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There are some ongoing jokes of a kind that cynics like myself believe have more than a grain of truth to them. They go something like "The moment you have a person or group sanctimoniously come out violently against [X], you can pretty much set your watch to the eventuality that that same person or group will be found to have committed [X] themselves." This works in a myriad of arenas, from "family first" politicians getting caught up in affairs, to "children first" people and groups found to have abused children, up to and including matters of intellectual property. The examples of those in favor of draconian IP enforcement being found to have violated IP themselves are so legion that this entire sentence could have been constructed of nothing but hyperlinks to those past stories.And now, it seems, we may be able to add Russia's Intellectual Property Rights Court to the list. A former judge on that court has filed a lawsuit against the court itself accusing it of wanton use of unlicensed Microsoft software.

The Defense Department, like much of the federal government, finds its FOIA obligations too burdensome to perform correctly or speedily. Thanks to its ability to cite national security exemptions more frequently than the FBI and NYPD, it has all the excuses it needs to withhold documents in full or replace long chunks of text with redaction bars.Somehow, the multitude of FOIA exemptions it has access to still isn't enough. Figuring three denials is nothing more than legislators playing hard to get, the DoD is again petitioning Congress to grant it another way to withhold information from requesters.

As most of you know, we recently launched a Kickstarter campaign for CIA: Collect It All — our fleshed out and polished version of the CIA's training card game that was recently obtained under a FOIA request. Two days later, we hit our funding goal, and now we've more than doubled it!Before we knew just how much interest there would be, our plan was to limit shipping to the US — but the requests from other countries came pouring in alongside the pledges, and so now we're happy to announce that CIA: Collect it All is now available in 170 countries!As we warned from the start, international shipping isn't cheap, but we've tried to secure the best rates we possibly could. If you were waiting on availability in your country before backing the campaign — or if you pledged for the digital print-and-play version but would like to upgrade to a physical copy — now's the time. There are a few major countries we are unable to ship to (such as Brazil and Russia) due to limitations of our fulfillment partner, and unfortunately there's nothing we can do about that right now, so we apologize if you're still left out.There's just over two weeks left in the campaign, and we still have no plans to produce more than this single print run of the game — so if you want to get your hands on a copy, now's the time to back us on Kickstarter so you don't miss out! We're overwhelmed by the support for this project (huge thanks to everyone who has backed it already), and we're excited to bring this formerly top-secret CIA training game to so many people around the world.

A few weeks ago, we wrote about the Irish High Court referring to the EU's highest court, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), eleven questions concerning the legality of personal data transfer across the Atlantic.The questions were prompted by a case brought by the privacy expert Max Schrems challenging Facebook's data transfers. When the Irish High Court judge indicated that she intended to make an order for a so-called "preliminary ruling" by the CJEU -- that is, one which addresses the fundamental legal questions raised by the case -- Facebook applied for a stay in order to appeal against the judge's decision at other, higher Irish courts. That's hardly surprising: Facebook's business model depends on being able to move sensitive user data around as it wishes. If both Privacy Shield and the "Standard Contractual Clauses" (SCCs) are ruled illegal, then Facebook -- and many other companies -- will have big problems. Given the danger, it's no wonder that Facebook is trying everything it can to prevent the CJEU from answering those questions.Considering Facebook's application, the same High Court judge who had made the reference to the CJEU explained that in her view (pdf) there is no right to appeal against that request for clarification under Irish law. However, she went on to consider what the relative harms to each party would be if she were in fact wrong on this matter, and came down firmly in favor of Schrems:

We've discussed time and time again how, when faced with an evolving video market, the broadcast and cable industry repeatedly decided to double down on bad ideas. While consumers increasingly lamented having to pay $130 per month for a massive channel bundles filled with sub-par content, the industry refused to offer serious a la carte options and then jacked up prices even further. When consumers began to complain about high costs and annoying ads, cable and broadcast executives responded by trying to stuff more ads into every viewing hour by speeding up or editing down programs.So for anybody paying attention, the fact that cord cutting is expected to set records in 2018 shouldn't be particularly surprising. And it's equally unsurprising that a recent study by Kagan highlights how soaring cable TV prices are contributing to the cord cutting trend. The firm was quick to note how the average cable bill has increased in price by 74% since 2000, even adjusted for inflation. All while the average income saw either tepid growth or remained flat, as this Kagan chart highlights:The firm noted how prices for multichannel packages have steadily risen from just below $60 a month in 2000 to close to $100 in the peak year of 2016, and that's not including the added costs these companies hide below the line via obnoxious hidden fees. Or the fact that most cable companies now charge you for everything from modem rental to the honor of being able to pay your bill in person or over the phone, resulting in compounded annual gross revenue for cable, satellite and telco pay TV platforms increasing at at a rate of 5.5% every year from 2000 to 2017.It's only now that streaming has begun to reach critical mass that some cable giants have actually buckled to the call for cheaper, better options (AT&T's DirecTV Now, Dish's Sling TV). But there's still countless cable operators soldiering forth with rate hikes and a refusal to improve historically awful customer service -- as if the traditional cable TV cash cow is going to live forever. Many industry execs still honestly see cord cutting as a trend that will magically end once Millennials come to their senses, which is a painful misreading of the scenario.Part of this confidence is because they have a fairly obnoxious plan b. Given the cable industry's growing monopoly over broadband, most of these companies will simply counter these losses with even bigger price hikes for broadband. Most of those are going to come in the form of arbitrary and unnecessary usage caps and overage fees. These are just glorified rate hikes on uncompetitive markets, but they have the added benefit of making it more expensive to stream for those looking to escape the stranglehold of their traditional cable provider.And with the looming death of net neutrality, there will soon be an ocean of new "creative" tricks these companies will use to ensure that you remain tightly constrained inside their own massive media landscapes (be that Comcast NBC Universal, or AT&T Time Warner), and punished should you actually try to wander into greener, cheaper pastures.

Police officers aren't legal experts. No court expects them to know the intricacies of the laws they're paid to enforce. Close enough is good enough when it comes to pretextual stops, street-level friskings, and other assorted Constitutional skirtings.But no one but a cop would know the ins and outs of stupid laws left on the books by careless legislators or how to wield them like weapons against those who dare to start hassling The Man. Got a criminal defamation law still laying around? Why not use it to arrest and charge critics gathering a few too many eyeballs to their personal blogs. Any number of charges, from disorderly conduct to "assaulting an officer" can be made to cover "contempt of cop" arrests. And every stupid "Blue Lives Matter" law has been abused at least once, with the oversensitive cops of New Orleans leading the way.Given that two-thirds of the links above direct you to Louisiana law enforcement officers and officials, it should come as no surprise Louisiana officers are using another bad law to bring criminal charges against people who aren't absolutely enthralled with their law enforcement experience. (via The Watch)

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is That Anonymous Coward with a response to ICE's warrantless raid of a private farm:

Five Years AgoThis week in 2013, while the MPAA was being accused of tampering with evidence in Finland, and a bunch of movie studios were fragmenting the streaming market by pulling films off Netflix, Chris Dodd was trying to claim he supports helping the blind while refusing to approve of the copyright exceptions that would do so. Meanwhile, the government was clashing with technology on many fronts, from increased censorship requests to Google to the DOJ wanting to fine companies that don't let it wiretap users to ICE raiding mobile phone repair shops.Ten Years AgoThis week in 2008, the RIAA was employing the questionable strategy of giving music services a bunch of publicity by suing them and the ugly strategy of aggressively targeting college students, while a court was thankfully rejecting its "making available" argument about copyright law. We took a look at all the problems copyright was causing for documentary filmmakers, and the smear campaign against Larry Lessig and free culture in general. And, for something that looks amusing in hindsight, many people were predicting that the mobile web was a huge threat to Google's dominance.Fifteen Years AgoBoth of this week's stars were in the news in 2003 as well. We got a look at how the MPAA stays one step ahead of consumer rights organizations, while the RIAA was settling an earlier round of lawsuits against students, and also creepily sending threatening IMs to file sharers. Amidst this, Apple officially launched its online music sales for the first time — we were lukewarm on the idea, and of course at this point it was still laden with DRM.

Following an FOIA lawsuit against the FBI, Emma Best is raking in agency documents dealing with the Church of Scientology. The FBI doesn't care much for FOIA requesters and the informal policy on handling released documents is to redact as much as possible and hope the redactions aren't challenged.Sadly, there's not much subtlety or attention to detail deployed when redacting documents prior to release. It appears that the FBI's FOIA response personnel are trained to redact anything that looks like a person's name, whether or not it actually needs to be redacted. This almost-automatic redaction technique has led to the most ridiculous of results: the FBI has engaged in the proactive protection of Superman's secret identity.Included in a batch of Scientology docs is a letter [PDF] to the Los Angeles District Attorney's office. This was apparently sent to steer the DA's office away from investigating complaints about the Church's overzealous pursuit of former members and critics. The letter attempts to paint a former member as some sort of crazy person pushing ridiculous conspiracy theories via an affidavit being circulated to press and law enforcement.The letter claims "Wally" (a pseudonym given by the Church) is attempting to "cash in on the popularity" of Scientology with a narrative containing so much "comic book flair" the letter's author decided to include a short vignette of the affidavit being reviewed by a mild-mannered reporter at the offices of his employer, The Daily Planet.This faux screenplay underwent FBI FOIA surgery, redacting the full names of every fictional character (although Jimmy Olsen's surname does slip through once). The end result looks for all the world as though the FBI truly felt Superman's secret identity needed to be withheld for privacy reasons.Here's the opening of the short scene, featuring its very famous -- and very fake -- setting.As MuckRock's J. Pat Brown points out, we can be sure it is Clark Kent/Superman (rather than reporter Lois Lane) underneath the redactions because of this unredacted "Mr."Emma Best, in a statement to Gizmodo, points out this farcical set of redactions is, at best, a demonstration of the FBI's apparently willful incompetence when it comes to FOIA response.

SESTA has done enormous damage to the critical protection Section 230 affords platforms – and by extension all the Internet speech and online services they facilitate. But it's not the only threat: courts can also often mess things up for platforms by failing to recognize situations where Section 230 should apply and instead allowing platforms to be held liable for how their users have used their services.Which leads to the situation Airbnb, Homeaway, and other such platforms find themselves in. Jurisdictions unhappy with some of the effects short-term rentals have had on their communities have taken to passing regulations designed to curb the practice. Whether or not it is good policy to do so is beyond the scope of this post. If some local jurisdictions want to impose liability on their residents for renting out their homes – and not all of them do – it's between them and their voters.The problem arises when the regulations they come up with don't just target people renting their homes, but also target the online platforms that facilitate these transactions. These ordinances effectively create liability for platforms arising from content generated by others, which is a regulatory practice that Section 230 prohibits.So Airbnb and Homeaway have started pushing back on these ordinances, first in San Francisco and now in Santa Monica. Unfortunately both efforts to enjoin them have resulted in federal district court decisions saying that Section 230 does not shield them from their reach, meaning that these local jurisdictions are fully able to hold these platforms liable if people use them to rent homes they aren't supposed to. The decision about the Santa Monica ordinance is now before the Ninth Circuit, and last week I wrote a brief for the Copia Institute explaining why it should find that Section 230 indeed prevents these ordinances from imposing liability on these platforms. It was important to say so, not just to support Airbnb and Homeaway, but because if Section 230 can't apply to them, then it won't be able to apply to a lot of other platforms that depend on it.The crux of the problem appears to stem from courts not seeing how what is at stake in these cases is actually speech, perhaps because the kind of speech sites like Airbnb and Homeaway intermediate is so specific. But even if the only expression these platforms intermediates is, "I have a home to rent," it's still speech, speech created by someone other than the platform, and Section 230 therefore still applies. There is no language in Section 230 that would require a platform to intermediate lots of different kinds of expression in order to be entitled to the statute's protection. Many platforms are extremely specialized in the type of expression they intermediate, often because that's what makes them useful and effective as services, and all are equally entitled to the statute's protection.The fact that the specific speech being intermediated is transactional in nature seems to be what's confusing the courts, especially given that these sites often make money by taking a cut of the transactions that are successful. The court addressing the Santa Monica ordinance recognized that a site like Craigslist, which also hosts "I have a home to rent" speech (among other types of speech), would not be affected by the ordinance because it doesn't make money when "I have a home to rent" speech results in a rental. But there is no reason that these platforms should be treated any differently. Section 230 applies regardless of how a platform makes its money. There's no requirement in the statutory language that a platform profit only in certain ways – in fact, if anything the statute encourages platforms to be innovative so that the public can continue to benefit from their services. And for good reason: think about platforms like eBay, which also profit when "I have a thing to sell" speech finds an audience who wants to buy it. If Section 230 protection could be withheld from all platforms that make money from consummated transactions it would be more than just the Airbnb and Homeaway who would be in trouble.The only relevant question to ask in considering whether Section 230 applies is who created the content that is potentially wrongful. In the case of Airbnb and Homeaway it is their users. After all, there's nothing inherently wrongful about saying, "I have a home to rent." Whether it is wrongful depends entirely on whether the user is allowed to rent it per local law. Liability should therefore remain entirely with the user who is the one who imbued it with its wrongness. Particularly because it is often not practical, or even possible, for platforms to police all the content passing through them. Even if they had the resources to examine the volume of user-generated content that passes through their systems they may not have the ability to know which, if any of it, was wrongful. Thus if platforms could be forced by any particular jurisdiction to try to police it anyway, in order to stave off potentially expensive liability, it would invariably chill their ability to provide their services – including in other jurisdictions.Which is also why Section 230 includes a pre-emption provision, so that no particular jurisdiction can get to decide for any other one what Internet speech and services people can benefit from in these other places. Without that provision the jurisdiction with the most restrictive laws would otherwise get to impose its policy choices on any other jurisdiction the service now shaped by these policies could reach, which, in the case of an Internet service, is every single one of the thousands and thousands of state and local jurisdictions nationwide.

As we have been discussing, Russia has engaged in something of an insane attempt to obliterate the application Telegram from its lands, following the company's refusal to hand over its encryption keys to Russia's FSB. Where this got really insane was Russia deciding to block hundreds of thousands of IP addresses, many of which are those of Amazon as Telegram had moved to the company's cloud service to get around the initial Russia blockade. As a huge swath of the internet in Russia subsequently broke, along with all sorts of Russian services that rely on the internet to function, many began to wonder what could be so severe in Telegram to warrant such a cluster bomb approach. Russia's answer was, of course, terrorism. The truth came in the form of a wave of protests in Russia, signaling that disallowing anti-government coordination via an encrypted messaging service is and always was the goal.And now Iran has mirrored the approach of its international partner, blocking Telegram in its country as well. The sales pitch to the public as to the need to block Telegram is also the twin of the Russian approach.

China's participation in the world market tends to portray the country as far more open than it actually is. China's does have some love for capitalism. Democracy, not so much. There's not much participation in the marketplace of ideas, thanks to continuous, ever-increasing censorship measures.Nothing's going to change in the near future. The sitting president was just rewarded with the title appendage "for life," thanks to a bought-in (and possibly bought) parliament stripping away term limits earlier this year. Chinese citizens have been rewarded for their enforced loyalty with a government-controlled internet experience and a scoring system that grants/strips perks based on a perverse "morality" algorithm.Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it, as the adage goes. The Chinese government is ensuring Cultural Revolution reruns by forcing the nation to forget inconvenient facts. A new law now makes it illegal to speak ill of the long-dead.

A few years ago, when the EU Commission was first considering some really bad copyright policies designed to attack fundamental principles of how the internet worked, we pointed out the many, many problems with the EU Commission's online survey (including the fact that their survey tool was literally broken, which eventually resulted in them expanding the time that the survey could be answered). It appears that one thing the EU Commission is good at doing is pushing silly one-sided online surveys that seem uniquely designed to get people to answer in a manner that blesses whatever awful policy the EU Commission has already decided to adopt.The latest is, once again, an attempt to massively censor the internet. As we've discussed over the past few months, after burying the evidence that said piracy is a much smaller issue than people claim, and ignoring multiple people explaining the fundamental issues of mandatory content filters (i.e., automated censorship machines), the EU Commission appears to be hellbent on putting in place such filters. And it's now pushing a survey to get you to support their plan.Everything about the survey is designed to get you to be worried about the scourge of "illegal content" online (without any evidence that it's a serious problem) and to demand that the EU force platforms to wave a magic wand and make it go away. Here's the survey's introduction:

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Eugene Volokh, the EFF, and several members of First Amendment Clinic students and professors have filed a brief in a case involving an unconstitutional and apparently permanent injunction against an anti-vaxxer. Oddly enough, this injunction is the result of a civil action brought by another anti-vaccination activist. The details leading up to this "shut up" order are a bit convoluted (and explained in full at the Volokh Conspiracy) but the short version is this:Anti-vaccination activist Kimberly McCauley blogs about her efforts and experiences. This includes frequent mentions of her daughter, who is now apparently being harmed by the state's vaccination requirements for students.McCauley sued Matthew Phillips, a lawyer and another anti-vaccination activist. Apparently, Phillips believes McCauley isn't as anti-vaccination as she could be and has criticized her on Facebook. Phillips has also mentioned McCauley's daughter in his posts, but McCauley has put her daughter front-and-center in her anti-vaccination crusade.While there is little doubt Phillips posts are antagonistic and filled with ridiculous conspiracy theories (the words "crisis actor" have been thrown around, along with accusations of shilling for pharmaceutical companies), it would appear the bulk of what he's posted is still protected speech. McCauley's full complaint can be read here and it details some disturbing trolling efforts by Phillips. This forms the basis of her request for a civil restraining order [PDF], which was granted, but demands nothing more than Phillips' silence on the subject of McCauley in perpetuity.

While Facebook professes to be a net neutrality advocate here in the States, their silence as Comcast, Verizon and AT&T have dismantled the open internet has long proven otherwise.And overseas, Facebook has routinely undermined net neutrality -- at times under the banner of altruism. Thinking it could corner the ad market in developing nations, Facebook has been pushing for years something known as "Free Basics" under its Internet.org initiative. Under Free Basics, Facebook delivers users a free, AOL-esque walled garden version of the internet featuring content from Facebook-approved partners. But the program quickly came under fire by content partners who didn't like Facebook being the curator of what gets viewed. Others criticized the program for at one point banning encrypted content.Countries like India ultimately wound up banning Free Basics as a violation of net neutrality, viewing the program as little more than glorified collusion -- since a cornerstone of the project involved Facebook determining which services users will be able to access. Users in these nations, meanwhile, began conflating "the internet" with Facebook itself, which is what Facebook obviously wanted, but which presented a whole host of new problems.As Facebook saw heated opposition from Indian net neutrality activists, its response to the PR kerfuffle was pretty terrible. While it was abundantly clear the program held cornering developing ad markets as its primary agenda, Mark Zuckerberg proclaimed that net neutrality supporters worried about Facebook's plans were simply extremists who were hurting the poor. And at one point, the company launched a campaign that attempted to trick Indian citizens into rooting against their own best interests on this subject by spamming the government in opposition to real net neutrality.Opposition to Facebook's version of the future has since spread to additional countries, and reports indicate that Facebook is slowly walking away from its Free Basics in a number of developing nations:

A recent ICE raid of a New York farm made national headlines thanks to the agency's apparent disregard for the Fourth Amendment, among other things. The show of force, coupled with the lack of Constitutional compliance, presented ICE as ruthless enforcers of the law. But there's not much respect for the "rule of law" contained in these actions, no matter how the current administration -- with its emphasis on expelling foreigners from the US -- presents itself.

Stories like this aren't supposed to have happened. Back in 2006, a Terre Haute company called Square Donuts Inc. sent a cease and desist notice to a convenience store chain in Indiana called Family Express, which also sells square-shaped donuts. The notice claimed that the latter was infringing on the former's trademark for "square donut", for which it had received a trademark registration from the USPTO. In 2016, Family Express sued Square Donuts Inc. to have a court declare its use non-infringing due to the lack of customer confusion and, more importantly, the fact that the trademark should never have been granted on the grounds that it is purely descriptive. As is usually the case, the ultimate fault for all of this lies at the feet of the USPTO, which never should have granted this trademark to begin with.Yet that doesn't change how absurd it is that this dispute is still going on. Very, very strangely, the most recent happening in this story is now it's Square Donuts Inc. that is petitioning the court for a judgment on the matter.

Recently, a genealogy service provided law enforcement with the information they needed to locate a murder suspect they'd been hunting for over forty years. GEDMatch admitted it was the service investigators used to find a familial match to DNA samples it had taken from crime scenes. This revelation led people to question how private their DNA data was when shared with genealogy services. The answer is, of course, not very, what with the purpose of these services being the matching of DNA info from thousands or millions of unrelated individuals.Police created a fake account to submit the sample they had and received matches that allowed them to narrow down the list of suspects. This was combined with lots of other regular police work -- combing public records and obituaries for living relatives near the locations the crimes occurred -- to gradually hone in on Joseph James DeAngelo, who is believed to have murdered twelve people and committed at least 51 rapes.But there was more to this than the DNA search at GEDMatch. Investigators had also used a service called FamilyTreeDNA to look for possible matches. The public database maintained by the company apparently helped investigators narrow down the list of suspects. Peter Aldhous of Buzzfeed has more details.

Early last month, the FTC took a small step towards enforcing a decades-old law. The 1975 Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act forbade manufacturers from placing repair restrictions on electronic devices costing over $5. This means the little stickers claiming "warranty void if removed" are not just bullshit. They're also illegal.Forty years of "void if removed" stickers being plastered on tons of consumer electronics means the law has done little to prevent manufacturers from placing repair restrictions on consumers. The language is so ubiquitous consumers assume tinkering with their purchased products will instantly void warranties. Many also believe taking their electronics to anyone but the manufacturer (or manufacturer-approved repair shops) for service will similarly remove warranty protections.The fact is that the burden rests on manufacturers to prove any tinkering or third-party repair voided the warranty's coverage. Of course, given the number of restrictions and exceptions contained in electronic device fine print, chances are doing anything to anything is probably gives manufacturers the "evidence" they need to duck out of warranty obligations.The press release by the FTC did not name the six manufacturers targeted by these cease-and-desist letters. Motherboard has now unmasked these lawbreakers, thanks to an FOIA request. And they're pretty much exactly who you think they are.

A resident of Virginia, with the ACLU's help, has won at least a partial victory against the mass collection of license plate/location info by automatic license plate readers (ALPRs). The question of whether or not mass collections of this data violated state privacy law has been answered, which may mean significant changes to the way state law enforcement deploys them.Virginia's history of ALPR use is questionable, to say the least. Some towns in the state obtained ALPRs by claiming a need to swiftly capture the worst of the worst criminals, but decided to put them to use locating people behind on their property taxes. In 2013, state police were discovered to be using ALPRs to troll parking lots at political rallies, giving law enforcement a convenient way to connect drivers to their political leanings. Many of these devices were deployed without public comment or oversight. And law enforcement agencies drew a blank when asked for documentation of the devices' crime-fighting effectiveness.This passive collection violated the state's "Government Data Collection and Dissemination Act," which forbids collection of personal information without a "clearly established need" to do so. The law prevents codification of abusive practices by requiring agencies looking to harvest personal information to seek approval first, rather than ask for forgiveness later.This law -- and law enforcement's apparent inability to follow it -- prompted this lawsuit.

Hey, everyone, today is World Press Freedom Day, which is a day created by the UN to "celebrate the fundamental principles of press freedom," to "assess the state of press freedom throughout the world" and to "defend the media from attacks on their independence." Sounds good, right? So how is the UN itself celebrating World Press Freedom Day? Why, by refusing to allow a presentation to be heard that calls out Turkey for its suppression of press freedom.For real.The News Literacy Project -- which, as the name suggests, seeks to increase new literacy among students -- was all set to do a presentation at the UN's Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) for World Press Freedom Day. However, just before the event, the UNAOC told NLP that it was "indefinitely postponing" their presentation unless references to the suppression of press freedoms in Turkey were removed. Really.

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Germany's terrible speech laws continues to be tools for abuse and stupidity. A recently-enacted law holds service providers responsible for lingering "hate speech" to the tune of €50m per violation. Social media companies have shown a tendency to over-enforce, resulting in the preemptive removal of things even the badly-written law doesn't consider criminally hateful.Whatever damage social media companies are doing in order to steer clear of massive fines, politicians are compounding by using the law to target opponents and critics. Courthouse News Service reports a German court has indulged a politician's hypocritical outrage to demand the disappearance of a critical, but hyperbolic, comment posted to Facebook.

Time and time and time again, U.S. telecom companies have promised us that better customer service, lower prices, and more competition is only possible if the latest industry mega merger is approved. But time and time again those promises not only don't materialize, but the deals wind up making an already broken market worse. As a result, the telecom sector sees historically awful customer service, higher prices, and all manner of additional problems ranging from broadband coverage gaps to net neutrality and privacy violations (both symptoms of limited competition).Everybody's favorite villain, Comcast, is a direct result of mindless M&A mania where upgrades, customer service, and genuine innovation took a repeated back seat to growth for growth's sake. So is AT&T, who we've allowed to slowly but surely re-assemble itself in the wake of Ma Bell's 1982 breakup. And despite history being very fucking clear on the negative impact of telecom consolidation, here we are again bearing witness to the same, age old idiotic "synergy" claims as T-Mobile tries to sell the press and public on its planned $26 billion acquisition of Sprint.As we noted previously this deal simply isn't necessary. Those pushing this merger like to pretend that Sprint was on the brink of collapse and simply couldn't survive without this merger. And while Sprint does have a heavy debt load and has been arguably incompetent on the branding and PR front, the company just announced what it's calling the "best financial results in company history."There were numerous partnership and funding options that wouldn't have involved killing one of just four major competitors, and eliminating jobs for anywhere between 10,000 and 30,000 human beings. Eliminating one-fourth of the industry's major competitors simply reduces the incentive to genuinely compete on price. It's simply not debatable ( industry-funded think tanks are already busy trying to muddy the logic waters, though you'll note that even here the farmed enthusiasm is a bit more tepid than normal).Trying to sell the deal, T-Mobile CEO John Legere spent much of this week trying to insist that reducing competitors somehow increases competition. To do so, the company tried to claim in an announcement that the public shouldn't worry, because somehow the combined Sprint T-Mobile would still have "7 to 8" big competitors to keep them in line:

The Malaysian government got a jump on the rest of the world by being the first to actually enact a "fake news" law. The government had several hundred million good reasons to do so, most them residing in the prime minister's bank account. Lawmakers cited concern for the public's well-being, but critics noted the law was just an efficient way for the government to shut down reporting it doesn't like.The nation's Ministry of Truth (a.k.a., the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission) cited free speech champion Donald Trump as the inspiration for this new censorship tool.

Among Techdirt's many stories chronicling the (slow) rise of open access publishing, a number have been about dramatic action taken by researchers to protest against traditional publishers and their exploitative business model. For example, in 2012, a boycott of the leading publisher Elsevier was organized to protest against its high journal prices and its support for the now long-forgotten Research Works Act. In 2015, the editors and editorial board of the Elsevier title Lingua resigned in order to start up their own open access journal. Now we have another boycott, this time as a reaction against the launch of the for-profit Nature Machine Intelligence, from the German publishing giant Springer. Thousands of academics in the field have added their names to a statement about the new title expressing their concerns:

A couple weeks ago we wrote about the unfortunate decision by Google to stop enabling domain fronting on its AppEngine. As we explained at the time, this was an (accidental) way of hiding certain traffic by using the way certain large companies had set up their online services, such that censors in, say, Iran or China, couldn't distinguish which traffic was for an anti-censorship app, and which was for others. The two largest services that enabled this were Google and Amazon, and a variety of different anti-censorship tools made use of the ability to effectively "hide" within those sites such that an authoritarian government couldn't block their apps without blocking all of Google or Amazon or whatever. Some CDNs have admitted that they don't allow it out of a fear for how it could impact other users on the system, but on the whole it appeared to be a useful, if unintended, way for Google and Amazon to do good in the world.However, when Google shut it down, the company just said that it was never supported, and the company had no plans to bring it back. Among the companies who relied on domain fronting is the popular encrypted communications app Signal. In a new blog post, Signal has explained why it believes Google suddenly decided to take action:

At long last, one of the stupider defamation lawsuits in recent history is finally over. Last year, the ousted director of a Tennessee culinary school (Tom Loftis) sued over an article appearing in a local paper. The article, written by journalist Jim Myers, insinuated the departure of Loftis signaled a return to quality for the culinary program. It also spoke highly of his replacement, Randy Rayburn.The article featured few direct quotes from Rayburn. The bulk of it consisted of Myers' take on the program's declining quality while Loftis was at the helm. So, naturally, Tom Loftis decided to sue his replacement, Randy Rayburn, who was responsible for none of the supposedly defamatory content contained in the article.Loftis argued this was "defamation by innuendo," all the while refusing to target the journalist and paper responsible for the alleged innuendo. He not only lost his lawsuit, but now owes legal fees for that attempt. Rather than accept this loss and cut a check, Loftis appealed. This recent state appeals court decision [PDF], via Randy Rayburn's legal representative, Daniel Horwitz, has nothing positive to say about Loftis' bogus lawsuit.First, the court points out the obvious: Rayburn didn't say the things Loftis is suing about.

Facebook certainly deserves ample criticism for its lax privacy standards and its decision to threaten news outlets that exposed them. That said, we've noted a few times now that the uneven press fixation on Facebook obscures the fact that numerous industries routinely engage in much worse behavior. That's particularly true of broadband providers (and especially wireless carriers), who routinely treat consumer privacy as a distant afterthought, with only a fraction of the total volume of media hyperventilation we saw during the Facebook kerfuffle.Facebook's casual treatment of your data isn't some errant tech industry exception, it's the norm, making #quitFacebook an arguably pointless gesture if you still own a stock mobile phone. In the telecom industry, a disdain for consumer privacy is a cornerstone of their entire business model(s). Companies like AT&T and Verizon aren't just bone grafted to our government's domestic surveillance apparatus, they collect and sell everything from browsing to location data to absolutely anyone and everyone--with little to no real oversight, and opt out tools that may or may not actually work.Verizon has been particularly busy on the anti-privacy front. You'll recall that the company was fined by the FCC for modifying wireless user data packets to track users around the internet without telling them. The company was engaging in this behavior for two years before security researchers even discovered it, and it took another six months of media criticism for Verizon to offer a simple opt out. Despite the wrist slap, a more powerful variant of this technology is still very much in play at Oath (AOL & Yahoo), Verizon's effort to compete with Google and Facebook in the media advertising wars.Not long after that, Verizon played a starring role in gutting modest FCC privacy rules protecting consumers (spurred in part by Verizon's tracking tech). Those rules, which Verizon lobbyists dismantled last year, simply required that ISPs be transparent with what data they're collecting and who they're selling it to. When California tried to mirror the FCC's discarded privacy policies, Verizon, Facebook and Comcast lied to lawmakers, falsely claiming that modest privacy protections would harm children, increase internet popups, and embolden extremism. None of it was true.More recently, Verizon has been facing numerous lawsuits over Yahoo hacks that exposed the data of roughly three billion consumers. And while this was before Verizon's ownership (Verizon wasn't informed of the hacks during negotiations, netting it a $350 billion discount), the company has since been actively trying to prevent customers from suing Oath (Yahoo) or Verizon over future breaches by using fine print to mandate binding arbitration:

At some point I need to write a bigger piece on these kinds of things, though I've mentioned it here and there over the past couple of years. For all the complaints about how "bad stuff" is appearing on the big platforms (mainly: Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter), it's depressing how many people think the answer is "well, those platforms should stop the bad stuff." As we've discussed, this is problematic on multiple levels. First, handing over the "content policing" function to these platforms is, well, probably not such a good idea. Historically they've been really bad at it, and there's little reason to think they're going to get any better no matter how much money they throw at artificial intelligence or how many people they hire to moderate content. Second, it requires some sort of objective reality for what's "bad stuff." And that's impossible. One person's bad stuff is another person's good stuff. And almost any decision is going to get criticized by someone or another. It's why suddenly a bunch of foolish people are falsely claiming that these platforms are required by law to be "neutral." (They're not).But, as more and more pressure is put on these platforms, eventually they feel they have little choice to do something... and inevitably, they try to step up their content policing. The latest, as you may have heard, is that Facebook has started to rank news organizations by trust.

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Well, that didn't take long. Over the past few weeks, we have been discussing yet another attempt to introduce a censorious site-blocking program to combat copyright infringement, this time in Japan. While site-blocking is unfortunately now popular in several countries, Japan's attempt at it is interesting in that the Japanese constitution specifically forbids censorship of this kind save for the need to combat very serious, typically deadly instances. What's not arguable is that Japan's constitution intended to allow for a sweeping site-blocking program to combat general copyright infringement. Despite this, and despite the fact that the Japanese government hasn't bothered to actually put any law in place that would institute site-blocking, at least one ISP decided to get a head start and began blocking access to several websites it determined to be "pirate sites." The Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp., or NTT, did this while saying the government should still get on crafting an actual law for its actions, despite the obvious unconstitutional nature of the whole enterprise.Because of its actions, it will be NTT that will face the first legal challenge to site-blocking rather than the government, with a private citizen, who happens to be a lawyer, suing the ISP for invading his privacy in order to censor his access to the internet.

As we've often noted, Comcast has been shielded from the cord cutting trend somewhat thanks to its growing monopoly over broadband. As users on slow DSL lines flee telcos that are unwilling to upgrade their damn networks, they're increasingly flocking to cable operators for faster speeds. When they get there, they often bundle TV services; not necessarily because they want it, but because it's intentionally cheaper than buying broadband standalone.And while Comcast's broadband monopoly has protected it from TV cord cutting somewhat, the rise in streaming competition has slowly eroded that advantage, and Comcast is expected to see see double its usual rate of cord cutting this year according to Wall Street analysts.Comcast being Comcast, the company has a semi-nefarious plan B. Part of that plan is to abuse its monopoly over broadband to deploy arbitrary and unnecessary usage caps and overage fees. These restrictions are glorified rate hikes applied to non competitive markets, with the added advantage of making streaming video more expensive. It's a punishment for choosing to leave Comcast's walled garden.But Comcast appears to have discovered another handy trick that involves using its broadband monopoly to hamstring cord cutters. Reports emerged this week that the company is upgrading the speeds of customers in Houston and parts of the Pacific Northwest, but only if they continue to subscribe to traditional cable television. The company's press release casually floats over the fact that only Comcast video customers will see these upgrades for now:

Another federal court is wrestling with compelled decryption and it appears the Fifth Amendment will be no better off by the time it's all over. A federal judge in North Carolina has decided compelling decryption of devices is only a small Fifth Amendment problem -- one that can be overlooked if the government already possesses certain knowledge. [h/t Orin Kerr]The defendant facing child porn charges requested relief from a magistrate's order to compel decryption. The government isn't asking Ryan Spencer to turn over his passwords. But it wants exactly the same result: decrypted devices. The government's All Writs Order demands Spencer unlock the devices so law enforcement can search their contents. As the court notes in the denial of Spencer's request, the Fifth Amendment doesn't come into play unless the act of production -- in this case, turning over unlocked devices -- is both "testimonial" and "incriminating."Spencer argued both acts are the same. The government may not ask him directly for his passwords, but a demand he produce unlocked devices accomplishes the same ends. As the court notes, the argument holds "superficial appeal." It actually holds a bit more than that. A previous dissenting opinion on the same topic said the government cannot compel safe combinations by "either word or deed."This opinion [PDF], however, goes the other way. Judge Breyer likes the wall safe analogy, but arrives at a different conclusion than Justice Stevens did in an earlier dissent. The court finds drawing a Fifth Amendment line at password protection would produce a dichotomy it's not willing to accommodate.

Year after year, we're installing millions upon millions of "internet of things" devices on home and business networks that have only a fleeting regard for security or privacy. The width and depth of manufacturer incompetence on display can't be understated. Thermostats that prevent you from actually heating your home. Smart door locks that make you less secure. Refrigerators that leak Gmail credentials. Children's toys that listen to your kids' prattle, then (poorly) secure said prattle in the cloud. Cars that could, potentially, result in your death.The list goes on and on, and it grows exponentially by the week, especially as such devices are quickly compromised and integrated into massive new botnets. And as several security experts have noted, nobody in this chain of dysfunction has the slightest interest in doing much about this massive rise in "invisible pollution":

We've talked quite a bit about Surban Express in these pages. The bus company chiefly works the Illinois university circuit, bussing students and others between the schools and transportation hubs like O'Hare Airport. In addition, the company also regularly sues any customers critical of its services, occasionally runs away from those suits, then refiles them, all while owner Dennis Toeppen harasses and publicly calls out these customers on the company website and its social media accounts. Also, the company has a deep history of treating non-white customers differently and poorly than others, culminating in a recent advertisement it sent out promising riders that they won't feel like they're in China when on its buses (the University of IL has a sizable Asian student population). After that advertisement, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan announced an investigation into the company's practices, prompting Suburban Express to apologize several times for the ad.Well, if Toeppen had hoped those apologies would keep the AG at bay, it didn't work. Madigan has now sued the company in Chicago for discriminatory behavior and the mistreatment of its customers.

In the last few years, a lot of the conversation around technology in general has shifted its focus from excitement about the obvious benefits to concern about its downfalls and side effects. It even feels like there's a general sense that "technology is bad for society" in a lot of places. This comes with a lot of associated myths, including the prominent idea that "if you're not paying for something, you're the product being sold" — an idea that is, at best a massive oversimplification. So on this week's podcast we're discussing the changing cultural attitudes towards technology, especially free online services and the many myths and misunderstandings about how they operate.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.

An ultra-safe Michigan town of 6,800 has claimed more than $1 million in military equipment through the Defense Department's 1033 program. The program allows law enforcement agencies to obtain anything from file cabinets to mine-resistant assault vehicles for next to nothing provided the agencies can show a need for the equipment. Most can "show" a "need," since it's pretty easy to type something up about existential terrorist/drug threats. Boilerplate can be adjusted as needed, but for the most part, requests are granted and oversight -- either at the federal and local level -- is almost nonexistent.This has come to a head in Thetford Township, the fourth-safest municipality in Michigan, and home to more than $1 million in military gear and two (2) police officers.

Adblocking is something that many people feel strongly about, as the large number of comments on previous posts dealing with the topic indicates. Publishers, too, have strong feelings here, including the belief that they have a right to make people view the ads they carry on their sites. (Techdirt, of course, has a rather different position.) In Germany, publishers have sued the makers of AdBlock Plus no less than five times -- and lost every case. It will not surprise Techdirt readers to learn that those persistent defeats did not stop the German media publishing giant Axel Springer from trying yet again, at Germany's Supreme Court. It has just lost. As Adblock Plus explains in a justifiably triumphant blog post:

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UK civil liberties group Liberty has won a significant legal battle against the Snoopers Charter. A recent ruling [PDF] by the UK High Court says the data retention provisions, which include mandated extended storage of things like web browsing history by ISPs, are incompatible with EU privacy laws.The court found the data retention provisions are at odds with civil liberties protections for a couple of reasons. First, the oversight is too limited to be considered protective of human rights asserted by the EU governing body. As the law stands now, demands for data don't require independent oversight or authorization.Second, even though the Charter claims demands for data will be limited to "serious crimes," the actual wording shows there are no practical limitations preventing the government from accessing this data for nearly any reason at all.The decision quotes the Charter's stated reasons for obtaining data, which range from "public safety," to "preventing disorder" to "assessing or collecting taxes." Obviously, the broad surveillance powers will not be limited to "serious crimes," contrary to the government's assertions in court.

Sprint and T-Mobile are once again talking megamerger. The two companies tried to merge in 2014, but had their romantic entanglements blocked by regulators who (quite correctly) worried that the elimination of one of just four major players in the space would eliminate jobs, reduce competition and drive up costs for consumers. Emboldened by the Trump FCC's rubber stamping of industry desires, the two companies again spent much of last year talking about a potential tie up, though those efforts were ultimately scuttled after the two sides couldn't agree on who'd get to run the combined entity.But the two companies appear to have settled their disagreements, and over the weekend announced they'd be attempting to merge once again as part of a $26 billion deal. Executives for both companies spent most of the weekend trying to convince the public that dramatically reducing competitors in the sector would magically somehow create more competition:

DNA isn't the perfect forensic tool, but it's slightly preferable to the body of junk science prosecutors use to lock people up. It's ability to pinpoint individuals is overstated, and the possibility of contamination makes it just as easy to lock up innocent people as garbage theories like bite mark matching.In terms of process of elimination, it's still a go-to for prosecutors. The rise of affordable DNA testing has provided a wealth of evidence to law enforcement. Investigators are no longer limited to samples they've taken from arrestees. Databases full of DNA info are within reach 24 hours a day -- and all law enforcement needs is an account and a few bucks to start tracking down DNA matches from members of the public who've never been arrested.

If this tech becomes a routine part of law enforcement loadouts, judicial Fourth and Fifth Amendment findings are going to be upended. Or, at least, they should be. I guess citizens will just have to see how this all shakes out.

The world is slowly but surely marching towards newer and better forms of artificial intelligence, with some of the world's most prominent technology companies and governments heavily investing in it. While limited or specialist AI is the current focus of many of these companies, building what is essentially single-trick intelligent systems to address limited problems and tasks, the real prize at the end of this rainbow is an artificial general intelligence. When an AGI could be achieved is still squarely up in the air, but many believe this to be a question of when, not if, such an intelligence is created. Surrounding that are questions of ethics that largely center on whether an AGI would be truly sentient and conscious, and what that would imply about our obligations to such a mechanical being.Strangely, patent law is being forcibly injected into this ethical equation, as the USPTO has come out in favor of the algorithms governing AI and AGI being patentable.

One of the recurrent themes on Techdirt is that law itself should not become a tool for unlawful abuse. No matter how well-intentioned, if a law provides bad actors with the ability and opportunity to easily chill others' speech or otherwise lawful activity, then it is not a good law.The CASE Act is an example of a bad law. On the surface it may seem like a good one: one of the reasons people are able to abuse the legal system to shut down those they want to silence is because getting sucked into a lawsuit, even one you might win, can be so ruinously expensive. The CASE Act is intended to provide a more economical way to resolve certain types of copyright infringement disputes, particularly those involving lower monetary value.But one of the reasons litigation is expensive is because there are number of checks built into it to make sure that before anyone can be forced to pay damages, or be stopped from saying or doing what they were saying or doing, that the party making this demand is actually entitled to. A big problem with the CASE Act is that in exchange for the cost-savings it may offer, it gives up many of those critical checks.In recognition of the harm removal of these checks would invite, EFF has authored a letter to the House Judiciary Committee raising the alarm on how the CASE Act would only aggravate, rather than remediate, the significant troll problem.Per the letter, federal courts have been increasingly "reining in [trolling behavior] by demanding specific and reliable evidence of infringement—more than boilerplate allegations—before issuing subpoenas for the identity of an alleged infringer. Some federal courts have also undertaken reviews of copyright troll plaintiffs’ communications with their targets with an eye to preventing coercion and intimidation. These reforms have reduced the financial incentive for the abusive business model of copyright trolling."But under the CASE Act, these provisions would not apply. Instead

Last week, we wrote a post on the appeals court ruling upholding the 15 month prison sentence for Eric Lundgren. Lundgren gave an interesting interview with the Verge explaining his position on all of this, while Microsoft -- feeling the heat from multiple stories criticizing its role in the prosecution -- put out a somewhat scathing blog post from VP Frank Shaw insisting everyone has this wrong, and presenting an argument that Lundgren was a low down dirty pirate who is pulling the wool over everyone's eyes.It does appear that Lundgren is overstating things in the interview he gives, especially this part:

When Blizzard decided to pretzel copyright law such that cheating in its online games constituted copyright infringement in a novel way that makes no sense, we warned that other game studios would join this insanity party and create a true judicial problem for the courts. Unfortunately for the world, we were right about that, and several other studios began claiming that such cheats broke EULAs and that this somehow resulted in copyright infringement, despite no actual copying occurring. Among those other studios was Epic, makers of the popular Fortnite game, but unique in that it managed to sweep up a 14 year old using a cheat in its lawsuits. The prospect of suing high school freshmen was likely not what EPIC had in mind with its lawsuits and, after the teen's mother responded to the court chastising the company for the lawsuit and also arguing that her son could not have agreed to the EULA as a minor, we noted what a massive PR nightmare this had become for Epic.

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