Woman Sues Mobile Phone Provider, Because Consolidated Bill 'Revealed' Her Affair
from the first-world-problems dept
Ah, modern technology. Michael Geist points us to the story of a woman in Canada who is suing her mobile phone provider, Rogers, for supposedly "revealing" the fact that she was having an affair. Basically, she had a mobile phone account with Rogers under her maiden name, which she used to have long chats with someone she was having an affair with. Her husband had set up the family's cable TV service, also from Rogers. At one point, he called Rogers to add internet and home phone service to the account, and Rogers then mailed a "global" bill that included all accounts. In looking over the bill, the husband noticed the long phone calls all to one number, and called it, and got the guy to admit to the affair. Following that, he left the wife.Now the woman, whose husband walked out, is suing the communications giant for $600,000 for alleged invasion of privacy and breach of contract, the results of which she says have ruined her life.I don't know, but I'd have to say that, perhaps, having the affair was the key problem here, rather than the bill. Hell, the husband could have just as easily opened the original mobile phone bill which was sent to the same house. It doesn't say so, but it seems likely that when the guy called to add services, Rogers asked if he wanted the bills consolidated and the guy just said yes.
Furthermore, the whole thing gets more bizarre later, when the story also claims that the "jilted third-party" later got access to the woman's voicemail and "harassed" her and "taunted" her (ex-)husband. And, on top of that, the article later notes "the wrongdoing that occurred in 2007 reoccurred" because the phone was still being billed to her husband's account in 2009. This part is left vague, but, it makes you wonder why two years after her husband had left her, she hadn't set up separate phone service for herself.
I'm sure it sucks to have all that happen, but it seems like a pretty big stretch to blame your mobile phone provider for the affair you had that caused your spouse to leave you...
Filed Under: mobile bills, privacy
Companies: rogers
Wired Takes On The Smartphone Patent Thicket And How It Stifles Innovation
from the dumbpatents-and-smartphones dept
Back in February, we noted the rapid explosion of patent lawsuits in the smartphone realm, with pretty much everyone suing everyone, and began to wonder if it was even possible to build a smartphone without getting sued. As it continued to play out, it became clear that the smartphone market was a living example of the problems of a patent thicket -- where a new technology is so locked down by patents, as to slow down the pace of innovation in that market -- directly the opposite of the intended purpose of patents. Patent thickets have been demonstrated in many areas, with smartphones just being the most recent.Wired Magazine has now taken on the issue, with a good article detailing the patent thicket mess in the smartphone space, and why it's a problem. There isn't much new in the story if you're a regular Techdirt reader, but it's an excellent summary of the situation and why it's a mess:
Underlying much of this litigation is a broken patent system that increasingly churns out weak patents, concomitantly strengthening the rights of those who hold them. Patents described in vague, abstract terms are the source of most infringement lawsuits as they provide more leeway for subjective interpretation. Patent examiners grant weak patents because administrative structures are overloaded and understaffed. And in an age of rapid product development, a market niche can be identified and a product manufactured, retailed and retired before a patent is even granted.The article also discusses the fact that patent litigation storms like this one had been avoided in the past when big companies came up against each other through "gentlemen's agreements" not to sue each other. But that's been flipped around a lot through a combination of non-practicing entities getting big awards, and companies arguing over who's in the stronger position for such an agreement not to sue.
The end result, though? Money that could go towards productive investment, instead is being wasted on litigation. It's exactly the opposite of what the patent system is supposed to do.
Filed Under: patent thicket, patents, smartphones
Companies: apple, google, htc, nokia
Feds Look At Jamming Mobile Phones In Prison
from the hope-you're-not-a-guard-during-a-riot... dept
Discussions over mobile phone jamming seems to get pretty controversial pretty fast. The technology is technically illegal in the US (except for the government), but that hasn't stopped some from using the tech anyway. Plenty of businesses have tried to get exceptions to the law. Movie theaters, in particular, have petitioned the government in the past for the right to jam mobile phones and a maker of jamming equipment has claimed that banning the technology is unconstitutional. Of course, the problem is that there may be legitimate reasons to use a mobile phone (emergencies, anyone?) and jammers don't discriminate. The collateral damage of mobile phone jamming could be a big deal.However, there's one other area that has pushed for jammers for a long time: prisons. Mobile phones have become popular contraband equipment in prison, and there are frequent stories of prisoners regularly using mobile phones to communicate with the outside world. So, now, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) is apparently planning to investigate if it makes sense to jam mobile phones in prison. I'm not sure why this isn't coming from the FCC, though it sounds like a bit of a political football, where a bill that would grant the FCC that power stalled out in Congress. I can understand the desire to block mobile phone usage in prisons, but jamming seems like a sledge hammer type of solution, that could cause problems for others (guards?) who might need mobile phones to work.
Filed Under: jamming, mobile phones, prison
Tipping Point? Quarter Of All Homes Have Totally Abandoned Landlines
from the watch-the-trends dept
The TV industry has been totally downplaying the idea that people would ever "cut the cord" when it comes to TV. While it may be true that it's a very small minority of users today, it would seem that those in the TV industry might want to look over to their friends in the telco industry. They used to scoff at the idea of cord cutters as well... and now 25% of all households have dumped their landlines entirely. And, among younger folks, it's getting increasingly difficult to find a landline at all. Things change. What was unthinkable not so long ago can become reality pretty quickly.Filed Under: cutting the cord, landlines, phones, tv
HTC Fires Back At Apple, Patent Nuclear Response Launched
from the and-here-we-go dept
With Apple and Nokia already locked in a patent nuclear war involving lawsuits filed back and forth and back and forth, it looks like the same thing may be happening now in the Apple-HTC dispute. The difference, of course, is that Apple initiated the lawsuit against HTC. But now HTC has responded in kind, claiming that Apple violates a bunch of its patents, while using the ITC loophole to get the iPhone barred from the US.What we're really seeing is what happens when you get a patent thicket in a highly competitive, dynamic area. Suddenly, rather than focusing on competing in the marketplace, and continually outpacing each other by offering new innovations and benefits to consumers, companies start wasting millions upon millions of dollars trying to block competitors from doing the same thing. It leads to a massive net negative impact on society and consumer benefit. What a shame.
At the very least, it appears that HTC recognizes this:
"As the innovator of the original Windows Mobile PocketPC Phone Edition in 2002 and the first Android smartphone in 2008, HTC believes the industry should be driven by healthy competition and innovation that offer consumers the best, most accessible mobile experiences possible."Either way, it's yet another nuclear war in the patent world, taking money away from actual innovation. What a shame.
Filed Under: patent thicket, patents, smartphones
Companies: apple, htc
German Court Says You Must Secure Your WiFi Or You May Get Fined
from the open-wifi-is-illegal? dept
Miranda Neubauer was the first of a few of you to send in the news of a bizarre German court ruling that makes it effectively illegal to offer open WiFi. Seriously:Germany's top criminal court ruled Wednesday that Internet users need to secure their private wireless connections by password to prevent unauthorized people from using their Web access to illegally download data.This is backwards in so many ways. First, open WiFi is quite useful, and requiring a password can be a huge pain, limiting all sorts of individuals and organizations who have perfectly good reasons for offering free and open WiFi. Second, fining the WiFi hotspot owner for actions of users of the service is highly troubling from a third party liability standpoint. The operator of the WiFi hotspot should not be responsible for the actions of users, and it's troubling that the German court would find otherwise. This is an unfortunate ruling no matter how you look at it.
Internet users can be fined up to euro100 ($126) if a third party takes advantage of their unprotected WLAN connection to illegally download music or other files, the Karlsruhe-based court said in its verdict.
"Private users are obligated to check whether their wireless connection is adequately secured to the danger of unauthorized third parties abusing it to commit copyright violation," the court said.
Filed Under: copyright, germany, passwords, security, third party liability, wifi, wireless
Because Nokia And Apple Aren't In Enough Patent Lawsuits...
from the let's-add-some-more dept
Ah, the patent nuclear war in action. After Apple roundly destroyed Nokia's reputation as being the leading innovator when it came to smartphones, Nokia got petulant and sued Apple for patent infringement. In response, in typical patent nuclear war fashion, Apple turned around and sued Nokia back for patent infringement. Nokia's response? Find some more patents and sue again and also use the ITC loophole to get two shots at Apple with the same patents. And why stop there? Now that there's an iPad on the market, Nokia has sued Apple yet again for patent infringement. Isn't it great to see how two companies compete in the courtroom rather than the marketplace? Just like the creators of the patent system intended...Students Who Caught Gym Teacher Stealing Money From Lockers May Get Punished
from the that-doesn't-seem-right... dept
A few years back, we had a story about some students using a mobile phone camera to record a teacher's outburst on film. Rather than disciplining the teacher who appeared way out of line, and who had pulled a chair out from under a student, the school disciplined the students for filming the teacher. In what may be a similar situation, reader Pickle Monger alerts us to the story of some students who got upset about money regularly disappearing from their lockers. After complaining to school officials and getting no help at all, they set up a mobile phone camera to record what happened to the lockers... and actually caught their gym teacher breaking into the lockers to steal the students' money.So how is the school reacting? Celebrating the ingenuity and the sleuthing skills of the kids in catching a bad teacher stealing money from students? Nope:
A school spokesman said it's possible the student who recorded the cell phone video could get in trouble as well because students are not supposed to use their phones during the day.Now, obviously the situation is a little more complicated due to the privacy issues in a locker room, but there's no indication that there were any privacy problems here at all. The whole purpose was to catch the thief that the school wouldn't catch. Punishing students for breaking those rules, while ignoring the reasons why they did it, teaches a really bad lesson to students.
School officials said they are not allowed to record video in locker rooms because of privacy.
Filed Under: mobile cameras, school, spying
Oh Look, Another Completely Ridiculous Wireless Broadband Bill
from the ripping-off-retirees-is-our-business-model dept
Last week we highlighted the highly-flammable combination of users who don't read their contract fine print or know what a gigabyte is -- and carriers that seem incapable of properly alerting customers before their 3G bill requires a second mortgage. This week the Boston Globe has yet another story of this kind -- exploring how a Dover, Massachusetts man has been fighting Verizon Wireless over an $18,000 phone bill since 2006. The man (obviously annoyed about the impact this has on his credit report) missed the fact that his two-year contract with Verizon expired, and his new contract began billing him by the kilobyte. His son, who had tethered his phone to his laptop, quickly racked up thousands of dollars in overage charges after downloading 1,119,000 kilobytes. Verizon, for their part, were not particularly helpful according to state regulators:"Kevin Brannelly, an official at the state Department of Public Utilities, tried to help the St. Germain family fight the bill because it did not seem right. "Never in my 25 years here have I seen such stubborn and senseless resistance to what is obviously a mistake," he wrote in an e-mail to St. Germain."
As with all these stories, Verizon justifies this absolutely insane markup over cost on their data service by insisting they at least made their ridiculously-constrictive pricing clear to consumers. Apparently not, given we've been watching a steady parade of these stories for years now. What has been made clear is that the cap and overage billing model isn't working for many customers. It also continues to be clear that carriers are doing a miserable job educating their users, and an even worse job implementing effective systems that alert a user before their bill goes utterly apocalyptic. While carriers often do reduce these charges after they're exposed in the press (though in this case half-off is still obnoxious) -- you have to wonder how many of these over-billing stories aren't being told.
Some carriers appear to be realizing that the millions to be made from ripping off retirees and the kilobyte confused isn't worth the endless bad press, and that helping your customers understand their bills might just help you differentiate your services. T-Mobile for instance is moving away from this cap and overage model, and last week announced they'd simply start throttling users back to slower (usually around 128 kbps) speeds should they cross their monthly cap. It seems like wireless carriers can either continue to rip people off until regulators get involved (or customers flee to more user-friendly carriers) -- or they can provide users with the tools necessary to help them adequately understand and control their monthly bill -- before it requires loan shark intervention.
Filed Under: bills, mobile data, mobile phones
Companies: verizon
