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Last week we wrote about France's push to force Google to pay legacy news organizations for the high crime of... sending them traffic. That was somewhat expected, as under the EU Copyright Directive, some version of this will show up in every EU country over the next few months (though France's first approach is particularly dumb). Down in Australia, they're not subject to the EU Copyright Directive, but it's not stopping them from taking the same ridiculous approach:

In one of the more surprising Fourth Amendment decisions ever handed down, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled "chalking" tires for parking enforcement was a search and, as such, violated the Constitution. The ruling, handed down last spring, sided with the plaintiff. It found that the use of chalk to mark tires for parking enforcement was an investigative act. The intrusion onto citizens' private property -- their cars -- for investigative reasons (rather than the community caretaking function the government claimed) was impermissible without a warrant, even if the cars were parked on public streets.

Last week, a full page advertisement appeared in the NY Times, that was crowdfunded by nearly 27,000 people (mostly from Taiwan), with the provocative line: "WHO can help? Taiwan." Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen posted a picture to her Facebook page:The story behind the ad and the companion TaiwanCanHelp.US website is quite fascinating in its own right, and is reflective of the impressive digitally-aware political movement that has really grown up in Taiwan over the last decade. If you're unaware, over the last five years or so, Taiwan has been perhaps the most interesting experiment to watch in using technology to build more effective participatory government, pushed forward by a bunch of open source/open government activists who realized that working towards real solutions rather than pure partisan rancor, was a good way forward. And that shows in how this new campaign came about.Much of it was designed in response to the WHO's continued efforts to box Taiwan out of the COVID-19 conversation, even as Taiwan seemed to be one of a very small number of countries which appeared to be dealing with the onslaught of COVID-19 quite well (and this was despite its closeness to China, and many people regularly travelling back and forth between Taiwan and China). The WHO's efforts to ignore Taiwan went really viral in late March when a major news program in Hong Kong, RTHK, interviewing Assistant Director-General at WHO Bruce Aylward, showed Aylward's ridiculously awkward attempts to avoid responding to questions about Taiwan:

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Last summer, alt-right "journalist" and no-scare-quotes buffoon Laura Loomer sued Facebook for uninviting her from its platform. According to her lawyer, the equally-buffoonish Larry Klayman, it was defamatory for Facebook to boot Loomer from the platform by designating her a "dangerous individual."According to Loomer, her removal from Facebook entitles her to 5% of Facebook's net worth: roughly about $3 billion at the time of the suit's filing. Loomer sued in Florida but will now have to continue her lawsuit in California, where Facebook is actually located. And Facebook has fired back in its own filing, pointing out that designating users as "dangerous individuals" and performing other moderation activities is not only protected by Section 230 of the CDA, but by the First Amendment as well.Facebook's motion to dismiss [PDF] says that decisions to label people as "dangerous individuals" is an expression of Facebook's opinion of that person and their posts -- something clearly protected by the First Amendment.

You need only look at its treatment of the telecom industry to understand that the Trump administration doesn't give a flying damn about U.S. monopolies (or the impact those monopolies have on consumers, prices, innovation, or the market). Despite being one of the least competitive (and least popular) industries in America, the administration has taken a hatchet to telecom consumer protections, often using bogus data and fraud to do it. Massive, competition and job-eroding mergers are rubber stamped before the administration even sees the data. Any pretense at meaningful oversight is theater.A new report by the American Antitrust Institute suggests that despite the administration's rhetoric around "big tech," its apathy to monopolies is fairly uniform. Experts have noted for a decade than US antitrust enforcement has grown toothless and frail, and our definitions of monopoly power need updating in the Amazon era. Antitrust enforcement had already waned under the Obama administration, getting severely worse once Trump came to power:

This week, our first and second place winner on the insightful side is PaulT, on our post about the pro-Trump 12-year-old who was told that people calling him a defender of racism and sexual assault is protected speech. One commenter asserted that this means these terms have lost all meaning and can be lobbed at anyone you don't like, and Paul put that notion to bed:

Five Years AgoThis week in 2015, the White House was floating the idea of crypto backdoors while the Senate Intelligence Committee was finally deciding it should maybe keep a real eye on the Intelligence Community, and we learned that the Baltimore Police Department had asked the creators of The Wire to not include details about their cellphone surveillance tools. The lawsuits against the FCC's net neutrality rules were pouring in from the usual suspects while Republicans were rushing to kill the rules and Verizon was claiming that nobody really wants unlimited data. We also got a look at some emails from MPAA boss Chris Dodd, revealing the organization's real feelings about fair use (it's bad!) as well as its feelings about giving money to politicians involved in writing copyright law (it's good!)Ten Years AgoThis week in 2010, Apple was exercising its control over the iPhone ecosystem, a book publisher was trying vainly to exercise control over people ordering books from abroad, and a Japanese newspaper was hoping to exercising control over whether people can link to its website. The TSA admitted that body scanners could save images, the RIAA insisted that musicians can't make money without them, and telcos still maintained that Google was getting a "free ride". This was also the week that an online publication won a Pulitzer for the first time, and the week that the Library of Congress announced it would begin storing tweets.Fifteen Years AgoThis week in 2005, we took a look at how tricky things were getting in the VoIP space because people were forgetting or ignoring the fact that voice is data. We were pleased to see IBM free up a bunch of patents, but wondered why the New York Times felt that this was so baffling it needed exhaustive explanation. A customer sued Comcast for handing their info over to the RIAA, muni broadband was doing better in some places than people thought, and Google quietly launched its pre-YouTube video offering. Meanwhile, we were shocked-not-shocked to learn things like that people prefer buying cars online and mobile carriers won't make money selling music.

We don't often do book reviews here on Techdirt, but since we've been talking about reading books scanned by the Internet Archive,* this one seemed good to discuss because of how it touches on many of the issues discussed here.Of course, it's not actually a new book. Danny Dunn and the Homework Machine, by Jay Williams & Raymond Abrashkin (with illustrations by Ezra Jack Keats), is part of a series of children's novels I read as a kid. I remember liking the books but have no specific memories of any of them, except for this one, which stuck with me for all these years because of a particular point it made. But more on that in a bit.The protagonist in these stories, Danny Dunn, is an eighth grade boy who, with his widowed mother, lives with Professor Bullfinch, an inventor (the mother is his housekeeper). As this particular book highlights, the professor's inventions include a special new kind of computer, which he keeps in his home laboratory. While today it hardly seems remarkable to have a computer in one's house, let alone one that can do everything that this one can, an important thing to remember is that this book was written in 1958, before computers were anywhere nearly as powerful and ubiquitous as they are today. Part of the magic of reading this book is getting a look at that historical snapshot of what the world was like when everything, that we today take for granted, was brand new.As an author's note explains, the story was written with the input of IBM computer engineers, so presumably its description of how the machine would have worked was not entirely fanciful.

We've seen roughly a zillion trademark disputes and cases in the alcohol industries, but perhaps nothing quite like this. Jack Daniels, the famous liquor company, found itself in a prolonged court battle with VIP Products LLC. At issue? Well, VIP makes a doggy chew toy that is a parody of Jack Daniels' famous whiskey bottle and trade dress. See for yourself.So, while the toy isn't exactly similar to the Jack Daniels bottle, it's a clear homage or parody of it. Parody, of course, has space carved out for it by the First Amendment. While trademark law might lead one to see a problem here, it's the fact that even this commercial product is expressive parody that keeps it from being trademark infringement.The Jack Daniels folks didn't agree. The company issued VIP a cease and desist notice, claiming trademark infringement. In response, VIP sued for declaratory judgement that its product was not infringing by asserting First Amendment protections. Jack Daniels then countersued for trademark infringement. While a district court ruled for Jack Daniels, arguing essentially that VIP's dog toy was not an expressive work because it wasn't a book, movie, or song, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th District vacated that ruling and stated that further proceedings would need to determine if Jack Daniels can demonstrate that it can apply the Rogers test for VIP's chew toy.

As if we needed any further evidence that Clearview is a terrible company. The web-scraping, facial recognition provider has been pitching its unproven tech to an assortment of law enforcement agencies, one-percenters, and questionable governments for a little while now. It shows no sign of slowing down either, no matter how many people (including members of Congress) are now aware of its business practices and cheerful exploitation of billions of images found all over the web.Someone grabbed a few internal Clearview documents and shared them with BuzzFeed earlier this year. Maybe they shouldn't have bothered. Clearview likes harvesting data and images as quickly as possible. But it's apparently less concerned with keeping its scraped stash secure from outsiders. As Zack Whittaker reports for TechCrunch, Clearview's internal files have been accessed by a security researcher, giving us yet another reason to distrust Hoan Ton-That's company.

We've been screaming from the rooftops about the need for more transparency regarding COVID-19, and tragically so many governments are going in the opposite direction. The latest is Iraq, where the nation's media regulator revoked Reuters' "license" for three months while also fining the organization ~$21,000 for daring to claim that the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases was actually higher than the government was reporting. According to the Communications and Media Commission, this violated rules and would "have serious repercussions on societal health and safety."Remember that we've been calling out various places -- including inside the United States -- that are saying that posting "fake news" about COVID-19 should be a criminal offense. This is what happens when you allow that kind of thinking. The arguments made by those who think they're stamping out "disinformation" are identical to those made by Iraq's media regulatory agency to silence accurate reporting.At the very least, it appears that Iraq's President recognizes this is ridiculous and dangerous:

The Supreme Court is being asked to resolve a circuit split on the reach of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The CFAA has done a lot of damage to security researchers and others who violate terms of service agreements. The "others" include everyday Americans who have no idea they might be violating federal law when they do things like give fake information to social media companies or use work computers for personal reasons.The CFAA case SCOTUS is being asked to look at involves something a bit more serious than that. It deals with a police officer who took money to search a license plate database for someone who had no legal access to it. Here's a brief description of what triggered the prosecution from the Eleventh Circuit Appeals Court.

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Last week we wrote about attempts to repair much-needed ventilators for serious coronavirus cases being stymied by manufacturers' refusal to allow hospital technicians to carry out the necessary work. Trammell Hudson, who describes himself as "a programmer, photographer, frequent hacker and occasional watchmaker", has come up with another approach to supplying ventilators to hospitals. It involves taking the inexpensive and widely-used Constant Positive Air Pressure (CPAP) devices typically used for sleep apnea, and turning them into emergency ventilators suitable for COVID-19 patients. These are known as Bi-level Positive Airway Pressure (BiPAP) machines. BiPAP devices are more sophisticated than CPAP ones: they apply higher pressure when the patient tries to breathe in, and lower pressure when they start to breathe out. In investigating the popular Airsense 10 CPAP device manufactured by ResMed, Hudson made a remarkable discovery:

A few weeks back, the Trump FCC put on a big show about a new "Keep America Connected Pledge." In it, the FCC proudly proclaimed that it had gotten hundreds of ISPs to agree to not disconnect users who couldn't pay for essential broadband service during a pandemic. The problem: the 60 day pledge was entirely voluntary, temporary, and because the FCC just got done obliterating its authority over ISPs at lobbyist behest (as part of its net neutrality repeal), it's largely impossible to actually enforce.Well, guess what:

The GDPR is a mess. Still. After nearly two years of existence, it hasn't done much to improve the privacy of the millions of Europeans it affects. But it has made big tech companies even more dominant and generated a hell of a lot of collateral damage.The privacy law was created by regulators bursting with short-sightedness and good intentions. And, if we're honest, a lot of unmitigated hate towards powerful US tech companies. (Hate, let's continue being honest, many of these companies did little to mitigate.) Transferring the power of privacy back to the people sounds good on paper, but in practice, it results in things like EU regulators violating their own law and, um, trash cans being temporarily removed from post offices because of the personal data they "collected" without permission.The unintended consequences of the broadly-written law have been discussed here at Techdirt with alarming regularity. Clerical mix-ups have resulted in people accessing other people's personal data. The law has reached across the pond to screw with US court dockets and vanish posts from American search engines. GDPR has even made Christmas more of a logistical nightmare than it usually is.Now there's this: in the middle of a pandemic, GDPR is preventing food from being delivered to at-risk Europeans self-isolating to prevent exposure to the deadly coronavirus. (Paywall-free link here.)

For the better part of a decade now, we've been discussing the growth of esports as a cultural thing. This genre of competition has hit milestone after milestone, from organized and broadcasted tournaments, to professional and collegiate teams and leagues, up to and including big boy television broadcasts. More recently we've been discussing how esports has been filling the void in various forms for fans of IRL sports, with versions of sports being played by real-life professional players. Even beyond that, the fact is that a thirst for consuming competitive arrangements has caused an uptick in interest in esports across the board.To put it simply, this is esports' moment. If ever there was going to be a major uptick in both viewership of esports and participation, it would be now, at a time when traditional sports aren't being played, and arenas will remain empty for the forseeable future. Interestingly, the trend towards that uptick has already begun.

When a police officer violates rights, they're put in the awkward position of defending their actions. If qualified immunity isn't immediately awarded to them by far-too-compliant courts, they've got to put in their work in defending the indefensible. That's when taxpayer dollars get spent defending actions that violate the rights of taxpayers.And there are so many examples of bad behavior no one should be defending in court. Here are cops arguing that someone invoking their rights is suspicious behavior. Here's one claiming that driving carefully and obeying all traffic laws is suspicious. Here are two cops claiming there's an expectation of privacy in the room they used to drink alcohol and nap while on the clock. Here are some officers claiming Constitutional rights are time-wasting bullshit.There's just so much of it. It would be darkly comic if it wasn't so tragic and/or frightening. Here's a school resource officer claiming a small amount of missing cash justified the strip search of twenty-two preteen girls. Here's another arguing it's OK to arrest a bunch of middle school students to "prove a point." Oh and it's apparently just good police work to hurl a flashbang grenade in the general direction of a toddler.This is all a lead-in to this gem of a defense, offered by cops hoping to see their small drug bust survive their unconstitutional actions. (via FourthAmendment.com)After running a red light, Joshua West was approached by a police officer after he had already parked his truck in the County Administration Building's parking lot. Officer Williams asked West to get back in his truck and proceeded to ask him questions about the truck's ownership, since it only had dealer tags in the window. West presented the officer with some paperwork -- including his valid license and insurance information. Officer Williams began writing a ticket for the red light violation.At some point during this stop, West dropped a small object on the floor of his truck. The officers weren't sure what it was but they really wanted to take a look. So, without actually having the legal permission to do so (West did not give consent), they began searching the truck. During this search, they found the object West had dropped: a small envelope (one that was -- according to the officers -- "concealed in West's fist") containing a clear plastic bag with methamphetamine in it.They then performed a second search, which turned up even more drugs. West moved to suppress this evidence, arguing the initial search of his truck was unjustified.Here's where it gets ridiculous. The officers claimed the first unlawful search was in fact lawful because it was done for "officer safety." Somehow, this "protective search" for weapons inside the truck allowed the officer to open an envelope and inspect its contents. The appeals court [PDF] agrees with the district court: this is a very stupid thing to assert.

For decades, big and small telecoms alike have abused the FCC Lifeline program, a fund that's supposed to help subsidize telecom connectivity for low income users. Started by Reagan and expanded by Bush Junior, the fairly modest program doles out a measly $9.25 per month subsidy that low-income homes can use to help pay a tiny fraction of their wireless, phone, or broadband bills (enrolled participants have to chose one).On one hand, the program (which you pay into via your telecom bills) genuinely has helped many low income Americans. On the other, the program has routinely been mired in fraud and scandal due to unethical telecom giants, spotty enforcement, and a failure to adequately track how this money is spent.Case in point: the FCC last week announced it would be fining low cost mobile service provider Tracfone a cool $6 million for making up "fictitious" subscribers in order to nab Lifeline money it wasn't owned. Some of the fraud was almost comical in its depth and scope, and should have been fairly easy to spot earlier:

Since time is a concept with increasingly less meaning, you may have forgotten that it’s been only five months, not five years, since the NBA’s dustup with China over Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey’s “Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong” tweet.In response to that controversy, a number of business-conscious — to put it generously — major sports figures distanced themselves from Morey’s tweet. Some went so far as to suggest that it wasn’t their concern or responsibility to discuss human rights violations outside their own country.At the time, these responses were clear examples of craven, self-serving statements from people who were more interested in preserving their investments than speaking honestly about human rights in a country in which they have major financial interests.But given the current moment, it’s clear that they weren’t just wrong on the ethics of the situation. Because while there are many unknowns about COVID-19 — like when this nightmare will end — we do know this: China censored information about the outbreak, which helped accelerate its spread. Suddenly the chasm between American citizens and China’s silenced whistleblowers doesn’t seem so wide.The Associated Press reported this week that China’s top leadership became aware that COVID-19 would likely be a pandemic in mid-January — and sat on that information for nearly a week. As early as December, China was censoring keywords about coronavirus on social media. Reporters Without Borders chronicled the impact China’s stranglehold on information had on the pandemic, from threatening doctors trying to warn the public to arresting whistleblowers for “false rumors.” Dr. Li Wenliang, who lost his life to coronavirus, has become a martyr in China, his experience a warning of both the seriousness of this pandemic and the cruelties of the Chinese government’s repression.None of this absolves other governments of their failures to adequately respond to COVID-19. Every official, whether in China or the United States, is responsible for their own actions. But had China not censored vital information about a deadly pandemic and hid what it knew, its people could’ve been better prepared and slowed the spread of COVID-19. According to Zhong Nanshan, “one of China’s most highly regarded epidemiology experts and the leader of the National Health Commission’s task force on the epidemic,” if China had taken appropriate action early on, rather than obfuscate and censor, “the number of sick would have been greatly reduced.”China’s citizens — and people across the globe — would have had more time to respond. Whether that time was or would have been utilized responsibly is another question.Back in October, no one in the NBA could’ve known what awaited the world just a few short months later. But revisiting that debacle now casts into even sharper relief the disgrace of it all.After Morey’s tweet, Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr stated: "None of us are perfect and we all have different issues that we have to get to and saying that is my right as an American...The world is a complex place and there's more gray than black and white." Suggesting Morey wasn’t “educated” on the situation, LeBron James warned that, even though we have freedom of speech, we should “be careful” about what we say.And the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan said, “I want to have an opinion in America, there’s a civic duty to engage and do the right thing, but having an opinion on sovereign matters in other countries, it’s for those people to decide,” and concluded that “you have to respect the norms” of China. (Khan’s comments were particularly baffling given that many Chinese people have faced extreme consequences for “having an opinion on sovereign matters.”)Shaquille O’Neal was one of the few to get it right. Shaq stressed the right to free speech, and added: “Whenever you see something wrong going on anywhere in the world, you should have the right to say ‘that’s not right,’ and that’s what [Morey] did.”We should care about Uighur prison camps, forced disappearances, crackdowns in Hong Kong, suppression in Tibet, censorship of women’s rights activists, the Great Firewall, and mass surveillance simply because caring about human suffering is the right thing to do, regardless of its proximity to us.But if basic morality doesn’t persuade us, maybe our current situation will. Censorship in China may seem like a faraway problem, but its effects will be felt globally for a long time to come. If that doesn’t convince us to care, it’s not clear what will.Sarah McLaughlin is Director of Targeted Advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. The views expressed here are her own.

Since time is a concept with increasingly less meaning, you may have forgotten that it’s been only five months, not five years, since the NBA’s dustup with China over Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey’s “Fight for freedom, stand with Hong Kong” tweet.In response to that controversy, a number of business-conscious — to put it generously — major sports figures distanced themselves from Morey’s tweet. Some went so far as to suggest that it wasn’t their concern or responsibility to discuss human rights violations outside their own country.At the time, these responses were clear examples of craven, self-serving statements from people who were more interested in preserving their investments than speaking honestly about human rights in a country in which they have major financial interests.But given the current moment, it’s clear that they weren’t just wrong on the ethics of the situation. Because while there are many unknowns about COVID-19 — like when this nightmare will end — we do know this: China censored information about the outbreak, which helped accelerate its spread. Suddenly the chasm between American citizens and China’s silenced whistleblowers doesn’t seem so wide.The Associated Press reported this week that China’s top leadership became aware that COVID-19 would likely be a pandemic in mid-January — and sat on that information for nearly a week. As early as December, China was censoring keywords about coronavirus on social media. Reporters Without Borders chronicled the impact China’s stranglehold on information had on the pandemic, from threatening doctors trying to warn the public to arresting whistleblowers for “false rumors.” Dr. Li Wenliang, who lost his life to coronavirus, has become a martyr in China, his experience a warning of both the seriousness of this pandemic and the cruelties of the Chinese government’s repression.None of this absolves other governments of their failures to adequately respond to COVID-19. Every official, whether in China or the United States, is responsible for their own actions. But had China not censored vital information about a deadly pandemic and hid what it knew, its people could’ve been better prepared and slowed the spread of COVID-19. According to Zhong Nanshan, “one of China’s most highly regarded epidemiology experts and the leader of the National Health Commission’s task force on the epidemic,” if China had taken appropriate action early on, rather than obfuscate and censor, “the number of sick would have been greatly reduced.”China’s citizens — and people across the globe — would have had more time to respond. Whether that time was or would have been utilized responsibly is another question.Back in October, no one in the NBA could’ve known what awaited the world just a few short months later. But revisiting that debacle now casts into even sharper relief the disgrace of it all.After Morey’s tweet, Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr stated: "None of us are perfect and we all have different issues that we have to get to and saying that is my right as an American...The world is a complex place and there's more gray than black and white." Suggesting Morey wasn’t “educated” on the situation, LeBron James warned that, even though we have freedom of speech, we should “be careful” about what we say.And the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan said, “I want to have an opinion in America, there’s a civic duty to engage and do the right thing, but having an opinion on sovereign matters in other countries, it’s for those people to decide,” and concluded that “you have to respect the norms” of China. (Khan’s comments were particularly baffling given that many Chinese people have faced extreme consequences for “having an opinion on sovereign matters.”)Shaquille O’Neal was one of the few to get it right. Shaq stressed the right to free speech, and added: “Whenever you see something wrong going on anywhere in the world, you should have the right to say ‘that’s not right,’ and that’s what [Morey] did.”We should care about Uighur prison camps, forced disappearances, crackdowns in Hong Kong, suppression in Tibet, censorship of women’s rights activists, the Great Firewall, and mass surveillance simply because caring about human suffering is the right thing to do, regardless of its proximity to us.But if basic morality doesn’t persuade us, maybe our current situation will. Censorship in China may seem like a faraway problem, but its effects will be felt globally for a long time to come. If that doesn’t convince us to care, it’s not clear what will.Sarah McLaughlin is Director of Targeted Advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. The views expressed here are her own.

Every presidential administration seems to make a game of thwarting oversight. The current one is no different. President Trump is setting himself apart from the pack by firing IGs at an alarming pace. Whatever's being done in our name at various government agencies is being done in the dark. Whistleblowers and leakers are being hunted down and persecuted/prosecuted (another favorite presidential sport).What would be considered unlawful obstruction in a criminal investigation is just business as usual at the Executive branch. The latest (but certainly not the last) obstruction was revealed in the investigation of the "JEDI" contract procedure. Amazon really wanted to be a part of American bloodsports, but was beaten out by Microsoft for lucrative Pentagon cloud storage contracts. Amazon sued, alleging it got illegally screwed by the President, claiming his frequent derogatory comments about Amazon and the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post pushed the Pentagon towards selecting Microsoft.An investigation was opened by the Defense Department's Inspector General. And we'll never know what really happened because it appears the administration inserted itself into the investigation. Jacqueline Feldscher has more details at Politico:

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For a group prone to calling others "snowflakes," they sure seem to get their feelings hurt pretty quickly. Fans of President Trump have filed a lot of defamation lawsuits, litigiously angry they've been called things because of things they've done. This includes notable fans of Trump, such as... President Trump himself, as well as his campaign.One of the youngest Trump fans sued Newsweek over a piece covering the 12-year-old boy (who is referred to only as "C.M." in the lawsuit) and his MAGA-related antics. The Newsweek article discussed the minor's pro-Trump videos, made more popular by local coverage in C.M.'s hometown. Here's how C.M. turned from precocious pre-teen to a limited purpose public figure. From the Third Circuit Appeals Court decision [PDF]:

Despite what you might think, the U.S. government doesn't actually know where broadband is really available, which is kind of a problem when you consider the FCC doles out billions annually in subsidies to expand and improve service.Later this month, the Pai FCC is expected to sign off on a new plan (pdf) that would dole out $9 billion in funding to help shore up fifth generation (5G) wireless coverage to rural areas. Consumer groups and academics have long argued, however, that the FCC's broadband availability maps have only a fleeting relationship to reality. That concern was mirrored by the Competitive Carriers Association, a coalition of largely small and mid-sized carriers, which issued a statement warning the FCC that it shouldn't be throwing billions in subsidies around without having an accurate understanding of the problem the agency is trying to fix:

History has shown that important, innovative breakthroughs come from transparency, collaboration, and information sharing. Dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic is going to require that -- but tragically it appears that China is going in the opposite direction. The government there is now requiring "extra vetting" by the government before research regarding COVID-19 can be published. Indeed, some preliminary research has already been removed from the internet:

The alcohol trademark wars continue! Now, usually when we talk about trademark disputes in the booze business, those disputes tend to center around creative names and trade dress of specific craft brands. This is most common in the craft beer arena, but it also happens in wine and liquor. While the sudden turn towards corporatism in the craft alcohol industries is more than mildly annoying, it is at least understandable when there is a trademark fight over the more unique aspects of branding.Much more annoying is when trademark disputes arise from one party trying to fight over the more generic terms in the alcohol industry. An example of this comes to us from JaM Cellars, the makers of the JaM brand of wine. Full disclosure: I've consumed roughly a metric ton of JaM wine in my time and really, really love it. What I love less, though, is that JaM decided to sue The Wine Group, makers of Franzia boxed wine, over its newly branded "Bold and Jammy" brand of boxed red wine.

Senator Richard Burr, the head of the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee sure seems to be engaged in a bunch of sketchy looking activities. First, there was the revelation from a few weeks back of selling off a bunch of hotel stock after being briefed about COVID-19 (while simultaneously telling the public it was nothing to worry about -- and that the US was "in a better position than any other country to respond," which now looks laughable in retrospect). The latest, as revealed by ProPublica, is that Burr sold his DC townhouse to a lobbyist who has had issues before Barr's committees, in a "private" unlisted sale for what appears to be above market rates.

The nation's phone companies don't really want to be in the residential broadband business. They routinely refuse to upgrade their networks despite millions in taxpayer subsidies, yet often lobby to ensure nobody else can deliver broadband in these neglected footprints either. US telcos have a bizarre disdain for their paying customers, delivering the bare minimum (slow DSL) at the highest rates they can possibly charge without a full-scale consumer revolt. It's not surprising, then, that many telco DSL customers are fleeing to cable broadband monopolies like Comcast, assuming they even have the choice.The poster child for this kind of dysfunction has long been Frontier Communications. Frontier, the third biggest telco in the U.S., has been repeatedly busted in a series of scandals involving substandard service and the misuse of taxpayer money. In States like West Virginia, leaders have buried reports exposing the depth of Frontier's grift, and, until recently, a Frontier executive did double duty as a state representative without anybody in the state thinking that was a conflict of interest. The company has since been under investigations from New York to Minnesota for failing to upgrade or even repair its aging network.This week, Frontier finally filed for bankruptcy, hoping to finally wipe the slate clean after several decades of bungled and ill-advised mergers, massive debt, and operating a business model where snide neglect was the centerpiece. Of course the company's announcement can't acknowledge any of these self-inflicted gunshot wounds, with Frontier insisting it has learned its lesson:

Puerto Rico is a US territory and its citizens have been citizens of the United States since 1917. A little more than one hundred years later, the local government has decided the rights granted to Puerto Ricans by the US Constitution aren't really rights -- not in the middle of a pandemic.The government is already receiving criticism (and at least one lawsuit) for its COVID-related crackdowns, which include quarantine and curfew orders that appear to violate Constitutional rights. Now, the government has added onto its Public Security law to criminalize certain kinds of speech. Here's the Committee to Protect Journalists on the island's "fake news" law. (h/t Sarah McLaughlin)

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This past Saturday was (apparently) "National Pet Day." I have pets and was unaware of this, but I'll survive. Anyway, the US Copyright Office thought that this would be a good day to tweet out this utter nonsense:

If you recall, the biggest downside of the $26 billion Sprint T-Mobile merger was the fact that the deal would dramatically reduce overall competition in the U.S. wireless space. Data from around the globe clearly shows that the elimination of one of just four major competitors results in layoffs and higher prices due to less competition. It's not debatable. Given U.S. consumers already pay some of the highest prices for mobile data in the developed world, most objective experts recommended that the deal be blocked.It wasn't. Instead, the Trump FCC rubber stamped the deal before even seeing impact studies. And the DOJ not only ignored the recommendations of its staff, but DOJ "antitrust" boss Makan Delrahim personally helped guide the deal's approval process via personal phone and email accounts. Both agencies, and the vocal chorus of telecom-linked industry allies, all behaved as if all of this was perfectly legitimate and not grotesquely corrupt.At the heart of the DOJ's approval was a flimsy proposal that involved giving Dish Network some T-Mobile spectrum in the hopes that, over even years, they'd be able to build out a replacement fourth carrier. As we noted at the time there was very little chance this plan was ever going to work.One, Dish (and CEO Charlie Ergen) have a long history of empty promises in wireless. He'd been accused (including by T-Mobile previously) of simply hoarding valuable spectrum and stringing along feckless, captured regulators for years with an eye on cashing out once the spectrum's value had appreciated. Two, AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile are all heavily incentivized to make sure this proposal never got off the ground. Three, the current FCC has yet to stand up to industry on a single issue of substance, would never engage in the kind of nannying required to usher Dish's plan from pipe dream to major network.But with the pandemic, it's not even clear we're going to get to that part of the program. Reports now indicate that the pandemic and quarantine may have scuttled Dish's plans for financing and deployment, even if Ergen hadn't been bluffing. The complaints are largely coming from unsourced Wall Street insiders, but they're certainly right that funding the T-Mobile merger's deus ex machina just got notably more complicated:

The nation's courts continue to disappoint citizens who've seen their homes destroyed by overzealous cops and their home-wrecking toys. If you're a suspected criminal and you hole up in your own home, perhaps some destruction is warranted, especially if you do something like open fire on law enforcement officers. You'd think extricating someone from someone else's house would be handled with more care. But it isn't.The Ninth Circuit Appeals Court has just delivered some bad news to a homeowner who saw his farmhouse destroyed by an unknown number of cops who arrived at the scene in 55(!!) vehicles, including a "Crisis Response Team" motorhome and two helicopters. Two SWAT teams were involved -- one from the Fresno (CA) Sheriff's Office and one from the Clovis PD. (via Courthouse News)This was all in response to a homeless man who had been spotted by a neighbor breaking into David Jessen's house after being rousted from a nearby construction site. The homeless man refused to come out and threatened to shoot officers. The man was actually unarmed and had done nothing more than help himself to the contents of Jessen's fridge when the supposed standoff began. Several hours later it was over. The combined forces of two law enforcement agencies resulted in $150,000 of damage. Five rooms were teargassed. Four doors and seven windows were destroyed, along with 90 feet of fencing that was rolled over by SWAT vehicles. An entire wall was ripped out as well.All of this happened to Jessen and there's no recourse awaiting him in the Ninth Circuit. The court dispenses of multiple allegations, including failure to train and accusations that the Sheriff's Office uses live SWAT raids as "training exercises" by inviting nearby law enforcement agencies to get some hands-on work in. These claims were always a bit on the edge and it was unlikely any court would sympathize with Jessen's theory that his rural home provided the perfect training grounds for inexperienced SWAT team members.But the decision [PDF] does come to the depressing conclusion that citizens and their homes are at the mercy of police officers in situations like these. Many law enforcement officials speak proudly of the discretion they have at their disposal. Far fewer actually exercise that omnipresent option. When you have more power than restraint, you tend to cause more damage than you prevent. One homeless B&E suspect is not worth $150,000 of damage. Of course, if you're not the one stuck with the bills, it really doesn't matter how much you put on someone else's tab.The court says this is OK. It's just the unintended consequences of enforcing the law. But the use of the word "discretion" is a bit rich in this context.

For nearly a month now, since this coronavirus nightmare really began in America, we've been discussing how all sports have become esports, nearly overnight. Auto-racing kicked this trend off with some fairly great internet and television broadcasts of real racers driving digital cars. After that, the NFL and NBA made their own runs at some kind of esports events, with fairly mediocre results.Now Major League Baseball is getting involved, having kicked off a 30 player tournament using the excellent MLB: The Show Playstation series. In announcing the series, MLB indicated it would be a tournament style event with one representative from 30 MLB teams playing their teams, with games being 3 inning affairs.

Signal, the end-to-end encrypted app maker, doesn't really need Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. It can't see what everyone's saying via its offering anyway, so there's little in the way of moderation to do. But, still, it's good to see it come out with a strong condemnation of the EARN IT Act, which as been put forth by Senators Lindsey Graham, Richard Blumenthal, Dianne Feinstein, and Josh Hawley as a way to undermine both Section 230 of the CDA and end-to-end encryption in the same bill. The idea is to effectively use one as a wedge against the other. Under the bill, companies will have to "earn" their 230 protections, by putting in place a bunch of recommended "best practices" which can be effectively put in place by the US Attorney General -- the current holder of which, Bill Barr, has made clear that he hates end-to-end encryption and thinks its a shame the DOJ can't spy on everyone. And this isn't just this administration. Law enforcement officials, such as James Comey under Obama, were pushing this ridiculous line of thinking as well.To be clear, the EARN IT Act might not have a huge direct impact on a company like Signal -- since it doesn't really much rely on 230 protections (though it might at the margins). But it's good to see that it recognizes what a terrible threat the EARN IT Act would be:

We're at a time when we need more transparency from our government officials than ever. And, of course, we're not getting it. The White House ordered federal health officials to designate documents from top-level coronavirus meetings as classified, keeping them away from FOIA requesters. The nation's other coronavirus task force -- headed by Jared Kushner -- is carrying out its official business using private email accounts.Things aren't much better at the state level. The Miami Herald filed a public records request seeking information about nursing homes in the state affected by the virus. The governor has repeatedly refused to release this information, which is putting healthcare workers and nursing home residents at risk. So, the Miami Herald sued. It notified Governor Ron DeSantis' counsel that it would be filing suit, as is required by the state's litigation process. The governor's lawyers responded by telling the Herald's legal rep to drop the case.

A few weeks ago, we wrote about the misguided freakout by (mainly) publishers and some authors over the Internet Archive's decision to launch the National Emergency Library during the COVID-19 pandemic, to help all of us who are stuck at home be able to digitally access books that remain in locked libraries around the country. A key point I made in that post: most (not all, but most) of the criticisms applied to the NEL project could equally apply to regular libraries. And perhaps that's why hundreds of libraries have come out in support of the project, even as those attacking the project insist that it's not an attack on libraries.Either way, it was only a matter of time before publishers got their lapdogs in Congress to start making noise, and first out of the gate was Senator Thom Tillis, who is already deep into his attempt to make copyright law worse, and who last week sent a letter to the Internet Archive's Brewster Kahle that reads very much like it was written by book publishers. First it gets high and mighty about how the pandemic has "shown the critical value of copyrighted works to the public interest" which is just a weird way to phrase things. The fact that something valuable is covered by copyright does not automatically mean that copyright is helpful or valuable for that situation. Then it gets to the point:

You may recall that earlier this year, I heavily criticized Larry Lessig's defamation lawsuit against the NY Times, which I believe is a quintessential SLAPP suit. The NY Times presented a Medium post that Lessig had written about the Jeffrey Epstein/MIT Media Lab situation in a way which he felt unfairly presented what he had said. As Larry and I discussed in a long and frustrating podcast, Larry believed that NY Times' characterization of what he said was "false and defamatory" and that it was done for clickbait reasons -- while I believe it was that Lessig himself failed to clearly explain his ideas, and that led many people to believe he was arguing something he was not. Lessig, clearly, disagrees. While I agreed that the NY Times (and many others) failed to understand the nuance of Lessig's arguments, you don't get to sue someone for misunderstanding your poorly made arguments.Either way, for reasons that are not entirely clear, on April 2nd, the NY Times finally changed the headline and lede to the story and added a correction. The original headline had read:

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China loves to censor. And residents of the country -- as well as those in Hong Kong who are now seeing China encroach on their democracy -- love to dodge the censors. It's a game that's been played for years, but one that has become increasingly sophisticated with the erection of China's Great Firewall.For years, Chinese citizens have been using pictures of Winnie-the-Pooh as visual shorthand for President Xi Jinping. President Xi is not flattered by the comparison. His unhappiness with this portrayal has accelerated the meme's spread -- as has the government's attempts to rein it in. And that's how something as innocuous as A.A. Milne's creation has made its way to the top of the Most Censored list.But it's more than some light mockery of the country's president. The recent protests in Hong Kong have been met with increased censorship by the Chinese government. Added to the ongoing memory-holing of 1989's Tiananmen Square Massacre were duties related to a new wave of protests -- and the government's sometimes-violent responses.The more the government tries to censor, the more citizens find ways to route around it. Chinese citizens have been very creative, using a number of image-alteration tricks to trick the government's algorithms, as well as some clever wordplay that turns innocuous phrases into condemnations of government officials and efforts.When the censorship algorithms fail, the government just starts blocking platforms completely and terminating communication services. Apps vanish from online stores, often with the assistance of US tech companies that don't want to anger the government presiding over one of the largest user bases in the world.But government critics always find a way. David Gilbert reports for Motherboard that Hong Kong gamers are using coronavirus lockdown favorite "Animal Crossing" to protest Chinese government interference and spread banned images.

For years politicians have paid empty lip service about the "digital divide," or the essential lack of broadband access and affordability. Yet for decades the problem just kept getting kicked down the road. Why? Because U.S. regulators and lawmakers lacked the courage to tackle the biggest problem: a lack of broadband competition due to monopolization of the market. Nor were they willing to stand up to the politically powerful companies like AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon which fight tooth and nail against any meaningful disruption of this broken status quo.As a result, Americans have paid some of the highest prices in the world for broadband service that's not only spottily available, but routinely ranks as mediocre across a wide variety of metrics. From telecom linked think tankers and hired economists to consultants and lobbyists, there's an entire secondary industry dedicated to pretending this problem is either overblown, or doesn't exist at all.Needless to say, it shouldn't have taken a pandemic to expose the superficiality of such claims, or the fact that US telecom issues deserved more attention. With millions of Americans hunkered down at home, a brighter light than ever is being shined on the fact that 42 million Americans lack access to any broadband whatsoever (twice what the FCC claims). Millions more can't afford service because we've allowed an essential utility to be monopolized.Anybody claiming that any of this is a surprise should be rightfully laughed at:

European publishers just can't punish themselves enough, apparently. New agencies experiencing downturns related to their inability to take advantage of the miraculous communications platform that is the internet are turning to their governments, demanding something be done about Google and its [checks notes] insistence on sending search traffic their way.Building off the dubious assertion of "neighbouring rights," the French government is now demanding Google pay French newspapers for the privilege of supplying them with additional readers.

European publishers just can't punish themselves enough, apparently. News agencies experiencing downturns related to their inability to take advantage of the miraculous communications platform that is the internet are turning to their governments, demanding something be done about Google and its [checks notes] insistence on sending search traffic their way.Building off the dubious assertion of "neighbouring rights," the French government is now demanding Google pay French newspapers for the privilege of supplying them with additional readers.

The evolution of esports has been in progress for some time now. Once met with chuckles and the rolling of eyes, now esports is big business. We've seen esports hit certain checkpoints on its way to full legitimacy, from college scholarships, to leagues run by IRL professional sports organizations, all the way up to having esports tournaments broadcast by the likes of ESPN.But part of what makes professional sports fun, and what would represent the next step in the growth of esports, would be to see play start to occur at the non-professional and local level. Facebook looks to be trying to bring that very thing about with a new platform for do-it-yourself esports tournaments.

The coronavirus crisis has highlighted the importance of whistleblowers to a free and unfettered press. Throughout this emergency, it has been whistleblowers playing a critical role in informing the general public and forcing governments to make important public health decisions. And it has been whistleblowers that have pierced the will of governments around the world who have tried to downplay the significance of the threat facing their citizens.In China, where the virus is believed to have originated, the government's "fail-safe" system for spotting contagious outbreaks failed to pick up the new illness, reportedly because local officials withheld information for political reasons. Instead, central health authorities learned about the outbreak when whistleblowers leaked internal local government documents.These documents emerged alongside observations from Dr. Li Wenliang, widely known as "the whistleblower doctor," who warned colleagues about new patterns of illness in WhatsApp messages now credited with raising the alarm about the new virus. He was detained and forced to confess to spreading false rumors in January, and was subsequently diagnosed with COVID-19, leading to his death in February. The Chinese government faced massive online backlash for its handling of the Li case, and has subsequently attempted to reclaim him as a national hero.In the United States, where the official response has been fractured and at times incoherent, whistleblowers have played a key role in escalating issues within the government and to the press.It was reported in February that U.S. health workers were given neither special training nor protective gear when handling Americans who were in quarantine on Air Force bases after being evacuated from coronavirus hot zones. The information underlying that reporting came from a whistleblower report shared with Congress and obtained by media outlets.That person's identity is not publicly known, and members of Congress have reported that she has been subjected to professional retaliation.In the Navy, leadership was not taking adequate steps to protect its sailors from contracting and spreading coronavirus, according to a letter sent from aircraft carrier captain Brett Crozier to his superiors. The letter described conditions on the U.S.S. Roosevelt, which Crozier led, as it was ravaged by coronavirus. It was sent to multiple recipients through unclassified channels, which Navy officials said could encourage it to be leaked — as it ultimately was, to the San Francisco Chronicle.Although the Navy has not publicly named a suspect for that leak, it fired Captain Crozier for his role in its release. (Crozier later tested positive for coronavirus as well.) The Acting Secretary of the Navy, Thomas Modly, flew to Guam to address the crew of that ship in a profanity-laden tirade that included a warning not to consider acts of whistleblowing in the public interest. In particular, Modly's address included the lines:

It's become sort of a common refrain among many that social media is only good for spreading misinformation and disinformation. I've even seen some people claim that social media is to blame for misinformation spreading about COVID-19. This is not to say that such information doesn't exist, and isn't being spread, but it ignores how much useful information is being spread as well. Indeed, nearly all of the accurate and more factual information I received concerning COVID-19 came via experts on Twitter, and generally anywhere from a week to nearly a month ahead of "official" reports. While I haven't seen it officially stated anywhere, I have seen people say that those on Twitter were more likely to quickly embrace social distancing and lockdown, as compared to those not on Twitter.So it didn't come as much of a surprise to me to hear, on a recent episode of the Andreessen Horowitz (A16Z) podcast, a bunch of oncologists all say that the best information they were receiving was via Twitter. The entire episode is quite interesting -- talking with Dr. Bobby Green from Flatiron Health, Dr. Sumit Shah from Stanford's Cancer Center along with A16Z's Vineeta Agarwala (who recently joined A16Z and I believe is still a physician at Stanford's Cancer Center as well) -- about how oncologists are dealing with their cancer patients in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. I'd recommend listening to the whole thing, but for the purposes of this post, I wanted to highlight just two short parts. The first one comes starting around 10 minutes in (and I think I've figured out whose voice is whose, so I believe the transcript here is accurate, though I wouldn't guarantee it) where they discuss the importance of Twitter, starting with Dr. Green talking about crowdsourcing ideas.

Jared Kushner's shadowy coronavirus task force is still at work behind the scenes, bringing this country back to health by leveraging Kushner's innate ability to marry into the right family. Very little is known about it and very little will be known about thanks to the task force's decision to run communications through private email accounts.Kushner's focus appears to be the private sector -- the same area his father-in-law appears to be most worried about. The curve has yet to flatten, but Trump and Kushner want to make sure companies remain healthy even if their employees aren't.It appears Kushner is now branching out into the public sector. The private sector will be involved, but as the target for a new strain of surveillance, as Adam Cancryn reports for Politico.

A few weeks back, we noted that the Trump Campaign was sending threatening letters about a TV ad by the PAC Priorities USA that criticized Trump's handling of the pandemic. You can see it here:As we noted, the threat letters only caused a lot more people to watch the ad, and it seemed notable that they only focused on one single line in the ad, and not the rest of it. Now the campaign has, incredibly, made good on the threats and filed suit against at least one TV station, WJFW-NBC in Wisconsin.The lawsuit is for "common law defamation" and is -- like so many Trump or Trump Campaign lawsuits -- not about any real legal issue, but mostly about three things: (1) creating chilling effects for others, (2) performing for the Trump base, and (3) fundraising for the campaign. There is no chance this lawsuit gets anywhere. Political advertising is among the most protected under the 1st Amendment, and, in fact, Congress has rules telling broadcasters that they cannot reject political ads from campaigns even if they're false. Of course, this ad is from a PAC, not the campaign directly, so that rule does not apply directly, but the general 1st Amendment principles still very much apply.On top of that, there is no way in hell that the clips, as cut, meet the high bar for defamation of a public figure. The argument made by the campaign is that the clip takes one thing that Trump said -- "this is their new hoax" -- and takes it out of context. The context being that Trump was referring to the Democrats' "politicization" of COVID-19, and the ad implies he's saying that the disease itself is a hoax. The problem is that the difference here is not even remotely close to what it takes to be defamatory, even if it's misleading. For one thing, Trump was playing down the threat and risk of COVID-19 in criticizing Democrats, who were warning that it was going to be a big deal. And that proved entirely accurate. The context here does little to actually make Trump look any better, and in no way rises to the level of it being defamatory.On top of that, as I've pointed out repeatedly, the Trump campaign itself has regularly (for years!) posted much more misleadingly cut videos of his critics, including Joe Biden. So, even if the Priorities USA ad was defamatory, it would open up the Trump campaign to similar claims many times over. But it's not defamatory.It's notable, of course, that Wisconsin, where this lawsuit was filed, has no anti-SLAPP law at all. And while the case is still likely to get thrown out at an early stage, the lack of an anti-SLAPP law means that (1) they're much less likely to get back attorney's fees, and (2) it's still going to involve much more expensive legal work than if they could use an anti-SLAPP law.Still, even though the case will get thrown out, Trump will "succeed." Already I'm seeing clueless fans of Trump's (the same ones who insist they're all for the 1st Amendment) cheering on this example of Trump "hitting back against the fake news media" and it will almost certainly create chilling effects at other news stations that don't want to take on the time and expense necessary to defend even this kind of bogus lawsuit. And that's a huge shame, because a key aspect of the 1st Amendment is to protect political discourse -- even when that discourse is misleading.At the very least, this case should be a strong reminder that (1) Wisconsin needs an anti-SLAPP law and (2) so does the federal government.