I currently have a FOIA request in to the Department of Homeland Security, and the fee waiver request was initially denied because DHS told me that I was considered a "commercial requester" since I was using Muckrock's platform to make the request. We're currently appealing this designation (and DHS seems to be ignoring our appeal, as it's been months...), but in another such situation, DHS has once again, declared Muckrock a "commercial requester" in order to demand fees -- on the basis of the fact that people might actually read the documents, and that somehow advances Muckrock's "commercial" interests.

Now, some background is important here. The whole point of waiving fees for "commercial" requesters is to avoid companies doing things like building up private databases by use of FOIA requests and then selling them. It's not for the purpose of blocking commercial media properties from doing journalism with the documents. In fact, Homeland Security's own FOIA guidelines make it clear that for-profit media operations using FOIA for reporting purposes are not commercial requesters:

A request for records supporting the news-dissemination function of the requester shall not be considered to be for a commercial use.

Seems simple enough, but apparently the DHS wants to ignore its own guidelines when it comes to Muckrock. Here's what DHS told Muckrock:

Regarding the "commercial requester" classification, the Agency has also properly determined that the requested records would be used for commercial purposes. Although you assert that any responsive documents would be made available to the public for free on MuckRock's website, the Agency must balance the commercial interest against the public interest. Making documents available on MuckRock's website, even at no charge, drives traffic to the website and furthers its commercial purposes. Your request does not provide any information that would allow the Agency to determine that the public interest outweighs this commercial interest.

But, that kind of argument makes no sense, and would effectively mean that basically all news media organizations who post the relevant source documents from FOIA requests are no longer considered "news media" requesters, but rather "commercial requesters." Because, of course, part of the media function of posting any such document is to "drive traffic." As Muckrock points out in response to this news, there are over 300 media organizations who contribute such documents to DocumentCloud (and we're among them). Many of those organizations are for-profit and clearly media operations. The attempt to claim that Muckrock is a "commercial requester" is clearly ignoring both the clear intent of the commercial requester status and DHS's own guidelines in how to deal with media requests from for-profit media properties.

It's almost as if Homeland Security is looking for bogus excuses to make it prohibitively expensive for media sites, reporting in the public interest, to actually get the documents they request.

A few more details have come to light on the police state experiment conducted in Ferguson, MO over the past couple of months. Despite repeated denials that continued all the way up until October 31st, the real reason for the FAA's no-fly zone over Ferguson has been revealed.

"They finally admitted it really was to keep the media out," said one FAA manager about the St. Louis County Police in a series of recorded telephone conversations obtained by The Associated Press. "But they were a little concerned of, obviously, anything else that could be going on.

At another point, a manager at the FAA's Kansas City center said police "did not care if you ran commercial traffic through this TFR (temporary flight restriction) all day long. They didn't want media in there."

Law enforcement put FAA staffers in an awkward position with this request. The FAA (obviously) has nothing in the rule books that provides for blocking First Amendment-protected activity. While there would be the heightened danger of collisions if police helicopters were also in the area, it's not like this sort of situation hasn't been handled without incident before. (See also: news coverage of every demonstration/riot/police pursuit to this point.)

No, law enforcement simply wanted to keep news coverage to a minimum and control the narrative through the indiscriminate use of tear gas, a ridiculous (and unconstitutional) "five second rule" and the casual detainment of reporters at ground level.

St. Louis police claimed over and over and over again that the no-fly zone was for "safety," citing a single incident where a police helicopter was allegedly shot at -- an incident that only existed in the minds of those looking to keep the press from circling overhead.

[P]olice officials confirmed there was no damage to their helicopter and were unable to provide an incident report on the shooting. On the tapes, an FAA manager described the helicopter shooting as unconfirmed "rumors."

Small concessions were made when law enforcement realized what it was asking for was impractical (and mostly illegal). As one news director pointed out, his crew was eventually told it could fly over Ferguson but only at an altitude above 3,000 feet -- not exactly a height that produces optimal (or even usable) footage.

Whatever your stance on the shooting of Michael Brown by Officer Darren Wilson, the fact remains that nearly everything local law enforcement did in response was poorly thought-out at best, and an outright abuse of power at worst. Officials have lied to the public, paywalled public documents, released information in a purely self-serving fashion (and over the objections of Eric Holder and the Justice Dept.) and approached the citizens they serve as an occupying force, rather than trusted allies.

We've been writing about the efforts by the police in Ferguson, Missouri to intimidate and arrest reporters trying to cover the protests and the police (over)reaction there. What's now come out is that, last Friday, the police actually signed a court agreement promising not to interfere with the media:

Parties acknowledge and agree that the media and members of the public have a right to record public events without abridgement unless it obstructs the activity or threatens the safety of others, or physically interferes with the ability of law enforcement officers to perform their duties.

This was based on a lawsuit brought by Mustafa Hussein, the reporter for radio station KARG (Argus Radio) who got some attention last night after a police officer yelled at him to "get the fuck out of here or you're going to get shelled with this" while pointing some sort of weapon at him: Note that the agreement was signed by Hussein and parties representing St. Louis County, the City of Ferguson and the Missouri Highway Patrol... on Friday the 15th. The threat to Hussein came on Sunday... the 17th.

And those kinds of activities are continuing today. Here's an Instagram video of a Getty photographer, Scott Olson, being arrested. Olson, if you don't know, is the guy who has photographed many of the most iconic images of what's happening in Ferguson, including this astounding shot. Here are a few more Olson images, courtesy of Getty's recent embedding program:

#453505316 / gettyimages.com

#453768692 / gettyimages.com

#453769244 / gettyimages.com

#453582860 / gettyimages.com

#453769068 / gettyimages.com

And the police arrested him. Yeah, you can see how they thought he was a "danger"... to them trying to control the narrative of what's happening.

And here's a video of police threatening CNN's Don Lemon -- which I've now seen, but for reasons that I don't understand, the video seems to disappear at times (as does the embed code).

No matter what, it seems pretty clear that police are continuing to stamp on the rights of just about everyone, including those with cameras and microphones (so you can just imagine how they're handling those without such things). The fact that there's a signed court agreement promising not to do this doesn't seem to matter to anyone.

Since we originally predicted and then witnessed major media outlets losing their minds over the horrific attempted murder committed by two young girls in Wisconsin, you may have heard that there has been a second attempted killing by another young girl that's also being billed as a "Slender Man killing." In this latest case, a young girl wore a white mask and attempted to stab her mother. She too is supposedly involved in the Creepypasta community and was interested in the Slender Man story. Media outlets, that really ought to know better, have since been knocking each other over in an attempt to shine the largest spotlight on an internet community that enjoys telling each other ghost stories in an attempt to assign blame for the horrors on which they report. It turns out that, should they delve a little deeper to understand what the Slender Man community is all about, perhaps they should be turning that spotlight on themselves instead.

Fruzsina Eordogh, who appears to be well informed about how the Creepypasta community and the Slender Man myth operates, outlines the folly that is mass media reporting on the two attacks. He claims there have been two glaring omissions in the reporting, the first of which is an absolute refusal to include the attention multipliers of online myth disseminators like Pew Die Pie. Pew Die Pie is something of a YouTube celebrity and his work includes Slender Man videos.

The little girls first tried to stab their friend in a public restroom, then in the woods. Both scenes, of Slender Man catching up with you in a public restroom and in the woods, happen in the first episode of Pew Die Pie's Slender Man video series. Is Pew Die Pie responsible for the stabbings? No, of course not.

In the case of the 13-year-old girl, her mother mentioned her daughter plays Minecraft, and the ultimate bad guy in the game is Enderman, a creepy figure the creator of Minecraft admitted to being inspired by Slender Man. Is Minecraft responsible for the stabbings? Again, no, of course not, but yet again every outlet has failed to mention the Slender Man-inspired monster in Minecraft.

Understanding the point of the above is key: nobody is blaming Pew Die Pie, Minecraft, or anyone else using the myth to tell stories for the killings. The sole point being made is that you have to understand the way the Slender Man community works: it is built off of gaining recognition in wider audiences. That's the whole point of the community, to expand upon the myth by creating doctored pictures, telling wilder stories, and getting Slender Man out there as widely as possible. The whole myth started with fictional photographs and news reports. That's the point. And guess how you take that to the next level?

Think of Slender Man as a community art project, where for years now adults, teens and tweens have been fabricating fake news articles, photographs, and even video games and comics, about Slender Man, this all-powerful, all-knowing spectre-monster with long arms (shaped like claws, or tree branches, or tentacles depending on the artist) that mind controls and kills people. When these two Wisconsin girls say they wanted to honor the Slender Man myth, to make him "real" and prove the "skeptics wrong," it sounds more like they wanted to participate in the community by creating the most credible news article about Slender Man ever. They didn't want to make him real by doing another photoshop, that's already been done. So how do you make the most credible news article about Slender Man? You actually go out and make Slender Man happen in a way the news can cover.

And, because these kids have a basic understanding of the world in which they live, they likely damn well knew the mass media would gobble this up like pigs at a trough. The girls in Wisconsin did more to propel the Slender Man myth into the public consciousness than anyone had before and the news outlets were their tools and unwitting conspirators. By the time the ink was dry on the Wisconsin story, a young girl in Ohio would have all the confirmation required on how to keep the news multiplier going in favor of Slender Man. Slender Man has jumped out of the fictional realm now, like the Poltergeist leaping from a television, and the news is the highway it took to get there.

Any media outlet that reports on this story and fails to mention that they as an outlet are now contributing to the Slender Man myth, is laughably ignorant and dangerous. The press does not exist in a vacuum. The press cannot blame CreepyPasta and memes but not blame itself or Pew Die Pie. In fact, the primary driver of the Slender Man myth is no longer Pew Die Pie, Minecraft, CreepyPasta, reddit, 4chan or Something Awful, but the press itself.

At some point all the people of our world are going to have to sit down and have a long conversation about how our news media operates to glorify some of the horrors we face. Murderers, school shooters, and terrorists all rely on the clockwork-like commitment of mass media to turn them into what they most want to be: a spectacle. We don't have to play along, but we do. That part's on us. But it's also on a media culture that prefers to keep the important role that they play out of the story.

As we've reported, Russia has been steadily trying to bring the Internet under control with ever-more stringent measures. After tackling general Web sites through powers that allow them to be blocked more easily, it now seems to be the turn of the bloggers, as this report from the ITAR-TASS News Agency on a recently-approved law explains:

The law introduces a new term: "Internet user called blogger." Bloggers will be obliged to declare their family name and initials and e-mail address. Those authors whose personal website or page in social networks has 3,000 visitors or more a day must have themselves registered on a special list and abide by restrictions applicable to the mass media. In other words, registration requires the blogger should check the authenticity of published information and also mention age restrictions for users. Also, bloggers will have to follow mass media laws concerning electioneering, resistance to extremism and the publication of information about people’s private lives. An abuse of these requirements will be punishable with a fine of 10,000 to 30,000 rubles (roughly $300 to $1,000) for individuals and 300,000 rubles ($10,000) for legal entities. A second violation will be punishable with the website's suspension for one month.

Clearly those onerous conditions are designed to make any blogger think twice or three times before publishing anything at all controversial or embarrassing for the authorities. The article notes that the new law may be challenged before Russia's Constitutional Court, and that there's a huge loophole in the form of blogs located overseas, which are not covered by the legislation. The fear has to be that the Russian government will now move on to blocking them too. Moreover, not content with intimidating independent blogs, the Russian authorities also seem to be tightening their grip on VKontakte, the Russian Facebook. As Ars Technica reports:

Pavel Durov, the founder of Vkontakte (VK) -- the largest social network in Russia -- said on Tuesday that he fled the country one day after being forced out of the company, claiming that he felt threatened by Kremlin officials.

In a post on his profile page on Monday, Durov explained that he was fired from his position as CEO of VK and that the so-called "Russian Facebook" is now "under the complete control" of two oligarchs close to President Vladimir Putin.

His removal is probably connected with his longstanding refusal to censor content on VKontakte:

Durov explained that after seven years of relative social media freedom in Russia, his refusal to share user data with Russian law enforcement has set him at odds with the Kremlin, which has recently been trying to tighten its grip on the Internet, according to The Moscow Times.

VK's former CEO says that despite his multiple refusals of Kremlin requests to censor his site in a similar fashion to how it filters print and TV news, the site -- which boasts 143 million registered users globally, 88 million of whom are based in Russia -- is now effectively under state control.

What's sad here is that, as we've noted ruefully before, in the wake of revelations about NSA and GCHQ spying, the West is no longer in a position to criticize this kind of censorship and surveillance. As the latest moves indicate, the Russian authorities seem intent on taking full advantage of that fact.

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A few years ago, we wrote about the bizarre and quixotic effort by Florida businessman Christopher Comins to find any possible way to sue University of Florida student and blogger Matthew Frederick VanVoorhis for his blog post concerning a widely publicized event in which Comins shot two dogs in a field (video link). The story made lots of news at the time, but Comins didn't go after any of the major media -- instead targeting VanVoorhis for a defamation suit. The original blog post is "novelistic" but it's difficult to see how it's defamatory. Either way, Comins' case was shot down on fairly specific procedural grounds: namely that Florida defamation law requires specific notice be given to media properties at least 5 days before a lawsuit is launched. Specifically, the law says:

Before any civil action is brought for publication or broadcast, in a newspaper, periodical, or other medium, of a libel or slander, the plaintiff shall, at least 5 days before instituting such action, serve notice in writing on the defendant, specifying the article or broadcast and the statements therein which he or she alleges to be false and defamatory.

Comins' lawsuit was dumped because he failed to give such notice. Comins argues that he did give such a notice (though the letter he sent did not meet the requirements of such notice under the law) and (more importantly for this discussion) that VanVoorhis' blog did not count as a media publication, and thus the law did not apply. The original court ruling rejected that pretty quickly, and now on appeal, a state appeals court has not just rejected Comins' anti-blog claim more thoroughly, but also highlighted the importance of blogs to our media landscape.

The full ruling does a nice job giving the history and purpose of the law above, as well as the importance of encouraging the media to report on difficult stories. And from there, it explains why VanVoorhis' blog is clearly a part of the media and why blogs in general are so important:

...it is hard to dispute that the advent of the internet as a medium and the emergence of the blog as a means of free dissemination of news and public comment have been transformative. By some accounts, there are in the range of 300 million blogs worldwide. The variety and quality of these are such that the word “blog” itself is an evolving term and concept. The impact of blogs has been so great that even terms traditionally well defined and understood in journalism are changing as journalists increasingly employ the tools and techniques of bloggers – and vice versa. In employing the word “blog,” we consider a site operated by a single individual or a small group that has primarily an informational purpose, most commonly in an area of special interest, knowledge or expertise of the blogger, and which usually provides for public impact or feedback. In that sense, it appears clear that many blogs and bloggers will fall within the broad reach of “media,” and, if accused of defamatory statements, will qualify as a “media defendant” for purposes of Florida’s defamation law as discussed above.

There are many outstanding blogs on particular topics, managed by persons of exceptional expertise, to whom we look for the most immediate information on recent developments and on whom we rely for informed explanations of the meaning of these developments. Other blogs run the gamut of quality of expertise, explanation and even- handed treatment of their subjects. We are not prepared to say that all blogs and all bloggers would qualify for the protection of section 770.01, Florida Statutes, but we conclude that VanVoorhis’s blog, at issue here, is within the ambit of the statute’s protection as an alternative medium of news and public comment.

While it seems crazy that this kind of issue is still being debated in 2014, it's good to see a court make such a clear statement on the fact that blogs will often qualify as media properties.

More and more digital media is being edited and prioritized in datacenters by intangible algorithms. As usual, this can be good and bad, depending on how the technology is used. On the one hand, algorithms can do laborious tasks that humans don't want to do. But at the same time, algorithms might introduce all kinds of errors or inadvertent biases on a scale that no group of humans could ever accomplish without automation. Here are just a few links on bots tinkering with online content.

• The Los Angeles Times reported on an earthquake in about 3 minutes -- thanks to an algorithm that collected data from the US Geological Survey and automagically created an article about the seismic event. This robotic reporting isn't exactly a new thing, but the robotic "scoop" can't be matched by human writers. [url]
• About half of all the edits on Wikipedia are made by bots. Algorithms keep spam links from flooding the site, and they also create whole entries based on online data, as well as perform tedious tasks such as grammar and spelling corrections. Not surprisingly, the biggest bot job on Wikipedia is detecting vandalism. [url]
• Algorithms aren't free of bias; they can actually amplify biases. Humans can also trick algorithms by gaming their inputs and biasing results, so computer-produced content isn't necessarily more objective than the writings of humans (not that anyone here would have assumed that). [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 few years ago, we noted that Russia was pushing new internet censorship laws, officially to "protect the children." Of course, everyone knew that was a bogus reason, and the laws were used to silence reporters who were critical of the government as well as a bunch of blogs. It appears that the political censorship is ratcheting up even more with reports that the the blog of opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been blocked, along with a number of independent news sites.

That alone began getting some attention, and it appears that the Russian government followed it up by trying to play whac-a-mole with a variety of news sites, even taking down access to a radio station's website because it had posted a mirror of Navalny's blog.

The reason given for blocking the other media websites was that the "websites contain calls to illegal activity and participation in mass events that are conducted contrary to the established order." As for the blocking of Navalny's blog, which is updated by his wife, the government is claiming that since Navalny is under house arrest with orders not to communicate publicly, this blog violates that order, and therefore it's appropriate to censor it.

These excuses ring rather hollow for obvious reasons. And so far it certainly seems like this latest attempt at widespread censorship is, of course, calling a lot more attention to both the censorship attempt as well as what it was they're so eager to hide. In fact, Russians appear to be quickly routing around the censorship, because that's what you have to do in a country that regularly tries to censor what you can read.

Last week, when perusing the newswires, I kept seeing references to a most diabolical plan that was supposedly being crafted by the FCC. The agency, I was told by countless news outlets, was engaged in an insane attempt to effectively bring back the Fairness Doctrine -- awful rules justly killed off back in 1987 that tried to force fair media coverage. Under this new horrifying plan, the insufferably nosy government would, I was told, shortly thereafter begin telling reporters and newsrooms what they could and couldn't cover. Newsrooms that failed to play along with this effort, I was told by FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai himself, would possibly lose their broadcast licenses, given that the voluntary survey was secretly not voluntary:

The FCC also wants to wade into office politics. One question for reporters is: "Have you ever suggested coverage of what you consider a story with critical information for your customers that was rejected by management?" Follow-up questions ask for specifics about how editorial discretion is exercised, as well as the reasoning behind the decisions. Participation in the Critical Information Needs study is voluntary—in theory. Unlike the opinion surveys that Americans see on a daily basis and either answer or not, as they wish, the FCC's queries may be hard for the broadcasters to ignore. They would be out of business without an FCC license, which must be renewed every eight years."

Madness! The massive stones on government! What a horrible example of government overreach! The outrage grew and grew, as additional news outlets piled on, noting this was a massive attack on the First Amendment. It also was a frontal assault on freedom that warrants the immediate demolition of the FCC entirely.

Knowing the FCC like I do after a decade of covering them, I thought that it seemed a little out of character for a timid, marginally-competent agency terrified of disrupting the status quo to suddenly take LSD and begin such a ham-fisted attack on common sense. As such, I did something crazy -- I read the actual study proposal. Apparently, this absolutely insane frontal assault on everything we hold dear in the god-damned universe was little more than a survey trying to ferret out how to best help disadvantaged, poor citizens (especially those for whom English may not be a first language) get the information they need. FCC Mignon Clyburn, who previously owned an African-American newspaper in South Carolina, has long held minority media ownership as a core policy focus.

It's a fairly routine and entirely voluntary field survey designed to gather data. Nothing more. There's not really any actual policy even attached to it. There was certainly nothing included that could drive any sane or reasonable individual to the conclusion that newsrooms would soon be under the iron fist of a new FCC-crafted information-control and propaganda gestapo. Many of the complaints against the "Critical Information Needs' (CIN) survey seemed focused specifically on how volatile and provocative the questions asked were, though I can't find any questions (page 25, pdf) that are even remotely controversial (perhaps I missed them or I'm not squinting my eyes or tilting me head just right).

You could try to argue the $900,000 survey was a waste of money, but then you'd have to admit the looming hearings about the survey as probably just as wasteful. You could also try to argue that such inquiries push beyond the FCC's technology-driven mandate (although you'd face counter argument that media ownership analysis is part of their job under the Communications Act). What you wouldn't be able to do with the slightest bit of factual support is suggest this was an FCC attempt to stifle free speech and newsroom freedom.

But people did, and the hysteria forced the FCC to issue a statement (pdf) saying that the survey was on hold until they could tone down the not-actually-inflammatory-at-all questions. The FCC noted that the survey was part of their Congressional requirement under section 257 of the Communications Act to study barriers to entry for small business owners and entrepreneurs (with an obvious focus on minority business owners). To try and placate the rioting, reading-challenged hordes, the FCC notes that any revamped study won't ask media owners or reporters what they think:

"To be clear, media owners and journalists will no longer be asked to participate in the Columbia, S.C. pilot study. The pilot will not be undertaken until a new study design is final. Any subsequent market studies conducted by the FCC, if determined necessary, will not seek participation from or include questions for media owners, news directors or reporters. Any suggestion that the FCC intends to regulate the speech of news media or plans to put monitors in America's newsrooms is false."

So in the end, the big "victory" is that a study trying to analyze minority media needs gets gutted and will be less useful. Hooray! Good job, team! Make no mistake, the furor really wasn't about the study itself, it was part of a long-standing concerted effort to gut any dwindling regulatory oversight the FCC has over the broadcast or broadband industries by demonizing the agency. The Fairness Doctrine is pretty routinely trotted out as a bogeyman on that front; former FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell tried to argue that supporting net neutrality would also bring the long-ago dismantled policy back from the dead. That's not to say that there haven't been small attempts to bring the Fairness Doctrine back, but those efforts never go anywhere because almost everyone realizes it's a stupid idea. It's more useful as a political scarecrow than anything.

Those still worried shouldn't be; the FCC is so terribly afraid of upsetting industry and the status quo that they can't even admit fundamental realities (like the broadband industry isn't competitive and prices are high). They lack the intestinal fortitude to implement significant good policy of any meaningful measure, much less bad ideas of such head-rattling, impossible scale. If we can all agree that government dictating what newsrooms can cover is idiotic, perhaps we can all also agree that those same newsrooms should be hiring people who can actually read?

Publishing content digitally is a topic that comes up around here fairly regularly. If you're a longtime Techdirt reader, you'll know that we generally think digital publishing drives down the price of content to free (but that doesn't mean your work is worthless!) and giving away content is often a very effective promotional tactic for selling other things that can't be freely copied. Here are just a few interesting examples of free content you can peruse at your leisure.

• Novelist Teju Cole surprised some folks by releasing a new short story of his on Twitter, using retweets only. The story, titled 'Hafiz', is now available (for free), and it poses some interesting questions over who owns the work. [url]
• If you have a Kindle, here's a link to a list of public domain books, sorted by author last name. This list is compiled from an ebook index of Project Gutenberg books, and there's also an EPUB version available (for non-Kindle users). [url]
• All sorts of people post answers to questions on Quora, so wouldn't it be nice to read a compilation of some of the best responses in one huge book? Quora released a free pdf of over a hundred answers from 2010-2012, covering 18 different question categories and including answers from anonymous users as well as Jimmy Wales. [url]

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