This Week In Techdirt History: We Finally Start Testing Responsive Design!

from the it's-about-time dept

Try out Techdirt's new responsive design on our beta site »

It hasn't escaped our notice that the design of Techdirt is a little... behind the times. There was a spate of high-profile redesigns a few years ago, with many blogs transitioning to a more "magazine"-esque style, and although they looked great, it wasn't always the most useful choice for readers — and that's part of why we didn't end up going along with the trend. We've heard from various readers over the years that they appreciate our adherence to a traditional blog format with a chronological list of posts, and the fact that we don't force the use of photos and imagery when they don't actually add anything to the content. We're also a very small and very busy team, so when we tinker with the site, we try to focus on adding streamlined features that are immediately useful, like the ability to expand posts on the front page instead of clicking through, or to hide all ads on Techdirt. We've also tweaked the appearance of the site in small ways from time to time, and in general we prefer this incremental approach over making a splash with a big redesign.

That being said, there's something very important that we've been neglecting for far too long: how Techdirt works on mobile devices. Our "lite" format is much too basic — a holdover from an earlier era of the mobile web — while our default site is extremely inconvenient on a small screen. And so today we're happy to announce that we're almost ready to launch a new responsive framework for Techdirt, enabling the default version of the site to perform well on devices of all shapes and sizes, and we'd like your help with the beta test. We built this framework ourselves using fairly basic responsive CSS, since so many pre-packaged solutions are overly complex and/or unnecessarily reliant on JavaScript.

Click this link to switch to Techdirt's beta site and try out our new responsive design! Your preference will be saved in a cookie, and you can go back to the regular version of the site at any time via your user preferences or the prominent "Exit Beta" link in the header of every page.

You'll notice a few small tweaks to the layout of our posts, but the main change is that every page should now respond nicely to any viewport size and organize itself to be easily readable and navigable. Please give it a try on your phones and tablets (or by resizing your browser window) and let us know how your experience goes. If you encounter any bugs, or have any general suggestions or comments, get in touch using our contact form or by reaching out to us on Twitter (or here in the comments!)

If all goes well, we hope to roll this change out to the site very soon, and we've got a few more adjustments (plus a general tidying-up of the visual design) in the pipeline.

Filed Under: design, web

With The Brexit In The Bag, 'Vote Leave' Starts Vanishing Away Its Promises And Faulty Math

from the nothing-is-ever-truly-removed-from-the-internet dept

In the aftermath of what is generally considered to be a Bad Idea, the forces behind the UK's exit from the European Union has pulled up stakes on its website and shut the whole thing down. The problem is that it looks more like an attempt to bury the past than to warmly greet the future it helped create, as Wired's Matt Kamen notes.

While this may simply be the campaign closing down in the wake of its victory, this removes all clear record of speeches, editorials, statistics, and information the Leave campaign used on the run up to the referendum on membership of the European Union on June 23.

The content is still there, but links to information have been removed and the landing page is nothing more than a static image. Visitors looking for promises that may be broken in the future (like rerouting of EU fees to the NHS) will have to know the page's URL in order to access it. Given comments made by those involved with the dubious promises and dubious math, the quasi-wipe of the site's content may not just be Vote Leave's idea of a victory lap.

Senior Leave politicians such as Iain Duncan Smith have, in the days since the referendum, denied the money was promised to the NHS, despite other figures in the campaign saying "the Government should use some of the billions saved from leaving the EU to give at least a £100 million per week cash transfusion to the NHS".

Vote Leave has yet to comment on its post-exit scrub, but others have noted that the internet (almost never) forgets. The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine has preserved Vote Leave's promises and other statements for posterity, ensuring that it won't be able to easily decouple itself from its assertions.

The movement spent plenty of its own money talking about all the money the UK was handing over to the EU, rather than spending on its own citizens. Tracing backwards from its still-live YouTube account, one can still access its £50 million giveaway -- supposedly the amount turned over every day to the EU. This number was referred to by the UK Statistics Authority as "potentially misleading," due to the fact that Vote Leave based it on gross contributions without factoring in rebates received from the EU or any flow of offsetting income resulting from trade agreements.

In addition, other claims made during the Brexit campaign -- mostly related to stemming the flow of immigrants into the UK and preventing Turkey and handful of other nations from joining the EU -- have proven to be just as false. The original narrative of cutting back the flow of immigrants to the UK by "tens of thousands" now appears to have been replaced with a more hesitant assertion that not a whole lot will change. As for concerns about Turkey joining the EU and bringing with it thousands of jihadists from neighboring nations, the best guess is that the nation's possible inclusion is still several years -- if not several decades off. (UK Prime Minister David Cameron suggested the year 3000 as a good estimate based on current progress. Turkey has been moving towards this since 1963 and hasn't budged the needle much over the past 50 years.)

If Vote Leave is truly trying to bury its misleading math and promises it can't keep, it made its first mistake by publishing them to the web where things tend to live forever.

Filed Under: brexit, internet never forgets, promises, streisand effect, vote leave, web

'Cocky' Defendant Gets A Web Redemption

from the video-solves-all dept

A few weeks ago, a young woman named Penelope Soto became an internet legend after she was caught on camera flipping a Florida judge the bird and telling him to go f**k himself during a court proceeding. Soto’s behavior earned her a 30-day stint in jail for contempt of court, but she apparently changed her ways at a later hearing and convinced the judge to vacate the month-long sentence.

But not all mouthy defendants are so lucky. Some of them do go to jail. Take, for example, the case of Brian Noval, a Florida man who in 2009 called a judge a c*ck — twice. Why do all of these things happen in Florida? Anyway, Noval’s antics were captured on film, and he earned himself 120 days in the pokey for his indiscretions. Noval only served four days of that sentence before the judge decided that this cocky defendant had learned his lesson.

As we all know, the internet is for porn, but it’s also for wonderful videos like these. And thanks to Daniel Tosh of Comedy Central’s Tosh.0, sometimes the stars of embarrassing viral videos are given the chance to redeem themselves on cable television. Ms. Soto hasn’t been given the opportunity to participate in one of these yet, but Noval was featured on the show last night.

For reasons that escape me, we never covered Noval’s incident in 2009, but now that he’s been brought back into the pop culture limelight, we’ve got some funny videos to entertain you with….

We’ll give you some info on the judge who heard Brian Noval’s case before you watch the video. Apparently Judge John Hurley of the Broward County Court presides over its first appearance division, and is known for his “spunk, one-liners and, on Fridays, bow ties.” To put it differently, this man is not to be f**ked with.

But Noval didn’t know that, so he called Judge Hurley a c*ck, like any man with common decency and respect for the judicial system would. And plus, it’s Florida — of course someone would think it’s acceptable to call a judge a c*ck in Florida. And without further ado, here’s the entertaining segment from Tosh.0:

Well, you don’t have to be wearing a seersucker suit to acknowledge that Daniel Tosh is correct when he says that “judges are basically parents for people who have sh*tty ones.” And we now know that Andrew Dice Clay could have a promising career ahead of himself as a criminal defense attorney. Because with a closing like, “Hickory dickory dock, my client has the right to call that judge a c*ck,” how can you possibly go wrong?

Broward judge sets high bar [Sun Sentinel]
Web Redemption – Courtroom C*ck Guy [Tosh.0]

More stories from Above The Law:

• Is Yahoo Serious?
• I Need A Contract Attorney: An ‘Ivy League’ Contract Attorney
• Avast Ye Maties! Kozinski Benchslap Ho!

Filed Under: brian noval, courtroom, insults, web

Turns Out That The iPad Won't Magically Bring Back Scarcity For Magazines

from the shocking,-i-know dept

Back in 2010, we suggested that the mad dash by various publications to build fee-based iPad apps was completely misguided, reminiscent of the belief in the 90s that publications could sell CD-ROM versions of their magazines. As we noted, there's nothing that special about the iPad format that takes away the natural abundance of the internet, and pretending that it was really any different than a portal to the wider internet with all its options was a fool's errand. In particular, we called out Rupert Murdoch's obsession with creating an iPad-only publication. In fact, we were confused why all the publishers investing so much in apps didn't put that same sort of effort into improving the features on their websites. A few months ago, the editor-in-chief and publisher of MIT's Tech Review more or less made the same point, saying that the future was on the web, betting on HTML 5 to make the site "look great on a laptop or desktop, tablet or smartphone" and then killing off the apps it had developed.

While others aren't going that far, there's more and more evidence that betting on apps was, in fact, the exact mistake that we predicted. Mathew Ingram summarizes how both The Huffington Post and Murdoch's The Daily have failed with their fee-based iPad app strategy. He makes the same basic point that a winner of our "most insightful comment" (by Robert Weller) made recently: that people get their news from lots of sources, so paying for a bunch of apps just doesn't make sense. In fact, it takes away from the value. As Ingram notes:

Whether media companies like it or not (and they mostly don’t), much of the news and other content we consume now comes via links shared through Twitter and Facebook and other networks, or through old-fashioned aggregators — such as Yahoo News or Google News — and newer ones like Flipboard and Zite and Prismatic that are tailored to mobile devices and a socially-driven news experience. Compared to that kind of model, a dedicated app from a magazine or a newspaper looks much less interesting, since by design it contains content from only a single outlet, and it usually doesn’t contain helpful things like links.

What he's basically saying is that the publishers focusing on apps are trying to create artificial scarcity by building digital silos. But that actually takes value away from those publications. People interact with the news in all sorts of ways that go way beyond "reading." But individual apps often make that more difficult. It involves extra effort (and cost) while providing less benefit. All because publishers are looking for something (anything!) that resembles some fencing so they can build a gate and go back to pretending they're in the gatekeeper business.

Hopefully publishers will finally stop looking to recreate the past by building artificial walls, and start looking at ways to make money that embrace the internet and what it enables.

Filed Under: apps, business models, economics, magazines, newspapers, scarcity, thedaily, web
Companies: aol, news corp.

The First Analysis Of The Web: Vague, But Exciting

from the true,-that dept

It's pretty common knowledge that Tim Berners-Lee is credited as the inventor of the World Wide Web, which we all know and love today. However, if you haven't ever done so, it's actually quite fun to read through his original proposal for the web, as a new way for managing information. Here's a snippet:

In providing a system for manipulating this sort of information, the hope would be to allow a pool of information to develop which could grow and evolve with the organisation and the projects it describes. For this to be possible, the method of storage must not place its own restraints on the information. This is why a "web" of notes with links (like references) between them is far more useful than a fixed hierarchical system. When describing a complex system, many people resort to diagrams with circles and arrows. Circles and arrows leave one free to describe the interrelationships between things in a way that tables, for example, do not. The system we need is like a diagram of circles and arrows, where circles and arrows can stand for anything.

We can call the circles nodes, and the arrows links. Suppose each node is like a small note, summary article, or comment. I'm not over concerned here with whether it has text or graphics or both. Ideally, it represents or describes one particular person or object

But perhaps even cooler, as pointed out to us by Mathew Ingram, is an image of the actual physical copy of the first version of this proposal that Berners-Lee gave his boss, Mike Sendall. At the top of the cover Sendall scribbled, "Vague, but exciting." Amusingly, one could argue that description still applies -- and, in fact, is part of the reason why the web has been so phenomenally successful. Its amazing openness may have been "vague" but it was also that vagueness and openness that not only made the web so exciting, but made it possible for the rest of the world to fill in details to make it do whatever people wanted.

Filed Under: history, tim berners-lee, web

German Government Wants Google To Pay To Show News Snippets

from the not-this-again dept

Some bad ideas just keep on coming back, despite the fact that they are manifestly stupid. Trying to get Google and others to pay for the privilege of sending more traffic to newspapers by including short snippets from their stories is one of them. Of course, logic would dictate that the newspapers should be paying Google for the marketing it provides, but unfortunately not everyone sees it that way.

Last year, the Belgian courts decided that Google was infringing on newspapers' copyrights just by linking to stories. Google was ordered to remove those links, at which point the newspapers started whining about "harsh retaliation" -- even though it was the court's decision, not Google's, and it was the newspapers' legal action that brought this about.

Sadly, the German government doesn't seem to have been paying attention to that rather ridiculous saga -- or maybe simply doesn't care -- and has just announced that it will bring in a compulsory licensing scheme for the use of even "small parts" of journalistic articles on commercial sites (original German).

The justification is that this will allow publishers to share in the financial benefit arising from this use, and for authors of the articles to receive an "appropriate" contribution, whatever that means. To do that, of course, will require the creation of yet more bureaucracy: a new collecting society (let's hope it doesn't turn out like the German music collection agency GEMA.)

What that overlooks, of course, is that Google, clearly the main target here, doesn't make any money from its Google News service, which is ad free. It would be nice to see Google simply remove all links, as happened in Belgium, and then wait for the German publishers to start complaining about this further example of "harsh retaliation". Sadly, that's unlikely to happen, since Google tends not to take a particularly aggressive stance on these issues (probably hoping to avoid further anti-trust complaints.)

Of course, the analysis above assumes that the still extremely vague proposal is simply a plan to skim some money off major Internet players like Google and to hand it to the German publishing industry so the latter doesn't need to worry about innovating. But given that the copyright industries' sense of entitlement knows no bounds, it's even possible that publishers want this scheme to apply to every quotation from their newspapers and magazines -- including those in blogs with any Google Ads, say, and Facebook posts. Now might be a good time for German Internet users to start raising the alarm, just in case.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Filed Under: copyright, germany, licensing, news, snippets, web
Companies: google

The Web Is Saved: East Texas Jury Says Eolas Patents Are Invalid

from the that-was-fast! dept

Okay, that happened much faster than I expected. Just a few hours ago, we wrote about Tim Berners-Lee telling an East Texas jury just how insane patent troll Eolas' patents were, along with their claims that all sorts of core web technologies were covered by their patents. We thought it might take some time before anything really happened in that case, but the jury took just a short while before completely invalidating Eolas' patents. Damn! Apparently the jury recognized that when the inventor of the web talks about how obvious a technology was at the time, he probably knows what he's talking about.

I wonder just how silly the long list of companies who "settled" with Eolas before the trial started feel right now.

Of course, all of that settlement money means that Eolas still has a big bank account. That means it'll appeal this ruling, and the case may still go on for a few years. But it's going to have to clear a big hurdle, and in the meantime it won't be able to sue anyone else using these patents. Score one for obviousness and a jury that recognized a patent troll trying to put up an innovation toll booth to try to demand loads of cash it didn't deserve.

Filed Under: embedding, hyperlinking, obviousness, patents, tim berners-lee, web
Companies: eolas, google, yahoo

Tim Berners-Lee In Court To Try To Prevent Patent Troll Eolas From Patenting Key Web Concepts

from the not-this-again dept

Remember Eolas? We've written about this infamous patent troll many times, mostly focusing on its big patent fight with Microsoft over the idea of browser plugins -- a case it eventually settled. In 2009, however, Eolas came back and basically sued the web, claiming that all sorts of very basic web technologies were, in fact, infringing on a brand new, ridiculously broad patent (built on the earlier patent), 7,599,985.

However, that case has finally gone to trial, and Wired has sent Joe Mullin -- hands down the best reporter on all things concerning patents -- to cover the case. His initial report is worth reading. Unfortunately, he notes that many of the companies Eolas sued chose to settle, helping to fund Eolas' ability to take this to court. Eight companies remain fighting. Eolas is asking for $600 million from these companies -- including over $300 million from Google and Yahoo.

As he had done nearly a decade ago, web inventor Tim Berners-Lee was called to explain to the court that Eolas' claims are ridiculous and the patents should be tossed out due to tremendous amounts of prior art. Berners-Lee also pointed out that these patents "could be a serious threat to the future of the web." He didn't mince words, noting that all of this stuff was widely known in the community of technologists working on these issues well before Eolas ever came along.

Last summer there was tremendous attention paid to the problem of patents within the tech space, but much of that furor died down after the patent reform bill became law -- even though it addressed almost none of the actual complaints about how the patent system hinders innovation. Once fall came, a lot of focus shifted back to copyright issues around SOPA. But people should be very, very worried about the outcome of this case, because if it goes badly, it could lead to a massive tollbooth on internet innovation.

Filed Under: embedding, hyperlinking, obviousness, patents, tim berners-lee, web
Companies: eolas, google, yahoo

No, WIPO Boss Did Not Say The Web Would Have Been Better If Patented... But His Comment Was Still Nonsensical

from the setting-the-record-straight dept

A whole bunch of you have been submitting this BoingBoing post which claims that WIPO director Francis Gurry claimed that the World Wide Web would have been better off if it had been patented. That was an interesting claim based on two things. First, a couple months ago, we had put forth a hypothetical about what would the web look like, if Tim Berners-Lee had patented it. Second, WIPO boss Francis Gurry has shown in the past to be much more thoughtful and realistic when it comes to intellectual property -- so the arguments seemed a bit out of character from what I'd heard from him before.

So I listened to the session, which you can find as the top righthand video on this page. Gurry's comments are a little silly, but he does not say that the web would have been better off if it were patented. Instead, he's responding to the point raised earlier in the session about the importance of investment in basic research, and noted that CERN -- where the web was first developed -- might have been able to invest more in basic research if it had been able to receive a small bit of revenue from patenting the web. In that context, his comments make slightly more sense:

Intellectual property is a very flexible instrument. So, for example, had the world wide web been able to be patented, and I think that is a question in itself, perhaps the amount of investment that has gone into or would be able to go into basic science would be different. If you had found a very flexible licensing model, in which the burden for the innovation of the world wide web had been shared across the whole user community in a very fair and reasonable manner, with a modest contribution for everyone for this wonderful innovation, it would have enabled enormous investment in turn in further basic research. And that is the sort of flexibility that is built into the intellectual property system. It is not a rigid system...

He certainly is not arguing that the web would have been better off -- just that it's possible that CERN and its investments in basic research would have been better off. Of course, there is a counter argument to that -- which is that if it had locked up the web in such a manner, the web that Berners-Lee created would not be "the web." It's doubtful that Marc Andreessen would have paid a license fee, no matter how "reasonable," to build the first "successful" web browser, Mosaic. It's likely that something else would have come along instead -- perhaps similar, but not the same.

Separately, I'd argue that, in an indirect manner, it's quite likely that the widespread success of the internet and the openness that it embraced has contributed significantly more back to the ability to do basic research than if CERN had been able to collect a few dollars for the invention. What the web did do was certainly raise CERN's profile even higher around the globe, and that likely opened up new opportunities for research and funding, among other things. Gurry's mistake, here, is in assuming that the necessary ingredient for increased basic research is merely money -- and also only money that comes directly in return for a concept. That's not true. As the rest of the panel he sat on discussed, the key ingredients of innovation tend to be openness, sharing and access to information. All of those contribute back to lots of different areas, including basic research. So I doubt his conclusion is accurate, but it's unfair to accuse him of saying something he simply did not say.

Filed Under: basic research, francis gurry, patents, web, wipo