law

Yep, the SOPA Battle Continues

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A summary and some of the latest news is here.

If you aren't calling your representatives, raising hell, signing petitions, something, then you're really not following how awful this thing is.  It's incredibly heavy-handed and even improvements have not been enough.

Go and raise hell, people.

I get the impression SOPA/Protect-IP is really a kind of last gasp of some media interests, but it's one so draconian and do broad-ranging that it could be misused terribly.

(By the way, the Movie industry is doing darn well despite all the supposed piracy.)

– Steven Savage

Giant Mess of News 12/9/2011

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Yeah, yeah I know news was moving away from roundups to more detailed posts and analyses, but damn, today had a lot of news.

Games:
Games were the largest share of Android's first 10 billion downloads. Yes, this is from the department of 'duh', but it's a reminder of the power and size of that market share.

B.S.:
Zynga tells investors it can double it's paying customers. I do not believe this possible in the short or medium term – but they didn't promise WHEN it could happen.

Legal Messes:
Apparently there are hacking charges against Groupon. This is more changing contracts/contacts, but also . . . well read the article.  Groupon's having bad times lately.

On Windows 8? Microsoft can change/remove apps apparently, at least that's the current plans. That's gonna go over well (anyone remember the infamous Kindle glitch?).  Watch this if you're a developer (or a lawyer)

There's some foofaraw in German where Motorola won seriously against Apple over a patent issue, but the resolution is anything but clear. This may come back later – or accelerate into further nastiness. Also remember who Motorola is part of now . . .

Also Apple lost in Australia over It's attempt to ban the Samsung Galaxy tablet, over – you got it – patents. This gets into ugliness involving countersuits and general stupidity.

Yes, patent suits are out of hand.  Yes they are killing innovation.  No, it's not being called out enough.

– Steven Savage

Frustration Friday: Lawsuits From The Sweet Spot

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Frustration Friday: Lawsuits from the Sweet Spot

So, as usual we hear about various lawsuits in IT this week.  Ironically I could be writing this column any week in the past decade and you could be nodding your head.  For that matter, for all you know I wrote this column two years ago – and I'm still right.

So, anyway, the usual IT lawsuits are flying about, it seems like there's quite an extensive web of them, especially in mobile IT as of late.  This company sues that company over patents, this company sues another, etc.  It's like a very strange game of tag, where everyone gets to be it.

Now it's too easy to dismiss these lawsuits as being about greed, stupidity, or both, but I'd like to suggest that we keep another reason for the constant Technical Law Suit Tsunamis that we progeeks see and wring our hands over.

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