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For quite a while now, we've pointed out that doing any serious content moderation on major internet sites is laughably difficult, if not impossible. Whether done in a purely automated format, or with real human oversight, everything ends up boiling down to just how much collateral damage are we all willing to accept when sites attempt to enforce moderation rules. Even when sites attempt to communicate the rules to the public in a somewhat transparent fashion, such as Facebook, it all inevitably goes to the kind of hell that includes nixing accounts for sharing what is purely art.But when sites don't bother to tell their users what the rules are, even after exacting punishment for violation of those rules? Well, that's when you have a bunch of Twitch streamers wondering what the hell is going on.

Remember RCEP? The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership is a massive trade deal being negotiated by most of South-East Asia -- including China and India. Although still little-known, it has been grinding away in the background, and is drawing closer to a final agreement. Almost exactly a year ago Techdirt noted that there were some interesting rumors that corporate sovereignty -- officially known as investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) -- might be dropped from the deal. A story in The Malaysian Reserve confirms that is the case:

Not a great week for the FBI, encryption-wise. The same week it was revealed the FBI's encrypted communications system was cracked by the Russians, a report by Joseph Cox of Motherboard details the agency's failure to punch a hole in a phone company's encrypted network.The phone company targeted by the feds was Phantom Secure, a device maker with a business model that revolved almost exclusively around making secure phones for criminals. Apparently the supplier of choice for the Sinola drug cartel, Phantom Secure had been under investigation for years when its owner was arrested in 2018.These efforts were apparently made after the arrest of the head of the company, with the FBI pitching a major sentence reduction if Phantom Secure CEO Vincent Ramos built the agency a backdoor.

When it comes to intellectual property, the culture of ownership has grown so large that it threatens to consume itself. Still, while we have an overly permissive USPTO and European trademark offices that facilitate this insane notion that all language is meant to be owned, there are still, blessedly, some rules. One of those rules is that, on the topic of trademark and publicity rights, people and companies are allowed to state facts. It is not infringing on anyone's rights to state such facts. That is all the more the case when the facts in question are historical facts.Someone might want to fill in famed Air Force pilot Chuck Yeager on all of the above, as he's decided to sue Airbus over marketing material that mentions his signature historical achievement.

It should be no secret that I'm not at all a fan of the right to be forgotten, which is a European concept, as currently employed, that allows people to get old news stories about them removed from search engines (there's more to it than that, but that's the basic explanation). To me, it seems like an attempt to bury history and facts, and that's dangerous. We've also seen too many cases of people trying to abuse it to hide spotty historical records that deserve to remain public. However, the excellent Radiolab podcast a few weeks back had a fascinating episode exploring the idea of the news media voluntarily agreeing to "forget" certain stories. More specifically, last year, Cleveland.com adopted a policy that would let people apply to be "forgotten" by the online news publication. They invited Radiolab folks to be present for one of the meetings where the staff debates applications.And it was a lot more interesting and challenging than I initially thought. Indeed, it brought back the conundrum I faced a few years ago, in which we weren't sure how to deal with someone who made a very compelling case why we should delete a story about them. We refused, and were also troubled by the fact that that story involved a federal court case that was then disappeared by the court itself. Courts shouldn't be disappearing public dockets like that. But, in reporting on that, given the compelling argument that had been made to us, we didn't highlight what the original story was or who the person was -- because of an inherent recognition that this person didn't deserve any more trouble.I'm still quite uncomfortable with the idea that a media organization would agree to go back and change stories to remove names (or, in some cases, to delete entire stories), as that is (again) a rewriting of history. Because that can certainly cause lots of other problems down the road as well. But the Radiolab episode is still worth listening to, as it does a really good job of laying out the difficult choices and tradeoffs, and the challenges that Cleveland.com takes on in making those decisions -- weighing a bunch of different factors.In many ways, it's another side of the whole "content moderation" debate, and how various platforms should make decisions on moderation. There are many, many difficult choices and no easy answers. I still find the overall concept of the Right to Be Forgotten quite troubling -- especially when it's enforced by the government. However, it's interesting and informative to learn about Cleveland.com's thoughtful approach to the matter, even if I'd probably come down in a different end position.

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We hear so much from law enforcement agencies about how much tech companies -- and their encryption offerings -- are turning America into a lawless frontier where the criminals always win and the cops are eternally hamstrung. We mainly hear this from two law enforcement agencies in particular: the FBI and the DOJ.Local cops seem to be doing just fine, but outside of Manhattan blowhard/DA Cy Vance, everyone seems to feel a rising tech tide lifts all cop boats. But these agencies insist we're "going dark." And they insist tech companies are screwing both cops and the public by allowing users to protect their communications and devices from criminals and snoopers alike, even if it means things are ever-so-slightly more difficult for criminal investigators.But these arguments are being made using facts not in evidence. Tech companies do care about crime, public safety, law enforcement's concerns, and the general insecurity of having devices filled with personal info being carried around by the vast majority of the American public. And tech companies are doing far more to address all of these concerns (rather than just the law enforcement concerns touted by the FBI, et al) than the federales are willing to admit.First off, tech companies are engaging in the "adult conversation" about lawful access. They're just doing it in a way the government doesn't like. They're approaching this with caution and concern, while the FBI and DOJ dishonestly claim the only "real" solution is unfettered, on-demand access to devices and communications.White papers have been written. Honest discussions have been had. But these are ignored because they don't offer the "absolutist" options federal agencies desire. It's the DOJ and FBI who are engaging in the equivalent of kicking and screaming while ignoring the real adults in the room.More evidence that tech companies are doing more to help than to hurt is rolling in. Casey Newton reports for The Verge that the fight against child sexual abuse is being lead by tech companies, and that law enforcement agencies are the beneficiaries of their contributions.

As we just got done noting, investors have finally started to grumble about AT&T's obsession with merger mania (aka "growth for growth's sake"). AT&T, you'll recall, spent more than $150 billion to acquire Time Warner and DirecTV in a bid to dominate the streaming video and online advertising space. But the deals saddled AT&T with so much debt, it forced the company to raise rates despite rising competition, driving many of these customers to the exits. Oh, and AT&T's being sued by other investors for allegedly lying about it. It has also largely bungled its TV branding in general.In what appears to be an intentional leak designed to suggest that AT&T is taking these concerns seriously, a report emerged this week in the Wall Street Journal (non paywalled alternative read here), suggesting that AT&T may now try to offload DirecTV after paying $67 billion for the company back in 2015:

San Francisco has already banned the use of facial recognition tech by local law enforcement. Oakland did the same thing a couple of months later. Pretty soon, it's not going to matter where you are in California. If you're a law enforcement agency, facial recognition tech is off-limits. Here's the latest news on the biometric front from the EFF.

It was only a couple of weeks ago that we wrote about LeBron James, part-time NBA superstar and full-time taco-lover, and his attempt to get a trademark for "Taco Tuesday" in the markets of podcasts, entertainment services, and social media. As we mentioned in that post, the idea that LeBron could get such a trademark on a fairly descriptive and widely used term is insane. Nearly as insane, as we noted, as the fact that the Taco John's chain already has such a registered trademark. It was the latter bit that we, as well as many other commentators on the topic, predicted would be the reason LeBron's application would be denied, as it would be identical to an already registered trademark.But the USPTO never ceases to amaze, it seems. While the USPTO did in fact deny the application, the confusing trademark it cited in doing so wasn't Taco John's, but another application for an advertising company out of Nevada.

Must be tough out there for cops. Literally everything is suspicious. And there are only so many hours in the day. Since no court is willing to end the tradition of pretextual stops, anything that can be described as suspicious has been used to initiate fishing expeditions.A few courts have called out this tendency to view almost everything humans do as indicative of criminal behavior. This is one of the better call-outs, as it gives some indication of just how many "training and experience" assertions the court has had to wade through while dealing with law enforcement assertions about reasonable suspicion.

For quite some time now we've been talking about why the CASE Act, which sets up a special copyright "court" with lower barriers to entry for copyright holders, is such a bad idea. There are all sorts of problems with it, starting with the fact that we already have a massive copyright trolling problem, and the CASE Act is deliberately designed to make it worse. While supporters like to pretend that the CASE Act is the equivalent of a "small claims" court, it actually can lead to damages awards up to $30,000, which is way higher than a standard small claims court.That said, as with so many copyright bills before it, Congress ignores all the problems associated with the CASE Act, because a bunch of vested interests pretend that there's some real problems solved by this law. So, once again, the bill has moved forward, this time with the House passing the bill out of the Judiciary Committee, meaning that it can go to a full vote on the floor. The end result here would be really dangerous for free speech online, but no one in Congress seems to care about it. Yet.EFF is asking people to contact their elected officials in Congress to let them know that theyshould not massively expand copyright in this manner, which will only lead to that much more extortion and shakedowns, while creating even more chilling effects for free expression online.

For years, top AT&T Lobbyist Jim Cicconi was the man that drove much of the telco's controversial policy apparatus, most recently the company's successful quest to kill net neutrality and effectively neuter the FCC. Cicconi's charm was frequently on display in his blog posts whining about things like the FCC increasing the speed definition of "broadband", or in the company's astroturfing efforts to undermine most if not all consumer protections governing the telecom sector (though it's worth noting he wasn't particularly, personally keen on Donald Trump).Cicconi retired a few years back, but his successor Bob Quinn didn't have an easy go of it. Quinn was fired after reports emerged that the company had paid former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen $600,000 (using the same shell company used to pay hush money to Trump’s alleged former partner Stormy Daniels) to gain additional access to the President, something AT&T called a "serious misjudgement." As a result, AT&T's entire External & Legislative Affairs (E&LA) group instead began reporting to AT&T General Counsel David McAtee to, one would assume, keep the unit on a more legal trajectory.But this week AT&T quietly brought Cicconi back from retirement to tackle something that has apparently spooked the telecom giant:

At the very last minute of last week -- prime government news-dumping time -- Rep. Adam Schiff announced the Office of the Director of National Intelligence was (perhaps unlawfully) refusing to turn over a whistleblower report to House Intelligence Community.That the ODNI would blow off its oversight isn't unusual. The Intelligence Community has long treated its obligations as mere suggestions, leaving it to whistleblowers and leakers to expose wrongdoing. What was a bit more unusual were the allegations being buried: what was forwarded to the ODNI by the IC Inspector General suggested the Trump Administration itself was involved.

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The Wall Street Journal has a report about how both the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department are investigating three "massage and escort" sites accused of taking up where Backpage left off (that link is likely paywalled, but here's a Gizmodo summary of the same article). The article is interesting in that it explores how these three sites -- Rubmaps, Eros, and EroticMonkey -- are believed to be connected with one guy, David Azzato, who "was convicted in France in 2011 of profiting from prostitution through a European network of escort-ad sites." Azzato denies having anything to do with the sites, though the article highlights some evidence that at least suggests otherwise.Either way, a few things struck me about the article. The first is the general futility of shutting down one or another such sites, because people move elsewhere:

So we've noted many times that the rise of streaming video competitors is indisputably a good thing. Numerous new streaming alternatives have driven competition to an antiquated cable TV sector that has long been plagued by apathy, high rates, and comically bad customer service. That's long overdue and a positive thing overall, as streaming customer satisfaction scores suggest. In response, traditional cable TV providers have had to up their game, exemplified by this week's launch of yet another streaming service by Comcast, dubbed "Peacock."The company unveiled the new streaming service this week, stating it should go live next April. And while no pricing details have been announced for non-cable subscribers, Peacock will be free to users that already subscribe to a traditional cable TV bundle from Comcast. According to Comcast, the new service and naming convention reflects a "proud and bold" persona for the nation's least liked company:

A couple of years ago, we covered the story of an exceptionally corrupt Alabama sheriff. Morgan County Sheriff Ana Franklin -- picking up where her predecessor, Sheriff Greg Bartlett left off -- was accused of starving prisoners to pad her personal checking account.This is a thing in Alabama. Sheriffs are allowed to use leftover food funds (obtained from both state and federal sources) as a personal source of income. Use it they did. One sheriff bought himself a house with the "excess" funds. The sheriff Ana Franklin replaced was so notorious for cutting food costs, he earned the nickname "Sheriff Corndog."Sheriff Franklin went further than the man she replaced. She went after a whistleblower who caught her taking $160,000 from the prisoner food account and handing $150,000 of that to a shady car dealership run by a convicted felon.Franklin also targeted the whistleblower -- former Morgan County jail warden Leon Bradley -- with bogus criminal charges. To do so, the sheriff's office went after a local blogger who was publishing the warden's allegations, paying the blogger's grandson to install a keylogger on her computer. Using evidence gleaned from the keylogger, the sheriff then went after the former warden, hitting Bradley with misdemeanor government records tampering. These charges were dropped by the presiding judge -- the one that had issued the search warrant -- who said the Sheriff's office had "deliberately misled the court" to "cover up their deception and criminal actions."Bradley sued the Sheriff and a handful of deputies. The lower court refused to grant immunity to any of the Sheriff's Office defendants on any of the 14 counts in Bradley's lawsuit. Not only was qualified immunity denied, but so were the state-level forms, including state-agent immunity and absolute immunity.The defendants appealed. The Eleventh Circuit Appeals Court has taken a look at the allegations and is no more willing to extend immunity to Sheriff Franklin and her deputies. (h/t Eric Goldman)The sheriff hoped to have the state's expansive absolute immunity doctrine applied to her abuse of power, but the appeals court isn't interested in turning Alabama state law into a shield for bad cops. The sheriff tried to persuade the court that anything done while officers were on the clock cannot be sued over. Yeah, we're not doing that, says the Eleventh Circuit [PDF].

Monster Energy. The company's name is enough to set the average Techdirt reader's eyes rolling. The company that makes sugar-heavy energy drinks has become essentially a caricature of an overly aggressive trademark enforcer. This habit is somewhat surprising, given just how often the company loses lawsuits and oppositions, which one would think would be a deterrent for future behavior. Instead, it almost seems as though every loss only spurs Monster Energy on.This continues on to today, when we learn that Monster Energy filed an opposition to a 21-year-old's trademark application for his business, Monarch Energy. You're probably thinking that the opposition is over the name of the young man's company, which would itself be a stretch as trademark infringement. But, no, it's over the kid's proposed logo.

One of the longer-running sagas here on Techdirt concerns the disgraceful situation regarding the flag of Australia's Aboriginal peoples. Mike first wrote about this in 2010, and again in June of this year. The problem is that what is now widely regarded as the flag of Australia's First Nations was designed fairly recently by a private individual, not a group representing those peoples, or some official Australian government body. The designer, Harold Thomas, signed a licensing deal with a clothing company, Wam Clothing, which imposes hefty fees for the use of the design, even on non-profit health organizations giving away items that bear the flag:

Turning security researchers into criminals is so popular we have a tag for it here at Techdirt. A security hole is found or a breach pointed out, and the first thing far too many entities do in response is turn the messenger over to law enforcement while muttering unintelligible things about "hacking."Security researchers are invaluable. They've exposed a ton of security breaches and helped make the web safer for everyone. Their efforts are rarely appreciated by the entity caught with its security pants down. Just because the breachee has chosen to blow off its obligations to its customers and users doesn't make the person who discovered the breach a criminal. Unfortunately, the CFAA lends itself to abuse and the DOJ is more than willing to abuse it -- something that turns security research into a security risk for those who choose to follow this career path.Then there are efforts like this one, which seems completely inexplicable. It's dog-bites-man news when a security researcher is arrested, but every other case we've covered involved nothing more than the use of a computer. This one expands the definition of "penetration testing."

Last summer, Denver police officers decided the First Amendment didn't exist in the city, at least not while they were in the process of helping a naked black man get some medical attention by handcuffing him in the middle of the sidewalk.Denver PD officers Adam Paulsen and James Brooks noticed journalist Susan Greene filming the incident and decided she needed some law enforcement herself. So they approached her and told her to stop filming by citing an inapplicable law. For whatever reason, they also told her to "act like a lady." Greene was handcuffed and placed in a squad car for 12 minutes before a less-stupid cop contacted these officers and told them to release her.The whole incident was captured by officers' body cameras, including the repeated suggestion the journalist wasn't "acting like a lady" by contesting the officers' decision to cuff her and put her in the nearest squad car.Here was the bullshit the cops used to try to shut Greene down:

Hoo boy. We've criticized a bunch of Senator Josh Hawley's nonsense over the past few months. After all, he's the elite cosmopolitan "get big government out of business" Senator who is railing against elite cosmopolitans, while demanding that government get deeply involved in regulating companies. Well, not all companies. Just tech companies. It's almost as if Hawley is deliberately picking on companies that he thinks don't like his insane brand of politics. Anyway, while Hawley has introduced a slew of nonsensical bills targeting internet companies, the most laughable was the one that literally lays out what features certain websites can and cannot use. As we wrote in our post about it, Hawley seems to want to appoint himself the product manager of the internet.Saagar Enjeti, a reporter for The Hill, recently sat down with Hawley, and Enjeti has posted some highlights from the interview. It's kind of scary that this guy is a sitting US Senator, as almost everything he talks about, he demonstrates an astounding, almost comical, level of ignorance or a clearly superficial understanding. But, hilariously, Enjeti actually asks him specifically to respond to my criticism that he's trying to appoint himself the product manager for the internet. Hawley's response is... not good.

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One of the most successful college football programs in history is coached by one of the most insecure men in America, apparently. This combination of success and neediness has resulted in one of the weirdest forms of location tracking in government history. (via Slashdot)

As you've probably heard, Ed Snowden just came out with his memoir, entitled Permanent Record. I haven't yet had a chance to read it, but it looks fascinating. Snowden obviously can't do the usual book tour for this kind of thing, but he has been doing a fresh round of very interesting interviews about his current situation -- including saying that he'd be willing to come home to the US and stand trial if only the US actually allowed a public interest defense for Espionage Act claims. As we've pointed out for years, one of the (many) problems with the Espionage Act is that it literally does not allow a defendant to explain why they leaked certain information, and assumes that it is equally nefarious to sell secrets to foreign enemies as it is to blow the whistle by informing the press of unconstitutional surveillance.Still, the DOJ decided to help boost sales of Snowden's book by suing him for all of the proceeds, over violation of the contract he held with both the CIA and the NSA. The lawsuit is fairly straightforward. Anyone who works in the intelligence community signs a lifetime contract that forbids publishing any manuscript or speech related to their work, without first getting "pre-publication" review.The government takes this very seriously (in fact, too seriously). Indeed, just recently there was another controversy about pre-publication review regarding a memoir and TV show by former CIA officer Amaryllis Fox. And, for reasons like these, it seems that -- purely on a legal basis -- Snowden and his publisher have a high likelihood of losing the lawsuit (in part because the law is against him here, and in part because he's unlikely to be in a position to contest it from Russia -- a point we'll discuss more below).That said, pre-publication review is a hugely sketchy process. Earlier this year, a bunch of former intelligence officials actually sued the government, arguing that the requirement is unconstitutional. That case is still making its way through the courts, with the government pushing for it to be dismissed. However, there are other recent stories about what a bullshit process pre-publication review tends to be. It involves multiple different contracts with unclear definitions and unclear requirements. Recent revelations have also shown that the feds often use the process to purposefully delay books that will reflect poorly on the government, while speeding through ones that support the government's position, or are coming from high-profile former officials.The ACLU, which is defending Snowden (and also involved in the other pre-publication lawsuit mentioned above) quickly put out a statement claiming that the book doesn't reveal any new secrets and didn't need to go through review:

Could Space X finally give the busted US telecom sector a much needed kick in the ass? Since 2017, Musk's Space X has been promising that it would launch 800 low orbit satellites capable of delivering cheaper, lower latency broadband to large swaths of the United States by 2020 or 2021. By and large Musk and company appear to have been successful sticking to that promise, insisting recently that this proposed timeline was "pretty much on target." That said, Musk had to fire some folks to ensure that the project was meeting its goals, which itself suggests they may not have been.More recent government filings indicate that the company may be able to accelerate the deployment of fast low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites across broad swaths of the Southern US. The company says that a number of improvements were discovered in the wake of launching 60 LEO satellites back in May. In a filing (pdf), the company says an adjustment in orbital spacing and other efficiences may bring the service (which will be sold under the "Starlink" brand) online sooner and more broadly than expected:

Earlier this year, we discussed a trademark suit brought against Anheuser-Busch InBev by Patagonia, the famed outer-wear maker known best for its association with skiing and outdoor sports apparel. While we usually make a big deal about market separation when it comes to trademark enforcement, this case was notable for two reasons. First, the trade dress choices made by AB InBev for its "Patagonia" beer were quite similar to Patagonia's trademarks, not to mention that AB hosted popup locations at skiing and biking locations to sell its beer, exactly where Patagonia is so well known. Second, AB is a notorious trademark hound, gobbling up all kinds of marks and then wielding them like a cudgel against small entities. If anyone were going to be sensitive to the trademark rights of others, you would think it would be a company like AB. But not so much.Rather than admitting its error and siding for strong trademark rights, however, AB InBev decided to try to get the lawsuit tossed by claiming that "Patagonia" is not actually well known and therefore should not be afforded federal trademark rights. The court took 20 pages to decide that AB InBev was wrong and that the case would move forward.

Everything old is new again, and the population of tech workers seems to turn over especially fast in the San Francisco Bay Area. I guess I now qualify as an old timer, in that I remember quite clearly when IBM ran a big ad campaign in San Francisco and Chicago to profess its newfound love for Linux. The ad campaign involved stenciling three symbols side-by-side: a peace symbol, a heart, and Tux, the Linux penguin:The message? Peace, Love, Linux. It didn't make much sense then either. Either way, neither city was happy with the streets being all stenciled up. San Francisco fined IBM $100,000 for graffiti, though perhaps the company figured that was cheaper than buying a bunch of billboards in the same area, and it certainly got more press attention. The story was even more fucked up in Chicago, however. There, one of the random dudes IBM's ad company had hired to paint this ad message all over sidewalks was arrested and sentenced to community service for vandalism. Not great.So, apparently no one working at Twitter was around for that experience nearly two decades ago, because the company has just done the same thing. Just a few days ago I was at the Powell Street BART station and saw it was completely coated in giant posters of tweets, but apparently they're stenciled on sidewalks nearby as well (I seemed to have missed those)

"Dynamic pricing" is an idea that sounds efficient and effective in economic theory, but often collapses under the weight of customer anger when put into practice. But while that is true of some of the most egregious approaches, other forms of dynamic pricing are ubiquitous and largely accepted — in part because of how the systems work, and in part because of how they present themselves to customers. This week, we're joined by Perfect Price CEO Alex Shartsis to discuss the many facets of dynamic pricing, and whether it deserves the hate it gets.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.

On Monday, Yahoo News had a bit of a new bombshell in revealing that the closures of various Russian compounds in the US, along with the expulsion of a bunch of Russian diplomats -- which many assumed had to do with alleged election interference -- may have actually been a lot more about the Russians breaching a key FBI encrypted communications system.

Turns out the truth is no defense to accusations of libel… at least not in Austria. And not when someone's reputation needs to be protected from [rereads article] substantially true statements. The standard for defamation in Austria comes nowhere close to what we're used to in the United States. The bar is low for the plaintiff and a bunch of insanity for the defendant who said true things and still got dinged for it. (h/t Techdirt reader Rose Crowell)Here's the background, as detailed by Philip Oltermann for The Guardian:

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The NY Times recently had a piece by Rob Walker noting that there is no tech backlash, despite many people believing there is one. Unfortunately, I think the article overstates its case, and misses the more important, more nuanced point. I do think that the public narrative -- driven by many in the media and many politicians and bureaucrats -- is that there's a giant "techlash" out there as people are fed up with how various tech companies act. I think that Walker's point is correct that the public is still using the big internet companies in larger and larger numbers. But I'm not sure it quite says what he seems to suggest it means.

Well. This is awkward. Congressional oversight of our intelligence agencies is actually being performed by the overseers. The House Intelligence Committee -- or at least Rep. Adam Schiff -- wants to know what's being withheld by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.Something fucked up has happened and the ODNI doesn't want to talk about it. What "it" is remains unknown, but it's apparently damaging enough the Intelligence Community is blowing off its obligations to its oversight.

Roughly a year ago, Nintendo launched a war between itself and ROM sites. Despite the insanely profitable NES Classic retro-console, the company decided that ROM sites, which until recently almost single-handedly preserved a great deal of console gaming history, need to be slayed. Nintendo extracted huge settlements out of some of the sites, which led to most others shutting down voluntarily. While this was probably always Nintendo's strategy, some sites decided to stare down the company's legal threats and continue on.One of those sites was RomUniverse, which not only refused to shut down, but essentially boasted that it wasn't scared of Nintendo's legal attack dogs and would continue on. That stance is about to be put to the test, however, as Nintendo has filed a copyright lawsuit seeking enormous damages against the site.

Moviepass is no more. The company's all you can eat movie ticket business model never worked as advertised, and a letter to subscribers informed them that the service would be shutting down over the weekend. Users are supposed to be getting refunds without having to ask for them.MoviePass initially seemed like it might be a plausible idea, though in recent months the company has been exposed for being aggressively terrible at this whole business thing. The service initially let movie buffs pay $30 a month in exchange for unlimited movie tickets at participating theaters, provided they signed up for a full year of service. But it wasn't long before the company began hemorrhaging cash, something made immeasurably worse when it dropped its price point to $10 a month as part of a last ditch attempt to spur growth.A bombshell Business Insider expose offered a stunning look at the company's dysfunction, and executives' interest in focusing on flashy marketing instead of fundamental business basics. Particularly entertaining was the fact that as things began to fall apart, company CEO Mitch Lowe thought it would be a good idea to arbitrarily change the passwords of heavy users so they couldn't actually use the service as advertised:

The US Patent and Trademark Office's side venture into immigration enforcement has come to an abrupt end. It recently instituted a US attorney requirement for foreigners filing trademark applications with the Office. This was apparently done to limit the flow of bogus trademark applications, a large number of which originated in China.This wasn't the problem. The problem was that the USPTO started requiring examiners to verify the immigration status of non-US citizens applying for trademarks. It was no longer enough to provide some form of address verification, like a utility bill. The USPTO was now demanding proof of permanent residence, which would limit applications by non-US citizens living in this country to green card holders.Notably, the USPTO does not require applicants to be legal residents of the United States. And only recently did it even require applicants from foreign countries to retain a US attorney for filing.After receiving a bit of backlash for branching out into immigration enforcement, the USPTO is backing down on its demands for green cards. Paul Singer of WGBH (who broke the original story) has more details on the rollback.

Last time we wrote about Billy Mitchell -- a man who appears to be famous for playing video games and pissing people off -- he was losing his legal fight against Cartoon Network for having a character that was a parody of Mitchell named Garrett Bobby Ferguson on its "Regular Show." The court was not impressed.

Earlier this spring, the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court basically said it's okay for cops to steal property from citizens. This isn't because stealing is okay. It isn't. It's illegal. It's that stealing someone's possessions after they've been seized with a warrant doesn't violate the Constitution.In this case, officers, who were engaged in an illegal gambling investigation, raided a couple's home, walking away with far more property than they officially said they did:

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FOSTA was sold to Congress and the public as a way to "protect women," who (we were told) were being sex trafficked because of a "loophole" in the law. As we warned over and over again at the time, FOSTA would actually put women at even greater risk, and that has been supported by nearly all of the evidence we've seen to date. Beyond the fact that the number of women who are actually victims of sex trafficking has been greatly exaggerated or completely made up to the point of ridiculousness, so far there have been multiple reports showing that the actual impact of FOSTA was to increase sex trafficking by putting sex workers at much greater risk, driving them into the greedy arms of traffickers who promise protection. This has resulted in more women dead and even police admitting that the law has made it more difficult for them to catch traffickers.That's pretty much exactly what many of us predicted before the law was passed, but Congress likes to pass laws and then forget about ever bothering to check whether or not the law did what it promised. So it's interesting to note that Rep. Ro Khanna is apparently planning to introduce a bill to study the actual impact of FOSTA, specifically on sex workers. This was buried in an article about Kate D'Adamo, a lobbyist representing the interests of sex workers on Capitol Hill.

This wasn't how it was supposed to go for AT&T. In AT&T executives' heads, the 2015, $67 billion acquisition of DirecTV and the 2018 $86 billion acquisition of Time Warner were supposed to be the cornerstones of the company's efforts to dominate video and online video advertising. Instead, the megadeals made AT&T possibly one of the most heavily indebted companies in the world. To recoup that debt, AT&T has ramped up its efforts to nickel-and-dime users at every opportunity, from bogus new wireless fees to price hikes on both its streaming and traditional video services.Not too surprisingly, these price hikes are now driving subscribers to the exits.The company's latest earnings report indicates that AT&T not only lost another 778,000 "traditional" video subscribers last quarter (satellite TV, IPTV), but it lost another 168,000 subscribers at its DirecTV Now streaming service -- due to "higher prices and less promotional activity." While the stupidity of these efforts (not to mention AT&T's absurdly confusing TV branding) has been apparent to analysts and the press for a while, investors have also now started to criticize AT&T's "growth for growth's sake" mindset.For example, "activist" (a generous term) investor Elliott Management recently conducted a detailed review of AT&T’s business management over the last decade and came away notably unimpressed. In a public letter to AT&T executives, the investor -- whose funds own around $3.2 billion in AT&T stock -- makes it pretty clear that AT&T's obsession with merging is not doing it any favors:

Is it good for governments to supplement their normal crowdfunding efforts (taxes) with something more voluntary? That's the question posed by this great Legally Weird post, which provides a number of examples of city governments asking citizens to dig a little deeper to pay for government things.Whether or not they can is an unanswered legal question. No one appears to have challenged any of these efforts on policy grounds. Considering giving is completely voluntary, the efforts are usually harmless and underfunded. Whether or not they should engage in crowdfunding is a much more interesting question, although most answers will probably boil down to whether or not the person answering agrees with what the funds are being raised for.Government crowdfunding efforts have been initiated to pay for park trash receptacles, to remove a Confederate statue, and to supply a public defenders' office with a much-needed cash infusion. Then there's the case that the Legally Weird post leads with.The city of Bloomfield, New Mexico is asking citizens to pay its legal fees for it. The crowdfunding effort created by Brad Ellsworth, the city's finance officer, hopes to raise enough money to finish paying the $700,000 the city owes to the ACLU.When we ask rhetorically why governments pursue highly-dubious litigation using public funds, this is the sort of thing we're talking about. The city came out on the losing end of a lawsuit filed by the ACLU on behalf of two Bloomfield Wiccans who disagreed with the city's placement of a Ten Commandments monument on the city hall lawn.The city argued the separation of church and state was intact because the monument was paid for and created by private citizens. It even contained a disclaimer to that effect on the monument itself. The case eventually made its way to the Tenth Circuit Appeals Court, which found in favor of the ACLU. The court said that permanent monuments erected on city property are government speech, even if they're privately-funded.The city countered the monument wasn't permanent. It said those providing the monuments needed to re-apply for prime city hall lawn position every 10 years. The court said there was no meaningful difference between ten years and permanent when the city placed no limit on renewals. The city petitioned the US Supreme Court, but the top court saw no reason to take up the case.Fortunately, the city's residents didn't have to pay for this litigation. The Alliance Defending Freedom provided the city with pro bono legal services, saving taxpayers a considerable amount of money. But the city lost, and it now owes $700,000 to the ACLU.Obviously, the city never prepared for this eventuality. The city has until 2021 to pay this debt off and has decided to make its first payment of $233,000 to the ACLU this year, using city budget funds. Its crowdfunding effort asks anyone -- city residents included -- to cough up the remaining $467,000. Its GoFundMe page contains a very self-serving statement that portrays the city as a fierce First Amendment warrior, rather than a participant in a project that violated the Establishment Clause of the Constitution.

Our first place winner on the insightful side this week is That One Guy with a response to our post about the Houston police officer who is facing felony murder charges over a botched raid:

Five Years AgoThis week in 2014, popular websites across the web participated in Internet Slowdown Day to demand net neutrality from the FCC — driving 1,000 calls per minute to Congress at some points, for a total of 300,000 calls plus 2-million emails and 700,000 FCC comments. It also spurred the big cable companies to waste their money on ads misleadingly pretending to support net neutrality themselves.Also this week in 2014, a court ruling gave a big win for fair use and against "hot news", one cab company was extra-angry about Uber and labeled it a cyber-terrorist group, and newly released memos justifying warrantless wiretapping showed crazy levels of executive branch authority.Ten Years AgoThis week in 2009, Hollywood was continuing its zealous war against Redbox by fearmongering about kids renting R-rated movies, the recording industry in Japan was working with the government on a plan to disable phones that are used to listen to pirated music, yet another DVD release of a classic TV show had to replace its music with new generic stuff due to licensing headaches, some ridiculous exaggeration was exposed in the UK's oft-repeated figure of 7-million file sharers, we got a look at the RIAA's copyright propaganda for schools, and there was yet another attempt to turn content into physical property with universal DRM. After all this, it was nice to read a judge eloquently explaining why copyright is not property... all the way back in 1773.Fifteen Years AgoThis week in 2004, the war against spam continued as WiFi spammers got caught and a major spam ISP finally kicked off 148 spammers — but so did the counterattacks, with a lawsuit against the spam blacklist headed to court and everyone bracing for the incoming deluge of election spam, though there was hope that might not be as bad as expected. One strategy that definitely didn't make sense was combating spam by turning email into a walled garden.Meanwhile, a university was trying to ban independent wifi networks with questionable authority, congress was moving forward with a draconian plan to criminalize file-sharing, and we saw the terrible appeals court ruling in Bridgeport v. Dimension that eliminated the de minimis defense for music sampling (even when the sample is completely unrecognizable) and issued the absurd edict "Get a license or do not sample. We do not see this as stifling creativity in any significant way."

It was only a few weeks back that we were discussing Liverpool FC, a soccer team playing in the UK Premier League, attempting to get a trademark for "Liverpool", the city in which it plays. While the club has made a point of reminding the public that its application is quite narrow, limited specifically to products and services revolving around soccer, that same public has pointed out there are both other indpendent soccer clubs in the city that would technically be infringing on that applied-for mark and that there is a culture of independent retailers selling fan gear that would get caught up in this as well. Liverpool FC, meanwhile, maintains that it wouldn't go after either group, but instead are interested only in protecting its fans from mass-makers of counterfeit apparel and the like.Which makes it somewhat strange that it's those very fans that are now organizing a protest against the team for its attempt to trademark the city's name.

A few weeks ago, Techdirt wrote about Denmark reviewing 10,000 court verdicts because of errors in mobile phone tracking data that was offered as evidence in those cases. At that time, it wasn't clear how many of the group were affected by the unreliable data. However, the Guardian reports that 32 people have already been freed. Given the large number of cases involved, it seems unlikely that many have been reviewed in such a short space of time. If that's the case, it is possible that quite a few more verdicts will be overturned, and more people released. Companies providing mobile phone services in Denmark are naturally keen to distance themselves from this mess. Jakob Willer, speaking on behalf of the country's telecoms industry association, said it was not their job to provide evidence:

The Ninth Circuit Appeals Court has resuscitated a lawsuit against Malwarebytes filed by litigious software company Enigma. Enigma Software tends to sue people who say bad things about its antivirus offerings and since there's a lot of people doing that, the company seems to spend a fair amount of time in court.Enigma ran into the Section 230 wall in the lower court by claiming Malwarebytes' designation of its software as a threat was an unfair business practice. It said Malwarebytes scans were locating its offerings on people's computers, informing them the software was shady, and quarantining it. Enigma alleged this was anti-competitive. And if it wasn't that, it was probably some sort of trademark thing, blah blah blah Lanham Act. (This claim sneaks into a lot of lawsuits involving Section 230 protections and Enigma tried this tactic in a defamation lawsuit it filed against BleepingComputer. It's a dodge, not a cognizable legal argument.)Malwarebytes prevailed at the district court level by citing a Ninth Circuit Appeals Court ruling finding that filtering software or services is also protected by Section 230 of the CDA. In the cited case, antivirus software company Kaspersky secured a dismissal from a lawsuit brought by an aggrieved adware purveyor. That decision said any material a provider feels is objectionable (in this case, adware) can be removed by the provider.That's what the court said then. What it's saying now is something different, and that appears to be only because the Ninth Circuit feels Malwarebytes and Enigma Software are actually competitors, even if Enigma has yet to earn the same amount of respect Malwarebytes has. From the decision [PDF]:

Mississippi legislators -- apparently guided by "threatened" cattle farmers -- decided to rewrite its product-labeling laws. It enacted a statute forbidding producers of non-meat products from using meat-associated terms to describe their products. This unconstitutional requirement was put in place to supposedly reduce customer confusion, but the labels targeted made it clear their products -- hamburgers, hot dogs, etc. -- contained zero meat."Vegan hot dogs" was no longer acceptable. Neither was the ubiquitous term "veggie burger." The law required plant-based products to disassociate themselves completely from the meat products they were emulating. Very few people have been tricked into buying veggie products when they meant to purchase beef. But consumers looking to replace meat products with veggie alternatives might find it a bit more difficult to figure out what products they're replacing when the descriptive terms aren't all that descriptive.The state was sued by Upton's Naturals Co. and the Plant Based Food Association. Represented by the Institute for Justice, the plaintiffs sought an injunction blocking the law's enforcement and a declaration that the law itself was unconstitutional.It appears the state has decided to craft a new statute -- one that doesn't violate the First Amendment -- rather than continue to fight this in court. Scott Shackford has the details at Reason.