Last Chance To Tell The Librarian Of Congress What's Important For A New Register Of Copyrights

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The (still) new Librarian of Congress created a bit of a fuss last year in effectively forcing the existing Register of Copyrights, Maria Pallante, (the head of the US Copyright Office) out of a job. Pallante has since (of course) found a new gig heading up an industry trade group, the Association of American Publishers, with a fairly long history of being against the public, against the internet, against the blind and against fair use.The removing of Pallante kciked off a bunch of ridiculous conspiracy theories that made little sense and had almost no basis in reality. It's pretty clear that Pallante was removed from her job because she had actively, and publicly, reached out to Congress to ask that she no longer have to report to Hayden. That seems like fairly basic insubordination and a fairly standard reason why a boss might fire you.Either way, the fuss over Pallante losing her job resulted in Hayden promising to listen to all stakeholders about who should replace Pallante. To that end, she launched an online survey asking people what they'd like to see in a new Copyright Office boss. Frankly, this... feels kind of gimmicky and silly. Hayden got the job she got because she actually understands a lot of these issues. Yes, she should absolutely be listening to the public and weighing lots of thoughts, but an online survey... just feels like the wrong mechanism. And, of course, such things are prone to ballot stuffing (from all sides). If you look around, it's not hard to find some fairly crazy and "not-quite-in-touch-with-reality" groups and individuals who are telling people just how to stuff the ballot box, including some nonsense that completely misrepresents the role.So I'm not going to tell anyone how they should fill out the survey, but I would suggest that people think carefully about what role the head of the Copyright Office should play. Should it be a job where the focus is on protecting the interests of a few gatekeepers who have spent years sucking up the copyrights of actual creators while claiming to represent artists? Or should it be someone who is focused on the actual job of the Copyright Office, such as modernizing the role of the copyright office, making it easier to research who holds copyrights on what works, and who is actually focused on the core principles of copyright law -- that it promote the progress of science -- as laid out in the Constitution?The online survey closes tomorrow, Tuedsay January 31st (possibly today by the time you're reading this), so please get your thoughts in sooner rather than later.

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Amidst Increased Government Surveillance, Chinese Internet Users Finally Gain Important Online Privacy Protections

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Techdirt stories about China have been relentlessly grim in recent years, offering a depressing vision of an online world under ever-greater surveillance, with correspondingly more systems for censoring every digital thought. But it's important not to get too apocalyptic, and to remember that life goes on. Just like their counterparts in the West, people in China are using the Internet for more and more of their daily lives. Arguably a greater problem than government surveillance for most people is the lack of privacy protections under Chinese law, which has led to highly-personal online information routinely being gathered and sold by third parties.In this context, the Caixin site has details of what it calls a "landmark privacy case" that may help to rein in some of that widespread abuse. The original complaint was brought by Weibo, China's version of Twitter, against an erstwhile partner, Maimai, which offers an enterprise chat app of the same name.

An intellectual property court in Beijing has just made one of China's first precedent-setting rulings on the issue by upholding a lower court's ruling against Maimai. The original case was brought nearly two years ago by Weibo, which said its millions of users had their publicly available personal data improperly mined by Maimai.

the court issued an article on its official microblog on Wednesday laying out guidance for similar cases involving user privacy when data is publicly available on sites like Weibo. That guidance gave six instances of what constitutes "improper" use of such data, including the potential to harm a user's welfare and disturbing order on the internet.Those policies were part of the court's broader opinion that third parties who gather such publicly available user information from services like Weibo should not violate individual privacy without making a concerted effort to get authorization from both platform operators and actual users.

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This Week In Techdirt History: January 22nd - 28th

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Five Years AgoThis week in 2012 was all about the fallout from SOPA/PIPA, and the pivot to focusing on new battles. The SOPA supporters who own major media networks were somehow complaining they couldn't get their voices heard, while movie theatre lobbyists were continuing to make up facts and a very confused CreativeAmerica was still campaigning for SOPA on the basis of needing it to take down Megaupload — despite that being the other big battle of the week because Megaupload had just been seized without SOPA.On that front, we saw the chilling effects as other companies began turning off useful sharing services, and began learning interesting tidbits from the indictment. Some artists spoke out in opposition, with Jonathan Coulton tweeting and blogging against the seizure and Dan Bull releasing one of his always-excellent protest songs. But Megaupload wasn't the only battlefront: we also saw the backlash against ACTA begin to build, with the Polish government seeing SOPA-like protests (and calling it "blackmail") followed by that epic moment when Polish politicians in parliament donned Guy Fawkes masks in protest themselves. And as if all that wasn't enough, we also had to contend with the TPP, support of which was laced into Obama's state of the union address, prompting public interest groups to speak out about an upcoming secret meeting on the deal.Ten Years AgoThis week in 2007, the big copyright fight was still over DRM. The RIAA was complaining about how people thought it looked evil, Blu-ray's DRM was rapidly cracked by the same hacker who beat HD DVD, the licensing group behind AACS admitted that DRM is not in fact a meaningful barrier to piracy, and a fight was breaking out over Apple's FairPlay DRM in Norway. On the plus side, we saw a couple positive court rulings, one further defending the right to anonymity online, and another not just protecting but potentially expanding the safe harbor protections of CDA Section 230.Fifteen Years AgoThis week in 2002 we were still addressing a few more quaint copyright questions, like whether sharing abandonware is piracy. Beset by lawsuits, KaZaa was selling its site and software to an Australian company. Taxis were beginning to adopt GPS, the future of free web email seemed uncertain, PC-based e-voting was being tinkered with, and we got an early glimpse into the iron-fisted secrecy of Apple. Oh, and Techdirt was nominated for a Bloggie award.Two-Hundred And Sixty-Three Years AgoThis has little to do with Techdirt topics, but it's a fun and interesting fact nonetheless: it was on January 28th, 1754 that Horace Walpole coined the word "serendipity" in a letter to Horace Mann, basing it on an old name for Sri Lanka used in a Persian fairy tale.

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Twitter Reveals Two National Security Letters After Gag Orders Lifted; Rightly Complains About Gag Orders

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In the last few months, we've seen multiple internet companies finally able to reveal National Security Letters (NSLs) they had received from the Justice Department, demanding information from the companies, while simultaneously saddling those companies with gag orders, forbidding them to speak about the orders. It started last June, when Yahoo was the first company to publicly acknowledge such an NSL. In December, Google revealed 8 NSLs around the same time that the Internet Archive was able to reveal it had received an NSL as well. Earlier this month, Cloudflare was finally able to reveal the NSL it had received (which a Senate staffer had told the company was impossible -- and the company's top lawyer was bound by the gag order, unable to correct that staffer).And now we can add Twitter to the list. On Friday, the company announced that the gag order on two NSLs had been lifted. There's one from 2015 and another from June of last year. Twitter appears relieved that it's finally able to reveal these, but quite frustrated that it was gagged at all.If you don't recall, Twitter has been much more aggressive than basically all of the other tech companies in challenging these gag orders. Back in 2014, Twitter sued the government, claiming it was a First Amendment violation to enforce these gag orders. That was after most of the other major internet companies had come to an agreement over how and when they could report such requests. Twitter, thankfully, felt that the agreement between the DOJ and internet companies was way too stifling and has fought it:

Twitter remains unsatisfied with restrictions on our right to speak more freely about national security requests we may receive. We continue to push for the legal ability to speak more openly on this topic in our lawsuit against the U.S. government, Twitter v. Lynch.We continue to believe that reporting in government-mandated bands does not provide meaningful transparency to the public or those using our service. However, the government argues that any numerical reporting more detailed than the bands in the USA Freedom Act would be classified and as such not protected by the First Amendment. They further argue that Twitter is not entitled to obtain information from the government about the processes followed in classifying a version Twitter's 2013 Transparency Report or in classifying/declassifying decisions associated with the allowed bands. We would like a meaningful opportunity to challenge government restrictions when classification prevents speech on issues of public importance.Our next hearing in the Lynch case is scheduled for February 14, 2017. Concurrently, Twitter is using the statutory means provided in the USA Freedom Act to seek more transparency into similar NSL requests, and will provide updates as they become available.

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Jose Cuervo Loses Bid To Block Trademark Registration For Il Corvo Wine

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When it comes to trademark disputes involving alcohol companies, we should all agree by now that things tend to get really, really silly. Too often a reversion to protectionism causes company lawyers to stretch the plain meaning of words on matters of similarity and the potential for customer confusion. The latest example of this comes to us from South Africa, where the company behind Jose Cuervo tequila attempted, and failed, to block the trademark registration for Il Corvo branded wine.

Tequila Cuervo SA de CV turned to the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria for relief when Fabrication and Light Engineering CC – South Africa’s largest storage and construction equipment manufacturers – applied for the registration of the proposed Il Corvo trademark.The tequila manufacturer, which owns the trademarks Cuervo and Jose Cuervo, as well as the raven depicted on some of their products, maintained the proposed Il Corvo mark was likely to deceive or cause confusion because of the mark’s similarity to their registered trademarks.

The proposed Il Corvo trademark did not globally resemble Tequila Cuervo’s trademarks and were visually and conceptually different. The differences between the marks were stark, the judge said. He said although there was a similarity between Corvo and Cuervo, the overall impression given by the marks based on their distinctive and dominant components were not so similar that it would cause confusion. He said it was extremely unlikely that the notional consumer would know that “corvo” and “cuervo” both mean raven in different languages.

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Germany Finally Dumps Law That Says It's A Crime To Insult Foreign Leaders

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Last year, we wrote about a bizarre situation in Germany, in which the incredibly thin-skinned Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, had discovered a little-used, mostly forgotten German law, saying that it was illegal to insult a foreign leader, and used it to go after a German comedian. Erdogan, of course, had been filing thousands of lawsuits within Turkey against people who mocked or insulted him, which resulted in people around the globe mocking and making fun of Erdogan. But the fact that he dug up this mostly forgotten law created a bit of a diplomatic mess at the time for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was trying to play nice with Erdogan diplomatically, for the sake of helping with the flood of refugees from the Middle East. The weak "compromise" was that Merkel allowed the case to move forward, leading to a sad ruling from a German court, barring the comedian from mocking Erdogan, though a federal investigation was later dropped for "lack of evidence."However, part of the compromise suggested at the time was that Merkel would allow that case to move forward, but would work towards getting that law off the books later. And apparently, that time is now. The German cabinet has said that the law is being scrapped.

Justice Minister Heiko Mass said the law is "obsolete and unnecessary," Deutsche Welle reported. He said the concept "dates back to a long-gone era, it no longer belongs in our criminal law."Mass added that foreign heads of state could still pursue libel and defamation cases "but no more or less so than any other person," according to the broadcaster.

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One More Time With Feeling: 'Anonymized' User Data Not Really Anonymous

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As companies and governments increasingly hoover up our personal data, a common refrain to keep people from worrying is the claim that nothing can go wrong -- because the data itself is "anonymized" -- or stripped of personal detail. But time and time again, we've noted how this really is cold comfort; given it takes only a little effort to pretty quickly identify a person based on access to other data sets. As cellular carriers in particular begin to collect every shred of browsing and location data, identifying "anonymized" data using just a little additional context has become arguably trivial.Researchers from Stanford and Princeton universities plan to make this point once again via a new study being presented at the World Wide Web Conference in Perth, Australia this upcoming April. According to this new study, browsing habits can be easily linked to social media profiles to quickly identify users. In fact, using data from roughly 400 volunteers, the researchers found that they could identify the person behind an "anonymized" data set 70% of the time just by comparing their browsing data to their social media activity:

"The programs were able to find patterns among the different groups of data and use those patterns to identify users. The researchers note that the method is not perfect, and it requires a social media feed that includes a number of links to outside sites. However, they said that "given a history with 30 links originating from Twitter, we can deduce the corresponding Twitter profile more than 50 percent of the time."The researchers had even greater success in an experiment they ran involving 374 volunteers who submitted web browsing information. The researchers were able to identify more than 70 percent of those users by comparing their web browsing data to hundreds of millions of public social media feeds.

"Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye, an assistant professor at Imperial College London, said the research shows how "easy it is to build a full-scale 'de-anonymizationer' that needs nothing more than what's available to anyone who knows how to code." "All the evidence we have seen piling up over the years showing the strong limits of data anonymization, including this study, really emphasizes the need to rethink our approach to privacy and data protection in the age of big data," said de Montjoye.

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China Bolsters The Great Firewall, Cracks Down Harder On VPN Use

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It sometimes takes a little while, but sooner or later most governments engaged in ham-fisted internet censorship get around to taking aim at VPNs. While VPNs certainly have numerous, legitimate uses (including an additional layer of security when on public WiFi), they're also great tools when it comes to preventing your government, ISP, or anybody else from nosily tracking your online behavior. As such, you'll see broadcasters or even Netflix quick to villify their use to enforce increasingly pointless geographical viewing restrictions.But such crackdowns are also a favorite tool of more restrictive governments, whether it's to protect VoIP revenue for state-run telecom monopolies, or to prevent users from tap-dancing around state-mandated filters or other restrictions.In China, home of the largest internet filter ever constructed, the Chinese government has ramped up its own long-standing war on VPNs by announcing a mass shutdown of VPN providers that have been helping citizens get around the great firewall.According to China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, all VPN providers now need prior government approval to operate, a move toward effectively making VPN use illegal entirely. Moving forward, all basic telecom providers and ISPs are barred from setting up or renting special lines (including VPNs) to carry out cross-border operations unless previously arranged. The new effort, which lasts till March 31, 2018, appears to focus more specifically on companies providing VPN services to individuals.This banning of a fundamental encryption tool is necessary, the Ministry said in a notice published to its website, to "strengthen cyberspace" and cure some ambiguous "disordered development" in the nation's telecom market:

"China's internet connection service market ... has signs of disordered development that require urgent regulation and governance, the ministry said. The crackdown on unregulated internet connections aimed to "strengthen cyberspace information security management."

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State Appeals Court Says Unlocking A Phone With A Fingerprint Doesn't Violate The Fifth Amendment

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As was hinted heavily three years ago, you might be better off securing your phone with a passcode than your fingerprint. While a fingerprint is definitely unique and (theoretically...) a better way to keep thieves and snoopers from breaking into your phone, it's not much help when it comes to your Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination.The Minnesota Appeals Court has ruled [PDF] that unlocking a phone with a fingerprint is no more "testimonial" than a blood draw, police lineup appearance, or even matching the description of a suspected criminal. (h/t Orin Kerr)

Diamond relies on In re Grand Jury Subpoena Duces Tecum, 670 F.3d 1335 (11th Cir. 2012), to support his argument that supplying his fingerprint was testimonial. In In re Grand Jury, the court reasoned that requiring the defendant to decrypt and produce the contents of a computer’s hard drive, when it was unknown whether any documents were even on the encrypted drive, “would be tantamount to testimony by [the defendant] of his knowledge of the existence and location of potentially incriminating files; of his possession, control, and access to the encrypted portions of the drives; and of his capability to decrypt the files.” Id. at 1346. The court concluded that such a requirement is analogous to requiring production of a combination and that such a production involves implied factual statements that could potentially incriminate. Id.By being ordered to produce his fingerprint, however, Diamond was not required to disclose any knowledge he might have or to speak his guilt. See Doe, 487 U.S. at 211, 108 S. Ct. at 2348. The district court’s order is therefore distinguishable from requiring a defendant to decrypt a hard drive or produce a combination. See, e.g., In re Grand Jury, 670 F.3d at 1346; United States v. Kirschner, 823 F. Supp. 2d 665, 669 (E.D. Mich. 2010) (holding that requiring a defendant to provide computer password violates the Fifth Amendment). Those requirements involve a level of knowledge and mental capacity that is not present in ordering Diamond to place his fingerprint on his cellphone. Instead, the task that Diamond was compelled to perform—to provide his fingerprint—is no more testimonial than furnishing a blood sample, providing handwriting or voice exemplars, standing in a lineup, or wearing particular clothing.

Diamond also argues that he “was required to identify for the police which of his fingerprints would open the phone” and that this requirement compelled a testimonial communication. This argument, however, mischaracterizes the district court’s order. The district court’s February 11 order compelled Diamond to “provide a fingerprint or thumbprint as deemed necessary by the Chaska Police Department to unlock his seized cell phone.” At the April 3 contempt hearing, the district court referred to Diamond providing his “thumbprint.” The prosecutor noted that they were “not sure if it’s an index finger or a thumb.” The district court answered, “Take whatever samples you need.” Diamond then asked the detectives which finger they wanted, and they answered, “The one that unlocks it.”

It is clear that the district court permitted the state to take samples of all of Diamond’s fingerprints and thumbprints. The district court did not ask Diamond whether his prints would unlock the cellphone or which print would unlock it, nor did the district court compel Diamond to disclose that information. There is no indication that Diamond would have been asked to do more had none of his fingerprints unlocked the cellphone. Diamond himself asked which finger the detectives wanted when he was ready to comply with the order, and the detectives answered his question. Diamond did not object then, nor did he bring an additional motion to suppress the evidence based on the exchange that he initiated.

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New Mexico Legislators Looking To Add Warrants To The Stingray Mix, Curb Electronic Surveillance

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The New Mexico legislature, which passed the most restrictive asset forfeiture reform bill in the nation, is once again targeting easily-abusable tools of the law enforcement trade. The Tenth Amendment Center reports that the proposed bill targets police use of Stingray devices, as well as other electronic data demands.

The bill would require police to obtain a warrant or wiretap order before deploying a stingray device, unless they have the explicit permission of the owner or authorized possessor of the device, or if the device is lost or stolen. SB61 does provide an exception to the warrant requirement for emergency situations. Even then, police must apply for a warrant within 3 days and destroy any information obtained if the court denies the application.SB61 would also bar law enforcement agencies from compelling a service provider or any person other than the owner of the device without a warrant or wiretap order. This would include actual communication content such as phone conversations, text messages and email, location information and other metadata such as IP addresses pertaining to a person or device participating in the communication.

When issuing a warrant or order for electronic information or upon a petition of the target or recipient of the warrant or order, a court may appoint a special master charged with ensuring that only the information necessary to achieve the objective of the warrant or order is produced or accessed.

(b) the number of persons whose information was sought or obtained;(c) the number of instances in which information sought or obtained did not specify a target natural person;(d) for demands or requests issued upon a service provider, the number of those demands or requests that were fully complied with, partially complied with and refused;(e) the number of times notice to targeted persons was delayed and the average length of the delay;(f) the number of times records were shared with other government entities or any department or agency of the federal government and the government entity, department or agency names with which the records were shared;(g) for location information, the average period for which location information was obtained or received; and(h) the number of times electronic information obtained under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act led to a conviction and the number of instances in which electronic information was sought or obtained that were relevant to the criminal proceedings leading to those convictions.

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Trump Muzzles Federal Employees; Reporters Start Asking For Leaks

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Reports started coming out this morning that the new Trump Administration had told the EPA that it needed to stop doing anything publicly without first getting approval from the White House (in addition to freezing grants and contracts). According to a memo that was sent around to EPA staff:

• No press releases will be going out to external audiences.
• No social media will be going out. A Digital Strategist will be coming on board to oversee social media. Existing, individually controlled, social media accounts may become more centrally controlled.
• No blog messages.
• The Beach Team will review the list of upcoming webinars and decide which ones will go forward.
• Please send me a list of any external speaking engagements that are currently scheduled among any of your staff from today through February.
• Incoming media requests will be carefully screened.
• No new content can be place on any website. Only do clean up where essential.
• List servers will be reviewed. Only send out critical messages, as messages can be shared broadly and end up in the press.

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Snowden's Favorite Email Service Returns, With 'Trustful,' 'Cautious,' And 'Paranoid' Modes

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A little more than three years after it shut down to avoid complying with federal prosecutors' demands for its encryption key, Lavabit is returning to life. The secure email system, whose most famous user was Edward Snowden, fought the US government in court over demands to produce the key that would unlock access not only Snowden's emails, but those of every user. Not only did it shut down, but it also memorably delivered a 4-point middle finger to the feds in the middle of the legal battle.With its users' privacy secured -- along with its legacy (Snowden-approved, man-sticking-it-to-itiveness) -- the Lavabit team gave the code to the public and started working on a newer, more secure email platform. As Kim Zetter reports for The Intercept, Lavabit's successor is now live.

[Ladar Levinson is] relaunching Lavabit with a new architecture that fixes the SSL problem and includes other privacy-enhancing features as well, such as one that obscures the metadata on emails to prevent government agencies like the NSA and FBI from being able to find out with whom Lavabit users communicate. He’s also announcing plans to roll out end-to-end encryption later this year, which would give users an even more secure way to send email.

With the new architecture, Lavabit will no longer be able to hand over its SSL key, because the key is now stored in a hardware security module — a tamper-resistant device that provides a secure enclave for storing keys and performing sensitive functions, like encryption and decryption. Lavabit generates a long passphrase blindly so the company doesn’t know what it is; Lavabit then inserts the key into the device and destroys the passphrase.

Some people who want more security — like activists, journalists, and whistleblowers — might balk at having their key stored on a third-party server. That’s where Paranoid mode comes in. The key for doing end-to-end encryption remains on the user’s device and never goes to Lavabit’s server. But to use another device, the user has to manually move the key to it. And there’s no way to recover the key if the user loses it or deletes it.

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Arrested Flag Burner Sues Arresting Officers

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Last summer, we brought to you the story of how Bryton Mellott, a young man in Urbana, IL, was arrested for posting a picture of himself burning the American flag on his social media accounts. The story was strange on a variety of levels. First, the law utilized to arrest him, one of many flag-burning prohibitions that exist in laws at the state level, had been declared unconstitutional decades prior to it having ever been enacted. Burning the flag has been codified as a form of protected free speech, no matter how stomach-turning any individual might find it. It was for that reason that the local State's Attorney's office requested that the police let Mellott go and didn't even attempt to bring any kind of charges against him, because they couldn't. The police report also noted that Mellott had been taken in for disorderly conduct, referencing the backlash his actions caused, which is insane. Blaming a victim of threats for receiving those threats as a reaction to protected speech ought to be beneath the common citizen, nevermind those we actually entrust to enforce the law.But perhaps the strangest part of the story, previously un-noted by us in our original post, the impetus for Mellott's arrest was one officer's apparent desperate search to find something for which to arrest him.

Mellott’s post was widely shared and had received 200 comments by the following morning. But just 12 hours after his post, Urbana police officers arrested him at his job at Wal-Mart after Mellott’s supervisor called and reported threats made by unknown people against Mellott and the store. Officer Jeremy Hale researched the Illinois flag-desecration statute, found it was still on the books, and decided of his own accord to enforce it.

Mellott filed a civil-rights lawsuit late Wednesday in Urbana federal court, claiming the three arresting officers knew or should have known that flag burning has been a protected means of political protest for almost 30 years. He says they violated his civil rights by arresting him. Mellott seeks compensatory damages and a court order that the Illinois flag-desecration statute is unconstitutional. He is represented by Rebecca Glenberg with the Roger Baldwin Foundation of the American Civil Liberties Union.“Open dissent is the highest form of American patriotism,” Mellott said in a statement. “And it was a frightening display of irony that on the Fourth of July, I should be taken from my workplace to sit in a county jail for exercising this liberty.”

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This Week In Techdirt History: The Slaying Of SOPA

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Five Years AgoIt's time for one more focused retrospective on the events of this week in 2012: the week of the SOPA blackout and a huge victory for the internet. First, we dip briefly into the previous week, where we put out a special Saturday post to report the surprise news that the White House had come out against the approach in SOPA/PIPA. The MPAA responded to this with a bizarro-world statement interpreting it as a sign they could rush the bills through and Rupert Murdoch lashed out at the president on Twitter, while NBCUniversal's Rick Cotton was lying about the bill on MSNBC and Harry Reid was admitting concerns but insisting they must push forward. But the looming Wednesday blackout was gaining steam: Wikipedia officially announced its participation with a tweet from Jimmy Wales, then Google announced that it would join the fray, but not with a full blackout (later revealing a blacked-out logo that drew a lot of attention to its petition page). The Internet Archive (recently declared a rogue site by the entertainment industry) threw its hat into the ring as well, as did gaming site Rock Paper Shotgun and some artists like Peter Gabriel. Even Microsoft, while not joining the blackout, finally made it clear that it opposed the bills in their current form. For our part, we decided that blacking out to raise awareness wouldn't be so helpful on Techdirt where almost all of our readers were well aware of SOPA, and instead spent the day reporting on what was happening.With all this going on, even before the protest there was talk of the bills being dead — but Lamar Smith quickly made it clear that wasn't the case. He and the MPAA both brushed off the planned blackout as a publicity stunt, and Smith put out a press release announcing the next phase of markup for the bills. On blackout day (Wednesday, January 18th) the denial continued, with the MPAA making the astonishing claim that no "big sites" had joined the protests (Wikipedia, Google and Reddit, anyone?) and Chris Dodd spouting sanctimonious bluster about tech companies turning users into their pawns. A whole bunch of creators signed a letter saying they don't want SOPA/PIPA passed in their names, and soon the blackout began to take effect...The first one to go was Rep. Lee Terry, who removed his name as a co-sponsor. On the senate site, Marco Rubio followed suit. Then Senators Boozman, Hatch and Blunt and Rep. Quayle, with more and more joining them as the day progressed. The most entertaining response came from Rep. Bruce Braley of Iowa. At the end of the day, we noted that 8-million people had looked up their Representatives' information with Wikipedia's tool, and posted a gallery of all the blackout screens. Senator Ron Wyden, long-time opponent of the bills, thanked the internet but noted that the work was not yet done.The reaction continued strong into the next day, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell calling for the bill to be dropped all four GOP candidates for the 2012 election said no to SOPA and PIPA. But the most telling responses came from the industries that pushed the bills to begin with: Hollywood studio execs expressed pretty blatant anger at the fact that the government wouldn't stay bought, and the MPAA straight-up threatened politicians who wouldn't stick to its agenda. The RIAA, meanwhile, just condescended to the internet.On Friday, staunch supporter Marsha Blackburn conceded that it was time to scrap SOPA, and by the end of the day the internet had won: the bills were both listed as "delayed" and both Harry Reid and Lamar Smith announced that they would no longer move forward with them. We analyzed a long interview with Chris Dodd to explain why the industry's approach failed, and then began focusing on what comes next.But there was no need to look far, because for all the significance of the victory, SOPA/PIPA were also a prime example of winning the battle not being the same as winning the war. Not only did the Supreme Court choose the blackout day to issue the Golan ruling that allowed works to be yanked back out of the public domain — on Thursday, in the midst of SOPA/PIPA chaos, the DOJ went ahead and unilaterally seized and shut down Megaupload and arrested many of the principles, including Kim Dotcom.They didn't need SOPA to do it. They didn't need anything to do it. Much like the seizures of Dajaz1 and Rojadirecta, they didn't even appear to need especially solid legal footing: at least, they took a whole lot of questionable things as evidence of criminal activity. Some artists like Busta Rhymes spoke out in defence of the site (it being an extremely useful distribution tool) — and then Anonymous struck back with widespread DDoS attacks on entertainment industry websites, prompting some nonsensical free speech complaints from the MPAA and suspicions that the DoJ might have provoked Anonymous on purpose.As we now know, the arrest of Kim Dotcom was just the beginning of another long fight about the overreach of the US government and the influence of the entertainment industry thereon — and we know that's not the only example of a continued war against the supporters of free culture and an open internet. The internet should still take time to remember and celebrate the defeat of SOPA though, if only because we're almost certainly going to have to do the same thing again, and again, and again...

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CBS & Paramount Finally Settle With Fan Film Axanar

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A little over a year ago, we first wrote about the unfortunate situation in which CBS & Paramount had sued a group of people trying to make a fan film in the Star Trek universe, called Axanar. Beyond the basic legal questions, there was a bigger issue here. Paramount has actually been pretty good about allowing fan films. The difference with Axanar was that it was shaping up to be a really good fan film, with professional level actors, sets and staff. And that was what set off Paramount and CBS, who jointly hold the copyrights on Star Trek. The big question then is what's the line between a fan film... and an unauthorized derivative work? This wasn't necessarily a question in the past, but today with the ease of making films (and funding them through platforms like Kickstarter), it becomes a much bigger question.

Something of a wrench was thrown into the proceedings last May, when JJ Abrams and Justin Lin -- who are involved in the official new Star Trek films -- claimed on stage that they were quite upset with Paramount for going after Axanar, and claimed that they'd gotten word from the company that it was going to settle the lawsuit. Of course, in the intervening months, no settlement showed up, and the filings back and forth between the parties got more and more rancorous. Things were finally heading towards a trial in just a few days... but now a settlement has finally been reached.

Paramount Pictures Corporation, CBS Studios Inc., Axanar Productions, Inc. and Alec Peters are pleased to announce that the litigation regarding Axanar's film Prelude to Axanar and its proposed film Axanar has been resolved. Axanar and Mr. Peters acknowledge that both films were not approved by Paramount or CBS, and that both works crossed boundaries acceptable to CBS and Paramount relating to copyright law.

Axanar and Mr. Peters have agreed to make substantial changes to Axanar to resolve this litigation, and have also assured the copyright holders that any future Star Trek fan films produced by Axanar or Mr. Peters will be in accordance with the 'Guidelines for Fan Films' distributed by CBS and Paramount in June 2016.

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Policing For Dummies: DOJ/Baltimore PD Edition

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Apologies to everyone in America. The Department of Justice can't fix what's wrong with the nation's police departments. It's up to those departments to make the changes and stick to them. There has to be a desire to change, otherwise all we'll end up with is better documentation of police misconduct and excessive force.A police department has to fall pretty far before the DOJ is willing to step in. Consent agreements follow reports -- all of which can be described as "scathing". These follow DOJ investigations in which it's routinely discovered the officers employed by the police department either don't know the first thing about constitutionally-compliant policing… or just don't care.Reason's Scott Shackford has read through the DOJ's consent agreement [PDF] with the Baltimore PD -- one that follows its extensive investigation/scathing report. In amongst all the new reporting requirements are passages that indicate Baltimore might be better off firing its entire force and hiring new recruits. The rot growing from within the department has destroyed everything, starting with the Constitution and working its way down to basic communications skills.It's completely depressing that all of this is included in the consent decree.

The agreement includes things like requiring police officers have reasonable suspicion to detain and search people, and not engage in warrantless searches; only arrest people for suspicions of crimes (no really, this is explained); stop using "boilerplate" language in reports to explain reasons behind stops and searches; not engage in racial profiling; not use information they know is not true to justify searches or arrests; attempt to de-escalate encounters before using force; not use force to punish people for resisting or attempting to flee (what the rest of us refer to as "police brutality"); don't use Tasers on elderly people, pregnant women, and small children, or just to stop people from fleeing; use seatbelts or restraining devices on people being transported (remember this is all partly due to the Freddie Gray case); respect the rights of citizens to both criticize police and observe and record public police behavior without retaliation; not retaliate against people who file complaints against police conduct; and so many, many, many other things. A read through the consent decree feels like the documentation of how most citizens expect their police to behave already.

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EU MEPs Call Again For 'Robot Rules' To Get Ahead Of The AI Revolution

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Questions about how we approach our new robotic friends once the artificial intelligence revolution really kicks off are not new, nor are calls for developing some sort of legal framework that will govern how humanity and robots ought to interact with one another. For the better part of this decade, in fact, there have been some advocating that robots and AI be granted certain rights along the lines of what humanity, or at least animals, enjoy. And, while some of its ideas haven't been stellar, such as a call for robots to be afforded copyright for anything they might create, the EU has been talking for some time about developing policy around the rights and obligations of artificial intelligence and its creators.With AI being something of a hot topic, as predictions of its eventual widespread emergence mount, it seems EU MEPs are attempting to get out ahead of the revolution.

In a new report, members of the European Parliament have made it clear they think it’s essential that we establish comprehensive rules around artificial intelligence and robots in preparation for a “new industrial revolution.” According to the report, we are on the threshold of an era filled with sophisticated robots and intelligent machines “which is likely to leave no stratum of society untouched.” As a result, the need for legislation is greater than ever to ensure societal stability as well as the digital and physical safety of humans.The report looks into the need to create a legal status just for robots which would see them dubbed “electronic persons.” Having their own legal status would mean robots would have their own legal rights and obligations, including taking responsibility for autonomous decisions or independent interactions.

Things descend slightly into the realms of science fiction when the report discusses the possibility of the machines we build becoming more intelligent than us posing “a challenge to humanity's capacity to control its own creation and, consequently, perhaps also to its capacity to be in charge of its own destiny.” However, to stop us getting to this point the MEPs cite the importance of rules like those written by author Isaac Asimov for designers, producers, and operators of robots which state that: “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm”; “A robot must obey the orders given by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the first law” and “A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or second laws.”

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What the Five Year Anniversary of the SOPA/PIPA Blackout Can Teach Congress About Tech

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Five years ago this week, Americans opened their internet browsers and saw darkness.Google, Wikipedia, Reddit, the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) and other major websites had banded together and gone dark to make a then-obscure piece of legislation infamous. Wikipedia shut down completely for 24 hours and a black band masked the Google logo.These internet giants and other online sites joined millions of Americans in protesting the 2012 Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) legislation in a historic grassroots movement. More than four million people signed Google's online petition linked to the blacked-out homepage. Eight million people looked up how to contact their representative when prompted to by Wikipedia. Tumblr alone produced 87,000 calls to representatives. The vast numbers led most congressional sponsors to rescind their support of the bill.SOPA and PIPA were well intended but ill-advised attempts on the part of Congress to protect the American copyright industry. But the legislation was so broad that it had the potential to harm or eradicate entire websites or online services, instead of specifically targeting individuals who uploaded illegal content.The New York Times called the SOPA/PIPA protests a "coming of age for the tech industry," and at CTA, we were proud to help lead this vital growth. It was a bipartisan and cross industry effort: venture capitalists and law professors, computer scientists and human rights advocates, progressives and tea partiers teamed together to fight the bills. Still, the bills progressed through Congress and appeared to have the momentum necessary to become law.The 2012 CES proved to be one of the turning points. We invited two legislators — Republican Congressman Darrell Issa and Democratic Senator Ron Wyden — to Las Vegas to explain how the bill would jeopardize the freedom of the digital world. Both policymakers made strong, smart and passionate cases, and the press and attendees listened. Within days, the tide had reversed, and members of Congress ceased their support of the harmful bills. Weeks later, SOPA and PIPA were history.We did this because we believe innovation, not an overbroad law, is the best way to grow the economy and fight piracy. History has proved us right. In five years since SOPA/PIPA failed, we've seen many instances of market disruptions and many more cases of technological innovation. Spotify, the now-ubiquitous Swedish streaming service, intentionally developed free streaming as a legal competitor to illegal piracy. It worked: piracy has dropped significantly. In 2013, less than 10 percent of daily web traffic in North America came from peer-to-peer file sharing - a more than 20 percent drop from 2008, when it comprised 31 percent of daily traffic.Even more exciting, streaming services also led to significant revenue growth for the music industry. The Recording Industry Association of America, one of the major supporters of the SOPA/PIPA legislation, reported an 8.1 percent increase in overall revenues from the first half of 2015 to the first half of 2016. This was due in large part to paid subscriptions to streaming services.Other content industries have experienced massive growth as well. Video streaming programs such as Netflix, Amazon and Hulu continue to thrive. U.S. consumers spent 22 percent more on subscription video streaming services in 2016 than in 2015.The combination of audio and video streaming takes up a whopping 71 percent of evening home entertainment in North America, and this number should only grow in the coming years. Once at odds on the floor of Congress, the innovation of the tech industry and the creativity of the media industries now mutually support and sustain one another's growth.New technologies will lead to the same market disruptions that the internet prompted for the media industry. Will Congress support new technologies or stifle them? And how will legacy industries evolve to thrive in this changing technological landscape?This year at CES 2017 in Las Vegas, innovators from around the globe came to exhibit technology that will change our world as we know it. Augmented and virtual reality technology will profoundly affect the media landscape, creating a more immersive and personalized experience. Drones have already changed the face of the retail industry, with Amazon making its first drone delivery in time for the holiday season. Self-driving cars will revolutionize the auto industry, decrease traffic deaths and bring increased mobility to the elderly and those with disabilities. In dealing with the challenges that will inevitably arise, will Congress choose to preserve old models and technologies, or will it embrace the new and allow American ingenuity to lead?Five years ago, members of Congress sided with progress over fear. The resulting explosion of innovation proved them right. As other new disruptive technologies emerge, we urge policymakers to heed the lessons of SOPA and PIPA and allow new innovations to prosper, thrive and move our society forward.Gary Shapiro is president and CEO of the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), the U.S. trade association representing more than 2,200 consumer technology companies, and author of the New York Times best-selling books, Ninja Innovation: The Ten Killer Strategies of the World's Most Successful Businesses and The Comeback: How Innovation Will Restore the American Dream. His views are his own. Connect with him on Twitter: @GaryShapiro

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Chicago Lawyer Sues City, Police Department Over Stingray Cellphone Surviellance

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Chicago attorney Jerry Boyle -- notably not representing himself -- is suing the city of Chicago and a number of police officials for constitutional violations stemming from the PD's Stingray use. It's a potential class action suit, but Boyle -- at least in his own case -- claims to have pinpointed exactly when his phone signal was intercepted by the police. Cyrus Farivar of Ars Technica points out this detail in the lawsuit's claims:

The 32-page lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Chicago on Thursday, specifically notes where and when the stingray was used, on January 15, 2015, “at approximately 8:00pm at the protest, near the 2200 block of West Ogden Avenue.”However, the civil complaint does not explain exactly how the plaintiff knows this information.“The evidence regarding CPD's use at that event is something that will be disclosed during the litigation,” Matt Topic, one of Boyle’s lawyers, e-mailed Ars.

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LA Chargers Already Face Trademark Opposition To Their Name Over The Term 'L.A.'

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There may be nothing more frustrating than trademarks being granted for terms that serve as simple geographic identifiers. With a couple of recent stories revolving around names of cities, or acronyms of them, it's probably time to consider whether some kind of official reform of trademark rules needs to be undertaken to keep companies from locking up such broad terms for commercial purposes. And there may be at least a slim chance that this conversation is starting, with the high profile example of the newly minted Los Angeles Chargers NFL team serving as notice.It was only this past week that the Chargers finally announced what everyone already knew was going to happen: the team is moving to the city of angels. As is SOP for an organization of its size, the team filed trademark applications for several iterations of its team name, including the term "LA Chargers." And that, almost immediately, is where the problems began to arise.

Unfortunately for the team, its “LA Chargers” trademark application ran into an issue. On Dec. 20, LA Gear, the ‘80s-era athletic apparel company, filed a Notice of Opposition with the Patent and Trademark Office’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board related to the apparel portion of the “LA Chargers” application, on the grounds that it conflicts with LA Gear’s trademarks, and is likely to cause consumer confusion as to the source of the goods.In the opposition, the Chargers are referred to as “Applicant” and LA Gear is “Opposer.” The document lists 22 U.S. trademark registrations owned by LA Gear. The oldest dates back to 1985. Two of LA Gear’s registrations are in the form of logos that consist of the letters “LA” – meaning those logo registrations do not include the word “Gear.”

Back in 2008, Major League Soccer’s LA Galaxy received a trademark for a logo that includes the words “LA Galaxy.” The Trademark Office records for that application show no opposition filed by LA Gear. It’s possible that the MLS team may have negotiated a private agreement with LA Gear to avoid these issues, and the Chargers/NFL haven’t been willing or able to do so. It seems more likely that LA Gear’s opposition to the LA Chargers trademark is a new tactic, and that the company intends to test the boundaries of its trademark rights in phrases including the word “LA,” at least as they apply to athletic apparel.

LA Gear’s claim may be a bit of a stretch, but it’s not impossible that the Trademark Office – or a court, should this dispute go that far – would rule in its favor. With all the drama around the team’s departure from San Diego, I’d bet the Chargers will simply come to a settlement agreement with LA Gear rather than put their incredibly valuable brand at risk of an adverse court ruling.

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Surprise: President Obama Commutes Chelsea Manning's Sentence

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Well, here's a surprise. President Obama has just commuted the bulk of Chelsea Manning's sentence, meaning she will be freed this May, rather than having to spend another three decades in jail. Manning, of course, was sent to prison for sharing a large chunk of US diplomatic cables with Wikileaks. Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison nearly four years ago (with credit for the 3.5 years she'd already been held, often in solitary confinement). Many people were already outraged at the sentence, especially given that there was no evidence of any actual harm from the leaks.

There were two big campaigns going on over the past few months -- one to pardon Ed Snowden, and another to commute Manning's sentence. President Obama had already made it fairly clear that he had no interest in pardoning Snowden based on the totally false claim that he could not pardon Snowden prior to Snowden being convicted. In the past few weeks, however, there were at least a few hints and rumors that Obama was seriously considering commuting Manning's sentence, and that led to even more focus on the campaign. Ed Snowden himself also advocated for Manning, even ahead of his own case:

"Chelsea Manning is somebody who went through the military criminal justice process, was exposed to due process, was found guilty, was sentenced for her crimes, and she acknowledged wrongdoing," he said. "Mr. Snowden fled into the arms of an adversary, and has sought refuge in a country that most recently made a concerted effort to undermine confidence in our democracy."

He also noted that while the documents Ms. Manning provided to WikiLeaks were "damaging to national security," the ones Mr. Snowden disclosed were "far more serious and far more dangerous." (None of the documents Ms. Manning disclosed were classified above the merely secret level.)

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Here Come The AIs To Make Office Workers Superfluous

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Stories about robots and their impressive capabilities are starting to crop up fairly often these days. It's no secret that they will soon be capable of replacing humans for many manual jobs, as they already do in some manufacturing industries. But so far, artificial intelligence (AI) has been viewed as more of a blue-sky area -- fascinating and exciting, but still the realm of research rather than the real world. Although AI certainly raises important questions for the future, not least philosophical and ethical ones, its impact on job security has not been at the forefront of concerns. But a recent decision by a Japanese insurance company to replace several dozen of its employees with an AI system suggests maybe it should be:

Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance believes [its move] will increase productivity by 30% and see a return on its investment in less than two years. The firm said it would save about 140m yen (1m) a year after the 200m yen (1.4m) AI system is installed this month. Maintaining it will cost about 15m yen (100k) a year.

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This Week In Techdirt History: January 8th - 14th

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Five Years AgoThis week in 2012, plans were coming into place for the SOPA blackout that would happen the following Wednesday. Reddit was the first to announce a site-wide blackout, and the next day they were joined by the Cheezburger network of sites. Then came the announcement that would really shift the tides: Jimmy Wales stated that he was in favor of the blackout, and asked the Wikipedia community to decide.Meanwhile, it was a big week for SOPA/PIPA supporters being caught infringing content themselves. CreativeAmerica appeared to crib much of a pro-SOPA mass email from Public Knowledge's anti-SOPA equivalent, then offered a denial that inadvertently underlined exactly why SOPA was so dangerous. CreativeAmerica also teamed up with the MPAA to place a pro-SOPA opinion piece in the Salt Lake Tribune, which turned out to be a bit of a remix from the text past lobbying efforts. And then SOPA sponsor Lamar Smith himself was discovered to be violating the Creative Commons license of a photo used on his website.Ten Years AgoThis week in 2007, the big news (especially in retrospect) was Tuesday's unveiling of the Apple iPhone after a flurry of rumors and hype. There was a hiccup when it turned out Apple hadn't yet secured the rights to the name, but as we know the ascendance of the device was unstoppable. There was also a weak attempt to use the iPhone as an example of why patents are necessary, which was much less convincing than the new study showing no link between patents and innovation.Fifteen Years AgoThis week in 2002, long before the days of SOPA, the DMCA was still a source of real debate — with attacks on the anti-circumvention provisions still showing promise. Apple was fresh off a somewhat-less-revolutionary announcement of a new iMac, and an early leak debacle showed just how tight a relationship they seemed to have with the press. Satellite radio was showing promise, SMS was failing in the US for reasons that were getting boring to hear about, online pizza delivery was becoming a competitive space, and Taser was working on its first consumer model.One-Hundred And Twenty-Three Years AgoWe've used the example of telephone switchboards many times in talking about how job-destroying innovation can often yield an explosion of unexpected new jobs, and this week we mark a turning point in that piece of history: on January 9th, 1894 the first battery-operated telephone switchboard was installed in Lexington, Massachusetts by the New England Telephone And Telegraph Company.

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New Study Essentially Suggests That Publishers Should Do CwF + RtB Instead Of Going Legal To Combat Piracy

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We have talked about the power of connecting with fans and giving them a reason to buy, along with using public shaming, as tools for combating piracy in its various forms. Tools far better, in fact, than twisting in litigious winds hoping that the construct of law will be sufficient to curb natural human behavior... and finding out that it isn't. What these routes offer content producers is a way to ingratiate themselves with their fans, building a community that not only wants to buy content themselves, but also will decry any attempt to pirate that content by others. Morality is shaped by the herd, in other words, so having the herd on your side finds content producers a powerful ally.But philosophy like that doesn't penetrate industry in and of itself. Perhaps, then, data and academic studies may. The International Journal of Business Environment recently released just such a study suggesting that content providers are far better off reaching out and connecting with fans, including those pirating their works, rather than trying to fight piracy legally.

According to Eva Hofmann of the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations, Coventry University, UK and Elfriede Penz of the Institute for International Marketing Management, at Vienna University of Economics and Business, in Austria, the unauthorised sharing of digital content is well-entrenched in popular culture. However, they have discerned a difference in the way those downloading pirated content and the legal downloaders decide on how to obtain the content they desire from the Internet.The researchers note that inherent in the problem for copyright holders is that digital goods can be duplicated endlessly without loss of fidelity, making piracy easy but also suggesting that the value of such goods as being less than traditional, physical items in the realm of content, such as CDs and DVDs.

Respondent groups differ in the effect of social consensus on the decision-making process. Additionally, the entire issue-contingent model is important in internet piracy research. From a practical view and based on social consensus results, it is essential for companies to establish sentiments that unauthorised downloading is an unacceptable behaviour within a specific social group that is highly relevant to downloaders.

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Court Says Tossing A Flashbang Grenade Into A Room With A Toddler Is 'Unreasonable' Police Behavior

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The Evansville (IN) Police Department has seen a drug bust go up in a cloud of flashbang smoke. A search warrant for drugs and weapons, based on an informant's tip, was executed perfectly… if you're the sort of person who believes it takes a dozen heavily-armed officers, a Lenco Bearcat, and two flashbangs to grab a suspect no one felt like arresting when he was outside alone taking out his trash. (via FourthAmendment.com)The state appeals court decision [PDF] hinges on the deployment of a flashbang grenade into a room containing a toddler. Fortunately, in this case, the toddler was only frightened, rather than severely burned. But it was this tossed flashbang that ultimately undoes the PD's case. The evidence is suppressed and the conviction reversed.Scattered throughout the opinion are some amazing depictions of the PD's SWAT team at work -- and how those officers seem to believe the violence of their entries during warrant service are somehow just the new normal.Things like the following paragraph. First: some background. In some cases, it's (theoretically) more difficult for law enforcement to obtain no-knock warrants. Facts need to be asserted that show that warning the occupants of a residence in any way would most likely result in the destruction of evidence and/or an armed response. Some judges are more willing than others to hand these out, but either way, the standard warrant boilerplate can't be used.So, here's the difference between a "knock and announce" warrant and a no-knock warrant, as deployed by the Evansville PD.

The SWAT team rode in a Lenco Bearcat that followed a patrol vehicle to the residence. At least a dozen officers were involved. Upon arrival and prior to entry, three officers and a police vehicle approached the rear of the residence and at least nine officers, most armed with assault weapons, approached the front of the residence. At 10:30 a.m., the police knocked on the residence and one of the officers announced, “Police - Search Warrant - Police - Search Warrant,” and another officer announced over a loudspeaker “Search Warrant. 314 Illinois.” State’s Exhibit 1 at 3:55-4:00. One second later, the SWAT team knocked down the door with a battering ram.

After the flash bang grenade was deployed, Detective Gray entered the residence and picked up a nine-month old baby crying on top of blankets in a playpen just inside and “very close to the door.” Id. at 332. The room also contained a baby’s car seat and a toddler’s activity center in the line of sight of the front door. One of the officers moved the car seat with his foot to proceed further into the residence.

Officer Taylor testified that his perception of things involved a much wider view than what the camera could see. At a time stamp of 4:01 on the video, a member of the SWAT team rammed the door open several inches with a battering ram. From an angle to the right, Officer Taylor tossed the flash bang into the house at 4:02, and it detonated at 4:04. The video at 4:02 shows only a portion of the right rear of the couch and the wood floor on which it sat. The video reveals that about five minutes after the initial entry someone stated: “Make sure you get a picture . . . are you taking a picture of that?” State’s Exhibit 1 at 8:50-8:55. This appears to be a reference to a charred stain on the floor. The person then stated: “Because the baby was in this room, but I put it right there for a reason.” Id. at 8:55-9:00.

The video shows almost no time lapse between when the door was battered in and the tossing of the flash bang. The door was barely opened when the flash bang was immediately tossed into the room, and the angle at which Officer Taylor was standing to the door did not allow him an opportunity to see what was inside the room. Indeed, Officer Taylor acknowledged that he could not see portions of the room in which the flash bang was placed. Specifically, he testified that he could see “from the couch over to the left, I can’t see the corner, the left corner inside the room and I can’t see the hallway in front of it, that’s why the flash bang goes in the threshold.”

The State does not point us to any other evidence indicating the criminal history of Watkins or the other occupants of the house. The record contains no evidence that law enforcement could not have safely presented the person matching Watkins’s description with the search warrant during the time that he was outside the house and before he re-entered it.

Comparing the factors, we conclude that while there was a considerable degree of suspicion, the extent of law enforcement needs for a military-style assault was low and the degree of intrusion was unreasonably high. Under these specific circumstances and particularly in light of the use of a flash bang grenade in the same room as a nine-month old baby who was “very close” to where the flash bang was deployed, the State has not demonstrated that the police conduct was reasonable under the totality of the circumstances.

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Cop Objects To Editorial About Community Policing, Sets Fire To 20-Year Career In Response

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There's nothing quite like watching a professional with twenty years of experience burn it all to the ground in the space of a few hours. Officer Daniel Wolff of the Detroit PD -- spending some time at home recovering from a work-related injury -- took issue with Motor City Muckraker's story highlighting the number of police officers who don't live in the communities they serve.He handled it badly. Here's Muckraker's Steve Neavling's coverage of the Facebook meltdown in which the journalist was personally attacked by the off-duty officer.

A Detroit cop on Tuesday called city residents “garbage” and bragged that he used to “hit them with “handcuffs in the head” and “smack” children in the face.Officer Daniel Wolff was responding on Facebook to a Motor City Muckraker story about an increasing number of Detroit police choosing to live outside the city.Wolff, who works in the second precinct and lives in the suburbs, said he would never live in the city he serves because it is “just a nasty place.”“Getting rid of residency was the best thing that ever happened to the Detroit Police!!!!! We have to police the garbage but you can’t make us live in the garbage.”

Wolff bemoaned cell phone cameras, saying, “You can’t walk up to a kid or asshole and smack him in the face like we did.”

When I told him that Internal Affairs was investigating, Wolff responded, “Please do. I’ve been trying to get fired for years you cunt. Help me you ass.”

The department received Wolff's alleged comments from the Muckraker the day they were posted, according to Director Michael Woody of the public information office."We have forwarded them to our internal affairs for a full investigation," Woody said. "This is not representative of the vast majority of our officers in this department, who work hard every day to build relationships with members of our community."

[W]e’re going to move forward with the investigation and we should be at a finding fairly quickly," [Craig] said. "If this individual feels that strongly about working in the City of Detroit and has that type of attitude, we certainly don’t want him here."

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Software Copyright Litigation After Oracle v. Google

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Many observers, including me, predicted that the 2014 decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) in Oracle America v. Google would provoke a new wave of litigation concerning copyright and interoperability. In particular, we worried that the decision would encourage dominant vendors to bring copyright claims against competitors that replicated interface specifications for the purpose of interoperating with the dominant vendors' products. We were right.Sure enough, Oracle America has factored into at least four cases so far. One of these cases settled, one is on appeal, and the other two likely will be appealed in the near future. The latter two cases also involve patent claims, so appeals will be heard by the CAFC. (The CAFC has nearly exclusive appellate jurisdiction over cases with patent claims.) One can assume that the plaintiffs added the patent claims to ensure CAFC jurisdiction.GDC v. Dolby Laboratories This is the case that settled. Dolby Laboratories provides advanced motion picture theatre sound systems. GDC Technology develops software and hardware that interoperates with the Dolby systems. Dolby facilitated this interoperability by making its interface specifications available to GDC. It appears that Dolby stopped providing this information after it acquired Doremi, a media server manufacturer. Evidently, this acquisition made GDC a more direct competitor. Emboldened by the CAFC's Oracle America decision, Dolby demanded that GDC stop using Dolby interface specifications to interoperate with Dolby products. Furthermore, Dolby insisted that GDC cease telling customers that GDC had the right to use this interfaces information to interoperate with Dolby products.Dolby's conduct prompted GDC in April 2016 to bring a declaratory judgment action in federal court in California against Dolby Laboratories seeking a declaration that Dolby does not own a copyright in the protocols and interconnection codes Dolby developed for digital cinema systems. In the alternative, GDC sought a declaration that fair use permitted it to use the specifications for the purpose of achieving interoperability. The parties settled the dispute in November 2016. According to the joint press release, as part of the resolution, GDC will dismiss its lawsuit against Dolby, and GDC and Dolby will grant each other licenses that will allow their respective theater management systems to interoperate with the other party's digital cinema servers. The other terms of the settlement agreement were not made public.SAS Institute v. World Programming This case currently is on appeal to the Fourth Circuit, and has the most complex procedural history. The district court ruled that the input and output formats the defendant copied were not protectable under copyright, but found that the defendant breached license restrictions on reverse engineering. A jury subsequently assessed damages of $26 million, which the court then trebled to $79 million under North Carolina's unfair trade statute.SAS, a company based in North Carolina, creates an integrated suite of business software products known as the SAS System. The SAS System allows users to perform a variety of data access, management, analysis, and presentation tasks. The SAS System can run on various kinds of computers ranging from PCs to mainframes. Users can perform tasks on the SAS System by writing programs in the SAS Language. Additionally, SAS developed a version of the SAS System called SAS Learning Edition to help users learn how to program in the SAS Language.World Programming Limited (WPL), a U.K. company, developed World Programming System (WPS), which can run SAS Language programs and produce similar outputs. Thus, WPL provides users with a competing platform on which they can run the programs they have written in the SAS Language, thereby avoiding being locked-in to the SAS environment.To develop WPS, WPL reverse engineered copies of the SAS Learning Edition. However, the license under which WPL obtained SAS Learning Edition prohibited reverse engineering of the software. It appears that WPL's development activities occurred in the U.K., but it distributed its software in the United States.SAS sued WPL in the U.K. in 2009 and in the U.S. in 2010. The U.K. case proceeded more quickly. The U.K. High Court requested guidance from the highest court in the European Union, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), on whether software functionality, programming languages, and data formats were protectable under the EU Software Directive. The CJEU ruled in 2012 that these elements were not protectable. On the basis of this ruling, the U.K. court entered final judgment for WPL in 2013.In April 2014, WPL moved for summary judgment in the U.S. action in North Carolina, arguing that the U.K. judgment had preclusive effect on many issues under theories of comity and collateral estoppel. In other words, WPL argued that SAS couldn't re-litigate in the United States what it had already lost in Europe.The district court ruled on the summary judgment motion in October 2014. The district court held that it was not bound by the U.K. court's conclusion that the EU Software Directive rendered unenforceable the SAS Learning Edition license terms restricting reverse engineering. This is because the district court found that North Carolina law differed significantly from EU law on the question of the validity of the contractual provisions prohibiting reverse engineering. Thus, the district court granted summary judgment to SAS on its breach of contract claim.With respect to SAS's copyright infringement claim, the district court refused to give preclusive effect to the U.K court's ruling that copyright did not protect the program elements WPL copied on the ground that WPL failed to demonstrate the similarity of U.S. and U.K. law on this issue. This is a questionable ruling. The U.K. court and the CJEU based their decisions on the Software Directive's articulation of the idea/expression dichotomy. The idea/expression dichotomy is a fundamental principle of copyright law worldwide, including U.S. copyright law. Therefore, there is no reason to conclude that a program element the CJEU considers to be unprotectable under Article 1(2) of the Software Directive also is not protectable under section 102(b) of the U.S. Copyright Act.Despite refusing to grant preclusive effect to the U.K. court's determination that WPL's copying did not infringe, the district court ultimately reached the same conclusion based on its own analysis of U.S. copyright law. It was undisputed that WPL had no access to SAS's source code, and thus WPL did not copy any SAS code, nor the structure, sequence, and organization of that code. Instead, SAS based its copyright claim on WPL's copying of the SAS System's input and output formats. The district court rejected the claim, reasoning that SAS in essence was asking the court to find that defendant's software infringes its copyright through its processing of elements of the SAS Language. This meant that plaintiff seeks to copyright the idea of a program which interprets and compiles the SAS Language. The court refused to allow such broad protection.SAS resisted the conclusion that WPL did not copy protected expression by arguing that this case is on all fours with Oracle America. The court rejected this argument. The court noted that in Oracle America, Google had copied strings of Java code. Here, by contrast, there is no evidence that defendant has copied specific strings of SAS language, or specific strings of source code for plaintiff's software, only that its software can function with these SAS Language elements.A trial was held on damages for WPL's breach of the SAS Learning Edition license; fraudulent inducement in obtaining the Learning Edition; and violation of North Carolina's Unfair and Deceptive Trade Practices Act (UDTPA). In 2015, the jury found SAS was damaged by WPL's breach of the license in the amount of $26 million; WPL fraudulently induced SAS to enter into the license agreement; and WPL's conduct violated the UDTPA. On account of the violation of the UDTPA, the district court trebled the actual damages to a total of $79 million.WPL and SAS cross-appealed. Because SAS did not bring any patent infringement claims, the appeal will be heard by the Fourth Circuit rather than the CAFC. SAS and its amici, Mathworks and the Business Software Alliance, have recently filed briefs. In their briefs, SAS and its amici completely ignore what the copyright aspect of this case is really about: whether copyright enables SAS to lock its users into the SAS System after they have invested millions of dollars writing their own programs in the SAS Language.Synopsys v. ATopTech In our third case following Oracle America, a jury in California found that the defendant infringed the command set in the plaintiff's software. Because the case also involves patent claims, the CAFC will hear the appeal of this dispute as well.Both Synopsys and ATopTech develop software for the place-and-route function in the design of computer chips, i.e., software that plans the layout of a chip and the electrical connections among its various components. Synopsys also produces sign-off or static timing analysis software, which checks the timing of the chip design created by the place-and-route software.Synopsys claimed in federal court in California that ATopTech had copied into ATopTech's place-and-route product, Aprisa, part of the command set from Synopsys's sign-off product, PrimeTime. Command sets include the names and syntax of commands, options, parameters, variables, objects, and attributes. ATopTech filed a motion for summary judgment that it did not copy protectable expression, but the court in a terse ruling found that Synopsys raised a triable issue as to whether the copied elements were expressive. Similarly, the court found there were triable issues relating to ATopTech's merger and fair use defenses. After trial in March 2016, the jury found that ATopTech infringed Synopsys's copyright in its command set, and awarded Synopsys $30 million in damages.The court then conducted a bench trial on ATopTech's equitable estoppel defense. ATopTech argued that Synopsys encouraged its usage of the command set in order to meet customer demand for improved interoperability between place-and-route and sign-off products when the two types of products are offered by different vendors. The court denied the defense, finding that there was no evidence that Synopsys had actual or constructive knowledge that ATopTech had copied the command set. The court also rejected ATopTech's assertion that Synopsys by its conduct misled ATopTech to believe that it would not assert its copyright in its command set.As noted above, Synopsys brought patent infringement claims against ATopTech in addition to its copyright claims. This means that any appeal in this case will also be heard by the CAFC.Cisco v. AristaIn our last post-Oracle America case, a jury in California recently found that the Cisco command line interfaces copied by Arista were not protected by copyright under the scenes a faire doctrine. Because Cisco also brought patent claims against Arista, the CAFC will hear this appeal as well.Arista Networks develops switches and other network products that compete with the market leader, Cisco Systems. In 2014, after the CAFC's decision in Oracle America, Cisco sued Arista for allegedly copying 500 of Cisco's command line interface (CLI) commands when developing its EOS network operating system. The CLI is the primary mechanism for network engineers to interact with switches and routers in which Cisco operating systems are installed. The 500 commands consist of two, three, or four words reflecting multi-level textual hierarchies. Before trial, the district court ruled that four building blocks of the CLI (the multiword command line expressions, modes and prompts, command responses, and help descriptions) could be protected as a compilation, and left it to the jury to consider whether merger or scenes a faire rendered Arista's copying noninfringing. The court further ruled that because the individual elements of each of these building blocks were not protectable, the compilations were entitled only to thin protection. Under Ninth Circuit precedent, this meant that infringement could be found only if there was virtually identical copying.At trial, Arista's lawyers -- who also represented Google in its litigation with Oracle America -- argued that the CLI was an industry standard Cisco encouraged others to use. Arista raised three defenses: merger, scenes a faire, and fair use. In December 2016, the jury rejected the merger and fair use defenses, but agreed that Arista's use did not infringe under the scenes a faire doctrine. Under the scenes a faire doctrine, courts deny protection to expression that is standard, stock or common to a particular topic or that necessarily follow from a common theme or setting. Granting copyright protection to the necessary incidents of an idea would effectively afford a monopoly to the first programmer to express those ideas.As noted above, any appeals in the case will be heard by the CAFC because Cisco's complaint also alleged patent infringement (a claim the jury rejected).Of the three cases that did not settle, two will be appealed to the CAFC. Given the random nature of judicial assignments, there is a good chance these appeals will be heard by different panels from that in Oracle America. Hopefully these panels will not feel too constrained by the Oracle America opinion. After all, CAFC panels often disagree with one another in patent cases.(These cases, and the Oracle America decision, are discussed in greater detail in my book Interfaces on Trial 3.0: Oracle America v. Google and Beyond.)Republished from the Disruptive Competition Project

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Florida PD's Stingray Documents Oddly Don't Mention Stingrays Once

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Curtis Waltman, filing his public records request through MuckRock, has obtained several hundred pages of documents related to IMSI catchers/Stingray devices from the Sarasota (FL) Police Department. There are a handful of interesting aspects about this haul, not the least of which is the fact that US Marshals basically raided the Sarasota PD's office in 2014 to remove Stingray-related documents ahead of the ACLU's scheduled examination of the files.What's been obtained by Waltman is presumably part of the stash the Marshals didn't take. The other interesting fact is that there is no reference whatsoever to Stingray devices or IMSI catchers in the documents, despite that being specifically what was requested.Here's Waltman's request:

To Whom It May Concern:Pursuant to Florida's Sunshine Law (Fla. Stat. secs. 119.01 to 119.15 (1995)), I hereby request the following records:Documents concerning IMSI catchers or any of the following words: "Stingray", "cell site simulator", or "dirtbox". including:-Contracts with the Harris Corporation regarding the acquisition of their Stingray or KingFish IMSI catchers-Department policies and procedure regarding the use of IMSI catcher technology-policies and procedures on the keeping of statistics about the Department's use and acquisition of IMSI catchersThe requested documents will be made available to the general public, and this request is not being made for commercial purposes.

These documents are the result of Joint Law Enforcement Operations Task Forces (JLEOs) that the SPD participated in from the years 2008 to 2014 with various local departments in their area, and also the DEA and the Marshals. Considering that South Florida has been designated as a High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, or HIDTA, it’s not surprising that they are engaged in high level operations with federal law enforcement agencies.What is surprising is how often they resorted to pen register and trap and trace court orders to be officially permitted to use their Stingray. Referring to cell site simulators as “trap and trace devices” is common, even by the DOJ.

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Techdirt's First Amendment Fight For Its Life

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As you may have heard, last week we were sued for $15 million by Shiva Ayyadurai, who claims to have invented email. We have written, at great length, about his claims and our opinion — backed up by detailed and thorough evidence — that email existed long before Ayyadurai created any software. We believe the legal claims in the lawsuit are meritless, and we intend to fight them and to win.There is a larger point here. Defamation claims like this can force independent media companies to capitulate and shut down due to mounting legal costs. Ayyadurai's attorney, Charles Harder, has already shown that this model can lead to exactly that result. His efforts helped put a much larger and much more well-resourced company than Techdirt completely out of business.So, in our view, this is not a fight about who invented email. This is a fight about whether or not our legal system will silence independent publications for publishing opinions that public figures do not like.And here's the thing: this fight could very well be the end of Techdirt, even if we are completely on the right side of the law.Whether or not you agree with us on our opinions about various things, I hope that you can recognize the importance of what's at stake here. Our First Amendment is designed to enable a free and open press — a press that can investigate and dig, a press that can challenge and expose. And if prominent individuals can make use of a crippling legal process to silence that effort, or even to create chilling effects among others, we become a weaker nation and a weaker people because of it.We are a truly small and independent media company. We do not have many resources. We intend to fight this baseless lawsuit because of the principles at stake, but we have no illusions about the costs. It will take a toll on us, even if we win. It will be a distraction, no matter what happens. It already has been — which may well have been part of Ayyadurai's intent.I am beyond thankful to the many of you who have reached out and offered to help in all sorts of ways. It is heartening to know so many people care about Techdirt. At some point soon, we may set up a dedicated legal defense fund. But, in the meantime, any support you can provide us will help — whether it's just alerting people to this situation and the danger of trying to stifle a free press through meritless lawsuits, or it's supporting Techdirt directly (or, if you have a company, advertising with us). As always, you can support us directly as a Friend of Techdirt, or check out some of the other perks you can get in our Insider program. You can also support us via Patreon.If freedom of expression and the press is to actually mean something, it needs to be protected, not stomped on with baseless lawsuits that silence independent voices and opinions.

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Twitter Kills Another Social Media Monitoring Service's Connection To Its Every-Tweet-Ever Feed

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Twitter has cut off another social media "surveillance" company from using its API. To date, the platform has forced third-party Dataminr to cut off connections to the CIA, DHS/law enforcement "fusion centers," and Geofeedia. All of these denials of service were the result of the company's policy against use of its API for surveillance.Very little of what was being done could truly be considered "surveillance," since Dataminr's access to basically every tweet produced did nothing but cull data from public accounts. What Twitter seemed to have more of a problem with was the marketing tactics of companies like Geofeedia, which insinuated their products were perfectly suited for keeping tabs on First Amendment-protected activity, like protests.As for the CIA and DHS, Twitter apparently felt these government agencies were far more involved in surveillance than the FBI, which just signed a contract with Dataminr for access to its every-tweet-ever API.The latest recipient of a Twitter disconnection is Canada-based Media Sonar. Again, the issue here appears to be the language used by the company to market its social media monitoring service.

Media Sonar touts its social media monitoring software and algorithms as ideal tools for police and corporations to aggregate and filter data to improve safety and protect corporate assets.But a U.S.-based investigation turned up marketing language that ran afoul of Twitter's policies, which state that posts on the popular social network should not be mined for surveillance purposes.Media Sonar's emails to past clients explicitly stated that the software, which allows officers to comb through publicly available posts on the likes of Twitter and Instagram, could help police search for "criminal activity" and "avoid the warrant process" when flagging people who have come under scrutiny.

Israel said most social media monitoring companies rely on algorithms to parse the vast amount of data and pull out meaningful information for clients. Those algorithms, he cautioned, can be misleading.Israel said they often analyze posts out of context and are unable to account for slang, cultural norms or other factors that give a post meaning.He cited a recent example of a British tourist who tweeted about his intention to "destroy the United States" on an upcoming trip. His post raised alarm bells with U.S. security, but the tourist had been trying to express his plans to party while abroad using common British slang.

[Citizen Lab's Chris Parsons] said law enforcement and federal agencies must demonstrate a need for mining online data, adding that they cannot look through material indiscriminately."Just because I say something on Twitter doesn't mean the RCMP can hoover it up," he said. "There has to be a reason, and they have to be able to articulate it."

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Iceland Forms A New Government... Without The Pirate Party

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Last month, we recognized that while it was still a long shot, it was interesting that the Iceland Pirate Party actually had a chance to form the new government there. A few previous efforts had failed and the job had fallen to the Pirate Party. However, it didn't take long for reports to leak out that the Pirate Party was having trouble building a coalition that would form the new government. And now a new government has been formed without the Pirate Party as part of the coalition:

Iceland's center-right Independence, Reform and Bright Future parties have agreed to form a coalition government and will give parliament a vote on whether to hold a referendum on joining the European Union.

Together, the coalition will hold 32 of the 63 seats in parliament. The Independence Party will have 21 seats, making it the largest party in the coalition.

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Prosecutors Looking Into $2 Field Drug Tests After Investigation, Figure Defense Attorneys Should Do All The Work

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The fallout from cheap field drug tests continues. The lab that does actual testing of seized substances for the Las Vegas PD had previously expressed its doubts about the field tests' reliability, but nothing changed. Officers continued to use the tests and defendants continued to enter into plea bargains based on questionable evidence.The Las Vegas PD knew the tests were highly fallible. After all, the department had signed off on a report saying as much and handed it into the DOJ in exchange for federal grant money. But cops still used them and prosecutors still relied on them when pursuing convictions.Nothing changed until ProPublica stepped in with its own investigation into the faulty drug tests. In response to this reporting, prosecutors are finally taking a closer look at the tests officers deploy hundreds of times a year.

The Clark County District Attorney’s Office in Nevada established a conviction review unit in October. In what appears to be one of its first efforts, the unit has been seeking information about problematic convictions resulting from one of the office’s routine practices: accepting guilty pleas in drug cases that rely largely on the results of field tests done by police that can be unreliable.

Daniel Silverstein, head of the newly formed unit, in November asked a statewide organization of defense lawyers for any information they had on cases that might have involved inaccurate field tests, and thus resulted in potentially wrongful convictions.

Howard Brooks, the Clark County Public Defender’s appellate director, called the district attorney request to defense attorneys “an absurd challenge.” Brooks argued it is the duty of prosecutors to verify the integrity of their convictions — both those that have already been won and those being brokered today in Clark County courts.

Prosecutors routinely delay crime lab analysis to check results of field tests until the eve of trial, court records show. When defendants plead guilty at preliminary hearings, the alleged drugs rarely even reach the lab. In Clark County last year, according to court data, just eight of 4,633 drug convictions went to trial.

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Tanzanian Farmers Face 12 Years In Prison For Selling Seeds As They've Done For Generations

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Seeds might not seem to have much to do with digital technology, but the DNA that lies at their heart is in fact digital information, and thus many of the issues that concern Techdirt also apply here. One of the key battlegrounds for seeds and their ownership is Africa, as we discussed back in 2013. The Belgian site Mondiaal Nieuws has an update on what's happening in one of the poorest African countries, Tanzania. Things aren't looking good there following a change in the relevant law:

"If you buy seeds from Syngenta or Monsanto under the new legislation, they will retain the intellectual property rights. If you save seeds from your first harvest, you can use them only on your own piece of land for non-commercial purposes. You're not allowed to share them with your neighbors or with your sister-in-law in a different village, and you cannot sell them for sure. But that's the entire foundation of the seed system in Africa", says Michael Farrelly [from an organic farming movement in Tanzania].

Under the new law, Tanzanian farmers risk a prison sentence of at least 12 years or a fine of over €205,300 [about $213,000], or both, if they sell seeds that are not certified.

"That's an amount that a Tanzanian farmer cannot even start to imagine. The average wage is still less than 2 US dollars a day", says Janet Maro, head of Sustainable Agriculture Tanzania (SAT).

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This Week In Techdirt History: January 1st - 7th

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Five Years AgoThis week we finally move from 2011 to 2012, but as far as the news goes little has changed: it was all SOPA, all the time. There was growing confusion around which companies actually supported the bill, with some like EA trying to avoid taking a position altogether and others, like some game developers, clashing with their own industry groups like the ESA over how to respond. The ESA was a strong supporter of the bill, and initially had the firm backing of Capcom — but Capcom soon tried to back down and worm its way out of the spotlight. Grover Norquist, a huge supporter of strong copyright law, also tried to get some distance from SOPA and PIPA. Al Gore came out with some thorough and strong opposition, and Senator Ron Wyden was planning a filibuster.Ten Years AgoThis week in 2007, everyone and their brother was jumping on the MySpace-clone bandwagon, with Disney launching a limited and unimpressive platform and even Toyota announcing plans to do the same. A tech company somehow managed to get a patent that basically covered all digital downloads and proceeded to sue everyone, while the RIAA was fighting its own fight to keep its wholesale digital download prices on the hush-hush. The movie industry was still flailing around with even more DRM and an unwelcome addition to the high-def DVD format wars, and we saw the latest crazy attack on YouTube in the form of an accusation that the site aids and abets vandalism.Fifteen Years AgoSpeaking of DRM, this week in 2002 one congressional representative pointed out that it is probably illegal under a 1992 law — but I guess that idea didn't fly. There was lots of buzz about the future of "interactive television" but that idea didn't exactly soar either. The beginning of 2002 also marked one of only two times in history so far that the number of domain names online had gone down (presumably after cybersquatters and domain prospectors abandoned their domains after the tech bubble burst). And though the technology was still in its early days, folks were beginning to worry about facial recognition software.Sixty-Three Years AgoBut now here's a real example of technology in its early days. I'm rarely surprised to find out that an area of tech has been around longer than I thought and than you might expect, but I was genuinely surprised to learn that all the way back on January 7th, 1954, IBM used one of its mainframe computers to do the first demonstration of computer translation, taking Russian sentences encoded to punch cards and producing print-outs of English translations. Of course the system was quite simple, the sentences carefully chosen, and the scope extremely limited — but it worked, and placed the first example of such technology much earlier in the history books than I would have guessed.

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Bushy's Brewery, Isle Of Man Govt. Have Trademark Hissy Fit Over Two Letters: TT

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If there is one lesson you take away from writing about trademark law and disputes, it's how simple it would be to avoid a massive percentage of the conflicts by holding trademark applications to a far higher standard then they often are. If the world's many trademark offices kept in mind that the entire point of this form of intellectual property is supposed to be keeping the public confident in their ability to determine the source of a given product or service by its trademarked branding, then it would be obvious that approved trademarks should be unique and distinct.As a counterexample to that line of thinking, consider the current dispute going on between Bushy's Brewery, located on the Isle of Man, and the Manx government, all over the government's trademark for exactly two letters: TT.

The company was hit with a legal warning by the Isle of Man government over the government’s ‘TT’ trademark, registered at the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO). Since 1998, Bushy’s has operated a beer tent at the Isle of Man TT Race, a motorsport event held annually since 1907 in the crown dependency, which is located in the Irish Sea between England and Northern Ireland.According to broadcaster ITV, the government’s Department of Economic Development issued a warning in response to controversy over the brewery’s use of the “iconic initials” (TT) and said that it needs to protect the famous TT brand.

“Bushy's has been told by the Isle of Man government that it can't use the letters ‘TT’ because it's trademarked. Bushy's is synonymous with the TT, its beer and the beer tent.“It also employs local people year-round, and contributes to the Manx economy. If the government believes in supporting the local economy, it should stop threatening legal action and let Bushy's ... use the letters ‘TT’.”

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Finland Will Give 2000 Unemployed People $590 Every Month, No Strings Attached, Even After They Get A Job

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Back in 2015, a Techdirt Podcast explored the fascinating idea of a universal basic income guarantee, something that the Swiss considered, but ultimately rejected in a referendum. The idea of giving money to everyone, regardless of what they do, or how much they earn, is intriguing and attractive for many. But what effect would it have on how people live and work? That's what Finland hopes to find out from an experiment it is conducting in this field, as a story in the Guardian reports:

Finland has become the first country in Europe to pay its unemployed citizens an unconditional monthly sum, in a social experiment that will be watched around the world amid gathering interest in the idea of a universal basic income.

Under the two-year, nationwide pilot scheme, which began on 1 January, 2,000 unemployed Finns aged 25 to 58 will receive a guaranteed sum of €560 (475).

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Trademark Dispute Between Coffee Companies Over 'Detroit' Trademark Demonstrates The USPTO's Carelessness

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It bears repeating: far too many of the trademark disputes we cover here at Techdirt are in large part the fault of a USPTO all too willing to grant trademarks on terms that are overtly either broad or based on geography. One would hope that it went without saying that trademarks, designed to inform the public as to the source of the products they buy, cannot work to that end if the identifying marks are not specific or original within the marketplace. Yet the Trademark Office too often doesn't seem to consider this when rubber-stamping applications.For example, there is currently a trademark dispute going on between two coffee companies over the name of the city of "Detroit."

A local company’s Detroit-branded java doesn’t jive with an East Coast entity that claims it was the early bird in the Motor City joe business.But the target of the complaint insists the Dec. 22 lawsuit filed by New York-based Detroit Coffee Co. is nothing more than a shakedown.“This is a Wall Street-versus-Woodward type of mentality,” said A.J. O’Neil, owner of Hazel Park-based Detroit Bold Coffee Co. “They think the little guy will fold.”Detroit Coffee Co., a Michigan LLC with a New York City address, filed a complaint alleging trademark infringement against Detroit Bold. It demands a jury trial in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

“It’s not like I have all this extra income to hire a big legal team and go (to New York) to fight this,” he said. “Those folks in New York are conjuring up something that at best has no merit.”

O’Neil told The News he and his attorney, Mark Schneider, haven’t seen any evidence that Detroit Coffee actually sells any coffee under the Detroit Coffee name, or has ever sold coffee or other merchandise branded with that name. The trademarks the company pulled in the early 2000s were dead at the time Detroit Bold registered new logos bearing “Detroit Bold Coffee Co.” in early 2016, according to trademark office records.Detroit Coffee renewed trademarks on the “Detroit Coffee” name for use on brewed coffees, teas and beverages on April 14, 2016, roughly two months after O’Neil registered two logos bearing the words “Detroit Bold Coffee Company.”

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Potential New FCC Boss Blames Obama For The Washington Post's Botched Russian Utility Hacking Story

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We've noted how one of Trump's top telecom advisors is Jeffrey Eisenach, a long-time Verizon consultant and aggressive opponent of net neutrality. Eisenach's one of three Trump advisors who have made it clear their top priority in the new administration will be to not only gut net neutrality, but to defang and defund the FCC as a consumer watchdog on telecom issues. Eisenach isn't just an advisor, he's also on the shortlist to be the next head of an agency he doesn't believe in.

But when Eisenach isn't busy dreaming about dismantling net neutrality, he can apparently be found writing logically incoherent op-eds over at the Wall Street Journal. In a strange little tirade posted on January 3, Eisenach quite correctly ridicules the Washington Post's recent false claim that Russians were busy hacking U.S. utilities. In short, a piece of common malware was found on one PC, and because the Washington Post couldn't be bothered to even call the company in question, the paper created a bogus narrative, based entirely on anonymous sources, that casually pushed the country closer to war.

Yeah, no biggie.

Eisenach starts off well enough, quite correctly illustrating the depth of the Washington Post's failure on the story, and how the malware was arguably run of the mill, and certainly not directly tied to the government:

"The kind of malware involved in these two intrusions is neither new nor particularly sophisticated. It is run-of-the-mill spyware that has probably been implanted on thousands of networks around the world, from home computers to those inside banks, power companies and government agencies. These bugs are freely available online, and the code found at the Democratic National Committee and the power company isn't even the latest version. The notion that such a mundane piece of software reveals a new and ominous threat to critical infrastructure is laughable."

"Misleading the American people to advance a political narrative has been a hallmark of President Obama's foreign policy. The most recent example is the administration's attempt to conflate the hacking of the Democratic Party with potential cyberattacks on critical infrastructure...Cyberthreats pose a clear danger to national security, and building an effective defense will take a concerted effort by the Trump administration. Americans are right to be concerned. But by playing on those fears, the Obama administration is putting politics ahead of the national interest."

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Facebook Censors Art Historian's Photo Of Neptune's Statue-Penis

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It's probably time for Facebook to give up trying to be the morality police, because it isn't working. While nobody expects the social media giant to be perfect at policing its site for images and posts deemed "offensive", it's shown itself time and time again to be utterly incapable of getting this right at even the most basic level. After all, when the censors are removing iconic historical photos, tirades against prejudice, forms of pure parody, and images of a nude bronze statue in the name of some kind of corporate puritanism, it should be clear that something is amiss.Yet the armies of the absurd march on, it seems. Facebook managed to kick off the new year by demanding that an Italian art historian remove an image of a penis from her Facebook page. Not just any penis, mind you. It was a picture of a godly penis. Specifically, this godly penis.

According to the Telegraph, Barbari got the following notification from Facebook. “The use of the image was not approved because it violates Facebook’s guide lines on advertising. It presents an image with content that is explicitly sexual and which shows to an excessive degree the body, concentrating unnecessarily on body parts. The use of images or video of nude bodies or plunging necklines is not allowed, even if the use is for artistic or educational reasons.”

Strangely, an exception is made for art. “We also allow photographs of paintings, sculptures, and other art that depicts nude figures.”

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Chicago Field Museum Decides To Embrace Cross-Promotion Instead Of Trademark Protectionism With Brewery

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When it comes to trademark issues, we tend to keep our pages filled with stories about disputes, bullying, and over-protectionism. While we try to highlight good-actors on matters of trademark, those stories are too few and far between for our tastes. With that in mind, why not start off the new year with one such example?Toppling Goliath is a brewery in Iowa with a number of regular and seasonal beers. One of those is PseudoSue, an ale with a label that features a roaring Tyrannosaurus rex. Anyone from the Chicago area is likely already thinking of our beloved Field Museum and the enormous T. rex fossil skeleton of Sue, who the museum tends to dress up like some kind of prehistoric barbie doll whenever one of our local sports teams has themselves a particularly good season. The museum has a trademark registration for Sue that covers all kinds of mechandise and initially reacted as readers of this site will have come to expect.

“Initially the Field Museum was very hard line about” wanting to protect their trademark of the name Sue used with the image of a T. Rex, said Martha Engel, an intellectual property attorney who represents Toppling Goliath.

But, ultimately, the brewery owners and the marketing executives at the museum got together and decided to create a cross-promotion scheme rather than launch a legal fight.“It became obvious that we could work well together,” Clark Lewey, a co-owner of the brewery, said. As part of the deal, Toppling Goliath will print new labels for PseudoSue and another beer called King Sue that promote the Field Museum and Sue, the T. Rex.

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Rightscorp Rings In The New Year By Vowing To Find New Ways To Lose Money In 2017

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Rightscorp is doing some aggressive whistling in the dark. The company that thought it could tackle piracy with threatening letters, threatening robocalls, and suing ISPs for contributory infringement has been bleeding money since its inception.By the middle of 2015, Rightscorp's letter-writing campaign to torrenters had led to nothing resembling a viable business model.

According to 10-K documents filed with the SEC earlier this month, the total loss from Rightscorp operations for 2014 was $3,398,873, with revenues of just $930,729 for the year. "As of December 31, 2014, our accumulated deficit was approximately $7,093,377," states the filing, adding that the company lacks the revenue to allow it to "continue as a going concern." Rightscorp stock price, meanwhile, similarly isn't much to write home about. Not so viable for a company that on a recent earnings call declared itself "one of the only viable solutions to the multi-billion dollar problem of peer-to-peer piracy."

The company, which monitors and targets repeated copyright infringers with extralegal payment notices, reported an operating loss of $784,180 during the three months ended March 31, a slight improvement from the $930,000 loss a year earlier. Rightscorp only generated revenues of $68,283, a 78 percent drop from 2015 Q1’s $307,904, and its services accrued only $49,142 due to copyright holders -- a third of the $153,952 gathered during the first three months of 2015.

In the notice of infringement, Rightscorp offers a choice between paying a small settlement fee of $30 facing a possible lawsuit for damages of around $150,000 USD under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), the current law.

A small growing company with modest revenue, Rightscorp has by no means conquered the problem of Internet piracy. But with proven technology, a unique way monetize digital loss prevention, and an astute management team at the helm, investors should take a serious look at Rigthscorp. In 2017, the Company is pursuing an aggressive growth strategy in focused on expanding its reach in the film and television arenas.

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Tesla Gave Up Its Patents, But People Are Freaked Out That Faraday Future Put Its Own Into A Separate Company

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Over the last couple of years, there's been a tremendous amount of attention placed on upstart electric car maker, Faraday Future. The company, that originally had very secretive backers (later revealed to extraordinarily wealthy Chinese investors), sprung out of nowhere a year ago and was quickly touted as an expected competitor to Tesla. What a difference a year makes. In the last few weeks, there have been a bunch of reports about how the company is flailing. It kicked off with a pretty damning Buzzfeed story about serious problems at the company, including unpaid bills and a bizarre situation involving having workers focus on designing another car for a totally different company owned by their major investor:

In December 2015, employees at Faraday's headquarters in Gardena, California, received a mandate from Jia: Design a prototype LeEco car that could be shown off publicly at a spring event in Beijing. According to several former employees, some of Faraday's designers were pulled off of their core projects to work on the vehicle. And in April 2016, LeEco unveiled a sleek, electric sedan called LeSee. On stage, Jia, who has been outspoken about his plans to usurp Tesla, touted LeSee as a LeEco creation as the white sedan glided across the stage to park in a mock garage. The audience couldn't see that the seemingly self-driving car was in fact being piloted from backstage via remote control.

Back in California, some Faraday employees were unsettled, sources told BuzzFeed News. Though they'd designed the car for LeEco per Jia's request, they were not given credit for doing so, and the company didn't receive payment in exchange. And the development of the LeSee had distracted them from work on Faraday's own vehicles. [The LeSee project] certainly added pressure onto the design team. It crunched timelines, a former employee with knowledge of the project told BuzzFeed News. It certainly made getting deadlines met that much more difficult. Faraday declined to comment on the project and the specifics of its relationship with LeEco. LeEco declined to comment on the project as well. In a statement to BuzzFeed News, LeEco said that the two companies are strategic partners by bringing together global resources in several areas.

In addition, these sources revealed to The Verge that the company's intellectual property is not owned by FF, but by a separate entity named FF Cayman Global, a revelation which raises questions about Faraday Future's relationship with its investors and suppliers, and could further endanger the company's success.

According to former employees, FF is in effect not one, but two companies, with a separate entity based out of the Cayman Islands just for FF's intellectual property. If you're an investor, you're fucked, one ex-executive said. The company doesn't own the IP.

"Some of the reasons some of us left was because we were afraid that all of the work that's being done in the US, there is no proper corporate structure or legal entity structure," the employee told Business Insider. "The feeling we had was that the IP [intellectual property] was not protected and if and when Faraday goes under, these guys would just pick up all the IP and all these other people in the US would be out of a job."

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Techdirt 2016: The Stats.

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Another yearly tradition around here is that, soon after the new year, we post some details about some of the stats we've got on visitors/commenters and such. It's pretty fun, and this will be the 7th year that we're doing it. For reference, here are the posts from 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011 and 2010. For what it's worth, for comment stats, we're using our own internal logs, but for traffic we're using Google Analytics, which isn't perfect -- and which many people block via tracking blockers, so the stats may not be entirely accurate -- but since we're focused on comparative info, it's likely that the results are pretty good, since those who block trackers should have a somewhat proportional effect across the various years.

In 2016, we went back up to having visitors from 239 "countries" (as defined by Google Analytics... which I know bugs some people who insist there aren't that many countries in the world) after a drop to 235 in 2015. Of course, at the bottom of the list, we're talking pretty random places, so that's kind of meaningless. At the top of the list, though, as always, is traffic from the US, which represented 65.66% of all our traffic. It's almost always right around 66%, but has been dropping marginally the last couple of years (66.95% in 2014, 66.82% in 2015). In 2016, the UK passed Canada for 2nd place on traffic, but it was pretty close (6.45% of traffic, vs. 6.34%). Canada and the UK are always neck and neck in terms of traffic, with Canada nudging out the UK in 2013 and 2015, but the UK beating Canada in 2014 and again this year. Evens and odds. Australia and Germany, once again, retain their spots as the 4th and 5th biggest visitors -- both of which have kept those spots for years. The next five countries are also the same: India, France, the Netherlands, Sweden and New Zealand. The only difference in 2016 was that France edged out the Netherlands, which had been just slightly ahead of France the previous few years.

After India, the top Asian countries were the Philippines and Singapore, also flip-flopping (last year it was Singapore on top of the Philippines, but the year before it was the Philippines ahead of Singapore) -- but the difference in traffic between the two is basically a rounding error. Japan and Israel (if you consider Israel part of Asia...) round out the top 5. If you don't count Israel as being in Asia, then swap in Malaysia.

The top five European countries were already mentioned in the global top 10, but if you want to know the next 5 European countries, you've got: Spain, Italy, Ireland, Russia and Finland. This is a bit different than last year. Russia wasn't in the list last year, but we had a few stories this year about Russian internet trolls that resulted in a bunch of comments yelling at us about how we were full of shit... so... hmmm... The entrance of Russia into the list bumped Norway out of the top 10, which is too bad. I like Norway.

Across both North & South America, of course, we get most of our traffic from the US and Canada, but Mexico, Brazil and Argentina make up the next 3, with Mexico passing Brazil after a few years of being behind. In Africa, as always, South Africa sent the most traffic. Before last year, the only real traffic we got from Africa was from South Africa, but last year there was a bunch from Kenya -- we thought mainly because a Kenyan copyright lawyer had flipped out about a post we did on Kenyan copyright law and wrote an angry blog post claiming we were defaming Kenya. But, traffic from Kenya continued to be notable, coming in second after South Africa (about half as much traffic), and Nigeria was right behind Kenya. After that, there was much less traffic, but still some from Egypt and Sudan.

For basically every year, we joked about how we would get one single visit each year from Christmas Island, but last year, it went away. We wondered what we'd done to offend whoever it was... but this year they were back again, with one single visit. There were six "countries" this year that sent a single visit: besides Christmas Island, there was also Curacao, St. Barthelemy, Western Sahara, Guinea-Bissau and Tuvalu. For the second year in a row, we got zero visits from North Korea, after getting two visits in 2013 and an astounding four visits from North Korea in 2014.

As is always the case, the country with the longest average visits is... Gibraltar. But, as with every year, that's because there aren't that many visitors from Gibraltar, and one of them is one of our most prolific readers and commenters, PaulT, who takes credit for helping Gibraltar lead the charts in terms of average time of visit. If we look at countries that actually send significant traffic, last year New Zealand and Canada led the way for average time on the site. This year, India stepped up, followed by Canada and New Zealand (the US is next, followed by Australia). India also leads the way of major countries in terms of pages per visit, with New Zealand next.

We always point out that our city charts are a bit meaningless, given the hugely different populations in different cities, but the top five this year are the same as the past few years: New York, London, LA, Chicago and SF. SF and Chicago flipped positions. Washington DC retains spot number 6 for the second year in a row (after not being in the top 10 for a while), followed by Toronto, Seattle, Houston and Sydney (the same names as last year).

Once again, Chrome was the browser of choice for people visiting the site, this time breaking through the 50% mark with 51% of all visits being via Chrome. Safari was 22% and Firefox was 17%. Firefox was down a bit, while Safari was up quite a bit. There was still some Internet Explorer traffic (5%) and Microsoft's new browser, Edge (2%) and even a tiny bit of Opera traffic as well (1%) and a bunch of other random browsers bring up the rear. Remember when Microsoft was a monopolist in the browser market and no one would ever catch up? Fun times.

For the second year in a row, Android edged out iOS visits, but it was still pretty damn close. Visitors using Windows visited more than 4x those using Macs (which surprises me a bit...) and we still have a small percentage (~3%) of visitors using Linux. Somewhat astoundingly, the majority of those Windows visits came from people still on Windows 7. I'm guessing that these are people visiting from offices where they haven't gone through a (very, very necessary) upgrade yet. Windows 10 was the second most, but it was much lower than Win7 visits.

In terms of ISPs, Comcast leads the way, followed by Time Warner Cable. This should be no surprise at all, as those two dominate the market these days. Verizon has a strong third place showing, followed by Charter. AT&T is pretty far down the list, once again.

As for mobile devices, the iPhone easily leads the pack, with 31% of all mobile visits, followed by the iPad with another 12%. All the rest are tiny, tiny slivers of a huge variety of Android devices, none alone getting more than 1.5%. The most popular Android devices for viewing Techdirt are basically any Google Nexus model and any Samsung Galaxy S model (S5, S6 and S7).

As for where our traffic is coming from, this chart looks pretty similar to last years:

1. No, A Judge Did Not Just Order Apple To Break Encryption On San Bernardino Shooter's iPhone, But To Create A New Backdoor
2. 71% Want The Dark Net Shut Down, Showing Most Have No Idea What The Dark Net Is
3. 56% Would Drop ESPN In A Heartbeat If It Meant Saving $8 A Month On Cable
4. President Obama Claims He Cannot Pardon Snowden; He's Wrong
5. Once Again, Piracy Is Destroying The Movie Industry... To Ever More Records At The Box Office
6. How The US Government Legally Stole Millions From Kim Dotcom
7. AT&T Mocks Google Fiber's Struggles, Ignores It Caused Many Of Them
8. Congrats, FBI, You've Now Convinced Silicon Valley To Encrypt And Dump Log Files
9. As Its CEO Continues To Claim It Doesn't Throttle, T-Mobile Spokesperson Confirms Company Throttles
10. Forbes Site, After Begging You To Turn Off Adblocker, Serves Up A Steaming Pile Of Malware 'Ads'

1. No, A Judge Did Not Just Order Apple To Break Encryption On San Bernardino Shooter's iPhone, But To Create A New Backdoor: 343 Comments
2. Holy Crap: Wells Fargo Has To Fire 5,300 Employees For Scam Billing: 283 Comments
3. FBI Boss Blows Past Policies, Guidelines, His Own Staff To Bring Back Clinton Email Investigation: 235 Comments
4. NBC Delayed Story About Trump's Access Hollywood Recording Over Fear That He Might Sue: 220 Comments
5. Our 'Copying Is Not Theft' T-Shirt Seems To REALLY Upset Some People: 210 Comments
6. What The Election Means For Stuff Techdirt Cares About?: 202 Comments
7. Homeland Security Wants To Subpoena Us Over A Clearly Hyperbolic Techdirt Comment: 197 Comments
8. Hillary Clinton Looks At Her Campaign's Many Missteps, Decides To Blame James Comey For Her Loss: 185 Comments
9. Somehow Everyone Comes Out Looking Terrible In The Effort For Election Recounts: 177 Comments
10. President Obama Is Wrong On Encryption; Claims The Realist View Is 'Absolutist': 175 Comments

1. That One Guy: 2306 comments
2. Ninja: 1577 comments
3. nasch: 1299 comments
4. John Fenderson: 1275 comments
5. PaulT: 1271 comments
6. Uriel-238: 1081 comments
7. DannyB: 1024 comments
8. Whatever: 882 comments
9. Padpaw: 845 comments
10. That Anonymous Coward: 825 comments

1. That One Guy: 355 comments (15%)
2. PaulT: 115 comments (9%)
3. That Anonymous Coward: 110 comments (13%)
4. Mason Wheeler: 87 comments (16%)
5. Ninja: 84 comments (5%)
6. John Fenderson: 67 comments (5%)
7. DannyB: 66 comments (6%)
8. Uriel-238: 64 comments (6%)
9. Roger Strong: 52 comments (8%)
10. Mike Masnick: 29 comments (6%)

1. TechDescartes: 46 comments (26%)
2. That One Guy: 38 comments (2%)
3. Roger Strong: 30 comments (5%)
4. DannyB: 29 comments (3%)
5. Mason Wheeler: 24 comments (4%)
6. Ninja: 22 comments (1%)
7. That Anonymous Coward: 17 comments (2%)
8. TheResidentSkeptic: 11 comments (11%)
9. AricTheRed: 9 comments (17%)
10. Vidiot: 9 comments (7%)

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Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of 2016 At Techdirt

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Happy new year, everyone! It's time for our annual look back at the highest-scoring comments of the year, and this time around we've got first and second place winners in both categories then a special third-place entry. (If you want to know this week's winners, here's first and second place for insightful, and first and second place for funny.)Most Insightful Comments Of The YearFor 2016's first place winner on the insightful side, we only have to head back to September, when terrorism scares in New York and New Jersey prompted Hillary Clinton to call on Silicon Valley, once again, to nerd harder and find a way to stop radicalization. Norahc racked up the votes with a smart rebuke:

Nerd Harder?

Perhaps if in her role as Secretary of State, she had "diplomat harder" we might have found a way to prevent the radicalization of people. Then again, that would entail people like her (including the other candidate) having to do real work instead of demanding other people work harder.

"No one needs that much, no one will ever use it!"

Saying that no one needs a 25 Mbps connection because a single user/service won't use it completely is rather like saying that there's no point in building multi-lane roads or highways because a single car will never be able to take up more than one lane.

Just more proof ...

Clearly this is just more proof that Mike Masnick is a Google shill.

The saddest thing is that Bowie only has an incentive to write new music for 70 more years.

Who holds the keys?

"...nine server administrators..."

Let me put that another way:

Nine
Server
Administrators

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New Year's Message: No One Said It Would Be Easy...

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Since 2008, my final post of the year tends to be a post where I take a step back and reflect on how the year went. It started, back in 2008, as a response to multiple people asking me why I always seemed so optimistic about the future, despite writing all sorts of articles highlighting all sorts of bad behavior and threats to innovation, free speech and civil liberties. And my argument, in short, has always been that I strongly believe in the forward march of progress and innovation -- and that any anger you see coming through in my writing comes from being annoyed and frustrated at people and events that slow it down. That is, my anger is at the pace of change, but my optimism is at the inevitability of change. And, each year, the message has been more or less the same, often highlighting key events and reasons why we should all be so optimistic, even in the face of various challenges. Here are those past messages if you'd like to see them:

• 2008: On Staying Happy
• 2009: Creativity, Innovation And Happiness
• 2010: From Pessimism To Optimism... And The Power Of Innovation
• 2011: From Optimism And Innovation... To The Power To Make A Difference
• 2012: Innovation, Optimism And Opportunity: All Coming Together To Make Real Change
• 2013: Optimism On The Cusp Of Big Changes
• 2014: Change, Innovation And Optimism, Despite Challenges
• 2015: New Year's Message: Keep Moving Forward

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