life. For Google, and companies that find themselves in similar positions, this will likely create some problems when doing business in Europe, as the E.U. regulators have indicated that the recent decision will be an important precedent for future cases.

Kevin Rizzo

Kevin Rizzo is the Crime in America Editor at Law Street Media. An Ohio Native, the George Washington University graduate is a founding member of the company. Contact Kevin at krizzo@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The EU’s Record Fine Against Google: A New Precedent for Antitrust Enforcement? appeared first on Law Street.

The parliament in Germany passed a controversial bill last Friday that would give social media companies such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter 24 hours to remove explicitly hateful speech and “obviously illegal” content before facing a fine of up to 50 million euros ($57 million).

Holocaust denial, dissemination of Nazi symbols, racist agitation, and antisemitic language are considered illegal under Germany’s criminal code and would qualify for prompt removal under the Network Enforcement Act, or “Facebook law,” as some are calling it.

The law, which will take effect in October after Germany’s elections, is the toughest of its kind. It also states that social media companies will have seven days to remove other, less offensive posts, and will have to submit a public report on the complaints they have received every six months and explain how they dealt with each instance.

German Justice Minister Heiko Maas has said he wants to treat Facebook as a media company, thereby making it legally liable for hate speech on its platform.

“Freedom of opinion ends where criminal law begins,” Maas said, adding that hate crimes in Germany have increased by 300 percent in the last two years.

“These [posts] are not examples of freedom of speech. They’re attacks on freedom of speech. The worst danger to freedom of speech is a situation where threats go unpunished,” Maas said while addressing the need for the legislation.

Germany already has some of the world’s strictest regulations regarding libel, defamation, and hate speech. However, in light of recent attacks and instances of homegrown terrorism across the continent, German and European lawmakers are facing pressure to further limit radicalization and offensive speech online.

In 2015, the European Commission created a voluntary code of conduct that called for web companies to remove videos that incite terrorism or hatred.

After the attacks in London, both British Prime Minister Theresa May and French President Emmanuel Macron said they are considering laws similar to Germany’s to fine companies that “fail to take action” against terrorist propaganda and violent content.

Facebook said in a statement, “This law as it stands now will not improve efforts to tackle this important societal problem.” And in another statement from May, the company said that the measure “provides an incentive to delete content that is not clearly illegal when social networks face such a disproportionate threat of fines. It would have the effect of transferring responsibility for complex legal decisions from public authorities to private companies.”

Because of its war-torn past, Europe has been more willing to place restrictions on freedom of speech in favor of limiting propaganda and hate speech than the United States. However, critics and human rights groups say this law may be going too far.

“Many of the violations covered by the bill are highly dependent on context, context which platforms are in no position to assess,” said David Kaye, the U.N. Special Rapporteur to the High Commissioner for Human Rights. “The obligations placed upon private companies to regulate and take down content raises concern with respect to freedom of expression.”

Joe McNamee, the executive director of the digital rights group EDRi, said that the law could establish a precedent for “wholesale privatization of freedom of expression,” with “large internet companies deciding what they want the public discourse to be.”

Celia Heudebourg

Celia Heudebourg is an editorial intern for Law Street Media. She is from Paris, France and is entering her senior year at Macalester College in Minnesota where she studies international relations and political science. When she’s not reading or watching the news, she can be found planning a trip abroad or binge-watching a good Netflix show. Contact Celia at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Germany Passes Law to Fine Social Media Companies that Fail to Remove Hate Speech appeared first on Law Street.

Self-driving cars might soon become a common part of our lives–TechCrunch recently reported a study predicting that 25 percent of driving could be done by autonomous vehicles by the year 2030.

But the new technology is far from perfect, and has recently caused a number of incidents. In late March, a Tesla in autopilot mode hit a police motorcycle in Arizona, although the officer was able to jump off of the motorcycle before he was injured. And a self-driving Volvo being used by Uber ended up in another crash in Arizona around the same time. Over the summer, a Tesla driver died in a crash while the car was on autopilot (the driver was watching a Harry Potter movie at the time).  In September, one of Google’s self-driving vehicles ran a red light and collided with the passenger’s side of another vehicle.

So, when there isn’t a human steering the wheel, who takes the fall in court for accidents like these? Many lawyers and legal experts who have weighed in on the issue believe that the automobile manufacturers should be held liable.

However, not every case involving self-driving car crashes is the same. Recently, Michael I. Krauss, a professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, explored how different types of accidents and malfunctions for different types of vehicles should be handled under tort law in a piece for Forbes Magazine. Tort law involves civil cases in which one party has faced injury or damages and another party has been accused of being responsible for them.

According to Krauss, if an accident occurs because of a “manufacturing defect”–meaning the car does not operate as it was designed to operate–then the company that built it should be at fault. If there was an “informational defect”–meaning the car’s owner was not properly educated about how to operate it, and used it incorrectly as a result–then, Krauss writes, the car company should be liable only if it was negligent and failed to give sufficient instructions or warnings.

However, Krauss notes that “design defects” create a legal gray area. A design defect would occur if the choices the car has been programmed to lead the driver into an accident in response to an unforeseen issue. For example, Krauss says that if a moose jumps in front of the car, it could choose to hit the moose and potentially kill the driver or swerve onto the sidewalk and endanger pedestrians. He argues that decisions about liability in these scenarios should once again be based on whether or not the manufacturers were negligent or whether they made the best possible design choice. Such decisions could be left up to juries or decided beforehand by regulators, based on what a reasonable person might conclude, Krauss writes.

The Society of Auto Engineers has established six levels of driving automation, with level zero indicating that the driver has full control and level five indicating that the car is completely autonomous. Bryant Walker Smith, a law professor at the University of South Carolina, told USA Today that a human driver is responsible for any crashes involving a vehicle ranked lower than level three. Smith added that because most accidents are caused by human error, which automatic vehicles aim to eliminate, a growing reliance on self-driving cars could mean fewer accidents and thus fewer legal disputes.

But the technology isn’t perfect, and can still make the same mistakes as humans–like speeding or running through red lights. Questions about who would take the blame for these violations remain unanswered.

Government regulation of self-driving cars could be changing under President Donald Trump’s White House. In September, former President Barack Obama’s administration released a set of standards for self-driving car manufacturers that would require them to conduct extensive safety assessments and provide the results to the federal government. Because legislation that addresses the vehicles varies for each state, the Department of Transportation released a centralized list of guidelines each state could adopt. But Elaine Chao, the new transportation secretary in Trump’s Administration, is now reevaluating the old administration’s rules as companies that develop the vehicles like Google and Uber push back against the amount of information they would have to report. Chao has cited safety and jobs–because the technology would eliminate the need for occupations like truck drivers–as her main concerns as she considers the issue.

Victoria Sheridan

Victoria is an editorial intern at Law Street. She is a senior journalism major and French minor at George Washington University. She’s also an editor at GW’s student newspaper, The Hatchet. In her free time, she is either traveling or planning her next trip abroad. Contact Victoria at VSheridan@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Who is Liable When a Self-Driving Car Gets into an Accident? appeared first on Law Street.

In a party line vote, the Republican-controlled House dealt a blow to internet privacy advocates on Wednesday, passing a bill that would roll back Obama-era protections on consumer data. President Donald Trump is expected to sign the bill, according to the White House. Undoing the rules, which were set to take effect at the end of the year, might signal a new path for the Federal Communications Commission, favoring unfettered industry growth over consumer-friendly protections.

Last October, the FCC enacted a new set of rules against internet service providers (ISPs) like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast, barring them from collecting consumer data such as browsing habits, app history, and location data. Personal information, like a customer’s social security number, was also safeguarded. Though internet companies like Google and Facebook use customers’ data as currency in selling targeted advertisements, the FCC decided ISPs should not be granted the same unregulated access.

Those protections will vanish with the new law, as would the ability for the FCC to draft similar rules in the future. “Today’s vote means that Americans will never be safe online from having their most personal details stealthily scrutinized and sold to the highest bidder,” Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy told The Washington Post.

Privacy advocates argue repealing the protections will grant ISPs access to customer data in a bid to boost profits. Instead of simply providing a channel for internet access, ISPs are now wading into territory dominated by billion-dollar mammoths like Google and Facebook: targeted advertising.

So while the protections would not have barred those companies from accessing user data to sell to advertising agencies and marketers, privacy advocates argue ISPs have access to a wider range of data than search engines and other websites, and thus should be more restricted. Some also worry that net neutrality–the policy that internet providers treat the web as a level playing field–could be next on the chopping block.

But opponents of the rules, and champions of the new path the FCC seems to be following, say that the rules would have stifled innovation. Industry advocates say the rules defined privacy too broadly (browsing and app history should not be private, they argue), and provided an unfair advantage to other data-collectors like Google, as the rules only targeted ISPs.

“There is no lawful, factual or sound policy basis to justify a discriminatory approach that treats ISPs differently from some of the largest companies in the Internet ecosystem that engage in similar practices,” The Internet & Television Association, an industry trade group, said last October when the rules were passed.

Ajit Pai, the newly-appointed FCC chairman, said the Federal Trade Commission, a consumer protection agency, will work together with the FCC to “ensure that consumers’ online privacy is protected through a consistent and comprehensive framework.” He said “jurisdiction over broadband providers’ privacy practices” would be returned to the FTC. But Pai added the FCC could still bring privacy-related lawsuits against ISPs.

Rep. Mike Doyle (D-PA), who voted against the bill, said in a House committee hearing on Monday that he worries that in the absence of regulations, ISPs will abuse their data-collecting power. “One would hope — because consumers want their privacy protected — that they would be good actors, and they would ask permission and do these nice things,” said Doyle. “But there’s no law now that says they have to, and there’s no cop on the beat saying, ‘Hey, we caught you doing something.’”

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Congress Passes Bill to Roll Back Internet Privacy Protections appeared first on Law Street.

For the first three months of 2017, Uber has been mired in controversy. Many have attributed the strife to the company’s mistreatment of its employees, influenced by its toxic “bro” culture and iffy moral compass. While it’s easy to brush Uber’s woes off as growing pains for a burgeoning Silicon Valley tech company, its web controversies seem to point to bigger problems with leadership.

Compounding Controversies

Back in January, during the weekend of the first travel ban and successive protests, the company garnered harsh criticism for turning off its surge pricing for rides to New York’s JFK Airport. The opportunistic move prompted people to delete the app in favor of its competitor Lyft.

Shortly after that, Uber’s CEO, Travis Kalanick, left President Donald Trump’s economic advisory council amidst criticism from the public and Uber’s own employees. The company was also sued by Google for allegedly stealing a key component in self-driving car technology. Then in late February, Kalanick was caught on video arguing with a driver over Uber’s fares.

Most recently, Uber initiated an internal investigation into sexual harassment and discrimination allegations lobbed at the company. The investigation was opened after Susan Fowler, a former Uber engineer, wrote a blog post outlining her disturbing experience at the company with an anonymous male executive who propositioned her for sex, prompting several female employees to also come forward.

Multiple company executives have since resigned. While Uber has reacted quickly to all of these controversies, the company’s responses have been either met with criticism or overshadowed by yet another controversy.

Uber CEO Seeks Help

Following the embarrassing squabble with one of his drivers, Kalanick admitted that he needs to “fundamentally change as a leader and grow up.” As a result, Uber announced that Kalanick was seeking to hire “leadership help.”

In early March, Uber announced that this “leadership help” would come in the form of a new COO. But the search for this position appears to have hit a snag with the news of president Jeff Jones’ resignation and a rumors of a “toxic” company culture, with Kalanick at the helm. Jones’ hiring was heavily publicized by Uber, and his departure undoubtedly adds complications to Uber’s future hiring plans.

In a statement released to Recode, who first broke the story of his departure, Jones said:

I joined Uber because of its Mission, and the challenge to build global capabilities that would help the company mature and thrive long-term.

It is now clear, however, that the beliefs and approach to leadership that have guided my career are inconsistent with what I saw and experienced at Uber, and I can no longer continue as president of the ride sharing business.

Dissatisfied Drivers and Changing the Company’s Culture

Aside from the resignations and sexual assault allegations from employees, Uber is also dealing with more crises regarding drivers’ dissatisfaction with wages. Uber drivers in some states are not allowed to accept tips and Uber’s attempt to strike down a Seattle law that allows its drivers to unionize proved fruitless.

Yesterday, four top Uber officials, all notably female, conducted a media call where they attempted to field questions about Uber’s shifting company culture. Conspicuously, Kalanick was not on the call, but Arianna Huffington, who sits on the company’s board of directors, was.

“Uber must change if it is to be as successful in the next decade as it has been in the last seven years,” Huffington said on the call. “Creating a great culture will be key to their future success. Going forward there can be no room at Uber for brilliant jerks and zero tolerance for anything but totally respectable behavior in an equitable workplace environment.”

Additionally, Huffington also reiterated the company’s faith in Kalnick’s leadership abilities, while underlining the fact that Uber’s culture had to change, and that new hires would be a focus for the company moving forward.

Uber executives have responded swiftly to each controversy; however, as we have seen with their clumsy and thwarted responses thus far, there’s no real indication that the company won’t stumble as it continues to move forward.

Austin Elias-De Jesus

Austin is an editorial intern at Law Street Media. He is a junior at The George Washington University majoring in Political Communication. You can usually find him reading somewhere. If you can’t find him reading, he’s probably taking a walk. Contact Austin at Staff@Lawstreetmedia.com.

The post Uber’s Controversies Continue to Pile Up in 2017 appeared first on Law Street.

Topic of the day: celebrities getting political. Hollywood is busy during the award season, but many celebrities have taken the opportunity to speak out about their political views. ICYMI, check out the speeches by the “Stranger Things” cast and “Moonlight” star Mahershala Ali from the SAG Awards on Sunday night.

Welcome to RantCrush Top 5, where we take you through today’s top five controversial stories in the world of law and policy. Who’s ranting and raving right now? Check it out below:

President Trump Fires the Acting U.S. Attorney General for Defying Immigration Ban

Last night, President Donald Trump fired Acting Attorney General Sally Yates for defying his executive order on immigration. Trump and White House spokesman Sean Spicer said that Yates “betrayed the Department of Justice” when she refused to comply with Trump’s order. In a statement, the White House said that Yates is “weak on borders and very weak on illegal immigration” and also made sure to point out that she was an Obama Administration appointee.

Yates wrote in a letter on Monday that she is responsible for making sure that the positions the Justice Department takes are right. “At present, I am not convinced that the defense of the executive order is consistent with these responsibilities nor am I convinced that the executive order is lawful,” she wrote. Republicans harshly condemned Yates, calling her a traitor and saying that the AG’s responsibility is to carry out the president’s orders. But she is a hero to many on the left.

Sally Yates was a career prosecutor for more than 2 decades & prosecuted Olympic bomber prior to being named Deputy AG. She exits DOJ a hero

— Brian Fallon (@brianefallon) January 31, 2017

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post RantCrush Top 5: January 31, 2017 appeared first on Law Street.

In our present information environment, there is news coming from every direction, at every angle, all the time. Due to this overabundance of information, it is often hard to tell reality from fiction. This can be especially difficult when opinions and fake news have also been interjected into the media landscape. Fake news is far from a periphery player too, in fact, it is splashed across some of the most popular websites on the internet like Facebook and Google. It may even have played a role in the outcome of the presidential election. Read on to learn more about the fake news phenomenon, its place in history, how popular websites made it mainstream, and the consequences of its rise.

The origin of “Fake News”

So what is fake news exactly? As its name suggests, fake news is literally made-up news about events that did not happen. In many cases, the creation of fake news is done by people from all over the world seeking to spread misinformation or looking to promote something and get rich doing it. One of the most egregious examples comes from a few writers in Macedonia who claim they made between $5,000 and $10,000 a month publishing fake stories. These people create extremely partisan pieces for the sole purpose of drawing the most eyeballs. The goal is to get readers interested because more traffic means more ad revenue.

But intentionally fabricating false stories isn’t the only way fake news spreads. It can also be the result of a person’s earnest, yet inaccurate beliefs such as this one example chronicled by the New York Times. Eric Tucker, a Trump supporter, posted a picture on November 9 of what he believed were charter buses bringing in paid protesters to dispute the election. While that was just how he interpreted what he saw, and something he later determined was not true, that did not stop his tweet from going viral. Tucker was a private citizen with a small Twitter following, yet his post was seized upon by several Trump supporters and conservative websites to justify their belief in a conspiracy. The way individuals interpret an event, often without full information about what actually happened, has become increasingly important.

Facebook and Google

Two of the companies that end up promoting (and profiting) from fake news the most are Facebook and Google. So how are these two tech titans attacking this problem? Before this question can be answered it is important to look at why these websites allow fake news in the first place. The issue of fake news on Facebook came to the forefront after a major incident earlier this year. In May, a member of a team that curated the “trending news” section for Facebook said that the group regularly avoided featuring conservative stories. This admission created a political firestorm that led to the end of the trending news team within Facebook and news curation on the site altogether.

In its place, Facebook installed an algorithm that would determine which news stories are being shared the most. However, shortly after its debut, the new section began elevating stories that were completely false. While the company still has some human oversight of the new trending section, they are told to exercise less editorial control over the articles that are featured, leading many fake stories to slip through.

While fake news on Facebook may not seem like a major issue on its face, a poll conducted by the Pew Research Center found that 44 percent of Americans get news on Facebook. In another, more recent poll, Pew found that nearly two-thirds of Americans believe fake news created confusion about basic facts. Facebook and other social media sites provide a way for articles to quickly go viral and reach a remarkably large audience. While most agree that the spread of fake news is a problem, finding an appropriate solution is not particularly easy. Facebook has been cautious in its response out of fear of censoring legitimate news outlets or once again projecting an anti-conservative bias.

How Companies Have Responded

The nature of Facebook’s business makes fake news a difficult issue to approach. At its core, Facebook relies on its large user base to sell advertising to. If the site eliminated fake news it could run the risk of seeming biased or alienating people and losing their engagement and possibly lucrative advertising revenue.

Despite this challenge, Facebook has said that it plans to address fake news. The CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has stated that Facebook is already working on blocking or flagging completely false articles and recently announced a partnership with third-party fact checker sites to help accomplish that goal. Ultimately, Facebook and other companies must walk a tight line. The most blatantly false news stories may be somewhat easy to identify, but in an era of polarized politics even some facts are contested, making it hard to create a clear rule.

For Google, the approach is slightly different because its search engine is predicated on reliability–if it is just showing fake news articles it would lose the trust of its users. However, that is not to say Google has avoided fake news altogether. The most significant example of fake news on Google is a result of the way the search engine ranks results. While search results often feature articles from the company’s curated Google News section, the “Top Stories” at the top of many search results include a broader range of articles that in some cases include fake news. It is particularly confusing because when you click to “read more” articles, it takes you to the Google News section, which is editorially vetted. This stems from the fact that Google Search and Google News are viewed as separate entities by Google. This distinction really becomes problematic because Google News does not accept ad revenue whereas Google Search does. A similar issue exists on Google’s mobile platform, which features AMP stories–web pages that are optimized to load almost instantly on mobile devices–at the top of the results page. This is yet another way for fake news to sneak into the top of the results page.

Google uses an algorithm to weed out spam and fake news websites, although it is not 100 percent foolproof. In light of the recent debate, Google has promised to fight fake news by restricting fake news sites’ access to its AdSense platform, which is often their source of revenue–fake news sites make money by generating a lot of traffic and serving viewers ads, often using Google’s advertising tools. Facebook also made a similar move to prevent fake news sites from using its advertising network.

The following video looks at fake news online and what companies are doing to stop it:

The Impact of Fake News

As many realize the extent to which fake news has spread online, some wonder whether it could have impacted the outcome of the recent election, as news reports indicate that fake news tends to have a conservative bias. Although it is impossible to show the exact impact of fake news on the election–and although Mark Zuckerberg dismissed the notion that fake news was consequential in the election–widespread false information is almost certain to have some sort of impact on people. In fact, according to an article from Buzzfeed News, there was actually more engagement with the top fake election news articles on Facebook than with the top content from traditional media sources in the last three months of the campaign. But, like many factors used to explain the election results, it’s impossible to say whether or not fake news actually tipped the election one way or another.

The video below features a PBS NewsHour discussion of fake news and its potential impact.

The effect of fake news has also been felt outside of the United States. An example would be in the Philippines, where a spokesperson for the president posted graphic images to justify the country’s violent campaign against drug dealers, even though fact checkers later realized that the images were actually taken in Brazil. Fake news also spread widely in the lead up to elections in Indonesia and a fake article about the Colombian peace deal with the FARC went viral shortly before the referendum vote. The problem was so disruptive that some African nations shut down social media sites after unconfirmed security threats spread before elections.

Fake news certainly has precedent in the United States. From the late 1890s through to the 1920s something known as Yellow Journalism reigned. During that period, competing newspapers would publish sensational and often false stories, each more so than the last, in an effort to win eyeballs. The scourge of Yellow Journalism became so bad at one point that many believe it contributed to the Spanish-American War of 1898.

Conclusion

So what is to be done about this problem? Some suggest that Google and Facebook could help create a crowd-sourced list of news stories that can be peer-reviewed. Others argue that big companies should not have the power to determine what is true. Recent efforts to reduce fake news sites’ access to the biggest advertising networks may help get rid of their financial incentives, but alternative ad networks may not follow suit.

The example of Yellow Journalism may also be a model to look at. The exaggerated and fabricated news stories at the turn of the 20th century were ultimately undone by waning public interest, court cases that protected the privacy of individuals, and a code of ethics adopted by many newspapers. But in the modern news environment centered around internet, and the abundance of media that comes with it, it may be difficult to weed out these stories altogether.

In the meantime, identifying fake news is a case by case effort that requires everyone’s diligence. It requires a balancing act of separating reality from fiction, but also a tolerance for information that you may not agree with and a skepticism for that which confirms your existing beliefs. Efforts of this nature are already underway on the platforms where most fake news is found. Now it is up to readers to determine if what they see is legitimate or not. If anything, the rise of fake news may drive people to become more critical news consumers.

Michael Sliwinski

Michael Sliwinski (@MoneyMike4289) is a 2011 graduate of Ohio University in Athens with a Bachelor’s in History, as well as a 2014 graduate of the University of Georgia with a Master’s in International Policy. In his free time he enjoys writing, reading, and outdoor activites, particularly basketball. Contact Michael at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The Reality Behind Fake News appeared first on Law Street.

As of Monday, two of the largest internet sites have decided to cut off fake news outlets from their advertising services.

These moves are a part of a crackdown on the dissemination of false or misleading news that plagued and possibly influenced the recent presidential election.

With growing criticism of both Google and Facebook, each took a stand to not tolerate these sources any longer. Google said on Monday afternoon that it would no longer allow fake news websites to use its online advertising services, according to the New York Times.

Facebook followed, updating its advertising policy in the Facebook Audience Network to include fake news sites in the section prohibiting misleading or false content.

In a statement to the New York Times, a Facebook spokesperson said, “We have updated the policy to explicitly clarify that this applies to fake news,” and that it will continue to verify people who want to advertise with them.

On Saturday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took to his Facebook page to discuss the substantial scrutiny that he and his company have received.

In a Facebook post Zuckerberg wrote:

Of all the content on Facebook, more than 99 percent of what people see is authentic. Only a very small amount is fake news and hoaxes. The hoaxes that do exist are not limited to one partisan view, or even to politics. Overall, this makes it extremely unlikely hoaxes changed the outcome of this election in one direction or the other.

In the comments section, one user pointed out that the 1 percent figure seemed awfully low. Zuckerberg clarified his statement, saying that that figure represents the platform as a whole, not individual experiences. Therefore, depending on who or what you follow, you may see more or less fake news on your newsfeed.

Google has also come under fire recently after the top result for the search “Final Vote Count 2016” was linked to the news site 70news, which falsely claimed that Donald Trump had won the popular vote, according to Mediaite.

Google’s top search result for “final election numbers” leads to fake news site with false numbers https://t.co/3DA5ZY6pQk pic.twitter.com/v3GTEvUgW8

— CBS News (@CBSNews) November 14, 2016

One section of the article (falsely) said:

UPDATE 11/14/16: THREE MILLION ILLEGALS VOTED THIS 2016 ELECTION. THAT’S NOT VALID! REMOVE 3 MILLION VOTES FROM HILLARY CLINTON. PLUS THE OTHER VOTE FRAUD. TRUMP BY DEFAULT IS THE WINNER IN THE POPULAR VOTE!

By Monday evening, the article was moved down to the second result. Google relies on algorithms to create search results, and like this example, does not always present accurate information.

With hundreds of different fake or misleading news sites out there, various individuals and groups have compiled their own lists of sites to avoid. Melissa Zimdars, assistant professor of communication at Merrimack College in Massachusetts, said her list “started as a resource for my students, who are learning about journalism/social media/media literacy.” She breaks up outlets by category, ranking their level of falsehood. She also included satirical sites such as the Onion and the Borowitz Report.

A majority of U.S. adults get their news from social media, rather than traditional news sources, according to a Pew Research Center report. Over 40 percent get their news from Facebook specifically.

Julia Bryant

Julia Bryant is an Editorial Senior Fellow at Law Street from Howard County, Maryland. She is a junior at the University of Maryland, College Park, pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism and Economics. You can contact Julia at JBryant@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post You’ll Never Believe Why Your Friends Posted so Many Fake News Stories appeared first on Law Street.

Innocent Googlers just trying to figure out the definition of “pathological lying” were subjected to internet trolling on Monday, when users edited its Wikipedia page to include presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s picture.

Everyone Google the words – Pathological Lying – right now. This is what I got – no joke. pic.twitter.com/jX7m1krIE3

— Brett R. Smith (@BrettRSmith76) October 31, 2016

Typically when Google users put in their search query, the first result is often a brief section of the query’s corresponding Wikipedia page. Because of this feature, the first search result users saw alongside the Wikipedia page for “pathological lying” was Hillary Clinton’s photo.

The Wikipedia revision history for the “pathological lying” page shows the many different users who meddled with the article. The first of these changes occurred on October 28, by an anonymous user who “Added the only person who has a proven track record for being a Pathlogical [sic] liar. References can be easily looked up on wikileaks, most media sites, and thru [sic] congressional hearings.”

IP addresses are used to identify anonymous users who make changes or additions to Wikipedia posts. From a search on the internet, the aforementioned user’s IP address was located in Bedminster Township, New Jersey at the time of the search, only 10 minutes from the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster. Interesting.

On October 29, a different anonymous user added the photo of Clinton to the page. This IP address is located in Boise, Idaho, where Clinton is far behind Trump in multiple polls.

Users went back and forth reverting each other’s edits until October 31 when moderators locked the page until November 3, citing “persistent vandalism.”

As of November 1, moderators had locked the page until after the election, writing, “Changed protection level of Pathological lying: make protrection [sic] consistent with other articles being attacked, until after the election.”

In similar fashion, the first result when users search “45th U.S. president” is the Wikipedia page for “United States presidential election, 2016,” which briefly showed a picture of only Trump. Wikipedia moderators also chose to lock this page due to a wave of recent edits.

@triplejHack What in the Wide World of Sports is going on with Google!? pic.twitter.com/PJHC23CzDK

— Dilo on Fire (@FireDilo) October 31, 2016

Julia Bryant

Julia Bryant is an Editorial Senior Fellow at Law Street from Howard County, Maryland. She is a junior at the University of Maryland, College Park, pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism and Economics. You can contact Julia at JBryant@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post A Rigged Election, A Rigged Search Engine, and Rigged Wikipedia appeared first on Law Street.

In the fight against the Islamic State, the internet is as vital a battleground as physical geography in Syria or Iraq. It’s where the group, also known as ISIS, spews its venom on potential recruits. It’s a key forum for building its caliphate and inspiring attacks. And it provides a channel for ISIS propaganda to reach those who are ripe for converting to its ideology. But Jigsaw, Google’s think-tank subsidiary, thinks it can complement governments in combating ISIS’ reach online with a strategy it aims to roll-out later this month: targeted advertising.

Jigsaw and London-based firm Moonshot CVE (Countering Violent Extremism) teamed up for an initiative called the Redirect Method. The premise is simple. It uses keywords searched via Google that ISIS recruits have commonly used in the past–the names of towns common on ISIS travel routes, for example, or the names of extremist leaders. When one of 1,700 relevant keywords are searched for, users will be prompted with ads of preexisting YouTube videos that provide counterarguments to the ideology ISIS espouses. The videos, curated by Jigsaw, include Imams disputing ISIS’ mangled view of Islam, testimonials from former extremists, or secretly filmed looks into towns under ISIS’ strict rule.

.@MoonshotCVE found that those searching for extreme ISIS content were also 3X more likely to seek content on mental illness #CounterISIS

— Jordan Humphreys (@jhumphreysDC) September 7, 2016

“The Redirect Method is at its heart a targeted advertising campaign: Let’s take these individuals who are vulnerable to ISIS’ recruitment messaging and instead show them information that refutes it,” Yasmin Green, Jigsaw’s head of research and development told Wired. For potential recruits in the West, English language video are used, for those in the Middle East, the videos are in Arabic.

There have been previous efforts using internet videos to reject ISIS ideology. The U.S. State Department released a series of videos through a YouTube channel called “Think Again Turn Away.” Those videos, however, were original creations, and thus deliberate in their messaging. Jigsaw and Moonshot’s strategy is to use organic, preexisting content delivered by those who have a counter-message to those of ISIS. Curating content that already exists, rather than having to create its own anti-radicalization videos, makes the message “more authentic and therefore more compelling,” Green said.

A pilot project conducted earlier this year was largely successful, at least in terms of how much time people spent watching the ads. During a two-month period, 300,000 people watched their curated videos. 500,000 minutes were spent watching the videos, with some netting an average viewing time of 8 minutes and 20 seconds.

At #CounterISIS, @yasmind is right that digital engagement needs to have an offline engagement component to curb #ISIS recruitment

— Daniel Hajjar (@DanielGHajjar) September 7, 2016

But simply because people are watching anti-ISIS videos does not necessarily mean they’re being dissuaded from joining the group, or from carrying out attacks in its name. At a Brookings Institute event on Wednesday in Washington, Green summed up the project’s intentions as being like any other Google search motivation–providing answers to questions.

“The branding philosophy for the entire pilot project was not to appear judgmental or be moralistic, but really to pique interest of individuals who have questions, questions that are being raised and answered by the Islamic State,” she said.

Alec Siegel

Alec Siegel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. When he’s not working at Law Street he’s either cooking a mediocre tofu dish or enjoying a run in the woods. His passions include: gooey chocolate chips, black coffee, mountains, the Animal Kingdom in general, and John Lennon. Baklava is his achilles heel. Contact Alec at ASiegel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Driverless cars are all the rage in the auto industry lately, as efforts have been underway for years to move away from the outmoded, human-driven gas guzzlers of the 1990s and early 2000s. The rosy image of the future of cars took a hit recently, however, when a man was killed while riding in his Tesla while on autopilot mode. This fatality immediately raised concerns over safety and the need for regulation that had been relatively quiet in the quest to go driverless. Read on to find out more about self-driving cars, how they are being regulated, and how close we are to a society where your car does the driving for you.

The History Behind Driverless Cars

While history has seen many driverless vehicles, from boats to rockets, driverless cars are typically something that is only seen in science fiction writing. Although the idea began drawing increasing interest around World War II, the concept was still in its infancy. Some actually believed the future wasn’t in driverless cars, but in safe highways that could guide cars like trains on a track. The movement for driverless cars really began to gain momentum with artificial intelligence enthusiasts during the 1960s who dreamed of developing driverless cars by the new millennium. Several prototypes were developed starting in the late 1970s, but the main challenge of developing a vehicle that could not only drive but react to conditions in real time remained elusive.

The industry got a boost when the U.S. military became involved in 2004, initiating a competition to develop driverless cars for use on the battlefield. Since then, driverless vehicles have popped up all over, including on farms, mines, and warehouses. The late 2000s and early 2010s also saw self-driving cars become a more plausible option for the average commuter, particularly when Google began its foray into the industry. Along with Google the other big name in the driverless car industry is currently Tesla Motors, while other many car companies have autonomous car projects of their own. The accompanying video looks at the history of driverless cars and their potential future:

Impact of Driverless Cars

Many carmakers are already fretting about the future of their industry. With the rise of affordable car-sharing services like Uber and Lyft, getting around without owning a car has become much easier for people who live in cities. This has led major car companies to invest in these services. Car companies are also investing in driverless cars, which could present another possible major disruption to the status quo of their industry.

Forecasts suggest that if and when driverless cars become widespread, likely sometime in the next couple decades, families will actually own fewer vehicles. This is due to the fact that a car that can operate by itself will be able to fulfill more functions with greater efficiency than traditional cars. Many may even forego ownership and use car sharing services instead.

It’s also important to consider driverless cars’ impact on the fusion of two industries. Namely, many of the largest and most well-known names in the auto and tech industry are teaming up to create the cars of tomorrow. The idea behind these collaborations is each industry is lending what it does best. In the case of the auto industry that is large scale production of vehicles that are safety and emissions compliant. For tech companies, that is developing the software, not only to allow for driverless cars but also for functions associated with computers or smartphones today.

Safety Concerns

The push toward driverless cars has continued even as the potential for danger remains high. While the accident in May that resulted in the death of the driver was the first fatality related to a self-driving car, it was certainly not the first accident. In fact, driverless cars are between two and five times as likely to get into accidents as cars with drivers, although that range depends on whether unreported accidents in regular cars are included. These numbers are slightly skewed by the small number of driverless cars compared to the large number of traditional cars. Nonetheless, while driverless cars are more likely to be in accidents, until the recent fatality, all the accidents that did occur only resulted in minor injuries because the driverless vehicles were always going slow at the time of the accident.

The following video details the first fatality in a driverless car:

Although the accident rate for driverless cars is higher, nearly all accidents between driverless cars and human drivers are the human’s fault. In fact, it was not until this year when the actions of a driverless car led to a traffic accident. This begs the question, why are driverless cars getting in more accidents when they are less likely to cause them in the first place? Ironically, the problem is that driverless cars are programmed first and foremost to always obey the laws of the road. However, in a busy intersection or highway, humans often disregard the rules and drive as necessary. The conservative approach that is taken by driverless cars actually increases their accident rate.

The inability to overcome the human element has caused the two leading companies in the driverless car industry, Google and Tesla, to pursue different approaches to the same goal. Based on observations made by Google engineers during an initial test phase–where drivers quickly trusted self-driving cars and stopped paying attention–Google decided to take a slower approach with the goal of creating a car that is 100 percent driverless. Conversely, Tesla embraces a notably different method. Tesla’s cars actually have many autonomous features already; however, the company instructs its drivers to keep their hands on the wheel while riding. Telsa argues that this approach will allow the company to collect enough data in order to improve its technology in a shorter timespan.

Perhaps the most significant safety issue, though, could affect cars with drivers and driverless models alike. This issue is the threat of hacking. With the amount of technology in modern cars and the many ways that they can connect to the internet, hackers are now able to take over a person’s vehicle.

The video below looks at the threat of car hacking:

Debate and Regulation

The high rate of accidents and the recent fatality has naturally intensified the debate over whether driverless cars are safe enough to traverse American roads. While autonomous features are commonly found in cars already, fully driverless cars are a work in progress. Getting driverless cars to the point where they are significantly safer than normal cars, however, could take hundreds of years of test driving. It becomes a question of how safe is safe enough and whether a crash in a driverless car is worse than a crash in a normal car.

While regulators are trying to step in and set up a framework for driverless cars, they too are uncertain about how to best regulate the industry. California, home to Google and most major tech companies, is currently the epicenter of the driverless car industry. In California, it is still illegal for driverless cars to operate on public roads without a licensed driver able to take the wheel at any moment. The main problem with these regulations, at least for the carmakers, is the requirement for cars have pedals and a steering wheel–features that driverless car makers like Google want to get rid of. California was actually the second state to authorize self-driving cars for testing and public use. The first state was Nevada, which has much looser regulations. Michigan has also authorized the use of driverless cars.

However, to avoid the varying state standards that have already popped up, many carmakers are anxious for national rules. Such rules may come sooner rather than later, as the Department of Transportation aimed to have a nationwide standard for regulations outlined within six months of its January announcement. In July, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx announced some progress on rulemaking and outlined steps going forward. However, many questions about regulation remain unanswered.

Conclusion

Driverless cars are a relatively new and exciting technology. Like any new advancement before them, there is an inherent risk involved, especially at the early stages. However, that risk has to be controlled in order to ensure driver safety.

While driverless cars excite the imagination, they still have a long way to go before they are adequately safe and regulated. This will not be an easy transition as it means people will have to embrace giving up control at 70 plus miles per hour. This also comes at a time when everything, including cars, is vulnerable to online attacks. Nevertheless, driverless vehicles appear to be an important next step in transportation technology. Even if they suffer several growing pains along the way, a car where everyone rides shotgun is likely the car of the future.

Resources

New York Times: Self-Driving Tesla Was Involved in Fatal Crash, U.S. Says

Computer History Museum: Where to? A History of Autonomous Vehicles

Los Angeles Times: Tesla and Google are Both Driving Toward Autonomous Vehicles. Which is Taking the Better Route?

The Economist: The driverless, Car-Sharing Road Ahead

USA Today: Study: Self-driving cars have higher accident rate

Wired: Google’s Self-Driving Car Caused Its First Crash

Bloomberg Technology: Humans Are Slamming Into Driverless Cars and Exposing a Key Flaw

Los Angeles Times: Is the World Ready for Driverless Cars? Are Driverless Cars ready for the World?

Governing: When Regulating Self-Driving Cars, Who’s at the Wheel?

Wired: The FBI Warns That Car Hacking Is a Real Risk

Michael Sliwinski

Michael Sliwinski (@MoneyMike4289) is a 2011 graduate of Ohio University in Athens with a Bachelor’s in History, as well as a 2014 graduate of the University of Georgia with a Master’s in International Policy. In his free time he enjoys writing, reading, and outdoor activites, particularly basketball. Contact Michael at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post How Close are we to Driverless Cars? appeared first on Law Street.

Don’t expect to see any Apple gear at the GOP Convention in Cleveland next month–the tech giant announced that it will not provide any funds, devices, or support to this year’s convention, like it has done in the past. Why not? Apple is protesting Donald Trump’s controversial remarks about minorities, women, and immigrants.

So, @realDonaldTrump, you’re such a “great” businessman and negotiator. You’re costing the #RNC sponsors (#Apple, #Ford, etc.). WTF?!#HaHa!

— (((B. Paul Stuart))) (@BrianPaulStuart) June 18, 2016

Apple is the first company in Silicon Valley to take this stance. Others like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft have already pledged some financial support to the convention. At the 2008 Republic and Democrat conventions, Apple donated about $140,000 worth of MacBooks and other products. In 2012, it did not donate free merchandise to the conventions because Democrats placed a ban on corporations financing their nominating events.

A spokeswoman for the GOP convention told Politico that “we are working with a variety of major tech partners who are focused on being part of the American political process.” In April, Google said it would attend the convention and would be the official live stream provider, despite pressure from protestors who called Google to back out because of Trump’s inflammatory comments. Microsoft will donate computers and software, but will not provide funds to Republicans, like it has in the past. Despite Mark Zuckerberg’s criticism of Trump, Facebook has pledged financial and other support to the convention.

Apple declined to comment on its decision, so it’s unclear whether or not it will still provide financial support to the Democratic convention in Philadelphia next month. A spokesperson for the Trump campaign did not respond to Politico’s request for a comment. Donald Trump has singled out Apple in speeches, criticizing CEO Tim Cook’s stance on encryption, while also calling for a boycott on its products.

Of course #Apple is uneasy over Donald J. Trump. Who isn’t? #rnc #uspoli #p2 https://t.co/wxjVfc31wD

— Truth Mashup (@truthmashup) June 19, 2016

Usually, tech companies donate to Democratic and Republican efforts equally. Apple typically does not engage in politics, but Cook has tried to forge relationships with Democrat and Republican lawmakers. Last year, Cook and a handful of top Republican house leaders dined in D.C. together.

However, Apple’s decision is not totally unprecedented. HP, who was a major donor to the GOP convention in 2012, backed out of funding this year’s convention because of pressure from activists at ColorofChange.org in June. The New York Times reported in March that several corporations were thinking about scaling back their donations to the RNC because of Trump’s political ideology.

“We want them to divest from hate. We want them to pull all their money and support,”  said Mary Alice Crim, field director for Free Press Action Fund, which is part of the anti-Trump campaign. She added that tech companies that are backing the convention need to be “thinking hard about where they put their brand, and whether they want to align their brand with racism, hatred, and misogyny.”

Inez Nicholson

Inez is an editorial intern at Law Street from Raleigh, NC. She will be a junior at North Carolina State University and is studying political science and communication media. When she’s not in the newsroom, you can find her in the weight room. Contact Inez at INicholson@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Apple Won’t Support the RNC Because of Trump appeared first on Law Street.

As the Supreme Court declined to hear the Authors Guild challenge of Googles Book’s digitizing program on Monday, a legal battle that lasted for over a decade comes to an end. The court’s denial to hear the case will leave in place an appeals court decision that upheld Google’s book scanning program as a fair use of copyrighted works. In its decision not to take up the case, the Supreme Court also avoided making a sweeping ruling on copyright law in the digital age.

“Today authors suffered a colossal loss,”Authors Guild President Roxana Robinson said in a press release after the Supreme Court’s decision. “We believed then and we believe now that authors should be compensated when their work is copied for commercial purposes,” Robinson said of the longstanding legal dispute. But advocates like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) have strongly supported Google’s project. The EFF concluded, “All in all, it’s a good day for fair use” after the circuit court ruled in favor of Google–the ruling that the Supreme Court’s decision now leaves in place.

Back in 2004, Google undertook an effort to digitize millions of books in order to create a database to help bolster the company’s dominance in the internet search market. Google also argued that it was providing a public service because it would help people discover existing pieces of writing. The project began as a collaboration with libraries to create searchable versions of works in the public domain, but it also expanded to include works currently under copyright.

At the heart of the issue is the question of whether or not Google’s project falls under the category of fair use, a legal doctrine that allows for copyrighted works to be used when serving certain public interests. The suit began back in 2005 when the Author’s Guild took issue with Google’s digitization project, arguing that the company would illegally take away authors’ profits. The case became a class action effort in 2012 after authors and copyright holders came together to challenge Google.

The Authors Guild’s primary issue with Google’s program is that the company did not seek out permission from the copyright holder before digitizing their work and making the contents searchable online. Although Google did not make the full text of copyrighted works available online, it did allow users to search for text within books as well as see a limited sample of the surrounding text. The Authors Guild also argues that allowing Google to digitize authors’ books without permission for its own profit is a clear violation of copyright law.

Google’s profit from the project was a major issue earlier on because the company initially displayed advertising in search results and on individual book’s pages. Although the two parties reached a sort of compromise to share ad revenue, Google eventually ended the program, noting that it wasn’t a major source of revenue. The two sides nearly settled the entire case back in 2011, but a New York district court judge rejected it, arguing that the arrangement would have given Google a de facto monopoly.

After rejecting the settlement deal, the New York district court ruled in favor of Google, saying that the way Google digitized and uses the books in its search engine constitutes a transformation in the context of fair use. In his opinion, which issued summary judgment to Google dismissing the Authors Guild complaint, Judge Denny Chin ruled in favor of Google, saying that its project

Advances the progress of the arts and sciences, while maintaining respectful consideration for the rights of authors and other creative individuals, and without adversely impacting the rights of copyright holders.

After the district court ruling, the Authors Guild appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which also ruled in Google’s favor. Ultimately, the Guild appealed to the Supreme Court, but after its decision not to take up the case on Monday, Google Books will now remain intact.

The court’s decision also reflects a reluctance to issue a major ruling on fair use in the age of the internet. The authors involved in the lawsuit claim, “the internet was not anticipated” when modern copyright law was written back in the 1970s and that the court needed to settle the issue. In light of the recent decision, we’ll likely have to wait for another high-profile case to make its way to the Supreme Court before to get a better understanding of the relationship between copyright law and the internet.

Kevin Rizzo

Kevin Rizzo is the Crime in America Editor at Law Street Media. An Ohio Native, the George Washington University graduate is a founding member of the company. Contact Kevin at krizzo@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Do you all remember back in 2014, when all anyone could talk about was the “Fappening?” It was a massive leak of celebrity nude photos–most of which were stolen from the celebrities in question. No one really knew who was behind the leak for a while, but now at least one of the perpetrators appears to have been caught. Ryan Collins, 36, of Lancaster, Pennsylvania is pleading guilty to “unauthorized access to a protected computer to obtain information.”

Collins gained access to the photos via the (mostly) female celebrities’ iCloud accounts. He got into those accounts by sending out a phishing scheme in which he posed as Apple or Gmail and asked the victims to reset their account information and passwords. He also allegedly managed to get into some of the accounts by guessing passwords. According to court documents he managed to get into 50 iCloud and 72 Gmail accounts, mostly owned by female celebrities. Then, he either downloaded images, or in some cases downloaded victims’ entire iCloud accounts.

Celebrities whose photos appeared online after the hacks included Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Kaley Cuoco, and Kirsten Dunst.

David Bowdich, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office, explained in a statement:

By illegally accessing intimate details of his victims’ personal lives, Mr. Collins violated their privacy and left many to contend with lasting emotional distress, embarrassment and feelings of insecurity.

The charge Collins is pleading guilty to could land him in jail for up to five years, but that’s very unlikely. According to the DOJ, “parties have agreed to recommend a prison term of 18 months,” although that recommendation won’t be binding and it will be up to a judge to decide how to dole out punishment to Collins.

Collins isn’t being charged with actually creating the “Fappening” however–meaning there’s no evidence that he was the one who uploaded the photos or shared them on the Internet. But, Collins is still paying for the gross invasion into privacy that he committed. Laws about the privacy that we’re all entitled to online, as well as the ownership of photos, are evolving as the internet continues to be a larger part of our lives. As revenge porn cases increasingly make it into the mainstream, it’s important that we set some boundaries–stealing someone’s private photos is simply not okay.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Tired of being inundated by news about Donald Trump? Don’t worry–there’s an app for that! (Sort of.) There’s a new Google Chrome extension that will let users who download it block all mentions of The Donald from their browser.

It’s called the Trump Filter, and was created by Rob Spectre. It comes with step-by-step instructions riffing off of Trump’s campaign slogan:

Install the Chrome extension

Browse the Internet you love

Adjust filter settings on the fly

Make America great again

Spectre explained that he wasn’t doing this out of any sort of attempt to profit off the endeavor, answering the question “Are you making money off this?” by stating:

No, nor was I put up to this by the Republican or Democratic Parties, the Obama Administration, my mother or any other possible sphere of influence. I am doing this out of a profound sense of annoyance and patriotic duty.

Spectre also admits that unfortunately there’s no way to use the filter to block Trump from your TV screen:

Tragically, Trump Filter cannot be installed on your television. However, we hope that enough installs will be a strong signal to the international media that America is ready to move on from this inveterate jackass.

Spectre certainly isn’t the first person to come up with an entertaining extension to block news that maybe some of us don’t want to see all over the internet. For example, there’s also a Google Chrome filter that blocks all references to the Kardashian clan. There are also extensions that alter words commonly found in modern news stories–my personal favorite changes any mention of “millennials” to “snake people.” There’s another good one that changes any mention of the “cloud” to “butt.” Finally, if you’re not going to download the Donald Trump blocker, there’s an extension you can download that changes all mentions of Trump’s name to “some rich asshole.”

I, unfortunately, probably shouldn’t download the Trump Filter, because writing about “some rich asshole” for “snake people” is my job. But if you want to kick off the New Year Trump-less, it’s probably not a bad idea, and I don’t blame you one bit.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Do Yourself a Favor: Block Trump News Stories with Google Chrome Extension appeared first on Law Street.

YouTube is a form of media that’s in many ways built on creativity–from reaction videos to remixes to fan tributes, YouTube is  home to many adaptions of other works. But whether or not those types of videos are legal has long been a hot topic of debate. YouTube itself is now getting involved and backing the principles of Fair Use, which protect adaptions, by offering legal and financial support to some content creators who have been targeted by particularly predatory takedown notices.

Fair Use is the legal doctrine that allows the use of copyrighted material in certain circumstances. As defined by YouTube it includes uses like criticism, commentary, educational purposes, or news reporting. YouTube also lays out other factors that usually go into deciding whether or not something can legally be deemed Fair Use–pointing out, for example, that the use of shorter clips tend to be decided as Fair Use more often than longer clips. Additionally YouTube explains how to determine if a use is “transformative,” usually a big sticking point for courts asked to decide Fair Use questions, stating:

Courts typically focus on whether the use is ‘transformative.’ That is, whether it adds new expression or meaning to the original, or whether it merely copies from the original. Commercial uses are less likely to be considered fair, though it’s possible to monetize a video and still take advantage of the fair use defense.

Despite the fact that this is all a fairly normal and accepted definition of Fair Use (although instances are usually decided on a case-by-case basis) some YouTube users are continually subject to copyright infringement claims under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). While that act was originally created to prevent piracy, it has been used in abusive fashion in some cases. The process for DCMA-based takedowns has become automated, making it harder for content creators who are affected to fight them.

So, YouTube has decided to pay some legal bills and offer legal support up to $1 million in instances where there are “clear fair uses which have been subject to DMCA takedowns.” For example, YouTube will provide support to the Ohio Chapter of Naral Pro-choice, a pro-choice advocacy organization. They were given takedown notices after using a clip of a committee meeting in a video criticizing local law makers in a video posted to YouTube. Another example of a type of video that YouTube will help to protect is a series made by Constantine Guiliotis, who debunks instances of UFO-sightings. While he uses others’ clips, he does so in a way that should be considered Fair Use.

YouTube explained its motivation for helping those who have been targeted by the takedown notices. YouTube’s Copyright Legal Director, Fred von Lohmann, stated: “we’re doing this because we recognize that creators can be intimidated by the DMCA’s counter notification process, and the potential for litigation that comes with it.”

Fair Use certainly is a tricky gray area–and there are certainly many cases in which copyrights need to be protected and plagiarism and piracy run rampant. However, abusing the DMCA also isn’t the answer. By aiding those who deserve it, YouTube draws a fair line between potential abuse on both sides.

Read more: Fair Use: Is it Really Fair?

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post YouTube is Standing up to Copyright Bullies and Protecting Fair Use appeared first on Law Street.

Google’s philanthropic arm just announced that it is giving $2.35 million to organizations fighting for racial justice, specifically in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The $2.35 million will be dispersed in the form of grants. The groups that will receive them are tackling a wide range of problems within the greater umbrella of racial equality. The Oakland Unified School District will receive a grant for $750,000 to help improve graduation rates in its schools. The Silicon Valley De-Bug group is going to receive a $600,000 grant to work with at-risk communities in San Jose and aid individuals who are going through the criminal justice system. Finally, the Ella Baker Center will receive two $500,000 grants–one to go to Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors, who is working on an app to report police violence. The other $500,000 dollar grant will go to Restore Oakland and will help train formerly incarcerated individuals to work in the lucrative San Francisco area restaurant industry.

The official announcement of the philanthropic efforts was at a screening of “3 ½ Minutes, 10 Bullets,” a movie about the shooting death of Jordan Davis, a young black man, in Jacksonville, Florida. Davis was shot in 2012 by a white man named Michael Dunn, who was sentenced to life without parole.

Justin Steele, Google.org’s lead in the Bay area, explained the company’s motivation to take such a public stand on such controversial and political issues, saying: “we hope to build on this work and contribute to this movement for racial justice.”

Concerns over racial equality in the context of the American justice system and interactions with police have of course been particularly public since the death of Michael Brown in the summer of 2014. But Google is also attempting to take on the inequality in the Bay Area, a serious concern after the influx of tech firms over the last few decades have brought in waves of wealth and pushed lower-income residents out of their cities and neighborhoods. Steele explained, “this is our home. We want to support social innovators striving to make the Bay Area better for everyone.”

While $3.25 million isn’t that big of a donation for a multi-billion dollar company, the fact that Google puts such a priority on giving certainly is a good thing. The cause of racial equality, while controversial, is an incredibly worthy one.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Google and Microsoft are finally putting a five-year legal battle to bed. A series of roughly 20 lawsuits in the United States and Germany over various patents and technological innovations were all settled, based on an agreement between the two tech monoliths.

The two companies were involved in disputes involving a wide range of products, including Motorola phones and Xbox technology. It’s unclear what sort of financial agreements were exchanged between the two companies.

The statement put out by Google and Microsoft executives included the following explanation:

As part of the agreement, the companies will dismiss all pending patent infringement litigation between them, including cases related to Motorola Mobility.

Separately, Google and Microsoft have agreed to collaborate on certain patent matters and anticipate working together in other areas in the future to benefit our customers.

So what does this mean for Google, Microsoft, and the tech industry as a whole? Well it may be indicative of the fact that these companies have bigger and more menacing enemies than each other. For example, both companies have been fighting patent trolls. Patent trolls buy up patents and then use them to file a number of lawsuits, but without any intention of actually utilizing the patents. These lawsuits are pretty prevalent in the United States, and with the European Union setting up a new patent court, Google and Microsoft are both lobbying to pass legislation that will ensure these kinds of lawsuits won’t explode in Europe as well.

Additionally Google and Microsoft, as well as a whole bevy of other tech companies, are working on a project called the Alliance for Open Media. Other partners in the venture include Cisco, Amazon, Netflix, Intel, and Mozilla. The purpose of the project is to create media formats, particularly video, that are royalty-free and work “across devices of all kinds and for users worldwide.” This will save these companies money, and probably lead to less expensive patent fights between them when it comes to video streaming. Moreover, it’s a smart PR move, as it will allow customers who probably don’t much care about patent battles between tech companies to more easily share videos across a wide range of devices.

So, Google and Microsoft burying the hatchet, at least in part, may be indicative of an overall shift between the two companies. However there are still some legal issues between the two companies pending, and there’s no guarantee that more–including patent issues–won’t arise in the future. For now, however, it looks like Google and Microsoft are mending some fences.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Google and Microsoft End Long Patent Battle appeared first on Law Street.

Phones, MP3 players, tablets, even watches have been heralded as next big thing in technology over the past decade or so. Now, however, that title belongs to Virtual Reality. Companies ranging from Facebook to Google to Microsoft have developed or are developing headsets that allow users to finally realize the virtual reality experience. While the industry is still in its infancy, a recent surge in funding and attention suggests virtual reality break-throughs in a number of different aspects of everyday life ranging from video games to movies. Read on to learn about the next big thing starting with its origins, how it actually works, what is currently available on the virtual reality market, and what is on the horizon.

History of Virtual Reality

The concept of virtual reality extends all the way back into the 1860s, when artists created 3-D circular pictures. However, like many other inventions, the progression of virtual reality was neither linear, nor was it the result of the work of just one person.   The rise of modern virtual reality can be traced the 1950s. In 1957 a man named Martin Hellig invented something known as the Sensorama, which combined 3-D pictures with wind, sound, and various smells.

This vision was shared by technician named Douglas Engelbart who saw the potential for digital displays in the future. His vision began being realized as part of a larger effort on behalf of the United States government to design a new radar system, whose recordings would be easier for humans to understand and interpret.

This work started bearing fruit in the 1960s when another scientist, Ivan Sutherland, developed a headset to design cars and mechanical parts on a computer. Another leap forward came in the form of flight simulators, which became increasingly popular in the 1970s as they offered a safer alternative to flight training than the actual thing. Initially, the simulator started off as stitched together movies, however as the technology advanced so they began offering video simulations that placed the person in the virtual cockpit.

VR also made it to the movies, as evidenced by the increasing incorporation and even reliance on visual effects in Hollywood blockbusters. In fact the first movie to depict the notion of Virtual Reality was the original Tron, which was released in 1982. VR was utilized in the video game industry as well as in arcades and early headsets, like Sega’s model form 1993. VR was also developed to assist with various rehabilitation exercises, namely to help those dealing with PTSD.  The video below takes an in-depth look at the history of virtual reality:

How does virtual reality work?

What exactly is virtual reality? For a basic definition it can be thought of as a computer generated three-dimensional world. This world can be experienced as the real world is, through sights, smells, and sounds. The basic parameters of generating virtual reality are similar, objects have to be life sized and there has to be some tracking mechanism, so when the viewer’s perspective changes what he or she sees also changes.

A key component of this is a concept known as immersion. Immersion includes depth and breadth of information. These deal with how a user interacts with their virtual environment and how effectively that environment is presented to them. There’s also another concept known as latency, which is the lag time between when a user changes their perspective to when the new perspective is clear. If the delay is too long, the immersive experience can be ruined. One important consideration regarding virtual reality is that while many of the recent models require or offer some form of a headset, a headset is not required to experience VR.

The Virtual Reality Industry

Presently

The number and quality of VR options on the market already vary widely. On the simplistic side is Google Cardboard, literally a cardboard box and a pair of lenses, which with a smart phone placed inside can give the illusion of virtual reality. At the other end of the spectrum are headsets like those produced by Oculus Rift. Oculus was initially funded through the crowd-sourcing site Kickstarter, until it was bought by Facebook for $2 billion dollars.

The Rift however, is not alone on the high end of virtual reality. Several rival headsets are also in production including the Samsung Gear, HTC Vive, and the Sony Morpheus. Perhaps the most intriguing rival is Microsoft’s HoloLens. Unlike the other headsets, which strictly focus on generating a virtual reality, the Microsoft headset is capable of augmented reality. Augmented reality is combining elements of the virtual and real world together.

Regardless of whichever headset a user prefers, there are number of uses for virtual reality already. Aside from some of the uses mentioned earlier such as gaming, treating PTSD, and training pilots, VR is also becoming valuable in sports. In football training, players can relive past situations in the hopes of better being able to diagnose how to perform in a certain situation in the future.

VR is helping dentists train as well, by offering an environment where they can learn without causing any real or feared damage to their patients. Virtual reality is also being employed in everything from public speaking training to helping people rehabilitate from strokes.

On the Horizon

So, what is next from this technology? Like with the advent of 3D movies, one of the first impacted fields will likely be the film industry. In July of this year, Oculus signed a deal with Felix and Paul Studios to produce VR videos. There are other deals also in place for companies like Samsung and Google, who are using their own VR devices to provide customers with virtual experiences.

Along with movies, another area that is increasingly incorporating VR is the gaming industry. In fact Facebook’s Oculus Rift headset was developed originally for video games. There are also a number of competitors, including Sony and Microsoft, who are also planning to use their own headsets along with their video game systems.

Additionally, it has been suggested that VR can play more of a role in everyday pursuits. For example, imagine a courtroom setting where jurors could potentially put on one of these headsets and be transported to a crime scene so they could more clearly appreciate the facts of a case.

Conversely, while Facebook and its competitors see VR as a medium accessed through a headset that may not be its final form. In fact according to a study by Siemens Research people completing tasks guided by one of the headsets are actually less successful than those simply following a paper manual. The article suggests an alternative to the headset in general. This comes in the form of improving camera and display technology for a more immersive experience.

For any of this to be accomplished though, the major challenges of VR must still be confronted. First is solving issues with tracking–a major problem for early versions of VR is that they couldn’t accurately respond to a user. Secondly, environments themselves must also be developed that are complex enough to grab a user’s attention, but can also match what the user perceives, meaning he or she should hear wind if they see a tornado. The following video looks at virtual reality and its future:

Conclusion

VR has certainly made leaps and bounds over the decades, evolving from 3D images to headsets that can increasingly mimic natural surroundings. Nevertheless, for all the progress made, there is still much farther to go. Most of the tech heavyweights have put considerable resources behind this technology, but there are still few early returns.

Additionally, even when these headsets start hitting the market in earnest, either later this year or early next, their actual availability may still be limited to a number of factors, such as cost. The Oculus headset for example, is projected to run for as much as $1500 dollars. Additionally, precisely how VR will be used remains a mystery. While there is talk of it infiltrating all corners of modern life, the initial efforts seem limited to video games, videos, and to enthusiasts. Even the idea of a headset is not set is stone, as other traditional uses such as screens present strong alternatives.  Virtual reality may one day be the end all, be all of technology. For now though, all most people can do is sit back, relax and imagine a world where VR reigns supreme.

Resources

How Stuff Works: How Virtual Reality Works

The Week: 6 Innovative Uses for Virtual Reality

Tom’s Hardware: The Past, Present and Future of VR and AR

University of Illinois: Virtual Reality History

CNET: Google Cardboard Reviewed

Wareable: The Best VR Headsets

Read Write: Virtual Reality Films Could Put the Whole Industry in the Spotlight

Game Rant: Virtual Reality in Gaming

Forbes: No More Headgames

Michael Sliwinski

Michael Sliwinski (@MoneyMike4289) is a 2011 graduate of Ohio University in Athens with a Bachelor’s in History, as well as a 2014 graduate of the University of Georgia with a Master’s in International Policy. In his free time he enjoys writing, reading, and outdoor activites, particularly basketball. Contact Michael at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Making Reality Virtual: The Rising Tide of Virtual Reality appeared first on Law Street.

Imagine this: you hire a contractor to install new hardwood floors. After the job is done, you discover that the floors weren’t built to code, multiple doors no longer fully open, and boot prints were visible in the varnish. So, you go on Yelp and submit a scathing review, “Absolutely horrible experience… The quality of the work is deplorable. Be warned!” Six months later, the company sues you for civil theft, intentional interference, and defamation, claiming that your online reviews had caused it to lose $625,000 worth of business, or $250,000 in profits; The company demands $125,000 in compensation. $60,000 in legal fees later, you settle for $15,000.

Unfortunately, this story is not a mere hypothetical. This is the story of Matthew White, a Denver-area resident who has become one of countless victims of Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP). In today’s online environment, a few bad reviews on Yelp can derail a fledgling company. SLAPP is the term used to describe legal claims made with the intention of silencing critics, despite having little chance of prevailing in court.

In response, consumer, media, and activist groups have lobbied for anti-SLAPP laws, and 28 states and Washington D.C. have passed laws intended to discourage SLAPP suits. There is no federal law yet, however.

Yelp, the $3 billion San Francisco company that publishes crowd-sourced reviews about local businesses, opened a political office in Washington last year to push for anti-SLAPP laws. In May, the Free Speech Act was introduced to a Congressional committee. According to Laurent Crenshaw, who handles national policy for Yelp, “This issue is really one that hits close to the heart for Yelp… The concern is that these types of lawsuits, even if not incredibly common, will have a chilling effect on people’s engagement online.”

The Free Speech Act aims to curb SLAPP suits by requiring a plaintiff in a speech-related case pertaining to matters of public concern to prove that he is likely to prevail. If he is unable to, the case would be automatically dismissed “with prejudice,” allowing the defendant to recover legal fees.

Yelp has built an impressive anti-SLAPP coalition, with endorsements from two major tech industry groups, the Internet Association and the Consumer Electronics Association, and has consulted with the likes of Facebook and Google. “Yelp’s involvement has been huge… It has really been tremendous for the cause” said Evan Mascagni, policy director for the Public Participation Project, a coalition pushing for anti-SLAPP laws.

Still, the road to a federal anti-SLAPP law will be long and arduous. Government transparency website GovTrack.us gives the Free Speech Act a 13 percent chance of being enacted, and accusations against Yelp claiming that the website solicited money for removing negative comments certainly does not help. Yelp is going to need to step up its game if it wants users to leave unfettered reviews without the fear of losing thousands in SLAPP lawsuits.

Hyunjae Ham

Hyunjae Ham is a member of the University of Maryland Class of 2015 and a Law Street Media Fellow for the Summer of 2015. Contact Hyunjae at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Yelp Pushes for Anti-SLAPP Legislation appeared first on Law Street.

President Obama announced on Wednesday the development of a pilot program to expand broadband access for people who live in public housing. This is the latest effort to bridge the “digital divide” between the rich and the poor.

The plan, called ConnectHome, will launch in 27 cities nationwide. With assistance from mayors, internet service providers, and other companies and nonprofits, the Department of Housing and Urban Development will make it cheaper and easier for more than 275,000 low-income households with almost 200,000 children to get internet at home, the White House said in a statement Wednesday.

The plan is consistent with a broader White House goal to upgrade the nation’s technology infrastructure, bringing high speed internet to every corner of the country.

There are already a few internet service providers that have committed to ConnectHome. Google in Atlanta, Durham, Kansas City, and Nashville will provide free internet internet connections in some public housing. Sprint Corp will offer free wireless broadband access to families with kids in public housing. In Seattle, CenturyLink will provide broadband service for pubic housing residents for $9.95 a month for the first year. Cox Communications is offering home internet for $9.95 a month to families with children in school in four cities in Georgia, Louisiana, and Connecticut. President Obama spoke about the program in Durant, Oklahoma where the Choctaw Tribal Nation is working with four local providers to bring internet to 425 homes.

The program is an extension of the president’s ConnectED initiative, which was announced in 2013 and aims to link 99 percent of students from kindergarten through 12th grade to high-speed internet in classrooms and libraries over the next five years. 

The announcement was timed to coincide with the release of a report from the White House Council of Economic Advisers, which highlights how low-income families in America do not benefit from high-speed broadband, despite the recent increase in internet usage in the past few years. Nearly two-thirds of the lowest income households own a computer, but less than half have a home internet connection. A news release about the report said:

While many middle-class U.S. students go home to Internet access, allowing them to do research, write papers and communicate digitally with their teachers and other students, too many lower-income children go unplugged every afternoon when school ends. This ‘homework gap’ runs the risk of widening the achievement gap, denying hardworking students the benefit of a technology-enriched education.

At the peak of the digital age, those who cannot access the internet are unintentionally falling behind. They are falling victim to the “digital divide” that occurs when lower income families aren’t able to utilize the same resources as families in higher income brackets. The internet is used for everything these days–it is used to stay in contact with family and friends, complete homework assignments, play games, go shopping, apply for jobs, read books, play music, and expand our worlds. Low income families who don’t have access to these tools will hopefully soon be able to close that gap as a result of ConnectHome and similar programs.

Angel Idowu

Angel Idowu is a member of the Beloit College Class of 2016 and was a Law Street Media Fellow for the Summer of 2015. Contact Angel at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Will Internet Access in Public Housing Bridge the Digital Divide? appeared first on Law Street.

The future is now…on hold until further notice. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has proposed drone regulations that will make Amazon’s future drone service (dubbed “Amazon Prime Air”) nearly impossible to implement. Unfamiliar with the online retailer’s plan to send packages via unmanned drone? Take at look at this video with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos featured on CBS This Morning.

The concept of drone ethics has become a hot-button issue both in the United States and abroad. Most recently, the off-Broadway play “Grounded,” starring Anne Hathaway, has brought issues regarding remote drone pilots into the spotlight.

Drone regulation remains a highly divisive issue. There is no question that drones have the potential to be used as weapons of war  as well as tools for efficient aid delivery.

Let’s highlight some clear benefits to delivery by drone in the United States. If small aircraft are being used, that means having fewer delivery trucks on the road, less fuel being consumed, and faster delivery times. Companies like Amazon and Google are urging the FAA to revise its irksome rules that impede the use of drone technology rather than accommodate it.

For example, under FAA rules all drone operators must fly aircraft “only within their line of sight.” While this rule might make sense for a recreational drone user, it does not necessarily make sense for a commercial drone that could be programmed to follow a GPS path to an exact location.

Speaking of recreational drone users–if you or anyone you know owns a drone, you could get into big trouble if you do not abide by the FAA’s policies regarding small, unarmed aircraft systems.

Seems like a lot of rules for a device that could be bought online for under a hundred bucks. In fact, on most sites there are no age restrictions to purchase drones. Are kids or teenagers going to know that flying drones above 400 feet is illegal? Are they even going to abide by the FAA’s rules even if they do know? Hopefully they don’t try to fly drones in harsh weather. Or fly too close to seagulls. Or interfere with local air traffic. (Suddenly smart phones don’t seem so dangerous anymore.)

The FAA has created conservative rules regarding drone use, and it is going to take its time evaluating comments from the public and private sectors while it revises those rules. Roughly speaking, it will take 18 to 24 months for the FAA to review everything and speak with Amazon regarding proposed policy changes.

Corinne Fitamant

Corinne Fitamant is a graduate of Fordham College at Lincoln Center where she received a Bachelors degree in Communications and a minor in Theatre Arts. When she isn’t pondering issues of social justice and/or celebrity culture, she can be found playing the guitar and eating chocolate. Contact Corinne at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Looking Forward to Amazon Deliveries Via Drone? FAA Says Not So Fast appeared first on Law Street.

One stereotype of the current tech atmosphere is that it’s dominated by young people–those of us who grew up using computers and other devices. Well it turns out that that stereotype might not be too far off. Moreover, according to a new lawsuit, it might be that way on purpose. Robert Heath, a 64-year-old engineer, is suing the king of all tech giants–Google–for age discrimination.

He claims that he had an interview with Google for an open position in software engineering for which he was qualified. His resume included successful positions in the same field at other reputable companies such as IBM and Compaq; however, Heath claims that he was not really seriously considered for the job, and that he wasn’t given a fair shot at the interview. The complaint Health filed states that:

The Google interviewer was barely fluent in English. The interviewer used a speaker phone that did not function well. Mr. Heath asked him, politely and repeatedly, if he would use his phone’s handset, and the interviewer refused, stating that ‘we’ would have to ‘suffer’ through the interview using the speaker phone because he did not want to have to hold the handset through the whole interview. Communication was very difficult, and Mr. Heath and the interviewer had difficulties understanding each other throughout the interview.

The complaint goes on to explain the issue with the interview, stating:

By conducting the interview as described above, Google intentionally did not allow Mr. Heath to communicate or demonstrate his full technical abilities, and did not have a sincere interest in hiring Mr. Heath

Heath was ultimately not offered the position he sought. He filed the lawsuit on April 22 in a San Jose, California federal court. He aims for it to be a class-action suit for anyone over the age of 40 who have been rejected from a job at Google.

Heath does seem at least supported by statistics about the median age at Google. According to Payscale.com, which relies on self reporting, the median age of Google employees is 30, which is certainly lower than the average age of the American worker. It’s even lower than the average worker in the computer science and engineering fields–the Department of Labor puts those median ages in the early-40 range.

Heath’s claim certainly isn’t the first time that Google has been accused of age discrimination. In another case, Reid v. Google, that was settled before it made it to trial, former executive Brian Reid claimed that he was discriminated against and eventually let go because of his age.

While Silicon Valley consistently makes the press for its dearth of racial and gender diversity, age discrimination seems to be a less consistent complaint. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen though–now Heath has the burden of claiming that it’s enough for the court to get involved.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Google Sued for Age Discrimination…Again appeared first on Law Street.

The 2015 Tribeca Film Festival kicks off its 14^th year of programming this week. Since its inception, the Festival has enabled directors and filmmakers from all over the world to showcase their independent movies and new projects.

Some of those projects include interactive elements. The Tribeca Film Festival’s Storyscapes program features five immersive projects vying for the 2015 Storyscapes Award. Two of the projects are particularly concerned with one overarching theme—access to personal data.

Is privacy a luxury in the age of the Internet? Corporations such as Google and Facebook often track consumers’ online behavior without their express consent. The data is collected and used to create specifically targeted advertisements under the guise of “personalization.” Businesses aggregate millions of dollars worth of information for free; they never compensate consumers for the info they provide.

Here’s a very mild example: Teen girl posts online status about coffee. Teen girl gets Facebook ads exclusively for Starbucks. Teen girl looks at ad, is reminded of the company, and gets her afternoon Frappucino. (Starbucks +1, Teen girl -$3.95)

The average Joe and/or suburban coffee addict can’t sue big companies for using their data because, usually, people sign contracts that they never read. (Case in point: when’s the last time you updated Flash? Did you read all the licensing copy before you clicked “I Agree” and continued? Didn’t think so.) In the fine print of many software or program updates, in extremely bombastic and verbose legalese, is a section that states that you allow the program to use any and all of your information free of charge if you sign on the dotted line.

Let’s take a look at the two Tribeca Storyscapes projects that address the commodification of personal information.

DO NOT TRACK

“Do Not Track” is a personalized documentary program that discusses the dangers of having an increasingly personalized online experience. If users are only shown ads that are relevant to them, will that make them intolerant of other advertising…or even other people?

Consumers have become accustomed to serving up their information online—it’s become a nasty little modern habit rather than a cultural annoyance. People have embraced the companies that use data mining to sell products…where’s the outrage? Perhaps you’ll find it at the live installation.

Check out dates/times to visit the installation here.

KAREN

The considerably less political (but just as provocative) project “Karen,” has been brought to Tribeca by Blast Theory, developed in partnership with National Theatre Wales. Karen is a life coach app who asks the user questions to determine his psychological profile. Blast Theory’s website claims that Karen “starts to identify things she shouldn’t know.” In trying to create a thrilling and personal experience, the creators of Karen looked into different methods of information aggregation.

We became fascinated with big data, and particularly how governments and large companies such as Facebook are collecting data on us secretly and using it without our consent.

Karen’s evaluation of your personality may reveal unsettling details about your cyber security. Want to hear Karen for yourself? Schedule your appointment here. (Bonus points if you recognize the performer who plays Karen, actress Claire Cage, from the British TV series Coronation Street.)

Wonder how much public information you can find about yourself online? Try conducting a search in a brand new window. Open Google Chrome, click File, and then select New Incognito Window. If you use this option, your new search won’t be tainted by your past search history. Happy Googling!

Corinne Fitamant

Corinne Fitamant is a graduate of Fordham College at Lincoln Center where she received a Bachelors degree in Communications and a minor in Theatre Arts. When she isn’t pondering issues of social justice and/or celebrity culture, she can be found playing the guitar and eating chocolate. Contact Corinne at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Tribeca Film Festival Storyscapes Examine Big Data & Confidentiality appeared first on Law Street.

On Wednesday the European Union’s antitrust chief hit Google with a double whammy. The EU formally accusing the multinational company of abusing its web dominance to the detriment of its competitors, as well as announcing it would begin officially investigating whether Google’s Android smartphone software forces phone makers to favor the company’s own services and applications.

In a press release issued by the EU, Google was accused of diverting web traffic in the European Economic Area from its rivals to favor its own products and services, particularly when it came to shopping websites. The statement warns that this kind of business practice hinders its competitors‘ “ability to compete, to the detriment of consumers, as well as stifling innovation.”

Anti-trust laws are meant as an economic safeguard to promote fair competition which benefits all consumers, while also preventing any one business from getting too big and becoming a monopoly. If the EU finds Google in violation of the anti-trust laws, the internet search giant will be forced to completely change the way it does business overseas and could also face a fine up to $6 billion.

According to the New York Times, the European Commision will also be launching an alternate investigation into Google’s “monopolistic” mobile business practices. The EU is trying to see if phone makers who want to use Google’s Android operating software–including Google owned applications like Youtube–are in fact contractually obligated to give those applications prominent features on their mobile devices.

Margrethe Vestager, the European Union competition commissioner, was quoted in the New York Times saying:

Smartphones, tablets and similar devices play an increasing role in many people’s daily lives, and I want to make sure the markets in this area can flourish without anticompetitive constraints imposed by any company.

Google responded to the investigation in a blog post Wednesday writing:

While Google may be the most-used search engine, people can now find and access information in numerous different ways — and allegations of harm, for consumers and competitors, have proved to be wide off the mark.

In 2013, the United States’ Federal Trade Commission investigated Google for similar complaints but closed its investigation, deciding not to take any action against the company even though the investigation found similar issues of search bias.

This time around the EU will have to prove that Google deliberately buries better search results, expanding beyond just e-commerce, in favor of its own company sourced content, although defining what qualifies as “better” could be tough. Subjectively speaking, Google’s actions may not actually be anti-competitive, but rather a better optimization for what consumers actually want.

Google now has 10 weeks to officially respond to the EU’s complaint, where they could settle the matter. If not, a lengthy court battle is an almost guarantee.

Alexis Evans

Alexis Evans is an Assistant Editor at Law Street and a Buckeye State native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and a minor in Business from Ohio University. Contact Alexis at aevans@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Google has been working on developing technology for a driverless car and now rumors are swirling that Apple, too, may be working on Steve Jobs’ infamous driverless iCar.

Google introduced the first fully-functioning prototype of a self-driving car in December 2014 after several less-functioning attempts by engineers over the years, according to Time. In a post on the project’s webpage, Google wrote that engineers had now managed to successfully combine elements of self-driving technology and laser-guided steering with car parts from conventional suppliers to create the working prototype.

Tesla and Uber have also reportedly been working on driverless technology and the Wall Street Journal reported that Apple was getting into the game, with “several hundred” employees now working on a minivan-like electric car. The project is still just a rumor, but in true mystery fashion, comes with its own codename: “Titan.”

Sridhar Lakshmanan, engineering professor at the University Michigan-Dearborn, recently told Time that there are three crucial elements required to turn a regular car into an automated one:  “A GPS system,” “a system to recognize dynamic conditions on the roads,” and “a way to turn the information from the other two systems into action on your ride.”

“What the autonomous system is supposed to achieve, in its full maturity, is the best of a computer, which is able to process large reams of data, and the ability of a human being to be adaptive in a new or known environment,” Lakshmanan told Time.

But why? Have we really become so lazy that we don’t even want to drive ourselves places anymore? Personally, I use long drives as valuable “me time,” and call me paranoid, but I’m just not sure I could ever really trust a computer to drive me anywhere safely. If this driverless technology becomes a market reality, will it really be safe and will people really use it?

A Forbes article suggested self-driving could allow for more work to be done, more tweets to be sent, and more web posts to be posted during commutes. So if you are displeased with your daily tweet ratio, perhaps a driverless car is the answer to cutting out the time-consuming aspect of manual driving.

Beyond social advantages, driverless technology could also greatly diminish the number of traffic accidents, and thereby the number of traffic accident deaths, each year and improve traffic flow.

“In a world without crashes, cars wouldn’t need tons of reinforced steel, excessive airbags, and other features that make them so heavy, and by definition, lighter cars are more efficient cars,” noted Forbes.

A driverless car may not be as passive and safe as some people might think, though. Greg Fitch, research scientist at the Center for Automated Vehicle Systems at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute told Tech Republic that to ensure safety, vehicle manufacturers are still expecting car owners to be alert while driving, with a hand on the wheel and foot ready to brake. “Believe it or not, that car could fail at any time,” Fitch said.

It seems at least some U.K. drivers share my sense of wariness on the issue of driverless cars. Some are even “horrified” by the idea. “Four in ten Britons would not trust an autonomous car to drive safely, believing it would jeopardize the welfare of drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians, a survey from price comparison site uSwitch.com found,” reported the Telegraph.

I suppose it remains to be seen whether we will all be traveling around in driverless vehicles in a few years. Now we just have to wait for the pilotless commercial planes and cook-less kitchens so we can all have even more time for those tweets and web posts.

Morgan Eichensehr

The post Driverless Cars on the Horizon, But Who Actually Wants to Ride in Them? appeared first on Law Street.

If you’re directionally challenged, speed obsessed, or looking for the fastest route on your morning commute you’ve most likely heard of the mobile navigation app Waze. This Google-owned travel buddy uses crowdsourced data from its millions of users to provide the fastest alternative routes to your destination of choice. It easily surpasses Google’s own Maps app by giving drivers the option of creative avatars such as ninjas and zombies, and allowing Wazers to report accidents, blocked roads, speed cameras, and police presence. However, that last feature is angering police who are now pressuring Google to turn off the feature, calling it a “police stalker,” and claiming it endangers cops.

In a letter to Google obtained by the Los Angeles Times, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck uses the murders of NYPD officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, who were killed by Waze user Ismaaiyl Brinsley, as a reason why the app should remove the feature. Chief Beck writes:

I am confident your company did not intend the Waze app to be a means to allow those who wish to commit crimes to use the unwitting Waze community as their lookouts for the location of police officers. While the app contains data that provides commuters with areas of construction, road hazards, it also provides police locations. I now know that Mr. Brinsley had been using the Waze app since early December to track the location of police.

But Chief Beck doesn’t have it quite right. Just to clarify, the app doesn’t actually “track” police. There is no GPS attached to cop cars beaconing their location as they drive around. Wazers who drive by traffic cops have the option to report which side of the road the police are on and if they’re either visible or hidden. When fellow drivers on the same route are near the reported cop, an icon pops up showing their approximate distance from you. As a user of the app myself I know first hand that spotting these cops is hard even with the extra help. If anything, the police reporting makes roads safer, forcing drivers to slow down.

Cops decry Waze traffic app as a “police stalker” http://t.co/vzIfGT0xSc by @dmkravets

— Ars Technica (@arstechnica) January 26, 2015

Brinsley had posted his plans to “give pigs wings” on social media, sharing a screenshot of his Waze app showing two police officers nearby. His actions were senseless and horrible but ultimately an unfortunate, unpredictable tragedy. Concluding that the app can be used as a tool for cop killers is like saying Tinder can be used as a tool for serial rapists.

As horrible as it may seem, it could be that cops are using this one isolated incident as a rallying cry to get rid of the feature that they never liked to begin with. Civilian owned radar detectors have been outlawed in some states, including Virginia and Washington D.C., making the Waze app a helpful alternative. It’s possible that their disapproval comes more from a financial standpoint than a safety one. The money that comes from traffic violations provides millions of dollars for state and local municipalities. Some stations even give their traffic cops ticket quotas to reach each month, and Waze threatens that.

So far Waze hasn’t made any moves to give into police pressure by removing the feature. I sincerely hope it continue to stand its ground because my zombie driving icon and I couldn’t imagine a commuting world without it.

Alexis Evans

Alexis Evans is an Assistant Editor at Law Street and a Buckeye State native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and a minor in Business from Ohio University. Contact Alexis at aevans@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Waze Traffic App is Pissing Off the PoPo appeared first on Law Street.

Since the top European court made a ruling in May requiring Google to field requests from members of the public to erase links associated with their names, the web search giant has removed about 230,000 URLs, according to its own data.

The European Union’s Court of Justice ruling said that Google would have to delete “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant” links from its searches on its European domains, such as google.co.uk and google.fr. Removing such links doesn’t mean they’ll never appear in a Google search again; just that they’ll be omitted when they’re associated with the name of the person requesting the removal.

The rationale behind the so-called “right to be forgotten” decision is to allow members of the public to reclaim their online profiles if they’re damaged by negative content on the web. It’s up to Google whether the links should be removed. For example, Google cites an example of an Italian woman who asked that an article about her husband’s murder be dissociated with the search for her name. In another example, a German individual asked that an article about the person’s rape be removed. The links were removed in those cases, but an Italian man’s multiple requests to remove links to 20 articles about his arrest for financial crimes were denied.

This is an apparent win for private European citizens who want to be in control of their public profiles, but European Union officials last month began to push for Google to expand the program beyond just European domains. A statement from the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party said that “decisions must be implemented in such a way that they guarantee the effective and complete protection of data subjects’ rights and that EU law cannot be circumvented.” This means that Google would have to field requests for link removals on its .com domain for Europeans to be fully protected.

That has yet to happen, but if it does, it could also affect a lot of people outside Europe, based on how it is carried out. Americans could request that Google take down embarrassing, damaging, and irrelevant links. But establishing the right to be forgotten in the U.S. could be more difficult because some would argue it interferes with American freedom of speech. In a case unrelated to the European issue, a judge ruled last month in the Superior Court of California in San Francisco that Google is protected in terms of the order in which it presents its search results. The plaintiff, Louis Martin, was alleging that Google was biased in excluding his website, coastnews.com, from search results.

While the San Francisco story is in a way the backward version of the European story–a citizen is trying to get a link to be visible rather than be taken down–it could set the precedent that Google is free to present whatever results its algorithms decide are relevant, regardless of privacy.

Zaid Shoorbajee

Zaid Shoorbajee is a an undergraduate student at The George Washington University majoring in journalism and economics. He is from the Washington, D.C. area and likes reading and writing about international affairs, politics, business and technology (especially when they intersect). Contact Zaid at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post The Right to be Forgotten on Google: Will it Come to the U.S.? appeared first on Law Street.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit recently heard oral arguments about the long-fought Google Books case between Google and the Authors Guild.

This case has been trudging through the courts for nearly a decade. In 2005, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers (AAP) separately sued Google on claims that it violated their respective copyrights on the Google Books database. Google claimed, however, that its database was a fair use.

The lawsuits were then consolidated, but AAP eventually settled out of court with Google. The Authors Guild continued its lawsuit against Google but later agreed to settle for $125 million. The Authors Guild and Google tried to amend their settlement, but the settlement was rejected.

Around this time, the Authors Guild filed a similar lawsuit against HathiTrust but lost on summary judgment.

Nevertheless, the Authors Guild/Google lawsuit carried on into federal court, but the Authors Guild met a similar fate as it did against HathiTrust and lost to Google via summary judgment last year.

According to Publishers Weekly, Google won its summary judgment motion partly because of its fair use argument. The court favored Google in three out of the four fair use factors. The four fair use factors are 1) the purpose and character of the use; 2) the nature of the copyrighted work; 3) the amount and substantiality of the portion taken; and 4) the effect of the use on the potential market. Google won on the first, second, and fourth factors because its scanning was a transformative use, 93 percent of the scanned works were nonfiction, and Google didn’t sell the books it scanned although it benefited financially from the web traffic caused by Google Books.

The Authors Guild then appealed to the Second Circuit.

Oral Argument

Andrew Albanese writes that the Authors Guild tried to differentiate the Google Books lawsuit from the HathiTrust lawsuit by arguing that Google Books was a commercial use, but the Second Circuit shot that argument down. Judge Pierre Leval said that transformative use was what mattered the most–the first factor. The Authors Guild also argued that Google should not be allowed to profit from its database of unlicensed works, and that Google Books differed from HathiTrust because Google Books offered snippets of the works, whereas HathiTrust did not display the works made available via searching.

Google argued for fair use and asserted that Google Books progressed the arts and sciences. Moreover, Google argued that Google Books created no market harm. Although users flock to Google because of Google Books, Google Books serves an educational purpose.

The Second Circuit did not mention when it would render a decision.

Analysis

Considering the court dismissed the Authors’ Guild argument that Google and HathiTrust could be distinguished via the first fair use factor, the Authors Guild has a tough challenge in attempting to reverse the district court’s decision in favor of Google. I have not listened to the oral argument, but by reading Albanese’s aforementioned article, it does not look good for the Authors Guild.

Joseph Perry

Joseph Perry is a graduate of St. John’s University School of Law whose goal is to become a publishing and media law attorney. He has interned at William Morris Endeavor, Rodale, Inc., Columbia University Press, and is currently interning at Hachette Book Group and volunteering at the Media Law Resource Center, which has given him insight into the legal aspects of the publishing and media industries. Contact Joe at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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My dear friend LinkedIn has some competition coming its way–that’s right, Facebook is developing a new platform designed to let people use the social networking site at work.

The new Facebook–dubbed FB@Work (Zuckerberg couldn’t think of something more clever?)–will allow co-workers to chat, network with other professionals in their field, and work together on documents.

Many professionals already use Facebook at work, but now the company is actually testing the professional platform with companies, according to Reuters. FB@Work would be a completely separate site from the social networking site. Its main competitors include LinkedIn, Google, Microsoft, Box, and Salesforce.com

Zuckerberg’s move to create a professional networking platform gives Facebook a new edge. The tech industry is in a high-speed capability race and this new platform gives Facebook a one-up.

FB@Work’s chat tool can compete with Salesforce.com’s Chatter, Google’s Gchat, and Microsoft’s Yammer. Networking with professionals on FB@Work compares to the entire platform of LinkedIn. Lastly, providing co-workers with a space to collaborate on documents challenges Google Docs, Box, and Dropbox.

All of these features will not only be more attractive for users, but also for advertisers. The Financial Times reports the professional website will provide users with accounts separate from the social Facebook, so marketers have more space to place ads. The separate accounts would function to keep certain information private from certain audiences.

Some features will look similar; the News Feed will still be a staple of the site. The terms of confidentiality are still in question.

With FB@Work, you may portray your Facebooking habits in a more positive light at work. However, the new platform is designed to foster a more-efficient Facebook that will overall increase productivity and connectivity in the workplace.

Would you use FB@Work? Personally, I wouldn’t want to have an additional distraction. Google and LinkedIn already provide all the services I need–chat, room to collaborate on documents, discussion boards, and networking space. Creating another account means worrying about another password to remember and another networking site to keep up with. Honestly, I think Facebook is just trying to remain relevant with this new platform.

In the past, Facebook has tried to compete with other sites and networking platforms. Do you remember the Beacon fiasco? Beacon was part of Facebook’s Ads platform, but users were infuriated when the truth about Beacon’s tracking mechanisms came out. Beacon tracked users’ online activity on third-party sites–even when they were logged out or opted not to broadcast their activity to their networks.

This controversy, which occurred in 2007, was not a lone incident in Facebook’s spotty history with privacy leaks. In 2011, a similar privacy breach occurred when three applications were reported to provide users’ personal information to third-party sites. Maybe that’s part of the reason I’m hesitant to join the movement for FB@Work. Though the site is still in its development phase, I don’t trust that the social account and the professional account of Facebook will be kept completely separate nor will it be entirely secure. Until this site is fully developed and used by many early adopters, you can find me on LinkedIn.

Natasha Paulmeno

Natasha Paulmeno is an aspiring PR professional studying at the University of Maryland. She is learning to speak Spanish fluently through travel, music, and school. In her spare time she enjoys Bachata music, playing with her dog, and exploring social media trends. Contact Natasha at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Facebook at Work: Facebook Creating LinkedIn Competitor appeared first on Law Street.

Google is smart. When I type something wrong, it tries to show me what I should have typed. It can, to some extent, fill in the gaps in searches. We’ve all made impressively vague google searches, a la “who’s the guy in the thing with the hat?” and Google has been able to tell us. Well now Google has gotten even smarter, and it’s trying to use those smarts to keep us from breaking the law.

Google is now making it harder for people to find illegal streaming, downloading, and torrenting sites. Essentially, if you’re trying to find a free download of a show, you’d probably search “How to Get Away with Murder watch free.” Under Google’s new algorithm, it would guess what you’re looking for and prompt you with legal ways to watch the show, even if they’re not necessarily free. For example, an ad on the side for Hulu, or to be able to purchase an episode of the show from iTunes.

It’s all part of a concerted effort that Google is making to fight piracy, detailed in its recently released report, “How Google Fights Piracy.” Google has taken many other steps as well, including removing terms that can be associated with pirating from its autocorrect and suggestion filters. Google also is working hard to make sure that when removal requests are filed — essentially when someone shows that their copyrighted material is being used illegally — the material is dealt with appropriately. It also make sure that it doesn’t allow companies or sites that infringe on copyright and pirating practices to buy ads. Google is especially vigilant when it comes to YouTube, given the possibility of pirated content being used on that site.

Overall Google’s efforts to stand against piracy are based on a few simple ideals:

• Create More and Better Legitimate Alternatives
• Follow the Money (essentially keep the pirates from profiting, removing the incentive to pirate.)
• Be Efficient, Effective, and Scalable
• Guard Against Abuse
• Provide Transparency

So far, Google’s efforts seem to be working. The algorithm changes have resulted in less visibility for many popular and well known illegal streaming sites. According to SearchMetrics, which publishes SEO visibility rankings, streaming sites have been hard hit. Marcus Tober of SearchMetrics explained who saw the greatest drops:

Amongst the loser sites are sites that had links and/or content to movie, TV and music content. Sites like movie4k.to which lost 98% of SEO Visibility have typical loser keywords like “download free movies”, “watch [movie name] online free”, “online free movies”, “movies download”, “watch [movie name]”, “where can I watch [movie name] online” etc.

So if you set out with the direct intention to watch something illegally, it’s not hard to find if you know what you’re looking for. What Google is really attempting to do is make it harder to watch something illegally for people who don’t really know how to find it in the first place. The company is going to be inundated with legal ways to do what they’re trying to do. They’re also trying to make sure that less illegal content is out there in general, rendering it harder for everyone to pirate.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Google Doesn’t Want You to Stream That TV Show appeared first on Law Street.

Twitter is suing the the United States Department of Justice for violating its First Amendment rights, the company announced on Tuesday. The social media service is arguing that it has the right to disclose to the public how often the government requests data from it for national security purposes.

Currently, the government requests information for such investigations from tech companies like Twitter in the form of national security letters and Foreign Intelligence Security Act court orders. The government does let these companies disclose how many times it requests information, but not down to the exact number. Instead they can report ranges of the requests they’ve received in “bands” of 1,000. For example, a firm can report that it has received between 0 and 999 government information requests, without being any more specific.

Twitter’s complaint is that these restrictions inhibit its freedom of speech. It argues that it should be allowed to disclose to its users a more precise number of government information requests. In particular, if it hasn’t received any requests in a certain category, Twitter wants to say publicly that the number is zero.

Ben Lee, a Twitter Vice President, said in a blog post on Tuesday:

It’s our belief that we are entitled under the First Amendment to respond to our users’ concerns and to the statements of U.S. government officials by providing information about the scope of U.S. government surveillance – including what types of legal process have not been received.

Twitter tried to accomplish the same thing earlier this year without going to court, by sending a sample transparency report in April to the DOJ, asking which information it could or couldn’t publish. Unfortunately, that attempt wasn’t fruitful. “After many months of discussions, we were unable to convince them to allow us to publish even a redacted version of the report,” Tuesday’s blog post also disclosed.

The current restrictions stem from a January settlement between the DOJ and Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Facebook, and LinkedIn. At that time, the companies were were looking for permission to publish any number at all related to national security requests. That settlement allowed these companies and “similarly situated companies” (that includes Twitter) to use the bands of 1,000 rule to report the number of government requests. Twitter hints in its formal complaint that the number of requests it receives is relatively small, and argues that it  should be allowed to reflect “limited scope” of government surveillance on its accounts in its transparency reports.

In the wake of the Edward Snowden leaks that revealed the vast extent of government surveillance online, tech companies have tried to show their users that they care about privacy. Apple and Google made news last month when they announced that their new generation of mobile operating systems would encrypt user data with the user’s passcode, making it impossible for either the company or the government to access private information without the passcode. Even if the government requests it, the company can’t reach it.

Unlike on most social media platforms, anything the average Twitter user tweets is publicly visible. So, intuitively, the government doesn’t need to request from Twitter too much information; it’s there for the picking. That seems to be what Twitter is hinting at when it says that it would like to be allowed to report that it has received zero national security requests. That being said, it would be nice to know what other information the government is asking to have – information that supposedly isn’t public. Twitter comes off in this story as the noble tech company trying to stay accountable to its 271 million active users. The company can stay even truer to the value of transparency by letting its users know what non-public information the government wants, and this suit will decide whether they get to do just that.

—

Zaid Shoorbajee

Zaid Shoorbajee is a an undergraduate student at The George Washington University majoring in journalism and economics. He is from the Washington, D.C. area and likes reading and writing about international affairs, politics, business and technology (especially when they intersect). Contact Zaid at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post A Tech Company That Has Your Back: Twitter Sues the DOJ appeared first on Law Street.

The Google X research lab announced this week that it expects its experimental Loon Balloons will be delivering internet service around the globe by next year. Using balloons to provide a wireless internet connection to rural areas across the country sounds like an extraordinary idea, but I thought it would remain science fiction.  I couldn’t fathom how the balloons could be controlled, including how they would maintain strong signals. Also, knowing that Google isn’t really an Internet Service Provider (ISP), I couldn’t imagine how this technology would be available to consumers. With regard to believing in the technology’s functionality and ability to be controlled, I will admit that my Googliness is nowhere near where it should be, and for that, I am ashamed. My public policy mind, however, still isn’t convinced that a practical solution for how to provide the service to consumers has been created.  First we must look at how the Loon Balloon works, and then we’ll explore the policy challenges it will face.

Project Loon’s pilot program has released solar powered balloons equipped with antennas and radios into the atmosphere. These balloons float roughly 65,000 feet into the sky. To better understand the balloons’ placement it should be noted that airplanes and weather occur on the troposphere, which is about 32,000 feet in the sky.  There’s no way to see the Loon Balloons from earth without a telescope. While the balloons are in the stratosphere there are winds, typically flowing from the west to the east, that allow the balloons to float. The balloons are then steered from the ground to follow the winds to new areas while always keeping balloons in every area necessary to continue providing a connection. The balloons are able to talk to neighboring balloons and can only receive signals from Project Loon antennas. This is intended to achieve high band width over long distances.

Additionally, the group-based antennas bounce off of the balloon network, which sends a signal down to the global internet. The pilot program has done so well that Astro Teller, head of the Google X Lab,  believes enough balloons will be launched in the southern hemisphere by next year to have a “semi-permanent ring of balloons.” The balloons are semi-permanent because they are eventually brought back down to earth to be recycled and reused. Although this project seems to ensure Internet access in rural areas, the balloons use the LTE protocol employed by cellular providers to equip users with wireless Internet service. This means that Google Loon has to team up with local ISPs to actually provide a connection to the public.  Here is where we could encounter a problem.

Many ISPs choose not to build infrastructure in rural areas due to the high cost and low probability that they’ll see a great enough return on their investment. This is one of the largest issues we face when considering how to provide Internet service in rural areas. If the balloon has to be supported by preexisting infrastructure then aren’t we back at square one? Google is not quite an ISP. The company is dabbling in this area with the invention and continued expansion of Google Fiber; however, this isn’t available in many areas. As an answer to the questions I’ve posed, Google expressed a plan to invest nearly $1 billion in low-Earth orbiting satellites as an extension of Project Loon. These satellites are able to beam internet access down to consumers.

It is unclear if the balloons will be used in conjunction with the satellites, or if the satellites will replace the Loon balloons all together. Either way, this project is interesting and continuing to broaden in scope. While we can see that the technology works, we’ll have to wait for more information on the success of its application.

Teerah Goodrum

Teerah Goodrum is a Graduate of Howard University with a Masters degree in Public Administration and Public Policy. Her time on Capitol Hill as a Science and Technology Legislative Assistant has given her insight into the tech community. In her spare time she enjoys visiting her favorite city, Seattle, and playing fantasy football. Contact Teerah at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Satellites, Fiber, Balloons Oh My! Google Loon Delivers Internet From Sky appeared first on Law Street.

As a society, unfortunately, we have come to a point where we normalize violence. We no longer find it unusual when we hear about mass shootings at schools, we create extremely violent video games that allow us to kill our opponents in a variety of ways, and we videotape fights and post them online. But now, now we’ve taken it one step too far. A developer who uses the moniker PlayFTW uploaded a Bomb Gaza game where users can drop bombs on draped figures who are supposed to represent the Palestinian organization Hamas, while trying to avoid killing civilians. The game was downloaded around 1,000 times before it was pulled by Google’s app store according to Fox.

Both Palestinians and Israelis have been prominent in sharing their views on the matter. Since the conflict started over a month ago there have been numerous online mementos; from the simple hashtag of #freepalestine, to the statuses saying “I stand with Gaza.” Our generation makes it a point to use technology to voice their opinions on matters, and I often find it commendable. But when people use said technology to glorify the ongoing violence occurring in Gaza, it is utterly shocking and despicable. It also raises red flags on what Google’s standards and policies are for their Play Store applications.

A Google spokesman said that the company doesn’t “comment on individual apps, but will remove apps that breach our guidelines,” which prohibit some speech, bullying, and violence. The app’s maturity setting was set to ‘low,’ which means that the game was deemed suitable for kids, according to the Guardian.

Google: I don’t know how you could allow a game like this to be put up.

PlayFTW: I don’t understand why you would create a game like this in the first place.

Android users: I don’t understand why you would download and play an insensitive game titled “Bomb Gaza.”

I’m just full of confusion at the moment.

What is going on in Gaza is horrendous. So far, more than 1,800 Palestinians have died, and many of those are children. Children who don’t have any say in the matter. Children who hardly have any idea what the conflict is about. Children who simply radiate innocence. I just don’t understand. I don’t understand how someone could take something so serious and turn it into a game.

Now I concede, I have played the earlier Call of Duty games that were set during World War II, but “Bomb Gaza” is so much different.  You cannot play as the German army in the Call of Duty games; you cannot imprison Jews and gas people as the Nazis did; and you cannot strip people of their dignity. You simply cannot recreate the emotions felt during WW2, because they are still too raw. With “Bomb Gaza” you’re supposed to aim for the ‘terrorists’ but can easily hit a civilian, and although it’s only a game, it still hits a deep, deep nerve.

I have no ‘true’ connection with this conflict. I am not Palestinian, and I am not Israeli; but I am a human. And it saddens me every time I hear about a village being taken out. It saddens me when I see a picture of a father holding the remains of his son. It saddens me when innocent people are caught in the crossfire of a conflict they never asked for. And it saddens me when an app is developed to perpetuate the conflict, to add fuel to the fire, to glorify and normalize the bombings of Gaza, and to do it now at the height of the conflict.

Hate perpetuates hate, violence perpetuates violence. But you know what? Peace perpetuates peace, and love perpetuates love and instead of using our technology to provoke the situation, why don’t we use it to try and solve this issue peacefully?

Mic Drop

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Trevor Smith

Featured image courtesy of [Plantronicsgermany via Flickr]

Trevor Smith

Trevor Smith is a homegrown DMVer studying Journalism and Graphic Design at American University. Upon graduating he has hopes to work for the US State Department so that he can travel, learn, and make money at the same time. Contact Trevor at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Google Really Messed Up With Bomb Gaza Game appeared first on Law Street.

Hey loves! How’ve you been? Did ya miss me?

I know, I know, it’s been awhile. I’ve left you hanging. But I’m back now, and after the past few weeks of doom and gloom left in the wake of the Hobby Lobby catastrophe, I’ve got some slightly lighter fare up my sleeve for you all.

Have any of you heard of Google Code School? It’s pretty rad. Basically, Google and Code School — two separate companies — teamed up to offer coding and development classes for folks working in technology. More rad, they announced that they’d be giving out vouchers for free classes to women and minorities — two groups that aren’t as well represented in the tech industry, in large part due to lack of access.

My best friend shared the news with me when Business Insider broke it earlier this summer, and both of us were pretty pumped.

We’re women! We work in technology — sort of. Doesn’t everyone kind of work in tech, nowadays? Our jobs are almost completely dependent on the Internet, so improving on our very rudimentary knowledge of coding would be hugely, wildly useful.

So, my friend and I followed Business Insider’s prompting and signed up for Code School. It was a pretty straightforward application, as user-friendly as all things Google tend to be. We gave our basic identifying information, confirmed that we were, in fact, WOMEN, a.k.a. qualified for said vouchers, and provided a little mini-essay about why we wanted to learn more about coding.

Easy enough.

Unsurprisingly, neither of us was accepted. Probably about a zillion other people applied for Code School, and Google can only give out so many vouchers for free classes. We understand, Google. We forgive you. (Sort of.)

That’s where the story should end, right? Apply to Code School, get rejected, walk away with our womanhood and lack of HTML coding fully intact, right?

You would think so.

But! The plot thickens. In applying for Google Code School, my friend and I were both also clandestinely enrolled in a strange, mysterious mailing list. It’s now terrorizing our inboxes a few times a week.

Has anyone here heard of the Levo League? It’s fucking ridiculous.

On its website homepage, Levo League claims to be a community “dedicated to your career success.” It’s geared toward professional women and offers tips for progressing in your career, weekly video chats with mentors, and job listings. To be fair, some of the mentors are pretty awesome — it counts women like Sandra Fluke among its ranks, and even a healthy smattering of men, like Humans of New York creator Brandon Stanton. (HONY, we love you.)

But, I didn’t come across Levo League because I was excited to hear Sandra Fluke tell me how to stick it to asshats like Rush Limbaugh. Nope. I came across Levo League because it sent me this wildly — almost laughably, absurdly — infuriating email.

Subject line, “How to Dress Professionally for Your Body Type.”

Seriously? This is the awesome advice you’re dishing out to professional women about how to boost their careers, Levo League?

How about, PUT PROFESSIONAL CLOTHES ON YOUR BODY. Boom. Done. You’ve dressed professionally.

Because, seriously, isn’t that what men do? Show me an article telling men how to hide their beer bellies and elongate their legs at work. Can’t find any? Yeah. That’s because a man’s professional worth isn’t measured by how tastefully he shows off his pecks or how skillfully he can cinch his waist.

Articles like this do nothing to help women boost their careers. If anything, they contribute to a culture that devalues women’s contributions in the workplace, reminding us all that our main function is ornamental. We’re only as valuable as we are attractive.

Despite Levo’s obvious effort to be a wee bit less objectifying than most attempts to sort women into shapes — they define body types not by fruit, but by adjectives like “petite,” “curvy,” “athletic,” the ever diplomatic “column,” and the always obnoxious “plus-size” — this is still nothing but sexism and body-shaming, cloaked in kindly advice.

Instead of instructing curvy and plus-size women on how to appear thinner and more petite, and dishing to athletic, column, and petite women about how to appear shapelier, why don’t we just tell all the women to love their damn bodies and pour more brain power into their actual work than into their wardrobe?

Think about all of the awesome, wonderful, revolutionary things women could be doing if they weren’t so busy worrying about whether their peplum top is making their hips look too big.

Think about all the time and brainpower we’d collectively save if we thought less about if our pants are just the right length for our curvy/athletic/column-shaped legs (each type requires a different length, apparently), and more about our actual jobs.

These kinds of advice articles — all of them — do nothing but distract women from doing valuable, wonderful things by reminding us that we have a thousand other things to worry about. Were you feeling confident and secure in yourself for a minute there, sweetheart? Stop that shit right now, take all of the energy you were previously dedicating to positive innovation and self-love, and redirect it toward fretting endlessly about all of the insecurities our patriarchal, consumerist society has manufactured for you.

Not to mention, this particular article assumes that all of the women it’s addressing are cis-gendered, feminine, and upper-middle class. Levo League, like so many other women-in-business organizations, fails to address the needs of queer folks, gender-non-conforming people, butch women, poor women, or working class women.

In other words, Levo League is really only interested in helping the women who need help the least. They’re not about inspiring and facilitating a mass revolution, where all the women collectively rise up and improve their lots in life. They’re about helping already privileged women amass even more privilege.

Levo League, you’re not helping. You’re just perpetuating the same damn problems that keep women disadvantaged at work in the first place.

Knock it off.

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Hannah R. Winsten (@HannahRWinsten) is a freelance copywriter, marketing consultant, and blogger living in New York City. She hates tweeting but does it anyway. She aspires to be the next Rachel Maddow.

Featured imaged courtesy of [Andre Benedix via Flickr]

Hannah R. Winsten

Hannah R. Winsten is a freelance copywriter, marketing consultant, and blogger living in New York’s sixth borough. She hates tweeting but does it anyway. She aspires to be the next Rachel Maddow. Contact Hannah at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Levo League’s Advice to Working Women: Look Prettier appeared first on Law Street.

I imagine the folks at places like Apple and Google have huge smirks on their faces as they watch the media frenzy Amazon Fire has caused. Why? Because companies like Apple and Google ARE technology, that’s their whole reason for existing. In contrast to them, Amazon is more like a digital supermarket with competitively priced inventory, and the added advantage of delivering its goods directly to consumers. Increasing Internet sales is its number one goal, so Amazon continually creates new apps and devices to achieve it. The difference between Amazon and a company like Google is that Amazon doesn’t have a passion for creating innovative technology for the sake of being a heavy hitter in the tech community. Due to this difference, Amazon Fire will be intriguing, until it is quickly replaced with a significantly better product.

What sets Amazon Fire apart from other smartphones is its built in and specialized Augmented Reality interface. Augmented Reality (AR) provides a connection between the real world and the digital world with overlays of video, audio, 3-D content, and location-based information. AR is what users experience with Google Glass and apps created by companies like Metaio, Layar, and Aurasma. When using the Fire phone’s firefly feature, the phone can instantly identify an object, price it,  and provide an option to buy through Amazon. This is most certainly convenient; however the phone’s built in capabilities aren’t much different from the Amazon Flow app, which is already available for both Android and iOS phones.  Although Amazon has used AR in its effort to increase sales, it definitely isn’t the first company to experiment with this technology, and it is actually behind in the ability to capitalize on all the known AR capabilities.

The use of this technology for marketing and ads as well as within specific industries like real estate has evolved since the early 2000s. Metaio is one of the first companies to promote the use of Augmented Reality through print campaigns and consumer usable home design and decoration AR solutions. Metaio, a German company, was founded in 2003 by CEO Thomas Alt. For Alt, the creation of AR stemmed from a project with Volkswagen. To build upon this technology, Metaio was awarded a German government grant to continue the work, which resulted in the creation of Augmented Reality. Since Metaio’s inception, it  has remained at the forefront of AR innovation and truly envisions AR as the new frontier. While companies like Google have partnered with Blipper to create real-time interactive image recognition Augmented Reality for Google Glass, Metaio is far more advanced.  It’s moved on to thermal touch, to make the whole world a touchscreen.

So what is my point?  Augmented Reality is the main selling point that Amazon is using to entice consumers to buy the Amazon Fire phone, but the company isn’t even using the feature its greatest abilities. Amazon Fire’s AR capabilities are basic compared to the new innovations that companies like Metaio are creating. On top of that, companies like Google have already released AR products and are continuing to push the limits of those capabilities. Google is just perfecting its established  AR and waiting to have a monster release of a product that’ll be too amazing for most people to ignore. Amazon is at a clear disadvantage due to the priorities established in its business model compared to the business models of actual tech companies. Because of this difference, technology companies can dedicate their time and resources to improving products while  Amazon is happy to have a hot product until it quickly becomes obsolete.

Think about it, when is the last time someone bought a Kindle e-reader? I imagine Amazon Fire’s product life will parallel that: big explosion and quick fizzle out.

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Teerah Goodrum (@AisleNotes), is a recent Graduate of Howard University with a Masters degree in Public Administration and Public Policy. Her time on Capitol Hill as a Science and Technology Legislative Assistant has given her insight into the tech community. In her spare time she enjoys visiting her favorite city, Seattle, and playing fantasy football.

Featured image courtesy of [Billy Brown via Flickr]

Teerah Goodrum

Teerah Goodrum is a Graduate of Howard University with a Masters degree in Public Administration and Public Policy. Her time on Capitol Hill as a Science and Technology Legislative Assistant has given her insight into the tech community. In her spare time she enjoys visiting her favorite city, Seattle, and playing fantasy football. Contact Teerah at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post That Amazon Fire Phone You Pre-Ordered is Already Outdated appeared first on Law Street.

The Supreme Court set software industry precedent on Monday with the unanimous reversal of a 2006 ruling in the patent infringement suit between Akamai Technologies Inc. and Limelight Networks Inc. Akamai had originally testified that Limelight encouraged its customers to violate an Akamai patent by copying technology to improve website traffic efficiency. The initial ruling was made under the doctrine of “induced” infringement, which tests liability by determining if the violator “knowingly induces others” to fully commit the crime, rather than first party infringement.

With five dissenting votes the decision was one of much dispute because it did not fit the parameters of classic patent infringement. In December 2013, the Solicitor General advocated a review of this ruling based on the concept of “divided” infringement. This notion challenged the traditional definition of patent infringement, which typically includes a purposeful violation committed by a single entity. In the case of Akamai v. Limelight, multiple independent users took some steps toward infringement, thus muddling the controversy and ultimately leading to this week’s reversal. Many top tier companies, such as Facebook, Google, and Oracle supported the reversal, asserting that they would have faced mountains of claims and skyrocketing litigation costs across the board had Akamai won the suit.

The complexity of this case’s nuances bring up greater concerns about the growing disparity between the context of the Patent Act’s conception more than two centuries ago, and today’s technological advances. Copying someone else’s invention is now as simple as downloading a file with the click of a button. Had Limelight been defeated, we would have seen a staggering increase in the already heavy burden of patent infringement suits on the technology community.

The nature of the patent industry has developed in the twenty first century from tangible products to cloud-based software. According to the Wall Street Journal, as of 2012 technology patents accounted for more than half of all the patents granted that year. This trend in software research and development has essentially turned patents into the type of invaluable investments that brick-and-mortar manufacturing used to be.

Due to this change it seems that trolling is no longer exclusive to social media. We’ve seen the rise of non-practicing entities (NPEs), more commonly known as “patent trolls”. These players work to build and enforce litigation for other people’s patents in the effort to collect licensing fees. The reversal of the Akamai v. Limelight case lifted helped to restrict the possible business of this secondary patent industry that typically hindered innovation by tying up inventors in legal trials.

It seems to me that while top companies, like Apple and Google, continue to push the limits of technology, they are simultaneously presented with a paradoxical challenge. As the only safeguard against having their ideas stolen by or credited to others, patents continue to serve as the blood of the technology industry.

On the other hand, patent trolls and entrepreneurs that use patent licensing business models to prematurely buy, sell, and trade patents have effectively altered the industry. In a way, patents are no longer fostering innovation but are rather sold to the highest bidder who may not actually create the best product, despite their sole rights to it. Unfortunately, these third-party entities of patent trolls and NPEs are driven by money, and when money is paired against the dreams of inventors, money typically wins. This is especially true with startups that don’t have the gross capital and market share of companies like Apple. In the end, true innovators, and the consumer audience they hope to serve, are the ones that tend to be on the losing end.

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Erika Bethmann (@EBethmann) is a New Jersey native and a Washingtonian in the making. She is passionate about travel and international policy, and is expanding her knowledge of the world at George Washington University’s Elliot School of International Affairs. Contact Erika at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [Alexandre Dulaunoy via Flickr]

Erika Bethmann

Erika Bethmann is a New Jersey native and a Washingtonian in the making. She is passionate about travel and international policy, and is expanding her knowledge of the world at George Washington University’s Elliot School of International Affairs. Contact Erika at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Supreme Court Makes it Easier to be a Patent Troll appeared first on Law Street.

Recently, there have been a lot cases that deal with liability. Whether, it’s Uber X drivers, Lyft, or even MH370, there is a common trend following the advancement of technological convenience, that the lines of liability become blurred. The next foreseen liability issue will be automated cars. The invention of the automated car provides convenience and could potentially increase safety on the roads. Google, large automakers, and governments around the world are investing large amounts of money to jump start vehicle automation technology. This all sounds great until we consider one minor detail: whose liable if no one is driving?

Driver Automation: What’s the issue?

It becomes confusing to fairly separate blame between a person driver and an automated vehicle. Looking at the possibility of a driverless vehicle being to blame, there are multiple aspects to consider, such as how the vehicle was made or tested. Many experts believe that it will be liabilities such as these that will slow down or even halt the shift of driverless cars from the research grounds to the roadways.

Do we just assume that this invention of driverless cars is out of reach because the court system will not be able to handle the liabilities that come with it? Rather than attempting to imagine every possible dangerous situation that may occur involving driverless cars, the courts can use a legal frameworks that are already in place. That is the rapidly growing area of law, product liability.

Following rapid technological change that has occurred in the last couple of years, products liability has become a growing area of law. It centers itself around the responsibilities of selling and creating  newer products. Plaintiffs involved in product liability lawsuits will have multiple theories of liability to choose from in their attempt to recover damages, such as negligence, design defects and manufacturing defects. This already established product liability system can be applied to the recent invention of the automated vehicles.

Negligence

Manufacturers can be charged with negligence if they do not design their products to be safely used in ways that can be predicted. An example of this would be an automated vehicle that works correctly during the day but has issues at night. When this results in a crash or car damage, a plaintiff can argue that driving at night is a foreseeable activity for a driverless car. The fact that a manufacturer did not correctly account for this is negligence.

Design Defects

A design defect is another possible liability avenue for driverless cars, that the court will be able to legally handle. A design defect would be labeled as something such as when the software can not sufficiently brake on a downhill slope. This can cause a frontal collision with another car, allowing the plaintiff to file a design defect liability claim.

Manufacturing Defects

There are times when the design can be sufficient, but the manufacturer can still have a liability issue due to manufacturing defects. This occurs when a manufacturer accidentally ships an older version of software containing flaws that a newer version has improved upon. Any injuries caused by a mistake such as this one can lead to a lawsuit revolving around manufacturing defects.

Prior to jumping to conclusions and believing that liabilities will put an end to automated vehicles before they hit the highway, let us look at the facts. The court system will not find it impossible to deal with the liability issues of driverless cars, but can instead use the products liability legal structure. In reality, automated vehicles are not really in a league of their own, but held to the same expectation of offering products that function correctly and safety as other manufacturers.

[The Atlantic] [CNN] [The Washington Post]

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Taylor Garre (TaylorLynn013)

Featured Image Courtesy of [Steve Jurveston, Mariordo via Wikicommons]

Taylor Garre

Taylor Garre is a student at Fordham University and formerly an intern at Law Street Media. Contact Taylor at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Will Driverless Cars Prove to be Too Much of a Liability? appeared first on Law Street.

I was watching television recently when I saw an awesome AT&T commercial that summed up the greatness that is technology. Take a look.

The dad literally turned off all the appliances and locked the door with a press of a button on his smartphone. Mind… Blown… I’m not easily impressed, but after seeing this I had to know more. How could all of these different things be turned off remotely with one app? Are they connected to the internet? What did I just see?

After some research, I found out that everything in that mind-blowing commercial will probably be common in about seven years. Household appliances like toasters, refrigerators, ovens, and coffee pots are being enabled to communicate with each other and with your applications — technology referred to as IoT, or the Internet of Things. We know about smart TVs, but say hello to smart thermostats. These devices have the ability to connect wirelessly via router signals, and some can even connect to the internet on their own. Not only that, but these appliances are able to connect, control, and share resources over different operating systems. This is so cool that even Google wants a piece of the action — which explains their $3.2 billion purchase of Nest, creator of smart thermostats and smoke alarms.

Last year 10 billion of these devices were connected to the internet, and there are estimates that up to 212 billion devices will be connected by 2020. The Internet of Things is slated to be an $8.9 trillion market by 2020, and will include many more things than just household devices. State, local, and federal governments are preparing to expand on these kinds of technologies and use them to create entire smart cities, as well as tech-supported infrastructure and energy sources such as wind turbines. These will all fall under the category of IoT and therefore could have some of the same vulnerabilities.

Proofpoint, a new tech security firm, has found evidence that smart appliances have the ability to be cyberattacked. In a study conducted from December 23, 2013 to January 6, 2014, Proofpoint found that more than 100,000 common appliances like multimedia centers, TVs, routers, and refrigerators were able to send 750,000 malicious emails in bursts of 100,000, three times a day. While some people may not be frightened by the prospect of their toaster sending out spam, we should note that this implies a bigger problem.

Proofpoint was not the first entity to point out these security issues, as there have been reports dating back to 2009 of concerns with the ability to hack routers. However, Proofpoint is the first to show supporting evidence that these security breaches can, will, and have happened to appliances. So what is happening? First, these devices are mass produced without much antivirus software to protect against security breaches. Because the devices have internet connectivity, hackers are able to exploit some of the known software vulnerabilities of the devices and apps that are used to control them. By exploiting these vulnerabilities, these devices become spam-sending machines capable of conducting denial of service attacks used to steal usernames and passwords. Another problem is that hackers may gain the ability to control the functions of the devices. What’s even more frightening is that many consumers won’t even know their networks and devices have been compromised.

The reason these vulnerabilities have not been dealt with is the lack of security standards for these gadgets. Not only have companies not produced universal security standards, there has been no government intervention to set security standards. With technology changing so rapidly, government officials have not been able to keep up with the changes and pass laws accordingly. Until such time as these standards are created, either by companies or by the government, we’re on our own folks.

On the bright side, I’m sure companies don’t want their products to be responsible for spreading viruses and spamming people. For that reason, I believe companies will develop more robust antivirus software as smart appliances become more common. However, if you already have one of these devices, you may want to take some precautions to protect them. Some suggestions are to screen your internet connections and bar devices that aren’t email servers from being able to send email. Another suggestion is to encrypt your devices. While my mind is still completely blown by the commercial I saw, I think that’s where I’ll let my interest pique…for now.

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Teerah Goodrum (@AisleNotes), is a graduate student at Howard University with a concentration in Public Administration and Public Policy.  Her time on Capitol Hill as a Science and Technology Legislative Assistant has given her insight into the tech community.  In her spare time she enjoys visiting her favorite city, Seattle, and playing fantasy football!

Featured image courtesy of [James Nash via Flickr]

Teerah Goodrum

Teerah Goodrum is a Graduate of Howard University with a Masters degree in Public Administration and Public Policy. Her time on Capitol Hill as a Science and Technology Legislative Assistant has given her insight into the tech community. In her spare time she enjoys visiting her favorite city, Seattle, and playing fantasy football. Contact Teerah at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Did Your Toaster Just Spam Me? appeared first on Law Street.

On December 30, 2013, a class action suit was filed against Facebook for its use of members’ private data. The lawsuit is led by two Facebook users named Michael Hurley and Matthew Campbell, though it purports to represent all Facebook users within the United States.

In 2010, Facebook unveiled a feature that allowed members to send private messages controlled completely by the users. They stressed the privacy features that this new messaging feature allowed. Hypothetically, those messages were just supposed to be viewable by the sender and recipient(s) of the message. Neither Facebook nor any third-party were supposed to have access to the messages.

The suit alleges that this was false. According to an inspection by “independent security researchers” last year, Facebook has been scanning the contents of those messages to use for marketing and other purposes. The suit alleges two main ways in which Facebook has been doing so. The first is when a user sends a private message with a link. For example, suppose someone sent you an article on lawstreetmedia.com, The link will register with Facebook, and the site will follow it to see to where it leads. If it is a site that has a Facebook page, as many do, Facebook registers that as a “like” on that company’s public page. That has a number of troubling implications. For example, I know I’ve definitely sent an article link to a friend before because I disagreed with the article. I definitely wouldn’t want a like to register on that site’s Facebook page as a result. It also means that it would be possible to fabricate likes–a company could make sure its page got linked in messages a lot, and likes would register as a result.

The suit also alleges that Facebook mines that sort of data sent in privates messages for use by either Facebook itself or third parties. It is then used for marketing or advertising purposes.

The suit states that Facebook’s use of private messages in such a way violates the Electronic Communications Privacy Act–an electronic version of the law preventing someone from opening another person’s mail. The argument that Facebook is expected to utilize is that Facebook isn’t reading the messages–just grabbing data from them.

This isn’t the first time that Facebook has been accused of such practices. In 2012, the Wall Street Journal pointed out that Facebook does scan its messages for keywords related to criminal behavior. Google has been the focus of similar allegations. There is a silver lining to Facebook’s use of private messages, however, as they also can sometimes filter out spam or malware before an unsuspecting user opens it. An internet security expert named Graham Cluley added, “[i]f you didn’t properly scan and check links, there’s a very real risk that spam, scams, phishing attacks, and malicious URLs designed to infect recipients’ computers with malware could run rife.”

The suit is demanding an injunction for Facebook to stop its behavior. The two plaintiffs also want Facebook to pay the members of the suit $100 a day for each violation, or $10,000. Given that the suit claims to include all American Facebook users who have had their private messages used in such a way, I would assume that’s a lot of people and could equal a pretty hefty sum.

Honestly, I wasn’t too surprised that Facebook used data in such a way. I pretty much assume that sites track activity always–but maybe I’m just a cynic. One of the best indicators for how this lawsuit will go for Facebook may come from the similar pending lawsuit involving Google. This September it was ruled that the suit would go forward–potentially becoming a big problem for Google. I’m sure we’ll see suits from other social media and communication sites in the months and years to come. Google and Facebook are just the beginning.

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Anneliese Mahoney (@AMahoney8672) is Lead Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [Sean MacEntee via Flickr]

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Facebook Suit Alleges Privacy Violations appeared first on Law Street.

The road to the Google Books Library Project was paved with good intentions. Equalize the reach of books to anyone with Internet access. Oh, and make the books free. Knowledge for the people.

But somewhere beneath this pavement there was a hitch — copyright law.  A lot of the books that were digitized for public access were under copyright. However, I must note that the scanned books were only available in snippets and wholly scanned so that they could be researched through the Project’s online card catalogue. Is this a violation of copyright law or is it fair use?  At first glance, I thought this was quite clearly copyright infringement, but upon deeper exploration I had to agree that the Google Books Project could be interpreted as transformative. But here’s how I really feel: it’s a stretch and I don’t respect it.

Let’s explore how the suit against Google has been unfolding.

On December 23, the Authors Guild, a coalition that aims to promote the copyright protection of written works, announced their intention to appeal the dismissal of their lawsuit against Google.  The suit centered on the notion that Google was infringing on the copyrights of numerous authors by scanning more than 20 million books for the Google Books Project without the authors’ permission. Though the Project’s stated purpose is to “make it easier for people to find relevant books while [also] respecting authors’ and publishers’ copyrights,” the contested point here is this: when does fair use cross the boundary into infringement?

Because I thought that blatantly copying another’s entire work without their permission would be an obvious case of infringement.

The suit was initially filed more than eight years ago and was abruptly dismissed by a New York Circuit judge on the basis that the Project doesn’t actually harm the creators of these written works. Granting a summary judgment motion in Google’s favor, the judge referenced the defenses of fair use and transformation. He made a point to factor in the educational purposes fulfilled by the Project in his determination that the Project was transformative. Ok. Sure.

I guess you could say that taking anothers’ works and printing them verbatim for your own use hidden by the pretext of ‘education for all’ would transform your creation into something new. Sure. Like I said, there are definitely some good intentions here, and I’m all for wider dissemination of book content. But I’m just not buying why these authors shouldn’t be compensated or why their permission isn’t needed.

Does anyone remember the Harry Potter case? Five years ago, someone attempted to create a Harry Potter encyclopedia for pretty much the same purpose as Google Books – to make information easier to find. However, in that case, the judge ruled that while the online guide was slightly transformative because it put all of the terms into one source, it still didn’t satisfy the defense of fair use because of the amount of verbatim text taken from the Harry Potter books. Is Google not doing the exact same thing?  Are they not copying the books verbatim and offering them to the public without author compensation or permission? Who is Google to determine the appropriate amount of content to freely display to the public?

Which brings me to my next question — does Google win merely because they are Google?  These books were created to entertain, to educate, and to bring forth whatever purpose the author may have fathomed. So in my opinion, the only new purpose that Google is adding is dissemination. I guess now we can take entire books and create our own educational or research-related excuse for stealing them and have the courts deem it a “transformation.” Google shouldn’t be allowed to decide the amount of content that can be utilized in creating this reference bank — the authors should. And the authors should’ve been given a voice throughout the Project’s entire creation.

I truly appreciate what Google Books stands for as far as enlarging the audience for these books and making intellectual power more easily obtainable. I just don’t understand why Google, with their absurd amount of wealth, couldn’t settle with the authors who created the information they wish to share — even after eight years! This case is nothing more than a power play by Google to remind us who’s in charge.

The Google Books Project should exist, but not without compensation to those who built it. Compiling information is not the same as creating it.

Gena.

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Gena Thomas, a recent graduate of Howard University School of Law, was born and raised in Lafayette, Louisiana. A graduate of The University of Texas at Austin, she enjoys watching scary movies and acquiring calories from chocolates of all sorts. Get in touch with Gena via email here.

Featured image courtesy of [Aray Chen via Flickr]

Gena Thomas

Gena Thomas, a recent graduate of Howard University School of Law, was born and raised in Lafayette, Louisiana. A graduate of The University of Texas at Austin, she enjoys watching scary movies and acquiring calories from chocolates of all sorts. Contact Gena at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Copyright Law: Why Google Doesn’t Have Time for That appeared first on Law Street.

It seems as if Google is always caught in the midst of a lawsuit. This time, has Google gone too far? Judge Denny Chin doesn’t think so.

Over the past eight years, Google has been in constant conflict with the Authors Guild, the not-for-profit American organization of and for authors, arguing the legality of Google Books.

Google Books, formally known as Google Print, is a revolutionary technology, initially introduced at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2004, that compiles millions of full-text books and magazines for public use.

Since the inception of Google Books, not much has changed. The documents continue to be scanned and converted into text through a process called optical character recognition where they are finally stored in a digital public database for users all around the world to use.

This has been an excessively drawn out copyright fight between juggernaut Google and the Authors Guild. And now, it is finally over, as Judge Denny Chin ruled in favor of fair use as it is something that benefits the masses. So as long as it benefits the masses, should it be partially free? (Healthcare anyone?) 

John Locke is probably turning in his grave right this instant.

John Locke, an english philosopher and physician, unequivocally believed in the idea of private property. If you create it, you claim that territory, conceive an idea, it is all yours—a sacred western value that the United States treats very seriously.

The ruling on Google Books completely turns this idea on its head. Furthermore, this is a landmark case because it could create a precedent for future court cases when it comes to copyright law.

Judge Chin’s overarching argument is that Google allows readers to discover books, therefore it will bring new income to the readers.

Judge Denny Chin made the ruling based on the fact that Google’s digitization of the source material is “highly transformative” and won’t interfere with the original market.

Now, this case is much bigger than it actually seems. On the surface, Judge Denny Chin’s decision seems great, enabling the world access to more than 20 million books. Unfortunately, this ruling utterly decimates the idea of copyright.

Copyright is a legal concept that gives the creator exclusive rights and protection over original works of authorship, ranging from literary artistic, and musical intellectual works. The author alone has the right to replicate, distribute, perform or display copies of his or her work.

This court case may be appealed as the judge basically ruled that as long as it benefits the masses, copyright really isn’t much of an issue. It renders everything copyright stands for utterly useless.

Will this court case be appealed? Probably. As of now, this “essential research tool” is available for everyone to use.

[Business Insider] [Gigagom]

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Featured image courtesy of [Lin Kristensen via Wikipedia]

Zachary Schneider

Zach Schneider is a student at American University and formerly an intern at Law Street Media. Contact Zach at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Google vs. Authors Guild: The Fight is Finally Over appeared first on Law Street.

Technology is becoming increasingly invasive awesome-sauce with developments such as Android allowing you to scan your face and Apple requesting that you use your fingerprint just to unlock your phone. I don’t know how the possibility of a tattooed tracking device could have evaded my imagination. Enter Google’s Motorola Mobility neck tattoo: a mini microphone and lie detector that can be embedded in your skin with a tattooing device.

Last week, Motorola Mobility filed a patent application with the Patent and Trademark Office for this new technological advent. Let’s call it the ‘G-too.’ (Call me if you’re interested in this name, Google. It would only cost you the accumulation of my student loans. You’re welcome.) The primary purpose of the G-too is to produce higher sound quality in mobile phone calls by giving consumers the option of activating the neck tattoo as a microphone. The mic could also be used to command the phone with one’s voice. Sure. There’s no doubt in my mind that the amount of background noise and disruptions during calls could dramatically be reduced, but when has technology surpassed personal boundaries? Maybe a better question is, do people even have personal boundaries anymore?

The actual name of the patent is “Coupling an Electronic Skin Tattoo to a Mobile Communication Device.” The next logical question here is, how would you charge the batteries? Well, fret no more. The patent application explains that the device may “employ solar panel technology, capacitive technology, nanotechnology or electro-mechanical technology.” Yea, I have no idea what “capacitive technology” is either, but it sure does sound a lot better than watching people lean up against outlets trying to juice up their G-toos. Or does it? The visual alone has given me the utmost joy.

Back to this lie detector feature. The tattoo would also be able to identify fluctuations in skin responses to determine if someone is lying based on their level of nervousness/confidence. Why on Earth would anyone want a tattooed indicator of their dishonest mishaps? I’m guilty of telling a few white lies here and there, and I’m positive I don’t need a spotlight and siren to tell the world.

The patent applicant also offers a collar that could be worn around your neck if you don’t feel comfortable with the idea of the tattoo. But I mean…if you want to be tech-savvy badly enough to wear a collar, you really might as well ‘be cool’ about it and go balls-to-the-wall with the tattoo.

No one likes someone who does something half-assed.

 Gena.

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Featured image courtesy of [flyingpurplemonkeys via Wikipedia]

Gena Thomas

Gena Thomas, a recent graduate of Howard University School of Law, was born and raised in Lafayette, Louisiana. A graduate of The University of Texas at Austin, she enjoys watching scary movies and acquiring calories from chocolates of all sorts. Contact Gena at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Google’s Neck Tattoo: The Ink That Makes You Think appeared first on Law Street.

The double standard of a generation. The ultimate oxymoron.

Each year major companies including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Google, constantly revise their terms and conditions—making it even harder for users to monitor and control who is able to view their content.

It may come as a surprise to many, but these companies OWN everything you post. That’s right, what is yours, is theirs. Just recently, Google announced a change in privacy, allowing them to access Google+ profile pictures and comments as a mean of advertising. Likewise, Facebook announced this Wednesday that  content posted by teenagers, individuals ages 13-17, are now not only accessible to people who know their friends, but anyone who types in the right keywords.

This forbidding future allots cyber bullying, moreover the increased accessibility to child pornography, elicit content, and internet stalking.

The Internet is evolving. Privacy used to have some standards. Now it’s a savage free for all, even children are subject to.

All of this brings up a pressing question: If random people on the Internet have access to private user generate content, can the government?

Yes. No question. In fact, this has been happening prior to the current revisions in dot-com privacy policies.

In Policy Mic’s article, PRISM: The 8 Tech Companies Who Gave Your Data to the Government Have This to Say About the Scandal, Google states, “Google cares deeply about the security of our users’ data. We disclose user data to governments in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government ‘backdoor’ into our systems, but Google does not have a backdoor for the government to access user data.”

To break this quote down, Google basically said, “We do not hand your content to the government on a golden platter. They have to ask nicely, and then, only then, will give it to them what they want in a paper lunch bag—not gold”.

Different phrasing, same idea. This brings up the much-needed talk about legislation to protect the user. Congress needs to look into these corporations’ exploitation of user content.

This is unlike anything we have seen before, and there are relatively no laws protecting the users. Should there be? Absolutely. But that may result in a much different Internet, an Internet where you pay to use websites. One way or another you are paying, it just depends if you want to pay with your identity.

[NewYorkTimes] [PolicyMic]

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Featured image courtesy of [g4II4is via Flickr]

Zachary Schneider

Zach Schneider is a student at American University and formerly an intern at Law Street Media. Contact Zach at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Privacy or the Internet: Choose One appeared first on Law Street.

The largest internet companies have joined forces with top civil liberties groups to call on the White House and Congress to increase transparency surrounding the government’s controversial National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance program. Apple, Facebook and Google are among the companies that signed a letter to the feds, asking for the right to disclose information about national security data requests.

The  tech giants’ call for greater transparency represents a push back against allegations that they had a deeper involvement with the NSA’s surveillance program, PRISM, and allowed the NSA ‘direct’ access to their servers. In particular, Google has vehemently denied that they granted the government such access. Last month, Google petitioned a secret U.S national security court to soften the restrictions on the information it can reveal about the government  data requests made under Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act (FISA), claiming such restrictions violate the company’s First Amendment rights. Microsoft also had a similar request.

Tech companies are prohibited from revealing anything about requests they receive for such information because FISA requests are classified as top secret.

[Time.com]

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Featured image courtesy of [Mike Mozart via Flickr]

Ashley Powell

Ashley Powell is a founding member of Law Street Media, and its original Lead Editor. She is a graduate of The George Washington University. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post NSA Transparency Push: Apple, Google, Facebook Join Civil Liberties Coalition appeared first on Law Street.