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We've covered plenty of stuff about the Oversight Board that Facebook set up. While we recognize the cynicism towards it and still think it's somewhat early to judge, for many of us following the Board's decisions closely, it's been really kind of eye opening how much the Board has really pushed Facebook to make real changes. Of course, there are many real structural issues with the way the Oversight Board is set up -- but the initial results have been fascinating.And that's why it's interesting to hear that the company is considering creating another oversight board like setup for dealing with the challenges of moderation and elections, according to a report in the NY Times.

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Thanks to its never-ending collection of location data, Google has become a prime target for law enforcement investigators. Using so-called "reverse warrants," investigators ask Google to turn over information for all devices in a geofenced area, with the hope of working their way backward from these data points to actual criminal suspects.They're called "warrants" but they can't possibly be supported by probable cause. Treating everyone in the area of a suspected crime as a criminal suspect until things can be sorted out inverts this concept. And the government isn't always honest with courts about how many innocent people these "reverse warrants" can ensnare. Fortunately, we've seen some courts engage in more active reviews of these requests, which has led to a few notable rejections.Google has released some details [PDF] on reverse warrants, which show they're an increasingly-popular option for law enforcement agencies. Zack Whittaker breaks down the data for TechCrunch.

You might recall after the telecom lobby convinced Congress to obliterate both privacy and net neutrality rules (despite both having bipartisan public support), there was a lot of industry whining about the various state replacement efforts that popped up. For example when California popped up with its own net neutrality rules, AT&T whined incessantly about how a "discordant network of state laws" would harm puppies and innovation. Ignored, of course, is that states were simply rushing to fill the consumer protection void created by federal apathy, itself a direct result of lobbying (aka corruption).The same thing happened with broadband privacy guard rails. In 2015, the FCC proposed some fairly basic broadband privacy rules largely focused on making sure what was being collected and sold would be transparent to consumers. But the telecom lobby was easily able to lobby the GOP-controlled Congress to use the Congressional Review Act to kill those rules before they could even take effect. And again, giants like AT&T whined about the discordant landscape of imperfect state legislative efforts that popped up in its wake, hoping you'd ignore that they helped create the problem by attacking even the most basic federal protections.The same thing of course is now playing out in the broader tech sector as well. For years, the tech, healthcare, marketing, insurance, and telecom sectors have worked to uniformly battle any meaningful federal privacy protections on the federal level. Not just the bad proposals. All of them. And, unsurprisingly, after years of this, states have started filling the void with their own solutions, many of which are less than perfect. This, as we saw with telecom, is causing all manner of consternation and constipation at major tech companies:

How gaming companies treat their modding communities that spring up around their games is something of a fault line in the industry. Game studios tend to be either pro-modding or not, with very little space in between. Nintendo, for instance, is notoriously anti-modding of its games. Bethesda, on the other hand, has traditionally been quite open-minded when it comes to the modding communities that have sprung up around its games. We've made the point for a long, long time that embracing modding communities is typically a massive boon to gaming companies and the restrictive attitude companies like Nintendo take makes little sense. Mods extend the shelf life and interest of games, driving attention and elongating the sales cycle and windows for those games. Giving up a little control for more sales seems to only make sense.But, speaking of Bethesda, some developers go even further. For instance, there is a forthcoming Fallout mod made by an independent team that is entitled Fallout: London, and it looks amazing.Now, I am very much a fan of this franchise, so I'm comfortable saying that if you can see a quality difference between what appears in this trailer and what has appeared in official trailers for the franchise, you're a much bigger stickler for details than I am. The mod changes more than just the location, though. It puts an emphasis on different types of gameplay to reflect a more British sensibility.

We all know how lousy civil asset forfeiture is. In lieu of actual criminal charges, cops (and feds) just seize any property they can get their hands on, turning other people's money into pure profit for law enforcement agencies. Money they can often spend with little to no oversight.It's a profitable venture. Cops steal more than actual crooks do, netting billions a year across the nation. The legal process for forfeiture asks very little from law enforcement -- rarely more than a mild hunch the seized funds are linked to criminal acts. The government has a very low bar to meet in most cases. For the people who've suddenly seen their money taken away, the bar is much higher.In most cases, the government gets to decide when forfeiture proceedings begin. It also doesn't have to make much of an effort to notify forfeiture victims that proceedings have begun. That leads to a lot of default wins for government agencies. The amount of money it takes to hire a lawyer to challenge a forfeiture is often more costly than the funds seized, leading to even more government "wins." Every cheap win is treated like a victory in the war on crime, even when it's usually nothing more than the government making some random person poorer.In the state of Massachusetts, one particular District Attorney is ensuring there's no due process when it comes to asset forfeiture. Thanks to severely lax laws, there's no lower limit for seizures, which means the DA's office is more than happy to help cops nickel-and-dime people to figurative death. There's also no legal obligation for the office to move forward with forfeitures in a timely fashion.This has led to the DA's office waiting for as long as possible to initiate some proceedings. And, since the office takes home a percentage of every successful forfeiture, it does as little as possible to ensure those who've had their money seized are made aware that proceedings are imminent. Saurabah Datar and Shannon Dooling have done some digging to produce this enraging report for ProPublica. (h/t @pakanukeha)

We've noted for years that the FCC's purported "war on robocalls" has been predominantly empty. Just a few years ago, for example, the FCC patted itself on the back for some minor rule changes that simply let wireless carriers offer robocall blocking tech by default. And quite often, the "record" fines the FCC announces to punish robocallers are never actually collected. Making matters worse, the US government usually only targets smaller scam robocallers, and not any of the major "legit" industries (like debt collectors) that utilize the same tactics as robocall scammers to harass struggling Americans they know can't pay anyway.You can see how effective the FCC's "war on robocalls" has been by the amount of robocalls you've received. Though it ebbs and flows, the problem has grown massively since 2015, and the Robocall Index notes that 30.7 billion robocalls have been placed in 2021 so far, up from last year. That's just the United States. This is not a war anybody could confidently claim we're winning.This week, the FCC made headlines again for announcing a "record" fine against partisan bullshit artists Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman for making 1,141 robocalls to cellphones during the 2020 elections without gaining consumer consent. The fines come after the duo were charged with four felonies in Michigan for making misleading robocalls to area minority voters. From the FCC's press release:

I remain confused at why so many people endorse Macarthur Genius award winner, Prof. Danielle Citron's views on Section 230. Over and over again people say that her ideas for reforming Section 230 are sensible. Except that they are not. She has falsely insisted that companies have no incentives to moderate and that their incentives are to push the most extreme content. This has been debunked over and over again. If it were true, then every website would turn into 8kun. But that doesn't happen, because most websites realize that when your website is full of garbage people, it drives away other users (including those more likely to support you or your advertisers) and it drives away advertisers.Citron's big idea is to put in place a duty of care or "reasonableness" standard, but we've explained at length why that's the kind of idea only an academic with no experience running a website could love. It would lead to a ton of costly litigation in which companies would have to repeatedly defend their moderation practices in court. At best this would lead to companies all adopting nearly identical moderation practices to whichever company survived the litigation gauntlet first -- effectively crushing any ability to experiment and innovate in the moderation market, and likely locking in Facebook as one of the few companies that can afford to handle moderation's liability risks.All that said, I'm even more flabbergasted by Citron's initial response to the (now walked back) news that OnlyFans was planning to phase out sexually explicit content. Many, many people have made the connection between OnlyFans' decision and FOSTA, the last time Section 230 was amended to add more liability to platforms. Of course, as we've now seen, FOSTA has had a massive human cost, is leading to some wacky vexatious civil lawsuits, and according to the GAO's own study, has failed to live up to any of its promises.In an article at CNN about the OnlyFans decision, Citron makes an absolutely bizarre claim, that the answer to OnlyFans deplatforming sex workers... is to put more liability on OnlyFans so that those sex workers can sue. I only wish I were kidding.

Recently, following our announcement that we have removed all Google ads and tracking code from Techdirt, a reader reached out to us with a novel (and greatly appreciated!) proposal for supporting the change and our ongoing reporting while also helping out a good cause: buying an ad — not for their own benefit, but for that of a public interest campaign that aligns perfectly with our own values. That's why you see a new banner in the sidebar on the site, encouraging our readers to sign an open letter put together by FSFE calling on the EU to pass a law requiring all publicly financed software to be made available under a free and open source license.This reader purchased the ad with their own money, as a way of helping out both Techdirt and the FSFE campaign — and we think this is such an amazing and generous idea that we wanted to call extra attention to it with a post. We've written about this same issue of open sourcing publicly funded software in the past, when the White House began embracing the idea and then unveiled an official open source software policy — but the fact is it should be the norm for all governments that use taxpayer money to develop software. If the public funds something, it should be available to the public by default.And, of course, we also want to call attention to this campaign as a way that you can support Techdirt. As we said in our post about removing Google trackers from the site, these kinds of reader-friendly changes also take away some of our revenue streams, and increase our reliance on you, our readers, to support us directly when and if you can. We're extremely grateful to all the readers who stepped up and gave us a tip through our Friend of Techdirt option in the Insider Shop, or engaged with one of the many other ways to support us — and now this one generous reader has showed yet another option, and one that allows you to support Techdirt and the public interest at the same time.So we encourage everyone to sign the open letter to help demonstrate that this kind of campaign works. Moreover, if there's a campaign or an organization out there that you think aligns well with Techdirt's values and readership and that you'd like to support while helping us out in this way, please get in touch and let us know. We don't currently have fixed rates for direct ad purchases like this, and instead prefer to come up with custom solutions that fit your budget and needs — so don't hesitate to reach out and let us know what you have in mind.Thanks again to all our readers, and today especially to this one reader who came to us with this excellent idea!

Gunshot detection tech provider ShotSpotter is fighting a PR battle on multiple fronts after more news surfaced that its analysts may alter detection records to fit police narratives and investigators' theories. Communications and court documents obtained by the Associated Press confirmed ShotSpotter allows law enforcement officers to request modifications to detection records. And the company apparently used to allow police officers to modify the data themselves.In addition to its questionable handling of evidence, ShotSpotter is also shedding customers. Law enforcement agencies in some cities have decided it's not worth paying for a product that can't reliably detect gunshots. Cities that have dumped ShotSpotter have reported false positive rates as high as 75%.ShotSpotter has fired back, claiming everyone reporting on its tech is wrong about its tech. It also claims it doesn't alter or allow alteration to reports submitted as evidence in criminal cases. Its assertions ring pretty fucking hollow in the face of all of this reporting, which relies on documents filed in court or obtained through public records requests. ShotSpotter's claims, however, are supported by nothing more than the company's own ineffective anger.Now, there's even more evidence showing ShotSpotter isn't worth paying for. The Chicago PD's Inspector General has concluded its investigation of the tech the city pays roughly $11 million/year for. And it has found the tech doesn't seem to be worth the money.

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Remember Gettr? That's the Trumpist social network run by former Trump spokesperson (and vexatious lawsuit filer) Jason Miller that promised to be supportive of "free speech." As we point out what happens with every new social network that jumps into the space with promises to "support free speech!" and "not censor!" before long they will begin to realize content moderation is required to keep your site running -- and soon they discover that content moderation will involve difficult choices. And, sometimes, it involves making mistakes.Of course, whenever Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or whoever else note that they made a "mistake" with a content moderation decision and reverse it, there are always some people who insist it couldn't possibly be a mistake and must be [insert conspiratorial reason here]. So I find it hilarious that on Wednesday, Gettr got to experience all this as well. First, Trump buddy and admitted "dirty trickster" Roger Stone went on Gab -- another such social network -- to whine about how he was "censored" by Gettr, claiming it was because he had made what he believed were disparaging remarks about Miller (and Steve Bannon).

Back in 2009, the FCC funded a Harvard study that concluded (pdf) that open access broadband networks (letting multiple ISPs come in and compete over a central, core network) resulted in lower broadband prices and better service in numerous locations worldwide. Of course when the Obama FCC released its "National Broadband Plan" back in 2010, this realization (not to mention an honest accounting of the sector's limited competition) was nowhere to be found. Both parties ignored the data and instead doubled down on our existing national telecom policy plan: letting AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast do pretty much whatever they'd like. Something, of course, taken to ridiculous new heights during the Trump era.Since then, "open access" has become somewhat of a dirty word in telecom policy, and even companies like Google Fiber -- which originally promised to adhere to the concept on its own network before quietly backpedaling -- are eager to pretend the idea doesn't exist. Why? Because having ISPs compete in layers over a centralized network may improve service, boost speeds, and reduce prices (see: this community-run network in Ammon, Idaho), but it would eat into the revenues of the regional monopolies bone-grafted to our intelligence gathering apparatus, and you simply can't have that.Which is why it was surprising to see California recently pass a $6 billion broadband infrastructure bill that does something unique: it mandates the creation of a massive "middle mile" fiber network that will be open access, which should encourage increased competition. The original announcement breaks down the spending this way:

We've done more than our share of posts in the past about the problems within the DMCA takedown system as currently practiced. The reason for so many posts is in part due to the sheer number of problems with how this all works. For starters, when notices go out to search engines like Google to delist "problem" URLs, those notices are often times generated by automated systems that unsurprisingly result in a vast majority of notices targeting URLs that are non-infringing. As in, over 99% of those notices. And even once we get past the malpractice of using automation buckshot notices that result in an incredible amount of collateral damage, we then have to add the wide open avenues for fraud and abuse of the DMCA system. That type of fraud runs the gamut, from trolls merely trying to cause chaos for the fun of it to competitors of certain forms of content trying to hurt the competition. In the immortal words of former NFL coach John Fox: "It's all a problem."And, on the fraud and abuse side, it's such a problem that perfectly legit URLs can get delisted by Google due to a request from "The U.S. Copyright Office", even though that office doesn't make those sorts of requests.

Summary: YouTube offers an endless stream of videos that cater to the preferences of users, no matter their age and has become a go-to content provider for kids and their parents. The market for kid-oriented videos remains wide-open, with new competitors surfacing daily and utilizing repetition, familiarity, and strings of keywords to get their videos in front of kids willing to spend hours clicking on whatever thumbnails pique their interest, and YouTube is leading this market.Taking advantage of the low expectations of extremely youthful viewers, YouTube videos for kids are filled with low-effort, low-cost content - videos that use familiar songs, bright colors, and pop culture fixtures to attract and hold the attention of children.Most of this content is innocuous. But a much darker strain of content was exposed by amateur internet sleuths, which was swiftly dubbed "Elsagate," borrowing the name of the main character of Disney's massively popular animated hit, Frozen. At the r/ElsaGate subreddit, redditors tracked down videos aimed at children that contained adult themes, sexual activity, or other non-kid-friendly content.Among the decidedly not-safe-for-kids subject matter listed by r/ElsaGate are injections, gore, suicide, pregnancy, BDSM, assault, rape, murder, cannibalism, and use of alcohol. Most of these acts were performed by animated characters (or actors dressed as the characters), including the titular Elsa as well as Spiderman, Peppa Pig, Paw Patrol, and Mickey Mouse. According to parents, users, and members of the r/Elsagate subreddit, some of this content could be accessed via the YouTube Kids app — a kid-oriented version of YouTube subject to stricter controls and home to curated content meant to steer child users clear of adult subject matter.Further attention was drawn to the issue by James Bridle's post on the subject, entitled "Something is Wrong on the Internet." The post — preceded by numerous content warnings — detailed the considerable amount of disturbing content that was easily finding its way to youthful viewers, mainly thanks to its kid-friendly tags and innocuous thumbnails.The end result, according to Bridle, was nothing short of horrific:

Under Trump, the DOJ did all it could to break the spirit of the Black Lives Matter movement that took on renewed vigor last spring following yet another killing of an unarmed black person by a white cop. That's according to a report [PDF] by The Movement for Black Lives, which examined BLM-related prosecutions headed by federal prosecutors.

So, last week the news broke that OnlyFans, the wildly popular platform for "subscribing" to private video and photographic content -- and whose most popular usecase appears to be for adult content -- announced that it was banning "sexually explicit material" in response to difficulty finding investors and payment processors/banks threatening to cut them off (and possibly rejecting too many payments). The whole thing was somewhat confusing because the company did say that nude imagery would still be allowed, just not "sexually explicit," and I'm sure the guidelines for the company's content moderation team on that distinction would have been quite something.Either way, this move lead to an outcry of complaints -- led by sex workers who were already quite reasonably pissed off at previous attacks on them via things like FOSTA. And now, OnlyFans has announced that it has dropped the plans to ban such content, and said that it had worked out some sort of agreement with the financial companies who had been causing trouble before:

While body-worn cameras have mainly proven to be a boon for prosecutors, rather than the all-purpose accountability tools many of us thought they would be [raises hand sheepishly], the mere existence of more recordings is still a net gain for the general public.When cops are doing the recording, there's always a chance footage that disputes their narrative or discredits their testimony may go missing (or never recorded at all). But sometimes everything remains intact and, to officers' dismay, works against them when they're lying about stuff. Courts have always tended to give cops more credence than defendants in criminal trials, but the increase in recordings has freed courts to defer to the witness with no skin in the game: the recording device.This doesn't always happen. Sometimes judges would rather believe cops than their own eyes. It happened in this case. Fortunately for the person challenging a stop that resulted in criminal charges, the second court to review the video decided the recording was far more credible than the officer. (via FourthAmendment.com)A stop that resulted in DUI charges for Michael Boger was predicated on the officer's claim that the rear license plate wasn't illuminated. While it may have been true that Boger was under the influence and behind the wheel, it helps to remember that law enforcement isn't an ends-based operation. The means count, especially if we want the Constitution to mean anything.Officers need to have a reason to pull over people and subject them to at least temporary detention. Courts aren't necessarily opposed to a little pretext. But the pretext needs to hold up. And if it's going to hold up, the stated reason for the stop needs to be credible, rather than immediately undercut by an officer's own body camera.Here's how and why the stop was initiated, as recounted in the North Dakota Supreme Court's decision [PDF]:

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As you likely know by now, a little over two years ago, Devin Nunes kicked off his SLAPPy litigiousness by suing the satirical internet cow with about 1,200 followers at the time of the lawsuit (it now has over 770,000). What got a bit less attention was that the satirical cow was only one of the four parties sued. There was also another satirical account pretending to be Nunes' mother, and then there was Twitter and a political consultant named Liz Mair (who he actually sued another time as well -- in a case that was also dismissed, though Nunes is appealing).Mair has written about what an attack on free speech this is, and spoke with us last year about what a nuisance it is to be sued. Last summer, the judge dismissed Twitter from the lawsuit and now he's finally dismissed Mair as well (as first reported in the Fresno Bee, whose parent company Nunes has also sued).The ruling is pretty short and sweet, as apparently this is just the paper version of what he ruled from the bench last month. But, more or less, the case fails for the exact reason everyone who knows anything about defamation predicted: the complaint doesn't show anything Mair stated was even remotely defamatory, and there's nothing showing actual malice, which is necessary if a public figure is claiming to be defamed.

Back around 2007 or so there was a bit of a ruckus when broadband ISPs were found to be selling your "clickstream" data (which sites you visit and how long you're there) to any nitwit with a nickel, then basically denying they were even doing that. Concerns about that now seem quaint.In the years since, technologies like deep packet inspection have allowed ISPs to collect and sell details on every aspect of your online life, then, through obfuscation, proxies, and empty promises of "anonymization," insist they're not doing exactly that. Or, as the wireless industry's location data scandals have shown, collect and sell your daily movement habits, initially with only a fleeting concern about user privacy and security.Now, sources in the infosec community tell Motherboard ISPs are also (again, via proxies) selling access to "netflow data." As the name suggests, netflow data details the day to day broader stroke network traffic (pdf), whether that's overall network loads, which servers are talking to one another, network topology, etc. The data is generally beneficial to researchers to understand network and user behavior, and to security experts to help mitigate network attacks. But it's also valuable, and increasingly, it's being offloaded to businesses who are then turning around and selling it:

We've talked plenty of times in the past about instances in which publishers of content, typically movies, get copyright takedowns performed on trailers. These takedowns are, frankly, never a great idea, but they are particularly stupid when companies like Marvel, Disney, and Warner Bros. takedown trailers, otherwise known as advertisements, and then release an identical or nearly identical trailer days later. What in the actual hell is the point of that? Killing off your own word of mouth and free advertising for your film?Now, Sony just went through this experience itself, having attempted to DMCA to death a leaked and, importantly, unfinished trailer for Spider-Man: No Way Home.

Another "ag gag" law has been shown the door by the courts. The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals has declared Kansas' "Farm Animal and Field Crop and Research Facilities Protection Act" (whew!) nothing more than a bunch of First Amendment violations trying to present themselves as a legitimate restriction on access to agricultural facilities. (via Courthouse News Service)This law dates all the way back to 1990, but it's finally being shut down after a successful challenge by the Animal Legal Defense Fund. The ALDF sued in 2018, pointing out the law's obvious constitutional problems. The law criminalizes certain deception in the service of trespassing. Why trespassing couldn't have been handled by existing laws was never explained, but one should never underestimate legislators' desire to please some of their biggest local donors.What the law sought to criminalize were investigations performed by the ALDF, which necessarily involved some form of deception to gain access to farms and dairies. How the ALDF does its work is detailed in the opening of the Tenth Circuit's decision [PDF]:

We've written a lot about the Oracle/Google case over API copyrights as it wound its way through the courts, but the Supreme Court ruling has such widespread implications that there is still plenty to unpack. This week, we're joined by two top experts on intellectual property — Berkeley Law's Pamela Samuelson and Stanford Law's Mark Lemley, who recently co-wrote a paper on the subject — to discuss in detail what impact this landmark case has on copyright and interoperability.Follow the Techdirt Podcast on Soundcloud, subscribe via Apple Podcasts, or grab the RSS feed. You can also keep up with all the latest episodes right here on Techdirt.

We can add another government agency to the list of entities that have been suckered in by Clearview's highly questionable sales pitches about its unproven tech: the US Army. [Paywall ahead, but alternatives abound.]

The judicial construct known as qualified immunity will continue to make it harder for people to obtain redress for rights violations… at least for the time being. While there has been a more sustained movement to reform law enforcement across the nation, thanks to cops doing the sort of stuff they've been doing for decades, qualified immunity seems particularly bulletproof.It probably seemed like a good idea at the time. It provided government employees a way to avoid being entangled in frivolous litigation based on unsustainable allegations of rights violations. But since that point, it has morphed into an easy button for civil suits, a route cops can use to escape accountability for actual rights violations so long as they violate rights in a way courts haven't previously declared an obvious rights violation.Last year, as protests against police brutality raged around the nation, federal legislators offered up a reform bill that would have altered qualified immunity, changing it from a de facto defense to something officers would actually have to prove in court. Rather than just offer up a motion to dismiss based on qualified immunity, officers would have to show their rights violations were performed in good faith, using more than a couple of boilerplate sentences. Evidence and justifications would need to be offered and, given the lack of an early out, more civil rights cases would subject officers to a jury of their peers, rather than a rote recitation of Supreme Court decisions before granting a dismissal.Of all the things cops want to hold onto, qualified immunity is at the top of the list. Their legal reps -- housed in numerous police unions around the nation -- have an even greater desire to see this doctrine remain intact. These two entities hold a lot of power, and have held this power for years. And there's a certain contingent of legislators, at every level, who will never do anything that might be perceived as being anti-cop. So, the struggle continues. And, for the moment, hopes of seeing qualified immunity rolled back at the federal level have died along with the reform bill that once threatened this extra right granted to government employees.Here's Marianne Levine and Nicholas Wu with more details for Politico.

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If you don't know who Doug Schoen is, he's a quintessential political/lobbying insider, who has worked for the Clintons and more recently for Mike Bloomberg's presidential campaign. It might surprise some people to find that he also was a regular on Fox News... before switching to propaganda purveyor Newsmax, where he was hired earlier this year as an "analyst." In previous lives he worked for political trickster Dick Morris, and was a partner with another political dirty trickster, Mark Penn, in a political consulting firm. Penn, famously, has argued that companies should attack more successful companies through political dirty tricks, and it appears that Schoen is following in those footsteps.He has penned a truly facts-optional op-ed for The Hill to argue that it is imperative for the government to force Google and Facebook to pay news organizations (presumably including his employer, Newsmax -- though The Hill fails to note Schoen's affiliation with Newsmax). Schoen trots out a bunch of dubious points, without support, and includes a few debunked tropes. We don't need to go through them all. But the underlying argument, as always, is that once Facebook and Google became successful, news organizations started failing, and therefore one must have caused the other. Of course, the fact that newspaper declines began before Facebook/Google became so popular should raise some questions about all this. Other research has shown that it's not so much news aggregation or social media that destroyed the news business model, but the death of classified advertising, which was going to happen on the internet no matter what.Schoen addresses none of this, but insists Google and Facebook are the cause. And he does this by flat out misrepresenting the data.

We've noted a few times how US regulators often simply refuse to acknowledge that the US broadband sector is heavily monopolized. Regional cable and phone monopolies are the number one reason US broadband is patchy, expensive, and slow with routinely terrible customer service. But when you see folks in both parties discuss US broadband, industry dysfunction is always framed in this extremely nebulous way (we must "fix the digital divide!"). Largely because nobody in government wants to offend deep-pocketed campaign contributors also bone grafted to our domestic surveillance apparatus.The latest broadband data from Leichtman Research illustrates the scope of the problem. The firm notes that the broadband industry added 890,000 subscribers last quarter. Cable companies added 840,000 of that total, while phone companies added just 50,000:

It seems all but impossible to completely do away with civil asset forfeiture, but advances are being made around the country. Criminal asset forfeiture remains a thing -- one that's rarely troubled by reform legislation. But it can be just as absurd, even if it comes with an adjacent or attached criminal conviction.The Supreme Court recently upheld a decision finding that the seizure of a $42,000 vehicle (via civil forfeiture) over a crime that only generated a maximum fine of $10,000 was excessive, violating Eighth Amendment protections. That decision has the potential to generate more successful challenges of forfeitures, given that many forfeitures don't come attached to criminal convictions, which would seem to indicate almost any seizure at all would be excessive.Another case dealing with the "excessive" aspect of forfeitures and fees has made its way to the top court in the state of Washington. It involves the seizure of a man's vehicle -- one that was also serving as his housing while he tried to find a place to live. (h/t Volokh Conspiracy)The decision [PDF] opens with a description of the unfortunate series of events that left the truck's owner homeless and in further financial trouble after the city's decision to provide code enforcement, rather than solutions.

Opponents of Uber et al. have been cheering the recent California court decision declaring Proposition 22 unconstitutional. Proposition 22 was a ballot measure passed to override significant parts of the legislature's AB 5 bill, which affected all sorts of untraditional employment arrangements, including those of "gig workers." Some people unhappy with the policy effects of Proposition 22 then sued to challenge its validity under the California Constitution. And, at least initially, have won.Whether it actually is a victory for labor is debatable but also somewhat besides the point. The relative merits of any of these things (Uber, Prop. 22, AB 5) is not what's at issue. Instead, the question is whether the decision correctly interprets the California Constitution.The California Constitution is, let's face it, kind of weird. Many state constitutions mirror the US Constitution with the way they are articulated. Not so the California Constitution, which reads much more like a laundry list of specific policies. As a result, it is more changeable than other constitutions, although given all the specific policies that can get baked into it, perhaps not always changeable enough.Ultimately the court found two aspects of Prop. 22 (but only two aspects, despite the challengers' arguments) to be unconstitutional given the current incarnation of the California Constitution: the language in Section 7451 about Workman's Compensation, and the language in Section 7465(c)(4) about amending the law put on the books by the proposition. Each had a different constitutional problem.The problem with the latter related to those potential future amendments. In general, the legislative effects of propositions are not easily changeable, which is something we've taken issue with before. If they were easily changeable then the legislature could simply pass a new law by a normal majority. But with ballot measures, the changes would require another ballot measure, which someone would need to be able to spend millions of dollars to underwrite. It's this unchangeability that has allowed wealthy parties to essentially blackmail the legislature into passing laws they like (see, e.g., the CCPA), because if they were able to fund the passage of these laws directly via a ballot measure, then there would be little the legislature could ever do to change them later, no matter how much they might need to be changed. Sometimes ballot measures include eased requirements for the legislature to make changes, but by default they do not. As the decision itself explains:

One America News (OAN) -- a "news" network apparently more "fair and balanced" than the extremely right-leaning Fox News -- sued MSNBC commentator Rachel Maddow for (factually) insinuating one of OAN's reporters had a side gig working for the Russian government. The OAN reporter, Kristian Rouz, also worked for Sputnik, the government-controlled Russian news outlet.This report by Maddow came with the usual Maddow commentary, which included (protected!) opinions and the statement that Rouz was "literally paid Russian propaganda." This referred to Rouz's Sputnik work and cast serious shade on OAN's decision to bring the reporter on board with its network. A defamation lawsuit followed. And OAN lost.The district court said the assertions were based on fact and everything else was protected opinion. The court signed off on MSNBC's anti-SLAPP motion, handing it a win. And with a the anti-SLAPP win came some fee-shifting, which led to OAN being ordered to pay more than $250,000 in legal fees.OAN appealed. And it has lost again. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals says the lower court was right about everything. The Appeals Court [PDF] says California's anti-SLAPP law can be applied here, seeing as it closely aligns with federal options for dismissals and motions to strike. Having determined that, it makes quick work of OAN's appeal.

I'm going to try, once again, to do that stupid thing where I try to express a nuanced point on the internet, where there's a high likelihood of it being misunderstood. So, consider this opening a warning that you should read this entire article to try to get at the larger point.And, along those lines, there are two parts to this story, and while much of it is going to point some fingers at the NY Times and Washington Post in how they presented a story that suggested blaming Facebook for something that isn't actually a Facebook issue, that shouldn't be seen as letting Facebook off the hook, because it doesn't come out of this story looking very good either. Basically, this is a story that shows how much more complex and complicated our information ecosystem is when it comes to misinformation, and simple blame games aren't necessarily that effective.But, first, some background: for a long time, NY Times reporter Kevin Roose has used Facebook's own CrowdTangle tool to highlight what content on Facebook was getting the most engagement. It is a consistently useful tool in showing how claims that Facebook has an "anti-conservative bias" is bullshit. It constantly shows top "conservative" personalities like Ben Shapiro, Don Bongino, and others as having the most engagement on the site.For reasons I don't fully understand, Facebook has always hated this, and has spent so much wasted effort repeatedly insisting that Roose's tracking of the numbers is not telling an accurate picture of what's happening on the site (even though he's using Facebook's own tool). Last week, Facebook launched a new offering which it seemed to hope would change the narrative on this. It's called the "Widely Viewed Content Report" (catchy!). And, obviously, it is true that "engagement" (what CrowdTangle shows) is not the be-all, end-all of what's happening on the site, but it is kinda weird how annoyed Facebook gets about the lists. You can almost hear the defensiveness in how they introduced this new report:

Earlier this month, another courtroom challenge of evidence exposed another questionable alteration of a gunshot report by law enforcement tech supplier, ShotSpotter. In 2018, a man shot by police officers claimed in his lawsuit that ShotSpotter altered gunshot detection records at the request of law enforcement to back up the officers' narrative -- one that claimed he had shot at them first. No gun was ever recovered and the number of shots originally detected by ShotSpotter matched the number fired by officers, leaving them at least one shot short of their "he shot first" story.This appears to have happened again. A man, apparently falsely arrested for a murder he didn't commit, was put in jail for eleven months based almost solely on ShotSpotter reports. The problem with the ShotSpotter report is that it kept changing. And again, the alterations made the report align with the presuppositions of law enforcement. The original detection didn't classify the "percussive noise" as a gunshot. This non-determination was manually overridden by a ShotSpotter "analyst" to be classified as a gunshot.Months later, ShotSpotter relocated the detected noise from where it was originally "heard" to the intersection where the wrongfully-arrested man's car was captured by a nearby surveillance camera, allowing prosecutors to tie together their theory that the person they had already pinned the crime on had actually committed the crime. But, as soon as the wrongfully-arrested man challenged this evidence, prosecutors dropped the case, citing a lack of evidence.This reporting on ShotSpotter's apparent alteration of reports to better fit law enforcement claims and theories angered ShotSpotter. The company issued an angry statement claiming Motherboard's article on its latest evidentiary… oddities… was bogus and possibly capable of "confusing" readers.

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Jonathan Mayer, a Princeton University professor and former chief technologist at the FTC, is one of the smartest people I know. Every time I've spoken with him I feel like I learn something. He's now written a quite interesting article for the Washington Post noting how he, and a graduate researcher at Princeton, Anunay Kulshrestha, actually built a CSAM scanning system similar to the one that Apple recently announced, which has security experts up in arms over the risks inherent to the approach.Mayer and Kulshretha note that while Apple is saying that people worried about their system are misunderstanding it, they are not. They know what they're talking about -- and they still say the system is dangerous.

To be clear, there's absolutely no evidence that 5G wireless technology poses a meaningful impact to human health. Most of the conspiracy theorists that claim otherwise have a head full of pebbles, and are uniformly basing those claims on misinterpreted evidence or absolute gibberish. That doesn't mean that you don't want to continue studying cellular technology's impact on the human body, or adjust your safety standards when the scientific evidence warrants.In December of 2019 the Ajit Pai FCC announced it would not be updating its radiofrequency (RF) emission guidelines, which determine "safe" levels of exposure. The decision, Pai said, was based on a comprehensive six year review of the available evidence.Yeah, about that.Several groups that lean toward the... conspiratorial... had challenged the FCC's decision, forcing a court review. And when the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit actually reviewed the FCC's decision making process, they found that the FCC didn't really do its due diligence in reviewing the evidence. The court stated in its order (pdf) that while there very well might be good evidence to not change the standards, the FCC under Ajit Pai didn't actually provide it:

This week, both our winners on the insightful side come in response to our post about OnlyFans and its announcement that it would no longer host sexually explicit content. In first place, it's James Burkhardt with some thoughts:

Five Years AgoThis week in 2016, a wave of newspapers that had tried out paywall models were discovering they didn't work as well as hoped, and those that had come to rely almost solely on Facebook for traffic were realizing that might have been a mistake. Snowden documents revealed that the NSA and New Zealand had been spying on pro-democracy activists, the DNC set up a Cybersecurity Board that was devoid of cybersecurity experts, and Donald Trump was promising to keep terrorists off the internet. Peter Thiel was taking a weird victory lap regarding Gawker, and we were disappointed to see LinkedIn abusing the CFAA and DMCA to sue scraping bots. Also, an episode of our podcast featured an early discussion of what would become a major theme for us over the past few years: the difference between platforms and protocols.Ten Years AgoThis week in 2011, some cops were trying to fight citizen recordings with wiretapping charges, and other cops were making excuses about why they can detain harmless photographers. Google spent a cool $12.5-billion to buy Motorola Mobility for all its patents, and we took a look at just what it was getting out of the deal and how it represented the loss to innovation caused by patents. We had a few other posts on the patent system too, looking at how they can be detrimental to the long-term success of startups, debunking the myth that they want or need them, and asking why monopolies for the first to invent something are really so important.Fifteen Years AgoThis week in 2006, Apple seemed to be on the warpath against any product with "pod" in the name, Jack Thompson was demanding early access to video games so he could get mad about them, and a mistake at Techdirt caused the deletion of a morning's worth of comments. The RIAA oh-so-graciously gave a family 60 days to grieve before continuing its case against a dead man, but then backed down in the face of widespread coverage and backlash, while the recording industry was taking petty revenge on a musician who supported free music and the movie industry was using push polls to defend the theater industry. We also took a look at how the more Hollywood attacks file sharing, the further underground it goes.

Who knew that a bronze statue of a mermaid could cause so much trouble. If you're not aware, there is a statue of the Little Mermaid on the shores of the Danish capital Copenhagen. It was created by Edvard Eriksen, who died decades ago. Eriksen's estate, however, is well known to try to claim copyright infringement on any other statues of mermaids that pop up in cities around the world, including in Michigan. Notably in that case, the estate ran away when a public backlash began to emerge. This is also, by the way, the same statue that Facebook has previously removed images of for showing too much "skin", or bronze in this case, as the mermaid is topless, because... mermaids.Notably, Eriksen based his own artwork on the famous Little Mermaid created by Hans Christian Anderson. Despite that, it seems that any remotely similar mermaid statues find their way into the estate's crosshairs, such as the statue that resides in Asaa, Denmark.

The problem with harvesting reams of sensitive data is that it presents a very tempting target for malicious hackers, enemy governments, and other wrongdoers. That hasn't prevented anyone from collecting and storing all of this data, secure only in the knowledge this security will ultimately be breached.Hack after hack after hack after hack has shown entities seem to be far more interested in collecting data than protecting data. While steps are undoubtedly taken to protect the info gathered by government agencies and numerous super-snoopy private companies, sooner or later they're never enough. It's not that these data collections are always unnecessary. It's that a breach is pretty much inevitable. And yet that inevitability almost always gets greeted as a surprise by those on the end of a malicious hacking.What's happening in Afghanistan isn't exactly unprecedented. We saw the same thing happen when the United States military pulled out of Vietnam. The enemies that the US presence was supposed to deter were completely undeterred by local military (one we were supposed to be training to be self-reliant) left behind. We have exited one of our Forever Wars and the Taliban -- proud supporters of Al-Qaeda -- is taking over.The Taliban is getting everything we left behind. It's not just guns, gear, and aircraft. It's the massive biometric collections we amassed while serving as armed ambassadors of goodwill. The stuff the US government compiled to track its allies are now handy repositories that will allow the Taliban to hunt down its enemies. Ken Klippenstein and Sara Sirota have more details for The Intercept.

As you'll recall, back in December, the FTC filed an antitrust case against Facebook, arguing that Facebook abused a dominant market position to acquire Instagram and WhatsApp for anticompetitive reasons, and that it puts in place anti-competitive polices that harm other companies that it is unable to acquire. At the end of June, the court dismissed the case, saying that the FTC never actually showed any evidence that Facebook is a monopoly -- which is a key part of any antitrust case. However, the judge gave the FTC a chance to amend. Yesterday (the deadline to file the amended complaint), the FTC took another shot at it and filed its amended complaint.The new complaint is longer (and actually mentions TikTok, which the original didn't!). But is it any stronger? Well, at least the complaint has a more coherent narrative to it, after the original really phoned it in. The complaint tells the story of how Facebook effectively missed the smartphone revolution, and that threatened to enable competitors to gain a stronger foothold in social media with a mobile-first approach. The thing that strikes me, however, is how the "evidence" here actually seems to argue against antitrust violations -- as it shows just how fragile Facebook's position was not that long ago, and how easily someone else might have overtaken Facebook. The fact that Facebook was aware of these competitive threats isn't an admission of antitrust behavior, but rather just the fact that the senior executive suite at Facebook has read Clay Christensen and understands the nature of the Innovator's Dilemma and how disruptive innovation works.That said, there is more evidence in this complaint that Facebook deliberately sought to undermine competition at a variety of different points. And if the FTC can convince the court that (1) the market definition it has is correct, and (2) that Facebook has monopolistic power in that market, perhaps it can move the case forward. But, again, the complaint focuses heavily on the Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions, both of which happened many years ago -- at a time when Facebook was nowhere near as big or powerful as it is today. And, importantly, there aren't really examples of them doing the same thing recently. Indeed, we keep seeing new entrants showing up in the social media market -- including Snap, TikTok, and Clubhouse. Those all undermine the argument that Facebook can stop competitors.But, honestly, parts of the complaint seem to contradict itself. For example, it says that Facebook was a monopoly since 2011 (which it needs to say to cover the Instagram acquisition period):

The perpetual motion machine that is the Chinese government's censorship arm rolls on. While China has embraced a particularly state-focused form of capitalism, it still engages in the sort of stuff long associated with the Chinese government, like mass censorship, government corruption, and the mass incarceration of undesirable citizens.Taking a brief break from its strongarm takeover of Hong Kong -- a project that's running decades ahead of schedule -- the government is (again) imposing its will on presumably drunken participants in the world's worst party game, karaoke. (h/t Sarah McLaughlin)

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To some extent, it was only a matter of time until this issue came up. OnlyFans has grown massively over the last year (demonstrating, yet again, that the idea that the internet ecosystem is "settled" and that Facebook/Google control all is not necessarily true). However, as most people know, OnlyFans' success is built on basically creating a paywall for adult content from fans willing to subscribe to certain individuals in order to gain access to paid-only pictures and videos. It has had a tremendous impact especially for sex workers who had their careers shattered by FOSTA a few years ago, which forced a bunch of platforms sex workers relied on to shut down.But, because it involves sex and adult content, sooner or later people were going to complain. And, complain they did. On Thursday OnlyFans announced that it was banning "sexually explicit" content, though it said it's still allowing nudity.

To be clear, wireless carrier app stores have always kind of sucked. Verizon's efforts to create its own app store were shut down in 2012, after underwhelming consumers for years. At the time, the narrative was that Verizon just didn't find it worth the trouble in the face of Google domination and innovation. And while that's still largely true (wireless carriers are utterly unfamiliar with competition and therefore historically suck at innovation and adaptation), it turns out there was another reason.Namely, that Google was paying Verizon and other major wireless companies a big chunk of money to not compete with the Android marketplace. And they were paying smartphone manufacturers to ship devices without competing app stores installed. Both nuggets were buried in a freshly unredacted copy of Epic's antitrust complaint (pdf) against Google, first spotted by Jeremy Owens:

Discussions over the right – or at least a good – way to regulate big tech companies are heating up in the European Union (EU). Several legislative proposals are set to be negotiated, with public and behind-the-scenes lobbying in full swing already. As with any regulation, a key question is how to hold corporate decisionmakers accountable for their actions and how to create transparency. Some of the ways this has typically been done in other industries include legally mandated corporate compliance regimes, rules for financial or supply chain transparency and mandatory risk assessments and audits. These ideas are coming to the tech sector now, too, especially with the draft “Digital Services Act” (DSA). The DSA suggests new due diligence rules for platforms such as Facebook and YouTube, for example, regarding what processes are in place for content moderation and how they deal with potential infringements on users’ fundamental rights. Audits are introduced to check whether companies comply with the DSA’s due diligence rules.If done right, audits can be a valuable mechanism helping independent researchers, oversight bodies and the public hold tech companies accountable. If done poorly, audits will be mere check-the-box exercises with little value that might even hurt people and entrench platform power. That is why it will be crucial for the EU get the audit provisions in the DSA right. Four major issues, drawn from past experiences with audits and general risks associated with them, need to be taken into account.First, there is the risk of a weak auditor or an auditor with only limited powers. Facebook’s and Google’s “privacy audits” in the US can be taken as an example. Each company was subjected to legally mandated scrutiny by the US Federal Trade Commission over data protection issues. Yet, what were at times billed as “privacy audits” turned out to be mere assessments that were later criticized as almost meaningless due to vague language and powers for the regulator.Second, auditors can, conversely, be too powerful. If their mandate is ill-fitting or too broad, the auditing company or governmental agency that oversees global corporate giants like Facebook and Google might have quite a sway in what billions of people access, read and watch on the web. This could be abused for financial or political interests. Especially authoritarian leaders might try to tip the scale in their favors by controlling big tech companies, which has some lawmakers in the EU worried as well. Third, the auditing process itself can lack clear guidance and oversight. Without quality control, what is meant to be a safety measure and to incentivize corporate compliance can turn into a check-the-box exercise. Unfortunately, there are grave examples for this danger: “Social audits”, aiming to certify suitable workplace conditions, especially in the clothing industry, have come under intense scrutiny, after audited companies’ factories burned or crumbled, killing hundreds of workers. A for-profit auditing system with little checks can be partly to blame. In the financial industry, bad and sometimes illegal business practices could not be stopped despite auditing regimes being in place, as the WireCard case in Germany illustrates. Similarly, the international “Dieselgate” scandal showed the limitations of overseeing car manufacturers.Relatedly, fourth, audits need to have consequences if they reveal corporate malfeasance. An audit that shows how a company failed to follow the rules cannot only result in recommendations or a blow to the company’s reputation. Fines and, more importantly, changes in business practices and compliance processes are necessary.In all four areas, the DSA needs improvement. To address the first two points on the strength or weakness of the auditor, it is crucial that the auditor’s tasks and powers are clearly delineated. For tech companies offering people news and information spaces, a top priority should be that auditors check corporate processes, not individual pieces of content. This means that the auditor should, for instance, monitor whether companies have suitable notice-and-action mechanisms, meaningful reporting standards about their online advertising practices and recommender systems as well as consumer protection measures in place. Determining the legality of content should be left neither to corporations nor governmental regulators, but to independent courts. This would ensure that platforms are held accountable, without establishing an all-powerful auditor. The DSA draft goes in this direction, but the tasks of the auditor need to be spelled out in greater detail.In practical terms, it is not yet clear who could and should do the auditing. Looking towards established audits in other industries can be helpful but copying existing methods risks perpetuating its flaws (like with the social audits) and not accounting for the peculiarities of tech companies. It is presumptuous to assume that big accounting firms might just take on auditing tech companies. Auditing a company like Facebook, TikTok or Snapchat is not the same as auditing a bank or an insurer. Auditors need different skills and specific technical knowledge in this field, which many existing auditing outfits might not have yet. However, it is also ill-advised to blindly rely on young companies now claiming to audit tech companies or even “algorithms”, as there is no common definition of what such “algorithmic auditing” entails. For example, the Ada Lovelace Institute, a UK-based NGO, has identified four different ways to assess algorithmic systems and those can, in turn, contain different approaches. An industry has sprung up offering to audit algorithmic systems for biases and legal compliance but there are no standards for such audits or auditors. To ensure high-quality auditors and a system of checks and balances, the EU should define what audits are supposed to achieve and what is expected of auditors. A vetting process regarding the financial independence of platforms and auditors could be discussed, as well as guidelines for oversight and quality control. Otherwise, audits risk being a fig leaf for tech companies or, worse, a cover-up for systemic failures like with some “social audits”.Lastly, the DSA’s remedies for failed audits and non-compliance need to be beefed up. An independent oversight entity should be enabled to stop abusive business practices and sanction companies. Promisingly, this idea on enforcement as well as some potential improvements to the auditing regime have been put forth by the European Parliament. With the DSA, the EU has the chance to build an auditing regime for digital platforms from scratch. It should strive to make it as structurally sound as possible to limit terrible outcomes like those described above. This is not far-fetched, because some platforms’ business practices have been linked to genocide, election interference and invasions of privacy, just to name a few risks.Establishing clear rules for the content of audits, standards for the auditors themselves and consequences for tech companies would be a true EU innovation. It would ensure a watch-the-watchers approach for auditors and thus alleviate legitimate concerns that governmental or private auditors (especially if paid for by the platforms) undermine democratic oversight. Taken together, this would go a long way in improving accountability for tech companies.Julian Jaursch is a project director working on platform regulation topics at Stiftung Neue Verantwortung (SNV), a Berlin-based not-for-profit, non-partisan tech policy think tank.

About a half-decade ago, public records requesters discovered the Chicago Police Department had been spending seized funds on surveillance equipment like Stingray devices. The forfeiture fund was apparently completely discretionary and the PD used this steady supply of cash to make purchases not specifically approved by the city. It also allowed the department to elude direct oversight of surveillance activities and ensure the public was unable to interrupt the procurement process with pesky comments and questions.It appears the New York Police Department has been doing the same thing for at least as long. But it's not doing it with "discretionary" funds lifted from New York residents using civil forfeiture. Documents obtained by Wired show the infamously secretive agency has even more secrecy up its sleeves -- a fund that is specifically exempt from its own oversight.

A couple of weeks back, we discussed 2021's thus-far dumbest controversy: Ben & Jerry's ceasing to sell ice cream in "occupied Palestinian territory". The ice cream maker is owned by Unilver and found itself in intellectual property news after a law firm in Israel seized upon Ben & Jerry's announcement to not sell its wares in a few sections of Israel to suggest that meant it was relinquishing its trademark. To that end, the firm sought to register a company it named "Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream of Judea and Samaria." This action was part of a possibly coordinated attack response on the company, which included action in the States such as Florida Man Governor Ron DeSantis suggesting this meant B&J's was "boycotting Israel" and should be scrutinized for that, and Jewish leaders indicating that B&J's ice cream may lose its kosher rating.As I said, all very stupid. But the trademark claim might be the dumbest of them all. Trademark laws are designed to keep the public from being confused as to a source of a good and the Israeli firm's actions appear to achieve the exact opposite end. It's also the case that, in general, trademark law doesn't simply repeal a valid trademark simply because a company temporarily ceases to sell a good in one small section of a geographic area for which it's registered.And, so, it's should come as no surprise that Unilever has sent a letter to the firm, Shurat HaDin, warning that it intends to protect its valid marks.

Last month, Sergeant David Shelby of the Alameda County (CA) Sheriff's Office inducted himself into the Hall O' Internet Infamy by openly admitting to people filming him that he was playing copyrighted music on his phone in hopes of terminating live streams, recordings, and police accountability activists' accounts.When confronted by activists, Sgt. Shelby pulled up a Taylor Swift track, hoping the fervent protector of intellectual property would keep the recording from being successfully uploaded. His effort failed. The interaction made its way to YouTube and to the internet beyond. Sgt. Shelby showed his whole ass and the world wide web was there to witness it.This is a new tactic being deployed by cops around the nation. It's not widespread, but it's happened more than once, which implies cops are at least cognizant of one aspect of the law. But, to date, it hasn't worked. The recordings meant to be terminated by copyright-protecting AI have been successfully published to the web. The inability to use copyright as a censor has exposed some cops as the bad faith operators they are -- a list that includes Sgt. Shelby.His coworkers aren't happy. Emails obtained by Motherboard (and covered by Samantha Cole) show Shelby's behind-the-blue-line compatriots thought this was an especially dumb and disingenuous move by this superior-in-name-only.