Editorials

In the last few days we have seen a couple of things that just might break the old business model of the MPAA and RIAA. The indicators are things like the decision that code is not physical property was pushed down by the 2d appeals court only a matter of days ago along with an increase in lobby presence by some media content providers (not the content owners) while the final piece of the puzzle is actually the US DOJ suite against Apple and a handful of book publishers for price fixing.

The explosion of the smart phone tied to the sudden need for people to post where they are and what they are doing every minute of the day has led to some rather interesting consequences. We all have heard the numerous reports of applications that are taking your personal data right off of your phone and then either selling it or using it to push their own applications… which reminds us… what ever happened to all those congressional requests and demands? Anyway getting back to the point we have even heard how one application (now pulled from distribution) used public Facebook profiles combined with check-ins on the Facebook game Four Square to allow almost anyone to stalk nearby women.

One of my favorite movies is the move “Heat”  (for multiple reasons) in this movie there is a scene where Tone Loc is talking to Al Pacino about one of the “bad guys” he makes a very telling comment; “But he goes on and on running down to me about how he ain't been doing nothin' and nothin's been going on and all this other bullshit, so right then and there I know: this cat's got somethin' goin' down.” The same can be said about companies and people that tell you how great things are all the time. This is what we are seeing in a rash of articles about how great the New iPad is and how Apple will dominate the market (tablet market) until 2016… This is odd as only a couple of weeks ago it was only through 2013.

Looking at bills like SOPA, PIPA and CISPA (Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act) it is easy to see the argument for Civil Liberties, Censorship, Personal Privacy and Private Communications. In fact we hear about this on a daily basis from groups like Anonymous, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Fight for the Future and more. However, while all of these arguments are very valid and ring in the ears of voters and consumers everywhere there is another threat that many are overlooking. This threat might even be larger than the ones that are talked about over and over; the security threat.