Remember how the UK was just playing a word game by claiming that it wouldn’t disconnect users from the internet via Peter Mandelson’s Digital Economy Bill? That was quickly debunked, as people realized that the gov’t was simply changing how it described the disconnection, calling it a “temporary account suspension” instead. Of course, that’s still a disconnect. Another unresolved question, however, was how long is temporary? Turns out the answer is however long Peter Mandelson thinks is appropriate.

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Better search, customizable label colors, YouTube previews, and other features have ‘graduated’ from Gmail Labs into the mainstream version of the Google’s e-mail service.

Originally posted at Deep Tech

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The EFF and the National Coalition Against Censorship are apparently asking YouTube to consider changing its policy with regards to nudity. Apparently, it will allow nudity if the video is from a film or TV show — but not if it’s user generated videos made for YouTube. Separately, YouTube suggests it will allow nudity with “some educational, documentary and scientific content, but only if that is the sole purpose of the video and it is not gratuitously graphic.” The problem, according to the EFF and NCAC, is that there is no exception for work that is artistic in nature, and apparently YouTube recently removed the videos of a well-known artist, Amy Greenfield, for violating the “no nudity” policy. Now, this isn’t actually a “censorship” issue, since YouTube is a private site, and not the government. So, honestly, I don’t see any problem with YouTube deciding that it doesn’t want that particular content on its site, but there is a separate issue raised here — which is that, once again, the real issue is Google’s lack of customer service — something we’ve seen a lot of lately. One of the complaints is that Greenfield’s videos were taken down with no recourse and no method for her to communicate with folks at YouTube to talk about getting them back online.

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Perfect 10, the adult entertainment publisher who simply freaked out about its magazine photos appearing online and mistakenly sued Google and Amazon for finding their images (that others had uploaded) via their search engines, never seems to want to admit that it sued the wrong entities. Every time it sues a third party (it also tried suing payment processors), claiming copyright infringement, the courts end up tossing out the lawsuits (there was a lower court ruling in Perfect 10s favor that got overturned). But, on the whole, Perfect 10s track record in these lawsuits is pretty dismal. Yet it keeps on trying. Last year, a lawsuit against Amazon was dismissed after the court pointed out that Amazon was clearly protected by the DMCA.

It appears that Perfect 10 and Amazon have finally settled that lawsuit, though they aren’t releasing the terms and conditions of the settlement. Given that Amazon won so handily in court, you’d have to imagine that Perfect 10 basically gave up to get the settlement. Still, it’s unfortunate that the details aren’t being made clear, as it would give confidence to other companies who are sued in similarly misguided lawsuits.

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This isn’t really a surprise given China’s massive internet censorship (“Great Firewall”) efforts, but apparently the Chinese government is now requiring anyone who wants to set up a website in the country to submit their identity cards and photos of themselves before they can build a site. Oh yeah, plus they have to meet with gov’t regulators to get approval to register and set up a website. In other words, the crackdown is spreading… though plenty of folks in China appear to be getting around these new rules by setting up websites outside of China. In the meantime, what a way to kill the sort of entrepreneurial web spirit you need: imagine how many internet sites would never get created if they first required approval by a government bureaucrat?

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Less than a year ago, Paul Graham wrote one of his fantastic essays suggesting that the world needs a startup founder’s visa. The problem, of course, is that our immigration policies have made it quite difficult for immigrants to come to the US to start companies, even though many of the most innovative companies these days are founded by immigrants. Tragically, our immigration policy is often created under the belief that immigration and jobs are a zero sum game — whereby more immigrants means fewer jobs. But if those immigrants are creating new companies that create new jobs, the opposite is true. Thus the impetus for a startup founder’s visa that would allow immigrants to come to the US to build new companies here, creating jobs here, rather than creating those companies elsewhere.

In the fall, venture capitalist Brad Feld felt compelled to try to get actual political support for the idea (now called the “startup visa” rather than the “founder’s visa”) and in just a few months has succeeded in at least getting Senators Kerry and Lugar (bipartisan support, which is good) to introduce the Startup Visa Act in the Senate. You can read the text of the bill (pdf).

While I’m still a huge supporter of the concept of the startup visa, I’m still a bit concerned that the focus is only on supporting entrepreneurs who have taken a certain amount of venture capital money. There could be unintended consequences with that, in forcing immigrant entrepreneurs to take venture capital that they don’t need just to secure their visas. The risk, then, is that immigrant entrepreneurs become way too dependent on their VCs. One of the great things about the startup world today is that capital requirements have changed for many types of startups, and the ability to bootstrap a startup has increased greatly — but bootstrappers aren’t welcome under the startup visa. I’ve been told that this was a political necessity, and including some sort of venture capital “sponsor” was the only way this bill would move forward — so hopefully this passes, but further changes are made later to account for the fact that not all startups need venture money, and without forcing an entrepreneur into taking money from someone just to get his or her visa.

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For the last few weeks there’s been all this talk about some site called PleaseRobMe that uses Twitter’s API to post the Tweets of people (mainly using location “check-in” service Foursquare) announcing that they’re “not home.” The site claims it’s just “raising awareness” of the potential hazards of announcing your location — though, plenty of people have pointed out that a more effective way of seeing that someone is not home is watching them leave in the morning. But this sort of moral panic over location information is not new. Consumerist points us to a fun post at Waxy that highlights two similar stories from decades past. First, there’s the fear from 1983 that answering machines would alert people to the fact you weren’t home (as if just not answering the phone wouldn’t?). The second is from 1977, and suggests people not publish funeral or wedding announcements in the newspaper, since that alerts potential burglars that you’ll be out as well.

The thing is, if a burglar wants to find out if you’re out, there are lots of ways to do that, outside of modern technology. Fearing that this is one more way to do so doesn’t seem particularly productive.

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The latest beta of Opera makes improvements to its much-discussed new JavaScript engine, and indicates that the Norwegian browser publisher intends on remaining competitive.

Originally posted at The Download Blog

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We’ve covered some of the better comments to the USTR over the Special 301 report, such as the submission from the CCIA. But, of course, there were some ridiculous submissions as well — and at the top of the list has to be the submission from the IIPA — the International Intellectual Property Alliance, a trade association/lobbying group of trade associations/lobbying groups (including the RIAA, MPAA, BSA, ESA and NMPA) that proudly highlights how it has filed comments for the Special 301 report since such things began in 1988. But what’s stunning is what the report effectively admits. Even though it claims to want to focus on ways to cut down on copyright infringement, the details show it wants the exact opposite. That’s because in reports on a variety of countries, the IIPA seems to suggest that policies encouraging or mandating the use of open source software is somehow a bad thing.

But if your goal is to actually reduce infringement, then wouldn’t you want to encourage the use of legal software? And by encouraging the use of open source software, you are making it that much less likely that infringement will be a problem, since the software will be cheaper. Basically, the IIPA is flat out admitting that it’s not actually interested in reduced copyright infringement. It’s abusing the USTR’s Special 301 process to set up protectionist policies for the companies and organizations it represents — and trying to use that process to deny efforts to actually reduce infringement.

This is really incredible when you think about it. Even though the USTR 301 report is supposed to be about figuring out ways to reduce infringement in countries around the world, the IIPA is trying to shoehorn open source software into the mix, claiming that it’s somehow worse than infringing. While many of the IIPA’s complaints have to do with mandates for open source software, it even goes after Indonesia, which is just recommending gov’t agencies consider open source software — and here, the IIPA basically exposes its agenda even further:

It encourages a mindset that does not give due consideration to the value to intellectual creations. As such, it fails to build respect for intellectual property rights…

Yes, you read that right. The IIPA is claiming that telling people to consider open source technologies — which are not at all “anti-intellectual property rights” — “fails to build respect for intellectual property rights” and doesn’t properly value intellectual creations. In other words, in the eyes of the IIPA, properly licensed software that happens to be under an open source license is worse than infringing because of its price.

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