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Reusable rocket technology has been a 'holy grail' of sorts for space exploration. Building reusable components is supposed to make space travel more affordable, but the Space Shuttle is the prime example of how that's not necessarily true, as it cost over an order of magnitude more than originally planned. Still, it should be possible to make reusable rockets that are cheaper to operate, and some private companies are figuring out how to do it. SpaceX hasn't quite gotten reusable rockets perfected yet (though, it has done it more than a few times with its Grasshopper vehicle). And depending on how you define a "rocket" -- Virgin Galactic & Scaled Composites have also developed reusable space vehicles.

Comcast has been dutifully modeling its behavior in such a way so as to fill up Techdirt's story pages for years now. So, when we come across a story somewhere discussing how Comcast is doing some bad new thing, it's tempting to simply assume it's true and move on. Such might be the case for some readers of ZDNet's recent post about how Comcast was injecting notices into browsers warning of potential copyright infringement.

Many members of the public believe the internet is subject to a completely different set of laws when it comes to defamation. Fortunately, sanity (mostly) continues to reign when courts apply REAL laws to newfangled message delivery systems. There are exceptions, of course. An Australian court recently declared Google to be the "publisher" of defamatory content posted by other people at other websites, but returned in search results. A Canadian court found a blogger personally liable for republishing defamatory statements made by others.

The Montana Standard, a newspaper in Butte, Montana has apparently decided on a new strategy for its online commenters, requiring "real names" to be associated with every comment. We've spent plenty of time arguing why this is kind of stupid, but many websites falsely believe that anonymity leads to less friendly comments, and using "real names" will magically make people nice (in our experience, people with real names can still be insufferable jackasses, while some of our best comments come from anonymous users, but...). But, that change in policy alone isn't that big of a deal. What is a big deal is that the Standard has decided to do this retroactively. As it stands now, and as it's been in the past, when you sign up to comment, it directly asks you for both your real name and your "screenname" and states pretty clearly that this is the name that will display with your comments: But on January 1st, all of that changes, and whatever people put in as their "real names" will show up. The Standard is allowing people who are concerned to email them before December 26th to argue for why their comments should be removed before the January 1st switch over, but it seems likely that many won't even realize this is happening. Lots of people have been using the comments on that post itself to criticize this plan, and Paul Alan Levy has written a thorough post explaining why this is so problematic:

As you may have heard, last week actor Charlie Sheen announced that he is HIV positive, which got lots of news coverage. Related to that, In Touch magazine produced the non disclosure agreement (NDA) that it claims "Charlie Sheen had his sexual partners sign when they came to his house." I guess if you're a celebrity known for sleeping around, this is the kind of thing you have your lawyers cook up for you. But what struck me as interesting was that, beyond the basic NDA language, there was some copyright language concerning any images, videos or sound recordings. You can understand why Sheen (and his lawyers) don't want anyone taking pictures of him or even talking about the relationship to book or magazine writers, so they include some bizarre copyright transfer language for the partner to agree to: It's a little difficult to read, so here are the relevant sections:

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When last we checked in with Martin Shkreli -- founder of Turing Pharmaceuticals and the personification of everything that's wrong with the pharmaceutical industry and mankind -- he was feebly defending his company's decision to jack up the price of a 60-year-old medication some 5000%. Shkreli became America's least liked human being after his company increased the price per pill of Daraprim (used by both AIDS and cancer patients) from $13.50 per pill to $750 per pill. After relentless criticism, Shkreli appeared to backpedal, claiming last September the company would lower prices:

If you were wondering whether or not the FCC would bless T-Mobile's new controversial zero rating plans, agency boss Tom Wheeler has given a pretty good indication of which way the agency is leaning. As covered previously, T-Mobile's been aggressively experimenting with zero rating -- first by exempting only the biggest music services from its usage caps -- then more recently by announcing Binge On. Binge On exempts video services from T-Mobile's wireless data caps, but "optimizes" those streams, limiting them to 480p.

As you hopefully already know, we take a bit of a different view of ad blockers around here on Techdirt, recognizing that many people have very good reasons for using them, and we have no problem if you make use of them. In fact, we give you the option of turning off the ads on Techdirt separately, whether or not you use an ad blocker. And we try to make sure that the ads on Techdirt are not horrible, annoying or dangerous (and sometimes, hopefully, they're even useful). Most publications, however, continue to take a very antagonistic view towards their very own communities and readers, and have attacked ad blockers, sometimes blocking users from reading content if they have an ad blocker. Perhaps no publication has fought harder against ad blockers than German publishing giant Axel Springer, the same company that frequently blames Google for its own failure to adapt.

We had just been talking about the awkward place the Washington Redskins most recent legal filing has left the government in, regarding the team's trademark. In that filing, the team pointed out the sheer hypocrisy of the government's stance that the term "Redskins" is too offensive to receive trademark registration status, yet the government has seen fit to award that status to all kinds of terms and phrases that are equally if not more offensive on any number of levels. But it isn't only for already-registered marks that the awkwardness exists. For new applications too, the courts now have to weigh whether offense applies to granting new trademarks. And, frankly, it's causing some in the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board to employ some serious mental gymnastics when ruling.

The visually impaired are a sizable group of hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Some vision problems are easily corrected with glasses or contacts or various kinds of laser-based eye surgery. However, some retinal problems are much more difficult (or impossible) to treat. Retinal surgery isn't fun at all, but it can be the preferred option when given the choice between blindness and some amount of vision. Check out a few of these developments that could help people see a little bit more.

Earlier this month, Brad Heath and Brett Kelman of USA Today reported that the DEA was running a massive amount of wiretap applications through a single judge in Riverside County, California. Judge Helios Hernandez has signed off on five times as many wiretap warrants as any other judge in the United States.

In the aftermath of the Paris attacks, portions of Anonymous decided to "launch multiple operations" against the jackass collective that is ISIS/Daesh. Dubbed #OpISIS, the group's self-declared "biggest operation ever" has predominately involved posting what the group claims are ISIS affiliated Twitter accounts to Pastebin. These "ISIS affiliated" users are then reported to Twitter using a "Twatter Reporter" script being circulated among some members of the collective. In a video, Anonymous crows that the group has been responsible for bringing 20,000 ISIS-related social media accounts offline:Except there's a major problem with the latest Anonymous campaign. A large number of the accounts they're suspending have absolutely nothing to do with ISIS. A review of the banned accounts by Ars Technica found that large number of the accounts were banned simply for using Arabic, with many ordinary Palestinian, Chechan and Kurdish users caught in the crossfire. Similarly, some of the banned accounts were trying to troll the religious cult. And there's indications that many in the group aren't even sure who they're supposed to be targeting:

Did you hear that story about how ISIS is so sophisticated with encryption that they have a special "opsec" manual on computer security protocols? You might have, because last week it was all over the internet. Yahoo kicked it off with a story, claiming it was the secret manual ISIS "uses to teach its soldiers about encryption." Wired followed up with its own story, as did The Telegraph. The "manual" was "discovered" by analysts at the Combating Terrorism Center, based out of the US Military Academy at West Point. Thankfully, Buzzfeed has the details, noting that the guide, created by a cybersecurity firm in Kuwait, named Cyberkov, is actually a guide for journalists and activists to protect their communications from oppressive governments. And there's nothing particularly secret about it, as apparently it's basically just repurposed stuff from the EFF's website:

Likeness and publicity rights have become a popular tool for censorship these days, often with a focus on someone whining about something they don't think is fair, despite it being perfectly legal. What's been allowed to occur has been the expansion of a permission culture that is squarely at odds with First Amendment principles in almost every respect. The depiction of public figures in art and entertainment, particularly when serving as some kind of commentary or comedy, should so obviously be protected as speech that I wonder how we even got to a point where our culture is now entertaining court cases over such things. And yet the cases keep coming,

Dell this week found itself under fire for embedding a certificate in some PCs that makes it relatively easy for attackers to cryptographically impersonate HTTPS-protected websites. First discovered by a programmer named Joe Nord, Dell's eDellRoot certificate appears to have been preinstalled as a root certificate on several Dell laptop and desktop models. As Nord notes, it's relatively simple to extract the locally-stored key, sign fraudulent TLS certificates for any HTTPS-protected website on the Internet, and trick user browsers to accept these encrypted Web sessions with no security warnings whatsoever.This is, of course, reminiscent of the Superfish fiasco that plagued Lenovo earlier this year. But in that case the culprit was third-party adware, while Dell's eDellRoot is the company's own abomination. Duo Labs Security says it discovered the same problem, noting that it had even found evidence of the root certificate on some SCADA systems, typically used in places like factories, dams and power stations. Like Nord, Duo's researchers note that it's rather incredible that Dell wouldn't have discovered and fixed this problem after what happened to Lenovo:

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Comcast certainly had quite a year. When it wasn't busy failing to justify its latest attempted mega merger or criticizing bloggers for calling its top lobbyist a lobbyist, the company continued to deliver what's statistically the worst customer service of any company in the United States. This is before you consider the company's latest efforts to expand usage caps, and use those usage caps to give their own streaming services a leg up, while payrolling the industry's attempt to kill net neutrality protections.

Look, everyone has known for quite some time that Senator Dianne Feinstein's big push for so-called "cybersecurity" legislation in the form of CISA had absolutely nothing to do with cybersecurity. It was always about giving another surveillance tool to her friends at the NSA. However, given that she was one of the most vocal in selling it as a "cybersecurity" bill (despite the fact that no cybersecurity experts actually thought the bill would help) it seems worth comparing her statements from just a month ago, with her new attacks on actual cybersecurity in the form of encryption.

The Institute for Justice has released its latest report on asset forfeiture. Despite some recent legislative attempts to add a much-needed conviction requirement to the seizure of property, most of the country still allows law enforcement to proceed under the assumption that money, vehicles and houses are "guilty," even if those they take this property from are, for all intents and purposes, innocent.

The Pentagon's 1033 program is a case study in unintended consequences. The idea -- put military equipment back into service rather than simply scrapping it -- has some merit. The actual deployment has been a nightmare.

We've had a few instances in the past involving wine-makers and needless trademark spats with companies in completely unrelated industries. The time Trek Bicycle went after a winery, comes to mind for instance. More recently, and somewhat more appropriate to this post, was the trademark dispute between a winery and brewery with similar names. The question in that case was whether or not wine and beer were distinct enough products so as to be essentially operating in different industries and, therefore, not fall under the trademark provisions for their respective marks.

Washing your hands with soap is an activity that most Americans probably take for granted. However, even doctors need to be reminded sometimes how important hand washing with soap is. This isn't just a conspiracy from the big "soap industry" for people to use more soap. Plenty of soap is bought and wasted, but hopefully, more people will use soap appropriately and wisely around the world....

Earlier this year, a police officer and the ACLU performed a "strange bedfellows" act in hopes of overturning Indiana's Bureau of Motor Vehicle's rejection of the officer's vanity license plate request. Rodney Vawter, a rare law enforcement officer capable of enjoying a laugh at his own expense (literally/figuratively), applied for a plate reading "01NK." The BMV gave it to him. Three years later, it changed its mind, claiming the plate was now "offensive."

Yahoo's been struggling for some time under the leadership of Marissa Mayer to become as relevant in the advertising and content space as contemporaries like Google and Facebook. By and large these efforts have not been going particularly well, with the mood inside the company supposedly "grim and contentious," employees frustrated with a lack of direction, heavy often-senseless micromanagement, and a "lack of a coherent strategy." A growing movement from both inside and outside of Yahoo to replace Mayer has gained momentum.

Once upon a time, a DC district court judge found the NSA's bulk phone metadata collection to be a violation of the Fourth Amendment. Wailing, gnashing of teeth and a round of appeals ensued.

By now, Comcast's strategy for fighting internet video competition is very clear. For one, the company is slowly but surely expanding usage caps into dozens of new markets. In these ever-expanding areas, Comcast imposes a 300 GB usage cap, then charges users $10 for every 50 GB of extra data they consume. Comcast's also now testing a new wrinkle wherein users have the option of paying another $30 to $35 if they want unlimited data. In short, the option to have the same unlimited connection they had yesterday will cost these users significantly more.

Over the weekend, the Telegraph (which, really, is probably only the second or third worst UK tabloid), published perhaps the dumbest article ever on encryption, written by Clare Foges, who until recently, was a top speech writer for UK Prime Minister David Cameron (something left unmentioned in the article). The title of the article should give you a sense of its ridiculousness: Why is Silicon Valley helping the tech-savvy jihadists? I imagine her followups will including things like "Why is Detroit helping driving-savvy jihadists?" and "Why are farmers feeding food-savvy jihadists?"

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At long last, it looks as though the law will finally get its (wo)man. Fourteen months after a Dawson County (GA) deputy arrested citizen journalist Nydia Tisdale for filming a political rally at a local pumpkin farm, Sheriff Billy Carlisle is patting himself on the back for turning a potential civil liberties violation into a ham sandwich.

New documents obtained by Charlie Savage of the New York Times (as the result of a FOIA lawsuit) show that the NSA may have killed off its bulk collection of US persons' emails back in 2011, but it quickly found another way to obtain these -- a way that circumvented restrictions on domestic collections.

A New South Wales cop is finally facing punishment for illegally accessing a Facebook account to perform illegal surveillance, but it took a trip to court to make it happen.

Following the attacks in Paris, many things were sadly predictable, including the crowd of encryption haters blaming Edward Snowden for the attacks. Responding to this, one anonymous commenter won most insightful comment of the week with a brief review of the facts:

Five Years Ago This week in 2010, we really saw things heat up around the TSA and its newly-introduced "backscatter" scanners and "enhanced" patdowns. One man was threatened with a lawsuit by the agency for refusing to be groped, while a woman who shared a similar story on the radio was nitpicked and accused of lying in a TSA blog post. The agency stood by its position when confronted, actively defending the techniques, and it even seemed like the public was okay with the naked scans — but it turned out that was only if you didn't mention the "naked" part. Tests were showing that similar scanners were frequently fooled by clothing, but Time Magazine was standing up for the TSA and saying the backlash was just internet hype, even as the agency was being sued by a pilot over its intrusiveness. Congress, of course, was unconcerned — perhaps because congresspeople who fly commercial get to skip the process. Meanwhile, the COICA online censorship bill was back up for a vote in the Senate, and the MPAA's interim CEO was out defending it with false claims. Nineteen senators voted to move forward with the bill while one (Ron Wyden) was saying he'd block it. Ten Years Ago This week in 2005 was all about the fallout from the Sony rootkit fiasco. After a week of being hammered, Sony finally relented and agreed to pull the CDs from stores. This was after the "uninstaller" they released was found to open up a new security hole which, upon examination, turned out to be a really massive and stupid one. Even after Sony's too-little-too-late announcement, people continued scrutinizing the rootkit, and noticed several other things — like the fact that it contained copyright-infringing code, and that this wasn't the first mistake of this nature from Sony. The rootkit appeared to be on track to become the biggest malware of the year, and some wondered why security firms didn't catch it sooner (while others wondered if they could trust any software from Sony). By the end of the week, the company made another act of reluctant contrition, offering DRM-free MP3s to people affected by the rootkit. Fifteen Years Ago Back in 2000, like many other observers, Techdirt didn't catch on to just how big mobile devices were going to become. When the CEO of Ericsson suggested they'd become more popular than PCs for accessing the web, we had serious doubts; when United offered wireless flight bookings, we wondered if it was important; when Samsung created a phone that could stream video, we questioned its usefulness. Well, live and learn! It was a different time after all — when the idea of people turning up in naked photos online was new and strange, and there was a console manufacturer called "Sega" mocking its competitor, the Sony PlayStation 2. Forty-Seven Years Ago We all know now that standard procedure for a television network when a live sporting event runs long is to keep the cameras rolling and delay whatever else was on the schedule (well, except for a younger generation that probably only has a vague idea of what a "television network" is). But there's a first time for everything, and today's standard procedure was November 17th, 1968's sudden and unexpected disaster: the infamous "Heidi Game", when the dramatic conclusion to a Raiders-Jets game (with the latter scoring two last-minute touchdowns to turn the game around) was cut from the airwaves in favor of Heidi, a made-for-TV movie adaptation of a 19th-century Swiss novel. Fans were unimpressed, and indeed nobody thought this was a good idea, but since nobody had thought about it in advance, the long-running game caused utter chaos, as Wikipedia summarizes:

Film ratings and content warnings seem like a perfectly harmless and sensible idea in theory, but in practice they become a tool of censorship and industry protectionism. The UK has its own issues in this regard that are not unlike the ones we see in the US, and one filmmaker has come up with an amusing idea to fight back: crowdfunding a long and uneventful film of paint drying, to at least bore the censors to tears. The British Board of Film Classification (formerly known as, yes, the British Board of Film Censors) is the UK equivalent of CARA, the film-rating portion of the MPAA. Both were formed by the industry to avoid government-administered content regulations, but where the MPAA's ratings stranglehold on the industry is based almost entirely on an economic monopoly, the BBFC's is backed up by ratings requirements in UK law. Where the MPAA can't actually ban films (instead forcing them to choose self-censorship or economic suicide), the BBFC can. But the BBFC has one weakness, of sorts: it has to watch the films, even if it decides not to let anyone else do so. In fact, it seems to be quite proud of its commitment to watching every minute of footage that is submitted for classification. This gave Charlie Lyne, a London filmmaker and critic, an idea for how to take a dig at the BBFC while also sparking conversation around this under-discussed issue: force the censors to watch a very long, very boring, very pointless film of paint drying. One of the most interesting things that this stunt highlights is the pricing system, whereby filmmakers must pay a per-minute fee for work they submit to the board — a fee that is trivial for a big studio production, but not so much for an indie working with a shoestring budget. Of course, in this case, Kickstarter neatly takes care of that problem: the final film will be scaled in length to the amount raised, with the crowdfunded cash paying the per-minute fee. Lyne has 14 hours of footage ready to go, which he figured would be plenty (it would cost a little over £6000 to get all that reviewed), but he's prepared to shoot more. And it looks like he might have to, since the campaign is past the halfway mark of using up all that drying paint. If it hits 13 hours, it'll snag a record too, becoming the longest film ever reviewed by the board. A fan has even set up a website where you can track the length of the film based on the money raised so far. With 24 days still to go in the campaign, it looks like the BBFC is going to be staring at that paint for a very long time. Of course, it's easy to wonder if they actually will, but at least they confirmed to Mashable that they do watch every minute of submitted footage — plus, it's always possible someone slipped some objectionable content in at hour 7, right? What choice do they have? So if you'd like to bore some censors and help spark conversation around the issue of movie ratings — which many people just assume are a system that works reasonably and fairly in the background, rather than a powerful and determining factor in the movie industry — head on over to the Kickstarter page and contribute a minute or two to this groundbreaking crowdfunded film.

Judge Liam O'Grady -- the same guy who helped the US government take all of Kim Dotcom's stuff, is the judge handling the wacky Rightscorp-by-proxy lawsuit against Cox Communications. The key issue: Righscorp, on behalf of BMG and Round Hill Music flooded Cox Communications with infringement notices, trying to shake loose IP addresses as part of its shake down. Cox wasn't very happy about cooperating, and in response BMG and Round Hill sued Cox, claiming that 512(i) of the DMCA requires ISPs to kick people off the internet if they're found to be "repeat infringers." Historically, it has long been believed that 512(i) does not apply to internet access/broadband providers like Cox, but rather to online service providers who are providing a direct service on the internet (like YouTube or Medium or whatever). However, the RIAA and its friends have hinted for a while that they'd like a court to interpret 512(i) to apply to internet access providers, creating a defacto "three strikes and you lose all internet access" policy. Rightscorp (with help from BMG and Round Hill Music) have decided to put that to the test.

The ACLU has released three more state-specific versions of its "Mobile Justice" app. The app, which sends audio and video recordings directly to the ACLU's servers to preserve them in case of any law enforcement "interruptions", is now available in Maryland, Minnesota and Virginia.

Feeding billions of people isn't an easy task. Farming isn't actually the hardest part. Food distribution and food waste are much more challenging than simply growing more food for people. It's good that we have multiple biotech solutions for making plants and animals that are easier to raise and grow, but some of the concerns about genetically modified organisms (GMOs) aren't totally unfounded. Turning back the clock on genetic research isn't going to happen, but we should also keep an eye on what's going on.

As we've covered before, the DOJ supports the idea of body cameras for local law enforcement agencies. It has set aside over $20 million a year in funding to help these agencies out. But it has no love for body cameras within its own agencies. There are no body cam requirements in place for FBI, DEA, ATF or the US Marshals Service.

Last year we noted that for being such a supposedly cool CEO, T-Mobile's John Legere seemed utterly clueless on the subject of net neutrality. Not only did the CEO claim that Title II and new net neutrality rules would "kill innovation" (tip: that didn't happen), he seemed totally oblivious to the bad precedent set by the company's zero rating efforts. Those efforts began with T-Mobile's decision to let some music services bypass user usage caps, which as we've discussed at great length puts smaller companies and non-profits at a distinct disadvantage.

The attacks in Paris were a horrible and tragic event -- and you can understand why people are angry and scared about it. But, as always, when politicians are angry and scared following a high-profile tragedy, they tend to legislate in dangerous ways. It appears that France is no exception. It has pushed through some kneejerk legislation that includes a plan to censor the internet. Specifically the Minister of the Interior will be given the power to block any website that is deemed to be "promoting terrorism or inciting terrorist acts." Of course, this seems ridiculous on many levels.

As several subscribers to our Techdirt Daily Newsletter have pointed out to us, Thursday morning's edition was flagged by Gmail with the following warning:

Back in 2013, we were impressed when the folks at Automattic (the company behind WordPress), actually filed some lawsuits against people who were abusing DMCA takedown notices just to takedown content they didn't like. Earlier this year, the company also took a strong stand against DMCA abuse by including a "Hall of Shame" in which it called out and shamed particularly egregious takedowns. At the time, we mentioned that other companies should pay attention. Fighting for your users' rights is important, but too many companies don't do it (and many just take things down on demand).

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At this point, we all know that the DMCA is a tool that is widely abused for censorship purposes. We have written post upon post upon post upon post upon post upon post upon post upon post upon post upon post upon post upon post upon post upon post upon post upon post detailing this (and those were just from the first page of my search results).

Chipotle has been making headlines lately for all the wrong reasons. While justifiably lauded for its efforts at embracing more sustainable agriculture, the restaurant is currently in the aftermath of a massive E. Coli outbreak in Washington and Oregon that resulted in dozens of illnesses and hospitalizations. And while the CDC's ongoing investigation of that outbreak is grabbing most of the public's attention, the company's quietly been caught up in another, less noticed snafu involving a total lack of fundamental, security common sense.

Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton gave a speech yesterday all about the fight against ISIS in the wake of the Paris attacks. While most of the attention (quite reasonably so) on the speech was about her plan to deal with ISIS, as well as her comments on the ridiculous political hot potato of how to deal with Syrian refugees, she still used the opportunity to align herself with the idiotic side of the encryption debate, suggesting that Silicon Valley has to somehow "fix" the issue of law enforcement wanting to see everything. Here's what she said:

I have to be honest: I have no idea how this whole "Ferguson Effect" became a thing. The general claim by those touting the theory is that, after the backlash over the Michael Brown shooting and several other high-profile deaths at the hands of law enforcement, police are so fearful of the general public that they are no longer taking the risks necessary to do their jobs properly, which is resulting in an uptick in violent crime in several major cities. It's a fascinating theory in that it is so often promoted by those who claim to be champions of the police, even as the theory itself claims that police are abdicating their primary responsibilities. As with any good theory built to draw on division and emotion, it only helps that this theory is essentially made up of a combination of anecdotal evidence and the simplistic reading of statistics without context.

When we encounter stories of trademark bullying over broad language, it's fairly common to find that the fight is between a large corporate entity pushing around a much smaller one. This case is no different. For some reason, retail toy giant Toys R Us is apparently opposing the trademark registration of a small Miami-area hair extension company.