08.24.19
Posted in Deception, Law at 10:38 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The sad truth that law firms claim to respect privacy and security; they do in principle, whereas in practice they respect neither
YEARS ago I wrote a long rant about laywers’ electronic mail still not being encrypted (even after Snowden’s NSA and GCHQ leaks). They don’t value privacy. They claim to care, but not really; not in practice, not in the technical sense or by any technical means. An envelope in the post (snail mail) or a phonecall (on the landline) might offer more privacy than electronic mail because surveillance on those (voice recognition, opening letters etc.) is a bit more expensive. There’s an overhead, but no encryption.
“An envelope in the post (snail mail) or a phonecall (on the landline) might offer more privacy than electronic mail because surveillance on those (voice recognition, opening letters etc.) is a bit more expensive. There’s an overhead, but no enryption.”This has sadly become the ‘norm’; law firms speak of aspects such as privacy and “privilege”; but in practice? Well, they do hardly anything towards that. Usually nothing towards it! To make matters worse, they give a wrong impression or the false expectation of privacy. It’s an illusion or deliberate deception. If you are not going to encrypt your data and your communications, then quit speaking of “privilege” altogether. You value it only in principle or in theory, but not in practice. So your practice misleads clients.
This isn’t limited to patent law firms, where subpoenas can lose one a case. █
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Posted in Deception, Free/Libre Software, Microsoft at 12:56 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: A weekly roundup looking back at distortion if not intentional misuse of the term “Open Source”; Microsoft is still working hard and spending a lot of money to control the narrative (e.g. to limit “Open Source” to what’s on its proprietary platform, GitHub)
THIS SERIES continues for the third week/weekend in a row. Readers may have noticed that we rarely mention Microsoft in it; that’s not because Microsoft isn’t openwashing (it certainly is; it does it all the time) but because it’s a growing phenomenon much bigger than one single company or a handful of them, e.g. GAFAM.
Microsoft’s ownership of GitHub is a growing problem. We’ll come to that in a moment, but let’s start with the Linux Foundation. Here’s a new press release from Sysdig [1, 2]. Sysdig is proprietary software, but the title of the press release has “Open Source Team” in it; that’s just for openwashing purposes. “Falco joined the CNCF in October 2018,” it says, alluding to a coalition under the Linux Foundation’s wing. The members? Mostly proprietary software companies, but they collaborate on some code. Their products? Just proprietary software, maybe with a few exceptions here and there.
“Sysdig is proprietary software, but the title of the press release has “Open Source Team” in it; that’s just for openwashing purposes.”On we move to LinkChain, which days ago spoke of an “Open Source Version”. That just means proprietary software with an openwashing slant, e.g. a ‘teaser version’ or ‘trial version’; like the same old “community”/”enterprise” edition trick, the former being designed for lock-in. Open as in locked? Maybe the name “LinkChain” serves as a warming; they try to chain people and companies. Akin to Open Core…
The next example is one that we mentioned a week ago. It’s about rideOS and its openwashing by characterising “APIs” as “open”. Some media is still playing along. Also covered a week ago was gross openwashing of surveillance. In recent days we saw many more examples of that. First of all, consider those two articles [1
2] about TECH5. It speaks of “MOSIP’s open architecture”. The second article says: “The T5-ABIS is built on an open architecture to preserve flexibility for governments.” That’s not Open Source, so both headlines are misleading. And now comes Microsoft. Its surveillance platform is being spun as “confidential” and “secure” by the Linux Foundation (which Microsoft pays) and SDTimes helps the openwashing of these back doors, NSA surveillance etc. This is very typical of SDTimes. “SD Times Open-Source Project of the Week” goes again to Microsoft. They keep doing that even when the projects are closely attached to proprietary software. We’re not surprised by this, especially because it’s the SDTimes. Microsoft’s long history of sabotage never bothers bribed writers, working for publications that Microsoft keeps bribing. This is an issue that bribed media won’t speak about. Obviously.
“Saying that FOSS projects ‘don’t exist’ if they’re not on GitHub is like saying that people ‘cease to exist’ if or when they delete Facebook.”Staying on the subjects of Microsoft and surveillance, Twitter is openwashing its surveillance to make it seem or sound or ‘feel’ ethical [1, 2]. It’s also worth noting that Twitter is outsourcing its code to a proprietary software platform of Microsoft. How very typical. To quote: “It just became easier to diagnose runtime performance issues at scale, thanks to Twitter. The tech giant today open-sourced Rezolus, a “high-resolution” telemetry agent designed to uncover anomalies and utilization spikes too brief to be captured through normal observability and metrics systems. Twitter says it’s been running Rezolus in production for over a year, and it says it’ll continue development on the public GitHub repository.”
So they gave it to Microsoft. We have meanwhile noticed that there’s more flawed work based on GitHub data. Janet Swift did an article about it, but she neglected to point out the obvious issue. The data itself is highly biased. As if FOSS projects don’t exist or do not count unless Microsoft (foremost foe of Open Source) controls them inside a proprietary software platform that freedom-conscious developers reject? Saying that FOSS projects ‘don’t exist’ if they’re not on GitHub is like saying that people ‘cease to exist’ if or when they delete Facebook.
“They cheapen Open Source to death.”Over at TechRepublic, the openwashing of Twitter carries on. It’s Mac Asay again. He said he had deleted his Facebook and similar accounts, but not Twitter (where he blocked me because free speech isn’t something he can grasp). So now he treats Twitter, a truly proprietary platform, as some kind of Open Source lecturer. He published “What Twitter taught me about open source” and the Linux Foundation then boosted him. He calls himself “longtime open sourceror,” but he and his employer Adobe are actively attacking Free software and Open Source by making these meaningless. They also pay major publishers to print this crap. So we’re supposed to assume that Twitter is some kind of Open Source leader even though it’s a proprietary software company? Well, that’s how Asay wants Abobe too to be perceived. They cheapen Open Source to death.
“The openwashing of IBM’s POWER comes along with the openwashing of IBM mainframes.”A rarer and relatively new pattern of openwashing that we’ve noticed is “open” by association; Marfeel shows the possibility of openwashing oneself and one’s proprietary software by giving some money; like oligarchs who give “some money” to “charity”. This pattern is related to one where a company builds a proprietary product on top of an “open” stack (not its own) and then seeks to ‘inherit’ the positive image of that underlying stack. Pure openwashing by AT&T was described here a week ago. Telecompetitor and Container Journal [1, 2] amplified that some more. To quote: “AT&T and Dell Technologies have pledged to work together to advance a variety of open source projects starting with the previously launched AirShip initiative, a management framework that combines elements of OpenStack and Kubernetes to declaratively automate cloud provisioning and lifecycle management for containerized applications.” Here’s another one; it shows how they’re openwashing 5G by associating it with things completely unrelated to it (like OpenStack and Kubernetes). Days ago we explained a similar PR stunt and last night we wrote about OpenPOWER. The openwashing of IBM’s POWER comes along with the openwashing of IBM mainframes. These are expensive machines with proprietary software on them (and lots of patents to destroy anyone who actually believes it’s “open” and OK to copy). So much for “Open Mainframe Project” as this new press release puts it…
“So here we can see how openwashing actually ruins “open-source”, Open Source and anything “open”…”Of course there are cases more blatant where the Open Source label is abused completely; this new press release says “Prey Inc., provider of the cross-platform, open source anti-theft software…”
Seems to be proprietary software, but that needs further investigation. In our latest daily links we also included 3 articles about H2O.ai. It received some more funding (in exchange for shared control) and no, it’s not “open source leader” as this headline put it. Go to their Web site and check; it’s proprietary software with limited-time ‘trial’…
So here we can see how openwashing actually ruins “open-source”, Open Source and anything “open”…
Here’s another new example. This is openwashing because it makes it sound like there’s code involved, but it’s just some registry.
Returning to examples from the surveillance domain, here we have Google with MediaPipe (more here). So a component for CCTV-like devices and other surveillance products… is now “open”.
“It’s a browser extension; never mind this browser being proprietary software that spies a lot.”Google’s message: our surveillance… is “open”, hence “ethical”. Even the listening devices (Live Transcribe). These are just the latest examples. This new example shows how surveillance through/for ads is described as “open” and “transparent”. It’s a browser extension; never mind this browser being proprietary software that spies a lot.
Google does its share of openwashing and no doubt future parts of this series will revisit Google a lot.
Now, what about Microsoft? Same old. Mary Jo Foley wrote about Stormy Peters joining Microsoft. It helps the openwashing. For well over a decade Stormy Peters had served Microsoft in various ways (Techrights wrote many articles about that), so Peters joining Microsoft to attack FOSS directly as a ‘mole’ is hardly surprising. Even expected. Love of money dooms FOSS and this is all about money: “Peters most recently was senior manager of Red Hat’s community team, a role she has occupied since November 2016, according to her LinkedIn profile. Her profile says she left Red Hat in August 2019 and joined Microsoft as Director of the Open Source Programs Office in August 2019. She is based in Berthoud, Colorado.”
“Microsoft hopes that the likes of Stormy, Nat and Miguel can help Microsoft control the narratives around FOSS.”What Microsoft propaganda sites call “prominent free and open source software advocate” (in the headline) is actually someone who sold out more than a decade ago; an associate of other defectors and traitors like Miguel de Icaza. This would not be the first.
“Stormy will never be able to make up for such an unforgivable action,” one reader told us. “Even if she leaves her motives will be forever suspect. It’s a reprehensible and inexcusable decision on her part that also shows terrible problems within Red Hat.”
This reader said Stormy is “like DeIcaza, a mole going home for rewards.”
Nat Friedman, an associate of both of them, even got a top job there (the top GitHub mole/role). But this was more or less expected all along. Microsoft hopes that the likes of Stormy, Nat and Miguel can help Microsoft control the narratives around FOSS. It’s easier to destroy or abduct FOSS that way. They are ‘doing a Nokia’. █
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Posted in Deception, Europe, Patents at 7:42 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
How can one expect a Unified Patent Court (UPC) when the law is grossly violated along with constitutions?
Summary: The EPO‘s embrace of patent maximalists’ agenda, which necessarily means significant decreases in patent quality (and deviation/departure from the EPC), dooms patent certainty; it also, however, dooms the Unitary Patent (UPC) because an extension of this rogue regime to the court system won’t be tolerated
PRESIDENT António Campinos — like Battistelli before him — welcomes software patents into Europe in defiance of the law. Brimelow had welcomed them “as such”, but that didn’t go so far. Europe’s Office — like the American Office (USPTO) — can grant all the patents it wants; but if courts say “no!” to granted patents, what will these patents be worth? Legal certainty suffers profoundly. We can’t say that often enough. They’re digging their own graves. They must choose between quality and quantity.
Found the other day here in Lexology was this article about patent systems becoming almost satirical (or self-satirising). What happens when people craft computer programs to automatically submit patent applications? Are these actual inventions? More importantly, how are examiners supposed to process such applications? In the authors’ own words, the EPO, USPTO and even UKIPO now wrestle with such a dilemma:
Three patent offices face questions stemming from the growing implications of artificial intelligence (AI) disrupting the intellectual property legal framework. The United States Patent Office (USPTO), European Patent Office (EPO), and United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) recently received two patent application filings directed to a beverage container and a flashing device used for attracting enhanced attention. While these patent applications may have initially gone unnoticed, the applications have attracted vast attention for primarily one reason—they name DABUS, an AI machine, as an inventor.
DABUS is a type of “Creativity Machine” which can generate ideas without human intervention and was developed by Stephen Thaler. While DABUS may have been “trained” to develop new ideas by a human, the two pending patent inventions were created autonomously by DABUS, resulting in DABUS named as an inventor.
Our advice on this has long been that quality and societal impact must be assessed; do patent offices exist merely to grant as many patents as possible as long as examiners can tick “all the right boxes”? Should examination too be automated? If so, what would actually be achieved? Hence it’s satirical (or self-satirising). It’s a waste of energy, too.
This seems not to matter to patent maximalists. To them, unlike the rest of us, the above waste is personal gain.
We recently wrote about using the "MedTech" buzzword to get patents at the EPO (the US has a similar buzzword or acronym which is leveraged to bypass 35 U.S.C. § 101, at least at the Office). Well, a site called “Med-Tech Innovation” or “med-technews” has just published this piece about a surveillance device and associated patents at the EPO where surveillance on everyone is notoriously rampant:
Aseptika and Renfrew Group International (RGi) worked together on the design and prototyping of the Activ8rlives BuddyWotch. This solution will provide “expert” pathways for use by patient, carers and the healthcare team to inform, manage and report the success of self-care plans. It aims to help patients remain independent at home, with a better quality and more sustainable model of care.
BuddyWotch will continuously monitor, record and transmit the patient’s physiological signs of blood oxygen, heart rate, breathing rate and temperature for 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week. With its integrated nine-axis accelerometer, BuddyWotch tracks the patient’s physiological signs and how these change over time as the patient goes about daily life.
As well as acting as an alert in case of medical emergencies, this information is used to continuously calculate the patient’s overall health and to detect whether the wearer’s health is getting better or is declining rapidly. It can be used to test the patient in a GP clinic using the six-minute walk test.
The BuddyWotch platform connects directly to the Company’s Activ8rlives Cloud (or can be pointed to a partner’s cloud system). Activ8rlives has portals for the patient, for family members caring for them and for clinicians, providing continuous monitoring and alerts as well as the index of tolerance to exercise, itself perhaps a better indication of overall health than simple alerts usually associated with remote monitoring systems.
The BuddyWotch transmits information to-and-from the wearer using an integrated 4G modem and WiFi, so that no separate home hub or smartphone is required by the user.
“The European Patent Office has granted Aseptika a patent for its medical-grade wearable,” Digital Health Age wrote. This site too is focused on so-called “MedTech” — somewhat of a hype wave (like FinTech or AdTech).
We’ve meanwhile also noticed Patrick Wingrove (Team UPC megaphone) crafting this ‘FinTech’-like puff piece that name-drops “blockchain” and other hype waves. He refers to extortion and patent lawsuits as “monetisation” (this is the kind of thinking greedy and sociopathic firms have adopted).
Vultures at work:
The general counsel at a financial services company in New York adds that his business thinks about patent monetisation a great deal. As one of the largest patent filers for blockchain technologies, his firm is considering how it can generate returns by using decentralised-ledger solutions in new and interesting ways.
Patrick Wingrove’s article is outside the paywall, for a change. So they’re looking for extra audience (not just the choir of subscribers).
His previous article, which was boosted by Team UPC, caused him to get all flustered in Twitter and the same people who boosted his Team UPC puff piece are now boosting (e.g. this one) an article from Mathieu Klos in which he refers to litigation zealots as “Experts”. They’re people who look to profit from it; not exactly objective.
Here are some portions and our response:
Austria is ready for the Unified Patent Court and business at Vienna’s patent firms is stable. However, the JUVE Patent ranking analysis 2019 shows the country’s leading patent litigation firms are on the cusp of a generational change. Whether today’s young litigators have what it takes to follow in the footsteps of veterans such as Lothar Wiltschek and Christian Gassauer-Fleissner remains to be seen.
[...]
Most Austrian patent attorneys continue to work among themselves. Most are organised in very small outfits with one to three fee earners. For the first time this year, JUVE Patent has compiled a list of the best-known Austrian patent attorneys. In this list, our readers will also find information on the practices’ most frequently-recommended technical areas, as well as their locations and size.
That’s just marketing. But OK, we get it… JUVE Patent exists to serve them. Just like Patrick Wingrove’s employer or even IAM with its bogus ‘rankings’, the marketing department.
On goes Klos about the UPC:
The amendment was part of a legislative pact. The aim of the amendment to the professional law for patent attorneys is to prepare them for the requirements of the Unified Patent Court.
[...]
According to the bill, this would enable Austrian patent attorneys to obtain the European Patent Litigation Certificate. It is the prerequisite for patent attorneys to be able to conduct proceedings before the UPC.
[...]
There are still some question marks surrounding the launch of the UPC and the planned local chamber in Vienna. A complaint to the German Federal Constitutional Court is still blocking ratification in Germany. Since 2017, the European patent community has been eagerly awaiting the court’s decision.
Klos plays along with Team UPC here; he perpetuates the falsehood that it’s “only a matter of time” and “everything is ready” and “everybody wants it”.
This kind of slant from Klos and JUVE as a whole was noted here earlier this year and last year when they set up this English site. JUVE has moved from covering EPO scandals, including gross violations of the EPC, to what nowadays resembles lobbying of litigation giants. The final paragraph:
The Austrian patent community is relatively relaxed about the delay [sic]. Experts are in favour of the court, but do not expect the UPC to boost their own business. The current situation is satisfactory to most Austrian patent firms.
Notice how he says “delay”…
As if it’s merely a temporary issue; then he speaks again of “Experts”. That’s like speaking of military generals in the context of peace.
To us, the demise of JUVE is all over this article and this time it comes from Klos rather than from his junior colleagues. Earlier on we asserted that the USPTO and EPO are engaged in self-harm if they don’t guard patent quality; “they’re digging their own graves,” we said. The same goes for publishers that choose to become megaphones of Team UPC and Team Campinos. To us, JUVE is already in that category. It’s a shame because it used to be good and the same goes for IP Kat. █
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