Ebola is scary. Absolutely. It's concerning that Ebola vaccines and treatments have not been developed as quickly as other pharmaceuticals, but the current outbreak is certainly speeding up research efforts. However, the economics of developing treatments for various ailments isn't always rational, given the examples of the wild success of the ALS ice bucket challenge and the failures of its knockoffs. If you need a reminder of other deadly diseases that still plague the world, here are just a few links on the topic.

• The US govt has stopped (temporarily?) funding for "gain-of-function (GOF)" experiments that could make viruses more pathogenic. This policy doesn't stop amateurs and other researchers (or Nature itself!) from creating more deadly mutations, but it could slow down the progress of developing ways to fight off certain diseases and understanding how some pathogens (eg influenza) might mutate. [url]
• A number of diseases pose far larger threats than Ebola does. There has been a re-emergence of measles, pertussis (or whooping cough) and antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The flu still kills thousands of people every year. [url]
• The WHO warns that multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) is a global threat to human health. The US saw a bit under 10,000 cases of TB in 2013 and 1.4% of those were drug resistant. Worldwide, 9 million people caught TB last year, and about 3.5% of those were resistant to antibiotics. [url]

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

A couple months ago, someone sent over an interesting Virginia Law Review article from Alli Orr Larsen about how the Supreme Court is increasingly listening to amicus curiae briefs (friend of the court briefs) from parties not actually engaged in lawsuits -- and at times that's problematic because the briefs are not always, you know, factual. We frequently write about amicus curiae briefs, detailing where we agree or disagree with them, leading to some interesting discussions. When done well, these briefs really can add valuable insight. But, sometimes they allow some ridiculous claims to make it into the discussion. As the abstract of Larsen's paper notes:

The trouble with amicus facts, I argue, is that today anyone can claim to be a factual expert. With the Internet, factual information is easily found and cheaply manufactured. Moreover, the amicus curiae has evolved significantly from its origin as an impartial “friend of the court.” Facts submitted by amici are now funneled through the screen of advocacy. The result is that the Court is inundated with eleventh-hour, untested, advocacy-motivated claims of factual expertise. And the Justices are listening. This article looks at the instances in recent years when a Supreme Court Justice cites an amicus for a statement of fact. It describes the way the brief, rather than the underlying factual source, is cited as authority and the failure of the parties to act as an adequate check.

That's definitely interesting, and certainly opens up the Supreme Court to responding to "truthiness"-type arguments. Given that, it's perhaps not that surprising that Stephen Colbert, the man who coined "truthiness" in the very first episode of his (soon to be ending) TV show, did a segment on Larsen's law review article a few weeks ago.

In that segment -- which we'd embed if Colbert/Comedy Central offered SSL embeds (they don't appear to) -- he calls out a few of the examples from the paper, including an amicus brief filed by the Library Copyright Alliance in the Kirtsaeng case, concerning the potential impact on foreign-printed books now found in US libraries (the fear was that if the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Wiley, it would mean that merely lending out foreign-printed books would potentially be infringing). Thankfully, the Court went the other way, but Larsen's paper calls out that the amicus brief from the libraries cited 200 million foreign-printed books from a blog and the blog in question is "no longer available."

Jonathan Band, the author of that amicus brief, took offense to his "hero," Stephen Colbert challenging his brief and hit back with an amusing letter that points out that the blog post actually is still available -- it just moved. Also, it was written by a known expert in the field who actually had access to the data necessary to make such an estimate. Still, Band jokingly mocks the whole experience of being mocked by Colbert and hits back with a few more amusing, less persuasive, counterpoints:

But then I realized that you, my hero, were actually criticizing the brief because it cited to a blog post as the source for the fact that U.S. libraries possess 200 million foreign-printed books, and the post was no longer available. Now that I have recovered from the shock and humiliation of this criticism, I offer the following response:

1. What difference does it make if the source can’t be found? This is the perfect example of truthiness. The number we cited sounds right, and we’re a bunch of librarians and librarians never lie.
2. The law professor who wrote the article that pointed out the missing blog post, Allison Orr Larsen, teaches at William & Mary Law School. That’s a silly name for a law school; it’s like Dick & Jane Law School.
3. It’s not our fault that the blog post was moved.
4. The blog post is actually still available in the website’s archive.
5. The person who wrote the blog post, Ed O’Neil, is an expert on the subject, and has access to the catalogues of the collections of every library in the country.
6. Wiley’s lawyers had ample opportunity to challenge the number, but didn’t. In fact, no one has challenged the accuracy of the number.

So, while the issue of the Supreme Court relying on amicus briefs is definitely an interesting one to follow, it appears that Larsen -- and Stephen Colbert -- may have misfired on this particular one.

For some reason, a Michigan Sheriff's Department has gotten itself involved in a sexting incident.

An investigation into "sexting" of photographs between at least 31 teenagers in Rochester Community Schools is expected to take at least two more weeks, an Oakland County Sheriff's captain said Thursday…

Capt. Michael Johnson of the Rochester Hills substation said cell phones confiscated from suspected students — 24 girls and 7 boys, ages 14 to 16 — have been turned over to the department's computer crimes section for forensic review to determine who sent photos, who was photographed, who received them and if they were shared with others.

Similar concerns are being expressed by others in the community.

Meanwhile, an attorney for a Rochester Hills student and another involved in a similar investigation in Romeo schools, said the activity is much more widespread and she has heard the number is likely double that under investigation.

Attorney Shannon Smith said Michigan State Police are investigating reports of about 10 incidents in the Romeo school system unrelated to the Rochester cases.

"This is happening everywhere, it's over the top," Smith said. "I have been contacted by schools and parents elsewhere in Oakland, Macomb and Wayne counties who have found similar photos on their children's cellphones and want to know what to do about it.

The reason for police involvement -- beyond the slim chance that it could net them some cheap child porn busts, thanks to existing laws being applied badly -- is left unstated. Apparently, the discovery of suggestive and/or explicit photos couldn't be left up to the students and their parents to handle. Instead, somebody will need to be punished for something that appears to be incredibly common and often wholly voluntary.

The Oakland County Sheriff's Department has already confiscated 31 phones. "Ten incidents" unrelated to these 31 cases are being investigated by the Michigan State Police. With any luck, these investigations will continue to turn up even more phones, containing more evidence, and so on, until… well, until what, exactly?

Well, possibly until the shock at how common this behavior is passes and is replaced with the logistic realities of the situation, as happened to Chief Deputy Donald Lowe of the Louisa County (VA) Sheriff's Dept.

[L]ouisa County High School was transformed into a crime scene, which it remained for the next month. Police cars sat parked at the school’s entrance, and inside, a few deputies who reported to Lowe began interviewing kids—starting with girls they recognized in the pictures and boys who had followed the accounts. [...] For the most part, the kids were “more than cooperative,” Lowe says. One person would give up 10 names. The next would give up five, and so on.

But pretty soon this got to be a problem. Within an hour, the deputies realized just how common the sharing of nude pictures was at the school. “The boys kept telling us, ‘It’s nothing unusual. It happens all the time,’ ” Lowe recalls. Every time someone they were interviewing mentioned another kid who might have naked pictures on his or her phone, they had to call that kid in for an interview. After just a couple of days, the deputies had filled multiple evidence bins with phones, and they couldn’t see an end to it. Fears of a cabal got replaced by a more mundane concern: what to do with “hundreds of damned phones. I told the deputies, ‘We got to draw the line somewhere or we’re going to end up talking to every teenager in the damned county!’ ”

So, at some point, an arbitrary line will be drawn to end the investigation. Charges may be handed down, if only to justify the use of police resources. High school students on the wrong end of the age of consent may find themselves facing child pornography charges. Students more than an arbitrary number of years removed from the age of subjects of the photos in their possession may end up similarly charged.

The temptation is to handle it as a criminal offense, hence the initial instinct of the Louisa County Sheriff's Dept. to view it as a "cabal" or "ring" before it became apparent that there was no unified, sinister force compelling this prolific creation of explicit photos. But despite realizing that trying to combat this as a criminal venture was fruitless, they still use a ridiculously skewed term when discussing sexting.

“I really don’t like the word sexting,” says Michael Harmony, the commander of the southern-Virginia branch of the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, which covers Louisa County. The term he makes his investigators use is self-production, which is law-enforcement-speak for when minors produce pictures of themselves that qualify as child porn.

Harmony may not be looking to press criminal charges against "self-producers," but phrasing it in this manner makes it clear he's willing to pursue anyone else in possession of this so-called child pornography. Law enforcement entities in other states view it the same way and have pressed (along with concerned parents groups and educators) for the creation of laws that make sexting a crime. In doing so, they have completely subverted common sense.

[I]n most states it is perfectly legal for two 16-year-olds to have sex. But if they take pictures, it’s a matter for the police.

Even if these law enforcement agencies decide there's nothing in this pile of cell phones for them, there's still a chance an aggressive prosecutor will still look for something he or she can make stick -- punishing the children… for the children.

If Lowe made an arrest, the case would land with Rusty McGuire, the main prosecutor for Louisa County. McGuire wouldn’t talk with me about this situation specifically, but he expressed his concern more generally about nude pictures of minors landing in the wrong hands: “What do you do? Turn a blind eye? You’re letting teenagers incite the prurient interest of predators around the country,” fueling a demand that “can only be met by the actual abuse of real children.”

So, to keep teens from being abused by sexual predators, we need to smack them around with the same laws meant to target sexual predators? McGuire pushes a threat that exists only in his mind -- one that turns a mostly consensual and incredibly common act into something that has to be addressed by the full extent of the law ("turn a blind eye?"). Failure to do so tips the balance in favor of child predators, who will only be able to satisfy themselves with actual abusive acts. McGuire was praised here at Techdirt earlier this year for his emphasis on education over enforcement when it comes to students sexting, but a few months removed from the positive Slate profile and he's conjuring up law enforcement's favorite boogeyman to justify law enforcement's intrusion into students' personal lives.

Two different law enforcement entities in Michigan are wading into this situation now, armed with enough info to make headlines but little more. Soon, they'll be swimming in cell phones and trying to find a punishment that fits the supposed crime -- or more accurately, trying to find a crime that meets their desire to see someone punished for a bunch of (mostly) consensual behavior.

AT&T -- a company with one of the most powerful DC lobbying operations around -- is not having a very good month. Just weeks after being fined by both the FTC and the FCC for SMS cramming, the FTC has also filed a lawsuit against AT&T for lying to consumers about "unlimited" data plans, and then... throttling those same plans. The issue was that, while AT&T stopped offering an unlimited data plan, it did promise to grandfather in those users, so long as they didn't change plans. However, it didn't take long for AT&T to start throttling just those users on unlimited plans in an effort to get them to switch away from an unlimited data plan. From the complaint:

In July 2011, Defendant decided to begin reducing the data speed for unlimited mobile data plan customers, a practice commonly known as “data throttling.” Under Defendant’s throttling program, if an unlimited mobile data plan customer exceeds the limit set by Defendant during a billing cycle, Defendant substantially reduces the speed at which the customer’s device receives data for the re st of that customer’s billing cycle.

In October 2011, Defendant began restricting the data speed for unlimited mobile data plan customers whose data usage exceeded thresholds imposed by Defendant. Initially, the data usage threshold at which Defendant throttled customers varied across geographic markets. The threshold was as low as 2 GB per billing cycle in dense markets like New York City and the San Francisco Bay Area.

In March 2012, Defendant modified its data throttling program. Under the revised version, Defendant set a uniform nationwide data usage threshold of 3 GB per billing cycle for devices using Defendant’s 3G network (e.g., iPhone 3G, 3GS, 4) and HSPA+ network (e.g., iPhone 4S), and 5 GB per billing cycle for devices using Defendant’s LTE network (e.g., iPhone 5, 5S, 6, 6 Plus).

Under the original version of Defendant’s throttling program, from October 2011 through February 2012, Defendant capped the data speed at 128 Kbps for customers who exceeded the data usage threshold. Under the revised version, starting in March 2012 and continuing to the present, Defendant caps the data speed at 256 Kbps for customers with 3G and HSPA+ devices and 512 Kbps for customers with LTE devices.

As the FTC notes, this throttling was drastic, decreasing speeds up to 90 to 95% in some cases. The complaint also notes that AT&T knew -- via internal focus group research -- that basically no one thinks a throttled connection is "unlimited."

When it implemented its throttling program, Defendant possessed internal focus group research indicating that its throttling program was inconsistent with consumer understanding of an “unlimited” data plan. The researchers concluded that, “[a]s we’d expect, the reaction to [a proposed da ta throttling program] was negative; consumers felt ‘unlimited should mean unlimited[.’]” The focus group participants thought the idea was “clearly unfair.” The researchers highlighted a consumer’s comment that “[i]t seems a bit misleading to call it Unlimited.” The researchers observed that “[t]he more consumers talked about it the more they didn’t like it.” This led the researchers to advise that “[s]aying less is more, [so] don’t say too much” in marketing communications concerning such a program.

The FTC further points out that the throttling wasn't because of any network concerns, pointing out that it went into effect even when the network had "ample capacity" and its network was not congested. All in all, AT&T throttled 3.5 million different customers more than 25 million times.

It's worth pointing out that the FTC is not saying that AT&T can't throttle -- just that it can't sell a plan as unlimited and then throttle it.

AT&T has already claimed the whole thing is baseless, but its argument doesn't make much sense:

“The FTC’s allegations are baseless and have nothing to do with the substance of our network management program. It’s baffling as to why the FTC would choose to take this action against a company that, like all major wireless providers, manages its network resources to provide the best possible service to all customers, and does it in a way that is fully transparent and consistent with the law and our contracts.

“We have been completely transparent with customers since the very beginning. We informed all unlimited data-plan customers via bill notices and a national press release that resulted in nearly 2,000 news stories, well before the program was implemented. In addition, this program has affected only about 3% of our customers, and before any customer is affected, they are also notified by text message.”

Yeah, but none of that changes the fact that the company sold an "unlimited" plan, and then made it very, very limited.

Of course, it's interesting to see that it's the FTC that filed this particular lawsuit. Some (mainly on the telco/anti-net neutrality side) have been trying to suggest that there's something of an ongoing turf war over regulating telcos lately between the FCC and the FTC. The earlier fine this month was done together, but this was just under the FTC's authority by itself -- though, in its press release, the FTC notes that it "worked closely on this matter with the staff" of the FCC. Just a few months ago, we know that the FCC was investigating Verizon's similar throttling plans -- under a similar theory. The FCC was concerned that Verizon's throttling was targeted based on what data plan customers were on, rather than whether or not they were heavy users on a congested network.

Furthermore, underlying all of that, there's been continuing debate over the larger "net neutrality / open internet" debate, as to whether or not the FCC should be handling it or the FTC -- with some arguing that new rules might limit one or the other's ability to step in. For the most part, those conversations have basically been some parties trying to drive a wedge between the two agencies that may not exist in reality, but it's still worth noting that the two agencies appear to be swimming in similar waters at times, but so far, they seem to be able to work together pretty well.

Last week, Techdirt reported on the humiliating and inevitable climbdown by German publishers in their attempt to force Google to pay for daring to drive traffic to their sites by using snippets from their publications. Despite that abject failure, it seems that the European Union's new commissioner for the digital realm, Günther Oettinger, is thinking about bringing in exactly the same misguided idea across the whole of the European Union, as the Handelsblatt newspaper reports (translation by Pirate Party MEP Julia Reda):

When Google is taking intellectual works from within the EU and using them, then the EU has to protect those works and demand a tax from Google.

Coming from the person who is charged with reforming European copyright, this does not augur well. If Oettinger really thinks that such a tax is the way forward for copyright in the digital age, he is evidently as clueless about the Internet as everyone feared he was, after telling the European Parliament that celebrities storing nude pictures online are stupid.

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Spend enough time staring at redacted documents liberated from secretive government agencies and you're bound to miss a thing or two on the first pass. Chris Soghoian, technologist for the ACLU was browsing through some FBI documents [pdf link] obtained by the EFF and came across this:

In 2007, FBI sent malware via a link intended to look like a Seattle Times/AP story. https://t.co/Se9f0NXGd1 at pages 61-62. — Christopher Soghoian (@csoghoian) October 27, 2014

In 2007, FBI sent malware via a link intended to look like a Seattle Times/AP story. https://www.eff.org/document/fbicipav-08pdf … at pages 61-62.

The documents date back to 2008 and were obtained by the EFF in 2011. What Soghoian caught fills in the blanks in this story from 2007.

FBI agents trying to track the source of e-mailed bomb threats against a Washington high school last month sent the suspect a secret surveillance program designed to surreptitiously monitor him and report back to a government server, according to an FBI affidavit obtained by Wired News...

The software was sent to the owner of an anonymous MySpace profile linked to bomb threats against Timberline High School near Seattle. The code led the FBI to 15-year-old Josh Glazebrook, a student at the school, who on Monday pleaded guilty to making bomb threats, identity theft and felony harassment.

The court documents didn't detail how the FBI managed to install the weaponized payload on Glazebook's computer. The emails obtained by the EFF, however, expose the electronic paper trail.

The CIPAV (Computer and Internet Protocol Address Verifier) made its way to Glazebrook's system via a Myspace message sent by the FBI… which was impersonating the Seattle Times.



Is this really what we want our investigative agencies to be doing in the name of public safety? Soghoian says no.

"The ends don't justify the means. I'm not saying that the FBI shouldn't be investigating people who threaten to bomb schools. But impersonating the media is a really dangerous line to cross."

The Seattle Times isn't too happy, either. Editor Kathy Best says the paper is now "seeking answers" from the FBI. Best's full statement on behalf of the Times is short, but deeply critical of the agency's actions.

We, like you, just learned of this and are seeking answers ourselves from the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s office.

But we are outraged that the FBI misappropriated the name of The Seattle Times to secretly install spyware on the computer of a crime suspect. Not only does that cross the line, it erases it.

Our reputation—and our ability to do our job as a government watchdog—is based on trust. And nothing is more fundamental to that trust than our independence from law enforcement, from government, from corporations and from all other special interests. The FBI’s actions, taken without our knowledge, traded on our reputation and put it at peril.

The FBI has already responded (somewhat) to Best's statement, deploying the usual deferrals to public safety and agency investigatory procedures.

“Every effort we made in this investigation had the goal of preventing a tragic event like what happened at Marysville and Seattle Pacific University. We identified a specific subject of an investigation and used a technique that we deemed would be effective in preventing a possible act of violence in a school setting. Use of that type of technique happens in very rare circumstances and only when there is sufficient reason to believe it could be successful in resolving a threat. We were fortunate that information provided by the public gave us the opportunity to step in to a potentially dangerous situation before it was too late.”

TL; DR: The public should be counting its blessings rather than examining our questionable methods.

Taken at face value, Special Agent Frank Montoya Jr. is basically saying that the FBI will abuse its power (and the reputations of others) whenever it determines such methods to be necessary to achieve its goals. Not really a comforting idea at all, and one that basically confirms Soghoian's suspicions: the ends will be used to justify the means, no matter how potentially damaging the means are.

A year ago, we noted a rather odd statement from President Obama, concerning some of the Snowden leaks. He more or less admitted that with each new report in the press, he then had to go ask the NSA what it was up to. That seemed somewhat concerning to us -- suggesting that the administration wasn't actually aware of what the NSA was up to until after it leaked to the press. Combine that with our more recent story of how James Clapper is basically ignoring the substance of President Obama's called for surveillance reforms, and you might begin to wonder who really runs the show when it comes to surveillance. And, indeed, according to a guy who knows quite well, the national security bureaucracy basically calls the shots, and the President has little to no power. That's the basic summary of an interview with Michael Glennon under the title Vote all you want. The secret government won't change in the Boston Globe.

Glennon is the author of a new book called National Security and Double Government, as summarized by the Boston Globe:

Though it’s a bedrock American principle that citizens can steer their own government by electing new officials, Glennon suggests that in practice, much of our government no longer works that way. In a new book, “National Security and Double Government,” he catalogs the ways that the defense and national security apparatus is effectively self-governing, with virtually no accountability, transparency, or checks and balances of any kind. He uses the term “double government”: There’s the one we elect, and then there’s the one behind it, steering huge swaths of policy almost unchecked. Elected officials end up serving as mere cover for the real decisions made by the bureaucracy.

Glennon cites the example of Obama and his team being shocked and angry to discover upon taking office that the military gave them only two options for the war in Afghanistan: The United States could add more troops, or the United States could add a lot more troops. Hemmed in, Obama added 30,000 more troops.

And, yes, of course, there have long been conspiracy theory books about the "shadow government" and the like, but this one's from someone who actually worked on these issues.

He was legal counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a consultant to various congressional committees, as well as to the State Department. “National Security and Double Government” comes favorably blurbed by former members of the Defense Department, State Department, White House, and even the CIA. And he’s not a conspiracy theorist: Rather, he sees the problem as one of “smart, hard-working, public-spirited people acting in good faith who are responding to systemic incentives”—without any meaningful oversight to rein them in.

Basically, the story that Glennon describes is sort of an exact replica of the concerns that many people have about how lobbyists push legislators in a particular direction. While many like to ascribe nefarious intent to lobbying efforts, the reality is that oftentimes legislators don't fully understand a particular or specific area, and the people they turn to are the lobbyists. And, to some extent that's reasonable. You'd rather that regulators and legislators actually are informed about the issues they're making decisions on, but too often they don't understand those areas at all. The problem is that the "experts" who are readily available aren't unbiased purveyors of truth, but are those who have a very specific agenda.

The same thing is true of government bureaucrats within the intelligence community. They're going to advise elected officials in ways that continually push and expand their own capabilities and powers, rather than limit them. And while what happens with lobbyists is often not directly publicly viewable, there can at least be some public recognition of policies and regulations that come out of those discussions. When it comes to the intelligence community, many of the results are kept entirely secret, so there's basically no pushback and no "other side" heard. The intelligence community acts as secret lobbyists for the expansion of the surveillance state, and the government basically says "okay." And that doesn't even begin to go down the road of recognizing how much of this "expansion" of the surveillance state also happens to massively benefit the private corporations that former intelligence officials jump to right after leaving the government. Glennon covers all that and more:

It hasn’t been a conscious decision....Members of Congress are generalists and need to defer to experts within the national security realm, as elsewhere. They are particularly concerned about being caught out on a limb having made a wrong judgment about national security and tend, therefore, to defer to experts, who tend to exaggerate threats. The courts similarly tend to defer to the expertise of the network that defines national security policy.

The presidency itself is not a top-down institution, as many people in the public believe, headed by a president who gives orders and causes the bureaucracy to click its heels and salute. National security policy actually bubbles up from within the bureaucracy. Many of the more controversial policies, from the mining of Nicaragua’s harbors to the NSA surveillance program, originated within the bureaucracy. John Kerry was not exaggerating when he said that some of those programs are “on autopilot.”

And the end result is basically that elected officials don't really have the power to do anything, even if they're technically "in power."

I think the American people are deluded... that the institutions that provide the public face actually set American national security policy. They believe that when they vote for a president or member of Congress or succeed in bringing a case before the courts, that policy is going to change. Now, there are many counter-examples in which these branches do affect policy.... But the larger picture is still true—policy by and large in the national security realm is made by the concealed institutions.

All the more reason why Snowden's revelations were so important. They've helped expose just a tiny fraction of these policies being decided in near total secrecy by the intelligence community to further its own agenda -- leading to some much needed sunlight, finally forcing at least a tiny bit of debate into that corner of the world that thrives on being able to expand in secret.

This article has been out for a few weeks now, but I've finally had a chance to read through the whole thing. Louis Menard, over at the New Yorker, has a long piece on just how messed up copyright laws are today, going over many of the same grounds we have (for nearly two decades). The piece itself is a sort of book review of Peter Baldwin's new The Copyright Wars: Three Centuries of Trans-Atlantic Battle, but basically repeats the main point: copyright law as it is today really doesn't make much sense. The first half of the article is a great look at the problems of copyright law, but unfortunately, the second half of the article goes off the rails by leaping on familiar and misleading tropes about why people feel the way they do about copyright. Still, the first half covers a number of copyright's problems quite well.

Among other things, it takes on the massive orphan works problem:

As it is, few creations outlive their creators. Of the 187,280 books published between 1927 and 1946, only 2.3 per cent were still in print in 2002. But, since there is no “use it or lose it” provision in copyright law, they are all still under copyright today. Patry, in his recent book, “How to Fix Copyright,” notes that ninety-five per cent of Motown recordings are no longer available. Nevertheless, you can’t cover or imitate or even sample them without paying a licensing fee—despite the fact that your work is not competing in the marketplace with the original, since the original is no longer for sale....

In the case of Motown, at least you know whom to call. In the case of many books and photographs, the rights holders are unknown; in other cases, it’s expensive to track down the heirs or the legatees or the firms, possibly no longer in existence, to whom the copyright belongs. And so, for fear of being sued and having their work pulped or otherwise erased from the universe, people avoid the risk. Patry says that the BBC has a million hours of broadcasts in its archives that cannot be used, because no one knows who holds the rights.

But much of the article talks about how, even if many of these debates have gone on for decades, the internet has really brought the problems into stark contrast:

Before the Internet, the social cost of this obstacle was minimal. Only a few people had the time and the inclination to travel to where they could see or listen to archived broadcasts. But today, when everything can be made available to the entire world at minimal expense, it seems absurd to hold enormous amounts of content hostage to the threat of legal action from the odd descendant. “That a vast existing cultural patrimony, already paid for and amortized, sits locked behind legal walls, hostage to outmoded notions of property, when at the flick of a switch it could belong to all humanity—that is little short of grotesque, ” Baldwin concludes. Yet the odd descendant has the law on her side. She has the power to pulp.

The article makes some really great points, but also dips into some unfortunate claims. It's particularly disappointing that Menard trots out the whole "Hollywood v. Silicon Valley" trope in simplified caricatures:

Let’s call the first type of business Hollywood and the second type Silicon Valley. Hollywood, along with the music industry and the publishing industry, which are the other major analog-era corporate interests, makes money by producing and distributing content. Silicon Valley makes money by aggregating other people’s content. Hollywood fears pirates; Silicon Valley fears paywalls. Silicon Valley accuses Hollywood of “monopoly” and “artificial scarcity,” and talks about the democracy of the Internet. Hollywood accuses Silicon Valley of “free riding” and “contributory infringement, ” and talks about protecting the dignity of the artist. But each side is only trying to defend its business model.

But that's not even close to accurate. Because, as we've discussed at length, "Silicon Valley" has also built all sorts of new innovations and tools that have helped "Hollywood" make a hell of a lot more money -- often in ways that have little to do with copyright protection.

From there, Menard pulls in a few more misleading (to sometimes wrong) tropes about the copyright fights -- including that only academics care about the length of copyright terms, and that they really don't like copyright just because it makes it harder for them to access other academic research. It also suggests (falsely) that the DMCA's "notice and takedown" process means "you can post almost anything as long as you take it down when the rights holder complains." It doesn't. At all.

Menard almost entirely ignores the free speech implications of copyright law and completely skips over how copyright can be, and often is, used as a veto on innovation. The article also ends in an odd way, suggesting that freelancers should assign their copyrights to big companies "who have the muscle to protect" them. Huh? It's a disappointing end to an article that had plenty of promise in its first half. It almost feels like Menard rushed the second half, just repeating silly old stories about "the copyright wars" in trying to find a way to end the article. That's unfortunate. Given the first half, it seems like a more interesting road to have traveled would have been to explore ideas and concepts for copyright reform, and how to bring the law into the modern era, making it more current and reasonable.

The Department of Justice and its underlings (the FBI and nearyl every law enforcement agency in the nation) have turned the ideal of asset forfeiture (defund drug dealers; return money to the defrauded, etc.) into a free-roaming, many-tentacled opportunistic beast, one that "liberates" any amount of "suspicious" cash from tourists, legitimate business owners or anyone else who just happens to have "too much" cash in their possession.

The IRS is in on this as well. The agency doesn't need to prove anyone is guilty of anything before seizing assets. It just needs to feel that things aren't quite right.

For almost 40 years, Carole Hinders has dished out Mexican specialties at her modest cash-only restaurant. For just as long, she deposited the earnings at a small bank branch a block away — until last year, when two tax agents knocked on her door and informed her that they had seized her checking account, almost $33,000.

The Internal Revenue Service agents did not accuse Ms. Hinders of money laundering or cheating on her taxes — in fact, she has not been charged with any crime. Instead, the money was seized solely because she had deposited less than $10,000 at a time, which they viewed as an attempt to avoid triggering a required government report.

The person whose money has been seized isn't necessarily guilty of anything. Hinders hasn't been arrested, nor does there appear to be any sort of ongoing investigation. The IRS hasn't hit Hinders with tax liens for unpaid taxes or subjected her to an audit. All it did was look at records for her deposits and decide that because none of them surpassed the $10,000 mark (which triggers automatic reporting), everything in the account must be somehow illegal.

Here's the brain-bleeding explanation of IRS's civil forfeiture program.

Civil forfeiture is an in rem proceeding against the property itself, not the owner of property. Civil forfeiture is a process that is separated from, and not dependent on, a criminal prosecution. Civil forfeiture can proceed administratively or judicially.

Hinders never needs to be charged. In fact, she never needs to be heard from again. The IRS can seize and hold this money indefinitely and decide whether or not the $33,000 is "guilty" without any input from Hinders. To opportunistic agents, any sub-$10,000 deposit is "evidence" that the depositer is deliberately avoiding reporting requirements, rather doing so for any number of more mundane, less criminal reasons.

Take this IRS seizure from last year, for example.

Since he bought it in 1978, Terry Dehko has owned Schott’s Supermarket in Fraser, Michigan. His daughter, Sandy, began working at the store when she was 12 and now helps her father run it. The IRS has not argued before a court of law that Terry and Sandy have committed a crime, but that has not stopped it from seizing their entire bank account, worth over $35,000. The IRS claims that Terry and Sandy violated federal anti-money laundering laws by making regular deposits of cash in amounts less than $10,000.

But the IRS has offered no evidence that money laundering has occurred. In fact, it has done nothing more than seize Dehko's money. The explanation for Dehko's deposit patterns make perfect sense, but perfect sense won't fund further IRS activity.

Their insurance policy, aimed at small businesses like their grocery store, protects them from theft, but only up to $10,000. Since any dollar over 10,000 left in the store is liable to uninsurable theft, Terry and Sandy make sure their revenues are deposited in their bank account before accumulating above $10,000.

Anyone nailed by an IRS seizure can fight for the return of their money, but there's nothing resembling due process here. Those choosing to do so would have to file a lawsuit intervening in the IRS's forfeiture case. In other words, the situation must be forced. Simply showing up and defending money from accusations of wrongdoing isn't enough. In fact, it isn't even a possibility, at least not in this case. Prosecutors for the Dehko case offered the them a "deal:" an implicit admission of guilt via a plea bargain (presumably on behalf of the guilty money) and the return of 20% of the seized funds.

There are more stories like this. A dairy had $70,000 seized by the IRS after a string of deposits following the sale of farm equipment raised bank eyebrows. Again, prosecutors offered a pennies-on-the-dollar settlement to the couple whose assets were taken. A 27-year-old vending business, heavily reliant on cash flow, had nearly $450,000 seized. Again, "structuring" of deposits was the excuse used to justify the government's theft of earned income. The IRS civil forfeiture system is every bit as crooked as the one being abused by law enforcement agencies. Perverted incentives have demolished restraint and fairness and turned it into an extremely efficient way to stockpile cash.

According to the Institute for Justice, the Department of Justice’s Asset Forfeiture Fund held $93.7 million of seized assets in 1986. In 2008, that fund was greater than $1 billion…

Fortunately for the Dehkos, they won their battle against the government and had the seized funds returned. The IRS was ordered to produce proof of wrongdoing or release the funds. It chose the latter and was additionally held responsible for $71,500 in attorneys' fees. Dropping the case also allowed the IRS to walk away from the debacle without further legal examination of its civil asset seizure policies. So, while the Dehkos obtained a win, the IRS ultimately learned nothing from the experience. The fact that the average forfeiture battle racks up over $20,000 in legal fees means that more often than not, the IRS will get to keep nearly everything it seizes.

America: land of the ass coverage policy and home of "better safe than sorry." Free and brave? Not so much. If anyone wants to know if the terrorists have won, here's another one to file under "Exhibit A: Yes, At Least A Sizable Partial Victory."

When some dumbass can keep planes from flying simply by renaming a WiFi hotspot, we as a nation cannot claim to have won the War on Terror, much less to be picking up some easy points during "trash time."

An American Airlines flight from Los Angeles International Airport to London was delayed Sunday after concerns over the name of a WiFi hotspot.

A passenger saw the WiFi connection, named "Al-Quida Free Terror Nettwork," and expressed concern to a flight attendant.

Flight 136 was taken back to the gate and delayed until 1 p.m. Monday, American Airlines officials said.

This delayed the flight for three hours. Those grounded by the quite-obviously-not-a-wireless-Al-Qaeda-hotspot were initially told it was a "maintenance problem." How fucking comforting is that? Instead of admitting to being pranked into submission by a single person, the airline instead chose to frame it as something with a much larger potential of killing its flying customers.

"Nothing to do with terrorists here, folks! Just the small chance that the plane you'll eventually be boarding may not be airworthy!"

According to ABC7's report, the airline is "assessing" the situation. And, of course, "law enforcement has been notified," because that's what we do when we have no idea what to do. Someone "said" something terrorist-related, therefore law enforcement, assessments, flight delays and NOT A SINGLE COOL HEAD PREVAILING ANYWHERE. May your paranoia always be unfettered.


The WiFi hotspot naming option has been routinely abused in the past, all without serious harm coming to anyone involved. The Consumerist reminds us that another dumbass delayed a Southwestern flight by naming a hotspot "Bomb on Board" -- a name more credibly threatening than the misspelled joke listed above.

And let's not forget how many citizens have pranked/startled wardrivers and leeches by naming their wireless connections things like "FBI_SURVEILLANCE_VAN." Give anyone the power to name something and it will quickly gravitate towards 4th-grade-level Mad Libs. Hence why any video game in which you can name your protagonist becomes a playground for swear words and dick jokes [timesink]. It also explains why my sons' loadout presets for Call of Duty: Black Ops are named "pokemon," "pewd" and "POOP" respectively.

Does anyone actually think this hotspot name indicated terrorist activity? I mean, other than the person reporting the WiFi hotspot name, the person acquiescing to the complainant's paranoia, the entire chain of command responsible for delaying the flight, the law enforcement officials who actually decided to investigate… never mind. I don't even want to know the answer. It's too depressing.