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This Week In Techdirt History: July 23rd - 29th

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Five Years AgoThis week in 2012, we started out by reporting on something that happened late on the previous Friday: the feds admitted that they violated the fourth amendment with their surveillance programs. We noted how Congress had lost all perspective with its moves to prosecute journalists as if they were spies, and that it was worrying how the Senate Intelligence Committee seemed more interested in stopping whistleblowers than figuring out why they blew the whistle. Meanwhile, the ACLU lost a fight to get the courts to recognize common sense and agree that widely published leaked documents should no longer be treated as classified.Ten Years AgoThis week in 2007, the RIAA was continuing its push to get radio stations to pay up for playing music by finding people to claim that radio play makes people buy less music. Meanwhile, a disturbingly RIAA-friendly change snuck into the Higher Education Reauthorization Act, potentially cutting funding from schools that don't filter P2P traffic (but was thankfully pulled soon after). The UK government, amidst various forms of copyright insanity, at least realized that extending copyright durations on 50-year-old songs was pointless. And the EFF kicked off a now-famous legal battle when it sued Universal Music for issuing a YouTube takedown over a clip of a little kid dancing to music.Fifteen Years AgoThis week in 2002, we saw one of the most insane attempts to prop up Hollywood of them all: a bill that would exempt them from hacking laws in their expeditions to find pirates was introduced in Congress. Meanwhile, the huge uncertainty caused by recent changes to royalty rates was threatening the future of webcasters, leading to a bill being introduced to save them. And a silly Texas company that had turned itself into a JPEG patent troll got some serious pushback from the ISO standards body.

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posted at: 12:00am on 30-Jul-2017
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New York City Council Passes Bill Making NYPD's Forfeiture Process More Transparent

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For months now, the NYPD has been arguing in court it can't possibly hand over records related to its forfeitures. The problem appears to be the NYPD itself. The department spent millions on new software specifically to track the disposition of seized items. But when faced with a public records suit by the Bronx Defenders, the NYPD claimed the software can't do the one thing it's supposed to do: track the disposition of seized items.The NYPD provides limited reporting on forfeitures, but the numbers produced have almost zero relation to reality. According to the NYPD, it only forfeited $12,000 in cash in 2015. According to numbers obtained by the Bronx Defenders, the NYPD's forfeiture office had nearly $69 million in cash on hand when queried in 2013 -- something that would take 5,750 years to amass at the rate cited by the NYPD. Not only that, but other documents showed NYPD property clerks were processing thousands of dollars every month, totaling $6 million in forfeiture transactions in 2013 alone. It seems unlikely the NYPD's forfeitures dropped to this impossibly-low level between 2013 and 2015.But still the NYPD insists it can't make its cradle-to-grave forfeiture-tracking system produce the stats Bronx Defenders are looking for. It needs to figure out its issues soon. The city council is calling the NYPD's bluff.

Every year the NYPD seizes millions of dollars in assets from innocent New Yorkers, who often have to fight a dizzying bureaucracy to get their property back. But today the City Council is poised to pass legislation that would make the practice vastly more transparent.The bill, which is expected to pass this afternoon, will require the NYPD to release annual reports on how much they seize from New Yorkers during stops and arrests and through the use of civil forfeiture, and account for what happens to the assets after they’re in custody."This first-of-its-kind transparency bill will shed light on the reasons why the NYPD has seized someone's property, whether revenue is generated from property seizure, and if an individual has been able to get their property back," said Bronx Councilman Ritchie Torres, the bill's primary sponsor. "The legislation will help ensure that the civil forfeiture process is used legitimately.”
The bill has indeed passed and institutes new reporting requirements for the NYPD.
This bill requires the NYPD to report on an annual basis on data relating to the property and money the department obtains possession of in the course of an arrest. The bill requires the data be broken down to include the amount of money or the property obtained and retained, the reason why the property or money is being held by the department, and whether or not the rightful owners of the property or money have failed to redeem such money or property. Additionally, the bill requires the NYPD to report on any sale or disposition of money or property seized during an arrest that was retained by the Department.
This forces the NYPD to provide information proactively. It can no longer hide behind claims of faulty software or a particularly labyrinthine public records process. It won't force the NYPD to say how the money's being spent, but will at least provide more transparency and accountability. The new data should make it slightly easier to identify abuse and could assist those fighting to reclaim their property. All it needs is the governor's signature to make it official.

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posted at: 12:01am on 29-Jul-2017
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Cigar City Brewing Sues Cigar City Salsa Over Trademark Despite Being In Different Marketplaces

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I'm generally not much for the summer season, but one sensation I do love is getting home from work on a painfully hot day, having just purchased a six-pack of beer, and cracking open a cold one in the evening. The only thing that occasionally gets in the way of that is when I lift the bottle to my mouth and then immediately realize that instead of beer, I bought salsa.Wait, that doesn't ever happen. And, yet, according to a lawsuit brought by Cigar City Brewing against Cigar City Smoked Salsa, customer confusion appears to be a chief concern.

Cigar City Brewing is suing Cigar City Smoked Salsa for trademark infringement, alleging that the labels and marks used by the salsa maker are so similar to the brewery’s material that consumers may think both products come from the same company.
Fine, so the suit doesn't so much allege that customers are going to confuse salsa and beer, but rather that the same company might be making both of them. The filing itself claims that there have been instances of actual confusion with the public and purchasing agents for stores that thought both products were made by the same company. That, frankly, is difficult to believe. It's all the more difficult to believe that this occurs on a large scale, for multiple reasons.To start, Cigar City is a common moniker for Tampa, Florida. It's a nod to the large Cuban population there. As such, there are all manner of businesses that incorporate the nickname into their business names. Types of businesses include gyms, music management, cattle farming, comedy clubs, and so on. It's not a terribly good identifier of source for that geographic area, in other words.To get around this, the filing goes to some lengths to try to suggest that beer and salsa are in fact in the same markets by virtue both that the items are sold in the same stores and, incredibly, that the public sometimes likes to have a beer and eat chips at the same time.
Plaintiff’s beers and Defendant’s salsa are sold in the same channels of trade, including grocery stores, and liquor stores. For example, both parties’ products are sold in Publix Supermarkets, Walmart stores and ABC liquor stores, among others (Exhibits 13, 14, 15 and 16). Beer and salsa, typically with snack chips, or with salsa on or in entrees, are frequently consumed together by the same persons and are thus purchased by the same types of consumers.
Except that isn't how markets are defined in trademark law. Instead, belligerents must be in direct competition with each other in their products for the markets to be a match, and salsa is not beer. They are closer in terms of the marketplace than, say, Cigar City Crossfit, but I imagine that beef sourced form Cigar City Cattle Company may well be sold in those same stores, yet there is not trademark action against them. So far, in summary, we have a common nickname used by two businesses in disparate industries.Now, the filing goes on to note that Cigar City Brewing is opposing the trademark registration for Cigar City Smoked Salsa, but that this opposition is pending. So this suit was filed before the USPTO has even had a chance to weigh in on the matter, which seems like a mistake. If nothing else, the ruling on the opposition would provide Cigar City Brewing with either more ammunition for its lawsuit, or, if defeated, an indication that it probably shouldn't file the suit to begin with. And the outcome of that opposition isn't exactly an assured slam dunk for Cigar City Brewing, as its own Exhibits in this lawsuit comparing the trade dress are of questionable use. First is the labels on the salsa that Cigar City Brewing repeatedly objects to as infringing and confusing.

And here is Cigar City Brewing's own logo. For what it's worth, they have several iterations of this and I chose the one most favorable to Cigar City Brewing's position.

I'm certain the brewery is trying to make a point complaining about the two logos, although what that point could possibly be is beyond me. Beyond both being black and white images, little else about the two logos has anything to do with the other. Frankly, the filing is full of exhibits like this, pretty much all of which offer nothing more compelling than this side by side comparison. I just cannot believe anyone in the grocery or liquor business is seriously confused by any of this.So, a common nickname used in different industries with trade dress that isn't similar while a trademark opposition is currently in process. Why in the world was this thing ever even filed?

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posted at: 12:01am on 29-Jul-2017
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West Virginia Tries To Improve Broadband Competition, Incumbent ISPs Immediately Sue

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So by now you've probably noticed that the broadband industry is somewhat, well, broken. Unaccountable giant telecom incumbents, with a stranglehold on both federal and state lawmakers, work tirelessly alongside well-compensated lawmakers and covertly paid policy vessels to protect the status quo (read: limited competition, high prices, poor customer service). Often that involves quite literally writing and buying state laws that make it impossible for anybody to do much of anything about this dance of dysfunction.And when it comes to highlighting the end result of this corruption, there's no better state than West Virginia. Whereas bigger incumbents in more populated states can often hide their stranglehold over a broken market under layers upon layers of exquisitely crafted bullshit, many West Virginia lawmakers and regional incumbent Frontier Communications lack the savvy and competence to mask what they're truly up to.As a result, the state has been awash in controversy over its telecom policies for years now. Local Charleston Gazette reporter Eric Eyre has done yeoman's work chronicling West Virginia's immense broadband dysfunction, from the State's use of broadband stimulus subsidies on unused, overpowered routers and overpaid, redundant consultants, to state leaders' attempts to bury reports highlighting how a cozy relationship with Frontier has led to what can only be explained as systemic, statewide fraud on the taxpayer dime.Obviously letting Frontier dictate state telecom policy has resulted in the state being one of the least-connected states in the nation. Facing growing calls to actually do something about it, West Virginia finally recently buckled to pressure and passed House Bill 3093, recently signed into law by West Virginia Governor Jim Justice. The bill makes a number of changes to try and improve regional competition, including streamlining pole attachment reform, and encouraging local broadband community co-ops to shore up coverage in low ROI areas.We already discussed how Frontier recently fired a long-standing employee for supporting the bill. Said employee's other job was as West Virginia Senate President, an absurd conflict of interest nobody in the state appears to have given much thought to. But Frontier has subsequently decided that it makes sense to sue the state of West Virginia for the new law, taking specific aim at the segment reforming utility pole fiber attachment rules:

"Frontier Communications has filed a lawsuit to prevent the enforcement of an article of House Bill 3093, known as the broadband bill, arguing that it conflicts with federal law and increases the chances of an interruption or outage for customers.House Bill 3093's Article 4 allows third parties, including Frontier's competitors, to trespass upon, handle, move, interfere with, and potentially damage Frontier's facilities attached to utility poles in West Virginia thereby, among other things, destroying in whole or in part Frontier's investment and other property and its ability to use its facilities to provide service to its customers, without prior notice to Frontier and an opportunity to protect its property, the lawsuit says.
We've noted how incumbent ISPs have sued to thwart pole attachment reform elsewhere, most notably in places like Louisville and Nashville where Google Fiber is trying to compete with incumbents. Existing pole rules often require each individual ISP move its own gear, resulting in up to a year of bureaucratic delays for new market entrants. Delays incumbent ISPs have historically exploited to intentionally slow competitor arrival to market."One touch make ready" reform rules, in contrast, propose using a single, licensed and insured subcontractor able to move any company's gear provided they give a notable heads up and pay for any potential damages. And while incumbent ISPs like Frontier and many cable providers (who also sued the state for its effort to speed up competition) like to give the impression these subcontractors are random incompetent yahoos who'll cut lines and wreak havoc, they're often the same experienced, licensed subscontractors used for years by many of these companies for their own pole work.It's believed this boring-sounding utility pole regulatory reform can reduce existing pole attachment times from six months to a year, down to a month or two. But because it would speed up the entrance of would-be competitors, incumbent ISPs have fought the reform tooth and nail. You see, incumbent ISPs talk a big game about their disdain for "burdensome regulation," but when said regulation protects their regional duopolies, they're the first in line to applaud. That is when they're not busy writing and buying protectionist state laws and regulations preventing local communities from making these decisions for themselves.Frontier's decision to spend time and money with lawsuits comes as rumors begin to swirl of potential bankruptcy at the company. The company has been bleeding customers after it bundled an expensive acquisition of Verizon's unwanted networks in Florida, Texas and California, a deal that initially pleased investors with promised growth, but saddled the company with billions in debt, further preventing it from upgrading its network at any scale. Frontier's apparent solution to this conundrum? Like any myopic, pampered legacy company, it's to double down on the bad ideas that brought it to this moment in the first place.

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posted at: 12:00am on 28-Jul-2017
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E And J Gallo Sends Cease And Desist Trademark Notice To E And B Beer

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It's been a refreshing bit of time since we've last written about a silly trademark dispute in the beer and alcohol space, so perhaps you, the dear Techdirt reader, had thought that the complete fuster-cluck that is trademark and alcohol had somehow begun to calm the hell down. Sadly, not so much, it seems. To serve as one reminder, E & J Gallo, maker of wines and spirits and a company that has previously demonstrated its inability to tell different kinds of drinks apart, has sent a cease and desist notice to E & B Beer, a company that makes, you know, beer.

The case pits well known wine and liquor company E and J Gallo against E and B Beer. The owner of Eand B, Santo Landa, says he sees no similarity and feels like this is a case of a big company trying to stomp out the little guy.E and B Beer has been around since the late 1800s in Detroit. It's already been trademarked once before.Since buying the brand, Landa applied for his own trademark but he's run into a roadblock. An attorney for E and J sent a legal notice saying similarities may cause confusion for customers.
So, let's start with the names of each company. It should be immediately clear that any concern about confusion between the two names is fairly silly. The only similarity between them is the "E and" at the start of each name. Everything else about the names is distinct, from the second initial used to the inclusion of another name (Gallo) and the other mark's description of what the product is (beer). Even if we set aside my personal quest to have the Trademark Office realize that beer, wine, and spirits are all distinct industries and should be treated as such for the purposes of trademark, there's little likelihood of confusion purely from the names of each business. Add to that the logos for each company are beyond distinct and it seems clear that confusion ain't going to be a thing.


None of each company's various iterations of their logos appear to be any more similar than the above. Other than the start of the name and both logos having red in them, there's just nothing there. Certainly not enough to rise to the level of trademark infringement. Which is probably why Landa himself can't figure out what the issue is and sees this as nothing more than a bullying attempt by a larger company.
"I'd like to get an explanation as to what they think is confusion," he says.The most troubling thing for Landa? He insists he can win a legal fight, but not without big money - money he simply doesn't have.
Now, E and J Gallo apparently offered Landa the rights to keep his name, but only if he limited his sales to 2 states. If you think that's reasonable, you aren't paying attention, because there's nothing remotely like trademark infringement here and there is no reason for Landa to give up his right to sell anywhere at all, never mind limiting himself to 4% of the country's states.

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posted at: 12:00am on 28-Jul-2017
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Titleist Tees Up Lawsuit Against Parody Clothier Because Golf Doesn't Have A Sense Of Humor

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Back in the more innocent era of the early 2010s, you may recall that we discussed a series of delightful trademark disputes between clothier North Face and a couple of guys who started a business first called South Butt (later changed to Butt Face). In those series of posts, we discussed two conflicting facts: trademark lawsuits against parody operators such as this are extremely hard to win in court... except that those same lawsuits are crazy expensive to fight, so the parody operators typically just cave and settle. It's one of those corners of the law in which the very framework of the legal system virtually ensures that the proper legal conclusion is never reached. Yay.It seems that North Face's peers in the clothing industry share its disdain for these parody companies. Titleist, for instance, recently filed a trademark and dilution lawsuit against a company called I Made Bogey, suggesting that the following example of its product both will confuse the public as to its origins and will tarnish Titleist's reputation.


Now, if you want to make the point that the hats and other items with this same branding aren't funny, go ahead. I'm right there with you. It's not even particularly clever. That said, it's also not the case that anyone is going to view this stuff as anything other than what it actually is: a parody of the notably poshly-presented golf brand. In fact, the joke only works, insofar as it does at all, if a person realizes that the parody pokes fun at the polite and often Waspy culture of golf. In other words, none of this is a thing were it not easily differentiated from Titleist's brand. For that very reason, attacks on parody like this have a heavy legal load to tow up a large mountain of precedent.
In the suit, Titleist claims both trademark infringement and dilution. For dilution to stick, it must show that I Made Bogey’s hats tarnish Titleist’s reputation or blurs its fame. For trademark infringement, however, Titleist must show that consumers would be confused by the two logos. “They would have to show that people would think Titleist is making hats” with the sexually explicit misspelling, said Tobin, the attorney. And that would be pretty difficult, she said.
And, yet, despite all of that, conventional wisdom suggests that this will all be settled out of court before the lawsuit progresses much further. The cost to fight this fight is likely to be too much for I Made Bogey to shoulder.
That doesn’t mean I Made Bogey is necessarily going to prevail, though. Trademark suits are expensive to defend, and there’s no guarantee the maker of Titties hats will come out on top. If you want a lewd golf hat, act sooner rather than later.
And, whatever your opinion of I Made Bogey's products, that's too bad. Taste is not really at issue when it comes to protecting parody, an important form of speech. Defenders of free speech need to be able to keep their spines when opportunities to defend speech they don't like arise. This is certainly one of those times. Abusing trademark law and playing pretend about public confusion to silence offensive speech is an action without any virtue.

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posted at: 12:00am on 27-Jul-2017
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CIA Helps National Archive Out By Offering To Trash Its Stash Of Leak-Related Documents

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The National Archives obviously can't be expected to store every piece of paper generated by the federal government. But it does have an obligation to preserve copies of historically-significant documents. Unfortunately, it's allowing agencies to make these decisions. While it's true some agencies may have a better grasp on a document's significance, other agencies aren't as interested in archiving historically significant documents -- especially ones that might make them look bad.Enter the CIA, which already has a significant history of burying documents it would rather not reveal.

The CIA is scheduled to begin destroying old records related to leaks of classified information in August unless critics convince the National Archives to scuttle the plan.The National Archives and Records Administration tentatively approved a CIA proposal to get rid of several types of records after 30 years. Along with leak-tied files, the record types include medical records, behavioral conduct files, security clearance information, personality files with counterintelligence interests, workers-compensation reports for employees posted overseas, and declassification and referral files.Leak-related files currently have to be saved permanently, but under this proposal they can be destroyed 30 years after a case is closed.
This is the CIA's response to the Archives' question: what documents should we not worry about keeping? This is the CIA stating none of the documents listed above have historical value. Nate Jones of the nonprofit National Security Archive points out why the CIA shouldn't be allowed to make this determination.
Jones warns that NARA and the CIA should err on the side of preservation, even if they believe the files at issue are backed up elsewhere. “History has shown that they are too eager to destroy their records,” he said of CIA officials. “The CIA does not have a lot of good will for preserving historically relevant documents.”
There's history the CIA likes -- the sort of thing that's enshrined in its public areas and featured prominently on its website. Then there's everything else. The CIA tends to move forward with document destruction without bothering to confirm backups still exist just in case.
[J]ust last month, it came to light that the spy agency chucked records about this country's secret role in the 1953 Iran coup during an office move, when it believed copies existed someplace else.
An avoidable accident, but nothing about it suggests it was an accident or that the CIA had any interest in avoiding it. History may be written by the winners, but history can be erased by even the clumsiest losers. Not only are those files gone but any record of their destruction is missing as well.
“There is no written record confirming the destruction of the 1953 microfilmed cables” because “records of such routine destruction were themselves temporary and scheduled to be destroyed.”
The CIA, meanwhile, is complaining its ample budget simply can't cover the cost of digitizing everything related to leaks or personnel issues. If this is even remotely true, it exposes a serious flaw in agency priorities. The government apparently has plenty of money available for watching others, but very little set aside for being watched by the public.
Matthew Aid, an ex-intelligence officer and historian, puzzled over the rationale behind the National Security Agency storing "several hundred times the volume of the Library of Congress every single day as part of its global eavesdropping operations," while "the CIA can't afford to scan its records."
Regrettably, the NARA is pretty much powerless. It can make recommendations and ask for proposals, but it's all held together by toothless laws which have zero deterrent effect on agencies hoping to carve holes in their sketchy history with scheduled document destruction.

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posted at: 12:00am on 27-Jul-2017
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Winnipeg Man Has Vanity Plate Referencing Star Trek Recalled Over Complaints Of How Racist It Is

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Here in North America, because 2016 just had to become the most infuriatingly stupid and polarizing year in the history of the multiverse, far too much oxygen was spent on debates over both how much racism was okay on one side and exactly what qualified as racist on the other. It's one of those frustrating contests with nobody to root for, as half of the population proclaimed that racism was dead and everyone was too stuck up about it while the other side managed to find racism everywhere, introducing into the popular lexicon terms like "privilege" that mostly make me want to put my head in a vice and get to rotating that lever.Still, this isn't a debate that should be totally ignored. After all, at its heart is the matter of free speech, not just as a legal framework but also as an ideal that the West tends to claim to hold in high regard. Strangely, one of the beacons of this debate shall now be on the subject of vanity license plates, with a heavy dash of nerd culture thrown in just to make it extra fun. For this story, we go to Winnipeg, where a Star Trek fan received the following vanity plate for his car.


The plate, owned by the unfortunately named Nick Troller, will be instantly recognizable to Star Trek fans, particularly those of us that go back to The Next Generation. The Borg was an alien race that assimilated other races into its hive-mind whatsit and traveled around in big grey cubes, because, you know, aliens. They often communicated such witticisms as "Resistance is futile" and "You will be assimilated." I imagine to those that are not fans of the series, the vanity plate would probably register as a curiosity. For some in Canada, apparently, it was a racist mantra.
If you've existed at all in the modern day political climate you'll understand how some people who are—rightfully—sensitive to the rise of normalized racism, saw Troller's plate as problematic. Seeing the plate as a problem some people complained and Manitoba Public Insurance (MPI) told Troller he had to get rid of it. Troller has since relented to the pressure and gotten rid of the plate for one that says "COLECTV"—the plate still has the bracket sporting the "resistance is futile" saying.Now, in this hyper-partisan time where everyone is either a racist or an SJW and we all hate each other with the burning passion of eight pissed off suns, it's no wonder that Troller's license plate has become an issue and that people on both sides have seized upon it. The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, which is known for taking people to court for denying anti-abortion activists a voice and other free speech issues, now—after advocating for Troller initially—may be taking the case to court.
Ok, let's just get this out of the way. The license plate isn't remotely racist and anyone apologizing for some people freaking out and complaining of its racism should stop. Stop and never do that again. For those of us that care about combating actual racism, these hypersensitive offense-magnets are getting in our way and impeding progress, acting as an example for some why real racism is dead. It's lame and it isn't to be apologized away.But it's also worth noting that something like a vanity plate is plainly a form of speech and having a government strip a citizen of that speech simply because other people are wrong about that speech is flatly insane. Particularly when you have to work really, really hard to convince yourself that the license plate above is racist, and when the acceptable alternative -- "COLECTV" -- I could easily argue is racist as well were I so inclined. Collecting? Collecting whom, you racist! See?We can all certainly have an argument over what the current levels of racism are and how they impact our culture or not, but it should be plain that this was a clear case of a government overstepping its bounds.

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posted at: 12:00am on 26-Jul-2017
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Your Robot Vacuum Cleaner Will Soon Collect And Sell Data About You And Your Home

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So while the internet-connected age has delivered untold innovation, it has also been a total shitshow for privacy and security. The internet-of-broken-things can't seem to go a week without reports of another major privacy screw up, and even your kid's Barbie is now collecting snippets of data that can be sold to the highest bidder. And while throwing a WiFi chipset into something isn't such a bad idea, companies are so eager to boost revenues that actually securing these products -- or respecting customers' privacy -- has repeatedly been shown to be a distant afterthought.The latest hot topic of conversation on this front is iRobot, makers of robot-vacuum Roomba. iRobot CEO Colin Angle turned a few heads this week after he told Reuters that the company is considering selling all of the data the company's robot collects about the size and layout of your home, to companies like Apple and Google:

"There's an entire ecosystem of things and services that the smart home can deliver once you have a rich map of the home that the user has allowed to be shared," said Angle. That vision has its fans, from investors to the likes of Amazon, Apple and Alphabet, who are all pushing artificially intelligent voice assistants as smart home interfaces... Angle told Reuters that iRobot, which made Roomba compatible with Amazon's Alexa voice assistant in March, could reach a deal to sell its maps to one or more of the Big Three in the next couple of years.
On it's surface, that's not necessarily the end of the world. Especially in the cell phone era when every step you take is collected, tracked, monetized and sold by cellular companies, app makers, and every advertising and metric company in between. But there's an awful lot of data these robots collect that you may not particularly want shared, and our proud tradition of overlong, convoluted terms of service traditionally won't make that clear. And as Gizmodo was quick to point out, Roomba's existing privacy policy is phrased in just such a way as to suggest your privacy preferences are irrelevant:
"[We may share your personal information with] other parties in connection with any company transaction, such as a merger, sale of all or a portion of company assets or shares, reorganization, financing, change of control or acquisition of all or a portion of our business by another company or third party or in the event of bankruptcy or related or similar proceeding."
In other words, this mouse print implies that there are oodles of situations in which your consent won't be necessary to sell private data about yourself and your home, even if by law Roomba may be required to inform you (generally and with a lot of marketing hype, of course) this is happening. That's assuming consumers even care, since most of us simply click "accept" on the TOS without giving much of a damn either way, quickly understanding that we're probably being screwed in some fashion, but having neither the time nor patience to understand how.But this bidirectional apathy becomes a problem cumulatively. Customers aren't reading rights-eroding TOS because they're too long, while every device in the home is now tracking, storing and monetizing your every heartbeat -- from children's toys that track your kids' babble, to smart home electric meters that tell companies and their marketing partners when you're at work or sleeping. Top that off with the paper mache grade security embedded in most of these products, and you begin to understand why the smart security analysts are warning people that a very big and rather nasty dumpster fire is just over the horizon.

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Alex Mauer Gets Another Game Taken Down From Steam Via DMCA As She Sends Imagos' Lawyer Death Threats

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Last month, we discussed a strange spate of DMCA notices going out from Alex Mauer, a video game music composer. Through her DMCA blitz, she managed to get a game removed from Steam, as well as getting several DMCA strikes against several YouTubers that had covered that game, all apparently as a result of a contract dispute she had with Imagos Softworks and her general inability to understand contractual language and copyright law. The tone of that post was justifiably critical, but some are now concerned that there is a well-being issue at hand. For starters, Mauer has now targeted a second game via DMCA takedown and has managed to get Steam to remove the game from its listings.

A copyright claim by a composer with a tendency to attract legal drama has led Steam to remove the game River City Ransom: Underground. The developers are disputing the claim and say they expect the game to be back on Steam at some point in the future.On Friday, July 14th, Steam removed River City Ransom: Underground due to a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) claim filed by composer Alex Mauer. In the claim, Mauer said that music she produced for the game was being used without her permission.
Mauer goes on to note that she doesn't have any documentation of her arrangement with Conatus Creative, developers of the game, but that this actually strengthens her claim, reasoning that if her music appears in the game and there is no written permission, it's copyright infringement. That seemingly sensical stance is rebutted, however, by Conatus, who does claim to have documentation proving its side of the argument.
Let me make it absolutely clear – Alex Mauer’s claim that the game violates her copyright is false. She is a co-creator of the music, with Dino Lionetti and Rich Vreeland. Our written license agreement is with Rich, who subcontracted Alex and Dino. When Rich offered to pay Alex an equal share of the music fee for her contribution to the game soundtrack, she emailed back: “oh that's awesome man i'm all for it thanks!” Rich has shown us the documentation that Alex was paid in full.Our lawyers advise us that there is no legal basis for Alex’s DMCA take-down claims. That’s undeniable by anyone except Alex. But being legally right is only half the story – as a practical matter, the costs of legal action would put console development plans on hold, perhaps indefinitely. We don’t have any interest in spending our time and our energy dealing with this matter further.So, we’re swapping out the soundtrack. When it’s completed, we hope that it will delight you, and we hope that you keep taking a chance on independent games, on Kickstarter projects, and on all labors of love. They’re worth it.
If all of that is true, and only one side of this fight is claiming to have documented evidence of their position, you can once again see how reckless abuse of the DMCA system can be undertaken by a party that is blatantly in the wrong as a matter of copyright law, while at the same time forcing their targets into unwanted actions due to the costs of the legal action. This, it goes without saying, cannot be what copyright is supposed to be for. If someone can falsely file DMCA notices with this kind of ignorant alacrity, where the most charitable reading of the situation is that Mauer is flatly confused about copyright and contract law, and where the more realistic reading is that she is running a DMCA extortion program, and there are no serious consequences for that abuse, then the DMCA system is plainly broken.But there are also more serious accusations flying around as part of this, including the legal staff for Imagos, Mauer's initial DMCA target, being on the receiving end of death threats from her.
After the publication of this story, several people pointed us to a message from Imagos Softworks’ lawyer, Leonard French, claiming that Mauer had sent him death threats. We reached out to Mauer about this and she confirmed that it was true. She said that she had been receiving her own set of threats in the wake of claims by French and other YouTubers, which she reported to the police. “The police told me it was ok for these people to make death threats to me because of freedom of speech,” she said in a private Twitter message. “So my immediate response was to issue death threats to the people who started the defamation crusade against me.”
First, making death threats is a crime, if they are truly serious death threats. I doubt a law enforcement officer told her they are simply "ok because of freedom of speech." And to then take that as a reason to send more death threats in reply is petulant at best.Regardless, it should go without saying that through punishment or otherwise, Mauer's DMCA abuse needs to stop.

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Surveillance Used To Give Poor Students Extra Financial Assistance Discreetly. Is That OK?

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A story about surveillance in China is hardly notable -- Techdirt has run dozens of them. But there are some unusual aspects to this report on the Sixth Tone site that make it a little out of the ordinary:

The University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), in the eastern province of Anhui, collects data from the charge cards of students who frequently eat in the school cafeteria -- usually the cheapest option, thanks to government subsidies -- but spend very little on each meal. The school's student affairs department uses the information for "invisible subsidies," or allowances delivered without drawing attention -- what it calls "a more dignified way for poor students to receive stipends."
According to the post, the program has been running for many years, but only came to light when a former student posting under the name of "Shannon" wrote an account of being selected in 2005 for additional support, published on the site Zhihu, the Chinese equivalent of Quora. His post has received over 45,000 likes so far, and the number continues to rise. As the Sixth Tone story notes, comments on Shannon's post have been overwhelmingly positive:
One comment that received over 3,000 likes read: "The University of Science and Technology of China has really got the human touch -- they are pretty awesome." Another netizen, meanwhile, described the innovative scheme as "the right way to use big data."
This raises a number of questions. For example, does the widespread use of surveillance in China make people more willing to accept this kind of benevolent spying, as here? Or is it simply that its use is felt to be justified because it led to additional funding that was given in a discreet fashion? More generally, how would Chinese citizens feel about this approach being rolled out to other areas of life? Since that's pretty much what China's rumored "citizen score" system aims to do, we might find out, if it's ever implemented.Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

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This Week In Techdirt History: July 16th - 22nd

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Five Years AgoThis week in 2012, we saw some copyright insanity when BMG issued a YouTube takedown on a Mitt Romney campaign ad for including a clip of Obama singing an Al Green song, and then the next day went on to take down the original clip, because even the President was a pirate in the eyes of the entertainment industry. Thankfully, by the end of the week, YouTube decided the videos were fair use, and restored them. Meanwhile, Viacom was blacking out web clips as part of a spat with DirecTV, leading Jon Stewart to blast them on their own network and get them to reverse the decision for at least some clips. And in New Zealand, the judge in Kim Dotcom's extradition trial spoke out against the TPP and copyright extremism, which forced him to step down from the case (even though the same thing never seems to happen to pro-copyright judges).Ten Years AgoThis week in 2007, the RIAA finally found itself on the hook for legal fees in one of its aggressive lawsuits, despite its usual strategy of dropping cases whenever that looked like a possibility. The head of an LA news agency who made headlines by being the first person to sue YouTube for copyright infringement decided he might take his misguided fight to Apple as well. The MPAA was speaking out against net neutrality because it might interfere with anti-piracy enforcement, Clear Channel was trying to use the Sirius-XM merger as a reason to get looser restrictions on terrestrial radio ownership, and Microsoft was making promises about future Windows editions as damage control after the poor reception of Vista.Fifteen Years AgoThis week in 2002, webcasters were appealing the new royalty rates that would cripple them, tech executives were seeking a better starting point for a conversation about piracy with Hollywood, and Universal was doing the kind of thing Universal does and appointing a new "senior vice president of anti-piracy". At least one analyst was looking at broadband adoption in a more positive light than usual at the time, while others were not too sanguine on the future of 3D TV — but we also took a moment to celebrate how it's often unglamorous technology that changes history the most, on the 100th birthday of the air conditioner.

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MLB Mulls Over Opposing Trademark For New Overwatch League Logo

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It's no secret that Major League Baseball has proven themselves to be happy bullies regarding its trademarks. Between thinking it owns the letter 'W', forgetting that fair use exists, and its decision to bully amateur baseball leagues, the legal staff for MLB has shown that they can produce some really head-scratching moments.Which brings us to the present, in which Major League Baseball has asked for an extension to decide if it wants to oppose the new logo for Overwatch League, the eSports league dedicated to playing -- you guessed it -- Overwatch.

As noted in a post on the website of law firm Morrison / Lee, the Overwatch League’s logo was approved for a trademark on March 28. Under the standard practice of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, this meant that any other parties with trademarks of their own had one month to respond to the logo—either to oppose it outright or to request more time to be able to oppose—before the logo’s trademark would actually be registered. Just one day before the end of that 30-day window, MLB filed for a 90-day extension to investigate the likeness of the OverwatchLeague’s logo to its own and potentially oppose it. Their request was considered valid and they were granted the extension immediately.
The extension expires in mere days, so we're all going to find out very soon if MLB thinks it should oppose the trademark for the following logo, helpfully placed next to the MLB logo so you can decide for yourself how confusing any of this is.
So, let's just get the obvious out of the way: these logos look nothing alike and will not cause any confusion. Period. Other than having a white outline of a "player" of each sport separating two colors and some words on the bottom, there's nothing even similar here. The colors are different, the outlines are different, the names of the leagues are both different and specifically descriptive. Confusion is simply not going to be a thing in this case.But let's say you're not convinced. Fine. Please tell me if the following logo also confuses you.
Of course it doesn't. The NBA uses a logo with the same style and yet MLB is not at their throats over it. That's because this logo style for sports leagues is fairly standard and there hasn't been issues with confusion before.Perhaps as MLB's legal staff considers whether to oppose Overwatch League's logo, they'll happen to come across this post. If they do, I have but one bit of advice: don't.

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San Diego Comic Con Gets Gag Order On Salt Lake Comic Con

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As you may know, San Diego Comic Con is going on right now. And, like many techie/geeky people, while I've never attended the show, I always look forward to what comes out of the event. However, SDCC is increasingly looking like a massive censorial bully. A few years ago, we covered what we believed to be a fairly silly trademark dispute that SDCC had filed against the organizers of the Salt Lake Comic Con. We pointed out that trademarking "Comic Con" seemed silly and there was no problem with multiple Comic Con's happily co-existing. And, really, SDCC is the 800-lb gorilla here. It's the dominant comic con and has been for many, many years, as it seems to grow larger and larger. Other cities having their own comic conventions doesn't take away from SDCC (if anything they tend to reinforce the dominance of SDCC).Last month, in covering some news about the case still going on, we added a long (longer than the post itself...) editor's note about the truly weird situation in which SDCC had sent us a ridiculous subpoena demanding (among other things) any internal documents ever mentioning SDCC and implying that we had some sort of business relationship with the organizers of the SLC event (to be clear, we have zero relationship with anyone involved in either event -- we just found a story written about the case and used that as the basis for our posts on the topic). We pushed back on SDCC and noted that it really appeared that their fishing expedition was an attempt to intimidate the press from reporting on this case. It was... really strange.And now, with SDCC happening right now, the Hollywood Reporter has the latest on the case, in which SDCC has filed for one of the strangest legal gag orders I've seen in a while. I mean, I've seen these kinds of gag order requests filed by pro se plaintiffs, but rarely by competent lawyers working at giant famous law firms.You can read the demand for a protective order here or below, and if I had to summarize it, it's basically: "it's no fair that Salt Lake Comic Con is getting good press coverage and we're being mocked, so the court should silence them." I read through the document and I kept expecting more... and... that's really it. They literally complain that they're losing in "the court of public opinion" and argue that it's somehow unfair that one side is talking about this case publicly and they should be barred from any further conversation. And, it gives some more context to the paranoid view that was clear in the subpoena we received: SDCC and/or its lawyers are so focused on the negative press coverage that they seem to assume that something more nefarious is going on... beyond the basic likelihood that lots of people think this lawsuit is over-aggressive bullying by SDCC.

Since the inception of this dispute, Defendants have brazenly engaged in a strategic public campaign to disparage SDCC and win this case in the court of public opinion. Defendants' public campaign has included statements made in numerous press releases, news articles, on websites and on social media including Facebook and Twitter. Indeed, Defendants boast they have secured more than 200,000 media articles reporting on the case that are favorable to Defendants.
Um, so? I have no idea what's wrong with someone trying to get their story out when they've been sued -- especially by a much larger entity. While some people choose not to go that path, there's nothing illegal about telling your story when you've been sued -- and nothing wrong with the media picking up on the story. It's news.SDCC goes on to claim that many of the statements made by the defendants in the case "are misleading, prejudicial, inflammatory or false." If that's the case, then go after them for defamation. Don't ask for a gag order.
Defendants repeatedly litigate their case by using media outlets to mischaracterize the parties' positions and taint the public's perception regarding the issues in dispute in this case. Defendants' media campaign is increasing in intensity as this case nears trial. Defendants' goal is to win this case by using media outlets to tarnish the reputation of SDCC and taint the jury pool. As Defendant Bryan Brandenburg stated in one of Defendants' many press releases, I am asking for support from the community and all the powers of the Universe to bring victory to us in this case.
The "jury" tainting is the only aspect of any of this that seems to have a kernel of reasonableness -- but seems easily dealt with during jury selection, in which you ask the potential jurors if they're familiar with the dispute. Despite the supposed 200,000 articles on this (more on that in a moment...) I find it hard to believe that the average potential juror has heard about this dispute at all. Hell, we covered it and I had totally forgotten about it until we got that stupid subpoena (it was so ridiculous that I told the process server that he must have the wrong guy when he showed up at my front door).From here, SDCC's high priced fancy lawyers then admit that this goes against the basic First Amendment protections anyone has... but argues that's fine and dandy because -- *gosh* -- some people are being mean to them online.
It is appropriate, however, to impose greater restrictions on the free speech rights of trial participants (such as parties and their attorneys) than on the rights of nonparticipants. Levine, 764 F.2d at 595. As the Ninth Circuit noted when considering a district court's order restricting statements of trial participants, several other courts have considered similar restraining orders. The overwhelming majority of those courts have upheld the restraining orders. Id. at 596 (citing numerous cases in which restraining order on trial participants were upheld).
Now, it's important to look at the details of the case that they cite as precedent for why they can gag the people they sued: Joel Levine v. US District Court for Central District. First off, that was a criminal case, not a civil one, and it involved the lawyer for one of the people who had been charged with espionage talking to the press, and the court arguing that in certain circumstances, you could issue a very narrow injunction on this type of thing. But there are lots of conditions on that and it's hard to see how those conditions apply to a civil dispute -- and especially one where the civil dispute involves a large organization (SDCC) suing a smaller one (SLCC) and then trying to further silence the small one.Indeed, the ruling in the Levine case specifically notes that because it's talking about lawyers the standards are different:
As officers of the court, court personnel and attorneys have a fiduciary responsibility not to engage in public debate that will redound to the detriment of the accused or that will obstruct the fair administration of justice. It is very doubtful that the court would not have the power to control release of information by these individuals in appropriate cases and to impose suitable limitations whose transgression could result in disciplinary proceedings.
But in this case, SDCC is trying to gag the actual defendants, not the lawyers.Further, the Levine opinion makes it clear that there should be strict scrutiny applied before issuing such a gag order, as it clearly is prior restraint. From the opinion:
Accordingly, the district court's order may be upheld only if the government establishes that: (1) the activity restrained poses either a clear and present danger or a serious and imminent threat to a protected competing interest,... (2) the order is narrowly drawn.... and (3) less restrictive alternatives are not available
And, really, is "people are being mean about us online" really going to qualify as "a clear and present danger or a serious and imminent threat to a protected competing interest"? Come on!The rest of the request for the gag order is basically "damn, the other side has been effective in telling their story to the press. That's so unfair."
Since the inception of this dispute, Defendants have engaged in a willful, open, and consistent strategy to win this case in the court of public opinion. See Edge Decl. Ex. 1, at p. 6. Through numerous press releases, articles, interviews with various media outlets, and the pervasive use of social media, Defendants (most notably Bryan Brandenburg) have been posting material and making statements that are designed to tarnish the reputation of SDCC and thereby influence the public (including the jury pool) regarding who should prevail in this litigation. In many instances, these statements are misleading, prejudicial, inflammatory, or false. Indeed, Defendants have made their strategy and intention clear from the outset. On August 11, 2014, shortly after the dispute between the parties began, Brandenburg commented extensively in an article in Inside Counsel titled Salt Lake Comic Con founders fight back with the subtitle Use the court of public opinion to combat trademark infringement claims brought by the San Diego Comic-Con. Id. The article paints Defendants as David to SDCC's Goliath, and compares SDCC to Superman's nemesis Lex Luthor. Brandenburg is credited in the article with the following statement [a]fter consulting with their lawyers, the team behind the Salt Lake Comic Con knew they had strong legal ground to stand on, but they didn't want to go to court, they wanted to win in the court of public opinion. Id. (emphasis added). Brandenburg is further quoted as saying [o]ur strategy was, if we are going to spend legal fees vs. legal fees, we wanted to be creative. We put it out to the public, challenging the cease and desist letter publically. Id. at p. 7 (emphasis added) (noting anecdotally, the fans seem to be on the side of Salt Lake's David rather than San Diego's Goliath).
Again, I'm trying to understand what the issue is here. Lots of people involved in court cases look to get support in the court of public opinion, but none of that really matters compared to the court of actual opinion: the court that is hearing the case. And, sure, the jury tainting bit is potentially an issue, but only if you really believe that the entire jury pool is going to be tainted by this. And that seems... difficult to believe.Of course, the whole "200,000" articles bit is part of the effort to argue that this info is widespread... but the details there are... lacking. It appears the vast majority of those 200,000 are... because the Associated Press wrote about the case and it has 160,000 distribution partners.
Defendants boast that an article written by the Associated Press about this dispute was published in more than 160,000 news outlets worldwide and claim many media outlets have already declared Salt Lake Comic Con the winner in the court of public opinion.
Okay... well, I went looking for the AP stories on the case... and they're pretty damn balanced (as you would expect from the AP). Here's one from 2005 that seems unlikely to bias anyone:
Salt Lake City co-founder Bryan Brandenburg said the trademark announced Thursday will be decisive in the suit, but attorneys for the established San Diego Comic-Con disagree. The case appears headed for trial after settlement talks broke down earlier this month.
And a more recent article:
Settlement talks have broken down between the organizers of two pop-culture conventions in California and Utah known for guests' elaborate costumes, Salt Lake Comic Con officials said Tuesday.Both sides are asking a judge to decide the contest over naming rights, said Bryan Brandenburg, co-founder of Salt Lake Comic Con."They want us to change our name," Brandenburg said. If the federal judge overseeing the case in San Diego doesn't side with either convention, the case could go before a jury later this year. Salt Lake has already spent nearly $1 million legal fees on the case.
Those are both snippets from longer articles, but hardly proof that a jury will be biased.What about social media? SDCC whines that one of the organizers of the SLC event has 5,000 Twitter followers and the SLCC Twitter feed has 30,000:
Importantly, Defendants' public campaign is not limited to press releases and contact with news media outlets. Bryan Brandenburg has waged war against SDCC on social media as well. Brandenburg uses his Twitter feed, which has more than 5,200 followers, to comment on the dispute and disparage SDCC. See Edge Decl. Ex. 4. Similarly, Defendants use the Salt Lake Comic Con Twitter feed, which has more than 30,000 followers to comment on the dispute and accuse SDCC of fraud.
I mean, 30,000 Twitter followers is nothing to sneeze at, but... uh... let's take a look at SDCC's Twitter followers, shall we?
Now, I'm no math genius, but 1.55 million followers seems like... a wee bit more than 35,000 or so. But... but... but, SDCC replies: it's not fair that the SLC guys speak out because SDCC has specifically chosen not to comment:
It is also worth noting that in the face of Defendants' public attacks, SDCC has exercised incredible restraint and has not responded in kind. SDCC believes this dispute should be litigated and decided in this Court. However, if Defendants' conduct goes unchecked, SDCC will have no choice but to defend itself publically in order to protect its reputation and set the record straight when Defendants disseminate false or misleading information. This type of public exchange regarding ongoing litigation is not productive or conducive to judicial integrity and SDCC hopes it can be avoided.
Incredible restraint. We're so proud of you SDCC. Of course, it didn't stop you from sending a bogus subpoena to us (and who knows how many other media properties), potentially creating massive chilling effects on media companies reporting on your silly dispute. And, really, what exactly is the problem with responding publicly? If you don't want to, don't. If you do, do. But, if you're just concerned about the outcome of the court case, focus on that, not gagging anyone.Unfortunately... it appears that the court granted the gag order just days before SDCC was set to start. It does limit the request though, noting that the first two parts of the request would be unconstitutional prior restraint. That covers "any false or misleading statements about SDCC or any of its board members" or "any false or misleading statements about the merits of this dispute." What the judge did grant was a gag order on statements that "accuses, suggests, implies or states that SDCC lied and/or committed fraud," "any statement about the genericness of the term comic con," "any statement about whether the term comic con is descriptive" and "any statement about whether SDCC abandoned any trademark rights."I have trouble seeing how the first two are unconstitutional prior restraint, but the rest are allowed to be gagged -- especially something as mundane as discussing whether comic con is generic or descriptive. But, really, since the court apparently doesn't want anyone discussing that kind of thing, perhaps go ahead and have a discussion in the comments about that very question. And, in case SDCC's high priced lawyers are looking at this yet again, I'll remind you once again that we have no relationship of any kind with the organizers of the Salt Lake City event. We just don't like big bullies silencing people or filing questionable lawsuits.

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Freedom Of Information Lawsuit Results In NYPD Agreeing To Follow FOI Law

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If you need any more proof the NYPD hates transparency, you need look no further than Keegan Stephan's victory in a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) lawsuit:

If you can't see the tweet, it says:
Big win! To settle my lawsuit, NYPD has agreed to comply with critical component of NY Freedom of Information law
This is what we measure success with when it comes to FOIL and the NYPD: a victory is the department AGREEING TO FOLLOW THE LAW.Stephan has been seeking information on the department's use of a sound cannon for crowd control. The NYPD, of course, had no interest in releasing these records. Central to the settlement is the department agreeing to accept FOI requests by email, something it's supposed to have been doing for more than a decade.
The man, Keegan Stephan, said in the suit that the department failed to justify withholding the records he requested and that a “policy and practice” not to accept or respond to Freedom of Information requests by email violated a 2006 provision of New York State law. Mr. Stephan also argued that by not allowing email requests, the police had increased “the time, effort, and expense involved” in obtaining records.
The department's settlement contains no admission of wrongdoing -- something common to government lawsuit settlements. This means it will accept zero responsibility for a decade-long run of FOI statute violations.The "new" email request system will aid more New Yorkers in having their requests ignored by the NYPD. The NYPD's future use of email for FOI responses will ensure requesters are informed of denials in a much speedier fashion. The portal the NYPD is setting up on its website will provide instructions for requesters, as well as information on how to challenge denials and non-responses. If nothing else, the NYPD will be forced to follow the letter of the law a bit more closely, but it will take far more than a steady stream of FOI lawsuits for it to approach the law's spirit.The NYPD has made a opacity a cottage industry. It has been dubbed the least responsive government agency in the US, worse than the CIA, FBI and NSA. It has developed an in-house classification system that allows pretty much anyone to designate almost any document "top secret" for almost any reason, and reached its nadir when it refused to release a copy of its FOIL response guidelines to a FOIL requester.But this is an ugly victory -- one that should subject the department to a steady stream of ridicule. It takes a lawsuit to make a law enforcement agency follow the law. That's just depressing.

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posted at: 12:00am on 21-Jul-2017
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Massachusetts Lawmaker Wants To Make It A Felony To Have Secret Compartments In Your Car

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A Massachusetts lawmaker is looking to give law enforcement another way to bust people and seize vehicles. Modify a vehicle you own in a certain way and you can expect to never see that vehicle again.

Blame it on the war on drugs and pressure from law enforcement lobbying. Stephan Hay, a Democrat state representative for Fitchburg, has introduced a bill that would criminalize operating a vehicle with a hidden compartment designed for the purpose of secretly transporting drugs and related contraband, equipment, currency, or weapons.The bill, H.1266, separately criminalizes the process of altering a vehicle with the intent of creating such hidden compartments. In each case the bill calls for a two-year mandatory minimum sentence, five years for subsequent offenses. The bill also allows police to seize the modified vehicle.
Notably, the bill wouldn't limit "secret compartment" busts to those containing contraband. The presence of an aftermarket "concealed storage space" is enough to trigger an arrest and seizure. The state would have to prove there was intent to use the compartment to store contraband, but the wording in the bill [PDF] flips the burden of proof when it comes to the vehicle itself.
Proof that a conveyance contains a hidden compartment as defined in this section shall be prima facie evidence that the conveyance was used intended for use in and for the business of unlawfully manufacturing, dispensing, or distributing controlled substances.
As Reason's Scott Shackford points out, Massachusetts already has the worst forfeiture laws in the nation. This built-in presumption of guilt only makes this worse. Defendants will start out in the hole, asked to prove a negative simply to have a small shot at recovering their seized vehicle. Unknowingly purchase someone's drug-running vehicle? It's as good as gone if the police discover any secret compartments. Seeing as criminal charges would result in something more aligned with due process, it will come as zero surprise if the law is used to seize vehicles but leave prima facie "drug traffickers" otherwise unharmed.

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Connecticut Latest State To Add A Conviction Requirement To Its Forfeiture Laws

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Civil asset forfeiture continues to be curbed by legislatures around the country. Belatedly realizing the harm done to citizens by opportunistic law enforcement, lawmakers have been engaged in serious reform efforts over the past few years. Some have fallen apart on the way to approval, thanks to harmful concessions to powerful law enforcement lobbies. Other have made it through intact, potentially ending years of abuse.Thirteen states have already added conviction requirements for forfeitures, all but eliminating the "civil" process that cuts property owners out almost completely. Connecticut has just become the fourteenth.

Late yesterday, Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy signed HB 7146, which will require a criminal conviction to permanently confiscate property. Unlike criminal forfeiture, which targets the property owner and occurs only after a conviction, civil forfeiture sues the property itself and allows the government to permanently keep property without charging anyone with a crime.HB 7146 will split the difference by requiring a conviction in criminal court as a prerequisite to a Connecticut state’s attorney litigating the forfeiture in civil court. The bill previously passed the House and the Senate without a single vote cast against it.
Making the law even better is the government being unable to seize anything without an accompanying arrest. From there, it must obtain a conviction to guarantee its control of the property. It must present evidence the property was used in a crime or was the proceeds of a crime, regardless of the conviction. If it can't prove this, or the arrest fails to result in a criminal conviction, the state must return the property within 14 days. This saves citizens the trouble and expense of having to litigate the return of seized property.On the downside, the law still allows law enforcement agencies to directly profit from forfeitures, giving them control of 70% of the proceeds with minimal oversight. This increases the risk of people having the book thrown at them in court to ensure prosecutors walk away with at least a plea deal, when there's money/property on the line.But it is a major improvement over the state's original statutes, which had resulted in 2/3 of the state's proceedings against "guilty" property being completely untied from any arrests or convictions of property owners.

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Oversight Board Finds NYPD Officers Still Violating Citizens' Right To Film Police

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The New York Civilian Complaint Review Board has just released a report [PDF] indicating NYPD officers are slow learners when it comes to recognizing citizens' right to record police officers. It's not that these officers have never been told. They have. The NYPD's "Finest Order" was handed down in 2014, telling officers citizens had a First Amendment right to film police. It's a response to a 2012 order by the Washington DC PD and a First Amendment lawsuit filed that year. It followed this up with internal policy changes two years later. And yet, problems persist.

In the three-year period from January 1, 2014 through December 31, 2016, the CCRB closed 257 complaints in which civilians reported that officers had interfered with their ability to record police activity. This police interference included, but was not limited to, officers instructing civilians to stop recording, searching civilians‘ phones for recordings of activity, deleting such footage, and damaging recording devices.
In fact, those with the most time on the job seem to have the greatest difficulty following instructions and policy changes.
Eighty-four percent of the officers named in interference-related allegations (180 subject officers) had more than two years on the force at the time the alleged incidents occurred. Of those, 53 percent (113 subject officers) had between three and 10 years on the force when they were alleged to have interfered with civilian recordings and the remaining 31 percent (67 subject officers) had more than 10 years on the force.
The NYPD "Finest Message" on recording distinctly notes what officers aren't supposed to do when encountering a citizen photographer:
Recognizing the affirmative right to record police action, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES should a Member of the Service:Threaten, intimidate, or otherwise discourage an observer from recording the police officer’s activities, assuming the observer is at a safe distance;Intentionally block or obstruct cameras or other recording devices when there is no legitimate law enforcement reason to do so; orDelete any pictures or videos from the observer’s camera, or order observer to delete such pictures or recordings.
But these orders were violated repeatedly. The most common excuse for violations was the officer didn't remember doing it or denied the violation had occurred.
NYPD officers who violate citizens' First Amendment rights do this in several ways. Intimidation is one tactic used to shut down recordings:
The CCRB also received multiple complaints of police officers pointing flashlights at civilians‘ recording devices to impede their ability to record. In one such case, the CCRB substantiated an interference allegation by a civilian and his wife who were walking down the street when they observed a police officer making an arrest. The civilian began taking photos of the arrest on his iPad and was instructed by the officer to stop taking photographs and to step back. The civilian stepped back but maintained that he had a First Amendment right to photograph the arrest. The officer then shone a flashlight at the iPad. The CCRB substantiated an interference allegation against the officer based on photographic evidence and the consistent testimony of the civilian witnesses.In a similar 2015 case, an officer stopped a group of individuals suspected of fighting and gun possession. When a third party civilian began to record the stop, an officer turned and pointed a flashlight towards the civilian‘s camera for nearly three and a half minutes. In that case, the interfering officer never issued any commands toward the recording civilian and the Board substantiated the interference allegation.[...]Other forms of intimidation were more severe. In a 2015 case, a civilian called 911 after he was assaulted at a bar. Officers responded and the civilian became angry when officers could not find the assailant. After a heated verbal exchange, the responding officers told the civilian that he would be arrested if he did not leave the location. The officers then went back to their marked police vehicle to prepare their complaint paperwork, at which time the civilian stood in front of the vehicle and attempted to take a photograph of the officers‘ license plate. At that point, the officer in the driver‘s seat drove the vehicle toward the civilian and stopped within inches of his body before driving away. Finding that the video evidence proved that the officer intentionally drove the police vehicle towards the civilian in a threatening manner and with the intention of preventing him from taking a photo of the license plate, the CCRB substantiated allegations against the officer for interfering with the civilian‘s recording, and for threatening him with the use of physical force.
NYPD officers also illegally seized and searched cellphones while being filmed by citizens. Multiple confirmed allegations show officers took phones with the intent of accessing, if not deleting, recorded footage. The CCRB notes it's very difficult to substantiate claims of deleted footage thanks to the inherent nature of the violation. It's tough to prove a recording existed prior to an alleged deletion when recordings that survive officers' deletion attempts usually absolves them of attempted deletion allegations.But searches/seizures with the intent of deleting recordings is actually the more subtle of the NYPD's anti-photography tactics.
Substantiated instances of damage or destruction of recording devices can be proven by video evidence from sources other than the recording civilian. In one incident, surveillance cameras captured officers physically grabbing a civilian‘s body as he began recording their stop and questioning of a woman on a sidewalk. After officers arrested the civilian, placed him in their patrol car, and began driving away, surveillance video captured one officer throwing his cell phone out of the car window. The phone landed on the sidewalk. The civilian was charged with Obstructing Governmental Administration, Disorderly Conduct and Resisting Arrest, but these charges were all eventually dismissed.
Some cops do this repeatedly:
In a 2014 incident, the officer‘s interference and destruction of a cell phone occurred simultaneously. The complainant sat in his car with two friends when officers approached him, told him the car smelled like marijuana, and asked him if he had been smoking it. When the complainant said no, officers removed the occupants from the car, frisked and searched them all, and then allowed them to return to the car. When an officer walked to the vehicle to return the complainant‘s identification, the complainant alleged that the officer saw his phone resting on his arm, assumed he was recording, grabbed his phone from his hand, and threw the phone to the ground, stomping on it. The officer then forcefully arrested the complainant. The CCRB found that the officer lacked credibility given three prior complaints of the same officer destroying civilian cell phones, and substantiated misconduct.
But the worse thing some NYPD officers do is shut down recordings with bullshit arrests, because it's always best to follow up a First Amendment violation with a severe curtailment of literal freedom:
In a 2014 incident, for example, a civilian began audio-recording an officer‘s stop of the civilian‘s friends. The officer grabbed the audio-recorder from the civilian‘s shirt pocket, then issued him a summons for possession of a box cutter under a section of the New York City Administrative Code that prohibits minors from possessing box cutters. The complainant was over 50 years old and clearly could not be mistaken for a minor and the CCRB substantiated the improper issuance of a summons.
The CCRB recommends more training, which is really all it can do. Officers have had close to three years to adjust to the constraints of the 2014 Finest Message, but it appears several officers still make up their own rules during encounters with citizen photographers. It's unrealistic to expect the number of violations to hit zero, but some disciplinary changes need to be made if these policies are going to have much effect on officer behavior. Otherwise, the same officers will keep deploying the same tactics and hoping citizens don't complain or the CCRB doesn't have enough to work with to substantiate the allegations.

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From Sans Serif To Sans Sharif: #Fontgate Leads To Calls For Pakistan's Prime Minister To Resign

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Some people get really worked up about fonts. Here, for example, is a thread on Reddit, spotted by Leigh Beadon, about the appearance of the serif font Cambria on the show "Better Call Saul". The problem is that the show is set in the years 2002 and 2003, while Cambria was designed in 2004. The (mock?) outrage about this slip-up is all good fun, but obviously nothing too serious. Unlike in Pakistan, where another apparent font faux pas is leading to calls for the country's prime minister to resign.As the Guardian explains, the daughter of Pakistan's prime minister is being investigated by the country's supreme court as a result of revelations in the Panama Papers that linked her to expensive properties in London. Documents produced in her defense had a slight problem, as spotted by font aficionados:

Documents claiming that Mariam Nawaz Sharif was only a trustee of the companies that bought the London flats, are dated February 2006, and appear to be typed in Microsoft Calibri.But the font was only made commercially available in 2007, leading to suspicions that the documents are forged.Social media users have derided Sharif for this apparent misstep, coining the hashtag #fontgate.
Such is the interest in #fontgate and the humble sans serif Calibri font, that visits to the relevant Wikipedia page have ballooned from 500 visits per day to 150,000 in just two days. As a result of the intense interest and some dubious editing attempts, Wikipedia has been forced to act:
After users seemingly tried to change the article's content to say the font was available from 2004, Wikipedia suspended editing on its Calibri page "until July 18 2017, or until editing disputes have been resolved".
Although you might think this is pretty much at the level of the Reddit discussion of Cambria, rival politicians in Pakistan see it as much more serious -- and an opportunity they can exploit:
Opposition parties have urged prime minister Nawaz Sharif to step down after the investigation found a "significant disparity" between his family's declared wealth and known sources of income.
However things turn out in Pakistan for the country's prime minister and his daughter -- Nawaz Sharif has denied wrongdoing -- #fontgate has already had one positive outcome. It allowed the Indian newspaper Financial Express to use the memorable headline: "Awesome story of Calibri, the font that may leave Pakistan sans Sharif."Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

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posted at: 12:00am on 19-Jul-2017
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BrewDog's Trademark Application For 'Elvis Juice' Brew Blocked By The Elvis Presley Estate

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One point I fear doesn't get made enough when it comes to trademark law is that trademarks ought to be both unique and specific in order to fulfill the law's purpose of keeping the public from being confused as to the origins of goods and services. There's a level of nuance severely lacking in the way trademarks are both granted and enforced such that the law is used far less for the benefit of the public than it is a revenue generator for those who would lock up common names and words. A perfect example of this would be the trademark application for "Elvis Juice" by the brewery BrewDog being blocked by the Elvis Presley Estate.Now, the last time we wrote about BrewDog, it was having its own issues with trademark enforcement. A pub in Birmingham had received a notice from the brewery's lawyers that it's planned name, The Lone Wolf, infringed on a spirit of the same name created by BrewDog. After the public backlash that ensued, BrewDog quite quickly backed off, both allowing the pub to keep its name while also publicly promising to leash the lawyers and only use them when truly warranted. This time, the shoe is on the other foot, with the Elvis Presley Estate blocking BrewDog's trademark application for "Elvis Juice", claiming that the public would associate the use of that somewhat common first name with the long-dead singer. The hearing officer for the UK Intellectual Property Office somehow agreed with this line of reasoning.

Last month the UK Intellectual Property Office found in EPE’s favour, with hearing officer Oliver Morris saying that “the average consumer will assume that the brand Elvis Juice is from the same or economically linked source as the brand Elvis”.Noting that “the opponent has been successful”, Mr Morris refused to register the marks and ordered BrewDog to pay EPE £1,500 as a contribution towards its costs.
When this trouble first began, two of the creators of BrewDog actually went out and went through the legal process of changing their names to Elvis, attempting to make the point that it's a common enough first name that nobody should associate it with a single famous person for all alcohol products everywhere. The brewery has a reputation for fighting these kinds of fights, so it can appeal the rejection, and hopefully will. After all, the trade dress for the Elvis Juice brand has absolutely nothing to do with Elvis Presley.
Anyone looking at that can of beer and thinking of a 1950's rock star isn't so much confused as potentially suffering from brain damage. To my original point, the common name "Elvis" ought to not be trademarked on its own in the first place, as that single common name does nothing to indicate any branding or origin on its own. "Elvis Juice" is unique and creative. "Elvis Presley" is an identifiable source name or phrase. But "Elvis" all on its own? That's just a name.

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When The 'Sharing Economy' Turns Into The 'Missing Or Stolen Economy'

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The sharing economy -- actually better-described as a rental economy -- is very much in vogue, inspired by the high-profile examples of Airbnb and Uber. But Western enthusiasm pales in comparison to that of Chinese entrepreneurs, who seem to have taken the view that the model will work for anything. For example, alongside the companies that rent out homes and cars, there are now some that will let you pick up an umbrella in a public spot, use it for a short while, and then return it. At least, that's the theory. But the South China Morning Post reports that the Sharing E Umbrella startup ran into a few problems:

Just weeks after making 300,000 brollies available to the public via a rental scheme, Sharing E Umbrella announced that most of them had gone missing, news website Thepaper.cn reported on Thursday.
The company was launched back in April, and is operating in 11 Chinese cities. Customers borrow umbrellas after paying a deposit of about $3, and a fee of 10 cents for every 30 minutes. Undeterred by the fact that each missing umbrella represents a loss of $9, the company's founder says he hopes to proceed on a larger scale by making 30 million of them available across the country by the end of the year. Here's why he's convinced he's on to a winner:
After seeing the launch of bike-sharing schemes across the country, the Shenzhen-based businessman said he "thought that everything on the street can now be shared".
Perhaps he should have waited a little before modelling his business on bike sharing. Caixin reported last month that Wukong, one of the smaller players in this crowded market, has just closed down -- after most of its bikes went missing:
Wukong operated its 1,200 bikes in the southwestern city of Chongqing. But most of the bikes were lost because the firm didn't embed GPS devices in the vehicles. By the time the company decided the devices were necessary, it had run out of money and failed to raise more
Wukong isn't the only rental company that lost track of most of its bikes, as Shanghaiist.com notes:
Wu Shenghua founded Beijing-based 3Vbike in February, using 600,000 RMB ($89,000) of his own money to purchase the first 1,000 bikes. But only four months later, he told the Legal Evening News that there were only dozens left.
Despite those failures, money continues to pour into the Chinese bicycle rental sector: last month, one of the leading startups, Mobike, announced $600 million in new funding, which it will use it to expand outside China. Let's hope people there remember to bring the bikes back.Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

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posted at: 12:00am on 18-Jul-2017
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Capcom Manually DMCAs English Translation Of Ace Attorney Game Not Available In English

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In gaming circles, Capcom is often seen as the company that brought you the Street Fighter and Resident Evil series of games. More recently, Capcom has become notable for its Ace Attorney series of games as well. But in intellectual property circles, Capcom will always be the game studio that pimped SOPA to the public, foisted broken DRM on its customers, and treated Resident Evil customers both to a secondary-market killing DRM that allowed only one play-through of the game and the removal of promised features and only alerted customers to it after sales had begun rolling in. I think it's fair to say, in other words, that Capcom has been known to be almost cartoonishly pernicious.Speaking of which, Capcom also recently shut down a fan-translated play-through of an Ace Attorney game only available in Japan. Consistency!

Dai Gyakuten Saiban is an Ace Attorney spin-off starring an ancestor of Phoenix Wright in feudal Japan that has not been released in English. For O and Garbage, who run a Dai Gyakuten Saiban YouTube channel, it’s their favorite Ace Attorney game.“Since I have an import 3DS, I bought the game just to try it out,” she said over reddit private messages. “Dai Gyakuten Saiban drew me in with it’s aesthetics, and then caught me in a death grip with Asougi [the main character’s rival].” Their shared passion for the game lead them to translate it over a period of about 8 months. Their videos consisted of footage of the game as they played it without commentary, with subtitles added using YouTube’s subtitling options. They finished just in time for the announcement of Dai Gyakuten Saiban 2. “We both loved the game a lot,” O said, “and it was a shame that not everyone would be able to experience it because it lacked a localization.”
Ok, so a couple of things to note here. First, the videos in question are quite old. It seems they began the series in 2015, so we're talking a couple of years here. Second, O and Garbage say they purposefully made sure there were no ads or monetization on the videos. They were trying to share the game with others that didn't have access to it, not make coin. Third, I've found nothing to suggest that any English version of the game is even planned, nevermind set for release. Most references for the game suggest there is no planned release for the game anywhere outside of Japan. Given that it's already a few years old, the likelihood of translated versions is beginning to drop. So, we have a fan translation of a game play-through in a language for which there is no planned release, with an audience in a market for which there is no planned release. And Capcom took it down. Why?I already know what you're thinking: "Probably a ContentID or bot-driven DMCA notice is to blame." Nooooooope.
Sunday, June 25th, O discovered that the entirety of their translated Dai Gyakuten Saiban videos had been taken down by Capcom. The copy of the takedown notice they showed me indicated that they were manually detected, and not a victim of the automated “Content ID” system that is sometimes overzealous in how it flags gameplay videos. I reached out to Capcom about this and they declined to comment.
So Capcom manually took down this fan translation, apparently believing that language is a form of DRM and gamers ought to have to learn Japanese and buy the only version of the game that exists in order to get any sort of peek at a play-through. Keep in mind we're talking about a play-through without ads or monetization on it. I'm struggling to come up with an explanation for why Capcom would do this other than...they're just mean, I guess? Mean to very real fans of its games that just wanted to show off how cool the game was to those that had no shot of getting it for themselves because Capcom didn't make it available to them.
While she’s not as frustrated as she was when she first found out, O and Garbage are both “bummed,” as Garbage puts it. But neither of them have very many regrets about starting the project in the first place.“There wasn’t an earth shattering revelation or pull to me doing this,” Garbage said. “I just wanted to share a game that was inaccessible.”
8 months of work down the drain. And for what?

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This Week In Techdirt History: July 9th - 15th

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Five Years AgoThis week in 2012, we saw the folks who had recently been defeated by the internet try to sneakily get their way. In Europe, that took the form of resurrecting the all-but-dead ACTA inside the Canada-EU Trade Agreement (and writing clueless columns, of course). In the US, it was Lamar Smith trying to sneak SOPA through in bits and pieces in other bills, seemingly having learned nothing from the experience. The public wasn't oblivious though, and soon a backlash led to some of the problems of CETA being fixed and Smith's new bill falling apart.Ten Years AgoThis week in 2007, webcasters lost their fight to delay a big royalty hike when the court denied the requested stay, but then SoundExchange surprised us all by actually being just a little bit decent and holding off on actually enforcing the royalties. Sony BMG tried to redirect some of the blame for its rootkit fiasco by suing a company that supplied one of the pieces of copy protection software, while the silly DRM game of AACS was serving only to annoy legitimate customers. And surprise, surprise: a study found ripped DVDs weren't even a big source of piracy compared to file sharing.Fifteen Years AgoThe battle over webcasting had already begun five years earlier in 2002, when it was clear that the labels wanted internet radio stations to go away. Meanwhile, after much concern about various pieces of bad internet legislation, it looked like Congress wasn't going to be moving on any of it anytime soon — but that didn't mean we could ignore a new bad bill that would basically eliminate people's fair use rights, which was unsurprising at a time when it looked like only one person in all of Congress really understood or cared about user rights.Also this week in 2002, in a move that would further cement them both as tentpole internet platforms for years to come, eBay bought PayPal.

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posted at: 12:00am on 16-Jul-2017
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Trump's Pick For FBI Head Sounds A Lot Like The Guy He Fired When It Comes To Encryption

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Trump's pick to head the FBI -- former DOJ prosecutor Christopher Wray -- appeared before the Senate to answer several questions (and listen to several long-winded, self-serving statements). Wray's confirmation hearing went about as well as expected. Several senators wanted to make sure Wray's loyalty lay with the nation rather than the president and several others hoped to paint him into a Comey-bashing corner in order to belatedly justify Trump's firing of his (potential) predecessor.Wray also spent a lot of time not talking about things he claimed he was unfamiliar with -- covering everything from presidential directives, to Donald Trump Jr.'s Russian emails, to questions about CIA human rights violations that went unnoticed/unprosecuted during his tenure in the DOJ.Sen. Orrin Hatch -- as he did during a recent Comey hearing -- brought up the subject of encryption. Hatch claims he "agrees with Tim Cook," which places him in opposition to Sens. Feinstein and Burr. It also puts him in opposition of the possible new FBI boss, who had this to say about encryption. (h/t Politico's Eric Geller)

I think this is one of the most difficult issues facing the country. There's a balance that has to be struck between the importance of encryption, which I think we can all respect when there are so many threats to our systems, and the importance of giving law enforcement the tools that they need to keep us safe.
You can already tell where this is going. Encryption is great and all, but what's would be really great is some sort of backdoor-type thingy.Wray continued by swiftly jumping to the other side of the argument -- at least in terms of team uniform. Certainly not in terms of how the "other side" feels about encryption and backdoors.
I don't know sitting here today as an outsider and a nominee before this committee what the solution is, but I do know that we have to find a solution. And my experience in trying to find solutions is that it's more productive for people to work together than to be pointing fingers blaming each other. And that's the approach I've tried to take to almost every problem I've tackled. And that's the approach I would want to take here in working with this committee and the private sector.One advantage to having been in the private sector for a while is that I think I know how to talk to the private sector, and I would look for ways to try to see if I could get the private sector more on-board to understand why this issue is so important to keep us all safe.
So far, so Comey. New suit in the office, but it fits the same as the last one. Wray thinks both sides should work together but strongly hints the actual work will have to be done by the private sector. The problem, according to a guy who's worked "both sides," is the private sector needs to be more "on-board." And that indicates Wray feels the problem isn't the lack of both sides working together, but the other side not capitulating. That's a problem, and it sounds a whole lot like X more years of Comey.

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posted at: 12:02am on 15-Jul-2017
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Privacy International Sues US Government Over Denied Access To Five Eyes Surveillance Agreements

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The last thing anyone heard about Five Eyes surveillance partnerships via official channels was more than seven years ago. In the intervening years, leaked documents have shed a little light on the information sharing Five Eyes countries (US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) engage in. But the last Five Eyes agreement released is now more than 60 years old.

The Five Eyes group has existed since 1946 and the last document officially published about it comes from 1955. Since then, vast technological changes have altered how national security bodies collect and store information.
The modern era of Five Eyes surveillance has only been glimpsed through leaked Snowden documents. Coverage of these documents is noted in Privacy International's FOIA lawsuit [PDF] against a handful of US government agencies. PI has been asking for updated versions of the Five Eyes agreements since late last year. Unsurprisingly, the agencies queried haven't responded.The agencies named as defendants (the NSA, ODNI [Office of the Director of National Intelligence], State Dept., and NARA [National Archives and Records Administration]) have all had at least 100 days to respond to PI's requests. None of them have responded positively. The NSA said all records were exempt from disclosure. The ODNI and NARA haven't responded at all, other than to note the request has been received. The State Department offered to "administratively close" PI's request if it didn't respond to the agency's letter within 20 days -- despite the State Department having done nothing to advance the request during the previous 180 days.As the lawsuit points out, the documents PI is seeking are definitely of interest to the public. The last agreement anyone has seen in full predates the internet itself, where most Five Eyes surveillance now takes place.
Many individuals today live major portions of their lives online. They use the internet to communicate with others, impart ideas, conduct research, explore their sexuality, seek medical advice and treatment, correspond with lawyers, and express their political and personal views. They also increasingly use the internet to conduct many ordinary activities, such as keeping records, arranging travel, and carrying out financial transactions. Today, much of this activity is conducted on mobile digital devices such as cellular phones, which “could just as easily be called cameras, video players, rolodexes, calendars, tape recorders, libraries, diaries, albums, televisions, maps, or newspapers.” Riley v. California, 134 S. Ct. 2473, 2489 (2014).The internet has also enabled the creation of greater quantities of personal data about communications, known as “metadata.” Metadata is information about a communication, which may include the sender and recipient, the date and location from where it was sent, and the type of device used to send it. Metadata can reveal web browsing activities, which might reveal medical conditions, religious viewpoints, or political affiliations. It can also reveal items purchased, news sites visited, forums joined, books read, movies watched and games played.Communications – emails, instant messages, calls, social media posts, web searches, requests to visit a website – that utilize the internet can take any viable route to their destination; distance is not a determinative factor. They have the potential to travel around the world before reaching their destination, even if the information is being sent between two people (or a person and an entity) within a single country, or even a single city. The dispersion of communications across the internet vastly increases the opportunities for communications and data to be intercepted by foreign governments, who may then share them with other governments.
Knowing who's allowed to do what with this firehose of information is something people would like to know. Unfortunately, a vast network of surveillance programs have been enacted with little oversight, utilizing secret directives and classified interpretations of existing laws.The ODNI may be engaged in more proactive transparency than it ever has in its history, but it still usually takes a lawsuit to force documents out of its hands. It's the ODNI that ultimately decides whether NSA-related documents get published, so targeting both with FOIA requests is a good way to increase your chances of disclosure. But those chances are still almost nonexistent, thanks to national security-related FOIA exemptions. And, if nothing else, the NARA should have some Five Eyes agreement back issues laying around, but once again, filing a FOIA lawsuit is only one of several steps in a long, arduous, and often frustrating process.

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House Budget Proposal Includes The Creation Of The United States Space Corps.

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There has been much in the way of focus on all the different ways Congress has devised to fight with itself as of recent, with most of that revolving around stupid partisan bickering and political posturing. Still, there are real proposals on the table, and currently the 2018 defense budget is one of them. We've already talked about some recent changes in DoD recruitment strategies that seek to get with the times, as it were. But where those changes were made to stave off dwindling rosters of soldiers at CYBERCOM, the House proposal for 2018 includes the creation of a brand new military branch.

Don't get your hopes up too high about becoming a space marine quite yet. But if the House of Representatives' version of the 2018 defense budget goes through, you may soon be able to enlist in the US Space Corps.The House Armed Services Committee (HASC) has breathed new life into those old plans by including a provision in the House version of the 2018 US defense budget that would create a separate military service dedicated to the cause of space as a warfare domain: the US Space Corps. It would also create a separate joint command, the US Space Command, breaking the role out of the US Strategic Command much in the way that was done with the US Cyber Command.
The biggest surprise in all of this might well be that it took this long, actually. Cyber Command's battleground is mere decades old, whereas we have been exploring space for more than half a century. Still, there is something unnerving about formalizing Earth's place at the cosmic table as a potential war theater. That said, the proposal does enjoy the rare consensus of bi-partisan support and it's not difficult to understand why. More than ever, we rely on assets outside of our immediate atmosphere to power all sorts of things key to our national security and power. The branch that currently oversees space defense and strategy, the Air Force, is no longer seen as capable of handling the job.
There’s been nothing shortsighted about this. We started working on it vigorously in September, and we’ve had countless meetings with a number of experts who have advised us as to how this should be construed. GAO has done three studies on this, all of which tell us that you cannot maintain the current organizational construct of the Air Force and solve the acquisition problems and the operational problems that we have. The Air Force is like any other bureaucracy. They don’t want to change.
At some level, this was inevitable. We are humans and, where we go, we fight. So don your helmets and fire up that chainsaw, future space marines, because the next battleground may be the inky blackness of the void. If so, it seems the House of Representatives, at least, wants to be prepared for it.

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posted at: 12:03am on 12-Jul-2017
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Court Says DMCA Safe Harbors Disappear Once Infringing Images Are Printed On Physical Items

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A really weird decision with some implications for DMCA safe harbors has come out of a US district court in California. The case revolves around paintings and pictures licensed by Greg Young Publishing International [GYPI], several of which appeared on Zazzle's website and, consequently, were turned into physical reproductions (mugs, t-shirts, etc.) via Zazzle's automated print-on-demand process.After some discussion about which prints GYPI actually controls for infringement claim purposes, the court gets down to addressing the supposed infringement. Discussing the safe harbor provisions, the court finds Zazzle qualifies for these protections. Sort of. The court says Zazzle qualifies as a provider of online services and, thanks to GYPI never sending any DMCA notices, it had no knowledge of the infringement.That's where the court's reasoning starts swimming in non-concentric circles. As Eric Goldman points out, the court's legal math doesn't add up when it decides there's something Zazzle could have done to prevent the alleged infringement. Goldman comments on the court's strange determination:

“Zazzle had the right and ability to control the types of products it produced,” in contrast to how eBay/Amazon allow vendors to select which products to sell. This is a non-sequitur because the alleged infringements are attributable to the images selected and uploaded by Zazzle’s users. It’s irrelevant to the alleged infringement what cut of T-shirt is selected by Zazzle and who manufactures the raw materials.
At this point, Zazzle should still be protected from the infringement committed by a user. But that's not how the court sees it. The court sees an infringing uploaded image (where Zazzle is still protected) being turned into a physical product and decides this is the point where Zazzle loses its safe harbor. From the decision [PDF]:
GYPI argues that Zazzle had “the right and ability to control” the sale of infringing products because “it is actively involved in selecting the products that are sold, pricing those products, selling the products, manufacturing the products, inspecting the products, and finally packaging and delivering the products.” Doc. 50-1 at 27. Zazzle does not dispute that it engages in these activities. The Court concludes that Zazzle had the right and ability to control the types of products it produced. Unlike eBay or Amazon, Zazzle’s role is not limited to facilitating the sale of products owned and marketed by third parties. Zazzle creates the products. If Zazzle lacks the right and ability to control the sale of products it creates, it is hard to imagine any defendant that would have such a right.
Without the uploads, there would be no infringement. Zazzle may benefit indirectly from the sale of products with infringing images, but the court still feels Zazzle should be held accountable even if it has almost no direct input in the physical product creation other than forwarding the order to the print-on-demand contractor. As Goldman pointed out, the reasoning doesn't add up. But that's OK, says the court, Zazzle's reasoning doesn't add up either.
Zazzle argues that it lacked the ability to control the sale of infringing products because, in practice, “the production process was effectively automatic . . . after a product was ordered and approved by Zazzle’s CMT [content management team].” Doc. 69 at 25. That is a non sequitur. It doesn’t matter if Zazzle lacked the ability to control its production process after CMT approved the product; presumably CMT had the authority to reject products that were infringing. More to the point, even if the entire process were automatic, that would suggest at most that Zazzle had chosen not to exercise its right and ability to reject infringing products, not that it lacked the right or ability to do so. GYPI is entitled to summary judgment that Zazzle is not protected under § 512(c) to the extent it manufactured and sold physical products bearing infringing images.
There is no further attempt made to explain the court's rationale. For some reason, it can't seem to get past the production of physical products, even though Zazzle claims it has no more control over that than it does over uploaded content. In effect, the court sets up a double standard: physical vs. digital. Zazzle is protected if users upload infringing images but not if customers decide they want a copy of this image on a t-shirt or poster.The CMT mentioned above sounds like little more than a perfunctory infringement check similar to the one that accompanies each image upload. And if the court decides to untwist Zazzle's "non sequitur" and hold it up for examination, Zazzle shouldn't be able to avail itself of DMCA safe harbors at the point of image upload either. The decision is internally inconsistent. Given the number of print-on-demand companies out there, this bizarre internal split on physical/digital infringement could cause problems down the road.

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Former Head Of GCHQ Says Don't Backdoor End-To-End Encryption, Attack The End Points

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When he was head of GCHQ, Robert Hannigan said some pretty clueless things about the Internet and encryption. For example, in 2014, he accused tech companies of 'facilitating murder', and joined in the general demonization of strong crypto. Last year, he called for technical experts to work more closely with governments to come up with some unspecified way around encryption. Nobody really knew what he meant when he said:

"I am not in favor of banning encryption. Nor am I asking for mandatory back doors. Not everything is a back door, still less a door which can be exploited outside a legal framework."
Now, speaking to the BBC, he has clarified those remarks, and revealed how he thinks governments should be dealing with the issue of end-to-end encryption. As he admits:
"You can't uninvent end-to-end encryption, which is the thing that has particularly annoyed people, and rightly, in recent months. You can't just do away it, you can't legislate it away. The best that you can do with end-to-end encryption is work with the companies in a cooperative way, to find ways around it frankly."
He emphasized that backdoors are not the answer:
"I absolutely don't advocate that. Building in backdoors is a threat to everybody, and it's not a good idea to weaken security for everybody in order to tackle a minority."
So what is the solution? This:
"It's cooperation to target the people who are using it. So obviously the way around encryption is to get to the end point -- a smartphone, or a laptop -- that somebody who is abusing encryption is using. That's the way to do it."
As Techdirt reported earlier this year, this is very much the approach advocated by top security experts Bruce Schneier and Orin Kerr. They published a paper describing ways to circumvent even the strongest encryption. It seems that Hannigan has got the message that methods other than crypto backdoors exist, some of which require cooperation from tech companies, which may or may not be forthcoming. It's a pity that he's no longer head of GCHQ -- he left for "personal reasons" at the beginning of this year. But maybe that has given him a new freedom to speak out against stupid approaches. We just need to hope the UK government still listens to him.Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

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How One Game Developer Views Steam's Refund Policy As A Boon In The Face Of Over $4 Million In Refunds

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It's been a little over a year since the Steam platform finally rolled out a true refund program for digital game purchases, with Microsoft quickly following suit. While gamers rejoiced at the news that every game purchase wasn't some form of a gamble, game developers reacted in a range generally between being nonplussed to vocally angry or fearful. The overall concern was that this move to shift the balance of Steam's supportive stance towards the consumer and away from the game developer would negatively impact the bottom line of developers now faced with a negative column in their sales metrics.Yet there are still very smart people in the gaming industry. One of those people appears to be Garry Newman, the developer for Rust, a survival game available on Steam's platform. Rust has been refunded a staggering 300,000-plus times, resulting in nearly four-and-a-half million dollars in refunds. But rather than freaking out and lashing out at the Steam refund policy, Newman instead decided to publish the refund statistics for everyone to see. And then he went on to explain why he thinks the refund policy for his game is actually a good thing.

Newman believes, however, that refunds provide Steam users who might normally keep their wallets under lock and key with some leeway. “I think in the long run, people knowing the refund system is there probably gained us more sales than it lost us,” he said.
That's the sound of a man confident in his product. So confident, in fact, that he trusts that taking away some of the fear and mental cost to a transaction for his game will ultimately result in more cashflow in by gamers who keep the game than cashflow out from gamers refunding it. We make this argument all the time about digital marketplaces: taking away barriers for potential customers to enjoy a product will grow the customer-base enough to render any negatives unimportant.There's also something to be said for the vision of being consumer friendly in this way. Anyone reading Newman's comments must certainly favor this kind of transparency and, again, the confidence in his product that he is demonstrating. More so, the flip side makes the inverse argument: game developers afraid of a refund policy are clearly afraid of it due to the anticipation that it will used. That would seem to indicate a wavering stance on how good the product is to begin with.If nothing else, this past year has shown us that digital goods can still come packaged with consumer friendly policies while keeping the industry successful. Hopefully we'll see more of this sort of thing.

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This Week In Techdirt History: July 2nd - 8th

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Five Years AgoCharles Carreon kicked off this week in 2012 by continuing to dig deeper, while Matt Inman and IndieGogo hit back. He then tried to intimidate a parodist with a bizarre list of threats and a DMCA takedown. But by Tuesday, he had dismissed his lawsuit (while still claiming victory somehow), only for things to take a truly bizarre turn when an apparently fake lawsuit was filed against him under Inman's name.Ten Years AgoThis week in 2007, Russia shut down Allofmp3, a new legal spat raised the question of whether embedding a YouTube video can be infringement, and restaurants were beginning to really grapple with independent, amateur reviewers. The MPAA and RIAA were still up to their dirty investigative tricks while the NFL was trying to dictate the contours of fair use. And this was the week that Bill Gates ceased to be the richest man in the world.Fifteen Years AgoThis week in 2002, the RIAA was just starting up its campaign of going after the individual users of P2P sharing networks, while webcasters were being driven underground by onerous new royalty rates and a Danish court deeming it illegal to deep-link to a newspaper website. As WiFi continued to ascend, ISPs like Time Warner were starting to crack down on open hotspots — and as text messaging continued to ascend, the Methodist Church was joining the early crowd of people decrying it for getting in the way of social interaction.

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Appeals Court Tells Lower Court (For The Second Time) To Stop Coddling An Abusive Ex-Deputy

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The Seventh Circuit Appeals Court seems a bit tired of the district court's shit. For the second time, it's remanding a case involving a convicted law enforcement officer because the lower court refuses to give the former officer the punishment he deserves. Terry Joe Smith has twice been sentenced for subjecting two arrestees to intentional and unreasonable excessive force. The facts of the case are this, as recounted by the Appeals Court's second run [PDF] at the same problem.

At trial, Smith’s fellow police officers testified against him, describing the unwarranted attacks. In the first incident, Smith punched the arrestee in the face with a closed fist, causing bleeding and swelling on his face. Two officers testified that the blow made the sound of a tomato hitting a concrete wall. At the time, the arrestee was fully under the control of four other officers, and the arrestee posed no danger to Smith. A fellow officer testified that he had been trained to refrain from striking anyone in the head with a closed fist unless he was in a “deadly force” situation because such a blow could be lethal. After that incident, Smith bragged about his behavior to other officers and mocked those who objected to his unjustified attack. The arrestee had to be removed from the scene in an ambulance.
That's only half the story. Here's the rest:
Several months later, in the second attack, Smith and other officers arrested an intoxicated man accused of battering a woman during a domestic dispute. Smith led the handcuffed arrestee to a patrol car. On reaching the car, Smith raised the man into the air, threw him face-first onto the ground and drove his knee into the man’s back with such force that the man defecated on himself. The man suffered injuries to his back and ribs. Smith later bragged that this was not the first time he had made someone defecate on himself. Again, Smith’s fellow officers testified that the arrestee was not actively resisting in any manner and that the use of force was unjustified and excessive.
Obviously, Smith liked throwing his weight around. And he had plenty of it, according to the decision's footnotes: 6' 3" and 270 pounds -- all of it apparently deployed to show these arrestees who was in "control" of the situation.Sentencing guidelines called for 33-41 months imprisonment. The court considered some mitigating effects (community work, difficult childhood) and those calling for the harsher end of the sentencing spectrum (assaulting juveniles at a detention facility, "unaddressed anger issues," lying to investigators). For reasons not adequately explained, the district court sentenced Smith to less than half the minimum: 14 months.Both parties appealed. In retrospect, Smith may have been better off letting the sentence ride. The Appeals Court sent the case back with instructions to either explain its downward sentencing departure better or to apply a sentence within the guidelines. It pointed out the lower court said Smith was unlikely to reoffend but did not show its homework as to why it had chosen to depart so drastically from the guidelines.The lower court took another look at the case and… arrived at the same exact sentence. The court considered the time the officer had served as well as some steps he had taken to reintegrate himself into the real world again. It also pointed to the officer's statement as a proper expression of remorse for his wrongdoing. The Appeals Court notes the second sentencing attempt is basically a word-for-word replay of the first. It also notes Smith's "remorseful" statement mainly discussed how difficult things were for him rather than for his victims.
Smith did make a statement at his second sentencing hearing but it is difficult to find mention of his victims or much of a sense of ownership of his actions in his remarks. We reproduce in full the letter he read aloud:Your Honor, as you may know, it is very dangerous being an ex-police officer in prison; but yet, there are little to no secrets in prison. Most inmates know why you are there before they even ask you. I had guys that hated me, not for being me but for my ex-profession. I made it clear I was no longer a sheriff’s deputy, and I was an inmate just like them; and I was there to better myself, just as they were…
There's more along these lines discussing his time in prison, but still nothing about the harm he did to the victims of his violence. Smith closed his letter by making it clear that only one person is on Smith's mind: former deputy Terry Joe Smith.
Why do I tell you this? I tell you this because you made the right decision when it came to sentencing me. I want to be an example to other judges, prosecutors that not every man that makes a mistake needs a long sentence and that when you have done everything to better yourself and when you have years left to serve – to sit and wait for your sentence to run out and the only thing you’re waiting for is an out date, it is the family, children and communities that are serving the sentence.[...]I can say that because of the sentence you handed me. You knew exactly what I needed to get back on track and I thank you. I hope my actions during and after my incarceration have validated your sentencing choice for me. I thank you for the opportunity you’ve given me.
Having been swayed by someone who showed no remorse for anything but his personal situation, the district court handed out the same sentence, which Smith had already served. It also stated extending his sentence would be unduly disruptive to Smith's new life. Undoubtedly so, but that's the nature of prison sentences, as the Appeals Court points out:
In addressing the need to promote respect for the law and deter others from committing similar crimes, the court mentioned that Smith had incurred two felony convictions,lost his job as a police officer, resigned his position on the city council, and lost his reputation within the community.[...]Losing one’s job and reputation are the normal consequences of committing a felony at work. It is unclear how these naturally occurring repercussions that are not part of any sentence would promote respect for the law and deter others from committing similar crimes.
As for the letter of regret that persuaded the lower court to do absolutely nothing about the absurdly low sentence it had imposed, the Appeals Court says this:
Smith’s statement to the court contained, at most, an acknowledgment that some—but not all—of his fellow prisoners were people like him, who had made mistakes and were seeking to better themselves. He also expressed his new-found belief that not all defendants required lengthy sentences, a principle he hoped the court would apply to him. He never mentioned his victims or his crimes unless one generously infers that the “mistake” to which he referred was senselessly beating arrestees who were already under control and posed no danger to him. He did not concede the facts of his offenses of conviction and he did not express regret for anything other than the length of a possible new sentence. It is certainly admirable that he learned in prison that prisoners are human beings like himself, but that is a far cry from an expression of remorse for the harms he caused or acceptance of responsibility for his crimes. There is nothing resembling the promised “ownership” in Smith’s remarks to the court.
With that, it's yet another trip back to the lower court to see if it can finally get its sentencing right. This court's extreme reluctance to apply the sentencing guidelines it gladly applies without question to normal defendants doesn't score it any points with the Appeals Court. The fact that the lower court needs to be told twice to do its job right looks even worse. The super-low sentence shows Deputy Smith isn't like the other prisoners he was forced to spend time with, no matter what his letter says. He's the beneficiary of judicial deference -- something lots of cops get, but is rarely enjoyed by members of the public they serve.

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Tim Berners-Lee Sells Out His Creation: Officially Supports DRM In HTML

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For years now, we've discussed the various problems with the push (led by the MPAA, but with some help from Netflix) to officially add DRM to the HTML 5 standard. Now, some will quibble with even that description, as supporters of this proposal insist that it's not actually adding DRM, but rather this "Encrypted Media Extensions" (EME) is merely just a system by which DRM might be implemented, but that's a bunch of semantic hogwash. EME is bringing DRM directly into HTML and killing the dream of a truly open internet. Instead, we get a functionally broken internet. Despite widespread protests and concerns about this, W3C boss (and inventor of the Web), Tim Berners-Lee, has signed off on the proposal. Of course, given the years of criticism over this, that signoff has come with a long and detailed defense of the decision... along with a tiny opening to stop it.There are many issues underlying this decision, but there are two key ones that we want to discuss here: whether EME is necessary at all and whether or not the W3C should have included a special protection for security researchers.First, the question of whether or not EME even needs to be in HTML at all. Many -- even those who dislike DRM -- have argued that it was kind of necessary. The underlying argument here is that certain content producers would effectively abandon the web without EME being in HTML5. However, this argument rests on the assumption that the web needs those content producers more than those content producers need the web -- and I'm not convinced that's an accurate portrayal of reality. It is fair to note that, especially with the rise of smart devices from phones to tablets to TVs, you could envision a world in which the big content producers "abandoned" the web and only put their content in proprietary DRM'd apps. And maybe that does happen. But my response to that is... so what? Let them make that decision and perhaps the web itself is a better place. And plenty of other, smarter, more innovative content producers can jump in and fill the gaps, providing all sorts of cool content that doesn't require DRM, until those with outdated views realize they're missing out. Separately, I tend to agree with Cory Doctorow's long-held view that DRM is an attack on basic computing principles -- one that sets up the user as a threat, rather than the person who owns the computer in question. That twisted setup leads to bad outcomes that create harm. That view, however, is clearly not in the majority, and many people admitted it was a foregone conclusion that some form of EME would move forward.The second issue is much more problematic. A bunch of W3C members had made a clear proposal that if EME is included, there should be a covenant that W3C members will not sue security researchers under Section 1201 of the DMCA should they crack any DRM. There is no reason not to support this. Security researchers should be encouraged to be searching for vulnerabilities in DRM and encryption in order to better protect us all. And, yet, for reasons that no one can quite understand, the W3C has rejected multiple versions of this proposal, often with little discussion or explanation. The final decision from Tim Berners-Lee on this is basically "sure a covenant not to sue would have been nice, and we think companies shouldn't sue, but... since this wasn't raised at the very beginning, we're not supporting it":

We recommend organizations involved in DRM and EME implementations ensure proper security and privacy protection of their users. We also recommend that such organizations not use the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and similar laws around the world to prevent security and privacy research on the specification or on implementations. We invite them to adopt the proposed best practices for security guidelines [7] (or some variation), intended to protect security and privacy researchers. Others might advocate for protection in public policy fora - an area that is outside the scope of W3C which is a technical standards organization. In addition, the prohibition on "circumvention" of technical measures to protect copyright is broader than copyright law's protections against infringement, and it is not our intent to provide a technical hook for those paracopyright provisions.Given that there was strong support to initially charter this work (without any mention of a covenant) and continued support to successfully provide a specification that meets the technical requirements that were presented, the Director did not feel it appropriate that the request for a covenant from a minority of Members should block the work the Working Group did to develop the specification that they were chartered to develop. Accordingly the Director overruled these objections.
This is unfortunate. What's bizarre is that the supporters of DRM basically refuse to discuss any of this. Even just a few days ago, the Center for Democracy and Technology proposed a last-ditch "very narrow" compromise to protect a limited set of security and privacy researchers (just those examining implementations of w3C specifications for privacy and security flaws.) Netflix flat out rejected this compromise saying that it's "similar to the proposal" that was made a year ago. Even though it's not. It was more narrowly focused and designed to respond to whatever concerns Netflix and others had.The problem here seemed to be that Netflix and the MPAA realized that they had enough power to push this through without needing to protect security researchers, and just decided "we can do it, so fuck it, let's do it." And Tim Berners-Lee -- who had the ability to block it -- caved in and let it happen. The whole thing is a travesty.Corry Doctorow has a thorough and detailed response to the W3C's decision that pushes back on many of the claims that the W3C and Berners-Lee have made in support of this decision. Here's just part of it:
We're dismayed to see the W3C literally overrule the concerns of its public interest members, security experts, accessibility members and innovative startup members, putting the institution's thumb on the scales for the large incumbents that dominate the web, ensuring that dominance lasts forever.This will break people, companies, and projects, and it will be technologists and their lawyers, including the EFF, who will be the ones who'll have to pick up the pieces. We've seen what happens when people and small startups face the wrath of giant corporations whose ire they've aroused. We've seen those people bankrupted, jailed, and personally destroyed.
This was a bad decision done badly, and Tim Berners-Lee, the MPAA and Netflix should be ashamed. The MPAA breaking the open internet I can understand. It's what that organization has wanted to do for over a decade. But Netflix should be a supporter of the open internet, rather than an out and out detractor.As Cory notes in his post, there is an appeals process, but it's never been used before. The EFF and others are exploring it now, but it's a hail mary process at this point. What a shame.

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Two Wangs Of Ireland Battle Over Trademarks Nobody Will Confuse

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It's frankly sort of ridiculous, but the state of trademark protectionism that exists today has rendered the trademarking of a person's own last name somewhat unwise. Given the low bar that has unfortunately been set in terms of judging real or potential customer confusion in the marketplace, simply using one's own name for a commercial brand rife with danger where trademarks are concerned. Something of an example of this is currently taking place between a small New York clothing designer named Thaddeus O'Neil and famed surf wear manufacturer O'Neill. The latter has been blocking a trademark application by O'Neil for over a year now.

In May of 2016, O'Neil the person filed a trademark for the name of his company, Thaddeus O'Neil, as well as his T.O. logo, which looks like an upside down Venus symbol. O'Neill the company, filed a motion in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office asking the court to block the trademark, claiming it was "likely to cause confusion." In June, the USPTO stated that the motion was not sufficient to grant the motion, however O'Neill the company appealed and the decision is now pending. The game of legal ping pong continues.
Let's get this out of the way: the two brands have little in common other than both selling clothing -- very different kinds of clothing -- and having a variation of a common last name. The branding for each company is wildly different and poses no threat to even the most moronic and hurried among us.

Those brands are nothing alike and they don't sell to similar marketplaces. Thaddeus O'Neil's branding includes his entire name. The lengths O'Neill is going to to block his trademark application seem rather heavy-handed given that, but it adds to the strangeness of it all that Thaddeus O'Neill can't name his brand after himself. And that strangeness birthed one of the best quotes I've ever been able to include in a Techdirt post.
"I'm a designer, and this is my work," O'Neill said in an email to The Hollywood Reporter. "Why can't the clothing I create bear my own name? We have Alexander Wang and Vera Wang coexisting unproblematically in same space. Wang is like Smith in China. They get along just fine and so do their customers. O'Neil is the Wang of Ireland."
O'Neil is the Wang of Ireland is something of a gem, but he's also plainly correct. Ownership over so common a last name at best should be wielded with care, if such a trademark ought to have been granted at all. Similar to how high the bars for infringement trademarks utilizing geographical areas are, so too should trademarks utilizing common last names be forced to reserve protectionism for when real confusion is likely or evident.

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Court Says Gov't Has To Do More Than Say It Doesn't Believe The Property Owners If It Wants To Keep The Cash It Seized

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The federal government thought it had laid an easy claim to someone else's cash, but the DC Court of Appeals is telling the government it's not quite as easy as it makes it out to be.The court lets everyone know things aren't entirely normal with the first sentence of the opinion [PDF]:

This is a civil-forfeiture case, which is why the plaintiff is the United States of America and the defendant is a pile of cash.
From that starting point we arrive at two sets of claims. First, the government's:
The government claims that the cash is subject to forfeiture because it is connected to the “exchange [of] a controlled substance,” i.e., drug trafficking.
And here is the government's sole basis for this conclusion:
This case traces its roots back to March 28, 2014, when an Amtrak passenger mistakenly removed another person’s backpack from a train at Washington’s Union Station. Later that day, he opened the backpack to find a shopping bag containing $17,900 in cash.Commendably, he turned the backpack over to Amtrak police. In addition to the money, Amtrak police officers found inside the bag a student notebook and other personal effects. One of the papers contained the name Peter Rodriguez, as did the train manifest. A police narcotics dog alerted to the backpack, suggesting the presence of drug residue.
That's basically it. A dog said it smelled drugs. Or, rather, an officer said a dog said it smelled drugs. The only other thing the government has to offer is that it doesn't believe the appellants' story about the legality of the money.
Using a contact number from the manifest, a detective with the Metropolitan Police Department called Peter Rodriguez, who gave a detailed description of the contents of the backpack—except for the money. Twice asked whether there was money in the backpack, Peter said no. Later, the detective called Peter to inform him that currency was found in the backpack, and that the bag—sans cash—could be recovered from Amtrak, though the money would remain with the MPD Asset Forfeiture Unit.Shortly thereafter, appellant Angela Rodriguez, Peter’s mother, contacted MPD, explaining, according to the government’s verified complaint, that the cash belonged to her and her domestic partner, appellant Joyce Copeland, who lives with her in New York City. The couple, she recounted, had left the money in a bag in Peter’s apartment, but neglected to tell him that it contained currency. When Peter later announced that he was coming to New York to visit his mother, she told him to bring the bag along. Unconvinced by Ms. Rodriguez’s story, the police formally seized the currency and turned it over to the DEA, which initiated administrative forfeiture proceedings.
The government says the appellants' story is unbelievable -- that someone wouldn't just stash $18,000 in someone's backpack and not tell them about it. The court points out it really doesn't matter what the government believes.
In this case, the couple has offered sworn testimony detailing how they amassed the money, why they transported it to North Carolina, and how it ended up in Peter’s hands. In fact, there is little in the record other than their declarations. Certainly, nothing in the record directly contradicts the pair’s sworn account—no evidence that they did not travel to North Carolina, for instance, nor evidence that the cash had another source. Given our responsibility to “view[] the evidence in the light most favorable” to the couple and to “accept . . . uncontroverted fact[s],” Johnson, 823 F.3d at 705, we have little trouble concluding that the couple has asserted ownership and offered “some evidence” of ownership sufficient to withstand summary judgment.
It also points out why cash seizures in particular raise these issues, and why the government shouldn't be so quick to assume every story told by appellants is bullshit.
[B]ecause the case concerns cash, it demonstrates how challenging it can be to document ownership of property seized by law enforcement. Indeed, the very qualities that make paper money useful for illicit activity—in particular, its untraceability—often make it difficult to prove that any cash is legitimate, no matter its source. This is especially true for those in our society who rely on cash to the exclusion of banking and other financial services. As Justice Thomas has recognized, it is “the poor and other groups least able to defend their interests in forfeiture proceedings” who bear the brunt of civil asset forfeiture. Leonard, slip op. at 4 (internal citation omitted). And it is these same groups that are “more likely to use cash than alternative forms of payment, like credit cards, which may be less susceptible to forfeiture.” [...] So especially when cash is at issue, requiring more than “some evidence” of ownership would be onerous, unfair, and unrealistic.
The court also has nothing good to say about the government's singular insistence that the appellant's money story is made up, despite being unable to produce any evidence to the contrary. Taking the government at its word eliminates any remaining shreds of due process left in the forfeiture process.
The government’s argument perfectly illustrates why credibility determinations and the weighing of evidence are left to juries rather than judges. Government counsel may well be able to convince judges that it is inconceivable someone would choose to keep sizeable cash savings, to travel with cash, or to pay for routine expenses using cash rather than a credit card, but a jury of laypeople with different and more diverse life experiences might view these very same choices with considerably less suspicion. We are thus especially reticent to circumvent the jury process and throw out sworn testimony because it is out of line with our own lived experiences.
The appeals court reverses the lower court's decision. The government will have to do something it explicitly tries to avoid by using civil asset forfeiture rather than criminal asset forfeiture: taking a case to trial and actually having to provide more definitive evidence than "the dog said it smelled like drugs."

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Stupid Patent Of The Month: Using A Computer To Count Calories

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This month's stupid patent, like many stupid patents before it, simply claims the idea of using a computer for basic calculations. U.S. Patent No. 6,817,863 (the '863 patent) is titled "Computer program, method, and system for monitoring nutrition content of consumables and for facilitating menu planning." It claims the process of using a computer to track nutrition information like calorie or vitamin intake. It is difficult to think of a more basic and trivial use for a computer.The '863 patent is owned by a patent troll called Dynamic Nutrition Information, LLC. Dynamic Nutrition filed a lawsuit this month in the Eastern District of Texas accusing Australian company Fatsecret of infringing the '863 patent. Dynamic Nutrition had filed four other lawsuits. Consistent with a pattern of nuisance litigation, each of those earlier suits settled very quickly.What "invention" does the '863 patent purport to cover? Claim 1 of the patent is reproduced in full below (with comments in brackets):

A computer program comprising a combination of code segments stored in a computer-readable memory and executable by a processor to provide nutrition content information related to consumables, the computer program comprising:a code segment operable to receive and store an input related to consumption of consumables, and to associate the input with a calender [sic] date [i.e. program a computer to track daily food intake]; anda code segment operable to generate an interactive display screen, wherein the interactive display screen includes [i.e. include some kind of user interface]one or more lists of consumables and related nutrition content information, and [i.e. list food options and nutrition information]a summary section of past consumption of consumables. [i.e. list past food intake]
In other words, program a computer to help people keep track of meals and calorie or vitamin intake.The application for Dynamic Nutrition's patent was filed on June 11, 2001. By that time, computers had been around for decades and there was nothing remotely surprising or innovative about programming a computer to keep track of datawhether it be nutrition data or units shipped or accounts receivable or whatever. Nevertheless, the Patent Office takes an extremely rigid approach to whether or not a patent application is obvious. This means that companies often get patents on common sense ideas (like taking photos against white background or filming a yoga class).
Even leaving aside the issue of obviousness, the claims of the '863 patent are invalid under the Supreme Court's Alice v. CLS Bank decision (which struck down patents that merely claim the use of conventional computers to implement an abstract idea). Indeed, the first company to be sued by Dynamic Nutrition, Under Armour, filed a motion to dismiss the case under Alice. Under Armour pointed out that the '863 patent itself repeatedly emphasizes that its methods can be implemented using any conventional computer or programming language. Given the strength of this argument, it is unsurprising that the litigation settled before Dynamic Nutrition even filed a response.Dynamic Nutrition's patent is not even the only patent that claims using a computer for routine meal planning. A patent troll called DietGoal sued dozens of companies with a meal planning patent. A court invalidated DietGoal's patent under Alice because it claimed nothing more than the "conventional and quotidian tasks" of selecting meals. The Federal Circuit affirmed that ruling. The logic of this decision applies straightforwardly to Dynamic Nutrition's patent claims.We recently launched our Saved By Alice project where we are highlighting cases where companies attacked by stupid software patents were able to use the Alice decision to defend themselves against weak patent suits. The Dynamic Nutrition litigation is yet another example of why the Alice ruling is important and how it can protect productive companies from patent trolls.Reposted from the EFF's Stupid Patent of the Month series.

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Indie Developer Finds Game On Torrent Site, Gives Away Free Keys Instead Of Freaking Out

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When game developers find their products available for download on torrent sites and the like, it's understandable if their reaction isn't exactly positive. Many gamemakers pour their hearts into developing their art and finding it available for free, fully cracked of any DRM that they might have included, can be understandably frustrating. It's typically that frustration that launches into DMCA takedowns, complaints about piracy harming the gaming business, and talk of site-blocking and legal threats.But not every game developer falls into that category. While it doesn't happen enough, some developers try to understand what piracy is and isn't, and where inroads with the gaming community can be made, even amongst those dastardly pirates. A recent example of this would be Jacob Janerka, who created the indie game Paradigm, only to find the game available on torrent sites across the internet.

But, instead of being filled with anger and rage while running to the nearest anti-piracy outfit, Janerka decided to reach out to the pirates. Not to school or scold them, but to offer a few free keys.“Hey everyone, I’m Jacob the creator of Paradigm. I know some of you legitimately can’t afford the game and I’m glad you get to still play it :D,” Janerka’s comment on TPB reads. “If you like the game, please tell your friends and maybe even consider buying it later,” he added.
Rather than playing whac-a-mole or, even worse, spending many calories and minutes complaining about the reality of video game piracy existing, Janerka decided to engage this community, give away a few free game keys, and include a request to spread the word about the game if those on the torrent site truly enjoy it. That's about as congenial as it gets, especially when we keep this within the frame of this group being one downloading Janerka's game for free when he's attempting to make a business out of his work product.In the aftermath of this, someone posted the exchange on Reddit, leading to a chorus of approval from the internet community, to further coverage of the story and his game by proxy, and to news coverage of Janerka. In those interviews, Janerka revealed that this isn't some marketing ploy that went well, but rather that he has personal experience with pirating games.
“I did it because I understand that in some cases, some people legitimately cannot afford the game and would like to play it. So maybe HOPEFULLY for a lucky few, they got the official keys and got to play it and enjoy it. I know for sure that when I was a young kid, I was unable to buy all the games I wanted and played pirated games. And when I actually got that disposable income, I ended up buying sequels/merch/extra copies,” Janerka adds.The developer doesn’t think that piracy hurts him much, as many people who pirate his games don’t have the money to buy them anyway. In addition, having non-paying fans of the game is more valuable than having no fans at all.
Janerka's approach is the polar opposite of most of the larger studios that tend to see game pirates as vermin fit for the judicial system. To see news of the game spread like this, simply because the developer decided to be awesome and human rather than heavy-handed or litigious, should be a signal to creators big and small how to handle having their games show up on torrent sites.

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This Week In Techdirt History: June 25th - July 1st

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Five Years AgoThis week in 2012, we saw some obstinate reactions to the ACTA protests, with an EU Parliamentarian saying dissent was "a soft form of terrorism", and the EU Commissioner saying he would simply ignore rejection of ACTA by the EU Parliament — while Australia's parliamentary committee on the subject was recommending rejection. As for the TPP in the US, we were annoyed but unsurprised to learn that the MPAA had full online access to the text of the agreement even as Congress continued to struggle to get even the slightest glimpse. Rep. Darrell Issa made the reasonable request that he be allowed to observe the next round of TPP negotiations, but he was (again unsurprisingly) rejected.Ten Years AgoThis week in 2007, some people were beginning to ask whether the RIAA's piracy investigation tactics were even legal. Of course, Attorney General Albert Gonzales was far more interested in throwing people in jail for attempted piracy. Rolling Stone rolled its eyes and wrote an obituary for the recording industry, while the MPAA was off doing its own thing — suing sites for just linking to infringing content. Meanwhile, statistics about reality kept being disobedient to the world of anti-violent-videogame crusaders, with their protests driving up the hype around Manhunt 2, and violent crime rates continuing to fall while violent video games got more popular.Fifteen Years AgoThis week in 2002, the new era of the web was slowly being born as the world noticed that broadband internet access unlocked entirely new usage patterns and behaviors for internet users — even though broadband was still really struggling to catch on in the US. Meanwhile, a congressman introduced a bill to legitimize all sorts of nasty anti-piracy vigilante tactics including the increasingly popular music industry scheme of trying to swamp file trading networks with fake files. Newspaper executives were looking to the future of the mobile web, while newspaper columnists were stuck in the past and moaning about those newfangled "blogs". And the RIAA succeeded in scaring workplaces into cracking down on employees sharing MP3s.

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Germany Officially Gives Up On Free Speech: Will Fine Internet Companies That Don't Delete 'Bad' Speech

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Yeah, yeah, before you rush to the comments and start justifying this by saying that Europe doesn't respect free expression in the same way the US does, let's just say while that may be true, this is still bad: Germany has moved forward with a plan to fine internet companies which don't quickly censor the internet. Censor what, though? Three loosely defined (and easily abused) categories: hate speech, criminal material and fake news.

Social media companies face fines of up to €50m (£43m) if they persistently fail to remove illegal content from their sites under a new law passed in GermanyThe German parliament on Friday approved the bill aimed at cracking down on hate speech, criminal material and fake news on social networks - but critics warn it could have drastic consequences for free speech online.
And, yes, again Europe has very different standards for free expression -- and Germany, in particular, has a long history of trying to suppress what it considers "bad" speech regarding some of its historical actions (Godwin'd!). Even so, this is dangerous and will be abused to stifle all sorts of important expression:
The German justice minister, Heiko Maas, who was the driving force behind the bill, said: Freedom of speech ends where the criminal law begins. Maas said official figures showed the number of hate crimes in Germany increased by more than 300% in the last two years.
Even accepting that free speech ends where criminal law begins, that doesn't justify fining the platforms. If people are posting "illegal" content, go after them for breaking the law. Don't go after the tools they use. By putting massive liability risks on platforms, those platforms will almost certainly overcompensate and over censor to avoid any risk of liability. That means a tremendous amount of what should be protected speech gets silence, just because these companies don't want to get fined. Even worse, the big platforms can maybe hire people to handle this. The littler platforms? They basically can't risk operating in Germany any more. Berlin is a hotbed of startups, but this is going to seriously harm many of them.The new law also has an even weirder provision, putting liability not just on the platforms, but on individual employees at online platforms who are designated the Chief Censors for that platform:
Aside from the hefty fine for companies, the law also provides for fines of up to €5m for the person each company designates to deal with the complaints procedure if it doesn't meet requirements.
Who the hell is going to want that job? Make one mistake in failing to censor something, and you may be bankrupted.Just a little while ago we wrote about how difficult it can be for a platform to be calling the shots on what's worth censoring and what's not. Since there's so much content, the analysis of each piece of content needs to be standardized in a manner that tends to be absurd. It appears that those supporting this law don't have any interest in the realities involved, but think that by passing this legislation, they've waved a magic wand. Yes, putting liability onto platforms (and employees) will likely lead to greater suppression of speech people dislike -- but also of important and necessary speech. There appears to have been no effort to consider how dangerous that might turn out to be.

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Lawyer Deploys Faulty Subpoena Demanding Evidence Preservation, Fails To Impress Lawyer Receiving It

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When a lawyer sends a demand to another lawyer, the one doing the sending had better be on top of their law game. Otherwise, things will go badly. And when they go badly, they end up being discussed here.Conservative blogger (and lawyer) Scott Johnson got hit with a subpoena ordering him to preserve evidence possibly relevant to a legal challenge of Trump's travel ban from a courtroom halfway across the country. The advance subpoena informed Johnson of his pending obligation to preserve (with production expected later) certain notes pertaining to certain blog posts pertaining to his attendance of a reception for conservative writers held by Trump at the White House.The problem with the proposed subpoena and evidentiary preservation demands is they weren't actually, you know, legal.

On June 10, I was served with a letter and draft subpoena from Tana Lin of the Keller Rohrback law firm’s Seattle office alerting me to my “document preservation obligations with respect to documents that are relevant or potentially relevant to this litigation.” Lin represents plaintiffs in Doe v.Trump, venued before Judge James Robart in the federal district court for the Western District of Washington.Though the lawsuit had been stayed, pending a recently issued ruling from the Ninth Circuit in the parallel Hawaii v. Trump “travel ban” case, Judge Robart authorized Lin to notify me of the lawsuit and seek my confirmation by June 15 that I would preserve potentially relevant documents until such time as she sends me a formal subpoena or the lawsuit is formally resolved.
The "potentially relevant documents" included any notes Johnson might have taken during this meeting and specifically referenced the same notebook Johnson referenced in his detailed post about the reception. To wit:
Although there was some degree of difficulty writing while standing, I took notes on the questions and Trump’s answers in my new notebook from CVS.
Johnson -- who knows a few things about federal procedures -- immediately fired a letter back to Tana Lin, telling her she had the wrong statute.
The final sentence of your letter in bold type cites Rule 34(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Rule 34(a) applies to a “party” to litigation. I am not a party. I am a “nonparty.” As such, Rule 34(c) would apply to me. Unless I am missing something, I find your instruction to me that I am “required” to do anything under Rule 34(a) highly misleading.
He also informed her the correct statute wasn't going to be of much help either.
Rule 34(c) cross references Rule 45. As a distant nonparty to the litigation, Rule 45 gives me certain rights once you serve me with a valid subpoena. Yet the draft subpoena you have served on me is a nullity.[...]Once I have objected to the subpoena under Rule 45, the rule would require you to seek an order enforcing compliance in the United States District Court for the District of Minnesota. I understand that Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson has joined you in the litigation. Perhaps you can assign enforcement of the subpoena to Ms. Swanson. I’m sure Minnesota taxpayers would enjoy the opportunity to see up close and personal how she is expending the resources of her office to hound a journalist for his utterly superfluous notes in the service of your litigation.
Lin called the reference to the wrong statute a "typo," but it really makes no difference which statute was cited: Johnson is a private individual who just happened to be invited to a reception thrown by the president. It's not like he had some preexisting obligation to retain the notebook for X number of years just in case someone might need it for future litigation. As he points out, he's not a government agency. He took notes for a planned blog post. He had no "duty" to preserve them then and there's not much in the proposed subpoena showing any legal reason why he can't throw them out now.What's concerning about this -- no matter which side of the travel ban you come down on -- is that litigants fighting an executive order somehow feel private non-parties should be compelled to turn over their private notes on the off-chance there might be something damning hidden in them. Johnson calls it "harassment" and he's not wrong. This is no different than anyone in any situation using the weight of the government to compel journalists to produce information about sources and contacts when they're not party to ongoing lawsuits or expected to serve as witnesses.Beneath it all is a lawyer who slid a subpoena request past an inattentive judge, citing statutes that don't say what she thinks they say. That's a lot of power to be wielding badly, considering it's mostly bad things that wait for those who reject a judge's advances.

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