News of the Week; August 30, 2017

MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY

  1.  AT&T’s slow 1.5Mbps Internet in poor neighborhoods sparks complaint to FCC: AT&T refusal to boost Internet speed violates discrimination ban, complaint says.
  2. EFF, Others Think It Would Be Cool If The FCC Stopped Hiding 47,000 Net Neutrality Complaints
  3. Why Net Neutrality Matters Even In The Age Of Oligopoly
  4. Net neutrality comment deadline is tomorrow; 21.9 million comments in so far
  5. Even Many ISP-Backed Allies Think Ajit Pai’s Attack On Net Neutrality Is Too Extreme
  6. A Title II opponent explains why Ajit Pai’s plan won’t protect net neutrality: Pai says antitrust will protect net neutrality—here’s why it probably won’t.
  7. 98.5% of unique net neutrality comments oppose Ajit Pai’s anti-Title II plan: Besides form letters, ISP-funded study finds almost no support for repealing rules.
  8. AT&T absurdly claims that most “legitimate” net neutrality comments favor repeal: AT&T ignores finding that 98.5% of unique comments favor net neutrality rules.
  9. Junk call nightmare flooded woman with hundreds of bizarre phone calls a day: Kim France gets a lot of calls – but nothing prepared her for receiving 700 a day.
  10.  ‘It was premeditated’: ‘FOX LIES’ guy speaks!
  11. Fox News lies about Bolling: ‘None of these women’ have come forward — except one of them has
  12. NPR Gives Up On News Comments; After All, Who Cares What Your Customers Have To Say?
  13. British Regulator Submits New Report to Government on Fox-Sky Takeover
  14. Paradigm Shift: Why Radio Must Adapt To The Rise Of Digital

DIGITAL

  1. Appeals Court Upholds Injunction Against VidAngel’s Streaming Service: “Star Wars is still Star Wars, even without Princess Leia’s bikini scene,” states the opinion.
  2. Selling alterable versions of Star Wars is still infringement, court says: “Star Wars is still Star Wars, even without Princess Leia’s bikini scene.”
  3. Suit blaming iPhone for student’s death by texting driver is defeated by Apple: Judge agrees with Apple that it has no legal duty to combat distracted driving.
  4. Horrible or non-existent Mayweather-McGregor fight streams prompt lawsuit: Showtime “knowingly failed to disclose that its system was defective,” suit says.
  5. Mayweather V. McGregor: Showtime Got Injunctions On Pirate Stream Sites Which Didn’t Work & Neither Did Their Own Stream
  6. Reaction video deemed fair use in YouTuber court battle: The pair behind the YouTube channel H3H3 Productions wins copyright lawsuit.
  7. Why the H3H3 YouTube victory could mark a major turning point for the site: The husband-and-wife team triumphed in a copyright and defamation lawsuit, with huge implications for “fair use” on YouTube
  8. ‘Reaction’ Video Protected By Fair Use–Hosseinzadeh v. Klein
  9. YouTube Personality Upset About Criticism Of His Video Loses Infringement/Defamation Lawsuit
  10. Suing critics using copyright doesn’t workHosseinzadeh v. Klein, No. 16-cv-03081 S.D.N.Y. Aug. 23, 2017 (Rebecca Tushnet)
  11. Copyright Suit Requires Fair Use Analysis: A fair use analysis is required before a copyright suit against “appropriation artist” Richard Prince can be dismissed, a New York federal court judge decided this week, declining to grant a quick win.
  12. Ingrid Goes West revels in everything wrong with Instagram celebrities: Aubrey Plaza is terrific as a social media addict in search of viral fame.
  13. Insights: Who’s An Influencer When You Can Buy Fake Online Love?
  14. Snapchat Looks To Win Over Influencers As Many Of Them Head To Instagram
  15. YouTube’s Redesign Makes It Easier To Watch All The Videos
  16. How Youtube Perfected The Feed: Google Brain gave YouTube new life
  17. Amazon lures YouTube influencers
  18. Google And Walmart’s Big Bet Against Amazon Might Just Pay Off
  19. Amazon Prime members will get even deeper discounts at Whole Foods: Beef, salmon, avocados, and more will be cheaper for everyone starting next week.
  20. The Real Price of Those Cheaper Avocados: In the Amazon era, Whole Foods is already getting cheaper. But there’s a potential price for those discounted groceries.
  21. Cortana and Alexa are coming together in surprising Microsoft-Amazon partnership: You’ll be able to tell Cortana to talk to Alexa and vice versa.
  22. German Court Says Ad-Blocking is Liberation, Not Extortion
  23. After Previously Claiming the Economics Would Never Work, HBO Streaming Now A Major Windfall
  24. Dark web finds bitcoin increasingly more of a problem than a help, tries other digital currencies
  25. Magic Leap settles bitter legal battle with executives who started its Silicon Valley office
  26. NFL Deal In China Means Big Things For Social Media Streaming
  27. NFL Sets Kickoff of Twitter Live Show for 2017-18 Season
  28. Homeowners Can’t Sue Over Low Zestimates–Patel v. Zillow (Eric Goldman)
  29. Section 512(f) Complaint Survives Motion to Dismiss–Johnson v. New Destiny Church (Eric Goldman)
  30. Backpage Executives Must Face Money Laundering Charges Despite Section 230–People v. Ferrer (Eric Goldman)
  31. California Case Against Backpage Moves Forward Over Money Laundering Claims
  32. The Ten Most Important Section 230 Rulings (Eric Goldman)
  33. Violent Alt-Right Chats Could Be Key To Charlottesville Lawsuits
  34. DreamHost takes a beating after hosting racist Daily Stormer: The neo-Nazi site has struggled to find a domain registrar.
  35. The far right is losing its ability to speak freely online. Should the left defend it?: Free speech was the left’s rally cry. But the fate of the Daily Stormer, a hate site ‘kicked off the internet’, signals the increasing irrelevance of the first amendment
  36. A Hunt for Ways to Combat Online Radicalization
  37. Nazis, The Internet, Policing Content And Free Speech
  38. Trump’s Latest Nonsensical Announcement About Censoring The Internet
  39. Convicted felon Martin Shkreli finds novel way to be a jerk online: He has offered to sell a New York Post reporter’s domain name for $12,000.
  40. James Damore Case Could Spawn More Legal Headaches For Google
  41. Google-funded think tank fires prominent Google critic: Think tank boss allegedly accused scholar of “imperiling funding for others.”
  42. Would You Doxx a Nazi?: The dangers of revealing the names and identities of white supremacists
  43. Facebook has hired former NYT public editor Liz Spayd as a consultant in a ‘transparency’ effort: She has also worked at the Washington Post and Columbia Journalism Review as a top editor.
  44. The Scale Of Moderating Facebook: It Turns Off 1 Million Accounts Every Single Day
  45. Supreme Court of Canada challenges the idea of state sovereignty
  46. Snapchat Is Adding Manual Controls for Advertisers Concerned About Brand Safety: Buyers can limit which content categories ads appear in
  47. Uber board has a surprise new CEO pick: Expedia’s Dara Khosrowshahi: Board reportedly took a last-minute turn away from HP Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman.
  48. Uber drivers have made more than $50M in the first month of tipping: Company tries to keep drivers happy while it awaits a new CEO.
  49. Major Uber investor tells Benchmark: Drop your lawsuit against ex-CEO Kalanick – VC: Benchmark Capital “is trying to use the courts… to take over this company.”
  50. Engineer whose blog post caused a storm at Uber has filed a Supreme Court brief: Fowler files a determined defense of employee-driven class-action lawsuits.
  51. Uber to stop tracking customers after ride is over: Uber app was programmed to monitor riders for five minutes after trip was done.
  52. Win for ex-Grubhub driver in pending trial may profoundly impact “gig economy”: “This trial is a milestone because similar cases have settled or been dismissed.”
  53. Copyright Troll Insists Septuagenarian Is An Enormous Copyright Infringer, Then Runs Away After Backlash
  54. Supreme Court Has Another Chance To Help Take Down The Patent Trolls
  55. Kaspersky Lab turns the tables, forces “patent troll” to pay cash to end case: “Why don’t you pay us $10,000?”
  56. Samsung’s boss is sentenced to prison: Unlike other jailed chaebol bosses, he may not be pardoned
  57. Samsung heir convicted, sentenced to 5 years on corruption charges: Scandal was connected to a move to strengthen control of Samsung Electronics.
  58. Apple will build new data center in Iowa, get $200M in tax breaks: Cheap energy, open land, and tax breaks are making Iowa a go-to for data centers.
  59. More Than 180,000 iPhone Apps Won’t Be Compatible With iOS 11
  60. Merlin Has Paid Out $1 Billion To Indie Labels: Merlin, the global digital music rights agency for 20,000 indie labels and distributors from 53 countries, has announced its billionth dollar in distributions, since launching in May of 2008. With all of its payments coming from music streaming, this milestone points to a promising future for independent music companies.
  61. Dystopian What Happened To Monday?may hint at Netflix’s film priorities: One actor in many roles, a population-controlled future—so Hunger Games plus Orphan Black?
  62. For Netflix, ‘The Defenders’ Is A Market Research Goldmine
  63. Can ‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Help CBS Boldly Go Into a Streaming Future?
  64. Why HBO was right to stand its ground against Game of Thrones hackers: As the network appears to emerge unscathed from a major cyber attack, experts say that hackers misjudged their leverage 
  65. With the USS McCain collision, even Navy tech can’t overcome human shortcomings: One mistake can cascade into a disaster in heavy marine traffic, regardless of tech.
  66. Feds: Son teaches dad how to sell drugs on AlphaBay, they both get busted – From his iPad, son allegedly searched “safest wallet to transfer tumble.”
  67. New Mini-Antennae Could Pave the Way for Brain-Computer Interfaces
  68. Who Owns the Internet?: What Big Tech’s monopoly powers mean for our culture.
  69. The ‘Distracted Boyfriend’ Meme’s Photographer Explains All
  70. All The Gear You Need To Record A Hit Song On Your iPhone
  71. Turnaround artists: How companies can catch up to the digital revolution – Latecomers can succeed at digitization if they take these five steps.
  72. What We Get Wrong About Technology
  73. #BotSpot: Twelve Ways to Spot a Bot: Some tricks to identify fake Twitter accounts
  74. The age of AI surveillance is here
  75. Do We Need A Speedometer For Artificial Intelligence?
  76. In the AI Age, “Being Smart” Will Mean Something Completely Different
  77. Artificial Intelligence Policy: A Roadmap (Ryan Calo)
  78. How Copyright Law Can Fix Artificial Intelligence’s Implicit Bias Problem (Amanda Levendowski)
  79. The New Governors: The People, Rules, And Processes Governing Online Speech (Kate Klonick) 

CREATIVITY

  1.  Palin v. NYT dismissed
  2. Judge Tosses Sarah Palin’s Defamation Suit Against The New York Times, Says No Actual Malice
  3. A chicken sandwich cannot be copyrighted, court rules: Man who put chicken inside a bun sought $10 million for theft of creative work.
  4. Village Roadshow Promises To Mete Out Its Brand Of Justice As Inequitably As Possible
  5. General Mills loses bid to trademark yellow color on Cheerios box: Cereal maker claimed consumers identified “yellow” with “the Cheerios brand.”
  6. Cheerios’ Failed Case for Yellow Shows Why It’s So Hard for Brands to Trademark Colors: General Mills’ defeat illustrates one of branding’s trickiest tasks
  7. Comparison to former licensor’s products isn’t trademark infringement: Alpha Pro Tech, Inc. v. VWR Int’l, LLC, No. 12-1615, 2017 WL 3671264 E.D. Pa. Aug. 23, 2017 (Rebecca Tushnet)
  8. Is a ban on the words “climate change” in grants consistent with Tam? (Rebecca Tushnet)
  9. 4th Cir. holds certification nonprofit’s self-promotion to retailers is commercial speech: Handsome Brook Farm, LLC v. Humane Farm Animal Care, Inc., No. 16-1813, 2017 WL 3601506, — F. Appx. – 4th Cir. Aug. 22, 2017 (Rebecca Tushnet)
  10. State Courts Do Nominative Fair Use Tooz: Instant Infosystems, Inc. v. Open Text, Inc., 2017 WL 3634547, No. B276691 Cal. Ct. App. Aug. 24, 2017 (Rebecca Tushnet)
  11. On Remand, Ninth Circuit Says Robins Satisfied Article III Standing
  12. Copyright Consternation & Confusion on Canadian Campuses as York Cogitates its Appeal
  13. A Tee, A Tweet And Frank Ocean: Some Copyright Lessons
  14. What Business Insider’s rambling hatchet job gets wrong about my work on copyright: A recent piece in Business Insider insults Rebecca Giblin’s academic integrity. Here is where it goes so horribly wrong.
  15. President Trump Banned From Reading InfoWars, Including These Vital Stories of the Week
  16. How Conservatives Manipulated the Mainstream Media to Give Us President Trump: A new report shows how conservatives are winning a war that the rest of us don’t even know we’re fighting.
  17. How Trump Is Creating a Propaganda State: The president is taking conservative media to its evolutionary endpoint. Is there any way to stop him?
  18. Chelsea Clinton defends Barron Trump after conservative site criticizes his clothes
  19. Daily Caller slams Barron Trump for dressing like a normal kid sometimes: The right-wing rag the Daily Caller goes after the president’s 11-year-old son for dressing down — like a kid
  20. Fake News: It’s Mostly a Right-Wing Phenomenon
  21. Alec Baldwin’s Trump Impression Is A Technical Marvel
  22. IP lawyer who represented TiVo is Trump’s pick as USPTO chief: Andrei Iancu has enforced patents for TiVo and Immersion Corp.
  23. TV Station Falls For Pranksters; Sues Them For Fraud
  24. The Seattle Times Bans Sportswriters from Local Radio, TV
  25. How to Get Ripped Off While Trying to Book Your Favorite Rapper: Over a few months, one tiny Atlanta-based company made $67,000 booking Migos and Rae Sremmurd concerts across the country that never actually happened. Their business model is surprisingly common in the live rap music industry.
  26. Dinwoodie & Dreyfuss on Brexit & IP
  27. Wonder Woman Is “A Step Backwards,” James Cameron Says; Director Responds
  28. Patty Jenkins hits back at James Cameron: ‘He doesn’t understand Wonder Woman’ 
  29. Twitter Did Not Hold Back in Responding to James Cameron’s Wonder Woman Criticism
  30. Erasing Herself From The Narrative: Taylor Swift and the absence of intimacy in the launch of Reputation
  31. Blame Taylor Swift’s New Song On The Internet
  32. A Day After Being Uploaded To YouTube, Taylor Swift’s New Music Video Sets Record With 35 Million Views
  33. Taylor Swift’s ‘Look What You Made Me Do’ Smashes YouTube’s 24-Hour Record, Crushing Psy
  34. Former Band Member Sues The Roots
  35. Marijuana-Themed Media Company Merry Jane Gets A Spark From Seth Rogen, Wiz Khalifa
  36. Deputy Attorney General Trots Out All Sorts Of Silly Analogies About ‘Intellectual Property’
  37. The Hitman’s Bodyguard Tops Worst Weekend Box Office In 16 Years: Lowest-grossing weekend since September 2001.
  38. Free speech in the fog of scientific uncertainty (Jane Bambauer)
  39. Primary-Market Auctions for Event Tickets: Eliminating the Rents of “Bob the Broker”? (Aditya Bhave & Eric Budish)

SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY

  1. cy pres-only settlement ok’d in Google privacy case In re Google Referrer Header Privacy Litigation, — F.3d —-, 2017 WL 3601250, No. 15–15858 9th Cir. Aug. 22, 2017 (Rebecca Tushnet)
  2. Court Calls Out Government For The ‘General Warrant’ It Served To Facebook
  3. Man in jail 2 years for refusing to decrypt drives. Will he ever get out?: Defendant to ask Supreme Court if compelled decryption is a 5th Amendment breach.
  4. Feds: Man jailed for not decrypting drives has “chutzpah” to ask to get out – Prosecutors use Yiddish to describe man imprisoned 2 years for contempt of court.
  5. No Immunity For Cops Who Arrested Man Recording Them For Obstruction
  6. Some In Congress Don’t Get The “Gravity” Of Russian Election Meddling, Former CIA Director Said: John Brennan, CIA director under President Barack Obama, also bemoaned a “barrage” of “inaccurate and misleading” news reports. He made these statements in an internal memo to CIA employees obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
  7. All The Ways Us Government Cybersecurity Falls Flat
  8. Public should know how police are using high-tech spying tools
  9. Once Again, New Zealand’s Spying On Megaupload Execs Found To Be Illegal
  10. Megaupload execs’ extradition may be at risk after new spying revelations: GCSB couldn’t say more without jeopardizing the national security of New Zealand.
  11. Canadian Courts Edging Towards A Warrant Requirement For Device Searches At Borders
  12. Aetna Mailer Accidentally Reveals HIV Status Of Up To 12,000 Customers
  13. New app scans your face and tells companies whether you’re worth hiring
  14. CCTV + Lip-Reading Software = Even Less Privacy, Even More Surveillance
  15. 465k patients told to visit doctor to patch critical pacemaker vulnerability: A year after calling advisory “false and misleading,” maker warns patients to patch.
  16. IOT Devices Provide Comcast A Wonderful New Opportunity To Spy On You
  17. Leak of >1,700 valid passwords could make the IoT mess much worse: List of unsecured devices lived in obscurity since June. Now, it’s going mainstream.
  18. 711 million email addresses ensnared in ‘largest’ spambot: The spambot has collected millions of email credentials and server login information in order to send spam through “legitimate” servers, defeating many spam filters.
  19. India’s Supreme Court Rules Privacy Is A Fundamental Right; Big Ramifications For The Aadhaar Biometric System And Beyond
  20. MalwareTech’s legal defense fund bombarded with fraudulent donations: At least $150,000 in donations were from stolen or fake credit card numbers.
  21. One of 1st-known Android DDoS malware infects phones in 100 countries: Move over, IoT. Attackers are abusing a new widely used platform to knock out sites.
  22. Microsoft’s Bid To Save Powershell From Hackers Starts To Pay Off
  23. Facebook Figured Out My Family Secrets, And It Won’t Tell Me How

Jon