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The reality of designer babies seems to be more and more likely -- especially now that gene editing tools like CRISPR are becoming more refined and widespread in labs around the world. Legitimate concerns over a modern form of eugenics are being raised, and the ethical debates are getting less theoretical as the science pushes the boundaries of what can be done. People might be able to activate or delete genes without fully understanding the results, and the advances that can eliminate genetic disorders could also eliminate certain minorities or traits that are not necessarily disabilities.

Live by the copyright, die by the copyright, as I've said before. See, copyright protectionism is sort of like taking a moral stand: when someone asserts the importance of their copyright, they assert it for all copyrights. For most of us, this is not a problem, because we don't spend a great deal of time bashing others over the head with the copyright cudgel. But when you're Hasbro? Especially considering all of the many various actions taken by the company to shut down anything having to do with its My Little Pony property? Well, then it would be nice if the company might at least make sure it wasn't committing copyright infringement in selling that property as well.

We've discussed for years now how Hulu is hamstrung by the fact that it's owned by the traditional cable and broadcast industry. Owners 21st Century Fox, Disney and Comcast/NBC have gone out of their way to ensure the service is never too disruptive -- lest it hurt the traditional cable cash cow. And that's been the cable industry's mantra for years now -- crow ceaselessly about how you're "innovating," while simultaneously trying not to innovate too much, lest your customers realize your legacy TV service is absurdly expensive, inflexible, and outdated.

The digital world is increasingly giving rise to "winner take all" industries, where a market is all but dominated by one company and, sometimes, a single smaller competitor. Since innovation is so often driven by competition and hindered by monopolies, this is a worrying trend — but its true extent, and its implications, are hardly clear. This week, we discuss various winner take all situations and what they mean for the future of innovation. 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.

Back in October, we noted that it was a really big deal that the European Court of Justice had said that the EU/US Safe Harbor framework violated data protection rules, because it had become clear that the NSA was scooping up lots of the data. The issue, if you're not aware of it, is that under the safe harbor framework, US internet companies could have European customers and users, with their information and data stored on US servers. Without the safe harbor framework, there are at least some cases where many companies would be forced to set up separate data centers in Europe, and make sure European information is kept there.

I kind of figured a lot of people would disagree with my post yesterday, in which I noted that the underlying idea behind what the Fine Brothers were trying to do in helping to support fans in making their own versions of the various "React" programs was actually a good idea. The point was that the idea behind it was actually pretty good. A big brand/entertainment property encouraging fans to make their own versions of their program, helping them with additional support, promoting those fan videos and helping them make money -- in exchange for a cut of the revenue -- remains a cool idea. Unfortunately, the idea came from a company that had a really bad history of overly aggressive behavior in taking down content, deleting negative comments and ridiculously and petulantly claiming that anything remotely similar to what they did was somehow unfair. The examples of them whining about Buzzfeed and Ellen having similar segments was particularly galling. On top of that, the trademarking of various terms, including the very generic "React" really pushed things in the wrong direction.

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The misuse of DMCA notices to remove unwanted information from the web has been well-documented here. The "right to be forgotten" has sort of codified this behavior, but only applies to citizens of certain countries.

You may have heard that, in early December, amid great fanfare, President Obama replaced the terrible No Child Left Behind law and replaced it with the "Every Student Succeeds Act" which, among other things, gave more power to the states when it came to educational standards, moving them away from the federal government. There's actually a lot of good things in ESSA (mainly getting away from the really horrible parts of NCLB), but there were plenty of little "gifts" to various lobbyists. And, apparently, that includes Hollywood's lobbyists.

Last week, we noted that the FCC has proposed new guidelines that would bring some much-needed competition to the cable TV set top box market. Data shows that 99% of consumers pay something on average to $230 a year in set top box rental fees, despite much of this dated hardware being worth little to nothing. Collectively, the cable industry pulls in around $20 billion annually in set top box rental fees, which are fairly consistently increased once or twice a year. Unsurprisingly, whenever the FCC has tried to do something about this proprietary, captive market, the industry becomes downright hysterical.

Back in November, Congresswoman Katherine Clark introduced an anti-swatting bill. As you probably already know, swatting is when someone calls in a fake report to police about an ongoing incident at someone's home -- usually something like an "active shooter" or hostage taking or something similar -- in the interest of having police departments overreact and send out a SWAT team to deal with the situation, such as by raiding the home. The bill looks to make it a felony to use the phone system to "transmit false information with the intent to cause an emergency law enforcement response." While I'm not aware of anyone (so far) getting killed by a swatting, it seems like it's only a matter of time.

Techdirt has been writing about open access and open data in the academic world for some years now. But beyond those important ways of sharing lies a more integrated approach, generally known as open science. Gabriella Coleman has passed on some interesting news from Canada in this field. McGill University's Montreal Neurological Institute (MNI), under the leadership of its director, Guy Rouleau, wants to speed up the translation of research into treatments, and thinks that opening up completely is the way to do that, as Science reports:

There was a time when making your own alcohol wasn't a completely legit thing to do. Sure, now anyone can just go down to a corner store almost any time and pick up a chilled alcoholic beverage, but if you're a real do-it-yourself-er, you won't want to drink just anything that comes in a pretty bottle. Here are a few projects you might want to check out someday when you're not feeling like guzzling something made by Anheuser-Busch-Inbev-SABmiller.

I first signed up for Twitter in March of 2007, but I'll admit that I barely used it for about nine months. There were two events in early 2008, however, that convinced me of Twitter's power. The first was that I logged in and saw someone who I only knew online, but not in person, mention a hole-in-the-wall restaurant in NY that I really liked, and because of that, we actually arranged to meet up there for lunch a few weeks later when I was in NY. That ability to connect people was really powerful. The second, though, was much bigger, and it was the Iowa caucus in 2008. It was in January in 2008, but I'm thinking about it today, obviously because (in case you haven't heard), today is this year's Iowa caucus that officially kicks off the Presidential silly season, known as the Presidential nominating process.

Apparently the millions Facebook has been spending on advertisements, lobbying, marketing and spamming the Indian government will be for naught. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) appears poised to ban the practice of zero rating as part of its new net neutrality rules, effectively killing Facebook's controversial Free Basics zero rating program once and for all in the country. According to the Times of India, TRAI is expected to deliver the death blow to Facebook's world-domination ambitions within a week:

Isn't politics just great? Politicians aren't exactly known for their honesty on things, often saying things to voters just to get elected. But Hillary Clinton's views on the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement have received quite a lot of scrutiny. After all, while she was at the State Department, she was a strong supporter of the TPP, and so it was a bit of a surprise last October when she came out against it. Of course, the fact that the deal is fairly unpopular with the Democratic Party base probably contributed quite a lot to that decision -- and Clinton's weak attempt at revisionist history to pretend she never really supported it.

Since late last week, we've been getting lots of inbound requests and submissions to write about The Fine Brothers, and the claims that they're somehow trying to "control" or "claim ownership" on the concept of "react videos." Almost all of the inbound requests are expecting us to trash the Fine Brothers for this apparent attempt to "own" something that can't be owned, and we're going to disappoint them. Having gone through all of the details, it actually looks like the Fine Brothers were legitimately trying to do something that's actually... kind of cool. Now, before you rip off my head as well, please wait and hear me out. I will say that they could have been a bit more tactful about it, but I don't think they deserve the intense hatred they're getting.

Back in 2013, not long after Aaron Swartz's tragic suicide, reporter Kevin Poulsen (who had also worked with Swartz on what became SecureDrop, the system for whistleblowers to anonymously submit documents to journalists) submitted a Freedom of Information Act with the Department of Homeland Security about what info it had on Swartz. There were some legal fights about it, but eventually DHS was forced to release the documents, which now reside at a site set up by Poulsen called SwartzFiles.com. These documents revealed things like the government's weird infatuation with the Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto, that many believe was written (at least in part) by Swartz (there's at least some dispute over this).

Keeping tabs on your network can help keep your important and personal information secure. For $29, Glasswire Pro for PC helps to visualize your past and current network traffic to help you better understand what is going on in the background. It alerts you to suspicious activity, allows you to block access by specific programs with its firewall, and uses limited resources so it won't slow down your computer. The tools allow you to monitor specific applications and protocols, and the Pro version lets you monitor up to 3 computers.

Apparently two French Parliament Members are on a mission to ban linking to websites, unless you first have permission. In short, they're looking to undermine one of the key features of the internet itself.

Apparently, the only way to stop terrorists from hating us for our freedom is to strip away those offensive freedoms.

The way things are going, pretty soon FBI Director James Comey is going to be out there alone, flipping off light switches and blowing out candles, all the while cursing the going darkness.

For many, many years, the big German music performance rights organization GEMA has been at war with YouTube over what rates YouTube must pay for any streamed music. It started with GEMA more or less arguing that a stream on YouTube was effectively the same as a purchased download on iTunes, and that it should get $0.17 per stream (yes, per stream). For anyone who understands even basic economics you'd recognize that's not even remotely in the realm of reality. The battle has gone on ever since, and unlike basically every other country in the world GEMA has refused to budge. Because of this YouTube has blocked most major label music from its service in Germany, while GEMA has filed a variety of lawsuits against YouTube in the country arguing that YouTube is somehow responsible for what YouTube users upload.

This week, one of the stories that got the most response was the extreme claims by the IAB chief that using an adblocker means you hate free speech. One anonymous commenter took first place for insightful with a simple explanation of this common fallacy:

Five Years Ago There were two related incidents this week in 2011, to do with citizens in Illinois videotaping authorities. One woman was arrested and faced 15 years in prison for recording her attempt to file a report of being sexually assaulted by a police officer; meanwhile, an artist faced the same sentence for video taping his own arrest. On the flipside, in the same week, a man was acquitted of charges that came after he filmed the TSA and refused to show his ID. The George Hotz situation was still in its early stages and unfolding slowly, but was already troubling after the judge approved an aggressive temporary restraining order requested by Sony. UFC was going after Justin.tv for inducing infringement, a Japanese court deemed overseas place-shifting of television to be infringing, and mass copyright shakedowns appeared based on Paris Hilton's sex tape and, more generally, the wide world of porn. Amidst all this, the president nominated a former top RIAA lawyer to be Solicitor General. Ten Years Ago Speaking of the RIAA, this week in 2006 they were pushing the new line that merely making files available is infringing, while some were predicting that their next target might be ISPs (following other trailblazers). In Canada, one record label actually stepped up to help defend a teen against the RIAA's aggressive tactics. The MPAA, for its part, exposed a serious double standard when it defended its own right to internally copy and distribute movies, even as the industry continued to push a plug for the analog hole in the form of secretive technology that nobody's allowed to examine. Following the disastrous launch of its Video project, Google admitted its mistake (though perhaps didn't quite grasp its full scope). This came the same week that Google announced it would let the Chinese government censor results on a special version of its site — a disappointing move, though we weren't sure why congress was grandstanding about it. Fifteen Years Ago This week in 2001, IBM was claiming to have developed "Napster-proof" DRM-laden music, Sega was getting out of the console business, the digital holdouts at The New Yorker were finally getting ready to go online, and even the smartest among us often failed to recognize the potential of mobile internet. The Presidential turnover was marked by widespread failures on the new Whitehouse website, though perhaps they had something to do with the prank pulled by the outgoing Clinton administration: removing the "W" key from all the keyboards in the building (prompting one TV show to hold a drive to collect replacements. Also this week in 2001: Despair.com (in)famously managed to trademark the :-( emoticon. Thirty Years Ago As you've likely noted, this Thurdsay was the 30th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. Back in 2011, we wrote a little about it on the 25th anniversary.

This week, we're looking at a pair of crowdfunded projects for proud urbanites: artwork that celebrates our streets and cityscapes. Microscape Models There's no shortage of souvenirs in the name of New York City, but this project offers an incredible new way to celebrate Manhattan: 1:5000 scale 3D-printed replicas of the cityscape itself, made with unbelievable levels of accuracy from recent aerial scans. Eventually they plan to do a huge array of cities, but for now it's the big one, rendered in all its gridlocked glory. The designs are hand-tweaked to optionally include buildings under construction or still in planning. The models come as individual 6" squares which can (for a hefty total price tag of $25k) even be assembled into a complete replica city — but, just one or two are pretty damn impressive all by themselves. There are also special landmark tiles available to Kickstarter backers, focusing on spots like the Chrysler Building, One World Trade Center, and Washington Square Park. Every Road Custom Maps Late last year, you might have seen a map making the rounds that purported to show how every road does indeed lead to Rome. Of course, as most people noticed (including the creators), you could create the same kind of visual for any spot on the road network of any location — and that's exactly what Every Road offers. They are custom map posters generated with an address of your choice in any given city, showing all the thousands of street routes from every point of the city to your chosen spot. The results are wispy, fractal-esque versions of recognizable city maps, and no two will be identical (unless two people choose the same address). The pricing is a little odd, with high-res digital copies costing slightly more than the smallest available print size — but for those who want to save cash, there's also a $5 desktop wallpaper option.

A few weeks ago, we wrote about some details from the court hearing in the ridiculous monkey selfie case in which PETA (the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) claimed not only that it represented Naruto, an Indonesian macaque monkey, but that the monkey should hold the copyright on this selfie: However, as we've explained time and time again (much to the chagrin of David Slater, the photographer whose camera was used to take the photo), the photo is clearly in the public domain, as it's long been held that the Copyright Act only applies to human authors. In court a few weeks ago, the judge made it clear he didn't believe PETA had any case at all, but Judge William Orrick has now come out with his written opinion in the case explaining his reasoning why. Not surprisingly, it more or less tracks with what he said in court: there is no evidence that the Copyright Act applies to monkeys, and thus, case dismissed -- with leave to amend. The judge cites numerous cases in which the courts clearly say the Copyright Act means a "person" when it refers to author... and PETA cited a grand total of zero cases that argued otherwise:

Ashkan Soltani is a well known privacy expert who (among other things) worked with Barton Gellman at the Washington Post to analyze the Snowden documents for story worthy information -- an effort that won that series a Pulitzer Prize. Soltani has been hugely instrumental in reporting on other privacy-related issues as well, including being a part of the team that also a Pulitzer Prize finalist for the Wall Street Journal's excellent What They Know series on digital privacy issues. Basically he has a long history of doing great journalism around privacy. For most of the last year, he was also the Chief Technology Officer at the FTC. Back in December, it was announced that he had moved over to work for the federal government CTO, Megan Smith, in the White House as a senior advisor. The CTO's office has been collecting some fairly amazing tech talent recently.

Not that long ago, we mentioned that progress towards an algorithm that could play the game of Go better than humans was on the horizon. It looks like our wetware shouldn't be too smug about being able to play Go now, but we can still have fun playing, right? And it'll still take a while before robots are any good at (non-contact) sports. Ping pong, FTW!

Back when you were a kid, you may (depending on your age) have checked books out of your library using a circulation card. The cards, like the one pictured below, would allow the librarian to keep track of the books, who had them, and when they were expected back at the library.

I really hate stories where there is no one to root for. Unfortunately, this is one of those stories. C'est la vie. If you were ambulatory enough to get to your computer these past few weeks, you likely came across a video from a Donald Trump rally, in which a group of five young girls, only three of which are seen in the video, called the USA Freedom Kids hip-bobbed a serenade to the Trumpster about how awesome America is. It was horrible. It was jingoistic and patronizing with just a dash of discomfort as these young girls were dressed in pleated red, white and blue skirts and tops. So that you don't think I'm exaggerating the level of horror here, see the video of the whole thing below, if you can stomach it.

EPIC is reporting that the DOJ has finally caved and is handing over a document it requested last fall. The document EPIC sought was the "Umbrella Agreement" between the US and Europe on the handling of each entities' citizens' data.

Stanford Law professor Barbara van Schewick, one of the leading scholars on net neutrality, has filed a report with the FCC detailing how T-Mobile's Binge On clearly violates net neutrality. As we've been highlighting, Binge On has numerous problems when it comes to net neutrality, and appears to clearly violate some of the FCC's rules. There's also the fact that T-Mobile flat out lied about it and claimed that it was "optimization" when it's really throttling.

Over in Japan, there's been a big political scandal brewing over the last few days, leading the country's economy minister Akira Amari to resign amid charges that he received significant bribes from a construction company. What makes that relevant to us here is that Amari was also Japan's leading negotiator on the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, and his resignation and the bribery charges are raising additional (and fairly serious) questions about whether or not Japan really should support the TPP. So far, the bribery that's been discussed does not appear to directly impact that TPP, but it at least raises other questions about whether or not the TPP itself was compromised by similar corruption (of course, some may argue that the entire process, in which big companies basically helped write the thing, is itself corrupt). Amari had been expected to travel to New Zealand in the next few days for the TPP signing ceremony, but obviously someone else will now have to go.

Despite its terrible name, the $20 LithiumCard Wallet Battery seems like a really cool product. It is roughly the thickness of 5 credit cards stacked together and is designed to fit in almost any wallet. The charge cord (Lightning or microUSB -- select your preference from the drop down menu) can be easily tucked away in the battery. It comes with a Nanostik pad for attaching to your device if you'd rather not carry it in your wallet. The 1200mAh promises a quick charge wherever you go.

So we recently reported on a claim that ISIS had been spotted making use of their very own encrypted messaging app, and highlighting how totally useless US laws requiring tech companies to backdoor encryption would be in that situation. However, it turns out that we should have been a lot more skeptical of the original report, coming from a single sourced security company. Over the years, we've learned that single-sourced security company claims are often highly suspect, and designed much more to get attention or increase FUD, than based on any real issue. The good folks over at Daily Dot are now reporting that this encrypted messaging app doesn't really appear to exist, and their investigation is pretty thorough and fairly convincing. Just like the claims that ISIS had a "training manual for encryption," this claim appears to be false.

Not too surprisingly, the Wall Street Journal has been a big booster of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement over the past year, repeatedly praising the deal and claiming it will save the world in all sorts of ways. Most of that is based on the faulty belief that the TPP is actually a "free trade" deal (it's actually the opposite), with some of it just being the standard WSJ faith-based belief that "if big businesses like it, it must be good."

I'm not certain why people think this will work, but there seems to be an idea floating around a few of our fellow citizens that they can simply force their favorite sports teams to do what they want by filing trademarks for things they never intend to use. You may recall the story about a jackass in North Dakota who wanted to prevent the University of North Dakota from changing its name from The Fighting Siouxto, well, anything else that had been suggested by filing for trademarks on all the other things that had been suggested. Such a strategy was doomed to fail from the beginning for any number of reasons, but mostly because you actually have to be using what you're trying to trademark in commerce in order to get it approved, and trolling isn't a commercial enterprise as far as I know.

So much for those "inalienable rights." The Sixth Amendment -- among other things -- guarantees representation for criminal defendants. This guarantee has been declared null and void in two states: Utah and Pennsylvania.

Biology does whatever it can do, and it's usually pretty messy about it. Just when people think they've figured out a nice hierarchical system for classifying plants and animals and microscopic organisms, we find out that there's more going on and some things aren't as clear cut as we thought. We could divide up life into several kingdoms and/or three domains, but taxonomy isn't getting simpler with time. Life is a continuous spectrum that can't be separated easily, and classifications could become even more complicated in the future. If you thought a platypus was weird, check out a few of these creatures.

Of course, by now you know about the "Five Eyes" coalition of the signals intelligence agencies of the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand all sharing certain intelligence information between them. Some of the Snowden docs have made clear that this collaboration helps the various countries get around restrictions on "domestic" surveillance by effectively offshoring it to other "friendly" electronic spy agencies. Well, at least for now, it appears that that the Five Eyes effort has lost an Eye.

Remember Roca Labs? The somewhat shady manufacturer of some goop that the company claimed was an "alternative to gastric bypass surgery." This was the company that initially sued the site PissedConsumer.com because it was hosting negative reviews of Roca's product -- and Roca claimed that because it pressured buyers into a gag clause saying they wouldn't say anything bad about the product, that PissedConsumer was engaged in tortious interference. There was a lot more as well, including threatening to sue us at Techdirt (more than once!) for reporting on the case, suing Pissed Consumer's lawyer Marc Randazza for defamation and a variety of other shenanigans (even including some bizarre side stories on Nevada politics, despite it being a Florida company). Anyway, late last year the FTC smacked down Roca for its misleading marketing and its non-disparagement clauses. Roca is still fighting that fight, but soon after it also lost the case against PissedConsumer.

We're back again with another in our weekly reading list posts of books we think our community will find interesting and thought provoking. Once again, buying the book via the Amazon links in this story also helps support Techdirt.

What happens when you lower the barriers to entry? More participants join the market. It works everywhere, even when the market is "law enforcement" and the "customers" are everyone else.

It appears that efforts to censor the internet globally continues to spread, with the latest being a report out of Pakistan that the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has told ISPs that they need to start blocking an astounding 429,343 websites at the domain level as quickly as possible, following a Supreme Court order to the PTA about the evils of porn online.

It is critical to backup your data today. It only takes one problem with your computer, and your photos, files and music could be gone. The $49 Genius Rescue Cloud Backup promises a convenient and easy solution. The Genius Rescue app runs in the background while you work and backs up your files automatically. You can access your files from any device anywhere in the world. It features 2TB of storage space and easy ways to restore old or lost files to your computers, so you can rest a little easier knowing they're backed up safely.

In an article that's actually a bit (but just a bit) more thoughtful than the headline applied to it ("How Corporations Profit From Black Teens' Viral Content"), Fader writer Doreen St. Felix tackles the cultural appropriation of creative works. Sort of.

A few years ago, we highlighted an absolutely ridiculous claim by a pro-copyright expansion think tank, arguing that it was a myth that copyright could ever be used for censorship. In that article, we listed out a number of examples of copyright being used absolutely for reasons of censorship, including a few by government actors. But, by far, one of the worst abusers of copyright law (and US copyright law specifically) to censor critical speech is the government of Ecuador. We've written a few times about Ares Rights, a Spanish company that was regularly sending DMCA notices in the US to try to suppress any kind of criticism of Ecuador's government (and also on criticism of Ares Rights).

Another whistleblower is facing charges brought by this administration -- one that has prosecuted more whistleblowers than all other administrations combined. Thomas Tamm, a DOJ lawyer during the Bush era, exposed the NSA's super-secret domestic surveillance program, whose authorization ran directly from the Attorney General to the Chief Judge of the FISA Court.

It's striking that from a situation where there were very few studies of the likely effects of the TPP agreement, we've moved to one where they are appearing almost every week. Recently Techdirt wrote about a World Bank study, and one from Tufts University; now we have one from the Peterson Institute for International Economics, which calls itself "a private, nonprofit, nonpartisan research institution devoted to the study of international economic policy." Here's its summary of the results: