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Back when Netflix was a pesky upstart trying to claw subscribers away from entrenched cable providers, the company had a pretty lax approach to users that shared streaming passwords. At one point CEO Reed Hastings went so far as to say he "loved" password sharing, seeing it as akin to free advertising. The idea was that as kids or friends got on more stable footing (left home to job hunt, whatever), they'd inevitably get hooked on the service and purchase their own subscription. Execs at HBO (at least before the AT&T acquisition) have stated it doesn't really hurt these companies' bottom lines in part because, much like with traditional piracy, there's no guarantee these users would actually subscribe if they lost access.In the last year or two, as Netflix's dominance grew, the company's position on the subject unsurprisingly started to toughen. And last week, the company began testing a system that would nudge password sharing subscribers to get their own account:

We've talked a lot in the past about how almost no one seems to actually understand privacy, and that leads to a lot of bad policy-making, including policy-making that impacts the 1st Amendment and other concepts that we hold sacred. Sometimes, it creates truly bizarre scenarios, like the arguments being made by Texas's Attorney General in the latest amended antitrust complaint against Google.As you'll likely recall, back in December, Texas's Attorney General Ken Paxton -- along with nine other states -- filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google. There were some bits in the laws that suggested some potentially serious claims, but the key pars were heavily redacted. Of the non-redacted parts there were really embarrassing mistakes, including claiming that Facebook allowing WhatsApp users to backup their accounts to Google Drive was giving Google a "backdoor" into WhatsApp communications.That makes the latest amended complaint even more bizarre. It attacks Google for doing more to protect its users' privacy. As you remember, a couple weeks ago, Google noted that as it got rid of 3rd party cookies in Chrome, it wasn't going to replace it with some other form of tracking. This is, clearly, good for privacy. It is, also, good for Google, since it's better positioned to weather a changing ad market that doesn't rely on 3rd party cookies tracking you everywhere you go.So the new amended complaint takes a move that is clearly good for everyone's privacy and whines that this is an antitrust violation.

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Law enforcement loves loves LOVES third parties. Anyone one step removed from someone they're investigating generally isn't covered by the Fourth Amendment, which means no one needs a warrant or probable cause to go fishing for "third party" data.But when it comes to the accused, what's easy for law enforcement is seldom simple for regular citizens. Third parties obtain tons of personal data when interacting with customers and users. But when a regular person asks for this information, third parties apparently feel free to blow them off. That's the case when someone's trying to do nothing more than dispute something on their credit record. And it's also the case when someone's life is literally on the line.This cavalier approach to record keeping might finally cost a third party some money. A man falsely accused of murder is taking car rental agency Hertz to court for sitting on a receipt that would have cleared him for several years.

The British government is looking to literally silence dissent. Protests are a fact of life. There hasn't been a government yet that's been able to avoid them. But governments still do all they can to prevent them from reaching critical mass. In Hong Kong, the Chinese government has turned protesting into a national security crime with life sentences. In the United States, legislators are still trying to find ways to shut people up without violating their long-protected right to be verbally and demonstratively angry at their government.Over in the UK, the government wants people to shut up. So, the Home Office has crafted a bill that would do exactly that: criminalize the "noise" protesters make. The bill would amend the 1986's Public Order Act to make it a crime to do the one thing demonstrations and protests are supposed to do: draw the public's attention. Here's Ian Dunt, writing for Politics.co.uk.

Late last year, we discussed Microsoft's acquisition of Zenimax, the parent company of Bethesda, and what it would mean for the studio's beloved franchises. At particular issue, given that this is Microsoft we're talking about, was whether new or existing franchises would be exclusive to Xbox consoles and/or PC. The communication out of Microsoft has been anything but helpful in this respect. First, Xbox chief Phil Spencer and Bethesda's Todd Howard made vague statements that mostly amounted to: man, we don't have to make Bethesda games exclusives and it's hard to imagine us doing so. Only a few weeks later, another Microsoft representative clarified that while the company may have plans to make Bethesda games "first or best" on Microsoft platforms, "that's not a point about being exclusive." This naturally led most to believe that Microsoft might have timed release windows on other platforms, but wouldn't be locking any specific titles down.What a difference a few months can make, it seems. With the acquisition officially complete, Microsoft put out a "welcome" announcement to the Bethesda team, which included this fun bit to be consumed by the public.

The Kansas City Police Department has managed to turn a few heads -- and not in the good way -- with an internal PowerPoint that may as well have been titled "So, You've Killed Someone." The document was obtained during discovery in a wrongful death suit against the KCPD. Back in 2019, Officer Dylan Pifer shot and killed Terrance Bridges, claiming he thought Bridges was trying to pull a gun from his sweatshirt pocket. No gun was found on Bridges.The presentation [PDF] obtained from Bridges' family's lawyer by the Kansas City Star advises cops of two things: police shootings should be handled like routine criminal investigations to eliminate claims of bias. And police shootings should be handled nothing like routine criminal investigations because they involve cops.The opening slide makes it clear what the priority is in investigations of shootings by cops: preserving the narrative. It even has the number one next to it.

Despite bottomless pockets and all but owning state and federal regulators for the last four years, telecom continues to stumble with adaptation in the streaming video era. Verizon's attempt to pivot from curmudgeonly old phone company to sexy new media brand fell flat on its face. AT&T's plan to spend $200 billion on the Time Warner and DirecTV mergers to dominate the television space has resulted in them losing 8 million pay TV subscribers in just the last four years. In short, pampered telecom monopolies aren't finding that getting ahead in more competitive markets to be particularly easy.Comcast too isn't having a great time of it, despite dumping the company's resources into its new Peacock streaming platform. A new filing this week indicates that Comcast lost $914 million on the venture just last year alone. Some of these losses were expected as Comcast shuffles resources around NBC Universal, pours money into new projects, and streamlines the company's overall structure, but it's worth noting that Comcast remains somewhat cagey about how many paying customers are actually signed up:

The good news is that Iowa prosecutors' attempt to jail a journalist for being present at a protest has failed. Andrea Sahouri -- who was arrested while covering a George Floyd protest in Des Moines last summer -- has been acquitted of all charges by a jury. But the fact that she was prosecuted at all is still problematic.Sahouri was arrested by Des Moines police officers while apparently walking away from the scene of a protest. Officers at the scene broadcast conflicting orders from their squad cars. While one loudspeaker told protesters to disperse, another told protesters to "protest peacefully." Officer Luke Wilson performed the arrest. Unfortunately, it took place out of view of nearby CCTV cameras. That shouldn't have been a problem since Officer Wilson was wearing a body camera. But he "forgot" to ensure it was recording before he began arresting people.The prosecution of Sahouri was handled in bad faith. Prosecutors sought to bar any mention of her employment as a Des Moines Register journalist during the court case. They claimed this case had nothing to do with press freedom -- that it only involved someone disobeying a lawful order to disperse. They claimed this despite recordings of the PD's arrival on scene showing officers issuing conflicting orders to protesters.

The DOJ has indicted another company for supposedly making it easier for criminals to elude law enforcement. The true target, though, isn't the company whose principals have been indicted, but encryption itself.A couple of years ago the DOJ decided to bring RICO charges against Phantom Secure, a cellphone provider that catered to the criminal element with "uncrackable" phones/messaging services built on existing Blackberry hardware/software.The FBI approached Phantom Secure, asking for an encryption backdoor that would allow it to snoop on its customers. Phantom Secure declined the FBI's advances. Its phones -- originally marketed to professionals desirous of additional security -- were soon marketed to criminals, a market sector that truly valued the security options offered by Phantom.But rejecting the FBI and selling to criminals causes problems. The DOJ went after Phantom Secure, arresting the owner and charging him with a bunch of RICO and RICO-adjacent crimes.It is happening again. The DOJ has decided encryption is a crime when companies offering encrypted communications choose to sell to people the DOJ considers to be criminals.Here's the DOJ's portrayal of its crime-fighting efforts -- one supported by people who rarely find a sandwich they don't think can be criminally charged.

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The Washington Post tech columnist Geoffrey Fowler recently had a very interesting article about how Amazon won't allow the ebooks it publishes to be lent out from libraries. As someone who regularly borrows ebooks from my local libraries, I find this disappointing -- especially since, as Fowler notes, Amazon really is the company that made ebooks popular. But, when it comes to libraries, Amazon won't let libraries lend those ebooks out:

Last week the House unveiled (a previous version of this story incorrectly stated the bill had been passed) the Accessible, Affordable Internet for All Act. The bill, which died last year after Mitch McConnell's Senate refused to hold a vote on it, includes a lot of great things, including spending $94 billion on expanding broadband into underserved areas. There's a ton of other helpful things in the proposal, like boosting the definition of broadband to 100 Mbps down (and upstream), requiring "dig once" policies that deploy fiber conduit alongside any new highway bills, and even a provision requiring the FCC to create rules forcing ISPs be transparent about how much they actually charge for monthly service.A summary (pdf) of the bill offers some additional detail, such as the fact the bill includes a mandate that the government (specifically the Office of Internet Connectivity and Growth within the NTIA) more fully study the impact of affordability on broadband access. In the wake of allegations that the FCC's subsidy auction process is a corrupted and exploited mess, the law also lays down a lot of groundwork to make the subsidization of broadband access more transparent, equitable, and accountable to genuine oversight with an eye on affordability (instead of exclusively focusing on access, which is the DC norm):

Last week the House unveiled (a previous version of this story incorrectly stated the bill had been passed) the Accessible, Affordable Internet for All Act. The bill, which died last year after Mitch McConnell's Senate refused to hold a vote on it, includes a lot of great things, including spending $94 billion on expanding broadband into underserved areas. There's a ton of other helpful things in the proposal, like boosting the definition of broadband to 100 Mbps down (and upstream), requiring "dig once" policies that deploy fiber conduit alongside any new highway bills, and even a provision requiring the FCC to create rules forcing ISPs be transparent about how much they actually charge for monthly service.A summary (pdf) of the bill offers some additional detail, such as the fact the bill includes a mandate that the government (specifically the Office of Internet Connectivity and Growth within the NTIA) more fully study the impact of affordability on broadband access. In the wake of allegations that the FCC's subsidy auction process is a corrupted and exploited mess, the law also lays down a lot of groundwork to make the subsidization of broadband access more transparent, equitable, and accountable to genuine oversight with an eye on affordability (instead of exclusively focusing on access, which is the DC norm):

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is a comment from Baron von Robber, responding to someone who is still insisting that Democrats "stole" the election:

We're nearing the end of our series of posts about the winners of our public domain game jam, Gaming Like It's 1925. We've already featured ~THE GREAT GATSBY~, The Great Gatsby Tabletop Roleplaying Game, Art Apart and There Are No Eyes Here, and Remembering Grußau, and today we're looking at the third and final game based on The Great Gatsby and the winner of the Best Digital Game category: Rhythm Action Gatsby by Robert Tyler.From the name alone, you can probably guess what the game is: rhythm action games are a popular genre, and hey, why not make one for The Great Gatsby? The premise is presented as a joke, with the designer describing it as "the way F. Scott Fitzgerald would have wanted his legacy to be maintained" — but the game doesn't just lean on this one bit of amusing silliness, nor does it cut any corners in fulfilling its promise. Rather, it's full of handcrafted original material.But before we get to all of that, there's another thing that makes Rhythm Action Gatsby stand out among all the Gatsby-based games this year: it's partly based on the book's incredibly iconic cover art. (We wondered if the cover art was even itself in the public domain, but it turns out that unlike most books, that particular cover was actually designed before the writing was done and published along with the first edition, and has an interesting story all its own.) The floating eyes and mouth that almost everyone immediately associates with The Great Gatsby become the target points of the rhythm action game, controlled by the player as they gaze out from the screen. The eyes must be triggered in time with the sparkling fireworks that rise from below and represent the notes of the music, while the mouth must be controlled to speak the words that tumble down from above.The words are a well-known passage from the novel, dramatically spaced out over the 2-minute duration of the game — and it's all narrated aloud. That's where we get to all the other original material in the game. The narration? Freshly recorded by the designer, with a distinct mood and excellent delivery. The jaunty music that sets the pace of the game? An original piece written and recorded by the designer. And then there's all the details: the color changes and screen flashes that occur throughout the course of a playthrough, linked to both progression and the player's performance. All of this is choreographed so well that when it comes together it makes a rhythm game that, although simple and short, feels surprisingly dramatic and narrative — and that's not only impressive, it's extremely appropriate to an adaptation of a novel, and proves that the initial joke about the combination of genre and subject being silly wasn't quite what it seemed. That's just great, and makes it a worthy winner of the Best Digital Game award.(Oh, and at the end, your performance is ranked and you get to find out just how great of a Gatsby you are. Several of our judges played it multiple times to try for better results, and maybe you will too.)Play Rhythm Action Gatsby in your browser on Itch, and check out the other jam entries too. Congratulations to Robert Tyler for the win! We'll be back next week with the final game jam winner spotlight.

The SolarWind intrusion, with the revelation that part of the architecture included, at least for a while, a really weak default password, and the hack of the water treatment plant with a similar password reuse problem, reminded me of this story I heard not long ago about another instance of poor security design.In a recent fan Q&A on Facebook, Bill Gibson, the drummer for Huey Lewis and the News, told a story about his friendship with Stevie Ray Vaughan. Stevie Ray Vaughan and his band Double Trouble had opened for the News for a while in the mid-1980s, and in that time Bill and Stevie had become good friends. Back at the hotel one evening after a show in New York City it came up that Bill had seen Jimi Hendrix perform something like seven times. Stevie, a guitarist who idolized Hendrix, was in awe. He wanted to hear everything about what it was like seeing Hendrix play, so he grabbed some beer and they settled in for an evening of Bill telling Stevie everything he remembered.By 3:00 AM they were out of beer, so they went down to Stevie's tour bus parked out in front of the hotel to get some more. He opened the bus with his key and started looking for the cooler he kept it in. "That's odd," Bill recalls Stevie musing, "The cooler is usually kept in this spot over here." Eventually he found a cooler elsewhere, removed the needed beer, and they left to go back up to finish their conversation.The next day they discovered why they'd had trouble finding the cooler. At the time, most bands were touring in buses that all came from the same company. That all looked the same. And that all were opened by the exact same key. Thus the reason that Stevie could not find the cooler where he expected it to be was because they were not on the bus where they expected to be. Instead of being on Stevie's bus, it turns out they were actually on UB40's bus that, unbeknownst to them, had just pulled up that night while they'd been ensconced in the hotel talking. Which Stevie's key had opened. And on which the UB40 band had apparently been sleeping the whole time Stevie and Bill were there inadvertently pilfering their beer…So let this story be a lesson to security designers, people who really should be employing security designers, and pretty much everyone else who likes to reuse their passwords: When the security credentials for one resource can be used to gain access elsewhere, especially in a way you did not anticipate, there's really not that much security to be had.And in most such cases it will likely be so much more than UB40's beer that's now been put at risk.

Summary: Google's ad service offers purchasers access to millions of users, including those viewing videos on YouTube. But its policies -- meant to prevent abuse, fraud, harassment, or targeting of certain demographics -- sometimes appear to prevent legitimate organizations from doing something as simple as informing others of their existence.Chad Robichaux, the founder of Christian veterans support nonprofit Mighty Oaks, wanted to reach out to veterans who might need his services. But his attempt to purchase YouTube ads was rejected by Google's Ad service for a seemingly strange reason.According to a screenshot posted by Robichaux to Twitter, Google forbade the use of "Christian" as a keyword. To Robichaux (and many responders to his tweet), this was evidence of Big Tech's bias against Christians and conservatives.But the real reason for this block was far less censorial or nefarious, if no more explicable. According to YouTube (which reached out directly to Robicheaux), the aim isn't to keep Christians from advertising, but rather to prevent advertisers from targeting users on the basis of their religion. Unfortunately, Google's policy doesn't exactly make that clear, instead stating that ads cannot contain "religious basis" content if the purchaser is engaging in personalized advertising.Decisions to be made by Google:

Last Wednesday, the House passed the "George Floyd Justice in Policing Act," a bill that targets a number of aspects of law enforcement that need improvement, including two that have caused a considerable amount of collateral damage.The bill [PDF] -- passed by the Democratic majority 220-212 with all but one member of either party voting the way you'd expect them to vote -- bans discriminatory profiling, mandates more training on discrimination, and requires law enforcement agencies to collect data on investigatory activities. It also bans chokeholds and no-knock warrants, both instruments of death still permitted by far too many law enforcement agencies. The on-again, off-again limits on the requisition of military gear via the 1033 program are back on.There are also mandates for federal officers, finally requiring their use of body cams and dashcams -- something they've avoided doing for years.But here are the accountability add-ons that are resulting in pushback from law enforcement agencies, their supporters, and (of course) their unions.

Last week the FCC took the wraps off a new $3.2 billion program designed to help struggling Americans afford broadband during the pandemic. The program was required by Congress as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021, and will, once fully operational, dole out $50 a month for broadband service to lower-income American families that qualify. That number jumps to $75 on Tribal lands (a stark reversal from the Trump/Pai era, where the FCC was interested in pulling back on tribal broadband subsidies). The program also doles out up to $100 for a tablet or computer.With COVID-19 showcasing broadband's essential nature in more ways than one, it's a welcome program that should deliver some immediate relief to the estimated 42 million Americans with no broadband whatsoever, and the estimated 18.5 million households that lack broadband access specifically due to the high cost of service. There's no reason children in the wealthiest country in the history of the planet should have to huddle in the dirt outside of Taco Bell, something interim FCC boss Jessica Rosenworcel was quick to highlight:

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A little over a year ago we wrote about a laughably stupid SLAPP suit that the Trump campaign, represented by Charles Harder, filed against the NY Times. As we noted at the time, the lawsuit appeared to have no intention of succeeding -- it was purely performative nonsense. The lawsuit claimed that an opinion piece by Max Frankel was defamatory because it noted that whether or not there was any explicit collusion between the Trump Campaign and Russia, it didn't matter, since both sides seemed to expect certain outcomes and allowed them to act accordingly.We also pointed out that the lawsuit completely misrepresented the article, pretending that Frankel's thesis -- again, that there didn't need to be any explicit deal -- was Frankel saying that there was "collusion" between the two. The case made no sense no matter how you looked at it. Frankel's article was an opinion piece -- and opinions aren't defamatory. It didn't allege what the campaign's lawsuit says it alleged, and there was no way in hell it could possibly meet the actual malice standard necessary for defamation.It took a year, but the Supreme Court of New York (which, contrary to its name, is more like a district court), has tossed out the lawsuit, though denying the NY Times' request for sanctions against Harder. As we expected, this was not a difficult decision for the court to come to. First, it was obviously opinion, and thus not defamatory:

One the one hand, you have wireless carriers telling anybody who'll listen that 5G will soon create the incredible, smart cities of tomorrow and no limit of incredible innovation. On the other hand, you have 42 million Americans without access to broadband during a plague, and tens of millions more stuck paying high prices for slow services thanks to monopolization and a lack of competition. It's a discordant reality gap that isn't lost on Martin Cooper, who invented the first cell phone (the Motorola Dynatac 8000x) in 1973. In an interview at CNET, Cooper pointed out how despite a history of innovation, the United States still somehow can't make broadband both universal and affordable, which is why 40% of US students struggle to get online:

It will come as no surprise to most of our readers that the NCAA is a jealous protector of its March Madness trademark. Much like the Super Bowl, the NCAA likes to march (heh) around and try to pretend like its trademarks give it overly restrictive rights when it absolutely doesn't.But what you may not be as familiar with is all of the ride along trademarks the NCAA has amassed relating to its men's basketball tournament. For instance, the NCAA also holds a trademark for "March Mayhem" and has used that in advertising partnerships in the past. For some reason, this has caused the NCAA to think that this allows it to oppose a trademark for a vasectomy clinic with an admittedly questionable marketing scheme.

At long last, some more NYPD police misconduct records have been released. Last month, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals refused to block the release of these records, now publicly available thanks to the repeal of a state law that shielded these records from the public eye for more than 40 years.A first batch of records was released before the matter was even settled. Records obtained by the NY-ACLU and ProPublica were released by ProPublica even as the Police Benevolent Association secured a restraining order blocking their release. Since neither of these entities were party to the lawsuit (the PBA was suing New York City and Mayor Bill de Blasio), they weren't subject to the court order.The partial set of records published by ProPublica came from the Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB). The publication only included records for officers with at least one substantiated complaint against them. A much fuller set of data has now been released by the CCRB -- a set that dates back more than 20 years and covers tens of thousands of NYPD officers.

Last summer we wrote about an interesting case involving the latest evolution of copyright trolling, involving Jon Nicolini, who some copyright troll watchers may recognize from his participating in an earlier generation of copyright trolling, when he was a sketchy "forensic expert" for copyright trolling firm CEG TEK. These days, Nicolini runs his own firm, Okularity, which appears to have created a new form of copyright trolling. According to the lawsuit, rather than file lawsuits as the pressure point (as was common in the past), Okularity sends a ton of DMCA takedown notices to social media companies, and then once your account gets taken down, Nicolini pounces and demands huge sums to rescind the notices, so you can get back your account.As we wrote over the summer, one of Okularity's targets was the well known Paper Magazine, put out by the publisher Enttech Media Group. Enttech said that Okularity sought to have Paper Magazine's Instagram account shut down, and then offered to "settle," demanding a pretty massive sum in the process. The lawsuit alleged violations of DMCA 512(f) which is the (unfortunately) mostly toothless part of the DMCA that is supposed to allow those on the receiving end of bogus DMCA takedowns to fight back. In practice, however, courts have mostly rejected all 512(f) claims, or made it so they're basically impossible to do anything useful with. Because of that, any time we see a 512(f) claim that has legs, we pay attention.The original complaint also tried to argue that Okularity violated the RICO statute, and long time readers here know what we think of RICO claims. While there did appear to be some unauthorized practice of law happening, there didn't seem to be nearly enough to make a RICO claim -- because there's basically never enough to make a RICO claim. We predicted that the RICO claim would get tossed out, but that the 512(f) claim might live on.Turns out, we were right.While the case has had some twists and turns, this week the judge tossed out the RICO claims, but is allowing the 512(f) claims to move forward. Nicolini and Okularity had argued that Enttech's lawyer, Robert Tauler, should face Rule 11 sanctions for ignoring evidence regarding their fair use analysis, but the court rejected those as well. Tauler did have to file a third amended complaint, however, to get to this point, as the court did find the first two complaints somewhat deficient.But on the key point -- 512(f) -- the court notes that the case can continue, even under the confused Lenz standard in the 9th Circuit, that basically said (1) DMCA filers have to "subjectively" consider fair use to be a "good faith" filing, but (2) automated takedowns may be okay... because we say so. Nikolini and Okularity argued that they do consider fair use before sending notices, while Enttech argued the notices appeared to be totally automated. The court basically says -- Enttech has met the initial burden that the case can move forward.One key point of contention in this: the takedown letters sent by Okularity do contain a "discussion of infringement and fair use," Okularity claims that shows that it does consider fair use. Enttech responded that every single notice Okularity sends contains an exact copy of this discussion, suggesting no actual analysis is done, and it's just a cut-and-paste. This point is what the judge focused in on:

Killing people using metadata is boring. These days, we're killing people using data brokers.

Over the last month we've written quite a few times about various state legislatures (and Governors) picking up on the nonsensical and unsupported statements that (1) "conservatives" face too much bias in social media content moderation decisions and (2) that Section 230 is somehow to blame for this. They've pushed a whole bunch of blatantly unconstitutional state laws that would seek to limit how social media companies can moderate content -- effectively compelling them to host content they disagree with (which would violate the 1st Amendment). Of course, as we've noted for quite some time now, both Republicans and Democrats seem to be very mad at Section 230, but for totally contradictory reasons. Republican bills seek to make social media companies moderate less content, while Democratic bills seek to make social media companies moderate more content.Both approaches are unconstitutional violations of the 1st Amendment. While most of the fights over the past few years have happened in Congress, now with these bad bills moving to the state legislators, it appears that Democrats don't want to be left behind. Over in Colorado, Colorado Senate president pro tempore Kerry Donovan would seek to force companies to moderate "hate speech," "fake news," and "conspiracy theories."The full bill is really, really bad. Websites would need to register (for a fee) with a "digital communications commission" in Colorado, and that Commission would accept complaints against social media websites if they were used for hate speech, undermining election integrity, disseminating intentional disinformation, conspiracy theories, or fake news. There's a big problem with this: most of that is protected under the 1st Amendment. I know that many people don't like that those things are protected speech, but you actually should like it. Because if "fake news" or "undermining election integrity" was not protected under the 1st Amendment, just imagine how the Trump administration would have abused both things.After all, it spent four years arguing that any criticism of the administration was "fake news" and claimed, repeatedly (despite the total lack of evidence) that the processes and procedures that helped make the 2020 election fair actually "undermined election integrity." This is why we don't let the government punish people for speech around those issues, because the government will define it in ways we dislike.As Eugene Volokh notes, beyond the fact that all of this is pretty clearly unconstitutional, the bill doesn't even bother to define "hate speech." Or "undermine election integrity." Or "fake news." Or "conspiracy theories." Or "intentional disinformation."Kerry Donovan is now running for US Congress as well (against conspiracy theorist Lauren Boebert). One would hope that she would have first learned how the 1st Amendment works before seeking to run for Congress. We might agree that Boebert clearly doesn't belong anywhere near Capitol Hill, but that's no excuse for misunderstanding some fairly basic principles in the Bill of Rights.

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Put enough cameras up and pretty soon they become tasty targets for malicious hackers.

As companies like Google shift away from individual behavior tracking in their ad efforts, telecoms like T-Mobile are headed in the opposite direction. The wireless giant this week announced it would be automatically enrolling all of its customers (including recently acquired Sprint customers) in a new behavioral tracking and ad system the company is launching on April 26. Whereas Google is shifting to its FLOC system that tends to clump consumers into groups of like minded consumers (an approach that still comes with its own issues), T-Mobile is doubling down on individualized targeting, and will start sharing its customers’ web and mobile-app data with advertisers.While this sort of tracking is nothing new for AT&T and Verizon, it's a shift away from T-Mobile's more consumer friendly branding, and will be something new for recently acquired Sprint customers. Fortunately users can opt out of the tech, though that may not always mean what you think it does. AT&T, for example, has historically viewed "opting out" as meaning "we will no longer hit you with targeted ads based on your online data," not that they won't gather data whatsoever. Other times in telecom, opting out can easily be reverted to opting in without the consumer really knowing.T-Mobile, like so many companies before it, tries a bit too hard to hide behind the claim that "anonymization" of individual user data makes collecting it ok, something that's been disproven by a repeated barrage of different studies. It only takes a small number of additional data points to quickly make users not so anonymous.One investigation of "anonymized" user credit card data by MIT found that users could be correctly "de-anonymized" 90 percent of the time using just four relatively vague points of information. Another study looking at vehicle data found that 15 minutes’ worth of data from just brake pedal use could lead them to choose the right driver, out of 15 options, 90% of the time.Despite this, companies continue to toss around the word "anonymization" as some kind of get out of jail free card, as if the terminology means anything. Case in point: T-Mobile's comments to the Wall Street Journal, which were thankfully quickly corrected by the EFF's Aaron Mackey:

You may have heard that in recent days a series of deepfake videos appeared on TikTok of a fake Tom Cruise looking very Tom-Cruise-ish all while doing mostly non-Tom-Cruise-ish things. After that series of short videos came out, the parties responsible for producing them, Chris Ume and Cruise impersonator Miles Fisher, put out a compilation video sort of showing how this was all done.As you can see, this was all done in the spirit of educating the public on what is possible with this kind of technology and, you know, fun. Unfortunately, some folks out there aren't finding any fun in this at all. Instead, there is a certain amount of understandable fear for how this technology might disrupt our lives that is leading to less understandable conclusions about what we should do about it.For instance, some folks apparently think that deepfake outputs should be considered the intellectual property of those who are the subjects of the deepfakes.

Summary: In 2012, the Huffington Post did an exposé on eating disorder blogs, mainly on the site Tumblr. It discussed the world of “thinspo” and “thinspiration” blogs, that focused on building a community around losing unhealthy amounts of weight. In response, Tumblr announced that it was banning “self harm” blogs, and classified eating disorder blogs among those no longer allowed.Three years later, a study by Munmun De Choudhury discussed how there was still eating disorder information on Tumblr, but that it was mainly split into two different categories: those who were supportive of eating disorders such as anorexia (referred to as “proana”) as well as communities built up around recovering from eating disorders. One interesting finding of the report was that the “recovery” groups often used the same keywords and messaging, in an attempt to permeate among the “proana” groups, in order to try to encourage those with eating disorders to seek support, therapy, and help towards recovery.That same year, Amanda Hess argued in Slate that the rush to ban content about eating disorders on social media (or, in the case of France, where such things were outlawed) was the wrong approach.

There was a time not too long ago when tech companies enjoyed broad public support and adulation. Now they face widespread opposition and criticism from almost all corners. The shift from one to the other has long been called the "techlash", but it's always been unclear where it really came from and how it happened, and especially what role tech journalism and company communications played. This week, we're joined by Dr. Nirit Weiss-Blatt, author of the new book The Techlash and Tech Crisis Communication, for a deep dive into the story of the techlash phenomenon and how companies are reacting to the new dynamic.Follow the Techdirt Podcast on Soundcloud, subscribe via iTunes, or grab the RSS feed. You can also keep up with all the latest episodes right here on Techdirt.

If everyone's going to be talking about Dr. Seuss, then we need to talk about this terrible decision from the Ninth Circuit a few months ago. Not to validate the idea of "cancel culture" in the particular way it's often bandied about as a sort of whining over people not wanting to be associated with certain ideas, but because when law takes away the ability to express them in the first place, that's censorship, it's an affront to the First Amendment, and it's something we all should be outraged about. And, as this case illustrates, the law in question is copyright.We've written about this case, Dr. Seuss Enters., L.P. v. ComicMix LLC, 983 F.3d 443 (9th Cir. 2020), many, many times before: some people wrote a mash-up using Seussian-type imagery and Star Trek vernacular to express new ideas that neither genre alone had been able to express before. And Dr. Seuss's estate sued them for it.The little bit of good news: their trademark claim failed. Applying the Rogers test to determine whether the Lanham Act could support such a claim, both the district court and the appeals court agreed: it didn't.

Last week we wrote about the many, many, many constitutional problems with a bill proposed in Utah to try to tell internet companies how they can moderate content. As we noted, the bill clearly violates the 1st Amendment, the Commerce Clause, and is also pre-empted by Section 230.So, of course, it passed.The Salt Lake Tribune report has a stunning set of paragraphs that demonstrate that supporters of the bill not only ignored many, many experts telling them the constitutional problems with the bill, but they then pretended no one notified them of those concerns (this is blatantly false):

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A bill [PDF] that's likely headed to a dead end at the governor's desk or a state court targets protected speech that might make some cops angry. The bill may end up dead, but the Kentucky Senate still needs to explain how it let the bill pass, considering it contains this very, very stupid addition, presumably courtesy of the bill's sponsor, Sen. Danny Carroll -- a former police officer.The bill converts free speech into a second degree misdemeanor. And it only targets speech that targets certain public employees.

AT&T had a damn good ride during the Trump administration. Not only did it convince Trump regulators to effectively lobotomize the nation's top telecom regulator (right before a pandemic, no less), the company got billions in tax breaks for doing effectively nothing. And while the government did sue AT&T over the Time Warner merger, that had more to do with making Rupert Murdoch happy than making life hard on AT&T (AT&T won the lawsuit anyway). All told, AT&T nabbed billions upon billions in regulatory favors, merger approvals, and tax breaks. In exchange the US public saw...58,000 layoffs.As another indication that AT&T's good times may be slowing down, the SEC filed suit against AT&T this week, accusing the telecom giant of leaking cell phone sales information to analysts and reporters to change their revenue forecasts for the company. This, in turn, let AT&T "beat" analysts' revenue forecasts in the first quarter of 2016, according to the SEC complaint (pdf). Technically, the SEC says AT&T violated the Securities Exchange Act and the SEC's Regulation "fair disclosure" rules, which "prohibit selective disclosures by issuers of material nonpublic information to securities analysts."Granted, this will now see a year+ of litigation ending it a tiny, pathetic fine (that could then be negotiated away to nothing), but it's still interesting to see regulators trying. From the SEC announcement:

We give government agencies a whole lot of power. That's the way the government works: we, the people, allow agencies to perform their duties with minimal interference and, in exchange, we theoretically benefit from these services we pay for indirectly.To perform their duties, agencies need a bit of runway. Discretion is theirs alone. We can hope to force external change, but internally, agencies operate without direct oversight from the people funding them. And when it comes to litigation, government agencies can usually dodge lawsuits, thanks to multiple levels of immunity. Qualified immunity shields public servants from accountability. Absolute immunity shields pretty much everything else.But there's a flipside, one we don't see all that often. The government can dodge a lot of accountability, thanks to its immunity stacks. On the other hand, it can't easily engage in litigation against the citizens signing its paychecks, thanks to Constitutional, judicial, and legislative protections.The government can only do so much when it feels besmirched. And it definitely can't do this sort of thing. Government officials can sue in their personal capacity. But they can't sue as a cohesive whole. That's the uptake from a short decision entered against a Native American tribe that decided to sue TV producers over some fictional stuff that happened in a fictional TV show. (via the Volokh Conspiracy)The Cayuga Nation -- a federally recognized Native American tribe that possesses land in New York, Oklahoma, and Ontario, Canada -- sued over its depiction in the Showtime series, Billions. In one episode, the Cayuga tribe was depicted as engaging in an illegal land deal -- one that involved bribery and blackmail.The tribe sued, claiming it had been defamed. But the court [PDF] handling the case points out the tribe is a governmental agency and, therefore, cannot engage in libel lawsuits. The First Amendment forbids this sort of government action, even if the government agency pursuing the claim operates outside of the federal government's purview.

The end of a crooked and corrupt era in Mississippi is still paying long-belated dividends to wrongly convicted criminals in Mississippi. The state that has defined "backwater" for so many years is slowly crawling out of its self-created gutter.Eddie Lee Howard has been freed. And it took "only" 26 years. Howard was convicted of murdering Georgia Kemp back in 1995. He was 38 at the time he was arrested. He is now 67. And he is being freed.The case was built on the testimony of two supposed experts, an overworked (and underqualified) coroner (Dr. Steven Hayne) and Dr. Michael West, a self-avowed "bite mark expert." In reality, state medical examiner Dr. Steven Hayne was just another cog in the conviction wheel -- a coroner who somehow managed to perform more than six autopsies a day.Radley Balko -- a longtime police accountability advocate -- has written a book about both of these men: "The Cadaver King and the County Dentist." Hayne only got his position because no one else stepped up to fill it. He certainly didn't have the credentials.

To be clear: Space X's Starlink low-orbit satellite broadband service won't revolutionize the broadband industry. The service lacks the capacity to service dense urban or suburban areas, meaning it won't pose much of a threat to traditional cable and fiber providers. With a $100 monthly price tag and $500 hardware fee, it's not exactly a miracle cure for the millions of low-income Americans struggling to afford a broadband connection, either.That said: if you're currently one of the 42 million Americans who lacks access to any broadband at all, the service, capping out at 100 Mbps, is going to be damn-near miraculous (if you can afford it). It's also going to be a major competitive challenge to the companies that not only compete for rural broadband attention (like WISPs, cellular providers, and last-gen satellite providers), but are busy elbowing out one another at the trough to grab a slice of taxpayer subsidies. Understandably, many of these companies are trying to slow Starlink by any means necessary.Last month, ViaSat urged the FCC to investigate Space X's very real impact on scientific research via light pollution (a genuine problem regulators have done bupkis about so far). Since the 80s, satellite systems have had a baked in exemption from the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), excluding their businesses from environmental review. As Amazon and Space X fling tens of thousands of low orbit satellites into space, ViaSat is suggesting that exemption be reversed. ViaSat's motivations here are entirely selfish. But at the same time this is a real problem they're not wrong about.Dish Network is also trying to slow down Starlink a bit more creatively by telling the FCC the company's broadband plans could cause interference in the 12.2-12.7 GHz band:

There's an ongoing trial in (of all places) Iowa that cuts to the heart of First Amendment protections for journalists. Andrea Sahouri, an award-winning journalist for the Des Moines Register, was arrested last May during a protest resulting from the killing of an unarmed black man by Minnesota police officer Derek Chauvin.Despite attempting to identify herself as a member of the press, Sahouri was hit with a tear gas canister, pepper sprayed, and arrested for "failure to disperse." According to Des Moines police, Sahouri wasn't wearing any press credentials, something that has been acknowledged by both Sahouri and her editor at the Register.However, it's also not clear at this point that any order to disperse had been given, making anyone -- much less a journalist -- subject to arrest for not immediately leaving the area. The lack of press credentials could be a problem, but it's also being argued Sahouri was known by officers and should have been recognized as someone covering the protest, rather than participating in it. Journalists generally aren't subject to orders to disperse.Her newspaper issued this statement in its editorial against her prosecution:

We've been highlighting a wide variety of state bills from Republican-led legislatures that all attempt to attack Section 230. Nearly all of them are blatantly unconstitutional attacks on the 1st Amendment. Somewhat incredibly, the latest one from Tennessee might not actually be unconstitutional. That doesn't mean it's good. In fact, it's not just incredibly stupid, but demonstrates that the bill's authors/sponsors are so fucking clueless that they have no idea what they're doing. In effect, they'd be banning the state from investing any money it holds. To spite Section 230.The bill -- which is House Bill 1441 and Senate Bill 1011 -- from Representative Tim Rudd and Senator Janice Bowling represent such a lack of understanding of how literally anything works that it should embarrass both elected officials and anyone who ever voted for either of them. The bill is pretty simple: it bans the state from investing in any entity protected by Section 230. The problem with this? Almost every single person and every single company is, in some way, protected by Section 230. So, in effect, the bill bans the state from investing any of its money.Let's dig in on the specifics. The bill is pretty short and sweet. Here's the key part:

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Ah, we were so young then. We excoriated the Obama administration for attacking and prosecuting whistleblowers at a faster clip than any other administration in history.This happened despite the fact Obama presided over some of the most historic leaks in history -- ones that kickstarted changes in surveillance programs and surveillance attitudes. The Obama Administration claimed to be the most transparent ever, but behind the scenes, it worked tirelessly to punish whistleblowers and leakers who were bringing actual transparency to entities that had long resisted it.The facts about the late, not-so-great Trump Administration are continuing to leak out. And Obama's enthusiasm for punishing professional and amateur transparency enthusiasts has been outdone by his successor -- a man who often engaged in leaking himself through his Twitter account. Here's Ken Klippenstein with the details:

To be clear, the US has always had a fairly pathetic definition of "broadband." Originally defined as anything over 200 kbps in either direction, the definition was updated in 2010 to a pathetic 4 Mbps down, 1 Mbps up. It was updated again in 2015 by the Wheeler FCC to a better, but still arguably pathetic 25 Mbps downstream, 3 Mbps upstream. As we noted then, the broadband industry whined incessantly about having any higher standards, as it would only further highlight the vast impact of monopolization.Unfortunately for them, last week, a bipartisan coalition of Senators wrote the Biden administration, urging it to adopt a more aggressive broadband definition. How aggressive? 100 Mbps in both directions:

Techdirt readers are by now all too familiar with how broken the DMCA takedown system is. But a recent post on TorrentFreak introduces us to some interesting new examples. It concerns the software review site ThinkMobiles. Apparently, it's a company registered in the Ukraine, and many of its authors seem to come from the region -- and nothing wrong with that. As TorrentFreak notes, ThinkMobiles is very protective of its articles. The Lumen database, which collects and analyzes requests to remove material from the Web, has 376 results for the company, representing many hundreds of potential takedowns. But TorrentFreak spotted that some of the most recent ones are particularly unusual:

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed and continues to change how life works for many of us in a variety of ways. We're learning just how underserved America is by our monopolistic broadband providers, for instance. Esports has come into fashion in ways never seen before as well. Work from home has become more normalized and school from home is the bane of parents everywhere, even when it's the best option available.And, with so much emphasis made on not traveling and on remaining socially distant, some had an idea to change how prospective university students perform the ritualistic "campus visit" during COVID times. The idea behind LiveCampusTours was to partner with local university students to provide a virtual tour of a school's campus and facilities.

There's a lot of competition for Worst Police Force in America. The NYPD is known for its casual approach to human life and its antagonistic approach to public records requesters. The Chicago PD operated its own black site to separate residents from their rights while interrogating them. The Pasco County Sheriff's Department thinks it should be in the business of turning students into criminals. The list goes on and fucking on.Enter the Vallejo (California) Police Department -- one that has apparently gamified the shooting of residents.