Social networking site fears reputation permanently damaged by false claim that it let older men pressure teenage girls for sex
Facebook has threatened to sue the Daily Mail for damages after the paper wrongly claimed in a piece published on Wednesday that 14-year-old girls who create a profile on the social networking site could be approached "within seconds" by older men who "wanted to perform a sex act" in front of them.
The paper apologised in print today and online yesterday for the error, which the author of the piece, Mark Williams-Thomas, insisted had been introduced by editors at the paper despite being told it was wrong. In fact, Williams-Thomas ? a retired policeman who now works as a criminologist ? had been using another, unspecified social network.
But the giant social networking site, which has 23 million users in the UK alone, said that although the Mail has changed the headline of the article online ? so that it now reads "I posed as a girl of 14 online. What followed will sicken you" ? it had not at first changed the page title of the article online, used by internet search engines to index content, nor the URL of the piece, which is also a factor in search-engine indexing.
At 10am today the title still read "I posed as a girl of 14 on Facebook. What followed will sicken you" while the URL contained the text "i-posed-girl-14-facebook-what-followed-sicken-you". The title and URL were, however, amended before noon.
A UK spokeswoman for Facebook said that the company was still considering legal action and looking at the "brand damage that has been done".
Charles Garside, assistant editor of the Daily Mail, said that the apology had been produced in consultation with Facebook, and that representatives of the paper and Facebook would be meeting today. The changes to the URL and page title were "a technical matter", he said, adding: "We are removing elements of that".
The incorrect naming of Facebook is understood to be blamed on "a matter of miscommunication".
Facebook staff claimed that attempts to add a comment to the piece, as readers are able to do, were repeatedly blocked by the Daily Mail.
The company is concerned that the article may have done permanent harm to its reputation in the UK. "If you were a Middle England reader and your child was on Facebook, this sort of thing would have a very serious effect on what you thought of us," said the Facebook spokeswoman.
Tensions over Facebook's position in the UK as a popular site among people of all ages, allowing them to contact each other, have been magnified in the past week after Peter Chapman was convicted of murdering Ashleigh Hall, a 17-year-old girl who thought that Chapman, 33, was also a teenager. Chapman had got in touch with Hall via Facebook, leading to criticisms from some senior police officers over the measures that the site takes to protect susceptible individuals .
But the Daily Mail piece, which carried Williams-Thomas's byline, suggested that anyone who signed up as a 14-year-old girl would be approached "within minutes of the profile going up". The piece also said that "messages from men poured in" and that "the first three who approached me were aged between 20 and 40".
However, Williams-Thomas and his agent, Sylvia Tidy-Harris, both insisted on their Twitter feeds that he had not used Facebook for the Mail article.
It "was on another well-known SNS [social networking service], not Facebook", said Tidy-Harris, echoing Williams-Thomas.
Tidy-Harris said that yesterday had "Been a hellishly tough day trying to juggle @mwilliamsthomas misquote in daily mail along with meetings and literally 100ks of calls/emails".
At Facebook, the anger at the misrepresentation was magnified because, they say, they were initially unable to get any response from the paper to their appeals for corrections.
"The people at Facebook in the US were reading this and knew at once that it couldn't have been our platform," said the Facebook UK spokeswoman. "We have made Facebook much more favourable to the safety of minors ? minors under 18 cannot receive messages from somebody over 18."
That means it would be impossible for the scenario described by Williams-Thomas to happen on Facebook.
Facebook's representatives said that they tried to get a response from the Mail throughout Wednesday without success, and that attempts by people at its PR agency to post comments on the piece with clarifying text failed. The Mail uses moderators who on that story approved comments before they could appear. By this morning the article had 380 comments.
Williams-Thomas has not responded to requests to specify which social networking service he was using by the time of publication.
? To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000.
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Daily MailMedia lawSocial networkingDigital mediaFacebookChildrenCharles Arthur
Suffering under an injunction against versions of Word that deal with particular forms of XML, Microsoft sallies forth once more against i4i
Remember Microsoft, and the case taken out by i4i alleging that it held particular patents relating to XML, and that later versions of Word infringed it - and that Microsoft should therefore be injuncted against selling it?
Yes, that case, which got its first result last August. (And you'll recall our interview with the chief executive of i4i.)
At that time, both sides were waiting for the outcome of an appeal lodged by Microsoft - which, being big, would expect to prevail.
And now, the result:
"a panel for the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit issued a revised opinion in i4i v. Microsoft which affirms the August 11, 2009 Final Judgment by The Honorable Judge Leonard Davis that ruled in favor of i4i and found that Microsoft had wilfully infringed i4i's U.S. Patent No. 5,787,449."
Oh dear, Microsoft, that has to hurt.
"Loudon Owen, Chairman of i4i, says, "The appeals court has again upheld the lower court's decision in its entirety. In addition, it issued a more detailed analysis in concerning the finding of willfulness in this case. The determination that Microsoft willfully infringed i4i's patent stands.""
"Michel Vulpe, founder of i4i and co-inventor, says, "i4i is especially pleased with the court's continued decision to uphold the injunction, an important step in protecting the property rights of inventors. i4i continues to offer custom XML solutions.""
The Court of Appeals is still considering a petition by Microsoft for en banc review (which, to save you the click, is granted pretty rarely - about 94 cases get it per year).
Which may mean that that's that for the XML-infringing version of Word, which is the 2003 version - though of course Microsoft is perfectly able to sell other versions that don't.
As Jack commented way back when the first case came up:
"anyone who has read a chunk of i4i's US Patent No 5,787,449 might well have doubts about the competence of the US Patent Office in granting it, and it seems even more unlikely that the average judge or juror in East Texas is competent to adjudicate on it. Perhaps someone should tell POTUS that the US software patent system is broken.
"Having said that, you have to wonder whether Microsoft has a rational legal strategy. Given its track record for losing lawsuits, and its presumed familiarity with the East Texas courts, you'd have thought it would either have found some way to move the case or change its Word code so that it couldn't be seen to infringe i4i's patent. If the latter is impossible, of course, then the XML open standard could be in trouble, too."
i4i has subsequently indicated that it's not going after the XML open standard.
MicrosoftIntellectual propertySoftwareCharles Arthur
Google's new interface turns the web into an interactive entertainment magazine
Google has launched Google Reader Play, an experimental feature that offers a new, highly visual way to browse the web.
The new interface displays only one story at a time, focusing on pictures, videos, visual statistics and maps.
"We think Reader Play is a fun way to browse interesting items online that you wouldn't find otherwise," said software engineer Garrett Wu in a blogpost announcing the new product.
Unlike the standard Google Reader in which users have to subscribe to feeds, Google Reader Play requires no set-up. It learns new users' preferences by asking them to mark items they like with a star to read later.
"We designed it especially for people who don't want to spend time curating their own set of feeds," said Wu.
Google Reader Play is thus easy to use, and as the items are displayed in full-screen, there is one type of content it is perfect for: television.
As Nick Bilton of the New York Times puts it: "Although Google doesn't address television in the description of the product, the promising use case for many people could be the ability to use Google Reader Play on a computer hooked up to a larger screen."
Launched a few weeks before Apple's iPad hits the stores in April, Google Reader Play makes it clear that the big tech companies are aiming to take on the consumer market.
Do you like the idea of Google Reader Play? Please have your say in the comments
The internet's most valuable domain name, sex.com, is back on the auction block ? and bidding starts at $1m
If you've got $1m for a starting bid, and many millions more available, you could next week be the proud owner of the internet's most fought-over domain name: sex.com.
The site's ownership goes up for auction next week by DOM Partners LLC, a New Jersey lender that backed a 2006 purchase of the domain name for up to $14m but which is now foreclosing on the loan.
The auction is scheduled for 18 March at the New York law firm Windels Marx Lane & Mittendorf LLP, according to legal notices. And there is good reason for the site to attract bidders: at one point, it was making at least $15,000 a day, according to a 2008 book, The Sex.com Chronicles by Charles Carreon.
In the late 1990s, internet domains used to change hands for stunning amounts: though sex.com sets the price record, others including fund.com ($10m), porn.com ($9.5m), business.com ($7.5m) and diamonds.com ($7.5m) proved how much value some investors saw in the visitor-attracting power of a simple, easily remembered name.
But in many cases those domains were sold before the rise of Google, whose search engine dominates internet navigation, and which assesses sites not by their names but by their reputations, as measured by the number of other sites that link to them. A search for "sex" on Google shows sex.com as the fourth result; the top result is a site first registered in 2000.
The auction is yet another twist in the history of sex.com, which has seen bizarre shenanigans between would-be rival owners including Mexican jails, international pursuits and accusations of hacking which Kieren McCarthy, the author of another book about the struggle for sex.com's ownership, has called "a Trojan war for the digital age".
That war began in October 1995, when Gary Kremen, who 18 months earlier had become the first person to register sex.com, noticed that he was no longer listed as its owner. An 11-year battle, sometimes legal, followed with Stephen Michael Cohen, who also claimed to be the owner, disputing Kremen's ownership. It was finally settled in January 2006, when Kremen, having been declared the owner, sold the site to Escom LLC.
But Escom made the purchase with a loan from DOM Partners ? and that has been in default for more than a year. "The loan was in default and DOM partners is foreclosing pursuant to its right under the security agreement," DOM's attorney, Scott Matthews, said. Attempts to reach Escom and sex.com for comment were not immediately successful.
But Richard Maltz, an auctioneer at Maltz Auctions who is running the sale, said on Monday there was considerable interest in it. "We don't know who's serious and who's not, but prospective bidders need a $1m certified cheque. It should be interesting."
Maltz said his firm was arranging for potential buyers to also be able to bid online. It is not known whether Stephen Cohen will be among the bidders.
Kremen, meanwhile, has been successful away from sex.com, having set up match.com, the dating website, and is chief executive of Grant Media.
InternetCharles Arthur
ISPs, Google, Facebook, eBay and Yahoo sign letter saying clause threatens free speech and could lead to blocking of sites
Amendments made to the digital economy bill by the House of Lords threaten freedom of speech and will lead to British websites being blocked without due judicial process, the chief executives of leading technology companies said today.
The heads of the four largest UK internet service providers ? BT, Orange, Virgin Media and TalkTalk ? as well as Google, Facebook, eBay and Yahoo have all co-signed the letter, along with consumer groups, academics and the technophile television host Stephen Fry, objecting to amendment 120A to the bill, which was added to the bill last week with support from Liberal Democrat and Conservative peers.
Ministers had been seeking powers to amend copyright law and impose conditions or fees where infringements were taking place.
But the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats succeeded in removing the measures from the bill last week, replacing them with a more specific amendment handing courts the power to force internet service providers (ISPs) to block certain websites.
<p>In a letter to the Financial Times , the online giants argue that the rules, if they become law, would fail to tackle copyright infringement as intended. The amendment has "obvious shortcomings", the 16 signatories say.
The letter says: "Endorsing a policy that would encourage the blocking of websites by UK broadband providers or other internet companies is a very serious step for the UK to take.
"There are myriad legal, technical and practical issues to reconcile before this can be considered a proportionate and necessary public policy option."
The amendment had been roundly criticised last week when it was added, as critics pointed out that it could be used to block sites such as YouTube.
But Lord Tim Clement-Jones, one of the backers of the amendment, said last week that the intention was to deal with "cyberlockers" ? a system that allows individuals to swap large files directly, rather than sending them by email or storing them on websites.
The House of Lords passed the amendment last week, replacing a clause that would have given broad powers to ministers to change the Copyright Act to respond to new forms of online infringement without the need for primary legislation.
But the letter's signatories called the amendment "bitterly disappointing", and explained: "Put simply, blocking access as envisaged by this clause would both widely disrupt the internet in the UK and elsewhere and threaten freedom of speech and the open internet, without reducing copyright infringement as intended. To rush through such a controversial proposal at the tail end of a parliament, without any kind of consultation with consumers or industry, is very poor law-making."
Responding to the letter, the chief executive of UK music industry body the BPI, Geoff Taylor, said that the amendment provided a "clear and sensible" way of dealing with illegal downloading.
Taylor added that the signatories to the FT's letter have acknowledged that illegal downloading has to be dealt with.
"The amendment adopted by the House of Lords provides a clear and sensible mechanism to deal with illegal websites," he said.
"Contrary to the claims in the letter, service providers would in every case be able to ensure that the decision as to whether a site should be blocked is made by the high court. The court would be required to consider the extent of legal content on a website, any impact on human rights, and whether the website removes infringing content when requested. So the suggestion that the clause would lead to widespread disruption to the internet or threaten freedom of speech is pure scaremongering.
"The signatories to the letter recognise that dealing with illegal websites is a legitimate concern, and have argued in the past that action against illegal downloading should focus on commercial operators. Removing unfair competition from clearly illegal websites will encourage investment in legal online services and improve the legal internet experience for everyone."
The digital economy bill is expected to be pushed through before parliament is dissolved for the general election, widely expected to happen on 6 May. If it reaches a second reading by early April, when an election would be called, it could go into the "wash up" ? the process at the end of a parliament when bills that have not been passed are hurried through. The government would need cooperation from the opposition to achieve that with the bill ? but it is not clear whether the Tories, who have objected to elements of the bill, as the "landline tax" of £6 a year to help pay for next-generation broadband, would support it.
Lord Clement-Jones had said the provisions, approved by 165 votes to 140, would protect the creative industries by preventing access to websites where films and music were being provided illegally.
He told peers: "I believe this is going to send a powerful message to our creative industries that we value what they do, that we want to protect what they do, that we do not believe in censoring the internet but we are responding to genuine concerns from the creative industries about providing a process whereby their material can be satisfactorily accessed legally."
Lord Clement-Jones said the "blanket nature" of the government's original intention was "objectionable". He argued the new proposals were "more proportionate, specific and appropriate".
The bill extends the role of media regulator Ofcom to include communications infrastructure and media content, and to appoint providers of local news in ITV regions.
It also includes powers to stop under-age children getting hold of violent computer games and contains measures to help the switchover to digital radio.
PiracyInternetDigital BritainDigital mediaMedia businessTechnology sectorDownloadsCharles Arthur
Charles Arthur, Rick Wray and Aleks Krotoski take on the BBC in this week's podcast, picking apart the latest news on the corporation - from the director general's strategy review to the battles with iPhone app developers. What's behind the BBC's contradictory new media messaging? Is digital really the future, or will they abandon a decade of investment to the archives?
Meanwhile Bobbie Johnson takes the team through the Musee Mecanique in San Francisco, the leading collection of pre-digital entertainment machines; and Mercedes Bunz speaks with Blaise Aguera y Arcas, the man behind Bing Maps.
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Only the biggest gaming brands get their own retail launch event and Final Fantasy 13 was one of them. The UK launch event was held in London yesterday with, apparently, thousands turning up to meet producer Yoshinori Kitase and art director Isamu Kamikokuryo. According to HMV's Tim Ellis the event was their biggest yet.
Today's Final Fantasy 13 signing at HMV's flagship store on Oxford Street was the biggest game launch the store has ever seen. With thousands of fans queuing up round the block it even beats our store's previous best game launch event, which was for World of Warcraft.
As the picture above shows there was plenty of dressing up for the occasion - were you there? - so let's hope the game was worth the effort. I'm going to grab some time on it today but anyone here started playing Final Fantasy 13 yet? If so what do you think so far?
GamesGreg Howson
Korean company Samsung kicks off the industry-wide push by launching a 3D range that will be in British shops by the end of the month
The friendly green monster Shrek, the blue-skinned Na'vi of the planet Pandora and Wayne Rooney's shots on goal will shortly take on a new, three-dimensional glory.
Spurred on by the success of the Hollywood fantasy blockbuster Avatar, the world's top electronics companies believe they can make 3D television sets the norm for consumers in the US and Europe within three years.
The Korean company Samsung kicks off the industry-wide push ? and battle for brand supremacy ? by launching a 3D range that will be in British shops by the end of the month.
Billed as the world's first high definition, three-dimensional LED televisions, Samsung's range will be serenaded by the Black Eyed Peas at a glitzy global marketing debut in New York tomorrow.
At a press conference today, Samsung said its televisions and Blu-ray devices will come with a starter pack of two pairs of 3D glasses and a Blu-ray version of Monsters vs Aliens under a tie-up with the movie studio DreamWorks Animation.
"It's quite simply the entertainment revolution of our time," said DreamWorks' chief executive, Jeffrey Katzenberg. "It's as important as the introduction of sound or colour."
Keen to get in on the act, the Japanese company Panasonic will sell its first 3D television at a BestBuy electronics shop in Manhattan this week. And Sony, which expects to begin selling its sets in June, has set an ambitious target of selling 2.5m 3D televisions by March 2011 ? amounting to roughly one tenth of all its global television sales.
In British shops, John Lewis's vision buyer, David Kempner, said he expected demand to be a "slowburn", with an opening price point of £2,000. "HD is still a relatively new concept and consumers are just getting used to it but 3D will be the next big thing. Given it has the support of all the major manufacturers, 3D technology has got momentum of its own but it also requires content providers to support it and there is a time lag there."
Experts say that 3D televisions are likely to enjoy mainstream uptake because the technology behind them barely costs any more than existing sets. To achieve three dimensions, manufacturers need more powerful processors but the fundamental make-up of the television changes only marginally. The only substantial extra cost is making 3D glasses.
"The add-on cost of manufacturing isn't significant," said Jim Bottoms, director of the technology consulting company Futuresource. "Set makers are starting to incorporate 3D in higher-end televisions this year. Very quickly, certainly by 2015, virtually every full-sized television will have 3D capability."
Although pricing for British shops is yet to be finalised, Sony's 3D televisions range in Japan from around £2,150 for a 40in set to double that amount for a 60in model, while Samsung is charging $2,000 (£1,350) to $4,000 in American stores.
Sport and films will be the early applications for 3D home entertainment. Under a deal with Sony, Sky has already begun showing certain Premier League matches in pubs on 3D televisions and this summer's World Cup could be a watershed for the technology: Sony will film 25 matches in South Africa using 3D cameras.
The opening ceremony of Vancouver's Winter Olympics was available in 3D. More than 20 movies in 3D are scheduled for release this year, including Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, which topped Britain's cinema box office charts at the weekend.
Mainstream television programming will take longer. The BBC and ITV have expressed interest in experimenting with 3D content.
But Bottoms said everyday shows were unlikely to go 3D until technology arrives to eliminate the need for special glasses, which is thought to be up to five years away.
"We see the next three to five years as being 'event-driven' for 3D. When we get to a glass-less solution, then we'll really see 3D become more pervasive," he said.
It has taken decades even to get to this point. The first 3D film, The Power of Love, was made back in 1922 and dozens of movies came out in the 1950s including such gems as Creature from the Black Lagoon.
But a key problem was "3D fatigue" whereby viewers' eyes became tired from distinguishing the twin images needed to create depth perception.
Samsung's president of visual display products, Boo Keun Yoon, told the Guardian that 3D fatigue killed off three-dimensional filming in the 20th century but that new techniques have overcome this lingering problem by creating a more consistent image.
"We've recently had developments in how 3D films are shot," said Yoon. "I believe 2010 will be the year of the 3D television revolution. Probably by the end of this year, we'll see an explosive growth in demand."
TelevisionTelevisionTelevision industryRetail industryUnited StatesAndrew ClarkZoe Wood
Using programs that screen out online advertising is fairly popular - particularly among the sort of savvy readers who spend their time reading this blog. But how much of a problem is it for web publishers? Just ask Ars Technica, the technology news and analysis site that tried a bold experiment to show its readers the real impact of ad blocking systems... and opened up a number of issues for web users and publishers alike in the process.
Ad blocking, if you aren't familiar, is a technique used in a number of browser plug-ins that basically removes advertising from the web. Similar systems are also used to block Flash content - but basically, it looks for ads on a given web page and removes them.
That means if you're using ad or Flash blocking, instead of seeing a page like this:
You see one like this:
Now, the common argument put forward by users is that it makes their online experience better and that since they were people who would never click on adverts anyway, it doesn't make any financial difference to the site they visit.
That myth has been exploded by Ars, which ran a post yesterday called "Why ad blocking is devastating to the sites you love". Last week the site, part of the Conde Nast empire which includes magazines such as Wired, Vogue and the New Yorker, tried an experiment so that users running ad blocking software also had the content blocked. Why?
There is an oft-stated misconception that if a user never clicks on ads, then blocking them won't hurt a site financially. This is wrong. Most sites, at least sites the size of ours, are paid on a per view basis. If you have an ad blocker running, and you load 10 pages on the site, you consume resources from us (bandwidth being only one of them), but provide us with no revenue.
The analogy they make is to a restaurant: ad blocking users are dining for free, even if they don't think they are.
It's an interesting dilemma in a world where publishers are increasingly looking at paywalls, but users remain far from enamoured by the concept of having to pay for website subscriptions. So what do you do?
Well, ad blockers are popular online - I certainly know from the comments that plenty of you use plugins like Adblock plus. Indeed, a few weeks ago during a discussion here about the iPad, somebody in the comments asked me if I used AdBlock, and if not, why not.
I don't, not only for these reasons put forward by Ars Technica, because money made through advertising pays a good proportion of my wages and other reasons. It would be more than a little two-faced to want people to pay for my content with their attention and then effectively remove my attention from other peoples' sites. But I accept that it's an argument that isn't made enough by publishers - and that it may not brook much sympathy with you.
None of this is to say that adverts aren't often annoying, intrusive or unwanted - but it's an argument that isn't made enough by publishers, and even so it may not brook much sympathy with you.
So: is putting up with ads possible worth it to support the sites you love? Or are there other options?
InternetDigital mediaPaywallsBobbie Johnson
Investors are pumping more and more money into web services that are heavily reliant on Facebook. So how big is the economy around the world's most popular social network?
An email came through to me last night that, in many respects, is the stock-and-trade of the startup world: a team of entrepreneurs company has received some funding.
In this case, the site in question is the Paris-based Smartdate, and its received $2.2m from investors to try and build its idea of using Facebook data as the basis of a matchmaking service.
So far, so normal. We've heard a great deal of this over the years; venture capitalists and investment funds putting money into companies that are building web services.
But there's something else going on here. From the swathes of press releases and funding announcements I trawl through each day, it feels to me like we're hearing much more recently about sites specifically and publicly built using Facebook as a platform. In many cases, they are almost entirely reliant on Facebook to provide their link to users.
Now, in part, that's no surprise: building up an ecosystem around Facebook is something that the company has tried very hard to do with F8 and Facebook Connect - and it's a smart move, because they know that when lots of people are invested in your success, you are less vulnerable to competitors.
But if so many people are pumping into companies that are almost entirely reliant on the world's largest social networking site, exactly how big is the economy around Facebook?
Let's see if we can work it out.
We know from a number of reports and internal estimates that Facebook itself is due to post somewhere upwards of $1bn in revenue for 2010, but I'm more interested in what the other companies are doing.
What levels of investment are going? How many companies rely on Facebook to keep themselves going? The conservative estimate must stretch into several billions of dollars worth of business at least.
After all, the headline sites who make the most from this business are worth hundreds of millions - and some are even looking to launch on the stock market. Even if they don't entirely base their business on Facebook (in many cases, they are available on - or partner with - other social networks too) the spread of users suggests that they're heavily invested in it.
• Back in November, Electronic Arts bought social gaming site Playfish, in a deal we are now told was worth around $275m.
• Meanwhile Zynga, another developer of popular games (like ) has already taken more than $200m of venture capital.
• Other companies making applications include Slide (also closely linked with MySpace but funded to the tune of $78m); Mindjolt (recently bought by MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe, funding not public); and of course FriendFeed (bought by Facebook for around $50m).
• On top of that, there's a huge number of companies like the aforementioned Smartdate, Plancast ($800,000); and a whole bunch of companies pushed forward by Facebook's own $10m fbFund.
That's just the start.
What other companies do you know that are reliant on Facebook? How big do you think the Facebook economy really is? Stick any information you know in the comments - once we've got an idea how big this is, we can start thinking about whether it's a viable ecosystem, a bubble or a house of cards.
FacebookMergers, acquisitions and fundingSocial networkingSoftwareInternetBobbie Johnson
Jesse Divnich of EEDAR recons this is just the beginning of a new industry power struggle...
Last week began with two staff members allegedly being escorted from their development studio by burly security guards. It ended with a multimillion dollar lawsuit against the biggest games publisher in the world.
And while gamers are frantically trying to work out what the Infinity Ward/Activision saga means for the Call of Duty and Modern Warfare brands, there are some much wider industry issues bubbling beneath the surface.
Because when studio heads Jason West and Vince Zampella filed that astoundingly vitriolic 16-page lawsuit against their former publisher, they slammed a question mark down over the nature of IP ownership in the modern videogame era. If, as West and Zampella allege, Activision granted them 'contractual rights' over the Modern Warfare brand, could they really defect and take a Modern Warfare-like title to another publisher, as news sources are indicating? And step back a little; would a multinational corporation really sign off a massively profitable franchise extension merely to appease its workers?
That seems massively unlikely, but the battle over the future of Infinity Ward and of the Call of Duty series is going to be long and messy, and it will have ramifications. "Whatever the outcome, this will be an event that will shape the developer/publisher relationship forever," says Jesse Divnich a leading US industry analyst and vice president of research firm EEDAR. Here's why...
"The developer/publisher relationship has always been complex," continues Divnich. "But it is not uncommon to see publishers give their developers a certain amount of freedom and creative control. It is the price publishers pay for retaining top talent.
"Take-Two did something similar last year by giving the heads of Rockstar additional creative control and nearly complete freedom to produce whatever they wanted. The jury is still out on whether or not this proved to be a financially fruitful move, I'd argue it was."
It's the exact nature of this creative control that's at the core of the Infinity Ward debacle. What the lawsuit seems to imply is that West and Zampella were effectively granted power of attorney over the MW brand, that subsequent titles couldn't be developed without their approval. Conversely, the document also suggests that Infinity Ward had been given implicit permission to pull out of the Call of Duty development machine. On page eight is this paragraph:
"The MOU [Memorandum of Understanding] gives West and Zampella the right to operate Infinity Ward independently and to chose to develop new intellectual property after they completed Modern warfare 2"
So if we're to accept the situation as presented in the document, West and Zampella had the power to both control and walk away from the CoD brand. Weird. And even if only half of this is accurate - the half about Infinity Ward possibly quitting Modern Warfare - that is enough of a nightmare scenario for Activision. Infinity Ward IS Call of Duty, it IS Modern Warfare. The Treyarch titles pull in a decent revenue, but they don't do one billion dollars each. So maybe a carrot was dangled to keep West and Zampella onboard. It's just they tried to take a bigger bite than Activision expected...
"It is a difficult undertaking to employ those who constantly think outside the box," says Divnich. "They can be very unstable. I am not criticising the creatives, I am instead saying that you cannot take outside-of-the-box thinkers and cram them into a cubicle only to have them work on repetitive projects/tasks. They'll go crazy.
"But back to the main subject, developers retaining creative control - it is no different than Hollywood actors who often retain creative control or input on the films they work on.
"In fact. I consider this event a positive for the industry. For years developers have been viewed by management as nothing more than programming monkeys with complete expendability. It is about time that we began to see some reach a 'celebrity' status to the point where their involvement on a title can impact sales."
In some ways this is already happening of course. The likes of Molyneux, Miyamoto and Will Wright can open a game in the same way as Will Smith and Tom Hanks can effectively open a movie. But the future that this lawsuit suggests is one in which the members of any successful development studio may be able to leverage significant personal power for themselves.
The thing is, that's good for them, but is it good for us? We may have seen the last of Modern Warfare in its current form, and if you're a fan, that's got to hurt. Developer power is positive, but it'll complicate things - it'll lead to more trouble like this.
Film-maker spends time on internet chat service Chatroulette ? all in the name of research, of course
Heard and read about Chatroulette, but a bit frightened to check it out yourself? Now you can find out about the website that allows you to video chat with strangers all over the world thanks to New York film-maker Casey Neistat.
After being introduced to it by a friend, Neistat logs on to Chatroulette. He explains what it means to get "nexted", and explores different aspects of the phenomenon.
The film-maker says that of the 90 people he clicked through at 4pm New York time on a Thursday he found 71% men, 15% women and 14% perverts, while 83% were fairly young and 17% older people. With the help of a female friend he also found out that people on Chatroulette are much more likely to talk to a woman. While 95% "nexted" Neistadt, his friend Genevieve was clicked away by only 5%.
Neistat is best known for the viral video he made with his brother in 2003 about the iPod's irreplaceable battery called The iPod's Dirty Secret. This summer, HBO will air an eight-episodes series created by Neistat, his brother Van and Tom Scott. It is called The Neistat Brothers and features short stories about the brothers' lives.
Conflict sparks debate about online censorship and highlights Apple's control over software platform
The International Federation of the Periodical Press (FIPP) is considering making a complaint to Apple over the computer firm's request that German publisher Springer censor the naked girls on one of its iPhone apps.
Springer-owned tabloid Bild's "Shake the Bild Girl" app allows iPhone users to undress a model. Each time the user shakes the phone, the girl strips an item of her clothing. While Bild features naked women daily in its pages, Apple ruled that the girls in its iPhone app should wear bikinis.
The Association of German Magazine Publishers (VDZ) asked FIPP last week to approach Apple over the issue. FIPP is debating the issue, but has no further comment at the moment.
The VDZ chief executive, Wolfgang Fuerstner, has warned that Apple's move might represent a move towards censorship. In an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel he said: "Publishers can't sell their soul just to get a few lousy pennies from Apple." Bild Digital CEO Donata Hopfen agreed: "Today they censor nipples, tomorrow editorial content."
Apple asks publishers of general interest apps to respect its US "no nipples" policy. In November, German weekly Stern's app was dropped from the App Store due to an erotic photo gallery.
When Apple approached Bild in January, the publisher censored the PDF version of the paper programmed for the iPhone.
According to Doepfner, Springer is Apple's second biggest client worldwide after Google. And Springer makes good money via Apple. The "Shake the Bild Girl" app costs ?1.59 a month and can be topped up with a PDF of the printed Bild for ?3.99 a month. Springer's head of public affairs, Christoph Keese, said that the iPhone apps launched Bild and its other newspaper Die Welt have sold a total of more than 100,000 units.
Apple's intervention has made it clear to publishers that they find themselves in a new role in a digital world.
When Apple announced at the end of Feburary that it would "remove any overtly sexual content from the App Store", publishers had to follow that request. It is Apple that has final control over its platform, not the publishers.
Video games publisher Ubisoft has apologised after thousands of players were locked out of its systems over the weekend.
PC users started reporting problems accessing some of the French company's most popular games, including best-seller Assassin's Creed 2, on Sunday afternoon. It later emerged that attackers had targeted the company's controversial anti-piracy system, causing it to break down - which in turn left thousands of people unable to play.
The chaos was so widespread because of the way that Ubisoft's copy protection system - which requires players who have bought the game to log in online and verify that they are not playing a pirated version - is designed. By flooding the anti-piracy servers with web traffic, the unknown attackers forced it to collapse and therefore locked out those players who tried to sign in.
This angered many gamers, who felt that they had been punished for buying legal copies of the company's games - which cost as much as £50.
"We've had to agree to their draconian rules in order to play their game, however Ubisoft haven't given a single thought to what happens when their servers screw up," said one disgruntled user on the company's web forums.
"[This] only penalises legitimate customers like myself who want to play your fantastic games but cannot," said another.
The company initially blamed the problems on "exceptional demand" - but in a statement on Monday, Ubisoft admitted that it had been targeted.
"Ubisoft would like to apologise to anyone who could play Assassin's Creed 2 or Silent Hunter 5 yesterday," it said. "Servers were attacked and while the servers did not go down, service was limited from 2.30pm to 9.30pm Paris time."
"Ninety-five percent of players were not affected, but a small group of players attempting to open a game session did receive denial of service errors."
The attack itself brings into question the company's decision to roll out its controversial digital rights management (DRM) to try and stop its games from being illegally copied.
Although the games themselves do not involve online play, the sign-in system is required for anybody playing titles like Assassin's Creed 2, which has sold more than 8m copies worldwide since it was release in November.
The constant tension between publishers, consumers and pirates has caused problems in the past - such as when Electronic Arts released Spore, a highly-anticipated evolutionary simulator that required online validation before it could be played. After complaints from thousands of users, the company eventually relaxed the rules.
But Ubisoft's system has caused extra irritation with players because it means that the titles cannot be used at all without a constant internet connection - a particularly drastic requirement given that the company says there are actually no cracked versions of the games in question in the wild.
The same denial of service technique employed by the Ubisoft attackers is often used by hackers and blackmailers to threaten online businesses, or by those protesting against web sites or companies.
And despite the company's assurances that only a handful of players were affected, however, it appears that the problems may not yet be over.
On Monday some users reported similar difficulties, leading the company to confirm via Twitter that "our servers are under attack again" and that "we're working on it".
GamesDigital rights managementPiracyBobbie Johnson
Advert suggests Apple wants tablet computer to go mainstream
Apple ran its first TV ad for the iPad during last night's Oscars coverage, while the company's founder, Steve Jobs, was spotted at the event. But while past campaigns won viewers over with their creative inspiration, this time Apple's ad seemed rather basic.
The ad positions the iPad as a device for private entertainment. That's it. You see the airbrushed hands of a man at home picking up the iPad to check out videos, read the New York Times, flip through book pages, check his private mail, and so on.
Apple has aired iPhone commercials during previous Oscars as it often uses high profile TV events to advertise its products and services. Its excellent 1984 ad that launched the Macintosh computer premiered during the third quarter of the Super Bowl.
Compared with the creativity of the 1984 commercial, the new ad for the iPad is rather disappointing, but it suggests Apple wants the iPad to go mainstream. The tablet computer will go on sale on 3 April in the US for $499, and hit the stores in the UK and other international locations in late April.
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After ten years of tinkering with DNA in a Rhode Island lab, a top fish boffin claims he has created a genetically enhanced mutant supertrout.?
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Home Secretary Alan Johnson has given Parliament some details on the most recent breaches of the various identity databases held by his ministry.?
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An Estonian virus writer has been jailed for two and a half years for creating a Windows worm family that launched denial of service attacks on the websites of a local insurance firm and ISP.?
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Shadow chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne claimed today that the Conservative party, if elected to form the next government, would meet its "ambition" of ensuring that the next generation of "Googles, Microsofts and Facebooks" were British companies.?
The government expects to have issued 17 million ID cards by 2017, Home Secretary Alan Johnson told the Commons yesterday.?
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Virgin Media is to see whether it can string up extensions to its fibre-optic network to Britain's telegraph poles in a bid to explore ways of bringing high-speed broadband to rural communities.?
The power of collaboration within unified communications
A European committee is calling for a community-wide ban on the Mosquito device which gets rid of teenagers by emitting an irritating buzzing noise that older people cannot hear, even though the device has the backing of Home Secretary Alan Johnson.?
What is your recession sales strategy?
Consumers really do want to access internet video on their tellies, market watcher In-Stat has concluded.?
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The Catholic Church's top exorcist has warned that Satan is alive and well and causing a whole load of problems at the Holy See.?
What is your recession sales strategy?
Tory peer and shadow security minister Baroness Pauline Neville Jones has set out her party's thoughts on cyber war and defence. Unfortunately once the waffle is stripped away there's pretty much nothing there.?
Offloading malware protection to the cloud
Japanese phone co KDDI has been telling the BBC that its latest phones can sense when an employee is slacking off.?
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Guessing the answer to common password reset questions is far easier than previously thought, according to a new study by computer science researchers.?
Offloading malware protection to the cloud
Microsoft has now slotted MySpace updates into its Outlook application.?
Offloading malware protection to the cloud
It's not Arc, it's Move, Sony revealed yesterday when it took the wraps off its Wii-style motion controller system for the PlayStation 3.?
Web threats: Why conventional protection doesn't work
American computer boffins say they have developed new software which makes programming of multi-processor machines much easier.?
What is your recession sales strategy?
