Technology News and IT Business Intelligence

In August 2009, home haircutting system maker Flowbee filed suit against Google in federal district court in Corpus Christi, Texas. The company was the umpteenth to take the Mountain View company to court for selling sponsored search ads to competitors under its trademarked keyword, which it alleged ‘confused’ customers.

On the 18th of February 2010, Google filed its answer to the complaints and simultaneously moved to file a counterclaim against the haircutting system vendor (documents here).

In the most recent filing for the case, Google denies most of the allegations Flowbee had brought forward, including that it has made any unlawful use of Flowbee’s alleged trademarks and similar marks.

At the same time, the company admits that it allows third parties to bid on keywords that may trigger display of their advertisements as Sponsored Links.

Google also filed a counterclaim against Flowbee for breach of contract. The search giant says that by filing the instant action in Texas, Flowbee breached the mandatory venue selection provision (federal or state courts of Santa Clara County, California) of the AdWords contract it had entered with Google. The Mountain View company is seeking damages for the money and resources that were spent trying to transfer the action to the ‘proper’ venue.

And then there are a couple of nuggets in the whole thing that are quite amusing (if you’re anything like me, that is).

For example: Flowbee in its suit filing documents attempts to define “The Internet and the World Wide Web” and mentions that people can visit Web pages using browser programs like Macintosh Safari or Microsoft Internet Explorer. In its answer, Google subtly points out that while it does not dispute the description of the Internet is essentially accurate, it denies knowledge of a “Macintosh Safari” browser program (it’s simply called Safari).

Also funny: Eric Goldman, Associate Professor of Law at Santa Clara University School of Law and well-known blogger, at the time Flowbee filed suit noted that a lot of the language in the documents was seemingly lifted from another lawsuit that was filed earlier by American Airlines against Yahoo and Google, covering similar grounds.

But reading Google’s answer, I stumbled on the company name ‘Rosetta Stone’ a number of times, and I wondered if Google’s attorneys had also copied most of the language from another suit and forgot to replace the company name Flowbee by Rosetta Stone here and there. Sure enough, the language education software maker sued Google a month before Flowbee did, equally claiming that the AdWords program infringes its trademark.

And you thought sifting through court documents is always a boring way to spend a slow Saturday afternoon!

Back in July, we reported that Facebook had become the Internet’s ultimate time waster, with users spending an average of 4 hours, 39 minutes on it per month, more than any other site on the Web.

Since then, however, that number has only gone up. According to numbers from Nielsen Online, users spent an average of 5 hours, 46 minutes on Facebook in the month of August. To put that in perspective, that’s triple the amount of time they spent on Google()!

In fact, the next closest site in Nielsen’s top 10 is Yahoo(), which, despite still having huge traffic in time consuming areas like news, sports, and financial data, could only get users to stick around for 3 hours and 14 minutes on average during the month. YouTube(), surprisingly, only occupied 1 hour and 17 minutes of the average user’s time.

Of course, one of Google’s stated philosophies is that they “may be the only people in the world who can say our goal is to have people leave our homepage as quickly as possible.” However, that ethos was set in stone long before users started spending an inordinate amount of time on social sites – sites that now want to compete in search.

For now, Google’s answer seems to be extending its reach in search through other products – primarily its Chrome() web browser and upcoming OS. But not having a strong presence in social networking remains the company’s Achilles’ heel, becoming ever more apparent as Facebook() pulls away from the pack in usage stats.

In an early morning blog post Friday, Microsoft Deputy General Counsel Dave Heiner announced that final field testing of the company’s Web browser ballot screen for European Windows customers (XP, Vista, and Windows 7) is under way now. The goal is to have a fully operational ballot screen by March 1 — a week from Monday.

“External testing of the choice screen will begin next week in three countries: the United Kingdom, Belgium and France,” Heiner reported. “Anyone in those countries who wishes to test it can download the browser choice screen software update from Windows Update. We plan to begin a phased roll-out of the update across Europe the week of March 1.”

Heiner’s post offered two very small renditions of what the browser ballot should look like. A careful study of these photos by Betanews indicates that these screenshots might not have been taken consecutively, assuming Heiner’s description is accurate.

As the rollout is currently being planned, Windows-based PC whose update features are set to automatic, will download the program that gives users the browser choice. At next bootup, if any version of Internet Explorer is pinned to the Windows 7 taskbar, it will be automatically unpinned. The screenshots show Windows 7. We do not know whether Vista-based systems with IE attached to their Quick Launch bars (a feature replaced in Win7 by the new taskbar) will unattach these icons as well, although since the process by which a program pins and unpins icons to these two devices is similar, it’s safe to forecast that Vista users will notice IE icons missing as well.

This will not mean IE is uninstalled. After the user reads the introductory screen (which explains why IE was unpinned, and gives the user an option to pin it back), the ballot screen appears. Here, just as Microsoft’s previous public rendition of the browser ballot indicated, the world’s top five Windows Web browser titles will appear in equally-sized vertical slots along the top row, with a second group of randomly organized titles made visible by scrolling to the right. What’s different about this latest rendition (we apologize for the screenshot not being any larger or clearer) is that the obvious Internet Explorer controls, including the menu bar and search bar, are removed from this ballot.

However, at least in this rendition, the IE icon reappears in both the title bar and the address bar, which does remain. Microsoft’s picture of the introductory panel shows the address bar missing, and the icon for the ballot being not the IE icon but a generic ballot icon Microsoft has used before — for instance, with generic Control Panel components. In its browser ballot screenshot, not only does the icon reappear but IE is re-pinned to the Windows 7 taskbar.

The reason this actually matters (whether there’s a blue IE icon in the corner or not) is because it was believed to have been a topic of complaint by opponents to Microsoft’s original proposition for a browser ballot, which was later revised to look more like this one. If the second rendition is accurate, such a complaint could arise again, hopefully not pushing Microsoft past its current March 1 deadline for full deployment.

Heiner does not mention in his blog post whether this process would enable IE to be uninstalled. Based on our understanding of how Windows works, this will probably not be possible from the browser ballot, specifically if the user currently has IE7 or earlier versions. Although IE8 now can be uninstalled, no such procedure exists for IE7 and older versions. However, IE6 and IE7 can be upgraded to IE8 which, when uninstalled, should not leave too many traces of older browser parts strewn about the system directories. Still, that’s a process that everyday users should perhaps avoid.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs wants publishers to support iPad, but not with Adobe Flash. Jobs’ anti-Flash campaign has grown bolder since the company announced iPad last month and during this week’s Mobile World Congress, where Flash 10.1 inched a little close to widespread mobile device availability. What’s Apple’s problem with Flash? Simply put: Competition.

Apple wants to control the entire mobile applications stack. The App Store/iPhone/iPod touch platform, which will soon include iPad, is a closed stack that Apple tightly controls. For developers, it’s Apple’s way or no way. But Apple could conceivably lose control of the stack — most importantly the applications and their user experience — should Flash run free and unfettered on iPhone OS devices.
Why Apple Disses Flash

As Adobe readies Flash for most every mobile platform — other than Apple’s, of course — and publishers ask what about Flash on iPad, Jobs and Co. have responded by slandering Flash’s reputation: Flash is too buggy, or iPad battery life would be 1.5 hours instead of 10 if running Flash. Flash slandering shifts the debate away from why Apple won’t allow Flash on iPhone OS devices to why Apple supposedly protects customers by holding back the Adobe technology. It’s the clever kind of counter marketing Apple excels at (Just watch most any “Get a Mac” commercial).

Apple’s Flash slandering obscures the real reason for resisting the technology. Because of Flash’s huge video success, too many people look at the technology in that context for iPhone OS devices. Long before Flash became the most common way of delivering video over the Web, developers used it to create applications — and they still do today. Flash is a rival development platform, and one Apple doesn’t control. If Apple lets Flash roam iPhone OS devices, uncaged and free, developers can create applications that bypass the App Store. By keeping out Flash, Apple:

Maintains tight control over the user experience
Avoids competition with a major third-party application platform
Keeps user interface fairly consistent across different iPhone OS applications
Ensures App Store remains iPhone’s primary application development and delivery platform

Apple’s problem with Flash is competition. The company doesn’t want any. Hence the anti-Flash campaign now under way. The Flash slandering will only increase as Jobs courts more content publishers for iPad and Flash becomes widely available on every other mobile device.

There are Other Reasons

Of course, there is a secondary reason for all this campaigning to, ah, dim the Flash: Apple-Adobe rivalry. With the notable exception of PDF, Apple competes with Adobe in most of the same content-creation categories. That was by choice. Apple chose to compete with this major, long-time Mac supporting developer.

Something else: Contrary to commonly held convention, Apple’s iPhone OS device strategy is not about the mobile Web. Apple seeks to establish iPhone OS devices as alternatives to the mobile Web. The mobile Web is all about the browser. The first iPhone was about the browser, but all that changed with App Store, which channels content consumption (or creation) away from the browser into application containers of disparate and discreet functions. “There’s an app for that” — Apple’s well-known marketing slogan — means that people work within separate applications; separately from one another since background operations are restricted or prohibited.

Apple wants any video capabilities to occur within these applications, using its technologies and the H.264 codec. Apple has worked around Flash, rather than support it, by iPhone’s YouTube implementation. Jobs wants iPad publishers to work around Flash, too, by supporting H.264 streaming instead of Flash. The publisher controls the user experience (on Apple’s terms, of course) with the application either way. The bigger benefit goes to Apple, which keeps out a rival development platform.

HTML5: Backdoor Lover

What I find fascinating is the backdoor Apple opened to yet another rival development platform: HTML5. Apple offers partial HTML5 support in its desktop and mobile Safari browsers, and the company has touted the advantages for video streaming without Flash. Apple is trying to have its cake and eat it, too, as the saying goes: Video streaming without the platform development competition.

But HTML5 support is hugely risky. Last year, at GigaOM, Alistair Croll asked the same question I did: “Will HTML5 break Apple’s stronghold on apps?” Google has answered with a resounding “Yes.” In 2009, Apple (or was it AT&T — or both) refused to accept Google Voice in the App Store. In January, Google responded by releasing Google Voice for iPhone as an HTML5 app running in Safari. Last week, when launching Buzz, Google released an HTML5 mobile version for Android 2.x and iPhone 3.x devices. No Apple App Store approval process required.

Apple should be more concerned about Google. As I will explain in a subsequent blog post, the mobile Internet is diverging along two paths: Discreet applications and the mobile Web browser. Apple strongly advocates applications, which benefit its closed App Store/iPhone OS device platform. Google is pushing the browser for consuming services or running HTML5-based apps (even while supporting mobile apps in the Android Marketplace). Microsoft also is taking a hybrid mobile Web browser/applications approach with Windows Phone 7 Series. Nokia favors browser and widgets more than discreet applications, which are more open on Symbian^3, Maemo or MeeGo, like Google’s Android.

Competition is in inevitable. It’s the nature of things. Life on earth is about living things competing for survival — something that transfers to the things humans create. Apple may try to shut out Flash as a rival development platform to App Store/iPhone OS devices, only to see HTML5 take its place. Google is a much bigger problem for Apple than Adobe ever could be.

Steve Jobs responded to Flash competition with words — anti-Flash marketing that came out of his mouth and which blogs and news sites candidly reported, all without him providing substantive evidence to back up the claims. How will Apple handle Google or try to close that HTML5 backdoor? The answer may be soon coming.

This week, Dutch group Forthehack launched PleaseRobMe, a site meant to expose the danger of location-based social networks such as Foursquare, BrightKite, Gowalla, and Google Buzz. Basically, PleaseRobMe says that every time someone posts his location in a location-based social network, that person is publicly announcing that he is not home, which could be taken to mean, no one is home.

To illustrate the point, PleaseRobMe rephrases public Foursquare posts to say, “@Username left home and checked in X minutes ago…” and then presents that person’s current map location in a Twitter alert.

“Don’t get us wrong, we love the whole location-aware thing. The information is very interesting and can be used to create some pretty awesome applications. However, the way in which people are stimulated to participate in sharing this information, is less awesome,” the site’s description says. “The danger is publicly telling people where you are. This is because it leaves one place you’re definitely not…home. So here we are; on one end we’re leaving lights on when we’re going on a holiday, and on the other we’re telling everybody on the Internet we’re not home. It gets even worse if you have ‘friends’ who want to colonize your house. That means they have to enter your address, to tell everyone where they are. Your address…on the Internet…”

Naturally, the site gathered instant attention for its approach. Some called it totally irresponsible, while others agreed that it does show how careless some users can be with oversharing information.

Foursquare responded to the commotion caused by PleaseRobMe by saying, “The truth is, you could make something like this without using foursquare at all. Just try searching Twitter for the words ‘headed to’…and you’ll start to scratch the surface on all the location data a lot of us push into the internets, perhaps even without thinking about it.

“Anyway, we definitely ‘get’ the larger issue here — location is sensitive data and people should be careful about with whom and when they share it,” the company’s blog said. “And at foursquare, we do everything we can to make sure that our users know with what people and social sites they are sharing their location with.”

So little has changed for Foursquare, but PleaseRobMe is trying to turn its sarcastic jab at location-aware social networks into an actual security operation.

The site now leads with a blurb that reads: “We want to offer this Web site to a professional foundation, agency, or company that focuses on raising awareness, helping people understand and provide answers to online privacy related issues. If you’re such a foundation, agency, or company, contact us.”

You could call it fearmongering, but such a service may be necessary as more so-called “n00bs” adopt location-revealing technology.

Now that everybody and her grandmother is on Facebook, we can see just how clueless and vulnerable many tech-disinclined people are.

Last week, hundreds of Facebook users who type “Facebook” into their Google search bar rather than use the URL in the address bar were routed to a ReadWriteWeb article instead of Facebook when Google temporarily shuffled the search rankings. What followed is one of the most tragically hilarious comment threads of all time.

After reading it, you start to wonder if Foursquare couldn’t eventually have posts from helpless users saying things like: “I’m walking unaccompanied down a dark alley with a pocket full of cash.”

The problem with status updates and social location sharing is that privacy is incumbent upon the user, and many aren’t capable of handling that responsibility. Foursquare’s comments yesterday said “Foursquare only knows where you are when you decide to tell us (by checking-in).”

In this way, each post a user makes is a waiver of his privacy, fully left up to his discretion. This means that everything a user does not post is meant to be private. But the problem occurs when users post very frequently. When a user waives his privacy by default, he can become a target not for what he says, but for what he leaves out and deems “private.”

Through simple deduction, an observer can watch for gaps in the user’s content stream and learn when he’s doing something he doesn’t want to share with the public.

Recent IT industry events have created a field day for those who think the news tend to come in “threes”:

During a five-hour-plus long event highlighting the conclusion of its Sun Microsystems deal, Oracle discussed plans for the company’s hardware division, and said it would continue investing in Sun’s Sparc- and X64-based systems and storage hardware. The company provided a Sparc road map and said it was planning upgrades for systems based on both the Sparc T series (now made by Oracle) and the Sparc64 chips made by Sun partner Fujitsu. However, there was no discussion of the status of UltraSparc-RK “Rock” processors and related “Supernova” systems, which are rumored to have been discontinued.

Oracle Co-President Charles Phillips commented extensively on the company’s plans to build integrated systems/appliances for online transaction processing (OLTP) and other Oracle database-intensive business applications. Only general guidance was offered regarding the availability of these new solutions.

Intel introduced the Itanium processor 9300 series (codenamed “Tukwila”), which the company said delivers more than double the performance of its predecessor, boosts scalability, and adds reliability features to the platform. The new chip boasts twice as many cores (four versus two) as its predecessor and eight threads per processor, plus significantly improved cache, interconnect bandwidth, memory bandwidth and memory capacity.

Intel discussed plans for “at least” two more generations of Itanium: “Poulson,” (scheduled for delivery in two years) will add an advanced multicore architecture, instruction-level and hyperthreading enhancements, and new reliability features. Future Intel Itanium processors in development will support socket and binary compatibility with 9300-based systems and software. The company expects OEM systems based on the new processors to ship within 90 days.

IBM’s Power Systems group launched its next-generation Power7 microprocessor, along with a quartet of business class, enterprise class, high-end and high-performance servers featuring the new chips. According to IBM, Power7 systems can deliver four times the performance, four times the virtualization capabilities, and three to four times the energy efficiency of previous generation POWER6+ systems, but will sell for the same price as those solutions.

Power7 processors can now run up to 32 simultaneous tasks — with eight cores and four threads per core. The chips also support more memory and throughput and offer new features, including TurboCore, Intelligent Threads and Active Memory Expansion. These features will make Power7 particularly valuable for demanding enterprise applications, as well as for the basis of workload-optimized IBM solutions like last year’s Smart Analytics Systems. In addition, Power7 systems’ robust performance and flexibility make them appropriate for increasingly complex Smarter Planet workloads and processes. IBM’s new Power7 systems will begin shipping between February 19 and March 16.

While these announcements all focused on their respective vendors’ latest/greatest microprocessor architectures (RISC for IBM Power and Sun Sparc, EPIC for Intel’s Itanium) for supporting enterprise-class Unix and Linux workloads, what was really going on beneath the surface? In short, the trio offers excellent examples of vendors engaged in customer preservation (Oracle), partner management (Intel) and forward thinking (IBM).

It’s important to consider the general state of the Unix market before slicing and dicing the announcements themselves. Once considered a nearly unassailable bastion of enterprise-class business and high-performance computing (only mainframe systems have a higher status), Unix solutions have been under continual pressure from below for the past half decade, due to the expanding capabilities and popularity of servers leveraging x86/64 Intel Xeon and AMD Opteron processors. In fact, x86/64-based systems have essentially eclipsed RISC and EPIC in high-performance computing and supercomputing environments.

The battle is likely to become increasingly fraught with next-gen x86/64 processors, including Intel’s Nehalem EX, waiting in the wings. How are Unix vendors responding? Not surprisingly, by emphasizing their platform’s already robust RAS (reliability / availability / security) features, as well as expanding virtualization and other capabilities that even the best x86 solutions have trouble meeting, let alone surpassing. Such strategies have tended to force Unix solutions into higher and higher market niches, but upwardly ratcheting performance has also allowed vendors to explore, develop and inhabit entirely new commercial opportunities, including workload-optimized systems.

So, what did the announcements say about the status of these vendors? Perhaps more importantly, did any of the three reveal anything appreciably new or unexpected?

Oracle Sparc

In the case of Oracle/Sun, not much. The marathon webcast was hours longer than other vendors’ comparable acquisition events, but painted Oracle’s plans for the Sparc server business with a broad brush.

Yes, Oracle will continue selling and developing existing Sparc processors and systems (an issue about which CEO Larry Ellison seemed notably unenthusiastic when the company first announced its plans to buy Sun). Yes, Oracle will develop new Sparc-based solutions, setting its sights on workload-optimized servers/appliances. However, that doesn’t show much in the way of imagination or innovation — Oracle has been shipping similar systems based on HP hardware for months, and IBM’s workload-optimized systems are arguably more sophisticated in terms of targeting specific industries and markets.

Oracle also said that it plans to increase its overall research and development budget some 55% from USD$2.8 billion in the past fiscal year to $4.3 billion in the year ahead. But how much of that budget, plus time and effort, will be spent to resurrect a Sparc platform that has fallen on hard times? That remains unclear.

Though no company wants to give its competitors a clear view of its strategic plans, the lack of transparency also doesn’t really matter if the essential purpose of Oracle’s discussion was, as I expect, to reassure current Sun customers and constrain them from jumping ship to IBM and HP, where many have already found comfortable homes.

Without clients’ good will, Sparc’s marketplace position will continue its slow decline, and could sap enthusiasm for continuing platform development. What should Sun customers do? Carefully watch how Oracle pursues to its Sparc/system plans, and keep an eye on what’s happening in Power and Itanium systems.

Intel Itanium

The timing of Intel’s announcement says almost as much about the state of Itanium as did Tukwila’s technical details. Coming on the same day and nearly at the same time as the Power7 launch, Intel appeared to be looking to overshadow IBM as much as trying to establish thought or market leadership. Some may see this as reading too much into press release minutiae, but there were also some curious issues around the launch, including the low-key responses of Itanium OEMs.

Also significant: The considerable three-month lag time between Intel’s announcement and the likely appearance of 9300 systems suggests the event may have been a bit premature. So, what was the point? First and foremost, to keep partners — especially HP — happy. Since HP and other Itanium OEMs have handed off microprocessor development to Intel, it behooves the company to be aggressive in offering those partners good news to take to market.

Overall, Intel deserves credit for delivering a 2X bump in performance, especially since less than a year ago, the company decided to incorporate DDR3 memory into Tukwila rather than the buffered DIMM memory of previous-generation Itanium chips. Despite that, it seems worth considering Itanium’s long-term prospects. At this point, HP represents some 85% of the Itanium market — a massive position, especially for a microprocessor once intended to become the Industry Standard platform for 64-bit enterprise computing.

That isn’t likely to change appreciably over time, but I’m not as pessimistic as some other analysts about the outlook for Itanium. Though Itanium is feeling the same upward pressure from x86/64-based servers as other Unix platforms, development will likely continue as long as vendors’ solutions, particularly HP’s Integrity systems, remain profitable. However, if HP ever begins porting HP-UX or its other legacy platforms to x86/64, it will likely mark the official beginning of Itanium’s end.

IBM Power7

In comparison to Oracle and Intel, IBM’s Power7 announcement had all the confidence of a vendor in firm control of its circumstances and thinking far ahead of its peers, and with good reason. Less than a decade ago, IBM trailed both Sun and HP in Unix sales. Today, it leads both those rivals, owning some 40% of the $16 billion Unix market.

In part, that success came as disaffected Sun and HP customers jumped ship to Power. Why? Because as Itanium and Sparc development hit potholes, snapped axles, and headed into the ditch, IBM Power stayed remarkably on track and true to the company’s long-term road map.

Power7’s significant performance improvements mean that any competing vendors’ platforms or systems are unlikely to pressure, let alone alter, IBM’s current Unix performance leadership position; Power6/6+-based systems own over a hundred #1 industry benchmarks.

The Power7 announcement also demonstrated an interesting development in IBM’s marketing strategy: Rather than specifically highlighting next-generation microprocessor improvements, which were considerable, the company instead focused on how Power7 is helping drive end-to-end system innovation. The result? IBM made strong cases both for Power7 delivering significant benefits to traditional business applications and for providing the engine in next-generation Smarter Planet workloads and processes.

How this will play in the market is an unknown. But as systems become ever more complex, it seems possible, if not likely, that microprocessors will increasingly take a back seat to overall systems evolution. If that is the case, it will require Oracle to further ramp up its Sparc efforts, and Intel to tighten development and messaging efforts with its OEM partners.

Overall, the events of the past weeks portend an increasingly interesting future for RISC- and EPIC-based systems. Far from the inevitable death spiral some have prognosticated for this sector, both IBM and Intel’s efforts suggest that innovation and competition remain alive and well in the Unix market.

Even the uncertainty around Oracle/Sparc is better than Sun’s previous wallowing in the Slough of Despond. That said, I also believe that IBM’s Power7 represents the current bar by which upcoming Itanium 9300 and Sparc systems will be judged. If Oracle, HP and other system vendors cannot or will not step up their games, the market for Unix servers will likely be a very different place in three to five years than it is today.

One of the “national priorities” in the Federal Communications Commission’s National Broadband Plan is to use high-speed connectivity to “provide more educational opportunities and improve outcomes” for those in rural areas and inner cities.

The FCC said today that 97% percent of public elementary and secondary schools do have Internet access, but speeds are insufficient, and services are being wasted.
The Schools and Libraries Universal Service Support Program already offers eligible public schools and libraries a special “E-rate” discount for telecommunications services and Internet access. But Commission rules currently require schools to certify that they will use “E-rate” funded services only for educational purposes, or activities that are “integral, immediate, and proximate to the education of students.”

Therefore, these subsidized services go completely unused on evenings, weekends, school holidays, and summer breaks, when people in surrounding communities may have no access to Internet services at all.

Today, the Commission said schools receiving the subsidized “E-rate” will have the option to open their facilities the public during non-operating hours.

“These connections will be available to adults taking evening digital literacy courses, to unemployed workers looking for jobs posted online, to citizens using e-government services, and for other uses that local schools believe will help their communities,” FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said today. “By making broadband available to more members of the public, this waiver furthers the goals of universal service and the Congressional directive to encourage access to advanced telecommunications and information services. And it does so in a way that doesn’t increase the size of the Universal Service Fund — indeed, that encourages more efficient use of USF funds.”

Schools that allow community members to use their E-rate services after hours, however, may not request service enhancements above and beyond those needed by students.

There will be no further legal action in a case whose outcome was already upheld in August 2008 by a US appeals court. As a result, legal precedent has now been made permanent for the right of open source software developers to seek monetary damages for infringement of their copyrights, even if their products were being distributed freely.

Settlement documents in the case of Jacobsen v. Katzer were filed early this morning in US District Court in Northern California, as Linux Foundation attorney Andrew Updegrove informed Betanews just hours later. A pending appeal of the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruling last August is now terminated. In the judgment that was being appealed, the Circuit panel ruled that the right to declare software free, could be given monetary value: “There are substantial benefits, including economic benefits, to the creation and distribution of copyrighted works under public licenses that range far beyond traditional license royalties,” that court ruled. “For example, program creators may generate market share for their programs by providing certain components free of charge. Similarly, a programmer or company may increase its national or international reputation by incubating open source projects. Improvement to a product can come rapidly and free of charge from an expert not even known to the copyright holder.”

The case itself was somewhat simple: Model railroad software developer Robert Jacobsen discovered that a commercial railroad parts maker was using his software without his permission, his license, or his original copyright attached. The point of contention had been whether the copyright that protects open source software is entitled to the same monetary evaluation as the copyright for commercial software. It was a fair question, since judgments in commercial software copyright violation cases are typically evaluated based on how much revenue the software would have earned in a normal market, had copyright not been violated.

Knowing that the Appeals Court had decided open source software was entitled to something, the remaining question was, how much? Rather than leave that for a judge or panel of judges to determine — especially since luck appeared to be on the plaintiff’s side up to now — parties agreed to set the precedent themselves.

The terms of the settlement award the plaintiff $100,000 plus costs, payable in installments over an 18-month period. Though arbitration is still binding with regard to ensuring payments are made, both sides have agreed to dismiss any pending and future action on this matter.

Today, Google Gmail customers are seeing a promised round of software changes whose purpose is to make Google Buzz users more aware of their privacy options, and to give them a more obvious way to back out of Buzz. These changes come a mere nine days after the social networking product’s rollout as an element of Gmail, although some have already claimed personal damage, and have already begun legal action.
Before we went to that extreme, Betanews tested the Buzz changes on accounts where Buzz was already set up. There we noticed the promised Buzz tab has been added to Gmail settings, where as we expected, the user is given the option to withdraw the lists of other Buzz users she’s following from her public Google profile. This is effectively a copy of the option from Buzz setup that Google only made prominent after its first round of changes at this time last week.
Though the initial problem with new users inadvertently sharing the identities of frequent Gmail contacts with others appears to have been addressed, it was in testing the efficacy of the new option for turning Buzz off that we discovered another potentially serious problem, which can begin with social spoofing, and can lead to the ability to follow other users with complete stealth.
First, we noticed one little quirk: Beside Show the list of people I’m following and the list of people following me on my public Google profile, there’s a link labeled Learn more. It takes the user to a page we’ve seen before on Google’s help system. But if you click this hyperlink, you also select the Show the list… option, even if it had been previously set to Do not show these lists on my public Google profile. This is something that users will have to remain cautious of before clicking on Save Changes.
Clicking on the clearly labeled Disable Google Buzz link brings up the Delete your profile dialog box (shown below), which explains the ramifications of exiting the social network. We noted that when the user clicks on this link, even though she has an opportunity to back out at this point, the Buzz link and its associated window are removed at that moment from the Gmail sidebar (but not from the Settings tab). Clicking on No, I changed my mind takes the user to the familiar Edit your profile dialog; but even then, Buzz is disabled.

But disabling Buzz does not mean deleting one’s Google profile. From here, the user is given the option to wipe her profile clean. As the explanation reads, “Your personal profile information will be permanently removed from our system.” Based on that explanation, it seems curious that Google would add another option, Also unfollow me from anyone I am following in Buzz, Google Reader, and other Google products. You would think that not having a Google profile means you’re not following anyone in Buzz. As we would discover, that’s wrong.
As a test, we first clicked on No, I changed my mind. But Gmail did not respond as we expected; it did not re-enable Buzz in Gmail. As it turns out, the disablement part already happened; the “change my mind” part refers to the deletion of one’s Google profile. This may lead to some confusion among users of Google Reader and Picasa, where profiles are also prominent; they may never have had an interest in deleting their profiles on those services anyway, just in Buzz.
Next, we noted that once the user has disabled Buzz and signed out of Gmail, she will not be given the traditional invitation to join Buzz. So Google will not continue to advertise a service the user has apparently rejected. However, even if the user visits http://buzz.google.com to restart the service, she’ll find she’s taken to Gmail where Buzz remains disabled.
But the Buzz tab still appears in Gmail settings, where she has the option of clicking on Show Google Buzz in Gmail and restoring it to the Gmail sidebar. If the user has not deleted her profile (if she “changed her mind” earlier), then Buzz will re-appear as though nothing had changed at all. Followers remain followers, and members who were followed before, are followed again.
Next, we tried the more destructive option: disabling Buzz and deleting the public profile, with the Also unfollow me… option checked. Google responded by taking us to the Accounts page, where we were told we didn’t have a public profile yet and were given the option to create one. That makes sense, because one reason a person might want to delete his profile is to start over with a new one.
What’s interesting here, though, is that the information in the Google Account we used for this test continues to include my picture, which one might think was a profile element. If the user goes to the page for the profile she thought was deleted, she’ll find a page with her picture on it…which might have her thinking she still does have a Google profile. Is it true that Google really deleted the profile information as it said it would? To figure this out, we tried re-entering Buzz.
Even when a user who’s discontinued Buzz once before enters Buzz through its own dedicated URL, she’s taken to Gmail where Buzz remains disabled. Though there are no explicit instructions here, we discovered the user can re-enable the service using the Buzz tab. However, she won’t be led by the hand in the creation of a new profile — there’s no auto-suggesting, no auto-following, no auto-anything. Buzz starts out with a blank slate. Arguably, that’s the most secure state it can start out in, blank — and perhaps Google wouldn’t have been the subject of such criticism if it had started out presenting a blank slate to begin with.
But what we were surprised to discover was this: When using a Gmail account to re-enroll in Buzz after having exited the service once already, Buzz does not automatically set up any Google profile at all. This despite the fact that our new Buzz service picks up the list of followers we generated the first time — not the list of people being followed, that’s gone. The list of people following a once-deleted Buzz user does remain and is restored once the user re-enters Buzz. This is probably because that list is compiled “live” from the active profiles of non-deleted Buzz users, so it can be reconstructed.

A person without a public profile shows up in Buzz as a person without a public profile, at least at first.
This made us wonder: If a user follows someone else using her old Buzz account, then disabled Buzz, and re-enabled it later, is the user still following that other person? No. Does the other person get notified? No, not directly. Can the followed person go into his Buzz list and discover that person is no longer following? Yes, just as though the following person were still inactive in Buzz. If the following user re-enrolls the followed user, is the followed user told? No, but the followed user can see the picture and ID of the following user in his list, assuming he’s looking for it.

As we discovered in our tests, when a user deletes her Google profile, certain information about her remains — for instance, the photo from her Google account, and her screen name. For someone who legitimately wants to discontinue using Buzz and all other Google services, erasing the Google profile may be pointless. Even though Google appears to promise that a deleted profile is a destroyed one, traces of a user’s activity could enable elements of that profile to be reconstructed. Apparently one key element survives the profile deletion: the list of people that a Buzz member is following.
But that points to a second problem, which may even be dangerous: Theoretically, a malicious user could leverage this situation to create a false Buzz identification that is not tied to any publicly searchable profile. That malicious user could then masquerade as someone whom the followed person knows, using only a name and perhaps a photo (that’s optional anyway), both of which could be false. If the malicious user created a false Google profile with Buzz, and then de-activated Buzz, the false photo and name would remain associated with the Gmail account.
The fact that this element survives even before the public Google profile is reconstructed reveals certain characteristics of Buzz that we did not previously know:
A Buzz user may follow others without a Google public profile. Even though Google states the creation of a public profile is necessary in order for a new user to enroll into Buzz, one certainly was not necessary for us to re-enroll an account into Buzz after de-activating it and deleting our test profile. As a result, if you find yourself using Buzz, you may discover that other individuals are following you whom you did not invite, and whose identities you cannot determine. In order to keep things simpler and more brief, let’s call the malicious user trying to follow someone X, and the person being followed Y. At first, X’s ID and photo (if he has one) is listed in Y’s Gmail under Y’s list of followers, even if X does not have a “public profile,” and even if X elects not to share his list of followed contacts on his (non-existent) profile. Y can unfollow that person (assuming he’s a person at all). However, if X does not have a public profile, all Y can see is the name and perhaps the photo. Therefore, it’s possible that a “non-profiled” person can follow any Buzz user, not with complete stealth, but at least without being able to present his credentials first. And if he has set up his Gmail account under a false name and photo, then conceivably anyone may easily become followed without permission by someone else passing himself off as a friend. This, in our opinion, is dangerous — perhaps even more so, theoretically, than the possibility of accidentally revealing one’s contacts list during sign-up.

Evidence exists that a user’s Buzz activities in Google’s database survive the deletion of her Google profile. Even without re-creating the Google profile, in our test, when we re-activated a once deactivated Buzz, it suggested (but did not automatically select) other Buzz members to follow. That list of suggestions (shown above) contained individuals to whom our test account had never sent a Gmail message, and from whom it had never received one, but who were previously followed under our Buzz account before we disabled it and deleted our test profile. That fact suggests that each user’s Buzz activity is being stored at Google independently of that person’s profile, so deactivating Buzz does not wipe one’s slate clean.
“Blocking” a follower can lead to a situation where the blocked follower can end up following that person anyway without being detected. Assume that X has no public profile, and is following Y. Y discovers X in her list of followers, so she blocks X. X is not notified — in fact, X still thinks he’s following Y. But he doesn’t receive Y’s updates, so he gets curious. X unfollows Y. Then X follows Y again. X is no longer blocked. What’s more, not only is Y not notified that X is no longer blocked, she cannot see that X is following Y. Y appears in X’s list of followed people, and X does not appear in Y’s list of followers. What’s more, X is not counted as one of the followers in Y’s Buzz count; so if Y has three other followers besides X, Y’s Gmail will read, “3 followers.”

Two simultaneous dialog boxes from different Gmail accounts: X is informed he’s following two people, one of whom is Y. Y believes she has blocked X, and Y is told that X is not following her. X does not have a public Google profile.
An unprofiled Buzz user may be followed by anyone else without being notified. This is where you could say Y turns the tables on X: Assume once again that X has no public profile, and is following Y. Y discovers X and blocks X. Immediately afterward, Y follows X. X can continue to follow Y, and Y will not appear in X’s list of followers. If X has not discovered yet that Y has blocked X, and X has not yet unfollowed and re-followed Y, then for the time being, X appears in Y’s list of followed people, and Y does not appear in X’s list of followers. However, X does have this one strange clue: Y is counted as one of the followers in X’s Buzz count. So if X has no other followers besides Y, X’s Gmail will read, “1 follower.” However, when X clicks on that link, the dialog box that appears will read, “X has 0 followers.”
In our initial tests last week, Betanews determined that it was indeed possible for a Buzz user to not have a public profile, and we explained why in one sense, this was a good thing. It made it possible for there to be a safeguard for new Buzz users to avoid inadvertently sharing her list of frequent Gmail contacts with other Buzz users.
But the addition of a system that enables a Buzz user to exit the service and come back with no profile at all, creates a new problem: It makes it easier for someone you don’t want following you to falsify his identity. Betanews notified Google of our test results prior to the publication of this story.

One of the “national priorities” in the Federal Communications Commission’s National Broadband Plan is to use high-speed connectivity to “provide more educational opportunities and improve outcomes” for those in rural areas and inner cities.
The FCC said today that 97% percent of public elementary and secondary schools do have Internet access, but speeds are insufficient, and services are being wasted.

The Schools and Libraries Universal Service Support Program already offers eligible public schools and libraries a special “E-rate” discount for telecommunications services and Internet access. But Commission rules currently require schools to certify that they will use “E-rate” funded services only for educational purposes, or activities that are “integral, immediate, and proximate to the education of students.”
Therefore, these subsidized services go completely unused on evenings, weekends, school holidays, and summer breaks, when people in surrounding communities may have no access to Internet services at all.
Today, the Commission said schools receiving the subsidized “E-rate” will have the option to open their facilities the public during non-operating hours.
“These connections will be available to adults taking evening digital literacy courses, to unemployed workers looking for jobs posted online, to citizens using e-government services, and for other uses that local schools believe will help their communities,” FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said today. “By making broadband available to more members of the public, this waiver furthers the goals of universal service and the Congressional directive to encourage access to advanced telecommunications and information services. And it does so in a way that doesn’t increase the size of the Universal Service Fund — indeed, that encourages more efficient use of USF funds.”
Schools that allow community members to use their E-rate services after hours, however, may not request service enhancements above and beyond those needed by students.