A Fortnite season 6 trailer was briefly taken down earlier this week, after receiving a strike from YouTube for copyright infringement. That alone would be strange enough, since trailers and promotional videos typically secure the rights to any third-party media ahead of time. But the real kicker here is who issued the claim: according to a screengrab posted to Reddit, it was none other than Fortnite’s own developer, Epic Games.
Month: October 2018
EFF To Texas AG: Epson Tricked Its Customers With a Dangerous Fake Update | Electronic Frontier Foundation
Back in 2016, printing giant HP sent a deceitful, malicious update to millions of OfficeJet and OfficeJet Pro printers that disguised itself as a “security update.” Users who trusted HP and applied the update discovered to their chagrin that the update didn’t improve their printers’ security: rather, the updated printers had acquired the ability to reject cheaper ink, forcing the printer owners to throw away their third-party and refilled ink cartridges and buy new ones.Now, Epson has followed suit: in late 2016 or early 2017, Epson started sending deceptive updates to many of its printers. Just like HP, Epson disguised these updates as routine software improvements, when really they were poison pills, designed to downgrade printers so they could only work with Epson’s expensive ink systems.
Texas Cops Seize Anti-GOP Sign From Homeowner’s Lawn | Techdirt
As one does in this age of social media telegraphy, outraged parties brought this to the attention of a local politician with a sizable following — Texas Ag Commissioner Sid Miller — who dumped his own petrol on the partisan bonfire by posting it to Facebook and calling it an example of “Democrat sleaze.” He also claimed the picture was supposed to be “Judge Kavanaugh’s young daughter” — a claim made without supporting evidence but with the amplification of 738,000 Facebook followers.Shortly thereafter, Marion Stanford began receiving threats. Unfortunately, this is the predictable part of the backlash. Stanford also received a visit from local law enforcement, which was a bit less predictable. But they weren’t there about the threats. They were there about the sign, as the Dallas Morning News reports.
Source: Texas Cops Seize Anti-GOP Sign From Homeowner’s Lawn | Techdirt
Thomas Goolnik Gets Google To Forget Our Story About Him Getting Google To Forget Stories About Thomas Goolnik | Techdirt
We at ignorantandunreasonable also got hit with one last week.
You’ll recall, of course, that prior to the GDPR, there was a big case against Google in the EU that created, out of thin air, a “right to be forgotten” (perhaps, more accurately, “a right to be delinked”) saying that for certain classes of information that showed up in Google’s search index, it should be treated as personal data that had to be delinked from that user’s name as no longer relevant. This never made any sense at all. A search result is not like out-of-date customer database info, yet that’s how the Court of Justice in the EU treated it. Unfortunately, with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) going into effect earlier this year, the “right to be forgotten” was even more officially coded into law. We’ve noted recently, there have been a few attempts to use the GDPR to delete public information on American sites, and now we at Techdirt have been hit with what appears to be just such an attempt.
Philly Cops Face Criminal Charges For Performing An Illegal Pedestrian Stop | Techdirt
Weird stuff is happening in Philadelphia. Things have changed drastically since Larry Krasner became District Attorney. Anyone who enters this office and immediately earns the undying hatred of the local police union is probably someone actually serious about accountability.Right after taking office, DA Krasner secured 33 resignations from prosecutors and staff who weren’t willing to get on board with his reform efforts. He went after the bail system, pointing out it did little else but ensure the poorest Philadelphians spent the most time in jail while still presumably innocent. Then he pissed off the police union by daring to tell incoming police cadets force deployment — especially deadly force — is a power to be used only when necessary and handled with the utmost of respect.Accountability INTENSIFIES. A bogus pedestrian stop performed by two cops has led to [rubs eyes in disbelief] the arrest of the two cops who performed the stop.
Source: Philly Cops Face Criminal Charges For Performing An Illegal Pedestrian Stop | Techdirt