Category Archives: Uncategorized

Uncategorized

The Economics of Spam

David H. Reilley, Jr. (Google Inc, formerly Yahoo!) and Justin M. Rao (Microsoft Research, formerly Yahoo!), have authored a paper on the Economics of Spam. It does a decent job of dissecting how and why spam “works”, and how various legislative initiatives such as the CAN-SPAM act in the US have had relatively little impact – that is, they haven’t helped reduce spam or make it less of a problem.

The full manuscript is available in PDF.

Spam is (overall) profitable for those who engage in it, even though the spam methods tend to be illegal. The things that are sold and the means of selling tend to be illegal anyway, so advertising in an illegal manner doesn’t really stretch their ethics or risk.

But more importantly, the authors estimate that society loses $100 for every $1 of profit to a spammer. This once again proves that not all economic activity is good. Regardless of profit, when the cost to society is that large, I would think it wise to not even get close to being involved with it in my business.

Many people don’t even realise that when they (for instance) purchase a list of email addresses they are likely breaking some local laws, and they may even make some money from it, but I think it’s just not right. If they, once informed, persist in using such marketing means, they lose all credibility with me. Unfortunately, many businesses to engage in spamming activities. Just choose to don’t be one of them.

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Patching the US patent system

The Electronic Frontier Foundation posted Can You Believe It? Legislation that Would Actually Help Fix the Patent System, about a new bill introduced by two US Representatives. The “SHIELD” act (Saving High-Tech Innovators from Egregious Legal Disputes) simply states that if you sue someone over a computer hardware or software patent, you better have a reasonable and good-faith belief a defendant actually infringes a valid patent before it sues. Otherwise, you’re up for all the costs.

I think it’s an excellent initiative. While not really fixing the patent system, it makes the now rife patent trolling particularly in the space of software patents unprofitable. Fundamentally I believe that software patents are a mistake, but I’m also a pragmatist. Software patents are not going to disappear overnight. However, any person or corporation with money (troll or not) can currently bully a small innovator, the mere threat can put them out of business regardless of whether the claims have merit. This is because the small innovator cannot even afford to let it go to court now, the process itself would bankrupt them even if they’d win. That is a hindrance to both innovation and valid economic activity – clearly that is not the intended purpose of the patent system. The patent system was intended to provide an inventor an exclusive time period to benefit from their invention either directly or through licensing (and as a sideline, recoup up-front costs) while having the details of the invention publicly available – thus promoting innovation, not hindering it.

The proposed bill is US legislation, but with a much broader effect. For instance, technically Europe doesn’t even have software patents, but any place that interacts with the United States through free trade agreements has some form of exposure to the US way of handling Intellectual Property, no matter how broken it is.

EFF point out that the “no frivolous claims or you pay” system has long been in place for copyright infringements and other such cases, so as a concept in the space of Intellectual Property rights it’s not new at all. It makes legal and logical sense sense and puts the US patent system in line with the rest of the US IP legislation, but no doubt there’ll be vigorous lobbying by parties that have an interest in keeping the system broken. It is a good sign that US Reps. DeFazio and Chaffetz stick their head out in this way.

For the broader case of software patents, see the Defend Innovation website. You can add your support there too.

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Dealing with trademarks

Cory Doctorow writes about a corporate lawyer from Jack Daniel’s handling a trademark issue extraordinary well. It’s about a book cover, and the author of the book tells his own story in a post entitled The Whiskey Rebellion. The book cover mimics the look of the JD label. Owners of a trademark have no choice but to pursue infringements, otherwise they can lose their trademark. But they can choose how to approach it, and therein lies the difference.

This particular lawyer also made the effort to explain the “why” just as I described above. That too is important, as I’ve found that it’s not well understood. As the Community Relations person at an international corporation, I used to be the first one contacting people in case of a trademark issue – I generally had to explain the why, but other than that there was no hassle and we’d come to some sensible solution.

With knowledge of how trademarks work, it’s not hard to assist people in avoiding the trademark even while still using the name. An interesting recent example is “LEGO Workshop” (legoworkshop.com), created by two kids (15 and 11yo). LEGO contacted them for infringement of the LEGO trademark. Of course they’re the cutest underdogs and great for a media story, but LEGO was in the right and as I explained they have no choice if they want to keep their trademark. It does appear that LEGO played corporate bully in this case, and then got the public backlash. A simple solution would have been to suggest “Workshop for LEGO” as a name, and they could’ve even gone out and acquired the domain for use by these kids. If that’d hit the media, it would have been good publicity.

The short story (and remember I Am Not A Lawyer) is that trademarks are adjectives (“a LEGO brick”). They should not be used as nouns (“I own a Ford”) or verbs (“Just Google that”). Google was very unhappy about their name morphing in to a verb, but it’s a use by people rather than a product or site – impossible to police. I presume their trademark (that is, exclusivity on its use) is effectively lost although it’d have to get challenged in court by someone before that would actually be made official. Hoover (the vacuum cleaners) are a neat historical example of this, their name turned in to both a verb (“to hoover”, which in British English means “to vacuum”) and a noun (“hoover” being a synonym for vacuum).

So the proper trademark use is “<trademark adjective> <product>”, and that use needs to be protected by the trademark holder. Further, improper use as verbs or nouns can also weaken the trademark and must thus be prevented as well.

Avoiding trouble is not hard. Let’s say you want to create a fanclub for brand or product X. “X Fanclub” is not appropriate but “Fans Of X” should be fine. “<noun> for|of <brand|product>” is the general form that makes it safe. So if you build a supplementary product for a bigger brand, you could use the form “<yourproduct> for <brand|product>”.

The same applies to domain names. Admittedly, sometimes this naming restriction makes finding a nice looking domain name quite a bit harder. But still, you want to have fun or start a company/product, not get stuck in legalities. You could also ask (the owner of the trademark). In any case, having to change a name later can be both annoying and costly.

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Geek Girls, CEOs and Coffees

Female engineers (and other tech professionals) are awesome. Healthy companies should contain a good set not only for the great pool of talent and expertise but also because of the additional perspective and balance to the work environment that a diverse set of employees in a work place can create. I’ve worked in a number of technical organisations where the techs were all male and the admins were female, and it was just wrong. In others there was a mix, and invariably the more even the mix was, the better the environment. Correlation does not imply causality, but still…

From this week’s news: Marissa Mayer. She’s a 37yo software engineer, and (among many other things) responsible for that clean simple front page of Google. Formerly employee #20 at Google, now Yahoo’s new CEO. In addition, she and her hubby are expecting their first child, and those two facts were announced on the same day. She intends to only take a few weeks off and actually work while away – as a parent, I’m somewhat intrigued by that seemingly simplistic perspective (I am mindful it’s only the media reporting) on an event that’s going to turn one’s world up side down, but I do agree that becoming a parent does not by definition disqualify you from running a company! Who knows how they’ll arrange things… perhaps the father will stay at home, perhaps Marissa will bring the baby to work and breast feed on demand. Why not? In essence, none of what they decide is really our business, but I do believe openly discussing options (in general, for everybody) is good. It is relevant whether and how companies enable and support parenthood, should people choose to become a parent.

Of course these important choices and options are not restricted to women. As a father, I’ve chosen to arrange my work hours in such a way that I can often pick my daughter up from school and have plenty of time available to spend with her. Part-time work and flexible work hours are important factors, seriously enabling a huge extra group of people to work or even just maintaining a healthier lifestyle. I’ve found that some companies enable that kind of arrangement, while others effective make it impossible. And sometimes, it’s easier to just start your own business and organise things “right”.

But getting back to the “geek girls” topic… fellow Brisbanite Miriam Hochwald started Geek Girl Coffees some years ago, and her initiative has spread to global range since. It’s a great supportive network, encouraging young women to pursue and persist in technical studies and professions. Horay to inclusive and supportive study and work environments!