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One of the wonders of the internet was that it was supposed to be a distributed computer system, meaning that it would be harder to take down and harder to censor. But, over time, things keep getting more and more centralized. And that's especially true in the mobile ecosystem, and doubly so for the Apple iOS mobile ecosystem (at least on Android it's much easier to sideload apps). The latest demonstration of this is that Apple agreed to remove apps from the NY Times from its iOS app store in China, complying with demands from the Chinese government:

AT&T has spent the last few months fending off critics of its planned $100 million acquisition of Time Warner. Most critics say the company's ownership of Time Warner will make it harder for streaming competitors to license the content they need to compete. Others warn that AT&T's decision to zero rate (cap exempt) its own content gives the company's new DirecTV Now streaming TV service an unfair advantage in the market. That's before you get to the fundamental fact that letting a company with the endless ethical issues AT&T enjoys get significantly larger likely only benefits AT&T.

Back in November, we wrote about Russia's surprising move to enforce an older data localization law that requires all Internet companies to store the personal data of Russian citizens on Russian soil. At the time, that seemed to be just another example of Vladimir Putin's desire to keep a close eye on everything that was happening in Russia. But a comment from his Internet adviser, German Klimenko, hints that there could be another motive: to make it easier for Russia to cut itself off from the global Internet during a crisis, as The Washington Post reports:

Techdirt first wrote about corporate sovereignty four years ago -- although we only came up with that name about a year later. Since then, a hitherto obscure aspect of trade deals has become one of the most contentious issues in international relations. Indeed, the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) measures in both TPP and TTIP played an important part in galvanizing resistance to these so-called "trade" deals, and thus in their defeat, at least for the moment (never say "never".)Corporate sovereignty may be a tough sell in new trade deals, but it is still lurking in plenty of existing agreements. For example, a post on the Sierra Club blog points out that two countries, Colombia and Romania, are being sued using ISDS clauses because of their refusal to issue mining permits:

When it comes to trademark issues, we tend to keep our pages filled with stories about disputes, bullying, and over-protectionism. While we try to highlight good-actors on matters of trademark, those stories are too few and far between for our tastes. With that in mind, why not start off the new year with one such example?Toppling Goliath is a brewery in Iowa with a number of regular and seasonal beers. One of those is PseudoSue, an ale with a label that features a roaring Tyrannosaurus rex. Anyone from the Chicago area is likely already thinking of our beloved Field Museum and the enormous T. rex fossil skeleton of Sue, who the museum tends to dress up like some kind of prehistoric barbie doll whenever one of our local sports teams has themselves a particularly good season. The museum has a trademark registration for Sue that covers all kinds of mechandise and initially reacted as readers of this site will have come to expect.

It's probably time for Facebook to give up trying to be the morality police, because it isn't working. While nobody expects the social media giant to be perfect at policing its site for images and posts deemed "offensive", it's shown itself time and time again to be utterly incapable of getting this right at even the most basic level. After all, when the censors are removing iconic historical photos, tirades against prejudice, forms of pure parody, and images of a nude bronze statue in the name of some kind of corporate puritanism, it should be clear that something is amiss.Yet the armies of the absurd march on, it seems. Facebook managed to kick off the new year by demanding that an Italian art historian remove an image of a penis from her Facebook page. Not just any penis, mind you. It was a picture of a godly penis. Specifically, this godly penis.

More evidence has surfaced showing the US government really doesn't care for whistleblowers. A Defense Department Inspector General's report [PDF] obtained by MuckRock contains details of Air Force supervisors turning against a civilian employee who reported time card abuse.

Chris Silver Smith, writing for Search Engine Land, notes that Google seems to have stopped responding to defamation lawsuit court orders.

While many support the idea of Wikileaks, many now worry that the organization's supposed goal of total transparency often plays second fiddle to Julian Assange's ego and the group's often inconsistent behavior. But whatever you think of Assange as a human being, it's important to remember that the group wouldn't be necessary if the established media actually did its job. Groups like Wikileaks are just symptoms of a broader disease: the larger media's shift to banal infotainment, and the failure of these giant media conglomerates to hold companies and governments accountable to the truth.

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The RIAA is not exactly known for being the most honest of organizations out there, but in an interview given by the organization's General Counsel, Steve Marks, the level of blatant dishonesty is taken to incredible new levels. I'm going to take just one paragraph and break down what a load of total bullshit it is, and hopefully it will demonstrate, yet again, why the RIAA should never be taken seriously in its claims. It's the final question in a short interview with the Hollywood Reporter, and the question is at the top:

So... Hollywood actor James Woods continues to make it clear that he's a complete and total asshole. As you may or may not recall, last year, Woods sued an anonymous Twitter user who went by the name Abe List, for mocking Woods on twitter. Specifically, List called Woods "clownboy" and later tweeted: "cocaine addict James Woods still sniffing and spouting." Woods sued Abe List claiming that the "cocaine addict" statement was defamatory, and (the important part) demanding the name and identity of Abe List. The fact that Woods, himself, has a long (long, long, long) history of spouting off similarly incendiary claims to people on Twitter apparently wasn't important. Here is an example of a Woods tweet that seems quite similar to the one he, himself, claimed was defamatory:Ken "Popehat" White agreed to defend Abe List, along with lawyer Lisa Bloom. And while the judge initially (and, in our opinion, correctly) found Woods' lawsuit to be nothing more than a SLAPP suit, the judge eventually changed his mind. The case was moving along... and then something bizarre happened. Abe List (whoever that is) died (unexpectedly, apparently). Woods then took to Twitter to obnoxiously gloat about "winning" the case, leaving out the fact that the case was ending due to the death of the defendant. After people pointed out to Woods how ridiculous it was that he was gloating over a "victory" when someone had died, the ever classy Woods, gloated some more, first saying he hoped that List died "screaming my name. in agony" and then later saying: "Learn this. Libel me, I'll sue you. If you die, I'll follow you to the bowels of Hell. Get it?"

We've noted repeatedly how "smart" television sets have the same security issues plaguing the rest of the internet of broken things: namely there often isn't any security to speak of. The net result has been TVs that spy on you by recording in-home audio, and in some cases transmitting that data unencrypted around the internet. But we've also noted how these TVs -- like the rest of the Internet of Things -- can be compromised in a matter of moments by some rather rudimentary hacking, then incorporated into the historically unprecedented DDoS attacks we're now seeing around the world.

Back in May we were both surprised and delighted by a thorough and detailed report from the Australian Productivity Commission noting that copyright was broken and harming the public, and that it needed to be fixed -- with a core focus on adding fair use (which does not exist in Australia). It similarly found major problems with the patent system. It was a pretty amazing document, full of careful, detailed analysis of the problems of both the copyright and patent systems -- the kinds of things we discuss all the time around here.

Rightscorp is doing some aggressive whistling in the dark. The company that thought it could tackle piracy with threatening letters, threatening robocalls, and suing ISPs for contributory infringement has been bleeding money since its inception.By the middle of 2015, Rightscorp's letter-writing campaign to torrenters had led to nothing resembling a viable business model.

Over the last couple of years, there's been a tremendous amount of attention placed on upstart electric car maker, Faraday Future. The company, that originally had very secretive backers (later revealed to extraordinarily wealthy Chinese investors), sprung out of nowhere a year ago and was quickly touted as an expected competitor to Tesla. What a difference a year makes. In the last few weeks, there have been a bunch of reports about how the company is flailing. It kicked off with a pretty damning Buzzfeed story about serious problems at the company, including unpaid bills and a bizarre situation involving having workers focus on designing another car for a totally different company owned by their major investor:

Each year, at the beginning of January, we have the unfortunate job of highlighting the works that were supposed to be entering the public domain on January 1st, but didn't (in the US at least) thanks to retroactive copyright term extension. As we've noted, copyright term extension makes absolutely no sense if you understand the supposed purpose of copyright. Remember, the idea behind copyright is that it is supposed to be an important incentive to get people to create a work. And the deal is that in exchange for creating the work, the copyright holder (who may not be the creator...) is given an exclusive monopoly on certain elements of that work for a set period of time, after which it goes into the public domain. That means that any work created under an old regime had enough incentive to be created. Retroactively extending the copyright makes no sense. The work was already created. It needs no greater incentive. The only thing it serves to do is to take away works from the public domain that the public was promised in exchange for the original copyright holder's monopoly. It's a disgrace.As always, the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke University has the most comprehensive look at what works should have entered the public domain this week, but didn't, due to the scam of copyright term extension that is nothing less than taking away the agreed upon rights of the public.

There was a time when I was a fan of Malcolm Gladwell. He's an astoundingly good story teller, and a great writer. But he's also got a pretty long history of... just being wrong. Over the years, Gladwell's willingness to go for the good story over the facts has become increasingly clear. Famously, Steven Pinker ripped Gladwell's serial problems many years ago, but it hasn't really stopped Gladwell since then. If you've ever quoted "the 10,000 hour rule" or suggested that someone can become an expert in something if they just spend 10,000 hours doing it, you've been fooled by Gladwell. Even the guy whose one study Gladwell based the idea on loudly debunked the claim, and just this past year put out his own book that is basically trying to rectify the false beliefs that have spread around the globe from people believing Gladwell's incorrect spin.

There was a time when I was a fan of Malcolm Gladwell. He's an astoundingly good story teller, and a great writer. But he's also got a pretty long history of... just being wrong. Over the years, Gladwell's willingness to go for the good story over the facts has become increasingly clear. Famously, Steven Pinker ripped Gladwell's serial problems many years ago, but it hasn't really stopped Gladwell since then. If you've ever quoted "the 10,000 hour rule" or suggested that someone can become an expert in something if they just spend 10,000 hours doing it, you've been fooled by Gladwell. Even the guy whose one study Gladwell based the idea on loudly debunked the claim, and just this past year put out his own book that is basically trying to rectify the false beliefs that have spread around the globe from people believing Gladwell's incorrect spin.

When a mainstream press that isn't always good at what it does meets technology it doesn't understand, the end result is often frustrating, if not comedic. Hacking is certainly no exception, given it's a realm where perpetrators are difficult to identify, hard proof is often impossible to come by, and hackers worth their salt either leave false footprints -- or no footprints at all. Throw in a press that's incapable of identifying and avoiding its own nationalism, and often all-too-gullible to intelligence industry influence, and you've got a fairly solid recipe for dysfunction when it comes to hacking-related news coverage.

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Update: So... literally a minute before this post was about to go live came the news that House Republicans have magically dropped this plan, after it received a ton of negative press overnight, and had tons of inbound phone calls and, yes, even our President Elect sort of (but not really) came out against the plan. While the Bloomberg article above credits Trump for this, if you read what he actually said, he does call the Office of Congressional Ethics "unfair," he just says this isn't a priority now (perhaps meaning the following plan will come back in the future). Since this is still a possibility, here's the original post.

So, we just wrote about Obama administration's tepid response to claims that Russians "interfered" with the Presidential election. In that post, we noted our concerns about the fact that we seem to be escalating a situation based on claims where we're not allowed to see any of the actual evidence. I've seen a bunch of people arguing that anyone who won't automatically accept that Russia interfered in the election should be dubbed either Putin supporters or, at the very least, "useful idiots" but we should be very, very careful about where this leads. I certainly think that there's a tremendous possibility that Russian forces did intend to interfere with our election, but I'd certainly like to see some actual evidence -- and the "evidence" provided so far shows no such thing.

Last month, we noted how Donald Trump proudly implied he was single-handedly responsible for Japan's Softbank bringing 50,000 jobs and $50 billion in investment to the United States. The problem, of course, is that it's not clear those numbers are entirely real, and there's absolutely no evidence suggesting they had anything to do with Donald Trump. The jobs were first unveiled back in October as part of a somewhat ambiguous $100 billion global investment investment fund between Softbank and Saudi Arabia aimed at boosting technology spending worldwide.

Over and over again, we've talked about the ridiculousness of the moral panic around so-called "fake news" -- a broad and somewhat meaningless term now used to describe just about anything from actual made-up stories, to news articles that have a small factual error, to those with a "spin" that someone disagrees with. And, as we warned, the panic of "fake news" is leading to widespread calls for censorship. A few weeks ago, we wrote about how German officials were supporting a plan to criminalize "fake news" and now Italy wants to join in on the fun. In an interview with the country's antitrust chief, Giovanni Pitruzzella, he argued that it's really time to crack down on the internet, with government wielding the censorship power over whatever it calls "fake news."

Another yearly tradition around here is that, soon after the new year, we post some details about some of the stats we've got on visitors/commenters and such. It's pretty fun, and this will be the 7th year that we're doing it. For reference, here are the posts from 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011 and 2010. For what it's worth, for comment stats, we're using our own internal logs, but for traffic we're using Google Analytics, which isn't perfect -- and which many people block via tracking blockers, so the stats may not be entirely accurate -- but since we're focused on comparative info, it's likely that the results are pretty good, since those who block trackers should have a somewhat proportional effect across the various years.

Happy new year, everyone! It's time for our annual look back at the highest-scoring comments of the year, and this time around we've got first and second place winners in both categories then a special third-place entry. (If you want to know this week's winners, here's first and second place for insightful, and first and second place for funny.)Most Insightful Comments Of The YearFor 2016's first place winner on the insightful side, we only have to head back to September, when terrorism scares in New York and New Jersey prompted Hillary Clinton to call on Silicon Valley, once again, to nerd harder and find a way to stop radicalization. Norahc racked up the votes with a smart rebuke:

Since 2008, my final post of the year tends to be a post where I take a step back and reflect on how the year went. It started, back in 2008, as a response to multiple people asking me why I always seemed so optimistic about the future, despite writing all sorts of articles highlighting all sorts of bad behavior and threats to innovation, free speech and civil liberties. And my argument, in short, has always been that I strongly believe in the forward march of progress and innovation -- and that any anger you see coming through in my writing comes from being annoyed and frustrated at people and events that slow it down. That is, my anger is at the pace of change, but my optimism is for the inevitability of change. And, each year, the message has been more or less the same, often highlighting key events and reasons why we should all be so optimistic, even in the face of various challenges. Here are those past messages if you'd like to see them:

Well, we can already see what government agency will be the next recipient of a Jason Leopold FOIA lawsuit.

Fun stuff ahead for some website owners, thanks to a breakdown in the registration process. A Swiss security researcher has spotted bogus ICANN blacklist removal emails being sent to site owners containing a Word document that acts as a trigger for ransomware.

We've talked a lot about how the FCC's refusal to outright ban "zero rating" here in the States opened the door to all manner of net neutrality violations and anti-competitive behavior. Thanks to this omission, we've now got gatekeepers like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast all exempting their streaming content from usage caps, while penalizing competing services. Consumers also now face T-Mobile and Sprint plans that throttle video, music and games by default -- unless users pony up an additional monthly fee. Some folks, like VC Fred Wilson, saw this coming a long way off.

The wheels of justice have turned to the point where Team Prenda copyright trolling efforts have netted John Steele and Paul Hansmeier federal indictments. The list of charges the pair face is ugly: mail fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and suborning perjury.After Prenda's many copyright lawsuits fell apart, Paul Hansmeier decided to start trolling small, local businesses with ADA lawsuits, hoping to turn what little legal expertise he has into profitable settlements. During this time, Hansmeier was also facing the dismantling of an attempted bankruptcy filing -- one that very much looked like an attempt to avoid paying judgments resulting from Prenda's years of bullshit. To avoid having his assets turned over to creditors, Hansmeier engaged in some creative accounting, like handing off money to a newly-formed trust and... dumping cash into a cardboard box.Hansmeier's ADA lawsuits weren't particularly successful and his efforts were beginning to attract judicial scrutiny. Worse, it appears the lawsuits have also attracted the attention of the FBI, which means Hansmeier could soon be facing a second set of indictments.

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We've written quite a few times about EU Commissioner Gunther Oettinger, a bigoted luddite, who bizarrely was put in charge of internet regulations for no clear reason at all. His main focus seemed to be on putting in place policies whose sole goal was to harm the internet because many key internet companies are American. Oettinger, who seems to be magnetically connected to all sorts of scandals has failed upward to a new job as the EU's budget chief, but as EU Parliament Member Julia Reda notes, he's still leaving a trail of internet destruction in his wake. In particular, she highlights ten everyday internet activities that would be outlawed if Oettinger's copyright and internet proposals become law. It's a pretty eye-opening list, and should raise serious questions about why Oettinger was ever put in charge of anything having to do with the internet.

A lawsuit has been filed against Apple, alleging that it did nothing to prevent the driver of a car from doing something a driver of a car shouldn't have been doing.

As was widely expected, the White House officially announced its response to claims of Russian interference in our election process, and the "response" is basically kicking 35 Russian diplomats out of the country. Russia admittedly suggested it will do the same. The announcement also includes adding some entities to the official list of "Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons." Somewhat incredibly, now added to that list is the FSB, which is the modern incarnation of the KGB. What's incredible about this was that it took until now for this to happen. With this, the administration also issued an executive order expanding on a previous executive order from last year, enabling it to take these actions.

Last year, we wrote about the ridiculous situation for Amos Yee, a teenager in Singapore who was arrested for some of his YouTube videos criticizing Lee Kwan Yew, the country's founder and long-time Prime Minister. As we said at the time, watching the videos over which he was arrested (which have since been made private), it seemed clear that Yee was doing what many teenagers do, and mouthing off to authority. He was a precocious kid with strong opinions, and he had an audience on YouTube. Good for him.

The NYPD's estranged relationship with its oversight continues. The Civilian Complaint Review Board -- put into place after it became apparent the NYPD wasn't interested in policing itself -- has noticed the department is vocally supportive of better policing, but has no interest in actually making any changes to the way it disciplines its officers.The NYPD has yet to see a civilian complaint it can't make disappear and has almost always recommended a lesser punishment for misconduct than the Board has recommended. In controversial "chokehold" cases, the Board found the NYPD was completely uninterested in doing anything about officers' use of a tactic it has outlawed.

Over in the UK, we've highlighted many of the problems of massively expanding surveillance through the (most likely illegal) "DRIPA" (Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill) and the new Snooper's Charter. And yet, the government there keeps insisting that such powers would never be abused. But, that's ridiculous. As we've seen in the past, it's difficult to find examples of surveillance powers not being expanded and abused over time. And, now the UK is realizing exactly how that works. The Guardian, via Freedom of Information requests, has discovered that local British councils were given the ability to use surveillance powers under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) to spy on all sorts of people for what appear to be minor infractions:

Efforts to rein in civil forfeiture have been moving forward around the country. Several states have passed laws that remove some of the perverse incentives that have allowed law enforcement agencies to seize cash, cars, homes, and whatever else might be laying around without criminal convictions. Very few efforts have gone as far as to make convictions a requirement in every case, but most have at least closed the federal loophole that allowed agencies to bypass more restrictive state laws to take control of citizens' assets.The federal government's use of asset forfeiture still remains untouched. The equitable sharing program that helped local law enforcement agencies skirt state regulations closed briefly due to budget cutbacks, but was revived once the tax dollars started flowing again.While some legislators have mounted efforts to scale back federal civil asset forfeiture, nothing has made its way to the president's desk. There's a new president on the way and his choice for attorney general isn't going to help those efforts along. Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions is a longtime fan of asset forfeiture and still believes -- despite years of evidence to the contrary -- that it's an effective Drug War weapon, rather than law enforcement agencies going shopping for things they want.At a 2015 Senate Judiciary Hearing, Sessions had this to say about federal adoption of local forfeitures, as well as forfeiture in general.

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It would be nice if we weren't remind daily just how petty politicians can be (on all sides of the aisle... so don't go making this about one party or the other). Over the summer, we wrote about a situations in which House Democrats tried to stage a protest on the House floor -- and House Republicans responded by gavelling the House out of session and turning off the live feed on C-SPAN so that the protest could not be easily seen (again, this isn't partisan: the House Dems did the same to House Repubs eight years ago). In response, some of those participating in the protest started using Periscope and Facebook Live to livestream online from the floor.

Two of the nation's foremost FOIA enthusiasts -- Jason Leopold and Ryan Shapiro -- are suing a variety of federal agencies for their failure to respond to requests for documents related to the 2016 election.The first lawsuit, filed a couple of weeks ago, concerns records pertaining to FBI director James Comey's actions in the last few weeks before Election Day. Most of the documents sought relate to the FBI's on-again, off-again investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email server. The pair also seeks a variety of communications between Comey and the rest of the FBI, as well as any internal FBI discussions about the number of leaks that accompanied Comey's last-minute dive back into the email investigation.Shapiro and Leopold are also seeking unredacted copies of Clinton email investigation documents previously released by the FBI. They also would like to see what the FBI has on hand that references a variety of right-wing news sites, including Breitbart News and alternativeright.com.The first lawsuit [PDF] alleges the FBI has violated FOIA law by not responding to their expedited request in a timely fashion. At the date of the lawsuit's filing, the FBI had yet to inform the requesters whether or not it would grant the request expedited status.The second lawsuit [PDF], filed earlier this week, makes the same allegations. Expedited processing was requested, but the agencies targeted failed to rule on the processing request in a timely fashion. The list of defendants in this lawsuit is a bit longer. Shapiro and Leopold have requested election-related documents from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, CIA, DOJ, and DHS. None of these agencies have issued a ruling on expedited processing.The documents sought here are also a bit different. The two requesters are asking for documents held by these agencies that pertain to the Russian interference -- hacking or otherwise -- in the electoral process. There are some interesting keywords listed, including Guccifer, Elite VPN, two IP addresses, and anything related to the alleged compromise of Clinton campaign head John Podesta's devices/email accounts.Obviously, both of the requests being sued over are time-sensitive and of considerable public interest. The longer these agencies delay their responses, the less "interesting" the information is to the public. Pulling the trigger on lawsuits two weeks after FOIA requests are filed is the new way of playing ball with federal agencies. Left to their own timetables, the agencies would likely release these documents sometime between "the distant future" and "never." This prompts the parties listed to at least adhere to the letter of the law and make a determination on expedited processing. And, given the information sought, there's no way these will be the only FOIA lawsuits related to the requested documents.

One of the ridiculous parts of all of the discussions around "cybersecurity" concerns what should be considered "critical infrastructure." That's because, thanks to various executive orders, what the President declares as "critical infrastructure" leads to different cybersecurity requirements. There have been concerns that this will result in broadly classifying the internet as "critical infrastructure" in a manner that will lead to easier surveillance. But, as we noted nearly a decade ago, broadly classifying the internet as critical infrastructure would be silly, when the use of that designation should be narrowly focused on things like voting and banking (not to mention things like energy grids and water supplies).

It's really, really difficult to give the South Carolina legislature any credit whatsoever. In the past few years, it has offered up bills that:

We've talked a lot about how Microsoft managed to shoot Windows 10 (and consumer goodwill) squarely in the foot by refusing to seriously address OS privacy concerns, and by using malware-style tactics to try and force users on older versions of Windows to upgrade. While Microsoft's decision to offer Windows 10 as a free upgrade to Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 made sense on its surface, the company repeatedly bungled the promotion by making the multi-gigabyte upgrade impossible to avoid, which was a huge problem for those on capped and metered broadband connections.

Back in 2011, MuckRock user Jason Smathers filed a FOIA with the CIA for all responses they had sent to requesters containing the term "record systems." This was a reference to two earlier rejections he had received from the Agency, which cited the inability to perform a search in the system based on the terms Smathers had provided.In response, the agency sent him partially redacted copies of those same two rejections.Smathers immediately appealed, on grounds that it beggared belief that he had been the only requester to have ever had an exchange with the CIA that contained the words "record system."Six years go by, and we hear nothing from the Agency regarding this request. Then, just this week, this letter arrives in the mail.Which is worse? The casual admittance that they haven't done anything for over half a decade, or the unfathomable audacity of putting Smathers on deadline? And while two months sounds pretty generous, keep in mind that they've been sitting on this for 72 months -- a mere 36 times what they're giving him.To give this some further context -- Smathers' request was assigned an internal MuckRock tracking number of 238. If you were to file a request today, you'd be given a number in the 31,000s.To the CIA FOIA officer (not) reading this: There have been children born since this appeal was filed that you could have a conversation with. This is bad, and you should feel bad. Please don't be bad, be good instead.And get rid of that damn fax machine.Republished from Muckrock

Police professionalism is on display again, this time by New York's finest -- which may as well be the nation's finest, as far as the NYPD is concerned. The police department that thinks so highly of itself it portrays itself as an intelligence agency when working with federal agencies and ships officers to crime scenes (uninvited) all over the world to lend a helping intruding hand is catching heat for an officer's decision to memorialize warrant service with some Snapchat posts.

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Remember how piracy was supposed to be killing the entertainment industry and no one would make anything any more? Of course, almost exactly five years ago, we showed this wasn't true at all, and the actual output of creative content was way, way up. Obviously, some of that was "amateur" creations, but it was true of professional creative content as well. One area that we pointed out was that the internet had made it possible to create much more new content and release it in new ways -- and that certainly has held true in the realm of scripted TV shows. A new report from FX Research shows that the amount of scripted TV shows has absolutely exploded over the past few years. Since just 2010 the number of scripted series available has more than doubled. That's crazy (but also awesome):Of course, it won't surprise people to see that a bunch of the new shows are on online services (Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, etc.). But it does seem noteworthy that all the other areas have been growing also -- even broadcast TV, which is a very limited resource, has somehow figured out how to cram in a few more scripted shows.