The Google: A Big, Fat, and Code Red Addled Target for Squabbling Legal Eagles
April 10, 2023
Note: This essay is the work of a real and still-alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, just a dumb humanoid.
Does the idea of a confused Google waving its tiny arms at pesky legal eagles seem possible. The Google is not just an online advertising leader, it is a magnet for attorneys, solicitors, and the aforementioned legal eagle.
“Rival Lawsuits Vie to Represent UK Publishers in Class-action Claim against Google” states:
The dinosaur – legal eagle image is the product of the really smart and intuitive ScribbledDiffusion.com system.
“Rival Lawsuits Vie to Represent UK Publishers in Class-action Claim against Google” states:
The claimants in both those cases argue that Google has engaged in anti-competitive behavior through its control of each part of the market for display advertising. The trillion-dollar company provides technology to both advertisers and publishers (through products such as Google Adsense and Doubleclick for Publishers) and runs AdX, an ad exchange that mediates advertising auctions.
Imagine two different lawsuits with flocks of squabbling lawyers. Poor Google. The company is dealing with the downstream consequences of Microsoft’s brilliant marketing play. The company has called into question the techno-wizardry of the online advertising outfit. Plus, it has rippled through its management processes. The already wonky approach to PR and HR are juicy targets for critics and some aggrieved employees.
How will Google respond? My concern is that Google’s senior management is becoming less capable than it was pre-Microsoft at Davos era. The Google is not going away, but its recent behaviors like changing file size limits, dumping employees, and apparent confusion about what to do now that Messrs. Brin and Page have returned to Starfleet command.
A real Bard said:
So quick bright things come to confusion. (Midsummer Night’s Dream, which should not be read aloud in a sophomore high school English class. Right, Bottom?)
I am not sure what Google’s Bard would say. I am reluctant to use the system since my son asked it, “Which city is better? Memphis, Tennessee, or Barcelona, Spain. Bard pointed out that Memphis was a soccer player who liked Barcelona.”
What the risk of this UK spat between lawyers getting resolved? Maybe 90 percent. What’s the likelihood Google will be hit with another fine? Maybe 95 percent. Being under siege and equipped with arthritic management hands at the controls of an ageing starship are liabilities in my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, April 10, 2023
TikTok in Context: It Is Technology, Not the Wizards Writing Code
March 23, 2023
Note: Written by a real, still alive dinobaby. No smart software involved, thank you.
Yep, let’s focus on technology; specifically, online and digitization. The press release / essay “MEMO: TikTok Is a Threat. So Is the Rest of Big Tech” does not name names. The generalization “technology” is a garden spray, not a disciplined Banksy can of spray paint. Yep, technology.
The write up from the Tech Oversight Project states:
Right now, lawmakers are weighing the virtues of a TikTok ban in the United States versus a forced divestiture from Chinese Communist Party-connected parent company ByteDance. Regardless of which direction lawmakers choose, focusing solely on TikTok does not fully get at the heart of the practices every platform engages in to cause so much harm.
And the people? Nope, generalizations and a handful of large companies. And the senior managers, the innovators, the individuals who happily coded the applications and services? Not on the radar.
The document does include some useful information about the behaviors of large technology-centric companies; for example and these are quotes from the cited document:
- Facebook developed a censorship tool in an attempt to court Chinese engagement.
- In an effort to court the Chinese market, Google developed a censored version of its platform for use in China and was forced to backtrack under pressure from human rights organizations.
- 155 of Apple’s top 200 suppliers are based in China.
My view is that specific senior executives directly involved in okaying a specific action or policy should be named. These individuals made decisions based on their ethical and financial contexts. Those individuals should be mapped to specific decisions.
Disconnecting the people who were the “deciders” from the broad mist of “technology” and the handful of companies named is not helpful.
Responsibility accrues to an individual, and individuals are no longer in second grade where shooting a teacher incurs zero penalty. Accountability should have a shelf life akin to a pressurized can of party cheese.
Stephen E Arnold, March 23, 2023
Are the Image Rights Trolls Unhappy?
March 21, 2023
Imagine the money. Art aggregators like Getty Images, Alamy, and others suck up images from old books, open source repositories, and probably from kindergarteners. Then when some blog boob uses an image, the image rights trolls leap into action. Threatening letters flood the “infringers” and a reminder than money must be paid. Who authorizes this? The law and the publishers who tell the “enforcer”, “Sure, get some money and will split it with you.” A great business indeed. Many “pigeons” are defeathered.
But there is a road block which some image rights trolls will endeavor to remove. “AI-Generated Images from Text Can’t Be Copyrighted, US Government Rules” states:
Any images that are produced by giving a text prompt to current generative AI models, such as Midjourney or Stable Diffusion, cannot be copyrighted in the US. That’s according to the US Copyright Office (USCO), which has equated such prompts to a buyer giving directions to a commissioned artist.
There is hope. The article points out:
The US Copyright Office left open the door for protecting works with AI-generated elements.
I can hear the sighs of relief from Mr. Pigeon’s office in London to the professionals exhaling at the Higbee law firm. Hope lives! The article adds:
However, the office has left the door open to granting copyright protections to work with AI-generated elements. “The answer will depend on the circumstances, particularly how the AI tool operates and how it was used to create the final work,” it said. “This is necessarily a case-by-case inquiry. If a work’s traditional elements of authorship were produced by a machine, the work lacks human authorship and the Office will not register it.” Last month, the USCO determined that images generated by Midjourney and used in a graphic novel were not copyrightable. However, it said the text and layout of Kris Kashtanova’s Zarya of the Dawn could be afforded copyright protection.
Will blog boobs who use machine generated images be able to illustrate their war veteran blogs, the church bulletins, and the individuals who wanted to celebrate flower arranging be free to create with smart software?
Maybe. I have confidence that legal eagles in the image trolling game will find a way. Where there is money to be had, creativity blooms. (Sorry flower person.)
Stephen E Arnold, March 21, 2023
Rights Issues: How Can Money Be Extracted from Content?
March 20, 2023
I don’t have a dog in this fight. I gave up on “real” publishers when the outfits with which I was working in Sweden and the UK went to the big printing press in the multiverse. Yep, failure. I am mindful about image rights too, but that doesn’t mean my Craiyon.com images or the clip art I have in my files from the years of CD-ROMs with illustrations that were “free to use.” Ho ho ho on that marketing blather.
I want to call attention to two news items and then offer a comment or two not presented by other dinobabies watching the wide, wild, wonderful world of digital information.
The first item is the Italian government’s conclusion that the illustration by Leonardo d Vinci is not in the public domain. I used to have a T shirt I bought in Florence with the image on the overpriced, made-in-China garment. I wonder if that shop on the bridge near the secret passage some big wheel used in the 16th century? I would assume that the Italian government has hoovered these and converted them to recycling fodder. You can read about this in the article “Italy Decides That Leonardo da Vinci’s 500 Year Old Works Are Not In The Public Domain.” The subtitle of the write up is “from the locking-up-in-the-public-domain department.” The story reports:
According to the Italian Cultural Heritage Code and relevant case law, faithful digital reproductions of works of cultural heritage — including works in the Public Domain — can only be used for commercial purposes against authorization and payment of a fee. Importantly though, the decision to require authorization and claim payment is left to the discretion of each cultural institution (see articles 107 and 108). In practice, this means that cultural institutions have the option to allow users to reproduce and reuse faithful digital reproductions of Public Domain works for free, including for commercial uses. This flexibility is fundamental for institutions to support open access to cultural heritage.
The operative word is “fee.”
The second item is about Internet Archive, a controversial outfit from the point of view of some publishers. The idea is that Internet Archive offers electronic books for free. Free, not fee, is an important concept. Publishers, writers, agents, book cover artists, and probably a French bulldog or two want to get a piece of the money generated by charging for electronic books. Look Amazon does it, and publishers are not thrilled. But there is some money paid out which is going the right direction.
The report I read is “The Internet Archive Is a Library.” Libraries and publishers have a long history. On one hand, publishers love to sell books to libraries. On the other hand, libraries are not turning cartwheels because libraries loan eBooks and other digital artifacts to patrons. As long as the money streams flow, publishers and rights holders are semi-happy, a bit like a black sheep of the family getting a few bucks when Uncle Tom goes to the big printing shop in the sky where my defunct publishers hopefully work setting type by hand.
The article says:
Despite its incredible library collections, which serve the needs of millions of people, Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, John Wiley & Sons Inc., and Penguin Random House assert that the Internet Archive is not a real library.
If one is not a real library, that institution must pay for books. That seems clear to the publishers. I have wondered why the US Library of Congress was not moving in the same direction as the Internet Archive. Oh, well. What about the Special Library Association? Yeah, oh, well. And the American Library Association in concert with Harvard or Stanford? Oh, well.
So the Internet Archive is in jeopardy.
Several observations:
- Entities which could have assumed this job in concern with Internet Archive could have been more proactive. They weren’t, so here we are.
- Publishers are hungry for revenue, almost any type of revenue stream will do. Why not extract money from an outfit trying to perform a useful library-type function? Sorry, we want money and people can buy information from us summarizes the position of some publishers on earth and possibly in the big printing facility amidst the stars.
- Legal eagles love books. Plus those folks sometimes buy books to decorate their offices in the event a meeting is required in a suitably classy environment. Do lawyers read these books? Maybe, but I think professional publishers sell online content to them. Thus, in today’s world it makes sense for lawyers to determine what is a library and what is not, what content is free and which is not. I think I understand, but I am not going to call my attorney because I have to pay in 15 minute increments.
Net net: Libraries are for many negative spaces. Some books present information which is bad; therefore, ban or burn the books. Now we can defund regular libraries and shut down the online outfits. Publishers may be thrilled. Others may not care. I like libraries, but dinobabies don’t have influence. I am glad I am old.
Stephen E Arnold, March 20, 2023
RightHub: Will It Supercharge IP Protection and Violation Trolls?
March 16, 2023
Yahoo believe it or not displayed an article I found interesting. The title was “Copy That: RightHub Wants To Be the Command Center for Intellectual Property Management.” The story originated on a Silicon Valley “real news” site called TechCrunch.
The write up explains that managing patent, trademark, and copyright information is a hassle. RightHub is, according to the story:
…something akin to what GoDaddy promises in the world of website creation, insofar as GoDaddy allows anyone to search, register, and renew domain names, with additional tools for building and hosting websites.
I am not sure that a domain-name type of model is going to have the professional, high-brow machinery that rights-sensitive outfits expect. I am not sure that many people understand that the domain-name model is fraught with manipulated expiry dates, wheeling and dealing, and possibly good old-fashioned fraud.
The idea of using a database and scripts to keep track of intellectual property is interesting. Tools are available to automate many of the discrete steps required to file, follow up, renew, and remember who did what and when.
But domain name processes as a touchstone.
Sorry. I think that the service will embrace a number of sub functions which may be of interest to some people; for example, enforcement trolls. Many are using manual or outmoded tools like decades old image recognition technology and partial Web content scanning methods. If RightHub offers a robust system, IP protection may become easier. Some trolls will be among the first to seek inspiration and possibly opportunities to be more troll-like.
Stephen E Arnold, March 16, 2023
Google: Good at Quantum and Maybe Better at Discarding Intra-Company Messages
February 28, 2023
Google has already declared quantum supremacy. The supremos have outsupremed themselves, if this story in the UK Independent is accurate:
Okay, supremacy but error problems. Supremacy but a significant shift. Then the word “plague.”
The write up states in what strikes me a Google PR recyclish way:
Google researchers say they have found a way of building the technology so that it corrects those errors. The company says it is a breakthrough on a par with its announcement three years ago that it had reached “quantum supremacy”, and represents a milestone on the way to the functional use of quantum computers.
The write up continues:
Dr Julian Kelly, director of quantum hardware at Google Quantum AI, said: “The engineering constraints (of building a quantum computer) certainly are feasible. “It’s a big challenge – it’s something that we have to work on, but by no means that blocks us from, for example, making a large-scale machine.”
What seems to be a similar challenge appears in “DOJ Seeks Court Sanctions against Google over Intentional Destruction of Chat Logs.” This write up is less of a rah rah for the quantum complexity crowd and more for a simpler problem: Retaining employee communications amidst the legal issues through which the Google is wading. The write up says:
Google should face court sanctions over “intentional and repeated destruction” of company chat logs that the US government expected to use in its antitrust case targeting Google’s search business, the Justice Department said Thursday [February 23, 2023]. Despite Google’s promises to preserve internal communications relevant to the suit, for years the company maintained a policy of deleting certain employee chats automatically after 24 hours, DOJ said in a filing in District of Columbia federal court. The practice has harmed the US government’s case against the tech giant, DOJ alleged.
That seems clear, certainly clearer than the assertions about 49 physical qubits and 17 physical qubits being equal to the quantum supremacy assertion several years ago.
How can one company be adept at manipulating qubits and mal-adept at saving chat messages? Wait! Wait!
Maybe Google is equally adept: Manipulating qubits and manipulating digital information.
Strike the quantum fluff and focus on the manipulating of information. Is that a breakthrough?
Stephen E Arnold, February 28, 2023
Is the UK Stupid? Well, Maybe, But Government Officials Have Identified Some Targets
February 27, 2023
I live in good, old Kentucky, rural Kentucky, according to my deceased father-in-law. I am not an Anglophile. The country kicked my ancestors out in 1575 for not going with the flow. Nevertheless, I am reluctant to slap “even more stupid” on ideas generated by those who draft regulations. A number of experts get involved. Data are collected. Opinions are gathered from government sources and others. The result is a proposal to address a problem.
The write up “UK Proposes Even More Stupid Ideas for Directly Regulating the Internet, Service Providers” makes clear that governments have not been particularly successful with its most recent ideas for updating the UK’s 1990 Computer Misuse Act. The reasons offered are good; for example, reducing cyber crime and conducting investigations. The downside of the ideas is that governments make mistakes. Governmental powers creep outward over time; that is, government becomes more invasive.
The article highlights the suggested changes that the people drafting the modifications suggest:
- Seize domains and Internet Protocol addresses
- Use of contractors for this process
- Restrict algorithm-manufactured domain names
- Ability to go after the registrar and the entity registering the domain name
- Making these capabilities available to other government entities
- A court review
- Mandatory data retention
- Redefining copying data as theft
- Expanded investigatory activities.
I am not a lawyer, but these proposals are troubling.
I want to point out that whoever drafted the proposal is like a tracking dog with an okay nose. Based on our research for an upcoming lecture to some US government officials, it is clear that domain name registries warrant additional scrutiny. We have identified certain ISPs as active enablers of bad actors because there is no effective oversight on these commercial and sometimes non-governmental organizations or non-profit “do good” entities. We have identified transnational telecommunications and service providers who turn a blind eye to the actions of other enterprises in the “chain” which enables Internet access.
The UK proposal seems interesting and a launch point for discussion, the tracking dog has focused attention on one of the “shadow” activities enabled by lax regulators. Hopefully more scrutiny will be directed at the complicated and essentially Wild West populated by enablers of criminal activity like human trafficking, weapons sales, contraband and controlled substance marketplaces, domain name fraud, malware distribution, and similar activities.
At least a tracking dog is heading along what might be an interesting path to explore.
Stephen E Arnold, February 27, 2023
Legal Eagles Will Have Ruffled Feathers and Emit Non-AI Screeches
February 6, 2023
The screech of an eagle is annoying. An eagle with ruffled feathers can make short work of a French bulldog. But legal eagles are likely to produce loud sounds and go hunting for prey; specifically, those legal eagles will want to make life interesting for a certain judge in Columbia. (Nice weather in Bogota, by the way.)
“A Judge Just Used ChatGPT to Make a Court Decision” reports:
Judge Juan Manuel Padilla Garcia, who presides over the First Circuit Court in the city of Cartagena, said he used the AI tool to pose legal questions about the case and included its responses in his decision, according to a court document dated January 30, 2023.
One attorney in the US wanted to use smart software in a US case. That did not work out. There are still job openings at Chick-f-A, by the way.
I am not convinced that outputs from today’s smart software is ready for prime time. In fact, much of the enthusiasm is a result of push back against lousy Google search results, a downer economic environment, and a chance to make a buck without ending up in the same pickle barrel as Sam Bankman Fried or El Chapo.
Lawyers have a reason to watch Sr. Garcia’s downstream activities. Here are the reasons behind what I think will be fear and loathing by legal eagles about the use of smart software:
- Billability. If software can do what a Duke law graduate does in a dusty warehouse in dim light in a fraction of the time, partners lose revenue. Those lawyers sifting through documents and pulling out the ones that are in their jejune view are germane to a legal matter can be replaced with fast software. Wow. Hasta la vista billing for that mindless document review work.
- Accuracy. Today’s smart software is in what I call “close enough for horseshoes” accuracy. But looking ahead, the software will become more accurate or at least as accurate as a judge or other legal eagle needs to be to remain a certified lawyer. Imagine. Replacing legal deliberations with a natural language interface and the information in a legal database with the spice of journal content. There goes the legal backlog or at least some of it with speedy but good enough decisions.
- Consistency. Legal decisions are all over the place. There are sentencing guidelines and those are working really well, right? A software system operating on a body of content will produce outputs that are accurate within a certain range. Lawyers and judges output decisions which can vary widely.
Nevertheless, after the ruffling and screeching die down, the future is clear. If a judge in Columbia can figure out how to use smart software, that means the traditional approach to legal eagle life is going to change.
Stephen E Arnold, February 6, 2023
Crypto and Crime: Interesting Actors Get Blues and Twos on Their Systems
January 31, 2023
I read a widely available document which presents information once described to me as a “close hold.” The article is “Most Criminal Crypto currency Is Funneled Through Just 5 Exchanges.” Most of the write up is the sort of breathless “look what we know” information. The article which recycles information from Wired and from the specialized services firm Chainalysis does not mention the five outfits currently under investigation. The write up does not provide much help to a curious reader by omitting open source intelligence tools which can rank order exchanges by dollar volume. Why not learn about this listing by CoinMarketCap and include that information instead of recycling OPI (other people’s info)? Also, why not point to resources on one of the start.me pages? I know. I know. That’s work that interferes with getting a Tall, Non-Fat Latte With Caramel Drizzle.
The key points for me is the inclusion of some companies/organizations allegedly engaged in some fascinating activities. (Fascinating for crime analysts and cyber fraud investigators. For the individuals involved with these firms, “fascinating” is not the word one might use to describe the information in the Ars Technica article.)
Here are the outfits mentioned in the article:
- Bitcoin Fog – Offline
- Bitzlato
- Chatex
- Garantex
- Helix – Offline
- Suex
- Tornado Cash – Offline
Is there a common thread connecting these organizations? Who are the stakeholders? Who are the managers? Where are these outfits allegedly doing business?
Could it be Russia?
Stephen E Arnold, February 1, 2023
Newton and Shoulders of Giants? Baloney. Is It Everyday Theft?
January 31, 2023
Here I am in rural Kentucky. I have been thinking about the failure of education. I recall learning from Ms. Blackburn, my high school algebra teacher, this statement by Sir Isaac Newton, the apple and calculus guy:
If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
Did Sir Isaac actually say this? I don’t know, and I don’t care too much. It is the gist of the sentence that matters. Why? I just finished reading — and this is the actual article title — “CNET’s AI Journalist Appears to Have Committed Extensive Plagiarism. CNET’s AI-Written Articles Aren’t Just Riddled with Errors. They Also Appear to Be Substantially Plagiarized.”
How is any self-respecting, super buzzy smart software supposed to know anything without ingesting, indexing, vectorizing, and any other math magic the developers have baked into the system? Did Brunelleschi wake up one day and do the Eureka! thing? Maybe he stood on line and entered the Pantheon and looked up? Maybe he found a wasp’s nest and cut it in half and looked at what the feisty insects did to build a home? Obviously intellectual theft. Just because the dome still stands, when it falls, he is an untrustworthy architect engineer. Argument nailed.
The write up focuses on other ideas; namely, being incorrect and stealing content. Okay, those are interesting and possibly valid points. The write up states:
All told, a pattern quickly emerges. Essentially, CNET‘s AI seems to approach a topic by examining similar articles that have already been published and ripping sentences out of them. As it goes, it makes adjustments — sometimes minor, sometimes major — to the original sentence’s syntax, word choice, and structure. Sometimes it mashes two sentences together, or breaks one apart, or assembles chunks into new Frankensentences. Then it seems to repeat the process until it’s cooked up an entire article.
For a short (very, very brief) time I taught freshman English at a big time university. What the Futurism article describes is how I interpreted the work process of my students. Those entitled and enquiring minds just wanted to crank out an essay that would meet my requirements and hopefully get an A or a 10, which was a signal that Bryce or Helen was a very good student. Then go to a local hang out and talk about Heidegger? Nope, mostly about the opposite sex, music, and getting their hands on a copy of Dr. Oehling’s test from last semester for European History 104. Substitute the topics you talked about to make my statement more “accurate”, please.
I loved the final paragraphs of the Futurism article. Not only is a competitor tossed over the argument’s wall, but the Google and its outstanding relevance finds itself a target. Imagine. Google. Criticized. The article’s final statements are interesting; to wit:
As The Verge reported in a fascinating deep dive last week, the company’s primary strategy is to post massive quantities of content, carefully engineered to rank highly in Google, and loaded with lucrative affiliate links. For Red Ventures, The Verge found, those priorities have transformed the once-venerable CNET into an “AI-powered SEO money machine.” That might work well for Red Ventures’ bottom line, but the specter of that model oozing outward into the rest of the publishing industry should probably alarm anybody concerned with quality journalism or — especially if you’re a CNET reader these days — trustworthy information.
Do you like the word trustworthy? I do. Does Sir Isaac fit into this future-leaning analysis. Nope, he’s still pre-occupied with proving that the evil Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was tipped off about tiny rectangles and the methods thereof. Perhaps Futurism can blame smart software?
Stephen E Arnold, January 31, 2023
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