Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 12/20 - iPhone Bans and iPad Bends

Episode Date: December 20, 2018

Now some iPhones can’t be sold in Germany, is there an iPad Pro bend-gate brewing, drones shut down a major UK airport, and why Carlton from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air is suing the makers of Fortnite. Sponsors: Metalab.co The Cyberwire Podcast Links: Apple to Stop Selling iPhone 7 and iPhone 8 Models in Germany While Appealing Broader Sales Ban [Updated]  (MacRumors) Apple confirms some iPad Pros ship slightly bent, but says it’s normal (The Verge) Justice Department charges Chinese nationals in ‘extensive’ global hacking campaign (CNBC) Uber's self-driving cars return to public roads after fatal crash (CNET) Drones cause holiday chaos at one of London's busiest airports (Engadget) Gatwick Airport: Drones ground flights (BBC News) Pinterest Readies Itself for Early 2019 IPO (WSJ) FORTNITE KEEPS STEALING DANCES — AND NO ONE KNOWS IF IT’S ILLEGAL (The Verge) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the TechMeme ride home for Thursday, December 20th, 2018. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, now some iPhones can't be sold in Germany.

Is there an iPad Pro Bendgate brewing? Drones shut down a major UK airport and why Carlton from the Fresh Prince is suing the makers of Fortnite. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. The legal tussle between Apple and Qualcomm has metastasized. A court in Germany has granted an injunction to Qualcomm banning Apple from selling some iPhone models in Germany that use chips from Intel and parts from a supplier named Corvo. Apple said that it plans to appeal this ruling, of course, but that during the appeals process, it would stop selling iPhone 7 and iPhone 8 models at Apple's 15 retail stores in Germany. All iPhone models remain available through carriers. and third-party resellers throughout Germany.

To reiterate, Apple and Qualcomm have been fighting a major legal battle in multiple countries, and there was recently that injunction in China, which, as we said, we think was the reason for those software tweaks in the most recent iOS update. And clearly, Qualcomm is pressing every legal leverage button it can in every jurisdiction it can on every facet of this dispute that it can. Here was Qualcomm's state. from Qualcomm's general counsel, Don Rosenberg. Quote, two respected courts in two different jurisdictions just in the past two weeks have now confirmed the value of Qualcomm's patents and declared Apple an infringer, ordering a ban on iPhones in the important markets of Germany and China, end quote.

And speaking of Apple, okay, so some customers have been reporting that their 2018 iPad pros have a very slight bend. in their aluminum chassis, sometimes right out of the box brand new. And Apple has actually confirmed to the verge that this can be the case. The bend is apparently due to a side effect of the cooling process during manufacturing. It shouldn't worsen over time if your device has a bend in it or affect that device's performance, Apple says. And officially, Apple says it does not consider this. the bend to be a defect. Now when I say slight bend, I mean slight.

In the second link in the show notes, that will take you to the story on this. The Verge has a photo showing the bend and it is ever so slightly noticeable, like you might be able to detect it by laying the iPad on a flat surface, but I don't feel like you'd notice it if you were just holding it in hand.

But the confusion is that some people are saying, again, this bend appears fresh out of the box, while others insist it shows up over time, especially after transporting an iPad Pro in, say, a backpack. Quoting Chris Welch in The Verge. It's an issue that seems to be more pronounced on the LTE model, as there's a plastic strip that breaks up the iPad's flat aluminum sides. It's where the antenna line divides two sections of metal

that some users have noticed a bend. Apple did not say the perceived flaw is strictly limited to the cellular iPad Pro, however, and some buyers of the Wi-Fi model, also claimed to have encountered it. Even if only cosmetic, the issue is out of character for Apple, which has rooted its reputation in manufacturing devices with best in industry fit and finish, end quote. Now, I'm kind of of two minds about this. I mean, I guess it's news. Anything with Apple is news and nothing tends to make headlines for Apple like product flaws. But is this really a product flaw? Is this really a big deal, I should say? And yet on the other,

hand, I mean, it is a $1,000 device. I can't imagine paying $1,000 and have it come out of the box all bendy before I've even turned it on. And Apple is all about their design aesthetic perfection and manufacturing process standards. So as former Apple marketing director Daniel Gartenberg tweeted, quote, I'm more surprised Apple acknowledge this. Let the class action suits begin, end quote. But I don't know. Color me cautiously unwilling to join. any sort of clutching pearls concern trolling about this just yet. Though I do want to credit Dan Seafert for winning the snark sweepstakes by tweeting, quote, Who knew that Apple would be the first to market with a foldable tablet?

Seaford then continued by saying, quote, In all seriousness, if the product is developing a bend or curve due to the cooling process, you might have gone too thin this time, Chief. I saw the bend in person and it's not hard to see, end quote. The Department of Justice has charged two alleged members of China's state-sponsored hacking unit known as APT-10 with stealing data from at least 45 U.S. tech companies and various government agencies. The charges against Zhu Ha and Zhang Shilong include conspiracy to commit computer intrusions and aggregated identity theft. Quoting from CNBC, two alleged cyber espionage campaigns identified in the indictment, include a technology theft campaign that began in 2006

and a campaign to steal intellectual property and other data from remote access client management companies that started in 2014. Over the course of the latter campaign, the two Chinese nationals access computers related to victim companies in at least 12 countries, the filing alleges, end quote. China's goal, simply put, is to replace the U.S. as the world's largest global superpower, FBI director Christopher Ray, said,

at a press conference this morning. Nine months after that fatal crash in Arizona, Uber has brought its self-driving cars back to the roads in Pittsburgh today, following approval from Pennsylvania's Department of Transportation, allowing Uber to test its self-driving vehicles on state roads. Quoting from CNET, Uber will also put self-driving cars back on the streets of San Francisco and Toronto, though these vehicles won't be operating in full autonomous mode just yet.

Instead, the company said they'll come with two human drivers who will maintain control of the cars at all times. Over the past nine months, we've made safety core to everything we do, Eric Mayhoffer, head of Uber's Autonomous Vehicle Program, said in a statement Thursday. This required a lot of introspection, and it took some time. Now we are ready to move forward, end quote. There is total chaos at one of the world's busiest airports and drones are getting the blame. For the second day in a row, Gatwick Airport, 7.5.5. of London was closed, straining tens of thousands of holiday flyers and causing untold delays and flight reroutings. The shutdown began yesterday after two drones were spotted flying, quote,

over the perimeter fence and into where the runway operates from, end quote. The runway was briefly reopened, only to be shut down again when there were further drone sightings. Quoting from the BBC, Gatwick Chief Operating Officer Chris Woodruff said, the police are looking for the operator, and that is the way to disable the drone. He said police had not wanted to shoot the devices down because of the risk from stray bullets. He said it remained unsafe to reopen the airport after the drone had been spotted too close to the runway. More than 20 police units from two forces are searching for the perpetrator who could face up to five years in jail, end quote. Authorities were careful to stress that they did not believe the drone flights were terrorism-related.

but this passage from the USA Today coverage of the events certainly makes it seem like whoever is behind this is definitely doing it deliberately. Quote, Superintendent Justin Burtonshaw of Sussex Police said the search was daunting. Each time we believe we get close to the operator, the drone disappears. When we look to reopen the airfield, the drone reappears, he said.

Burtonshaw said, new and bigger drones have more reach, making it harder for police to locate the personnel, controlling the flying device, end quote. One thing we can certainly anticipate dominating headlines in the first half of next year will be some high-profile IPOs. Lyft, Uber, Slack, Airbnb, and now, according to Wall Street Journal, Pinterest is planning to IPO in 2019 as well.

The journal says that Pinterest is planning for an IPO as soon as April, and it might go public at more than a $12 billion valuation, which is the valuation level at which it raised in. its most recent round of funding. Quote, in September, Pinterest surpassed more than 250 million monthly active users who visit the site to browse through billions of images on topics ranging from living room furniture to dinner receipts and tattoos. The company generates revenue from ads scattered across its site and is poised to

generate revenue in excess of $700 million this year, up 50% from the prior year, according to a person familiar with the matter, end quote. Pinterest has always been an odd sort of duck. It's a huge social network that not a lot of people tend to think about. And part of the reason for that is that Pinterest tends to like to fly under the radar. There have been some massive funding raises over the years, yes, but not flashy or aggressive ones like we're used to among the Ubers of the world. But a quarter billion users and reportedly getting close to one billion a year in revenue is certainly nothing to sneeze at. all of these high-profile companies going public at the same time can be entirely coincidental, of course.

They've just all reached this stage of their growth and evolution at around the same time. But it is worth noting that companies tend to want to go public in a generally healthy stock market when investors are willing to gamble on new companies. So it is interesting that all these companies are looking to apparently pull the trigger on their IPOs in the next three to six months or so. This could be an indication that the smart money is telling them to get out the door while the getting is still good. That would suggest that the smart money might not expect the market to be quite as rosy in the second half of next year. All right, we know Fortnite is the biggest game in the world right now. It's making so much money that Epic Games, the company behind it, is launching its very own games marketplace,

which will compete with the likes of Steam. They're making bank with Fortnite. night right now because they're selling scads of digital extras, things like skins and character models, but also they're selling what are known as emotes. Emotes are little celebratory animations, basically dances your character can do in game to really rub it into someone that you've just bested in game. You might have noticed these emote dance moves have filtered into the real world with things like touchdown celebrations and the like. So these dances, these emotes, are sold from anywhere between $5 to $10 per dance.

But here's the question. Does Fortnite have the right to sell signature dance moves, especially if they are copied from somewhere else? For example, one of the more popular emotes is called Fresh. But if you're old enough to remember the TV show Fresh Prince of Bell Air, the fresh emote looks suspiciously like the Carlton, the dance made famous by the Carlton character on that show. And guess what?

The actor, Alfonso Ribeiro, who portrayed Carlton Banks on the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, has filed suit against Epic Games, claiming that they ripped off his signature dance move. And he's not even alone. A rapper called Two Millie has also sued Epic Games because he claims that they put his signature dance, the Millie Rock, into Fortnite,

as an emote called Swipe It. And guess what? That backpack kid, if you've seen that meme, Russell Horning, you may know his dance from when he danced with Katie Perry on Saturday Night Live. Yeah, he's suing epic games as well. But here's the thing.

No one knows the legality of any of this. Of course, if Fortnite wanted to play one of two Millie's raps in game, they'd have to pay to license. his music. And if they were to make a 2 Millie likeness into a playable Fortnite character, they'd have to do the same. They'd have to clear it with 2 Millie and pay him. Two Millie's real name is Terrence Ferguson, by the way, quoting from The Verge. But the claims are more complicated when it comes to dances. Epic took a dance Ferguson popularized, turned into a visual

asset with motion graphics, and then made it into a reward for playing a lot of Fortnite. So the first question would be whether a dance move can be protected by copyright at all. Most dance moves do not constitute copyrightable works because they do not, under copyright law, rise to the level of choreography. Deciding if a work of dance is protectable, choreography is a subjective evaluation, typically based on length and prestige. Individual dance moves like the worm, the macarena, or the moonwalk have historically been left out. The Copyright Office's own guidance is clear, quote, individual movements or dance steps by themselves are not copyrightable, it says, specifically calling out the waltz and the hustle step. The copyright office is not super up on

trends. But the matter has never actually been argued in court, explains Marilyn Jean-Louis, an entertainment lawyer who also happens to be a former dancer. We don't know the answer to whether a dance move can be copyrighted, she says. There's no definitive case law determining this, end quote. Now, interestingly, all three suits that I mentioned are represented by the same law firm and are suing on similar copyright infringement grounds, as well as alleged violation of the right to publicity, which basically means the right to profit on the use of your own name, likeness, or identifiable traits. And interestingly, two Millie's complaint alleges epic went so far as to copy videos of his dance frame by frame and use those videos to then generate the animation.

He also alleges that Epic coded the Ride the Pony emote, which looks a lot like the Gangnam-style dance by copying from Size music videos. And Alfonso Ribeiro's complaint says that by copying Carlton Banks' signature dance, they're using Ribeiro's likeness by default. Except, of course, that Carlton Banks is a fictional character owned by NBC. It is likely to be months before the heavy wheels of the legal system kick into gear for any of these cases, months that Fortnite will still be making all that money selling these downloadable dance moves. So just to be on the safe side, if you enjoy doing the Carlton inside Fortnite, I suggest you get your fill of doing so, just in case there is some sort of injunction coming down the road, not around the

iPhones, but around dance moves. So real quick programming note next week, everybody, as you know, holidays are coming up. So next week, there will only be three shows on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. I'll be coming at you as usual tomorrow with the weekend long reads and all the news of a Friday before a big holiday break. You do never know. People sometimes try to sneak in big bits of news under the radar before a big holiday approaches. So we'll see. But no shows on Monday or Tuesday next week.

For now, peace out, and I will talk to you tomorrow.