Category: Newest & Most Improved

Feb. 8, 2011
REDMOND–A bundle of feature updates and add-ons released Monday to subscribers of Microsoft’s popular word-processor service Word includes a new digital rights management, or “DRM”, feature designed to facilitate the use of copyrighted material in documents written using the service. “We’re very excited about the new [copyright advisor] tool,” explains Microsoft VP of Circumstantial Features Edmund Raunch. “For hundreds of years there’s been a lot of legal uncertainty surrounding the writing process. How would you know, for example, if what you were writing was infringing somebody else’s copyright unless you knew everything that had already been written. Well, we’ve tackled that uncertainty and just blown it away.”

Known informally as “the Mouse,” the feature involves a context-appropriate pop-up avatar in the likeness of Disney’s famous cartoon character. “Disney actually approached us concerning a branding alliance on the feature,” explains Raunch. “They’re very dedicated to the whole copyright and rights management issue and wanted to be actively involved in the development of the Advisor.”

The advisor works in much the same way as conventional spell-checking and grammar-checking features, monitoring documents on-the-fly as they are created and flagging any potential problems for the user. Once a potentially infringing passage is identified, the Advisor materializes and offers a number of options, including suggested, non-infringing re-phrasings, and an option to pursue automated negotiation for a licensing micro-payment to cover the use of the copyrighted material.

The advisor identifies potential infringement by checking documents against those stored in a centralized registry database maintained by the company. The registry also functions as a clearinghouse for licensing transactions involving registered materials. “We’re very happy to offer registration in the Advisor’s database free of charge to content creators,” notes Raunch. “We recover our costs by taking a small slice of each of the licensing transactions.”

During a feature demonstration, the advisor proved adept at identifying direct copying, noting almost instantly that “Call me Ishmael” was taken from Moby Dick, a book once, but no longer, in the public domain. In a cheerful voice, Mickey suggested alternatives, including “My name is Ishmael” and “Call me Ichabod,” and also offered to license the phrase for 8 cents in fewer than 50 copies of the document.

More impressive was the advisor’s ability to identify potential “derivative uses,” including creation of sequels and so-called “fan fiction.” With fewer tell-tale details than the words “Kirk,” “logic,” and “pointy ears,” Mickey was able to suggest that we seek license from Paramount for creation of a work derivative of its Star Trek franchise.

The feature is not without its critics, many of whom emphasize the Adivsor’s power to delete unlicensed language it deems to infringe another’s copyright. “This is putting too much power in the hands of Microsoft,” notes Information Without Borders director Janet Pullet. “The advisor enforces their view of copyright law, and that may be much more limiting of traditional fair use rights than even current law is.”

Responding to critics, Microsoft’s Raunch pointed to the company’s obligations under recent extensions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act: “I’m not a lawyer, but from what I understand, word processors are considered ‘circumvention’ devices because you can type in any document you want and just save and copy it. Because of that, we’re obligated, by law, to enforce copyright to the extent technically feasible, and that’s just what the advisor does.

Sept. 21, 2006
WALVILLE, ARK.–Representatives of the Wal-Mart corporation on Friday opened the first of many planned in-store trading ‘pits’ for the buying and selling of futures contracts on more than 1,100 consumer and household goods carried by the retailing giant. “This is about injecting some new excitement into the shopping experience,” exclaimed Wal-Mart VP of Marketing William Foursby. “It’s about capturing some of the energy of a bazaar, of an open marketplace, and, at the same time, extending our value chain that last mile to our retail customers.”

Futures–agreements to buy or sell a quantity of a commodity at a future date at a standardized location of delivery–are conventionally used by commodity sellers as hedges against the risk that the market price of a commodity will move in an unfavorable direction before the commodity is ready to be sold. “The easiest example is a farmer who needs to make decisions about what crops to grow,” explains Foursby. “With a liquid futures market, the farmer can easily get a guaranteed price for crops before planting, and so can figure out how much and what to plant.”

The Wal-Mart trading pits–located near the store’s registers and designed to accommodate up to 45 live traders–permit customers to buy futures contracts on such familiar products as Pringle’s potato chips and Elmer’s Glue. “I’m long 200 July Cheese Whiz contracts,” explained a breathless trader shortly after the pit opened for its first trading day. “This is great. I already cleared a half-cent spread on 400 August 100 ct. paper clips.”

Though designed to help commodity producers control risk, most futures contracts in mature markets–typically more than 90%–go unexercised, with the buyer and seller of the contract simply settling in cash the difference between the contract price and the market price. “We expect that the Wal-Pits will work like traditional commodities markets,” notes Foursby. “That is, they will function as markets in risk–in the buying and selling of price fluctuation risk–rather than, primarily, as markets in the underlying products.”

“The value of the pits to Wal-Mart is potentially quite great,” explains Morgan retail analyst Jean Wobble. “As I understand it, all of the contracts are written with Wal-Mart stores as the standard delivery location. For those contracts that do go all the way to fulfillment, the natural thing for traders to do would be to buy the underlying products right there in the store, not to mention the pricing and inventory-management leverage that Wal-Mart will get by trading in the pits for itself.”

Customers who sign up for trading during the initial phase receive complimentary garish jackets and some quick lessons in pit etiquette, including shouting, gesticulating, huffing and puffing, and jumping up and down. “I’m ready to do some tradin’,” exclaimed a newly-minted trader in a green tie-dyed jacket. “Those Doritos contracts sound really good.”

April 4, 2004
SPRINGDALE, ARK.–Grey Mountain Surrogates Inc., a subdivision of meat processing and biological services giant Tyson Foods, launched Friday a nation-wide campaign advertising its ‘Natural Mother’ organic surrogacy service. “We’re very pleased to be able to offer the highest-quality surrogacy on the market,” notes Grey Mountain president of operations Harald Spine. “In Natural Mother we offer a convenient, labor-saving service that also provides a more wholesome, healthy gestation environment than most mothers could manage on their own.”

According to company marketing materials, Grey Mountain offers “only the cleanest, most healthy surrogates. [The] surrogates live only in communal, cooperatively managed communities nestled in pristine mountain forests.” All surrogates are “certified drug and hormone free” and are fed an “organic, vegetarian diet high in vegetable protein and supplemented with natural fish oils for improved brain and neurological development.”

Grey Mountain surrogates also follow an “adaptive, physician-designed exercise regimen,” including “regular, fresh-air walks on our beautiful country grounds,” and all are housed in a “high-stimulus environment, including exposure to classical music and clinically-designed resonance recordings of a maternal voice for maximum in-utero stimulation.”

“We want people to know that our surrogates are dedicated 24 hours a day to the healthy gestation of their children,” explains Spine. “We’ve designed a comfortable, idyllic habitat in a natural, toxin-free environment. What could be better?”

Responding skeptically to news of the campaign, longtime Tyson critic Dr. Henriette Jostle of the Center for Medical Responsibility points to historical shortcomings in several of Tyson’s surrogacy ventures. “We’ve heard this ‘all natural’ story before and the reality usually bears no resemblance to the spin. I’ve been to the Grey Mountain facility and I doubt it’s changed much. What I saw was a warehouse filled with Barcaloungers lined up armrest-to-armrest. The surrogates were eating TV dinners and the floor was just covered with peas-n-carrots and that aluminum packaging. And, sure they got to walk in the open, once a day, supervised, otherwise they were locked in the ‘house’ to protect the ‘product.'”

Dr. Jostle has also charged Tyson with engaging in ‘double-batching’ and ‘term-acceleration.’ “There are huge efficiency pressures in the surrogate market, and companies like Tyson try to maximize the output of their surrogates in a number of ways,” explains Jostle. “Typically they’ll induce labor just at the point of viability in order to free-up surrogates. Often customers will receive ‘full term’ babies without realizing that they’ve been maintained in company nurseries for months. Companies will also often ‘double batch,’ co-gestating two, and sometimes even three, unrelated fetuses. Standard industry practices are simply horrifying.”

Tyson’s surrogacy subsidiaries have also run afoul of various labor groups, including the Somatic Workers of America which last year charged Tyson subsidiary Deer Lick Glades Inc. with the illegal smuggling of non-U.S. workers. “Tyson regularly employs non-union and undocumented surrogates,” charges SWA steward Quentin Thrush. “We have undisputed evidence that Tyson has paid to smuggle illegal surrogates across borders hidden in the cockpits of buses. They become a captive workforce, unable to demand decent, humane working conditions.”

November 18, 2009
WALVILLE, ARK.–Responding to public requests from privacy advocates, retailing giant Wal-mart agreed Wednesday to release details concerning a newly-implemented system for tracking shoppers in its Wal-mart and Sam’s Club stores. “We understand that there is some sensitivity surrounding this initiative,” notes Wal-mart spokesman Joel Scent, “And we want to be entirely upfront and open about the program and the ways it will benefit our shopping family. We’ve been testing the system in a few pilot stores–we’ve made no secret about that–and now, with that experience behind us, we’re ready to talk about the program.”

Tested over the past three months in 23 stores across the U.S., the tagging system, known as the In-store Cookie System, or ICS, uses a proprietary combination of electro-magnetic and channeled-particle beams to produce a “persistent, informationally-significant, quantum-molecular structured excitation” just beneath the surface of the skin. “It’s really quite simple,” explains Scent. “The ICS muzzle is positioned with our security cameras at a store’s entrance. As a shopper comes in, the system sends out a series of invisible beams that harmlessly arranges some of the molecules in her forehead. Initially, the molecules are arranged to encode some information, just a unique identifying number, but during the course of the engagement the Cookie might be extended with some additional codes to help us customize and improve the shopping experience.”

Stores making use of ICS are equipped throughout with camera-like Cookie-readers capable of uniquely identifying and tracking shoppers as they move through the store. Shopper’s movements are then translated into a schematic of concatenated three-dimensional vectors and recorded in the ICS database for later analysis. Cookie-readers mounted in shelves, connected wirelessly to the adaptive packaging of some products, enables products to tailor their pitches based on assumptions derived from customers’ shopping trajectories. “It was a little eerie,” notes a shopper in a Chicago pilot store. “I guess it was because I was in the baby aisle first, but everywhere I went all the boxes started having pictures of cute babies on them. I even saw a Pillsbury Doughbaby. And everything seemed to say ‘Safe for your Baby,’ or something like that, in big, bright letters.”

Besides enabling products to tailor their packaging, ICS, used in conjunction with adaptive price tags, enables stores to offer special bargains to shoppers, and even to offer lower prices to shoppers whose trajectories suggest indecision. “The real benefit to shoppers is that the information we gather through ICS will help us offer shopper-specific bargain bundles of related products,” notes Scent. “Say the system sees that a shopper has been looking at boy’s clothing and has also been in automotive fixtures, now, with adaptive packaging, we can add a little coupon on that underwear package for a discount on a Hot Wheels car or something.”

Critics of ICS point to just such customized bargains as one of the system’s many drawbacks. “There’s a reason they call it ‘price discrimination,'” exclaims Coalition for Economic Justice chairman Silas Lift. “Besides being a deep invasion of privacy, Wal-mart’s tag-and-track system will result in the worst sort of red-lining. Those who can buy more will get better prices while those who can’t afford to will simply pay more.”

A number of critics also point to reported inadequacies in the ‘opt-out’ method implemented in the test stores. “To opt-out you’ve got to wear this ridiculous yellow hat that says ‘OPT-OUT’ in big black letters,” notes Anonymous League president June Clever. “It turns out that the test stores kept these hats behind a counter and most shoppers didn’t even know about them. We’ve also heard stories about inadequate supplies of hats. We at the League are advocating a switch to an ‘opt-in’ hat to be worn by shoppers who clearly consent to data collection.”

Wal-mart plans to begin worldwide rollout of ICS early next year, and is in early negotiations to license the system to partner retailers and grocers.