A few months back, the Orange County Sheriff's Department admitted it had been listening in on privileged conversations. Calls from inmates to lawyers were being swept up along with everything else by service provider Global Tel Link. This violation of state law (among other things) jeopardized dozens of prosecutions. In all, GTL's so-called "technical error" resulted in the interception of more than 1,000 privileged calls.

The Sheriff's Department claimed it told GTL to fix the problem, but didn't appear to have been terribly bothered by this evidentiary windfall... some of which made its way into the hands of prosecutors. It made several disappointed noises about its provider when confronted in court, but its quasi-proactive "knock it off" -- directed towards GTL -- didn't explain its lack of proactivity when it came to informing criminal defendants and their legal reps their cases may have been compromised by attorney-client privilege violations.

This was only the tip of the iceberg. The OC Register reports there's been an exponential increase in the number of privileged calls trapped by this "technical error." (h/t Matt Ferner)

Nearly 34,000 inmate phone calls to their attorneys were recorded, and the Orange County Sheriff’s Department accessed calls 347 times, according to documents revealed in court proceedings Friday, Nov. 9.

The numbers are a significant – and, to some, alarming – spike from the 1,079 recorded calls Global Tel Link originally acknowledged in an August hearing. At that time, 58 of those recorded calls also were said to have been accessed by Sheriff’s Department or phone company investigators 87 times from January 2015 to July 2018.

Conveniently under seal until after the sheriff's election concluded and GTL's contract renewal was in place, the new numbers blow the old, still disturbing, numbers out of the water. This has triggered a new round of finger-pointing from the Sheriff's Department, which again claims -- despite listening in to the illegal haul -- it's all GTL's fault.

In a release distributed late Friday, Sheriff Sandra Hutchens, who plans to step down early next year, blamed GTL.

“The facts show that this is an error by GTL, an error that they are continually unable to fully disclose or explain,” Hutchens said. “We anticipate this will be exploited by some to perpetuate an anti-law enforcement narrative. We are confident that those who look at this situation objectively will recognize an error by a contractor does not constitute a conspiracy by law enforcement. To imply otherwise ignores the truth.”

Oh my. Not an "anti-law enforcement narrative." Anything but that. The departing sheriff has decided to blame the company for the problem, but not any of her personnel who repeatedly listened to recordings they should never have had access to. And she's proactively blaming the media by claiming reporting facts about the department's thousands of violations is "anti-law enforcement."

GTL, on the other hand, says the new number is bogus. It claims the older, lower number is accurate and those 1,079 calls were the only ones recorded despite the numbers called being on GTL's "do not record" list. When asked to explain the ~33,000 call difference, GTL spokesman James Lee deferred to the court's protective order, saying it prevented him from discussing the case. Apparently the order only covers culpatory statements but nothing halfway exonerative GTL's front man wants to throw out there.

No one seems to know what the actual number of violations is. We've already seen the number of calls collected climb from 1,000 to 34,000 within the space of two months. The Sheriff's Departments wants GTL to shoulder all the blame for the debacle, but somehow still feels comfortable signing it up for another year of possible incompetence.

Orange County taxpayers are paying department personnel to engage in attorney-client privilege violations. That's the long and short of it. And they're going to be paying for the eventual settlements to the eventual lawsuits. It's to be hoped the investigation being helmed by the court will eventually reach the bottom of this debacle, but with one official walking away from the job and the department giving GTL another chance, it doesn't seem like the embarrassing admission of multiple illegal acts by law enforcement will have much of a deterrent effect.

So, we were just talking about how Denuvo's new ownership, Irdeto, was busily making the case via the example of some unnamed AAA sports game that even when Denuvo DRM is cracked in a few days it's still worth it to protect a game's initial release window. The comments from Irdeto got so ridiculous that it claimed that even if Denuvo kept titles safe for a few hours, that was still worth it. As specious as this claim might be, it's also formulated to be hard to argue with. After all, with this low of a bar, all Irdeto's Denuvo has to do is barely work for any measurable amount of time before the release of game in order for Irdeto to claim victory. So how can it possibly fail?

Well, how about if a game's Denuvo protection is defeated before the game gets released?

This weekend, the technology suffered yet another disappointing blow. The long-awaiting stealth game Hitman 2 – which comes ‘protected’ by the latest variant of Denuvo (v5.3) – leaked online. Aside from having its protection circumvented, this happened three days before the title’s official launch on November 13. It appears that a relatively new cracking group called FCKDRM (more on them in a moment) obtained a version of Hitman 2 that was only available to those who pre-ordered the game. There are some reports of the crack failing at times on some machines but nevertheless, this leak is important on a number of fronts.

Firstly, the game leaked online three days early, rendering the protection when the game finally comes out much less useful. Secondly, presuming the original copy of the game was obtained on Friday when the pre-order copy was delivered, it took just a single day for the group to crack Denuvo’s latest protection. Considering an announcement made by Denuvo just last week, this is a pretty embarrassing turn of events.

That is putting it mildly. This is the destruction of a nonsense argument Irdeto made for itself to try to pretend that Denuvo was worth any amount of investment by game publishers. For the game to be cracked before official release is nearly the ultimate punchline in all the jokes that have been made at Denuvo's expense since the once-vaunted DRM became just another DRM failure. For it to happen to a AAA game, with the name of that game very much in the public eye, just days after it cited an anonymous AAA game as the reason Denuvo was necessary, almost seems like this was a setup job.

But it wasn't. Instead, this is just DRM being DRM, which is to say fallible. And that should be causing other publishers that have used this exact iteration of Denuvo, and have games in early release, to wonder why they bothered.

Given that Denuvo 5.3 was cracked so quickly (some crashing issues aside) it raises questions about other upcoming titles set to use similar technology. They include Battlefield V from EA/DICE, which has its official full release on November 20 but is already available to early access players.

I'll give Denuvo this much: this is the longest death spiral I've ever seen.

For years, smaller cable companies have complained that giants like Comcast do everything in their power to make life miserable (and expensive) for them. These smaller providers have complained that Comcast often mandates they buy and include NBC channels and regional sports networks in their lineups, driving up costs. Many of these companies have considered getting out of the TV business entirely as their margins get tighter and they find themselves increasingly out-maneuvered by ever-growing, vertically-integrated media, telecom, and broadcast giants like Comcast and AT&T.

This week, the American Cable Association, a coalition of around 700 mid-sized and small cable providers, simply issued yet another request to the DOJ to, you know, actually maybe do something about Comcast's growing monopoly power:

"To help secure the benefits of a competitive pay-TV and broadband market for millions of consumers, the American Cable Association has asked antitrust law enforcers at the Department of Justice (DOJ) to open an investigation into the business practices of the vertically integrated media giant Comcast-NBCU, focusing on harms stemming from the dominant communications firm’s control of cable systems, TV stations, and regional sports networks (RSNs) concentrated in some of the largest local markets in the country."

Their complaint notes that with the conditions now expired on Comcast's 2011 merger with NBC, the company has greater leeway than ever to use its size, wealth, growing broadband monopoly and political power to bully smaller cable operators and consumers alike.

Normally these cries would simply be ignored in M&A manic America. Much like the TV market, smaller cable companies can't compete with the immense political power Comcast's wealth and size buys on Capitol Hill, so their concerns are pretty consistently ignored. As a result, whether we're in the throes of Obama or Trump administrations, blindly letting the biggest media and telecom companies merge, then standing around with a dumb look on our collective faces as these titans do what they always do (raise rates and use their newfound power to hamper competitors) is kind of our thing.

Like many small businesses, the ACA pretty consistently issues these cries for help without anybody much giving a damn. But that dynamic changed when President Trump this week curiously decided to wade in and comment on the ACA's filing:

So for one thing, it's unlikely that Donald actually cares about Comcast's monopoly power. After all, if he did, his FCC wouldn't have just effectively neutered itself and net neutrality (and most meaningful oversight of predatory monopolies) at direct Comcast request. Don probably just saw something on NBC news that made him mad, and decided to punish Comcast for it in a passive aggressive way. And punish it did: Comcast's stock dropped steeply on Monday of this week, and a dozen furrow-browed stories exploring Comcast's antitrust power were published that would have otherwise never have been written.

Oddly, many outlets took the potential for a DOJ inquiry into Comcast's monopoly power seriously. But there's zero real indication that's the case. As the assault on net neutrality should have made pretty clear, letting giant telecom operators like Comcast largely dictate most tech policy has been the Trump administration policy thus far, and that's not likely to change. The DOJ isn't going to suddenly investigate Comcast just because Don ran his mouth on Twitter, and it's certainly not going to suddenly pursue remedies for an eight-year old merger.

Don was likely just being Don: jumping into the fray of a subject he doesn't know much about because he saw some shit on TV that made him sad. And while it's true that Don's DOJ did sue AT&T to thwart (unsuccessfully) its Time Warner merger, it's likely that had less to do with actually helping consumers, and more to do with hurting CNN or helping Trump ally Rupert Murdoch, who spent most of 2017 trying to scuttle the deal for competitive reasons. So yeah, it's possible that the DOJ could ruffle some feathers at Comcast as punishment for critical NBC coverage of the President, but it's just not likely with Comcast already having gotten most of what it wanted (most notably in the form of a self-immolating FCC in the hands of Ajit Pai).

Meanwhile, the ACA has made a pretty consistent habit of complaining about Ajit Pai's failure to keep an eye out for the little guy, despite being breathless supporters of Pai's appointment. Perhaps at some point the ACA can connect the dots between supporting politicians that don't care about monopoly power, and policy that pretty clearly doesn't care about monopoly power.

So by now most people have probably read the New York Times deep dive into what can only be described as Facebook's deep well of internal dysfunction and self delusion. While there's a lot of interesting bits in the piece, one portion that received some extra, justified hyperventilation was the revelation of Facebook's use of smear merchants. Smear merchants that the Times notes Facebook employed to try and discredit those pointing out that Facebook's privacy practices have generally been hot garbage:

"While Mr. Zuckerberg has conducted a public apology tour in the last year, Ms. Sandberg has overseen an aggressive lobbying campaign to combat Facebook’s critics, shift public anger toward rival companies and ward off damaging regulation. Facebook employed a Republican opposition-research firm to discredit activist protesters, in part by linking them to the liberal financier George Soros. It also tapped its business relationships, lobbying a Jewish civil rights group to cast some criticism of the company as anti-Semitic."

By late 2017, a big part of those efforts involved paying DC-based consultancy Definers Public Affairs to engage in efforts to smear competitors and activist critics alike. In some instances, the Times suggests this involved parroting intentionally dubious stories via Definers' "news" organization, NTK Network:

"On a conservative news site called the NTK Network, dozens of articles blasted Google and Apple for unsavory business practices. One story called Mr. Cook hypocritical for chiding Facebook over privacy, noting that Apple also collects reams of data from users. Another played down the impact of the Russians’ use of Facebook."

Ironic that Facebook was funding disinformation while professing to fight disinformation. Of course, the public reaction was immediate and justifiable. Twitter was stocked with people simply shocked that a major company would hire a PR and policy firm to spread fluff and nonsense. And Facebook was quick to issue a statement downplaying what Definers had been up to, yet acknowledging they'd fired the firm for what they'd apparently have you believe is no solid reason:

"Lastly we wanted to address the issue of Definers, who we ended our contract with last night. The New York Times is wrong to suggest that we ever asked Definers to pay for or write articles on Facebook’s behalf – or to spread misinformation. Our relationship with Definers was well known by the media – not least because they have on several occasions sent out invitations to hundreds of journalists about important press calls on our behalf. Definers did encourage members of the press to look into the funding of “Freedom from Facebook,” an anti-Facebook organization. The intention was to demonstrate that it was not simply a spontaneous grassroots campaign, as it claimed, but supported by a well-known critic of our company."

In a conference call this afternoon, Zuckerberg then tried to claim that neither he nor Sandberg knew anything about Definers being hired, while insisting that Facebook would be taking a much closer look at their DC policy and lobbying partners moving forward. But companies routinely hire firms like Definers knowing full well the kind of tactics they employ, and the idea that neither Zuckerberg nor Sandberg knew anything about the work Definers was doing is generally being seen as either a falsehood or incompetence.

While Facebook's decision to smear critics instead of owning their own obvious dysfunction is clearly idiotic, much of the backlash has operated under the odd belief that Facebook's behavior is some kind of exception, not the norm. Countless companies employ think tanks, consultants, bogus news ops, PR firms, academics, and countless other organizations to spread falsehoods, pollute the public discourse, and smear their critics on a daily basis. It's a massive industry. Just ask the telecom sector.

In the last decade alone broadband providers and firms far worse than Definers have been caught paying minority groups to generate bunk support for bad policy, hijacking consumer identities to support bad policy, creating bogus consumer groups to generate fake support for bad policy, flooding the news wires endlessly with misleading op/eds without disclosing financial conflicts of interest, stocking public meetings with cardboard cutouts (so real people can't attend), or filling news comments sections and social media with bullshit criticism of corporate critics.

This is the world we've built, and nobody wants to do anything about it. In none of the above instances did anyone face the slightest consequences for their actions. And this is just telecom. The same tactics occur in countless sectors. Third party policy and lobbying houses routinely help corporations stuff public proceedings with entirely bogus public support. Reporters are still trying to determine which of a dozen PR lobbying and policy shops helped the broadband industry steal the identities of real (and in some instances dead people) to generate bogus support for killing net neutrality.

These kind of shady business operations are absolutely everywhere and used by countless major companies ranging from AT&T to your local power utility. As (relatively) new entries on the American lobbying scene, Silicon Valley companies have often insisted they're above such behavior, something this week's report pretty clearly disproves. And while it's great everybody's upset about Facebook and Definers' clearly disingenuous tactics, this is a problem we've let infect the marrow of American business culture--in large part because we refuse to actually do anything about it.

You'll routinely see no efforts at serious lobbying and policy reform, no real punishment for involved offenders, and (as Facebook made abundantly clear) zero real unforced interest in addressing disinformation. The best we routinely get is a few bouts of short-lived hyperventilation and some hand-wringing in the press, followed by some collective amnesia as bigger, worse scandals increasingly gobble up our already-strained attention spans.

For quite some time now, when discussing how the various giant platforms should manage the nearly impossible challenges of content moderation, one argument I've fallen back on again and again is that they need to provide real due process. This is because, while there are all sorts of concerns about content moderation, the number of false positives that lead to "good" content being taken down is staggering. Lots of people like to point and laugh at these, but any serious understanding of content moderation at scale has to recognize that when you need to process many many thousands of requests per day, often involving complex or nuanced issues, many, many mistakes are going to be made. And thus, you need a clear and transparent process that enables review.

A bunch of public interest groups (including EFF) have now sent an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg, requesting that Facebook significantly change its content removal appeal process, to be much clearer and much more accountable. The request first covers how clear the notice should be concerning what content caused the restriction and why:

Notice: Clearly explain to users why their content has been restricted.

• Notifications should include the specific clause from the Community Standards that the content was found to violate.


• Notice should be sufficiently detailed to allow the user to identify the specific content that was restricted, and should include information about how the content was detected, evaluated, and removed.


• Individuals must have clear information about how to appeal the decision.

And then it goes into many more details on how an appeal should work, involving actual transparency, more detailed explanations, and knowledge that an appeal actually goes to someone who didn't make the initial decision:

Appeals: Provide users with a chance to appeal content moderation decisions.

• The appeals mechanism should be easily accessible and easy to use.


• Appeals should be subject to review by a person or panel of persons not involved in the initial decision.


• Users must have the right to propose new evidence or material to be considered in the review.


• Appeals should result in a prompt determination and reply to the user.


• Any exceptions to the principle of universal appeals should be clearly disclosed and compatible with international human rights principles.


• Facebook should collaborate with other stakeholders to develop new independent self-regulatory mechanisms for social media that will provide greater accountability.

Frankly, I think this is a great list, and am dismayed that the large platforms haven't implemented something like this alread. For example, we recently wrote about Google deeming our blog post on the difficulty of content moderation to be "dangerous or derogatory." In that case, we initially got no further information other than that claim. And the appeals process was totally opaque. The first time we appealed, the ruling was overturned (again with no explanation) and a month later when that article got dinged again, the appeal was rejected.

After we published that article, we had an employee from the Adsense team eventually reach out to us to explain that it was "likely" that some of the comments on that article were what triggered the problems. After pointing out that there were well over 300 comments on the article, we were eventually pointed to one particular comment that used some slurs, though the comment used them to demonstrate the ridiculousness of automated filters, rather than as derogatory epithets.

However, as I noted in my response, my main complaint was not Google's silly setup, but the fact that it provided no actual guidance. We were not told that it was a comment that was to blame until after our published article resulted in someone higher up on the AdSense team reaching out. I pointed out that it seemed only reasonable that Google should share with us specifically what term it felt we had violated and which content was the problem so that we could then make an informed decision. Similarly, the appeals process was entirely opaque.

While the reasons that Google and Facebook have not yet created this kind of due process are obvious (it would be kinda costly, for one), it does seem like such a system will be increasingly important, and it's good to see these groups pushing Facebook on this in particular.

Of course, earlier this year, Zuckerberg had floated an idea of an independent (i.e. outside of Facebook) third party board that could handle these kinds of content moderation appeals, and... a bunch of people freaked out, falsely claiming that Zuckerberg wanted to create a special Facebook Supreme Court (even as he was actually advocating for having a body outside of Facebook reviewing Facebook's decisions).

No matter what, it would be good for the large platforms to start taking these issues seriously, not only for reasons of basic fairness and transparency, but because it would also serve to better make the public comfortable with how this process works. When it is, as currently construed, a giant black box, that leads to a lot more anger and conspiracy thinking over how content moderation actually works.

Update: It appears that shortly after this post went out, Zuckerberg told reporters that Facebook is now going ahead with creating an independent body to handle appeals. We'll have more on this once some details are available.

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I had missed this story from a couple months back, but reader Kris kindly alerted me to it. It's the story of how a video of a grandmother in Scotland reading a mostly out-of-print children's book to her grandson, and laughing uncontrollably about the book, went viral and turned the book into a total best seller around the world. First, you need to watch the video:

It has over a million and a half views on YouTube, and apparently a huge number on Facebook as well. The book's author, Craig Smith from New Zealand appears to be ecstatic about all of this (as he should be!):

Smith told the Guardian that demand had “gone through the roof” for the picture book since the video of Clark took off: in New Zealand, his publisher is “rushing to print another 50,000 copies, with a view for more”, while The Wonky Donkey is now also being reprinted in the UK. Amazon in the US and the UK has sold out, while used bookseller AbeBooks said that it has sold “hundreds of copies” of The Wonky Donkey in the last week, amid “massive demand” around the world.

[....]

“The video is gold. Watching Janice read and laugh was just delightful, and like many, her infectious laugh had me laughing too,” said Smith. “I’ve always wondered why sales had not taken off so much in the UK and US, but that looks like that’s about to change.”

According to the Associated Press, the book had sold about 75,000 copies prior to all of this (which isn't bad), though it was mostly in New Zealand and Australia, but had since gone out of print. But now, the publisher, Scholastic, was rushing to print another 600,000 copies.

According to Scholastic, the book had sold about 75,000 copies and was out of print before the video caught on last month.

"Before this fall, if you had said 'Wonky Donkey' in my store, no one would have known what you were talking about," said Linda Devlin, owner of Linda's Story Time in Monroe, Connecticut. "Now, it just sells and sells. People see it and say, 'Oh, I have to get that for my grandchildren.'"

Scholastic announced Friday that it had ordered another 600,000 copies. Meanwhile, Clark is coming to New York in November for an event at Barnes & Noble.

And, last month the book went to the top of the charts. From out of print to topping the book sale charts in just a couple of weeks is pretty incredible:

The 2009 picture book about a three-legged, one-eyed donkey has sold more than 100,000 copies in the United States this fall, much of that in the past week. According to NPD BookScan, which tracks around 85 percent of the print market, "Wonky Donkey" topped all releases with more than 90,000 copies sold last week, beating out Bob Woodward's "Fear" and Rachel Hollis' "Girl, Wash Your Face," among others.

But... here's the thing. That video is almost certainly copyright infringement. It's a derivative work with the grandmother reading the entire book out loud. Obviously, neither the author nor the publisher mind that this happened. Indeed, they're pretty happy about it. And so this could just be yet another example of where copyright infringement actually ends up helping the copyright holder significantly.

But this is also an excellent example of the massive harm that the EU is about to do with Article 13 and the EU Copyright Directive. Under Article 13, platforms like YouTube and Facebook would be required to block this kind of video or face massive liability. Of course, how these platforms might detect such a video is unclear. There is no form of ContentID that would see that video and know that it was infringing, but it pretty clearly is. But, once the video got so popular, with over a million views and news stories about it, sooner or later the companies would recognize that it was infringing and would be forced to take it down or face crippling liability.

All weekend long, various supporters of Article 13 have been screaming at me on Twitter about how Article 13 won't harm the internet or creators at all, and that's it's really just about "making YouTube pay its fair share." I'm curious how they could possibly explain what to do in this particular case. Under the law they want, a content creator (and tons of happy parents) would be at a loss. This book likely wouldn't be such a massive success. The companies would be forced to take that content down and to block anyone else from ever uploading it.

And what do you do if you're a smaller platform? The risk of letting just one such video through would almost certainly bankrupt you. But how is a smaller platform going to police for this kind of video that none of the copyright holders want policed? But, as a platform, Article 13 leaves them no choice.

This is one of the many problems with the approach of Article 13. It assumes, incorrectly, that all infringement is black and white obvious, and that all infringement is necessarily bad and must be stopped. It cannot take into account that those assumptions are frequently not at all accurate. It cannot take into account that this will not only cut off much of what makes the internet wonderful, but will also completely keep new entrants at bay. Google and Facebook can afford to deal with this. The next Google and Facebook won't even bother. And that would make for a pretty sad, spunky, hanky-panky, cranky, stinky, dinky, lanky, honky-tonky, winky, wonky donkey.

Last month we pointed to research out of Northeastern University that showed U.S. wireless video performance was thoroughly mediocre thanks in large part to arbitrary carrier throttling. The study, spearheaded by researcher David Choffnes, found that this carrier throttling usually had absolutely nothing to do with congestion. Instead, much of it was driven by carriers trying to impose arbitrary limits on your connection, then charge you more money to avoid it. For example, Verizon now throttles all video on its "unlimited" wireless data connections to 480p (around 1.5 Mbps), unless you pay Verizon for a more expensive plan.

Choffnes is tracking ISP network management by using crowdsourced data from his Wehe app. More recently Choffnes released an updated report that continues to show that carriers arbitrarily throttle video and select apps. But his report and data also found that Sprint (and its prepaid subsidiary Boost Mobile) routinely throttles Skype performance on its networks... without telling consumers about it. The throttling was discovered in 34 percent of 1,968 full tests run between January 18 and October 15 of this year, note the researchers:

"We found a significant number of instances of Sprint throttling our Skype tests. This is interesting because Skype’s telephony service can be construed as directly competing with the telephony service provided by Sprint...We asked Sprint to comment on our findings. Their reply was: "Sprint does not single out Skype or any individual content provider in this way." Our test results indicate otherwise, particularly for video content providers where we were able to confirm targeted throttling of Wehe tests."

On its surface, Sprint throttling Skype a third of a the time isn't the end of the world. But as is often the case with net neutrality, it's the precedent that matters. Sprint has already tinkered with throttling video, music, and games unless users were willing to pay more money, something nobody in the Obama administration so much as blinked at -- even with net neutrality rules intact.

Now, post-repeal, Sprint is throttling a service that could be directly construed as competing with Sprint's own offerings, something Choffnes told me should be raising alarm bells for anybody interested in keeping the internet competitive and relatively neutral:

"In a neutral network, all of these services can compete on a level playing field to offer a product that attracts the most users,” he said. “When an Internet provider targets a service for throttling, the playing field can tilt in favor of one service over another."

“This is particularly problematic if the Internet provider's service is favored, because they can use this advantage to drive users away from competing products and to ones belong to the Internet provider,” Choffnes added. “And because the competition is limited by the Internet service they are given, in some cases there may nothing they can do to regain equal footing."

Sprint, for its part, justly flatly denied to me and other reporters that this was even happening, though Choffnes stands by his data. Here's the point where an objective regulator would come in, investigate the issue, and then punish companies if necessary. Of course in the Ajit Pai era that's simply not going to happen. Under the FCC's 2015 rules, ISPs had to be transparent about what they were doing so users knew what kind of connection they were buying. With those rules now dead, the FCC has effectively made transparency a largely voluntary affair that ISPs can ignore at their leisure.

That's where Choffnes comes in. He's trying to at least hold ISPs accountable by using crowdsourced data to clarify what ISPs are up to. But with the news of Sprint throttling Skype coming and going without a single comment from anybody in a position to actually do anything about it, it's not clear if knowing alone is going to be enough.

Again, Sprint throttling Skype for a third of its users certainly isn't the end of the world. But it remains a precedent you should be worried about. ISPs are desperately trying to be on their best behavior right now ahead of next February's net neutrality lawsuits against the FCC. They don't want to add any fuel to the fire (well, aside from that Verizon throttling California firefighters for no reason thing). But should the FCC and ISPs win their court battle, you're going to see a lot more "creative" efforts to impose costly new barriers to access, and less and less transparency with the end user about what's happening.

Things will get a little less crooked in part of Alabama in the near future. Sheriffs will no longer be able be able to personally benefit from federal funds meant to feed the state's prisoners.

More than one sheriff in the state had been caught starving prisoners while picking up nice things for themselves with the leftover money. Weirdly, this is all legal under state law, which allows personal use of unused food funds by sheriffs running the state's jails.

Three consecutive sheriffs in Morgan County found themselves in legal trouble for taking advantage of state law. One was hit with a consent decree forbidding county sheriffs from taking home food funds. The next two sheriffs decided to ignore this legal agreement, with one of them earning the nickname "Sheriff Corndog" from his underfed prisoners. The third in line -- continuing a 16-year tradition of ignoring the 2001 consent decree -- raised the bar on county sheriff legal troubles by giving $160,000 in federal food funds to a corrupt car dealership run by a former felon.

A sheriff in Etowah County also brought down the heat on himself by taking home $250,000 a year in federal food funds that were supposed to be used to feed inmates. The $750,000 that managed to be accounted for is likely only a small part of the sheriff's total take. According to public records, Sheriff Todd Entrekin managed to acquire $1.7 million in property while officially taking home a $93,000 salary.

In Cullman County, this loopholicious law has been closed. As Zuri Davis of Reason reports, voters have decided one local sheriff won't be making himself richer at the expense of the inmates he oversees. Strangely enough, this amendment -- which passed with 88% of the vote -- had the support of the local sheriff.

Sheriff Matt Gentry decried the practice as ruining the reputation of Alabama sheriffs. He instead touted support for the Sheriff's Food Bill, or Local Amendment 1. The amendment sought to add a constitutional protection to make the use of the funds more transparent. Under the amendment, the money would be placed in a public account and all excess funds would go toward law enforcement operations like deputy equipment. The account would also be subject to an audit by the state every two years.

It's good to see someone recognize a problem and do something to fix it, rather than view the problem as an opportunity to be taken advantage of. This doesn't change anything anywhere else in the state. Certainly the Alabama legislature is aware of the negative press but it still seems reluctant to amend the law that allows local law enforcement officials to behave in a manner befitting crooked cops. Until it does, sheriffs will continue to make themselves look bad and legislators look complicit.

Visit DontWreckThe.Net to learn about the EU Copyright Directive »

As you'll recall, back in September, the EU Parliament voted to approve a draft of the EU Copyright Directive, despite it including a bunch of very problematic pieces -- mainly Article 13's mandatory filters and Article 11's snippet tax. What the EU Parliament approved was not the same as what the EU Council of member states had approved, nor what the EU Commission had approved, so now those three bodies have been working on a "trilogue" process to sync up the various versions and come up with a master version that will have to be approved again by all three institutions. There has been a lot of activity in the past few weeks -- and Italy's change of government has made things a bit interesting.

As the Trilogue discussions have continued, we've teamed up with a bunch of platforms and startup organizations both in the EU and the US to make some suggestions. It would probably be best for the internet to drop both Article 11 and Article 13 altogether, but barring that, we have a pretty detailed list of suggestions over at DontWreckThe.Net. As you hopefully see, just by looking at the long list of fixes we're requesting, there are still huge problems with the proposals. Furthermore, given that many of the platforms we've partnered with in developing this list are the ones who will be hardest hit, we're hopeful that the various officials debating this will take notice. Even more important: this is not just about those platforms, but everyone who uses them. If you use Reddit or Patreon or Vimeo, these rules are going to have a massive impact on how you'll be able to interact with the internet going forward. Also, we're asking other organizations to join this project, so if you run an organization that is worried about the impact of Articles 11 or 13, please reach out to us through the site.

And please, EU officials, don't wreck the net.