Two recent court cases have interesting ramifications. The government of Arizona is forced to turn over metadata along with the documents turned over in FOA requests, and a US District Judge has ruled that owners of data stored on 3rd party computers don’t have to be notified when a warrant has been used to seize your information.

Amazon’s PhrasePay system has a new take on online shopping security. Now, with outtakes! Note: I am working on improving the video quality; please forgive me for the fuzziness- I just moved to an Adobe Premier Pro editing suite and I haven’t massaged the settings yet.

A very ugly, unscripted and unshaven (!) Geeking Akron’s continuing run-in with the inapplicably-named “Swine Flu.”

Is cloud computing ready for primetime?

With barely a few weeks before the official launch of Windows 7, one would think that all efforts of the company would be geared toward that event. Instead, some of that energy is being directed toward… H1N1 (”Swine”) Flu education.

Actually, I kinda like that.

Normally I would leave the H1N1 reporting and info to the News department and editorial staff here at AkronNewsNow, but hey- it’s encroached on my turf; and considering tht we’ve been giving a fair amount of space to H1N1 reporting, I thought I’d throw this into the mix.

The Microsoft H1N1 site (visit it here) is an informational site run off of Microsofts newer CloudApp services and aims to educate the public on genereal H1N1 information, a self-assessment tool, tips on what to do if you have (or think you have) the virus, and a survey system to get Epidemiological data to Emory Univeristy, where it derives it’s medical information (so No, your health and wellbeing are not being managed by the old Windows ME development team because they were not allowed to do anything else within the company).
Hat tip to Fark, of all places.

Ah, the Federal Trade Commission, fixing things that aren’t broken, and breaking more in the process. Earlier this year, the FTC solicited comments on new proposed regulatory changes to rules regarding public endorsements of products, this time focusing on social media applications such as blogs, facebook, twitter and other services. The largest user blocks of these services are private consumers, who use them to keep in touch with others and occasionally get some non-traditonally derived news and information.

After the comment period passed, the FTC formalized the changes and by Dec. 1 of this year, the new rules go into place where bloggers and others will be restricted in how they present any mention of a product or service where some measure of remuneration may -or may not- be given in exchange for the endosement. Violations of the guidelines would result in an $11,000 fine per occurance.

The basis for the changes is both simple and laudable. You can read the changes and explanatory text here at the FTC website (it took me a while to get through, and I recommend an adult beverage if you’re of age, as a it can be tough going as such text always is in an 81-page regulatory agency report). In a nutshell, if a product or service provider gives incentives or pays money to have a blogger or other electronic publisher for a review or endorsement, then that relationship should be disclosed. I have no problem with this, it is basic transparency that most people already subscribe to.

Where it all goes horribly pear-shaped is the complete lack of any detail or safeguards to give a pass to those who do not receive any actual remuneration for said services, and as a matter of law (Hey! Here’s my first disclaimer! You knew it was coming: I am NOT a lawyer. Just a guy in the internet publishing industry that has to watch these things). Another is that it makes no distinction of professional product reviewers and consumers who simply use social media services. Indeed, even “word of mouth” (as defined as even consumer-level of posting activity to social media sites) is a targeted outlet of endorsement by the new regs. One of the traps that I see is that just giving a product or service to someone without any actual further payment can actually make a blogger/twitterer/Facebooker liable under the regulations, if the product or service is of an uncertain, undefined value:

For example, a blogger could receive merchandise from a marketer with a
request to review it, but with no compensation paid other than the value of the product itself. Inthis situation, whether or not any positive statement the blogger posts would be deemed an “endorsement” within the meaning of the Guides would depend on, among other things, the value of that product, and on whether the blogger routinely receives such requests. (page 10)

The best way to shed light on these things is by hard examples. Take the following true scenario:

Last week, my cronies and I attended a Microsoft-sponsored Server 2008 / Windows 7 rollout event in Pittsburgh, PA for IT and internet professionals. Personally, I went simply because I could consider myself a “professional” for the afternoon, but it is useful for other reasons as well that aren’t germaine to this topic. Anyhoo… a “goody bag” item for attending is a full copy of Windows 7 Ultimate, a few weeks before the operating system becomes publicly available.

Does this look like a face that can afford an $11,000 fine for talking about something?

I’ve installed it, tested it, and it runs great. What’s more, I’ve blogged about it and posted items regarding it on Facebook. Would I have fallen within the confines of the new FTC guidlelines if I haven’t stated something to the effect of “PROMOTIONAL COPY OF WINDOWS 7 FOR REVIEWED WAS GRANTED GRATIS BY THE MICROSOFT CORPORATION TO THE REVIEWER BECAUSE HE’S TOO CHEAP TO BUY AN INDIVIDUAL COPY AND HE DROVE AN HOUR AND A HALF TO GET INFO ON IT ANYWAY FOR HIS DUTIES AT HIS JOB.” All true? Indeed, but is it relevant? Let’s look at the probable reasoning behind granting copies to IT folk (Yay! Another disclaimer! “I can’t speak for Microsoft, I am only surmising what they’re thinking with the policy of gifting copies of software at these events”). They have an audience of decision makers and specialists and primary consumers within a room. Businesses and other consumers listen to them. Making them more comfortale with a new product makes it more likely that they, and others, will be more receptive to purchasing their products and using their software. Giving a free sample of a product to these people is likely to increase down the road sales exponentially, even though we didn’t shell out the retail $300 a copy for the DVD.

Did Microsoft ask for a review? Was there a pleading for good social media references? Was Steve Balmer on his hands and knees in the foyer begging ‘please give us some props’ and sweating profusely? All no. As far as the expectation of Microsoft, we could have used them as coasters under our 20-ounce Mountain Dews. But, let’s face it, the FTC itself states that value would be a consideration in determining whether a violation of the guidelines had occured, and judging by history $300 (by most accounts what the box retail version of Ultimate would sell for) would gain the attention of someone in a cheap blue suit.

But this is just one example, and it effects geeks like me. Let’s try another that hits YOU closer to home.

Congratulations, caller- You’re a winner!!! Two tickets to the big concert on Friday!
Thanks TK O’Grady at WONE 97.5 for letting me take the pic while he was eating lunch.

Congrats, you just won a couple of tickets to the next [insert your favorite band here] concert on the weekend- just don’t say anything about it. As things read in the regulations, it seems that items given from a product producer or service provider -in this case, a concert promotor or venue- through an intermediary -a radio station- still makes the requirements follow the actual item through the intermediary, reglardless of whether the end recipient has any relationship with the originator of the tickets whatsoever. Let’s read through this slowly, with my own additions in bold to specify who is who in this clear-as-mud pile of dingos kidneys called ‘clarifying text’:

The recent creation of consumer-generated media means that in many instances, endorsements are now disseminated by the endorser, rather than by the sponsoring advertiser [the concert promoter -/bryan]. In these contexts, the Commission believes that the endorser [the radio station] is the party primarily responsible for
disclosing material connections with the advertiser [the concert promoter again]. However, advertisers [the concert promotor, again] who sponsor these endorsers [The radio station, again] (either by providing free products – directly or through a middleman [the radio station is the middleman in this situation, follow along close here] – or otherwise) in order to generate positive word of mouth and spur sales should establish procedures to advise endorsers [this means YOU, as the radio station was acting as a middleman] that they should make the necessary disclosures and to monitor the conduct of those endorsers [again, this means YOU, if you write about it. Positive word of mouth, and all that.].(page 39)

By the way, the aforementioned recommendation of an adult beverage (Disclaimer: “if you’re of age!”) is to blunt the pain incurred from beating your head against your computer monitor, which you are surely doing at this point.

So are you wanting to tweet “Great concert!” from your smartphone from the concert? I don’t think 140 characters are going to be enough in room for a disclaimer to keep you from civil penalties, were someone from the FTC to press the point.

Basically, this is poorly written drivel while there is no distinction made between those who write reviews for a living, or who write them as a matter of course in addition to their duties and the average consumer who gets caught up in the dragnet of government boilerplate. Think it won’t get to this level?

It was reported last week that an elderly couple in Spring, Texas was raided by federal authorities in a SWAT-style operation under the auspices of the Fish and Wildlife Service for the horrible crime of- possessing legal orchids in their greenhouse.

Mr. Norris ended up spending almost two years in prison because he didn’t have the proper paperwork for some of the many orchids he imported. The orchids were all legal – but Mr. Norris and the overseas shippers who had packaged the flowers had failed to properly navigate the many, often irrational, paperwork requirements the U.S. imposed when it implemented an arcane international treaty’s new restrictions on trade in flowers and other flora.

It wasn’t even their fault, but they were convicted anyway. Badly written regulations have even worse consequences.

It’s my personal belief that the long-held notion that the intent to commit a crime needs to be present for a crime to have been committed, but the wandering maze of beureaucratic hell we’ve been developing over recent decades have made the act of living nearly impossible without inadvertantly breaking some laws and rules somewhere along the line.