It's not too hard to remember the day when a lot of people couldn't receive text messages on their mobile phones. I still sometimes ask people to see if they use text messages. Apparently, if they're on T-Mobile, I shouldn't even bother. Even if you don't want to use text messaging, T-Mobile requires users to accept messages... and to pay for them. That's resulted in a class action lawsuit against the company for unfairly forcing people to pay for text messages they don't want. While it may not be a huge issue right now, if SMS spam picks up, it could become a very important issue.

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Someone who prefers to remain anonymous, submitted to us an unintentionally amusing editorial concerning the issue of unlicensed software. The editorial is written by someone at a consulting firm, trying to drive more business in helping software companies force their customers into complying with license terms -- so it's in the writer's best interest to make it sound like going after unauthorized users is good business. You'll notice as you read through the report that all of the data seems to only come from one side: the software companies themselves. It should come as no surprise that those software companies complain about significant "losses" due to unauthorized use -- as it's rare for most software firms to admit that they often benefit from the network effects of unauthorized use. It's even rarer for most software firms to admit that some unauthorized use comes from those who would never pay for the software in the first place.

From there, the report gets even worse, claiming that software license compliance efforts (basically, showing up at your customers and making sure they're not using more than they paid for) "cause few, if any, negative ramifications" and generally say the "impact of software license compliance activity was neutral, positive, or very positive." Once again, this is incredibly one-sided. It only talks to the software firms themselves -- who are either unlikely to admit or simply unaware of how their customers feel about such compliance efforts. If the consulting firm were really interested in understanding the impact of these compliance efforts (rather than just selling more compliance services), it would have also investigated how those on the receiving end felt about such efforts -- and the longer term impacts of treating your customers as if they were thieves. But, that might not tell such a rosy story, and might not be good for business.

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We've already talked about how Ray Niro, a well-known patent attorney, has been filing lawsuits over a patent he claims covers any website with a JPEG image. He's been known to particularly target his critics. It appears that all of the attention this patent has generated, has resulted in at least one party filing with the Patent Office to request a re-exam of the patent. While the patent has already gone through a re-exam in the past, and only this one claim survived, it would be nice to get it completely rejected.

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We've noted in the past that it's become somewhat standard for any company who has lost the private data of its customers/employees/partners/etc. to agonize for a little while and then offer one year of free credit monitoring as an apology. Apparently that formula has reached such a point that companies are doing it automatically. This way, the press can simply combine two stories into one. Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey loses a laptop with data on 30,000 members? No big deal. With the announcement they immediately offer a year of free credit monitoring and everyone can forget about it and move on. At this point, you have to assume that anyone storing personal data is starting to mentally price in the cost of a single year's free credit monitoring as a cost of doing business. It's certainly cheaper than actually securing your data.

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It seems that in the first half of every year there are some rumors that Microsoft might want to buy Yahoo. We heard it in 2006 and again in 2007. Now that it's 2008 and Yahoo is looking incredibly vulnerable, having just announced weak earnings and plans to layoff 1000 employees, and given their lack of a serious strategy, Microsoft has finally decided to take the plunge, making a somewhat unsolicited $44.6 billion bid for the company, representing a rather large 62% premium on the company's current valuation. This seems like a move both companies have to make, as a hail mary shot at coming up with something that can actually compete with Google. Going it alone hasn't been working. Both companies have been trying all sorts of tricks to get back in the race, without much success. Both seem to be living off a legacy past, but are unable to excite many new users. Microsoft has shown some signs of moving up the chart, but Yahoo has been steadily listing in the other direction. Combining the two gives them scale, but it'll still take a lot of work and has a high likelihood of failure. Merging two huge companies like this is not an easy thing at all, and could very well be distracting enough to actually help Google gain even more ground. However, given how little either has been able to seriously dent Google's momentum, it seems that they need to give this a shot.

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It's been well-documented that Google has become something of the mythical permanent record teachers warned you about as kids. There are plenty of stories about people losing jobs or discovering dubious information about dates using Google. A few years back, services popped up claiming that they could scrub your online record clean -- though, how successful such services could be was certainly called into question. However, it appears that those services have morphed into a new, somewhat scary, category called online reputation management. While it's to be expected that corporations might have people monitoring online reputations, it's quite another thing to have individuals hire firms to do the same thing. From the description in the article, it sounds like this involves a combination of search engine optimization, plus legal bullying of anyone who says something you don't like. If anything, that sounds like a recipe for more trouble, but you can see how it would appeal to those who are unhappy with how they're perceived online. Obviously, it's no fun to have something bad about you exposed online, but efforts to suppress that information have a decent likelihood of backfiring and serving to highlight that information. I wonder if these online reputation managers have malpractice insurance for when that happens?

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From a purely academic standpoint, it really is fun to see how modern technology is making life difficult for those who rely on old and potentially obsolete laws. However, the decisions made concerning these laws may have a pretty wide impact. We've discussed in the past the pitfalls of asking fans to create "user-generated" ads, but a new lawsuit raises a very interesting legal question. If you ask people to make their own ads for your product, how do truth in advertising laws apply? It's probably not much of an issue if fans are simply going out and creating an ad for fun on their own -- but what if you encourage it? Plenty of big name brands have been setting up contests, getting people to create commercials for them. Yet, when sub shop chain Quiznos did that, competitor Subway sued them, claiming that many of the ads made exaggerated in false claims about Subway's sandwiches. Quiznos, for its part, claims that thanks to the safe harbors of the Communications Decency Act, it's not liable for the content created by the participants in the contest. Subway, on the other hand, argues that by encouraging such actions with a contest, Quiznos has overstepped the boundary, and violated its trademarks. While you can see the reasoning behind Subway's argument, it's hard not to side with Quiznos on this one. No one is going to take most of the user-generated ads seriously -- knowing that they're designed to poke fun at Subway. Also, any attempt to expand "truth in advertising" type rules to fan-created ads is going to cause all sorts of unnecessary problems. Still, when politicians were first writing up trademark laws and truth-in-advertising laws, I'd imagine the possibility of user-generated advertisements never even crossed their minds.

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For years and years, we've been hearing analysts talk up the prospects of the mobile porn market with little to no evidence that it's more than a niche market. Almost all of the analyst estimates are based on assumptions concerning how VCR technology and the internet were both driven by huge demand for pornographic content. It's natural to then assume that the mobile industry will go down the same path. However, that ignores why VCRs and the internet worked well for adult entertainment. Both allowed a better quality offering to be viewed in the privacy of your own home. Mobile porn is the opposite. It's a lower quality product that you can now view out in public. That seems a lot less appealing. So, take it with a pretty large grain of salt when analyst firms insist that mobile porn is about to be a big thing. These are the same firms that have been predicting huge growth for mobile porn for a while, with little to back it up. Yes, there is some market for mobile porn, but it's hard to see it being as big as some of these predictions make it out to be.

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While the Associated Press has talked a lot about adapting to a new internet-centric world, there's still very little evidence that it's doing anything different. It's still trying to act like a gatekeeper rather than an enabler. However, it appears that Reuters is actually experimenting with something interesting. It has a new project, called OpenCalais, designed to help any information provider extract useful metadata from written content. In other words, it's an automated system that you can run an article or a blog post through, and it will return useful data in a structured manner. For example, if you wrote an article about Google's earning report, it would note that the article was about Google, that it had to do with an earnings report, and maybe connect some important other points. The idea, then, is that the more useful semantic data that's there, the more useful things that can be done on top of it. For those who believe that better use of semantic data is the key opportunity for newspapers to jump to the internet age, this could represent a very big deal. Of course, there's a very big "if" in that statement. The service actually needs to work well and be useful. It also needs to attract users. There's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem here, as the really useful apps built on top of that data won't come unless the data itself is available. Having Reuters behind the project suggests a strong initial base of content, but it remains to be seen how much adoption can actually be driven through this system. Some of it may depend on how much in the way of resources Reuters has put behind this project to jumpstart it (and whether that commitment continues after Reuter's acquisition by Thomson Financial closes). Either way, it's an experiment worth following, and one a lot more interesting than simply demanding that people pay more money.

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And you thought NTP getting RIM to shell out $612.5 million was excessive? It seems that other patent holding companies are shooting much higher. About a year ago, we noted that some private equity firms were so thrilled with the outcome of various patent hoarding lawsuits that they were raising funds solely to buy up patents, stick them in shell companies, and sue businesses that actually made products. We're seeing more and more of those types of lawsuits, with the latest one being pretty impressive. Private equity firm Fortress Investment Group has backed a patent holding firm IP-Com, who is now suing Nokia for patent infringement to the tune of $17.77 billion (yes, billion with a b). At that rate, a mere $600 million seems like pocket change. Expect to see a few more of these types of lawsuits, as well. With so much money going into these patent hoarding firms, combined with fears that we may finally seem some legitimate patent reform (either via Congress or the Supreme Court), many patent holders may be scrambling to squeeze whatever they can as fast as they can -- and starting off with ridiculous numbers is one way to push for a faster settlement.

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