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The DHS and CBP have both taken a healthy interest in travelers' social media posts. The DHS head even suggested withholding this information would no longer be an option -- that demands for account passwords were on the way. (Considering the government can search every person and their electronic devices at the border, demands for social media info would seem to be mostly redundant...) The underlying premise is this would give the US a jump on incoming terrorists by checking travelers' posts against a list of troublesome terms.This isn't a welcome development, but the federal government continues to be its own worst enemy. You can't fear what can't be deployed competently. The DHS isn't going to stop trying to hoover up social media posts as part of the vetting process, but as a just-released Inspector General's report [PDF] points out, it may be several years before this vetting program operates in any sort of useful fashion. (via The Register)

As we've noted, the main reason the Sci-Hub site is so popular with academics is not because it is free -- researchers generally have free access to papers anyway -- but because it is so easy to use. Among other things, it provides a centralized store of a huge number of papers -- 58 million at the time of writing -- that can be downloaded with a single click. But an interesting post on the Green Tea and Velociraptors blog points out Sci-Hub's holdings are beaten by the total number of papers available on the ResearchGate site, which has 12 million members:

In our recent conversation about Ed Sheeran's rise to fame, we chiefly focused on his claim that music piracy helped him be discovered by the public and his generally lax views on filesharing of his music. While that modern view on how music is consumed is refreshing, we focused less on another chief part of the equation: Ed Sheeran is really good to his fans. Between engaging with them directly via social media, having a generally congenial attitude towards them, and producing music his fans love, he's built up quite a connection with his listeners.But he appears to want to go above and beyond simply connecting with his fans, as well. He's even willing to go to bat for them with his label, Atlantic/Warner. He demonstrated this when a musician in the UK had a short video of herself covering a Sheeran song not only taken down from her Facebook account over a copyright claim, but had her account briefly suspended.

Many people seem to forget that before Ed Snowden came along, Senator Ron Wyden was beating the drum in Congress about how the NSA was abusing Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act to spy on Americans. Here's a story we did back in 2011 concerning Wyden raising concerns about the failure of the Director of National Intelligence to say how Section 702 was being used on Americans. Even earlier in 2011, we wrote about then Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, refusing to answer this question, saying that "it is not reasonably possible to identify the number of people located in the United States whose communications may have been reviewed."Wyden kept up a series of similar requests, famously leading to the 2013 hearing in which Wyden directly asked Clapper about whether or not information was being collected on Americans and Clapper flat out lied. Snowden himself has credited that particular exchange as playing a big role in convincing him to leak documents.Fast forward to now. Last week, Senator Wyden sent a letter to incoming Director of National Intelligence* Dan Coats, once again asking how many Americans are having their communications watched under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act (which, again, is supposed to be used for foreign intelligence, but which we now know is regularly used to do surveillance on Americans).

Remember James Woods? The Hollywood actor sued a Twitter troll for $10 million, claiming defamation, because that troll had sarcastically referred to Woods as a "cocaine addict." Woods, of course, has a long history of mixing it up on Twitter with lots of people, including saying things almost identical to what he sued over:Throughout the case, Woods continued to make it abundantly clear to the world that he is a horrible person. Specifically, during the course of the case, the (anonymous) defendant unexpectedly passed away, leading Woods to gloat about the guy's death, after first claiming that the reason the appeal in the case was dropped was because he was winning the case:

We've talked about the astounding hypocrisy of Rep. Devin Nunes a few times in the past. He heads the House Intelligence Committee, which is supposed to be conducting "oversight" of the intelligence community, but has generally been a cheerleader for mass surveillance in recent years. Nunes, in fact, has regularly slammed any attempt to cut back on surveillance, to the point of actively misleading the public in making false claims about how NSA surveillance programs work. The hypocrisy became clear when Nunes flipped out following the firing/resignation of Mike Flynn as National Security Advisor, arguing that it was somehow unprecedented that an American's phone calls with Russian officials were recorded by the intelligence community. Of course, that suggests either near total ignorance of the programs he's supposedly in charge of overseeing, or just blatant political pandering.And now it's getting worse. Reporter Katie Bo Williams got her hands on an interesting letter that Nunes, along with ranking member Rep. Adam Schiff, just sent to the heads of the CIA, NSA and FBI, continuing to dig in on the whole "recorded Mike Flynn" thing. The target now is Executive Order 12333, which we've spoken about quite a lot. That's the executive order signed by President Reagan, that more or less gives the intelligence community total free rein in conducting surveillance overseas. As an ex-State Department official revealed back in 2014, the vast majority of NSA surveillance actually is done under 12333, and it just uses other programs -- like Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act and Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act -- to fill in the gaps of what they can't get via 12333. Executive Order 12333, for example, was used to hack into Yahoo and Google's servers overseas, allowing the NSA to scoop up lots of info without any oversight by US courts.Anyway, based on the letter that Nunes has sent, he's suddenly quite concerned about 12333. And this demonstrates his massive hypocrisy, because another letter he sent a few years ago has him arguing that there should be less oversight on 12333... but we'll get to that. This new letter suggests that the Flynn recording came under 12333, and so he's demanding all sorts of data on how 12333 is used on US Persons.Of course, what's interesting here is that the Congressional intelligence committees have long stated that they don't really have much oversight into anything under 12333. Dianne Feinstein (who was a top member of the Senate Intelligence Committee) admitted in the past that the committees get zero insight into 12333 intelligence collection:

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The Mormon Church has been somewhat flip-floppy when it comes to criticism against it. On the one hand, the notoriously tight-knit Church has been admirably tolerant of many attempts to parody it, including public commentary and a certain Broadway show of world renown. On the other hand, it seems the Church tends to draw a line in the sand when it comes to disseminating official church documents, even when this is done by journalists and organizations dedicated to commentary and news. In the past, the Mormon Church has attempted to utilize copyright law to have those documents removed from such sites as Wikimedia and Wikileaks, which of course resulted in the wider viewership of those same documents as news of the threats wove through the media. The Streisand Effect, it seems, offers no quarter of religious institutions.A decade later, it seems our friends in Utah have not learned this lesson, as the Mormon Church reportedly threatened the MormonLeaks website with legal action over copyright infringement after the site hosted a PowerPoint presentation.

Last fall, Alphabet/Google announced that the company would be notably scaling back its Google Fiber ambitions. The company axed its CEO, laid off a small number of employees, and froze a number of anticipated fiber builds (in Portland and a few other locations). Numerous reports indicated that there were growing concerns among many executives about the high costs and slow pace of deploying fiber, so the company was considering an overall pivot to next-generation gigabit wireless while it continued building out most already-announced markets.While it's hard to call this pivot a failure until we see a real wireless product, ISPs like AT&T were of course quick to suggest Google Fiber was little more than folly (ignoring that AT&T's anti-competitive behavior played a starring role in Google Fiber's struggles in many cities). This has contributed to an overall air of "we told you so" smugness emanating from numerous quadrants of the telecom status quo.That take, however, is short-sighted. One, the launch of Google Fiber put an unrelenting spotlight on the lack of broadband competition in countless markets, driving many large ISPs (like AT&T) to deploy gigabit broadband service that had previously been unheard of. Google Fiber also managed to shine a bright spotlight on the way many large ISPs use our broken legislative and regulatory systems to keep things broken, whether that's by using utility pole beaurocracy to slow competitors' installs, or writing awful state protectionist law hamstringing what your local town and city can do about it.Over at Backchannel, long-standing duopoly critic and Harvard Law Professor Susan Crawford notes that there are a lot of useful lessons from Google Fiber, most notably that the system Google Fiber is operating in is effectively rotten to the core:

A couple of years ago, the Freedom of the Press Foundation sued the DOJ over its refusal to release its secret rules governing spying on the nation's journalists. This was prompted by revelations the FBI had used National Security Letters to obtain information on AP and Fox News journalists. The DOJ then issued new rules on the do's and don'ts of surveilling journalists, but once again (a) redacted them into uselessness and (b) granted the FBI an NSL exception, undercutting the entire point of the recrafted rules.The OIG report -- in which the Inspector General disputed the DOJ's extensive redactions -- still has yet to be released in a less-redacted form. Sadly, it now appears it will never be any less redacted than the unintelligible mess the DOJ handed over a few years ago. A federal judge has sided with the government, finding its investigative techniques and methods are too sensitive to be handed over to the public, much less journalists it may or may not have surveilled using NSLs. (h/t Trevor Timm, Mike Scarcella)Underlying everything is the government's barely-contested assertion that these rules contain information of national security interest. It's a handy assertion because it means the DOJ doesn't even have to explain why the redactions it made are relevant to its national security claims. From the opinion [PDF]:

In the fall of 2015, privacy activist Phil Mocek and the Center for Open Policing sued the city of Tacoma for its response to a request for Stingray documents. The documents Mocek obtained were heavily-redacted, despite there being several mostly-unredacted versions of the FBI's Stingray non-disclosure agreement already in public circulation.(This would be the standard NDA the FBI appends to every Stingray purchase by local law enforcement agencies -- one that says all public records requests should be forwarded to the feds and encourages locals to toss cases rather than expose Stingray use. It's also the same contract the FBI was shocked to hear agencies were complying with after signing on the dotted line to take ownership of their new cell tower spoofers.)The lawsuit was filed under the state's open records law, with Mocek challenging the Tacoma PD's use of the "investigative records" exemption to withhold significant amounts of a mostly bog-standard nondisclosure agreement. As was noted back then, the continued withholding of this information could become costly (for taxpayers): the state's public records law allows for fines of $500/day for violations.The court has spoken and the Tacoma PD's excessive secrecy is indeed going to cost residents a chunk of change.

Last month, we noted that a ton of tech companies -- including us at the Copia Institute -- had signed on to amicus brief opposing the Trump Executive Order on immigration. As you know, the administration came out with a new executive order a few weeks later, trying to get around the multiple courts that had blocked the original order. The new order is just a cosmetic rewriting of the original one with a few small changes that the administration hopes will survive judicial scrutiny. A number of challenges have already been filed to the new order, and in one of them, brought by the state of Hawaii, a bunch of tech companies (again, including the Copia Institute) have now filed an amicus brief opposing the order. In particular, this brief focuses on the harms to the tech industry, including actual examples of harms created by this exec order:

As we noted last week, one of the main copyright battlegrounds in the UK concerns the use of Kodi boxes -- low-cost devices running the open source Kodi multimedia player, usually augmented with plug-ins that provide access to unauthorized content. One of the popular uses of such Kodi boxes is to watch live streams of sporting events. TorrentFreak reports on an important new court order obtained by the UK's Football Association Premier League (FAPL) to prevent people from viewing live streams of soccer games free of charge. The problem for the FAPL is that the addresses of the servers streaming matches are often only known once the games begin. To meet that challenge, the court has granted a new kind of injunction: one that allows live blocking. Here's how it will work:

With one of Prenda Law's key players, John Steele, pleading guilty and likely spending many, many years in prison, you might think that it would mean an end to egregious copyright trolling. However, Matthew Sag, who's spent years tracking the number of copyright trolling lawsuits, lets us know that trolling is still going strong, and it's only slightly modified since the days of Prenda:

The DOJ is still fighting a lawsuit over the iPhone exploit the FBI purchased to access the (worthless) contents of a phone used by a participant in the San Bernardino shooting. FBI director James Comey and the DOJ made comments at the time stating a couple of things:1. The phone crack was expensive.

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New York state legislators apparently think the state's so cosmopolitan it may as well be Europe. As Adam Steinbaugh points out on Twitter, though, local comparisons aren't nearly as flattering.

So we've noted a few times now how every month or so there's a media report proclaiming that you can't save any money via cord cutting. The logic in these reports almost always goes something like this: "Once I got done signing up for every damn streaming video service under the sun, I found that I wasn't really saving much money over traditional cable."Authors leaning on this lazy take almost always tend to forget a few things. One, the same people dictating cable TV rates dictate streaming video rates. Two, adding a dozen streaming services to exactly match your bloated, 300 channel cable subscription misses the entire point of cord cutting. The benefit of streaming is you can pick and choose the content you prefer. And yes, if you prefer a massive bundle of religious programming, horrible reality television, and infomercials, then yes -- you may want to stick to paying an arm and a leg for cable.Just like clockwork, USAToday rushed to meet this month's invisible quota for "cord cutting doesn't save me money" stories. In their version, the author desperately tries to include the cost of broadband service just to try and make an inaccurate point:

The ATF's sting operations have already drawn plenty of criticism. Not from law enforcement agencies who partner up with the ATF for easy busts or the DOJ which oversees them, but from almost everyone else, including federal judges. These stings result in government-made criminals who are led by undercover agents towards robbing fake stash houses of nonexistent drugs, cash, and weapons. The fun thing about the nonexistent drugs is it can be whatever amount ATF agents say it is. And that amount of drugs -- that exists nowhere but in the imagination of federal agents -- is used to determine lengths of sentences.Judge Gerald McHugh trimmed back a sentence given a defendant caught in an ATF stash house sting, pointing out the crooked system allows prosecutors to play judge, jury and executioner -- all before the case even lands in court. As the judge notes, he has never run into a sting prosecution where the imaginary drug stash was below the statutory guideline triggering the longest sentences.

One of the topics that generates strong feelings in the online world is adblocking. Many users love it, but many publishers hate it. That's a big problem, because advertising has turned into the main way of funding what appears on the Internet. As adblockers become more common, so the advertising revenue available to pay for creating articles, images, sound and video diminishes. Some want to ban adblockers, but that's hardly a solution: forcing visitors to your site to view ads they hate is not a good way to foster a long-term business relationship. Improving ads seems a better approach, but that's easier said than done, and may come too late now that so many people have installed adblockers.The other obvious solution is to charge people to view online material. There's been a certain reluctance to try that approach, partly because of the misleading slogan "information wants to be free", and partly because historically it hasn't worked in general. But it seems that major online players in China are now starting to roll out the paid-for model, perhaps in part because adblockers are widely used there, as in the West. Here's what the biggest online service, WeChat, with a billion accounts created, and at least 700 million active users, is trying, as reported by technode:

Much of the way the movie industry looks to combat film piracy will seem familiar to readers of this site. It typically involves shakedown threat letters, games of DMCA whac-a-mole, and a paint-by-numbers approach that mostly amounts to film studios shaking their lawyers' fists at the sky. All that produces the status quo, where piracy is still a thing, films still make gobs of money, and regular observers of it all are left scratching our heads wondering how so much noise could be made over it all.But I will give credit where credit is due as Costa Rican film distributor Romaly deserves some style and creativity points for its new anti-piracy tactic.

The rise of drones in both the personal and commercial spheres has happened with stunning speed, and it has created a whole bunch of hard-to-answer regulatory questions. This week we're joined by Notifleet's Siggi Hindrichs to discuss the current state and future of drone regulation by the FAA.Follow the Techdirt Podcast on Soundcloud, subscribe via iTunes or Google Play, or grab the RSS feed. You can also keep up with all the latest episodes right here on Techdirt.

For years now, we've highlighted Verizon's tendency to grab all manner of tax breaks and subsidies from a town or city -- in exchange for fiber optic upgrades that are often never delivered. All up and down the eastern seaboard, Verizon was given the keys to the kingdom in franchise and other agreements filled with loopholes that let the telco, time and time again, promise one thing, then deliver another. And because the company enjoys immense lobbying power over regional regulators and state legislatures, Verizon has never really been held accountable for this behavior.New York City has been a particular point of contention. In 2008, former mayor Mike Bloomberg and Verizon signed (behind closed doors) a new franchise agreement promising "100% coverage" of FiOS across the city by 2014. As some local reporters had warned at the time (and were promptly ignored), the city's deal with Verizon contained all manner of loopholes allowing Verizon to wiggle over, under and around its obligations. And wiggle Verizon did; a 2015 city report found huge gaps in deployment coverage -- particularly in many of the less affluent, outer city boroughs.New York City had long promised to sue Verizon over its failures, and this week made good on that promise. A lawsuit filed by the city (pdf) says that Verizon only ultimately reached 2.2 million out of the city's 3.3 million residences with FiOS. The city is seeking a declaration that Verizon is in breach of its deployment obligations, as well as an order to complete the project as promised. The contract required that Verizon "pass" nearby apartments and buildings with fiber. But according to the city, Verizon's definition of "pass" meant "getting the fiber line somewhere close to the building, maybe":

The Constitution -- which has always been malleable when national security interests are in play -- simply no longer applies at our nation's borders. Despite the Supreme Court's finding that cell phone searches require warrants, the DHS and CBP have interpreted this to mean it doesn't apply to searches of devices entering/leaving the country.For the past 15 years, the government has won 9/10 constitutional-violation edge cases if they occurred within 100 miles of our borders -- a no man's land colloquially referred to as the "Constitution-free zone." But the pace of device searches has increased exponentially over the last couple of years. The "border exception" is no longer viewed as an "exception" -- something to be deployed only when customs officers had strong suspicions about a person or their devices. Now, it's the rule, as NBC News reports.

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A quick update in the lawsuit filed against us. Today we filed additional motions for Leigh Beadon, part of the team here, who was also sued. We've filed a motion, on Leigh's behalf, to have the lawsuit thrown out on anti-SLAPP grounds, because this is a strategic lawsuit designed to chill our exercise of First Amendment rights. At the time of our initial filings in the case, Leigh had not yet been served. That happened a few days later, and now we've also filed the motions to dismiss for Leigh as well, and a related memorandum detailing the reasons why he should be dismissed. Please read the filings. Also, just to have them all in one place, we've posted our original filings below as well.As we noted before, this lawsuit is a huge distraction for us, and we appreciate everyone who has stepped up already to help keep us going and to keep publishing through this ordeal. Please check out the site ISupportJournalism.com to let us know you support our reporting on a variety of important issues. Or, check out some of our t-shirts, hoodies and other gear, as we've been refreshing some old favorites and some new designs as well.

Like many bad laws, I'm sure this bill lying on the Utah governor's desk has its heart in the right place. But, like many bad laws, its head is completely up its ass. Eugene Volokh reports there's Yet Another Cyberbullying Bill on the threshold of passage. Like many that have come before it, it's full of constitutional issues and easily-abusable language.

For several years now, the cable and broadband industry has, like so many industries, turned to obnoxious, misleading fees to help pad their already healthy revenues. The fees, usually tacked on below the line post-sale, aren't just a great way to covertly raise rates -- but they allow companies to advertise one rate -- then charge something decidedly different. Despite effectively being false advertising, this practice has long been ignored by regulators. Companies like Comcast and Charter have, however, been repeatedly sued for the practice.Two major fees in the last few years have received the brunt of the attention. One being the "broadcast TV fee." The broadcast TV fee is simply your cable operator taking a part of the cost of programming and burying it below the line to help them falsely advertise a lower rate. Comcast and Charter have both insisted this is simply them being transparent with their customers.Another contentious fee is the "regional sports fee," which functions in just the same way, and as the name implies is just the cost companies pay to broadcast sports content. On its face, this fee was already contentious (given that many cable providers own the local sports broadcaster). But one DirecTV customer actually discovered that you could use a tool on the DirecTV website to determine how much each zip code pays in regards to this fee.What she found is that there appears to be no rhyme or reason for how this fee is assessed. Users just a few feet apart could pay $0, $2.47, $5.83, or $7.29 in regional sports fees -- despite all having access to the same content. The user even broke down this in practice in Arizona via a handy map:The Consumerist then went city by city and found the same thing in Chicago, New York, and multiple cities in California. And in places like Philadelphia, the website found that people paying absolutely nothing in fees are often saddled right next to people paying up to $7.29 more per month: There's no coherent reason for this. It's not because of regional franchise agreements, most of which were demolished when companies like AT&T and Verizon convinced state legislatures to pass state-level agreements when they got into the business a decade ago. Similarly, DirecTV doesn't even offer a regional sports offering in many of the markets with varying rates. What is for certain is that both the broadcast TV fee and these regional sports fees have skyrocketed in very short order. The regional sports fee has jumped from $1 to nearly $10 for some carriers in just the last few years.Hoping to find out why different people pay such dramatically different rates, the website asked DirecTV and got a complete and total non (and frankly false) answer:

The problem with bad laws (well, ONE problem) is they'll need to be enforced at some point. Legislators pass laws out of fear, boredom, or a desire to look busy. They'll pass laws to push personal agendas and closely-held beliefs. They'll pass laws in response to bizarre tragedies so unique they can't be found in expanded actuarial tables or at the behest of favored industry leaders. Every so often, they'll even pass laws citizens are demanding. But far too often, they'll just pass laws because they're legislators and it's right there in the job description.They'll pass laws with zero regard for enshrined rights or their consitutents' civil liberties… like this Tennessee law which almost seems constitutional if no one examines it too closely. (via Adam Steinbaugh)

Last year, 19-year-old UK student Josh Browder released a chatbot called "DoNotPay" that assisted drivers in challenging parking tickets. It was a small program with a huge upside. The bot's legal guidance -- in the form of yes/no questions -- resulted in more than $4 million in tickets being dismissed.Chatbots are no replacement for lawyers, but almost no one seeks legal help when dealing with parking tickets. That's probably why law/traffic enforcement agencies feel comfortable issuing so many bogus ones. DoNotPay not only saved UK residents millions of dollars, it also proved the ticketing system was fundamentally broken. More than 64% of the 250,000 tickets challenged were overturned.Browder was hoping to apply his chatbot AI to other legal issues -- narrowly-focused areas where legal help might be appreciated, but without the chance of severely screwing up someone's life if the chatbot led someone down the wrong path.

Thru, Inc. made a mess of its registered trademark by allowing it to lie dormant. It registered "Thru Dropbox" but made no attempt to challenge Dropbox's application for the term "DROPBOX" in 2009. Instead, it sat back and watched as Dropbox grabbed market share. Five years after it filed its application, the trademark was awarded to Dropbox. Only then did Thru, Inc. act, so to speak. It acted like the horrified victim of Dropbox's motion for declaratory judgment, one that would uncontestably award the "Dropbox" registration solely to the cloud storage service. Thru countersued, claiming infringement. Bad move.During the lawsuit, discovery by Dropbox uncovered Thru Inc.'s master plan. Emails showed company officials actually referred to the "Thru Dropbox" trademark registration as a "lottery ticket" that would pay off as soon as Dropbox went public. As the court pointed out while handing bits and pieces of Thru's thoroughly-chewed ass back to it, referring to a dormant trademark registration as a "lottery ticket" is like counting your yachts before you've purchased them. It demonstrates bad faith -- the sort of thing that generally leads to lawsuit losses and hefty legal fee liability.And here come the financial losses Thru clearly didn't figure into its "lottery ticket" calculations. The presiding judge has awarded more than $2 million in legal fees to Dropbox. From the order [PDF]:

Last month, we wrote about the truly bizarre situation in which no one in the federal government seemed willing to say who was in charge of the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). You see, there had been widespread reports right before the inauguration that the current director, Michelle Lee (who's been really, really good at the job) was being kept on in that role. But, for some reason, the Commerce Department's website listed the role as vacant. And there were a series of other confusing and conflicting signs. But the most bizarre part was that the USPTO and the Commerce Department simply refused to say who was in charge. Which is... weird.Late on Friday, it appears that the Commerce Department responded to two separate FOIA requests simultaneously, from the two sites that had been covering the issue most closely, Patently-O and IP Watchdog, confirming that Lee remains the Director:Dennis Crouch, who runs Patently-O, notes that, while it's bizarre that no one would respond (especially since Lee was retaining the role, not moving into it...), it's time to move on. IP Watchdog, who has long hated Lee for daring to recognize that over patenting and bad patents can be serious problems, is still agitating to get Lee removed. Thankfully, that looks like a long shot. And that's doubly good, since one of the other people gunning for the slot was former chief judge at CAFC (the appeals court that handles patent cases) Randall Rader. Rader, who resigned over an ethics scandal, was a key component in making the patent system worse during his time on the court. So, for now, at least, a bullet has been dodged.Still, it's quite bizarre that this whole thing happened in the first place. What was so hard about having the USPTO or Commerce Department just admit that Michelle Lee was still the director?

What's a few typos between you and a friend a few cops? Nothing, really. The lives they ruin will not be their own.UK resident Nigel Lang lost more than two years of his life to a typo. He was never jailed, but the life he lived was bereft of freedom. Thanks to the addition of a single wrong digit, Lang's house was raided, his electronics seized, and his life's goals rerouted.

For years we've pointed out that UK libel law, in particular, was horrible and easily abused to chill speech. Things appear to have gotten somewhat better -- as some really bad cases at least made people realize that some of the more extreme issues needed to be fixed, but on the whole, UK libel law is still incredibly broad, and can and does stifle speech (and, yes, I know, the UK doesn't have the same free speech protections as the US does -- but it should). This latest case is just a good example of why the UK's standards for libel are so problematic.The story involves two columnist/writers in the UK who got into a bit of a Twitter spat. Part of the problem, here, is that a lot of people have very strong emotional opinions about at least one of the parties in the lawsuit. Katie Hopkins has made a name for herself saying outrageous things and has been referred to, multiple times, as a professional troll. There are lots of people who dislike her, and certainly are quite happy to see that she's come out the big loser in this libel dispute. But before you celebrate, the details here are important, and quite worrisome, if you support freedom of expression.I recommend reading the full ruling by the UK High Court, which makes it pretty clear that this was just a fairly quick and silly Twitter spat -- not unlike one that many, many people (perhaps, including, some of you reading this right now...) get involved in each day. The background is that another columnist, Laurie Penny, had tweeted something more or less saying she was okay with some graffiti on a WWII memorial in London. Hopkins got angry at Penny's tweets and there were some angry tweets about Penny. That got some press attention for reasons I don't fully understand. A week or so later, Hopkins starts tweeting angrily at a different columnist, Jack Monroe, sort of referencing back to Penny's tweets about the memorial vandalism. And, as the court ruling notes, the following happened:

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Fortunately for law enforcement officers (but not so much for lowly citizens), courts have routinely affirmed that officers don't need to know the laws they're enforcing to stay in the law enforcement business. No one expects cops to be legal scholars, but the least they could do is get a second opinion when they're faced with a situation where applicable laws may -- or just as frequently, may not -- exist.We've seen nonexistent laws abused before. Most of the time, a perceived moving violation acts as the groundwork for a fishing expedition. This is fine, sayeth the courts. Other times, nonexistent laws are cited to shut down photographers or harass people otherwise minding their own business.Texas law enforcement officers are notorious for this. They frequently -- and possibly willfully in some cases -- misread the state's failure to identify statute as meaning they're allowed to demand identification from anyone at any time. They could not possibly be more wrong.The perfect storm of law enforcement beclownery occurs when they interact with someone who actually knows the law. The bluffing commences in a real-time display of "our word against yours," with officers assisting each other in collective ignorance because, if might makes right, then a united citation of nonexistent statutes by armed men is the rightest thing of all.Too bad these officers pulled over a defense lawyer. In the officers' defense, they couldn't have possibly known this fact ahead of time. (h/t Adam Steinbaugh)

What is it about Senators and their awful internet analogies around net neutrality? It's been just over a decade since the late Senator Ted Stevens gave his infamous "series of tubes" analogy in which he tried to explain the internet and net neutrality. Remember?

Back in September last year, Mike wrote about the remarkable court ruling in India that copyright is not inevitable, divine or a natural right. As we have been reporting since 2013, the case in question was brought by three big Western publishers against Delhi University and a photocopy shop over "course packs" -- bound collections of photocopied extracts from books and journals that are sold more cheaply than the sources. Although the High Court of Delhi ruled that photocopying textbooks in this way is fair use, that was not necessarily the end of the story: the publishers might have appealed to India's Supreme Court. But as the Spicy IP site reports, they didn't:

This week, up here in Canada we were pleased to see our government take a stand against the USTR's Special 301 hearing, although it's a shame they didn't do that before passing new draconian copyright laws. Still, it's a step in the right direction, and That One Guy racked up the most votes on the insightful side with some kudos and hope for the future:

Copying Is Not Theft and Home Cooking Is Killing Restaurants are back »Last week we brought back two of our 2016 T-shirt designs, and today we've got another two favorites returning to the Techdirt Gear store on Teespring: Copying Is Not Theft (a conversation starter, to say the least...) and Home Cooking Is Killing Restaurants.In addition to our usual offerings (tees, hoodies, mugs and stickers) we've added a bunch of additional options for Copying Is Not Theft gear, at the expense of color choices (necessitated by the design). There are tank tops, long-sleeve tees, crew neck sweaters and a second option for women's tees. Also, in addition to our usual $23 premium men's tees, you have the option of a cheaper Hanes tagless tee for only $20. We don't know if this is something people prefer, and we're not sure how big the quality difference is (the premium tees are very nice) -- but if lots of people opt for the cheaper t-shirt and are satisfied with the quality, we'll consider making this available for more shirts in the future. Vote with your wallet and by letting us know in the comments or on Twitter!Check out the Techdirt Gear store for these returning designs, and more »

For a while now, Techdirt has been writing about the decision by some sites to stop allowing readers to make comments on articles. We've pointed out that's pretty regrettable, especially when it's couched in insulting terms of "valuing conversations" or building "better relationships." Dropping comments is a lazy response to a real and challenging problem: how to encourage readers to engage in meaningful ways.As well as a natural tendency for people to write hurtful or insultings things that they probably wouldn't say to each other face-to-face, there's another problem: the rise of Internet troll factories whose entire purpose is to flood sites with propaganda in the form of comments that espouse a particular viewpoint. As we noted recently, Google is looking to use machine learning technology to help identify and then deal with toxic comments:

Thanks to a laundry list of lazy companies, everything from your Barbie doll to your tea kettle is now hackable. Worse, these devices are now being quickly incorporated into some of the largest botnets ever built, resulting in some of the most devastating DDoS attacks the internet has ever seen. In short: thanks to "internet of things" companies that prioritized profits over consumer privacy and the safety of the internet, we're now facing a security and privacy dumpster fire that many experts believe will, sooner or later, result in mass human fatalities.Hoping to, you know, help prevent that, the folks at Consumer Reports this week unveiled a new open source digital consumer-protection standard that safeguards consumers’ security and privacy in the internet-of-broken things era. According to the non-profit's explanation of the new standard, it's working with privacy software firm Disconnect, non-profit privacy research firm Ranking Digital Rights (RDR), and nonprofit software security-testing organization Cyber Independent Testing Lab (CITL) on the new effort, which it acknowledges is early and requires public and expert assistance.As it stands, most of the proposals are common sense and take aim at most of the common issues in the IOT space. For example, encouraging companies to spend a few minutes engaged in "penetration testing" of their products before shipping (a novel idea!). The standard also hopes to ensure companies notify consumers of what's being collected and who it's being shared with, and that devices aren't using default login credentials. But Consumer Reports also notes that it hopes to develop these standards with an eye on more broadly incorporating them into product reviews:

Taser, the company, gets a lot of cop love because of its titular product, which is deployed (too) frequently to subdue arrestees. It probably doesn't get as much love for its body cameras, especially since it's already wired one line to sync footage with Taser deployment.Its cameras are going to get even less love now. Taser's latest product looks to ensure no shooting goes unrecorded.

Back in 2014, much was made about piracy in Australia, specifically whether Aussies using VPN services to get the American flavor of Netflix should be more heavily combatted and how release windows for movies in Australia were pushing the public to pirate the film instead of waiting for it. While much of the conversation about Netflix was unfortunate, we did see some positive signs about release windows coming from distributors in Australia. One distributor, Village Roadshow, even had its CEO admit how badly a delayed-release window had boned them when it came to the wildly popular The Lego Movie.

Techdirt has just written about how a report from the European Parliament's "rapporteur" -- basically, the subject lead -- on planned reforms to EU copyright law recommends dumping one of the most stupid ideas in the draft proposals, a link or "snippets" tax. Although that's good news, it shouldn't come as a huge surprise. After all, the idea has already been tried in Germany and Spain, and failed dismally both times. The damage that a link tax would cause to the smooth functioning of the Web is so obvious that the only people refusing to acknowledge that fact are the publishers who have been demanding this new "right" as part of their copyright maximalism. But alongside the ridiculous snippets tax, there's another extremely dangerous idea that the European Commission has slipped into its copyright reform. Article 13 of the published draft (pdf) reads as follows:

We all know by now the music industry's mantra that piracy kills artists. Well, not kills kills, but kills their musical careers before they could even really begin, so destructive is the dissemination of free music amongst the public. After all, if the public doesn't pay for every last instance of every last bit of music, how in the world could musical artists ever make a living? This mantra is one that tends to be applied universally to the concept of free music by the industry, with zero in the way of nuanced discussions about potential business models that might work for some, or many, artists.Except that that's silly. It ignores the power of freely disseminated music in helping musicians to be discovered in the first place, where they can then go on and make all kinds of money through what have always been better profit-centers for artists, such as concerts, merchandise and the like. Many artists don't understand this, swallowing the industry's mantra whole. But there are exceptions, such as Ed Sheeran, who began his career sans record label, promoting himself instead.

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The US Trade Representative's annual Special 301 Report repeatedly points out how other countries are "failing" US IP industries by not doing enough to prevent piracy. The "name and shame" approach hasn't done much to curb piracy, although it has generated a few pressure points to leverage during trade negotiations.Countries appear to be tiring of the annual shaming. Michael Geist reports the Canadian government has issued a rebuttal ahead of this year's Special 301 hearing.

Company [allegedly] does bad stuff. Gets busted. Someone points it out online. Company sues commenter for pointing out facts because details are slightly off. That's just how oil company SG Interests rolls apparently.Popehat's Ken White has caught another case -- a First Amendment-rustling libel lawsuit filed in hopes of shutting a critic up. The Popehat Signal hasn't been lit, but the defendant does have a legal fund supporters can contribute to as he goes up against a presumably very well-funded opponent.The comment that started the whole thing actually quotes a DOJ press release, so there's a substantial amount of factual basis for the commenter's allegations -- even if the allegations aren't completely on the nose in terms of the company's settlement with the feds.An article about the Bureau of Land Management's cancellation of oil leases appearing on a local news site drew the attention of Peter Kolbenschlag, an activist and PR strategist. The comment SGI is suing over claims the company was fined for collusion and bid rigging.

Earlier this year, we wrote about growing concerns that President Trump's executive order stripping those who are not US citizens of certain rights under the Privacy Act could have major consequences for transatlantic data flows. Now two leading civil liberties groups -- the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Human Rights Watch (HRW) -- have sent a joint letter to the EU's Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality, and other leading members of the European Commission and Parliament, urging the EU to re-examine the Privacy Shield agreement, which regulates transatlantic data flows, as well as the US-EU umbrella agreement, a data protection framework for EU-US law enforcement cooperation. The joint letter calls on European politicians to take into account what the ACLU and HRW delicately term "changed circumstances" -- essentially, the arrival of Donald Trump and his new agenda.The first worry concerns the Executive Order that excluded foreigners from privacy protections. The joint letter goes into more detail about why other laws, for example, the Judicial Redress Act, are not an adequate replacement for those protections. The ACLU and HRW also raise another issue: the lack of a functioning Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB). That matters, because the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) said oversight was needed to ensure that EU data receives appropriate privacy and other fundamental rights protections when it is exported to other countries. The joint letter explains why effective US oversight and redress mechanisms are absent: