Apple has learned nothing from Microsoft’s Surface - The Verge

iPad sales are indeed down, but it does not follow from that fact that iPad use is down. This Time article did the yeoman’s work of aggregating some data about iPad sales. The bottom line is that in the five years since the iPad’s 2010 launch, Apple has sold more than 258 million of the tablets. That’s more iPads in the wild than people living in Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Russia, Japan, Mexico, Philippines, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Egypt, Germany, Iran, Turkey, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Thailand, France, United Kingdom, or Italy (thanks Wolfram|Alpha).

My dad has an Android tablet and a Windows PC. Since he got the tablet (which, interestingly from a marketing perspective, he insists on calling an iPad) he does nothing on the PC except pay bills, and that’s primarily because most of the apps you use to pay bills on mobile devices are, to put it mildly, user-hostile antichrists of design and experience.

He is a sample of one, but my dad isn’t even your typical cutting edge older gentleman. For example, he was on Aol dial-up until sometime around 2013, and refuses to use a non-clamshell mobile phone. So his taking so quickly to using a tablet implies to me that the replacement of PCs by iPads and other tablets may be closer than Tom Warren of The Verge thinks, although still far off.

I don’t see my dad using an iPad Pro though because most of his use is on the couch as a second screen. I suspect that the second screen use case coupled with the price point will dampen iPad Pro sales outside of the geek and artist demographics.

When is time to take antitrust action against Comcast?

It’s hard to read about U.S. comeptition law without wondering when Comcast is going to face consequences for its clear abuse of its market power.

China hack attacks on US continue despite commercial spying pact

If this surprises you, I’ve got a real-life, fully functional totally Back to the Future hoverboard to sell you…

Hackers Can Silently Control Siri From 16 Feet Away

Well this is concerning:

A pair of researchers at ANSSI, a French government agency devoted to information security, have shown that they can use radio waves to silently trigger voice commands on any Android phone or iPhone that has Google Now or Siri enabled, if it also has a pair of headphones with a microphone plugged into its jack. Their clever hack uses those headphones’ cord as an antenna, exploiting its wire to convert surreptitious electromagnetic waves into electrical signals that appear to the phone’s operating system to be audio coming from the user’s microphone. Without speaking a word, a hacker could use that radio attack to tell Siri or Google Now to make calls and send texts, dial the hacker’s number to turn the phone into an eavesdropping device, send the phone’s browser to a malware site, or send spam and phishing messages via email, Facebook, or Twitter.

You can disable Siri whenever your iOS device is locked by going to Settings > Touch ID & Passcode > Allow Access When Locked and toggling the Siri switch to the “off” (as in not green) position. This doesn’t guarantee a hack like the one deascribed above won’t work on your device, but it does guarantee you’ll see Siri doing something weird and can thus be alerted to the hackery.

Axel Springer bans adblock users from Bild online

According to the report by Reuters at The Guardian:

More than 30% of Germans online use such software, many more than the 5% of internet users globally in 2014, according to Dublin-based analytics and advisory firm PageFair, which develops “ad blocker-friendly” advertising.

My basic position on ad blocking is that it’s a permissible response to shitty or intrusive advertising but whatever tool you use should have a whitelisting feature. I don’t know what the ultimate solution to this debate will be but I know that Bild.de publisher Axel Springer’s approach is unwise.

It’s so easy to find well-done news on the internet these days that Axel Springer is only hurting itself with the new policy. Instead of focusing on taking only high-quality advertisements that aren’t obnoxious or classless and minimizing the concomitant tracking, Bild.de is walling itself off from 30 percent of its native-language audience.

In short, someone at Axel Springer should be fired.

CFPB proposes ban of class action prohibitions in arbitration clauses

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said in a press release today:

In the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, Congress required the CFPB to study the use of arbitration clauses in consumer financial markets and gave the Bureau the power to issue regulations that are in the public interest, for the protection of consumers, and consistent with the study’s findings. The CFPB’s study – released in March of this year – showed that arbitration clauses restrict consumers’ relief for disputes with financial service providers by allowing companies to block group lawsuits.

The study also found that, in the consumer finance markets studied, very few consumers individually seek relief through arbitration or the federal courts, while millions of consumers are eligible for relief each year through group settlements. According to the study, more than 75 percent of consumers surveyed in the credit card market did not know whether they were subject to an arbitration clause in their contract. Fewer than 7 percent of those consumers covered by arbitration clauses realized that the clauses restricted their ability to sue in court.

The March 2015 CFPB report on this issue (PDF) said:

The Bureau understands that class lawsuits have been subject to significant criticism that regards them as an imperfect tool that can be expensive and cumbersome for all parties. However, the Bureau notes that Congress, state legislatures, and the courts have mechanisms for managing and improving class procedures over time. On balance, the Bureau believes that consumers are significantly better protected from harm by consumer financial service providers when they are able to aggregate claims. Accordingly, the Bureau believes that ensuring that consumers can pursue class litigation related to covered consumer financial products or services without being curtailed by arbitration agreements protects consumers, furthers the public interest, and is consistent with the Study.

Class action lawsuits can be a pain in the ass for everyone involved and the only winners are the plaintiffs' lawyers. But the mere possibility of a class action may be enough to prevent predatory behavior on the part of service providers.

‘Happy Birthday’ copyright held invalid

Until now, Warner has asked for royalties from anyone who wanted to sing or play "Happy Birthday to You" --- with the lyrics --- as part of a profit-making enterprise. Royalties were most often collected from stage productions, television shows, movies or greeting cards. But even those who wanted to sing the song publicly as part of a business, say a restaurant owner giving out free birthday cake to patrons, technically had to pay to use the song, prompting creative renditions at chain eateries trying to avoid paying royalties.

I hope this is the death knell of every non-‘Happy Birthday’ song all of those tchotchke-full restaurants have been forcing their underpaid and overworked waitstaffers to sing to uncomfortable diners.

The Government Is Selling Thousands of Homes to Hedge Funds Without Their Owners' Knowledge

Jared Bennett reports at The Atlantic:

It was a great deal for Oaktree. The fund bought the pool of mortgages for about two-thirds of the $105.7 million HUD estimated the homes were worth. [Julius] Uwansc, who now faces foreclosure through the new servicer of the loan, Selene Finance, was unaware that any of this had transpired.

“Whatever deal that went on between Bank of America, Selene and HUD is not known to me,” he says. Uwansc maintains he has complied with the terms of his modification and has filed lawsuits against both Bank of America and Selene.

I worked at the Philadelphia Housing Authority for almost seven years. Many of the programs run by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development are poorly understood, even by the executives who are tasked with making use of them in their own cities. But many of those programs are also beneficial to the community, when properly utilized, and when the agencies involved take the time to explain the benefits to all of the stakeholders involved, from potential residents to the mayor.

Read the article at The Atlantic for full context, but it sounds to me like the program tdhis article covers, the Distressed Asset Stabilization Program, or DASP, is not being sufficiently overseen and participating investors are taking advantage of “flipping” strategies and rental demand, especially in cities full of once-again-rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods, like Philadelphia. The demolition of high-rise public housing buildings colloquially (and, I would suggest, derogatorily) known as “projects” and construction of row-home style mixed-income residential developments, had decreased crime, outstanding rent, utility costs and other “key performance metrics” even before I left in 2013.

The switch in Philadelphia from high-rises to row homes reduced inventory but a simultaneous improvement in re-certification procedures, expanded homeownership counseling and planning assistance and other administrative changes dampened the negative effects of that reduction. That doesn’t change the fact that residents should constantly be kept in the loop about the status of the mortgage for their home, especially who owns it and when the creditor to whom they owe payments has changed.

Consider this:

Oaktree paid $68.6 million for the 803 Baltimore mortgages [including Julius Uwansc’s], about 65 percent of the $105.7 million HUD says they were worth. That means even if the company doesn’t collect a dime on any of the mortgages, even after legal fees and other expenses, it can more than make its money back by foreclosing and selling the homes. (Oaktree declined to comment on the outcomes of loans bought through DASP.)

(emphasis added)

Oaktree’s declining to comment says perhaps far more than any comment could have said. I suspect the component of the DASP program, a core component, that allows companies like Oaktree to purchase mortgages in bulk at a discount is precisely what incentivizes foreclosing as quickly as possible and with minimal effort to remediate the default.

This is a worrying example of something I saw frequently while I worked at the Philadelphia Housing Authority: rarely do the interests of borrowers and residents align with those of the local, state and federal agencies tasked with providing financial and logistical assistance. In fact, the perverse reality of funding for such programs is that the more successful they are, the less likely they are to get an increase in or even flat year-over-year funding.

It is, therefore, beneficial to those administering the programs and running the larger organizations of which the programs are a part to achieve a balance between minimally visible progress and maximizing future funding eligibility. Yes, there are sometimes performance incentives on such programs, but they are not the norm, and it doesn’t look like there are any here, and if there are they are not being sufficiently enforced.

Don’t take my word for it, read Jared Bennett’s article at The Atlantic in full.

Image by Flickr user respres

Most of this article is an extensive discussion of my hunt for the best ad blocker on iOS. It isn’t exhaustive and, given the pace at which the App Store moves, probably won’t remain current for long. That’s why I want to open things with my own thoughts on ad blocking, because I don’t expect those to change any time soon.

My Opinion on Ad Blocking

Large publishers don’t have much to worry about with regard to ad blocking because they have the resources to play cat-and-mouse with developers. But smaller publishers and even independent publishers of a significant size, traffic-wise, are right to keep an eye on ad blocking. I don’t think John Gruber has much to worry about either, but he also doesn’t have time to spend staying one step ahead of blockers who blacklist his primary advertising network, The Deck.

I use blockers on desktop browsers and, now, on iOS for all the reasons so many people have already cited: ads often ruin the reading experience, trackers build creepy profiles on what we like and follow us around the web showing it to us, and sometimes the stuff a publisher publishes is worth our eyeballs, so why should we be counted among their visitors and help boost their ad rates?

But… But… But… BUT…

Can you sense that I’m about to state a caveat to my support of the development and use of blockers? If not, you need more coffee, or to visit a doctor, or just give up reading for, like, ever.

Seriously though here’s the caveat: Blockers should absolutely always and without fail include a whitelisting feature, and it is my personal opinion that to use blockers without actively using the whitelisting feature is entitled, unethical and hypocritical.

It’s entitled because it assumes you deserve everything published on the web for free, just because, like, you’re you. That’s not true.

It’s unethical because there are absolutely jobs to which blocking poses an existential threat, and jobs are people, and people have families, and feelings, and futures.

It’s hypocritical because, at least in my mind, the primary purpose of using blocking tools is to say to publishers and their ad partners, unequivocally, you’re doing it wrong. But to say that sincerely you have to have in mind that there is a way of doing it right. And, of course, there is: unobtrusive, minimally tracking advertisements carefully monitored and held to a far higher standard than that to which most are held these days.

It sends no signal to simply block everything indiscriminately, which is what you’re doing if you don’t use a whitelist. I want publishers who display ads respectful of their readers to continue to be able to sell that inventory. I want to see a virtuous cycle: I want them to be able to charge more for that space because they’re on whitelists their less respectful competitors aren’t on.

So I use ad blockers on desktop and mobile, and also spend a lot of time on building whitelists full of sites whose ads I don’t mind and whose business model I want to help preserve for at least as long as it takes for them to find and transition to whatever model comes next.

An Ad Blocking Case Study: Peace by Marco Arment

Apple released iOS 9 earlier this month and Safari, the built-in browser, gained the ability in 64-bit devices to load what Apple calls (a bit disingenuously…) “content blockers”. These are apps you install and enable in Settings > Safari > Content Blockers. This new class of apps is almost exclusively used for blocking display advertisements and tracking scripts that follow you around the web building an anonymized-but-still-targeted-at-your-face profile about you.

I’m writing this to express my opinion, because that’s what the internet is for. I’ll explain my reasons and then recommend steps you should or shouldn’t take based on how much you agree with me.

[caption id=“attachment_1388” align=“aligncenter” width=“576”] Settings screen from Peace, an iOS ad blocker by Marco Arment[/caption]

Let’s use a case study to illustrate the acceleration of the debate about ad blockers on iOS and desktop web browsers. Marco Arment, an early tumblr employee, the creator of Instapaper (which he later sold) and, more recently, of the Overcast podcast service for iOS, released his own ad blocker, called Peace, on September 16, 2015, announcing it in a blog post. He explained in that article:

And we shouldn’t feel guilty about this. The “implied contract” theory that we’ve agreed to view ads in exchange for free content is void because we can’t review the terms first — as soon as we follow a link, our browsers load, execute, transfer, and track everything embedded by the publisher. Our data, battery life, time, and privacy are taken by a blank check with no recourse. It’s like ordering from a restaurant menu with no prices, then being forced to pay whatever the restaurant demands at the end of the meal.

I was one of many purchasers who paid $2.99 to try out Peace on my iPhone, helping to send it flying to the top of the paid app charts almost immediately. It’s well-designed and includes the ability to do one-time exceptions or permanently whitelist specific sites (more on that later). Arment had to explain in a post the day after Peace launched why Peace blocks the classy ad network The Deck. This explanation was important because Arment displays advertisements on his own site using The Deck. It was a clear example of the cognitive dissonance the ad blocking issue causes.

The Top App Disappears From the App Store

The day after that, though, Arment did something surprising: he pulled Peace from the App Store and explained how everyone could get a refund. That’s tens of thousands of dollars to which he said “Nevermind” because he developed a crisis of conscience. He said:

Peace required that all ads be treated the same — all-or-nothing enforcement for decisions that aren’t black and white. This approach is too blunt, and Ghostery and I have both decided that it doesn’t serve our goals or beliefs well enough. If we’re going to effect positive change overall, a more nuanced, complex approach is required than what I can bring in a simple iOS app.

Arment can afford to take the hit, financially, but what’s more surprising about this move is that he is a world-class iOS developer, constantly improving and maintaining a popular podcast app, who spent a lot of time and effort and stress building an app that, only days after it launched, he decided to kill. And Apple took notice: the company notified him on September 21 it would be “proactively refunding” every purchase of his ad blocker.

I didn’t expect that because Apple included in iOS 9 its very own News app, which doesn’t allow content blocking and thus is now the only bullet-proof way for publishers to ensure their advertisements come along for the ride when someone reads their stuff. I wonder if it was more a kind gesture to Arment, whose great apps bring a lot of attention and a nontrivial amount of money to Apple (who gets 30 percent off the top for every purchase of every paid app) and iOS.

The First Crop of iOS Ad Blockers

I tried five different ad blockers¹, listed below:

• Peace, $2.99, since removed and refunded
• AdMop, free
• Crystal, $.99
• Purify, $3.99
• Blockr, $.99

I quickly realized my dealbreaker feature while evaluating those apps: whitelisting. That immediately eliminated AdMop and Crystal.² The next one I eliminated was Blockr which, while it does offer a whitelist, is a little too complex for my tastes, requiring you to choose from several different elements to whitelist on each site. I prefer simplicity just from an aesthetic perspective, but more importantly “normals” – non-geeks – are less likely to use a feature that looks complex and bloated, not because they “don’t get it” but because they’re not obsessed with spending hours tweaking the settings on their gadgets.

Peace is my favorite because not only does it offer a whitelist, but the action extension you use to whitelist a site includes all of Peace’s other settings, including a global disable button. Even more interesting is the separate action extension Arment included to “Open in Peace,” meaning you can disable the app globally and selectively load overburdened pages in Peace on demand. While I’ll focus on building a whitelist, the inclusion of a selective-enable option demonstrates the amount of thought Arment put into this issue. This wasn’t just a money grab, it was an experiment. That’s what the Scott Meyer, CEO of Ghostery, the company whose blocking database Arment licensed, called it, The Peace App Experiment. His thoughts echoed Arment’s:

Specifically, the black and white, all on/all off approach to content blocking in Peace ran counter to our core belief that these aren't black and white decisions. With the currently limited flexibility of the user experience, we both felt it best not to continue to sell or support the app. Ghostery is based on giving the consumer the choice as to what they block and when. Ghostery doesn’t block ads or any other content by default. That’s too subjective a call. If there are objective measures for what types of tracking should be blocked, then that’s an option we’ll pursue. Right now, however, we didn’t feel that we had the mix right in Peace. Marco agreed.

I suspect based on that language and Arment’s own post about withdrawing the app that future improvement by Apple to its blocking framework may enable the nuance to which Peace aspired. For now though, the app isn’t available anymore and, while if you already have it installed and don’t delete it, you can keep using it, there’s no guarantee of any support or updates. I plan to hang onto it and will probably stick with it until Purify somehow differentiates itself.

[caption id=“attachment_1387” align=“aligncenter” width=“576”] Whitelisting screen from Purify, an iOS ad blocker by Chris Aljoudi[/caption]

But for those of you who haven’t yet tried one out, or are still on the fence about which one to use, and haven’t yet purchased and installed Peace, or have deleted it since it was pulled from the App Store, I have to recommend Purify. Yes, it’s $3.99, no, that shouldn’t stop you from getting it. It has a dead-simple and fast whitelisting option and lets you decide to block images, scripts and fonts as well, although only ads and trackers are blocked by default.

[caption id=“attachment_1390” align=“alignright” width=“264”]ublock, an ad blocker for desktop browsers, by Chris Aljoudi[/caption]

Purify also has the benefit of being developed by Chris Aljoudi, maker of the uBlock extension for desktop browsers. uBlock also has a dead-simple whitelisting option. Aljoudi developed uBlock out in the open and it’s free, so you can get a good sense of the quality of his work before buying Purify, if my recommendation isn’t enough.

iOS 9 marks the first time Apple has included content blocking in the mobile operating system, and it almost certainly is part of a larger strategy to squeeze other large companies reliant on advertising models for revenue. But its bound to put pressure on small and medium publishers to clean up their advertising standards or consider alternatives like membership programs or tip jars, used by Brett Terpstra, The Loop, Katie Floyd and many others, with varying degrees of success.

For now, I’ll keep on blocking the crap and whitelisting the good guys. How about you?

Feature image by NEXO Design under CC-BY-SA; screenshots by me

Video gamer hunts down, stabs man who killed his online ‘Counter-Strike’ character

Michael Sheridan reports at NYDailyNews.com:

Julien Barreaux reportedly spent six months looking for the person who killed his online character in a virtual knife fight, and eventually found the foe living only a few miles away in Cambrai, a town about 2 hours north of Paris.

The lunatic only got two years' imprisonment for what pretty plainly looks to me like premeditated attempted murder. I don’t know anything about French law, but that seems like an embarrassing outcome for any prosecutor.

Image is top of French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen

Tom Brady’s Four-Game N.F.L. Suspension Erased by Judge

Tom Brady is now set to play in the Patriots' opener. I don’t care, but I know my parents, my siblings and most of my friends might. Here’s what the presiding judge said:

"The court finds that Brady had no notice that he could receive a four-game suspension for general awareness of ball deflation by others or participation in any scheme to deflate footballs, and noncooperation with the ensuing investigation" Berman wrote.

So there you have it. A sportsball post. Don’t say I never gave you anything.

Photo by Belinda Haskins Miller

Missouri Teenagers Protest a Transgender Student’s Use of the Girls’ Bathroom

I can’t blame the students for protesting. Kids can be cruel, and kind of dumb. I certainly was.

But parents and attorneys like Derrick Good display a shameful vacuity in couching their bigotry in terms like “physical privacy.”

Karen Workman quotes one such parent:

"My goal is for the district and parents to have a policy discussion,” said Derrick Good, a lawyer who has two daughters in the district and wants students to use either facilities based on their biological sex or other gender-neutral facilities.

Requiring the teen in question, Lila Perry, to use the men’s room is no different than requiring Mr. Good’s daughters to use the men’s room. The absurdity of Good’s position is that it presumes Lila is a male pretending that she is a female so she can infiltrate Mr. Good’s daughters' physical privacy in the ladies' room.

And the twisted aspect of this circumstance is that Good’s “fight” for that privacy has obliterated Lila’s own physical privacy by turning her gender dysmorphia, with which she appears to have otherwise been coping rather well, into a national news story and an indictment of her morals.

This isn’t the first time the Christian advocacy group with which Good worked have used the plight of a child to their benefit. The hilariously named “Alliance Defending Freedom” compared “threats to its freedom,” which, hilariously, it claims are “multiplying,” to the death of a small boy on its Who We Are page.

It’s not impossible though for such people to change their minds. Consider the father of D.W. Trantham, speaking in a story about parents pulling a child out of D.W.’s school after the school allowed her to choose which bathroom she would use:

Her father Tim believes people getting mad over transgender bathroom choice is a red herring. He thinks most people are just uncomfortable or scared of what they don't understand.

Tim admits he used to be the same way.

“I was some of those people myself at one point in my life,” Tim said. “I didn’t understand what transgender was or the issues involved.”

Ms. Perry is not discouraged:

She said she knows of other, younger transgender students in the district and wants to open a dialogue so they have a better high school experience.

Years of data suggest that between 30 percent and 50 percent of transgender people attempt suicide at least once.¹ There is a mountain of data since then, and the Wikipedia article on suicide among LGBT youth is a good starting point if you’re interested in further research.

My point it that as a former Catholic of about 18 years I’m certain it’s rather unChristian to consciously exacerbate what is already a difficult process for transgender youth.

Image is the transgender pride flag

Alison Parker, Adam Ward of WDBJ remembered by friends

It’s inappropriate to use these tragic murders as fodder for the never-ending Second Amendment debate, and people on both sides of the isle are already guilty of that.

If the killer’s intent was to terrorize, are those people who are disseminating photographic and video imagery of the murders aiding and abetting that son of a bitch, even after his suicide?

I’m obviously emotional over this thing, as many people are, and the aiding and abetting thing is more a thought experiment than a serious question. But if we don’t at least think about it, try to push the debate forward somehow, if nothing changes at all, Alison and Adam died for nothing. That’s unacceptable.

Lewis James Fogle Free, 34 Years After His Wrongful Conviction

The case against Mr. Fogle itself was never a strong one – it was based entirely upon the testimony of so-called jailhouse informants, including a man himself suspected of the crime. It was only years after the 15-year-old victim’s body was found in the woods that the suspect, Elderkin, named Mr. Fogle as being involved. This accusation came during Elderkin’s fifth statement to police, while Elderkin was receiving psychiatric treatment and with the assistance of hypnosis. No physical evidence connected Mr. Fogle to the murder, and he testified at trial he was nowhere near the scene when the girl was murdered. Nonetehless, the jury convicted Mr. Fogle and the court sentenced him to life in prison without parole.

This gentleman spent more time in jail for something heinous he didn’t do than I have spent being alive. This guy has a wife and kids, who not only haven’t lived with him for 34 years, but who have had to deny he assaulted and murdered a teenager, as well. The District Attorney was admirable in his cooperation with Innocence.

But there is no utility in blaming or blessing any single person: what changes can we make to the criminal justice system that will prevent mistakes like this from happening in the first place?

Maybe life with parole shouldn’t be on the table unless there is conclusive DNA evidence of the defendant’s guilt. I don’t know. But we can’t shrug our shoulders about it. After all, we were happy to incarcerate Fogle for the rest of his life when we thought he took someone else’s life. What will do now that we have effectively taken most of his?

What’s better for free speech on reddit, saving a single thread or getting the whole site unbanned in Russia?

If the choice is between all of reddit remaining banned in most of Russia and IP-blocking access to one thread about mushrooms, I’d block access to the thread. I think there’s a far stronger “pro-free-speech” argument for restoring access to 99.99% of reddit for Russians rather than inciting a total ban by refusing to restrict access to a single post.

Photo by Kirill Vinokurov, from Wikimedia

Facial Recognition Software Moves From Overseas Wars to Local Police

This is troubling:

Lt. Scott Wahl, a spokesman for the 1,900-member San Diego Police Department, said the department does not require police officers to file a report when they use the facial recognition technology but do not make an arrest. The department has no record of the stops involving Mr. Hanson and Mr. Harvey, and Lieutenant Wahl said that he did not know about the incidents but that they could have happened.

Should police departments be allowed to use facial recognition?

Yes.

Should they be able to use it with minimal consent, oversight and reporting requirements?

No.

Image from Wikimedia

The ethics of modern web ad-blocking

Marco Arment, creator of Instapaper and, more recently, Overcast:

This won’t be a clean, easy transition. Blocking pop-ups was much more incisive: it was easy for legitimate publishers to avoid one narrowly-useful Javascript function to open new windows. But it’s completely reasonable for today’s web readers to be so fed up that they disable all ads, or even all Javascript. Web developers and standards bodies couldn’t be more out of touch with this issue, racing ahead to give browsers and Javascript even more capabilities without adequately addressing the fundamental problems that will drive many people to disable huge chunks of their browser’s functionality.

I vascillate between Ghostery and uBlock, but they do the same thing: disable the scripts that power advertisements and tracking on the web. Some sites respect their visitors and present unobtrusive, high-quality advertisements. I whitelist those because, even if I’m unlikely to look at the ads and far less likely to actually click on them, the respect the publisher showed me deserves reciprocation.

But Arment is right. There’s no nice way to say it: publishers with shitty ads won’t remain viable much longer in the face of increased user awareness and response. The ability to use ad blockers in iOS 9 will only accelerate the downfall of sites with shitty ads.

Can the FTC ban digital goods?

Brent Kendall, writing at The Wall Street Journal:

The current case is about patents, but the ITC also can take action against goods that infringe copyrights, an issue important to Hollywood and other rights holders. They are eyeing the ITC as a new venue for combating foreign websites that trade in pirated digital material and the ability of U.S. consumers to access them.

If the court hearing this case on August 11th upholds the FTC’s decision to exercise its import ban authority in the digital realm the ramifications will be far-reaching and almost immediate. Music and movies, 3D printing, and perhaps even digitally transmitted and executed software code would be among the items open to FTC authority. The Federal Trade Commission has very little expertise in the digital space, so making the arbiters of what digital imports are okay and which are not may not be an intelligent approach.

Do we need a Digital Transmission Commission? If the FTC is to get digital ban authority it will need strong oversight.

Photo by Uberpenguin at Wikipedia

Federal Court’s data breach decision shows new tilt toward victims, class-action lawsuits

John Fontana writes at ZDNet:

In an interesting twist, the Court said the fact Neiman Marcus offered free credit monitoring services was evidence that there was harm to these victims. The ruling turned on its head the way courts historically view such services as compensation for harm while negating a victim's right to file a lawsuit (re: standing).

This may get very interesting very fast: if companies are at risk of being held ot have tacitly admitted liability by offering credit protection services to potential breach victims, they will stop offering that stuff.

The possibility of class actions instead of free credit monitoring may appeal to those whose data has been stolen, but it’s not really a great trade at all. Credit monitoring is expensive and the industry is still suffering growing pains, but class actions usually net plaintiffs an insignificant amount of money in damages while making lawyers very, very rich.

“Happy birthday” lawsuit takes a(n unexpectedly interesting) turn

Did you know copyright lawyers have waged a legal battle over ‘Happy Birthday’ for a long time? They have, and, somehow, it recently got interesting.

If this proposition is accepted by the judge, Warner/Chappell may lose out on a cash cow that is reported to reap $2 million a year in revenue. Filmmakers like the named plaintiffs — and others who have forked over as much as six figures to license — would no longer have to pay a penny to feature "Happy Birthday" in motion pictures and television shows.

If the copyright the company has been using for years to charge people licensing fees is invalidated, we may see a whole lot of lawsuits aimed at the would-be copyright holders to recoup those licensing fees.

"Birthday candles," Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

China-Tied Hackers That Hit U.S. Said to Breach United Airlines

This is starting to look like a concerted effort to gather a specific data set for some sort of coordinated use:

The previously unreported United breach raises the possibility that the hackers now have data on the movements of millions of Americans, adding airlines to a growing list of strategic U.S. industries and institutions that have been compromised. Among the cache of data stolen from United are manifests -- which include information on flights’ passengers, origins and destinations -- according to one person familiar with the carrier’s investigation.

Drone regulation, firefighting and basic decency

Michael Martinez, Paul Vercammen and Ben Brumfield report at CNN:

Five such "unmanned aircraft systems" prevented California firefighters from dispatching helicopters with water buckets for up to 20 minutes over a wildfire that roared Friday onto a Los Angeles area freeway that leads to Las Vegas.

This is an inappropriate use of drones, wholly lacking in basic decency. It’s not impossible, or even implausible, that a drone-related delay will some day result in the destruction of one or more homes or even get someone burned to death.

It’s not far removed from scumbaggery like the Ohio jackass who filmed the aftermath of a fatal car accident instead of helping the victims. Drone enthusiasts who want to minimize regulation already have a tough road ahead, so they would be wise to engage in some self-regulation.

Connecticut lawyer and commercial drone lobbyist Peter Sachs created the Drone Pilots Association to advocate for more commercial drone use. There is even video on his website of his using a drone to assist the volunteer fire department he works with.

The difference between sachs and the California morons is that Sachs offered his drone to the department for its use in battling a blaze. So it’s clear that drones can be a useful tool in fighting fires, they just shouldn’t be used for fire tourism when firefighters, homes and civilians are potentially in danger.

Photo of a 2008 California wildefire via Wikimedia Commons

Democracy.io - Contact your Members of Congress

Great stuff from the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

Failure to effectively reach members of Congress has disastrous consequences. Studies show that politicians fundamentally misconceive their constituents’ views, making it harder for them to represent us in the lawmaking process.

That’s why we built Democracy.io: a new tool to put you in touch with your members of Congress—with as few clicks as possible.

Ex-Googler says she exposed company-wide pay inequality with crowdsourced spreadsheet

Kristen V. Brown wrote for Fusion about Googler Erica Joy’s recent salary spreadsheet. Google had no response to her request for comment, which is the worst kind of response to something like this. Apple released, deliberately, a dismal diversity report (read: majority male, majority white) last year, and Tim Cook took responsibility for fixing it.

If there is a pay disparity problem at Google, or even the illusion of a pay disparity problem, Google PR needs to be on top of this story. The only time silence is ever okay is when you’re prepping a statement that will include unequivocal evidence that there is no disparity.

Antitrust official inappropriately lauds Amazon’s “disruptive business model”

DOJ antitrust head William J. Baer, speaking at a London antitrust conference:

By conspiring with Apple, which was seeking a fail-safe way to enter the market, five major publishers and Apple reached an agreement to drive the industry to an agency sales model and seize back control over and raise retail pricing of e-books. The department successfully challenged this conspiracy to quash Amazon’s disruptive business model, forcing the defendants to terminate the contractual agreements they had used to effectuate the conspiracy. Since then, Amazon’s disruptive business model has continued to stoke competition in the e-books marketplace.

That is an inappropriate way for a federal antitrust official to speak about a major market participant. Amazon did not make noise about Apple’s ebooks collusion for the good of its customers. They did it because low prices keep them on top, and because no other company is willing to bear the losses Amazon can endure, there is no end to their dominance in sight.

Apple’s attempt to raise prices in cooperation with five publishers did not end well for the Cupertino company and rightly so, but their motivations were logical. Amazon maintains low prices and therefore the illusion that they are doing customers a favor, and in the long run doing authors and publishers a favor by expanding the pool of would-be customers who can afford ebooks.

However, there is at least some truth to the concerns authors and publishers have expressed about Amazon’s dominance. The company is in a position to decide what books a large majority of book buyers can access. It’s a wise short-term strategy both business-wise and legally because it is as quiet and passive as Apple’s conspiracy was bold and aggressive. But long-term it’s likely to expose the company to regulatory inquiry at a time when Amazon is contemplating things like drone delivery, which will likely face stiffer regulation sooner than later, especially when put to retail use.

Of course based on Assistant Attorney General Baer’s comments at the Chatham House Annual Antitrust Conference, Amazon has at least one friend in a position, and a mindset, to lionize them despite questionable competition strategies.