For several weeks now, I’ve been writing about what appears to be a coordinated group of possibly paid blog commenters who roam the web looking for blog items on net neutrality. (See here and here.) These commenters almost always write in generalities and their comments are always negative of net neutrality regulations.
Mark Glaser at PBS’ MediaShift blog has done a superb job of following up on this matter and has an excellent analysis of the net neutrality astroturf-sock-puppet-commenting brouhaha. If you’re a telco (and I assume the pack of commenters were hired by telcos and not cable operators, but I could be very wrong…it just seems such a telco-ish thing to do somehow), make sure you read Glaser’s write-up of his investigation.
Glaser contacted a known telco PR firm called Issue Dynamics Inc. to find out if they’re behind the robotic anti-net neutrality comments. IDI’s assistant vice president Kevin Reid answered Glaser’s email with an emphatic no — in fact (and here’s the lesson), Reid thinks a stunt like this ultimately hurts the telcos’ cause.
Why? Because now no one will take at face value any blog comments that deride net neutrality, however sincere the commenters may be.
“IDI does not post comments on blogs on behalf of its clients and it does not pay others to do so either,” Reid said. “We would also never recommend a tactic like this to anyone. As far as I am concerned, this is just a bad idea that has been implemented by someone who does not understand how the blogosphere works.
“In this particular instance, any comment opposed to Net neutrality will now potentially be considered suspect regardless of the merits of the comment itself. So, the impact of this blog commenting effort has actually done more harm than good. And, it is now going to be more difficult to have discussions around this issue and that is bad for everyone. You cannot trick the blogosphere into agreeing with your position. If you try, you will fail and may be burned along the way.”
Glaser also offers some helpful hints to bloggers regarding how they might screen out future astroturf-sock puppet commenters. But in the end, it all comes down to the blog owner’s judgment.
The best defense we have is to check and double-check what people say, and work together as a community of bloggers to out the people who would try to use sock puppetry, astroturf or other means to deceive us.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 7:49 PM | Print | Comments (0)
As I called it, Vonage has been hit with its first class-action lawsuit (the suit was filed Friday but I didn’t know that when I predicted the lawsuit on Saturday). Filed in the U.S. District Court in New Jersey, the suit alleges that Vonage tried to compensate for a lack of sophisticated institutional investors by pitching its stock directly to customers.
According to the complaint, securities law “requires that a company recommending the purchase or sale of its securities to a customer must have a reasonable basis for believing that the recommendation is suitable for the customer.” The suit doesn’t mention another SEC violation that Vonage may have committed — its failure to link to a prospectus from the emails or voice mails it sent to customers. But just give it time…a suit accusing Vonage of unlawful activity in this regard is no doubt on the way.
Meanwhile, VoIP company Net2Phone also filed suit last week in the U.S. District Court in New Jersey, only this complaint was filed against another VoIP pioneer, Skype. Net2Phone is accusing Skype of infringing on one of its key VoIP patents that it received in August 2000. Net2Phone is seeking a permanent injunction plus damages.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 4:31 PM | Print | Comments (0)
The problem with technology is that once it’s out, it’s impossible to repress. The past week has borne out this basic truth in the file-sharing arena, with police attempts to shut down a P2P site in Sweden sparking an public outcry in that country and a popular Russian music sharing site embroiling the U.S. in international legal fights — and threats.
The Swedish situation: last Wednesday Swedish police raided 10 locations of what is billed as the world’s largest BitTorrent site, The Pirate Bay. By Saturday, the site was up again and even worse, public opinion in Sweden turned nasty toward the U.S. after TV and press reports said that Swedish authorities shut down the sites at the behest of the U.S. government.
Unbelievably, there’s even something of a political party, The Pirate Party, devoted to copyright reform.
“The common man now realizes that we really are needed,” said Rickard Falkvinge, chairman of the Pirate Party, a small political organization that says it aims to “fundamentally reform copyright law, get rid of the patent system and ensure citizens’ rights to privacy.”
The party is taking part in this year’s parliamentary elections, and Falkvinge said the raid was proving to have a certain political upside.
In Russia, the rise of a popular music site has even ratcheted up geo-political tensions. As The New York Times’ Thomas Crampton reports today, AllofMP3.com offers a vast catalog of online music at a fraction of the price charged on legitimate music sites and company executives say that their service is legal under Russian law.
Despite pressure by U.S. record companies, courts in Russia have indeed ruled that what AllofMP3.com is doing is legal — the company points to a license issued by a royalty collecting society, the Russian Multimedia and Internet Society or ROMS (reflecting its Russian initials). Under a 1993 Russian law, collecting societies are permitted to act on behalf of rights holders who have not authorized them to do so.
Needless to say, the U.S. government and U.S. record companies are apoplectic about AllofMP3.com, with the government even taking the step of warning Russia that this web site could jeopardize the country’s entry into the World Trade Organization.
I’m all for protecting copyrights, but it strikes me that the MPAA and the RIAA and the U.S. government are playing a losing game with these strong-arm tactics (assuming, of course, that the U.S. did put pressure on Swedish authorities to shut down The Pirate Bay.) For one thing, the U.S. already has an international reputation as a bully; but more importantly, shutting down sites in Sweden or Russia only promises that they will crop up in some other country.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 7:10 AM | Print | Comments (1)
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