The level of stupidity on the internet knows no bounds, but occasionally there are individuals that descend below even the typical train wreck mentality of the average internet user. And they usually start a blog.

Eventually the worst of the stupidity will get called out, usually by holding it up to the light, pointing and laughing in derision. And in typical fashion the derided will shake their little fists and stamp their little feet in anger and claim copyright violation.

Case in point. Global Geek News, a lie in every word as the site has nothing global in scope, the writer is obviously not a geek, and there is no news on it, decides it's time to dictate Twitter policy. A person following 44 people with 57 followers decides to dictate Twitter policy. His post:
http://globalgeeknews.com/blog/?p=18

The derision:
http://www.bynkii.com/archives/2008/03/on_twitter_ettiquette.html
You'll note the comment from the writer of Global Geek News (pcnerd37) claiming "you basically steal nearly every word from my posts." Followed by posting PCNerd37's Legal Whining which states:

Quote:

But no matter how much you whine, Fair Use still applies and fair use allows copying parts of a work for comment or CRITICISM, wihtout permission. Now fair use allows for copying pars of a work. And that is what the Bynkii post does, copys 2 posts from a blog and then criticizes them point by point. Each quote is accompanied by criticism.

Anyway, I've quoted is Legal page verbatim. He can claim copyright infringement if he wants, but he'll lose.
oh and a tip, if you don't want other blog posters commenting on your blog posts (which pretty much requires quoting) you should probably stop providing Trackback URLs.

Mac rumor site Think Secret recently shutdown as part of an agreement with Apple. Apple sued Think Secret on January 5, 2005 after they published rumors about Apple's plans to announce the iPod mini at the 2005 Macworld. Think Secret wasn't the only rumor site at the time publishing rumors about Apple's announcements, but Apple sued them to get the names of those that had leaked the information, and no one else, before actually making their announcments. This of course immediately lent credence to all of Think Secret's claims, including claims that were wrong (such as price).

Many people have ventured opinions on the news, some claiming victory for Apple, some claiming Apple is a bully, others expressing disappointment in Nick Ciarelli (Think Secret's publisher) for seemingly caving in to Apple and "damaging" the First Amendment.

I think both opinions are wrong. First, we don't know the full extent of the agreement. All we know is Think Secret is shut down and Apple failed to get the names of those that disclosed information to Ciarelli. No information on if Ciarelli is prevented from stating another site, or working for another site. No information on if Apple paid Ciarelli any money.

I don't think any damage was done to the First Amendment. This never went to court and no precendence setting decisions were rendered. You can't cite agreements of this sort in a legal brief. So the First Amendment is where it was before the case began. The only precendence that might be claimed is that after 3 years a college student might get sick of a court case getting in the way of his studies.

Apple didn't set any new claims for what is a trade secret. I'm not sure the information Ciarelli published could be considered a trade secret. The report simply stated: "Reliable sources inside and outside of Apple have confirmed Apple will announce the new pocket-size iPods in a number of capacities and in various colors, including stripes. Capacities will be 2 and 4GB -- meaning users could store some 400 and 800 songs, respectively. Prices will start at around $100US"

David Zeiler at the Baltimore Sun believes Think Secret violated trade secret law because Ciarelli received information (citing the trade secret law) "knowing the same to have been stolen or appropriated, obtained, or converted without authorization". The problem is that Zeiler doesn't examine what a trade secret is. The law defines a trade secret as:

So is what Think Secret published a trade secret? I don't think so. Part of it was finanical information, but that information was WRONG? So is wrong information a trade secret? I don't think so, it might be harmful to Apple, but not a trade secret.

Part of it could be considered technical information, it mentions 2GB and 4GB sizes, but does this information "derive independent economic value, actual or potential, from not being generally known to...the public"?

Adam Engst contends that rumor information can be harmful to Apple by causing Apple customers to delay purchasing items. The problem is that close followers of Apple already KNOW Apple announces new products at Macworld and are waiting for that anyway. Personally I doubt those that aren't close followers of Apple would be following Apple rumor sites, so I don't see how they would even know to delay their purchase. At least not until Apple sued a rumor site and brought it to national attention.

Basically in the end I don't think Apple or Ciarelli think they had an open and shut case and that is why they compromised. There are probably tangential reasons for the decisions on both sides for deciding to settle. I don't see the First Amendment as being harmed in any way, it certainly has slowed down the flow of Apple rumors. Apple does come out looking like a bit of a bully, but it would've been even worse if they'd continued the law suit. I actually think Apple did the most harm to itself by filing the lawsuit to begin with, and then even worse by filing before Macworld commenced making everyone believe all the rumors Think Secret posted, including the wrong $100 price point.

Somebody will write a thesis about this someday I'm sure, but it struck me the other day that there were some weird similarities between early 20th century history, and the Harry Potter storyline. I frequently hear these kind of suppositions made about books like the Lord of the Rings, but generally you can make draw similarities between any story with an over-arching evil person and Hitler. The Harry Potter storyline struck me more in it similarities with the history of both world wars, rather than just World War II.

World War I was a long drawn out war of attrition. Waging back and forth over the same land. Several passages in the Harry Potter books indicate that the first rising of Voldemort was also a long drawn out war of attrition with Voldemort knocking of members of the original Order of the Phoenix one by one.

World War I ended with the arrival of the US troops reinforcing the Allied forces. This marked the US's entry into the world as a Great Power. Voldemort's first rise to power was ended when he attempted to kill Harry Potter, newly born to the world, and after Voldemort's defeat considered a great power in the world of magic.

World War II began with the world refusing to acknowledge the second rise of Germany's power. Winston Churchill stood out as a lone voice arguing for Britain to strengthen its defenses against Hitler. Not until the invasion of Poland did the world acknowledge the danger and openly declare war on Germany. In the Harry Potter novels, Dumbledore stands out as the lone voice arguing that Voldemort has returned to power, and it isn't until the Ministry of Magic is invaded that the world acknowledges Voldemort's return.

I guess I'll have to wait until this weekend for the last Potter book to come out to see if I spot any other parallels between the world wars.

More updating of the site. I'm still goofing around with the RSS Feeds section. There were some things I didn't like about the old one. I like the new one a bit better, but I think I need to tweak it a bit more.

I've also setup a gallery for photos I've taken. Currently I've got some images from my trip to New Orleans and pictures of my cats. Thrilling stuff.

Kevin's Photos

welcome to the new site look. I'm pretty happy with it overall. Only downside is those collapasable sections of web links don't work in IE 6. Of course. I don't use IE 6 much so I'm debating if i'll bother to fix it. Probably. I also want the arrows to point to the right when collapse, and point down when opened. Shouldn't be too hard to do, I learned some neat tricks with CSS and raster images that emulate old sprite behavior in 2D games.

This is pretty much a straight port of the mollio free templates to the open source xoops CMS. It took a bit of hacking to get it done but it works pretty smoothly.