Nevada Looking To Proactively Legalize Autonomous Cars

from the paving-the-road-to-the-future dept

There's been a lot of advancement lately in the field of autonomous cars. The DARPA Grand Challenge a few years ago convinced many people that autonomous vehicles were possible and since then we've been seeing more and more work on concepts around such vehicles, including Google's secret testing of its own autonomous cars and some other researchers doing an autonomous drive from Italy to China. However, with Google, it needed to get special permission to take the car out on the roads, and apparently some politicians in Nevada are working hard to court autonomous vehicle manufacturers to its state. They've put together a bill that would make it easier to get autonomous vehicles on the road in the state, by setting up a process to "authorize" such vehicles, and allow them to operate on Nevada highways.

As Ryan Calo notes in his post (the one linked above) about this, it's great that Nevada is taking a proactive approach, however, he does worry about some of the broad language:

The bill's definition of autonomous vehicles is unclear, even circular. Autonomous driving exists on a spectrum. Many vehicles available today have autonomous features, while falling short of complete computer control. Surely the bill's authors do not intend to require that, for instance, today's self-parking Lexus LS 460L be tested and certified.

Either way, it's exciting to think that such vehicles are getting closer to being available to the public.

Filed Under: autonomous vehicles, cars, nevada

Nevada Politician Pitches $25 Passes To Let You Speed

from the budget-crunch dept

Via Slashdot, we find the story of Nevada gubernatorial candidate, Eugene "Gino" DiSimone, who is proposing a somewhat different idea for raising some extra money for the state: offering special "speeding" passes for $25 per day, which would let you drive up to 90 mph on designated highways. He claims it would raise $1 billion per year, which... seems extreme. If my math is correct (and it may not be), that means 40 million uses of this pass, meaning over 100,000 people using it every day. And those would have to be people who not only want to speed, but also figure $25 is worth it balanced against the likelihood of getting pulled over while just traveling 90 on your own. And it will only be allowed for vehicles that pass a special inspection and get a special transponder installed -- further limiting the number of folks who can use it.

Also, nowhere are the "costs" of such a program discussed. Not only will there be these extra inspections, the transponders will cost money, and there's technology infrastructure as well, including the ability to read the transponders, manage the database, set up the call-in system that will let people purchase the day pass, etc. The police are against the idea because they say it'll create more accidents, which some might argue isn't proven fact, but it probably does make their lives more complicated as well. Seems like this is more of an attempt to get some attention (oops, it worked) rather than any sort of serious proposal.

Filed Under: eugene disimone, nevada, politics, speeding

Sharron Angle Insists She's Going To Sue Harry Reid For His Reposting Of Angle's Own Website

from the political-calculations dept

Earlier this week, we wrote about the bizarre decision by Nevada Senatorial candidate Sharron Angle to send a cease-and-desist to Sen. Harry Reid (who she's challenging in the election) over Reid's decision to put her old website back online. Reid was doing so to point to statements Angle made on her old website that were toned down on her new website. The idea, of course, is to suggest that she's hiding her real positions. Whether or not that's true, Angle accused Reid of both copyright infringement and trying to trick users into giving the Reid campaign their information.

The Reid campaign originally complied with the cease-and-desist and (of course) went public with it, generating much more attention to the original issue. With so much publicity, Reid's campaign has put the website back up. Assuming that the reposted website is the same as what was up before, it's clearly done by the Reid campaign -- so the claims of possible confusion or tricking users is ridiculous.

However, Angle is now saying that since Reid has put the website back up, she's definitely going to sue:

"Well your website is like you, it's your intellectual property," Angle said. "So they can't use something that's yours, intellectual property, unless they pay you for it or get your permission... And he didn't ask me for it, and he didn't pay me for it. I would have sold it to him."

Angle was asked: "So the latest is that it is up again, and you are just going to have to see as far as pursing this in court? Is that the plan?"

"Well we are going to pursue it," Angle replied. "I don't think that Harry is above the law. He needs to obey the law if you and I need to obey the law. Harry isn't immune. He needs to obey the law as well."

Now, at a first pass, Angle (while a bit confused on the terminology) is probably correct that Reid is technically "infringing" by posting the website, but the Reid campaign would (I'm sure) hit back with a nice fair use defense that would have a pretty high likelihood of succeeding. That said, the whole idea of actually going to court over this is preposterous. This is clearly not what copyright law is about and the whole point by the Reid campaign is to draw more attention to Angle's old website. If she were politically savvy, she would just drop it, rather than drawing more attention to it herself. Going to court makes her old website the story, even as she's trying to hide it.

Filed Under: copyright, harry reid, nevada, politics, sharron angle, websites

Senate Candidate Angle Accuses Senator Reid Of Copyright Infringement For Displaying Angle's Website

from the that's-not-how-this-works dept

The internet never forgets, but apparently, someone involved in the Senate election campaign for Sharron Angle was unaware of this fact. It appears that Angle and her staff are also quite unaware of The Streisand Effect. As you may or may not know, Angle is running for US Senator in Nevada, where she's challenging current Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Reid, apparently, has been using images from Angle's primary campaign website against her. Angle apparently totally revamped her website after winning the primary, apparently to tone down some of the rhetoric on the website. So, she's not very pleased that Reid is showing off her old website -- which his staff apparently reposted at a new domain.

So, what does she do? She sends a cease-and-desist to Reid for publishing her own website claiming that it infringed on her copyright. No, seriously. You can read the cease & desist here and laugh along with it. Her lawyers claim that Reid only did this to capture email addresses under false pretenses, but it seems pretty clear that Reid's campaign just wanted to highlight some of Angle's more incendiary comments from the primary campaign, which she's now trying to back away from.

And, of course, because of all of this, Angle and her lawyers handed the Reid campaign a perfect peg to highlight exactly those statements.

Filed Under: campaigns, copyright, harry reid, nevada, senate, sharron angle

US Prosecutors Narrow Fishing Expedition On Newspaper Commenters

from the but-they're-stil-fishing dept

Last week, we wrote about how US prosecutors appeared to be going on a total fishing expedition, demanding all sorts of information from the Las Vegas Review-Journal about all of the commenters on a certain article, including their "full name, date of birth, physical address, gender, ZIP code, password prompts, security questions, telephone numbers and other identifiers." This seemed to be far overreaching, and we're glad to see many more mainstream news sources picked up on the story this week. It seems that all that public attention has caused the US attorneys to back down a bit, greatly narrowing what they're requesting to information about just two comments. Even then, some are concerned about this, and the ACLU has filed a motion to try to block even the release of the info on those two comments, citing the right to anonymous speech. However, the newspaper seems willing to hand over what little info it had, noting that it really doesn't have much info on the anonymous commenters anyway (and had deleted one of the comments already for violating its terms of service). Either way, it's good to see the US attorneys quickly back down from such an over-broad request.

Filed Under: anonymity, comments, fishing expedition, nevada, newspapers, us prosecutors
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