Random Thoughts

This is one of those articles that may throw you for a loop, and I do not think that the author was given enough space to really make more points for discussion and thought. In this day and age of prisons being full and we are filling as fast as we build them, I think we should reconsider how much we are paying to keep people locked up for victim-less crimes.

From CBS news (London):

 Doing Time For Cyber-Crime
The Internet Is Catching An Increasing Number Of Deviant Acts, But When Do You Nail A Criminal-In-Waiting?

LONDON, June 19, 2007
(AP)

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

(CBS) This opinion piece was written by CBSNews.com producer Tucker Reals in London.

There’s a lively debate across Britain’s airwaves today about what to do with a surplus of prisoners. Too many people arrested, not enough room for them to serve time. Recent events in the news raise the question: is the Internet about to put an even greater strain on the prison system?

Along with all the other great debates born of the Digital Age — how much Web time is too much, how do you keep your kids safe, who should know what you’re surfing, etc. — allow me to add another. Who should we arrest and lock up based on what they’re looking at with a www. in front of it?

A global law enforcement task force announced this week that a major Internet pedophilia ring was busted — rescuing more than 30 kids from hell and “rounding up” 700 people suspected of downloading or creating the repulsive material for mass consumption. They’re still working the case, but 200 people have already been arrested in Britain alone.

In February, Austrian authorities announced a similar bust and said almost 2,500 people were suspected of pedaling videos and images of exploited children online. Hundreds were arrested in the U.S. and in Europe.

It hasn’t been said publicly who will face prosecution or jail time. Will it be only the ones who created the material that get thrown in jail, or also the ones who uploaded it to the Web, or the ones who downloaded it?

That’s another debate that is sure to gain steam in the coming months and years: How deviant do you have to be to in the cyberworld to get locked up in the real world?

Then there’s terrorism.

Extremist groups are becoming more Web-savvy with every passing day. Most of them have their own Web sites, and the larger ones even have multimedia production houses to disseminate hate online. How many clicks into the intricate web of militant propaganda constitutes an act of terrorism in itself?

Law enforcement agencies use the Web to monitor people — people suspected of pedophilia, terrorism, fraud, you name it.

Tom Cruise played a future cop a few years ago in a sci-fi movie in which a super-computer looked into suspect individuals’ futures. The suspects’ crimes were foreseen and Cruise would gallantly show up in the future, moments before the heinous act was committed. He would arrest them for the crime they were going to commit.

In the movie, the system led to a crime-free society. At least it did until the plot took a twist that I can’t remember because the movie was entirely too similar to all of Mr. Cruise’s other recent work.

Monitoring and arresting people for their online activities in our society may well be an excellent way to get would-be child rapists and suicide bombers off the streets before they cross the line into reality.

But now our society must figure out where to draw the line between private deviance and behavior that constitutes a danger to the public.

I don’t know where that line should be. But if we allow too much leniency, we’re not safe. If we allow too little, Tom Cruise could become reality … and we’re going to need a lot more prisons.

By Tucker Reals

Put this in the “yeah honey that bill for the private investigator on the credit card bill  is toinvestigate if our daughter is having an affair” - no really.

From Reuters 

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An Israeli man who hired a detective to find out whether his daughter was cheating on her husband was told by the investigator his wife was in fact the one being unfaithful, an Israeli newspaper reported on Sunday.

The man had his daughter followed at the request of his son-in-law, who had been suspicious of his wife’s behavior. The daughter was found innocent but the private investigator managed to snap photographs of the mother and another man caught in the act, the Maariv daily said.

“I saved my daughter’s marriage and at the same time, saved myself from a woman who had it all in life but chose another man,” the man, who has since sought to end the marriage, was quoted as telling his lawyer.

I’m filing this under dating issues, as everyone should be able to afford a private investigator to checkup on their mate. You never know when someone is fucking around it seems.

Wow, with this sociologist review of myspace, I wonder if the question “have I seen you on myspace” will be a way to tell if you are a degenerate or not. I remember reading something a while back talking about employers searching through social networks and blogs to see if they should hire you. Could it become a liability in some people’s eyes just to have a myspace account? If what this sociologist is saying is true, I guess it could be.

I also have to think.. wow, Myspace is worth like 580 million, or it was a time ago, some recent estimates put it’s value in the billions.. does that mean that a combination of freaks, fags and musicians have a lot of buying power and are a powerful demographic? Interesting thoughts…

Here is the article from Boing Boing that stirs these questions in my mind:

MySpace, Facebook mirror class divisions in US society

My friend danah boyd — frequently featured here — is one of the best social scientists working on social networking sites today. She’s just published a working draft of a paper called “Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace,” which posits that well-to-do, stable American teens with “good prospects” end up on Facebook, while poor, queer, marginal and non-white teens end up on MySpace (even in the military, grunts are on MySpace and officers are on Facebook — guess which one the military banned!)

As with all danah’s work, this is provocative, insightful stuff that exposes the deeper lessons lurking beneath the tens of millions of profile pages on social networking sites.

The goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes, or other “good” kids are now going to Facebook. These kids tend to come from families who emphasize education and going to college. They are part of what we’d call hegemonic society. They are primarily white, but not exclusively. They are in honors classes, looking forward to the prom, and live in a world dictated by after school activities.

MySpace is still home for Latino/Hispanic teens, immigrant teens, “burnouts,” “alternative kids,” “art fags,” punks, emos, goths, gangstas, queer kids, and other kids who didn’t play into the dominant high school popularity paradigm. These are kids whose parents didn’t go to college, who are expected to get a job when they finish high school. Teens who are really into music or in a band are on MySpace. MySpace has most of the kids who are socially ostracized at school because they are geeks, freaks, or queers.

Interesting article about what you can do if someone registers a similar domain name to take your web site traffic. I had not idea there were these steps available, nor that a few thousand dollars is considered cheap!

From Xbiz:

Domain Name Theft

By John Yates

 You can fight back against cybersquatters, typosquatters and Internet pirates siphoning traffic away from your website by using one of a few methods currently available to protect your domain name. The odds of success often are good, and the cost is usually manageable. XBIZ describes and evaluates the legal tools here.

Suppose your successful high-traffic website is located at BlueZone.com. You’ve been operating for two years, traffic has increased each month, and consumers go to your site because they know it displays, sells and links to quality adult product in the MILF genre. Your traffic suddenly drops substantially, and you soon learn why: an Internet pirate has just registered and activated websites located at BlueZones.com, BlueBone.com, and BluZone.com. You run Whois searches on these domain names and locate the hosting company and a registrant, but are unable to identify the person or company that actually owns these domains.

Under the circumstances outlined above, you should strongly consider initiating an arbitration proceeding under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), which applies to all domains ending with .com, .net and .org. Your goal will be to have the pirate domain names either canceled or transferred to you, which are the only two remedies a UDRP arbitration permits. In order to win, you must prove three facts: 1) the pirate domain names are identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or service mark to which you have rights; 2) the pirate has no rights or legitimate interests in the confusingly similar domain names; and 3) the pirate has registered and used the confusingly similar domain names in bad faith.

In most UDRP arbitrations, the most difficult fact to prove will usually be that you have trademark rights in or relating to the domain name. If you have registered the word “BlueZone” as a trademark, then you will not have a problem, because your trademark rights are demonstrated by your registration. If you haven’t registered BlueZone as your trademark, you will have to provide the arbitration panel with some evidence that consumers identify “BlueZone” with your site, and with a specific kind of product.

Traffic figures, industry awards for BlueZone, advertising campaigns to promote the mark and the website, and evidence of product marketed under the BlueZone brand will all help you prevail.

Compared to the alternatives, a UDRP proceeding is a true bargain. Arbitration fees usually range from $1,300 to $3,500 in a proceeding involving one or two domain names and one to three arbitrators, and attorney’s fees from $3,000 to $8,000. Cost varies depending on whether the pirate fights to keep the confusingly similar domains, and on your attorney’s hourly fee. Filing the complaint to getting a decision usually requires 60 days or less. You don’t need a registered trademark to prevail, and you don’t need to know who or where the true owner of the pirate domains is. Against these clear benefits, you should also know that UDRP remedies are very limited. Also, the UDRP arbitration can only deal with domain names that actually exist when the proceeding is commenced. Even if you win, the pirate can register additional confusingly similar domains, and start the same problem all over again.

UDRP arbitrations are particularly appropriate to protect stage names, and domain names using stage names, from pirates. Typically, evidence of your appearance in several videos under the same stage name will be sufficient evidence of your trademark rights in the name to shut the pirate down, or transfer the offending domain name(s to you.

Court Actions Under Federal Trademark and Unfair Competition Statutes Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (15 U.S.C. §1125(D))
Under the same hypothetical facts outlined above, and assuming that the true owner of the pirate domain names cannot be located, you may protect your Bluezone trademark, and BlueZone.com, by filing what is called an in rem action under the Anti- Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) in the federal court for the district in which the registrar of the offending domain name(s) is located. The action is called in rem because you are proceeding only against the pirate domain names, and not the pirate.

The prerequisite to filing an in rem action is proving to the court that you have either diligently tried, but failed, to identify the true owner of the domain names, or that you did identify the true owner, but are unable to compel the owner to show up to be sued. The true owner cannot be forced to appear, in most cases, if the owner resides outside your state, or outside the U.S. You will need to prove essentially the same facts in the ACPA in rem action as in the UDRP arbitration. As in the UDRP arbitration, the only remedies available in the ACPA in rem action are cancellation or transfer of the offending domain names.

The UDRP arbitration and the in rem court action under ACPA have similar benefits, but the UDRP arbitration is the better choice, for at least three reasons. First, the quantity of evidence required to win is greater in federal court than in the UDRP domain name arbitration. Second, the in rem action may require a lawsuit to be filed far from your home. For example, if AOL is the registrant of the pirate domains, you will need to file your in rem action in Virginia, where AOL is headquartered. Third, obtaining the same relief offered quickly through the UDRP arbitration is vastly more complex procedurally when you obtain it through your ACPA in rem action. This typically leads to higher attorney’s fees. Higher attorney’s fees are partially offset because federal judges, unlike UDRP arbitrators, do not charge for their time.

If you are able to identify the true owner of the pirate domain names, then you may file your ACPA action in any federal court in which the true owner can be compelled to appear. This will usually be the district or districts in which the true owner resides or does business.

In order to prevail in your ACPA action where you have identified the owner of the pirate domains and forced the owner to show up in court, you must prove that the owner registered them without any reasonable belief that doing so was lawful. Also, you must prove that the pirate domain names are confusingly similar to your BlueZone trademark, or that BlueZone is generally recognized by U.S. consumers, and the pirate domain names actually lessen (”dilute” in legal terminology) the ability of BlueZone to identify your high-quality MILF genre products. It generally will be easier to prove confusion, rather than dilution, although neither alternative is necessarily easy to prove.

If you win an ACPA action against the true owner of the pirate domains, then you will be eligible for all available remedies, including enhanced damages, ability to recover the pirate’s profits from using the pirate domains, ability to recover your attorney’s fees, transfer or cancellation of the pirate domains, and an order prohibiting the owner of the pirate domains from registering the domains, or any others like them, again. The large number of remedies available can make an ACPA action the better choice, in the right circumstances. Typically, those circumstances will include the ability of the owner of the pirate domains to pay you substantial damages, and a provable and substantial loss of business or traffic at BlueZone.com.

Trademark Infringement, and False Designation of Origin or Dilution (15 U.S.C. §§1114, 1125(A), (C))
You may wish to protect the BlueZone mark and BlueZone.com by simply filing a standard action for trademark infringement if you have registered BlueZone with the Trademark Office, or for false designation of origin or dilution if you have not. This choice eliminates the need to prove, as you must in the ACPA action, that the owner of the pirate domain names was acting in bad faith, and focuses more on the strength of the BlueZone mark. Otherwise, you must prove the same facts to win, and if you do win, you will have the same remedies as described above.

In summary, most of the time you will be able to adequately protect your trademark and domain name from various kinds of Internet piracy through the relatively cheap and fast UDRP procedure. The risk you run is that you will need to repeat the UDRP procedure continually if the pirate continues to register domain names confusingly similar to yours. If your trademark is strong, well-recognized, and has been in use for a long time, and you are able to identify the true owner of the pirate sites as a solvent person or business entity as well as compel the owner to show up to be sued, then ACPA or trademark litigation may be your best choice. Even though the total costs are likely to be significantly higher than for the UDRP arbitration, the broader remedies available may make the cost worthwhile.

Caffeine Addiction Keeps Growing -  from digg with full article and discussion there.

Everywhere you look, people are wired on caffeine or touting its benefits —or both. Products that already have caffeine are adding more—in the past few months Diet Pepsi, Jolt and Mountain Dew have all rolled out extra-caffeinated versions. Novelty items like caffeinated soap are showing up. But for the general public, the trend is more about

Starbucks raises prices - (excerpt from Reuters story)

 And as with past Starbucks price increases, analysts also said consumers were unlikely to balk at paying a few cents more for their daily caffeine fix.

The increase will vary by drink and by market, but will average out to about 9 cents a cup, Borrman said. Starbucks’ last price rise of about 5 cents per drink went into effect in October.

The latest increase affects drinks made behind the counter and is effective July 31 at Starbucks’ 6,300 company-owned stores in the United States, Borrman said. Licensed stores control their own prices, but are expected to follow the move, he added. There are about 3,500 licensed Starbucks stores in the United States.

Starbucks cuts down on caffeine served - faster means more money and less caffeine per shot pulled form the new automatic machines that they are using at most locations.