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This is apparently going to keep happening. A while back, we discussed the situation in which Donald Trump declared his candidacy for President (while making comments that torpedoed a bunch of his vaunted business interests) and used the music of Neil Young without the artist's permission. As I noted at the time, Trump was legally allowed to use the music, since the venue had paid the required ASCAP license, but failing to go the extra step and clearing it with Young allowed the musician to generate headlines all to do with his support of Democrat Bernie Sanders. Since candidacy announcements are generally not done to generate name recognition for one's opponents, I suggested that, hey, just go get the whiny artist's permission first, mmkay?

Getting stuff into space is difficult. There are a bunch of different rockets that have been used over the last few decades, but the odds of a launch failure isn't quite zero yet. A few companies are making cheaper launch systems, but a perfect track record is hard to maintain over more than a handful of launches. Perhaps that's why sentient robots in the movies never think about leaving the Earth behind.

Bad ideas never die. Although there have been some recent minor steps in a positive direction concerning copyright in the EU, politicians have been trying to undermine them with really terrible ideas. We already covered the push to effectively outlaw outdoor photography, and now it appears that (despite already having this proposal voted down), some are pushing for a so-called "ancillary copyright" concept, better known as a snippet tax or a link tax.

It appears the Chinese government is concerned it doesn't censor the internet enough already.

Chris Christie, New Jersey Govorner, presidential candidate, and anti-terror crusader, has built quite a reputation for himself for his admiration for the now partially-expired PATRIOT Act. Add to that his worry about anyone opposing NSA surveillance and his assertions that any fears over government surveillance are so much malarkey, and the man who built his anti-terror reputation in part upon the pillar of an entirely trumped up case he prosecuted as a US Attorney has solidified his never-ending love for all things Orwellian.

Well, Spain's officially a police state now. On July 1st, its much-protested "gag" law went into effect, instantly making criminals of those protesting the new law. Among the many new repressive stipulations is a €30,000-€600,000 fine for "unauthorized protests," which can be combined for maximum effect with a €600-€300,000 fine for "disrupting public events."

A few weeks back we discussed a few times the ridiculousness of Assistant US Attorny Niketh Velamoor seeking, and then getting, a gag order preventing Reason.com's staff from revealing the existence of a subpoena for identifying information on a few of its commenters who had made hyperbolic internet comments about a US judge. We noted that the gag order itself did not give a reason, other than repeating the possibility of any or all of the officially allowed reasons for a gag order, but never specifying which ones applied. We also noted that Velamoor's initial application for the gag order had not been unsealed in the case -- and we filed a FOIA request with the Justice Department for it (along with the DOJ's guidelines on seeking a gag order). We still have not received a response on either FOIA request.

It's time for another freebie deal from the Techdirt Deals store. We're featuring a 6-month subscription license for up to 3 computers for Bitdefender Total Security. Bitdefender combines anti-malware, online purchase protection, parental controls, file encryption, PC tune-ups and more in one package. It even includes anti-theft features to allow you to lock or wipe your lost device. To get the freebie, sign in to your store account, sign up for the newsletter, share the deal on Facebook or Twitter, and then you'll get your code for the deal.

Time Warner Cable continues to be incredibly good at being incredibly bad at what it does. The cable operator already enjoys arguably the worst customer satisfaction ratings of any company in any U.S. industry, below even Comcast. Its horrible customer service is legendary, and things have actually gotten worse as the company has sat on its hands waiting to be sold off to a rotating crop of equally dysfunctional suitors. When you're this bad at what you do, you have to be truly creative in finding new and imaginative ways to annoy your customer base.

Florida certainly has its reputation for general nuttiness, and sometimes it goes beyond the prototypical "Florida Man" to the "Florida Judge." Last week, Florida judge Mark Mahon decided that because he personally couldn't take a little criticism from protestors outside the courtroom, he could unilaterally suspend the First Amendment of the Constitution, leading him to issue a hilarious order barring people from demonstrating anywhere near the courthouse if those demonstrations included mocking judges:

Hollywood's efforts to win political clout have always stretched across the country, from glitzy campaign fundraisers in Beverly Hills to cocktail parties with power brokers in Washington. Last year, the film industry staked out another zone of influence: U.S. embassies. Its lobbying arm paid to renovate screening rooms in at least four overseas outposts, hoping the new theaters would help ambassadors and their foreign guests "keep U.S. cultural interests top of mind," according to an internal email. That was the same year that the Motion Picture Association of America, which represents the six biggest studios, reported it was lobbying the State Department on issues including piracy and online content distribution. Hollywood's interests – including its push for tougher copyright rules in the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact – often put the industry at odds with Silicon Valley. The only public indication of the embassy-theater initiative was a February 2015 press release from American officials in Madrid, titled "U.S. Embassy Launches State-of-the-Art Screening Room." It credited "a generous donation" from the MPAA. Asked about its gifts to the State Department, the lobby group declined to say how many embassies got donations or how much they were worth. "Because film is a great ambassador for U.S. culture around the world, MPAA assisted with the upgrade of some embassy theater facilities," said spokeswoman Kate Bedingfield. "All gifts complied with the law as well as with State Department ethics guidelines." Nicole Thompson, a State Department spokeswoman, said at least three embassies besides Madrid received between $20,000 and $50,000 in entertainment upgrades last year – London, Paris and Rome. The revamped screening rooms, she said, aren't intended to entertain U.S. officials, but rather to help them host screenings to promote an American industry and sow goodwill. Thompson said the donations were proper and that all gifts to the department are reviewed to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest. "The department has explicit authorities to accept gifts made for its benefit or for carrying out any of its functions," she said. The State Department routinely accepts gifts from outside groups, Thompson said. She couldn't provide any other examples of major gifts from groups that simultaneously lobby the agency. Thompson declined to list the items given by the MPAA or their total value, and wouldn't say whether the group had made similar gifts in the past. There was at least one precedent. A spokesman for Warner Bros. Entertainment said the studio helped pay for the refurbishment of the screening room at the U.S. ambassador's home in Paris in 2011. "This donation was coordinated with the State Department and complied with all appropriate rules and regulations," the spokesman said. State Department policies posted online specifically permit gifts from individuals, groups or corporations for "embassy refurbishment, " provided that the donors are vetted to ensure there's no conflict or possible "embarrassment or harm" to the agency. The posted policies include no caps on the value of donations, nor any requirements for public disclosure of foreign or American donors. The rules also say that the donations can't come with a promise or expectation of "any advantage or preference from the U.S. Government." Obtaining an advantage, albeit a nonspecific one, sounded like the goal when a Sony Pictures Entertainment official wrote to the studio's chief executive officer, Michael Lynton, to relay a request to fund the screening rooms from Chris Dodd, the former U.S. senator who heads the MPAA. The executive writing the note – Keith Weaver – sought to assure the CEO that such a donation wouldn't be improper. "The rationale being that key Ambassadors will keep U.S. cultural interests top of mind, as they screen American movies for high level officials where they are stationed," reads the message, included in a cache of emails hacked from Sony and which were posted online by the website WikiLeaks. "The cost implication is estimated to be $165k (aggregate of $$$/in-kind) per embassy/per studio. Apparently, donations of this kind are permissible." Besides Sony, the MPAA represents Disney, Paramount, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal Studios and Warner Bros. Entertainment. The e-mails suggest that Sony executives decided against contributing to the project for budget reasons. The MPAA has long been a powerful presence in the nation's capital, spending $1.34 million on federal lobbying last year, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. One of its flashier tools has been to host exclusive gatherings at its Washington screening room, two blocks from the White House, where lawmakers get to watch blockbuster films, rub elbows with celebrities, and up until several years ago, enjoy dinner – a perk scuttled because of stricter rules on congressional lobbying. Hollywood studios depend on foreign markets for much of their profit but the MPAA's interests don't always align with those of other major American constituencies. For example, Hollywood studios have moved some film production to Canada to cut costs. American film workers have tried to get the federal government to stop the outsourcing of jobs, but have been met with resistance from the MPAA. The trade group has also pushed federal officials to pressure foreign governments into adopting stricter copyright laws. An MPAA-funded study found that in 2005 worldwide piracy cost American studios $6.1 billion in revenue. That number has been disputed by digital rights advocates. For the TPP trade deal, the MPAA has discouraged the American government from exporting "fair use" protections to other countries. In a hacked message from Dodd to the U.S. Trade Representative, the MPAA chief warned that including such provisions, which in American law allow limited use of copyrighted materials without permission, would be "extremely controversial and divisive." Digital rights activists have characterized the efforts as overzealous. "They're basically encouraging other countries to adopt the most draconian parts of U.S. copyright law and even to reinterpret U.S. copyright law to make it more stringent," said Mitch Stoltz, an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "Broadly speaking broadening copyright law harms free speech in many cases by creating a mechanism for censorship." The state-of-the-art screening rooms are a relatively minimal investment by Hollywood as it works to strengthen connections abroad. This spring, the U.S. ambassador to Spain, James Costos, brought a group of foreign officials to Los Angeles for a meeting hosted by the MPAA. Among them were representatives from the Canary Islands, who came prepared to discuss filming opportunities and tax incentives for American studios in the Spanish territory. The State Department touted the trip as an opportunity to "expand bilateral trade and investment, including through ties between the entertainment industries." It's not known whether the path to that particular meeting was eased by the new screening room in Madrid. At the theater's debut in February, the ambassador's guests were treated to a dark tale of corruption, lobbying and double-dealing in Washington – the Netflix series "House of Cards." Republished from ProPublica Related stories: For more coverage of politics and influence, read ProPublica's previous reporting on secret political dealings by Sony, a reversal by the higher ed lobby and an imploding super PAC. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for their newsletter.

I don't have cable. I almost never watch TV. I never see cable news unless someone points me to a clip online. Yet apparently, with the extended holiday weekend this past weekend, cable news went absolutely bonkers with vague, unsubstantiated claims from government officials about how everyone should be on heightened alert for an attack from ISIS:

Later today, FBI director James Comey will testify before two separate Senate panels about "going dark", the buzz phrase for law enforcement's ridiculous fear of strong encryption. In preparation for this, Comey has posted an article claiming that he's not "a maniac" and recognizes the value of strong encryption... but.

Here on Techdirt, we often write about the bad behavior of Big Pharma, particularly in terms of how it is one of the main driving forces behind far-reaching international agreements like TPP. As a recent leak underlines, drug manufacturers hope to use TPP to extend the monopolies that allow them to charge high prices for their products. Confirmation that drug pricing has little to do with actual costs in at least one part of the world comes from a surprising source -- the heads of Big Pharma companies, as this report in the Canberra Times reveals:

No one ever praised politics as a germ-free environment, but Wisconsin may be taking it to new levels, aiming for Chicago-esque levels of dirty politics. The state appears to have several people in positions of power operating in purely partisan self-interest, leading to governmental abuses.

The US has hundreds of thousands of swimming pools -- roughly 309,000 public pools and 10.4 million residential pools. It's a nice way to cool down on a hot summer day, but it's also kinda gross if you think about sharing germs with all the people swimming in the pool. At least there's no danger of getting attacked by sharks in a pool, but if you're paranoid about pool safety, check out a few of these links. (And perhaps try to stick with pools that use salt water chlorination.)

We've recently discussed at length the subpoena and gag order issued by the Assistant US Attorney over some tasteless, but innocuous, comments made by Reason readers. Anyone who's spent any time in comment sections would have seen these comments as nothing more than the internet being the internet -- a place where hyperbole and stupidity very often outweighs thought and nuance. The comments are being treated as serious threats by the US government, seeing as they were posted below an article about a federal judge. Here are two of the more "violent" comments:

Oh, the poor, lowly comments section. These days, you can't turn a corner without the comment section being blamed for the death of civility, falling gold prices, and the general, entropic heat malaise of the universe. If you haven't noticed, there's a bit of a trend in the news industry afoot wherein you kill off the comment section, mindlessly shove your community over to Facebook if they want to comment, then proudly proclaim you're doing this not because you're too lazy or cheap to moderate, but because you're really just super passionate about improving online conversation. It's kind of a thing.

A few weeks ago we wrote about ICANN's new attack on whois privacy, laying out a proposal to deny private/proxy registrations to anyone involved in "commercial" activity on their websites. While it may be difficult for some to comprehend why this is a big deal, it is not a theoretical concern at all. Cathy Gellis has a great story over at Popehat reminding everyone of the time litigious lawyer Charles Carreon was able to uncover the identity of a critic, who he then threatened repeatedly.

Smart watches are among the hottest gadgets du jour, but do they live up to the hype? Their adoption hasn't been even remotely on par with smartphones, and reactions from those who have used them are mixed — but that doesn't mean they're useless or have zero appeal. So, does this dubious trend have a future, or are smart watches a dumb idea? Update: And just like that, reports are out that the sales of the Apple Watch have been disappointing. 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.

Here we go again with copyright taking content away from the public, rather than the other way around. You've probably heard about everything going on in Greece these days, with the big vote and the fight over Greek debt and how it will deal with it. Leading up to it, my social media stream suddenly filled up with people linking to a story at Medium with an English translation by Gavin Schalliol of an interview famed economist Thomas Piketty gave to the German publication DIE ZEIT. Whether you like/agree with Piketty or not (and I'm in the camp that thinks he's overrated), the interview itself was pretty interesting, making a key point that has gotten lost in much of the debate: that for all the pressure that Germany has been putting on Greece to repay its debts, Germany itself didn't repay its debts after World War II (or earlier wars). Lots of people have been talking about it, and tons of English-language news reports wrote up the story, with nearly all of them linking to Schalliol's translation. Just for example, here's the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, Quartz, Slate, Business Insider, Fortune, Marketwatch, and Vox, all of whom link to Schalliol's translation on Medium.

An Argentinian programmer who was trying to do a good thing in exposing severe vulnerabilities in the country's e-voting system was rewarded for his actions -- with a police raid on his home. According to Argentinian news outlet La Nación, Joaquín Sorianello informed MSA, the company than makes the Vot.ar e-voting system, that the SSL certificates used by the system to encrypt transmissions between the voting stations and the central election office could be easily downloaded, allowing for potential voting fraud (or just a good old-fashioned DDOS attack).

Do you ever just want to block out the world for a bit? For 49% off, the Sleep Eye Mask Headphones can help you do just that, even in spite of their silly name. The memory foam mask fastens quickly with a Velcro strap and helps to block out light and ambient noise to help you relax. The mask is wrapped in a soft covering that is machine washable. Plug the cord into an MP3 player or phone, and your favorite music will play through the flat audio discs that are covered with extra layers of foam so you can comfortably lay on them, as you drift away from the stressed of the day.

Well, we finally received some surveillance reform with the passage of the USA Freedom Act, which, even with its built-in six-month waiting period is still more surveillance reform than we've seen in the past thirty years. So, of course, the intelligence "community" is seeking to counterbalance its "losses" with gains from the private sector. Self-spying will have to replace government spying, if we're expected to run a secure nation.

A large group of state Attorney Generals has now stepped into the legal fight between Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood and Google. As we've explained a bunch, Hood went after Google with an investigation and detailed subpoena that was funded and written by the MPAA itself. In response to this, a federal court has already called out Hood's actions, noting that there was "significant evidence of bad faith" on the part of Hood as he attempted to unconstitutionally hold Google responsible for anything bad that its search engine found on the internet.

You may recall that back in November of 2013, we wrote about an absolutely insane ruling by a federal jury in East Texas, arguing that e-commerce vendor Newegg infringed on an absolutely laughable patent, held by a patent troll named TQP, which claimed to cover encryption. Newegg immediately promised to appeal the ruling -- so you may be wondering where that appeal is right now. So is Newegg. Yesterday, the company filed a petition for a Writ of Mandamus basically asking the appeals court to tell the district court to do its damn job and issue a final ruling (either on behalf of Newegg, or against it so it can appeal). Basically, Newegg has been stuck in limbo for nearly two years on this case for no clear reason. The judge in the case, Rodney Gilstrap, has just been sitting on the case, doing absolutely nothing for nearly two years, leaving Newegg unable to appeal.

We've already written about the hack and leak of the Hacking Team and all its emails and files. There are likely to be tons of stories coming out from that hack over the next few days and weeks as people go through everything. However, it appears that someone is at least making a pretty ridiculous and half-hearted attempt to stuff that genie back in the bottle. Security consultant Mustafa Al-Bassam noted on Twitter that he received a copyright takedown notice for his mirror of the files from a different company, Lexsi.

National identification numbers are common enough -- many countries issue their citizens with a unique identifier. But in terms of scale, few can match Aadhaar, India's identity number system. As The Times of India explained a few years back, when the scheme was first announced:

The DC Circuit Court has revived Prison Legal News' long-running FOIA lawsuit against the federal Bureau of Prisons. "Long-running" tends to describe a lot of FOIA litigation, but this particular case is the ultra-marathon of FOIA lawsuits.

Maybe you've seen some ads featuring a former California governor fighting a younger, computer-generated version of himself lately. The Terminator franchise is almost guaranteed to be rebooted every few years, just as the real life technology that could create strong artificial intelligence is getting closer and closer. Hopefully, a $10 million donation from Elon Musk to the Future of Life Institute will help delay Judgment Day, but progress in artificial intelligence can't be bargained with, it can't feel pain or mercy, and it will stop at absolutely nothing....

Lionsgate Studios, as you may remember, was last seen absolutely losing its mind over the leak of Expendables 3, which [insert snarky comment about movie quality here]. The studio's reaction to the leak was to peel off a massive lawsuit, get a restraining order, and go takedown crazy. Between those actions and the studio's willingness to go the DMCA and/or legal route in silencing a documentary about The Pirate Bay, not to mention a video that the Copyright Office itself used as an example of Fair Use, it's clear that Lionsgate doesn't mind firing off legal shots at questionable targets.

Sprint was the only one of the big four carriers to clearly support Title II and full net neutrality rules, but since the rules' passage the company's behavior has been a little bit strange. Last week, Sprint announced a new "All In" promotion that offers new users unlimited text, voice and data for $60 a month, plus a $20 device lease fee. The plan was supposed to be the company's game changing assault on current industry darling T-Mobile, but Sprint curiously included a small caveat in the fine print of the program; absolutely all video going over the Sprint network would be throttled to 600 kbps regardless of network congestion:

We've already covered some of the details coming out in the flurry of legal filings in the dispute between Google and Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood (helped along by the MPAA which financed and ran Hood's investigation). However, there is one little tidbit mentioned towards the end in one of the MPAA's many filings resisting subpoenas from Google to turn over internal documents. The MPAA's lawyers at Jenner & Block not only argue that much of the material being requested is "privileged," and thus allowing the requests will lead to lawsuits over the legality of those requests, but further argues that the emails in the Sony hack are similarly privileged and should not be available for use in lawsuits:

It's the oldest argument when it comes to copyright: what promotes creative works more, strict protections for creators or liberal abilities to create and adapt associated works? These arguments are often made as a matter of theory, with some creators saying copyright protections allow for investment in creating art, whereas those who might create other things based off of those creations (fan-art/films/fiction, mashup artists, samplers, etc.) would tell you about all the art we've lost due to over-reaching protections.

Good news! Kenya has developed an ingenious, foolproof plan to put an end to the menace of cybercrime as we know it: they'll soon be requiring that all Wi-Fi users register with the government before going online. Since most of us realize that hacking or tricking Wi-Fi authentication systems is impossible, and, as we all know, criminals aren't capable of stealing other peoples' Wi-Fi credentials, Kenya will be at the very forefront of landing a killing blow on internet-based crime as we know it for decades to come. It's simply amazing that someone didn't come up with this idea sooner.

As the copyright reform effort is underway in Europe, a number of legacy players are running a bit scared. The UK Publishers Association published a rather amusing attempt at "mythbusting" claims that reformers are making about copyright. Nate Hoffelder over at The Digital Reader does a nice job showing how many of the Publishers Association's claims are complete bunk, and clearly influenced by what's in the publishers' best interests, rather than anyone else's -- but that's to be expected. They're there to represent a position -- and rather than take a long-term view, recognizing that what's best for the public long-term will be best for the publishers as well, they take the short-term, protectionist, anti-consumer view. Because that's what these silly trade groups think they should do.

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The whole legal fight between Google and Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood has been pretty nasty from the very beginning, but it's been getting even nastier as it drags on. Even in many high stakes lawsuits involving large companies and the government, the filings tend to remain somewhat bland and low key. But this particular fight seems personal to many of the parties involved (going beyond just Google and Jim Hood to the MPAA and the studios it represents). If you don't recall, for a few years now, Hood has been bizarrely blaming Google for the fact that people do bad stuff online, rather than understanding that a search engine isn't responsible for the content that it finds. The reasons for Hood's ignorance became a lot more clear after the Sony Hack, when internal emails revealed that Hood was acting as a puppet for the MPAA whose hand was shoved so far up Hood's behind that it was a bit unseemly.

Between the FBI and the NSA, arguments against encryption that locks bad guys out (and, consequently, the government) have filled the air over the past several months. "Going dark" is the repeated concern, as if encryption would leave the nation's intelligence and investigative agencies without any options to pursue terrorists/child pornographers. It's all FUD and it's all dangerous, because carving small holes in encryption CARVES HOLES IN ENCRYPTION. Never mind the intended uses of golden keys/backdoors. A hole is a hole.

New Zealand is the latest country to "do something" about online trolling. A rather comprehensive anti-cyberbullying act passed its third reading in the Parliament by a significant margin (116-5) and is awaiting royal assent. The "Harmful Digital Communications Act" criminalizes plenty of speech, mainly through the use of broad wording.

New Zealand is the latest country to "do something" about online trolling. A rather comprehensive anti-cyberbullying act passed its third reading in the Parliament by a significant margin (116-5) and is awaiting royal assent. The "Harmful Digital Communications Act" criminalizes plenty of speech, mainly through the use of broad wording.

Hacking Team -- purveyor of exploits and spyware to a variety of government agencies all over the world -- has been hacked. Late Sunday night, its Twitter account name was changed to "Hacked Team" and its bio to read:

This week, the MPAA unveiled some new anti-piracy ads that are targeted (of course) at people who have already paid to go see a movie. Vincent Clement won most insightful comment of the week by underlining just how backwards this is:

Five Years Ago Last week, we recalled on ASCAP's attack on Creative Commons. This week in 2010, its own members lashed out at it in response. EFF, Public Knowledge and Creative Commons itself all politely responded to the attack, while we noted that the music publishing industry in general has a bad habit of aggression towards consumer's groups and those who respect individual rights. The Swedish Pirate Party was seeking to host The Pirate Bay from inside the Swedish parliament, while Dutch ISPs were fighting against demands that they block the site entirely, even as Dutch public television was experimenting with BitTorrent distribution. Meanwhile, the pilot of TV show Pioneer One was released on BitTorrent and quickly raised $20,000 do create more episodes. The Supreme Court's Bilski Ruling came out, narrowly allowing software and business model patents to survive while dropping plenty of hints that the court was against software patents in the long run. The IEEE, on the other hand, just celebrated. Ten Years Ago This week in 2005, there were two other expected and fairly predictable rulings from the Supreme Court: Grokster and Brand X. Sweden was putting a bad file-sharing law into effect while a Taiwanese court ruled that file-sharing software is completely legal. The EU wanted an EU-wide licensing scheme for music downloads, former RIAA boss Hilary Rosen realized that these victories might not be victories and at least one record label surprised us by not blaming technology for its problems. Warner Brothers, on the other hand, was still actively rebelling against new business models, while UK residents were discovering that their home VHS copies were the only remaining records of shows the BBC never kept. Newspapers were having fun making pointless and/or obvious observations about the digital age, like the fact that online directions are sometimes wrong, or that user-created content is popular, or that giant would-you-rather studies about technology yield weird results. Fifteen Years Ago Five years before that, the New York Times was already criticizing geeks while lexicographers were struggling to agree on the correct spelling of "dot-com" (or .com or dotcom or...) A former top music exec was pointing out that file-sharing can't be stopped, while a current top music exec was insisting he'll crush digital music sites entirely. Some high-profile outages also rocked the web this week in 2000: Yahoo! went down when a fiber line was severed, United Airlines' website disappeared for most of a morning, and most shocking of all, a glitch took down Techdirt's front page for an hour and a half. One-Hundred And Ten Years Ago We've had lots of technology history lately, so this week let's take a break for some science history. It was on June 30th, 1905 that the Annalen der Physik science journal received Albert Einstein's paper On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, which established the theory of special relativity. The universe would never be the same again.

A few weeks ago, we featured the Gloveone and talked about the growing market for supplemental virtual reality devices. We also talked about the coming VR future on this week's podcast episode. But there's another half of the VR world we haven't talked a lot about: the capture and creation of VR environments. This week, we're looking at the Sphericam 2, a 360-degree 4k camera. The Good As VR devices like the Oculus Rift become more popular, there's going to be a huge thirst for content — and in this everyone-is-a-creator world, a huge thirst for content-making tools, too. Though much of the excitement has been around video games and from-scratch environments, there are also plenty of compelling things to be done with material captured the real world. For that, you need an elaborate multi-camera setup — or a device like the Sphericam. It's tiny (about the size of a tennis ball), rugged and full-featured, and requires no special knowledge to capture 360-degree footage which can then be converted to a navigable VR environment. It's basically a GoPro combined with a Google Street View car, and that's pretty cool. For the videophile, it has solid specs: 60fps raw video at 4096x2048 resolution, on six cameras with no blind spots. The Bad There's really only one major drawback here, and that's the price. At $1500 plus shipping, it's not something that's going to find its way into everyone's pocket overnight. That's not to say the price is unfair — given the amount of technology packed into the device, it seems at least reasonable, but for the time being it remains an obstacle. Still, just like the VR devices themselves, it's likely that things like the Sphericam will only get more and more accessible as time goes on. The User Generated This is the part that's really exciting and interesting about devices like this. Today, it's simply no longer enough to release a new means of consuming content to the world — it needs to come with ways of creating that content. The world of virtual reality will have no multi-decade gap between early "professional only" days and later "everyone's in on it" days, like photography or film or recorded music — the two will arrive almost simultaneously, with content coming from a huge spectrum from amateur to professional and everything in between. Devices like the Sphericam are paving the way for this, demonstrating that even something cutting-edge like virtual reality can and will be adopted by creators of all classes. It's going to be an interesting future in more ways than one.

It would take many, many blog posts to fully articulate all the ways that modern copyright law threatens innovation. But one notable way is through Section 1201 of the copyright statute. As discussed previously, Section 1201 is ostensibly supposed to minimize copyright infringement by making it its own offense to bypass the technical protective measures (TPMs) controlling access to a particular copy of a copyrighted work. (Sometimes these sorts of TPMs are referred to as DRM, or Digital Rights Management.) It is a fair question whether forbidding the bypass of TPMs is at all an effective approach to minimizing infringement, but it’s an even more important question to ask whether the portion of the copyright statute that forbids the bypassing of TPMs does so at the expense of other sections of the statute that specifically entitle people to make certain uses of copyrighted works. The answer to this latter question is clearly no, and in fact Congress anticipated that it would be “no,” when it put into Section 1201 the requirement that the Copyright Office consider afresh, every three years, whether certain types of TPM bypassing should be deemed specifically permissible, notwithstanding Section 1201’s general prohibition against it. Unfortunately these triennial rulemakings are an extremely cumbersome, expensive, and ineffective way of protecting the non-infringing uses of copyrighted works the public is entitled to make. But the even bigger problem, and the one that I will focus on here, is that Section 1201’s prohibition against bypassing TPMs is increasingly standing in the way of not just non-infringing uses of copyrighted works but non-infringing uses of computing devices as a whole. In the triennial rulemaking underway members of the public petitioned for a number of exemptions to Sections 1201’s prohibition, which the Copyright Office distilled into 27 classes of exemptions. The first 10 classes generally sought to allow people interact with copies of copyrighted works in ways they were entitled to but that the TPMs controlling the interaction prevented. But the latter classes, 11 through 27, were notable in that, rather than involving the sort of consumption of copyrighted media content DRM is designed to control, they all were classes designed to allow people to interact with computing logic itself. Some of these classes, like 23 (“Abandoned software – video games requiring server communication”) and 24 (“Abandoned software – music recording software”), sought to allow people to bypass TPMs so that they could actually run the copies of software they legitimately had access to. But for many of these classes petitioners found themselves needing to ask not for exemptions to use copyrighted works in ways that they that the legitimate right to but for exemptions allowing them to use computers in ways they had the legitimate right to use them. Because particularly for the classes seeking exemptions to modify the functionality of, or perform security research on, devices like phones (Classes 11 and 16), tablets (Class 12), TVs (Class 20), vehicles (Classes 21 and 22), and even computer-chipped medical devices (Class 27), that’s what these devices all are: computers. They just happen to be phone, TV, car, and pacemaker-shaped computers. Like a home PC (which Congress had not explicitly sought to regulate access to in 1998 when it codified Section 1201) they are pieces of computing hardware with circuitry that gets controlled by software. And, just like the home PC, people should be able to use the processing power of their computing devices as they would choose to, regardless of the shapes they come in. Unfortunately, unless they bypass the TPM they can’t, and unless the Copyright Office grants the exemption they can’t bypass the TPM legally. And that’s a problem, because when people’s exploration of the full contours of their computing devices is limited by the threat of legal sanction, all the innovation and discovery that exploration would have yielded is chilled. But to the extent that it is copyright law that is causing this chilling, it is a particularly bizarre result. Copyright law is inherently about promoting the progress of the arts and sciences, or, in other words, stimulating innovation and knowledge-sharing. It is completely anathema to copyright law’s constitutional mandate for Section 1201 of the copyright statute to explicitly impose barriers to that discovery. This contradiction was an important point I made in two sets of comments and testimony submitted as part of this rulemaking process. In them I argued that these exemptions, particularly for classes 11-27, should be granted liberally in order that people’s freedom to tinker with the tools they legitimately possessed not be impinged upon just because those tools happened to contain a TPM. If the Copyright Office were to do nothing and simply let these TPMs continue to block this free exploration with the threat of legal sanction it would be particularly unjust because none of those TPMs were implemented to limit the infringement of copyrighted works. While the software running a device may itself be a copyrighted work, the TPM bypass would not be about violating any of the exclusive rights in that work’s copyright. Rather, the TPM bypass would simply be about getting the device itself to work as its user would choose. Opponents to these classes argued that, even if the TPMs were not guarding against copyright harms, they prevented other sorts of harms that might result if people could use computing technology with unfettered freedom. For instance, they fretted, with regard to vehicles it was argued that if people could study or modify the software on their cars then brakes would fail, pollution would increase, and other terrible consequences would befall the world. But something important to remember is that by limiting this sort of discovery we also limit all of its benefits as well. If people cannot legally do security research on their cars, for instance, it doesn’t make those cars more secure. It just makes it harder to make them more secure. Also, it is not the role of copyright to regulate technology use and development (except to the extent that it is designed to stimulate innovation). When the Copyright Office suddenly gets to be the gatekeeper on how people can use their computing technology, while it may forestall some potential negative outcomes to that use, it also forestalls any good ones. Furthermore it prevents any other more appropriate authority better equipped to balance the costs and benefits of technology use to craft more nuanced and effective regulation to address any negative ones. As they would — after all, it’s not like we have been living in the Wild West up until the Copyright Office managed to become inserted into the technology regulation space. For instance, even in the analog world if people modified the physical attributes of their cars – something they never needed the Copyright Office’s blessing to do – other regulators could still speak to whether they would be allowed to drive their modified cars on open roads. These other regulators have not become enfeebled just because the modifications people may choose to make to their cars may now be digital, particularly when the consequences to these modifications are not. But even when the consequences to how people use their machines are digital, regulators can still address those outcomes. The problem has been that regulating computing use is tricky and up to now we haven’t done it very well. Instead we’ve ended up with laws like the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), laws that are very powerful and just as blunt, which punish beneficial computer uses as much as negative ones. But just because we have not perfected laws governing computer use does not mean that the Copyright Office should simply say no to these uses. In fact, it’s actually reason that the Copyright Office should say yes to them. One of the problems with the CFAA is that it construes the question of wrongfulness of a computer use based on the permissibility of that action. As a result, without the exemptions we are left in a situation where barriers erected under the auspices of copyright could threaten to become the sole basis by which the CFAA gets its teeth to sanction the very sort of inherently non-infringing activity that copyright law was never intended to prevent. And that’s the bitter irony, because while laws like the CFAA sadly lack any adequate mechanism to assess whether a computer use is a beneficial or otherwise fair use, copyright law by design can, and, indeed, pursuant to its Constitutional origins, must. For these reasons the Copyright Office should grant all the sought after exemptions, particularly for these latter classes. And it’s also for these reasons that it’s time to amend the copyright statute to remove the bottleneck to innovation Section 1201 has become given how it requires the permission of the Copyright Office before any of this computer use can be allowed. Thanks to Jeffrey Vagle and others for their help preparing these comments and testimony. Reposted from Digital Age Defense

We've talked a bit about the important security certificate effort being put together by EFF, Mozilla and others, called Let's Encrypt, which will offer free HTTPS security certificates, making it much easier to encrypt the web. They've been busy working on the project which is set to launch in a few months. But first... Let's Encrypt has released its first transparency report. Yes, that's right: before it's launched. As you might expect, there are a lot of zeros here: This is actually pretty important for a variety of reasons. First, it clearly acts as something of a warrant canary. And by posting this now, before launch and before there's even been a chance for the government to request information, Let's Encrypt is actually able to say "0." That may seem like a strange thing to say but, with other companies, the government has told them that they're not allowed to claim "0," but can only give ranges -- such as 0 to 999 if they separate out the specific government requests, or 0 to 249 if they lump together different kinds of government orders. Twitter has been fighting back against these kinds of rules, and others have argued that revealing an accurate number should be protected speech under the First Amendment.

Disposing of dead bodies is usually not a funny topic for anyone -- except for maybe Monty Python. But until we figure out how to cheat death, we're going to need to deal with corpses. Burying the dead six feet under might not be practical in some places, and not everyone is keen on cremation. Here are just a few other options.

YouTube and the music collection society GEMA have been at war for many years. Five years ago, I was at Berlin Music Week and it was one of the major points of discussion. YouTube was blocking all music videos, since GEMA insisted that YouTube should pay rates on par with digital sales (iTunes) rates for each play. Musicians I met with in Germany were furious at GEMA's obsessive control over their own music -- with one musician even showing me how he had an official website that GEMA was aware of, and an "unofficial" website his band showed to fans, which offered up free music (something GEMA refused to allow). The various court rulings in the case have been a mixed bag with some finding YouTube liable for user uploads, and even saying that YouTube needs to put in place a keyword filter.

Over the last few years, we've seen leaks here and there of the various chapters of the TPP agreement, but generally ones that are quite out of date. The latest public leak of the "intellectual property" chapter that I'm aware of was done last October by Wikileaks and was the version from the previous May (2014). Now, Politico claims that someone has leaked the May 2015 version, though Politico has not published the document (which, frankly, is pretty lame for a journalism property). But, based on Politico's report, the agreement still looks to be what everyone's been saying it would be: a huge gift to giant corporate special interests, such as Big Pharma: