We were pretty skeptical that charges of racketeering would stick to the RIAA when filed a few years ago, so it comes as little surprise to see a judge dismiss the claim. While the complaint could be refiled, the judge's words indicate that it will be quite difficult to make a successful case for racketeering. As emotionally appealing as it would be to see the RIAA found guilty of racketeering, it is a stretch. It's better to focus on what the RIAA is actually doing, rather than trying to paint its actions falsely. The RIAA is filing questionable lawsuits based on flimsy evidence, but that's not quite enough to prove racketeering.

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Earlier this month, we pointed to the case of a Moroccan computer engineer who was arrested, supposedly for "stealing" the Moroccan prince's profile on Facebook. As we noted in the post, the original details weren't clear on whether the guy had somehow gained control over the prince's actual Facebook page (which seemed unlikely) or if he'd just set up a fake profile. Further details revealed, indeed, that the guy had merely set up a fake profile of the prince for fun. Given how common fake profiles of celebrities are on Facebook, it seems rather ridiculous to consider that being akin to identity fraud. Apparently, however, the judicial system in Morocco feels differently. The guy in question has now been sentenced to three years in jail. This seems ridiculously excessive, especially since it doesn't sound like the fake profile was negative in anyway. The guy, Fouad Mourtada, claims to be a fan of the prince who just saw the opportunity to have a bit of fun in setting up a profile for him. It's difficult to see how any court with any sense of reason could consider that to be the equivalent of identity fraud.

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It really was only a matter of time after the announced ActiBlizsion merger that someone was going to make a bid for Take Two Interactive, makers of the super popular (if controversial) Grand Theft Auto series of video games. Given Activision and Blizzard are focusing on their own merger, it probably makes sense that industry leader EA has stepped up to make the Take Two bid. EA apparently tried to get Take Two's board to agree to a deal, but when it turned EA's offer down (at a rather large premium), EA decided to go directly to the shareholders in a hostile bid. Take Two claims that the current offer undervalues the company (despite being a 64% premium on the stock price) because it expects the company's stock to rise after it releases the next edition of GTA in the spring. Of course, aren't stock prices supposed to reflect that kind of thing already?

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Some news stories really make you wonder if politicians ever think their actions through. It's as if they don't realize that anything they do might have a reaction that nullifies the point of the action in the first place. An example of this would be the repeated ridiculous attempts by various countries to ban YouTube entirely. We've already seen it happen in Brazil, Turkey, Morocco and Thailand. In every case, it was over some random video that the government (or a judge) found offensive. Yet, in calling for the entire site to be blocked, the effort only called a lot more attention to the offending videos, while also pissing off the much larger population of folks who were using YouTube to look at other content. The latest to join this crowd would be Pakistan, who quietly ordered ISPs to block YouTube without making any kind of public announcement. Of course, in doing so, the ISP PCCW that serves many countries throughout Asia accidentally blocked YouTube in many other countries as well -- and apparently directed a barrage of unwanted traffic at a Pakistani site, basically knocking Pakistan off the internet for a bit. Oops. Given how little previous bans of YouTube succeeded in preventing interest in these "offensive" videos, does Pakistan actually think it will work this time?

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Bill Gates has been an incredibly successful businessman, but that doesn't mean he's particularly good at predicting the future of technology. Remember his claim that spam would be gone within 2 years... which he made in 2004? However, if there's one prognostication that Gates just can't let go of, it's his belief that speech recognition will replace keyboards as the preferred input device for computers. He's been saying it for years and years and years, without much to show for it. I had thought (hoped?) that he'd realized maybe he was wrong on this one, but apparently not. In a recent speech, he's insisting that speech recognition (and touch screens) will start to surpass keyboards as the input method of choice for many people. I was going to go back and put together a list of the times he had predicted that in the past, but it appears that Matthew Paul Thomas already did that a few years ago. Note that his earliest predictions (starting in 1997) were that speech would surpass keyboards within a decade. This quote is from October 1997:

"In this 10-year time frame, I believe that we'll not only be using the keyboard and the mouse to interact, but during that time we will have perfected speech recognition and speech output well enough that those will become a standard part of the interface."

If you go to Matthew's site, you'll find a lot more like that, continuing on through the years, with some different prediction time frames. This isn't to say that speech recognition hasn't gotten a lot better, and isn't used in many more ways today than it was in the past -- but it's not come anywhere close to replacing a keyboard for a variety of good reasons that have much less to do with technology than with how people work. Imagine just how noisy your typical office would be if you had to speak to your computer rather than type? Typing isn't used just because it's efficient, but because it lets people work without disturbing others, and without letting everyone else know every little thing that you're doing. Yes, speech recognition technology is getting much better and it's useful in some situations, but it's certainly not the perfect interface for an awful lot of what people do on a computer.

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Now that online dating has become commonplace, would-be suitors are having a hard time making themselves seem interesting in an increasingly large dating pool. So, what to do if your own interests and achievements are boring and average? Well, just borrow the good bits of the exciting profiles that you find, and add them to your own. Apparently, these acts of profile plagiarism are fairly commonplace now amongst the online dating set. When people find well-written, exciting descriptions, they grab them for their own profiles. Unfortunately for the daters, eventually, a real-world meeting delivers a product that the marketing has misrepresented, and disappointment usually results. Although in some cases, it's possible to track down the "original" author, most origins are fairly difficult to trace -- surely more than one person enjoys "long walks on the beach."

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One of the key themes around here for a while has been that technology has a way of making certain laws either obsolete or antithetical to their intended purposes. Often, however, lawyers, judges and politicians have a difficult time recognizing this. That's why it's at least somewhat encouraging to see Australian High Court Judge Justice Kirby publicly recognizing that computer code tends to make laws obsolete or meaningless. "It was a good moral and ethical principle to keep people's control over the usage that was made of the information... And then along came Google and Yahoo. And when the new technology came, there was a massive capacity to range through vast amounts of information. The notion that you could control this was a conundrum." However, while he does realize that technology can make laws obsolete, his solution is still to push for more laws: "To do nothing is to make a decision to let others go and take technology where they will. There are even more acute questions arising in biotechnology and informatics, such as the hybridization of the human species and other species. Points of no return can be reached." It's an interesting point -- though, he doesn't exactly explain what those points of no return are (at least not in the article that quotes him), and why the law would do a better job preventing those points from being reached than technology itself. In some ways, this is merely echoing Larry Lessig's concept that "code is law," though Lessig better recognized that trying to regulate technology with regulations was likely to be a lot less effective than regulating technology with technology.

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Last month, we noted that a lawyer wasn't just trying to trademark the term "cyberlaw" but was already threatening other lawyers for using the term. As the news broke a bunch of folks (mainly lawyers) pointed out how ridiculous this was, and now the guy has dropped his attempt to trademark the term (though he is still trying to trademark a logo of the term). He claims: "It was very clear that this was not going to be an academic argument, it was going to be more of a shouting match, and I didn't think it was worth my time to get involved in a shouting match with people that were going to shout louder." However, as Eric Golman notes at the link above: "Funny--I would have thought it wasn't worth his time because the application was completely unmeritorious."

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We've talked in the past about how both DirecTV and the RIAA have used a borderline legal version of a shakedown to get people to pay them money, without them having a chance to defend themselves. The way the process works is simple. They come up with a mere slip of evidence that the person might be guilty, and then send them threatening letters offering not to sue if they merely pay up first. With DirecTV, the company used names of people who had bought smart card writing devices, even though such devices have perfectly legitimate uses beyond pirating satellite TV signals. With the RIAA, obviously, it was through a list of (often questionable) IP addresses. By using this method, many people pay rather than face a lawsuit -- even if they're innocent. They recognize that the cost of a lawsuit is much worse than just paying the settlement charge. In the organized crime world, this is generally known as a shakedown, or if you prefer, extortion. Yet, for some reason, it's legal when these businesses do it.

And, it turns out, the RIAA and DirecTV are not alone in doing so. Perhaps they even learned the practice by watching how big retailers approach shoplifters. Reader Josh sent in a Wall Street Journal article showing how many large retail chain stores are using a very similar process against suspected shoplifters. In the most egregious case, Home Depot detained a guy it thought was stealing drill bits, but dropped the effort after he showed them a receipt. A few weeks later, though, he received a letter demanding $3,000, which was later raised to $6,000. Admittedly, the amount is quite high there as the law firm that handled the case later admitted to a typo in entering the amount -- but the process seems quite similar to the RIAA/DirecTV process. It doesn't matter if the person is guilty or innocent. You just ask them to pay up or threaten them with a lawsuit. The retailers all insist this is a necessary process since shoplifting costs them so much -- but it's hard to see how forcing people to pay up without a chance to defend themselves is ever right, no matter how much shoplifting costs these retailers.

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As more entrepreneurs set their sights on the potential to make money (and ostensibly do some "good" in the process) in the solar power industry, it would seem obvious that Silicon Valley would emerge as a hotbed of activity. Anecdotally, Silicon Valley is home to more aspiring founders and CEOs per capita than any other place in the world; people flock here ready to take their shot at the-next-big-thing. The Valley's many success stories have spawned a large group of people who have the name recognition and/or money needed to tackle big challenges. In a recent column, The New York Times draws connections between the experience and aspirations of Silicon Valley's business elite and the likelihood Silicon Valley could also become "Solar Valley".

While many people are looking for the first solar industry Google to emerge, it is companies like Intel that provide the better template for what Solar Valley businesses might look like (Moore's Law having nothing to do with it). Google became a household name and corporate giant barely a half decade after its founding. Key to that success is competing in an industry with low capital requirements, and where creating a successful brand can be a self-fulfilling. On the other hand, Intel was around for twenty five years before its marketing efforts led people to start asking for Intel Inside; even today Intel's products remain essentially hidden behind the more visible brands of PC manufacturers. Like chip companies, solar businesses face capital-intensive startup and long product development cycles. As a whole, the solar industry faces development hurdles like land acquisition, permitting, environmental review, and transmission capacity, which will limit the rate at which solar companies can grow. And solar companies are unlikely to earn much of a premium on their name: your electricity bill will not say Energized By Ausra any time soon. Even residential products will be sold through local solar installers, and homeowners are more likely to choose an installer based on the best value for the service than any particular panel manufacturer that that installer represents.

There's no doubt that interest and investment in solar power will continue to grow in Silicon Valley, and the area will almost certainly produce success stories. But the nature of the industry means that most of the magazine covers will stay reserved for members of the Internet crowd.

Daniel DiPasquo is an expert at the Techdirt Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Daniel DiPasquo and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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