Much of the online discussion has focused on the merits of the suit.  Oracle officially acquired Sun Microsystems early this year.  Sun originally developed Java and, over time, released most of the platform into the open source ecosystem.  Patents that were filed may have been a defense against litigation or even a joke.  And Google has licenses for those patents.  So the question here revolves around whether, by strict or loose interpretation, Google violated its licenses, but the vagueness and generality of Oracle’s complaint [pdf] (and press release) renders most of this analysis speculative pending additional clarification.  (More discussion on the open source backdrop is available here and here, and counterpoint here.)

However, the remedy Oracle wants couldn’t be more clear.  It asks for monetary damages to compensate it for its financial losses and punitive damages because it alleges Google “knowingly,” i.e. intentionally, violated its IP rights.  In addition, Oracle requests “[a]n order permanently enjoining Google, its officers, agents, servants, employees, attorneys and affiliated companies, its assigns and successors in interest, and those persons in active concert or participation with it, from continued acts of infringement of the patents and copyrights at issue in this litigation” and “[a]n order that all copies made or used in violation of Oracle America’s copyrights, and all means by which such copies may be reproduced, be impounded and destroyed or otherwise reasonably disposed of.”  The last one is the kicker: just like TiVo’s demand of EchoStar, Oracle wants the court to tell Google to reach into Android owners’ handsets and rip out the offending material, leaving innocent consumers with a gutted shell — and the remainder of their two-year service contract.

The destruction remedy applies only to the copyright claim.  If the case goes to trial a jury could conceivably find Google liable for patent infringement but not copyright violation.  And even if it did, the district judge has discretion over what relief to grant.  Plus, the appeals process could hack back overbearing damages.

But as long as it is on the table, the availability of such a remedy is a very big stick.  Even if Google believes it should win the suit, betting on that outcome doesn’t make sense if it means risking having to destroy consumers’ phones or fighting a long and uncertain legal battle after the destruction provision is awarded, instead of paying conventional monetary damages.

Google has seen how a similar fight has played out for EchoStar.  EchoStar attempted to comply with the court order by sending DVR boxes an update that replaced the infringing technology with noninfringing parts, leaving intact the DVRs’ functionality.  The Federal Circuit said “no dice,” the remedy was disablement of the DVRs, and that alone would suffice.  EchoStar continues to refuse to disable its customers’ DVRs and has been held in contempt and fined $200 million.

The Federal Circuit has agreed to rehear EchoStar’s case en banc.  And in the interim, the U.S. Patent and Trademark office has invalidated the very patents TiVo claimed EchoStar infringed. (TiVo is appealing the ruling; until its appeal is exhausted, the patents remain in force.)  And the FTC has stepped in to give the circuit court some guidance, filing an amicus brief urging it to consider how specific sanctions will impact innovation across the technology industry.

The availability of destruction as a remedy smothers innovation.  If Oracle can’t strong-arm Google into settling but wins at trial and is awarded the destruction provision (and it survives appeal and Google eventually capitulates instead of balking and riding a series of contempt proceedings into a draconian post-litigation settlement or bankruptcy), (1) consumers would have their phones replaced with bricks and think twice before buying new tech again; (2) Android developers would see their platform and all their apps evaporate; and (3) in the future, companies would likely waste time reinventing the wheel to avoid Google’s court-ordered fate rather than developing new technologies.  There is a storm brewing, brought on by the rise of tethered appliances and the thicket of software patent regulation.

—By Jennifer Halbleib

Disintegrating Droids. The Droid X comes pre-loaded with eFuse technology, which prevents it from booting with unapproved software. Motorola points out that triggering eFuse doesn’t permanently disable the phone — it can re-boot once approved software is reinstalled. Much better.

Neighborhood watch for software vulnerabilities. At the Black Hat security conference last week, Microsoft advocated for cooperation between software companies, researchers, and security vendors to share information on flaws and patches in order to keep users safe. Perhaps cross-pollination at the meeting will spread the idea of mutual aid to website owners as well.

Researcher remotely hacks ATMs. Also at Black Hat, a security researcher demonstrated that he could remotely order stand-alone ATMs to spew cash. While causing a remote ATM to dispense money at will is less appealing to the average thief than cracking open a proximate machine, an accomplice with a laptop in a van nearby could make it a profitable endeavor.

Apple rejects iPad magazine subscription app. Apple has nixed an app from Time, Inc. that would have allowed iPad owners to purchase a digital subscription to Sports Illustrated. Peter Kafka of Media Memo hypothesizes that Apple doesn’t want to give magazine publishers the access to personal user information they would have with an app. But publishers are likely salivating over the targeted advertising potential of mining that data. Plus, single-issue sales through iTunes are cumbersome and inefficient. There may be a confrontation brewing, unless publishers are willing to be satisfied with whatever options Apple grants them.

Communicating with the e-book mothership. If the latest must-read on Kindle is dotted with typos or has a few pages missing, there’s a good chance Amazon offers a patch to correct the error. It’s a handy Internet-enabled functionality, although one can imagine at the extreme authors continuing to update their work ad infinitum, making it impossible for a reader to say he or she has read an e-book since content is always subject to change. Information flows in the other direction on the Kindle superhighway too, as Amazon apparently keeps track of what readers are highlighting. There’s some creep factor in Amazon knowing what ideas Kindle readers think are important, even if the most highlighted passages are in works as deep as The Lost Symbol. But the information is also so interesting.

The remote control. In April, Sony quietly revised the End User License Agreement that came with the latest PS3 firmware update to allow the company to change how an owner’s console operates in whatever way it wants, no notice or permission required. Now the FCC, at the request of the MPAA, has given cable and satellite providers the right to remotely disable output connections on consumers’ set-top boxes, leading consumers to ask “What did I buy?”

Curated Computing is the new name in town for the experience provided by the tablet non-PC. This particular term is meant to accentuate the “less choice, more relevance” aspects of that experience. It rolls off the tongue more smoothly than “contingently generative” and sounds less regressive than an “appliance,” but it connotes somewhat life aboard the Axiom. However, its proponents suggest that curated computing devices are meant to exist alongside and supplement traditional PCs. Let’s call that a worthy goal and the best of both worlds.

iPhone pillow talk with Steve Jobs. A ValleyWag reporter last week exchanged late-night emails with a defiant Steve Jobs on the iPhone’s ability to give people “freedom from” data theft, battery hogs, and porn. The emails speak for themselves, giving a little insight into Jobs’ perspective on the benefits and aims of the iPhone. He gets a little snarky at the end, but then again it’s 2am when he’s responding, and he never has a chance to clarify his comments, unlike the Gawker reporter.

Android outsells iPhone. During the first quarter of 2010, phones with the Android OS grabbed 28% of the U.S. market share, surpassing iPhone’s 21% (RIM’s Blackberry is still at the top with 36%).  Although Android benefited from Verizon’s buy-one-phone-get-one-free promotion and iPhone continues to lead worldwide, it appears Google is getting closer in Apple’s rearview mirror.

McAfee prevents computers from booting up in new virus-protection strategy. Centralizing security software in a few big providers concentrates expertise to solve problems, while also meaning that there are only a few–albeit strong–security systems the bad guys need to breach in order to wreak widespread havoc.  But in a previously under-appreciated risk, a flawed update of widely-used antivirus software can cut out the middleman and accomplish the same havoc directly.  A McAfee software update mistakenly identified a critical file as a virus and quarantined it, causing computers around the world, many of which automatically install updates, to repeatedly attempt to boot up.  One source estimated that 800,000 PCs were affected.

Taking [re-]generativity seriously. A Connecticut mayor donated her kidney to a Facebook friend last month after seeing his desperate status update.  The patient’s doctor had suggested that he try publicizing his need through social media, using an online connection to a forge a real-world bond.

Whoops: Five days later, Steve Jobs announced modified Apple developer rules banning use of “intermediary” tools such as Air—in other words, there will be no more cross-platform development. Adobe employees: not happy.

This is starting to sound pretty antitrust-y. It’s hard to think of any logical reason Apple cares where an app’s code originates—unless, of course, it just wants to hurt Adobe at every turn. Unfortunately, it’s been hard to find knowledgeable people analyzing actual antitrust law—anyone know of a good blog? (For what it’s worth, this old post from the Antitrust Law Blog indicates that the tech sector, including Apple, is under heavier scrutiny from the DOJ and FTC.)

Not surprisingly, there are rumors a lawsuit is brewing.

As usual, there’s another chapter in this saga: Flash translation. In a related but not identical story, Apple has long been hostile to Adobe’s Flash multimedia platform, citing stability and security concerns for refusing to offer Flash support for the iPhone and iPad. This puts websites that use Flash in a tough spot and limits iUsers’ access to content—75% of web video according to Adobe. Enter RipCode, which has developed a server-side translator solution. If an iPhone user attempts to access a Flash video, the “transcoder” detects the platform and translates the video into a compatible format. Since the transcoder is run off the website’s server, it doesn’t require Apple’s approval. Assuming it’s reliable, this is a nice example of a how the generative web allows enterprising developers to solve problems (or, depending on your point of view, do end-runs around the rules).

—By Jennifer Halbleib and Elisabeth Oppenheimer

• Developers are banned from making public statements about the terms of the Agreement.
• Apps developed with the SDK can only be publicly distributed through the App Store and at Apple’s discretion.
• Reverse engineering (including what is considered fair use under copyright law) is prohibited.
• Developers cannot create an application or program that would interfere with any Apple product, not just the iPhone.
• Apple’s liability to a developer is limited to $50.
• Apple can revoke/kill an App at any time.

Google’s Android Software Development Kit License Agreement is very different from its iPhone counterpart.  Not only is there no ban on public statements, but the Agreement is itself publicly available online.  In addition, as we knew, developers don’t have to distribute apps through the Android Market or get Google’s pre-approval if they do (though Google can remove an app if it’s a security risk or violates the Agreement).  If developers don’t use the Market, Google doesn’t take a cut of the profits.

These differences can significantly affect development of the smartphone ecosystem.  On one hand there is the iPhone walled garden, aesthetic and secure but limited; on the other is the wide world of Android, with great potential for variety but also unknown risks, where rules exist, but enforcement is responsive, not preemptive.

Both models may end up coexisting, each phone attracting its own set of users.  Those choosing Android would be willing potentially to sacrifice some security – or take some responsibility for ensuring that what they install on their phone is safe – for novel functions and greater utility, not to mention the cutting-edge cool apps.  iPhone users would opt for a carefully curated set of verified apps at the expense of the most innovative, and riskiest, apps.  Apps that are both useful and safe may transition between platforms, established on Android and subsequently accepted on a case-by-case basis for the iPhone.  Apple may use Android as a testing ground to prove the security of apps that violate iPhone’s strict guidelines but are useful enough to warrant an exception.

Conversely, one of the models may be adopted entirely, the other fading from prominence into history.  For Android to prevail, developers must continue to grow the Market and users judge innovation worth the security risks.  Google itself can maximize this tradeoff by encouraging good apps and vigilantly removing dangerous ones.  But it also requires developers and users to take some responsibility.  Developers by self-policing can prevent the Market from turning into a minefield for users, both by designing secure apps themselves and using the developer community forums to maintain standards across developers within the Market.  Users will have to think before they download and provide feedback to the Market should something go wrong (or right) that can be incorporated into the decisions of other users.  In this scenario, Android would supersede the iPhone much as the Internet replaced AOL and CompuServe.

Alternatively, the iPhone may poach Android to extinction by pilfering all the best apps that Android has tested, leaving only the harmful or useless apps in Android’s exclusive domain.  Or one of JZ’s concerns may materialize – the government may realize the potential for easy control and mandate tethering or users may prefer security to generativity and choose to be penned and shepherded by Apple.

It will be interesting to see how all the players – Apple, Google, developers, users, governments, and watchdogs – influence which story prevails.  Right now, the divergence between the paths forged by Apple and Google is broad.  Will the future follow one or strike out down some middle ground?

–by Jennifer Halbleib

Amazon Cracks Open the Kindle. Amazon is opening the Kindle to outside developers who can market their products in what sounds exactly like an App Store, down to the 70-30 revenue split and and light policing of apps. (One difference is that developers have to pay for wireless delivery.) It’s seeming like this is *the* model for the next few years. Speaking of which…

Computers Should Be More Like Toasters. The sale of the Apple Tablet could mark an important moment for generativity. Computers have been shrinking and phones have been growing—but the critical difference has been that anyone could still code for a computer, until now. The Tablet looks more like a computer than a phone, but will Apple will prescreen apps they way it does for the iPhone? Farhad Manjoo thinks that would be a good thing, but there are clear generativity costs.

The Splinternet means the end of the Web’s golden age. Josh Bernoff points out that, as we switch to appliancized computers and smart devices instead of PCs, the web becomes a “splinternet.” Websites show up and operate differently on each device. He thinks about how to handle this from a business and marketing perspective, advising: “Here’s what not to do: panic and try to unify things again. The shattering cannot be undone.”

Technology Changes “Outstrip” Netbooks. Meanwhile, the BBC considers the convergence among netbooks, smartphones, and tablet notebooks, and who the short- and long-term winners are likely to be.

Apple censors Dalai Lama iPhone Apps in China. An interesting look at how censorship works on iPhones in China. (The story was written pre-Google announcement, so some portions are out of date.) Apple, complying with local law, appears to be removing apps related to the Dalai Lama in the Chinese App Store, and a search for Falun Gong apps freezes the search page. On the other hand, it’s possible to access YouTube through an iPhone app, which isn’t always possible on a PC.

And in the crystal ball dep’t — from JZ’s book:

Imagine entering a café in Paris with one’s personal digital assistant or mobile phone, and being able to query: “Is there anyone on my buddy list within 100 yards? Are any of the ten closest friends of my ten closest friends within 100 yards?” Although this may sound fanciful, it could quickly become mainstream. With reputation systems already advising us on what to buy, why not have them also help us make the first cut on whom to meet, to date, to befriend? These are not difficult services to offer, and there are precursors today.

As usual, there’s an app for that… the “datecheck” app allows you to enter a name, phone number, or email address, and get information on your date. The categories are “sleaze detector” (check of criminal convictions & sex offenses), “$$$” (home ownership, etc), “interests” (gleaned from social networks), “living situation” (who they live with), and “compatibility”—although unfortunately, the “compatibility” check is still just a check of astrological signs. Now all they need is friends’ feedback rankings.

—By Elisabeth Oppenheimer

Joe Hewitt, Facebook’s iPhone app developer, has quit developing for the iPhone because he is “philosophically opposed” to Apple’s review policies and their tight control over their platform. But instead of hitching his wagon to Android or some other mobile platform, he’s decided to focus instead on making the mobile web as strong as it can be. He told TechCrunch:

The web is still unrestricted and free, and so I am returning to my roots as a web developer. In the long term, I would like to be able to say that I helped to make the web the best mobile platform available, rather than being part of the transition to a world where every developer must go through a middleman to get their software in the hands of users.

And he says on his blog that we can avoid a world where “the only technologies that matter” are the ones where Apple or some other gatekeeper makes decisions (however irrational or infuriating, as yet another developer has chronicled). I’m not entirely convinced that a vigorous mobile web is enough—for instance, Apple can still disable Flash on its phone, thus crippling many web apps—but it might be, and it’s a valuable complement to more open mobile platforms.

Then we have two people thinking about whether the web itself will remain free. First is Chris Messina on The Death of the URL. Messina writes from the perspective of a user experience designer, who understands why the complexity of the Internet can frighten users (“thar be dragons!”) but thinks that should be a challenge for designers, not a reason to give up on “the infinite organicity of the web” and the structures of “one of the most generative periods in history.”

Second is Tim O’Reilly on The War for the Web. He notes that Facebook and the Apple iPhone require users to play by the company’s rules to some extent, although the web still exists as a partial backstop—e.g., Google Voice is available on the web, if not as a native iPhone app. But he worries that the web itself will become less interoperable and less generative as companies with natural monopolies in one area attempt to gain control in other areas as well. Go read the whole piece; it’s worth it.

JZ argues that the PC and the internet have been the perfect combination for generativity. The internet itself could itself be a solution to the control of mobile platforms. But these pieces point out, yet again, how even that combination isn’t untouchable unless we’re constantly, actively working at it.

—By Elisabeth Oppenheimer

Lost in the Cloud

Cambridge, Mass.

EARLIER this month Google announced a new operating system called Chrome. It’s meant to transform personal computers and handheld devices into single-purpose windows to the Web. This is part of a larger trend: Chrome moves us further away from running code and storing our information on our own PCs toward doing everything online — also known as in “the cloud” — using whatever device is at hand.

Many people consider this development to be as sensible and inevitable as the move from answering machines to voicemail. With your stuff in the cloud, it’s not a catastrophe to lose your laptop, any more than losing your glasses would permanently destroy your vision. In addition, as more and more of our information is gathered from and shared with others — through Facebook, MySpace or Twitter — having it all online can make a lot of sense.

The cloud, however, comes with real dangers.

Some are in plain view. If you entrust your data to others, they can let you down or outright betray you. For example, if your favorite music is rented or authorized from an online subscription service rather than freely in your custody as a compact disc or an MP3 file on your hard drive, you can lose your music if you fall behind on your payments — or if the vendor goes bankrupt or loses interest in the service. Last week Amazon apparently conveyed a publisher’s change-of-heart to owners of its Kindle e-book reader: some purchasers of Orwell’s “1984” found it removed from their devices, with nothing to show for their purchase other than a refund. (Orwell would be amused.)

Worse, data stored online has less privacy protection both in practice and under the law. A hacker recently guessed the password to the personal e-mail account of a Twitter employee, and was thus able to extract the employee’s Google password. That in turn compromised a trove of Twitter’s corporate documents stored too conveniently in the cloud. Before, the bad guys usually needed to get their hands on people’s computers to see their secrets; in today’s cloud all you need is a password.

Thanks in part to the Patriot Act, the federal government has been able to demand some details of your online activities from service providers — and not to tell you about it. There have been thousands of such requests lodged since the law was passed, and the F.B.I.’s own audits have shown that there can be plenty of overreach — perhaps wholly inadvertent — in requests like these.

The cloud can be even more dangerous abroad, as it makes it much easier for authoritarian regimes to spy on their citizens. The Chinese government has used the Chinese version of Skype instant messaging software to monitor text conversations and block undesirable words and phrases. It and other authoritarian regimes routinely monitor all Internet traffic — which, except for e-commerce and banking transactions, is rarely encrypted against prying eyes.

With a little effort and political will, we could solve these problems. Companies could be required under fair practices law to allow your data to be released back to you with just a click so that you can erase your digital footprints or simply take your business (and data) elsewhere. They could also be held to the promises they make about content sold through the cloud: If they sell you an e-book, they can’t take it back or make it less functional later. To increase security, companies that keep their data in the cloud could adopt safer Internet communications and password practices, including the use of biometrics like fingerprints to validate identity.

And some governments can be persuaded — or perhaps required by their independent judiciaries — to treat data entrusted to the cloud with the same level of privacy protection as data held personally. The Supreme Court declared in 1961 that a police search of a rented house for a whiskey still was a violation of the Fourth Amendment privacy rights of the tenant, even though the landlord had given permission for the search. Information stored in the cloud deserves similar safeguards.

But the most difficult challenge — both to grasp and to solve — of the cloud is its effect on our freedom to innovate. The crucial legacy of the personal computer is that anyone can write code for it and give or sell that code to you — and the vendors of the PC and its operating system have no more to say about it than your phone company does about which answering machine you decide to buy. Microsoft might want you to run Word and Internet Explorer, but those had better be good products or you’ll switch with a few mouse clicks to OpenOffice orFirefox.

Promoting competition is only the tip of the iceberg — there are also the thousands of applications so novel that they don’t yet compete with anything. These tend to be produced by tinkerers and hackers. Instant messaging, peer-to-peer file sharing and the Web itself all exist thanks to people out in left field, often writing for fun rather than money, who are able to tempt the rest of us to try out what they’ve done.

This freedom is at risk in the cloud, where the vendor of a platform has much more control over whether and how to let others write new software. Facebook allows outsiders to add functionality to the site but reserves the right to change that policy at any time, to charge a fee for applications, or to de-emphasize or eliminate apps that court controversy or that they simply don’t like. The iPhone’s outside apps act much more as if they’re in the cloud than on your phone: Apple can decide who gets to write code for your phone and which of those offerings will be allowed to run. The company has used this power in ways that Bill Gates never dreamed of when he was the king of Windows: Apple is reported to have censored e-book apps that contain controversial content, eliminated games with political overtones, and blocked uses for the phone that compete with the company’s products.

The market is churning through these issues. Amazon is offering a generic cloud-computing infrastructure so anyone can set up new software on a new Web site without gatekeeping by the likes of Facebook. Google’s Android platform is being used in a new generation of mobile phones with fewer restrictions on outside code. But the dynamics here are complicated. When we vest our activities and identities in one place in the cloud, it takes a lot of dissatisfaction for us to move. And many software developers who once would have been writing whatever they wanted for PCs are simply developing less adventurous, less subversive, less game-changing code under the watchful eyes of Facebook and Apple.

If the market settles into a handful of gated cloud communities whose proprietors control the availability of new code, the time may come to ensure that their platforms do not discriminate. Such a demand could take many forms, from an outright regulatory requirement to a more subtle set of incentives — tax breaks or liability relief — that nudge companies to maintain the kind of openness that earlier allowed them a level playing field on which they could lure users from competing, mighty incumbents.

We’ve only just begun to measure this problem, even as we fly directly into the cloud. That’s not a reason to turn around. But we must make sure the cloud does not hinder the creation of revolutionary software that, like the Web itself, can seem esoteric at first but utterly necessary later.

Jonathan Zittrain, a law professor at Harvard, is the author of “The Future of the Internet — And How to Stop It.”

Google and Microsoft are now officially fighting over you. They are vying not merely for your momentary attention—that rare instant when your precious eyeballs stray to an ad, motivating you to click on it and cause a penny or a nickel to fall into their jars. They want a long-term relationship with you, and each thinks its future depends on it.

Google made its boldest bid in this direction this week with the announcement of its new operating system, Chrome. Soon you will be able to buy a PC or other device loaded with Chrome instead of Windows. By Google’s account, Chrome will serve a single essential purpose: to get your computer up and running with a Web browser —confusingly also called Chrome—seconds after you’ve turned it on. Now you’ll be greeted each day by Google instead of Microsoft. Just as all those years ago Microsoft Windows pointed you toward Microsoft’s other products, Google’s browser will likely naturally angle you toward Google’s ever-expanding family of Web products.

If the plan succeeds and lots of people snap up Chrome instead of Windows, it will cement the idea that software is now meant to run out there “in the cloud,” far away from the PC or PDA in front of you. You’ll need an Internet connection to do most things—and to be sure, that’s much easier to find in 2009 than it was in 1995. The question is, in the era of the cloud, how do we avoid sacrificing our essential computing freedoms?

The issue arises because Google aspires to be not only the index of your information, but also the repository. As Google Mail seamlessly interacts with Google Docs and Spreadsheets (the whole service is called Google Apps), you might find yourself spending most of your time not simply on the Web, but at Google.com or its partners. Google could be as dominating a presence in the cloud era as Microsoft has been in the PC era.

Google’s announcement is a milestone within a long transition from the PC to the Web. For about two decades, an overwhelming majority of computer users were greeted by Microsoft’s Windows startup screen and chime. Microsoft collected fees for the basic software that ran your PC, and then again by selling application software such as word processors and spreadsheets. Software developers would write new software for Windows since that’s where the users were, and users would keep buying Windows since that’s where the software was. As the Web took off in the late 1990s, the browser began to disturb this arrangement. Netscape got the idea of bundling software called Java with its browser, which made it powerful enough to take on word processing, spreadsheets, and many other things.

Google is now on the verge of finishing what Netscape started. So far, Google hasn’t fully figured out its business model. Instead of charging you the way Microsoft did for Windows and Office, perhaps Google will stick with ads, hoping you’ll occasionally click on something. Or perhaps, serving as the hub of your online identity, Google can help you spend your money on other sites, taking a cut the way your credit-card company does from a merchant when you make a purchase. Or perhaps Google will charge developers for the privilege of running their software on the Google Apps platform, or even to run it elsewhere but drawing upon Google resources—the way that a restaurant’s Web site might help you find the place by embedding an interactive Google map on one of its pages.

Although no one can predict Chrome’s future, the Web relentlessly pulls us, and our data in. Unless we come up with ways of protecting ourselves now, our data could be shaped and used in ways we haven’t imagined and that are beyond our control. We could find it hard to switch from one service provider to another after piling up so much information, and so many relationships, in one place. We ought to be able to move our data, with just a click, from one gated community to another—from, say, Microsoft’s Office Live, its suite of Web-based software, to Google Apps. We ought to be able to bridge our identities from one place to another, instead of having to choose just one. Why shouldn’t our Google Docs be permanently accessible through Office Live and vice versa, and on to some upstart site that no one’s heard of? Market forces may naturally take care of this—but they are not magic, and a little bit of well-crafted regulation (or the threat of it) can help maintain a competitive marketplace.

Freedom for you is one half of the puzzle. The other half is freedom for those who write software. Even in a world mostly of Windows, there are thousands of different pieces of software that can be found, and Bill Gates has had nothing to say about whether they would be allowed to run on his platform. We ought to preserve similar freedoms in a new world where Web platforms can and do shut down outside software all the time, whether on the Facebook platform or Google Apps. This might come about through software authors uniting to temper some of the practices that give Web-platform makers much more control over outside software than Microsoft ever had for its desktops, or again, through narrow regulation to ensure nondiscriminatory accessibility to these platforms—especially if one platform outgrows the rest.

Long-term relationships can be extremely valuable and healthy; it makes sense to get new and promising ones off on the right foot.

Our OpenNet overview of the Internet in Iran dates from 2005, but it’s still largely true.  (An update is in the works.)  Iran has been able to impose a finely grained Internet filtering regime, not having to deal with the sheer volume of traffic that, say, China has.  It’s able to treat its Internet-using public the way a school can filter what its kids see on their PCs.  All Internet traffic is routed through a server farm that applies the filtering.  (The government used to run U.S. company Secure Computing’s (since acquired by McAfee) SmartFilter software.  Secure Computing denied selling the software to Iran; see Wikipedia’s summary.  Today Iran runs its own home-grown filtering software.)

So it’d be trivial for the Iranian government to block access to Twitter as it could to any particular Web site, and it could even block access to some Twitter users’ feeds there while leaving others open, by simply configuring its filters to allow some Twitter urls through while filtering others.  But Twitter isn’t just any particular Web site.  It’s an atom designed to be built into other molecules.  More than most, Twitter allows multiple paths in and out for data.  Its open APIs make it trivially easy for any other Web service provider to insert a stream of tweets in or to capture what comes out.  Thus Twitterfall can provide a waterfall of tweets — all viewable by going there instead of to Twitter.  Anyone using at Twitterfall can tweet from there as well.  You can hook up your Facebook status in either direction, so that when you tweet it automatically updates your Facebook status — or the other way around.

The very fact that Twitter itself is half-baked, coupled with its designers’ willingness to let anyone build on top of it to finish baking it (I suppose it helps not to have any apparent business model that relies on drawing people to the actual Twitter Web site), is what makes it so powerful.  There’s no easy signature for a tweet-in-progress if its shorn of a direct connection to the servers at twitter.com.  And with so many ways to get those tweets there and back without the user needing twitter.com, it’s far more naturally censorship resistant than most other Web sites.

Less really is more.

Publius points out that Iran could simply cut off all Internet access, or at least all access for most people there.  Maybe it’ll come to that.