If you missed Sunday’s paper, you should go check out the Boston’s Globe‘s spotlight on John Barranco. He’s the executive director of a non-profit who is accused of using millions of state dollars, intended for disabled kids, to live a jet-setter’s life. Some estimates of this theft exceed $30 million. It’s staggering.

He famously threatened one of my colleagues in the historic Massachusetts State House by yelling,  “I’ll rip your fucking head off and shove it down your throat.” Far too many exchanges with Mr. Barranco took on the feel of scenes  from Goodfellas. When I knew him, he was a scary, mean, egotistical, opportunistic, visionary but selfish man.

One of the most reasonable men I know had this to say of John:

“I’ve never encountered anyone so crass, so boorish, so incapable of sitting down and working something out. He was like a mad bull snorting and pawing at the turf.”

Amazingly, what brought him down was bullying his wife with a lawsuit intended to harass her during their divorce. This exposed the details of their estate, which the State’s Inspector General used to pick up on a trail of what is now described as staggering case of embezzlement and misappropriation of funds.

Greg Nadeau, the colleague who Barranco threatened, said in the Globe article that he was surprised it took so long for the State to catch up with Barranco. 

The wheels of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine.

If you get the chance, check the Globe’s article.

Mayor Mike Bloomberg wants to establish New York as the nation’s leading digital city. That makes him different from almost any mayor in the world.

Bloomberg is a technovore, and because of this he is centering the City of New York’s focus on establishing it as a digital communications leader. He’s personally in the mix on this. Just last month he kicked off “Foursquare Day” in New York , not as a novice, but as a guy who gets it, and who is cheerleading a local start-up.

Yesterday the City of New York announced its Road Map for The Digital City, a 60-page plan to “achieve New York City’s digital future.” To put momentum behind the plan, the Mayor inked deals with Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and Tumblr to leverage the services in forty departments and make the digital channel key to city customer services and communication. And this is planned to be operational by the end of summer…THIS summer.

Fueling New York’s Digital Economy
Besides working on network access, open government and citizen engagement, New York’s plan sets a course to encourage its digital economy in the following ways:

1. Establish a new engineering institution
2. Expand workforce development programs to support growth and diversity in the digital sector
3. Support technology startup infrastructure needs
4. Continue to recruit more engineering talent and teams to New York City
5. Promote and celebrate NYC’s digital sector through events and awards
6. Pursue a new .nyc top-level domain, led by the city’s IT department.

Will Boston Compete to Be the Most Digital City in the World?
Part of the plan also includes establishing an index for digital achievement in partnership with other major international cities. Will Boston be one?

The challenge is now before us: lead, follow, or abdicate?
Hello, Mayor Menino? Hello, MITX? Hello, Mass Technology Leadership Council? Hello, Senator Spilka of the Joint Committee on Economic Development and Emerging Technologies? Hello, Massachusetts Technology Collaborative? Hello, Acting State Chief Information Officer John Letchford? What say you? Are we in together, or just freelancing in the same direction?

Tonight, a few of us here in Massachusetts are having a discussion about what industry and government groups can do to Fuel Massachusetts’ Digital Economy. I believe that New York’s road map gives this meeting in a new perspective. It should be a wake-up call. Too often Boston is the business incubator, and its breakthrough firms are acquired or move as they grow.

I’m excited by how the Boston Police Department has grabbed on to real-time messaging, such as Twitter. And I’m proud to have been part of the group that established Mass.gov. But now we need to get beyond point solutions to find ways to enrich the whole digital ecosystem.

So What Makes New York Different?
For one thing, Mayor Bloomberg is a technovore. Digital communications technology is part of his diet. It’s how he thrives.

In the world of elected politics, that’s still quite unusual. Leaving an electronic trail of what you say, in email, on Twitter, or IM is exactly what experienced political operatives avoid. Phones are good; email and Twitter create more risk than reward. While .gov projects carry their own special governance and funding complexities, being connected to a culture that avoids “on-record” utterances is a challenge. It’s hard to centralize anything in Massachusetts, and Boston can be impenetrable to those elsewhere in the state.

But still, of tonight’s panel, how many of the public sector leaders have tweeted or posted in the last week? My quick search on their Twitter feeds shows little to no real engagement, or in some cases weeks of non-use. We have some building to do.

In Massachuetts, Jane Swift was the first governor who kept and used a computer in her office. That doesn’t make her good or bad, but it did create conceptual possibilities for her and the governors who followed her. Real energy and inspiration come from the top of the ticket.

I know advisers and consultants to both Mayor Bloomberg and Menino; both are smart guys. Both know that digital communications is a pivot in government and the creative economy.  But at this moment, Bloomberg and New York are the team with a plan, and my Boston favorites are approaching this competitive season with hope, and a great set of civic and business supporters who need focal leadership.

It’s time to take our achievements and goodwill and formalize them into a shared vision. For a pretty good starting point, we might look a couple hundred miles to our south.

I’m writing this is a moving cab, but want to put this in front of you quickly, even if it is a bit raw.  Please read, and let me know what you think.

There was a buzz around the Internet yesterday as Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. blamed the iPad for joblessness.

“A few short weeks ago I came to the House floor after having purchased an iPad and said that I happened to believe, Mr. Speaker, that at some point in time this new device, which is now probably responsible for eliminating thousands of American jobs. Now Borders is closing stores because, why do you need to go to Borders anymore? Why do you need to go to Barnes & Noble? Buy an iPad, download your book, download your newspaper, download your magazine.

Chicago State University, in my congressional district, in freshman class, they are not being given textbooks any longer. They are all being given iPads as they enter school. President Wayne Watson hopes to have a textbook-less campus in four years, where at this state university they will no longer have textbooks.

Well, what becomes of publishing companies and publishing company jobs? And what becomes of bookstores and librarians and all of the jobs associated with paper? Well, in the not too distant future, such jobs simply will not exist. Steve Jobs is doing pretty well. He’s created the iPad. Certainly, it has made life more efficient for Americans, but the iPad is produced in China. It is not produced here in the United States. So, the Chinese get to take advantage of our First Amendment value — that is to provide freedom of speech through the iPad to the American people. But there is no protection for jobs here in America to ensure that the American people are being put to work.”

I’d love your thoughts on this idea of managing innovation to maximize employment in “old economy jobs.”

Here’s the Gigantic Hypocrisy
Just a few weeks ago, the very same Jesse Jackson Jr. proposed amending the US Constitution to make sure that every student gets an iPod and a laptop (see the video of this — 50 seconds in — at the end of this post). Can anyone explain why iPad’s cause unemployment, yet iPods should be a constitutional right?

This is a Preview of Who Will Regulate Digital Marketing
I’ve worked in government close to telecom regulators, and built firms in regulated industsires. Congressman Jackson is exactly this kind of politician who is eager to decide what analytics and data of visits on your site you can retain.

Digital media is powerful and lucrative, and that makes it magnetic to politicians. Once regulated, there will be a new lobby. The more robust the regulation, the richer the contributions of that lobby will be.

There are many approaches to regulation, but one I’ve highlighted is the shift from considering your website or blog a press…and instead regulating it as a public accommodation.

We could avoid having our industry restructured by leaders like Representative Jackson with lobbying based on .001 percent of our current PPC budgets. I promise you regulation will decrease conversion rates and increase compliance costs.

It’s time for a far more robust response to this threat than what the DMA or AMA has mustered. They’ve not lobbied at the level that’s required to win this before it starts.  Expect more on this — but for now, please just read both of Representative’s Jackson statements and realize this: no matter how such leaders regulate, you lose.

His pro-iPod and anti-iPads stance are both cotton-headed.  The only way to win at regulation is to keep it out of the hands of elected officials. If you think design by committee stinks, just wait until your industry is structured by it.

If anyone can get social media policy right, it will be the Australians.

They have every reason to do so. Australia is an expansive continent with many remote populations. It’s distant from Western hubs of influence. Being plugged in is a necessity. It’s a culture that adores sociability. So there are many incentives to create policies that encourage excellent social media use.

Good social media policy does  three things:

1. Affirms what staff can do, and defines what social media is.
2. Influences staff to use social media responsibly.
3. Provides a basis for enforcement against bad actors.

The Gold Standard for Social Media Policy
An old friend from Somerville, Pat McCormick, manages digital engagement for the Department of Justice in Melbourne. They’ve launched a social media governance program that should be the new gold standard for public social media policy. It is reasonable, provides examples, and is cool in the act of governing.

Good Policy Sets You Up For Winning
Right from the start, it acknowledges the mixture of work and life we all must deal with, then sets out practical guidelines.

Good Policy is Easy to Absorb
Yep, there’s a written policy everyone must know. But as I’ve said before, reading is for suckers, so its huge that they’ve broken down the policy in to a few key points illustrated with rock tunes and animation. Examples use the social profiles of real staff, including Pat, and their socially savvy HR department, in the video. This is important, as engagement precedes compliance.

Its Not as Easy as They Make It Look
A friend worked for a firm where the policy was to not to use social media in the office, and not to mention anything about work in personal use of social media. Of course, on the same day this policy was issued, the CEO asked people to blast their personal email lists and social networks about how great the firm was (using provided sample copy) and to email him personally once this was done.

See the difference? Corporate culture is bigger than policy. Pat’s team is using the cultural momentum of the organization to make sure their standards lead to good use of the social channel.

Recently, numerous political groups have been quite upfront about their intent to exert authority over different parts of the online world.  It seems everybody want to rule the Web.

• Dept of Justice moves to regulate Web through accessibility standards.
• FCC proposes to regulate Web access via broadband, claims it’s part of regulating telcos.
• Commerce Dept to set rules to protect Web trust: child protection, copyright, security, e-comm, and ICANN.
• The United Nations ITU (Telecom Treaties) seek to regulate the Web. WSJ calls this a threat to Net freedom.
• Florida claims worldwide jurisdiction on Web #defamation about Florida or its residents.
• Utah seeks to regulate the use of trademarks in domain names.
• And finally: NY Times calls for someone (anyone) to regulate Google’s search algorithm.

The set of government initiatives to control the web appears far more organized and comprehensive than the users and industry groups these regulations would effect.  In short, there’s a boom in government’s aspiration to run the Web.  And that boom feels like a power grab to claim turf that today mostly belongs to individuals.

This is  a story about Eric and Jack, who both blog about the law with an eye on topics that are enlightening, ennobling, or at least entertaining.

By now you’ve probably heard about Eric Turkewitz, who wrote an April 1st post in his NY Personal Injury Law Blog announcing he was the new Whitehouse blogger. He recruited other legal bloggers to echo the post, so they could punk unsuspecting political bloggers who type first and check facts later.

The stunt captured a wider set of dupes than expected. In fact, none other than the New York Times ran with the story. Suddenly, the little geeky joke was everywhere. Here’s Turkewitz’s explanation of the stunt.

Why the hell would I go to all this trouble for an April Fools’ stunt?

I’m glad you asked: Lawyers often deal with misery. Peoples’ lives can be forever changed in a fraction of a second in an accident. Divorce. Child custody. Bankruptcy. Arrests. There is no real end to the chain of human misery that clients bring to the doors of practicing attorneys.

Eric’s explanation matches my own for blogging. Personal injury law is how people and families attempt to recover when they “become statistics” though no fault of their own. I hear about explosions, poisonings, fraud, catastrophic medical errors, and — toughest of all — kids whose lives will be forever framed by the careless act of another. I understand the need for a joke, and I try to provide some of that here. In my opinion, lawyers with character rock. I’m fortunate to know more than a few of them.

Can’t a Lawyer Make a Joke?
After the joke, the recriminations began. After all, reminded Jack Marshall of the EthicsAlarms blog, lawyer advertising is  highly regulated. Counselor Turkewitz misrepresented himself, and the codes of legal conduct are not suspended on April Fools’ Day.  This both put Turkewitz’s professional livelihood and reputation at risk and made Mr. Marshall the target of vitriol for being a complete April Fools’ Grinch.

What followed was a thoughtful exchange between the two men about the nature of legal advertising and the provision of free expression rights even to members of the bar.

I’ve often noted that trademark rights can’t be used to encumber efficient commercial and even competitive speech.  Yet bar regulation of lawyers’ commercial speech does just that, by restricting truthful, accurate, and constitutionally protected self expression. Hey, if corporations can have “speech rights” in this crazy democracy, then members of the bar should too.

Yes, Lawyers Can Blog a Joke or Make a Mistake and Live to Tell the Tale.
To his credit, Mr. Marshall re-examined both the facts and his own motives for teeing off on such a benign case. And, unlike the fake apologies of news retractions or cheating politicians/golfers, Jack Marshall did a man’s job with his.

It gave a far better introduction to his character. Take a look.

Blogs and social media in general often seem random, petty, self-aggrandizing, and downright anti-social.  But they also give us the chance to see people with insight and integrity more closely, and to discover there’s often lots more to like. I’m looking forward to reading more of Eric’s NY PI Blog and Jack’s EthicsAlarms blog to see where their legal insights turn next.

I hope you enjoy them as I have.

Your Digital Papers, Please?
Last week at the Davos World Economic Forum, Microsoft’s chief research and technology officer floated what to date has been an obviously bad idea: that Internet users should be licensed.

The suggestion is covered and advanced in a Time Magazine article that takes the familiar dystopic theme of the Net as the Wild West, requiring standards and regulations for safety, just like modern transportation systems. Governments run highways, so why not information super-highways?

Time‘s Barbara Kiviat suggests the Net needs a sheriff, and that licenses would do the trick. Licensing would authenticate identity, and give governments something to revoke, inspect, and otherwise use to claim standing in order to administer this stateless medium.  After all, a bunch of private machines connected by private networks aren’t architecturally under the control of the state. In a world of online risk, we need governance through governments.

I think we’ll hear more of this theme, and that it will be advanced on the need to prevent crime and protect  kids.  More surveillance and censorship will be positioned as bulwarks of child safety and perhaps national security.

Making the Case for Big Brother in the Americas
The many benefits of Big Brother’s watchfulness are neatly summed up by PredatorWatch.ca.

As someone who has done casework on finding ways to protect organizations from pedophiles, I’m all for raising offender inhibitions. But having police pretend to be sexually available kids is is misguided.  At best, it nails low-probability offenders; at worst it titillates and entraps a class of nasty, but perhaps otherwise benign, web users.

We’re Watching the Bad Guys; We’re Watching You

Internet filtering, censorship of Web content, and online surveillance are absolutely increasing in scale, scope, and sophistication in democratic countries as well as in authoritarian states. And to some degree, they support one another.

That’s the premise of Access Controlled, a book due out in April, edited by the dream team of Ronald J. Deibert, John G. Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski, and Jonathan Zittrain. I expect their research and perspective on this global trend will fuel a richer discussion on the costs and benefits of making online surveillance the new digital norm.

Last week I asked UsefulArts.us readers what they think may online law trends for  2010.  Here’s the first of what looks like a half dozen responses to that question.

The Coulrophobia Epidemic of 2010: trademark owners’ fear of clowns may be rational.
When a competitor uses your mark and pretends to be your company, that’s infringement. But when a clown mocks you with your own mark, that’s parody. And it may well be protected speech. And in an age of Twitter and viral video, mocking can be more deleterious than infringement.

Consider this fake press conference, at which an impostor U.S. Chamber of  Commerce announced its (not real) change in policy to support combating global warming. When the real Chamber shows up, it turns into an episode of The Office, which the clowns play to the Chamber’s regret.

From the above escapade, the Chamber filed a claim of trademark infringement and used a take-down notice to force the pranksters’ ISP to discontinue a parody website that supported the hoax. Was there a “likelihood of confusion”? Absolutely. And it was also classic parody speech.

Similar trademark claims have been made against NYTimes.se, which mocked The New York Times and corporations like DeBeers. We recently noticed The South Butt, a clothing line which mocks The North Face. And, only a few days ago, environmental activist Brian DeSmet received a complaint for mocking Peabody Energy.

In a world where Ashton Kutcher is considered a brand, a fear of clowns may be a viable business survival strategy.

Regulation of digital marketing heats up. States try it too.
I suppose the fear of regulators is a variation of the fear of clowns.

In 2009, I noted with concern that the FCC began to use “public interest” language to describe its interest in regulating access to, and speech on, the internet. Our friends point out that the FCC has sometimes shown more concern for the demands of corporate lobbyists and “public decency” advocates than it has for individual civil liberties.

Consider the FCC’s efforts to protect Americans from “dirty words” in FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, or its much-criticized deregulation of the media industry, or its narrowly thwarted attempt to cripple video innovation with the Broadcast Flag.

The impulse to regulate (and tax) the Net extends to state and local levels. John Ottaviani guest-blogged on Eric Goldman’s Tech & Marketing Law Blog about Maine’s passage of a little COPPA Act banning the use of personal information about minors for marketing purposes (which the Maine Attorney General then refused to enforce) and Kentucky’s seizing of domain names. Add to these Massachusetts’ failed online privacy act and numerous states’ decisions to tax e-commerce. States, along with federal regulators, seem to be keen to mold the internet.

If there is a common theme between these issues, is that parody and regulation is that both claim to be in the public interest, and both hard to defend against. I expect to see marketers organize to participate in regulatory dialog, and I expect to see clowns rampant as ever on the web and in social media.

My still germinating collection of 2010 predictions will have to include one of this blogs repeated themes, the impending rise of regulation of digital marketing. (See my post “Regulation is Headed Toward Digital Marketing, Do Something.“)

Now that the FTC has staked out a requirement for bloggers to prevent the false appearance of independence if they’re being paid, there’s just one catch. How do you start to enforce such a rule? My prediction: a show trial with a chaser of  strategic inaction.

The same article reports that the Commission is also “crafting its next move” to regulate online behavioral targeting by requiring users to “opt in.” The FTC’s northeast regional director, Leonard Gordon, explains this is because “studies show that most consumers don’t read privacy agreements.”

FTC Cynicism in the Public Interest
See the paradox? He uses consumers’ disinterest in reading agreements as the basis for requiring greater use of them.  This is a cynical recommendation. Its goal isn’t providing informed “opting in”. Quite the opposite, it is to make gathering behaviorial data and customization an Internet harder to undertake. And that may be the wrong choice.

Behavioral Targeting May Be Core to the Web’s Success Model
The reality of the “free Internet” is that much of its content is paid for by advertisers who do so with no contractual assurance of return. Competition creates the need for data to optimize these ads. Better tracking and targeting is what has kept the Internet growing while other channels are losing ad dollars.

The FTC is considering making an assertion that data privacy should be the U.S. Internet’s default value, and perhaps imposing “standard labeling” for privacy statements.

I’m thrilled to see privacy being valued. I’m concerned to see the FCC and FTC asserting jurisdiction over bloggers and the Net. And I’m astounded at the lack of industry representation by the many associations that promote our industry but are apparently disinterested in governmental affairs.

Privacy is something we should all promote; but there are competing values and individual choices that make this medium successful. The digital marketing industry seems absent from these deliberations, and that absences is a risk to the success of this medium.

It’s time for our associations to speak up for the practical need for behavioral targeting and the costs of eliminating tracking by making it “opt-in.” Privacy is a value — and so is the “free internet.” I’m surprised to say this, but like any virtue, even Privacy is best in moderation.

Discussions of regulating digital marketing were just below the surface at New York Ad:Tech.  My last post gave an overview of efforts to regulate digital marketing. Now, here’s an interview at Ad:Tech by reporter David Spark with Ted Murphy, CEO of Izea, the company that makes the paid blogging service Social Spark. Ted’s been in touch with the FTC, and that made it into the interview.

How Can Digital Content Pay for Itself?
The quest for “monetization” is still a major theme in digital publishing. Can long-tail marketing pay for itself? What about social media? How can the need for journalism get attached to new working business models?

Answer: Pay for Play, the “Oldest Profession” in Marketing
Pay for play is absolutely present in many non-digital business models. Gartner Consulting is being sued for this right now, for $1.4 billion.  IT consulting used to be rife with “sponsored authorship.” They wanted to avoid this kind of case.

I was part of this. First you’d pay Aberdeen to write nice but vague things about your firm, then after a few quarters of paying Garner they’d become aware of you, and you’d get mentions. There were only winks and nudges, perceived or real, exchanged with the subscriptions. Hell, the analysts that covered our space probably thought we all just had nervous ticks.

But firms, like the one in the video below, are explicit about “you pay, we get people to publish stuff for you.” Sounds a bit like the PR trade, but with less smoke and fewer mirrors, and more certainty of results.

The FTC would require that such relationships be made transparent to readers. And though this sounds reasonable, consider why political figures endorse and speak for one another. PR and lobbying are pretty similar: one pursues political favor, the other journalistic favor. Having a truth squad to enforce ethical behavior could be a medicine more deadly than the disease it seeks to solve. Regulation or not, your online BS detector is still the best defense.