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Last night, we posted the news that a judge in New Zealand had ruled that Kim Dotcom and his colleagues were extraditable. Dotcom is appealing the decision, so it's not over yet. Soon after the decision was announced, the full ruling by Judge Nevin Dawson was released. It's a staggering 271 pages, and I've spent a good chunk of today reading it over. Some parts of it are more compelling than others, and there may even be enough to support the ruling. However, what troubles me is how frequently Judge Dawson appears to totally, without question, accept the US government's arguments (as relayed by New Zealand prosecutors), despite the fact that many of them are clearly misleading at best, or downright incorrect.

We recently warned about how the new Data Protection Directive in the EU, while written with good intentions, unfortunately appears to both lock-in and expand the whole right to be forgotten idea in potentially dangerous ways. A big part of it is that the directive is just too vague, meaning that the RTBF may apply to all kinds of internet services, but we won't know for certain until the lawsuits are all finally decided many years in the future. Also unclear are what sorts of safe harbors there may be and how the directive protects against abusing the right to be forgotten for out and out censorship. Unfortunately, many are simply celebrating these new rules for the fact that they do give end users some more power over their data and how it's used.

We've noticed some Christmas dinner traditions that might sound a little strange. But there are some traditions around this time of year that are curious enough to warrant some quick fact-checking. Whatever the case may be, enjoy whatever traditions you follow!

As a Techdirt reader, the business of professional baseball is not required reading. That said, for many reasons, the baseball business aligns nicely with many of the topics we discuss here, and baseball in general is probably the math-iest of sports. That's why it seems necessary to push back on this Chicken Little piece at the Wall Street Journal, which claims that the laughably large baseball contracts players are signing today are doomed to drop precipitously because of cord-cutting.

Here's a brief roundup of Fourth Amendment-related court decisions in which judges have pushed back against law enforcement's insistence that these warrantless searches were completely justifiable.

Facebook Co-Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg's decision to dedicate 99 percent of his Facebook stock towards improving the world was met with strong praise this holiday season. The resources will be used to promote programs related to "personalized learning, curing disease, connecting people and building strong communities."

For several decades, the US presented itself as the "land of opportunity" -- a welcoming place where foreign citizens could come to escape religious oppression, endless wars, poverty or vicious dictatorial regimes. This has morphed over the last several years -- thanks to endless wars of our own (Drugs, Terrorism) -- into the US acting as the "land of hostility," where foreign citizens are viewed as freeloaders at best, and terrorists/drug runners at worst.

If you're a Quentin Tarantino fan, just a movie fan, or someone who in some way sees advertisements, you likely already know that Tarantino's latest film is due for release on Christmas. What you may not know is that it's already widely available through illegitimate sources and that it appears that came to be because someone inside of a film industry company got their hands on a screener copy and uploaded it to the internet.

The Indian government has spent much of the last year trying to craft net neutrality rules, and had recently been fielding public comment on whether or not Facebook's zero rating effort, Free Basics, violates net neutrality. As we've covered at length, Facebook's been trying to corner the developing nation ad market with a zero rated program that offers free access to curated, Facebook approved content. Critics and Free Basic content partners alike haven't been comfortable with giving Facebook that much control.

Here's a roundup of some of our most popular car accessory deals. First up, we have the $30 Zus Smart Charger and Locator. Plug this into your car's power adapter and you can charge your devices while you're driving around town. It can help you find your way back to your parked car via Bluetooth and an app for your phone.

Cyrus Farivar is reporting that the government of Venezuela has decided the best way to keep its citizens from learning more about its collapsing economy is to sue the US-based operators of a currency exchange information website… in a US federal court.

For quite some time now, we've pointed out that the whole zero rating issue was a way for broadband providers to conduct a stealth war on net neutrality -- first putting in place "restrictions" that they could then "lift" for partners, pretending it was a consumer friendly move. Last month, T-Mobile introduced Binge-on, it's second such attempt at zero rating. Its first, Music Freedom, exempted some streaming music services from its data caps. Binge-On focused on video, but had a few oddities. Like Music Freedom, Binge On would make "select" video streaming platforms exempt from the data cap -- but in order to do that, it would downgrade the quality of those streams to 480p, a lower resolution than most are used to these days. It was notable that neither YouTube nor Amazon Prime were included "partners" in the launch.

While cable industry executives are still intent on claiming cord cutting's either a mass hallucination or a fad, data suggests that ditching traditional TV for Internet video is gaining steam. A new study by PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers) indicates that while traditional TV customers get 194 channels, they only watch, on average, about 17 of them. And while the study found that 79% of US consumers subscribe to some form of traditional pay-TV, 23% said they engaged in "cord-trimming" in the past year (reducing their overall package where they could), and 16% said they had unsubscribed from pay-TV services in the past year.

The challenge by Philip Morris to Australia's plain packaging law for tobacco products is perhaps the best-known example of how companies try to use corporate sovereignty provisions in trade agreements to force nations to change their policies -- in this case, one designed to save lives. That case was also notable for the way that it had been brought: since Philip Morris was very unlikely to win by invoking the trade agreement between Australia and the US, it used one between Australia and Hong Kong -- a classic case of treaty shopping. Last week, we heard that the case had been dismissed. An article by Kyla Tienhaara in The Sydney Morning Herald explains:

As we've previously discussed the trademark issues surrounding the Washington Redskins team name, and as I've personally flip-flopped on the question like I was running for public office to represent salmon on a dry dock, none of that coverage has ever called into question that the team is run by some number of jackasses. Dan Snyder, who owns the team, has gone out of his way to attack all kinds of media and blogs over coverage of the team and its antics. Well, back on the name of the team, even if they got a big gift from a court in a related lawsuit, it turns out the team has been engaging in a bit of subterfuge to try to drum up support for the mascot as well.

This doesn't come as a huge surprise, but minutes ago in New Zealand Judge Nevin Dawson gave the US Justice Department a bit of an early Christmas present in declaring that Kim Dotcom and his co-defendants in the Megaupload case are eligible for extradition, following the long extradition trial earlier this year. The judge apparently said that the evidence was "overwhelming" against the defendants. This does not mean that Dotcom and crew are boarding a plane across the Pacific just yet. They have 15 days to file an appeal and Dotcom's lawyers have already indicated that such an appeal is on the way (what did you expect?). Dotcom's lawyer Ira Rothken points out that under New Zealand's extradition agreement with the US, there is no extradition over copyright issues -- and argues this ruling renders such a safe harbor "illusory." Of course, even if that fails, there's still a separate process for approving the actual extradition, which would take place with New Zealand's Justice Minister, but that part of the process is more of a formality than anything else. It's not over yet, but at this point things are leaning strongly towards Dotcom and his colleagues being shipped to Virginia to face a US criminal trial.

Maybe you haven't seen the latest Star Wars film yet, but it's pretty hard to avoid hearing about it. Recently, there have been some more "realistic" space movies out (eg. Gravity, Interstellar, The Martian), but there's also plenty of actual space stories to watch, too. In the past year or so, we've seen some spectacular rocket failures, but thankfully, we're closing out 2015 with some successful accomplishments -- and plans for more sequels.

When Google discusses its latest self-driving car statistics (provided monthly at the company's website), the company is quick to highlight that with two million miles of autonomous and manual driving combined, the company's self-driving cars have only been involved in 17 minor accidents, none of them technically the fault of Google. Or, more specifically, these accidents almost always involve Google's cars being rear ended by human drivers. But what Google's updates usually don't discuss is the fact that quite often, self-driving cars are being rear ended because they're being too cautious and not human enough.

Body camera footage is a great tool for law enforcement accountability. But all the potential good can all be undone by ensuring the public has no access to the recordings. If recordings become just another internal "document," nothing has been gained by the addition of body-worn cameras.

As highlighted by the folks at EFF, Judge Richard Posner has ruled in an appeal on a defamation case, tossing out an injunction against two individuals who defamed two other people. The details of the actual case fall into the "somewhat nutty" category, involving some religious stuff that we'll skip over as not relevant. What you need to know is that two people (Patricia Ann Fuller and Paul Hartman) were sued and found to have defamed Kevin McCarthy and Albert Langsenkamp. Some of those people go by other names and titles (including Mr. Langsenkamp referring to himself as a Papal Knight of the Holy Sepulchre), but we'll leave that aside. The court found in favor of the plaintiffs and said that the defamation occurred. The only real issue on appeal was whether or not the judge's decision to issue a very broad injunction against Hartman and Fuller was appropriate.

Welcome to the last podcast episode of 2015! For the whole year (and since long before that) Techdirt has been speaking out against surveillance and government invasion of privacy, to the point where it might seem like we give no consideration to the legitimacy of any kind of surveillance. But that's not necessarily true, so this week we're approaching things from the other side and discussing the limits of reasonable and acceptable surveillance. 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.

For much of the year Facebook has been under fire for trying to dress up its attempt to corner developing nation ad markets under the banner of selfless altruism. Facebook's plan is relatively simple: through a program dubbed Free Basics, Facebook plans to offer developing markets a Zuckerburg-curated, walled garden version of the Internet, for free. Under Facebook's vision of this program, Facebook becomes the axle around which online access (and therefore online advertising) spins for generations to come, with the tangential bonus of helping low-income communities get a taste of what online connectivity can offer.

While everyone's been focused on the big dispute over the name of the NFL team from Washington DC... and whether or not it's appropriate for the US Patent and Trademark Office to take back the team's trademark, observant trademark watchers knew that the case to watch on this issue involved a dispute over the trademark for the band "The Slants." The band, whose members are Asian Americans, sued after the USPTO rejected their attempt to trademark the name of the band, claiming that the name was a disparaging term for Asians. The key argument: is it a violation of the First Amendment for the Lanham Act (the law under which registered Federal trademarks exist) to allow the USPTO to reject trademarks for being disparaging. Specifically, Section 2(a) says that:

Most of our readers are familiar with what a VPN service does -- and VPN deals are very popular around here. But if you're not using a VPN and don't know why you'd want to, check out this post from 2013. If you have any interest in being anonymous on the internet, use a VPN service. Grab a 2-year subscription for Private Internet Access VPN service for just $59.95 before time runs out. Private Internet Access has some good reviews and has publicly answered TorrentFreak's serious questions about its privacy policies and logging practices. PIA says, "We do not log, period. This includes, but is not limited to, any traffic data, DNS data or meta (session) data. Privacy IS our policy."

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance really doesn't like encryption -- and really doesn't seem even remotely interested in the fact that he doesn't appear to understand even the basics of what he's talking about. Vance started whining about mobile phone encryption in January of this year, falsely claiming it meant these phones were "sealed off from law enforcement." Of course, that ignores the fact that only some information is encrypted, and plenty of other stuff is readily available. Over the summer, Vance kept up the campaign, with a ridiculous nearly fact free op-ed in the NY Times in which he blamed an unsolved murder in Evanston Illinois (note: ~800 miles from Manhattan) on encryption. As we noted at the time, the facts didn't match the reality. The phone in that case (from Samsung) didn't come with default local encryption turned on, and it's not at all clear the phone even had that much value in the investigation (and, remember, communications metadata was still readily available).

Earlier this year, we wrote about (yet another) ridiculous copyright lawsuit where the heirs of famous people think they must own something just because everything must be "owned." In this case, it was the heirs of Abbott & Costello, claiming copyright infringement because a Broadway play, Hand of God, uses a bit of the famed "Who's On First?" routine in the play. You probably know "Who's On First?" already, right? The history of this routine is incredibly complicated. It's arguable as to whether or not Abbott & Costello came up with it in the first place. Going back to the Vaudeville days, jokes like this got passed around over and over again, with each act putting its own spin on it, or just mimicking others. Abbott even performed a version of it before he teamed up with Costello. Some have long argued that the entire bit is clearly in the public domain.

You'll recall that when AT&T was trying to justify its $69 billion acquisition of DirecTV, it rolled out all the usual claims about how the deal would have immeasurable benefits for consumers. Sure, the deal would technically eliminate jobs and a pay TV competitor from an already competitively-stunted market, but just think of the potential synergies! And as the two companies begin to fuse operationally, these amazing synergies have started to materialize -- in the form of new rate hikes imposed by both companies on exactly the same day.

Long before the vast planetary surveillance programs being carried out by the Five Eyes team were revealed by Edward Snowden, there was Echelon, a similarly globe-spanning system for slurping up communications. The person who did more than anyone to expose this top-secret collaboration was the UK journalist Duncan Campbell:

Some odd news out of Massachussetts. Legislators and law enforcement are teaming up to push legislation that would give agencies permission to seize and sell property belonging to people convicted of sexual crimes against children.

The goal of launching people into space is difficult to really justify. Robots can do just about all of the same tasks a human astronaut can, and if robots can't, maybe we should work on building better robots. Still, manned missions to explore space are a really long term project that could lead to lunar space stations -- or small colonies on the moon or Mars. And if we ever want to expand beyond the Earth, we'll have to figure out how to travel in space for more than a few days at a time without the Earth's protection.

Photography Is Not A Crime (PINAC) has obtained the Lakeland (FL) Police Department's internal guidance on citizen recordings. What should be a simple, succinct document stating that photography and recordings are presumed to be protected by the First Amendment, the guidance works extra hard to imagine scenarios where it might be possible to shut down recordings or seize devices.

We talk a great deal around these parts about new business models at both the macro and micro level. Individual experiments and successes, as well as failures, are both interesting and instructive, but a good macro-level look at how entire industries can function in a digital marketplace should be equally useful. With that in mind, Chris Dixon has an absolute must-read post on Medium on the lessons other industries can learn from the PC gaming industry's success in recent times.

The Cherokee County (KS) Sheriff's Department engaged in a fruitless 19-hour standoff with a vacant residence. On the 20th hour, the fugitive house was finally taken down.

The FCC's unwillingness to clearly ban zero rating as part of the net neutrality rules is starting to bite the agency -- and consumers -- squarely on the ass. Zero rating -- or the practice of letting some content bypass an ISPs' usage caps -- is seen by many to be a major anti-competitive problem, given the act of giving some companies cap exempt status puts everybody else at a disadvantage. That's why Chile, Norway, Netherlands, Finland, Iceland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta and Japan have banned the practice.

As you may have heard, last night Apple CEO Tim Cook was on 60 Minutes. The overall story really wasn't all that insightful for anyone who's been following Apple for any length of time, but what got a lot of attention was Tim Cook reiterating his position on protecting the privacy of Apple users through encryption. Here's basically the entire exchange:

Arizona's Sheriff Joe Arpaio is infamous for many reasons. He likes to dehumanize his detainees by issuing them pink underwear. His office is pretty much Racial Profiling Central. His armed "citizen posse," which is tasked with providing backup to sworn officers and (no, really) investigating President Obama's birth certificate, has included such luminaries as Steven Seagal and Lou Ferrigno. His jail has twice been declared unconstitutional. His office has been sued by the DOJ and at least 11 former employees. He has been called several things, most of them derogatory, but until this point, has never been accused of violating intellectual property laws.

This is your last chance to get the CompTIA Exam Prep Bundle -- it's on sale now for $59 and includes 42 hours of certification prep course content. Completing these courses will get you ready for A+, Network+, Security+, Cloud Essentials, and Cloud+ exams (exams are not included in this bundle). You will receive certificates of completions for your work from the course provider, Simplilearn, and be ready to ace the exams to give your career that extra boost.

Last week, we wrote about how Juniper Networks had uncovered some unauthorized code in its firewall operating system, allowing knowledgeable attackers to get in and decrypt VPN traffic. While the leading suspect still remains the NSA, it's been interesting to watch various US government agencies totally freak out over their own networks now being exposed:

Blackberry's CEO John Chen feels the company hasn't hit rock-bottom yet. In a post for the company's blog, Chen announces that the phone favored by much of The Establishment will continue to support the hopes and dreams of The Establishment.

In the Democratic Presidential debate on Saturday night, Hillary Clinton followed up on her recent nonsensical arguments about why Silicon Valley has to "solve" the problem of encryption. As we've noted, it was pretty clear that she didn't fully understand the issue, and that was even more evident with her comments on Saturday night.

The Intercept has done it again. An anonymous source "concerned about the militarization of domestic law enforcement" has handed the site a catalog of cell phone surveillance equipment. Many of the products discussed in the pages are making their public debut, presumably to the deep chagrin of the manufacturers and the government agencies that use them.

The Intercept has done it again. An anonymous source "concerned about the militarization of domestic law enforcement" has handed the site a catalog of cellphone surveillance equipment. Many of the products discussed in the pages are making their public debut, presumably to the deep chagrin of the manufacturers and the government agencies that use them.

This week, law professor Eric Posner joined the crusade of people attacking free speech under the banner of stopping ISIS, stating "it’s common sense that when a country is embroiled in a war, it should counter propaganda that could populate a third column with recruits." Our winner for most insightful comment of the week is That One Guy, who responded to this by pointing out that the premise is correct but the conclusion is wrong:

Five Years Ago This week in 2010, we saw artists responding to piracy in a variety of ways. On the one hand, a comic artist was speaking out about how copyright kills culture, a musician was explaining why file sharing isn't a big deal, and an author was trying an honest and direct approach to asking pirates for support. On the other hand, a different author was slamming piracy while admitting to having a huge pirated music collection, and George Clinton (usually a supporter of remixing and sampling) surprised us all with a lawsuit against the Black Eyed Peas. Meanwhile, the Wikileaks saga continued, and many noted that the US's reaction was doing more harm than the leaks themselves (to the point that you had to wonder if it was more about overhyping threats to pass new laws). The Congressional Research Service noted that there were serious challenges to charging Julian Assange with anything (not to mention the challenge of doing proper research on Wikileaks when access to Wikileaks is blocked). Attention was also beginning to turn towards Chelsea Manning (then still Bradley), who was being tortured by the government apparently in the hopes of securing testimony of a "conspiracy" with Assange. Ten Years Ago Today, product placement is a fact of life — but this week in 2005, creators in America were still hoping they could get out from under its bootheel while creators in Europe were only just beginning to experience the gathering storm. The music business was busy blaming Apple for the fact that digital download sales weren't a panacea, while Starbucks was considering its own download offerings and Google was rolling out music-focused search services. Congress was doing Hollywood's bidding in seeking to plug the analog hole, Microsoft was granted an absurd patent on pausing videos with a click, and the Supreme Court allowed CD-ROM reproductions of magazines (remember those?) as long as they are in annoying limited formats. Since some of Sony's DRM-infected CDs were still on the shelves, one band took it up the task of recall the discs themselves. Another copy protection provider was trying a publicity stunt with a $1000 bounty to convince the world its technology was safe, though at least some people were smart enough to realize that copy protection stalls innovation. Fifteen Years Ago Five years before that, the idea of copy-protected CDs was a new one. This week in 2000 was the first time we heard of plans to make such CDs (and the first of many times we'd point out the inherent problems with the idea). Also this week in 2000: Tuvalu was getting rich off the dot-TV domain deal, while technology magazines were no longer getting rich covering post-bubble Silicon Valley; electronic ink was still on the horizon though early wireless payments were becoming a reality; Walmart couldn't catch up to Amazon despite predictions, and Ask Jeeves was cleaning house with lots of layoffs; and, near the very beginning of a process that has now entirely reversed itself, the tech world was actively pushing more people to adopt Flash. Twenty-Eight Years Ago Square Enix is one of the most popular video game developers in the world, but back in 1987 it was still just Square — a struggling studio on the verge of bankruptcy, with no popular games under its belt. On December 18th, strongly suspecting it would be their last title ever, they released a little game called Final Fantasy for the NES. The rest, as they say, is history.

Some truly DIY-inclined people never run out of ideas, and are always brimming with projects they want to undertake. The rest of us occasionally need a nudge in the right direction, and for that there's Thimble, a monthly maker kit delivered to your door. The Good How many people have picked up an Arduino in a moment of excitement, only to realize they didn't really have any plans for it? How many Raspberry Pi boards are sitting unused in drawers? My estimate is: lots. The potential of these maker staples is obvious and exciting, but realizing that potential is a step that's a bit harder to take, and that's where Thimble comes in. Thimble offers a monthly subscription for maker kits that use Arduino, Raspberry Pi and other components to create cool projects that you can start doing right away. Everything's neatly packaged with all the parts and instructions you need, and these aren't just pre-fab snap-it-together sets: they are real, fun maker projects to be carefully assembled and programmed. The instructions cover the entire process — the first kit, which is for a small wi-fi controlled robot, takes you all the way from soldering the basic components to coding a smartphone control app. Electronics kits and other such tools have been around for a long time, but the subscription model opens up new possibilities. Rather than needing to cram a generic kit full of enough generic gear to build multiple things, take them apart, and build them again, Thimble can custom-craft each kit and continually introduce people to specific new skills and projects that leave them with functioning fruits of their labor. The Bad Part of me wonders if a monthly subscription might just be a little much — a lot of people aren't going to have time to dig into and complete a new project that often, and a backlog of Thimble boxes would quickly become just as intimidating as that drawer-bound Arduino you never learned how to use. Meanwhile, at $70 per kit, a monthly subscription is no small commitment. I suspect that as the company grows, they will have to offer some more flexible options such as less-frequent deliveries and the easy ability to pause and resume subscriptions, or simply "opt in" during months when you have the time. The Students Of course, it's pretty clear that while this could be a lot of fun for adult hobbyists and even serious makers, the true beneficiaries are going to be students who are still just setting out on this path. The kits look like great teaching tools, and would certainly be a step up from the dusty bins full of tangled bits of wire and half-broken circuit components that I remember from high school tech class. Thimble's future may well lie in partnerships with high schools, student clubs and other places where the next generation of makers are learning the skills they need.

Following Congress passing the Omnibus spending bill, it of course did not take long for President Obama to sign the bill, meaning that the fake cybersecurity bill/actual surveillance bill, is now law. Particularly ridiculous is that in his little speech about it, Obama talked about how he "wasn't wild about everything in it" but that he was happy that it was a bill "without ideological provisions." Except, you know, for the many ones that did get in there.

While trademarks being granted for colors strikes me as a special brand of silly in general, there really must be something about the color purple and its associated shades that sparks protectionism. Purple/magenta has been the subject of trademark bullying from several entities in the past, including CraftsAmericana Group, T-Mobile, and Cadbury. What moves the needle on most of these stories from "trademark-gone-too-far" to "trademark bullying" is that these actions tend to be brought against other groups that aren't even operating within the same industry as the offended. That's key in trademark disputes where, in most cases, the two parties must be competing with one another for infringement to occur.

It's not always easy to nurture plants so they grow and thrive, but it's especially difficult without land -- and gravity. Farming in space isn't exactly a common activity, but if any significant number of people are going to live in space for longer than a few months (without re-supply cargo ships or huge stores of packaged food), astronauts are going to need to figure out how to grow their meals. Space station residents have only just started to eat plants they've grown in space, so it'll be awhile before anyone is growing potatoes on Mars.

Add the Toronto Star to the growing list of websites which claim to love conversation with their readers so much, they will no longer be letting readers comment. As we've seen with countless news outlets over the last year, it's not just good enough to close your comment section, for some reason you must insult your readers' collective intelligence. This can easily be accomplished by pretending you're not closing down comments because you're too lazy and cheap to maintain a local community and moderators, but because you're looking out for the best interests of all mankind.

The season of Christmas is upon us. You can feel it everywhere, from the holiday decorations, to the television specials, to the waning interest in workplace productivity. Oh, yeah, and Target is back in the news for losing people's personal information again.