2019 has come to a close, and now it's time for our annual round-up of the comments that racked up the most insightful and funny votes in the entire year! As usual we've got the top three in each category — and if you're looking for this week's winners, here's first place and second place for insightful, and first place and second place for funny.The Most Insightful Comments Of 2019Back in April, we wrote about the Music Modernization Act and the problems with legacy industry players handling the royalties for independent songwriters. This garnered our first place winner for insightful in 2019 from Rico R. who shared his personal story as an example of how our copyright systems simply don't serve smaller creators well:

Five Years AgoThis week in 2014/15, we reveled in the tradition of governments dropping news on Christmas Eve in the hopes that nobody will pay attention to it — employed by the NSA in releasing details on its illegal surveillance of Americans and by the French government to enact a controversial surveillance law of its own. Sony was caught infringing in copyright in a stark example of how broken the system is, while we used the notion of a movie about the big Sony hack to explore the unnecessary licensing of news stories. Comcast and Time Warner Cable were doing their darnedest to convince people their merger would be just fine, even though they were in fact the least-liked companies in any industry. And we took another look at how copyright makes culture disappear.Ten Years AgoThis week in 2009/10, Amazon announced that Kindle ebooks outsold physical books for Christmas, but we noted that "sold" isn't exactly the right word for DRM-laden licensed rentals, which change the equation on the value of a Kindle and were already forcing customers to stick with bad products — and the distinction was also becoming important in the music world with questions about licenses stopping at the border. We also looked at how automakers were abusing anti-circumvention laws to force people to pay more for car repairs, and how the UK's Digital Economy Bill was projected to cost more than the highest estimates on the cost of piracy. Zynga was making copyright threats over a script for auto-playing Mafia Wars, and the Viacom/YouTube fight was hit with the embarrassing revelation that Viacom uploaded many of the videos it was suing over.Fifteen Years AgoThis week in 2004/05, the popular technopanic was blaming wireless technology for everything under the sun — though at least one study was putting to bed the idea that it would interfere with pacemakers. Among the biggest sources of tech excitement was "nanotechnology", which we were beginning to realize was often just a rebranding of existing fields. Meanwhile, Wired took a detailed look at just how big and organized the file-sharing community was, while one anti-piracy group was caught hiding spyware and adware in Windows Media files.

Every year, a few days after New Year's Day, we post some stats about traffic and comments from the previous year (we do it a few days after New Year's to make sure that we actually have complete data for the year -- and also, because it takes a bit of time to go through all the data, and other work needs to be done as well). For reference, you can see our previous such posts: 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011 and 2010. We still use Google Analytics for traffic data, mainly because it's the easiest to use, even though it is increasingly not the most accurate, in part because many of our readers (*cough* including me) will often block Google Analytics from recording our traffic. As we've discussed in the past, most "traffic" numbers are complete garbage, a fact that most people like to ignore because it benefits themselves. However, here we are only using the traffic stats for comparative or relative purposes, rather than absolute purposes -- which seems much more reasonable (i.e., we'll note which stories got the most traffic, but not detail how much traffic, since we're positive that number is inaccurate or misleading).Once again, let's start with where people are coming from. The top of this list is basically always almost exactly identical. The vast majority of our traffic is from the US, with 67% (it's always between 67% and 70%). Number two, as always, is the UK, though this year it jumped up to 6.65% from 5.5%, and Canada remains third at 4.41%. India had jumped to 4th place (from 5th) last year, and it remains in 4th place again with 2.8% of our traffic. Australia is still in 5th with 2.2%. The next five are still the same: Finland, Germany, France, Netherlands, and Sweden, though Finland jumped over Germany to go from 7th to 6th. We noted that last year was Finland's first in the top 10, and this year it bumped up another spot. Not sure why we're moderately big in Finland, but it's cool by me.At a continental level, the Americas represent 74% of our traffic (98.5% of that is North America), Europe 17%, Asia 7%, Oceania is 3% and Africa is 1%. Interesting to think about as we consider whether we can even continue to serve European traffic following the various anti-internet laws they've been passing over there. Overall, Google says we had visitors from 237 countries last year, down one from 238 last year, but up one from 236 the year before. Among countries that have become much more censorial, we notice our traffic has dropped precipitously. We used to get a fair amount of traffic from Russia but it's now barely a blip. We get more traffic from Austria and Denmark than Russia nowadays. We get about the equivalent amount of traffic from China as we get from Russia (i.e., not very much). In Asia, most of our traffic comes from India and the Philippines (with some Singapore, South Korea, Japan, and Pakistan as well). Turkey? We get basically the same amount of traffic as we get from Russia and China. It's almost uncanny that we get nearly the identical traffic amounts from each of those countries.Sometimes it's fun to explore the bottom of the list, which tends to be dominated by single visits from random islands in the South Pacific and various countries in Africa -- but not sure it actually tells us very much useful. It's interesting to see a growing number of visits from Cuba, a country whose internet access still remains very, very limited. We're back down to no visits from North Korea, after it sent us 2 visits the previous year.In terms of technology, it's worth noting that Chrome, while still dominant, has dropped in the level of dominance. Last year it represented 49% of all visits to the site (same as the previous year), but this year it's dropped to 45.8%, with Safari jumping up to 21.5% from 17%. Firefox has dropped from 10% to 6%, which makes me sad as a Firefox user. In news that I'm sure is frustrating to Microsoft (and surprising to everyone), we still get 4% of traffic from Internet Explorer and less than 2% from Microsoft Edge. Most of the other browser traffic is various mobile browsers, so we'll breakdown operating system traffic next. 32% of our traffic comes from Windows-based computers, 28% from Android devices and 27% from iOS devices. Only 10% comes from Macintosh computers, which surprises me. 3% of our traffic is from Linux-based machines. Slightly less than 1% comes from Chrome OS. Oh, and 0.03% from Blackberry, 0.02% from "Windows Phone" and 0.01% from Playstation 4. Wow.In terms of service providers, it's a little difficult to tell, because Google Analytics records the same ISP in many different ways (i.e., there's "Comcast Cable Communications LLC" which is listed separately from "Comcast" and "Comcast IP Services" and "Comcast Cable Communications Inc."). I'm sure there's a reason for all those different names, and I'm also assuming it's due to some lame rent seeking activity. So, my rough estimates are that about 10% of our traffic is carried by Comcast, around 7% by Charter, 6% by AT&T and Verizon each, and then lots of other smaller players.Mobile traffic continues to grow by leaps and bounds. We finally (finally, finally, finally) made our site responsive to make mobile browsing better, and so our mobile traffic numbers shot up. Last year it was 39% of our traffic. This year it was 55% of traffic (wow!). Looking purely at mobile traffic, the fight between Android and iOS remains pretty close. 50% of mobile visits are Android and 49% are iOS. The iPhone obviously was the most dominant device, followed by the iPad. When you get into Android devices, we see variations on Samsung phones leading the pack, with the S8, S9, S9+, Galaxy Note 8 and Galaxy Note 9 all making the leader boards. The only two devices that weren't from Apple or Samsung were the Google Pixel 2 XL and the Xiaomi Redmi Note 5A. Going further down the list, we see more variations on the Google Pixels and Samsung devices. Eventually, pretty far down the list we start to see some Motorolas and some OnePluses. Much further down the list there are some LG devices. An Amazon Fire (?!?) and even a fair number of visits from an Essential Phone (?!?!?!?).For the last few years we've highlighted the following chart of where our traffic comes from:As we say every year, unlike nearly every other site out there, we do not focus on gaming social media for traffic, and truly wish to get as much "direct" traffic as possible, because that's how you build loyalty. So it makes me happy to see direct traffic remains our biggest source at over 40% and social is just around 12.5%. This may be naive. Basically every other site seems to focus on getting as much social traffic as possible, and it is, certainly a channel for generating traffic. But it's also fickle and leaves you completely at the whim of whatever recommendation algorithm those companies have designed and I'd rather focus on creating good content than worrying about some third party algorithm I have no control over (same goes for search traffic, for what it's worth).Within social traffic, we get the most from Twitter, followed by Reddit, Facebook, HackerNews, Quora and then YouTube. Google obviously drives most of the search traffic followed by Bing and then DuckDuckGo (which is pretty close behind Bing). As always, many of the top search terms are clearly people using search as a navigation tool, as they just are variations on "techdirt" or "tech dirt." Some of the other top search terms that took people to Techdirt are surprising. There's "baby shark" coming in at the top, and also "UCF professor Richard Quinn." Not sure why people are searching on him, but the top result is our 2010 story on him, and his accusations against his students for cheating (and how he dealt with them). I don't know if he did something new this year that made a bunch of people search for him. Some other top search terms are perhaps less surprising: there are searches for copyright troll "Higbee & Associates" (many of which seem to be from people who received demand letters from Higbee) as well as Backpage and everyone's favorite SLAPP suit filing coal boss, Bob Murray.And now it's time for the lists:Top Ten Stories, by unique pageviews, on Techdirt for 2019:

Take 2 Interactive, the famed game studio behind the Grand Theft Auto franchise, is no stranger to our pages. When we have posted about the company, however, it has typically been to highlight how many ridiculous lawsuits and threats it faces over IP from unlikely sources. There was the ongoing battle with Lindsay Lohan over GTA5. There was a strange cease and desist notice sent to the company by the infamous Pinkerton Agency over its accurate depiction in Red Dead Redemption. The point is that Take 2 has been on the receiving end of frustrating intellectual property challenges such that it really should have some perspective on better ways to handle things than to simply be as heavy-handed as possible.But apparently that's a lesson that hasn't stuck. Take 2 Interactive recently filed a lawsuit against Johnathan Wyckoff and several John Does over what appears to be a now-defunct project entitled Red Dead Redemption: Damned Enhancement Project. The goals of the project were somewhat simple. Fans of the series may already know that the original title was never released for the PC, only the PlayStation. The original game was also released several years ago, with now outdated graphics. Using the more recently released PC version of Red Dead 2, the project aimed to put the game map from the original game into its sequel and then update the graphics from the original game to produce a more polished version of the original. Worth noting here is that the gaming public has complained about the lack of a PC port of Red Dead 1 for years, with Take 2 offering no hint that it had any intention of meeting this demand.And yet they filed suit anyway.

Sonos is taking heat this week for a wasteful "feature" in its "smart" speakers that isn't all that smart.Last October, Sonos announced a new "Trade up" upgrade discount program that let you trade in older Sonos hardware for a 30% discount on new gear. But buried within the program was 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:

We've written plenty about Sci-Hub over the years. The service, which was set up to allow free and easy access to academic research that is all-to-often hidden behind insanely expensive paywalls (often, despite being paid for with public funds), is the bane of academic publishers, though the hero to many academics. As we've highlighted, the big publishers keep playing whac-a-mole with the service as they try to take it down around the globe, and each time it just seems to get the site more attention. From the earliest days, it's been clear that Sci-Hub works by getting academics with access to various collections to "donate" their login credentials, so that Sci-Hub can fetch any missing papers not in its collection (if it, and its associated site Libgen, already have it, they make that version available).However, the Washington Post is now claiming that the DOJ has been investigating Sci-Hub founder, Alexandra Elbakyan, who started the site as an academic herself who found it nearly impossible to access the research she needed. But here's the twist, apparently the DOJ is alleging that Elbakyan is somehow tied to Russian intelligence.

The Ultimate Web Coding for Everyone Bundle has 8 courses designed for people of all ages to take their first steps in learning how to code. The courses cover the fundamentals of Python, Ruby, JavaScript, PHP, HTML, CSS Bootstrap, MySQL, and node.js. You'll learn through lectures and hands-on projects how to start coding and building your own apps and websites. It's on sale for $29, and if you use the code 20SAVE20 you'll save an additional 20% off.Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

The Russian government has successfully disconnected itself from the world. "Internet sovereignty" is the term the government prefers. That's what the Russian government actually calls the law signed into effect in May.The idea is to isolate the Russian internet from the internet the rest of the world uses. It's not to protect Russia or Russian internet users. It's to force all Russian internet traffic through Roskomnadzor servers, which will allow the government to surveil its citizens' internet use, presumably to facilitate censorship efforts and prosecutions.Lots of experts doubted the plan was feasible. At best, it would subject all Russian internet traffic to government surveillance. At worst, it would cause critical systems to fail. The plan was to pull the plug in April. It didn't happen until December. According to the Russian government, this extreme Balkanization of the internet went off without a hitch.

Another day, another company leaving massive troves of consumer data openly accessible to the internet.One of the darlings of the holiday tech marketing season was Wyze Labs, which provides significantly cheaper ($20) in home internet-enabled cameras compared to competitors like Ring. While both Wirecutter and CNN put Wyze's cheap camera on their holiday must buy shopping lists, the company's customers got more than they bargained for under the tree this Christmas.The folks at Twelve Security discovered that camera information, Wi-Fi network details, email addresses, Alexa tokens, and even biometric data of 2.4 million customers was inadvertently left available to the open internet from December 6 to December 27. Security researcher "Ghost" stated he'd "never encountered a breach of this magnitude," and noted that a significant, major breach had already impacted the same company about six months ago. A second post by the firm notes how the cameras are largely just rebranded Xiaomi cameras from China, funneling much of this collected data back to Alibaba cloud servers.Wyze, which sells the cameras largely through its relationship with Amazon, told the New York Times that an "employee error" was to thank for the massive breach:

We've written a bunch about why AI generated artwork should not (and need not) have any copyright at all. The law says that copyright only applies to human creators. But what about patents? There has been a big debate about this in the patent space over the last year, mainly lead by AI developers who want to be able to secure patents on AI generated ideas. The patent offices in the EU and the US have been exploring the issue, and asking for feedback, while they plot out a strategy, but some AI folks decided to force the matter sooner. Over the summer they announced that they had filed for two patents in the EU for inventions that they claim were "invented" by an AI named DABUS without the assistance of a human inventor.And now, the EU Patent Office has rejected both patents, since they don't have a human inventor.

A 2018 lawsuit [PDF] against Google over location tracking survives, but only just. The lawsuit -- filed after a report showed Google was still collecting location data even after users shut off location services on Android phones -- alleges Google violated California laws and privacy protections by tracking users (including children) after it had been told not to.The lawsuit has been dismissed [PDF], but the court is giving the plaintiffs a chance to amend the lawsuit and suggesting there are issues the court alone can't decide. (via FourthAmendment.com)The plaintiffs allege they were led to believe Google would no longer collect and store location data when "Location History" was shut off. They cite Google's own support page, which (formerly) stated "With Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored." The court says this language could have misled users, no matter what Google's Privacy Policies and Terms of Services actually said about location data.

If you hadn't noticed yet, the internet of things is a security and privacy shit show. Millions of poorly-secured internet-connected devices are now being sold annually, introducing massive new attack vectors and vulnerabilities into home and business networks nationwide. Thanks to IOT companies and evangelists that prioritize gee-whizzery and profits over privacy and security, your refrigerator can now leak your gmail credentials, your kids' Barbie doll can now be used as a surveillance tool, and your "smart" tea kettle can now open your wireless network to attack.Security analysts like Bruce Schneier have been warning for a while that the check is about to come due for this mammoth dumpster fire, potentially resulting in human fatalities at scale -- especially if these flaws are allowed to impact integral infrastructure systems. But Schneier has also done a good job noting how nobody in the production or consumer cycle has any incentive to take responsibility for what's happening:

Dozens of companies are offering off-the-shelf DNA tests that promise to do everything from settling paternity claims to letting you know what horrible disease is going to end your life. Other companies simply offer you a chance to connect with the roots and outer branches of your family tree by matching your DNA to the thousands of other people in their databases.What's not in the marketing pitches are the side effects of tying DNA markers to personally-identifiable info. Some companies are allowing law enforcement agencies to access entire databases with a single warrant. One company (Family Tree) has basically granted the FBI carte blanche access to its entire database.Then there's the private sector. Insurance companies and employers may be using DNA tests to deny coverage or raise rates on existing coverage if markers for genetic diseases are found. Nothing's more personal than your DNA. When it's tied to you with a bunch of third-party records, it can cause problems.That's the general message of a letter sent to US military members by the Department of Defense. Yahoo News obtained a copy of the DoD's letter [PDF], which warns troops away from using consumer DNA products because of the risks they pose.What the Pentagon has to say about DNA kits applies to everyone, not just members of the military.

The NY Times recently published quite a story, sharing videos and text messages of various Navy SEALs who had reported to officials their concerns with Special Operations Chief Eddie Gallagher. Gallagher was then put on trial for war crimes and mostly acquitted last summer. The one charge he was convicted for resulted in a demotion and a confinement sentence, but President Trump stepped in and reversed that decision, leading to some turmoil within the military, as many leaders were not at all happy about what former Secretary of the Navy, Richard Spencer (who was fired over all of this) called "shocking and unprecedented interference." Other long term military officials also found the decision shocking.The NY Times report shows Navy investigators interviewing a number of Navy SEALs whom Gallagher commanded, revealing some of their concerns about Gallagher, with quite a few striking quotes. For example:

Revenge porn laws generally aren't built to last. When crafting these laws, legislators tend to lose sight of the Constitution. Everyone agrees revenge porn is bad, but simply being in agreement isn't enough when rights are on the line.Minnesota passed a revenge porn law in 2016. The law barely made it three years before being found unconstitutional by a state court. As usual, the legislature's inability (or refusal) to narrowly craft a speech restriction has come back to haunt it. KARE 11 reports the state Court of Appeals has undone the Constitutional damage caused by the state's poorly-written law.

Design Wizard is an easy-to-use graphic design software that will add magic to your marketing and put the sparkle in your social media. With its features, you can magically resize your designs, upload your fonts, photos, logos, and create custom color palettes. Its library has over 1 million premium images, illustrations, 120 free fonts, 30,000 design templates, and more. Design Wizard protects you from any copyright complications by providing images that are licensed for commercial use. It's on sale for $39.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.

It feels like pretty much every day there's some sort of new "techlash" story, about how awful social media is, about how it's dragging down democracy, destroying lives, and that we'd all be better off without it. We've been arguing for quite some time now that while there are real issues of concern about social media, most of the narrative is exaggerated to downright misleading. So it's actually surprising, but nice, to see the NY Times (which has been among the most vocal cheerleaders of the "internet is bad" narrative) have an excellent opinion piece by Sarah Jackson outlining how Twitter, in particular, has "made us better."Jackson has recently co-authored a book, #HashtagActivism that details what a wonder Twitter has been for traditionally marginalized groups. It has allowed them to communicate, to organize, and to bring their messages into the mainstream.

We've long noted that T-Mobile's brand reputation as a feisty consumer-friendly disruptor is only really skin deep. While the T-Mobile of 2012 or so certainly added some much needed competition to the wireless sector (killing ETFs, eliminating long-term contracts, and eroding international roaming costs), more recently the company has started to look a lot like the bigger competitors (AT&T, Verizon) it pretends to be superior to. From mocking groups like the EFF to opposing net neutrality, the company isn't all that different from the companies its brash CEO John Legere likes to make fun of.Case in point: during the ongoing multi-state AG lawsuit attempting to stop the merger, documents were released showing that one of T-Mobile's master plans was to first buy Sprint then merge with Comcast. Yes that Comcast; one of the least liked companies on the planet, frequently mocked by Legere as a clear example of industry dysfunction. The presentation, assembled at the request of T-Mobile board member Thorsten Langheim in December 2015, highlights how T-Mobile owner Deutsche Telekom was eager to use T-Mobile to exploit the poorly regulated and marginally competitive US telecom market:

Gaming Like It's 1924: The Newly Public Domain Game JamHappy New Years, everyone. Last year, for the very first time in two decades, the US actually allowed some works to enter the public domain. This represented the end of an era in which copyright maximalist lobbyists had been able to regularly extend copyright terms each year to prevent any new works from entering the public domain. However, the backlash to such practices had become so vocal, and the evidence for why such term extensions were necessary had become so non-existent, that they didn't even make any serious attempt to extend them again, leading works from 1923 to actually enter the public domain. Well, now it's 2020, and works from 1924 have entered the public domain.Last year to celebrate, we held our very first public domain game jam, asking people to create both analog and digital games utilizing newly public domain works. It was a great success with over 30 entries, including some really amazing winners.This year, we're doing it again, with the Gaming Like It's 1924 public domain game jam. The rules are basically the same as last year. For the entire month of January, you can submit your digital or analog games (specific rules are at the link) based on some of the newly public domain works from 1924. If you're looking for ideas on what works are there, Duke's Center for the Study of the Public Domain has an excellent list and LifeHacker has called out some highlights as well.Once again, we're offering up prizes (with even more choices this year) in a variety of categories: best analog game, best digital game, best adaptation of a 1924 work, best remixing of multiple sources, best "deep cut," and best visuals. We also have a wonderful and diverse judging panel, that is a mix of gaming and copyright experts (and a few who qualify as both!).You certainly don't need to follow the path of those who won last year, but if you want, you should check out last year's winners (and all the other submissions as well) to get some ideas. The contest is open for the entire month of January, with judging in early February. We hope you'll consider entering and help demonstrate the value of a robust public domain, and the ability to build on those earlier creative works.

It's that time again. Ever since 2008, my final post of the year has been a reflection of some sort -- not necessarily on stories from the past year, but usually somewhat of an echo of what inspired me to write the original post in 2008. People had highlighted two seemingly contradictory things about me: that I was perpetually optimistic and happy about the state of innovation and future possibilities, but also that I seemed to focus so much attention and energy (some misleadingly have called it "anger") at efforts to impede, hold back, or simply block important and useful innovations. As I've said repeatedly, these two things are not in conflict. It is entirely possible to be optimistic about innovation, while frustrated at those who seek to prevent it, for whatever reasons. If you'd like to look over the stories from the past, they're all listed here:

For the better part of two decades, the cable industry has fought tooth and nail to prevent having to sell cable channels individually (a la carte). Historically, the cable industry's defense of this opposition is that letting consumers buy individual channels would do two things: kill off niche channels, and raise rates on consumers. Granted you're supposed to ignore that both things have been happening anyway. Despite streaming competition, cable rates continue to skyrocket, and cable operators themselves have been dumping less watched channels from their lineups anyway in a bid to shore up tightened margins.The streaming sector's impact on these issues remains a work in progress. And state or federal efforts to force cable providers to sell channels individually haven't gone particularly well.Case in point: back in September, Comcast sued the state of Maine for trying to force the company to sell users individual cable channels (LD 832). Comcast lawyers insisted that the new law violated the company's First Amendment rights, and told news outlets the law would "suppress competition and result in higher consumer prices and less program diversity." Historically, "this violates our company's First Amendment rights" is an argument telecom lawyers throw against the wall in every case in a bid to try and see if it sticks.In this case, it appears to be working. Comcast's argument was twofold: the law violated Comcast's editorial decision making right to require consumers to take bundles of programming, and violates the First Amendment's prohibition on speaker-based regulations -- since the law applies to incumbent cable providers but not other pay TV providers. It's that latter argument that appears to have swayed U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Torresen's decision to impose a preliminary injunction preventing the bill from taking effect. She appeared to be less swayed by Comcast's phony concern that such laws would raise cable TV prices:

Great for home use with an external monitor, this refurbished Apple Mac mini Intel Core i5 delivers outstanding computer performance without the hefty Apple price. It's a great find for those who already own a mouse, keyboard, and display. You can connect a display of your choosing through the Mac mini's HDMI video port. With its 7.7" width, this Mac mini only takes up a small space on your desktop so you can work on your tasks freely. If you're looking for a compact computer for simple tasks and a more affordable price, this refurbished Apple Mac mini is the right one for you. It's on sale for $250 and you can save an additional 20% with the code 20SAVE20.Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

The latest benefit of an education at an institute of higher learning? Becoming inured to round-the-clock surveillance.A few months ago, the University of Alabama started penalizing students for leaving home games too early. Coach Nick Saban was apparently angered by students' refusal to stick around to the end of blowouts. Working with FanMaker, the university instituted a point system that rewarded faithful fans for sitting through entire games by awarding them points that placed them closer to the top of the list for tickets to actually meaningful games.This mini-surveillance app tracked students' location during the game. Going outside the range of the stadium's network before the game was over docked points from the students' totals, dropping them down the list of ticket buyers.This surveillance was weird and ultra-specific and motivated by perhaps the most powerful football coach in the nation. Other schools are experimenting with more pervasive tracking, this time tied to class attendance, as the Washington Post reports.

Swatting isn't going away. Neither are SWAT teams. And the amped-up, guns-out tactics these teams use all but ensure a violent end for targets of bogus 911 calls."Swatting" is a cheap and efficient way to terrorize anyone you want terrorized, whether it's a gamer, journalist, online critic, celebrity, activist, or just someone's whose personal info has ended up on the wrong website. Why hire a hitman to take out your enemy when cops are willing to do it for free?The downside is limited. Even if caught, "swatting" perpetrators are charged with a grab bag of crimes that combined rarely add up to the attempted murder a swatting actually is. The rare exception is serial swatter Tyler Barriss, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for making the bogus 911 call that ended in the death of Andrew Finch at the hands of the Wichita, Kansas police department.There isn't much being done to deter future swattings -- at least not in terms of additional training or policy changes at law enforcement agencies. It's almost impossible to tell if a 911 call is legit until officers are on the scene, but it does seem these situations could be approached with a little more caution and little less reliance on immediate lethal force deployment.There are some other efforts being made to limit future tragedies resulting from swatting attempts, as Olivia Solon and Brandy Zadrozny report for NBC. Changes are being made to 911 services in a few US cities that have already shown some positive results.

It's well known that the UK doesn't have nearly as strong press protections as the US does, but it was still somewhat shocking to discover that the Metropolitan Police in London had opened an investigation into journalists who reported on the Snowden documents back in 2013. The Metropolitan Police had refused to confirm or deny such an investigation before finally acknowledging it in 2015.However, Ryan Gallagher now reveals that the Met Police have declared the investigation "inactive" for the time being:

Technically, the head of the DOJ's antitrust division, Makan Delrahim, is supposed to enforce antitrust law and derail harmful monopolies when they arise. But that's certainly not what's happening with the DOJ review of T-Mobile's $26 billion merger with Sprint, which antitrust experts (and even the DOJ's own economists) have repeatedly warned will indisputably reduce competition, raise rates, and result in thousands of layoffs as duplicative positions are eliminated.As state AGs continue their lawsuit to stop the merger, details were revealed last week in court showing that Delrahim did everything in his power to help shovel the deal through the merger approval process, including providing T-Mobile tips (via both personal and business accounts) on which officials they should focus their lobbying attention on in order to get the deal across the finish line:

The 2020 Full Stack Digital Marketing Certification Bundle has 12 courses to help you master marketing on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Analytics, and more. You'll learn how to create your first advertising campaign via Google PPC ads and branch out from there to learn about advertising on YouTube and Facebook. You'll also learn how to market ideas and products on LinkedIn, MailChimp, Reddit and more. It's on sale for $39, and if you use the code 20SAVE20, you'll save an additional 20% off at checkout.Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

The development and deployment of facial recognition tech continues steadily, but the algorithms involved don't seem to be getting much better at recognizing faces. Recognizing faces is pretty much the only thing it's expected to do and it can't seem to get the job done well enough to entrust with it things like determining whether or not a person is going to be detained or arrested.That critical failure hasn't slowed down deployment by government agencies. There are a handful of facial recognition tech bans in place around the nation, but for the most part, questions about the tech are being ignored in favor of the potential benefits touted by government contractors.Last year, members of Congress started demanding answers from Amazon after its "Rekogition" tech said 28 lawmakers were criminals. Amazon's response was: you're using the software wrong. That didn't really answer the questions raised by this experiment -- especially questions about the tech's disproportionate selection of minorities as potential perps.This has been a problem with facial recognition tech for years now. Biases introduced into the system by developers become amplified when the systems attempt to match faces to stored photos. A recent study by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) found that multiple facial recognition programs all suffer from the same issue: an inordinate number of false positives targeting people of color.

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is an anonymous commenter summing up the motivation behind FOSTA 2.0:

Five Years AgoThis week in 2014, NSA mega-defender Mike Rigers took a moment on his way out of congress to attack Obama for not launching a pre-emptive cyberwar with North Korea, while a retired official launched a bizarre lawsuit against Edward Snowden and Laura Poitras "on behalf of the American people". We were also unsurprised to learn that a CIA-appointed panel determined there was nothing wrong with the CIA spying on the Senate.Meanwhile, Sony was still lashing out against people sharing the documents leaked in the big hack, first demanding a Twitter user remove posts then stepping it up and threatening to sue Twitter itself. While this was going on, more digging through the documents confirmed that the MPAA's $80-million settlement with Hotfile was about appearances, not money.Ten Years AgoA brief world tour of this week in 2009: China was raising the Great Firewall even higher with claims about fighting piracy, the Australian Domain authority was shutting down sites critical of internet filters, Argentina was extending its copyright terms, a Hungarian copyright maximalist called those who oppose anti-circumvention laws "hate-driven" and "Maoist", Italian courts were continuing to attack YouTube at every opportunity, the Vancouver Olympics in Canada was making even-more-insane-than-usual intellectual property demands, and the Vatican created a special new copyright-like right on everything related to the Pope. On the more positive side, Chile rejected an attempt to force ISPs to filter and block copyrighted works, and at least one Lord in the UK was fighting to include something good in the Digital Economy Bill.Fifteen Years AgoThis week in 2004, the recording industry was getting creatively evil in attempting to freeze money donated to the Red Cross because it came from the company that operated Kazaa. The CEO of India's eBay affiliate was arrested because people sold pornographic material on the site, ComScore was trying to invent a new category of "researchware" to avoid its tools being called spyware, the Washington Post bought Slate, and some courts that installed WiFi networks were suddenly shocked by the fact that people were using them. Blockbuster was continuing to try to prop itself up, following its recent elimination of late fees with a big price drop for its subscription service. And at a time when it was popular to panic about kids using "text speak" and forgetting how to write properly, one study showed that they are perfectly capable of doing both.

Late last week, Cloudflare put up a fascinating and thoughtful blog post discussing (among other things) a change to its warrant canary list. As you hopefully know, a warrant canary is when a service provider makes a proactive statement about something it has supposedly never done. The idea is that if that statement disappears at a later date, one might reasonably infer that the company had been forced to do the thing it claimed it had not ever done -- and, additionally, that it had possibly been gagged from saying so. There are (somewhat reasonable) criticisms of warrant canaries, and to date, they're probably more well known for false alarms than any actual report of gagged pressured malfeasance.Still, Cloudflare's public (so, not gagged) decision to delete a line from its warrant canary is interesting and worth thinking about. The original warrant canary from Cloudflare stated that the company hadn't done any of the following:

Buying and selling marijuana is legal in the state of Washington. There are several limits placed on these acts, but it's pretty much the equivalent of alcohol. You have to be 21, can only buy a certain amount at a time, and can't smoke it in public or drive under the influence.What's apparently illegal is playfully announcing your pot business sells pot using nothing but Christmas lights. (via Reason)In 2017, Hashtag Cannabis in Redmond, Washington hung up some Christmas lights on the store that spelled out "P-O-T." Here's a really terrible photo of the contested display, taken from the county court's ruling on Hashtag's pot sign:Ho ho ho now I have a gravity bong.The local authorities -- the Washington Liquor and Cannabis board -- were not amused. The Board cited the store for violating restrictions on signage, claiming the string of Christmas lights exceeded the allowable size of 1,600 square inches by 2,300 square inches. It also said the sign was not "affixed" to the "permanent structure," which seems a little weird because lights have to be affixed to something and in this case it was the business' building. The Board also took issue with the word "POT" because it wasn't part of Hashtag Cannabis' business name.Two years later, Hashtag Cannabis has struck a blow for the little guy with Christmas lights, a weed business, and maybe a little too much time on his hands. The ruling [PDF] says the state's regulations run afoul of state free speech protections, as well as the US Constitution.The state argued its ban on POT in Christmas light form was crucial to the government's "substantial interest" in "curtailing minor children's interest in and exposure to the marijuana trade." Inarguably, this is a legitimate interest. However, the laws governing this speech aren't all that legitimate.

For a decade we've talked about how the broadband and cable industry has perfected the use of utterly bogus fees to jack up subscriber bills -- a dash of financial creativity it adopted from the banking and airline industries. Countless cable and broadband companies tack on a myriad of completely bogus fees below the line, letting them advertise one rate -- then sock you with a higher rate once your bill actually arrives. These companies will then brag repeatedly about how they haven't raised rates yet this year, when that's almost never actually the case.Despite this gamesmanship occurring for the better part of two decades, nobody ever seems particularly interested in doing much about it. The government tends to see this as little more than creative marketing, and when efforts to rein in this bad behavior (which is really false advertising) do pop up, they tend to go nowhere, given this industry's immense lobbying power.But something quietly shifted just before the holidays. After a longstanding campaign by Consumer Reports, The Television Viewer Protection Act of 2019 passed the House and the Senate last week buried inside a giant appropriations bill that now awaits President Trump’s signature.The bill bans ISPs from charging you extra to rent hardware you already own (something ISPs like Frontier have been doing without penalty for a few years). It also forces cable TV providers to send an itemized list of any fees and other surcharges to new customers within 24 hours of signing up for service, and allows users shocked by the higher price to cancel service without penalty.The bill's not perfect. Because of the act itself it largely only applies to cable TV, not broadband service where the problem is just as bad. And cable TV providers can still falsely advertise a lower rate, thanks to what appears to be some last minute lobbying magic on the part of the cable TV sector:

The Ethical Hacking Training Bundle has 8 courses designed to help you move from novice to expert in how to diagnose different kinds of cybersecurity attacks and how to defeat them. You'll learn about bug bounty programs, SQL injections, phishing, cross site scripting, and more. It's on sale for $39, and you can use the code 20SAVE20 to save an additional 20% off.Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

The world's second-largest jailer of journalists -- Recep Erdogan's Turkish government -- has just been pushed back against ever so slightly by the country's Constitutional Court. The government's long-running ban of Wikipedia has been overturned, the Associated Press reports.

Another case of nonexistent "customer confusion" is being litigated. Tofurky, the maker of several vegetable-based products, sued the state of Arkansas over its bogus [squints at Legiscan in disbelief] "Act To Require Truth In Labeling Of Agricultural Products That Are Edible By Humans" law.The law, written at the behest of meat and dairy lobbyists, claims customers are "confused" by non-meat products that use meat-like words in their product descriptions. A law similar to this passed in Mississippi was recently found unconstitutional by a federal court, resulting in legislators rewriting the law to make it less, um, unlawful.The Arkansas law has an added bonus not found elsewhere: wording targeting the use of phrase "cauliflower rice." Why? Because Arkansas is home to the nation's largest rice industry.Not that any consumers were actually confused. If they had been, they would have approached lawmakers. Instead, the entities approaching legislators were entrenched interests claiming shoppers were too stupid to figure out veggie burgers don't contain meat.That law is now on death's door, having been savaged by a federal judge calling bullshit on the state's willingness to violate the First Amendment to make certain industries happy. (via AgWeek)The ruling [PDF] blocks the state from enforcing the law while the rest of the particulars are sorted out, but it seems clear there's no way the state can salvage this terrible legislation. Tofurky pointed out the law contains no exceptions for makers of plant-based meat alternatives, meaning the company has almost zero chance of ever complying fully with the law, even if it retools its packaging (at an estimated cost of $1,000,000) and does everything it can to keep Arkansas consumers from viewing ads targeting shoppers in states not saddled with idiotic laws.The state argued that Tofurky's use of words like "sausage," "kielbasa," "burger," and "ham" confuse consumers despite Tofurky also using words like "white quinoa," "all vegan," "plant-based," and a big "V" to distinguish its vegetarian and vegan products from the meats they emulate. The court says this argument is ridiculous.

The Maccabeats, as I have just discovered, is an Orthodox Jewish a capella group that specializes in Jewish-themed parodies of hit songs (pretty much all a cappella groups seem to do a bunch of parodies). Their latest video, for this year's Chanukkah, was a parody of both Billie Eilish's Bad Guy (here: "Pan Fry") and Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road." It's pretty entertaining. Anyway, on Tuesday, they got a takedown notice from YouTube, saying that the video is no longer allowed to be shown for copyright violations:

Some sanity has finally prevailed in Austria, where libel laws are anything but sane. Earlier this year, a guest of the Ferienhof Gerlos hotel in Austria was sued by the hotel after posting reviews that mentioned the unexpected presence of a photo of a man in a Nazi uniform by the front entrance.The guest -- referred to in court documents only as "Thomas K" -- said a few things the hotel didn't like in his reviews. This:

The Ultimate SQL Bootcamp Bundle has 6 courses to help you learn how to manage tasks and databases like a pro. You'll learn about SQL Lite, Microsoft SQL, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Rest API, and Oracle SQL. It's on sale for $21.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.

Back in March, NY Times reporter Nellie Bowles had quite a story, announcing that When Uber and Airbnb Go Public, San Francisco Will Drown In Millionaires. Nearly all of the article was quotes from various third party service providers -- real estate, financial planners, party planners -- excitedly planning to cash in, but the overall tone of the article was basically one big "Man, San Francisco is sure going to be totally overrun by obnoxious insanely rich tech bros." When that article came out, I think I heard about it from just about everyone I knew. People both here in the Bay Area and elsewhere were all commenting on it -- in many cases worried what it would do to where we all live.And, basically none of it happened. So rather than explore why NY Times reporter Nellie Bowles got it wrong, she's just written a new article about the same types of folks as the last article, complaining that they can't find all the "zillionaires" they expected. Maybe because that's not how any of this works and the original article was feeding a nonsense narrative? But that's not covered. There's no mention of the earlier article at all. There's no exploration of why the predictions didn't come true. Just scores of quotes from people disappointed that the throngs of stupid rich tech bros spending silly money didn't actually appear.This seems like the kind of thing that the NY Times would know better than to do. Both stories are making grand claims, where data could and should exist, but supporting them solely with a few limited anecdotes. There are good times to use anecdotes as a narrative tool in reporting, but considering how frequently I heard from people who honestly believed that tech IPOs were going to completely change San Francisco over the past few months -- which didn't even remotely happen -- it seems like the NY Times owes readers a bit more self-reflection on why it ran the original story, why it framed it the way it did, and why its predictions that were written as if they were set in stone never actually happened.This is the kind of thing that the NY Times used to have a "public editor" to handle, but the NY Times decided a few yeas back that it no longer needed such a position. Each and every day we learn more about why that was a mistake.

Another stupid, pointless effort to turn protectors and servants into professional victims is being mounted in Alabama. Cops can barely be bothered to educate themselves on the laws they're enforcing, but they're usually all over the ones that allow them to turn things they don't like into criminal activity.It's (yet another) "blue lives matter" law being foisted upon citizens by legislators who are altogether too certain they're in the right. Here's the backer of the proposed law that would turn cops into a protected group making a claim that's proven false before the end of the article at PoliceOne.

Last week, Karl wrote up a fascinating post about a NY Times effort to use a dataset that a whistleblower at a data broker firm gave them to track the whereabouts of President Trump, by spotting the location data of what appears to be a Secret Service agent detailed to the President. Karl included two quotes from two different Senators in the article, and I found both of them amusing, as they both basically took the story and responded with their own "hobby horse" solution to the problem, even though neither one of them seemed to accurately understand or describe it:

I usually don't jump in on things like these until a few more facts are in. As much as law enforcement complains about people "rushing to judgment" before every conceivable fact has been examined, here at Techdirt we prefer to be right, rather than first. Hey, we care about our reputation and we know our readers expect better of us.That being said, there are a lot of tells in this story that suggest this is going to get a whole lot worse for the law enforcement agencies involved in this nearly-deadly raid. Not "worse before it gets better." Oh my no. The only way it gets "better" is if these officers and agencies have access to a time machine and can undo every fucked up thing they did here.Here's a brief summary of what happened, as reported by the Associated Press:

We recently wrote about how Senators Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal are preparing for FOSTA 2.0, this time focused on child porn -- which is now being renamed as "Child Sexual Abuse Material" or "CSAM." As part of that story, we highlighted that these two Senators and some of their colleagues had begun grandstanding against tech companies in response to a misleading NY Times article that seemed to blame internet companies for the rising number of reports to NCMEC of CSAM found on the internet, when that should be seen as more evidence of how much the companies are doing to try to stop CSAM.Of course, working with NCMEC and other such organizations takes a lot of effort. Being able to scan for shared hashes of CSAM isn't something that every internet site can do. It's mostly just done by the larger companies. But last week Cloudflare (one of the companies that Senators are demanding "answers" from), did something quite fascinating: it enabled all Cloudlfare users, no matter what level of service, to start using Cloudflare CSAM scanning tools for free, even allowing them to set their own rules and preferences (something that might become very, very important if the Graham/Blumenthal bill becomes the law.I highly recommend reading the entire article, because it's quite a clear, interesting, and easy to read article about how fuzzy hashing works (including pictures of dogs and bicycles). As the Cloudflare post notes, those who use such fuzzy hashing tools have intentionally kept at least some of the details secret -- because being too public about it would allow those who are producing and distributing CSAM to make changes that "dodge" the various tools and filters, which would obviously be a problem. However, that also results in two potential issues: (1) a lack of transparency in how these filtering systems really operate and (2) an inability for all but the largest players to make use of these tools -- which would be disastrous for smaller companies if they were required to make use of such things.And that's where Cloudflare's move is quite interesting. In providing the tool for free to all of its users, it keeps the proprietary nature of the tool secret, but it's also letting them set the thresholds.

Enjoy 9 hours of battery life with this lightweight 11.6-inch Apple MacBook Air laptop. It has 128GB of flash storage to provide plenty of space for files, and its resolution of 1366 x 768 delivers enhanced picture quality. This refurbished Apple MacBook Air laptop has an Intel Core i5 processor and 4GB of RAM for smooth multitasking capability. It's on sale for $400 and if you use the code HAPPYHOLIDAYS, you receive an additional 15% off (code valid across the site until 12/25 11:59pm PST).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's a whistleblower talking about TSA stuff, but it's not the sort of whistleblowing you're probably accustomed to. Frustrated by the internal routing of his complaints, the TSA's highest-ranking official in [checks notes] Kansas has brought his complaints to CNN.We all know the TSA has done almost nothing to make traveling safer over the course of its existence, but what the TSA's Jay Brainard has observed shows the actors in our nationwide security theater are tiring of their roles.

Former MEP Julia Reda, who lead the fight to block the problematic parts of the EU Copyright Directive (and who came very close to succeeding against huge odds, but eventually lost) has published a really important piece for the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard about why the new Copyright Directive should terrify every American who recognizes the importance of an open internet. First off, these laws mostly target American companies -- many of which may just choose to follow the new EU rules globally.

Back in the fall, we noted that, even if we thought it was silly, under existing law, it seemed highly likely that the DOJ would win its lawsuit against the publisher for Ed Snowden's memoir, Permanent Record. As I noted at the time, the government and the intelligence community in particular take the issue of "pre-publication review" incredibly seriously. Basically, if you take a job in the intel community, you sign a lifelong contract that says if you ever publish a book about anything regarding the intelligence community, you have to submit it for pre-publication review. Officially, this is to avoid classified information showing up in a book. Unofficially, it also gives the US government a sneak peek at all these books, and sometimes (it appears) allows them to hide stuff they'd rather not be public.As I noted when the lawsuit was filed, there is another ongoing lawsuit challenging pre-publication review requirements on 1st Amendment grounds -- but given the state of the law today, it seemed pretty clear that Snowden would lose this case. And, that's exactly what's happened. Judge Liam O'Grady (who seems to end up with all sorts of high profile cases) easily ruled in favor of the government last week. In short, the court says: an unambiguous contract is an unambiguous contract.

The eternal flame that is Ring's dumpster fire of an existence continues to burn. In the past few months, the market leader in home surveillance products has partnered with over 600 law enforcement agencies to:

Back in October, we wrote about the disastrous results (even if there were good intentions behind it) of a California law, AB5, that sought to "protect" so-called "gig" workers by forcing companies to hire them as employees, rather than freelancers/contractors. Supporters of the bill, including its vocal author Lorena Gonazlez, argued that it was necessary to protect these workers from exploitative companies and that it was clarifying what the courts had already decided. However, a big part of the problem was the framing of the bill, which more or less assumed that no one could possibly want to be a freelancer or contractor, that everyone must want to be an employee. That's not true. Nowhere was this more clear than in the world of freelance journalism, where many freelancers like the flexibility that comes with the role, and the ability to write for many different publications. Gonzalez's bill, which goes into effect on January 1st, put a ridiculously low yearly "cap" on articles that a freelancer could contribute to a single news site at 35. Any more than that, and the person would need to be reclassified as an employee. Even Gonzalez flat out admitted that the 35 cap was "a little bit arbitrary." Lots of freelancers contribute way more than 35 articles per year (some do more than that in a month), and they rightly saw that this would likely destroy the ability to be a freelance journalist in California.Gonzales didn't make things any better by initially attacking some of those who pointed out these problems, even retweeting a tweet calling journalist Yashar Ali "a selfish piece of shit" for pointing out the problems with the bill. And, of course, as the law is about to go into effect, the impact is being felt. The biggest one was Vox-owned sports site SBNation, which has long allowed for sports fans to write about their favorite teams and get paid for it as freelancers. However, last week, Vox announced it could no longer have California freelancers writing for the site. It was going to hire a much smaller number of full time staff, but hundreds of freelance contributors could only continue to contribute for free: