Top Russian Net Official Says Children Under 10 Shouldn't Go Online -- At All

Furnished content.


As Techdirt readers know only too well, doing things "for the children" is a perfect excuse to pass all kinds of ridiculous laws that would otherwise be thrown out without a thought. For example, back in 2013, we wrote about attempts to pass legislation in Russia that would ban swearing on the Internet. It was framed as an amendment to an existing law called "On the Protection of Children" that introduced a blacklist designed to block access to information on drugs, suicide and child pornography. Now the head of Roskomnadzor, the body that oversees website-blocking in Russia, has a bold proposal for protecting children from all the Internet's possible harms. It takes the "for the children" logic to its logical conclusion, as TorrentFreak explains:

In a Q&A session with AIF.ru, Alexander Zharov spoke on a number of issues, including online safety, especially for children. Naturally, kids need to be protected but the Rozcomnadzor chief has some quite radical ideas when it comes to them using the Internet."I believe that a child under 10-years-old should not go online. To use [the Internet] actively they need to start even later than that," Zharov said.

"Some parents are proud of the fact that their three-year-old kid can deftly control a tablet and use it to watch cartoons. It is nothing good, in my opinion. A small child will begin to consider the virtual world part of the real world, and it changes their perception of reality."

0 comments, click here to add the first

Disappointing To See Google's Waymo Sue Over Patents

Furnished content.


For years, we had pointed out that one of the nice things about the new generation of tech companies was that they rarely seemed to use patents offensively. Yes, they were subject to tons of patent lawsuits from trolls or from legacy players trying to hang on against innovators, but we've pointed out in the past that young companies innovate, while older companies litigate. So, we have a tendency to watch companies to see when they shift from being patent litigation defenders, to going on the offensive. For years -- even as patent system supporters falsely claimed that Google only existed because of patents -- it was good to see not a single example of Google going on the offensive and filing patent lawsuits against other companies.That changed, unfortunately, back in 2012 when Google brought a patent lawsuit against Apple. Some argued that it wasn't "really" Google, because it came from Motorola, a company that Google had purchased (mainly for the patents) and then only owned for a short while before dumping, but it was still a Google-owned property going on the offensive. At that time, we argued that if Google really wanted to support patent reform (as the company claimed) then it should stop being a patent aggressor.To its credit, I don't believe the company went on the offensive again... until just now. As has been widely reported, Google's Waymo subsidiary (which works on Google's self-driving cars) has sued Uber over its self-driving car technology, which Uber obtained last year, in purchasing another startup, Otto, for its self-driving car technology. Otto, of course, was founded by a former Google/Waymo guy. Just a few weeks ago, Bloomberg had written that a bunch of early Google car team members had left to found Otto in part because Google had paid them a ridiculous sum of money, so they no longer needed to stay there.Along with the lawsuit, both in the filing itself and in a separate blog post about the lawsuit, Waymo tries to bend over backwards to say that this situation is not your typical "patent" lawsuit, but a very specific one. Indeed, the company is clear that the patent issue is a lesser concern. The larger one is over trade secrets -- and here the company is fairly specific that Otto's founder, and several early employees, appear to have deliberately copied a huge amount of proprietary info from Google/Waymo before departing:

Recently, we received an unexpected email. One of our suppliers specializing in LiDAR components sent us an attachment (apparently inadvertently) of machine drawings of what was purported to be Uber's LiDAR circuit boardexcept its design bore a striking resemblance to Waymo's unique LiDAR design.We found that six weeks before his resignation this former employee, Anthony Levandowski, downloaded over 14,000 highly confidential and proprietary design files for Waymo's various hardware systems, including designs of Waymo's LiDAR and circuit board. To gain access to Waymo's design server, Mr. Levandowski searched for and installed specialized software onto his company-issued laptop. Once inside, he downloaded 9.7 GB of Waymo's highly confidential files and trade secrets, including blueprints, design files and testing documentation. Then he connected an external drive to the laptop. Mr. Levandowski then wiped and reformatted the laptop in an attempt to erase forensic fingerprints.Beyond Mr. Levandowki's actions, we discovered that other former Waymo employees, now at Otto and Uber, downloaded additional highly confidential information pertaining to our custom-built LiDAR including supplier lists, manufacturing details and statements of work with highly technical information.

0 comments, click here to add the first

What Should We Add Next To The Techdirt Gear Store?

Furnished content.

Get I Invented Email, Copymouse and more in the Techdirt Gear store »Right now, there are four different designs in available in the Techdirt Gear store on Teespring: our new Copymouse gear, our limited-time I Invented Email gear, and two different styles of Techdirt logo gear. But, under Teespring's new ongoing-order system, over time we're going to start bringing back some of our designs from last year as permanent fixtures in the store — in some cases with tweaked or updated designs.So, which Techdirt tees would our readers like to see first? There's our popular Takedown gear, the controversial Copying Is Not Theft, and some less-popular but beloved-by-some options like Home Cooking Is Killing Restaurants and Math Is Not A Crime. Of course, there's also the first t-shirt we offered and still the most popular: Nerd Harder.We have some brand new designs in the works too and will be rolling those out in the near future, but first we want to get one or two of these classics back into rotation. In addition to letting us know which ones you're most interested in, feel free to include your thoughts on whether the design needs an update or you'd like to see different products/colors available!Thanks for your feedback, and thanks for supporting Techdirt.

Two logo tee styles (plus hoodies, mugs & more) in the Techdirt Gear store »

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story


Read more here

0 comments, click here to add the first

California Law Enforcement Union Sues To Block Police Accountability

Furnished content.


Because there's just not enough opacity shrouding police misconduct and not enough slanting of the criminal justice system against defendants, California police unions have decided to get involved in a judicial dispute over lists of law enforcement officers whose half of "our word against yours" isn't quite as bulletproof as is normally assumed.A Los Angeles sheriff is trying to do the right thing, but he's running into opposition from his own supposed "representatives."

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has collected the names of about 300 deputies who have a history of past misconduct — such as domestic violence, theft, bribery and brutality — that could damage their credibility if they testify in court.Sheriff Jim McDonnell wants to send the names to prosecutors, who can decide whether to add them to an internal database that tracks problem officers in case the information needs to be disclosed to defendants in criminal trials.

The union that represents rank-and-file deputies strongly opposes providing the names to prosecutors and has taken the department to court. The Assn. for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs argues that the disclosure would violate state laws protecting officer personnel files and draw unfair scrutiny on deputies whose mistakes might have happened long ago.

0 comments, click here to add the first

Just To Be Safe, We're Resetting All Techdirt Passwords In Response To Cloudbleed

Furnished content.


As you may have heard, late yesterday it was revealed that there was a pretty major bug that was potentially leaking all sorts of sensitive data for some companies that use Cloudflare. The bug is being dubbed "Cloudbleed" as it's actually quite similar to what happened a few years ago with OpenSSL in what was known as Heartbleed. Cloudflare was alerted to the bug by some Google security researchers and quickly patched the problem -- but it had gone on for months, with some sensitive data being indexed by search engines (that's all been cleaned up too).At Techdirt, we use some Cloudflare services. It is unclear (and, in fact, unlikely) that any Techdirt data leaked via Cloudbleed. Also, we don't retain sensitive data from our users. However, in an abundance of caution, we have decided to reset everyone's passwords. If you have an account on Techdirt (which is not a requirement), you will be logged out, and will be required to go through the password reset process to get back into your account. Yes, this is a bit of a pain for our users, but despite the low likelihood of people here being impacted, we felt it was the right thing to do. Various security researchers have suggested that people change their passwords at other sites as well, and we recommend using a password generator/wallet (some of which will automatically change passwords at many sites upon request) to do so.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story


Read more here

0 comments, click here to add the first

Lindsay Lohan Won't Put Her GTA5 Lawsuit Out Of Its Misery

Furnished content.


Here is something you, the dear Techdirt reader, may not have known about me: I had always thought that there was only one proper spelling for the name "Lindsey." I'm not sure why I thought that, but I was certain that name was only spelled with an "e" before the "y." But, it turns out, spelling it as "Lindsay" is a perfectly common and accepted alternate spelling for the name. And the only reason that I now know that is because Linsday, with an "a," Lohan will not let her lawsuit against Take-Two Interactive -- for appropriating her likeness for several characters, which didn't actually happen -- die its final death.First, a refresher. Lohan decided that a side quest character in Grand Theft Auto 5, which was actually an amalgam of several Hollywood starlet tropes, violated her publicity rights. She also claimed that an entirely different character that was used on some of the game's marketing and packaging was also her and also violated her publicity rights. The case wove its way through the past half-decade, largely with the court and Take-Two casting narrow eyes at the mountains of paperwork Lohan's legal team was able to produce while somehow maintaining an inability to come up with claims that were in any way credible, before the court finally tossed the lawsuit entirely. The court at the time made it clear that Take-Two's characters weren't direct appropriations of Lohan's likeness and that the parody amalgam starlet it had created was clearly protected by the First Amendment.But, for some reason, it appears that LiLo's legal team was, like, "nuh uh!"

Lindsay Lohan has been granted an appeal in her lawsuit against the maker of the Grand Theft Auto video games. Last year, the Appellate Division Courthouse of New York State tossed the case, stating it was without merit. Her appeal was accepted by the New York Court of Appeals on 16 February.

0 comments, click here to add the first

German Regulators Urge Parents To Destroy WiFi Connected Doll Over Surveillance Fears

Furnished content.


For a while now, we've discussed how your children's toys are quickly becoming the latest and greatest privacy threat courtesy of cryptic or half-cooked privacy policies and the treatment of device security as an afterthought; rather part and parcel now for the privacy dumpster fire that is the internet of not-so-smart things era. Numerous privacy groups have complained that smart Barbies and other toys not only now hoover up and monetize childrens' prattle, but leave the door open to the devices' being used nefariously by third parties.The problems culminated in a lawsuit last December here in the States against Genesis Toys, maker of "smart" toys like the My Friend Cayla doll and the i-Que Intelligent Robot. The lawsuit accuses the company of violating COPPA (the Childrens' Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998) by failing to adequately inform parents that their kids' conversations and personal data collected by the toys are being shipped off to servers and third-party companies. The privacy policy for the toys does warn users that companies like Nuance Communications, also a government defense contractor, will receive this data for analysis:

"We may use the information that we collect for our internal purposes to develop, tune, enhance, and improve our products and services, and for advertising and marketing consistent with this Privacy Policy." It continues, If you are under 18 or otherwise would be required to have parent or guardian consent to share information with Nuance, you should not send any information about yourself to us."

"An official watchdog in Germany has told parents to destroy a talking doll called Cayla because its smart technology can reveal personal data. The warning was issued by the Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur), which oversees telecommunications.Researchers say hackers can use an unsecure bluetooth device embedded in the toy to listen and talk to the child playing with it.

0 comments, click here to add the first

Coalition Slams DHS Plans To Demand Social Media Passwords

Furnished content.


Starting last summer, we noted that the Department of Homeland Security had quietly tested the waters to expand the information it requested of travelers entering the United States, to "optionally" include social media handles. By December it was officially in place. And then, just days into the new administration, the idea was floated to expand this program even further to demand passwords to social media accounts.In other words: that escalated quickly. We went from "hey, maybe we could ask people to volunteer what their social media profiles are" to "hey, let's demand all social media accounts, including passwords" in, like, six months.In response, a ton of human rights and civil liberties organizations have posted an open letter condemning this dangerous plan.

This proposal would enable border officials to invade people's privacy by examining years of private emails, texts, and messages. It would expose travelers and everyone in their social networks, including potentially millions of U.S. citizens, to excessive, unjustified scrutiny. And it would discourage people from using online services or taking their devices with them while traveling, and would discourage travel for business, tourism, and journalism.Demands from U.S. border officials for passwords to social media accounts will also set a precedent that may ultimately affect all travelers around the world. This demand is likely to be mirrored by foreign governments, which will demand passwords from U.S. citizens when they seek entry to foreign countries. This would compromise U.S. economic security, cybersecurity, and national security, as well as damage the U.S.'s relationships with foreign governments and their citizenry.Policies to demand passwords as a condition of travel, as well as more general efforts to force individuals to disclose their online activity, including potentially years' worth of private and public communications, create an intense chilling effect on individuals. Freedom of expression and press rights, access to information, rights of association, and religious liberty are all put at risk by these policies.The first rule of online security is simple: Do not share your passwords. No government agency should undermine security, privacy, and other rights with a blanket policy of demanding passwords from individuals.

0 comments, click here to add the first

Another Free Speech Win In Libel Lawsuit Disguised As A Trademark Complaint

Furnished content.


Unless the Supreme Court decides to weigh in on this long-running SLAPP lawsuit (highly unlikely -- and unlikely to be appealed to that level), it looks like it's finally the end of the line for Dr. Edward Tobinick and his quest to silence a critic of his questionable medical practices.Quick recap: Dr. Tobinick claimed he could treat Alzheimer's, strokes, and other neurological maladies by repurposing an immunosuppressant drug. Dr. Steven Novella disagreed with Tobinick's unsubstantiated claims and wrote a few blog posts detailing his problems with Tobinick's treatments.

Tobinick is not a neurologist, and yet he feels it is appropriate for him to treat multiple neurological conditions with an experimental treatment. It is generally considered unethical for physicians to practice outside of their area of competence and expertise. He is trained in internal medicine and dermatology and is certified in those specialties. He has never completed a neurology residency nor is he board certified in neurology.Despite his lack of formal training and certification, he feels he has ushered in a “paradigm shift” in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease – a disease that has proved challenging for actual neurologists for decades.

Dr. Novella’s critical opinions of the Plaintiffs are not outlier views. In fact, the prevailing view seems to be that Dr. Tobnick is, at best, irresponsible. On the first page of Google alone, there are numerous other articles written by other authors, entirely unrelated to the article at hand, that also express critical and unflattering opinions of Tobinick and Plaintiffs’ “medical” practice.

Appellants Edward Lewis Tobinick, MD (“INR CA”), INR PLLC (“INR FL”), and M.D. Edward Tobinick (“Dr. Tobinick”) (collectively, the “Tobinick Appellants”) appeal the district court’s orders striking INR CA’s state law claims pursuant to California’s anti-SLAPP statute, twice denying amendment of the Tobinick Appellants’ complaint, denying relief pursuant to Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (“Rule”) 37, 56(d), and 60 due to potential discovery-related abuses, and granting summary judgment against the Tobinick Appellants on their Lanham Act claim. We affirm the district court in all respects.

The Tobinick Appellants waived their challenge to the district court’s application of California’s anti-SLAPP statute based on the Erie doctrine. The Tobinick Appellants did not raise the Erie claim in their response to Dr. Novella’s special motion to strike INR CA’s state law claims, nor do the Tobinick Appellants now contend that they ever raised the issue before the district court. Moreover, when asked by the district judge “what about the issue of anti-SLAPP statutes applying in diversity cases in federal court?” the Tobinick Appellants’ counsel responded “[t]here seems to be a plethora of case law that suggests that it is allowable in diversity actions in federal court.”No exception to waiver saves the Tobinick Appellants’ claim. The Tobinick Appellants have not identified any miscarriage of justice resulting from a finding of waiver, nor do we see one, given the weakness of the Tobinick Appellants’ state law claims.

As a preliminary matter, there is no factual dispute as to where the articles were displayed online, how the websites were set up, and whether the websites generated revenue through advertisements and membership subscriptions. The Tobinick Appellants describe a complex “funneling” scheme to generate profit for Dr. Novella, in which the Tobinick Appellants claim that the two articles are connected to other websites through hyperlinks in a way that readers are directed to websites that generate revenue for Dr. Novella, such as through advertising or membership subscriptions. This funneling theory, which attempts to connect the articles to revenue sources, relies on such a level of attenuation that it fails to demonstrate economic motivation in the commercial speech context.

To be sure, neither the placement of the articles next to revenue-generating advertising nor the ability of a reader to pay for a website subscription would be sufficient in this case to show a liability-causing economic motivation for Dr. Novella’s informative articles. Both advertising and subscriptions are typical features of newspapers, whether online or in-print. But, the Supreme Court has explained that “[i]f a newspaper’s profit motive were determinative, all aspects of its operations—from the selection of news stories to the choice of editorial position—would be subject to regulation if it could be established that they were conducted with a view toward increased sales. Such a basis for regulation clearly would be incompatible with the First Amendment.”Furthermore, as our sister circuits have recognized, magazines and newspapers often have commercial purposes, but those purposes do not convert the individual articles within these editorial sources into commercial speech subject to Lanham Act liability.

0 comments, click here to add the first

After Losing 10,000 Viewers Per Day, ESPN Finally Buckles To Offering Standalone Streaming Video Service

Furnished content.


For years now, ESPN has been the perfect personification of the cable and broadcast industry's denial regarding cord cutting. Long propped up by a system that forces consumers to buy massive bundles of largely-unwatched channels, ESPN has struggled with the rise of streaming alternatives and sleeker, "skinny" channel bundles. The sports network, which has lost 7 million viewers in just a few years, has been trying to argue that these losses (which caused Disney stock to lose $22 billion in value in just two days at one point) are simply part of some kind of overblown, mass hallucination.Last year, ESPN exec John Skipper even went so far as to suggest that these departing customers weren't worth keeping anyway:

"People trading down to lighter cable packages. That impact hasn't leaked into ad revenue, nor has it leaked into ratings. The people who've traded down have tended to not be sports fans, and have tended to be older and less affluent. We still see people coming into pay TV. It remains the widest spread household service in the country after heat and electricity."

"We could sell ESPN, as a standalone product, but we don't believe it to be a good business," Skipper said. "We're in 90 million homes," he added, "so no, we do not have a contemplation now that we would launch as a standalone."

"Iger affirmed that ESPN will launch a branded standalone streaming service later this year, in partnership with BAMTech, the digital technology firm in which Disney bought a $1 billion stake last year. He also talked up the prospects for ESPN to offset the industry-wide trend of declining subscriber rates via from traditional MVPDs through gains from the handful of upstart streaming channel packages that are in the works."

0 comments, click here to add the first

Court To Cop: You Took 80 Days Away From A Person's Life With A Baseless Warrant, So We're Taking Your Immunity

Furnished content.


In 2009, April Yvette Smith was arrested on drug dealing charges and spent 80 days in jail. The charges were ultimately dropped by the district attorney, but by the time it happened, Smith had already lost her job. The same can't be said for the officer who obtained her arrest warrant. His job was always secure. The only thing he's lost -- seven years after the fact -- is his immunity from Smith's civil rights lawsuit.The chain of events leading to Smith's wrongful arrest are as horrible as they are stupid. Somewhere between Barney Fife and the banal evil of law enforcement ineptitude lies Officer Jason Munday. It starts with a "wired" confidential informant and ends in an indifferent "investigation" that sounds as though Munday just got bored sitting around the office.Here's how it began, as detailed in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals opinion [PDF]:

On March 10, 2009, officers Munday and McGinley conducted an undercover investigation using a confidential informant, Rufus Lynch Sr. The officers searched Lynch, wired him with audio and video recorders, and gave him sixty dollars. Lynch then went to 728 East Pine Street, where he purchased crack cocaine from two individuals. After the transaction, Lynch returned to the officers. He told the officers that he purchased drugs from April Smith, a black female. The detective’s notes identify April Smith as such: “B/F April Smith,” and “April B/F skinny $20 1 rock in plastic, Smith 40s.”

Because the audio recorder had no batteries, it failed to record the transaction. And because the camera wired to Lynch pointed in the wrong direction, the video recording did not capture the drug sale. The video instead shows an unidentified black woman sitting on a front porch, and two other individuals standing on the porch.

At some point during the next nine months, Munday scanned police databases for residents of Lincoln County named April Smith with criminal records. He then stumbled upon April Yvette Smith, a black woman who lived in Lincoln County and had been convicted of selling crack cocaine in 1993, 1997, and 2005. His search also revealed at least two other April Smiths with criminal records. He had no indication that the woman who sold crack cocaine to Lynch in March 2009 had a criminal record, or was even a Lincoln County resident. And the record reflects no further attempt by Munday to investigate Smith or connect her to the crime.

[E]ven ignoring Smith’s weight, a criminal history, common race, common gender, and unfortunately common name is not enough to establish probable cause.[...]When applying for an arrest warrant, Munday simply did not have enough information for any reasonable or prudent person to believe there was probable cause. He lacked any information connecting Smith’s conduct to the contours of the offense, and certainly lacked enough evidence to create any inference more than mere suspicion.

[T]o find the offender, Munday merely ran a broad search in the department’s database of individuals with criminal histories, looking for a woman of the same name. And when he found multiple individuals, at least two of whom were black women named April Smith weighing between 130 and 140 pounds, he chose one for no immediately apparent reason.[...]There is no evidence that Munday attempted to identify Smith as the black woman in the video footage. There is no evidence that the officers showed Lynch a photo of Smith to establish the identification. There is no evidence that the officers investigated Smith herself, or found any indication that Smith frequented the site of the drug sale that day, that month, or at all. Indeed, there is no explanation whatsoever for the nine-month delay between Lynch saying a black woman named April Smith sold crack cocaine to him and the issuance of an arrest warrant for April Yvette Smith.

“Horner was ‘not required to exhaust every potentially exculpatory lead or resolve every doubt’” to show probable cause. Id. at 190 (quoting Miller v. Prince George’s County, 475 F.3d 621, 630 (4th Cir. 2007)). But he still had to conduct some level of investigation. And he did. Munday conducted none.

[E]ven a glance shows that Munday was unreasonable if he believed he had probable cause. Smith did have a criminal history for possessing and selling cocaine. But as discussed above, Munday had no evidence about her conduct whatsoever, let alone any evidence connecting her to the crime in question. It would be unreasonable for any officer to view Munday’s dearth of evidence as sufficient to establish probable cause. As a result, qualified immunity does not apply.

0 comments, click here to add the first

This Week In Techdirt History: February 12th - 18th

Furnished content.


Five Years AgoThis week in 2012, mass anti-ACTA protests broke out across Europe as opposition to the bill continued to swell. Bulgaria joined the list of EU members halting ratification of the treaty and even the European Parliament's president spoke out against it. The EU official who resigned in protest of ACTA explained further what was wrong with it, the head of Mozilla called it a bad way to develop policy, Public Knowledge made a strong call for greater transparency in such agreements, and our own Glyn Moody offered a thorough debunking of the European Commission's list of supposed "myths" about ACTA as well as the idea that there's any meaningful transparency at all. Despite all this, the IFPI and other lobbyists stood by the agreement, even having the gall to claim that the public protests were silencing the democratic process.Ten Years AgoThings were pretty grim on the copyright front this week in 2007. The RIAA was making its first forays into voluntary enforcement deals with ISPs that would forward settlement letters, which would eventually morph into the now-dead six strikes program. The US entertainment industry was trying to get Canada condemned as a pirate haven while its Canadian counterpart was itself pushing for an iPod tax. Microsoft was introducing yet another DRM scheme even as one survey showed that even two-thirds of music industry executives thought ditching DRM would be a good idea. Hollywood was beginning a new crusade against Google, not over YouTube but over ads on P2P websites, and a jury sided with sample troll Bridgeport in yet another abuse of the George Clinton copyrights they own. There was, at least, one victory: an EFF-backed lawsuit forced a prolific DMCA abuser to rescind his baseless takedown notices.Fifteen Years AgoThere was one event this week in 2002 so much more significant than the others that it deserves the sole focus this week. Today, CC licenses are an integral part of the world of digital content, but (because copyright is a disaster) such open and flexible licenses were not always so easy to employ no matter how much a creator might want to. But it was this week fifteen years ago that we first learned that Lawrence Lessig and a team of other people were working on a new project called Creative Commons to provide an alternative to copyright.Two Days AgoWhat, two days ago? Yes: this week, I'm using this space to remind everyone about the Techdirt Survival Fund that we launched on Friday along with our filings in the lawsuit we face. We're very grateful to everyone who has donated so far, and hope you continue to give generously and spread the word so we can continue our fight for free speech.Techdirt is off tomorrow for President's Day. We'll be posting the weekly comment winners at noon, and back to our regular schedule on Tuesday!

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story


Read more here

0 comments, click here to add the first

Order This Weekend To Get The Next Batch Of Techdirt Gear!

Furnished content.

New Gear From Techdirt: I Invented Email »As some of you might have noticed, recent upgrades over at Teespring have allowed us to change the way we offer Techdirt gear. Instead of running individual week-or-two long campaigns that only print and ship once the whole thing is completed, we've now got our logo gear (in two styles) and our I Invented Email gear running on a cycle with new orders printing and shipping every three days, so you don't have to wait nearly as long to get your hands on it. Those of you who already ordered should be getting your shirts, hoodies et al soon!Another batch closes tomorrow (Sunday) night — so order now to get in on the next shipment! The Email gear won't be around forever, so don't wait too long.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story


Read more here

0 comments, click here to add the first

Chinese Trademarks And The Emoluments Clause: Do They Intersect In The Trump Presidency?

Furnished content.


As the world continues to get used to an America with a President Donald Trump at its head, the binary nature of the current political climate has reared its own head in unfortunate ways. One example of this is the stunning speed with which many of those previously ignorant of the emoluments clause of the Constitution, as the Title of Nobility Clause is commonly called, have feigned familiarity with it. As one of my colleagues here termed it, the "emoluments hunting" going on is transparently political in nature, rather than representing a serious effort at protecting the public interest from the shadow of undue influence and sanctioned bribery over our highest political office.Both sides of the American aisle are badly misusing this important constitutional text. Those whose skin might crawl at the mere words "President Trump" seem to find emoluments violations everywhere, even in the most trivial of cases. Trump himself, of course, hasn't helped in the matter, even when he easily could, as he has shirked the norms of disentangling the presidency from the previous life of he who holds that office. Trump, you will recall, has distanced himself from the decision-making aspects of the family business, but not the profits of it. It's an important distinction, which we'll get into in a moment.But first, for the sake of context, let's start with the text of the emolument clause, as well as the framers' reasons for its inclusion in the highest law of our land. The text itself is blessedly short and seemingly simple.

No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States: and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.

"One of the weak sides of republics, among their numerous advantages, is that they afford too easy an inlet to foreign corruption."

In 2006, Trump applied for a trademark for “Trump” in connection with a company providing construction services in China. China’s Trademark Office rejected the application, on the grounds that someone else (Dong Wei) had filed a similar application about two weeks earlier, and had priority under China’s first-come-first-served trademark rule.** There are, apparently, more than 200 other “Trump” marks on the Chinese trademark register — for everything from Trump toilets to Trump pacemakers, Trump condoms and even a “Trump International Hotel” — that have been claimed by persons other than Trump (or any of the Trump Organizations). This, as all good trademark nerds will recognize, is a concrete illustration of a common problem in “first-to-file” jurisdictions, where it can be relatively easy to “reserve” a mark by filing an application, without evidence that you are actually using the mark in question.

It’s not bribery, exactly, that we’re trying to prevent in this clause. We don’t need a special constitutional provision prohibiting office-holders from taking bribes, because taking bribes is already illegal under the common law, and it is also one of the “high crimes and misdemeanors” for which office-holders can be impeached. But it’s a close cousin to bribery; accepting an emolument introduces an improper element — personal gain — into the decision-maker’s calculus, less obviously and overtly than in cases of actual bribery, but no less serious for that.And that is precisely the situation Trump is now in. He has 49 additional applications pending before the Chinese Trademark Office. He has been given a nice, valuable gift, and he could be forgiven for thinking that other similar gifts could follow (if he behaves himself well).

But why should that matter for purposes of the foreign emoluments clause? If France had had a law that gave all visiting Americans a snuff box (if they came at a certain time to the Hotel de Ville and submitted an application), would Jefferson have been able to keep his? Wouldn’t it have been just as troublesome in those circumstances as an outright gift would have been?

0 comments, click here to add the first

Techdirt Survival Fund: I Support Journalism

Furnished content.

Donate to the Techdirt Survival Fund »As we mentioned last month, we are currently being sued for $15 million by Shiva Ayyadurai, represented by Charles Harder, the lawyer who helped bring down Gawker. We have written, at great length, about Ayyadurai's claims and our opinion backed up by detailed and thorough evidence that email existed long before Ayyadurai created any software. Once again, we believe the legal claims in the lawsuit are meritless and we intend to fight them and win. Earlier today, we filed a motion to dismiss (along with our memorandum in support) and a special motion to strike under California's anti-SLAPP law (along with a memorandum in support). You can see all of those below. I encourage you read through them.Unfortunately, the fight itself is incredibly distracting and burdensome. It has taken up a significant amount of my time (and the time of others who work here) over the last month and delayed multiple projects that we were working on, and even forced us to pass on writing about many stories we would have liked to cover. Even though we are confident in winning the legal fight, it has already taken a massive toll on us and our ability to function and report. We have now set up a Techdirt Survival Fund at ISupportJournalism.com, which will allow us to continue our reporting on issues related to free speech and the growing threats to free speech online, while continuing to fight this legal battle. We've put together an all-star steering committee to help us oversee how the funds will be spent, including representatives from both the Freedom of the Press Foundation and EFF.Many of you have already supported us in various ways -- by becoming Techdirt Insiders, supporting us on Patreon or by buying t-shirts. We are so grateful for all initial support we've received, but for us to survive, we unfortunately need to ask for more help. Please consider supporting us via this new fund and spreading the word as well.In this era, especially, strong independent voices in journalism are necessary. Allowing lawsuits to stifle freedom of expression online, silencing voices and creating chilling effects, is a huge threat to how a responsible society functions. Please support Techdirt and support journalism.

Donate to the Techdirt Survival Fund »

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story


Read more here

0 comments, click here to add the first

Pro-Marijuana Student Organization Wins Court Case Over Using School Logos

Furnished content.


We've seen stories in the past in which higher educational institutions attempt to slap down students' use of school iconography when it comes to advocating for marijuana legalization. Trademark law is the preferred bludgeoning tool in many of these cases, regardless of whether or not the uses in question actually pass the muster on the tests for Fair Use. Still, at least in most of these cases the schools are at least quick to act and staunch in their attempts to silence a completely valid political position by the student body.That's not so in the recent dust up between a pro-marijuana student group and Iowa State University. In this particular case, the student group got approval from ISU to use school trademarks, only to have that approval rescinded once a bunch of politicians got involved. The organization created by students is called the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML.

When NORML ISU first formed, in 2012, group members submitted a request for approval of a t-shirt saying "Freedom is NORML at ISU" with a small cannabis leaf above the slogan, and the Trademark Office initially approved it.Soon thereafter, the Des Moines Register ran an article about marijuana legalization in which ISU student Josh Montgomery, then president of the school's NORML chapter, mentioned that ISU was supportive of his organization's efforts and had even approved the aforementioned t-shirt. On the day the Register article ran, the Iowa House Republicans Caucus sent a formal letter to ISU leadership asking whether they had actually approved the NORML t-shirt. By the end of the day, ISU President Steven Leath and his top staff were emailing one another to discuss whether the school could revoke approval of the NORML design. The next day, a representative from the Iowa Governor's Office of Drug Control Policy personally contacted ISU administrators to voice concern with their t-shirt approval policies.

On Monday, the appeals court affirmed the district court's ruling, concluding that students' "attempts to obtain approval to use ISU's trademarks on NORML ISU's merchandise amounted to constitutionally protected speech." And state schools cannot discriminate against constitutionally protected speech on the basis of its viewpoint without proving that this restriction serves a compelling governmental interest and is narrowly tailored to serve that interest.

0 comments, click here to add the first

Court: Unsupported Assertions And Broad Language Aren't Enough To Support Cell Phone Searches

Furnished content.


Another court has stepped up to inform law enforcement that just because criminals are known to use cell phones doesn't mean any cell phone possessed by a suspect is fair game -- warrant or no warrant.This time it's the Superior Court of Delaware making the point. In its suppression of evidence found on a seized cell phone, the Superior Court makes it clear that cell phones are used by everyone -- not just criminals. Not only that, but if an officer is going to seek a warrant that effectively allows them access to the owner's entire life, the warrant needs to contain more specifics and limitations than this one did.During a consensual search of an apartment where a homicide suspect (Qualeel Westcott) was staying, police came across heroin and three mobile phones. All three of the phones were seized. A warrant was obtained to search the content of the phones. But a warrant alone isn't good enough. While a warrant is better than nothing at all, the warrant here -- according to the court -- barely exceeded "nothing at all."While the court does recognize [PDF] there's a good likelihood that phones possessed by suspects will often contain useful evidence of criminal activity, it takes far more than the bare bones assertions made by the officer obtaining the warrant, which did almost nothing to establish a relationship between the phone and suspected criminal activity. (via FourthAmendment.com)

[H]owever, Detective Sergeant Horsman did not expressly state any nexus between Mr. Westcott's ownership of the mobile phone and the existence of evidence of the crimes (including a confession) on that mobile phone. Although the magistrate may draw reasonable inferences from the factual allegations of the affidavit, the leap required here is a long one. The mere fact that a defendant owns a mobile phone is not, in and of itself, sufficient to warrant an inference that evidence of any crime he or she commits may be found on that mobile phone. The affidavit did not provide probable cause for a search.

Here, the search warrant authorizes a search of all "data and cellular logs." This description does not limit the scope of the officer's search of the mobile phones to relevant material and does not place any limitation on the types of "data, media, and files" to be searched.There is also no temporal limitation on the search. The police alleged that the shooting occurred on May 11 and the presence of heroin at the apartment provided probable cause for its recent distribution. The police should have sought a more limited search warrant permitting the search of suitably recent data from the phones.Instead, the application sought a general search "of the three phones." The warrant thus provides broad permission to rummage through the entire digital lives of the phones' owners. Accordingly, it does not contain the level of particularity required under the Constitution of the United States, the Delaware Constitution, or Delaware statute.

0 comments, click here to add the first

New Report On Encryption Confirms There's More Of It, But Still Not Much Of A Problem For Law Enforcement

Furnished content.


CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies) has just released its report on encryption and it comes to the same conclusions many other reports have: encryption is good for everyone and law enforcement fears are overstated and mostly-unrealized. (h/t Kevin Bankston)The report [PDF] opens up with this statement:

It is in the national interest to encourage the use of strong encryption. No one we interviewed in law enforcement or the intelligence community disagreed with this.

While encryption use is growing rapidly, the share of traffic that is both of interest to law enforcement and unrecoverable is still relatively small. Most companies use encryption that allows law enforcement agencies to recover plaintext data. Most e-­mail, if it uses encryption, also allows for recovery. Currently, an estimated 18 ­percent of global communications traffic is end-­to-­end encrypted. It is estimated that 22 ­percent of communications traffic will be end-­to-­end encrypted by 2019.

0 comments, click here to add the first

Canada-EU Trade Deal Ratified By European Union; Now Needs Approval By All Member States' National Parliaments

Furnished content.


As Techdirt reported last November, while TPP and TAFTA/TTIP appear to be dead, the trade deal between Canada and the European Union (CETA) has been slowly working its way through the system. Today, the European Parliament approved the deal, which means that the European Union has completed the formal ratification process. However, for certain aspects of the agreement, notably the corporate sovereignty chapter, further approval is now needed by the national parliaments of all the EU's member states -- which means another 30+ votes that must all go in CETA's favor. That's by no means certain, as resistance has been mounting in a few countries. One of them is Belgium, where the Walloon region won important additional rights that may still be invoked.As we wrote last year, CETA's economic effects are likely to be tiny -- the official estimate is just 0.08% extra GDP in total for the EU -- or even negative. The very limited economic impact is confirmed in the official press release from the European Commission, where the only quantified benefit singled out is the following:

CETA creates new opportunities for EU companies. It will save EU businesses over €500 million a year currently paid in tariffs on goods that are exported to Canada. Almost 99% of these savings start from day one.

The current form of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) that exists in many bilateral trade agreements negotiated by EU governments has been replaced with a new and improved Investment Court System. The new mechanism will be transparent and not based on ad hoc tribunals.

There is clear proof that free trade agreements spur European growth and jobs. As an example, EU exports to South Korea have increased by more than 55% since the EU-Korea trade deal entered into force in 2011. Exports of certain agricultural products increased by 70%, and EU car sales in South Korea tripled over this five-year period.

0 comments, click here to add the first

T-Mobile Backs Off Added Fee For HD Streaming As Unlimited Data Wars Heat Up

Furnished content.


While the U.S. wireless industry isn't quite as competitive as it's portrayed as (non-price competition is generally the law of the land), T-Mobile has still managed to disrupt the sector with a crazy idea: giving users what they want. That was again made evident this week when Verizon was forced to bring back sort-of unlimited data after spending the last several years telling consumers they didn't really want such simple, straightforward plans. Verizon's long-standing belief that it can tell consumers what they're supposed to want took a notable blow this week by any measure.Shortly after Verizon announced it was returning to unlimited data, T-Mobile once again upped the ante, announcing it would no longer be charging an extra fee to stream HD video over the company's LTE Network. According to the announcement, T-Mobile not only stopped charging a premium for HD quality (the de-prioritization of which you may recall T-Mobile lied was happening at several points), but also eased up on the restrictions surrounding tethering (using your phone as a modem).In a statement, T-Mobile CEO John Legere hinted at studies showing that Verizon has nearly lost its network size and speed edge over T-Mobile, which the company had long been using to justify its refusal to more seriously compete:

"I don't blame Verizon for caving. They just lost their network advantage, and they know it and more importantly, more and more customers know it. Their back's against the wall, said John Legere, president and CEO at T-Mobile. This is what the Un-carrier doesdrag the carriers kicking and screaming into the future. Next up, we're going to force them to include monthly taxes and fees. Mark my words."

"T-Mobile responded to our question about HD video day passes by saying, "All customers have to do to get HD is go into the app or online to turn on. It's very easy." Customers still have to enable HD video every 24 hours or it reverts to 480p, a T-Mobile spokesperson told Ars via e-mail. However, the company's Twitter support account says it only will have to be enabled once per month. T-Mobile's press release doesn't clear things up."

0 comments, click here to add the first

Counterpoint: As Denuvo Lauds Its Weeks-Long Control, 20 Year Old Game Still Selling Due To Its Modding Community

Furnished content.


I've covered the saga of Denuvo DRM regularly as of late. The once-vaunted anti-piracy tool, thought to be the end of video game piracy altogether, has instead had its protection window reduced to somewhere between a week and some weeks. Despite the headwinds of reality, the folks behind Denuvo have bravely soldiered on, proclaiming the tool still useful for protecting the ever-important early-release window of new video games.And that's where I think a counterpoint needs to be made. The idea that the most important time in the sales cycle for a new video game is its initial release is almost gospel within the industry. And it's not without its logic, I suppose. Many, many games experience the vast majority of their sales upon initial release. But what if that wasn't the case? And what if by simply embracing the gaming community and releasing control over the product, instead of trying to cling to it with tactics like DRM, the sales cycle for a game became so long that it changed the math?What if more games were like Quake, in other words. And I mean the original Quake, released by id Software some twenty years ago. The game has continued to sell throughout these past two decades, but is going through something of a comeback recently. Why? Well, it's because the modding community that has developed around the game has kept it fresh and relevant.

Quake mapping is consistent, organized and unrelenting. Quake’s community has mostly rallied around a singular download hub for nearly every level, and there’s even a handy launcher that downloads, installs and runs them all for you. Quake map packs tend to be once-a-month events, and they’re of indisputable quality, unshackled by the hardware and engine limits of the 90s.You can pick Quake up from GOG or Steam, but the GOG version works out slightly cheaper since it includes both official expansions—Scourge of Armagon and Dissolution Of Eternity—which are sold separately on the Steam release.

0 comments, click here to add the first

The NBA Announces Plan To Start Its Own eSports NBA League

Furnished content.


eSports has been a thing for some time now. While competitive video gaming was once relegated to some minor tournaments incorporating a few games held in a couple of countries in Asia, eSports has evolved into a wider industry. You can track the progress of it all by its reaching certain checkpoints: viewership numbers that look like those of real-life sporting events, the introduction of college scholarships for eAthletes, and eSports coverage appearing on national broadcasts from the likes of ESPN. The trend line for this has only moved in one direction. And now that appears to be continuing with professional sports leagues getting in on the action.The latest in this is the National Basketball Association's announcement that it will be partnering with Take-Two Interactive to start its own eSports basketball league.

Today, the National Basketball Association announced plans to partner with publisher Take-Two Interactive for an official NBA 2K esports league, which led NBA commissioner Adam Silver to deliver this fantastic quote to the Wall Street Journal: “Think of eBulls against the eKnicks.”

The league, Silver explained, will operate just like the NBA: It’ll have a regular season, a playoff bracket, and a finals matchup. Teams of five players, each with his (or her?) own custom NBA 2K characters, will compete in a five-month season that starts in 2018. There’ll even be a draft, Silver said, although he also noted to the Wall Street Journal that none of the 30 NBA teams have fully committed to this esports league yet. (He expects around half of them to participate in the first year.)

0 comments, click here to add the first

First Look At UK Piracy Alert System: Mostly Benign, Except ISPs Are Requesting Filesharing Software Be Removed By Clients

Furnished content.


Earlier in the year, the public learned ISPs in the UK were partnering with the entertainment industries to send out "educational notices" to internet users suspected of copyright infringement. Having seen this type of "education" take many forms in the past, from silly to threatening, we have since waited to see what form this iteration would take. Well, TorrentFreak got in touch with someone who was notified through the system, and it appears this version is relatively benign.

The redacted sections are those that would identify the individual to whom it was sent, but you get an idea of the actual content in the notice. The links included in the notice are to the subscriber's ISP account, as well as one that takes you to the 'Get it Right Information Portal." It's at that portal that a subscriber will get more information on the suspected act of copyright infringement. While that information is fairly detailed, including such things as file sizes and types, the times and dates of the infringement, and the application used in the alleged infringement... the whole thing still relies on the faulty evidence of an IP address. That's problematic for reasons we've discussed to death here at Techdirt, but given the lack of any threatening language in any of this, it's still all fairly benign.Which is why the individual TorrentFreak spoke with, who admits to committing the act in question, doesn't think the public will be all that impressed with this unsolicited "education."

“I don’t think [the warnings] will work, at least not on a big scale. Maybe they will educate some people who did it by mistake or did it just once but for someone like me there is no hope. But at least the campaign is not aggressive.”

“Your broadband service won’t be affected as a result of receiving this email alert,” Sky assures its subscribers, but it doesn’t stop there. “However, if you continue to share content illegally using your broadband connection, Sky will request that you take immediate steps to remove or disable any file sharing software that is being used to share copyrighted content illegally,” Sky writes.

0 comments, click here to add the first

This Week In Techdirt History: February 5th - 11th

Furnished content.


Five Years AgoThis week in 2012, as congress sat in the wreckage of SOPA, 70 different groups put together a letter telling lawmakers to halt all other efforts to expand intellectual property. Despite this, a number of elected representatives were still inexplicably backing the dead bill, while Lamar Smith was trying to declare all anti-SOPA data as invalid. At the same time, he was being trashed by Politifact for his claims about the impact of piracy, and styling himself as an enemy of the internet by continuing to push a data snooping bill. The RIAA was also on the warpath, attacking Google and Wikipedia and hypocritically complaining about 'misinformation'.Ten Years AgoThis week in 2007, we were digging deeper into Viacom's takedown of 100,000 YouTube videos, and noticing that some were short, innocent home movies that were clearly not infringing. They weren't alone, of course: people were starting to realize how the RIAA's DMCA notices were slapdash and flimsy, and we even saw a bizarre push from the supposed creator of the Electric Slide to get videos of "his" dance off of YouTube. Meanwhile, Steve Jobs personally spoke out against the recording industry's DRM demands, prompting a rather strange response from the RIAA (which was also ludicrously calling for higher prices on CDs).Fifteen Years AgoThis week in 2002, congress was all over the internet with its "dirty dozen" crop of digital regulation bills. Apple and Sony were battling over the future of home entertainment and what the technology would look like, while other companies were avidly pushing home networking to a mostly-uninterested public that didn't really understand what the benefits would be or why they'd want such a setup. Broadband was still failing to gain a real foothold, but spam was going strong and people were trying to figure out how to create the next Silicon Vally. One thing was clear though: the dot-coms that dropped big bucks on Superbowl ads weren't seeing much return on investment.One-Hundred And Eight Years AgoThere are lots of big milestones in the history of consumer electronics and communication technology, and many involve the invention of critical components like the transistor. But this week we celebrate one that gets discussed less often: the invention on February 5th, 1909 of of Bakelite, one of the first synthetic plastics. It was useful for a huge range of applications, but quickly became a critical material in the world of electronics where it formed insulating and non-conducting components like telephone and radio casings, lightbulb sockets and bases, automobile distributor caps and more. Though it began to be replaced in the 1940s, it is still manufactured today.(Fun side fact: Bakelite also became a tool for advanced art forgery, because it could be used to harden paint and make it appear much older than it really was.)

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story


Read more here

0 comments, click here to add the first

UK Police Spy On Journalists At Small Town Paper, Gather One Million Minutes Worth Of Call Data

Furnished content.

The UK's top spy agencies have been known to place journalists under surveillance. Leaked Snowden documents showed GCHQ collected emails from news organizations such as the New York Times, BBC, and Washington Post. More accusations of spying were raised by UK journalists, detailing what appeared to be a clear abuse of the country's anti-terror laws -- laws particularly prone to exploitation thanks to generous loopholes and a minimum of oversight.

It wasn't just spy agencies doing the spying. In the case of the UK journalists, it was also local law enforcement digging through their emails and phone calls in hopes of identifying sources and leakers. More evidence of police surveillance of journalists has come to light, as reported by the Associated Press. Once again, it's law enforcement looking to uncover sources and whistleblowers, rather than terrorists or criminals.

British journalist Julia Breen's scoop about racism at her local police force didn't just get her on the front page, it got her put under surveillance.

In the months that followed Breen's exclusive, investigators logged her calls, those of her colleague Graeme Hetherington and even their modest-sized newspaper's busy switchboard in an effort to unmask their sources. The two were stunned when they eventually discovered the scale of the spying.

"It just never even crossed our minds," Breen said in a recent interview in the newsroom of The Northern Echo, in the English market town of Darlington. "I don't know if I was quite naive, but on a regional newspaper you don't expect your local police force to do this."

Mark Dias, a Cleveland Police officer, came forward and admitted he was the source for Breen's story, but that didn't stop the department from obtaining three days worth of calls to the paper's switchboard, along with logs of calls to and from three of the journalists who worked for the paper.

Once the police were tapped in, they just kept collecting call records.

Although none of the seized records included the content of the individuals' conversations, collectively the length, timing and nature of hundreds of phone calls can be extraordinarily revealing. It was later calculated that the surveillance covered over 1 million minutes of calling time.

And for what? The whistleblower the police were interested in had already outed himself. (And placed under investigation by his department.) Anything beyond that point was purely a fishing expedition for new sources/whistleblowers -- presumably in hopes of heading off more negative press. In addition to the journalists and Dias, Cleveland Police gathered information on communications with a police union official, and a lawyer that Dias and the union official were working with.

Since this came to light, the department has apologized to all of its snooping targets. It has also promised to perform an internal review of its last six years of policework to see if other surveillance abuses have taken place. This was more likely prompted by a court decision calling the surveillance unlawful than the department's innate desire to do the right thing. It will be doing it now, but only after being caught doing things it shouldn't have been doing.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story


Read more here

0 comments, click here to add the first

Patent Troll Sues Netflix, Soundcloud, Vimeo And More For Allowing Offline Viewing

Furnished content.


Joe Mullin over at Ars Technica has the story of a patent troll, Blackbird Technologies, which was founded by (of course) two patent attorneys to buy up patents and shakedown companies with legal threats. Blackbird Technologies has now sued Netflix, Soundcloud, Vimeo and a variety of other companies over US Patent 7,174,362, issued in 2007 (filed for in 2000) on a "method and system for supplying products from pre-stored digital data in response to demands transmitted via computer network."Specifically, the lawsuits are targeting various "download to consume offline" features on various content websites. Netflix, of course, just famously launched that long-requested feature, which is useful in cases where people have slow or no internet access (e.g., taking your laptop on an airplane without internet access). If anyone thinks that this kind of feature was developed because of this patent, they're being delusional. And that's especially true because the patent itself isn't even about downloading content from the network for offline viewing. Instead, it's actually about someone ordering some content over the internet, having that content automatically burned to a CD-ROM and having that CD-R shipped off to the person. As Mullin notes, the true irony here, is that the guy who got the patent in the first place, Sungil Lee, may have been inspired by Netflix, which already had a very popular business shipping DVD's ordered online to customers:

Context is important when looking at Lee's patent. It's extremely unlikely an inventor writing up the idea of a web-based system for creating and shipping CD-Rs, in the year 2000, was not acutely aware of Netflixwhose DVDs-in-the-mail business had begun blowing up. If there was any copying at all, it was Lee copying Netflix's idea. But in the upside-down world of patent trolls, it's Blackbird who gets to claim the mantle of defending innovation, while it accuses Netflix of being the copycat.

0 comments, click here to add the first

Wyden, Other Senators Warn That Net Neutrality Repeal Will Make SOPA Backlash Look Like A Fireside Snuggle

Furnished content.


We've repeatedly noted how for some stupid reason, net neutrality is treated as a partisan issue in Washington -- with Democrats (generally) in support, and Republicans (generally) opposing the idea. It's an absurd, myopic paradigm given the fact that net neutrality has broad, bipartisan consumer support. Most people want the internet to function as a relatively-level playing field. Everybody wants to be able to access the content and services of their choice without interference from the likes of Comcast and AT&T, who seem hell bent on using their monopoly over the last mile to their anti-competitive advantage.With the looming specter of a net neutrality rule repeal under Trump, the GOP, and new FCC Boss Ajit Pai, a number of Democratic Senators (including Ron Wyden and Ed Markey) held a press event (video) warning that if the GOP and FCC try to repeal net neutrality, it will result in a "political firestorm" they may not be entirely prepared for. The Senators were quick to recall that roughly 4 million consumers reached out in support of the FCC's net neutrality rules a few years ago, a number Markey proclaimed would look "miniscule" in comparison to the looming backlash against the rules' repeal.Markey's office also issued a statement saying that he'd fight tooth and nail against repeal of the rules, in whatever form that arrives:

"Despite what the cable companies and Republicans say about net neutrality, there is nothing broken that needs fixing, said Senator Markey, a member of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. I will oppose any regulatory efforts, including repeal, forbearance, interpretative rule, or refusal to enforce existing rules, as well as any legislative efforts to undo or roll back the Open Internet Order. We stand united in this fight to ensure that all Americans have access to a free and open Internet."

0 comments, click here to add the first

Court Unanimously Keeps Lower Court's Injunction Against Trump's Immigration Order In Place

Furnished content.


Let's start this out by being quite clear: this is still the beginning of a fairly long legal process. But, the 9th Circuit appeals court has just unanimously ruled that the lower' court's injunction barring Donald Trump's executive order on immigration should remain in place. In short: the federal government remains barred from actually carrying out the order. This does not mean, as our President has wrongly suggested, that people are free to randomly enter the country in droves. They still have to go through the already thorough vetting and visa process. It just means that the blanket ban that caused so much havoc cannot be used to bar entry into the country. We were among those who signed onto an amicus brief for the wider tech industry, asking the court to rule this way, so we're happy they did.The court is pretty clear, and it's somewhat surprising that the ruling was unanimous. While it's always difficult to tell how judges are going to rule based solely on oral arguments, it certainly felt like two judges were leaning towards the states' argument and one towards the federal government's. But when it was time to write an opinion, all three came down on the side of the states. Not only that, but they did it per curiam, meaning that the entire panel "wrote" the opinion (rather than singling out the specific judge who wrote it). This can be seen as the three judges showing a united front, and also a pre-emption towards the likelihood of our thin skinned President picking directly on one of the three as somehow being responsible (as he did in earlier tweets about the case). Either way, the judges stood together, noting that the federal government's argument was weak:

To rule on the Government's motion, we must considerseveral factors, including whether the Government hasshown that it is likely to succeed on the merits of its appeal,the degree of hardship caused by a stay or its denial, and thepublic interest in granting or denying a stay. We assess thosefactors in light of the limited evidence put forward by bothparties at this very preliminary stage and are mindful that ouranalysis of the hardships and public interest in this caseinvolves particularly sensitive and weighty concerns on bothsides. Nevertheless, we hold that the Government has notshown a likelihood of success on the merits of its appeal, norhas it shown that failure to enter a stay would causeirreparable injury, and we therefore deny its emergencymotion for a stay.

Most relevant for our purposes, schools have beenpermitted to assert the rights of their students.... As in those cases, the interestsof the States' universities here are aligned with theirstudents. The students' educational success is inextricablybound up in the universities' capacity to teach them.... And the universities' reputationsdepend on the success of their professors' research. Thus, asthe operators of state universities, the States may assert notonly their own rights to the extent affected by the ExecutiveOrder but may also assert the rights of their students andfaculty members.We therefore conclude that the States have alleged harmsto their proprietary interests traceable to the ExecutiveOrder. The necessary connection can be drawn in at mosttwo logical steps: (1) the Executive Order prevents nationalsof seven countries from entering Washington andMinnesota; (2) as a result, some of these people will notenter state universities, some will not join those universitiesas faculty, some will be prevented from performing research,and some will not be permitted to return if they leave. Andwe have no difficulty concluding that the States' injurieswould be redressed if they could obtain the relief they askfor: a declaration that the Executive Order violates theConstitution and an injunction barring its enforcement. TheGovernment does not argue otherwise.

We are satisfied that in the extraordinary circumstancesof this case, the district court's order possesses the qualitiesof an appealable preliminary injunction. The partiesvigorously contested the legal basis for the TRO in writtenbriefs and oral arguments before the district court. Thedistrict court's order has no expiration date, and no hearinghas been scheduled. Although the district court has recentlyscheduled briefing on the States' motion for a preliminaryinjunction, it is apparent from the district court's schedulingorder that the TRO will remain in effect for longer thanfourteen days. In light of the unusual circumstances of thiscase, in which the Government has argued that emergencyrelief is necessary to support its efforts to prevent terrorism,we believe that this period is long enough that the TROshould be considered to have the qualities of a reviewablepreliminary injunction.

The Government contends that the district court lackedauthority to enjoin enforcement of the Executive Orderbecause the President has unreviewable authority tosuspend the admission of any class of aliens. TheGovernment does not merely argue that courts owesubstantial deference to the immigration and nationalsecurity policy determinations of the political branchesanuncontroversial principle that is well-grounded in ourjurisprudence. See, e.g., Cardenas v. United States, 826 F.3d1164, 1169 (9th Cir. 2016) (recognizing that the power toexpel or exclude aliens [is] a fundamental sovereign attributeexercised by the Government's political departments largelyimmune from judicial control (quoting Fiallo v. Bell,430 U.S. 787, 792 (1977))); see also Holder v.Humanitarian Law Project, 561 U.S. 1, 33-34 (2010)(explaining that courts should defer to the political brancheswith respect to national security and foreign relations).Instead, the Government has taken the position that thePresident's decisions about immigration policy, particularlywhen motivated by national security concerns, areunreviewable, even if those actions potentially contraveneconstitutional rights and protections. The Governmentindeed asserts that it violates separation of powers for thejudiciary to entertain a constitutional challenge to executiveactions such as this one.There is no precedent to support this claimedunreviewability, which runs contrary to the fundamentalstructure of our constitutional democracy.

Indeed, federal courts routinely review theconstitutionality ofand even invalidateactions taken bythe executive to promote national security, and have done soeven in times of conflict.

The Fifth Amendment of the Constitution prohibits theGovernment from depriving individuals of their life,liberty, or property, without due process of law. U.S.Const. amend. V. The Government may not deprive aperson of one of these protected interests without providingnotice and an opportunity to respond, or, in other words,the opportunity to present reasons not to proceed with thedeprivation and have them considered....The Government has not shown that the Executive Orderprovides what due process requires, such as notice and ahearing prior to restricting an individual's ability to travel.Indeed, the Government does not contend that the ExecutiveOrder provides for such process. Rather, in addition to thearguments addressed in other parts of this opinion, theGovernment argues that most or all of the individualsaffected by the Executive Order have no rights under the DueProcess Clause.

The procedural protections provided by the FifthAmendment's Due Process Clause are not limited tocitizens. Rather, they appl[y] to all 'persons' within theUnited States, including aliens, regardless of whether theirpresence here is lawful, unlawful, temporary, or permanent.Zadvydas v. Davis, 533 U.S. 678, 693 (2001). These rightsalso apply to certain aliens attempting to reenter the UnitedStates after travelling abroad. Landon v. Plasencia, 459 U.S.21, 33-34 (1982). The Government has provided noaffirmative argument showing that the States' proceduraldue process claims fail as to these categories of aliens. Forexample, the Government has failed to establish that lawfulpermanent residents have no due process rights whenseeking to re-enter the United States. See id. ([T]hereturning resident alien is entitled as a matter of due processto a hearing on the charges underlying any attempt toexclude him. (quoting Rosenberg v. Fleuti, 374 U.S. 449,460 (1963))). Nor has the Government established that theExecutive Order provides lawful permanent residents withconstitutionally sufficient process to challenge their denialof re-entry. See id. at 35 ([T]he courts must evaluate theparticular circumstances and determine what procedureswould satisfy the minimum requirements of due process onthe re-entry of a permanent resident alien.).

At this point, however, wecannot rely upon the Government's contention that theExecutive Order no longer applies to lawful permanentresidents. The Government has offered no authorityestablishing that the White House counsel is empowered toissue an amended order superseding the Executive Order signed by the President and now challenged by the States,and that proposition seems unlikely.Nor has the Government established that the WhiteHouse counsel's interpretation of the Executive Order isbinding on all executive branch officials responsible forenforcing the Executive Order. TheWhite House counsel isnot the President, and he is not known to be in the chain ofcommand for any of the Executive Departments. Moreover,in light of the Government's shifting interpretations of theExecutive Order, we cannot say that the currentinterpretation by White House counsel, even if authoritativeand binding, will persist past the immediate stage of theseproceedings.

First, we decline to limit the scope of the TRO to lawfulpermanent residents and the additional category morerecently suggested by the Government, in its replymemorandum, previously admitted aliens who aretemporarily abroad now or who wish to travel and return tothe United States in the future. That limitation on its faceomits aliens who are in the United States unlawfully, andthose individuals have due process rights as well. Zadvydas,533 U.S. at 693. That would also omit claims by citizenswho have an interest in specific non-citizens' ability to travelto the United States....There might be persons covered by the TRO who do nothave viable due process claims, but the Government'sproposed revision leaves out at least some who do.

Second, we decline to limit the geographic scope of theTRO. The Fifth Circuit has held that such a fragmentedimmigration policy would run afoul of the constitutional andstatutory requirement for uniform immigration law andpolicy.... At this stage of the litigation, we do not need to anddo not reach such a legal conclusion for ourselves, but wecannot say that the Government has established that acontrary view is likely to prevail. Moreover, even if limitingthe geographic scope of the injunction would be desirable,the Government has not proposed a workable alternativeformof the TRO that accounts for the nation's multiple portsof entry and interconnected transit system and that wouldprotect the proprietary interests of the States at issue herewhile nevertheless applying only within the States' borders.

The Government has not shown that a stay is necessaryto avoid irreparable injury. Nken, 556 U.S. at 434. Althoughwe agree that the Government's interest in combatingterrorism is an urgent objective of the highest order, Holderv. Humanitarian Law Project, 561 U.S. 1, 28 (2010), theGovernment has done little more than reiterate that fact.Despite the district court's and our own repeated invitationsto explain the urgent need for the Executive Order to beplaced immediately into effect, the Government submittedno evidence to rebut the States' argument that the districtcourt's order merely returned the nation temporarily to theposition it has occupied for many previous years.The Government has pointed to no evidence that anyalien from any of the countries named in the Order hasperpetrated a terrorist attack in the United States. Ratherthan present evidence to explain the need for the ExecutiveOrder, the Government has taken the position that we mustnot review its decision at all. We disagree, as explainedabove.

By contrast, the States have offered ample evidence thatif the Executive Order were reinstated even temporarily, itwould substantially injure the States and multiple otherparties interested in the proceeding. ...When the Executive Order was in effect, the States contendthat the travel prohibitions harmed the States' universityemployees and students, separated families, and stranded theStates' residents abroad. These are substantial injuries andeven irreparable harms.

0 comments, click here to add the first

Funcom Responds Well To Mixup Over Denuvo DRM Resulting In Piracy Of Conan Exiles Game

Furnished content.


With the way the past couple of weeks have gone for Denuvo, the DRM that was supposed to end piracy but instead only ended the industry's brief resurgence in faith in DRM, you would be forgiven if you thought this was going to be yet another post about another Denuvo-protected game being cracked and released to the pirating masses. This isn't that kind of story. Instead, it's the story of game publisher Funcom accidentally stripping Denuvo out of the latest build of its early access game, Conan Exiles, and having that be released to the pirating masses.

In Conan Exiles' case, Denuvo Anti-Tamper was temporarily removed - and accidentally. An updated version of the game was suddenly without protection. Denuvo Anti-Tamper returned soon enough, via another update, but not quickly enough. Pirates pounced and the damage was done.Remember, Conan Exiles isn't solely an online game, which tend to prevent piracy by requiring game versions to match that of the official servers. In Conan Exiles you can host your own worlds and play them alone or with others, or join their private worlds. In other words, a pirate can play the game.

"There is unfortunately not much we can do about those who choose to download and play unauthorised copies," Funcom said, "but we hope they make the jump to the official version so they can stay up to date with the latest patches and improvements. Being an Early Access title, there will be a lot of updates going forward!"

0 comments, click here to add the first

Iowa Appeals Court Doubles Down On Curbing Police Abuse Of 'Inventory Search' Warrant Exceptions

Furnished content.


As we're well aware, the minute you get behind the wheel of your vehicle, your Fourth Amendment protections take a nosedive. Having a vehicle on a public street makes everything viewed through the windows a perfectly acceptable warrantless search. Add to that the number of traffic violations -- real or imagined -- that can act as a pretense for an investigative stop, and driving becomes a warrantless search waiting to happen.While the Supreme Court did scale back some extracurricular law enforcement exploration with its Rodriguez decision, all it takes is an unconfirmable "smells like marijuana" or some other indicator of suspicion (talking too much, talking too little, making eye contact, not making eye contact, interstate travel, etc.) to turn a stop that shouldn't have been prolonged past the point of issuing a ticket into a full-fledged search of a vehicle.Then there's this wrinkle. If you're arrested or otherwise told to leave your vehicle, law enforcement is allowed to take the vehicle into custody (so to speak). At some point, the officer having the vehicle moved performs an inventory of the vehicle's contents. This is to make sure that when the vehicle is returned to the driver, there's no dispute as to whether or not your Creedence tapes and "business papers" went missing while in the hands of law enforcement.What it's not supposed to be is a warrantless search. But because law enforcement is required to perform inventories of everything of value in the car, it often becomes one. And once something is inevitably discovered through the course of an inventory, it becomes very difficult to have the evidence thrown out. After all, law enforcement is doing what it's supposed to do. Too bad the seized vehicle had so much contraband in it.What can happen, however, is courts finding the inventory-taking process to be pretextual in and of itself. If there was no reason to impound the vehicle -- or officers appeared to be clearly motivated by something other than providing a list of contained items, the "inventory exception" can be overcome. FourthAmendment.com compiles two recent judicial unicorns into one handy post. Both come from the same state appeals court (Iowa), which may suggest a history of law enforcement abuse of this exception is finally being addressed.In the first case [PDF], the defendant was approached by a police officer who said he was going to ticket him for improper parking. Since the defendant was unable to produce proof of insurance, this escalated to the officer impounding the vehicle. The defendant refused to consent to a search of the vehicle. The officer said he was just going to inventory the car and proceeded to do so. A gun and bullets were found during the inventory. The defendant challenged the evidence as a Fourth Amendment violation.The court agreed with the defendant's argument -- seizing on the same legal technicality. Under state law, if a vehicle is to be seized for lack of insurance, the officer must first remove the license plates and registration before having the vehicle moved. This officer never took that step. As the court sees it, not following this step indicates the inventory search was pretextual. It was just a thinly-disguised investigative -- and warrantless -- search.

A plain reading of the statute requires the citation for failure to produce proof of insurance be issued and license plates and registration receipt be removed before the vehicle is impounded. It is unclear from our record as to whether or not Officer Carter issued Juarez-Martinez a citation for failure to provide proof of insurance before impounding the car. In any event, it is clear that Officer Carter failed to remove the license plates and registration receipt before impounding the car. Because the officer overlooked the legislatively imposed requirements for the impoundment, it appears he was motivated solely by an investigatory purpose. See Huisman, 544 N.W.2d at 439. We therefore conclude the impoundment was invalid and, accordingly, the inventory search was invalid.

After Deputy Davis left the scene with Baudler, Officer Halverson and Assistant Chief Miller searched the truck. The officers found a glass pipe and methamphetamine inside a sunglasses case, and the search was stopped. The officers offered differing reasons for the search. Deputy Davis testified when he left the property it was his intention that the truck would be impounded.In contrast, in his incident report Officer Halverson stated they “were requested by Deputy Davis to search the vehicle because he stated the plates did not come back to the proper truck.” At the hearing on the motion to suppress, Officer Halverson testified he searched the vehicle because Deputy Davis requested the officers to do so. He stated after they discovered the methamphetamine they contacted Deputy Davis and informed him of what they had found, and the search was stopped. Officer Halverson testified it was his understanding the truck was going to be impounded.

Deputy Davis told me he needed [the truck] searched incident to arrest. At that point the truck was locked and I told [Baudler’s son] that we needed to look through the vehicle before he took it. . . . After [Deputy Davis] told us—asked us to search the vehicle incident to arrest, [Baudler’s son] unlocked it for me. I stood in the door, kind of looked in the vehicle and I called Officer Halverson over to assist me with the search. Almost within seconds he found some methamphetamine and a pipe . . . . At that point I told Officer Halverson that I saw numerous tools, Milwaukee tools, plus like a collection of vehicle titles. I told him about that. Then I went back to my car, called Deputy Davis and told him we found what we believed was methamphetamine. He said we were going to impound the vehicle, so we stopped the search.

Officer Halverson testified the Winterset Police Department also has an unwritten inventory policy. Officer Halverson stated the inventory policy is that:"[a]nytime we arrest someone and they have a vehicle there, we impound the vehicle. We do a complete inventory of the interior contents of the vehicle and the condition of the exterior of the vehicle and then it is—we stay with it until a tow company comes and then we follow it to the police department where it gets held."However, on cross-examination, Officer Halverson admitted he has arrested individuals who are driving and let the passenger take the vehicle home, has allowed people to keep their vehicles in their driveway after being arrested, and has allowed a vehicle to remain at a friend’s house after an arrest with the consent of the homeowner.

[H]ere, the vague inventory “policies” related by Deputy Davis and Officer Halverson grant officers unlimited discretion to arbitrarily conduct searches. Basically, the officers could choose to impound any vehicle seized.

We conclude the conflicting testimony of the officers, as well as the timeline of events surrounding the search of the truck, indicate the officers searched the truck for the sole purpose of investigating for suspected criminal activity beyond the scope of the search warrant. Thus, we find the inventory exception does not apply to overcome the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement due to the vague impound policies and improper motive.

0 comments, click here to add the first

Congress Tries Once Again To Require Warrants To Search Emails

Furnished content.


The efforts to reform ECPA -- the Electronic Communications and Privacy Act -- have been going on for basically two decades at this point. The law, which was passed in 1986, has a whole bunch of problems, with the biggest one (as we've discussed dozens of times) being that it considers any email that's been on a server for more than 180 days "abandoned," and thus freely searchable by law enforcement without a warrant. That's because there was no concept of cloud computing back in 1986. People who got email "retrieved" those emails off of a server and downloaded them to local storage. Many in Congress have been trying to fix this for so, so, so many years. And it always gets blocked. The IRS and the SEC have both been fairly proactive in trying to block ECPA reform bills that will require a warrant (funny: I thought it was the 4th Amendment that made such a warrant necessary, but, silly me, no one cares about the 4th Amendment any more).Last year, a plan to fix ECPA, called the Email Privacy Act, with an astounding 315 co-sponsors, passed the House unanimously. As we noted at the time, this is fairly incredible. In these contentious times -- especially on issues related to surveillance and law enforcement -- to have a unanimous vote on a law that says "get a warrant" if you want access to emails, is quite incredible. But, of course, even with that much support on that side of Congress, the Senate has a way of killing ECPA reform each and every year. Last year, a few Senators -- including Jeff Sessions, who is likely to be our next Attorney General -- tried to bury it with ridiculous amendments that would expand surveillance.On Monday, the reintroduced Email Privacy Act easily passed the House via a voice vote, showing that our Congressional Members still recognize how important this is. Of course, now it gets to go back to the Senate, and we saw how well that worked last year. And then we have to believe that President Trump will sign the bill. Stranger things have happened, of course, but it still seems like a longshot that real ECPA reform will become law this year. It's great that Rep. Kevin Yoder, along with Reps. Jared Polis, Bob Goodlatte, John Conyers, Ted Poe, Suzan DelBene, Will Hurd, Jerry Nadler, Doug Collins and Judy Chu keep pushing this bill. I disagree with many of the folks on that list on a number of other issues we cover, but the fact that they're willing to support basic 4th Amendment concepts for email is worthy of recognition. Now, hopefully, the Senate won't try to muck it up again.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story


Read more here

0 comments, click here to add the first

Court Tells Melania Trump She Can't Sue The Daily Mail In Maryland, So She Refiles In New York

Furnished content.


Disclaimer: As you probably already know, the lawyer in this story, Charles Harder, is the lawyer in the ongoing lawsuit against us.Back in September of last year, we wrote about how our now First Lady Melania Trump, represented by Charles Harder, had sued the Daily Mail and some blogger in Maryland. As we noted at the time, the choice of Maryland for the venue was odd -- since the Daily Mail is a UK publication and Trump (at the time) lived in NY. We speculated that the blogger -- Webster Griffin Tarpley, who was not widely known -- may have been included solely to try to get the case into a Maryland court. As we noted at the time, Maryland's anti-SLAPP law is notoriously weak. In a profile on Harder last year, the Hollywood Reporter noted that he's well aware of the differences in state laws:

In his offices, Harder keeps charts mapping the differences in libel and privacy laws throughout the country. He also has become a pro on where to strategically file cases.

In this case the Article was researched, written for and published in a United Kingdom newspaper and published on a general news website that did not focus on Maryland. The Article was uploaded by MailOne staff in London and MailOne staff in New York posted the Article to the U.S. homepage of MailOnline. No reporter or editor traveled to Maryland in the course of reporting, editing, or publishing the Article.... There are no advertising or business acts conducted by MMI that were purposefully directed to Maryland. Further there is nothing about the parties that connects the case against MMI to Maryland -- MMI does not have an office in Maryland, Plaintiff does not live in Maryland, and the witnesses are not located in Maryland. It would be unreasonable as a matter of constitutional due process for this Court to exert jurisdiction over MMI or MailOnline in the State of Maryland.

As a result of Defendant's publication of defamatory statements about Plaintiff, Plaintiff's brand has lost significant value, and major business opportunities that were otherwise available to her have been lost and/or substantially impacted. The economic damage to Plaintiff's brand, and licensing, marketing and endorsement opportunities caused by the publication of Mail Online's defamatory article, is multiple millions of dollars. Plaintiff had the unique, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, as an extremely famous and well-known person, as well as a former professional model and brand spokesperson, and successful businesswoman, to launch a broad-based commercial brand in multiple product categories, each of which could have garnered mutli-million dollar business relationships for a multi-year term during which Plaintiff is one of the most photographed women in the world. These product categories would have included, among other things, apparel, accessories, shoes, jewelry, cosmetics, hair care, skin care and fragrance.

Plaintiff is involved in many business ventures involving the licensing of her name and likeness, and relying upon her valuable reputation, and the defamatory publication foreseeably caused substantial damage to her business, career, reputation and her actual and prosepctive economic relationships. As a result of the conduct of Daily Mail, Plaintiff has been damaged in an amount to be proven at trial.

0 comments, click here to add the first

Michigan Lawmakers Looking To Amend State Constitution To Add Protections For Electronic Data

Furnished content.


A ballot measure introduced by a bipartisan group of Michigan legislators is sure to encounter some heavy resistance on its trip through the lawmaking machinery. The proposal amends the state's constitution to add a warrant requirement to data that law enforcement is used to obtaining without one.

House Joint Resolution C (HJRC) was introduced by Rep. Jim Runestad (R-White Lake) along with 11 bipartisan co-sponsors. If approved, voters would have the opportunity to alter Article 1, Section 11 of the Michigan state constitution in the following manner:The person, houses, papers, and possessions, and electronic data and communications of every person shall be secure from unreasonable searches and seizures. No warrant to search any place or to seize any person or things or to access electronic data or communications shall issue without describing them, nor without probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation. The provisions of this section shall not be construed to bar from evidence in any criminal proceeding any narcotic drug, firearm, bomb, explosive or any other dangerous weapon, seized by a peace officer outside the curtilage of any dwelling house in this state.

Because the federal government relies heavily on partnerships and information sharing with state and local law enforcement agencies, passage the amendment could potentially hinder federal surveillance programs that depend on state cooperation and information gathering.State and local law enforcement agencies regularly provide surveillance data to the federal government through ISE and Fusion Centers. They collect and store information from cell-site simulators (AKA “stingrays”), automated license plate readers (ALPRs), drones, facial recognition systems, and even “smart” or “advanced” power meters in homes. Requiring warrants to gather such data would undoubtedly limit the amount of information collected by state and local law enforcement. Information that doesn’t exist cannot be shared with the feds.

0 comments, click here to add the first

Wawa Versus Dawa: Trademark Dispute Blamed On A Need To Police That Doesn't Exist

Furnished content.


We've made the point before. In the pantheon of trademark disputes, the most commonly trotted out excuse for overt protectionism is nothing but a headfake. While companies often proclaim their bullying actions are a requirement under trademark law's provision for active policing of infringement, the fact is that this requirement does not mandate that companies roadblock any and all similar uses to their marks. Instead, the idea is that trademark holders cannot allow actual infringements to go unchallenged.For an example of the difference, we can point to the current dispute between two companies in the food mart business, Dawa Food Mart and Wawa Inc. The former is a single store in New Jersey that has operated for two years now. The latter is a mid-sized chain that only recently decided that Dawa infringed on its trademarks.

According to The Courier-Post, Wawa has filed a federal trademark infringement lawsuit against Dawa Food Mart, located at 15 Lafayette Street in Paterson, Passaic County.The Korean owner of Dawa Food Mart, identified only as Han in the report, explained to the Courier-Post that "Dawa" means "welcome" in his native language. The shop has been open for about two years now.

"Wawa spokeswoman Lori Bruce told the newspaper that the lawsuit is about fulfilling an "obligation to protect consumers from any likelihood of confusion" and protecting "the brand name," symbolized by the Canada goose whose name is a direct translation from the Native American language used in the region."

0 comments, click here to add the first

This Week In Techdirt History: January 29th - February 4th

Furnished content.


Five Years AgoThis week in 2012, we watched as the reaction to ACTA continued to heat up. Though the opposition was in some danger of straying off course, there were some big developments: the Slovenian Ambassador apologized for signing the deal, the Polish Prime Minister suspended all efforts to ratify it, Bulgarian MPs followed in the footsteps of Polish MPs the week before and protested with Guy Fawkes masks, and widespread protests began to break out across Europe.Meanwhile, the TPP was also on the docket for the week, with a stark example of crony capitalism presented by the USTR getting civil society groups kicked out of the Hollywood hotel where it was hobnobbing with entertainment industry elites. We pointed out that SOPA/PIPA should be a pretty good lesson on why these negotiations need to be way, way more transparent.Also, this was the week we released the first Sky Is Rising report.Ten Years AgoThis week in 2007, the world was still reacting to the newly Google-owned YouTube. The plans for revenue sharing with video creators were brewing, and while NBC was embracing the promotional value of YouTube clips, Viacom made its big move of telling Google to yank 100,000 videos off the service, setting the stage for the big legal feud to follow.Also this week in 2007: Sony BNG reached a deal with the FTC for violating federal law with its horrible rootkit DRM, the RIAA had a SWAT team raid an Atlanta mix-tape producer on questionable legal grounds, Google was offering half-apologies for aiding Chinese censorship, and Adult Swim's now-infamous marketing stunt shut down the city of Boston.Fifteen Years AgoFive years earlier in 2002, Google made a much more popular decision when it announced it would not use pop-up ads. Of course, that seems obvious now, as did other things that were fresh at the time, like the convergence of wireless devices and the possibility of having a laptop as your only computer. In the world of secondary effects from the dot-com bubble bursting, we saw Cisco grappling with a huge gray market for used IT products and folks to dropped out to work in tech going back to school to finish their degrees.Also, because nothing is truly new: folks were commenting on how news was getting less factual and more opinionated.One-Hundred And Seventy Years AgoThough not in fact headquartered in the city itself, Techdirt does a whole lot of its business in and around San Francisco — so this week we're marking a milestone in that city's history. It was on January 30th, 1847 that its name was changed from Yerba Buena to San Francisco by Lt. Washington Allon Bartlett.

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story


Read more here

0 comments, click here to add the first

HowStuffWorks Attempts To Explain Why Advertisers Use Super Bowl Euphemisms, But I have A Simpler Explanation

Furnished content.


It's common knowledge at this point why advertisers start to go wonky after the new year. We've long talked about how all kinds of groups and companies suddenly begin playing the euphemism game when it comes to the Super Bowl, America's annual celebration of brain trauma. Everyone, from comedians to beer makers to tech companies, goes to great lengths to wink at everyone as they all refer to the Super Bowl by any name other than its own. Why? Well, because the NFL has a trademark on the term, which allows it to restrict the user of the phrase only to its sponsorship partners... except that that's not remotely true and isn't how trademark law works at all. Instead, the only real prohibition is on the implication that a company is an official sponsor of the NFL when it isn't. Beyond that, simply calling the game what it's called isn't trademark infringement.But this is confusing enough that this year the website HowStuffWorks has done an entire piece to explain to an almost certainly confused public why companies are pretending that nobody knows what they're talking about when they say "the big game" instead of "the Super Bowl." It's a post that deserves a rebuttal, which I will helpfully provide.

The Super Bowl is a registered trademark of the NFL. And the football league also owns the copyright to the telecast of the game. That's why advertisers use unregistered phrases like "the Big Game" or "the football championship" when hawking a furniture sale or happy hour, for instance. The NFL allows the Super Bowl sponsors and the network airing the game that year to use the phrase, but they pay heavily for it.

"The NFL wants to make sure they keep their sponsorships the way they want to control who has use of the phrase," says Anderson. "That way people can know what's directly connected to the NFL and their product." Trademark infringement occurs when someone uses a trademarked term (like "Super Bowl") in a way that may cause a person to wrongly infer an official connection between the company the trademark belongs to and the product advertised.

It’s unnecessarily stupid for the NFL, which should want “Super Bowl” said as often as possible, because until 100% of TVs new and old are tuned to the Big Game, the league has not accomplished its goal of complete domination of American consciousness. Best Buy wants to have a Super Bowl sale? Great! That’s a free ad for the NFL, which should thank a non-sponsor for promoting their product.This is not, however, how the NFL thinks. This is the same league that banned its own teams from posting GIFs of game highlights, ostensibly to protect its TV partners, as if any GIF-worthy play isn’t being turned into a GIF by a thousand different people and going viral anyway. Shouldn’t the league want its teams to reap the benefits of all those clicks, which convert to social media followers, which convert to deeper embedding of the product, through official channels, in the minds of consumers?

0 comments, click here to add the first

Good News: Nevada's Strong Anti-SLAPP Law Is Constitutional

Furnished content.


For many, many years we've talked about the importance of strong anti-SLAPP laws. In case you're new to the subject, SLAPP stands for a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. In short, SLAPP suits are lawsuits where it is fairly obvious that the intent of the lawsuits is to stifle free speech, rather than for a legitimate purpose under the law. The intention of anti-SLAPP laws are to allow for such lawsuits to be tossed out of court quickly -- and, frequently, to force those who bring those suits to pay legal fees. While actually getting a federal anti-SLAPP law is really important, for now, we're left with a patchwork of state laws. While many (though not all) states have anti-SLAPP laws, they vary widely in terms of what they cover and just how strong or effective they are.As we've pointed out in the past, a few years ago, Nevada passed a really great anti-SLAPP law, though it's been under attack the past few years. Thankfully, Marc Randazza informs us that Nevada's anti-SLAPP law has been found to be Constitutional, meaning that it will survive largely intact (a few changes had been made a few years ago to bolster the law's likelihood of surviving).Perhaps even more important was that the ruling basically recognized that Nevada's anti-SLAPP statute was similar to California's (much older and much more broadly litigated anti-SLAPP) law, and that Nevada courts can use California case law for its own anti-SLAPP cases. That's also a good thing:

A secondary issue in the case, and an important one, is that the Nevada Supreme Court recognized that Nevada and California Anti-SLAPP jurisprudence are essentially one body of law. This is not entirely new law. In John v. Douglas Cnty. Sch. Dist., 125 Nev. 746 (2009), the Nevada Supreme Court held similarly, but this was discussing the prior version of the law....[....]The good news is that the Court reaffirmed the John v. Douglas County pronouncement that Nevada courts should rely on the rich body of California case-law in interpreting the Nevada statute. Given the scant case-law we have in Nevada, this is a godsend. California has interpreted "matter of public concern" as extremely broad. Meanwhile, I have seen Nevada trial court judges looking at the standard as much more narrow.This is a good decision that brings more predictability to Anti-SLAPP litigation under the Nevada statute, and ultimately will function to keep Nevada's free speech protections aligned with its free-speech-protective neighbor.

0 comments, click here to add the first

Court Tosses Lawsuit Brought By Brother And Sister Against Take-Two Interactive Over NBA2K Face Scans

Furnished content.


As face-scanning technology has progressed, its use in video games has become more and more realistic. While several games make use of this to transport the gamer directly into the game they play, one of the best to do this is 2K Sports' NBA2K series. By using a web camera or your smartphone, you can take a scan of your face and import it into the game to create your own avatar to ball out on the court with NBA stars. I've done this, and it's awesome.It's that face-scanning feature that was the subject of an attempted lawsuit by a brother and sister in Illinois, however, who argued that Take-Two was violating the state's Biometric Information Privacy Act, which seeks to ensure that businesses that store biometric data for their customers are protecting that data and not using it in ways the customer had never intended. The idea is that if your bank requires a fingerprint to access your account, and either loses that data to theft or uses that data for some other purpose, the public can get monetary and injunctive relief from the court. To do so, however, the plaintiff must suffer actual harm from a violation of BIPA.Ricardo and Vanessa Vigil used the face scan feature in a copy of NBA2K they purchased, and agreed to the terms of service for the feature, but then sought monetary damages against Take-Two, claiming that the "actual harm" they suffered was the failure to follow every rule in BIPA itself. They claimed that the risk that their faces could be pilfered after they decided to play the online portions of the game with the characters they created using their face scans qualified as actual harm. The judge, after a motion to dismiss by Take-Two, was not buying it.

There is no allegation that Take-Two has disseminated or sold the plaintiffs' biometric data to third-parties, or that Take-Two has used the plaintiffs' biometric information in any way not contemplated by the only possible use of the MyPlayer feature: the creation of personalized basketball avatars for in-game play. The purported violations of BIPA are, at best, marginal, and the plaintiffs lack standing to pursue their claims for the alleged bare procedural violations of BIPA.

0 comments, click here to add the first

Nine Years Later, Patriots Get '19-0' And 'Perfect Season' Trademarks, Despite Doing Neither

Furnished content.


Nine years ago we had a post about some of the ridiculousness surrounding trademarks and the Super Bowl (a popular topic this time of year). In particular, we mocked the fact that the New England Patriots had filed for some trademarks in the week before the Super Bowl. Then, as now, the Patriots made it to the Super Bowl, but that year they had done it with a perfect record, winning all 16 games in the regular season and the first two playoff games to go 18-0. They were heavily favored to win the Super Bowl, and had filed for trademarks on both "Perfect Season" and "19-0." Of course, the NY Giants came away with quite the upset and sent the Patriots home as losers. Given that, we were kind of surprised a few months later to discover that the Patriots were still seeking the trademark on "19-0," despite the fact that its actual record for the season was a demoralizing 18-1.I pretty much stopped following it after that and assumed that the Patriots probably gave up as well. But, no. ESPN now tells us that nine years later, the US Patent and Trademark Office has approved the trademarks. No. Really:

Though it has been nine years since the Patriots nearly achieved an undefeated season, the team just now has gotten around to trademarking "Perfect Season" and "19-0."The Patriots have gone through the process with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and, in December, trademarked the two slogans through their parent company, The Kraft Group, online records show.

The one complication with those two filings is that, while thousands of T-shirts were printed commemorating a perfect Patriots season, none of them were ever sold. Emblazoned with an event that didn't occur, they instead were shipped to other countries.

Having to prove that they deserved the right to the phrase, the Patriots apparently licensed "Perfect Season" to the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association, which produced a DVD of the 2015 state football championship game between Xaverian Brothers and Central Catholic high schools. Xaverian prevailed, winning its 24th straight game (spanning two seasons).

0 comments, click here to add the first

Texas A&M Accused Of Committing Copyright Infringement In Effort To Bolster Trademark Protection For '12th Man'

Furnished content.


I'm not sure there is a more annoying group of stories about trademark protectionism than that of the "12th Man." What most likely assume is a common term at football games, popularly denoting the impact a raucous crowd can have on the opposing team, is actually a closely guarded trademarked term of Texas A&M. So closely guarded, in fact, that the school has not only policed use of the term by other football organizations, but it has also seen fit to threaten breweries and double-amputees over their use of the term. So concerned is Texas A&M by the moral position on intellectual property, in other words, that there are no limits on how it will act to protect its trademark.That includes violating someone else's intellectual property, it seems. It appears the university is being sued for copyright infringement after having posted on its website a large swath of an unpublished book by an author on the history of Texas A&M, all in order to bolster its own claims on the trademark for the "12th Man."

Alabama resident and author Michael J. Bynum sued the Texas A&M University Athletic Department, the Texas A&M University 12th Man Foundation and three school employees on Thursday in the Southern District of Texas, claiming the athletic department posted the “heart” of his unpublished book “12th Man: The Life and Legend of Texas A&M’s E. King Gill” on its website “nearly word-for-word” in January 2014 without his permission... He made several trips from Alabama to Texas, visiting Gill’s high school in Dallas and Texas A&M University where he met with Brad Marquardt and Alan Cannon, media-relations employees in the school’s athletic department.Cannon and Marquardt are now defendants in the lawsuit.

“It was an incredibly coincidental mix-up on my part,” the email said. “I was cleaning my office, which you may recall is generally a cluttered mess. While going through files, I found a story of the 12th Man on some slightly yellowed 8.5×11 paper. I had no recollection of it [sic] origin.

0 comments, click here to add the first

Denuvo Responds: Five Days Is Better Than No Days, Amirite?

Furnished content.


It certainly looks for all the world like Denuvo is unraveling as a valid option for DRM in video games. The software, once described as the final solution to piracy, has had its defenses cracked in time intervals following an exponentially shorter curve. For how long it would take to crack a Denuvo-protected video game, reality went from "never", to "months", to "less months" in the case of the latest Doom game. After Doom was cracked, and after the developer removed Denuvo from the software via a patch, the makers of Denuvo spun it as a victory, stating that developers were protecting their games during the early release window and then removing it later.But then Resident Evil 7, protected by Denuvo, was cracked in under a week's time. With its spin halted by this new reality, Denuvo's response has changed slightly to: hey, it could be worse!

Now, Denuvo is defending its "Anti-Tamper" technology, saying it's still the best copy protection currently available."It's correct that the title in question was cracked some days after release," Denuvo Marketing Director Thomas Goebl told Eurogamer. That said, "Given the fact that every unprotected title is cracked on the day of release—as well as every update of games—our solution made a difference for this title."

Goebl did deny earlier reports that publishers were being issued refunds after their Denuvo-protected games had been cracked. "We do not have any deals in place that offer refunds if a game is cracked within a specific time frame," the company told Eurogamer.

0 comments, click here to add the first

Here's What Happened When The Dutch Secret Service Tried To Recruit A Tor Admin

Furnished content.


Law enforcement keeps bumping into Tor, as Techdirt has reported many times over the years. So it's understandable that the authorities are always looking for ways to subvert and circumvent the extra protection that Tor can offer its users when used properly. For obvious reasons, we don't often get to hear exactly how they are doing that, but a fascinating post on the Dutch site Buro Jansen & Janssen purports to give some details of what happened when the country's secret service tried to recruit a Tor admin. First, a caveat. The site says:

We received this story from a person who wants to remain anonymous. We conducted an investigation to the existence of this person and confirmed their existence.

A land-rights collective which has been publishing for 30 years on the expansion of repressive legislation, public-private partnerships, authorities, governmental actions and other state affairs.

They approached me and identified themselves with a badge of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and said they were working for the AIVD (Dutch secret service). They asked me to hear them out. I was in a state of shock and thought I had committed a crime but they immediately started to talk about on my studies. They made it clear they've read my thesis on IT security and showered me with compliments before they were firing a round of job offers at me.

They asked me if I was interested in traveling for a couple of years and for example work in Germany at a technology company while visiting the Chaos Computer Club's hacker spaces to see what's going on and report back to them. All my expenditures would be covered....They also mentioned that occasionally there are hacker parties in Italy, Austria, Spain, and other countries, and they said I could see that as paid holidays. They were very honest about the fact that they were looking for foreign talent but mostly interested in keeping tabs on Dutch IT-professionals and hackers abroad. They emphasized on monitoring Dutch people abroad at least 3 times.

The old man who showered me with compliments suddenly said: "look, we know about your Tor-exit nodes, if you run them with us you will be able to make a living out of it, but if you don't and something illegal happens, we can't help you if the police visits your home and seizes your equipment."

0 comments, click here to add the first

RIP Denuvo: Resident Evil 7 Cracked In Five Days

Furnished content.


The Denuvo saga has been impressive on a couple of levels. The DRM software's public cycle was notable first in that game-cracking groups, notorious for their confidence in their own abilities, initially sounded the alarm over Denuvo's status as an anti-piracy unicorn that would never be broken and would lead to the end of software piracy. That happened in January of 2016. By August, Denuvo was being broken by other cracking groups. By the time winter rolled around, game developers, including developers of AAA titles, were pushing out quiet updates to games to remove Denuvo from their software entirely. Denuvo's makers, meanwhile, spun this as a success story, suggesting that developers were chiefly using Denuvo to protect games during the initial release cycle and then removing it afterwards.But that thin thread of relevancy appears to have snapped, relegating Denuvo to the same scrap pile as every other form of DRM ever tried, now that a cracking group has successfully cracked a Denuvo-protected game in five days' time.

Yesterday, just five days after its January 24th retail date, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard was cracked by CPY. The self-proclaimed Italian group placed RE7 on a so-called top site, with the ‘piracy pyramid‘ doing the rest of the work by cascading it to torrent sites in a matter of minutes. Currently, tens of thousands of pirates are grabbing the 23GB download.

Some fans have complained that Denuvo is unwieldy and annoying. It forces games to be dependent on third-party activation servers and makes certain types of modding impossible. Publishers use the program regardless, in hopes of boosting game sales by rendering piracy more difficult.

0 comments, click here to add the first