EFF Tackles Bogus Podcasting Patent - And We Need Your Help

News Update by Rebecca Jeschke

Patenting podcasting? You've got to be kidding. Yet a company called Volomedia just got the Patent Office to grant them such exclusive rights.

EFF and the law firm of Howrey, LLP aren’t willing to just sit by and watch. This patent could threaten the vibrant community of podcasters and millions of podcast listeners. We want to put a stop to it, but we need your help.

The Volomedia patent covers "a method for providing episodic media." It's a ridiculously broad patent, covering something that many folks have been doing for many years. Worse, it could create a whole new layer of ongoing costs for podcasters and their listeners. Right now, just about anyone can create their own on-demand talk radio program, earning an audience on the strength of their ideas. But more costs and hassle means that podcasting could go the way of mainstream radio -- with only the big guys able to afford an audience. And we'd have a bogus patent to blame.

In order to bust this patent, we are looking for additional "prior art" -- or evidence that the podcasting methods described in the patent were already in use before November 19, 2003. In particular, we're looking for written descriptions of methods that allow a user to download pre-programmed episodic media like audio files or video files from a remote publisher, with the download occurring after the user subscribes to the episodes, and with the user continuing to automatically receive new episodes. You can read the entire prior art request here, and if you have something that could help, please send it to podcasting_priorart@eff.org or fill out the form on our Volomedia page.

EFF's Patent-Busting Project has taken on ten of the worst free-speech and innovation crushing software patents approved by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Eight of the ten have had a bite taken out of them so far, with two busted entirely, one narrowed, four reexams granted by the Patent office, and another one invalidated by the courts. We weren't looking to add to our list of the "worst of the worst," but this one was so bad we had to add it as a special bonus offender, and we can't wait to shoot it down. As Renee DuBord Brown of Howrey said, "Overbroad patents deter innovation. Congress specifically authorized the reexamination process to correct such errors, and we are looking forward to working with EFF on this reexam."

Related Issues: Patents

[Permalink]

Soliciting volunteers for an essential position? You’ll get what you pay for

No organization would ask an intern to manage its communications or marketing departments. So why do many of them put volunteers in charge of their all-important social media efforts?

Recently, an all-too-familiar e-mail went out to participants from last month's C-BOM blog sustainability meeting. I won't name the organization it came from, but here is a portion:

"I was wondering if those of you who work with students wouldn't mind passing the below job description on. The stipend isn't much, but this is a great opportunity ...

We're looking for part-time interns to help increase the impact of our (Blahbety-Blah) Project. Ideal candidates are snappy writers, have a good grasp of social networks and are self-starters...Please forward this email widely!

... Here are some of the perks:

• Build writing skills and portfolio.
• Telecommuting is possible!
• Plug in to a fantastic network of independent media makers.

If you're based in Chicago, come and work from our comfy (popular neighborhood) office. We'll supply you with coffee and workspace.

Thanks,
(Jane Doe)"

If you're a nonprofit with no clue about social media, it just might it might sound like a good opportunity.

To better understand my consternation, let me run the above e-mail through my happy-peppiness remover. Translated into more sober terms, here's what offers like the above usually mean:

"Hello. I represent a nonprofit that desperately wants to be on the Tweeter and the My Face because everyone is on there, and everyone else says we ought to. We have no clue how to get there. But we hear all the college kids talking about them, and we know from past experience that students usually work cheap.

After all, they seemed fine with eight bucks an hour plus college credit when they were stuffing our envelopes for our snail-mail fundraising campaign last summer. So we want one of them.

We'd love to think a little deeper about this but—hey—cheap labor is cheap labor. So instead, we'll just ignore the following items:

• Our internal communications department.
• Our internal marketing department.
• Our official communications plan and branded messaging.
• Any attempt to think strategically.

We'll just let those college interns handle everything. It's okay to give them total control over the accounts they set up in our name, right? No matter, we have more important things to do with our time like writing memos and sending thank-you letters. It's just webby-bloggy stuff anyway, and no one important reads those, so what could possibly go wrong?

Fingers crossed,
My Exec. Dir. Told Me to Write This Email"

Significant damage can be done—and instantly—to organizational brands that eschew strategic thought and professional insight when planning and rolling out their initial social media forays.

The power of Twitter, Facebook and other major social networks to elevate a given company or toss it over a cliff needn't be belabored. But as any nonprofit manager should know, outreach is outreach. It doesn't matter whether you do it in person, through the U.S. Postal Service, by e-mail or on Twitter. A social networking service is as much a front-line contact opportunity for an organization as is answering the front desk phone.

I'd bet money most nonprofit receptionists receive more training than do most "social media interns.”

Ultimately, e-mails like the above set the entire communications process in reverse. How can any intern make an organization shine on Twitter if said organization has no idea why it's on there, what it wants from being there and whom it's trying to reach?

The frequent protest I get whenever I raise this topic to friends in the nonprofit world tends to be a version of the following: "We don't have the time/money to do it better/ourselves/any other way, because we have more important things to take care of than social media."

I answer with a single question: What year do you think you're living in?

It's 2009 (and weeks away from 2010). If your communications plan is not Internet-based yet, it had better be soon. If you don't believe having a social media presence—not to mention an informative Web site and regularly updated blog—is fundamental to success with contemporary audiences, then you’d better reexamine your beliefs. 

Yesterday's aged donors who spent the early 2000s demanding they remain on your snail-mail lists won't be around forever. And if you think you're going to mobilize tomorrow's supporters by half-hearted, cut-rate outreach attempts, I have two final words:

Think again.

Mike Doyle is a strategic PR consultant and scribe of the longstanding local blog, Chicago Carless. He covers Midwestern online media on his ChicagoNow byline, Chicagosphere.

I have absolutely enjoyed reading this article and following the discussion thread. Well put, Mike.

By William Hershey, Staff Writer Updated 7:11 AM Friday, November 13, 2009

COLUMBUS — Ohioans support for President Barack Obama has cooled just a year after state voters helped to send him to the White House, according to a Quinnipiac University Poll released on Thursday, Nov. 12.

The poll also found that for the first time Republican Rob Portman, a former congressman from suburban Cincinnati, has moved ahead of the two Democratic candidates — Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher and Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner — in the 2010 U.S. Senate race. The Democrats led in earlier polls.

With the Senate race still a year away and no one very well known to the voters, the drop off in support for Obama has more immediate significance, said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

The poll found that for the first time, more voters disapproved of Obama’s performance (50 percent) than approved (45 percent). In a September poll, 53 percent approved and 42 percent disapproved.

Voters backed away from Obama’s handling of health care and the economy:

• For the first time, voters split, 40 percent to 40 percent, on who is doing a better job handling health care — Obama or congressional Republicans.

• By 55 percent to 36 percent, voters opposed Obama’s health care plan, with independents opposed, 57 percent to 33 percent. However, voters supported by 53 percent to 40 percent giving people the option of a government health insurance plan.

• Voters disapproved of Obama’s handling of the economy, 53 percent to 42 percent. Obama’s slippage should get the White House’s attention, said Brown.

“Ohio still is the most important swing state in the country,” Brown said. “The fact that the president is under water in Ohio is a sign for the White House that something is going on.”

The Thursday poll followed the Wednesday release of a poll that found incumbent Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland tied with Republican John Kasich in a 2010 matchup, even though nearly seven of 10 Ohioans didn’t know enough about Kasich to express an opinion about him.

The fates of all Democrats are tied to Obama, said Brown.

“Politics is a team game,” he said. “The players on the team are affected by the captain.... In this case, it’s captain Obama.”

However, Republicans have their own problems, said Brown.

“The Republicans don’t have a captain,” he said. “Nationally, the Republican brand is still in bad shape.”

In the Senate race, Portman, who also was a trade representative and budget director for President George W. Bush, led Brunner 38 percent to 34 percent, and was ahead of Fisher, 39 percent to 36 percent.

Among Democrats, Fisher led Brunner 24 percent to 22 percent, with 51 percent undecided.

For the Republican nomination, Portman led Tom Ganley, the Cleveland-area auto dealer who started TV ads this week, 26 percent to 7 percent, with 64 percent undecided.

The poll was taken from Nov. 5 to Nov. 9 with 1,123 voters, and had an overall margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.

November 9th, 2009

The New Mantra of Public Relations: “Not control, but coordination”

Posted by: Guest Contributor

By Elizabeth Sicuso

Last week I had the opportunity to hear Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, Price Floyd.  Floyd has the unique responsibility of combining internal communications for one of the country’s largest federal agencies, as well as public communications and outreach.  With a two-front war front that has less than a stellar record with voters, I can imagine this is not an easy task.  However, Floyd made it sound like a cakewalk.  (Floyd’s presentation was just prior to the tragedy that occurred at Ft. Hood in Texas, which, I can only imagine had a significant- and saddening – impact on his day.)

While Floyd had many fantastic points, there were a few in particular that I think can be helpful to everyone in working in the public affairs, public relations, or government relations arena.

Your Audience is bigger than you think. While you may not be in charge of messaging for such a diverse (and large) group as the Department of Defense, the group listening to your message is significantly bigger than you would imagine.  Take, for example, the situation with Twitter.  Any one of your tweets might not just get the attention (and retweet) of one of your followers, but also some of their followers.  And their followers. And their followers. Before you know it, that message has been seen by hundreds, maybe thousands.  Did you and your team consider that potential for unlimited indirect communications – outside your knowledge – during your messaging brainstorms or development? Probably not.

This extra size and diversity of the group you are communicating with makes having a creditable message more important than ever.  Floyd could not stress enough that reality doesn’t always fit perfectly in the media relations methods of yester year – people are talking with or without you – best to just get in the game.  Floyd said that to be in media relations today, you have to be “more comfortable with non-approved people saying non-approved things.”  Take that to heart.

Trying to avoid social media? Think again. Did you know that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has a Facebook Fan Page? Actually, he has six. Even more, did you know none of them are controlled by the Department of Defense or Secretary Gates?  Chances are that your boss and clients don’t have the same kind of high profile as the head of our country’s military community, but as much as they would like to pretend like social media doesn’t exist, chances are people are talking about them regardless, or even worse, pretending to be them!

Floyd recommended this simple trick for helping you bosses and clients realize that they need to be available on, follow, and monitor social media: Do a simple online search of their name.  Chances are, the information that comes up will surprise them.

I walked out of the presentation with this one simple thought: If the DoD (and all of its many players and moving parts) can balance security, information sharing and transparency, then why can’t every company?  The DoD has some of the most sensitive and top-secret information in the world, but they can still manage to not only have social media presences, but also list them prominently on their home page and to integrate social media into their overall communications strategy.  (Check it out the new Defense.gov – I think you’ll be impressed – I definitely was.  By the way, Price Floyd and his team got DoD’s newly updated website up and running in less than three months – unheard of in the context of federal bureaucracies)

A colleague of mine, Chris Battle recently wrote on Security Debrief, that the Department of Homeland Security, another extraordinary agency, in scope and size, was failing in keeping up with technology. How about your company or your clients – are they keeping up?

A very interesting perspective and one that I hope more government and community agencies will consider. I am often perplexed by agencies that continue to show a blind view toward the potential and benefit of social media.

There are, obviously, drawbacks, but people in the organization need to be trusted. Those that do not show responsibility should be held accountable for their actions.

In my opinion, blanket policies and blockades are not effective, nor are they healthy for the agency's communications strategies. The cliche' stands: "The times, they are a changin'".

Computerworld - An anonymous group calling itself "Control Your Info" has taken over hundreds of Facebook groups to highlight what it claims is a major security weakness on the social networking site.

Facebook downplayed the incident and said no hacking or confidential information was involved.

As of this morning, more than 200 Facebook groups had been hijacked and renamed Control Your Info. Pasted on each group's Wall was a message announcing that it had been "hijacked" and reminding members to be careful about controlling personal information on social networking sites.

"This means we control a certain part of the information about you on Facebook. If we wanted we could make you appear in a bad way which could damage your image," the message said.

"For example we could rename your group and call it something very inappropriate and nasty, like 'I support pedophile's rights,' " the message said, while going on to assure group members that Control Your Info wouldn't do that. The message also promised to restore each hijacked group's name by the "end of next week" and promised not to "mess anything up."

A separate Web site set up by Control Your Info claimed that the group's action did not constitute hacking but was a demonstration of how a legitimately available feature on Facebook can be used to easily hijack Facebook groups.

According to Control Your Info, when the administrator of a Facebook group leaves, anyone can register as a new administrator for that group. To take control of a Facebook group, a user only has to do a quick search on Google to identify public groups with no administrators.

Once someone signs up as a group administrator, that person then can do what it likes with the group, including changing its name, sending e-mails to members and editing information on it.

"This is just one example that really shows the vulnerabilities of social media. If you chose to express yourself on the internet, make sure the expressions are your own," the group urged.

In an e-mailed statement, a Facebook spokesman downplayed the incident and said there had been no hacking and no confidential information was at risk.

"The groups in question have been abandoned by their previous owners, which means any group member has the option to make themselves an administrator in order to continue communication to the group," the spokesman said.

The spokesman further stated that Facebook group administrators have no access to confidential information. Administrators can edit a group name, moderate discussions or send a message to members only in the case of small groups, the spokesman said. "The names of large groups cannot be changed, nor can anyone message all members," he said. In cases where Facebook finds that a group name has been changed inappropriately, it will disable those groups, which is what it plans on doing in this case, he said.

Sign up for the Computerworld Networking newsletter.