Court Says Metadata Should Be Released Under Freedom Of Information Act Request

from the commence-metadata-scrubbing dept

Copycense points us to the fascinating news that a federal judge has ordered Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to reveal the metadata on a document as part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. ICE had responded to the FOIA request (apparently "after significant delay,") but provided the content requested in an unsearchable PDF. The original requestor for the content, the National Day Laborer Organization, complained that this was unfair, and the information had to be supplied with metadata -- and the court agreed. The court also agreed that making the PDF unsearchable was not justified:

"Metadata maintained by the agency as a part of an electronic record is presumptively producible under FOIA, unless the agency demonstrates that such metadata is not 'readily producible.'"

Sounds like some government employees are going to need to spend the next few weeks scrubbing metadata from documents. Wouldn't want people to find out who really wrote various laws by looking at the metadata on Word docs, would we?

As for the unsearchable format, the judge slammed ICE for clearly going out of its way to make the document "more difficult or burdensome for the requesting party to use," in violation of standard discover rules. Nice to see that ICE has the time to purposely obfuscate records requested in a FOIA. Transparency in action...

Filed Under: freedom of information, metadata

Arizona Court Says Metadata On Public Records Is Public As Well

from the lobbyists-rushing-to-scrub-metadata dept

An interesting ruling in the Arizona Supreme Court found that the metadata on a public record should be public as well -- so people could, conceivably, look at who created certain documents and when they were created. While that might not seem like a big deal, as the article link above describes, plenty of interesting data often can be found in the metadata -- such as what lobbyist wrote up what documents for other organizations to send. While this only applies in Arizona right now, you have to imagine that lobbyists are quickly learning how to better scrub metadata off their astroturfing letters.

Filed Under: arizona, lobbyists, metadata, public records

Putting Metadata In Video For Search Purposes? Patented! Microsoft Sued

from the it-never-ends dept

The last time we wrote about a small company called Gotuit Media, it was in 2003, when the company was suing TiVo for an excessively broad patent about recording TV while playing back TV concurrently. Apparently, the company is still in the business of suing other companies that are putting obvious ideas into practice. For example, it's now suing Microsoft over its implementation of Silverlight-based videos for the Olympics on NBC's website. Microsoft's crime? Apparently the videos are going to include some metadata that will make them searchable, allowing users to search and find specific content. And, that, according to Gotuit, is patent infringement.

Of course, that's ridiculous. If you were to tackle the problem of how to create a search engine for video, one of the first things just about any competent programmer would think of is adding text metadata to the video that would then be used for search. But, thanks to the patent system, apparently you can only do that if you've agreed to pay Gotuit a licensing fee.

Filed Under: metadata, online video, silverlight, video
Companies: gotuit, microsoft

Australian Officials Accidentally Reveal Google As Responsible For Anti-eBay Filing

from the jockeying-for-position dept

Last month, we wrote about plans by eBay in Australia to ban all non-PayPal payment solutions from the auction site. This has set off quite a firestorm, especially from folks who don't particularly like PayPal. Australian regulators are looking into the matter, and have asked for comments from anyone interested, some of which it's posting online. Most of the comments come with the name of the individual and/or company who sent it in -- but a few were posted anonymously, at the submitter's request. However, it appears that regulators didn't do a very good job scouring for metadata, as someone who looked more closely at the PDF file discovered that it clearly says "Submission by Google re eBay" in the metadata (found via Slashdot).

While this has some wondering if "tensions" are escalating between the two companies, I think it's safe to say that tensions were already quite high between the two companies concerning their competing payment solutions. After all, when Google first launched Google Checkout, eBay quickly banned it from use on the site, claiming (with a straight face) that Google wasn't trustworthy enough, since it didn't have a track record of payment solutions. Then, you may recall a year ago, that Google (childishly) planned a "protest" outside of eBay's own user conference, which resulted in eBay removing all ads from Google for a little while. Considering that eBay is Google's largest advertiser, this was no small move. So, somehow, I doubt the fact that Google filed a comment against banning other payment systems in Australia is going to be seen by either party as an "escalation" of the tension between the two companies.

Filed Under: anonymity, australia, google checkout, metadata, paypal
Companies: ebay, google

Reuters Wants To Add Value To Anyone's News Stories

from the watch-this-space dept

While the Associated Press has talked a lot about adapting to a new internet-centric world, there's still very little evidence that it's doing anything different. It's still trying to act like a gatekeeper rather than an enabler. However, it appears that Reuters is actually experimenting with something interesting. It has a new project, called OpenCalais, designed to help any information provider extract useful metadata from written content. In other words, it's an automated system that you can run an article or a blog post through, and it will return useful data in a structured manner. For example, if you wrote an article about Google's earning report, it would note that the article was about Google, that it had to do with an earnings report, and maybe connect some important other points. The idea, then, is that the more useful semantic data that's there, the more useful things that can be done on top of it. For those who believe that better use of semantic data is the key opportunity for newspapers to jump to the internet age, this could represent a very big deal. Of course, there's a very big "if" in that statement. The service actually needs to work well and be useful. It also needs to attract users. There's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem here, as the really useful apps built on top of that data won't come unless the data itself is available. Having Reuters behind the project suggests a strong initial base of content, but it remains to be seen how much adoption can actually be driven through this system. Some of it may depend on how much in the way of resources Reuters has put behind this project to jumpstart it (and whether that commitment continues after Reuter's acquisition by Thomson Financial closes). Either way, it's an experiment worth following, and one a lot more interesting than simply demanding that people pay more money.

Filed Under: metadata, news, opencalais, semantic news
Companies: reuters