Ditto, a startup that helps users virtually try on different pairs of eyeglasses, has launched an Indiegogo campaign to help fight a big threat — the company says it’s being sued by 1-800-CONTACTS and another company called Lennon Imaging Technology.

Ditto’s technology allows users to create webcam recordings of their faces, which they then use to see how different designer glasses will look with their facial shape and size. Both Lennon Imaging and 1-800-CONTACTS are claiming that this technology infringes their own patents. But Ditto’s campaign describes them as “patent troll” lawsuits — Lennon is a non-practicing company, meaning that it doesn’t have a product or service of its own, and Ditto co-founder and CEO Kate Endress said 1-800-CONTACTS (which is owned by WellPoint) didn’t purchase the patent in question until after the company’s CEO visited the Ditto website.

1-800-CONTACTS did not respond when I emailed for comment. However, the Electronic Frontier Foundation published its own blog post in support of Ditto saying that 1-800-CONTACTS has “a long record of using the courts to bully its competitors.” That prompted a complaint from the company’s lawyer saying that 1-800-CONTACTS is not a patent troll. The EFF writes:

Sure, the company is not a classic patent troll — a shell company that does nothing but buy patents and sue—but it’s little better. Patent trolls generally want to use the club of litigation to extort licensing fees. But all indications are that 1-800-CONTACTS isn’t interested in a license from Ditto. Rather, it wants to destroy the competition.

Indeed, Endress said she’s in a tough spot, where “we cannot afford to win” — in other words, the company doesn’t have enough money to defend itself in court, and even though Ditto has raised venture funding, the threat of litigation scares off any additional investment. The company has already had to lay off three engineers, Endress said.

That’s why the company has turned to Indiegogo to fund its legal efforts. (Endress said the money will only go towards legal costs.) So far, it has raised about $5,700 of its $30,000 goal. However, the campaign page states that Ditto is looking at $30,000 to $100,000 in legal fees over the next three to six months (and potentially much more afterwards), so I’m guessing Ditto could use a lot more help if possible.

Update: A 1-800-CONTACTS spokesperson just sent me the following statement:

1-800 CONTACTS has a history putting the consumer first by promoting competition. In fact, 1-800 CONTACTS spent years working in concert with consumer advocacy groups to support the passage of the Fairness to Contact Lens Consumers Act. This legislation was passed by Congress and gives all Americans the right to their contact lens prescription so they can choose where to purchase contact lenses. 1-800 CONTACTS also compelled the largest contact lens manufacturers to sell to Internet retailers. Both efforts were successful and led to a more open and competitive market that has benefitted numerous online competitors and ultimately, millions of consumers.

As a leading vision retailer, 1-800 CONTACTS recognized the need to improve the online purchasing options for eyeglasses and began developing an enhanced virtual try on system that would vastly improve the consumer experience. As part of our due diligence when developing our virtual try on technology, we investigated the existing rights in this space, as is standard practice. The granted patent that 1-800 CONTACTS purchased in 2012 entitled “Interactive try-on platform for eyeglasses” was filed in 2001 and granted in 2006. Like most other companies operating a business that depends on technology, 1-800 CONTACTS purchased this patent for a reason – the patent covered what the business was doing so the patent either needed to be licensed or purchased. Ditto could have licensed or purchased the same patent, but chose to ignore it and launched their website with an infringing virtual try on feature anyway.

1-800 CONTACTS began working on our virtual try on system for Glasses.com long before Ditto was formed as a company. Glasses.com had a working demonstration of its more robust 3D virtual try on system running in 2011 – before Ditto launched its website in April 2012. Members of the 1-800 CONTACTS team visited Ditto’s website to try the virtual try on technology when it launched. Viewing competing products that are on the market is not unusual, and is in fact a responsible business practice.

1-800 CONTACTS has offered to discuss an amicable resolution to the lawsuit through licensing or other options, but instead of responding to our offer, Ditto has spent time and energy engaging in online discussions and issuing an inaccurate and misleading press release.

Ditto has found its strongest supporter in the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), who has been quoted multiple times in blog articles and in Ditto’s press release. What Ditto and the EFF failed to disclose is that three members of the advisory board at the Electronic Frontier Foundation all work for Durie Tangri – the same law firm representing Ditto in this case. It is disappointing that the EFF concealed this inherent bias from the public, instead holding itself out as an impartial observer.

1-800 CONTACTS will launch our virtual try on technology next month, providing an enhanced consumer shopping experience. Our approach has taken longer to bring to market, as we developed a revolutionary virtual try on system customized for the iPad. We were honored to present our ground-breaking technology at TED in February, where we also demonstrated the app 1,650 times on 100 iPads.

Complaint 1-800-Contact v. Ditto by TechCrunch

999 016 – Ditto Motion to Dismiss With Memo (00354120) by TechCrunch

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer has been placed in “administrative segregation,” prison shorthand for solitary confinement for “investigative purposes.” Supporters believe he was locked down and given no Internet access because of his ability to send Tweets to a third party who relayed them on his private account. Auernheimer has not sent electronic messages since April 8.

In a letter acquired by the Daily Dot, Auernheimer writes:

His pro bono attorney, Tor Ekeland, has not been able to contact Auernheimer since his lockdown.

Auernheimer was sentenced to 41 months in prison for programmatically scraping user information from a public AT&T website and sharing it with Gawker.com. He entered prison with much fanfare and attempted to blog from behind bars until his lock down.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

The IRS refuses to deny whether its Criminal Tax Division rummages through suspected tax dodgers’ emails without a warrant. In response to the American Civil Liberties Union request for its privacy policy, the IRS dumped 247 records, revealing that the agency definitely believed it could access emails without a warrant before a court deemed the practice illegal. The agency is conspicuously silent on whether it still applies those old spying rules.

“The Fourth Amendment does not protect communications held in electronic storage, such as email messages stored on a server, because internet users do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in such communication,” wrote IRS Criminal Tax Division’s Office of Chief Counsel in 2009.

Under a law widely acknowledged as an antiquated privacy law called the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), governments can access emails opened or older than 180 days without a search warrant. The giant loophole was responsible for the notorious resignation of General David Petraeus after the FBI gained access to his mistress’ incriminating emails.

Recognizing that people now regularly store email in the cloud indefinitely, a federal court in U.S. v. Warshak needed probable cause to compel a company like Google to hand over access.

Here’s the kicker: The IRS won’t say whether it now applies the privacy protections in Warshak to its investigations. Sometimes, what isn’t said can mean more than what is.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

I don’t see a problem with this.

In short, a West Virginia lawmaker wants to outlaw the wearing of head-mounted displays while driving in his state. The devices would join other banned electronic communication devices like cell phones. The bill, while perhaps a bit laughable at first, is logical and smart. It makes a lot more sense than banning the use of Google Glass in dive bars.

The story goes that CNET’s early Google Glass hands-on prompted the proposed legislation. CNET’s Chris Matyszczyk reached out to the bill’s sponsor, Gary G. Howell, a Republican in the West Virginia Legislature, who thankfully isn’t an ignorant Luddite. He’s just sensible.

I actually like the idea of the product and I believe it is the future, but last legislature we worked long and hard on a no-texting-and-driving law. It is mostly the young that are the tech-savvy that try new things. They are also our most vulnerable and underskilled drivers. We heard of many crashes caused by texting and driving, most involving our youngest drivers. I see the Google Glass as an extension.

Texting while driving is dangerous, and while Google Glass is, well, less emasculating, it is still a distraction. Cars are already overloaded with gadgets and screens. They have their own heads-up displays, countless dials and, worse yet, slow and unresponsive infotainment systems that seemingly control more of the vehicle with each new iteration.

If you’re driving, that’s what you should be doing. Facebook can wait.

The proposed legislation would lump head-mounted displays in with cell phones and other electronic devices currently banned from using while operating a motor vehicle. The first offense would result in a fine of $100. The second, third or subsequent offenses would cost $200 or $300, respectively.

Howell goes on to state that he’s not sure if the proposal will become law, although he’s sure other legislatures will file similar bills.

But have no fear. Google apparently saw this coming. The company already has an answer.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Congratulations! You’ve managed to avoid the intergalactic debris that’s been flying around to survive another action-packed week in the tech industry. And you know what else that means? It’s time for CrunchWeek, the weekly show where a few of us writers hang out in the TechCrunch TV studio and dish on the biggest stories from the past seven days.

In this edition, Ryan Lawler, Drew Olanoff and I (our usual host Leena Rao was working out of town this past week) got together to discuss Elon Musk very publicly going to bat for his electric car company Tesla after the New York Times published a less than flattering (and perhaps less than truthful) review of the Model S, the big San Francisco launch of Blackjet, the company that aims to be the Uber for private jet travel, Zynga’s surprise settlement with its gaming nemesis Electronic Arts, and TechCrunch’s help in nailing the coffin shut on the Harlem Shake meme.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Hey Microsoft, 2004 called. It wants its privacy outrage debate back. Microsoft is on the rampage lately, aggressively attacking Google on search, shopping, and email, the latter which is now featured on Microsoft’s infamous “Scroogled” site where – get this! –  Microsoft goes after Gmail because Google reads your email to target you with ads! Seriously.

You have to have a sense of history to get how ridiculous this all is. Let’s go back to 2004 for a minute. Early that year, the big debate in the media about Google’s upcoming free webmail service was its “potentially sticky privacy issues.” (source: PCMag). Journalists, bloggers, and even advocacy groups like the World Privacy Forum and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, got their hands in the matter, leading some to even proclaim “Google mail is evil!”

The issue at hand was that Google was reading your email, and using it to target you with ads. Like Google.com does in a way, but in the more personal and private context of your inbox. The fact that it was bots and not sweaty, I.T. guys with Cheetos-encrusted fingers doing so (e.g. the real live human beings who actually did read your Microsoft Exchange email – I know, because I used to work with some of those guys. OK fine. I also ate Cheetos and read your email.), was set aside so everyone could get outraged over the privacy invasion. Where is this data stored? For how long? Who is it shared with?

It was a worthy argument to have at the time, because we were just then entering into an era where users exchanged privacy for services. This was a time when Facebook was getting off the ground as a site for college students to privately network, remember. Before the News Feed backlash. Before mobile apps. Before everything had a “share!” button. It was a new way of doing business, and it deserved a thorough examination.

Years later, as it turned out, it seems no one cares that much about their privacy. (Cue angry commenters.) Sure, sure, someone cares. A portion of the population cares, and cares deeply. But on a grander scale – the one involving millions, sometimes billions, of user accounts, it’s obvious that a large majority of people got over their Gmail privacy concerns – and their Facebook concerns, for that matter. Over a billion people let Facebook sell their data to advertisers today, for example.

In Google’s case, people got over it because the Gmail, at launch, was demonstrably better than the competition. It was worth selling a little bit of your soul privacy, in order to take a dramatic leap forward in email.

Not only have people since moved on from the Gmail privacy debate, they’ve done so at the expense of Microsoft and Yahoo mail. Gmail now has over 425 million users, more than Hotmail (~360M) and Yahoo mail. Only a third of Outlook.com’s 25+ million users actually switched from Gmail at launch, and it’s hard to say how many remain today. Even if Outlook.com brought Microsoft back into closer competition with Gmail’s user numbers, it doesn’t also make bringing back the “privacy fears” outrage a clever marketing tactic.

Instead, it comes across as a desperate one.

Like, grasping at straws desperate.

Microsoft may argue that these unconcerned citizens are just uninformed. “Ignorance is bliss,” you know. They don’t know, but they should, so Microsoft will step up and educate them.

To wit, via Scroogled:

Your email is nobody else’s business. But Google makes it their business. Even if you’re not a Gmail user, Google still goes through your personal email sent to Gmail and uses the content to sell ads.

The real reason why people don’t seem to be taking extra precautions to keep companies away from their personal data, whether Google, Facebook or otherwise is because the actual fallout just isn’t there. (Yes, there are always cases here and there where someone gets fired or arrested for posting something on Facebook. But let’s get real, anyone stupid enough to post “I robbed a bank!” on Facebook was probably stupid enough to get arrested without Facebook’s help.)

The worst case scenario, as Microsoft happily points out on Scroogled, seems to be more accurate, better targeted advertisements.

Oh, the horror.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Governments around the world, especially the U.S. government, are continuing to request more private data from Google. The search giant released a fresh transparency report this morning, revealing that the U.S. leads the world in information requests about users (8,438 requests for information from about 14,868 users). Google isn’t a fan of how governments force them to hand over data and freak out privacy-happy users, so the regular transparency report has been their (very) clever way of heightening public pressure on issues of government surveillance.

After the FBI surveillance of General David Petraeus’s correspondence with his mistress over Gmail sparked a full-blown scandal, the public got a lot more interested in the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), which sets rules for government spying. This new transparency report now details the different legal methods under ECPA by which governments try to extract data from tech companies.

“68 percent of the requests Google received from government entities in the U.S. were through subpoenas,” explains the blog post. “These are requests for user-identifying information, issued under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (“ECPA”), and are the easiest to get because they typically don’t involve judges.”

In an email to TechCrunch, a Google spokesman says that requests from the U.S. government are up 6 percent from the first half of 2012. Google’s compliance with requests is down slightly, from 90 percent to 88 percent.

Say what you will about Google’s approach to privacy, their transparency report has even been praised by privacy watch-dog, the Electronic Frontier Foundation. In Google’s move toward a more open (and exposed) world, the report has become a savvy method for the company to push back at governments, in a way consistent with their own value system. Kudos, Google. Kudos.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

The standard electronic medical record is a confusing, text-heavy computer read-out. But thanks to winners of Designer Fund and the White House’s Health Design Challenge, a beautiful, comprehensible, mobile version has just been open-sourced. Soon, the Veterans Affair Administration will implement a combination of the best of the submissions as the record format for its six million patients.

The challenge was launched in November by the White House and a new community of philanthropic angel investors called Designer Fund. Directed by five-year Facebook designer Ben Blumenfeld and 500 Startups founding team member Enrique Allen, Designer Fund aims to advise and back designer-led startups with a positive social impact.

The Health Design Challenge to redesign the electronic medical record (EMR) was a huge success, pulling in 230 submissions compared to 80 submissions in a previous White House health challenge. Blumenfeld tells me that “from a quantity standpoint it was amazing, but from a quality standpoint too. People thought through all sorts of ways for the electronic medical record to expand and live on mobile, and have preventative care in there too.”

The overall winner called “Nightingale” from consultancy gravitytank solved many of the biggest problems with the existing EMR. Those include medication plans that are tough to understand, unintuitive formatting, impersonal statistics, and the general feel of a decades-old print-out. It will be the basis of the open-sourced final version that other healthcare providers could adopt.

Nightingale creates an obvious hierarchy for all your health info, and uses styling to make it easy to read. Patients are shown their statistics on a scale from “concerning” to “doing well” instead of as raw numbers.

Rather than only showing your latest lab results, Nightingale puts them in context of your past tests to show how you’re trending. That’s critical, because if your latest results says your cholesterol is too high but the trend shows it’s coming down quickly, you’re actually taking the right steps and shouldn’t make drastic changes.

Graphical timetables in Nightingale make it obvious when to take which medications. Nightingale is accessible from mobile so you can always check your dosage schedule, which will help people make sure they take the meds on schedule. You can even set email and phone alerts to remind you it’s pill-popping time.

Mobile was a big theme among the top submissions. Studio TACK, which took second place, laid out ailments on a body map that could be view on your phone. Josh Hemley’s M.ed won best medication design by creating a browsable deck of mobile medicine cards.

The challenge’s winners will split $50,000 in cash. Beyond that, Blumenfeld tells me healthcare companies he’s talked to are calling the winner’s showcase “the perfect place to recruit from.” But hopefully the winners see the real prize is helping six million VA patients and more truly understand their health.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

HelloSign, a service of HelloFax, has launched a plugin that lets you fill out and sign documents in Chrome without leaving Gmail.

The HelloSign for Gmail plugin allows a user to open, edit and sign documents in Gmail and automatically loads the signed and edited document as an attachment to be sent. It is now only available in Chrome but will be added as a plugin to Firefox. It is not available in Internet Explorer or the Safari browser.

All signed documents are legally binding and automatically backed up in the user’s HelloSign account with other documents.

Adding the Chrome extension is pretty simple. In its tutorial, HelloSign takes the user through the process. It shows how a contract appears. There are three options for the file: view, download or sign. A signature box appears where you can type your name.

Here’s another look at the service:

DocuSign is the giant in the electronic signature market. It does not directly provide a way to sign documents and instead integrates with Zapier for people to create the signing app themselves.

I know I would not create my own app to sign documents in Gmail when there is something as easy to use as HelloSign.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

“Other than the vague threat of an Orwellian dystopia, as a society we don’t really know why surveillance is bad,” writes Washington University Law Professor, Neil Richards [PDF]. Today, the United State Senate reauthorized a controversial Obama-supported surveillance law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 Amendments Act of 2008 (FISA), which permits intelligence agencies to monitor international communications, sometimes without a warrant and little court oversight.

Civil libertarians are up in arms, but in the face of deadly terrorist threats, does government monitoring actually harm people? Richards’ attempts to argue that brazen government spying does, indeed, have real-world harms, including mass self-censorship and blackmail, and supplies moderately compelling evidence that will appeal to those naturally scared of the government.

Without the Senate’s support, FISA’s powers were set to expire at the end of the year. Fierce FISA critic, Senator Ron Wyden (CrunchGov Grade: A), who released a hold he put on the bill in exchange for limited congressional debate, worries that evidence of government overreach means that FISA could lead to more unnecessary spying. The scope of monitoring and the admitted breaches of the 4th Amendment are themselves shrouded in secrecy. Proponents, such as Representative Lamar Smith, (CrunchGov Grade: F) argue that national security concerns are worth the trade-off.

Under the worst-case scenarios, how could spying from democratic governments actually hurt people in a way that would offset the increased risk of terrorism?

Self-Censorship

“Freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth,” wrote Supreme Court legend, Louis Brandeis. However, “surveillance inclines us to the mainstream and the boring,” writes Richards, who argues that the omnipresent threat of government monitoring makes our discussions risk-averse and devoid of important contentious dialog. Certainly in Soviet-era Russia, the very real threat of being hauled off to the icy gulags undercut democratic debate.

There is some evidence that users self-censor in the presence of a watchful eye. In one experimental study, monitored participants were less likely to engage is neutral topics or discuss issues that were incriminating or critical of their colleagues.

There is no equivalent study of government spying or its effect on mass dialog. Certainly there is no shortage of criticism on President Barack Obama’s Facebook page. But, perhaps the effect only applies to government officials with actual knowledge of government malfeasance. Without good evidence on the chilling effects, we’ll let readers decide whether self-censoring behavior extends to government employees.

Blackmail and Coercion

“Information collected surreptitiously can be used for other purposes, whether blackmail or the discrediting of opponents by revealing embarrassing secrets,” Richards writes. Under constant surveillance, governments invariably pick up unintended bits of incriminating evidence. For instance, Richards points to how FISA-surveillance led to the discovery of evidence that a terrorist suspect murdered his own daughter for dating the wrong boy. “Whether these discoveries are important, incidental, or irrelevant, all of them give
greater power to the watcher.”

Perhaps a more compelling example was how the Federal Food and Drug Administration spied on scientists who alleged that the agency was approving dangerous medical devices. According to ABC, only one of the scientists being monitored still works for the FDA. The others were either fired or their contracts were not renewed. Thus, overactive government spying could potentially be used to snuff out important critics.

Richards makes a valiant attempt, but one would think that the over-the-top rhetoric from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and The American Civil Liberties Union would be supported by some jaw-dropping evidence. Instead, it mostly appeals to those who are naturally afraid of the government, and willing to bet that the worst-case scenarios, even without much evidence, will come true.

Civil libertarians aren’t making an unreasonable bet that the government will overstep its authority, but they’re just as reasonable as the many congressmen who voted to authorize the bill for the sake of saving American lives.

[Image Credit: Flicker user aussiegall]

Article courtesy of TechCrunch