One thing that's been somewhat universal in the US is pretty much everyone's opposition to the whole ITU WCIT charade going on in Dubai right now. It doesn't matter what political party they belong to or what general views on technology or the internet they hold, pretty much everyone recognizes, even if there are faults with the system today, giving the ITU more control will inevitably make things worse. So it should come as little surprise that Congress has passed another resolution (they did an earlier one in August that more or less said the same thing) unanimously (397-0) telling the ITU to not even think about trying to take over any aspect of internet governance. This resolution first was approved in the Senate and this is just the House concurring.

Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives concurring), That it is the sense of Congress that the Secretary of State, in consultation with the Secretary of Commerce, should continue working to implement the position of the United States on Internet governance that clearly articulates the consistent and unequivocal policy of the United States to promote a global Internet free from government control and preserve and advance the successful multistakeholder model that governs the Internet today.

Of course, such a resolution is technically meaningless. It's mostly just a bit of warning, that if the ITU does actually lead to significant changes in internet governance, the US is unlikely to go along with them. In an age where it's rare to see bipartisan support of anything, it's nice to see pretty much everyone recognize the ITU process is dangerous and undesirable.

The English language creates new words all the time and steals words from other languages to bulk up its vocabulary. Maybe it's not fair to other languages, but then the consequences are that English grammar is highly irregular and correct spellings sometimes require knowledge of the word origins. Here are just a few interesting tidbits on creating new words.

• The usage of "OMG" apparently dates back as far as 1917 -- when Lord John Fisher used it in a letter to Winston Churchill. However, the Oxford English Dictionary only added OMG to its lexicon in 2011. [url]
• How many words exist in the English language? Unabridged dictionaries have hundreds of thousands of entries, but scientific estimates put it closer to a million. A 2011 Culturonomics paper suggests the English language is growing at a rate of about 8,500 new words per year, but that rate is actually slowing down. [url]
• Lingodroids are creating new words that humans might be able to use. Perhaps fittingly, these bots are generating a whole lot of new 4-letter words. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

As some of you may know, in addition to posts and comments for Techdirt, Tim Geigner aka Dark Helmet also writes novels. Today we're happy to announce that all three of his "conspiracy fiction" titles are now available as PDF ebooks in the Techdirt Insider Shop. These new editions feature brand new cover art and are all available on a pay-what-you-want basis, so head on over and download these three novels today:

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Digilife »
David Barker is a child psychologist. A United States defense software contractor commissions him to help with one of their programs, the first true digital consciousness. The program has taken hostages in the company’s underground lab and the company sends David into the lab with a handpicked team of specialists: a mathematician, a computer engineer, a cultural anthropologist, and representatives from the military. Their task is to regain control over this new being and convince her to let her hostages go. But from the moment they set foot in the underground lab, David realizes that the company’s claims of control over this digital being have been flights of fancy and their mission to reason with the first digital consciousness becomes a struggle to survive.

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Echelon »
Payton "Doc" Connor is an investigator at the Center for UFO Studies in Chicago, a real-life private agency that investigates the paranormal. He has a reputation for dissecting reports the agency receives and proving them to be hoaxes. Shortly before the agency sends him on a routine investigation to New Mexico, the Agency assigns him as mentor to a new investigator, Chanel Falasco. During the trip to the desert, they are contacted by a contemporary "Deep Throat", who confesses his part in a national conspiracy that includes Freemasonry, the Illuminati, and a cult born of Nazis that escaped the Nuremburg Trials with the help of wealthy industrialists. The confessor wants to use them and CUFOS to expose the group he works for before their ultimate goals are realized through an illegal surveillance network referred to only as Echelon.

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Midwasteland »
It is the near future in a post-apocalyptic Chicago and Anton Donovan is an anomaly. That is, though he appears to be human in every respect, he is actually a mutated version of a human. There are several differences between anomalies and humans, but the most compelling of these is the anomaly’s ability to manipulate radiation that has been left behind by a long ago waged nuclear war. The humans fear this power and they have instituted a testing process to find and euthanize anomaly children in their cities. The result of this is that anomalies only live in freedom outside of human civilization. Because of a series of personal tragedies suffered at the hands of one of these anomaly enclaves, Anton joins the human military. They think that he is going to help them hunt down his own kind, but instead he is going to use his unique situation to push both sides towards a peace, even as both humans and enclaves alike prepare to wage a worldwide war.

Shock generally isn't an emotion I feel when I come across a story to write for Techdirt. Anger? Sure. Sadness? Of course. Dismay? You know it. But not shock. I can't say that's true in this instance. Recall two recent stories we've had about Netflix. The first is a piece I wrote about Disney opting out of their Netflix streaming deal, resulting in so-called Disney knock-offs to spring up to fill the void. The second is a story Leigh Beadon covered in which one television analyst somehow looked at parents having the ability to provide their children with more entertainment choices via Netflix and decided that was a bad thing, urging companies like Disney to veer away from Netflix altogether.

It would appear that Disney is now reversing course and embracing the ever-living hell out of Netflix as the future of its distribution model.

If you’re a Netflix subscriber and you have kids, you’re about to make those kids happier. Netflix and Disney just inked a new deal, making the former the exclusive American subscription TV service for “first-run live-action and animated feature films from The Walt Disney Studios.”

This marks the first time that a major Hollywood studio decided to side with a digital distribution rather than a traditional TV provider. The deal is also a high-water mark for a company that some were speculating was ripe for takeover as recently as last month.

According to the press release by Netflix, Disney's releases, and those of its subsidiaries (including, presumably, LucasFilm), will be available on all platforms beginning in 2016. Ostensibly, this would include Netflix's streaming platform, which is a break from Disney's previous dropping of streaming through NetFlix. Perhaps even more impressive, Disney is releasing at least a portion of their back catalog through NetFlix as well, as early as this coming year.

The article goes on to note that if you think this is a dagger in the heart for pay-TV, there's still another massive hurdle to leap.

“The pay TV business as we know it is on really safe grounds until sports distribution changes,” Cryan added. “It’s technically difficult to distribute that stuff online at scale. In addition to that, the business is stacked up so you pay a lot for ESPN and other sports channels not available elsewhere. Until that changes, the core of the pay TV business is on relatively safe ground.”

Now, I happen to think that sports streaming isn't the challenge Dan Cryan makes it out to be, but he's right that the barrier is still there and it's massive. Still, keep in mind that ESPN, unfortunately the king of cable sports, is a Disney owned operation. If the house of mouse is beginning to shift the aim of its movie distribution towards a digital provider, it isn't a huge leap to bring sports streaming along with it.

Back in October, we pointed out how the US delegation to the ITU WCIT (World Conference on International Telecommunications) was pushing for much more openness and transparency for the notoriously closed and secretive process that could impact internet governance. That was certainly refreshing to see. But it also stood in stark contrast to the same US government's massively secretive and opaque process to the Trans-Pacific Parntership agreement -- which could have just as much, if not more, of an impact on internet governance issues.

With negotiations on both issues happening simultaneously (WCIT in Dubai and TPP negotiations in New Zealand) it seems quite crazy to see the US speaking out vehemently in favor of greater openness and transparency in Dubai, while actively trying to prevent similar transparency in Auckland. Here's the State Department on WCIT:

On the eve of the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), we believe that it is the right time to reaffirm the U.S. Government's commitment to the multistakeholder model as the appropriate process for addressing Internet policy and governance issues. The multistakeholder model has enabled the Internet to flourish. It has promoted freedom of expression, both online and off. It has ensured the Internet is a robust, open platform for innovation, investment, economic growth and the creation of wealth throughout the world, including in developing countries.

[....] The Internet's decentralized, multistakeholder processes enable us all to benefit from the engagement of all interested parties. By encouraging the participation of industry, civil society, technical and academic experts, and governments from around the globe, multistakeholder processes result in broader and more creative problem solving. This is essential when dealing with the Internet, which thrives through the cooperation of many different parties.

The global community has many serious topics to discuss with respect to the Internet. Collectively, we need to ensure that these matters are taken up in suitable multistakeholder venues so that these discussions are well informed by the voices of all interested parties.

Our commitment to the multistakeholder model is based on the fact that transparency, inclusion and participation are the 21st century standards governing discussions related to modern communications.

Yet, over in New Zealand, US officials, as well as negotiatiors from others countries, are taking the opposite view. They're doubling down on secrecy, not transparency. They are not using a "multistakeholder" model at all, but rather locking out civil society and public interest groups. They've ignored or limited the ability of the innovation industry to have any say in the proceedings at all, and (most ridiculously) they're enforcing a secrecy policy many times worse than what we see at the ITU with WCIT. Many of the documents from WCIT have leaked out, while precautions mainly driven by the US government have, to date, limited the leaks from TPP negotiations.

It's really quite incredible that the same government can make those claims about openness, transparency and the importance of a multistakeholder process on the one hand, while going in the opposite direction on basically the same exact issue at the very same time for an event held elsewhere. The whole thing stinks of hypocrisy, which could easily be solved by opening up the TPP process, revealing the negotiating documents for public comment, and allowing the public into the process. After all, in the words of the US government:

We have and will continue to advocate for an Internet that is not dominated by any one player or group of players, and one that is free from bureaucratic layers that cannot keep up with the pace of change. We will work with everyone to ensure that we have a global Internet that allows all voices to be heard.

If only the US government would listen to that important message.

It's fairly widely accepted that the key digital device in the future will be the mobile phone, not the desktop computer that has had such an impact on Western society for the last few decades. That's partly a question of cost -- if devices are to reach even the poorest in emerging economies, they must be very cheap. But there are also other factors, such as the mobile phone's small size and portability; its rugged design and ability to cope with intermittent power supplies; and the built-in Net connectivity that more or less comes as standard.

But not everyone is delighted at the prospect of this powerful technology becoming pervasive. Here, for instance, is a depressing tale from India:

A village council in the state of Bihar this week prohibited unmarried women and girls from using mobile phones, saying that they promote extramarital affairs and unsanctioned marriages and erode the moral fabric of society. Married women will be allowed to use them only indoors and in the presence of a relative.

Well, perhaps mobile phones have indeed contributed to affairs, but logic dictates that there was probably a man at the other end of the conversation, and it's quite likely he was using a mobile phone too: why not ban all unmarried men and boys from using them, and only allow married ones to make calls under supervision of their relatives? The answer, of course, is that this is not about "eroding the moral fabric of society", but about power, and in particular the erosion of traditional male power in the village:

Many villagers, male and female, attended a village meeting Sunday about the ban, and most favored it, particularly older people, Mr. Alam said. He presided over the meeting. The panchayat [unelected council], which is made up entirely of men, also barred women from bathing outdoors, at water pumps or in ponds or canals.

Moreover:

The village's top elected official, Shamina Khatoon, a woman, was not invited to the panchayat’s meeting on Sunday.

Which is pretty strange, since she is both the top official in the village and a woman, and so might be expected to offer a useful perspective on the proposal.

Other comments from the New York Times article indicate that Indian officials are investigating the matter, which at least offers some hope that the ban will be rescinded. Whatever happens, this incident confirms that one of the best ways of empowering women and weakening the grip of patriarchal power is to help them acquire them mobiles cheaply. Moore's Law and mobile companies eager to sell phones and contracts to anyone, whatever their gender, will make sure that happens whether the village elders like it or not.

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You may remember a high-profile, landmark ruling last year in Massachusetts, where charges against Simon Glik -- arrested for violating a state law that said it's "wiretapping" to record a police officer in public without his permission -- weren't just dropped, but the arrest was found to be both a First and Fourth Amendment violation. In the end, Boston was forced to pay Glik $170,000 for violating his civil rights.

You would think that story would spread across Massachusetts pretty quickly and law enforcement officials and local district attorneys would recognize that filing similar charges would be a certified bad idea. Not so, apparently, in the town of Shrewsbury. Irving J. Espinosa-Rodrigue was apparently arrested and charged under the very same statute after having a passenger in his car videotape a traffic stop for speeding, and then posting the video on YouTube. Once again, the "issue" is that Massachusetts is a "two-party consent" state, whereby an audio recording can't be done without first notifying the person being recorded, or its deemed a "wiretap." This interpretation, especially when dealing with cops in public, is flat-out ridiculous and unconstitutional, as the Glik ruling showed.

It's somewhat amazing that no one pointed out to the folks in Shrewsbury how this might play out, but given the Glik ruling, Shrewsbury officials might want to start putting away some cash to pay Espinosa-Rodrigue...

No one ever said that criminals were particularly smart. Over the years, we've pointed to a number of incredibly stupid criminals who post evidence or confessions of their crimes in YouTube videos. What's amazed us, though, are politicians who argue that there should be additional criminal penalties for those who broadcast their crimes via YouTube, even as it presents evidence that makes it easier to convict them. In fact, we had a story of a City Council explicitly ordering a serial criminal to stop posting evidence of his crimes to YouTube.

Thankfully, such calls for adding penalties for dumb criminals publicly exposing evidence about their crimes seems to have died down. So, now we can see videos like the following in which Hannah Sabata, a 19-year-old from Nebraska, confesses to robbing a bank and a car and brags about it (and let's not even get into whether or not the Green Day tune with the video is infringing... though it looks like that's been "claimed" and "monetized" by ContentID): The video was posted last week... and apparently a lot of people called the local sheriff. Apparently Ms. Sabata also texted her ex-husband (an ex-husband at 19?) bragging about the crime as well, and he alerted the police also. Adding to the evidence: the outfit she wears in the video... is the same outfit she wore during the bank robbery.

"I've been sheriff for 19 years, and in law enforcement for 42 years, and I've never seen anything like this," Sheriff Radcliff said.

Yup. And it seems like a good thing that we have stupid criminals incriminating themselves so publicly, rather than making that an additional crime.

We recently mentioned that Jerry Brito of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University was publishing a book about the "free market case for copyright reform," called Copyright Unbalanced: From Incentive to Excess. It's now available at Amazon. They also have a free chapter available on the site. Brito was kind enough to send me an advance copy of the short book, and it's a worthwhile read.

Not surprisingly, it fits in quite well with our ongoing discussion of the recent RSC paper by Derek Khanna, and more specifically our recent discussions on why it makes little sense to assume that copyright is property in economic terms. As we've noted, it has some property-like attributes and many non-property-like attributes. Ignoring the non-property-like attributes, even though they have vast economic implications, is a huge mistake, and basically means ignoring fundamental economics.

Those posts have led to some interesting (and some less interesting) discussions in the comments. And, in a bit of perfect timing, Brito's latest edition of his "Surprisingly Free" podcast is with law professor Tom Bell and makes one of the absolute best arguments I've heard -- from the legal perspective -- for why it's an absolute mistake to claim that copyright is property, contrary to the claim of some of the amateur lawyers in our comments. Seriously, just listen to the podcast, but I'll highlight a few snippets.

Copyright is not quite like other types of property. It has some similarities, to be sure, but at its root it is fundamentally different than tangible property like fields and houses and cars and computers. And that's because it is non-rivalrous in consumption. Copyright is a special kind of economic good and special kinds of rules should therefore apply to it. Among those rules, you should have those that take into account that you can have too much copyright....

That, of course, is really no different than what we've said for a while. It has property-like attributes, but many non-property like attributes as well. Brito then makes the argument that copyright is a form of property, and then Bell highlights a few more differences about where copyright originates legally speaking, and also highlights some similarities.

I don't want to get into a semantic discussion, but I am not completely comfortable with calling copyright property. Simply saying property. I don't even like the phrase intellectual property. I prefer intellectual privilege. I think copyright is a privilege, because it's created by statute, it doesn't exist in a state of nature, it's not recognized by common law. It's purely the creature of statute and you can't say that about the sorts of property rights we enjoy in our persons and in our farms and our cars and computers. Those rights, the rights in those forms of tangible property... you can't deny they're protected at the common law. And many people, me among them, would say that they're protected in a state of nature....

Important ramifications follow from what you call copyright. Me? I like to say it's a privilege that has certain property-like aspects and indeed the best things about copyright -- and there's a lot to like about copyright -- are those features that most resemble property. It's alienable, you can transfer it to other people, you can go to the copyright office and check to see who owns the copyright. There is something like trespass afforded to people who suffer wrongful use of their property. Wonderful things. That's the best thing about copyright.

Brito points out, in response, that there are other "intangible" forms of property, naming taxi medallions and tradeable emissions permits. Bell points out that those often are not considered property.

I was just talking to someone who works out here in Southern California in the local regional air quality control board, and we got into this conversation, and he said "we don't call them property, we don't even call them privileges, we call them permits" I said "well you can buy and sell permits" and he said "there are some things that are like property, but we don't call them property, because we don't want the state thinking, for example, we can't change the rules without suffering a takings claim." And that's true of copyright as well. Look, if Congress decides tomorrow, that we're going to just stop copyright -- they won't, but they might say, per some of the suggestions, of our reformers in our book -- we're going to tinker around the edges, and maybe, just once, around the edges, trim back the restrictions. If they did that, would they face a takings claim? No, no! It's just not part of common law...

This is interesting, because I had actually believed that copyright likely would be covered by a "takings" claim (i.e., a prohibition under the 5th Amendment on "taking" away some property). But as Bell notes, since copyright is not subject to common law, it seems wrong -- and to him, preposterous -- that it would be subject to a takings claim. Of course, just watch: I bet if copyright is trimmed back, the entertainment industry will bring a case under this very theory.

Bell then goes on to point out why, if such a "takings" claim was allowed, there would be a pretty big Constitutional problem very quickly. And it stems from the "limited times" clause under copyright. You'd have a bit of a conflict there, wouldn't you?

Let's recognize, that if you take that approach to copyright, you pretty quickly run into a tough paradox. And it's that the Constitution, says that "only for limited times" shall lawmakers protect these works of authors. So if you're a fan of real property, intangible property, as I am, you don't want to hear about lawmakers saying "we're putting a fuse on your property rights in your house or your car or your computer. We're going to let you have property rights for, oh, maybe 20 years and then 'poof' it's gone, anybody can take it." No, we would take exception if the federal government said that policy with regard to our 401ks or our houses or cars, and for good reason. Yet that's the policy we have copyrights, and it's by design. It's in the Constitution. It's as if the Constitution had a clause that said 'oh also, property rights in your farms and factories and houses -- yeah, we're going to end all those after 34 years.' That's not how they treat tangible property. We're glad of that. And yet that is how we treat copyright and I think we should be glad of that.

From there, Bell goes on to talk about the recommendations he makes in the book for how copyright should be reformed -- and he definitely goes pretty far out there with them:

1. Reinstate the Founders’ Copyright Act,
2. Withdraw the U.S. from the Berne Convention,
3. Develop misuse doctrine into an escape from copyright,
4. Focus copyright policy on consumers’ costs, not producers’ profits, and
5. Reconceive “IP” as “Intellectual Privilege.”

The discussion on those is very interesting, both in the book and in the podcast. I won't spoil it all for you yet, but I will say that, yes, he's talking about going back to what copyright law was in 1790 -- meaning that it only lasts for two 14 year terms, and that it should cover only "maps, charts and books" since that's what the founders intended. Also, infringement only happened if you copied the entire thing. Copying a section was fine. Interestingly, Bell's next book (also published by Mercatus) will apparently be published under those exact terms. As for why other things shouldn't be covered, well, he notes that the founders didn't appear to think such expressive works like music, painting and sculpture required copyright, and it's not clear why that should have changed.

There's also the "misuse" doctrine aspect, which is fascinating, in that he thinks it could act as a form of "training wheels" for a world without so much reliance on copyright:

How can misuse doctrine open an escape from copyright? The doctrine bars claims of copyright infringement that arise under conditions of misuse. It does not, however, bar claims premised on violations of common-law rights, such as trade secrets or the contractual terms of a license. In effect, misuse doctrine corrects the overweening power that results from combining copyright privileges with common-law rights, by negating only the former. Suppose for instance that a copyright holder wrongly tried to squelch rights protected by the First Amendment and the fair use doctrine by including in its license a clause forbidding public criticism of the work. A court might remedy that misuse by denying the considerable enforcement powers afforded by the Copyright Act even while leaving the underlying contract in force. In practical terms, the dispute would become a matter of state contract law rather than federal legislation. Repeated applications of the same doctrine in other cases would eventually encourage the development of business models premised solely on contract law, tort law, trade secret law, and other common-law devices. Misuse thus opens an escape from a world where copyright comprehensively regulates access to expressive works to one where only common-law rules apply

I'm not sure I fully agree with that -- and I can actually see how contract law could create a worse scenario (in which things like fair use, first sale, etc. would not be allowed). But it is a thought-provoking discussion.

One other point that was quite interesting. Bell argues that when you claim that copyright is "property" you actually harm real property rights, because things like fair use, first sale and other such "exceptions" suggest that it's equally fine to create similar exceptions to real property, and that's a road that we shouldn't want to travel down.

If you'd actually like to see that discussion live and want to see some sparks fly, the Cato Institute is hosting a discussion of the book with Brito and Bell, and moderated by Jim Harper... but also with the RIAA's Mitch Glazier to (I am guessing) argue strongly against all of this. I imagine that ought to be entertaining, and it appears they'll be streaming the whole thing live online, Thursday at noon ET, 9am PT. Should be a fun time.

Yesterday, we wrote about how US taxpayers were handing over approximately $1.5 billion to Hollywood to get them to film movies in certain locations -- and how little of that money actually generated jobs (though, lots of it flowed into the pockets of Hollywood studio execs). Even worse, the story highlighted how there's a nasty "race to the bottom," where Hollywood demands increasing subsidies from different locations, with promises to only film movies in the locations with those subsidies. That means more and more taxpayer money going to Hollywood, for the sake of a temporary production, which often brings in workers from LA, and has only a brief, marginal impact on the local economy -- usually much, much less than the subsidy in question.

While the NY Times article explored how this was happening in the US, a new article at Bloomberg highlights how this is happening around the globe, using key examples from the subsidies around The Hobbit and Harry Potter -- both of which involved massive subsidies in response to Hollywood threats to film elsewhere.

How much taxpayer money can Warner Bros. demand from the government of New Zealand to keep production there (rather than, say, in Australia or the Czech Republic)? That answer turns out to be about $120 million, plus the revision of New Zealand's labor laws to forbid collective bargaining among film-production contractors, plus the passage of three-strikes Internet-disconnection laws for online copyright infringement, plus enthusiastic and, it turns out, illegal cooperation in the shutdown of the pirate-friendly digital storage site Megaupload and the arrest of its owner, Kim Dotcom.

[...] The U.K. government found this out in 2005, when Warner Bros. threatened to move "Harry Potter" productions to the Czech Republic. The government of Gordon Brown caved in to studio demands and passed new subsidies. In 2009, New Zealand also gave in and now faces demands for more.

Again, if this actually created the economic activity that Hollywood claims it does, perhaps it would be worth it. But both articles highlight how this isn't true at all. It just shifts money from local taxpayers to Hollywood execs.

The worst part is that, for most of the wannabe Hollywoods, it's bad economic policy on every level. The productions bring in mostly low-end, temporary jobs, while the high-end jobs remain in Hollywood or New York. Call it the Curse of Harry Potter.

That article, authored by Joe Karaganis, who has been studying this issue for quite some time, suggests that if the public is financing these movies, then perhaps the movies should belong to the public if the studios can't pay back the loans. The suggestion is a really creative one. If the movie actually makes money, then the studios can pay back the loans. If it's a flop, then let the movie go to the public via a Creative Commons license, and let the public do something with it.

One way to break the curse is to route public money through what we might call an Expecto Patronum license -- named after the powerful defensive charm in the Potter series. Under the license, public money takes the form of a conditional loan rather than a grant or tax break. After five years, producers have a choice: Pay back the loan or re-release the film under a Creative Commons attribution license, which would allow it to be shown freely.

If a film is among the few that have longer-term commercial value, its producers can choose the first path. If it isn't, they lose nothing by taking the second route. The license thus underwrites creative risk-taking without squandering public money on blockbusters. It also ensures that public investment generates public culture -- not works controlled by the studios for the next 95 years.

It's such a reasonable idea that you know that Hollywood would freak out at any legitimate push to use it. In true "entitlement mentality," they believe such taxpayer-funded subsidies are their right, and that localities that won't pay up are missing out. Yet, as the data clearly shows, most locations would be much better off saying "no," as the benefit is minimal. Or, at the very least, they should make the terms similar to what the article suggests. If you want the public to finance the movie, then make it conditional. In the end, you pay back the loan or the public gets the movie.

We've covered stories about the Yellow Pages and other directory companies in the past, as their business and general worth appears to be just short of evaporated, but this is a strange one. Frustratingly, there is a chasm worth of unknowns in this story, and not just by us here at Techdirt, but apparently by some of the players involved. Details are scant, due to the Mexican court system not having the kind of transparency of legal documents that we have here in the States. What we do know is that the result of a mystery lawsuit by two companies against Yahoo for "breach of contract, breach of promise, and lost profits arising from contracts related to a yellow pages listings service" is that Yahoo has been ordered to pay up $2.7 Billion (yes, with a "b") dollars. While the entire case represents something of a mystery to nearly everyone commenting on it, one commonality seems to be that everyone is confused.

If the ruling stands, Yahoo would be forced to part with nearly 36% of the $7.56 billion in cash it had as of September 30. It would be one of the first major challenges faced by CEO Marissa Mayer, who took the helm at Yahoo in July.

J. P. Morgan analyst Doug Anmuth was similarly stumped. A research note he issued Monday focused on the ruling, around which he said there is "little clarity." It's unclear how the court came to the $2.7 billion figure for the judgment, but Anmuth said it "appears high based on the seemingly small size of Yahoo's business in Mexico."

No one really seems to know what the hell is going on here, except everyone commenting agrees that the judgment amount is insane. That said, I should also note that the judgment is not final and that Yahoo is promising to exhaust every appeal avenue afforded to them, which you'd expect given that there's over a third of their cash assets on the line. Adding to the mystery of the case is the fact that not only are court documents unavailable, but virtually nobody is commenting on the matter either.

The lawsuit was brought by Worldwide Directories S.A. de C.V. and Ideas Interactivas S.A. de C.V. against Yahoo and Yahoo de Mexico, Yahoo said.

The companies could not be reached for comment, although Carlos Bazan-Canabal, who describes himself as a founder of Worldwide Directories, told Reuters via email that he had contracted a U.S.-based law firm to handle the Yahoo case. He declined to comment further on the matter.

For what it's worth, investors don't seem to think that the massive judgment is worth selling of Yahoo shares, as of yesterday, but with so few details it's hard to know what's going on. One thing is for certain, however: if judgments like these are validated, it would be a bright signal to tech companies throughout the world to avoid doing business in Mexico.

Pro Publica has done it again. They've put together a great report on how the government can usually get your digital data without bothering to get a warrant. On top of that, they line it up with what the law actually says about the subject. Here are just a couple examples, but check out the whole thing: Beyond phone records and location data, they explain how law enforcement can get IP addresses, emails, email drafts (treated differently than emails), text messages, general cloud data and social media information. And... the shorthand version is that the government can pretty much look at an awful lot of your data with very little judicial oversight.

The various government bodies negotiating the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) have been criticized repeatedly for their lack of transparency. In the last few negotiating meetings, they've tried to respond to this by arguing that they allowed public interest / civil society groups various ways to meet with and interact with the delegates. For the most part, this interaction was way too limited, but it was something. However, for the latest negotiating round in New Zealand, it appears that these groups have been almost entirely excluded. Representatives from a bunch of groups fighting for the public interest -- including EFF, KEI, OpenMedia.ca, Public Citizen and others flew all the way to New Zealand... only to be barred from the premises where the negotiations are being held, save for a brief 15 minute session for each on one day of the 10 day negotiation.

Academics, experts, consumer groups, Internet freedom organizations, libraries, educational institutions, patients and access to medicines groups have flown a long way from around the world to Auckland, New Zealand, to engage with delegates in the 15th round of Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations.

For the first time, however, we have been locked out of the entire venue, except for a single day out of the 10 days of negotiations. This not only alienates us as members of public interest groups, but also the hundreds of thousands of innovators, educators, patients, students, and Internet users who have sent messages to government representatives expressing their concerns with the TPP. All of us oppose the complete unjustifiable secrecy around the negotiations, but more importantly, the IP provisions that could potentially threaten our rights, and innovation.

These new physical restrictions on us are reflective of the ongoing lack of transparency that has plagued the TPP negotiations from the very beginning.

This is really shameful behavior on the part of the New Zealand hosts.