Techdirt

For over a decade, some Web sites have been moaning about adblockers. The German publishing giant Axel Springer hates them. It has been pursuing Eyeo, the company behind Adblock Plus, through the courts in Germany for years, accusing it of unfair competition. Here's how that turned out for the publisher, as reported by Eyeo on its blog:

It is becoming more and more valuable to learn a second, or third, fourth, or fifth language. uTalk helps you overcome the language barrier challenge by helping you learn real, practical vocabulary in a wide variety of languages from any device that you choose. uTalk's language programs let you understand how native speakers actually talk and feature independently verified translations so you'll be able to navigate through your next vacation like a real local. There are two non-expiring subscription options to choose from in the Deals store: 1 language for $19.99, and 6 languages for $29.99.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.

I originally wrote a draft of this post over the weekend, before Nunes, filed a second bullshit lawsuit against Liz Mair, but now that that has happened, it has become even more relevant. I've lightly updated the original text to include this new lawsuit.Lots of folks laughed about Rep. Devin Nunes' crazy lawsuit against a satirical cow on Twitter that mocked him, but much of the case is no laughing matter for those on the receiving end. While it is unlikely (but not impossible) that a court will let the case get far enough to unmask who is behind the satirical Twitter accounts, those individuals will still need to lawyer up. Also, while it gets ignored in much of the reporting on the case, there was one named defendant: political strategist/communications expert Liz Mair, who seemed to get sued for tweeting criticisms of Nunes.While the fake cow account got hundreds of thousands of new followers, Mair didn't get quite the same bump. But she's got even more crap to deal with in this case -- as well as the second case that Nunes just filed. She's now written a thoughtful post on just how totally fucked up it is that a sitting member of Congress would sue a critic for being mean to him on Twitter:

We've noted for a while that 5G is being aggressively over-hyped. While it's an important evolutionary step in wireless connectivity, it's far from the revolution hardware vendors and cellular carriers are promising. Verizon, for example, insists that 5G is the "fourth industrial revolution" that will almost miraculously spur the smart cities and smarter cars of tomorrow. While 5G is important (in the sense that faster, more resilient networks are always important), the idea that 5G will fundamentally transform the broken broadband market tends to overshoot the mark.Under the din of hype, groups like the EFF have repeatedly warned that fixating on the technology obscures the industry's failure to deploy fiber broadband to countless Americans despite billions of dollars in subsidies and tax breaks. Fiber that's essential in driving 5G outside of major metro markets.Meanwhile, companies like Verizon continue to overstate not only what 5G can do, but where it's available. A closer look at Verizon's "Home 5G" service (which affixes a 5G antenna to user homes) in cities like Sacramento has found it to be barely available. Last week, Verizon again heralded the "world first" launch of truly mobile 5G service in both Chicago and Minneapolis. Again however reporters who visited the city to cover the launch walked away unimpressed, noting that while speeds were blisteringly fast (upwards of 500 Mbps on the test network), actually getting a steady signal was largely impossible:

Fake news laws aren't harmless. They don't protect the public. They're useless. And they lend themselves to censorship. Given these factors, it's tough to believe any of the proponents of fake news laws are proceeding in good faith but blinded by good intentions and fuzzy logic.Anywhere they've been put in place, they've lead directly to governments taking action against political opponents, dissidents, and activists. Excuses are made about national security and protecting the public, but in the end, it's the public that ends up short on protection.Singapore's new fake news bill is no exception. Legislators began pushing this bill last year, using their own fake news to claim the proposal had widespread support from the country's residents. The committee behind the legislation heavily editorialized the feedback it received at a public hearing, presenting a vocal opponent's comments as being supportive of instituting a fake news law.Roughly a year later, the bill has materialized, according to the New York Times.

Last week we wrote (not for the first time) about the really dreadful Terrorist Content Regulation making its way through the EU regulatory process. As we noted, this is Article 13 on steroids. Everything that's bad about Article 13 is worse in the Terrorist Content Regulation, even though it's getting much less attention.Perhaps because it's getting so little attention it just sailed through an EU Parliament committee's approval process. This was in the LIBE Committee, which is supposedly in charge of protecting civil liberties. And yet here, it seems to be stamping them out.

Sometimes stories that appear to have good outcomes end up with unsatisfying ends. Such appears to be the case with the recent changes to Canada's copyright laws. After ISPs in Canada began making a great deal of noise about the plague that is settlement threat letters, which ISPs are required to pass through to their customers under threat of fines, the government did the unthinkable and changed the law. The changes made it so that copyright trolls could not force ISPs to pass these letters to ISP customers if the letters contained the usual tactics: offers to settle the claim of infringement, requests for payment or personal information, a reference or link to any such demands, etc. This should have been the end, in other words, of copyright troll fishing expeditions as facilitated by ISPs.But, as Michael Geist pointed out at the time, that hope was always fleeting, as the new law failed to put in place any punishment for copyright trolls should they simply ignore the law. And ignore the law they most certain did!

Unfortunately, as you know by now, the EU Parliament approved the current (disastrous) version of the EU Copyright Directive, which is now on track to become the law of the land. It's not good, but things aren't quite over yet. For this week's episode, we've got returning guest MEP Julia Reda — who has been a key force opposing the terrible articles in the Directive — to talk about what happens now.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.

Some good news is one the way for Tennesseans. Attorney Daniel Horwitz -- who knows his way around stupid libel lawsuits -- sends word that a revamp of the state's mostly-useless anti-SLAPP law is a step or two away from landing on the governor's desk.The current law does nothing to shield citizens from bogus lawsuits clearly intended to silence criticism. This lack of protection has resulted in a number of merit-less lawsuits being filed. One of the most ridiculous -- a former university program head suing his replacement for things a journalist said -- managed to make its way all the way up to the state's appeal court. In the end, the defendant was awarded $10,000 in legal fees, but none of that was guaranteed when the plaintiff started wasting everyone's time and money.As the law stands now in Tennessee, only communications to public officials about public entities are shielded from defamation lawsuits. It doesn't cover things like negative reviews of businesses, criticism of any public figure, or -- like the case above -- things defendants never actually said.The new law would actually function like an anti-SLAPP law should. It would halt discovery until a ruling on the anti-SLAPP motion and allow the prevailing party to recover fees.

It appears that Devin Nunes wants to become the new poster-child for filing bullshit SLAPP suits to silence and intimidate his critics. Just a few weeks after filing an obvious SLAPP suit against two satirical Twitter accounts, Republican strategist Liz Mair, and Twitter itself, Nunes is back in court again, suing news giant McClatchy and Liz Mair again. The first lawsuit was for $250 million. This one is for $150 million. Both are SLAPP suits that seemed designed to shut up his critics -- especially Mair. Nunes is represented by the same lawyer, Steven Biss, in both cases (Biss has, well, a colorful history).The latest lawsuit is as equally ridiculous as the first. It is mostly about the very same article that was central to the first lawsuit, an article by The Fresno Bee (a McClatchy-owned newspaper), talking about how a winery that was partly owned by Nunes was involved in a scandal involving cocaine and potentially underage prostitutes on a yacht. The McClatchy article has (from its initial publication), made clear that Nunes' investment in the winery doesn't involve any role with the winery or any management functions:

The CompTIA Certification Prep Bundle has 5 courses geared to prepare you to take 3 certification exams. You'll start with preparing for the CompTIA A+ certification. You'll then learn how to configure, manage, troubleshoot, and maintain networks for the CompTIA Network+ exam. Finally, you'll learn about risk management, risk mitigation, intrusion detection, and more as you prepare to take the CompTIA Security+ exam. The bundle is on sale for $59.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.

Last week Australia rushed through a ridiculous bill to fine internet companies if they happen to host any "abhorrent content." It appears the UK took one look at that nonsense and decided it wanted some too. On Monday it released a white paper calling for massive fines for internet companies for allowing any sort of "online harms." To call the plan nonsense is being way too harsh to nonsense.Theresa May herself announced the plan in a video that she posted to the very same social media she insists is harmful to children, because consistency is not a strong point of people looking to shackle the internet:

We've noted a few times now that while Facebook gets a lot of justified heat for its privacy scandals, the stuff going on in the cellular data and app market in regards to location data makes many of Facebook's privacy issues seem like a grade-school picnic. That's something that was pretty well highlighted by the recent Securus and LocationSmart scandals, which showcased perfectly how cellular carriers and location data brokers routinely buy and sell your daily travel habits with only a fleeting effort to ensure all of the subsequent buyers and sellers of that data adhere to basic privacy and security standards.That was again exemplified by reports on how this data often winds up in the hands of bounty hunters, and can often include 911 location data that's supposed to be protected by law.Throughout all of this, the Ajit Pai FCC has largely been mute and feckless. In large part because taking action would require actually standing up to the industry's biggest wireless carriers, something that's indisputably not in Pai's wheelhouse. New FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks apparently has no such reservations, and in an editorial in the New York Times doesn't tread gently, noting the scale at which this data can be (and is) abused for a wide variety of reasons:

A Georgia politician -- apparently tired of being questioned by uppity journalists -- has decided the First Amendment shouldn't apply in his state. James Salzer of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports the departing state rep, Andy Welch, has lobbed an unconstitutional bomb into the legislature on his way out the door.

People's confusion as to what trademark law protects and doesn't protect is a source of neverending frustration for those of us who simply cannot stand the growth of ownership culture. There is this pervasive and growing sense by those who aren't particularly well informed that trademark law simply allows one to own a word or phrase to the exclusion of every other person's use. That, obviously, is not the case and it's always worth reiterating over and over again that the point of trademark law is to prevent the public from being misled as to the source of a good or service. And, yet, that baseline fact eludes far too many people.Such as Dave Johnson, for instance. Johnson is a rather renowned announcer for horse racing, having spent time on the Illinois circuit and, more famously, calling races at Santa Anita Park. If you're a fan of the pony races, you may know his signature call even if you don't know his name: "And down the stretch they come!" Johnson trademarked the phrase in 2012. He also recently sued the Weinstein Co. over the 2014 Bill Murray film, St. Vincent, in which Murray uses the line.

People's confusion as to what trademark law protects and doesn't protect is a source of neverending frustration for those of us who simply cannot stand the growth of ownership culture. There is this pervasive and growing sense by those who aren't particularly well informed that trademark law simply allows one to own a word or phrase to the exclusion of every other person's use. That, obviously, is not the case and it's always worth reiterating over and over again that the point of trademark law is to prevent the public from being misled as to the source of a good or service. And, yet, that baseline fact eludes far too many people.Such as Dave Johnson, for instance. Johnson is a rather renowned announcer for horse racing, having spent time on the Illinois circuit and, more famously, calling races at Santa Anita Park. If you're a fan of the pony races, you may know his signature call even if you don't know his name: "And down the stretch they come!" Johnson trademarked the phrase in 2012. He also recently sued the Weinstein Co. over the 2014 Bill Murray film, St. Vincent, in which Murray uses the line.

One of the worst defenses of civil asset forfeiture has been penned by retired police chief Robert Stevenson for the Michigan news site, the Bridge. It's written in response to two things: pending forfeiture reform bills in the state legislature and the Supreme Court's Timbs decision, which indicated forfeiture may fall on the wrong side of the 8th and 14th Amendments.Michigan definitely needs to overhaul its forfeiture laws. Law enforcement claims it's dismantling drug cartels, but a look at the state's forfeiture stats shows cops are just piling up low ball seizures to create a suitably impressive total. Cash seizures are routinely below $1,000. Vehicle seizures are also popular with Michigan cops, but the average value of vehicles taken from alleged drug dealers also falls below the $1,000 mark.It's these tiny seizures -- the ones not worth fighting in court -- that the state legislature is trying to curb. It's hoping to implement a conviction requirement for any forfeiture under $50,000. Chief Stevenson says this would let the drug dealers win. But beyond using some florid language to flesh out a tiny parade of horribles, Stevenson cannot actually say why this conviction requirement would harm drug enforcement efforts. He tries. Lord, how he tries. But there's nothing coherent in his defense of cops taking property from citizens just because.First, Stevenson argues that cops should be able to take money they feel deeply in their hearts is derived from drug dealing even if it can't find any evidence linking the person carrying it to a crime.

You can add Colorado to the growing list of states finalizing state-level net neutrality legislation. Colorado's new Senate Bill 78 would not only block ISPs from engaging in all the usual anti-competitive shenanigans (blocking or otherwise throttling a competing service), but it would also force ISPs to pay back state taxpayer-backed grants if they engage in said behaviors. After a last-second GOP attempt to add porn filters to the legislation failed, the bill passed the Colorado General Assembly last week and heads to the desk of Colorado Governor Jared Polis for signature.Colorado legislators note the effort is just one of 120 bills and resolutions in 34 states (and DC) crafted on this subject since Ajit Pai's FCC voted to kill net neutrality in late 2017. The bills are a direct reflection of the strong bipartisan majority of Americans that support such protections.As we've seen countless times before, telecom industry backed organizations like the AT&T-funded Colorado Competitive Council were quick to complain that such state-level efforts would only create regulatory confusion, and that enforcement of net neutrality should be left to the FTC:

A handful of former intelligence officials are suing the US government for engaging in prior restraint. It's a novel take on a First Amendment issue -- one that involves a vetting process for books, articles, and op-eds written by these officials containing details of their work in the CIA, Defense Department, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.While the government obviously has some right to ensure classified or sensitive info isn't leaked in post-career memoirs, the plaintiffs argue the vetting process has no guidelines and no firm timetable, which has resulted in planned publications being held up for years with zero explanation. Charlie Savage has more details at the New York Times.

The Department of Homeland Security isn't all that interested in securing the homeland, it appears.

Pay what you want for the Java Master Class Bundle and you'll get the Java Game Development course. If you beat the average price, you unlock access to 9 more courses. You'll learn the basics of Java, from Boolean Logic to Object-Oriented Programming. Courses also cover Java Spring, JavaFX, Swing, and more. In all, the bundle has over 50 hours of lessons to help you master Java.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.

Announcing The Sky Is Rising 2019: a new report offering a detailed look at the entertainment industry.A funny thing happened on the way to the internet supposedly destroying the entertainment industry. It saved the entertainment industry instead.A little over seven years ago, we released our first Sky is Rising report for CCIA. At the time, the key point we found in looking at the state of the modern entertainment industry was that the parts that were whining the loudest about how awful the internet was for content were only representing a very small part of the actual content industries. Recorded music may have been struggling as a business, but every other aspect of the music business was thriving. More music was being produced than ever before. More music was being consumed than ever before. More people were spending more money on music than ever before -- just not in the traditional ways. Ditto for video. And books. As we noted back in that original report, if you focused on the supposed true purpose of copyright -- to "promote the progress" of content production -- it was clear that the internet had made that possible a lot more than "copyright" law ever did.Today, again in partnership with CCIA, we're releasing our brand new Sky is Rising report for 2019, again looking at the state of the global entertainment industry. And, once again, it's thriving. But something big has changed in the past decade or so: even the legacy parts that were struggling when we put together the last report, the parts that were most impacted by the transformative nature of the internet, are now thriving as well. And in basically every case it's because of the internet that the legacy companies have shunned and complained about (not to mention demanded a continuous, never-ending, new set of laws to "tame" the very internet that is saving them).A few tidbits from the report, though I recommend reading the whole thing. Despite the doom and gloom statements from the industry about how consumers were just "getting stuff for free" and no longer interested in paying for content, the data shows that consumers continue to increase their spending. There was a temporary drop off... but it coincided not with the rise of the internet, but with the 2008 financial crisis:The recorded music business is often the poster child for an industry "wrecked" by the internet. And you could potentially have made that argument a few years ago if you totally ignored the fact that more people were making and releasing music than ever before. But certainly, "recorded" music revenue had dropped... until, starting around 2014, that turned around. And it's entirely due to streaming music, which last year accounted for nearly half of all recorded music revenue, and continues to grow at an astounding clip. Anyone who says that the internet has destroyed the recorded music business is lying to you:But, that's not all. As we detail in the report, all other aspects of the music business have continued to thrive -- with much of it being because of the internet. The live music business has continued to grow. Music publishing and performance rights have continued to grow. Music merchandising has become a massive business in its own right. It's literally nearly impossible to find any part of the music business that is struggling these days, despite what some folks in the industry will tell you. Of course, if you're wondering why the RIAA and others changed their talking points from complaining about "piracy" to the made up concept of "the value gap," this is why. They realized that things were going great, and all their talk about piracy killing the industry was increasingly going to ring hollow. So they invented this purely fictional concept of a "value gap" which is basically just whining that other industries are too successful and need to be forced to hand over more money. This too is an old playbook for the RIAA labels, who have spent decades trying to squeeze every penny out of any successful online service, continually insisting that if anyone else makes a dime off of music, it should instead go to the labels.The video world is another fascinating realm. Netflix and other streaming video providers have helped created the golden age of TV-style programming these days. We detail in the report just how much Netflix, Amazon, and other streaming video services have been spending on content, leading to massive growth in original scripted TV programming. But, it's not just the online streaming services. The number of original scripted TV programs on broadcast, basic cable and premium cable has also risen over the past decade. And this is all happening despite so much competition from other things people can do with their free time:On the movie side of the coin, box office revenue continues to increase, both in the US and abroad. People are continuing to go to the movies, and more movies than ever before are being created around the globe. There was so much data here, we finally just had to stop adding more to get the report out.In the past, some people argued that just talking about box office numbers was unfair, because where the internet was really having an impact was in destroying the home video market. There was some amount of irony in that given just how loudly and fiercely the MPAA itself had fought against there ever being a home video market (cue former MPAA boss Jack Valenti's famous Congressional testimony, in which he declared: "I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone."). That wasn't true back then, and it's certainly not true today either. A few years after Valenti said that, the home video market brought in more revenue than the box office -- and that's still true today. The home video market is growing fast -- and it's almost all because of the internet. Note how much of the market is now subscription based, rather than transactional. That's Netflix's innovation, not the movie studios.And then there's books. Once again, rather than destroying the market, the internet has saved it. More and more books are being published. Interestingly, in the book market, the story was a bit different than elsewhere. While ebooks and audiobooks are now a significant portion of the book market, physical books seem to be making a bit of a comeback -- and a lot of that has to do with the ability to buy them online.Indeed, what we found in our research is that a tremendous uptick in new books is coming from authors self-publishing (in 2017, over a million self-published books were released for the first time -- a massive increase over the past decade). Believe it or not, most of those self-published books are available as paper books, rather than ebooks, thanks to internet services like Amazon CreateSpace, Lulu and Blurb.Indeed, as we saw back in the 2012 report, a huge part of the story of today's entertainment industry is how much is now being driven not by the old gatekeepers, but by the fact that anyone can make use of the internet to create: whether it's video, movies, music, books, or video games, lots of people are using the internet to create, to build an audience, to distribute globally... and to make some money. So many of the new "stars" are coming up via the internet, rather than waiting for some legacy gatekeeper to discover them. That hasn't made those gatekeepers obsolete, but it's certainly taken away some of their leverage.Back in 2011, we noted that so many people kept referring to their being some sort of "war" between Hollywood and Silicon Valley, but it struck us as odd that Silicon Valley kept coming up with the "weapons" that seemed likely to help Hollywood thrive. Eight years later, the evidence is in: the entertainment industry is thriving. The sky is rising. And Hollywood should be thanking the internet, rather than continuing to attack it at every single turn.Go check out the full Sky Is Rising 2019 Report for a detailed look at the state of the entertainment industry today.

Just a reminder this is the sort of thing that is happening at our borders with exponentially-increasing frequency.

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Stephen T. Stone with a summary of the situation with sites clamping down on sexual content, largely out of fear of FOSTA liability:

Well, here we are at our final spotlight post for winners from our public domain game jam, Gaming Like It's 1923. It's the winner of the Best Analog Game category: Permanenceby Jackson Tegu.Permanence is probably the most intriguing and unusual of all the submissions we received, and it piqued the curiosity and imagination of many of our judges. It's also just about as analog as a game can be: it takes the form of a book. Indeed, the instructions advise (somewhat apologetically) that you professionally print and bind the included PDF to create a real book to hold in your hands — but in a pinch, a basic print-out will suffice.But this isn't a book of instructions... not quite. Nor is it a book to simply read... not quite. Rather, the book is the instructions, the game, and the story all at once. It is designed to be played by seven people, but not all at once — each player will, on their own time, take their journey through the book. And they won't leave the book the same as they found it: each player is instructed (poetically) to "free their traveler from the page" with scissors, and then to leave behind their traveller's "attachments" as small bookmarks between the pages. All this throughout the course of a meditative roleplaying journey based on two 1923 works that have entered the public domain: the painting Metempsychosis by Yokoyama Taikan, and poems from the book The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran.If you're still feeling a bit unclear on what exactly Permanence is, don't be discouraged — it is a game to be discovered via play, not mastered beforehand. Its unique and creative approach made it a shoe-in for Best Analog Game, and the only way to understand it is to print it out and give it a try. You can download it now from its page on Itch!And with that, we wrap up the series of winner spotlights for our public domain game jam. Once again, a huge thanks to everyone who participated, and who played the games that were submitted — we never expected such a great response, and we're thrilled with how it went. You can still check out the full list of winners and the collection of other entries at any time, and if all goes according to plan with the finally-expanding public domain, we'll be back with another edition next year!

Qualified immunity isn't a codified defense. Congress never passed a law granting public employees this exception to Constitutional protections. This exception -- one that allows public servants to avoid being directly sued by the public whose rights they've violated -- was crafted by the Supreme Court. The theory is it's too hard for the government to fully comprehend the rights it's supposed to be guaranteeing, so there needs to be an escape hatch for government employees.This escape hatch has allowed an amazing amount of abuse to go unpunished. As long as the government employees were the first to engage in egregious Constitutional violations, they're given a free pass. The free pass runs indefinitely if courts refuse to draw a bright line in published opinions. It doesn't seem like it would be that difficult to comply with the Constitution, but here we are.Qualified immunity has again been extended in a case where the behavior the government engaged in was not only unconstitutional, but criminal. (h/t Clark Neily)In this case, an illegal gambling investigation led to the search of property owned by the plaintiffs. The search warrant authorized the seizure of cash, gambling machines, and anything else the government determined was derived from illegal activity. So, the government did some seizing. But the inventory sheet didn't match up with what was taken. From the decision [PDF]:

When it comes to the record of anti-piracy outfit MUSO, based in the UK, you get a mixed-bag. On the one hand, the organization was caught patting itself on the back for the number of takedowns of infringing content it had achieved, when the number it was touting was made up in some sizable percentage of the number of takedown requests it had issued. The focus at all on takedowns as a method for combating piracy, rather than the development of better business models that take advantage of the internet, is itself a problem. On the other hand, MUSO has also been willing to tell content publishers that piracy is by and large their fault, with a lack of convenient legal alternatives being the biggest barrier to ending copyright infringement. So, a little bad, a little good.Well, we can add another item to the good column, as MUSO recently came out on its own site with a piece that essentially argues that DRM should be abandoned completely. And, while the alternative on offer in the post is more takedown efforts, MUSO is at least trying to frame this as an argument for better treatment of consumers.

The NSA isn't the only collector of bulk phone records. The NSA may not even be doing this anymore, but for a long time, it was not only the NSA's bread-and-butter, but the DEA's as well.The DEA has run multiple bulk records collections for more than 20 years, given the green light by our current Attorney General, William Barr, who also ran the DOJ back in 1992. These not only targeted calls placed to "drug nexus" countries, but purchase records as well. "Nexus" is a slippery word -- one the NSA takes advantage of as well. US law enforcement considers almost anywhere in or out of the country to be a "drug nexus," which gives it the suspicion it needs to pull over drivers on interstate highways or rifle through their belongings at airports looking for drugs cash.Using this flimsy connective tissue and a bunch of subpoenas, the DEA approached private companies and demanded vast amounts of third party records. Some of these details were exposed when the DEA's "Hemisphere" documents were published. Six years after Ed Snowden let the world know the NSA was collecting phone records in bulk, the Inspector General of the DOJ has finally released a report [PDF] on the DEA's bulk collections.According to the IG report, the DEA ran three bulk collection programs. Program A collected bulk telephone records on calls from the US to "drug nexus" countries. These were obtained with "non-target-specific" subpoenas directly from the service provider. Like the NSA, the DEA wanted metadata about these calls, like date, time, and duration.Program B did pretty much the same thing: non-targeted subpoenas were handed to "selected vendors" to gather data on purchases, which were then cross-referenced with the DEA's bulk records database to (finally!) identify targets to investigate. (What purchases? According to Charlie Savage of the New York Times, the DEA is tracking purchases of money counting machines. This is probably information the DEA didn't want the public to have, but a redaction failure caught by Savage exposed the intent of this collection program.)

Despite endless government initiatives and countless promises from the telecom sector, our national robocall hell continues. Robocalls from telemarketers continue to be the subject the FCC receives the most complaints about (200,000 complaints annually, making up 60% of all FCC complaints), and recent data from the Robocall Index indicates that the problem is only getting worse. Consumers continue to be hammered by mortgage interest rate scams, credit card scams, student loan scams, business loan scams, and IRS scams. 4.9 billion such calls were placed in February alone.And while the FCC does routinely fine companies and scammers for robocalling, these aren't the kind of outfits that tend to leave a forwarding address. In fact of the $208 million in fines doled out by the FCC for robocall related fraud, the FCC has only been able to collect around $6,790 in actual penalties. That includes the recent, headline-grabbing record $120 million fine the FCC levied against a robocaller who had made up to 98 million robocalls during one three-month period. The FTC has similarly collected $121 million out of $1.5 billion penalties doled out to stop the annoying spam calls.Often, it's hard to collect because the robocallers in question are just scam organizations that quickly disappear or can't pay. In other instances, it's just a lack of follow through at the FCC or Justice Department, something that's also plagued some of the agency's rulings against companies like AT&T. Many have been quick to point out that the collection failure highlights how fines alone aren't really doing much to thwart the problem, especially if authorities can't or won't collect them:

Pay what you want for The Python Master Class Bundle and you'll get access to the Python Object Oriented Programming Fundamentals course where you'll learn to create new Python applications. If you beat the average price for the bundle, you unlock 9 more courses. You'll learn about web scraping, Numpy, iPython, Scipy and more. Other courses cover making graphs, interactive games, machine learning, web programming, and more on your way to mastering Python.Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

A new "report" has been released by Copytrack, supposedly detailing the insane amount of "stealing" that goes on every day. "Report" is in quotes for reason. First, the "report" [PDF] opens up with a literally unbelievable statistic conjecture.

Because American politics is a hellscape, you may not recall that thousands of women marched in D.C. back in 2017 shortly after our current President was sworn in. So much has happened since then that perhaps this was pushed out of your memory banks. At the time, however, the movement sparked marches among women's groups throughout the country, and led in part to a women's movement around the 2018 midterms. Along the way, however, four activist organizers started Women's March Inc. to formalize the organization of future marches. In addition to that, the group, for some reason, thought it was a good idea to try to trademark the term "Women's March" and to issue threats to other organizers to not use the term in their names.

Following the Christchurch mosque shooting, the New Zealand government swiftly declared footage and photos of the shooting illegal and started rounding up citizens who violated the censorship body's new declaration. The government of its closest neighbor has responded to the tragedy in a similar fashion, outlawing the sharing of "abhorrent violent material."Tragedies make for bad laws. And Australia -- while relatively short on tragedy -- has been crafting some supremely bad laws lately. The national security flag was waved around a bit to justify encryption-breaking mandates. Now, the government has rushed through a bill targeting content like the Christchurch shooter's livestream of his violent act.

Good news, UK porn aficionados: the porn filter is backed up.

One of the many concerns about the upload filters of the EU's Copyright Directive is that they could lead to censorship, even if that is not the intention. The problem is that once a filtering mechanism is in place to block unauthorized copies of materials, it is very hard to stop its scope being widened beyond copyright infringement. As it happens, the German government has just provided a good example of the kind of abuse that is likely to become a commonplace.FragDenStaat -- literally "ask the State" -- is a German freedom of information (FOI) organization. It obtained and published a six-page report about the herbicide glyphosate. The document was written by the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, a publicly-funded body that provides scientific advice to Germany's federal government on issues relating to things like food, product, and chemical safety, as well as consumer health protection. Even though the report was paid for by the German public, obtained legally -- and can still be requested by anyone -- FragDenStaat is not allowed to distribute it. The Regional Court in Cologne has ruled that would be an infringement of the German State's copyright, and ordered it to be taken down. FragDenStaat says it will appeal -- to the Court of Justice of the European Union, if necessary -- and comments:

While cities like Seattle and San Francisco are known as technology and innovation hubs, that hasn't historically been reflected by the broadband markets in those cities. Like everywhere else, the two cities suffer from little real broadband competition, with incumbent monopolies like Comcast leaving consumers and businesses with a dearth of options for quality, lower cost broadband. And, like the rest of America, as companies like AT&T and Verizon shift their ambitions to online advertising, they're refusing to upgrade aging DSL lines, leaving cable with an even more potent monopoly that 5G wireless isn't likely to fix.Faced with decades of sub-par service, "tech hubs" like Seattle and San Francisco have pondered building their own broadband networks. More than 750 towns and cities have pursued the option, which is why ISPs like AT&T and Comcast have lobbied for laws in nearly two-dozen states attempting to ban or hamstring such efforts. It's not hard to see why. Chatanooga's Publicly-owned ISP EPB was ranked last year as the best ISP in the nation, and Harvard studies have shown that such community networks tend to offer better service at lower and more transparent prices than their private-sector counterparts.If any city should be able to pursue and fund a public open access fiber network, you'd think it would be tech-obsessed and hugely wealthy San Francisco. That was the thinking of Mark Farrell when he took his seat on San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors in 2010. He spent several years trying to convince his fellow city residents that an open-access, wholesale fiber network (where private ISPs come in and compete in layers on top) would improve life (and business) immeasurably in the city. But as with so many efforts, his plan ran face first into a buzzsaw of telecom industry lobbying:

In the wake of the Christchurch shooting massacre in New Zealand, there has been a somewhat odd focus on the internet platforms -- mainly those that ended up hosting copies of the killer's livestream of the attack. As we previously discussed, this is literally blaming the messenger, and taking away focus from the much deeper issues that led up to the attack. Still, in response, Microsoft's Brad Smith decided to step forward with a plan to coordinate among big internet companies a system for blocking and taking down such content.

The EFF's attempt to force critical FISA court opinions out of the DOJ's hands has been rejected by a California federal court. The EFF was seeking to obtain unreleased FISA opinions by utilizing some of the new review requirements enacted with the USA Freedom Act. Unfortunately, the court has rejected the EFF's compound argument, as Aaron Mackey explains:

The Complete Machine Learning A to Z Bundle has 9 courses designed to help you become proficient with this important technology. Deep learning isn't just about helping computers learn from data—it's about helping those machines determine what's important in those data sets. This is what allows for Tesla's Model S to drive on its own or for Siri to determine where the best brunch spots are. You'll learn TensorFlow, Python's scikit-learn, Apache MXNet, PyTorch, and more. You'll learn how to build chatbots with Google DialogFlow and Amazon Lex, and you'll learn to build voice apps for Amazon Lex. It's 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.

An $11-million defamation lawsuit brought against Buzzfeed by the head of a "news" agency has been dismissed by a New York federal court judge. Michael Leidig, who runs CEN (Central European News), didn't like being hailed as the "King of Bullshit News" by Buzzfeed in 2015. He sued Buzzfeed nine months after the article was published. Leidig, a UK citizen, may have hoped for a more British take on defamation law, but libel law works differently here in the United States.

You may have noticed that FCC boss Ajit Pai likes to breathlessly and repeatedly proclaim that one of his top priorities while chair of the FCC is to "close the digital divide." Pai, who clearly harbors post-FCC political aspirations, can usually be found touring the nation's least-connected states declaring that he's working tirelessly to shore up broadband connectivity and competition nationwide. On trip after taxpayer funded trip, both Pai and his fellow commissioners tell audiences his policies are expanding high-speed internet access and closing the digital divide to create jobs and increase digital opportunity.Several times a month, some small local paper can be found unquestioningly hyping Pai and his fellow commissioners' "digital opportunity tour." Like this recent piece on FCC Commissioner Branden Carr's trip to Alaska, or this piece on Pai's recent visit to Vermont, where Pai once again repeated his (false) claim that gutting sector oversight (and net neutrality) will somehow magically result in better broadband in these historically neglected areas:

So roughly a month ago you might recall that Steven Spielberg had a "get off my lawn" moment in demanding that Netflix films be excluded from Oscar contention. The sentiment isn't uncommon among old-school Hollywood types who see traditional film as somehow so sacred that it shouldn't have to change or adapt in the face of technological evolution. It was the same sentiment recently exhibited by the Cannes film festival when they banned Netflix films because Netflix pushed back against absurd French film laws (like the one requiring a 36-month delay between theatrical release and streaming availability).You'll notice there's never much solid supporting evidence supporting these banning recommendations; just some vague arguments that films from streaming services can't be considered good because these companies push back against traditional and often counterproductive business tactics that haven't aged well in the internet era (like those antiquated release windows). And while Netflix's catalog certainly has its share of duds, there's an ocean of awards for films like Roma that suggest the entire sentiment is little more than old man protectionist nonsense.Granted shortly after Spielberg's comments about how terrible streaming services were, Spielberg came out in breathless support of Apple's new undercooked Apple+ streaming service, suggesting that perhaps streaming services aren't so bad if Steven's backing them.Curiously however, Steven's grumpy vision of a streaming-free oscars may not come to fruition. Reports this week surfaced that the Department of Justice has actually told the Academy to tread carefully in terms of excluding streaming services from contention, as they could run afoul of antitrust guidelines:

A Pennsylvania judge has delivered an earful to the York County Drug Task Force and its handling of property forfeitures. Christopher Hawkins, represented by Korey Leslie (who was kind enough to email me the ruling the York Dispatch couldn't be bothered to post with its article), challenged the seizure of two vehicles and a bunch of electronics from his house. Hawkins was arrested after a controlled heroin purchase. There appears to be no question Hawkins participated in drug dealing. But that doesn't excuse the government's decision to take two cars and some TVs from him as "evidence."Judge Craig T. Trebilcock doesn't like anything about the Task Force's seizures, since it appears to be more concerned with taking things with resale value, rather than property with an actual nexus to drug distribution. The opinion [PDF] repeatedly calls Task Force detectives out for their lack of credibility and the dollar signs continually dancing in their eyes. The Task Force originally seized four vehicles from Hawkins before returning two of them for a lack of drug nexus. But it still couldn't connect the two it kept.

Over the last few years, Russia has been one of the most aggressive countries in using claims of copyright infringement to push for full site blocking at the ISP level. Of course, that has resulted in tens of thousands of innocent sites getting blocked (collateral damage!), not to mention a corruption scandal and... no meaningful decrease in piracy. Apparently, the answer for the Russians: head deeper into the infrastructure to push site blocking even further.Now, apparently, beyond just demanding ISPs engage in massive site blocking, various VPNs have been ordered to start blocking full sites as well.

Pennsylvania teens will be relieved to know their Constitutional right to disparage their school remains intact. A lawsuit brought by a student who was suspended for expressing her displeasure with several school traditions has been given the federal court seal of approval.At the heart of the case is a string of Snapchatted F-bombs. The student, referred to only as B.L., expressed her displeasure using curse words -- a teen tradition that dates back at least as far as the traditions she expressed her displeasure with. The decision [PDF] recounts the sweary events leading to this Constitutional violation, which began with B.L. being passed over for a varsity cheerleading spot:

It is generally a bad idea to make any massive change in the wake of a tragedy. It is certainly reasonable to explore and discuss some of these ideas, but the temptation to overreact to an emotional sample size of one is often too great, leading to very silly outcomes. Take, for example, a suggestion by professor Jennifer Grygiel, in the wake of the awful attack in Christchurch, New Zealand a few weeks back. As with other "blame the tech" attempts, her focus is less on the speed with which the platforms removed content, but more with the fact that live-streaming is even available at all. Her proposal? No more live-streaming at all.Grygiel at first repeats an earlier argument she made that all live-streaming must be put on "time delay" for censors to review. She notes that she first pushed this idea a few years ago, in the wake of another "streamed live" attack.

Many of us are still getting over the insanity of the EU's Copyright Directive decision, and already we need to worry about the next awful EU regulation on the horizon: the EU's Terrorist Content Regulation which is significantly worse than even Article 13/17 of the Copyright Directive, and will create a massive stifling effect on free speech on the internet.Over at Stanford, Daphne Keller has put together a depressing, but thorough, look at how the Terrorist Content Regulation will allow the most censorial government officials to silence speech across the EU, and possibly around the world.We've discussed some of the details in the past (and on a podcast), but one of the key parts of the law is that it will require any website to take down content deemed to be terrorist content within one hour, based on demands from "competent authorities" within countries (don't even bother trying to figure out who is a "competent authority," it'll drive you crazy.)Another, perhaps equally (or more) concerning, is that the regulation seeks to promote platform terms of service over the rule of law. As I'm sure you know already, platform terms of service do not need to match up with local laws, and platforms can be much more free to block or ban any kind of content as a violation of a particular term. The EU's plan here elevates the power of the terms of service, by allowing "competent authorities" (those guys again!) to tell platforms that certain content is in violation of their terms, requiring companies to review the content and potentially remove it or face liability. And you know what that will lead to: widespread censorship.Keller's piece focuses on this "TOS over rule of law" aspect of the Terrorist Content Regulation to highlight how it will effectively allow the most censorial in a position to spread their censorship across the EU. Effectively, because if platforms disagree with a "referral" concerning their Terms of Service, they face incredibly onerous conditions in response:

NetSpot lets you visualize, optimize, and troubleshoot your wireless networks with your computer so you can get the best connection possible at all times. Use the mapping feature to view dead zones and optimize hotspot placement, and use the troubleshooting tool to identify connectivity issues. With NetSpot Home, you'll never miss a beat, post, or important email even when your internet is acting up. You'll reach maximum WiFi efficiency, all while assuring your home network is perfectly secure. It's available for Mac or PC and is on sale for $19.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.

There goes the DMCA, being wielded as a tool of censorship again. The EFF is currently battling for a Redditor's anonymity -- something threatened by a bogus DMCA takedown and a subpoena seeking to unmask this supposed infringer.It's about much more than simply disappearing content from the internet one party didn't want exposed. It's about targeting an individual to deter them from ever posting content like this again. Behind the subpoena is a powerful religious entity -- one that's seeking to shut down criticism of its means and methods.

For the better part of the last decade, some Wall Street analysts have quietly been pointing out that the current pay TV business model is unsustainable. As it stands, broadcasters increasingly impose giant price hikes for the same programming to cable companies, who in turn pass those higher costs on to consumers. Those consumers are, in turn, increasingly "cutting the cord" by moving to cheaper streaming alternatives. And when those streaming alternatives don't provide what they want or raise rates (as AT&T recently did with its DirecTV Now service), subscribers then shift toward free options like over the air antennas or piracy.Smaller cable providers have been warning for years that unless you enjoy the size and leverage of being a giant ISP and broadcaster combined (AT&T/Time Warner, Comcast/NBC Universal), you're not going to be able to survive this new tight-margin market. Some, like CableONE, have opted to get out of TV entirely and focus on broadband. It's a trend that's only likely to accelerate.Some Wall Street analysts, like MoffettNathanson analyst Craig Moffett, have been noting for a while that this entire mess isn't getting better anytime soon. He's again making the rounds, arguing that there's a chance that bigger cable operators could similarly embrace the idea of giving up on video as margins tighten. And if they stop caring about video (either by dropping pricey channels or raising rates), it's only going to accelerate the cord cutting trend: