With so much talk about airline fees lately, you might overlook perhaps the largest source of ancillary revenue for the industry — and a big headache for you — that lets airlines make money for nothing. A lot of it.

If you've ever been on a "full" flight that was full of empty seats, perhaps you've wondered: What happens to the paid fares when passengers don't show up for flights?

The airlines keep much of the money, of course. No-show fliers get vouchers for the unused value of their tickets good for a year from booking, but stiff change fees often eat heavily into that value. And much like unused gift cards, their value disappears into thin air when not used by a strict deadline.

No one knows how much money the airlines make on unused, expired tickets — they aren't required to say — but experts suspect it's a gigantic haul.

"The airlines collected $6 billion for baggage fees last year, and undoubtedly it's more than that. ... This is an issue that has been around a long time," said travel expert Chris Elliott, author of  “Scammed.” "Just look at the rates of overbooking on flights — 10 to 20 percent — that's how many no-shows the airlines expect."

Consumer advocate Ralph Nader has been on a crusade for the past year trying to figure out how much money the airlines are making by flying nothing and trying to nudge the industry toward a more forgiving policy.

"We're talking billions of dollars," he said. "My drawer is often full of unused tickets because plans change. The point is, why a year? The statute of limitations for contracts is three to six years."

Before you assume Nader is tilting at windmills, recall that a similar Nader crusade helped force airlines to compensate passengers when they were kicked off overbooked aircraft.

Nader recently sent letters to all major U.S. airlines asking how much they earn from unused tickets. He got a polite refusal delivered by the industry group Airlines for America, which called the information "confidentially and commercially sensitive."

"Consumers understand that if nonrefundable tickets cannot be used, their value will be lost," the letter said.

The letter, signed by association general counsel David Berg, goes on to say expiring airline tickets are no different from time limits on refund policies of "other retail shopping outlets, from clothes to computers, and are neither deceptive nor unfair."

Nader wasn't impressed by the airlines' response.

“The writer was thrashing around for every analogy he could find, filling the page and a half with non-sequiturs," Nader said. For starters, any analogy between clothes and airline ticket return policies breaks down pretty quickly. After all, if the time to return a sweater has passed, you still get to keep the sweater.

Undeterred, Nader has filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act with the Transportation Department seeking the same data.

But is it really unfair for airlines to keep the money spent on unused tickets and to load up restrictions on refunds?

One convincing argument offered by the industry is that plane tickets are a "perishable" item, akin to concert tickets. Once the plane leaves the ground with an empty seat, an airline can't make money off it, so why should it be expected to offer easy refunds? No one who buys a ticket to a rock concert or a sporting event expects a refund if they miss the event.

Of course, that analogy breaks down, too. Airlines do, in fact, make money off seats sold to no-shows — they overbook. And concert tickets are much easier to sell when buyers' plans change. Most airline tickets aren't transferable.

But the key argument put forth by the airline industry is that traditional, self-regulating market forces take care of the problem. Consumers don't have to buy discounted non-refundable tickets. Full-fare tickets, which can be changed at will and offer refunds, are always an option.

"Consumers can choose between airlines with different service options and select tickets that vary in price, depending on their flexibility," Berg said in his letter to Nader.

Not really.

Something is seriously wrong with the price of refundable tickets. Nothing says "broken market" like swollen prices that bear no resemblance to the value of a product offered and show no signs of price competition.

The gap between refundable and non-refundable tickets is absurd. An airline industry official tried to argue the point with me during a recent chat and priced a one-way, nonstop ticket between New York and Chicago. Non-refundable cost: $112. Refundable cost: $870. Clearly, free market forces are not at play and are not effectively offering a variety of choices and conditions.

No one really believes refundable tickets are a genuine option: On the refund portion of its website, Continental Airlines states clearly that "most tickets are not refundable."

"It has nothing to do with value," Nader said. "It has to do with algorithms. It's not like you're getting a real break with non-refundable tickets. The computer has permitted this to happen. The airline could never do all the calculations which allow them to take advantage of consumers in this situation with humans — it would be too labor-intensive."

Nader isn't optimistic that the Transportation Department will offer him any useful information about unused ticket revenue, but he's already shaking the trees at another government agency: He's pestering the Federal Trade Commission's anti-trust division to investigate. He believes that because most airlines have exactly the same policy about unused tickets, there's evidence of collusion and price fixing. As evidence, he points out that, while he asked multiple airlines for data, he got a single response from an industry trade group.

"They are colluding to achieve to a uniform policy so they don't have to look over their shoulder," he said. "I've never seen anything like this. They are colluding over the information. It has got to be slapped down."

When asked about this accusation, Steve Lott, a spokesman for Airlines for America, pointed to the letter the agency had already sent Nader. It says the trade group responded on behalf of the airlines "as a matter of convenience."

"DOT for decades has been well aware of air carrier policies and has not objected to them. Many of those policies are far superior to refund policies available to consumers in most other industries," Lott said.

The truth of the matter is that airline no-show and refund policies are unique and need to be evaluated as their own beast. If they were Nordstrom-level, no-questions-asked liberal refund policies, airlines wouldn't ever be able plan anything, as fliers would book and cancel trips constantly.

On the other hand, a harsh no-refund policy — something that was floated in the dark airline industry days after 9/11 — would be anti-consumer and probably hurt the industry by making fliers gun-shy. A clear middle-of-the-road policy is called for, along with better refundable ticket options.

The real problem is that today's no-show policies are tilted too far in the airlines' favor.

"An even bigger rip-off is when you do try to use (a ticket credit) and you get hit with a $150 change fee and the fare differential, and the credit is essentially useless," Elliott said. Also, many consumers miss the fact that the credit is valid only for one year from the original booking — not from the day of the flight or the day of cancellation.

"I hear from people every day who misunderstand that and are told their voucher is worthless," he said.

Of course, the truth is straightforward: The airlines need the money.

"The airlines are so woefully mismanaged right now that if they didn't do this, they would be unprofitable and would cease to exist," he said.

RED TAPE WRESTLING TIPS

There are many honest reasons that consumers miss flights. Even though airlines' stated polices on their carriage of contract may sound strict, many make exceptions. A common one: the "flat tire rule."

If you are late to the airport because something happens on your trip there, many airlines will simply put you into the next available flight where there's room, often without a change fee. Just ask nicely.

Elliot also points out that while airlines rarely offer full refunds, consumers can get a little money back when their unused ticket value expires. Some taxes, such as passenger security fees, are eligible for refund. Airlines won't automatically offer tax refunds; you'll have to ask.

It's always a good idea to see whether Southwest Airlines is flying your way, as it has the most understandable change fees in the industry.

And as always, when life intervenes on your plans, don't be afraid to call the airline and ask for an exception. 

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The face of Occupy Wall Street for many of those who've never made it to New York City says he’s under increasing attack from other protesters, and was assaulted recently during a march.

Tim Pool, a mini-celebrity for giving OWS the Walter Cronkite treatment through his nonstop web-based, TimCast live video stream, was involved in some kind of scuffle at around 9:30 p.m.  Sunday night -- there is, of course, video evidence. On other occasions, marchers have been seen harassing him and yelling for him to turn off his camera.  And there are ominous statements directed at him online, like this one: "I suggest you stick by his side because unfortunately he's probably going to need protection."

The conflict surrounding Pool raises myriad issues for Occupy Wall Street, as it wrestles with tension between goals of transparency to the public but secrecy to protect members from arrest and to stay one step ahead of police.

It also reveals some of the fundamental tensions facing journalists covering protests, or anyone wielding a camera in the ever-increasing world of always-on video.

For his part, Pool doesn't mince words about his predicament.

"I probably will get severely injured in these next coming months,” he said. “...I pretty much expect to wind up in the hospital. The threats I'm hearing, with words like 'protection' in them, sound awfully Mafioso."

Pool has been called a snitch who has helped police identify protesters for arrest. But he says transparency is one of the primary goals of Occupy Wall Street and he plans to keep his camera on, no matter what it reveals -- even events that might be counterproductive to the protesters' cause.

In the early days of Occupy Wall Street, when the protest was confined to and then kicked out of, Zuccotti Park, Pool was treated like a rock star. His live stream was regularly viewed by 10,000 or more Internet users, many of whom were following the movement from across the globe. He was eventually profiled by several major media outlets, including msnbc.com, in a story named “A Ustream star is born”.

But tensions began to mount during a march in November when protesters let air out of police squad car tires and Pool showed the alleged vandalism on camera, refusing to stop streaming when protesters yelled at him to turn off his equipment.

Pool straddles a delicate line between being part of the Occupy Wall Street movement and an objective observer. He said he is not actually a member, but also declined to call himself an "outside journalist." 

“I'm trying to help people understand what's happening and make a clear report," he said. "We cannot rely on the mainstream media to do that."

But he says some members expect him to show only video that helps the cause.

"That would be propaganda. ... I don't take orders," Pool said.  "I film what's happening around me. I do it because people need to know what's going on. ... In reality, anybody who throws a bottle should be accountable for their actions. They should be upset at themselves for being in the vicinity of cameras when they do it."

Pool said he's received veiled threats ever since the November incident, with critics becoming more vocal in recent days. There have even been accusations that he's getting paid by law enforcement.

On Sunday night,  one such critic shined a light directly into Pool's camera in an effort to block his stream.  Then, a scuffle ensued with another unidentified person. While Pool lost control of the camera, it never shut off.  After about 10 seconds of yelling, someone yelled, "I have Tim's phone (and camera) but I don't know where he is." Later someone shouted, "Someone just attacked Tim."  Moments later, Pool can be heard saying, "He just chopped my arm and smashed my camera. ... The dude hit me because he doesn't want me streaming."

Bob Sullivan / msnbc.com

Tim Pool

(The incident occurs at about the 17:30 timecode on this recording)

The alleged assailant was wearing a mask, as were many protesters that night, participating in a type of march called a Black Bloc. While some alleged images of him are circulating on the Web, he has not been identified.

Pool, while shaken, was uninjured and says he would not press charges against the alleged attacker. He also said he won't stop streaming the protests, come what may. 

In another video from that night, Pool got in a shouting match with protesters who demand that he not show their faces. 

"Put your f%$#g camera away and get the f%$#g out of here. You have no respect," said one.  A more moderate voice chimes in: "Sir, this would be a lot easier if you would just put the camera down."

Pool held his ground firmly: "Information is free. ... Transparency is what brings me here. ... transparency prevails.”

Among Pool’s detractors is Occupy organizer Jason Ahmadi, who recently told “The Atlantic” that "the growing sentiment among people is that Tim, specifically, is putting people in danger and is serving as a tool for the police, whether he’s aware of it or not." Said another, Patrick Bruner:  "Many individuals don’t want to be filmed by him, including me. ... The larger issue is the ethics of filming someone without their permission."

In the rumor-laden world of Occupy Wall Street, discussions of larger issues can be challenging. One Twitter user recently wrote that Pool "just tried to help NYPD arrest an occupier." There also are claims that the man who attacked Pool was actually a law enforcement official trying to cause trouble -- "it was either that or an anarchist," Pool said.  Of course, it's always possible someone was merely trying to steal his equipment, though that seems unlikely given the context.

On Tuesday, he spent much of the afternoon trying to beat back claims that he was profiting from his efforts and had already collected nearly $100,000.

"That's just not true," Pool told msnbc.com, saying donors have given him a little more than $10,000, which he’s using to pay for streaming costs.

He also said he has no plans to change tactics.  "I do what I do. I stand by my principle in regards to spreading the truth.  I will not compromise. The people deserve the truth above all else."

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UP FOR DISCUSSION

Because Thursday is Data Privacy Day, and thanks to Google's new privacy policy, Tuesday was “You’ve Lost More Privacy Day,” Helen Popkin and I began a dialog, one that will continue tomorrow in an open chat with readers.

From: Helen Popkin
To: Bob Sullivan
Given that the privacy policies for all Google products just got put in a BlendTec, and Facebook, Twitter and MySpace programmers have put together the “Don’t Do Evil” search engine, is it time to talk about what Google is really risking here?

-------

From: Bob Sullivan 
To: Helen Popkin

I have two immediate thoughts.

1) I think most users believed this “shared across all Google properties” thing was already true.  I mean, maybe you don’t quite connect YouTube video with Gmail ... but your Gmail ads already “read” your email. So what if they reflect recent videos you’ve watched, too?  I think this idea of data sharing across divisions is standard across financial services companies (why Bank of America customers get offers from Merrill Lynch). In other words, is this *really* new? Remember the old Larry Ponemon privacy interest scale which says that 60 percent of Americans say they care about privacy, but their actions belie their words; 33 percent say, “I have nothing to hide?” and only 7 percent are really privacy activists willing to take steps to protect their privacy. I suspect most users won’t notice this change, or if they do, it won’t be enough to nudge them to change their search engine habits.

2) The risk Google is taking here — and I think it’s a big one — is in blending Google Plus contributions with its search algorithm. Google Plus is still largely populated by early adopters, and many of them went there seeking greater privacy controls than Facebook had at the time G+ launched. Now, many avid social networkers there feel betrayed. While the general population tends to forget such insults, early adopters do not.  Many of them are privacy activists, and it’s very bad form to anger your early adopters. On the other hand, SearchEngineLand.com’s Danny Sullivan says that most of the frustration on this point isn’t from Google users — who haven’t complained much at all — but rather from wonks who are raising issues about it. (Read more about this issue here.)

3) OK, a bonus thought. At a time when Facebook is offering more granularity in its privacy settings (such as they are), Google is killing granularity here. Couldn’t you see some people being OK with all this sharing as long as YouTube wasn’t included? What about the contents of Google docs? If a user finds any of this spooky, there’s nothing he or she can do about it. And that’s trouble. 

4) OK, bonus thought two: There’s a steady, sad progression where companies like Google and Facebook encroach more and more on privacy, see what kind of firestorm they have to endure, and then try something else. I fear they are learning that the bar for really causing a cause celeb online is very, very high. Bit by bit, these large Web companies are becoming more emboldened by each incident like this.

5) Last bonus thought. I wonder if Google’s positive vibes from SOPA (“Hey, those Google folks stood up for us against the government!”) will afford the firm a partial mulligan for this.

---- 

From: Helen Popkin
To: Bob Sullivan

1) Blah blah blah. If we really cared about protecting our personal information, "password" wouldn't be a popular password and IT managers wouldn't have to enforce regularly changed and increasingly complicated log-ins that require both lower-case and capped letters, numbers, some sort of punctuation, and, I predict in the near future, wingdings. What we really want is a fat lady in a painting to guide us through our stuff, like them lucky kids in Gryffindor, but I digress.

Your average technology layperson won't care about Google's user data and privacy policy integration until #GoogleIsEvil starts trending on Twitter.

2) Re: "The risk Google is taking here – and I think it’s a big one — is in blending Google Plus contributions with its search algorithm." See above.  

That said, Google is for sure getting desperate — hence collating its user data and privacy policies into one super product, while screwing other social networks via its new social search. "Facebook" is increasingly replacing of "Just Google it," in how we operate on the Internet,  and Facebook is capitalizing on its increasing presence as a portal of information by actively courting news outlets, as well as other sorts of information sites — along with e-commerce, of course — to create a strong Facebook presence to attract clicks.

3) Re: Granular privacy settings. Many people are still operating under Facebook's default settings (which are open to share the most of your info). We like privacy as an idea but in reality, we barely notice. It's a fact of Internet life people are already inured to — the Antiqued Pine Provence Bed, handcrafted in vintage pine reclaimed from floor joints of early 20th-century Midwest barns, which I'll never buy nonetheless haunts via ads on most any non-ecommerce website I visit hours after I leave the Sundance Catalog website where it lives, just because I clicked on the ugly-ass, overpriced  thing once. Once! (Ok, maybe twice.)  Such benign following we hardly notice, and it's right in our face.

It's not new that your Google search results are impure — your results are already based on your previous Internet behavior. Google's social search just makes that gated Internet community even smaller. Facebook, for all its Google smack talk, does the same thing. People are getting more and more of their information from Facebook, but what we see first on Facebook is based on our clicking behavior on that site, and off as well, depending on how much you've locked down your Facebook privacy.  

4) Google, Facebook etc., are always seeing what they can get away with. Check out how much both those companies are increasingly spend on D.C. lobbying budgets. Google spent $9.7 million on lobbying in 2011, up 88 percent from 2010. Facebook spent comparatively modest $1.4 million — but it's a 284 percent more than Facebook's 2010 lobbying budget.

Neither of those amounts are insane compared to other monoliths — Big Pharma is in the triple-digit millions — but those budgets gets bigger every year. Corporations that lobby are also more likely to spend money to get legislation to bend their way than to actually throw it in to something that benefits their customers.

5) Will Google lose its positive SOPA vibes? Sure, if Facebook has its way. As we saw with SOPA, if you rile up the masses via viral Facebook posts and trending hashtags, anything's possible. As you've already mentioned, Facebook, working with Twitter and MySpace (tee-hee), built a search bookmarklet to circumvent Google's social search — which throws those sites to the dogs — and called it "Don't Be Evil," mocking the guiding principal Google famously declared early on. Oh snap Facebook, Twitter and MySpace!

It's not the first time Google's had this thrown in its face, but "evil" is exactly what grabbed everyone's attention with SOPA, if another company can make "evil" stick to its competitor, what better way to sway public opinion.

Helen A.S. Popkin goes blah blah blah about privacy and then asks her to join her on Twitter and/or Facebook. Also, Google+. Because that's how she rolls.

Here’s a lot more reading material on Don’t Do Evil and the rest of the issues raised by Google’s announcement:

• Google’s Broken Promise: The End of "Don’t Be Evil"
• You Call That Evil?   (A good opposing viewpoint)
• How To: Escape From Google’s Clutches, Once and For All
• Google Stockpiles Data Ammo Through Privacy Merge, Guns To Win Relevancy War
• It seems Google's social search is here to stay — Larry Page told employees if they didn't like it, they should hit the road (Google denies that his happened)

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Monday’s Supreme Court ruling invalidating a conviction based on evidence gained by GPS tracking of a suspect's car might seem like a victory for privacy advocates. But on the critical issues of privacy and Fourth Amendment rights, the majority of the court actually punted. 

The unanimous opinion issued Monday morning is among the first in which the Supreme Court has decided a case at the thorny 21st-Century intersection of law, technology and privacy.  Police in Washington, D.C., had tracked a suspect by placing a tiny GPS device on his car, then tracking his movements for about a month. While the trial court held that evidence obtained through the GPS amounted to surveillance of the suspect's movements through public spaces, an appeals court ruled that it constituted an illegal search and seizure and a violation of Fourth Amendment rights.  The Supreme Court affirmed the decision. 

There was a remarkable amount of disagreement, however, in this unanimous decision. The court issued perhaps the narrowest ruling possible -- essentially that placement of the GPS on the car constituted a violation of property and effects rights, akin to trespassing, therefore spoiling any evidence garnered through the process.  Left undecided: What rights do citizens have when law enforcement uses other technological methods to track their whereabouts?

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, while concurring with the decision, delivered a separate opinion dripping with disappointment.

"With increasing regularity, the government will be capable of duplicating the monitoring undertaken in this case by enlisting factory- or owner-installed vehicle tracking devices or GPS-enabled smartphones. In cases of electronic or other novel modes of surveillance that do not depend upon a physical invasion on property, the majority opinion’s trespassory test may provide little guidance," she wrote.

Electronic law expert Mark Rasch, former head of the Justice Department's Computer Crime unit, said the opinion has "almost given carte blanche to law enforcement to go ahead and try to find their way around" the ruling, such as enlisting the help of cell phone providers to track citizens in their cars.

Sotomayer clearly regretted that the majority did not take the opportunity to make a more definitive ruling on privacy and Fourth Amendment rights, Rasch said. In her opinion she raised the complex issue of law enforcement agencies increasingly using private firms to aid in surveillance and evidence gathering. Rules governing evidence originally obtained by third parties are unclear, but generally offer fewer rights that rules governing law enforcement investigative techniques.

"This approach is ill suited to the digital age, in which people reveal a great deal of information about themselves to third parties in the course of carrying out mundane tasks," Sotomayer wrote. "People disclose the phone numbers that they dial or text to their cellular providers; the URLs that they visit and the e-mail addresses with which they correspond to their Internet service providers; and the books, groceries, and medications they purchase to online retailers. … I for one doubt that people would accept without complaint the warrantless disclosure to the government of a list of every website they had visited in the last week, or month, or year."

Justice Samuel Alito also seemed frustrated by the court's failure to take on the deeper issues raised in the GPS tracking case.

"(This opinion) largely disregards what is really important (the use of a GPS for the purpose of long-term tracking) and instead attaches great significance to something that most would view as relatively minor -- attaching to the bottom of a car a small, light object that does not interfere in any way with the car’s operation,” he wrote in a concurring opinion.  "By contrast, if long-term monitoring can be accomplished without committing a technical trespass — suppose, for example, that the federal government required or persuaded auto manufacturers to include a GPS tracking device in every car — the court’s theory would provide no protection."

The Justice Department had asked for even more sweeping evidence-gathering rights. It argued that placement of the GPS device on the suspect's car was akin to other forms of electronic evidence-gathering that the court has already allowed. The most analogous situation, the Justice Department argued, was placing a homing beacon, or "beeper," in a device that is given to a suspect – for example, in the case cited by Justice, when illicit chemicals with a beeper attached were sold by a cooperating witness to a suspect.  But such beepers are placed into property with the permission of a third party and then accepted voluntarily by a suspect. That differs greatly from law enforcement attaching a gadget to a suspect's car, the court found. That makes the act less like surveillance and more akin to a search, affording it Fourth Amendment requirements.

"The government physically occupied private property for the purpose of obtaining information," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote. "We have no doubt that such a physical intrusion would have been considered a 'search' within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment when it was adopted."

Scalia was comfortable stopping there.

"It may be that achieving the same result through electronic means, without an accompanying trespass, is an unconstitutional invasion of privacy, but the present case does not require us to answer that question," he wrote, in a direct answer to Sotomayer's complaint. "There is no reason for rushing forward to resolve them here."

Rasch found deep faults in Scalia's logic. Police "attach" things to citizens' automobiles all the time. Parking tickets, for example, or chalk marks as a reminder to meter maids that cars may have exceeded hourly requirements. The act of installing something on a car is not itself trespassing, he argued – it’s the act of using such a device to track a citizens' movement over time without a warrant that raises constitutional issues. 

"'Hands off my car,' is the best way I can put this ruling," he said, adding that he thought the court had failed by issuing such a narrow ruling.

"They've avoided the issue. They were asked to address the Fourth Amendment issues, and they decided a trespassing case," he said. "You don't need the Supreme Court for that." 

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SOPA – Maybe I’m for it after all.

I’m as adamant a supporter of Web free speech as you’ll find. And there’s a lot to dislike about the Stop Online Piracy Act. But when my stories about Web free speech are stolen and posted in their entirety by “rogue” websites, my head hurts. Stealing content is a funny way to prove your anti-SOPA credentials.

Opponents of controversial anti-piracy legislation called SOPA have been gaining momentum in the past week, and on Wednesday, their show of muscle reached orgasmic proportions.  Perhaps swept up in the excitement of a protest that seems to be working, a long list of websites copied in its entirety a story I wrote about it over the weekend and placed it on their own sites. Here’s one example, viewed early Wednesday afternoon.

Sure, msnbc.com’s name appears there, but the Web site in question gets the clicks and the revenue.  Not fair, I’m sure you’d agree.

For good fun, this “pirate” version seems to have been run through a translator, and back again. So my, “Opponents of controversial federal anti-piracy legislation known as SOPA seem to be picking up steam,” has been mangled into, “Opponents of argumentative sovereign anti-piracy legislation famous as SOPA seem to be picking adult steam.”

It’s the people who steal content and claim they are protected by free speech who are full of adult steam, otherwise known as hot air. I have no patience for Internet users who copy movies, music or software whole-hog, share it with their friends for free and then cry foul at efforts to stop this.

Of course, I haven’t been singled out for story theft.  You can find rogue copies of almost every msnbc.com story – and any NYTimes.com, and any CNN.com story – all over the Internet. I’m not talking about “aggregated” versions, which are gently rewritten copies of someone else’s work, made famous by the Huffington Post. I mean total rip-offs. 

I’m not in favor of SOPA. Blacklisting entire domains is a terrible idea that seems to have been beaten back by reason. Jailing alleged pirates would be Draconian in most cases.  Using the U.S. Justice Department to enforce multinational corporations’ intellectual property rights through the criminal court system makes me queasy.  Placing the burden of proof on small websites to show they aren’t violating copyrights is a dangerous turnabout of U.S. law. And perhaps most important, it’s highly doubtful that SOPA would be effective in stopping the kind of content theft I’m writing about here.

For a little more explanation on the reasons SOPA would have done more harm than good, I asked San Diego State University information systems teacher Robert Gillespie, about problems he sees with its enforcement mechanism.

"SOPA ... would leave a great deal of elbow room for interpretation, which is why so many corporations fear the ramifications of its passing," he said. "It can be implemented with far reaching effects.  For example, if some media site republished a New York Times article without permission, not only can they go after the site in question, but they can make the search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing), any add networks, and various other connected business entities (such as ISP, domain, and website host providers) cease connection with the website in question...This is a bludgeoning tool that is imprecise and clumsy when in the wrong hands. "

So thank goodness, SOPA in its original form appears dead. But if you don’t think there’s a piracy problem, you’re not paying attention.

How bad is it?  Even U.S. Senators steal content for their websites. (Though I am flattered, Sen. Bernie Sanders. I was proud of that story.) By the way, Sanders’ position on SOPA is unknown.

Photographers have been fighting this battle for years, and are doing a relatively good job of using watermarks and other technologies to enforce their rights. In fact, a cottage industry of photography IP lawyers has grown up around the problem, sending bills and other demand letters to photography infringers. (See a discussion of this in “When is sharing, stealing?”) Writers, so far, have gotten nowhere.

You could argue, of course, that imitation isn’t just flattery – it’s actually good business in the Digital Age. If enough people copy your stories, eventually that comes back to you in a social network-y,  wisdom of crowds-y, long tail-y kind of way.  Except in rare cases, I don’t buy that.  The math just doesn’t add up.

The real problem is Web culture that suggests everything is free, or should be free. That’s just not a grown-up way of looking at the world.

So tonight, while you’re patting yourself on the back for being a part of a genuine Internet movement that has successfully influenced Congress –  an impressive feat, mind you –  know that there’s much more work to be done.  Tell a friend they should link to a story instead of copy a story onto a blog.  Because if we don’t find a reasonable way to protect intellectual property rights, you can bet an unreasonable one will rear its ugly head again soon.

Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and Comcast/NBC Universal. Microsoft publicly opposes SOPA in its current form, while Comcast/NBC Universal is listed as a supporter of SOPA on the House Judiciary Committee website.

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Online retailer Zappos.com is telling 24 million customers that their personal information has been hacked, and forcing all of them to reset their passwords.  Cyber criminals may have accessed customers' names, e-mail addresses, billing and shipping addresses, phone number, and the last four digits of consumers' credit card numbers, the firm said in an announcement that was posted on Zappos' Web site late Sunday night.  Full credit card numbers were not stolen, the firm said, because they were stored separately.

The announcement included the text of an e-mail that Zappos customers will soon receive.

"We were recently the victim of a cyber attack by a criminal who gained access to parts of our internal network and systems through one of our servers in Kentucky. We are cooperating with law enforcement to undergo an exhaustive investigation," says the e-mail,  which is signed by Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO. "For your protection and to prevent unauthorized access, we have expired and reset your password so you can create a new password. Please follow the instructions below to create a new password.  We also recommend that you change your password on any other web site where you use the same or a similar password."

While passwords that may have been stolen were cryptographically scrambled, Zappos said, it is still requiring all consumers to change their passwords. Zappos also recommends that consumers who use their Zappos password on other sites — a common, if unsafe, practice — should change those passwords, too.

Zappos has set up a special Web page for customers to visit and change the password: http://www.zappos.com/passwordchange.

Anticipating a flood of customer service calls in response to the notification e-mail, Zappos is taking the unusual step of turning off its customer service telephone lines and forcing consumers with questions to send them in via e-mail.

"Due to the volume of inquiries we are expecting, we realized that we could serve the most customers by answering their questions by email," Hsieh said in a note to employees, also posted on the firm's Web page. "We have made the hard decision to temporarily turn off our phones and direct customers to contact us by email because our phone systems simply aren't capable of handling so much volume. (If 5% of our customers call, that would be over 1 million phone calls, most of which would not even make it into our phone system in the first place.) "

Hsieh said the firm would have "all hands on deck," to help customers with questions.

Judged by the number of customers impacted, Zappos' data breach is among the biggest thefts of customer information ever, but still considerably smaller than last year's incident involving the Sony Play Station Network, which reportedly impacted 77 million customers.

Hsieh struck an apologetic tone in both the e-mail to consumers and the memo to staff.

"We've spent over 12 years building our reputation, brand, and trust with our customers. It's painful to see us take so many steps back due to a single incident," he said in the memo. "I suppose the one saving grace is that the database that stores our customers' critical credit card and other payment data was not affected or accessed."  

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