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The ACLU would like to take a closer look at the government's activities regarding its seizure of Freedom Hosting back in 2013. To date, the docket remains sealed -- as is the case in far too many DOJ prosecutions. In this case, the FBI basically took over Freedom Hosting to serve up its Network Investigative Tool to unmask anonymous Tor users.The difference between this and its more recent NIT deployment in the Playpen child porn case is that many of those exposed by the malware weren't suspected of any wrongdoing. While letting the exploit run its course, the FBI also helped itself to TorMail's email database, later acquiring a warrant to access the contents of the seized communications.The ACLU would like to take a look at the warrant authorizing the NIT deployment, especially in light of recent Playpen prosecutions where federal judges have found the warrant used invalid. But the first step is unlocking the docket itself, which remains blocked from public view. Joseph Cox of Motherboard was the first to report on the ACLU's recent filing.

Copyright trolls still plague the world, unfortunately. While many are the group and individuals that advocate against this form of legal extortion, nearly always built upon shaky evidence at best, too silent have been the ISPs that copyright trolls utilize to send out their settlement letters. For whatever reason, ISPs en masse have decided that it isn't prudent to advocate for their clients. But not all ISPs behave this way. In Sweden, ISP Bahnhof, which we have written about previously for its client-friendly practices, is fighting back against one copyright troll on behalf of its customers in the best way possible: by turning the intellectual property tables back upon them.Sweden has recently become something of a target for copyright trolls, with Spridningskollen leading the charge. This group, the name of which translates into English as "Distribution Check," uses data gathered by anti-piracy groups to send out the typical threat letters and settlement requests to people who have IP addresses accused of infringing on copyrighted material. A spokesman for Spridningskollen, Gordon Odenbark, insisted that his group's work was necessary for both providing revenue to rights holders and, more importantly, to deter the general public from violating the intellectual property rights of others.There's just one problem: Bahnhof has a valid trademark for the term "spridningskollen."

Last week, Mike wrote about an important case involving one of the Creative Commons licenses. The fact that some 15 years after the CC movement started and the courts are still trying to bring legal clarity to the use of CC licenses is further proof that the law tends to lag far behind technology. Given their rarity, it's interesting to see another recent case involving a CC license, this time in Austria, pointed out by Alan Toner on his blog.As the timeline (in German) of the events indicates, the story began in January 2014, when thousands of left-wing protesters demonstrated against a ball organized by the far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), held annually in Vienna. Following attacks on property and the police during the protest, one person was arrested, and in June 2014 his trial began.The left-wing film collective Filmpiraten published a couple of short videos relating to the person involved. Shortly afterwards, the FPÖ used excerpts from the two Filmpiraten videos as part of a report published on its YouTube channel. The FPÖ video was released under the standard YouTube license, which claims full copyright in the material. However, both the Filmpiraten videos used a Creative Commons license -- specifically, the BY-NC-SA license. Under its terms, others may use the material free of charge, but are required to release the resulting work under the same CC license.The FPÖ video did not respect that condition, so Filmpiraten's lawyers sent a letter asking for its material not to be used. The FPÖ responded by taking Filmpiraten to court, demanding €35,000 (about $40,000) in compensation for what it said were false accusations about its use of copyrighted material. The court case finally began in February 2015, and in July 2016 the judge ruled in favor of Filmpiraten, effectively upholding the Creative Commons license.One worrying aspect of the case is that Filmpiraten struggled to find the resources to conduct such an expensive and time-consuming legal battle. As a spokesperson for the organization told the Austrian site futurezone, that may be why the FPÖ has adopted this approach -- and why it is now appealing to a higher court in an attempt to get the judge's ruling overturned.Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Touched on briefly during our rundown of police unions demanding better pay for better behavior and accountability was the San Antonio Police Officers Association's (SAPOA) demand that the city should be willing to raise wages if it really expected its officers to perform their duties without veering into abuse or misconduct.Part of what's keeping a deal from being struck between the city and the union is the amount of money on the table. This gives the union the appearance of holding the city's safety hostage until its demands are met. That may not be an entirely fair characterization (there's some "hostage-taking" on the other side as well), but there's something far more worrying in the proposed contract that's keeping this from being resolved.The San Antonio police union wants changes to disciplinary procedures that would effectively whitewash past misconduct by officers. Michael Barajas, writing for the San Antonio Current, takes a close look at the controversial clause, and how it's likely to allow bad officers to not only stay employed longer, but possibly rise through the ranks as well.

As we recently announced, on Monday, we'll be hosting the first in a new series of events we're running, called the Techdirt Greenhouse Salons. The first one is on The Battle For Copyright Reform, and will take place Monday evening in San Francisco (thanks to Automattic and Pinterest for sponsoring/hosting the event). You can request an invite at that page. The event will involve some very brief presentations upfront, but the main event will be the specific discussions among attendees about the upcoming fights for copyright reform (both good and bad) around the globe. If you would like to attend, please fill out the form requesting an invite (though, don't do what one person did and just use the form to rant about how evil we all were for destroying the music industry, without leaving a name or any other such info). It'll be a fun and enlightening event, so let us know if you'd like to join. We've also received tons of feedback from folks interested in future such Greenhouse Salons, so stay tuned...

While Hillary Clinton's tech policy proposals seem to be the standard mix of empty promises and vague nothingness designed to not pin her down on anything really serious, Donald Trump's tech policy proposals have basically been incomprehensible nonsense.

When the FCC crafted its new net neutrality rules, we noted that the agency's failure to ban "zero rating" (exempting your own company's content from usage caps) was going to be a problem. And lo and behold, with the FCC AWOL on the subject, companies are starting to take full advantage. Verizon and Comcast now exempt their own streaming video services from usage caps without penalty, while companies like T-Mobile and Sprint have launched new confusing and punitive data plans that throttle games, music and video content -- unless users pay a premium.

Brush up your coding skills and get ahead of the curve with the Complete iOS 9 and 10 Development Bundle. For $35, you'll learn Apple's programming language, Swift, from scratch and start building iOS apps like a pro. You will also learn about how the new iOS 10 apps can extend to Messages, Siri, Phone, and Maps to provide more engaging functionality than ever, so you can be ahead of the curve in learning the upcoming update.

We've discussed a few times in the past how Google's seemingly arbitrary policies are a potential problem for various media companies that often rely on the company. We've detailed ridiculous warnings we've received because our news stories covered topics that Google deemed offensive, because apparently no one at Google can distinguish between reporting on something offensive and just posting something offensive. We've also discussed how Google tends to present itself as a great white monolith to those who run up against its seemingly arbitrary policy decisions where there's basically no recourse and no human to speak to.

The government doesn't care much for a level judicial playing field. That whole checks and balances thing? It's just getting in the way of speedy prosecutions. Federal and state prosecutors have engaged in routine Brady violations -- the withholding of exculpatory evidence from defendants.Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is taking this to a whole new level. It's refusing to turn over FOIAed records to a defendant's lawyer expressly because they could be used to mount a defense against the government's charges. Of course, ICE doesn't say so in those exact words, but the words it does use leave that distinct impression.The ACLU of Colorado notes that defense lawyers in immigration cases are even more hamstrung than most when going up against the government.

While hacking and "cybersecurity" threats have long been used to justify awful government policy, the entire concept is clearly about to be turbocharged. With the rise in hacking attacks on the DNC, many were quick to call for renewed cyberattacks on Russia despite the fact that hard, transparent proof of Russian nation state involvement remains hard to come by (the idea being unsound either way). But in a speech last week, Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton took things one step further by suggesting that she'll make it an administration goal to respond to cyberattacks with real-world military force:

Last spring, New Mexico's governor signed a bill into law that would prevent law enforcement from seizing people's assets without securing a criminal conviction. This was likely prompted by the New York Times' publication of footage from Las Cruces asset forfeiture seminar in which the speaker basically said asset forfeiture is used by law enforcement to "shop" for things they want.Several months later, the city of Albuquerque was sued by state legislators because its police refused to stop seizing assets -- mainly vehicles -- without obtaining convictions. The city claimed the new law only applied to state police, and anyway, it was only performing a valuable community service by taking cars away from members of the community.

We've spent some time and energy in these pages poking at Bethesda and its parent company, Zenimax, over each's overtly ridiculous stances on protecting what it views as its intellectual property in the past. But even a bad actor in the IP arena can get things right in other ways and Bethesda has shown itself to be fairly good in the past in the area of connecting with its fans. This is one of the more underappreciated aspects involved in digital business models, in which the digital realms where we operate open up content producers to direct interaction with their customers. Done right, this will ingratiate a business with its community, fostering a loyalty it might otherwise not have. Done really right, it gets a company all of that plus a PR bonus that can only come from these organic interactions.Which brings us back to Bethesda, makers of Fallout 4. The company recently heard from one fan showing his appreciation for its work on the game and the game's help in getting him through some fairly rough times.

If you're a gadget watcher or an Apple fanatic, then you already know that tomorrow is Apple's big fall event when it announces new hardware products. Unlike basically every other tech blog in the world, we tend not to cover the announcements (or all of the rumors leading up to those announcements). Every so often something interesting will come out of them and we'll write up that, but for the most part, we recognize that other sites are going to cover the basic beats and we're not the kind of publication that wants to spend our time writing up promotional copy for tech companies. But, sometimes there's some overlap in our usual coverage and these kinds of events. Brian Conroy, a trademark lawyer in Ireland who has a fun blog of trademark-related issues realized that Apple may have leaked some details via its trademark applications.

Hopefully you will recall that Take Two Interactive had been facing down two lawsuits brought by Lindsay Lohan and Karen Gravano over character depictions in the company's opus, Grand Theft Auto V. Both filed suit over publicity rights and likeness concerns in New York. Lohan claimed that a character in the game that evaded paparazzi after having sex in public and made some oblique references to similar-sounding movies that Lohan had acted in, along with a female character on the game's cover art, were both ripping off her personage. Gravano, meanwhile, claimed that a different character, one which made references to starring in a reality show about mobster wives and evading mob retribution, was ripping off her personage. While both suits failed to address the fictional differences in the characters, which were both composite characters parodying their celebrity archetypes, Take Two attempted to defend itself with those facts and tried to get the case dismissed. Strangely, the court at the time allowed the case to move forward......and now the appellate division has reversed course and tossed both cases out.

Not all Kickstarter campaigns are created equal. Even the mostly-good ones that eventually satisfy their backers are often plagued with delays and poor communication. But once in a while, there's a campaign that runs smoothly, communicates openly, and delivers a great product on time as promised — and Minaal is one company that pulled off such a campaign to launch its line of travel bags. This week, we're joined by co-founder Jimmy Hayes to discuss how they pulled it off and what their experience can teach us about other campaigns and the broader crowdfunding ecosystem.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.

The latest leak about the NSA's overseas spying transgressions took the unlikely form of a little-noticed YouTube video -- one that covered mostly-wonkish subject matter. The details of the NSA's malware attack on the French "White House" were revealed during an interview with Bernard Barbier, the former head of the French Intelligence Service, by a local engineering school. The video, of course, has since been removed, but not before French paper Le Monde picked up on the content of the interview.Matt Suiche parses it all out -- an inadvertent confirmation of a Snowden document leaked in 2013 that contained an itinerary item about a discussion between French and US intelligence officials concerning a (at that time "alleged") "May 2012 cyber attack on the French Presidential network."Sure, spies are known for spying on foreign governments. But allied countries were supposed to keep this sort of non-brotherly spying to a minimum. The former head of the French Intelligence Agency described the meeting this way:

The FBI generally likes to keep as much information as possible out of the public's hands, so its decision to release its files on the Hillary Clinton email investigation are probably best viewed as a one-off, rather than the leading edge of a new era of transparency.The agency certainly couldn't pretend there isn't significant public interest in the content of the investigative files. The outcome of a presidential election could very well hinge on the voting public's interpretation of the documents' content.And the FBI certainly has an interest in clearing the air of any hints of politically-motivated favoritism. That the investigation occurred at all does some damage to Clinton's credibility, while the decision not to pursue prosecution doesn't do much for the FBI's.A closer look at the investigative documents simply gives more credence to the FBI's assertion that it found evidence of stupidity, but not criminal intent. At worst, the private email server allowed Hillary Clinton to better avoid FOIA requests (an effect now nullified by the State Department's ongoing release of nearly every email it's been able to recover) -- something that's a civil violation, rather than a criminal one. From the Washington Post's Matt Zapotosky and Rosalind Helderman's dive into the FBI's docs: [PDF vol. 1, PDF vol. 2]

Stop re-upping on low quality charging cables that tear after just a few months. The $17 Zus Kevlar MicroUSB Cable is built with the same aramid fiber technology used in aerospace and military applications so normal wear and tear just won't affect them. They are tangle free and come with a velcro tie to keep them neat and tidy. The Deals store is also offering aMFi Certified Lightning Cable and a USB-C cable.

We've noted for years that usage caps on fixed line broadband connections are little more than a major, unnecessary price hike on uncompetitive markets. But while caps certainly are little more than a cash grab, there's another less talked about problem at play: nobody is making sure ISP usage meters are accurate. That has resulted in a number of instances where an ISP will bill users for consumption when the power is off, and even some instances where ISPs confused MAC addresses and billed the wrong customer for additional monthly consumption.

Remember how lots of people (including plenty of you right here) were saying that it was no big deal that Gawker was shut down due to a campaign financed by Peter Thiel? Remember how people said it wouldn't mean any harm for anyone else as long as they "don't publish someone's sex tape?" Remember how we pointed out that Thiel's funding campaign included plenty of other lawsuits that had nothing to do with sex tapes? Yeah, about that. It appears that Thiel's favorite lawyer, Charles Harder, who he apparently helped set up in his own law firm with ongoing support for a variety of cases to take down Gawker, has now become the go-to lawyer for another famous hater of media: Donald Trump and his friends. Trump, of course, has repeatedly publicly stated that he has sued a reporter just to cost him money. So, Trump and Harder seem perfect together.

Lots of people have been talking the past few days about TorrentFreak's discovery of the fact that Warner Bros., via its hired DMCA agent Vobile, has been issuing DMCA takedowns on its own website. Specifically, in recent notices to Google from Vobile, on behalf of Warner Bros., the infringing domains include WB's own official websites for movies like "Batman, the Dark Knight" and "The Matrix."It's easy to look at this and laugh. And the story's been getting lots of attention thanks to places like the BBC picking up on it as well. And thus, jokes like this one are an easy target:

Colorado legislators legalized recreational marijuana use and now law enforcement agencies in bordering states are camping out on highways hoping for easy busts. All roads in and out of the state are now "drug corridors." This has led to suspicionless stops and seizures by police officers -- predicated on nothing more than a vehicle being on a strip of highway leading to or from a supposed "source" state.Not every bust goes as easily as officers might have hoped. Nebraska deputies tried to make drug conspiracy charges stick to a pair of Minnesotans arrested while on their way to Colorado with more than $60,000 in cash. The conviction didn't stick because it isn't against the law to conspire to perform an act that is legal in another state. It's illegal to buy or sell marijuana in both Minnesota and Nebraska, but not in Colorado, where the two were headed. The charges went away but the $60,000 in cash is likely going to remain in Nebraska law enforcement's possession.Another traffic stop in another Midwestern state has been ruled unconstitutional, partially because Kansas law enforcement officers believed the driver being a resident of marijuana-friendly Colorado was pretty much all the reasonable suspicion they'd need to perform a search.The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals -- in stripping away the immunity granted to two Kansas Highway Patrol officers by the lower court -- points out the many flaws in the officers' reasoning. [PDF link]Peter Vasquez was pulled over because his temporary tag was unreadable. Once the temporary tag had been verified as legitimate, he should have been free to go. Instead, it was merely the start of a fishing expedition by the officers, who hoped to find the Colorado resident in possession of an illegal substance.

This week, almost all of the top comments came in response to the various posts about our Copying Is Not Theft gear. First, it's an anonymous commenter who won the top spot on the insightful side by examining the root of the rage that came in response to the shirt:

Five Years AgoToday, we're just going to focus on one thing that happened this week in 2011, since it bears relation to the discussion raging around our Copying Is Not Theft t-shirt and, specifically, the "threats" we regularly receive that people are going to copy it or other Techdirt content to teach us some kind of lesson. As we've always stated in response, we're totally fine with people copying our material as we consider it all to be public domain — and there are really only two caveats. The first is that we don't approve of copiers claiming to be affiliated with us when they're not, and the second is even more serious: we definitely don't approve of other people trying to exert control over our public domain content by claiming their own copyright on it. And that's exactly what happened this week in 2011 when Gregory Evans of LIGATT Security copied a Techdirt post in one of his "books" that was actually just a compilation of articles. As we said at the time, we (unlike almost everyone else he copied) are fine with our articles being used in a book without permission — but we were not fine with the fact that he also included a prominent copyright notice for all content in the book. Copying is one thing; copyfraud is another.Ten Years AgoThis week in 2006, as the iPod-loving world was still coming to terms with the horrors of the Foxconn factory, the company was busy trying to destroy the lives of the bloggers who exposed conditions there — only to back down when faced with a global storm of terrible publicity. The RIAA, meanwhile, was following the MPAA's lead and trying to fill schools with pro-copyright propaganda "education" (not to mention continuing to insist that it should be allowed to rifle through people's hard drives). And when you can't get the people to agree with you, just fake it — like the recording industry did in Canada with a questionable survey showing that apparently Canadians were desperate to pay bigger copyright levies on blank CDs.Fifteen Years AgoThis week in 2001, music companies were still struggling to get consumers interested in buying downloadable music, and the real insight and projections came from looking at how college kids were reacting to new digital entertainment offerings. But at least the industry got happy news when the Copyright Office declared that there's pretty much nothing wrong with the DMCA (uh, sure...). Ebooks were also failing to take off, and at least part of the cause was onerous anti-piracy techniques that rendered them less appealing. Of course, while the copyright industries were still struggling with the internet as some sort of new and confusing phenomenon, to the public it was already becoming just another mundane part of life.One-Hundred And Seventy-One Years AgoThe oldest continually published monthly magazine in the US, and a long-time source for coverage on technology and innovation, is Scientific American — and it was on August 28th, 1845 that it published its very first issue:

Happy long weekend, Techdirters! We've got two big offers on the go — one that, like the summertime, is coming to an end, and one that just got started. As long-time readers know, we have a philosophy here called CwF+RtB: we connect with fans and then try to give them a reason to buy, and we owe a big thanks to all the fans who keep proving that it's a damn good philosophy indeed. We've actually been experimenting with some expansions to our traditional on-site advertising recently, but we've never much liked that world (thus our failure to follow most of the media's lead in getting angry about ad blockers, instead offering the ability to turn off ads on Techdirt if you so choose) and, unsurprisingly, we ran into plenty of problems right away: deceptive and clickbait-ish ads, technical problems that interfered with the site for some people, and the fact that both we and our readers have the well-trained ad-blindness of any internet native. So we quickly shut down those new programs, because we'd much rather focus on direct offers like these that give our readers a chance to support Techdirt and get something good in return.First, I'm sure you've seen our latest line of t-shirts, hoodies and other gear: Copying Is Not Theft. It's the one that's been riling people up way more than we expected on Twitter and our Facebook page. Their ire over the message is matched only by the desire to buy the gear that said ire seems to inspire in others — which is a fancy way of saying that a lot of you snatched up a t-shirt after realizing just how controversial it was.But, if you haven't gotten yours yet, time is running out! The Copying Is Not Theft campaign closes on Monday at 8:00pm PDT, and we won't be taking reservations after it ends (the shirt will come back some day, but we aren't setting a date and it might be a while). So hurry up and place your order before it's too late!Next, we've got a brand new deal for Techdirt readers. I probably don't need to tell anyone reading this how important a VPN is if you're concerned about your privacy and security online, and that's why we've teamed up with Private Internet Access (one of the most popular and highest rated VPN providers out there) to offer a one-year subscription to the Techdirt Crystal Ball for free when you sign up for a VPN account.The Techdirt Crystal Ball is a special members-only feature that lets you read, share and comment on upcoming Techdirt posts before they go public on the front page of the blog, giving you a glimpse into our internal editorial queue and letting you get the jump on the conversation:Normally Crystal Ball access costs $15/year via our Insider Shop, but you can get a full year for free: just use our special affiliate link to sign up with Private Internet Access. We won't auto-renew the Crystal Ball subscription or force you to cancel to avoid being charged — after the year is up, it will expire automatically.Once again, happy long weekend everyone! Thanks for checking out these offers and helping us grow our CwF+RtB philosophy instead of tangling with crappy ad networks. All the profit from these and everything we sell goes to supporting (and expanding!) our ongoing reporting — we couldn't do it without you.

Every so often, we've written about examples of historical "moral panics" -- those moments when "concerned citizens" (often including the press and/or politicians) freaked out about the moral horrors of... some awful "new" thing. You all know the obvious ones: like comic books and Dungeons & Dragons, but we like to highlight the truly oddball ones that people these days don't realize were ever possibly considered a threat to our moral fabric. Things like chess and the waltz. Oh, and of course the printing press. Evil, evil, evil filthy things that will warp the minds of our young people and make them lazy, violent and degenerate.

The Kingdom of Bhutan is probably best known for its splendid location in the Himalayas, and for eschewing measurements of Gross Domestic Product in favor of Gross National Happiness. In the one Techdirt story so far about the nation, we also reported that Bhutan's government seemed to lack a sense of humor when it came to the Internet. Three years later, the online situation threatens to deteriorate further:

Law professor Eric Goldman (who has guest blogged here on occasion) has announced that he'll no longer be blogging at Forbes. There are a few different reasons why -- including some personal/family related ones, but one of the reasons that stands out is that he's unhappy with Forbes' decision to block people using ad blockers:

For quite some time now, we've seen EU regulators talk fairly openly about their desires to harm American internet companies, mostly in a misguided attempt to boost local European companies (and to collect more money). It's why we keep hearing about weird, carefully targeted regulations designed to pump up how much money companies like Google, Apple and others pay.

Prestigious Pets, a Texas pet-sitting company, has done a severe amount of damage to the "prestigious" half of its name over the past several months. After front-loading its inevitable reputational ruin by adding a KlearGearian "non-disparagement clause" to its service contracts, the company doubled-down with a $1 million defamation lawsuit after losing out on its small claims court bid to extract $6,766 from an unhappy customer for "lost work opportunities" and "libelous and slandurous [sic] harm."The unhappy customers, whose Yelp review only stated the pet sitter Prestigious Pets hired had overfed their fish, were forced to defend themselves against a clearly baseless lawsuit. Fortunately, Chris Dachniwsky of law firm Thompson & Knight stepped up to represent the couple on a contingency basis.Even better, Public Citizen's Paul Alan Levy is reporting the court has tossed the lawsuit and found [PDF] the non-disparagement clause Prestigious Pets deployed to its own detriment is unenforceable.

The Intercept has obtained what appears to be another set of leaked documents -- these ones originating from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The first document released (assuming that more are on the way) is a catalog of law enforcement-only tech products from UK firm Cobham, including Stingray-like devices capable of not only locating suspects, but also intercepting their phone calls and messages.

The National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) [yes, there's an association for everything] has just announced its selections to head up a DHS "working group" tackling "election infrastructure cybersecurity." Like any committee formed in response to a hot-button topic, the appointees are better known for their years of tenure in government positions than their technical acumen, as the ACLU's Chris Soghoian points out.

Two decades ago, there were a series of lawsuits against copy shops over whether or not it was fair use for them to be photocopying educational materials for college coursepacks. Unfortunately (and, some of us still think, incorrectly) the courts ruled that this was not fair use. The end result was that the price of coursepacks shot up to astronomical levels (this happened while I was in college, and I saw coursepacks increase in price from $20 - $30 to well over $100, and they've gone up more since then).

Okay, we have some really serious concerns about the absolute mess of a draft copyright reform proposal that was leaked via EU regulators. The whole thing is basically a giant handout to legacy entertainment companies, pushing for things like taxing Google and other aggregators, and generally ignoring what's best for the public.

Some terrestrial TV stations and cable stations are better at internet-ing than others. While Netflix has built an empire upon streaming ad-free shows, for instance, other services like Hulu have gone the route of a tiered structure, with a price point for streaming with ads and one for streaming without ads. One of the interesting things is seeing other traditional broadcast networks watch how these models play out and then go about offering their own. Take CBS, for instance. It's very clear that CBS is enamored with the idea of streaming its content advertising free, but likes Hulu's tiered structure better than that of Netflix.At CBS' site, you can see that it is now offering two tiers of its "All Access" platform. The existing service is offered with "Limited Commercials", while a service that costs $4 more is labeled "Commercial Free." I'd like to focus on the commercial free offering for a moment, because it's a bold step that includes giving viewers a way to stream CBS shows "commercial free", except where there are both commercials and where CBS is choosing to call "commercials" by the term "promotional interruptions" instead.

The NYPD may not have time to update its Muslim surveillance policies or inform its officers of changes to its stop-and-frisk program, but it certainly has time to dig around for policies it can use to keep even more information out of the public's hands.The New York Daily News reports the NYPD has been paging through old laws and has found something that will be useful in further reducing the department's accountability. (h/t Reason)

While the University of Texas is no stranger to being a trademark bully, and colleges in general have become overtly maximalist in intellectual property protectionism, it can still be stunning to see the lengths to which a school will go. The latest trademark dispute concerning UT involves donuts shaped in the 'hook 'em horns' gesture, because apparently the school is now in the pastry business. Recently, the owner of Donut Taco Palace 1, Angel Seng, received a threat letter from the university insisting that she stop making donuts that look like horned-hands.

Last week, we wrote about lawyer Charles Harder -- most well known as the lawyer that Peter Thiel set up with the mission of destroying Gawker -- sending out defamation threat letters on behalf of Donald Trump's wife, Melania Trump. The main threat was to the Daily Mail, for posting a story about a book and magazine article that made some accusations claiming that Melania had worked as an escort via the modeling agency that she worked for. As I noted in the original post, while the story may be false, I didn't see how defamation charges would stick, seeing as the Daily Mail was reporting (accurately) on what the article and book had published, and also noted some inconsistencies and questions about how factual the allegations were. In addition, I still don't see how they could get to the "with actual malice" standard required for defamation of a public figure.

If there ever were decent protections for whistleblowers in Australia, they're gone now. Australia's Attorney General was pushing for harsher whistleblower punishments two years ago, while simultaneously claiming data retention laws -- and expanded permissions for intelligence agencies to pore through retained data -- were simply the way governments were doing business these days.And what a business it is. The Australian government wants to punish whistleblowers but finds they're often difficult to track down. It's just so much easier to find those they leak documents to, like journalists, and work towards getting them to divulge their sources. The "best" part about the new data retention laws is that those seeking whistleblowers to punish won't have to confront journalists directly. In fact, they may never need to speak to them at all.

Sign up for VPN service now and get a free year's subscription to the Crystal Ball »Today we're happy to announce that we've partnered with Private Internet Access to offer a great new deal for Techdirt readers. When you sign up for VPN service, you'll receive a one-year subscription to the Techdirt Crystal Ball: a special members-only feature that grants you early access to read and share upcoming Techdirt posts before they go public on the front page of the blog. This is normally a $15 annual subscription but you'll get a full year for free when you sign up with Private Internet Access. (And no, we won't auto-renew the Crystal Ball or force you to cancel to avoid being charged in the future!)We know our readers care about their privacy and security, and Private Internet Access is one of the best-reviewed and most trusted providers of VPN service — one of the most critical tools for protecting your anonymity online. Sign up using our special affiliate link and you'll receive a coupon code that you can exchange for your free year of Crystal Ball access in our Insider Shop. You'll also receive some First Word/Last Word credits for use in the comment section, plus a Techdirt Insider Badge on your user profile!

The EFF and ACLU are pushing the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to hold full en banc rehearings (with all 11 judges, rather than just three) of two recent CFAA-related cases. The first case, US v. Nosal, is the more (in)famous of the two. In this decision, the court read the language of the CFAA broadly enough to criminalize a mostly-harmless everyday activity participated in by thousands of Americans: password sharing.The court tried to couple this with some "authorization" wording to make it appear as though the court wouldn't entertain frivolous prosecutions using interpretation of the CFAA, but that gives the court (and the DOJ) far more credit than they have earned.The other case -- Facebook v. Power Ventures -- is dangerous in its own way, even if it involves two private companies, rather than the US government's prosecutorial arm. The same appeals court didn't go quite as far as it did in the Nosal decision in terms of criminalizing password sharing, but instead made the district's stance even more confusing by arriving at a seemingly-contradictory conclusion.

Today's Stupid DRM Trick is brought to you by Adobe LiveCycle ES3 and Windows 10.

More and more people are cutting the cable cord and looking to alternative TV and movie viewing methods. SelectTV by FreeCast offers all the perks of both cable and web-based streaming -- while simultaneously dwarfing any other library. You can access over 300,000 TV episodes, 200,000 movies, 50,000 radio stations, and 5,000 live channels all from the same, simple browser interface. A 1-year subscription through the Deals Store is only $19, and there's a 3-year subscription for $49 available as well.

The ACLU is hoping to intervene in Microsoft's legal battle against the government, challenging gag orders attached to warrants and subpoenas issued under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). Microsoft sued the DOJ back in April, arguing for the right to notify customers that their communications and data have been handed over to the government.Microsoft didn't have a problem with the government's gag orders in every case. It's just that the demand for secrecy accompanied more than half of the ~300 orders per month Microsoft receives. And nearly 70% of those gag orders arrived with no fixed end date.The ACLU petitioned the court to intervene in the case on its own behalf, citing its position as a Microsoft customer. The DOJ filed a motion to dismiss Microsoft's lawsuit, hoping the court will find Microsoft has no standing to challenge gag orders on its customers' behalf. The ACLU is trying to prevent this from happening until the DOJ addresses the issues raised by the ACLU's (attempted) intervention. In its opposition [PDF] to the DOJ's motion, the ACLU points out that the government's "no standing" argument pretty much nullifies any sort of due process for Microsoft customers (including the ACLU) who've been targeted by the DOJ's super-secret warrants, relegating them to a Kafka-esque legal purgatory.

Several years ago, we hosted a series of really fun events called the Techdirt Greenhouse, which involved getting a lot of smart people together and actively brainstorming on a variety of topics. We’ve been wanting to bring back the Greenhouse events for a while now, and we’re finally going to do so with a new series of evening "Greenhouse Salons” hosted by our Copia Institute. Today we're announcing the very first of these new Greenhouse Salons, The Battle For Copyright Reform. As you know, there are ongoing efforts to reform copyright around the globe, with a proposal leaked for the EU and one expected shortly in the US.

You'd be hard pressed to find a better example of government-pampered mono/duopoly than AT&T. For years, the ISP has all but bought state laws protecting it from broadband competition. When simply buying awful state laws proves too cumbersome or obvious, it often tries to use poison pills in unrelated legislation (like traffic laws) to hinder competitors. The end result is a laundry list of states like Tennessee that remain broadband backwaters, quite by AT&T design, as the company uses state legislatures as glorified marionnettes, all marching in line to protect the status quo.

Most of the time, you can say pretty much whatever you'd like on Twitter without the company actually bothering to enforce its harassment and online abuse policies. Think it's funny to threaten to rape somebody? Twitter this week informed Medium software engineer Kelly Ellis this was perfectly ok. Want to hurl racist threats like a lobotomized halfwit? Cool! Is flinging anti-semitic insults more your cup of tea? No problem! Over the last year, you'd be hard pressed to find somebody not talking about how inconsistent and arbitrary Twitter's ban hammer is.

Give enough people access to sensitive information and abuse is inevitable. We've covered multiple incidents of law enforcement database misuse by police officers. Some have used their access to track former spouses. Others use it to harvest info on potential partners, supplementing the minimal personal data supplied by internet dating sites.But it's not just law enforcement officers abusing this access. It's also abused by public employees who have been granted access to these databases. Jose Gaspar of Bakersfield.com details the apparent routine misuse of database access by school administrators.

We've occasionally seen instances in the past in which educational institutions are threatened with trademark lawsuits or actually go through them, though those suits usually feature the worst trademark bullies out there (hi, Olympics!). Rarer is seeing some small business owner pestering schools with trademark disputes. Still rarer are cases in which those businesses are actually involved in the business of trying to promote education.Yet that's exactly what we have in the case of Springboards to Education, which has filed nine trademark suits against seven school districts, a non-profit, and a library.