At Reuters, Felix Salmon responds to a reader’s question as to why backers of Kickstarter projects don’t benefit when the companies behind backed projects subsequently raise equity from venture capitalists. A good reminder of what Kickstarter projects are and are not.

Orin Kerr at The Volokh Conspiracy

There’s been a fair amount of misinformation circulated over the past week about Miranda warnings. Lawprof Orin Kerr’s short piece at The Volokh Conspiracy presents a nice summary of the basics, including the effects of not giving the Miranda warning to a suspect.

JOBS Act:

• The JOBS Act Turns One, and Let’s Be Honest, It’s a Failure by Zachary M. Seward at Quartz.
  

Proposed SHIELD Act:

• Peeved Politicians Want “Loser Pays” Rule for Patent Trolls; SHIELD Act Would Target Patent Shell Companies, Exempt Inventors, Universities by Joe Mullin at ArsTechnica.
  

More on the SHIELD ACT: Deep Dive: Software Patents and the Rise of Patent Trolls at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Free Software Movement:

• Where The Free Software Movement Went Wrong (And How To Fix It) by Klint Finley at TechCrunch.
  

Equity Crowdfunding Development:

• SEC Greenlights One Style Of Equity Crowdfunding For Startups by Josh Constine at TechCrunch.
  
  

Europe’s other problem: where are all the tech startups? European leaders want you to ‘test your own wings,’ but there are systemic headwinds getting in the way - at The Verge:

As noted in The Verge article, regulatory fragmentation is a big part of the problem in Europe - the need to comply with a patchwork of diverse regulations across the continent. This is also increasingly becoming a problem here in the United States with, for example, both federal and state-by-state privacy, data and similar regulations, which impose significant legal, compliance and related costs on startups.

Want To End The Litigation Epidemic? Create Lawsuit-Free Zones - LawProf Eric Goldman at Forbes.com:

”[F]inding ways to dial down litigation might be the best ‘jobs stimulus’ effort our legislators could undertake. The way to create lawsuit-free zones is through ‘immunities’ and ‘safe harbors.’ Immunities categorically eliminate legal liability in the specified contexts. Safe harbors allow defendants to avoid liability if they take the specified steps. Both help motivate socially beneficial and job-creating activity.”

Twitter’s Big Challenge: Too Much Twitter - Wired:

“[T]witter is what you make it. If you’re overwhelmed by its flow, that’s easily fixed by simply following fewer people. Each of us builds our own follow graph, and the resulting timeline, the fruit it bears, is our responsibility too. But the snark surrounding Klein’s complaint on Twitter was the same kind of thing you hear from junkies who never want anyone else to get clean. The fact is, he’s right. If you use Twitter actively, it almost inevitably becomes unwieldy.”

Google Wants To Operate .Search As A “Dotless” Domain, Plans To Open .Cloud, .Blog And .App To Others - TechCrunch

Bruce Schneier and Jonathan Zittrain at The Berkman Center, speaking on IT, Security, and Power. (video: one hour, thirty minutes)

The Proposed Bill, as amended April 1st (including legislative summary): Right to Know Act of 2013.

From the Legislative Summary: “This bill would … . [among other things] require any business that retains a customer’s personal information, as defined, or discloses that information to a 3rd party, to provide at no charge, within 30 days of the customer’s specified request, a copy of that information to the customer as well as the names and contact information for all 3rd parties with which the business has shared the information during the previous 12 months, regardless of any business relationship with the customer. This bill would require that a business subject to these provisions choose one of several specified options to provide the customer with a designated address for use in making a request for copies of information under these provisions.”

More:

Electronic Frontier Foundation: New California “Right to Know” Act Would Let Consumers Find Out Who Has Their Personal Data — And Get a Copy of It

VentureBeat: California Lawmaker Introduces ‘Right to Know Act’ to Give Citizens Access to Their Data

Anil Dash speaking at The Berkman Center on The Web We Lost (video: one hour, eleven minutes)

“Paucity of Art in the Age of Big Data: A Dispatch from San Francisco:” At The Millions, Lydia Kiesling on the search for “the great San Francisco tech novel.”

Photo: View from the de Young Museum © 2013 j.r.mchale

The consensus early reaction, the day after the Facebook Home announcement, appears to be:

• Facebook Home is well-designed, with some clever elements such as the messaging bubbles;
  
  
• Google and Android app developers will dislike Facebook’s lock/home-screen and launcher approach which makes Google services and 3rd party apps less visible;
  
  
• Facebook home might appeal to certain Android users in the United States (i.e., Facebook power users and mobile phone newbies), but Facebook Home might be more of a play for new users internationally, particularly in emerging markets; and
  
  
• So what’s new: Facebook Home poses additional privacy concerns through enhanced data collection.
  
  

Facebook Home Link Round-up:

• What the Analysts are Saying: A dozen analyst reactions at CNN.Money.
  

• How Facebook Home Is (and Isn’t) an OS: Fast Company
  

• App Developers Are Scared Facebook Home Will Bury Their Stuff: Business Insider
  

• Opportunity, meet problem - Facebook Home’s uneasy relationship with Google: Tim Carmody at The Verge
  

• I Like It, but I Don’t Like It Like It; The Facebook phone is not as dumb as I thought it was going to be: Farhad Manjoo at Slate.com.
  

• Facebook Home at First Glance: Web/App designer, Khoi Vinh.
  

• The Soul of a New (Facebook) Machine: The Atlantic.
  

• Mark Zuckerberg on Facebook Home, Money, and the Future of Communication: Steven Levy, writing at Wired.com.
  

From the SEC today: “The Securities and Exchange Commission today issued a report that makes clear that companies can use social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter to announce key information in compliance with Regulation Fair Disclosure (Regulation FD) so long as investors have been alerted about which social media will be used to disseminate such information.”

More at the Securities and Exchange Commission website, including the report (pdf) in its Reed Hastings investigation, which triggered today’s announcement.

And even more at the Wall Street Journal - their analysis of today’s SEC embrace of social media with respect to public disclosure.

My favorite music from the first quarter of 2013: four new releases (and two from last year to which I just recently got around to listening).

Veronica Falls: “Waiting for Something to Happen” (2013)

Parquet Courts: “Light up Gold” (2013)

Torres: s/t (2013)

Mogwai: Soundtrack from “Les Revenants” (2013)

Land Observations: “Roman Roads IV-XI” (2012)

Martin Rossiter: “The Defenestration of St. Martin” (2012)

A Spotify playlist of selections from the above (and from a few other first quarter releases).

All of this years’ National Magazine Awards Finalists collected at LongForm.org.

Long Read: “The Meme Hustler; Tim O’Reilly’s Crazy Talk” by Evgeny Morozov at The Baffler - a little history of “open source”, Web 2.0 and Government 2.0, and a lot of criticism of O’Reilly’s web media/meme empire by noted contrarian and critic of cyber-utopianism Morozov.

More Morozov: At Slate, Farhad Manjoo and Morozov discuss Morozov’s latest book (To Save Everything, Click Here) in a series of written entries and replies.

In a decision this past weekend, a U.S. District Court answers: no. More on the decision, and a link to the court’s opinion, at Wired.

Also: Today, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit decided that the online streaming of over-the-air television broadcasts by the startup, Aereo, is permitted. More on the decision, which is bound to be appealed, at ArsTechnica.