Iowa State Tells Students To Piss Off And Continues Its New Trademark Policy Despite Their Concerns
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We've been discussing Iowa State University's bold attempt to twist itself into a knot over its trademark policy for some time now. This all started when the school attempted to bow at the alter of certain Iowa state government reps to disallow a pro-marijuana alumni group from using school iconography. For its efforts, the alumni group beat the school in court on First Amendment grounds, eventually resulting in a $600k judgement against the school. Rather than learning its lesson, the school reacted to all of this by rewriting its trademark policy for student groups, pulling back permission of all kinds for groups to use the school's name and symbols. This, predictably, led to a full on revolt by students, with all kinds of groups refusing to associate themselves with the school at all. The student government, meanwhile, pointed out that the policy was written with zero input from students or student representatives.In other words, ISU managed to piss off its own students by trying for iron grip control for... reasons?With the revolt in full swing, you might have thought that perhaps this would be the thing that caused ISU to wake up and reverse course. Noooooooope. Instead, the school's administration simply penned what reads like a canned letter to its students about the trademark policy, explaining its reasoning for doing whatever the fuck it wants and brushing student concerns aside.“Thank you for your interest and concern regarding the recently modified Guidelines for University Trademark Use by Student and Campus Organizations (Guidelines),” the opening of the letter sent by the university trademark office reads. “We value your input as representatives of the student body.”The letter explains the purpose, process and means through which the policy was implemented, going through the Trademark Advisory Committee (TAC) of which one current member of Student Government was present. The letter did promise to expand the TAC to include more student representation, but that pledge is little more than tripe given that the policy has already been written and put into practice as of the first semester of school. On top of that, a big part of the frustration on the part of students has been the school's nonstop claim that the policy change had nothing to do with the court battle it recently lost, whereas the letter admits that it was.Whereas University Counsel Michael Norton had said the court case between the Iowa State chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws’ (NORML) and the university had nothing to do with the implementation of the policy at a Student Government meeting in August, the letter said the policy was “certainly influenced” by court cases across the country, including the NORML lawsuit.“It seems to have made student organizations more angry, it is getting worse not better,” Woodruff said. “The university still hasn’t apologized for their miscommunication, they still haven’t claimed any responsibility … This response is more of the same, telling students they are just associated with the university. We aren’t associated with the university, we are the university.” Frankly, you would think the school would want to boast of a robust student organization landscape. That's one of the draws in campus life that brings students in. Prospective students as of this moment, however, have to be scratching their heads wondering why the school is in some stupid, needless intellectual property war with its own students.And, honestly, why at every turn in this saga of stupid, Iowa State has managed to do exactly the wrong thing.
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posted at: 12:11am on 12-Dec-2018
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How Bike-Sharing Services And Electric Vehicles Are Sending Personal Data To The Chinese Government
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A year ago, Techdirt wrote about the interesting economics of bike-sharing services in China. As the post noted, competition is fierce, and the profit margins slim. The real money may be coming from gathering information about where people riding these bikes go, and what they may be doing, and selling it to companies and government departments. As we warned, this was something that customers in the West might like to bear in mind as these Chinese bike-sharing startups expand abroad.data [from the associated Mobike smartphone app] is sent back to Mobike's servers in China, it is shared with multiple third parties (the privacy policy limits this sharing in no way whatsoever) and they are using what is effectively a social credit system to decrease your "score" if you prop the bike against a lamp post to go and buy a loaf of bread. Detailed location data of this kind is far from innocuous. It can be mined to provide a disconcertingly complete picture of your habits and life:through the collection and analysis of this data the Chinese Government now likely have access to your name, address (yes it will track your address based on the location data it collects), where you work, what devices you use, who your friends are (yes it will track the places you regularly stop and if they are residential it is likely they will be friends and family). They also buy data from other sources to find out more information by combining this data with the data they collect directly. They know what your routines are such as when you are likely to be out of the house either at work, shopping or engaging in social activities; and for how long. As Hanff points out, most of this is likely to be illegal under the EU's GDPR. But Mobike's services are available around the world, including in the US. Although Mobike's practices can be challenged in the EU, elsewhere there may be little that can be done.And if you think the surveillance made possible by bike sharing is bad, wait till you see what can be done with larger vehicles. As many people have noted, today's complex devices no longer have computers built in: they are, essentially, computers with specialized capabilities. For example, electric cars are computers with an engine and wheels. That means they are constantly producing large quantities of highly-detailed data about every aspect of the vehicle's activity. As such, the data from electric cars is a powerful tool for surveillance even deeper than that offered by bike sharing. According to a recent article from Associated Press, it is an opportunity that the authorities have been quick to seize in China:More than 200 manufacturers, including Tesla, Volkswagen, BMW, Daimler, Ford, General Motors, Nissan, Mitsubishi and U.S.-listed electric vehicle start-up NIO, transmit position information and dozens of other data points to [Chinese] government-backed monitoring centers, The Associated Press has found. Generally, it happens without car owners' knowledge. What both these stories reveal is how the addition of digital capabilities to everyday objects -- either indirectly through smartphone apps, as with Mobike, or directly in the case of computerized electric vehicles -- brings with it the risk of pervasive monitoring by companies and the authorities. It's part of a much larger problem of how to enjoy the benefits of amazing technology without paying an unacceptably high price in terms of sacrificing privacy.Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+
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