Techdirt

Let's get this straight out of the gate: I am an expert on nothing to do with the stock market beyond my own personal investments. So, absolutely none of this should be taken as any advice or indication that a certain position in any market is being advocated personally by me. This is not a post about where you should invest your money. It is, instead, a post about how silly certain portions of the stock market appear to have become.And that statement is informed by a decade of watching GameStop, the retailer for new and used video games, new and used video game consoles, and mostly new Funko Pop toys, has been driven further and further from relevance. While predictions about the demise of GameStop have been around forever, recently there is more reason to think they're going to become true. First, the trend of expanded purchases for digital downloads does away with a hefty chunk of GameStop's potential revenue. Yes, GameStop offers its own digital download platform... but nobody uses it. In recognition of that trend, the next generation of consoles are being offered with an option to forgo any optical drive entirely, which would be another nail in GameStop's coffin if widely adopted. And, like most retail operations, the COVID-19 pandemic has severely crippled GameStop's business.Which is why those challenges and trends are accurately reflected in GameStop's stock price, because... oh, wait... shit.So, yeah, in the month of January, GameStop's stock has risen roughly 4x. And if you want to try to explain that away, please note that pulling the timeline back further actually makes all of this look way more bonkers.Okay, so what's going on here? Did GameStop come up with an entirely new strategy to propel its relevance in the long-term video game industry? Did it totally restructure, coming up with cost-saving measures or store and staffing closures that make it suddenly more profitable? Was there some consequential change of leadership or outside investment in the company?Nope, none of that. Instead, there appears to be a sort of insane tug of war going on right now on Reddit between short sellers and day traders that is artificially sending this stock on an insane rollercoaster.

We've got one more cross-post from another podcast this week, and the subject is still the law that's dominating the tech policy discourse: Section 230. Mike recently joined R Street's Shoshana Weissmann on the Daily Tech News Show hosted by Tom Merritt, for a roundtable discussion about the all-important online liability shield and its many, many vital applications that people typically fail to consider. You can listen to the whole conversation on this week's episode of the Techdirt Podcast.Follow the Techdirt Podcast on Soundcloud, subscribe via iTunes or Google Play, or grab the RSS feed. You can also keep up with all the latest episodes right here on Techdirt.

Republicans have spent decades holding themselves out as the party of "small government" and "keeping government out of business," while also claiming to be strict supporters of an originalist interpretation of the Constitution. The reality, of course, is something altogether different. Even as Republican politicians often pay lips service to these claims, their policy ideas show the opposite. The top Republican on the House Energy & Commerce Committee has announced the GOP's "Big Tech Accountability Platform" that has an astounding level of government interference not just into business, but into the 1st Amendment rights of all Americans.The full plan is somewhat astounding (I don't know why it's showing sideways, but I guess download it and rotate it). It opens by paying lip service to the idea of the 1st Amendment, and the value of "more speech" over suppressing speech. But then immediately seeks to undermine the 1st Amendment by suggesting that internet companies should be compelled to host speech they disagree with. It falsely suggests that the decision to suspend President Trump's account was an attack on his conservative views, and not his efforts to incite his supporters into overturning the election. It includes a section on giving law enforcement more access to content and forcing tech companies to become an arm of law enforcement. It (of course!) has a section on protecting "our children."The whole thing is a censor's dream.Of course, the GOP has no real power in Congress, especially in the House right now, but that could change quite a bit over the next few years, so we should take these proposals seriously. The key parts of the plan are here:We could go through piece by piece and explain how these issues are misleading, wrong, silly, or pointless, but I'm sure we'll have plenty of chances to address each point as they start showing up in various bills.What is clear, however, is that most of this policy is not about any principled stands the GOP may have. Most of it is about spite.

Back in 2019, a California court tossed a lawsuit brought by a self-described feminist who had her Twitter account banned following some posts targeting transgender people. Meghan Murphy tweeted enlightening things like "men aren't women tho" and "how are transwomen not men?" She also "deadnamed" transsexuals, identifying them using their former gender/names, something Twitter's rules explicitly prohibit.The court didn't care much for Murphy's proposed class action lawsuit, pointing out that Twitter is free to remove users and content for any and all reasons, even reasons it hadn't yet added to its official list of rules. (The deadname prohibition came after Murphy's account was permanently suspended.) This may seem unfair, but that's the rules people agree to when using a platform provided by others.Beyond that, there's Section 230, which shields Twitter from exactly these kinds of lawsuits. The court pointed out Twitter's editorial decisions (i.e., the removing of her account and its content) do not remove the platform's Section 230 protections. In fact -- contrary to inexplicably popular belief -- Section 230 of the CDA expressly provides for good faith moderation efforts and does not limit them to removing only illegal or illicit content.The court tossed the lawsuit and Murphy appealed. Murphy's second pass doesn't go any better than her first. And, again, it's Section 230 that's instrumental to this second dismissal. From the decision [PDF]:

The Power User PC Software Bundle has 3-year subscriptions to a suite of software products to help you recover data, erase sensitive files, and convert audio/video files. Stellar Data Recovery is an easy-to-use Windows data recovery software to get back lost documents, emails, photos, videos & many more from HDD, USB, memory card, and other devices. Stellar Data Recovery for iPhone is an efficient DIY software to recover lost data from all iOS devices, iCloud, and iTunes backup files. BitRaser File Eraser is secure software that permanently wipes sensitive files stored on a laptop or desktop PC. Stellar Repair for Photo software repairs corrupt photos and restores your prized memories. Stellar Converter for Audio Video converts videos and audio files to various popular formats, having different codecs, frame rates, resolution & bitrates. Plus, it features utilities for video editing, GIF creation, metadata insertion, and more. The bundle is on sale for $60.Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Here's an interesting lawsuit, brought to you by some familiar names. And by "interesting," I mean "exceedingly stupid."The lawsuit [PDF] was filed by "Ambassador Marc Ginsberg." Ginsberg last served as an ambassador in 1998. And yet, that title is being used to name him as the plaintiff. The defendant is Apple. In the mix (but not a defendant) is Telegram, a popular and often controversial messaging app that has served as a mouthpiece for alt-right personalities and others who have been banned from more mainstream social media services.Ginsberg also runs the Coalition for A Safer Web (the co-plaintiff in this lawsuit), a non-profit whose mission is "inter alia, to promote new public/private partnerships to facilitate the expeditious removal of extremist and terrorist incitement and instruction content from social media platforms." The executive team at CSW includes Dr. Demetrick Pennie, a former Dallas Police sergeant and, according to the site, "leading CDA 230 expert."Here's some of Dr. Pennie's 230 expertise at work:

As we've noted a few times, there's an underlying belief in American tech policy that if we just keep throwing money at entrenched broadband monopolies we can lift US broadband out of the depths of mediocrity. But as we've noted more than a few times, heavily subsidizing a bunch of regional monopolies, while not doing anything about the conditions that created and insulate those monopolies, doesn't result in much changing. It's especially ineffective when you don't really punish ISPs for decades of taking taxpayer money in exchange for network upgrades that almost always, like clockwork, wind up unfinished.The latest case in point: in 2015, regional monopolies CenturyLink and Frontier Communications took nearly $800 million in taxpayer funds to expand broadband to underserved areas they deemed too expensive to wire themselves. And guess what happened:

When cops complain about marijuana legalization being the slippery slope to a crime-ridden, apocalyptic hellhole, they're really only complaining about the removal of one of their favorite excuses for searching vehicles, houses, and people without a warrant.For years, the odor of marijuana has been a blank check for warrantless searches. But when marijuana possession is no longer a crime, it stands to reason the odor of marijuana is no more "suspicious" than the odor of gasoline or fresh bread or a litter box. These are all just things now -- non-criminal things. And yet, cops can't seem to let this go, even years after the contraband is no longer contraband.A recent decision [PDF] by an Oregon appeals court -- a state where marijuana has been legal since 2015 -- reaffirms the legality of possessing marijuana and firmly reminds the state's law enforcement they need far more than a whiff of marijuana to engage in further hassling of citizens. (via FourthAmendment.com)In this case, a state trooper followed his nose to an arrest for drug trafficking. It started with a traffic stop:

Police reform efforts are being mounted all over the nation, but very few appear to be capable of creating any lasting, positive changes. Reforming law enforcement is difficult to do. Legislators, for the most part, still "back the blue," if for no other reason than cops are also government employees. Powerful police unions are firmly entrenched, providing the biggest obstacle to reform -- fully capable of gutting reform bills by leaning on legislators and threatening less law enforcement activity.The Louisiana legislature has finally agreed to some recommendations from a state task force. The best recommendations, however, were excised from the final proposal, leaving state residents to deal with law enforcement agencies which won't really have to change much of anything to comply with the minimal changes.Perhaps the most significant change is this, which shows you just how little will be changing for the state's cops.

Readers here will not need to be reminded that BMG, a prolific music label, is also a prolific enforcer of copyright. BMG has been party to some of the most notable instances of copyright enforcement, from its lawsuit against Cox, to its use of Rightscorp to troll internet users and lie to them, up to and including taking down news videos of President Obama singing an Al Green song. There are plenty more examples after those, leaving anyone perusing them with the distinct impression that BMG super-duper respects the strictest enforcement of copyright laws, presumably in order to protect creators of content.But that wouldn't seem to be the case if the accusations from the Jehovah's Witness affiliated Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society are true. See, BMG is the publisher for artist Aled Jones' album Blessings, which is essentially a collection of religious songs from a wide variety of faiths. Jones included a Jehovah's Witness song, kicking off a shit storm.

South Carolina's civil asset forfeiture programs are abusive and unconstitutional. That was the conclusion reached by a South Carolina court late last year.

For the last year, we've been highlighting how Australia's rush to create a Google News tax is so stupid. It follows similar efforts in Europe and a few other places, where newspapers that spent years dismissing the internet and doing little to adapt, are now whining that Google is... sending them free traffic and not paying them for it.It's truly bizarre. Google sends lots of traffic to news organizations. Tons of news organizations employ search engine optimization experts who work hard to get even more traffic from Google. But... around the globe, many of them are demanding that Google also pay them for sending them traffic. Back in 2014, Google shut down its Google News offering in Spain when that country passed a similar law. Over the past few months, Google has tried to explain to Australian officials just how incredibly stupid this plan is, but Australian officials (and the newspaper lobbyists down under) don't seem to care.Last week, Google finally pulled out the nuclear option, saying that it might just pull out of Australia entirely if the law passes. That's an even bigger threat than the one Facebook made a few months back, when it claimed it would likely block the ability of anyone in Australia to share news on Facebook. But Google says it may shut down entirely in Australia:

With Trump FCC boss Ajit Pai and his giant coffee mug headed for the revolving door, the Biden administration has tagged existing FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel as the new boss of the agency. Rosenworcel is well liked by consumer advocates and industry insiders, and largely opposed the Trump FCC's efforts to lobotomize the agency's consumer protection authority, kill net neutrality, eliminate decades-old media consolidation rules, and effectively turn the agency into a rubber stamp for Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon's every policy pipe dream.Outside of that time when she helped scuttle an FCC effort to bring more competition to the cable box because the US Copyright Office (falsely) claimed doing so would violate copyright, Rosenworcel has a good track record as somebody genuinely interested in real data and real solutions. That makes her a notable improvement to Ajit Pai, who literally could not even admit US broadband is expensive, spotty, and generally mediocre, or that this is due to rampant, unchecked monopolization. It's a willful blindness Rosenworcel clearly doesn't share:

Blade is the world's thinnest bone conduction speaker. Using bone conduction technology, this speaker turns sound into a mechanic vibration of different frequencies, leveraging the effects of the different materials on top of which it is placed and used. It delivers a high sound volume, being 4 to 5 times louder than the average cell phone speakers' volume. Put Blade on top of anything and experience a DIY customizable experience of sound. It's on sale for $28.95 and is available is grey, silver, or cyan.Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

In Netflix's recent release, "Death to 2020," Lisa Kudrow does an absolutely pitch perfect parody of whiny "conservative" upset about non-existent "cancel culture" over "conservative views." Kudrow, playing the role of a Trump campaign spokesperson/conservative commentator, talks about how she has to keep saying that "Conservative Voices Are Being Silenced," including on a variety of popular media interviews and, of course, a NYT best-selling book by the same title:Of course, it's becoming harder and harder to create satire and parody these days when you have terrible people like Senator Josh Hawley making such parody obsolete within days. We've already talked about how Hawley, a lying demagogue, who apparently has been plotting how to run for President since he was a child, threw an absolute shit fit when Simon & Schuster told him it no longer wanted to publish his book. Hawley, who was (briefly) a constitutional law professor, has a law degree from Yale, and clerked at the Supreme Court for Chief Justice Roberts, ridiculously claimed that a private enterprise deciding it didn't want to do business with him was an attack on his 1st Amendment rights. It was not. And, of course, within a few days, he had a new publisher.But, Josh Hawley is going to Josh Hawley, which means never letting a chance to play the whiny, disingenuous victim go to waste. He's now been given column space in one of the most well known newspapers in the country, the NY Post, to whine about how he's being "muzzled." And, of course, as soon as that was published, he immediately ran to his Twitter account, which has over half a million followers, to post a link to this op-ed in a major American newspaper, to whine about how he's been muzzled.I wish I were so muzzled.Nearly everything about the article is bullshit. Josh Hawley, who is trying to restore his reputation after he was, correctly, seen as a key instigator of the insurrectionist mob at the Capitol, clearly has no compunction about just making shit up in an attempt to change the narrative. He wants to blame everyone, but refuses to take any responsibility. He's the antithesis of every stupid "conservative talking point" he spent decades spewing. He's refusing to take responsibility for his own actions. He's demanding government action to stop the free market. He's attacking actual free speech when it criticizes him.I'm not going to quote any of it, because that's sinking to the level he wants. If you want to read it, you can see it above, but Prof. David Karpf's hilarious thread critiquing it as if it were a draft handed in by a student is basically all you need to see:

Late last year, the Tampa Bay Times broke the news the local sheriff's office had set up a "pre-crime" program targeting schoolkids in Pasco County. The same program used by the Pasco County Sheriff's Office to harass residents into "moving or suing" (yes, those are the Sheriff's words) had been retooled to target minors, utilizing highly questionable access to students' records.Some deputies made dozens of visits a year to residents that the Office had declared pre-criminals, citing them missing mailbox numbers or overgrown grass. What's in line for students being subjected to the same scrutiny isn't clear, but the Sheriff's broad list of indicators is pretty disturbing. According to the Sheriff, potentially criminal minors were students with low grades, spotty attendance, and/or were victims/witnesses of domestic violence.The program itself was disturbing. But the Sheriff's access to student records appeared to be illegal. A privacy group dug into the laws surrounding the use of student records and came to the conclusion this program violated federal privacy protection laws, namely FERPA (Family Education Rights and Privacy Act).While educators may have been able to share some records with School Resource Officers working with the Sheriff's Department, they were forbidden from sharing those records with the Sheriff's Office -- at least not without parental consent. Parental involvement in any of this pre-crime BS appears to be minimal. In fact, most parents (and administrators) appeared to be unaware the program even existed before the Tampa Bay Times uncovered it with public records requests.Now the program has drawn the attention of Congress.

This week, both our winners on the insightful side come from the long conversation on our post about the deplatforming of Parler. In first place, it's Bloof with a response to the notion of the censorship of conservatives academia:

Sign up for the Public Domain Game Jam on itch.io »It's now been almost a full month since works published in 1925 entered the public domain in the US, and that means we're nearing the end of our public domain game jam, Gaming Like It's 1925 — but it's not too late to get involved! After all, plenty of game jams only run for a couple of days, and you've still got an entire week to cook up an analog or digital game based on newly-public-domain material and compete for one of our great prizes.Check out the game jam page for the full rules and some links to public domain works you could draw on, as well as game design tools for designers of all experience levels. Even if you've never tried making a game before, a week is plenty of time to learn the basics of Twine or Story Synth, and anyone can try their hand at thinking up a roleplaying or party game — we've had winning games that are nothing more than some rules in a text document.The jam runs through January 31st and then our judges will begin playing the entries to select winners in six categories (the winners of the 2020 jam are linked below, and you can read our judges' thoughts on them here):

Clearview's attempt to dodge a potential class-action lawsuit filed against it in Illinois has just been booted back to the Illinois court system by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.Clearview -- facial recognition's current supervillain -- was sued in Illinois by Illinoisans alleging violation of Illinois law. Multiple times.The plaintiffs claimed Clearview's scraping of publicly available photos, location data, and other information from a variety of websites and social media platforms violated the state's law, which requires companies to obtain permission from people before harvesting and selling access to this data.This same law netted a $550 million settlement from Facebook for its preemptive tagging of people in photos, something a court found to be a violation the law passed by the state in 2008. This settlement appeared to rattle Clearview, which filed documents with the court stating it would no longer do business in Illinois or knowingly collect biometric information from Illinois residents.This lawsuit continues, however, thanks to the Seventh Circuit. In a somewhat novel move, the plaintiffs argued they do not have standing to pursue this lawsuit in federal court. Clearview argued otherwise, hoping to establish enough standing to take the lawsuit federal, at which point it would agree the plaintiffs did not have enough standing to move the case forward.It's not often plaintiffs argue against their own standing, but the plaintiffs want this case in a state court, where they can pursue Clearview for violation of state laws. The only federal hook is Clearview's existence as a Delaware corporation headquartered in New York. State courts will normally allow lawsuits like these to be moved to federal court because the plaintiffs and defendant aren't located in the same state.The district court, however, agreed with the plaintiffs: they did not allege any federal harms or anything else that would make the case better served at the federal level. The opening of the Seventh Circuit's opinion [PDF] highlights the bizarre nature of this appeal:

Summary: Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte's rise to power was greatly aided by Facebook and its overwhelming popularity within the country. An estimated 97% of Filipinos have Facebook accounts and the company itself co-sponsored a Q&A session with local journalists that was broadcast on 200 radio and television stations and livestreamed on the platform. Questions were crowdsourced from Facebook users, helping propel the mayor of Davao to the highest office in the country.Duterte's run for office was also directly assisted by Facebook, which flew a team of reps in to help the candidate's campaign staff maximize the platform's potential. As his campaign gathered critical mass, he and his team began weaponizing the tools handed to him by Facebook, spreading misinformation about other candidates and directly targeting opponents and their supporters with harassment and threats of violence.Not much has changed since Duterte took office in 2016. Facebook continues to be his preferred social media outlet. But Facebook's latest attempt to tackle the spread of misinformation on its platform may prompt Duterte to find another outlet to weaponize. In September 2020, Facebook's moderation team announced they had removed a "network" linked to the Philippines government for violating its rules against "coordinated inauthentic behavior."

Last summer we covered how Trump had hired Michael Pack, a protégé of Steve Bannon, to run US Agency for Global Media. USAGM is the organization that runs Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, and Middle East Broadcasting. It also runs the Open Technology Fund (which itself spun out of Radio Free Europe, and helped to fund a variety of important technologies for enabling free speech among dissidents and activists). It was clear from the beginning that Pack's plan was to (a) recraft the media organizations to be propaganda machines and (b) shift OTF's funding to some organizations with security/encryption techniques that were not widely trusted. Pack fired a bunch of people in a move that a court later rejected, noting that Pack did not have the authority to do so.He also began a witch hunt at Voice of America, seeking to investigate journalists for "anti-Trump bias" and get rid of them. A reporter who asked a perfectly reasonable question to Mike Pompeo was reassigned.As we pointed out, this kind of meddling, beyond likely breaking the law, was also doing tremendous damage to the credibility of these organizations, and certainly to the important technical work that OTF funds.So it was good to see that one of Biden's first moves upon getting into office was to demand Pack's resignation and also to shuffle the leadership at Voice of America.In an act of true projection, on the way out the door Pack whined about how being fired was a partisan act and would harm credibility. This is all bullshit. From day one, Pack was a partisan hack who tried to turn Voice of America into a pro-Trump media organization.Whether or not people like or appreciate the work that USAGM and its various organizations do, there is no doubt that Pack's efforts harmed those organizations' credibility. Good riddance.

Surprising no one who understands anything about international trade, the UK's departure from the EU -- Brexit -- is proving to be disastrous for its economy. Among the latest victims are Scottish fishermen, who are no longer able to sell their catches to EU customers, and the UK meat industry, which has tons of rotting pigs' heads on its hands. And it turns out that Brexit will be making copyright worse too.It concerns the slightly obscure area of what are traditionally called "orphan works", although "hostage works" would be a better description. Whatever you call them, they are the millions of older works that are out of print and have no obvious owners, and which remain locked away because of copyright. This has led to various proposals around the world to liberate them, while still protecting the copyright holders if they later appear and assert ownership. One of these proposals became the 2012 EU Directive "on certain permitted uses of orphan works". It created a new copyright exception to allow cultural institutions to digitize written, cinematic or audio-visual works, and sound recordings, and to display them on their Web sites, for non-commercial use only. As Techdirt noted at the time, the Directive was pretty feeble. But even that tiny copyright exception has been taken away in the UK, following Brexit:

Last summer, as anti-police brutality protests were in full swing, a Lafayette man posted an obviously bogus Antifa call to action on his "cajUUn Memes" Facebook page. The announcement called for "cajun comrades" to rise up and engage in a takeover of the River Ranch neighborhood.Anyone with half a brain reading the post would have known it was a joke. It contained references to marijuana (the group was to meet at 4:20 pm) and asked that only "card carrying members" of Antifa show up. There was also the line: "Arms optional. Legs encouraged."For some reason, neither the mayor nor the local police department got the joke. The mayor issued an official statement about the city's "zero-tolerance policy for threats to life and property" and a police spokesperson said the PD would be monitoring the event despite there being "no credible evidence" the planned takeover of River Ranch would take place.The day came and went without any Antifa uprising taking place. That should have been the end of it. It wasn't. Two months later, the Lafayette Parish government sued John Merrifield, the man behind the joke post.

With the BitDegree Academy AWS Online Courses, you can master the world's most prominent cloud platform via over 191 lectures and 10 practice exams. You will be introduced to the concept behind clouds, such as its architecture design principles, AWS value proposition, and cloud economics aspects. You will also learn about AWS shared responsibility, access management, concepts of security, and compliance. All the content was prepared with absolute cloud beginners in mind, so there’s no need to worry about steep learning curves or complex IT terminology. It's on sale for $80.Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

A lawsuit [PDF] against Google over ad practices and search engine rankings has been dismissed. The allegations start normally before taking a sharp turn into some recently favored causes of action. First, there's the RICO. Second, the plaintiff claims the RICO and everything that goes with it is a result of Google's anti-conservative bias.Here's the most coherent part of the allegations:

While Amazon Ring and other doorbells certainly deliver a certain convenience, they've created no shortage of entirely new problems. Problems that could have been avoided with just a bit of foresight and ethical behavior. First comes the fact they're being integrated into our already accountability-optional law enforcement and intelligence apparatus. Then, like the rest of the "let's connect everything to the internet but do a shit job on basic security and privacy because it costs money" IOT sector, they can't be bothered to get the fundamentals right when it comes to consumer security.The latest example involves Ring failing to adequately secure users information when they share to the Ring "Neighbors" portion of the Ring app. Journalists had already showcased how Ring's security standards were hot garbage. And while Amazon has taken some steps to address those concerns (like making two-factor authentication mandatory), this week it was revealed that Ring’s Neighbors app was exposing the precise locations and home addresses of users who had posted to the app:

As we've discussed for some time, the esports industry has been the subject of unprecedented growth in competitive sports. This growth trend began nearly a decade ago, but its pace steadily increased and was then supercharged by the COVID-19 pandemic. The industry is now looking back at a year when it nearly doubled in size, basking in its new found cultural position. So, the esports industry has grown. Now it's time for it to grow up.What do I mean by that? Well, it's time that the industry learn the same lessons many other sports leagues have had to learn: it's the players that drive interest among viewers. Personalities are what become popular in competitive sports and those personalities need space to shine through, rather than be muzzled. And, unfortunately, the esports industry has a nasty habit of trying to muzzle its personalities.The most glaring example of this came during the Hong Kong protests of 2019. During those protests, many esports athletes spoke out in support for the protests. This led to those athletes being punished, including bans of high profile streamers and others. Given all that's happened in and to Hong Kong since, it's hard to imagine companies like Blizzard arguing they were on the right side of history when it comes to Hong Kong. Frankly, I think I'd enjoy seeing them try.But the Hong Kong protests are far from the only example of gaming companies and esports events taking a heavy hand to silence athletes. You will recall that Nintendo, after nixing a competition over its use of a mod that basically made putting the tourney on possible, likewise nixed a Splatoon tournament broadcast for the crime of some of the players criticizing the company.And the latest example of all of this is a Mortal Kombat player being disqualified from a tournament all for mildly chiding the game developers about an over-powered character in the game.

As was totally expected, US district court judge, Barbara Jacobs Rothstein, has handily rejected Parler's motion to force Amazon to turn Parler's digital lights back on. The order is pretty short and sweet, basically saying that Parler hasn't even remotely shown a likelihood of success in the case that would lead to having the court order Amazon to take the social media site back.On the antitrust claims, the judge points out that these appear to be a figment of Parler's imagination:

Another day, another privacy scandal where the penalties do virtually nothing to prevent history from repeating itself. This time the focus is on the Flo Period period and fertility tracking app, which has struck an arguably pathetic deal with the Federal Trade Commission over allegations that it lied to app users about sharing private health information with third-party firms, including Facebook and Google. According to the complaint and settlement, Flo informed the app's users that customer data would be "kept private." Instead, Flo sold consumer data, including the dates of user periods and their pregnancy plans with third parties:

Another law enforcement officer has lost his job after being unable to accept the outcome of a national election. Lots of officers around the nation are under investigation for their participation in the Capitol Hill raid earlier this month. There's another name to add to that long list -- one who used to work for one of the worst law enforcement officials in the county, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd. (h/t WarOnPrivacy)Trump repeatedly made it clear he preferred cops to the people they served and would be willing to overlook almost any sin they committed, as long as they did it with a uniform on. Trump claimed not liking cops was "wrong" and that he would fix it. He praised extrajudicial killings by federal officers and encouraged beat cops to beat arrestees.That love for cops is paying dividends. But probably not paying enough to offset the loss of a law enforcement salary. A Polk County deputy has been fired for threatening messages about the January 6 raid on the Capitol.

On Thursday morning, the Oversight Board (you're apparently not supposed to call it the "Facebook Oversight Board" since it's -- theoretically -- independent) announced that it had agreed to review Facebook's decision to indefinitely suspend former President Donald Trump.

The Complete Chess Bundle has 14 courses taught by International and Grandmasters designed to help you go from beginner to club level chess player. You'll learn different strategies and tactics via 120+ hours of content. It's on sale for $100.Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

One of the most predictable things in the world is that if anything is going on in the universe, people will try to find some way to make video games into a villain over it. This is doubly true if there are children within a thousand miles of whatever is going on. Notable when these claims arise is the velocity with which any nuance or consideration of a counter-vailing opinion is chucked out the window.Meanwhile most of the world, and the United States in particular, is suffering in all manner of ways from the COVID-19 pandemic. Hundreds of thousands dead. Millions falling ill. Economic fallout for large swaths of the public. High tensions due to all of this, compounded by a mad would-be-king inciting violence in the house of government. And, even for those not suffering health or massive economic crises, there's the simple matter that we're all more isolated, all home more often, and all mired in a severe lack of socialization and life-affirming activities.And it's in this environment, apparently, that the New York Times has decided to chide parents for letting their kids play video games and allowing more screen time more generally.

By law, the FCC is required once a year to issue a report indicating whether quality broadband is being deployed on a "reasonable and timely basis." If not, the agency is supposed to, you know, actually do something about it. Unsurprisingly, the Pai FCC last year issued a glowing report declaring that everything was going swimmingly, despite some glaring evidence to the contrary. After all, the nation's phone companies have effectively stopped upgrading their DSL lines, leaving cable giants like Comcast with a growing monopoly over faster broadband speeds (no, neither Elon Musk nor 5G will magically fix this problem).As one of its last acts in power, the outgoing Trump FCC this week issued its latest annual report on the state of broadband deployment in the US. And, rather unsurprisingly for an agency that took kissing monopoly ass to an entirely new level, outgoing boss Ajit Pai used it to declare the US broadband is perfectly healthy thanks to mindless deregulation and his incredible leadership:

This is how the law enforcement community has responded to nationwide complaints that they do their jobs poorly, violently, and abusively: by doing their jobs poorly, violently, and abusively.The killing of George Floyd by a Minnesota police officer set off anti-police brutality protests across the nation. These protests were met with more police violence, with some of the violence singling out journalists, protesters, and legal observers. Things have since calmed down, but each new instance of police violence tends to result in another set of protests. Cops have proven they can't stop killing people or violating their rights so this cycle will continue in perpetuity.Since it's impossible to calm the police down, it appears prosecutors and law enforcement agencies are shifting their focus into inflicting maximum pain on those exercising First Amendment rights. A truly ridiculous response to a recent protest in Arizona shows just how far the government is willing to go to stifle dissent. Maybe the ultimate goal isn't to end protests, but the end result of this Phoenix protest shows local law enforcement is willing to put their credibility on the line to punish citizens for being unhappy with the status quo.

The trademark dispute between Jack Daniels, famed maker of brown liquor, and VIP Products, maker of less famous doggy chew toy Bad Spaniels, has been a long and winding road. If you aren't familiar with the case, the timeline goes like this. VIP made a dog toy that is a clear parody homage to a bottle of Jack Daniels whiskey, called Bad Spaniels (get it?). Jack Daniels sent a C&D letter to VIP, claiming trademark infringement. VIP turned around and sued Jack Daniels for declaratory judgement that its product did not infringe, leading Jack Daniels to then file its own trademark lawsuit in response. The initial court ruling found for Jack Daniels, rather bizarrely claiming that VIP's product couldn't be expressive work, thereby protected by the First Amendment, because it wasn't a form of traditional entertainment. On appeal, however, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit said that ruling was made in error, vacated it, and instructed the lower court to apply the Rogers test since the product was clear parody and expressive after all. Rather than have that fight, though, Jack Daniels instead petitioned the Supreme Court to hear its case.While I might find it interesting to see just how many doggy-related puns several SCOTUS Justices might fit into opinions on this case, however, we now have the news that the court has declined to hear the case.

Summary: Since the rise of the internet, the recording industry has been particularly concerned about how the internet can and will be used to share infringing content. Over time, the focus of that concern has shifted as the technology (as well as copyright laws) have shifted. In the early 2000s, most of the concern was around file sharing applications, services and sites, such as Napster, Limewire, and The Pirate Bay. However, after 2010, much of the emphasis switched to so-called “cyberlockers.”Unlike file sharing apps, that involved person-to-person sharing directly from their own computers via intermediary technologies, a cyberlocker was more of a hard drive on the internet. The issue was that some would store large quantities of music files, and then make them available for unlicensed downloading.While some cyberlockers were built directly around this use-case, at the same time, cloud storage companies were trying to build legitimate businesses, allowing consumers and businesses to store their own files in the cloud, rather than on their own hard drive. However, technologically, there is little to distinguish a cloud storage service from a cyberlocker, and as the entertainment industry became more vocal about the issue, some services started to change their policies.Dropbox is one of the most well-known cloud storage companies. Wishing to avoid facing comparisons to cyberlockers built off of the sharing of infringing works, the company put in place a system to make it more difficult to use the service for sharing works in an infringing manner, while still allowing the service to be useful for storing personal files.Specifically, if Dropbox received a DMCA takedown notice for a specific file, the company would create a hash (a computer generated identifier that would be the same for all identical files), and then if you shared any file from your Dropbox to someone else (such as by creating a shareable link), Dropbox would create a hash and check it against the database of hashes of files that had previously received DMCA takedown notices.This got some attention in 2014 when a user on Twitter highlighted that he had been blocked from sharing a file because of this, raising concerns that Dropbox was looking at everyone’s files.Dropbox quickly clarified that it is not scanning every file, nor was it looking at everyone’s files. Rather it was using an automated process to check files that were being shared and see if they matched files that had previously been subject to a DMCA takedown notice:

In light of the events at the Capitol, social media and other online companies have been reevaluating who they let speak on their platforms. The ban of President Trump from Twitter, Facebook, and various other platforms has sparked fierce debate over moderation and free speech. But Google’s recently reinstituted ban on political advertisements until at least inauguration day and the continued ban from Facebook are silencing voices that need to be heard the most – those speaking about state and local political issues.Before last November’s election, both Google and Facebook restricted the ability of political advertisers to submit and run new ads. This policy was implemented to prevent situations like those in 2016, when Russian agents were able to purchase $100,000 in Facebook ads related to that year’s presidential election. Although these ads did nothing to affect the outcome of the election, they gave rise to the spurious narrative that Russia “hacked” the election.But Facebook’s ban has continued far past election day under the stated purpose of preventing ads claiming the election results were rigged or that the election had been stolen. Google eventually returned to allowing ads and Facebook made an exception for the Georgia runoff. However, the companies’ most recent bans leave many smaller speakers without two of their most important platforms, despite the policies’ failure to prevent the spread of doubt over the 2020 election results.Politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ted Cruz, while certainly benefiting from social media, can reach an audience without these platforms. But many other speakers who want to speak to local audiences about important political issues have come to rely on them.Before the advent of targeted online advertisements, communicating and organizing locally required going door-to-door or hanging flyers in your neighborhood. If you could find enough support, perhaps you could even set up a meeting in a public space. The old system was not only inefficient, but often costly in terms of time and money.This is what makes advertising on Facebook and Google so valuable to those wanting to engage on important issues. Want to inform your neighbors about a city board meeting over a key issue for your community? Want to build a coalition of people to support or oppose an issue at your state capitol? Facebook and Google can do so more successfully, and at a fraction of the cost.This is often the most important kind of political engagement - forming relationships with your fellow citizens to make your voices heard on issues that carry major personal impacts and are far too often under-reported and less understood.And make no mistake, the last year has featured no shortage of critical state and local issues.State legislatures are already in session dealing with important and contentious topics like education, budget cuts, and of course, the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine. Local governments are still dealing with shutdowns and business closures as the pandemic continues into 2021. And as organizing in person gets increasingly difficult, if not impossible, digital tools are becoming even more important.Key state and local issues are also too often drowned out by politics at the national level. Given the turbulent times we are living through, who can blame people for being glued to the events unfolding in Washington? That’s why Facebook and Google ads are important tools to draw attention to state and local issues.Inauguration is over and the stated purpose of banning these ads has passed. But more importantly our federalist system of government means that politics don’t only happen at the national level. Rather, the political issues that most greatly affect our lives are those closest to home. Facebook and Google should recognize this fact and end its political ad ban which puts national politics ahead of state and local issues.The internet is at its best when it informs and connects local communities on the issues that impact them. Blanket political ad bans lessen the opportunity for this kind of much-needed engagement while also failing to improve the national discourse.Eric Peterson lives in New Orleans where he is the Director of the Pelican Center for Technology and Innovation

Talk of police reform has escalated over recent years. It reached an inflection point after the killing of an unarmed black man by a white Minnesota police officer last May. Since then, a lot of proposals have been put forward, but very few have passed without being stripped of anything useful.What's being asked doesn't make it impossible to be a cop, no matter what law enforcement and union officials may claim. There's definitely room for improvement and giving taxpayers better, more accountable cops is something that will likely pay for itself, especially in cities where millions of dollars of lawsuit settlements are paid out to victims of rights violations and excessive force every year.The Newark, NJ police department had plenty of problems. It still has a few, but it has shown dramatic improvement. A federal consent decree put in place following a DOJ investigation has started to pay off. The ACLU demanded an investigation into the Newark PD back in 2010, pointing out an alarming pattern of abuse by officers.

Ajit Pai's tenure wasn't devoid of value. He arguably oversaw some decent moves that will bring more spectrum to market (albeit not without some caveats and casualties), and he implemented the nation's first suicide hotline (988). But by and large it's pretty hard to not see Pai's tenure as a giant middle finger to consumer welfare, and a four year, sustained ass kissing for the nation's biggest telecom monopolies.In his departing statement, of course, Pai gushes about what an honor it was to serve the "American people":

WYSIWYG Web Builder is an all-in-one software solution that can be used to create complete web sites. What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get means that all page elements will be displayed in the same position as in the designer. Unlike fluid (dynamic) layouts, objects depend on the position and size of the objects surrounding them. WYSIWYG Web Builder generates HTML, HTML5, or XHTML tags while you point and click on desired functions. Just drag and drop objects to the page, position them 'anywhere' you want, and when you're finished, publish it to your web server (using the built-in Publish tool). The software gives you full control over the content and layout of your web pages. It's on sale for $30.Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

While lots of people have been blaming social media for the insurrection at the Capitol a few weeks back, fewer have recognized that Fox News is at least as much to blame, if not more. As we've covered in the past, Yochai Benkler's book, Network Propaganda, went into great detail with tons of data and evidence, to highlight how, contrary to popular belief, the crazy conspiracy theories don't really spread that quickly on social media... until after Fox News picks them up. That book also highlights how, while "left-wing" media has its own fair share of wacky conspiracy theories, they don't spread to nearly the same degree, and competition among different news venues includes attempts to debunk the wackier conspiracy theories. The same is just not there in the Fox News media-sphere.We've actually seen this play out in interesting ways over the last few weeks. Fox News actually did, finally, break with President Trump and his pathetic attempts to deny the election results, and it simply made Trump and his cultist fanboys switch channels to even more insane merchants of garbage: OAN and Newsmax.Somewhat infamous neocon Max Boot, who spent years championing the kinds of policies that Fox News used to support, before becoming a vocal "Never Trumper," has penned a piece in the Washington Post that rightly calls out Fox News' role in the current mess that we're in. However, he then goes much further, in suggesting legal consequences for Fox News and other Republican/Trumpist voices that played a role via things like Fox News.

To be very clear: American consumers don't like broadband usage caps. At all. Most Americans realize (either intellectually or on instinct) that monthly broadband usage caps and overage fees are little more than monopolistic cash grabs. They are confusing, frustrating price hikes on captive customers that accomplish absolutely none of their stated benefits. They don't actually help manage congestion, and they aren't about "fairness" -- since if fairness were a goal you'd have a lot of grandmothers paying $5-$10 a month for broadband because they only check their email twice a day.Enter U.S. cable giant Charter (Spectrum), which has spent a good chunk of the last year trying to get the FCC to kill the merger conditions applied as part of its 2015 $79 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable. Those conditions, among other things, required that Charter adhere to net neutrality (despite the fact that the GOP has since killed net neutrality rules), and avoid usage caps and overage fees. Both conditions had 7 year sunset clauses built in, and Charter, eager to begin jacking up U.S. broadband consumer prices ever higher, has been lobbying to have them killed two years early.To get its way, Charter petitioned the FCC, falsely claiming that such caps are "popular" among consumers. They even employed the help of the Boys and Girls Club, which was apparently happy to petition the FCC on Charter's behalf even if that meant selling out their constituents. Unfortunately for Charter, COVID has brought renewed attention on the fact that usage caps are glorified price gouging bullshit. And with industry BFF Ajit Pai headed for the exits, Charter has been forced to back off its request:

Anyone who says anything critical of the Turkish government is a terrorist. That's been the operative theory of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has jailed more journalists than China and somehow managed to make a handful of governments around the world complicit in the punishment of his critics.The hits just keep on coming. The latest roundup of "terrorists" in Turkey is COVID-related, linked to the government's attempt to bury its bad infection numbers.

Techdirt has been following the important copyright case in India that is about how people in that country can access academic journals. Currently, many turn to "shadow libraries" like Sci-Hub and Libgen, because they cannot afford the often hefty frees that academic publishers charge to access papers. If a new "Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy" (pdf), just released as a draft by the Government of India, comes to fruition, people may not need to:

A serious set of police reforms has passed through the Illinois legislature and is headed to the governor's desk. You can tell it's a good set of reforms because the police union hates it.In the final hours of the legislative session, state senator Elgie Sims did no one any favors by introducing a 764-page amendment to the reform bill that had already passed. That's not a cool move, no matter what the ends are. No one can possibly hope to read and comprehend something of that size with only a few hours left in the session, as another state senator pointed out on his Facebook page.But it's not as if the state senators had no idea what was contained in the bill. More than a week earlier, one of the state's police unions was already complaining about its contents and asking legislators to vote the bill down. The union's list of complaints looks like a comprehensive set of reforms -- something almost any other person or entity in the state would view as positives. Here's the Illinois Fraternal Order of Police's bitch list about the earlier, 611-page police reform bill, followed by commentary:

The podcast went on pause over the holidays and amidst the deluge of... events — but now we're back! And to kick things off, we've got a cross-post from Nick Gillespie's Reason podcast. Mike recently joined Nick for an interview about Section 230 and why a decentralized internet is better than a heavily-restricted one, and you can listen to the whole thing on this week's episode of the Techdirt Podcast.Follow the Techdirt Podcast on Soundcloud, subscribe via iTunes or Google Play, or grab the RSS feed. You can also keep up with all the latest episodes right here on Techdirt.

Last week, I explained my thoughts on why the Parler takedown from AWS didn't bother me that much -- considering that there were many other cloud and webhosting solutions out there. Yet Parler has quickly discovered that many other providers aren't interested in hosting the company's cesspool of garbage content either. As I pointed out, at some point, some element of that has to be on Parler for attracting such an audience of garbage-spewers. Either way, we figured the site would eventually be back up, and now it appears that it's on its way. The site put up a holding page with a few "Parlezs" (their version of tweets) from its execs and lead cheerleaders.The site appears to be using Epik for hosting and DDoSGuard for DDoS protection. Neither of these are that surprising. Epik has built up something of a specialty in hosting the garbage, hate-filled websites no one else wants to touch. It has hosted Gab, 8chan/8kun, and The Daily Stormer among others. DDoSGuard is a somewhat sketchy Russian company that provides services to an equally sketchy group of sites -- and some terrorist groups. Brian Krebs has recently discussed how DDoSGuard may create some significant liability issues:

As we've written about recently, Beijing's creep into Hong Kong control has turned into nearly a dash as of late. What started with July's new "national security" law that allowed the mainland to meddle in Hong Kong's affairs led to arrests of media members in July, the expulsion and arrest of pro-democracy politicians in November, and then expanded arrests of members of the public who have said the wrong things in January.And as that mad dash to tighten its grip before a new American administration takes office continues, Beijing appears to be starting the process of censoring the internet in Hong Kong as well. In a move likely designed to make this all look reasonable, the first reports revolve around a website used to post information about Hong Kong police.

MyDraw is an advanced diagramming software and vector graphics drawing tool. This diagram software includes powerful features to help you create flowcharts, org charts, mind maps, network diagrams, floor plans, family tree diagrams, and others. Featuring a familiar and user-friendly interface inspired by Microsoft Office allows you to start working with MyDraw very quickly. With MyDraw, you can create amazing vector drawings using a large set of tools for drawing lines, curves, rectangles, ellipses, polygons, and all other shapes. It also features automatic layouts to make arranging diagrams easier. It's on sale for $34.Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.