Litecoin Walmart Hoax Easily Exploits A Lazy U.S. Press

from the stop-and-think dept

You might have seen a week or two ago how everybody absolutely freaked out after a Rolling Stone article falsely reported that Ivermectin overdoses were causing massive congestion at Oklahoma hospitals. In reality, the truth wound up being something substantively less than that (Mathew Ingram at Columbia Journalism Review has a good breakdown here). The whole mess began after a local news organization published a story that was misinterpreted by a bunch of national outlets who "aggregated" and repackaged it. The screw up was then picked up in turn by conservative commentators eager to point out that the press was specifically out to get them.

But that wasn't true either. These kinds of aggregation screw ups probably happen a hundred times a day. They usually involve a bunch of click-hungry sites amplifying a story without bothering to check if the original story was true (in the case of the Ivermectin story, countless outlets, including MSNBC, didn't bother to even read the original interview with the local doctor). These screw ups aren't necessarily malicious, they're just representative of a broken U.S. ad-based press for which speed, inaccuracy, and inflammatory headlines make more money than measured, sometimes boring, often complicated truth. As Mike discussed, confirmation bias plays a huge role in the whole mess.

But it really can't be reiterated how often this kind of cock up happens without the level of breathy introspection that accompanied the Ivermectin/Oklahoma error. For example, this week it wasn't particularly hard for some hoaxers to release a completely fake press release (using GlobeNewswire) stating that Walmart had partnered with the cryptocurrency Litecoin. Countless journalists and news outlets leeched onto the press release and wrote elaborate stories and hot takes, without a single one bothering to confirm that any of the facts in the release were true.

They weren't, and everybody in the chain, from GlobeNewswire to a long line of outlets, had to apologize about screwing up so badly. Reuters was one of several news outlets forced to withdraw the story, then try and pretend it never happened:

"GlobeNewswire is owned by telecommunications company Intrado. It issued a “notice to disregard” the original release at 11:18 a.m. ET.

A number of media organizations, including CNBC, sent headlines on the announcement. Shares of Walmart had little movement on it. Litecoin was down about 2.2%, according to Coin Metrics.

GlobeNewswire said that a fraudulent user account was used to issue the release.

While everybody makes mistakes, basic journalistic norms involve asking the company or person you're writing about for comment. Even doing aggregation (which can serve an important function of adding context to other peoples' stories, especially if you know more about the subject than the poorly-paid 22-year-old who originally wrote it) involves doing some research, or at the very least developing a good gut instinct to ferret out stories that don't feel right or aren't properly supported by any evidence. In this case, bizarrely, even the Litecoin Foundation appeared to have been taken it by the hoax...about its own product:

"Litecoin tweeted the press release from its official account at 9:50 a.m. ET. CNBC’s report on the what turned out to be fake was published five minutes later. In a statement Monday afternoon, the Litecoin Foundation said a social media team member “was a little too eager and shared the story from the Litecoin Twitter account. This was quickly deleted and we have taken steps to correct future issues."

The Rolling Stone Ivermectin story got a lot of media play because partisan pundits leaped on it as proof positive that it was evidence of unfair bias against conservatives. But the real culprit is the advertising-based media ecosystem that prioritizes speed and headlines over substance, depth, truth, and sometimes even basic competency. And that's exploitable by everyone from ordinary trolls and partisan hacks to poorly-regulated industries and giant corporations. And while everybody shakes their fist at the problem insisting it supports their preconceived personal biases, few of those same folks really want to spend much time thinking about creative funding alternatives for a clearly busted, ad-engagement based media system.

Filed Under: hoax, journalism, litecoin
Companies: litecoin foundation, walmart

Canadian Man Arrested For Not Being A Terrorist

from the fake-it-til-you-make-it dept

Here in the United States, we're used to the FBI radicalizing terrorists in order to arrest terrorists. If you don't have any aspiring terrorist friends, the FBI can set you up with some. Don't have a plan to do some terror stuff? No problem, the FBI has all kinds of ideas. Low on cash and unable to pick up your own terrorist supplies? Petty cash has you covered, my man. Just looking for a little acceptance? The FBI can fill that void in your life, just before it arrests you and takes that life away.

A string of open net goals by the FBI's counterterrorism division has left us a bit jaded. We need something new to shake things up a bit. Fortunately, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have stepped up to provide a new twist: arresting and charging someone for [checks news report] not being a terrorist.

A Canadian whose widely-publicized account of conducting executions for ISIS fueled public outrage and debate in the House of Commons has been charged with allegedly making it up.

Shehroze Chaudhry, 25, who has portrayed himself as a former ISIS member living freely in Canada, was charged with faking his involvement in the terrorist group.

Not only is it a crime to be a terrorist in Canada, it's also a crime to not be one -- not if you portray yourself as a terrorist. After invoking all sorts of small-t terror with his pretending to be Jihadist Public Enemy No. 1, Chaudhry found himself arrested on the more seldom-used charge of "terrorism hoax."

The RCMP apparently doesn't take kindly to being duped, although it seems any investigation would have discovered Chaudry's lack of terrorism and allowed the agency to drop him as a suspect and quit wasting tax dollars on him. There's a hint of bitterness in this statement:

“Hoaxes can generate fear within our communities and create the illusion there is a potential threat to Canadians, while we have determined otherwise,” said stated Superintendent Christopher deGale, who heads the Toronto INSET.

“As a result, the RCMP takes these allegations very seriously, particularly when individuals, by their actions, cause the police to enter into investigations in which human and financial resources are invested and diverted from other ongoing priorities.”

I understand things like hoax bomb threats and hoax 911 calls can be taxing on a system that often portrays itself as overstretched. But Chaudry's faux terrorism was apparently limited to shitposting on a number of social media accounts, talking a good terrorist game while never actually being involved with any terrorism group.

The hoax charge hasn't been used often, but it appears prosecutors think this time it will stick. After all, not many faux terrorists end up the subject of multiple news reports and podcasts reaching large audiences.

[T]he Crown may intend to argue that, because the hoax was so widespread and was featured on a popular podcast, it created fear that Canadian ISIS members were “returning and running around,” and that police were powerless to stop them.

Implicit in that argument is that Chaudry is being punished for making law enforcement look inept. Moving forward with a prosecution on these charges, however, won't make them look any less inept. In fact, it will compound the perceived ineptness. First, the RCMP can't take down real terrorists. Second, the RCMP has to resort to arresting fake terrorists. Adding these two negatives together won't make them a positive.

But it could be an easy win for the Crown. The best defense against charges of fake terrorism is evidence you're a real terrorist. Either way, Chaudry is probably screwed. But fake terrorism is only five years in prison. Actual terrorism usual nets a person a whole lot more time behind bars. The best choice may be to agree to be the guy who didn't actually do anything.

Filed Under: canada, hoax, isis, rcmp, shehroze chaudhry, terrorism, terrorism hoax

Louisiana Police Appear To Be Using A Hoax Antifa List Created By 8Chan To Open Criminal Investigations

from the cause-is-supposed-to-be-probable,-not-theoretically-possible dept

A public records request sent to the Louisiana State Police has uncovered something disturbing. Although the LSP continues to refuse to release the document in question, it appears this law enforcement agency has been using a bogus list of supposed Antifa members compiled by 8chan users to keep tabs on Americans opposed to Trump.

The public records lawsuit [PDF] filed by Harvard lecturer (and former staff attorney for Orleans Public Defenders) Thomas Frampton on behalf of records requester William Most, alleges law enforcement's refusal to hand over the "antifa.docx" file referenced in obtained emails is an indication the state police actually believe this bogus "Antifa" list -- compiled from a list of signatories to an anti-Trump petition -- is credible enough to be used in ongoing investigations and litigation.

Here's Frampton's summation of the situation, as gleaned from the state police's responses to Most's repeated requests for a copy of the Antifa doc.

On August 27, 2018, while searching through the first batch of 64 emails, Mr. Most noticed several high-ranking LSP officers sharing a document entitled “full list of antifa.docx” in August 2017. The dossier was also shared with non-LSP law enforcement, including an official from the Lafayette Parish Sheriff’s Office.

The LSP “Antifa” emails were sent just days after the conspiracy theory website “8Chan” published a fake dossier of what purported to be a full list of “Antifa.” The hoax was promoted on Neo-Nazi websites like Stormfront. The purported “Antifa” roster contains the names of thousands of ordinary, law-abiding citizens who signed an online petition against President Trump.

LSP has refused to disclose the “full list of antifa.docx” records. The Agency claims that releasing the document could “compromise” an ongoing criminal investigation in which LSP anticipates arrests, and reveal the identity of its “Confidential Informant.”

This suggests two things, neither of which make the LSP look any better. Either it truly believes the hoax doc is real, rather than just names take from an online petition, or it's trying to avoid having to admit it was duped by a confidential informant, even if only temporarily.

The ever-present resistance to transparency by the state police is detailed in the filed motion as well. It's not just the appearance of an undelivered "antifa.docx" file in an email string, but the agency's refusal to meet court-ordered timelines or even begin work on fulfillment when its public records team says it will.

Defendant has completely withheld access to hundreds of records responsive to the Plaintiff's initial and modified request, but this lawsuit deals only with the inspection of five (5) specific records, the attachments to the five emails identified in [Paragraph]l19 of this Petition. Defendant has withheld these records after months of arbitrary and capricious stalling and delay; first negligently, apparently, then intentionally; despite multiple offers by Mr. Most to accept redacted portions of the record; and notwithstanding good-faith pre-litigation efforts by Mr. Most to explain to Louisiana State Police why the records are not exempt from disclosure.

But it's the Antifa doc that's making headlines. Alone it could mean nothing more than something passed around by law enforcement officers and officials before being discarded. Coupled with the LSP's insistence that release of the document would compromise both an investigation and its confidential informant, the refusal to release the docx file suggests the agency has opened investigations predicated on a hoax. However strongly one may feel about the criminality of Antifa's actions, there's nothing in this document justifying investigations and surveillance of people who did nothing more than sign an online petition. If the LSP fell for a hoax and opened investigations based on protected speech (the signing of online petitions), it's going to be facing a lot more litigation in the future.

Filed Under: antifa, hoax, investigation, louisian, louisiana state police, public records, transparency, trolls
Companies: 8chan

Texas Police Arrest Kid For Building A Clock

from the this-is-infuriating dept

We talk a lot about police overreacting to things, but this takes things to a new and ridiculous level. The Dallas Morning News released a story last night about police in Irving, Texas, arresting 14-year old Ahmed Mohamed, a freshman in high school, for building a digital clock and bringing it in to school to show his teachers. Ahmed likes to tinker and build electronics. This is the kind of thing you'd think the school and the community would want to encourage. But, instead, he was arrested and sent to a juvenile detention center, suspended from school and the police say they may charge him for making a "hoax bomb." Except it's a clock. He never said it was a bomb. He never implied it was a bomb. Just some teachers and the police freaked out about it.

He kept the clock inside his school bag in English class, but the teacher complained when the alarm beeped in the middle of a lesson. Ahmed brought his invention up to show her afterward.

“She was like, it looks like a bomb,” he said.

“I told her, ‘It doesn’t look like a bomb to me.’”

The teacher kept the clock. When the principal and a police officer pulled Ahmed out of sixth period, he suspected he wouldn’t get it back.

They led Ahmed into a room where four other police officers waited. He said an officer he’d never seen before leaned back in his chair and remarked: “Yup. That’s who I thought it was.”

Ahmed felt suddenly conscious of his brown skin and his name — one of the most common in the Muslim religion. But the police kept him busy with questions.

The bell rang at least twice, he said, while the officers searched his belongings and questioned his intentions. The principal threatened to expel him if he didn’t make a written statement, he said.

“They were like, ‘So you tried to make a bomb?’” Ahmed said.

“I told them no, I was trying to make a clock.”

“He said, ‘It looks like a movie bomb to me.’”

The incredible thing is that the police flat out admit that he never claimed it was a bomb, but they're still considering charging him with making a hoax bomb.

Ahmed never claimed his device was anything but a clock, said police spokesman James McLellan. And police have no reason to think it was dangerous. But officers still didn’t believe Ahmed was giving them the whole story.

“We have no information that he claimed it was a bomb,” McLellan said. “He kept maintaining it was a clock, but there was no broader explanation.”

Perhaps there was no broader explanation because none is needed.

Even more ridiculous: they handcuffed this kid (wearing a NASA t-shirt, by the way) and walked him through the school as they took him away. This picture is shameful.

Ahmed's sister told me to post this. Yes this situation is real for those questioning. pic.twitter.com/Oxd0JxUS6O

— Prajwol/Ru (@OfficalPrajwol) September 16, 2015

You can also see him discuss the invention in this YouTube video: The most depressing part of the news article is how it ends:

He’s vowed never to take an invention to school again.

Curiosity killers.

The school has now doubled down on this move, by sending a letter to parents at the school congratulating themselves for this whole thing:

While we do not have any threats to our school community, we want you to be aware that the Irving Police Department responded to a suspicious-looking item on campus yesterday. We are pleased to report that after the police department's assessment, the item discovered at school did not pose a threat to your child's safety.

Our school is cooperating fully with the ongoing police investigation, and we are handling the situation in accordance with the Irving ISD Student Code of Conduct and applicable laws. Please rest assured that we will always take necessary steps to keep our school as safe as possible.

Even worse... the school is using this as a "teaching moment" telling parents to tell their kids to report any "suspicious" things. Like brown kids being curious and inventing cool shit:

I recommend using this opportunity to talk with your child about the Student Code of Conduct and specifically not bringing items to school that are prohibited. Also, this is a good time to remind your child how important it is to immediately report any suspicious items and/or suspicious behavior they observe to any school employee so we can address it right away. We will always take necessary precautions to protect our students.

And by "address" it, apparently, they mean arrest bright kids for being curious and gifted.

The whole "bomb hoax" thing based on authorities getting confused about a non-bomb reminds me of that time, back in 2007, when Cartoon Network tried to promote Adult Swim with light up boxes of various characters placed around Boston -- and because some people freaked out and the city was shut down, Boston's mayor declared the marketing stunt a "bomb hoax." Once again, if someone is building something that you mistake for a bomb, and they had no intention of passing it off as a bomb, nor does it actually look like a bomb, it's not a bomb hoax. At all. And you look ridiculous calling it out as such.

And, of course, you look that much more ridiculous when you not only overreact like this, but do it against a clearly intelligent and talented teenager who likes to tinker with electronics.

Update: A picture of the clock has now been released. Nothing about it changes the story at all.

.@IrvingPD: this is the homemade clock made by Ahmed Mohamed and brought to @IrvingISD High School. @NBCDFW pic.twitter.com/owUQbQLDQy

— Ellen Bryan (@EllenBryanNBC5) September 16, 2015

Filed Under: ahmed mohamed, arrested, bomb, clock, education, hoax, hoax bomb, irving, texas, tinkering

Sting Operation Shows How Full Of Crap Health Journals Are When It Comes To Dietary Studies

from the eat-it dept

Look, I probably don't have to tell you Techdirt readers this, but I'm a strange sort of cat. I could go into all the reasons why I'm odd, but whenever I try to explain to people how non-normal I am, I usually just reveal this little bit of truth: I hate chocolate. No, I don't not-love chocolate. Nor do I dislike chocolate. I fucking hate it, nearly as much as I hate how low I appeared on this ingenious bit of sleuthing a commenter did in determining which Techdirt writers swear the most (a list which I insist is fucking bullshit, by the way). That said, everyone else loves chocolate, of course, so I'm sure they and many others were thrilled to see so many well-respected publications blaring headlines recently about how chocolate can help reduce weight. I'd show you a bunch of links to those stories put forth by supposedly well-respected journalism outlets and scientific journals that make heavy claims about peer-reviews and fact-checking, but I can't because most of those stories have been pulled. Why?

Because the whole thing was a bullshit hoax put on by a journalist to make the point that, at least when it comes to studies around diet and health, the journals and the media the reports on their papers are largely full of crap. Go read that entire thing, because it's absolutely fascinating, but I'll happily give you the truncated version. John Bohannon, who has a Ph.D in molecular biology of bacteria and is also a journalist, conspired with a German reporter, Peter Onneken, to see how badly they could fool the media to create BS headlines. They did this by turning John Bohannon into Johannes Bohannon (obviously) and creating a website for The Institute of Diet and Health, which isn't actually a thing. Then they conducted a very real study with three groups: 1 group eating a low-carb diet, 1 group eating their regular diet, and 1 group eating a low-carb diet and a 1.5oz bar of dark chocolate daily. After running background on the groups, conducting blood tests to correct for disease and eating disorders, and hiring a German doctor and statistician to perform the study, away they went. The results?

Onneken then turned to his friend Alex Droste-Haars, a financial analyst, to crunch the numbers. One beer-fueled weekend later and... jackpot! Both of the treatment groups lost about 5 pounds over the course of the study, while the control group’s average body weight fluctuated up and down around zero. But the people on the low-carb diet plus chocolate? They lost weight 10 percent faster. Not only was that difference statistically significant, but the chocolate group had better cholesterol readings and higher scores on the well-being survey.

Bam, results! Not just results, but results the media would absolutely love to sink their idiotic teeth into. The problem? Well, the method for running the entire study was bullshit.

Here’s a dirty little science secret: If you measure a large number of things about a small number of people, you are almost guaranteed to get a “statistically significant” result. Our study included 18 different measurements—weight, cholesterol, sodium, blood protein levels, sleep quality, well-being, etc.—from 15 people. (One subject was dropped.) That study design is a recipe for false positives.

Think of the measurements as lottery tickets. Each one has a small chance of paying off in the form of a “significant” result that we can spin a story around and sell to the media. The more tickets you buy, the more likely you are to win. We didn’t know exactly what would pan out—the headline could have been that chocolate improves sleep or lowers blood pressure—but we knew our chances of getting at least one “statistically significant” result were pretty good.

Bohannon goes into some of the gory math, and it really is fun to read, but this is pretty easy to understand. With a small enough sample size and testing for as wide a range of results and factors as possible, you absolutely expect to find greater variance than if your study was testing for less factors or had a higher sample size. It's simple: people are different and testing less people makes those difference statistically appear to be more significant.

Anyway, the team then went to the International Archives of Medicine, which Bohannon identifies as a "fake journal" publisher. In other words, pay enough Euros and your "study" gets "published", all without the bothersome time-waster known as being peer-reviewed. Not that IAM doesn't claim to be reviewed. It certainly does make that claim, but after payment was accepted Bohannon found that their study had been accepted without change. And, keep in mind, this study is designed to be bad. So, once the study had been published, it was time for the PR machine to swing into action.

Take a look at the press release I cooked up. It has everything. In reporter lingo: a sexy lede, a clear nut graf, some punchy quotes, and a kicker. And there’s no need to even read the scientific paper because the key details are already boiled down. I took special care to keep it accurate. Rather than tricking journalists, the goal was to lure them with a completely typical press release about a research paper. (Of course, what’s missing is the number of subjects and the minuscule weight differences between the groups.) But a good press release isn’t enough. Reporters are also hungry for “art,” something pretty to show their readers. So Onneken and Löbl shot some promotional video clips and commissioned freelance artists to write an acoustic ballad and even a rap about chocolate and weight loss. (It turns out you can hire people on the internet to do nearly anything.)

Onneken wrote a German press release and reached out directly to German media outlets. The promise of an “exclusive” story is very tempting, even if it’s fake. Then he blasted the German press release out on wire service based in Austria, and the English one went out on NewsWire. There was no quality control. That was left to the reporters.

And it didn't take the reporters long to pick up this crap-on-a-stick and run with it like children after the ice cream truck. Not all of them, but some of the stories are still up. The Daily Star covered their paper, for instance, as did the Times of India, international editions of The Huffington Post, and some television news programs. Men's Health was going to go with a story in September, though that probably won't run now. Shape Magazine didn't get off so lucky, with their story appearing in the June issue, in print. And remember, this is all bullshit. None of it is real. How does something like this happen?

The answer is lazy "journalists."

When reporters contacted me at all, they asked perfunctory questions. “Why do you think chocolate accelerates weight loss? Do you have any advice for our readers?” Almost no one asked how many subjects we tested, and no one reported that number. Not a single reporter seems to have contacted an outside researcher. None are quoted. These publications, though many command large audiences, are not exactly paragons of journalistic virtue. So it’s not surprising that they would simply grab a bit of digital chum for the headline, harvest the pageviews, and move on. But even the supposedly rigorous outlets that picked the study up failed to spot the holes.

Now, there is some humor in all of this, but also danger. It's one thing to claim that chocolate leads to weight loss and have the media run wild with it, but we all know that fad diets and exciting health claims rain down on us in buckets, and I think it's safe to say that not all of them are as harmless as Bohannon's. The average person hasn't done much thinking about the validity of these studies that they read about in the media; they simply trust the media to do the fact-checking. The media, it appears, largely trusts the journals to do the reviews and fact-checking. Except some (many?) of those journals don't. The whole thing harkens back to one of the funnier moments in the Anchorman movie, when the main character makes a ludicrous claim about women's brains being smaller than men's, and then punctuates the statement with a smirk, saying, "It's science." As far as much of the media reporting goes, it might as well be "science."

Strangely, Bohannon notes that readers of the articles were apparently more skeptical than the authors.

There was one glint of hope in this tragicomedy. While the reporters just regurgitated our “findings,” many readers were thoughtful and skeptical. In the online comments, they posed questions that the reporters should have asked.

“Why are calories not counted on any of the individuals?” asked a reader on a bodybuilding forum. “The domain [for the Institute of Diet and Health web site] was registered at the beginning of March, and dozens of blogs and news magazines (see Google) spread this study without knowing what or who stands behind it,” said a reader beneath the story in Focus, one of Germany’s leading online magazines. Or as one prescient reader of the 4 April story in the Daily Express put it, “Every day is April Fool’s in nutrition.”

If we've reached a time when readers are more skeptical than the reporters, that's a massive problem for journalism, but perhaps a delightful sign for the spread of skepticism and inquiry amongst the public. Either way, look with a critical eye the next time you hear about that fad diet or health food claim.

Filed Under: chocolate, fooling journalists, hoax, journalism, science, statistics, studies, weight loss

New 'Company' Claims It Uses Algorithms To Create Content Faster Than Creators Can, Making All Future Creations 'Infringing'

from the [algorithmically-generated-trollface] dept

Over the weekend, TorrentFreak covered the discovery of the latest thing in copyright enforcement: algorithmically-generated content created solely for the purpose of extracting infringement settlements and licensing fees.

That's the staggering notion being put forward by Qentis Corporation. The outfit, which claims a base in Russia, says that its business model is to use massive computing power to generate digital intellectual property on a never-seen-before scale and transfer the rights to its partners.

"Our clients are private high net-worth individuals (HNWI), investment funds and corporations that act as pure investors," Qentis explains.

What Qentis is proposing is the bulk algorithmic creation of content – music, text, images etc – on such a large scale that in a few years its clients will own the rights to just about anything people might care to create and upload.

The creator of Qentis, Michael Marcovici, told TorrentFreak that his "company" had the potential power to generate content before actual creators can, resulting in a world where every new work is already infringing.

"Qentis aims to produce all possible combinations of text (and later on images and sound) and to copyright them," Qentis' Michael Marcovici told TorrentFreak.

"Concerning text we try this in chunks of 400 word articles in English, German and Spanish. That would mean that we will hold the copyright to any text produced from now on and that it becomes impossible for anyone to circumvent Qentis when writing a text."

By 2020, supposedly every possible photograph will have been created and registered by Qentis. Text content generation is advancing at a faster rate.

Qentis -- as a concept -- is frightening. As an actual entity, it's an ultra-dry satirical device. Marcovici's website isn't the future of anything. The computing power needed to accomplish this is beyond the means of anyone. Brute force creation results in tons on unusable "content," something Marcovici readily admits.

"About the mathematics, this is mainly about working with n-grams, we don't work iteratively with misses because that would produce as you mention a LOT of misses, probably only 1 out of few million would be readable," the company's Michael Marcovici told us.

Qentis is a piss-take on utilitarian content creation and over-broad content protection. It seeks to embody the worst aspects of automatically-generated content and copyright trolling. And it pretty much nails both, presenting a respectable corporate front that almost masks the insanity leaking in around the edges. A quasi-proof of concept page claims Qentis' software "wrote" Lady Gaga's "Applause" four years before she did. On its About page, it notes that it has already generated "97.42%" of all 400-words-or-less text in several languages before dropping this bombastic (and misspelling-laden) statement.

If you are planning to publish any text in these languages we must inform you that the chances are almost 100% that they are already part of the copyrighted inventory of the Qentis Corporation and that you are about to violate these and you will be held responsible for this.

Qentis does not issue permission to individuals to publish any of its texts or images, please do not try to inquire. Qentis grants writes for reproduction only two is selected group of publishers.

Another page claims this company will free online content providers from the hassle of creating content. Instead, all content roads will lead to Qentis, from which rights to its algorithmic creations will be distributed to a variety of middlemen ("high networth individuals"), who will then license the content.

Whoa if true, but you'd have to ignore the computing power needed to brute force content creation that covers almost every conceivable combination of words -- especially given that the language keeps evolving and changing, adding massive new permutation and combinations. The claims Qentis/Marcovici make would be impossible in one language. Quentis claims to be doing this in several.

Then you'd have to ignore the fact that solely computer-generated content (i.e. content created without an actual creator) generally isn't copyrightable. From the USPTO:

Similarly, the Office will not register works produced by a machine or mere mechanical process that operates randomly or automatically without any creative input or intervention from a human author.

While it wouldn't take much to skirt this in real life (the presence of an editor or someone who tweaks algorithms before generating content), in the Qentis world where millions of pieces of content are being "created" every year, it would be impossible.

Furthermore, even if Qentis could create all those works and even if they were found to be copyrightable, Qentis would still run into a different problem: under the law, if someone truly comes up with the identical works independently, there's no infringement which would kind of break Qentis' entire business model (were it real). Independent invention, while not allowed in patent lawsuits, is a defense against copyright infringement. As Judge Learned Hand once famously wrote: "if by some magic a man who had never known it were to compose anew Keats's Ode on a Grecian Urn, he would be an "author," and, if he copyrighted it, others might not copy that poem, though they might of course copy Keats's." In short, even if all the other impossible situations above were taken care of, others creating these works independently likely would not be infringing anyway.

But it's all a joke… or at least, yet another art project from Marcovici. At his personal website, it's listed along with other concepts like Bitcoin paper money, rats in a Skinner box entering trading orders, an underground package delivery system and advertising on paper money.

Marcovici's publicity bio that looks suspiciously like a Wikipedia page notes that he also owns the Domain Developers Fund, conveniently located out of reach of US regulators in the Cayman Islands. The website seems to be dead, but his personal site gives some details as to its purpose. The language used is decidedly more flowery than informative, but it appears to be (if it actually exists) a domain squatting business. While this is listed alongside other Marcovici projects (like Qentis), this one at least appears to have some basis in reality. Marcovici's email address (mike@qentis.com, according to the Qentis.com registry) is linked to at least 1,649 domain registries.

Interestingly, one of those is Fontsy.com (also listed on Marcovici's website), a site that gives away "free" fonts (many of which can only be licensed by their creators), providing the following warning to those who partake of its services.

The fonts which available on this website are their authors' property. If you want use any font from this website commercially, you should contact the author. Look at the redme-files for more informations. is there no readme-filme, open the font file. Under windows there are copyright informations.

So, Marcovici (or at least the administrators of this website) have a pretty slippery grasp on intellectual property rights, something Qentis.com definitely shares.

Qentis.com's history as a domain dates all the way back to 2003, when it linked surfers to Marcovici's ebay store. By 2006, it had gone dormant. From there it became a platform for pushing his book on his ebay experiences, only morphing to its current form sometime this year.

So, this is Marcovici's stunted, but expansive, satire. A copyright-trolling automaton that will cleanse the world of creativity using brute force computing power and a team of outsourced rights enforcers. But behind all the copyright monopoly bluster, there are small hints at the message Marcovici is trying to send.

The same page where "Howard LaFarge" states that Qentis will become the "universal source of all web content," thus "freeing" corporations from their dependence on "expensive" creators, this paragraph appears.

what is left now to creatives is not anymore the repetitive low quality text they currently produce mainly from machines for SEO but to engage in real creativity at the level where context becomes more important than words.

It's even more explicit on a page detailing an interview with a "Russian TV station" that likely never happened.

The first way is simply to create something new, something really new, not just the remix of parts that are already there, really creativity is when people grow out of the usual stuff, we have been written books for thousands of years, produced images for thousands of years, it’s time to make use of new technologies and the combination of technologies to create content in new ways. such new ways of content, combinations of acting, sound, text, smell and and more can never be reproduced in an automated way. Yes Qentis makes it useless to continue to write average texts because they already exist writing text has become an activity like harvesting potatoes, or washing the car, jobs we want to eliminate so that we can grow over this and focus on more intellectual activities.

That's the statement of intent. I don't agree with all of it, especially since creativity is informed by predecessors and influences, but if Marcovici's Qentis "project" is meant to mock SEO-friendly filler and bots that compile web detritus into ebooks, then I can get behind the concept. There's nothing here that's based in mathematical reality, but using hyperbolic bullshit to take an (admittedly blunted) swipe at "brute force" content generation (millions of web pages generated with all the care and creativity of "harvesting potatoes") is a worthy windmill tilt. Unfortunately, Marcovici -- with his domain-name squatting and casual use of the IP of others (at Fontsy, but likely elsewhere as well) -- isn't the best medium for the message.

Filed Under: content, copyright, hoax, michael marcovici
Companies: qentis

New Social Networking Site (And Likely Hoax) Will Only Let You Enter If You're Drunk

from the (hic) dept

There has been no shortage of social networking ideas that have come and gone, some being useful, some being silly, and some being downright stupid. But Reddit user MFLUDER recently directed my attention to a new social network app that only lets you enter and participate -- if you're drunk. The LIVR social network and associated app website claims the idea will launch launch sometime this Spring (assuming my gut is wrong about it being a viral hoax). To join, you've got to plug a breathalyzer device into your phone, and if your blood alcohol content is high enough you're allowed to enter. What could possibly go wrong?

The website claims LIVR users get to use a number of features once they've drunkenly stumbled through the virtual door, including getting to play "crowd-sourced truth or dare," maps that will highlight the other drunk nerds in your immediate vicinity, and the ability to randomly drunk dial another LIVR user. The website also promises users a "blackout button" that will erase all of your incoherent and inappropriate tirades at the end of the evening or the next day, giving users what the founders claim is encouragement to just "go nuts" and "be their true self" without worrying that said true self might result in joblessness, divorce, or worse:

"What Happens on LIVR Stays on LIVR It's 4 AM. You've posted uncensored selfies. Flirted with Drunk Dial. Racked up Truth or Dare points. But you don't want your boss to see. Just hit the Blackout Button and all record of your night is permanently cleared. Relax. Be yourself. Your secret's safe with LIVR."

Right. Except the Internet generally doesn't work that way, and there's really no such thing as privacy online. The potential for abuse seems somewhat high for law enforcement, the NSA, stalkers, and in generally encouraging people to get the highest score when it comes to their BAC. Not that people don't generally do this stuff without the help of an app, but you have to imagine LIVR, if it's even actually real, is going to need some decent lawyers on retainer for the flood of lawsuits headed their way.

"I think some of our best ideas are found at the bottom of a glass," insists Brooklyn-based founders Kyle Addison and Avery Platz in a promotional video for their unlikely-sounding new endeavor:

LIVR App from LIVR on Vimeo.

Says the website:

"LIVR isn't just another tired social network. It's an online party at all times… guaranteed. No baby photos. No puppies. Mom isn't here. Just a global network of similarly buzzed people looking to have a good time."

Yes an endless virtual "party" where half of the people are incoherently arguing over who is the most drunk, and the other half are busy pretending they're drunk by using mouthwash to trick the BAC meter. Who would possibly get tired of that? I still think it's likely a hoax ("Avery Platz," for example, has a strangely-nonexistent digital footprint outside of the LIVR announcement for a Brooklyn developer that likes to drink and talk), but it's still a pretty damn good one.

Update: And, yep.

Filed Under: hoax, livr, social networking

DailyDirt: Fact-Checking Is Hard...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Journalism is a tough business, and it's not getting any easier. Reporters need to be more skeptical than ever (especially around April Fool's day) and keep an eye out for pranks or stories that sound too good to be true (or are obvious publicity stunts). Sometimes there's a fine line between what's newsworthy and what's simply entertaining, but here are a few stories that might have needed a more critical editor.

• Husband and wife team Gary di Silvestri and Angelica Morrone paid their way into the Sochi Olympics. The couple deposited some funds into a Dominica bank to get legitimate citizenship, and then they formed a ski team to represent the Caribbean island. The press covered their biographies just like any other Olympians (but maybe that shouldn't have happened). [url]
• Local news stations are always looking out for heart-warming human interest stories, but perhaps they should screen people who claim to be yo-yo masters a bit more rigorously. Andy Kaufman would be amused by this hoax. [url]
• Just about every morning news show does some kind of cooking segment, especially around the holidays when people are looking for recipe ideas for family gatherings. Unfortunately, the folks as WSAW-TV have pulled this video from Youtube, but you might still be able to find it to try the awful recipes. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: angelica morrone, chef, gary di silvestri, hoax, prank, publicity stunt, sochi olympics, yo-yo master

DailyDirt: Nothing To Fear, Maybe

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The urban legend about poisoned candy on Halloween has pushed parents away from handing out home-made treats -- even though the realistic odds of finding dangerous treats is vanishingly small. Still, there are some crazy people out there, so maybe it's better safe than sorry. Just know that getting hit by a car while crossing the street is a far more frequent occurrence on Halloween....

• Joel Best has been investigating Halloween Sadism reports since 1985, and while he can't prove a negative (ie. that no kids have ever been sadistically poisoned by Halloween candy), the evidence for any widespread Halloween threat to children is pretty thin. The last update for this study was done in 2010, and 1982 was a particularly bad year for poisoned candy scares. But since the mid-80s, there haven't been more than 2 reported incidents per Halloween -- and so far, follow-up investigations have only found evidence of hoaxes. [url]
• Timothy O'Bryan was actually killed by a cyanide-laced pixie stick in 1974. However, the murderer was the boy's own father who had taken out a $60,000 life insurance policy for his son and was later convicted and executed for killing him. [url]
• Last year, there was at least one report of a razor found in a Reese's peanut butter cup by a father in New Mexico. Chocolate and peanut butter are two great tastes that taste great together, but razors are not part of that recipe. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: candy, halloween, hoax, joel best, poisoning, razor, sadists

US Paid Millions For Bogus (Patented) Intelligence Software; Now Trying To Cover It Up Claiming 'National Security'

from the government-at-work dept

There are so many ridiculous aspects to a NY Times story from this weekend about a nearly decade-long relationship between the US government and what appears to be a con man who conned them out of tens of millions of dollars that it's hard to know where to start, so let's break it down in sections:

Conned
First off, the crux of the story is that a guy named Dennis Montgomery seems to have concocted an elaborate con on the US government that worked for years. He created some software, supposedly originally designed to help colorize movies, but it was later pitched for its capability to (I'm not joking) read coded messages in the "crawl bar" on Al Jazeera which (it was claimed) provided clues to planned terrorist attacks. Various US government agencies basically kept handing over millions and millions of dollars to Mr. Montgomery and partners. Some of those former partners now admit that Montgomery's technology was a hoax, and his presentations included doctored videos and test results.

Known, but still purchasing
Next up, there's the news that the CIA figured all of this out way back in 2003 and knew the software was useless, but the government was still paying millions of dollars in new contracts for it and using the software at least until 2009, when it was supposedly used to "detect" Somali terrorist plans during Obama's inauguration -- terrorist plans that later turned out not to exist at all.

And, it wasn't just the CIA that had figured this out. The NY Times report notes that the media -- including reports from both Bloomberg and (of all places) Playboy -- had previously called out "hints of fraud by Mr. Montgomery." Separately, a Pentagon report notes that the government had paid an astounding $285 billion in just three years to contractors accused of fraud or wrongdoing.

Feeling safer?

Relied on the info to make big decisions
What's really scary is how much the government seemed to rely on bogus info from this system that the CIA knew didn't work. In one case, it actually caused an international incident:

In December 2003, Mr. Montgomery reported alarming news: hidden in the crawl bars broadcast by Al Jazeera, someone had planted information about specific American-bound flights from Britain, France and Mexico that were hijacking targets.

C.I.A. officials rushed the information to Mr. Bush, who ordered those flights to be turned around or grounded before they could enter American airspace.

"The intelligence people were telling us this was real and credible, and we had to do something to act on it," recalled Asa Hutchinson, who oversaw federal aviation safety at the time. Senior administration officials even talked about shooting down planes identified as targets because they feared that supposed hijackers would use the planes to attack the United States, according to a former senior intelligence official who was at a meeting where the idea was discussed. The official later called the idea of firing on the planes "crazy."

The French then conducted a study, and also concluded that the technology Mr. Montgomery used was a total hoax, and told the Bush administration, leading them to claim "we got played," though it didn't stop the federal government from continuing to buy the technology for at least another five years.

Oh, also there were no actual repercussions to this massive international incident. The guy at the CIA who had been one of the main supporters of the technology, Donald Kerr, got promoted after this. Another CIA official noted that not only was no one blamed for this massive misstep, but "they acted like it never happened."

FBI's improper search
In 2006, the FBI began investigating things, after Mr. Montgomery and his then business partner had a dispute and split up. There were claims that Montgomery had illegally copied data from the company when he left, and it was during this investigation that employees apparently told the FBI that "Montgomery had manipulated tests in demonstrations with military officials to make it appear that his video recognition software had worked." So, once again, the government discovered the hoax... but, the whole investigation was dropped after a court determined that the FBI screwed up by conducting "an improper search" of Montgomery's home. So the technology lived on, and was still being purchased and used by government agencies.

Patenting software that doesn't work
Oh yeah, did we mention that Montgomery "patented" this apparent hoax of a technology? The NY Times mentions this in passing. In doing a quick search, I've turned up a bunch of different patents from Montgomery and others who worked with him.

Nice to see that you can patent fraudulent systems, huh?

Cover up
Oh yeah, the biggest point in all of this is that the Federal government is working over time to cover this entire story up. It still hasn't admitted to any of this. It hasn't taken Montgomery to court at all (he's facing other legal problems related to passing bad checks at casinos). However, the Justice Department is apparently working overtime to keep this story totally secret:

The Justice Department, which in the last few months has gotten protective orders from two federal judges keeping details of the technology out of court, says it is guarding state secrets that would threaten national security if disclosed. But others involved in the case say that what the government is trying to avoid is public embarrassment over evidence that Mr. Montgomery bamboozled federal officials.

Once again, it appears the government is using secrecy and totally bogus claims of "national security" to hide embarrassing details, rather than for any legitimate reason. This is an unfortunate result of giving the government too much power to declare things as "secret" with little to no oversight. It clearly will abuse that power to hide mistakes, rather than admit them and maybe even learn from them. Instead, we allow a con artist to cost tax payers tens of millions of dollars, and then the government tries to brush it all under the rug.

And, yes, all of this really should make you wonder about all of those claims from politicians supporting the renewals on the Patriot Act and other such legislation, who claim that the government has protected us from multiple terrorist attack attempts. While I'm sure there have been some attempts, it does make you wonder how many such "thwarted" attempts included the ones that were apparently totally made up by Montgomery.

Filed Under: coverup, government, hoax