Techdirt

This week, both our top comments on the insightful side came in response to the DOJ's attack on Trump protestors, accusing them of "hiding behind the First Amendment". Robert L won first place for responding to that absurd notion:

Five Years AgoThis week in 2012, more and more people were coming out against the efforts of the ITU's WCIT, including both Tim Berners-Lee joining the already-active Vint Cerf and Mozilla expressing its concerns. Though the White House denied that it was prepared to dump the ITU, it was firm in refusing to support a bad treaty. The ITU itself was doing a really bad job of pretending to respond to people's complaints, and even though a whole bunch of countries ended up refusing to sign the treaty, the boss decided to go ahead and declare victory anyway.Ten Years AgoThis week in 2007, people were digging in to the recently introduced PRO-IP bill, with the DOJ coming out against the legislation, even as Hollywood's favorite lawmaker complained it wasn't strong enough, and the inimitable William Patry explaining the many problems with the bill. North of the border, Canada was stalling out in its efforts to introduce its own version of the DMCA as public opposition continued to grow rapidly. And, in a piece of news that is especially amusing given recent events, people were just realizing that you could pretty much submit anything to the FCC's public comment system, including fake comedy entries claiming to be from Leon Trotsky, George W. Bush and... Donald Trump.Fifteen Years AgoThis week in 2002, there was a lot of uncertainty in the world of internet distribution and media distribution in general. We believed predictions that the DVD would be the last physical format, perhaps underestimating Hollywood's aggression on that front — like the fact that device makers appeared poised to give in to demands to put copy protection in everything. The Balkanization of the web into many walled gardens was becoming really concerning (though of course it was still silly for folks like the New York Times to be predicting "the end of free content"), but some folks like Tim O'Reilly were at least able to see the bigger picture on issues like piracy. And while it's easy to forget today that it wasn't always that easy or cheap to get yourself a web host for your small business (let alone personal) needs, in 2002 it was a big deal that a major player like Yahoo announced it would be getting into the small business hosting game.

Earlier this year, we covered the horrific story of the death of a 5'4" 110-lb. 18-year-old at the hands of the Mesquite (TX) police department. The teen, suffering from a bad acid trip, was tased multiple times, threatened with death by an officer, and left to die in a jail cell with little more than a cursory nod towards his health and wellbeing.Graham Dyer's parents were unable to obtain any details about their son's death from the Mesquite PD. The department refused to turn over records, pointing to state law allowing it to withhold records on arrested suspects who never faced criminal charges. This exemption may have made sense to lawmakers at the point it was passed. But in-custody deaths are inherently questionable. This exemption does little more than give law enforcement agencies everything they need to cover up misconduct.Fortunately, Dyer's parents didn't stop there. They asked the FBI to open an investigation into their son's death. The FBI closed its investigation without forwarding it to the DOJ for charges but the investigation did serve at least one purpose: it allowed Dyer's parents to finally obtain records related to their son's last night on earth.What they found was horrifying. Video showed their son thrashing around in the back of a police car, incoherent and completely unrestrained. Captured audio captured an officer threatening to kill their son if he didn't calm down. The in-car video also showed the same officer repeatedly tasing their son in the testicles. (The officer claims he was aiming for the "inner thigh" but Dyer kept moving. Considering a taser is effective almost anywhere it's placed, why place it so close to a person's testicles unless you're hoping to "accidentally" tase that part of the arrestee?) They also saw their son dragged from the police car at the jail sally port, laying on the floor with an officer's foot on his head.Without these records from the FBI, the Dyers would never have known what led to their son's death. The Mesquite PD's refusal to turn over records also served its own purpose: it ran the clock on the statute of limitations. The state can no longer bring criminal charges against the officers -- despite the DA saying there's evidence of criminal behavior.But that can't prevent the officers from being sued. The Dyers have taken the Mesquite PD to court and now, at long last, the PD is being forced to hand over the documents it refused to give to the teen's parents. What's in these documents -- and the officers' testimony -- only adds to the portrait of these officers' depraved indifference.To begin with, the officers who arrested Dyer showed almost zero concern for his wellbeing. Not once did they consider bringing the teen to a nearby hospital. Nor was any sort of health check given when Dyer was turned over to the local jail. But the arresting officers had every reason to believe Dyer might be seriously injured.

If cops have the ability and opportunity to record a traffic stop, should it be held against them when they don't? Arguments have been made to that effect for a few years now. Dashcams have been in wide use for at least a couple of decades. Law enforcement agencies all over the US are issuing body cameras to officers. But it seems whenever something questionable happens, footage is nowhere to be found, or what there is of it is almost useless.Unfortunately, years of discussion by (mainly) defense lawyers hasn't resulted in policy changes. Worse, it hasn't budged the judicial needle much. In rare cases, the absence of footage is used against officers, but in those cases, it mainly seems to be because efforts were made to destroy footage already captured.In this case [PDF] reviewed by the Sixth Circuit Appeals Court, no effort was made post facto to destroy footage. Instead, an officer proactively prevented footage from being created by disabling the dashcam recording the traffic stop. (via FourthAmendment.com)The defendant made a few different arguments for suppression of evidence obtained via a search of his vehicle. Citing Rodriguez, he claimed the wait for the K9 unit unnecessarily prolonged the traffic stop. The appeals court disagreed, saying its interpretation of the Supreme Court's decision gives officers about 20 minutes to freely violate citizens' rights.

The Mirai botnet that swept through poorly-secured devices last year resulted in unprecedented denial-of-service attacks. At one point, the botnet turned its wrath on security researcher Brian Krebs' site, resulting in a sustained attack that saw Krebs' DDoS protection service (Akamai) say it was getting too old for this shit uninterested in providing further protection for this particular user.The people behind the botnet have just pled guilty to federal charges.

The last time we checked in with the folks behind the massively popular video game PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, the company was complaining about Epic Games "ripping off" its 100 vs. 100 player game mode for its Fortnite title. In that post, we attempted to explain why this sort of thing isn't "ripping off" in an intellectual property sense, because the idea/expression dichotomy exists. Using someone else's idea for creative expression is not infringement, whereas using someone else's specific creative expression is. Simple enough.Except the folks behind PubG, as the game is sometimes known, didn't take to this intellectual property lesson and are now instead suggesting that the entire video game industry needs much more intellectual property protection because of all the "ripoffs" out there. This from the creator of the game, Brendan Greene.

Because it's worked oh so well in the past, European news agencies are (again!) calling for service providers like Google and Facebook to start paying them money for sending them business.

If you're looking to learn more about the growing app development field around AI, the Voice, Chat and Vision Automation Bundle is the place to get started. You'll learn about using Alexa for building conversational interfaces for Echo, FireTV and more. Another course covers SikuliX, a scripting/automation technology that relies on pattern matching. You'll learn about chatbots and how to build them with DialogFlow or Amazon Lex, and much more. This bundle is on sale for $29.Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

After regulators blocked AT&T's attempted acquisition of T-Mobile, T-Mobile found a new lease on life and began delivering some much-needed competition to the wireless sector. That added competition brought numerous benefits to consumers, from forcing AT&T and Verizon to bring back unlimited data plans, to the elimination of long-term contracts. And while these companies still try to avoid competing too intently on price, T-Mobile's disruption has been hugely beneficial all the same.That said, T-Mobile's consumer-friendly brand identity (driven by trash-talking CEO John Legere) often only goes so far. The company has consistently opposed net neutrality rules, at one point insisting this opposition would put the company on the "right side of history." When people questioned T-Mobile's positions (and a lot of the outright bullshit it used to justify its own zero rating and throttling), Legere doubled down by attacking the EFF.So it's interesting to see the company's announcement this week that it would be jumping into the television business and challenging traditional cable operators. According to T-Mobile, they've also acquired a streaming video operator by the name of Layer3TV, whose technology will be used to fuel the new service scheduled to arrive sometime in 2018. While details and pricing are non-existent, Legere quite justly took the opportunity to make fun of the cable industry's high prices and horrible customer service reputation:

Employees of the federal government swear an oath to protect and defend the Constitution. Assistant US Attorney Rizwan Qureshi must have done that as well. And, among the parts of the Constitution he's supposed to defend is the First Amendment. But, as a lawyer for the DOJ he has a job to do -- and apparently sometimes that job includes making batshit insane arguments to try to throw protesters and a reporter in jail against their basic First Amendment rights to assemble and to report. This is the case against six people who were singled out and prosecuted, among hundreds of people arrested during protests around Donald Trump's inauguration. We wrote about it last month, mainly focusing on one defendant Alexi Wood, a journalist who was filming/live-streaming the protests, but still got arrested and prosecuted.Pretty much everyone should agree that protesting is legal and protected under the First Amendment. Obviously, vandalism and property destruction are not. But, the incredible thing about this case and the arguments that Qureshi made is that he didn't even bother to claim that the six defendants participated in violence or property destruction. He just argued a form of aiding and abetting the violence and damage, just by being present, and complained that they were "hiding" behind the First Amendment. Here's a snippet from the Washington Examiner's report on the closing arguments:

Emma Best of MuckRock has unearthed some disturbing details in an FBI response to an FOIA request: apparently the agency considered -- however briefly -- the investigation and prosecution of people filing requests.The nature of the requests may shed some light on the FBI's thought process because the heavily-redacted email included in the response certainly doesn't. Each year, the FBI updates its Dead List -- the names of people the FBI has files on who have passed away. Death increases the chances of released files because this major life event tends to terminate investigations.The FBI claims it can't find its updated Dead List. This seems odd, if not downright unbelievable, but the DOJ has backed the FBI's claim and FOIA requests for the latest copy are being rejected. No problem, said MuckRock. It went to work with an older version of the list which included 7,000 names.

Remember Suburban Express? It's been a few years since we've had the pleasure of writing about the company that buses students between the University of Illinois and Chicago, or its lawsuit happy owner, Dennis Toeppen. Toeppen and his company have engaged in some fairly anti-consumer behaviors, most of which have to do with hefty three-figure fines unilaterally assessed to passengers for the most minor of infractions, like showing up for the wrong bus or on the wrong day. But some of the online critics also brought up issues with drivers for the company who treated foreign exchange students like trash in front of other passengers.Now, one of Toeppen's excuses for filing lawsuits against those specific critics is that this foreign exchange student was apologized to, though the company has never said from who or at what time that apology was issued. One would think such an apology was an indication of regret over those racist comments, had such an apology ever actually been issued. Judging by a recent advertisement Suburban Express sent out for its Christmas bus schedule, it seems like the drivers take their cues from the company at large./div>Companies generally don't advertise that students will ride buses with: "passengers like you. You won't feel like you're in China when you're on our buses." Why? Well, because catering to any asshole that can't stand being on a bus with someone who looks a bit different from them isn't the MO for most people with a soul. One does wonder whether any lawsuits over the reviews accusing the company of racism would have survived all this being entered into evidence.But, as per usual, Suburban Express was quick with an apology. And it's just dripping with remorse.When called out for a racist advertisement, companies don't generally apologize for that by insisting that a major public university is terribly run because it admits a large number of foreign students, nor does it call that "selling out." For the record, the actual percentage of Chinese-born students at U of I is much lower, not to mention that the claim that higher-paying foreign exchange students somehow are a burden on Illinois residents seems like a self-defeating argument.Regardless, the Illinois Attorney General has decided to get involved, opening an investigation into the company to determine if Suburban Express violated the Illinois Human Rights Act. And, whaddya know, shortly after Lisa Madigan got involved, the company apologized again.No need to read the entire apology. It's actually apologetic, both for the initial advertisement and the first apology. Apologizing for an apology isn't generally a good look, but the reputation Suburban Express has built for itself practically begs you to read this supposedly sincere apology in a tone of sarcasm, because nothing in the history of the company suggests that we should take this as anything other than the shivering, whimpering attempt to avoid the scrutiny of a state attorney general known as a bulldog.Best of luck to Suburban Express in getting itself out of this one, and even more luck to any foreign student finding herself in need of a ride to Champaign-Urbana.

One of the tensions in the digital world that I find fascinating is what a content or platform creator must feel when deciding just how much freedom it wants to give to its fans. The benefits of giving fans the freedom to tinker is especially noticeable in the video game space, where long traditions exist for modding and making custom user-created content. Most game publishers' embrace of this sort of thing ranges from a wink and a nod to actively fostering the modding community.The NBA2K series, on the other hand, has actually incorporated custom made content into the game's platform, allowing players to create and share custom clothing and accessory designs. The latest iteration of the game is no different, although this version of the game is notably allowing this custom content to be sold for the same "virtual currency" (VC) used everywhere else in the game. VC can be earned through play, or bought with real world money. All of this was going along swimmingly until 2K discovered, shockingly, that its custom content store was full of designs that pretty clearly infringed on all kinds of trademarks and other intellectual property.

Some surprising news out of Florida: actual public officials being held accountable for public records law violations. We're used to hearing about officials finding new and creative ways to dodge public records requests. We're also used to hearing about officials using tried-and-true methods to avoid turning over records, like demanding astronomical fees or abusing exemptions.In this case, several years of blowing off requests for emails has ended in indictments for two Florida officials.

The fact that the FCC comments for Ajit Pai's net neutrality repeal were stuffed with fake comments is nothing new at all. We first reported on it back in May, and reports of comments from totally fake people or long dead people continue to pop up. Even worse are multiple stories of people having their own identities used to file comments, often opposed to their own views. The FCC has consistently responded that it doesn't care. New York's Attorney General has been investigating this as fraud, and asked the FCC to delay its net neutrality repeal until after the investigation was complete -- a request the FCC completely ignored. And, as we just noted a little while ago, Schneiderman recently announced that he's found over 2 million fake comments.But it's easy to say "well, all these fake comments mean all the comments can be ignored." But it's important to look at the source of these fake comments and on which side they ended up. And just this week two new studies have come out, both taking a really deep dive into the fake comments. The Wall Street Journal did an investigation and reached out to 2,757 people who had supposedly commented. 72% of them said they had not posted the comments.But even more thorough and more interesting is a new report that just came out this morning, from Startup Policy Lab's "Truth in Public Comments" project. Its methodology was even more thorough than the Wall Street Journal's. It took a random sample of 450,000 public commenters, and asked them "did you submit the comment quoted below to the FCC, yes or no?" The results are astounding:

As Ajit Pai's attack on net neutrality rolls along, it's worth a steady reminder that the FCC's open commenting period for the public was marred by spam-bots inserting comments from some list somewhere, all in support of Pai's actions. In other words, the period during which the FCC is supposed to listen to the general public for feedback never actually existed, masked as it was by these fraudulent comments.Eric Schneiderman, the New York Attorney General, about whom we've not always written kindly, set up a searchable site through which you can find if you or anyone you know has their names in these FCC comments and, if their comment is in support of the government, you can verify whether you or they actually made that comment or not. You might be surprised by the answer you get, however, as Schneiderman announced this week that they have found -- so far -- that at least two million fake comments used real people's names to support Pai and the FCC.

Run Windows software on Mac or Linux with with CrossOver! You can quickly and easily launch Windows apps right from your Mac dock or Linux system without buying a Windows license, rebooting, or using a virtual machine. Whether you're looking to use Windows games, productivity software or utility programs, CrossOver allows you to run them natively on your Mac or Linux systems like normal. There's no simpler way to bring your operating systems together to work in harmony! Both versions of CrossOvers are on sale for $19.Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Last month, I wrote a post detailing Ajit Pai's big lie, concerning his totally false claim that the order the FCC voted on today simply brings the internet back to where it was in 2015. As we explained that's not even remotely close to accurate. That same post also mentioned a second, but still important, lie that Pai and Pai's supporters have been telling repeatedly: that the 2015 rules harmed broadband investment.There are two very important things to discuss regarding this claim. First, it is simply not true. Second, whether or not it is true, broadband investment is an incredibly meaningless proxy for whether or not the rules are good.Let's start with the first point. There is no credible evidence that Title II harmed investment. While the big broadband companies have made claims about this, and telco-funded thinktanks have pushed out studies claiming this, on financial reports (where the consequences can mean jail time if they're lying), they all admit that classifying broadband under Title II has not harmed investment.Here's Neil Smit, Comcast Cable's President and CEO telling Wall Street that nothing about Title II changes anything (on page 16):

So by now we've pointed out how 200 engineers, internet legends, nearly 1000 startups, countless internet companies, 30 small ISPs, and millions of American consumers have told the FCC its plan to repeal net neutrality is extreme and will harm competition, innovation, and the health of the internet. But we've also pointed out repeatedly how this makes absolutely no difference at Trump's FCC, which appears mindlessly dedicated toward one singular purpose: pleasing entrenched telecom duopolies like Comcast, AT&T and Verizon.You can add the FCC's own CTO to the long list of folks who think the FCC's net neutrality repeal is neither in the public interest, nor good for the health of the internet. In a leaked e-mail this week, FCC CTO Eric Burger (hired by Ajit Pai last October) warned that once the rules are repealed, there's really nothing in place to stop these entrenched duopolies from throttling or hamstringing services or websites they compete with:

Whistleblowing stories have become something of a commonplace, as a stream of Techdirt posts attests. Some leaks offer massive revelations, like the documents released by Chelsea Manning, or Edward Snowden. Others are smaller scale, but expose unsuspected activities that powerful people were trying to keep in the shadows. Here, for example, is a recent leak published in the Guardian about big companies spying on law-abiding organizations that dare to disagree with them:

Bitcoin has been much in the public eye recently. Most of the attention has been focused on the extraordinary rise in its price as measured against traditional currencies. But another aspect that has been exercising people is its energy usage, as a post on the Digiconimist site explains:

As you will all know, we've been covering the trademark case between San Diego Comic-Con and Salt Lake Comic Con pretty much since this whole dispute began some three years ago. From the outset, this whole thing seemed wholly unreasonable. Whatever trademarks SDCC managed to get past the USPTO, there are roughly a zillion comic cons across the country, few of which have any licensing arrangement with SDCC, meaning the plaintiff in this case hasn't bothered to enforce its trademarks for some time. That generally leads to the mark being abandoned, or considered generic. Either should have kept SLCC in the clear. Add to all that the fact that this is arguably a trademark that should never have been granted on the grounds that it's almost purely descriptive -- a "comic con" is a comic convention -- and many observers thought this was going to be an easy win for SLCC in court, including this writer.Well, the jury has come back, and it managed to rule for San Diego Comic-Con instead.

By now we've noted countless times how the claim that net neutrality hurt broadband investment is indisputably false. It's not a debate. Public SEC filings, earnings reports, and numerous CEO statements to investors (who, unlike you, they're legally not allowed to lie to) have disproven this canard. Data suggesting otherwise usually originates with ISP-paid economists more than willing to twist, distort, cherry pick and massage the numbers until they comply with whatever message is being shoveled toward the media this week.Despite the "net neutrality-killed investment" claim being decidedly false, it never appears to die. ISPs and FCC boss Ajit Pai continue to desperately cling to this claim as if repetition forges reality itself. The claim has played a starring role in nearly every speech Pai has given on this subject, as well as every press release that has been issued by the FCC. The claim popped up yet again recently, when Ajit Pai issued a press release (pdf) claiming that he had been meeting with five small ISPs, all of which claimed that net neutrality had seriously harmed their ability to expand their broadband footprints. From the release:

If you had evidence an opposing witness in a criminal trial was untrustworthy, you'd want to use it, right? Too bad says the local law enforcement union. And too bad says a California court. The issue at hand is the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department's "Brady" list. "Brady" is shorthand for exculpatory evidence and untrustworthy law enforcement officers called to provide testimony certainly falls under that heading.After Sheriff Lee Baca resigned in disgrace following his department's implication in widespread jailhouse corruption and its tendency to hire some of the worst people possible to staff its jail, new sheriff Jim McDonnell wanted to make this list of questionable officers public. He wanted to hand it to prosecutors so they'd know which deputies to avoid if they wanted honest, untainted testimony. He didn't go so far as to offer the same list to defense attorneys, but it was one step further than any sheriff before him had taken.The sheriff's union sued, claiming handing the Brady list to prosecutors violated state confidentiality laws. In July, the LA County Appeals Court agreed with the union. The case has been taken up by the California Supreme Court, but it won't be discussed or decided until next year. Meanwhile, the ~300 deputies whose names are on the Brady list may have been witnesses in a combined 62,000 cases since 2000. And still, nobody is allowed to access their disciplinary files.The Los Angeles Times has obtained copies of the 2014 version of the list. (It does not say how it obtained these, so its presumably a leak.) In it are details of hundreds of acts of misconduct, all relating to "moral" issues which could conceivably be used to cast doubt on these deputies' credibility. The documents contain many more details, but this quick rundown by the Times scratches the surface of the secret Brady list. [h/t CJ Ciaramella]

When we discuss the problems around "the internet of things" and app-controlled everything, we typically have to get into the weeds a bit about privacy, whether you own what you purchased, and the ethical implications of opening up an internet-connected service or product to potential hacking. On the security and hacking side of things, it should be clear by now that far too many companies don't take this stuff seriously enough. Our pages are rife with IoT devices being hacked, including everything from Barbie dolls to sports cars. It's enough to make you long for a company with a mission basic enough to develop a product so geared towards security that it couldn't possibly get this app-controlled thing wrong.Well, how about a handgun safe? Take the Vaultek VT20i handgun safe, for instance. This safe can be opened either by inputting the user's PIN number, up to eight digits, either on the box itself or via a smartphone app. Now, you're probably wondering why someone who needs their hand-cannon would need to open the safe up with an app. It's a great question, but one we probably shouldn't worry about considering that some security researches found that you can just open that damn thing with a laptop instead, no PIN number needed.

Storyist is the only do-it-all writing platform designed specifically for fiction writers and optimized to be a powerful word processor on both desktop and mobile platforms. This fully-featured word processor gives you complete control over manuscripts and screenplays, giving you elite annotation power, high-level story viewing, and many more tools to make writing complex projects a breeze. It is on sale for $19.Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

One of those things I thought would have gone out of vogue is apparently still in style in New Hampshire. The number of bullshit wiretap prosecutions brought against people recording cops has dropped precipitously over the past half-decade as courts have found use of wiretap statutes in this fashion unconstitutional, but over in the Live Free or Die state, the statute lives freely and dies even harder.Back in 2015, prosecutors brought wiretapping charges against Alfredo Valentin. Valentin had returned home one day to find a SWAT team in the middle of a no-knock raid. Apparently, Valentin's roommate was also a heroin dealer. Valentin had been called home by a neighbor who noticed his dog wandering the street, apparently set free (and still alive!) by the SWAT team's home-breaching efforts. Valentin chose to record the officers as they proceeded with the raid despite officers telling him (wrongly) that he couldn't.This became a wiretapping charge because the cops couldn't handle a citizen ignoring a direct order. They claimed Valentin "hid" the phone by placing it down by his leg while he kept recording. Apparently, the officers could still see the phone, so claims of it being a "secret" recording were per se moronic. But this was what the flimsy, highly-questionable charges rested on: a supposedly surreptitious recording officers in attendance knew was happening.The charges were tossed and Valentin sued. Now, with the ACLU's help, Valentin has obtained a settlement (but not an admission of wrongdoing) from the government.

Lawsuits have begun to pile up for broadband provider CenturyLink, after a whistleblower revealed earlier this year that the ISP had been routinely over-billing its broadband customers for years. The whistleblower, who claims she was fired after bringing the problem to company management, said the company had a multi-year habit of consistently signing customers up for services they never ordered and didn't want. Of course that's on top of the routinely-misleading billing practices we see at most giant broadband providers, most notably the habit of making up completely bogus fees to jack up the advertised price post sale.The whistleblower account was followed up by lawsuits from several state attorneys general, who say they discovered ample evidence that misleading pricing and overbilling was a consistent occurrance. An investigation by Minnesota AG Lori Swanson, for example, found numerous examples where customers were overbilled -- yet CenturyLink refused to fix the problem -- even when customers had the ISP's original promises in writing.But worry not! CenturyLink last week issued a press release stating it had investigated itself, and found that company executives were completely and utterly innocent of any wrong doing. According to CenturyLink, the company constructed a "special committee" filled with CenturyLink board members, who collectively dug through 9.7 million documents, 4.3 terabytes of billing data consisting of over 32 billion billing records -- and interviewed 200 current and former Company employees. They found, impressively, precisely what CenturyLink CEO Glen Post hoped they would:

UK prosecutors are looking at the possibility of having a whole bunch of convictions overturned, thanks to misconduct by a lab service contracted by the government. Malfeasance at Randox Testing Service, which handles toxicology tests for UK law enforcement, first came to light earlier this year when two of its employees were arrested.

Just a quick update from Portland, Oregon, folks. After the city engaged in some truly impish behavior by trying to bully aside a local brewery that has a trademark on Portland's iconic jumping-deer sign, there have been no further negotiations on a resolution between the two sides. See, the city of Portland really wants to license the trademark for the image of the sign to national and international macrobrewers, whereas Old Town Brewing just wants to have the same trademark rights it has legally held for that image in the alcohol industries since 2012. You might have thought that a refusal of the mark by the USPTO would have ended this story. You would be wrong.Apparently, the city has filed multiple trademark applications in the hopes that something, anything, will get approved. This is according to a Portland hospitality industry group, which has taken notice of the city's actions and is firing off angry letters to its own mayor as a result.

Last week, Mike and I were at a conference celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Reno v. ACLU, a seminal case that declared that the First Amendment applied online. What makes the case so worth a conference celebrating it is not just what it meant as a legal matter – it's a significant step forward in First Amendment jurisprudence – but also what it meant as a practical matter. This decision was hugely important in allowing the internet to develop into what it is today, and that evolution may not be something we adequately appreciate. It's easy to forget and pretend the internet we know today was always a ubiquitous presence, but that wasn't always so, and it wasn't so back then. Indeed, it's quite striking just how much has changed in just two decades.So this seemed like a good occasion to look back at how things were then. The attached paper is a re-publication of the honors thesis I wrote in 1996 as a senior at the University of California at Berkeley. As the title indicates, it was designed to study internet adoption among my fellow students, who had not yet all started using it. Even those who had were largely dependent on the University to provide them their access, and that access had only recently started to be offered on any significant a campus-wide basis. And not all of the people who had started using the internet found it to be something their lives necessarily needed. (For instance, when asked if they would continue to use the internet after the University no longer provided their access, a notable number of people said no.) This study tried to look at what influences or reasons the decision to use, or not use, the internet pivoted upon.I do of course have some pause, now a few decades further into my career, calling attention to work I did as a stressed-out undergraduate. However, I still decided to dig it up and publish it, because there aren't many snapshots documenting internet usage from that time. And that's a problem, because it's important to understand how the internet transitioned from being an esoteric technology used only by some into a much more pervasive one seemingly used by nearly everyone, and why that change happened, especially if we want to understand how it will continue to change, and how we might want to shape that change. All too often it seems tech policy is made with too little serious consideration of the sociology behind how people use the internet – the human decisions internet usage represents – and it really needs to be part of the conversation more. Hopefully studies like this one can help with that.

Gaming is changing the nature of storytelling. Video games of course — but also the modern rise of board games, tabletop RPGs and other forms of analog gaming. A good game does more than just arbitrarily pair play with a veneer of narrative, it marries the mechanics and the theme to enable interesting new ways of conveying and exploring complex ideas. This week, we're joined by game designer Randy Lubin to discuss how games can tell stories in a way nothing else can.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.

If you understand anything about the net neutrality fight, it should be this: repealing these popular rules is just one small part of a long-standing ISP plan to reduce meaningful oversight of one of the least-competitive industries in America. So far this year we've already watched as the Trump administration gutted broadband privacy rules, defended price-gouging prison phone monopolies, made life easier on business broadband monopolies, and began weakening the standard definition of broadband to help obfuscate a lack of competition in the sector.And they're only really getting started. The next big push, lobbied for by Comcast, AT&T and Verizon, is to gut meaningful FCC oversight of giant ISPs, then shovel any remaining authority over to the FTC. This week the FCC and FTC released a joint statement declaring that this new "coordination of online protection efforts" would be a massive boon to consumers while protecting a "free and open internet":

Presumably prestigious law firm 1-800-LAW-FIRM is winning some cases somewhere. But it's not having any luck with its dubious legal theories related to social media companies and "material support for terrorism." The firm hasn't racked up any wins in these cases (as far as I'm aware). The page touting its "anti-terrorism" lawsuits has a lot to say about the filings, but provides no details on the firm's lack of success. And yet, the lawsuits keep flowing.Not content to represent family members of people killed in terrorist attacks, 1-800-LAW-FIRM is also representing law enforcement officers not killed or injured by terrorists, but rather ones who happened to be on the scene of shootings targeting cops. Again, the real villain, according to this law firm (and its plaintiffs), is social media.In January, Dallas Police Sergeant Demetrick Pennie sued [PDF] Twitter, Google, and Facebook, claiming they were directly responsible for "radicalizing" Micah Johnson, who shot and killed five police officers in Dallas, Texas. According to Pennie, the social media companies actively allowed and encouraged terrorist use of their platforms to spread their message and attract participants.Pennie's exploration of the outer limits of culpability has come to an end, netting 1-800-LAW-FIRM (and Excolo Law) a loss in its "sue social media for violent acts committed by individuals" sweepstakes.

Microsoft Office is one of the most ubiquitous software suites in the world, used extensively in offices of all industries. In special bundle, eLearnOffice uses bite-sized videos and quizzes to assess and increase your skills in eight Microsoft Office applications. Plus, you can delve even further into one of the flagship programs, Microsoft Excel, with this unique two-for-one deal for only $49.Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

In the US, the Fourth Amendment protects the privacy of conversations… up to a point. The government can't open mail or intercept phone calls without a warrant. Thanks to a fairly recent Supreme Court decision, the government can't access the contents of a person's phone -- home to a great many conversations -- without a warrant.But the Fourth Amendment only covers so much. It doesn't stop the recipient of communications from revealing them to anyone else, the government included. Any person can hand over communications to the government voluntarily even if the sender of those messages assumed -- or stated -- they were supposed to be confidential. This is part of the reason why the "going dark" problem has been overstated. The government has multiple ways to access communications without having to crack open a cell phone.Communications are only as private as all participants feel they are. That's the way the Fourth Amendment has been read in the US. In Canada, there's an equivalent protection under Section 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Contents of communications require warrants to access and the searches themselves must be "reasonably" supported by probable cause.Canada's highest court has found, in contrast to US judicial views, an expectation of privacy can still be found in messages sent to someone else -- even if those messages are retrieved from the recipient.

By now the FCC has made it clear it has absolutely no intention of actually listening to the public or to experts when it comes to its plan to repeal popular net neutrality rules later this week.It doesn't really matter to the FCC's myopic majority that the vast majority of the record 22 million public comments on its plan think it's a stupid idea. It apparently doesn't matter than over 800 startups have warned the FCC that its attack on the rules undermines innovation, competition, and the health of the internet. And it certainly doesn't appear to matter than over 190 academics, engineers, and tech-policy experts have told the agency that its repeal will dramatically harm the internet -- or that the FCC's justifications for the reversal make no technical or engineering sense.If the current FCC was actually capable of hearing these dissenting expert voices, they'd probably find this new letter from 21 of them worth a look. You might recognize some of the authors. They include Internet Protocol co-inventor Vint Cerf, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, several designers of the Domain Name System (DNS), World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, public-key cryptography inventors Whitfield Diffie and Martin Hellman, and more.In their letter, they effectively argue that the FCC's entire rationale for dismantling net neutrality protections rests on a flawed misunderstanding of how the internet actually operates. And worse, that the FCC has made absolutely no attempt to correct its flawed logic as this week's rule-killing vote approached:

Google has released what appears to be its entire collection of National Security Letters to date. Well, at least the entire collection approved for release by the DOJ, which still falls far short of the number received by the search giant.Liam Tung of ZDNet points to a recent Transparency Report-related blog post by Google, which shows the company is still working to improve its dissemination of materials related to government demands for data and communications.

Something strange has been happening in China. People have been going nuts about bicycles. Specifically, investors have gone crazy over startups that allow people to rent bikes for a fraction of a dollar per hour, and then leave them anywhere, rather than only at special bike stations -- what is known as "dockless" bike-sharing. And now that sector is in trouble, as Bloomberg reports:

As we've well-documented, Trump's FCC is currently under fire for not only gutting net neutrality, but for giving a crash course in what regulatory capture looks like. In just a short period of time the agency has moved to protect cable's monopoly over the cable box, gut media consolidation rules exclusively for the benefit of Sinclair broadcasting, protect prison phone monoplies, weaken broadband deployment metrics, kill broadband funding for the poor, and make it easier for business broadband monopolies to hamstring competitors and keep prices absurdly high.That said, every year like clockwork, the FCC holds its "telecom prom" in Washington DC. It's traditionally an event where telecom industry executives, lobbyists, FCC staffers, consumer advocates and policy wonks all have a much-needed laugh and blow off steam. It's also a wonderful opportunity to line up to kiss the ring in the hopes of impacting future policy. Normally this sector shindig barely makes a blip on the media radar. But given the FCC's decision to continually give consumers the policy equivalent of a massive middle finger throughout 2017, this year's event took on a notably different tone.Unsurprisingly, FCC staffers clearly thought this year's event was a great opportunity to make a few jokes about Pai's reputation as a walking rubber stamp for the telecom sector. After all, a little self-deprecation and ribbing has been part of the proceeding for years. But apparently, nobody told FCC staff writers that parody, satire and other forms of humor are supposed to be notably different from the reality you're lampooning.After making numerous jokes about how he was "colluding" with industry giants like Sinclair broadcasting (you can watch a video of Pai's presentation here), Pai (a Verizon regulatory lawyer from 2001 to 2003) went so far as to present a video he made with Verizon exec Kathy Grillo. In it, Pai and Grillo engage in an adorable little skit where they collude to install Pai as a "puppet" chairman of the FCC at Verizon HQ back in 2003:

Congress continues to push for a bill to deal with the use of the internet for sex trafficking. Over the past few months we've discussed multiple attempts at this. Most of the initial action happened on the Senate side, with SESTA -- the "Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act." That was a terrible bill with many, many problems. The Senate then put forth a revised version that had marginal improvements, but still many, many problems. While it was voted out of committee, Senator Wyden put a hold on it, noting how bad it would be for the internet and free speech.From there, the action moved over to the House, with its version, called FOSTA -- the "Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act." Believe it or not, FOSTA as initially written was even worse than SESTA. However, there's now a planned markup of the bill in the House Judiciary tomorrow, and it's over a totally revised "manager's amendment" from Judicary chair Rep. Bob Goodlatte, rather than the original FOSTA that was sponsored by Rep. Ann Wagner. As law professor Eric Goldman points out, of the four bills presented so far, the Goodlatte Manager's Amendment is by far the best, but still has significant problems that should be corrected if the bill is to move forward.One oddity: the new FOSTA doesn't just focus on sex trafficking, but expands to all online prostitution. This seems both dangerous and unnecessary. While there are legitimate debates to be had about whether or not prostitution should be legalized, the issues around prostitution are clearly different than the issues of coerced sex trafficking. Yes, there is obviously some overlap between trafficking and prostitution, but automatically sweeping both issues together is problematic for a whole host of policy reasons. Everyone should be reasonably against trafficking of unwilling individuals. The issues around willing and consentual transactions involving sex are a lot more complicated. Conflating both in a single bill seems... dangerous.However, some elements of FOSTA are clearly better than what we saw in SESTA. Instead of focusing on punching a giant hole in CDA 230, the new FOSTA takes a smarter approach. It first creates a new crime (outside of CDA 230), which would be 18 USC 2421A, which would make it a crime to take actions "with the intent to promote or facilitate the prostitution of another person." What's important here is the "intent" standard. The previous bills all used some form of "knowledge" or "knowing conduct." Here, you need to have the actual intent to promote or facilitate prostitution, which is a much more reasonable standard for making these actions criminal. The crime can be "enhanced" if the party engages in "acts of reckless disregard of the fact that such conduct contirubted to sex trafficking violation[s]" but that's only once the intent is already shown. Again, this seems like a more reasonable approach, and would solve the problems we had with the knowledge standard -- and the fear that this would disincentivize monitoring or helping law enforcement under SESTA.Still, as Eric Goldman notes, this bill could lead to "dubious investigations" and fishing expeditions as prosecutors look to show "intent" on platforms with many, many users, where some of those users may be engaged in prostitution:

On Thursday of this week, the FCC will vote to undo the 2015 Open Internet Order. While the FCC insists that this will just be bringing back the internet to the regulatory framework it had prior to 2015, that is not true. It will be changing the very basis for how the internet works and doing so in a dangerous way. Starting on Tuesday, a bunch of organizations are teaming up for a massive #BreakTheInternet protest. Please check it out. The post below is designed to answer many of the questions we've received about "free markets" v. "regulations" on net neutrality, and why we believe that the 2015 rules are consistent with the beliefs of those who support free market solutions.I've already written about some of the reasons why I changed my mind about net neutrality rules, in which I mentioned that my standard position is to be pretty skeptical of government intervention in innovative markets. But many of the people I know who are opposing net neutrality -- including FCC Chair Ajit Pai -- like to couch their opposition in "free market" terms. They talk about the "heavy hand of regulation" and "getting government out" of the internet and stuff like that. But as far as I can tell, this is a twisted, distorted understanding of both the telco world and how free markets operate. So, for those folks, let's dig in a bit and explore the free market argument for net neutrality. And, I should note, this is clearly not the argument that many people supporting net neutrality are making, but this is why I think that even those of us who still believe in free markets helping innovation should still support rules for net neutrality.To start with, this is also not the anarchist's argument for net neutrality (or the "AnCap's" argument). If you don't believe the government should ever do anything, well, then nothing is going to convince you. However, if you believe that in cases of market failure, the government has a role, then do keep on reading. As the famous (and very "free market") economist Milton Friedman wrote:

Back in August, psychiatrist Mark Beale filed a defamation lawsuit. His target? A one-star review containing zero words written by someone using the name "Richard Hill." Beale claimed this single review, hosted by Google, had irrevocably damaged his livelihood.In support of this, he offered several bizarre assertions. (These can be found in voluminous documentation accompanying Beale's amended complaint [PDF].)

Six Sigma is a disciplined, data-driven approach and methodology for eliminating defects in any process -- from manufacturing to transactional and from product to service. This course will focus on the sub-methodology, DMAIC (define, measure, analyze, improve, control) to provide you with both an introduction to Six Sigma and how to implement it in your own business practices. Use audio video lectures, simulated exams, flashcards and tool kits to prepare for the Six Sigma Green Belt and Black Belt Certification Exams. You can also earn 80 PDUs for PMI credential holders. You get 1 year of access and 60 hours of content for $49.Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Back in November, we discussed some reforms Australia was looking to make to its copyright laws. Chiefly at issue was how safe harbors were incorporated into the law, with those provisions applying only to primary service providers like ISPs due entirely to what appears to be a simple poor choice of words in the law. Under strict reading of the law as written, websites, libraries, and schools that allow internet users to create their own content and engage online would not be subject to safe harbor provisions, unlike the country's American counterpart. The government initially signaled that it wanted to harmonize its law with EU and American law, before the lobbying dollars of the entertainment industry sprung into action, causing the government to walk this back a bit.And, now, it seems that all it took was some meager conversation between government officials and industry representatives for safe harbors to be yanked away from the usual MPAA targets.

FBI Director Christopher Wray offered testimony to the House Judiciary Committee at a hearing entitled "Oversight of Federal Bureau of Investigation." Not much in terms of oversight was discussed. Instead, Wray took time to ask for a reauthorization of Section 702 before using several paragraphs of his prepared comments to discuss the "going dark" problem.It picks up where Wray left off in October: offering up meaningless statistics about device encryption. Through the first eleven months of the fiscal year, the FBI apparently had 6,900 locked phones in its possession. Wray claims this number represents "roughly half" of the devices in the FBI's possession. The number is meaningless, but it serves a purpose: to make it appear device encryption is resulting in thousands of unsolved crimes.That number has been updated in Wray's latest comments [PDF]:

The NYPD continues to extend a middle finger to every entity that isn't the NYPD. The department's long history of doing everything it can to thwart public records requesters has been discussed here several times. It's not on much better terms with its oversight, which it routinely ignores when directed to do something about its officers' routine rights violations and deployment of excessive force.If it's not going to be accountable to the public -- either via FOIL (Freedom of Information Law) compliance or respecting the decisions of its oversight -- it's certainly not going to let the judicial branch push it around.

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side came in response to the absurd trademark battle between the San Diego and Salt Lake comic conventions, where the former played some licensing games with Rose City to try to bolster its argument. Aerie simply wasn't having it, for good reason:

Five Years AgoThis week in 2012, the ITU was holding its World Conference on International Telecommunications to try to, more or less, "fix the internet" (not that it was broken). Their ideas about speeding up infrastructure built-out were more likely to slow it down, and it was unclear who many of the new proposed rules actually covered. They rushed to approve a deep packet inspection standard in secret, then turned out to be really bad at secrecy. Amidst all this it was no surprise that Congress managed to pass a unanimous resolution telling the ITU to keep its hands off the internet.Ten Years AgoThis week in 2007, Apple (while navigating the iPhone patent minefield) was proposing a plan to make extortion an explicit part of DRM, while Nielsen was for some reason trying to become a copyright cop. Perfect 10 was losing in its attempts to blame anyone with money for infringement, rather than the infringer while the MPAA, in an instance of extremely amusing irony, was forced to take its anti-piracy kit for universities offline for violating the GPL license on code therein. This was also the week that we saw the introduction of the PRO IP Act, which would be signed into law the following year.Fifteen Years AgoThis week in 2002, file sharing was in the legal crosshairs as Morpheus and Grokster went to court. Deals site FatWallet challenged a crazy DMCA claim from Wal-Mart over posting sale prices, leading to a public outcry and, later in the week, Wal-Mart backed down. We got a good example of licensing insanity when Finnish taxi drivers were forced to pay for the music they play in their taxis, and in the least surprising news ever, analysis of broadband prices following the recent Comcast/AT&T Broadband merger showed that they were going up.

The Privacy Shield framework is key to allowing personal data to flow legally across the Atlantic from the EU to the US. As we've noted several times this year, there are a number of reasons to think that the EU's highest court, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), could reject Privacy Shield just as it threw out its predecessor, the Safe Harbor agreement. An obscure but influential advisory group of EU data protection officials has just issued its first annual review of Privacy Shield (pdf). Despite its polite, bureaucratic language, it's clear that the privacy experts are not happy with the lack of progress in dealing with problems pointed out by them previously. As the "Article 29 Data Protection Working Party" -- the WP29 for short -- explains: