Dana Blankenhorn

The Most Dangerous Legal Argument in the World

Oracle has escalated its war of legal words with Google with the most dangerous argument possible.

The burden is on Google to show the APIs it copied do not contain copyrightable expression because Oracle registered the copyrighted works at issue, which include the API specifications and the code.

Sounds innocuous, and it's supposed to. But if accepted by the court, and on appeal, it completely transforms the software landscape.

Oracle is arguing that it can copyright APIs and prevent companies from even connecting to its programs with them, without its permission, which may include demands for payment or for other business arrangements, at its sole discretion.

This would be a profound expansion of copyright, which remember lasts for the life of the creator plus 75 years, and is routinely extended any times it seems like Mickey Mouse might enter the public domain. (There is constant talk of making copyright eternal as well, and eliminating the public domain entirely.)

Net Becomes a Tower of Babel

Back when the Web was spun, nearly 20 years ago, the dream was simple. One network protocol, one network, a world connected, and people as well.

That dream has been fading for some time, but now it's pretty much over.

ICANN ended it this week, although the concept had already been on life support.

When it began letting domain names be written in languages other than English, the unified Web was basically dead. When a domain name is in Chinese, an American can't even type it, let alone know it. And if that's the domain's only name (increasingly that's the case) it's inaccessible outside the country.

What has been happening over the last few years is the gradual creation of national Internets, which can be controlled rigidly by national governments. China's is the most extensive, the largest as well as the most actively-censored Net in the world.

Intellectual Property Imperialism, or The 1793 Game

Think of this as Volume 15, Number 24 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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Ideas have no intrinsic value.

They are only valuable if they are exploited. You can only get value from them if you pursue an idea to a completed work or invention, or if you get so good at coming up with new ideas people who do scale works or invention will pay you to supply them.

Patent and copyright were first created as “monopolies” in our 1787 Constitution, but they did not become enforced until the late 19^th century, after the U.S. gained a positive balance-of-trade in the products of ideas – in books and inventions.

When countries like China and India choose to ignore our copyright and patent laws, they are walking in the foodsteps of people like Samuel Slater (right), the people whose inventiveness built this country. Slater copied his 1793 Rhode Island mill from one he'd worked at in England, in violation of English law. Eli Whitney never made money from his cotton gin – his money came from a gun made with interchangeable parts he was able to manufacture.

Even when copyright and patent rights are fully maintained, most of the money they generate does not go to the people who came up with the ideas. In fact, very little does. A singer or author may only earn a 15% royalty. Royalties on patents are even more modest.

So why has the United States become such a stickler on patent and copyright, to the point where the government is willing to call Google an outlaw in order to enforce these laws more rigorously? 

The Unexplained Death of Google Translate API

Yesterday, in a short blog post called "spring cleaning," Google announced it is deprecating (slowly killing) its Google Translate API.

APIs product manager Adam Feldman seems to have deliberately buried the lead, listing the Translate API among a collection of others. But linking to the API's page shows the software will be shut on December 1.

The Google Translate API page offers this cryptic explanation. "Due to the substantial economic burden caused by extensive abuse, the number of requests you may make per day will be limited and the API will be shut off completely on December 1, 2011."

How do you "abuse" a translation tool, and how does that cause any "economic burden," let alone a "substantial" one?

Before Accusing Anonymous, Sony, Some Proof Please

Sony's claim that the online advocacy group Anonymous hacked its Playstation 3 network, enabling the theft of personal data from millions of users, has been laughed away by the group.

For once we didn't do it, states a blog post at Anonops, which has in the past been a reliable port into the group's actual aims and claims.The post was linked from the Anonops Twitter feed, which also called Sony incompetent.

The charge by Sony, which is based in Japan but now run by an Australian, former CBS head Howard Stringer, is made under the signature of Kazuo Hirai, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Sony Computer Entertainment America. In support of testimony to a U.S. House subcommittee, it states "We discovered that the intruders had planted a file on one of our Sony Online Entertainment servers named “Anonymous” with the words 'We are Legion.'"

The only other bit of "evidence" Sony offered is that, so far, no credit card transactions have been consummated with any of the compromised data. Anonymous is known for attacks with political rather than financial motives.

Since the data theft on April 26, Sony has revealed that it didn't protect user passwords with encryption, only with a simple hash. 

Here's why I believe Anonymous didn't do it, but why it's in a world of trouble nevertheless:

Limits of Tolerance

Think of this as Volume 15, Number 16 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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Every generation's political thesis follows a pattern.

First, the old assumptions reach their sell-by date. They are overthrown, usually by someone associated with the old antithesis. But in leaning into the old assumptions as though they were still valid, the crisis leader angers core supporters. And it's only then, when supporters of the new Thesis react, that political change is truly established.

Think about it. Civil War. Lincoln was a former Whig, seen as squishy by Radical Republicans, and after his death those followers “waved the bloody shirt” for a generation to keep Democrats out of power.

The new antithesis, under Grover Cleveland, united Mugwump Republicans with urban and rural Democrats, but through the Populist Uprising it crashed. The new Thesis, under Teddy Roosevelt, prevailed for most of a generation, surrendering only to a new antithesis under Wilson, which accepted Roosevelt's assumptions on economic and foreign policy while adopting outright racism and religious know-nothingism to please its Populist base.

FDR had been part of the Wilson Administration. He supported the idea of budgetary balance at first, and built a lasting coalition only after his supporters rejected Wall Street Republicanism utterly, embracing Keynsian economics and an aggressive foreign policy. Nixon leaned against this as Eisenhower's Vice President, and after his election launched verbal attacks on members of the old coalition, leading his own followers to believe all Democrats were illegitimate, somehow foreign, hippie-type individuals out to take our guns, raid our cashboxes and surrender to the enemy of the moment.

Which brings us here. Obama overthrew the Nixon Coalition, which under GW Bush had reached its sell-by date with Iraq, Katrina and the Big Shitpile.

But there was an important element missing in the President's 2008 victory. Intolerance. By that I mean, most Democrats did not see Republicans as illegitimate, as dangerous, as worthy of loathing. Only Bush. Many were unwilling to defend their own ideas in 2010, which unleashed The Crazy.

Egypt, open source and revolution

Over at AOL-HuffPo, filmaker Raymond Schillinger is calling Egypt's the first open source revolution.

Having covered open source since 2005 I have one word for Mr. Schillinger.

No.

Schillinger seems to confuse open source, which is a software development and business model, with the computer revolution itself. (He also seems to think Wikipedia is open source -- it's Creative Commons.)

Some of his confusion comes from having been at a government open source conference during the uprising. Listening to people like Aneesh Chopra, (who hosed Virginia Democrats with a massive defense contract for managing the state's computers, leading to a Republican takeover) gush about how open source development is neato can turn your head.

And open source can be good for government at all levels, if you realize it's a make-or-buy decision, and if you commit to building your own internal resources, not just buying systems from contracts as Chopra did. If you do that, then you can really take advantage of everything going on around you, the work being done both inside and outside government, and by ordinary people as well. As presently implemented, open source is just a badge contractors use and they're the only people pocketing the savings.

But getting back to Egypt.

Internet, Economy, Polity

Think of this as Volume 15, Number 7 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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Like many I spent some time watching the riots in Tunisia and (later) Egypt over the last week.

Some of the stupid I heard on the TV was fairly understandable. Everyone was asking what this means to the U.S. Almost as if Tunisia or Egypt, and their people, did not exist. The fear was that some Islamic party might take over, that Egypt could become another Iran.

It could happen, but if that move is tried it can't succeed. The same forces that made the Tunisian and Egyptian governments vulnerable guarantee it.

And this is the point that is most misunderstood.

The American Civil Cold War

Think of this as Volume 15, Number 3 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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The first Civil War, like World War II, was an epic struggle with a final outcome.

Everyone who engaged in it knew what they were doing was important. Those who opposed either war, like Clement Vanlandingham or Charles Lindbergh, were swept away and the movements they represented tossed down the memory hole.

The Cold War was different.

The Cold War was a long, twilight struggle, engaged in mostly through proxies, and it was always controversial. It defined the differences between America's parties, mainly because Republicans wanted it  that way. Any objection, whether tentative or tactical, whether couched diplomatically or screamed on a street corner, led to proponents rejecting not just the speech but the speaker. They had to cry treason, they felt, because without absolute unity we might lose.

There was never the kind of absolute unity the Cold War's proponents demanded. Yet we won.

Since the height of the Vietnam war protest movement, I believe America has been engaged in a Civil Cold War. Like that other Cold War, it is mainly fought by proxy. Those behind the struggle never suffer, seldom die. That's the proxies' job. You don't become a hero by dying for your country -- you become one by making the other son of a bitch die for his country.

What a Real Cyberwar Looks Like

Ever since the Web was spun people have been buzzing about the idea of "cyberwar."

I have been among them. Over the last 15 years I have tracked online battles over East Timor, over Lebanon and Israel, over China and Chechnya. Every major conflict comes with a cyber-component these days.

But most are cyber in nature. Oh noes, you can't get to a particular site. Or maybe your connection goes away for a while. Pinpricks.

Real cyberwar doesn't just take place in cyberspace. Real cyberwar takes place in meat space, and is a concentrated effort by government to enforce local law on a global scale.

When Chinese or Iranian bloggers are arrested and put in jail to rot, that's cyberwar. When it becomes a crime to pass on valuable information, or to have it on a server, that's cyberwar.

Cyberwar has come to America.