February 01, 2012

The Facebook IPO and SOPA

Facebook obliquely references SOPA/PIPA in its disclosure (along with other proposed laws), as a risk factor to its business:

... there have been a number of recent legislative proposals in the United States, at both the federal and state level, that would impose new obligations in areas such as privacy and liability for copyright infringement by third parties. These existing and proposed laws and regulations can be costly to comply with and can delay or impede the development of new products, result in negative publicity, increase our operating costs, require significant management time and attention, and subject us to claims or other remedies, including fines or demands that we modify or cease existing business practices.

Posted by Anupam Chander on February 1, 2012 at 05:15 PM in Digitization | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 20, 2012

The Chinese View of SOPA

The New Yorker has a story on the Chinese view of SOPA:

Commentator Shi Han wrote about trying to post a comment to Tencent, the giant Chinese portal. “I’ve written a short article about SOPA. But when I tried to put it up, Tencent replied with a message: ‘Your content has not passed review.’”

Posted by Anupam Chander on January 20, 2012 at 06:39 AM in Digitization | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 17, 2012

SOPA Teach-In

Posted by Anupam Chander on January 17, 2012 at 09:32 PM in Digitization | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 10, 2012

.XXX Operator Earns Millions from Those Worried About .XXX Names

The BNA's Thomas O'Toole has an important post on the exploitation of companies and others worried about a ".XXX" version of their trademark.  He notes that this group has paid about millions  to register .XXX names to block others from exploiting them.

ICM Registry Inc., the registry operator for the .xxx top-level domain, announced Nov. 1 that it sold nearly 80,000 domain registrations in the just-concluded Sunrise A and Sunrise B registration periods.

... 

These dollars represent an enormous tax on the trademark owner community with very little in the way of countervailing social benefit. It's true that nobody forced trademark owners to participate in the .xxx sunrise registration round. On the other hand, how many companies would risk tarnishment of their brand in .xxx if the cost of protection is a mere $299?

These registrations cost nearly $300 per domain, representing a massive expenditure of cash mostly by folks who want to be kept out of .xxx's adult content neighborhood.

Further demonstration of the poor choices made by ICANN.

Posted by Anupam Chander on January 10, 2012 at 04:23 AM in Digitization, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

December 04, 2011

Women Make Up 9% of Directors of Silicon Valley Firms

The SF Chronicle reports on a new study:

Women account for less than 10 percent of the total number of board directors in the valley, according to global executive search firm Spencer Stuart in the report, "2011 Silicon Valley Board Index."

... Women sat on 91 percent of [S&P 500] boards, accounting for 16 percent of all directors, compared with 9.1 percent in Silicon Valley.

Will lack of female representation among directors (and likely officers as well) affect these companies' ability to serve its users?

Here is a list of Apple Directors (higher than the 9% average--but just 1 of 8):

Apple's top officers are 100% male, as the graphic shows.

Posted by Anupam Chander on December 4, 2011 at 08:19 AM in Digitization | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 20, 2011

Siri-Everything

The French developer Applidium reports that Siri could be run from any device, were it not for a single line of code that authenticates the iPhone to Apple.  That is, Apple could license the use or Siri for your car, or your fridge, or your shoes. Hat-tip: Gizmodo.

Posted by Anupam Chander on November 20, 2011 at 09:01 PM in Digitization | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

November 16, 2011

"The Great Firewall of America"

Rebecca MacKinnon has a sobering piece in today's New York Times:

China operates the world’s most elaborate and opaque system of Internet censorship. But Congress, under pressure to take action against the theft of intellectual property, is considering misguided legislation that would strengthen China’s Great Firewall and even bring major features of it to America.

The legislation — the Protect IP Act, which has been introduced in the Senate, and a House version known as the Stop Online Piracy Act — have an impressive array of well-financed backers, including the United States Chamber of Commerce, the Motion Picture Association of America, the American Federation of Musicians, the Directors Guild of America, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the Screen Actors Guild. The bills aim not to censor political or religious speech as China does, but to protect American intellectual property. Alarm at the infringement of creative works through the Internet is justifiable. The solutions offered by the legislation, however, threaten to inflict collateral damage on democratic discourse and dissent both at home and around the world.

Posted by Anupam Chander on November 16, 2011 at 08:55 AM in Digitization, Globalization | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack

October 25, 2011

Silicon Valley Focuses on Human Rights Implications of Its Work

I'm attending the Silicon Valley Human Rights Conference--the third such conference, following Yahoo's conference in April 2010 (if I recall correctly), and Google's Budapest conference in Fall 2010--a public demonstration of a commitment to the virtues of free speech. Some will question whether billion dollar corporations can ever be sincere in their commitment to human rights, or whether such efforts are simply window dressing. The corporate officers present here--from Google and Facebook--certainly have human rights bona fides in their biographies.

Van Jones is going on now, talking about the "pro democracy struggle going on right here.  A struggle against plutocracy."  Watch it online here.

Posted by Anupam Chander on October 25, 2011 at 12:13 PM in Digitization, Globalization | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 14, 2011

Cloud Law: University of Toronto Conference

Today, the University of Toronto Faculty of Law's Centre for Innovation Law and Policy is hosting a splendid conference on cloud computing and the law. The entire conference is being live streamed--and will be archived online here: http://cloudlaw.ca/ 

It's fun to be back in Toronto, my first time in decades.  A quick observation for my Toronto friends, and I'm sure not the first time someone has suggested it: the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) looks as if a spaceship crashed into a gothic building, and unfortunately it was a spaceship from a people who liked really awkward shapes.

Posted by Anupam Chander on October 14, 2011 at 01:55 PM in Digitization, Globalization | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 08, 2011

Fired Yahoo! CEO Received $40 Million in 2009

According to Business Week:

Oct. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Yahoo! Inc. Chief Executive Officer Carol Bartz topped a list of executives who are paid too much for running underperforming companies, according to a report by proxy advisory firm Glass Lewis & Co.

Bartz, who joined the company in early 2009, received $39 million last year, according to Glass Lewis, which is based in San Francisco. That was the highest compensation among executives at 25 overpaying companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, Glass Lewis said today.

To determine whether the company is paying too much, Glass Lewis weighs metrics including stock price, operating cash flow and growth in per-share earnings. Much of Bartz’s compensation included options to purchase stock at prearranged prices in the event the company meets certain targets. The executive aims to combat rising competition from Facebook Inc. and Google Inc. and reverse the slump that’s left sales little changed on her watch.

“Bartz represents a problem we find at many other firms with poor pay-for-performance grades: excessive compensation awarded to executives to encourage them to join or remain with a company,” the report said.

The demeanor presented by the CEO in this interview suggests that that money was likely ill-spent.

Here's a proposal to the Yahoo! board (whom the outgoing CEO labels "doofuses"): I think I could do a better job at 1/10th the compensation.  Indeed, I suggest that anyone you hire be limited to 1/10th the compensation, period--perhaps $1 million in salary, and up to $3 million in performance pay.

Posted by Anupam Chander on September 8, 2011 at 11:23 AM in Digitization | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack