This decision runs contrary to the stated intention and the plain text of New York law, so obviously we are disappointed. But more importantly, this decision makes it even more critical that New York law be clarified to make sure regular New Yorkers can occasionally rent out their own homes. There is universal agreement that occasional hosts like Nigel Warren were not the target of the 2010 law, but that agreement provides little comfort to the handful of people, like Nigel, who find themselves targeted by overzealous enforcement officials. It is time to fix this law and protect hosts who occasionally rent out their own homes. Eighty-seven percent of Airbnb hosts in New York list just a home they live in -- they are average New Yorkers trying to make ends meet, not illegal hotels that should be subject to the 2010 law.

Despite the seizure of the phone records, a Justice Department spokesman said the agency valued freedom of the press and was “always careful and deliberative in seeking to strike the right balance between the public interest in the free flow of information and the public interest in the fair and effective administration of our criminal laws.”

On November 5, [redacted], the case agent sent an e-mail asking another Special Agent in the [redacted] Field Office to inquire, in the other agent's capacity as his squad's liaison to the CAU, whether the on-site communications service providers could obtain telephone toll records of U.S. persons making [redacted] calls [redacted]. The case agent's November 5 e-mail listed 12 [redacted] telephone numbers, 8 of which were identified in the e-mail as belonging to Washington Post reporters [redacted] and Washington Post researcher [redacted] and New York Times reporters [redacted] The email identified a 7-month period -- a few months before and a few months after the published articles -- as the time period of interest for the leak investigation.

[....] However, in absence of any request from the case agent or anyone in the FBI, the CAU SSA issued an exigent letter dated December 17, [redacted], to Company A for telephone records of the reporters and others listed in the case agent's November 5, [redacted], e-mail. We determined that the SSA did this without further discussion with the case agent or the Special Agent who had asked only whether such records could be obtained through on-site providers, not that the records should be obtained.

The CAU SSA's exigent letter sought records on nine telephone numbers, seven of which were identified in the e-mail exchanges described above as belonging to Washington Post and New York Times reporters or their news organizations' bureaus in [redacted].....

The exigent letter did not specify the 7-month interval noted in the case agent's November 5 e-mail, or contain any date restrictions. The exigent letter also stated that the request was made "due to exigent circumstances" and that "subpoenas requesting this information have been submitted to the U.S. Attorney's office who will process and serve them formally on [Company A] as expeditiously as possible." However, this statement was not accurate. A subpoena request had not been sent to the U.S. Attorney's Office at the time the exigent letter was served, or at any time thereafter.

A legislative proposal, backed by the N.C. Automobile Dealers Association, would make it illegal for Tesla, or any other car maker, to bypass dealerships and sell directly in the state. The proposal cuts at the heart of Tesla’s business model: selling luxury cars over the phone or Internet and then delivering them to the front door of high-net-worth customers.

These rules are not designed to promote safety, nor improve quality of service. They are intended to stop innovation, protect incumbents, hurt independent drivers, and shut down Uber in Denver.

It's true that we are fast approaching the day when we will be able to use a 3D scanner to send a digital file representing an object across the Internet so that it can then be printed at the destination. But that only works for simple, fungible items like cups or replacement parts, and is useless if you want to deliver a particular, personal item rather than just a generic copy.

To do that, we need an Internet of drones:

A short distance drone delivery service built on an open protocol. Think short haul logistics.

It's a system that will explode in a way that is very similar to the way the Internet grew up -- where connections were bought by individuals and installed one modem and IP address at a time, and where the early providers are local geeks with shelves full of modems and an expensive T-1 lines.

It's an approach that uses "uncontrolled airspace" and incremental purchases of cheap, standards compliant pads/drones to roll itself out (very similar to the way the Internet was able to piggy back on the old telephone system).

As a result of this open approach and decentralization, it's something that could grow VERY fast.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Lined up against this measure [of expanding the coverage to everyone] are Canada, CEPT, Citel, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Poland and the United States. For it are the Arab States, African States, Brazil, India, Iran, Philippines and RCC.

The UK government must legislate to establish a new press "self-regulation" body — independent of both publishers and politicians but overseen by media regulator Ofcom — because newspapers have "wreaked havoc" in the lives of innocents, says the nine-month inquiry report into the culture, practice and ethics of the business.

Lord Justice Leveson, who has been hearing issues including the "hacking" of mobile phones for news stories, said the existing Press Complaints Commission (PCC), comprised of newspaper editors, is "not actually a regulator at all". And he has rejected news publishers' alternative suggestion of binding themselves to ethical standards by commercial contracts.

Instead, he is advising the government to legislate the creation of a new independent body to promote "high standards" and safeguard individuals' rights, run by a chair and a board who will hold publishers to a code.

Leveson is leaving the definition of that code and the implementation of the new body to whomever Prime Minister David Cameron, should he follow the recommendation, might appoint to set them up. But Leveson suggests the code should outline what constitutes "public interest" – a thorny topic on which newspapers and others often disagree.

"This is not, and cannot be characterised as, statutory regulation of the press. The legislation would not establish a body to regulate the press: it would be up to the press to come forward with their own body that meets the criteria laid down.

"The legislation would not give any rights to Parliament, to the Government, or to any regulatory (or other) body to prevent newspapers from publishing any material whatsoever.

"Nor would it give any rights to these entities to require newspapers to publish any material except insofar as it would require the recognised self-regulatory body to have the power to direct the placement and prominence of corrections and apologies in respect of information found, by that body, to require them."

"For the first time, we would have crossed the rubicon of writing elements of press regulation into the law of the land.

"We should, I believe, be wary of any legislation that has the potential to infringe free speech and a free press.

"In this House – which has been a bulwark of democracy for centuries – we should think very, very carefully before crossing this line."

It is resolved in the House of Representatives and Senate that they shall not pass any new legislation for a period of 2 years from the date of enactment of this Act that would require individuals or corporations engaged in activities on the Internet to meet additional requirements or activities. After 90 days of passage of this Act no Department or Agency of the United States shall publish new rules or regulations, or finalize or otherwise enforce or give lawful effect to draft rules or regulations affecting the Internet until a period of at least 2 years from the enactment of this legislation has elapsed.

In fall 2009, Comcast planned to launch an Internet service for the poor that was sure to impress federal regulators. But David Cohen, the company's chief of lobbying, told the staff to wait.

At the time, Comcast was planning a controversial $30 billion bid to take over NBC Universal, and Cohen needed a bargaining chip for government negotiations.

"I held back because I knew it may be the type of voluntary commitment that would be attractive to the chairman" of the Federal Communications Commission, Cohen said in a recent interview.

The initiative may not have sealed the FCC's decision to approve the NBC merger. But it helped, Cohen said.

The proposal clearly captured the fancy of regulators. Late last month, Genachowski, the FCC chairman, touted the program, seemingly claiming some credit for its creation.

"This particular program came from our reviewing of the Comcast NBC-U transaction," Genachowski said in a speech. "Comcast embraced it as good for the country, as well as good for business. And I'm fine with that."

The wildly different clock speeds of Moore’s Law and Washington law, however, make for increasingly damaging collisions at the intersection of technology and public policy. Even with the best of intentions, lawmakers, regulators, and judges can’t possibly anticipate tomorrow’s innovative products and services. Nor can they guess how specialized legislation, thrashed out over the course of years and infected by lobbyists and special interests, will return to haunt us when technology inevitably changes.

Faced with the unknown unknowns of dramatically new products—social networks, location-based ads, driverless cars–the best advice for governments is simply to leave them alone. Don’t just do something, stand there. At least until it’s crystal clear that the market has failed, consumers are being harmed, and that lawmakers have a remedy that won’t make things worse.

At a conference I attended over the summer, on the other hand, the Federal Trade Commission’s Julie Brill got it dangerously wrong. Given the novelty of policy problems in privacy, cybersecurity and competition in the fast-changing Internet ecosystem, Brill argued, both Washington and Silicon Valley should proceed with caution. “Regulators need humility,” she said, “but so do companies.”

The dynamism of the Internet ecosystem certainly calls for more humble trade policy. But the last thing we want is for companies to slow down so Washington can catch up. In Silicon Valley, we have a special name for humble start-ups. We call them failures.

In 1988, I invested most of the earnings from this lecture circuit acquiring the leasehold on Connecticut’s Stratford Inn. Hotels, inns and restaurants have always held a special fascination for me. The Stratford Inn promised the realization of a longtime dream to own a combination hotel, restaurant and public conference facility — complete with an experienced manager and staff.

In retrospect, I wish I had known more about the hazards and difficulties of such a business, especially during a recession of the kind that hit New England just as I was acquiring the inn’s 43-year leasehold. I also wish that during the years I was in public office, I had had this firsthand experience about the difficulties business people face every day. That knowledge would have made me a better U.S. senator and a more understanding presidential contender.

In short, “one-size-fits-all” rules for business ignore the reality of the marketplace. And setting thresholds for regulatory guidelines at artificial levels — e.g., 50 employees or more, $500,000 in sales — takes no account of other realities, such as profit margins, labor intensive vs. capital intensive businesses, and local market economics.

The problem we face as legislators is: Where do we set the bar so that it is not too high to clear? I don’t have the answer. I do know that we need to start raising these questions more often.

Obviously, our office encourages lifelong learning and wants Minnesotans to take advantage of educational materials available on the Internet, particularly if they’re free. No Minnesotan should hesitate to take advantage of free, online offerings from Coursera.

When the legislature convenes in January, my intent is to work with the Governor and Legislature to appropriately update the statute to meet modern-day circumstances. Until that time, I see no reason for our office to require registration of free, not-for-credit offerings.

• Pizza is not a vegetable, but just 1/8 of a cup of tomato paste counts the same as a half cup of vegetables, according to Congress. It's actually not that easy to directly compare the nutritional value of various servings of fruits and vegetables, but plenty of people simply see highly-processed foods as an unacceptable component of school lunches. [url]
• The USDA had a suggestion to try out a "Meatless Monday" recommendation, but it quickly backed off doing so. The proposal would have encouraged corporate and school cafeterias to offer a vegetarian meal on Mondays, but there were obvious objections from parts of the agriculture industry. [url]
• California's Proposition 37 would require labels on genetically modified foods -- and consumers will likely be surprised at the amount of GMOs in their diet. If it passes, the result of this vote could make GM foods a larger national issue. [url]

Notice for Minnesota Users:

Coursera has been informed by the Minnesota Office of Higher Education that under Minnesota Statutes (136A.61 to 136A.71), a university cannot offer online courses to Minnesota residents unless the university has received authorization from the State of Minnesota to do so. If you are a resident of Minnesota, you agree that either (1) you will not take courses on Coursera, or (2) for each class that you take, the majority of work you do for the class will be done from outside the State of Minnesota.

The legislature has found and hereby declares that the availability of legitimate courses and programs leading to academic degrees offered by responsible private not-for-profit and for-profit institutions of postsecondary education and the existence of legitimate private colleges and universities are in the best interests of the people of this state. The legislature has found and declares that the state can provide assistance and protection for persons choosing private institutions and programs, by establishing policies and procedures to assure the authenticity and legitimacy of private postsecondary education institutions and programs. The legislature has also found and declares that this same policy applies to any private and public postsecondary educational institution located in another state or country which offers or makes available to a Minnesota resident any course, program or educational activity which does not require the leaving of the state for its completion.

Tricia Grimes, a policy analyst for the state’s Office of Higher Education, said letters had been sent to all postsecondary institutions known to be offering courses in Minnesota.

"In recent months, as e-hail apps have emerged, TLC has undertaken serious diligence and is moving toward rule changes that will open the market to app developers and other innovators. Those changes cannot legally take place until our existing exclusive contracts expire in February. We are committed to making it as easy as possible to get a safe, legal ride in a New York City taxi, and are excited to see how emerging technology can improve that process. Our taxis have always been on the cutting edge of technological innovation, from GPS systems to credit card readers."

“electronic storage” means--
(A) any temporary, intermediate storage of a wire or electronic communication incidental to the electronic transmission thereof; and
(B) any storage of such communication by an electronic communication service for purposes of backup protection of such communication;

What the Bill Does

From its 1980s origins as a law restricting hacking into government computers, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) has morphed into a general-purpose federal law against trespassing on anyone else's computers. With that breadth, the CFAA extends to a wide variety of activities, ranging from data scraping (see, e.g., EF Cultural Travel v. Explorica) to fake profiles (see, e.g., the Lori Drew prosecution related to Megan Meier's death) to ex-employees walking out the door with competitively sensitive information (see, e.g., US v. Nosal and WEC v. Miller).

The proposed bill's main substantive provisions attempt to give "cloud computing services" extra protections under the CFAA. First, the bill says that each unauthorized access of a cloud computing account counts as a separate CFAA offense. Second, the bill specifies a formula for computing losses in CFAA violations involving cloud computing services, setting a minimum floor of $500 loss per affected cloud computing account.

Problems with the Bill 

The CFAA is Already a Mess.  Good luck trying to read the CFAA's text. Constant amendments over the years have created spaghetti code. This bill adds only slightly to the CFAA's overall lack-of-tidiness, but every incremental amendment makes the CFAA more unwieldy.

The Definition of "Cloud Computing Service" is Incoherent. The bill seeks to protect cloud computing services, but what are those? Check out the bill's definition:

the term "cloud computing service" means a service that enables convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (including networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or interaction by the provider of the service.

What??? This sounds more like a vendor's sales pitch than a basis for criminal prosecution. We can reinforce the definition's weakness by trying to determine what isn't a cloud computing service. Every user-generated content website seems to qualify; but so should every online bank. In fact, this definition of cloud computing service probably becomes co-extensive with the Internet generally.

To be fair, the failed definition isn't totally the drafter's fault. I don't think it's possible to define "cloud computing service" precisely. Tip to legislators: if you can't clearly define your subject matter of your legislation, you're probably doing something wrong.

What's the Problem That Needs to Be Solved? I can't figure out how the proposed amendments address any problem we're seeing in the field. It's possible I've missed some relevant case, but I can't think of a single case I've seen where the CFAA underprotected a cloud computing service or this legislation would have changed the outcome. Seeking some clarity, I submitted a press inquiry to Sen. Klobuchar's office last week and got no response. So I have no idea what problem this bill purports to solve.

Implications

This bill exemplifies several ongoing problems with efforts to legislate the Internet:

1) Legislative grandstanding. It's flashy for legislators to tell their constituents that they are fighting hard to protect emerging technologies like "cloud computing." But legislators rarely understand cutting-edge technologies, and usually rapidly evolving technologies are poor candidates for legislative intervention. So legislators' efforts to push buzzword-laden legislation are often more for show than substance.

2) Regulatory exceptionalism. As I explain here, legislators keep creating new "exceptionalist" rules for subsets of the Internet ecosystem--online dating sites, social networks, cloud computing services, etc. We saw how well that worked in California's effort to ban employers from asking employees for social media login credentials. California so utterly failed at defining "social media" that it simply covered the entire Internet...and all non-networked electronic data too! Yet, legislators seemingly haven't learned from their colleagues' repeated failed efforts to precisely define the contours of some Internet subcommunity. The proposed CFAA amendment, and its gibberish definition of "cloud computing service," exemplifies this.

3) Code proliferation. For every problem, real or perceived, legislators think they can fix the problem with more regulatory code. But the manufacturing of new legal code exacts a toll of its own. This bill increases the CFAA's complexity with minimal or zero commensurate benefit. If Sen. Klobuchar or anyone else really wants to "fix" the CFAA, a good start would be to reduce the law's length, organize it better, and reduce its implications for users' ordinary Internet activity.

"They don't what they're talking about," Linton says. "They often don't know what they're talking about."

According to Linton, the regulations would still allow for independent sedan operators with one car, and would only eliminate companies with a handful of cars that he says most frequently try to game the system. Linton says paper receipts will prevent drivers from charging for miles they didn't drive, and the regulations will only prevent sedans from operating in jurisdictions they aren't registered in—i.e., an Uber trip from Maryland to D.C. could be driven by a car from Maryland or D.C., but not from Virginia.

Canada passed a law in June that sets a new standard of permissiveness. It caps statutory damages if copyright is breached for non-commercial purposes. It expands the definition of “fair dealing” (“fair use” in America) and creates exemptions for educational purposes and for parody. Firms must pass warnings about infringement to the person who posted the material rather than immediately take the content down themselves. This contrasts with practice in America and Europe, where a web company alerted to infringing material must remove it. This encourages knee-jerk responses to complaints.

Britain too plans to introduce internet-friendly legislation this autumn after a review led by Ian Hargreaves, professor of digital economy at Cardiff University. As with Canada’s law, the recommended new code entails exemptions for non-commercial uses and user-generated content. Also mooted is a “digital copyright exchange” that would establish a marketplace for copyright. A musician could list her song and the licensing terms. A filmmaker wanting to use it would know quickly and simply what to do.

“We don’t have discretion to grant exceptions in situations like this. Once we find out someone has a criminal history of dishonesty or breach of trust we can no longer employ them.”