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American telcos don't have a monopoly on monopolies. Foreign telcos can be just as inappropriately (and pehaps illegally) protective of their turf profits.

Although the benefits of sharing big datasets are well-known, so are the privacy issues that can arise as a result. The tension between a desire to share information widely and the need to respect the wishes of those to whom it refers is probably most acute in the medical world. Although the hope is that aggregating health data on a large scale can provide new insights into diseases and their treatments, doing so makes issues of consent even trickier to deal with. A new study of Parkinson's disease from Sage Bionetworks, which describes itself as a "non-profit biomedical research organization," takes a particularly interesting approach. Unusually, it used an iPhone app to gather data directly from the participants:

Traveling to mars is going to be a really, really long term project. We had some fun on the moon and drove around up there in a nifty moon buggy, but we didn't have a commitment to stay there for very long -- or even plans to keep going there once we knew it could be done. Getting astronauts to mars requires a completely different level of planning than going to the moon. Current technology won't get us there (well, at least not alive and healthy), but maybe we're still making some progress with a few untested propulsion systems.

As expected, Apple has now responded to the DOJ in the case about whether or not it can be forced to write code to break its own security features to help the FBI access the encrypted work iPhone of Syed Farook, one of the San Bernardino attackers. As we noted, the DOJ's filing was chock-full of blatantly misleading claims, and Apple was flabbergasted by just how ridiculous that filing was. That comes through in this response.

Backpage.com has been pretty busy in court. The site, which basically took over the market for "adult" classified ads after Craigslist shut down its ads (after being misleadingly attacked) has been sued a bunch of times, almost always by people misunderstanding Section 230 of the CDA which, as we've discussed hundreds of times, says that sites are not liable for the actions of their users. Last year, however, Backpage won a big case in Massachusetts in May, but then lost one in Washington in September. (Separately, it won a different case going after Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart for meddling and getting credit card companies to stop supporting Backpage.com -- the company just asked the lower court to dismiss what's left of that case). The September ruling was surprising, as it's one of a very, very, very small number of cases that basically says that Section 230 doesn't apply.

The battle for net neutrality seemed like it was over — but the regulations left a loophole open. Unsurprisingly, ISPs quickly started exploiting it, offering "zero rating" services to do an end-run around true net neutrality. Last week's guest Marvin Ammori joins us again this week, to discuss the true and imperfect state of net neutrality, and the many games internet providers play. Follow the Techdirt Podcast on Soundcloud, subscribe via iTunes, or grab the RSS feed. You can also keep up with all the latest episodes right here on Techdirt.

In what appears to be an annual tradition in Rhode Island politics, legislators (and the state Attorney General) are pinging the First Amendment to see if any new loopholes have developed since the end of the last legislative session. And, of course, it's being done to save the cyberchildren from internet nastiness. (via Overlawyered)

Join us in telling EU regulators not to wreck the net.

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On February 18th, Senator Lindsey Graham had this to say about the FBI v. Apple court battle.

One of the key lines that various supporters of backdooring encryption have repeated in the last year, is that they "just want to have a discussion" about the proper way to... put backdoors into encryption. Over and over again you had the likes of James Comey insisting that he wasn't demanding backdoors, but really just wanted a "national conversation" on the issue (despite the fact we had just such a conversation in the 90s and concluded: backdoors bad, let's move on.):

Several cable operators managed to eek out some modest subscriber gains in the fourth quarter of last year, prompting some renewed claims by the industry that cord cutting was "on the ropes" or was otherwise an unfair hallucination of the media. After all, Comcast saw a net gain of 89,000 pay TV users during the fourth quarter. Time Warner Cable similarly saw its best year since 2006 with a net gain of 54,000 TV subscribers. Charter also saw a net gain in the fourth quarter of 29,000 video subscribers. For some of these companies, this was the best performance they've seen since 2006.

Spencer Ackerman of the Guardian was the first to report the news -- what there was of it -- that the FBI's rules governing its access to data collected by the NSA have changed. To what exactly, no one knows. Neither agency is offering any details.

If you follow video game news as I do, you probably came across a fascinating and somewhat thrilling series of speculative stories revolving around a game called Spintires, which is being sold through the Steam platform. The driving game had been selling for some time, and selling fairly well, when all of the sudden it stopped working. Just like that, the game was crashing all over the place. Some sites, including this later-updated Gamasutra post, began digging into a wellspring of conspiracy theories about purposeful sabotage by the developer over money disputes with the publisher.

Some people are seriously addicted to caffeine. Maybe you get headaches if you skip a morning cup of coffee or experience other symptoms of withdrawal, but if you've built up an extreme tolerance, you might need to start incorporating it into other habits. We've mentioned a few other products that come with a dose of caffeine, but here are a few more to try if you're a real caffeine junky.

While other states seem distressingly focused on exempting law enforcement from greater transparency -- whether by crafting new loopholes in FOI laws or deciding body camera footage should remain in the control of police -- California is going the other way.

Let's start out with this story, which is graphically (and tragically) illustrative of the problem discussed later in this post.

Over the last couple of years, the increasing popularity of the open source streaming software Popcorn Time has turned into one of the film industry's biggest nightmares. Not just because it's free, but also because it provides an extremely easy-to-use service. The fact that it is open source -- and therefore essentially impossible to eradicate -- just makes things worse. As part of the film industry's attack on Popcorn Time, a UK judge was persuaded a year ago to order a group of web sites to be blocked purely on the grounds that they were distributing the Popcorn Time software. That was the first step down a slippery slope, and it seems that the second step has now been taken in Norway. A post on TorrentFreak reports that the Popcorn-Time.no domain name has been seized by the police there:

Let's go back just a few months to remind you about two stories that seem fairly unrelated.

You had to know this was coming eventually, but the latest John Oliver main story was his take on the Apple v. FBI encryption fight. If you haven't seen it yet, here it is: Not surprisingly, Oliver's take is much clearer and much more accurate than many mainstream press reports on the issues in the case, appropriately mocking the many law enforcement officials who seem to think that, just because Apple employs smart engineers, they can somehow do the impossible and "safely" create a backdoor into an encrypted iPhone that won't have dangerous consequences. He even spends a bit of time reviewing the original Crypto Wars over the Clipper Chip and highlights cryptographer Matt Blaze's contribution in ending those wars by showing that the Clipper Chip could be hacked.

Snap up the $45 Rolo Travel Bag and get ready to change the way you pack. The Rolo has 4 compartments for you to put your stuff in and keep organized. It all rolls up to a slim 16"L x 6"W x 2"H. It comes with a swivel hook for hanging and a shoulder strap for easy carrying. Add it to your camping/backpacking supplies and keep your clothes organized and easy to find. Use it for a short little getaway on its own or put your most used stuff in it for easy access on longer trips.

To Kill a Mockingbird is obviously one of the most well-known and widely read books in American literature. And, of course, there's been some controversy of late around its author, Harper Lee, who passed away last month. Much of the controversy focused on the decision last year to publish Go Set a Watchman, which was initially described as something of a long lost "sequel" to TKAM, but which it was later admitted was actually an early draft of TKAM. Many argued that Lee didn't actually intend for the book to be published, and that she may have been taken advantage of by those around her. Either way, the controversy is now growing, following Lee's death, as what appears to be the first and second orders of business for Lee's estate was to (1) have the details of her will sealed and (2) stop publishing the mass market paperback version of To Kill a Mockingbird, making sure that the only new versions of the book that will be available will be the noticeably more expensive trade paperbacks.

We've written quite a few times about Polk County, Florida, Sheriff Grady Judd. You may recall him from the time he arrested two teenagers because they admitted to "bullying" another teen who committed suicide. Judd also promised to arrest the parents of both girls as well, stretching an already ridiculous understanding of the law to absolute breaking points (in fact all of the charges were dropped against the girls, because, all the talk of bullying was basically not true).

When FCC boss Tom Wheeler was first appointed to head the agency, few expected much. After all, here was yet another FCC revolving door regulator with a history of lobbying for both the cable and wireless industries -- now tasked with heading an agency that oversees both. Yet the one-time "dingo" surprised everybody by fighting for tougher net neutrality rules, raising the standard definition of broadband, standing up for municipal broadband and improved broadband competition, and now fighting to unlock the cable industry's stranglehold over the cable set top box.

The New York Times is reporting -- based on the comments of several unnamed officials -- that WhatsApp may be headed for the same sort of courtroom dustup Apple is currently involved in.

Following the death of Ray Tomlinson, we were disappointed but not entirely surprised to see Shiva Ayyadurai pipe up again with his ludicrous claims of having invented email — and many of our top comments this week come in response to that story. In first place on the insightful side, we've got Kalean responding specifically to the notion that not crediting Ayyadurai is racist, considering the team with a much better claim to the title:

Five Years Ago First, we saw some fun (read: stupid) IP fights this week in 2011. There was Lady Gaga taking on Baby Gaga, the already-infamous makers of human breast milk ice cream (a part of her larger IP strategy which was all about her image, not her music). There was Zynga trying to trademark the suffix "Ville", Apple trying to trademark App Store on the groups that "App" stands for Apple, and Summit Entertainment trying to claim near-total ownership of the word "Twilight". And we haven't even gotten to the more traditional copyright issues yet... On that front, we saw Rep. Lofgren continuing to defend the victims of ICE's domain seizures (something which predictably displeased the RIAA), Fox News sending a very meta DMCA takedown, and the RIAA attempting to claim trillions in damages from Limewire. Surrounding all this was a globe-spanning question about copyright: can platforms and service providers be held liable for what they host or link to? Russia, freaked out by the Arab Spring, certainly thought so; Turkey had just finished banning all of Blogspot over a few infringing blogs; a French court held Google liable for not magically blocking infringing movies; and in the US, the feds seemed pretty jazzed about secondary liability too. Ten Years Ago Of course, the secondary liability question was hardly new. In fact, five years earlier in the same week of 2006, we noted that it was the next big legal debate online. This was the same week that France was flipping back and forth on the notion of legalizing file sharing. At the time, though, a bigger concern was security. The identities of 17-million porn customers were breached", there was strange data leak speculation around Citibank, and there was a growing realization that stupidity, not hacking or malice, was the biggest cause of breaches. Also this week in 2006: some people still just didn't care about the internet while others were willing to go on hunger strikes to get it; iTunes delved deeper into the world of TV shows while radio stations fended off ongoing accusations of payola; and Google bought Writely, paving the way for Google Docs. Fifteen Years Ago The favorite pastime this week in 2001 was still dissecting the dotcom downturn, whether that meant painting a rosier picture of the situation, outright deeming it a good thing, or simply looking for someone or something to blame (maybe... the Microsoft Case?) Meanwhile, we watched as Hollywood continued bullying its fans over IP and commented on how that was probably a bad plan. Even more notably, this week's thread of online liability questions extends all the way to this week in 2001, when an early legal decision about suing anonymous posters started to set some precedents in that realm. Three-Hundred And Fifty-One Years Ago Today, there is a struggle to prevent scientific journals from locking up information and knowledge — but once, a long time ago, they were the first and only way to widely share that knowledge to begin with. One of the oldest and longest-running is the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, the first issue of which was published on March 6th, 1665. And as is often the case with publications from that era, its full original title was extensive and glorious: Philosophical Transactions, Giving some Account of the present Undertakings, Studies, and Labours of the Ingenious in many considerable parts of the World.

This week, we've got three new crowdfunded products that let you monitor things in new ways — two that provide data you've likely never had access to before, and a third that takes webcams to the next level. Enflux Fitness and workout metrics are among the prime areas where smart technology can deliver something new and truly useful to lots of people. From FitBit to Nike+, there are a variety of sensors and monitors out there for the fitness enthusiast — but Enflux Smart Clothing wraps all sorts of stuff into one form-fitting full-body package. The Enflux suit has two major sensor modules and 10 motion sensors in total, allowing it to not only track and store a huge amount of workout data, but to actually build a full 3D avatar so you can watch your own workout. This enables you to do things like watch your form and motion with an overlay of the ideal form and motion, or even have the app call out tips and cues during the workout like a human trainer would. BRAIN One What Enflux does for exercisers, the BRAIN One does for motorcyclists. Just as the best athletes in the world have trainers and technology at their back, so do the world's motorsports champions, because nobody gets to be the best without metrics that help them understand their own failings and improve. BRAIN One is a standalone telemetry device that attaches easily to any motorcycle and starts collecting key performance data with a bunch of sensors, most notably a 9-axis inertia sensor that watches your handling of turns and bends. It communicates with your smartphone, and even integrates with GoPro and other action cameras for additional capabilities, like challenging your friends to asynchronous races and creating videos of your results overlaid with performance data. It also has an open API and is designed to be extendable to other types of vehicles with a little configuration and coding — and it does all this at a fraction of what professional telemetry devices cost. WebEye VR Just in case you're not a fitness buff or an avid motorcyclist, here's a device for everyone (or at least, everyone with access to Google Cardboard or, better still, a headset like the Oculus Rift). The WebEye VR claims to be the first virtual reality webcam, and while I can't entirely confirm this, it's clearly an early entrant in the field. Its biggest application is obviously video chatting, which could be bumped to a whole new immersive level with VR technology, but I suspect it'll also find use for things from home monitoring to VR content creation. It's got some solid specs: two full-HD cameras delivering a 160-degree field of view in full stereoscopic 3D, at a price that's pretty much on par with a pair of high-end normal HD webcams. There are demo videos and live broadcasts for those who want to see how it performs, and one of the creators has even made himself available for live one-on-one demo calls with potential backers.

Support our crowdfunding campaign to help us keep covering stories like this! This is not all that surprising, but President Obama, during his SXSW keynote interview, appears to have joined the crew of politicians making misleading statements pretending to be "balanced" on the question of encryption. The interview (the link above should start at the very beginning) talks about a variety of issues related to tech and government, but eventually the President zeroes in on the encryption issue. The embed below should start at that point (if not, it's at the 1 hour, 16 minute mark in the video). Unfortunately, the interviewer, Evan Smith of the Texas Tribune, falsely frames the issue as one of "security v. privacy" rather than what it actually is -- which is "security v. security." In case you can't watch that, the President says he won't comment directly on the Apple legal fights, but then launches into the standard politician talking point of "yes, we want strong encryption, but bad people will use it so we need to figure out some way to break in."

With so much annoying stuff coming out of the White House lately, it's good to see the tech folks there continue to do some good work, including pushing for a policy that should lead to further embracing open source technologies inside the federal government -- in part by pushing the government itself to open source the code it writes for its own work (and even when not releasing the code to the public, at least sharing it inside the government for other agencies to use).

Electric cars are getting more attention as they become more practical and eliminate the "range anxiety" factor. While battery-powered cars were actually some of the first horseless carriages, Tesla has gotten some recent publicity for its 'ludicrous' performance -- as well as plans for even bigger batteries (a 100kwh battery seems to be on Tesla's horizon). There are a few other all-American electric cars with supercar-like specs and/or retro-styling, but when will a reasonably-priced (no subsidies!) all-electric commuter car be available? (March 31st?)

You know the word "selfie" by now (whether you like the concept or not), but what about "dronie"? It seems that, back in 2014, Twitter, of all companies, decided to try to make "dronie" a thing, combining drones with selfies (i.e., photos of yourself, taken from drones). It even set up a twitter feed for @dronie and tried to highlight examples of such things -- focusing on a campaign around the 2014 Cannes Film Festival. The concept did drum up some fairly lame press coverage (because of course it did), with some puff pieces on "dronies," pretending that it was the next new thing -- even though it was just a Twitter marketing campaign. Never mind the fact that others apparently had been using the term before Twitter started in. Either way, Twitter then applied for the trademark on "dronie" because nothing says cool, hip internet slang, like registering a trademark for a term you're trying to convince people is totally "the next thing." Especially when the word has already started to enter the public lexicon. Twitter had originally applied to register DRONIE (on June 20, 2014) as used in connection with drones and toys, as well as when used with an enormous list of related goods/services, including downloadable software via the internet and wireless devices for downloading, searching, tagging, viewing, etc. photos; telecommunications including messaging and chat services; online community forums for users to search and chat about pictures of others; education, including providing training, entertainment, sporting and cultural activities, providing on-line electronic publications; scientific and technological services and research and design relating thereto; and online social networking services....

A couple of months ago, I wrote a long post trying to dig into the details of David Lowery's class action lawsuit against Spotify. In the end, while there was some question over whether or not streaming music services really need to get compulsory mechanical licenses for producing reproductions of songs, it seemed like the fact that such licenses are compulsory and can be obtained easily via having the Harry Fox Agency issue a "Notice of Intention" under Section 115, it seemed crazy to think that the various music services had not done that. In fact, we noted that the only way the lawsuits made any sense was if the various music services and HFA ignored this and didn't send out such NOIs. At the time, I noted that this would be a surprise, and it could mean the services were in deep trouble.

We've written a few times now about the somewhat bizarre Matthew Keys case. While he still denies having done anything, he has been found guilty under the CFAA for sharing the login information to the Tribune Company's computer systems, which apparently resulted in someone hacking a story on the LA Times website. The hack was nonsensical and lasted for all of about 40 minutes. There's no indication that this bit of vandalism did any actual harm -- or even that very many people saw it. And yet... the Feds had to work overtime to figure out how to turn this minor bit of vandalism (which everyone agrees Keys did not actually do directly) into nearly $1 million in damages (thanks to emails that the Tribune Company says were worth $200+ each, and random claims about "ratings declines" due to a separate incident involving Keys and the Tribune-owned TV station Keys used to work for).

Back in January, we wrote about an absolutely ridiculous case, in which Tamara Fields sued Twitter, after her husband was tragically killed in an ISIS raid last year. Why Twitter? She apparently blames Twitter for the rise of ISIS. She provides no evidence to show that the people who killed her husband (a government contractor for DynCorp International) was killed by people who used Twitter. Or that anything about the attack was related to Twitter. It's entirely just "ISIS uses Twitter. ISIS killed by husband. Let's sue Twitter." As we noted at the time, Section 230 should easily get this lawsuit tossed out quickly, and the company has now filed its Motion to Dismiss. The TL;DR: "Section 230, Section 230, What a stupid lawsuit this is."

Earlier this year Netflix surprised everybody by announcing it was expanding into 130 additional countries, bringing its total footprint to 190 markets. But alongside the announcement came the less-welcome news that Netflix was also planning to crack down more on "content tourism," or the act of using a VPN to trick Netflix into letting you watch content specifically licensed for other countries. If you take a look at what's available per country, the motivation to use a VPN to watch content not available in your market becomes abundantly obvious.

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As had been hinted at for months, the FCC formally unveiled its plans to apply some relatively basic privacy protections for broadband service. And while you'll likely see the broadband industry bitching up a storm over the next few months, none of the requirements are particularly onerous (and many are things ISPs are doing already). The agency's full announcement (pdf) notes the rules will require that ISPs are a) transparent about what they're doing, b) have basic systems in place to protect collected data and alert users in case of data breach and c) provide users with opt out technology that actually works.

It must be admitted that the Apple/FBI fight over iPhone encryption has had much more "outside the courtroom" drama than most cases -- what with both sides putting out their own blog posts and commenting publicly at length on various aspects. But things have been taken up a notch, it seems, with the latest. We wrote about the DOJ's crazy filing in the case, which is just chock full of incredibly misleading claims. Most of the time, when we call out misleading claims in lawsuits, the various parties stay quiet about it. But this one was apparently so crazy that Apple's General Counsel Bruce Sewell called a press conference where he just blasted the DOJ through and through. It's worth looking at his whole statement (highlights by me):

Support our crowdfunding campaign to help us keep covering stories like these! The Justice Department has now filed its response to Apple's motion to vacate being forced to undermine the security features of Syed Farook's work iPhone. It's... quite a piece of work. The DOJ is pulling out all the stops in this one, and it seems to be going deeper and deeper into the ridiculous as it does so. Of course, it repeats many of the arguments in its earlier filings (both its original application for the All Writs Order as well as its Motion to Compel -- which even the judge told the DOJ she didn't think it should file). For example, it continues to assert that this should be judged on the "three factor test" that it made up from a Supreme Court decision that doesn't actually have a three factor test.

We've seen all kinds of strange trademark actions revolving around the works of Tolkien, including threats against holiday campsites and pubs. The dual threat of dumb in these disputes always ends up being both the protectionist aims against businesses that don't operate anywhere near the literary or theatrical realms in which Tolkien's works normally operate and the sketchy history of the term "hobbit" itself, with it being rather clear that Tolkien both didn't invent the word itself and actually based his hobbit characters on previous fictional works. This of course hasn't precluded anyone with any kind of ownership stake in rights associated with Tolkien from sending out threats to anyone and everyone that in any way uses the term.

What is a healthy meal? If you look closely enough at almost anything, you'll find it's not as simple as you might expect. Should you eat more fruits and vegetables? Of course you should. But what if the fruit is pre-cut and conveniently packaged (or comes with a free frogurt)? Marketing healthy (or "healthier") foods is making it a bit confusing to know what's really healthy and what's just over-priced and convenient. Yay!

As so many have tried to frame the Apple v. FBI fight as one of "privacy v. security," the fact is that it's really about security v. security, where it really comes down to what are you more afraid of: the off-chance that someone will secretly plan a terrorist attack on an encrypted iPhone, or the much more likely issue with millions of phones being stolen or hacked into by criminals looking to swipe your private information. Apple's VP of software engineering, Craig Federighi, had now taken to the pages of the Washington Post to try to highlight this issue, and explain that the FBI and DOJ are really trying to make everyone a lot less safe.

They've been promising it for months now, without ever actually doing anything, but Senators Dianne Feinstein and Richard Burr (the two top members of the Senate Intelligence Committee) now insist that they're finally ready to release their anti-encryption bill.

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.

There is a (reasonable) tendency to argue that in this big fight over encryption backdoors and "going dark" and "should Apple help the FBI" to assume that the various DOJ/FBI efforts to force backdoors into encryption are the official position of the Obama administration. After all, the Justice Department is a part of the administration and the head of the DOJ, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, reports to President Obama. And the FBI is a part of the DOJ. But it's also been quite clear for some time that there are a variety of opinions within the White House on these issues, with many outside of the DOJ not supporting backdooring encryption at all. In fact, many are actively opposed to such ideas. And now it's reaching the stage where people are starting to push stories that the White House is not at all happy with FBI Director James Comey and his crusade on this issue.

Last year, FBI Director James Comey floated a ridiculous idea that retweeting ISIS tweets could be seen as "material support" for terrorism. Indeed, an American teenager got sentenced to 11 years in jail for pro-ISIS tweets, with the "material support" being that some of those tweets linked to pages that taught people how to use Bitcoin. Some have taken this idea even further, and argued that internet companies can be slapped with "material support for terrorism" claims or charges if they let ISIS members or other terrorists make use of their services.

You still have your old vinyl stashed away, right? Bust out your collection and admire that awesome cover art while listening to your favorites again on the ION Vinyl Motion Portable Turntable. For $60, this retro-looking turntable can play all of your 33 1/3, 45 & 78 RPM records and then close up into a compact little suitcase that you can take with you. It features built in speakers with high-fidelity audio and can run on its lithium ion battery. It also comes with a USB cable and software that will let you convert those vinyls into digital files.

Earlier this week, the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) -- the same organization whose boss Randall Rothenberg recently suggested that if you use an ad blocker you hate free speech and are, possibly, a racist -- put out some guidelines for publishers looking to "combat" ad blockers. The basic crux of it: the IAB suggests that sites block people who use ad blockers from reading their content. They even created a puke-inducing acronym "DEAL" and some code for "detecting" ad blockers. Detecting being the D: