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As Techdirt reported last year, the problematic "right to be forgotten" -- strictly speaking, a right to be delisted from search results -- took a really dangerous turn when the French data protection regulator told Google that its orders to delist results should apply globally, not just in France, a view it confirmed twice. The latest development in this saga is the submission of a petition to the French Supreme Court against the global reach of delisting, made by the Wikimedia Foundation, the organization behind Wikipedia. As its blog post on the move explains:

We've discussed the amazing bullshit known as Hollywood Accounting many times here on Techdirt. This is the trick whereby big Hollywood studios basically get out of paying anyone royalties by claiming movies (including big, mega-famous ones) are not profitable. The most simple version of this trick is that the big studio sets up an independent corporation to represent "the film." It then "sells" services to that corporation, which it owns, at exorbitant prices. So, for example, it will charge a "marketing and distribution fee," which may actually be many multiples of the film's actual budget. No cash changes hands here. It's just a paper transaction, but because of those "fees" any money made from the film remains with the big Hollywood studio, and is not passed on to anyone who has "participation" in the net profits from the film.

We've been noting for the last year how the latest front in the quest to bring competition to the broadband market is the boring old utility pole. Under the current model, a company like Google Fiber needs to request an ISP move its own gear before Google Fiber can attach its fiber lines. Given that ISPs often own the poles, and have little incentive to speed a competitor to market, this can often take six months or longer -- worse if gear from multiple incumbent ISPs needs moving. Google Fiber notes this has quite intentionally slowed its arrival in cities like Nashville.

A year ago, Techdirt wrote about China's disturbing plan to create "citizen scores" that would rate everyone in the country on the basis of everything they do and say online. Although not much has been heard in the West about the scheme since then, that doesn't mean that the plan has been dropped. As the Washington Post reports:

Back in August, Mike wrote about a trademark case between Car-Freshner Corp., the company that makes those ubiquitous tree-shaped air-fresheners, and Sun Cedar, a tiny non-profit that made real-wood fresheners while employing at-risk folk in the form of the homeless, ex-cons and recovering addicts. It was a strange case for any number of reasons, including the dissimilar appearance between the product of the two companies, the wide delta of size of the two companies, and the very nature of the work Sun Cedar was attempting to do as a social good. Sadly but unsurprisingly, Car-Freshner trotted out the excuse that it had to sue this small non-profit or risk losing its trademarks.And now it seems like, rather than working out some other kind of arrangement that would have allowed Sun Cedar's good work to continue, the trademark dispute has resulted in the end of the non-profit entirely, at least in its current iteration. Even with an attorney agreeing to represent the non-profit for free, the costs of taking on the suit in far-off NYC simply killed the whole operation.

It was only a matter of time until this happened, but Oracle has officially appealed its fair use Java API loss to the Federal Circuit (CAFC). As you recall, after a years-long process, including the (correct) ruling that APIs are not covered by copyright being ridiculously overturned by CAFC, a new trial found that even if APIs are copyright-eligible, Google's use was covered by fair use. Oracle then tried multiple times to get Judge William Alsup to throw out the jury's ruling, but failed. In fact, on Oracle's second attempt to get Alsup to throw out the jury's ruling, citing "game changing" evidence that Google failed to hand over important information on discovery, it actually turned out that Oracle's lawyers had simply failed to read what Google had, in fact, handed over.

Stories of Facebook's attempt at puritanical patrols of its site are legion at this point. The site has demonstrated it cannot filter out parody, artwork, simple speech in the form of outrage, iconic historical photos, or sculpture from its prude-patrol censorship. As a private company, Facebook is of course allowed to follow its own whim when it comes to what is allowed on its site, but as an important tool in this era for communication and speech, the company is also a legitimate target for derision when it FUBARs this as badly as it does so often.So queue up the face-palming once more, as Facebook has decided to remove a video posted by a Swedish cancer charity informing women how to check for breast cancer, because the video included animated breasts, and breasts are icky icky.

Last week, I wrote about how privacy is about tradeoffs, and despite what some people claim, there's no such thing as "absolute privacy," nor would you actually want something approximating what people think they mean by it. The real issue is the tradeoff. People are quite willing to trade certain information in exchange for value. But, the trade has to be clear and worth it. That's where the real problems come in. When we don't know what's happening with our data, or it's used in a sneaky way, that's when people feel abused. Give people a clear understanding of what they're giving and what they're getting and you eliminate most of the problem. Then give end users greater control over all of this and you eliminate even more of the problem.

In the last few weeks, we've written a few posts about Richart Ruddie's company, Profile Defenders, which appears to be "improving reputations" online by filing bogus defamation lawsuits, finding a bogus made-up "defendant" to "admit" to posting defamatory information, reaching a "settlement" and getting a court order. The whole scheme is about getting that court order, which is then sent on to Google and others (mainly Google). The whole point: if Google sees a court order saying that some content is defamatory, it will de-index that page. That the whole process to get that court order is a total sham is basically ignored. That may be changing. We were just noting that some of Profile Defenders' cases are in trouble, and at least one has had the court order vacated.

Back in August a report emerged claiming that Google Fiber executives were having some second thoughts about this whole "building a nationwide fiber network from the ground up" thing. More specifically, the report suggested that some executives were disappointed with the slow pace of digging fiber trenches, and were becoming bullish on the idea of using next-gen wireless to supplement fiber after acquiring fixed wireless provider Webpass. As such, the report said the company was pondering some staff reductions, some executive changes, and a bit of a pivot.

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There was some oddity over the summer, when the Copyright Office flat out misrepresented copyright law to Congress and the FCC with regard to the impact on copyright of the FCC's (now dead) proposal to create competition among set top box providers. As we've explained over and over again, there were no copyright implications with the FCC's proposal. All it said was that if an authorized user wanted to access authorized content via a third party device, that authorized user should be able to do so. And yet, the Copyright Office, incorrectly, seemed to make up an entirely new exclusivity in copyright law (one that would outlaw DVRs) that basically said not only could a content provider license content to a cable TV provider, but it could also limit the devices on which end users could view that content.

After spending several days basking in the fiery glow of negative press (and seeing potential investors walk away from buying the company), Yahoo is asking the government to please please let it talk about the spying it apparently performed for the NSA or FBI.

Streaming video competitors are justifiably nervous about AT&T's $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner. Consumer advocates have been raising alarm bells since the deal was announced, warning that AT&T could make it more difficult than ever for streaming providers to gain access to the content they'll need to compete with AT&T's upcoming DirecTV Now streaming service. They're also concerned that AT&T will continue to use zero rating to give its own content a distinct advantage, while penalizing streaming competitors like Netflix and Amazon.

Earlier this year, we were among the first to write about the highly questionable practice of "reputation management" companies filing clearly bogus lawsuits against unknown defendants, only to magically have those "defendants" show up a day or two later with an agreement that they had posted defamatory content. The goal of these lawsuits was obvious: get a court order. That's because many platform websites, including Google, won't take down or delink content based on a claim of defamation, but will do so if there's a court order. Of course, filing a real lawsuit has all sorts of problems, including money and actually needing to have a real case. These reputation management lawsuits got around all of that by basically faking defendants, having them "agree" to a settlement admitting to defamation, and getting a court order saying that the content is defamatory. Neat and clean. And total abuse of legal process.

A few weeks ago, we reported on a move by some public-spirited lawyers in Kuwait to challenge an extraordinary new law that would require everyone in the country -- citizens and visitors like -- to provide their DNA for a huge new database. It seemed like a quixotic move, since the Kuwaiti authorities were unlikely to be intimidated by a bunch of lawyers. And yet Kuwait has indeed backed down, as reported by New Scientist:

The US government is still holding onto its opacity ideals while publicly touting transparency directives. The FISA court -- which presides over the NSA's surveillance programs -- has normally been completely shrouded in darkness. Things changed in 2013 after Ed Snowden began leaking documents.Forced into a conversation about domestic surveillance, the administration responded with more transparency promises and the signing of the USA Freedom Act into law. The new law curtailed the collection of domestic business records (phone metadata and other third-party records) and required the court to make its opinions public following declassification reviews.All well and good, but the government has apparently decided the new law only requires transparency going forward. FISA opinions dating back to 2001 still remain locked up, despite transparency promises and reform efforts.The ACLU is now suing the government to force the release of over a decade's-worth of FISC opinions. Many of those still withheld contain rulings on issues that are the very definition of "public interest." The appendix to the motion [PDF] contains a list of opinions the ACLU would like to see released, including the following:

On the bright side, I suppose, if the plan by the Cubs was to undertake an overly aggressive stance on trademark protection every round of the playoffs, there's only one round left, so this should be it. We had just been discussing that as the team entered the League Series to attempt to make the World Series, it had filed a lawsuit against the many street vendors that line the path to Wrigley Field for selling counterfeit merchandise. This suit, while perfectly within the rights of the team, bucked a decades-long trend of allowing those sales. It was part of the tradition of going to a game, walking by these vendors and seeing their kooky designs. Another tradition for the team is raising a blue "W" flag whenever they win. That "W" was part of trademark opposition by the Cubs and MLB when a business unrelated to the professional sports market dared to use the single letter in a logo for its financial services product.And now it seems that, on the eve of the World Series, the Cubs are going after more than one kind of W still, as well as the letter C.

For folks in the San Francisco area, on Thursday night, I'll be at the Wikimedia Foundation for Wikimedia's brand new, awesome event series: Free Open Shared. I'll be giving a talk on copyright, why it matters, and how the fight over copyright reform impacts all sorts of important stuff, including many things that people don't think of as being related to copyright. I'll be giving a talk and then there will be a Q&A session as well. For those not in the area, they're planning on live streaming the event, and there should be a recording that we can post here as well, but it's always nice to see folks in person (and also, it's much easier to take part in the Q&A that way...). RSVP is required and space is limited, so if you can make it, join us for a fun conversation on copyright.

Software patents have been dubious since their inception — not just in principle, but legally too. Past rulings have called their validity into serious question, and now an opinion from a prominent pro-patent judge has called for people to admit that they simply shouldn't exist. This week, we discuss what this opinion means for the (hopefully short) future of software patents.New: Subscribe to the Techdirt Podcast on Google Play.Follow the Techdirt Podcast on Soundcloud, subscribe via iTunes, or grab the RSS feed. You can also keep up with all the latest episodes right here on Techdirt.

Back in 2013 the New York Times profiled just the latest in AT&T-related surveillance scandals, revealing the existence of "Project Hemisphere." The original report detailed how Project Hemisphere is a joint program between AT&T and the DEA that provides a variety of federal and state law enforcement agencies with nearly real-time access to logs and location data on nearly every single call that touches the AT&T network. Unlike AT&T's NSA-related scandals, in many ways this system is much larger than anything covered previously. It's also much older, with the project having roots as far back as 1987.

Remember when a copyright maximalist think tank guy insisted that copyright would never, ever be used for censorship? Well, about that...

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Look, it's getting ridiculous that Hillary Clinton defenders keep insisting that the John Podesta emails released by Wikileaks are full of fakes and doctored content. With most other leaks, including the one of Colin Powell's emails, the victims (and, yes, they are victims) eventually admit that the leaked content is legit. Not so with the Podesta emails. But that's dumb. As Robert Graham points out, it's totally possible to validate many of the emails. And they do validate.

Look, it's getting ridiculous that Hillary Clinton defenders keep insisting that the John Podesta emails released by Wikileaks are full of fakes and doctored content. With most other leaks, including the one of Colin Powell's emails, the victims (and, yes, they are victims) eventually admit that the leaked content is legit. Not so with the Podesta emails. But that's dumb. As Robert Graham points out, it's totally possible to validate many of the emails. And they do validate.

As you may have heard, last Friday, the brand new Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, removed the head of the Copyright Office, Maria Pallante, from her job. The press release from the Library of Congress tries to spin this as a "new appointment" for Pallante, to advise Hayden on digitization projects at the Library, but pretty much everyone sees this as Pallante being fired rather abruptly (Update: And Eriq Gardner at the Hollywood Reporter has Pallante's resignation letter, saying she will not accept the new job). From the Billboard article linked above:

We've talked a lot about Donald Trump and his ridiculous views on defamation and the First Amendment -- including his penchant for threatening defamation lawsuits against basically everyone who says something he dislikes. He rarely follows through, though he certainly does sue sometimes.

Another stack of documents has been leaked to The Intercept, these ones detailing a little-known New Zealand company's facilitation of worldwide surveillance.

The trade deal between the EU and Canada, known as CETA -- the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement -- is remarkable for the fact that it has still not been signed and ratified, even though its completion was "celebrated" over two years ago. That's partly because of growing resistance to the inclusion of a corporate sovereignty chapter -- also known as investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). In an attempt to head that off, the European Commission persuaded Canada to swap out vanilla ISDS for a new, "improved" version called the Investor Court System (ICS). As Techdirt noted before, this is really just putting lipstick on the pig, and doesn't change the fact that companies are being given unique privileges to sue a country for alleged harm to their investments using special tribunals, as well as in national courts.CETA has faced other problems, notably from Bulgaria, Romania and Belgium. The first two said they wouldn't sign because of Canada's refusal to lift visa requirements for their citizens. That blackmail seems to have paid off. The Sofia Globe reports that Canada has agreed to remove the visa requirements from December 2017, and Bulgaria and Romania now say that they will sign CETA.That leaves Belgium, or more precisely, the French-speaking Belgian region of Wallonia, which, as we noted back in April, was not happy with CETA. A couple of weeks ago, the Walloon parliament confirmed that it would refuse to give its permission for the central government to sign CETA in its name (original in French). Because of the way the Belgian political system works, that meant that Belgium would not be able to sign CETA on October 27, as the European Commission had originally hoped.That, in its turn, meant that the European Union as a whole would not be able to sign CETA on that day. That's because back in July, European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker agreed to treat CETA as a so-called "mixed agreement," a deal that must be ratified by all of the EU member states' national assemblies, as well as by the bloc. If Belgium can't do that because of Wallonia, CETA is blocked.As you might imagine, the Walloons have come under intense pressure to change their mind, from just about the entire EU and Canadian political establishment. Last Friday, Wallonia's Minister-President Paul Magnette told the regional parliament that he still refused to allow Belgium to sign, despite that pressure. As well as being worried about the impact of Canada's agricultural products on Walloon farmers, Magnette singled out corporate sovereignty as a particular worry for him and his colleagues.The fact that CETA's ISDS/ICS remains the most problematic area can be seen from a fascinating CETA document (pdf) that was recently leaked. It's called the "Joint Interpretative Declaration on the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between Canada and the European Union and its Member States," and is an attempt to offer additional guarantees that are enough to convince Magnette and other CETA skeptics to allow its signing and ratification:

Executive director of Photography is Not a Crime (PINAC) Grant Stern is taking Miami Beach mayor Philip Levine to court over public records request denials. As Fusion's Ethan Chiel reports, the mayor has been busy blocking critics on both Twitter and Facebook, and Stern aims to find out just how many constituents the mayor is tuning out.

With the time we spend discussing the scourge of DRM that has invaded the video game industry for some time, it can at times be easy to lose sight of those in the industry who understand just how pointless the whole enterprise is. There are indeed those who understand that DRM has only a minimal impact on piracy numbers, yet stands to have a profound impact on legitimate customers, making the whole thing not only pointless, but actively detrimental to the gaming business. Studios like CD Projekt Red, makers of the Witcher series, and Lab Zero Games, makers of the SkullGirls franchise, have come to the realization that focusing on DRM rather than focusing on making great games and connecting with their fans doesn't make any sense.And now we can add Polish game studio Flying Wild Hog to the list of developers that get it. The makers of the recently released Shadow Warrior 2 game have indicated that it basically has zero time for DRM for its new game because it's entirely too busy making great games and engaging with its fans. On the Steam forum, one gamer noticed that SW2 did not come with any embedded DRM, such as Denudo, and asked the studio why it wasn't worried about piracy. Flying Wild Hog's Kris Narkowicz replied:

This might be big, depending on how much of this information is passed on to the general public, rather than delivered ex parte or under seal. Joseph Cox of Vice/Motherboard was the first to snag this ruling [PDF] by a Washington district court judge ordering the FBI to turn over tons of info about the NIT it deployed in the Playpen child porn investigation.As we're already aware, the NIT was deployed by the FBI in Virginia but obtained identifying information about Tor-cloaked site visitors not just all over this country, but all over the world. The motion to compel discovery asked for several details about the NIT and its deployment and most of them have been granted.Here's the full list (with additional commentary):

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For some time now, security researchers have been warning that our lackadaisical approach to Internet of Things security would soon be coming home to roost. Initially it was kind of funny to read how "smart" fridges, tea kettles and Barbie dolls did an arguably worse job than their dumb counterparts with a greater risk to privacy and security. But as we collectively realized that these devices not only created millions of new home and business attack vectors, but could also be used to wage historically-unprecedented DDoS attacks, things quickly became less amusing.

As fixed and wireless broadband growth crawls to a halt and cord cutting begins to hammer TV numbers, incumbent telecom giants have been trying to pivot into the media and advertising game with mixed results. Verizon so far has shelled out billions to acquire aging 90s internet brands Yahoo and AOL, believing this can somehow transform the stodgy duopolist into a sexy, sleeker Facebook and Google competitor. So far these efforts to woo Millennials have been arguably underwhelming and occassionally comical, highlighting how innovation and disruption is somewhat foreign to these companies' DNA.

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As you know, last week, large chunks of the internet spent hours writhing on the ground and totally inaccessible thanks to a giant DDoS attack that appears to have been launched via a botnet involving insecure DVR hardware (which can't be patched -- but that's another post for later). Of course, whenever this kind of thing happens, you know that some people on the politics side of things are going to come up with dumb responses, but there were some real whoppers on Friday. I'm going to focus on just two, because I honestly can't decide which one of these is dumber. I'll discuss each of them, and then you guys can vote and let us know: which of these is dumber.

The NSA doesn't like the fact that it didn't get a big enough slice of the tax-dollar-grabbing cyber pie. After much discussion about which agencies would oversee what aspects of the US government's cyberwar defense systems, the NSA -- despite all of its computing power and hoarded exploits -- ended up with the unenviable task of protecting the home turf rather than engaging in more offensive maneuvers.

Another "free speech" controversy has blown up at Facebook. "Free speech" in quotes because Facebook is a private company that can make it own rules about speech it's willing to tolerate, much less protect. It's also one that can make up the rules as it goes along and apply them inconsistently. Welcome to the Internet. That's just how things are done.So, it comes as no surprise that moderators at Facebook attempted to remove Donald Trump's posts as "hate speech." (via Slashdot)

An attempt to force the government to reveal its secret list of terrorist groups has been shot down by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals [PDF]. The Heartland Alliance Immigrant Justice Center's FOIA request for "Tier III" terrorist groups can remain unfulfilled. [h/t Brad Heath]Without giving too much away (and neither the court nor the government does), "Tier III" is apparently more nebulous and fluid than tiers I and II.

A strange article in Vox lamenting the construction of currently-underutilized gigabit networks prompted our first place winner for insightful this week, with WDS making short work of the issue:

Five Years AgoThis week in 2011, an interesting copyright question was raised when Warner Bros. bought the movie rights to a story written in a Reddit comment thread, and subsequently stopped the author from continuing to use Reddit, even as it wasn't clear that under Reddit's TOS he would be able to offer Warner Bros. an exclusive deal in the first place. Meanwhile, in a real blast from the past, Bill Gates was called to testify in an antitrust trial about... Windows 95. And Microsoft's views on sure seemed to waver a lot depending on who was in the antitrust hot seat. In congress, Senator Wyden was continuing to fight the PROTECT IP bill while the broader internet clued in on the notion that another bill focused on anti-streaming could make Justin Bieber a felon.Ten Years AgoThis week in 2006, everyone was still trying to parse the implications of Google's acquisition of YouTube, except for politicians who were rushing to blame YouTube for all sorts of things. Universal Music launched a lawsuit against streaming sites but left YouTube out of the list of targets — which became very unsurprising when we learned that Google's new deals with record labels included giving them equity in YouTube. Meanwhile, the Authors Guild lawsuit over Google Books was proceeding just about as slowly as a lawsuit possibly can, the MPAA was doing its best to brainwash the Boy Scouts with an anti-piracy badge, and a tour through the EULA for Windows Vista revealed a hilariously broad term stating that "you may not work around any technical limitations in the software".Fifteen Years AgoThis week in 2001, the first inklings of the mass-ditching of landlines in favor of cellphones were spotted. There were also inklings about the death of broadband that didn't pan out quite as accurately. Speaking of technology takeovers, professional photographers were starting to make the switch to digital cameras and (most) retail software stores were struggling to compete with downloads. But in retrospect, perhaps the biggest tech news was a simple and vague rumor portending that Apple was going to launch some sort of non-Mac music device the following week (and fifteen years ago tomorrow, the world would meet the iPod).One-Hundred And Forty-Seven Years AgoHoaxes are a dime a dozen in the internet era, and frankly they are just too easy. But I love a good hoax story from the golden age, and this week we've got one that certainly qualifies: on October 16th, 1869 workers uncovered the Cardiff Giant, a huge "petrified man" forged by an atheist New York tobbaconist in order to win an argument with some Methodists. Scientists quickly realized it was a fake, but theologians who believed giants once walked the earth defended its authenticity. It's still on display in the Farmers' Museum in Cooperstown, and a replica made by P. T. Barnum can be seen in Michigan.

Amidst the reporting and fervor over the email hack of Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta, there has been something of a recent discussion that has begun over the ethics of circulating what is in that hacked cache. Some within the media itself have worried about about reporting either too much on the hacked emails, or even at all in some cases, with still others going for a more nuanced position of encouraging the reporting of information in the public interest while leaving all the personal stuff in the emails undisclosed to whatever degree is possible.

While we cover a lot of silly intellectual property disputes here, none has the potential to upend our society into a circus of hilarious litigious stupidity as much as publicity rights do. This barely-arrived form of intellectual property has been the star of all kinds of legal insanity, with one needing only to note its use by such upstanding denizens of our reality as Lindsay Lohan and the brother of Pablo Escobar. But I have to admit I had reserved a special place in my humor-heart for Harris Faulkner, the Fox News anchor that sued toy-maker Hasbro for making a a hamster figurine that shared her name. Because the sharing of a name isn't sufficient to arise to a publicity rights violation, the IRL-non-hamster-Faulkner had to claim that the ficticious-hamster-Faulkner also borrowed from her physical likeness, an argument which her legal team actually made. As a reminder, here are images of both.

As we are quite likely in some kind of golden age for pure snark, a golden age probably in part super-charged by these here internets, it would be nice if the general public likewise had a firm grasp on the protections afforded to us by free speech rights to partake in parody and mockery. Sadly, too often the targets of such parody would rather try to silence speech than address what might be legitimate concerns. But it's when government does so that any forgiveness for this should end, as government should be particularly aware both about the free speech rights in place regarding parody and of the consequences of trying to silence criticism in any sort of ham-fisted manner.Which brings us to the city government of Atlanta, Georgia, which appears to be trying to apply trademark law to harass a comedian whose "City of Atlanta" parody page uses a city logo, with predictably laughable results. This episode started when Ben Palmer, a local comedian, became frustrated at the machinations of city government and started a parody Facebook page, adorning it with one of the city's official seals.

A few weeks back, we wrote about the arrest of Harold Martin, an NSA contractor working at Booz Allen, for apparently taking "highly classified information" from the NSA and storing it electronically and physically in his home. There were a lot of questions about whether or not Martin was connected to the Shadow Brokers release of NSA hacking tools, though as more info comes out, it sounds like perhaps Martin was just found because of an investigation into Shadow Brokers, but not because he was connected to them. Soon after the arrest was made public (after being kept sealed for a little over a month), reports came out suggesting that Martin was basically a digital hoarder, but not a leaker (or a whistleblower).

Welp, it looks like another bad day for Team Prenda. The law firm that went around uploading its own porn films and then shaking down people on the internet has had a bad few years in terms of courts blasting them for abusing the court system and ordering them to pay up for all sorts of awful things. Every few weeks it seems like we read about another loss for John Steele and Paul Hansmeier (the third "partner" in this mess, Paul Duffy, passed away). The latest is not only a pretty big hit, it's also a complete "own goal" by Team Prenda. This one wasn't in one of their crappy shakedown lawsuits where a defendant hit back. No, this was in the case where Prenda tried to sue all of its critics for defamation in both Illinois and Florida. The Florida case, filed by John Steele, was quickly dismissed once Steele realized it broke all kinds of rules. But the Illinois cases moved forward. There was some bouncing around between state and federal court, before the case was dismissed and some sanctions were added.

Last month, we wrote about Bruce Schneier's warning that certain unknown parties were carefully testing ways to take down the internet. They were doing carefully configured DDoS attacks, testing core internet infrastructure, focusing on key DNS servers. And, of course, we've also been talking about the rise of truly massive DDoS attacks, thanks to poorly secured Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and ancient, unpatched bugs.

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See the update at the end...