Month: October 2014

Microsoft Takes Down A Bunch Of Non-Infringing YouTube Videos Over People Posting Product Keys In Comments

This seems to me like a very clear-cut reason why there should be harsh penalties imposed on those who sends false DMCA takedown notices:

Oh, Microsoft. The company has now admitted that it ended up sending a bunch of DMCA takedown notices on non-infringing videos, all because someone had posted product keys in comments to those videos. To its credit, Microsoft has apologized and said that it has “taken steps to reinstate legitimate video content and are working towards a better solution to targeting stolen IP while respecting legitimate content.” That’s all well and good, but this seems like the kind of thing that they should have done long before issuing obviously bad takedowns.

Link (Techdirt)

Yet another Kickstarter that ignores IP

Someone wants to recreate a Marvel figure as a plush toy, even using its name, and doesn’t even foresee any problems with that what so ever:

This is a dancing baby Groot Plush toy. I’m working with a company in order to get them shipped and sold in the United States.

The only challenge we face as a community, and this Kickstarter project is having the funds to do what we want. This Kickstarter will begin providing the funds for shipping the Baby Groot to everyone who would like to order one, and help us finance our future as a community. This will also alleviate the necessity to do Kickstarters for future aquisitions of other merchandise that the community might show an interest in.

Link (Kickstarter)

Ebola is the New Black [or not]

Marc Randazza over at The Legal Satyricon writes in a blog post how people seem to go crazy over the ebola craze, and without reason.

Ok, not really, but I figured it [Ebola is the New Black] was a catchier title than “Ebola is the new paranoia for the stupid genetic refuse that proves that Idiocracy was not just a movie, but a prophecy.”
That would just not do as a headline. But, I suppose it is a clumsy, but effective lede.

Remember “give up ANY rights, as long as it keeps us safe from Beardsley McTurbanhead, who is going to kill us all if he can?”

How could you forget? That fad isn’t over yet.

But, just in time for the new fall idiot fashion season, we have Ebola!

A nurse at the Howard Yocum School in Maple Shade Township, New Jersey sent a letter to staff members informing them that two new students from Rwanda, Africa would be arriving at the school on Monday.
“This is not an area identified as a country with an Ebola outbreak, however l am taking precautions as per the health guidelines of the Burlington County Health Department,” the nurse wrote. “I will be taking the students’ temperature three times a day for 21 days.”

Link (The Legal Satyricon)

UK Court Blocks Author From Publishing A Book About His Own Sexual Abuse, At Ex-Wife’s Request

A British performing artist has been forced to shelve a book based on his experiences of childhood sexual abuse after his ex-wife obtained an injunction to prevent their young son from reading it. In a case that is alarming freedom of speech campaigners and which publishers say is deeply disturbing, the court of appeal has ordered that the artist cannot publish key sections of the book until the issue has been decided at trial.

However, his ex-wife’s lawyers dispute claims that the case could set a precedent undermining the rights of other authors, arguing that it is concerned only with the rights of one child, who has a number of health problems, who they say would suffer catastrophic psychological distress were he to read parts of his father’s work.

Link (Techdirt)

Whisper tracks its users. So The Register tracked down its LA office.

We [The Register] were surprised as anyone when The Guardian revealed that, far from being “the safest place on the internet”, the anonymous messaging app Whisper was tracking the location of its users – even when they specifically denied the app access to their location.

Worse, if someone’s posts were deemed newsworthy, according to The Guardian, the company went out of its way to find out where they were located, using the device’s identification number and IP addresses to track them. This information was then “shared” with news organizations and the Department of Defense.

In response, the app’s editor-in-chief Neetzan Zimmerman and CTO Chad DePue took to Twitter and Hacker News to defend themselves, and even posting a lengthy rebuttal. Unfortunately, nothing they said appeared to persuade anyone that what The Guardian has reported was anything but entirely true.

As luck would have it, your correspondent was in the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, home to Whisper’s headquarters, at the time – and decided that maybe Whisper would like to walk through the accusations face-to-face.

Link (The Register)

More Abuse Of The Orphan Drug System: Taking Treatment From Free To $80,000 A Year

Catalyst Pharmaceutical Partners, which has just reported what seems like good news for those suffering from Lambert-Eaton Myasthenic Syndrome (LEMS), a progressive, muscle-weakening disease. Catalyst has announced positive results from a final phase trial of a drug called “Firdapse.” As The Street article reports, analysts believe that once approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, Firdapse could cost between $60,000 and $80,000 per year if it is designated an orphan drug, which brings with it seven years of marketing exclusivity. That might seem the going rate for new drugs, but there’s a nasty twist in this tale, as Feuerstein notes:

Firdapse is not a new treatment for LEMS. The active ingredient in Firdapse is a compound known as 3,4-Dap, which has been available in the U.S. for more than 20 years. Doctors treating the small numbers of LEMS patients in the U.S. can obtain inexpensive 3,4-Dap from compounding pharmacies. It’s even given away for free to doctors and patients by a tiny New Jersey drug maker, Jacobus Pharmaceuticals.

That means that Catalyst took no risks with Firdapse. Indeed, it didn’t really do anything at all

Link (Techdirt)

The American Government Tried to Kill James Risen’s Last Book

James Risen’s new book on war-on-terror abuses comes out tomorrow, and if you want to find a copy it shouldn’t be hard to obtain. As natural as that seems, it almost wasn’t the case with the Risen’s last book, “State of War,” published in 2006. Not only did U.S. government officials object to the publication of the book on national security grounds, it turns out they pressured Les Moonves, the CEO of CBS, to have it killed.

The campaign to stifle Risen’s national security reporting at the Times is already well-documented, but a 60 Minutes story last night provided a glimpse into how deeply these efforts extended into the publishing world, as well. After being blocked from reporting on the NSA’s warrantless surveillance program for the paper of record, Risen looked into getting these revelations out through a book he was already under contract to write for Simon & Schuster, a book that would look at a wide range of intelligence missteps in the war on terror.

In response, it seems, the government once again went straight to the top in order to thwart him.

Link (The Intercept)

What ‘Democracy’ Really Means in U.S. and New York Times Jargon: Latin America Edition

With yesterday’s resignation of President Hugo Chávez, Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator. Mr. Chávez, a ruinous demagogue, stepped down after the military intervened and handed power to a respected business leader, Pedro Carmona.

Thankfully, said the NYT, democracy in Venezuela was no longer in danger . . . because the democratically-elected leader was forcibly removed by the military and replaced by an unelected, pro-U.S. “business leader.” The Champions of Democracy at the NYT then demanded a ruler more to their liking: “Venezuela urgently needs a leader with a strong democratic mandate to clean up the mess, encourage entrepreneurial freedom and slim down and professionalize the bureaucracy.”

Link (The Intercept)

New Zealand Cops Raided Home of Reporter Working on Snowden Documents

Agents from New Zealand’s national police force ransacked the home of a prominent independent journalist earlier this month who was collaborating with The Intercept on stories from the NSA archive furnished by Edward Snowden. The stated purpose of the 10-hour police raid was to identify the source for allegations that the reporter, Nicky Hager, recently published in a book that caused a major political firestorm and led to the resignation of a top government minister.

But in seizing all the paper files and electronic devices in Hager’s home, the authorities may have also taken source material concerning other unrelated stories that Hager was pursuing. Recognizing the severity of the threat posed to press freedoms from this raid, the Freedom of the Press Foundation today announced a global campaign to raise funds for Hager’s legal defense.

In August, one month before New Zealand’s national election, Hager published Dirty Politics, which showed that key figures in Prime Minister John Key’s National Party were feeding derogatory information about their opponents to a virulent right-wing blogger named Cameron Slater. Hager published evidence in the form of incriminating emails, provided by a hacker, demonstrating coordination between National Party officials and Slater. The ensuing scandal forced the resignation of a top Key ally, Justice Minister Judith Collins, and implicated numerous other National Party officials and supporters. Despite the scandal, the National Party won a resounding victory in the election, sending Key to a third term as prime minister.

Link (The Intercept)

5,000 Domains Seized Based On Sealed Court Filing; Confused Domain Owners Have No Idea Why

This is a shining example of why law enforcement shouldn’t be able to force others to do their bidding without a court order

In the past, we’d been fairly worried about governments seizing website domains with little or no notice, but it’s perhaps equally, if not more, troubling when it’s done by private individuals and companies. This was one of our concerns with the original version of SOPA, which included a “private right of action.” But, even though SOPA never became law (and the private right of action was dropped fairly early on), it appears that some courts are still allowing this to happen. Just a couple of months ago, we wrote about a troubling ruling in an Oregon district court that let a Filipino entertainment company seize a bunch of domains, in a process that was done under seal. In the past, we’ve seen other brands, like Chanel do the same thing. Louis Vuitton has also tried seizing domains.

The latest such example seems especially troubling because no one has any idea what’s fully happening, but it appears to involve Chan Luu, a jewelry and clothing retailer. The Internet Commerce Association notes that approximately 5,000 domains appear to have been seized, handed over to a private “receiver” who is now trying to sell those domains — for no clear reason.

Link (Techdirt)