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Monday, June 20, 2011
Closing Out Shorts (39% Cash)
We took our QID and SDS leveraged shorts off today. Not that we won’t put them back on eventually, but the 200 day moving average seems to be pretty decent support for now. (We added longs back in March) This capital has yet to be redeployed — we are now running about 39% cash in [...]
Tech Leaders Netflix, Apple Dog Nasdaq ETF
John Spence submits:
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Recent softness in technology leaders Apple (AAPL) and Netflix (NFLX) is a big reason why a Nasdaq-100 exchange traded fund is trailing the overall market as measured by the S&P 500.
One way to hedge further weakness from these ?technology generals? is to purchase an ETF that shorts the Nasdaq-100, an investment newsletter said Monday. In other words, this bearish ETF is designed to profit when the tech-heavy index declines on any given day.
The past two sessions have seen ?relative weakness? from the pair with Apple ?firmly cracking? its 200-day exponential moving average and trading at its lowest level since November of last year, says Tarquin Coe, technical analyst at Investors Intelligence.
?Ongoing underperformance from prior leaders is not indicative of a healthy market,? he wrote in a note to subscribers Monday.
He recommended a position in ProShares Short QQQ (PSQ). The ETF seeks a return of 100% of
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Don't Forget Your Logged Out Users
I find myself saying this quite often these days to entrepreneurs and their product teams. It's something that I've noticed working with leading social platforms like Etsy, Twitter, Tumblr, and others. Services such as these have a large number of...
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Peanuts Rights Holder Shuts Down Peanutweeter, Pisses Off Fans For No Reason At All
You may recall, a few years back, all the attention received by a site called Garfield Minus Garfield, in which a guy, Dan Walsh, took Garfield comic strips and "removed" Garfield, creating existentially weird comic strips in their place. We wrote about it three years ago, mainly to point out how nice it was that Garfield creator Jim Davis didn't freak out about it, and noted that he enjoyed it. In fact, Davis and his publisher, Ballantine Books, were so pleased with the attention it got, that they all worked together to put out an official Garfield Minus Garfield book. As we noted, we hoped that others who saw people doing creative things with their works would react similarly.
Apparently the folks who own the rights to the famed Peanuts comic strip empire see things quite differently. Over the past few weeks, the site Peanutweeter has received a bunch of attention with various websites writing about it and showing off some of the strips. The way Peanutweeter worked is that the guy behind it, Jason Agnello, would pair up a frame from a Peanuts cartoon with a semi-random tweet he would find that would match with the scene (and put the Tweeter credit below). Here are a few examples: 
Anyway, you guessed it, with all that attention, it appears that Iconix Brand Group, the owner of Peanuts Worldwide, LLC., became aware of this and... did the stupid, but easy, thing of sending a DMCA takedown to Tumblr. You can see the letter below. It's a pretty standard DMCA takedown letter. It's not clear if Tumblr automatically complied, or told Jason and he complied, but all of the comics have been taken off the site, replaced with a post about the DMCA notice. 
Jason points out that he believes the use is fair use, but doesn't want to bother fighting this. ScytheNoire points us to an analysis of why Peanutweeter is likely fair use, though as we've discussed before, in many cases, it really just depends on whether or not the judge likes something. The post runs through the standard four factors and argues a strong likelihood of fair use, an analysis I think is pretty accurate. In theory, if Jason did desire to pursue it, he could push for sanctions. Issuing a DMCA takedown on fair use content is potentially a sanctionable offense, though, the law there is still a bit unsettled.
But even beyond the legal aspect here, let's discuss the basic common sense approach here. Now, obviously, Peanuts is a huge licensing business these days, but so is Garfield. In the case of Garfield, Davis and others quickly (and correctly) realized that such derivative works didn't harm or tarnish the brand in any way. Quite the contrary, it brought renewed interest in the strip, especially from an audience that might not normally care. On top of that, the friendly and encouraging approach resulted in a book from which they could all profit.
On the flipside, you have Iconix/Peanuts, who have just pissed off thousands of people online who followed Peanutweeter on Twitter and Tumblr -- and all for what? This was getting attention and getting people (who normally wouldn't) to think about Peanuts again. That's an opportunity. But it takes a special kind of lawyer to look at a great opportunity, and think that demands a legal threat letter.
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Apparently the folks who own the rights to the famed Peanuts comic strip empire see things quite differently. Over the past few weeks, the site Peanutweeter has received a bunch of attention with various websites writing about it and showing off some of the strips. The way Peanutweeter worked is that the guy behind it, Jason Agnello, would pair up a frame from a Peanuts cartoon with a semi-random tweet he would find that would match with the scene (and put the Tweeter credit below). Here are a few examples:
But even beyond the legal aspect here, let's discuss the basic common sense approach here. Now, obviously, Peanuts is a huge licensing business these days, but so is Garfield. In the case of Garfield, Davis and others quickly (and correctly) realized that such derivative works didn't harm or tarnish the brand in any way. Quite the contrary, it brought renewed interest in the strip, especially from an audience that might not normally care. On top of that, the friendly and encouraging approach resulted in a book from which they could all profit.
On the flipside, you have Iconix/Peanuts, who have just pissed off thousands of people online who followed Peanutweeter on Twitter and Tumblr -- and all for what? This was getting attention and getting people (who normally wouldn't) to think about Peanuts again. That's an opportunity. But it takes a special kind of lawyer to look at a great opportunity, and think that demands a legal threat letter.
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Sega Pass hack exposed 1.3 million accounts, LulzSec denies responsibility
"We are deeply sorry for causing trouble to our customers," Sega spokesperson Yoko Nagasawa said in today's statement. "We want to work on strengthening security."
This time, hacker collective LulzSec isn't claiming responsibility, instead sending out a tweet offering to help Sega find the actual culprit. "We love the Dreamcast," they said. "These people are going down."
Sega Pass hack exposed 1.3 million accounts, LulzSec denies responsibility originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 20 Jun 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Climatologists figuring out which data make their models better
In order to improve long-term predictions of global climate change, we need more information about the current and changing environment. Unfortunately, in the current era of government budget problems, expensive satellite climate studies are being cut, so it is important to identify the measurements we need the most, choosing among things like air temperature, pressure, humidity, radiance at various wavelengths, radiation transfer to and from the surface, etc.
One possible way of prioritizing is to figure out which of those measures would help us the most when it comes to projecting future climate change, and focus research funds there. A paper that recently appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science presents a statistical method for doing this and shows that surface temperature measurements may not be the most useful data to improve surface temperature predictions.
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Report: Skype logo on slide in Brazilian PlayStation Vita presentation
Why would there be any doubt that a PSP feature would carry forward? Well, for one thing, between the PSP version and now, Skype was purchased by Sony's competitor Microsoft; for another, the PSP Go proved that we can't expect any feature to carry forward from one Sony handheld to another, not even playing PSP games.
When it acquired Skype, Microsoft said it planned to continue supporting versions on non-Microsoft platforms, so it's not impossible that it would continue supporting Sony handhelds. Right now, this is unconfirmed, as neither Microsoft or Sony offered comment when queried by Joystiq.
Report: Skype logo on slide in Brazilian PlayStation Vita presentation originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 17 Jun 2011 18:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Daily State of the Markets: Getting Interesting
David Moenning submits:
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Good morning. The vast majority of the time, the stock market tends to respond to news inputs in the short-term while moving to and fro within the primary trend. However, there are times (such as we are seeing now) when the primary trend is in question. Thus, how the market reacts to the news is oftentimes more important than the news itself. Friday's market was a good example of this idea: Traders were treated to what appeared to be good news out of Germany and France, yet the bulls couldn't seem to do much with it.
While the Dow and S&P did manage to finish with green on the screen, the same can't be said for the Nasdaq. And in short, "the action" was disconcerting to those who might have expected to see an oversold rally get legs in response to Germany backing down from its stance of the mandatory
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DannyB's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week
This week's "favorites" post comes from DannyB.
Having never done the favorite posts before, I wasn't sure if I should. Since I didn't have to pee, I hope I made the right decision.
The best laugh all week was Man Tries To Patent Godly Powers; Justifies It By Pointing To Software & Business Method Patents. That makes sense in an insane sort of way. Multiple forms of insanity combined. He forgot to mention aliens. 'Nuff said.
Speaking of patents: Congress Happy To Knock Out Patents That Impact Financial Institutions... But Everyone Else?. Don't worry. This is good news in disguise. Precedent: You protected Johnny from bad patents, why not me too? What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
Microsoft To US Gov't: Hey, Only We Should Be Able To Use Patents To Shakedown Other Companies!. Nice hypocrisy there Microsoft. Live by the patent, die by the patent. (Apple, are you listening?)
56 pages of iTunes terms? Really? Can't we get a short version in one sentence? Try this: You agree to return to the Apple store each month and do whatever they tell you. I AGREE
Which brings me to Music Service Simfy Files Complaint Over Apple Blocking Its iPad App. When you build a business on something controlled by a party with conflicting interests, be prepared to have the rug yanked out from under you. It's not the first time, and it won't be the last. (Disclaimer: Android fanboy talking.) Android lacks a single point of control. There are currently multiple Android app stores (e.g., Google, Amazon), with more on the way. (Will I get in trouble for saying "app store"?) If you don't like Google's store or its policies, approval process, etc, there is Amazon's store. More choice (not less) is a good thing.
I had to chuckle at Former Obama Advisor Says Wikileaks Is Wonderful For The US Government. It's a shame the US government doesn't understand the importance of anonymous public whistle blowing. Of course, maybe they do, but I'd rather not go there.
The next article was informative. How Out Of Control Copyright Law Is Keeping Millions Of Books & Images Away From Scholars. I admit I had been one of those confused about the "science" and "arts" part of "useful arts and science". I didn't know copyrights were for science and patents were for useful arts. That profoundly affects what I think copyrights were intended to protect.
Next was Once Again, The Freedom Of Information Act Is Proving To Be Just That: An Act. If the Osama Bin Laden pictures are released, we learn nothing new. (Unless it would reveal something we didn't know! My mind races with possibilities if I go there.) Otherwise, propaganda usage of the pictures is irrelevant. Honest people could comply with FOIA. If the government would act honestly most of the time, they would have credibility when they need to protect a secret.
Which leads to several ICE domain seizure favorites.
Talk about the right hand of government not knowing what the left hand is doing. C'mon guys. Which do you want? The free flow of information or censorship and government control. It's a delusion to think you can have both.
I was happy to see continuing pushback on mass copyright infringement lawsuits and copyright trolling.
Oh goodie. FBI Agents Getting More Power To Spy On People With Less Oversight. Why is this not surprising. CDA. DMCA. PATRIOT Act. ACTA. PROTECT-IP. Naked scanners. Patdowns. Controlling "rogue" websites. Government as a private police force, no due process. GPS tracking without due process. Making a joke of FOIA. Where does it end?
Maybe it just gets worse. US Trying To Extradite UK TVShack Admin Over Questionable Copyright Charges?. It turns out the US is not just trying, they're actually going to do it. Wow. The discussion on this topic says it all.
Summit Entertainment May Learn That You Can't File A Copyright Takedown Over A Trademark Issue. What to say? The title itself is the punch line. I hope that abuses of the DMCA starts resulting in some serious costs to the abuser.
Senators Unconcerned About Massive Unintended Consequences Of Criminalizing People For Embedding YouTube Videos. I should be shocked. But I'm too numb from other government actions. Clearly the senators don't give the south end of a northbound rat.
What did we learn? People in government should be required to have a full bladder. Which brings me back to where I started. (Oh, gotta run now. . .)
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Having never done the favorite posts before, I wasn't sure if I should. Since I didn't have to pee, I hope I made the right decision.
The best laugh all week was Man Tries To Patent Godly Powers; Justifies It By Pointing To Software & Business Method Patents. That makes sense in an insane sort of way. Multiple forms of insanity combined. He forgot to mention aliens. 'Nuff said.
Speaking of patents: Congress Happy To Knock Out Patents That Impact Financial Institutions... But Everyone Else?. Don't worry. This is good news in disguise. Precedent: You protected Johnny from bad patents, why not me too? What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
Microsoft To US Gov't: Hey, Only We Should Be Able To Use Patents To Shakedown Other Companies!. Nice hypocrisy there Microsoft. Live by the patent, die by the patent. (Apple, are you listening?)
56 pages of iTunes terms? Really? Can't we get a short version in one sentence? Try this: You agree to return to the Apple store each month and do whatever they tell you. I AGREE
Which brings me to Music Service Simfy Files Complaint Over Apple Blocking Its iPad App. When you build a business on something controlled by a party with conflicting interests, be prepared to have the rug yanked out from under you. It's not the first time, and it won't be the last. (Disclaimer: Android fanboy talking.) Android lacks a single point of control. There are currently multiple Android app stores (e.g., Google, Amazon), with more on the way. (Will I get in trouble for saying "app store"?) If you don't like Google's store or its policies, approval process, etc, there is Amazon's store. More choice (not less) is a good thing.
I had to chuckle at Former Obama Advisor Says Wikileaks Is Wonderful For The US Government. It's a shame the US government doesn't understand the importance of anonymous public whistle blowing. Of course, maybe they do, but I'd rather not go there.
The next article was informative. How Out Of Control Copyright Law Is Keeping Millions Of Books & Images Away From Scholars. I admit I had been one of those confused about the "science" and "arts" part of "useful arts and science". I didn't know copyrights were for science and patents were for useful arts. That profoundly affects what I think copyrights were intended to protect.
Next was Once Again, The Freedom Of Information Act Is Proving To Be Just That: An Act. If the Osama Bin Laden pictures are released, we learn nothing new. (Unless it would reveal something we didn't know! My mind races with possibilities if I go there.) Otherwise, propaganda usage of the pictures is irrelevant. Honest people could comply with FOIA. If the government would act honestly most of the time, they would have credibility when they need to protect a secret.
Which leads to several ICE domain seizure favorites.
- The List Of Sites Challenging Domain Seizures
- Rojadirecta Sues US Government, Homeland Security & ICE Over Domain Seizure
- ICE Stalling On More FOIA Requests Concerning Domain Name Seizures
- Government working for private industry.
- Lack of due process, legal service, representation and response.
- Making a(nother) mockery of FOIA.
- Its ineffectiveness.
- Hurting unrelated subdomains; demonstrating a lack of understanding of how things actually work.
- Impacting sites outside the US.
Talk about the right hand of government not knowing what the left hand is doing. C'mon guys. Which do you want? The free flow of information or censorship and government control. It's a delusion to think you can have both.
I was happy to see continuing pushback on mass copyright infringement lawsuits and copyright trolling.
- From Two Nude Nuns Mass BitTorrent Lawsuits Down To None
- Judge Rules That Righthaven Lawsuit Was A Sham; Threatens Sanctions
- Denver Post Sued Over Righthaven Connection
- Those Who Settled With Righthaven Consider Taking Action; Righthaven Threatens Them With More Suits
Oh goodie. FBI Agents Getting More Power To Spy On People With Less Oversight. Why is this not surprising. CDA. DMCA. PATRIOT Act. ACTA. PROTECT-IP. Naked scanners. Patdowns. Controlling "rogue" websites. Government as a private police force, no due process. GPS tracking without due process. Making a joke of FOIA. Where does it end?
Maybe it just gets worse. US Trying To Extradite UK TVShack Admin Over Questionable Copyright Charges?. It turns out the US is not just trying, they're actually going to do it. Wow. The discussion on this topic says it all.
Summit Entertainment May Learn That You Can't File A Copyright Takedown Over A Trademark Issue. What to say? The title itself is the punch line. I hope that abuses of the DMCA starts resulting in some serious costs to the abuser.
Senators Unconcerned About Massive Unintended Consequences Of Criminalizing People For Embedding YouTube Videos. I should be shocked. But I'm too numb from other government actions. Clearly the senators don't give the south end of a northbound rat.
What did we learn? People in government should be required to have a full bladder. Which brings me back to where I started. (Oh, gotta run now. . .)
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Viral Video: D9 Acting CEO Jane Lynch on the "R-Word"
"Glee" star Jane Lynch opened the ninth D: All Things Digital in a terrific bit of stand-up, posing as the acting CEO of News Corp. and making all kinds of comical proclamations.
But one thing she thinks should not be made fun of are loaded "R-words" that denigrate those with intellectual disabilities, as you will see in this riveting PSA.
But one thing she thinks should not be made fun of are loaded "R-words" that denigrate those with intellectual disabilities, as you will see in this riveting PSA.
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Blog Post: ??????: ???????????? ?? WP7 ? Softkey
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Sunday, June 19, 2011
Cash Kings: 10 Companies Positioned to Gain Market Share, Reward Shareholders
MarketGrader.com submits:
Amid an uncertain economic climate, investors should be looking not only for companies that are able to survive an economic downturn but also for those that might actually benefit from taking market share from weaker rivals that may be too busy defending their turf or simply focused on surviving a weak economy.
A good place to find these companies is MarketGrader?s "Cash Kings" idea list, one of 22 unique lists published daily for our subscribers. In order to qualify as a "Cash King", a company must have an overall ?Buy? rating from MarketGrader, a Cash Flow overall grade of at least A- and a minimum of $1 billion in cash on hand.
Our current list, available for free to all visitors as the Idea List of the Week
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New malware steals your Bitcoin
In a sure sign that the virtual currency Bitcoin has hit the mainstream, a new Trojan horse program discovered in the wild Thursday seeks out and steals victims’ Bitcoin wallets, the same way other malware goes for their banking passwords or credit card numbers.
The malware, Infostealer.Coinbit, is fairly simple: it targets Windows machines and zeroes in on the standard file location for a Bitcoin wallet. It then e-mails the wallet—a data file containing private crypto keys—to the attacker by way of a server in Poland, according to Symantec, which was first to alert on the attack.
“If you use Bitcoins, you have the option to encrypt your wallet and we recommend that you choose a strong password for this in the event that an attacker is attempting to brute-force your wallet open,” Symantec’s Stephen Doherty wrote in a blog post Thursday.
Bitcoin is an anonymous, decentralized virtual currency that’s been percolating for the last two years, and broke out into widespread attention with Gawker’s excellent June 1 story on Silk Road, the online drug market where Bitcoin is the standard currency. Independent of any national currency, Bitcoin is exchanged peer-to-peer, or earned by users who contribute CPU cycles to mathematically generating new Bitcoin, a process called “mining.”
Hacker-types have been sniffing around Bitcoin since at least April, when a program called Stealthcoin debuted that’s tailor-made for turning a botnet of compromised computers into a covert parallel Bitcoin mining machine. The first actual theft of Bitcoins was reported this week by a user who claimed a hacker transferred 25,000 BTC from his machine, theoretically worth about $500,000 at current exchange rates.
With its single-minded focus, Infostealer.Coinbit has the feel of an interim solution. In the future, Bitcoin theft will probably be a standard feature in full-featured Trojans.
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Jeff Bezos On Innovation: Stubborn On Vision; Flexible On Details
For years, I've been fascinated by Jeff Bezos' ability to make big risky decisions for Amazon and stand up to intense investor pressure to go in a different direction. While everything may seem rosy at Amazon these days, for years, it was amazing to see just how much investor animosity there was towards some of Bezos' moves. For years -- quite by design -- the company focused on growth and expansion over profitability, earning complaints from investors. Then Amazon focused on expanding its free shipping program, which drew the ire of investors who thought it was costing the company too much. But Amazon stuck with these efforts and became the dominant player in the field. More recently, it's done things that left some investors scratching their heads, such as the whole Amazon Web Services effort, and even the early Kindle effort -- and yet both have proven to be quite successful.
Geekwire notes that at the latest Amazon shareholder meeting, Bezos got almost the exact opposite question from those he used to get concerning these sorts of things, from Evan Jacobs, questioning if Amazon wasn't taking enough risks. Bezos' answer is fantastic for anyone who thinks about innovation these days, and wants to make big bets, rather than go for the quick flip:
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Geekwire notes that at the latest Amazon shareholder meeting, Bezos got almost the exact opposite question from those he used to get concerning these sorts of things, from Evan Jacobs, questioning if Amazon wasn't taking enough risks. Bezos' answer is fantastic for anyone who thinks about innovation these days, and wants to make big bets, rather than go for the quick flip:
In a way, that is like the nicest compliment I’ve ever gotten. First of all, I think we have gotten pretty lucky recently. You should anticipate a certain amount of failure. Our two big initiatives, AWS and Kindle — two big, clean-sheet initiatives — have worked out very well. Ninety-plus percent of the innovation at Amazon is incremental and critical and much less risky. We know how to open new product categories. We know how to open new geographies. That doesn’t mean that these things are guaranteed to work, but we have a lot of expertise and a lot of knowledge. We know how to open new fulfillment centers, whether to open one, where to locate it, how big to make it. All of these things based on our operating history are things that we can analyze quantitatively rather than to have to make intuitive judgments.That idea of willing to be misunderstood for a long time really has been the key to Amazon's success, and Bezos' ability to stand up to investors who regularly called for changes in strategy and to focus on the long-term has really paid off. In this age when "pivot" has become a buzzword in the startup community (there's even a whole conference on the subject), where companies completely shift strategies on whims, perhaps there's something to be said for seeing the long term game plan better than others, and sticking to it. Obviously, this doesn't mean being totally pigheaded if an idea isn't working, but Bezos' point is to be flexible on the details, but stay true to the ultimate vision you believe in. That's really, really tough for a lot of entrepreneurs to do, but it's a really important lesson to learn.
When you look at something like, go back in time when we started working on Kindle almost seven years ago…. There you just have to place a bet. If you place enough of those bets, and if you place them early enough, none of them are ever betting the company. By the time you are betting the company, it means you haven’t invented for too long.
If you invent frequently and are willing to fail, then you never get to that point where you really need to bet the whole company. AWS also started about six or seven years ago. We are planting more seeds right now, and it is too early to talk about them, but we are going to continue to plant seeds. And I can guarantee you that everything we do will not work. And, I am never concerned about that…. We are stubborn on vision. We are flexible on details…. We don’t give up on things easily. Our third-party seller business is an example of that. It took us three tries to get the third-party seller business to work. We didn’t give up.
But. if you get to a point where you look at it and you say look, we are continuing invest a lot of money in this, and it’s not working and we have a bunch of other good businesses, and this is a hypothetical scenario, and we are going to give up on this. On the day you decide to give up on it, what happens? Your operating margins go up because you stopped investing in something that wasn’t working. Is that really such a bad day?
So, my mind never lets me get in a place where I think we can’t afford to take these bets, because the bad case never seems that bad to me. And, I think to have that point of view, requires a corporate culture that does a few things. I don’t think every company can do that, can take that point of view. A big piece of the story we tell ourselves about who we are, is that we are willing to invent. We are willing to think long-term. We start with the customer and work backwards. And, very importantly, we are willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time.
I believe if you don’t have that set of things in your corporate culture, then you can’t do large-scale invention. You can do incremental invention, which is critically important for any company. But it is very difficult — if you are not willing to be misunderstood. People will misunderstand you.
Any time you do something big, that’s disruptive — Kindle, AWS — there will be critics. And there will be at least two kinds of critics. There will be well-meaning critics who genuinely misunderstand what you are doing or genuinely have a different opinion. And there will be the self-interested critics that have a vested interest in not liking what you are doing and they will have reason to misunderstand. And you have to be willing to ignore both types of critics. You listen to them, because you want to see, always testing, is it possible they are right?
But if you hold back and you say, ‘No, we believe in this vision,’ then you just stay heads down, stay focused and you build out your vision.
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Irish Hotel The Latest To Sue Google Over Autocomplete Suggestions
Another day, another auto suggest lawsuit for Google. There's apparently no shortage of people, places and things being defamed by an innocent algorithm. Last year, the French courts found against Google's proprietary "Suggest" in several cases. In January of 2010, the Centre National Prive de Formation a Distance (CNFDI) was appalled that "Google" would suggest the word "scam" be linked to its initials. This was also the case with Direct Energie, (another) French company, who also felt that "scam" should not be algorithmically appended to searches for its business. Later in the year, the French courts did what they do best: blame Google for its users' actions, finding it guilty of libel for somehow linking the words "rapist," "satanist" and "convicted" to searches pertaining to a certain convicted sex offender.
Then France invited Google to take its suggested (by its users) search terms and stop suggesting them when users searched for music or movies. The courts lost this one, but Google went ahead and kept on censoring, most likely seeing this as the path of least resistance, especially when it came to the famous French Resistance (Post-Internet Edition).
And it's not just France. An Italian man sued Google (and won) because searches for his name came with bonus features like "con man" and "fraud."
Of course, all of this is old news. In fact, people have been suing Google for its suggestions (none of which are its own) since the dawn of time (ca. 2006), when ServrCheck sued the search engine giant for its willingness to tack on "keygen" and "crack" to searches for its software.
With all that history behind it, there should be no surprised noises or raised eyebrows from anyone regarding this latest bit of news. Now it's an Irish hotel's turn to step up to the Complaint Box and file a grievance. This suit brings an all-new term to the "Google Suggest Hall O' Libelous Shame": "receivership." Apparently, people searching for information on the Ballymascanion Hotel are finding "receivership" high up on the Autocomplete list. Now, it's not the people that have an issue with this. After all, the "people" are the ones who put it there. Rather, it's the hotel itself that's upset about being linked to something as tawdry as "receivership," but rather than issue a press release or update its Facebook page or whatever, it's decided to drag Google and its terrible Suggestions into the courtroom.
Now, it's been said before at Techdirt (and several other places) that this isn't Google's doing. The suggestions that show up in the search field are based on what people are actually searching for. But obviously you can't hold everyone liable for unintentionally disparaging your business while trying to ensure their money doesn't end up in the pockets of "con men," "scammers" and "frauds." Google really shouldn't be expected to tweak its algorithm to fit each individual user, much less be forced into laundering someone or something's unsavory reputation by deleting terms the users don't care for. But as long as the courts keep siding with the "victims," "victims" will keep dragging Google into court for something it isn't doing.
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Then France invited Google to take its suggested (by its users) search terms and stop suggesting them when users searched for music or movies. The courts lost this one, but Google went ahead and kept on censoring, most likely seeing this as the path of least resistance, especially when it came to the famous French Resistance (Post-Internet Edition).
And it's not just France. An Italian man sued Google (and won) because searches for his name came with bonus features like "con man" and "fraud."
Of course, all of this is old news. In fact, people have been suing Google for its suggestions (none of which are its own) since the dawn of time (ca. 2006), when ServrCheck sued the search engine giant for its willingness to tack on "keygen" and "crack" to searches for its software.
With all that history behind it, there should be no surprised noises or raised eyebrows from anyone regarding this latest bit of news. Now it's an Irish hotel's turn to step up to the Complaint Box and file a grievance. This suit brings an all-new term to the "Google Suggest Hall O' Libelous Shame": "receivership." Apparently, people searching for information on the Ballymascanion Hotel are finding "receivership" high up on the Autocomplete list. Now, it's not the people that have an issue with this. After all, the "people" are the ones who put it there. Rather, it's the hotel itself that's upset about being linked to something as tawdry as "receivership," but rather than issue a press release or update its Facebook page or whatever, it's decided to drag Google and its terrible Suggestions into the courtroom.
Now, it's been said before at Techdirt (and several other places) that this isn't Google's doing. The suggestions that show up in the search field are based on what people are actually searching for. But obviously you can't hold everyone liable for unintentionally disparaging your business while trying to ensure their money doesn't end up in the pockets of "con men," "scammers" and "frauds." Google really shouldn't be expected to tweak its algorithm to fit each individual user, much less be forced into laundering someone or something's unsavory reputation by deleting terms the users don't care for. But as long as the courts keep siding with the "victims," "victims" will keep dragging Google into court for something it isn't doing.
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