Joe Schlesinger

Congrats to Mr. Joe Schlesinger in receiving a well-deserved lifetime achievement award from the Canadian Journalism Foundation. I have the pleasure of watching some of Joe’s reports over the years and fully enjoyed them. Congrats Joe for a job well done.

Ang Lee Documentary

I came across this Ang Lee documentary by chance. Very insightful. Enjoy.

Close The Office?

I am a big fan of the original BBC Office created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant but strangely I just couldn’t stand the NBC version. While it sad to see anything goes bad but I am glad some people thinks NBC should give The Office a rest.

Here is a short clip from the 16 episodes UK series.

David Cameron’s son Ivan dies

I first blogged about David Cameron here in 2006. I am really sorry to read David’s six-year old son Ivan was taken ill overnight and passed away in the hospital this morning. My heart and best wishes go to the Cameron family and friends.

P.S. Since 2006, time has changed so much and the Obama-way of conducting politics is slowly taking shape.

Oscar Winners: Kate Winslet, Sean Penn, Penelope Cruz @ Press Room

Cancel Amex, Get $300

Yes, by now it has been widely reported that canceling an Amex card can get some people $300. Ignoring the long term impact on the brand image for a moment, it is probably a smart financial move to offer money to get people with terrible credit risk to pay off their debt before end of April by offering them $300 as buy out payment.

In a world of recessional economy, it might be a smart move to get those delinquent debt paid off before other credit card companies get to the same group of dead beat card holders. I will be very surprise if the debts owned to American Express by these card holders are not into the thousands and tens of thousands. This is ultimately a calculated credit default risk/reward for American Express.

I would be very interested to find out more about the credit history of actual card holders who get offered these deals.

2008 Oscar – Sean Penn

I was surprised that Sean Penn won Best Actor, now may be I shouldn’t have been surprised since he won SAG and Critics Choice awards. Anyway, I was hoping Mickey Rourke would win.

Penn’s award speech was quite insightful and very right about Prop 8. See Times of India,

“I think that it is a good time for those who voted for the ban against gay marriage to sit and reflect and anticipate their great shame and the shame in their grandchildren’s eyes if they continue that way of support,” Penn said as he accepted his golden statuette.

“We’ve got to have equal rights for everyone.“

Here is a video of Penn’s acceptance speech,

[HT: First Showing]

2008 Oscar – Kate Winslet

I am really happy for Kate Winslet in winning the Best Actress award (for The Reader) as she has grown with the diversity of roles she has taken over the years since I first noticed her in Titanic. Great for her.

To celebrate her win and have a bit of fun. Here is Kate playing a funny version of herself in Extras. Pay attention to what she said in the episode about Oscars. Quite funny. Enjoy.

Here is Kate talking about her Oscar winning role in an 2008 interview.

Kate on Charlie Rose.

2008 Oscar – Kate Winslet

I am really happy for Kate Winslet in winning the Best Actress award as she has grown with the diversity of roles she has taken over the years since I first noticed her in Titanic. Great for her.

To celebrate her win and have a bit of fun. Here is Kate playing a funny version of herself in The Extras. Pay attention to what she said in the episode about Oscars. Quite funny. Enjoy.

2009 Oscar Round Table by Newsweek

I love the yearly Oscar Round Table hosted by Newsweek. This year Newsweek found Robert Downey Jr., Anne Hathaway, Sally Hawkins, Frank Langella, Brad Pitt and Mickey Rourke to sit down for a great and frank chat between actors & actresses. Lovely.

Enjoy.

Here is the first of a series of clips.

P.S. In the clip “Oscar Roundtable: ‘With Obama, We’re Alive Again’” I love Anne in saying, “We are allowed to hope now.” Love it.

18 Pregnant Schoolgirls

18 Pregnant Schoolgirls is airing on CBC Newsworld
Monday Februay 23, 2009 at 10 pm ET/PT & Sunday March 1 at 8 pm ET

The story behind the teenage pregnancy scandal that rocked the world. Watch a promo video of 18 Pregnant Schoolgirls.

Oscars Movie Chat – 好戲咪走雞

I am very much looking forward to watch Oscars this Sunday. While I haven’t watched as many nominated films as I had in previous years, I want to see how the ones I’ve watched will do.

Slumdog Millionaire (Love this film, hope it wins Best Picture but I am realistic)
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (nice special effects but …)
The Wrestler (Mickey Rourke, hopefully will win Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role)
Rachel Getting Married (Anne Hathaway, nominated for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role)
The Dark Knight (Heath Ledger, should win Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role)
WALL·E (will likely win Best Animated Feature)

Plus I am going to chat live with my radio host friend Terry on coming Monday morning Oscar edition of 好戲咪走雞 about all things Oscars (including the beautiful dresses).

Whats in Facebook’s TOS Pandora’s Box? – Thank you Suzie White

Many things in life is not as simple as it seems. The recent flip and flop of Facebook’s changing of it Terms of Service is an example of a Pandora’s Box that is now opened and has some serious implication.

For Facebook, it has been forced to take the high road and created a Facebook group for concerned users to help draft a “Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities”. So the genie is now out.

More interestingly, this Fox news article is reminding us the Terms of Service we may have agreed to already if we are users of gmail, LinkedIn, Monster.com, Apple iTune, YouTube, etc. It will not surprise me if some of these services’ TOS will eventually be tackled and forced to change some draconian provisions. Strategically, since Facebook has already invoked the high ideals of a “Bill of Rights”, it makes sense to sort out the TOS with Facebook first. Like other negotiations, whatever Facebook set as a standard can be easily used as a benchmark to try to get compliances with other companies.

In the upside down world of social network. The straw that broke the camel’s back may end up helping the camel gains strength to lift the world and teach users around the world to organize and help change “routine”/”standard” industry practice.

A friend suggested these kind of draconian provisions are not new and users have been agreeing to them for years. I thought about this a little. I suppose my reply is US had slavery for years, and then “suddenly” the practice of slavery become unacceptable to some. In our social network age, the original post that pointed out the TOS issue became a lighting rod which focused all the negative attentions onto Facebook and forcing it to address the problem. But you see, with Facebook’s initiative to draft a “Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities”, people around the world have been taught an important lesson of the power within them.

Call me naive, Suzie White, Corporate Counsel for Commercial Transactions, should be credited and thanked for opening Facebook’s Pandora’s Box and triggering an avalanche of change. It is about time the extreme and draconian provisions of these TOS be removed/rephrased/reworded. Again, it is paradoxical that an act to maximize a private corporation’s legal protection may have launched a movement to reduce corporations’ legal protections to a necessary (and minimum?) level.

P.S. Some entrepreneurs or business investors may be wondeing what all the big fuss about TOS. And how dare “customers” are complaining about things like TOS when they are not even paying a cent for these great services.

Facebook Irrevocable & Perpetual license & Indemnity clause – Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities

Dear Mark,

As part of this reform, it is key for Facebook to terminate its “perpetual” right. While users can’t revoke our “irrevocable, perpetual” license granted to Facebook, Facebook can terminate/forgo these “perpetual” rights that users have granted you.

When Facebook uses a noble and grand sounding name like “Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities“, it is time for Facebook to let go of the notorious shield of the Indemnity clause.

Can you imagine an indemnity clause the “United States Bill of Rights” or the “Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms” ? Setting out all the lofty goals and ideals and then add a clause saying, oops, by the way, those ideals don’t apply to us. If you sue us, we will always win!

ref for “irrevocable, perpetual” license:

“By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant [...] an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, [...] license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, [...]“

ref for Indemnity clause:

“You agree to indemnify and hold the Company … arising out of or in connection with any User Content …”

P.S. I posted a pretty similar version of this post to Facebook here.

Calgary Crime Map

After cities like London, Calgary Police finally gives us a tool to see and map crimes data in our communities – Calgary Crime Map.

For more see CTV Calgary report.

Facebook’s new Terms of Service (TOS) is dead – Time has changed

I am happy to tell my friend that he is wrong now that Facebook’s new Terms of Service (TOS) is dead. With the Pandora’s Box opened, I believe the straw that broke the camel’s back will paradoxically make the camel even stronger as it now knows better that its “master” may not be always right. Pushing the idea one step further, the minds of powerful private corporations can be changed when enough force and determination are applied by large users community.

Lack of a better name, I will put these kinds of studies, observations & analysis under the temporary label of “Dynamic Law and Economics” (borrowing from Coase‘s “Law and Economics“). “Dynamic Law” because of the short-term and seemly dynamic and short term nature of these contractual arrangements.

The important idea here is not just what Facebook’s users have managed to do to reverse Facebook’s TOS decision in this one case. It is the wider implication of what large group of customers & clients have collectively learned and know what they can collectively do to change the minds of large corporations. You see, in Facebook’s case, if is a *private* corporation own by very limited number of investors and investment funds.

May be “Dynamic Law and Economics” contains some new ideas & concepts, or may be not. But I sense something fresh ways to look at the design and consideration of contractual arrangements. Will see if there are any substances in my thoughts here.

More reports:
Facebook Caves To User Pressure And Promises Bill Of Rights – Channel Web
Facebook’s about-face: Change we can believe in? – CNet
Facebook says Oops, (we) did it again – Reuters
Facebook Backs Off Controversial Content-Rights Policy Changes – MTV
Facebook backtracks on terms of use after protests – AP
Facebook Withdraws Changes in Data Use – NYT

Special acknowledgment to Suzie White, Facebook Corporate Counsel for Commercial Transactions, in opening up the Pandora’s Box and showing us why the old ways of drafting Terms of Service is broken. And why, in some cases, allotting the drafter of a contract the maximum protection may, paradoxically, not be the best approach.

Facebook Mark Zuckerberg’s Skywalker Lightsaber: The Power of Terms of Services

Imagine one day in the not too distance future, if Facebook was sold to or become a not-so-honorable marketer, then Facebook will have a set of very accurate and detailed profile of our preferences in movie, music, sports, TV shows, financial investment leanings, sexual partners, politics, food, etc. And Facebook even has all our personal photos and our friends’ photos all exploitable by Facebook.

Well, we (175+ million of us) have collectively fed Facebook with plenty of our personal information and intimate details and Facebook has shown us the claws of a marketing monster in its new TOS.

Facebook’s young CEO/Jedi Master Mark Zuckerberg has come out to reassure us his company is for good and not for evil. But when Zuckerberg said one thing and then armed Facebook with some powerful TOS, is he simply another Anakin Skywalker who ended up turning to the dark side and rise to become Darth Vader?

You be the judge. If you are worried, do something when there is time.

P.S. I started this blog entry with this following story but I decided to leave it at the end instead.

You see, I’ve enjoyed Reader’s Digest articles for years when I was young and thanks to RD, my English had a bit of Michigan accent for a while. But after CBC Market Place exposed RD as a sweepstakes crazed marketing monster exploiting its readers’ names & addresses and preying on its customers (many senior citizens), I’ve lost all respect for Reader’s Digest.

Now, I think Facebook can be a hundred times worst than the marketing nightmare that is Reader’s Digest. Facebook has all our personal details, and together with some powerful Terms of Services, it just granted itself legal ability to turn itself into a marketing monsters.

Facebook’s New Weapon of Mass Destructions (Terms of Services)

Feb 18, 2009 Update: Facebook’s new Terms of Service (TOS) is dead – Time has changed

*******

Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg tried to reassure Facebook users that “On Facebook, People Own and Control Their Information“. I think his assurance is simply not enough and may be empty words designed to brush off our serious and justified concerns.

To share what I think, I left Mark a shortened version of the following comment,

Dear Mark,

I don’t have strong justifications to suspect that you mean Facebook users ill with the new Terms of Services (TOS). At the same time, your colleagues at the legal department have laid out some serious weapons of mass destruction on the table to “protect” Facebook. In my blog entry, I went as far as writing, “I submit, under the new TOS, Facebook may have the legal power and strength to win all legal challenges from past and current disputes.“

I don’t know what was I smoking when I also wrote and thought, “It is paradoxically the draconian power that Facebook, a private company, has decided to assign itself which may eventually lead to, hopefully soon, a back down to a more reasonable TOS.“

A friend of mine thought the Facebook TOS outcry will die a peaceful death like other TOS protests that came before this one. My friend even told me, “The last memorable TOS boycott of a free service with a noticeable effect was Yahoo/Geocities in 1999.”

I hope my friend is wrong. I hope there are enough people who care about their rights and their personal info/contents to force Facebook to revert back to its old TOS for now until a more acceptable TOS is developed in consultation with legal experts (the likes of Larry Lessig) and groups of users.

As my free market economists friends like to remind me, Facebook is a private company and is free to do whatever it wishes to, and will have to acceptable all consequences it causes.

Best Regards,
Kempton

P.S. Mark, It will be a good start if you simply direct your legal department to reword your blog posting right into the TOS agreement using the same powerful legal languages.

Ref: blog entry Facebook TOS paradox

For more reports and comments please see: NYT, Fox News, Bloomberg, CNet News, Forbes.

Background:

Suzie White, Facebook Corporate Counsel for Commercial Transations, put the weapons of mass destruction on the table on Feb 4, 2009 in this benign sounding blog entry “Update to Our Terms“. And their updated new terms here.

*******

Feb 17 Update:

• Facebook polls users on TOS update – CNET News
• Protesters demand answers from Facebook regarding new policy – San Jose Mercury News
• Facebook’s Fine-Print Fiasco – BusinessWeek
• Facebook faces furor over content rights – CNN
• Facebook data policy change sparks protests, controversy – USA Today

Two Guy Ritchie’s films

Thanks to Kevin Roberts’ recommendations, I checked out Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch and really enjoyed these two Guy Ritchie‘s films. Wonderfully made, “funny, clever, fast-paced, brilliantly shot and full of larger than life British characters” indeed.

Here are the trailers of the two films.

Facebook Terms of Service Paradox – Facebook owns our asses? Forever? Not quite.

Feb 18, 2009 Update: Facebook’s new Terms of Service (TOS) is dead – Time has changed

*******

Chicago Tribune asked, “Do you belong to Facebook, forever?” after The Consumerist’s post Facebook’s New Terms Of Service: “We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content. Forever.”

Some people are worried, rightly so, that Facebook can end up owning our asses forever with terms like (emphasis added),

“You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish [...]“

and important limitations from the old Terms of services removed (emphasis added),

“You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.”

and remain in the “Termination” section (emphasis added),

“The following sections will survive any termination of your use of the Facebook Service: Prohibited Conduct, User Content, Your Privacy Practices, Gift Credits, Ownership; Proprietary Rights, Licenses, Submissions, User Disputes; Complaints, Indemnity, General Disclaimers, Limitation on Liability, Termination and Changes to the Facebook Service, Arbitration, Governing Law; Venue and Jurisdiction and Other.”

It is important that people are worried about the potentially unchecked power of Facebook, which as a private company can do anything it wishes after all. At the same time, I submit, in the age of social networks and blogs, Facebook may have just opened up its own Pandora’s box unwittingly.

The Facebook Terms of Service Paradox

I submit, under the new TOS, Facebook may have the legal power and strength to win all legal challenges from past and current disputes. After all, they didn’t hire some dummy to write and update its powerful Terms of Service. But I suspect any resulted and most likely lengthy legal disputes will generate such a negative vibe and protests in the Facebook users community towards Facebook that either users may leave in droves to different services or Facebook may have to end up changing its Terms of Service back to something much more acceptable to users.

It is paradoxically the draconian power that Facebook, a private company, has decided to assign itself which may eventually lead to, hopefully soon, a back down to a more reasonable TOS. Now, I am NOT a lawyer, and I don’t even play a lawyer on TV. But it seems to me, in a legal thought experiment within the social network context, the outcome of this Facebook TOS mess should be pretty close to what I suggested in the above Facebook Terms of Service Paradox.

I love to hear your thoughts on this.

P.S. I suppose there are many ways to launch campaigns to try to change Facebook’s mind if it didn’t do it itself, soon. Of course, Facebook, being a social network, seems like a great first choice to use as a tool to bring Facebook down from the heavens.

As an aside. For a company with not much historical profit to speak of, it is interesting to see how determine will it be in acting stupid and hurting its chance of ever making any money whatsoever in the future.

Time value of money is a well known finance concept. May be there should be time value of legal power as well. (smile)