In the immortal words of the @TheDoobieBros—"What the people need is a way to make them smile."William Murray Golf's attorney @AlexYoffe's response to Doobie Brothers' attorney Peter Paterno, re: "Listen To The Music".#BillMurray #WilliamMurray #DoobieBrothers pic.twitter.com/rIxmM8wzDV— William Murray Golf (@WMurrayGolf) September 25, 2020
I am sure that Howard King of your firm, who argued that the song "Blurred Lines" did not infringe on Marvin Gaye's composition "Got To Give It Up", would agree that your client was not harmed under these circumstances.This, frankly, is a bad legal position to take. The two circumstances are nothing alike. Murray is using music from the band in an advertisement. The "Blurred Lines" case was all about minute details of how much of a song's "feel" could be copyrighted -- not the music itself, in terms of the copyrightable expression of a song, but, rather, its style.What Murray could have done would be to respect the band's congeniality in order to work out an arrangement with minimal impact on his company. The Doobie Brothers' initial letter, with all of its lack of serious threat, seemed to indicate the band would be open to that sort of thing. But to simply use the song in an advertisement and claim no harm, therefore no copyright infringement, seems like a stretch.In other words, I would advise Murray's legal team try to get back in touch with the band and come up with a real offer to work this out.
Gerardo Gonzalez is a United States citizen. He has never been removable from the United States. The United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), however, came to a different conclusion in December 2012. After Gonzalez was booked on state law criminal charges by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), an ICE agent ran his name through electronic databases, an automated procedure that ICE uses to determine whether an individual is a removable noncitizen. Because one database flagged Gonzalez’s birthplace as being in Mexico, and the agent could not find records showing that Gonzalez had lawfully entered the United States, the agent determined that Gonzalez was removable from the United States. ICE issued an immigration detainer, requesting that the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department (LASD) detain Gonzalez for up to an additional five days in the Los Angeles County Jail after when he was entitled to release from custody on state criminal charges so that ICE could take him into its custody.This situation used to be even worse. Prior to December 2012, ICE didn't even need probable cause to issue a detainer. So, even if people were free to go, that freedom to go could be removed if ICE had done nothing more than initiated an investigation into whether the person targeted by a detainer was actually removable. Thanks to some litigation, ICE began requiring probable cause. But that probable cause was limited to an officer's "belief" that a person was removable. Because one database said Gonzalez's birthplace was Mexico and the officer could find no records of legal entry, Gonzalez was held for another five days after he was prepared to post bail for the state criminal charges. Here's how this worked out for Gonzalez:
On December 31, 2012, ICE issued the immigration detainer against him. Although the detainer had no effect on Gonzalez’s custody when lodged due to a then-applicable parole hold, Gonzalez became eligible for release on bail from LASD custody on state criminal charges in May 2013 when the hold expired. He attempted to post bail with the assistance of his girlfriend, who went to a bondsman. The bondsman informed her that Gonzalez was subject to an immigration detainer. The detainer requested that LASD keep him in custody for up to five additional days after his release from custody on state criminal charges. The detainer, however, prevented him from posting bail. Even if he posted the $95,000 bail as he had intended to do, Gonzalez would remain in custody. Indeed, it was LASD policy to comply with all ICE detainers.ICE dropped the detained when Gonzalez sued, presumably in hopes of getting him to drop the lawsuit. It didn't happen. And now there's precedent on the books that says ICE can't do this sort of thing in future.The lower court said ICE can't rely solely on the database used in this case to make probable cause determinations. The database is too inaccurate to be relied on, according to the district court.
In finding for Plaintiffs on this Database Claim, the district court concluded that the databases are unreliable for determining probable cause of removability, and thus the Government violates the Fourth Amendment by issuing detainers based solely on searches of the databases.The Ninth Circuit says the district court didn't do enough fact-finding to make this determination. However, the Appeals Court does reach this conclusion, which has the potential to vastly alter the way ICE enforces detainers. Without probable cause, ICE can't hold people more than 48 hours on a detainer or, as in this case, five days past the point the person was due to be released by local law enforcement. Detainees should be treated the same as arrestees and given their day before the judge as soon as possible.
[T]he panel concluded that, because the Fourth Amendment requires probable cause to seize or detain an individual for a civil immigration offense, it follows that the Fourth Amendment requires a prompt probable cause determination by a neutral and detached magistrate to justify continued detention pursuant to an immigration detainer.Thanks to Trump, our immigration courts are already overloaded. And again, thanks to Trump, ICE keeps loading them up even more by going after anyone it believes is subject to removal, rather than concentrating on the "dangerous" immigrants this Administration claims infest our nation. If ICE can't get them before a judge within 48 hours, they should be free to go, just like anyone arrested on actual criminal charges.It hardly makes sense for the Fourth Amendment to be less effective for people detained on civil violations. The Ninth Circuit Appeals Court has corrected that error and its reach covers a whole lot of border territory.
The craft brewing company, based in Ellon, had won the right to register the brand as a trademark in the UK in 2018. However, they have been denied exclusive rights to the name in Europe – potentially threatening sales on the continent.Unlike its UK counterpart, the EU bought the Presley estate's line that throughout Europe people buying an IPA called Elvis Juice would somehow think it was associated with a crooner from the American 50s as opposed to, say, Elvis Costello. Or the two Elvises that legally changed their name to Elvis that also own BrewDog. How that makes any sense, or how anyone is making this connection in, for instance, Spain is beyond me.
In the case documents, the EU Intellectual Property Office ruled: “It is clear that the applicant’s submission based on the peaceful coexistence of the marks cannot succeed. No evidence actually demonstrating such peaceful existence on the pertinent market has been shown. In short…there exists a likelihood of confusion… A likelihood of confusion for only part of the relevant public of the European Union is sufficient to reject the contested application.”I mean, if this were two years ago, when the UK IPO decision came down, the UK would have been part of that pertinent market. And that should have been all that was needed to side with BrewDog. This, somehow, went the other way.And, as a result, it's an open question as to whether BrewDog will keep its Elvis Juice branding as a whole, given the EU decision. Meanwhile, the EU IPO also ordered the brewery to pay the Presley estate costs.
Adam Henschke, an applied ethicist working on areas that cross over between ethics, technology and security at the Australian National University, tells me that one of the concerns that people like himself have with smart cities is exactly this — the power that such technologies have over access to basic goods and services. Henschke admits that while it's not uncommon for landlords to have the power to change people's locks as part of normal eviction processes, this technology obviously raises a bunch of other issues."His first concern is that it could be psychologically easier for a landlord, real estate agent or building manager to lock a person out. “If this is done in person, then whoever changes the locks likely has to confront the tenant in person,” says Henschke. “Whereas, as this is being done remotely, it can be psychologically easier to make the decision to lock the tenant out.”That said, the piece includes some quotes by folks who believe existing legal protections will simply extend to protect renters and homeowners under an automated system where eviction becomes less of a physical affair and simply a cold few lines of code. And you'd certainly hope that's the case. But when you look at some of the new companies being created to make evictions a more efficient, gig-economy affair, fused with massive COVID-19 financial headaches, smart locks, and an apathetic/incompetent government, you have to pause and at least think about the potential ramifications of making eviction too automated and efficient:
"Civvl aims to marry the gig economy with the devastation of a pandemic, complete with signature gig startup language like "be your own boss," and "flexible hours," and "looking for self-motivated individuals with positive attitudes:" "FASTEST GROWING MONEY MAKING GIG DUE TO COVID-19," its website says. "Literally thousands of process servers are needed in the coming months due courts being backed up in judgements that needs to be served to defendants."You'd hope that existing law and oversight steps up to protect the consumer, but as we work to make the eviction process a more automated and gig-worker backed affair (as usual only thinking about any potential problems after the fact if at all), it's kind of hard not to think we're going to find some creative ways to make existing problems worse.
Square is putting all of our crypto patents into a new non-profit org we're calling the Crypto Open Patent Alliance, which will maintain a shared patent library to help the crypto community defend against patent aggressors and trolls. Join us! #bitcoinhttps://t.co/I9VopgtMz9— jack (@jack) September 10, 2020
Accordingly, the court held that, as a threshold matter, the Rogers test needed to be applied. Under that test, a trademark infringement plaintiff must show that the defendant’s use of the mark either (1) is “not artistically relevant to the underlying work” or (2) “explicitly misleads consumers as to the source or content of the work.” Id. at 9 (quoting Gordon, 909 F.3d at 265). The Ninth Circuit vacated the district court’s finding of infringement and remanded for a determination, in the first instance, of whether Jack Daniel’s can satisfy either element of the Rogers test.But instead of proceeding along those lines, it seems that Jack Daniels instead wants to have a fight at the U.S. Supreme Court over whether a parody dog chew toy truly is expressive. The appeal takes particular umbrage at the lower court's sense of humor.
Because the court of appeals thought [VIP Products’] notorious copying was funny, it held that the company has a First Amendment interest in confusing consumers into believing that Jack Daniel’s sponsors a dog toy spotlighting poop.The more serious aspects of the filing focus on just where and how Fair Use can be applied in trademark law.
The Lanham Act provides that certain categories of use “shall not be actionable” as dilution. One excluded category is “[a]ny fair use . . . other than as a designation of source for the person’s own goods or services.” 15 U.S.C. § 1125(c)(3)(A) (emphasis added). The Act identifies parody as a permitted fair use, but it excludes the parodist from liability only so long as the parodist does not use a trademark as its own designation of source. Id. § 1125(c)(3)(A)(ii). The Ninth Circuit did not apply that exclusion here, presumably because it had no basis to reverse the district court’s conclusion that VIP Products used Jack Daniel’s trademarks as a designation of source.Which is one hell of a presumption. What the court actually did, instead, is recognize the product as parody, deem it expressive because of that, and then indicated that the use of any trade dress or marks therefore didn't act as a source identifier. In other words, the lower court indicated that this ought to be a fight over customer confusion rather than how closely the parody's branding compared with the subject of that parody.Which is exactly the correct arena for this to be fought in. Because of the clear parody nature of the product, the proper question is will the public be confused into thinking it was buying a product that has any actual association with Jack Daniels. That Jack Daniels doesn't want to have this fight on those grounds should tell you everything you need know.
If the "Toy Story 4" character Duke Caboom reminded you of Evel Knievel, you're not alone -- the folks in charge of his image and likeness thought so too ... and now they're suing.A company called K&K Promotions just filed suit against Disney, Pixar and whole a bunch of their subsidiaries ... claiming the stuntman driver toy that Keanu Reeves voiced in the latest 'Toy Story' flick is a clear and obvious rip-off of the legendary American motorcycle daredevil.The suit itself (embedded below) goes into Evel's life story, details the rights K&K has to his trademarks and likeness, reminds the court that an Evel Knievel motorcycle toy was created decades ago, and culminates in asserting that Disney's character has infringed on those trademark and likeness rights. There is also the assertion that Disney asked the film's cast members not to compare characters to the trademarks of others' when doing media hits.Below is some footage of Duke Caboom from the film.Now, let's get the easy stuff out of the way. Does Duke Caboom conjure to the mind the memory of Evel Knievel? Yes, it most certainly does! Have folks from Disney actually said that Knievel was part of the inspiration behind the character? As the lawsuit itself points out: uh huh! Producers Mark Nielsen and Jonas Rivera have indicated that the stuntmen from the 70s were absolutely the inspiring force behind Caboom, with the latter going so far as to state that the character was built as "a stuntman evocative of Evel Knievel's era."So does that make this character infringing on K&K's trademark and likeness rights?Well, no, probably not. After all, there are marked differences between the characters, such as the country of their origin, the exact makeup of their outfits, what their personages look like in appearance, and so on. It's also worth highlighting the "era" in the Rivera quote, because Evel Knievel was merely the most famous of a series of motorcycle stuntmen in the 70s and 80s. And those stuntmen often had similar routines, motorcycles, and outfits. Dale Buggins is an example of this.In fact, this all brings to mind Lindsay Lohan's attempt to sue over a Grand Theft Auto character, in that the character was actually an amalgam of tropes for famous Hollywood celebrities. She lost her case for that reason. Here, too, we have a character that is not specifically an Evel Knievel character, but rather an amalgam of motorcycle stuntmen tropes of which Knievel is the most famous. The assertion that Disney asked cast members to avoid getting the company in trouble by invoking the specific names of inspirational forces isn't all that surprising either. Why would the company want to get sued over a cast member's otherwise innocent comment, after all?This could be a money grab, I suppose. But if it is, you really have to wonder if it's the smartest play. Disney's character, after all, probably caused a great many people to remember the era of motorcycle stuntmen for the first time in a long time, with Knievel coming along for the ride. Why not simply try to capitalize off of that?
Hindenburg Research published a bombshell report claiming that the Nikola One wasn't close to being fully functional in December 2016. Indeed, Hindenburg published a 2017 text message exchange in which a Nikola employee stated that the company didn't resume work on the truck in the months after the show.Even more incredible, Hindenburg reported that the truck in the "Nikola One in motion" video wasn't moving under its own power. Rather, Nikola had towed the truck to the top of a shallow hill and let it roll down. The company allegedly tilted the camera to make it look like the truck was traveling under its own power on a level roadway.Now, on the one hand, that's objectively funny. It's sort of an Adam West's Batman approach to product demonstration. But, on the other hand, now that Milton has admitted the charges above, he's likely in a whole world of trouble. The company has tried to weasel out of this in fairly absurd fashion.
"Nikola never stated its truck was driving under its own propulsion in the video," Nikola wrote. "Nikola described this third-party video on the Company’s social media as 'In Motion.' It was never described as 'under its own propulsion' or 'powertrain driven.' Nikola investors who invested during this period, in which the Company was privately held, knew the technical capability of the Nikola One at the time of their investment."Not everyone seems to think that's true. The SEC and DOJ are reported to have opened investigations into the company's behavior after these revelations. And, as to the point of Milton's reputation personally, he's out at Nikola.
Milton's resignation came just 10 days after a bombshell research report revealed that Milton wasn't telling the truth in 2016 when he unveiled the company's first product, the Nikola One, and claimed that it "fully functions." Over the weekend, Milton offered (voluntarily, he says) to resign as executive chairman, and Nikola's board accepted his offer. Milton will also relinquish his seat on Nikola's board.Now, a few items of note. First, Nikola does now have a functioning prototype, the Nikola Two. It's also partnering with several automobile companies and has contracts in place with them.But for Milton, he loses his position at the company he founded, millions in stock and consulting fees, and has gained infamy as someone who is willing to, at best, mislead the public about his companies' products. Your reputation is a scarce good. Frittering it away by turning the camera on an angle probably isn't the best move.
In addition to halting city use of the surveillance technology, the new rule prevents "private entities in places of public accommodation" in Portland from using it, too, referring to businesses that serve the general public — a grocery store or a pizza place, for instance. It does not prevent individuals from setting up facial-recognition technology at home, such as a Google Nest camera that can spot familiar faces, or gadgets that use facial-recognition software for authenticating users, like Apple's Face ID feature for unlocking an iPhone.This means no one gets to use it but private citizens surveilling their own doorways. Sure, that's going to capture people moving up and down the street, but unlike law enforcement agencies, private citizens can't deprive someone of their freedom just because the tech thought it recognized someone.The hit to businesses doesn't take effect until 2021. The rest of it starts immediately. Portland is still in the throes of civil unrest -- something that started in late May and shows no sign of letting up, no matter how many federal officers the Administration throws at the "problem." There's the obvious concern facial recognition is being used to identify people engaged in First Amendment activity for reasons unknown to anyone but those deploying the tech. The local cops will be blocked from doing this going forward (if they were ever doing it at all) but it will have no effect on facial recognition deployment by federal officers.It seems inevitable some business owners will challenge the law. This tech allows internal security to keep an eye out for banned individuals and suspected shoplifters. But private tools don't appear to be any better at identifying people than the tech being sold to government agencies. Allowing private companies to use the tech puts law enforcement only a phone call away. And it can lead to the same results (false positives, bogus arrests) despite being owned and operated by non-government entities. It's a bold move by the city of Portland. But it's probably also a necessary one if you're serious about protecting residents from unproven tech that has the latent ability to destroy lives.More bans are sure to come, especially now that everything law enforcement-related is under the microscope. Portland has set the ban bar pretty high. Other cities that believe they're serious about keeping their residents safe from surveillance creep now have something to shoot for.
“Whose constitutional rights is this violating?” Wilkinson, a Reagan appointee, asked.“These are simple observations of public movements, and it’s not inside someone’s dwelling, it’s public streets, where someone’s expectancy of privacy is minimal,” he said. “We’re not talking about excessive police force, so is it the right of the pixel whose rights are being violated?”The judge is right that the expectation of privacy is lower in public areas. But this is too reductive. A pixel isn't just a pixel -- incapable of having its rights violated. It's a person, even if that person can't be clearly identified using these recordings alone. The entire purpose of the aerial surveillance system is to help police identify criminal suspects. And police do this by cross-referencing this footage with surveillance equipment on the ground, which is completely capable of turning a "pixel" into a person.But Wilkinson isn't the only judge being asked to rule on this. Judge Roger Gregory is far more critical of the government's arguments. The government said there were no Constitutional concerns in tracking the movements of millions of Baltimore "pixels" since the PD was only interested in the "pixels" who may have been near a crime scene. Most of the recordings collected are never used by the Baltimore PD's analysts.That doesn't make it okay, says Judge Gregory.
Gregory, a Clinton appointee, countered that it is unconstitutional to gather such information in the first place.“That would turn the Fourth Amendment on its head,” he said. “That’s like invading someone’s home with a camera and taking a photograph of you, then say, ‘It’s no problem because we never developed the film.’”It seems unlikely the Appeals Court will be any more impressed with the ACLU's arguments. As long as people are still rendered as pixels -- and planes incapable of capturing footage 24 hours a day -- there appears to be very little violation of privacy. If there's no sympathy for the mosaic theory of the Fourth Amendment -- where multiple Constitutional surveillance techniques combine to form an unconstitutional invasion of privacy -- Baltimore residents will still be watched by multiple eyes in the sky.
Ubisoft's Gods & Monsters recently underwent some rebranding, switching its name to the demonstrably-worse Immortals Fenyx Rising a few weeks ago. It has gone over like a lead balloon. In fact, it had our team wondering if we should just refuse the new name and stick with the old one!As uncovered by TechRaptor, Monster Energy opposed Ubisoft's trademark for the title "Gods & Monsters." The logic goes that Monster has enough of a presence within video games that Ubisoft's use could reasonably cause confusion among consumers.Logic which runs counter to the purpose of trademark law, to how trademark law actually works in terms of market designations, as well as to good business and marketing. Taking those in reverse order: the name change is almost objectively terrible. I have yet to find any publication that thinks the title switch was even a wash for Ubisoft, never mind beneficial. The universal opinion seems to be, and I agree with it, that Ubisoft to one extent or another participated in a bit of self-harm by this rebranding.Now, on to the actual legal question. The consensus here too seems to be that Ubisoft could have easily have won this battle on the merits, but didn't want to simply to avoid any delay stemming from a legal battle.
Playing armchair attorney, this seems like something Ubisoft probably could've won, no? My guess is that it has less to do with whether or not Ubisoft cared to spend the money on this legal battle, and more to do with just getting the game out on shelves. Immortals has been delayed already, and its sales factor into Ubisoft's fiscal year that ends in March 2021. Fighting a protracted trademark infringement case would further delay the game. Going ahead with the name Gods & Monsters would result in an injunction. Ubisoft may be in the right, but it doesn't have the time to prove it.Which is all probably true, but only if Ubisoft couldn't have gotten a declaratory judgement when Monster Energy first opposed the trademark application. Because it is quite clear that there is no infringement here. Whatever participation Monster Energy has in the video game space, most of which is mere sponsorship and advertising, it still isn't a maker of video games. Ubisoft should have needed merely to point that out to get its use declared legit. Couple that with the broader question as to whether literally anyone would make the association between a video game called Gods & Monsters and an energy drink company and I would guess getting a court to side with it would have been fairly easy for Ubisoft.But Ubisoft decided against that route and bowed to Monster Energy's bullying. Which is how we get Immortals Fenyx Rising instead of Gods & Monsters. An objectively worse name. For no reason, other than trademark bullying.Cool.
In the eyes of many Internet regulars, it was a provocation so bald-faced and deliberate that it could not be ignored. And all over the world, Internet users responded spontaneously by answering the Spammers with angry electronic- mail messages called "flames." Within minutes, the flames -- filled with unprintable epithets -- began pouring into Canter and Siegel's Internet mailbox, first by the dozen, then by the hundreds, then by the thousands. A user in Australia sent in 1,000 phony requests for information every day. A 16-year-old threatened to visit the couple's "crappy law firm" and "burn it to the ground." The volume of traffic grew so heavy that the computer delivering the E-mail crashed repeatedly under the load. After three days, Internet Direct of Phoenix, the company that provided the lawyers with access to the Net, pulled the plug on their account.It wasn't just Usenet users. Immigration lawyers were also upset in part because Canter and Siegel were asking for money to do what most people could easily do for free:
Unfortunately, it also provided an opportunity for charlatans to charge exorbitant fees to file lottery entries for hopeful immigrants.In truth, all it took to enter the drawing was a postcard with your name and address mailed to the designated location.Canter and Siegel, a husband-and-wife law firm, decided to join the lottery frenzy by pitching their own overpriced services to immigrant communities.The two were unrepentant, later claiming they made over $100,000 from the advertisement. They quickly set up a new company called “Cybersell” to do this for others -- and signed a contract to write a book for HarperCollins originally called "How To Make A Fortune On The Information Superhighway."Decisions to be made by Usenet server providers:
NETCOM On-Line Communications has taken the step ofcancelling the service of Laurence Canter of Canter andSiegel, the lawyer commonly referred to as the "GreenCard Lawyer". Mr. Canter had been a customer of NETCOMin the past. He had been cautioned for what we considerabuse of NETCOM's system resources and his systematic andwillful actions that do not comply with the codes ofbehavior of USENET.Mr. Canter has been widely quoted in the print andon-line media about his intention to continue hispractice of advertising the services of his law firmusing USENET newsgroups. He has also widely posted hisintention to sell his services to advertise for othersusing the newsgroups. We do not choose to be theprovider that will carry his messages.That link also has notices from other service providers, such as Pipeline and PerformanceSystems, saying they were removing internet access.Others focused on trying to help Usenet server operators get rid of the spam. Programmer Arnt Gulbrandsen quickly put together a tool to help fight this kind of spam by “cancelling” the messages when spotted. This actually helped establish the early norm that it was okay to block and remove spam.As for Canter and Siegel, they divorced a couple years later, though both kept promoting themselves as internet marketing experts. Canter was disbarred in Tennessee for his internet advertising practices, though he had already moved on from practicing law. Cybersell, the company they had setup to do internet advertising, was apparently dissolved in 1998.
First, prosecutors have more than a constitutional duty to disclose exculpatory information; they also have a broad duty under Mass. R. Crim. P. 14 (a)(1)(iii) to disclose "[a]ny facts of an exculpatory nature." This duty is not limited to information so important that its disclosure would create a reasonable doubt that otherwise would not exist; it includes all information that would "tend to" indicate that the defendant might not be guilty or "tend to" show that a lesser conviction or sentence would be appropriate.[...]Second, even if prosecutors had only their constitutional obligation to disclose, and not the broad duty under our rules, we would not want prosecutors to withhold exculpatory information if they thought they could do so without crossing the line into a violation of the defendant's right to a fair trial.The acceptable standard under the Constitution is not "see what you can get away with." This is an obligation, not a nicety to be deployed at the prosecutor's discretion.
A prosecutor should not attempt to determine how much exculpatory information can be withheld without violating a defendant's right to a fair trial. Rather, once the information is determined to be exculpatory, it should be disclosed -- period. And where a prosecutor is uncertain whether information is exculpatory, the prosecutor should err on the side of caution and disclose it.In this case, the information was definitely of the possibly exculpatory variety. Lying cops who've admitted before a grand jury they falsified reports should definitely be considered impeachable witnesses. Whether or not the information is determined admissible at trial is beside the point.
[T]he ultimate admissibility of the information is not determinative of the prosecutor's Brady obligation to disclose it. Where the information, as here, demonstrates that a potential police witness lied to conceal a fellow officer's unlawful use of excessive force or lied about a defendant's conduct and thereby allowed a false or inflated criminal charge to be prosecuted, disclosing such information may cause defense counsel, or his or her investigator, to probe more deeply into the prior statements and conduct of the officer to determine whether the officer might again have lied to conceal the misconduct of a fellow police officer or to fabricate or exaggerate the criminal conduct of the accused.The cops also argued their immunity from prosecution during their grand jury testimony should shield them from any adverse consequences. Wrong again, says the court. The immunity only covers prosecution for the admitted crimes. It is not a shield against reputational damage that may result from this information being made public or handed over to defendants.
An immunized witness, like others who are not immunized, may prefer that the testimony not be disseminated by the prosecutor, especially if it would reveal the witness's dirty deeds, but that preference does not affect whether the information is exculpatory or whether it should be furnished to other defendants. Once disclosed, the immunized testimony may be used to impeach the immunized witness, provided that the testimony is not being used against the witness in a criminal or civil prosecution other than for perjury. In sum, a prosecutor's obligation to disclose exculpatory information is the same for immunized testimony as for all other testimony. There is no higher Brady standard applied for a prosecutor to disclose immunized testimony.The Court wraps this up by laying down the law: this is Brady info and it needs to be disclosed to defendants. The SJC is not fucking around.
[W]e conclude, as did the district attorney, that the prosecutors here have a Brady obligation to disclose the exculpatory information at issue to unrelated criminal defendants in cases where a petitioner is a potential witness or prepared a report in the criminal investigation. That obligation remains even though that information was obtained in grand jury testimony compelled by an immunity order. And the district attorney may fulfill that obligation without prior judicial approval; a judge's order is needed only for issuance of a protective order limiting the dissemination of grand jury information.More broadly, we conclude that where a prosecutor determines from information in his or her possession that a police officer lied to conceal the unlawful use of excessive force, whether by him or herself or another officer, or lied about a defendant's conduct and thereby allowed a false or inflated criminal charge to be prosecuted, the prosecutor's obligation to disclose exculpatory information requires that the information be disclosed to defense counsel in any criminal case where the officer is a potential witness or prepared a report in the criminal investigation.That's the standard in Massachusetts. And bad cops are on notice there's pretty much nothing they can do to escape the consequences of their own actions. This is as it should be. Now, if the courts could just make sure prosecutors and police departments are actually compiling Brady lists, we'd be set. At least in this Commonwealth.
“Beginning in September, as part of an ad experiment, some viewers may begin to notice that they are receiving ads during streams that others in a channel aren’t receiving,” the company wrote on its website. “Like pre-rolls, these are ads triggered by Twitch, not by the creator.”Crucially, these ads utilize Twitch’s “picture-by-picture” functionality, which basically means that the stream you’re watching pops out into a smaller window while the ad rolls in the main window. However, ads will still steal the show from some viewers, with streamers none the wiser as to who can hear what they’re saying (picture-by-picture mutes streams) and, therefore, understand what’s happening on stream while ads are playing.If this reads as though Twitch were trying to turn its platform into some flavor of broadcast television, where the content is broken away from in the service of displaying advertising, that's because that's exactly what this is. Which doesn't make any sense. Twitch is not television. Sure, some streamers choose to break away from their own content for advertising. In fact, doing so staves off this new process of forced breakaways. But many streamers don't do that. For a viewer to be torn away from the content that continues on, muted, all while they're forced to view ads, would be stupid on its own. To give streamers not only almost zero control over whether this happens, but also zero visibility into when and to whom it's happening, can only serve to piss everyone off.Which is exactly what it did.
“You’re not YouTube,” said Twitch partner ThatBronzeGirl on Twitter in response to Twitch’s announcement. “When ads play in the middle of the stream, viewers actively miss out on content (muted or not). Add this to the fact that viewers are hit with an ad as soon as they enter a stream, so channel surfing is cumbersome. Idk why y’all hate viewer retention.”“This means either one of two things happens: 1) I schedule a break in the stream to have control over ads running that are proven to drive viewers away. 2) Viewers get an ad randomly that is all but guaranteed to drive them away. Which of those is for us though?” said variety streamer Deejay Knight.“If I don’t play enough ads, Jeff Bezos literally comes to my stream and pushes the ad button, what do I do,” said former Overwatch pro Seagull.Let's be clear, Twitch is a thing because of the talent that chooses to use it. It's bad enough to put a new advertising model in place that pisses off viewers. But piss the talent off and they'll simply go somewhere else, particularly when the viewers voice their frustration by removing their eyeballs. Some of this seems to also be Twitch not understanding that the platform is no longer video game let's-plays. The content is wide and varied and much of it cannot function with this sort of intrusive advertising.
“A streamer could be talking about suicide prevention, and up pops an ad,” said Scottish Twitch partner Limmy. “Depending on the implementation, the streamer would either be unaware, which is bad, or the streamer has to announce a forced ad break at an inappropriate time.”“We’re not all Overwatch and Fortnite,” said dungeon master MontyGlu. “In narrative streams such as DnD live shows and RPG game streams, 10-30 seconds removed could completely deprive people of story, context and investment.”As the Kotaku post notes, part of the problem here is that all the monetary incentives for streamers compared with the platform are horribly misaligned. Many streamers make most of their money through subscriptions and brand partnerships. The money they get from Twitch is mostly an afterthought. Twitch, on the other hand, makes gobs of money from advertisements. It's a scenario in which the platform is incentivized by advertising while the talent is very specifically incentivized by a lack of advertising. More ads drive eyeballs away, which means less lucrative partnerships and subscriptions.If Twitch wants to push more ads, it desperately needs to get the streamers on board.
“While I’m not allowed to say specifics, Twitch has the worst CPM ad-revenue share to creators with their standard contracts (read: not the big shots with custom negotiated rates),” said Minecraft YouTuber and Twitch streamer KurtJMac. “They want ads to run because they make bank. Pay a fair rate to creators and we’d be glad to run ads!”Somewhat amazingly, Twitch has stated that it isn't backing down. The experiment will run its course, the company said, and it will review the data afterwards. I simply can't imagine that said data will show that intrusive ads that everyone hates are good for the company.
EA has yet another piece of interconnected news to share: it's rebranding its Origin desktop app to simply be called the EA desktop app, alongside giving its PC platform a visual refresh.Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, EA SVP, strategic growth Mike Blank says the overhaul is intended "to create a more frictionless, fast, socially-oriented experience for our players, where it becomes the best place for them to connect with the people they want to play with in the games they want to play."I'm frankly not used to giving EA a ton of kudos in these pages, but the overall strategy is a good one. The company appears to have finally realized that being permissive with gamers that just want to play the company's games is better business than trying to lock them into a failed client few want to use. The revamping of the UX was long needed, too, but the real star of the show here is that EA is looking to be more open in general.
"All of that is signaled by creating a common and consistent brand that is centered around EA and what EA stands for," Blank says. "And what signals it is this inflection about how EA stands for bringing your players together around the games they want to play on the platforms they want to play on. So yeah, it's not just a name change. It really signals an ethos that is critically important to us and that we know that's important to our players.It's been a long journey for EA in this regard to where our games show up and where they don't. One of the things that we value is democratizing gaming, which is: how do you enable more people to play? And how do you make it easy for them to do so? And by bringing our games to Steam, we are doing just that. So whether we were there in the past or not, I look towards the future. And what I think today is that we are stronger and healthier. And I think we're responding more effectively to the needs of our players today than we ever have, and Steam is part of that journey."Again, this is EA we're talking about, so it's going to take more than just the right words to convince most of us that this truly is a new direction for the company. Still, these are the right words. EA has long built a reputation for itself as being anti-consumer in many ways, but all of those ways come down to one thing: control. For a company with that history to suddenly start giving up that control, not out of surrender but out of a belief that it's good business, is a positive step.
Last week, District 205 technology teacher Jennifer Leban tweeted, "Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I feel like parents would much rather have teachers talking to students via Zoom WITHOUT masks on instead of WITH... Seems like an obvious choice?"Moyer responded, "Then take your mask off."But Leban, a 2020 Illinois Teacher of the Year finalist, said she does not have her own room, so state regulations bar her from taking off her mask.For context, while new case counts have been dropping across much of the country, the same is not true for the Midwest. Here in Illinois specifically, new cases have been on the rise since July, including a breathtaking day mere weeks after Moyer's suggestion that a teacher remove her mask where the state saw nearly six thousand new cases get reported. Leban, by the way, is immunocompromised, making Moyer's suggestion that she simply remove her mask all the more idiotic. She presented the district with a doctor's note that recommended she get a remote placement, for which there are some slots in the district, but that request was denied without explanation.Others, of course, saw the Twitter exchange as well.
In the Twitter discussion, Kim Gwizdala, an English teacher from Glenbard West High School, said it was "absolutely wild to me that your own superintendent would suggest a thing when it is in direct violation with health guidelines and science."Moyer took exception to that comment."Excuse me. The attorneys have indicated that the interpretation from the State is as follows: Teachers can take their mask off when they are in their rooms by themselves facilitating remote learning. Get your facts straight before you pontificate."To Leban, he wrote, "Your entire media center isn't good enough? OK then."Shortly after that, for reasons that should be obvious, Moyer deleted several of those tweets. No public apology came, however. Also, as parents began jumping into the conversation, Moyer chose to block them on Twitter, even though his account is that of the school district's website, not a personal account. It's worth noting here that the courts recently ruled that Donald Trump, as a public official, could not block the public from his official account because his control over the account and his status as a public official made that specific space a public forum. Why Moyer's account, tied to the district's website, should be any different is anyone's guess.
In a Twitter discussion last week about an Elmhurst teacher's position on masks, Alicia Duell, the director of technology and information services at Wheeling School District 21, said Moyer blocked her from his Twitter account. An Elmhurst resident, Duell noted Moyer was the superintendent of her children's school district.Meanwhile, an Elmhurst resident emailed Patch over the weekend that she, too, had been banned from the superintendent's account.Which brings us to the present, where the public has taken notice of Moyer's behavior at a recent board meeting and is voicing their complaints.
Last Monday, a number of written comments were read during the public comment portion of the meeting, including those critical of Moyer. Eileen Espinosa, a local resident who once served on a school council in Chicago, said she has "extended grace" to Moyer during the pandemic, but could no longer remain silent."His utter lack of leadership is overwhelming and you're ignoring it is no longer acceptable," Espinosa said to the board in her comments. "Dr. Moyer's inability to send communications that help the community to come together in the spring and throughout the summer and into the school year are a repeated reminder that he does not lead our district. He continues to air his grievances and personal opinions on social media."There are more, as well. The ultimate lesson here is in just how badly Moyer handled this at every step. One-liners to immunocompromised teachers advising them to take of their masks against both state regulations and common sense is an obvious misstep. Doubling down with sarcasm and snark when called on it, all the more so. Deleting those tweets and thinking this would all go away, rather than simply apologizing, put this on the tee at the Streisand National Open. Going on a parent-Twitter-blocking spree to try to stifle dissent hit the ball right in the middle of the fairway. And the refusal to publicly comment to date on the matter made the Streisand crowd go wild.
When asked for comment about his deleted tweets late last month, Moyer did not directly answer. In an email, he said his public messages should be interpreted as seeking "a balance between safety for all and creating the healthiest learning environment for students. It is time for all of us to move beyond the negativity and keep the focus where it belongs."Right now the focus may just be on whether Moyer is the best person to be leading a school district during a pandemic in a state that is suffering under a surge of the virus.
Beer aficionados worldwide can easily describe the nuances of pilsners, IPAs, milkstouts, and lagers. More hazy is the fact that beer is a product that touches upon nearly every type of intellectual property. Indeed, the names of breweries and beers are subject to trademark; label art and packaging are works of authorship covered by copyright law; and hops—that critical component of a beer’s aroma and flavor—can be patented.It's a fair point, certainly. Though, left entirely unsaid in the entire post is whether any of this is a good thing. Instead, the post goes on to explore in some detail just how all things IP can be applied to brewers' products. Even when it gets absurd, the post hand-waives away any concerns. We'll start with the patenting of hop varieties.
The short answer to this seemingly straightforward query is the plant patent. By statute in the United States, whoever:” invents or discovers and asexually reproduces any distinct and new variety of plant, including cultivated sports, mutants, hybrids, and newly found seedlings, . . . may obtain a patent therefor. . . .”Hops can be among these new plant varietals, and as part of the bargain for inventing a novel strain, brewing innovators release their work into the public domain after 20 years. But until that two-decade window closes, the creator and owner of a plant patent gets to cash in exclusively on the agricultural brainchild.A couple of things here. First, the idea that mild differences in varieties of particular plants should get patents doesn't strike me as a great thing. And, given the longstanding practice of patent-extending by making minor tweaks to the biology of the plants and then re-patenting them, I can't imagine why the craft beer industry, once rife with creative brews, would want any of this protectionism.Second, as the post mentions, though barely, patent holders for even some of the most well-known hop varieties regularly fail to hold up their end of the patent deal with the public.
Of note, if a patent owner does not adequately teach the world (translation: the public domain) about the plant at issue and how to make it upon the patent’s expiration, the patent’s owner—by effectively keeping the invention secret and taking advantage of the 20-year monopoly bestowed by patent law—has not kept up its side of the bargain. This unfortunately seems to be the case with respect to the Citra hops patent, which does not offer much in the way of substantive direction for replication of this varietal, meaning it may not be enabled and, therefore, subject to challenge.Great.When it comes to trademarks, the post does a decent job of articulating how trademarks are chiefly meant to avoid customer confusion. While true, the industry survived for decades without putting any real emphasis on trademarks. That seems worth mentioning. Instead, the post goes on to use an absolutely awful example of trademarks being used to protect an industry brand.
To be clear, marketplace confusion is what trademarks are meant to prevent. That being said, if a shopper strolls down a grocery aisle, peruses the beer selection, and confuses a bottle of Stone IPA with and a Keystone Light by virtue of packaging—and advertisement—encouraging drinkers to “grab a Stone,” Molson Coors Beverage Company (owner of the Keystone brand) may be infringing upon Stone IPA’s trademark. If this scenario sounds familiar, that is because this very dispute between Stone Brewing and Molson Coors is scheduled for an October trial in federal court.Here again we have errors of omission. While Stone is indeed in a fight with Molson Coors as described above, the article fails to point out that Stone Brewing, in service of getting a huge judgement in this court case, has turned on a ton of other craft breweries with which they used to coexist peacefully, and has started bullying them with its trademarks as well. And, what's more, Stone went on to piss and moan when the wider public thought it was behaving like bullying dickheads in all of this. This seems like exactly the sort of thing craft breweries could learn from, yet it's all totally absent from the post.And, while the post goes on to ignore the question of copyright in label art, the most glaring absence of information has to do with the history of the industry. Again, this is an industry that exploded before everyone decided to have corporatized legal firms challenging every trademark application that's even close to infringement. If there is a lesson in the last decade for the craft beer industry, it's that it should have striven really hard to retain its roots when it became big business.And the real shame of it is that new brewers reading trade magazines like Craft Brewing Business may not know, and now won't learn, of those far better times.
“The data shows that when it comes to the impact of forfeitures, the big story is in the small numbers,” Blaha said in a statement. “Those kinds of amounts have a small impact on government systems, but they have a big impact at the individual level.”[...]“If you are managing a public safety budget, small forfeitures are a minor and unpredictable part of your revenue stream,” Blaha continued. “But if you are a low income person experiencing a forfeiture, those amounts can have a big effect on your life. Having a few hundred dollars seized can mean the difference between making rent or homelessness. Losing that old car can lead to missing work and losing your job.”The program punishes the poor. Very few law enforcement agencies which rely on forfeiture for their discretionary funds want to tangle with an actually organized criminal organization. Those guys can afford lawyers. Most citizens can't. That's why most seizures are so small they're not worth fighting in court. At the end of the jurisprudence day, citizens may win back their cash or cars, but they'll lose the war, having paid more in court and legal fees than what their property is worth.Everything adds up to real money if you have enough of it. Here's the ugly truth, straight from the auditor's report [PDF].
523 (12 percent) forfeitures were less than $100.Only seven percent targeted amounts that might actually do damage to criminal organizations. 64% of forfeitures targeted less than $1,000.Here's the list of crimes associated with these seizures, which shows officers are willing to take easy wins and easy cash, rather than actually tangle with criminal enterprises far more harmful and dangerous.
1,414 (32 percent) forfeitures ranged from $100 to $499.
858 (20 percent) forfeitures ranged from $500 to $999.
1,252 (29 percent) forfeitures ranged from $1,000 to $4,999.
304 (7 percent) forfeitures were equal to or greater than $5,000.
In 2019, DUI-related and controlled substance accounted for 94 percent of the forfeitures. DUI-related forfeitures accounted for 3,654, or 47 percent, of reported forfeitures, while forfeitures involving a controlled substance accounted for 3,611, or 47 percent, of reported forfeitures. The remaining forfeitures involved fleeing (251), prostitution (69), “other” crimes (36), weapons (31), robbery/theft (23), assault (20), and burglary (13). Figure 5 on the following page shows completed forfeitures by type of crime.Oh thank god. They're dismantling Big Drunk. We won't have to fear the scourge of alcohol/drug consumers for much longer. #Heroes. And if that wasn't enough, the dangerous Sinola Fleeing Cartel is being destroyed bit-by-bit. Abandoned property is so much easier to seize and forfeit than stuff people are still standing next to and stating their claim for.This is how asset forfeiture works: easy wins predicated on criminal activity that rarely affects anyone besides the person stopped and their property. It all adds up though. For the state of Minnesota, the total was $7.5 million. And what did it accomplish? Did it cripple the non-organized crime of driving under the influence? Did it make it less likely for people to carry their personal stashes of illicit substances? No one dismantled a drug cartel. No one ensured Minnesotans would be subjected to fewer violent crimes. All that happened was cops took stuff that was easy to take and spent the money once it rolled in.
As noted above, this Order is neither the only time the Undersigned has sanctioned Mr. Liebowitz nor is the Undersigned the only judge in this district who has sanctioned him. In Berger v. Imagina Consulting, Inc., 18-CV-8956 , in responding to a contempt citation that was precipitated by Mr. Liebowitz having lied to Judge Siebel, Mr. Liebowitz's attorney argued that Mr. Liebowitz should not be held in contempt and recommended a number of steps Mr. Liebowitz should take to improve the professionalism of his practice. Among counsel's recommendations was professional psychological help and a CLE course on small law firm management. See 18-CV-8956, Dkt. 61 at 4. While both may be helpful, psychological help is best obtained because the patient wants help. Whether Mr. Liebowitz wants to improve or not (and the Court questions whether he does), this Court concurs with Mr. Liebowitz's attorney in Berger that management training is in order. Accordingly, Mr. Liebowitz is ordered to participate in CLE training regarding management of a small law firm. Mr. Liebowitz must attend such training on or before September 1, 2020. The course must cover the basics of setting up and running a law practice, including how to maintain systems so that Court obligations are tracked and obeyed. Mr. Liebowitz is directed to provide the Court with information about the course he wishes to attend for the Court's approval. He will, at the end of the course, be required to present proof of attendance and to provide a sworn statement to the Court on what he learned from the course and what concrete steps he has instituted in his practice to improve compliance with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and Court orders.That was back in May. You may note that we are now in September. Liebowitz had many months to write up the required book report for Judge Valerie Caproni. But what he actually turned in would embarrass your average 3rd grader who forgot to do the book report he had a month to write up and then tried to write something on the bus to school. First, he did apparently take some CLE (Continuing Legal Education) classes -- though not all the ones the judge required. He lists out six classes he claims he attended. The judge did require him to not just present proof of attending the courses, but also the "sworn statement" about "what he learned" and "what concrete steps he has instituted in his practice to improve compliance with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedures and Court orders."That second part is... lacking. First he notes:
One program entitled Panel of Lawyers Who are Doing it: Practice Management Technology toGrow Your Solo/Small Law Practice Ethically was not recorded and thus I was unable to watchthis program on-line. However, instead of watching only two of the following in number 5 inyour Honor's Order, I watched all three programs. What I learned in Admitting our mistakes:Owning up to Lawyer Missteps, is relevant here because I didn't realize that this program wasonly available as a live event and was not going to be recorded like the other programs identifiedabove. I apologize to the Court for this mistake.Then he just copy/pasted the outlines of each of the courses into the filing. This is, literally, the least he could do. And it's not the kind of effort that tells anyone from your 3rd grade teacher to the federal judge who has significant power of your future livelihood that you actually did the work you were required to do. Then, he adds two more paragraphs at the end that... do not actually answer what the judge ordered, and again sounds like he scribbled it down just in time to meet the deadline. It's the legal equivalent of "this book is a book that I read, that is called [x] and has so and so many pages."
Based upon what I learned in the above CLE's, I am continuing to learn new things in mypractice management software to run things more efficiently and smoothly. I also am makingsure to own up to my mistakes that do happen. I am also improving my time management skillsby implementing some of the essential guidelines learned such as managing a plan at thebeginning of the day. I am changing the way I use technology such as calendaring to make suretasks get done on time and items get docketed correctly. I have also learned to delegate tasks thatcan be delegated to make the work flow more efficient.I thank the Court for recommending these CLE programs and look forward to continuing toimplement what I learned into my practice.I cringe just reading that.Guess who else was not impressed. Judge Caproni responded the very next day saying "um, no, try again." Also, points docked for typos.
Mr. Liebowitz was directed to submit a report detailing "how he is changing the practices in his firmbased on what he learned" in these courses. Dkt. 28. Mr. Liebowitz's above-statement that he is"changing the way I use technology such as calendaring to make sure tasks get done on time and itemsget docketed correctly" is insufficient. No later than September 8, 2020, Mr. Liebowitz is directed tofile a letter detailing the specific and concrete changes he is making to his practice. Additionally, nolater than September 8, 2020, Mr. Liebowitz is directed to explain why he unilaterally substitutedanother course in direct violation of a previous Court order and without the Court's permission. Mr.Liebowitz is also directed to proofread carefully his submissions before submitting them. His letterdated August 31, 2020, is riddled with typos that presumably would have been caught had Mr.Liebowitz proofread the letter prior to submission.Oof. Now, to a normal person, you might recognize that this judge is not happy and maybe, just maybe, try a little harder for the next time. But, come on, this is Richard Liebowitz we're talking about. He basically submitted the same work over again with slight modifications:
The reason why I took all three of the courses in Number 5 is because one program inNumber 4 entitled Panel of Lawyers Who are Doing it: Practice Management Technology toGrow Your Solo/Small Law Practice Ethically was not recorded on video but was only availableas a live event. Thus, I was unable to watch this program on-line. I did not realize that thisprogram was only available as a live event and was not video recorded as was the case with theother programs identified above. I apologize to the Court for this mistake.Based upon what I learned in the CLE's, the specific and concrete changes I have made -and will continue to make - include delegating tasks to employees to make the Firm moreefficient in managing cases. This includes tasks such as client intake, discovery, motions,calendaring, etc. I am doing this by implementing a plan at the beginning of each week. Also, bymaking a weekly plan this will improve my time management. In addition, I am actively trainingand supervising new staff and current staff on new calendaring/scheduling/client protocols in theoffice while maintaining a well-balanced and flexible work schedule for employees. Thecontinued education on our practice management software is ongoing. In addition, I plan ontaking more CLE courses dedicated to management for small law firms so that I can becontinually educated by professionals in the field.That's it. That's literally it. I mean, even I can hardly believe that this is all Liebowitz would do. I mean, holy shit, dude. Do you really think this would suffice?Judge Caproni is... not happy. She wants young Richard in court in person tomorrow to explain himself. In detail.
WHEREAS on September 8, 2020 Mr. Liebowitz submitted a letter that fails to addressadequately these two issues (Dkt. 31);IT IS HEREBY ORDERED THAT: Mr. Liebowitz must appear in-person on September15, 2020 at 2:00 p.m. in Courtroom 518 of the Thurgood Marshall Courthouse, 40 FoleySquare, New York, New York, 10007. Mr. Liebowitz should be prepared to explain in detailwhat concrete steps he has taken, based on the CLE courses he took, to improve his practice orotherwise ensure that the non-compliance that gave rise to the sanctions in the first instance willnot be repeated. He should also be prepared to explain why, when he learned that due to his owninattention to detail one of the courses he was ordered to take was unavailable, he did not ask theCourt to modify its prior order rather than unilaterally deciding he could take a different course.I get the feeling tomorrow is going to be another bad day for Liebowitz.
Get your Otherwise Objectionable gear in the Techdirt store on Threadless »On Monday we released our line of Otherwise Objectionable gear in our store on Threadless and, the very next day, GOP Senators unveiled their latest attempt at truly stupid Section 230 reform: a bill that would remove those two critical words from the law. Of course, those who understand how important Section 230's moderation protections are to the internet will fight to prevent this bill from passing, and then there's the fact that it's pretty obviously unconstitutional — but while the fight continues, there's never been a better time to declare your Otherwise Objectionable status with pride.
As usual, there's a wide variety of gear available in this and other designs — including t-shirts, hoodies, notebooks, buttons, phone cases, mugs, stickers, and of course the now-standard face masks. Check out all our designs and items in the Techdirt store on Threadless!The latest quarterly earnings report from GameStop doesn't show much sign of a turnaround for the long-troubled game retailer. Sales were down 26.7 percent year over year for the April through June quarter. Even accounting for permanent store closures and COVID-related reduced operating hours, so-called comparable "same-store" sales were still down 12.7 percent year over year. GameStop's already depressed stock is down nearly 8 percent on the news, as of this writing.GameStop still publicly sees an "opportunity to capitalize" on the upcoming release of new Sony and Microsoft consoles, which could help turn its business around in the short term. But there's some reason to believe the coming generation of consoles could actually make GameStop's long-term prospects worse, thanks to console options that get rid of disc drives entirely.During a recent earnings call, CEO George Sherman tried to spin this in the opposite direction, pointing out that the new consoles include an option for a disc drive as a reason for optimism. A huge chunk of GameStop's money is made reselling used games that are marked up considerably. If the best a cheerleader for the company can muster is pointing out that, at least for this generation, some of the consoles will still have drives... well, that isn't great.Especially when you put this all in context. Both Microsoft's Xbox and Sony's PlayStation forthcoming consoles have options for discless devices that are priced significantly less than the alternative. That represents yet another reason why some gamers, who might not have gone all digital otherwise, will be jumping ship. Between the virus pushing more gamers to download games digitally, lower priced consoles in the middle of an economic downturn, and the general trends that pre-date the pandemic, the analogies some are drawing to GameStop's future aren't pretty.
Sherman confirmed in the earnings call that GameStop will sell these disc-drive-free consoles in its stores, a move akin to a world where Tower Records decided to sell iPods as its physical album sales cratered.Yikes.Now, none of this suggests that every gamer everywhere is ready to give up discs. Nor should this be taken to indicate that retail game stores are going to become fully extinct. In fact, I don't think the Tower Records analogy is the best that can be drawn, even if we stay in the music space. Instead, it is beginning to feel inevitable that GameStop, or other companies, will be become like modern day record stores: there to cater to the niche market of those that want CDs and vinyl, with all of the nostalgia that's as important for buyers as the product itself.But it sure as hell won't be the GameStop of the last two decades.
Argentinian brewer Warsteiner Importers Agency Inc. first filed the intent-to-use application for a Patagonia beer trademark in 2006, based on its intent to sell its beer in the U.S., the court said. It filed several extension requests, including one in 2011 that said it still intended to use the mark, but didn’t intend to import its beer. Anheuser-Busch asked it to file one more extension and then bought the application in March 2012. It filed a statement of use, claiming it began using the trademark in July 2012 and received the trademark registration later that year.Patagonia learned of the trademark in 2013 but believed that Anheuser-Busch had legitimate rights, according to the opinion. But shortly after the beermaker launched Patagonia beer at a pop-up stores at ski resorts in 2019, with the beer and promotional apparel featuring a mountain logo that allegedly infringed Patagonia’s trademarks, Patagonia sued.In other words, the company picked up on a long-delayed application by another beer maker, bought the application rights to the trademark, and then claimed it had been using the mark for five years, which it had not. When Patagonia learned of the application, it thought AB/InBev's application was legit, but learned after the pop-up stores began selling clothing that it was not. Patagonia, to add to all of this, sells some beer under its mark as well. Trademark law includes "anti-trafficking" rules that prevent companies from buying applications like this prior to the mark in question actually being used in commerce. The rules for this are complicated, but the claims Patagonia is making as to how AB/InBev tried to get around these rules most certainly are not.
Patagoina also argued that the beermaker fraudulently had Warsteiner change the date on the document assigning the trademark to suggest compliance with the anti-trafficking rule. Anheuser Busch said the change was to correct an error.The court rejected Anheuser-Busch’s bid for a judgment that its Patagonia trademark had become incontestable, finding it hadn’t been used continuously for five years as required. Incontestable marks can only be challenged if they became generic, abandoned for nonuse, or acquired by fraud.Anheuser- Busch also still faces allegations of fraud through its alleged violation of the anti-trafficking rule and false claims of continuous use.In addition to all of the above, the court also decided that the branding AB/InBev decided to use was similar enough that a jury should decide if there was true trademark infringement here.What should perhaps be most striking in all of this is just how callous AB/InBev appears to be when it comes to the trademark rights of others, especially compared with how protective and expansionist the company is of its own trademarks. It is quite silly to expect virtue and consistency from a multi-national corporation, of course, but the hypocrisy is still quite glaring.
Any insult targeted at a French mayor will now be treated as contempt - an offence that carries a maximum penalty of community service or a €7,500 fine - France's justice minister has announced.“Any attack perpetuated against a mayor is an attack perpetuated against the Republic”, warned French Minister of Justice Eric Dupond-Moretti on Wednesday after a ministerial meeting to which local mayor associations were invited, according to BFMTV.Assault is already a crime, so the government has ways to deal with those who physically attack government officials. This new wrinkle makes being mean to them a crime. The Republic as a whole will feel every insult targeting a town mayor. So will the people uttering the insults. $7,500 fines and/or 280 hours of community service await those who like to fight with their words, rather than their fists.This may trim down the number of public insults but it's hardly going to make the government any more popular with the governed. If French citizens are physically attacking mayors 300+ times a year, there's something more going on that just a little bit of assholishness that's gotten out of hand. Protecting people from violence is something any government should do. But protecting them from being insulted is something only authoritarians do.
Guild Esports, a UK-based owner and developer of esports teams, confirmed plans for an initial public offering in a statement Wednesday. The company said it wants to build a global sports franchise modeled on the English Premier League, NBA and NFL. It will float 40% of its shares next month and hopes to raise £20 million ($25.9 million) to recruit new players and invest in the business.Beckham, a former Manchester United and England footballer, will use his global influence and following to support the Guild Esports brand, the company added. Beckham is also co-owner of Inter Miami CF, a Major League Soccer team in the United States.The CNN post goes on to note that ad revenue in the industry for 2019 was just under a billion dollars. The point in all of this is that the difference between a beloved hobby and professional sports is the "professional" part. In other words, money. Now that esports has not only emerged as a major force in competition when it comes to ad revenues and eyeballs, but also now a place for potential owners of sporting franchises to invest very real money, the only question is just how popular and dominant esports will grow to become.Based on the company's plans, it has some very lofty goals.
The company plans to recruit up to 20 esports players by the end of next year, modeling player training and scouting on the talent academies pioneered by Premier League football teams.The last milestone is probably one we're hurtling toward at speed: when the maturity of the esports industry is so accepted that these posts on Techdirt no longer make sense to write.
Doki Doki Literature Club creator Dan Salvato is being demonetized for his own music on YouTube because the platform claims the soundtrack included in his videos - which he himself composed - is "someone else's content."Salvato took to Twitter in order to share his grievances. Apparently, his videos have been subjected to demonetization for several months due to purported copyright infringement for the music he used in them - however, Salvato himself composed all of said music, meaning that YouTube is claiming that he is essentially stealing his own intellectual property.We have of course heard of this sort of thing in the past: a person has videos demonetized despite the content being of their own creation. Still, there is something perfectly simplistic about this case. A game and music maker puts videos up of his own game and music...and it gets demonetized. While no system is ever perfect, that YouTube's system allows for this sort of thing to not only happen, but to go on for months without correction, is an indication that the system sucks and something else should be done.Now, as often happens, once Salvato complained publicly, YouTube got in touch to investigate. People will point to this as though future rectification made all of this acceptable. But that's absurd. After all, you're forced to wonder just how often this sort of thing occurs and doesn't ever get fixed.
When officers arrived at her house, Weimer was still dressed in the clothes she had been wearing the night before. She had minor injuries to her face and foot, and officers observed what looked like mud and blood on her clothes. Weimer told officers that she, Haith, and others had attended a party the night before and that she had given Haith a ride from that party and dropped him off at another party. She then spent the rest of the night at the housing community where her mother and sisters lived. Her cousin, sisters, and then-boyfriend Michael Gibson confirmed her story. Weimer and Gibson also told officers that Weimer injured her foot when they were “horseplaying” a few days earlier. App. 87 ¶ 31. And Weimer said that the blood on her shirt and the injury to her eye were caused by a fight with Gibson. DNA testing later confirmed that the blood on Weimer’s clothes belonged to Gibson, and none of the DNA samples collected from the crime scene matched Weimer—in fact, the samples suggested a male DNA profile.Almost two years later, an ex-boyfriend of Weimer's (Thomas Beal) told investigators that she had shot Haith and told him that the blood on her clothes came from the victim. Of course, DNA evidence had already ruled this out, which should have made this witness' statement a bit more suspect. But investigators went back over the photographs taken at the scene and found something they could possibly use to tie Weimer to a crime DNA evidence heavily suggested she hadn't committed. The first attempt to implicate Weimer failed.
When reviewing Haith’s autopsy photos, a state investigator saw what she believed to be a bite mark on Haith’s hand. A Fayette County dentist analyzed the injury. The dentist first concluded that Gibson bit Haith, but after examining teeth impressions for Weimer, she reported she could not identify which set of teeth caused the mark.The investigator sought a second opinion and got the one she wanted.
A bite-mark expert then reviewed Beal’s statement, photos of the injury to Haith’s hand, and teeth impressions from Gibson and Weimer. He concluded the bite mark matched Weimer.The investigation continued. This ended up raising questions about the origin of this bite mark. Some evidence suggested the bite could have taken place hours or days before the murder. The prosecutor went back to the "expert" and, conveniently, secured a revision that turned Weimer back into the prime suspect.
Without reviewing additional evidence, he determined the bite occurred seven to ten minutes before Haith’s death.The prosecutor went back to the state's key witness -- the ex-boyfriend who was already wrong about the blood on Weimer's clothes. His story changed. The witness claimed "a black man named Lonnie" had helped Weimer with the murder. But this "Lonnie" had been in jail at the time the murder took place, further distancing the state's key witness from anything resembling the truth. Somehow this failed to dissuade the state from relying on this very sketchy testimony. Adding this questionable testimony to other questionable testimony from a jailhouse informant -- one who claimed the state's favorite witness was involved in the murder -- prosecutors went after Weimer.The case fell apart immediately. Weimer's ex-boyfriend recanted his story on the stand, claiming a police officer "kind of like coaxed me along" when preparing his statement. The state remained immune from dissuasion and took another swing at Weimer after the first trial had ended in a dismissal of all charges. The second time around it worked. Weimer was convicted of third-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder.Nine years later, Weimer had her charges vacated by a judge who found enough evidence to suggest she had been wrongly incarcerated and imprisoned. A whole bunch more evidence came to light during her retrial. That's where the state's bite mark "expert" performed his own Perry Mason move.
The bite-mark expert also disavowed his trial testimony, stating that his opinion that the bite mark was Weimer’s was based on “junk science.”Also uncovered were letters from jailhouse informants that showed investigators and prosecutors handing out unspecified deals in exchange for testimony against Weimer. In June 2016, the charges were dropped with prejudice, ending eleven years of wrongful imprisonment.Unfortunately, the ending for Weimer is far from happy. Too many layers of immunity stand in the way of prosecutors, experts, and investigators being held personally accountable for destroying an innocent woman's life. The prosecutor who led this witch hunt-esque "investigation" -- DA Nancy Vernon -- will escape some of the claims brought by Weimer. Most significantly -- at least in terms of what this post is highlighting -- she'll dodge any responsibility for using junk science to help press a very shaky case against Weimer. According to the court, everyone was still in the bite mark Dark Ages and can't be held responsible for the collective ignorance of law enforcement forensic techniques.
During the relevant time period—from late 2002 to early 2006—the unreliability of bite-mark evidence was not widely recognized such that “any reasonable official in [Vernon’s] shoes would have understood that [s]he was violating” Weimer’s rights by directing officers to investigate the timing of the bite mark on Haith’s hand. Despite allegations that the bite-mark expert later referred to such evidence as “junk science” during Weimer’s post-conviction proceedings, such evidence was widely used in criminal proceedings during and after Weimer’s trial, see Erica Beecher-Monas, Reality Bites: The Illusion of Science in Bite-Mark Evidence, 30 Cardozo L. Rev. 1369, 1375–87, 1408 (2009) (outlining the scientific unreliability of bite-mark evidence and arguing that judges “circumvent[] their gate-keeping responsibilities” by “continu[ing] to admit bite-mark testimony into evidence”); see also Brewer v. Hayne, 860 F.3d 819, 824–25 (5th Cir. 2017) (holding forensic odontologists were entitled to qualified immunity when the plaintiffs showed only that the evidence the experts presented at trial in the 1990s was no longer considered trustworthy by later standards and that the experts may have been negligent in their analysis). Thus, based on the law as it existed at the time, Vernon was not on notice that her alleged conduct of directing further investigation into the bitemark evidence would violate Weimer’s rights.But almost every other claim survives. The prosecutor who ignored the evidence she didn't like (DNA evidence suggesting a male committed a crime/the lack of victim's DNA on Weimer) in favor of the stuff she did (bite mark "analysis," a bunch of jailhouse informants being offered deals) will have to face Weimer's malicious prosecution and civil rights conspiracy claim without the shields of qualified or absolute immunity.
Get your Otherwise Objectionable gear in the Techdirt store on Threadless »If Section 230(c)(1) contains "the twenty-six words that created the internet", then (c)(2) contains the words that gave them some critical help. Among those words are two that are especially important, "otherwise objectionable", as they turn a limited list of specific content that can be removed into an open-ended protection for platform operators to moderate as they choose — and now you can wear them proudly with our new gear on Threadless.
As usual, there's a wide variety of gear available in this and other designs — including t-shirts, hoodies, notebooks, buttons, phone cases, mugs, stickers, and of course the now-standard face masks. Check out all our designs and items in the Techdirt store on Threadless!She looked at the correct answers, which Edgenuity revealed at the end. She surmised that Edgenuity’s AI was scanning for specific keywords that it expected to see in students’ answers. And she decided to game it. Now, for every short-answer question, Lazare writes two long sentences followed by a disjointed list of keywords — anything that seems relevant to the question. “The questions are things like... ‘What was the advantage of Constantinople’s location for the power of the Byzantine empire,’” Simmons says. “So you go through, okay, what are the possible keywords that are associated with this? Wealth, caravan, ship, India, China, Middle East, he just threw all of those words in.”“I wanted to game it because I felt like it was an easy way to get a good grade,” Lazare told The Verge. He usually digs the keywords out of the article or video the question is based on.And Lazare appears to have been right, as he now gets perfect scores on all of his tests. This is obviously both lazy teaching and lazy technology. Relying on software to grade tests that are essentially short-form essay tests, as opposed to multiple-choice Scantron style tests, make zero sense. Human grading is needed.But the technology is quite lazy as well. How can a platform that is grading exams of this nature not build in a check against proper grammar, for instance? The fact that a student can simply toss in a bunch of disjointed words at the end of an answer, like some kind of keyword metadata, and get away with it is crazy. Especially when Edgenuity informs everyone that it's supposed to work this way.
According to the website, answers to certain questions receive 0% if they include no keywords, and 100% if they include at least one. Other questions earn a certain percentage based on the number of keywords included.Whatever that is, it sure as hell isn't good education. And while testing practices in education are generally under scrutiny wholesale at the moment, there is little reason to issue tests at all if everyone involved is going to be this lazy about it.And, to be clear, this is happening all over the place, with students finding more than one way to game the system.
More than 20,000 schools currently use the platform, according to the company’s website, including 20 of the country’s 25 largest school districts, and two students from different high schools to Lazare told me they found a similar way to cheat. They often copy the text of their questions and paste it into the answer field, assuming it’s likely to contain the relevant keywords. One told me they used the trick all throughout last semester and received full credit “pretty much every time.”Another high school student, who used Edgenuity a few years ago, said he would sometimes try submitting batches of words related to the questions “only when I was completely clueless.” The method worked “more often than not.”I think it's fair to say that Edgenuity probably doesn't get a passing grade for its platform, now widely used thanks to COVID-19.
One interesting thing that happened was related to how we communicated with web masters who were affected by Safe Browsing alerts. Because very quickly when we started looking into the problem of how users might be exposed to malware on the web, we realized that a lot of it came from websites that were actually benign, but were compromised and started delivering malware via exploits. The site owners or administrators typically did not realize that this was happening.Of course, at the same time, when sites are being put on blocklists when they don't even realize that their sites are compromised, they often assume that there is some sort of bias against them or the content of their websites.Matt Cutts, who for many years was in charge of stopping “web spam” at Google, wrote a few blog posts in the early years responding to people who accused Google of blocking websites whose content they disagreed with, with Matt explaining how he responds to such complaints. In that linked post, Cutts responds to complaints from a vocal Google critic, who claims that it was blocking the website of a think tank that had expressed opinions that were different than Google's regarding net neutrality.Cutts points out that this is not accurate and that Google had only blocked a specific page on that think tank's website, and the reason was that that page itself was compromised and visiting it would install malware on the visitor's computer:
If you visit pff.org/issues-pubs/, you'll see that it's a web form. It looks like pff.org stored their data in a SQL database but didn't correctly sanitize/escape input from users, which led to a SQL injection attack where regular users got exposed to malicious code. As a result, normal users appear to have loaded urls like hxxp://www.ausbnr .com/ngg.js and hxxp://www.westpacsecuresite .com/b.js < --- Don't go to urls like this unless you are 1) a security researcher or 2) want to infect your machine. Notice that even in this case, Google didn't flag the entire pff.org site, just the one directory on the site that appeared to be dangerous for users. I never like it when people accuse Google of flagging a site as malware just because we don't like it for some reason. The bright side of this incident is that pff.org will find out about a security hole on their site that was hurting their users (it looks like pff.org has disabled the search on the vulnerable page in the last few hours, so it appears that they're responding quickly to this issue). Flagging malware on the web doesn't earn any money for Google, but it's clearly a Good Thing for users and for the web. I'm glad we do it, even if it means that sometimes we have to write a generic malware post to debunk misconceptions.Decisions for Google:
In our first interactions with web masters they would often be surprised. So we started building tools dedicated to web masters, now called Search Console. The basic feature was that we would try to guide the web master to the reason that their website was infected, or if we didn't know the exact reason we would at least tell them which pages on their server were distributing malware, or we would show them a snippet of code that was injected into their site.Along the way, they have faced mistakes and errors, including a technical error in 2009 that, for a time, labeled every single Google search result an error.Google also put together an appeals process for those who felt their site did not belong on the blocklist, and enlisted a third party, the non-profit StopBadware.org which was formed out of Harvard's Berkman Klein Center in 2006, to help with reviewing appeals when a site gets listed in Safe Browsing.This partnership represents an early version of having an independent third party help review content moderation choices on a platform.
Challenges to warrants based on typographical errors or factual inaccuracies typically fall under this Circuit’s clerical error exception. We have consistently found that inadvertent drafting mistakes, for instance transposing a number in a street address or listing an incorrect nearby address, do not violate the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures. That is because those errors create little risk of a mistaken search or a general warrant granting police an unconstitutionally broad authority to conduct searches.The order to search listed the wrong address. Here's why:
This description at the beginning of the warrant correctly directed officers to Abdalla’s precise New Hope Road address in DeKalb County. But the warrant’s final paragraph “commanded” officers “to search the . . . premises located at 245 Carey Road, Hartsville, Trousdale Tennessee.” (R. 20-1, Search Warrant, Page ID # 59.) Agent Gooch testified that the Carey Road address came from using a previous warrant as a template. Although Judge Patterson had jurisdiction over Abdalla’s residence in DeKalb County, he lacked jurisdiction in Trousdale County, which encompassed the Carey Road property listed on the warrant’s final page.The court says this is harmless. Rather than suppress evidence in hopes that cops won't just copy-paste "sworn statements" before running them by a judge, the Appeals Court says this creates "little risk" of "mistaken searches." Perhaps in this case the risk was minimal. The rest of the warrant correctly described the residence and how to locate it. But to pretend careless warrant crafting rarely results in "mistaken searches" ignores how often it happens -- and how often this supposed low-risk "mistake" results in real harm."Little risk?" Here's what's actually happening in the Sixth Circuit, which covers Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee.
Oak Park, Michigan (November 2019): Police raid the wrong side of a duplex, breaking windows and the front door before realizing their mistake.Flint, Michigan (October 2014): Troopers go to the wrong house to locate a fugitive, shoot family's dog in the face.Detroit, Michigan (May 2017): After conducting a one-day(!) human trafficking investigation, a SWAT teams raids the wrong house, handcuffs everyone present (including two children) before discovering their mistake.Detroit, Michigan (September 2017): DEA agents raid two(!) wrong addresses. The forty officers(!!) recover no drugs. Search warrants and property receipts left at the properties by the feds were blank, according to this report.Detroit, MIchigan (April 2017): Police raid wrong house, kill homeowner's dog.Nashville, Tennessee (August 2020): Three cops raid wrong house, traumatizing the resident and two young children. Officers predicated the search on housing information that hadn't been updated since November 2018.Lebanon, Tennessee (January 2006) - Officers raid wrong house, kill 61-year-old man while his wife is handcuffed in another room.Louisville, Kentucky (October 2018) - Officers (three of whom shot and killed Breonna Taylor during another botched raid) using outdated information raid a house looking for someone who had moved out four months earlier.Bowling Green, Kentucky (July 2016) - Police raid the wrong house looking for a Black suspect. Officers handcuff and question the homeowner, who weighs 100 pounds less than the suspect they're looking for. The interrogated homeowner is also one foot taller than the suspect. He's also white.Louisville, Kentucky (January 2020) - Officers enter the wrong house seeking a shooting suspect, handcuffing one of the residents.Louisville, Kentucky (July 2020) - Cops raid a vacant house looking for a drug suspect who had already been arrested and was in jail. Officers break windows, destroy a door, and handcuff the man hired to paint the interior of the vacant residence.Cleveland, Ohio (November 2018) - Wrong house raided during a shooting investigation. Cops cause over $8,000 of physical damage to the house and spend an hour interrogating all the residents -- some of whom are disabled -- before realizing their mistake.Strongsville, Ohio (May 2010) - A man and his 14-year-old daughter are forced out of their house and made to lay face down on the lawn until officers realize they have the wrong address.Cleveland, Tennessee (May 2018) - DEA and local cops raid wrong house in search of murder suspect. Flashbangs are deployed into the house despite the presence of young children -- something officers should have been able to discern from the number of toys around the front entry of the residence.This is just a small sampling. And this is just from this circuit, which covers only four of the 50 states. This happens far too frequently for it to be shrugged off by an Appeals Court, even if the facts of the case might lead the court to conclude a mistake in an affidavit doesn't warrant the suppression of evidence.The Fourth Amendment places the sanctity of the home above all else. And yet, officers continue to perform searches without performing the due diligence required to support a home invasion. Outdated info, unverified claims by informants, minimal investigative work… it all adds up to situations where rights are violated and residents are recklessly subjected to violence and deadly force.How bad can it get? Here's a true horror story that shows just how little law enforcement agencies care about the people they're supposed to protect and serve:
Embarrassed cops on Thursday cited a "computer glitch" as the reason police targeted the home of an elderly, law-abiding couple more than 50 times in futile hunts for bad guys.Apparently, the address of Walter and Rose Martin's Brooklyn home was used to test a department-wide computer system in 2002.What followed was years of cops appearing at the Martins' door looking for murderers, robbers and rapists - as often as three times a week.Every wrong visit to the house was a chance for officers to respond with deadly force to perceived threats. That these residents managed to survive 50+ incidents with cops looking for violent criminals is a miracle. "Mistaken searches" are not an acceptable outcome. Blanket statements like these issued by courts just give cops more reasons to cut corners before banging their way into someone's home in search of nonexistent criminals or criminal activity.
Sony’s full year corporate report was published over the weekend Australian time, and as always it covers Sony’s PlayStation division as well as the other units within its business. Naturally, the coronavirus was a big factor, with Sony estimating a ¥68.2 billion loss ($876.3 million) in operating income just from COVID-19.But gaming has done well for Sony. The PlayStation business now generates more sales and operating income than any other part of Sony:Now, it's worth noting that Sony's gaming revenue is actually down for 2019, but the percentage as revenue generator for the company is up. And, as noted above, gaming is now the single largest revenue generator of any market Sony is in. And what's really interesting in all of that is that it's happening while Sony has famously limited its own reach with walled gardens. PlayStation exclusives have been the norm wherever Sony can sign them. Sony's first-party games, many of them among the best that gaming has to offer, have of course been siloed on PlayStation consoles. For years, Sony limited PS4's remote play function to Sony Xperia phones that never broke ground in market share. Everything, it seemed, was designed to be as locked into Sony's walled garden as possible.But we're starting to see signs that the company has recognized that it needs to change.
All that said, explicitly mentioning the potential for PC ports in its annual report is the latest sign that Sony continues to slowly loosen its tight, walled-garden approach to game hardware and software. In 2017, for instance, Sony expanded its PlayStation Now streaming service to work on Windows PCs as well as PS4 hardware. That service now has 2.2 million regular subscribers, Sony says, up significantly from the 1 million subscribers claimed last November.In 2018, Sony finally opened PS4 titles to cross-platform online play with other consoles after years of public reluctance on that score. Then, earlier this year, Sony said MLB: The Show will come to non-PlayStation consoles as soon as 2021, after decades of PlayStation exclusivity.It all speaks to a company that's more aware that "competition from online PC games and players from other industries is expected to continue to intensify," as it says in its annual report. Even as Sony pushes hard for the exclusive "speed, haptics, and sound" improvements of the upcoming PlayStation 5 this year, it is hedging its bets somewhat with support for non-Sony hardware as well.If gaming is your best revenue generator, these moves only make sense. MLB The Show is fantastic; why should Sony only sell it to PlayStation owners? While Horizon: Zero Dawn took over three years to make it to the PC... it still made it. Why wouldn't Sony want to sell its game to PC gamers that may never want to buy a PlayStation, but would love to play some of the games previously exclusive to it?It's long past time Sony teared the walls of its garden down. Let the revenue streams in. Increase availability of its products. Make more money.The only surprising aspect of all of this is how much work it took to convince Sony that more money was good.
Joe Biden's presidential campaign is rolling out a series of official virtual yard signs designed for display on islands in Animal Crossing: New Horizons for the Nintendo Switch.As first reported by The Verge, the four virtual sign designs squeeze supportive messages for the Democratic candidate into a 32 x 32 pixel, 16-color custom pattern square, suitable for displaying on a sign in front of your virtual house. In addition to the standard "Biden Harris" and "Team Joe" designs, the campaign has also released a version with a rainbow pride logo integrated into the "JOE" branding and a design featuring Biden's signature aviator sunglasses in red, white, and blue.Putting any thoughts about individual candidates aside, it's a pretty fun and low-risk use of a social video game by the Biden team. How much effort did it take to put these images and in-game items together? Not very long, to be sure. And, with turning out the youth vote being such a premier goal of literally any political campaign, this is at least an innovative way to try to build some momentum with younger voters.And, thankfully, it won't be terribly intrusive, unlike the politics of this stupid real life hellscape we all live in. Nobody is going to see these signs unless they visit the island of the person using them. This isn't any more in-your-face than real life yard signs for a candidate.All that being said, the Biden campaign should probably be on the lookout for some unintended fuckery, given historical attempts to do this sort of thing.
Political campaigns using video games to get their message out has a short and spotty history. Former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner was among the first politicians to be interviewed in Second Life's virtual world back in 2006, an interview locale which later became known for attacks by flying penis griefers.Not going to lie, I'm sort of sorry I missed that one. Either way, it remains interesting to see how folks are finding new ways to use open and social worlds like Animal Crossing.
Some in the community have contacted us about the activities of a small minority of publishers who may attempt to inflate sales or pages read through the use of various techniques, such as adding unnecessary or confusing hyperlinks, misplacing the TOC [table of contents] or adding distracting content.Unfortunately, Amazon's moderation efforts did affect a very small number of legitimate authors. Writer Walter Jon Williams was blocked from selling his ebook because his table of contents was located near the end of his book. Williams pointed out he had done this to maximize the amount of content prospective readers/purchasers could access using Amazon's "Look Inside" feature. After some back-and-forth, Williams' book and buy button were restored by Amazon.Amazon continues to work to minimize abuse of the Kindle Unlimited system. The most noticeable and major change has been to cap earnings at 3,000 pages per ebook per reader. This limits the amount of money scammers can pull from the Unlimited payout pool. It also limits the number of times Kindle Unlimited readers will find themselves scrolling through ebooks solely designed to inflate page counts.Decisions to be made by Amazon:
Omar Maani, a former co-owner of politically-connected red light camera company SafeSpeed, has been charged with scheming with a former high-ranking Cook County official to bribe the relative of an Oak Lawn village trustee in order to install new red light cameras in the southwest suburb.Maani is charged with one count of bribery conspiracy in a two-page document known as a “criminal information,” which is typically used in cases [w]here the defendant intends to plead guilty.If true, such a guilty plea and quick conviction would lay bare the truth that red light cameras for years have been used to bilk money from taxpaying citizens to fill the coffers of both state governments and the contractors those governments work with. In this specific instance, the accusations against Maani suggest fairly brazen behavior. Maani is accused of attempting to pay a close family member of trustee from a Chicago suburb in exchange for installing SafeSpeed cameras in the city. While that is good old fashioned Chicago area politics, it's also textbook bribery.And if you might think this was some one-off scheme, it came about in coordination with the chief of staff for Cook County's Commissioner, Patrick Doherty, among others.
In February, Doherty was indicted on two counts of bribery and one count of conspiracy to defraud, accused of conspiring with a fellow SafeSpeed sales agent and one of the company’s owners to pay $4,000 in bribes to the relative of an Oak Lawn village trustee, in exchange for influencing that trustee to help approve the installation of additional cameras.The charges against Doherty came about two weeks after former Illinois State Sen. Martin Sandoval pleaded guilty to taking $70,000 in bribes to act as a “protector” for red light camera company SafeSpeed. Sandoval said he agreed to take bribes in exchange for blocking proposed legislation to ban red light cameras.This again should lay to rest what the purpose of red light cameras is: revenue generation. They aren't about safety. They aren't about the law. They aren't about influencing driving habits. They are about money, full stop.Which is why they should not exist.
A federal court has halted the release of police misconduct records until a coalition of New York City’s police, fire and corrections unions can make their case to the United States Second Circuit of Appeals.The ruling came Wednesday afternoon — just days after Manhattan Federal Judge Katherine Polk Failla ruled on a lawsuit brought by the unions over the repeal of the law shielding police personnel records known as 50a.That's right. The union doesn't just want records blocked from release. It wants the law back on the books. This is all very procedural so it probably doesn't wipe away Judge Faila's distaste for this lawsuit. Five days prior to this temporary injunction, Faila had this to say about the union's challenge of the repeal.
The lawsuit, brought by the coalition of unions over the repeal of 50a, argued that releasing unsubstantiated or unfounded allegations would put officers and firefighters at risk and would affect their employment prospects if they leave their department.But Failla said the unions failed to explain why an “officer in charge of hiring would be incapable of interpreting the records” and she had been “presented with no evidence of increased violence or threat of violence.”The disclosures plaintiffs’ argument also seems to overlook the disclosures that have historically been made,” Failla said, noting that the NYPD had previously published disciplinary records in recent years at NYPD headquarters.“Any injunctive relief that I would order, could not put that particular horse back in the barn,” she added.And yet this ad hoc collection of union legal cowboys is desperate to do just that. The horse cannot be re-barned but maybe enough union members' money can be blown delaying the inevitable. This will be the trophy brought back to the rank-and-file. Money was spent in an attempt to thwart transparency. And -- in the absence of any real victories -- this will have to do.Maybe in the end the courts will decide the repeal of 50a violates the many, many collective bargaining agreements the city has agreed to over the years. If so, New York City needs to let these expire and write new ones that actually give taxpayers a bit more bang for their buck. Accountability is a must. The city's unions continue to insist it's a luxury even the nation's largest city can't afford.
Based on our preliminary review, appellants have made a strong showing of likely success on the merits that the district court’s injunction exempting “Journalists” and “Legal Observers” from generally applicable dispersal orders is without adequate legal basis. Given the order’s breadth and lack of clarity, particularly in its non-exclusive indicia of who qualifies as “Journalists” and “Legal Observers,” appellants have also demonstrated that, in the absence of a stay, the order will cause irreparable harm to law enforcement efforts and personnel.DHS personnel will still have to comply with the stipulation of the now dead restraining order requiring them to ID themselves:
This order does not disturb the portion of the district court’s August 20, 2020 order directing the parties to confer regarding identifying markings…The equally short dissent disagrees. The restraining order has been in place for more than a month at this point and the federal task force hasn't found itself unable to engage in crowd control and riot suppression efforts.
In light of the deferential review accorded to the district court’s factual finding at this stage, the district court’s extensive factual findings with respect to journalists and legal observers, including the finding that the injunction would not impair law enforcement operations to protect federal property and personnel, and the fact that a temporary restraining order has been in place since July 23, 2020, the government has failed to meet its burden to demonstrate either an emergency or irreparable harm to support an immediate administrative stay.This will be appealed. And it may end up being something the Supreme Court will feel like addressing. There's a question that needs to be answered since the future will contain plenty of protests and plenty of people covering them. This was how the district court judge explained it in an earlier hearing:
Simon initially said at a hearing Tuesday that the question of whether journalists have different rights under the First Amendment than those of protesters, who legally must leave an area after a riot has been declared, was likely to end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.But Judge Simon took a pass on that question in his decision -- the one now rejected by the Appeals Court.
Someday, a court may need to decide whether the First Amendment protects journalists and authorized legal observers, as distinct from the public generally, from having to comply with an otherwise lawful order to disperse from city streets when journalists and legal observers seek to observe, document, and report the conduct of law enforcement personnel; but today is not that day.With this rejection by the Appeals Court, that "someday" may be much closer than it was a little more than a week ago, when journalists and observers were still shielded from being assaulted by federal officers. The gloves are off now and federal agents are free to treat them like the rest of the crowd when deploying force.
Aura, however, goes all in on real-time location-tracking instead, as TechCrunch reports. The app collects students' names, location, and COVID-19 status, then generates a QR code containing that information. The code either comes up "certified" if the data indicates a student has tested negative, or "denied" if the student has a positive test or no test data. In addition to tracking students' COVID-19 status, the app will also lock a student's ID card and revoke access to campus buildings if it detects that a student has left campus "without permission."TechCrunch used a network analysis tool to discover that the code was not generated on a device but rather on a hidden Aura website—and that TechCrunch could then easily change the account number in the URL to generate new QR codes for other accounts and receive access to other individuals' personal data.It gets worse. One Albion student was able to discover that the app's source code also included security keys for Albion's servers. Using those, other researchers into the app found that they could gain access to all kinds of data from the app's users, including test results and personal identifying information.Now, Aura's developers fixed these security flaws...after the researchers brought them to light and after the school had made the use of the app mandatory. If anyone would like to place a bet that these are the only two privacy and security flaws in this app, then they must certainly not like having money very much.To be clear, plenty of other schools are trying to figure out how to use technology to contact trace as well. And there's probably a use for technology in all of this, with an acceptable level of risk versus the benefit of bringing this awful pandemic under control.But going off half-cocked isn't going to help. In fact, it's only going to make the public less trustful of contact tracing attempts in the future, which is the last thing we need.