As Techdirt has pointed out a number of times, attacking the huge free online repository of academic papers, Sci-Hub, is wrong from a number of viewpoints. It's wrong because Sci-Hub is not a site aiming to profit from the labor of others, but is simply trying to make knowledge accessible to everyone. That's also what academic publishers like to claim they are doing, except that strangely many of the largest end up with profit margins of 30%-40%, and the papers aren't accessible to all, just to those rich enough to pay the "egregious price increases" that roll in every year. It's wrong because most of the research published was paid for by the public through their taxes, who surely ought to be able to access it from convenient repositories that are as easy to use as Sci-Hub. It's also provided free of charge for publishers to repackage, often with few changes. And yet the latter want people to pay again, typically $30 for a single article.

It's not just wrong: it's really foolish on the part of the publishers to pursue Sci-Hub in this way. It simply provides another example of the Streisand Effect, with every legal action alerting more people to Sci-Hub's existence, and encouraging them to find out more. It's foolish, too, because it underlines the fundamental inability of publishers to stop people sharing online, which probably leads others to start doing so. Techdirt has already covered previous failures to shut down Sci-Hub. A new post on TorrentFreak provides us with an update on that continuing fiasco, with details of a new injunction obtained by one of Sci-Hub's arch-enemies, the American Chemical Society:

The amended injunction now requires search engines, hosting companies, domain registrars, and other service or software providers, to cease facilitating access to Sci-Hub. This includes, but is not limited to, the following domain names.

'sci-hub.ac, scihub.biz, sci-hub.bz, sci-hub.cc, sci-hub.cf, sci-hub.cn, sci-hub.ga, sci-hub.gq, scihub.hk, sci-hub.is, sci-hub.la, sci-hub.name, sci-hub.nu, sci-hub.nz, sci-hub.onion, scihub22266oqcxt.onion, sci-hub.tw, and sci-hub.ws.'

Obtaining an injunction is one thing; applying it is another. As the TorrentFreak post notes, many of the non-US service companies involved aren't interested in obeying US injunctions. At the time of writing, a list of Sci-Hub mirrors around the world showed several still operating without any difficulty. And even if some service providers go on to shut down Sci-Hub's domains, it would be easy to come up with new names for mirrors, whether close to "Sci-Hub" in form, or quite different. And ultimately people can use Tor to access sites that are even harder to take down. In the meantime, all that these vindictive and pointless legal moves achieve is to ensure that Sci-Hub remains in the public eye, and gains ever-more users and supporters.

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Another whistleblower will be going to jail. Thanks to the application of the Espionage Act, former FBI special agent Terry Albury wasn't able to defend his leaking of FBI internal documents to journalists (most likely The Intercept) by claiming he leaked to expose noxious FBI tactics and behavior. Defenses predicated on public interest aren't allowed in Espionage Act trials, meaning Albury's decision to plead guilty is there to limit the number of years he'll spend incarcerated, rather than an indication his leaks were meant to harm the government.

Albury's attorneys released this statement to the Columbia Journalism Review shortly after his court hearing.

Terry Albury is a good and honorable man. His conduct in this case was an act of conscience. It was driven by his belief that there was no viable alternative to remedy the abuses he sought to address. He recognizes that what he did was unlawful and accepts full responsibility for his conduct, which he has demonstrated by reaching an agreement with the government to plead guilty.

Albury's statement while entering his plea pointed to internal FBI problems that personally affected him. These apparently pushed him towards leaking documents, as the issues described likely made use of proper channels impossible. When the problem is systemic racism, there's little hope an African-American agent is going to find anything more than vindictive behavior and recrimination by staying within the walls of the Bureau.

In his plea, Mr. Albury acknowledged that the facts outlined by the government were accurate and that he had acted with the knowledge that he was breaking the law. His lawyers, JaneAnne Murray and Joshua Dratel, said in a statement that he viewed his disclosures as “an act of conscience” in the face of racism at the F.B.I.

“It has long been a critique of the F.B.I. that it consists of and reflects a predominantly white male culture, which, as a result, has often treated minority communities with suspicion and disrespect,” the statement said. It added that Mr. Albury — who was the only African-American field agent in the Minneapolis office — had decided to act after he was assigned to the bureau’s counterterrorism team and “was required firsthand to implement F.B.I. investigation directives that profiled and intimidated minority communities in Minnesota and other locations.”

The leaks cited here are only part of the set of documents given to journalists. They detailed the FBI's internal rules for finding and developing informants. Agents are given a lot of latitude to pursue people they want to turn into informants. The lack of controls or oversight led to plenty of profiling by the agency, resulting in the targeting of marginalized groups disproportionately. This process allowed FBI agents to leverage anything and everything against targets to turn them into confidential informants. This included the threat of deportation or blocked visa applications if the target was a foreign citizen in the United States. As the article at The Intercept notes, the FBI would routinely deport informants whenever they ceased being useful.

But there's more to the leaks than pursuing Muslims or black teens or whoever the FBI felt would be most-easily leveraged or likely to have criminal contacts. The leaked documents also contained info about the FBI's surveillance of journalists -- all part of the Obama Administration's war on leakers.

In 2015, after several scandals involving the surveillance of reporters from the Associated Press and Fox News during the Obama administration, former Attorney General Eric Holder announced an update to the Justice Department’s “media guidelines,” which implemented strict rules for when the government is allowed to use subpoenas, court orders, or warrants to spy on reporters’ communications. However, the guidelines conspicuously exempted NSLs from the rules, meaning the FBI or Justice Department could use NSLs to circumvent the strict media guidelines and spy on reporters without any court oversight.

This may look like a crackdown on FBI spying, but in reality, it allowed the FBI to misuse NSLs to obtain records pertaining to journalists' contacts, presumably in hopes of sniffing out leakers and whistleblowers. The only check against abuse is internal: an agent deploying an NSL targeting a journalist must obtain permission from the FBI General Counsel or a supervisor in the national security division. Considering both the GC and NatSec brass would be just as interested in finding and exposing whistleblowers and leakers, obtaining permission for an NSL is likely laughably easy.

What Terry Albury exposed was the FBI's abuse of internal rules to target certain demographics and surveil journalists. This was classic whistleblowing but it's being treated as classic espionage, despite the absence of malicious motive or the direct delivery of documents to an enemy foreign power. But that's the way this law rolls. And as long as it can be used to punish whistleblowers, it will never be changed.

I haven't had a chance to write much about the latest attempt to update copyright law in the US, under the title of the "Music Modernization Act," but in part that was because Congress did something amazing: it came up with a decent solution to modernizing some outdated aspects of copyright law, that almost everyone agreed were pretty decent ideas for improvement. The crux of the bill was making music licensing easier and much clearer, which is very much needed, giving what a complete shit show music licensing is today.

There was a chance to have this actually create a nice solution that would help artists, help online music services and generally make more works available to the public. It was a good thing. But... leave it to the RIAA to fuck up a good thing. You see, with there being pretty much universal support for the Music Modernization Act, the RIAA stepped in and pushed for it to be combined with a different copyright reform, known as the "CLASSICS Act."

What is the CLASSICS Act? Well, it's actually based on a good idea -- fixing the mess that is pre-1972 sound recordings. We've written about this for years, and without getting too deep into the weeds, the basic thing is that prior to February of 1972, sound recordings were not covered by federal copyright. Compositions were still protected, but not the actual recording. To deal with that, various states set up their own state-based copyright laws for those works -- sometimes in statute, sometimes through common law. But, as part of the "transition" of bringing sound recordings into federal copyright, Congress also (ridiculously) said that sound recordings prior to 1972 would remain under whatever ridiculous state copyright laws existed until 2047. And thanks to Sonny Bono, that got pushed back to 2067. As Public Knowledge points out, that's created a ridiculous situation, keeping important works out of the public domain for nearly two centuries:

State copyrights are, for all intents and purposes, indefinite. Back in 1972 -- when Congress first federalized (new) sound recordings -- Congress sought to “fix” this problem by declaring that all state copyrights in pre-’72 sound recordings would expire on February 15, 2047. They picked 2047 so that recordings made immediately prior to the new law’s passage (i.e. the last sound recordings protected only by state copyright) would be kept out of the public domain for a full 75 years, the same as their newer, federally-protected counterparts.

However, because that 2047 date applied indiscriminately to all sound recordings made before 1972, recordings ended up with mind-boggling terms of potential state protection. Thomas Edison’s original sound recordings, made in 1877, wouldn’t be guaranteed to enter the public domain until 170 years after it was first created. Congress doubled down on this decision in 1998, pushing the date back another 20 years, to 2067. That Edison recording now is kept out of the public domain for 190 years -- enough to provide theoretical royalties to eight generations of the original artist’s descendants. As a result, with a few exceptions (mostly when artists have affirmatively committed their works to the public domain) there are no sound recordings in the public domain in the United States, period.

As we've noted for years, the proper way to fix this is just to put pre-1972 sound recordings under federal copyright law, and give them the same public domain date they would have received if they had been covered by federal copyright law all along. This is not, by any means, a perfect solution. It has some additional drawbacks, but at a high level, it puts all sound recordings on a level playing field and makes sure that there isn't confusion over different treatments for a song recorded in March 1972 from one recorded in March of 1971.

But that's not what the CLASSICS Act does. While it claims to put those works on the same footing as federal copyright law, it only does that part way. It sets it up so that streaming services providers will now have to pay performance royalties on the pre-1972 works (after a bunch of court rulings -- but not all -- have suggested they don't need to pay such fees). Again, that's fine if it puts all the works on the same level playing field. But the CLASSICS Act doesn't quite do that. It just adds the "pay the RIAA" part, and leaves out the "oh yeah and let these works go into the public domain on the same schedule as all other works" part. In other words, under the CLASSICS Act, these royalties will have to be paid way beyond when those works should go into the public domain.

Public Knowledge further points out that the CLASSICS Act also ignores termination rights, which would benefit artists (but hurt the labels) and could also cause serious harm to archives and libraries:

Most of the protections that libraries, archives, and other nonprofits rely upon apply specifically to reproduction and distribution of works, but not to their public performance. CLASSICS/MMA 2 creates a federal right that covers performance, but not reproduction or distribution -- those parts of the copyright regime that serve as the lifeblood of these institutions.

EFF highlights some more issues with the CLASSICS Act, including how it would basically lock in existing providers like Pandora, Spotify and Sirius XM, but cause problems for any upstart:

Creating new barriers to the use of old creative works is not what copyright is for. Copyright is a bargain: authors and artists get limited, exclusive rights over their works as an incentive to create. In return, the public is enriched by new art and authorship and can use works in ways and times that fall outside the rightsholder’s zone of exclusivity. Creating new rights in recordings that have been around for 46 years or more doesn’t create any new incentives. It simply creates a new subsidy for rightsholders, most of whom are not the recording artists. The CLASSICS Act gives nothing back to the public. It doesn’t increase access to pre-1972 recordings, which are already played regularly on Internet radio stations. And it doesn’t let the public use these recordings without permission any sooner: state copyrights will continue until 2067, when federal law takes over fully.

The CLASSICS Act will put today’s digital music giants like Pandora and Sirius XM in a privileged position. Many of them already pay royalties for some pre-72 recordings as part of private agreements with record labels, on terms that simply won’t be available to smaller Web streamers like college and independent radio stations.

Unfortunately, this combined Frankenstein of the bill with both the good stuff and the bad sailed through the Judiciary Committee this week.

You will, undoubtedly, see stories celebrating this bill moving forward. And many of them will make accurate statements about how parts of this bill are really good. But parts of it are really bad and damaging to the public domain. The proper response would be to fix the CLASSICS Act such that it actually modernizes pre-1972 works by putting them under federal copyright law, rather than this half-assed way that only adds in the licensing requirements, without the rest of what copyright law is supposed to bring us.

Kevin Poulsen of The Daily Beast has obtained a warrant application showing even the most ardent of surveillance state defenders aren't immune from the all-seeing eyes they feel are ever so essential to keeping this nation safe. It appears none other than former NSA and CIA boss Michael Hayden was subjected to the government's magnifying glass for allegedly leaking sensitive information to reporters.

The FBI sought a search warrant for the email account of former CIA and NSA chief Gen. Michael Hayden in 2012, according to a newly unsealed court filing. The warrant application was part of a broader Obama-era investigation into a leak of classified information to the press. Another official later pleaded guilty in connection to the disclosure.

The targeting of Hayden’s AOL email account drives home just how aggressively the Obama administration pursued leaks, in this case following a relatively thin lead all the way to the private email account of a retired four-star general. Hayden served as director of the National Security Agency from 1999 to 2005, and later led the CIA until his retirement in 2009.

And it is a very thin lead. All that's included in the warrant affidavit [PDF] is the fact that Hayden engaged in email conversations with two unnamed reporters a total of 30 times in 18 months. Given his position, it's surprising it didn't happen more often. Officials are always contacted by reporters when writing about subjects/programs/etc. they oversee. In the affidavit, the special agent notes many of these contacts were to "confirm quotes" to be used in published articles and books.

The inquiry here apparently centered on news of the Stuxnet virus and the US's involvement in the cyberattack. The only quote about Stuxnet attributed to Hayden was fairly innocuous, stating only that this was the first time a cyberattack had been used to "effect physical destruction."

As Poulsen points out, this investigation lead to a dead end, at least as far as its pursuit of Hayden as a leaker.

The FBI found no evidence that Hayden did anything wrong. But using similar tactics, the FBI eventually tracked the story to retired Marine Gen. James Cartwright. In 2016 Cartwright acknowledged he was a source for the article and pleaded guilty to a single count of lying to the FBI. Cartwright’s prosecution was widely criticized by freedom-of-the-press groups and government insiders, and Obama pardoned Cartwright shortly before leaving office.

What this dead-ended investigation does show is how aggressively our government pursues leakers and whistleblowers. NSLs, warrants, and anything else the government might find useful are being deployed to sniff out journalists' sources. The government may hesitate to place a journalist under direct surveillance, but it has no problem achieving the same ends by deploying these backdoor searches. Working its way backwards from government employees, the government can sweep up communications that would raise serious First Amendment issues if approached head-on. And it obviously has no qualms about grabbing the personal communications of team players who've fully bought into the system.

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The French government has been pushing for a stupid "backdoors" policy in encryption for quite some time. A couple years ago, following various terrorist attacks, there was talk of requiring backdoors to encrypted communications, and there was even a bill proposed that would jail execs who refused to decrypt data. Current President Emmanuel Macron has come out in favor of backdoors as well, even as he's a heavy user of Telegram (which isn't considered particularly secure encryption in the first place).

But now, the French government is apparently moving forward with its own, homegrown, encrypted messaging system, out of a fear that other -- non-French -- encrypted messaging apps will be forced into providing backdoors to their own systems:

The French government is building its own encrypted messenger service to ease fears that foreign entities could spy on private conversations between top officials, the digital ministry said on Monday.

None of the world’s major encrypted messaging apps, including Facebook’s WhatsApp and Telegram - a favorite of President Emmanuel Macron - are based in France, raising the risk of data breaches at servers outside the country.

There are a number of silly things here. First off, the fact that they're doing this should make it clear why it's been so stupid to have the government itself calling for backdoors. Clearly, the French government understands the risks involved, or it wouldn't be doing this in the first place. The message it seems to be sending is that keeping messages and communications secure is important... but only for government officials. For the peasants? Let them eat insecure messages, I guess.

Second, there should be questions about how well this will be implemented. The report does note that they're using "free-to-use code found on the Internet," which (hopefully?) means they're basing it on Open Whisper Systems' encrypted messaging code, which is freely available and is generally considered the gold standard (Update: actually it's based on Riot/Matrix and apparently the plan is to open source it -- which is good). However, doing encrypted messaging well is... difficult. It's the kind of thing that lots of people -- even experts -- get wrong. Rolling your own can often get messy, and you have to bet that a government rolling its own encryption for government officials to use is going to be a clear target for nation-state level hackers to try to break in. That's not to say it can't be done, but there are a lot of tradeoffs here, and I'm not sure that the best encryption is going to come from a government employee.

Also, the report suggests that this technology "could be eventually made available to all citizens," which would certainly be interesting, but would seem to contradict with all of those reports and statements about demanding backdoored encryption. Given how often the French government (and the President) have asked for backdoors, would any French citizen ever feel particularly secure using an "encrypted" messaging system offered up by that same French government?

ISPs like Comcast (and the politicians, think tankers and PR/policy consultants paid to love them) have been successful framing net neutrality as a partisan issue to sow dissent and stall policy progress and consensus. But the reality is that net neutrality and net neutrality protections continue to have overwhelming, bipartisan support. Survey after survey have shown that the overwhelming majority of Americans support net neutrality, and for most people preventing natural monopolies from being bullies (at least until somebody has the courage to embrace policies that encourage broadband competition) is a no brainer.

This week another survey highlighted how opposition to Ajit Pai and the Trump FCC's net neutrality repeal is overwhelming. According to a new study out of the University of Maryland (pdf), 86% of the country opposes the FCC's decision to roll back net neutrality protections at ISP lobbyist behest. And again that opposition is bipartisan, with 82% of Republicans and 90% of Democrats opposing the FCC's obnoxiously-named "restoring internet freedom" repeal. While the sample size of 997 registered voters is arguably a little small, there's really nothing subtle about the findings:

It's worth noting that since the last survey, Republican opposition to the repeal has actually grown from 75% to 82% as more people realize the ISP-manufactured reasons for the repeal are based largely on fluff and nonsense. There's absolutely nothing "partisan" about trying to keep the internet relatively open, healthy and neutral. There's nothing partisan about protecting consumers from natural monopolies who've literally bought and written state laws keeping their broken, anti-competitive status quo intact.

While the survey found the traditional ISP arguments about net neutrality being "heavy handed" or "stifling innovation" work a little better on GOP voters, the public overall isn't really buying them:

Of course majority public opinion doesn't automatically make something right, but in this case we've noted time and time again that the logic and data supporting this repeal are little more than hot garbage pushed by companies terrified of open competition and truly level playing fields. It's difficult to tap dance around the fact that the attempted repeal of net neutrality is arguably the worst government tech policy decision in the history of the internet, making the SOPA backlash look like a toddler's hiccup in comparison.

And while ISP lobbyists believe they've "won" the battle by convincing Ajit Pai to ignore the will of the public, they'd be pretty foolish to think this giant policy middle finger aimed squarely at already angry consumers isn't going to result in mammoth and unforeseen political and policy blowback over the next decade. That's assuming the FCC repeal survives its looming court challenge, something that's no sure thing given all of the bizarre and unethical behavior Pai's agency engaged in as it tried to float this monumental turd of a policy proposal.

The masterplan for censorship: follow up a highly-questionable election with a "cybersecurity" law granting the government power to shut down critics and dissenting views. That's what's happening in Honduras, following the reinstallation of Juan Orlando Hernandez as president following an election "filled with irregularities."

The new law mandates the policing of "hate speech," as defined by a government that would love to see its critics deprived of an online platform. Whatever the government declares to be hateful must be taken down within 24 hours. Failure triggers fines and third-party platforms will be held responsible for content created by users.

While the new law does not directly target the social media platforms, activists say: "In its current state, it requires any service or website that includes user-generated content to process complaints and remove “hate speech” or discriminatory content within 24 hours."

"Should online intermediaries fail to do so, their services could be fined or blocked. The latest draft of the bill also creates a national cybersecurity committee to receive reports and relay them to websites and companies, and to develop policy strategies on issues ranging from cybercrime to hate speech and fake news," Javier Pallero, Digital Rights activist focusing on the Latin American region explained, according to Access Now.

The threat of $50,000 fines and an impossible timeframe will likely result in proactive policing of content, resulting in removal of posts not covered by the law. Whatever social media companies don't remove ahead of requests will be removed shortly after receiving demands from the Honduran government. Between the two, it's unlikely much dissenting speech will survive. This will be especially effective against local providers and small companies without the legal manpower to fend off Honduran censorship attempts.

The so-called "cybersecurity" law won't make anyone but the government more secure. Anti-government activists have been routinely targeted by the Honduran government, some of which have been jailed indefinitely in violation of Honduran due process laws. Others have experienced more direct physical attacks and/or undergone torture in an attempt to deter them from future criticism. This law does nothing more than attempt to turn social media companies into compliant partners of Honduran government abuse.

The few dissenting voices in Honduras have been amplified by social media platforms. This is what the law aims to take away. In addition to vague guidelines on hate speech, the government is also seeking to punish those who support opposition forces or express sympathy for victims of incarceration, torture, or government-ordained murder.

The law which would severely hamper the media's work includes Article 335-B, under which journalists can be sentenced to eight years in prison for "defending, justifying, or glorifying" terrorism.

The proposed law has been heavily criticized by international human rights organizations, like the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) which has warned the bill could be used to "sanction the work of human rights defenders."

Murder isn't an exaggeration. Since Hernandez's reelection, 35 protesters have been killed by government forces and more than 1,000 have been detained. In addition, nighttime raids of alleged anti-government protesters by police forces have become routine, despite the country's laws limiting warrant service to daylight hours.

Any law regulating speech should be examined closely to determine the motivating factor. In some cases, it's more benign -- a misguided attempt to solve a problem that can't be solved through censorship. In other cases, the legislative wording may be benign, but the malicious intent all too apparent. That's the case here and in several other countries, where terms like "cybersecurity," "terrorism," and "hate speech" have been thrown around as a smokescreen for targeted oppression of government critics.

There are a lot of arguments to be made against subsidizing movie/TV studios. The best argument is this: the payouts to visiting studios rarely pay off for local taxpayers. Politicians love the side benefits -- rubbing elbows with producers, actors, and other studio personnel -- but there's nothing to be gained financially by paying a studio to film in your town. In one case, a city was promised 3,600 additional jobs. In reality, only 200 jobs materialized, all but 14 of those temporary construction work.

Then there's the argument against using public funding to prop up an out-of-town industry. If there are extra tax dollars around, they're better spent locally, where they'll do the most good. Subsidizing businesses is always problematic. It skews incentives and allows governments to play favorites using the public's money.

But the worst argument someone can make against subsidies is this one: subsidies should be content-based. Two members of the clergy and a state politician are bent out of shape because a subsidized TV series shoot resulted in the depiction of a historical figure in compromising positions.

The AMC series "Preacher" has portrayed Christ in a graphic sex scene that combines blasphemy with pornography.

The August 21 episode titled, "Dirty Little Secret," showed an actor playing the role of Jesus having sex with a married woman in an extended, graphic scene with explicit vocals. The director used shadows and silhouettes to soften the two figures as they engaged in various sexual positions, but these cinematic techniques did not disguise the pornography.

We have laws governing porn which are mostly hands-off, provided producers follow several regulations. We certainly don't have blasphemy laws, thanks to a separation of church and state. But never mind the legal details. This small collective of pearl-clutchers wants legislators to pull funding solely because the imagery in this episode may have offended some members of one religion.

We respectfully request that the Administration, and the Office of Louisiana Economic Development, reject all efforts by AMC to obtain tax credits for the series "Preacher" and the episode which blasphemed Christ. We call upon the Administration and the Louisiana Office of Economic Development to flatly reject this request for a $16.2 million tax refund check.

The op-ed notes the state of Louisiana has a law prohibiting the use of public money to fund pornography. That's all well and good, but just because the writers call the images that offended them porn doesn't make them porn. To buttress this argument with talk of blasphemy only adds to the problem, ensuring that any state legislators attempting to follow through on this dubious suggestion will engage in multiple constitutional violations.

That's not all. The authors of the op-ed -- which include state senator John Milkovich -- claim their views are universal, something that's more factually-incorrect than everything leading up to it.

Thus, the larger truth is that there is never a good time to reward production companies that trash our Louisiana values, mock our beliefs– and dishonor Christ.

The state should definitely reject the request for a $16.2 million subsidy by AMC. If AMC is so keen on shooting scenes in Louisiana (or any other state), it should pay its own way. But it shouldn't do it for any of the reasons suggested here. It should end the subsidy program completely, rather than risk looking like it's making content-based decisions about what type of speech it's willing to fund.

For a few months now we've been noting how a "broadband deployment advisory panel" (BDAC) the FCC created to "solve the digital divide" has been plagued by scandal, resignation, and accusations of corruption. The panel was created last year to purportedly advise the Trump FCC on the best approach(es) to improving broadband cost and availability. But it didn't take long for reports to emerge that the panel was little more than a who's who of entrenched telecom industry interests, and since its creation its been plagued by a steady stream of disgruntled departures.

This week, Pai's panel made headlines again after reports emerged indicating that the woman Pai picked to chair the panel has been arrested for defrauding investors as part of a fiber network deployment con:

"Elizabeth Ann Pierce, who served as CEO of Quintillion Networks LLC , allegedly convinced two investment companies that the firm had secured contracts for a high-speed fiber-optic system that would generate hundreds of millions of dollars in future revenue, the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office and FBI said Thursday. The system was pitched as one that would provide service in Alaska and connect it to the lower 48 states, authorities said.

“As it turned out, those sales agreements were worthless because the customers had not signed them,” U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman said in prepared remarks. “Instead, as alleged, Pierce had forged counterparty signatures on contract after contract. As a result of Pierce’s deception, the investment companies were left with a system that is worth far less than Pierce had led them to believe."

Ajit Pai had proclaimed that he had an "excellent and deep pool of applicants to serve on the BDAC," when he announced (pdf) Pierce's appointment last year. Apparently that well wasn't quite deep enough. The disgraced executive was appointed by Pai in April, resigned her Quintillion CEO spot in August, and had resigned from the BDAC by September.

But Pierce's arrest is only the latest chapter on the problems with Pai's advisory council. Earlier this year, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo penned a letter saying he'd be resigning from the panel, claiming in his resignation letter (pdf) that not only does the panel exist almost exclusively to help prop up the interests of incumbent ISPs, but it hadn't actually accomplished a single item of note in terms of helping improve broadband competition or availability:

"It has become abundantly clear that despite the good intentions of several participants, the industry-heavy makeup of BDAC will simply relegate the body to being a vehicle for advancing the interests of the telecommunications industry over those of the public...after nine months of deliberation, negotiation, and discussion, we’ve made no progress toward a single proposal that will actually further the goal of equitable broadband deployment."

Liccardo's complaints were mirrored by a similar, late March resignation letter by New York City CTO Miguel Gamiño Jr. And they were also mirrored by complaints from community broadband groups like the Coalition for Local Internet Choice (CLIC), who say the panel is actively undermining community-driven attempts to improve the nation's broadband connectivity:

"The audacity and impropriety of the process is clear from the fact that this entity, comprised primarily of corporate and carrier interests, is empowered by the Commission to develop model codes that could potentially impact every locality and state in the United States without any serious input from the communities it will most affect."

In more rural areas with a tepid ROI community broadband and public/private partnerships are often the best creative solutions to the broadband monopoly logjam. But because giant ISPs fear competition and folks like Ajit Pai are blindly, ideologically opposed to even working closely with local governments, the FCC is now actively undermining such efforts. Pai has routinely supported ISP-crafted protectionist state laws in 21 states that hamstring communities looking to build their own networks, even in areas ISPs refuse to.

In other words, much like his boss, Ajit Pai says one thing then immediately does another; he breathlessly professes to be "fixing" problems he's actually making worse, and is leaving a trail of dysfunction and grumbling in his wake.