Month: June 2014

Aereo

~ susie ~ 4 Comments

I can’t seem to wrap my head around this ruling. Unless I’m missing something important, this sounds a lot like the arguments TV networks used to make about VCRs. And is it the job of the Supreme Court to cut off innovation if it threatens someone else’s monopoly? What am I missing?

Vox:

The real question has always been whether a ruling against Aereo would have implications for other online services. Many of the arguments broadcasters made against Aereo could just as easily be made against conventional cloud storage services such as Google Music and Dropbox, which also transmit copyrighted content to consumers.

In its 6-3 ruling against Aereo, the Supreme Court went out of its way to emphasize that the ruling shouldn’t be seen as a threat to other services that transmit copyrighted content at the request of users. Yet a legal scholar whose work was heavily cited by Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissenting opinion says that the case will have cloud storage and consumer electronics companies “looking over their shoulders.”

“They’re just different, trust us.”

“The court is sending a very clear signal that you can’t design a system to be the functional equivalent of cable,” says James Grimmelmann, a legal scholar at the University of Maryland. “The court also emphasizes very strongly that cloud services are different. But when asked how, it says, ‘They’re just different, trust us.'”

The problem is that “trust us” isn’t going to be very reassuring for entrepreneurs and investors building the next generation of media technologies. Silicon Valley needs clear rules about what’s legal and what isn’t. The Supreme Court didn’t just fail to provide such such clarity, it blew up the legal principle that has served as the foundation for the cloud storage economy since 2008.

Judge: No-fly list violates rights

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

U.S. No-Fly List Violates Constitution 0
About damn time!

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A federal judge has ruled that the U.S. government violated the rights of 13 people on its no-fly list by depriving them of their constitutional right to travel, and gave them no adequate way to challenge their placement on the list.

It’s the nation’s first ruling to label the no-fly list redress procedures unconstitutional.

U.S. District Court Judge Anna Brown’s decision handed down Tuesday says the procedure offered to people to remove themselves from the list fails to give travelers a meaningful mechanism to challenge their placement.

Thirteen people challenged their placement on the list in 2010, including four military veterans.

Cutting off the water in Detroit

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

Detroit Freedom Friday 3 outside the DWSD downtown protesting the thousands of water shut-offs order by the bank-imposed emergency manager. Gov. Snyder appointed Kevyn Orr to privatize and drive more people out of the city. (Photo: Abayomi Azikiwe)

Just disgusting. You know some politician’s getting rich off the back end, while people struggling to get by were billed $180 a month for water:

“It was six in the morning when city contractors showed up unannounced at Charity Hicks’ house.

Since spring, up to 3000 Detroit households per week have been getting their water shut-off – for owing as little as $150 or two months in bills. Now it was the turn of Charity’s block – and the contractor wouldn’t stand to wait an hour for her pregnant neighbour to fill up some jugs.

“Where’s your water termination notice?” Charity demanded, after staggering to the contractor’s truck. A widely-respected African-American community leader, she has been at the forefront of campaigns to ensure Detroiters’ right to public, accessible water.

The contractor’s answer was to drive away, knocking Charity over and injuring her leg. Two white policemen soon arrived – not to take her report, but to arrest her. Mocking Charity for questioning the water shut-offs, they brought her to jail, where she spent two days before being released without charge.

Welcome to Detroit’s water war – in which upward of 150,000 customers, late on bills that have increased 119 percent in the last decade, are now threatened with shut-offs. Local activists estimate this could impact nearly half of Detroit’s mostly poor and black population – between 200,000 and 300,000 people.

Too bad

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

I really enjoyed the political coverage at Pando:

Over the weekend, Pando fired two of its hardest-hitting editorial staffers, David Sirota and Ted Rall, both nationally syndicated veteran journalists. Sirota recently broke a big story about Chris Christie’s administration awarding pension contracts to hedge funds, private equity groups, and venture capital firms whose employees to donated to the governor’s reelection.

In February, Pando raised $1.2 million in financing from some powerful venture capitalists, including Accel Partners and Founders Fund, both of which invested in prior funding rounds.

Sirota’s scoop about Chris Christie breaking anti-corruption laws was shared and liked 10,000 times on Facebook. According to Quantcast, Pando is only pulling in 859,000 monthly uniques globally and 579,000 uniques in the U.S.

An anonymous source alerted Valleywag to the firings. Neither Rall nor Sirota would comment on why they were fired. But there was a consensus among sources that the decision was not related to budgetary concerns. “It was completely from Sarah Lacy. Paul was the executioner. Apparently it came from complaints from investors in Pando,” according to one Valleywag source. “Sarah basically said there was not enough tech and too much politics.”

I am not certain about the terms of their departure, but I heard Rall was fired without severance but will be compensated through the pay period.

In response to questions from Valleywag, Sirota said: “I had an amazing time working with Pando to break huge stories and never once received any negative feedback from my editors, including when they let me go.”

Rall is a popular political cartoonist. His tenure at Pando lasted less than a month. Within those few weeks, he broke the story that some Uber drivers made less than minimum wage contrary to the company’s claims.

My morning fun

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

She seems to have deleted the really blatant lying ones, but:

This was because I suggested that, as parents, honesty and integrity were desirable for children.