mark cuban – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Dallas Mavericks Fail To Get Trademark For Its Star Player's Nickname

from the ole dept

We’ve not been shy about pointing out that the recent practice by famous athletes of trademarking their nicknames all seems somewhat silly. The whole thing smacks of some combination of a money-grab over terms often not coined by the athletes themselves, and the kind of protectionism by the famous that is just all the rage these days. A recent incident of this concerning the trademark application for Luka Doncic’s nickname carried with it a twist, however, in that the application was not submitted by Doncic himself, but by the Dallas Mavericks, the team for which he plays. The thrust of our post on the matter was roughly: well, that seems kind of shitty. After all, NBA players tend not to play for the same teams forever, though it’s worth pointing out that the Mavericks pulled this off with Dirk Nowitzki, so there’s that. Still, should Doncic move to another team, what happens to that trademark on his nickname?

Mark Cuban appeared to show up in the comments.

Typical techdirt. Don’t ask why. Dont do any research. Just pretend they know something

We have been grabbing player urls and trademarking and copyrighting player related terms for years.

It’s to protect players.

You know what’s worst than your article ? Some scammer trademarking or copyrighting a nickname or slogan they read about online

All of our players have the right to use them, but never do. They just appreciate that we are looking out for them.

After I was done yawning at the “Typical techdirt” part of the comment, it took me roughly thirty seconds to think up a far more player-friendly option: the team could simply educate its players on how to trademark their own nicknames if they so choose, rather than attempting to trademark them itself. After all, the team is just looking out for the players, right? My research into our own comments tells me that the Mavs do, at least.

It would probably also help protect the players if the team was successful at the trademark process, something that was most certainly not the case this go around.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office denied the Dallas Mavericks’ trademark applications for two of Luka Doncic’s nicknames. The Mavericks sought to acquire the rights THE MATADOR and EL MATADOR, last December. Doncic picked up the nickname of Matador while playing for Real Madrid in Spain before joining the NBA .

According to trademark lawyer Josh Gerben, who has been following the application process, the refusal isn’t a surprise. In a video posted to Twitter, he states that the reason that the applications were rejected was because the USPTO found 20 other preexisting Matador trademarks that it views as too similar to Doncic’s marks.

Gerben went on to note that the team may have made its application harder to approve by packing as many market designations into it as it possibly could. This is somewhat common, but for a mark that is already approved for other markets, this broad shotgun-based approach doesn’t win you any points with the USPTO. It’s also the case that protecting players is not a market unto itself, meaning that the Mavericks would have had to show a real intent to use the marks in the markets requested. Perhaps a failure to do so also counted against the application.

I’ll give Cuban credit where it’s due, however, because often times when he’s quoted I find myself falling just a little bit more in love with him.

For now at least, it doesn’t look like Doncic will have to worry about the Mavericks acquiring the rights to his Matador nickname. The team won’t be challenging the USPTO’s ruling. When contacted, Cuban was blunt about the ruling.

“Shit happens,” Cuban said via email. “Moving on.”

Never change, Mark. Well, maybe just a little…

Filed Under: luka doncic, mark cuban, matador, trademark
Companies: dallas mavericks

Counterpoint: Maybe Athletes Should Rush To The Trademark Office… If They Play For Teams Like The Dallas Mavericks

from the this-isn't-what-we-meant dept

Over the past several years, we’ve covered the increasingly trendy practice of professional athletes rushing to the trademark office to register their nicknames and/or catchphrases. From Anthony Davis’ unibrow, to Bryce Harper’s flippant remarks, to Ryan Lochte channeling his inner bro-ness, up to and including Jeremy Lin’s claim on his portmanteau nickname, we’ve raised our eyebrows at this sort of theory of ownership and protectionism that often times looks to make exclusive money over the coined phrases created by others. This sort of locking up of language was never really the point of trademark law, as we’ve pointed out, and we’ve suggested that athletes engaging in this sort of thing probably isn’t the best thing for the public, the supposed beneficiary of trademark law.

But perhaps we should introduce a caveat in our stance: if you play for the Dallas Mavericks, maybe you should rush to the trademark office. It seems that Luka Doncic, the rookie star of Mark Cuban’s team, has had the trademark rug pulled out from underneath him by his employer.

One person in particular, Mike Pocopio, a development coach on the Mavs’ staff, referred to Doncic as ‘El Matador’ and it stuck.

Now, ‘El Matador’ and ‘The Matador’ have both been trademarked by the Mavs’ after they registered the names with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

According to Josh Gerben, the Mavs want the exclusive rights to the name so, should Doncic leave the Mavs one day, he would no longer be able to call himself ‘El Matador’.

That seems… pretty shitty? We have a rookie athlete doing a great job for his team, building a reputation for himself that results in a nickname, and then his team goes out to lock that nickname up… for what? So that if Doncic goes elsewhere, the team can reapply that nickname to a new player? Come on. What sure seems more likely is that the Mavericks know that Doncic is a thing in basketball circles and want to be able to trade off of their newest star player’s persona to the exclusion of him. Not a great look, honestly.

So, if athletes now want to claim that they are trademarking all of the things because they’re afraid team ownership will undercut them in doing so, that seems valid now. Thanks to the Mavs.

Filed Under: athletes, el matador, luka doncic, mark cuban, trademark
Companies: dallas mavericks

Mark Cuban Still Has Absolutely No Idea How Net Neutrality Works

from the double-down-on-misunderstanding dept

Wed, Nov 29th 2017 10:44am - Karl Bode

To be very clear, there are numerous subjects Mark Cuban has a very solid understanding of, ranging from his support of patent reform and the benefits of improving antiquated film release windows to highlighting the SEC’s disdain for the 14th and 4th Amendments during his fight over insider trading allegations. But when it comes to net neutrality, modern telecom competition, and the problems caused by letting unchecked duopolists like Comcast run amok, Cuban has pretty consistently made it abundantly clear he has absolutely no earthly idea what he’s talking about.

The latest case in point, Cuban trotted out this little gem last week while public outrage at the FCC’s grotesque handout to the telecom sector was peaking:

After taking a pretty severe beating on Twitter, Cuban subsequently doubled down, proclaiming that net neutrality should be killed because, you know, nipplegate happened thirteen years ago:

So look, if you’ve read our primer on net neutrality or paid attention to our coverage of this subject for the last decade, you should know by now that net neutrality violations are just a symptom of the disease that is a lack of competition in the broadband sector. Net neutrality rules were a temporary, imperfect solution to the fact that nobody in either party seriously wants to address this problem because it would stop campaign contributions from flowing. As a result, our state and federal legislative system is systemically infected by lawmakers willing to sell out the public and the internet for some pocket change.

The result of this isn’t pretty. AT&T and Verizon enjoy monopoly control over cell tower backhaul and business data services (BDS). Cable companies like Comcast enjoy a growing monopoly over fixed-line broadband because telcos aka “the market” are refusing to invest in rural and second-tier urban markets. With no competition and apathetic regulators, we’ve witnessed privacy infractions, net neutrality violations, legendarily-awful customer service, deployment redlining, and endless price hikes (again, all just symptoms of a lack of competition and regulatory capture) time, and time, and time again.

This isn’t magically fixed by gutting some modest consumer protections. And keeping net neutrality intact certainly doesn’t “put Donald Trump in control of the Internet.” There’s simply no logical basis for that claim. In fact, passing net neutrality rules is a perfect example of one of the few times over the last twenty years that the FCC actually listened to consumers and was willing to stand up to the nation’s powerful telecom duopoly. Punishing them for this based entirely on your gut feelings and misunderstanding of how the telecom sector works only helps ensure that won’t be happening again anytime soon.

Cuban (who has sidelined as a commercial pitchman for AT&T), subsequently tried to clarify that the real threat to the internet isn’t lumbering telecom monopolies, but Apple and Google app stores:

Let's be clear on NN.
1. No ISP can mess with anything that impacts Apple or Google. Both control the app stores/hardware and operating systems which control the mobile universe (the fastest growing segment of the net and the future w 5g)

— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) November 26, 2017

This idea that the real “neutrality problem” is Google and Apple (“search neutrality” or “app store neutrality”) has long been an ISP-driven bogeyman we’ve deflated time and time again. Users have a choice not to use the Google or Android app stores or devices. They have a choice of search engines. But in telecom, there is no choice. If you’re lucky, you have a choice of a lumbering cable company or a telco that refuses to upgrade its network. Usually they’re engaged in non-price competition because, again, we’ve let them dictate state and federal protectionism for a generation.

Cuban is part of a subset of folks for whom net neutrality challenges their belief that all regulation is automatically always bad and the government is entirely incapable of ever doing good. The problem is that’s not only overly simplistic (it prevents you from actually weighing the merits of each instance of regulation intelligently), it doesn’t really work in the telecom sector. If you obliterated the FCC tomorrow, you’d still be stuck with a lumbering monopoly with a stranglehold over the last mile. A stranglehold that bipartisan corruption on the state and federal level would ensure would never be threatened by disruption or innovation.

Net neutrality protects consumers, small businesses, and startups until we can find a way to drive more competition to the market. Some (including Cuban) seem to labor under the belief that advancements in wireless will have us all swimming in dirt-cheap connectivity in no time, making net neutrality irrelevant. Except wireless connectivity is spotty, carriers are booting users off these networks due to low ROI, these connections are usually capped, throttled and expensive, and again, AT&T and Verizon have a monopoly on the backhaul market feeding it all (but don’t worry, Trump’s FCC is busy protecting that monopoly, too).

You can get rid of net neutrality rules if you first embrace policies that actually drive broadband competition. But we’re not doing that. Under Trump’s FCC, Ajit Pai is actually busy lowering the base definition of broadband to try and obfuscate this lack of competition. Folks like Pai aren’t even capable of admitting there’s a problem, making the idea that the former Verizon lawyer wants to fix the problem preposterous. Meanwhile Cuban has been an outspoken Trump critic; are we to presume that Trump magically, mystically got this right? 20 million consumers don’t think so.

This isn’t the first time we’ve been over all this. I made many of the same points back in 2014 when Cuban was busy telling anybody who’d listen that net neutrality rules would destroy the internet and prevent sick people from getting necessary medical care (both, again, being lazy canards circulated by ISP lobbyists). Check out the last paragraph of this 2014 post for some unintentional, unfortunate clairvoyance on my part.

It’s disappointing that Cuban isn’t interested in listening to the countless experts like the EFF telling him that net neutrality rules are incredibly important — especially for the kind of small businesses Cuban used to represent. It’s equally unfortunate that folks that look up to Cuban for guidance are being told to root against their own best self interests — and to support a Trump agenda item that may just be the most unpopular decision in tech policy history.

Filed Under: broadband, competition, fcc, mark cuban, net neutrality

Mark Cuban Falsely Tells Congress AT&T's Latest Mega-Merger Will Be Really Wonderful For Consumers

from the you're-not-helping dept

Thu, Dec 8th 2016 10:40am - Karl Bode

Earlier this year, AT&T announced that it planned to shell out 100billiontoacquireTimeWarner.Thatcomesontheheelsofthecompanyspending100 billion to acquire Time Warner. That comes on the heels of the company spending 100billiontoacquireTimeWarner.Thatcomesontheheelsofthecompanyspending70 billion to acquire DirecTV. Why is AT&T spending countless billions on content and a legacy satellite TV provider when the lion’s share of the company’s broadband network desperately needs upgrading? Because fixed and wireless broadband subscriber growth has slowed, and telco executives believe they need to turn to content and advertising (read: slinging videos at Millennials) to please investors.

Under fire for the anti-competitive repercussions of its latest deal, AT&T testified this week before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy & Consumer Rights. As you might expect, AT&T and Time Warner both breathlessly insist that there are absolutely no downsides to the companies’ merger, adding the deal would be an incredible boon to consumers and the video market alike:

“Together, AT&T and Time Warner will disrupt the entrenched pay-TV models giving customers more options, creating more competition for cable TV providers,? AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said.

?By joining forces, we will accelerate the development and delivery of the next generation of video services that provide consumers with greater choice, convenience, value, and affordability,? Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes told lawmakers in prepared testimony.

The problem is that’s not really true. Most streaming providers are worried that AT&T, which just launched its new “DirecTV Now” streaming service, will make it harder than ever for streaming competitors to license the content (HBO, etc.) they need to compete. Similarly, many (including the outgoing FCC) are concerned that AT&T’s decision to zero rate this DirecTV Now content (exempting AT&T’s content from usage caps while still penalizing competitors) twists and distorts the open market. AT&T already effectively eliminated a TV market competitor when it acquired DirecTV. Now it’s tilting the playing field unfairly in its favor.

These concerns received fleeting lip service at this week’s hearing. Instead, the committee spent a significant amount of time listening to folks like Mark Cuban, who attended the hearing to lavish praise on AT&T’s latest mega-merger:

?We need more companies … with the ability to compete with Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook. Delivering content to consumers in this app-driven world is not easy, it is very expensive and difficult. … Alone, it will be very difficult, if not impossible for either AT&T or Time Warner to compete with any of the companies I’ve mentioned. Together it will still be difficult, but a combined entity at least gives them a chance to battle the dominant players in the marketplace and increase consumer choice and competition for consumer attention.”

So one, AT&T is a massive telecom conglomerate that not only owns its own core and last mammoth nationwide network, but also is already the biggest TV provider in the country after its DirecTV acquisition. This scale provides AT&T immeasurable benefits in content negotiations, and the idea that it was in any way difficult for AT&T to compete in this space is laughable. That’s before you even mention AT&T’s incredible and often comedic lobbying influence on state and federal telecom and media policy. A helpless little daisy, AT&T is not.

And while DirecTV Now might bring some added streaming competition to the space, it’s not like Apple, YouTube, Hulu, Sling TV, Sony, HBO and countless other companies aren’t flooding into the streaming video space as well. The competition is already coming to this market. Another mega-merger doesn’t help this competition, it actively harms it. AT&T is a company with a long, rich history of anti-competitive behavior and defrauding its own customers on multiple occasions. That it will use this expanded size and power in an anti-competitive fashion isn’t theoretical. This is what AT&T does.

But zero rating is complicated. Understanding the perils of vertical integration and the threat of one company owning the content and the conduit is difficult. Realizing that AT&T all but owns state and federal government is inconvenient. As such, Cuban tried to trot out a somewhat bizarre little story in which he argues that the AT&T merger would be really wonderful for joe, beer-drinkin’ consumer, because, uh, algorithms:

“I would also like to point out one other important element of consumer choice that an AT&T and Time Warner merger would improve.

Each of the largest content companies I have mentioned so far, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple present much if not all of their content algorithmically. As a Facebook user I don?t get to pick what content I get to see in my newsfeed. I can try to influence it, but Facebook algorithms control what I see.

In the future, it won?t be algorithms that choose what we see, our choices will be driven by some form of Artificial Intelligence learning from trillions of disparate inputs.

Meanwhile, for those of us who still enjoy our TV the old-fashioned way, on our couch, cold beverage in one hand and remote in the other, there is a lot to be said for having a company that can afford to continue to offer us that choice. As much of a geek as I am, I like having the choice of searching through a programming guide to see what?s on rather than an algorithm telling me what I should watch. I think a lot of consumers would like to see that choice continue as well.”

So one, that entire story makes no goddamned sense. Because Apple, Google and Facebook use algorithms in their news feeds, it’s a good idea to let a company with a massive history of anti-competitive behavior grow immeasurably larger? AT&T somehow will provide us with purer access to programming guides free of the nefarious influence of Silicon Valley artificial intelligence? That’s so illogical I can’t even deconstruct the point Cuban’s trying to make. It’s like arguing that forest fires are good because pineapples exist.

Granted we’ve noted a few times that while Cuban has a solid grasp of a number of issues, net neutrality, telecom and media issues aren’t among them. As such, he should probably be the last person testifying on the subject before Congress. In fact in writing this piece, I stumbled upon something I wrote for Techdirt back in 2014 when (again) trying to highlight that Cuban doesn’t really understand net neutrality:

“Of course Cuban has already made his fortune. Were we to take 1995 Mark Cuban (who was busy building Broadcast.com) and transplant his business into the modern era under AT&T, Verizon and Comcast — you can be damn sure he’d be taking a very different approach to these issues. Cuban has spent a decade making it abundantly clear he doesn’t understand net neutrality, the telecom market or the potential pitfalls of these new cap exempt business models. Perhaps we should put Mark Cuban, Donald Trump and all the rest of the billionaires with plenty to say but little actual understanding in charge of the telecom industry. At least we’d get some entertainment value out of the equation while the Internet burns.

Clearly I opened a portal to another dystopian dimension, and for that I’m truly sorry.

Filed Under: consumers, internet, mark cuban, mergers, tv
Companies: at&t, directv, time warner

Mark Cuban Pulls Credentials Of Two Human Reporters For Mavs Games To Stave Off Robot Journalist Apocalypse

from the wut? dept

I have to admit at the start of this post that I rather like Mark Cuban. Not his reality show shtick, but rather what I’ve seen from him in interviews and his positions. On matters of innovation and intellectual property, I’ve found him rather refreshing, even as we at this site have poked him on the topic of net neutrality. That admiration makes it all the more jarring when Cuban goes somewhat off the rails on unrelated matters.

For instance, Cuban, who owns the NBA’s Mavericks organization, recently pulled the press credentials of two sports journalists. Due to the vacuum of explanation for the move, those that covered it were left to speculation to explain why Cuban would do something like this. That speculation amounted mostly to Cuban either punishing ESPN, the employer of both journalists, for moving Mavs beat journalists into a national coverage role and thereby decreasing the exposure of the team, or pulling an ego trip on the journalists over the type of coverage the team was receiving. The latter was a rather unfair and an all too easy potshot at Cuban, while the former didn’t make a great deal of sense as one of the journalists hadn’t been on the Mavs beat for at least a decade.

But when Cuban finally commented publicly on his motives, they were revealed to make even less sense, which I wouldn’t have thought possible.

Mark Cuban and the Dallas Mavericks pulled the credentials of experienced ESPN reporters Marc Stein and Tim MacMahon this weekend under mysterious circumstances. There was no obvious motive for the Mavericks to do so, and Cuban hasn’t said much to clear it up—but he broke his silence this evening. Cuban told the Associated Press he banned MacMahon and Stein to stave off the advances of the encroaching robot sportswriter horde.

Lest you think this is an unfair representation of Cuban’s position, here are his comments directly from an email he wrote to the Associated Press.

“Maybe I will be wrong but I see a direct path from the trends in coverage of games we are seeing over the last couple years to the automation of reporting on games and the curation of related content,” Cuban wrote in an email to the AP. “This isn’t a knock on wire services or their reporters. They are valued and valuable in sports coverage.”

“While it may seem counterintuitive to ban someone from covering us as a way of stopping automation, it really was my only option,” Cuban said. “As is evident by the AP partnership with Automated Insights, it’s not if but when.”

To be clear, the AP does have some automated coverage being done for some sporting events, chiefly minor league baseball games for which paid press attendance doesn’t really make sense. But there is not automated recaps being done of NBA games at this time and it is difficult to imagine a rabid sports fan base being satisfied with auto-recaps of the professional teams in major leagues that they so love. Whatever Cuban is really worried about, I’m struggling to understand how it can really be about robotic coverage of Mavs games.

And even if his motivations really are that simple, in what world does it make sense to remove the credentials for two human reporters to stave off SkyNET’s NBA coverage?

It’s not a legitimate concern right now, and even if Cuban has decided to take a stand against automated recappers, banning two human reporters is an obtuse solution. ESPN said that they will rely on wire services for recaps of games that they don’t send reporters to, so if anything, all Cuban is really doing is ensure that Mavericks game recaps are written by a wire service, such as the AP, and not ESPN. If his bone to pick is truly with robot sportswriters, ESPN is not the institution to take it out on.

It’s a sort of off-brand version of the Streisand Effect, in which you take action to stop something and, by doing so, directly encourage that something to occur. For someone generally smart, this move doesn’t resonate. Regardless, I for one welcome our new robotic sports journalist overlords.

Filed Under: automation, mark cuban, reporting

DailyDirt: Personal Mobility Devices

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Hoverboards of various designs have captured the imagination of kids for quite some time. Mobility devices like the Segway were supposed to revolutionize transportation and city planning, perhaps replacing cars with somewhat ridiculous 2-wheeled vehicles. Maybe someday self-balancing mobility devices won’t be some kind of joke. We might have to wait until all the patents expire, though.

After you’ve finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: electric vehicles, hoverboard, hovercart, hoverseat, hovertrax, mark cuban, patents, personal mobility, personal transporter, pogo stick, rideables, scooter, segway, transportation

No, 'App Neutrality' Is Not A Thing

from the misdirection dept

Mon, Feb 23rd 2015 07:56am - Karl Bode

Last month, BlackBerry CEO John Chen tried to kiss up to major wireless carriers on the issue of net neutrality with a truly bizarre missive that received ample mockery in the technology press. Basically, Chen tried to argue that we don’t need tough neutrality rules — but we really should consider rules that force app developers to make content for unpopular mobile platforms. Like oh, BlackBerry, which after endless missteps now controls just 2% of the smartphone market. This was, to hear Chen tell it, because when companies refuse to make apps for unpopular platforms they’re violating something Chen called “app neutrality”:

“Netflix, which has forcefully advocated for carrier neutrality, has discriminated against BlackBerry customers by refusing to make its streaming movie service available to them. Many other applications providers similarly offer service only to iPhone and Android users. This dynamic has created a two-tiered wireless broadband ecosystem, in which iPhone and Android users are able to access far more content and applications than customers using devices running other operating systems. These are precisely the sort of discriminatory practices that neutrality advocates have criticized at the carrier level.”

Of course, as we pointed out at the time, Netflix isn’t discriminating against anybody. If BlackBerry wasn’t currently a train wreck and had a big enough market share to justify their time, Netflix would surely develop an app for BlackBerry users as well. As most of you know, net neutrality is about protecting the Internet from the bad behavior of companies that have built massive last-mile broadband monopolies courtesy of regulatory capture. In contrast, developers aren’t making apps for BlackBerry simply because people aren’t using BlackBerry’s products. And while Google and Apple do dominate the smartphone market, the primary reason is because they offer a good product. That’s in contrast to say, AT&T or Comcast, which offer a crap product because they have a government-protected monopoly over the last mile and have no incentive to improve.

I have no idea from the bowels of which ISP think tank or telco meeting room this “app neutrality” talking point originated; Chen and BlackBerry’s incoherent tirade dominates the search results for the term. But it’s worth noting that Mark Cuban actually argued a very similar point two days earlier, but, fortunately for Cuban, the media was too busy mocking BlackBerry to notice. Here’s a snippet of Cuban’s insight on the issue of app neutrality:

“There are basically 2 doors that control the availability of apps to the vast majority of smart phones in this country. They are owned and controlled by 2 of the largest tech companies in the world, Apple and Google. If you want your app to reach any type of audience (yes there are other app platforms supporting phones on the margin, but they are tiny by comparison), you have to make Google and Apple happy.”

Again, this ignores that Apple and Google have come to dominate the smartphone market because they make a kickass product. Not to say either of those companies doesn’t engage in anti-competitive behavior, and I don’t think anybody would argue Apple’s app approval process isn’t bizarre. But that has nothing to do with net neutrality, and Apple and Google are a far, far cry from government-pampered duopolists like AT&T and Comcast. Still, Cuban proceeds to insist that net neutrality rules need to ensure Apple and Google play nice too:

“The mobile app economy is far from open. It?s dominated by two companies. It is in the best interest of the entire mobile eco-system to address this duopoly while we are re-examining net neutrality. We should seriously consider requiring Apple to to allow and support 3rd party app stores and to require that Google continues to support and enable 3rd party stores and more importantly to integrate them into the Play Store, much as Amazon does with Marketplace integration.”

Cuban is again showing he doesn’t quite understand how the broadband industry works or what net neutrality actually is. Consumers actually do have a choice of what kind of smartphone to buy or what apps to install. While there are some smartphone freedom constraints (usually imposed by the aforementioned carriers, mind you), users still can buy a Windows phone, or a BlackBerry phone, or some offshoot hackable Android ROM that provides greater application freedom and allows them to install whatever unsigned applications they’d like. They can also access something called the Internet for even greater freedom. That’s in contrast to a Comcast customer who, if they want decent broadband, usually doesn’t have any other choice. The two discussions are nothing alike, and I don’t think that’s a particularly complicated point to understand.

Still, like “search neutrality” before it, somebody somewhere pretty clearly hopes that the idea of “app neutrality” will shift people’s attention away from what the net neutrality conversation is actually about: highly-tactical telecom carrier abuse of an uncompetitive broadband market. Fred Campbell of the Center for Boundless Innovation in Technology (a policy group dedicated to “liberate the ingenuity and creative spirit of America?s high-tech entrepreneurs and enterprises through market-oriented government policies”) also rushed to the “app neutrality” argument when the group recently suffered a small stroke over the FCC’s Title II plans:

“Chairman Wheeler?s description of his plan in Wired is disingenuous. His proposal will not ?ensure the rights of innovators to introduce new products without asking anyone?s permission.? Some of the biggest gatekeepers on the mobile Internet today are using their power over mobile operating systems to deny access to application developers, yet these behemoths are exempted from the FCC proposal. The fact is, application developers will still have to ask someone for permission before they can access the mobile Internet.

The Chairman?s plan is also discriminatory. He is proposing to apply privacy limitations on Internet service providers through ?Section 222? while exempting Internet ?edge? companies whose fundamental business model is to profit from collecting and selling personal information about consumers. The Chairman?s discriminatory decision to exempt the Internet?s biggest data collectors from this privacy provision appears designed to protect the Administration?s political allies in Silicon Valley, not consumer privacy.”

You see, Google, Apple and Netflix’s domination of the smartphone and streaming video market is bad, even though consumers still actually have an organic market choice when it comes to those services. AT&T, Comcast and Verizon’s stranglehold on the broadband market is to be ignored — even praised — because, uh, well, I’m not sure. You’d think those endlessly espousing the value of “free markets” would find the latter situation equally untenable, since it often involves companies literally writing state telecom law to further insulate government-protected duopolies from said market freedom. Unless of course it’s not really about loving free markets or meaningful personal values at all, and it’s really just about offering any old flimsy, inconsistent argument to help carriers protect the revenues received from uncompetitive (and certainly not free) markets?

Filed Under: app neutrality, fcc, fred campbell, john chen, mark cuban, mobile ecosystem, net neutrality, open internet

Mark Cuban Again Illustrates He Has No Idea What Net Neutrality Is Or Why It's Important

from the words-are-but-wind dept

Wed, Nov 26th 2014 08:21am - Karl Bode

To be very clear, there are some subjects Mark Cuban has a very good understanding of, ranging from his support of patent reform and his helpful goal of improving antiquated film release windows to highlighting the SEC’s disdain for the 14th and 4th Amendments during his fight over insider trading allegations. That said, for some reason when the Dallas Mavericks owner begins talking about telecom, Internet video and net neutrality, a string of cryptic gibberish begins to spill forth from his head that’s entirely detached from the cogent, mortal plane.

As the boss of HDNet (now AXS TV), Cuban spent years crying and wailing about the rise of Internet video. He frequently attacked companies offering content for free, insisted that Hulu viewers “leech off the money we pay to enjoy tv,” waged a bizarre, unsuccessful one man war against “illegal” YouTube, and told anybody who would listen that Internet video was destined to failure. That mindset fueled his position on net neutrality, one that largely mirrors that of the cable and broadcast industry at large (read: everything is fine and we need no rules). Cuban even at one time urged ISPs to go ahead and block P2P entirely (legitimate uses be damned).

Spurred by the recent Title II debate, Cuban has emerged once again to share his neutrality insights on Twitter, where he recently floated the increasingly stale idea that supporting a neutral Internet is a government assault on on the Utopian miracle that is the telecom free market:

3. The "People" want more gov to protect them so they cant be stopped from getting movies/tv shows OTT.That is straight out of Ayn Rand

— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) November 13, 2014

Cuban also offered up a Q&A session with the Washington Post because, Post writer Nancy Scola informs us, “there’s nothing that Cuban dislikes more than untested conventional wisdom” (aka the need for net neutrality rules). Most of us by now know the U.S. broadband market isn’t free or functional — it’s a broken duopoly, slathered in a layer of regulatory capture, preying on a captive audience incapable of voting with their wallets. Cuban’s refusal to acknowledge this reality is on stark display throughout the Q&A:

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The Verizon decision [the January, 2014, court order that struck down the Federal Communication Commission’s 2010 passage of net neutrality rules] has created an opportunity for the FCC to introduce more rule-making. They shouldn’t. Things have worked well. There is no better platform in the world to start a new business than the Internet in the United States.”

Except innovation is being threatened precisely because the U.S. broadband market is indisputably broken. Companies like Verizon and AT&T have abused the fact they dominate 85% of the wireless retail market for years, whether it’s the blocking of handset GPS radio functionality to push their own GPS apps, the blocking of Google Wallet to help adoption of their own mobile payment platforms, or the blocking of Facetime to push users toward metered data plans. On the fixed-line side you’ve got residential ISPs who’ve also been abusing the lack of competition to impose entirely unnecessary usage caps to hinder Internet video use and protect TV revenues.

As we’ve noted for many years now, these very real, very clear anti-competitive behaviors are a symptom of the broader disease that is a lack of competition. While there’s certainly a conversation to be had about the perils of government over-reach if rules aren’t done correctly, if you’re still somehow arguing that the U.S. broadband industry is a healthy, functioning free market, you’re simply not credible on the subjects of net neutrality or telecom.

We’ve noted how Title II with forbearance is the best tool we have in light of this lack of competition to keep the Internet healthy and consumers protected. To defend their government-pampered fiefdoms from any attempt to change the status quo, incumbent ISPs have falsely claimed that Title II “bans fast lanes” or “stifles investment,” both of which are demonstrably not true. Yet Cuban buys this argument without question:

> “I want certain medical apps that need the Internet to be able to get the bandwidth they need. There will be apps that doctors will carry on 5G networks that allow them to get live video from accident scenes and provide guidance. There will be machine vision apps that usage huge amounts of bandwidth. I want them to have fast lanes.”

That protecting net neutrality will break grandma’s pacemaker is a favorite talking point of the telecom industry, even though none of the proposed rules would hinder things like prioritized machine to machine connectivity, and the FCC’s simply never going to ban intelligent network management. You’ll recall that one of Verizon’s greasier arguments of late has been that net neutrality rules will harm the deaf. Amusingly the majority of deaf and disabled groups not only don’t agree (apparently AT&T hasn’t gotten around to paying them yet), the majority of deaf and disabled groups support Title II. For someone who claims to hate “conventional wisdom” and professes loving questioning things so much, Cuban seems quick to buy Verizon’s line of nonsense.

In one of the more amusing exchanges, Cuban proceeds to insist that because none of the entrepreneurs he speaks to bring up net neutrality in meetings, net neutrality as a concept must not be very important to the broader Internet:

“I have yet to talk to a single entrepreneur, or investment I have, or potential investment I have, or [seen an] acquisition or sale of a company on the Internet where the issue of net neutrality has come up. No one starting a business even considers net neutrality in their business, except for those that are religious about it and ISPs and networks that have to deal with any uncertainty it introduces.”

This couldn’t possibly be explained by the fact that entrepreneurs or potential deal partners sitting in Mark Cuban’s office have done their research, know Cuban loathes net neutrality, and therefore don’t mention it because they want his money right?

The Mavs owner then proceeds to brush aside concerns over programs like AT&T’s Sponsored Data, which involves companies paying AT&T for the privilege of bypassing arbitrary user caps. That, as VC Fred Wilson eloquently pointed out, sets a dangerous precedent in that it lets deeper-pocketed companies buy an advantage over the same smaller entrepreneurs Cuban professes to love. T-Mobile’s Music Freedom plan sets a similarly bad precedent for small businesses and entrepreneurs. Yet like so many people who don’t actually understand net neutrality (including the FCC), Cuban thinks these kinds of arbitrarily-erected monetization efforts are cute and creative business models:

“It’s a business decision that has as a much chance to fail as work. If you don’t like the offering from T-Mobile you may go somewhere else. Or if you like the offering, you may switch to T-Mobile. If T-Mobile came to me and asked me if I wanted to subsidize their consumers getting [Dallas] Mavs games streamed live over their phones or to mobile home routers, without impacting their data caps, I would love it, if the price was right, and would do it in a heartbeat.”

Of course Cuban has already made his fortune. Were we to take 1995 Mark Cuban (who was busy building Broadcast.com) and transplant his business into the modern era under AT&T, Verizon and Comcast — you can be damn sure he’d be taking a very different approach to these issues. Cuban has spent a decade making it abundantly clear he doesn’t understand net neutrality, the telecom market or the potential pitfalls of these new cap exempt business models. Perhaps we should put Mark Cuban, Donald Trump and all the rest of the billionaires with plenty to say but little actual understanding in charge of the telecom industry. At least we’d get some entertainment value out of the equation while the Internet burns.

Filed Under: broadband, fast lanes, mark cuban, net neutrality, open internet, regulations

SEC Is A Due Process Nightmare: Searches Emails Without A Warrant, Refuses To Share Exculpatory Evidence

from the the-sec-doesn't-like-the-constitution dept

Back in December, we wrote about the effort to push for ECPA reform by noting that one of the main government agencies fighting against it was the SEC, which wanted the ability to snoop through your emails without getting a warrant. If you don’t remember, ECPA is an excessively outdated law from 1986, whose definitions make no sense in the internet era (especially one with cloud computing). The key example often given is that emails on a server that are over 180 days old are considered “abandoned” and thus no warrant is needed to access them. That may have kind of made sense in an era when people downloaded all of their email, but now that nearly all email remains on servers somewhere it makes no sense at all. There are other problems with ECPA similar in nature (opened vs. unopened emails are treated differently, for example), but it’s clear the law is outdated.

Two stories popped up last week that raise serious concerns about the way that the SEC tramples on the Constitution. The first is that in a hearing, SEC boss Mary Jo White was asked why the SEC is so resistant to ECPA reform and what’s wrong with getting a warrant, and more or less admitted that it’s standard practice for the SEC to not get a warrant, but to rely on loopholes in ECPA to get access to emails. Prior to this, many had assumed that this was just a desire of the SEC, not that they were regularly doing it. But White’s answer makes it clear that the SEC views this practice — which seems like it should be a clear 4th Amendment violations — as standard operating procedure.

While she insists that the privacy issues aren’t a huge deal, because the SEC tries to “give notice” to the subscriber whose email is being accessed, that still doesn’t explain why paper documents require a warrant, and yet the SEC doesn’t bother with the much higher standard (including judicial review) of a warrant for electronic documents.

Meanwhile, concerning a separate issue, Mark Cuban and his lawyer published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last week, discussing the SEC’s totally bogus case against him for insider trading, which got tossed out by a lawyer. The key issue they discussed is how the SEC had exculpatory evidence that proved Cuban had done no wrong from back in 2004 — and then did everything possible to avoid turning over that evidence, as is normally required in legal proceedings.

In a criminal trial, the federal government has long been obliged to promptly turn over to the defense any evidence that could show that the accused did not commit the offense of which he is accused. The Brady rule (announced in the 1963 Supreme Court case, Brady v. Maryland), prevents one-sided prosecutions in which the defendant is kept in the dark about information that might show that he is innocent.

The government’s job as criminal prosecutor is not to obtain convictions, but “to do justice,” according to the traditional legal maxim. It should be required to follow the Brady rule in civil trials as well. But the SEC does not, even when it accuses a citizen of fraud. Had the agency complied with this simple rule in its recent insider-trading case against one of us, Mark Cuban, it is unlikely that a lawsuit would even have been filed, let alone go to trial.

At issue were notes the SEC had concerning the details of Cuban’s conversation with the CEO of Mamma.com, the search engine Cuban had invested in (and then sold all his shares in), which showed that, contrary to the SEC’s claims in the case against him, Cuban had never made certain promises. When Cuban and his lawyer asked for these notes, the SEC resisted.

The SEC, however, resisted the disclosure of these notes for the next three years. Even up until the time Mr. Cuban took the stand, the SEC continued to fight to keep the notes from being shown to the jury by asking the judge to exclude them from evidence. Fortunately, the judge disagreed and the jury ultimately cleared Mr. Cuban of a charge of insider trading.

So, reading both of these stories, we see that the SEC feels that it is free to ignore both the 4th Amendment (against search and seizure without a warrant) and the 14th Amendment (concerning due process). Don’t we think that agencies of the federal government should be required to follow the Constitution — especially basic concepts like protecting the privacy of individuals and giving them basic due process? And, for those of you who think this is no big deal, because it’s the SEC, and the SEC just goes after big bad bankers and the like, recognize that the agency following right behind the SEC in fighting ECPA reform is the IRS. Do you feel it’s similarly okay for the IRS to search your emails and electronic records without a warrant while also believing that it need not share any of the exculpatory evidence it finds, proving your innocence, while bringing a case against you for violating the law?

Oh, and just for the hell of it, let’s take this a step further. Just a few weeks ago, the NY Times reported on an increasingly popular tactic of law enforcement to effectively use the SEC to trick people into effectively implicating themselves in criminal cases. It tells the story of a low-level guy who worked at a law firm, and was asked by the SEC to “help out” with an investigation. Only at the last minute, was it mentioned that someone from the district attorney’s office would be present — and at no time was there any indication that the guy was being investigated for criminal behavior. But thanks to the SEC smokescreen, the guy was indicted, and he’s still not sure why.

So, now it’s an SEC that ignores the Constitution, searches emails without a warrant, hides exculpatory evidence and surreptitiously uses these “investigations” to help build out criminal charges against people on a highly questionable basis. See the problem, yet?

The folks over at VanishingRights.com are fighting to reform ECPA, which would at least solve half of the problem above. Right now, the SEC and the IRS remain the main government agencies aligned against such reform. It’s time to tell those agencies that they need to obey the Constitution too.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, due process, ecpa, ecpa reform, irs, mark cuban, mary jo white, sec, warrantless searches, warrants

Crowd Funding: Also A Method For Proving Marketability To Investors

from the in-the-pudding dept

As crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter continue to be a rising trend in content production, there's an important lesson that both successful and failed attempts can teach us all. That lesson is that the turnout for such a project tells the producer everything they need to know about the combination of the saleability of their project and their ability to properly market it. In fact, Mark Cuban recently came out in strong support of crowd funding, going so far as to suggest that every startup should be required to do a Kickstarter campaign.

“It's a way for you create demand and sell the product without giving up any equity. That is a compliment to what an investor might do. In terms of PE (price to equity), there are strategic investors and then there's just money. I'm not a big fan of money investors, which is what most angel investors turn out to be, because they just want their money back. I try to be very strategic, I try to add value, or I don't make the investment.”

It's a great way to look at things, but I wonder if we can take it a step further. There is no reason that a Kickstarter project cannot also woo more traditional investors. This is all the moreso if the Kickstarter campaign takes off like a rocket. Why wouldn't an investor want to back a project that has shown it is both in-demand and managed by competent business folks? Serving as one example of the ability to do this, not to mention the leverage such an approach provides content creators, is Chris Roberts, developer of the Star Citizen game, which was wildly popular on Kickstarter.

“We’re still doing investment,” Roberts explained to RPS, “but I’m going to be a bit more picky in choosing it, and I’m getting to dictate the terms better. I’m saying, ‘You guys have to realize about making the game as good as possible. No forcing us to go public or to sell out.’”

Far from well-known conditions of corporate or investor interests forcing an early release of a game, or nixing important but difficult to create aspects of one (ahem, Mass Effect 3), this diversification of backing dollars protects the creator and his or her vision for their creation. There are still going to be stipulations under which an investor may hand over their cash, but the control over the creator is mitigated by the other sources of funds.

Beyond that, Chris explains how crowd funding can be a great proving ground to current or new investors.

“It’s actually funny. Everyone I lined up is basically over the moon. Your big risk as an investor is, “I’m backing this thing. Does anyone really want it?” At this point there’s no question that people want it, and maybe a lot more than anyone was expecting.”

What does this mean in practical terms? Well, far from the the caution some issue that crowd-funded projects will naturally be lower-budget cousins to their corporate largers, being able to attract money from multiple sources, including a wider internet public, could make for huge budgets in games, films, and music. I would suggest creators heed Mark Cuban's words: crowdfund, both for the money you can generate for your product, but also to prove to traditional investors that you're going to be successful.

Filed Under: attracting investors, chris roberts, crowdfunding, entrepreneurs, mark cuban, market research, star citizen, validation