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It's hard to believe that even after the huge disaster "link taxes" have been in Europe and Australia that people would push to have them in the United States, and yet here we are. This brewing bad idea has some foolish friends in Congress, who tasked the Copyright Office with doing a study on the viability of importing this nonsense into American law, and via our already over-encumbered copyright law. The Copia Institute filed a public comment as part of this study and provided testimony at a hearing in December. In both, we pointed out that a site like Techdirt is exactly the sort of small, independent media outlet such a scheme is supposed to help yet is instead exactly the sort of small, independent media outlet such a scheme most definitely would hurt.While some of its advocates insist it is not actually a "link tax" being proposed, and instead something fancier-sounding ("ancillary copyright"), the inevitable result will be equally ruinous to the very journalistic interests this scheme is ostensibly supposed to advance by destroying the very thing they all ultimately depend on: the ability to connect to audiences. It will have this effect because the whole point of this scheme is to attack the platforms and services that currently have the nerve to help them make that connection by linking to these media sites. After all, the thinking apparently goes, how dare these platforms and services deliver media outlets this valuable audience attention without paying for the privilege of getting to do them this enormous favor?The defects of this plan to essentially tax the platforms and services that provide media outlets with this critical benefit are significant. For example, it completely offends the goals and purpose of both copyright law and the First Amendment, which exist to help ensure that information and ideas can spread. It offends it by design, by deliberately creating a regulatory regime that punishes the platforms and services that facilitate this spread. It also offends the First Amendment more specifically in how it targets the expressive freedom of the platforms and services themselves to refer people to others’ expression.It is also completely at odds with its own professed goal. These platforms and services are giving media outlets everything they ever said they wanted: audience attention. Yet now these outlets would bite the hand that feeds, and for no good reason. Because even to the extent that this scheme is predicated on the idea of helping journalistic enterprises make more money, it will have the exact opposite effect. No media outlet makes money without an audience. You can’t profit from audience attention if there is no attention. And there won’t be any attention with schemes like this obstructing platforms and services from connecting media outlets and their expression to those audiences.As we’ve seen in other countries, schemes like these have starved media outlets of their audience lifeblood by effectively unlinking them from the world. It has this effect in part because it deters the platforms and services that currently drive traffic to media outlets from being in the drive-traffic-to-media-outlets business anymore by making it way too expensive to do. Sure, with a scheme like this maybe some of the big platforms (Google News, Facebook) might suck it up and pay into the system (although, given what happened in Spain and Australia, when they each at various points refused to continue to do business there in the face of these sorts of schemes, perhaps they wouldn’t). But given all the gnashing and wailing, even at this hearing, that Google and Facebook have too much power, it would make sense to make sure that there could be other platforms and service competitors to Google and Facebook. The more the big ones are resented for driving traffic to other sites the more important it is that it be possible for other platforms and services to be able to exist to do it instead.Yet that diversity in audience-facilitating services is exactly what compulsory licensing schemes like this one foreclose by inordinately exploding the cost of doing business for anyone who might want to build a platform or service capable of referring audiences to other sites. Those costs don’t just come from the money itself needed to pay into the licensing system but also the potentially massive compliance costs associated with not running afoul of such a scheme’s inevitably technical rules and also any defense costs involved with trying to avoid costly liability should someone accuse the service of not complying with those rules quite right. (As we wrote in our comment, the compulsory licensing system for music webcasters illustrates how hugely and deterrently expensive the costs of complying with a compulsory licensing systems like this proposed one can be.)And deterring these platforms and services it isn’t going to do anything to make online journalism more profitable. For one thing, it in no way targets any of the reasons why it may not be profitable, to the extent that’s even the case. After all, if distant corporate owners would prefer to starve local newsrooms in favor of skimming off profits, that’s not a failure of copyright law that’s causing the decline of local news. It’s not even a failure of any particular journalistic profit model.But to the extent that the news business is legitimately under strain, schemes like these don't alleviate that strain because it was not the absence of this sort of ancillary right that caused any of the underlying problems in the first place. More likely culprits hurting the news business are things such as media consolidation, corporate governance models that emphasize quick profits over good journalism, advertising models that are offensive to user privacy, poor site design that doesn’t retain readers' attention, and even paywalls and terrible site design that deliberately repel readership. It would make a lot more sense to correct these actual issues, or at least leave everyone free to innovate better monetization models if they are what’s needed for media outlets to flourish as the economically sustainable entities we want them to be. Instead a scheme like this just papers over the actual problems and by throwing more copyright at everything creates all sorts of chilling new ones that now everyone will have to cope with, no matter how contrary to their expressive or economic interests.Because it WILL hurt them. It will suppress the reach of every media outlet's expression, and with it also their ability to profit from that reach. And it will hurt them this way without delivering any economic return, probably not to anyone but especially not to the smaller, independent outlets. Compulsory licensing systems are often profoundly inequitable, directing most of the money to big incumbent players and very little to the smaller creatives in the "longtail" of the money distribution chart. (Again, see the webcasting compulsory license for an example of this dynamic.) Furthermore, to the extent that some larger media outlets may envision doing special licensing deals with the big platforms like Google and Facebook, which they think they’ll be able to strike in the extortive shadow of a scheme like this, it would still leave everyone else, especially the smaller, independent media outlets without that bargaining power, in even more trouble than they are already in now.Especially when such a scheme will meanwhile make it impossible to monetize audience attention that platforms and services are no longer legally able to freely deliver to them, unless these platforms and services spend a ton of money to comply with this scheme or be willing to risk infringement liability. By chilling these platforms and services it will destroy the Internet ecosystem these media outlets depend on to get that audience attention in the first place. And as a result it will diminish the diversity of independent journalistic voices, who will inevitably fade into unvisited obscurity. You almost couldn’t invent a better system to destroy independent media if you tried.And that is in large part because, as it became clear in the hearing, this proposed scheme ultimately has little to do with actually supporting the economics of journalism writ large. Instead what emerged from the hearing was a perverse sense of entitlement, where some news outlets were arguing that if any audience-facilitating service happened to make money from the exercise of directing audience traffic to them, then this was somehow money that they were entitled to. This scheme only makes sense as a policy designed to pick the pocket of any business that happens to provide any audience facilitating service and is clearly built on a sense of resentment that anyone else might ever in any way profit from linking to someone else's expression, even when it still provides a symbiotic benefit to the media outlet behind the expression by helping it connect to its own audience. Not content to let this generous goose continue to lay all this economic opportunity on their doorstep, advocates of this scheme would rather use regulation like this to slaughter it in the misguided effort to grab up the imagined riches it greedily thinks such a scheme would magically reveal, irrespective how foolishly destructive such efforts would actually be to everyone.

Ten years ago a coalition of strange bedfellows came together to thwart one of the most problematic pieces of legislation in tech policy history. In the process they made history, rekindled waning optimism about the health of democratic process, forged longstanding new alliances across activism, politics, academia, and industry, and redefined what's possible in the tech policy arena and the halls of Congress. Not bad for a day's work.Their motivation was SOPA/PIPA, a ham-fisted attempt to impose a draconian expansion to the nation's copyright laws that experts warned would restrict speech, stifle innovation, and curtail the growth of numerous online communities. The bill crafted an extrajudicial process with contours dictated not by experts, the public, or democratic process, but by entertainment industry lawyers. Thwarting its passage required a unique fusion of DC veterans well-versed in the machinery of Congress, academics with a vast understanding of the issues at hand, and younger activists employing fresh tactics in the fight for an open internet.The result was not only a high watermark in online activism, the lessons learned during the experience will inform coalition building and activism for decades to come. Many of the experts, industry leaders, and politicians who experienced the battle first hand were kind enough to share their thoughts on the experience. Their contributions are outlined here, in case you missed any:Mike Masnick reflected on his experience of the campaign, and discussed how the successes of the SOPA/PIPA fight can help drive optimism for future reform efforts and meaningful change.Tiffiniy Cheng discussed how the activist backlash to SOPA/PIPA not only killed the bill in 2012, the internet blackout campaign and resulting policy victory "shook Congress so profoundly that no significant copyright legislation has been introduced in the ten years since."David Segal wrote about Aaron Swartz's contributions to the SOPA/PIPA fight, and how the battle helped build the cornerstones of his organization Demand Progress.John Bergmayer celebrated the victory that was SOPA/PIPA, but made it abundantly clear there's more work that needs to be done when it comes to preserving an open internet and ensuring that creators are paid appropriately.Parker Higgins discussed how while the SOPA/PIPA campaign was a cornerstone victory, it was only one stepping stone in the context of the broader activist fight for an open internet, freedom of expression, and unfettered access to knowledge online.Babatunde Okunoye wrote about how while the SOPA/PIPA fight was an important victory in the States, there remains a parade of challenges around the world when it comes to fighting for free expression and an open internet.Yochai Benkler discussed the lessons learned from the SOPA/PIPA victory and how they can inform the ongoing fight against crony capitalism and the steady creep of global authoritarianism.Michael Petricone wrote about how the SOPA/PIPA debate helped redefine our understanding of the internet's power and usefulness, and examined how the internet--and the entertainment companies that sponsored the bill--thrived without the need for heavy-handed copyright laws.Lia Holland wrote about how years after SOPA/PIPA, the fight continues to combat exclusionary gatekeepers and monopolized control and implement interoperable, decentralized tools and technologies tailored toward the common good. Christian Dawson discussed the perils of uninformed internet policy, how the SOPA/PIPA debate redefined modern activism, and the need for broad coalitions during the policy challenges to come.Representative Zoe Lofgren detailed her unique vantage point on SOPA/PIPA from inside the halls of Congress, and the inspiration of informed collective action. Paul Geller offered his perspective on the SOPA/PIPA fight from his vantage point at Grooveshark, and how while SOPA/PIPA was an essential victory, it may have been our last chance at forging common sense regulation aimed at protecting entrepreneurs and a vibrant internet. And finally, Paul Keller took a closer look at the SOPA/PIPA fight from the European perspective, documenting how coordinated opposition to SOPA/PIPA helped inspire and galvanize opposition to the EU's equally problematic Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). Again, we'd like to extend our immense appreciation to contributors of our latest roundtable, live panel participants, and Techdirt readers, and we hope these conversations have provided value to internet policymakers and everyday internet users alike.

We've talked at length about the issues surrounding automated copyright infringement "bots" and how often those bots get the primary question they're tagged with wrong. Examples of this are legion: Viacom's bot takes down a Star Trek panel discussion, all kinds of bots disrupted the DNC's livestream of its convention, and one music distributor's bot firing off DMCA notices to, well, everyone. Google itself has reported that nearly 100% of the DMCA notices it gets are just bot-generated buckshot.But Google isn't the savior here either. The company also uses automated systems for detecting copyright infringement and, at least in the case of Google Drive, those automated systems occasionally suck out loud at their job.

It's never been a secret that for all of the public claims about how Donald Trump's upcoming social network "TRUTH Social" will be for "free speech" that this was never actually the plan. We noted right up front that its terms of service appeared to be way more restrictive than all the competitors it was criticizing -- and even said it would be a violation of terms to "annoy" anyone working for the site. When Rep. Devin Nunes -- who has a long history of suing people for criticizing and mocking him (i.e., no friend of free speech) -- announced he was retiring from Congress to become CEO of Trump's social network, we noted that he'd be quick to ban people on the site.And, so it's no surprise that Fox Business is reporting that the site will have "strict" content moderation tools in place, in order to make the site "family friendly."

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A few weeks ago, we warned that Congress should not include the ridiuculously dangerous SHOP SAFE bill in the expected USICA bill. Unfortunately, Congress did not listen.On Tuesday, Nancy Pelosi released the text of the renamed America Creating Opportunities for Manufacturing, Pre-Eminence in Technology and Economic Strength Act of 2022 (or America COMPETES Act). This is for the bill that had already been renamed from Endless Frontiers to USICA. As we noted in our last post, the crux of the bill actually is really important -- as it attempts to build out a much better infrastructure in the US for core research and development into science and technology. If the bill were actually just about that, I might support it.But... the bill is an astounding 2912 pages long.And with nearly 3,000 pages, you would be right in assuming that the House lit this thing up like a Christmas tree full of favors for certain members of Congress. And apparently that includes Rep. Jerry Nadler, who is the main sponsor of the SHOP SAFE Act, which is included in whole -- with no changes, despite the widespread criticism -- in the bill. If you're trying to find it, it starts on page 1672 of the 2912 pages. In other words, buried almost directly in the middle. Gotta hide all the bad stuff, I guess.There are a few other bad bills included in the COMPETES Act as well, but I'm not going to go through each and every bit of nonsense in the 3000 page bill right now. But I will note that the SHOP SAFE bit is not just actively dangerous, but it undermines the rest of the bill. It does the exact opposite of what's on the tin: it will do significant damage to both innovation and competition, and basically lock in Amazon as the only place where people can sell stuff.Nadler might as well have named it the "give Amazon a monopoly" Act. I have no idea why Speaker Pelosi would agree to put this piece of garbage in this bill, other than there must be a lot of favor trading going on. As policy expert Josh Lamel noted (accurately), this bill will make life really difficult for anyone who say, uses Etsy, in order to protect some giant European luxury brands who were asking for this nonsense bill in an attempt to control the online marketplace.

Register now for TODAY's online event featuring Rep. Zoe Lofgren »From the European perspective, the revolt against SOPA that happened 10 years ago is a somewhat distant memory. During the past 10 years we have seen two more inflection points in the fight against excessive copyright enforcement: the successful fight against ACTA in 2012 that was directly inspired by the success against SOPA earlier that year and — much more recently — the fight against upload filters that unfolded between 2016 and 2019 in the context of the EU copyright reform.In this post I will trace the lineage of the struggle against excessive copyright enforcement from the revolt against SOPA all the way to the outcome of the EU copyright reform that was enacted in 2019.From SOPA to ACTAThere can be no doubt that SOPA — had it been enacted — would have had massive consequences for internet users around the globe. While formally a proposal for legislation in the US, it would have changed the operating rules for platforms that are part of the online fabric for most of the global population. Much like the rules of the DCMA and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act are underpinning copyright enforcement and content moderation around the globe, SOPA would have been applied globally.This is partially due to the fact that the platforms targeted by the proposal are primarily based in the US, but also because platforms that operate on a global scale have incentives to comply with rules that apply in sufficiently large markets, which means that regulatory regimes are often exported well beyond the jurisdictions where they have been originally enacted.Seen in this light, the successful revolt against SOPA was as much a win for internet users outside of the US as it was for users in the US. But for internet users and activists in Europe, it also provided the inspiration for their fight against ACTA — the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement that was negotiated from 2007 through 2010 by the European Union, the US, Switzerland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Singapore, Morocco, Japan, and South Korea.In parallel to the protests against SOPA, the EU and the individual EU member states geared up to sign the final ACTA agreement. The protests against ACTA in Europe erupted when — in an act of incredibly poor timing — the Polish government announced on the 18th of January 2012 that it would sign ACTA.This moment unleashed a series of protests that took place both online and offline — in the form of sizable demonstrations in a number of EU member states. The protests that continued throughout the spring of 2012 ultimately lead to the rejection of ACTA by the European Parliament on the 4th of July 2012, effectively killing ACTA less than half a year after SOPA had been defeated.While unfolding in different political venues, the mobilizations against SOPA/PIPA and ACTA share an important characteristic. Both were directed against measures that were extremely one-sided: Both SOPA and ACTA bundled right holder demands for stronger — or rather excessive — copyright enforcement into legislative measures that did not contain any other elements.In both cases a central element was the desire to enlist Internet Service Providers as copyright enforcers. This meant that the mobilization against these measures could rally around a very simple political demand — to stop these measures from being adopted. In both cases the widespread opposition from internet users and platforms (both commercial and non-profit) managed to build up enough political power to achieve this well defined goal.From ACTA to UploadfiltersWith ACTA and SOPA defeated, it took a while for rightholders to launch another attempt to gain additional enforcement powers. In the period between 2012 and 2015, rightholders in the EU started building a new case against online platforms and their users. Instead of targeting internet service providers which had been on the focus of the measures contained in the SOPA and ACTA proposals, this new case focussed on “user generated content” platforms, of which YouTube was the primary example.Driven largely by the music industry — but supported by organised rightholders from across the spectrum — European rightholders developed the "value gap" narrative that claimed that UGC platforms where generating value from the unauthorised upload of copyrighted content by their users that they failed to pass on to the legitimate recipients — the rightholders. To address this supposed “value gap” rightholders demanded legislative measures that would strip UGC platforms of the liability privileges that shield them from legal responsibility for content uploaded by their users.These liability limitations established by the 2001 E-Commerce directive that ensure that platforms are not liable for content uploaded by their users as long as they follow a notice and takedown procedure became the main target of the rightholder lobby which managed to convince the EU Commission to include a proposal to make large UGC platforms directly liable for any content uploaded by their users in its proposal for a Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market that was unveiled in the fall of 2016.Article 13 of the Commission proposal contained language that would have required large UGC platforms to "take measures to ensure the functioning of agreements concluded with rightholders for the use of their works or other subject-matter or to prevent the availability on their services of works or other subject-matter identified by rightholders through the cooperation with the service providers."In other words Article 13 — as proposed — would have required platforms to either conclude licensing agreements with rightholders for all content uploaded by their users — an impossible demand — or to block uploads of works identified by rightholders.Digital and civil rights advocates quickly identified the provisions in Article 13 as the most problematic aspect of the Commission's proposal for the CDSM directive and started campaigning against what — in their eyes – amounted to the introduction of mandatory upload filters in the EU.The campaign to stop upload filters and to delete Article 13 that took shape over the following two and a half years recalled many aspects of the previous fights against SOPA and ACTA. As in the revolt against SOPA, the coalition fighting to delete Article 13 included civil society advocacy groups, public interest organisations and a wide range of online platforms.Similar to the mobilization against ACTA, the coalition managed to mobilize large groups of supporters both online — more than 5 million people signed a petition against Article 13 — and offline — in early 2019 more than 200.000 people across Europe took to the streets. The tools and tactics used by the opponents of Article 13 included many of the tools first deployed in the revolt against SOPA — ranging from website blackouts to mass email and social media campaigns directly targeting the responsible law makers.But in the end the campaign to delete Article 13 failed to achieve its objective. During the final legislative showdown — the vote in the EU parliament in April 2019 — a proposal to have a separate vote on Article 13 of the directive was narrowly rejected with a margin of just five votes. As a result it never came to a yes-or-no vote on Article 13 and the European Parliament adopted the entire DSM directive including a heavily modified version of Article 13 with a clear majority.Learning from Article 13Even though it ultimately failed at achieving its objective, the campaign against Article 13 clearly showed excessive copyright enforcement measures have not lost their mobilization potential among internet users. So what was different here?The biggest difference between the campaigns against SOPA and ACTA on the one side and Article 13 on the other side is that the latter was just one measure embedded in a much bigger copyright reform package — the proposed Copyright in the Digital Single Market directive. Where SOPA and ACTA immediately stood out in their one-sidedness and were thus much easier to discredit, the DSM directive was a multi-dimensional legislative package that contained a wide variety of measures that appealed to different sets of stakeholders.In addition to Articles 13 and 11 — a new neighboring right for press publishers — which reflected demands by organized rightholders, the directive also contained proposals for new copyright exceptions benefitting libraries, educational and research institutions and a number of measures strengthening the position of individual creators vis-a-vis publishers and other intermediaries. And while Article 11 and 13 were both highly controversial, these other measures enjoyed support from lawmakers across broad parts of the political spectrum.As a result of this divide-and-conquer approach, support for the project of adopting the directive came from a diverse set of stakeholders who pushed to see "their" issues adopted. Meanwhile lawmakers (and the EU Member States) were bitterly divided between different camps supporting different elements of the directive while rejecting others. These divisions manifested themselves not along party lines but split all major political parties down the middle.In this relatively unstable political climate there never was as clear majority for abandoning the overall project of adopting the directive and so the vast EU legislative apparatus did what it has been designed to do: step by step it pursued its objective towards producing compromise between the various political groups which ultimately resulted in the adoption of the directive at the very end of the legislative term.User rights as a by-product of the fight against upload filters?While the final vote on the directive was very much perceived as an all or nothing decision — the proponents of Article 13 united under the "yes to copyright" banner while the opponents proclaimed to "save the internet" — a retrospective analysis of the adopted measures paints a very different picture.During the course of the legislative wrangling, Article 13 underwent significant changes to accommodate concerns expressed by its opponents. The Final version of Article 13 (now Article 17 after a renumbering of the provisions of the directive) is substantially different from the Commission's original proposal. And while it shares its two main elements — the removal of the general liability privilege for UGC platforms and a de-facto requirement to deploy upload filters — it has accumulated a number of substantial procedural and substantive user rights safeguards that have not been present in the original version.Even more so Article 17 has become a vehicle for harmonizing key user rights by making the previously optional exceptions for quotation, criticism, review, parody, pastiche and caricature mandatory in all EU Member States. In addition, it now imposes obligations on Member States to ensure that these rights can effectively be exercised by users of UGC platforms. All of these amount to tangible improvements for internet users in the EU (for platforms this picture is more complicated).So while the effort to prevent the mandatory imposition of upload filters has clearly failed, the collision of massive SOPA style mobilisations with the EU’s compromise focussed legislative process may have created a rather unexpected outcome: the codification of important user rights and a framework for regulating the use of automated content moderation technologies that had were already in widespread use but so far deployed purely at the discretion of the online platforms.As such, what had originally been perceived as a bitter loss breaking with the tradition of the earlier successes of the mobilisations against SOPA and ACTA, seems more and more like a win for internet users in an admittedly ugly disguise.Paul Keller is Director of Policy at Open Future and President of the COMMUNIA association for the Public Domain where he coordinated the advocacy efforts related to the new EU copyright directive.This Techdirt Greenhouse special edition is all about the 10 year anniversary of the fight that stopped SOPA. On January 26th at 1pm PT, we'll be hosting a live discussion with Rep. Zoe Lofgren and some open roundtable discussions about the legacy of that fight. Please register to attend.

We've noted for years how AT&T has this pattern in which they'll promise a massive wave of new fiber investment and jobs if they get "x" (X=merger approvals, deregulation, tax breaks, a bunch of new subsidies, whatever). Then, a few years later, somebody will realize they failed utterly to meet those obligations. This happens over and over and over and over again, and not only does AT&T never see much in the way of accountability, nobody in state or federal leadership seems to learn much of anything from the process (usually because they're, well, corrupt).We'd seen a bit of a break from this cycle the last few years as AT&T was fixated on its disastrous $200 billion Time Warner and DirecTV mergers as part of an effort to dominate online streaming and video advertising. With that effort an abject failure, AT&T has shifted back to focusing more on doing something it should have been doing all along: deploying modern generation fiber. Or at least pretending to in a practice I've long affectionately called "fiber to the press release."This week AT&T issued a press release stating it would soon be offering ultra-fast 2 Gbps ($110 per month) and 5 Gbps ($180 per month) fiber tiers to 5.2 million customer locations now, with the goal of offering the ultra-fast options to 30 million locations by 2025. Feeling growing (but very spotty) competitive pressure from community broadband fiber deployments, AT&T also announced that it will be ditching most of its caps, sneaky fees, and surcharges on these faster tiers:

The justice system may say lofty things about debts to society or rehabilitation, but when it all comes down to it, a person in jail is just something to be processed. Whatever happens to them is supposedly well-deserved. If you can't do the time, don't do the crime. This catchy phrase also refers to pretrial detainees who haven't been convicted of any crimes but who simply don't have the means (or the judicial permission) to spend their pre-trial days out in the open.The grist goes in the mill and the less the government can spend doing it, the better. The ends matter. The means don't. The United States is the land of the free. Yet somehow, our incarceration rate is higher than countries where human rights supposedly matter less, like Cuba, Turkey, and Russia.Putting people in jail is easy. Cops engage in pretextual stops. Then they deploy handler-pleasing drug dogs or, worse, cheap field drug tests that frequently misidentify legal substances as illegal -- cotton candy, donut crumbs, bird feces, etc.Getting jailed doesn't change the math much. Jails rely on cheap drug tests to ensure inmates and parolees are staying clean. But they don't seem to be much more accurate than the $2 tests favored by law enforcement officers out in the field.Jailed people's freedom may have already been taken. But their return to freedom can be delayed (or denied) due to inaccurate drug tests administered by jails and prisons. The New York Inspector General investigated drug tests used by New York jails and prisons. And those tests aren't much better than the super fallible field tests used to put people behind bars. More than 1,600 prisoners were punished, with 140 sent to solitary confinement -- all based on nothing more than unverified in-prison drug tests. (h/t CJ Ciaramella)The end result of these faulty tests? Unjustified punishment and loss of freedoms for people already subject to plenty of punishment and loss of freedoms. The report [PDF] opens with a handful of representative cases:

Joe Biden entered office a year ago with a mandate to end corporate control of our government by establishing programs to benefit working families and by appointing qualified public servants to execute and oversee those programs.We anticipated all along that Mitch McConnell would resort to his usual tactics and use the Senate filibuster rules to undermine President Biden's legislative agenda. Appointments should have been a different story. Nearly a decade has passed since Senate Democrats put an end to the filibuster for executive nominations, yet Republicans, on behalf of their corporate sponsors, continue to abuse the confirmation process, preventing President Biden from fulfilling his promises to the American people. Senate Democrats should recognize these games for what they are, stop enabling the obstruction, and move forward on approving President Biden's highly qualified nominees.Take, for example, the nomination of Gigi Sohn to the Federal Communications Commission. Sohn's strong credentials include co-founding the communications policy advocacy organization Public Knowledge and serving as counselor to former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. She is known as a long-time, tireless advocate for the expansion of affordable internet access - one of the key issues on the Democrats' agenda. There is currently a vacant seat on the FCC, and without a full commission it will be difficult to advance the policies necessary to expand affordable broadband service to the millions of American families left on the wrong side of the digital divide.One person - Sen. Roger Wicker, the Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation - is standing in the way.Sen. Wicker is promoting the interests of his big corporate campaign donors by preventing a pro-consumer, pro-worker majority at the Federal Communications Commission. Ever since Gigi Sohn was nominated, he has come up with bogus reasons to delay her confirmation vote. During her confirmation hearing she answered questions for hours. She provided reams of written materials and followed up with answers to additional questions. Six weeks later, Wicker asked for yet more documents and suddenly announced that the committee needed to hold yet another confirmation hearing.Why did he not request such documents in a timely manner? Why did he not submit written questions for the record, standard practice for the committee? Why did he not accept the conclusions of government lawyers who carefully reviewed the very documents he claims to now seek? Because it's not about getting answers. It's about standing in the way of a highly qualified nominee simply because he doesn't like the outcome of the last Presidential election. Sen. Wicker wants an FCC majority that puts corporate profits first, not one that considers what is best for consumers and workers in the industry and that listens to the majority of Americans - Republican and Democrat - who support net neutrality and universal broadband access.Make no mistake. This is yet another Republican attempt to undermine our democratic system and the functioning of the federal government. They might not be scaling the Capitol walls, wearing face paint, threatening to hang elected officials who don't kowtow to their demands, and publicly parading confederate flags in the halls of the Capitol, but Senate Republicans are trying to undermine the 2020 election results by playing every game possible to prevent a duly elected Administration from having qualified nominees serving on federal agencies. We have seen time and time again that Republicans will use every trick in the book to prevent oversight of their powerful corporate benefactors.Unfortunately, after the vote last week by the U.S. Senate, Republican obstructionists will continue to be able to use the legislative filibuster to block critical legislation that will improve the lives of millions of working Americans. But my union helped lead the successful effort during the Obama Administration to eliminate their ability to filibuster qualified and critical nominees so that the federal government can function on behalf of the American people.That is why Senate Democrats must not give in to these outrageous and egregious efforts to draw out the already long confirmation process for qualified nominees like Gigi Sohn. They must recognize these games for what they are and reject the never ending requests for even more hearings when they have had ample time to ask their questions. Senate Democrats must move forward expeditiously to approve Gigi Sohn and President Biden's other highly qualified nominees.Christopher M. Shelton is President of the Communications Workers of America (CWA)

The unexpected rebranding of Facebook's holding company as "Meta" has prompted a good deal of head scratching. Was it because Mark Zuckerberg is now a true believer in the metaverse religion, as the rather cringe-worthy video released at the time of the name change is meant to suggest? Was it perhaps an attempt to change the conversation in the wake of the damning testimony and leaks of Frances Haugen? Or maybe it was just a desperate bid to find a way of attracting younger users now that Facebook is increasingly an old person's social network, as the New York Times pointed out recently:

As you've probably seen, for the last couple of weeks we've been running our Techdirt Greenhouse series of posts looking back on the fight against SOPA from those who were there at the time, including one this morning from from Rep. Zoe Lofgren, who was a key player in Congress stopping SOPA. Tomorrow at 1pm PT / 4pm ET, we'll be having Rep. Lofgren join us for a "fireside chat" looking back at what happened with SOPA a decade ago, but more importantly looking at what's happening today with internet regulations and where things are likely to go. If you want to attend live, please register to sign up. Like many of our recent events, we're using the Remo platform, which has the feeling of an actual in-person event, even while it's virtual. You'll be able to talk to other people at your "table" as well as move around to other tables to talk to other attendees as well. During the talk with Lofgren, you'll be able to submit your own questions as well. So please join us tomorrow...

Register now for our online event featuring Rep. Zoe Lofgren »In 2010 I was in a leadership role on the data science team at Grooveshark.com. These were the pre-Spotify days, and we were trying to transition customers away from elicit downloads to music streaming. Using the YouTube user-generated content model made a lot of sense. We theorized that if YouTube could democratize the distribution of video, allowing creators from all over the world to distribute their art on a speedy, frictionless platform, it only made sense that we could do the same for music.On the information products team, our goal was twofold. First, we aimed to discover trending, unknown artists worldwide and serve them up to record labels hungry for new talent.The second goal was to act as a connector between bands and brands so that artists and labels losing revenue could develop a brand-new channel for monetization. Eventually, we would be able to create affinity profiles on consumers across the globe. That’s something we bragged about back then. Now there’s a bit of shame associated with that type of information collection and rightly so.While indies were quick to license Grooveshark, major labels did not want to give up their gatekeeper status. We signed deals where we could and took down unlicensed music when notified, frequently beating YouTube’s response time. The majors didn’t want the royalties. They wanted to make sure that any artist with a new or innovative sound had to come up through their farm league.Lawsuits weren’t new to Grooveshark. We’d been sued a handful of times in state or federal courts. Often, they were disposed of in summary judgments or settled, turning into the licensing deals that we had been asking for all along.But in November of 2011, Universal Music Group, along with Sony, Warner, and nine other labels, filed a lawsuit against the company and the employees themselves, including me and two junior employees. Generally, employees, especially non-founder, non-participating employees like us, would never be liable for the actions of their employer.Still, because this was copyright infringement, the majors tried to pierce the corporate veil. They accused us of a combined $17 billion worth of copyright infringement. If found liable, I would have been on the hook for some $900 million that could not be discharged in bankruptcy and would be garnished from my earnings for the rest of my life.It was a transparent attempt at intimidating new employees and discouraging prospective employees from accepting a job at Grooveshark or any other fledgling tech company hoping to innovate in the music space. The majors had successfully shut down some 20+ startups before us, but we were well funded, growing quickly, and loved by our 20+ million users. Under the leadership of founders Sam Tarantino and the late Josh Greenberg, Grooveshark had survived every attempt previously made.I remain convinced that I was a party to that lawsuit for one reason and one reason only: I was going to be called as a witness in the House IP subcommittee's second “Sites & Parasites” hearing. I would have testified to the evidence that major labels were feeding erroneous information to DMCA takedown systems and using the court system to structure settlements that would line label coffers but whose proceeds would never make their way to the artists.Thus, they prioritized lawsuits over licensing deals. Knowing that no lawyer worth their weight in salt would volunteer a client for a testimony who is a party to a suit like that, I was served just as we negotiated my appearance before the committee.In the “Sites & Parasites” hearings, representatives from legacy media angled to pass the conveniently titled Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its Senate sister bill, the Protect IP Act (PIPA). These bills would have given them a virtual veto on any tech platform that allowed users to upload their own content.Speeches, news articles, music, video, and even user comment sections were well within the boundaries of this legislation. The legacy content industries believed that this was their chance to constrain the Internet. So, they fought like it was existential. For Grooveshark, it was existential. Had the legislation been enacted, Grooveshark would have ceased to exist immediately.Though we were early into the fray, Grooveshark was only a minor player in the organizing efforts. The RIAA and MPAA were eventually thwarted when Internet creators, activists, and users alike organized to defend themselves, voluntarily blacking out some of the most significant websites on the Internet, and sending so many emails to congressional accounts that it resulted in the first email server outage in congressional history.Soon after that, SOPA and PIPA were shelved, Spotify sold a portion of itself to the major labels, and we entered a period of detente.Though it took two more years, that lawsuit did end up taking Grooveshark down. $150,000 per month in legal bills will bleed a startup dry, and having big enemies doesn’t inspire the fundraising they’d need to keep the venture growing. I resigned from my position in 2012, and the case against me was settled shortly after.Some may argue that this was the preferable outcome. Major labels now embrace streaming. For better or worse, they participate in the profits of artist merchandise sales, live performance, and other exotic licensing opportunities. I’ve harbored a decade-long resentment against Spotify, but even I can’t argue with the amount of access to new and diverse music that my subscription delivers.As I look back on all the startups that were cut down, the capital squandered, and the artists whose window for global exposure narrowed to just a handful of labels again, I find myself wondering: what did we accomplish in killing SOPA and PIPA?We thwarted a bill that would have resulted in the most powerful legacy industries on the planet securing a veto on any new web 2.0 technology. We made the Internet safe for entrepreneurs. We protected the innovation sandbox that was the safe harbors, and we helped create hundreds of billions of dollars in new business opportunities and the jobs that went along with them.We ensured that the Internet would remain a haven for free speech, popular or not, for another generation.Still, I can’t help myself from wondering: could we have created a system that allowed for sensible regulation, thus pre-empting the maleficence of today’s internet behemoths? Was that our chance? Was that even within the deal space?The negotiators from tech were not organized for a fight such as the one brought to their doorstep in 2010. You can draw a straight line from SOPA to the well-armed giants of tech now, thwarting regulation of any kind, sensible or not. That was their wake up call, and wake up they did.Now the Internet companies are the monied gatekeepers and we are further away from sensible regulation than ever before. Recent disclosures from Facebook insiders suggest that polarizing the body politic is not just about clicks. It’s also a legislative strategy. The more polarized our legislative bodies, the less likely they will be to agree on any reform. Still, if I have to choose a side again today, I would not choose the side of censorship.The Internet remains our best weapon in the fight against tyranny and the suppression of ideas. When they ban books in Texas schools, enterprising students will find them online. When they close polling locations in under-represented neighborhoods, the Internet will organize carpools. When governments silence public figures and force them into hiding for exposing high-ranking officials, the Internet will carry her message across the globe.The Internet does not solve any of these problems. It is merely a tool. Each of us decides if we will use it to divide or unite. Though there may be a price to pay for free speech, the price is far greater if forced to go without it.Paul Geller is the founder of ChannelshiftThis Techdirt Greenhouse special edition is all about the 10 year anniversary of the fight that stopped SOPA. On January 26th at 1pm PT, we'll be hosting a live discussion with Rep. Zoe Lofgren and some open roundtable discussions about the legacy of that fight. Please register to attend.

Everything old is new again. New and still abusable. Thomas Brewster reports for Forbes that the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) is taking advantage of a nearly 40-year-old law to obtain information about WhatsApp users.

Everyone wants to blame internet companies for everything. A couple weeks back, a woman sued Meta over the death of her brother, claiming Facebook was to blame. This is the latest in a ridiculously long line of failed lawsuits that look to hold Facebook liable for the deaths of people, just because either the killers or people connected to them somehow communicated on social media. It's like suing AT&T because two people plotting a crime spoke on the phone. These are nonsense lawsuits and they are nuisance lawsuits. This one is no different.The underlying story here is tragic: two men, who were a part of the "boogaloo bois" (one of the many extremist groups who believe that a new civil war is coming, and that they need to help it along), killed a Federal Protective Services officer, Dave Patrick Underwood. They literally believed that this was part of the process to start this civil war. Its quite understandable while Underwood's family would be furious about this, and the two murderers are going to be in prison for a long, long time.But trying to demand money from Facebook?The entire complaint argues that because the two murderers talked on Facebook, Facebook is somehow responsible. It tries to get around Section 230 by arguing that the murderers found each other due to Facebook's algorithms, and somehow that gets around Section 230 (it doesn't).

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Register now for our online event featuring the author of this post, Rep. Zoe Lofgren »On December 16, 2011, more than a decade ago, I had just concluded one of the longest Committee markups during my time in Congress. After hours and hours debating the future of the internet, I took to my website to echo the call to action coming from many, including writers at Techdirt:

Last week, we noted how AT&T-owned DirecTV had decided to axe OAN, the conspiracy and fantasy channel, from its cable lineup. The decision came just three months or so after a blockbuster report showed that AT&T not only helped fund and set up the conspiracy theory spewing "news" outlet, but it came up with the idea. OAN has been notorious for spreading false claims ranging from non-existent election fraud to the false claim that COVID was developed in a North Carolina lab as part of a government plot.Of course things have shifted dramatically for AT&T since OAN's creation several years ago. The company's $200 billion acquisitions of DirecTV and Time Warner flamed out spectacularly, forcing it to sell much of the assets to recoup its massive debt load as it backed away from its TV and video advertising ambitions and refocused on telecom. That included selling off DirecTV into a new joint venture with private equity firm TPG Capital, which now has a 30 percent stake.So the recent decision to axe the channel from the DirecTV lineup likely had more to do with TPG Capital not wanting to be associated with the venture than AT&T (whose Dallas-based executives remain largely cozy with insurrectionists and right-wing conspiracy theorists). But the channel apparently thought attacking AT&T board members would be their best path forward, with channel hosts now asking viewers to "find dirt" on AT&T board member William Kennard:

Hope Mike Lindell has socked away some of his MyPillow millions. Trump toadying is proving to be an expensive hobby, and it's not as though the former president is doing anything to repay those whose support has been absurdly unwavering with anything like, you know, legal assistance. Or actual money.Trump cohorts and legal reps are being sued by Dominion Voting Systems for the weeks of (alleged) defamation they engaged in following Trump's loss at the polls. The MyPillow CEO is being sued by Dominion for the same thing, thanks to his sudden ascendance into the public sphere -- a position he used to spread plenty of false (and easily disproved) "stolen election" theories.Lindell responded to being sued by Dominion with a lawsuit of his own -- one that claimed Dominion's lawsuit was unconstitutionally silencing his company by naming it as a defendant. His lawsuit pointed out (correctly) that Lindell made all of the allegedly defamatory assertions before going on to claim his company was being censored by Dominion, preventing it from saying all the things Lindell just finished claiming it had never said, nor would ever say.Another voting tech company is now suing Lindell for defamation, raising a lot of the same allegations Dominion's lawsuit did. Smartmatic -- which was dragged into the post-election shitstorm by Trump acolytes pushing conspiracy theories -- says Lindell made tons of false claims about the company being involved in the "theft" of votes, as well as being compromised by Chinese hackers during the 2020 election. (h/t Mike Dunford)The lawsuit [PDF] doesn't waste any time letting the judge (and Lindell) know exactly what Smartmatic thinks of him and his assertions.

And here we go again. When Microsoft acquired Zenimax/Bethesda last year, the first question that leapt to most people's minds was whether or not Microsoft would wall off long-running franchises from Bethesda with exclusivity to Xbox and/or PC platforms. Those looking for answers were surely initially confused by conflicting statements from both sides of the deal, which was then "clarified" later by Microsoft execs saying that titles would be "first/better on Microsoft platforms" but not exclusive. That was then clarified further by Microsoft's actual actions, which was to announce that the next Elder Scrolls game would indeed be a PC/Xbox exclusive.Well, as we were just discussing, Microsoft is finalizing its biggest ever acquisition into the game publishing market with a purchase of Activision Blizzard and King Digital Entertainment, and all the same questions immediately leapt to everyone's mind. And, because past is prologue, the players in this deal and those impacted by it are churning out vague, unclear statements on what this means for exclusivity for franchises from those studios.We'll start with what Sony said in comments to The Wall Street journal.

We're excited today to announce that we've received a grant from Grant for the Web to create a content series on Techdirt exploring the history (and future?) of web monetization, entitled "Correcting Error 402." We'll get more into this once the series launches, but lots of people are aware of the HTTP 404 Not Found error code -- and some people are at least vaguely aware of 403 Forbidden. What most people probably don't know about is the Error Code 402: Payment Required. It's been in the HTTP spec going back decades, with "This code is reserved for future use." But no one's ever actually done anything with it.And, arguably, the lack of standardization there has created some ancillary issues -- including a few giant, dominant payment processor companies, high transaction fees, as well as the current (and more recent) mad dash scramble to fill the gap by trying to build a zillion different kinds of cryptocurrencies, most of which are fluff and nonsense, but without actually understanding what makes the most sense for an open internet.Grant for the Web is a project of the Interledger Foundation. Interledger is an attempt to create an open protocol, web monetization standard for handling internet payments and monetization. We've talked a little about all this in the past, when we started experimenting with Coil (a provider of tools to help enable web monetization), and on the podcast we did with Coil founder and Interledger co-creator Stefan Thomas.But we wanted to dig deeper into the questions of what the web might look like if monetization was built on an open standard as part of the web, and that's what this content series will entail. Expect the series to startup in about a month, and to explore the history, present, and future of monetization. And, just to answer a few questions you might have: this series is not going to be about cryptocurrency (though it may get mentioned in passing), because that's not central to the questions here, and it's also not going to be just about Interledger/Coil's vision of the future. It's designed to be a deeper exploration of the question of monetization online and how it should work.

Register now for our online event featuring Rep. Zoe Lofgren »Ten years ago a massive, digital grassroots movement defeated the Stop Online Piracy Act in the House, and its Senate companion the Protect IP Act (SOPA/PIPA). Looking back, this signal victory drove an even more important outcome–the birth of a large wave of Internet activism organizations, including our own Internet Infrastructure Coalition (i2Coalition), a new, unified, independent voice for Internet infrastructure providers.Our story began in 2011 when I led operations for a web hosting company called ServInt. My future co-founder of the i2Coalition David Snead, was our outsourced General Counsel. He and I became alarmed about the damaging impact on the Internet infrastructure layer of a little-known bill, the Combating Online Infringement, and Counterfeits Act, or COICA, introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT).While well-intentioned to combat infringement by foreign “rogue” websites, the bill would have allowed for the mass blocking of websites by the Department of Justice without due process, on the say so of intellectual property holders. We met with Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and his staff to seek advice about how to have a voice in the COICA debate. Their answer was direct : “get more of you.”At that point, it seemed like just a handful of small Internet infrastructure enterprises were even aware of COICA. We realized that we needed to start a grassroots movement.We began intensive outreach to the Internet infrastructure community online and offline at conferences, meetings, and events, which led to formation of the “Save Hosting Coalition.”We launched letter writing campaigns to explain our deep concerns to legislators in Congress, which continued when SOPA/PIPA eventually superseded COICA.Fortunately, as our group worked to build a social media campaign and to connect with legislators, we found that we were no longer alone. The Consumer Technology Association, known then as the Consumer Electronics Association, had an active lobbying team who invited us to join them in their efforts to convince Congress of the dangers of SOPA/PIPA.This broader collaboration became a turning point when we realized the crucial nature of our role in the SOPA/PIPA debate. As Internet infrastructure providers, we were best positioned to explain to policymakers how the technology works and that their well-intentioned proposals to fix problems actually would undermine the functioning of the Internet ecosystem. We showed that proposed SOPA/PIPA technical provisions would make it impossible for small and medium-sized Internet infrastructure businesses to continue operating at scale.Our campaign against SOPA/PIPA culminated in our decisive conversation with Senator Jerry Moran (R-KS) and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, which helped convince Senator Moran to join Senator Wyden in a bipartisan hold on PIPA in the Senate. This procedural move froze Senate action for a bit, and gave the time for our new friends at Reddit and Fight for the Future to organize the Internet Blackout Day, which shut down 115,000 sites and galvanized public support for stopping the bills. We aided in the coordination of this vital day, which effectively stopped SOPA/PIPA in its tracks.The power of facts made the difference in our collective victory. Concerned technology companies explained with one voice how the bills would destroy Internet infrastructure operations. Aligning with the CTA enabled a strong and unified advocacy campaign. Consequently, minds changed in Congress because members and staff heard rational arguments and listened to our concerns.The SOPA/PIPA legislative debate made clear the ongoing threat of uninformed Internet policy. We saw the need for continued educational advocacy from our Internet infrastructure provider vantage point.Four companies in the Save Hosting Coalition (Rackspace, cPanel, Endurance (now Newfold Digital), and Softlayer) invested to keep our group going. On July 25th, 2012, we formally launched the Internet Infrastructure Coalition (i2Coalition) with 42 members with a mission to ensure that Internet infrastructure providers are at the table helping to solve future Internet policy problems.We believed then, as we do now, that Internet policy solutions should be scaled appropriately without creating barriers for new, small entrants in the infrastructure layer, be they college students innovating in their dorm rooms, or entrepreneurs fulfilling a need. Policymakers must understand the technology underlying all these small digital businesses to avoid laws and regulations that inadvertently would disrupt their functioning, ultimately limiting incentives for future innovation and market entryWe proudly reflect on our strong work a decade ago to educate Congress about how SOPA/PIPA would impair the Internet ecosystem. That successful fight led to the i2Coaltion’s formation, and our story is not unique. The most important outgrowth of the SOPA/PIPA saga turned out to be the creation of permanent organizations like ours, set up to defend Internet innovation.There will always be a need for more Internet education for legislators and regulators, and there will always be somebody coming out with another SOPA/PIPA-like proposal. The Internet needs permanent voices ready to address both.As we celebrate the i2Coalition’s 10 year anniversary in 2022, we know our work is always evolving. The Internet infrastructure industry today faces a diverse set of challenges involving security, safety, privacy, and more. We face many of the same intermediary liability focused challenges that we had when we started, particularly while engaging in complex issues such as Section 230 reform in the United States and the Digital Services Act in the EU.We need to keep learning together and empowering alliances with other like-minded stakeholders, to ensure that an educated appreciation of the nuts and bolts of how the Internet works informs policy making fully. At the i2Coalition we are as excited as ever about the digital future, and look forward to continuing to be the voice for the multitudes of businesses that build the Internet.Christian Dawson is the Co-Founder of the Internet Infrastructure Coalition (i2Coalition) where he works to make the Internet a better, safer place for the businesses that make up the Cloud.This Techdirt Greenhouse special edition is all about the 10 year anniversary of the fight that stopped SOPA. On January 26th at 1pm PT, we'll be hosting a live discussion with Rep. Zoe Lofgren and some open roundtable discussions about the legacy of that fight. Please register to attend.

A private company, that leveraged a bold (unproven) claim about $400 billion in pandemic unemployment fraud into government contracts allowing it to (mistakenly) lock people out of their unemployment benefits, is hoping to use both of these dubious achievements to secure even more government contracts.Here's the claim:

For way too long now, short sighted publishers have insisted that ad blocking is "stealing." That's always been bullshit. Back before we turned off all our 3rd party ads last year, we were perfectly fine with people using ad blockers (and we even let you just turn off ads in your preferences, if you preferred that approach).But some publishers still don't get it. One of the worst is the German media giant Axel Springer, who was one of the most vocal proponents of the EU Copyright Directive, and owns tons of publications around the globe, including Politico and Business Insider in the US. As obnoxious as some publishers are regarding the internet, Axel Springer has been worse. Years back, Axel Springer sued the company behind Adblock Plus and lost. The courts found that adblocking is perfectly legal.Axel Springer decided that can't be left to stand, and decided to try again with everyone's favorite tool of control: copyright. In 2019 Springer came up with a bizarrely stupid argument that ad blocking is copyright infringement. The argument was that because the browser extensions change how a website is displayed in your browser, that it "changes the programming code of websites" and that makes it infringing. But that's nonsense. Adblockers work on content that is already directly in your browser that the company sent in an authorized manner.It's the equivalent of saying that taking a highlighter to a book that you own is copyright infringement.Thankfully, last week a court in Hamburg saw it that way as well and said that adblocking is not infringement. This is important not just for adblocking but for basically any kind of browser extension and for the concept of HTML itself.From an automated translation of the ruling, the court says that "there is no unauthorized duplication and/or reworking of copyrighted computer programs" under the meaning of copyright law. It further says:

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Register now for our online event featuring Rep. Zoe Lofgren »Amid fears that the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) could be the first nail in the coffin of an open internet, our collective defeat of the legislation was a win for an emerging digital world that puts the interests of people first.A decade later, many of our fears have come to reality, even without SOPA to speed them along. Worse yet: the optimistic, values-driven resistance of the SOPA era has transitioned to bitter conflict (or worse, nihilism) around digital life, rights, and restrictions. We now stand at a new inflection point that SOPA resistors are facing or ignoring in turns—despite the potential for a positive vision that might unite us all again.The SOPA Internet Blackout was a moment where digital citizens united with one voice to support the continuation of the internet’s innovation of “permissionless publishing” or “sharing” an infinitude of digital printing presses. The internet accelerated speech and connection, it brought together global communities of mutual interest, enabling organizing and activism on a scale never before seen. This has been a powerful tool.And yet, it was not accessible for many.Platforms like Facebook filled some of the gaps, marketing ease of connection in exchange for data it could exploit. The internet granted anyone who could log on permission to publish and share in a way that newspapers in the 80s could never imagine.But the technology of the time could not take the next step and allow everyday people to maintain the database tools necessary to ensure the integrity and function of social media networks. You could share, but you could not curate or control the related data with anything nearing the utility of sharing itself.Neoliberal capitalism did what it does amid this half-baked promise of internet freedom—locking in centralized players and championing monopoly. Monopolies are quite simply easier for entrenched gatekeepers to collude with. Powerful corporations recognized the momentum of protests like SOPA’s, the utility of an unfettered communications medium, as an existential threat to their profits and bad practices.And so, they used the centralized databases that the people could not yet control to obscure their mechanisms of oppression, bringing about the era of algorithmic trade secrets, performative legislation, censorship, and conspiracy theories we live in now. The threats to our digital lives are compounding in darkness, even as our human lives become more digital.Regardless of ideology, everyone recognizes that something is fundamentally wrong. But, we don’t trust each other because of the pervasive cloud of darkness that intermediates our interactions. This distrust was seeded via the centralized, opaque databases of Facebooks and Amazons, and amplified by the very same. Our every “social” action online is leveraged to manipulate the internet out of its power and promise.Even digital rights activists who recognize and resist these harms find themselves in conflict because they have uncovered another fundamental shortcoming of our current system: any vision of a digital future, a digital life that is one-size-fits-all, will always be exclusionary.These toxic database-powered social platforms are vivid proof that billions of dollars and extensive global legislative and social pressure, even when combined with the best thinkers and moderation that money can buy, will still miserably fail many different communities in ways as diverse as communities themselves are: by amplifying hate, by promoting harm, by expanding censorship, by profiting from mass surveillance, by capitulating to shareholders and governments at the expense of democracy, and more.We have found the outer limits of centralized database platforms as tools of liberation. Along the way, we have lost the optimism that characterized the dawn of the web and the anti-SOPA movement. Optimism is now frequently mocked as privilege, as white men’s myopia—and with all the compounding harms that would not have been possible without the internet, it is no wonder that those who speak well of the web are met with hostility.But just as the blunt rock eventually became a knife, the tool of the internet will continue to evolve. In the long shadow of SOPA, and at a time when new technologies are once again disrupting our digital lives, the question we must ask is who will hold that knife, and how will it be used?This question is pressing—as it appears the database limitations Facebook, Amazon, and Google exploited could mark them as the next newspapers in the ‘80s. New technologies like blockchain have the ability to make databases permissionless in the same way that the internet made publishing permissionless. This innovation could unlock a new digital future that, while still filled with human problems, may enable far better, community-owned tools to address them—as well as something we have not had for many years: a new, inclusive vision for the internet.Today, we could begin to fight for a future of many interoperable, decentralized webs, tools, and technologies. Community owned and governed databases as diverse as the world itself. A vision that brings organizers and technologists out of conflict over censorship and control by working together for the rights, education, and tools for each person and community to equitably build and own their digital experience. This is work that cannot succeed unless the marginalized people who have been traditionally excluded from technology and the policies that govern it lead in a central role.To ensure this just transition, we must also support new generations in gaining greater competency and higher expectations for their digital lives, and invest now in a collective vision of sharing open, transparent, and transformative tools that will render the legacy entities that have failed us obsolete. If we do not, others will invest in perverting these technologies all over again.There isn’t one answer for what the future of the internet should be. Let’s reclaim the hope that defeated SOPA and work together toward a world where everyone can equitably build, own, moderate, control, and access their own digital lives and communities.Lia Holland is Campaigns & Communications Director at digital rights organization Fight for the Future, where she focuses on web3 and copyleft issues.This Techdirt Greenhouse special edition is all about the 10 year anniversary of the fight that stopped SOPA. On January 26th at 1pm PT, we'll be hosting a live discussion with Rep. Zoe Lofgren and some open roundtable discussions about the legacy of that fight. Please register to attend.

U.S. broadband suffers from significant regional monopolization, which directly results in the country being mediocre on nearly every broadband metric that matters... be it broadband prices, coverage, speeds, and customer service. This isn't something to debate; the data is everywhere, and anybody who has spent much time dealing with giants like AT&T or Comcast knows the sector has major problems. By developing national standards U.S. broadband is slow, expensive, inconsistently available, with terrible customer support. The cause has always been regional monopolization and the state and federal corruption that protects it.Granted if you asked think tanks funded directly by the telecom industry, U.S. broadband is secretly fantastic, and critics are unhinged radicals. For example, the "Information Technology and Innovation Foundation," which has AT&T, Charter, Comcast, Verizon, and T-Mobile as financial backers, penned a new report this week trying to frame every single meaningful criticism of the sector as falsehoods being spread by "radicals" and "broadband populists" exclusively looking to undermine the industry. I was tagged by the study's author, so I guess I'm to assume I'm one of the radical populists being mentioned?

What's the greatest threat to children since the invention of contraceptives? Why, encryption, of course. Just ask (almost) anyone. FBI directors have pointed to device and end-to-end encryption as an aider and abettor in child sexual abuse. Government leaders from around the world have claimed the addition of end-to-end encryption to Facebook's messaging service will result in millions of abused kids. Others who find the chanting of "national security concerns" just isn't getting the job done have often chosen to lean on abused children to make their points (badly) about the "dangers" encryption poses.The UK government is trying to regulate encryption into nonexistence. It doesn't have the strength of character to flat-out demand encryption backdoors so it's trying to apply indirect pressure to accomplish the same thing. Its efforts are being aided by an extremely manipulative ad campaign -- one detailed here with righteous anger by Rianna Pfefferkorn. The ad flips the script on the sanctity of the home -- one given ultimate protection from government intrusion -- turning it into a black box where evildoers are free to sexually assault children. The shitty metaphor equates a home with curtains drawn to end-to-end encryption, turning privacy into secrecy while suggesting only criminals are interested in private communications.But encryption is good for kids, argues none other than the… UK government???

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side Stephen T. Stone with a comment about our latest example of brazen DMCA abuse:

Five Years AgoThis week in 2017, outgoing FCC boss Tom Wheeler warned about the perils of killing net neutrality, while leaked details of Trump's FCC transition plan revealed his plans to gut all the agency's consumer protection powers — then, on Friday, it was confirmed that Ajit Pai would become the new FCC boss. Meanwhile, we marked the five year anniversary of the SOPA protests (and be sure to check out our much bigger celebration for the ten year anniversary) by reminding lawmakers of what happened and discussing what it could teach them about tech.Also, in surprising but welcome news, this was the week that President Obama commuted Chelsea Manning's sentence.Ten Years AgoThis is it: the week of the 2012 SOPA/PIPA blackout protest. First, it was announced that Wikipedia was officially on board. Then Google promised to do something big, and the Internet Archive announced plans, as did Rock, Paper, Shotgun. The day before the protest, Lamar Smith and the MPAA brushed it all off as a publicity stunt and Smith announced that markup on SOPA would resume in February.Then, on Wednesday, it began. Many sites went dark, Google blacked out their logo, and here at Techdirt we focused on covering the events as they unfolded. Although the MPAA was in denial, and being condescending (and one-upped by the RIAA the next day), the effects were clear: Rep. Lee Terry was the first co-sponsor to remove his name from SOPA, then Senator Marco Rubio ditched PIPA followed by several other senators — and when the dust settled, we couldn't help but notice that most of them were Republicans, since Democrats seemed to be dropping the ball. Ultimately, the internet won, and the bills were officially, indefinitely delayed.But, of course, the week couldn't be all good news. At the very same time as this was all going down, the DOJ unilaterally shut down Megaupload and arrested many of the principles with the help of New Zealand law enforcement. The details of the case raised massive concerns, and the internet was quick to strike back: Anonymous managed to take down the DOJ, RIAA and MPAA websites. The war for internet freedom was far from over...Fifteen Years AgoThat was a lot of detail on 2012, and this week in 2007 was nowhere near as exciting — but there were two developments that were small and interesting at the time, but in hindsight were pretty big deals. First, DVD rental company Netflix started rolling out a new feature allowing some users to stream a limited selection of movies. Second, we covered the announcement of a curious experiment that aimed to support dissident government employees in oppressive regimes: "a new site called Wikileaks".

You will recall that we had several posts covering when Microsoft acquired Zenimax Media for $7 billion, as well as some of the potential fallout from that acquisition. Much of the focus was on what the purchase of Zenimax and its child studios, such as Bethesda, would mean for long-running game franchises from those studios going exclusive to PC and/or Xbox. Microsoft made a bunch of vague, lightly-conflicting statements on the topic before ripping the bandaid off by making the next Elder Scrolls game an Xbox/PC exclusive.Most folks in the gaming community are either agnostic about exclusives, or decidedly hate them. There are very few cheerleaders for exclusives in other words, which is why most news about larger publishers acquiring small or mid-sized publishers is greeted with very narrow eyes.That being said, there are acquisitions, and then there are acquisitions.

It's been obvious for a while that the future of internet television is starting to look increasingly like traditional cable. Initially, the streaming sector was all about innovation, choice, and lower costs to drive subscriber interest. But as the market has matured and become dominated by bigger players, some familiar patterns have emerged, including giant companies trying to lock down as much content as possible in exclusives, and a steady parade of price hikes that slowly, surely, start to erode the value proposition.Last week Netflix announced that the company would be imposing yet another price hike. Here in the U.S., the company's 720p "basic" tier is increasing $1 to $10 per month, its 1080p "standard" tier is increasing $1.50 to $15.50 per month, and its 4K "premium" will see a $2 increase to $20 per month. Similar hikes are also on their way to Canadian subscribers. In a statement, Netflix justified the hikes using familiar rhetoric about "improving the customer experience":

Ten years ago this week, I watched my computer screen as much of the Internet slowly switched off. Over a hundred thousand websites, including that of our predecessor organization CEA, were going dark in a last-ditch protest of a House bill called the “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA) and its Senate counterpart, the “Protect IP Act” (PIPA).These bills were backed by large content companies concerned that the Internet would disrupt their longstanding business models. While we sympathized with their concerns about unauthorized downloading, we could not agree with their proposed solution: allowing content owners to easily "take down" entire websites, without due process or notification, if they claimed that the site hosted unauthorized content.If these bills had passed, the consequences for the Internet would have been devastating. Any website featuring third-party content, including libraries and community bulletin boards, would have been vulnerable to sudden and permanent removal after a single complaint. Sites would vanish and have little recourse. Bad actors would run rampant, using the SOPA-PIPA process to harass competitors and censor opposing viewpoints.Opposition to SOPA-PIPA had been slowly growing. A strange-bedfellows coalition ranging from the Electronic Frontier Foundation to the Heritage Foundation was opposing the bills. Artists like Amanda Palmer and OKGO denounced the bills’ impacts on creativity. A group of startup founders including Alexis Ohanian, Micah Shaffer, and Christian Dawson walked the Capitol meeting with legislators, many of whom had never previously been face-to-face with an internet entrepreneur. And at the 2012 CES, Republican Rep. Darrell Issa and Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden stood together and declared they would do anything in their power to stop the bills.But this opposition, vigorous as it was, shrank in comparison to the bills’ support. SOPA and PIPA were backed by dozens of DC's biggest players, including the Motion Picture Association, the Recording Industry Association, and the powerful US Chamber of Commerce. SOPA had dozens of Congressional sponsors, including Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith.In the Senate, PIPA sailed unanimously through the Judiciary Committee and Majority Leader Reid announced that he planned to bring the bill to the floor for a vote. By normal DC rules, the game was over and the bills were sure to pass.But the Internet blackout drew public attention, and the tide quickly turned as Americans began calling and emailing their members of Congress. In total, more than 14 million Americans contacted their lawmakers to protest the legislation. I remember sitting in a legislator’s office the morning after the blackout and watching in sincere astonishment as the phone rang off the hook.The impact was swift, as legislators rushed to take their names off the bills. For the first time, policymakers realized that the Internet wasn’t some fringe domain for computer geeks, it was a central and treasured element of their constituents' daily lives. Within a week, SOPA and PIPA had been pulled from consideration in the House and Senate.The death of SOPA/PIPA unleashed a Cambrian Explosion of online innovation. Companies like Instagram, Tinder Slack, Patreon, and thousands of others changed the way we work, play, and live. Anyone who attended CES 2022 could not help but see the extraordinary dynamism and competition that currently exists in the technology industry.The content industry also thrived once they stopped treating the internet as an enemy and began treating it as an asset. While content companies once declared that ”you can’t compete with free,” in the wake of SOPA-PIPA they pivoted to offering well-designed, consumer-friendly services at reasonable prices.According to the RIAA, U.S. recorded music revenues grew 9.2% in 2020, with 83% of the revenue coming from Internet streaming. The movie industry has seen similar gains, with global streaming video revenue projected to hit $94 billion by 2025. Meanwhile, independent creators used new internet platforms to present their work directly to fans without having to go through gatekeepers or intermediaries.Most importantly, the post-SOPA-PIPA Internet has proven to be the most impactful communications platform in human history. On May 25, 2020, 17-year-old Darnell Frazier used her smartphone to document the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. Posted to Facebook, this video kicked off an ongoing national conversation on race and injustice.Similarly, in 2017 women took to the Internet to respond to sexual assault allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein and describe their own experiences under the hashtag #MeToo. Widespread media coverage changed the way our society responds to sexual harassment. For the first time, regular people have been empowered to speak to millions on important issues, and they are using the power to change society for the better.Over the last decade, we have learned many lessons. We have learned that the Internet, while it provides tremendous benefits, is not perfect. That is why we need clear federal guidelines in areas like online privacy and digital currencies that protect consumers and promote innovation.We have learned that Americans continue to care passionately about the Internet. Over the last two years during COVID, millions have gone online to work, educate their children, access health care, keep in touch with loved ones, and arrange delivery of critical goods. No wonder online companies rank highly in surveys of America’s most-loved brands.However, the SOPA-PIPA fight is not over. In “Groundhog Day” fashion, threats to the free and open Internet are reemerging. Policymakers are threatening to increase government control over Internet speech, and impose other limitations that would harm online companies and small businesses.Many of those pushing today’s “anti-tech” narrative are the same disgruntled competitors and legacy industries that engineered SOPA-PIPA. In fact, some broadcasters and content companies are even opposing an eminently qualified FCC nominee, Gigi Sohn, because of her correct and pro-consumer opposition to SOPA-PIPA a decade agoCongress is now considering legislation that would eliminate products like Google Docs and Amazon Prime. These services are woven into the lives of millions who rely on them to surmount the difficulties of COVID. If Congress breaks these services, the reaction from voters could make the SOPA-PIPA earthquake look like a mild tremor. Similarly, you could predict a SOPA-PIPA-type backlash if the government places unreasonable restrictions on the 46 million Americans who own digital assets.A few weeks after SOPA-PIPA died, I was ordering coffee when the barista pointed at the “STOP SOPA” sticker on my laptop. “I emailed my member of Congress about that, and it worked…It was the first time I felt I could actually change things in Washington,” he said.Thankfully, ten years after SOPA-PIPA, the Internet’s ability to empower American expression and innovation is only just beginning.Michael Petricone is the Senior VP, Government Affairs, at the Consumer Technology Association.This Techdirt Greenhouse special edition is all about the 10 year anniversary of the fight that stopped SOPA. On January 26th at 1pm PT, we'll be hosting a live discussion with Rep. Zoe Lofgren and some open roundtable discussions about the legacy of that fight. Please register to attend.

Vice News has some really great reporters on tech issues who work for its Motherboard publication. For reasons that don't make sense, last week they had some other reporter write an absolutely ridiculously bad story trying to argue that the "stop the steal" idiots were helped along by the amazingly important work done by folks in the famed "Voting Village" at the DEFCON conference. The full article is long and bad and has the ridiculous and misleading title: How an "Ethical" Hacker Convention Is Fueling Trump's Big Lie. But the very premise of this story is not just wrong, but dangerously stupid. It's shameful that anyone at Vice thought this was an appropriate story to publish.The facts are this: there have been quite reasonable concerns about the security and technology in certain electronic voting machines going back decades. In fact, Techdirt covered tons of these stories, which were often about problems with the security in early machines, the lack of paper trails for the votes, and (perhaps most importantly) the unwillingness of the voting machine companies to work transparently with actual security researchers who could help harden those machines. Voting Village was set up in DEFCON as a response to that, in which these ethical hackers would get their hands on voting machines, seek out the vulnerabilities in order to help harden the security and improve these machines. It's how cybersecurity has always worked.And while it is true that some of the Stop the Steal grifters have tried to take some of the headlines or presentations from DEFCON and pretend that they prove that the 2020 election was hacked or broken or whatnot, that's got nothing to do with Voting Village "helping" them. If it weren't for Voting Village, those same grifters would have found other reports and other news stories to misinterpret and to make their unsubstantiated claims.The simple fact is that just because security researchers have concerns about some voting machines, and have worked to highlight where security vulnerabilities might be, that does not mean that an election is easily hacked, or that any election was actually hacked. That's the kind of thing that the "stop the steal" grifters have never been able to show and all of the evidence to date has failed to substantiate.Paragraphs like this are utter nonsense:

Multiple governments have been relying on contact-tracing apps to limit the spread of COVID. This has gone on nearly uninterrupted for the last couple of years in more than a few countries. Given the type of data collected -- contact information and location data -- it was only a matter of time before some government decided to abuse this new information source for reasons unrelated to tracking COVID infections.I guess the only surprise is that it took this long to be abused.

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Crony capitalism is alive and well, and can only be contained (if at all) by sustained popular action. SOPA/PIPA were broadly bipartisan bills designed to adapt techniques developed from the financial arm of the war on terror to pad the pockets of one of the most powerful business lobbies in Washington DC.The bills proposed to create an extrajudicial process, invoked and driven either directly by industry lawyers or by their revolving door colleagues in the White House (the MPA and RIAA leveraged bipartisan neoliberalism), which would trigger obligations, levied with all the fine precision of a sledge hammer, for payment systems providers and advertising delivery systems to cut off whole sites that the industry lawyers alleged were hosting copyrighted made available without a license or privilege.It was, in other words, a travesty to anything remotely resembling a balanced, expression-respecting version of copyright law. None of this troubled the bipartisan alliance of sage legislators who supported the bill—too ignorant to study its details; too captivated by the ideology of private property; or too corrupt to care.The bill embodied the kind of public-private-partnership that Niva Elkin Koren and Michael Birnhack had warned about a decade earlier: the Invisible Handshake. An alliance between states and companies handing off to each other functions that neither could do on its own, with companies harnessing the state to do their work in SOPA/PIPA, in this case, just as other companies were collecting data for the state in ways disclosed by Edward Snowden not long after.For those who now yearn for bipartisan regulation of content moderation, at a time with Mark Zuckerberg is asking for regulation—be careful what you wish for. If it really constrains business, it won’t be broadly bipartisan. It will be hard fought and narrowly won, and only with hard, sustained political mobilization.Networked mobilization has played an important democratizing role, using the same affordances that also undergird radicalization. How quaint to remember that ten years ago people still thought that copyright policy was a big enough deal to go out on the streets in the US and Europe, carrying signs like Stop ACTA!In this world of ours, when the US seems to be teetering on the edge of an authoritarian takeover, at least for a while or in some major states; in which hundreds of thousands went out on the streets to protest police killings of Black men and women; that seems like a time long, long ago.But the core lesson was that online mobilization, coupled with real-world protests, can and does work. It’s not just armchair activism; or at least it isn’t if it wants to be effective. As Zeynep Tufekci argued effectively, what we’ve learned in the past decade is that mobilization on social media is far from a silver bullet, and has real costs alongside benefits; but it is a source of enormous power.As we read, day in day out, about online mobilization of the far right, disinformation and propaganda, and imagine new ways for networks to police their users’ radical politics, let’s not forget that radically decentralized protest has worked across the political spectrum, pursuing liberatory and oppressive projects alike. Whatever powers of suppression we invest in the parties to the Invisible Handshake will be at least as available to would-be authoritarians are they are to would-be egalitarians, and likely more so because of the shamelessness of the former.Democratically governed critical infrastructures are central to the power of a citizens’ strike. On January 18, 2012, ProPublica recorded 80 supporters and 31 opponents of SOPA/PIPA. On January 19, the ratio in favor had shifted from 80:31 to 65:101. By January 20, the ratio would continue to go against passage of the bills to 55:205.What happened on January 18 was the Internet Blackout, when thousands of sites, including Wikipedia and Reddit, blacked out. What happened was a massive citizens strike, but it was centrally anchored around democratically governed critical infrastructures, none more critical than Wikipedia.Yes, I know, Wikipedia is far from a utopian democratic public sphere. And yet, here was the world’s most important knowledge utility shut down following extensive public debate, in which over 2,000 Wikipedia editors participated, because the community reached a conclusion to shut it down to stop a grave threat to the core values of the community.Other than Wikipedia itself, there are no other democratically produced and governed pieces of Internet infrastructure on a global scale. There continue to be efforts at platform and open cooperatives, and periodically open source alternative platforms are developed. But we all know that more and more of our online infrastructures are fully commoditized and controlled centrally.That’s why the protests of employees of those companies have become such a critical dimension of democratic resistance. But increasingly internet activism of this type is limited to consumer boycotts or ethical consumption, which usually garners more symbolic support than actual behavioral change. With the overwhelming corporatization and enclosure of all levels of the infrastructure, we are losing a critical base of power for democratic accountability that can be based outside of the twin pillars of crony capitalism.Yochai Benkler is the Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard Law School, and faculty co-director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.This Techdirt Greenhouse special edition is all about the 10 year anniversary of the fight that stopped SOPA. On January 26th at 1pm PT, we'll be hosting a live discussion with Rep. Zoe Lofgren and some open roundtable discussions about the legacy of that fight. Please register to attend.

This week Representatives Anna Eshoo and Jan Schakowsky, and Senator Cory Booker introduced the Banning Surveillance Advertising Act, which the trio proclaim will dismantle the snoopvertising industry and make everybody immeasurably safer:

Missouri Governor Mike Parson is perhaps best known these days for trying to convert a right-click menu option into criminal hacking with his relentless (and relentlessly uninformed) desire to turn the people who exposed a security flaw in the state's Department of Education website into nefarious criminals.Governor Parson seems to believe intimidation is better than accountability. Whatever can be used to deter normal people from exposing the shortcomings of better people (i.e., government employees) is fair game. For years, the state's public records law have served this same purpose: increasing the distance between the state's government and the lowly people who have the misfortune of living in this state.In 2016, the state's laws were used to justify something that looked a whole lot like extortion. Non-profit group Reclaim the Records asked the state for birth and death records dating back to 1910. To be sure, this was a big ask. But it wasn't nearly as big as the state agency portrayed it. According to the state's Department of Health and Senior Services, compiling these records for release would involve more than 23,000 hours of labor at $42.50 an hour, resulting in a $1.5 million bill for services rendered.This wasn't acceptable to Reclaim the Records, which chose to hire a lawyer rather than issue a $1.5 million check to the Missouri government. Once the group lawyered up, the DHSS changed tack, informing Reclaim the Records it simply wouldn't be releasing the data at all. It became apparent the agency was only interested in profiting from information it was required to collect and compile. Any third-party with enough money could buy this data from the DHSS. But public records requesters were being asked to pay full retail plus a sizable markup for information the agency was obligated to turn over to them.A few years later, the transparency rating of the state and its "sunshine law" took another hit when the state's attorney general arrived in court to argue the government had a First Amendment right to withhold records. The AG deliberately conflated rights afforded to residents (the protection that allows them to make complaints about government officials without fear of retaliation) with the state government's nonexistent right to withhold records under the First Amendment.With the state governor and his office undoubtedly facing hundreds of public records requests related to his inexplicable decision to treat responsible reporting of security flaws as criminal hacking, the governor's office is backing (and directing) efforts that will make it more difficult for public records requesters to obtain documents and data from government agencies.

When we've talked about any plans to put in online DRM pings when it comes to console gaming, we've typically centered that discussion around the console makers themselves. For older Xbox consoles and, well, all things Nintendo, this has been a particularly annoying problem. Nintendo wanting online checks is just so on brand so as to be only mildly annoying. If you buy Nintendo, you know what you're getting. Microsoft's plan to have online checks for the Xbox made less sense. Piracy of console games isn't nonexistent, but it isn't exactly a massively huge problem given the technical know-how needed in order to use pirated games on modern consoles. Even for game publishers like Activision Blizzard, which has found itself in the headlines for entirely more significant reasons as of late, DRM was typically only included on PC ports of games, not on the console versions themselves.Until now, it seems. Owners of Diablo 2 Resurrected have discovered that it has an online check that makes the game unplayable if the game hasn't checked in within 30 days, even on consoles.

It's no secret the Chinese government wants to control its population through pervasive surveillance. It's also no secret the government wants very badly to eliminate a certain sector of its population with (in every sense of the words) extreme prejudice.China's minority Uighur Muslim population presents an existential threat to a government that is tasked with controlling the hearts and minds of billions of residents. The Uighurs don't buy into the government narrative or whatever passes for a national religion in a country where almost every religious expression has been suppressed.The Chinese government claims to have no national religion. This may be true. But it will only tolerate so many, and Islam isn't one of them. The government has engaged in the mass disappearance of this minority. And it has done so with an alarming amount of assistance from non-Chinese entities, ranging from American tech companies to foreign government officials.It's not like anyone's having trouble divining the Chinese government's intent when it comes to its Uighur population. But even multinational entities charged with keeping the (worldwide) peace and preventing large-scale human rights abuses are giving China what it wants.Enter the United Nations, which has apparently become Nations United Against Uighurs, according to this report for Newsweek by Josh Feldman:

Last week, we wrote about how entertainer/magician Criss Angel sent a ridiculous threat letter to comedian/magician Harrison Greenbaum after Harrison created a parody website/menu gently mocking Criss Angel's bizarrely named restaurant, CABLP. Greenbaum had announced on Twitter that he wasn't going to stand for this kind of bullying, and apparently he made the very smart decision to have Public Citizen Litigation Group lawyer Paul Levy respond on his behalf. If you've been reading Techdirt for any length of time, you should probably know that if you're on the receiving end of a letter from Paul Levy, you've probably done something very dumb. But, damn, Paul's letters are just so entertaining -- you can just picture the grin on his face as he writes these. And I'm not going to mention all the puns/references to magic, because I'll let you spot them all on your own.It opens up pretty much as you'd expect: this is the situation, your client sent a dumb letter demanding ridiculous things, and no, my client isn't going to cave to your demands:

This week (January 18) marks the ten-year anniversary of the successful campaign against the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the United States. This proposed legislation threw up grave challenges to the future of an open Internet, including freedom of expression and access to information, by creating a blacklist of censored websites to be blocked and made inaccessible to the public.Although originally intended to target websites having copyrighted and illegal content, this legislation potentially threatened websites containing political and dissident ideas. Joining this fight were a host of organizations in the private sector and civil society who fought for a free Internet.An integral part of the fight was the campaign to ensure that anti-censorship tools were protected. In the world envisaged by the SOPA, anti-censorship tools like Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), could be banned. VPNs are legitimately used to ensure privacy and anonymity while accessing the Internet. They are also used to access content such as critical commentary or dissident ideas which might have been blocked online in some country contexts.That would have been the worst possible outcome for people including journalists, whistleblowers, human rights defenders and others who depend on them for secure access to censored material online and for whom these tools allow secure transmission of sensitive information. This would have been true for the United States, and the effect on the American market would have had knock-on effects on the range of products available in other countries.Although the SOPA fight was won, this fight is far from over in other areas of the world.Just last week (week of January 9), the Nigerian government finally unblocked Twitter after blocking it for 7 months, beginning June 4 2021. Seven months prior, Twitter removed a Tweet by the Nigerian President in which he threatened the Igbo ethnic group who were agitating for an independent state away from Nigeria. Twitter deemed the Tweet in violation of its rules. The Nigerian government thought otherwise and in response ordered Nigerians to stop using Twitter and instructed ISPs to cut off access to Twitter from the Nigerian cyberspace, commencing the indefinite suspension of Twitter.Nigerians largely ignored the order not to Tweet, recognizing it as a violation of their fundamental human rights to expression and opinion. Nevertheless, Twitter was now censored in the country and could only be accessed via VPNs by millions of Nigerians whose rush to download VPNs saw a huge spike in VPN adoption from the country by over 1400%.ExpressVPN, a popular VPN service, reported a 200% increase in downloads from Nigeria on June 6, two days after the Twitter ban. The successful impact of VPNs as anti-censorship tools for accessing Twitter in Nigeria could be observed via Nigerian topics and conversations trending in countries such as Canada and the Netherlands where VPNs used as exit nodes.The Nigerian government responded to those who continued to use Twitter through VPNs by threatening legal action but relented after public backlash.However, this is not the case everywhere. An avenue they could have explored was the blocking of VPN services in the country. Russia’s ongoing blocking of the Tor anonymity network and the blocking of VPNs by the Great Chinese FireWall is a case which demonstrates that anti-censorship tools are vulnerable targets for blocking. Australia is another country where VPN use has been threatened. When anti-censorship tools are blocked, it becomes much harder to access the open Internet.On this anniversary of the campaign against SOPA, we must never lose sight of the broader, ongoing global fight against an open Internet. An important struggle in this fight is to ensure that anti-censorship tool use remains legal and access to them is unfettered. Particularly as we grapple with a world where there is Great Power competition — and thrown in this rivalry are competing versions of how free the Internet should be, what content should be allowed and whether these tools should be freely accessible.Drawing from the success of the SOPA campaign and the lessons from that struggle — including the indispensable role of a broad and determined coalition in the fight for an open Internet, we can ensure that we dig in and continue the resistance which secures and expands its gains, especially across borders.Babatunde Okunoye is a researcher on digital society, particularly in the context of the global south. This post was originally posted on his Medium.This Techdirt Greenhouse special edition is all about the 10 year anniversary of the fight that stopped SOPA. On January 26th at 1pm PT, we'll be hosting a live discussion with Rep. Zoe Lofgren and some open roundtable discussions about the legacy of that fight. Please register to attend.

Just as we're in the midst of a Greenhouse series all about SOPA, copyright industry lobbyists, and former copyright industry lawyers now running the Copyright Office are conspiring to make copyright law worse and to favor Hollywood and give the big giant legacy copyright companies more control and power over the internet.And, yet, we pay almost no attention to how they massively abuse the power they already have under copyright law to silence people. The latest example is the book review blog, Fantasy Book Critic. I'd link to it, but as I'm writing this all you now see is a message that says "Sorry, the blog at fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com has been removed."Why? Because two of the largest publishing companies in the world, Penguin Random House and HarperCollins, hired a ridiculously incompetent service provider called "Link-Busters" which specializes in bullshit automated DMCA takedowns for the publishing industry. Link-Busters' website looks like basically all of these sketchy, unreliable services, promising to "protect IP" and (even more ridiculously) "turn piracy into profits."The company also claims on its website that "you can be assured your work will be protected to the fullest extent," and also: "According to multiple independent metrics, Link-Busters quarantines and/or eliminates more pirated content than other anti-piracy services." Of course, it's easy to get more things taken down if you don't give a shit as to whether or not it's actually infringing. And apparently, that is Link-Busters' secret sauce: sending bogus DMCA takedowns for things like book review websites.On Monday, Link-Busters, on behalf of Penguin Random House and HarperCollins sent over 50 bullshit takedown notices to Google, claiming that various reviews on Fantasy Book Critic were actually infringing copies of the books they were reviewing. Each notice listed many, many blog posts on the site. This is just a small sample of four such notices.The actual notices do contain some links to websites that appear to have pirated copies of some books available, but also lots of links to Fantasy Book Critic's reviews. The whole thing just seems incredibly sloppy by Link-Busters. Some of the "allegedly infringing" books in some of these notices didn't even include links to allegedly infringing pages.And then some show the only allegedly "infringing" links being... Fantasy Book Critic's reviews:That link, which again, does not exist any more, can be seen on the Internet Archive where you see that not only is it clearly a review, and not piracy, but it directly links visitors to places where they can buy the book. Turning piracy into profits, huh? By taking down review sites pushing people to places where they can buy the book?Of course, the real problem here is that there are no consequences whatsoever for Link-Busters or Penguin Random House or HarperCollins. While the DMCA has Section 512(f), which is supposed to punish false notifiers, in practice it is a dead letter. This means, Link-Busters can spam Google with wild abandon with blatantly false DMCA notices and facezero consequences. But, more importantly, publishing giants like Penguin Random House and HarperCollins (which are currently suing libraries for offering lendable ebooks), can get away with this abuse of the law over and over again.Fantasy Book Critic was reduced to begging on Twitter for Google to look more closely at Link-Busters bogus notifications and to restore their blog. They even contacted Link-Busters which admitted that they fucked up (though, perhaps they should have checked before sending these bogus notices?)

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The SOPA blackouts of 2012 marked an important milestone in the power of online activism to influence policy at the highest levels, but it would be a mistake to view it as either the start or the end of the struggle it represents. It is still among the most strikingly-effective examples to date, but it built on years of policy work that continues to this day.Online activism is notoriously poorly preserved, and it rarely produces the salient visuals of offline protests. Massive crowds of people taking part in an online action can’t be photographed extending down city blocks; no hand-painted signs with powerful slogans or sea of faces with resolute determination will become the iconic image representing the moment.As a result, it’s easier to forget the early Web blackouts of 1996 protesting the passage of the Communications Decency Act, or the Gray Tuesday event of copyright civil disobedience in 2004, to name a few I spoke about the legacy of these three events, taken together, at re:publica 2014).The SOPA protests provided a counter-example, in part, both because of the memorable visuals of the online “blackouts” and the in-person events coordinated in cities around the country. Images of Aaron Swartz, who had been a key organizer against the bill, addressing crowds at a New York rally illustrated articles about the online protests.As important as the unprecedented scale of the online actions was the reception by the press, the public, and the political sphere. The SOPA blackout represented a moment of online grassroots activism demanding to be taken seriously, and getting the coverage and reception it deserved. Every major news outlet reported on the protests and, as an indicator of its prominence, each of the candidates vying for the Republican nomination for president were asked onstage about SOPA at a January 19 debate — surely a first for a copyright proposal. Their criticism was ample evidence of the cracks in the bill’s inevitability.One long-term effect of the SOPA blackouts: it has seemed to meaningfully shift, perhaps permanently, the policy environment around copyright in particular. In 2011 and early 2012, SOPA appeared to be inevitable, in part because earlier industry-favored copyright proposals had both passed with near unanimity and withstood challenges that laid their irrationality bare.After SOPA’s flame-out, it no longer seems like copyright law is something that can be hammered out by industry representatives behind closed doors (admittedly, this shift has corresponded with the rise of tech companies as lobbying giants with a different copyright agenda than the existing players, which has surely played a role). As just one example: In 2011, SOPA was inevitable, but so was an eventual expansion to the Copyright Term Extension Act, continuing the public domain freeze that had been running since 1998. Of course, that never came to pass, and the public domain has grown on January 1 every year since 2019.That change wasn’t the result of the “war being won” — far from it. Increasing the costs of pushing through copyright policy has mostly shifted the battlegrounds in two major ways.First, big changes to how copyright gets enforced in the United States happen through private agreements with online platforms. YouTube’s ContentID system already existed in 2012, but the importance of that tool and others like it has increased immensely in the years since. The result is a landscape of platforms that do what Professor Annemarie Bridy has called “DMCA-plus enforcement,” extending the effective contours of copyright without a change in the law.If there is an upside to this arrangement, it has been that actual copyright law discussions have had the heat turned down slightly, and may have become less of a fact-free zone. It’s hard to play out the counterfactual, but I think the right-to-repair movement and the Music Modernization Act have been beneficiaries of this change.Second, and perhaps more nefariously, copyright proposals that had been proxies for regulating online speech more broadly have migrated to other areas of the law. Most notably in the past decade, these attacks have focused on section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. In some cases, the overlap is almost comical, like when op-eds pushing for changes cite the wrong law, and the New York Times has to issue a correction. In other moments the effect is more depressing. Watching FOSTA/SESTA skate through to passage, despite all the organizing against it, was a low point for online speech.In my work with journalists today, copyright continues to be a chokepoint for silencing unfavorable reporting, but it is only one arrow in the quiver of would-be censors. We see police officers attempting to limit the distribution of their statements by playing mainstream music in the background, or right-wing activists issuing takedowns for newsworthy photographs documenting their associations, but we also see frivolous SLAPP suits by elected officials, a dramatic rise in arrests and assaults on journalists, and existential legal threats to entire outlets.The overwhelming majority of people who are passionate about freedom of expression and access to knowledge online aren’t paid to work on those issues. I have been very lucky that, since 2011 I have been able to focus on these important topics as my job, first at the Electronic Frontier Foundation as a copyright activist, and now as the director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation. SOPA was among the very first issues I worked on in this field, and I’ve carried its lessons through the decade of activism that I’ve been fortunate enough to participate in.Parker Higgins is the director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation. From 2011 to 2017, he worked on the activism team at the Electronic Frontier Foundation on copyright and speech issues.This Techdirt Greenhouse special edition is all about the 10 year anniversary of the fight that stopped SOPA. On January 26th at 1pm PT, we'll be hosting a live discussion with Rep. Zoe Lofgren and some open roundtable discussions about the legacy of that fight. Please register to attend.

We'd already noted that the FAA had been pushing to impose limits on 5G deployments in certain bands due to safety concerns. The problem: the FCC, the agency with the expertise in spectrum interference, has repeatedly stated those concerns are unfounded based on the FCC's own research. The whole feud has been fairly bizarre, with the FAA refusing to transparently "show its math" at several points, but taking the time to leak its scary claims to select press outlets.More specifically: the FAA (and a big chunk of the airline industry) claims that deploying 5G in the 3.7 to 3.98 GHz "C-Band" will cause interference with certain radio altimeters. But the FCC has shown that more than 40 countries have deployed 5G in this band with no evidence of harm if you implement some fairly basic safety precautions (like limiting deployments immediately around airports, and utilizing a 220 MHz guard band that will remain unused as a buffer to prevent this theoretical interference).The FCC says there's not actually a problem here. And the wireless industry, having spent billions of dollars on middle band spectrum, obviously wants to move forward with deployment. Especially given criticism that U.S. 5G underperforms many overseas deployments thanks to a dearth of middleband spectrum. The U.S. has deployed substantial low band 5G spectrum (great range, lower speeds), and high band millimeter wave spectrum (poor range, poor building penetration, great speeds), but unlike many nations overseas, not much middle band (both good speeds and good range).The whole C-band mess escalated significantly this week after the CEOs of several major airlines issued a public letter effectively proclaiming their businesses would grind to a halt if wireless carriers continue to deploy 5G in these spectrum ranges:

There is no "going dark." Despite the FBI's protestations otherwise -- mostly embodied by FBI directors with axes to grind and narratives to sell -- investigators aren't finding encryption to be much of an impediment.The FBI claimed -- using stats irrationally inflated by (according to the FBI) malfunctioning software -- that law enforcement agencies were drowning in devices whose content they couldn't access. That turned out to be a lie. Perhaps it wasn't a deliberate lie but it had certainly proved convenient. Once the FBI recognized its error, it promised to deliver an accurate count. In May 2018, the DOJ and FBI promised to release an updated number. The agencies still have yet to do so.That brings us to the events of last January, when a bunch of dipshits decided the only way to restore democracy was to destroy it. A raid on the Capitol building in Washington DC -- egged on by lame duck president Donald Trump and a handful of Congressional toadies -- culminated in BlueLivesMatter hashtaggers attacking cops who stood between them and their twisted perception of justice. The effort failed, but the stain on American history -- perpetrated by self-declared "patriots" -- will last forever.Since then, the FBI and DOJ have engaged in hundreds of investigations and prosecutions. The OPSEC of Capitol raiders was sometimes nearly nonexistent, but more than a few participants knew enough to utilize encrypted services for their communications. The fact that the government has investigated, arrested, and charged hundreds of Capitol raiders shows encryption isn't holding it back.The blockbuster indictment brought against several members of the Oath Keepers -- one that includes seldom-seen sedition charges -- makes it clear the FBI still has plenty of options when it comes to dealing with encryption.

It's funny sometimes how quickly a company can go from being known for making a great product to being known for being a litigious intellectual property bully. And if that doesn't accurately describe the heel-turn pulled off by the folks behind PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, then I don't know what does. To be clear, PUBG, as it's lovingly referred to, was a groundbreaking video game. While the game didn't invent the battle royale concept, it certainly ushered that genre into an era. And just like any breakthrough genres suddenly having success, that means others are going to start trying their own hands at the genre. While plenty of other entrants have gotten into the battle royale game, PUBG has fought battles with several of them, most notably Epic's Fortnite title.Now, while PUBG has managed to get some settlements out of other legal action against battle royale game developers, it's worth noting that it ended up dropping its suit against Epic. Why? Well, because unlike some of its other targets, Epic has a huge legal war chest of its own to fight back. And, as tends to be the case with PUBG's suits, all of its complaints were over non-protectable elements of those games. Much of what is in these suits that PUBG files are for supposed copyright infringement of what ends up being ideas, rather than specific expression. The battle royale concept, for instance, or the manner in which some of the gameplay is conducted, are not protectable expression, but mere ideas for a genre of games.Well, the PUBG folks are at it again, with publisher Krafton suing Garena over its Free Fire mobile game. Apple and Google are also named in the suit, both of them for putting Free Fire on their app stores, and Google additionally for hosting some videos of the game's gameplay and other footage.

Gaming Like It's 1926: The Public Domain Game JamRandy Lubin is a game designer who partners with Techdirt and The Copia Institute on many of our game-related projects, including our public domain game jam. He's also the developer of Story Synth, a free and easy to use platform for building narrative games. Story Synth makes it easy for even inexperienced designers to quickly build a game, so it's a perfect way to get involved in the jam. We invited Randy to share some details on how the platform works and what you can do with it.We’re in the middle of our fourth annual public domain game jam: Gaming Like It’s 1926. If you’re thinking about designing a game, Story Synth is a free platform on which you can design a browser based game in under an hour, with no technical skill or prior experience needed. In this post, I’ll give a quick overview of what Story Synth is and how to design a game with it.With Story Synth, you can design prompt-driven storytelling games by authoring the content in a Google Sheet and then uploading the sheet at storysynth.org. The platform then automatically builds your game, complete with a homepage for your game that you can share online. The platform has live multiplayer: players in the same session will see the same prompts at the same time.Story Synth supports a wide variety of formats inspired by tabletop RPGs such as The Quiet Year and For the Queen. Other formats enable players to generate collections of random prompts and to explore a map of hexagons. You also have plenty of options to customize your game, from tweaking the visual appearance to adding on extensions such as dice rollers, editable lists, shared journals, and more. You can learn more about all of this in the Story Synth guide, or the video tour.You can get started with your design by copying a template Google Sheet. You can grab a link for the format you want at the Story Synth Formats page. Once you make a copy, start editing and adding prompts in the numbered rows. When you’re ready to upload your game, set the Sheet to publicly viewable and then paste the sheet URL in the Story Synth homepage and the site will build your game. Once your game is built, you can launch a new session and test it out; when you refresh the page, Story Synth reloads the content from your Google Sheet; that means that you can keep editing your sheet and immediately testing the changes.If you’re making a game for the Gaming Like It’s 1926 jam, then you can create an Itch.io page that links to your game on Story Synth and then submit it to the jam. Here are more detailed instructions for publishing Story Synth games on Itch.For inspiration on works entering the public domain, check out Duke University’s overview. To get a sense of what Story Synth games are like, try playing fantasy travel game Around the Realm and Seven Samurai inspired Clash at Ikara, or browse the gallery for more options.If you have any questions, feel free to drop by the Story Synth Discord.