MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY
- Senate Democrats fight FCC plan to lower America’s broadband standards: You can’t fix the US broadband problem by redefining it, senators tell FCC.
- FCC’s Broken Comments System Could Help Doom Net Neutrality
- FCC “apology” shows anything can be posted to agency site using insecure API: FCC API could be misused to host malware on FCC’s domain.
- FCC makes net neutrality complaints public, but too late to stop repeal: 13,000 pages of net neutrality complaints released, but comment deadline passed.
- Apple Throws Its Support Behind Net Neutrality. Sort Of.
- Apple’s Real Reason For Finally Joining The Net Neutrality Fight
- AT&T Blatantly Lies, Claims Most Consumers Want Net Neutrality Killed
- Large ISP & Silicon Valley CEOs Were Too Afraid To Publicly Testify On Net Neutrality
- Comcast sues Vermont to avoid building 550 miles of new cable lines: Vermont is trying to make Comcast bring TV and Internet to unserved areas.
- FTC slaps Lenovo on the wrist for selling computers with secret adware: Companies need user “affirmative consent” to preinstall MITM adware, FTC says.
- Video Chat Price-Gouging Costs Inmates More Than Money
- More and More Actions on Pirate Radio – What is Next?
- Bouyant RTL fully acquires SpotX
- BMG Continues Growth Spurt as Revenues Top $276 Million
- Antitrust Is Back — But The Media Industry Doesn’t Need It
- How I Became Fake News: I witnessed a terrorist attack in Charlottesville. Then the conspiracy theories began.
DIGITAL
- Case Dismissed: Judge Throws Out Shiva Ayyadurai’s Defamation Lawsuit Against Techdirt
- Judge dismisses Shiva “I Invented EMAIL” Ayyadurai’s libel lawsuit against Techdirt
- Court Dumps Lawsuit Against Zillow Over Its Inaccurate ‘Zestimates’
- Blogger Isn’t Liable for Anonymous Comments–Griffith v. Wall (Eric Goldman)
- Lawsuit: Amazon sold eclipse glasses that cause “permanent blindness”: “Eye injury ranging from temporary discomfort to permanent blindness.”
- Spotify: Don’t Compare Us to Napster – The company has responded to a copyright lawsuit by challenging what rights are truly implicated by streaming.
- Spotify Finally Realizes That Streaming Isn’t Reproduction Or Distribution
- Steve Jobs gave us President Trump
- The ‘internet of things’ is sending us back to the Middle Ages (Joshua Fairfield)
- CBS Welcomes Amazon’s NFL Streaming But Sees ‘Competitors’ In Future
- Apple, Amazon bid for James Bond film rights- Hollywood Reporter
- Kaspersky Gets Awful Patent Troll To Pay Up To Drop Its Own Case
- Reports of Russia’s Election Hack Keep Getting Scarier
- Thousands Of Facebook Ads Tied To Bogus Russian Accounts
- Facebook says it sold political ads to Russian company during 2016 election
- Facebook sold 2016 election-related ads to “shadowy Russian company”: 470 “suspicious and likely fraudulent” FB accounts all tied to same Russian firm.
- The Devil’s Pact: Putin, the “Alt-Right” and the Long Shadow of History – The Russian president’s claims of “historical victimhood” in World War II try to justify his country’s present-day destructive behavior.
- Twitter Suspends Reporter’s Account… After He Gets Targeted By Russian Twitter Bots
- How Russian & Alt-Right Twitter Accounts Worked Together to Skew the Narrative About Berkeley: #Antifa and #Berkeley were hot topics last weekend in America — and in Russia
- Fear And Loathing On Social Media
- Digital property rights debate heats up in NAFTA renegotiation
- Leaked Plans Shows Top EU Body Backing: Copyright Industry Against The Public, The Internet, And Innovation
- Tech companies declare war on hate speech—and conservatives are worried: In light of Charlottesville, Silicon Valley revisits its absolute approach to free speech.
- AI is Developing Faster than Experts Imagined. Do We Need a Speed Limit?
- Google And Microsoft Can Use AI To Extract Many More Ad Dollars From Our Clicks
- How to Regulate Artificial Intelligence
- A Serf on Google’s Farm
- Reporter: Google successfully pressured me to take down critical story – Google allegedly told Forbes “the article was problematic and had to come down.”
- Google is losing allies across the political spectrum: Antitrust sentiment grows, so does skepticism about Google on both the left and the right.
- Google promised not to scan Gmail for targeted ads—but for how long?: Google tells judge it might resume targeted advertising “to meet changing demands.”
- Third-party Google Assistant speakers put “OK Google” in tons of form factors: The Google Assistant comes to speakers from Sony, JBL, Onkyo, Panasonic, and others.
- Say Goodbye To The Blob. Google’s New Emoji Have Arrived
- The YouTube Generation And 6-Second TV Ads
- Facebook’s YouTube Competitor, ‘Watch’, Rolls Out Nationwide
- Facebook launches Watch video service in U.S. to take on YouTube for ad dollars: The move comes as advertisers are shifting budgets from television to online as more viewers prefer to watch their favourite shows on smartphones and tablets
- Facebook is offering the music industry millions to let its users upload songs in videos
- Inside the black market where people pay thousands of dollars for Instagram verification
- Internet’s Most Popular “Stream Ripping Site” Shuts Down As Result Of Legal Settlement
- A Popular Third-Party YouTube Video Player Has Been Removed From The App Store
- Music Industry Halts Popular YouTube Piracy Service
- YouTube Live Now Supports Ultra-Low Latency, More: YouTube launched a series of updates for its livestreaming service
- The ‘demonetized’: YouTube’s brand-safety crackdown has collateral damage
- Why Alphabet’s Shares Are Soaring in 2017
- Bitcoin falls as China bans initial coin offerings
- How Netflix’s Content Strategy Is Reshaping Movie Culture
- Time Inc shifts toward video as eyeballs move online
- Time Inc, publisher of magazines including People and Sports Illustrated, is turning to the internet to distribute its growing cache of video material and television shows, part of a plan to counter fast-declining print advertising revenue.
- The Agony and Ecstasy of Building an Online Music Business
- In a blast from the past, Logitech releases a new trackball: It’s the company’s first new trackball in nearly a decade.
- As Uber struggles, Lyft expands into 32 more states: 94 percent of the US population will now be able to access Uber’s top competitor.
- Squeezed for profits, maker of $400 connected juice press closes up shop
- The Risks Of Demonizing Silicon Valley
- From Apple to Y Combinator—tech sector denounces new “Dreamers” plan: “It’s against our values to turn our backs on #DREAMers,” Uber’s new CEO tweeted
- Boston Red Sox caught red-handed using Apple Watch to steal signs: Boston was apparently stealing signs from opposing teams’ catchers and pitchers.
- Apple bids farewell to Apple Music Festival after 10 years: As Apple’s focus shifts to original video content for its services business.
- Samsung is Developing VR Tools to Help Diagnose Mental Health
- One of the biggest challenges of self-driving cars: The humans inside them.
- Stupid Patent Of The Month: JP Morgan Patents Interapp Permissions
- Surviving This Summer On The Internet
- Catching Up on Ninth Circuit CFAA Jurisprudence: Internet Law Casebook Excerpt (Eric Goldman)
- Global Content Removals Based on Local Legal Violations: Internet Law Casebook Excerpt (Eric Goldman)
CREATIVITY
- “Monkey Business” settled
- Awful Court Decision Says Dr. Phil Producer’s Video Not ‘Fair Use’
- Mickey singer Toni Basil sues Disney and South Park
- Why Notoriously Litigious Disney Is Letting Fan Stores Thrive: The Mouse isn’t bringing cease-and-desists down on Instagram darlings like Cakeworthy or The Lost Bros.
- Insurer Attempts To Fight Back Against Kanye West’s Touring Company’s Lawsuit
- New York Times 1; Sarah Palin 0
- Court battle over one driver’s pay could have big impact on “gig economy”: Was Raef Lawson an employee or a business owner when he drove for GrubHub?
- High-profile “gig economy” trial turns on a part-time actor’s job woes: A surprising plaintiff is challenging worker classifications in the gig economy.
- Judge Sweet: Lynyrd Skynyrd Movie Cannot Proceed
- Coachella Sues “Filmchella” for Trademark Infringement
- Terry Pratchett and protecting artistic legacy
- Can Rotten Tomatoes Crush a Movie at the Box Office?: Moviegoers, critics, and filmmakers weigh in on the website that is torturing major studios and redefining how we decide whether to go to the theater
- Theater of War: He traveled to some of the world’s most dangerous places to disarm militias, negotiate with gangs, and defy terrorists. But Bill Brookman was just a clown.
- Activists want to fight sex trafficking by changing a key Internet law: The 1996 law Section 230 is widely seen as a foundation of the Internet economy.
- Al Jazeera Gives A ‘Voice To The Voiceless’ By Killing News Comments
- What Makes Information Valuable? Information Quality, Revisited (Urs Gasser)
SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY
- Instagram Done Got Hacked
- Site sells Instagram users’ phone and e-mail details, $10 a search: Leak suggests this week’s Instagram breach was bigger than first thought.
- Celebs’ phone numbers and e-mail addresses exposed in active Instagram hack: Hackers exploited app bug, then advertised data in underground forums, researchers say.
- FDA, Homeland Security Issue First Ever Recall, Warnings About Flimsy Pacemaker Security
- Military Appeals Court Says Demands To Unlock Phones May Violate The Fifth Amendment
- The Epic Crime Spree Unleashed By Onity’s Ambivalence To Its Easily Hacked Hotel Locks
- Court Finds FBI’s ‘Malware’ Deployment To Be Perfectly Constitutional
- UK’s Terrorism Law Reviewer Says Tech Companies Shouldn’t Offer Encryption To Anonymous Users
- Officers With Personal Body Cams Taking The ‘Public’ Out Of ‘Public Accountability’
- As a general rule, body cam footage across US is not a public record: “The patchwork releases of body camera footage only sow further public distrust.”
- UK Police Test Facial Recognition Tech At Carnival, Rack Up 35 Bogus ‘Hits’ And One Wrongful Arrest
- Data Breach Exposes Thousands of Job Seekers Citing Top Secret Government Work
- Exploit goes public for severe bug affecting high-impact sites: Apache Struts bug opens banks, insurance cos., and Fortune 500s to code-execution hacks.
- Taking Stock Of Trump’s Cybersecurity Executive Order So Far
- Companies should treat cybersecurity as a matter of ethics
- The Feds Promised To Protect Dreamer Data. Now What?
- Canadian Cops Belatedly Asking For Authorization To Deploy Stingray Devices They’ve Been Using For Years
- The Privacy Battle Over the World’s Largest Biometric Database: A new ruling could jeopardize India’s controversial collection of citizens’ fingerprints, photographs, and iris scans.
- Hacker Lexicon: What Is DNS Hijacking?
- Above Devastated Houston, Armies Of Drones Prove Their Worth
Jon