Company Promises 'Seamless Parking Experience' In Exchange For The Permission To Track App Users All Over The Internet

from the pervasive-tracking?-yeah,-there's-an-app-for-that dept

Paying for parking should be simple. A driver exchanges money for space and time. End of discussion.

But it's never going to be that simple again. Not if tech companies like Metropolis Technologies can help it. Instead of paying for parking, drivers will be expected to allow the company to trail it all over the internet, across devices, and package up all this information and sell it to third parties.

You shouldn't need an app to park a car. Metropolis believes you do. And that's causing some friction in Southern California, where cars are everywhere and parking is limited. A dust up between Trader Joe's customers and a nearby lot began with a shopper being accosted by a lot attendant and ended with the retailer making it very clear it had no desire to make its customers download an app just to park their cars.

Colin Shanahan discovered this during a recent visit to the Trader Joe’s grocery store in Hollywood.

After parking his car in the garage — seldom an easy task, as any SoCal TJ’s customer will attest — he was instructed by an attendant to download an app to his phone, register for service and use that for payment.

“Not wanting to give some random app a ton of personal information, I declined,” the Hollywood resident told me.

The parking-lot attendant, he said, “let me off with a warning that I wouldn’t be so lucky next time.”

The response from Trader Joe's?

“This isn’t a TJ’s thing,” said Tara Miller, a Trader Joe’s spokesperson. “It’s being implemented by the landlord. We are a tenant in the building and are bound by the same parking validation system as other tenants.”

No, it's a Metropolis thing. The Venice, California company was formed in 2017 and offers the promise/threat of "parking reimagined" on its bright, shiny website.

The reimagination begins with the requirement of an app to park cars in lots "serviced" by Metropolis. The demands it makes from users (again, just in exchange for the dubious privilege of paying for parking along with additional "convenience" fees) starts with some expected info: name, phone number, credit card. These are all things that are expected from services requiring payment -- both to obtain the payments and to verify the legitimacy of linked accounts.

Then the list continues: email address, make, model and year of vehicle, license plate number. Again, these might be useful for validating parking and preventing fraud. But they're not strictly necessary. Metropolis believes this information is key and demands it.

The list of demands gets much longer once you install the app.

Metropolis says it may also collect your internet protocol address, which identifies your specific device on information networks, as well as your wireless service provider, browser, operating system and type of phone.

It reserves the right to monitor “pages that you visit before, during and after” using the company’s online parking validation, as well as “information about the links you click” and “information about the services you use.”

[...]

“Your browsing activity may be tracked across different websites and different devices or apps,” the policy says. “For example, we may attempt to match your browsing activity on your mobile device with your browsing activity on your laptop.

All of this to facilitate paying for parking. Obviously, Metropolis doesn't make its money from the "convenience" skim it collects from every transaction. This is where the real money is: pervasive tracking of a person's internet use and other habits across devices… all starting with an app that's just supposed to allow you to pay for temporary use of a parking space.

And it won't just be Metropolis tracking you. The app's 4,000-word terms of service policy also says third parties will be permitted to tag along like digital remora, helping themselves to whatever data comes floating downstream from the parking app produced by Metropolis. That information is also used to by these third parties to track users' activities across apps and devices specifically for the purpose of delivering targeted advertising.

David Lazarus, who wrote this up for the Los Angeles Times, was only able to get more corporatespeak when he asked for an explanation for what all of this has to do with parking.

[T]he spokesperson said the company “collects essential information to facilitate a seamless parking experience.”

The only thing seamless here is Metropolis' collection of information, almost all of which is not "essential" to a "seamless parking experience." (And what the hell is a "parking experience?" Your car does most of the "experiencing" and it's inanimate.)

But Metropolis will make inroads despite its illogical, privacy-invading take on parking because people have been trained to assume there's an app for everything, and anything that keeps them from having to open a wallet or purse is probably a net gain in the long run. There will be the doubters and pockets of resistance, but those on the fence who question the need for a parking app will be smacked in the eyes with a 4,000-word terms of use policy that most won't bother reading.

Most people aren't wrong to want or expect frictionless transactions. What's wrong is companies like Metropolis remove the friction in exchange for tons of information most people wouldn't willingly agree to hand over if the companies were upfront about what information they were gathering and what they planned to do with it. Pretending a densely worded novella-length privacy policy is the same thing as transparency is pure bullshit.

Filed Under: data, parking, privacy, tracking
Companies: metropolis technologies

Sixth Circuit Reaffirms It's A Fourth Amendment Violation To Chalk Car Tires For Parking Enforcement Purposes

from the folks,-this-is-why-they-play-the-games dept

Two years ago, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals surprised the city of Saginaw, Michigan by finding the process of marking car tires with chalk for parking enforcement violated the Fourth Amendment. The city certainly didn't expect multiple ticketholder Alison Taylor's lawsuit to make it this far. And it certainly didn't expect the Appeals Court to reverse the district court's decision that no Fourth Amendment violation had taken place.

Contrary to expectations, the Appeals Court ruled in 2019 that chalking tires certainly appeared to violate the Fourth Amendment. And the city was unable to successfully argue otherwise. Relying on the Supreme Court's Jones decision, the Appeals Court said the city unreasonably "trespassed" on the private property of residents (that being their cars) to apply the chalk mark -- property still protected by the Fourth Amendment against unreasonable searches despite being parked on public streets.

The argument that this temporary intrusion was excused by the community caretaking function of law enforcement also failed. The court pointed out engaging in revenue-generating enforcement efforts did nothing to take care of the community and the initial trespass occurred when vehicles were still parked legally, giving the government no reasonable suspicion to engage in this intrusion.

That wasn't necessarily a win for Alison Taylor, who decided to sue after she'd amassed fifteen parking tickets. It went back down to the lower court for some fact-finding, giving the city another chance to raise arguments that might allow it to continue utilizing this parking enforcement method.

Well, the case has returned to Sixth Circuit Appeals Court, and the court's conclusions haven't changed. The city raised a new argument during the case's return to the lower level and the Appeals Court [PDF] doesn't like this one either.

This time around, the city argues chalking is actually an administrative search -- yet another warrant exception the government has at its disposal. But if it's an administrative search (as the city argues), it's still an unreasonable search because it eliminates one crucial aspect of these searches: the opportunity for the search target to ascertain compliance with the law before being subjected to this warrantless search.

Generally, when a search is conducted for an administrative purpose and pursuant to a regulatory scheme—such as inspecting a home for compliance with a municipal housing code— the government may justify a warrantless search by showing that it met “reasonable legislative or administrative standards.” This is assessed by “balancing the need to search against the invasion which the search entails.” But it is not a free-for-all for civil officers; among other requirements, “the subject of the search must be afforded an opportunity to obtain precompliance review before a neutral decisionmaker.” This prerequisite removes the City’s practice from the usual administrative-search case, see id.; Liberty Coins LLC, 880 F.3d at 281–82, as there is no such opportunity (which the City does not contest).

Having failed with this definition, the government proposes another: parking on public streets is a "closely-regulated industry" that gives city employees the authority to perform warrantless searches. This argument is even worse, says the Sixth Circuit.

[U]nlike the closely regulated industries of liquor sales, firearm dealing, mining, or automobile junkyards identified by the Supreme Court, municipal parking plainly does not “pose[] a clear and significant risk to the public welfare.” That automobiles are regulated and involved in parking is inconsequential because the exception applies to industries, not objects. So, for example, a state’s statutory scheme authorizing a warrantless inspection of an automobile junkyard resulting in the search of a Ford Mustang may be permissible, but it does not apply to the search of the same convertible parked on a city street.

The city also tried to compare this form of parking enforcement with border crossings and DUI checkpoints -- places where Fourth Amendment rights are presumed to be waived, if not ignored completely, to allow the government to serve its "special needs" (border security, public safety). Even the city seems to have a hard time buying its own argument.

We see no special need here, which defendants concede by admitting that “Ms. Hoskins’s job was not impacted in any respect if she did not chalk tires.” And common-sense commands this conclusion; for nearly as long as automobiles have parked along city streets, municipalities have found ways to enforce parking regulations without implicating the Fourth Amendment. Thus, tire chalking is not necessary to meet the ordinary needs of law enforcement, let alone the extraordinary.

However, the court does allow the parking enforcement officer (the "Ms. Hoskins" mentioned above) qualified immunity for the warrantless trespasses on Alison Taylor's property. Unsurprisingly, the Appeals Court says the officer could not have possibly gathered from almost nonexistent precedent that this was a rights violation. In fact, the only precedent the Appeals Court can find is the Jones decision, which concerns a GPS device and impermissible trespass onto a person's property. That case also involved law enforcement and a parked car, but it's completely understandable that a parking enforcement officer wouldn't equate this decision with the heretofore unchallenged practice of chalking tires.

So, the city will have to find another way to engage in parking enforcement. This may mean the installation of plate readers and surveillance cameras. Or there might be a simpler solution -- one that cities have used for years with few problems or constitutional violations. The court even includes a link in its decision to inform the city of its options.

See, e.g., Amanda Erickson, A Brief History of the Parking Meter, Bloomberg CityLab (April 3, 2012), available at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-04-03/a-brief-history-of-the-parking-meter (last visited Aug. 9, 2021).

Like the last one, this decision is published, which means it's precedent. So, if chalking is in use elsewhere in the circuit (and it almost definitely is), it's a constitutional violation. But, given the fact it's unlikely many drivers will challenge being chalked, it's probably a pretty safe way for city governments to violate rights en masse.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, 6th circuit, chalk tires, parking, parking enforcement

Appeals Court: Chalking Tires For Parking Enforcement Violates The Fourth Amendment

from the extra-4th-with-bonus-pun-topping dept

A rather surprising conclusion has been reached by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals: a common parking enforcement tool of the trade may be unconstitutional.

Not everyone who's been ticketed multiple times for parking violations has made a federal case of it. Alison Taylor did, though, arguing that Saginaw, Michigan's practice of "chalking" tires was a violation of her Fourth Amendment rights. Taylor had been ticketed fifteen times when she decided to sue. The court sides with her, finding that marking tires to determine whether a vehicle has been parked too long constitutes not just a search, but an unreasonable one, under the Fourth Amendment.

The Appeals Court opinion [PDF] leads off with an almost unforgivable pun:

Parking enforcement officers return to the car after the posted time for parking has passed, and if the chalk marks are still there—a sign that the vehicle has not moved—the officer issues a citation. Alison Taylor, a frequent recipient of parking tickets, sued the City and its parking enforcement officer Tabitha Hoskins, alleging that chalking violated her Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable search. The City moved to dismiss the action. The district court granted the City’s motion, finding that, while chalking may have constituted a search under the Fourth Amendment, the search was reasonable. Because we chalk this practice up to a regulatory exercise, rather than a community-caretaking function, we REVERSE.

The route the court takes to reach this conclusion is circuitous and somewhat amusing, especially if one imagines Saginaw city reps watching with increasing dismay as their "easy win" assumptions are dismantled paragraph by paragraph.

The Appeals Court references the Supreme Court's Jones decision to arrive at its determination that chalking tires = search. In that decision, the Supreme Court punted on the issue of tracking devices as searches, opting instead to find the warrantless placement of the device on someone's car as an intrusion in and of itself, a "trespass" onto someone's private property -- in this case, a car.

In recent years, however, the Supreme Court revisited the seldom used “property-based” approach to the Fourth Amendment search inquiry in United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400 (2012). Under Jones, when governmental invasions are accompanied by physical intrusions, a search occurs when the government: (1) trespasses upon a constitutionally protected area, (2) to obtain information. Id. at 404–405.

The car may be parked on a public street when chalking occurs, but the placement of chalk on the private property of a citizen is a "trespass" with the intent of gathering information (how long the car has been parked in a certain spot).

[O]nce we determine the government has trespassed upon a constitutionally protected area, we must then determine whether the trespass was “conjoined with . . . an attempt to find something or to obtain information.” Id. at 408 n.5. Here, it was. Neither party disputes that the City uses the chalk marks for the purpose of identifying vehicles that have been parked in the same location for a certain period of time. That information is then used by the City to issue citations. As the district court aptly noted, “[d]espite the low-tech nature of the investigative technique . . . , the chalk marks clearly provided information to Hoskins.” This practice amounts to an attempt to obtain information under Jones.

That's not the end of the analysis. Warrantless searches are permitted if the search is reasonable. The city claimed the chalking/search was reasonable because of a reduced expectation of privacy when parked on a public street. Alternatively, it argued the search was reasonable under the community caretaking exception.

The reduced expectation of privacy exception argument fails because a car legally parked on a public street -- absent any other indicators of criminal activity -- cannot generate the probable cause needed to justify a warrantless chalking. At the point the tire is marked, no law has been broken, nor is there any justifiable suspicion the driver intends to violate the law by parking for longer than is allowed.

As for the community caretaking function, the Appeals Court finds this argument just as weak. The caretaking function is not supposed to be investigatory or carried out with the intent of collecting evidence. Marking a tire gives the government information it can use later to issue parking tickets. This does nothing to make the community safer.

The City fails to carry its burden of establishing that the community caretaker exception applies in this instance. First, on these facts, the City fails to demonstrate how this search bears a relation to public safety. The City does not show that the location or length of time that Taylor’s vehicle was parked created the type of “hazard” or traffic impediment amounting to a public safety concern. Nor does the City demonstrate that delaying a search would result in “injury or ongoing harm to the community.” Washington, 573 F.3d at 289. To the contrary, at the time of the search, Taylor’s vehicle was lawfully parked in a proper parking location, imposing no safety risk whatsoever. Because the purpose of chalking is to raise revenue, and not to mitigate public hazard, the City was not acting in its “role as [a] community caretaker[.]”

The finding is narrow, but it's enough to steer the city of Saginaw to other methods of parking enforcement -- which unfortunately could see an increase in the use of automated license plate readers or surveillance cameras to accomplish the same ends.

The City does not demonstrate, in law or logic, that the need to deter drivers from exceeding the time permitted for parking—before they have even done so—is sufficient to justify a warrantless search under the community caretaker rationale. This is not to say that this exception can never apply to the warrantless search of a lawfully parked vehicle. Nor does our holding suggest that no other exceptions to the warrant requirement might apply in this case. However, on these facts and on the arguments the City proffers, the City fails to meet its burden in establishing an exception to the warrant requirement.

This doesn't mean the government won't ultimately secure a win for tire chalking. What it does mean is the case heads back down a level for more exploration of the issue. This is a ruling on an appealed motion to dismiss by the city. All this means for Alison Taylor is her case isn't dead yet. But if this holds up, a lot of cities using similar enforcement methods are going to have to try a different approach. Unfortunately for those in the Sixth Circuit's jurisdiction, this may mean more reliance on ALPRs and other tech that has its own unanswered privacy-related questions.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, 6th circuit, chalking tires, parking, parking enforcement

Resetting The Balance To Save Copyright (Part III)

from the alternate-side-of-the-street dept

Summary of Parts One and Two: The essential balance of copyright between incentives for creators and the feeding of a rich and unlicensed public domain has been undone by a long series of misguided efforts to save copyright by making its rules both stronger and less enforceable at the same time. The industry’s tactics have backfired, eroding what was left of any moral authority for obeying the law. And that was the chief (and most efficient) mechanism for enforcement all along.

The repeated and retroactive extension of copyright terms, largely at the behest of the Disney Corporation, has had the unintended consequence of creating a nation of felons, both technically and in spirit. According to one provocative study by John Tehranian, we all violate copyright unintentionally many times a day. And to the extent we realize it, we don't care.

To return to the parking analogy, the result of these legal changes has been to paint every curb a red zone—it's now illegal to park anywhere. The result is not perfect enforcement of copyright but its opposite. No one obeys the law or thinks they ought to. Getting caught is more or less a random event, and rational consumers won't change their behavior to avoid it.

The center will not hold. Large media holding companies are becoming desperate, expending their resources not to find new ways of making money but to secure passage of increasingly draconian laws (SOPA) and treaties (ACTA) that give them more, largely unusable new powers. Even if passed, these legal tools will do little to improve legal enforcement. But they are certain to cause dangerous and unintended new harms.

At the same time, the marketing machines of these same companies have convinced us that our right to enjoy content is inherent—the American Way. Once offered, we imagine free content should always be free, even if the rightsholder changes its mind or intended all along to attach conditions to consumption based on time or place or the ability to associate mechanisms, such as advertising, that allowed for indirect revenue generation.

Americans don't understand that subtlety, and rightsholders have given them no reason to try. Public education efforts have been pathetic. Instead of teaching consumers the costs and dangers to the delicately-balanced system from copyright infringement, they emphasize moral and legal prohibitions that are rightly perceived by consumers as petulant, cynical, and amusingly out-of-touch.

These campaigns, for starters, say nothing about the economics of content production and distribution. They are morality tales, narrated by fabulists who pride themselves, in their day jobs, on their mastery of manipulation and misdirection. It's as if Darth Vader sat down with preschoolers to talk about why they shouldn't throw stones at the Death Star because of the potential for property damage.

Consider just a few examples below: YouTube's mandatory copyright "school" for violators and the classic 1992 "Don't Copy that Floppy:"


Clearly, not much has changed over the last twenty years in efforts to change public perceptions and behaviors. The Hollywood that can produce blockbuster movies somehow can't make a PSA that isn't a self-parody.

I think the public can be educated, and should be. Here's where I part company with those who reject copyright altogether. The theory of copyright—limited monopoly in exchange for a rich public domain—is still a good one, and the system created by the English, adapted by early Congresses, had the virtue of being largely self-enforcing and therefore efficient.

It is the 20th and 21st century imbalance in copyright, and not copyright itself, that must be fixed. And it can be fixed. There is a way out of this dangerous and increasingly tense cold war between content industries and their customers. Here's a simple three-step solution:

1. If rightsholders want consumers to obey the law and support their preferred business model, they first need to stop making it impossible for consumers to follow the rules. Copyright needs to be weakened, not strengthened.
2. Content industries need to end the stalling and excuses—perhaps understandable in 1998, when I first wrote about digital distribution in "Unleashing the Killer App," but not now, nearly fifteen years later. They need to embrace digital media and new channels fully, even if doing so means tolerating a considerable amount of unauthorized distribution and reuse as working models for profit-generation rapidly evolve.
3. Public education needs to focus not on self-righteous indignation but on collaborating with consumers on finding ways to compensate creators for the value of their work. If consumers understood the economics of content creation and distribution, and given an easy way to cooperate, they'd do it.

Ironically, there's every reason to believe that embracing a relaxed copyright regime and encouraging creative reuse would actually generate more revenue for creators. That, in any case, has been the lesson of every form of new media to be invented in the last hundred years or more.

Each of them was initially resisted and branded as illegal and immoral. Each of them—from the player piano to the photocopier to the VCR to the Internet—has instead offered salvation and riches to those who figure out the new rules for working with them and not against them. (Hint: network effects rule.) Rightsholders consistently confuse each fading media technology with the true value of the content they control. The medium is not the message.

For now, industry apologists—the MPAA, the RIAA, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and others—are caught in a dangerous cycle of denial and anger. A growing number of consumers refuse to follow the current rules. So they lobby to make the rules stronger and the penalties more severe, amping up the moral rhetoric along the way.

But this only serves to starve the public domain more, undermining the basic principles of copyright. With the system increasingly out of balance, self-enforcement becomes even less likely. The law is impossible to obey, and rarely enforced. So consumers make up their own rules, for better or worse, with expensive and unnecessary casualties piling up on both sides.

Eventually, consumers and creators find the right balance and the most effective forms of compensation, regardless of the industry's efforts to cut off their nose to spite their face.

Then along comes another disruptive technology and a new round of customer innovation, and the cycle starts all over.

Rights holders remain stubbornly parked in the same old spots, afraid that if they move their vehicles at all they'll be doomed to circling the block forever, unable to stop until they permanently run out of gas.

The rest of us, meanwhile, are happily enjoying our flying cars.

Filed Under: acta, advertising, hollywood, john tehranian, parking, sopa
Companies: disney, mpaa, riaa, youtube

DailyDirt: Standing In The Alpha-Beta Parking Lot....

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

City planning in the future might have to take into account some technologies that sound like science fiction from the 1960s. Probably no flying cars, but there could be autonomous vehicles and less sprawl. Owning a car might not even be practical. In any case, parking lots will likely be long gone, and here are just a few links on some interesting parking situations.

• What goes well with a liveried chauffeur? Perhaps a parking spot that costs a million bucks. The first parking spot in NYC listed for $1 million is in a private garage at 66 E. 11th St. [url]
• One of the first automated parking garages opened in NYC in 2002 -- and it dropped a few cars before working out its bugs. But now, car owners don't have to worry about parking attendants (like Richard Edson) taking cars out for joyrides... [url]
• When cars can drive themselves, they'll just drop us off, circle the block and/or park themselves somewhere (hopefully in a good neighborhood). They could also meet up with their other robot-car friends at the automated parking garage and waste time chatting about power converters.... [url]
• To find some more bizarre/crazy stuff, check out some things that other StumbleUpon users have found. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can also recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: autonomous, cars, city planning, garages, nyc, parking

How Copyright Extension Undermined Copyright: The Copyright Of Parking (Part I)

from the parallel-parking dept

What do copyright and parking laws have in common?

The short answer: no one takes either very seriously.

According to a recent article in L.A. Magazine, only 10% of parking citations ever get written. Which is to say that 90% of the times that people park illegally, there are no consequences. Those who violate the increasingly strict parking rules in most U.S. cities are more likely to associate a ticket with bad luck or personal hostility against them than with the fact that they broke the law.

In other words, when you get a ticket, you don't feel guilty. You feel victimized. As John Van Horn, the editor of Parking Today, explains, low levels of enforcement undermine the deterrent intent of parking laws. "We break the law often and get away with it. Deep down inside we know that. What makes us mad is getting caught the few times we do. 'Ninety percent of drivers on this street got away scot-free today, but I get the ticket?' That makes us crazy."

Part of what drives us to rage at getting a ticket is that we don't actually believe parking should be illegal in the first place. The freedom to park wherever there's space is deeply ingrained in the American psyche if not the law. The invention of the parking meter in the late 1930's was greeted with near-riots across the country. Editorials railed against the new devices as "illegal," "immoral" and a "perversion." The Alabama state Supreme Court declared meters unconstitutional in 1937, and ordered them removed from Birmingham streets.

"I truly believe that when men and women think about parking, their mental capacity reverts to the reptilian cortex of the brain," says UCLA's Donald Shoup, perhaps the nation's only academic devoted to the study of parking.

A law that is rarely enforced—indeed, which is not cost-effective to enforce except sporadically—is no law at all. Which brings us to copyright.

Overprotective and largely unenforced rules, combined with a deep-rooted sense of entitlement, create an explosive combination. The problem is the same with parking and copyright. As copyright law becomes more strict, and its penalties more byzantine, Americans are less likely to make the effort to follow the rules, or to believe that new forms of technology-enabled copying are immoral in the first place.

We refuse to see our behavior as illegal, even when we know it is. Recent surveys by the Pew Research Center, for example, report that 72 percent of Americans between ages 18 and 29 "do not care whether the music they download onto their computers is copyrighted or not." Rightly or wrongly (if those terms even mean anything anymore in this context), the added penalties, extensions, and limits on copying, along with decreasing rates of successful enforcement, are making it less, not more, likely that Americans will obey the rules.

We are collectively living in a state of cognitive dissonance, uncomfortably embracing two conflicting beliefs at the same time. Copying is illegal. Copying is not wrong.

Where did we get the idea of a right to free content? In large part, from the content producers themselves. An older generation grew up with music, movies and television programs beamed directly to their televisions and transistor radios at no charge. Those consumers can't understand why saving content onto some medium and enjoying it again or later should suddenly transform a strongly-encouraged behavior into a felony.

A younger generation, raised on cheap Internet access, was likewise encouraged to enjoy all manner of copyrighted materials freely and frequently by content providers who wisely chose to rely, as their predecessors did, on advertising and other indirect revenue to pay their costs and generate profits. That's the message of newspapers, magazines, and broadcast networks who offer some or even all of their content without a paywall. And the movie industry teases consumers mercilessly with trailers, interviews, and production blogs that show just enough of upcoming movies to make us feel entitled to see the rest, one way or the other, the sooner the better.

Yet when fans enthusiastically encourage others to embrace their preferences by posting clips or copies of popular content to YouTube or by ripping CDs and DVDs to repeat their enjoyment on other devices, they instantly cross the legal line from well-trained consumers to dangerous criminals—even terrorists.

Copyright may be the law, in other words, but it no longer holds any moral authority with most consumers. There's no longer an ethical imperative to obey it or even understand it. Self-enforcement is fading, and the rules are so severe and so frequently violated that effective legal enforcement has become nearly impossible.

It's a meter, and we all know that the meter is rarely checked. Copyright is a law in name only—as obsolete and irrelevant as rules still on the books in some jurisdictions that regulate who can or must wear what kind of clothing.

Next: How making the law stronger makes the law weaker »

Filed Under: copyright extension, enforcement, free content, parking

DailyDirt: Who Drives Best -- Men, Women... Or Robots?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

If you believe in gender stereotypes, then you probably think that men are better drivers than women. However, auto insurance companies are inclined to believe that women are actually safer drivers. It's a hotly debated topic, but it's safe to say that there are lots of bad drivers -- both men and women -- on the road. That's why we need robot cars. Here are a few links to some driving-related studies.

• A New York City traffic study found that male drivers were responsible for 80% of car accidents in which pedestrians were severely injured or killed. Blame it on testosterone, which increases aggression and risk-taking. [url]
• A University of Michigan analysis of 6.5 million car accidents in the U.S. between 1998-2007 found that female drivers were responsible for 68.1% of all crashes. Apparently, women have trouble navigating intersections, as they were most often hit on the driver's or passenger side while trying to turn left or right. [url]
• A more recent UK study showed that women are actually better at parking than men, dispelling the myth that men have better spatial awareness than women. According to the professional driving instructor who created the study, men learn and perform better during driving lessons, but it's possible that women retain what they learn better than men. [url]
• Let the car park itself. Many automakers, including Ford, Toyota, and BMW, are offering self-parking systems in their vehicles now. While they can guide cars into parking spaces with minimal driver involvement, they aren't always reliable. [url]
• To discover more interesting car-related content, check out what's driving around StumbleUpon. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: accidents, autonomous vehicles, cars, drivers, gender stereotypes, parking, robots
Companies: bmw, ford, toyota

Man Creates Useful City Parking iPhone App... And City Doesn't Get Upset

from the yes,-dog-bites-man dept

It's really tragic that this even seems like it's worth a post at all, but we've seen so many ridiculous stories of people creating cool and useful apps for their cities or universities -- only to have officials freak out that outsiders are somehow violating intellectual property laws, and only official city/university apps should be allowed. So, when we heard about a guy in Elgin, Illinois who created a simple iPhone app to help people avoid parking tickets, it just felt likely that city officials would be upset about it. But... instead, they actually seem happy about it:

He just start selling his Elgin Parking iPhone application last week, but already city officials are commending him. For a download price of $1.99, it helps people comply with the city's odd/even parking law.

Hopefully, this means that common sense is making a bit of a comeback. I half expected officials to either be upset that he was "making money" by selling an app that helped people avoid parking tickets, or be upset that, with fewer parking tickets to give out, they'd have less revenue -- but it's great to see the city endorsing this sort of thing, where a citizen is free to help make life better for others in the city. And... since people sometimes complain that too many of the stories on Techdirt are negative, it seemed worth a post to give kudos to Elgin for not doing the stupid things that many other cities have done. In this day and age, that's progress.

Filed Under: elgin, iphone apps, parking

Will Smart Parking Make Circling The Block A Thing Of The Past?

from the wouldn't-that-be-nice dept

There was a fascinating article in the NY Times this past weekend about how the city of San Francisco is embracing "smart parking" technology -- basically installing special sensors on the ground in 6,000 of its 24,000 metered parking spots. The idea is that the sensors will report (from one to the next and then onto a central computing system) where there are actually spots available -- and people will be able to discover where to go via electronic street signs indicating open spots or even via their mobile phones. It should make for an interesting experiment at the least. Beyond the hassle of just finding an open spot, the article notes that in some places a significant component of street traffic can be attributed to people just trying to find a parking space. Of course, if there's still too many people looking for spots, it's unlikely that these sensors will alert people in enough time. By the time they find the open spot, they're likely to find someone else already beat them to it. Still, this does seem like a step in the right direction in terms of using information to better deal with at least some traffic congestion problems.

Filed Under: parking, san francisco, smart dust, smart parking