As promised, the world's trade negotiators have finally released a public and, to a limited extent, redacted version of the current draft document for the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. Releasing a draft of a global trade agreement is actually unprecedented, say many diplomats.

Though the authors of certain passages under consideration -- many of them marked by [square brackets] -- have been redacted from public view, it's clear that new legal limitations on an Internet service provider's ability to claim "safe harbor," excusing it from secondary liability for copyright (or patent) infringement, are being considered. That option is believed to have been proposed by the United States delegation, as indicated by a leaked document from the European Union (PDF available here from Wired). However, another option that would not limit ISP safe harbor provisions, is listed in the draft document under equal consideration.

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Clearly Apple is preparing for such a circumstance, or that's my interpretation of last night's fiscal 2010 second quarter earnings call. The question isn't if iPad will cannibalize Mac sales but when. If the cannibals are coming, they'll first strike during back-to-school buying season.

Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer tipped off the company's thinking early in the conference call: "We expect gross margins to be about 36 percent down from 41.7 percent in the March quarter and reflecting approximately $36 million related to stock based compensation expense. We expect about 25 percent of the sequential gross margin decline to be driven by the first quarter of iPad sales." Whoa, one-quarter?

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In an indirect yet obvious way, Section 3.3.1 of Apple's new iPhone developers' agreement binds developers to a promise that whatever they bring to the iPhone will be created exclusively for the iPhone. It effectively bans the use of cross-platform tools or middleware like Adobe Flash, by saying anything Apple approves must be coded in the company's own Objective-C, or in C or C++.

If Adobe were to have proceeded with its previous plans to forge an official, working Flash platform for iPhone, that would have been the defiant move. Instead, Mike Chambers, the company's product manager for Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR), found himself yesterday afternoon sounding the retreat.

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What's a mobile device prototype worth?

Depends on who you are. If you're Apple, it's priceless. When you tightly control every aspect of the product development process, anything that subverts the message is a potential risk to the brand. Loss of control to a company like Apple is unthinkable. If you're Gizmodo, the answer is $5,000 -- which is the amount the tech blog reportedly paid to an unnamed individual who supposedly found the prototype of Apple's upcoming fourth-generation iPhone in a California bar.

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Download Mozilla Firefox 3.6.4 public beta for Windows from Fileforum now.

Starting today, an ambitious project from the Mozilla Foundation called "Lorentz" makes its first public, experimental debut, with the release of a public beta of Firefox 3.6.4. Mozilla doesn't often promote a public beta of a point release, but this time, the organization needs data from the field regarding the stability of a critical new feature that could help it regain lost traction against competitors Google, Opera, and Apple.

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Can nothing stop Apple?

The Cupertino, Calif.-based company's quarterly earnings again rose high above Wall Street consensus, which already was $600 million to $1 billion above guidance. Today, after the bell, Apple reported $13.5 billion revenue and net profits of $3.07 billion, or $3.33 a share, under the new reporting method implemented last quarter. A year earlier, Apple reported revenue of $9.08 billion and $1.62 billion net quarterly profit, or $1.79 per share. Fiscal 2010 second quarter ended March 27, 2010.

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Today, AT&T Interactive launched Buzz.com in beta, the company's answer to entertainment search and recommendation site Yelp. If you think you've seen it before...well, you haven't -- not this, anyway.

The word "Buzz" was employed liberally throughout the 1990's to describe successful alternative rock groups. Pretty much any non-pop band that sold 500,000 albums in that era was classified as a "buzz bin" artist by MTV. By 2004, it was worn out.

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Google Buzz should not have changed Gmail to such an extent that its existing users found themselves sharing personal information on a social network without their consent. That's the message sent in a letter to Google CEO Eric Schmidt yesterday, made public today by Canada's Privacy Commissioner, Jennifer Stoddart.

In that letter, Stoddart and her counterparts from nine countries asked Google to provide them with a report about the lessons the company has learned from the Buzz experience, and how those lessons will improve the way Google rolls out products in the future.

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In light of all the controversy about the lost iPhone prototype which was found and reportedly sold to the media, there was a brief loss of focus from Apple's iPad tablet yesterday.

Don't worry, it's back.

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Gizmodo was wrong to acquire a lost iPhone prototype -- quite likely a nearly finished version 4 design -- let alone pay to obtain it. Perhaps this marks the distinction between bloggers and journalists. I would have contacted Apple about returning a device so obviously stolen. There is grave difference between obtaining secret information for the public good and what Gizmodo did: Obtain property containing trade secrets belonging to a public company. Gizmodo has violated the public trust and broken the law. Free speech isn't a right to pay freely for something clearly stolen.

I typically reserve this kind of treatise on journalistic ethics for my Oddly Together blog, where in late March I posted "The Difference Between Blogging and Journalism." Betanews founder Nate Mook asked me to write something here about the journalistic and legalistic ethicacy of Gizmodo's actions. I simply couldn't refuse.

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Facebook's privacy policy, like its services, is an evolving organism. Recently, that evolution has been reactive rather than pro-active. Another reaction may be in the works after today's announcement of a new Facebook feature that enables users to subscribe to personal interests or "likes," officially called "Connections," the way they connect to other users.

The company said today there's a new way for a Facebook user to block others, including friends, from seeing one's "connections" -- the list of pages that represent things one likes to do (e.g., snowboarding) or to partake in (e.g., classical music), or people they may enjoy who may not be represented by their own Facebook pages (e.g., Bertrand Russell, Elvis Presley). But someone who's perusing the page for people or things that Facebook users vote that they "Like" (which replaces "Become a Fan Of" today) may still see the list of everyone who has voted she likes something, the company also said -- indicating that one's likes may never be completely private.

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In addition to its more traditional Mojo software development kit for WebOS, Palm introduced a novel browser-based development environment for webOS last December called Project Ares. Users can drag-and-drop to create apps in Ares, and then hit "launch" in the browser to package, upload and launch homemade apps on a USB-connected Pre or Pixi.

Today, Palm alerted developers that the first full version of Project Ares has launched.

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At about this time last year, we received some skeptical comments from folks who questioned whether it was wise for Betanews to declare Windows 7's automated troubleshooting system one of the new operating system's Top 10 features -- #8, to be specific. Saying a software publisher has improved its product by making it easier to find out what's wrong with it, is in one sense a bit ironic, and in another the sort of thing that typically smacks of the kind of messages brought to readers directly from the vendor without any filtering whatsoever.

The reason I declared what Microsoft is now calling its "Fix-It Center" (now with its own Support page) #8 is the same reason I declared Action Center #1: It has the potential for refashioning users' impressions of Windows, so that they come to understand that troubleshooting one's computer is as much a part of life as repairing little things in one's home.

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Apple's aloofness is world famous. The company doesn't exactly buddy up to the media like Microsoft does, and it doesn't keep a running dialogue with the public like Google does. It communicates directly with only a handful of reputable media outlets, and uses a predictable routine of product launches where it can address the public in measured doses.

One of these doses is Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) expected to take place on June 28, 2010. In 2007, this was the event that Apple used to debut the original iPhone and its availability on AT&T. Then in 2008, Apple used WWDC to unveil the iPhone 3G. In 2009, it was used to unveil the 3G S. It is essentially Apple's annual "iPhone event."

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On Friday night, I bought an iPad nearly three months after giving 12 reasons why I wouldn't. An unexpected reason came up: My wife's MacBook Pro died. I reckoned she could temporarily use the tablet (which cost way less than any new Mac laptop) and give me a chance to better test the device (than using the Apple Store display models). I'm not among Apple's inner circle of reviewers, nor on any of its other reviewers' lists. I'd have to buy an iPad to test one and pay the restocking fee should I decide not to keep it. The MacBook Pro failure presented reason to join the iPad Generation.

Before getting to those 10 questions to ask, first it's the story of the failed MacBook Pro. I bought the computer used -- somewhat scratched and nicked but in excellent operating condition -- in summer 2009. Early last week, the laptop started acting strangely, with scrolling display or pixelated frozen screen that required reboot. Thursday, the computer rebooted to kernel panic -- Apple's version of the Windows blue screen of death -- every other reboot before freezing up again. So I hauled the ailing laptop into the local Apple Store, expecting prognosis that the graphics chip had failed; I'd already read on the InterWeb that generation of nVidia graphics chip was defective.

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