Techdirt

On the list of countries I've always wanted to visit but would be somewhat scared if I did, Russia is probably near the top. While there are certainly more dangerous parts of the world for any variety of reasons, I've found that the thing that gets me in the most trouble is my big mouth -- and the Russian government has made a habit of coming down on any kind of speech it doesn't like with a hand heavier than a Russian bear. This government uses its own laws in perverse ways to accomplish this, notably its laws that make it illegal to offend others on religious grounds, as seen chiefly in its treatment of punk band Pussy Riot.This use of religious protectionism has proceeded to the present. The Russian government recently announced that it was locking up a noted atheist blogger for two months. His crime? Playing Pokemon Go in a church.

The door to modernizing Cuba's communications networks opened slightly wider recently after the FCC removed the country from the agency's banned nation list. That allows fixed and wireless companies alike to begin doing business in Cuba as part of an overall attempt to ease tensions between the States and the island nation. And while Cuba has been justly concerned about opening the door to NSA bosom buddies like AT&T and Verizon, it's still apparently not quite ready to give up some of its own, decidedly ham-fisted attempts to crack down on free speech over telecom networks.

A few weeks ago, we wrote about a really great and detailed look by BuzzFeed's Chris Hamby into "investor state dispute settlement" (ISDS) provisions in international trade agreements -- something we refer to as corporate sovereignty, because it enables companies to effectively force countries away from certain regulations. Hamby's piece was about how rich corporate execs were using corporate sovereignty provisions to get out of criminal prosecutions. That was only part I of his investigation. Part II of the series may have been the most useful, because it detailed how the mere threat of an ISDS case could pressure countries into changing regulations. This is super important, because one of the key talking points from defenders of corporate sovereignty provisions is to point to stats on actual cases. But if the threats are really effective, the stats on cases really is only showing a portion of what ISDS is doing.

As technology ushers more and more things towards the realm of "post-scarcity", an inevitable conversation has arisen around the very roots of capitalism and what this rapid change means for our economic systems at the most fundamental levels. But the answer is far from simple — is capitalism dying? Can it evolve? Is the whole question being framed incorrectly? This week, we discuss the notion of a post-capitalist world, what it might look like, and how close it actually is.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 alleged hackers who social engineered their way into CIA director John Brennan's personal email account have been rounded up by the FBI. The so-called "Crackas With Attitude" collective lost two of its members to the federal court system late last week.

There's been plenty of talking going around this election cycle about the terrible security problems with our current voting technology -- along with some conspiracy-theory level talk of foreign agents looking to "hack" the election. We haven't been very impressed with officials telling us all to calm down and it's difficult to see how FBI director James Comey did himself any favors by basically arguing that the voting system is secure... mainly because of what a complete and utter mess it is. The larger point he's making is somewhat valid, if clunky, in the fact that each state runs their own voting, so it's not like hackers can get into one central system and wreak havoc. The different systems definitely make it harder. But arguing that this is a sign of good security seems kind of ridiculous:

Keep your information protected with a 3-year subscription to Privatoria VPN for $29. It has the normal VPN features and also offers secure chat, email and data transfer. Check out Privatoria's privacy policy, where they promise no logging and no third-party information sharing.

Riley Roberts, speechwriter for former attorney general Eric Holder, has a fascinating examination of James Comey's first four years as the head of the FBI. It details his frequently-antagonistic relationship with, well, nearly everyone, as well as his long history of going head-to-head with high-ranking government officials.Roberts says no FBI director since J. Edgar Hoover has acted with such autonomy. The unprecedented public discussion of the agency's Clinton email investigation is just one such example. While Comey was undoubtedly correct that there was significant public interest in not just the outcome, but the inner workings of the investigation, his decision to hold a press conference and release investigative documents came as a surprise to his closest colleagues.

We've long pointed how how broadband usage caps (especially on fixed-line networks) are arbitrary, punitive and confusing. In addition to being totally unnecessary, broadband caps open the door to anti-competitive behavior (like zero rating a company's own content but not a competitor's). The idea that caps are necessary to manage the network has long been debunked, and even the ISPs themselves have admitted that caps have nothing to do with congestion. Broadband caps are little more than glorified price hikes on captive markets, useful to protect legacy TV revenues from streaming video.

Last week one of the big stories of the week was Facebook blocking people from posting an iconic photo from the Vietnam War because it showed a young girl, naked, running from an attack. After lots of press and lots of public outcry, Facebook relented and claimed that it would be adjusting its policies. And yet... another week, another set of stories of problems on Facebook. It's unclear how widespread this is, but on Monday there were suddenly reports (on Twitter, of course) of Facebook randomly blocking perfectly reasonable links. The first example I saw of this was reports that Facebook was blocking this story from The Intercept about Rep. Barbara Lee's lone vote against the PATRIOT Act (the only member of the House to vote against it) a few days after September 11th. Seems like the kind of story Facebook would appreciate, but:

The ACLU has been hinting at this for the past few months, but with the end of President Obama's term in office coming up and coinciding with the launch of Oliver Stone's feature film about Ed Snowden, the ACLU, along with Amnesty International, are launching an official campaign to ask the President to issue a pardon for Ed Snowden. They'll be hosting a press conference Wednesday morning, where Snowden will show up via video (perhaps using Robot Snowden?) to discuss. Not surprisingly, the ACLU says they've lined up a bunch of "legal scholars, policy experts, human rights leaders, technologists and former government officials," who will all be supporting a pardon for Snowden.

We keep getting back to the whole "nerd harder" aspect of those who don't understand technology insisting that technology can accomplish just about anything, if those darn techies would just put their minds to it. We've seen it a lot in the encryption fight, but it's also been a big part of the copyright fights as well -- with Hollywood in particular repeatedly insisting that if these darn techies are so bright, why can't they just create technology that stops infringement. Of course, it doesn't work that way, but the industry still never seems to get it. A good reminder that technology isn't easy should come from this TorrentFreak story, noting that the "secure" system that Hollywood now uses to send out "screener" copies of movies had some pretty serious vulnerabilities, as found by Chris Vickery.

The twice-hacked Office of Personnel Management has had little to offer but promises of "taking security seriously" and free identity theft protection for the thousands of government employees whose personal information was pried loose by hackers.Twice-hacked, because there was one breach the OPM did discover, and one it didn't. While it spent time walling off the breach it had detected, another went unnoticed, leaking enough info on government employees that the CIA began worrying about the safety of agents located abroad.A new report [PDF] by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (which AP refers to but, oddly, does not feel compelled to LINK to, despite it being a completely PUBLIC document) details where the OPM initially went wrong.

Last chance this year to get Nerd Harder, Takedown, and more Techdirt gear! »Yes, that's right — it's a September holiday sale! We know it takes some time for your orders to arrive from Teespring, so we're leaving a nice big window for those of you who want to gift some Techdirt gear in December. All our past shirts — plus one brand new design — are available from now until October 3rd.This is the last time we're offering any of this gear in 2016, and we won't be taking reservations once these campaigns close! Most of the shirts will come back eventually, but we can't promise when and it might be a year or more. Also, Nerd Harder is now available on hoodies, mugs and stickers for the first time.As for the Vote2016() gear, this is your last chance ever! Order it now and you'll get it just in time for election month!Remember, you've only got three weeks from today to place your orders, and everything will ship with plenty of time for the holidays. As usual, t-shirts are $20, hoodies are $35, mugs are $14 and stickers are only $4 — though not all designs are available on all products! Hurry up and get your gear before it's too late.

More evidence has surfaced that the online reputation management business is shady as all hell. Previously, we've covered the use of fake websites used to generate bogus DMCA takedowns by copy-pasting negative reviews in full and claiming these were the original works of bogus contributors by backdating the posts. We've also covered the even shadier and more legally-dubious tactic of filing bogus lawsuits -- using both fake plaintiffs and fake defendants -- to obtain court orders to delist negative reviews, bypassing the site where they're actually hosted in attempts to force Google, Yahoo, Bing, et al. to make them vanish from search results.Paul Alan Levy of Public Citizen -- thanks to the investigative skills of FIRE employee/Popehat contributor Adam Steinbaugh -- has uncovered another bogus libel lawsuit targeting negative reviews and comments. The standard M.O. is in effect. "Plaintiff" magically locates person behind anonymous review and gets them to sign a retraction. This legal paperwork never makes its way to the site where the review is actually hosted, however. The court order obtained through bogus means is instead served to search engines, resulting in the desired effect: the vanishing of negative content.This follows closely on the heels of a bogus lawsuit in which the person whose name appears as a plaintiff claimed to have no input in the legal proceedings. While the jury (not the courtroom one) is still out on those claims, in this case it's been confirmed that the supposed plaintiff had nothing to do with the lawsuit containing his apparently forged signature.

The woefully out-of-date CFAA -- the product of panicked early-80s legislating in response to underdeveloped hacker fears -- continues to hold back research (both of the security and non-security kind) when not being wielded like the prehistoric weapon it is by the DOJ and multiple entities who prefer bludgeoning the messenger to fixing their broken systems.Because of the ongoing misuse and abuse of a badly-written law (aided and abetted by some terrible court decisions), a group of academic researchers has decided to proactively sue the government over its terrible legislation, rather than wait around to get sued/indicted for attempting to determine if individual websites exhibit bias against certain users.They've enlisted the help of the ACLU, which filed its suit against Attorney General Loretta Lynch back in June. The DOJ has responded with a motion to dismiss [PDF] that claims everything is wrong with the lawsuit, from the issue of standing to multiple failures to state a claim under the First and Fifth Amendments.

Save yourself time and money with a one-year subscription to TextExpander for only $19.98. It allows you to create custom shortcuts that populate any set of text or images you want, to save you the time and effort of typing. Whether it's HTML formatting, a salutation, or even a lengthy email, you'll find minutes and hours freed up. It is available in English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian and Spanish, and there's even a team subscription offered today for an unlimited number of devices. This deal ends September 15, so you need to hurry to take advantage!

Briefly noted in an earlier article about the FBI's investigation into Hillary Clinton's personal email server was the existence of communications that pointed towards FOIA-dodging as a possible factor in her decision to set this up.Emails released earlier had hinted at this. The FBI's investigation documents contained part of an email from Colin Powell warning her that if it became public Clinton was using a personal BlackBerry, any communications on that device could become subject to FOIA requests. Powell also pointed out that he had routed around this during his years at the State Department by "not saying much" and "not using systems that captured the data."So, it's not as though government officials need much help from people like Matt Yglesias in keeping more communications related to government work hidden from the public. They've always had plenty of options and appear to be keenly aware of which systems feed into FOIA-able areas.The full email has now been released (h/t Rebecca Shabad and Steve Ragan) and the contents make it clear Powell had ways of routing around FOIA requirements while heading up the State Department. This appears to be the information Clinton was seeking -- how to avoid having to use the systems the State Department already had or being blocked from using her personal BlackBerry while in office.Clinton had noticed Powell used a personal BlackBerry and wanted to know what restrictions he ran into and whether he was allowed to use it while "on site" during his tenure as Secretary of State. She added that she was trying to "bring along" the State Department, presumably towards the private email server/personal device future Clinton envisioned.Powell's response begins with him pointing out he didn't use a Blackberry for stuff he wanted to keep off the FOIA radar. He used his own computer.

Four and a half years ago, we wrote about our serious concerns about the conviction of Dharun Ravi, a Rutgers student who surreptitiously filmed his roommate engaged in a sexual encounter. The roommate, Tyler Clementi, later killed himself, after finding out that he had been filmed. That part was a big story, and kicked off a variety of discussions, some of which were more reasonable than others. But as we noted back then, what was most troubling about the legal case and conviction of Ravi was that he was really being prosecuted for what Clementi did, rather than what Ravi did.

People celebrating the "demise" of Gawker in being forced into bankruptcy by a questionable lawsuit and ruling from Hulk Hogan, financed by Peter Thiel, keep insisting that it has no real impact on the freedom of the press. And yet... things keep showing that's wrong. Gawker filed for bankruptcy and sold off its assets to media giant Univision, which agreed to close down the flagship Gawker site and redistribute some of the reporters to other sites. But late Friday, Univision management made another decision, and this one is horrific: they agreed to delete six stories on the site (with a seventh one being considered) because those stories were the subject of lawsuits against Gawker.

When we talk password security here at Techdirt, those conversations tend to revolve around stories a bit above and beyond the old "people don't use strong enough passwords" trope. While that certainly is the case, we tend to talk more about how major corporations aren't able to learn their lessons about storing customer passwords in plain text, or about how major media outlets are occasionally dumb enough to ask readers to submit their own passwords in an unsecure fashion.But for the truly silly, we obviously need to travel away from the world of private corporations and directly into the world of politicians, who often times are tasked with legislating on matters of data security and privacy, but who cannot help but show their own ineptness on the matter themselves. Take Owen Smith, for example. Smith is currently attempting to become the head of the UK's Labour Party, with his campaign working the phones as one would expect. And, because this is the age of social media engagement, one of his campaign staffers tweeted out the following photo of the crew hard at work.

The FBI has been having a real tough time recruiting young tech savants to its cause, and this week our first place winner for insightful is an anonymous comment with some clear and simple thoughts on why that is:

Five Years AgoThis week in 2011, copyright was going crazy in Europe. Even though a smart review of the copyright system there suggested that its purpose was to send as much money as possible to US companies, Europe announced plans to extend copyright terms retroactively and wasted no time making them official. Meanwhile, the leaked State Dept. cables were revealing just how big a role US diplomats play in copyright around the world: guiding the dismantling of online civil rights in Sweden, pressuring Canada to enact draconian copyright law (sometimes even at the behest of Canadian politicians, and acting as Microsoft sales staff in Bosnia.Ten Years AgoThis week in 2006, HP was embroiled in a massive scandal when it was revealed that Patricia Dunn, the chairperson of the board, was spying on other board members and, it soon turned out, members of the media as well, all over some leaked information a few years earlier. Eventually she spoke out publicly, admitting only that it was embarrassing (though really that's just the getting caught part, I suspect). Before that, HP's spokesperson addressed the whole mess by claiming the fraud and identity theft had something to do with "personal integrity".Fifteen Years AgoFive years before that in 2001, HP was in the news for the rosier reason of its purchase of Compaq in a $25-billion deal. Meanwhile, there was lots of speculation over who might buy Yahoo! (and as we recently found out, that speculation would have to wait another fifteen years to be resolved), and some back-and-forth on the question of whether Apple should buy Palm, or try to make its own way into the handheld market (and I think we all know how that worked out).Also this week in 2001: the Justice Department backed down from seeking a breakup of Microsoft, a critical ruling found eBay not liable for pirated goods sold on the site, and despite the death of Napster more people were trading music online than ever before.Fifty Years AgoI'm sure I'm not the first to tell you that this week was the 50th anniversary of Star Trek, one of the greatest television franchises of all time. But as a Canadian I might be the first to tell you/brag about one lesser-known fact: though September 8th is when the first episode first aired on NBC, up here north of the border we actually got it before you — the very first airing of The Man Trap was two days earlier on CTV.

Back in May we noted that the ridiculous and terrible anti-encryption bill from Senators Richard Burr and Dianne Feinstein was dead in the water. The bill had all sorts of problems with incredibly broad and vague requirements, but the quick summary was that tech companies would have to figure out a way to backdoor all encryption, because if they received a warrant, they'd be required to decrypt any communication.

Lies, damned lies, and the DOJ's FOIA fulfillment rate.

For years, we've pointed out the ridiculousness of "the view from nowhere" reporting (a phrase coined by journalism professor Jay Rosen). This is the ridiculous belief that being an "objective" journalist means never challenging what someone says to you, but rather just showing "both sides of the story" and not "taking" any side. But, that's ridiculous. If someone claims that the earth is flat, and you do a story showing the person claiming that, alongside someone else saying it's not, but never point out that the person saying the earth is flat is crazy, then you're not doing your job as a journalist. A journalist should be focusing on getting to the truth, and that means calling bullshit when warranted.

Last month, we wrote about a blog post by Public Knowledge questioning why the Copyright Office kept acting like a lobbying firm for Hollywood, often stepping into issues where it has no business and almost always pushing the Hollywood viewpoint. It turns out that was just a sneak peak of a much larger report that PK has now released on The Consequences of Regulatory Capture at the Copyright Office. The full 50-page report is worth a thorough read.

Just a few months ago, we wrote up a decently long post explaining why the upcoming "transition" of a piece of internet governance away from the US government was both a good thing and not a big deal. You can read those two posts on it, but the really short version is twofold: (1) the Commerce Department's "control" over ICANN's IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) was always pretty much non-existent in the first place; and (2) even having that little connection to the US government, though, only provided tremendous fodder for foreign governments (mainly: Russia & China) to push to take control of the internet themselves. That's what that whole disastrous UN/ITU/WCIT mess was a few years back. Relinquishing the (non-existent) control, with clear parameters that internet governance wouldn't then be allowed to jump into the ITU's lap, helps on basically every point. It takes away a key reason that other countries have used to claim they need more control, and it makes it clear that internet governance needs to remain out of any particular government's control.

For years, we've pointed to examples of seemingly ridiculous and/or arbitrary examples of Facebook's content moderation team blocking or banning perfectly reasonable content as offensive, often in a manner where it apparently can't distinguish between nudity that is art or newsworthy, from that which is just titillating.

It feels like every day now you hear news of another major hacking attack. The fact is, however, that most attacks occur without the user even knowing. The $49 Ethical Hacking, Cyber Security and Forensics Bundle can help you protect your systems from attack. You will learn the mechanisms of spam, phishing, spear-phishing, malware, and social engineering. And you will learn how to structure preventative measures through penetration testing and network vulnerability assessments.

So Karl has already pointed out the ridiculousness of Comcast complaining about the new FCC set top box proposal -- a proposal that is basically identical to the one that Comcast itself had proposed in response to the FCC's original, more comprehensive set top box proposal. And a bunch of other organizations have rushed out statements slamming the FCC proposal as well, despite their previous support for an "app-based" solution.

We've noted how the FCC's plan to bring competition to the cable box fell apart over the last few months, thanks to a massive disinformation effort by the cable industry involving a flood of hugely misleading editorials and some help from the US Copyright Office. In short the cable industry used a sound wall of hired voices to claim that cable box competition would hurt consumer privacy, violate copyright, result in a huge spike in piracy, and was even racist. Despite these claims being nonsense, the unprecedented PR campaign managed to sway several FCC Commissioners that had originally voted yes on the proposal.

This story is crazy. Late yesterday it was revealed that banking giant Wells Fargo had to fire 5,300 employees over a massive scam in which those employees created over 2 million fake accounts to stuff with fees in order to meet their quarterly numbers. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau also fined the company $185 million ($100 million to the CFPB, $35 million to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and another $50 million to Los Angeles). Oh and it needs to pay back around $5 million to the customers it screwed over. The CFPB provides some crazy details:

Last year, we did an episode of the Techdirt podcast discussing whether or not Airbnb was good or bad for cities, and afterwards I heard from a few people insisting that we were too quick to dismiss the concerns of the anti-Airbnb crowd. It seemed to us that the problem, if there was one, was in the overall housing stock of cities, rather than Airbnb having a legitimate impact. Yes, certainly there are some people who just use some homes/apartments/condos for doing short-term rentals, but it was difficult to see how (even at Airbnb's scale) it was enough to significantly impact housing prices.

In the world of video games, it's always useful to remember one thing: Nintendo hates you. More specifically, Nintendo hates its fans that go about expressing their fandom in ways that Nintendo does not specifically approve of. And Nintendo doesn't approve of much it seems, whether its fan-remakes of games made 25 years previously, fan videos of fan-created Mario Bros. levels, or fan-made movies featuring Nintendo game characters. Nintendo is not on board when it comes to its customers' desire to be creative and express their love for the games the company makes or the characters within them.That stance continues to present, with Nintendo shutting down all kinds of fan-made creations. Those creators typically walk away from their projects in defeat. But when Nintendo decided to send a DMCA complaint to the creators of No Mario's Sky, those creators didn't just walk away. The game itself came out of a coding competition.

A couple of years ago, we wrote about Ruichuan IPR Funds, which seemed to be a rather odd kind of patent troll -- one that was essentially backed by the Chinese government. Since then, Ruichuan has dropped off the radar in the West, but there have been some important changes in its home country, as reported on the IAM blog:

We're back again with another in our weekly reading list posts of books we think our community will find interesting and thought provoking. Once again, buying the book via the Amazon links in this story also helps support Techdirt.

Last year, we talked about an important copyright case in the EU regarding whether or not linking to infringing material was, in itself, infringing. The case involved a blogger in the Netherlands, Geen Stijl News ("GS Media") linking to some pre-publication Playboy photos. There had been an earlier case, the Svensson case where the European Court of Justice got things right with regards to whether or not hyperlinks could be infringing, but there were some questions left open in that ruling. The court in the Svensson case found that linking to authorized content wasn't infringing. But what about unauthorized content?

The FBI is suffering from an image problem. Its boss has spent a great deal of time arguing against protecting phone owners from thieves and malicious hackers. Its anti-terrorism program seems to be focused on pushing vulnerable people into doing things they'd never do on their own. And it has, along with the NSA, seen whatever street cred it might have had stripped away by leaked documents, litigation, and the realization that all Americans and their rights are subject to the agency's chants of "national security."In order for an agency to keep up with the hacking Joneses, it needs periodic injections of new blood. The problem is, the only decently-skilled hackers the FBI can apparently press into service are those it's arrested. It's having a difficult time attracting new hires that honestly want to use their skills in the ways the FBI would like to deploy them.So, the FBI is trying to alter its stance on hiring, as well as the public's perception of the agency. And, of course, it's failing to do so because it's allowing Jim "Nerd Harder" Comey to act as spokesperson for the FBI's youth movement. After being informed by his daughter that the FBI = "The Man," Comey is using this dad anecdote to lead into a series of dad jokes that seem better suited for attracting people like him, rather than the people his agency actually needs.

Grab the $49 1-year all access pass to Codeplace and start learning Ruby on Rails by building real world applications -- from marketplaces to social networks. Codeplace's format combines contextualization, step-by-step navigation, an interactive dictionary, source code, progress tracking and much more so you can learn Ruby on Rails at your own pace.

If you've followed the telecom sector for any amount of time, you've probably noticed that the merger conditions affixed to its rotating crop of mega-mergers are usually hot garbage. Frequently the ankle-height goals are proposed by the companies themselves, and are usually something the companies planned on doing anyway. Telecom companies also know full well that regulators historically can't be bothered to check their math on such promises, letting them essentially trot out a rotating crop of feel good, but totally hollow "obligations" before they get to work laying off redundant employees and raising rates.

You don't often see a journalist argue for more government secrecy. In fact, you never see this. This makes Matt Yglesias' piece for Vox more than an oddity. His argument for a broad FOIA exemption covering the single most-used form of government communications appears to be motivated by two things:

Back in February, the FCC approved a new plan to bring some much-needed competition to the old cable box, resulting in better, cheaper, and more open hardware. But fearing a loss of control (and $21 billion in annual cable box rental fees) the cable industry launched an unprecedented lobbying campaign featuring an endless barrage of editorials attacking the plan for encouraging piracy and even being racist. The cable industry even managed to get the Copyright Office to fight on its behalf, spreading false claims that the plan would "harm copyright" despite having really nothing to do with the subject.

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.