Decentralization Matters: But Why?

Innovation

from the decentralize-all-the-things dept

About a year ago, the Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web asked if I would help edit and compile a “magazine” talking about decentralization and why it’s important. It was a fun and interesting challenge, and now the final product is out, the D-Web Digest.

There are a bunch of fascinating articles in there, which I summarize in my editor’s letter to open up the issue. I’m not going to go over all of the articles (you can see that in the editor’s letter) but I would like to highlight a few that I think are particularly worth checking out:

I think, by far, the piece in the collection that made me think the most is Danny O’Brien’s piece on “terminal values and cognitive liberty.” You need to read the whole thing, but it really gets at the question of why decentralization is so important. I’ve been citing and quoting the piece to people since last Spring, but now it’s finally out for people to see.

The key to Danny’s piece is understanding what fundamental, core, “terminal” values are so important, and whether or not decentralization is one of those, or rather a means to reach one of them. His conclusion (though you should read the process by which he gets there) is that cognitive liberty is the terminal value, and the only real way to get there is through decentralization. Here’s just a snippet:

Our own consciousness cannot be rented from others, or temporarily conceded to us, with built-in police or backdoors or hidden ad men. We need to seize the means of computation, and that means ejecting all of these interlopers, and relocating it back into the personal domain we control: whether that’s physically, or by using tools like encryption and zero-knowledge proofs to preserve our control when our data and processing power sits on others’ hardware.

That’s the pyramid of digital rights for me: a firm foundation of decentralized, user-controlled technology, giving us broader cognitive liberty, internal privacy, freedom of self-expression, and freedom of self-determination.

A second piece I want to call out is Mai Ishikawa Sutton’s piece that finally addresses the whole DWeb/Web3 split that has been so frustrating to me over the past few years. Effectively, there are two camps within the decentralized tech world: one that believes it will be powered by crypto and blockchains, and one that… most certainly does not. They sometimes use the same language, and talk about the same goals, but often do not. And the two groups don’t seem to trust each other much. Mai moves the debate significantly forward not by digging into what the two groups agree or disagree on, but looking into a core element of the technology (which is similar to Danny’s piece above) regarding who is designing the technology, who controls it, and who stands to benefit from it. A snippet:

Building new and shinier tools out of the same political and economic conditions will do nothing to fundamentally change the world. But “decentralization” is also not a value in itself, and it’s not enough to build the kinds of technological networks we need to confront intensifying global crises. People need to continue to discuss, shape, and re-shape collective values. With those values held at their core, communities with common interests can collectively coordinate and embody them, first and foremost through how they govern themselves and treat one another. After all, the current internet is a reflection of shared values; the question is how we embed justice and mutual care into the Webs to come. Instead of expecting some technology to save us, we need to organize and save ourselves.

Farzaneh Badiei and Holmes Wilson both tackle important points regarding centralization being unavoidable, even in decentralized systems. These systems always have certain elements of centralization to make them work, and being aware of what these are and how they work is critical.

Badiei highlights the role of DNS, and how it has become increasingly centralized, and the potential risks that creates.

One such space is the operation of DNS resolvers, which is increasingly centralized. Imagine if we provided the capability for thousands of operators to run efficient and secure resolvers. Imagine there were so many of these operators that they were not restricted to a single jurisdiction, ensuring that any intellectual property lawsuit would not affect access to web services as a result of the resolvers being forced to block them.

Wilson, meanwhile, highlights that for all the benefits found in open source software for decentralized systems, centralization often rears its head in various cloud services, as necessitated by scale:

Cloud services such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud enjoy such significant marketshare not because they control the code for technologies they deploy (tools such as Linux, Postgres, and Kubernetes are free and open source software) but because they control the ability to use it at scale. Most engineers don’t even learn these tools directly anymore; they simply learn to turn to a cloud services company, purchase the correct service, and make it work for their needs. The power to operationalize code is creating the same lock-in and barriers to entry that software licenses once did.

This leads well into my own contribution to the series, which tries to highlight how to think about decentralization vs. centralization, recognizing that there are certain tradeoffs, benefits, and costs to each, but suggesting a framework for considering where each makes more sense, and how to implement them in a manner that minimizes the problems of centralization, while enabling more of the benefits of decentralization:

This lesson is important: having centralized infrastructure that is open and on which others can build in a decentralized manner can open up tremendous possibilities.

And we see that same pattern in the internet.

In some ways the internet is an even better example than the U.S. interstate highway system, because the internet did not require a huge centralized planning system to build the infrastructure, nor is the upkeep of the internet reliant on the same centralized system. Instead, it was built and created in a distributed manner, as an open system that anyone could build on, adapt, and contribute to.

As a centralized open protocol, it enabled amazing decentralized benefits. The protocol allowed anyone to build on it and experiment. And out of that grew tremendous benefits, through open innovation. A consistent, standardized protocol allowed for widespread innovation through competition, a standardized infrastructure basis on which to build, and a singular ability to communicate across the different experiments.

Out of this comes the best benefits of both centralization (efficiency, economies of scale, enabling infrastructure) and decentralization: distributed power, adaptive and rapid innovation, and the ability to be more nimble and responsive to opportunities.

The final piece I’ll post a snippet of is one by Cory Doctorow, that highlights one of the biggest dangers of centralization: twiddling. That is, how centralized companies, moving down Cory’s famed enshitification curve, start “tweaking” the knobs to benefit themselves over their users (and partners).

There’s a bitter irony in enshittification: the internet’s great promise was disintermediation, but the calcified, monopolized internet of “five giant websites, each filled with screenshots of the other four” is a place where intermediaries have taken over the entire supply chain.

As Douglas Ruskoff puts it, the platforms have “gone meta” — rather than providing goods or services, they have devoted themselves to sitting between people who provide goods and services and people who want to consume them. It’s chokepoint capitalism, a market where the intermediaries have ceased serving as facilitators and now run the show.

The double irony is how the platforms seized power: by installing so many sliders and knobs in the back-end of their services that they can twiddle away any temporary advantage that business customers, advertisers or end users take for themselves.

Again, that’s not all of the pieces, but I need to leave some room for surprise. Adam Rose and Basile Simon provide very real (and extremely important) examples of where decentralized storage are hugely important. Kurt Opsahl writes about how recognizing code as speech is central to making this all work. Naomi Brockwell highlights how privacy as a core (or terminal?) value is a part of why decentralization is key. Chris Riley talks about the too frequently underexplored issue of how the data flows (not just where it’s stored). And Kristin Smith looks at the regulatory landscape in which all of this plays.

Not all of the pieces in the collection agree with each other (and I certainly don’t agree with everything said in them either), but taken together, they represent a really interesting exploration of decentralization, why it’s so important, and what challenges and tradeoffs there are to building out a decentralized world.

As we seriously consider how to make the world more decentralized, I think this collection of articles should be considered important primary reading, even if only to get everyone thinking.

Filed Under: centralization, decentralization, distributed, enshittification, privacy, protocols, terminal values

Documents Show The DEA Has Problems Constraining Itself To Losing The War On Drugs

Legal Issues

from the don't-quit-your-day-job,-I-guess dept

It’s simply not enough to be part of one problem. The DEA feels the need to be part of several problems.

You’d think it would have its hands full blowing billions of dollars on a lost drug war and filling people’s heads with hysterical stupidity about the magical powers of fentanyl.

But, as FOIA terrorist Jason Leopold documented for BuzzFeed News in mid-2020, the DEA felt it needed to travel out of its wheelhouse, asking the DOJ for permission to “conduct covert surveillance” on… people protesting police violence following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.

Prompted by that revelation, the Cato Institute went searching for more documentation of the DEA’s mission creep. And it found something. As Patrick Eddington reports, the DEA has sent its officers and agents all over the nation to do things definitely not related to its primary directive: ensuring Americans never run out of illicit drugs.

The DEA was given permission to “enforce any federal crime” committed by police violence protesters, but that temporary pass was supposed to expire two weeks after the DOJ issued it. The DEA apparently felt the free pass to go off-task was permanent.

That authority was supposed to expire after two weeks, but after pursuing litigation using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), an investigation by the Cato Institute has thus far failed to confirm that the DEA’s covert surveillance operations were, in fact, terminated by mid‐​June 2020. Moreover, DOJ documents obtained by Cato in the litigation show that the DEA has engaged in such non‐​drug enforcement operations nearly 30 times since February 2005.

Of the 27 specific episodes listed in the documents, four involved providing security at Super Bowls and 10 other sporting events; five involved unspecified “assistance” after natural disasters, including after Hurricane Matthew in Haiti in 2016; three others involved “investigative assistance” after the murder of local police officers in Dallas, San Antonio, and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. None of the 27 episodes appear to have had any connection to the DEA’s stated mission of enforcing the nation’s drug laws.

The document [PDF] obtained by Cato contains a very strange list of things the DEA has been permitted to do. Or maybe not explicitly permitted. Maybe just ignored. The DEA sought explicit permission to engage in surveillance of police protesters in 2020. But Cato notes the list handed to it by the DEA dates back to 2005. Maybe the agency has always sought permission for these off-task actions. Or maybe it has just showed up on the scene without being explicitly told they weren’t allowed and/or needed.

Either way, here’s the full list of events/incidents the DEA chose to taint with its interloping:

Security at Super Bowl XXXIX in Miami, Florida (2005)
Assistance after Hurricane Katrina (2005)
Assistance after Hurricane Rita (2005)
Security at various events in Phoenix (2006-2007)
Investigative assistance after Boston Marathon Bombing (2013)
Security at Pittsburgh Marathon (2013)
Security at Vermont Marathon (2013)
Security at Boston July 4th celebration (2013)
Assistance after flooding in South Carolina (2015)
Security at visit of Pope Francis in El Paso (2016)
Security at Super Bowl (2016)
Security at Copa America soccer tournament in California (2016)
Investigative assistance after Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando (2016)
Security at US Track & Field trials (2016)
Investigative assistance after shooting of six police officers in Baton Rouge (2016)
Investigative assistance after shooting of Dallas police officers (2016)
Security at presidential debate in St. Louis (2016)
Assistance after Hurricane Matthew in Haiti (2016)
Investigative assistance after shooting of San Antonio police officer (2016)
Security at the Boston Marathon (2017)
Assistance after tornadoes in Dallas (2017)
Security at Boston July 4th celebration (2017)
Security at Chicago Marathon (2017)
Assistance in aftermath of Las Vegas shooting (2017)
Security at Chicago Marathon (2018)
Security at Super Bowl (2019)
Security at funeral of NJ Detective Joseph Seals (threats to retaliate at event to be attended by high government officials) (2019)

Some of this list looks like officers pitching in to help following national disasters. Some of this looks like the DEA pitching in to investigate serious crimes. The rest of it… it’s tough to tell what to make of this. The hit-and-miss list shows the DEA showing up at certain events repeatedly, but not consecutively. It shows up at Super Bowls, but only a handful of them. It seems to be very interested in marathons, but can’t be bothered to show up every year they’re run. For some reason, it provided security at a single presidential debate.

None of this looks like the DEA has policies in place that govern its extracurricular activities. None of this suggests the DOJ — which oversees the DEA — has anything in place that designates the DEA as an entity to be used when extra security or investigative resources are needed. Perhaps it’s better than it looks. Maybe this is the feds smartly flexing underutilized DEA agents to areas where help is needed. Or maybe it’s just the DEA deciding it wants to do things and being obliged by people who either don’t know or don’t care how the DEA utilizes its resources.

Whatever the case, it clearly shows the DEA is willing to bring its drug warring expertise to places it isn’t needed. And, given that the agency has a singular focus, there’s a good chance many of these events it chose to attend never asked for its help. It just showed up and hung around until the event was over.

None of this looks particularly nefarious. But it does look wasteful and more than a little disorganized. You shouldn’t be asking for the big bucks to fight a drug war but then act like you’re a private security force (or worse, the National Guard) just because you can. Sure, I think the Drug War is a waste of money. But I would expect those who believe it isn’t — that being the DEA and its employees — to at least maintain the pretense as long as they’re going to be blowing my money.

Filed Under: dea, police protests

Daily Deal: The 2023 Complete Linux E-Degree Training Bundle

Deals

from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept

Linux is the most fundamental technology required by all real developers. It is required in almost all fields of Software engineering. DevOps, Cloud, Full Stack, and App developers must have a working knowledge of Linux. With five comprehensive modules and over 40 Linux technologies covered, this Linux Training Bundle offers a detailed program tailored for absolute beginners. The curriculum includes a compilation of important topics such as security, DevOps, and cloud, combining all the necessary elements to become a well-rounded Linux professional. The program goes beyond theory, offering real-time project building and quizzes to help you apply your knowledge in practical scenarios. By engaging in hands-on activities, you’ll develop a strong foundation and gain the confidence needed to tackle real-world challenges. It’s on sale for $30.

Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Filed Under: daily deal

If Creators Suing AI Companies Over Copyright Win, It Will Further Entrench Big Tech

Copyright

from the be-careful-what-you-wish-for dept

There’s been this weird idea lately, even among people who used to recognize that copyright only empowers the largest gatekeepers, that in the AI world we have to magically flip the script on copyright and use it as a tool to get AI companies to pay for the material they train on. But, as we’ve explained repeatedly, this would be a huge mistake. Even if people are concerned about how AI works, copyright is not the right tool to use here, and the risk of it being used to destroy all sorts of important and useful tools is quite high (ignoring Elon Musk’s prediction that “Digital God” will obsolete all of this).

However, because so many people think that they’re supporting creators and “sticking it” to Big Tech in supporting these copyright lawsuits over AI, I thought it might be useful to play out how this would work in practice. And, spoiler alert, the end result would be a disaster for creators, and a huge benefit to big tech. It’s exactly what we should be fighting against.

And, we know this because we have decades of copyright law and the internet to observe. Copyright law, by its very nature as a monopoly right, has always served the interests of gatekeepers over artists. This is why the most aggressive enforcers of copyright are the very middlemen with long histories of screwing over the actual creatives: the record labels, the TV and movie studios, the book publishers, etc.

This is because the nature of copyright law is such that it is most powerful when a few large entities act as central repositories for the copyrights and can lord around their power and try to force other entities to pay up. This is how the music industry has worked for years, and you can see what’s happened. After years of fighting internet music, it finally devolved into a situation where there are a tiny number of online music services (Spotify, Apple, YouTube, etc.) who cut massive deals with the giant gatekeepers on the other side (the record labels, the performance rights orgs, the collection societies) while the actual creators get pennies.

This is why we’ve said that AI training will never fit neatly into a licensing regime. The almost certain outcome (because it’s what happens every other time a similar situation arises) is that there will be one (possibly two) giant entities who will be designated as the “collection society” with whom AI companies will have to negotiate or to just purchase a “training license” and that entity will then collect a ton of money, much of which will go towards “administration,” and actual artists will… get a tiny bit.

And, because of the nature of training data, which only needs to be collected once, it’s not likely that this will be a recurring payment, but a minuscule one-off for the right to train on the data.

But, given the enormity of the amount of content, and the structure of this kind of thing, the cost will be extremely high for the AI companies (a few pennies for every creator online can add up in aggregate), meaning that only the biggest of big tech will be able to afford it.

In other words, the end result of a win in this kind of litigation (or, if Congress decides to act to achieve something similar) would be the further locking-in of the biggest companies. Google, Meta, and OpenAI (with Microsoft’s money) can afford the license, and will toss off a tiny one-time payment to creators (while whatever collection society there is takes a big cut for administration).

And then all of the actually interesting smaller companies and open source models are screwed.

End result? More lock-in of the biggest of big tech in exchange for… a few pennies for creators?

That’s not a beneficial outcome. It’s a horrible outcome. It will not just limit innovation, but it will massively limit competition and provide an even bigger benefit to the biggest incumbents.

Filed Under: ai, big tech, copyright, licensing, monopolies

Our Ongoing Refusal To Regulate Data Brokers Is Going To Bite Us On The Ass

Privacy

from the we've-tried-nothing-and-we're-all-out-of-ideas dept

Every few weeks for the last fifteen years there’s been a massive scandal involving some company, telecom, data broker, or app maker over-collecting your detailed personal location data, failing to secure it, then selling access to that information to any nitwit with a nickel. And despite the added risks this creates in the post-Roe era, we’ve still done little to pass a real privacy law or rein in reckless data brokers.

The latest case in point: a new report by Rolling Stone shows how easy it is to buy location data (often down to the meter and millisecond) and track pretty much anyone. Including, apparently, visitors to Mar-a-Lago. The reporters simply paid some money to Near, a company that uses smartphone location data to closely track the behavior of more than 1.6 billion people across 70 million locations in 44 countries. 

They were able to track the locations, everyday habits, and home addresses of Trump devotees down to the meter:

“Checking tabs conveniently labeled “Common Evening Location” and “Common Daytime Location,” we were able to identify the likely homes and workplaces of any given visitor, marked as dots over buildings on a map.”

And that’s of course just location data. Movement data is often fused with other data (income, race, gender, sexual orientation, energy consumption habits, shopping tendencies) to create detailed profiles of everyone that are shared internationally like popcorn.

Companies and data brokers spent years trying to claim that all of this rampant over-collection was no big deal because the data was “anonymized.” It apparently didn’t matter that study after study has shown that it’s trivial to identify folks in such data sets with just a little additional data. Rolling Stone reporters, unsurprisingly, found the same to be true here:

“Even though the data is technically “anonymized” (we can’t see the age, income, or ethnicity of a specific visitor, let alone their name), the pinpoint locations of where they spend their days and nights makes educated guesswork pretty easy.”

We do nothing about this problem for two reasons: one, the ongoing privacy nightmare is hugely profitable to a long line of companies (telecoms, app makers, hardware OEMs, marketing firms, insurance agencies, “Big Tech,” small tech, whoever), creating a massive lobbying firewall and stunting any and all incentive for meaningful reform. Creating empowered, informed citizens and healthy, competitive, competently regulated markets would cost companies billions, so we just… don’t bother.

Two, the government doesn’t really want anything to change because this barely accountable data-hoovering ecosystem we’ve created is a great way for them to bypass getting a fucking warrant.

But there’s not only the public privacy harms involved here, but the national security risk of this kind of reckless data trafficking at global scale. We’ve spent three straight years hyperventilating about the potential risk of Chinese intelligence having access to your TikTok likes, failing to realize (or care) that data brokers are tracking far more, at a much larger scale:

“We managed to spy on a sitting president in his own home from the comfort of our couches just by messing around with the free version of a single data broker’s web app. Now imagine what a dedicated forensic team could do, working 24/7, with access to the full paid services of every commercial data broker, in addition to all of the other data sources out there, from high-tech hacking to old-fashioned surveillance.”

We’ve seen so many scandals like this I’m just not sure what is needed to push the needle on reform. But I suspect it will need to be a scandal so massive that ignoring the problem is simply no longer politically tenable. What would that have to look like? Either the massive leak of embarrassing information on rich and powerful people at historic scale, or something involving a significant loss of life.

I don’t say that to be hyperbolic. It’s a natural extension of the chaos we’ve already seen, whether it’s the abuse of location data by stalkers or people pretending to be law enforcement, to the abuse of location data to ruin folks’ lives because of their sexual preferences. It couldn’t be any more obvious that the trajectory we’re on ends very badly, and at unprecedented scale.

Filed Under: anonymization, data brokers, location data, privacy, reform, security, surveillance

Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

Techdirt

from the as-they-say dept

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is a simple anonymous response to the claim that Elon Musk fights censorship:

Remember when Elon happily complied with the Turkish government’s request to censor anti-Erdogan content during its presidential election?

In second place, it’s a double-winning comment from Thad that also takes first place on the funny side, responding to Elon’s unhinged interview in which he said “Earth” would judge the conflict between him and ExTwitter advertisers:

Earth? Hey, I’m from Earth!

And my judgement is…it’s not Bob Iger’s fault that Elon Musk is a fucking nazi.

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with a comment from That One Guy about the flood of people finding more ads next to awful content on ExTwitter:

Right for all the wrong reasons

So it turns out Elon was right, Media Matters’ article was deceptively misleading!

It is way easier than they were making it out to be to find that sort of vile content next to ads for major companies.

Next, it’s an anonymous response to Cathy’s post about Marin County’s plan to collect license plate camera data:

Just a note:

“Owned by the Sheriff’s department” does not mean “limited in distribution to only the Sheriff’s department”.

q.v. license plate records.

Once they have it, they’ll get requests from all over the country “did our guy pass by one of your cameras?”.

And if the department hires some third party to do things like “provide software showing travel records for given licenses”, said third party is likely to also have access to those records. … At which point you might as well give up pretending there is any privacy.

Over on the funny side, we’ve already had our first place winner above, so we’ll move on to second place, where Stephen T. Stone replied to one of my own comments in which I described another comment as being like “an unholy hybrid of a Linda Yaccarino tweet and a Donald Trump tweet”:

So…it’s an Elon Musk tweet?

For editor’s choice on the funny side, since pretty much all the jokes this week were about Elon Musk, we’ve got two of those. First, it’s an anonymous comment about the cease and desist letter over the name of Musk’s AI:

Elon probably can’t understand it, let alone grok it.

Finally, it’s thecleric with a comment about Musk’s silly and bizarre conceptions of free speech:

Free as in beer or free as in speech?

Musk: Neither.

That’s all for this week, folks!

This Week In Techdirt History: November 26th – December 2nd

Techdirt

from the as-you-were dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2018, consumer groups accused the FCC of weakening oversight of cell carriers under the pretense of battling text message spam, activists were making one last push to restore net neutrality via the Congressional Review Act, and senators were continuing to point out that US broadband maps suck. The FBI was demanding identifying info on thousands of YouTube viewers to prosecute a single bombing suspect, the UK was hosting theatrical Facebook hearings about fake news, and the EFF and ACLU were petitioning the court to unseal documents from the DOJ’s latest anti-encryption efforts. We also featured a three part series all about free speech written by Mike Godwin.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2013, we learned that the White House declined Keith Alexander’s offer to resign so as not to let Snowden win, while we learned more about how the FBI quietly did a lot of the NSA’s spying, and explained how not caring about surveillance because you “haven’t done anything wrong” is a bad way to think. US TPP negotiators were accused of bullying and refusing to budge on ridiculous IP and corporate sovereignty demands, while TPP defenders took to the internet with talking points and inadvertently confirmed opponents’ worst fears. Meanwhile, Team Prenda’s shenanigans continued, as did its staggering losses.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2008, telcos were asking for government money and claiming that the internet would collapse without it, while the Danish high court told ISPs they had to be internet police and block the Pirate Bay. The EFF blasted Apple for a fraudulent DMCA takedown, Hollywood’s DVD cash cow was drying up, and Blockbuster was trying to get into the set-top box game. A German court realized that music samples can be fair use, lawyers for the Dr. Seuss estate were targeting a town Christmas party, and Lori Drew was found not guilty of felonies but guilty of misdemeanors. Also, Reuters gave up on its ill-fated plan to have a full-time Second Life beat for a reporter.

Filed Under: history, look back

Investigation Exposes Yet Another Small Town That Is Little More Than A Law Enforcement Honeypot

Legal Issues

from the going-to-the-well-far-too-often dept

Law enforcement for profit is an ugly proposition. Most of us immediately think of civil asset forfeiture, which is generally just cops going shopping for stuff they want or cash to buy the stuff they want that isn’t subject to outside oversight.

But there’s another undercurrent of corruption that runs through small town America — places where cops and their supposed oversight have converted small stretches of highway into ATMs.

Everyone knows these small towns that have converted themselves to speed traps are corrupt. They’re overseen by people who see themselves as the second coming of Buford T. Justice and, for all intents and purposes, act as though their sole job is filling a burlap sack featuring a Sharpie-inscribed dollar sign.

It’s not a new thing, not even for Techdirt. Going back almost a decade, we find this article detailing the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety pulling the plug on Stringtown, OK — a town with a population of 410 that somehow managed to rake in nearly $500,000 in speeding ticket fines alone in 2013. That total represented 76% of the town’s total budget for that year. That would be the second time the town was stripped of its ability to write speeding tickets. The first occurred about a decade earlier.

Four years later, it was the town of New Miami, Ohio making national headlines. The small town was ordered by the state Appeals Court to refund more than $3 million in speed camera citation fees, ending a six-year battle between those wronged and the government that profited from being wrong. The court said the town was free to collect fines for speeding, so long as it could find a way to do it constitutionally. But the town argued being constitutional was too hard, an assertion the court disagreed with.

A few years later another small town was making national news for treating highway drivers like blank checks, rather than citizens with long-recognized rights. Brookside, Alabama was completely subservient to its police force whose hunger for cash had converted a nearby highway into a playground for opportunists and the local court into a kangaroo court for out-of-town drivers. Drivers reported receiving as many as 12 tickets during a single traffic stop with all infractions being routed through a court whose parking routinely overflowed with out-of-town drivers seeking to challenge obviously bullshit citations.

Now, it’s time for Fenton, Louisiana to experience the national spotlight. As of 2010, Fenton was home to 379 residents in space covering roughly 20 blocks. 2010 was apparently the town’s population watershed. As ProPublica notes in its expose of this speed trap town, the current population barely clears 200. Fenton contains one city hall, one library, one gas station, and one extremely opportunistic police force.

In many ways, Fenton is like other small towns in Louisiana. But it is remarkable in one way: This village of 226 people collected more money in a single year through fines and forfeitures, primarily traffic tickets, than almost any other municipality in Louisiana, according to audits.

In the year ending in June 2022, Fenton brought in $1.3 million that way.

Yeah… let’s not even pretend this is fine or normal or in any way justified by state or local laws. This is corruption supported by local leaders and carried out by local law enforcement. The fines were collected by something called the “mayor’s court” — a quasi-judicial operation that can only be found in two states: Louisiana (home of the parish!) and Ohio (see above!). All the court does — at least in the case of Fenton — is process the hundreds of tickets and millions in fines supposedly racked up by drivers who had the misfortune of venturing in or near this completely corrupt town.

Who stands to benefit from this arrangement? Well, it’s pretty much everyone who’s a part of this arrangement.

The mayor runs the village with revenue primarily made up of those fines. The bulk of the salaries of the people in the courtroom — everyone from the mayor to the clerk — comes from fines and fees collected by the court.

The conflicts of interest are so apparent those involved refuse to discuss them. The former village attorney, Mike Holmes, boldly and falsely claimed the mayor’s court operates in a “neutral, impartial manner.” The mayor offered no comment at all.

It doesn’t matter. The numbers tell the story the principal participants won’t.

The average municipality in the U.S. gets 1.7% of its revenue from fines and forfeitures, according to the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that promotes equity. In Fenton, it’s 92.5%.

This makes it apparent the town government serves itself. It may somehow serve the extremely small community by raking in millions in cash every year, but it does so by committing highway robbery. And, despite being subject to previous court rulings ordering the mayor’s court to behave in a less self-interested manner, the town of Fenton still runs its court in a way that ensures those benefiting directly from this unnatural partnership with law enforcement will continue to enrich themselves at the expense of due process.

Eddie Alfred Jr. is the mayor of Fenton and the “judge” who presides over the mayor’s court. He does this despite telling ProPublica he does not, instead claiming defendants are required to speak to the town’s prosecutor if they wish to challenge their citations. Despite his assertion he does not preside over the court, this is what ProPublica observed during its visit to Fenton’s court:

When we visited Fenton in September to observe court, “Judge Alfred,” as he is referred to in court records, donned a black judge’s robe, walked down the hall from the mayor’s office and sat at the bench. No one was waiting to have their cases heard. After Holmes [the local prosecutor] noted for the record that several people had missed their court date, Alfred said, “Court is now adjourned.” Afterward, he refused to speak with us and went back to his office.

Those are the actions of someone who knows their actions are indefensible. They’re also the actions of someone who never expected their lies to be exposed by reporters who don’t actually live near Fenton, Louisiana. Alfred underestimated ProPublica. And because he did, he had to do a hasty walk of shame out of the court and into his office where he could safely ignore requests for comments.

Records also show drivers who don’t show enough deference to local cops are hit with higher fines than those who are more subservient. Notes written on tickets let the court know which drivers were “rude” and request these drivers not be allowed to talk their way out of citations with less-than-subtle phrases like “Bad attititude! DO NOT FIX!”

If a driver decides to blow off this small town and its mercenary version of law enforcement, the town does everything it can to punish them anyway.

For those who miss court and don’t pay, the consequences can be severe. Fenton sent the Louisiana Office of Motor Vehicles about 750 requests to suspend driver’s licenses between 2018 and June, a number on par with much larger municipalities in the state.

When asked about this policy, the local prosecutor claimed state law required instant reporting of missed traffic court dates. When asked again, the prosecutor admitted he had lied:

He later acknowledged that’s not true and cited a two-year deadline under state law to request a suspension.

Say what you will about Big Brother or federal overreach, but sometimes, it’s the smallest towns with the smallest police forces that are the biggest bullies. All we can hope is that being exposed for what they truly are will force this town to change its ways. On the other hand, there’s no legitimate way this town can get its hands on $3 million in funding without pulling bullshit like this. And when there are millions on the line, it’s extremely easy to ignore the criticism of the people footing the bill.

Filed Under: civil asset forfeiture, eddie alfred jr., fenton, forfeiture, honeypot, law enforcement, louisiana, speed trap

Hormel Fairly Chill About ‘Spam’ Trademark, Still Missing Business Opportunities

Trademark

from the spam-spam-spam-eggs-and-spam dept

Hormel, the foodstuffs company that makes Spam, amongst other items, has made it onto our pages before. And not for good reasons. Ages ago, the company attempted to sue anti-spam proprietors, arguing that its “Spam” trademark somehow translated into the world of IT and email. Separately, the company also bullied a Canadian brewery into changing the name of one of its brews, Damn Skippy, claiming to be concerned as to customer confusion over its Skippy peanut butter brand, despite Skippy no longer being sold in Canada at the time. So Hormel has shown itself to be an aggressive trademark enforcer on occasion.

In this specific instance, in which a chef in Minnesota paid homage to Spam on her restaurant’s menu, it never got far enough. Instead, chef Ann Kim changed the name of her menu items to remove any reference to Hormel’s product instead. Kim created her own “spam” in house and served it in two dishes, including a fried rice dish and a “Spam ‘n Cheese” sandwich. The names of those dishes and the ingredient lists have since been changed after Hormel reached out, not with a cease and desist letter, but which questioned if she was using Hormel Spam in her dishes.

“We did not get an official cease and desist letter. It was an inquiry email asking if we were using the official Spam product,” Rachael Crew, a spokeswoman with Kim’s Vestalia Hospitality group, said in a statement. “Based on Hormel’s email, we knew it would come next. So we proactively changed the ingredient name to Ann’s Ham.”

The online and printed menus now reflect the change, including the renaming of the sandwich to “Ann’s ham ‘n’ cheese.” Kim did not respond to requests for comment.

Now, would Hormel have sent a C&D if those changes hadn’t been made? We can’t be sure, of course, but that would seem at least somewhat likely given Hormel’s history. Still, I would consider Hormel’s statement on the matter not overly aggressive nor maximalist.

“From time to time, we come across instances of others using our trademarks without licensing agreements. We understand that people are inspired by our iconic products and may even create replicas, usually unaware of any trademark violation that may have occurred,” the statement read. “Typically, we try to give people the benefit of the doubt and simply ask if they are aware of our trademarks and what our process is for the use of our trademarks.

“The issue is, if trademark owners don’t police their trademarks, they may lose them. So, we do this in order to prevent that from happening and work with [the] business to try and remedy the situation without too much hassle.”

It should be pointed out that this reflects the company’s recent stance on its trademark enforcement. The further you go back in history, the more you find Hormel acting very much like a trademark bully. This softer tone is certainly preferred.

But that last bit of the quotation is precisely the problem. Yes, there is a requirement in trademark law to enforce marks or risk losing them… if there is indeed the potential for customer confusion or a risk of the term becoming generic. But, as we’ve pointed out ad nauseum in the past, there are other options beyond simply shutting other uses down. The most common of those options is cheaply licensing the term is an option, thereby endorsing the use as official.

But instead, Hormel now gets to not be the trademark bully and still get its way, merely as a chilling effect result of its own enforcement history. Words are one thing, after all, while actions tell the true story.

Filed Under: ann kim, spam, trademark
Companies: hormel, vestalia hospitality