Techdirt

We've mentioned at great length how Trump's executive order to more heavily "regulate" social media is an unworkable joke. It attempts to tackle a problem that doesn't exist ("Conservative censorship") by attacking a law that actually protects free speech (Section 230), all to be enforced by agencies (like the FCC) that don't actually have the authority to do anything of the sort. You can't overrule the law by executive order or regulatory fiat, nor can you ignore the Constitution. The EO is a dumb joke by folks who don't understand how any of this works, and it should be treated as such.Instead, most press coverage of the move is still somehow framed as "very serious adult policy," despite being little more than a glorified brain fart.The FCC also knows the order is unworkable garbage that flies directly in the face of years of espoused (government hands off) ideology by Ajit Pai, Brendan Carr and friends. And yet, terrified of upsetting dear leader, Pai issued a totally feckless statement on Monday stating the EO would be pushed through the rule-making process, pretending as if this was all just ordinary, sensible tech policy:

Early in 2019, we wrote about stream-ripping site FLVTO.biz winning in court against the record labels on jurisdictional grounds. The site, which is Russian and has no presence in the United States, argued that the courts had no jurisdiction. The RIAA labels argued against that, essentially claiming that because Americans could get to the site it therefore constituted some kind of commercial contract, even though no actual contract existed. Instead, the site merely makes money by displaying advertisements. The court very much agreed and dismissed the case.On appeal in May, however, the case was sent back to the lower court.

The Accredited Agile Project Management Bundle by SPOCE is designed to equip users with the know-how they need to master Agile project management, PRINCE2 Project Management, and PRINCE2 Agile Project Management. You'll learn the skills needed for managing and delivering successful projects. You'll also gain an understanding of risk management, planning, handling change, and more. It's on sale for $99.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.

Is there anything the DHS can't turn into a debacle while pretending to secure the homeland? It would appear it's impossible for America's least essential security agency to move forward without stepping in something.As protests in Portland neared the 60-day mark, the DHS was tasked with protecting federal property like courthouses and… um… statues. ICE, CBP, Federal Protective Services, and US Marshals all arrived in Portland ready to go to war with people exercising their First Amendment rights. You only have one chance to make a first impression, and the unidentified officers from unknown agencies throwing protesters into unmarked vehicles was one hell of a first impression.The federal agencies went to war, firing tear gas and projectiles at protesters, rioters, journalists, and legal observers. It made no difference to the DHS which was which. But it did make a difference to a federal judge, who issued a temporary restraining order forbidding federal officers from attacking, gassing, assaulting, or arresting journalists and observers who were just trying to do their jobs.The federal officers immediately violated the restraining order. Or, more accurately, they never stopped doing the stuff that earned them the restraining order in the first place. Apparently, the DHS feels it hasn't violated First Amendment rights hard enough. The latest black eye for the DHS is more targeting of journalists, this time with surveillance.

This week, several of our top comments come in response to publisher Ken Whyte moaning about libraries, starting with our anonymous first place winner for insightful:

Five Years AgoThis week in 2014, we saw a judge slam a sheriff for an attack on Backpage that raised serious first amendment questions, and a student succeed after an eight-year legal battle against a university over being expelled for speech. On the other side of the free speech coin, we saw the cops shut down a hologram concert because they didn't like a rapper's lyrics, James Woods sue a random Twitter user for $10-million, and of course Donald Trump continue his lawsuit against Univision (and that post contains our first mention of a certain lawyer, with the now-entertaining phrasing of "apparently, it's some guy named Michael Cohen, who isn't just out of his depth on stuff, but he appears to be actively making things worse.")We also saw a huge bombshell in the lawsuit over the copyright status of Happy Birthday, with new evidence showing the song is in the public domain that Warner Music quickly tried to muddy the waters around.Ten Years AgoThis week in 2010, we wondered why the press was still blindly believing entertainment industry "studies", and how there were new copyrights being claimed on work by an artist who died 70 years ago. Copyright was interfering with technology both old-old and new-old, disrupting the preservation of decaying player piano rolls as well as obsolete video games. And the new round of DMCA anti-circumvention exemptions surprised everyone by including phone jailbreaking, though it left out plenty of good suggestions too.Fifteen Years AgoThis week in 2005, the anti-open-WiFi brigade was stirring up FUD about cantennas and the press was taking the bait. ISP Telus learned all about the Streisand Effect by blocking its customers from reaching websites supporting its employees in their union battle against the company, while offering weak excuses, and we were not exactly shocked to learn that Qualcomm founder Irwin Jacobs doesn't like muni-WiFi. Canada put the final nail in the idea of an iPod tax, one UK court showed it wasn't fooled by ridiculous claims of losses to software piracy, and yet another study showed that file sharers are the music industry's best customers.

This seemed fairly inevitable, after it became quite clear that the Twitter hack from a few weeks ago was done by teen hackers who didn't seem to do much to cover their tracks, but officials in Florida announced the arrest of a Florida teenager for participating in the hack, followed by the DOJ announcing two others as well -- a 19 year old in the UK and a 22 year old in Florida.As for why the first announced was separate and done by Florida officials, it appears that it involved a 17-year-old, and apparently it was easier to charge him as an adult under state laws, rather than under federal law, as with the other two.

Summary: With news breaking so rapidly, it’s possible that even major newspapers or official sources may get information wrong. Social media sites, like Twitter, need to determine how to deal with “news” tweets that later turn out to be misleading -- even when coming from major news organizations, citing official government organizations.With widespread protests around the United States calling attention to police brutality and police activity disproportionately targeting the black community, the NY Post tweeted a link to an article discussing an internal communication by the NY Police Department (NYPD) warning of “concrete disguised as ice cream cups” that were supposedly found at some of the protests, with the clear implication being that this was a way to disguise items that could be used for violence or property destruction.The article was criticized widely by people who pointed out that the items in fact appear to be part of a standard process for testing concrete mixtures, with the details of each mixture written on the side of the containers. Since these were found at a construction site, it seems likely that the NYPD’s “alert” was, at best, misleading.In response to continuing criticism, the NY Post made a very minor edit to the story, noting only that the markings on the cups make them “resemble concrete sample tests commonly used on construction sites.” However, the story and its title remained unchanged and the NY Post retweeted it a day later -- leading some to question why the NY Post was publishing misinformation, even if it was accurately reporting the content of an internal police memo.Questions for Twitter:

There's been a panic over the last few weeks about TikTok, the rapidly growing social network that is owned by the Chinese internet giant ByteDance (by way of history: ByteDance purchased a startup called Musical.ly in 2017, and rebranded it TikTok in 2018, and then it started growing like crazy). A few weeks ago, the Trump administration started suggesting it would ban TikTok, and a story was built up around the idea that TikTok was some sort of national security threat, despite very little evidence to support this. A separate narrative was simply that Trump was annoyed that TikTok kids made Trump look bad in Tulsa by reserving a bunch of tickets to his rally that they never intended to use.Either way, it was announced today that the Trump administration was likely to order ByteDance to shed TikTok and immediately with that was the news that Microsoft was a likely buyer.The whole thing is kind of silly. The most compelling argument I've seen for why the US should ban TikTok came from Ben Thompson at Stratechery, who more or less says (this is a very simplified version of his argument, so read the whole thing) that since China mostly bans US apps and services within its Great Firewall, there's an uneven playing field. I tend to lean slightly the other way: that supporting more freedom is a better approach. It feels like banning TikTok or forcing a sale is stooping to their level, and even validating their approach. And that worries me. And, yes, in the short run it puts us at a slight disadvantage on the global playing field, but frankly, US internet companies are still doing pretty damn well. The idea that we need to force a sale like this sets a questionable and potentially dangerous precedent -- suggesting we don't think that American firms can really compete.On top of that, if the concern is about China, then the fact that most of our network and computer equipment is built in China would seem like maybe a larger concern? But beyond a weird, similar freakout about Huawei, no one seems to be taking any serious interest in that. And that doesn't get into the fact that US intelligence has leaned heavily on US internet companies to try to get access to global data -- meaning that there does seem to be a bit of US exceptionalism built into all of this: it's okay when we do it, but an affront if any other government might do the same thing...Separately, this whole situation with TikTok and Microsoft demonstrates the pure silliness of the antitrust hearing in the House earlier this week. Note that there were claims that the four companies there represented "monopoly power." And yet, just days later, we're talking about how a recent entrant in the market, which has grown up quickly, and which Facebook certainly sees as a threat, is so powerful on the internet that it needs to be sold from its Chinese owners -- and the leading candidate to purchase it, Microsoft, is not even one of the "too powerful" companies who were on the panel.If a new entrant can rise up so quickly to be a "threat" and then needs to be purchased by another giant... it certainly suggests that the internet market still remains pretty vibrant, and not at all locked down by a few monopolies.

Update: Sooo... we already have a bunch of updates on this story. Trump has said he's banning TikTok entirely and is "against" allowing a US company to buy TikTok. Below is the original post, with only a slight clarification regarding Ben Thompson's thoughts on TikTok, which I didn't present very clearly in the original. Then, beneath the post I'll have more thoughts on Trump's comments.There's been a panic over the last few weeks about TikTok, the rapidly growing social network that is owned by the Chinese internet giant ByteDance (by way of history: ByteDance purchased a startup called Musical.ly in 2017, and rebranded it TikTok in 2018, and then it started growing like crazy). A few weeks ago, the Trump administration started suggesting it would ban TikTok, and a story was built up around the idea that TikTok was some sort of national security threat, despite very little evidence to support this. A separate narrative was simply that Trump was annoyed that TikTok kids made Trump look bad in Tulsa by reserving a bunch of tickets to his rally that they never intended to use.Either way, it was announced today that the Trump administration was likely to order ByteDance to shed TikTok and immediately with that was the news that Microsoft was a likely buyer.The whole thing is kind of silly. The most compelling argument I've seen for why the US should ban TikTok came from Ben Thompson at Stratechery, who more or less says (this is a very simplified version of his argument, so read the whole thing) that since China is engaged in a war to impose its ideology on the world, and that it will make use of TikTok and other services to effectively attack Western liberalism, it is effectively dangerous to allow it to operate in the west under Chinese ownership. He supports selling TikTok off to a American company, or barring that, banning the app in the West. I tend to lean the other way: to me, banning TikTok strikes me as effectively proving China's views on liberalism, and allowing them to claim hypocrisy on the west, and use these actions to justify its own actions.On top of that, if the concern is about China, then the fact that most of our network and computer equipment is built in China would seem like maybe a larger concern? But beyond a weird, similar freakout about Huawei, no one seems to be taking any serious interest in that. And that doesn't get into the fact that US intelligence has leaned heavily on US internet companies to try to get access to global data -- meaning that there does seem to be a bit of US exceptionalism built into all of this: it's okay when we do it, but an affront if any other government might do the same thing...Separately, this whole situation with TikTok and Microsoft demonstrates the pure silliness of the antitrust hearing in the House earlier this week. Note that there were claims that the four companies there represented "monopoly power." And yet, just days later, we're talking about how a recent entrant in the market, which has grown up quickly, and which Facebook certainly sees as a threat, is so powerful on the internet that it needs to be sold from its Chinese owners -- and the leading candidate to purchase it, Microsoft, is not even one of the "too powerful" companies who were on the panel.If a new entrant can rise up so quickly to be a "threat" and then needs to be purchased by another giant... it certainly suggests that the internet market still remains pretty vibrant, and not at all locked down by a few monopolies.Updated thoughts: So that's the original above. Now that Trump is saying he really is going to ban TikTok and is against its sale, there are multiple issues raised. Trump seems to think he can do this under his emergency economic powers (effectively declaring TikTok to be a national security issue -- the same "tool" he used to impose tariffs on China without Congressional approval). If he goes that route, there will be lawsuits -- and there will be significant Constitutional issues raised. The Supreme Court has in the past declared software speech, in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association (the case about whether or not the government could regulate video games and require age warnings). And, in the 2nd Circuit, a somewhat frustrating decision regarding the publishing of some code that would break DRM, Universal v. Corley, it is at least notable that the Court made a clear statement that software is protected under the 1st Amendment:

Last month, we wrote about the big publishers suing the Internet Archive over its Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) program, as well as its National Emergency Library (NEL). As we've explained over and over again, the Internet Archive is doing exactly what libraries have always done: lending books. The CDL program was structured to mimic exactly how a traditional library works, with a 1-to-1 relationship between physical books owned by the library and digital copies that can be lent out.While some struggled with the concept of the NEL since it was basically just the CDL, but without the 1-to-1 relationship (and thus, without wait lists), it seemed reasonably defensible: nearly all public libraries at the time had shut down entirely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the NEL was helping people who otherwise would never have had access to the books that were sitting inside libraries, collecting dust on the inaccessible shelves. Indeed, plenty of teachers and schools thanked the Internet Archive for making it possible for students to still read books that were stuck inside locked up classrooms. But, again, this lawsuit wasn't just about the NEL at all, but about the whole CDL program. The publishers have been whining about the CDL for a while, but hadn't sued until now.Of course, the reality is that the big publishers see digital ebooks as an opportunity to craft a new business model. With traditional books, libraries buy the books, just like anyone else, and then lend them out. But thanks to a strained interpretation of copyright law, when it came to ebooks, the publishers jacked up the price for libraries to insane levels and kept putting more and more conditions on them. For example, Macmillan, for a while, was charging $60 per book -- with a limit of 52 lends or two years of lending, whichever came first. And then you'd have to renew.Basically, publishers were abusing copyright law to try to jam down an awful and awfully expensive model on libraries -- exposing how much publishers really hate libraries, while pretending otherwise.Anyway, the Internet Archive has filed its response to the lawsuit, which does the typical thing of effectively denying all of the claims in the lawsuit (though I will admit that I chuckled to see them even "deny" the claim that the Archive's headquarters are in an "exclusive" part of San Francisco (FWIW, I'd probably describe the area more as "not easily accessible by public transit," but that doesn't quite make it exclusive -- or at least not any more exclusive than most of the rest of SF)).

You can't always pick your fighter for Constitutional challenges. Sometimes you're handed an unsympathetic challenger, which makes defending everyone's rights a bit more difficult because a lot of people wouldn't mind too much if this particular person's rights are limited. But that's not how rights work.A pretty lousy decision has been handed down by a Minnesota federal court. A challenge of two laws -- one city, one state -- has been met with a judicial shrug that says sometimes rights just aren't rights when there are children involved. (h/t Eric Goldman)The plaintiff is Sally Ness, an "activist" who appears to be overly concerned with a local mosque and its attached school. Ness is discussed in this early reporting on her lawsuit, which shows her activism is pretty limited in scope. Her nemesis appears to be the Dar Al-Farooq Center and its school, Success Academy. Ness feels there's too much traffic and too much use of a local public park by the Center and the school.Here's how she's fighting back against apparently city-approved use of Smith Park:

2019 saw a record number of consumers ditch traditional cable television. 2020 was already poised to be even worse, and that was before a pandemic came to town. The pandemic not only sidelined live sports (one of the last reasons many subscribe to traditional cable in the first place), it put an additional strain on many folks' wallets, resulting cord cutting spiking even higher.Among the hardest hit continues to be AT&T, whose customers have been fleeing hand over fist even with AT&T's attempt to pivot to streaming video. According to AT&T's latest earnings report, the company lost yet another 954,000 pay TV subscribers -- 886,000 from the company's traditional DirecTV and IPTV television offerings, and another 68,000 customers from the company's creatively named AT&T TV Now streaming video platform. All told, the losses left AT&T with 18.4 million video customers, including both Premium TV and AT&T TV Now, down from nearly 25.5 million in mid-2018.That's a fairly amazing face plant for a company that spent more than $150 billion on megamergers (DirecTV in 2015, Time Warner in 2018) in a bid to dominate the pay TV sector. The problem is the deals saddled AT&T with an absolute mountain of debt, which the company then attempted to extract from its customers in the form of relentless price hikes. During an economic crisis and pandemic:

The DOJ's Civil Rights Division has wrapped up an Obama-era probe into the Alabama prison system. Initiated in 2016, the investigation covers 13 prisons in the state, containing nearly 17,000 prisoners. What the DOJ found was widespread deployment of excessive force and a resolute lack of concern for inmates' well-being. (via Huffington Post)The report [PDF] notes that the Constitution (indirectly) gives inmates the right to be free from violence from other prisoners. The correctional facilities investigated here did almost nothing to prevent inmate-on-inmate violence.

If there is one thing that really needs to stop at the USPTO, it is the organization's continued approval for trademarks on terms that are basic geographic indicators. While this isn't just an American thing, far too often people are able to get trademark approvals for marks like area codes or the name of their home counties and towns. Given that the purpose of trademark law is to allow unique identifiers for the source of a good or service, marks like these are obvious perversions of the law.And yet it keeps happening. One recent example of this comes from Kentucky, where two Louisville breweries are in a fight over the use of the name of a neighborhood in that city, Butchertown.

The COVID-19 pandemic has spawned an infodemic, a vast and complicated mix of information, misinformation and disinformation.In this environment, false narratives – the virus was “planned,” that it originated as a bioweapon, that COVID-19 symptoms are caused by 5G wireless communications technology – have spread like wildfire across social media and other communication platforms. Some of these bogus narratives play a role in disinformation campaigns.The notion of disinformation often brings to mind easy-to-spot propaganda peddled by totalitarian states, but the reality is much more complex. Though disinformation does serve an agenda, it is often camouflaged in facts and advanced by innocent and often well-meaning individuals.As a researcher who studies how communications technologies are used during crises, I’ve found that this mix of information types makes it difficult for people, including those who build and run online platforms, to distinguish an organic rumor from an organized disinformation campaign. And this challenge is not getting any easier as efforts to understand and respond to COVID-19 get caught up in the political machinations of this year’s presidential election.Rumors, misinformation and disinformationRumors are, and have always been, common during crisis events. Crises are often accompanied by uncertainty about the event and anxiety about its impacts and how people should respond. People naturally want to resolve that uncertainty and anxiety, and often attempt to do so through collective sensemaking. It’s a process of coming together to gather information and theorize about the unfolding event. Rumors are a natural byproduct.Rumors aren’t necessarily bad. But the same conditions that produce rumors also make people vulnerable to disinformation, which is more insidious. Unlike rumors and misinformation, which may or may not be intentional, disinformation is false or misleading information spread for a particular objective, often a political or financial aim.Disinformation has its roots in the practice of dezinformatsiya used by the Soviet Union’s intelligence agencies to attempt to change how people understood and interpreted events in the world. It’s useful to think of disinformation not as a single piece of information or even a single narrative, but as a campaign, a set of actions and narratives produced and spread to deceive for political purpose.Lawrence Martin-Bittman, a former Soviet intelligence officer who defected from what was then Czechoslovakia and later became a professor of disinformation, described how effective disinformation campaigns are often built around a true or plausible core. They exploit existing biases, divisions and inconsistencies in a targeted group or society. And they often employ “unwitting agents” to spread their content and advance their objectives.Regardless of the perpetrator, disinformation functions on multiple levels and scales. While a single disinformation campaign may have a specific objective – for instance, changing public opinion about a political candidate or policy – pervasive disinformation works at a more profound level to undermine democratic societies.The case of the ‘Plandemic’ videoDistinguishing between unintentional misinformation and intentional disinformation is a critical challenge. Intent is often hard to infer, especially in online spaces where the original source of information can be obscured. In addition, disinformation can be spread by people who believe it to be true. And unintentional misinformation can be strategically amplified as part of a disinformation campaign. Definitions and distinctions get messy, fast.Consider the case of the “Plandemic” video that blazed across social media platforms in May 2020. The video contained a range of false claims and conspiracy theories about COVID-19. Problematically, it advocated against wearing masks, claiming they would “activate” the virus, and laid the foundations for eventual refusal of a COVID-19 vaccine.Though many of these false narratives had emerged elsewhere online, the “Plandemic” video brought them together in a single, slickly produced 26-minute video. Before being removed by the platforms for containing harmful medical misinformation, the video propagated widely on Facebook and received millions of YouTube views.As it spread, it was actively promoted and amplified by public groups on Facebook and networked communities on Twitter associated with the anti-vaccine movement, the QAnon conspiracy theory community and pro-Trump political activism.But was this a case of misinformation or disinformation? The answer lies in understanding how – and inferring a little about why – the video went viral.The video’s protagonist was Dr. Judy Mikovits, a discredited scientist who had previously advocated for several false theories in the medical domain – for example, claiming that vaccines cause autism. In the lead-up to the video’s release, she was promoting a new book, which featured many of the narratives that appeared in the Plandemic video.One of those narratives was an accusation against Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases. At the time, Fauci was a focus of criticism for promoting social distancing measures that some conservatives viewed as harmful to the economy. Public comments from Mikovits and her associates suggest that damaging Fauci’s reputation was a specific goal of their campaign.In the weeks leading up to the release of the Plandemic video, a concerted effort to lift Mikovits’ profile took shape across several social media platforms. A new Twitter account was started in her name, quickly accumulating thousands of followers. She appeared in interviews with hyperpartisan news outlets such as The Epoch Times and True Pundit. Back on Twitter, Mikovits greeted her new followers with the message: “Soon, Dr Fauci, everyone will know who you ‘really are’.”This background suggests that Mikovits and her collaborators had several objectives beyond simply sharing her misinformed theories about COVID-19. These include financial, political and reputational motives. However, it is also possible that Mikovits is a sincere believer of the information that she was sharing, as were millions of people who shared and retweeted her content online.What’s aheadIn the United States, as COVID-19 blurs into the presidential election, we’re likely to continue to see disinformation campaigns employed for political, financial and reputational gain. Domestic activist groups will use these techniques to produce and spread false and misleading narratives about the disease – and about the election. Foreign agents will attempt to join the conversation, often by infiltrating existing groups and attempting to steer them towards their goals.[Deep knowledge, daily. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter.]For example, there will likely be attempts to use the threat of COVID-19 to frighten people away from the polls. Along with those direct attacks on election integrity, there are likely to also be indirect effects – on people’s perceptions of election integrity – from both sincere activists and agents of disinformation campaigns.Efforts to shape attitudes and policies around voting are already in motion. These include work to draw attention to voter suppression and attempts to frame mail-in voting as vulnerable to fraud. Some of this rhetoric stems from sincere criticism meant to inspire action to make the electoral systems stronger. Other narratives, for example unsupported claims of “voter fraud,” seem to serve the primary aim of undermining trust in those systems.History teaches that this blending of activism and active measures, of foreign and domestic actors, and of witting and unwitting agents, is nothing new. And certainly the difficulty of distinguishing between these is not made any easier in the connected era. But better understanding these intersections can help researchers, journalists, communications platform designers, policymakers and society at large develop strategies for mitigating the impacts of disinformation during this challenging moment.Kate Starbird, Associate Professor of Human Centered Design & Engineering, University of WashingtonThis article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Cook County (IL) Sheriff Tom Dart doesn't appear to know much about the First Amendment. He also doesn't understand Section 230. The grandstanding sheriff has graced Techdirt's page multiple times for suing online marketplaces and strong-arming payment companies in a severely misguided attempt to combat sex trafficking. His assaults on Craigslist and Backpage were terminated by federal courts, which reminded the sheriff of the existence of both Section 230 immunity and the First Amendment. Law enforcement officers may not be required to know the laws they enforce, but they should at least have some passing familiarity with the Constitution.Sadly, Sheriff Dart is still unfamiliar with Constitutional rights and protections. The sheriff's latest violation of rights stems from his decision to engage in pretrial detention practices that ignore the Constitution, as well as changes to local law. The Seventh Circuit Appeals Court doesn't care much for that. Its order [PDF], which allows plaintiffs to continue their lawsuit against the sheriff for violation of their rights, makes it clear the Sheriff's freelancing isn't doing the Fourth Amendment any favors.The opinion opens up with an idealistic quote from the Supreme Court.

In New Hampshire, Facebook has been dealing with a pro se lawsuit from the operator of a cafe, whose Instagram account was deleted for some sort of terms of service violation (it is never made clear what the violation was, and that seems to be part of the complaint). The Teatotaller cafe in Somerset, New Hampshire, apparently had and lost an Instagram account. The cafe's owner, Emmett Soldati first went to a small claims court, arguing that this violated his "contract" with Instagram, and cost his cafe revenue. There are all sorts of problems with that, starting with the fact that Instagram's terms of service, like every such site, say they can remove you for basically any reason, and specifically says:

Protests related to the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin have passed the two-month mark in Portland, Oregon. In response to unfettered liberalism, the Trump administration has sent in the troops. Officers from ICE, CBP, US Marshals Service, and other federal agencies flooded into Portland with the ostensible aim of protecting federal property, like the courthouse targeted by protesters.Instead of a measured response to defuse tensions, federal officers engaged in Gestapo tactics. Unidentified officers in unmarked vehicles began removing protesters from the streets, hauling them away to unknown locations for questioning. Those released after being detained were given no paperwork commemorating their interaction with America's secret police, nor were they told why they had been detained.This wasn't the only broadside against Constitutional rights. Federal officers also attacked journalists and legal observers. This didn't just violate social contracts. It violated the First Amendment. Local journalists and observers sued. And they obtained a restraining order from a federal court blocking federal agents from attacking clearly identified journalists and observers. The court noted that local law enforcement -- which had been hit with an earlier restraining order -- was able to abide by the court-ordered rules of engagement. The court said the federal government offered no plausible argument why it would be impossible to abide by the same restrictions.The [federal] police are rioting.The plaintiffs are back in court asking for sanctions to be brought against the federal government for refusing to abide by the restraining order. (h/t Mike Scarcella)The opening of the motion [PDF] contains some invective, but it appears to be justified.

The Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud Bundle has 8 courses to teach you how to effectively use the tools in the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite. You'll learn how to use Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom, Premiere Pro, Spark, and After Effects. Courses cover logo design, photo and video editing, and more. 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.

How was your Wednesday? I spent 5 and a half hours of mine watching the most inane and stupid hearing put on by Rep. David Cicilline, and the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial & Administrative Law. The hearing was billed as a big antitrust showdown, in which the CEOs of Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon would all answer questions regarding an antitrust investigation into those four companies. If you are also a glutton for punishment, you can now watch the whole thing yourself too (though, at least you can watch it at 2x speed). I'll save you a bit of time though: there was very little discussion of actual antitrust. There was plenty of airing of grievances, however, frequently with little to no basis in reality.If you want to read my realtime reactions to the nonsense, there's a fairly long Twitter thread. If you want a short summary, it's this: everyone who spoke is angry about some aspect of these companies but (and this is kind of important) there is no consensus about why and the reasons for their anger is often contradictory. The most obvious example of this played out in regards to discussions that were raised about the decision earlier this week by YouTube and Facebook (and Twitter) to take down an incredibly ridiculous Breitbart video showing a group of "doctors" spewing dangerous nonsense regarding COVID-19 and how to treat it (and how not to treat it). The video went viral, and a whole bunch of people were sharing it, even though one of the main stars apparently believes in Alien DNA and Demon Sperm. Also, when Facebook took down the video, she suggested that God would punish Facebook by crashing its servers.However, during the hearing, there were multiple Republican lawmakers who were furious at Facebook and YouTube for removing such content, and tried to extract promises that the platforms would no longer "interfere." Amusingly (or, not really), at one point, Jim Sensenbrenner even demanded that Mark Zuckerberg answer why Donald Trump Jr.'s account had been suspended for sharing such a video -- which is kind of embarrassing since it was Twitter, not Facebook, that temporarily suspended Junior's account (and it was for spreading disinfo about COVID, which that video absolutely was). Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle, Rep. Cicilline was positively livid that 20 million people still saw that video, and couldn't believe that it took Facebook five full hours to decide to delete the video.So, you had Republicans demanding these companies keep those videos up, and Democrats demanding they take the videos down faster. What exactly are these companies supposed to do?Similarly, Rep. Jim Jordan made some conspiracy theory claims saying that Google tried to help Hillary Clinton win in 2016 (the fact that she did not might raise questions about how Jordan could then argue they have too much power, but...) and demanded that they promise not to "help Biden." On the other side of the aisle, Rep. Jamie Raskin complained about how Facebook allowed Russians and others to swing the election to Trump, and demanded to know how Facebook would prevent that in the future.So... basically both sides were saying that if their tools are used to influence elections, bad things might happen. It just depends on which side wins to see which side will want to do the punishing.Nearly all of the Representatives spent most of their time grandstanding -- rarely about issues related to antitrust -- and frequently demonstrating their own technological incompetence. Rep. Greg Steube whined that his campaign emails were being filtered to spam, and argued that it was Gmail unfairly handicapping conservatives. His "evidence" for this was that it didn't happen before he joined Congress last year, and that he'd never heard of it happening to Democrats (a few Democrats noted later that it does happen to them). Also, he said his own father found his campaign ads in spam, and so clearly it wasn't because his father marked them as spam. Sundar Pichai had to explain to Rep. Steube that (1) they don't spy on emails so they have no way of knowing that emails were between a father and son, and (2) that emails go to spam based on a variety of factors, including how other users rate them. In other words, Steube's own campaign is (1) bad at email and (2) his constituents are probably trashing the emails. It's not anti-conservative bias.Rep. Ken Buck went on an unhinged rant, claiming that Google was in cahoots with communist China and against the US government.On that front, Rep. Jim Jordan put on quite a show, repeatedly misrepresenting various content moderation decisions as "proof" of anti-conservative bias. Nearly every one of those examples he misrepresented. And then when a few other Reps. pointed out that he was resorting to fringe conspiracy theories he started shouting and had to be told repeatedly to stop interrupting (and to put on his mask). Later, at the end of the hearing, he went on a bizarre rant about "cancel culture" and demanded each of the four CEOs to state whether or not they thought cancel culture was good or bad. What that has to do with their companies, I do not know. What that has to do with antitrust, I have even less of an idea.A general pattern, on both sides of the aisle was that a Representative would describe a news story or scenario regarding one of the platforms in a way that misrepresented what actually happened, and painted the companies in the worst possible light, and then would ask a "and have you stopped beating your wife?" type of question. Each of the four CEOs, when put on the spot like that, would say something along the lines of "I must respectfully disagree with the premise..." or "I don't think that's an accurate representation..." at which point (like clockwork) they were cut off by the Representative, with a stern look, and something along the lines of "so you won't answer the question?!?" or "I don't want to hear about that -- I just want a yes or no!"It was... ridiculous -- in a totally bipartisan manner. Cicilline was just as bad as Jordan in completely misrepresenting things and pretending he'd "caught" these companies in some bad behavior that was not even remotely accurate. This is not to say the companies haven't done questionable things, but neither Cicilline nor Jordan demonstrated any knowledge of what those things were, preferring to push out fringe conspiracy theories. Others pushing fringe wacko theories included Rep. Matt Gaetz on the Republican side (who was all over the map with just wrong things, including demanding that the platforms would support law enforcement) and Rep. Lucy McBath on the Democratic side, who seemed very, very confused about the nature of cookies on the internet. She also completely misrepresented a situation regarding how Apple handled a privacy situation, suggesting that protecting user's privacy by blocking certain apps that had privacy issues was anti-competitive.There were a few Representatives who weren't totally crazy. On the Republican side, Rep. Kelly Armstrong asked some thoughtful questions about reverse warrants (not an antitrust issue, but an important 4th Amendment one) and about Amazon's use of competitive data (but... he also used the debunked claim that Google tried to "defund" The Federalist, and used the story about bunches of DMCA notices going to Twitch to say that Twitch should be forced to pre-license all music, a la the EU Copyright Directive -- which, of course, would harm competition, since only a few companies could actually afford to do that). On the Democratic side, Rep. Raskin rightly pointed out the hypocrisy of Republicans who support Citizens United, but were mad that companies might politically support candidates they don't like (what that has to do with antitrust is beyond me, but it was a worthwhile point). Rep. Joe Neguse asked some good questions that were actually about competition, but for which there weren't very clear answers.All in all, some will say it was just another typical Congressional hearing in which Congress displays its technological ignorance. And that may be true. But it is disappointing. What could have been a useful and productive discussion with these four important CEOs was anything but. What could have been an actual exploration of questions around market power and consumer welfare... was not. It was all just a big performance. And that's disappointing on multiple levels. It was a waste of time, and will be used to reinforce various narratives.But, from this end, the only narrative it reinforced was that Congress is woefully ignorant about technology and how these companies operate. And they showed few signs of actually being curious in understanding the truth.

Among the dated and dumb business concepts exposed as folly during the pandemic is the traditional Hollywood film release window, which typically involves a 90 day gap between the time a move appears in theaters and its streaming or DVD release (in France this window is even more ridiculous at three years). The goal is usually to "protect the traditional film industry," though it's never been entirely clear why you'd protect traditional theaters at the cost of common sense, consumer demand, and a more efficient model. Just because?While the industry has flirted with the idea of "day and date" releases for decades (releasing movies on home video at the same time as brick and mortar theaters), there's long been a lot of hyperventilation on the part of movie theaters and traditionalists that this sort of shift wasn't technically possible or would somehow destroy the traditional "movie experience," driving theaters out of business.The pandemic has changed everything. To the point where AMC Theaters and Universal have struck a pact to shorten the traditional release window, allowing movies to appear on demand just 17 days after they appear in theaters:

The Australian government rang in 2019 by saddling the nation's tech companies with compelled decryption mandates. The new law gave the government the power to demand technical assistance to access any data or communications sought by law enforcement or security agencies. Sure, "case-by-case" solutions might work for awhile, but sooner or later, built-in backdoors would expedite things for both the government and their compellees.The backdoors may not be in place yet, but it appears no one really trusts Australian tech companies now, thanks to the Australian government. An inquiry into the country's anti-encryption laws is underway and local tech giant Atlassian has expressed its displeasure with the new status quo.

It was just days ago that we were discussing Stone Brewing's new campaign to jealously protect all uses of the word "stone" on alcohol branding. The one time advocate brewer claiming to stand up for craft brewing against "Big Beer" has since devolved into a corporate gorilla smashing up the USPTO to get trademarks cancelled and firing off cease and desist notices to small breweries. All this, mind you, as it also wages war on a second front with MillerCoors over Keystone's rebranding as simply "Stone". In that suit, MillerCoors complained that lots of breweries use the word "stone", which appears to have set Stone Brewing off on its bout of aggression.When Sawstone Brewing pushed back on a C&D and failed to work out an agreement with Stone Brewing, the latter initiated an attempt to cancel the former's trademark. Sawstone complained publicly. And now Stone Brewing is busy complaining that the public is being mean to it as a result.

Summary: Social media platforms are constantly seeking to remove racist, bigoted, or hateful content. Unfortunately, these efforts can cause unintended collateral damage to users who share surface similarities to hate groups, even though many of these users take a firmly anti-racist stance.A recent attempt by Facebook to remove hundreds of pages associated with bigoted groups resulted in the unintended deactivation of accounts belonging to historically anti-racist groups and public figures.The unintentional removal of non-racist pages occurred shortly after Facebook engaged in a large-scale deletion of accounts linked to white supremacists, as reported by OneZero:

Earlier this month I noted how the calls to ban TikTok didn't make a whole lot of sense. For one thing, flood of researchers have shown that TikTok isn't doing anything any different than a flood of foreign and domestic services. Secondly, the majority of the most vocal pearl clutchers over the app (Josh Hawley, etc.) haven't cared a whit about things like consumer privacy or internet security, suggesting it's more about politics than policy. The wireless industry SS7 flaw? US cellular location data scandals? The rampant lack of any privacy or security standards in the internet of things? The need for election security funding?Most of the folks hyperventilating about TikTok haven't made so much as a peep on these other subjects. Either you actually care about consumer privacy and internet security or you don't, and a huge swath of those hyperventilating about TikTok have been utterly absent from the broader conversation. In fact, many of them have done everything in their power to scuttle any effort to have even modest privacy guidelines for the internet era, and fought every effort to improve and properly fund election security. Again, that's because, for many it's more about politics than serious, adult tech policy.That's not to say there aren't security concerns when it comes to installing Chinese-made apps on American devices, but that same argument can be made (but somehow isn't) for an absolute ocean of foreign and domestic services, hardware, and apps. Over the weekend, Kevin Roose at the New York Times made some similar points, noting that things tend to get stupid when you fuse politics with policy and domestic financial interests with national security (especially given lobbyists adore taking advantage of the lack of transparency in the latter):

At the end of last year, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released its review of 189 facial recognition algorithms submitted by 99 companies. The results were underwhelming. The tech law enforcement and security agencies seem to feel is a game changer is just more of the same bias we've been subjected to for years without any AI assistance.

The Film and Cinematography Mastery Bundle will teach you how to write, shoot, and distribute your own films. One course walks you through every step of the film making process, from writing a screenplay to picking the right distribution method, and it comes with bonus materials including sample spreadsheets, contracts, and additional resources. Another course takes on the basics of cinematography, like choosing the right camera, ISO, frame rate, shutter speed, etc., and broadens your understanding of camera movement, and working with a production team. The final course shows you how to create professional videos with the equipment you already have, and take a look at ideal equipment to buy, techniques for getting better shots, and much more. It's on sale for $29.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 frustrating claims that critics of Section 230 make is that because of Section 230 the big internet companies have no incentive to deal with awful content (abuse, harassment, bigotry, lies, etc.). Yet, over and over again we see why that's not at all true. First of all, there's strong incentive to deal with crap content on your platform because if you don't your users will go elsewhere. So the userbase itself is incentive. Then, as we've discussed, there are incentives from advertisers who don't want their ads showing up next to such junk and can pressure companies to change.Finally, there are the employees of these companies. While so much of the narrative around internet companies focuses (somewhat ridiculously) on the larger-than-life profiles of their founders/CEOs, the reality is that there are thousands of employees at these companies, many of whom don't want to be doing evil shit or enabling evil shit. And they have influence. Over the past few years, there have been multiple examples of employees revolting and pushing back against company decisions on things like government contracts and surveillance.And, now they're pushing back on the wider impact of these companies. That's a Buzzfeed article detailing how a bunch of employees inside Facebook are getting fed up with the company's well-documented problems, its failure to change, and its failure to take into account its broader impact.

While the Trump administration and its allies (like Josh Hawley) like to talk a lot about monopolization in "big tech," they couldn't actually care less about monopolies or their impact on competition. For example while Hawley and the Trump FCC/DOJ have made an endless stink about the power of "big tech," that's largely for performative political reasons, namely to perpetuate the utterly false claim that Conservatives are being "censored," to bully tech giants away from encryption, or to frighten them away from finally doing something about the (profitable) bigotry and disinformation problems that plague their networks.Oddly, this performative, sometimes vindictive nonsense is often conflated with actually caring about monopoly power and reforming antitrust. You only need to look at the DOJ and FCC's mindless rubber stamping of every fleeting whim of the US telecom industry, one of the most heavily monopolized (and widely despised) sectors in technology. While T-Mobile was getting the red carpet rolled out for its competition and job killing merger with Sprint, Bill Barr's DOJ was busy hassling small cannabis companies, or filing empty-headed "antitrust" lawsuits against automakers for agreeing to limit emissions.Studies from the likes of the Antitrust Institute (pdf) have made it very clear: the Trump administration's interest in "antitrust reform" is utterly and completely hollow. During an era when lagging antitrust enforcement needed to be meaningfully improved and reformed, the Trump administration instead began wielding antitrust as a political bludgeon to gain leverage over its enemies and dole out favors to its allies. It's mindless theater and an abuse of the law, yet it's often portrayed as serious adult policy making by many experts and the press.Despite ongoing whistleblower investigations of Barr's politicization of antitrust, his DOJ is now rubber stamping the merger between native advertising platforms Taboola and Outbrain. EU and UK regulators have been scrutinizing the deal, arguing it will erode competition in the native advertising (read: clickbait) space, resulting in notably worse terms for already struggling publishers who face getting an even smaller share of advertising revenue:

They say that only two things are certain in life: death and taxes. But here on Techdirt, we have a third certainty: that governments around the world will always seek ways of gaining access to encrypted communications, because they claim that things are "going dark" for them. In the US and elsewhere, the most requested way of doing that is by inserting backdoors into encryption systems. As everyone except certain government officials know, that's a really bad idea. So it's interesting to read a detailed and fascinating report by Matthias Monroy on how the EU has been approaching this problem without asking for backdoors -- so far. The European Commission has been just as vocal as the authorities in other parts of the world in calling for law enforcement to have access to encrypted communications for the purpose of combating crime. But EU countries such as Germany, Finland and Croatia have said they are against prohibiting, limiting or weakening encrypted connections. Because of the way the EU works, that means the region as a whole needs to adopt other methods of gaining access. Monroy explains that the EU is pinning its hopes on its regional police organization:

Professional sports is now fully in the weeds trying to navigate reopening live sports events during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. It's not going great, frankly. NFL players are beginning to opt out of the season, citing health concerns. Golfers have been trickling out of events due to positive COVID-19 tests. MLB, meanwhile, just found itself with four teams unable to play the other night due to roughly a third of the Florida Marlins popping positive for the virus. Given that these leagues just started reopening, it's not a good sign.Still, I won't lie and say it hasn't been nice to see baseball back on my TV again. And, as we wrote about recently, what the league is trying to do with innovation around piped in crowd noise and its MLB app is downright cool. But not all tech solutions are good ones and Fox Sports' use of video game graphics to input fake crowds into stadiums on the screen is pretty terrible.

Forty-five years after a law was passed in New York allowing public agencies to withhold employees' disciplinary records from the public, it was finally taken off the books by the state's legislature. The law -- known by its statute number "50-a" -- hadn't really been an obstacle to the limited transparency begrudgingly extended by the NYPD until the department suddenly decided it was no longer interested in sharing information about disciplined officers with journalists.The decision to start following the letter of the law occurred in 2016. Four years later, the state legislature erased it, making these records accessible again. The Police Benevolent Association (PBA) -- one of two NYPD unions -- sued to block the release of records created by the city's Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB). The PBA secured a temporary restraining order earlier this month, blocking the release of these records. The federal judge also forbade the ACLU from releasing documents it had already obtained until the PBA's appeal has been addressed.Here's the strange thing: the New York branch of the ACLU isn't a party to this suit. The PBA sued the city and mayor over the records. The ACLU is going to fight the bizarre order from Judge Katherine Polk Failla. But ProPublica also has a copy of these records. And it's not going to bother with speaking to Judge Failla. After all, it's not a party to this lawsuit either. The temporary restraining order the PBA obtained is permanently worthless.

As we mentioned on Friday, on Monday, the NTIA followed through on a key part of Trump's executive order on Section 230, asking the FCC to weigh in on interpreting the law. Everything about this is crazy. The NTIA request was almost certainly written by a recently hired lawyer who has spent the last couple of years attacking Section 230. He's also the same lawyer who sued Twitter on behalf of a white supremacist, and when I had reached out to him over email to ask him how that made sense under 230, insisted to me that Section 230 was a narrow statute that only applied if it was about protecting children. I can't say for sure, but my email exchange with him suggested to me that he was wholly unaware of Section 230 prior to me asking about it. Either way, that case failed spectacularly, and Adam Candeub has spent the past two years attacking 230 on various panels. And now he's deputy secretary at NTIA in charge of this issue.The petition to the FCC is performative nonsense, just like the Executive Order that preceded it. The FCC has no authority over internet edge providers. It has no authority to interpret Section 230. That's for the courts. And if Congress doesn't like how the courts have interpreted the law, then it's on Congress to change the law. The FCC has literally no authority at all to deal with this issue. And, you would think that since we're living in an era where the current FCC, under Chair Ajit Pai, has been literally giving away whatever authority the FCC actually has regarding the area it does have oversight concerning (namely internet access providers), that it would take a similar hands off approach to the NTIA request. Unfortunately that doesn't seem likely.Pai has remained basically silent on this issue since the executive order came out. His fellow Republican Michael O'Rielly has suggested it's probably unenforceable gibberish. However, the third Republican on the Commission, Brendan Carr, has spent the last few months gloating and tweeting Trumpian nonsense about how "big tech" is censoring conservatives and something must be done (that this is 100% diametrically opposed to his views on regulating broadband access providers is not something he thinks you should concern yourself with -- this is a Trumpian world we're living in and so all that seems to matter regarding regulatory control is which companies you like and which you don't like).Carr published a hilariously ridiculous plan to regulate big internet companies in Newsweek to coincide with the NTIA petition, which he knew was coming. He claims -- hilariously incorrectly -- that the success of big internet is not because of the free market, which he as a good Republican has to pretend to support, but rather through "crony capitalism" like... Section 230. In fact, he flat out misleads everyone in claiming that Google abused its power to shut down the comments of The Federalist because it's a conservative publication. Carr ignores that Google did the same thing to us, even though he knows they did it to us, because I told him about it and he follows me on Twitter.But to argue that 230 is crony capitalism is to ignore facts (apparently, a Carr specialty). Section 230 does not favor any particular company. It applies equally to all websites, including small ones. Indeed, our empirical study showed that 230 helped create more competition, not less.On the Democratic side, Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel seems to be alone in being willing to call bullshit on this ridiculous NTIA petition:

On Friday, we wrote about the bad reporting concerning Nick Sandmann's settlement with the Washington Post, that nearly every knowledgeable lawyer figures was likely for "nuisance value" to get rid of the lawsuit. We noted that the NY Post's coverage of it misleadingly suggested that the kid got many millions of dollars, when there's no evidence to support that conclusion, and plenty to suggest he got very little. If you want a thorough debunking of "the kid got paid" narrative, this thread by @RespectableLawyer lays out the details. As we had noted in our post, the court had already rejected nearly all of the claims in the case, and only allowed it to be reinstated to allow for very narrow discovery on very narrow issues which Sandmann almost certainly would not have won on. There was basically no chance Sandmann would win the case. So, a nuisance fee settlement makes it worthwhile to everyone. The paper gets out of the case for less than the cost of going through discovery and the whole summary judgment process, and Sandmann gets to say he got paid, without ever saying how little.

Infamous copyright troll Richard Liebowitz didn't have a very good Monday. Facing massive sanctions and quite an incredibly detailed order exposing his long trail of disobeyed orders and lies to courts across the country, with just a week before he had to comply, Liebowitz (1) appealed to the 2nd Circuit to put a stay on the original order, and (2) asked the original judge to lift the non-monetary sanctions as being unfair. The district court judge, Jesse Furman, wasted almost no time at all in rejecting that request highlighting (among many other things) that Liebowitz and the actual lawyers he hired to represent him waited until about the last possible minute to make that request.If Liebowitz was hoping the 2nd Circuit would bail him out as well, that didn't work either. As first pointed out by Mike Dunford, the 2nd Circuit has denied the request for a stay, and has said the larger appeal will be heard the week of August 10th. That's a pretty quick turnaround. But, worse for Liebowitz, this denial of the stay comes on the deadline by which Liebowitz was required to file a copy of the original opinion and order from Judge Furman in every docket of any currently pending case brought by Liebowitz.For much of the day yesterday, we wondered if Liebowitz would actually obey the order, and late last night, he finally got around to it, trying to squeeze it in just as the deadline ran out. It would be nearly impossible to check every single one of his remaining cases, but it does appear that he filed the order in some of his ongoing cases, though he included a petulant note on the cover page:

The Creative Arts Bundle has 6 courses to help you learn how to draw and paint. You'll learn the fundamentals of oil painting, of still life painting, and of drawing. Three courses focus on watercolor painting and landscapes. The bundle is on sale for $35.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.

For years and years we've pointed out that, if they were invented today, copyright maximalist authors and publishers would absolutely scream about libraries and probably sue them out of existence. Some insisted that we were exaggerating, but now we've seen nearly all of the big publishers sue the Internet Archive over its digital library that acts just like a regular library.But, perhaps the most frustrating part in all of this, is that whenever these copyright maximalist authors and publishers are confronted about this, they twist themselves into knots to say "well, I actually love libraries, but..." before beginning a bunch of arguments that show they do not, in fact, like libraries. Sometimes, however rarely, a maximalist just comes out and admits the facts: they fucking hate libraries.The latest example of this is Kenneth Whyte, a small publisher of Sutherland House Books in Canada, who seemed to think now was the time to take to the pages of The Globe & Mail to whine about libraries competing with book stores that sell books. Of all the things to be bothered with right now. Even the setup of this column is just ridiculous, arguing that libraries -- with their public taxpayer funded support -- are unfair competitors to booksellers:

While the United States talks a lot about our heroic efforts to combat robocalls and unwanted text messages, the reality is we just aren't very good at it. Most of our initiatives go comically out of their way to fixate exclusively on "scammers," ignoring that the biggest source of unwanted robocalls and spam texts is usually legitimate companies and debt collectors, who often utilize many of the same tactics to harass targets they know can't pay. And while we like to crow often about "record" fines levied against bad actors, the FCC has only collected $6,790 in actual penalties of the $208 million in fines doled out so far.When it comes to text message spam campaigns, we've bungled that as well. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 is a dated piece of befuddling legislation that's been interpreted to mean that you can't send unsolicited text message spam en masse. But marketers and political campaigns have long wiggled around the restrictions via P2P text message efforts, which still let you send blanket text message campaigns -- just somewhat individually via pre-scripted templates. These efforts were ramped up by the Sanders campaign, and have since been heavily embraced by the Trump campaign.But there was trouble in paradise earlier this month when anti-spam companies working for wireless carriers blocked a massive new text message fund raising campaign by the Trump administration, purportedly because wireless carriers were worried the effort would violate the 1991 law and wireless industry guidelines. Carriers clearly felt the Trump administration wasn't doing enough to gain consumer consent for the message, especially given there are several lawsuits that have already been filed against both the Trump and Sanders campaigns for just this sort of thing.Wary of angering Trump, wireless carriers pussyfooted around defending themselves, and as a result couldn't even be bothered to comment on the record:

Surprising exactly no one, an NYPD official has declared NYPD officers to be above the law. In response to the George Floyd killing -- a killing carried out by a Minnesota police officer who crushed Floyd's throat with his knee until no pulse could be detected… and then continued for another three minutes -- resulted in the city passing a new law forbidding officers from choking the life out of arrestees. Seems reasonable.Top brass disagrees. The NYPD's Chief of Department told officers no stupid law was going to keep them from restraining people to death.

We've argued for a long, long time that these automated copyright takedown bots that far too many media companies utilize are both broken and illuminate just how broken copyright takedown policies for streaming sites have become. The output of this broken system is shown when these bots take down totally legitimate content or when grifters abuse the system to try to take some measure of income away from small third-party streamers. But attempts at machine-based copyright enforcement are truly at their most satisfying when content companies employing these bots commit unintentional copyright seppuku.This happens way more than you might think, but the latest version of this is Viacom briefly nuking its own Star Trek Comic-Con panel when the copyright borg misfired.

A very interesting decision [PDF] has been handed down by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. It not only addresses what constitutes exigent circumstances, but also attacks predictive policing as nothing more than a tool law enforcement uses to enforce a racist status quo.The decision is long. It has four(!) concurrences and two dissents. Three of the concurrences attack the dissent written by Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, who believes not giving the government what it asked for blunts officers' ability to police high-crime areas.Here's the Appeals Court's final ruling, which details the events leading to this challenge, as well as its outcome.

About a month or so ago on the radio program Fresh Air, host Terry Gross spoke to epidemiologist Michael Osterholm from the University of Minnesota about a variety of topics related to the pandemic. It's an interesting discussion, and one part stood out: he complained about the term "social distancing" arguing that the phrase "social distancing" was misleading since it suggested not being social with others.

A surge of federal agents swept into Portland, Oregon in response to ongoing protests in the city. The city hadn't asked for federal help, but help arrived anyway. And it wasn't much help. The blend of federal agents -- drawn from the CBP, US Marshals Service, and ICE -- rolled onto the streets in unmarked vehicles. Out of these vehicles sprang agents dressed like soldiers, wearing no markings clearly identifying the officers or the agency they represented. Residents were taken off the street to unknown locations for questioning. They were later released and given no paperwork that informed them who had detained them or for what reason.This federal intervention was immediately greeted by several lawsuits, including one filed by Oregon's Department of Justice. One set of plaintiffs has already secured a temporary restraining order against the federal government. (h/t Mike Scarcella)Portland journalists sued the DHS -- along with the Portland Police Bureau, US Marshals Service, and the city itself -- over attacks on journalists and neutral observers by law enforcement officers. The federal agencies were added to the lawsuit shortly after they added themselves to mix in early July.The court has granted the restraining order, finding that the government's actions pose a threat to multiple Constitutional rights. There's a history of violence against journalists by federal agents, detailed here in the court's order [PDF].

In February, we wrote about how a patent troll, Voice Tech, had sued a small open source voice assistant company, Mycroft AI, claiming infringement. Mycroft AI and its founder/CEO Joshua Montgomery had put up a blog post about the situation, which attracted our attention, in part due to his willingness to call out trolling for trolling, and promising not to back down. It included some strong language, including:

The Complete 2020 Cloud Foundation Bundle has 4 courses covering AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and CompTIA. Courses cover cloud concepts, security, architecture, pricing, and support for the various services. You'll learn how to troubleshoot capacity, automation, connectivity and security issues related to cloud implementations, and much more. It's on sale for $50.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.

The federal government's "Fusion Centers" -- overseen by the DHS -- continue to provide us with the least bang for our federal buck. DHS officials have told Congress that the real purpose of the centers -- supposedly designed to gather intelligence about threats to the country -- is to generate conversations about terrorism. And those conversations are meant to portray the DHS as useful and worthy of continued funding.

The federal government's "Fusion Centers" -- overseen by the DHS -- continue to provide us with the least bang for our federal buck. DHS officials have told Congress that the real purpose of the centers -- supposedly designed to gather intelligence about threats to the country -- is to generate conversations about terrorism. And those conversations are meant to portray the DHS as useful and worthy of continued funding.

For decades, incumbent broadband and television giants like Comcast and AT&T enjoyed life from a comfortable position of monopoly dominance. If you want to subscribe to broadband, such companies are often your only option. If you wanted to subscribe to television service, you were required to rent a locked down, highly proprietary cable box courtesy of the industry's cable hardware monopoly. Are you a broadcaster and want to have your cable channel in a conspicuous position in the lineup? Expect headaches. Want to use their utility poles to build a decent competitor? Expect a lot of bullshit.Natural monopolies are a pain in the ass. Telecom monopolies like AT&T, whose domination spans the better part of a century, are a very particular type of pain in the ass. But with cord cutting and the rise of streaming changing at least part of their business equations, it's interesting to watch how these giants of yesterday are now struggling to adapt to a new era in which they not only no longer dominate, but often have to collaborate.Case in point. Before its 2015 merger with DirecTV and 2018 merger with Time Warner, AT&T -- a company with a thirty year track record of obvious, documented, monopolistic behavior -- told anybody who'd listen that there was simply no way that the company would use the greater scale from its merger ambitions to behave badly.While U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon bought into that nonsense, AT&T quickly set about proving to everybody that critics were right to worry. It set about abusing its broadband monopoly to thwart streaming competitors, drove up TV prices on consumers and competitors alike, and began withholding HBO content from competitors. All things it swore to the courts it wouldn't do, and all while its lobbyists set about dismantling consumer protections (like net neutrality rules) designed specifically to thwart this kind of behavior.As AT&T attempts (poorly) to pivot toward the cord cutting generation, the company is suddenly finding itself in an alien predicament: it has to innovate, collaborate, and compete. But with companies like Roku and Amazon now dominating the streaming hardware space, AT&T's been having a hard time bullying them into carrying its streaming platform. In turn, AT&T has gotten a bit pouty as it tries to explain why, despite all this bullying, posturing, bullshit, and market domination, it still managed to lose nearly 1 million TV subscribers last quarter and nearly four million subscribers in just the last few years:

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is an anonymous commenter responding to the assertion that there's no financial incentive to share coronavirus vaccine research: