Digital Media

Ever since someone tried to sell me on the curious notion that Houston was the Manhattan of Texas, I have become fascinated with the place.

So I am blissfully excited that PCWorld has caused my blood to turn my arteries into a NASCAR track with the revelation that police in the Houston-area county of Montgomery have decided to shame drunk drivers in a very modern way.

Yes, if you are caught driving while the special eggnog concoctions are making your nerve endings feel like Christmas lights, you will have your name on an especially festive Twitter page.

This seasonal offer only applies to those arrested between Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve. And the Twitter page in question will not be one newly set up for the occasion, but rather that of Montgomery County District Attorney Brett Ligon.

Naturally, some are wondering whether this little Twittering experiment might be flying the wrong way down a lane currently occupied by the concept of "innocent until proved guilty."

The Manhattan of Texas. A home of socially-networking progress?

(Credit: CC Eflon/Flickr)

As Houston attorney Paul B. Kennedy says, on his own blog, with a sarcasm that not even a sliver of cabernet sauvignon could dampen: "Of course the police never make wrongful arrests."

However, in Texas they do seem to be quite keen on humiliation as a palliative. No, I am not referring to the bedroom predilections of Texan lawmakers, but rather to Denton, Texas (near the slightly less Manhattanesque city of Dallas), where every arrest gets Twittered.

It has to be said, though, that the Denton Twitter page was originally conceived by an enthusiastic layperson, rather than a zealous arresting officer.

While the Montgomery County drunk-driving information that is being Twittered is not legally confidential, you might wonder whether Twittering humiliation is a reasonable method of enacting the law.

Montgomery County Vehicular Crimes Prosecutor Warren Diepraam told PCWorld: "I sincerely doubt that the fact that I've put someone's name on a Twitter page is going to affect their right to a fair trial."

And I sincerely doubt that Diepraam believes that social networking is anything other than a vehicle for honest and legal communication. However, could he be the same Warren Diepraam from Houston, Texas who, on his Facebook page, wants people to think he looks like the moon? Surely not.

I have often wondered if being a divorce lawyer makes you feel better about humanity or worse. Perhaps it merely keeps you in intimate contact with all the pitfalls of relationships on a daily, even hourly, basis.

Still, whose heart could possibly lose so much as a throb on hearing that almost one in five divorces in the UK are fueled by Facebook?

No, it's not that Facebook's employees are so irresistible that anyone who comes into contact with them, even in the UK, immediately leaves their spouse. Rather, it seems that the constant lack of trust in marriages causes much trawling around spouses' Facebook pages until one party decides the party's over.

It has already been established by one study that Facebook turns lovers a painful shade of green. However, the Telegraph quotes a law firm declaring that almost one in five divorce petitions make Facebook the scene of the crime.

The managing director of Divorce-Online told the Telegraph: "I had heard from my staff that there were a lot of people saying they had found out things about their partners on Facebook and I decided to see how prevalent it was. I was really surprised to see 20 percent of all the petitions containing references to Facebook."

Facebook is the home of love, surely.

(Credit: CC Sabrina Campagna/Flickr)

Some of the biggest culprits, according to the Telegraph, are flirty e-mails and messages found on Facebook, which are "increasingly being cited as evidence of unreasonable behavior."

And it was only in February that Emma Brady discovered her husband was divorcing her when he updated his Facebook status to: "Neil Brady has ended his marriage to Emma Brady."

Are people who leave themselves so exposed on Facebook merely careless? Or does the liberating new medium of social networking allow them to deliberately tell their spouses that they have had enough without having the courage to look them in the eyes?

Perhaps, though, Facebook might use this phenomenon to advertise its own power. The site should create a special group: the Facebook Disconnects group. It would bring together all those whose marriages that ended because of wall posts and the like, thereby showing how Facebook relationships are more powerful than any out there in the dumb ole' analog, touchy-feely world.

That way, advertisers might finally realize that it's better to put all of their money into digital relationships on Facebook rather than into those quaintly ancient TV spots.

There are those who believe that Microsoft came up with the name Bing for its refreshed search engine after staring at the word "Bingo" for several days and then removing the last letter.

However, a small entity in St. Louis has decided that the name Bing was, is and always should be, theirs.

According to Ars Technica, Bing Information Design! has designs on some compensation from Microsoft, as it has used the delightful term, followed by a slightly less delightful exclamation point, ala Yahoo, since 2000.

Even to the most bleary eyes, Bing Information Design's Web site does not immediately stir confusion with Bing the search engine. Bing Information Design is "dedicated to taking tough, hard-to-define concepts and boiling them down into simple, easy-to-understand ideas."

So perhaps there might be those who would prefer a few pictures that would engender easy-to-understand ideas that might explain one thing: how could anyone confuse a massively promoted search engine from Microsoft with a minimally known company whose two founders "have over 25 years of experience in design, illustration, branding, information architecture and publishing"?

(Credit: Diego 3336/Flickr)

Bing Information Design's lawsuit says that Microsoft's Bing "causes confusion with regard to the relationship between the plaintiff and the defendant, confuses the public with regard to the origin of the plaintiff's services and dilutes the value of the plaintiff's trademark."

The lawsuit also suggests that Microsoft knew of the St. Louis Bing and that therefore Bing deserves "actual and punitive damages, including having Microsoft pay for corrective advertising to remedy the confusion it caused."

I am sure that many an ad agency would leap at the opportunity to create a campaign that says "Bing. The Decision Engine Decisively Not from St. Louis. And Decisively Lacking an Exclamation Point."

A Microsoft spokesperson told Ars Technica: "We believe this suit to be without merit and we do not believe there is any confusion in the marketplace with regard to the complainant's offerings and Microsoft's Bing."

It will be interesting to see what proof of marketplace confusion Bing Information Design's lawyers might offer. Has there truly been consternation in Missouri? Have people walked into Bing Information Design's offices expecting to find Steve Ballmer chewing on some ideas?

It will be also interesting to hear whose fine decision it was to put that lovely exclamation point after the Bing in the St. Louis company's name.

One should always have sympathy with the small fish in the big sea. But is this a slightly gratuitous attempt by Bing Information Design to gain a little cha-ching? One awaits the full evidence with an exclamation point in one's heart.

When rich people sue rich people, it often seems that the only possible winners can be rich people.

Which perhaps doesn't engage the emotions of spectators quite as much as, say, when rich people are caught with their plus fours around their ankles.

Still, the current lawsuit between eBay and Craigslist does offer a small window into our own daily lives. You know, the one through which we decide whether we believe what someone is telling us.

This legal spatula is being flipped in Delaware Chancery Court, its essence revolving around how much of Craigslist eBay really owns. Is it 28.4 percent, on which they initially agreed in 2004? Or is it the 24 percent that appears to have emerged after what eBay believes was a "self-dealing" and underhand scheme by Craigslist to dilute the value of its stock?

eBay's executives have already protested both their innocence and niceness. On Thursday and Friday, it was the turn of Craig Newmark and Jim Buckmaster of Craigslist. (Oh, if you're in need of human fascination, it continues Monday and is being streamed live by the Courtroom View Network.)

So here we are having to decide who is, well, the nicest person, the one who isn't telling the odd fib or two.

Perhaps the most moving remark of the first couple of days came from former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, who told the court that the moment she became concerned about the dealings between the two companies was when eBay founder Pierre Omidyar allegedly became frustrated with Craigslist.

"To be honest," she told the court, "I was starting to get concerned because really, nobody doesn't like Pierre."

And so we had eBay claiming the niceness higher ground. "We are sweet. We are lovely. We are kind to animals," seemed to be her refrain. The folks at Craigslist, though they might seem pleasantly libertarian at times, are not immune from a little folksiness of their own.

Believable?

(Credit: CC: Jemima G/Flickr)

So when Newmark and Buckmaster took the stand, it was surely hard not to see them as the smaller, more idealistic Merry Men trying to avoid being slammed into the stocks by the big, bad Sheriff of Nottingham.

Newmark, he of the dour-colored suits and the slightly Elvis Costello-ish mien, sounded like Elvis at his lowest when he described how he felt betrayed by eBay.

He came to believe that his lady suitor's aim was not true. "eBay, specifically Meg Whitman, made commitments, and broke them," he told the court.

The Craigslist team, you see, became very concerned when eBay began to create its own classified site, with the slightly uncomfortable name Kijiji. Whitman, claimed Newmark, had promised exclusivity, but she was clearly playing around with Craig's confidential data and his feelings.

Buckmaster, Newmark's blessedly calm Friar Tuck, no doubt tugged at some heartstrings on Friday, when he described a correspondence between himself and Whitman.

On July 12, 2007, he allegedly wrote to the then-eBay CEO: "It is my sad duty to report that we are no longer comfortable having eBay as a shareholder." He went on to explain that Craigslist rather wanted to "explore options for our repurchase, or for otherwise finding a new home for these shares."

This all seemed like Whitman and her less than merry people were being dumped. Which is why you might be rendered somewhat insensate by her alleged reply: "We are so happy with our relationship with Craigslist that we could neither imagine doing anything to disturb our personal rapport with you or [Craigslist founder] Craig [Newmark], nor parting with our shareholding in Craigslist Inc. under any foreseeable circumstances."

She allegedly continued: "Quite to the contrary, we would welcome the opportunity to acquire the remainder of Craigslist Inc. we do not already own whenever you and Craig feel it would be appropriate."

Buckmaster told the court he found the cheery tone of this note to be "threatening."

So there you have it. Buckmaster continues with his possibly painful story on Monday. You, meanwhile, have all weekend to discern who might have slipped a little Rohypnol into their facts and who might be appealing to more fundamental human frailties.

You might also wonder what on earth these two sides were doing trying to have a relationship with each other. Somehow, it all seems a little like Angelina Jolie trying to get it on with Ross Perot.

Is there some etiquette one should follow when receiving a spam text?

Should one at least read it before erasing it? Should one even attempt a polite reply, even if it is in the negative? Or should one sue the rotten behind off the ungracious crasher who deigns to invade one's cell phone?

If your name is Elizabeth Espinal, you gravitate toward the latter option.

According to the Miami New Times, Espinal was inconvenienced by that slightly creepy King texting her with what she describes in her suit as "cryptic" messages.

You know the kind of thing, enticements to nosh on a splendidly nourishing Burger King steakhouse burger. Or entreaties to please, please try a Mocha BK Iced Coffee. After the first, Espinal allegedly texted back "stop." But the King kept creeping electronically into her life certain, it seems, of winning her over. At least twice more, apparently.

Unimpressed by his wooing her with his "perfect mix of rich coffee and chocolate syrup," Espinal slapped him with what she hopes is a perfect mix of a lawsuit.

The New Times suggested that within Espinal's veritable onion ring of pain lay the idea that she was "caused actual harm" and was "subjected to aggravation."

(Credit: CC Ted Murphy/Flickr)

Now, we all have our own opinions of fast food. Yes, the purchasing process can be aggravating, and yes, very occasionally our digestion can slip a cog in its delicate machinations, resulting in some temporary harm. But could this all be worth $5 million?

Oh, perhaps I didn't mention, but Espinal is allegedly looking for 5 million whopping dollars. Perhaps the King would merely have to sell a couple of his crowns, but still, it does seem like a lot of money.

She appears to have filed the suit in April of this year as a class action and it has not yet received certification. Her no doubt clever lawyers are relying on Section 47 of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which "prohibits unsolicited voice and text calls to cellular phones."

I understand that Espinal might be on the blistered side of peeved to discover she had to pay for the texts that Burger King sent, even though they might have contained patently irresistible enticements.

But $5 million suggests either that she is a very sensitive human being, or that she believes that the only way to deal with an alleged harasser is to harass them right back.

What if she were to somehow win? Might we all be able to sue those who text us with unwanted inducements? I'm not thinking merely of AT&T, which keeps sending me texts with numbers and concepts far beyond my meager rationality.

What about those slightly odd people we meet at parties and networking events? You know, the insurance salesmen to whom we regret giving our phone number, our business cards, even our names--the ones who contact us suggesting a meeting and then contact us three more times. Might we be able to take them for a few million?

I think I'll text my lawyer and ask him.

Here's the story. Or at least most of it.

Some 19 years ago, a man in Germany, together with his half brother, reportedly murdered an actor named Walter Sedlmayr. The man was convicted and served 15 years in jail.

Now he is free. And, according to Wired, he has exercised that freedom by instructing lawyers, the elegantly named firm of Stopp and Stopp, to sue Wikipedia.

The lawsuit claims that German privacy law, designed to help criminals re-integrate into society, prevents the man being named in association with Walter Sedlmayr's murder.

Wired quotes Jennifer Granick from the Electronic Frontier Foundation as saying that the lawyers are not only demanding that publications change whatever they write now, but that online archives must endure revision, too.

In writing to Wikipedia, the lawyers offered a very interesting approach: "As your article deals with a local German public figure (such as the actor Walter Sedlmayr), we expect you are aware that you have to comply with applicable German law."

Well, gosh, perhaps not everyone realizes when they mention, say, Boris Becker or that interesting actress who was in the first of the Bourne movies, that one is subject to German law when one does so.

Geek.com quotes the Electronic Frontier Foundation as adding: "At stake is the integrity of history itself. If all publications have to abide by the censorship laws of any and every jurisdiction just because they are accessible over the global Internet, then we will not be able to believe what we read, whether about Falun Gong (censored by China), the Thai king (censored under lèse majesté) or German murders."

(Credit: CC Schoschie/Flickr)

You might be wondering why I have not mentioned this German murderer's name. You see, as I write, I am reminded that the world seems to revel in the persona of murderers. In some slightly twisted way, they become figures of fascination.

I have a strange suspicion that the more the name of Walter Sedlmayr's murderer is mentioned, the more famous he will become. And the more famous he will become, the more money he might be able to make from the fame he claims not to desire.

So I am conducting a fame-reduction experiment. Moreover, I know that everyone who chooses to discover his name can do so in a myriad of ways.

I wonder how many people tried to access information about this man who murdered the German actor Walter Sedlmayr and how many people have done so in recent days.

I also wonder how Wikipedia will choose to respond to this interesting and rather revisionist-minded lawsuit. At the time of writing, the full names of both murderers are still there in the Wikipedia entry for Walter Sedlmayr.

However, the Wikipedia Administrators' noticeboard has a spirited discussion about all aspects of the case.

The solution proposed by a poster called Zara 1709 on the noticeboard is to "remove the full name from the article and the article talk page, but leave in the edit history of the article and the talk page. We would even have some sources that mention the full names in the reference, simply because they provide other, relevant information, too."

The precedent for this is the so-called Star Wars kid case, in which a 14-year-old Canadian boy waved around a golf-ball retriever like a lightsaber and then endured painful taunts, leading to an equally painful lawsuit.

Zara1709 noted that: "It is quite important to point out that, on Wikipedia, regard for people's privacy applies to criminals and former criminals, too."

However, another poster, Baseball Bugs, dissented: "There is no justification whatsoever for censoring the names of the killers. The notability argument is bogus, there is no privacy or BLP issue, and the 'doing harm' argument is crystal-ball and thus is irrelevant. And some anonymous German judge has no jurisdiction over Wikipedia."

In reading all this, I am left with the words that were often drubbed into me by teachers: "History is written by the winners."

So if this German request succeeds, might some consider that the winner is Wolfgang Wehrle, the man who, with his half brother Manfred Lauber, murdered Walter Sedlmayr 19 years ago? Dash it, I couldn't help myself. I hope I'm not causing undue work for some future editor.

Facebook seems to have contributed to countless broken love affairs, divorces, and insane levels of jealousy. People pry into your friend lists and updates until they sometimes reach conclusions far beyond reality. How lovely, then, that a mere status update appears to have saved a Harlem man from jail.

According to The New York Times, Rodney Bradford decided to update his status with a call from the soul. "Where's my pancakes?" is the Times' translation of a status update it says was written in "indecipherable street slang." The fact that Bradford did this at 11:49 a.m. on October 17, using his father's computer, meant that he would not have to suffer pancakes of a more distasteful nature in the local penitentiary.

(Credit: CC Slushpup/Flickr)

Bradford, you see, was arrested the next day for robbery. However, after he was booked, his lawyer was intelligent enough to update the district attorney with news of Bradford's Facebooking.

A subpoena was swiftly flung the way of the Zuckerbergville crew so that they might reveal whether the timing and location of the update were correct. They were, meaning Bradford could update his criminal status to "cleared."

There are some, however, who are not entirely convinced the charges should have been dropped. Joseph Pollini, a teacher at the Department of Law, Police Science and Criminal Justice Administration at John Jay College of Criminal Justice told the Times: "With a username and password, anyone can input data in a Facebook page."

He also offered a dire warning of the infinite dastardliness of people Bradford's age: "Some of the brightest people on the Internet are teenagers. They know the Internet better than a lot of people. Why? Because they use it all the time."

Oh, why is it so hard to give young people the benefit of the doubt--especially on Facebook?

France has adopted a strong antipiracy law, one that may mean those who chronically share unauthorized movies and music online will lose Web access for up to a year.

France's top constitutional court approved a revised plan to penalize those accused multiple times of infringing intellectual property, according to a report published Thursday in The New York Times.

In the spring, the court rejected an earlier version of the law.

Dan Glickman, chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America, applauded the French court's decision.

"Today's decision is an enormous victory for creators everywhere," Glickman said. "It is our hope that ISPs will fully honor their promise to cooperate and that the French government will take the necessary measures to dedicate resources to handle the enormous task ahead."

Rick Cotton, executive vice president and general counsel at NBC Universal, said: "The French action recognizes that jobs and economic growth in creative industries are under assault by digital theft. We need a safe and secure Internet that enables consumers to access content easily but does not facilitate illegal file sharing that kills jobs in creative sectors."

Under the law, a new agency will be created that will issue termination notices to Internet service providers, and they will in turn cut off access to customers accused of piracy. But first, in cases where the agency wants to terminate service, it must first go through some kind of judicial review.

One of the ways the law was revised to gain acceptance by the French court is to require a judge to review each case before anyone's Internet access is shut down.

It's doubtful that a law like this could be adopted in the United States, at least at this point. Both the film and music industries have shied away from lobbying for a three-strikes law. But they have appealed to ISPs to voluntarily create what they refer to as a graduated-response program. This would call for the ISPs to issue warnings to chronic copyright offenders and potentially cut off service for those who refuse to comply.

There is yet another way that copyright owners could get ISPs to help in their antipiracy efforts, according to Gwen Hinze, international policy director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

She says the United States could agree to a three-strikes rule as part of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA, being negotiated by legislators in the United States, Japan, the European Union, among others.

In this way, U.S. copyright owners could create a law without any public debate, Hinze said. She called any such attempt "policy laundering."

ACTA members are scheduled to gather again for more talks later this year.

Updated at 3 p.m. to include comments by Electronic Frontier Foundation.

There were those who believed that the creator of the "Should Obama Be Killed?" Facebook poll might be a sinister white supremacist out to cause world disruption.

Some were less convinced, as all the four potential answers to the poll--"Yes", "no", "Maybe" and "if he cuts my health care"--were spelled correctly.

Now, according to the Associated Press, the Secret Service, which quickly went into action to pay the poll's author a social call, has announced that no action will be taken against the creator. (A separate person, a poll software developer, came forward earlier this week and had what he described as a "friendly" talk with the Service.)

"Case closed," Secret Service spokesman Edwin Donovan told the AP. "I guess you could characterize it as a mistake."

It was mistake that appears to have been perpetrated by a juvenile who, presumably, thought it was, um, funny. The Service met with both the juvenile and his or her parents (no details about the person's identity are being revealed) and decided, perhaps, that a little grounding might be sufficient.

Still, it is worth considering just what developers and Facebook itself might do to get a slightly firmer grasp on alleged amusements posted on the social-networking site.

(Credit: The Huffington Post)

A very swift wander around Facebook revealed to me a 145-member group entitled "All Traffic Wardens Should be Killed."

Another 34-member group is dubbed "Perez Hilton Should be Killed."

Other personalities who seem to be the object of Facebook death threats include soccer player Didier Drogba, as well as British pop group Take That.

"Twilight" star Robert Pattinson is the subject of a Facebook group called "Who Thinks Robert Pattinson Should be Killed?"

There is a 32-person group that should concern many readers--it certainly concerns me greatly--called "All Ex-boyfriends should be Killed."

And two groups, called "Everyone Should be Killed," seem to walk a tender line between equanimity and insanity.

In fact, if you perform the Facebook search for "should be killed," you get no less that 500 cheery, little groups.

So is this the time to mention Facebook's own terms of service reject all content that is "hateful" or "threatening"?