CBS Sues Over Star Trek Fan Film Because It Sounds Like It's Going To Be Pretty Good

from the set-phasers-on-dumb dept

When it comes to passionate fan-bases, it's kind of hard to match Star Trek fans. This is a group of fans that fuel much of the cosplaying and fan-creating that goes on to this day. CBS, owners of the Star Trek copyrights, has had something of a complicated relationship with these fans, flip-flopping between allowing this community to foster a wider appreciation of the franchise while occasionally clamping down on them. In the past, it has seemed clear that CBS' chief criteria for deciding when to go legal on fan-made works boils down to two factors: is there money involved and just how professional is the fan-creation going to be?

That trend appears to be ongoing, with the news that, once again, CBS is shutting down a fan-made Star Trek work, which thought it enjoyed the network's support, after it was clear that the fan-movie was probably going to be good.

Axanar, the subject of a lawsuit filed on Friday in California federal court, is no ordinary Star Trek film. The forthcoming feature film (preceded by a short film) is the source of more than $1 million in crowdfunding on Kickstarter and Indiegogo. The producers led by Alec Peters aim to make a studio-quality film. As the pitch to investors put it, "While some may call it a 'fan film' as we are not licensed by CBS, Axanar has professionals working in front and behind the camera, with a fully-professional crew--many of whom have worked on Star Trek itself--who ensure Axanar will be the quality of Star Trek that all fans want to see."

By August, Peters was giving interviews expressing confidence that the project would survive any legal heat. He spoke to The Wrap that month and reported having a meeting with CBS. He says he was told the film couldn't make money — and evidently, he took that to be a good sign. "CBS has a long history of accepting fan films,” Peters told the entertainment site. “I think Axanar has become so popular that CBS realizes that we’re just making their brand that much better.”

Unfortunately, the lawyers over at CBS apparently don't see it that way. CBS is asking for an injunction on the film and damages for copyright infringement. This flies in the face of all of the amateur Star Trek films and shows that have been allowed to exist. The primary differentiation here certainly seems to be one of quality, with those working on the film touting their experience and know-how.

But why should that matter to CBS? To be clear, CBS is within its rights to shut this down, but given that it has seen value, or at least a lack of harm, in allowing other fan-made works to exist, why should a quality fan-made film suddenly be a threat? If anything, as Peters noted, allowing fans to grow the universe, to participate in its creation and foster new and deeper fandom should only benefit the Star Trek franchise. Upping the quality of that creation would, it seems, benefit the franchise even more.

Instead, this comes off as another ham-fisted smackdown of a fan-created film that, given the support it received, was something Trek fans were looking forward to.

Filed Under: alec peters, axanar, copyright, crowdfunding, fan film, professional, star trek
Companies: cbs, paramount

CBS Claims It Will Pull All Content Offline Unless It Can Be An Anti-Competitive Ass

from the baby-talk dept

Contract disputes between cable companies and broadcasters have gotten increasingly ugly as programmers demand more and more money for the same content. These retransmission fee fights often result in consumers not only losing access to content they're paying for, but it places the consumer in the position of PR pinata, as each side tries to get consumers annoyed at the other guy. After a few months of bickering, on-screen tickers and blacked out content, the two sides usually agree to a new confidential contract, which then winds its way to the end consumer in the form of yet another cable bill rate hike.

But there's been another troubling aspect to these fights that almost stumbles into net neutrality territory.

Back during a 2010 contract debate between News Corporation and Cablevision, News Corp. took the unprecedented step of blocking all Cablevision broadband customers from accessing Fox content online, whether they subscribe to TV or not. Viacom did the same thing last year when it blocked all CableONE broadband customers (via an IP range block) from accessing Viacom content online. In other words, broadband customers who may even be paying for TV through another provider (like satellite), still found themselves caught in the crossfire, unable to access publicly-available content online.

It's a muddy practice that stumbles somewhere between a net neutrality violation and vanilla jackassery. And it's one of several problems the FCC is trying to resolve after Congress directed the agency to put an end to these shenanigans and re-examine what constitutes "good faith" negotiations after the industry failed to self regulate. As the FCC ponders action, CBS apparently thought it would be a good idea to start throwing threats around. In a recent filing with the FCC (pdf), CBS basically states that should the FCC ban this behavior (which CBS has also engaged in), the broadcaster will take its ball and go home:

"Local broadcast stations have a duty to transmit programming for free, over-the-air. They have no obligation to make any of that programming or any other content available online. The fact that many stations choose to do so for free as a routine business practice is in stark contrast to other content providers, including online newspapers and other media providers such as Netflix and Amazon that place their content behind paywalls."

CBS of course made a similar threat during the Aereo trial, stating they'd be pulling all broadcast television off the air if the company didn't get what it wanted (in that case, Aereo dead, in this case, a spineless FCC). From there though the threat gets clearer. Stop us from obnoxiously punishing paying customers for our own inability to get deals done in a civil fashion, CBS warns, or the future of television will die!:

"Prohibiting a broadcaster from limiting access to customers of an MVPD [multichannel video programming distributor] with which it is having a dispute in order to protect its negotiating position would be a strong disincentive for stations to make their content available online as a general practice."

In other words, nobody will put content online if the FCC prohibits companies from engaging in asinine behavior that hurts paying customers. But CBS apparently didn't get the memo that they no longer have the power they used to. In the new internet video era there's a little something called competition. No longer can CBS sit on its legacy throne, engaging in anti-competitive behavior, flinging threats and pouting without repercussion. With streaming services like Netflix, HBO, and Amazon all vying for consumer attention via original programming, a broadcaster pulling its content offline is a one-way ticket to irrelevance.

Filed Under: fcc, internet, network television, retransmission fights, tv
Companies: cbs

State Department 'Planted' Anti-Wikileaks Questions For 60 Minutes Interview With Julian Assange

from the nice-of-them dept

The latest batch of Hillary Clinton emails have been revealed, and Trevor Timm, the Executive Director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, points us to a particularly interesting one, in which then State Department spokesperson PJ Crowley tells Clinton that the State Department has successfully "planted" questions for the show, 60 Minutes, to ask Assange. Indeed, if you watch the interview, the reporter, Steve Kroft, regularly repeats State Department talking points -- often prefaced with the sort of weak journalistic hedging "there are people who believe..."

Of course, this is not the first time 60 Minutes has been seen to be extra deferential to the government. You may recall the program's infomercial for the NSA, done by a guy who immediately went to work for law enforcement week's later.

And, while Kroft seems to want to present the supposed legal case against Assange to Assange, it's worth remembering that five years later and the DOJ still has not charged Assange with any crime, though apparently the grand jury investigation is still ongoing.

It also seems noteworthy that Crowley resigned from the State Department just a few weeks after this email, right after he publicly criticized the treatment of Chelsea Manning, who was being held in solitary confinement for leaking the State Department's documents to Wikileaks. Crowley publicly said that such treatment was "ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid" -- and within days, he no longer had a job.

None of this is to say that 60 Minutes or any other journalism program shouldn't be asking tough questions of Julian Assange or anyone else they interview. Of course they should. But the very idea that the government is "planting" one-sided or misleading and biased questions with journalists, to pin on a guy they're trying (and failing) to charge with criminal activity for embarrassing those in power, certainly seems pretty sketchy. The media is supposed to be questioning those in power, not to be used as a tool by those in power to question those who are actually exposing corruption.

Filed Under: 60 minutes, hillary clinton, journalism, julian assange, pj crowley, planted questions, state department
Companies: cbs, wikileaks

Time To Say Goodbye To All Pre-1972 Music?

from the PAY-US-screams-the-recording-industry dept

As we've been covering over the past few years, there's been a big battle going on over the copyright status of "pre-1972 sound recordings." That may sound like a weird thing to be arguing over, but it's due to a weird bit of history in US copyright law. You see, for a very long time, Congress believed that copyright law could not cover sound recordings. However, various states stepped in and either through explicit state law or through common law, created copyright-like regulations for sound recordings. When copyright was finally updated in the 1976 Copyright Act, pre-1972 works were left out of the federal copyright system, even as federal copyright law basically wiped out all state copyright law for everything else. This has created some weird issues, including that some songs that should be in the public domain under federal copyright law are locked up in perpetuity. A simple and reasonable solution to this would be to just move pre-1972 sound recordings under federal copyright law and level the playing field. But, the RIAA has resisted this. That might seems strange, until you realize that the RIAA and its friends saw this weird quirk of copyright law as a wedge issue with which to try to squeeze more money out of everyone.

It started a couple years ago when basically everyone started suing Sirius XM and Pandora for playing pre-1972 music without getting a separate license to do so. Once again, the reasoning here is a bit complex, but prior to the 1976 Act, there really wasn't even any concept of a "public performance right" for sound recordings -- only for compositions. The idea of one for sound recordings only came into existence with the updated copyright law. But what the RIAA and friends are trying to do is to rewrite history and pretend that these various state laws also retroactively meant to include a public performance right, and that these newer services were violating it.

In a series of rulings in the last year, Sirius XM has lost a few of these lawsuits, while winning another one. This has many copyright scholars quite concerned that decades of settled law are being tossed out.

More importantly, we pointed out that this could mean the end of hearing classic songs from the 50s and 60s on internet and satellite radio. But, it appears that the RIAA and friends are not stopping there. Last month they took things up a notch and started suing terrestrial radio stations over pre-1972 music as well.

And that brings up a whole different issue. As you probably know, terrestrial radio does not need to pay at all for the use of sound recordings (it does pay songwriters/publishers for the use of the composition), because Congress has (correctly) noted that songs on the radio are a form of advertising, and thus the musicians benefit from it, and there's no reason to pay fees for the performance again. While the RIAA whines about this, the major labels own decades-long practices around payola make it clear that they, too, recognize that radio play is valuable for the musicians and worth paying for -- rather than worth being paid for.

Every few years, the RIAA pushes to have Congress change the law, and to start making terrestrial radio pay a "performance rights fee" for sound recordings as well. But that never seems to get anywhere. So, instead, the RIAA appears to be attacking this via the pre-1972 loophole, and claiming that even though Congress explicitly has said that radio doesn't need to pay, such a promise does not apply to pre-1972 songs. The new lawsuits, from ABS entertainment, aims to be a class action lawsuit for a bunch of pre-1972 music, and has targeted terrestrial broadcasters who also stream online, including CBS, iHeartRadio (previously known as Clear Channel) and Cumulus -- the big three radio broadcasters.

In the meantime, one of the first original cases concerning this issue, against Pandora, has now moved to the 9th Circuit appeals court and a whole bunch of copyright experts have weighed in hoping that the appeals court will reverse the lower court and remind everyone that these state laws never included a public performance right in the first place. Unfortunately, this is the 9th Circuit, which is somewhat famous for its wacky copyright rulings, so pretty much anything goes here. However, should it come out in favor of the RIAA's position, it could mean that pre-1972 music will start disappearing not just from streaming and satellite radio, but from traditional terrestrial radio as well.

Filed Under: copyright, copyright act, pre-1972 music, pre-1972 sound recordings, radio, streaming
Companies: cbs, cumulus, iheartradio, pandora, siriusxm

Leonard Nimoy's Son Needs To Crowdfund Money For Spock Documentary... To License Photos And Videos

from the come-on-cbs-and-paramount dept

As you may have heard, Leonard Nimoy's son Adam Nimoy is working on what sounds like an incredible and touching documentary called "For the Love of Spock" -- about both the Star Trek character of Spock and about Leonard Nimoy's career (for the none of you who don't already know this, Nimoy played the iconic Mr. Spock in the TV show and movies). It had begun as a documentary just about the character of Spock, but after Leonard Nimoy passed away earlier this year, the focus has expanded to cover his life as well. It sounds really great, but Adam is trying to raise $600,000 on Kickstarter to make it happen. There are a lot of reasonable expenses included in that $600k, but one stood out to me: the need to license images and footage of Nimoy:

It will also enable us to license the hundreds of film clips and still photographs of Mr. Spock as he has appeared on television and in feature films over the last fifty years.

It's worth noting that part of the thinking behind this was to get the documentary out in time for the 50th anniversary of the original Star Trek. In other words, if anything, this documentary is only going to help draw a lot more attention to the whole Star Trek franchise which can only be good for the rightsholders. In other words, the fact that the rightsholders haven't stepped up and just granted a free license to Adam Nimoy is ridiculous and short-sighted.

Admittedly, the rights behind Star Trek are a little muddled due to the CBS/Viacom corporate split a decade ago, with each company still owning pieces. But, either way, it seems that both CBS and Viacom/Paramount Pictures should recognize that they stand to benefit greatly from having this documentary. The idea that they can't sort this out themselves and give Nimoy the photos and clips he needs seems ridiculous.

Supporting this documentary seems like a great idea -- and it sounds like much of the money will go towards all of the other important work in putting together an excellent end product. It just seems ridiculous that at least a decent chunk of the money has to be used to pay off CBS and/or Paramount to convince them to let Nimoy make a movie that will only help their own bottom line.

Filed Under: adam nimoy, crowdfunding, documentary, leonard nimoy, licensing, spock
Companies: cbs, paramount, viacom

Broadcasters Working Hard To Cripple Dish's Consumer Friendly Sling TV

from the get-the-hell-out-of-the-way dept

You might recall that two years ago just around this time Dish technically won the CNET best of CES award for its Hopper auto-ad-skipping DVR technology, but CNET owner CBS trampled its own editorial policies by not only telling CNET to pull the award from Dish, but also banning CNET from writing reviews about the product. The excuse CBS gave was that CBS and Dish were involved in ongoing litigation over whether ad-skipping violated copyright, though of course the real reason was that CBS simply didn't want Dish's consumer-friendly product getting any more media attention than was absolutely necessary.

After the rather ridiculous fiasco, CNET reporters resigned and CEA took the "best of CES" honors away from CNET and gave them to Engadget. Fast forward a few years and Engadget has brought things full circle, this year awarding Dish's new $20 Sling TV service with the best home theater product award, best software/app award, and best of CES overall award. With perhaps an extra dash of hyperbole, Engadget declares Sling TV to be the beginning of the end for traditional television:

"Many of us have been waiting, hoping and even lusting after Sling TV before we'd ever heard of it: an internet TV service that gives you the channels you love, on any screen, anywhere, without a subscription to traditional cable or satellite TV service. Our long wait finally, blessedly ended at CES 2015. Sling (don't call it Dish) TV is a big deal, folks. It could very well be the beginning of the end for traditional pay TV here in the US, and that's not something I ever thought possible before this week. That, friends, is why Sling TV is taking home three Best of CES awards, including Best in Show."

That's probably overdoing it. While we noted that the service is a big deal because it finally breaks ESPN out of the traditional cable bundle, the lack of live broadcaster channels (for now), the inability to record programs, and the scattershot content catalog don't quite make this a cable TV killer yet -- though it's at least a step in the right direction (2015 looks to be the year streaming video finally leaves the cradle). Of course, like Dish's Hopper DVR, Sling TV very nearly didn't exist, and it came only after Dish was willing to give more than its pound of flesh to change-averse broadcasters.

Dish had to promise ABC that it would disable ad-skipping for some ABC content on Hopper to secure licensing rights. CBS (busy cooking up a $7 a month streaming service of its own) then proceeded to make it clear Dish would have to jump through even more hoops if it wanted similar deals (which haven't been struck yet). Apparently Dish's contract language with broadcasters also includes a clause whereby the satellite provider has to stop advertising the service if it reaches five million viewers, since you certainly wouldn't want a streaming television offering to get too popular and disrupt the cozy cable and broadcast status quo.

And those are only the contract restrictions we know of. Again, ad skipping and streaming TV aren't really all that innovative anymore -- but they are in an industry that fights tooth and nail against a litany of common-sense things consumers want (greater freedom in channel selection, fewer ads, prices that don't skyrocket at four times the rate of inflation). And Dish's uphill fight likely isn't over yet; should the service see any kind of traction you can be sure the cable companies and ISP will come crawling out of the woodwork, demanding the same kind of interconnection deals they struck with Netflix should Dish want its traffic to continue flowing unhindered.

So forget about the best of CES award, we really should be doling out an annual "I ran the gauntlet of protectionist legacy jackasses and still managed to somehow release a consumer-friendly product" award.

Filed Under: broadcasters, cord cutting, limits, sling tv
Companies: abc, cbs, dish

CBS Blames Netflix For Its Own Secrecy Over Streaming Video Numbers

from the I'll-show-you-mine-if-you-show-me-yours dept

After spending the last few years suing the hell out of every and any disruptive TV innovation on the horizon (from Dish's Hopper to Aereo), CBS recently announced the launch of its own "All Access" streaming video service. The service, only available in 14 metro markets, lets users view CBS content the day after it airs on traditional television -- with advertisements included. It's a somewhat shaky value proposition, and when pushed this month to disclose how many subscribers the service has signed up since its October launch, CBS CEO Les Moonves not only refused to get specific, he felt the need to throw a jab at Netflix:

"Moonves would say only that CBS All Access was “ahead of projections,” but acknowledged that could mean as few as 10 subscribers...I've been extremely impressed with the product,” he said, adding that its subscriber base would grow as more affiliates sign up to provide a live feed of their stations’ programming over broadband...Pressed for a hard number of subscribers, Moonves replied, "When Netflix tells you how many people are watching House of Cards, we’ll tell you how many subscribers we have."

It should be fairly obvious that when you're a subscription service, ratings matter less than when you're a traditional broadcaster dealing with advertisers, but this faux outrage at Netflix secrecy was the tone CBS took for much of last week. Case in point is CBS's chief researcher David Poltrack, who couldn't help taking shots at Netflix's original series viewership numbers:

"The average adult watches 5.2 hours of content on Netflix per week, 3 hours of which are spent watching television programming of some kind. Netflix’s original series account for 6.6 percent of that viewing, David Poltrack, CBS chief research officer, said at a UBS conference today in New York. "Self-reported behavior is always subject to error,” Poltrack said. “But it’s all we have. If Netflix disagrees with anything I’m about to report, I welcome them to provide anyone with the correct numbers."

The irony is that CBS is part of an industry that's been intentionally burying its head in the sand when it comes to emerging cord cutting trends for years now, with companies like Nielsen lagging on tracking viewing on tablets and phones, and often obscuring data that tells the industry things it doesn't want to hear. Namely, that the current cable TV cash cow model has a hard expiration date that's coming up faster than executives think. Now contrast CBS's ratings and secrecy-obsessed mindset to Netflix, which points out that ratings aren't as important to the company because they can hinder the creation of good content:

"The reason we don’t give ratings is not to frustrate the press,” said (Netflix chief content officer Ted) Sarandos. “It’s an irrelevant measure of success for us."..."Maybe it has been necessary for the business of entertainment, but it’s been terrible for the creative side of television," he said. "I do think that the ratings discussion has been negative for television."

The end result has been the heavy catering to the lowest common denominator (oh hi, didn't see you standing there, reality television). Note that Netflix isn't saying ratings are worthless, just that they've traditionally been taken too seriously, and this logic only extends so far. Netflix last week premiered its $90 million magnum opus "Marco Polo." It has the second-most expensive budget on television right now, behind only HBO's "Game of Thrones." Early reviews are rather mixed and Netflix obviously isn't going to ignore viewership numbers for a venture of that scope, but the point remains that the traditional cable and broadcast industry has been so obsessed with ratings (quite often incorrect ratings telling them what they want to hear), it has sometimes struggled to see the forest for the trees.

Filed Under: david poltrack, les moonves, numbers, ratings, streaming, ted sarandos, tv
Companies: cbs, netflix

Negotiating Away Innovation: Dish Agrees To Kill Autohop To End TV Blackouts

from the shameful dept

The various TV networks have been suing Dish for the past couple of years because of its "autohop" feature, which automatically records prime time shows, and then lets subscribers watch them (starting the very next day) with commercials automatically skipped. So far, Dish has won basically every ruling in the case, showing that such technology is perfectly legal.

But now it's probably dead.

As we predicted would happen back in March, CBS has used its fight over retransmission to get Dish to agree to basically kill off autohopper, delaying it for 7 days after the show initially airs. In exchange, CBS will drop its lawsuit over autohopper, but also agree to allow Dish to offer its programming online ("over the top" as they say). This is basically the same deal Dish struck with ABC/Disney back in March as well, meaning that it's the same thing that every network will eventually agree to as well.

The retransmission fight was always lurking in the background of the autohopper lawsuit. The networks claimed that since Dish had existing negotiated deals for retransmitting network shows, the autohopper stuff was a contract violation (in addition to a copyright violation). So, basically, the legal fights lasted until the retrans negotiations had to come up again. Getting agreements for internet streaming is certainly nice, but to have it come at the expense of a nice bit of innovation like autohop is ridiculous. Perhaps it opens the door for third parties to make such technologies themselves, but these days standalone DVR products are pretty much a relic of history.

Of course, how long will it be until someone sets up a commercial system for acting as a DVR for internet streams, complete with commercial skipping features? It's doable today, but you can bet that even though it's just like a regular DVR/VCR, the legacy TV guys will flip out and call in the next coming of Aereo.

Filed Under: autohop, autohopper, blackouts, contracts, copyright, retransmission, tv
Companies: cbs, dish, disney

'Scorpion' Walter O'Brien Finally Tries To Respond To Inconsistencies In His Many Claims

from the not-very-convincing dept

I really thought we were done writing about Walter O'Brien -- the claimed "inspiration" for the TV show Scorpion. We already wrote two separate posts detailing the questionable, unbelievable or obviously false claims that he has made recently. And we did another post calling out the "professional journalists" who simply repeated his claims without any skepticism. And, once again (since this comes up every time), I have absolutely no problem with CBS making whatever TV show they want. The problem I have is with O'Brien using the obviously bogus claims to try to build a business on false premises, leading people to believe that giving him money will get you results not unlike those in the obviously farcical TV series.

In that last post, we noted that a couple of the journalists who had originally written fawning profiles had taken the concerns to heart and had tried to reach out to O'Brien to respond about the inconsistencies. Susan Karlin, at Fast Company, had written a profile about O'Brien that repeated many of the claims. When many of us raised questions, that story was briefly dropped behind an unimpeachable paywall (it said it was behind the paywall, but offered no way to pay) and then reemerged with a note acknowledging the questions raised and saying that Karlin was reaching out to O'Brien for a followup. We were skeptical that any followup would happen, but alas, late last week Karlin had a new story describing O'Brien's weak attempts at responding to the questions about his life story.

It appears he avoided most of the really damning stuff -- ridiculously claiming that "non-disclosure agreements" prevented him from discussing them. On the IQ question:

IQ: Regarding his absence from IQ lists, O'Brien wrote: “I was about nine years old when a teacher administered my IQ test," said O'Brien. "Unfortunately, as I was nine, I didn't know that I needed to keep the paperwork for future reference.”

O'Brien did not respond to a follow-up question asking, since he was using his IQ as a marketing element, why he didn’t later take a Mensa-endorsed test in case that figure got challenged.

First off, this proves what we said in our last post, that all of his claims about being "the fourth smartest" are complete bunk. Elsewhere, he had admitted that it was the Stanford-Binet test he took. At age 9, in 1983, the version of the Stanford-Binet that was out was known as the L-M version (two versions ago), in which the scores were not based on standard distributions, but rather a ratio scoring system (i.e. "this score at this age, compared to a normal person at this age"). And yet, to back up his claim of being the 4th smartest, he pointed to this chart, which uses the modern Stanford Binet "standardized" scoring system to compute "rarities." So he's mixing his metrics. Worse, research has shown that scores on the L-M test (especially at the high end) correspond to lower scores on the current Stanford-Binet test (SB5). So, even if the test was accurate, his score would be lower. On top of that, all the test showed was that at age 9 Walter was probably much brighter than other kids his age. It means nothing about him being particularly smart today. At the very least, for someone who puts so much weight on his IQ score and claims to be so smart, you'd think maybe (just maybe) he'd actually have a working understanding of how IQ scores work.

O'Brien did clear up some of the inconsistencies about his appearance in the International Olympiad in Informatics in Argentina, showing that he absolutely did attend (he has a "participant" certificate). O'Brien completely ignored the question about why his visa application to come to the US claims he came in 6th place in that competition, when it's clear he did not. At best there are reports that he came in 90th, though the explanation for why that 90th place doesn't show on the website for the Olympiad doesn't make much sense:

“The application from Ireland to compete had just missed the cut-off deadline,” said O’Brien. “We applied for an exception and it was granted, that's why Ireland doesn't appear in the registry, but did compete, and I certainly was there.”

But, clearly, the website was updated after the competition to show who won, so it's difficult to understand why they did not add his results.

O'Brien does admit to having faked the picture of the headquarters, as we pointed out, but says that the company was run virtually and he never thought people would think it was real:

Regarding the Photoshopped German building, he added, “I apologize if the building image on the website was misleading, as it was just a cool graphic that our website designer provided years ago. To me it was clearly a made up image since it has a large scorpion tail reflected in the glass and no sky in the background, but I can see how you could think it was our headquarters.”

Regarding the bogus number of 2600 employees and the UPS Store as his address:

O’Brien said Scorpion was run virtually, to reduce overhead, utilizing approximately 2,600 pre-screened independent contractors on an as-needed basis to solve large software problems for companies, individuals, and governments. “Most of our systems are either in the cloud (like Amazon's) or at a large customer's data center (like a military base), so we spend our time either at a customer site or telecommuting from our laptops,” he said. "Because we are virtual (and for security reasons), as with many companies, we use a P.O. box for our address.”

I'm all for virtual businesses running online, but there is no business in the world making over a billion dollars that can run entirely virtually without at least some semblance of a real office -- and various stories have claimed that Scorpion makes over a billion dollars in revenue. You don't run a billion dollar business out of a UPS store box. No one does. Small businesses run out of such things -- which is great for them. It's logistically impossible to run a large business that way.

The "2,600 pre-screened independent contractors" excuse is also bogus. First of all, I'm quite familiar with the expert network business, and I've never seen an expert network so careless as to come even close to suggesting that the network members are the equivalent of employees. But, more importantly, with every expert network, it's very common for the members of that network to promote that they're members on things like LinkedIn. And yet, it seems that almost none of these folks associated with Scorpion do so. It's possible that the rolodexes of the very small number of people (it appears to be less than 10) who actually do work at Scorpion may total up to 2600 people, but that's a very misleading way to promote the business.

Speaking of incredibly misleading ways to promote your business, O'Brien also responds to the hilarious claim that Scorpion was a venture fund with $204 billion under management:

O’Brien also stood by the $204 billion venture fund. That figure “was true at the time,” said O’Brien. “That statement simply referred to the total net worth of all the investors and venture capitalists that Scorpion had a relationship with and often hire Scorpion for due diligence. This is collectively referred to as a fund source as we are allowed to show these investors any new companies or inventions that we thought were worth the investors taking a closer look at.”

That's bordering on fraud -- to the point that it seems like the SEC might be interested. You don't get to claim "because I sometimes work with these investors, I can claim to have a fund worth the value of all their assets."

He also never bothers to explain why -- if he was managing a fund with over $200 billion and building up a company with over $1 billion in revenue (out of a UPS store) and 2,600 "independent contractors" -- he was still working a day job doing QA for The Capital Group.

Karlin also turns up some other lies from O'Brien that we had missed. O'Brien claimed that the following happened back in 1992:

1992 Presented A.I. discoveries, Invited to speak at the Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science conference at the University of Limerick (A.I.C.S.), by special invite from Dr. Padraig Cunningham. The youngest Scientist ever invited to present his SPEAKART project. This project was a fifth generation computer application, in the Dublin Hitachi research lab which resulted in being offered an apprentice position at HITACHI.

Karlin contacted Dr. Cunnigham and found a rather different story:

“That’s not true that I invited him to speak,” said Padraig Cunningham, now a professor in computer science at University College in Dublin, when contacted by Fast Company. “And he wasn’t offered an apprentice position at the Hitachi Dublin lab. I’d just finished working there in September, 1992, and he was not offered a job.

“I Googled his name and found this softer version of events in a news article published on one of his sites,” he added. (It reads: “Later that year [1992] Dr. Padraig Cunningham of T.C.D. invited him to attend the two-day Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science Conference in Limerick University.”)

“It appears he later hardened his claims that he was invited to speak and got a position at Hitachi,” said Cunningham. “This is a really old item, but it’s consistent with the idea that he’s become more effusive about his claims.”

This is the same thing that seems to keep coming up with O'Brien. He takes snippets of reality and extends and extends and extends those claims, embellishing the story each and every time. Being invited to attend a conference eventually turns into being invited to speak and then into getting a job.

In regards to all the other obviously bogus claims -- including the ones about "catching the Boston Marathon bombers," stopping wars, having his software misused leading to 2,600 civilian casualties in the Gulf War (yes, same number of "independent contractors" he now claims to have), stopping soldiers in Afghanistan from drinking water laced with arsenic from local drug lords... O'Brien doesn't want to respond to any of it.

“Much of our company’s work, especially with military/government clients is subject to strict Non-Disclosure Agreements, so we can’t say more than has been cleared for news.

“I’ve answered all the questions I have time to right now,” he replied in response to follow-up questions. “All that remains to be said is that I’m proud of and stand by my career, my company, and all the good we have done.”

It appears the strict non-disclosure agreements allow him to promote things that are extraordinarily dubious (and debunked by other information), but not to actually present any evidence to confirm. How convenient.

Filed Under: distortions, exaggerations, iq, lies, scorpion, walter o'brien
Companies: cbs

60 Minutes Tells Stories About FBI And NSA But Somehow Fails To Connect The Dots

from the comey's-no-hero dept

60 Minutes, which has been harshly criticized for running puff pieces for the NSA and FBI recently, is at it again. Last night, they ran two unrelated yet completely conflicting segments—one focusing on FBI Director Jim Comey, and the other on New York Times reporter James Risen—and the cognitive dissonance displayed in the back-to-back interviews was remarkable.

First up was 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley's interview with FBI Director Jim Comey. 60 Minutes aired the first part of the interview last week, which ran 14 minutes and did not contain a single adversarial question. This time, Scott Pelley asked him at least asked a couple softballs about civil liberties, although the primary one Comey just refused to answer.

The main focus of the piece, however, was Comey's supposed commitment to "the rule of law." "That's a principle over which James Comey is willing to sacrifice his career," Pelley explains to the audience. He then proceeded to re-tell the infamous "hospital bed" scene from 2004 during the Bush administration, where Comey, then deputy attorney general, threatened to resign unless Bush altered the original NSA warrantless surveillance program. Bush relented a bit and so Comey stayed on as deputy attorney general for more than a year afterwards.

Comey is portrayed as the hero, who stopped illegal surveillance from going forward. What Comey did was certainly admirable, but this episode happened in March 2004 and only pertained to a small portion of the NSA's illegal activities. The NSA's illegal warrantless wiretapping program (as the public knew it) was first exposed more than eighteen months later in December 2005. 60 Minutes explains this in the very next segment but couldn't apparently put two and two together: Jim Comey was presumably also responsible for signing off on the illegal program the New York Times exposed after his hospital bed protest.

During this segment, 60 Minutes interviewed James Risen about the Obama administration's war on leaks and described the scoop he is most famous for: his Pulitzer Prize-winning story exposing that same warrantless wiretapping program.

Risen explains to 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl that the NSA was not only gathering metadata without a warrant on Americans in 2005, but the content of phone conversations as well. And as Stahl herself points out—and as former NSA chief Michael Hayden basically admits in the segment—this was in direct violation of the 1978 law the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which required court orders to conduct such spying.

Critically, Risen's first story in December 2005 makes it clear the warrantless wiretapping of Americans was ongoing at the time. And we learned just last year as part of the Snowden revelations that Comey's hospital protest was over Internet metadata, not illegal eavesdropping on phone calls.

So to sum up: the government was breaking the law in December 2005. This is the program that Comey had presumably signed off on after the much-talked-about incident and he remained deputy attorney general. Yet Comey is still uncontroversially portrayed as a man dedicated to "the rule of law."

This information was readily available to 60 Minutes, as it's in the most well-known recounting of the hospital bed scene done by reporter Barton Gellman for the Washington Post and in his book The Angler in 2007. As Barton Gellman reported in 2007, Comey forced some changes with his potential resignation in 2004, but "much of the operation remained in place."

"Imagine you're doing ten things one day, and the next day you're only doing eight of them," an unnamed official told Gellman in The Angler. "That's basically what happened here."

Cross posted from the Freedom of the Press Foundation.

Filed Under: 60 minutes, fbi, fisa, james comey, james risen, nsa, surveillance
Companies: cbs