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by Karl Bode on (#19J3Y)
Thanks to the lack of broadband competition, the ISP push to impose unnecessary and arbitrary usage caps shows no sign of slowing down. Comcast continues to expand its "trial" of usage caps and overage fees, while AT&T has followed suit. And both companies have now started adding a new wrinkle to the mix, charging consumers $30 to $35 more per month if they want to avoid usage caps entirely. That's right, despite broadband getting cheaper than ever to provide, ISPs are now charging you a massive monthly premium if you want the same unlimited broadband service you enjoyed yesterday.
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Techdirt
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| Updated | 2025-11-22 01:00 |
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by Tim Cushing on (#19HD5)
Rules are rules, except when they aren't. UK law enforcement's biometric database has strict rules governing the retention of data not linked to suspects facing charges. The system automatically deletes the data when a file is flagged as closed, which happens automatically when a person is released without bail. At this point, "problems" develop, as The Register's Alexander J. Martin explains.
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by Timothy Geigner on (#19GR9)
Everyone should know by now that language is ever evolving. New, cultural, or colloquial words get added to the dictionary. In addition, existing words attain new definitions, typically contextual definitions. Like the word "diamond", for instance, which has a different definition when spoken in the context of baseball. In baseball lingo, the diamond is in the filed, or infield, and the term is as common as "bat", or "ball", or "single." And, yet, two makers of baseball equipment are now in a trademark legal spat over the word "diamond."
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by Michael Ho on (#19FXK)
Algorithms have already quietly crept into nearly every part of our lives, helping us to search the internet and connect with friends and to find matching personalities for dates. Soon, we'll have cars that drive us -- and some old Yakov Smirnoff jokes won't make any sense. But how will people adapt to a 'robot economy' where everything is done by robots -- and we can't even play games without knowing that the computers are just letting us win?
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by Mike Masnick on (#19FQH)
A few months back we noted that various German publishers, including publishing giant Axel Springer kept suing adblockers, claiming they were illegal... and they kept losing. AdBlock Plus notes that German publishers are now 0 for 5 as yet another legal challenge to ad blocking has been rejected:
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by Tim Cushing on (#19FGJ)
More good news on the secure communications front: WhatsApp has finally implemented full end-to-end encryption -- for everyone. Late in 2014, WhatsApp began rolling out its end-to-end encryption, but it was limited to one-to-one communications and did not cover messages containing media. Now, it's everything, including group messages.
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by Leigh Beadon on (#19F85)
Anyone even remotely interested in free culture, the internet and copyright surely knows the name Aaron Swartz — but only some truly understand what made him tick, and why he was considered so special and important in that world. This week and next, we're joined by Justin Peters, author of The Idealist, a new book that takes a close look at Aaron himself as well as the internet culture that gave rise to his attitudes and activism, which is the focus of this first half of the discussion. 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.
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by Timothy Geigner on (#19F4N)
The political season lingers upon us, for all the world appearing to be less democracy in action and more likely some kind of test initiated by aliens to see exactly how much mind-numbing stupidity a populace can handle. In any case, for some reason presidential politics brings out the touchiest behavior amongst us. For instance, take a quick look at this brilliantly, if unintentionally, hilarious "trailer" a Donald Trump Supporter put together.
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by Tim Cushing on (#19EW5)
As the DMCA heads towards possible reform, critics on both sides have been airing their complaints with the current system. For far too many people, though, the problem is apparently Google, rather than the law or the DMCA process itself. Rights holder groups have been especially vocal about Google's supposed participation in copyright infringement, despite the fact it processes tens of millions of DMCA takedown notices every day.
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by Daily Deal on (#19EW6)
Photography fans know that cameras have come a long way in a few short years. However, you still need to zoom and choose what to focus on for that perfect shot. The new light field cameras take away that need to choose your focus and perspective. The Lytro Illum is the pro-grade, DSLR-like version of their light field camera. It has an 8x optical zoom lens, touchscreen LCD display, an ISO range of 80-3200, WiFi and many more features. It's available in the deals store for $369.99 and comes with a rechargeable battery and quick chargers, USB cables, a lens hood and other accessories.
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by Karl Bode on (#19EP7)
Google isn't making any friends on the news that the company is effectively bricking working smart home hardware for a large number of users. About seventeen months ago Google acquired Revolv, rolling the smart-home vendor's products in with its also-acquired Nest product line. Revolv hardware effectively lets users control any number of smart-home technologies around the home, ranging from home thermostats and garage door openers, to outdoor lights and security and motion detection systems. But according to an updated Revolv FAQ, all of these systems will no longer work as of May 15, 2016.
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by Tim Cushing on (#19EEF)
In the Seventh Circuit -- where there's currently no Appeals Court precedent on cell site location info (CSLI) -- federal judge Pamela Pepper has decided only about half of what other courts have said about this info's expectation of privacy applies. That would be the half that finds the Third Party Doctrine covers cell phones' constant connections to cell towers. (via FourthAmendment.com)
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by Karl Bode on (#19DXT)
Last year, AT&T launched the latest sexy trend in broadband -- charging users significantly more money if they want to opt out of their ISP's snoopvertising. It basically works like this: users ordering AT&T's U-Verse broadband service can get the service for, say, $70 a month. But if you want to opt out of AT&T's Internet Preferences snoopvertising program (which uses deep packet inspection to study your movement around the Internet down to the second) you'll pay at least $30 more, per month. With its decision, AT&T effectively made user privacy a premium service.
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by Tim Cushing on (#19D9M)
"Naked" is synonymous with "vulnerable." And yet, plenty of naked people continue to be shot and killed by police officers, despite having nowhere to hide weapons and nothing standing between them and the bullets headed their way.
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by Glyn Moody on (#19CN9)
As Techdirt has reported, over the last few years there has been a general swing away from allowing patents on genes. The highest courts in both the US and Australia threw them out in cases involving Myriad Genetics and its attempts to patent genes affecting breast cancer susceptibility. Another country where the status of gene patents has been called into question is Canada. In November 2014, the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) brought a case over five gene patents held by Transgenomic connected with the Long QT syndrome, an inherited heart rhythm disorder that can be fatal. CHEO took legal action because it wanted to be able to carry out genetic tests for the syndrome without needing to pay for patent licenses. Last week, CHEO announced that it had come to an agreement with Transgenomic:
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by Michael Ho on (#19BW1)
Everything in moderation... including exercise. Exercise is undoubtedly good for you if you compare it to a sedentary lifestyle, but running marathons every day isn't going to do you any favors. But where is the optimal sweet spot for exercise? It's not the same for everyone, but it looks like most Americans aren't doing enough. Fortunately, the right amount probably isn't as much as you'd think.
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by Timothy Geigner on (#19BPW)
Okay, this really needs to stop happening. There has been a recent wave of those in some way involved in the video gaming business applying for trademarks on insanely common gaming terms and phrases. We saw this in recent examples, such as Sony's brazen attempt to trademark "let's play," a term for wildly popular online videos showing games in action. Tangentially, the Fine Brothers' attempt to transform "react videos" into a licensing revenue stream was met with heavy criticism, warranted or not. And now we have Bandai Namco trying to trademark the term "finishing move" in Japanese.
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by Karl Bode on (#19BF6)
Much like encryption, Tor and the dark net are frequently demonized. One, because they're simply poorly understood by the vast majority of the public. And two, because like any tools, they can be used for good, evil, or old-fashioned chaos. That this isn't the tool's fault is -- for some annoying reason -- a very difficult idea for some people's brain matter to digest.
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by Glyn Moody on (#19B9R)
Important information about recent terrorist attacks in Europe continues to emerge. Here's the latest news from Brussels, as reported by the Guardian:
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by Glyn Moody on (#19B3N)
As you may have noticed on Twitter and across social media, a big leak of documents from Mossack Fonseca, a global law firm based in Panama, took place over the weekend. Actually, to call the Panama Papers leak "big" is something of an understatement:
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by Tim Cushing on (#19AVP)
An interesting case has been brought to our attention by Eric Goldman. What happens when someone takes it upon themselves to play IP Policeman for a large corporation? The plaintiff in this case, David Heller, uncovered piracy of Adobe products in Florida (referred to in the opinion as the baseball-esque "Florida Pirates"). He brought this information to Adobe's attention. Adobe was pleased. So was Heller… at least for a little while.
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by Daily Deal on (#19AT0)
It's time for another great VPN deal. If you're not using a VPN and don't know why you'd want to, check out this post from 2013. Basically, if you want to be anonymous on the internet, you should use a VPN service. Get a 2-year subscription for Private Internet Access VPN service for just $59.95 and start browsing anonymously. Private Internet Access has some good reviews and has publicly answered TorrentFreak's serious questions about its privacy policies and logging practices.
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by Karl Bode on (#19AND)
So Facebook's Oculus technically "launched" the Rift VR headset on March 28, and while the press generally seem to like the gear, the launch itself hasn't been going particularly well. Most users that pre-ordered still haven't received not only their headset -- but any kind of hard shipping date from the company. Initially, all users had to go on were some anonymous posts at Reddit implying that Facebook lawyers wouldn't let Oculus communicate a reason for the delays. Over the weekend however users received an e-mail informing them that because of an "unexpected component shortage" shipments have been delayed by a few weeks. To soothe the angry hordes, Oculus has decided to offer free shipping on all pre-orders.
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by Tim Cushing on (#19ACP)
The FBI will not be talking about the Network Investigative Technique (NIT) it used to obtain information about anonymous visitors to the child porn site it seized and ran for two weeks while the NIT did its work. A recently-filed declaration (uploaded by USA Today's Brad Heath and pointed out by the ACLU's Chris Soghoian) by the FBI tells the court the defense will learn nothing from being provided details on the NIT's inner workings, especially since the agency isn't willing to turn these details over to Jay Michaud's lawyers.
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by Karl Bode on (#199Y7)
Last week the FCC announced that it would be imposing some relatively new basic privacy protections on broadband. While the full rules will be hashed out after extensive public and company input (meaning if anything they'll get weaker), FCC boss Tom Wheeler's proposal (pdf) is fairly basic: ISPs should alert customers when their data is stolen, ISPs should be totally transparent about what they're collecting, and ISPs should provide users with working opt-out tools for any data collection service the ISP employs. None of these requirements are particularly onerous, and most ISPs will find that they're already adhering to them.
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by Tim Cushing on (#199BM)
Massive databases full of personal information are in the hands of law enforcement. There are many legitimate uses for these databases, but like anything containing sensitive information, the temptation to abuse access privileges is omnipresent. This is highly problematic when the violator is a law enforcement officer. Not only does this violate internal policies and local statutes, but it puts sensitive info in the hands of someone who has plenty of power but little apparent interest in wielding it properly.
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by Leigh Beadon on (#197HV)
This week, we looked at an example of something all-too-rare: a rational response to terrorism, and a way to save more lives. Brent Ashley won first place for insightful with his thoughts on why that's not going to appeal to the powers that be:
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by Leigh Beadon on (#194N9)
Five Years Ago After all the DMCA talk this week, it's interesting to see all the related battles that were happening back in 2011. We saw a court reject the idea that the DMCA requires service providers to proactively block infringement; we debunked the idea that the public domain is a bad thing and showed examples of how just letting people use your content is often a better choice than struggling with licensing. In general it was clear that greater IP enforcement simply doesn't work and copyright doesn't even make sense in cognitive science terms — but that didn't stop broadcasters from trying to block time-shifting options or ISPs from trying to throttle infringement but hurting World Of Warcraft players instead, or Boston College from telling students that a wireless router is a sign of copyright infringement. In the world of revolving doors, former Senator and fresh new lobbyist Chris Dodd was practicing his MPAA talking points, while a judge who was okay with lumping together a bunch of unrelated filesharing lawsuits turned out to be a former RIAA lobbyist, and the EU hired a former IFPI lobbyist to take the lead on copyright regulations. Ten Years Ago The saga continues as we move back to 2006, when Germany was seeking hefty jail sentences for file-sharers, TorrentSpy was trying to stop the MPAA from re-interpreting the Supreme Court in its favor, and experts were already pointing out that copy protection doesn't work and it was clear that nobody liked it (like the new DRM from Accenture that was too confusing for anyone to understand). This was underlined by the Korean music industry successfully selling DRM-free music at a higher price-point. An ISP that had formerly claimed filesharing was a huge burden admitted it wasn't, while YouTube was instituting its (now much more flexible) ten-minute time limit on videos as a scattershot way of reducing piracy and trying to avoid comparisons to Napster by courting official distribution deals. And, given what's happening in America right now, it's fun to look back at our coverage of a silly Donald Trump business idea and remember how inconceivable today's circus once seemed. Fifteen Years Ago In 2001, copy-protected CDs were just getting ready to enter the US (and the problems were already becoming apparent). Despite all the doom and gloom, digital entertainment providers were doing just fine, though the same couldn't yet be said about mobile content: people just didn't seem to care despite all the hype, and the revenue had yet to materialize. Some were pointing out that internet companies still need to be innovative, though perhaps examples like MLB charging money for its online baseball audio broadcasts wasn't the best approach. This was also the week that Google slightly surprised everyone by naming Eric Schmidt as chairman. Eighty-Six Years Ago Considering how awful the MPAA is these days, it's easy to forget that the group's current role was originally intended to be a solution to a different problem: the incredibly restrictive and censorious Motion Picture Production Code that clamped down on the free expression of American filmmakers. It was on March 31st, 1930 that the industry's MPAA-prototype first adopted the code (though it wouldn't be enforced strongly for four more years).
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by Leigh Beadon on (#19482)
This week, we've got one standout project that seems worth highlighting here at Techdirt because of its commitment to things we all care about: cutting-edge media technology, the planet we all live on, and the public domain. Catalog.Earth is a project to use the first to capture the second and dedicate it to the third. The project emerges from the simple fact that bunch of landscapes on earth are disappearing forever (and the fact that plenty already have). While many are fighting to stop or at least slow down that loss, the folks behind Catalog.Earth are filling in another gap: making sure that, no matter the outcome, the memory of these places won't be completely lost. To that end, they want to use the best technology for 3D video and audio to capture immersive footage and sound from far-flung, highly threatened landscapes. And, most importantly, they want to put all that material in the public domain — the only real way to ensure it lasts forever and benefits everyone. First on the list for this debut of the project is the Columbia Glacier in Alaska. They are working with specialists from the realm of geography and 3D video production to mount an expedition that will produce multiple 360-degree 4K video/audio recordings of the quickly-retreating glacier at different times of year. The footage will be released under a CC0 public domain license, ensuring nobody can ever try to claim ownership and clamp it down. And that's just the first step, to show the potential of the project. They'll also be working on a set of guidelines and tools to help other people begin contributing to the catalog, with the goal of capturing endangered landscapes from around the world. Ultimately, the plan is to build an open-source platform to enable the creation and curation of this catalog, making it easy for anyone to contribute and everyone to enjoy. Sure, there's a tiny cynical voice inside me that wonders if we're just paying for someone's Alaskan excursion — but in truth it seems like a fair and sincere exchange. These days, when so many photographers and videographers are protective and exclusive about the rare and difficult material they capture, nothing demonstrates a genuine concern for what you're doing more than dedicating the content you produce to the public domain.
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by Tim Cushing on (#192P0)
Right before the end of last year, the DOJ -- facing budget cuts -- announced it would be ceasing its "equitable sharing" program with local law enforcement agencies. These agencies complained loudly about the unfairness of being decoupled from the asset forfeiture money train, as this partnership often allowed them to route around more restrictive state laws.
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by Tim Cushing on (#192JJ)
Just when we thought some surveillance reforms might stick, the administration announced it was expanding law enforcement access to NSA data hauls. This prompted expressions of disbelief and dismay, along with a letter from Congressional representatives demanding the NSA cease this expanded information sharing immediately.
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by Michael Ho on (#192EG)
Biology defies simple categorization -- even though some think of the field of biology as glorified taxidermy. We even have a difficult time defining what life is. (Are viruses alive?) Fundamental questions about how life began and how life even continues are still elusive. We've just started to scratch the surface of collecting data that might help us understand more about ourselves and the ecosystem we live in. Here are just a few links on genomes and biodiversity that lead to more questions than answers.
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by Timothy Geigner on (#1929T)
It wasn't so long ago that we were discussing the problems with the United States Treasury Department's list of scary names and how it was being used to prevent completely innocent folks from using online services. The ultimate point of that post was that casting broad nets in which to turn suspicious eyes without applying any kind of checks or common sense was a recipe for calling a whole lot of people terrorists that aren't actually terrorists.
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by Tim Cushing on (#1924E)
A Canadian court -- granting a request made by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) -- is in the process of dismantling protections for Canadian journalists. The case involves a Skype interview by Vice Magazine with an alleged terrorist currently located in Syria. The interview, in which the self-avowed terrorist (Farad Mohamed Shirdon) claimed an attack in New York City was imminent, appeared back in October 2015 and led directly to his being charged in absentia with several terrorism-related offenses.
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by Mike Masnick on (#1920G)
So, today's been DMCA 512 takedown day here at Techdirt. Today's the day that comments are due at the Copyright Office concerning the effectiveness (or not) of the DMCA's notice and takedown provisions. And, of course, no one's entirely happy with the DMCA, but they're unhappy in very different ways. We wrote about the legacy music industry whining that Google has built a successful service while they failed to adapt themselves. We wrote about Automattic reinforcing how DMCA takedowns are regularly abused to try to censor content (and how people are afraid to counternotice), and we wrote about our own filing, highlighting how the abuse of the DMCA process raises questions about how the current setup is Constitutional.
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by Mike Masnick on (#191RP)
As mentioned earlier, today's the day to file comments with the Copyright Office over the DMCA's notice and takedown provisions. We've already discussed the recent set of studies showing that there are way too many bogus takedown notices that are clogging the system, creating real problems for small service providers and censoring free speech. We also wrote about the patently ridiculous filing by the legacy players in the music industry, who whined about how the public is enjoying more content than ever before (which, you know, is the stated purpose of copyright law), but they're upset that their business models are now obsolete. Finally, we wrote about the fantastic filing from Automattic, which gives many more real world examples of how the takedown process is abused (which the legacy industry pretends isn't true, because people don't file counternotices).
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by Mike Masnick on (#191KR)
Earlier this week, we wrote about a major new study that revealed that a ton of DMCA takedown notices are clearly faulty, and how that shows just how messed up the DMCA's notice-and-takedown provisions are in giving tremendous incentives to send notices with absolutely no punishment for filing bogus takedowns. The legacy music industry and its supporters keep claiming that the fact that there are so few counternotices is evidence that there's almost no abuse. In fact, in the legacy music industry filing we wrote about earlier today, they even had the gall to claim that the real abuse is in the counternotices themselves.
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by Mike Masnick on (#191BQ)
As we've mentioned, today is the day that comments are due to the Copyright Office on the effectiveness (or not) of Section 512 of the DMCA, better known as the "notice and takedown" safe harbor provisions. We'll be posting the details of our own filing at some point (possibly not until Monday as we're still finalizing a few things), but some of the other filings are starting to filter out, including a fairly astounding 97-page document from a bunch of legacy music industry organizations (about half of which is the actual filing, with the rest being appendices), including the RIAA, ASCAP, AFM, NMPA, SoundExchange and more. It's basically every organization that represents the way the industry used to work -- and the document reads like an angry polemic against the internet. It would have been much shorter, if they just wrote "our business used to be much better when we had more control and less competition -- and we never bothered to adapt, so fuck Google and all those internet companies -- and let's change the DMCA to punish them and magically bring back the good old days."
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by Daily Deal on (#191BR)
Ethical hacking and penetration testing skills are increasingly in-demand. Get the $39 Cyber Security Hacker & Pen Tester Training bundle and start on your way to learning more about this exciting field. You'll study security code, threat modeling, web-based vulnerabilities, cross-site request forgery, source code fuzzing w/ AFL, cross-site scripting, penetration testing steps & more in 12 courses with 20+ hours of content.
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by Tim Cushing on (#1914S)
The MPAA doesn't often speak out about legislation… not unless it's directly involved in the crafting (remember SOPA?) Issues that affect a much larger percentage of the public are considered none of its business. It will make noise from time to time about fair use and the public domain -- usually arguing there should be less of both, but sometimes speaking out in defense of these IP aspects.
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by Mike Masnick on (#190XW)
Remember how the FBI insisted over and over again that the case in San Bernardino was not about setting a precedent and was totally about getting into "just that one phone?" Of course, no one believed it, but pay close attention to what's happening now that the FBI was able to hack into Syed Farook's work iPhone. The DOJ has also said that the crack was limited to just that type of phone and probably wasn't widely applicable. However, at the same time, the Justice Department probably has no interest in sharing the details of the vulnerability with Apple:
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by Mike Masnick on (#190FK)
Well, here's something to speculate about. On Thursday, Reddit posted its latest transparency report concerning government requests for user information or content removal. This is the second such report, following its 2014 report. As one Reddit user quickly noted, the 2014 transparency report had something of a "warrant canary" concerning National Security Letters (NSLs): If you can't read that, it says:
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by Mike Masnick on (#18ZWS)
We've written a whole bunch about the incredibly thin-skinned and litigious President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Erdogan took his show on the road to the US this week, and apparently that included pretending that he can treat press in the US as bad as he does at home. Erdogan spoke at the Brookings Institution yesterday, and there were protestors outside. That's not that surprising, but rather than doing what basically anyone else does in that situation and ignore the protestors, Erdogan's security clashed with the protestors and then took it up a notch going after reporters:
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by Michael Ho on (#18YFN)
Rocket science is difficult, but as technology gets better, it looks like more and more people are capable of launching pretty powerful rockets. Private companies are semi-routinely shooting satellites into space, and that capability could be useful for all kinds of applications ranging from scientific exploration... to intercontinental missiles. If hobbyist drones seem like a problem now, wait until more hobbyist rockets are launching into space.
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by Nathan Leamer and Zach Graves on (#18Y9X)
Abusive patent litigation siphons tens of billions of dollars from the economy every year. In addition to burdening American entrepreneurs with lost revenues and great uncertainty, the scourge of frivolous lawsuits depletes funds that otherwise could have used toward research and development, venture-capital investment and other essential business activities. While it isn't the kind of comprehensive corrective to America's "patent troll" problem that we'd like to see, the newly introduced Venue Equity and Non-Uniformity Elimination Act would address one small piece of the problem. The bill, S. 2733, would curtail rampant venue shopping that unfairly distorts legal outcomes by allowing plaintiffs to select friendly judges in advance. According to research from George Mason University's Mercatus Center, nearly half of all patent cases are filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. Through the first half of 2015, the Tyler, Texas-based court heard 1,387 patent cases, compared with an average of 19 such cases in other federal judicial districts. The district has become so notorious as a magnet for "patent troll" litigation that Samsung ramped up its giving to charities near the court, and even built an ice skating rink next to the court's Marshall, Texas division, undoubtedly to present a more friendly face to local juries. The City of Tyler even advertises itself as "IP friendly" and lists the big awards the court has doled out. The current state of affairs is so absurd that John Oliver even covered it. When the Federal Circuit heard oral arguments this month in TC Heartland, a case that deals with venue, it blamed Congress for the current mess. As the panel explained, the present situation arose from a 1990 case called VE Holding that overrode the previous, stricter, rules following an interpretation of a 1988 law. Therefore, since Congress messed it up in the first place, they should be the ones that fix it. Yet, cracking down on venue shopping alone offers a more modest goal than the sorts of comprehensive patent-reform legislation that have stalled in Congress in recent years. The last major push for comprehensive reform – H.R. 3309, the Innovation Act of 2013 – passed the U.S. House in December of that year with broad bipartisan support and an overwhelming margin of 325-91. At the time, it held a 7-1 margin of support among Republicans. Alas, the bill also drew host of special interests to the table, who swiftly ramped up an intense and well-funded opposition campaign (get your fill of AstroTurf at www.savetheinventor.com). After failing to clear the Senate during the 113th Congress, the Innovation Act was reintroduced last year by House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, as H.R. 9. Both that measure and a Senate companion bill (S. 1137, the PATENT Act) included venue-reform provisions. Despite strong support from free-market groups (including R Street) and a wide variety of other organizations, a coalition of special interests has obstructed either bill from moving forward. The holistic approach to patent litigation reform appears to have been swallowed up by fear-mongering. Opponents have gone so far as to claim that an effort pushed by some of the most conservative legislators actually represented Obama's liberal vision for a "patent-free society." Narrowly-targeted reform efforts like the one introduced by Sens. Jeff Flake, Cory Gardner, and Mike Lee (none of whom are even remotely considered to be on the "liberal" end of the spectrum), present a new opportunity to move forward. The fruits of innovation should go to entrepreneurs and inventors, not trial lawyers. Addressing abusive patent litigation is essential to ensure that America's rules to reward technological innovation remain in line with the Constitution's mandate to "Promote the Progress of Science and the useful Arts." Nathan Leamer and Zach Graves are from R Street, a free market-based, think tank in Washington DC
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by Tim Cushing on (#18Y0Q)
As if you needed another reason not to trust the government… or its public-facing websites. Brian Krebs is reporting that several government websites are leaving themselves open for exploitation by malicious internetizens.
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by Mike Masnick on (#18XSJ)
Most Thursday's, we post book recommendations with links to purchase the books through Amazon (where a little cut of the purchase price goes to us). We've received a ton of feedback that people like those recommendations (and seeing how many books you guys have bought via that, suggests it's true!). We had another such book lined up for today, but we're going to put that aside as we saw the news this morning that publisher Verso Books, which has published a number of excellent books (including ones we've recommended in the past), is doing a special one day (today!) offer for a bunch of free ebooks, many of which may interest folks here -- though there are a few caveats which we'll get to.
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by Tim Cushing on (#18XKK)
British hacker Lauri Love stands accused of causing "millions of dollars" in damages to US government computers -- charges he's been facing for more than two years. These charges originate in the US, but it's the UK that's been trying to get Love to give up his encryption keys for the past couple of years.
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by Timothy Geigner on (#18XDJ)
People's passwords and their relative strength and weakness is a subject I know quite well. As part of my business, we regularly battle users who think very simple passwords, often times relating to their birthdays and whatnot, are sufficient. Sometimes they simply make "password" or a similiar variant their go-to option. So, when CNBC put together a widget for readers to input the passwords they use to get feedback on their strength or weakness, I completely understand what they were attempting to accomplish. Password security is a real issue, after all -- which is what makes it all the more face-palming that the widget CNBC used was found to be exploitable.
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by Daily Deal on (#18XDK)
The $39 VoCore is a mini Linux machine, with which you can make a tiny router, invent a new device, build a motherboard, or even repurpose old speakers into smart wireless versions. Its small size gives you options: use it as a standalone device running OpenWrt or use it as an embedded component of a larger system. With some knowledge of electronics and the included Dock that extends the Ethernet and USB ports, the electronic world is your playground.
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