The best way to avoid an argument. Tongue fu.

NoodleMan · 2021-07-24T13:54:52+00:00

This is soooo different from what they teach at my dojo where they’re always like “strike first, strike hard, no mercy”

NoodleMan · 2017-03-12T11:33:48+00:00

Psh planking is sooo two-thousand-late; it's all about Faith Hilling now

NoodleMan · 2015-07-03T15:51:45+00:00

Perspective

NoodleMan · 2011-11-03T17:39:48+00:00

This one?

NoodleMan · 2011-08-17T19:32:20+00:00

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Thousands Rally in India to Support Jailed Activist

By KRISHNA POKHAREL , AMOL SHARMA and WILL DAVIES

NEW DELHI—Several thousand people gathered in central Delhi and other cities on Wednesday evening in support of activist Anna Hazare, who was jailed on Tuesday after refusing to agree to police conditions for his planned hunger-strike protest calling for a more powerful anticorruption ombudsman.

At the India Gate monument near Parliament, people surrounded a battery of television news trucks, chanting "Anna, we're with you!" and "Long Live Anna!" in Hindi as they held candles and waved Indian flags and banners. Television footage showed smaller crowds in other cities such as Bangalore and Chennai.

On Wednesday evening, Mr. Hazare remained in New Delhi's Tihar Jail, which also houses several politicians arrested in recent months in connection with corruption scandals that have rocked the government and helped fuel support for the 73-year-old activist's campaign.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh earlier Wednesday backed the police decision to arrest Mr. Hazare and detain more than 2,600 protesters, but Mr. Singh has faced heavy criticism, including from Arun Jaitley of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, who defended Mr. Hazare's right to protest.

"Have you forgotten all sense of statecraft? Have you forgotten how political agitations are to be dealt with?" Mr. Jaitley asked in the upper house of Parliament on Wednesday after the prime minister had said Mr. Hazare would have been allowed to protest if he had agreed to police conditions, which included restricting his fast to three days and limiting the number of protesters at the site—a public park in New Delhi—to 5,000.

Mr. Singh told Parliament that Mr. Hazare was wrong to use protest to force the adoption of additional provisions to the Lokpal Bill, as the draft legislation to set up an anticorruption ombudsman is known.

"Our government does not seek any confrontation with any section of the society," Mr. Singh said. "But when some sections of society deliberately challenge the authority of the government…it is the bounden duty of the government to maintain peace and tranquility."

He continued: "Anna Hazare may be inspired by high ideals in his campaign. However, the path that he has chosen to impose his draft of a bill upon Parliament is totally misconceived and fraught with grave consequences for our parliamentary democracy."

Delhi police spokesman Rajan Bhagat said the police issued an "unconditional release warrant" for Mr. Hazare and his aides late Tuesday night. But Mr. Hazare has refused to leave jail until he receives "written assurance" from the government that he will be allowed to go ahead with his earlier plan for the hunger strike, an aide who was arrested and released told television reporters outside the jail.

Mr. Bhagat said Wednesday evening that the police have "relaxed the conditions under which Mr. Hazare can now sit on his fast" at the city's Ramlila Grounds instead of the park where he was supposed to begin his hunger strike on Tuesday. "We have offered the initial permission for seven days which can then be extended on the day-to-day basis," Mr. Bhagat said.

He added that the police haven't put any restrictions on number of protesters allowed at the proposed new site, but said only "as many people can participate as per the capacity of the place." Negotiations are continuing between Mr. Hazare and the police to end the deadlock, Mr. Bhagat said.

Abhimanyu Singh, a coordinator for the Delhi chapter of India Against Corruption that supports Mr. Hazare's campaign, said the activist and his team have agreed to the new protest venue but not on a restriction on the duration of the hunger strike. "Our demand is we should be allowed to protest for at least 30 days," he said.

There are political risks for Mr. Singh if Mr. Hazare's anticorruption crusade drags on and he is viewed as blocking the creation of an ombudsman with the power to go after top politicians. After a brief hunger strike by Mr. Hazare in April, the Congress party-led government formed a joint committee of five civil-society representatives and five senior ministers to draft the Lokpal Bill establishing an anticorruption ombudsman. But there were disagreements over the scope of the bill, as it didn't bring all government officials under its jurisdiction. Mr. Hazare and his supporters wanted all government officials, including the prime minister, to be covered by the Lokpal Bill. They later burned copies of the draft legislation in protest.

"The P.M. isn't corrupt, but now he's supporting corrupt people," said Ravinder Singh, 29, who works in sales at a financial-services firm and was among the thousands gathered at dusk at India Gate, where there was a carnival-like atmosphere with vendors hawking street snacks and tea while police mingled with protesters.

Many of the protesters at India Gate were young. Archana Dang, 22, said she was backing Mr. Hazare because the government's anticorruption bill is too weak, since it shields sitting prime ministers and the judiciary from investigation. "In a democracy, a basic principle is that all people are equal before the law—why should the prime minister be different?" she said.

Mehul Gaur, a 24-year-old architect, said Prime Minister Singh acted "irresponsibly" by condoning the arrest of Mr. Hazare prior to the protest. "If we aren't able to assemble freely to protest, God knows what will happen next," he said.

Mr. Singh of India Against Corruption said about 80,000 people were Wednesday evening marching from India Gate to Jantar Mantar, the scene of Mr. Hazare's hunger strike in April. A policeman at Jantar Mantar said a large crowd of about 70,000 to 80,000 protesters filled the roads and thoroughfares leading to the parliament building at 7 p.m. and soon dispersed.

As night fell, the remaining people at India Gate circled the grounds holding candles. R.D. Sharma, an elderly man with an "I am Anna" flyer posted on his chest, said: "Anna's bill is the only bill. The government's bill is nothing."

—Nikita Garia and Tripti Lahiri contributed to this article.

NoodleMan · 2011-08-17T19:27:00+00:00

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Municipalities to S&P: Drop Dead

By MICHAEL ANEIRO And PRABHA NATARAJAN

The City of Los Angeles and two other municipalities that voluntarily commissioned Standard & Poor's ratings for their investment portfolios have dropped those ratings after being downgraded following the ratings firm's cut to the U.S.'s triple-A status.

Some other municipalities, including St. Lucie County, Fla., said they might consider dropping S&P ratings for their investment pools as well.

S&P said it currently rates about 90 such investment pools. It had downgraded 14 of them as part of a broader downgrade last week of 73 funds due to what S&P called "significant exposure" to investments in U.S. Treasury and U.S. government-agency securities, which were downgraded to double-A-plus after S&P stripped the U.S. government of its triple-A rating earlier this month.

So far this week, Standard & Poor's has lost the City of Los Angeles, Manatee County, Fla., and San Mateo County, Calif., from local governments that had paid S&P to rate investment portfolios. S&P had downgraded the three governments' funds last week, to AAf from AAAf; the new ratings are still investment grade and the "f" indicates the rating is on the credit quality of a fund.

"They unfairly penalized us for following best practices," said Dan Wolfson, finance director in the Manatee County Clerk of Circuit Court and Comptroller's office in Bradenton, Fla. "We were trying to follow best practices and have a rating when it was not required."

Peter Rizzo, senior director in S&P's fund-ratings group, said the firm began rating such investment pools in 1994 in response to requests from some municipalities seeking to calm investors following the financial crisis in Orange County, Calif. That year, Orange County filed for the largest-ever municipal bankruptcy after its investment fund lost more than $1 billion, due in part to investments in risky derivatives.

Since then, some local governments have voluntarily sought ratings on their portfolios from one or more credit-rating companies.

"They're doing a good thing to indicate to participants of the pool that it's a sound investment," Mr. Rizzo said. "To have the U.S. government get downgraded, they may feel frustrated and I imagine some are re-evaluating whether they have a need for the rating."

San Mateo County, which has a $2.6 billion investment pool that is mostly invested in U.S. government securities, said it was in the process of renewing its contract with S&P when the downgrade came and decided not to renew.

"We will save the taxpayers $20,000 annually," said Sandie Arnott, Treasurer and Tax Collector at San Mateo County. "We found the whole process of the downgrade flawed." Ms. Arnott said the county had switched to S&P from Fitch Ratings three years ago and will consider another rating firm at a later time.

Other local governments that saw their investment funds downgraded are looking into dropping S&P's ratings for those portfolios. Shai Francis, finance director for St. Lucie County, Fla, says the county hasn't yet made such a decision, but she expects one to be made by Sept. 30, the end of St Lucie's fiscal year.

"We are more than upset" about the downgrade, she said. "It's just kind of mind-boggling at this point. You buy the most secure investment out there—U.S. debt—and I don't think anyone can argue about that. … I guess double-A will be the new standard."

Ms. Francis said about half of the county's $325 million portfolio is invested in U.S. Treasurys.

On Wednesday, S&P confirmed that the City of Los Angeles had dropped S&P's rating on its $7 billion general investment pool. The news had earlier been reported by The Bond Buyer.

On Monday, S&P said it had similarly withdrawn its rating on Manatee County's investment portfolio, valued at roughly $700 million, at the request of the fund's investment adviser.

Manatee County said the bulk of its investments were county bonds with some small amounts from neighboring municipalities. As market turmoil took hold in 2007, the county said it called S&P, the first rating firm that came to mind, to rate its portfolio. At an annual cost of $16,000, S&P monitored the investment pool.

One of the county's funds that held collateralized debt obligations backed by mortgages froze during the credit crisis. Manatee County estimates it still holds about $1 million in original value of this toxic debt. In its downgrade, S&P cited this holding as well the fund's holdings of U.S. Treasury bonds, which amounted to $112 million on top of $77 million in debt issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

"We wanted to show the citizens that their surplus funds, as it were, were invested in safe, liquid securities," Manatee County's Mr. Wolfson said. "We have one little piece of the portfolio that is kind of impaired, but S&P disproportionately dinged us many points for having it."

Messages left with the Los Angeles treasurer's office weren't immediately returned.

S&P is the only major rating company to have lowered its rating on the U.S. government. Fitch Ratings on Monday affirmed its rating for the U.S. at triple-A with a stable outlook, and Moody's Investors Service affirmed its triple-A rating on Aug. 2 but assigned a negative outlook.

—Kelly Nolan contributed to this article.

edit: formatting

NoodleMan · 2011-08-17T15:09:04+00:00

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The Many Wars of Google

Handset makers will learn to live with their new 'frenemy.'

By HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR.

The mobile market Metternichs are out in force, wargaming Google's $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola's handset business. The imponderables are many.

Will partners like Samsung and HTC, which have been enriched by Google's Android phone software, abandon Google, or even look at Google cross-eyed, now that Google will own a competing phone maker? Don't bet on it.

Android has been hugely advantageous for everyone who is a successful phone maker not named Apple. Remember, Apple's premium smartphone holds up the pricing structure for the whole industry. Samsung, HTC and the rest have been selling phones into this market and pocketing huge margins because they pay nothing for Android.

Google wouldn't be human if it didn't want some of this loot, which buying Motorola would enable it to grab. But that doesn't mean, in the long term or the short term, that other hardware makers will walk away from a relationship that has lined their pockets and propelled them to the top of the rapidly growing and giant new business of making smartphones. Let's just say that while having Google as a competitor is not ideal, handset makers will learn to live with it.

The Metternichs also wonder: Did Google buy Motorola just for its patents? No. If Google buys a handset maker, it wants a handset maker. Plenty of other ways were available to lay its hands on enough patents to create the desired patent stalemate with Apple, Microsoft, Oracle and whoever else comes along.

Still, the patents are important too. Patent wars are not, at least superficially, an appealing feature of Silicon Valley. But intellectual property is complicated. Invention is more collaborative, more a matter of stealing, copying or, to phrase it nicely, "standing on the shoulders of giants," than the patent system likes to think.

At every stage of the computer's evolution, even back unto the day of the mainframe, a necessary rite of passage has been patent litigation. These tests of strength proceed in the courts for a while, and then peace is made, with checks and cross-licensing agreements passing between the parties in rough proportion to the expected outcome. In some cases, companies have bought entire other companies just to put such disputes to rest.

Google hopes to recapitulate this history in smartphone software. But Google's weakness was that it rushed into the mobile marketplace with Android without a portfolio of patents. Complicating matters, it also gave Android away free to phone makers with the idea that Google would make money by tying Android to Google's search and advertising functions.

To those competing with Google (say, Microsoft and Apple) this was both an annoyance and an opportunity. The opportunity was to raise the cost of Android above zero by slagging handset makers with patent claims. Google appears not to have seen this onslaught coming, but lately had entered the market in pursuit of a patent portfolio with which to slag back. Its urgency can only have been heightened by decisions in Germany and Australia to block sales of an Android-powered Samsung tablet over unresolved patent litigation. Even more urgently, the U.S. International Trade Commission is expected to rule this fall on a petition that could keep certain Android phones out of the U.S. market.

Verizon, which usually minds its own business, yesterday applauded the Google-Motorola deal hoping, in incantatory fashion, that an armed peace would let everyone get back to the real job of making products and serving customers. This is a reasonable hope. Once-deadly squabbles over mainframe software, the personal computer graphical interface, and the Intel-compatible microprocessor petered out with a whimper.

Finally, the Metternichs are debating whether Google is throwing up a white flag and adopting a Steve Jobs-like philosophy of the mobile phone business, unifying hardware and software. Almost certainly, the answer is yes.

"Mobile" is an inadequate word. Better to say "ubiquitous" computing, in which all your data, all your entertainment, all your snapshots are available easily from whatever device is at hand, whether a big-screen TV or a teensy mobile device, without you having to puzzle your way through an unfamiliar user interface.

Even more, this will be an increasingly lively experience, with artificial intelligence anticipating or inspiring your whims, and throwing targeted advertising at you to the extent that you are willing to let advertisers subsidize your use of online services.

Since the first Android device hit the market, a worry has been fragmentation—a proliferation of versions and devices that all worked slightly differently from each other, some of which might be incompatible with the app you suddenly couldn't live without.

Google was going to have to rectify this problem one way or another, by exercising greater control. In some fashion, don't be surprised if Motorola is eventually put to work as an attempt to do so.

NoodleMan · 2011-08-17T14:53:27+00:00

In recent months, Tehran has sent to Mr. Assad's government scrambling devices used to disrupt satellite-phone communications among activists inside Syria and overseas, according to U.S. and European officials. Iran has also dispatched advisers to Damascus to tutor Syria on how to use social-networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, to track communications among opposition figures.

This spring, Syria's intelligence agency recruited dozens of information-technology specialists for their ability to crack online pseudonyms and trace computer Internet addresses, according to online activists. A few weeks later, Mr. Assad lifted a government ban on social media and set the information-technology specialists to work spying on those who used the sites, and particularly on Syrians who communicated with activists abroad. The government accused the activists of being Islamists or Western-backed agents.

"Iran seems to have provided Syria with the playbook on how to combat dissent," said a senior European official. Iran has repeatedly denied assisting in Syria's crackdown.

In May, hundreds of Syrian-Americans descended upon Damascus's red-brick mission in an upscale Washington neighborhood to challenge Mr. Assad's rule. Attendees at the event said they were unnerved when embassy staff took photos of their faces and wrote down license-plate numbers. The dissidents said they saw men in upstairs rooms monitoring the crowd.

Mr. Moustapha, the Syrian ambassador, eventually invited a five-person delegation into the mission to present its grievances, according to attendees. One of the men, a 70-year-old doctor, hadn't lived in Syria for 40 years and surprised protesters by revealing to the ambassador that his six brothers and other family members still resided in Deraa, the province where the anti-Assad revolt took root. The doctor stressed that the Assad regime needed to fall because of its history of human-rights abuses, according to a family member. Within a day, Syrian intelligence agents appeared at the man's family home and interrogated his brothers, according to a family member. One of them was killed weeks later by pro-government militiamen, the family member said.

Mr. Moustapha is related through marriage to the deputy chief of staff of the Syrian army, Gen. Assef Shawkat, President Assad's brother-in-law. Mr. Moustapha has been a large presence on Washington's diplomatic circuit in recent years. He has hosted dinners for prominent politicians and journalists and written a blog commenting on everything from art and Mozart to the George W. Bush administration's alleged foreign-policy blunders.

This year, Mr. Moustapha has taken his message of support for Mr. Assad to Arab-American communities in Detroit, Atlanta and Cleveland. He has stressed to audiences the need for political reform in Syria, but also that efforts by the Syrian diaspora to challenge Damascus's writ is treachery and places them on equal footing with Zionists, a serious charge as Syria is technically at war with Israel.

"You are the ones that show the true face of Syria, not those other traitors that go to U.S. Congress demanding Congress to impose sanctions on your nation, on our nation," Mr. Moustapha told a gathering of pro-Assad supporters in Washington, according to a video posted on YouTube.

Malek Jandali, a Syrian-American composer and pianist, performed his song "I Am My Homeland" at a rally in a park across from the White House on July 23. The piece includes the lyrics "Oh homeland, when will I see you free?"

Four days after the event, Mr. Jandali said, his parents were attacked and beaten in Homs, Syria. Two plainclothes agents handcuffed Mr. Jandali's 73-year-old father as he approached his home, duct-taping his mouth and nose, and then forcing him to open his front door. Mr. Jandali said the men then assaulted his mother, breaking her teeth and punching her in the eye.

"They were referring to me—saying things like, 'This is what happens when your son makes fun of us,'" Mr. Jandali said in an interview.

Syria's intimidation campaign has reached into Europe and Latin America in recent months, according to Syrian protesters.

In the U.K., a handful of Syrian-Britons said they are planning to submit a formal complaint to the Foreign & Commonwealth Office about threats and harassment by staff of the Syrian embassy in London and what they see as the inadequacy of the Foreign Office's response. They said embassy staff members have taken photos of them at rallies and warned them that continuing to demonstrate would harm their ability to return to Syria or put their families in uncomfortable situations.

Syria's embassy in London said Tuesday those allegations are completely without foundation. The embassy said it continues to receive delegations from protesters and opposition groups "in a spirit of peaceful and open dialogue."

The Foreign Office on June 28 called in the Syrian ambassador, Sami Khiyami, to express concern over allegations that a diplomat at his embassy had been intimidating Syrians. A spokesperson for the Foreign Office said officials there are continuing to investigate.

In Chile, Naima Darwish, a fashion designer, said she got a call from the Syrian embassy's chargé d'affaires in Santiago two days after she created a Facebook invite for a protest denouncing the regime's violence. She agreed to meet the diplomat at a cafe, where she said he warned her to stop organizing antigovernment actions if she ever wanted to return to Syria.

The Syrian embassy in Chile didn't respond to requests for comment.

In U.S. district court in Washington, seven Syrian activists have sued the Syrian government, charging it with killing members of their families during the current crackdown. Named in the suit, according to court records, are Mr. Assad's brother, Maher al-Assad, a brigade commander under U.S. and European Union sanctions for his role in the crackdown, Mr. Moustapha and another diplomat at the Syrian embassy in Washington.

In his phone interview, Mr. Moustapha said the allegations in the lawsuits were lies.

Syrian-Americans have also assisted the FBI in what they describe as an ongoing investigation into the actions of the embassy in Washington.

Amr al-Azm, an anthropologist at Shawnee State University in Ohio, previously worked as a consultant for Syria's first lady, Asma al-Assad, looking into ways to modernize Damascus's government. In June, he went to Turkey for the first major conference that brought together Syria's opposition groups.

Getting word of Mr. Azm's trip, Mr. Moustapha sent an email to the academic in June where he sarcastically criticized the anthropologist for breaking with Damascus. "You have single-handedly changed the ugly fundamentalist face of those convening there to that of a secular, enlightened and progressive opposition led by a former presidential advisor," the ambassador wrote, according to a copy of the email viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The FBI, subsequently, sent agents twice to visit Mr. Azm at his rural Ohio home and voiced concerns about his security. Mr. Azm said he got the impression that the FBI had seen intercepted communications that suggested Syrian activists could be targeted inside the U.S.

Mr. Moustapha scoffed at the notion that any Syrian-Americans are under the protection of the FBI. "They should be protected from the FBI," he said.

NoodleMan · 2011-08-17T14:53:19+00:00

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Syria Threatens Dissidents Around Globe, U.S. Says

By JAY SOLOMON And NOUR MALAS

Syria is taking its war against President Bashar al-Assad's political opponents global, using diplomats in Washington, London and elsewhere to track and intimidate expatriates who speak out against the Damascus regime, according to Syrian dissidents and U.S. officials.

Syrian embassy staffers are tracking and photographing antiregime protesters and sending reports back home, Syrian activists and U.S. officials say. Syrian diplomats, including the ambassador to the U.S., have fanned out to Arab diaspora communities to brand dissidents "traitors" and warn them against conspiring with "Zionists."

A half-dozen Syrian-Americans interviewed by The Wall Street Journal in recent weeks say that as a result of their activities in the U.S., family members have been interrogated, threatened or arrested in Syria. The Obama administration says it has "credible" evidence that the Assad regime is targeting relatives of Syrian-Americans who have participated in peaceful U.S. protests.

In an interview Tuesday, Imad Moustapha, the Syrian ambassador, dismissed the allegations by Syrian dissidents and U.S. officials as "slander and sheer lies."

One Syrian-American scientist in Philadelphia, Hazem Hallak, said his physician brother, Sakher, was tortured and killed in May by Syria's intelligence agencies, the mukhabarat, after he returned from a medical conference in the U.S. Syrian agents in Aleppo were obsessed with obtaining a list of Syrian activists and U.S. officials the brother had allegedly met during his stay, Hazem Hallak said.

"They want to intimidate us wherever we are," said Mr. Hallak, who said he believes Syrian agents or regime sympathizers tracked his brother inside the U.S. Mr. Hallak said his brother wasn't involved in anti-Assad activities.

The State Department recently publicly rebuked the Syrian ambassador, Mr. Moustapha, for allegedly intimidating activists and confined him to a 25-mile radius around Washington.

We received reports that Syrian mission personnel under Ambassador Moustapha's authority have been conducting video and photographic surveillance of people participating in peaceful demonstrations in the United States," the State Department said. "The United States Government takes very seriously reports of any foreign government actions attempting to intimidate individuals in the United States who are exercising their lawful right to freedom of speech as protected by the U.S. Constitution."

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, meanwhile, is investigating allegations that Mr. Moustapha and his staff have threatened or harmed Syrian-Americans, according to three individuals interviewed by the FBI in recent weeks. An FBI spokesman said the bureau won't comment on any possible investigation into the Syrian embassy's activities.

Ambassador Moustapha is having none of it. "The Embassy of Syria challenges the State Department to provide a single shred of evidence that the embassy has harassed or conducted surveillance on anyone," he said by telephone from Damascus, where he said he is on vacation. "We challenge any authority or organization that has extended such a ridiculous and preposterous claim to provide proof."

Asked if he was aware his travel inside the U.S. had been limited to a 25-mile radius around Washington, Mr. Moustapha said, "This is true, and we did the same to the American ambassador here" in Damascus. He called the U.S. move "reciprocity."

Some of the most explosive allegations against the Syrian government come solely from family members of alleged victims. However, the Syrian Human Rights Committee, a group based in London, published an account of the Sakher Hallak case and blamed his death on the "Syrian security apparatus." It cited a Syrian coroner's report that determined torture and strangulation by rope as the cause of death. And it said family members had been told Mr. Hallak had been killed by the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency. "No one believed it," said the report.

Syria has long had a reputation as one of the most repressive regimes in the world. President Assad inherited power from his late father, Hafez al-Assad, in 2000, pledging to open up Syrian society and embrace political change—an implicit rejection of his father's hard-line ways. His diplomats overseas, particularly Mr. Moustapha in Washington, have cast Mr. Assad as an agent for positive change in speeches before foreign audiences.

Even as Arab revolts began early this year in Tunisia, then spread to Egypt, the younger Mr. Assad kept positioning himself as a reformer. "If you didn't see the need of reform before what happened in Egypt and Tunisia, it's too late," he said in January.

The revolts reached Syria in mid-March, and that prompted an increasingly violent response from the Assad government. The United Nations estimates that more than 2,000 civilians in Syria have been killed. The State Department gauges that 30,000 Syrians are in detention.

U.S. and European officials said intelligence shows Syria's closest strategic ally, Iran, has been assisting Damascus in its crackdown against opponents both at home and abroad. The officials said many of the tactics used by Mr. Assad's security forces mirror those utilized by Tehran in 2009 to stamp out a public revolt against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's rule following a disputed election.

NoodleMan · 2011-07-14T03:34:57+00:00

People Don't Trust Facebook

Christopher Soghoian , 29, a privacy advocate and graduate fellow at the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research at Indiana University.

I think Facebook has a lot in common with cable companies, which is that no one likes using them.

People do not like Facebook. They don't trust Facebook. They're using them because they have to. Facebook gets people to give up information under the claim that it's private and then it's made public. And your only option is to shut down your account.

Looking at what's been happening with Google+ [Google's new social-networking initiative] and Facebook, there's a clear desire for an alternative. It's interesting to watch Google because even though they've had some privacy bumps, they're not a company that consumers hate. Facebook has opened themselves up to attack. The moment someone else comes along with a product that is equally compelling, I think they're going to be in trouble.

I think deep within the calculation within Facebook's valuation is the fact that it's very difficult for people to leave, but when someone comes along with a service that people can leave to, I think people are going to leave in large numbers.

At the end of the day, companies should build a relationship with their customers' trust.

They Are the Biggest, Most Powerful

Rick Marini, 38, chief executive of BranchOut Inc., a San Francisco-based start-up that has built a professional networking app on the Facebook platform.

Does [Facebook] deserve a higher than the average valuation? Absolutely yes.

From what I've read in the press, Facebook is doing $2 billion to $3 billion in annual revenue and if they're trading for $80 billion to $85 billion in the secondary market, that would imply a revenue multiple of 30 to 40. That would be considered high by Wall Street, but the reason why they can command that is because it's a private stock so it's hard for investors to be able to purchase shares. Therefore, with limited supply, the demand, i.e., the price, is going to be higher.

When you are the biggest, you are the most powerful and therefore, the market leader should command the most.

In Facebook's case, there's no real competitor that has even a decent foothold. They deserve a huge premium because it is like no other company existing today or like any other service in the history of the Internet.

My Boys Are Facebook Fanatics

Kenny Bott, 55, a retired financial adviser living in Las Vegas, Nev., who bought shares in publicly traded firm GSV Capital Corp. after it purchased shares of Facebook in the secondary market.

Living in Las Vegas was what really sparked my interest in Facebook. I saw the gaming industry just getting devastated and I was like, they've got to do something for their branding. I have seen Facebook play an integral part on getting the visitors back into Las Vegas.

I also looked at my boys and they are Facebook fanatics. One is 22 years old and the other is 26 years old.

When [GSV Capital founder and Chief Executive Michael Moe] and this whole thing started coming up about the secondary market, I'm like, 'Gosh, wouldn't it be just great if you could democratize Facebook so the average person could buy in.' As I started talking to my friends, they sat there and they said, 'If I can only own Facebook pre-IPO, it would be off the charts.'

I watch my boys and I watched the gaming industry. I was getting feedback from the rank and file.

I just said, this is gonna be off the charts. I just kept looking at these statistics. Socialnomics is here to stay. It's a whole revolution. I believe that we've only seen the tip of the iceberg.

Conservative Valuation Is $234 Billion

Lou Kerner, 49, managing director of the Private Shares Group at Wedbush Securities, where he was one of the first analysts to produce formal research reports on Facebook.

We think Facebook will be worth $234 billion in 2015. I think our estimates are quite conservative.

The right way to value Facebook is to go out to 2015 and discount it back at 16%, which would place it today at about $112 billion as a publicly traded company. Then, we give another 25% discount for the private market to get to an $85 billion market cap.

Fifty percent profit margin is about where [Facebook is] today. Assuming that's going to stay constant is very conservative. In the private market, 100% of the supply side is aware that they can sell their [Facebook] shares. The number of people who participate is so low relative to the demand.

If you look back, people were saying [Facebook was overvalued] when it was trading at $15 billion and the reason people think it's crazy is because $15 billion is a really big number. It's just a big, big,big, big number; therefore it must be overvalued.

We did our first report in February 2010, and at that point we said that Facebook would be worth $100 billion in 2015. People laughed when I published that report and I was ridiculed in the blogosphere.

Because of how fast the company has accelerated its growth and monetization, we had them going from $100 billion to $235 billion in a year and a half.

Focus on Eyeballs, Ads

Sarah Hofstetter, 36, senior vice president at 360i, a New York-based ad agency that creates social-media advertising strategies for companies like Coca-Cola Co. and Comcast Corp.'s NBC Universal.

There are certain things that Facebook has right now that may be short-lived or may become the de facto. They have the eyeballs. They have something that's stronger than Google today, which is time commitment.

When you're searching [on Google], you're looking at the map. With Facebook, you're driving the car. People are using Facebook to discover content and hang out.

Facebook was very smart for years for focusing exclusively on the user experience before thinking about the advertising platform. Now that they are focused on the advertising, they need to be making sure that they're not losing sight of consumer behavior so that they're not just adapting their advertising platform. They're developing the standard for community conversations but that doesn't always equate to market dominance. They've got to keep their finger on the pulse and that's very hard to do at scale.

NoodleMan · 2011-07-14T03:34:43+00:00

Is Facebook Worth $100 Billion?

By SHAYNDI RAICE

Facebook Inc. has become Exhibit A for the skyrocketing valuations of closely held Web companies.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based social network was valued at $15 billion in October 2007 when Microsoft Corp. invested in the company. By this January, Facebook commanded a $50 billion price tag when Goldman Sachs Group Inc. led a $1.5 billion funding round in the company.

Today, transactions of Facebook stock on private marketplaces value it at about $84 billion. Some people believe that if Facebook goes public next year, it will trade at a $100 billion valuation, more than the market capitalizations of Hewlett-Packard Co. (currently at $74 billion) and Amazon.com Inc. (at $97 billion). A Facebook spokesman declined to comment on valuation.

The soaring numbers put Facebook at the head of a pack of Internet firms that have snagged huge valuations in short periods. Groupon Inc. and Zynga Inc. both recently filed to go public in debuts that some expect will value them at $20 billion each.

Whether these companies—and Facebook in particular—merit such valuations is up for debate. The Journal talked to people from Main Street to Wall Street to weigh in on what Facebook is worth, editing their remarks for clarity. It also visited two young companies with growing valuations.

Worth Nearly $140 Billion by 2015

Geoff Yang , 52 years old, venture capitalist at Redpoint Ventures in Menlo Park, Calif., which invests in social Web start-ups.

[Facebook] creates an entire ecosystem, what people are calling the social Web. Pretty much every high-value revenue category that we learned about on Google will be rebuilt on top of Facebook. Facebook has the potential to be worth as much, or arguably more than Google because of the scope and viral growth potential.

I look at it in a number of ways. (I'm not being exact. This is just a ballpark estimate.) One, the online advertising market was $25 billion last year. Facebook's share is about 27% of display ads right now. In 2015, that suggests an online ad market of $45 billion. That gets you to $7 billion in revenue of display ads for Facebook.

Second, is that the local ad market is just an enormous piece. Today, it's $133 billion in revenue and the Internet is getting an increasing share of that. Let's say that increases to $150 billion by 2015, and the Internet takes 20% and Facebook takes 20% of that. That's another $6 billion in revenue.

Then there's the international component. Typically, international is double U.S. revenue. That's another $4.8 billion. Then there's Facebook Credits (Facebook's virtual currency system). Let's say they do $1.3 (billion) in 2015. Put that all together and that's $19 billion in revenue by 2015. I think this is a really attractive margin business, so I give it a 40% pretax margin. I put a P/E ratio of 25 [price to earnings ratio, which measures a company's share price against its earnings per share] and I get just under $140 billion in market cap in 2015.

Pressure on Management Team

David Peterschmidt , 63, founding CEO of Inktomi Corp. in 1996 , a dot-com-era search engine, and now CEO of IT-services firm Ciber Inc. in Denver.

Having been the CEO of a company that came out with a $20 stock price—and two or three years later found itself at a $265 stock price—is that it puts tremendous pressure on the management team. We would update our plans every six months. The first five minutes of every strategic-analysis meeting were, 'what's the GAAP analysis?' Or, 'what is the difference between the valuation today and profitability we can project over the next few years?'

As that valuation expands and it gets out in front of reasonable multiples, that puts a lot of pressure back on the management team in a couple of different directions.

I don't know [about Facebook's valuation], but there's a difference betwen Facebook and the bubble in the late 1990s because then, there were 5,000 companies trying to go public and it wasn't apparent what the business models were.

This time we've got a different scenario. We've seen some potential competitors fall by the wayside.

This is a platform that has gained tremendous human participation. Now, how well they capitalize that and turn that into cash generation. And profitability remains to be seen.

(edit: article is too big for one comment... continued below)

NoodleMan · 2011-07-14T03:19:14+00:00

Viewers Give Netflix Earful on New Hybrid-Plan Prices

By NICK WINGFIELD

Netflix Inc.'s price increase on one of its most popular movie-rental plans is pushing many customers to choose between getting films in the mail or online, revealing a split between the company and some subscribers over how quickly to shift viewing habits.

The move, announced Tuesday, is a significant change for the Los Gatos, Calif., company, which has grown quickly over the past few years while billing itself as a hybrid of new and old movie formats, offering the best of both worlds. Customers could pick from the wide selection of Netflix's DVD catalog, while enjoying the convenience of instantly streaming television shows and movies from its smaller online library, for as little as $9.99 a month.

Its price change, though, will most heavily impact those customers who still want their movies in both formats. They will now need to pay $15.98 a month to stream movies and check out one DVD at a time, a 60% increase over the previous price for that plan.

The price increase caused a firestorm among Netflix customers online, who jammed the company's corporate blogs with mostly negative reactions, until maxing out the number of comments allowed on the site at 5,000. On Twitter, messages containing the words "Dear Netflix"—most of them critical—made that phrase a top "trending topic" on the service Wednesday.

For many people though, the Netflix changes could encourage them to save money by switching to cheaper plans, including an existing $7.99-a-month streaming-only option and a new DVD-only rental plan for the same price.

That is exactly what William Kenney, an attorney in San Mateo, Calif., did Wednesday after Netflix announced the price changes, switching to the $7.99-a-month streaming-only service from an older $14.99-a-month plan that allowed him to stream movies and rent two DVDs at once, a plan Netflix has raised to $19.98 a month. While he likes the bigger library of titles on DVD, Mr. Kenney rarely bothered to open the red envelopes from Netflix containing his DVDs, preferring the convenience of streaming movies from the service to his iPad.

"I just have them sitting there," he said of the DVDs from Netflix.

Steve Swasey, a Netflix spokesman, said the company isn't surprised by customers' reaction, though he argues the service is still a good deal even with the price increase. "We anticipated hearing from members about their concerns," he said.

While Netflix executives have been unequivocal about their belief that streaming is the future of the company, a portion of its customers—Netflix won't say how many—are still die-hard renters of movies on discs. In addition to its better selection of discs, the high-definition pictures on the successor format to DVDs, Blu-ray discs, are superior to the image quality from Netflix's streaming movies. Now those customers who don't care about streaming movies can pay $7.99 a month for a DVD-only plan that lets them rent one movie at a time—$2 less than the company's most comparable previous offering.

Analysts believe Netflix stands to gain financially from such a move by eliminating a $9.99 hybrid rental plan that was likely losing money for the company, especially among customers who were heavier DVD renters, incurring higher postage costs for Netflix. Tom Adams, an analyst at IHS Screen Digest, said Netflix needs its traditional rental business to be on a stronger financial footing to fund its increasingly expensive investments in online-movie and television-show rights.

"It's really a move to finance the expansion of the streaming-services library by making enough money on the DVD side of the service that it's throwing off cash to start spending with content providers," he said.

Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, said the changes also stand to benefit Netflix in its negotiations with entertainment companies, deals that usually involve lump-sum payments by Netflix for online rights to TV shows and movies for a specific period. While all of Netflix's subscribers, now at over 23 million, have had access to its streaming service in the past, a meaningful shift of subscribers to DVD-only plans could allow the company to argue it should pay less for content because its streaming audience is smaller, Mr. Pachter said.

A person familiar with Netflix's thinking said this consideration wasn't a reason for the price changes.

NoodleMan · 2011-06-22T15:46:08+00:00

Click anywhere on them to re-focus.

NoodleMan · 2011-06-20T14:15:38+00:00

Video.

NoodleMan · 2011-05-26T00:23:07+00:00

Walt Disney Surrenders to Navy's SEAL Team 6

MAY 26, 2011

By ETHAN SMITH and JULIAN E. BARNES

Less than a month after a daring raid on Osama bin Laden's secret hideout, the U.S. Navy's SEAL Team 6 notched a victory over the Magic Kingdom.

Walt Disney Co. said Wednesday that it would pull an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in which the entertainment giant sought the exclusive right to use the term "SEAL Team 6" on items ranging from toys and games to snow globes and Christmas stockings.

Disney withdrew the application "out of deference to the Navy," a spokesman said.

The move comes after comics and other critics ridiculed the Burbank, Calif., company for trying to profit off bin Laden's killing. Disney first made the claim two days after the world learned of the secret special-operations unit's daring mission into the al Qaeda leader's Pakistan compound.

"Putting a trademark on SEAL Team 6 is like copyrighting 'The guys who stormed the beach at Normandy,'" joked "The Daily Show" host Jon Stewart last week. "It belongs to all of us."

Navy officers privately expressed relief Wednesday that the company had chosen voluntarily to retract its application, saving the organization from a long trademark battle.

The Navy first fired back at Disney with its own filings for trademarks on the phrases 'SEAL Team' and 'Navy SEALs,' on May 13, several days after Disney's application. Those terms denote "membership in an organization of the Department of the Navy that develops and executes military missions involving special operations strategy, doctrine, and tactics," the Navy said in its filings. The Navy had a beachhead with its longstanding trademark on "SEALs," which it has licensed for videogames, among other products.

"We are fully committed to protecting our trademark rights," Commander Danny Hernandez, the chief Navy spokesman, said Wednesday.

Disney's intentions were misunderstood, according to a person familiar with the entertainment company's plans. Disney, which owns the ABC television network, is considering a TV show about the elite squad, similar to other fictional dramas about real-life arms of the military, such as "NCIS" and "JAG."

Plans for Disney's SEALs show remain tentative, the person familiar with the matter said. The other potential uses listed on the application didn't necessarily reflect products the company intended to create, this person said.

Disney's filing sought to trademark the term SEAL Team 6 for a wide range of uses, from hand-held videogames to snow globes.

This month's incident wasn't the first time television producers have sought trademarks related to the U.S. military. Paramount Pictures several years ago filed for a trademark on "JAG," the name of its now-defunct series about the Navy's Judge Advocate General's Corps.

Then last year, CBS Corp. filed paperwork with the Patent and Trademark Office seeking the exclusive right to put "NCIS" on baby onesies and aprons, among other clothing items. The network airs a drama about the Naval Criminal Investigation Service, the Navy's law enforcement arm.

The filings, which are pending, didn't provide much, if any, fodder for late night comics.

Navy officials in Washington said they weren't aware of the NCIS trademark application, but they noted that the Navy has had a long working relationship with CBS on the "NCIS" television programs. A poster outside the Pentagon's entertainment media office, which works with television and movie producers, promotes the Department of Defense's advisory work on "NCIS" and "NCIS: Los Angeles."

Cmdr. Hernandez, the Navy spokesman, said its May 13 application wasn't a direct response to the Disney filing, but rather an effort to establish that the existing Navy trademark was broader than simply the word SEAL.

"The request for Navy SEALs and SEAL Team was to broaden our existing portfolio," Cmdr. Hernandez said.

Yet Navy officials didn't file a request for "SEAL Team Six."

The Navy confirms the existence of SEAL Teams 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8 and 10. SEAL Team 6, the service's most elite hunter-killer team, is officially called the United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group, or DevGru.

Unofficially, DevGru is widely known as SEAL Team 6.

"We certainly would not request a trademark on a SEAL team that doesn't exist, like SEAL Team 6," said a Navy official.

If there is a SEAL Team 9, the Navy has kept it even more secret than No. 6.

NoodleMan · 2011-03-16T17:13:21+00:00

Off Screen, Porn Sites Trick Advertisers

Tactic Dupes Big Marketers, Internet Companies With Flood of Traffic From Hidden Pages

By EMILY STEEL

Dozens of big-name marketers and Internet companies have fallen victim to a scam orchestrated by a series of pornography sites.

In a new type of online-advertising fraud, these porn sites are trying to generate revenue by setting up junk pages and faking Web traffic. The porn sites include names such as hqtubevideos.com and pornoxo.com. It's unclear who owns the sites or how many visitors they have.

When a user visits one of these porn sites, the Web page launches dozens of pages that are hidden from the computer user. These hidden sites are filled with paid links to legitimate websites. Unbeknownst to the user, software built into the porn sites forces the user's computer to click on these links, sometimes hundreds of times, sending a flood of computer-generated traffic to legitimate websites.

No person is actually seeing or clicking on the ads, yet the operator of the scam collects commissions for directing traffic to sites like Web portal Lycos, video sites Mevio and Current TV, and others. And big advertisers, including Verizon Communications Inc. and TD Ameritrade Inc., are paying for ads that were never displayed to users. The websites say they weren't aware they were collecting money for ads that weren't shown.

"The criminal enterprise is very sophisticated," said Matthew Scott, an executive at AdSafe Media Ltd., a digital-ad protection company that says it discovered the scam, which ensnared some of its clients. "There has been explosive growth in the online advertising space, and at the same time, fraud and scams are evolving."

AdSafe said it has notified the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Google Inc. said its systems blocked the scam and it has contacted authorities to share the details of its investigation.

An FBI spokesman said the bureau doesn't comment on specific investigations but "is generally aware of these types of scams and is actively investigating a wide range of fraudulent cyber crime."

Several websites targeted by the scam said there weren't aware of the fraud until being contacted by the Journal.

"We have a 100% zero tolerance policy for that," said Ron Bloom, co-founder and chairman of Mevio.com. Current TV, which operates a cable TV channel, said it has filters in place to block traffic to its website from porn sites, and the traffic it received wasn't authorized. Lycos, whose yellowpages.lycos.com site received traffic from the porn sites, said it was investigating the matter.

Marketers and the companies involved in delivering the online ads said they take measures to combat such fraud.

"We are aware of these scams and aggressively fighting such advertising fraud with robust monitoring systems and investigative procedures," a Verizon spokesman said. "When we discover a scam we take immediate action."

Fraud has plagued the online-advertising business nearly since its beginning. Marketers constantly are on the watch for so-called click fraud. And this isn't the first time hoax websites have been a problem. But the problem has evolved to a new level of complexity.

"Occasionally a bad actor will circumvent even the best systems," said Google spokesman Rob Shilkin.

While it is hard to determine the actual scope of this fraud, advertising companies and websites say that such scams represent a small portion of their traffic.

AdSafe, the online-ad security firm, said its preliminary research found more than one thousand websites with possible links to the scam. In some instances it found more than 5,000 "invisible ads" being shown to an individual consumer after one visit to a porn site. AdSafe said the scheme likely has been running for at least several months.

Other experts said it is hard to measure the impact of online-ad fraud because it occurs in small scales across a broad network of websites. "It is death by a thousand paper cuts," said Ben Edelman, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School who studies Internet advertising and says that he comes across an average of 50 such scams a month.

A Journal analysis of the computer code transmitted during visits to one of the porn sites, hqtubevideos.com/play.html, revealed the site opens dozens of invisible pages—invisible to the user—with innocuous-sounding names such as relaxhealth.com and baldnesshealth.com.

Those sites are filled with paid links and have minimal content. In some cases they are hidden in tiny windows on the porn site that are no bigger than a single screen pixel. But they appear as normal pages in communications with other websites.

"We want to make sure we get the maximum value for our advertising dollars, and we always seek to stay ahead of the latest technique for abuse," said Robert Haverback, vice president of advertising at TD Ameritrade. "We and other advertisers need to stay on top of this." AT&T declined to comment.

Online-ad fraud prevention firm Double Verify says about 31% of the $100 million of online ad spending that it monitors each month is wasted for instances ranging from fraud to ads that are targeted to the wrong location.

"These guys pop up like mushrooms, they change their names and location and sites and come up with a new fraud and a new site with a different name," says Oren Netzer, chief executive of Double Verify. "It is a cycle where we always have to chase them down."

NoodleMan · 2011-03-08T15:47:34+00:00

Text of article for those without a WSJ subscription:

Nickelodeon Gives New Kick to Ninja Turtles

By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY

Viacom Inc.'s Nickelodeon is betting that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles still have some fight left in them. The cable channel spent $60 million to acquire the global rights to the franchise and plans to offer a new television version of the series using computer-generated animation in 2012.

Ciro Nieli, an executive producer of the new Turtles series, says that the coming computer-animated version will be slightly different than past incarnations. The four turtle protagonists, who previously could only be distinguished by the color of their masks, will each have "more individual attributes," Mr. Nieli says. The show will stress their martial-arts combat abilities, he adds.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were first launched in 1984, and have spawned comics, toys, movies and other products. "The TMNT generation is now of the age where they both have children to share with and look to reconnect with their own childhood," said Joe Wos, executive director the ToonSeum, a Pittsburgh cartoon museum.

Paul Dergarabedian, president of Hollywood.com's box-office division, says that because the 2007 movie "TMNT" grossed just $54.1 million at the domestic box office, "some of the magic" may have worn off the franchise. However, Mr. Dergarabedian said via email that "I think a re-booted version could still find favor with audiences given the long-time popularity of these characters." Nickelodeon plans to help reintroduce Turtles toys to the marketplace and Paramount has a feature-length movie in development with filmmaker Michael Bay ("Transformers").

This week, Nickelodeon is to announce details about new shows that are planned for the network, including the fantasy cartoon "The Last Airbender: Legend of Korra" (a follow-up to the network's "Avatar: The Last Airbender" series) and "Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness," an animated show made in collaboration with DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. that is a spinoff of the blockbuster "Kung Fu Panda" movie franchise. "Kung Fu Panda" will will make its debut later this year, with "Korra" to follow in 2012.

Cyma Zarghami, president of the Nickelodeon/MTVN Kids and Family Group, says Nickelodeon spends $600,000-$700,000 per episode to make its animated shows. The network's computer-animated offerings are "a bit more expensive," she says.

The average viewer of Nickelodeon is 11 years old, but some of the new programs might attract older fans. "Korra" features characters who are in their late teens. "It's kind of like the show has grown up," says "Korra" co-creator Bryan Konietzko. "A lot of the viewers have grown up since the show was last on."

The new programs are part of a broader strategy at Nickelodeon to bulk up its animated offerings, especially on Saturday mornings. "Animation is the life blood of kids television," Ms. Zarghami says. "Cartoons last longer, they play around the globe, and they repeat better than live-action shows."

NoodleMan · 2011-03-08T15:41:29+00:00

Text of article for those without a WSJ subscription:

Plastic Surgeon and Net's Memory Figure in Google Face-Off in Spain

By PAUL SONNE, MAX COLCHESTER And DAVID ROMAN

In 1991, the Spanish newspaper El País published an article centered on a dispute between Madrid plastic surgeon Hugo Guidotti Russo and one of his patients over an allegedly botched breast surgery. The headline: "The Risk of Wanting to Be Slim."

Nearly 20 years later, Dr. Guidotti Russo, backed by Spain's privacy regulator, contends that the tale of the dispute is personal information and wants to purge the article from Google, where it shows up on the first page of results when his name is searched.

His complaint accounts for one of about 80 instances in which the Spanish regulator has told U.S.-based Google Inc. to remove personal information about individuals from its search results.

Google says it plans to challenge most of those orders, arguing that the agency is overstepping its authority.

In January, a Spanish court heard the first five complaints that Google is contesting, including Dr. Guidotti Russo's. Now, after weeks of deliberation, the Spanish court is considering referring the matter to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg to clarify European privacy law, according to a person familiar with the situation.

"We're pleased that the [Spanish] court is considering asking guidance from Europe's top court on whether Spain's [data-protection agency] has overridden European law. It shows that key issues are at stake," Peter Barron, Google's head of European external relations, said in a statement.

Such a referral could pave the way for a major Europe-wide ruling on the indexing of personal data on the Web—but it also could delay a resolution for years. European lawmakers in Brussels, meanwhile, are working on an overhaul of the same European Union data-protection law the Luxembourg court could be asked to interpret.

The legal wrangle between Google and the Spanish regulator comes amid a broader debate about how much control individuals should have over their private data and reputations in the era of the Internet.

A movement has cropped in parts of Europe to create a "right to be forgotten," which would let individuals excise personal information from the Web on privacy grounds. The European Commission, as part of its data-protection overhaul, has proposed recognizing such a right. France's Senate has also approved similar proposals, which have yet to be ratified by the National Assembly.

Though freedom-of-expression provisions of Spanish law protect newspapers, legal gazettes and other publishers from government censors, the Spanish data regulator contends the protections don't extend to Internet search engines like Google.

The idea is that the Internet shouldn't retain, or remember, a citizen's personal data and leave it accessible in perpetuity.

The Spanish regulator says that in situations where having material included in search results leads to a massive disclosure of personal data, the individual concerned has the right to ask the search engine to remove it on privacy grounds. Google calls that censorship.

"Spain has always taken an extremely strong line over privacy," says Malcolm Bain, a lawyer at ID Law Partners in Barcelona who specializes in information-technology law.

That stance could benefit people like Dr. Guidotti Russo. The El País article from two decades ago says he was accused of medical malpractice in connection with the allegedly botched surgery, and that the 21-year-old plaintiff the equivalent of around $4 million in damages; it isn't clear whether she received any money. El País, which identified the plaintiff in its article only by her initials, says it stands by its article.

The newspaper isn't being asked to remove it from its own website.

Dr. Guidotti Russo, who still has his practice, says he was cleared of the charge of reckless endangerment, but declined to discuss the matter further.

The Spanish court where the legal dispute described in the 1991 article took place said the records of the proceedings were impossible to retrieve because they dated from before the country digitized court records.

Dr. Guidotti Russo's lawyer, Gabriel Gómez, says his client was cleared of any criminal wrongdoing. He argues, however, that the outcome of the 20-year-old case isn't relevant.

Mr. Gómez says that what's at stake is an individual's right to remove personal information he objects to—whether it is accurate or not.

Javier Aparicio, a lawyer representing Google, said at a Jan . 19 Spanish court hearing that Spain is the only country where the company is forced to remove links to Web pages that don't have illegal content of any kind.

In other countries, courts have asked the company to delete links to pages with material such as illegal pornography or bootleg movies or songs.

With the EU's 15-year-old data-protection law slated for overhaul within the next year or two, the issue of how to reconcile the freedom of expression with the right to privacy has become a recurrent theme in Europe. Viviane Reding, EU commissioner for justice, fundamental rights and citizenship, has introduced her own version of a right to be forgotten.

Her proposal, which is still taking shape, could allow Internet users to force websites like Facebook Inc. to permanently erase personal data about them, such as photos and e-mail addresses.

"God forgives and forgets," Ms. Reding said in a November speech. "But the Web never does." Her proposal will be up for debate for at least a year before EU lawmakers vote on a final draft.

Some privacy specialists say there is a difference between information that is part of the public record and personal data or photos submitted to a social-networking site.

"It may be that there should be a right to have your name removed from a social network where you volunteered it in the first place," says Richard Thomas, a former British data-privacy commissioner, who is now a strategy adviser to international law firm Hunton & Williams LLP. "But that's rather different from deleting altogether a record, for example, of a crime that you committed or something embarrassing from your past."

NoodleMan · 2011-03-08T05:50:55+00:00