Transcript of Mark Zuckerberg’s Senate hearing; Transcript courtesy of Bloomberg Government via The Washington Post, April 10, 2018

Transcript courtesy of Bloomberg Government via The Washington Post; Transcript of Mark Zuckerberg’s Senate hearing

"SEN. JOHN CORNYN (R-TEX): Thank you, Mr. Zuckerberg, for being here. I know in — up until 2014, a mantra or motto of Facebook was move fast and break things. Is that correct?

ZUCKERBERG: I don't know when we changed it, but the mantra is currently move fast with stable infrastructure, which is a much less sexy mantra.

CORNYN: Sounds much more boring. But my question is, during the time that it was Facebook's mantra or motto to move fast and break things, do you think some of the misjudgments, perhaps mistakes that you've admitted to here, were as a result of that culture or that attitude, particularly as it regards to personal privacy of the information of your subscribers?

ZUCKERBERG: Senator, I do think that we made mistakes because of that. But the broadest mistakes that we made here are not taking a broad enough view of our responsibility. And while that wasn't a matter — the “move fast” cultural value is more tactical around whether engineers can ship things and — and different ways that we operate.

But I think the big mistake that we've made looking back on this is viewing our responsibility as just building tools, rather than viewing our whole responsibility as making sure that those tools are used for good."

Elon Musk quits AI ethics research group; BBC, February 22, 2018

BBC; Elon Musk quits AI ethics research group

"Technology billionaire Elon Musk has quit the board of the research group he co-founded to look into the ethics of artificial intelligence.

In a blog post, OpenAI said the decision had been taken to avoid any conflict of interest as Mr Musk's electric car company, Tesla, became "more focused on AI".

He has been one of AI's most vocal critics, stressing the potential harms."

How can we stop algorithms telling lies?; Guardian, July 16, 2017

Cathy O'Neil, Guardian; 

How can we stop algorithms telling lies?

[Kip Currier: Cathy O'Neil is shining much-needed light on the little-known but influential power of algorithms on key aspects of our lives. I'm using her thought-provoking 2016 Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality And Threatens Democracy as one of several required reading texts in my Information Ethics graduate course at the University of Pittsburgh's School of Computing and Information.]

"A proliferation of silent and undetectable car crashes is harder to investigate than when it happens in plain sight.

I’d still maintain there’s hope. One of the miracles of being a data sceptic in a land of data evangelists is that people are so impressed with their technology, even when it is unintentionally creating harm, they openly describe how amazing it is. And the fact that we’ve already come across quite a few examples of algorithmic harm means that, as secret and opaque as these algorithms are, they’re eventually going to be discovered, albeit after they’ve caused a lot of trouble.

What does this mean for the future? First and foremost, we need to start keeping track. Each criminal algorithm we discover should be seen as a test case. Do the rule-breakers get into trouble? How much? Are the rules enforced, and what is the penalty? As we learned after the 2008 financial crisis, a rule is ignored if the penalty for breaking it is less than the profit pocketed. And that goes double for a broken rule that is only discovered half the time...

It’s time to gird ourselves for a fight. It will eventually be a technological arms race, but it starts, now, as a political fight. We need to demand evidence that algorithms with the potential to harm us be shown to be acting fairly, legally, and consistently. When we find problems, we need to enforce our laws with sufficiently hefty fines that companies don’t find it profitable to cheat in the first place. This is the time to start demanding that the machines work for us, and not the other way around."

The Supreme Court’s big ruling on ‘patent trolls’ will rock businesses everywhere; Washington Post, May 23, 2017

Brian Fung, Washington Post; The Supreme Court’s big ruling on ‘patent trolls’ will rock businesses everywhere

"So what does the Supreme Court's ruling mean for this system?

It's a big deal, particularly for smaller companies. The court voted unanimously to say that patent lawsuits should be tried where the defending company is based, rather than in a court of the plaintiff's choosing.

Legal analysts say this decision could shift a huge number of cases away from “plaintiff-friendly” districts and toward more “neutral” venues where a defending company stands a better chance of fending off a suit.

“From here out,” according to Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, “defendants can still be sued in a district such as E.D. Tex. if they have a regular and established place of business in it, but the decision is likely to shrink what I called in my January preview a ‘jackpot patent litigation sector.’ ”"

Supreme Court Ruling Could Hinder ‘Patent Trolls’; New York Times, May 22, 2017

Adam Liptak, New York Times; 

Supreme Court Ruling Could Hinder ‘Patent Trolls’

"More than 40 percent of patent lawsuits, for instance, are filed in a federal court in East Texas.

In recent years, a single judge based in Marshall, Tex., oversaw about a quarter of all patent cases nationwide, more than the number handled by all federal judges in California, Florida and New York combined.

Monday’s decision was a victory for big technology companies and other patent holders, which have complained about what they called forum shopping in patent cases. Other companies have argued that it makes sense to let cases be considered by courts that have developed expertise in patent matters."

The tech industry is eroding copyright law. Here's how to stop it; Los Angeles Times, May 10, 2017

Jonathan Taplin, Los Angeles Times; The tech industry is eroding copyright law. Here's how to stop it

"The only way to get Internet companies to honor the widely accepted understanding of fair use is to make it law. Although the current legal definition makes one thing crystal clear — you cannot use a work in its entirety and still claim fair use — it leaves many aspects of the doctrine open to interpretation. The Registrar of Copyrights should codify a 30-second time limit for audio and video clips and require that content be used in a transformative or interpretive way.

With concrete guidelines in place, regulation would have to be built in. For instance, when a user asserts fair use for a work that YouTube identifies as being blocked by the copyright holder, the clip would have to be sent to a human screener for evaluation. If it is longer than 30 seconds or does not appear in a transformative work, the clip would remain blocked. YouTube already has this process in place for screening pornography, ISIS videos and the like.

The ambiguous definition of fair use allows for its continued abuse, and this abuse has become a gateway for the further eroding of copyright law. By now it is well understood that the rise of tech monopolies such as YouTube and Google has hastened the decline of publishing industries. If we don’t move to safeguard copyright law now, there will be no new content to remix."

Under pressure from tech companies, ‘Fair Repair’ bill stalls in Nebraska; Guardian, March 11, 2017

Olivia Solon, Guardian; 

Under pressure from tech companies, ‘Fair Repair’ bill stalls in Nebraska

"“This has the potential to weaken security features in a host of electronic devices. It’s not about dead screen or battery,” said CompTIA’s Alexi Madon, adding that the bill applied to medical equipment and government servers. “Manufacturers are also required to give up sensitive intellectual property.”

Tony Baker, a Nebraska politician who previously provided information solutions to the US military, countered the suggestion that repair rights would infringe on the intellectual property rights and the security of software. He explained how his organization created software running on classified networks that granted different levels of access to different groups of people, depending on their level of authorisation or security clearance. He argued that manufacturers could do the same with their products."

A Copyright Coup in Washington; Wall Street Journal, 11/2/16

Wall Street Journal; A Copyright Coup in Washington:

"Ms. Hayden is now looking for a copyright office successor, and don’t be surprised if she chooses someone whose experience includes time at Google. This is reason enough for Congress to take a look: If the position is open to political influence, then the register should be politically accountable—and report to elected officials, not the nation’s librarian.

Perhaps these are all coincidences and Ms. Hayden merely botched a personnel dispute. But she now has an opening to install a register friendly to Google, and anyone tempted to write off the Pallante dispute as bureaucratic squabbling should remember: The company’s goal is to defenestrate laws that protect property. The guarantee to own what you create is the reason entrepreneurs take the risks that power the economy—a reason guys like Larry Page and Sergey Brin start Google."

Maria Pallante's Departure From the Copyright Office: What It Means, And Why It Matters; Billboard, 10/25/16

Robert Levine, Billboard; Maria Pallante's Departure From the Copyright Office: What It Means, And Why It Matters:

"Although Hayden spoke about the importance of copyright during her confirmation hearings, she is perceived to favor looser copyright laws, since she previously served as president of the American Library Association, an organization that lobbies for greater public access to creative works, sometimes as the expense of creators. The Obama Administration also has close ties to technology companies, which would like to see a Copyright Office that values fair use and other exceptions to copyright over the rights of creators and copyright owners.

Hillary Clinton is thought to be view copyright more favorably, but she hasn’t said much about the topic, and she initially addressed it in her “Initiative on Technology & Innovation” -- not an encouraging sign for creators. Donald Trump doesn’t appear to have said much about the topic."

Asia Is Getting Its Own Patent Police; Bloomberg, 7/7/16

Paul Einhorn and Pavel Alpeyev, Bloomberg; Asia Is Getting Its Own Patent Police:

"Xiaomi is among a growing number of Chinese companies—PC maker Lenovo, screen maker BOE, appliance maker Midea—“looking to get their hands on good, solid IP that can be used against multinationals,” says Guy Proulx, chief executive officer of advisory firm Transpacific IP Group. “Used against” often means extracting fees via angry letter, negotiation, or lawsuit. It’s a shift for Chinese companies, which have more often been the defendants in patent suits. They’re catching up with a trend in Japan and South Korea, where government-backed funds are fighting on behalf of big tech companies’ IP."

Look Who's Winning A New Generation Of U.S.-China Patent Disputes; Forbes, 7/5/16

Ralph Jennings, Forbes; Look Who's Winning A New Generation Of U.S.-China Patent Disputes:

"Chinese officials now as ever don’t like being told by foreigners, whether companies or government agencies, that their business people are breaking laws that hurt peers offshore. Now the Communist Party-backed legal system may want to bite back at the old allegations. Chinese smartphone developers conservatively took a 17% share of the world’s 349,000 smartphone sales in the first quarter, per data by market research firm Gartner, so their lawyers will be hard to ignore. Tech hardware firms tend to do a lot of suing anyway – just part of business...

Foreign business people are watching the Qualcomm case as another bellwether, like the Apple cases, for how Chinese courts will rule and watch for any political overtones. “If, now that Qualcomm has met those demands, China’s courts don’t uphold Qualcomm’s IP rights, then it will send a resounding message to other foreign firms that there’s really nothing you can do to protect your technology there,” says Mark Natkin, managing director with market research firm Marbridge Consulting in Beijing."

Taylor Swift Wants YouTube To Treat Artists More Fairly, Too; Huffington Post, 6/20/16

Sara Boboltz, Huffington Post; Taylor Swift Wants YouTube To Treat Artists More Fairly, Too:

"Taylor Swift, Sir Paul McCartney and U2 are among those set to join the music industry’s increasingly loud battle with the world’s largest music service: YouTube. The musicians hope to plead the case in a series of ads this week that it is time to reform a 17-year-old law known as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that they believe puts tech giants before musicians.

Enacted way back in 1998, the DMCA offers certain protections — sometimes called “safe harbor” — for websites hosting copyrighted content. Under the law, websites like YouTube can serve copyrighted music uploaded by ordinary users so long as the site takes it down when the rights holder asks. In an open letter to be published Tuesday in D.C.-based publications The Hill, Politico and Roll Call, dozens of artists and major record labels call for reforming the DMCA, according to multiple reports.

Many major record labels are currently involved in contract renegotiations with YouTube, or will be shortly, meaning the letter will make its debut at a key time. Those same labels believe that the DMCA gives big tech companies like YouTube a leg up in negotiating fees — meaning less revenue is making its way back to music creators. And that doesn’t make artists very happy, either. Music industry executives call that difference between actual profit from user-generated content sites and estimated potential profit a “value gap.” And they’re out to close it."

IBM has been awarded an average of 24 patents per day so far in 2016; Quartz, 6/2/16

[2,500th post since this blog was started in 2008--Kip Currier]

Mike Murphy, Quartz; IBM has been awarded an average of 24 patents per day so far in 2016:

"The media tends to focus on the crazy things Google, Facebook, and Apple patent, but they’re still dwarfed by more traditional companies like IBM and Samsung when it comes to the number of patents they’re awarded each year. Through the first half of 2016, IBM has, yet again, been the leader in technology patents, averaging roughly 23.6 patents awarded each day..."

The company is in the middle of a painful reinvention, that sees the company shifting further away from hardware sales into cloud computing, analytics, and AI services. It’s also plugging away on a myriad of fundamental scientific research projects—many of which could revolutionize the world if they can come to fruition—which is where many of its patent applications originate."

Music World Bands Together Against YouTube, Seeking Change to Law; New York Times, 5/31/16

Ben Sisario, New York Times; Music World Bands Together Against YouTube, Seeking Change to Law:

"The fight over the Digital Millennium Copyright Act has touched a nerve. The music industry is bracing for what may be a high-wattage lobbying battle reminiscent of the one over the Stop Online Piracy Act, a bill that was abandoned in 2012 after opposition from technology activists and Internet giants like Google and Wikipedia.

The copyright law gives “safe harbor” to Internet service providers that host third-party material. While music groups criticize the law, some legal scholars and policy specialists say any change to it would need to be considered carefully, particularly to preserve protections like fair use.

“Anything that rewrites the D.M.C.A. isn’t just going to affect YouTube,” said James Grimmelmann, a law professor at the University of Maryland. “It is going to affect blogs. It is going to affect fan sites. It is going to affect places for game creators and documentarians and all kinds of others.”

In December, the United States Copyright Office asked for comments about D.M.C.A. as part of a review of the law, and filings by record companies show how laborious copyright policing can be."

Huawei sues Samsung over patents; BBC News, 5/25/16

BBC News; Huawei sues Samsung over patents:

"However, Huawei has said at least some of them are classed as Frand - an acronym referring to "fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory". This means the Chinese company has committed itself to offering anyone a licence so long as they agree to a non-excessive compensation.

This kind of agreement is common in the tech sector as it makes it possible for different companies' products to communicate and share data formats with each other...

"Huawei may have initiated litigation as lever to get a settlement," commented Ilya Kazi from the Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys.

"We don't know if it intends to go all the way through. Most cases do settle.""

Library Associations Spearhead New Copyright Coalition; Library Journal, 4/30/15

Lisa Peet, Library Journal; Library Associations Spearhead New Copyright Coalition:

"A group of technology companies, trade associations, and civil society organizations have joined forces to form Re:Create, a national coalition to advocate for balanced copyright policy. In the wake of recent proposals to amend the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, as well as constant advances in the field of knowledge creation, coalition members are calling for responsive copyright law that balances the interests of those who create information and products with those of users and innovators, providing robust exceptions as well as limitations to copyright law in order that it not limit new uses and technologies.

Particular attention will be paid to the concept of fair use, considered a “safety valve” within U.S. copyright law and an important reinforcement of the First Amendment right to freedom of expression. This emphasis is particularly timely, as on April 29 register of copyrights Maria Pallante announced at a House Judiciary Committee hearing that the U.S. Copyright Office would launch a Fair Use Index—a searchable database listing court opinions pertaining to fair use...

Partners from all sectors will be working together toward Re:Create’s agenda: ALA, the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), the Center for Democracy & Technology, the Computer & Communications Industry Association, the Consumer Electronics Association, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Media Democracy Fund, New America’s Open Technology Institute, Public Knowledge, and the R Street Institute. According to its website, Re:Create will be “Supporting a Pro-Innovation, Pro-Creator, Pro-Consumer Copyright Agenda.”"

In Music Piracy Battles, Lyrics Demand Respect Too; New York Times, 11/11/13

Ben Sisario, New York Times; In Music Piracy Battles, Lyrics Demand Respect Too: "When the forces of the music industry go after websites for using copyrighted content without permission, that content tends to come in the form of MP3 files or YouTube videos. But the National Music Publishers’ Association, a trade group representing thousands of publishers, noted in an online news conference on Monday that the Internet was also filled with sites that reprint song lyrics without licenses, selling advertising based on the enormous traffic they attract. According to the association, there are five million Google searches each day for lyrics, and more than half of all lyric page views are on unlicensed sites."

Defining and Demanding a Musician’s Fair Shake in the Internet Age; New York Times, 9/30/13

Ben Sisario, New York Times; Defining and Demanding a Musician’s Fair Shake in the Internet Age: "As the leader of the bands Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker, Mr. Lowery had a modicum of fame in the 1980s and ’90s. But over the last year, he has become a celebrity among musicians for speaking out about artists’ shrinking paychecks and the influence of Silicon Valley over copyright, economics and public discourse. In public appearances and no-holds-barred blog posts, Mr. Lowery, 53, has come to represent the anger of musicians in the digital age. When an NPR Music intern confessed in a blog post last year that she paid very little for her music, he scolded her in a 3,800-word open letter that framed the issue in moral terms... The issue has become hot as technology companies like Pandora and Google have replaced major record labels as the villains of choice for industry critics."