Back in December, it was revealed that the NSA had given RSA $10 million to push weakened crypto. Specifically, RSA took $10 million to make Dual Elliptic Curve Deterministic Random Bit Generator, better known as Dual_EC_DRBG, as the default random number generator in its BSAFE offering. The random number generator is a key part of crypto, because true randomness is nearly impossible, so you need to be as random as possible. If it's not truly random, you've basically made incredibly weak crypto that is easy to break. And that's clearly what happened here. There were other stories, released earlier, about how the NSA spent hundreds of millions of dollars to effectively take over security standards surreptitiously, including at least one standard from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). People quickly realized they were talking about Dual_EC_DRBG, meaning that the algorithm was suspect from at least September of last year (though there were indications many suspected it much earlier).

In response to all this, NIST quickly issued an announcement recommending against using Dual_EC_DRBG, but it didn't finally remove it from its random number generator recommendations until this week -- following through on an open comment process on changing its recommendations.

Following a public comment period and review, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has removed a cryptographic algorithm from its draft guidance on random number generators. Before implementing the change, NIST is requesting final public comments on the revised document, Recommendation for Random Number Generation Using Deterministic Random Bit Generators (NIST Special Publication 800-90A, Rev. 1).

The revised document retains three of the four previously available options for generating pseudorandom bits needed to create secure cryptographic keys for encrypting data. It omits an algorithm known as Dual_EC_DRBG, or Dual Elliptic Curve Deterministic Random Bit Generator. NIST recommends that current users of Dual_EC_DRBG transition to one of the three remaining approved algorithms as quickly as possible.

In September 2013, news reports prompted public concern about the trustworthiness of Dual_EC_DRBG. As a result, NIST immediately recommended against the use of the algorithm and reissued SP 800-90A for public comment.

Some commenters expressed concerns that the algorithm contains a weakness that would allow attackers to figure out the secret cryptographic keys and defeat the protections provided by those keys. Based on its own evaluation, and in response to the lack of public confidence in the algorithm, NIST removed Dual_EC_DRBG from the Rev. 1 document.

In the announcement, NIST also points out that it's reviewing its cryptographic standards development process, to try to prevent this sort of thing from happening again.

Robots that mimic biological organisms can take advantage of centuries (or more) of evolution to perform various tasks. Robot locomotion that cheats off nimble animals could be more adaptable in natural environments -- and animal-inspired bots could teach robot designers about how to make robots that are more flexible in uncontrolled conditions (outside of factories). Here are just a few more examples of biomimicry.

• Snake-like robots have been taught to grab onto things like poles and trees. While some are concerned that these snake bots could also learn how to strangle people, these machines actually look like really smart grappling hooks. [url]
• A soft robotic fish swims like the real animal -- with the ability to rapidly reverse direction in a fraction of a second, just how real fish try to escape predators. This robofish can't swim for very long compared to real fish, but a more advanced robofish might be able to infiltrate a school a fish and help observe natural fish behaviors. [url]
• A robot razor clam can burrow deep into packed sand and serve as an anchor. RoboClam could help bury undersea cables and other underwater tasks, and it borrows some moves from real clams to do its job. [url]

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

Late last fall, we highlighted some very questionable practices by Intellectual Ventures in suing a bunch of big banks for patent infringement. Our focus was on a particular patent, 6,182,894, which was initially assigned to American Express, and which claimed to cover the concept of CID or CVV codes (those little extra three numbers on the back of your credit card you're supposed to type in as an added security measure). American Express, perhaps realizing how ridiculous it would be to sue over such a patent "donated" it to a non-profit, the Consumer and Merchant Awareness Foundation ("CMAF"), who explicitly promised that it would only be used to encourage better credit card security, and that it would never use the patent "against issuers, acquirers, merchants or consumers related to activity in the retail financial services and payment areas." Of course, it took all of about two years before CMAF effectively sold the patent to Intellectual Ventures, and then disappeared as an entity. IV, apparently, felt that it was not bound by the original promises, and started suing basically everyone. Soon after our story appeared exposing this questionable activity, Intellectual Ventures suddenly decided to drop that particular patent from its lawsuit. Shocking.

However, it continued with a few other patents... but that all ended last week when a judge rejected the remaining patents as completely bogus:

... the Court concludes as a matter of law, based on a clear and convincing evidence, that neither the '137 nor the '382 patent contains patentable subject matter under Section 101.... Nothing in the Court's Claim Construction establishes patentability, since however the claim terms may be construed each patent consists of nothing more [than] the entry of data into a computer database, the breakdown and organization of that entered data according to some criteria, disclosed in the '137 patent, but not the '382 patent, and the transmission of information derived from that entered data to a computer user, all through the use of conventional computer components, such as a database and processors, operating in a conventional manner. There is no inventive technology or other inventive concept that authorizes the protections of a patent, such as an improvement in the workings of the computer or the transmissibility of data or some other transformation of data into something qualitatively beyond the informational content of the data entered, even though the data might be organized and manipulated to disclose useful correlations. Rather, these patents are "drawn to a mental process -- i.e., an abstract idea."...

The two patents in question, 8,083,137 and 7,603,382, describe some rather basic and obvious ideas that a couple of patent lawyers twisted around to make it appear like they were patentable. The '382 patent claims to patent offering up a custom webpage to a user based on their personal preferences. The '137 patent is about "administering financial accounts." In both cases, Joe Mullin in the link above notes that they appear to have really originated with patent lawyers. The '137 patent did come from an engineer, but it wasn't because of anything she invented. She was doing some retirement planning, and her patent lawyer husband thought that her ideas for tracking budgets could be patented. The '382 patent just came straight from a patent lawyer.

And, of course, what the judge was noting above, is that neither should have been granted as patents in the first place, because both just involved basic data processing that any software could do. Neither did anything even remotely inventive. And, of course, the fact that both originated with patent lawyers highlights just how bogus IV's constant refrain is about how it's protecting individual inventors. It's never been about individual inventors at all.

It's been about the lawsuits and the money.

Which is why it should be no surprise to read about IV's response to this complete loss:

[Our] patent portfolio is deep and we have another action pending against Capital One in Maryland. We remain committed to defending our intellectual property rights, as well as those of our customers and investors.

In other words, okay, if we didn't get you with the first batch of bogus patents, we have tens of thousands of other bogus patents, and sooner or later, some judge will either let us win, or these banks will fork over lots of cash to make us go away.

A recent article in the NY Times talked about how the US State Department is behind a project to build up mesh networks that can be used in countries with authoritarian governments, helping citizens of those places access an internet that is often greatly limited. This isn't actually new. In fact, three years ago we wrote about another NY Times article about the State Department funding these kinds of projects. Nor is the specific project in the latest NYT article new. A few months back, we had covered an important milestone with Commotion, the mesh networking project coming out of New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute (OTI).

But the latest NYT article is especially odd, not because it repeats old news, but because it tries to build a narrative that Commotion and other such projects funded by the State Department are somehow awkward because they could be used to fight back against government surveillance, such as those of the NSA. The problem is that the issues are unrelated, and nothing in mesh networking deals with stopping surveillance. As Ed Felten notes, the Times reporters appear to be confusing things greatly:

There’s only one problem: mesh networks don’t do much to protect you from surveillance. They’re useful, but not for that purpose.

A mesh network is constructed from a bunch of nodes that connect to each other opportunistically and figure out how to forward packets of data among themselves. This is in constrast to the hub-and-spoke model common on most networks.

The big advantage of mesh networks is availability: set up nodes wherever you can, and they’ll find other nearby nodes and self-organize to route data. It’s not always the most efficient way to move data, but it is resilient and can provide working connectivity in difficult places and conditions. This alone makes mesh networks worth pursing.

But what mesh networks don’t do is protect your privacy. As soon as an adversary connects to your network, or your network links up to the Internet, you’re dealing with the same security and privacy problems you would have had with an ordinary connection.

The whole point of Commotion and other mesh networks is availability, not privacy. The target use is for places where governments are seeking to shut down internet access, not surveil on them. Yes, there is a case where if you could set up a mesh network that then routed around government surveillance points you could circumvent some level of surveillance, but the networks themselves are not designed to be surveillance proof. In fact, back in January when we wrote about Commotion, we pointed out directly that the folks behind the project themselves are pretty explicit that Commotion is not about hiding your identity or preventing monitoring of internet traffic.

Could a mesh network also be combined with stronger privacy and security protections? Yes, but that's different than just assuming that mesh networking takes on that problem by itself. It doesn't -- and it's misleading for the NYT to suggest otherwise.

The oral arguments in the Aereo case happened this morning before the Supreme Court and you can read the transcript here (it's still a travesty that there is no live broadcasting (or any video recording at all) of the proceedings, but that's a different argument for a different day). As with any such case, this discussion needs to be prefaced with the fact that reading the tea leaves from what Justices say during oral arguments is a unlikely to yield much that is useful. You'll often see large segments of the arguments discuss issues that later don't appear at all in the final ruling. In some cases, Justices are just testing out certain theories or pushing the lawyers to see how they respond. Oral arguments do matter, but not nearly as much as the underlying briefs. We still have a few months (probably) to find out how the Court will rule, but we can at least comment on some of today's discussion.

The important thing to get from the discussion was that the Justices, for the most part, seem to actually recognize that with copyright law the way it is today, finding -- as the broadcasters would like -- that Aereo is engaged in a public performance -- may have long term consequences for all sorts of other industries. It starts off early on, with Justice Sotomayor jumping in with a very different question, concerning whether or not Aereo is a cable company, which would include a different set of issues (in fact, this was exactly the strategy that Aereo competitor/predecessor ivi sought to take -- and ran into trouble). She points out that there may be value in avoiding the whole public performance question all together, since it could get messy:

If we take public performance, maybe we run into what Professor Nimmer saw as a problem. Why isn't what used to be called a phonograph record store that sells phonograph records to 10,000 customers a public performance? It seems to fall within that definition. But if it is, there's no -- no first sale doctrine and it's a big problem. So we could avoid that problem.

Meanwhile, Justice Breyer is clearly concerned about the possible impact on the cloud, again in discussing the possibility that the Court could avoid the issue by calling Aereo a cable company:

And what you've read in their briefs is they, in their supporting amici, have thrown up a series of serious problems not involving them, like the cloud, which the government tells us to ignore, and many others, which make me nervous about taking your preferred group.

Which bounces back to Sotomayor, who notes that the public performance definition the broadcasters want "sweeps up" an awful lot of other businesses where it doesn't make sense:

I mean, Justice Breyer has already asked you -- said he's troubled about the phonograph store, and -- and the Dropbox and the iCloud. I'm also worried about how to define or -- public performance or the performance of a work publicly, which I guess is the better way to do it, according to you. How do I define that so that someone who sells coaxial cable to a resident of a building is not swept up as a participant in this? Or someone who -- the sort of passive storage advisors that -- this is really hard for me.

Justice Kagan, also, quickly gets to the heart of the matter -- the point that we've been raising since the beginning with Aereo -- that this is all about the length of the cable. If someone were to do this at home -- with the same exact electronic setup, it's clearly legal. But the broadcasters want to make Aereo illegal, because the length of the cable between the "DVR" component and the "TV" component is much longer.

Suppose a company just gave the antenna and a hard drive, that's what they sold to the user, and the user was able to use the antenna and the hard drive in her own house or apartment in order to get all these broadcast programs. What would the -- would that be a performance?

When the broadcaster's lawyer pushes back, Kagan points out that it does seem odd that where the hardware sits determines if there's a public performance or not.

But then it really does depend on, like, where the -- where the hardware is. In other words, if -- if Aereo has the hardware in its warehouse as opposed to Aereo selling the hardware to the particular end user, that is going to make all the difference in the world as to whether we have a public performance or not a public performance.

Chief Justice Roberts highlighted the same issue:

Why isn't -- and I don't want to stretch it too -- but why isn't it like a public garage in your own garage? I mean, you know, if you -- you can park your car in your own garage or you can park it in a public garage. You can go to Radio Shack and buy an antenna and a DVR or you can rent those facilities somewhere else from Aereo. They've -- they've got an antenna. They'll let you use it when you need it and they can, you know, record the stuff as well and let you pick it up when you need it

There's then a discussion trying to see if there's a way to distinguish Aereo from the Cablevision decision (in the 2nd Circuit appeals court) saying that Cablevision's remote DVR was legal. The lawyer for the broadcaster says that he thinks the Cablevision decision was decided incorrectly, but the difference is that Cablevision already has a license. This is misleading, because the license in Cablevision was unrelated to the issue of the DVR feature. Furthermore, over-the-air broadcasts (which is what Aereo offers) have an implied license already associated with them (you don't have to pay to watch over-the-air TV for that very reason). So the distinction here is meaningless. Justice Breyer says that, even if that's true, there's still a real risk to cloud computing.

But then the problem is in the words that do that, because we have to write words, are we somehow catching other things that really will change life and shouldn't, such as the cloud? And you said, well, as the government says, don't worry, because that isn't a public performance. And then I read the definition and I don't see how to get out of it.

When asked similar questions, the Deputy Solicitor General, Malcolm Stewart, (again, bizarrely, the US is intervening on behalf of Hollywood for no clear reason), appears to admit that there's no clear line, and that things should be decided on something of a case by case basis:

I think you would have to -- you would have to know both the details of the service and you would have to be making a harder call there about how to draw the line, because I don't pretend that there is a bright line between providing a service and providing access to equipment. If you look, for instance, at the extremes of a person putting a rooftop antenna at his own home, everybody agrees that the rooftop antenna manufacturer is not performing at all and the individual is engaged in a solely private performance.

The other extreme is the cable company, one big antenna, makes transmissions to a lot of people; Congress clearly intended to define that as a private performance. Somewhere in the -- you could come up with lots of hypotheticals that look more or less like one of the other extremes, they are somewhere in the middle. It's an authentically hard call as to where to draw the line. So I don't have a good answer for you.

But that seems rather important, given that this case is asking for that line to be drawn. And the Justices were clearly struggling with that point. Justice Breyer responded:

How do we get out of the example? I mean, how do we get out -- what words do I write to get out of this, throwing into this clause a music store that distributes via Federal Express, a device, or the U.S. Postal Service or even someone over the counter, distributes to 10,000 people a copy of a record which they then will take and play it? They have, to the same degree, transmitted something that will electronically make a performance of the music. So are they when they sell the record violating the display clause?

This isn't to say that the Justices are in agreement with Aereo. They expressed plenty of skepticism about the whole setup, arguing repeatedly that the whole thing seems to have been set up solely to fit within the law, using a technological setup that makes no sense. Aereo, in response, sought to argue that there were technical reasons for its setup, but frankly, that's bogus. The technological setup is insane, but the insanity is not because Aereo is trying to "get around" the law, but the exact opposite. Because it's trying to stay within the law. If the setup of copyright law itself wasn't so insane, there would be much better ways to do what Aereo is doing. But thanks to a bunch of interlocking "rights" buried within copyright law, and caselaw that is basically duct-taped onto the statute every time a new technology comes around, actually innovative requires the Rube Goldbergian-approach that Aereo took just to stay within the law. It's ridiculous that that is seen as a suggestion of illegality...

When the broadcasters lawyer comes back to rebut Aereo's lawyer, he argues that if Aereo loses, it can just get a license or go out of business. But Justice Breyer notes that it's really not that simple:

Once you take them out of the compulsory licensing system, they're going to have to find copyright owners, who owns James Agee's pictures? Who owns something that was written by -- like a French silent film in 1915? I mean, the problem is that they might want to have perfectly good things that people want to watch and they can't find out how to get permission. That is a problem that worries me and it worries me again once you kick them out of the other systems

In the end, I think the Justices were rightly worried about how any ruling might impact the cloud. While there was some skepticism about Aereo's setup, Aereo's lawyer did a good job highlighting why those were wrong. Still -- and again, reading Supreme Court tea leaves is nearly impossible -- if I were going to guess, I'd guess that the Supreme Court will seek some sort of "narrow" ruling that tries to say that Aereo should get a license (possibly just throwing the issue back to the lower courts on the details), while doing everything it can to avoid a ruling that throws the entirety of cloud computing under the bus.

Having followed the saga of Prenda Law over the past few years, one thing has become clear: John Steele really loves the "I know you are, but what am I" form of legal argument, in which whatever he's accused of, he aggressively accuses his accuser of being guilty of the same. It's a sort of faux macho move, in which every attack on him is met with an equally or more aggressive attack. To date, the strategy has failed badly, but it seems that Steele just can't let go of this kind of approach. In the latest round of the Anthony Smith case, Steele appears to be trying on a variant of that aggressive posture, taking on the very serious and direct accusations made against him (including those by multiple federal judges) and mocking them, by asking another court rhetorically, "what, do you really think I'm guilty of all these crazy things?" when the answer to that question may very well be yes.

At issue is the continuing fight over getting Steele and his collaborators, Paul Hansmeier and Paul Duffy, to actually pay up for their abuse of the legal process. Last we checked in on this particular case, the district court was finding them in contempt and piling more onto the money they would need to pay, while the appeals court does not appear to be impressed by Team Prenda's arguments, clearly calling out the "shell games" that Prenda and associated entities were playing.

While aspects of the case have been stayed during the appeal, other aspects are moving forward, including Smith's lawyer continuing to push for discovery on the actual assets of Steele, Hansmeier and Duffy. As you may recall, despite being required to provide such information, they did so in a questionable manner. As Judge David Herndon pointed out:

The Court finds that plaintiff's counsel has not met its burden. They submitted incomplete, and to say the least suspicious, statements of financial condition. Attached to each statement was a letter from their certified public accountant ("CPA"). In these letters, the CPA indicates a departure from generally accepted accounting principles. He further notes that plaintiff's counsel elected to omit substantially all of the disclosures required by generally accepted accounting principles. The Court finds these statements insufficient to establish plaintiff's counsel's inability to pay.

Since then, Smith's lawyer, Jason Sweet of Booth & Sweet, has continued to push for determining the financial position of the three individuals here. There's a sealed document which apparently hints at some shady financial dealings, but it appears to be making Steele very angry. While Paul Duffy filed a pretty empty opposition saying that he has no offshore accounts, Steele went into full on, ultra-aggressive "who me?" defensiveness in response, leading to some incredible statements, considering what multiple courts have already said about them. The classic part has to be this:

For this Court to find any act of Prenda should be attributed to Steele, the Court would have to believe that Steele lied to multiple federal judges without getting caught, committed massive tax fraud without the IRS finding out, and proactively broke into the Illinois Secretary of State’s corporate records database to hide his ownership of Prenda Law, all because of the remote chance that years later a federal judge might sanction Prenda Law for $261,000.

Except... of course, multiple judges have already claimed that Steele and the others have lied, including in this very case. In the original ruling in this case, Judge Patrick Murphy directly called out Steele for lying, saying: "These men have shown a relentless willingness to lie to the Court on paper and in person." He furthermore highlighted how it was quite clear that Steele was directly involved in Prenda, which Steele is now denying yet again. And no one is claiming he hacked into the corporate records database (though, now that he's denied it, it almost makes you wonder...), but that he was clearly in control of Prenda and received much of the money that went into Prenda.

As for the issue of the IRS, well, last we checked, at least one judge, Otis Wright, has referred their conduct to the IRS, and there are at least some indications that an investigation is ongoing. And while no one thinks they set up this shell game specifically to avoid this particular ruling, it's not difficult to see that they did so to try to avoid a series of similar court rulings, after Prenda's initial approach started getting regularly shot down in court.

Steele's response also ratchets up the ridiculous rhetoric in describing the copyright trolling shakedown business, which they copied from a bunch of other firms:

Steele and his partner, Paul Hansmeier (”Hansmeier”) were early pioneers in catching thieves and hackers who engaged in stealing copyrighted works and other computer related misdeeds, including computer hacking and copyright infringement.

Except, of course, they were neither pioneers, nor were they catching "thieves" or "hackers." Rather, by all accounts, they set up a honeypot site, uploaded their own content to it, shared it on file sharing sites, and then used the IP addresses of those who followed the release that they themselves put online, to shake them down with lawsuits and demands for settlement. The evidence on this is fairly overwhelming.

Steele tries to argue away the "oddities" the court noted in the filings made by the CPA they hired this way:

At the hearing, no reference was made to the GAAP, the Generally Accepted Accounting Rules, a set of standards designed for the financial reporting of corporations, not individuals. Steele submitted his financial statement as directed. Steele’s submissions were accurate, and no filing since has disproved any aspect of Steele’s statement

If he thinks that this will get him out of the fact that the CPA "elected to omit substantially all of the disclosures required" I would imagine he's got another thing coming.

Steele, also tries to angrily argue away the infamous Brett Gibbs spreadsheet that revealed the revenue of Prenda Law, and how 70% of it went to both Steele and Hansmeier, who have long denied being associated with that firm. Steele argues that this spreadsheet was made by Gibbs, as opposed to (as Gibbs has noted) made by Prenda and shared with Gibbs via a shared Dropbox account.

It appears that Mr. Gibbs created some accounting sheet of Prenda Law finances for some period of time prior to this case, and thus is irrelevant. Steele has no personal knowledge of Mr. Gibbs’ accounting records, methodology, or how Mr. Gibbs created his documents. According to Mr. Gibbs himself, he doesn’t either, and claims he doesn’t even know how his document came into existence. Such a document hardly comports with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure governing admissible evidence.

He focuses on the fact that the spreadsheet is not admissible. Of course, his partner, Hansmeier, having argued basically the same thing in the past, has also suggested that the facts of the document are accurate, noting (incorrectly) that the document supports Steele/Hansmeier's position and that it was "stolen."

Related to all of this, Steele appears to still be playing games. In a separate filing, Sweet details how Steele took it upon himself to (incorrectly) inform various parties that Sweet had subpoenaed, that the stay on one part of the case meant those subpoenas were withdrawn as well. Except that they're part of a separate process, which is still ongoing. Sweet asked Steele to confirm that Steele had gone back to those third parties, and admitted that he was wrong in interfering with the discovery process. Steele did not do so, but rather sent one of his snarky emails about how he promises that he "will address your most recent round of subpoenas as appropriate."

It's been a while since Steele has done this kind of thing, but it's the same old John Steele, cocky until the very end, even as all of the evidence is against him. It reminds you of a little kid who has been caught doing something wrong but figures if he just keeps denying it over and over again, buying himself time, there will be some way to get out of it all.

For the past five years or so, the USTR's chief intellectual property negotiator has been Stan McCoy. McCoy has long positioned himself as an intellectual property maximalist, repeating talking points from lobbyists regularly, while condescending to anyone who questions the legitimacy of those claims. McCoy famously was the chief negotiator behind the US's disastrous (and mostly failed) attempt to push ACTA through, as well as the lead on the TPP's intellectual property chapter -- a chapter so bad it may help sink the TPP agreement. In fact, previous reports have noted that McCoy's bullying and aggression in trying to push through the TPP were angering others in the negotiations. McCoy also has a long history of mocking public interest advocates, while praising maximalists for similar tactics. From a report a few years ago concerning a hearing that McCoy chaired:

The burden of proof was very obviously on the public interest, civil society groups. Stan McCoy of the USTR, who was presiding over the hearing, joked about the two-phonebook-sized submission by the International Intellectual Property Alliance. (Lol?) Sadly, there is no independent verification of these industry reports and there were no tough questions for industry regarding their testimony. Several times, McCoy interrupted civil society groups’ testimony to chide them on speaking too generally about IP policy, but refrained when industry witnesses did the same.

Given all that, it should be no surprise at all that McCoy, the failed strategist behind ACTA and the TPP's IP provisions... has received his reward and pat on the back from the industry: a shiny new job at the MPAA. As Tim Lee notes in that link, this is just the latest in the never-ending revolving door between maximalist lobbying groups and the USTR:

Last year I wrote that at least a dozen former senior USTR officials have moved to industry groups that favor stronger protections. McCoy's hire makes it a baker's dozen. Previous hires include including Greg Frazier, who (according to his LinkedIn page) spent 8 years as the executive vice president of the Motion Picture Association of America after a stint at USTR. Other former USTR officials took jobs at drug and medical device companies.

McCoy's old job, assistant USTR for intellectual property and innovation, made him the Obama administration's highest-ranking trade negotiator on patent and copyright issues. Jamie Love, director of the public interest organization Knowledge Ecology International, notes that this isn't the first time USTR's top intellectual property official has gone on to take a lobbying job. McCoy's predecessor, Victoria Espinel, is now the head of the software industry group BSA.

Espinel's predecessor at BSA was Robert Holleyman, the man Obama just nominated to a senior post at USTR. While at BSA, Holleyman supported the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act, which would have created an official internet blacklist to aid in anti-piracy efforts. (He backtracked a few weeks later after an uproar in the technology community.

Another of McCoy's predecessors as USTR's top IP official is Joe Papovich, who later spent seven years as a lobbyist for the recording industry.

As Lee notes, the revolving door between maximalist lobbying organizations and the USTR goes round and round, with USTR officials joining the lobbyist organizations and then going back to the USTR. It's a clear case of regulatory capture by the industry. None of those folks go on to public interest or civil society groups, nor does the USTR ever seem interested in hiring those people. It's entirely a one-sided effort to help out the biggest lobbying interests. Work for a few years pushing through policies that favor those companies, and then get "rewarded" with a nice, high-paying job for those very same lobbyists, and no one ever seems to point out the obvious corruption in the entire process.

As Lee notes, as easy as it is to ascribe comic-book levels of ill-intent here, that's unlikely. McCoy and others genuinely believe what they're doing is the right thing. But the end results are clear:

I doubt public servants like McCoy consciously pursue dubious policies in an effort to curry favor with future employers. McCoy's press representative hasn't responded to my interview request, but I assume McCoy sincerely believes the Hollywood-friendly policies he advocated at USTR were in the interests of the nation.

But the revolving door between USTR and industry groups creates a strong but subtle pressure on USTR's culture. Like many government agencies, USTR regularly turns to outside experts to help it sort through complex trade issues. Naturally, they turn to people they trust: their former colleagues — or even former bosses — who now work at trade organizations with plenty of resources to devote to understanding the minutia of trade policy.

And it's even worse than that, frankly. Because, when you combine that revolving door, with the proposals seen in ACTA, TPP and elsewhere, it undermines the public trust in all of this. People see it and naturally assume corruption, even if the intent is pure. In other words, even if we give McCoy and others the benefit of the doubt, the very fact that he spent 5 years pushing entirely for the MPAA's policies, while brushing off any and all claims from the MPAA's critics, and then took a job at the MPAA, confirms in the minds of many people that the USTR has no interest in representing the public good. And that perception (regardless if the underlying intent is real or not) corrodes public trust in the federal government, and the USTR in particular.

Having followed the copyright industry for so long, I'm often shocked at the incredible sense of entitlement of those who argue strictly for greater and greater copyright powers. One thing we've discussed in the past is that the gatekeepers (and it always is the gatekeepers) have an issue of constantly overvaluing the content and undervaluing the service. That is, any time they see a new service come along that the public really likes, they insist that all or nearly all of the value must be attributable to the content and not the service. Thus, they will always argue that "the service" is somehow ripping them off. We've seen it over and over again, from ringtone royalties to Guitar Hero to Pandora and others. Every time the story is the same: these other companies are making some money (even if they already pay us) and therefore we're getting screwed. If anyone else is making any money, then the copyright holders start screaming about how it's completely and totally unfair.

In their minds, the value of the service is meaningless. The fact that they were unable to provide such services directly themselves gets totally ignored. They just insist that 100% of the value is the content, and thus they need to get more money. Nevermind the fact that companies like Pandora already pay nearly all of their revenue to the copyright holders. There's always more blood to be squeezed from that stone, even if it means killing the golden goose (to mix a few parables).

Two recent stories illustrate this extreme entitlement, and total dismissal of the value of anyone else, perfectly. Let's start with the Aereo case, which was heard today at the Supreme Court. It will be some time before the court rules, but check out this quote from Gordon Smith, the president of the National Association of Broadcasters on why he believes Aereo is breaking the law:

“Quite simply, Aereo takes copyrighted material, profits from it and does so without compensating copyright holders,” said Gordon Smith, the president of the National Association of Broadcasters.

Of course, that's misleading in the extreme for a variety of reasons. First of all, there are lots of areas where it's perfectly legal to profit from copyrighted materials without compensating copyright holders. Used book stores and used record stores (back when such things existed) are a perfect example. Fair use is another. The point is: just because someone is making a profit does not mean that the copyright holders have to get paid. That's never been the case. In fact, it's the same fallacy described above. People are flocking to Aereo because it provides a better service than the cable companies. But the broadcasters ignore all of that and insist all of the value must come from the content itself.

That brings us to the second story highlighting this, which involves comments over in the EU concerning the legality of reselling digital media. Not surprisingly, the record labels, represented by the IFPI and BPI, are 100% against this sort of thing for no logical reason, other than that consumers might actually prefer such a system. They specifically highlight that the quality and convenience of digital resales are too good, and that might upset the business model the record labels have chosen. The argument echoes the labels' argument against ReDigi in the US, a service that allows people to resell digital content that has been shut down in the US.

Again, the focus here has nothing to do with what's right or what's best for the public. In fact, the entire argument appears to be "fuck the public, we need more money." It completely ignores multiple studies that have shown that a thriving used goods market increases the value of the original market. It ignores the idea that making things easier and better for consumers is a good thing. Instead, it's all about overvaluing the content and undervaluing everything else.

This all goes back to a point we made years ago: industries that have embraced copyright for the entirety of their business model have set copyright up as a crutch on which they lean. Rather than exercising the rest of their body, finding all sorts of other good business models that allow them to improve the experience for customers, they just keep leaning on that crutch and insist it's entirely necessary for them to live. And thus, those other muscles atrophy and wither away. So now that the world is changing and innovating, and others are demonstrating lots of great ways to better serve the public, the copyright maximalists are insisting it's all impossible. They need that damn crutch, and anything else is "piracy." They only have themselves to blame, of course. For decades, people have been explaining to them and showing them how to build better services, how to offer better experiences for everyone, while still making money. And, all they do is lean more on that old crutch and insist it's the only possible way to walk.

It's a massive sense of entitlement, in which they appear to have no self-awareness that they're actively advocating for a world in which the public is worse off.

As we've been reporting for nearly a year now, the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, really hates Twitter. Indeed, it is arguably becoming something of an obsession for him, to the point where he has now taken the unprecedented step of suing his own country over it, as Hurriyet Daily News reports:

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan made an application to the Constitutional Court on April 18 over the failure to implement court rulings requesting the removal of content violating his rights, according to a senior official from his office. Erdoğan is seeking 50,000 Turkish Liras in compensation, Reuters reported.

The move has been described as a "first of its kind" by the Union of Turkish Bar Associations (TBB) head Metin Feyzioğlu, who said the prime minister of Turkey had never before filed a lawsuit against the state.

"There is no precedent for the Prime Minister of the Turkish Republic to sue the Turkish Republic and demand compensation. This is happening for the first time," said Feyzioğlu.

He also described Erdoğan's application to the Constitutional Court as "unlawful," on the grounds that domestic remedies had not yet been exhausted.

Those domestic remedies include filing a lawsuit against Twitter, which naturally seems to be trying to avoid that: on April 14, its head of global public policy held talks with officials from the prime minister's office, the Communications Ministry and telecom authorities. The company has already made concessions, as this story from Agence France-Press indicates:

Twitter blocked two accounts on Sunday that had been used to spread corruption allegations against Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, his government and his inner circle.

The move came after high-level meetings between the government and executives from the company last week, and after the Turkish government provoked a storm in March by trying to ban the network entirely.

The two accounts blocked on Sunday -- @Haramzadeler333 and @Bascalan -- leaked large amounts of secret documents and recorded phone conversations implicating Erdogan, his family and associates in a wide-ranging corruption scandal.

It seems unlikely that blocking a couple of accounts will satisfy the Turkish prime minister -- it may even embolden him. Expect to see further interesting developments in this long-running struggle pitting a popular but increasingly-autocratic Erdoğan against his political opponents and supporters of freedom of speech.

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

CNN recently published a follow up story dealing with the circumstances surrounding the suicide of Rebecca Sedwick, a 12-year-old who leapt to her death reportedly due to intense bullying -- and it appears the whole "bullying" part is almost entirely absent.

One of the more unexpected outcomes of Sedwick's suicide was the arrest of two students in connection with her death. (Though not wholly without precedent...) According to Sheriff Grady Judd, the two suspects posted messages both before and after Sedwick's death that indicated they were involved in her bullying. The older of the two suspects (one was 14 and the other 12) posted the following on Facebook after Sedwick took her own life.

Yes ik [I know] I bullied Rebecca nd she killed her self but IDGAF [I don't give a (expletive)].

Sheriff Judd took it upon himself to have these two arrested, setting a somewhat dangerous precedent in his county that people could be held criminally responsible for someone else's voluntary action. He seemed to approach this as a crusade against the cruelty of youth, one in which laws and common sense could be overturned in order to right wrongs.

Judd, as it turns out, has had plenty of crusades in his past. One of his more notable efforts involved sending deputies 1,900 miles away to arrest a suspected pedophile. Judd's moral compass, however, skews a bit further north than most, which makes his stance on issues like pornography and bullying somewhat suspect.

In 2007, commenting on a case in which he had arrested a man who was running a porn site out of his home in Polk, [Judd] said: "No normal person could even imagine what's depicted in those videos and in those photographs." A sexual behavior expert from the University of Central Florida said in a motion in the man's court file that it was run-of-the-mill erotica available anywhere on the Internet to anyone.

Judd also seldom performs his work without an audience. One colleague of his memorably stated that the most dangerous place to be is "between Judd and a camera." This calls into question Judd's judgement as well, which seems to be at least as populist-oriented as it is crime-oriented.

Not long after Judd's high-profile arrest of two students, the charges were dropped by the State District Attorney. Judd applied spin to his prized arrests being cut loose, claiming all he wanted to do was, "bring this conduct to the proper authorities." Considering Judd is one of the "proper authorities," one wonders what endgame he envisioned. It certainly couldn't have been his righteous crusade being found legally untenable by the state.

Another crusader, this time a lawyer, decided Sedwick's death called for a new law -- one that targeted parents for not policing their children's online behavior. According to his extrapolations, the parents should be held responsible for an unrelated person's suicide, something even further removed than Judd's assertion that the two students should be held criminally responsible for Sedwick's suicide. (Of course, Judd also thought the parents should be punished somehow, and even hauled in one of the parents for unrelated abuse/neglect charges.)

By the time this had all been sorted out, rumors were beginning to surface that Sedwick's home life wasn't quite the placid safehouse her grieving mother had portrayed it as.

More than a year before her death, Sedwick had been battling depression resulting from her deteriorating relationship with her father, according to intake reports from a counselor that are included in the police file. She also complained about fights between her mother and stepfather. The file, which has been reviewed by CNN, says she cut herself on a few occasions, had suicidal ideations and had been committed for psychiatric evaluation for two days.

In November 2012, she accused her mother of abusing her and then took back the accusation, saying she was pushed to lie by classmates who forced her off campus and told her they wouldn't let her return home unless she lied to an officer. Her mother denied abusing Sedwick but said she slapped the girl's face once during an argument about Sedwick being too young to date.

Sometime before her death, Sedwick's relationship with an online boyfriend came to an end, according to the documents. Family conflict, in addition to bullying from girls at school, weighed on her.

What wasn't found in the files, however, was much evidence that Sedwick was unrelentingly bullied.

"I don't think I was prepared for the abysmal lack ... of any evidence of bullying for the seven months prior to her suicide," said Nancy Willard, director of Embrace Civility in the Digital Age, a group that focuses on combating cyberbullying, and author of a handful of books including "Positive Relations @ School (& Elsewhere)."

Willard says this case is like many others: parents and authorities leaping to the wrong conclusions in the aftermath of a tragedy. The haste to pin a suicide on bullying buried the rest of Sedwick's background. This is somewhat understandable, given the circumstances. In the wake of a tragedy, no one wants to point the finger at the parents as possibly being partially responsible for their own child's death.

But if these teens were somehow responsible for Sedwick's suicide, then why wouldn't anyone go after the other factors, all of which were included in the police file? Why didn't someone haul in the ex-boyfriend? Surely he's as "culpable" as anyone.

No one would think to haul in anyone else (parents, ex-boyfriend) who contributed to Sedwick's unhappiness, but it was considered perfectly OK to haul in two teens and attempt to press criminal charges, even when faced with a dearth of evidence. But that's exactly how ridiculous Judd's efforts were.

Now that Judd has apparently seen this lack of evidence for the first time, he's backpedaling quickly.

"We never said that bullying was the only reason Rebecca committed suicide," Judd told The Associated Press. "But what the bullies did is that they continued to stack bricks on an already overloaded wagon till finally, it broke."

But these "bricks" could have been "stacked" in any order. Judd simply made the most popular move, one that brought in the most unsympathetic suspects. And then he rode his hobby horse hard, until it collapsed under the weight of his misguided convictions.

But there are still those who want to make someone pay. The lawyer for Sedwick's mother is planning to sue the school district as well as at least one of the two girls Judd arrested. He claims to have evidence that the teens bullied Sedwick and that the school not only knew, but did nothing to stop it.

There is evidence that indicates Sedwick was bullied in the months leading up to her death, but that evidence is scattershot at best. The lack of evidence doesn't necessarily mean it didn't happen, but it does suggest that, coupled with other information coming to light, it was hardly the only factor in Sedwick's decision to end her life.

The point here isn't to excuse the bullies for their actions. The point is that far too often the instantaneous reaction to tragedies is misguided and myopic, focusing on the least sympathetic protagonists and ignoring anything else that doesn't fit the narrative that's easiest to accept. The larger problem is that law enforcement and legislators are especially prone to act on this limited (or willfully ignored) information, and that results in all sorts of questionable actions and terrible laws -- things that negatively affect the general public.