coming up on Tech news today why Steve balmer’s leaving Microsoft and who might replace him Amazon testing a wireless service and apple gets Mappy all that more coming up netcasts you love from people you trust this is Twi bandwidth for Tech news today is provided by cashfy at c.com [Music] this is Tech news today for Friday August 23rd 2013 Tech news today is brought to you by gazelle the fast and simple way to sell your used gadgets find out what your used Samsung Galaxy iPhone and other smartphones are worth at gazelle.com welcome to Tech news today I’m Tom Merritt I’m sarahan and I’m Alex simple temporary Jason for today yeah Jason’s off aaz is off but we got a Allstar cast to help bring you the top Tech stories of the news it’s starting with the top 10 of the day in the [Music] newss that’s how the internet felt exploding when Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer announced his retirement from Microsoft within the next 12 months Balmer will step down when a new CEO has been found a special committee to find a replacement will be led by independent board director John Thompson and include chairman Bill Gates Balmer said Microsoft is transitioning into a devices and services company and Balmer said in his goodbye email quote we need a CEO who will be here longer term for this new Direction well in other news Apple’s lost as hell and it’s not going to take it anymore so it bought another map app this time the company is called Embark and it builds free Transit apps to help smartphone users navigate public transportation seems to be something that people like to do former Wall Street reporter Jessica Le Wall Street Journal reporter rather Jessica leson says her sources tell her the company plans to directly integrate embar technology into Apple Maps Bloomberg reports Amazon tested a wireless network on a spectrum owned by global Star Satellite the test took place in Cupertino California near Amazon’s lab 126 which designs and Engineers Kindle devices Global star has applied to the FCC to transition 80% of their satellite Spectrum to terrestrial low power service or tlps which could serve as an alternative to Wi-Fi Lenovo just wants you to be happy so the company will start offering start menus on Windows 8 PCS but this isn’t the whole pseudo start icon thing coming to Windows 8.1 no this is the actual start menu replacement software sort of coming with all new Lenova Windows PCS Lenova partnered with San Diego California based sweet labs to bundle its Pokey start menu software into new units along with sweet labs own app store Google bought patents from technology manufacturer foxcon for technology to generate quote a virtual image and is superimposed on a real world view Bloomberg and Financial Times reported earlier this year that the wearable glasses will be manufactured by foxcon in California which gives Google the chance to say the device was made in the USA police affidavits related to the raid on kim.com Mansion point to New Zealand Police and spy agencies tapping directly into un United States surveillance systems such as prism to capture email and other traffic Keith ing made the discovery on his blog called on point that the organized and financial crime Agency New Zealand or afans requested assistance from the government Communications Security Bureau or gcsb the country’s signals intelligence unit which is a charge of surveilling the Pacific region under the five eyes agreement the US Department of Justice on Friday filed a revised proposal remedy for Apple in the ebook case proposal is a new word that I just created Apple was found guilty in July of conspiring with Publishers to set ebook prices doj still wants Apple to drop inapp purchasing restrictions for competitors as well as restrict Publishers from using agency pricing for up to five years the new proposal reduces the injunction term from 10 years to five and staggers negotiation with Publishers and ask for an external monitor the Department of Justice included a 2010 email from Steve Jobs in their proposal as further evidence that Apple instituted inapp purchasing restrictions as retaliation against Amazon Pandora just had a healthy quarter and wants to celebrate Pandora executive said in an earnings call yesterday that they will lift the 40-hour monthly cap on free mobile listening that was instated back in February and this is actually the second time Pandora has instituted a free cap and then lifted it again it last lifted the cap in September 2011 so you can stream stream stre stream your way to shapely hips and thighs I will Google launched the latest beta that’ll be weird Google launched the latest beta of Chrome for desktop and Android today this releas is the first Chrome for Android to support webgl by default a number of new swipe gestures come along as well like swiping horizontally across the top Toolbar to switch between tabs and dragging vertically down from the toolbar to enter the tab switcher view the MakerBot digitizer is coming to a home office near you if you have $1,400 that is it’ll start shipping in October and what’s special about this machine is it’s designed to allow replication of objects without any need for the user to learn anything about 3D modeling software or have any special expertise works by pointing several lasers at an object and then detecting Contours in the surface allows users to upload their 3D designs directly to thingiverse a website where 3D designs can be shared this episode of tech news today brought to you by gazelle do you want the new Samsung Galaxy S 4 or maybe the iPhone 5S that is purportedly coming HTC1 do you do you want to upgrade but you’re like I’ve got this old phone and I don’t have enough cash well got your solution right here sell the old phone on gazelle hasslefree get the money and buy the new phone and you may say well now wait a minute Tom how’s that going to work I don’t want to be without a phone you don’t have to be lock in your quote go to gazelle.com tell them what kind of device you have and lock in your quote for 30 days you’ve got 30 days to get your new phone that’ last you beyond the purported purported September 10th announcement uh that’s supposedly coming from Apple or allow you to get whatever phone you want transfer all your data get your new phone number over there and then you send the old phone to gazelle and they’ll pay you fast they’ll turn it around by check by PayPal or you actually get an extra 5% with an Amazon gift card and if you’re like Tom Tom Tom I want to sell a tablet so you you aren’t helping me gazelle’s now buying back a large selection of tablets in addition to the iPad you can now sell to gazelle select Samsung Google Nexus Kindle Fire Microsoft Surface and Asus Tablets you get paid fast you get paid in cash find out what your iPhone your Samsung and other Android smartphones are worth take a minute go to gazelle.com and find out so your used Samsung Galaxy iPhone today do it right now you can do it while you’re listening unless you’re driving then wait till you get home gazelle.com g- a z ll.com and we thank them for their support of tech news today joining us now to gather round the round table and talk about the stories of the day Lamar Wilson you know him from this week in YouTube or maybe from his YouTube channel at Lamar Wilson youtube.com/ Lamar Wilson how’s it going Lamar thanks for joining us hey thanks for having me here I’m I’m I’m excited today is a big day yeah it is we got we got all kinds of stuff and of course it’s Friday which means Len Peralta internet cartoonist extraordinaire is joining us to draw Court sketch like representations of Steve Balmer yes I’m really looking forward to doing it I know we have a lot to talk about so let’s get right into it yeah let’s get into it and uh talking about Steve Balmer retiring earlier today we did a twit live special with Mary Joe Foley from all about microsoft.com and Paul thorat both co-hosts of Windows weekly and Paul’s joining us now to talk about this a little bit Paul from wisp.com thanks for joining us Paul absolutely so Microsoft Steve Balmer we heard in the news views retiring he’s been CEO since January of 2000 he’s been at Microsoft since 1980 he was Employee 30 and he said my original thoughts on timing would have had my retirement happen in the middle of our company’s transformation to a device and services company we need a CEO who will be here longer term for this new Direction so what does this mean why is Steve Balmer stepping down and why is he doing it like this that’s the big question I’m not really sure we could answer either one of those unfortunately I mean there’s so many questions and so few answers here I mean he in his letter to employees he explained why now which is what you just uh stepped through a little bit there that this transition is going to take a certain amount of time and and his plan was not to be around for all of that but as to the um you know why and and what he might do after Microsoft who Microsoft might uh find to replace them those are all open questions we talked a little bit this morning in the special about the the Oddity of him not saying what he’s going to do next there’s no no talk of him getting a board seat or staying on as an adviser of any kind and we we don’t have any hint do we no and and when you look back in time when Bill Gates was CEO for Microsoft for such a long period of time Balmer was from most of that time the very clear number two and was always the ER parent and as we move forward in time to balmer’s tenure as CEO U there was never that never once did we have that person there were a couple of actually you know actually now now that I’ve said that there were a couple people who came on temporarily who I thought maybe would have risen into the ranks and become that person but it never really materialized and after Steve sinowski left last year that was probably the last one where a lot of people had expected him to take over but U yeah there’s no clear air and and they’re searching for one now no no chance of Bill Gates coming back we can be safely say that probably not likely that sinowski would come back special committee led by John Thompson he’s the board’s lead in independent board of directors director chairman Bill Gates on that committee Chuck nooski and Steve lusco they’ve hired hydri and struggles International the recruiting firm which is a great name uh if you had to make a a guess on the best bet who do you think will probably step into this role oh I hate to even guess at that I mean I Mary Joe pointed out a couple people earlier who she thought that would be great uh choices and I agree with both of those so one of them would be Tony Bates who most recently ran Skype and the other one is saasha nadala who runs the service and uh I’m sorry servers and tools business at Microsoft um I actually think they would almost be better off going with someone external to the company but based on the way they made this uh announcement I don’t I don’t actually see that happening it does seem like and we talked about this a lot in the special Microsoft is under the influence of Bill Gates still as chairman of the board and he’s got to sign off on whoever the replacement is so they’re going to stick with this devices and services strategy that Balmer put into place it sort of hog ties a new CEO a little bit yeah I mean it’s fair to say that Gates kind of hog tied bomber as well when you think about it I mean his influence over the company was obviously pretty vast although you know again to an outsider it seems like Gates was involved very heavily in his outside work and was not really involved in the day-to-day stuff at Microsoft but the fact that he’s uh doing what he’s doing right now and is involved in the search for the next CEO kind of shows you they they want some form of a a succession that makes sense given the history of the company do do you think there’s any uh is there any we talked about some wild conspiracy theories is is there anything nefarious behind here I know we have a story today that that Microsoft is under investigation for bribery allegations in Russia and Pakistan probably has nothing to do with this a lot of people are joking that Balmer came on about the rise of Windows XP Windows xpn support April 8th 2014 we we just really don’t know what’s going on here no I like the area 51 stuff but I I think that you know the the bribery thing Microsoft is a ginormous company this kind of stuff has happened in in various locals around the world in the past I mean obviously that has nothing to do with it um XP obviously has nothing to do with it but you know I do wonder about timing and of course I’m you know human like anyone else I do wonder about these weird coincidences I think that it’s possible that he intended to do this last year but he wanted to make sure that Steven sinowski was out of the way uh so that he wouldn’t have a chance of uh taking over his CEO which a lot of people assumed he was going to do we do we think he’s it’s actually going to take him 12 months to leave I I think by saying I will leave within one year of today it really sort of is designed to take the drama out of the whole thing yep you we’ve got a whole year to expect him to go but I wonder if he’ll actually be here next summer yeah I don’t think it’s going to take that long I think sometimes just by publicly stating something you’re giving the impetus for to happen you know that they could have done this privately but then maybe they would have taken their time now the eyes of the world are going to be on Microsoft shareholders are looking at mic soft and I think it may drive them to make that decision a little more quickly so I I don’t think he’ll be out before you know the holidays or whatever but I I don’t think he’s going to be here you know 11 months from now a stock price had a big jump when this was announced up up 8% it’s now right now as we’re recording about 6.84% so it’s it’s pulling back a little bit but generally it’s too bad he couldn’t leave every day you know the stock market and the general analyst reaction is this is a good thing well I think think the the problem for Microsoft uh over the past 10 well that’s not fair to say one of the problems for Microsoft over the past 10 years has been that stock price and it’s hard for the company to do something that will move the stock um we talked earlier about this notion that Microsoft every so often will come up with some new version of Windows and some new version of office and some new version of server and those products are interesting and they’re very predictable and they’re very safe and they generate a lot of revenues and that’s great but that’s not the type of thing that drives stock prices up and so I think the stock price change that you’re seeing today is a temporary but is B more just chain chained to this notion that Microsoft is finally doing something major you know good or bad like this is a this is a big change and this big change is not the type of thing we associate with Microsoft C can you can you see them uh really streamlining behind the the whole Xbox line and maybe they just need a younger hipper guy to kind of take that to the next generation is is that kind of thinking probably of bomber I hope so and that’s the theory behind like a person like Tony G Tony Bates Who is younger and represents this kind of cloud first mentality um I do think they need new blood and that’s the thing I I I think ideally Microsoft actually takes someone from outside the company I just don’t see that happening so uh hopefully they do go in that direction I hope it’s not Ben Affleck by the way quite a coincidence that he was announced as the new Batman same time Balmer I mean have you seen them in the same room I don’t no that’s a good point that is just not okay yeah no it’s not weird weird feelings Mary Joe fulley co-host of Windows weekly with Paul has a uh an interview with Steve Walmer that she had today so look for that at allabout microsoft.com or zdnet.com and she she mentioned this morning when we were talking to her that he sounded kind of modlin about the whole thing and guess to be expected of course yeah it’s a transition and you know he’s been part of Microsoft for all of his adult life you know he’s been at the company for 30 years and has been CEO for what thir 12 13 years I can’t do basic math um yeah I I the fact that he has no idea what he’s going to do Post Microsoft kind of tells you where his head’s at I mean I I really that part at least is honest I really think he doesn’t even know how to approach a post Microsoft world so that’s going to be a big change for him I think we need a we need a pool to start start a pool we can take Mary Joe’s list of possible candidates from her column this morning and and start start placing Wagers are you in yeah it’s like a Deadpool but in Reverse it’s a it’s a Rejuvenation pool back to life pool I don’t know a promotion pool yeah well I’m sure you’ll be working on this story uh for quite a while so keep folks keep an eye on windsup site.com Paul thanks for joining us today thank you very much for having me on thanks Paul absolutely and windows weekly twit.tv ww I’m sure they’ll be talking about it still next week on that episode as well let’s uh let’s get into some other stories Jessica Lon over at her new blog she’s a former Wall Street Journal reporter always breaking stories that that blog now uh has another one about Apple buying Embark a map app yeah and it’s funny because Embark I’m actually quite familiar with because when Apple Maps first launched and everybody went it’s awful it’s not ready for prime time uh I spent a bunch of time downloading as many other map Alternatives I could on my iPhone to see what was best and Embark was one of them what it is is a a variety a suite really of Transit apps uh over about a dozen US cities so there’s one for the BART system here in the Bay Area there’s one for the Chicago public transport line New York Etc uh they’re all separate apps it’s not just one app it’s basically uh you know it’s geolocated uh based on where you live although the team is located here in Silicon Valley small team and apparently according to lesson sources this will will directly become part of Apple Maps so Embark technology will just be part of Apple Maps which is a good thing Transit is a big part of Google Maps and a big part of what was wrong with Apple Maps certainly from the get-go what’s interesting is that the iOS apps are still available in the App Store uh although the Android apps have apparently been pulled Alex I don’t know if you can see uh this is actually a trip that I used on Embark just a few days ago when I was coming back from uh from a trip I was at SFO and I had to uh go to my nearest B stop share it again if you can oh okay uh let’s see where are we I’m sharing to Maring On Studio Apple TV you should see it there yeah there you go so yeah this is uh this is actually sort of a backwards but if I’m going from my nearest BART station to San Francisco I say I want to depart now go ahead and plan my trip you get a variety of leaving times based on when you want to leave how much the trip is going to cost you’ve got system Maps again this is I’m looking at my local Bart Transit uh situation but you get an idea for the kind of uh the kind of information that you would get this is a great app I love it it works really well in fact it works uh better than what the comparable apps that are made by the own public transportation systems uh look like so I think this is a great get uh for Apple I guess the question is you know is does it make more sense for Apple to buy a company like Embark rather than build it inter I’m sure they tried Lamar what do you think I was just going to say the same thing I I I think they tried it and realized man it’d be so much easier just to get somebody else’s technology and Apple has so much money it’s like what yeah just just buy it integrate it because that’s one of the things that’s just hugely missing I I don’t think they thought that process out that people actually take public transportation so yeah they had to buy it I think this was a good purchase and I’m hoping that what they were doing was already integrating this technology so when an announcement comes in a couple weeks they can just say hey we have Transit now that they’ve been already working on it and they’re good-look apps right I mean I use the transit feature of Google Maps a lot I’ve used that in New York City a ton and I I like it it’s fine but it doesn’t it doesn’t look as good as that and and if you can go and bring out Apple Maps and say guess what this is the best map for your phone for transit in the United States that’s going to be a big win to get people to pay attention to Apple Maps and see if it’s improved in other ways yeah I I it’s interesting Mauricio moss in chat says this app app actually doesn’t work well in New Yorker or DC that I haven’t tried I think it certainly works well in the area that I have used it maybe that has something to do with the company being based in Silicon Valley I don’t know but I think at this point Apple uh could use all the help that they can get and this isn’t the only I mean they’ve acquired quite a few companies now they’ve acquired Place base they’ve acquired poly 9 C3 technology for that very cool flyover 3D Tech that everybody forgot about but was very very cool when they showed it off last year uh Wi-Fi slam locationary hop stop so this is clearly they’re taking it seriously um and you know we’ve heard that you know Apple Maps is not as bad as it used to be so I guess that’s a good thing yep all they need to do is acquire Google and their help search that would be great so get on that they almost have enough cash they just need to drive down the Google price a little uh Amazon doing some interesting testing we heard that news fuse a wireless network on the global star Spectrum some of you may know Global star they’re a satellite Provision Company similar to idium and they took a test near Cupertino which is also near lab 126 Amazon’s Kindle arm Global star applied to FCC in November to convert 80% of their satellite Spectrum to terrestrial they want to use something called terrestrial low power service which uses approximately 25 MHz of their Spectrum as a Wi-Fi replacement and and the cool thing about tlps is you just need a firmware upgrade to make current 80211 compliant devices work so you wouldn’t have to sell new hardware to people people would just do an update and they’d be able to use this the O odd side of it is global star really wants to use this as a wholesaler they want to lease it out to Enterprises so their push is we want to make this work in congested areas in buildings where Enterprise has a hard time providing Wi-Fi to their offices Etc so I wouldn’t see it you maybe coffee shops maybe something like that would use it Starbucks might might roll it out I wouldn’t see it as something you’re going to be using a lot personally like in your house but you may take advantage of it when you’re out and about so what’s Amazon up to are they going to start providing a Wi-Fi like service or are they going to build it into their Kindle devices which is you know might be why lab 126 is doing this test Lamar what’s what’s your best guess I am I’m going to say I’m going to agree with you if you’re agreeing with with that that notion that they’re going to come up with their own wireless devices I I think remember when Amazon had too much server space and they say hey let’s lease it out and and now they’re you know uh Netflix and so many other companies are running and inde dependent on them and I I definitely see this happening we need something else other than the carriers because they are horrible so if Amazon can do this if Google is already starting it I say go for it if we can get cheaper uh spectrums out there I’m all for it I will I’ll sell myself I I I’ll be the first person to test it out I don’t care about NSA just give me some free stuff doesn’t it seem like Amazon it would make a lot more sense for Amazon to say would you like Wi-Fi well then you’ll love our new Kindle I mean the whole thing is they want to sell the devices so that they can sell uh you books and services and products and and all that good stuff so I think it makes more sense for them to bundle it within something that you have to buy from Amazon rather than this Starbucks Wi-Fi provided by Amazon you’re welcome Goodwill you know that’s that sounds really nice but I don’t think that makes as much sense for them as a company yeah I I think what I what I guessed when I saw this is remember Kindle is bundled uh in their eink versions with a connection in some cases now they put a cap on those connections but they used to sell it unlimited so maybe Amazon’s thinking well if we can roll out tlps in enough places and that’s a big bet Global star has to also provide the transmission of this thing and this thing’s more like Wi-Fi than it is LTE so that that’s an interesting aspect of it but maybe Amazon says well we’ll build it in too so we’ll have we’ll have an LTE radio in Kindles going forward and we’ll have the ability we’ll put the firmware in so that you can get not just Wi-Fi but tlps and anywhere that Global star is providing this an Amazon user will be able to log on for free and it expand the system the other side of this is maybe Amazon’s doing a cell phone which we’ve heard lots of robers about Bloomberg reported that before did that excite you yeah yeah I I was I was just going to say a Kindle phone uh as some variant has to be coming and then you could pretty much get internet anywhere without necessarily having to be bothered with a carrier if they uh do the Spectrum right and yeah does excite me I I would I’m excited that you know this technology is going forward we’re less dependent on the carriers as you can see I do not like carriers they don’t carry so well anymore as they us to well who is anyone out there being like you know his awesome carriers they are just looking out for us has to be somebody and again it’s a little bit confusing and and it’s a fine line between this because I was I’m talking uh with Uncle Bick to in the chat room right now about he’s like well this sounds to me like ymax there are some definite similarities in the sort of the wholesale model of this but the difference is while this can go three to five times the length of Wi-Fi it’s still more like Wi-Fi it’s more at least Global star is positioning it as as hey we can help you cut through the congestion and provide Wi-Fi signals to Wi-Fi devices but who’s to say uncle b 2 doesn’t have a point and they start they start expanding it and saying hey it’s like Municipal Wi-Fi was thought to possibly be in the past where we can just blanket coverage everywhere and it is essentially as the same as a mobile data technology so both sides of this are intriguing what Amazon might be doing for it with Kindle or a possible Kindle phone what Global star is going to do as a service provider is interesting as well more competition in in wireless data Carriage the better I think we all agree on that Pandora is making things cheaper too Lamar you’re going to like this they’re lifting the cap on free listening Sarah yeah as I mentioned they had a good quarter uh in their earnings call they uh they they beat the uh the the streets expectations and they said we’re going to lift the 40-hour monthly cap on free mobile listing so that’s anybody who doesn’t have a Pandora One account who doesn’t pay for that it’s pretty much pretty much all of us most of us uh on free mobile listening they had announced it back in February and pretty much said listen this is just one of these cost measures that we have to in state it’s going to affect a very very very small number of our users because 40 hours for a lot of people is is quite a bit but it is the second time that Pandora has reversed this they instituted a free cap lifted it again then instituted again and then lifted it so they flip flapped a couple times and uh on the earnings call they listed two reasons for that they said the cap was a blunt tool for limiting usage and cost but the company had developed better techniques like skip limits that control costs without affecting The Listener experience much so they felt like they could lift the cap again and that also their ad business is better so Pandora can now monetize those hours from from from 41 onward at a much higher rate meaning the 41st hour and what was interesting also is that when they said that they instituted the mobile cap their usage dropped 10% now that’s kind of interesting obviously you say well obviously they want usage to go back up 10% although they said it’s probably not going to work that way because there are many factors that may relate to users users may have dropped out because they said ah we got a mobile cap don’t like it anymore they may have switched to other services who knows they may have just not used Pandora anymore uh but their revenue uh is up 50% year-over-year company says they’re going to be profitable for the full year for Pandora that’s really good what was never said though and I think is interesting is this seems like something that Pandora probably looked around and said okay well what are certain caps that let’s say an iTunes radio will also not have we’re going to have to lift that so at least we’re on a a Level Playing Field with the service that hasn’t launched yet but it’s going to be a direct competitor Pandora like no other service has been before Lamar do you think Pandora is sort of forced to stop capping us so that iTunes radio looks less attractive well you stole my my thing that was what I was going to say and you read too much into the Artic no but um words right out of his mouth Sarah no absolutely they they they’re not stupid they see that coming ahead on September 10th or whenever it ends up being released and of course it most likely will not have a cap I used to love Pandora I I still think it has it has a you know a soft spot in my heart for it but you know I use Google music now um you know I’ll try out the iTunes radio I I think they have to stay competitive with with the market but you know there’s a lot of uh Pandora lovers out there and I I think it’s a service that’s going to stay around they got to stay competitive uh but yeah they they knew what they were doing I I think this is fairly transparent as a response to iTunes radio Pandora pays a lot of attention because I’m sure they know that a large portion of Their audience comes from IOS I’m guessing iOS users in a lot of cases but I also think it’s interesting when you think about Pandora’s consistent objection to paying the higher royalty rates that they say oh we’re making a better job of monetizing our advertisements you know that the industry is going to LEAP on that and say see they’re not having any problem making money so there’s really no reason to change any of these royalty rates at all yeah I think it’s you know it’s good Pandora’s figuring out how to get profitable though that’s something that even though they’ve brought in so much money paying out those royalties had always had always hampered the company so that they’re on the right track uh but it it’ll be interesting to see how many people say oh iTunes radio is so good and all the ways Pandora isn’t and you know what it’s going to look like next quarter for them Liberation music has sent a takedown notice to the wrong guy and they’re ending up in court uh they sent a dmca takedown to YouTube about a 2010 Lawrence leig lecture called that leig posted to his YouTube channel in June 2013 now the lecture uses Snippets of a song called listo Mania by Phoenix that Liberation music holds the rights to is yeah I like that song too it’s a great song leig and the eff are now suing Liberation media for violating the dmca with an overly aggressive takedown leing used a small portion of the song in his lecture and he says I have got a fair use defense here it was it was a small enough portion that it that it’s you know its use is allowed it doesn’t compete with the market for the song in any way the lecture is an entirely New Creation I wasn’t derivative of Phoenix’s song and I’m not trying to sell the lecture it is an educational material that is available it meets all four factors it seems like of fair use the way the dmca works if someone believes that a copyright infringement has happened they send a notice for takedown if the person who is accused of infringing doesn’t believe that it is uh infringing they send a counter notice and then if the original Notifier says Nope that is definitely infringement you have to take it down then it can be resolved in court and that’s what no one ever does but leig is doing at 512f the section of the dmca that requires copyright owners to pay damages when they go too far in issuing a takedown this isn’t the first time it’s gone to court lens versus universal the famous dancing baby case uh was filed back in 2007 it’s still winding its way through Court one of the problems there is universal backed down quickly when they got the counter notice so there’s not as clear of a case here Liberation threatened to sue leig if he reposted after the counter notice and now Le’s like you you have just broken 512f I think you know we can all wonder what’s going to happen in court who’s going to win Etc but do you agree uh Lamar that this is kind of a watershed test even if leig wins though does that actually pave the way for somebody like you or I who doesn’t have money to take people to court to make better use of fair use absolutely because you know as a YouTube Creator myself I I have to you know know walk very carefully uh through YouTube because of this and you know any you know we deal with that with this week in YouTube where any one thing can take our video down and and they don’t expect they know most people are not going to challenge it in court because they can’t afford to so once they get challenged though like I’m glad this guy is challenging them uh you know they they may back down from that but yeah yeah this this is a problem because I I was reading through this and he he like you said he meets every thing for fair use and it’s just it it’s just not right how these companies are are coming in and what it is is some of these companies now Federation Media or whatever whatever they call um Liberation Liberation sorry uh Liberation media may have legitimate case but there are so many of these other companies that would just go in and and just do claims just because and well immediately take your video down like you Google will not question it until you counter and it’s a big problem I’m hoping that this set a president for us to to have a better say and our videos getting taken out before we have any kind of response to it yeah it’s it’s unfortunate that this may drag out for a long time as as the previous case had but in general I think it’s the the the big problem and Lamar I know you know this because you you know a lot of other YouTubers and and people just don’t understand what their rights are fair use is a gray area I mean even for us sometimes we’re you know we we have to we have to fight to get our videos uh put back up after they were taken down and in general I think the main problem is when a large company says hey you can’t do that a lot of people say oh okay I you know they don’t really know any better or they don’t feel that they have the the the the might behind them to fight anybody in court and so it ends up being a bit of a bully situation because the larger companies for the most part usually know what they’re getting away with um and and taking advantage of people so I I don’t know exactly what what the what the solution is because yeah YouTube isn’t going to like enact some sort of a fair use school we can all graduate from and then we’re all in agreement uh it just doesn’t work that way so I think it’s some some way for the public to be more uh educated is the right uh answer but I I don’t know exactly how to do that yeah it makes me wonder go ahead son no go ahead Lamar uh it makes me wonder if there’s some kind of payout that happens if you get so many takedowns a month because there’s some companies who are just devoted to just taking things down and I’m wondering what is their motivation uh behind it and and so there may be some behind the scenes things that that are nefarious and why they’re so aggressive and he take down so I’m hoping a court case kind of find that out for us yeah that’s the thing is like what what what what was it about the speech that that that scared everybody so much probably nothing it’s just like hey that song you can’t do that take it down yeah I can imagine that there would be a little salivating on the part of someone in the industry if they thought they caught lar Lawrence lesk the champion of fair use and Creative Commons violating copyright and they could prove it I I don’t think they understood first of all how much Lawrence lesing knows about this area the law and and and what they were what they were doing when they decided that he had violated it I I think it may have just been a lawyer who didn’t really understand the situation very much because what they’re trying to do with all these takedowns is set the limit of fair uses far out as possible so that everybody feels like they have to license works and pay the industry if they use them and this is I think this is a very important case because if leig wins if it does go to court and leig wins it does set a precedent and whenever there’s a precedent out there companies just naturally become a little more conservative in how they act in a way that might violate a court case that already exists in court law even if there’s not that much threat of somebody like me or Lamar or Sarah going out and suing somebody it just changes the nature of things uh and if you would like to understand fair use a little more and the four factors that this this case shows are all in effect go to Fair use. stanford.edu there they have an excellent description of copyright and particularly the four factors of fair use and how they play into things let’s finish up with Google wanting to become your dictionary they’ve kind of become a lot of people’s spelling dictionary already yeah I mean let’s say you there’s a word and you sort of are like what does it mean am I am I spelling it right and you type it into Google search very often right at the top you get the little definition you go yeah yeah that’s the word I was thinking of well Google announced on a Google+ a blog post that their word search results will now include not just definitions but also synonyms for a particular word sample sentences that the word might be used in some description of the word atmology so word nerds will love this even includes a chart showing how commonly the word has been used over time it little sort of a little bell curve it’s just a popular word when did the word Peak and you can quickly translate the word into other languages that’s very helpful I’m constantly trying to do that maybe I do that more than other people but I love it you can tap on a microphone uh in the search bar if you’re obviously using the mobile version to hear the results spoken aloud but what’s interesting and there’s a bit of a a lively debate happening in that original Google+ post about this people saying well where’s all this information coming from in one case someone says I think that’s coming directly from the Oxford dictionary and that’s all do you have the rights to this where is where’s the credit going and is this coming from some sort of weird Data Bank where we might actually get results that are not accurate in all cases of course sometimes there there are questions as to whether a word is officially a dictionary word or not but in general I think this is great uh this is this is information I’m looking up somewhat regularly guys especially since I do a lot of writing uh any any issues with this Lamar are you a are you a word nerd as well I am I I used to be uh Elementary School teacher and heavy the vocabulary so of atmology and all that that it I’m G to have fun with this and it’s uh it’s going to kill a lot of apps it’s going it just it just is you know even some of the free ones there’s just no incentive to use them now and um that that could be scaring uh some of the people uh it was also mentioned that this is us only and one of the comments was like you know the world is bigger than America Google and that’s always one of the arguments uh but yeah they have to start somewhere I have no problems Tom yeah I hope they actually expand this and make it available for other languages in other parts of the world but they’re probably experimenting in in the US because they feel like that’s that’s the easiest Market to knock off because that’s where they are I also want to know sources though and and that that is a good that’s a really good question I’m looking at the example on Google plus there’s the fortuitous definition and it looks very official but where is this coming from you know I I think that is important not only for me to know that I can trust it but also to give credit if they’re pulling it from from some other area uh I especially with the dictionary I think that’s extremely but that aside that’s my only big criticism of it otherwise I think it’s it’s a good service you know helping people to be able to look up the meanings of words will help us all to have more solipsistic arguments over the semantics of what we’re debating what exactly but he said let’s move on to the calendar uh the Risen Edge uh goes into effect on Sunday the 25th that is their cheap phone replacement plan we’ve spoke about in the past and starting next week VM world starts in San Francisco it starts on Monday the 26th and runs through the 29th big big big uh to-do from VMware it’s virtual but they’ll be there in person that’s right it’s always confusing let’s see what’s incoming incoming message got an email from Bran who says in episode 380 380 that can’t be right you mentioned a possible future where your encrypted files are held on a cloud that’s distributed among many strangers there are two platforms that we are and we’re doing the exact way freet and woa woa is a cloud storage similar to Dropbox that encrypted your files before sending them off used to allow you to offer some sort of your hard drive space to Wala then they’d be stored then they would store encrypted files on multiple hard drives that it would always be available to the user who uploaded it freet is similar storing encrypted files on multiple computers nobody can get at the files on their computer they’re always available though when you want that file so the concept is being played out right now it’s not not perfect but it’s a promising concept no those are great examples Brian and that is exactly what these folks are talking about is we have these nasset beginnings of the kind of Internet that we’re talking about how do we make that easier how do we make that so that you don’t have to be interested you don’t even have to have a lot of tech skills to take advantage of the kinds of storage that wall and fret use and I I know probably for Brian and and and and other folks in the audience it doesn’t seem that hard uh but they want to go even farther they want to make as dead simple as going to drive.google.com and signing up for Google Docs but absolutely great examples if people are looking for what already exists in Wala and freet good stuff got another email from James who says Hey guys on your story about Yahoo having the most traffic on the web in July you didn’t mention Yahoo was expiring usernames unless people logged into Yahoo They also opened up the expired usernames for the taking in July I would think the expiring usernames would have caused the web traffic to be higher than usual but the numbers for August will tell if it was only temporary great point because the number was uniqu right yeah that’s probably exactly what’s going on that definitely has an effect right unless they secretly are roled out geoc cities again and we didn’t know about it if only I want my my Athens site back I was in the Athens well then who are all those geoc cities people that heard about it yeah secret testers no James is right I mean they they went to a massive number of people and said hey do you still want this Yahoo address probably got people to log in for the first time in a long time that would drive your unique’s number up and he and he he phrases it the right way we won’t know how much until August we see if this falls back so it’ll be interesting to watch great email thanks for that and thank you Lamar Wilson for joining us today youtube.com Lamar Wilson for all your stuff twit.tv is it is ITT Twi it’s just YT okay twit.tv anything else going on you want to tell folks about um no you know you can follow me on on Twitter or Google Plus I do both of those pretty frequently and uh yeah I just just happy to be on this going to enjoy the weekend and come back refresh to do more Tech stuff next week excellent we have not forgotten about Len Peralta you might have on the audio podcast but those on the video have been watching his illustrations uh Lyn as usual awesome stuff take us through what you drew today thank you so much well uh you know know uh the big announcement of course with Steve bomber uh leaving Microsoft a lot of speculation of who the new CEO will be well I kind of did a mashup of news here and the new next Microsoft CEO announced is of course Ben Affleck what of course is he saying hi I was in jigle jie because that’s the worst movie ever made in case you forgot in case you forgot who he was but I did that’s hilar um uh this is a pretty simple one uh Apple buying Embark you know this week it’s funny I was using I’ve been using ways ever since we talked about it on the show a couple weeks ago and uh uh and uh and I’m interested to see what happens this is kind of a neat little cartographer uh Apple sort of looking at what’s going to happen uh in the future with the app hope hopefully uh they’ll they’ll have get their act together kind of a Renaissance yes exactly uh Amazon wireless this is a this is I don’t know this was just kind of an interesting thing what would Amazon wireless look like well this is what it would kind of look like it’s a little upside down Amazon I don’t know I thought that was pretty cool I don’t know about you Jeff Bezos I thought the I thought that was a pretty neat little take it’s not it’s going the wrong way but it is of course Amazon branded so Amazon wireless who knows uh the Pandora Pandora’s uh p a new kind of Pandora’s Box is opening of course they’re opening it up for 40 for uh 40 hours there at least so that’s a just you know kind of creepy and weird uh let’s see oh Lawrence leig a little cartoon of Lawrence leig he’s going to be fighting the power this let’s just uh fight the power Larry fight the power at B by invoking a Public Enemy song copyright 1989 and um you should definitely send that to Lawrence lesing I should I should um and then finally the something you wrote in this in the show notes got me thinking about this one it’s a little bit abstract but the Google dictionary wants to be your Google Wants To Be Your Dictionary I thought Google wants to be my dictionary what I want to be your dictionary baby it’s a you it’s wearing a smoking jacket smoking that went to a whole different place than orig find your words it’s just you know I I was I was running short on time and I thought this is very I know I like it hey Martini in a cigar I’m into alternative come on over Google if you know what I mean tell me my atmology but do you see he’s got the little G worked into his face there I don’t know I thought that was great anyhow um but there you go that’s those are the tech stories of the day drawn by me excellent lenar alta.com the place to find Len Pearl tartsy and we have we have a bit.ly link right bitley bit. twit L yes exactly and you can follow me at uh at Len Peralta I’ll also put a link in the uh in the uh chat room and they can choose which one should go into the online store you know because we have the screenshot up and it’s still the uh the Google dictionary it’s almost like you’ve become the Google dictionary and I am him hey baby what’s happening how you doing uh you could also find a link to lens drawings at the top of our subreddit Tech neww today. rd.com it’s a place where you can not only get that but links from all of the audience thousands of people in there submitting links you can do it too and you should definitely be voting on the links that are submitted so that we know what stories you’re most interested in and helps us create our lineup every day technew today. rd.com you can find us on the web at twit tw. tv/ TNT email us TNT twit.tv and give us a call leave us a voicemail 260 TNT show we will be back on Monday with Randall Bennett as our guest is will still be off but it’ll be fine don’t worry he’ll be back Tuesday we’ll see you [Music] Monday