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We talk a lot around here about the many problems with the copyright trolling industry. Those problems take several forms, but they can be best globalized as a problem of the copyright troll's basic business model. These groups claim to tackle piracy in defense of the content creators with whom they contract, but they do so not by spear-fishing confirmed infringers with sound evidence, but rather they cast as wide a net as possible based on flimsy evidence at best, all in the hopes of producing enough settlement money from scared recipients to make some coin. This bird-shot approach, to further mix my hunting analogies, inevitably creates serious collateral damage and exposes how poorly constrained the technology used to identify infringement is to reality.To see this at work in the most ironic and palm-facing degree, we can take a look at IP Arrow. We've discussed IP Arrow in the past, in particular its happily sending out bogus DMCA notices for legit businesses that seemed to falsely claim that its clients own the rights to child pornography. Also, we wrote about how the owner of the organization owed millions of dollars to Hollywood for having run his own warez site years previous. More recently, it seems that either the technology IP Arrow is using to identify infringing parties for its clients has taken a really stupid turn for the worse, or the organization has graduated to trying to use the DMCA process to stifle criticism.

Last year Russia passed a new surveillance bill that promised to bring greater security to the country. As is par for the course for these types of bills, the legislation did the exact opposite by not only mandating new encryption backdoors, but by also imposing harsh new data-retention requirements on ISPs and VPN providers. As a result, some VPN providers like Private Internet Access wound up leaving the country after finding their entire function eroded and having some of their servers seized. The end result? Russia's pledge to shore up security wound up making everybody in the country notably less secure.And now Russia appears poised to dramatically up the ante.Alongside the country's attack on encryption, Russia has dramatically ramped up internet filtering and censorship in the apparent hopes of making the great firewall of China seem reasonable. And a new bill being pushed quickly through the Russian legislature would not only impose fines of up to $12,400 per breach on search engines that still link to these banned sites, but would require VPNs to immediately cease providing access to these blocked domains as well. If they refuse, these VPN providers risk being blocked themselves:

US government requests for Facebook data are up, according to the company's latest biennial transparency report. Total requests jumped from 23,000 to 26,000, as compared to the first six months of 2016. Overall, it's an increase of about 12,000 requests over 2015's total.At this point, Facebook is fielding about 1,000 more requests a month as compared to 2015. While there's not a whole lot of detail in the presented data, the social media platform is now able to report something it hadn't been able to do before the passage of the USA Freedom Act. Both of the 2016 reports now show what percentage of data requests come with a gag order attached.According to the report, more than half of the orders received in 2016 came with gag orders: 56% for the first half of the year and 50% in the second. Gag orders are standard operating procedure for National Security Letters but those only make up a small percentage of the requests Facebook receives: less than 1,000 total for all of 2016.A majority of the requests are search warrants, which often come with limited-time gag orders. Or at least they should be limited-time. As we saw in Adobe's recent court win, search warrants appear to be arriving with indefinite gag orders when only delayed notification is justified. Facebook has been pushing back against over-broad requests and government secrecy, but its success has been limited.Also of interest is the lack of FISA orders. For the first time since Facebook began reporting these numbers, it received no FISA orders for content or non-content data. This would seem to confirm an apparent Section 702 blockage at the FISA court. As was noted here earlier, the FISA court apparently approved zero government requests under Section 702 (internet content/non-content collections) in 2016. The last approved order of 2015 would have carried over into the first couple of months of this year, which may be why Facebook shows FISA requests in the first six months of last year, but nothing past the point of that order's expiration.So, the government has begrudgingly agreed to a little more transparency, but is ensuring much of what's behind the numbers remains firmly in its grasp. Gag orders accompany at least half the requests the government sends out, and the number of requests continues to increase. At this point, Facebook fields a couple thousand gagged orders a month, with most, presumably, tied to sealed cases and indictments, which kind of makes a mockery of this whole "open court" system. Considering Facebook maintains control of users' accounts, communications, and data on its platform, it makes little sense to withhold notification for extended periods, if not indefinitely.

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Back in February, we had former top FCC staffer Gigi Sohn on our podcast and she laid out the likely strategy of Ajit Pai and Congress to kill net neutrality while pretending that they were protecting net neutrality. And so far, it's played out exactly according to plan. Each move, though, seems to be getting reported by most of the tech press as if it's some sort of surprise or unexpected move. It's not. There's a script and it's being followed almost exactly. So, as a reminder, let's go through the exact script:Step 1: Set fire to old net neutrality rulesNew FCC boss Ajit Pai announces that he's going releasing a plan to roll back the Open Internet rules that his predecessor, Tom Wheeler, put in place two years ago. This has been done, and Pai has released what's called an NPRM (a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking) which opens up a comment period. Once the comment period is over, the FCC can release its new rules and vote on them. The problem -- as basically everyone in telco knows (but which almost never gets mentioned in the press coverage) is that the FCC almost certainly will lose in court if it rolls back the rules that Wheeler put in place. This is important. Contrary to what you may have heard, the FCC isn't allowed to just willy nilly flip flop the rules.Indeed, the FCC is barred by statute from putting in place "arbitrary and capricious" rule changes. Basically, every lawsuit challenging any FCC rulemaking includes claims that they were "arbitrary and capricious." And, to get over that burden, the FCC can't just change the rules willy nilly, but have to lay out clear evidence for why a change in policy is necessary. That's why the Wheeler Open Internet rules have been upheld by the DC Circuit (who shot down previous rules). Wheeler effectively laid out the clear reasons why the market had changed drastically in the decade plus since the FCC had declared broadband to be an "information service" rather than a "telecommunications service" (under Title II).For Pai to successfully role back those rules, he'd need to show that there was some major change in the market since the rules were put in place less than two years ago. That's... almost certainly going to fail in court. Again, this is important: Pai can change the rules, but that rule change will almost definitely be shot down in court. While many are assuming that the Pai's new rules are a done deal, they are not. I mean, he's almost certainly going to ignore the public outcry about how rolling back these rules will harm the internet. And he's almost certainly going to continue to blatantly misrepresent reality and (falsely) claim that investment in broadband has dropped because of these rules (despite tons of clear evidence that he's wrong). And, then he will pass new rules. But those rules will be challenged and he will almost certainly lose in court, and the old rules would remain in place.Again: basically everyone in the FCC (including Pai) and in Congress know this. The press not reporting on this is a shame.Step 2: Congress to the "rescue"Congressional net neutrality haters (e.g. those receiving massive campaign contributions from big broadband players...) are well aware that Pai's plans have no chance in court. Yet, they want there to be this kind of uproar over the plans. They want the public to freak out and to say that this is bad for the internet and all that. Because this will allow them to do two things. First, they will fundraise off of this. They will go to the big broadband providers and act wishy washy on their own stance about changing net neutrality rules, and will smile happily as the campaign contributions roll in. It's how the game is played.The second thing they will do... is come to "the rescue" of net neutrality. That is, they will put forth a bill -- written with the help of broadband lobbyists -- that on its face pretends to protect net neutrality, but in reality absolutely guts net neutrality as well as the FCC's authority to enforce any kind of meaningful consumer protection. We've already seen this with a plan from Senator Thune and this new bill from Senator Mike Lee.Unfortunately, some reporters will buy this argument and pretend that these bills will "save net neutrality." The article at that link is correct that a change in administrations can lead an FCC to try to flip flop again on net neutrality, but totally ignores that any such attempt would totally flop in court as arbitrary and capricious, without actual evidence of a changed market. The article is also correct that Congress should fix this permanently, but misses two key factors: (1) Congress is way too beholden to broadband lobbyists to come up with anything that actually protects neutrality and (2) the plans presented so far are designed to kill net neutrality while pretending to "protect" it.This latter point is why Verizon's General Counsel can say with a straight face that no one wants to kill net neutrality. Because he's going to be supporting Congress' plan that pretends to save it. That's because the Congressional plans do put in place a few bright line rules that seem important to net neutrality -- saying that it bars "paid prioritization," throttling and the like. The problem is that those are last decade's net neutrality issues. The big broadband providers have already said they're fine with those kinds of rules because they've found ways around them.Specifically, the big broadband providers are doing things like deliberately overloading interconnect points to force large companies like Netflix to pay not to be throttled. Or they're putting in place totally arbitrary and low data caps, and then offering to "zero rate" certain services, pretending that this is a "consumer friendly" move. Again, as we've said dozens of times, you're not a hero if you save people from a fire that you set yourself. And that's exactly what zero rating is. Access providers set low data caps themselves and then "save" their customers from having to pay for going over those caps... but, only if you use approved services (often ones owned by the access provider themselves).And this is the problem. Under the existing Wheeler rules, the FCC was able to adjust and respond to efforts by the telcos to continue to abuse net neutrality and block the open internet, while pretending they were doing something else. The Congressional proposals for "net neutrality" actually take away that authority from the FCC. In other words, they are opening the floodgates for the big broadband access providers to screw over customers, by saying (1) you can't do the obviously bad stuff, but you can do the hidden bad stuff that's effectively creates the same problems and (2) the FCC can no longer stop you from doing this.That's not a plan to save net neutrality or an open internet. It's a plan to bless the access providers' plans to start walling off the internet and getting to double and triple charge companies for offering services. This is a plan to put tollbooths on the internet, but in ways that are less obvious than people were first worried about.Step 3: Leverage the ControversyMeanwhile, everyone who wants to kill net neutrality knows what's going to happen here. They will use the fact that Pai's rules absolutely can't withstand scrutiny in the courts to step up and push for the Congressional "rescue." Even more likely: they'll say that we need Congress to step in to "prevent uncertainty" from the inevitable lawsuits. Believe it or not: they're happy that this will get tied up in courts for years, because that gives Congress extra cover to push through this pretend "compromise." You'll hear lots of tut-tutting about "uncertainty" that has to be stopped. But, like zero rating and the fact that it's not heroic if you rescue people from your own fire, the fire here is being set by Ajit Pai and big broadband's key supporters. They're setting this fire of rolling back Wheeler's rules solely to whine about the uncertainty that will be caused by their own unnecessary rule change... and then will say that "only Congress can settle this."So, what does all this mean? It means people who are mad about this (as you should be) need to be direct in what they're talking about here. Don't pretend that Pai's rule change is the real problem. It's not. It's just a mechanism to get to new regulations from Congress that will cause real problems. Don't let anyone say that the Wheeler rules have harmed the internet or investment. They have not. Don't let anyone (especially supporters of killing net neutrality) launch into self-pitying cries about "uncertainty." Remind them that the uncertainty is coming from them and their supporters. And, most importantly, don't pretend that a bill from Congress pretending to "save" net neutrality will actually do so, when it's quite obvious that the bills being offered will undermine our internet, help big broadband screw over users, and diminish competition.

A hacking group calling itself TheDarkOverlord (TDO) has tried, and failed (so far) to extort Netflix and several other companies after stumbling onto a server of unreleased content. TDO was apparently able to compromise the servers of an audio post-production company by the name of Larson Studios. Among the content acquired from the hackers were ten episodes of the as-yet-unreleased new season of the popular Netflix show "Orange is the New Black," which isn't supposed to see full release until June. Outside of some free advertising in the news media and some wasted calories, the group's efforts don't appear to have culminated in much.At first, the hacking group tried to extort the post-production company, which didn't go very well. The group claims that Larson originally agreed to pay 50 bitcoin (around $67,000) to prevent the release of the compromised content, but then didn't follow through on the payment after a December 31 deadline. TorrentFreak claims they were shown a copy of a contract purportedly signed by Larson Studios, but the group claims that while the contract was printed, signed, scanned and returned to them, Larson got cold feet about paying up.The hacking group then shifted its attention to trying to get Netflix to pay up to avoid public release of the episodes. After apparently getting no initial response from the giant streaming company, the hacking group announced on Twitter it had leaked the first episode in the new, as-yet-unreleased fifth season of "Orange is the New Black" on BitTorrent networks:

One of the great stories in unintentional consequences in technology in the past few years has been Pokemon Go. The augmented reality game application has resulted in all kinds of legal action and consequences, including New York declaring playing it to be a sex offender parole violation, lawsuits stemming from players of the game wandering onto private property and annoying the residents there, and even the DOD releasing guidelines for safe Pokemon hunting.What Milwaukee did in the wake of this legal activity made less of a media splash, but that appears to be changing. The Midwest city decided to add a city ordinance requiring a permit from any augmented reality game makers that made use of locations within the city. The ordinance reads:

Fake images, often produced using sophisticated software like Photoshop or the GIMP, were around long before so-called "fake news" became an issue. They are part and parcel of the Internet's fast-moving creative culture, and a trap for anyone that passes on striking images without checking their provenance or plausibility. Until now, this kind of artful manipulation has been limited to the visual sphere. But a new generation of tools will soon allow entire voice patterns to be cloned from relatively small samples with increasing fidelity such that it can be hard to spot they are fake. For example, in November last year, the Verge wrote about Adobe's Project VoCo:

Former members of Team Espionage recently expressed their concern that the Shadow Brokers' dump of NSA Windows exploits had done serious damage to the security of the nation. The unwanted exposure of NSA power tools supposedly harmed intelligence gathering efforts, even though the tools targeted outdated operating systems and network software.However, there are still plenty of computers and networks online using outmoded software. This makes the released exploits a threat (especially those targeting XP users, as that version will never be patched). But not much of a threat to national security, despite the comments of anonymous former Intelligence Community members. It makes them a threat to personal security, as Chris Bing at CyberScoop points out:

In the post-Snowden era, we don't have to tell you how important it is to stay engaged with (and vigilant about) the surveillance state in America. Jennifer Granick is the Director of Civil Liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society, and author of the new book American Spies — and this week she joins us for an in-depth discussion about the surveillance state today. Of course, shortly after we recorded this podcast, the NSA made major changes to one of its surveillance programs, so Jennifer returned to record an addendum examining this latest news, so make sure you listen to the end!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.

Because we talk so much about fair use here, we often likewise find ourselves talking about parody. Parody is one of the forms of content protected under fair use, and that protection is responsible for the availability of a great deal of great content. Parody tends to be equal parts humor and commentary and enjoys a long history of important speech here in America.But parody doesn't have that protected status in intellectual property laws abroad. Taiwan, for instance, has a form of fair use protections, but those protections carve out no space for parody. This has resulted in local film studios going after one popular YouTuber in such a way as to include law enforcement raids of his offices and the threat of very real jail time.

Because we talk so much about fair use here, we often likewise find ourselves talking about parody. Parody is one of the forms of content protected under fair use, and that protection is responsible for the availability of a great deal of great content. Parody tends to be equal parts humor and commentary and enjoys a long history of important speech here in America.But parody doesn't have that protected status in intellectual property laws abroad. Taiwan, for instance, has a form of fair use protections, but those protections carve out no space for parody. This has resulted in local film studios going after one popular YouTuber in such a way as to include law enforcement raids of his offices and the threat of very real jail time.

Last June, you'll recall that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld the FCC's net neutrality rules, claiming the FCC was within its rights to reclassify ISPs as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act. In fact, the FCC was driven toward that move by Verizon, which sued to overturn the agency's much weaker 2010 rules. Needless to say, ISPs were quick to try and appeal last June's court decision by requesting an en banc hearing before the whole court.This week the court refused the industry's request, meaning the existing 2015 rules crafted and passed under former FCC boss Tom Wheeler remain intact. Consumer groups and content and hardware trade groups like Incompas were quick to applaud the ruling as a victory for consumers and those wary of large ISP attempts to hamper streaming video competition:

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Real estate site Zillow is getting sued. Again. The company has already been sued for trade secret theft, copyright infringement, and settled multiple lawsuits related to harassment and other workplace violations. This time it's getting sued for handing out a "Zestimate" the plaintiff feels is too low.Barbara Andersen, an Illinois resident and real estate litigation attorney, is asking the court to force Zillow to take down its estimate of her home's value, which she believes is incorrect.

Lies and hyperbole are certainly no strangers to either side of the net neutrality debate, but as the FCC moves to kill net neutrality -- net neutrality opponents have taken things to an entirely new level. FCC boss Ajit Pai's speech last week unveiling the move was utterly packed with claims that had already been painstakingly debunked over the last decade (read: lies), from the absurd claim that gutting consumer protections would somehow help consumers in the Comcast era, to the similarly untrue claim that net neutrality killed broadband investment.Of course ISPs followed Pai's speech with a bunch of their own misleading statements. Most of them tried to claim that nothing is actually going on and even if it were -- consumers shouldn't worry because large duopolists can always be trusted to remain on their best behavior in light of no oversight. Comcast, for example, was quick to post a missive to its website trying to claim that net neutrality somehow gets better -- by killing net neutrality. Just look at the banner used by the ISP:Yes, consumers, prepare to "enjoy" the amazing benefits of gutting nearly all oversight of one of the least competitive, least-liked, and most anti-competitive companies in the history of American industry. You're welcome!But Verizon upped the ante and deserves some kind of award for publishing this abomination of a video to the internet:In it, a bespectacled faux-journalist named Jeremy asks Verizon General Counsel Craig Silliman about net neutrality. The "interview" is only under way for a few seconds before Silliman drops a major lie:

We've been talking about Australian politicians' odd obsession with passing ever more draconian data retention rules for years now. As you may recall, the politicians pushing for this appeared to have absolutely no clue what it actually entailed. Just a few months ago, we wrote about reports about how Australia's data retention laws had been abused to spy on journalists and their sources. While some parts of the law went into effect a year and a half ago, it appears some parts just went into effect a few weeks ago. These new rules require every ISP to retain metadata on all online communications for at least two years. And... it took just about two weeks before the Australian Federal Police (AFP) were forced to admit that it had used the info to spy on journalists (again). They insist this was a mistake, of course.

With all the attention ride-sharing has been getting lately, some might think Uber and Lyft were highly inventive apps. But according to at least one company, the apps are just highly infringing. Who's right? Probably neither.Hailo Technologies, LLC ("Hailo") has recently sued both Uber and Lyft, alleging they infringed Hailo's taxi dispatch patent, U.S. Patent No. 5,973,619 ("the '619 patent"). The patent claims a method for a "computer system" that: (1) displays a list of transportation options; (2) asks the customer for a number of passengers; (3) shows destinations graphically; (4) displays the approximate fare; (5) calls a selected taxi company up for a ride; and (6) gives an estimated arrival time. A few months ago, Hailo also sued a few other companies for infringing a different patent, U.S. Patent No. 6,756,913 ("the '913 patent"), which claims a method for keeping track of available taxis on the road. More specifically, it claims a method where a computer (1) determines if a taxi is free (i.e. currently has no rider); and if free (2) sends the current location of the taxi to the taxi dispatch server.Both of Hailo's patents date to the late 1990s. That is, the patents claim these inventions didn't exist (or weren't obvious) at that time. Except a brief Internet search shows that similar taxi dispatch technology not only existed, but was widely used. Two reports from the Department of Transportation from 1991 and 1992 describe the state of "computer dispatch" technology at that time, and show many of the claimed features of the '619 and '913 patents. Another report, from 1995, has even more detail about various taxi dispatch technologies. For example, on page 115 the report details a product called "MT GU," an automated call box that allows customers to order "one or several taxis," specify "the taxi desired" (including getting a larger van), and provides the waiting time. The MT GU system seems to describe many, if not all, of the features in the system claimed in the '619 patent, and predates it by several years.So there's good reason to think that the inventions claimed in the two patents were not actually novel or non-obvious when the patent applications were filed. But will any of that matter? Patents, once issued, are presumed valid. In order for a patent to be declared invalid in court, a challenger must show "clear and convincing evidence" of invalidity. When the argument for invalidity is based on prior art, this can be an expensive and time consuming process, often costing in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars. Thus even if these patents are in fact invalid and never should have issued, due to the cost of litigation courts often never decide the issue.An alternative to court exists in the form of inter partes review at the Patent Office. This allows the Patent Office to take a second look at claims in a patent, and declare them unpatentable under a more lenient "preponderance of the evidence" standard. But this procedure, although cheaper than court, is still relatively expensive. One study estimated costs through appeal at $350,000.Given the costs of litigation in court or at the Patent Office, a patent owner can sue on a "presumed valid" patent and use the threat of fees and costs to get an undeserved settlement. When a company does nothing else (meaning, it doesn't have a real business other than litigation) we call those companies "patent trolls."Hailo strikes us as pretty trollish. As noted, the patents in questions seem weak at best, and Hailo doesn't seem to be seriously using the "inventions" in any event. In its complaint against Uber, Hailo states that it is an app maker. But its website, www.bring.bikes, was registered only 10 days before it sued Uber and Lyft. Confusingly enough, there is another company named "Hailo" that actually does make a taxi hailing app. Even more confusing: "Hailo" the patent owner says it does business under the name "Bring," but does not appear to be associated with another company called Bring that's actually involved in transportation.This "Hailo" by contrast, seems focused on litigation. A recently filed document attaches the agreement assigning the '913 patent from its original owner to Hailo. The contract is replete with references to patent enforcement and litigation. And in an earlier complaint, Hailo listed its business address as that of a law firm, and one of its members, 2S Ventures, has been associated with at least one entity that has filed over 20 lawsuits (login req.), a typical litigation pattern for a patent troll.Whether or not Hailo is a practicing company, these are weak patents that deserve serious challenge. Sadly, that's unlikely to happen – which is why stupid patents like these should never issue.Republished from EFF's Stupid Patents of the Month series.

It appears that Chris Dodd's reign atop the MPAA is coming to an end. As you may recall, he took the job in 2011 to become the head of the MPAA -- directly contrasting a statement he'd made just months earlier that he'd never become a lobbyist. Dodd's first move was to preside over the MPAA's first legislative Titanic. After years of easily passing every copyright law it wanted, Dodd helped turn a slam dunk, easy-to-pass SOPA/PIPA into a huge disaster that has consistently scared Congress away from making any substantial copyright law changes. And, yes, it was Dodd's failed leadership that was a big part of the problem.Other "highlights" from the Chris Dodd era include near complete silence after the Sony hack, a leaked plan on how the MPAA would help pay for lawyers to do the legwork for elected officials to attack Google, and even leading the movie studios to begin to question why they send many millions of dollars to the MPAA each year for very little return.With that as backdrop, it's been announced that Dodd is stepping down from the MPAA and will be replaced by Charles Rivkin, who has worked in both government and in the entertainment industry. Dodd's contract ran through 2018, and news reports say he'll "transition" out of his role between now and September of this year. Hopefully Rivkin will be more forward-looking, and will recognize that (1) the public and (2) the internet are not enemies of the movie industry. That would go a long way towards improving the MPAA's approach to things, but we'll see.

The impact the dropping of the "about" collection will have on the NSA's upstream harvesting will either be massive or minimal, depending on who you ask.The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board's report on the "about" collection noted a few things, one of them being the supposed impossibility of preventing inadvertent collection.

If defense lawyers did this, you can bet the local prosecutor's office would be there in an instant to file charges. But since it's a prosecutor's office doing it, local prosecutors see nothing wrong with lying to witnesses to obtain testimony. Charles Maldonado of The Lens looks into the unethical practices of the Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office.

It seems that this spring really is the time for obscure copyright disputes with odd connections to the US's weak-kneed compliance with the Berne Convention on copyright. We've already written a few times about the moral rights claim by the guy who created the giant "Wall St. Bull" statue, as well as a lawsuit against a Wall St. church for moving a 9/11 memorial -- both of which reference VARA, the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990. VARA was passed as part of the US's slapdash attempt to pretend it complied with the Berne Convention, a document that was created in 1886, and which the US took over 100 years to even pretend to comply with. VARA wasn't the only such move in 1990. That very same year, Congress also passed the Architectural Works Copyright Protection Act of 1990, or AWCPA.Now, hold that thought as we get into the meat of what this story is about. It's a posting on Reddit's /r/legaladvice/ subreddit, which is kind of famous for absolutely awful questions and even worse answers -- so take it with a grain of salt. But the posting claims that it's from a homeowner, who had customized things done to a model home which then burned down. In trying to have the home rebuilt as it was before, the original developer refused to rebuild it, and also refused to hand over the blueprints. Instead, the homeowner more or less recreated the plans from memory (and photographs and a neighbor's house that was similar) and had another builder start to rebuild -- only to receive a cease & desist letter from the original builder, threatening a copyright claim:

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Did you hear the story this weekend about how Trump's Chief of Staff Reince Priebus went on TV and said that the administration is "looking at" changing libel laws or amending the 1st Amendment of the Constitution? You probably did. It's dumb and wrong and it makes no sense, but that doesn't mean that the President isn't already doing great harm to free speech. But first, let's cover Priebus's nonsensical comments. If you somehow missed it, here's what he said:

For several years now cable and broadband providers have been using hidden fees to covertly jack up their advertised rates. These fees, which utilize a rotating crop of bullshit names, help these companies falsely advertise one rate, then sock the consumer with a significantly higher-rate post sale (often when locked into a long-term contract). The practice also allows the company to falsely claim they're not raising rates on consumers. They omit that they're talking about the above the line rate being charged, implying that anything below the line (where real fees like taxes are levied) is outside of their control.For example, for several years now, CenturyLink has been charging its broadband customers an "internet cost recovery fee," which the company's website insists "helps defray costs associated with building and maintaining CenturyLink's High-Speed Internet broadband network" (that's what the full bill is supposed to be for). Comcast and other cable companies have similarly begun charging users a "broadcast TV fee," which simply takes a portion of the costs of programming, and hides it below the line. The names differ but the goal's the same: falsely advertise one rate, then charge consumers with a higher price.Comcast was sued for the practice last year. Amusingly, the company responded to the suit by trying to claim that covertly jacking up their advertised rate was just their way of being "transparent" (nothing quite says "transparency" like not knowing what your bill is going to be until after you've signed up for service). Despite this being false advertising, you'd be hard pressed to find any U.S. regulator, federal or state-level, that gives much of a damn. The sense one gets is that the government, slathered with campaign contributions, has been conditioned to see this kind of behavior as simply creative expression.In Oregon, regional TV regulators have bucked the apathetic trend and are urging Oregon's Department of Justice to begin investigating Comcast's (and other providers') abuse of this kind of pricing. In a letter to the Oregon Department of Justice (pdf), the smaller regulators for Multnomah and Washington counties point out that under current law they're forbidden from regulating cable prices. But, they note, they're being inundated with complaints from Comcast subscribers tired of having their rates covertly jacked up while under contract:

The surprising shutdown of the NSA's email harvesting program -- one that operated "upstream" and grabbed not just communications to and from surveillance targets, but also those "about" surveillance targets -- is good news. Considering the NSA had done nothing but abuse this specific privilege, the shutdown is a welcome surprise. But it's not great news, for a variety of reasons.First, the shutdown arrives on the heels of a yearlong denial of surveillance requests by the FISA court. This indicates the NSA was either still abusing its collection or the court no longer felt the program was constitutional, at least not the way the NSA was running it. The shutdown seems to reflect the NSA's inability or unwillingness to shift towards more targeted surveillance methods -- ones that won't sweep up lots of US persons' communications inadvertently.It also suggests the program -- at least the upstream part of it -- is no longer as useful as it used to be. The rise in default encryption by email providers may be preventing the NSA from gathering as much info as it used to, as Julian Sanchez explains at Just Security.

This week, we were all appalled by the astonishing move by the Oregon government to fine a man who criticized the traffic camera system for practicing engineering without a license. One anonymous commenter won most insightful comment of the week by pointing out what this teaches about similar notions:

Since I'm here at the Creative Commons 2017 Global Summit this weekend, I want to take a break from our usual Techdirt history posts and highlight the new State Of The Commons report that has been released. These annual reports are a key part of the CC community — here at Techdirt, most of our readers already understand the importance of the free culture licensing options that CC provides to creators, but it's important to step back and look at just how much content is being created and shared thanks to this system. It also provides some good insight into exactly how people are using CC licenses, through both data and (moreso than in previous years) close-up case studies. In the coming week we'll be taking a deeper dive into some of the specifics of the report and this year's summit, but for now I want to highlight a few key points — and encourage you to check out the full report for yourself.Public Domain Dedications Are Gaining SteamEven within the CC community itself, there is some debate as to the effectiveness and appropriateness of various licensing options like no-derivatives and non-commercial. Here at Techdirt we've always encouraged creators to strongly consider the CC0 option that puts their work fully into the public domain (or at least as fully as you can under a copyright system that provides no clear legal mechanism for doing so). In the past year, the use of CC0 has been growing, largely thanks to some specific projects like the the release of a large collection from the Metropolitan Museum of Art which I wrote about a couple months ago, and the public-domain-focused photography platform Unsplash. Hopefully the success and usefulness of these projects drives even more creators and platform operators to embrace CC0 (many content sharing platforms still don't even give uploaders the option, with CC-BY as the least restrictive license available).Non-Commercial Licenses Are The MinorityCasting the net a little wider than pure public domain dedications, there's an even bigger trend away from the more restrictive CC options. We've discussed many times in the past how "non-commercial" is an extremely problematic requirement in an era where the lines between commercial and non- are often extremely blurry. Similarly, "no derivatives" cuts of countless avenues of positive, productive use of content, and creates even more uncertainty around exactly what is allowed — and under a harsh copyright regime with hefty penalties for infringement, uncertainty is functionally pretty close to just being blocked altogether. So it's great to see that licenses which allow remixing and commercial use are continuing to increase as a proportion of all CC licenses, reaching 65% this year.The Commons Is HugeIn 2016, there were 1.2-billion works published with Creative Commons licenses. Though growth has slowed slightly since the count passed the one-billion mark last year, it shows no signs of stopping. Ten years ago, there were only 140-million such works.Many of the discussions at the summit are focused on how to push these trends forwards even further, both in specific areas of interest and in the commons as a whole. We'll have closer looks at some of these ideas soon, but for now check out the full report to learn more — and get ready for the Made With Creative Commons book (a collection of examples of CC work, plus insights from artists on how they have built sustainable open culture businesses, and advice on using CC with your own work) which will be available as a free ebook on May 5th.

As was noted here earlier, the NSA surprised many people by shutting down its email collection. This collection was authorized by the FISA Amendments Act, which is due for renewal at the end of this year. Since the point the collection began, it was clear the NSA was also harvesting (inadvertently, it said) US persons' communications.Ron Wyden, along with a few other lawmakers, has been asking the NSA for years to turn over information on this program -- specifically, how many US persons had been swept up "incidentally" in the bulk collection. For years, the NSA has refused to do so, claiming it would be impossible to compile this information and, somewhat hilariously, claiming it would violate the privacy of those swept up in the collection to query the database for incidental collections.This decision to shut down the program may result in that answer never being given to Wyden. The ODNI (Office of the Director of National Intelligence) may decide the shutdown renders this particular query moot. It shouldn't. Now that the email program has been shut down EXPLICITLY because it sweeps up too many US persons' in the dragnet, the answer is more important than ever. And the ODNI has recently (and very belatedly) promised to deliver this number and should keep that promise even though the program has been shut down. Not only that, but this shutdown only affects the collection of email. It doesn't prevent the NSA from collecting other internet-based communications. With fewer people using email as their primary communication method, the NSA will still have plenty of communications to harvest.There's another good reason for turning over that number: the Section 702 collection has been plagued with problems pretty much since its inception. The FISA court determined in 2011 that the program -- as operated by the NSA -- was unconstitutional. Apparently some fixes were made as the program was allowed to continue. But as Marcy Wheeler pointed out a year ago, the program has never not been violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

We had just been talking about Ed Sheeran suggesting that piracy actually helped his career rather than hurt it, as well as his decision to go to bat against his label for a fan who covered one of his songs, but he's not the only one out there who doesn't see filesharing as the great music Satan the labels would have us believe. Artist Mac DeMarco announced on stage at Coachella that his latest album had leaked online. The instructions he then gave the concert-goers is not the norm amongst artists, to say the least.

Creative Commons launched its 2017 Global Summit today with a rather moving surprise: a seven-foot-tall 3D printed replica of the Tetrapylon from Palmyra, Syria. For those who don't know the tragic situation, Palmyra is one of the most historic cities in the world — but it is being steadily destroyed by ISIS, robbing the world of countless irreplaceable artifacts and murdering those who have tried to protect them (the folks at Extra History have a pair of good summary videos discussing the history and the current situation in the city).Among ISIS's human targets was Bassel Khartabil, who launched Syria's CC community several years ago and began a project to take 3D scans of the city, which CC has been gathering and releasing under a CC0 Public Domain license. He was captured and imprisoned, and for the past five years his whereabouts and status have been unknown. As the #FreeBassel campaign continues, Creative Commons is now working to bring his invaluable scans to life in the form of 3D-printed replicas, starting with today's unveiling of the Tetrapylon — which was destroyed in January along with part of a Roman theatre after ISIS captured the city for a second time.This isn't the only such project — the Institute of Digital Archaeology and UNESCO unveiled a replica of part of the Temple of Bel in London last year — and these combined efforts are a critical bulwark between ISIS and its goal of eliminating this part of our shared cultural history. You can read more about CC's project — including status updates on the other artifacts, monuments and architecture that they are reproducing — on the #newpalmyra website (at the time of writing it still lists the Tetrapylon as "coming soon", though that will likely change shortly).Much of this weekend's summit is likely to revolve around the ongoing tension between open culture and intellectual property regimes, but I can't think of a better way to kick things off than with something that even the staunchest copyright maximalist can surely agree with: that the treasures of this 2,000-year-old city belong to us all, their destruction is a travesty, and the ability to preserve them even in some small way is a triumph of technology and the cultural commons.

Look, we warned everyone about this. Right after Congress stupidly stripped privacy protections so that ISPs could more actively sell your data (and make it harder for you to realize it or do anything about it), there were a few crowdfunding campaigns that popped up on GoFundMe, claiming that they were raising money to then buy the web browsing data of Congress. We pointed out at the time that this was dumb and dangerous because you can't just go buy someone's web surfing data. That's not how any of this works. But, you know, it was one of those stories that people just really, really wanted to believe, so apparently unaware of it being flat out impossible (more people should read Techdirt...), tons and tons of people donated tons and tons of money, without realizing there was absolutely no way these campaigns could do what they they claimed. The more well-known campaign, by a self-declared "privacy activist" named Adam McElhaney, ended up raising over $200k (despite others claiming that it looked like a pure scam). The slightly lesser well-known one, by actor Misha Collins, took in just under $90k. Between them, they raised about $300k... with promises of obtaining data that anyone with any knowledge of the situation would know they couldn't obtain.So, uh, take a wild guess what has happened? If you guess they didn't get any data with that money, well give yourself a prize, because that's exactly 100% what happened.And... some of the folks snookered into handing over the cash for something that was pretty clearly bogus are... not happy. Many have been requesting refunds. McElhaney is now claiming that he was never planning to buy the data from ISPs, but rather get it by FOIA, though he's now admitting in a GoFundMe update that it's not working either:

There aren't many details yet, but Charlie Savage at the NY Times has a major scoop: apparently, the NSA has halted "about" email collections. This is important. As we've discussed in the past, under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, the NSA can collect info on approved "foreign targets." But here's where it got sketchy: they could collect the communications "to" them or "from" them -- which most people would expect -- but also they could collect any communications "about" them. In other words, did you joke about Osama bin Laden in an email? It's possible that under Section 702, the NSA could collect that email without a warrant. That was massively concerning because the "about" emails from Americans could contain lots of other info, and once sucked up into the NSA's system and made available to the FBI for "backdoor" incidental collection searches, could expose people to lots and lots of trouble. There have been pushes over the past few years to limit the collection to no longer include "about" communications, but those had been (as far as we knew!) unsuccessful.And, for an unclear reason, the NSA has stopped doing that. Trevor Timm speculates that perhaps the FISA court ruled that collection illegal, which is possible (also we just noted that there were no new 702 approvals by the FISA Court last year), so perhaps the FISC is finally taking its job a bit more seriously. We've also pointed out that there have been legal fights over the fact that the DOJ lied to the Supreme Court about the nature of these "about" collections, which may have created more pressure to stop them from happening.I'm sure that we'll find out more about what happened in the near future, but this will certainly play a large role in the upcoming debate about renewing Section 702.

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As most people know, babies who are breastfed from birth enjoy a wide range of benefits. Here's what the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef), a global organization with nearly $5 billion of funding, has to say on the topic of breastfeeding:

For years ESPN has been the perfect personification of the cable and broadcast industry's almost-comic denial regarding cord cutting and market evolution. Long propped up by a system that forces consumers to buy massive bundles of largely-unwatched channels, ESPN has struggled with the rise of streaming alternatives and sleeker, "skinny" channel bundles. The sports network, which has lost 10 million viewers in just the last few years, has been trying to argue that these losses (which caused Disney stock to lose $22 billion in value in just two days at one point) are simply part of some kind of overblown, mass hallucination.Surveys have shown that 56% of consumers would drop ESPN in a heartbeat if it meant a reduction in the $8 per subscriber the channel is believed to cost. But last year, ESPN exec John Skipper suggested that these departing customers weren't worth keeping anyway:

The weird, sickening persecution of Barrett Brown continues. Whether or not you like the guy (and every time we post about him, we hear from people who provide reasons why they dislike him), the way he's been treated by our justice system is despicable. If you don't recall, Brown is an award winning journalist, who certainly went deep with Anonymous and other online groups. Eventually that resulted in him being arrested and harassed by prosecutors for sharing a link. When the infamous Stratfor hacks were released, he shared a link to the files to get people to sift through them. Because some of the files included swiped credit card numbers, he was charged with "trafficking" in stolen credit cards. Oddly, right before trial -- realizing how insane it was to charge him over this -- the feds dropped the charges around linking, but pushed forward on other charges because he hid a laptop in a cabinet and (stupidly...) got angry at the FBI when they came to investigate. The odd part is that following a plea deal, the judge sentenced him to an astounding 63 months in jail -- and cited the sharing of the link (again, those charges were dropped, but it sometimes appeared the judge didn't realize that) to explain why.But the odder part throughout all of this was just how vindictive and petty everyone in the system were towards Brown -- and specifically towards his interactions with the press. The feds sought to stop the media from reporting on Brown's case and got a judge to block Brown or his lawyers from talking to the media. And once he was in prison, the feds cut off his email.All this weird petty shit, just to stop him from talking to the media.Late last year, he was released from prison (earlier than expected) and has been complying with all the terms of his release... except, apparently, officials disagreed with that... because he was conducting interview with the media, according to D Magazine, where Brown has been working since his release. The Intercept, which employed Brown as a columnist while he was in prison, has more details, claiming that his check-in officer suddenly claimed that he needed permission before he could conduct media interviews -- something he had not been told at all.

We've seen random attempts by governments to block access to social media sites or even the internet as a whole, but the Indian state of Kashmir has ordered 22 social networks to be blocked for at least a month. Journalist Nazir Masoodi, who is in Kashmir, tweeted out screen shots of the government order, noting "This could be my last tweet."

As we noted yesterday, FCC Chair Ajit Pai has officially kicked off his plan to kill net neutrality -- and unfortunately did so by spouting debunked myths and fantasies about how much damage net neutrality was causing for investment. As we pointed out that, that's complete hogwash. If you actually looked at what telcos and ISPs were spending it showed no impact from the open internet rules. And, really, why should it have changed investment plans? As we've noted, the rules had basically no impact on ISPs unless those ISPs were looking to screw over consumers. And if it harmed those ISPs' investment plans, that doesn't seem like a very big loss. Otherwise, the open internet rules just provided clear "rules of the road" for ISPs to treat internet data fairly and to not screw over end users.Either way, that's not the only "investment" that Pai should be looking at. Because one of the other key aspects of having an open internet is the massive amount of investment that has resulted for companies that operate on the internet. Pai seems (bizarrely) exclusively focused on investment in the infrastructure (which, again, has not dropped despite his claims) and totally ignores all the investment layers above (which also helps funds the infrastructure). So, just as Pai is (wrongly) whining that net neutrality harmed investment, over 800 startups, from all 50 states, sent him a letter urging him not to get rid of the open internet rules (and, yes, we were among those who signed onto the letter).This is important. Pai is making all sorts of misleading to nonsensical claims about the impact on the economy of the net neutrality rules, but in doing so he's trying to ignore all of the business that's created because the internet is kept open and free and the giant incumbent access providers are unable to favor their own services or throttle and stifle innovative upstarts. Pai talks a good game about how he wants the "democratization of entrepreneurship" thanks to a fast internet. That's great. But if he kills off net neutrality we lose that. We get a system where each startup has to go begging and pleading to each access provider for a deal they probably can't get or couldn't afford even if they were able to. We've seen that world. It's the world that existed on mobile phones in the early 2000s when the providers got to control (i.e., charge ridiculous sums for) who had access to their customers. That was not a good world to live in and it vastly limited the economic opportunities of the mobile world. It was only when smartphones broke away from the carriers' control that things changed.We shouldn't move back towards that kind of world, yet that appears to be the clear end result of the plans that Pai is pushing. This is a mistake and over 800 startups are letting him know that. Pai may think he can ignore them all, but he should note that each of those companies has a lot of users, and it's not difficult to ask them to speak up too. Pai is playing with fire if he thinks that the public won't speak out about his attempts to kill off net neutrality and to harm the most innovative companies out there, in favor for the slow, lumbering duopolists who control the pipes.

It doesn't take many stories of people suffering due to unaffordable medicine to make you question the state of pharmaceutical patents, but the arguments in their defense are loud and frequent. Most are variations on the same theme: without the promise of a monopoly, important drugs would never be researched and developed. But does this argument truly hold up? It's come up as a tangent in previous episodes of the podcast, but this week we're dedicating a full episode to questioning the popular defenses of pharma patents and looking for a better way forward.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.

Anyone familiar with internet culture will be familiar with Godwin's law. It goes roughly something like this: the longer a discussion goes on on the internet, the higher the probability that a comparison to Hitler or the Nazis will be made. This axiom enjoys lofty status on the internet -- so often have we seen its claim played out in threads and discussions.Godwin's Law is, of course, not a real law. But there may soon be a real Godwin's Law on the books, stemming from the murder of Robert Godwin Sr. and the subsequent video upload to Facebook of the murder.

Section 702 -- the statute that allows the NSA to collect internet communications and data in bulk -- is up for renewal at the end of this year. The NSA, thanks to Ed Snowden, faced more of an uphill battle than usual when renewing Section 215 (bulk metadata collections). For the first time in its existence, the NSA ended up with a compromise (the USA Freedom Act), rather than a straight renewal.The Intelligence Community appears to be trying to get out ahead of straight renewal opponents. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has released a Section 702 Q&A at millennial watering hole Tumblr. By returning its own soft serve questions with canned talking points, the ODNI is hoping to show just how lawful its upstream collection is.It also hopes to obscure something that's been around since the 2008 FISA Amendments Act: backdoor searches. Other government agencies have had the ability to peruse the NSA's collections, which were ostensibly gathered solely for national security use. The FBI is the most frequent backdoor searcher, seeing as it has rebranded as a counterterrorism unit over the past several years, which has allowed it to expand its surveillance capabilities and increase exploitation of the NSA's data stores.The ODNI's Q&A document sort of admits this, but tries to downplay the implications of allowing a domestic law enforcement agency free access to national security-focused surveillance intake.

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Even though stories of copyright collecting societies failing to distribute the monies that they collect to artists abound -- we wrote about one just a few weeks ago -- this doesn't seem to discourage others from continuing to bend the rules somewhat. Here, for example, is a story from Australia, where there is a major battle to switch to a US-style fair use approach to copyright. Naturally, the affected industries there hate the idea of allowing the public a little more leeway in the use of copyright materials. So Australia's copyright collection agency decided to build up a war-chest to lobby against such changes. The Sydney Morning Herald explains where the money for that fighting fund is coming from:

To be clear: fifth generation (5G) wireless should be really impressive when it actually arrives, providing significantly faster mobile broadband speeds at lower latencies. The catch: the 5G standard hasn't even been created yet, and any real deployment of the ultra-fast technology isn't expected to even seriously begin until 2020. That hasn't stopped wireless carrier and hardware vendor marketing departments, which have been hyping the technology as the second coming for several years now. Sure, these salesmen don't know what 5G really even is yet, but they're pretty sure it's going to fix everything.As these carriers rush to begin tests on the hardware and software advancements that may someday make up the 5G standard, the real yeoman's work is now being done in marketing. All of the big carriers are tripping over themselves, trying desperately to convince the public that they're going to be the first to offer the amazing new benefits 5G can provide. Verizon has traditionally been at the forefront of this hype, telling anyone who'll listen it hopes to offer gigabit speeds over wireless sometime this year (to a limited number of trial participants).Not to be outdone, AT&T has upped the ante this week with a proclamation that the company is first to market with "5G Evolution." What is 5G evolution? It's a largely meaningless marketing term concocted by AT&T to describe 4x4 MIMO (multiple input, multiple output) antennas and 256 QAM technologies that can be used to make existing LTE networks faster. It really has nothing whatsoever to do with "5G," but you wouldn't know that from reading AT&T's marketing missives this week:

It seems like common sense. The person legally responsible for defamatory statements is the person making the defamatory statements. But since pursuing that person often seems too difficult, legislators, courts, and disingenuous plaintiffs have engaged in mental/litigious gymnastics in hopes of finding third parties responsible for the statements of others.We've seen a long list of lawsuits filed against service providers in response to defamatory content hosted on their platforms. We've seen courts -- mostly outside of the US -- convert third-party platforms into "publishers" for the sake of delisting/content removal court orders. We've seen numerous attempts to avoid Section 230 defenses by recrafting defamation lawsuits as trademark infringement litigation.We've even seen some bad lawmaking, attempting to strip away protections for service providers to make it easier to hold them responsible for the actions of others.The European Court of Human Rights is in the middle of another attempt to hold third parties responsible for the allegedly-defamatory statements of others.

This isn't a huge surprise, but unfortunately, today -- after a mostly ridiculous "debate" on the House floor full of claptrap and bullshit about how important copyright is to "protecting jobs" (despite this bill having nothing to do with any of that) -- the House voted 378 to 48 to approve a bill that makes the head of the Copyright Office, the Copyright Register, a Presidential appointment rather than an appointment by the Library of Congress, as it's been throughout the entire history of the Copyright Office. As we pointed out just yesterday, Congress appears to be rushing this through for no clear reason. It held no hearings on the issue (other than the fact that the current Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, was getting ready to appoint her own Copyright Register).Again, every reason given by supporters of this bill doesn't hold up to any scrutiny. They claimed, falsely, that copyright creates 5 million jobs (one Rep -- Tony Cardenas -- even claimed that the Copyright Register "oversees" those jobs). But this is not true. They claimed that the Copyright Office needs to be modernized -- which is true. But Carla Hayden has already commenced a massive modernization project, which this bill will stop dead in its tracks. They claimed that this would provide "greater oversight" over how the Copyright Office is run, but that's not even remotely true. The bill actually takes away the oversight from the Librarian of Congress... and gives it to no one other than the President, who isn't likely to be paying much attention to what's happening at the Copyright Office.This bill serves no purpose other than to take power away from the Librarian of Congress and give it to powerful lobbyists who will have a major say in who runs the Copyright Office. The bill will now move to the Senate where it is also likely to get an easy approval, and no doubt the President will sign the bill (which gives him more power, even if he's shown little sign of actually appointing people to the nearly 500 open positions which this will add to). It's a bad bill, and it's a gift to Hollywood, even as it will harm the actual content creators who will have to wait even longer for the office to actually be modernized.

As we mentioned recently, today is "World Intellectual Property Day," an event put together by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to promote ever greater protectionism and mercantilism in favor of copyright holders and patent holders, while ignoring any impact on the public of those things. It's a fairly disgusting distortion of the claimed intent of intellectual property, which is often promoted for the claimed benefits it brings to the public, but extreme supporters, such as WIPO, are never willing to actually weigh out the pros and cons of copyrights and patents, and how over-protection and over-enforcement can cause serious problems for the public, innovators and creators.I wasn't sure if I was going to write anything specifically about World IP Day, but Brandon Butler, the Director of Information Policy at the UVA Library put up an excellent suggestion on Twitter, that we should use "World IP Day" to re-read what Lord Thomas Macauley said in the UK Parliament back in 1841 when they were discussing copyright term expansion. We've pointed to it and quoted from it at length many times over the years, but even now, 176 years later, it still remains one of the best statements on how over-monopolizing ideas creates real harms. It's a part of the lesson that supporters of copyright and patents either ignore or wish to hide. So we will post it here in its entirety (after all, it's in the public domain):

FCC boss Ajit Pai has made no secret of his disdain for net neutrality. Or, for that matter, his general disregard for the consumer-protection authority granted the agency he's supposed to be in charge of. Pai had already stated that his "solution" -- to his perceived injustice that is net neutrality -- is to replace the government's existing, hard net neutrality rules with "voluntary commitments" by the likes of AT&T, Comcast and Verizon. From there, he hopes to leave any remaining regulatory enforcement to the under-funded and over-extended FTC (we've explained why this is a notably bad idea here).Pai clarified his plans a little during a speech today in Washington, DC at an event hosted by FreedomWorks (which, not coincidentally, takes funding from the giant ISPs Pai is clearly eager to help). According to Pai, the FCC will issue a Notice of Proposed Rule Making tomorrow to begin the process of rolling back Title II and killing net neutrality. The FCC will then vote on the proposal on May 18, according to the agency head. That means there will be a full public comment period (that's where you come in) ahead of a broader vote to kill the rules later this year.Pai's full speech (pdf) was packed with conflations, half-truths, and statements that have been repeatedly, painstakingly debunked over the course of the last decade. Among them being the ongoing claim that net neutrality rules weren't necessary -- because incumbent ISPs had done nothing wrong:

Being transparent about what private consumer data is being collected and sold appears to be a hard lesson for hardware vendors to learn. Earlier this month, Bose was hit with a new lawsuit (pdf) accusing it of collecting and selling personal subscriber usage data of the company's $350 QC 35 noise-canceling headphones. More specifically, the lawsuit claims that the Bose Connect smartphone companion app is collecting user preferences when it comes to "music, radio broadcast, Podcast, and lecture choices" -- and then monetizing that data without making it clear to the end user: