Author: Joe Jones

OMG, more kabuki!

When I saw the editorial titled Kabuki Congress, I knew what the next blog post would be.

The question is whether the Bush administration broke the law by allowing the National Security Agency to spy on Americans and others in the United States without obtaining the required warrant. The White House wants Americans to believe that the spying is restricted only to conversations between agents of Al Qaeda and people in the United States. But even if that were true, which it evidently is not, the administration has not offered the slightest evidence that it could not have efficiently monitored those Qaeda-related phone calls and e-mail messages while following the existing rules.

In other words, there is not a shred of proof that the illegal program produced information that could not have been obtained legally, had the administration wanted to bother to stay within the law.

…Putting on face paint and pretending that illusion is reality is fine for Kabuki theater. Congress should have higher standards.

I mean, it’s the usual NYT line, but you gotta love the kabuki.

Say it with a nose

From the greatest magazine on Earth:

This Valentine’s Day in Shanghai, people said “I love you” not with roses but with noses. Business at Shanghai’s plastic surgery clinics has risen by 30% since the beginning of the month, a trend fuelled by Valentine’s Day and the Chinese New Year, when young people receive job bonuses and cash presents from relatives. Some clinics offered special Valentine’s Day packages, such as a 20% discount between February 14th and 17th. The most popular treatment was for couples to opt for matching noses, or to have their eyes reshaped.

Liu Yan, who is 24, was quoted in a newspaper as saying, “I suggested it [to my boyfriend] as a way of celebrating our relationship and bringing us closer together with a special kind of bond.” Miss Liu said her 28-year-old boyfriend “loved the idea of matching noses”, and readily paid the 10,000 yuan ($1,200) for the surgery.

Real-life “super troopers” in Southwest Airlines prank

Fuerschbach v. Southwest Airlines has to be one of the most fun cases I’ve read in a while…

Several supervisors at Southwest Airlines convinced two Albuquerque police officers to stage an arrest of Marcie Fuerschbach, a Southwest Airlines employee, as part of an elaborate prank that included actual handcuffing and apparent arrest. This was a “joke gone bad,” and turned out to be anything but funny, as Fuerschbach allegedly suffered serious psychological injuries as a result of the prank. She sued the officers and the City of Albuquerque under 42 U.S.C. 1983, alleging violations of her Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. Fuerschbach also asserted claims for various state torts against the officers, the city, her supervisors, and Southwest Airlines.

The full story after the jump…
Continue reading Real-life “super troopers” in Southwest Airlines prank

The most Japaneezy states in the Union

The U.S. states/wannabe states where you’re most likely to find Japanese people:

# Hawaii: 1.70% (20,590 / 1,211,537)
# California: 0.33% (112,212 / 33,871,648)
# Washington: 0.29% (16,396 / 5,894,121)
# Nevada: 0.20% (3,935 / 1,998,257)
# Oregon: 0.19% (6,351 / 3,421,399)
# New York: 0.17% (32,034 / 18,976,457)
# Massachusetts: 0.14% (8,682 / 6,349,097)
# New Jersey: 0.13% (11,245 / 8,414,350)
# District of Columbia: 0.13% (749 / 572,059)
# Maryland: 0.12% (5,354 / 4,296,486)

And the lowest? Puerto Rico, with only 183 Japanese people—0.004%. Pitiful.

Source: 2000 U.S. census data, translated by this dude, and brought to my attention by someone on the Philadelphia mixi board who was complaining about Pennsylvania being ranked 39. (Cross the river to Jersey and enjoy your shrimp chips, dang it.)

Is transparency the best policy?

It isn’t illegal to keep secrets. Sometimes, you really have to. Other times, it will get you in trouble. Case in point: the class action against NetFlix.

In late 2003, a Netflix customer named Manuel Villanueva started a website where he documented problems he had experienced with Netflix, a company that provides DVD rentals by mail. He noted that Netflix had violated its agreement to provide him with “unlimited rentals,” by engaging in a practice known as “throttling.”

As a result of this practice, Villanueva says, he was treated worse than other renters who paid the very same price he did — $17.99 – for what was supposed to be, in theory, the same service. In addition, he says, Netflix’s advertising was misleading: Rentals weren’t really unlimited given that Netflix selectively doled out its DVDs.

Now, to be clear, discriminating among customers is usually legal… as long as it isn’t based on race or some other protected status, or in a sensitive type of business like lodging. That’s how airlines get away with charging a walk-up businessman $1,000 for the same seat that would cost an advance purchaser $200. The thing is, just about everyone who buys airplane tickets knows this is the case. From the same article:

The problem [was] that Netflix did not disclose the throttling to consumers up front – and thus arguably misled them as to the service they were purchasing, breaching its agreement with them, as stated in its Terms and Conditions. For this reason, the plaintiff class had a valid claim.

…The plaintiffs in the lawsuit saw equal treatment as a right, implicit in the company’s promise of “unlimited rentals.” And they are correct about this – if a company does not disclose that there are certain limits to the “unlimited” feature, this seems clearly misleading.

Once a company has disclosed its business practices, customers can choose to say or to shop elsewhere. Many Netflix customers retain their accounts – even after throttling has been publicized. Why? They think the service is still a good deal.

One of the few good experiences I had in my law school Contracts class was a simple negotiation simulation. Client A wanted $10,000; Client B didn’t want to pay more than $5,000. We had to pair up and reach a compromise. Once we had all done our separate negotiations, we compared results… and the people who got the most for their clients turned out to be the ones who were most open about what their clients wanted. (As opposed to my partner, who wanted to offer the other side nothing to start out with.)

So the bottom line is, don’t keep customer policies secret. The policies that you “have to” keep secret are often going to get you in trouble once they become public. And at any rate, a major part of keeping people happy is making sure that they don’t feel like they’re getting screwed behind closed doors. Lesson to NetFlix.

Airlifting anime to starving Iraqis

Anyone out there remember Dave Chappelle’s “Black Bush” skit? With the scene that went like this:

BLACK BUSH: I got a coalition of the willing! I got 40 nations ready to roll, son!
REPORTER: Like who?
BLACK BUSH: Who the f— said that? Like who? Uh… England. Japan’s… sending Playstations…

Well, although I haven’t seen any Playstation stories yet, here’s the next best thing, which I swear I am not making up:

The Japan Foundation, with the cooperation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Animation International Middle East, has decided to provide an Arabic-dubbed version of the soccer animation TV program “Captain Majed” (originally “Captain Tsubasa”) to the Iraq Media Network (IMN) as grant aid.

As soccer is a popular sport in Iraq, it is expected that the TV program will strengthen goodwill toward Japan on the Iraqi side. In particular, it may provide dreams and hopes for the children of Iraq, who will shoulder the future of the country.

The conclusion of the agreement for this grant aid took place on March 2 between the IMN and the Japan Foundation, and the program will be provided to the IMN within coming days.

Holy crap, can diplomats be any more irrelevant? Although I have to admit, if you dub this show in Arabic, it might seriously look like a show about Iraqi soccer players.

Koizumi vs. the idiot box

The next target of Koizumi’s Deadly Big Government Assassination Squad?

Domo-kun, of course.

NHK “has too many stations. If NHK is to focus on overseas broadcasting, it will have to reduce some of the existing” channels, Koizumi said of a request he made to Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Heizo Takenaka during their meeting earlier in the day.

Some background on this: NHK is currently contemplating setting up an English-language channel, an idea that Koizumi has been pushing. This channel would serve honkies living in Japan, and also be available on cable and satellite overseas, like a backwards version of CNN or the BBC. There are some obvious problems with the concept: not many people overseas are likely to need a Japanese channel in English, and the channel doesn’t address the growing number of non-English-speaking foreigners in Japan, but the idea has something of a cool factor going for it.

Of course, another problem is paying for this through the existing license fee system. Many Japanese people are likely to object to subsidizing the new Gaijin Channel, so NHK may actually end up funding its overseas programming through the demons of advertising.

Japan’s “travel deficit”

If you follow Japan, you probably know about the “Yokoso! Japan” tourism promotion campaign. There are awesome TV spots featuring Koizumi and posters of creepy-looking foreign people. Japan is desperate to get tourist dollars.

Why? Japan might have a big trade surplus, but in terms of tourism, it exports much, much more than it imports. In 2004, for instance, travel from Japan accounted for $38.3bn in expenditures, while travel to Japan accounted for just $11.3bn, a 3.4:1 ratio. A recent JETRO report characterized this as a “travel deficit.”

Travel to Japan has been increasing over the last few years, while travel from Japan has been stable or slightly decreasing. Deflation in Japan probably has much to do with this; also, Japan has been more permissive about visas in recent years, while other countries have gotten stingier. I wonder if we’ll actually see results from this promotion campaign. My guess is: probably not really.

Aso on the non-offensive

Foreign Minister Taro Aso, who has no problem offending Koreans and Chinese on a regular basis, apparently doesn’t like to offend Muslims.

Aso criticized some European publications Monday for printing contentious cartoons of the prophet Muhammad, calling such action “shallow.”

“Even people like us who are not Muslims know the fact that idolatry is absolutely impossible (in Islam),” Aso told a Diet committee. “If someone familiar with that kind of thing did so, I say, from my personal feelings, it could have been shallow.”

Now I’m imagining the Saturday Night Live version of Chris Matthews interviewing Aso on “Hardball.”

MATTHEWS: This is great! Say something even more contradictory!
ASO: The U.S. government should stop glorifying war by building monuments to dead soldiers.
MATTHEWS: Keep it coming!
ASO: Asia should open up its markets to Japanese rice exports.
MATTHEWS: Wow! You’re unstoppable!
ASO: And the UK should give up its royal family…
MATTHEWS: (head explodes)

Ah, if only he weren’t #6 in the post-Koizumi opinion polling, he would make one hilarious Prime Minister.

Tell spyware to get off your property

One of the coolest technology law developments I’ve seen lately is based on a really, really old idea.

In the very recent case of Thomas Kerrins v. Intermix Media, Inc., a federal court in Los Angeles just held that trespass was a viable legal theory to address the alleged distribution of spyware and adware programs.

…The plaintiff raised various claims, including the ancient claim of trespass to chattels. Traditionally, trespass to chattels refers to the interference with or taking of another’s personal property. It now is being applied by the courts to address the improper access to and interference with computers, networks and servers.

In this case, the defendant moved to dismiss the trespass claim, arguing that the plaintiff had not alleged sufficient interference with his computer. The court disagreed, as the showing of interference or harm required is not stringent. Because the plaintiff had asserted that the defendant’s spyware and adware damaged his existing software, reduced the efficiency of his computer system, and that the removal of the spyware and adware required the time and expense of a computer specialist, the plaintiff had more than adequately stated his claim.

It totally makes sense, and I hope more courts adopt this doctrine in the future. Now I want a firewall that says TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED.