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As millions of Americans begin to work and learn from home in a bid to slow the spread of COVID-19, America's patchy and expensive broadband networks are likely to get a workout. To be clear, the shift will certainly highlight the broken US telecom market, at least in terms of patchy availability, limited competition, and high prices. But most experts say US networks should be able to shoulder the load without too much difficulty.As of last week, giants like AT&T and Verizon say they hadn't seen a massive surge in internet usage yet, and insisted they'd be able to shoulder any load once usage ramps up further:

The FBI continues to avoid playing its hand honestly in the "going dark" debate. It continues to do things like call strong encryption "warrant-proof" encryption, damning it by associating its very existence with unlawfulness. FBI Director Chris Wray continues to claim he's not asking for encryption backdoors while calling for encryption backdoors. And for nearly two years, the FBI has refused to update its erroneous count of uncracked devices in its possession.The last time the FBI delivered a number, it claimed it had about 7,800 devices in its possession that it couldn't get into. After being questioned by Congress about its claims, the FBI went back to count devices and found its tracking method had resulted in a severe miscount. No real number has been delivered yet, but the early estimate was that the actual number was slightly over 1,000 devices. Not quite the apocalypse the FBI needed us (and our Congressional reps) to believe it was.As usual, when the government fails, private citizens step in to do the work that government agencies are spending our tax dollars not doing. The DOJ and FBI have spent years hardly bothering to compile an accurate accounting of police use of deadly force, resulting in a small cottage industry of journalists, activists, and hobbyists doing the work for them.The same thing can be said about the "going dark" narrative. The FBI loves the narrative but can't be bothered to provide any hard data backing its assertions that encryption is destroying the criminal justice system. So, it's left up to people like Joseph Cox and his team members at Motherboard to try to get a grip on how often device encryption is disrupting criminal investigations.Using information gathered from more than 500 iPhone search warrants and other court records, Motherboard has compiled a database that gives readers a better idea of encryption's impact on law enforcement investigations -- a narrative stripped of all the competing narratives, if you will.In conclusion, Going Dark is a land of contrasts:

There has been some absolutely ridiculous sniping between the Chinese government and the US government over "blame" for Covid-19. For idiotic reasons, President Trump and his sycophantic followers started referring to Covid-19 as "The Chinese Virus," a racist term that hints at putting blame on Chinese people for the virus or even implying that those of Chinese ancestry are more risky than others. The administration also stupidly limited the number of Chinese staffers allowed at the US bureaus of Chinese news organizations, partly in response to China expelling three Wall Street Journal reporters over a headline it didn't like.The Chinese government responded in an even more idiotic manner, trying to blame Americans for the disease.

Just another reminder the Drug Enforcement Agency doesn't care all that much about drugs and/or enforcement. If there's money to be made, the DEA is all in. If it can score easy wins by engaging in entrapment, it will. But the drugs will flow and the damage will be done. And the DEA will be there to hoover up the cash… even when the cash has nothing to do with drugs.The DEA stole another person's life savings back in 2015. A raid of house predicated on the theory Miladis Salgado's husband was involved in drug dealing ended with the DEA walking off with $15,000 Salgado had saved for her daughter's quinceanera. This was money Salgado had saved while working at a duty-free shop in the Miami airport, along with gifts from friends and relatives.And it all was gone after the DEA raided her house. The good news is Salgado eventually got her money back. But it took time and it took a lawyer. In the end, the DEA admitted it had no evidence tying her husband to drug trafficking.

Techdirt has just written about the extraordinary legal action taken against a company producing Covid-19 tests. Sadly, it's not the only example of some individuals putting profits before people. Here's a story from Italy, which is currently seeing more new coronavirus cases and deaths than anywhere else in the world. Last Thursday, a hospital in Brescia, in the north of Italy, needed supplies of special valves in order to use breathing equipment to help keep Covid-19 patients alive in intensive care (original in Italian). The manufacturer was unable to provide them because of the demand for this particular valve. The Metro site explains what happened next:

Yesterday I wrote up a fairly insane story about how a Softbank-owned patent troll, Fortress Investment Group, through a shell company subsidiary, Labrador Diagnostics (which, despite its name, does not seem to do any diagnostics), using patents that it had bought up from the sham medical testing company Theranos during its fire sale, had sued BioFire Diagnostics/BioMerieux, one of the few companies making a Covid-19 diagnostics test, claiming patent infringement. The patent infringement claims were on all of its diagnostics created using BioFire's FilmArray 2.0, FilmArray EZ, and FilmArray Torch devices -- and the company's Covid-19 tests were based on that technology. Even worse, the company asked the court to issue an injunction, blocking BioFire from using the tests. As we pointed out, this was not just tone deaf, but destructive and dangerous.This morning, hours after our article went viral, Labrador Diagnostics issued a press release claiming that once it became aware that BioFire was working on Covid-19 tests, it had offered the company a royalty-free license on those tests (and only those tests):

For all the fears and freak-outs over "disinformation" on social media, over the past few weeks Twitter, especially, has been an amazing source for getting accurate, thoughtful information regarding the Covid-19 pandemic and how to deal with it. It's a pretty stark contrast, in fact, between people who seemed to be paying attention to credible voices on social media, and who began "social distancing" sooner, and those who were getting their information from politicians and television (especially cable news) who seemed to wave off the dangers for way too long. That's not to say there hasn't been disinformation about Covid-19 online -- including some spread by politicians and crackpots. However, on the whole, social media has done what it does best: allowed credible, knowledgeable voices to rise to the top for many.As Elizabeth Nolan Brown at Reason notes, COVID-19 Reminds Us: Social Media Is Good, Actually:

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As the EARN IT Act moves forward -- with all of its Section 230 and encryption-threatening appendages still intact -- we're getting some very interesting responses from tech companies that have benefitted from Section 230 and/or rely on strong encryption.The goal may be noble -- the protection of children from sexual abuse -- but those noble goals are just a crowd-pleasing dodge. It's an assault on both Section 230 and strong encryption that's being pushed with an anti-child porn narrative, one that makes it very difficult for legislators to oppose. To vote against EARN IT, supporters will misleadingly claim, is to vote for the spread of child porn, so it's going to be tough to find lawmakers willing to push back.Attorney General Bill Barr wants encryption broken. If it means American citizens are less protected, so be it… just as long as the FBI can get into a few more locked devices or accounts. Plenty of people in the administration seem to feel Section 230 has to go, if only to make it easier to sue platforms for perceived slights.Entities that used to be allied against Section 230 reform and encryption-breaking are now for it. The Electronic Privacy Information Center wants to do both somehow. It has sent a letter [PDF] in support of the EARN IT Act that is pure cognitive dissonance. EPIC claims it wants to see Section 230 reformed but somehow keep this "reform" from threatening the encryption of end-to-end communications. How it imagines this law will achieve both aims is nearly impossible to discern.The letter says Section 230 must be reformed, but for something much lower on the "for the children" list.

While it required some nudging, several of the nation's biggest ISPs this week announced they would be suspending their usage caps and overage fees as millions of Americans prepare to hunker down to slow the spread of COVID-19. Comcast, AT&T, and Centurylink all stopped imposing such limits for at least the next 90 days. Critics (and even leaked Comcast memos) have long made it clear such restrictions (particularly on fixed line networks) aren't technically useful in managing congestion as the industry once claimed, and are little more than glorified price hikes on captive customers.The speed at which such restrictions were dispatched (during a time when overall bandwidth consumption is up, no less) supports industry executive claims that such limits are arbitrary, confusing, and unnecessary.That said, numerous ISPs say they're taking additional steps to ensure users can stay online during the outbreak. For example, a coalition of several dozen ISPs struck a voluntary "Keep Americans Connected Pledge" that they wouldn't kick users offline during the outbreak for lack of payment due to Coronavirus, and wouldn't impose late fees either. From the FCC announcement:

Last week, we were perplexed as to why House Democrats had agreed to an extension of NSA/FBI surveillance powers for a President they keep insisting is incompetent and vindictive against anyone he dislikes. At the same time, we couldn't figure out why Republicans were so keen to support it at the same time they were insisting that those same powers were used by the "deep state" to spy on the President's own campaign. After it passed, President Trump hinted that he might veto it anyway, and now with the Covid-19 pandemic in full swing, the Senate has agreed to punt on the issue for the time being, extending the FISA authorities for 77 days, with a promise of debating real reform in the interim:

Clearview's claims that its controversial facial recognition program is only for use by law enforcement agencies continues to be exposed as a lie. Documents obtained by BuzzFeed showed the company has sold its tech to a variety of private companies, including major retailers like Kohl's and Walmart.It's also expanding its reach across the globe, pitching its products to dozens of countries, including those known mostly for their human rights violations. Even when it limits itself to law enforcement agencies, it still can't help lying -- exaggerating its success and assistance in criminal investigations.Before Clearview became a plaything for government agencies and private corporations, it was a toy for the rich and powerful. Kashmir Hill -- who broke the first story about Clearview's problematic image-scraping operation -- has a followup in the New York Times detailing the company's unpleasant origin story.

Honestly, I wasn't sure how to begin this story or how to fit all the insanity into the title. It's a story involving patents, patent trolling, Covid-19, Theranos, and even the company that brought us all WeWork: SoftBank. Oh, and also Irell & Manella, the same law firm that once claimed it could represent a monkey in a copyright infringement dispute. You see, Irell & Manella has now filed one of the most utterly bullshit patent infringement lawsuits you'll ever see. They are representing "Labrador Diagnostics LLC" a patent troll which does not seem to exist other than to file this lawsuit, and which claims to hold the rights to two patents (US Patents 8,283,155 and 10,533,994) which, you'll note, were originally granted to Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos -- the firm that shut down in scandal over medical testing equipment that appears to have been oversold and never actually worked. Holmes is still facing federal charges of wire fraud over the whole Theranos debacle.However, back in 2018, the remains of Theranos sold its patents to Fortress Investment Group. Fortress Investment Group is a SoftBank-funded massive patent troll. You may remember the name from the time last fall when Apple and Intel sued the firm, laying out how Fortress is a sort of uber-patent troll, gathering up a bunch of patents and then shaking down basically everyone. Lovely, right?So, this SoftBank-owned patent troll, Fortress, bought up Theranos patents, and then set up this shell company, "Labrador Diagnostics," which decided that right in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic it was going to sue one of the companies making Covid-19 tests, saying that its test violates those Theranos patents, and literally demanding that the court bar the firm from making those Covid-19 tests.A bit more background here: the company they're suing, BioFire, recently launched three Covid-19 tests built off of the company's FilmArray technology. And that's what "Labrador" (read: SoftBank) is now suing over. From the lawsuit:

A year ago, I was at a round table discussion, where someone was doing one of the standard rants we've all heard, about how big internet companies were evil because they were focused on profits over the health of their user base, etc. I pointed out that while this narrative had taken hold among many people outside of these internet companies, it didn't seem to reflect what I was hearing from those within those companies -- especially as they were investing heavily in "trust & safety" teams, including both hiring people and building technology, that would provide better overall experiences on the platform. Instead, I suggested, their complaint seemed to be more with Wall Street investors, and the short term profits that it demanded from many public companies. There are the Jeff Bezos/Amazon exceptions -- where he basically told Wall Street to go put their head in a bucket for many years while he re-invested in the business as they demanded profits -- but for the most part, public companies are put on a short leash, not so much by management expectations, but the demands of investors.I'm thinking about that a lot again, following the news of the proxy fight over Twitter's management that was raised just recently. At the beginning of the month, it was revealed that Paul Singer's massive hedge fund Elliott Management had taken a large stake in Twitter, and wanted major changes, including getting rid of founder/CEO Jack Dorsey. A few days later, it was revealed that a deal was struck between Twitter and Elliott Management to keep Dorsey in charge... for now. However, it seems that the situations is fairly tenuous. Elliott Management now has a board seat, and a promise of some very tricky "growth" targets (especially tricky in the face of who knows what's coming with the economy during a pandemic).The details of those metrics makes it seem clear that Elliott Management is forcing Twitter down a specific path -- one that is likely to make the user experience for Twitter users much, much worse:

Mobile voting app Voatz is still a mess. Two years ago, West Virginia decided to give the app a spin to allow some voters to vote from home during the midterm elections. Nobody in the security world thought this was a good idea. The only people who did feel this was a safe, secure way to collect votes were state legislators and Voatz itself. Some early poking and prodding by security researchers immediately found problems with Voatz's handling of votes, including out-of-date SSH and unproven facial recognition tech that was supposed to verify voters by matching their selfies to their government IDs.Two-and-a-half years later, not much has improved. Voatz is still courting state governments, trying to talk them into using its app to allow the housebound and those overseas to vote in their elections. An MIT study of the software found multiple issues, including flaws that would allow attackers to intercept votes -- and alter or trash them -- without anyone on either end realizing they'd been hacked.Voatz responded badly, insulting the researchers and claiming its server-side software would miraculously prevent the described attack from happening. When the researchers pointed out Voatz was wrong about its own software, it published a blog post attacking the researchers as "publicity hounds" seeking to disrupt the election process.Another month has passed and it's more bad news for Voatz. Voatz and Tusk Philanthropies hired cybersecurity firm Trail of Bits to perform a security audit of its software. Guess what? It's still a mess.

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First off, I hope that everyone reading this, and their friends, families, loved ones, etc, are staying safe -- and I urge you to stay safe as well, which means staying home as much as possible. I did want to at least put up a post noting that these are unique and unprecedented times, and I honestly have no idea what this will mean for Techdirt over the next few weeks or months. We may very well be posting less. I don't know if our posting focus will change. I have some posts on the way that touch on the pandemic situation, and plenty that don't, and while I want to continue covering other things, it feels like we're in a moment where pretty much the only thing that is going to matter for the near future is how we deal with the pandemic.We will try to continue on in the same way we always have done, but I don't know what that will actually look like.While the team here is already effectively remote, and you might think that means we should be able to carry on as usual (or even moreso, since we're all pretty much limited in going out and about), I think that's an impossible request as well. Many people are now also dealing with watching children or parents or other relatives, all the time, and that obviously takes time, attention and energy. At the same time, all of us are watching the news and are concerned about what this means for our own health, the health of our loved ones, and the health of everyone else around the globe. It's a frightening and uncertain time -- and that, by itself, makes less than ideal working conditions for anyone. These are not times when I expect anyone, myself included, to be as productive as normal.So, I at least wanted to put up a note that says, more or less, I have no idea what will be happening at Techdirt over the next few weeks and months. We have a new project that we were excited to launch before the end of the month -- and that may still happen, or we may put it off. I don't know how many posts we'll have or what topics they'll be on. I don't know if anyone will feel like recording podcasts, or if I'll feel like recording podcasts. I just don't know.I know that lots of people are now concerned about their own jobs and their own financial position, and I hope that everything works out okay for everyone. I will note, also, that we've already heard from some of our own sponsors and backers, who have put off decisions on sponsorship. Also, a decent part of our revenue last year, and in our planning for this year, was for live events, all of which have now been put on indefinite hiatus -- meaning that if you're not in dire financial straits due to everything else, and are in a position to do so, we'd truly appreciate the support to make sure that we can keep going through these trying times. If you want the most direct way of supporting us, it's to do direct donations via this page, but the general support page lists many different ways to support us, some of which get you nice things in response, beyond the warm feeling of helping Techdirt continue.But, the most important point of all: please, everyone, stay safe out there.

We've noted for years how as US telcos have given up on upgrading their aging DSL lines, they've effectively helped cement a bigger monopoly for cable giants like Comcast and Spectrum in countless markets nationwide. A recent study estimated that 40 million Americans can't get broadband at all -- double FCC estimates. And FCC data indicates that in 44% of US markets, users have the choice of only one ISP at speeds of 25 Mbps or higher. More often than not, your only option for "real" broadband is probably going to be Comcast.Even if you're "lucky" enough to have the choice of two options, telcos and cablecos don't go out of their way to actually compete. Combine this lack of competition with the Trump administration's decision to effectively neuter FCC consumer protection authority, and these mono/duopolies have less incentive than ever to compete on price, improve terrible customer service, avoid net neutrality and privacy violations, or expand service into the many under-served corners of the US.It's a problem that's slowly but surely getting worse. The latest data from Leichtman Research indicates that the nation's eight biggest cable broadband providers added 3.14 million broadband subscribers in 2019, reaching a total of 67.98 million. In contrast, the nation's top eight traditional phone companies, which offer a mix of fiber and DSL, lost a combined 619,605 subscribers to reach a historic low of 33.24 million subscribers last year:AT&T, Verizon, Windstream, CenturyLink, and Frontier are all losing subscribers because they've largely given up on fixed residential broadband in countless markets. Most long ago shifted their focus to enterprise services, video advertising, or anything other than residential broadband, which has never been profitable enough, quickly enough for their liking. As a result, DSL lines aren't being upgraded (or even repaired), service is no longer being seriously expanded, and consumers are heading to their only alternatives: either a capped and expensive cellular connection, or a capped and expensive cable broadband line.Leichtman notes that at the end of 2019, cable broadband providers had a 67% fixed broadband market share versus 33% for US telcos. That 67% market share is the highest level since the third quarter of 2001. So despite all the talk about gigabit fiber, our breathless dedication to the "digital divide," and the "race to 5G," the biggest untold story in US broadband remains the fact that cable monopolies are growing bigger and more powerful at the same time we strip away all of the government's consumer protection authority. What could possibly go wrong?And while 5G is often bandied about as a panacea to this problem, the same issues that have plagued traditional broadband are going to be replicated with 5G: including high prices, regional mono/duopolies (this time over cell tower fiber backhaul), feckless, industry-captured regulators, and an unwillingness by carriers to spend the money needed to seriously deploy to under-served areas.There's some hope that low orbit satellites from the likes of Amazon and Space X could finally disrupt this broken-ass status quo, but having seen numerous disruptive efforts scuttled by the industry's dominant and politically-powerful incumbents over the last few decades, genuine US telecom disruption at any meaningful scale is something you'll need to see before you believe it.

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is David, taking a moment to process one particular comment from the Michigan State Police who were taking well-deserved flak on Twitter for bragging about stealing $40,000 from a driver:

We're nearing the end of our series about the winners of our public domain game jam, Gaming Like It's 1924. So far we've looked at Hot Water, Legends of Charlemagne, 192X, and The Hounds Follow All Things Down, and this week the feature is the winner of Best Digital Game: You Are The Rats In The Walls by Alex Blechman.This not just a returning win for Alex, but a second in the digital game category, following last year's win with Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening To Steal Treasure. While Stopping By Woods was a Twine-based remix of a Robert Frost poem, Rats brings things into the graphical realm with RPG Maker and takes on one of the more notable 1924 works to enter the public domain this year: H. P. Lovecraft's short story The Rats In The Walls. And both games have one thing in common: a sense of humor that pervades the writing and design. Rats takes the famous story — in which a man returns to his family's ancestral estate and discovers horrible secrets that drive him mad, made manifest in the form of scurrying rats that torment him — and gives the player the role of the titular vermin via a simple game mechanic: nipping at the character's heels to drive him towards various locations on the small but detailed map. Alongside this, it embraces a simple and highly effective comedy premise: combining the elaborate, heavily-wrought prose that Lovecraft is famous for with modern, casual, highly self-aware language. The result is consistently funny, with a few great surprise jokes and an absurd overall tone that just works.As you can see, Rats also makes great use of RPG Maker assets to build a fitting and eye-catching (if unpolished) setting for the game, which was the first thing that made it a contender for the Best Digital Game category, but what really sealed the deal in that regard was the aforementioned game mechanic of driving the character around by controlling the rats that chase him. It's nothing mindblowing, and it can be (intentionally) frustrating, but it adds an element of gameplay and leverages the digital medium to make Rats something slightly more than just a simple story dressed up with sprite graphics (and also undoubtedly required some scripting to go beyond RPG Maker's basic capabilities). The mechanic also successfully makes the basic level of choice in the story (which just amounts to determining what order things unfold in) feel more integrated with the game. All this combines with the excellent writing to create a short experience that keeps players closely engaged from start to finish.You can play You Are The Rats In The Walls in your browser on Itch, or check out the other submissions in our public domain game jam. And come back next week for the final winner spotlight!

The Connecticut State Police have agreed to pay $50,000 to a man its officers subjected to a bunch of Constitutional violations on their way to issuing tickets to him for violations he never committed.Here's a brief description of how this whole thing started:

Back in January, Sonos took some well earned heat for a new product "recycle mode" that effectively bricked older smart speakers the company was no longer interested in supporting. They're now backtracking from the effort after significant backlash.It began last October, when Sonos announced a new "Trade up" upgrade program that let you trade in older Sonos hardware for a 30% discount on new speakers. But the program included a bizarre caveat: to get the discount, users need to put their old hardware into "recycle mode," which effectively bricks the product preventing it from being used again. According to Sonos, once you apply online you'll get the discount immediately, but the speaker system you're trading in goes into a 21 day countdown mode before it's inevitably made useless:

As we noted, there's an effort underway, lead by Senator Thom Tillis' office, to rewrite copyright laws in a manner that is even "friendlier" to Hollywood -- which is kind of insane, given just how far the laws have been bent to favor Hollywood over the years, and against the public. Of course, for the past decade or so, significant updates to copyright law have mostly been a kind of third rail issue in Congress (with a few notable exceptions), as the memory of the SOPA/PIPA protests still lingers. However, with this new approach brewing, it seems that some wish to rewrite that history.Gene Quinn from IP Watchdog -- a site that tends to support an extreme maximalist viewpoint mostly on patents, but sometimes on copyright as well -- has an amazingly weird post, supporting a more maximalist copyright reform, playing off a new paper from ITIF. If you don't recall, ITIF wrote the original paper that became SOPA. It was that think tank's policy proposal that was molded into the awful bill that would have fundamentally changed how the internet worked. So, you should already be somewhat skeptical of ITIF's "policy recommendations" on copyright -- starting with the very idea that "digital piracy" is a "scourge" that requires laws to stop.As we've shown in great detail using the industry's own "piracy" numbers, changes to the law to ratchet up copyright enforcement have failed to decrease piracy. What does decrease piracy is putting in place laws that enable more innovation and experimentation around new licensed services with a variety of business models.But, not surprisingly, that's not the focus of any reform effort. Still, what's most amazing in Quinn's piece is his rather insane attempt to rewrite the history of SOPA/PIPA. If you weren't around when it happened nearly a decade ago, (Gene was, so he has no excuse), a wide coalition of people all got together to point out how dangerous the law would be for a functioning internet, and how it would stifle speech, harm innovation, and (worst of all) break certain technical elements being used to make the internet more secure -- all so Hollywood could continue to tilt at windmills and pretend that "piracy" was being attacked. As more and more people (with very diverse ideological backgrounds) all came to realize how dangerous SOPA/PIPA was, they organized a day of protest on the internet, which set phones ringing throughout Congress, urging elected officials to rethink that plan. One by one, Senators and Representatives dropped their support of the bill, and it never moved forward.That's not how Gene Quinn describes it however. In his version "hacker groups" (?!?) threatened to shut down the internet (?!?!?!?!?) if SOPA passed:

Riding your bike while sending out geolocation data is the hot new crime.Cops are using reverse warrants with increasing frequency, inverting the usual investigation process by demanding info about everyone in a certain area before trimming down the data haul to a list of suspects. It's sort of like canvassing a neighborhood, except investigators approach companies like Google, rather than people who might have seen something.The problem with these dragnets is it makes everyone in the area a suspect. The more heavily-trafficked the area is, the more problematic this process is. Reverse warrants have already resulted in innocent people being jailed. This report by NBC News is another cautionary tale -- one that involves a man who became a suspect in a robbery just because he wandered into the geofence set up by cops.

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Here's one I didn't quite expect to see. Match.com -- the dating website owned by IAC, which owns basically every other major dating site, including OkCupid, PlentyOfFish, Tinder, Hinge, and a bunch of others as well -- has announced that it will support the idiotic EARN IT Act, that would utterly destroy Section 230 and the ability of websites to host user generated content. Match's publicly stated reasons for this are... bizarre. It doesn't actually explain why it supports it. It just says it does, that protecting children is important, and then some mumbo jumbo about the kids online these days -- none of which touches on what the bill would actually do.

To be clear, there are going to be layers of life and death dysfunction that the Coronavirus shines a bright spotlight on, most notable being a shaky US healthcare system and incompetent government leadership. But the outbreak and response is also going to shine a bright light on the broken US telecom market, and the millions of Americans that won't be able to effectively telecommute in a crisis.We've noted time and time again how a lack of competition in the US broadband market means consumers pay some of the highest prices in the developed world for broadband that usually ranks somewhere in the middle of the pack. While we talk a lot about this problem, few actually do much about it. Similarly, few really have noticed how as US telcos effectively give up on upgrading antiquated DSL lines, they're giving cable giants like Comcast even bigger monopolies across vast swaths of America. In turn, those cable giants are facing less incentive than ever to improve customer service, upgrade rural networks, or compete on price.With little competition and federal regulators that are little more than a rubber stamp to their every monopolistic whim, these companies have also been given a green light to gouge US consumers with usage caps and overage fees. Worse, a recent report suggested that 40 million Americans can't get broadband at all, nearly double FCC estimates. The Trump administration and FCC's response to this problem so far has been to blow sweet kisses at the nation's biggest telecom providers in the form of regulatory favors, massive tax breaks for doing nothing, and a lot of overheated rhetoric.This has always been a problem, but as FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel notes, it's going to become a more obvious problem as millions of Americans are suddenly asked to work (and learn) from home to avoid spreading the virus further and faster:

Last fall we were happy to see the 9th Circuit rule against LinkedIn in its CFAA case against HiQ. If you don't recall, the CFAA is the "anti-hacking" law that has been widely abused over the years to try to shut down perfectly reasonable activity. At issue is whether "scraping" information violates a terms of service, and thus, the CFAA. A few years back, the same court ruled in favor of Facebook against Power Ventures, saying that even though Power's users gave permission to Power and handed over their login credentials, Power was violating the CFAA in scraping Facebook, because the information was behind a registration wall -- and because Facebook had sent a cease-and-desist.In the HiQ case, despite what seemed to be a similar fact pattern, the court ruled against LinkedIn, saying it could not block HiQ's scraping via a CFAA claim, with the main "difference" being that LinkedIn information was publicly viewable, and therefore should be open to scraping. I still don't quite see the difference between the cases -- because in the Facebook situation, once you have a login, the information is effectively available in the same manner, but that is how the courts ruled. After first asking (and not getting) an en banc review (and then asking for more time), LinkedIn has now asked the Supreme Court to weigh in on this issue (hat tip to Media Post). I worry that the court might make things much worse if it does take the case, and block all kinds of scraping.Of course, one thing that's notable since the 9th Circuit ruling came down -- all of the attention that Clearview AI has received over the last few months, for its frightening facial recognition app, built of of scraping "public" social media images and profiles. This use of scraping has convinced some -- even some who seemed to support the HiQ ruling -- that perhaps there should be limits on scraping. I think that's a kneejerk reaction, and focusing in too narrowly on the wrong issue. The issue there is not with scraping, but with the specific use of the data as an attack on privacy going well beyond the internet itself (i.e., tracking and identifying people out in the real world). It's one thing to focus on that issue, as opposed to saying that's an argument against free scraping.At a time when we're so worried about competition, the ability to scrape is incredibly important. It's how competitors can be built in a world with network effects. If other companies can build compatible services, without having to do a deal with Facebook or Linkedin or YouTube or Twitter, that enables more competition much more easily. And yet, too many efforts are being made to cut off that kind of interoperability. The LinkedIn case is just one example. If the Supreme Court does take it up, let's hope they recognize just how important this kind of adversarial interoperability can be, rather than buying into some nonsense about how scraping must be blocked and not allowed.As for the petition itself, the question LinkedIn is asking the Court to review is whether or not bots can scrape websites, even after receiving a cease-and-desist letter:

A year ago, the DOJ subpoenaed Chelsea Manning to appear before a grand jury and provide testimony as it was building its case against Julian Assange, who was subsequently indicted on a very questionable basis. Manning refused to comply with the subpoena, and was put in jail for contempt of court. Many people -- even some supporters of Manning -- seemed split on this move, noting that complying with a lawful subpoena, especially regarding a situation where all information had been previously provided and in which the target is already indicted, is different than being asked to cough up private info. But, given the context of Manning's earlier incarceration and commutation, the whole effort seemed somewhat vindictive.As reporter Dell Cameron pointed out, the DOJ already has all the details of Manning's conversations with Assange. It's difficult to see what more it needed to get from her. And yet, she sat in jail. And considering her history with possible suicide attempts, it seemed (tragically) that being confined again could be incredibly damaging to her. Indeed, yesterday it was reported that she attempted suicide once again.Incredibly, just a day later, the court has ordered her released from jail, noting that her appearance "is no longer needed."

Video streaming is a key part of today's Internet world. According to research from Sandvine, it represents 60.6% of total downstream volume worldwide. The centrality of video to the Internet experience makes video codecs one of the hottest technologies. The most popular format today is H.264, used by 91% of video developers. But H.264 is getting long in the tooth -- its history goes back two decades. An upgrade is long overdue. There's a successor, H.265, also known as High Efficiency Video Coding, or HEVC. However, the use of H.265 has been held back by patent licensing issues. As Wikipedia explains in painful detail, there are two main patent pools demanding payment from companies that use HEVC in their devices. For one of the pools, the patent list is 164 pages long. Partly in response to this licensing mess, and HEVC's high per-device cost, the Alliance for Open Media was formed in September 2015:

America's least valuable renewable resource is school resource officers. At some point, we -- as a nation -- apparently agreed school disciplinary issues should be turned over to law enforcement officers. To be sure, this decision was made without our input, for the most part. Most people agree it's ridiculous to turn rote violations of school policy over to men and women trained in the apprehension and investigation of actual, real crimes like homicide, drug distribution, and any number of day-to-day activities carried out while black.What have we received in return for being forced to part with our souls in exchange for the rare occasions where serious criminal acts occur on school grounds? An endless supply of outrage and disgust, which is the renewable resource no one asked for. What is our take-home from this involuntary exchange?I don't know.Do you love a parade? Because this is one of the most horrible:

On Wednesday, the Senate held a hearing about the EARN IT Act, the bill that is designed to undermine the internet and encryption in one single move -- all in the name of "protecting the children" (something that it simply will not do). Pretty much the entire thing was infuriating, but I wanted to focus on one key aspect. Senators supporting the bill, including sponsor Richard Blumenthal -- who has been attacking the internet since well before he was in the Senate and was just the Attorney General of Connecticut -- kept trying to insist the bill had nothing to do with encryption and wouldn't be used to undermine encryption. In response to a letter from Facebook, Blumenthal kept insisting that the bill is not about encryption, and also insisting (incorrectly) that if the internet companies just nerded harder, they could keep encryption while still giving law enforcement access.

Source: The AtlanticMaya MacGuineas, the president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, published a frightening article about technology and capitalism in the April edition of The Atlantic magazine. MacGuineas contends that the tech companies are manipulating us into using their products, addicting our children to potentially harmful devices, and stealing our extremely valuable data in exchange for “free” services.The Masses Are Not So Easily ManipulatedMacGuineas warns us of “habit-forming” products and the “Orwellian art of manipulating the masses”:

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If ever there were a time to end Constitutionally questionable FISA surveillance powers it should be now. Democrats have been, quite rightly, concerned about an out of control Trump administration, abusing the powers of government to target his enemies and critics. Republicans have been screaming from the heavens, quite rightly, about the FBI's abuse of the FISA process to conduct surveillance on members of the Trump Campaign. And all this is coming at a time when the crown jewel of the program -- the phone metadata surveillance -- has been shown to have been a huge, wasteful mess that has been effectively useless.And it's up for renewal. So just kill it.But, no, that's not how Congress works. Instead, earlier this week, the House worked out a bipartisan "compromise" that lets them each claim victory -- when all it really does is reauthorize powerful, frequently abused, Constitutionally-questionable surveillance powers -- the very same powers that the Trump administration has been insisting are being abused by "the deep state" against the President himself. As Marcy Wheeler explains, the final bill involved Rep. Adam Schiff -- who ran the impeachment effort against Trump, pointing out how incompetent and dangerous Trump can be -- watering down an earlier proposal to make sure that Trump has much greater surveillance powers with less oversight.

For most of the last decade, cable and broadcast industry executives insisted that "cord cutting" (users cancelling traditional TV and moving to antennas or streaming) either wasn't real or was only something losers did. Many of the analysts and viewer tracking firms (like Nielsen) -- which have a financial stake in telling cable and broadcast executives what they wanted to hear -- were quick to happily parrot these denials.Now that it's impossible to deny the trend, most of those folks have become notably quiet.This week Leichtman Research took a final look at 2019 earnings reports for the biggest cable companies and it wasn't particularly pretty for the sector. All told the top pay TV providers in America, representing about 95% of the market, lost about 4,915,000 net video subscribers in 2019--compared to a loss of 1,585,000 subscribers in 2018. Satellite TV providers were particularly hard hit last year.Among the biggest hit was AT&T's DirecTV, which lost 3,190,000 subscribers last year alone. Most of those losses were courtesy of the rate hikes AT&T imposed on its customers to pay off the debt it accumulated after spending $150 billion on megamergers in the last five years alone (DirecTV in 2015, Time Warner in 2019). Instead of dominating the space as AT&T had hoped, it "enjoyed" a revolt from customers and investors alike.But things weren't much better for the cable sector, which collectively lost 1,560,000 video subscribers in 2019 -- compared to a net loss of about 920,000 subscribers in 2018. Or the nation's traditional phone companies like Verizon and AT&T (who also offers TV service via IPTV), who lost 665,000 subscribers last year -- compared to 245,000 the year before. Even the companies that tried to at least somewhat get ahead of the trend (like AT&T) wound up paying the price, even losing subscribers from their new streaming TV platforms due to rate hikes.It's always been pretty clear that most cable TV providers intend to ride this cash cow until its last gasp before doing obvious things like shoring up historically terrible customer support or actually competing on price. And to some degree, you can understand why. The traditional pay TV sector is still home to a whopping 86.2 million subscribers with the top seven cable companies still laying claim to 45.8 million video subscribers, satellite TV services 25.4 million subscribers, and the top telephone companies 8.3 million subscribers.And while streaming will continue to slowly erode these totals, these companies all have an ace in the hole: their growing monopolies over broadband. The lack of US competition means that as margins on TV get tighter, they can simply squeeze their captive broadband customers tighter, something that usually manifests in not just vanilla price hikes, but the steady growth of bullshit fees, usage caps, and utterly arbitrary and unnecessary usage caps and overage penalties.

On May 29, 2018, the FBI promised to deliver an updated count of encrypted devices in its possession. As James Comey and his replacement, Chris Wray, continued to advocate for weakened encryption, the number of phones the FBI couldn't get into swelled from 880 in 2016 to over 7,800 by the time the FBI realized its phone-counting method was broken.This number still hasn't been updated. An early internal estimate by the FBI put the real number of locked devices at ~1,200. But the official number still hasn't been released. This hasn't stopped Chris Wray from continuing his attacks on encryption, painting pictures of a dark future that isn't supported by the small number of encrypted devices in the agency's possession.The attacks continue. They're more subtle than Attorney General Bill Barr's aggressive pitches, but they're still happening. Chris Wray spent his time at a recent cyber security conference in Boston making the case for strong encryption before (yet again) making a plea for tech companies to give law enforcement the encryption backdoors Wray still refuses to call backdoors.

Roughly a year and a half ago, we discussed a proposed amendment to Japanese copyright law that would seek to criminalize copyright infringement. The general consensus is that the chief impetus for this new addition to Japanese copyright law centered on the manga industry, which is a multi-billion dollar industry, despite that particular media being pirated alongside all other media. Whereas Japan's copyright laws were generally in line with American laws, specifically in that copyright infringement is treated as a civil matter, this new law changed that up to make it a criminal offense. The problem with that, as many people pointed out, is that Japan's constitution is quite clear that anything akin to censorship cannot be done except for the following circumstance:

Anyone who's read Techdirt for any length of time knows that I've spent years fighting for better anti-SLAPP laws at both the state and federal level. You may remember my public talk about the importance of anti-SLAPP's using the lawsuit against myself as an example, though my fighting for better anti-SLAPP laws dates back way before that event. Or, if you want a more humorous take on SLAPP lawsuits and the need for anti-SLAPP laws, you can check out John Oliver's clever take on the issue:In short, SLAPP lawsuits are "Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation." These are lawsuits -- generally defamation lawsuits -- that target someone's speech, not because the lawsuits have any chance of succeeding, but just because the filer knows that the lawsuit itself is a huge hassle, in terms of time, money, and attention, for those on the receiving end. What a good anti-SLAPP law does is threefold:

For the second time in a little over 30 days, odious facial recognition tech supplier Clearview is being sued. Unlike the first lawsuit, which is a proposed class action over violations of Illinois' biometric privacy law, this one [PDF] is being filed by a government agency. The Attorney General of Vermont is seeking to permanently ban Clearview from collecting info about state residents or sell access to the info it's already collected.

Look, I totally understand the very valid concerns that many people have about the spreading of false or misleading information regarding Covid-19. There are plenty of reports about misinformation spreading, especially via social media. Indeed, there are reports on the lengths to which various social media platforms are trying to crack down on all that misinformation -- a noble goal, though plenty will inevitably get through. This is the very nature of content moderation.So, I can understand why public officials are concerned about how the spread of misinformation could be a real problem. But if you want a masterclass in how not to deal with the problem of misinformation about the coronavirus, look no further than Newark, New Jersey, where Public Safety Director Anthony Ambrose has put out a statement that is both dangerous and unconstitutional at the same time (quite a twofer). I'm posting a screenshot in the expectation (hope?) someone will realize just how bad this is and remove it. It says that anyone who posts false information about the coronavirus will face "criminal prosecution."If you can't see that, it says:

One of the common themes here at Techdirt over the last decade is how in the digital and internet-connected era, the very meaning of "ownership" and "property" has changed -- often for the worse. In the broadband-connected era, firmware updates can often eliminate functionality promised to you at launch, as we saw with the Sony Playstation 3. And with everything now relying on internet-connectivity, companies can often give up on supporting devices entirely, often leaving users with very expensive paperweights as we saw after Google acquired Revolv.The latest example of this phenomenon comes courtesy of Philips, who this week announced it would be discontinuing its support of the first generation of its Hue Bridge on April 29. The Bridge is the heart of Philips' internet-connected lighting system, helping you manage all of the fancy new "smart" light bulbs you've installed around the house. And while the decision won't "brick" the hardware as we've seen from other companies, it will erode overall functionality of the platform, preventing them from connecting to the internet (the entire point):

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Ever since the DOJ started attacking Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, it was obvious that it was simply a ploy to attack big tech companies that are (unfairly) seen as being "anti-conservative." Remember, that Section 230 explicitly exempts federal crimes -- the kind of law enforcement the DOJ is engaged in. That is, there is literally nothing in Section 230 stopping the DOJ from doing its job. But as Barr and the DOJ continued to attack 230, it also became clear that this was going to be a wedge issue he could use to undermine encryption -- encryption that keeps us all safe.Last month, the DOJ hosted a "workshop" regarding Section 230, and again Barr and the DOJ's agenda became quite clear. For all the talk of "dangers" to children online, the DOJ ignored the fact that it has failed to abide by Congressional mandates regarding fighting child sexual exploitation, and Congress itself has failed to fund programs it has put forth to deal with the issue.At the DOJ's 230 hearing, plenty of speakers highlighted why messing with 230 would create all sorts of problems. Unsurprisingly, the DOJ has ignored all of that, and sent out Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen to pitch four changes to Section 230, each one dumber and more counterproductive than even I had expected. The speech starts out with a misleading history of antitrust law -- the other big tool in the DOJ's toolbox to whack at internet companies -- and then gets to 230. If I have a chance I may get back to Rosen's antitrust discussion, but to keep this post from getting too long, we'll just focus on the 230 argument (ignoring the fact that evidence shows that 230 increases competition, rather than diminishes it).

Streaming video providers like HBO and Netflix have traditionally taken a lax approach to password sharing. Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has gone so far as to say he "loves" password sharing, and sees it as little more than free advertising. Execs at HBO have similarly viewed password sharing in such a fashion, saying it doesn't hurt their business. If anything, it results in folks signing up for their own accounts after they get hooked on your product, something you'll often see with kids who leave home, or leave college and college friends behind.The traditional cable industry sees things quite differently. Executives at the nation's second-largest cable company (Spectrum), for example, have called the lax attitudes toward password sharing "insane," and have frequently (and falsely) claimed that the practice is akin to "piracy." In response they've been trying to build a new coalition tasked with taking aim at what they see as a diabolical menace.A new service being launched this week should provide some fuel for those endeavors. DoNotPay is a startup that revels in helping consumers take counter-advantage of US corporations' automated customer service systems, offering users services like a fast-food receipt scanner that will automatically fill out surveys for free food, an automated system for securing refunds for crappy WiFi, or a service that lets you auto-contest parking tickets. Their latest offering is Chrome extension that lets users share their streaming service access without actually sharing your password:

Sometimes all it takes is a lawsuit and little bad press to make the federal government at least temporarily regret its thieving ways.In January, the DEA was sued by Rebecca West and her father Terry Rolin after the agency lifted Rolin's life savings -- more than $82,000 -- from West at the Pittsburgh airport. The supposedly travel safety-focused TSA agents saw the cash in West's carry-on luggage and decided to notify State Troopers and the DEA. After a few extended conversations with West, the DEA decided to seize the money under the theory that a person with this much cash on their person must have obtained it illegally.The Institute for Justice -- which is representing West in her lawsuit -- reports the DEA has suddenly and mysteriously decided the money agents took from West was probably honest money after all.

Last month we were happy to report that both houses of the Virginia legislature had passed anti-SLAPP laws (partially in response to Rep. Devin Nunes' use of the state for a bunch of SLAPPy libel-tourism lawsuits. As we noted at the time, the two versions that passed through each part of the legislature were somewhat different, so they needed to be reconciled.Unfortunately, it appears they were unable to reconcile to the two bills. In response to a tweeted question from reporter Rob Pegoaro, Schuyler VanValkenburg, who had introduced the House version of the bill, admitted that they couldn't reconcile the two, and it would need to wait until next year:

The Michigan State Police recently informed Twitter users that it's engaged in stealing money from drivers. I don't know what it expected from this announcement, but I'm sure spending a few days being ratioed wasn't what the agency had in mind.Here's the first part of the MSP's "Yes, we steal money" announcement:

Last week, we featured the first half of a panel discussion organized by Lincoln Network, all about the concept of open internet protocols versus proprietary walled-garden platforms. The panel is moderated by Marshall Kosloff and features Mike Masnick, Cory Doctorow, Ashley Tyson and Mai Sutton, and this week we've got the second half of the discussion plus the audience Q&A.Follow the Techdirt Podcast on Soundcloud, subscribe via iTunes or Google Play, or grab the RSS feed. You can also keep up with all the latest episodes right here on Techdirt.

The DOJ has taken an open-and-shut espionage case and managed to somehow misplace the back cover. Does this say something about the unintended consequences of charge-stacking? Maybe. Whatever it is, it isn't pretty.The case against alleged Vault 7 leaker Joshua Schulte seemed pretty air tight, especially when Schulte continued to leak sensitive documents while behind bars, as well as attempting to rope his family into committing contempt of court violations on his behalf.He also, as Marcy Wheeler pointed out, gave the government pretty much everything it wanted or needed, but the DOJ's prosecutors failed to present evidence in a coherent way, resulting in a whole lot of juror confusion.