Antone Johnson

"Ouch.  I was thinking it's a serious issue for lawyers, with our duty of client confidentiality under various state bar rules.  At least we don't have HIPPA to deal with like healthcare professionals.  (Presumably psychologists, therapists, social workers, pharmacists, etc. are also at the same risk.)" - Antone Johnson

"Keaton beat me to it.  Social media are still free ad-supported media.  We create some of the content as well as consuming it, but that makes us audience participants, not customers.  The "customers" of Facebook, like the customers of broadcast TV networks or free radio stations, are the advertisers that accounted for 85% of FB's revenue in 2011." - Antone Johnson

"Blue Bottle coffee deserves its cult-like status. In the hands of a competent barista it puts most other coffee to shame. Pleasant surprise in the middle of a slick mall lined with corporate chain…" - Antone Johnson

"When it's time to camp out for a few hours of working, studying or reading, Espresso Roma holds its own among stiff competition in Berkeley and Rockridge. It's a pleasant place that manages to have…" - Antone Johnson

"Bill, that is intriguing. It does sound counterintuitive, with all the media chatter about a "frothy" market and about ever-larger angel rounds closing in the past couple years. It would be interesting to see the full distribution of round sizes. If I had to guess, my hunch is that a small number of large angel deals (say $1MM+) are getting done, but they are still outliers, and for each of those there are ten $250K seed rounds. Of course everyone's anecdotal experience is unique; in my practice, working mostly with early stage consumer Web and mobile startups, the most common approach is initially to raise an angel seed round of $100K to $400K or so on convertible notes and stretch that funding far enough to develop a proof-of-concept/minimum viable product before going back to the well for a larger Series A priced equity round (or the equivalent). That would have been out of the question even a few years ago, but with cloud computing and storage platforms like Amazon AWS,..." - Antone Johnson

"Huh?  I agree with your whole first paragraph, but there have been plenty of "perp walks" on Wall Street that were widely publicized.  Just one example, these Bear Stearns guys:   http://online.wsj.com/article/..." - Antone Johnson

"There are no, no, no smoking guns to 9/11.  Every conceivable question was put to rest at least seven years ago, and only the lunatic fringe clings to bizarre conspiracy theories for reasons I can't begin to fathom.  Let the dead rest in peace and move on. http://www.popularmechanics.co..." - Antone Johnson

"And yet none of these are new issues.  I remember borrowing records from a friend or the public library as a kid and taping them onto cassette, or taping songs off the radio, or making mix tapes and sharing them with friends.  Most media are readily shared, swapped, borrowed, lent, etc. even in traditional format.  What if a group of five friends buys five different books and then takes turns reading them, so only one copy of each book is sold instead of five? Each of these things deprives the artist and distributor of potential revenue, yet it's not clear whether any of them should be considered immoral or made illegal (let alone criminal), whether done online or offline.  Issues around sharing content are so much more nebulous than with physical property." - Antone Johnson

"Because views and values vary dramatically between countries and cultures.  Some, like France, focus on the "moral rights" of the creator which can be inalienable even if a corporate distributor is involved.  Others, like China, seem to have little respect for intellectual property in general — which, after all, is a semi-arbitrary legislative construct designed to encourage the creation of original works of authorship by maintaining scarcity at the point of distribution.  (For centuries if someone wrote a song, they might have been able to control copies of the sheet music being made, but nothing stopped competent musicians from learning it by ear and performing it without paying ongoing royalties to anyone.)  Bottom line, something like property crime (stealing someone else's possessions) is far easier to agree upon in international treaties vs. more amorphous concepts of IP rights, in which countries' interests are often diametrically opposed." - Antone Johnson

"I'm interested to learn more about ACTA, but I would emphasize that trade in counterfeit goods (mostly a trademark issue) differs from copyright infringement in fundamental ways. To be clear, I think it's wrongheaded to hold the middle-man (e.g., eBay) vicariously liable for its users' trade in counterfeit goods, for policy reasons similar to those underlying the DMCA: Who is best positioned to recognize and deal with infringing items? The creator, not some intermediary handling millions of transactions and billions of page views. Bad court decisions in France aside, current law generally makes the brand owner (e.g., Louis Vuitton) responsible for policing sales of infringing goods and issuing take-down notices. There is also the opportunity for customs to actually seize counterfeit goods as the port of entry. Copyright is far more problematic because there are so many shades of gray involved. Things like time-shifting and place-shifting, making backup copies, all kinds of fair use..." - Antone Johnson

"It couldn't be reasonably viewed as infringing.  An excerpt of five or six notes should be exempt under any normal interpretation of the fair use doctrine." - Antone Johnson

"Curious to know what you think is so bad about UDRP and cybersquatting legislation.  Where you stand depends on where you sit.  Who is "we" from your perspective?" - Antone Johnson

"This comment is factually incorrect or misleading on many levels. The notion that ITI or Technet is in any way comparable to MPAA or RIAA is absurd. They offer nowhere near the amount of unanimity, sheer wealth and influence that the Hollywood organizations do. Anyone who's followed tech policy knows it's been an incessant struggle to herd the cats for decades, particularly because dominant players come and go with such incredible speed. Facebook didn't exist ten years ago. The players most influential in shaping CDA and DMCA were companies like AOL, Prodigy, AT&T and so forth -- years before YouTube or MySpace were twinkles in their founders' eyes. The notion that ISPs are "the parties most affected" is even more absurd. Social media sites like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and the photo sharing sites would be the most affected, together with search engines like Google and Bing. Penalizing sites for even linking to other sites that contain infringing content is a great way to legislate..." - Antone Johnson

"A headline that screams about "The world's most wanted alleged pirate" should refer to a murderous sociopath who is responsible for kidnapping, torturing and killing civilians and dumping their mutilated bodies into the Gulf of Aden if his ransom demands are not met. Language loses so much of its power when we abuse it. I'm becoming increasingly sensitive to the misuse of the word "pirate" to refer to copyright infringement. I never gave it much thought until news stories about REAL PIRATES off the coast of Somalia emerged a couple years ago — and these guys aren't cutesy Disney characters. I know the horse is out of the barn for the term "software piracy," which has stuck for a couple decades, but I wish people (particularly journalists, particularly in headlines) would use more measured language when describing intellectual property crimes. In theory, it's not all that different than using the term "rapist" or "child molester" to describe someone who embezzles money from their..." - Antone Johnson

"It's not just semantics.  I haven't read the indictment, but "conspiracy" has a specific legal meaning and it's important to get these things right when it comes to criminal prosecution.  (For example, someone can be a co-conspirator, indicted or unindicted, and that affects things like their Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights.)  Just sayin'." - Antone Johnson

"Look, my skin crawls at the mention of Lamar Smith after SOPA, but this article is a serious misreading of the quoted language in H.R. 1981, and the FUD in the comment thread makes it even worse. This kind of reaction serves only to give ammunition to SOPA-backing politicians and corporate interests by *rightly* painting us all with the same broad brushes of "overreacting" and "misinformation." There are other, unrelated provisions in the bill, but the proposed amendment to 18 U.S.C. § 2703 is MUCH narrower than the article claims. Here is what the plain language of the bill states: - ISPs would be required to maintain logs of the dynamic IP addresses they assign to subscribers for a period of at least 12 months, in case the government needs that data for criminal investigations.That's it. No more. It's a preservation-of-evidence rule. Most ISPs do this anyway, although the exact time period might be shorter or longer. To the extent Comcast or AT&T or whoever is maintaining insecure..." - Antone Johnson

"Thanks.  Yes, "incorporation" is convenient shorthand, but I think it creates unrealistic expectations and leads to apples-and-oranges comparisons." - Antone Johnson

"That sounds like an empty threat. Are exhibitors really willing to put their money where their mouth is?  Refusing to show obscure arthouse titles from Fox Searchlight is one thing, but when Universal releases the next huge summer action blockbuster featuring an A-list star whose name alone guarantees packing 'em in, I'd love to see who has the cojones to say no to all that revenue just to make a statement.  (Typical game theory scenario:  Maybe all theater chains stand to gain if they form a united front, but in reality, if chain A doesn't pick up the next "Twilight," Chain B will.)" - Antone Johnson

"It's a start, but nowhere near enough. The entire bill deserves to languish in committee until it dies an ugly death. What's the rush? DMCA seems to have done a decent job for the past 14 years -- but if that's really not enough, start with a blank slate and actually *include* Internet companies in the conversation rather than trying to bulldoze them." - Antone Johnson

"Excellent point, Bill. I also think there are downsides for entrepreneurs as well. Even without crowdfunding, for a late-stage startup with a few dozen angels and other investors, any time a significant corporate event occurs, it can be a drain on resources of senior management (as well as significant legal expense) to round up the necessary consents and answer myriad questions from stockholders. Multiply by 10 or 100 and it becomes an administrative nightmare. The probability of shareholder class action litigation also increases, which in turn should cause D&O premiums to rise... And so on. I think there are many unintended consequences that crowdfunding advocates tend to overlook." - Antone Johnson

"Excellent point, Bill. I also think there are downsides for entrepreneurs as well. Even without crowdfunding, for a late-stage startup with a few dozen angels and other investors, any time a significant corporate event occurs, it can be a drain on resources of senior management (as well as significant legal expense) to round up the necessary consents and answer myriad questions from stockholders. Multiply by 10 or 100 and it becomes an administrative nightmare. The probability of shareholder class action litigation also increases, which in turn should cause D&O premiums to rise... And so on. I think there are many unintended consequences that crowdfunding advocates tend to overlook." - Antone Johnson