Remember when Republicans were against the "Fairness Doctrine"? Apparently, that's now out the window, so long as they can attack Facebook. As we noted recently, Senator Ted Cruz appears to be pushing for the strangest interpretation of Section 230 around (in direct conflict with (a) what the law says and (b) how the courts have interpreted it) saying that in order to make use of CDA 230's immunity "good samaritan" clause, internet service providers need to be "neutral." Again, that's not what the law says. It's also an impossible standard, and one that would lead to results that would piss off lots of people. The similarities to the FCC's concept of the "Fairness Doctrine" are pretty clear, though such a rule on the internet would be an even bigger deal, since the Fairness Doctrine only applied to broadcast TV.

And, it appears that Cruz's incorrect interpretation is spreading like a virus. Senator Lindsey Graham is now spewing the same nonsense.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a subcommittee chairman on the Senate Judiciary Committee, told MT that he remains concerned about potential bias when it comes to content moderation on social media platforms. “They enjoy liability protections because they’re neutral platforms. At the end of the day, we’ve got to prove to the American people that these platforms are neutral,” he said. “You’ve got to have a validating system where the government can come in and validate that this whole system is neutral.”

So much about this is wrong. First, Section 230 of the CDA has never required platforms to be neutral. Indeed, it would be silly to do so because what the hell does "neutral" even mean in this context? Second, claiming that someone needs to "prove" that the platforms are neutral. What does that even mean? How would you prove that anything is "neutral" anyway? Finally, saying that the government has to validate that your internet service is neutral raises a very large number of very serious First Amendment questions. What kind of Senator is not only so wrong about the law, but thinks that the appropriate role of government is to "validate" internet platforms over what kind of speech they allow?

Separately, this is the same Lindsey Graham who just recently was demanding that social media sites do more to takedown content he didn't like. Now, apparently, he's up in arms over the fact that the sites took down content he did like. If Graham truly wants websites to "do everything possible to combat" terrorist groups using the internet, then attacking CDA 230 is the worst possible way to do that. CDA 230 gives websites the power to moderate and filter out such content without fear of facing legal liability. In other words, it's an excellent tool for getting websites to takedown extremist content. To then turn around and insist that sites should lose CDA 230 protections because they also took down some content you like... raises all sorts of First Amendment issues. You're basically saying websites should only remove the content I dislike, and if they remove content I like I'm going to put their existence at risk. Guess what happens then? Sites will stop moderating entirely, leaving up more of the "bad" content you dislike.

Oh, and back to that whole "fairness doctrine" thing. Guess who is vehemently against it? You guessed right: Lindsey Graham. Opposing the Fairness Doctrine is one of the few issues on his tech campaign platform and a few years back he put out a press release touting his conservative credentials including "barring the use of federal funds to re-instate the Fairness Doctrine" (which was silly anyway, because there was no appetite to re-instate the Fairness Doctrine).

Except, now, as soon as he can pretend to be up in arms over Facebook, Graham seems to jump on the idea of a Fairness Doctrine for the internet. Not only that, but he seems to think it's already in place (it isn't) and requires the government to go in and validate platforms over what speech they allow.

And now for the moment you've all been waiting for: a decision from the Ninth Circuit in the Monkey Selfie case.

Upshot: the case remains dismissed, and the defendants get to recover attorney fees for the appeal. There's also relatively little to say on the copyright front. This case has turned almost entirely into litigation about standing and proven to be a significant wrench in the works for any future litigation anyone, but PETA in particular, might want to bring on behalf of animals.

First, the court skewers PETA over the quality of its "friendship" with Naruto, casting significant side-eye towards PETA's apparent settlement of the lawsuit, which led to its attempt to dismiss the appeal, while at the same time leaving some question as to whether Naruto himself was down with this settlement and plan to dismiss his appeal. From footnote 3:

We feel compelled to note that PETA’s deficiencies in this regard go far beyond its failure to plead a significant relationship with Naruto. Indeed, if any such relationship exists, PETA appears to have failed to live up to the title of “friend.” After seeing the proverbial writing on the wall at oral argument, PETA and Appellees filed a motion asking this court to dismiss Naruto’s appeal and to vacate the district court’s adverse judgment, representing that PETA’s claims against Slater had been settled. It remains unclear what claims PETA purported to be “settling,” since the court was under the impression this lawsuit was about Naruto’s claims, and per PETA’s motion, Naruto was “not a party to the settlement,” nor were Naruto’s claims settled therein. Nevertheless, PETA apparently obtained something fromthe settlement with Slater, although not anything that would necessarily go to Naruto: As “part of the arrangement,” Slater agreed to pay a quarter of his earnings from the monkey selfie book “to charities that protect the habitat of Naruto and other crested macaques in Indonesia.” See Settlement Reached: ‘Monkey Selfie’ Case Broke New GroundForAnimal Rights, PETA, https://www.peta.org/blog/settlementreached-monkey- selfie-case-broke-new-ground-animal-rights/ (last visited Apr. 5, 2018). But now, in the wake of PETA’s proposed dismissal, Naruto is left without an advocate, his supposed “friend” having abandoned Naruto’s substantive claims in what appears to be an effort to prevent the publication of a decision adverse to PETA’s institutional interests. Were he capable of recognizing this abandonment, we wonder whether Naruto might initiate an action for breach of confidential relationship against his (former) next friend, PETA, for its failure to pursue his interests before its own. Puzzlingly, while representing to the world that “animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, use for entertainment, or abuse in any other way,” see PETA, https://peta.org (last visited Apr. 5, 2018), PETA seems to employ Naruto as an unwitting pawn in its ideological goals. Yet this is precisely what is to be avoided by requiring next friends to have a significant relationship with, rather than an institutional interest in, the incompetent party—a point made by ChiefJustice Rehnquist in Lenhard v. Wolff, 443 U.S. 1306, 1312 (1979). See infra page 9 for exact language.

But repudiating PETA's "next friend" standing doesn't end the inquiry. There is a 2004 case from the Ninth Circuit, Cetacean Community v. Bush, which established the precedent that animals might be able to sue for themselves, even without a "next friend" to do the suing for them. The court decides it has to defer to that precedent, although so reluctantly as to undermine its persuasive effect in future cases.

Reaching that conclusion didn't end the inquiry, however. Cetacean Community means that animals might be theoretically able to sue for themselves in the Ninth Circuit, but it doesn't mean they will necessarily have a viable claim. To figure out whether they do, we have to look at the applicable statute, which in this case is the Copyright Act. And here the court concludes that Naruto, being a monkey, has no standing to sue for copyright infringement.

Several provisions of the Copyright Act also persuade us against the conclusion that animals have statutory standing to sue under the Copyright Act. See Davis v. Mich. Dep’t of Treasury, 489 U.S. 803, 809 (1989) (“It is a fundamental canon of statutory construction that the words of a statute must be read in their context and with a view to their place in the overall statutory scheme.”). For example, the “children” of an “author,” “whether legitimate or not,” can inherit certain rights under the Copyright Act. See 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 201, 203, 304. Also, an author’s “widow or widower owns the author’s entire termination interest unless there are any surviving children or grandchildren of the author, in which case the widow or widower owns one-half of the author’s interest.” Id. § 203(a)(2)(A). The terms “children,” “grandchildren,” “legitimate,” “widow,” and “widower” all imply humanity and necessarily exclude animals that do not marry and do not have heirs entitled to property by law. Based on this court’s decision in Cetacean and the text of the Copyright Act as a whole, the district court did not err in concluding that Naruto—and, more broadly, animals other than humans—lack statutory standing to sue under the Copyright Act.

So there you go. Our long national nightmare of not knowing whether any random monkey might be able to sue for copyright infringement has been resolved. We may now go about our lives confident in the knowledge that they cannot, at least not in the Ninth Circuit.

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Yes, the CIA made a card game. And... we're releasing it. No, really. If you want to play the top secret card game that the CIA used to train analysts, you can now back our Kickstarter project for CIA: Collect It All.

Let me explain how we got here...

We write a lot about the CIA here on Techdirt -- often covering just how secretive the organization is around responding to FOIA requests. After all, this is the same organization that invented the famous "Glomar Response" to a FOIA request: the now ubiquitous "we can neither confirm, nor deny." And that one "invention" is used all the time. Indeed, if you have a few extra hours to spend, feel free to go through just our archives demonstrating CIA obstructionism over FOIA.

But... the organization actually did recently respond to a set of interesting FOIA requests. Back in 2017, at SXSW, the CIA revealed its gaming efforts, and even let some attendees play them. That resulted in a few FOIA requests for the details of the game, including one by MuckRock's Mitchell Kotler and another by entrepreneur Douglas Palmer. In response to the FOIA requests, the CIA released the details of some of the games (though, somewhat redacted, and in typical FOIA response gritty photo-copy style), including a card game called "Collection Deck." My first reaction was... "Hey, that would be fun to play..." And then I had a second thought.

There's another super popular topic here on Techdirt: the public domain and how important it is to build on works in the public domain. Remember, under Section 105 of the US Copyright Act, works of the federal government of the United States are not subject to copyright and are in the public domain.

We've already been working with Randy Lubin of Diegetic Games on a few different projects (including Working Futures and others you'll need to stay tuned for). So, we started talking about making a version of the CIA's game to play for ourselves. And everyone we mentioned it to wanted to play as well. And the more we looked at the details, the more we realized that we could make a much nicer version (while paying homage to the original and its route through FOIAdom) that was playable, and maybe even offer some changes, fixes and alternative rules. We decided to name our version, "CIA: Collect It All." Not only does "Collect It All" spell out CIA and pay homage to the CIA's "Collection Deck" name, "Collect It All" was also General Keith Alexander's surveillance motto that we roundly mocked due to its inherent conflict with the old 4th Amendment. Anyway, this seemed like a way to take back the phrase a bit.

And that led us to Kickstarter. We're using Kickstarter in the real original sense of Kickstarter. We had an idea that we thought was pretty damn cool that we wanted for ourselves. And we want to see if others want it as well so we can produce it at scale. If people want it, awesome. We'll make a bunch. If we're wrong and no one really wants it... well, we'll probably still make a copy for ourselves, but you're on your own, working with redacted photocopies.

So... here's a chance to:

1. Get a cool, fun game that until just recently was a top secret training game by created by the CIA -- which, come on, is pretty cool
2. Help support Techdirt and all the reporting we do (including reporting on the CIA pushing back on FOIA requests)
3. Demonstrate why building on the public domain is a good thing
4. Did I mention that you get to play a fun game, with awesome design work (much better than the CIA's), that was originally created by the CIA?

So, check it out and back us on Kickstarter. And tell your friends. Because, look, they wanted to be CIA agents when they were kids too.

Ever since the FBI began its "going dark" crusade, crucial questions have gone unanswered. Considering the budget and technical expertise the FBI has access to, why was it so necessary to get Apple to crack an iPhone's encryption for the Bureau? Turns out it wasn't. The FBI did have a solution, but the head of the division charged with cracking open the San Bernardino shooter's phone didn't want a technical solution. He wanted a courtroom solution.

The report that outed the FBI's general disinterest in using outside contractors to crack encrypted devices is now being used against the FBI. Ten (bipartisan) legislators have signed a letter demanding answers from the agency about its anti-encryption efforts. The "going dark" narrative continues to be pushed by director Christopher Wray, despite recent reports showing at least two vendors have tools that can crack any encrypted iPhones. The tools are also much cheaper than the ~$1 million the FBI spent to open the shooter's phone, which raises questions about the agency's fiscal responsibilities to taxpayers.

The letter [PDF] highlights portions of the Inspector General's report indicating the agency was less than motivated to find an outside solution while engaged in a legal battle with Apple. It also points to the thousands of devices the FBI says it can't access, despite the ready availability of vendor tools designed to do what the FBI continues to claim is impossible.

These are the questions the legislators want answered -- questions we've been asking for months:

Have you consulted with relevant third-party vendors to understand what tools are available to help the FBI access device content?

Do you agree that there are solutions available to help unlock or nearly every device on the market? If not, why are these solutions, particularly the ones discussed above, insufficient?

Why can't the FBI unlock the 7,800 devices? Have you attempted to use tools developed by third-parties to unlock these devices?

Of these locked phones, how many are equipped with biometrics or how many have data available through a cloud service, which would provide additional means to access data or unlock phones?

For each device that you have not used a third-party tool to unlock, what is the rationale for not doing so?

These are all reasonable questions. But the FBI has been anything but reasonable when it comes to device encryption. Its director continues to insist -- despite zero tech expert support -- that safe and secure encryption backdoors are possible and that it's willing to sacrifice the public's security for "public safety." The FBI's disingenuous actions show it can't be trusted to handle the encryption debate honestly. Hopefully, this letter will reset the "conversation" by giving stakeholders insight into the fight the FBI appears to be throwing in hopes of being bailed out by legislators or federal judges.

A few years ago, annoyance at John Deere's obnoxious tractor DRM birthed a grassroots tech movement. John Deere's decision to implement a lockdown on "unauthorized repairs" turned countless ordinary citizens into technology policy activists, after DRM and the company's EULA prohibited the lion-share of repair or modification of tractors customers thought they owned. These restrictions only worked to drive up costs for owners, who faced either paying significantly more money for "authorized" repair, or toying around with pirated firmware just to ensure the products they owned actually worked.

The John Deere fiasco resulted in the push for a new "right to repair" law in Nebraska. This push then quickly spread to multiple other states, driven in part by consumer repair monopolization efforts by other companies including Apple, Sony and Microsoft. Lobbyists for these companies quickly got to work trying to claim that by allowing consumers to repair products they own (or take them to third-party repair shops), they were endangering public safety. Apple went so far as to argue that if Nebraska passed such a law, it would become a dangerous "mecca for hackers" and other rabble rousers.

Apple's efforts in particular to monopolize repair run deep. The company has worked alongside the Department of Homeland Security and ICE to seize counterfeit parts in the United States and raid shops of independent iPhone repair professionals. FOIA efforts to obtain details on just how deeply rooted Apple is in ICE's "Operation Chain Reaction" have been rejected. The efforts to "combat counterfeit goods" often obscures what this is really about for Apple: protecting a lucrative repair monopoly and thwarting anybody that might dare repair Apple devices for less money.

And Apple's efforts on this front are a decidedly global affair. More recently, Apple has been harassing an independent repair shop owner in Norway named Henrik Huseby. After Norway customs officials seized a shipment of 63 iPhone 6 and 6S replacement screens on their way to Huseby's repair shop, Apple threatened to sue the store owner unless they agreed to stop using aftermarket screens and pay a hefty settlement:

"In order to avoid being sued, Apple asked Huseby for “copies of invoices, product lists, order forms, payment information, prints from the internet and other relevant material regarding the purchase [of screens], including copies of any correspondence with the supplier … we reserve the right to request further documentation at a later date."

The letter, sent by Frank Jorgensen, an attorney at the Njord law firm on behalf of Apple, included a settlement agreement that also notified him the screens would be destroyed. The settlement agreement said that Huseby agrees “not to manufacture, import, sell, market, or otherwise deal with any products that infringe Apple’s trademarks,” and asked required him to pay 27,700 Norwegian Krone ($3,566) to make the problem go away without a trial."

How sweet. Huseby decided to fight the case, and despite being out-manned five Apple lawyers to one, managed to win. And despite Apple's ongoing claims that it's simply engaged in a moral crusade against counterfeiters, Huseby's lawyer is quick to reiterate what Apple's methods are really all about:

"In this case, Apple indirectly proves what they really want,” Per Harald Gjerstad, Huseby’s lawyer, told me in an email. “They want monopoly on repairs so they can keep high prices. And they therefore do not want to sell spare parts to anyone other than ‘to themselves.’"

Apple's real motivation is the protection of their lucrative repair monopoly enjoyed thanks to their "Authorized Service Provider" program, which requires that repair companies become authorized by paying Apple a fee, only buy "authorized" repair parts from Apple at a fixed rate, and limits what repairs a third-party vendor can actually perform. Meanwhile, Apple continues to lobby against right to repair laws in 18 states around the United States, all of which require hardware vendors sell replacement parts and repair tools to the general public and independent repair companies.

Ironically, the harder Apple and other companies fight against this trend, the more support they drive toward these right to repair bills.

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is an anonymous commenter with a response to the Goldman Sachs analyst asking whether curing patients is a sustainable business model:

If curing patients is not a sustainable business model then perhaps health care should not be a for profit endeavor.

Obviously, treating the symptoms will be much more profitable than curing the disease, however - what kind of an asshole verbalizes such revolting thoughts. Everyone has dumbass ideas, but most refrain from embarrassing themselves with same.

In second place, we've got a comment from That Anonymous Coward in the discussion about his own recent Twitter suspension:

The easiest solution is to make people use the tools they have been given.

Dislike a word? Filter it.
Think that users a tool? Block them.

Reporting shouldn't be a weapon, it should be more like 911 when something serious is happening... not because McD's is out of fscking nuggets.

Because everyone has a different level of comfort its impossible to have a single approach, and in trying to do it you just piss both sides off a bit more each time.

For editor's choice on the insightful side, we've got a comment about the MPAA's quiet shutdown of its legal movie search engine. We noted that to succeed the company must innovate, and Personanongrata spelled out in more detail why they feel like they don't have to:

Au contraire, MPAA can continue to hire lobbyists to shape the "law" in the industries favor while using the states security agencies (eg FBI, DHS) and courts to investigate industry related violations of the "law" at tax-payer expense.

MPAA can also retain swarms of attorneys to harass/intimidate/litigate.

Next, we've got an anonymous upgrade to our suggestion that pre-1972 sound recordings need to be unified under federal copyright law:

Or how about we just put them in the public domain now? If someone hasn't made money in 46 years or more, the next 46 years are unlikely to be much more profitable.

Over on the funny side, our first place comment comes from Roger Strong in response to our post about a copyright troll accusing Google, Popehat and BoingBoing of "black hat SEO":

This guy doesn't care about his reputation. What he's desperate for is attention and relevance. Before trying to trash him via SEO, remember the old saying:

"If only our tongues were made of glass. How much more careful we would be when we speak."

• John F. Kennedy

In second place, we've got Capt ICE Enforcer with another response to the MPAA's search engine shutdown:

Not good

Great. Now I need to find a pirate site to show me where all the legal content is...

For editor's choice on the funny side, we start out with Pixelation applying some Apple branding to the company's leaked memo warning employees not to leak stuff:

Oh, the iRONY.

And finally, we've got an anonymous comment about the New Hampshire first amendment ruling that said it's okay to call a patent troll a patent troll:

Reminds me of the Brit who was haled into magistrate's court for calling a noblewoman "pig". The magistrate fined him.

"So that means I can't call a duchess "pig"?" he asked.

"No, you can't," the magistrate explained.

"But can I call a pig "duchess"?

"Yes."

So he strolled out of the courtroom, nodding to the plaintiff and saying "Good day, duchess."

That's all for this week, folks!

Five Years Ago

This week in 2013, as the fallout for Prenda Law continued, we shifted our focus to the cybersecurity bill CISPA. While the White House was threatening to veto it if the privacy issues were not addressed, the House was rejecting all the amendments that might actually do so and its sponsors were ignoring the fact that it would render online privacy agreements meaningless. Sponsor Mike Rogers (whose wife, surprise surprise, stood to benefit hugely from the bill) made his infamous comment about the only opposition being 14-year-olds in their basement, prompting rapid and widespread backlash. We knew from history how the bill would be abused, and the only amendment that was being truly considered was pretty toothless. Then, of course, the bill was passed by the House, with 288 supporters.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2008, the threat to privacy was the DHS's domestic spy satellites — but more was happening on the copyright front, such as J. K. Rowling trying to use emotional appeals to block a Harry Potter guidebook and push silly legal theories like the idea that spoilers are copyright infringement. And Warner Bros. was threatening the filmmaker behind the movie Troll, which he was seeking to remake, because it happened to have a character named Harry Potter ten years before Rowling's books were written. Hollywood was starting to turn its attention to 3D movies as a way to revive cinemas, the recording industry was seeking more money because it deigned to let people transfer media between devices, and we took a look at how everyone overvalues content and undervalues services.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2003, it was the ten-year anniversary of the release of Mosaic, the first "major" web browser. The entertainment industry was succeeding in its crusade against piracy within various organizations, with CIO Magazine telling corporations to worry about the legal issues of employee downloading, and a bunch of Naval Academy students being disciplined for sharing music. Copyright fears were holding back books about hacking and internet security research and — in an early precursor to the sort of sharing that would be formalized by CISPA a decade later — the government was asking corporations to hand over details on their infrastructure and just trust the agencies to keep it safe.

This morning I saw a lot of excitement and happiness from folks who greatly dislike President Trump over the fact that the Democratic National Committee had filed a giant lawsuit against Russia, the GRU, Guccifier 2, Wikileaks, Julian Assange, the Trump campaign, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone and a few other names you might recognize if you've followed the whole Trump / Russia soap opera over the past year and a half. My first reaction was that this was unlikely to be the kind of thing we'd cover on Techdirt, because it seemed like a typical political thing. But, then I looked at the actual complaint and it's basically a laundry list of the laws that we regularly talk about (especially about how they're abused in litigation). Seriously, look at the complaint. There's a CFAA claim, an SCA claim, a DMCA claim, a "Trade Secrets Act" claim... and everyone's favorite: a RICO claim.

Most of the time when we see these laws used, they're indications of pretty weak lawsuits, and going through this one, that definitely seems to be the case here. Indeed, some of the claims made by the DNC here are so outrageous that they would effectively make some fairly basic reporting illegal. One would have hoped that the DNC wouldn't seek to set a precedent that reporting on leaked documents is against the law -- especially given how reliant the DNC now is on leaks being reported on in their effort to bring down the existing president. I'm not going to go through the whole lawsuit, but let's touch on a few of the more nutty claims here.

The crux of the complaint is that these groups / individuals worked together in a conspiracy to leak DNC emails and documents. And, there's little doubt at this point that the Russians were behind the hack and leak of the documents, and that Wikileaks published them. Similarly there's little doubt that the Trump campaign was happy about these things, and that a few Trump-connected people had some contacts with some Russians. Does that add up to a conspiracy? My gut reaction is to always rely on Ken "Popehat" White's IT'S NOT RICO, DAMMIT line, but I'll leave that analysis to folks who are more familiar with RICO.

But let's look at parts we are familiar with, starting with the DMCA claim, since that's the one that caught my eye first. A DMCA claim? What the hell does copyright have to do with any of this? Well...

Plaintiff's computer networks and files contained information subject to protection under the copyright laws of the United States, including campaign strategy documents and opposition research that were illegally accessed without authorization by Russia and the GRU.

Access to copyrighted material contained on Plaintiff's computer networks and email was controlled by technological measures, including measures restricting remote access, firewalls, and measures restricting acess to users with valid credentials and passwords.

In violation of 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a), Russia, the GRU, and GRU Operative #1 circumvented these technological protection measures by stealing credentials from authorized users, condcting a "password dump" to unlawfully obtain passwords to the system controlling access to the DNC's domain, and installing malware on Plaintiff's computer systems.

Holy shit. This is the DNC trying to use DMCA 1201 as a mini-CFAA. They're not supposed to do that. 1201 is the anti-circumvention part of the DMCA and is supposed to be about stopping people from hacking around DRM to free copyright-covered material. Of course, 1201 has been used in all sorts of other ways -- like trying to stop the sale of printer cartridges and garage door openers -- but this seems like a real stretch. Russia hacking into the DNC had literally nothing to do with copyright or DRM. Squeezing a copyright claim in here is just silly and could set an awful precedent about using 1201 as an alternate CFAA (we'll get to the CFAA claims in a moment). If this holds, nearly any computer break-in to copy content would also lead to DMCA claims. That's just silly.

Onto the CFAA part. As we've noted over the years, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is quite frequently abused. Written in response to the movie War Games to target "hacking," the law has been used for basically any "this person did something we dislike on a computer" type issues. It's been dubbed "the law that sticks" because in absence of any other claims that one always sticks because of how broad it is.

At least this case does involve actual hacking. I mean, someone hacked into the DNC's network, so it actually feels (amazingly) that this may be one case where the CFAA claims are legit. Those claims are just targeting the Russians, who were the only ones who actually hacked the DNC. So, I'm actually fine with those claims. Other than the fact that they're useless. It's not like the Russian Federation or the GRU is going to show up in court to defend this. And they're certainly not going to agree to discovery. I doubt they'll acknowledge the lawsuit at all, frankly. So... reasonable claims, impossible target.

Then there's the Stored Communications Act (SCA), which is a part of ECPA, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which we've written about a ton and it does have lots of its own problems. These claims are also just against Russia, the GRU and Guccifer 2.0, and like the DMCA claims appear to be highly repetitive with the CFAA claims. Instead of just unauthorized access, it's now unauthorized access... to communications.

It's then when we get into the trade secrets part where things get... much more problematic. These claims are brought against not just the Russians, but also Wikileaks and Julian Assange. Even if you absolutely hate and / or distrust Assange, these claims are incredibly problematic against Wikileaks.

Defendants Russia, the GRU, GRU Operative #1, WikiLeaks, and Assange disclosed Plaintiff's trade secrets without consent, on multiple dates, discussed herein, knowing or having reason to know that trade secrets were acquired by improper means.

If that violates the law, then the law is unconstitutional. The press regularly publishes trade secrets that may have been acquired by improper means by others and handed to the press (as is the case with this content being handed to Wikileaks). Saying that merely disclosing the information is a violation of the law raises serious First Amendment issues for the press.

I mean, what's to stop President Trump from using the very same argument against the press for revealing, say, his tax returns? Or reports about business deals gone bad, or the details of secretive contracts? These could all be considered "trade secrets" and if the press can't publish them that would be a huge, huge problem.

In a later claim (under DC's specific trade secrets laws), the claims are extended to all defendants, which again raises serious First Amendment issues. Donald Trump Jr. may be a jerk, but it's not a violation of trade secrets if someone handed him secret DNC docs and he tweeted them or emailed them around.

There are also claims under Virginia's version of the CFAA. The claims against the Russians may make sense, but the complaint also makes claims against everyone else by claiming they "knowingly aided, abetted, encouraged, induced, instigated, contributed to and assisted Russia." Those seem like fairly extreme claims for many of the defendants, and again feel like the DNC very, very broadly interpreting a law to go way beyond what it should cover.

As noted above, there are some potentially legit claims in here around Russia hacking into the DNC's network (though, again, it's a useless defendant). But some of these other claims seem like incredible stretches, twisting laws like the DMCA for ridiculous purposes. And the trade secret claims against the non-Russians is highly suspect and almost certainly not a reasonable interpretation of the law under the First Amendment.

Donald Trump's long time lawyer, Michael Cohen has been in a bit of hot water of late. As you no doubt heard, the FBI raided Cohen's office and home seeking a bunch of information, some of which related to the $130,000 he paid to adult performer Stormy Daniels. Already there have been a few court appearances in which Cohen (and Donald Trump) have sought to suppress some of what's been seized, but that doesn't seem to be going too well. At the same time, Cohen is still fighting Daniels in court, which also doesn't seem to be going too well.

Given all of that, it's not too surprising that Cohen has decided to dismiss his ridiculous lawsuit against Buzzfeed for publishing the Christopher Steele dossier. As we pointed out, that lawsuit was going nowhere, because it sought to hold Buzzfeed liable for content created by someone else (oh, and that leaves out that much of what Cohen claimed was defamatory may actually have been true.

And while many are suggesting Cohen dropped that lawsuit because the other lawsuits are a much bigger priority, there may be another important reason as well. As we noted last month, through a somewhat complex set of circumstances, the lawsuit against Buzzfeed may have resulted in Cohen having to reveal the details he's been avoiding concerning Stormy Daniels. That's because Buzzfeed was claiming that Cohen's interactions with Daniels were relevant to its case, and it was likely to seek that information as part of the case moving forward.

In other words, dropping the Buzzfeed lawsuit (that he was going to lose anyway), Cohen wasn't just ditching a distraction in the face of more important legal issues, he may be hoping to cut off at least one avenue for all the stuff he's been trying to keep secret from becoming public. That doesn't mean it won't become public eventually. After all the DOJ has a bunch of it. But it does suggest that Cohen had more than one reason to drop the Buzzfeed lawsuit.