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Lots of publishers freak out about the existence of adblockers. Some seek ways to get around them, others simply complain. This might seem like a situation where the desires of publishers and the desires of readers are irreconcilably opposed — but is that truly the case? This week, we discuss the popular reactions to adblocking and look at the real problem with online advertising: the quality of the ads themselves. 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.

As of late, Nintendo's relationship with YouTube and the YouTube community has been, shall we say, tumultuous. After rolling out a bad policy to share revenue with YouTubers on the basis that those personalities torpedo their reputations by promising only positive Nintendo coverage, claiming the monetization for a large number of "let's play" videos uploaded by independent YouTubers, and even going so far as to lay claim to the review of a Nintendo game created by well-known YouTuber "Angry Joe", Nintendo clearly seems to believe that YouTube is not so much an independent community as it is some kind of official public relations wing for the company. This is really dumb on many different levels, but chiefly it's dumb because it breeds ill-will amongst fans, of which Nintendo used to have many.

Unleash your inner novelist and let Scrivener help manage your writing project. Available for $19.50 in the store for either Mac or PC (select your preferred version in the drop down menu), the Scrivener household license allows you to access your work on multiple devices. Scrivener replaces bits of paper, index cards and sticky notes by allowing you to storyboard projects, to edit and work on different sections, either alone or in concert, and to post notes and access research. There's a script formatting function to help you write the next classic movie hit, a name generator, and the ability to freely edit and restore to older versions so you won't lose anything as you dive deep into the creative process.

As we've been covering over the past few years, there's been a big battle going on over the copyright status of "pre-1972 sound recordings." That may sound like a weird thing to be arguing over, but it's due to a weird bit of history in US copyright law. You see, for a very long time, Congress believed that copyright law could not cover sound recordings. However, various states stepped in and either through explicit state law or through common law, created copyright-like regulations for sound recordings. When copyright was finally updated in the 1976 Copyright Act, pre-1972 works were left out of the federal copyright system, even as federal copyright law basically wiped out all state copyright law for everything else. This has created some weird issues, including that some songs that should be in the public domain under federal copyright law are locked up in perpetuity. A simple and reasonable solution to this would be to just move pre-1972 sound recordings under federal copyright law and level the playing field. But, the RIAA has resisted this. That might seems strange, until you realize that the RIAA and its friends saw this weird quirk of copyright law as a wedge issue with which to try to squeeze more money out of everyone.

Five years ago, we wrote about a pretty big victory against National Security Letters (NSLs), which the government has long used to get around the 4th Amendment, demanding information from companies, complete with a perpetual gag order. In 2007, an anonymous ISP owner fought back, speaking out against the whole gag order thing, but not even being able to say what ISP he was associated with, because of that gag order. In 2010, Nicholas Merrill, of Calyx Internet Access, was finally able to admit that he was the one fighting the gag order -- after reaching an agreement with the government (and that was after a number of trips back and forth between the district and appeals courts). Now, five years later, a federal court has finally ruled that the gag order, which was issued back in 2004, should be lifted, because the government has no "good reason" for keeping it in place and keeping the gag order would violate the First Amendment. You can read the redacted order here, which is an interesting read. Basically, a permanent gag order doesn't really fit with that whole First Amendment thing we have here in the US -- but the court prefers to focus on whether or not there's any reason to keep the order in place now.

Back in July we noted how the city of Chicago was hoping to cash in on streaming services by imposing a new tax on Netflix. Blind to the negative impact such taxes can have on emerging economies, Chicago proudly proclaimed it would be expanding its 9% "amusement tax" authority (traditionally covering book stores, music stores, ball games and other brick and mortar entertainment) to cover any service that interacts with the cloud. While the new ruling was supposed to technically take effect September 1, Chicago recently announced it was postponing portions of the new tax until next year to field criticism and manage plan logistics.

The last time we checked in with insurance giant Blue Cross / Blue Shield, the company was arguing that trademark law meant that researchers couldn't publish a study finding that BCBS doctors weren't always the best at handling patients in need of psychiatric care. As far as giant insurance companies go, it's a disappointing level of evil for the company to embrace. If you want to be the biggest name in insurance, you have to really get into some dastardly stuff. So come on, Blue Cross, what else have you got?

A couple of years ago, we wrote about a new kind of open access. Alongside the traditional "gold" open access, whereby research institutions pay publishers to make academic papers freely available to all readers, and "green" open access, which consists of posting papers to an institutional repository or open online archive, the mathematician Tim Gowers came up with something he called "diamond" open access. At its heart lies arXiv.org, one of the earliest attempts to open up academic publishing in the early 1990s using the (then) new Net -- basically, it's an online server, where preprint papers are posted for anyone to read. Here are the key features of a diamond open access title:

There have been some pretty wild treatments for cancer, from modifying HIV and creating a gene therapy approach... to using genetically-engineered bacteria or radiation to attack cancer cells. Over the years, there have been quite a few promising studies that haven't amounted to practical treatments. There will probably never be a silver bullet, but until medicine figures out how to beat a lot more cancers, there's always more research to be done.

Miami Heat part-owner Ranaan Katz will be parting with a bit of his fortune because he is a censorious blowhard who doesn't know when to quit.

At the beginning of this year, Attorney General Eric Holder attempted to close an exploitable loophole in asset forfeiture laws. State and local law enforcement agencies often sought federal "adoption" of seizures in order to route around statutes that dumped assets into general funds or otherwise limited them from directly profiting from these seizures. By partnering with federal agencies, local law enforcement often saw bigger payouts than with strictly local forfeitures.

Back in 2010, the notoriously-litigious Motion Picture Academy sued GoDaddy for allowing a bunch of "infringing" domains to be registered. According to the Academy, anything that might use the word "Oscar" is under its control, thanks to several registered trademarks. Trademark infringement doesn't fall under Section 230 protections, which is basically the only reason this lawsuit managed to stay alive for five years.

Lots of folks have really strong opinions -- both positive and negative -- about Burning Man, the big "festival/experiment/one-week city in the desert" or whatever you want to call it. But no matter what you think of Burning Man, it's always seemed odd that the organization behind it acts like a crazy intellectual property maximalist at times -- including using twisted interpretations of copyright and trademark law to stop people from doing anything Burning Man doesn't like with photos from the event. It required attendees to sign over the copyright on any photos taken, for instance.

School is back in session in the States but you don't have to sit in a classroom to learn anymore. Take advantage of 97% off of the eduCBA Tech Training Bundle and gain unlimited access to over 500 courses. Learn coding, software development, CAD, design and much more. All you need is internet access to stream the courses so you can learn almost anywhere, anytime and at your own pace.

As you may have heard last week, a British Airways plane caught fire as it was taxiing on the runway preparing for takeoff. Thankfully, everyone on board escaped with just a few minors scratches and bruises. The plane wasn't so lucky. However, there were lots of other people around on other flights witnessing the whole thing and -- not surprisingly -- many of them have Twitter accounts. And, as has become fairly standard when visual news breaks somewhere with people around, they started tweeting photos. Here's David L. Somers at 4:16pm:

Remember Tanya Cohen? Earlier this year I wrote a story calling bullshit on a long non-sensical rant by "Cohen" in which "she" argued that the US was somehow against human rights and true free speech because it refused to criminalized "hate speech" with hate speech loosely defined as any speech "Tanya Cohen" didn't like. While some of the free speech crew attacked Cohen's piece, I pointed out that, to me, it was very clearly satire. There was no way anyone actually believed those statements. Take this one for example:

Down in Australia, it appears that phone giant Vodafone is facing a bit of a scandal as it's come out that the company went digging into a journalist's phone records after she wrote some stories about security flaws in a Vodafone system. Remember, a decade ago, when there was a big scandal at HP, when it spied on board members to try to stop leaks? That was bad. This is worse. This is directly violating a customers' privacy, just because you're upset about some leaks.

There's been a bit of hysteria in the US lately about "the Chinese stealing our secrets." Now, there's plenty of evidence of corporate espionage going on from China, but the actual impact of it appears to be quite overblown. But as we're in a giant moral panic about everything China related, the White House launched a big "crackdown" on such things recently -- and so far it seems to have resulted in the DOJ destroying innocent people's lives, while getting a lot of egg on its face. The latest: late on Friday the DOJ announced that it was completely dropping all charges against Xi Xiaoxing, the head of Temple University's physics department, who had been arrested earlier this year for apparently sharing the schematics of a special device known as a pocket heater with Chinese scientists. The only problem? It turns out he didn't actually share the schematics of a pocket heater with the Chinese -- the FBI just assumed what he shared must be a pocket heater. But it wasn't.

This week, we took a look at an interesting question: should the police be able to take control of self-driving cars? One anonymous commenter won most insightful comment of the week by pointing out one of the key problems with this idea:

Five Years Ago This week in 2010, we got another look at ACTA when the latest draft leaked and, as expected, it was mostly bad news. So bad, in fact, that a majority of EU Parliament members signed a declaration against it, though it wasn't clear at the time if that would make any difference. At the same time, emails released under a FOIA request gave us a closer look at just how much the USTR pushed to keep ACTA as secret as possible. Craigslist was under attack, and caved this week by shutting down its Adult Services section (and replacing it with a black bar that read "censored"). Some people, at least, were beginning to stand up and point out that forcing Craigslist to do this actually helps the criminals it's supposed to stop, but the anti-Craigslist "public interest" groups kept up their ongoing media attacks. Of course the real source of the attacks was Attorneys General, especially Connecticut's Richard Blumenthal who, it turned out, didn't even have jurisdiction over prostitution. Ten Years Ago This week in 2005, still two years away from the first iPhone, Motorola released its much-hyped "iTunes Phone" — and it sucked. At this time, the market for smartphones still hadn't been carved out by the well-designed iPhone, and most people simply didn't want phones with lots of features (or just didn't know it yet), nor were they sure why they really needed a mobile data plan, and the future of mobile music downloads looked bleak. Of course all this renewed conversation and speculation around the possibility of a real Apple-made "iPhone", while the company was releasing its iPod Nano (and being weakly answered by Sony's revamped Walkman. There were plenty of other emerging technologies to wonder about, too. People didn't seem all too interested in interactive television, and business travellers apparently had no desire to make use of wi-fi hotspots (one of those things would rapidly change). New technologies meant to stop identity theft seemed like they might actually be making it easier. Companies were slowly coming to grips with the fact that personal work surfing can't be stopped (and isn't bad anyway). And in news that shocked absolutely nobody, it turned out young men like shiny new gadgets more than older women. Fifteen Years Ago Speaking of interactive television, Microsoft tried it back in this week of the year 2000 as well (and nobody thought it'd work then either). And speaking of gadgets, how about a Casio wrist camera? (Apparently it was pretty cool.) Robotic pets and conversational online bots were on the way, as were human-implantable tracking chips... Some people were debating who should receive the dubious title of Most Downloaded Woman. Microsoft seemed like it might be (slowly) starting to change, and so for that matter did Bill Gates. In the younger dot-com world, we unsurprisingly discovered that the majority of internet advertising is bought by dot-coms, while some preferred to just bankrupt themselves with Superbowl ads (perhaps because being young and rich doesn't always make you happy). Sixty-Eight Years Ago The word "bug" as a term for an engineering problem predates computers, but there's a folk etymology for use of the term in the computing world that is based on a true story (though the details are often presented wrongly). On September 9, 1947, an error in the Harvard Mark II (an electromechanical computer) was traced to a literal bug: a moth that had gotten trapped inside a relay. The moth was attached to the log book with the note "first actual case of bug being found", and now resides in the Smithsonian.

Move over Newton's Cradle, there's a new physics-based desk toy in town: Ferroflow, the automatic ferrofluid sculpture. The Good A few years ago, ferrofluid became a brief online sensation when a video of Sachiko Kodama's synchronized sculptures went viral. It was one of those "I could stare at this for hours" moments, with the shapes and movements of the ferrofluid in a shifting magnetic field proving utterly beautiful and captivating. Magnetism is unique as a feature of the physical world that we encounter daily in plenty of mundane situations and yet which still produces effects that are un-intuitive to our brains on a basic level — and the seemingly-unnatural shapes that ferrofluid takes bring that fact to the forefront. In short: ferrofluid is cool, and the Ferroflow brings it to your house or office in all its glory. The device produces its own ever-shifting magnetic field to keep the fluid in constant, lava-lamp-like motion, and also lets you take control via a single adjustment knob. Beyond that, it's nothing fancy, because it doesn't need to be: good desk toys, from the iconic Newton's Cradle to the various once-popular displays of oil and water, are less about elaborate mechanisms and more about teasing out curious and entertaining aspects of nature in the simplest way possible. The Bad Okay, so this isn't going to change the world — in fact, it's quite the indulgence, given the cost of the unit: $240 at full price, with just a handful of slightly discounted early-bird deals still available. If you (quite sensibly) think that's far too much to spend on a toy like this, there is an alternative: the Mini Ferroflow, that strips the concept down to even barer bones. There's no automatic mode and no control knob: it's just a sealed vial of ferrofluid and a couple of loose magnets to manipulate it with. The resulting shapes and splashes are no less fascinating, though, and $35 is a far less balk-worthy price. The Safe, Presumably This is a bit of an aside, but if we're talking about magnetic toys, let's take a moment to remember the death of Buckyballs. For the unfamiliar, these were a super-popular toy consisting of nothing but a bunch of powerful spherical magnets and all the amazing shapes they could form. They were fun and satisfying to manipulate. They also, unfortunately, led to a lot of genuine horror stories about internal injuries caused to children who swallowed them, which set off an ongoing dispute between the manufacturer and the government. It got pretty ugly, and though it seems like Buckyballs should still be available for older kids and adults, they aren't — the toy was recalled and removed from the market last year. The Ferroflow probably won't be lining the shelves of toy stores and thus is unlikely to face any similar conflict — but I bring it up because the whole saga is an interesting study in safety regulation, personal responsibility, and choosing how to react when your toy starts injuring children.

Digital Music News has an unfortunate story that we've heard too many times before: that of an independent musician successfully building a following... only to do a deal with a major label and see it all come crashing down. What's interesting is that the artist, Terra Naomi, was willing to lay out all of the details. It's worth a read, as it's a story that is pretty common. That is not to say that signing a major label deal is necessarily a bad thing. For some artists it may be the right decision. But the way that major labels work is that you'll only get enough attention for the label to determine if you're "the next big thing" where all its revenue will come from for the next few years... and if things don't seem to be going that way, you'll be pushed aside quickly. The standard stat given is that 90% of major label deals "fail." That does not mean they are not profitable for the label. The way RIAA accounting works, the labels can make out like a bandit on many of those record deals, while the artist gets hung out to dry. That appears to be the case with Naomi as well.

Negotiators had hoped to conclude the big Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement at the last negotiation round, thinking that since the US had finally granted fast track, all the obstacles were moved out of the way. That didn't happen, leading many to wonder if the entire agreement is doomed. However, as EFF recently explained there's still a ton going on behind the scenes (or, rather, behind closed doors). That discussion notes that the USTR has appointed one of its own top lawyers, Tim Reif, to be the USTR's new "chief transparency officer." Of course, giving lawyers new titles and actually being transparent are two very separate things.

Putting all sorts of things into space to see how they'll react in a micro-gravity environment has been done for decades now. Sometimes, it's really unpredictable what exactly will happen to stuff -- eg. will seeds exposed to space grow differently? But some things are not really too consequential. Do whisky drinkers really care if their favorite beverages are aged in space? Are astronauts allowed to get drunk on the International Space Station?

There's probably not much the NYPD will like about the latest CCRB (Civilian Complaint Review Board) report, but then again, the CCRB isn't really there to serve up the sort of stuff it likes. What it will discover is that some form of accountability is now inevitable, rather than remaining a lofty ideal thrust in its general direction by a handful of activist groups and politicians.

As we've been discussing, the two big music collection societies in the US, ASCAP and BMI, are desperately fighting to get the DOJ to alter (or end entirely) the "consent agreement" that they operate under. The consent agreement, in various forms, has been in place for decades, after the DOJ properly recognized that in licensing songwriters' and publishers' public performance rights, they had something of a monopoly. And monopolies can be dangerous when abused. Thus the consent decree to keep the organizations in line. However, both are really angry about this, in large part because they believe that without the consent decree, they could create a world in which they could force everyone to have to pay much higher fees (you can see some of how they tried to collude with publishers to jack up rates to Pandora).

A student's suicide -- the tragic outcome of an apparent rape -- has led to a lawsuit against the school, as well as Amazon and one of its merchants.

If violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, as Issac Asimov's delightful line in Foundation tells us, then perhaps desperate lawsuits are the last refuge of the disrupted industry. There is simply no better example of this than the many groups affiliated with many city's taxi services and their many lawsuits against Uber. We've seen this dance play out in the past, with the disrupted industry flailing away in court, attempting to get the government and/or the law to protect its own business interests rather than competing with a disruptive newcomer. It almost never ends well for the old guard.

Intellectual property is often times used to censor others or control that which should otherwise be free. Sometimes it does this for arguably valid reasons. And sometimes it does so in ways so laughably and obviously against the intention of intellectual property protections that it would make you laugh if you weren't too busy yelling in anger. This story is about an example of the latter.

Have fun while learning basic programming, electronics and robotics with the Makeblock Arduino Starter Robot Kit, which is on sale at 46% off in the Deals store. The kit comes with everything you need to build either a tank or a 3-wheeled car out of aluminum bits and bolts, and electric wire (no soldering required). The Arduino board allows the robot to be controlled by simple programs you write and execute via remote control. Just pop in a few AA batteries and enjoy watching your little robot roam around the world.

Since Edward Snowden exposed the extent of online surveillance by the U.S. government, there has been a surge of initiatives to protect users' privacy. But it hasn't taken long for one of these efforts — a project to equip local libraries with technology supporting anonymous Internet surfing — to run up against opposition from law enforcement. In July, the Kilton Public Library in Lebanon, New Hampshire, was the first library in the country to become part of the anonymous Web surfing service Tor. The library allowed Tor users around the world to bounce their Internet traffic through the library, thus masking users' locations. Soon after state authorities received an email about it from an agent at the Department of Homeland Security. "The Department of Homeland Security got in touch with our police department," said Sean Fleming, the library director of the Lebanon Public Libraries. After a meeting at which local police and city officials discussed how Tor could be exploited by criminals, the library pulled the plug on the project. "Right now we're on pause," said Fleming. "We really weren't anticipating that there would be any controversy at all." He said that the library board of trustees will vote on whether to turn the service back on at its meeting on Sept. 15. Used in repressive regimes by dissidents and journalists, Tor is considered a crucial tool for freedom of expression and counts the State Department among its top donors. But Tor has been a thorn in the side of law enforcement; National Security Agency documents made public by Snowden have revealed the agency's frustration that it could only identify a "very small fraction" of Tor users. The idea to install Tor services in libraries emerged from Boston librarian Alison Macrina's Library Freedom Project, which aims to teach libraries how to "protect patrons' rights to explore new ideas, no matter how controversial or subversive, unfettered by the pernicious effects of online surveillance." (The Library Freedom Project is funded by Knight Foundation, which also provides funding to ProPublica.) After Macrina conducted a privacy training session at the Kilton library in May, she talked to the librarian about also setting up a Tor relay, the mechanism by which users across the Internet can hide their identity. The library board of trustees unanimously approved the plan at its meeting in June, and the relay was set up in July. But after ArsTechnica wrote about the pilot project and Macrina's plan to install Tor relays in libraries across the nation, law enforcement got involved. A special agent in a Boston DHS office forwarded the article to the New Hampshire police, who forwarded it to a sergeant at the Lebanon Police Department. DHS spokesman Shawn Neudauer said the agent was simply providing "visibility/situational awareness," and did not have any direct contact with the Lebanon police or library. "The use of a Tor browser is not, in [or] of itself, illegal and there are legitimate purposes for its use," Neudauer said, "However, the protections that Tor offers can be attractive to criminal enterprises or actors and HSI [Homeland Security Investigations] will continue to pursue those individuals who seek to use the anonymizing technology to further their illicit activity." When the DHS inquiry was brought to his attention, Lt. Matthew Isham of the Lebanon Police Department was concerned. "For all the good that a Tor may allow as far as speech, there is also the criminal side that would take advantage of that as well," Isham said. "We felt we needed to make the city aware of it." Deputy City Manager Paula Maville said that when she learned about Tor at the meeting with the police and the librarians, she was concerned about the service's association with criminal activities such as pornography and drug trafficking. "That is a concern from a public relations perspective and we wanted to get those concerns on the table," she said. Faced with police and city concerns, library director Fleming agreed to turn off the Tor relay temporarily until the board could reconsider. "We need to find out what the community thinks," he said. "The only groups that have been represented so far are the police department and city hall." Fleming said that he is now realizing the downside of being the first test site for the Tor initiative. "There are other libraries that I've heard that are interested in participating but nobody else wanted to be first," he said. "We're lonesome right now." Republished from ProPublica ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for their newsletter.

Google is making us stupid. Smartphones have ruined the art of conversation. Video games make you violent. There's simply no limitation to the number of people quick to assume that technology is to blame for long-standing human foibles despite generations of historical evidence to the contrary. There is, however, usually a very sharp limit to the science actually supporting these positions. At the forefront of this yeah I bet that's probably true movement has long sat Susan Greenfield, whose expertise in the field of "justify-my-Luddite-beliefs-at-all-costs" has gained endless media attention.

Remember Adam Miller? The so-called, self-professed "faith healer" sued an online critic, Stephanie Guttormson, earlier this year. It was a clear SLAPP lawsuit. Guttormson had taken one of Miller's laughable promotional videos and added some commentary mocking it. You can see it here: That video had less than 1,500 views at the time Guttormson was sued. It now has about 65,000. The main claim in the lawsuit was copyright infringement, which is laughable. It's clearly fair use. The video was used in a non-commercial manner for commentary and criticism. It's easily fair use, and the lawsuit was clearly designed to silence public comment. The lawsuit also made some ridiculous claims, such as claiming that calling Miller's nonsense "faith-based bullshit" is "defamatory" because "Mr. Miller's work does not require a client to hold any faith." Yeah. Let that one sink in for a moment.

Trademark is for a lot of things (not it isn't), but one of the things it is definitely not for is for jilted ex-business contacts to fight with 3rd parties because they are butt-hurt about not being able to pay the rent. And if that hasn't confused you enough, come see what's going on in Louisiana, where a couple that had purchased a restaurant and then, failing to pay the rent on time to the original owners, decided that they would go trademark-crazy on the new ownership that replaced them.

Reliable space travel is slightly elusive. Sure, we have a few rocket systems that can take people up to low Earth orbit, but there's always the chance that those rockets will fail and explode in the sky. On top of that, re-usable rockets haven't quite lived up to their promised cost effectiveness, though some progress is being made on that front. A space elevator could provide a nice alternative, obviating the need for explosive chemical thrust to get to orbital altitudes. But where would we put it, if it's even possible to build one? (Maybe on Mars first....)

Via Mitch Stoltz, we learn of a new proposed copyright law in Kenya that not only would be a disaster for the internet in that country, but where the people pushing it don't even seem to understand what they're talking about. The key element: forcing ISPs to be copyright cops and putting liability on them if they somehow fail to magically stop piracy:

It appears that at least one of the sources below is a hoax site. We're checking out the details and will post an update soon.

Mea Culpa: As our comments section has helpfully pointed out, I have been pantsed today by two hoax stories on two hoax sites that performed their hoaxing in a barely noticeable fashion. For what it's worth, the band has publicly commented that they did not authorize the use of the song and did so in a manner indicating that they were/are planning some kind of response, but the lawsuit claims from Survivor and EMI are fabrications. As our comments section also helpfully pointed out, the state of copyright is such that it can at times be difficult to spot the satire from true stories. That said, it doesn't excuse this writer getting fooled. We are leaving the full post as originally written below, but striked through, so that everyone can see exactly how thoroughly I was fooled today. I have been internet-ed!

Unless you've been living under an insanely large rock these past few weeks, you probably know all about the saga of Kim Davis. Davis is the Kentucky clerk so wrapped up in Christian theology that she decided to defy the United States Supreme Court's order that same-sex marriages are the law of the land and promptly refused to hand out any marriage licenses to her constituency. This, as you should know, is a wonderfully stupid story that continues to get stupider. Whatever your religion, the United States is a secular nation. A Christian government employee can no more refuse to hand out marriage licenses due to religious views than a Muslim person working for the ATF refuse to inspect a case filled with beautiful whisky, a Jewish person working for the FDA refuse to approve imports of succulent bacon, or an atheist person working for the IRS refuse to grant a religious group tax exempt status. Secular government means religion doesn't factor into the job of government. Period, paragraph, full-stop.

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.

A few weeks ago there was a fair bit of controversy after a US drone-strike killed an ISIS "hacker" who was, among other things, popular on Twitter. While US officials tried to paint him as a much bigger deal behind the scenes, some are now admitting that he was just noisy online. ABC News is reporting on the supposed internal debate among US counterterrorism officials concerning how to best deal with ISIS Twitter users. Some are arguing that these guys are small time annoyances, while others are arguing that we should just straight up kill ISIS tweeters. This next quote is fairly incredible.

Before the FCC passed new net neutrality rules, countless ISP consultants, think tankers, and various other sockpuppets desperately proclaimed that the rules would totally destroy the Internet and stifle all network investment. Now months after the rules took effect, everything seems to be operating as it was before -- if not better. Google Fiber continues to deploy to a growing number of underserved cities, municipal broadband providers and smaller ISPs continue to push gigabit upgrades, and even Comcast has announced it's deploying two gigabit service to around 18 million subscribers before the end of the year.

Many of the coolest sites around run on WordPress because it's easy, flexible, open and you can tailor it to your site's needs. The WordPress Wizard Bundle, on offer in the Deals store, has every course you could need to learn about WordPress. Pay what you want and learn about monetizing websites and setting up your own shop on your site. If you beat the average price (under $9 at the time of writing), you'll get access to 10 more courses covering everything from optimizing your site to drawing in traffic to designing responsive business sites and more. 10% of the profits from your purchase will go towards Creative Commons, which develops, supports, and stewards legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and innovation.

As broadcaster licensing squeezes Netflix ever tighter, you've probably noticed that the streaming company continues to lose higher-end, popular television and film content at an annoying rate. The latest such shift occurred when Netflix last week refused to extend its licensing agreement with Epix, resulting in Netflix customers losing access to mainstream films like Hunger Games: Catching Fire, World War Z and The Wolf of Wall Street. Epix then proceeded to strike a deal with both Hulu and Amazon, who'll now be carrying those titles instead.

As we noted earlier this year, as the Copyright Office and the Librarian of Congress consider the requested "exemptions" from Section 1201 of the DMCA, General Motors has come out strongly against allowing you to modify the software in the car that you (thought you) bought from the company. If you're new to this fight, Section 1201 of the DMCA is the "anti-circumvention" clause that says that it's copyright infringement if you "circumvent" any "technological protection method" (TPM) -- even if that circumvention has absolutely nothing to do with copyright infringement. Yes, this is insane. It's so insane that Congress even realized it would lead to ridiculous situations. But, rather than fixing the damn law, Congress instead decided to duct tape on an even more ridiculous "solution." That is that every three years (the so-called "triennial review"), people could beg and plead with the Copyright Office and the Librarian of Congress to issue special "exemptions" for classes of work where Section 1201 wouldn't apply. Yes, that's right, you have a law, but Congress knew the law made no sense in some cases, and so it just gave the Librarian of Congress (the guy who currently can't keep his website online) the power to anoint certain classes of technology immune from the law.

Late last week, singer Aretha Franklin succeeded in convincing a judge in Colorado to stop the Telluride Film Festival from screening the documentary Amazing Grace -- a concert film shot by Sydney Pollack that was actually filmed back in 1972, but was never shown. Franklin, of course, has no copyright in the film, but argued in her injunction request that she had an agreement with Pollack not to use the film without her authorization. From the complaint:

Labor unions would like it very much if somebody would investigate Verizon for its neglect of the company's aging DSL lines. As we've noted previously, both AT&T and Verizon are busy trying to walk away from aging DSL lines they no longer want to focus instead on profitable (read: usage capped) wireless. The problem historically has been that both companies have received billions in tax breaks and subsidies to not only build and support DSL, but to upgrade those lines to fiber. Instead, in case after case, we've shown how Verizon simply took the money and then convinced state lawmakers to forget about the obligation.

Techdirt first mentioned the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) last year, when "The Really Good Friends of Services" -- the self-chosen name for about 20 members of the World Trade Organization -- could no longer keep their plans locked behind closed doors, and word started to spread. Essentially, TISA completes the unholy trinity of global trade agreements that also includes TPP and TAFTA/TTIP. Between the three of them, they sew up just about every aspect of trade in both goods and services -- the latter being TISA's particular focus. They share a common desire to liberalize trade as much as possible, and to prevent national governments from imposing constraints on corporate activity around the world. One particularly blatant reflection of this desire is the inclusion of something called the "ratchet clause." As with "The Really Good Friends of Services," that's an official name, not something chosen by the opponents of TISA (although they could hardly have come up with anything more revealing.) Here's how the European Commission's TISA page explains it:

People can debate whether or not governments need to do something to curb carbon dioxide emissions, but while the debate continues, technology could help give us more attractive options for dealing with unwanted carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. Several methods of carbon sequestration have been proposed over the years, but none have really turned out to be financially viable so far. Sure, we could plant a trillion trees, but even that might have its own detrimental impact on the environment.