(…) following the Supreme Court’s decision that said Aereo was a cable service solely because it looked like one, and therefore had to pay retransmission fees, we warned that this would lead to a legal mess. Some people insisted Aereo could just start paying retransmission fees, but we wondered how that would fit with the ruling in the ivi case, that said internet companies didn’t qualify for statutory licenses on retransmission fees, because internet companies are not cable companies.
Aereo made a filing with the court that basically said that given the Supreme Court’s “look like a duck” test finding it a cable service, it seemed pretty clear that the ivi ruling was overturned, and thus it now wants a statutory license to pay retransmission fees. In addition to telling the court this, Aereo also filed with the Copyright Office its application to be eligible for those fees, leading the Copyright Office to send back a somewhat passive aggressive letter saying that it will “accept” the letter “on a provisional basis” but refuses to “process” it because, in its opinion, the ivi ruling means Aereo cannot be a cable company and nothing about the Supreme Court calling Aereo a cable company changes its opinion of that fact.
Category: Ignorant or unreasonable
On How UK’s Political Elite Shoved Through A Data Retention Bill
Politicians are supposed to represent the will of the public. It rarely works that way in practice, but the strongest demonstration of that may be what’s happening in the UK with this new data retention bill. We wrote about it earlier, but MP Tom Watson has more details on how this is an “erosion of political trust,” in which leaders of multiple parties in Parliament worked together to do a deal that clearly goes against the will of the public, and then sought to shove it through with no debate at all.
I truly hope this article is wrong
Like many other similar cases, this involves two teenagers sexting each other. We can all admit that this is a rather stupid thing to do, but it would be crazy not to recognize that this happens quite frequently with teens these days. It’s already a pretty big stretch to try to twist those cases into “child porn” cases, but various prosecutors have been doing exactly that for years now. In this case, the 15-year-old girlfriend sent her 17-year-old boyfriend a photo of herself, and he sent back the video. The mother of the girl complained, and prosecutors went after the boy for “two felony charges, for possession of child pornography and manufacturing child pornography.”
So far, so normal (although one could argue it shouldn’t be)
The male teen was served with petitions from juvenile court in early February, and not arrested, but when the case went to trial in juvenile court in June, Foster said prosecutors forgot to certify that the teen was a juvenile. The case was dismissed, but police immediately obtained new charges and also a search warrant for his home. Police also arrested the teen and took him to juvenile jail, where Foster said they took photos of the teen’s genitals against his will.
That’s the real wtf-ness… W.T.F.???
Edit:
It seems like Lowering The Bar also picked up on the story:
Police in Sexting Case Want to Take Photo of Teen’s … No, That Can’t Be Right
The Washington Post calls this “a unique approach to collecting evidence,” and I guess that’s one way to put it. The approach is to forcibly inject a 17-year-old boy with something that would cause an erection so they can take a picture of that to compare with the picture he allegedly texted to his girlfriend.
I’m not at a loss for words very often but just now I sat and stared at this report for a while.
CIA Sent FBI Agents After, Ended Career Of 19-Year Employee Over A FOIA Request For Historical Documents
Scudder never did anything his superiors thought was wrong until after he attempted to free these historical documents. Everything the agency never took issue with during his previous 18 years of employment — like personal call infractions and the possession of photos (taken by Scudder in his position as “official CIA photographer”) deemed “classified” — was suddenly yet another reason to force him out. It’s been clear for a long time that the government doesn’t care much for whistleblowers. It also seems to have something against transparency, even concerning documents of historical interest only.
Congressional Committee Thinks It Shouldn’t Have To Answer The SEC’s Questions About Insider Trading
The U.S. House Ways and Means Committee and a top staff member say the panel and its employees are “absolutely immune” from having to comply with subpoenas from a federal regulator in an insider-trading probe.
The committee yesterday responded to U.S. District Court Judge Paul Gardephe’s order to explain why it hadn’t complied with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s requests for documents, phone records and testimony of aide Brian Sutter for more than a year.
Computing student jailed after failing to hand over crypto keys
A computer science student accused of hacking offences has been jailed for six months for failing to hand over his encryption passwords, which he had been urged to do in “the interests of national security”.
Christopher Wilson, 22, of Mitford Close, Washington, Tyne and Wear, was jailed for refusing to hand over his computer passwords, a move that frustrated an investigation into claims he launched an attack on a police website.
Wilson, who has Asperger’s Syndrome, was suspected of “trolling” the Northumbria Police as well as attempting to break into the Serious Organised Crime Agency’s website.
Watch Your Mouth, Or The Village Of Arena Police Department May Get Violent
Thomas G. Smith made a fundamental error: he assumed that as an American he had a right to use blunt language to criticize the police.
Legally, he was right. Practically, he was wrong.
Free speech victory in Texas
I bring good news: top-notch work by generous and dedicated lawyers has produced a free speech victory in Texas.
Last year I lit the Popehat Signal seeking help for J. Todd DeShong, a blogger and AIDS activist. DeShong, a longtime critic of the nutty and conspiratorial junk science occasionally directed at AIDS issues, ran afoul of Clark Baker, an ex-cop and full-blown AIDS denialist who offers “expert” “witness” services
Popehat Signal Update: Dream Team Victory In Texas (Popehat)
UK’s Web Filters Blocking Nearly One-Fifth Of The World’s Most Popular Websites
Remember UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s China Lite® web blockade, the one that was set up to keep British children from stumbling across Internet Pornography™ and other assorted subjectively objectionable material? While being ostensibly “for the children,” the default settings (applied by ISPs at the request of the Foster State) are blocking a whole lot of non-porn.
Nearly one in five of the most visited sites on the internet are being blocked by the adult content filters installed on Britain’s broadband and mobile networks.
A Porsche car dealership, two feminist websites, a blog on the Syrian War and the Guido Fawkes political site are among the domains that have fallen foul of the recently installed filters.
The Open Rights Group, which campaigns for digital rights, surveyed the 100,000 most popular sites as ranked by digital marketing research firm Alexa, and found that 19,000 of them were blocked by at least one fixed line or mobile internet service provider.
This could never be viewed as corruption…
A new FOIA discovery via Todd Feathers at MuckRock has turned up some emails showing a rather cozy relationship between top Comcast execs and Justice Department antitrust officials. In fact, just days before Comcast announced its intent to acquire Time Warner Cable, Comcast Senior VP of Regulatory and Legislative Affairs, Kathryn Zachem, had invited Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Renata Hesse, to “attend a celebration of the opening ceremony” of the Sochi Olympics, care of Comcast NBC Universal. Hesse sent an email saying that she really wanted to attend but “the rules folks over here tell me I can’t do this.” Though, she still says that they need to get dinner sometime soon. When Zachem responds that she had hoped it would still be okay because “we have nothing formally before you all,” Hesse notes “our ethics rules are very restrictive.”