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Other than when News Corp. used copyright to takedown its own feed from last night's GOP Presidential debates, there really wasn't much that was Techdirt-related. The only other significant moment was a bit of a debate between Chris Christie and Rand Paul concerning the NSA and government surveillance. As we've discussed before, Christie is a big time surveillance state supporter. He's argued that anyone opposed to NSA surveillance is guilty of "dangerous" thinking, has said that civil liberties worries about the NSA are "baloney" and has argued that Rand Paul is responsible for any future terrorist attacks, after Paul suggested that we shelve parts of the PATRIOT Act and obey the 4th Amendment.

Well, now we know what the UK's anti-terrorism law does best. The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) expanded powers for security/law enforcement agencies. For safety. For the nation. And, ironically, for the prevention the sort of thing it was recently amended to prevent. While it may occasionally be used to track down terrorists, it seems to be more often deployed by the watchers to watch those watching the watchers.

Remember Denis O'Brien? He's apparently an Irish media bigwig that we'd never heard of until earlier this year when he received a ridiculous injunction barring the media from reporting on a speech given in the Irish Parliament by a member, Catherine Murphy, in which she outlined some questionable loans that were given by the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation to O'Brien. Here was the crux of that speech:

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Better add that "RTs ≠ endorsements" line to your Twitter profile. Huffington Post's Ryan J. Reilly's coverage of the FBI's efforts against ISIS notes that FBI head James Comey considers retweeting to be material support of terrorism. But that's OK, because the FBI's crew of mind-readers will make sure that anyone who didn't "mean it" avoids prosecution.

If you'd like to blow the whistle on government activity, there are several options available to you. First, there are the "proper channels," which come highly recommended by government officials who don't care much for whistleblowers. Then there's the media. Depending on which outlet you choose, there's probably going to be a lot of backdoor chatter with officials to "negotiate" the terms of document releases -- which could result in a more concerted effort by the government to expose the source of the documents..

If anyone thought a bad law was going to keep Massachusetts' politics out of the mud, the state's Supreme Court has given campaigning parties official permission to get waste deep in the sludge.

As you may have heard, there was a Republican Presidential debate last night -- and it was so much fun they actually did two of them. I happen to be in a hotel which had Fox News on the TV (at home I haven't had any TV service for many years), so I was watching some of it, just for the fun of it. A few people also pointed out that you could watch the stream live via Sky News' YouTube livestream. The debate was officially the "Facebook/Fox News" debate, so it seems odd enough that it wasn't streaming anywhere on Facebook, but we'll leave that aside for now. Yet, with about 15 minutes left in the debate, the livestream on YouTube suddenly disappeared and you got this: In short, Fox News issued a copyright takedown to YouTube over Sky News' streaming the debate. While that might sound perfectly reasonable, it seems worth pointing out that both Fox News and Sky News are owned by the same company: News Corp.. Yes, News Corp. effectively DMCA'd itself. Because that's how copyright works.

Techdirt has written a number of posts about the introduction of data retention laws around the world, as well as about the successful legal challenges that are being brought against them. Here's another such law, this time from Peru, which has a particularly nasty twist, as the EFF reports:

For quite a while now, some of us in the business of discussing digital business models and entertainment have suggested that the ongoing trend of cable-cord-cutting, which will eventually turn the cable TV business into something completely different than what it's been for decades, would be best spurred on by better streaming sports options. What once seemed like a trickle of streaming adoption by sports leagues and broadcast partners has begun to turn into a river, with baseball and football looking to expand streaming options and some very serious web companies getting into the game as "broadcast" partners with major pro sports leagues.

Personal transportation comes in an ever-growing number of forms these days. Sure, we've had bikes and scooters and skateboards for a while, but now we can add motors (and the internet?) to anything with wheels. This progress could be revolutionary, but so far, no one has lived up to the Segway hype of changing how city planning is done.

The cops who were caught on camera insulting an amputee, disabling security cameras, playing darts and sampling THC-laced edibles during a raid on a pot dispensary are suing to prevent Santa Ana Police Department investigators from using the recording against them. (via Reason)

A little over a month ago, we covered a FOIA response (if you could call it that...) from the FBI concerning TrueCrypt, in which it withheld all 69 pages of responsive documents. In addition to the ridiculousness of much of the withheld information being easily-accessible online, there was the question about what this denial meant for TrueCrypt.

We've already written a few stories about the newly leaked IP chapter of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, and how the US is pushing back against any attempt to punish abusers or to support the public domain. But in going through the documents, another key fact strikes me. Throughout the document it's designed to absolutely require strict copyright laws and enforcement. But when it gets to the public's rights, the so-called "limitations and exceptions," the agreement tosses up a big fat "meh, that one's voluntary."

It's taken many years, but one of the EFF's longstanding cases against the NSA has finally reached an important milestone: exploring the 4th Amendment question raised by the NSA tapping the internet backbone. This is part of the Jewel v. NSA case that has been going on for years. Back in February (after a lot of procedural back and forth on other issues), the district court rejected the 4th Amendment argument, basically toeing the government's "but... but... national security!" line. Not surprisingly, the EFF disagreed with the court and appealed to the 9th Circuit appeals court.

We've covered copyright levies (a.k.a., "you must be a pirate/thief" taxes) several times here at Techdirt, with a majority of them pertaining to the cassette tapes of the digital world: blank CDs/DVDs, hard drives, removable storage, cell phones, internet connections, etc. The theory is that the only reason anyone buys storage of any kind is to have some place to put all their pirated goods. Hence, they must pay a "tax" to compensate artists for all the creative works they've ripped off.

If you've cut the cord from cable and satellite, there's still a way to watch your local affliate stations. You need an HDTV antenna to pick up those channels floating around out there for free. For 63% off in the Deals store, the 1byone Digital Indoor HDTV Antenna is a sleek option that can get you up and running quickly. The little antenna connects any HDTV or device that has an ATSC tuner to any tower within a 25 mile radius. You can check AntennaPoint to find your closest Digital TV transmitters. It comes with a 10 ft coaxial cable and a manufacturer's 30-day, money-back guarantee.

You would think, by now, at least the big time lawyers would recognize that bogus defamation threats and demands for takedowns would only lead to more attention. And that should be especially true for Martin Singer, who proudly promotes the claim that he's a "pit bull" of a lawyer for a variety of Hollywood stars. Given his clientele, you'd think he and his firm, Lavely & Singer, would be especially careful about not making totally bogus threats that are actually likely to backfire and call extra attention to whatever it is they're trying to hide. But, apparently with all his Hollywood connections, Singer and his staff have not yet learned about the Streisand Effect.

A few weeks ago, we pointed out that Senator Sheldon Whitehouse led the way with perhaps the most ridiculous statement of any Senator (and there were a lot of crazy statements) in the debate over encryption and the FBI's exaggerated fear of "going dark." He argued that if the police couldn't find a missing girl (using a hypothetical that not only didn't make any sense, but which also was entirely unlikely to ever happen), then perhaps Apple could face some civil liability for not allowing the government to spy on your data. Here's what he said:

YouTube star (among other things) Hank Green recently wrote an interesting post slamming Facebook for the way it treats video makers like himself. He has a few specific complaints, including that Facebook creates major incentives for people to upload videos directly to Facebook rather than just linking/embedding from other platforms (basically Facebook will bury your non-native videos) and that Facebook plays some questionable tricks in determining what counts as a "view" allowing it to claim more video views than YouTube when the truth is probably that it has about 1/5 as many views. But Hank's biggest complaint is that because of the incentives for native views, it's quite common for people to take other people's YouTube videos and upload them to Facebook themselves -- and that Facebook is not very responsive to takedown requests:

By now it should be no surprise at all that the legacy entertainment and software industries liked to produce absolutely ridiculous anti-piracy ads, under the mistaken belief that if they just "educate" people a little more, they'll magically stop infringing. It's never worked. It never will work, but they just keep on trying. A few historical examples have been so Reefer Madness ridiculous that they've reached iconic levels. For example, the infamous "don't copy that floppy" campaign: Or the "Home Taping is Killing Music" campaign: That one has been subject to frequent mockery, including the time that the Dead Kennedy's did the following on one of its cassette tapes: Or this parody by Bo Patterson on "Home Sewing is Killing Fashion." And, of course, Dan Bull's parody song "Home Taping Is Killing Music." And, then the ever iconic "You Wouldn't Download A Car" ads (it's actually "you wouldn't steal a car" but everyone remembers it the other way): This one was fabulously parodied by the IT Crowd: Given all of that, you might think that the legacy entertainment industry couldn't possibly get any more crazy with these kinds of ads. You'd be wrong.

In what is being called the "Maui Meltdown" by some, the TPP ministerial talks in Hawaii last week failed to produce the agreement that some hoped for, and many more expected. That's despite the fact that it was billed as definitely the last round. The New York Times has a good summary of the key problems that need to be solved to achieve that elusive final deal:

We've written a few times now about how the news site Netzpolitik has been investigated for treason for reporting on some efforts to expand German internet surveillance. The site published the leaked documents supporting that claim, which would be clearly protected by the First Amendment here in the US. However, in Germany, it resulted in a treason investigation... and widespread protests as people are quite rightly concerned about the chilling effects of targeting journalists. There's also been some political mudslinging as there's been some debate over whether or not the investigation should move forward.

Artificial intelligence is obviously pretty far from gaining sentience or even any kind of disturbingly smart general intelligence, but some of its advances are nonetheless pretty impressive (eg. beating human chess grandmasters, playing poker, driving cars, etc). Software controls more and more stuff that come in contact with people, so more people are starting to wonder when all of this smart technology might turn on us humans. It's not a completely idle line of thinking. Self-driving cars/trucks are legitimate safety hazards. Autonomous drones might prevent firefighters from doing their job. There are plenty of situations that are not entirely theoretical in which robots could potentially harm large numbers of people unintentionally (and possibly in a preventable fashion). Where should we draw the line? Asimov's 3 laws of robotics may be insufficient, so what kind of ethical coding should we adopt instead?

Well, that's interesting. Based on all of the talk this week, it was expected that there would be a vote today in the Senate on the faux cybersecurity CISA bill -- but it didn't happen. Business concluded and everyone went home for the month without a vote, meaning it won't be taken up until September, at the earliest. According to Kaveh Waddell at the National Journal:

Just a few weeks ago, we were somewhat surprised to see a court rule in favor of FilmOn, an Aereo-clone, arguing that contrary to what was found in the Aereo case, FilmOn's internet streaming of network TV should be seen as the equivalent of a cable channel. That's important, because it means that the company can just pay Section 111 compulsory fees to the Copyright Office, and then it's free to stream broadcast (network) TV over the internet.

It appears that the 4th Amendment is up for a bit of a revival this summer. Last week, we wrote about an important ruling in a Northern California district court saying that mobile phone location info -- officially known as "Cell Site Location Info" or "CSLI" -- was protected by the 4th Amendment, meaning the government couldn't scoop it up without a warrant. The ruling was excellent and detailed, but we noted there would be inevitable appeals.

Almost exactly a year ago, the Hollywood-funded and run astroturfing group "Creative Future" posted a bizarre and fact-challenged article attacking BitTorrent Inc. for copyright infringement, and demanding that the company "take responsibility" for how the BitTorrent protocol was being used. There was, as always, some apparent confusion between BitTorrent the protocol and BitTorrent Inc., the company. You would have thought that this would have been figured out by now, especially given that BitTorrent Inc., the company, has been trying repeatedly to help content creators experiment with new business models that embrace the BitTorrent protocol, with a fair bit of success.

Earlier, we wrote about some of the sections of the leaked IP chapter that KEI leaked yesterday. With the rest of the sections released today, there are some oddities worth calling out. For example, why is the USTR arguing against the public domain? In the section on Internet Service Providers (ISPs), there's a part that lists out what the "parties recognize" the need for, including "promoting innovation and creativity," "facilitating the diffusion of information, knowledge, technology, culture and the arts" and "foster competition and open and efficient markets." Right after that, a few countries suggest "acknowledging the importance of the public domain," and the US and Japan oppose this suggestion: Is that really something worth objecting to? And if so, why? Does the USTR not believe in the importance of the public domain? Is Michael Froman and the USTR negotiators really that out of touch with the importance of the public domain? Or is it yet another favor for their future employers in the entertainment industry?

It's so important to keep your data as secure as you can these days. VPNs can be a great way to keep your privacy protected. For $29, the TigerVPN Lite Subscription, on offer in the Deals store, can help you surf securely via one of their 15 worldwide nodes. It is compatible with most devices (sorry Windows Phone owners) and allows you to choose your preferred encryption protocol. TigerVPN responded to TorrentFreak's VPN review survey, so you can learn a bit more about their policies and practices (they have the second set of responses on that page).

We've asked this before and no one answered. But with the faux "cybersecurity" CISA bill back on track for another vote, it's time to ask the question again: Can defenders of CISA explain what data breach it would have stopped? This is important, because many of the defenders of CISA keep pointing to things like the OPM hack as an example of why we need "cybersecurity regulations." Just yesterday, Senator John McCain used various recent high profile hacks as proof of why we need such a bill:

Last week, as you might have heard, negotiators on the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement gathered in Maui to try to finalize the agreement. Many believed that negotiators would more or less finish things up in that meeting. Earlier reports had suggested that everyone was "weeks away" from finishing, and many had said that the only thing holding back a final agreement was fast track authority (officially "trade promotion authority") from the US government to make sure that the USTR could negotiate an agreement without further interference from Congress. And, as you'll recall, Congress voted in favor of fast track after a long fight.

As it appears that the fake "cybersecurity" bill CISA is heading to a vote in the Senate, some were surprised this week to see the Department of Homeland come out against the bill with a letter expressing concerns that the bill "could sweep away important privacy protections" with its open ended definitions and provisions:

Back in 2012, we wrote about Philip Morris using corporate sovereignty provisions in trade agreements to sue Australia and Uruguay over their attempts to reduce the number of deaths from smoking through plain packaging and other health measures. Since then, the case has become a textbook example of all that is wrong with investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). For example, even though Philip Morris lost its battle in the Australian High Court to stop the introduction of plain packaging, it did not simply accept the ruling, but sought to use ISDS to nullify the court's decision. The natural instrument would be the trade agreement between the US and Australia, but the Australian government had wisely refused to accept a corporate sovereignty chapter there. So Philip Morris used an obscure 1993 trade agreement between Australia and Hong Kong, which did have ISDS, claiming that its business activities in the latter territory gave it the right to invoke the treaty -- a classic example of "treaty shopping". Since those events from a few years back, we've heard nothing about how the Philip Morris ISDS case is proceeding -- until now, since The West Australian newspaper has discovered the following fact:

This was an extraordinarily-fast resolution to an excessive force lawsuit, especially considering it took a trip to the appeals court.

We've previously pointed out how some charities might need some changes to improve their reputation, public image and effectiveness. Some charities have been vilified for million-dollar CEO salaries or inefficient operations, but in the end, everyone wants to see more net good come from their donations than would have happened by doing nothing, right? Here are just a few examples of charitable organizations getting some good results -- even if their methods may still be debated.

Copblock is dishing some dirt on a "warrantless" FBI raid in Cleveland, purportedly over a convenience store owner's controversial murals.

There's a number of reasons Verizon is slowly exiting the fixed-line broadband business and focusing on wireless. One, wireless is notably less regulated than Verizon's aging copper lines, which are saddled with "cumbersome" requirements that they keep these services (since they were largely paid for by taxpayer subsidies) active for folks like your grandma. Wireless is also far less unionized, with around 2% or less of Verizon's 38,000 unionized workers employed on the wireless side. Since the data is usage-capped, wireless also has huge profit growth potential as Internet video explodes on mobile networks.

The FBI's cyber-initiatives may be doomed to fail. While it seems to have little problem acquiring and deploying new technology and techniques, it's finding it very hard to talk people into running all of it, as Alexander Martin at The Register points out.

Powerstrips are handy, but sometimes you just need more outlets at the wall. For $19, the Aduro Surge Protector has you covered. It features 6 grounded outlets and 2 USB charge ports, and it comes with an extra long screw you can use in place of the wall plate screw to help provide extra stabilization. The Safety Shutdown Technology protects your devices from power surges, and a lighted indicator lets you know that you're protected.

We live in a world that venerates "ideas" but ignores the fact that even the best idea is worthless if it's poorly executed. In turn, people who "copy" ideas are often demonized, even when it's their superior execution that is responsible for their success. But the truth is that copying is a critical part of innovation and progress, and the instinct to ignore or refute that idea has left us without many clear measurements of its impact — not to mention lots of bad policy, and a highly problematic "ownership culture" when it comes to ideas and creative output. 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.

There have been plenty of discussions on the possible "risks" of running a tor exit node, where clueless law enforcement might confuse traffic that comes out of that node as being from the person who actually manages the node. And, indeed, last year we wrote about an absolutely ridiculous case in which a tor exit node operator in Austria was found guilty as an "accomplice" because someone used his node to commit a crime. Thankfully, it appears that the US isn't going quite down that road yet. It appears that a month and a half ago, of all places, the website Boing Boing received a subpoena concerning the tor exit node that the site hosts, demanding an appearance before a federal grand jury in New Jersey.

We've written a couple stories already about the ridiculous (and chilling) decision by German prosecutors to investigate the news site Netzpolitik for treason in publishing a couple of stories about plans to expand German surveillance capabilities and powers, with whistleblowers as sources. Things have become fairly heated over the past few days and appear to have just resulted in the country's Justice Minister firing the top prosecutor behind the investigation.

Here's a not-so-gentle reminder that Canada's defamation laws are significantly different than those in the United States. A former Senate staffer is on the hook for $10,000 in damages for "publishing" a defamatory article on his website back in 2009. The thing is: it wasn't hisarticle.

Apparently, British Airways has been involved for years in a big case in Europe concerning alleged price fixing for air cargo. In a somewhat bizarre turn of events, the judge in the UK who has been dealing with the case for years, Justice Peter Smith, took a short vacation with his wife, in which he flew British Airways. On the return trip, apparently there were some issues with the flight and his luggage. I'll let the judge explain the story himself:

We've written a few times about the ridiculousness of so-called ag-gag laws, that prohibit photographing or videotaping farms (sometimes even from public land). These laws were pushed for heavily by large industrial farmers who were sick of animal rights advocates getting images and videos of the conditions in farms and slaughterhouses that were questionable. Whatever you might think of the practices of those advocates, banning taking photographs or videos seemed like a really questionable move -- which would have a chilling effect on whistleblowers of all kinds. It seemed like it had to be unconstitutional -- and a court in Idaho agrees, declaring that state's law unconstitutional.

Last week, Techdirt wrote about Google's refusal to comply with France's order to apply the "right to be forgotten" -- actually, a right to be removed from search results -- globally. Perhaps because the issue seems easy to understand, many have offered their opinions on the rights and wrongs of Google's move, both for and against. Writing in The Guardian, Julia Powles has provided a good summary of the two main positions. First, without the "right to be forgotten," the internet would become a "database of ruin":

A year ago, a project called Matchstick launched on Kickstarter -- designed to be an open, WiFi connected HDMI stick, built on Firefox OS, to let you stream over the top video to your TV. It was touted as a more open version of the Chromecast device. It got over 17,000 backers (including me) and raised nearly $500,000. It was supposed to be delivered in February of this year but was pushed back after the Matchstick team announced that it had decided to build in DRM support. This angered plenty of people who, quite rightly, noted that they had bought into the vision of an open platform, rather than one that furthered the cause of DRM. However, the Matchstick team had weighed that against the fact that many popular video streaming services, including Netflix, require DRM, and decided that it couldn't exist without DRM. The plan, the team announced, was to ship in August.

As you may have heard, a company called Microsoft has just launched version 10 of one of its products. Here on Techdirt, we don't do software reviews -- you might be able to find one or two online if you search a little -- but we do like to analyze privacy policies. In this respect, it seems that Microsoft is breaking new ground, as EDRi.org found when it looked at updated terms and conditions that came into effect on August 1, just in time for Windows 10:

Our podcast with Kevin Smith is one of my personal favorites. It might seem obvious to some people that you can't look around for affirmation to keep you motivated, and that haters are always going to be around with words of discouragement. Critics will have some valid points, but nobody is perfect -- and you just need to keep trying things until it works (with the exception that if your catchphrase is 'hail Hydra' -- maybe you're going down the wrong path).