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Back in 2011, we wrote about Kickstarter going to court to ask for a declaratory judgment that a patent held by ArtistShare (7,885,887) was invalid, and thus, that Kickstarter was not infringing. As we explained at the time, ArtistShare and its CEO Brian Camelio had been going around to various crowdfunding platforms asking them to pay up over the patent. Camelio, never one to hold back his opinions, explained that he was going after Kickstarter because he really just didn't like the company:

Almost exactly three years ago, Mike wrote up a post that discussed Planet Money pulling together five economists with differing political views to see what they could all agree on. The result was several policy ideas that appeared to transcend politics if economics was the driving motivator instead of any kind of partisanship. The whole post is awesome, and has influenced my thoughts on economic policy and taxes to a large degree, but I came away from it with one general concept firmly in mind: tax what you want to discourage, don't tax what you want to encourage, and never tax innovation or the future.

The FBI has been really screaming its head off about the evils of encryption over the last year or so. Director James Comey keeps fearmongering about encryption, though when asked to give examples of cases where encryption had created problems, all of his "examples" turn up empty. Yet, the FBI keeps insisting that something needs to be done and, if not, there's a real risk of "going dark." One of Comey's top deputies has insisted that tech companies need to "prevent encryption above all else." And the fearmongering is working. Some politicians are already freaking out about this so-called "going dark" scenario.

I have to admit, I didn't see this one coming. We recently discussed how Bob Costas reacted to a video of him being more than a bit hard on Cubs MLB pitcher Pedro Strop by going full-tirade on the internet and social media. Within that post was the embedded video of the broadcast segment that featured Costas wondering aloud whether Strop pointed up to the heavens while walking off the field (something very common in sports) was him imploring a dead relative for forgiveness for his awful performance. That video, I should mention, was up and working at the time the post was being written. By the time it was published, however, it had been taken down with a notice that someone had filed a copyright claim on it.

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Earlier this year, there were some questions raised when it appeared that UK Prime Minister David Cameron was suggesting that he wanted to undermine all encryption on the internet. Later, some suggested he was looking more at undermining end point security. However, after being re-elected, and apparently believing that this gave him the mandate to go full Orwell, Cameron is making it clear that no one should ever have any privacy from government snoops ever.

Amnesty International has been heavily engaged in fights against mass surveillance, recognizing that many of the people it communicates with need an expectation of privacy in their communications with the group. Last year, Ed Snowden revealed that the NSA specifically spied on Amnesty International and other human rights organizations. And, while Amnesty International was unable to gain standing by the US Supreme Court, since it couldn't prove that the NSA had spied on its communications, the story appears to be somewhat different over in the UK.

Earlier this year, the Federal Communications Commission voted to ease the way for cities to become Internet service providers. So-called municipal broadband is already a reality in a few towns, often providing Internet access and faster service to rural communities that cable companies don't serve. The cable and telecommunications industry have long lobbied against city-run broadband, arguing that taxpayer money should not fund potential competitors to private companies. The telecom companies have what may seem like an unlikely ally: states. Roughly 20 states have restrictions against municipal broadband. And the attorneys general in North Carolina and Tennessee have recently filed lawsuits in an attempt to overrule the FCC and block towns in these states from expanding publicly funded Internet service. North Carolina's attorney general argued in a suit filed in May that the "FCC unlawfully inserted itself between the State and the State's political subdivisions." Tennessee's attorney general filed a similar suit in March. Tennessee has hired one of the country's largest telecom lobbying and law firms, Wiley Rein, to represent the state in its suit. The firm, founded by a former FCC chairman, has represented AT&T, Verizon and Qwest, among others. James Tierney, director of the National State Attorneys General Program at Columbia Law School, said it is not unusual for attorneys general to seek outside counsel for specialized cases that they view as a priority. Asked about the suit, the Tennessee attorney general's office told ProPublica, "This is a question of the state's sovereign ability to define the role of its local governmental units." North Carolina Attorney General's office said in a statement that the "legal defense of state laws by the Attorney General's office is a statutory requirement." As the New York Times detailed last year, state attorneys general have become a major target of corporate lobbyists and contributors including AT&T, Comcast and T-Mobile. North Carolina is no exception. The state's Attorney General Roy Cooper received roughly $35,000 from the telecommunications industry in his 2012 run for office. Only the state's retail industry gave more. The donations are just a small part of contributions the industry has made in the states. In North Carolina's 2014 elections, the telecommunications industry gave a combined $870,000 to candidates in both parties, which made it one of the top industries to contribute that year. Candidates in Tennessee received nearly $921,000 from AT&T and other industry players in 2014. The FCC's decision came after two towns – City of Wilson in North Carolina and Chattanooga in Tennessee – appealed to the agency to be able to expand their networks. The vote has rattled some companies. In a government filing earlier this year, Comcast cited the FCC's decision as a risk to the company's business: "Any changes to the regulatory framework applicable to any of our services or businesses could have a negative impact on our businesses and results of operations." If the court upholds the FCC's authority to preempt restrictions in North Carolina and Tennessee, it may embolden other cities to file petitions with the agency, according to lawyer Jim Baller, who represents Wilson and the Chattanooga Electric Power Board. "A victory by the FCC would be a very welcome result for many communities across America," said Baller. For some residents in and outside of Chattanooga, clearing the way to city-run broadband would mean the sort of faster Internet access that others might take for granted. For 12 years, Eva VanHook, 39, of Georgetown, Tennessee, lived with a satellite broadband connection so slow that she'd read a book while waiting for a web page to load. In order for her son to access online materials for his school assignments, she'd drive him 12 miles to their church parking lot, where he could access faster WiFi. Charter, the local Internet service provider, declined several requests by her husband to build lines out to her home. Only last month did Charter connect her home to the Internet. "Even the possibility to jump on [the local utility's] gigabit network would blow our minds right now," VanHook said. "There is nothing faster than Chattanooga. Just through meeting them and hearing them speak and having them understand what's going on, that's the kind of place I want to do business." Republished from ProPublica. Related: Obama Wants You to Have Cheap, Fast Internet, But Many Cities Aren't Allowed to Provide It ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for their newsletter.

For years, broadcasters and cable operators have tried to push the boundaries of good taste and advertising revenue generation. Whether that's trying to prevent consumers from skipping ads to patenting technology that will use cameras embedded in set tops to watch you watching TV, there's a relentless thirst for new realms of ad revenue. As a sense of futility extends into the quest for more meaningful privacy protections in the new age of smart hardware and deep packet inspection, cable operators continue to nudge the boundaries of revenue collection ever further.

Last week, Tim Cushing explained that one of the bad outcomes of the recent European Parliament committee vote on Julia Reda's copyright reform report was that it recommended limiting freedom of panorama -- the ability to take pictures and make videos of public objects -- to non-commercial use. As Techdirt readers know, in the digital age, it is very hard to draw a clear distinction between commercial and non-commercial contexts online, which makes any kind of limitation to non-commercial use problematic. The person responsible for introducing the amendment to Reda's report, Jean-Marie Cavada, has written a blog post about the freedom of panorama issue (original in French), and it gives us some interesting insights into his thinking here:

You would only really know this if you're a baseball fan, but Bob Costas went ahead and stepped in it recently while calling a Cubs vs. Cardinals game. You see, relief pitcher Pedro Strop came out to work from the bullpen and promptly crapped himself on the mound (not literally). This, of course, is only in good keeping with the Chicago Cubs tradition of sucking, but apparently Costas decided to go in pretty hard on Strop when the pitcher pointed at the sky as he exited the game.

Video games that are entertaining need to be simple enough for people to understand, but at the same time, hard enough to be a little challenging and not too easy to beat. Games like Flappy Bird demonstrate this sweet spot for gameplay, and some classic games like Super Mario are still widely enjoyed even decades after their initial releases. Computers can play games like these, too, but they can't enjoy them like we do. Check out a few of these links on creative ways to continue playing Super Mario.

For most of the last decade Seattle, like many U.S. cities, has been painfully unhappy with its broadband options. If they're "lucky," Seattle residents have the choice of apathetic telco CenturyLink (formerly Qwest), or everybody's favorite dysfunction monolith, Comcast. CenturyLink historically can barely be bothered to upgrade its aging DSL networks, resulting in most of its users paying an arm and a leg for 3 to 6 Mbps DSL (which was quite cutting edge in 2003). And while Comcast has done a relatively better job upgrading its networks, their customer service documentably qualifies for inclusion as a new circle of hell.

There's been a bunch of fuss online over the "news" that Craigslist is supposedly donating $1 million to EFF when the money is not actually from Craig. It's from a startup that Craigslist has sued out of business, under a dangerous interpretation of the CFAA that harms the open internet. Obviously, EFF getting an additional $1 million in resources is really great. But it's troubling to see so many people congratulate Craigslist and Craig Newmark for "supporting EFF." Craig himself has contributed to this misleading perception with this tweet implying he's giving his own money to EFF: Plenty of smart people are cheering on Craig for supposedly being so generous. But that's wrong. This isn't Craigslist being generous. This is Craigslist abusing the CFAA to kill a company who was making the internet better, and then handing over some of the proceeds to the EFF, which actively opposed Craigslist's lawsuit.

There's been a bunch of fuss online over the "news" that Craigslist is supposedly donating $1 million to EFF. Obviously, EFF getting an additional $1 million in resources is really great. But it's troubling to see so many people congratulate Craigslist and Craig Newmark for "supporting EFF." Craig himself has contributed to this misleading perception with this tweet implying he's giving his own money to EFF: Plenty of smart people are cheering on Craig for supposedly being so generous. But that's wrong. This isn't Craigslist being generous. This is Craigslist abusing the CFAA to kill a company who was making the internet better, and then handing over some of the proceeds to the EFF, which actively opposed Craigslist's lawsuit.

Sure, Freedom of Information laws are great, but they have their downsides. For one thing, they clearly signal to agencies which records are being sought. It's unavoidable. To answer a request, an agency needs to know what it's looking for. Once the request is out in the open, efforts can begin in earnest to excise information anyone affected doesn't want made public.

Remember Thomas Dart? He's the sheriff of Cook County, Illinois (the county that covers Chicago and many of its suburbs). For reasons that make no sense at all, he's somewhat obsessed with the fact that some prostitutes have figured out how to use the internet. But, rather than using this information to actually find and arrest those who are breaking the law, he's decided a much better move is to ignore the law and attack the internet tools those prostitutes use. Back in 2009 he sued Craigslist, wasting a ton of taxpayer money, until the court inevitably threw out the case, explaining (in detail) to Dart that the law (in particular, Section 230 of the CDA) says he can't do that. As we noted at the time, the really, really bizarre part was that in Dart's initial announcement, he even noted how his staff used Craigslist to find and arrest those engaged in prostitution. In other words, his lawsuit appeared to be an attempt to shut down a tool that had been useful to his staff in stopping crime. Indeed, in the court ruling throwing out his bogus lawsuit, the Court pointed out the obvious:

The TSA runs a fairly entertaining Instagram account, if you're the sort of person who is impressed by pictures of weapons seized from stupid passengers. That would be the extent of its social media prowess. Its blog is pretty much a 50/50 mix of Yet Another Thing You Can't Take Onboard and Blogger Bob defending the TSA's latest gaffe.

As we recently noted, New York City only just woke up to the fact that the lucrative 2008 Verizon franchise deal the city thought would bring fiber broadband to 100% of all five boroughs, has only resulted in Verizon cherry picking about half of the city's residents. Of course as we pointed out, if the city had actually bothered to read the closed-door agreement struck with former Mayor Mike Bloomberg (or listened to a few local reporters at the time), leaders could have noticed at any time that it contains oodles of loopholes allowing Verizon to wiggle over, under and around most of the obligations contained therein.

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Donald Trump seems to be showing off what would happen if your prototypical internet troll had way too much money at his disposal. As you may have heard, he's putting on a big show of "running" for President, though as many have recognized, the move appears to be a hell of a lot more about getting himself publicity (thankfully, at least some news organizations are properly categorizing stories about Trump as entertainment rather than politics). Of course, the plan to get more attention may be backfiring somewhat, as some of the ridiculous comments he's made "on the campaign" are coming back to bite him -- including Univision cutting ties with him over the Miss USA telecast and NBC dumping both the pageants and his Apprentice series (that thing is still on?).

For many years, despite claims from legacy copyright industry extremists who sought to blame everyone else for any piracy issues, we've pointed out that the reality is almost always that piracy is their own fault for failing to provide convenient, reasonably priced alternatives to the public. When they actually do that, piracy rates almost always drop significantly. And now we have even more proof that these legacy industry insiders know this and don't care.

Open records requests and lawsuits go hand-in-hand. Agencies obfuscate, stall, perform deliberately inadequate searches and fail to respond in a timely manner. These actions frequently result in lawsuits, which are notably almost always filed by the requester.

For more than a decade we've noted that while there's no hard scientific evidence proving that Wi-Fi is a health hazard, that hasn't stopped an endless parade of folks from declaring war on the humble technology. Numerous schools have been sued for trying to install Wi-Fi networks, and some schools have even banned Wi-Fi entirely based on nothing more than a gut feeling. The campaign against Wi-Fi is generally waged by those professing to be "electromagnetically sensitive," even though most provocation trials to date have suggested these individuals can't actually identify when a "harmful" Wi-Fi agent is in the room.

It's been a while since we last wrote about CETA, the trade deal between Canada and the European Union. Back in March, we noted that the French Secretary of State for External Commerce, Matthias Fekl, said that France would not ratify CETA unless the corporate sovereignty, or investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), provisions were removed or replaced by something completely different. Of course, it's hard not to be sceptical about these statements, since politicians like to grandstand, and are happy to change their positions every few months. But not, it seems, Matthias Fekl. According to a report on the French site Le Devoir (original in French), he's still of the same opinion:

First, the good news: members of the House of Representatives in the US Congress are now allowed to use open source technology in their offices, rather than the very limited list of proprietary offerings they were given in the past. Second, the bad news: how the hell is it 2015 and this is only becoming an option now? I guess we can't change the past, and so let's celebrate the House of Reps finally getting to this point -- which just happens to coincide with the upcoming launch of the House Open Source Caucus (led by Reps. Blake Farenthold and Jared Polis). We've talked plenty about how little Congress understands technology, software and the internet today -- so actually introducing them to the basics of open source software can only help. And, yes, this comes on the heels of a Congressional rep making a pull request on Github. So, maybe (just maybe) we're starting to see more of our elected officials actually taking the time to understand the technologies that their policies will impact.

The shortest distance between the Earth and Mars varies depending on where the two planets are in their respective orbits. In July 2018, Mars will be a little under 36 million miles away (pretty close to the closest possible distance of 33.9 million miles). However, it's not quite as simple as shooting a big rocket aimed in the right direction. If astronauts are going to survive the trip (and the return?), no one has the technology to do that yet. Manned space exploration sounds like a noble venture, but funding it seems to be a big problem.

The McKinney (Texas) Police Department is under lots of outside scrutiny, thanks to the racially-tinged antics of its police force -- namely the since-departed Officer Eric Casebolt, who barrel rolled into infamy in a cell phone-captured video that culminated in him pinning down a 14-year-old girl while waving a gun at two teens.

"The more things change, the more everything is just Smith v. Maryland (1979)."

We've been covering France's bizarre war against Uber, starting with last week's taxi driver riots in which they overturned Uber cars, set fires, and held drivers and passengers hostage. This was followed by a bizarre caving in by the French government, who didn't go after the taxi drivers for their actions, but rather declared that Uber should be stopped and told law enforcement to seize the cars of Uber drivers. And, yesterday it went up a notch with two top Uber execs in France getting arrested and accused of the horrible crime of "inciting illegal employment" in a country where the unemployment rate continues to rise.

The promise of virtual reality has been teasing us since the late 60s, and yet it never seems to arrive in a fully realized form, and often gets relegated to the realm of mockery. Recently, however, VR (and its cousin, augmented reality) is back in a big way, with flagship products like the Oculus Rift and Microsoft Hololens taking the spotlight, backed up by dozens of other contributions from Google Cardboard to our recent Awesome Stuff feature, the Gloveone. To discuss this exciting trend, we're joined by erstwhile Techdirt writer Carlo Longino who, along with regular co-host Dennis Yang, attended this year's E3 conference and tried out a bunch of new offerings on the VR market. 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.

Bungie, creators of the hit game Destiny, is going through a bit of a rough stretch. Whereas Witcher 3 creators CD Projekt Red have been showing the gaming industry how to do everything right in regards to DRM, DLC and consumer interaction, Bungie apparently decided to give a master class over the last few weeks on how to do everything very, very wrong.

Last week, we announced the new website for the Copia Institute and talked about our philosophy of hacking policy through innovation, not lobbying. This week, we're inviting everyone to get involved in one example of this philosophy in action. In this world of rapid technological innovation, nobody can truly claim their efforts stand alone. Everything is built upon previous innovations, and everyone benefits from those who took a pro-innovation stance when building their businesses and technologies. Today, everyone bears some of the responsibility for ensuring that we continue to promote innovation rather than stymie it, and it’s to that end that Copia is creating the Statement of Innovation Principles: a clear, robust statement for innovative companies to sign on to, laying out a variety of principles they intend to uphold in order to promote future innovation, ranging from how they deal with data and intellectual property to how they structure their APIs and developers’ kits. We started this project in March at our 2015 Inaugural Summit, where we presented an initial version of the statement to a roundtable of General Counsels from innovative companies, then opened up a revised draft for discussion with everyone present. There were lots of interesting points raised at the summit, and you can watch the full roundtable discussion for some background on the project: Based on all the comments and ideas from the summit we've made another round of revisions to the Statement, and we have now published the updated draft and are seeking feedback from the public. We've included some notes on key questions that were raised at the Summit and which we feel deserve further discussion, as well as a list of possible additional principles that were proposed but haven't yet been adopted into the complete list. We'd really love the community here at Techdirt to get involved, since we know you have a deep understanding of and interest in these issues, so we hope you'll head over to the project page on the Copia site where you can read the current draft and leave comments on individual points or the document as a whole. We look forward to hearing what you have to say, and will be incorporating the feedback into a new draft later this year.

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In 2014, it really looked like Europe was moving towards strong net neutrality, while the US was going to allow for special fast lanes on the internet. In 2015... everything has gone the other way. The US passed real net neutrality rules, while Europe has not only decided to kill net neutrality, but has done so in a way where they pretend that they're actually supporting net neutrality.

A federal judge has just ordered the government to return $167,000 it took from a man passing through Nevada on his way to visit his girlfriend in California. The officers really wanted that money, too. They used two consecutive stops to jerry-rig some probable cause… even though at that point they thought they were only dealing with $2000. From the original stop forward, the entire situation was deplorable, indisputably showing that everyone involved was more interested in taking (and keeping) a bunch of cash than enforcing laws or pursuing justice.

Nobody could ever accuse FCC Commissioner Mike O'Rielly of being a consumer advocate. As one of five agency commissioners, O'Rielly (alongside former Verizon lawyer Ajit Pai) has voted down every single meaningful FCC effort to aid consumers and improve broadband market competition. Whether it's trying to protect net neutrality, or the FCC's attempt to stop ISPs from writing obnoxious protectionist state law, O'Rielly's sole function appears to be to oppose pretty much everything that could possibly help the American public, under the ingenious pretense of helping the American public.

The NSA has long claimed that it does not engage in "economic espionage." NSA and Defense Department officials have repeatedly insisted that while they do lots of other things, economic espionage is not on the list:

When it comes to old notions that are used to stave off the need to embrace new business models in the digital age, nothing is more annoying than the whole "the masses just want everything for free" myth. That belief is snappy, punchy, and as simple to understand as it is completely and demonstrably wrong. But for a certain segment of the population, typically older generations of the kind that pine for the good old days when America was all apple pie and tasteful cartoons, the myth persists. Now, however, the myth is old. Old enough that it's begun to lose its flavor, like a piece of gum that you've been chewing on since Metallica shut down Napster. The new flavor is every digital success story that proves the myth wrong. Kickstarter happens to be my favorite example of this. What's remarkable about Kickstarter is that it's over half a decade old and, despite some still embracing the old myths, it's somehow still setting records in raising money for content producers.

Chanel is a company that does fashion and perfume. I know this because I can't walk into a department store without walking past a bunch of glass cases that smell like someone boiled six billion flowers in a pot and then threw it on me, leaving me only to walk past the purses and handbag sections and laugh at the prices for tiny, tiny little bags. Chanel does not sell chocolate, unless you count naming some of the afore-mentioned perfumes and handbags with vaguely chocolate-y names. I know this because I did a Google search to make sure, and those are infallible. And, yet, for some reason, Chanel has decided to play trademark-goalie on a two-person chocolate shop operating in Australia.

There are thousands of species of mosquitoes. Killing them all might not be advisable, but controlling how they interact with us would be good -- so that we can prevent various mosquito-borne diseases. If you hate mosquito bites, check out a few of these links to learn more about your tiny tiny nemeses.

Like all of the patents we highlight in our Stupid Patent of the Month series, this month's winner, U.S. Patent No. 6,795,918, is a terrible patent. But it earns a special place in the Pantheon of stupid patents because it is being wielded in one of most outrageous trolling campaigns we have ever seen. Patent No. 6,795,918 (the '918 patent), issued from an application filed in March 2000, and is titled: "Service level computer security." It claims a system of "filtering data packets" by "extracting the source, destination, and protocol information," and "dropping the received data packet if the extracted information indicates a request for access to an unauthorized service." You may think, wait a minute, that's just a firewall. By the year 2000, firewalls had been around for a long time. So how on earth did this applicant get a patent? A good question. Here's how you get a patent on a firewall more than a decade after firewalls were invented. Step 1: File a description of your so-called invention that is nothing more than mundane details about how firewalls work. Step 2: Add some language saying this is totally not just a firewall. Step 3: Claim a firewall. With any luck, the Patent Office will just wave you through. To be fair, the '918 patent suggests a firewall system that is not "user configurable." The idea is that unsophisticated home users might misconfigure their firewalls so it is better to give them a system they cannot mess up. Just like a real firewall, only dumber! The patent also hedges its bets by claiming a system that is "substantially free from user adjustment," whatever that means. Even if that was a new idea in 2000, this is not actually a technological improvement. It's kind of like putting a padlock on the front hood of a car and then saying you've invented a new kind of car. The '918 patent spent its entire life in well-deserved obscurity. Indeed, the original inventor chose to let the patent expire in September 2012 by not paying the maintenance fee. This is unsurprising. Why waste money keeping a terrible patent alive? Usually, that is where the story would end. Unfortunately, even an expired garbage patent can be useful in the hands of a patent troll. In January of 2015, a newly-formed company called Wetro Lan, LLC, purchased the '918 patent. Shortly after that, it began filing dozens of lawsuits in the Eastern District of Texas against companies that provide, you guessed it, firewall technology. The troll can do this because damages for patent infringement go back six years. So, technically, it can still demand damages for alleged infringement that took place from mid-2009 until the patent expired in September 2012 (though the defendants might have a good laches defense). Wetro Lan has sued just about everyone who sells a product relating to network security, from Avaya to ZyXEL. To take one suit as an example, Wetro Lan has sued Hacom, LLC, a small company based in Santa Ana, California, that provides embedded hardware, software, and consulting for implementation of open-source applications. In its complaint, Wetro Lan says that Hacom's Phoenix IT-100 Appliance and its other routers directly infringe the ‘918 patent. But Hacom doesn't sell anything remotely like the dumb, non-configurable, firewall discussed in the '918 patent. They sell advanced products which enable users to configure settings through a web-based interface or at the command line. In fact, since Hacom's products incorporate free software (free as in freedom), they are configurable down to the source code level. There's no way that Hacom's products infringe a patent that, even if it were valid, would cover only the dumbest of firewalls. But if Wetro Lan is like most trolls, that's not the game here. The likely point of this litigation is to extract a nuisance settlement. We have significant doubts that Wetro Lan would ever litigate one of its cases on the merits, and win. The attorneys behind the Wetro Lan campaign are the same lawyers who sued our client in the Garfum v. Reflections by Ruth case. We desperately need legislative reform to stop more abusive litigation from these trolls. Such reform should include fee shifting, heightened pleading requirements, and venue reform to stop shell company trolls dragging innovators to the Eastern District of Texas. Without help from Congress, trolls will keep shaking down small companies like Hacom. Republished from the EFF's Stupid Patent of the Month series

Here's something you see all too rarely -- not because the government's civil asset forfeiture programs aren't routinely abused -- but because it's a good way to spend lots of money fighting a losing battle.

You'd like to think that people don't use intellectual property and the courts to push themselves into the public spotlight. You'd like to think that the complexities of IP law and the lack of competent lawyers just have otherwise well-meaning people confused. But then you come across a case where there doesn't seem to be any other logical explanation for the trademark lawsuit other than a bunch of once-mildly-famous people trying to thrust themselves into the light of the modern sun and you begin to lose faith. Let me introduce you to Peter Beckett, lead singer for a band called "Player", who had a very popular hit in the late-70's called "Baby Come Back." Now he's also got a hell of a trademark suit filing on his hands, having decided that Keith Urban selling a "Keith Urban Player acoustic guitar kit" is somehow a trademark violation on his band's name.

Things seem to be going from bad to worse in Australia. In April, it brought in mandatory data retention, and last week its own version of SOPA finally became law. Now the Australian government is working on another awful piece of legislation: a bill to revoke the citizenship of those holding dual nationality if they are "involved in terrorism." A column in The Sydney Morning Herald gives a few examples of what that dangerously elastic concept might mean in practice:

Last week, we noted some bizarre happenings in France, as taxi drivers unwilling to compete against Uber decided to stage a "protest" which actually looked a lot more like a riot. They overturned Uber cars, held passengers and drivers hostage and lit fires around the country. You might think that this updated version of Luddites smashing machines would lead to a similar result -- getting laughed at and confined to the dustbins of history. But, this is France we're talking about. Politicians quickly ordered a crackdown on Uber including ordering law enforcement to seize the cars of Uber drivers.

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Remember back when newspapers were considered the leading defenders of the First Amendment and free speech? Apparently that's over. Newsday (the newspaper I grew up reading) has an editorial up by Anne Michaud (the publication's "interactive editor") in which she argues for a dismantling of the First Amendment when it comes to "hate speech." These kinds of arguments have become popular again lately (in fact, many in the US seem to think that hate speech is already not protected under the First Amendment). Michaud's piece starts out by highlighting how she, herself, explored the white supremacist world a few years ago:

There's that old joke that you've probably heard (in part because we've mentioned it in other contexts), about the drunk man searching for his keys under a streetlight, while admitting that he lost them further down the street. When asked why he's looking over by the light instead, he says "because that's where the light is." People even refer to this as the streetlight effect. And you can see it in all sorts of odd places.

If you didn't know, Netflix is kind of huge. So huge, in fact, that some new analysis suggests that if Netflix was a Nielsen-rated TV network, the service would, sometime within a year, attain a larger 24-hour audience than ABC, CBS, NBC or Fox. That's something Nielsen itself should probably be tracking, but as we've noted previously, Nielsen has painfully lagged on actually tracking the cord cutting revolution, for fear of upsetting cable and broadcast executives with their heads planted squarely in the sand.