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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As a reminder, our Working Futures scenario planning game around the future of work question is in full swing. If you haven't yet filled out our survey, please do so soon. There have been some great, thoughtful and insightful ideas provided so far, and it's already shaped some of how we'll be proceeding. We've been hard at work designing the specifics of how the "game" part of this will work, with our first workshop to be held next week. While that event is invite only, we still have a few open seats -- so if you'll be in San Francisco next week and think you have something you can add to this discussion, feel free to request an invite via the website. The event itself will be an interactive, guided game for developing a bunch of scenarios. Once we've had a chance to go through the results, we'll begin sharing some of the details -- but the overall results will only get better if you participate as well -- so go fill out the survey.

Pharma companies generally like to give the impression that their business is a win-win kind of thing: you get better, they get sales. But sometimes the mask slips, and the real strategy that lies behind the benevolent exterior is revealed. For example, back in 2014 we wrote about the CEO of Bayer, one of the biggest drug companies in the world, openly admitting it developed medicines for rich patients in the West that can pay high prices, not for those in places like India that need them just as much, but can't afford them.

Now CNBC has spotted another revealing remark that probably reflects what many in the Big Pharma world say privately. It appears in a report called "The Genome Revolution" about a new generation of treatments based on powerful genomic techniques like CRISPR. They hold out the hope that many diseases can be cured permanently, for example by editing the patient's DNA to replace genetic code that is causing the problem. The report asks: "Is curing patients a sustainable business model?" It goes on to explain the issue here:

"The potential to deliver 'one shot cures' is one of the most attractive aspects of gene therapy, genetically-engineered cell therapy and gene editing. However, such treatments offer a very different outlook with regard to recurring revenue versus chronic therapies," analyst Salveen Richter wrote in the note to clients Tuesday. "While this proposition carries tremendous value for patients and society, it could represent a challenge for genome medicine developers looking for sustained cash flow."

That's a fair analysis. Given the choice between creating a product that cures people after one use, and another that requires a lifetime's supply, the rational choice for a company is the latter. The analyst's question, shocking as it is, exposes neatly the tension between what Big Pharma and its shareholders may want -- fat, recurring profits -- and what patients and society desire -- a short course of treatment that results in a complete cure. As genomic medicine continues to progress, that question is likely to be posed more frequently, both behind closed doors, and in public debates. It will also bring with it another one: if curing patients isn't a sustainable business model for traditional pharma companies, why not find other ways to fund the development of genomic treatments?

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

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Another day, another story of copyright gone stupid. This time it involves Major League Baseball, which is no stranger to stupid copyright arguments. Going back fifteen years, we wrote about Major League Baseball claiming that other websites couldn't even describe professional baseball games. There was a legal fight over this and MLB lost. A decade ago, MLB was shutting down fan pages for doing crazy things like "using a logo" of their favorite sports team. And, of course, like all major professional sports leagues, MLB has long engaged in copyfraud by claiming that "any account of this game, without the express written consent of Major League Baseball is prohibited", which is just false. MLB has also made up ridiculous rules about how much reporters can post online at times, restricting things that they have no right to actually restrict.

The latest seems particularly stupid. Following on some sort of silly spat in which a guy named Kevin Clancy at Barstool Sports (the same brainiacs who wanted to sue the NFL for having sorta, not really, similar merchandise) got pissed off at a popular Twitter account called @PitchingNinja run by a guy named Rob Friedman, who would tweet out GIFs and videos of interesting pitches from MLB games. Apparently, the dudebro Clancy from Barstool sports pointed out that Friedman was violating the made up rules that MLB has on how much someone is allowed to share on social media, leading a ton of Clancy's fans to "report" Friedman. Twitter shut down Friedman's account -- leading said dudebro, Clancy, to celebrate.

In a podcast interview with that very same Barstool Sports, who got his account shut down, Frideman notes that "there's such a thing as fair use." Indeed, his use of images and videos appears to be fairly obviously fair use. Since we can't see his account while it's suspended, we'll go off of the Yahoo Sports description of the @PitchingNinja account:

Nearly every Rob Friedman tweet arrives offering four things: a baseball player’s name, a pitch he has thrown, an adjective to describe that pitch and a short video clip to illustrate it. Changeups are “ridiculous,” and fastballs are “absurd,” and sliders are “nasty,” and sometimes they’re “disgusting” and “filthy” and “obscene” and every other sort of visceral descriptor, too. Friedman is best known as @PitchingNinja, and his nearly 50,000 followers relish his ability to curate baseball’s deep cuts – the sort of physics-bending pitches average fans may not notice but ones in which pitching nerds luxuriate.

So, going through a quick four factor test -- Friedman is adding commentary, using a tiny amount of a game, not doing this for any commercial advantage and, if anything increasing the market for MLB's product. It seems like a pretty clear cut fair use situation. MLB has told Yahoo that they expect to come to some sort of agreement to let Friedman back on Twitter:

League sources told Yahoo Sports that they expect to “quickly and easily” reach a resolution with Friedman that would allow him to continue posting pitching GIFs. In a letter to the league official who filed the DMCA complaint, Friedman, a lawyer by trade, outlined his argument on how what he does benefits the league.

But, of course, it's bullshit that they should even need to do this in the first place. The whole point of fair use is that you don't need permission, and you don't need to reach an agreement. And yet, according to Yahoo, MLB seems to think it needs to come to an agreement with Friedman over what is fair use:

MLB plans to contact Friedman in the coming days, if not sooner, at which point they are likely to agree on what constitutes fair use.

But, they don't need to agree. The law says what fair use is, and MLB doesn't get to change that to suit their own whims.

Friedman also told Yahoo the following:

“I also understand that MLB has every right to protect its product,” he wrote in the email, which he shared with Yahoo Sports. “I’m most certainly not trying to deprive MLB of any value, instead I’m trying to create value by helping pitchers have a sense of community, learn, and appreciate the game. Rather than debate the legal matter, I am more than happy to give MLB all of my gifs for free or work out some other content deal that just allows me to use MLB content, as permitted, for fair use, to help pitchers, coaches, and fans understand the game. I would be happy to donate any content for free and execute a copyright license ensuring that MLB owns any gifs I create.”

That's... weird. MLB already owns the copyright to the videos. Fair use is what lets Friedman make use of them without needing a license. So I'm not sure what he's talking about licensing them back to MLB. That doesn't really make much sense. But, you still see the underlying point that he's making, which is that he's building more interest in the game, and he's not trying to claim any ownership or make any money from what he's doing, it's just for the love of sharing the game and educating people. Which, you know, is the kind of thing that fair use is explicitly designed to enable.

And, of course, no one should take Twitter off the hook here for suspending Friedman's account. Twitter could have (and should have) rejected the DMCA notices and pointed out that the @PitchingNinja account was engaging in fair use. Instead, it shut down the account, and once again showed how copyright is regularly abused for censorship, rather than any legitimate purpose under the Copyright Act.

Russia's war on encryption and privacy has reached an entirely new level of ridiculous. We've noted for a while how Putin's government has been escalating its war on encrypted services and VPNs in the misguided hope of keeping citizens from dodging government surveillance. But things escalated dramatically when the Russian government demanded that encrypted messaging app Telegram hand over its encryption keys to the FSB. After Telegram refused, a Russian court banned the app entirely last Friday, and the Russian government began trying to actually implement it this week.

It's not going particularly well.

Telegram tried to mitigate the ban by moving some of its essential infrastructure to third-party cloud services. But Russian telecom regulator Roskomnadzor responded by blocking upwards of 16 million IP addresses, many belonging to Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud. Not too surprisingly, the heavy-handed maneuver resulted in connectivity problems across massive swaths of the Russian internet:

Some users say the ban has disrupted the functionality of unrelated online games and services:

And even credit card terminals:

While the Russian government has been portrayed as a technological and hacking mastermind in the wake of its escalating global disinformation and hacking campaign, there's nothing at all competent about this effort. The Russian government is demanding that both Apple and Google pull encrypted messaging apps from their app stores. They've also tried to pressure sideloading websites like APK Mirror into refusing to offer alternative access to the Telegram app. But it's just another game of Whac-a-Mole, with VPN provider NordVPN saying it saw a 150% spike in Russian usage in the wake of the ban.

The Russian government is claiming that its ham-fisted blockade has resulted in a 30% dip in Telegram usage. But Telegram founder Pavel Durov has downplayed the ban's impact on overall "user engagement":

"For the last 24 hours Telegram has been under a ban by internet providers in Russia. The reason is our refusal to provide encryption keys to Russian security agencies. For us, this was an easy decision. We promised our users 100% privacy and would rather cease to exist than violate this promise.

"Despite the ban, we haven’t seen a significant drop in user engagement so far, since Russians tend to bypass the ban with VPNs and proxies. We also have been relying on third-party cloud services to remain partly available for our users there."

Russian state media meanwhile continues to demonize Telegram as a haven for villains, and is directing users to alternatives like TamTam with alleged ties to the Russian government. All told, it's another wonderful illustration of how filtering the internet doesn't work (unless collateral damage and annoyance is your stated goal), and a war on fundamental security and privacy tools only makes everybody less secure. This is not a battle Russia can "win," but it's apparently too far down the rabbit hole of bad ideas to stop now.