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We've got another double winner this time around, and it comes in response to recent sad news: the death of David Bowie. As we examined some of the copyright questions surrounding his work, one anonymous commenter achieved first place for both insightful and funny with a simple comment:

Five Years Ago This week in 2011, much of the news on the Wikileaks front was centered on Twitter, which the government had ordered to reveal information on people connected with the site. This drew the ire of Iceland officials (among others), and not unlike the recent domain seizures, the government's approach was full of mistakes. But, at least, we learned that Twitter would stand up for its users rights. Of course, that wasn't the only attack Wikileaks faced: customs officers were intimidating Wikileaks volunteers, a congressional rep was asking the Treasury Department to put the site on the terrorist list (a request that was thankfully refused), and one bold man from Florida was suing Wikileaks for personal distress. On the flipside, the EFF was debunking the myth that the leaked cables didn't help anything while On The Media was seeking out the anonymous senator who killed a recent whistleblowing bill and the press at large was starting to realize that Bradley Manning was being tortured. Also of note this week in 2011, we covered the beginnings of a now-infamous incident when Sony got a restraining order against George Hotz for jailbreaking the PS3. Ten Years Ago Netflix was the unstoppable giant this week in 2006, and it was still just focused on mailing DVDs — which unscrupulous postal workers would occasionally steal. The main victim, however, was clearly going to be Blockbuster. Google was trying to wow the world with a new online video offering, but it was sadly all about copy protection and not very impressive. MySpace revealed that it had its own video strategy in the works, which explained why it had recently started blocking YouTube. This dismal state of affairs even led some to wonder if AOL was the one with the most interesting and innovative video offering. That title certainly didn't belong to the world of mobile TV, which was wrecked by fragmentation and walled gardens like so much mobile content. Meanwhile, efforts were still underway to plug the analog hole, and Tim Lee pointed out that the most insidious effect might come from the exception for so-called "professional" equipment. We bemoaned the fact that DRM was still endearing itself to artists as Sony's CEO attempted to brush off the recent rootkit fiasco. Fifteen Years Ago In these early days of 2001, calls for regulating the internet were much simpler — and even more absurd. Case in point: one novelists request that everything online be officially labelled as "true" or not. Case in point the second: a legislative attempt to deem the actions of spiders and other online bots as "trespassing". But hey, this was a time when one of the biggest intellectual property questions on the internet was the legality of "framing" content from other sites. Blogs, which were still often given their forgotten full name of weblogs, were still new enough that a different news organization would "discover" them every few weeks, leading to strange ideas like blog-based print magazines. Also this week in 2001: we heard the very first murmurs of what would grow into immense hype about "IT", also known as "Ginger". Remember that? Yeah, it turned out to be the Segway. Hurrah. Eighty-Nine Years Ago With all the obligatory and uninteresting hype surrounding the recently-announced Oscar nominations, perhaps it's worth noting that the Academy was founded on January 11th, 1927 by Louis B. Mayer and a room of his 36 hand-picked guests. If I understand correctly, those people all became immortal in their 60s and continue to choose every Oscar winner to this day.

For the past few weeks, we've been looking at selections of cool Kickstarter projects — but this week we're going back to taking a closer look at one interesting offering: the nOb, a multi-functional control peripheral with a unique approach to what it does. The Good There are no shortage of USB knobs, sliders and switches out there, and they pretty much all come to us from the music production world, and are all MIDI-based. In fact, in the past, I've criticized devices for bucking that standard — but the nOb does so for a good reason: it's not just about music. Instead of MIDI-over-USB, the nOb uses a USB serial standard and is designed to interact with all sorts of software interfaces. Anything that can be clicked-and-dragged onscreen can be controlled with the nOb by simply hovering your cursor over it. Thus, far beyond just music software, it can control things like the playhead in video editing software, or the adjustment sliders and canvas panning in Photoshop, or for that matter any scroll-bar in any app. Its exact input style is controlled by two switches on the device, and both these switches as well as the knob are all touch-sensitive, allowing for an additional layer of customizable control with various taps and double-taps. The simple flexibility of the nOb is what makes it noteworthy. Though it probably seems like a simple toy to casual users, it has a lot of potential for a wide variety of professional tasks in music, video, design, illustration, photography, animation, 3D modelling and anything else that requires hours hunched over a keyboard and mouse, navigating a complex project and tweaking hundreds of settings to perfection. The Bad For now, I have few if any reservations. It seems a little on the pricey side at €150, but once you look at the quality of construction and consider the touch-sensitive controls, it's pretty justifiable. It would be nice to see it include a MIDI-based option (and indeed, this is one of the stretch goals) since the mouse-hover control system will not always be ideal for music applications, especially complex workflows that rely on MIDI as a near-universal standard — but this isn't a case of ignoring a good standard out of hubris or ignorance. It's a conscious choice to try something different that opens up huge new possibilities, and the nOb's USB serial interface is also open and developer-friendly. The Beautiful & Hackable It can't go entirely unmentioned that the nOb looks very nice — and there's no reason to doubt the claim that it feels very nice too, given the mahogany enclosure and the solid aluminum knob. Also, in keeping with the tradition of the great analog synthesizers and mixer boards of old, it's designed to be easily physically hackable for the tinkerers out there: everything is screwed together and easily disassembled.

As they say, with great power comes great responsibility. Facebook, being a dominant force in the social media industry, certainly has a great deal of power, but how does it do in the responsibility department. It's an important question, because as a platform essentially designed to facilitate speech and expression, it would seem necessary to treat with care how it collides with that speech when controversy arises. Unfortunately, we've seen time and time again how Facebook treats the question bureaucratically rather than with any kind of nuance. Between bending the knee to national interests, promising to censor speech deemed to be hateful, or just flat out hiding behind a wall of corporate speak in order to take down photos, the trend for Facebook is one of grip-tightening rather than free expression.

Body cameras have become democratized, for lack of a better word. They're relatively cheap, easy to use and can be deployed with minimal setup. They hold the promise of increased transparency and accountability, but legislators seem far more interested in ensuring the new technology will have zero net positive effects.

Eating healthier is a common new year's resolution, and it might be good to start simple and stop consuming one unhealthy snack item. However, a completely healthy diet is a totally different task. There are countless fad diets that don't really work or aren't as healthy as they're supposed to be. On top of all that, we should also keep an eye out for the outbreaks of foodborne illnesses and food safety recommendations. Maybe people who drink all their calories aren't totally crazy....

Late last year, we relayed the story of Ai Weiwei, an artist who had previously used Legos to create political art in the form of portraits, being refused a bulk order of Lego blocks by the company. At issue was a long-standing company policy prohibiting its facilitation of blocks being used for political speech. As a result of Weiwei going public about the refusal, the story was Streisanded into the public consciousness, resulting in condemnation and shaming from more of the masses than would have ever been aware of the project otherwise.

As asset forfeiture's popularity continues to decline in the eyes of the public and certain legislators (but not in the eyes of its beneficiaries), arguments against reform efforts are becoming more desperate and strained. Hartford County state's attorney Joseph I. Cassilly has been granted a pile of pixels at the Baltimore Sun to defend the "right" of Maryland's law enforcement agencies to take money from people without charging them, much less convicting them.

For much of the last year now, Facebook has been under fire in India for its "Free Basics" zero rating campaign, which exempts Facebook-approved content from carrier usage caps, purportedly to the benefit of the nation's poor. Critics however have argued that Facebook's just trying to corner developing ad markets under the banner of altruism, and giving one company so much control over what's effectively a walled garden sets a horrible precedent for a truly open Internet. Indian regulator TRAI has agreed so far, arguing that what Facebook is doing is effectively glorified collusion, and it's demanding that Facebook shut the program down until a public conversation about net neutrality can be had.

The traditional cable and broadcast industry's chief export is no longer quality programming, it's denial. First the industry denied cord cutting even existed. Then it acknowledged it existed, but pretended it was only something losers living with mommy had any interest in. More recently the cable industry has acknowledged that yes, there is something that vaguely looks like a mammoth tsunami looming on the horizon, but people are totally overreacting because the cable industry is just so god damned innovative.

Yosemite National Park is apparently changing the names of a bunch of famous sites and buildings in the park thanks to one of the most ridiculous trademark disputes you'll ever hear about. Ever stayed at the famous historic Ahwahnee hotel? That's not what it will be called next time you go. Camped in Curry Village? Not any more. All thanks to... trademark law.

You don't always need full-sized tools to get the job done. The $25 Nano Tool 3 Pack from the makers of KeySmart are the perfect little tools to keep handy. The wrench works with #8, #10, 1/4", M4, M5, and M6 sizes. The socket works as a flathead screwdriver and includes a standard size bit holder. The ruler can help you measure in 1/8" increments up to 2 inches. Keep all three stainless steel tools on your key chain and always be ready for those emergency fix-it situations.

At what point will the music industry stop crying wolf? Remember that part of the reason behind the 1909 Copyright Act in the US was the arrival of the player piano, which some feared would put musicians out of business. Same with the phonograph. Remember, John Philip Sousa told Congress in 1906 how those darned "talking machines" were going to stop people from singing:

Strap in, folks, because we've got quite a battle brewing. You may recall that Mike Huckabee recently found himself the subject of a copyright dispute with Frank Sullivan, a member of Survivor, over the use of the band's hit song Eye of the Tiger at a rally for the release of Kim Davis. Davis was the county clerk who asserted that her right to express her religion -- in the form of denying same sex couples the right to marry -- overrode the secular law of the land, which is about as bad a misunderstanding of how our secular government works as can be imagined. Sullivan's filing indicated that the rally was conducted by the Huckabee campaign and that the use of the song had been without permission, therefore it was an infringing use. Left out of the filing was any indication of whether the Huckabee campaign had acquired the normal performance licenses.

For a few years now, broadcasters have whined endlessly about the use of VPNs to access Netflix in markets where the streaming service had yet to launch. You'll recall that Australian broadcasters in particular loved to throw hissy fits over the use of VPN technology, accusing customers (paying for both Netflix and a VPN) of being "pirates" for refusing to adhere to regional viewing restrictions. Of course, ignored amidst all this whining (and the futile attempts to ban VPNs) was the fact that these users wouldn't be going to these lengths -- if they liked the existing services being made available to them.

As we've written recently, a report from the World Bank suggests that the economic benefits from TPP will be slight for the US, Australia and Canada. New Zealand is predicted to do better, but not much: the econometric modelling predicts a 3.1% boost to its GDP by 2030 -- roughly 0.3% extra GDP per year. That's a pretty poor payback given the price participant countries will have to pay in terms of copyright, biologics and corporate sovereignty. Such details have not prevented one of the main newspapers in the country, the New Zealand Herald, from banging the drum for TPP's signing ceremony, which is probably going to take place quite soon:

Sports fans in the city of St. Louis are having a rough go of it lately. Fresh on the heels of losing their football team to Los Angeles, now we are learning that the federal government has charged former Cardinals scouting director Christopher Correa with unauthorized access into the Houston Astros computer systems. While some had speculated that the government would go after the Cardinals under the Economic Espionage Act, it's beginning to look like our original assumption that the CFAA would be the tool the government would wield has been proven correct. Also appearing to be correct were reports that the "hacking" that took place in this instance was of the less hack-y variety and more of the let's-try-the-guy's-old-password-y.

It's been a while since Apollo 17. Getting to Mars sounds like a worthy follow-up mission, but just figuring out how to live inside a metal tube for longer than a year outside of low Earth orbit is also a pretty challenging project. NASA hasn't been very focused on going back to the moon recently, but that could change depending on who becomes the next US president. But in the meantime, here are a few other efforts working on missions to get to the moon.

What is it with political campaigns issuing totally bogus takedown notices? It happens all too frequently, especially with presidential campaigns. But the latest example may be the stupidest one we've seen to date. The folks at the Lumen Database (formerly Chilling Effects) alert us to the ridiculous news that Bernie Sanders' campain issued a bogus DMCA notice to the Wikimedia Foundation, because Wikimedia Commons has hosted some Sanders' logos.

As you may have heard, there was some tragic news a few weeks back, when the founder of Debian Linux, Ian Murdock, passed away under somewhat suspicious circumstances. Without more details, we didn't have much to report on concerning his passing, but Gabriella Coleman put together this wonderful look at how Murdock shaped the Debian community, and why it became such a strong and lasting group and product. Ian Murdock in his Own Words: "The package system was not designed to manage software. It was designed to facilitate collaboration" Ian Murdock (1973-2015). Peering in from the outside, the Debian operating system -- founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock, then a twenty-two-year-old college student -- might appear to have been created with hardcore, technologically-capable power users in mind. After all, it is one of the most respected distributions of Linux: as of this writing, the current Debian stable distribution, Jessie, has 56,865 individual open source projects packaged (in native Debian parlance software is referred to as packages), and Debian itself has functioned as the basis for over 350 derivative distributions. Debian developers are so dedicated to the pursuit of technical excellence that the project is simultaneously revered and criticized for its infrequent release cycle -- the project only releases a new version roughly every two years or so, when its Release Team deems it fit for public use. As its developers are fond of saying, "it will be released when it's ready." But if you take a closer look, what is even more striking about Debian is that its vibrant community of developers are as committed to an array of ethical and legal principles as they are to technical excellence. These principles are enshrined in a bevy of documents -- a manifesto, a constitution, a social contract, and a set of legal principles -- which guide what can (and cannot) be done in the project. Its Social Contract, for instance, stipulates a set of crystal clear promises to the broader free software public, including a commitment to their users and transparency. In 2001, I began anthropological fieldwork on free software in pursuit of my Ph.D. Debian's institutional model of software development and rich ethical density attracted me to it immediately. The ethical life of Debian is not only inscribed in its discursive charters, but manifests also in the lively spirit of deliberation and debate found in its mailing lists. Ian Murdock, who passed away tragically last week, had already left the endeavor when my research began, but his influence was clear. He had carefully nursed the project from inception to maturity during its first three years. As my research wrapped up in 2004, I was fortunate enough to meet Ian at that year's Debconf. Held annually, that year's conference was hosted in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and it was the first year he had ever attended. Given his fortuitous presence, I took the opportunity to organize a roundtable. Alongside a couple of long-time Debian developers, Ian reflected on the project's early history and significance. By this time, many developers had already spoken to me in great (and fond) detail about Ian's early contributions to Debian: they were essential, many insisted, in creating the fertile soil that allowed the project to grow its deepest roots and sprout into the stalwart community that it is today. In the fast-paced world of the Internet, where a corporate giant like AOL can spectacularly rise and fall in a decade, Debian is strikingly unique for its staying power: it has thrived for a remarkable twenty-three years (and though I am not fond of predictions, I expect it will be around throughout the next twenty as well). It was well-known that Ian established the project's moral compass, and also provided an early vision and guidance that underwrote many of the processes responsible for Debian's longevity. But witnessing Ian, and other early contributors, such as Bdale Garbee, articulate and reflect on that early period was a lot more potent and powerful than hearing it second hand. In honor of his life and legacy, I am publishing the interview here (it has been slightly edited for readability). Below, I want to make two points about Ian's contributions and do so by highlighting a selection of his most insightful remarks drawn from the roundtable discussion and his blog -- comments that demonstrate how he helped sculpt Debian into the dynamic project it is today. 1. Ian Murdock instilled a culture of reciprocity in Debian Technologists and hackers contribute to free and open source software (F/OSS) development for a variety of reasons, many of which have little to do with altruism. But when Ian first cut his teeth on free software he was moved by the fact that other developers gave their code away freely.

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. Every year at the beginning of January, we post a story about all the works that should be entering the public domain in the US, but aren't. That's always based on a blog post from Duke's Center for the Study of the Public Domain, which is led by professor James Boyle. Every time we do this, some people seem to ask what's such a big deal about the public domain anyway, and I usually like to point such people to Boyle's own book on the subject: The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind.

Over the past year or so, there has been some people questioning if merely tweeting could be considered "material support for terrorism." Taking things to another level altogether, Tamara Fields, whose husband (a government contractor for DynCorp International) was tragically killed in an ISIS strike late last year, has now sued Twitter for providing "material support" for ISIS.

Two researchers for Kaspersky Lab, Costin Raiu and Anton Ivanov, have published an absolutely fascinating tale of how they successfully tracked down a zero day exploit in Microsoft Silverlight. The story is totally worth reading, and it stems from the researchers trying to find an exploit that was described in an Ars Technica article by Cyrus Farivar, concerning a hacker selling exploits to Hacking Team, which was revealed last summer when Hacking Team got hacked and had all its emails (among other things) released.

The $19 Complete White Hat Hacking And Penetration Testing Bundle is a great way to update your skills or get introduced to the concepts and techniques behind network and data safety. Learn at your own pace from the comfort of your home with interactive courses and lectures. The five courses cover network penetration testing, VMWare vSphere and ESXi virtualization software, the Cisco Packet Tracer, and how to set up your own sites.

Back in 2011 we noted how a group of Falun Gong members filed suit against Cisco in San Francisco, alleging that Cisco held some culpability for the Chinese government's crackdown on dissidents, critics, and others. According to the lawsuit at the time, Cisco "competed aggressively" for the contracts to design China's Golden Shield system, "with full knowledge that it was to be used for the suppression of the Falun Gong religion." The full, amended complaint (pdf) accused Cisco CEO John Chambers and two other senior executives of working with the CCP to find, eavesdrop on and track Falun Gong members.

Metallica, in some circles, will always be known as the band that sued Napster and promised to go after the band's own fans that used the platform. For some former fans of the band, nothing the band has done since can redeem it. And I'm assuming the latest move probably won't help much either: various reports note that a Canadian Metallica tribute/cover band called "Sandman" showed up at a gig recently, only to discover a 41 page cease and desist letter from the band's lawyers, claiming that they were unfairly profiting off the Metallica name and logo.

Metallica, in some circles, will always be known as the band that sued Napster and promised to go after the band's own fans that used the platform. For some former fans of the band, nothing the band has done since can redeem it. And I'm assuming the latest move probably won't help much either: various reports note that a Canadian Metallica tribute/cover band called "Sandman" showed up at a gig recently, only to discover a 41 page cease and desist letter from the band's lawyers, claiming that they were unfairly profiting off the Metallica name and logo.

For a few years now, HBO has turned a blind eye to users that decide to share their passwords for HBO Go (the streaming app for existing cable providers) and HBO Now (the standalone streaming app for cord cutters). Last year HBO CEO Richard Plepler said the company keeps a close eye on the company's password sharing stats, but said the sharing isn't a huge phenomenon. Besides, as the CEO argued in an interview a few years back, the act of sharing passwords can be seen as a new form of marketing the brand, and a tool to create a new generation of addicts:

Supporters of TPP generally insist it's absolutely worth doing, despite any infelicities it might contain, because of the huge overall economic benefit it will bring to participants. But when challenged, they are unable to cite any credible evidence for that claim. That's because there isn't any: despite the impact that TPP's measures will have on how the US and other countries do business, there are astonishingly few studies on whether it will indeed have a positive impact overall. Just over a year ago, we wrote about one of the rare attempts to model TPP, commissioned by the US Department of Agriculture, which came up with the following result for countries like the US and Australia:

We've had some fun with our North Korean friends around these parts in the past, mostly revolving around the Pyongyang regime's adorable attempts to bolster its already nefarious reputation through its propaganda efforts. While the nation's Orwellian policies are both stark and serious, and it certainly does have troubling weapons in its arsenal, so many of its threats have amounted to bad propaganda devised through the liberal use of video game footage, music and bad attempts at Photoshop. Well, the arms race doesn't end, of course, which is why North Korea is pleased to display its latest weapon: bad attempts at video editing!

One of the properties of life itself is that it changes its environment. All life does it, not just us humans. But we might be the only animals that might care about our legacy on the world. We haven't completely figured out what mark we've left on the Earth (or if it's permanent), but we've definitely changed some things, for better or worse.

We used to do cover a certain type of story around here, where we informed our readers about some truly dumb criminals doing truly dumb things with technology. We stopped doing those posts more recently, in part because they were starting to feel stale and in part because we didn't want to force our readers to confront the true levels of stupidity that exist on this planet. But, like a member of the Corleone family, they just keep pulling me back in.

There have been a number of copyright-related discussions spurred by the unfortunate passing of David Bowie, but here's one more that might make for an interesting law school exam. Matthew Braga, over at Vice's Motherboard, has a really wonderful story about how Bowie used a lyric writing word randomizer app called Verbasizer in writing his album Outside in the mid-1990s. He includes this clip from a documentary about it: In short, it's a digitized version of the famed "cut up technique" that has been used by creators for decades. Bowie had previously been known to use a more traditional method of literally cutting up pieces of words on paper. But in the 90s he teamed up with Ty Roberts, who later went on to found Gracenote, to create a software version that would randomize words to create possible lyrics.

Last week at CES, I had the honor of "moderating" a panel on what was next for patent reform, that kicked off with a short speech from US Patent and Trademark Office Director Michelle Lee, who notes that she's the first ever director of the Patent Office to attend CES (which is crazy). Before Director Lee was appointed to the full job, back when she was just the interim director, I noted that she was the first head of the patent office I'd ever seen who seemed to have a more accurately nuanced view of patents, and recognized how in some cases they could be harmful rather than helpful. She's continued to make that clear since taking over the top job full time, and you can see that in her speech. She, unlike so many in government jobs related to copyright or patents, actually pointed out the full Constitutional clause, and how patents need to be for the promotion of progress, and not just "to help inventors get paid."

In late 2014, we wrote about a class action lawsuit filed against copyright trolling operation Rightscorp, which argued two things: (1) that the company's robocalling people's mobile phones accusing them of copyright infringement violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), because you're not allowed to robocall mobile numbers, and that (2) the use of questionable DMCA 512(h) subpoenas to discover accounts associated with IP addresses was "abuse of process." Rightscorp and co-defendant Warner Bros. got that second claim tossed for violating California's anti-SLAPP law.

Kentucky legislator John "Bam" Carney thinks social media might be getting a bit out of hand. His response? Prior Restraint: The Legislation. (via Slashdot)

Keep track of your busy life in one handy app. Pagico 7 allows you to turn all of your tasks, notes and projects into easy to understand flowcharts to help you visualize your workload and track your deadlines and progress. You can organize your data with tags and keywords making it easier to find related pieces of information. It's on offer for $15 in the Techdirt Deals store.

It's time to panic about Craigslist again. If it's not a key player in the human trafficking scene, it's the unwitting accomplice in over 100 murders.

Mike just recently did a post on the horrible effects of piracy on Hollywood box office results from last year, which can be summarized as "holy shit, look at all the money!" That post took a macro look at the year Hollywood had at the box office, in which revenue and individual ticket sales were both up, despite the fact that piracy exists. Still, the post warned of one potential rebuttal some might make: yeah, but Star Wars.

As we've noted for some time, the broadband industry (and all the think tanks and politicians that work for it) have spent the last few years trying to vilify Netflix. That's primarily due to the company's support of net neutrality, but also its opposition to anti-innovative and anti-competitive broadband usage caps. These attacks usually start with the criticism that Netflix now dominates around 37% of peak downstream traffic (as if that's a bad thing), followed by some bizarre and unfounded claim that Netflix should be forced to "pay its fair share" (read: give us a cut of revenues despite us having no legitimate claim to it).

In the latest batch of Hillary Clinton emails -- forced out of the State Department's gnarled fists by an FOIA lawsuit and a recently-released Inspector General's report showing the agency flat out sucks at responding to FOIA requests -- there's a conversational thread suggesting the presidential candidate considers her access to classified information more important than the security of that information.

Criminal defendants face a tilted playing field all over the country. If it isn't the frequent withholding of exculpatory material by prosecutors, it's everything leading up to it -- beginning with questionable interrogation methods and continuing with the admission of dubious physical evidence.

As you probably heard, President Obama gave his final State of the Union Address a little while ago, and it was likely pretty much what you expected. A lot of vague pronouncements and not a whole ton of substance. I was surprised that the TPP got very little mention at all (it was basically mentioned in passing), but found it especially odd that the internet was mentioned just twice — and in ways that seemed to contradict each other. First, the President gave a brief mention of how his administration has "protected the open internet":

There are a lot of things about ourselves we just don't know. Why do we need sleep? How does general anesthesia work? A whole bunch of involuntary reactions are still mysterious. Partial explanations exist to describe what happens when these things occur, but that's not a fully satisfactory understanding. So what about sneezing? Think you know all about it?

At long last, it appears some prosecutors will no longer be putting BS gag orders on their subpoenas. Eastern District of New York judge Raymond J. Dearie has expressed his displeasure with the language found on nearly all subpoenas issued by the Brooklyn, New York US Attorney's Office.

Historically, the FCC has steered well clear of regulating broadband prices. Hell, for most of the last fifteen years the FCC hasn't even admitted that high prices due to limited competition are a problem, instead focusing on the politically sexier idea of ensuring uniform availability. The FCC certainly collects pricing data from broadband ISPs, but, at the industry's behest, never shares that data with the public. As a result, we get things like our $300 million national broadband map, which will happily show you (largely hallucinated) speed and competitive options in your neighborhood, but won't tell you how much they cost.

It appears someone'slistening to local crackpot New York District Attorney Cyrus Vance's demands that encryption be outlawed to make law enforcement easier. His "white paper" didn't have the guts to make this demand, instead couching it in language stating he would be completely unopposed to a legislative ban on encryption, but that he wasn't going to be the bad guy asking for it.

It appears someone'slistening to local crackpot New York District Attorney Cyrus Vance's demands that encryption be outlawed to make law enforcement easier. His "white paper" didn't have the guts to make this demand, instead couching it in language stating he would be completely unopposed to a legislative ban on encryption, but that he wasn't going to be the bad guy asking for it.

After a few weeks off for the holidays, we're back! And as anyone on the internet can't ignore, CES 2016 has just wrapped up. Our own Mike Masnick was there, and today he's joined by journalist and long-time CES veteran Rob Pegoraro for a post-mortem of the event and this year's crop of new products. 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.

Earlier today we wrote about the latest misleading claims from John Legere and T-Mobile about its BingeOn program. I've seen some confusion some of the discussions about this -- some of it thanks to Legere's misleading claims -- so I wanted to go through exactly what T-Mobile appears to be doing and why it's problematic. Also, with that, I wanted to highlight the key part of the FCC's net neutrality rules regarding throttling, and the one single paragraph that T-Mobile appears to be banking on to protect it from getting slapped around.