Don't Regulate The Internet Like Every Company Is The Same

from the bad-regulations dept

This year seems to be the year in which governments all over the globe really, really want to regulate the internet. And they're doing a ridiculously dumb job of it. We've talked a lot about the EU, with the Copyright Directive and now the Terrorist Content Regulation. And then there's Australia with its anti-encryption law and its "abhorrent content" law. India has already passed a few bad laws regarding the internet and is discussing a few more. Then there's the UK, Germany, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Cameroon, etc. etc. etc. You get the idea.

Oh, and certainly, the US is considering some really bad ideas as well.

When you look at what "problem" all of these laws are trying to solve, it can basically be boiled down to "people do bad things on the internet, and we need to regulate the internet because of it." This is problematic to me for a variety of reasons, in part because it seems to be regulating the wrong party. We should, ideally, be going after the people doing the bad things, rather than the tools and services they are using to do the bad things (or to merely promote the bad things they're doing). However, there is an argument -- not one that I wholly buy into -- that one reasonable way to regulate is to focus less on which party is actually doing the bad thing, and more on which party is best positioned to minimize the harm of the bad thing. And it's that theory of regulation (applied stupidly) that is behind much of the regulatory theory on the internet these days.

Well, there's also a second theory behind many of the regulatory approaches, and it's "Google and Facebook are big and bad, so anything that punishes them is good regulation". This makes even less sense to me than the other approach, but it is certainly driving a lot of the thinking, at least in the EU (and possibly the US).

Combine those two driving theories for regulating the internet and you've got a pretty big mess. They seem to be taking a sledge hammer to huge parts of the internet, rather than looking for narrow, targeted approaches. And, on top of that, in focusing so much on Google and Facebook, so many of these laws are written solely with those two platforms in mind, and with no thought to how it impacts every other internet company, many of which operate on a very different basis.

Earlier this year, I wrote up my thoughts on what sort of regulatory approach would really "break up" big tech while preserving an open internet, but it's an approach that would require a very big shift in mindsets (one I'm still hoping will occur).

However, Ben Thompson has taken a much more practical approach to thinking through regulating the internet. He, like me, is skeptical of most of these attempts to regulate the internet, but recognizing that it's absolutely going to happen no matter how skeptical we are, he is proposing a framework for thinking about regulating the internet, in a way that would (hopefully) minimize the worst outcomes from the approaches being used today.

You should read the whole thing to understand the thinking, the background, and the approach, but the key aspects to Thompson's framework are to recognize that there are different kinds of internet companies -- and that's true not just up and down the stack, but across the different kinds of services. So his hope is that if the regulatory approaches were more narrowly targeted to a manner in which they fit better we'd have a lot less collateral damage in trying to shove a square regulatory approach through a round internet service.

Another key to his approach is a more modern update to the common "free as in speech v. free as in beer" concept that everyone in the open source world is familiar with. Ben talks about a third option that has been discussed for decades, which is "free as in puppy" -- meaning something that you get for free, but which then has an ongoing cost in terms of maintaining the free thing you got.

Most in the West agree, at least in theory, with the idea that the Internet should preserve “free as in speech”; China in particular represents a cautionary tale as to how technology can be leveraged in the opposite direction. The question that should be asked, though, is if preserving “free as in speech” should also mean preserving “free as in beer.”

Specifically, Facebook and YouTube offer “free as in speech” in conjunction with “free as in beer”: content can be created and proliferated without any responsibility, including cost. Might it be better if content that society deemed problematic were still “free as in speech”, but also “free as in puppy” — that is, with costs to the supplier that aligned with the costs to society?

With that premise, he suggests a way to better target any potential platform regulation:

In theory, this lets various countries who believe there are certain problems on the internet more narrowly target their regulations without harming other parts of the internet:

This distinct categorization is critical to developing regulation that actually addresses problems without adverse side effects. Australia, for example, has no need to be concerned about shared hosting sites, but rather Facebook and YouTube; similarly, Europe wants to rein in tech giants without — and I will give the E.U. the benefit of the doubt here — burdening small online businesses with massive amounts of red tape. And, from a theoretical perspective, the appropriate place for regulation is where there is market failure; constraining the application to that failure is what is so difficult.

Please don't comment on this without first reading Ben's entire piece, as it gets into a lot more detail. He very readily admits that this doesn't answer all the questions (and, indeed, likely creates a bunch of new ones).

I will admit that I'm not convinced by this model, but I do appreciate that it's given me a lot to think about. At the very least, in targeting just the ad-supported platforms for regulation solves two problems: (1) the mis-aligned incentives of ad-supported platforms to consider the wider societal impact of the platform, and (2) the sledge-hammer approach to regulating all internet platforms, no matter what type and where in the internet stack they reside, by more narrowly focusing it just at the application level and just at a particular type of service. And, frankly, this kind of approach could potentially move us towards that world of "protocols, not platforms" that I envision (a more regulated ad-supported platform world might push companies to explore non-advertising based business models).

I still have lots of concerns, however, for all of the complaints about what Google and Facebook have done with an ad supported model, we should be willing to admit that an ad supported model has created some incredibly powerful services that have really done amazing things for many, many people. Everyone focuses on the negatives -- which exist -- but we shouldn't ignore how much of the good stuff we've gotten because of an internet built on the back of advertising. Can it be improved? Absolutely. But targeting internet advertising as "the problem" still feels too broad to me (and, in fact, I think Ben would likely agree on that point). If there must be a regulatory approach, it should not be targeted just by the nature of the platform, but around the specific and articulated harm that it is trying to solve. At least that way, we can weigh the harms such a law might mitigate, against the good aspects it might hinder, and then be better able to judge whether or not the regulatory approach makes sense.

I'm still skeptical that most plans to regulate the internet will do a very good job of narrowly targeting actual harms (and to do so without throwing away lots of good stuff), but since we're going to be having lots of discussions around these regulations in the coming weeks, months, and years, we might as well start having the discussion of how we should view and analyze these proposed laws. And, on that front, Ben's contribution is a useful way of thinking about these things.

Filed Under: app, competition, free, free as in beer, free as in puppy, free as in speech, infrastructure, internet, lock in, regulations
Companies: facebook, google, youtube

FCC Under Fire For Putting ALEC Rep On 'Consumer' Advisory Board

from the foxes-and-the-hen-house dept

In 2017, FCC head Ajit Pai came under fire for filling a new "Broadband Deployment Advisory Council" (BDAC) task force with oodles of industry representatives, but few if any consumer representatives or local town or city officials. Not too surprisingly the panel saw a significant amount of controversy, several protest resignations, and the arrest of a one-time panel chair for fraud, but the panel itself never actually accomplished much of anything to address the problem it was created for.

Fast forward to last week, and the FCC has once again found itself under fire for appointing a member of the The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to the agency's "consumer advisory" panel:

"A committee that advises the Federal Communications Commission on consumer-related matters now includes a representative of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which lobbies against municipal broadband, net neutrality, and other consumer protection measures. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced his Consumer Advisory Committee's new makeup on Wednesday. One new member is Jonathon Hauenschild, director of ALEC's Task Force on Communications and Technology. He and other Consumer Advisory Committee will serve two-year terms.

The most obvious problem is that ALEC is directly employed by the telecom sector to undermine and eliminate consumer protections.

ALEC played a starring role in helping the broadband industry pass blatantly-protectionist bills in more than 21 states that hamstrung or simply banned towns or cities from building their own networks, even in instances when private industry refuses to. It has also bandied about cease and desist warnings against critics who've pointed this out. Both ALEC and Hauenschild have lobbied against net neutrality protections that continue to have the overwhelming bipartisan support of the public. You'd be hard pressed to find a single actual consumer advocate who'd agree with ALEC's positions on these issues.

While Hauenschild likely holds some personally divergent opinions from his employer, there's very little in his background or time at ALEC that would qualify him as expert on consumer telecom issues. Certainly nothing that would somehow position him above a universe of objective experts or academics who've actually worked to protect consumer welfare. And while Pai appointing a like-minded ally to an FCC panel isn't surprising, involving ALEC also raised a few eyebrows given that even AT&T and Verizon have recently backed away from the organization due to its recent hosting of a bigoted, far-right extremist:

"ALEC has long received financial support from the telecom industry. But Verizon left ALEC in September 2018 after it hosted a speech by right-wing activist David Horowitz, in which Horowitz argued against the legalization of abortion and gay marriage, compared the left wing's support of "redistribution of income" to slavery, and said that "at the K-12 level, school curricula have been turned over to racist organizations like Black Lives Matter, and terrorist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood."

Verizon explained to The Intercept that it "has no tolerance for racist, white supremacist, or sexist comment[s] or ideals." AT&T subsequently ended its membership in ALEC, also citing the Horowitz speech."

While ALEC certainly has expertise in consumer protection, it comes in the form of trying to prevent it from happening. Again, Pai surrounding himself with like-minded allies isn't surprising. But appointing an ALEC rep to a consumer issue advisory panel is kind of like inviting a hungry shark to your swimming safety seminar: there's certainly experience there, just not of a variety you're going to find useful. And certainly not helpful when it comes to fixing the universe of problems consumers face in a telecom sector dominated by wealthy and well-connected natural monopolies.

Filed Under: ajit pai, consumer advisory board, fcc
Companies: alec

Sixth Circuit Court Dumps Lawsuit Seeking To Hold Twitter Responsible For The Pulse Nightclub Shooting

from the another-attack-victim-taken-for-a-ride dept

Another one of 1-800-LAW-FIRM's lawsuits has been tossed for a second time. After being shut down at the district level for attempting to hold social media companies responsible for the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, the law firm asked the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to take another look at its dubious legal theories.

The Appeals Court has taken another look and it doesn't like what it sees any more than the district court did. The violent act committed inside the nightclub was horrible, but the court cannot provide a remedy for every wrong -- especially not in a case where the plaintiffs are trying to hold a third party responsible for violent acts they neither encouraged nor committed.

Social media platforms may make it easier for terrorists to spread their message, but that does not add up to material support for terrorism. That's the legal theory 1-800-LAW-FIRM and Excolo Law have been using to push these lawsuits in order to dodge the obvious Section 230 implications. It has yet to find support in any court. It doesn't find any here either. From the decision [PDF]:

We sympathize with Plaintiffs—they suffered through one of the worst terrorist attacks in American history. “But not everything is redressable in a court.” Kemper v. Deutsche Bank AG, 911 F.3d 383, 386 (7th Cir. 2018). And terrorist attacks present unique difficulties for those injured because the terrorists “directly responsible may be beyond the reach of the court.” Id. This is one such case. But the absence of Mateen and the inability to hold ISIS responsible cannot create liability elsewhere. Plaintiffs’ complaint includes no allegations that Twitter, Facebook, or Google had any direct connection to Mateen or his heinous act. And Plaintiffs do not suggest that Defendants provided “material support” to Mateen. Without these connections, Plaintiffs cannot state a viable claim under the ATA. As a result, we affirm the district court’s dismissal of Plaintiffs’ claims.

The Appeals Court also agrees with the lower court's finding that the nightclub shooting had almost nothing to do with the international terrorism the plaintiffs claim Twitter and others are helping support. The shooter was "self-radicalized" and nothing in the plaintiffs' 51-page complaint is able to conclusively tie a domestic shooting by a US citizen to ISIS or its online recruitment efforts.

The plaintiffs want the court to apply a completely ridiculous "proximate cause" standard that has never been applied before and will never be applied in the future. There's no legal basis for it and it would pretty much allow almost anyone to sue almost anyone else for almost anything.

With the “highly interconnected” nature of social media, the internet, and “modern economic and social life”—we expect Defendants’ websites to cause some “ripples of harm” that would “flow far beyond the defendant’s misconduct.” Fields, 881 F.3d at 749. But without more, Defendants do not proximately cause all these potential ripples. The content did not compel Mateen’s actions.

Indeed, if we accepted Plaintiffs’ argument, Defendants would become liable for seemingly endless acts of modern violence simply because the individual viewed relevant social media content before deciding to commit the violence.

With nothing to hang on Twitter, there's nothing left of this lawsuit. The state law claims follow the federal claims into a dismissal with prejudice. 1-800-LAW-FIRM wants another chance to amend its lawsuit but the Appeals Court says it should have tried that earlier at the district level. This lawsuit is dead, just like so many others filed by this law firm.

Filed Under: 6th circuit, cda 230, intermediary liability, liability, pulse nightclub shooting, section 230, social media
Companies: 1-800-law-firm, excolo law, twitter

Peachtree Officials Come To Their Senses, Vote Down Plan To Finance Lawsuits Against Critics Following Widespread Criticism

from the nice-move-geniuses dept

A quick followup to yesterday's post about officials in Peachtree, Georgia looking to pass a resolution that would allow city officials to spend taxpayer money to sue their own critics for defamation. There were all sorts of problems with this... and it appears the taxpayers weren't happy. At the city council meeting last night, lots of those taxpayers made it clear this was a bad idea:

People lined up to push back against the resolution....

“You get to decide whether you’ve been defamed or not and you want to use our money taxpayer money to sue us, we might impoverish us,” said another Peachtree City resident.

It sounds like nearly everyone who spoke out was against the proposal, leading it to be voted down unanimously, though the mayor, Vanessa Fleisch, had an odd bit of commentary on the whole thing:

“I think it’s the right outcome I work for the citizens, the intent was very pure but it wasn’t written correctly I’ve been told and so the citizens have spoken and we move on,” said Mayor Fleisch.

The intent is never pure when the goal is for public officials to sue critics. And, the problem was not that it wasn't written correctly. The problem was with the whole idea. Hopefully, this doesn't mean there's a plan to "rewrite" this proposal. Just leave it be and maybe get a somewhat thicker skin if you're going to work for the government.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, defamation, free speech, georgia, jon rorie, lawsuits, peachtree city, taxpayer funds, vanessa fleisch

Facebook's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Privacy Week

from the isn't-that-every-week dept

I know that some will argue that "every week" is a bad week for Facebook with regards to privacy, but this week in particular is looking especially awful, with (last I checked!) three "big" stories regarding the company's bad decisions and handling regarding data. Of course, because this is Facebook, I still think the reporting is getting the story a bit wrong. The story that has gotten the most attention is the least concerning, while the ones getting less attention are the real problems.

First up is the NBC News story going through a big pile of leaked internal documents from its ongoing lawsuit with app developer Six4Three. If you don't recall, the company, which made a skeezy app to let you find pictures of other people on Facebook wearing bikinis, got mad and sued Facebook when Facebook (finally) realized that maybe it shouldn't give app developers access to so much data, and cut them all off (effectively killing Six4Three's entire ability to operate). Many people reacted to this week's story as if it was some big reveal that Facebook cut favorable data deals with some partners, and that it toyed around with business models selling access to data, but frankly, I don't see all that much that's different from the cache of documents that was released back in December.

As I said then, most of the stuff that people are freaking out about appears to be taken out of context. Facebook investigating different business models isn't inherently bad. And many people are framing those discussions completely outside of the context of what Facebook was actually doing at the time or how people viewed the data it had access to. A lot of focus is on the fact that Facebook put a dollar value on the data -- but that doesn't actually mean (as many are suggesting) that it ever planned to "sell the data." It did look at charging app developers to access the data, but that's not a particularly crazy idea -- and one that lots of people discussed at the time, and one that plenty of companies with lots of data use.

There are, certainly, reasonable concerns to be raised about Facebook looking to deliberately undermine competitive services via its platform -- and that was the part that most concerned me back in December as possible antitrust violations. But, there doesn't really appear to be that much new on that front. Facebook looks sketchy, but when hasn't it looked sketchy?

And, because some will erroneously call me a Facebook shill, let's look at the other two privacy blunders this week because there's nothing redeeming about either of them. Both are straight up awful. They're the kinds of security mistakes that tiny startups with no real understanding of security make. Not something that a company like Facebook should ever make. If you want to be concerned about Facebook and privacy, focus on these two stories that suggest not so much a cavalier attitude towards privacy as an incompetent implementation of basic security practices.

First up, Business Insider revealed that Facebook was asking users for their email password and then sucking up all your contacts without asking for permission. While you might wonder what idiot would hand Facebook his or her email password for no obvious reason (a valid question) that doesn't absolve Facebook from even asking. After pressing Facebook on this, the company admitted that it sucked up the email contacts of 1.5 million users this way, and that it's now deleting it.

Since May 2016, the social-networking company has collected the contact lists of 1.5 million users new to the social network, Business Insider can reveal. The Silicon Valley company said the contact data was "unintentionally uploaded to Facebook," and it is now deleting them.

The revelation comes after pseudononymous security researcher e-sushi noticed that Facebook was asking some users to enter their email passwords when they signed up for new accounts to verify their identities, a move widely condemned by security experts. Business Insider then discovered that if you entered your email password, a message popped up saying it was "importing" your contacts without asking for permission first.

This is a very bad security practice, and certainly could lead to legal issues for Facebook. Sucking up that kind of data without permission is super bad. Facebook's excuse here is not good either:

A Facebook spokesperson said before May 2016, it offered an option to verify a user's account using their email password and voluntarily upload their contacts at the same time. However, they said, the company changed the feature, and the text informing users that their contacts would be uploaded was deleted — but the underlying functionality was not.

How does someone not catch that? How does someone not catch that asking for your (non-Facebook!) email account is just a bad idea in general? This reflects extremely poorly on Facebook's security review process.

The second story may be even worse. TechCrunch has the story that Facebook is now admitting that the really bad screwup first reported last month, concerning the company "accidentally" storing plaintext passwords of some Instagram users, actually impacted millions of users, rather than just a few thousand as originally reported. This of course, goes back to the general law of security breaches that we've discussed for over a decade: it's always worse than originally reported. It's difficult to think of a big security breach where the number of impacted people wasn't updated upwards at a later date.

As we noted last month, what caused this was legitimately a bug, rather than nefarious intent, but for a company of Facebook's size, and with the security talent it has on staff, this is the kind of bug that is unacceptable -- especially with something such as protecting passwords (an area of security that is very well developed). I guess these are just more things to add to the neverending Facebook apology tour.

Filed Under: contacts, data, passwords, plaintext, privacy, security breaches
Companies: facebook

Daily Deal: Readitfor.me Standard Plan

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

A leading book summary service for entrepreneurs, executives, and business coaches, Readitfor.me condenses the most important books into twelve-minute summaries that will keep you up to date on the most important trends in the business world. You'll get summaries of best sellers, classic reads, and books that will help you solve specific problems like productivity, tough conversations, management, and more. The one year subscription is on sale for $29.

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

The DOJ Isn't Buying T-Mobile's Nonsensical Merger Benefit Claims

from the ill-communication dept

Back in 2011 DOJ regulators blocked AT&T from acquiring T-Mobile, arguing that that the deal would have harmed consumers and resulted in higher rates by eliminating one of just four major wireless players. That's a pretty easy argument to make, given every time a country allows four wireless carriers to morph into three, the sector gets less competitive and prices go up (see: Ireland or Canada). Blocking the deal wound up being a good thing: T-Mobile went on to be even more disruptive, and has helped introduce a number of consumer-friendly market shifts like cheaper international roaming and the death of long-term contracts.

In 2014 T-Mobile and Sprint tried to merge, and regulators (quite correctly) pointed out the deal wouldn't be good for consumers or the market, and blocked it from happening.

Fast forward to 2019, and T-Mobile is once again trying to merge with Sprint, hoping to take advantage of the Trump era to finally overcome regulatory scrutiny. Both companies have been telling everyone who'll listen that reducing the total number of competitors will somehow boost competition in the sector. Not too surprisingly, even in this era of blind telecom sector fealty, regulators are having a hard time swallowing this particular pill. Both Reuters and the Wall Street Journal cite DOJ insiders who say that the DOJ isn't likely to approve the deal in its current form:

"The U.S. Justice Department has told T-Mobile US Inc and Sprint Corp it has concerns about their proposed $26 billion merger in its current structure, sources familiar with the matter said on Tuesday, although no final decision has been made.

T-Mobile CEO John Legere was quick to insist the "premise" of the report was "simply untrue":

The CEO didn't get into which aspect of the story he took issue with, but it's not just the DOJ that has expressed skepticism of the deal's benefits. A growing array of state regulators and attorneys general have also started kicking back against the deal, expressing concern that more consolidation is probably the very last thing the already arguably broken US telecom sector needs right now. While T-Mobile claims merging with Sprint will create a bigger, better third competitor, that's simply not how telecom works historically. Fewer competitors equals less competition, and higher prices. History suggests that's not really debatable.

Wall Street analyst Craig Moffett tells me his research firm dropped the chance of merger approval from around 50% to 33% given the growing state-level opposition, public disdain, and the growing call for more meaningful US antitrust enforcement in the way of the DOJ's bungled AT&T Time Warner merger kerfuffle.

Granted the deal could still be approved. Pai's FCC is likely to rubber stamp the deal without much thought. And the DOJ could approve the deal given the right combination of conditions. Given the vast army of revolving door lobbyists T-Mobile has under its belt (ranging from Trump ally Corey Lewandowski to former FCC Commissioners like Mignon Clyburn and Robert McDowell), there's a lot of firepower aimed at getting this deal done, regardless of how terrible history says it's going to be for consumers, competition, and a healthy wireless market.

Filed Under: antitrust, competition, doj, mobile operators
Companies: sprint, t-mobile

Supreme Court Again Ducks A Chance To Clarify First Amendment Protections

from the rap-on-brother-rap-on dept

The First Amendment is getting no help from the nation's highest court. Yet again, the Supreme Court is declining an opportunity to answer a very important question about free speech: where is the dividing line between threats and violent -- but protected -- speech?

The Supreme Court already punted on this issue in 2015 with the Elonis v. United States case. In that case, Anthony Elonis posted a bunch of nasty stuff online about his ex-wife. He ended up being jailed for these, with the court finding his posts -- which he claimed were merely him venting in the form of ultraviolent rap lyrics -- constituted threats.

His appeal went all the way to the top but the Supreme Court had nothing for him. It did overturn his conviction, but it left the First Amendment question unanswered. The Supreme Court said the trial court adhered to the wrong negligence standard -- one that said Elonis should have known his posts were threatening if any "reasonable person" would find them threatening. The correct standard to use was mens rea, meaning the government needed to prove Elonis knew his posts were illegal (i.e., that they were "genuine threats") when he posted them.

As for the First Amendment, the Supreme Court seemed happy to avoid this issue completely. Having decided the wrong standard was used by the trial court, the Supreme Court declared it did not need to hand down an opinion on the First Amendment implications, leading to the mess we're in now, with lower courts drawing disparate conclusions about the line between threats and protected speech.

The mess will continue. Pittsburgh rap artist Jamal Knox was jailed for the lyrics of his song "Fuck the Police." An obvious tribute to the 1988 N.W.A. track, Knox's song included the names of two officers that had previously arrested him and some very descriptive violent acts involving them.

Knox and Beasley's song, posted on Facebook and YouTube, included the names of the two Pittsburgh officers who arrested them with lyrics like, "I'ma jam this rusty knife all in his guts and chop his feet" and "Well your shift over at three and I'm gonna f*** up where you sleep."

The song ended, "Let's kill these cops cuz they don't do us no good."

The officers testified that the lyrics made them "nervous" and concerned for their safety, with one saying it led him to leave the police force.

On the basis of the cops' subjective response to the song's lyrics, Knox was sent to prison for two years. (His sentence also included drug and gun charges.) Knox argued his lyrics were part of his rap persona and that he was not trying to threaten the officers, much less try to bring his violent lyrics to life. The state supreme court upheld the conviction, apparently because the justices had never heard a rap song in their lives.

"...The rap song here is of a different nature and quality," the court's chief justice wrote in the majority opinion.

"They do not include political, social, or academic commentary, nor are they facially satirical or ironic. Rather, they primarily portray violence toward the police," the opinion read.

This rationale was rebutted in a masterful understatement in the rapper's brief to the Supreme Court:

The rappers, in their brief filed Wednesday, said that the opinion "reveals a court deeply unaware of popular music generally and rap music specifically."

We'll never find out whether the SCOTUS justices are a bit more up on today's urban music, unfortunately.

The Supreme Court declined Monday to take up the case of rapper Jamal Knox, who argued he was sent to prison for a song that was protected by the First Amendment.

By avoiding the issue for now, the justices left for another day a look at the contours of so called "true threats" -- speech that falls outside the protections of the First Amendment.

That's a shame. Thanks to its disinterest, we're just going to have to throw the greatest rap collaboration track ever released in the trash. The amicus brief sent to the unreceptive court was penned by some lawyers and legal scholars. Oh, and these guys:

Additional amici include musical artists Chancelor Bennett (“Chance the Rapper”), Robert Rihmeek Williams (“Meek Mill”), Mario Mims (“Yo Gotti”), Joseph Antonio Cartagena (“Fat Joe”), Donnie Lewis (“Mad Skillz”), Shéyaa Bin AbrahamJoseph (“21 Savage”), Jasiri Oronde Smith (“Jasiri X”), David Styles (“Styles P”), Simon Tam (member of The Slants and petitioner in Matal v. Tam, 137 S. Ct. 1744 (2017)), and Luther R. Campbell (member of 2 Live Crew and petitioner in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 510 U.S. 569 (1994)), as well as music industry representatives Alan Light (former Editorin-Chief, Vibe and Spin magazines), Dina LaPolt, Patrick Corcoran, Peter Lewit, and the entertainment company Roc Nation, LLC.

I guess the First Amendment will have to wait for another test case the Supreme Court can't wait to bypass. We need to have this question answered. Rap music -- and those inspired by it -- is something that just isn't going to go away.. Until SCOTUS finally decides it's going to answer some difficult questions, all we really have left is this GIF:

Filed Under: 1st amendment, free speech, jamal knox, lyrics, music, rap, supreme court

The UK's Dubious Plan For Age-Based Porn Filters Begins On July 15

from the hurry-and-hide-the-naughty-bits dept

Undaunted by the fact that internet filters never actually seem to work, the UK continues its quest to censor the internet of all of its naughty bits.

The UK has long implemented porn filters in a bid to restrict anybody under the age of 18 from accessing such content. New age verification controls were also mandated as part of the Digital Economy Act of 2017. But as we've previously noted, the UK government has seen several fits and starts with its proposal as it desperately tries to convince the public and business sectors that the ham-fisted effort is going to actually work. This week the country formally announced that its filter proposal officially now has a start date: July 15.

According to the UK government, websites that fail to comply with the country's age verification program face fines up to £250,000, risk being taken offline, or may lose access to payment services:

"...commercial providers of online pornography will be required by law to carry out robust age-verification checks on users, to ensure that they are 18 or over. The move is backed by 88% of UK parents with children aged 7-17, who agree there should be robust age-verification controls in place to stop children seeing pornography online.

Websites that fail to implement age-verification technology face having payment services withdrawn or being blocked for UK users."

In short, starting in July, should you want to view some porn, you'll be redirected to a special subsite where you'll be prompted for an email address and a password, before verifying your age using a driving license or a passport. There's a few exceptions, including websites that aren't selling access to porn and those that are simply engaging in "artistic" pursuits. Expecting the UK government to figure all of this out on the run should, at the very least, provide some entertainment value.

While this might make some people feel good, there's still little hard data to suggest any of this is going to work, and more than a few hints it's actually going to cause problems. The obvious risk of this data leaking out and being used nefariously is one concern. The other major problem is there are simply too many porn websites to effectively police, and the belief the UK government can police them all is arguably laughable. Meanwhile all it takes to avoid the restrictions is the use of a VPN or proxy to trick the website in question to think that you're coming from another country.

Others note that the ban is likely to just drive many users looking for porn toward notably more seedy venues and workarounds:

"When you hire a bouncer to crack down on kids drinking in the local pub, you don’t get a sudden rise in homework. You get a surge in fake IDs and drinking in the park.

The porn block will do the same thing online, pushing kids towards streaming sites stuffed with malware, creepy subreddits, and places on the dark web that sell credit cards details – because it seems as if this age verification system is going to use credit cards as its basis. It’s a classic case of driving legal behaviour underground, making it a whole lot dodgier than it was in the first place."

Meanwhile there's little data supporting the idea that porn filters in general even work, and plenty of data suggesting such filters routinely cause collateral damage. A joint-report published this week by digital rights advocates Open Rights Group (ORG) and Top10VPN VPN review portal noted the UK government already filters 760,000 websites with notable inaccuracy, leading to the routine inadvertent censorship of legitimate websites.

All in all the UK's war on porn is a puritanical feel good measure that's going to cause far more problems than it actually fixes. And in a few years it's likely the UK will either retreat from the measure after it gets tired of playing a futile game of naughty-bit Whac-a-Mole, or will double down on the efforts while pretending the entire affair actually worked.

Filed Under: censorship, porn, porn filters, uk

Dallas Mavericks Fail To Get Trademark For Its Star Player's Nickname

from the ole dept

We've not been shy about pointing out that the recent practice by famous athletes of trademarking their nicknames all seems somewhat silly. The whole thing smacks of some combination of a money-grab over terms often not coined by the athletes themselves, and the kind of protectionism by the famous that is just all the rage these days. A recent incidence of this concerning the trademark application for Luka Doncic's nickname carried with it a twist, however, in that the applicant was not by Doncic himself, but by the Dallas Mavericks, the team for which he plays. The thrust of our post on the matter was roughly: well, that seems kind of shitty. After all, NBA players tend not to play for the same teams forever, though it's worth pointing out that the Mavericks pulled this off with Dirk Nowitzki, so there's that. Still, should Doncic move to another team, what happens to that trademark on his nickname?

Mark Cuban appeared to show up in the comments.

Typical techdirt. Don't ask why. Dont do any research. Just pretend they know something

We have been grabbing player urls and trademarking and copyrighting player related terms for years.

It's to protect players.

You know what's worst than your article ? Some scammer trademarking or copyrighting a nickname or slogan they read about online

All of our players have the right to use them, but never do. They just appreciate that we are looking out for them.

After I was done yawning at the "Typical techdirt" part of the comment, it took me roughly thirty seconds to think up a far more player-friendly option: the team could simply educate its players on how to trademark their own nicknames if they so choose, rather than attempting to trademark them itself. After all, the team is just looking out for the players, right? My research into our own comments tells me that the Mavs do, at least.

It would probably also help protect the players if the team was successful at the trademark process, something that was most certainly not the case this go around.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office denied the Dallas Mavericks’ trademark applications for two of Luka Doncic’s nicknames. The Mavericks sought to acquire the rights THE MATADOR and EL MATADOR, last December. Doncic picked up the nickname of Matador while playing for Real Madrid in Spain before joining the NBA .

According to trademark lawyer Josh Gerben, who has been following the application process, the refusal isn’t a surprise. In a video posted to Twitter, he states that the reason that the applications were rejected was because the USPTO found 20 other preexisting Matador trademarks that it views as too similar to Doncic’s marks.

Gerben went on to note that the team may have made its application harder to approve by packing as many market designations into it as it possibly could. This is somewhat common, but for a mark that is already approved for other markets, this broad shotgun-based approach doesn't win you any points with the USPTO. It's also the case that protecting players is not a market onto itself, meaning that the Mavericks would have had to show a real intent to use the marks in the markets requested. Perhaps a failure to do so also counted against the application.

I'll give Cuban credit where it's due, however, because often times when he's quoted I find myself falling just a little bit more in love with him.

For now at least, it doesn't look like Doncic will have to worry about the Mavericks acquiring the rights to his Matador nickname. The team won't be challenging the USPTO’s ruling. When contacted, Cuban was blunt about the ruling.

“Shit happens,” Cuban said via email. “Moving on.”

Never change, Mark. Well, maybe just a little...

Filed Under: luka doncic, mark cuban, matador, trademark
Companies: dallas mavericks