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We have computers that can beat us at games like chess and Go (and Jeopardy!), but we haven't seen too many robots that can beat humans at more physical sports like soccer or tennis. We've seen some air hockey robots that are nearly unbeatable, so it's really only a matter of time before robots learn how to play sports with a few more dimensions. Here are some badminton robots that are inching toward playing better than some of us.

A month ago, folks in Austin Texas voted against a proposition that Uber and Lyft supported, concerning a number of new rules that would be put on ride hailing operations. Given that, both companies immediately shut down operations in Austin -- a city with over a million residents and only 900 cabs. In response, people are so desperate for rides that they're seriously trying to recreate the Lyft/Uber experience by using a Facebook group where people can post their location, negotiate a fee, and have someone pick them up (something that seems a lot more dangerous than typical Uber/Lyft).

IP trolls are about 90% cardboard facade. They puff themselves up with blustery legal threats written on serious-looking legal letterhead, but it's really no different than the defensive mechanisms of many creatures found on the lower end of the food chain. For most, the slightest of pushes back results in the whole charade collapsing.There's a great future in speculative invoicing, said no one ever in any seminal coming-of-age, post-college disillusionment film. Just look at Prenda Law, which resorted to fraudulent behavior when its aggressive, but incompetent, trolling failed to pay the bills. And yet, nothing stops the trolls from trolling. The occasional speed bump surfaces, but trolls dismiss these rather than meet the challenge head on. They're in it for settlements, not wins… and certainly not precedent.Unfortunately, too many will get away with the following tactic, as covered by indispensable thorn-in-trolls'-side, Sophisticated Jane Doe of Fight Copyright Trolls.

As you probably heard in the news, last week, Presidential candidate/reality TV star Donald Trump took a bit of a detour from the campaign trail last week to fly to Scotland to open his new golf course. That the timing of the trip coincided with the Brexit referendum for the UK to exit the EU was just the wacky icing on the bizarre global political cake we're all now eating (bad metaphor apology). As you also probably heard, Trump talked about how wonderful the Brexit stuff was, and how much the people in Scotland must be thrilled, apparently missing the fact that Scotland, somewhat overwhelmingly, voted to stay in the EU. And because this is Scotland, and Scotland is awesome, folks there took to Twitter for a series of increasingly funny insults:

Already on the shitlist of U.S. broadband companies for supporting net neutrality and opposing things like usage caps, Netflix now has a new factually-challenged enemy: Russia. Russia's Culture Ministry took over government film funding through the Cinema Fund in 2012, and more recently unveiled a list of approved subject matter should film makers in Russia wish to get funding. Approved subject matter should include tales that herald "traditional values," "the constructive actions of civil society" or "heroes fighting crime, terrorism and extremism."

They've been pressured to do this for a while, but according to a Reuters report over the weekend, both Google and Facebook have started using some of their automation tools to start automatically removing "extremist" content. Both are apparently using modifications to their copyright takedown technology:

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MPAA boss Chris Dodd has apparently decided to take the fairly insane stance that what's good for the public is clearly bad for Hollywood. That's the only conclusion that can come from the news that he's actively campaigning against the EU ending geoblocking rules:

Back at the end of May the Copyright Office put out a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) concerning some changes to the DMCA agent registration process. As we've noted for years, technically to be covered by the important DMCA safe harbors you first have to register with the Copyright Office (and we've repeatedly recommended that you do so, if you have any kind of site, even a personal one, where people may post potentially infringing material). Not registering won't automatically make you liable, but it can make the legal process a lot more problematic for you if someone posts infringing material on your website. Most people who commented on this new NPRM were pleasantly surprised to see that the key part of the proposal was reducing the fee for registering an agent from $105 (or more) down to just $6. The Copyright Office says it can do this thanks to the much easier efficiency of electronic filing. That's great.

For most of the last year, the House has desperately been trying to punish the FCC for standing up to ISPs on net neutrality. This has included an endless number of taxpayer funded "accountability" hearings designed to shame the agency, as well as attempts to gut FCC authority and funding via sneaky budget riders. The latest example is the House Appropriations Committee's 29-17 vote to approve an FCC appropriations bill (pdf), part of a larger Financial Services Bill determining the 2017 budgets for multiple agencies. That bill not only dramatically reduces the FCC budget, but tries to hamstring net neutrality rule enforcement.

Late last week, a proposal from the Department of Homeland Security was published in the Federal Register concerning forms tourists need to fill out upon entering the US. Specifically, DHS proposed adding the following to Form I-94W, which is the Nonimmigrant Visa Waiver Arrival/Departure Record:

This week, we were horrified by the story of Ashely Cervantes, an 18-year-old who customs agents subjected to vaginal and rectal probes by a local doctor in a search of nonexistent drugs. TexasAndroid won most insightful comment of the week by pointing out the staggering addition of insult to injury in the case:

Five Years AgoThis week in 2011, amid lots of IP chaos, we offered up a two-part history of the many "killers" of the music industry, first in the analog era and now in the digital one. Undeterred, Universal Music was in the midst of going to war with popular hip-hop blogs and websites for posting tracks (most if not all of which the artists wanted posted). If you doubt that last bit, consider that one of the targets was 50 Cent's own official website. There was also a lot of buzz about the awesome new social music service turntable.fm, and we wondered how long it would take for the RIAA to kill it (it's gone now, by the way).While a new filing in the Rojadirecta case elaborated on how ICE's domain seizures violate the first amendment even as Senatory Patrick Leahy was celebrating them, rightsholders in the UK were seeking their own web censorship powers. Hollywood was busy too, with the MPAA lobbying to get law enforcement to behave as its own private police force and trying to convince ISPs to become copyright cops, too.Ten Years AgoFive years earlier in 2006, there was a very similar history lesson for the people thinking about entertainment industry legislation: Gary Shapiro of the CEA took out a full page advertisement in the Capitol Hill newspaper highlighting, once again, all the past freakouts about new technology destroying music and movies. This was important considering big legal questions like deep linking of MP3s, and mean lawsuits like Paramount suing an amateur filmmaker for making his own 12 minute version of an Oliver Stone movie. Not to mention the creepy prevalence of the MPAA hiring people to stalk and/or hack potential legal targets, and the agency's generally high levels of bullshit.Fifteen Years AgoIt was a different time in 2001, when we could be surprised by the fact that teenagers were adopting the internet en masse or that Amazon wasn't dead yet. Doctors were still fairly resistant to using technology like email and the first IBM PC was a mere 20 years old. The hot new TLDs on the block were .biz and .info, and buyers were competing over popular picks like show.biz and sex.info, while Network Solutions was busy trying to sabotage the whole .biz enterprise. "Cyber Rage" was a new notion that would evolve into today's doxxing, swatting and other nastiness, and one group was so miffed by digital smut that it sought to send Yahoo execs to jail as pornographers.Eight-Two Years AgoThe FCC is a big and complex regulatory body that has a massive impact on all modern communication innovation in America — and it was on June 19th, 1934 that it came into existence after the passage of the Communications Act of 1934.

This week, for the cyclists out there, we've got a pair of new crowdfunded devices that aim to enhance your experience on your bike — then after that, we've got a shameless plug for the new Techdirt t-shirt.BlubelBlubel is a navigation system that has been simplified and redesigned specifically for cyclists, wrapped up inside a bicycle bell that connects to your smartphone via Bluetooth. Instead of a full map-based system, Blubel boils navigation down to a straightforward directional indicator: as you ride, the ring of LEDs on the bell shift to alert you to turns and point you in the right direction. But it's also an actual bell, and what's more, every time you ring it the whole system gets smarter. Since most navigation systems are tailored for drivers first and foremost, bell rings from all Blubel users are recorded as waypoints in a shared map algorithm and used to calculate smarter cycling routes throughout the area, resulting in a community-driven navigation database. The associated app lets you plan routes and set destinations, and it also records data and gives you access to lots of metrics about your ride, much like a fitness app.CLASSONWhile Blubel wraps navigation tools in a bell, CLASSON wraps indication and safety tools (and some navigation assistance) in a helmet. The CLASSON helmet contains cameras which can record your ride like a dashcam or a GoPro, but that's not their primary function: they are hooked into a smart system that offers a variety of features. First, it monitors your blindspots, and activates subtle visual indicators on the helmet's visor to let you know when a car is approaching to your side — a huge boon for cyclists in busy urban environments. Next, they monitor your arm movements to translate physical turn signals into blinking turn indicator lights on the helmet, and it can detect deceleration to activate a brake light — a huge boon for night-time cyclists. Plus, similar to the Blubel, it can guide you to destinations chosen on the associated app using a simple directional indicator system also built into the visor.P.S. Check out the latest t-shirt from Techdirt!Yesterday, we launched a new t-shirt on Teespring, available only for a limited time!This spin on the infamous 80s anti-piracy campaign is only available until July 4th, so get yours today (it's also available as a women's tee and a hoodie).

When law enforcement agencies want to know what people are up to, they no longer have to send officers out to walk a beat. It can all be done in-house, using as many data points as can be collected without a warrant. Multiple companies offer "pre-crime" databases for determining criminal activity "hot spots," which allow officers to make foregone conclusions based on what someone might do, rather than what they've actually done.Not that's it doing much good. For all the time, money, and effort being put into it, the databases seem to be of little utility.

Weeks back, Karl Bode wrote about the curious position Oculus Rift had taken in updating its software to include system-checking DRM. VR headset technology and game development, experiencing the first serious attempt at maturity in years, needs an open ecosystem in which to develop. What this DRM essentially did was remove the ability for games designed to run on the Rift from running on any other VR headset, with a specific targeting of community-built workarounds like Revive, which allowed HTC Vive owners to get Rift games running on that headset. Oculus, it should be noted, didn't announce the DRM aspect of the update; it just spit out the update and the public suddenly learned that programs like Revive no longer worked.The backlash, to put it mildly, was swift and severe. Oculus having been acquired by Facebook likely didn't help what were already negative perceptions, supercharging the outcry with allegations of the kind of protectionism and the lack of care for the public that Facebook has enjoyed for roughly ever. Still, many saw the whole thing as peons screaming at a feudal lord: Oculus would simply ignore the whole thing. Just weeks ago, in fact, Oculus was working journalists at E3 in defense of the DRM.

Robots are getting better at performing complex tasks all the time. It won't be too long before they can drive cars and deliver packages (and replace about a quarter of a million human workers who drive for UPS/FedEx/USPS/etc). The technology isn't quite there yet, but it doesn't seem to be too far off in the future. However, we're nowhere near seeing a Rosie the Robot servant, predicted in the 1960s, but we're getting closer. Check out these marginally helpful robots for the home that could beat flying cars and pneumatic tube transportation to becoming a reality.

Want some unsurprising news? Apparently a three year gag order has just lapsed, allowing Ladar Levison, the founder and former operator of Lavabit, the secure email service Ed Snowden famously used, to finally say that yes, the feds asked him to turn over his encryption key in order to access Ed Snowden's emails.

Remember this image?That's the meme that was (and still is) passed around on social media (rather gently) mocking Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for looking kinda like Gollum from the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Or, not even Gollum, but his nicer alter ego, Smeagol. Last we wrote about this, a Turkish court was assembling an expert panel to determine if that image is insulting to Erdogan. Since then, of course, we've learned just how insanely thin-skinned Erdogan is, having filed an average of over 100 actions against people for insulting him per month (how does he get any actual work done?).

See the update at the end

Almost two years ago, we excitedly wrote about the announcement behind Let's Encrypt, a free certificate authority that was focused on dramatically lowering the hurdles towards protecting much more of the internet with HTTPS encrypted connections. It took a while to launch, but it finally did and people have been gobbling up those certificates at a rapid rate and getting more and more of the web encrypted. This is a good thing.

Limited time offer: Support Techdirt and get a Home Cooking Is Killing Restaurants t-shirt or hoodie!In the 80s, the BPI launched its now-iconic campaign to combat an early form of copyright infringement: Home Taping Is Killing Music.Of course, as it turned out, that wasn't true — music is alive and well — and the notion that taping songs from the radio for personal use should qualify as copyright infringement is questionable to begin with (even if it's not at all surprising that record labels saw it that way). Naturally, the campaign was and is ripe for parody (Techdirt friend Dan Bull even made a whole song about it) and our favorite is a simple alternative version...And so we introduce a new t-shirt (or hoodie!) from Techdirt: Home Cooking Is Killing Restaurants:Just like our last t-shirt, we're offering this one via Teespring as a limited-time campaign. From now until July 4th, you can get the Home Cooking Is Killing Restaurants design on a men's or women's t-shirt or a high-quality hoodie in a variety of colors — so order yours today!

Oh boy. A few weeks back, we wrote about the absolutely ridiculous story in which the four children of Frank Zappa appear to be fighting over the Zappa name. The story is somewhat complex and involved and is actually somewhat more nuanced than the unfortunately-all-too-typical "heirs of famous artist fight over splitting up the proceeds of that artist's legacy." In that original article, we noted that the dispute seemed to focus on two specific claims: first that the Zappa Family Trust (run by Ahmet and Diva, but to which all four children are beneficiaries) had a trademark on the tour name "Zappa Plays Zappa," under which Dweezil Zappa had toured for years. After some fairly public back and forth online, it became clear that there was an underlying dispute that had simmered for years here: Frank's wife Gail, who had controlled the ZFT, had trademarked Zappa Plays Zappa and charged Dweezil to use it, but had (according to Dweezil) then reneged on an agreement to share the proceeds from merchandise sales. Ahmet insisted that he'd allow Dweezil to continue to use the name for just $1, but it didn't seem that there was any interest in clearing up the older dispute about merch sales, or to allow Dweezil to get some of the proceeds from ongoing merch sales.

We've been covering the still going lawsuit by CBS and Paramount against Axanar Productions for making a crowdfunded fan film that they claim is infringing because it's looking pretty good. Things got a little weird last month when the producer of the latest Star Trek film, JJ Abrams, and its director, Justin Lin, basically leaked a bit of news saying that after they had gone to Paramount, the studio was going to end the lawsuit. At the time, Paramount said that it was in "settlement discussions" and that it was "also working on a set of fan film guidelines."

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No matter how you may feel about the Second Amendment or firearms themselves, there's no way you can feel comfortable with access to Constitutional rights being predicated on something as worthless as the government's ever-expanding "you might be a terrorist" lists.But that's what's being sought by legislators. In the wake of the Orlando shooting, politicians are searching for answers to unpredictable violent acts, and have seized on the FBI's multiple investigations of the shooter as a potential terrorist for deciding who can or can't obtain a gun. A "dramatic" sit-in by Congressional reps hoped to force the issue, even though it ended up pushing nothing forward at all.Some legislators want gun ownership tied to terrorist watchlists -- the same watchlists that have turned 4-year-olds into suspected terrorists and designated entire families as suspicious simply because a single member somewhere in the branches of the family tree is under investigation.This kneejerk reaction not only would eliminate rights but also any form of due process. As it stands now, there's very little chance anyone wrongly designated as a suspected terrorist by the US government will be able to remove themselves from these lists. A recent court decision about the TSA's "no fly" list has at least raised the redress procedure to "extremely difficult" from its previous status as "nonexistent."But that's only one of the government's terrorist watchlists. Another watchlist contains thousands of Americans with no known ties to any terrorist group. The fact that these known unknowns comprise 40% of the watchlist is only part of the problem.As we've seen from the FBI's neverending series of terrorist investigations, the government is more than happy to create all the "terrorists" it needs to ensure a steady flow of income to certain agencies and a steady decline in civil liberties for the rest of us.Even if the list used to deny gun purchases is limited to those deemed too dangerous to board an aircraft (but not dangerous enough to arrest), rights will be denied to thousands who've never done anything wrong. The no fly list is a debacle as anyone but the TSA (and those pushing this legislation) will admit. The no fly list has, in the past, contained both people no one would normally consider unfit for gun ownership (Sen. Ted Kennedy, Rep. John Lewis), as well as an 18-month-old toddler. Accurate, it is not, and yet, legislators are more than willing to strip a right away from citizens based on an incredibly flawed database. Logic has no place in gun control arguments, though, as Rep. John Lewis is one of the legislators leading the charge, even though he should know personally how worthless and inaccurate the no fly list is.What's even more disconcerting is the number of politicians who believe multiple rights should be stripped from those on watchlists. Senator Joe Manchin actually let these words tumble out of his mouth during an interview with MSNBC.

The FBI's use of a Network Investigative Technique (NIT) to obtain info from the computers of visitors to a seized child porn site has run into all sorts of problems. The biggest problem in most of the cases is that the use of a single warrant issued in Virginia to perform searches of computers all over the nation violated the jurisdictional limits set down by Rule 41(b). Not coincidentally, the FBI is hoping the changes to Rule 41 the DOJ submitted last year will be codified by the end of 2016, in large part because it removes the stipulation that limits searches to the area overseen by the magistrate judge signing the warrant.For defendant Edward Matish, the limits of Rule 41 don't apply. He resides in the jurisdiction where the warrant was signed. He had challenged the veracity of the data obtained by the NIT, pushing the theory that the FBI's unexamined NIT was insecure (data obtained from targets was sent back to the FBI in unencrypted form) and info could have been altered in transit.It's not much of a legal theory as any person performing these alterations would have had to know someone was performing long-distance acquisitions of identifying computer information and the IP addresses normally hidden by the use of Tor.But that questionable legal theory is nothing compared to those handed down in Judge Henry Coke Morgan Jr.'s denial [pdf] of several motions by Matish. As the judge sees it, the FBI really didn't even need a warrant. Morgan Jr. says there's no expectation of privacy in an IP address, even if Tor is used to obscure it, which follows other judges' conclusions on the same matter. However, Morgan Jr. goes much further.Morgan Jr. hints at the Third Party Doctrine but refuses to consider the fact that this information was not obtained from third parties, but rather directly from the user's computer via the FBI's hacking tool.

More bad news for Hillary Clinton and her ill-advised personal email server. Another set of emails released by the State Department shows the government agency had to disable several security processes just to get its server to accept email from Clinton's private email address.

While we've talked in the past about how absurd design patents can get, it's worth pointing out that, hey, shit's not getting any less absurd, people. Design patents, as opposed to utility patents, function more like trademarks. The idea is that the "invention" in the case of design patents are supposed to be unique outputs of what might otherwise not be unique inventions that are then said to act as some sort of single-source invented thing. Honestly, the whole concept smells of a workaround on the actual purpose of patent law and it tends to function that way as well. How else do you explain the design patent granted on a toothpick with some lines carved into it, for instance? Or Apple's design patent on the animation of turning a page within an ebook? Rewarding exclusivity to these types of "inventions" that barely work up the sweat of an "inventor" should seem absurd to you, as should the frequency with which the public is left wondering where exactly the "invention" is in any of this.Which brings us to General Mills and its recently granted design patent on tortilla bowls.

Nearly half a decade ago, we wondered publicly what a company like Twitter, a self-proclaimed advocate of free and open speech, would do if confronted by a government that is anything but. In that post, Mike discussed how Twitter had been used to rant against the government in Saudi Arabia, and wondered what would happen if Saudi Arabia decided to make such speech illegal. But what if it's not direct government action but that of other users that threatens such speech? While we have seen some governments routinely punish internet speech they don't like, we're now seeing signs of non-government individuals getting into the racket as well, as a way to silence the kind of barely-progressive speech a company like Twitter would likely say it wants to protect.

The Space Shuttle was a cool idea, but it never accomplished the goal of providing a relatively low-cost route to space. The concept of reusable space ships is still attractive, but it really depends on how much it takes to refurbish them before they attempt another launch. A few different organizations are already testing some reusable space vehicles (and Boeing has its X-37B that's orbiting somewhere above us right now). Here are just a few more spaceplanes that might join the new reusable space race.

Back in April, we noted that California Assemblymember Mark Stone was pushing some legislation to basically push California governments to copyright and trademark everything they could. This was a bad kneejerk response to the admittedly ridiculous situation in Yosemite, where the concessions vendor had trademarked various park names and then tried to hold them ransom. Of course, the proper response is to make sure that kind of thing can't be covered by trademark or copyright law, not push state government entities to lock up things under intellectual property laws.

You may recall that a year ago, a massive DDoS attack was launched against GitHub from China. The attack itself was somewhat clever, in that it effectively turned the Great Firewall around, using Chinese search engine Baidu's ad platform and analytics platform to basically load code that contributed to the attack. The target of the attack were two tools that helped people in China access material that was blocked in China by the Great Firewall. Of course, this attack was actually the second attempt by China to stop people from accessing such information on GitHub. The first attack involved just using the Great Firewall to block GitHub entirely (it needed to block the entire GitHub, rather than just specific pages, because GitHub is all HTTPS) -- but that caused Chinese programmers who rely on GitHub to freak out and point out that they rely on GitHub to do their jobs.

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.

Back in April, we talked about the fact that the lawsuit against Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant and Jimmy Page for copyright infringement over "Stairway to Heaven" was moving forward to a jury trail, and how ridiculous it was. As we noted, the song was written in 1970, and it's a bit crazy to argue after all these decades that there's infringement. But, more importantly, the similarities between Stairway and the Spirit song "Taurus" were just a few common notes that were predated by many artists, including Bach's Bouree in E Minor. Still, as we'd seen with the Blurred Lines case, when copyright cases go to juries over song similarities, they often turn out wacky. The intricacies of copyright law are tossed out the window and often "hey, these sound similar" seems to win out.

A court in Berlin has made a very bad ruling, saying that digitizing images in the public domain creates a new copyright. We wrote about this case last year, involving the Reiss Engelhorn Museum in Mannheim suing Wikipedia because users had uploaded 17 images of the museum's public domain artwork. Ridiculously, the German court sided with the museum:

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For years we've noted how 19 states have effectively let companies like AT&T and Comcast write protectionist state broadband laws to protect the status quo. Such laws usually either block or hamstring frustrated communities looking to build their own broadband networks, or in some instances from striking public/private agreements with companies like Google Fiber. Last year the FCC finally started paying attention to such bans, stating it intends to use Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to preempt restrictions conflicting with its Congressional mandate to ensure even broadband deployment.

When you look back at Techdirt's coverage of Russia's attempts to control its people and shut down online dissent, it's unlikely you will be thinking to yourself: "What Russia really needs is more mass surveillance." But Russian politicians would disagree with you there, as they debate bringing in even more powers for the government:

We've noted countless times how in the modern computing era, you don't really own what you think you own. You don't really own the music or books that can arbitrarily disappear on your devices, and you no longer really own a wide variety of hardware that can be dramatically changed (often for the worse) via firmware update months or years after purchase. If you're extra lucky, you'll shell out $300 for a piece of hardware that one year later simply won't work at all. With intelligent automobiles and the rise of the internet-of-not-so-smart things, that's more true now than ever.

In 2009, the FCC funded a Harvard study that concluded (pdf) that open access policies (letting multiple ISPs come in and compete over a central, core network) resulted in lower broadband prices and better service. Of course when the FCC released its flimsy, politically timid "National Broadband Plan" back in 2010, this realization (not to mention an honest accounting of the sector's limited competition) was nowhere to be found. Since then, "open access" has become somewhat of a dirty word in telecom, and even companies like Google Fiber -- which originally promised to adhere to the concept on its own network before quietly backpedaling -- are eager to pretend the idea doesn't exist.

We've seen plenty of strange, even laughable, trademark spats around here. What can get lost in the kind of ownership culture we've collectively created is that trademark is chiefly built around the concept of avoiding customer confusion. With that noble goal in mind, businesses are allowed to reserve the right to use specific marks that act as identifiers for their brands. One of the tests that's commonly referenced to determine whether there is the potential for customer confusion is: would a moron in a hurry be confused by a given use between two competing companies?Except nobody ever bothers to tell us to where that moron is hurrying. Given the trademark battle between two portable toilet companies, however, the answer may be: to the bathroom.

Animals aren't as dumb as you might think, and the more we study our pets -- the more we find that we may not just be anthropomorphizing our favorite animals. Some animals definitely have personalities, and some can exhibit some pretty complex cognitive skills. If we can understand more and more animal brains, maybe we'll be able to figure out our own brains, too, someday. Here are just a few things to remember about cats, fish and birds.

So something fascinating happened in Congress today. No matter what your opinion is on gun control or the various legislative proposals around it that have been up for debate in the past week or so, it's hard to fathom what Congressional Republicans thought they were doing today in shutting off the live video feed from the House floor. A bunch of Democrats decided to hold a sit in on the House floor to push for a vote on some gun legislation. That's a bit of a stunt no matter how you look at it, but the Republicans shot back by helping that stunt get much more attention by not just gavelling the House out of session, but also turning off the live feed of the House floor that flows to C-SPAN and out to the rest of us. C-SPAN doesn't control the cameras and is at the whim of Congress to access that feed, so when the GOP shut off the feed, C-SPAN was left without. This isn't a stupid move that's limited to the Republican side of Congress, apparently. Eight years ago the Democrats did the same thing when they controlled the House and were upset about Republicans trying to focus on a particular issue.

Just yesterday we wrote about how the Senate was, somewhat ridiculously, rapidly pushing forward plans on a vote for an amendment to the laws concerning what information the FBI can gather using National Security Letters (NSLs). Despite the fact that the big push for this bill began a few weeks ago, and the fact that it had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the Orlando shooting, cynical Senators including John McCain and Mitch McConnell pointed to the shootings in Orlando as a reason that this expansion of FBI surveillance powers was needed. Of course, the reality is that it wasn't needed, and the law is really there to paper over the fact that the FBI has already been widely abusing its NSL powers to get information it's not allowed to request.

Today's misguided IP infringement lawsuit comes from Cinemark USA, one of the largest theater chains in the United States. Its target is Roblox, a multiplayer online sandbox game where users can create their own "worlds" using blocks -- putting it somewhere between Minecraft and Second Life.Cinemark is accusing Roblox and a few dozen of its users of trademark infringement, thanks to the latter's creations. According to the lawsuit [PDF], various users have created versions of Cinemark theaters (complete with branding) and placed them in their own worlds, or uploaded for others to use in theirs.It's one thing for Cinemark to pursue these Does for trademark infringement. (Although it's bound to be a waste of time, money, and reputation...) It's quite another to go after Roblox for content created by its users. Just because there's no built-in protection for service providers against claims of trademark infringement (like Section 230 of the CDA or the DMCA safe harbor) doesn't mean targeting the platform, rather than the actual wrongdoers, is the right way to approach this.But this filing makes no distinction between Roblox and its users, despite there being a long list of usernames included. The better way to do this (again, assuming suing users, many of whom are likely to be under the age of 18, is somehow "better" than simply asking Roblox to take the content down) would be to serve Roblox a subpoena for account holder information as part of pre-trial discovery, rather than blowing through the entire filing referring to both Roblox and Does as inseparable "defendants."Now, it's understandable that Cinemark might be concerned about unauthorized brand use. One of the stipulations of maintaining this indefinite protection is to assert your control over it. Litigation isn't the only option, but it seems to be the most popular one.As for consumer confusion, it's highly unlikely Roblox users would consider user-generated content to be an authorized marketing attempt by the theater chain… especially when things like the following carry Cinemark branding.

We've been talking a lot about Rule 41 lately around here. As we've discussed, the DOJ had pushed for an update to the rule, basically granting the FBI much greater powers to hack into lots of computers, including those abroad (possibly creating diplomatic issues). We've been discussing the problems with the DOJ's proposed change for years, and we haven't been alone. Civil liberties groups and tech companies have both blasted the plans, but to no avail.

Earlier this week I got knocked out by some pretty serious food poisoning. The few times I would try to do some work or pop in on Twitter, all I was seeing was people mocking the London Review of Books' somewhat insane 35,000-word-long profile of Craig Wright, the guy who earlier this year claimed to be the real Satoshi Nakamoto. While he even convinced Gavin Andresen (the guy who really turned Nakamoto's original work into actual Bitcoin), many others quickly pointed out that Wright's "proof" appeared to be a giant scam. Why write a 35,000-word profile on a guy who isn't Satoshi Nakamoto? I don't know, but thankfully the food poisoning and the few snarky tweets I saw saved me from digging into the entire thing and wasting an afternoon. Fusion posted a much shorter summary of the piece, in case you're wondering.

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Roskomnadzor is the Russian "telecommunications regulator" or "watchdog," but it could just as easily be described as the Russian internet censor, because that appears to be a large part of its role in the country. In the past, we've written about Roskomnadzor blocking all of Wikipedia over a single reference to hashish (really) and also a plan to block all of CloudFlare because the company made it difficult for Russia's internet censorship plans to work. Earlier this month, Roskomnadzor made news for blacklisting a Vice article, claiming that it would encourage shoplifting.