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If you haven't noticed, the entertainment industry has a new, terrifying bogeyman. Over the last year or two, pressure from entertainment industry lobbying groups has resulted in an all-out war on streaming video devices (aka computers) that run Kodi, the video streaming software. Kodi has technically been around since 2002, first as Xbox Media Player, after which it became the Xbox Media Center until 2014. The XBMC Foundation then renamed the software Kodi, and it became popular as an easy way to store and stream content, including copyrighted content, from hardware running Kodi to other devices in or out of the home.For years now, tinkerers everywhere have built custom-made PCs that use the open-source Kodi platform. In more recent years, outfits like Dragonbox or SetTV have taken things further by selling users tailor-made hardware that provides easy access to live copyrighted content by not only including Kodi, but integrating numerous tools and add-ons that make copyright infringement easier. Driven largely by clearly-terrified entertainment-industry execs and lobbyists, numerous studios, Netflix and Amazon have tried to sue these efforts out of existence.Even the FCC has tried to help the entertainment industry in this fight, demanding that Ebay and Amazon crack down on the sale of such devices. Since the FCC lacks authority over copyright, it has instead tried to justify its involvement here by focusing on these devices' illegal use of the FCC approval logo. It's another big favor to the entertainment industry by the Pai FCC, who you'll recall killed efforts to help make the traditional cable box sector more open and competitive.But the fight has also been pushed well beyond "fully loaded" Kodi-embedded devices specifically built and sold with an eye on copyright infringement. Google, for example, has banned the word Kodi from its autocomplete filter despite the fact that the Kodi software is perfectly legal. Facebook has also been piling on, initially updating its commerce policy to ban the promotion of "products or items" that facilitate or encourage unauthorized access to digital media.Last week, Cordcutter news was the first to notice that Facebook had since tailored its commerce policy further to specifically ban Facebook users from promoting "the sale or use of streaming devices with KODI installed.":Facebook hasn't banned the sale of any devices that are compatible with Kodi-streaming devices (keyboards, remotes). But the specific focus on Kodi remains a problem because, again, Kodi itself isn't illegal. Nor is building a small custom-PC with Kodi (or any of numerous variants like Plex) installed. Banning users for selling custom PCs that just happen to include software the entertainment industry assumes will be used for piracy is an obnoxious over-reach, but it should make it clear just how terrified the entertainment industry is of such devices.It's an age-old story. This "threat" (which again is perfectly-legal hardware running perfectly-legal software) could be countered by offering consumers better, more modifiable, and open products and services. Instead, as we saw with the cable industry's massive disinformation attack against cable box reform efforts, the goal is always to keep everything unrealistically locked down to the detriment of the right to tinker and consumer choice.

Here's one that might create a bit of a stir. The history of the 20th century and maximalist, ever expanding copyright is often associated with one particular company: Disney. I mean, the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) is regularly called the "Mickey Mouse Protection Act" and Tom Bell once created this lovely Mickey Mouse Curve showing how copyright terms always seemed to expand just before the original movie starring Mickey, Steamboat Willie was about to enter the public domain:This pattern might finally (miraculously) end this year -- but not because Disney has become enlightened. Rather, it's mainly because Disney's lobbying influence is not what it once was, and SOPA seemed to make both Congress and the legacy entertainment industry realize that they would almost certainly lose another such fight on an issue like this (not that there weren't attempts to slip provisions into trade agreements that had the potential to expand copyright terms).However, it does seem notable -- as first spotted by Eriq Gardner at The Hollywood Reporter -- that Disney has now been put in the possibly awkward position of complaining about "overzealous copyright holders," and talking about the importance of user rights and fair use to protect free speech and the First Amendment. No, really.Disney, of course, owns ABC. Back in May (though the complaint appears to incorrectly state March), ABC aired a two-hour program entitled The Last Days of Michael Jackson. The Michael Jackson Estate was not pleased and sued for copyright infringement. The complaint itself is quite a read. It completely mocks the program in question:

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Yet again, when it comes to digital goods, you don't own what you buy. Inmates in Florida's prison system are learning this fact of life, thanks to a change in jail "entertainment" providers.

So FCC boss Ajit Pai will need to don some tap-dancing shoes this Thursday, when he'll be forced to explain to a Senate oversight committee why his agency not only made up a DDOS attack, but lied repeatedly to the press and Congress about it.As we recently noted, e-mails obtained by FOIA request have proven that the FCC completely made up a DDOS attack in a bizarre bid to downplay the fact that John Oliver's bit on net neutrality crashed the agency website last year. A subsequent investigation by the FCC Inspector General confirmed those findings, showing not only that no attack took place, but that numerous FCC staffers misled both Congress and the media when asked about it.Pai initially tried to get out ahead of the scandal and IG report by issuing a statement that threw his employees under the bus while playing dumb. According to Pai's pre-emptive statement, the entire scandal was the fault of the FCC's since-departed CIO and other employees who mysteriously failed to alert him that this entire shitshow was occurring (you can just smell the ethical leadership here):

The Australian government is looking to revamp its compelled access laws to fight encryption and other assorted technological advances apparently only capable of being used for evil. It's getting pretty damn dark Down Under, according to the Department of Home Affairs' announcement of the pending legislation.

Those steeped in ownership culture often have the wrong idea when it comes to trademark laws. In the minds of some, trademark laws can be used like publicity rights laws, wherein a famous somebody -- or that somebody's heirs -- can use that fame to control all uses of references to that somebody for ever and ever. That, of course, is not how trademark laws work. Instead, trademark law is designed to protect the public from confusion by allowing some monopolistic use of names and terms in some markets and only if actual commerce is taking place.This is a lesson the management company of the late renowned martial arts star Bruce Lee has now learned the hard way. Bruce Lee Enterprises attempted to both block the trademark registration for production company Barisons in the UK, which applied for a mark covering its forthcoming Jun Fan: the Bruce Lee Musical, and also to apply for a "Jun Fan" mark in the theatrical designation itself. Jun Fan, if you're not aware, was the birth name of Bruce Lee.The problem for BLE is that Barisons had already communicated its intention to put on the show with BLE and defended itself by accusing BLE of registering for its own trademark purely to block the production company's show, without any intention of putting on its own theatrical production.

The Iowa Supreme Court has decided to lower standards for law enforcement officers in its state. The ruling [PDF] issued earlier this summer gives state officers the opportunity to dismiss lawsuits against them by asserting qualified immunity. Prior to this decision, there was no qualified immunity defense state actors could raise in court. They were actually forced to actually defend themselves in court, making it easier for plaintiffs' claims to survive an early motion to dismiss and bringing them closer to justice. (via Bleeding Heartland)The case -- Baldwin v. City of Estherville -- involves an arrest for a crime that didn't exist. It involves driving an ATV through a city-owned ditch, something that's illegal under state law but not under the City of Estherville's laws. An arrest for something that wasn't actually illegal was followed by this lawsuit. It's a weird origin for a Fourth Amendment lawsuit, but the outcome makes holding officers accountable for their misdeeds much more difficult with the court's addition of qualified immunity to local government's litigation toolbox.A lot of discussion of other states and their local immunity defenses -- as well as whether or not Constitutional cases are torts rather than strict liability issues -- leads the court to the following conclusion:

There has long been anxiety around the "permanent record" of the internet, and recent public shamings based on old tweets have brought that fear to the forefront for many people. But the mass deletion of old tweets also means throwing out huge amounts of potentially valuable information. Is there a technological solution? A cultural one? This week, we're joined by returning guests Cathy Gellis and Parker Higgins to discuss a proposal for fixing the problem without sacrificing the permanent record.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.

For a while now we've been noting that while Ajit Pai professes to be a huge proponent of "closing the digital divide," most of his policies are doing the exact opposite. Pai's attacks on net neutrality, for example, will likely only act to drive up broadband prices for everyone as ISPs enjoy their newfound ability to creatively abusive captive customers in uncompetitive markets. And Pai has repeatedly attempted to fiddle with FCC data collection methodology with an eye toward obfuscating the industry's competitive failures (be that skyrocketing prices or poor coverage).That's of course when he hasn't been busy slowly-but-surely gutting programs designed to help bring broadband to the nation's less affluent areas.One of Pai's core policies has been a relentless attack on the FCC's Lifeline program. Lifeline was created under the Reagan administration and expanded under the George W. Bush administration, and provides low-income households with a measly $9.25 per month subsidy that low-income homes can use to help pay a tiny fraction of their wireless, phone, or broadband bills (enrolled participants have to chose one). The FCC under former FCC boss Tom Wheeler had voted to expand the service to cover broadband connections, something Pai (ever a champion to the poor) voted down.Traditionally this program had broad, bipartisan support and was never deemed even remotely controversial. But ever since Trump and Pai stumbled into town, the current FCC has slowly waged war on the program. For example Pai's FCC voted 3-2 last November to eliminate a $25 additional Lifeline subsidy for low-income native populations on tribal land. Pai's FCC also banned smaller mobile carriers from participating in the Lifeline program, a move opposed by even the larger companies (Verizon, AT&T) Pai's FCC normally nuzzles up to.But Pai's quest backfired late last week when a U.S. Appeals court issued a stay order (pdf) freezing Pai's efforts to kill Tribal broadband subsidies, the court arguing that Tribal organizations and smaller wireless carriers are likely to win their court challenge against the recent FCC changes.Small wireless carriers and several tribal organizations had sued the FCC (pdf) in the United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, noting the FCC "failed to engage affected tribal governments" ahead of the rule changes. Tribal leaders also filed a petition (pdf) claiming Pai's multi-pronged attack on Lifeline would only make it harder to connect tribal lands to the internet.So far the courts seem to be agreeing with them, and tribal groups have been quick to applaud the ruling:

New gear from Techdirt, now available on Teespring »No discussion about free speech gets very far without someone busting out the idea that "you can't yell fire in a crowded theatre". It's a phrase that's irritated actual free speech experts for years: it adds nothing to the discussion, and it's not even true — there are plenty of times when you can (not the least of which being if the theatre is actually on fire!) Moreover, the phrase itself is a relic of an old, awful, and overturned Supreme Court ruling that put someone in jail for criticizing the mandatory military draft in the First World War. The inimitable Ken White dug into the phrase's uselessness and horrible legacy in a 2012 Popehat post and, more recently, an episode of the Make No Law podcast.And now you can help fight back against this dangerous idea with new gear from Techdirt! The Free Speech Pro-Tip is available on t-shirts, hoodies, mugs and stickers from Teespring.Order yours today, and be sure to check out our storefront for other great Techdirt gear!

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Many years back, I remember seeing Michael Arrington, the founder of TechCrunch, being interviewed about that site (which at the time was on its way to becoming the first "mainstream" tech news blog). I'm paraphrasing, and possibly misremembering, but what stuck with me was that he suggested that, as a blog, you basically had to focus on one of three things to succeed: being first, being funny, or being insightful. And he had chosen "being first" as the strategy for TechCrunch -- trying to break news as quickly as possible. And while that makes sense as a business strategy if you can do it, it had absolutely no appeal to me for how we ran Techdirt. We always hoped to focus on adding more insight into various issues, than breaking news. That's not to say we don't break news every so often, but it's certainly not the focus.Last Thursday, I published a long post about the whole question of internet platforms cutting off certain users. While the actual title of the story was Platforms, Speech And Truth: Policy, Policing And Impossible Choices, it had a different title on our social media feeds:

A major component of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was the idea of line sharing, or local loop unbundling. Simply put, the rules set forth required that incumbent telcos needed to share their networks with smaller competitors, providing wholesale access to bandwidth. It was an effort to foster something vaguely resembling competition in the broadband space by letting smaller companies piggyback on existing network infrastructure. The thought was that because the barriers to market entry were so high (both politically and financially), this could help smaller competitors gain footholds that would otherwise be impossible.The effort didn't work out for several reasons.One, incumbent ISPs quickly got to work trying to make the process as difficult as possible, often causing intentional delays as smaller ISPs (CLECs) attempted to connect to incumbent networks (ILECs). Big ISPs also got quickly to work lobbying to kill the effort, and by the early aughts had largely succeeded. Big ISP executives then proudly proclaimed the effort was a failure from conception, ignoring that other countries, like France, took the idea and utilized it to great success (users in Paris can now get TV, broadband and phone service for a small fraction of what users in the States pay).That said, there were plenty of terribly-run ISPs from that era that died thanks to their own incompetence and terrible business plans. But by and large line sharing was a concept we never truly tried to make work. Still, some smaller ISPs not only survived, but thrived thanks to the rules.Like independent California ISP Sonic, which utilized those early line-sharing relationships as intended, and slowly-but-surely built out their own network on the back of the initial sharing relationship. Big ISPs like AT&T and Verizon, however, are now attempting to kill the last vestiges of those rules. In a recent blog post by telco lobbying organization US Telecom, telcos argue that the rules are no longer necessary, and (much like their attacks on net neutrality) eliminating them will drive all kinds of amazing "innovation and investment":

Last week, the Broward County School Board went after a Florida newspaper, claiming it should be held in contempt of court for publishing information the school district didn't properly redact. The Sun Sentinel obtained a copy of the Parkland school shooter's educational records as the result of a public records suit. Certain information was redacted -- or at least was supposed to be -- to comply with state and federal privacy laws.What was delivered to the Sun Sentinel by the district had black redaction bars covering two-thirds of the document. Unfortunately, the redactions were merely cosmetic. Anyone with a copy of the PDF could select the "redacted" text in the PDF and paste it into a text editor to see what was supposed to have been withheld. The school board screwed up, making it possibly liable for privacy law violations, but it went to court claiming it was all the Sun Sentinel's fault anyone's privacy got violated.The Sun Sentinel has now responded -- both with an editorial middle finger and a filing in court. (h/t Brittany Wallman) If everything goes the Sun Sentinel's way, not only will it not face contempt charges (there's been no ruling on the motion, so it appears the judge doesn't believe closing barn doors post-livestock exodus qualifies as an emergency), but might collect some cash from the school district for trying to silence the paper.From the motion [PDF]:

Earlier this year, we discussed a trademark lawsuit brought by the famous Billy Goat Tavern in Chicago against a chip company in Missouri called the Billy Goat Chip Co. At issue was the tavern's claim that the chip company's name and logos infringed on its trademarks. Interestingly, Billy Goat Chip Co. countersued with seemingly important information, including that it had been operating for a decade, had trademarks for its business for a decade, and that its branding differences were such that the potential for public confusion didn't exist. The Billy Goat Tavern, on the other hand, only had trademarks for its name for the tavern industry and didn't begin selling packaged food until 2017, at which time the tavern applied for marks in that industry as well.Honestly, the whole thing seems fairly cut and dry. Different markets, different products, and the very real potential that the chip company could get the tavern's trademarks cancelled based on its own first use. Yet, despite the Chicago judge presiding over the case essentially agreeing when ruling on Billy Goat Chip's motion to dismiss, the court is allowing all of this to go trial.

The "good faith" exception can be difficult to overcome. Courts seem willing to grant the government this Fourth Amendment workaround even when it seems apparent the government operated in bad faith.Take, for instance, the FBI's Playpen investigation. On the strength of a single warrant issued in Virginia, the FBI, in essence, searched computers all over the nation (and all over the world) to extract identifying info about the devices' users. Even when courts found the warrant to be invalid because of its blatant disregard for jurisdictional limitations (warrants can only be executed in the district they're issued), they still granted the government "good faith" because the FBI agent had relied on the judge's approval of the warrant to execute the search.But this was happening while the FBI was petitioning the rest of the government to remove jurisdictional limitations with amendments to Rule 41. So, this warrant was obtained while limits the FBI wanted lifted were in place, but its execution took place before the limits were lifted. Somehow, this was still considered "good faith," even if those overseeing the warrant and investigation knew the FBI planned to violate jurisdictional limitations with the deployment of its PII-scraping malware.This is only a small part of the federal court system's deference to law enforcement. "Good faith" is supposed to be the exception, not the rule, but hundreds of court rulings on evidence suppression bend over backwards to view law enforcement actions in the best possible light, even as evidence mounts outside the court system American policing is frequently unconstitutional, if not outright corrupt.When you see a court actually reject the government's "good faith" advances, you can be certain law enforcement has screwed up severely. This case, brought to our attention by the Sixth Circuit Blog, is one of those exceptional strippings of a Fourth Amendment exception.In this decision [PDF], the Sixth Circuit Appeals Court upholds the lower court's suppression of evidence. The Akron PD engaged in a lengthy drug investigation, but decided to take a few shortcuts to search a residence it vaguely speculated might be related to the drug dealer they were pursuing. The connective tissue of the warrant tore immediately upon judicial inspection. The supposed probable cause for an extensive, broad search of a residence? One time the guy they were surveilling parked his car in the driveway.The target of the investigation was Camiolo Rocha-Ayon Jr. The rest of this is related to Carl Tucker -- the person challenging the evidence's legal origins -- in ways only clear to the officer requesting the warrant.

Just recently, Tim Geigner wrote about how Nintendo's success with the relaunched Nintendo NES Classic showed how the company successfully competed with free, because there are plenty of NES emulators that can play ROMs for free. And yet, the NES Classic comes in a neat, easy to use package. And it's worth buying if only because it looks cool -- just like the original, but... tiny. I should know: I have one and it's great. And my wife can't stop playing Mario Bros. on it, though she keeps complaining about other games from her youth that are missing.But, of course, this is Nintendo we're talking about, so it's been busy, busy, busy suing a bunch of ROM sites and scaring others into shutting down. The site EmuParadise shut down recently with the following as part of its farewell message after 18 years in operation:

Earlier this year, US Border Patrol agent Lonnie Swartz was acquitted of second degree murder for killing a 16-year-old Mexican resident by firing sixteen bullets across the border into a Nogales, Mexico street. Ten of those hit Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez, killing him in Mexico, but with bullets fired from the United States.The excuse for emptying a clip into another country (and another country's citizen) was that Rodriguez and others were "throwing rocks" at Border Patrol agents. Considering there's a fence separating the US and Mexico side of Nogales -- and a decently sized one at that -- and the BP officers were free to move out of range of the rocks, it would appear there was no physical threat to Swartz's safety. Nonetheless, he felt compelled to shoot across the border 16 times. He may have escaped jail time, but he's not going to escape a lawsuit. (h/t Kevin Gosztola of ShadowProof)The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld the lower court's stripping of Swartz's qualified immunity. The decision [PDF] points out several things about how far the Constitution expands into Mexico when it involves an American on American soil firing deadly projectiles into another country.First off, the court notes J.A. (as he's referred to in the ruling) posed no threat to officers even if he was throwing rocks. (J.A.'s survivors claim he wasn't.) The Border Patrol had the high ground plus a fence to protect them from thrown rocks.

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It's been an interesting year for those of us who support strong privacy for the public -- in part because we've seen lots of movement on attempts to regulate privacy. However, you may have noticed that we've also regularly criticized almost every attempt to regulate privacy. We've been highly critical of the GDPR, Europe's big privacy regulation that is impacting basically every website globally. And we were even more critical of California's disaster of a privacy bill, that was a rush job with tremendous problems. And now that the news has come out that the White House is working on a domestic version of the GDPR (perhaps in an attempt to preempt California and other states from making a mess of things) we should, perhaps, clarify why nearly all attempts at regulating privacy, are likely to be complete disasters.And I know that many people who advocate in favor of privacy issues are supportive of at least some aspects of these bills. And I completely understand where they're coming from. So let's set some parameters: privacy is incredibly important -- and it's something that is often undervalued by those services that collect other people's private information, and a failure to protect privacy can have massive, life-changing consequences. But, I believe that almost everyone is confused about what privacy really is. We've discussed this a few times before, but I think it's important to recognize that the more we fail to properly understand privacy, the more likely it is that every attempt to regulate it will fail badly, often creating significantly bad consequences that will do a lot more harm than good. That doesn't mean we shouldn't protect privacy, however, and towards the end of this post, I'll suggest a better path forward on that front.The basic issue is this: privacy is not a "thing," it's a trade-off. Yet, nearly all attempts to regulate privacy treat it as a thing -- a thing that needs "protecting." As such, you automatically focus on regulating "how do we protect this thing" which generally means prohibitions on sharing information or data, or even being willing to delete that data. But, if we view privacy that way, we also lose out on all sorts of situations where someone could benefit greatly from sharing that data, without the downside risks. When I say privacy is a trade-off I mean it in the following way: almost everything we do can involve giving up some amount of private information -- but we often choose to do so because the trade-off is worthwhile.For example, leaving my house to go grocery shopping involves a trade-off in privacy. Someone could see me and recognize me, and could figure out certain pieces of information about me: what I shop for, what I eat, perhaps generally where I live, and the fact that I'm not home at that moment. They might also be able to spot what kind of car I drive, or divine other information about me from the things that they see me buying. That's all "private" information that is in some way exposed. Now, for most of us, we consider this trade-off worth it. First of all, the potential downside risk is extremely low. We doubt most people would recognize or care who we are, and we doubt that anyone who does so would glean information from this that could be used abusively. Also, the benefits are pretty high (we get the stuff we need). There are scenarios under which that might change (for example, this is why many top celebrities don't do their own grocery shopping -- the privacy "cost" to them is much higher, and thus the trade-off equation is different).When we move into the digital world, once again, the issue that many people have is that this trade-off equation is a lot more of a gray area, and it makes people uncomfortable. In the grocery example above, for most people it's an easy call: the benefits outweigh the costs by a very large measure. When we talk about online services, what makes some people nervous is that this isn't as clear. And it's unclear for a number of important reasons: the risk of abuse is not clear, so we don't have as good an understanding of the potential costs as doing something like grocery shopping. Similarly, many of the costs appear "hidden" in that online services aren't completely upfront about what data they're collecting on us and what they're doing with it. The benefits still seem to be there -- otherwise why would people be using these services so much? -- but the trade-off equation includes a lot of guesses and uncertainty.On top of that, we've definitely seen a few cases of information abuse or misuse -- though most of that has been around data breaches, identity fraud or credit card fraud. But, the potential downsides seem much more serious.And thus, when we're dealing with services online, we're left in a situation that has many people reasonably nervous. And it's not because our privacy is lost or being abused but that we don't have a good sense of the risk of such abuse and thus we can't accurately gauge the the cost side of the equation (we similarly may have more difficulty measuring the benefits side, but that's perhaps less of a big deal here).When we regulate privacy as a "thing," rather than a "trade-off," however, we end up cutting off many possibilities where people would actually be perfectly happy to trade some information for some larger benefit. This leads to things like rules and restrictions on what kind of information companies can even ask to use in offering services. Even worse, it often leads to rules that give companies who are holding our data even greater control over that data, by including "responsibilities" that actually serve to increasing the power of the companies over the users.But there are better ways of dealing with all of this, starting with recognizing the idea that privacy is a trade-off. If that's the case, there should be two key concepts for any competent approach to privacy: transparency and user control. As discussed above, many of the problems today (and nearly all of the concerns) are over the lack of transparency. This impacts both the cost and the benefit sides of the equation. If we don't understand what data is being collected or what it's being used for (or how it's being stored), along with what actual benefits we're getting, it's much, much more difficult to make an informed decision about whether or not the trade-off is worth it. And the issue of control is connected to that, in that the more control end users have over their own data, the more they're able to make informed choices in weighing the costs and benefits.Now, much of the problem here comes from various companies themselves, who for a variety of reasons have decided it's better to have less transparency and less user control involved. Perhaps it's because they feel that if people know the actual costs and benefits, they'll decide it's not worth it. Perhaps it's because it's difficult to provide both the transparency and control that is necessary to make informed decisions. Perhaps they're afraid that transparency and control might also create unnecessary friction leading to poor choices. It's likely to be some combination of these along with multiple other factors as well.However, when many of the regulatory aspects focus on the "requirements" for companies using data, it often serves to harm the abilities of users to actually control their data. Yes, it may create opportunities for users to delete all of their data as held by a service, but "delete/not delete" is a very crude level of control. A more ideal world might be one where users have a form of a "data bank" which they control, and where they know what data is in there. And, if they want to use a service, that service could explain what data it needs, why it needs that data, and for how long it would like to access it. Then, the user can make a more informed choice, better weighing the trade-offs, and decide whether it will allow access to the data for that purpose, or if it wishes to somehow offer an alternative agreement.Unfortunately, very few of these "privacy regulations" move us towards such a world, where there is greater transparency and end-user control. Instead, they mostly focus on putting onerous and often extraneous and unnecessary requirements on services to better "protect" data. And, again, all that does is increase their power, limit competition and limit the ability of new services to appear that do provide more transparency and control.So every time we see new stories about privacy regulations, think about whether or not they'd lead to a world in which end users have more control and more transparency, or if they really seem designed to just put up enough roadblocks that only the largest companies can handle them... and which will likely lock our data even more tightly within those giant entities.

There's several reasons that the hype surrounding Google Fiber has stalled; most notably Alphabet executives growing weary of the slow pace and high costs of traditional fiber deployments (something they should have understood going in). But another major obstacle for Google Fiber was the boring old utility pole. Google Fiber attempted expansion in numerous cities like Nashville and Louisville, but ran face first into an antiquated utility pole attachment process that traditionally favored incumbent operators, and lawyers for AT&T and Comcast, who were eager to sue to keep their dominance intact.As it stands, when a new competitor tries to enter a market, it needs to contact each individual ISP to have them move their own utility pole gear. This convoluted and bureaucratic process can take months, and incumbent ISPs (which often own the poles in question) have a long and proud history of then slowing things down even further by intentionally dragging their feet. After all, the very last thing purportedly "free market" adoring entities like AT&T and Comcast want to deal with is honest to goodness competition.To help fix this problem, Google Fiber and several other companies proposed new "one touch make ready" rules that would dramatically streamline the pole attachment process. Under this proposal, just one licensed and insured contractor would be allowed to move any company's gear, provided they give advanced notice. When several cities tried to pass such rules regionally, they found themselves on the receiving end of lawsuits by AT&T and Comcast.Fast forward to last week, when the Ajit Pai FCC formally approved plans to take these "one touch" rules and implement them federally. A statement from Pai correctly assesses that this is one of numerous logjams preventing fiber competition from taking root:

The recent exposure of the TSA's "Quiet Skies" program by the Boston Globe is leading to more terrorist watchlist litigation. The "Quiet Skies" program sends air marshals all over the US to watch travelers swallow, shop, use the restroom, and stare at things. It's suspicionless surveillance even the air marshals disagree with, with some quoted by the Globe calling the program a worthless waste of tax dollars, if not just a vehicle for repeated Constitutional violations.The Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is using this information in two of its lawsuits against the government. Its lawsuit against the Terrorist Screening Center -- which originated in 2016 -- will hopefully be aided by the Globe's reporting. A motion to compel discovery [PDF] seeks details on the program for use in this litigation. The filing notes the government continues to hide information about its many watchlists from the plaintiffs it represents, forcing it to rely on leaked documents to obtain information it has already requested from the government.

This week, both our top comments on the insightful side come from our post about the MPAA's latest attack on free speech under the guise of saving it. In first place, it's a simple anonymous point made in response to a critic:

Five Years AgoThis week in 2013, we learned that lots of government agencies were trying to access that sweet, sweet NSA data — and that the DEA was not only getting it, but being instructed to cover up where it came from. Some data even made it to the IRS, with the same instructions. Once all this was revealed, the DOJ decided it should perhaps be "reviewed", which was small comfort. Then, it was revealed that the NSA scans all emails in and out of the country, and we got a look at the loophole the NSA uses to claim authority to spy on Americans. It turned out this loophole was created on the same day that the FISA court smacked down the NSA for violating the fourth amendment — a ruling people were eager to see, and the DOJ agreed to release a redacted version.Ten Years AgoThis week in 2008, copyright expert William Patry shut down his excellent blog because covering copyright issues had become "too depressing". To see what he means, look at other events that very same week: the Jammie Thomas trial was turning into a huge mess, Blizzard was trying to block a bot-maker from open-sourcing his code, a fight between TorrentSpy and the MPAA was turning into a major privacy battle thanks to some email spying, and Uri Geller was suing someone for debunking his psychic claims using an eight-second copyrighted clip. Mac clone-maker Psystar, facing a major lawsuit from Apple, was fighting back with an antitrust claim, and a Sony executive was apparently so aware of the failings of legal offerings that he encouraged customers in Australia and New Zealand to pirate PSP games.Fifteen Years AgoThis week in 2003, people were beginning to dig deeper into just how spammers make money and discovering it doesn't require a lot of customer sales as long as you can keep selling lists of spam targets — and because of this chain of list sales, even well-known companies were profiting from spam. Of course, there also were at least some people buying penis enlargement pills, too. Meanwhile, both Red Hat and IBM were fighting back against SCO's IP lawsuits, while the RIAA was still fighting hard to get info on filesharing students and generally warring with the EFF. And in an example of how much free culture terrifies some people, when Creative Commons reached out to MP3.com about partnering to give artists the option of using CC licenses, the company angrily responded by not just declining but demanding CC "cease and desist" from contacting any artists on MP3.com.

The court system belongs to the people. That's what a "presumption of openness" means. It's a public system, accessed by the public or by representatives of the public. With rare exception, documents filed with the court system should be made available for viewing by the public.The FISA court, which oversees a multitude of surveillance programs and national security investigations is a closed book. Until very recently, it operated in total darkness, much like the agencies seeking its approval for surveillance. The Snowden leaks changed that, moving it very slightly closer to a presumption of openness.The Director of National Intelligence -- nodding towards transparency in a mostly self-serving way -- has begun to declassify orders and rulings from the FISC. But a majority of FISC documents released by the ODNI haven't come from this hesitant step towards transparency. They've been forced out the government's hands by numerous FOIA lawsuits.Access to court documents shouldn't have to be litigated, even in the FISA court. That's the argument being made by Georgetown professor Laura K. Donohue in her FISA court brief [PDF]. The long, very interesting brief covers a number of issues and government arguments, but it all boils down to public access as a presumption, rather than a grudging concession after a courtroom loss in a FOIA case.Her brief note the FISA court controls the documents submitted to it and the orders/opinions it issues. When it decides its subservient to surveillance agencies and their national security assertions, the system of checks and balances is thrown out of whack. That's what's happened over the 40 years the court has been in operation. Government agencies and a number of administrations have decided it does not have the discretion to handle the release of court documents.This is obviously wrong. Donohue's brief sets the stage with a dismantling of the government's opacity arguments -- all designed to override the court's inherent authority to control the release of court documents. [Paragraph breaks added for readability.]

Two Los Angeles Sheriff's Department deputies are hearing -- for the fourth time -- they'll be personally responsible for a string of Constitutional violations resulting in them filling two innocent people with bullets. At this point, the officers have lost at the district level, the Appeals Court, got a partial remand (but no grant of immunity) from the Supreme Court, and are back in front of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals losing again.Deputies Christopher Conley and Jennifer Pederson were searching for a parolee named Ronnie O'Dell. A department briefing claimed O'Dell lived in a one-room shack behind a home owned by Paula Hughes. O'Dell did not live there. Instead, the deputies found -- after entering the shack without announcing their presence or obtaining a warrant -- Angel Mendez and Jennifer Garcia. Mendez, who had been sleeping on a futon, started to move a BB gun off the bed (the BB gun was used to shoot pests) and set it on the floor so he could stand up. Deputy Conley shouted "Gun!" and the rest -- all fifteen bullets of it -- is tragic history.From the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court's second pass [PDF] at this case:

In 2015, the state of New Mexico overhauled its asset forfeiture program. The reform bill all but eliminated civil asset forfeiture by creating a conviction requirement. This eliminated roadside shopping trips by New Mexico law enforcement in which "perps" were free to go, so long as they left everything else (cash, vehicles) behind.Despite the passage of this law, the Albuquerque PD continued to engage in asset forfeiture on pre-reform terms. The especially aggressive program saw citizens losing their vehicles to law enforcement because of acts committed by other drivers and the PD seized cars by the dozens during DWI arrests. The PD was sued by state legislators for its continued violations of the new law while the law enforcement agency repeatedly claimed the legislation just didn't apply to it.The plaintiff in this case -- who has just received a ruling that may cause serious problems for asset forfeiture programs elsewhere in the nation -- had her vehicle forfeited by the Albuquerque PD after her son drove it drunk. A ruling in this case allowed Arlene Harjo's lawsuit against the city to proceed, and also resulted in the PD dropping its unlawful -- if not unconstitutional -- program.

When we talk about the scourge that is copyright troll operations, and the wide path of legal destruction they've caused throughout the world, it can be easy to lose sight of just how precarious a business model it can be for the trolls. Loathe as any writer should be to engage in cliche, it is simply true that the best response to shut down this kind of non-litigious bullying is to simply punch back. After all, it is quite clear at this point that the last thing these trolling operations want as a response to their lawsuit-threat letters is for any actual lawsuit to be conducted. More specific to this story is how Guardaley, the shady German company that appears to setup shell operations throughout the world and cultivate law firms to enforce its operations, all too often forgets to bring any actual evidence to the courtroom when it does show up there and which otherwise does everything it can to stay out of the courtroom altogether.Again, bullies will tend to back down when you fight back against them. But backing down doesn't have to be the end of the story, as demonstrated by one Utah man that received a copyright trolling threat letter from an outfit called Criminal Productions (super on the nose, there, guys...), immediately lawyered up, and demanded that discovery begin.

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A few months ago, we wrote about (YET ANOTHER) terrible law Louisiana has on the books. Like its other terrible laws, this one is abused by law enforcement. The law itself -- which forbids the "intimidation" of public officials -- has already been ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge.This law is wielded by officers and prosecutors to ring people up for "intimidating" cops by doing things like threatening to sue or file complaints. The wording lends itself to this. It criminalizes anything that might "influence" a public official's "conduct." No doubt threats of lawsuits or complaints have some effect on officers and how they behave and react. The most noticeable effect isn't on the public officials. It's the addition of a charge specifically related to what a citizen says to a law enforcement officer if they're unhappy with the way they're being treated.Travis Seals was the recipient of one of these bogus charges as the result of him informing an officer he was going to file "lawful complaints" during his arrest for unknown charges. (The opinion only says "conduct not specifically reflected in the record.") He verbally objected to the arrest, which apparently led to the application of pepper spray and Seals' announcement of the pending filing of complaints.The lower court said the law was unconstitutional. Even though Seals was never officially charged by the DA, the DA still chose to fight for the bad law in court. And again, it's the state appealing the lower court's ruling. The state tried to get the case tossed for lack of standing, saying it had promised not to use that law against Seals in the future. The court disagrees, using a couple of footnotes (p. 5) to explain why this promise isn't really worth the PDF it's printed on before ruling on the law itself. It also points out the state has brought this charge in circumstances like these against 150 people, so it's not as though it's restraining itself for abusing a bad, broadly-written law.And it is incredibly broad, as the Fifth Circuit Appeals Court points out in its opinion [PDF]. (h/t Volokh Conspiracy)

Comcast has been dinged for a third significant website privacy vulnerability in almost as many months. Back in May, a bug in Comcast's website used to activate the company's Xfinity-branded routers opened the door to letting attackers trick the website into displaying the home address where the router is located, as well as the Wi-Fi name and password. Then last June, security researchers discovered that an API used by Comcast could be tricked into returning a swath of private customer data, including account numbers, a user's account address, and numerous details about a user's account, including what services are subscribed to.Comcast's now back in the news again, with BuzzFeed reporting that yet another security flaw in Comcast's website has potentially exposed customer information. Security researcher Ryan Stevenson (who also discovered the previous two vulnerabilities) found that two new, previously-unreported vulnerabilities exposed the the partial home addresses and Social Security numbers of more than 26.5 million Comcast customers.One of the flaws let an attacker exploit an "in home authentication" portal set up by Comcast that let customers pay their bills without logging in. The portal asked users to verify their identity by showing them partial snippets of four potential home addresses. While this was designed to be convenient, it opened the door to a potential hacker spoofing a Comcast user's IP address to obtain sensitive data. Once alerted, Comcast fixed the vulnerability and required that users enter their cable and broadband credentials to pay their bills.The other flaw was potentially more damning, since it exposed the last four digits of Comcast users' social security numbers:

More news comes from the Boston Globe about the TSA's "Quiet Skies" program. Having decided the skies were too quiet, the TSA started nominating people for surveillance based on god knows what and sent air marshals all over the US to tail "suspects" as they unsuspectingly went about their travels. Some of the targets included flight attendants and law enforcement officers. To those tasked with this futile (and likely unconstitutional) surveillance, the program is a waste of time and resources, if not a full-blown civil liberties catastrophe.To the TSA, this previously-hidden bullshit is just some more discretion-flexing on behalf of the American public to save them from terrorists it inadvertently admitted aren't even targeting aircraft anymore. Why go through the hassle of the boarding process, smuggling precursors past half-inept, half-asleep TSA agents when you can just rent a van from Home Depot and drive it into a crowd?The TSA insists the program has value and that it will continue to send air marshals out to tail flagged randos. It also insists better education of air marshals will shut complaining marshals the hell up. But what it failed to do in a Congressional hearing, called after the Globe's expose, is actually present any evidence the program works.

On the matter of trademark bullying, we typically talk about these cases as matters of legal outcomes and courtroom repercussions. Less discussed is the power of the masses in the form of protest and public shaming in order to combat trademark bullies. And, yet, that appears to be part of the equation trying to solve the irritation that is Aloha Poke Co.'s trademark bullying of actual Hawaiian poke joints out of their own culture.You will recall that we recently discussed Aloha Poke Co., the Chicago-based poke chain that doesn't count any actual Hawaiians among its founders, firing off cease and desist letters to all manner of other joints that use some version of "Aloha" and "Poke" in their names. Most of these other entities are owned and operated by actual Hawaiians, from which both words and their cultural relevance stems. With so many entities out there using what are fairly generic terms in the realm of anything Hawaiian, the suggestion for public confusion made by Aloha Poke Co. seems spurious at best. Perhaps as importantly, if the company thought that the public wouldn't get wind of its bullying, it appears that it was very, very wrong, as protests at its Chicago headquarters have been organized.

As you may recall, we've been working on a big fun project called Working Futures that mixes scenario planning and science fiction to start thinking about what the future of work might really look like. We've had a lot going on behind the scenes on that project, so expect more in the future. But, for now, we're also pitching a panel at SXSW next year on this topic entitled: Science Fiction Dreams of Electric Jobs, in which myself and Berit Anderson from the sci-fi/scenario planning company Scout.ai would be joined by two incredible science fiction writers, who have both worked in tech for years, and who are brilliant and insightful, Nicky Drayden and Ramez Naam, to discuss this topic and maybe do a little live scenario planning as well.But the way SXSW works (if you don't know) is that part of determining if your panel is accepted is that all the panels that make it past the first level of review then are put up on SXSW's "Panel Picker" platform for people to vote on over the next couple of weeks (voting closes on August 30th). The voting doesn't fully determine what makes it (I believe it only accounts for about 30% of the decision), but obviously it does help. So if you think this would be a good panel at SXSW, please head over and vote (and... if you think it would be an awful panel, you should go vote for some of the other stuff, much of which looks pretty awesome as well).

Sinclair Broadcast Group's $3.9 billion merger with Tribune Media has reached an inauspicious end. Tribune has formally announced that it's not only terminating the planned merger, but will be filing a lawsuit (pdf) against Sinclair for what the company states was an "unnecessarily aggressive" sales pitch to FCC regulators and the DOJ. According to Tribune, it's hoping to recoup its losses and "hold Sinclair accountable" for causing the companies' controversial merger to implode:

Eugene Volokh has tracked down another questionable defamation court order targeting Google with a delisting demand. The plaintiff doesn't appear to be abusing the legal process -- he may not understand the request the judge granted is unconstitutional -- but the whole thing seems more than a little weird.

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Warning 1: I'm about to talk about an issue that has a lot of nuance in it and no clear "good" answers -- and it's also one that many people have already made up their minds on one way or the other, and both sides will probably not really like at least part of what I have to say. That's cool. You get to live your own life. But, at the very least, I hope people can acknowledge that sometimes issues are more complex than they appear and having a nuanced discussion can be helpful, and I hope people can appreciate that.Warning 2: This is a long post, so I'm going to provide a TLDR at the top (right under this, in fact), but as noted above, a part of the reason it's long is because it's a complex issue and there's a lot of nuance. So I strongly advise that if your initial response to my TLDR version is "fuck you, you're so wrong because..." maybe try reading the whole post first, and then when you go down to the comments to write out "fuck you, you're so wrong..." you can explain yourself clearly and thoroughly and address the actual points in the post. Thanks!TLDR: Internet sites have every right in the world to kick people off their platforms, and there's no legal or ethical problem with that. No one's free speech is being censored. That said, we should be at least a bit concerned about the idea that giant internet platforms get to be some sort of arbiter of what speech is okay and what speech is not, and how that can impact society more generally. But there are possible solutions to this, even if none are perfect and some may be difficult to implement, and we should explore those more thoroughly, rather than getting into screaming fights over who should or shouldn't be allowed to use various internet platforms.So, this post was originally going to be about the choices that Facebook and other internet platforms make concerning who is allowed on their platforms, specifically in response to an interview that Mark Zuckerberg gave back in July, in which he noted that he didn't think Facebook should remove Holocaust deniers from its platform, saying:

As we've noted for a while, a VPN isn't some kind of magic bullet. While it might help you hide some of your online activity from snoopy governments, nosy ISPs, or a packet sniffing dudebro at the coffee shop, it's not some mystical panacea. Unfortunately, in the wake of seemingly endless privacy scandals and a federal apathy to any meaningful privacy rules of the road, many people have been flocking to VPNs without understanding that many VPNs are scams, poorly configured (making you less secure, not more), and that promises made about data retention are often hollow.Ironically, many of the companies most responsible for our privacy problems have now jumped into the VPN business to capitalize on consumer worries they themselves helped create. Like Facebook, which, in the shadow of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, thought it might be a good idea to launch a VPN that pretends to protect consumers from online harm, but actually exists solely to track your behavior online when you're not visiting Facebook.Verizon, fresh off of its successful efforts to kill net neutrality and FCC broadband privacy protections, also recently launched a new VPN service dubbed Safe WiFi. Safe WiFi, you'll be happy to learn, "protects your privacy and blocks ad-tracking." But when I began digging into Verizon's VPN for Motherboard, I found that the company had rushed the service to market so quickly, it failed to even write an actual privacy policy for the service. Instead, the company informed me it had simply copied a placeholder privacy policy lifted from McAfee, the company that actually built its VPN. According to this privacy policy, Verizon's VPN collects, well, pretty much everything:

A redaction failure by a public entity has led to a request for contempt charges to be brought against a Florida newspaper and two of its reporters. The Sun Sentinel obtained a copy of the Broward County School Board's report on the Parkland shooter after a successful public records request lawsuit. The report was heavily redacted… or at least, it was supposed to be. But the school board screwed this task up.

Back in May, we wrote about the bizarre attempt by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to exempt itself from the EU's new privacy legislation, the GDPR. ICANN sought an injunction to force EPAG, a Tucows-owned registrar based in Bonn, Germany, to collect administrative and technical contacts as part of the domain name registration process. EPAG had refused, because it felt doing so would fall foul of the GDPR. A German court turned down ICANN's request, but without addressing the question whether gathering that information would breach the GDPR.As the organization's timeline of the case indicates, ICANN then appealed to the Higher Regional Court of Cologne, Germany, against the ruling. Meanwhile, the lower court that issued the original judgment decided to re-visit the case, which it has the option to do upon receipt of an appeal. However, it did not change its view, and referred the matter to the upper Court. The Appellate Court of Cologne has issued its judgment (pdf), with a comprehensive smackdown of ICANN, yet again (via The Register):

A man convicted for fraud makes his second appearance in the Fourth Circuit Appeals Court. The first was an attempt to have his sentence vacated via complaints of prosecutorial misconduct. Gregory Bartko not only discovered a government witness had perjured himself, but during his trial, the prosecution routinely delayed its production of evidence -- something the district court noticed. It didn't result in a new trial, but it did bring judicial hellfire down on the heads of the prosecution team.The Fourth Circuit's 2013 decision doesn't pull punches.

A grand jury will indict a ham sandwich.The corollary, of course, is "if that's what the prosecutor wants." And prosecutors rarely want their ham sandwiches indicted.An unarmed man shot in the stomach by Officer Sarah Stumler of the Louisville Metro Police recently discovered the corollaries of this truism still hold, even if the city is giving the victim $1.8 million in taxpayer cash to settle his lawsuit.There's another lawsuit underway over the killing of Ismael Lopez by a Mississippi police officer. The Southaven Police Department obtained a warrant but went to the wrong address, shot at Lopez's dogs, and apparently shot him after encountering him carrying a gun. The link between these is the failure to process the ham.

So we've kind of been over this. For more than two decades now we've pointed out that electronic voting is neither private nor secure. We've also noted that despite this several-decade long conversation, many of the vendors pushing this solution are still astonishingly-bad at not only securing their products, but acknowledging that nearly every reputable security analyst and expert has warned that it's impossible to build a secure fully electronic voting system, and that if you're going to to do so anyway, at the very least you need to include a paper trail system that's not accessible via the internet.Having apparently learned nothing, reports emerged this week that West Virginia is considering launching an initiative that would let some state residents vote via cellphone. To be clear, the effort initially appears focused on letting troops stationed overseas vote. Not surprisingly, more than a few folks were quick to highlight to CNN how this would be an arguably terrible idea:

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Check out our new list of all the ways you can support Techdirt »Let's get a few things out of the way first: we are rarely aggressive in asking for support on Techdirt. Many other sites do complete takeovers or popups or have pleas for funding that take up half the screen. We don't do that. However, every so often we do remind folks that we need support to keep running -- so today I'm going to do that with what is hopefully an interesting story and a discussion on the kinds of things we won't do for money.If you haven't yet heard it, I want to recommend a recent episode of the Reply All podcast entitled An Ad for the Worst Day of Your Life. It is quite an amazing story involving a guy whose wife died suddenly and unexpectedly a day after their daughter was born. That happened back in 2008, and the guy, Matt, was quite understandably distraught. He began blogging about his life as a widower and single father. The blog caught on and got more and more attention. Eventually, Matt decided the blog was no longer necessary, pulled it down, and moved on with his life.Then, this year, just as he was about to get remarried, he suddenly started seeing ads with a giant picture of him -- and his dead wife. Those ads were showing up everywhere, thanks to the various sites that include awful units full of "Stories From Around the Web" or "Stuff You May Have Missed" or whatever. You know what they look like. They're always filled with the worst kind of clickbait crap imaginable. "Whatever happened to..." "Eat this if you want to live longer..." That kind of stuff. Here, I just randomly opened up a story on Google News, scrolled to the bottom and got this example:They're all over the damn place -- and many publishers love them, because they pay a lot more than just about any other ads. The Reply All episode calls these "Chumboxes" -- a term I'd not heard before -- and then goes through the process of figuring out how Matt's picture kept showing up in them. It's convoluted, but involves content farms playing a weird arbitrage game of writing clickbait stories and then trying to attract traffic to sell their own ads. A story about a dead wife gets clicks. And that generates more fake stories about Matt and his wife and more ads and more clicks. It's a huge mess of crap, but it pays incredibly well.The two major companies who provide these things are Outbrain and Taboola. And they're big. There are a few other smaller operations, but Outbrain and Taboola are the main ones. Outbrain has raised nearly $200 million and bought up many of its smaller competitors. Taboola has raised $160 million.Here's the thing: Taboola, specifically, has been after us to put these ads on our site for years. We told them no, and they kept coming back. We told them no again and explained that we think those ads are crap and are an insult to our readers (because they are). And the company said, "No, we have quality filters and we promise it'll show good ads." Eventually we said we'd take a look and ran a test with our content using their "quality filters." And, guess what? The ads were still awful crap that would be insulting to you. So we told Taboola no. But they don't let up. Every few weeks we get another request from Taboola. They email. They try to friend us on Linkedin. They try to friend us on Facebook. And we keep saying no.Because, despite what some trolls will say about us doing anything that will get clicks or money, we have no desire for short term revenue that fucks over our community. Because we actually value you guys (even some of our critics). Using crappy services like Taboola and Outbrain shows a lack of trust and lack of respect for your community. It shows a level of short-term money-grab thinking that is insulting and disrespectful. And that's too bad, because the concept behind Taboola and Outbrain could be good. If we could use a service like that which would actually take you to good and relevant information around the web, and get us paid at the same time, that would be great. Indeed, seven or eight years ago we partnered with a company that promised that. And then, a month later, they said they were no longer doing that and wanted us to do sketchy stuff. And we no longer work with that company.We've talked before about how traditional banner ads -- the kinds from Google AdSense, for example -- have become next to useless over the last few years. The rates keep dropping to the point that they're barely worth including at all. In fact, we're exploring some new advertising programs that respect our community by not including any tracking technology at all, so if you happen to work for a company that wants to advertise in a respectful manner, please contact us.All of that is to say: we try to respect the community here, even at the expense of revenue. And that sometimes makes things quite difficult. So we need to rely on you, our community, more and more. We try to be as respectful as possible. We don't put up paywalls. We don't complain if you use ad blockers. Hell, we let you turn off the ads on the site. But we also sometimes need to ask for support, and we've tried to make it possible to support us in many, many, different ways. We've now put up a page that lists out all the ways you can support us, from becoming an Insider (the easiest and most direct way to support us -- and we're working on some fun updates to that program), to backing us on Patreon, to buying one of our many t-shirt designs (more coming soon) to buying products from our deals store, from which receive a commission. We also have a partnership with Private Internet Access if you're looking for a VPN.We're also just now launching a new job board in partnership with ZipRecruiter, and if you're looking to hire someone and post a job there, it helps support us as well (also, if you're looking for a tech job, go check it out).Our goal, as always, is to build and support this community -- but it does take some money to keep things going. We know that not everyone can support us monetarily and we do our absolute best to make the site and community work for everyone, without being annoying or intrusive. But that does mean that every once in a while we may need to remind you that we need your support and explain the way we think about these things.

You might recall that when HBO comedian John Oliver originally tackled net neutrality on his show in 2014, the FCC website crashed under the load of concerned consumers eager to support the creation of net neutrality rules. When Oliver revisited the topic last May to discuss FCC boss Ajit Pai's myopic plan to kill those same rules, the FCC website crashed under the load a second time. That's not a particular shock; given the massive public opposition to the repeal, and an FCC website that's never been accused of being cutting edge.But things then got a bit weird. After the second attack last year, since-departed FCC Chief Information Officer David Bray issued a statement (pdf) claiming that FCC analysis showed the FCC had been the target of a DDOS attack by "external actors":

Well, this is awkward.

We've featured a number of stories here about entities attempting to pass off video game footage as something in real life. On the one hand, since these stories usually feature governments doing this in a pretty bald-faced attempt at trickery, and since these attempts at trickery typically have something to do with the realm of war, it's easy to take a negative view of the whole thing entirely. On the other hand, it's hard to escape the notion that our video games have gotten so realistic so as to be able to fool large swaths of people into thinking they are depictions of the real thing, which is pretty damned cool.And, yet, even when the use of game footage is more innocuous, it still seems to get people's fur up. In the UK, one housing developer was caught using a screenshot from Cities: Skylines, a city-building game, in its pitch material for a housing project.