Tuesday, August 28, 2018

A Short Rant About Dates in Filenames

If you are going to use a date in your filename, use YYYY-MM-DD (with or without dashes). Any other date system is wrong. Yes, that's right. If you use a different date system in your file names you are wrong.

Why?

Because YYYY-MM-DD (not YY-M-D or YYYY-DD-MM or, god forbid, MM-DD-YYYY or M-D-YY) sorts chronologically. Watch what happens when I have three files with dates, we'll call them

2018-11-28.File3.docx, 2018-06-17.File2.docx, and 2017-12-08.File1.docx

If I sort ascending by file name I get:

2017-12-08.File1.docx
2018-06-17.File2.docx
2018-11-28.File3.docx

See? Nice, chronological order.

If I use a different date system the order if fucked up, thus defeating the purpose of using the fucking date.

I will demonstrate with two variants - non-two-digit Month/Day and the standard US format of MM-DD-YYYY

Non-Two-Digit Month/Day sorted ascending file name

2017-12-7.File1.docx
2018-11-28.File3.docx
2018-6-17.File2.docx

See? 1 comes before 6, so without the leading "0" the "11" comes before the "6" in "alphabetical order" and that is not chronological order. Thus, it's wrong.

Now, let's see the travesty of MM-DD-YYYY

06-17-2018.File2.docx
11-28-2018.File3.docx
12-07-2017.File1.docx

Should we even make an attempt at M-D-YYYY?!

11-28.2018.File3.docx
12-07-2017.File1.docx
6-17-2018.File2.docx

How the fuck can anyone find what they are looking for in that garbage naming convention!?

Ok. End of rant. STOP WITH THE AWFUL DATE FORMATS PEOPLE!!!!

ISO 8601 Data elements and interchange formats – Information interchange – Representation of dates and times

Tuesday, July 24, 2018

Wisconsin Geographic Indications

You can ask Erin, I've been railing at this for ... what? ... let's see I graduated law school in 2004, I took my first Trademarks class in ... 2002 or so? ... 16 years?

As you might expect from a lawyer that spends a lot of time thinking about how law applies to the food and beverage business, I am obsessed (obsessed!) with Geographic Indications, the TRIPS word for Appellation d'Origine Controlle (FR), Protected Designation of Origin (EU), Denominazione di origine controllata (IT), Certification Marks (US), etc.

Historically, the US has looked to take advantage of European intellectual property by "borrowing" their designations of origin for things that bear little passing resemblance to "cheese," let alone "parmesan" or "asiago" or "feta."

The chicken is now coming to roost, so to speak, with the current trade war. It turns out that when you slap huge tariffs on your trading partners, they don't like that and they look elsewhere. When they look elsewhere, the others ask that you play by their rules. If their rules are better (e.g., aren't huge tariffs), then you play the game. So, when our bumbling fool of a head of state imposed tariffs on Mexico and pulled out of the Trans Pacific Partnership, the partners to those looked to get their goods elsewhere - namely Europe. And Europe came in and say, we'd be happy to send you all the Asiago cheese you can handle, but you have to agree to play by our Asiago rules - so, no Asiago from anywhere other than Italy.

In response, and I can only imagine cartoonishly hopping mad, Wisconsin cheesemaker Sartori renamed their "asiago" cheese "Sartiago" so that Mexico wouldn't stop importing it.

In an event that I assume Sen. Tammy Baldwin has no recollection of, I actually spoke to her about Geographic Indications and how we, Wisconsin, were missing the boat. [ed note: the short version of this story is that we were both being interviewed for a documentary about beer]. And, she responded with something like this. I think her position, the typical American position, and definitely the official "Wisconsin Food Producers" position is that anyone should be allowed to call their hard white salty cheese "parmesan" because "What else would you call it?" Well...maybe Asiago?

Look, this full discussion is much longer. I actually get most of the way into the full rant in a podcast that I did with Edible Alpha about trademarks in food [ed note: that was part 2, you can find part 1 here.

But, the short of the argument is this: if "terroir" in food means anything - and I think the whole premise of the sustainability, locavore, slow food, whatever-you-want-to-call-it movement is fundamentally based on it meaning something - then, we [ed note: the "royal we" not literally you, the reader, and me, Jeff, the author, but yes, us too] need to protect Designations of Origin as meaning something. And that means, that when someone in a particular place creates something that you like and they call it something to show their pride in their place that you - manufacturer in the middle-of-nowhere foreign country - can't create something that vaguely resembles that thing and call your thing the same thing. Because that's misleading the public, it's deceptive trade practice, it's counterfeiting, it's infringement.

The State Journal article mentions that "The U.S. has been battling the EU over the geographic naming restriction during trade negotiations dating back to the Obama administration." This is wrong. This "battle" dates back to arguably, the Paris Convention in 1883 and certainly to TRIPS in 1995, but even back to the adoption of the American Viticultural Areas in 1981 and a first attempt at such a thing back in the 1930s.

Friday, July 13, 2018

Design Thinking and Lawyers

I am going to start by saying that I am not trained in "Design Thinking" or any of its sub or related fields. I'm not going to spend a lot of time giving backstory on Design Thinking. For that, go check out the Stanford d.school and/or the work of Margaret Hagen at Stanford's Legal Design Lab. So, with the "what this isn't" out of the way...

I believe that one of the most underrated skills of a lawyer is problem solving. Clients don't often think of lawyers as "problem solvers." We are more often thought of as "technicians" or, in other words, people who act at the instruction of the client.

Indeed, many clients dread lawyers because we aren't seen as problem solvers at all, but problem causers. Lawyers have a reputation for saying "no, you can't do that because laws x, y, and z say it's illegal." As a result, clients are reluctant to come to lawyers in the first place. I'm not saying I'm immune to this problem [hands over ears "lalalalalalalalala"], but I am saying that lawyers can and should be better.

Moreover, We can have a relatively long discussion about why lawyers-as-technician is a dead business model, but the short of it is that no-longer-that-advanced-technology will soon be doing the "technician" piece of being a lawyer. Advances in technology such as artificial intelligence, smart contracting, blockchain, not to mention industry pressures from rapidly increasing innovation cycles will put pressure on lawyers to modularize, standardize, and mechanize the drafting of contracts and other transactional documents.



There will be (already is) increased pressure on lawyers to be problem solvers. To work with clients to understand facts (products and businesses processes), the analyze "the law" (regulatory, case law, whatever), and to work with clients to align appropriately. Once this framework is in place, our robot overlords will take it from there and draft the contracts that define the way forward.

Thus, lawyers have a need for an arsenal of tools to engage in problem solving. Law school, the analysis of fact and conclusion of law, is one such tool. The business world has many such tools - Design Thinking, Lean Startup, Six Sigma, just to name three. As business lawyers we will need to be conversant in these business tools, not just our legal tools.

Monday, May 21, 2018

In the "You Don't Know What You Don't Know" Dept

On May 25, 2018 the General Data Protection Regulation ("GDPR") goes into effect in the European Union. That's this Friday for those of you playing along at home. It is a comprehensive system for the protection of "Personal Data" applicable to any resident of the European Union.

The GDPR is quite comprehensive, and I won't go into all of it. Relevantly, though, it requires that "Data Controllers" (entities that collect data from users) or "Processors" (entities that process data for Data Controllers) disclose the collection of  "Personal Data" ("any information relating to an individual, whether it relates to his or her private, professional or public life. It can be anything from a name, a home address, a photo, an email address, bank details, posts on social networking websites, medical information, or a computer’s IP address") and require that "Data Subjects" have control over the Personal Data. There is a whole litany of resources on how Data Controllers and Processors can comply with the GDPR.

The GDPR, among other things, contains some interesting rights, for example:
- The Right of Erasure
- The Right to Data Portability
- The Right to Rectification

Here's the interesting rabbit hole: The GDPR recognizes the concept of "pseudonymization" - “[T]he processing of personal data in such a manner that the personal data can no longer be attributed to a specific data subject without the use of additional information.” So, this isn't "anonymization" or removing any marker of Personal Data, but rather adding an intervening step to figure out to whom the Personal Data belongs. Perhaps through the process of "hashing" or "encryption."

It turns out that such pseudonymous Personal Data is not exempt from the GDPR, and thus it is still subject to the Rights enumerated therein (unlike truly anonymized data which is exempt).

You say: "That's not that interesting"

"Ah, but what about THE BLOCKCHAIN?" I say.

I'm not going to into too much detail here because multiple authors have tackled this better than I possibly could (see, Van Humbeeck, Andries, The Blockchain-GDPR Paradox, The Ledger, Nov 21, 2017 and Luvai, Kennedy, How Blockchains May Comply with GDPR Mandates, May 2, 2018). But the basic gist is this: when data is written to a blockchain, it is, more or less locked in place and can't be deleted (the word is "immutable"). New data does not overwrite old data, instead new data is "appended" to the chain. Moreover, data on public and private blockchains is frequently "hashed" and/or "encrypted" because blockchains, by their nature, are transparent. Meaning that any node can see transactions that occur on its chain; if there is data stored in a block, that data is often hashed or encrypted to prevent it from being truly public.

I'm sure you are beginning to see the problem: if the data in a block on a blockchain is GDPR Personal Data and the GDPR mandates that Data Subjects have a Right of Erasure of their Personal Data, it is functionally impossible for the blockchain operator (we'll ignore the question of how we even determine "who" the Data Controller or Processor is and assume we can even identify such an entity on a particular blockchain) to comply with the GDPR Right of Erasure.

Thus it seems that that the unstoppable force (blockchain) has met its immovable object (GDPR). Grab your popcorn for this show!


Monday, April 2, 2018

The Word of the Day is "Telematics"

Wikipedia tells me that "Telematics" means:

Telematics is an interdisciplinary field that encompasses telecommunications, vehicular technologies, road transportation, road safety, electrical engineering (sensors, instrumentation, wireless communications, etc.), and computer science (multimedia, Internet, etc.). Telematics can involve any of the following:
  • the technology of sending, receiving and storing information via telecommunication devices in conjunction with effecting control on remote objects
  • the integrated use of telecommunications and informatics for application in vehicles and with control of vehicles on the move
  • global navigation satellite system technology integrated with computers and mobile communications technology in automotive navigation systems
  • (most narrowly) the use of such systems within road vehicles, also called vehicle telematics

Other than it being an interesting word, so what? Right?

Well, as it turns out, the word "telematics" makes an appearance in a 2015 rule from the Copyright Office regarding exemptions from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA"), in 37 CFR Part 201, Section 6: "Proposed Class 21: Vehicle Software - Diagnosis, Repair, or Modification."

[B]ased on the Register’s recommendation, the Librarian adopts the following exemption: Computer programs that are contained in and control the functioning of a motorized land vehicle such as a personal automobile, commercial motor vehicle or mechanized agricultural vehicle, except for computer programs primarily designed for the control of telematics or entertainment systems for such vehicle, when circumvention is a necessary step undertaken by the authorized owner of the vehicle to allow the diagnosis, repair or lawful modification of a vehicle function; and where such circumvention does not constitute a violation of applicable law, including without limitation regulations promulgated by the Department of Transportation or the Environmental Protection Agency; and provided, however, that such circumvention is initiated no earlier than 12 months after the effective date of this regulation.

Again, you might say, So What?

The above is an exemption to the DMCA that allows the owners of a vehicle that contains a "computer program" to circumvent technological protection measures of the computer program for the purpose of "diagnosis, repair, or lawful modification." Of course, all "vehicles" today contain "computer programs" - for example, there might be a computer program that electronically controls shifting, or gas mix/utilization rates, or braking power. This 2015 exemption allows a consumer (or someone acting on their behalf) to make repairs or modifications.

However, there are two (three) big exceptions to this exemptions:

  1. entertainment systems
  2. telematics
  3. "undertaken by the authorized owner"

Entertainment systems aside, as you can see, "telematics" turns out to be a pretty big exception in an age of autonomous vehicles. Moreover, as autonomous vehicles become more prevalent, outright ownership of such vehicles is decreasing in favor of leasing and licensing schemes. The result is best summed up in a pretty wonderful piece by Vice's Motherboard

Tuesday, January 16, 2018

Decentralization, Technology, and the Realization of a New World Order? Or not.

Part 1 - What are we protecting anyway?

I think we need to assume that without rules or formalized order that systems tend toward chaos. Without this hypothesis, imposed order is unnecessary, right? If we think that without laws and rules that everyone will just peaceably get along, why do we need rules making murder illegal?

Maybe that's overly simplistic. Murder rarely happens even amongst animal species incapable of rule making because basic survival is a strong motivator for even unorganized groups to self-enforce basic concepts like "don't kill someone physically and/or emotionally near to others in our proximity." Still, we have examples of humanity, even in law-based systems, who through their own strength manage to murder large numbers of people who disagree with their worldview without immediate (or even proximate) consequence. Many (although it would be hubris to say all) have been brought to account before law-based tribunals. So, perhaps this itself is proof of the hypothesis. But, even for the sake of argument, let's assume that something so "fundamentally" (I know that's a loaded word) wrong as murder is self-executing.

But at what point do these self-enforcing mechanisms break down? Other basic needs, such as food and shelter, do not seem to be so "fundamental." Theft is relatively easy to justify based on perceived need (self-interest). Destruction is easy to justify based simply on revenge or relative worth. Even these simple transgressions require enforcement of the underlying concept of "exclusive ownership" (whether by the individual or by the community isn't particularly relevant at this point)[1]. Let alone more complicated concepts that are fundamental to modern governance such as antitrust, freedom of speech, and environmental protection.

It is easy to simply point at today's somewhat universal system of law and order and say that we've proved the point. The fact that every group of humans have created laws and enforcement mechanisms is proof that such a system is de facto better than a system without laws and enforcement. To my knowledge there is no large group of people that operate under a functional anarchy.

To date, it seems that centralized rule and order (nations) have organized, roughly, along geographical borders. For most of human history this seems pretty obvious. Yet it seems increasingly obvious, that geography may not be the best control mechanism for groups of people to be organized and interact with each other.

So, one of the central questions that this series of posts will ask is this: if we could get rid of the current geography-based systems and, using modern technologies, re-align ourselves, what would that look like? Would we still engage in dispersed centralized behavior (i.e., we would still be centralized, but not around geography)? Or is "true" decentralization (in essence, anarchy; each individual acting, for all intents and purposes in their individual interest) possible in a modern techno-utopia or desirable?



[1] It might interesting to look at societies that managed to survive for long periods that had "political" systems that did not have an underlying belief in "exclusive ownership." Even a system like communism believes that resources are "owned" by "the people" such that taking a "community" item for "personal use" would be transgressive. Without more research, it seems that a more apt candidate might be some Native American systems that view some types of property (such as land) as "unownable."

Monday, November 27, 2017

Building an Ecosystem

I've been doing some research into how to build an entrepreneurial ecosystem - something I have been tasked with for one of the many projects I seem to have stumbled into. I came across this great list of values that should be embedded into an ecosystem. But, as I read the values, it really seems like these are good values just for life in general. But, that makes sense, doesn't it? We're all creating our own personal ecosystems and if we want them to work and be successful, well, we need an ecosystem built on good values.


from the Kauffman Foundation's, Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Building Playbook (seems like a rather obvious title, doesn't it?)