Editor’s note: Sid Venkatesan is an IP partner specializing in high stakes IP disputes and IP counseling for technology companies in the Silicon Valley office of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP. James Freedman is an associate in Orrick’s IP group and a recent Stanford Law School graduate. 

A New York appellate court has recently ruled in UMG Recordings v. Escape Media Group that the safe harbor protections that Congress designed for Internet companies do not cover sound recordings made before 1972. The decision is a new and unexpected break with earlier decisions by state and federal trial courts.

As a result, Internet companies that host or transmit songs before 1972, including hits from The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and Elvis Presley, may no longer rely upon the DMCA’s safe harbors to insulate them from potentially crippling legal liability as a result of copyright infringement that arises from downloading, hosting or transmitting copyrighted sound recordings.

The Decision

Escape Media Group, which owns the Grooveshark music hosting site, was sued by Universal Music Group, a major rights-holder, in New York state court for infringing UMG copyrights in pre-1972 works. Grooveshark permits users to upload recordings to its servers and lets other users stream that music. UMG sued Grooveshark for hosting UMG-owned copyrighted songs from prior to 1972 without a license.

Grooveshark argued in the trial court that its services were protected by the DMCA safe harbors, specifically Section 512(c). As we’ve discussed before, this safe harbor immunizes service providers that host user uploaded content so long as the service provider posts a DMCA policy, adheres to DMCA notice and takedown provisions, and complies with other formalities. The trial court agreed with Grooveshark (as well as an earlier federal court decision) and found that Grooveshark’s hosting of pre-1972 songs was protectable under the DMCA. UMG appealed, and on April 23, this decision was reversed by a New York appellate judge that found the DMCA safe harbors inapplicable to copyright infringement of sound recordings created before 1972.

Why does 1972 matter? In 1971, Congress amended the U.S. Copyright Act to include federal protection for sound recordings “fixed” on February 15, 1972. At the same time, Congress included in Section 301(c) of the Copyright Act that “any rights or remedies under the common law or statutes of any State shall not be annulled or limited” by the Copyright Act until 2067. UMG argued that it had common law rights in sound recordings fixed before February 15, 1972 and its rights could not be annulled by the DMCA safe harbors.

Grooveshark countered with a public policy point, arguing that Congress could not have intended the Copyright Act to be read in this way, as it would “eviscerate the DMCA.” Unluckily for Grooveshark, shortly before this decision was issued, the U.S. Copyright Office sent a letter to Congress stating that the DMCA did not cover pre-1972 sound recordings, and urged Congress to fix the issue. At the end of the day, the appellate court rejected Grooveshark’s position and held that pre-1972 sound recordings were not covered based on the text of Section 301(c) and the legislative history. The court punted the issue back to Congress, stating “it would be far more appropriate for Congress, if necessary, to amend the DMCA to clarify its intent, than for this Court to do so by fiat.”

The Aftermath

Though it has its critics, the DMCA provides Internet services, including content-hosting sites, certain peer-to-peer services, search engines and ISPs with defined protections from copyright infringement claims based on the transmission, downloading, uploading, caching, or linking to digital copyrighted content. Under Section 512, the DMCA protects four types of Internet services — called “service providers” under the Act: 1) conduits, like ISPs, that transmit material through a network; 2) caching services; 3) service providers like YouTube or Veoh that store user uploaded content; and 4) information location tools, like search engines. The DMCA also exempts nonprofit educational institutions from liability.

With this decision, those protections may have gone up in smoke. Therefore, Internet companies hosting pre-1972 sound recordings can face claims for actual damages and injunctions under common law. Actual damages can be substantial. For example, BlueBeat.com settled a lawsuit for approximately $1 million for claims to streaming and selling Beatles songs, many of which were recorded prior to 1972. On the flip side, since this decision applies to state common-law copyright protections, it means that service providers may be clear of the worst penalties for copyright infringement for infringement of pre-1972 sound recordings. Under federal law, which would be subject to the DMCA, a service provider can face “statutory damages” that can range from $750 to $30,000 per work (meaning that, for example, a service that is found to host 1,000 infringing copyrighted songs could be hit with a $30 million award).

Further, though UMG has won the day in New York, there remain a lot of uncertainties regarding its claim. The copyright rules of the road that have developed in cases involving Internet companies have developed in connection with claims arising under the federal law. It is uncertain how legal issues, like the determination of indirect liability, the evaluation of affirmative defenses (such as fair use and “Betamax defense”), and the calculation of damages will occur under New York common law.

As a result of this case, Internet companies with a presence in New York (and perhaps other states, should this decision prove persuasive in other states) are now facing a two-regime copyright system and will face increased regulatory costs as a result. Going forward, these companies should take a hard look at what content is hosted, transmitted or cached through their services using, for example, logging techniques or third-party systems, such as the Content ID systems employed by sites like YouTube, to audit content on their service. This can inform appropriate action—either identifying a need for content licenses or a need to engage in increased technical self-help measures to curb infringement.

These costs are obviously unwelcome for technology companies, and we expect that this decision may fuel the drumbeat for Congress to act to amend the Copyright Act to correct this statutory loophole.

[This column reflects Sid’s and James’ general views and does not constitute legal advice or the views of Orrick or its clients.]

[Image Flickr]

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Penguin has offered, and has confirmed to us that the European Commission has accepted, a settlement with the EC over the agency pricing model for e-books — a case the stretched back to last year and involved Penguin, along with Hachette, Macmillan, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster, as well as Apple. The other four publishers and Apple settled with the EC in September 2012. The deal will mean that Penguin can proceed with its merger with Bertlesmann’s Random House, first announced in October 2012, and approved by Brussels earlier this month, so that the two publishers can better battle Amazon.

But in making the settlement, Penguin maintained “it has done nothing wrong,” and that that its position “remains unchanged…the company continues to believe that the agency pricing model operates in the best interests of consumers and authors.”

The full statement from Penguin:

“Penguin confirms that, subject to the market test currently underway, it has reached an agreement with the European Commission to settle its investigation into the establishment of agency pricing agreements for eBooks. Penguin’s position that it has done nothing wrong remains unchanged and the company continues to believe that the agency pricing model operates in the best interests of consumers and authors. While we disagree with some elements of the Commission’s analysis, we are settling as a procedural matter to clear the decks in anticipation of our proposed merger with Random House.”

This also means that the EC’s investigation into agency model pricing will now also close. The full run-down of that case, as it has been played out with the commissioners, is here.

In essence, the publishers and Apple were being investigated over agency agreements signed between them that the EC believed prevented others (namely Amazon, but also Barnes & Noble and other online booksellers) from inking wholesale agreements with the publishers. The publishers would have looked for deals with Apple that it considered more favorable to the publishers, in light of the fact that Amazon regularly prices books at wafer-thin margins — and often at a loss — in order to drive more business overall.

The agency model lets the publishers set the price for books and offer resellers a fixed cut of that price (30% is a typical cut). The wholesale model sees publishers selling their books to distributors, who then sell them at whatever price they want. The latter is the route Amazon has used to great effect to grow its business, sacrificing margin on cheaper books for scale.

Penguin’s concessions in the settlement reached today are essentially the same as those reached by the other four publishers. According to the EC document outlining the case, they are as follows:

1. To the extent that they have not yet been terminated, Penguin will terminate the relevant agency agreements for the sale of e-books in the EEA concluded with Apple.
2. Penguin will offer each retailer other than Apple the opportunity to terminate any agency agreements concluded for the sale of e-books that: (i) restrict, limit or impede the retailer’s ability to set, alter or reduce the retail price or to offer price discounts or promotions; or (ii) contain a price MFN clause as defined in Penguin’s commitments. In case a retailer decides not to make use of the oppor­tunity to terminate such an agreement, Penguin will terminate it in line with the conditions laid down therein.
3. For a period of two years from notification of the decision to Penguin, Penguin will not restrict, limit or impede the ability of e-book retailers to set, alter or reduce retail prices for e-books and/or to offer price discounts or promotions. However, as regards agency agreements, the aggregate value of the price discounts or promotions offered by any retailer shall not exceed the aggregate amount equal to the total commissions Penguin pays to that retailer over a period of at least one year in connection with the sale of its e-books to consumers.
4. For a period of five years from notification of the decision to Penguin, Penguin will not enter into any agreement relating to the sale of e-books within the EEA that contains a price MFN clause as defined in Penguin’s commitments.

The newly formed Penguin Random House will be 53% owned by Bertlesmann and 47% owned by Pearson, Penguin’s parent.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

In a startup’s never-ending battle for new users, data is king. When the decision to put that shiny signup button down here vs. up there can mean the difference between 40 percent of new visitors signing up instead of 20 percent, good data analysis can be what puts food on the table.

YC-backed analytics service Heap wants to make analytics better. They want to help you to code less, but grow more.

Heap’s approach to analytics is, in a sense, backwards from what many web developers might be used to.

Check out their demo video, below:

With many analytics tools (whether its something built in-house, or something like Google Analytics’ event tracker), the decision to track a new metric can take days to implement. First, you’ve gotta decide what you want to track. Then you write and test the code — or, in the case of a bigger company, you wait for one of the engineers to write and test the code (a task that’s probably somewhere around 200 items deep on their to-do list.)

Then you wait. Since you weren’t capturing that specific data before, it’ll be a few days before enough data trickles in to be meaningful.

Heap, meanwhile, captures everything from the day you install it onward. If a user clicks on an image, it’ll log it. If they’re pressing keys on the keyboard because your UI incorrectly implies that’s what they should do, it’ll log it. Every click, every page view, every form submission — if it’s something their lil’ blurp of JavaScript can capture, they log it.

Because of that torrential stream of data constantly being logged, you’re able to come up with new questions and have answers immediately without writing a line of new code. So you made a surprise appearance on Reddit’s front page yesterday and want to know how many of those new visitors tapped your page’s drop-down “Share” button? The data is already there, ripe for the perusin’: just tell Heap which DOM element is the share button, then tell it to count the clicks based on Reddit as the referrer.

User groups (like, say, everyone who signed up after coming from Reddit) can quickly be bundled into “Cohorts” while “Funnels” allow you to measure metrics across a certain series of events. Want to know where you’re losing the most would-be users in your multi-page signup process? That’s what funnels are for.

There’s a matter of user privacy that’s worth discussing here, but it’s a tangled enough topic that it’s probably worth saving for another day — or, as it’ll probably get brought up down below, for the comments. As users, we all expect certain pre-set actions (page views, signups, etc) to be logged for later analysis, but isn’t logging everything just a bit… much?

As you might imagine, capturing this much data requires a pretty heavy amount of storage, so this thing ain’t free. The price scales based on the number of unique visitors a site has. Got 100 users? That’ll be a buck a month. 2,500 users? $25 per month. 200,000 users? $1,000 bucks. 500,000 users? That’ll be $2,000. You can tinker with the pricing scale right here.

If you’re interested in playing with Heap before tossing it onto your own site, you can find a sand-boxed demo right here. Otherwise, interested parties can find the beta sign up here.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

The tech industry brought a lot of drama this week, so there was lots to dig into in this episode of CrunchWeek, the TechCrunch TV show where a few of us writers give our personal takes on the stories that dominated our headlines for the past seven days.

Watch the video embedded above to hear Leena Rao, Anthony Ha, and I discuss Google’s decision to axe its RSS-powered Reader app (and the tech press’ collective wailing about the decision), the new Samsung Galaxy S4, an apparently fantastic phone with a very awkward launch event, and the surprise Friday announcement that Dropbox has acquired Orchestra, the 13-person startup behind the super popular Mailbox app, for some $100 million.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Online advertising company Federated Media just announced that current CEO Deanna Brown is stepping down, while founder and former CEO John Battelle will be taking on the role again.

The company says that Battelle and Brown will be working together during March “to ensure a seamless transition.” Brown joined Federated in 2009 as president and chief operating officer, and replaced Battelle as CEO a little more than a year later.

Brown said in the press release that she’ll be announcing a new venture in a couple of weeks.

In a post on his own blog, Battelle offers more details on the decision. He says that Brown told him earlier this year that she wanted to work on “something smaller and more directly related to content creation,” and they discussed possible replacements:

And then it hit me – quite literally in mid-sentence while on a Board call. Why the hell don’t I simply step back in? I love this company, I am passionate about the Independent Web, and to be honest, I see a huge opportunity in front of us. What am I, nuts? Why didn’t I think of it the moment Deanna told me of her decision?

Battelle notes that he stepped back from a day-to-day role at FM (he was still involved as chairman) to focus writing a book and running conferences like the Web 2.0 Summit. He’s still going to work on those outside projects, but he says he’s going to bringing on a co-author for the book and hiring someone to work full-time on the conferences.

Federated Media started out as an ad network for blogs (in fact, it was TechCrunch’s main ad partner during the site’s early years), and while it still runs standard ads on the network, over time it has placed a bigger emphasis on custom campaigns and “conversational marketing.” As for where FM goes from here, Battelle says it’s still his “first love” and “at the height of its running narrative”:

I am utterly convinced that the media company of tomorrow will have both a technology-driven programmatic foundation, as well as the ability to execute bespoke, beautiful ideas on behalf of the entire media ecosystem – creators, marketers, and communities. When you bring the scale and precision of data-driven platforms to the brilliance of great media executions, magic will happen. Delivering on that vision for the Independent Web is the mission of Federated Media Publishing.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

In 2009, Google launched Commerce Search, a hosted enterprise search product to power online retail stores and e-commerce websites. Commerce Search was the company’s first custom-tailored enterprise search product for a specific vertical. It looks like Google has recently (and quietly) decided to shutter it.

A Google spokesperson issued this statement about the decision:

We are making a strategy shift towards offering more flexible, easier to adopt modules for retailers, such as the Search As You Type widget, rather than a full site search replacement and therefore will no longer be offering Google Commerce Search as a core site search replacement product. We will continue to support our current retail customers using GCS and will try to help them on the best migration process to alternate solutions.

The search product launched in 2009 as a fast search product retailers could add to their e-commerce sites. Commerce search included a number of features that were optimized for retail and product search, such as customized ranking, sorting of results, spell checker, stemming and synonym suggestion, as well as product promotions. Google also updated Commerce search in 2011 with Instant Search availability, merchandising tools and local product availability.

Google had a number of well-known retailers using Commerce Search, including GNC, Forever 21, and Panasonic.

It appears that the decision to shut down commerce search is a more recent one. Last summer, Google announced that it would be sunsetting Google Mini, an enterprise search appliance that’s been around since 2005. At the time, the search giant said that the Mini’s functionality could be better provided by products like Google Search Appliance, Google Site Search and Google Commerce Search.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Google this week fired off one of the first high profile tests of Russia’s controversial new firewall — erected November 1, 2012 to block child porn, drugs and suicide content; but seen by critics as a route for the government to block whatever else it chooses. Google’s YouTube operation in Russia has filed an appeal against the Russian regulator for blocking YouTube content. The appeal, filed on February 11, concerns a block of a video that showed how to apply Halloween makeup: because it shows how to make a wound, Roscomnadzor (Russia’s consumer watchdog) also deemed that it encouraged suicide and suicidal tendencies.

The news was first reported in the Russian newspaper Vedomosti. Google’s position is that there is not enough clarification on what kind of content is permitted or not. In this case, a video intended for entertainment has been misinterpreted, it believes. A spokesperson in Russia, Alla Zabrovskaya, provided the following statement to TechCrunch:

“YouTube provides a community where people from around the world can express themselves by sharing videos and being informed. While we support the greatest access to information possible, we will, at times, restrict content on country-specific domains where a nation’s laws require it or if content is found to violate our Community Guidelines. In this case, we have appealed the decision of Russian Consumer Watchdog because we do not believe that the goal of the law was to limit access to videos that are clearly intended to entertain viewers.”

This case is an appeal of an existing ruling to block a video; it’s not a lawsuit and so it does not entail and financial claims over lost revenue, TechCrunch understands.

The situation highlights a problem of Russia’s new firewall: it was erected to block specific pages that violate Russia’s laws, but has apparently it been less nuanced in its actual application. On top of that, when the regulator decides to block one piece of content on a site, the entirety of that IP gets blocked. While it is appealing the decision, YouTube has taken down the suicide video, but if it had not, then all of YouTube would have been blocked in Russia.

It also underscores the tension that continues to exist in Russia over free speech and government control; and the role that international (Western) giants like Google play in the country’s information and tech economies.

YouTube has been dancing around the Russian regulator’s firewall for months now. Back in November, just weeks after the laws came into effect, YouTube faced a temporary block that was later attributed to a technical error. At the time, this is how Zabrovskaya described it to me:

“There is not much to comment, it was a technical mistake…YouTube was never blocked, it just appeared in the “black list”, and then was deleted almost immediately as the news cycle started.”

But at the time she also sounded a note of warning, which this week is now coming into play with YouTube’s formal appeal:

“We have expressed our opinion on the law, underlining that IP or DNS-blocking system is damaging to Internet development in Russia, as these are the ways which could potentially block the entirety of the product (YT or any other UGC-product ) over one piece of illegal content.”

We are contacting Roscomnadzor for comment and will update this story as we learn more.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Another victory for hackers and a blow for the security of open source systems: OpenX, the online and mobile advertising company that announced a $22.5 million fund raising just last month, says that it is closing down its OnRamp open source ad serving platform, after the service was hacked on February 9, and the company determined that it would be too risky and costly to continue using it securely.

The news was announced by OpenX on its public forum this morning, along with a longer explanation for the decision — however it looks like the decision to close down the service was noticed by at least one blog yesterday.

In brief, OpenX cites the effect on publishers and advertisers using the OnRamp platform; the fact that hacks of all sites are on the rise; and the “virtual impossibility of ensuring the continued security of OnRamp in an environment of increasingly sophisticated and powerful intrusions that exploit open source software.” It also makes a reference to the cost of trying to defend against something like this again in the future. Because of all that, “we have decided that we will no longer host and operate the OnRamp service,” the company writes.

OpenX does not say how many publishers and advertisers will be impacted by the decision; nor does it detail what information the hackers may have obtained when they infiltrated the site on February 9. We have reached out to the company to ask.

Unlike OnRamp, other services from OpenX like OpenX Market and OpenX Enterprise are paid; these will continue operating as before.

Except for a support page, links for OnRamp have disappeared from the OpenX site. However, OpenX says that it will reactivate the interface again today at 5pm so that customers can “view the status of their accounts and copy relevant information needed in order to transition their ad serving to another provider.” Advertising, however, will no longer be served. On March 22, OnRamp will be “terminated permanently.”

Although OpenX lays the blame squarely on the vulnerabilities of open source in a hackers’ world, it also makes the case for open source still being a worthwhile thing: “We have been long and proud supporters of the open source movement and we are deeply saddened that our OnRamp contribution to the movement must end due to this criminal activity,” the company writes.

This is not the first time that open-source-based services have been noted for being more vulnerable to hacking and malware. The same has been said of the Android mobile operating system for a while now (one of the more recent developments here).

Update: A reader asked me whether the fact that it was a free product influenced the decision to close down OnRamp. Without knowing hard user numbers it’s hard to say whether it was really a move to try to push more people to paid services, or whether the free OnRamp was cannibalizing the revenue-generating services. What is true is that, if OnRamp was free to use, then it woud have been hard to justify a move to making huge investments into making it more secure, if hacking had debilitated it and posed a security threat to those publishers and advertisers using it. On top of that, a hacked OnRamp represents bad PR for OpenX as a secure platform for serving any ads.

Full announcement below.

OnRamp, a free ad serving service based on open source code, was subjected to a serious malicious hacker intrusion on Saturday, February 9, 2013. After further review of the intrusion, other recent attacks on the service, the effect on our publishers and advertisers, the recent increased frequency of malicious hacking activity directed against technology companies of all types, the possibility of future intrusions through this open source service which could continue to jeopardize OnRamp customers, the virtual impossibility of ensuring the continued security of OnRamp in an environment of increasingly sophisticated and powerful intrusions that exploit open source software, and the resources we would be required to expend to maintain the security of the service, we have decided that we will no longer host and operate the OnRamp service. OnRamp, because it is based on open source software, has been subjected to attacks of significantly greater frequency and force than any of OpenX’s other products, including OpenX Enterprise and OpenX Market, which continue to meet high standards of security and reliability, and continue to operate normally.

We sincerely regret that the actions of a limited number of bad actors have forced us to terminate a service used for many years without cost by our valued customers. In order to facilitate customers’ transition to another service, we will be reactivating the user interface, but not advertising delivery, of OnRamp at 5:00 p.m. Pacific Time on Tuesday, February 12, 2013. Through the user interface, customers will be able to view the status of their accounts and copy relevant information needed in order to transition their ad serving to another provider. OnRamp, however, will no longer deliver advertising. The user interface will be available until Friday, March 22, 2013 at 5:00 p.m. Pacific Time, at which time OnRamp will be terminated permanently. We will post additional information in the days ahead to assist customers with the transition. If you have any particular questions regarding your OnRamp account, please email us at hosted-support@openx.org.

We have been long and proud supporters of the open source movement and we are deeply saddened that our OnRamp contribution to the movement must end due to this criminal activity. We are grateful to our customers for using OnRamp for their ad serving needs, and apologize for the inconvenience caused by this necessary action.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Dell has indeed made the decision to go private, according to reports today from The AP and other sources. The deal reportedly involves a leveraged buyout worth $24.4 billion by company founder Michael Dell and partners.

Talks about Dell going private have been growing this year, with reports last week saying that Michael Dell was offering up to $1 billion of his own funds to take control of the company to help make it happen. The deal was reportedly brought to the Dell Board of Directors for a vote last night according to Bloomberg.

The deal will also include Microsoft, which is investing $2 billion in the deal, as well as private equity firm Silver Lake Partners, which will invest $1 billion, according to a source speaking to Reuters. Dell stockholders will get $13.65 in cash per share in the arrangement, Reuters reports, with Michael Dell remaining at the helm of the newly private entity.

Microsoft has released an official statement on the Dell privatization deal, which reveals that it is essentially injecting the money into the business in order to help keep a key partner solvent and producing hardware to support its ecosystem.

Microsoft has provided a $2 billion loan to the group that has proposed to take Dell private. Microsoft is committed to the long term success of the entire PC ecosystem and invests heavily in a variety of ways to build that ecosystem for the future. We’re in an industry that is constantly evolving. As always, we will continue to look for opportunities to support partners who are committed to innovating and driving business for their devices and services built on the Microsoft platform.

Analysts have been split on what the decision to go private means for Dell. Some argue that it’s a good move, since it’ll allow the company to make decisions behind close doors, without having to answer to shareholders. Such a move could also make internal restructuring easier, and set the stage for sell-offs of less successful components of the business, simplifying all of those processes and limiting the number of people who have influences over those kinds of hard decisions. Others think that this isn’t a move that will transform the company, but simply one that stalls failure while keeping the real problem (read: Michael Dell) intact.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Five months after we wrote about Shirley Hornstein and how she fooled a number of startups, Hornstein has responded in a blog post apologizing for her behavior and declaring that she has “made the decision to stop.”

My initial post included a legal complaint by Founders Fund against Hornstein alleging that she had been falsely claiming a connection to the venture capital firm and its partners, and I also posted a number of images where Hornstein had Photoshopped herself next to celebrities. Other than that, I didn’t delve into many specifics, instead outlining a pattern of behavior that I’d heard about from a number of sources, where Hornstein would get involved in startups by claiming important Silicon Valley connections and making big promises, then fail to deliver. BetaBeat went into more detail, describing allegations that included credit card fraud.

Hornstein’s post doesn’t discuss specific incidents, but is instead a broad acknowledgment of consistent lying:

For as long as I can remember, I have been lying. From the simple white lies, to the “if-I-say-this-I’ll-get-what-I-want” lies, and the this-could-have-serious-consequences lies, I’ve told them (probably even to you). In fact, I have spent the last 26 years (or, my entire life) lying to, deceiving and manipulating everyone around me, including myself. It finally, publicly, and devastatingly caught up to me last year and I made the decision to stop.

Hornstein says that her “life came crashing” down as a result of the post, with the loss of her job and friends. She also speculates that lying became her “coping mechanism, because it allowed me to cover up everything I hated about myself – my body, my (normal) upbringing, my (non-ivy) education, my job (or sometimes lack thereof), my (nonexistent) friends, and my constant fear of being unimportant.” And yes, she apologizes and says that she’s serious about changing her behavior:

For the first time in my life I sought out professional counseling and have spent the last five months learning to work through my insecurities, processing my past and am trying to understand why I have such an addictive relationship with lying. I don’t think it’s too late for me to grow into the person I want to be, and while I know that I might make mistakes in the future, I will continue to grow & learn and do the best I can. Doing so will also mean making amends for my past behavior. I want to start building my life in an honest way, and I hope that the people I hurt will be able to see that harm was never my intention, and how truly sorry I am to have put them through this.

You can read more here.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch