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Imagine you are a researcher in 2050, researching the history of the Black Lives Matter movement. But you've stumbled across a problem: almost every Tweet, post, video or photograph with the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter that you want to use in your work is an orphan work (i.e., works whose owners are impossible to track down, but are still covered by copyright). You'd like to ask permission but all you've got to go on are usernames from defunct accounts. Where do you go from here?

Over the past 15+ years, Techdirt and its team has made plenty of predictions and prognoses about various aspects of the world of tech — which means we've made plenty of mistakes. This week, our podcast is dedicated to discussing some of those poor predictions and figuring out what we can learn from them. 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.

The administration won't back FBI Director James Comey's push for encryption backdoors. Neither will Congress, at least not at this point. (But just give 'em one terrorist attack…) Former intelligence officials have written off backdoored encryption as a lost cause, if not a genuinely bad idea. But Comey continues to peddle his "gone dark" future to whoever will listen. In this case, it was the Senate Homeland Security Committee.

With the conclusion of the negotiations for the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement now in place, there has been some ridiculous whining from the pharmaceutical industry which got almost everything it wanted in the agreement, but wasn't quite able to get a few things, including a 12 year patent-like exclusivity on biologics. And, because of that hissy fit, apparently, the USTR and its counterparts in Australia and Canada have agreed to help out Big Pharma in another arena. Jamie Love is reporting that this week there's a meeting at the WTO this week to explore granting a special exemption on patent rules for developing nations (i.e., those who often need drugs the most, while also being the least likely to be able to afford them). It's silly to enforce patents in these countries, because doing so would not only lead to almost no business at all, but (more importantly) because lots of people will die or, at the very least, suffer needlessly.

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Last week we wrote about Matthew Keys being found guilty of three CFAA charges which will likely lead to some amount of jailtime for him (the prosecution has suggested it will ask for less than 5 years). While Keys still denies he did anything he's accused of, the prosecution argues that he took a login to the Tribune Company's content management system, handed it off to some hackers in an internet forum and told them to mess stuff up. And... so they made some minor vandalism changes to an LA Times article. It took the LA Times all of 40 minutes to fix it. Even if we assume that Keys did do this, we still have trouble seeing how it was any more than a bit of vandalism that deserves, at best, a slap on the wrist. Its ridiculous to say that it's a form of felony hacking that requires a prison sentence. As we noted in our original article, the Tribune Company and the feds argued that the damage cost the company $929,977 in damage, well above the $5,000 threshold for the CFAA to apply. We still have trouble seeing how the $5,000 could make sense, let alone nearly a million dollars. And it's important to note that the sentencing guidelines match up with the dollar amount of the "damages" so this actually matters quite a bit for Keys.

You can add Pittsburgh to the growing list of towns, cities and states that claim Verizon is ripping them off. Verizon, of course, froze its FiOS fiber expansion years ago, instead focusing its attention on more profitable (read: capped) wireless service. The company did continue to expand FiOS in a number of east coast cities (Washington, Philadelphia, New York), agreeing to full city fiber expansion in exchange for sweetheart franchise deals, tax cuts, and/or subsidies. But as cities like New York have found out, Verizon's definition of full city fiber upgrades probably doesn't match yours.

Things on the Crypto War 2.0 battlefront just got a little more interesting. The administration won't seek backdoors and neither will Congress. The intelligence community has largely backed away from pressing for compliance from tech companies. This basically leaves FBI director James Comey (along with various law enforcement officials) twisting in his own "but people will die" wind.

Yesterday on Twitter, there was a big discussion over the fact that Twitter had disabled two well-known sports media Twitter feeds, both for supposedly infringing on copyrights by posting GIFs of sports highlights. Almost everything about this story is ridiculous and highlights just how screwed up copyright law is today. Let's count the ways:

This week, over at the Copia Institute, we released our new report comparing the impact of anti-piracy enforcement to that of innovative new entertainment services. That One Guy posted a lengthy rejoinder that was voted most insightful comment of the week:

Five Years Ago This week in 2010, the ACTA negotiations were nearing completion, prompting EU Parliament members to speak out even louder about their objections to the deal and the Mexican Senate to vote unanimously to withdraw from the negotiations entirely. Though officially nobody but the negotiators were supposed to have seen the agreement text, nobody was surprised when the MPAA voiced its approval of the current deal. When the draft text was finally released, it was bad, and we pointed out how that was inevitable considering they didn't talk to key stakeholders — but the negotiators continued with their line that secrecy was vital (and turned off the WiFi at a briefing about the draft). Meanwhile, Rupert Murdoch's advertisers were bailing on his paywalled news sites while the Boston Globe was celebrating its own paywall with a column full of logical fallacies, and the Knight Foundation was bizarrely funding even more paywalls. Cory Doctorow (who has a way better nose for business models) was explaining why free doesn't bother him, and the world was realizing just how much money Minecraft was raking in. Ten Years Ago In 2005, the Wall Street Journal was a paywall pioneer, and getting ready to raise its online subscription prices, not for the first time. The BBC, on the other hand, was realizing that its role in news had to evolve and change, and focused on becoming a facilitator. A new study suggested that file-sharing is good for digital music sales, but that didn't stop Macrovision from trying to convince entertainment companies they really need more copy protection software (which Macrovision made). The industry was trying a new (and stupid) approach by insisting that fair use harms innovation, while we were offering the more likely explanation for their behaviour: innovating is hard, but suing people is easy. The RIAA was gearing up to go after satellite radio, while the most egregious incident comes from France, where the operator of a lyrics website got six months in jail. Fifteen Years Ago This week in 2000, it was still a time to analyze Silicon Valley in the midst of the dot-com flux. One study suggested that dot-com execs don't actually fit the stereotype most people have in mind, though the public sex that broke out at a big dot-com party diluted that message a bit. More important was determining which dot-coms were running out of money — and for some, that became a way to make money in and of itself (while for others it was the sign of a coming internet depression). Six-Hundred And Five Years Ago This week we celebrate the makers of the Medieval era by marking the October 9th birthday of the Prague Orloj aka the Prague Astronomical Clock. Actually, nobody knows its precise birthday, just the first time it was mentioned in writing in 1410 — but it's a marvel of early engineering, the third-oldest astronomical clock in the world and the oldest that is still ticking away today.

3D printers are wonderful tools for modern makers and tinkerers, but all by themselves they can make little more than plastic trinkets and pieces of larger projects. Today, we're looking at one of the most interesting evolutions in the world of 3D printing: the Makerarm, a veritable factory-in-a-box that boasts 3D printing as just one of its many capabilities. The Good The range of the Makerarm's capabilities is almost unbelievable, and calling it a "3D printer" simply doesn't do it justice. Yes, it can 3D print — with both the filament and resin methods — but swap out the tool head attached to its programmable arm and it becomes a light-duty miller and carver, or a laser-engraver. Swap it out again and it can print custom circuit boards. Once more, and it can assemble the components on those boards. Use the variety of suction cups, grippers and magnets and it can assemble whole projects, then throw on the screwdriver head and it can fasten them all together. Pair it with another Makerarm, and they can work in concert to do all those things but bigger. Yup, the Makerarm does just about everything, to the point that you can build an entire custom laptop computer without needing any other tools — and it does all that for only $2200 (the price with a complete set of tool heads). As if that weren't enough, the arm itself is maker-friendly, and includes a hardware development kit for building custom tool heads. It's not a 3D printer but a general-purpose robotic arm, and the savings in both money and space for an avid hobbyist is staggering. Someone with a limited budget and a small workshop no longer has to make that tough choice between 3D printing, milling, laser engraving and PCB printing — all of which are available as reasonably affordable desktop devices, but no more than two of which have been combined before. The ability to actually assemble projects piece by piece is just icing on the metaphorical cake — and the ability to swap in a food-friendly head and print with confections is icing on the literal cake. The Bad The Makerarm is only in the working prototype phase, and that means there's still the question of just how well it really does all these things. That's something serious makers will have to determine after they get their hands on the device, so not everyone is going to want to jump on the Kickstarter right away. It's probably fair to guess that it won't match the quality of standalone devices for every function, but it appears poised to exceed at least some of them, and as long as it's capable the price tag will make it an appealing alternative to an array of individual tools. The Controllable In the past I've bemoaned other tools that can only be controlled by proprietary software and, worse still, only on iOS or Android — a limitation that I think puts such devices somewhere on the border between "hobby" and "toy" in the minds of serious makers. The Makerarm's approach is different and much better all-around, though not without drawbacks: its custom control software is web based, which means it's completely platform-agnostic (good) but also tied to the cloud and the Makerarm website (less good). However, it's also mercifully not reliant on its own software, and works with other CAD/CAM/CAE tools — it even comes with a one year subscription to AutoDesk Fusion 360. Given this, and the fact that the arm itself is trainable and scriptable, and the fact that people can build new tool heads for it, I think the Makerarm's already-impressive list of functions is in fact just the beginning.

Last weekend, negotiators finally completed negotiations on the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement. However, as we noted, there was no timetable for the release of the text (though some are now saying it may come out next week). Once again, it was ridiculous that the negotiating positions of the various countries was secret all along, and that the whole thing had been done behind closed doors. And to have them not be ready to release the text after completion of the negotiations was even more of a travesty. Wikileaks, however, got hold of the Intellectual Property Chapter and has released it online.

A couple of weeks ago, the government petitioned the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals for an en banc rehearing of its decision finding that the acquisition of historical cell site location information (CSLI) requires a warrant. The government used many of the arguments the dissenting opinions did -- mainly that CSLI should still be considered a "business record" under the Third Party Doctrine.

The words "all natural" might not mean what you think it means when it's on a food label. Likewise, just because an ingredient list contains the name of a chemical you've never heard of -- doesn't necessarily mean that "chemical" is bad for you. Potassium benzoate is a common preservative, but it's no longer found in many beverages because it can react with ascorbic acid to create trace amounts of benzene. Food additives may react with other ingredients in some undesirable ways, but should we get rid of all of them? It's nice to be able to increase the shelf life of a Twinkie -- though maybe we should just eat fewer Twinkies to begin with.

Minnesota law enforcement's last-ditch effort to keep body camera footage out of the hands of the public has failed. Back in February, legislators made the first effort, pushing a bill that would have limited recording requests to the subjects of the recordings. It also included a 90-day destruction period for any footage not part of an ongoing investigation, which would have allowed agencies to destroy damning footage of police misconduct, provided involved subjects hadn't requested a copy within the limited timeframe.

Back in 2010, we wrote about the ridiculous patent thicket in "teledildonics" -- better known as internet-connected sex toys. A few different companies had been claiming patents on teledildonics and some patent lawsuits had broken out over it. One of the patents we covered, US Patent 6,368,268, was held at the time by New Frontier Technologies, for a "method and device for interactive virtual control of sexual aids using digital computer networks."

Everyone knew this was coming. With the expansion of publicity rights that is currently ongoing, and more specifically after the case between former NCAA players and Electronic Arts that effectively killed off college sports video games, it was only a matter of time before former professional players turned their sights on the Maddenfranchise. Now that a few former NFL players have filed a publicity rights suit against EA, we again will see the First Amendment go up against publicity rights. So far, for free speech advocates and champions of video games being art, it isn't going well.

Astute high school seniors are looking at which colleges to apply to, and there is no dearth of college rankings to make some schools look better than others on paper. If a college applicant is looking for "earning power" -- it's not the school, but the choice of major that really matters. (And remember: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, etc, etc. never even graduated from college...) If you're looking for social networking, it might help to go to a prestigious school -- or you could just try to be really active on Twitter/Facebook. Maybe the best strategy is to apply to as many schools as possible, and figure it out after the thick acceptance letters are sent out.

There are all sorts of proprietary code out there, unavailable for inspection and perfectly capable of sending people to prison, as Slate's Rebecca Wexler reports.

We've pointed out a few times in the past that while everyone refers to the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement as a "free trade" agreement, the reality is that there's very little in there that's actually about free trade. If it were truly a free trade agreement, then there would be plenty of reasons to support it. But the details show it's not, and yet, time and time again, we see people supporting the TPP because "well, free trade is good." The Washington Post, for example, pushed out a ridiculous editorial arguing that the TPP is cause for celebration because it will "slash tariffs and harmonize regulatory regimes."

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 help support Techdirt.

We first wrote about this issue more than a decade ago, but there's been a ridiculous attempt by some yoga instructors to use intellectual property to lock up certain yoga poses. While most of the focus has been on copyright, other attempts have used other forms of intellectual property as well. But the most watched legal dispute was the one brought by Bikram Yoga and Bikram Choudhury against Evolution Yoga... and the 9th Circuit appeals court has now made it abundantly clear: you can't copyright yoga.

If, like me, you find American presidential politics far more humorously entertaining than anything Adam Sandler has produced in the past decade (at least), you probably already know all about Donald Trump's stupid red hat. This isn't to say anything about Trump's politics, which are also stupid, but the hat he's trotting around with is objectively stupid and if you don't agree, well, you're wrong.

Good things come in small packages. The $34.99 SKEYE Pico Drone is tiny and cute but promises loads of fun. This nimble little drone comes pre-programmed with multiple flight modes suitable for all skill levels. It can dive and flip in tight spaces (up to 50 m away), be seen at night with its LEDs, and fits conveniently in the remote control for storage. It comes with a USB charging cable, 4 replacement rotor blades, and a 4-channel 2.4GHz transmitter.

Earlier this week, we wrote about the EU Court of Justice's decision that the NSA's surveillance of the internet meant that the EU-US data protection safe harbor was invalid. As we noted, there's a lot of mess in all of this, but losing that safe harbor would be tremendously problematic for the internet. And the impact could be that the NSA basically screwed things up royally for American internet companies by spying on European users. But, the issue actually goes much deeper. As that ruling recognized, the crux of the matter was dependent on the EU's Data Protection Directive. And that Data Protection Directive is about to be updated.

We've already talked a lot about how the cable and broadcast industry's response to a changing TV landscape (ad skipping, dropping ratings, Internet video competition) is the ingenious one-two punch of mindlessly raising rates and making the viewing experience more annoying than ever. They've accomplished the latter in several ways, ranging from simply pushing more ads than ever before, or by even speeding up or editing popular programming to ensure more ads will fit in each viewing hour.

Read the new report from The Copia Institute,

When Ed Snowden first gave his cache of documents to reporters, there were two sets handed out. Most famously, one set went to Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Ewan MacAskill, who went to Hong Kong on behalf of the Guardian. And the other set went to Bart Gellman, who wrote up reports on them (technically as a freelancer) for the Washington Post. Yesterday, Gellman wrote about a crazy story in which Purdue University absolutely freaked out, after it realized that Gellman gave a keynote speech -- for an event organized by the University President, and which Gellman had been specifically asked to give -- that showed some of the previously released Snowden documents during his presentation. Despite promising Gellman that the talk had been recorded and a link and a copy of the video would be sent to him, instead, Purdue ended up deleting the whole thing and basically stopped responding to him.

Two and a half years ago, we wrote about former Reuters editor Matthew Keys being indicted based on charges that he'd shared the login information for the content management system to his former employer, the Tribune Company, in an online forum and then encouraged members of Anonymous in that forum to mess things up. Some people used that access to change a story on the LA Times website. Keys insists that he didn't do this and the feds have no direct evidence linking him to whoever leaked the login (he also claims at the time of the leak he no longer had access to the Tribune Company's systems).

It's a damned dirty shame that if you search Techdirt stories for "beer" -- all you come away with are stories about silly trademark fights that ought never have happened. Of all the possible tangential topics having to do with beer, one of life's great pleasures, spinning into trademark discussions is the worst of them. Yet these stories keep happening. And, in our wonderful comments section, oft times someone will suggest a barely-changed replacement name to get around the trademark dispute that also clearly thumbs its nose at the accuser. Very few breweries choose to go that route, unfortunately.

The flu (aka the influenza virus) can be just annoying to some, but it's also a deadly threat that can't be ignored. There's a new flu vaccine every year, but that's a hit-or-miss game -- with some years being much less effective than others. However, it's still a good routine to get into -- until someone finally develops a universal flu vaccine. If you haven't gotten your flu shot reminder. Here it is. YMMV.

Despite there being multiple copies of nearly-identical FBI/Stingray non-disclosure agreements in the public domain at this point, the Tacoma (WA) Police Department still refuses to provide FOIA requesters with an unredacted version of its own NDA.

The government has done a spectacularly terrible job at protecting sensitive personal information over the past couple of years. Since 2013, the FDA, US Postal Service, Dept. of Veterans Affairs, the IRS and the Office of Personnel Management have all given up personal information. So, it's no surprise the Government Accountability Office's latest report on information security contains little in the way of properly-secured information.

Back in 2013, in a hugely important decision, the US Supreme Court rejected the idea of gene patents, in particular the patents held by Myriad Genetics for the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes (that are genetic warning signs for breast cancer). A parallel case was happening down in Australia, where an Australian court went the other way last year, ruling that genes could be patented. As we noted, the case could still be appealed to the Australian High Court. And now... the High Court has finally rejected gene patents.

We already wrote about how New Zealand has released some of the details about the finalized TPP agreement before the official text is released. The one we discussed is forcing participants into a "life plus 70 years" copyright term, even as the US had been exploring going back towards a life plus 50 regime like much of the rest of the world. That won't be possible any more.

Earlier this summer, we were taken a bit by surprise when both former NSA/CIA boss Michael Hayden, along with former DHS boss Michael Chertoff, came out fairly strongly against backdooring encryption at a time when their counterparts still in the government seemed to be leaning in the other direction and have been pushing proposals to mandate backdoors. And it appears they're not backing down. Hayden has now doubled down with further statements against backdooring encryption, according to Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai at Vice's Motherboard.

Photography fans know that cameras have come a long way in a few short years. However, you still need to zoom and choose what to focus on for that perfect shot. The new light field cameras take away that need to choose your focus and perspective. Lytro cameras use a microlens array to take in more information about the light coming from all distances in the picture. Download the photos and with the Lytro app, you can refocus shots, view them in "3D" or change the perspective.

Back in June we noted how the very first net neutrality complaint had been filed and that it was notably stupid, but important. Basically, a small San Diego company by the name of Commercial Network Services (CNS) tried to complain that Time Warner Cable was abusing its monopoly power by refusing to give the company free peering. CNS operates a series of webcams in the San Diego area which, when visited, inform users that the reason they can't access the "ultra-HD" version of the cameras is because their ISP isn't a peering partner with CNS: In its informal FCC complaint, CNS tried to claim that Time Warner Cable's refusal to offer free peering violates the "no paid prioritization" and "no throttling" sections of the new net neutrality rules. Basically, CNS has been trying to claim that net neutrality somehow means it deserves free peering from bigger ISPs, even though that's never been how things work for smaller companies, and the new net neutrality rules don't change that. So it was the first net neutrality complaint, but it was also the first example of a company trying to use the rules to weasel out a business advantage, something mega-ISPs tried to claim would be a huge, unmanageable problem.

China's plan to control the hearts, minds and internet connections of its citizens continues unimpeded. That's the great thing about authoritarian regimes: rollout of mandatory programs is usually only a problem of logistics, not opposition.

Previously leaked reports and drafts of the TPP agreement had showed that the US and Australia were strongly pushing other countries to extend the minimum copyright terms to "life plus 70 years," up from the international norm of "life plus 50 years." Mexico was actually pushing for life plus 100 at one point. This seemed bizarre to us. It's hard to see how anyone could legitimately support extending copyright terms, but the USTR refused to back down. This made no sense, given that here in the US, as we undergo a major copyright reform effort, even the head of the US Copyright Office has admitted that perhaps it's time to start moving back towards life plus 50 years here in the US.

Today's novel legal argument: take a ruling on cell site location info warrant requirements and make it fit the warrantless data haul obtained earlier by submitting onlythe "quantity" the court has previously OKed.

A ways back, we brought you the delightfully dumb news that LMFAO, the band, had sent a cease and desist letter to Pigeon Hill Brewing Co. over one of its beer brews, the LMFAO Stout. At chief issue, according to the brand, was a misguided concern that drinkers of the stout would somehow think that the acronym in the beer's name meant that LMFAO the band had endorsed or was otherwise affiliated with the beer. This was dumb on any number of levels, but the primary reason is that LMFAO got its name from a common internet/texting acronym, rather than achieving any kind of originality in music-group-namesmanship.

We've seen some early-stage advances for ways that might help restore sight to people with low vision (or no vision), but it will take many more years before the clinical trials and safety approvals are complete. And not everyone will want to undergo an eye surgery to try to regain some vision, either. Fortunately, robots and wearable technology continue to improve, and these gadgets could become very useful for the blind (and the rest of us, too). Maybe we won't just see telecommuting iPads for remote workers -- but also robot assistants for casual and everyday uses, as well.

The Appeals Court of Kansas has upheld a lower court's decision finding it beyond the reach of a university to expel a student for off-campus behavior.

It's been rumored for years, but reports out of Atlanta suggest that it's now confirmed that in order to finalize the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, everyone agreed to carve tobacco out of the corporate sovereignty system, better known as ISDS (investor state dispute settlement). These systems allow companies to sue countries for passing regulations that the companies feel harm their ability to profit -- and tobacco companies have already filed ISDS complaints in a few countries that have pushed to put health warnings on cigarette packages.

A few weeks ago, we wrote about the big ruling by Judge George King in a district court in California that Warner/Chappell does not hold a valid copyright in the song "Happy Birthday." The press ran with the story, with nearly all of the coverage falsely stating that the judge had declared Happy Birthday to be in the public domain. As we noted in our post, however, that was not the case. While the plaintiffs had urged just such a finding, Judge King noted that there were issues related to this that a jury would need to answer, and he would not go that far. Instead, he merely stated that Warner did not hold a valid copyright. Many people assume that this is good enough. The likelihood of some third party magically showing up after all of these years and not just claiming the copyright, but having enough evidence to prove it seems very slim. Glenn Fleishman has done a nice job writing up a detailed explanation of this copyright mess for Fast Company, in which he notes the "uncertainty is maddening."

There's a common refrain regarding services these days that "if you're not paying for it, you're the product" — but this notion is at best an oversimplification, and at worst outright untrue. This week, we look at the far more complex and diverse reality of how free services relate to their users. 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.

Poor Verizon. Telco executives for years have sat in their board rooms bored by the billions to be made on telecom and transit, jealously eyeing Facebook and Google ad revenue, and desperately dreaming of being seen as more than just a dull old phone company. That's why the telecom giant recently paid $4.4 billion to acquire AOL, and is now throwing tens of millions at a new Internet video service aimed squarely at Millennials (hey kids, why get Internet video right from the source or a disruptive content company when you can get it from the phone company?).

The past two Techdirt podcasts had special guest Kyle Wiens, the CEO of iFixit, discussing both the DMCA's anti-circumvention review process and the more general importance of the freedom to tinker. In those podcasts, Wiens talked a bit about some companies being more willing than others to support iFixit's efforts to help people repair or modify products they had purchased.