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Canadian law enforcement brought down a massive criminal conspiracy. Now, thanks to information it doesn't want to release to the court, most of what was brought down will be re-erected by the suspects it's cutting loose. (h/t Techdirt reader Pickle Monger)

Large ISPs like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast spent a significant part of Friday trying to convince the press and public that they didn't just screw consumers over on privacy (if you've been napping: they did). With the vote on killing FCC broadband privacy protections barely in the books, ISP lobbyists and lawyers penned a number of editorials and blog posts breathlessly professing their tireless dedication to privacy, and insisting that worries about the rules' repeal are little more than "misinformation."All of these posts, in lock step, tried to effectively make three key arguments: that the FTC will rush in to protect consumers in the wake of the FCC rules being repealed (not happening), ISPs don't really collect much data on you anyway (patently untrue), and that ISPs' lengthy, existing privacy policies and history of consumer respect mean consumers have nothing to worry about (feel free to pause here and laugh).For more than a decade, large ISPs have used deep-packet inspection, search engine redirection and clickstream data collection to build detailed user profiles, and their longstanding refusal to candidly talk about many of these programs should make their actual dedication to user privacy abundantly clear. Yet over at Comcast, Deputy General Counsel & Chief Privacy Officer Gerard Lewis spent some time complaining that consumer privacy concerns are little more than "misleading talk" and "misinformation and inaccurate statements":

A recurrent theme here on Techdirt has been the way in which the West has ceded the moral high ground in so many areas involving the tech world. For example, in 2010, we noted that the US had really lost the right to point fingers over Internet censorship. The moral high ground on surveillance went in 2013 for people, and in 2014 for economic espionage. Meanwhile, the UK has been shown to be as bad as the most disreputable police states in its long-running blanket surveillance of all its citizens.The UK's most recent move to cast off any pretense that it is morally superior to other "lesser" nations is the Investigatory Powers Act, which formalizes all the powers its intelligence services have been secretly using for years. One of the most intrusive of those is the power to carry out what is quaintly termed "equipment interference" -- hacking -- anywhere in the world. That means it certainly won't be able to criticize some new rules in China, spotted by the Lawfare blog:

No technology is perfect and facial recognition software is obviously no exception. But whereas law enforcement groups use this flawed technology in too many instances, device manufacturers are beginning to ship out security features that rely on facial recognition software almost ubiquitously. Many might look at this modern technology and imagine defeating it and logging into another person's phone would resemble some kind of Mission Impossible style convolution. Sadly, as proven again recently with the release of Samsung's Galaxy S8, defeating the security feature is laughably simple.

If you're of a certain age, you will remember the derision with which video games as an entertainment industry were met some time ago. While many of the claims about gaming encountered during that time, such as the impact of violent games on young minds or the assured claims that playing games would rot the brains of young people who played them, please understand how much louder that silliness was shouted years back. I can personally recall my own father insisting that if I played video games, I would end up having oatmeal for brains. Good one, Dad, except I played them anyway and now I'm a real-life grown-up with a family and two jobs and a house and all that jazz. Jazz, of course, being a previous receptacle for many of these same claims, but I digress.Less vociferous have been those on the other side of the "video games will rot your brain" position, but reverse claims do exist. Some have posited that there could actually be benefits to playing video games, from instilling in players a baseline sense of achievement, improving cognitive ability, or preparing them to be better at business than they would be otherwise. And now a recent study suggests that simple video games may in fact be useful therapeutically for those who have suffered trauma or addiction.

FOIA clearinghouse MuckRock has been on the receiving end of government antipathy before. Local government agencies aren't happy the service is able to work around location restrictions by offering proxies for out-of-state requesters. So far, this hasn't done much to slow the flow of public records to MuckRock.MuckRock users have been thwarted individually, mainly with FOIA fee requests ranging from $270,000 to $660 million. Various agencies have also cut MuckRock out of fee exemptions, claiming the service just isn't journalistic enough to avail itself of fee waivers.Dell Cameron of the Daily Dot reports a federal agency has decided to screw MuckRock users by making it more difficult to make requests. It's not one of the expected enemies of transparency, however. It's one that's been historically very easy to work with.

Roughly a year ago, a Canadian court ruled that Vice Media must turn over conversations one of its journalists had with an alleged terrorist to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The ruling created a chilling effect, carving a hole in journalistic protections in favor of national security concerns. Not only would it deter journalists from speaking to sources who might, at some point in the future, face criminal charges, but it also would deter sources from speaking to journalists for fear their cover might be blown by law enforcement court orders.Vice appealed the decision. Unfortunately, there's no better news awaiting them at the Ontario Court of Appeals. Elizabeth Raymer of Legal Feeds reports the higher court has upheld the previous ruling.

Previously unreleased documents acquired by Techdirt show, fairly conclusively, that Congress will be making a huge and dangerous mistake if it moves forward with changing how the head of the Copyright Office is appointed. And despite the fact that the RIAA & MPAA are eagerly supporting this change, the people it will hurt the most are content creators. Because the Copyright Office is basically incompetent when it comes to modernizing its technology. That's what was found by a thorough (but not publicly released) Inspector General's report, detailing how the Copyright Office not only threw away $11.6 million on a new computer system that it said would cost $1.1 million, but also lied to both Congress and the Library of Congress about it, pretending everything was going great.In reality the project was a complete and utter disaster. It was put together by people who seemed to have no clue how to manage a large IT project, and there was basically zero effort to fix that along the way. After literally wasting $11.6 million on nothing, the entire project was scrapped in October of last year.The timing here is important. October is when Carla Hayden reassigned Maria Pallante, effectively firing her. Pallante had led the Copyright Office since 2011 (soon after the big project began), so she was in charge through the vast majority of this disastrous project. While legacy copyright folks tried to spread evidence-free conspiracy theories about why Hayden fired Pallante, it seems a lot more likely that it was because Pallante had overseen a project that flat out wasted $11.6 million, and during the course of the project the Copyright Office repeatedly lied to the Library of Congress about its status.But here's the astounding thing. Congress is trying to reward the Copyright Office for this scandal, and give it more power and autonomy despite this absolute disaster. Perhaps because, until now, the Copyright Office has been successful in keeping this whole thing hidden.As we've mentioned, Congress is effectively trying to move the Copyright Office out of the Library of Congress by having the new Register of Copyright (who heads the Office) be appointed by the President and approved by the Senate (i.e., making it a political appointee), rather than be appointed by the Librarian of Congress as has been the case since the creation of the Copyright Office. One of the key arguments in favor of this is that the Copyright Office is woefully behind on technology, and needs to be modernized. Almost exactly two years ago, a fairly scathing report from the GAO came out about the lack of leadership on IT issues from then-Librarian of Congress James Billington. Thankfully, Billington is gone and Carla Hayden is in charge now -- and she actually has a history of modernizing a library. Reports from folks at the Library say that Hayden has moved quickly to establish a real modernization plan for the entire Library, including the Copyright Office, and that those efforts are already starting to move forward.And that's got to be better than giving the Copyright Office autonomy to modernize itself. As we're releasing here for the very first time publicly, an Inspector's General report looking at various IT projects related to the Library of Congress is absolutely devastating in revealing how incompetent the Copyright Office is at modernizing itself. Specifically, in 2010, the Copyright Office asked for $1.1 million it said it would need to build its Electronic Licensing System (eLi). Just about everything turned out to be a complete disaster and a waste of money. From the executive summary of the report:

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The DOJ is attempting to prosecute the creator of a remote access software -- not because he used it for nefarious purposes -- but because it can (and has been) used by criminals. Kevin Poulsen has the whole bizarre story at The Daily Beast -- one that involves a 26-year-old programmer and the remote administration tool (RAT) he created and sold.Taylor Huddleston, creator of NanoCore, a RAT that has been linked to intrusions in ten countries, had his home raided by FBI agents on December 6th. The 14-page indictment paints Huddleston as a willing accomplice -- someone who sold his product to bad people to do bad things.But the facts of the case -- things that can be proven with forum chat logs and Huddleston's proactive efforts to prevent his RAT from being abused -- disagree with the government's narrative. NanoCore does all the things an administrative tool is expected to do, including keylogging and granting control to remote administrators. But Huddleston claims he created the tool to be a low-cost solution for cash-strapped businesses and small government agencies. His actions appear to back up the claims that he never intended this to be a plaything for criminal hackers.While Huddleston did debut and offer his product for sale at HackForums -- hardly the best marketplace if one wants to be seen as purely innocent -- he took corrective actions and issued strict warnings about illegal deployment.

Rep. Devin Nunes, who heads the House Intelligence Committee, has been all over the privacy/security map in recent weeks. He's publicly decried the supposed "illegal surveillance" of former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn while trying to avoid undercutting the NSA programs and presidential authority that make it all this spying possible.His hypocrisy knows no bounds. Nunes has repeatedly suggested NSA spying activities (under Executive Order 12333) should receive even less oversight. Now he's complaining the spy infrastructure he wholeheartedly supports is too big and dangerous, now that it's resulted in Mike Flynn's departure.But it goes even further than that. Nunes is utilizing an informal network of what he calls "whistleblowers" to leak him details of investigations. Then he immediately goes and discusses these investigations in public. Barton Gellman (who handled some of Snowden's leaks) points out just how far Nunes has gone in defending both Mike Flynn and Trump White House.

Following the Congress vote to dismantle privacy protections for broadband subscribers, VPNs have suddenly become a very hot area, despite the complex issues surrounding them. We've reported on various instances of authorities around the world either banning VPNs, or flirting with idea of doing so. But there's no doubt that the main battleground over VPNs is in China, where the government has been clamping down on their use with ever-greater rigor.For example, back in 2012, China started blocking VPNs, but in a rather ad hoc and piecemeal way. As Karl reported in January of this year, the authorities have now taken a much harsher line, requiring all VPN providers to obtain prior government approval in order to operate. Although that still allows people to use VPNs, it places them under strict control, and means they can be turned off by ordering suppliers to shut them down. The South China Morning Post (SCMP) reveals that in the major city of Chongqing, the local authorities have taken these measures to their logical conclusion -- banning VPNs completely:

This week, after James Comey unveiled his idea for an international encryption backdoor partnership (still impossible to do safely), DannyB racked up the votes to win most insightful comment of the week by reflecting the style of Comey's demands of technologists:

Only Available Until Monday Night: Necessary Hashtags Gear

As is commonly said, mistakes happen and it's what we do about those mistakes that is important. Too often when the mistakes are concerning trademark bullying, there is nothing done to acknowledge or address that bullying. The bully will simply state the oft-repeated excuse that they must bully according to trademark law, which isn't remotely the case. And, because there is no acknowledgement that anything was done wrong, the bullying then continues.Well, after a recent dust-up over trademarks between BrewDog, a self-styled "punk brewery," and a family-owned pub, it seems that the brewery is actually going all in on reforming how it approaches trademark issues, and even intellectual property more generally.

While copyright collection societies the world over tend to be good hosts for the disease of corruption, not all corruption is equal. These collection groups often like to jack up fees when someone points out that they actually have to do their job, to threaten businesses in the most insane ways, and also to, oops, sometimes just totally forget to pay the artists they purport to benefit. Over in Kenya, however, the dominant copyright collection group, MCSK, went for and hit the corruption trifecta by engaging in all of three at the same time. Not a good look for anyone who thinks these collection groups have a role to play for artists.It got so bad, in fact, that the Kenyan government has decided to pull MCSK's license to operate.

Columbia University's Knight First Amendment Institute wants to know why device searches at the border have skyrocketed since the beginning of this year. As was reported earlier this month, the number of devices searched in February 2017 equals the total searched in all of 2015. Even last year's jump from 5,000 to 25,000 searches looks miniscule in comparison. Border device searches are on track to more than double last year's numbers. (h/t The Intercept)The Knight First Amendment Institute filed FOIA requests with the DHS, ICE, and CBP for "statistical, policy, and assessment records" related to the steep increase in device searches. It's also looking for any legal interpretations the agencies might have on hand that explain their take on the Supreme Court's Riley decision, which instituted a warrant requirement for cell phone searches.It asked for expedited handling given the significant public interest in all things immigration and border-related, which has climbed along with the device searches thanks to several presidential directives, some of which are being challenged in court.As the lawsuit [PDF] notes, the public definitely should be apprised of the policies and procedures governing border device searches. If there's been an increase in searches, the public should be made aware of why this is happening, as well as their rights and remedies when it comes to entering or leaving the United States. The suit also points out that several recent reports suggest devices have been taken by government agents by force, or "consent" obtained through threats of further detention and/or violence.Naturally, the FOIA requests have been greeted with non-responses and indifference by these agencies, which has prompted the Institute's FOIA lawsuit. The FOIA requesters seek the court's assistance in pushing the agencies into quicker responses. To date, it's received nothing but acknowledgements. There have been no estimates of time needed to fulfill the requests or any indication the agencies have even begun searching for responsive documents.Of course, this immediate lawsuit strategy could backfire. The government has been pushing back against FOIA requesters' lawsuits filed shortly after the statutory response period has expired. It claims these immediate lawsuits are nothing more than certain requesters hoping to push their requests to the front of the line, rather than allow theirs to be ignored/mishandled/stonewalled in the order it was received. Of course, the government's arguments would be more sympathetic if multiple federal agencies didn't repeatedly engage in these tactics and do whatever they can to keep requested documents out of requesters' hands.

Spotify is pulling the plug on free access to some artists' newest releases, according to The Guardian. Currently, Spotify's 50 million paid users fork over £10/month to play their music offline without ads, but now they're also getting exclusive access to artists' biggest new releases. Meanwhile, Spotify's other 50 million free users have their access suddenly restricted.This has been a major sticking point with some artists and labels for many years. They've long demanded that some music only be available to paying subscribers because the royalties shared there are much higher. With this new setup -- which Spotify loudly resisted for years -- Spotify benefits by paying fewer royalty fees to record labels, though those fees from free streaming were lower per stream than paid streams anyway. But it's the record labels that pushed this one through:

Eugene Volokh, just recently teamed up with Paul Levy to track down who was behind a scam abusing the court system with forged or fraudulent court documents to get questionable or fake court orders to force Google to takedown links. It's a sketchy (and illegal) "reputation management" trick and it appears that at least a few folks are doing it. Volokh has just spotted another one and it comes with a Prenda Law twist. Volokh nicely sums up the background info leading up to this:

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The House Oversight Committee finally took on the FBI's Facial Recognition Program and discovered what critics have been saying about it for years: it's broken, filled with innocent Americans, and completely out of control.

For a few years now, our intelligence overseers have been insisting that we shouldn't be too concerned about surveillance programs that collect "just metadata" because that doesn't really reveal too much. But, of course, we've shown how "just metadata" can ruin a career diplomat's life, and former NSA/CIA boss Michael Hayden has admitted that the US kills people based on metadata.Either way, I find it fascinating that reporter Ashley Feinberg needed just a few small bits of innocent metadata from FBI Director James Comey to track down his secret Twitter account. It took her all of four hours or so. Just last night, Comey admitted that he was on Twitter, leading lots of people to go searching for the account since there is no official one. I won't describe all of how Feinberg tracked it down (it involves some pretty excellent sleuthing and is worth reading) but suffice it to say, it's metadata that gives Comey away. The account, @projectexile7, was then almost certainly confirmed as Comey's based on metadata about who was following it, who it was following, and what it liked:

Last week, the UK's Home Secretary Amber Rudd said that WhatsApp risked becoming a "place for terrorists to hide." Then, like many others that have used this tired old trope, she went on to call for the development of some magic unicorn key to unlock all encrypted communications, one that was somehow available only to those on the side of truth, beauty, law and order, and not to the other lot. In doing so, her cluelessness was particularly evident, as her invocation of the "necessary hashtags" emphasized, but she's not alone in that. Despite the chorus of experts pointing out for the thousandth time why it's not possible, the EU Justice Commissioner has just said that the EU must have magic unicorn keys, too. As EurActiv reports:

Readers here will hear the name "Monster Energy Corporation", makers of the Monster Energy beverage, and likely immediately roll their collective eyes. Monster Energy has truly been a monster when it comes to trademark bullying over some of the most frivolous claims imaginable. From threats against breweries over location-based puns, to threats against beverage review sites it doesn't like, and even threats against an actor that featured in a monster movie over a photo he tweeted holding a Monster Energy drink, the company is something of a joke in trademark circles.Which hasn't kept the company from continuing its bullying ways, of course. The latest version of its efforts concerns a startup root beer company in DC that dared to use the word "beast" in its name, with Monster Energy asserting that beast is too close to monster and oh my god why is this universe such a silly, silly place?

Over the years, there have been plenty of debates about whether bloggers should be considered journalists and, specifically about if they should qualify to be protected by journalist shield laws. Court rulings on this have been something of a mixed bag with some courts saying that bloggers don't qualify for state shield laws, but over in Pennsylvania there's a recent ruling that went the other way.The case, filed in Beaver County Pennsylvania, and heard in the local state court, found that the blogger who runs BeaverCountian need not respond to a subpoena demanding IP addresses or other identifying info on various commenters. The lawsuit was brought by Connie Javens and Renee Javens Zuk against a bunch of John Does who they accused of posting defamatory comments on BeaverCountian.The court carefully reviewed Pennsylvania's journalist shield law and found that the operator of Beaver Countian is pretty clearly covered. It first notes there's no requirement that the publication be a print publication and further highlights that the operator of the site, John Paul Vranesevich, clearly does journalism with his posts to the site.

For a few years now, we've written about various local governments and their pointless wars against Airbnb, which are often driven by lobbying from the big hotels. Different governments take different approaches, but Miami apparently has an incredibly restrictive regulation that effectively bars short term rentals entirely. Even worse, the mayor has been pushing to make things even worse. Since the current law only is enforced in response to complaints, mayor Tomas Regalado is pushing a plan to more proactively hunt down homeowners who offer short term rentals on Airbnb.And here's where things get... sketchy. There was a hearing and a vote about this plan recently, and a bunch of Miami homeowners went to City Hall to speak out against this plan. Of course, in order to speak before the Miami commissioners considering this, they had to first identify themselves. The commissioners, apparently unswayed by these homeowners or by Airbnb itself, voted 3 to 2 to move forward with the plan (and also threatened to sue Airbnb directly...). But perhaps most ridiculous of all, the city is now looking to go after the homeowners who spoke at City Hall. After all, they identified themselves as homeowners using Airbnb:

FBI Director James Comey is still pitching encryption backdoors, despite there being almost no one -- from the Intelligence Community to legislators around the world -- interested in what he's selling. Comey claims to be sitting on a pile of encrypted devices the FBI can't get into, even with help from outside contractors.His latest backdoor idea was floated at a national security symposium at the University of Texas. Knowing any legislated backdoors might result in US device customers turning to overseas suppliers, Comey thinks he can minimize domestic fiscal damage by getting the rest of the world to fall in line with an idea most foreign governments still find unpalatable, even as they suffer terrorist attacks with a far greater frequency than we do at home. Michael Kan has more details at ComputerWorld:

ISP lobbying and policy groups were, unsurprisingly, quick to mindlessly applaud this week's decision by Congress to kill consumer broadband privacy rules. Actual consumers, however, are far from pleased about Congress' decision to take campaign contributions in exchange for selling consumer privacy rights down river. With cable providers nabbing a growing broadband monopoly, ISPs increasingly merging with giant broadcasters, and neither competition nor regulatory oversight providing much of anything in the way of checks and balances, most people realize we're in for an...interesting ride over the next few years.Amusingly, even many of Donald Trump's most fervent online supporters were shocked by Congress' and the Trump administration's giant middle finger to consumer privacy. Over at Breitbart, traditionally not a hotbed for nuanced understanding of often-complicated tech policy, commenters were quick tocry foul over the vote to kill the FCC's rules:Of course many Trump supporters tried to heap the entirety of the blame in the lap of the GOP, ignoring the White House's wholesale support of the killing of the protections. But it was interesting to see several others actually seeing through the broadband industry's bullshit claim that the FTC will somehow come running to magically fill in the privacy enforcement gaps (it has no real authority over broadband, and ISPs can avoid oversight via common carrier exemptions anyway):Meanwhile, over at The_Donald subreddit, users that traditionally spend their calories happily whining about "snowflakes" and "libtards" suddenly came to the realization that the broadband market isn't competitive, and with neither competitor nor functional regulatory oversight of these ever-expanding telecom giants, the average consumer ("cuck" or not) is going to get screwed by companies like AT&T and Comcast. Repeatedly:Gosh, it's almost as if some regulations are actually necessary, and one has to intelligently debate the subtle, often-complicated nuance of each implementation! As we've noted the rules were created for a damn good reason. Namely that the lack of competition in the broadband sector had resulted in ISPs engaging in some incredibly idiotic behavior. ISPs in recent months have charged consumers more for privacy, given low income customers even worse customer service, or covertly modified user packets to track users around the internet and build entire profiles -- without telling a single god-damned customer this was happening.Suddenly realizing their predicament, numerous Trump supporters urged the President to immediately veto the repeal of the rules, again ignoring the fact that Trump's administration has made it repeatedly clear the push to kill the rules had the administration's full-throated support:Of course the sudden realization that government oversight of giant, anti-competitive corporations is sometimes necessary and even good for consumers has arrived a little late for most of us. It might have been nice if a few of these folks had heeded the warning about hollow populist rhetoric before our collective privacy rights were thrown in the toilet. With the gutting of net neutrality and Trump's likely approval of the massive AT&T Time Warner merger waiting in the wings, there's some additional hard lessons looming for Trump enthusiasts that actually care about tech policy.That said, this is another reminder of how certain issues (most notably net neutrality and privacy) have been quite intentionally shoveled into idiotic partisan grooves -- despite broad, bipartisan consumer support for both concepts. There are those that benefit by having tech policy discourse mired in such callow debate, but it isn't you or I (oh hi, didn't see you standing there, Comcast). Seeing the world entirely as a game of partisan patty cake -- waged idiotically but enthusiastically in team-colored onesies -- remains an ongoing disservice to us all.

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The DOJ's Inspector General has just released its latest report [PDF] on federal civil asset forfeiture. It's not pretty and it confirms many of the criticisms of the program. Law enforcement agencies -- including the DEA, which is responsible for nearly 80% of the $28 billion of forfeited assets over the past decade -- claim the program is key in the dismantling of criminal organizations.However, the facts don't back up this claim.The report opens by pointing out agencies involved in civil forfeiture seem completely uninterested in the actual pursuit of criminals. One multimillion dollar seizure resulted in nothing more than millions of dollars being seized. Any criminals associated with the cash are presumably still out there committing criminal acts.

So we've noted how new FCC boss Ajit Pai has breathlessly claimed that closing the digital divide will be the top priority for his commission. But we've also noted how his actions as FCC boss have run in stark, dramatic contrast to that stated goal. Whether it's making it easier for prison phone monopolies to rip off inmate families, his decision to kill a plan to bring much-needed competition to the cable box, or his attacks on net neutrality, so far Pai has made it painfully clear that protecting AT&T, Comcast and Verizon is actually where his priorities lie.In the last week Pai took his "love for the poor" to soaring new heights by falsely taking credit for year-old job plans at Charter Communications, and cheering as Congress dismantled consumer privacy protections at large ISP behest. But Pai also took what most analysts believe will be the opening salvo in a war against subsidized broadband service for the poor.Last year the Wheeler-lead FCC voted to expand the Lifeline program, first created by the Reagan administration and expanded by the Bush administration. Originally, low-income homes received a $9.25 monthly credit that could be used toward wireless or traditional phone service. The 2015 changes not only gave these homes the option to use this money for broadband in an attempt to modernize the fund, but also placed the lion's share of ISP eligibility administration in the hands of the FCC in an attempt, in part, to better police fraud.A number of states sued over the move, in part because large ISPs (which enjoy even greater regulatory capture on the state level) didn't want the federal government spending money on anything that might improve regional competition. This week, Pai issued a statement saying (pdf) that he would be killing the FCC's legal defense of the 2015 changes, and freezing all federal approval of federal provider eligibility. Why? This power belongs in the hands of the states, not the FCC, claims Pai:

Remember last year when CETA, the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between Canada and the EU, was on, then off, then on again, then off again, and finally on again? After that, CETA was ratified by the European Union, and now needs to be approved by all Member States' parliaments before it is definitively in force. Well, guess what? One of those parliaments -- in the French-speaking Belgian region of Wallonia, which has already derailed CETA before -- could be about to block it again. As an article originally in The Globe and Mail reports:

Judge William Alsup certainly continues to make himself known for how he handles technology-intensive cases. In techie circles, he's mostly known for presiding over the Oracle/Google Java API copyright case, and the fact that he claimed to have learned to program in Java to better understand the issues in the case (in which he originally ruled, correctly, that APIs were not subject to copyright protection, only to be overturned by an appeals court that simply couldn't understand the difference between an API and functional code). He's also been on key cases around the no fly list and is handling some Malibu Media copyright trolling cases as well.And, last month, he was handed another big high-profile case regarding copying and Google: the big self-driving car dispute between Google's (or "Alphabet's") Waymo self-driving car company and Uber. In case you weren't following it, Waymo accused a former top employee of downloading a bunch of technical information on the LiDAR system it designed, only to then start his own self-driving car company, Otto, which was then bought up by Uber in a matter of months. Most of the lawsuit is focused on trade secrets, with a few patent claims thrown in as well.Either way, Judge Alsup appears to want to be educated on LiDAR before the case begins. In two orders last week, Judge Alsup first asked lawyers for each side to present a basic tutorial on the basics of self-driving car technology:

In the wake of yesterday's unfortunate Congressional vote to kill broadband privacy protections (which had only just been put in place a few months ago, and hadn't yet taken effect) we've been seeing a lot of... bad ideas. People are rightfully angry and upset about this. The privacy protections were fairly simple, and would have been helpful in stopping truly egregious behavior by some dominant ISPs who have few competitors, and thus little reason to treat people right. But misleading and misinforming people isn't helpful either.The story that's getting the most attention and seems to be going viral (or at least on the verge) is this GoFundMe campaign set up by Misha Collins to buy and release Congress's internet data:

At this point, the category of "fake news" has become all but meaningless — a trajectory many of us saw coming the moment we first heard the words or saw the hashtag. That doesn't mean the underlying problems aren't real; many people who talk about "fake news" are trying to express real concern about genuinely troubling trends, but the nebulous label isn't doing them any favors, and is in fact diverting attention from the heart of the issue. With thousands of words a day being expended on the subject with little to no visible progress on understanding it, and companies like Facebook unveiling fact-checking features that may prove to be interesting experiments but are unlikely to make much difference in the long run, it's rare and refreshing to see someone actually get things right. That's why if you're interested in the "fake news" phenomenon, you should read Danah Boyd's new post about the real problems that we can't expect internet platforms to magically address:

Law prof Eric Goldman -- who's covered numerous internet-related cases over the years -- is sounding the alarm about a draft bill [PDF] circulating Congress which could do some very serious damage to the internet itself. The bill aims to undercut Section 230 protections in the name of preventing sex trafficking.

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Monopolies are everywhere, even in the Defending Americaâ„¢ business. Huffington Post's Zach Carter writes about a defense company that's being termed the "Martin Shkreli" of government contracting. In case you need reminding, Martin Shkreli is the hedge fund bro turned pharma kingpin who purchased a drug used by cancer and AIDS patients and raised its price from $14/pill to $750/pill. After an immense amount of backlash, Shkreli promised to lower the price, reneged on that promise, acquired the Wu Tang Clan's one-copy-only $1 million album, and otherwise engaged in personal and professional roguery, including smirking his way through a Congressional hearing on drug prices.The Shkreli process is being used by a defense contractor to inflate prices on what appear to be common manufacturing components, but ones with very few suppliers. When this company steps in, the number of suppliers decreases to one and the component prices skyrocket. This company was spotted by a member of Congress, who made it public with a letter to his colleagues.

Not too surprisingly, VPN providers say they're seeing an interest spike in the wake of lawmakers' full frontal assault on consumer broadband privacy protections. The attack on the rules comes as the broadband industry is suffering from an overall decline in competition, something of notable concern to privacy advocates. Some VPN providers were quick to use the debate as a marketing opportunity, with VPN provider Private Internet Access taking out a front page ad in the New York Times shaming the 50 Senators who sold consumer welfare down river in exchange for AT&T, Comcast, Verizon and Charter campaign contributions.VPN provider NordVPN says it has seen an 86% spike in new subscriber inquiries since the effort to kill the rules began, something it's quick to note happens every time privacy is threatened by myopic lawmakers worldwide:

Given the FBI's skill at cultivating terrorists to arrest and indict, you'd think it would have done a better job handling the planned terrorist attack in Garland, Texas. The two shooters were killed by local police before they could kill any attendees at a "Draw Mohammed" event thrown by anti-Muslim activist (and bumbling litigant) Pam Geller.The FBI appears to prefer "hunting" terrorists who are about 90% talk and 10% insolvent. The list of FBI terrorism busts includes senior citizens, people with cognitive disabilities, and wannabe ISIS militants so terrifying they can't even talk their mom into giving them their passport back so they can go fight for ISIS.When faced with suspects with coherent plans and firepower, the FBI simply motors away from ground zero. Literally. A 60 Minutes investigation into the Garland shooting reveals the FBI was on top of the suspects for several years, but failed to prevent the attack from being carried out. Elton Simpson, one of the shooters, was in constant contact with an FBI informant, and had been tracked on and off by the feds since 2006.

In 2013, Time Warner Cable (since acquired by Charter Communications) struck an $8.35 billion deal with the LA Dodgers to create LA SportsNet, the exclusive home of LA Dodgers games. To recoup its investment, Time Warner Cable demanded exorbitant prices from competing cable providers if they wanted access to the channel. Unsurprisingly, all of Time Warner Cable's competitors in the region balked at the $5 per subscriber asking price.Several years later, a massive portion of Los Angeles still can't watch their favorite baseball team, since Time Warner Cable's asking price not only kept competing cable operators from delivering the channel, but prohibited over-the-air broadcasts of the games.Last November, a new wrinkle emerged in the standoff after the Department of Justice sued AT&T (now owner of DirecTV) for being a "ringleader" in a collusion effort involving the channel. The DOJ effectively claimed that DirecTV, Cox, and other regional cable providers violated antitrust law by sharing private company data during their coordinated effort against Time Warner Cable's exclusive arrangement and higher rates. The original complaint stated that this "unlawful information exchange" violated consumers' rights to fair channel price negotiations:

Last week, the Senate voted 50-48 along party lines to kill consumer broadband privacy protections. That vote then continued today in the House, where GOP lawmakers finished the job, apparently happy to advertise how ISP campaign contributions consistently, directly manifest in anti-consumer policy with a 215 to 205 vote (you can find a full vote breakdown here). The rules, which were supposed to take effect this month, were killed using the Congressional Review Act -- which not only eliminates the protections, but limits the agency's ability to issue similar rules down the road.The broadband industry's effort to kill the rules is one of the uglier examples of pay-to-play government in recent memory. The protections, originally passed last October by the FCC, have been endlessly demonized by the broadband industry, despite the fact that they're relatively straight forward. The rules would have simply required that ISPs are transparent about what they collect (and who they sell it to), and provide working opt out tools. ISPs were also required to have consumers opt in for more sensitive data collection (financial, browser history data).Large ISPs, however, consistently whined about the rules, insisting the rules would "confuse" consumers, and hamper "innovation" in the advertising and telecom space. They also tried to claim that ISPs don't really collect much data on consumers, and what collection that does happen can be easily dodged by using a VPN (neither of which is true). ISPs also tried to claim it was unfair to saddle them with additional privacy regulations not seen by Google and Facebook, intentionally ignoring that the often stark lack of broadband competition makes this an apples to oranges comparison.In an last-ditch attempt to try and convince the House that ISP revenues shouldn't take priority over consumer privacy, a group of around twenty smaller ISPs sent a letter to the House (clearly promptly ignored) trying to explain to them how the lack of competition in broadband made the rules necessary:

In the news and publishing world, there tends to be pretty strong support for protecting free speech and, in particular, strong anti-SLAPP laws. After all, news publishers, are (unfortunately!) frequently targeted in SLAPP suits that are designed solely to shut up a news organization from reporting on something that someone doesn't like. That's why I'm always surprised when publications themselves seem to go after others for speech. But here we are, with a weird legal battle involving two publishers in nearby Santa Clara, California. The lawsuit was filed by Santa Clara Eagle Publishing and its boss Miles Barber against a guy named Robert Haugh, who just recently started an online-only publication called "Santa Clara News Online." Eagle Publisher/Barber, on the other hand, publish the more established "Santa Clara Weekly."Haugh's Santa Clara News Online appears to be your typical local blog, with Haugh -- a local reporter for over 15 years -- posting news and opinion blog posts about local happenings in Santa Clara. Some of those blog posts criticized Barber and Santa Clara Weekly. And, thus, the lawsuit. Lawyer Ken White -- better known around these parts as Popehat -- is representing Haugh and has filed a lovely anti-SLAPP motion against Barber and Eagle Publishing, noting that it seems quite clear that the intent of the lawsuit was to try to silence Haugh from criticizing Barber and the SCW:

The basic impetus behind DRM is obvious: a frantic, misguided desire to make digital products behave like physical ones. But the truth is DRM goes far, far beyond that, restricting all sorts of activities that are intrinsic to the idea of "owning" something. Two people who have thought a lot about this are law professors Aaron Perzanowski and Jason Schultz, authors of the new book The End Of Ownership. This week, Aaron and Jason join the podcast to discuss the book and the worrying status of DRM today.Follow the Techdirt Podcast on Soundcloud, subscribe via iTunes or Google Play, or grab the RSS feed. You can also keep up with all the latest episodes right here on Techdirt.

For pretty much all of the history of Techdirt, we've been hearing from the legacy entertainment industries about how the internet has been destroying art and destroying culture. They were making things worse, and we'd have more starving artists and less content -- and whatever content we did have would definitely be terrible. That's the story we were told over and over and over again -- and there are still a few in the industry who pitch this story.The problem is it's simply not true.The New York Times has an article by Farhad Manjoo called, How The Internet Is Saving Culture, Not Killing It, in which Manjoo claims that a cultural shift has been happening, one that could have radical implications for creators:

For many years now, we've been talking about the copyright questions surrounding pre-1972 sound recordings. There are a ton of ongoing cases about this and it may be a bit confusing to keep up with it all. In short, under old copyright law, copyright only applied to the composition itself, but not the recordings. Many states then tried to step in and created state copyright laws (or common law doctrine via the courts) that gave sound recordings some form of copyright protection -- some of it much crazier than ordinary copyright law. Eventually Congress federalized copyright for sound recordings, but it didn't apply to any sound recordings from before 1972 (and a few at the very, very, very beginning of 1972, but it's easier just to say "pre-1972 sound recordings.") And then, even though the 1976 Copyright Act took away state copyright laws having any power, they still applied to certain aspects of pre-1972 sound recordings. This has... made a mess of things. The easiest solution would be to just admit this is dumb and say that pre-1972 works should be covered by federal copyright law, but lots of folks have been against this, starting with the RIAA (more on that in a bit).And with things being confusing, some copyright holders have been using the weird status on pre-1972 sound recordings to effectively try to shakedown online streaming music sites into giving them better deals. The various cases have been all over the place, with the first few cases coming out saying that because pre-1972 sound recordings aren't covered under federal copyright law, things are different and copyright holders can sue over them. This upended decades of what was considered settled law.Last summer, in a related case on a slightly different issue, the Second Circuit completely ripped to shreds the argument from the record labels that the DMCA's safe harbors don't apply to pre-1972 sound recordings. The labels were going on a quixotic attack against the video hosting site Vimeo, and because the DMCA's safe harbors protected that site, it argued that pre-1972 sound recordings didn't qualify. The lower court had ruled the other way, opening up a world of problems for any website that hosted audio. Thankfully, the 2nd Circuit reversed it. Of course, the labels asked the Supreme Court to hear the appeal, specifically arguing that the 2nd Circuit's ruling had to be in error because it was "contrary to the considered view of the United States Copyright Office."The Supreme Court, thankfully, declined to hear the case on Monday. This is a big win for the DMCA's safe harbors. While the 2nd Circuit's ruling only has precedence in that one region, the 2nd Circuit is fairly well respected and influential on the other circuits -- and having the Supreme Court refuse to take up the issue, at the very least, suggests that the Supreme Court doesn't see that reading as particularly egregious.Meanwhile, there are other things afoot regarding the legal status of pre-1972 sound recordings. Late last year, we noted that the big win for the copyright holders in NY was overturned, and it was decided that, contrary to what some copyright holders have been arguing, there was no "performance" right under NY's state copyright, and thus they can't magically argue that such a right applies to pre-1972 works. Then, earlier this month, out here in California, the 9th Circuit told the California Supreme Court to explore the issue concerning whether or not California's state copyright law provided some proto-performance right to pre-1972 works.And, just a few days after that, the state of Georgia's Supreme Court ruled that pre-1972 sound recordings can be played by streaming sites, and some copyright holders can't bring "RICO" claims (IT'S NEVER RICO!!!!!!) just because iHeartRadio plays those songs.As more and more courts seem to be cutting off this attempted path used by record labels to shake down online services, it appears that maybe even the RIAA is having a change of heart. As you may recall, back at the top of the post, I noted that the RIAA was one of the leading voices insisting that it would be horrible to bring pre-1972 sound recordings under federal copyright law a few years ago. If they hadn't blocked proposals along those lines, none of this mess would have happened. That's why I find it somewhat surprisng, that one of the RIAA's favored front groups, musicFIRST, has been banging the drum this year, suddenly insisting that pre-1972 sound recordings should be treated the same as post-1972 works. Maybe, just maybe, the RIAA should have taken that position originally, rather than hoping to keep the copyrights separate so that it could force internet companies to pay more.

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Last time we checked in with (former) Brooklyn prosecutor Tara Lenich, she was facing state charges for abusing wiretap warrants to listen in on conversations between a police detective and one of her colleagues. This stemmed from what was termed a "personal entanglement" between her and the detective.The wiretap warrants couldn't be obtained without a judge's signature. Since there was no probable cause for the warrant, no judge would sign them. Lenich had a solution. She just forged the judge's signature on the warrant. And then she kept forging judges' signatures, stretching out her illicit surveillance for more than a year, with a faked signature on every 30-day renewal.Lenich is now facing federal charges. An indictment handed down by DOJ pretty much repeats the allegation of the state charges, detailing Lenich's long-running, extremely-personal wiretap operation.

Just last week, we wrote about a fairly insane bill up for consideration in the California Assembly. AB-1104 would effectively make it illegal to post or share any "false or deceptive statement designed to influence" an election. As we noted at the time, this is about as unconstitutional as you could possibly imagine. Again, here's the text, as put forth by Assemblymember Ed Chau:

Last week, buried under the fracas surrounding the failed update to the Affordable Care Act, the Trump administration conducted an adorable little stage play few actually noticed. The Administration invited Charter CEO Tom Rutledge to the Oval Office, where the CEO -- alongside Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Energy Secretary Rick Perry, repeatedly implied that Trump's policies were somehow to thank for the creation of 20,000 jobs and $25 billion in investment at the cable giant. Press Secretary Sean Spicer was quick to applaud the "new" jobs on Twitter.At the same time Charter issued a statement expressing "confidence in the deregulatory policies of the Administration," the President's office rushed to release a video patting itself on the back for the "landmark deal":