As we noted recently, one of the most worrying aspects of corporate sovereignty chapters in trade agreements is the chilling effect that they can have on future legislation. That's something that the supporters of this investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanism never talk about. What they do say, though, is that corporate sovereignty cannot force governments to change existing laws. A recent defeat for Canada before an ISDS tribunal proves that's not the case:

An international trade tribunal has ordered Ottawa to pay ExxonMobil and another oil company $17.3 million, following a complaint that the companies were required to spend money in Newfoundland and Labrador on research and development.

The case was brought by ExxonMobil using the corporate sovereignty provisions in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and concerned another agreement, called the Atlantic Accord. As CBC News explains:

Under the terms of the Atlantic Accord, a federal-provincial agreement on oil development first negotiated in 1985, oil companies are required to support petroleum-focused research and development in Newfoundland and Labrador, as part of its local benefits package.

In other words, three decades ago, Canadian politicians had passed a research and development package, one of whose measures was designed to boost local employment -- exactly the kind of thing that voters want their politicians to do. But the ISDS tribunal ruled that under NAFTA, this was not permitted, and awarded substantial damages to ExxonMobil for being required to comply with the Atlantic Accord. But it gets worse:

Unless the governments of Canada and Newfoundland and Labrador agree to change the R&D legislation, Ottawa could be on the hook for continued damages. The federal government is responsible because NAFTA is an agreement between sovereign nations.

That is, the corporate sovereignty provisions in NAFTA are being used to force the Canadian government to change existing and long-standing legislation -- something that ISDS fans assure us never happens.

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Both a cop and his prime homicide suspect have walked away free men. But it's the cop who's gathered most of the attention. Donald Love was picked up by Milwaukee police on August 14, 2013, after his infant son died in a local hospital of traumatic brain injuries. Love wasn't just a "person of interest." He was alone in the house with the infant at the time the injury occurred.

Love was interrogated by detective Rodolfo Gomez Jr. This questioning was recorded. The highlight reel, as it were, doesn't show much interrogation. It shows Gomez attacking the restrained suspect on two separate occasions. Love was punched, kicked and jabbed in the eye with Gomez's thumb. The latter -- and more excruciating "interaction" (caution: the video hosted here contains some very unnerving screaming) -- occurred during Gomez's "follow-up questioning," and appears to have been provoked by Love's justifiably angry yelling.

A jury acquitted Love of all charges more than year later. Another jury also acquitted Gomez of all charges, despite watching him assault a handcuffed man. (via The Honest Courtesan)

How do you defend someone against charges related to a videotaped beating? Well, you do everything you can to cast the person handing out the beating as the real victim. His defense lawyers helped, but they had to fight an uphill battle against both damning video footage and statements made by Gomez himself, most of which gave the indication that he had no idea how to handle a potentially dangerous individual.

First, Gomez admitted he said something he knew would provoke an angry response. Then he claimed his short-term memory went all haywire in the heat of the moment.

Even after Gomez punched Love hard in the face, he still refused orders to sit and stop resisting, Gomez told the jury, causing the veteran detective to fear for his life.

Love finally settled down when the lieutenant responded to yelling in the interrogation room and helped Gomez gain control of Love. Both detectives then left the room, but Gomez continued to monitor Love from just outside the doorway.

It was at that point, Gomez said, that he realized he had handcuffed Love earlier.

"I had forgotten I had handcuffed Mr. Love," Gomez said.

"Forgotten." And twice at that. Gomez got a very good look at the "forgotten" handcuffs during the first beatdown, having twisted Love's free arm up against his body and bent him over the interrogation room desk. But he entered the room moments later and acted as though Love's left hand was unrestrained.

On top of that, he stated that he "provoked" an angry reaction -- something he probably wouldn't have done if he thought Love was completely unrestrained. If he actually thought Love wasn't cuffed to the wall -- and went ahead with his plan to aggravate his detainee -- then Gomez was either acting recklessly or just looking for an excuse to start swinging.

Gomez's memory continued to leak.

Gomez said the door behind was closed and locked, which made retreat difficult. But even if the door had been open, he said, he would not have tried to leave the room.

"I'd be giving my back to a killer," Gomez said.

A lieutenant testified that when responding to the room after hearing yelling, the door was open.

And with all of that (and the detective's past misconduct), the jury still found Gomez credible enough to acquit. The key to this unlikely turn of events? The skillful manipulation of time. A handful of guys in black suits walking down through a parking lot is almost completely uninteresting. But adjust the speed a bit and suddenly you have something much more dramatic. The same sort of thing happens in real life. A video which apparently shows a detective beating an unarmed, restrained man becomes a horrific incident in which a detective bravely survives a potential beating at the hands of an unarmed, restrained man.

A juror from the trial said a defense expert's frame-by-frame examination of the incident's key moments put things in a different light and convinced jurors that Gomez reasonably believed he was in danger and used only the force necessary to establish control over Deron Love, a suspect in the death of his infant son.

"We were able to convince the last juror, reluctantly, that still frame by still frame Gomez's last three closed fist windups became open palm motions to control Love's arms, and his final leg strike misses the mark."

Gardner said the expert's explanation, while moving single frames from the video back and forth in a slide show, helped convince jurors that Love was resisting Gomez's commands to sit down or relax his body, even if Love didn't actively fight back.

It also helps to have a jury pool sufficiently awed by the dangers of police work that they can swallow that last sentence without immediately vomiting in disbelief. And also willing to grant positive points for blows that didn't quite connect. Apparently, you can "resist" without "actively fighting back," and you'll know that you're "resisting" when the police officer begins raining blows on your handcuffed body.

"Turning your back on a killer" or no, Gomez had other options. Love was restrained. He could have left the room. He could have called for help. He could have simply walked as far back as needed to still "communicate" with Love without being "resisted" at the same time. The excuse that he "forgot" he had handcuffed Love might work once, but it doesn't explain his actions the second time, after he could plainly see the handcuff attached to Love's wrist.

Gomez, for the time being, is no longer a Milwaukee PD employee. This "problem" may be swiftly remedied now that he's been acquitted. Love has also been cleared of all charges, but he's headed right back into the courtroom with a newly-filed civil rights suit against Gomez. Just as this won't be Love's first tango with Gomez, it also won't be Gomez's first appearance under the heading "DEFENDANT" in a civil rights suit. A 2008 lawsuit stemming from a no-knock warrant obtained by Det. Gomez ended up this way.

Gomez, now a homicide detective, sought qualified immunity. The district judge denied the request, a decision that was upheld Wednesday by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Gomez was recently the subject of internal investigation after his arrest on a domestic violence claim. No criminal charges were issued.

In its 20-page opinion, the court found that "If believed, (the sister's sworn) deposition testimony would establish that Officer Gomez knowingly or with reckless disregard for the truth made false or misleading statements in the affidavit..."

In denying Gomez qualified immunity, the court noted that Gomez's affidavit implied the [suspects] kept weapons as a part of a criminal enterprise, when the sister's tip suggested nothing of the sort, that he knew the sister was on bad terms with Sharon Betker and hadn't been in the Franklin home for five years, and didn't try to nail down some information that came from her as hearsay.

"Statements that are both unreliable and uncorroborated do not support probable cause," the court found.

Former Det. Gomez, ladies and gentlemen: a cop who hits restrained men and unrestrained women, but somehow manages to land on his feet. And wrapped up in his tale of habitual abuse is the "power" of video -- an objective, unblinking eye that can be made to "take sides" when properly manipulated. A recording of a disputed event is better than hearsay and conjecture but, in reality, is often nothing more than a useful idiot. It only records. It offers images, not insight. With enough skill, any recording can be used to present both sides of the same argument. "Seeing is believing," as they say, but the use of controversial tactics, like those used in Gomez's defense, can change what is seen and alter beliefs.

Getting on a rocket to Mars has been a dream for space exploration enthusiasts for decades. However, there are a lot of engineering problems that still need solutions before people can safely get to Mars (and back, unless you favor the one-way trip strategy). Optimists might expect humans to walk on Mars sometime in the 2030s, but realistically, there would have to be a significant change in the way deep space exploration is funded for that to happen. If you're just entering 5th grade or so, maybe you can consider a career on Mars. But perhaps you shouldn't put all your eggs in one basket.

• Boeing has a promotional video for its SLS (Space Launch System) rocket that could get people to Mars. Boeing suggests that six spacecraft elements need to be built, and two of them are already in the works. Getting those other four pieces might be difficult to do without several billion dollars more funding. [url]
• British astrophysicist Maggie Lieu wants to be the first woman to have a baby on Mars. She's a 24yo PhD candidate who is also on the shortlist for the Mars One project, so it's possible that her wish could come true. It sounds more than a bit risky to give birth on another planet, but it's been done in Antarctica.... [url]
• For a manned mission to Mars to work, an extremely sophisticated life support system will have to be developed to shield astronauts from radiation and keep bodies from atrophying in microgravity. When astronauts who have been in space for months come back to earth, there are plenty of able-bodied people to help them re-adjust to earth's full gravity -- but that's not really an option for landing on Mars. [url]

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

This isn't a huge surprise, even as it's ridiculously problematic, but the jury in the "Blurred Lines" copyright case has ruled that Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams infringed on Marvin Gaye's song, and thus now owe $7.54 million. I had guessed that this is how the jury would rule solely because it was possible to play Blurred Lines lyrics over the Gaye composition and have it sound like it would fit -- and it seemed unlikely that the jury would understand enough about the specifics of copyright to not think that magically made it infringing. Of course, the fact is there are tons of songs that you could play over tons of other songs. That's why there are even multiple different comedy routines making this point.

The jury seems to understand that Thicke and Williams didn't do this on purpose -- even though there was a claim made that they said they wanted a song with "the feel" of a Marvin Gaye song. In fact, they said it wasn't willful infringement. That means that, according to this jury, merely being inspired by a genre and making a song with the same sort of "feel" is infringing. That's not how copyright law is supposed to work at all. One hopes that Thicke and Williams appeal and the appeals court slaps down this ridiculousness. Either way, this accidental infringement is worth a pretty penny, according to the jury:

Ultimately, a jury comprised of five women and three men heard dueling opinions regarding "Blurred Lines" and decided to order Thicke and Williams to pay $4 million in copyright damages plus profits attributable to infringement, which for Thicke was determined to be $1.8 million and $1.6 million.

That's less than the $25 million that the Gaye Estate was seeking, but still. That's crazy. It's likely that Thicke and Williams will appeal, and one hopes that they'll go through with it, rather than settle just to end things. This is a horrific copyright ruling that suggests that songs that merely have a similar feel may be infringing. It's a really dangerous precedent that completely undermines basic copyright law. In the meantime, the Gaye estate is asking for a permanent injunction on the sale of the song, which is just a negotiating tactic to pressure Thicke/Williams into settling...

Back in the summer of 2013 as the various "Five Eyes" countries were still reeling from the initial Snowden disclosures, New Zealand's Prime Minister John Key promised to resign if it was ever proven that the GCSB (New Zealand's equivalent to the NSA) had engaged in mass surveillance of New Zealanders -- but with some caveats. He later said that he meant if it was proven that there was illegal surveillance going on. But of course, what's legal can vary based on who's in charge. Either way, late last year there were Snowden documents that proved GCSB regularly scooped up data on New Zealanders, and Key reacted to it by calling Glenn Greenwald "a loser." Not quite the resignation you might have expected.

Then, of course, last week there were further revelations of GCSB doing mass surveillance on a bunch of neighboring countries. In response to that, a former director of the GCSB, Bruce Ferguson, admitted that of course the GCSB was engaged in mass surveillance, but he thinks it's okay because it "discards items it cannot have."

"The whole method of surveillance these days, is sort of a mass collection situation – individualized: that is mission impossible.”

And, later:

"You cannot these days just individually select people ... you put out a big net, catch stuff, you throw out the stuff you don't want ... and you keep the stuff you do want."

In other words, the GCSB does mass surveillance. So what is Prime Minister John Key now saying about this? Well, first, he will no longer promise that mass surveillance isn't taking place, because of course he can't. Furthermore, he now says that even if mass surveillance is shown he won't resign.

And that leads up to an interview done by Radio New Zealand with Key, in which he just starts tap dancing like crazy:

Interviewer: “Nicky Hager’s revelations late last week . . . have stoked fears that New Zealanders’ communications are being indiscriminately caught in that net. . . . The Prime Minister, John Key, has in the past promised to resign if it were found to be mass surveillance of New Zealanders . . . Earlier, Mr. Key was unable to give me an assurance that mass collection of communications from New Zealanders in the Pacific was not taking place.”

PM Key: “No, I can’t. I read the transcript [of former GCSB Director Bruce Ferguson’s interview] – I didn’t hear the interview – but I read the transcript, and you know, look, there’s a variety of interpretations – I’m not going to critique–”

Interviewer: “OK, I’m not asking for a critique. Let’s listen to what Bruce Ferguson did tell us on Friday:”

Ferguson: “The whole method of surveillance these days, is sort of a mass collection situation – individualized: that is mission impossible.”

Interviewer: “And he repeated that several times, using the analogy of a net which scoops up all the information. . . . I’m not asking for a critique with respect to him. Can you confirm whether he is right or wrong?”

Key: “Uh, well I’m not going to go and critique the guy. And I’m not going to give a view of whether he’s right or wrong” . . . .

Interviewer: “So is there mass collection of personal data of New Zealand citizens in the Pacific or not?”

Key: “I’m just not going to comment on where we have particular targets, except to say that where we go and collect particular information, there is always a good reason for that.”

As Glenn Greenwald points out, this is quite an evolution:

From “I will resign if it’s shown we engage in mass surveillance of New Zealanders” to “I won’t say if we’re doing it” and “I won’t quit either way despite my prior pledges.”

Being a politician, it seems, is always making sure you can tap dance around the fact that you'll make pledges you never intend to keep.

Insanely popular game Minecraft is known for a lot of things. It's a fantastic creative outlet and the digital sandbox of youngsters' dreams, for instance. The game has also been known to raise the ire of unrelated companies who somehow think all that creativity by gamers is something that can be sued over. It's known for amazing user-generated content, including games within games and replicas of entire cities. The nation of Turkey is known for very different things. It's a country that absolutely loves to censor stuff, for instance. And, thanks to recent developments, Turkey is also known as a great place to get a front-row look at the incredible violence done by the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

But the Turkish government has a plan to keep its youngsters from witnessing too much violence: it is calling for a Minecraft ban.

Turkish websites Hürriyet Daily News and LeaderGamer report that the country's Family and Social Policies Ministry is now calling for Minecraft to be banned in the region. The ministry's report has been sent to the legal affairs department, along with instructions for the legal process for the ban to begin. Ultimately, whether the game is banned or not will be decided in the Turkish courts.

When it comes to the issue of violence corrupting the national youth, one would really think that the Turkish government might have bigger fish to fry than a sandbox game in which battling fictional and non-human monsters is almost an aside from the actual gameplay mechanics. The point of the game is to build, to be creative, to express. For a Turkish government with the barbarians quite literally at its doorstep to call for censorship of one of the more benign gaming titles in recent memory would be comical if it were parody. But it isn't.

Nor are some of the hilariously contradictory claims to Ministry made in its report.

Although the game can be seen as encouraging creativity in children by letting them build houses, farmlands and bridges, mobs [hostile creatures] must be killed in order to protect these structures. In short, the game is based on violence," the report stated (via Hürriyet Daily News). The ministry feels as though children may confuse the in-game world with the real world, and even begin torturing animals, oblivious to the pain they're inflicting. The report added that not only would Minecraft cause "social isolation," but that the online component might lead to internet bullying.

Ah, of course! It's a video game, so it has to create isolation amongst players, except it's a video game, so it must also create bullying problems because of the all the interacting going on between those isolated players. Don't think about that sentence for too long or your brain will storm out of your noggin in protest.

Turkey may be censorship happy, but going after Minecraft over violence concerns? C'mon guys...

Services like Uber and Lyft have been disrupting the taxi industry, and plenty more industries, too. In fact, they are the progenitors of a new and growing "gig economy". But what's it like to actually drive for one? Podcast co-host Dennis Yang has been trying his hand as a driver for both services, and in this episode he shares his experiences and sparks off a discussion about the future of this economy.

Follow the Techdirt Podcast on Soundcloud, subscribe via iTunes, or grab the RSS feed. You can also keep up with all the latest episodes right here on Techdirt.

For years now, customers have been begging HBO to offer a standalone streaming service. Instead, customers got HBO Go, a streaming service only accessible if you can prove you have traditional cable. HBO Go is part of the cable and broadcast industry's "TV Everywhere" initiative -- or the industry's misguided belief that you can thwart cord cutting by building giant walled gardens firmly tethered to traditional cable. Of course this does nothing to actually thwart cord cutting, and only drives customers unwilling to pay cable's endlessly-soaring rates to piracy.

For many years, HBO was hesitant to offer a truly stand alone streaming service, fearing disruption of the cozy, promotion and subsidy-laden relationships it has with cable operators. Late last year HBO finally announced it would offer a standalone HBO service, but didn't provide any hard details.

The good news? HBO has formally announced that it's launching "HBO Now" next month for a $15 monthly fee. The bad news (for some)? The service is going to be an Apple exclusive at launch, meaning that while you can access the service via iOS devices, you're out of luck if you'd like to use the service on a game console, Roku player, Chromecast, or any of the myriad other competing streaming devices. And while you will be able to watch HBO Now content via the new website and any old browser, you can apparently only register for the service using Apple's HBO Now app and an iOS device.

This resulted in many people correctly noting customers are being herded from one walled garden to another:

HBO used to be cable only, now it's cable and Apple exclusive. Is that really an improvement? http://t.co/ExSUMumDPg pic.twitter.com/1NKqrtV7Ei

— Richard Lawler (@rjcc) March 9, 2015

The press release can't be bothered to mention this, but the exclusive is only for three months, after which HBO Now will be made available on all the usual platforms. Cable providers may also jump in and pitch the service, though many will likely worry they'll only act to cannibalize existing cable subscribers. In other words, we're not exactly talking about the end of the world here, and HBO Now is still part of a welcome sea change toward more standalone streaming options in 2015. If you're still annoyed, just pretend Apple users are beta-testing the service and ironing out the wrinkles ahead of your arrival this summer.

Still, while the exclusive surely nets Apple a nice cash payout, being greeted by a giant wall isn't a great first HBO Now brand impression for Android, Xbox, Playstation, Chromecast or Roku users. Being greeted by that same giant wall also isn't going to do much to keep the "most pirated TV show on television" from being downloaded via BitTorrent. HBO Now's still a welcome change, it's just a shame its market entry has to be polluted by unnecessary, annoying boundaries just to fatten Apple's wallet.

The latest big report from the Intercept is about an annual hackathon, put on by the CIA (which the NSA and others participate in) where they try to hack encrypted systems, with a key focus on Apple products. The CIA calls this its annual "Trusted Computing Base Jamboree." The whole point: how can the CIA undermine trusted computing systems. If you can't see that, it notes:

As in past years, the Jamboree will be an informal and interactive conference with an emphasis on presentations that provide important information to developers trying to circumvent or exploit new security capabilities.

In other words, rather than seeking to better protect Americans by making sure the security products they use remain secure, this event was about making everyone less safe -- in particular Apple users. The report notes how researchers have undermined Xcode so that the intelligence community can inject backdoors into lots of apps and to reveal private keys (apparently not caring how that makes everyone less secure):

A year later, at the 2012 Jamboree, researchers described their attacks on the software used by developers to create applications for Apple’s popular App Store. In a talk called “Strawhorse: Attacking the MacOS and iOS Software Development Kit,” a presenter from Sandia Labs described a successful “whacking” of Apple’s Xcode — the software used to create apps for iPhones, iPads and Mac computers. Developers who create Apple-approved and distributed apps overwhelmingly use Xcode, a free piece of software easily downloaded from the App Store.

The researchers boasted that they had discovered a way to manipulate Xcode so that it could serve as a conduit for infecting and extracting private data from devices on which users had installed apps that were built with the poisoned Xcode. In other words, by manipulating Xcode, the spies could compromise the devices and private data of anyone with apps made by a poisoned developer — potentially millions of people.

The risks for nearly anyone using an Apple product should become pretty clear when you realize what this "whacked" Xcode can do:

• “Entice” all Mac applications to create a “remote backdoor” allowing undetected access to an Apple computer.
• Secretly embed an app developer’s private key into all iOS applications. (This could potentially allow spies to impersonate the targeted developer.)
• “Force all iOS applications” to send data from an iPhone or iPad back to a U.S. intelligence “listening post.”
• Disable core security features on Apple devices.

While the Jamboree appears mostly focused on Apple products, that's not all. Microsoft's BitLocker encryption was also a target:

Also presented at the Jamboree were successes in the targeting of Microsoft’s disk encryption technology, and the TPM chips that are used to store its encryption keys. Researchers at the CIA conference in 2010 boasted about the ability to extract the encryption keys used by BitLocker and thus decrypt private data stored on the computer. Because the TPM chip is used to protect the system from untrusted software, attacking it could allow the covert installation of malware onto the computer, which could be used to access otherwise encrypted communications and files of consumers.

Again, this suggests a serious problem when you have the same government that's supposed to "protect us" in charge of also hacking into systems. With today's modern technology, the communications technologies that "bad people" use are the same ones that everyone uses. The intelligence community has two choices: protect everyone, or undermine the security of everyone. It has chosen the latter.

“The U.S. government is prioritizing its own offensive surveillance needs over the cybersecurity of the millions of Americans who use Apple products,” says Christopher Soghoian, the principal technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union. “If U.S. government-funded researchers can discover these flaws, it is quite likely that Chinese, Russian and Israeli researchers can discover them, too. By quietly exploiting these flaws rather than notifying Apple, the U.S. government leaves Apple’s customers vulnerable to other sophisticated governments.”

There's been a lot of talk lately about the growing divide between the intelligence community and Silicon Valley. As more stories come out of projects to undermine those companies and the trust they've built with the public, it's only going to get worse.

As we've noted countless times, diminishing the impact of piracy isn't exactly rocket science. Give consumers what they want at a reasonable price, and more often than not you'll be able to minimize piracy's impact on your business model. But as we've seen just as often, that logic is a bridge too far for many entertainment industry executives, who've relentlessly instituted all manner of more "creative" solutions to try and retain legacy power in shifting markets. Why give consumers what they want when you can insult, cajole, sue and otherwise harass your paying customers, then blame everything but your own rigid thinking?

The latest ingenious solution comes courtesy of India's Tamil Film Producer's Council (TFPC), which is considering a plan to stop releasing movies entirely in the misguided belief that this is going to somehow stop people from pirating. Apparently, the logic goes, if you stop releasing films for three months, the lack of things to pirate (ignoring a century of previous content, of course) will magically stop piracy forever! Ingenious!:

"Piracy will automatically stop when there's no content. When we stop film releases, say for three months, the movie pirates will go out of business. We are looking into this option because film producers have suffered heavily in the last 24 months," (said) Kalaipuli S Thanu, TFPC president."

One, there's just a blistering amount of hubris involved in believing that you can turn an entire culture's art creation on and off like some kind of spigot. Like they were scolding a kitten, you'll recall the RIAA often used to state that if people didn't stop pirating content, creators would just stop making music -- as if the business side of the equation could simply wipe all art creation from the face of the earth. That some still think they can unilaterally stop art creation as a "punishment" for piracy perfectly exemplifies the distorted thinking responsible for the global entertainment industry's ongoing struggles.

Two, the report notes that just a three-month ban on film production would impact the release of some 36 Indian films, which would then be harmed by the fact that they'd be shoveled in a more crowded release window. In addition to harming content creators, TFPC can't apparently understand that stopping the release of all films hurts its paying customers. Local filmmaker "Cheran" has a different suggested course of action, involving crazy concepts like modifying release windows and (gasp) lowering prices:

"If original DVD of a new film is available for Rs.50, why would anyone think of buying a pirated copy?" (asked Indian Filmmaker Cheran. "We all know the quality of pirated prints. I've sold nearly Rs.10 lakh (or around $16,800) DVDs of my film in the first two days," he said."I don't mind if one person buys and shows it to his entire family. As long as people don't watch pirated version of any film, I'm happy to release my films on DVD. Most households today have access to digital TV, so new films can be released via direct-to-home medium as well," he added."

Hopefully somebody at the TFPC hears Cheran's outlandish suggestions above the din of indignant entitlement.