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While Techdirt generally and myself more specifically tend to fall on the side of a more permissive philosophy when it comes to policing trademarks, there are certainly times when one entity or another crosses the line. As it happens, it seems somewhat common that those lines get crossed by parties that have themselves been quite aggressive in policing their own IP. When the Girl Scouts of America (GSA) sued the Boy Scouts of America in 2018 over the rebranding BSA went through after finally allowing girls to join, it was not difficult to see the GSA's side of things. Essentially, what was The Boy Scouts of America became simply Scouts BSA, which did away with the core gender distinction that drew a shiny line between the two organizations in the public sphere. GSA provided real world examples of confusion in the public, with stories of some families thinking or being told that BSA and GSA had merged, and others having intended on signing their daughters up for GSA and ending up in Scouts BSA.In the end, this ultimately was caused by the cavalier attitude Scouts BSA took to its rebranding. A moment's thought would immediately have brought these concerns to light, but Scouts BSA plowed ahead.And now that cavalier attitude appears to have continued, with GSA issuing another filing against BSA over further rebranding efforts its undertaken.

The other day Senator Schatz tweeted, "Ask every Senator what Section 230 is. Don’t ask them if they want to repeal it. Ask them to describe it."

[Note: this is one of multiple posts covering the Commission's 332-page report.]The Presidential Commission on Law Enforcement -- ushered into existence by a 2019 Executive Order -- has released its report [PDF], just in time for the man who ordered it to move out of the White House. President Trump spent his four years defending and praising law enforcement, no matter how often law enforcement's actions provoked criticism elsewhere. This report does the same thing, even as it pretends to offer an objective opinion on the challenges facing the law enforcement community.The Commission is composed solely of law enforcement officials and officers, which makes its findings one-sided and, of course, suspect. The report calls for an end to the "disrespect" shown to law enforcement. But it does little to address the roots of this perceived disrespect. At best, the report suggests the public is just "misinformed" about law enforcement's role in society and posits it's "progressive prosecutors" and opportunistic legislators causing most of the reputational damage, rather than the things cops do when their leash is long enough.The report also has nothing good to say about device encryption. Using lingo provided to it by consecutive FBI directors and former AG Bill Barr, the report claims something called "warrant-proof encryption" (a.k.a., regular encryption) should have backdoors legislated into it.

Shortly after the coronavirus started showing up everywhere uninvited, President Trump decided to amplify his China-centric trade war with a war of words, referring to the new virus as the "China virus." The Chinese state media responded by suggesting the United States was actually the source of the virus, and then everything just kind of went to hell for awhile. Both countries took turns throwing each other's journalists out -- something that made a lot of noise but didn't really accomplish anything.With that spat behind it, China went back to doing what it does best: locking up its own citizens. This was done with more enthusiasm than usual, since the state media's attempt to control the coronavirus narrative failed spectacularly, contradicted by local reports that managed to escape the Chinese government's blockade.The government is still rounding up journalists and locking them up for reporting on the local spread of the virus. Zhang Zhan, former lawyer and current journalist, has been incarcerated since May of this year. She's accused of "picking quarrels and stirring up trouble." The schoolground wording belies the severity of these charges, which are a convenient catch-all for journalists, dissidents, and critics of the state.Little had been heard about Zhang's arrest (and the others that accompanied) since earlier this year. The government finally released information on the charges in mid-November. Zhang's charges -- which include accusations of spreading "false information" via the internet -- come with a recommended sentence of 4-6 years.This isn't Zhang's first run-in with the Chinese government.

As you likely know by now, President Trump is trying to use his last few weeks in office to use various levers of power remaining to him to make sure he fucks up the open internet. However, he also threw a wrench in the works of the long-overdue and way too small COVID relief package by saying that the checks to individuals should be $2,000 rather than $600. He's not wrong, but it was bizarre that his own White House was part of the negotiations that made sure the checks were smaller. It's almost as if the President and his own administration don't communicate very much.House Democrats took up the cause, and pushed for the $2,000, and many House Republicans went along with it, recognizing how popular an idea this was. The problem, of course, is that Mitch McConnell has absolutely no interest in this at all. Earlier today, Mitch McConnell blocked the motion to vote on increasing the checks to $2,000. Afterwards, he announced, in the most awkward language possible, that he wants to link the raised stimulus to... Section 230 repeal and the made-up issue of "election fraud."

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A few weeks ago, Oracle announced that it was moving its headquarters out of Redwood Shores, in the middle of Silicon Valley, to Austin, Texas. The move is more symbolic than anything else. The company told employees they can continue working from wherever they want and founder Larry Ellison sent an email to all employees saying he'll be working from the island of Lanai, which he purchased a few years ago. But the symbolism of the move works in multiple ways. Despite being founded and headquartered in Silicon Valley for almost half a century, Oracle has long represented the anti-Silicon Valley approach to innovation.Nearly a decade ago, cartoon artist Manu Cornet made this truly classic cartoon image of tech company org charts (which he thankfully put under a Creative Commons license):I've heard people at all of those companies more or less confirm the accuracy of every one of those. The Oracle one is particularly on point:For a while now, people in Silicon Valley have been well aware of Oracle's reputation as the anti-innovation behemoth, especially following its attack on APIs, interfaces, and how software is developed with the case against Google's reimplementation of the Java API. We're still waiting on how the Supreme Court rules on that one, to see whether or not Oracle has succeeded in undermining a key part of how software is developed -- including Oracle's own practices in reimplementing others' APIs.Bloomberg now has a big report on how all of the recent antitrust cases against Google have Oracle's fingerprints all over them, and in the article, Oracle's top lobbyist gleefully takes credit for it.

Update: The original report from NJ.com and the man's lawyer said that Clearview was involved, however the NY Times has now reported that it was not actually Clearview, but other facial recognition technology. The post has been updated accordingly.Given facial recognition tech's predilection for false positives, the only thing surprising about its link to false arrests is how long it took. After years of live trial runs all over the world, tech used by the Detroit Police Department managed to contribute to two bogus arrests in a matter of months.Despite this, the PD defended its use of the tech, even while admitting it was wrong 96% of the time. The PD said safeguards were in place to prevent false arrests -- including forbidding officers from using facial recognition search results as the sole probable cause for arrest warrants. Nonetheless, the false arrests happened. And, in both cases, it appears the safeguards were ignored.Now, there's a third victim of facial recognition tech. A New Jersey man was falsely arrested for theft he didn't commit, thanks to mistaken facial recognition.

Given facial recognition tech's predilection for false positives, the only thing surprising about its link to false arrests is how long it took. After years of live trial runs all over the world, tech used by the Detroit Police Department managed to contribute to two bogus arrests in a matter of months.Despite this, the PD defended its use of the tech, even while admitting it was wrong 96% of the time. The PD said safeguards were in place to prevent false arrests -- including forbidding officers from using facial recognition search results as the sole probable cause for arrest warrants. Nonetheless, the false arrests happened. And, in both cases, it appears the safeguards were ignored.Now, there's a third victim of facial recognition tech. A New Jersey man was falsely arrested for theft he didn't commit, thanks to none other than facial recognition uber-villain Clearview.

Predictive policing has spread from the streets to the school house, bringing with it everything that's screwed up about it. But this time it targets minors, turning missed school days, low grades, and exposure to domestic abuse into criminal predicates.This subjects minors to the same harassment that currently targets adults in the Pasco County (FL) Sheriff's jurisdiction. The pre-crime program run by the Sheriff allows deputies to swarm houses late at night to harass residents and write them citations for missing mailbox numbers or overgrown grass. There's nothing in this program that appears to target serious or violent crime. Instead, as the Sheriff has stated, the goal is to make people miserable enough that they "sue or leave the county."This same mentality now plagues Pasco County schools. And there's more to it than a lifetime of petty harassment that now begins while residents are still minors. Not only is it pretty messed up to predetermine students' criminal histories using a handful of questionable indicators and an Excel spreadsheet, it also appears to be illegal. The Pasco County Sheriff's Office seems to have bypassed asking itself any tough questions about turning bad students into criminals. It also appears to have avoided running this program past its in-house counsel.Subjecting students to the Sheriff Office's "juvenile intelligence analysts" isn't as straightforward as the Pasco Sheriff thinks. There are laws governing the sharing of school records -- both at state and federal levels. And the Sheriff's Office -- the personification of "rule of law" -- appears to be violating federal law, according to analysis by Student Privacy Compass.

Last month Techdirt wrote about some ridiculous scaremongering from Elsevier against Sci-Hub, which the publisher claimed was a "security risk". Sci-Hub, with its 85 million academic papers, is an example of what are sometimes termed "shadow libraries". For many people around the world, especially in developing countries, such shadow libraries are very often the only way medics, students and academics can access journals whose elevated Western-level subscription prices are simply unaffordable for them. That fact makes a new attack by Elsevier, Wiley and the American Chemical Society against Sci-Hub and the similar Libgen shadow library particularly troubling. The Indian title The Wire has the details:

Summary: With the COVID pandemic still in full force, the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology moved its annual meeting online. The event was due to run for an entire week, but early issues caused attendees and moderators to question the contents of the pre-packaged content filter provided by Convey Services, which operated the virtual meeting software.The effort to ensure followup Q&A sessions would be free of profanity and other disruptiveness went awry when terms commonly used by paleontologists got caught in the software's filter. While words like "pubic," "bone," or "hell" might be appropriately blocked elsewhere, the blocklisting of these words disrupted the conference the software was supposed to keep from being disrupted.

More than a decade ago, Simon Glik was arrested by Boston police officers for the "crime" of recording them in public. This was made possible by a law passed in the mid-60s, which turned Massachusetts into a "two-party" recording state. Unless the person doing the recording has the consent of the person being recorded, it's a violation of the state's wiretap law.Glik successfully challenged this law, securing an Appeals Court ruling that stated the law was unconstitutional as applied to the recording of police officers in public places. This didn't immediately end the bogus arrests. Five years later, the government was taken to court again for enforcing this law in a way the Appeals Court said it couldn't. Also along for the ride was James O'Keefe's "Project Veritas," which argued the law was unconstitutional when applied to any public official in nearly any setting.The federal court said the Glik decision applied to the recording of police officers, whether surreptitious or not. It pointed out the Boston Police Department had issued new guidance based on the Glik decision, but falsely portrayed acceptable recordings as limited to those cops knew were happening. Not so, said the court. Even surreptitious recordings of cops in public spaces are protected by the First Amendment. It didn't come to the same conclusion about Project Veritas' arguments, finding the law was not overbroad when it applied some minimal restrictions to recording public officials.The Commonwealth still wants to abuse its bad law. It appealed this decision, sending it to the same court that had found its application of the law to the recording of cops unconstitutional nearly a decade ago. The First Circuit Court of Appeals says [PDF] the government's arguments are no better nine years later. Surreptitious recordings of police officers performing their public duties does not interfere with their work. Citizens are under no obligation to tell police officers they're being recorded. The government's interpretation of the law would just provide cover for misconduct.

A few weeks ago we noted that smaller, but still important, internet companies were working to get in the room on the discussions regarding Section 230 in Congress. The issue is that, among many in Congress and the media, they believe (falsely) that Section 230 is some sort of subsidy "only for Big Tech." As we've pointed out many times, the opposite is true. Facebook and Google have giant legal teams who can handle the liability without 230. It's everyone else who is screwed. This is why Facebook has always been first in line to undermine Section 230.As you'll recall, Facebook was the key cog to fold and support FOSTA, pressuring the Internet Association to support the law, and allowing Congress to claim (falsely) that "tech" supported the law. Right after that happened I remember talking to some of the smaller members of the Internet Association who were absolutely livid about the situation, and how they felt that Facebook and IA completely threw them under the bus to cement Facebook's own position in the market.With the fight over 230 heating up again it looks like a bunch of those companies have decided not to make the same mistake again. They've started a new organization, called Internet.Works to advocate on issues around 230. The coalition is made up of a bunch of important and successful internet companies, all of whom rely on Section 230, but who are not Google, Facebook, Amazon, or Apple. Instead, it's Automattic (the WordPress guys), Cloudflare, Dropbox, eBay, Etsy, Glassdoor, GoDaddy, Medium, Nextdoor, Patreon, Pinterest, Reddit, Snap, TripAdvisor, Vimeo, and Wikimedia.The organization is clearly set up to be a counterbalance to Facebook's ability to completely undermine 230 for everyone else:

[Note: this is one of what will probably be several posts covering the Commission's 332-page report. There's a lot to cover in here and one post simply isn't enough to cover everything in it. Stay tuned.]President Trump took office and immediately declared war on Americans. The only good people are government people. And the best people of all are law enforcement people, who were immediately elevated above those they served by the new leader of our nation.

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Back in March, Devin Nunes filed yet another of his many, many SLAPP suits. This one was against the Washington Post and reporter Shane Harris. As we noted at the time, the lawsuit was mostly performative, and had no real legal argument. After first being transferred to the appropriate venue, last week the federal court in DC easily tossed the case noting that Nunes failed to plead anything actually defamatory.

While unveiling its shiny new 5G-enabled iPhones back in October, Apple brought Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg to the stage to declare that Verizon had launched an updated, "nationwide" 5G network that shores up the company's 5G coverage. Until now, Verizon has largely embraced "high band" or millimeter wave 5G, which provides amazing speeds if you're near an antenna, but suffers from terrible range and building wall penetration issues. As a result, the company has been routinely criticized for comically overstating not only what 5G is capable of, but where 5G is available.To attack this credibility problem, and drive some hype for the new iPhones, Verizon announced that it was dramatically expanding its 5G network to 200 million more people. To do so, Verizon announced it would be using "dynamic spectrum sharing" (DSS) that helps utilize some existing 4G channels to offer 5G.Fast forward a few months, and the early reviews of Verizon's DSS 5G improvements... aren't so hot. PC Magazine took a closer look at Verizon's latest upgrade and found that users in many cases would be better off just sticking to 4G:

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is BentFranklin passing along a useful link on our post about the people helping Trump consider martial law:

Five Years AgoThis week in 2015, while newly-leaked documents were exposing the US government's surveillance options, Hillary Clinton was nonsensically calling for an encryption "Manhattan Project" but not to produce a back door. Tom Cotton was also attacking Tim Cook and demonstrating profound ignorance, and was joined by Manhattan's Disctrict Attorney. Blackberry, apparently hoping to hasten its own demise, started arguing for greater cooperation with law enforcement. And yet, amidst all this, the government apparently didn't notice the irony in freaking out about an unauthorized backdoor discovered in Juniper firewall software.Ten Years AgoThis week in 2010, we wondered if journalists would face the same treatment as Julian Assange and why US publications were downplaying the significance of major leaks, while, in apparent anticipation of a leak, Bank of America started trying to block payments to Wikileaks, soon followed by Apple blocking the Wikileaks app. Meanwhile, we got a closer look and Homeland Security's terrible evidence for its recent domain seizures, and its affidavit that was riddled with errors that just got worse and worse.Fifteen Years AgoThis week in 2005, Senators were apparently undeterred by multiple court rulings on the unconstitutionality of video game bans, the FTC was cautiously optimistic about spam trends although the clock was ticking on Bill Gates's prediction that the problem of spam would be solved by early 2006, and Eliot Spitzer began an investigation into digital music price fixing. Sony's woes continued as Texas expanded its lawsuit to include MediaMax CDs and some of the parent company's own stores were failing to pull the rootkit CDs from shelves. And, as three men were facing charges for selling modified Xboxes, we wanted to know why modifying your own hardware is a federal crime.

Sign up for the Public Domain Game Jam on itch.io »Lots of people will be exchanging gifts tomorrow, but we all get one on January 1st when new material enters the public domain in the US for the third year in a row — and, also for the third year in a row, we're hosting our public domain game jam, Gaming Like It's 1925. We're looking for designers of all stripes to create games using some of the works from 1925 that are running out of copyright protection in the new year, and offering prizes in a bunch of categories. We announced this one a bit early to give people time to make plans, and you can sign up on the jam page on itch.io before it officially launches on New Year's Day!You may have heard about The Great Gatsby entering the public domain, but while it's one of the highest-profile 1925 works, it's not alone: works by Agatha Christie, Aldous Huxley, Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, Noël Coward, Zora Neale Hurston and more are joining it, along with films like Harold Lloyd's The Freshman and Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush — and that's not even mentioning the artworks and musical compositions. Our jam page has links to several lists of 1925 works including Duke University's always-excellent roundup.We're long-time believers in the value of a robust public domain and this game jam is all about showing the kinds of amazing new things that are created when old works are opened up. Get all the details on itch.io including complete rules, categories and prizes, and the list of judges — and get ready for January 1st when it's time to start gaming like it's 1925!Sign up for the Public Domain Game Jam on itch.io »

While we've continued to cover the rise of esports as an emerging force in the competitive games marketplace, the rise in popularity and adoption of it have started to grow exponentially. Some of this has to do with the COVID-19 pandemic, with esports first taking the place of shut-down IRL sporting events and then cementing its position as a viewing spectacle almost perfectly designed to be consumed from home. But the fact is that the growth and rise of esports was occurring prior to the pandemic and was always going to continue its rise, with professional sports organizations jumping on board, and major marketing and apparel players in the sports world jumping in as well.But one major milestone that has eluded esports thus far has been to be included in major regional and international competitions. The Olympics, for instance, has reportedly considered adding esports to its games, but previously there has been a lot of shade thrown on the topic by IOC officials as well. That's why it's somewhat notable that the Asian Games in 2022 will feature esports as a medal event.

Summary:In the fall of 2019, talk show host Ellen Degeneres was criticized after being seen attending a professional football game with former President George W. Bush. Degeneres addressed the controversy on her show, saying she was invited by the Dallas Cowboys’ owner, and also suggesting that she was friends with the former President Bush and that people should “be kind” to people they disagree with politically.Rafael Shimunov took the video of Degeneres giving her side of the controversy and transformed it so that the background showed disturbing images from the Iraq War which was started by President Bush. The clip used approximately half of the video that Ellen herself had posted to YouTube, with the only change being the replacement of the blue background. Soon after that video began to go viral on Twitter, Shimunov and others who had reposted it received notices saying that the video was taken down due to a copyright claim under the DMCA made by someone working for Degeneres’ TV show.Recipients of the takedown notice said that it appeared to be the work of a social media manager for the show and not an automated takedown.As the EFF noted in discussing the takedown, the DMCA requires that anyone filing a DMCA takedown notice take into account whether or not the content in question is covered by fair use, and there is little evidence the social media manager filing these notices did so.Decisions to be made by Twitter:

Well, the government is closing out the year with quite a mess. As threatened, President Trump today vetoed the massive National Defense Authorization Act, living up to his promise to veto it if it didn't include the complete revocation of Section 230 of the Communications Act, which has nothing to do with funding our military. Trump, for no reason at all, says that repealing Section 230 is important for "national security", which makes no sense at all (nor does he provide any rationale for this statement). Senate Armed Service chair and Trump buddy Senator Jim Inhofe had already threatened to override the veto should Trump go this route -- and has (correctly!) said that 230 has nothing at all to do with the NDAA. Inhofe has already responded to Trump's veto by asking Congress to "join me in making sure our troops have the resources and equipment they need to defend this nation." In other words, he's asking Congress to override the veto.As for 230, Inhofe (ridiculously) claims that he does support a repeal of the law, but it should be in a separate legislative vehicle, and not the NDAA:

Hi, kids! Do you like state-ordained violence? Want to see me [redacted] in each one of my [redacted]? Wanna copy me and do exactly like I did? [Bond theme intensifies.]The Snowden leaks gave us some of the first looks behind the Vantablack curtain surrounding intelligence efforts engaged in by US allies in the UK. The Snowden sneak peek enabled legal challenges that routinely found UK intelligence agencies were violating the rights of UK citizens, as well as those the UK government has unilaterally declared rightsless.More rights violations and general wrongfulness has been uncovered. The Investigatory Powers Tribunal doesn't like what it's been seeing from MI6, which has apparently let its sources and informants run wild. The Tribunal doesn't say what criminal violations have been committed in the name of national security, but its limited ruling expresses its displeasure with attempted MI6 interference and its apparent blessing of criminal actions.

Hi, kids! Do you like state-ordained violence? Want to see me [redacted] in each one of my [redacted]? Wanna copy me and do exactly like I did? [Bond theme intensifies.]The Snowden leaks gave us some of the first looks behind the Vantablack curtain surrounding intelligence efforts engaged in by US allies in the UK. The Snowden sneak peek enabled legal challenges that routinely found UK intelligence agencies were violating the rights of UK citizens, as well as those the UK government has unilaterally declared rightsless.More rights violations and general wrongfulness has been uncovered. The Investigatory Powers Tribunal doesn't like what it's been seeing from MI6, which has apparently let its sources and informants run wild. The Tribunal doesn't say what criminal violations have been committed in the name of national security, but its limited ruling expresses its displeasure with attempted MI6 interference and its apparent blessing of criminal actions.

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For not the first time this year, Section 230's authors -- Ron Wyden and Chris Cox -- have felt the need to speak up and debunk some of the many, many myths around Section 230. Their team-up in a filing to the FCC remains one of the most thorough and comprehensive debunkings of 230 myths out there that it should be required reading for anyone criticizing the law. But apparently no one actually reads FCC filings, so they've now taken to the pages of USA Today (which recently ran a nearly fact free attack on 230) to explain once again why Section 230 is so important to the open internet.The op-ed starts by talking about the movie, The Wolf of Wall Street, about the sketchy fraudulent practices of Jordan Belfort and his company Stratton Oakmont. As 230 fanatics know, that company, Stratton Oakmont, is a huge part of the reason why Section 230 exists. People on stock discussion forums on early internet service Prodigy had criticized the Belfort's company, and rather than go after whoever posted the criticism, Stratton Oakmont sued Prodigy itself. And, incredibly, a judge had initially sided with Stratton Oakmont because Prodigy moderated its forums and pitched itself as a "family friendly" internet service.

U.S. Telecom providers, as companies that have spent the better part of the last century as government-pampered monopolies, are adorable when they try to innovate or seriously compete in more normal, competitive markets. Verizon's attempt to pivot from curmudgeonly old phone company to sexy new ad media darling, for example, has been a cavalcade of clumsy errors, missteps, and wasted money.AT&T has seen similar issues. Under CEO Randall Stephenson, AT&T spent roughly $200 billion on mergers with DirecTV and Time Warner, hoping this would secure its ability to dominate the pay TV space through brute force. But the exact opposite happened. Saddled with so much debt from the deal, AT&T passed on annoying price hikes to its consumers. It also embraced a branding strategy so damn confusing -- with so many different product names -- it even confused its own employees.As a result, AT&T lost 3,190,000 pay TV subscribers last year alone and roughly 7 million since 2017. Not exactly the kind of "domination" the company envisioned. Despite a $42 billion tax break from the Trump administration for literally doing less than nothing (42,000 layoffs, in fact), AT&T's now being forced to consider low ball offers for DirecTV after investors finally got tired of the company's merger-mania. It's not going particularly well:

U.S. Telecom providers, as companies that have spent the better part of the last century as government-pampered monopolies, are adorable when they try to innovate or seriously compete in more normal, competitive markets. Verizon's attempt to pivot from curmudgeonly old phone company to sexy new ad media darling, for example, has been a cavalcade of clumsy errors, missteps, and wasted money.AT&T has seen similar issues. Under CEO Randall Stephenson, AT&T spent roughly $200 billion on mergers with DirecTV and Time Warner, hoping this would secure its ability to dominate the pay TV space through brute force. But the exact opposite happened. Saddled with so much debt from the deal, AT&T passed on annoying price hikes to its consumers. It also embraced a branding strategy so damn confusing -- with so many different product names -- it even confused its own employees.As a result, AT&T lost 3,190,000 pay TV subscribers last year alone and roughly 7 million since 2017. Not exactly the kind of "domination" the company envisioned. Despite a $42 billion tax break from the Trump administration for literally doing less than nothing (42,000 layoffs, in fact), AT&T's now being forced to consider low ball offers for DirecTV after investors finally got tired of the company's merger-mania. It's not going particularly well:

Oh my. Be mindful about the suddenly sensitive Chinese government. Let's not accuse them of things they want to do when those things haven't been done yet.Maybe it's just a Winnie the Pooh meme. Maybe it's the inability of professional athletes to keep their opinions to themselves. Maybe it's an entire landmass who doesn't want to see its independence crushed by a government that agreed to not crush its independence for the next several years.Never mind the narratives. Here's what the Chinese government has been doing. It wants certain citizens prosecuted, persecuted, and ejected. The Uighur population of China has been a target for years. Nothing will change that. But it can be made worse.Huawei -- currently the target of misguided or, at least, hypocritical US government activity -- has been whipping up some AI that goes beyond facial recognition. The AI being built by Huawei will identify people based on the their race, sex, and religious proclivities. Never mind the fact that facial recognition still can't reliably recognize faces. The tech being built by Huawei promises to subject millions of Chinese residents to algorithms at least as untrustworthy as those not being asked to suss out people's race or religious leanings.The Chinese government isn't worried about backlash. But those still doing business in other parts of the world (like Huawei and others) are. You can't increase market share when the rest of the world considers you an extension of an oppressive government.Alibaba -- the Amazon of the unregulated -- doesn't want to alienate a user base it's attempting to cultivate. It has issued a statement that serves as a somewhat reluctant middle finger to the Chinese government. There's a whole world of marks out there. Why should Alibaba restrict its hunt for rubes to whatever the Chinese government allows?

Since this past summer we have been writing about a bonkers lawsuit brought against the makers of a Netflix movie, Enola Holmes, by the Conan Doyle Estate. The stories of Sherlock Holmes are, of course, largely in the public domain now, although roughly 10 tales still haven't reached the expiration date of their copyright protection. The film does not tell any of those protected stories. Instead, it tells an original story, focused on Holmes' sister, Enola. To make its copyright claim, the Estate instead suggests that Enola Holmes shows a Sherlock who has feelings and empathy, among other details, and therefore runs afoul of the character copyright as Sherlock didn't show such features until those still-protected stories were written. Also, something about Sherlock developing a liking towards dogs. Yes, seriously.Well, Netflix moved to have the case dismissed, going in quite hard on the details of the Estate's claims. For starters, in Enola Holmes, um, no dogs. Added to that, the motion provides ample evidence of Sherlock having feelings and empathy prior to the protected works and that such ideas are not protectable anyway. The rest of us, meanwhile, waited patiently to see if the mystery of whether or not you could break copyright in this way could actually succeed in court.Sadly, we'll never know, as reportedly Netflix and the Estate have reached a settlement.

Summary:Formed in 2007 and operated out of Limassol, Cyprus, xHamster has worked its way up to become the 20th most-visited site on the internet. The site boasts 10 million members and hundreds of millions of daily visitors despite being blocked by a number of governments around the world.Being in the pornography business poses unique moderation challenges. Not only do moderators deal with a flood of both amateur and professional submissions, they must take care to prevent the uploading of illegal content. This goes further than policing uploads for unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material. Moderators must also make decisions -- with facts not in their possession -- about the ages of performers in amateur videos to prevent being prosecuted for the distribution of child pornography.Given the stakes, users would expect a well-staffed moderation team trained in the difficult art of discerning performers' ages… or at least given the authority to block uploads until information about performers is obtained from uploaders.Unfortunately, this does not appear to be the case. An undercover investigation by Vice shows one of the biggest sites on the internet has chosen to lower its costs by relying on an all-volunteer moderation team.

It seems that people have decided that now is a good time to attack Google in various ways. In October, the US Justice Department sued Google for allegedly violating antitrust laws. This month, ten US states sued Google, alleging anticompetitive behavior, followed by another 38 states, alleging that the company has created an illegal monopoly in online search and advertising. In November, 165 companies and industry bodies sent a letter to the EU complaining about Google and asking for tougher antitrust action. The EU has also released first drafts of its new Digital Services Act, and Digital Markets Act. One of the key elements of the new laws is tackling the power of leading online platforms like Google.The EU has already taken steps towards that end. Back in 2018, the EU fined Google €4.34 billion for breaching antitrust rules. As part of its compliance with the EU's demands, Google introduced a process whereby other search engines can bid to appear on a "choice screen", which lets Android users pick the default search engine when they set up their smartphone. However, some rival search engines, like DuckDuckGo, were unhappy with the approach. At the end of October, DuckDuckGo, along with Ecosia, Lilo, Qwant and Seznam -- search engines from Germany, France, France and the Czech Republic, respectively -- sent an open letter to the European Commission on the subject:

Movements to "defund" law enforcement agencies have sprung up around the nation, trailing the protests against police violence that spread across the country following the killing of an unarmed black man by Minneapolis police officers in May.In most cases, no one's looking to completely dismantle the local police force. Instead, legislators and activists are seeking to move some of their funding to other areas -- like social services, mental health care, and other crime reduction efforts that shouldn't involve armed officers. This hasn't stopped police departments -- which often command outsized percentages of city budgets -- from complaining they're being dismantled and that these efforts will lead to outbreaks of violent crime.One of the agencies complaining about defunding and violent crime is the Austin Police Department. And a federal official is pitching in with the complaining. A recent press conference held by the US Attorney's Office claims Austin's defunding effort has led to more crime.

Yesterday, Senator Thom Tillis helped ram through a gift for Hollywood: getting the felony streaming copyright bill that he'd only released a week earlier included in the must-pass omnibus funding bill despite literally no discussion or debate about the problems with the bill.This morning, he really doubled down. As announced last month, Tillis has now released a draft of his DMCA overhaul, which appears to be exactly what he had hinted at last month -- meaning he appears to have ignored the advice and suggestions of many of us who warned Tillis of the dangers of simply buying into Hollywood's vision of copyright reform. I wonder why he would do such a thing?Of course, it also makes you wonder why he had to hide the felony streaming bill in yesterday's must pass omnibus. Since he was going to be working on a big copyright reform bill, why not put it in there in order to have an actual debate and discussion about it?Anyway, Tillis notes that this current version is just a discussion draft and he'll release the actual bill next year once the new term begins. He's asking people for their edits. In fact, he (somewhat hilariously) asks YouTubers to send in their own redlines and, well, careful what you ask for:

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It was only mid-day yesterday that it was confirmed that Congress has slipped in two controversial copyright provisions into the must-pass government funding bill. Last night, as everyone expected, that must-pass bill did indeed pass, and it will soon be law.There are many, many reasons to be frustrated about this. First, just the way this was done is incredibly stupid. The government waited until the very last minute (with a couple of "extensions") to work out this agreement on a combination of the COVID relief bill (which is way too small and way too late for many, many people) and a bill to actually fund the government and avoid a shutdown. It's already ridiculous that we have to do this government funding bill each year, especially considering that Congress already approves a budget earlier in the year, and the appropriations bill is really just a fight over how to apportion what Congress has already agreed to spend. And then, because the appropriations bill is considered a "must pass" to keep large parts of the government funded, Congress lights it up like a Christmas tree with totally unrelated bills they couldn't get passed through normal process.Incredibly, some politicians, like Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, seem proud of this practice:

For much of the last few years, broadband customers have been complaining that Frontier Communications, the nation's third-biggest telco, had been charging its customers a rental fee for modems they already owned. Normally, you're supposed to be able to buy your own modem instead of paying your ISP a rental fee upwards of $10 per month. To nab some extra dough from captive customers, Frontier basically decided to charge its customers a rental fee anyway, giving them a polite, though giant, middle finger when they complained.This façade persisted until customers had a problem with their hardware, at which point the ISP would just shrug and claim there was nothing they could do. When consumers complained to the Trump FCC about this, the agency did... absolutely nothing. As with most complaints to the Trump FCC, the agency just forwards your complaint to the ISP in question then does... nothing whatsoever.This kind of behavior is the norm for the broadband industry, given it faces minimal pressure to try harder due to limited competition and captured regulators. So consumer advocates last year successfully pushed for the passage of the Television Viewer Protection Act (TVPA). The law, which likely would have never made it past a broken and corrupt Congress in standalone form, had to be shoveled into a budget bill in order to be passed by Congress and signed by President Trump in December 2019. It's not likely that many, including Trump, even noticed that the provision existed in the broader bill.The bill prohibits charging consumers a rental fee for hardware they already own. It also requires that ISPs be a bit more transparent about all the bullshit fees broadband providers use to pad their advertised rates. And it gives you a 24 hours to cancel cable TV for any reason. It's not perfect; the bill doesn't prohibit ISPs from using bogus fees to raise your rate while under contract. It's also loosely worded enough that ISPs could likely find some new ways to tap dance around it. But it's still a step in the right direction:

A historic hack of unprecedented scale has set off alarms in the US government -- itself a target of suspected Russian hackers who leveraged IT infrastructure company SolarWinds' massive customer base to compromise an unknown number of victims. Among those victims were several US government agencies, including the DHS's cybersecurity wing, which announced its own breach hours after issuing a dire warning to potentially affected government agencies.Is it time to panic? No, says the lame duck president, who claims this is already "under control" -- something that very definitely isn't true. SolarWinds says it has 18,000 customers using the affected Orion software. And many of those customers (which include Fortune 500 companies and major telcos/service providers) have thousands of customers of their own -- all of which may be operating compromised systems. The DHS said the only way to ensure systems are clear of this threat was to airgap them and uninstall the infected software.Others who have been briefed on the hack are far less cheery about its ongoing impact. Trump tweeted there was nothing to worry about. Republican allies seem more concerned than the man who won't have to worry about this for much longer.

We've been talking about the growth of esports for some time here, in particular the way it has exploded in use since the pandemic first began. Still, for those of us watching the progress of esports, there are certain milestone markers you look for. Major sporting brands like Nike jumping into it is one, as is seeing the first esports company looking to be listed on a major stock exchange. But the real indicator that esports is now fully a thing is when major IRL sports leagues like the NHL, NASCAR, and MLB jump onto the bandwagon.Still, in some of those cases, this action was taken specifically to tide the public over during the severe lockdowns in the pandemic, which by-and-large shut down IRL sports. But with the Philadelphia Eagles deciding to be the NFL's first franchise to get into esports, it appears to be for the long haul.

A controversial shooting that resulted in another controversial shooting is generating even more controversy.Earlier this year, self-proclaimed antifa supporter Michael Reinoehl allegedly shot and killed far right counter-protester Aaron Danielson during a protest in Portland, Oregon. Reinoehl claimed the shooting was self-defense. Other witnesses claimed the shooting was unjustified. Neither assertion ever had a chance to be proven. Reinoehl was killed by US Marshals four days later -- an extrajudicial killing praised by President Trump as good and lawful.

You'd think the government of a land surrounded by enemies would do more to regulate malware distribution by local companies. It's one thing to hold your enemies close. It's quite another to provide them with the tools to ensure your own downfall.One would think malware purveyors like the Israel's NSO Group would post photos of countries like Saudi Arabia on its "DO NOT ACCEPT CHECKS FROM THESE GOVERNMENTS" wall at its HQ. But it doesn't care. It sells to whoever will buy, even if that means subjecting Israeli citizens to surveillance programs run by Israel's enemies.This has been part of NSO's far from illustrious history for years. When not being sued by American companies for leveraging their messaging services to deliver malware, NSO Group has allowed a variety of authoritarian governments to spy on activists, journalists, and dissidents with its toolkit of exploits and scalable attacks.The latest expose on NSO's unsavory tactics comes from Citizen Lab, which has been exposing the nastiness of malware purveyors for years. Citizen Lab says NSO is still allowing Israel's enemies to target critics, making it far more dangerous for them to engage in activities that expose heinous government actions. Unsurprisingly, it's longtime human rights violators making the most of whatever NSO Group will sell them.

It's generally understood that the latest Congressional COVID relief package is the policy equivalent of a band-aid on a lost limb, and the $600 being doled out to struggling American families is a joke (especially compared with international public aid efforts). We're also only just starting to take inventory of how much padding and nonsense is buried in the bill that couldn't be shoveled through standalone bills due to its innate terribleness and grift.But the bill did include a few helpful measures, including $7 billion to help shore up America's affordable broadband problem. $3.2 billion of that money will be aimed at keeping working families connected to the internet in a country where toddlers have had to huddle in the dirt outside of fast food restaurants just so they can attend class.The bill provides a $50 a month emergency broadband benefit for anyone laid off or furloughed during the pandemic. Details are still forthcoming, but I'm assuming the effort will be built on the back of Lifeline, a low-income program begun by Reagan and expanded to cover wireless by Bush Junior. The program currently provides a measly $9.25 monthly subsidy low-income families have to spend on broadband, phone, or wireless service. In the last few years, Trump FCC boss Ajit Pai has repeatedly tried to kneecap the program despite it having broad, bipartisan support for decades.Early reports indicate the bill also includes $1 billion in grants for Tribal broadband programs, $300 million for rural broadband deployment, $285 million to fund a pilot program to shore up broadband issues for communities near Black colleges and universities, and $65 million to help improve the FCC's notoriously shaky broadband availability maps.These are all indisputably good things. Especially during a public health and economic crisis that has highlighted why broadband is essential for survival and opportunity. Something reflected in a statement by Oregon Senator Ron Wyden:

As we warned about earlier this month, it appears that Congress has in fact put two very controversial copyright provisions into the government funding "omnibus" bill that will be voted on later today. As you may have heard, last night Congress worked out a "deal" on both a $900 billion Covid relief/stimulus package and the giant $1.4 trillion omnibus government funding bill, which is being voted on today. There had been concerns raised all month about how -- under pressure from Hollywood -- Congress might try to sneak two dangerous copyright provisions and one trademark provision into the omnibus.Since the "deal" was announced last night, people have been scrambling to find out what's actually in the fucking bill which is being voted on shortly. It's just come out that, indeed, all three controversial copyright and trademark provisions are in the bill. The CASE Act will supercharge copyright trolling exactly at a time when we need to fix the law to have less trolling. And the felony streaming bill (which was only just revealed last week with no debate or discussion, includes provisions that are so confusing and vague no one is sure if it makes sites like Twitch into felons.The fact that these are getting added to the must pass government funding bill is just bad government. And Congressional leadership should hear about this.The full omnibus bill is over 3,000 pages long, so you can search through it for your favorite bit of nonsense. Felony streaming is on page 72. The CASE Act starts on page 77.There's a reason that copyright is generally controversial. Small changes can not only have a massive impact, that impact can be on the public's ability to express themselves. The idea that two such bills should be jammed through in this manner is a total and complete travesty. People should be mad about this and should hold the Congressional leadership of both parties responsible. This is not good governance. This is sucking up to Hollywood at the expense of the public.

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Great news, everyone! The outgoing president -- the one who refuses to accept the results of the popular vote or the electoral college vote -- has been horny on main for weeks. The only thing that could keep Trump in office is some sort of civil war, something he appears to be actively encouraging.A bunch of politicians who've sold their souls for hospitality discounts at Trump properties are claiming the election is illegitimate. Multiple lawsuits have been filed. Most of them have failed. Those on the side of Trump seem to believe they can contest the legitimacy of the election without having any Trump votes nullified. Wild ass claims about voter fraud have yet to be proven.None of this has worked. There's a new person headed to the Oval Office. But that doesn't mean Trump and his obsequious shitheels can't throw a wrench into the works. The Executive Branch has a bunch of uncontested powers and it appears this Executive Branch is willing to test the extent of those powers rather than hand over the office to its challenger and be forced to clean up the hundreds of fast food wrappers littering the White House floor.Let's just check in with the "law and order" president -- the one who's respecting both aspects so much he's willing to put boots on the ground… in the US of A.

At the start of this year, AT&T's creatively named streaming app, AT&T TV Now (since renamed HBO Max), was unceremoniously pulled from all Roku streaming hardware after a contract between the two companies expired and they couldn't agree on a new one.It took more than a year of folks not being able to watch AT&T streaming services for this standoff to finally break, and it required leveraging the strength of Wonder Woman to do so. After being unable to come to an agreement for much of the year, AT&T used its ownership of Time Warner to gain a little leverage on Roku. First, it announced that the anticipated Wonder Woman sequel would be released on Christmas day, but only on HBO Max. Then, it announced a major plan to release most major 2021 theater releases simultaneously on both streaming and in theaters.As the Wonder Woman 1984 release date approaches, Roku appears to have buckled. The sides this week announced a new deal that will finally bring AT&T's HBO Max to Roku:

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is That One Guy with our response to the latest bogus op-ed about Section 230:

Five Years AgoThis week in 2015, the clueless press was still letting itself get played and suggesting that encryption played a role in the San Bernardino attacks, while congress was dropping all pretense and turning CISA into a full-on surveillance bill, which they then crammed into the must-pass government funding bill (which also included some other nonsense). It got support of confused congressmen and a promise-breaking White House then — despite being terrible for privacy — it predictably passed.Ten Years AgoThis week in 2010, the clueless press was playing the mark for a different scam and continuing to rely on bogus research about file sharing, but the main source of panic and confusion on the scene was still Wikileaks, and we argued America's reaction was doing far more harm than the leaks themselves and was probably just about overhyping online threats to pass new laws. The Congressional Research Service was pointing out the obstacles to criminally charging Assange and complaining about being blocked from accessing Wikileaks itself by the panicked government (and the Air Force went further the same week, blocking access to news sites reporting on Wikileaks as well), and the staff of Columbia Jounralism School was warning the president that prosecuting Wikileaks would set a dangerous precedent. But the government decided to look into the possibility of CFAA charges anyway. There was a slight bit of uplifting and surprising news though, when congressional hearings on Wikileaks turned out to be not entirely stupid.Fifteen Years AgoThis week in 2005, an emerging conversation about traffic shaping was paving the way for a net neutrality fight, with the most worrying aspect being that FCC chairman Kevin Martin was apparently prepared to give the telcos everything they wanted. Congress was doing its own kowtowing, this time to Hollywood, and serving up exactly the legislation the entertainment industry wanted, while the music business was getting mad at Apple for the DRM it had a huge hand in pushing for — and we talked about how copy protection stalls innovation. HarperCollins was spending a lot of money to scan its own books for no obvious reason beyond spiting Google, the MPAA was suing someone for sharing movies it couldn't actually find on his computer, and one band was dealing with Sony's DRM failure by sending their fans burned replacement CDs with no copy protection.