Good tools in more languages = great

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Bravo to Google for making its Gmail service accessible via an Arabic and a Hebrew interface (via Khaled).  Fun to hear it, too, directly from one of the engineers.
This translation step, which puts Gmail at 40 languages, is so essential to the use of Internet in a way that will improve lives generally, enhance productivity, promote cross-cultural understanding, and positively affect democracies. It makes me cringe, the extent to which English is the lingua franca of the web.

Farewell, Robert Scoble

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I am one of the many who have benefitted from learning about Microsoft through the work of Robert Scoble, who has announced that he’s moving on to his next gig. I will miss his take on things from Redmond, and/but look forward to listening to his clear, resonant voice from another perch, at PodTech. Microsoft, indeed, was “lucky to have” him.  Good luck, Scoble!  Keep writing and, no doubt, podcasting.

The "How to Make Money" Session at Bloggercon

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Dave Winer has kindly (or, well, maybe…) offered me the chance to be the discussion leader for the “How to Make Money” session at Bloggercon IV. I’m delighted and honored to be taking up this challenge with the help of the rest of the unconference attendees later this month in San Francisco. Here’s a framework for the discussion:

During every conference about Web 2.0 (oops — did I say that?) blogging, the conversation gets around, one time or another, to “how to make money.” It’s obvious there’s money all around this space. The simple proof: the venture capital world salivates at the prospect of a hot new company in this space, bidding up valuations and fueling the trend with not just their capital and attention but big-time connections and leadership. Somebody, definitely, is making money related to blogging and related technologies, or is pretty sure they will make money on it, but it’s not obvious that bloggers, in fact, stand to make much money from blogging.

If you are a blogger, how do you go about making some money from your work? One obvious answer is the classic approach of throwing BlogAds or Google ads or whathaveyou ads on your blog. That works for some people, but it generates more than beer money only for a select few at the left-hand side of that famous power law distribution. Some, like Mike Arrington at TechCrunch, have added premium sponsorships to the mix; then again, Mike’s plainly in the select few. Others contend that a blog is itself an advertisement. You don’t make money on the blog itself, but rather you make money on other things (as in the artist who gives away his or her content on a p2p service and makes money on other things to pay the rent). I trust that we’ll kick around these ideas, but also get into some new possibilities: shouldn’t really simple syndication allow for some new thinking around getting people to pay for the content you create? And are there ways for bloggers themselves to get on the bandwagon of making some of the money that the venture guys are planning to make? How could that work, exactly? Put another away: lots of people have spent lots of digital ink (sound and images too) on the general problem of “how do you monetize the long tail?”

In classic Bloggercon/unconference style, though, this is just a starting point. The beauty and the thrill is in where the conversation may go.

David Hornik on the Web 2.0 TM Controversy

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David Hornik, famous as the VC at August Capital who made some of the first true web 2.0 investments, is actually a lawyer. And a good one. Not to mention a Harvard Law School grad. (Who now teaches at a business school.) He has the go-to post on the web 2.0 trademark controversy, in which a conference promoter (CMP) sent a cease-and-desist letter to an Irish non-profit with a plan to hold a conference using the term “web 2.0” in a manner that CMP believed violated their rights. Equally important, to be sure, is Tim O’Reilly’s summation/apology post (CMP works with O’Reilly on the huge conference with the relevant name.) The NYT piece, by Sara Ivry, is also good.

My view: this issue is another example of IP-law-gone-silly. And I agree with David when he writes:

“… I believe Intellectual Property needs to inform business decisions, not dictate them. Entrepreneurs should never take on risks that they don’t understand and appreciate fully. But that is not to say that entrepreneurs should never take on risk — they should just choose to take on that risk after fully exploring its scope. In some cases that risk is Intellectual Property risk (will my ability to enforce my trademark be diminished by my failure to enforce it in this instance?). In other cases that risk is pure business risk (will my long-time supporters turn on me if I enforce my trademark in this instance?). Or perhaps a mixture of the two.

“I am quite certain that had CMP fully appreciated the potential business risk of sending a Cease and Desist letter to it@cork, they would not have done so. More importantly, I am certain that if Tim O’Reilly had had the opportunity to consider and comment upon the risks of such aggressive trademark enforcement by CMP, he would have urged them to think better of it. But, alas, whoever ultimately made the decision to crack down on the use of the ‘Web 2.0’ service mark (I suspect it was a lawyer, not a business person) did not fully consider the ramifications of doing so and the result of that action have reverberated throughout the blogsphere.”

The big distinction here is between having IP rights (separate conversation: debating the merits of whether the scope and duration of the rights are too big) and seeking to enforce them — in every instance — against others who may possibly be infringing them. That’s where business people should call the shots, not the lawyers. The point is not that you shouldn’t have IP rights, nor that you shouldn’t ever enforce them. It’s that there’s an art to know when to press your case and when to use other tools at your disposal to get your way, whatever that might be — or even to make the decision to look the other way, or to give away your rights to embrace the community’s embrace of something to which you have the rights.

As an aside: likewise, what do you think that the PR firm in the Lance Dutson case in Maine would give for a do-over? Or Diebold? Alas, no mulligans in IP law (and related) enforcement matters.

Hiring at the Berkman Center: Clinical Fellow

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We are hiring for a teaching position in the Berkman Center clinical program for this coming fall. The job is a fun, dynamic, interesting one — teaching Harvard Law School students the applied side of cyberlaw. You’d work closely with me, with Phil Malone (former US DOJ senior lawyer, former HLS Kramer fellow, several years as co-director of the Berkman clinical program), and other Berkman team members, including Bruce Keller and Jeff Cunard, partners at Debevoise & Plimpton, who have been co-directors of our clinical program for the past few years as well and have been teaching in the HLS curriculum. We collaborate with some of the other terrific cyberlaw clinics out there from time to time as well, like Boalt (Samuelson Clinic), Stanford, and so forth. We work with terrific organizations like Creative Commons. We’re looking for someone with practice experience in the Internet law, IP, and/or related fields who has a strong interest in law teaching. More on the clinical program at the Berkman Center can be found here.

New ONI Map, Amnesty International Campaign

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Our OpenNet Initiative partners at the Citizen Lab of the Munk Centre at the University of Toronto have created a new way to view censorship online: an updated interactive map. This new visualization tool is a central aspect of Amnesty International’s recently-launched campaign against online censorship called Irrepressible.info. CBC reports, as does BBC.

(Bravo to Ron Deibert, Nart Villeneuve, and company for their work on this useful and cool tool.)

Apple Loses In Latest Round with Does

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The Court of Appeal in California (Sixth Appellate District) has ruled in favor of Jason O’Grady in his dispute with Apple Computer. It’s a pretty resounding opinion (linked here (PDF)), covering a lot of ground, including trade secret, the Stored Communications Act, and various other issues related to whether a corporation can stop a publisher for disclosing information related to an intended product launch.

The Court held: “Apple Computer, Inc. (Apple), a manufacturer of computer hardware and software, brought this action alleging that persons unknown caused the wrongful publication on the World Wide Web of Apple’s secret plans to release a device that would facilitate the creation of digital live sound recordings on Apple computers. In an effort to identify the source of the disclosures, Apple sought and obtained authority to issue civil subpoenas to the publishers of the Web sites where the information appeared and to the email service provider for one of the publishers. The publishers moved for a protective order to prevent any such discovery. The trial court denied the motion on the ground that the publishers had involved themselves in the unlawful misappropriation of a trade secret. We hold that this was error because (1) the subpoena to the email service provider cannot be enforced consistent with the plain terms of the federal Stored Communications Act (18 U.S.C. §§ 2701-2712); (2) any subpoenas seeking unpublished information from petitioners would be unenforceable through contempt proceedings in light of the California reporter’s shield (Cal. Const., art. I, § 2, subd (b); Evid. Code, § 1070); and (3) discovery of petitioners’ sources is also barred on this record by the conditional constitutional privilege against compulsory disclosure of confidential sources (see Mitchell v. Superior Court (1984) 37 Cal.3d 268 (Mitchell)). Accordingly, we will issue a writ of mandate directing the trial court to grant the motion for a protective order.”

An interesting passage, about the public interest in this case: “Apple first contends that there is and can be no public interest in the disclosures here because ‘the public has no right to know a company’s trade secrets.’ Surely this statement cannot stand as a categorical proposition. As recent history illustrates, business entities may adopt secret practices that threaten not only their own survival and the investments of their shareholders but the welfare of a whole industry, sector, or community. Labeling such matters ‘confidential’ and ‘proprietary’ cannot drain them of compelling public interest. Timely disclosure might avert the infliction of unmeasured harm on many thousands of individuals, following in the noblest traditions, and serving the highest functions, of a free and vigilant press. It therefore cannot be declared that publication of ‘trade secrets’ is ipso facto outside the sphere of matters appropriately deemed of ‘great public importance.'”

The NYT has more. As do Dave and Denise and Dan.

A Neighborhood Watch for the Kenyan Parliament

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One of Berkman’s all-time great graduates, Ory Okolloh, has launched Mzalendo, which is watching over the Kenyan parliament. Subscribe to their RSS feed; bound to tell important stories, and to be an important story itself.

They are “a volunteer run project whose mission is to ‘keep an eye on the Kenyan Parliament.’  The project was started by two young like-minded Kenyans who were frustrated by the fact that it is difficult to hold Kenyan Members of Parliament (MPs) accountable for their performance largely because information about their work in Parliament is not easily accessible. In our opinion Parliament should be one of the most open institutions in government, yet beyond the coverage from local newspapers it is virtually impossible to keep track of what Kenyan Parliamentarians are doing. Of course one can peruse copies of the Hansard, but one has to go through an arduous process to get access to Hansard copies from the Government Printer’s Office and most people do not have the time to filter through the dense information that is contained in the Hansard hard copies.”