Techdirt

We wrote about this case last April, and it appears very little has changed over the last 10 months. Francis Rawls, a former Philadelphia policeman, is still in jail because he has refused to decrypt his computer for prosecutors. At this point, Rawls has been jailed for sixteen months on contempt of court charges.How long will Rawls stay jailed without a criminal conviction? The prosecution says that's up to him. As for the appeals court, it apparently doesn't feel a pressing need to address the unresolved issue: whether or not the Fifth Amendment protects citizens against being forced to turn over passwords.

We've been covering the BMG v. Cox case since the beginning, and a bad decision just got made even worse -- and more dangerous. If you've been following the case, you know that it's on appeal right now (and a whole bunch of amici have weighed in), but in the meantime, the judge in the district court, Judge Liam O'Grady, has doubled down on his opportunity to chop up and mock the DMCA's safe harbors by telling Cox it must pay $8 million to BMG in legal fees because its using the DMCA safe harbors as a defense was found to be "objectively unreasonable."That's crazy, for a variety of reasons, but we'll get there. From the very beginning, this case was a joke, and it's unfortunate that the court didn't realize that early on. The case was filed back in 2014, and we pointed out that it was really BMG (and another publisher, Round Hill Music) acting as a proxy for copyright trolling operation Rightscorp, testing out the wacky legal theory that the DMCA requires that ISPs kick repeat infringers entirely off the internet. No one has ever interpreted the DMCA in this manner. Yes, 512(i) requires a repeat infringer policy, but it had always been widely recognized that that referred to services that hosted content, not network providers (e.g., YouTube is required to have a repeat infringer policy that kicks users off YouTube if they keep posting infringing works, but your ISP shouldn't kick you off the internet for the same thing.)If that interpretation of the law was legit, you'd think that someone would have tried it in court before -- especially with all the whining from the MPAA and RIAA about how ISPs weren't doing enough to stop piracy. So this was a real stretch as a legal theory.But, somewhat amazingly -- even after the legal proceedings demonstrated that the lawsuit was really about copyright trolling and exposed some heinously bad behavior by copyright troll Rightscorp -- the case went against Cox and in favor of BMG (Round Hill Music was kicked out of the case early on).O'Grady made it pretty clear in the case that he's not a big fan of this internet thing, and doesn't see why it's a big deal if someone were to get kicked off the internet. At one point in the proceedings, Public Knowledge and EFF sought to file an amicus brief. Admittedly, many district court judges aren't fans of amicus briefs (they're more usually seen at appellate courts), but O'Grady was so dismissive of this one that it was fairly incredible:

Learn the tricks of the Linux systems administration trade with the $49 Linux/UNIX Certification Training Bundle. Gain the knowledge and skills to install, configure, and support Linux/UNIX servers, learn to control and troubleshoot the boot process, and test your progress with quizzes and exam simulators and more. This hands-on duo of courses will help you prepare for the CompTIA Linux+ and the Novell Certified Linux Professional certification exams.Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Credit where credit is due: Trump has done more to preserve the full CIA Torture Report than Obama ever did. On his way out the door, the DOJ fought on his behalf in federal court, arguing against an order to deposit the full report with the court clerk for preservation in the ongoing trial of Abd al-Rahim Al-Nashiri, who has alleged he was waterboarded while detained by the CIA.Barack Obama did stuff one copy of the full report in his presidential archives before Trump took over, perhaps in response to fears that the incoming president might make the whole thing vanish. Trump did mention his support for the use of torture on more than one occasion, and it would have been somewhat inconvenient to have an official document laying around saying torture is bad and the US shouldn't do it.Maybe it's oneupmanship or maybe the Trump's legal counsel feels it has too much on its plate already, but as the New York Times' Charlie Savage reports, Team Trump is handing over a full copy of the Torture Report to the court as requested.

For years, we'ved noted how incumbent ISPs have waged a not-so-subtle war on towns and cities looking to escape from the high prices and abysmal service of the country's broadband duopoly (which is actually quietly becoming more of a cable monopoly without many noticing). Many of these cities have taken to either building fiber networks themselves -- or striking public/private partnerships with companies like Google Fiber or Ting/Tucows -- because the private sector has failed to deliver the service and connectivity they want at prices they can afford.This kind of grassroots revolution is precisely why large ISPs like Charter, Comcast and AT&T have spent the last decade lobbying for (and in most instances directly writing) protectionist bills across twenty different states banning local citizens from making these kinds of decisions for themselves. If you want to see precisely why these regional monopolists are so afraid, you need look no further than Huntsville, Alabama.City-owned Huntsville Utilities has been building a fiber broadband network that should service the lion's share of the city's homes and businesses over the next few years. What's more, the network will be open access -- meaning that ISPs can come in and compete with each other over the regional infrastructure. Google Fiber has already signed up to be one of at least three ISPs taking advantage of the build, and should begin offering service there by the middle of this year.FCC data has long noted that the open access model provides consumers with better service at lower prices, thanks to the miracle of competition. Obviously that's a nightmare for large ISPs used to doing the bare minimum while charging captive subscribers the absolute maximum. As such, the federal government consistently has treated open access networks like a plague, given that regulators and lawmakers are consistently terrified of upsetting some of the biggest campaign contributors in the country. For what it's worth, Google Fiber also walked back its original promise to run its network under the open access model.But you only need to look to what's happening in Huntsville to understand why ISPs have spent so much time and money demonizing municipal broadband. With competition looming, incumbent ISPs have miraculously wasted no time in finally delivering the speeds locals have been clamoring for. Comcast this week announced that it will soon bring its cable-based gigabit broadband service to Huntsville, the company breathlessly insisting this deployment reflects Comcast's unwavering dedication to being, well, awesome:

Last summer, a Florida federal court reached some unusual conclusions in a lawsuit filed by SEO company e-ventures, which felt Google had overstepped its bounds in delisting a lot of its links. Google defended itself, citing both Section 230 and the First Amendment. The court disagreed with both arguments.As to Section 230, the court found that Google's delisting efforts weren't in "good faith." The reason cited was e-ventures' claim that the delisting was in "bad faith." So much for this seldom-used aspect of Section 230: the "Good Samaritan" clause which states no third-party company can be found liable for actions it takes to remove content it finds questionable. And so much for "viewed in the light most favorable to the non-moving party." Apparently, Google's long history of spam-fighting efforts is nothing compared to an SEO wrangler's pained assertions.The court also said Google had no First Amendment right to handle its search rankings however it saw fit, which is more than a little problematic. While it admitted Google's search rankings were protected speech, its statements about how it handled search engines weren't. And, for some reason, the court felt that Google's ads undermined its First Amendment protections because its desire to turn a profit somehow nullified its "editorial judgment."It was a strange decision and one that suggested this court might be considering getting into the business of telling service providers how to run their businesses. It also suggested this court believed the more successful the business was, the fewer rights and protections it had. These dubious conclusions prevented Google from having the case dismissed.Fortunately, this wasn't the final decision. As Eric Goldman points out, last year's denial only delayed the inevitable. After a few more rounds of arguments and legal paperwork, Google has prevailed. But there's not much to celebrate in this decision as the court has (again) decided to route around Google's Section 230 "Good Samaritan" defense.

As Techdirt reported last November, while TPP and TAFTA/TTIP appear to be dead, the trade deal between Canada and the European Union (CETA) has been slowly working its way through the system. Today, the European Parliament approved the deal, which means that the European Union has completed the formal ratification process. However, for certain aspects of the agreement, notably the corporate sovereignty chapter, further approval is now needed by the national parliaments of all the EU's member states -- which means another 30+ votes that must all go in CETA's favor. That's by no means certain, as resistance has been mounting in a few countries. One of them is Belgium, where the Walloon region won important additional rights that may still be invoked.As we wrote last year, CETA's economic effects are likely to be tiny -- the official estimate is just 0.08% extra GDP in total for the EU -- or even negative. The very limited economic impact is confirmed in the official press release from the European Commission, where the only quantified benefit singled out is the following:

CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies) has just released its report on encryption and it comes to the same conclusions many other reports have: encryption is good for everyone and law enforcement fears are overstated and mostly-unrealized. (h/t Kevin Bankston)The report [PDF] opens up with this statement:

So last year we noted how Verizon proposed paying $4.8 billion to acquire Yahoo as part of its plan to magically transform from stodgy old telco to sexy new Millennial advertising juggernaut, which, for a variety of reasons, isn't going so well. One of those reasons is the fact that Yahoo failed to disclose the two, massive hacks (both by the same party) that exposed the credentials of millions of Yahoo customers during deal negotiations. The exposure included millions of names, email addresses, phone numbers, birthdates, hashed passwords (using MD5) and "encrypted or unencrypted" security questions and answers.As noted previously, Verizon had been using the scandal to drive down the $4.8 billion asking price, reports stating that Verizon was demanding not only a $1 billion reduction in the price, but another $1 billion to cover the inevitable lawsuits by Yahoo customers.Verizon appears to have gotten at least some of what it wanted, Bloomberg reporting that Verizon has managed to shave $250 million or so off of the original price tag:

Techdirt has been covering the fight for a "Right to Repair" for a long time -- Mike first wrote about it in 2009. Even though the idea seems a no-brainer -- you bought it, why shouldn't you be able to repair it? -- progress has been extremely slow, as successive Techdirt articles have chronicled. One of the most important developments is a number of "Right to Repair" bills that are being considered by various state legislatures. These typically require electronics manufacturers to make service manuals available to the public, and to sell repair parts. The hope is that if even one or two of these are passed, manufacturers will find it simpler to comply nationally. However, an article on Motherboard suggests that the "Right to Repair" movement has a rather surprising enemy. Here's what an unnamed source told the publication:

We've written a few times about Rep. Devin Nunes, who heads the House Intelligence Committee. He's been a long-time vocal supporter of NSA surveillance. He insisted that there was no need for reform after the Snowden leaks and he actively misled the public and other members of Congress to shoot down an amendment that would have stopped so-called backdoor searches of "incidentally collected" information on Americans. Nunes falsely claimed that by blocking backdoor searches of the 702 database, it would have blocked things such as tracking whether or not the Orlando nightclub shooter had overseas contacts (it would not have done that at all).So it's fairly hilarious to see that Nunes' first reaction to the news of National Security Advisor Mike Flynn's resignation was to demand answers on why Flynn's calls with Russian officials were recorded.

The $49 Microsoft Programming Certification Training Bundle has what you need to become familiar with Microsoft.NET, Azure, and more. This 4-course bundle will help you study for the Microsoft 70-486 and 70-487 certification exams in ASP.NET MVC web development and Microsoft Azure development. You will learn through visual demonstrations and multimedia presentations, and test your progress with quizzes and exam simulators.Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

We've been pretty damn clear that we think the Trump administration's targeting of people from a few countries by banning them from entering the US is both inhumane and misguided. We were proud to sign on to an amicus brief opposing it and happy that the 9th Circuit agreed -- though the case is far from over. As I've noted repeatedly, to me it's an issue of basic humanity and decency, but some have insisted on making arguments about how certain people are somehow out to get us and we need to protect ourselves from them. I know that, these days, it's considered silly to rely on things like facts for an argument, but it seemed worthwhile to actually explore some facts on this particular topic.We'll start with a post at Lawfare, by Nora Ellingsen. And we should start out by noting that Techdirt and Lawfare have a pretty long history of... well... not agreeing on much. The site is generally supportive of the intelligence community and supportive of actions taken to protect "national security." We tend to be more skeptical. Ellingsen worked in the FBI's Counterterrorism Division for five years, specifically working on international terrorism investigations inside the US. Since leaving the FBI to go to law school, she's been tracking counterterrorism cases in the US, using DOJ data. And she's gone through that data to try to determine if there's any truth to the idea that people from those countries represent a big ongoing threat. And the answer is that it's just not true. In fact, the real "terrorism" threat in America appears to be... from Americans.:

For years, we've noted how one of the greasier lobbying tactics in telecom is the use of minority groups to provide the illusion of broad support for what's often awful policy. Such groups are given cash for a shiny new event center in exchange for parroting any policy position that comes across their desks, even if it dramatically undermines their constituents. As a result, we've shown how time and time again you'll see minority coalitions like the "Hispanic Technology & Telecommunications Partnership" supporting awful mergers or opposing consumer-centric policies like more cable box competition or net neutrality.And it's not just minority groups. A wide variety of groups take telecom cash to repeat whatever they're told, whether it's rural Texas school associations, the U.S. Cattlemen's Association or even "balloonists." Some of these groups are created specifically for this purpose. Other times, these groups are "co-opted" without understanding what they're actually supporting. The goal overall is simple: to create the illusion of broad support for bad ideas the actual public -- minority or otherwise -- would oppose.With the debate over net neutrality heating up once again, ISPs have again dusted off this tried and true tactic to mislead the press, public, and politicians. As a result, we're seeing numerous civil rights groups that are more than happy to let giant corporations like AT&T and Comcast rent their identity for the weekend. This week, a coalition of such groups, including the NAACP, Asian Americans Advancing Justice, and the National Urban League, fired off a letter urging Senators to move quickly to craft "a permanent statutory solution" to "solve" net neutrality once and for all:

We've written plenty about CCTV here on Techdirt, and its creeping normalization around the world, but particularly in the UK. So it's good to read a story on the legal news site outlaw.com about a rather unusual ruling from a Scottish court pushing back against the use of an intrusive CCTV system. It concerns a dispute in Edinburgh between the individuals Nahid Akram and Debbie and Tony Woolley. The latter couple live above a guest house run by Akram. For various reasons, both parties decided to install CCTV systems, but with rather different scope:

I've covered the saga of Denuvo DRM regularly as of late. The once-vaunted anti-piracy tool, thought to be the end of video game piracy altogether, has instead had its protection window reduced to somewhere between a week and some weeks. Despite the headwinds of reality, the folks behind Denuvo have bravely soldiered on, proclaiming the tool still useful for protecting the ever-important early-release window of new video games.And that's where I think a counterpoint needs to be made. The idea that the most important time in the sales cycle for a new video game is its initial release is almost gospel within the industry. And it's not without its logic, I suppose. Many, many games experience the vast majority of their sales upon initial release. But what if that wasn't the case? And what if by simply embracing the gaming community and releasing control over the product, instead of trying to cling to it with tactics like DRM, the sales cycle for a game became so long that it changed the math?What if more games were like Quake, in other words. And I mean the original Quake, released by id Software some twenty years ago. The game has continued to sell throughout these past two decades, but is going through something of a comeback recently. Why? Well, it's because the modding community that has developed around the game has kept it fresh and relevant.

While the U.S. wireless industry isn't quite as competitive as it's portrayed as (non-price competition is generally the law of the land), T-Mobile has still managed to disrupt the sector with a crazy idea: giving users what they want. That was again made evident this week when Verizon was forced to bring back sort-of unlimited data after spending the last several years telling consumers they didn't really want such simple, straightforward plans. Verizon's long-standing belief that it can tell consumers what they're supposed to want took a notable blow this week by any measure.Shortly after Verizon announced it was returning to unlimited data, T-Mobile once again upped the ante, announcing it would no longer be charging an extra fee to stream HD video over the company's LTE Network. According to the announcement, T-Mobile not only stopped charging a premium for HD quality (the de-prioritization of which you may recall T-Mobile lied was happening at several points), but also eased up on the restrictions surrounding tethering (using your phone as a modem).In a statement, T-Mobile CEO John Legere hinted at studies showing that Verizon has nearly lost its network size and speed edge over T-Mobile, which the company had long been using to justify its refusal to more seriously compete:

Net neutrality is at risk. The FCC under Ajit Pai is clearly intent on destroying it, and this is quickly turning into a fight for the future of the internet. This week, we're joined by Gigi Sohn, one of former chairman Tom Wheeler's top advisors at the FCC and now a fellow at the Open Society Foundation, to discuss what's happening at the FCC and what needs to be done in response.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.

As we discussed over and over again during the past eight years, the Obama White House -- despite a first day pledge to be "the most transparent administration in history" -- was actually quite famous for its extreme secrecy, combined with a seriously paranoid view of anyone leaking anything unflattering to the White House. As we detailed, the Obama White House declared any unflattering leaks as "aiding the enemy." And, of course, the Obama administration went after more leakers/whistleblowers with Espionage Act claims than all other Presidents in history combined.So, now, I guess we'll see what the Trump administration does about leaks. So far, in just the first few weeks of the Trump administration, the number of leaks out of the White House has been fairly astounding. There are leaks on just about everything, with some being just downright silly (and a few being literally unbelievable). In a larger report in Politico on how Trump is adjusting to the job of being President, there's a brief mention that he's getting increasingly frustrated by the leaks and is seeking to have them stop:

Kamala Harris -- former California Attorney General and current US Senator -- may have failed in her attempt to take Backpage down, but her dubious legacy lives on. The same day the US Supreme Court denied certification to an appeal of a decision in favor of Backpage and its Section 230 protections, Backpage shut down its adult ads rather than face additional prosecution/persecution from misguided politicians like Harris.While all those who went after Backpage pat themselves on the back for making NO DIFFERENCE WHATSOEVER in the battle against sex traffickers, those involved in the day-to-day work of tracking down sex traffickers down aren't nearly as thrilled.As has been noted here on multiple occasions, shutting down a service used by some for illegal activity just buries the illegal activity even deeper underground. Backpage's adult ad closure means traffickers will be moving to other venues -- ones not being actively watched by law enforcement, no doubt including sites they're not even aware of. As for sex workers who used Backpage to advertise adult services, they've simply moved their ads to other sections of the site. So, all the grandstanding has done nothing to harm sex traffickers. It has done a bit of damage to sex workers. But it's caused the most harm to law enforcement.David Meyer Lindenberg of Fault Lines points out that those actually involved with the fight against sex trafficking are angered by the vindictive prosecution of Backpage. It may have helped net Kamala Harris a new job where she can screw things up at the federal level, but it's done nothing to combat trafficking.He highlights a handful of quotes from a Miami Herald article on the Backpage adult ad shutdown.

The $49 Complete IT Cloud Architect Training Bundle is 88 hours of a complete cloud computing education. Study locking down networks, providing top physical security, and monitoring and auditing security systems. You'll learn about networking standards, network cabling & transmission, TCP/IP and so much more.Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

In the last few weeks, there's obviously been a lot of attention on the cruel actions of Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), a part of the Department of Homeland Security. Slate has an article detailing some of the awful stories coming out after the Trump executive order on immigration and travel (here are just a few):

One of the hallmarks of Tom Wheeler's FCC was a renewed focus on competition at higher broadband speeds. It's one of the reasons the last FCC bumped the standard definition of broadband from a measly 4 Mbps down, 1 Mbps up, to 25 Mbps down, and 3 Mbps up. That higher benchmark allowed the FCC to point out that roughly two-thirds of American homes lack access to more than one ISP at 25 Mbps or better, highlighting a growing cable monopoly over broadband as DSL providers like AT&T and Verizon shift their attention toward giant media acquisitions and away from residential broadband.Needless to say, large broadband providers (and the politicians paid to love them) quickly threw a hissy fit, insisting that nobody really needs that much bandwidth. This idea that you don't really need faster speeds falls in line with the industry's (and again, many politicians') ongoing refusal to acknowledge that the broadband market isn't all that competitive. After all, if you admit there's a problem, then you've admitted that somebody may just have to fix it.FCC Commissioner Mike O'Rielly is squarely on the side of industry on this subject, having voted down the FCC's higher 25 Mbps benchmark. Even though 25 Mbps is a far from radical benchmark, and 3 Mbps upstream remains a bit of a joke, O'Rielly's dissent (pdf), made his disdain for faster speeds (and the technologies that will use them) abundantly clear:

Last November, the UK government finally passed the Snooper's Charter, officially known as the Investigatory Powers Act. That was largely because everyone in the UK was too busy arguing over the Brexit mess to notice that Theresa May had finally achieved her goal, and pushed through what the Open Rights Group called "the most extreme surveillance law ever passed in a democracy." Now that May has provided the police with the ability to rummage through a year's worth of every Brit's browsing history without a warrant, and given permission for the intelligence agencies to break into any computer and demand backdoors to be installed for any software or online service used in the UK, it seems she has a new target: whistleblowers. The Guardian reports on big changes the authorities want to make to the laws protecting government secrets, doubtless with an eye to dissuading any future Snowden/Guardian-type partnerships in the UK:

eSports has been a thing for some time now. While competitive video gaming was once relegated to some minor tournaments incorporating a few games held in a couple of countries in Asia, eSports has evolved into a wider industry. You can track the progress of it all by its reaching certain checkpoints: viewership numbers that look like those of real-life sporting events, the introduction of college scholarships for eAthletes, and eSports coverage appearing on national broadcasts from the likes of ESPN. The trend line for this has only moved in one direction. And now that appears to be continuing with professional sports leagues getting in on the action.The latest in this is the National Basketball Association's announcement that it will be partnering with Take-Two Interactive to start its own eSports basketball league.

Earlier in the year, the public learned ISPs in the UK were partnering with the entertainment industries to send out "educational notices" to internet users suspected of copyright infringement. Having seen this type of "education" take many forms in the past, from silly to threatening, we have since waited to see what form this iteration would take. Well, TorrentFreak got in touch with someone who was notified through the system, and it appears this version is relatively benign.

Like hundreds of thousands of Americans, I am closely following the "airport cases" around the country. In order to keep abreast of the latest developments in one of the fastest-moving cases, Washington v. Trump, I built a Twitter bot that scrapes the public docket mirror hosted by the Ninth Circuit and tweets about new documents and links as soon as they're added.This case leads a legal push that has attracted incredible amounts of public attention. There have been tens of thousands of protestors, dozens of organizations and companies that submitted amicus briefs (including Techdirt's think-tank arm, the Copia Institute), and over 135,000 people who tuned into the audio-only livestream of the Ninth Circuit oral arguments (which was also broadcast live on multiple news channels).Those numbers reveal a public demand to be informed and to participate in the law. But they also show the limitations on the kind of transparency that can satisfy that demand. Most notably, any attempts to make court proceedings more accessible to the public has to contend with the expense and overhead of dealing with PACER. My bot is only possible because the Ninth Circuit provides a public docket mirror for individual "cases of interest," essentially duplicating the existing system outside the paywall. Those mirrors are manually updated, which means they are labor-intensive, error-prone, and not always up to date.By contrast, look at the @big_cases bot run by USA Today reporter Brad Heath. It monitors a set of district court cases, selected by hand, and posts new documents as they get filed. These district court cases don't have public docket mirrors, so @big_cases accesses PACER directly -- and for that, it needs user credentials and ultimately to pay for the documents it downloads. For a journalist whose job is reporting on legal developments, paying these costs makes sense -- and sharing the documents further is a valuable public service. Without institutional backing, though, it's hard to justify the PACER expenses.The costs go beyond the financial. These bots represent an experiment in meeting members of the public where they are, and those efforts are less likely if they come with a pricetag. Worse, it means these experiments will be limited to cases of widespread general interest. To pick a trivial example: Techdirt readers might be interested in a bot that tweets updates from privacy or copyright dockets. If those public documents were freely accessible, anybody could build a tool like that without worrying about subsidizing the ongoing PACER costs.At a time when the president and his press secretary are calling into question the legitimacy of factual news reporting, an informed public requires more than ever access to primary sources. Moreover, they need to be confident in the integrity of those sources. Journalists reporting on court proceedings increasingly post the original source documents. Without a free and public government source file, though, most readers can't see the context of the case, and they have to trust that they're getting the full and unmodified documents in question.The procedural stance of Washington v. Trump is unclear. A Ninth Circuit judge has made a request that both sides brief whether a larger panel should re-hear the question. The White House has issued conflicting reports about whether or not it will appeal Thursday's order to the Supreme Court. And the District Court has indicated that a new briefing schedule might be appropriate. These paths offer various levels of transparency, and it's frustrating to know my bot may not be able to keep up with, say, district court proceedings simply because of the antiquated PACER system.Meanwhile, the issue continues to attract attention from lawmakers. The House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on Judicial Transparency and Ethics on Tuesday, February 14, and is expected to include testimony on PACER. Hopefully, the Committee uses this to recognize that a truly transparent judiciary requires rethinking how PACER functions.

PayPal is ubiquitous. And that's unfortunate. Over the years, the payment platform has earned a reputation for acting in a way that can charitably be described as "hellishly inconsistent." For little to no reason, users have found their accounts shut down or suspended. And, thanks to US laws meant to prevent the PayPal-ing of material support to foreign terrorists, PayPal has been suspending accounts for innocuous payments containing certain trigger words in the descriptions.The latest victim of PayPal's inscrutable policies and unapproachable customer service is a small Canadian newspaper. As the CBC reports, the small paper's attempt to enter a few of its stories for consideration for national newspaper awards resulted in the bricking of both the sender's and the receiver's accounts.

Despite the rising competitive threat of T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless has spent the last few years simply refusing to seriously compete on price. That stubbornness has extended to the company's refusal to match T-Mobile's unlimited data plans, eliminated by Verizon back in 2011. In a truly competitive market, you're supposed to listen to your customers and try to provide whatever they're clamoring for. But Verizon's tack has been the exact opposite; the company spending the last few years trying to tell consumers they don't really want simpler, unlimited data options -- and that these plans are unnecessary and unviable.For most of this time, Verizon Wireless' excuse du jour was that it didn't have to compete on price or service because its network was just that phenomenal. But a report last week by Open Signal found that T-Mobile, once considered an under-cooked upstart, was finally fielding a network that nearly matches Verizon in terms of both speed and overall coverage:

Keep your skills sharp and stay up to date on new developments with the Virtual Training Company Unlimited Single User Subscription for $89. With courses covering everything from MCSE certification training to animation, graphic design and page layout, you'll have unlimited access to the entire catalog. They have over 1,000 courses, add more each week, and each course comes with a certificate of completion.Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Part of the reason asset forfeiture is such a problem is the lack of transparency. The funds obtained through this process are frequently hidden from the public and used to purchase everything from margarita makers to Stingray devices. The procedure through which the government takes control of citizens' assets is also shrouded in secrecy. Cases are filed against property, not the persons formerly in possession of them. The process for retrieval is purposely impenetrable, designed to make it almost impossible for petitioners to reclaim their assets.Law enforcement officials claim that all parts of this opaque process are there to prevent drug dealing and/or terrorism, hence their reluctance to divulge the inner details of this particular mean/method. Legislators in New Jersey were hoping to end this unofficial tradition with a bill that would have demanded far more transparency from agencies involved in asset forfeiture.S2267 passed with unanimous support in both houses of the State legislature and would have instituted the following information be submitted to the state Attorney General's office every year.

As was widely expected, back in October, Oracle announced its appeal of Google's big fair use win, concerning its reuse of certain Java API components in Android. If you've been following this (long, long, long) case, you'll recall that Google has won twice at the district court level. The first time, Judge William Alsup correctly noted that APIs were not subject to copyright, because copyright law clearly states that copyright protection does not apply to "any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery," and an API is a process, system or method of operation. However, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), who only had jurisdiction over the case because it initially involved a patent issue, seemed unable to understand that an API is different from software and overturned the lower court's sensible ruling.That resulted in the second case which was weird, because everyone had to tiptoe around the fact that basically everyone had assumed that APIs were not covered by copyright, in order to instead make a fair use argument, which ultimately succeeded. Oracle then tried to play some games to get that ruling overturned, but that failed miserably, when the judge pointed out that Oracle's argument was almost entirely based on a failure to read what Google had actually given them (Oracle had claimed that Google failed to disclose something important, when the reality was that Oracle's lawyers failed to read the material that Google had given them).Anyway, now that things are back at CAFC, we have to hope and pray that the court doesn't muck things up any worse than it already has (and, trust me, it's mucked things up badly to the point that it's impacting a bunch of other cases). On Friday, Oracle filed its 155-page opening brief. Feel free to dig in, if you must, but the arguments are (mostly) basically what we expected. Oracle argues that Google's use is not fair use (basically saying the jury got it wrong). It further argues that the case should be sent back to the district court because it was prevented from presenting key evidence that would have undermined the fair use claim. And then, somewhat incredibly, at the end, Oracle continues to try to argue that Google concealed its plans to expand Android into PCs -- the very issue that Judge Alsup smacked Oracle down for when it was revealed that Google had shared that info, and Oracle just hadn't read it. In the filing, Oracle whines that Judge Alsup "blamed the victim" for not having read what Google actually gave them, saying that it was impossible to have read everything Google gave them because there was just too much stuff and this was a "needle in the haystack." That... seems pretty weak. Amusingly, at the same time that Oracle is complaining that Google gave Oracle too much in discovery, it also complains that Google clearly withheld more info. Throw any argument at the wall and see what sticks, I guess.Frankly, this opening brief seems to really lean in to CAFC's notorious ignorance of how software works, and the fact that last time around it couldn't tell the difference between an API and software. It just keeps focusing on the agreed upon point that Google copied some of Java's APIs, but keeps calling it "copyrighted code." It's impossible to predict how CAFC will rule, because CAFC is frequently hilariously confused when it comes to how technology (and software in particular) actually work. But hopefully someone over there will take the time to figure it out. After all, there have been a few, somewhat shocking signs of enlightenment in the past few months at CAFC. Hopefully that continues.

The state of Ohio has had its problems with speed cameras. Back in 2010, the city of New Garfield refunded $100,000 in fines collected in violation of its speed camera policy. The city told the public that drivers would only be ticketed for driving more than eleven mph over the speed limit [... which makes one question the purpose of its speed limits]. Plenty of drivers got dinged for exceeding the speed limit by less than the arbitrary cutoff, resulting in the mass refund.Not that this will necessarily keep anyone from being ticketed, speeding or not. In the same year, an Ohio court ruled that an officer's guesstimate of someone's speed is just as reliable as radar or speed cameras when it comes to testimony. Given how many speed cameras have ticketed parked cars and brick walls, this is somewhat of a "close case" when it comes to testimonial accuracy.The Newspaper -- which stays on top of every speed/traffic cam-related development [note: they really HATE traffic cams in France…] -- reports that New Miami, Ohio, is being forced to hand back every cent of its speed camera take as the result of a court decision.

The Christian Science Monitor has posted an interesting article detailing some (but certainly not all) of the ways the US Secret Service can obtain data from locked phones. In all the cases discussed in the article, the data itself wasn't encrypted, but was otherwise inaccessible without the password.In addition to using third-party forensic software and hardware (like that of recently-hacked Cellebrite), the Secret Service also engages in a lot of manual labor to recover phone data. In one instance, the Secret Service was able to pull out the phone's flash memory and grab data from it -- although this process took it nearly a week.A Huawei phone obtained by the agency called for a very unique brute force approach.

This week, after Elizabeth Warren was blocked from reading a letter by Coretta Scott King in the Senate, we noted the extreme Streisand Effect that resulted. Chris ODonnell won most insightful comment of the week by summing it up nicely:

Five Years AgoThis week in 2012, as congress sat in the wreckage of SOPA, 70 different groups put together a letter telling lawmakers to halt all other efforts to expand intellectual property. Despite this, a number of elected representatives were still inexplicably backing the dead bill, while Lamar Smith was trying to declare all anti-SOPA data as invalid. At the same time, he was being trashed by Politifact for his claims about the impact of piracy, and styling himself as an enemy of the internet by continuing to push a data snooping bill. The RIAA was also on the warpath, attacking Google and Wikipedia and hypocritically complaining about 'misinformation'.Ten Years AgoThis week in 2007, we were digging deeper into Viacom's takedown of 100,000 YouTube videos, and noticing that some were short, innocent home movies that were clearly not infringing. They weren't alone, of course: people were starting to realize how the RIAA's DMCA notices were slapdash and flimsy, and we even saw a bizarre push from the supposed creator of the Electric Slide to get videos of "his" dance off of YouTube. Meanwhile, Steve Jobs personally spoke out against the recording industry's DRM demands, prompting a rather strange response from the RIAA (which was also ludicrously calling for higher prices on CDs).Fifteen Years AgoThis week in 2002, congress was all over the internet with its "dirty dozen" crop of digital regulation bills. Apple and Sony were battling over the future of home entertainment and what the technology would look like, while other companies were avidly pushing home networking to a mostly-uninterested public that didn't really understand what the benefits would be or why they'd want such a setup. Broadband was still failing to gain a real foothold, but spam was going strong and people were trying to figure out how to create the next Silicon Vally. One thing was clear though: the dot-coms that dropped big bucks on Superbowl ads weren't seeing much return on investment.One-Hundred And Eight Years AgoThere are lots of big milestones in the history of consumer electronics and communication technology, and many involve the invention of critical components like the transistor. But this week we celebrate one that gets discussed less often: the invention on February 5th, 1909 of of Bakelite, one of the first synthetic plastics. It was useful for a huge range of applications, but quickly became a critical material in the world of electronics where it formed insulating and non-conducting components like telephone and radio casings, lightbulb sockets and bases, automobile distributor caps and more. Though it began to be replaced in the 1940s, it is still manufactured today.(Fun side fact: Bakelite also became a tool for advanced art forgery, because it could be used to harden paint and make it appear much older than it really was.)

The UK's top spy agencies have been known to place journalists under surveillance. Leaked Snowden documents showed GCHQ collected emails from news organizations such as the New York Times, BBC, and Washington Post. More accusations of spying were raised by UK journalists, detailing what appeared to be a clear abuse of the country's anti-terror laws -- laws particularly prone to exploitation thanks to generous loopholes and a minimum of oversight.It wasn't just spy agencies doing the spying. In the case of the UK journalists, it was also local law enforcement digging through their emails and phone calls in hopes of identifying sources and leakers. More evidence of police surveillance of journalists has come to light, as reported by the Associated Press. Once again, it's law enforcement looking to uncover sources and whistleblowers, rather than terrorists or criminals.

Joe Mullin over at Ars Technica has the story of a patent troll, Blackbird Technologies, which was founded by (of course) two patent attorneys to buy up patents and shakedown companies with legal threats. Blackbird Technologies has now sued Netflix, Soundcloud, Vimeo and a variety of other companies over US Patent 7,174,362, issued in 2007 (filed for in 2000) on a "method and system for supplying products from pre-stored digital data in response to demands transmitted via computer network."Specifically, the lawsuits are targeting various "download to consume offline" features on various content websites. Netflix, of course, just famously launched that long-requested feature, which is useful in cases where people have slow or no internet access (e.g., taking your laptop on an airplane without internet access). If anyone thinks that this kind of feature was developed because of this patent, they're being delusional. And that's especially true because the patent itself isn't even about downloading content from the network for offline viewing. Instead, it's actually about someone ordering some content over the internet, having that content automatically burned to a CD-ROM and having that CD-R shipped off to the person. As Mullin notes, the true irony here, is that the guy who got the patent in the first place, Sungil Lee, may have been inspired by Netflix, which already had a very popular business shipping DVD's ordered online to customers:

We've made the point for several years now that the way class action lawsuits are handled in America is flawed in fundemental ways. What was supposed to be a method for enabling large groups of the aggrieved to pool resources against much larger and better-funded entities has instead devolved into a procedure that appears almost perfectly designed to enrich unscrupulous lawyers while the class itself gets a laughable percentage any monetary damages.We get to see these flaws in practice yet again, this time in an update for the story that simply will not die: the legal action over Sony removing the PS3's ability to run Linux, which it advertised when the console launched. The class action suit had reached a proposed settlement, only to have the presiding judge nix it, essentially over concerns that the class was being victimized all over again, this time by its own lawyers.

When we talk about pacemakers here at Techdirt, the focus is usually on how the devices have paper-mache grade security, allowing anybody to assassinate the cardiac-challenged with relative ease. In fact we've reached the point where the FTC had to recently issue its first ever warning against a pacemaker vendor when it announced that hackers could comprmise pacemakers made by St. Jude Medical, sending "commands to the implanted device, which could result in rapid battery depletion and/or administration of inappropriate pacing or shocks."But your pacemaker may just betray you in other ways, too. In Ohio a man was indicted this week on arson and insurance fraud charges after his Pacemaker data contradicted the story he was telling authorities. When the man's home burned down on September 19, Middletown resident Ross Compton told authorities he quickly packed some belongings in a suitcase and some bags, broke a window with his cane, and quickly fled through the window before carrying his belongings back to the car. The man also acknowledged at the time that he had a pacemaker.So police obtained a warrant for the data stored on the device, and doctors quickly concluded that the story the man's heart was telling didn't match the narrative coming out of his mouth:

More Executive Orders have been issued by Donald Trump. The latest skew heavily in favor of Trump's recent conversational partners: members of law enforcement.Earlier this week in a meeting with several sheriffs, Trump voiced his support for asset forfeiture and made an off-hand comment about ruining the careers of legislators engaged in reform efforts. Great fun was had by all… mostly Trump and perhaps a sheriff or two.One order does nothing more than what large bureaucracies do best: institute task forces. Trump's task force is charged with "crime reduction and public safety." The DOJ will head this up and ask for cooperation from local law enforcement agencies. The public safety priorities are definitely Trump's, though.

As the world moves more and more data and communications to the Internet, the demand for ethical hackers and penetration testers is higher than ever. The $45 Ethical Hacking For Beginners is a demo-heavy and comprehensive course. You'll be immersed in the basics of ethical hacking, from installing the preferred penetration testing OS, Kali Linux, to the many varieties of network threats. Today is also the last day to get an additional 70% any of the courses in the Deals store with the code LEARN70.Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

New Gear From Techdirt: I Invented Email »Okay, it's been a long time since we ran some t-shirt campaigns around here, and we've been hard at work on some new designs that we think you'll enjoy. First up, we've got one that we've had a few people asking for: our brand new I Invented Email gear, allowing you to express your opinion on certain events. Separate from that, we've got some brand new Techdirt logo gear in two styles. Check 'em out. The email t-shirts are only available for a limited time, so get them while they're here.

Thanks to FOIA requests (and lawsuits), the ACLU has gathered enough documents to provide a comprehensive report [PDF] on the worthlessness of the TSA's "Behavioral Detection" program. Meant to give the agency a better way of proactively thwarting acts of terrorism, the program instead opts for lazy profiling, dubious readings of behavioral cues, and junk science.

One of several service providers to sue the government over its gag orders, Microsoft received some good news from a federal judge in its lawsuit against the DOJ. Microsoft is challenging gag orders attached to demands for data and communications, which the DOJ orders is statutorily-supported by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) and, if not, by supposed national security concerns.As Microsoft pointed out in its lawsuit, the government rarely justifies its secrecy demands and frequently issues gag orders with no endpoint. Microsoft received nearly 2,800 of these gag-ordered requests over an 18-month period, with over two-thirds of them demanding silence indefinitely.The good news is a federal judge has (partially) waved away the DOJ's motion to dismiss and will allow Microsoft to proceed with its lawsuit, as Politico's Josh Gerstein reports.

The Texas legislature's proposed cyberbullying bill is gathering more opposition. As we covered here last month, the "for the children" bill was meeting resistance from groups actually concerned about the welfare of the state's children.According to the Texas branch of the National Association of Social Workers, the bill would put more students in harm's way by trimming back counseling and other resources in favor of dumping the problem in the lap of law enforcement. Not only that, but the bill would expand the jurisdiction of school disciplinary procedures to cover actions taken by students off-campus.The bill has additional problems that need to be addressed before it's passed, as the EFF points out. One of the more dangerous aspects of the proposed legislation is its presumptive stripping of anonymity. Rather than let a court decide whether the party bringing charges has earned the right to uncover the identity of an online commenter, the law hands that power to the aggrieved person before any legal proceedings have commenced.

Despite repeated warnings from security experts about their problems, biometrics are gaining in popularity for all kinds of applications, many of them inappropriate. Here's another group that is so enamored of the technology it seems it hasn't thought things through:

Let's start this out by being quite clear: this is still the beginning of a fairly long legal process. But, the 9th Circuit appeals court has just unanimously ruled that the lower' court's injunction barring Donald Trump's executive order on immigration should remain in place. In short: the federal government remains barred from actually carrying out the order. This does not mean, as our President has wrongly suggested, that people are free to randomly enter the country in droves. They still have to go through the already thorough vetting and visa process. It just means that the blanket ban that caused so much havoc cannot be used to bar entry into the country. We were among those who signed onto an amicus brief for the wider tech industry, asking the court to rule this way, so we're happy they did.The court is pretty clear, and it's somewhat surprising that the ruling was unanimous. While it's always difficult to tell how judges are going to rule based solely on oral arguments, it certainly felt like two judges were leaning towards the states' argument and one towards the federal government's. But when it was time to write an opinion, all three came down on the side of the states. Not only that, but they did it per curiam, meaning that the entire panel "wrote" the opinion (rather than singling out the specific judge who wrote it). This can be seen as the three judges showing a united front, and also a pre-emption towards the likelihood of our thin skinned President picking directly on one of the three as somehow being responsible (as he did in earlier tweets about the case). Either way, the judges stood together, noting that the federal government's argument was weak:

We've repeatedly noted how for some stupid reason, net neutrality is treated as a partisan issue in Washington -- with Democrats (generally) in support, and Republicans (generally) opposing the idea. It's an absurd, myopic paradigm given the fact that net neutrality has broad, bipartisan consumer support. Most people want the internet to function as a relatively-level playing field. Everybody wants to be able to access the content and services of their choice without interference from the likes of Comcast and AT&T, who seem hell bent on using their monopoly over the last mile to their anti-competitive advantage.With the looming specter of a net neutrality rule repeal under Trump, the GOP, and new FCC Boss Ajit Pai, a number of Democratic Senators (including Ron Wyden and Ed Markey) held a press event (video) warning that if the GOP and FCC try to repeal net neutrality, it will result in a "political firestorm" they may not be entirely prepared for. The Senators were quick to recall that roughly 4 million consumers reached out in support of the FCC's net neutrality rules a few years ago, a number Markey proclaimed would look "miniscule" in comparison to the looming backlash against the rules' repeal.Markey's office also issued a statement saying that he'd fight tooth and nail against repeal of the rules, in whatever form that arrives:

The ongoing digitization of the vast wealth of material sitting in museums and archives around the world is one of the greatest projects of the digital age — a full realization of the internet's ability to spread knowledge and culture to all. Or it would be, if it weren't for copyfraud: for every museum genuinely embracing open content and the public domain, there's another claiming copyright on public domain images and being backed up by terrible court rulings.And so it's fantastic to see The Metropolitan Museum of Art joining the former camp with a new Open Access policy that is putting images of 375,000 works online with a CC0 public domain declaration. The Met actually partnered with Creative Commons, Wikimedia, Pinterest and others to help make this happen, and has even announced its first Wikimedian-in-residence who will head up the project to get these images into Wikimedia Commons and onto Wikipedia.This is all great, but here's the annoying thing: it should be totally unnecessary. These are digitizations of public domain works, and there's no reasonable basis for granting them any copyright protection that would need to be divested with a CC0 mark in the first place. They are not creative transformative works, and in fact they are the opposite: attempts to capture the original as faithfully and accurately as possible, with no detectable changes in the transfer from one medium to another. It might take a lot of work, but sweat of the brow does not establish copyright, and allowing such images to be re-copyrighted (in some cases hundreds or even thousands of years after their original creation) would be pointless and disastrous.Instead of the CC0 mark, the Met should be able to use a lesser-known Creative Commons tool: the Public Domain Mark, which indicates that something you are sharing is already in the public domain (whereas CC0 declares that you have rights in it, but are relinquishing them and releasing it to the public domain). And while the Met probably could have done so (and likely discussed this with CC since they were partners in this project), it's understandable why they decided not to: the statutory public domain is so damn weak and vulnerable that it can't be trusted, and a CC0 license is actually a much stronger way of ensuring nobody tries to exert control over these works in the future.As Creative Commons points out on their information page for the Public Domain Mark, they don't recommend it for works where there is any doubt, in any jurisdiction, that they are in the public domain — a category that is virtually empty when all factors are considered. Though efforts to establish copyright on digitizations of PD works have mostly failed in the US, they have gained ground in Germany and the UK among other places. And attacks on the public domain are creative and frequent in the US too. Though it's somewhat hard to envision how another party could swoop in to attempt to take copyright control of the Met's digitizations, there would also be the possibility of the museum changing its stance in the future — and any such uncertainty creates a chilling effect where everyone who wants to make use of the images has to think twice. The CC0 mark is the strongest available statement that something is in the public domain.Sadly, even CC0 is not completely waterproof, and it's a problem in the first place that the only way to release something into the public domain in most jurisdictions is via a third party's special licensing tools, not an official legal mechanism under copyright law. That's how you end up with a museum needing to partner with international copyright experts just to be able to make it absolutely clear that they don't own any rights to an unknown copyist's 100-year-old painting of a 4000-year-old Egyptian relief, which frankly should have been obvious. Kudos to the Met for doing everything it possibly could in a world that sometimes seems determined to snuff out as much of the public domain as it can.