David Canton is a business lawyer and trade-mark agent with a practice focusing on technology issues and technology companies.
DAVID CANTON – For the London Free Press – January 29, 2005
The introduction of the Internet into the everyday lifestyles of consumers has fundamentally changed the way we do business.
A domain name is an important part of a businesses identity. Reaching customers by a website can be crucial to a company’s ability to compete in the marketplace. Cybersquatters can interfere with this ability — but fortunately there is recourse.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has published an “Endangered Gizmos List” that shows the status of various products that are extinct, endangered, or saved. The nemesis of this technology is the entertainment industry – which seems to try to stiffle all sorts of innovation that they think not be in their best interests.
The classic example is the Sony Betamax – that they tried to kill. Turns out that the device they were afraid of has actually made a lot of money for the industry.
As the EFF puts it, “This is bad news for innovation and free competition, but it also threatens a wide range of activities…” that people should be able to do.
As a Canadian, it seems truly odd that there is such a strong push to ban consumer products just because they could possibly be used to reduce an industry’s revenue – in a country where one can buy guns and ammunition (along with a 6-pack) at the local store.
The Real Lawyers Have Blogs blog reports that Microsoft now has an employee blogging policy. The policy is a good guideline for any blogger within a corporate setting. To a great extent also relevant to any blogger.
The guidelines are:
Above all, âBe smartâ
Respect existing confidentiality agreements
Donât break news; donât disclose confidential information
Be cautious with third-party information
Respect prior employers
Identify yourself
Be cautious in how you offer support or advice
Speak for yourself
Think about reactions before you post
On the heels of IBM’s announcement that it is opening 500 patents to the open source community, Sun announced yesterday that it is opening 1600 of its patents to the open source community.
A recent study surveyed in detail how people use search engines. Included in the report are things like the most popular searches, what people do and don’t search for, and how trusting people are of the results.
One surprising result is that almost 2/3 of users are not aware of the distinction between paid and unpaid results.
In addition to the results ranked by the search engines’s logic, businesses pay the search engines to list them when certain keywords are searched. Those results are listed apart from the main results however, and are easy to distinguish.
Its not that the paid results are necessarily wrong – but users should understand which they are looking at.
DAVID CANTON – For the London Free Press – January 22, 2005
Another holiday season has come and gone. If you listen closely, you will hear the “click” of people taking photos with their new camera phones.
With a press of a button, users can connect to the Internet or e-mail and send their photos anywhere.
Camera phones can be a great way to stay connected, but they also pose threats to privacy in our workplaces, educational institutions and social settings.
In a December 15 2004 entry I mentioned that Google had won a U.S. court decision that said its use of third party trade-marks as keywords was not trade-mark infringement.
The opposite result was just obtained in France.
This shows how difficult it can be to operate an Internet based company given inconsistent laws around the world. Especially when you are breaking new ground and it is unclear how the laws will apply.
Frank Koelsch – EVP Corporate Strategy and Research of the Info-Tech Research Group – gave a presentation yesterday to the London Chamber of Commerce IT Roundtable, which I chair.
His top reasons for outsourcing failure include:
- Poorly defined objectives
- Poor understanding of baseline data (ie what metrics are performance tested and compared to)
- Inadequate contractual framework
Consider whether what you want or are getting is “your mess for less”, or improved quality.
Look at the alternatives. As part of the “objectives” and “baseline data” analysis, consider, for example, if it is better just to improve in-house performance.
Overall, outsourcing is not necessarily good or bad, it just needs to be done for good reasons that are understood, and must be executed well.
The proposed bill sounds to me akin to making auto manufacturers responsible for the traffic law violations of car owners.
CNet runs an article that starts by saying:
A bill introduced in California’s Legislature last week has raised the possibility of jail time for developers of file-swapping software who don’t stop trades of copyrighted movies and songs online.
The proposal, introduced by Los Angeles Sen. Kevin Murray, takes direct aim at companies that distribute software such as Kazaa, eDonkey or Morpheus. If passed and signed into law, it could expose file-swapping software developers to fines of up to $2,500 per charge, or a year in jail, if they don’t take “reasonable care” in preventing the use of their software to swap copyrighted music or movies–or child pornography.
Peer-to-peer software companies and their allies immediately criticized the bill as a danger to technological innovation, and as potentially unconstitutional.
David Fraser has a posting on his Pipeda and Canadian Privacy Law blog discussing how to deal with customer privacy complaints. It is a worthwhile read for any business.
It is based on the same theory as my Jan 10 article “Privacy culture Necessary”.
David points out that: All businesses need to think about information through the eyes of their clients. Even more, they need to think about it through the eyes of their most sensitive, paranoid clients. Personal information is important and must be treated accordingly.
If someone does complain, take the complaint seriously. Complaints that end up in the press or in the Privacy Commissioners office may have ended sooner if they has been taken more seriously at the outset.
Unless otherwise stated, all original material created by David Canton included in this blog is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
