News

Wednesday 2024-10-16

06:00 AM

AI Sludge Local News Site Hoodline Falsely Accuses San Mateo DA Of Murder [Techdirt]

How should we feel when an AI journalist operation falsely accuses someone of murder? How about if the person falsely accused is a public figure? I know there are some questions lately about where liability should land when an AI system hallucinates, but here it seems pretty clear who is at fault: a nonsense peddling AI sludge factory called “Hoodline” run by a company called Impress3.

We’ve written multiple times about the growth of absolutely horrible AI sludge journalism, in which crappy (often legacy) news sites are replacing reporters with terribly written, prone-to-lying, AI journalists, with apparently zero editorial review. As I’ve said, I do think there are places where generative AI tools can be useful in journalism, but it’s not in writing stories independently without any review. Indeed, I use AI tools to interrogate everything I write (including this article, which the AI didn’t much like) before I then have a human editor review it.

But apparently, some others don’t much care, including “Hoodline.” We actually mentioned them a few months ago in one of our stories about AI sludge news sites.

A few days ago, I was reading the news recommended by Google News, and a story caught my eye, claiming that the San Mateo County DA had been charged with murder!

This seemed like it would be really big news! Especially in San Mateo County where I live. And I hadn’t even heard anything about it. The article starts out by claiming again that the San Mateo DA had been charged with murder.

Following a preliminary hearing, San Mateo County District Attorney John Caisiano Thompson, age 56, is being held to answer on all charges related to the alleged murder of a woman in his residence despite the victim’s body remaining unfound. According to an official X account from the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office, Thompson was apprehended after a collaborative investigation by the DA’s Office and the East Palo Alto Police Department, which initially began as a search for a missing person.

When I first read this, I wondered if the San Mateo County DA’s office had handed this off to another DA to avoid the conflict of interest. But there was nothing of the sort discussed in the article. Indeed, the more I read through the article, the more it became clear that this wasn’t actually the San Mateo County DA at all. It was just some guy they arrested a while back finally being charged.

Yes, there’s a little tiny “AI” next to the byline of the reporter, which should have clued me in. But I wasn’t even looking at the byline, and even if I had, I probably wouldn’t have noticed the little “AI” icon.

So, what happened? Well, the Nafnlaus account on Bluesky figured it out.

It was, in fact, trying to make a story out of a tweet by the San Mateo County DA’s ExTwitter account. But when the AI parsed it, it merged the name of the account “San Mateo County District Attorney” with the start of the tweet, which begins with the guy being charged. So merged together, it looks like that name is the DA.

When parsed, looks like:

And the AI is too stupid to notice this or to do a simple look-up to realize the San Mateo County DA is actually Stephen Wagstaffe. You know, the kind of thing a human might actually check.

Anyway, this is yet another reason why this is not the right way to be using AI in journalism. It makes me wonder why Google is featuring a site like Hoodline in Google News when it publishes this kind of nonsense. This should also alert people that any site run by Impress3 is not at all trustworthy, especially Hoodline.

Discord Disputes DMCA Subpoena, Rejects Role as ‘Anti-Piracy’ Partner [TorrentFreak]

Under U.S. law, rightsholders have an option to identify alleged copyright infringers, without directly having to file a lawsuit.

Instead, they can request a DMCA subpoena. These documents are typically signed by a court clerk and don’t require any judicial oversight. Specifically, they allow rightsholders to obtain the personal details of anonymous alleged infringers through third-party service providers.

Foreign companies are also aware of this discovery ‘shortcut’. For example, Korean game publisher Nexon previously used it to identify people who allegedly shared pirated content, including the games MapleStory and Sudden Attack, through Discord, .

Nexon Targets Discord with DMCA Subpoenas

When Nexon obtained a DMCA subpoena last October, Discord initially objected, deeming it “overbroad and unduly burdensome.” After the parties got together, an agreement was reached to confidentially disclose basic subscriber information related to 64 Discord User IDs.

Discord was clearly hesitant to cooperate but, faced with a motion to compel, it eventually chose to do so. However, the company did not envision that Nexon would return to court with similar requests a few months later.

In May, Nexon obtained a new DMCA subpoena, which again requires Discord to share the personal details of alleged copyright infringers. This time, the legal paperwork targets roughly two dozen users who allegedly shared copyrighted material related to the MapleStory game.

When the subpoena was issued, Discord had yet to send over the user details from the first request, which it eventually shared mid-June. However, going forward, the company doesn’t intend to adopt the role of anti-piracy data provider.

Discord Draws a Line

In July, Discord sent a letter to Nexon, informing the game company that it has no intention of cooperating with the latest request, describing it as improper.

“Now, you appear to be demanding additional information for yet more User IDs, which you allege infringe one of the same copyrights you have already asserted. You are attempting to renegotiate a deal that has already been struck and fulfilled. Your actions are improper,” Discord’s attorney wrote.

The letter outlined a broad list of objections and makes it clear that Discord doesn’t plan to invest substantial resources to help Nexon catch online pirates.

“Discord is committed to fulfilling its obligations under the law, but acting as your copyright assertion partner is not one of them. Your firm continues to make improper and overly burdensome demands […] including immediate threats of motion practice in non-existent legal matters.”

Prepared to Fight

The messaging platform wrote that it is prepared to file a motion to quash the subpoena, if needed. It further urged Nexon to withdraw their demands, and cease sending any similar ‘defective’ subpoenas going forward.

To support its stance, Discord made a list of twenty-two general objections and reservations. Among other things, the company wants to protect user privacy and their first amendment right to anonymous speech.

“Discord objects to the Requests as infringing its users’ decisions to remain anonymous, an aspect of their freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment. The Requests improperly seek to unmask anonymous speakers and consequently compel disclosure of material protected by the First Amendment,” it reads.

This strongly-worded letter didn’t have the desired result, however. Instead of backing off, Nexon doubled down, filing a motion to compel at a Texas federal court late last week.

The game company refutes Discord’s objections and asks the court to enter an order requiring Discord to produce the requested user data. Nexon says that it needs this information to protect its copyrights.

“Discord’s failure to cooperate discovery has impeded Nexon’s ability to discover relevant, non-privileged information that will support its potential claims against the users who have provided access to the infringing material,” Nexon writes.

While the court has yet to rule on the matter, Discord is expected to file a formal motion to quash the subpoena in response, as indicated in its earlier communications.

The dispute is yet another classic example of the clash between copyrights and user privacy, with online service providers in the middle. The fact that Discord’s compliance requires operational (time and money) resources, makes it even more complex.

This isn’t just an isolated issue that affects these two companies. The outcome of this brewing legal dispute could have a direct impact on similar DMCA subpoena efforts in the future.

—

A copy of the motion to compel, filed at the Texas federal court by Nexon Korea Corporation, is available here (pdf)

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

05:00 AM

Civil Rights Lawyer Sues Court That Blocked Him From Talking About Private Prison Company [Techdirt]

A couple of years ago, private prison giant CoreCivic decided it had had enough. It went to court to secure an order blocking noted First Amendment lawyer Daniel Horwitz from talking about it. Horwitz was then currently engaged in multiple lawsuits against the private prison company, the most prominent being his representation of the family of Terry Childress, who died in one of company’s many prisons.

The gist of CoreCivic’s arguments was this: Horwitz was steadily tweeting out public records detailing CoreCivic’s many problematic prisons, as well as negative news coverage of the company and details about inmate deaths. According to CoreCivic, Horwitz’s free speech (and activism on behalf of his clients and their interests) was somehow going to prevent it from prevailing in these lawsuits. Not only that, but some of his social media posts were mean.

Mr. Horwitz’s social media posts are direct, a necessary requirement of Twitter, yet are extraordinarily vicious in their verbiage. Certain of Mr. Horwitz’s social media posts specifically mention Childress and contend that Defendants bear responsibility for his unfortunate death. Indeed, these posts call CoreCivic a “death factory” and contend that CoreCivic “kill[s]” people.

[…]

More than this, Mr. Horwitz’s public comments absolutely will prejudice Defendants’ ability to obtain a fair trial. They are intended for vast public consumption and specifically are directed to Mr. Horwitz’s nearly 8,000 Twitter followers and to the public at large. They have been retweeted and shared multiple times over, significantly increasing their reach. They also have been picked up by local media outlets with incredibly high volumes of readers and viewers, like Channel 4 and The Tennessean. The negative impact on Defendants and on their right to a fair trial with an impartial jury cannot be understated. And, if allowed to continue, the public comments by Mr. Horwitz only will worsen, particularly as the parties begin the written discovery and deposition phase of this lawsuit.

That’s a pretty wild claim. Most defendants are encouraged to not discuss lawsuits publicly in hopes of deterring the accidental release of anything that might undermine their defenses. But plaintiffs can certainly discuss cases if they’d like to without running afoul of civil litigation rules of procedure. And if an industry giant thinks it can’t secure a fair trial because the stuff Horwitz tweeted out portrayed it so negatively, the problem is with CoreCivic, not the factual, damning information being publicly released about it.

The sad thing is the court bought CoreCivic’s arguments and decided to engage in prior restraint. It issued an order that robbed the lawyer of his First Amendment rights, as the Institute for Justice explains.

Way back in July 2022, a federal court in Nashville imposed a gag order that prohibited civil-rights attorney Daniel Horwitz from talking publicly about a wrongful-death case he brought against a private prison. The court applied a local rule that presumes, without any evidence, that an attorney’s public comments about a broad swath of topics will prejudice court proceedings. The rule then imposes a burden on the attorney to prove that his speech is not prejudicial.

With the court refusing to roll back its unconstitutional order, Horwitz was left with the proverbial nuclear option. Represented by the Institute for Justice, Horwitz is suing the court itself to get the rule of procedure abused to silence him overturned as unconstitutional. It’s not often you see a complaint whose only defendants are the court and the judges staffing that court, but you’ll see it here as Horwitz takes on the Middle District of Tennessee and its four judges.

The complaint [PDF] makes it clear preventing a lawyer from talking about issues of public interest just because they also reference a target of his litigation violates the First Amendment.

This isn’t a case involving the publication of privileged communications or documents placed under seal by the court. This involves the dissemination of publicly-available information that should not be silenced just because CoreCivic doesn’t like what this information says about it.

The local rule is the problem here, especially the way the court has chosen to use it here.

Rule 83.04(a)(2) creates a presumption that anything an attorney says publicly about a broad range of things—like the evidence in the case or character of the parties—is likely to impact the proceedings. An attorney who wants to tell the public about his case must overcome that presumption and prove his speech is not prejudicial. But such presumptions against open dialogue are antithetical to the First Amendment.

Attorneys, like everyone else, have a First Amendment right to speak publicly about non-privileged matters. Although a court’s interest in ensuring a fair trial may sometimes justify tailored limitations on attorney speech, a court can restrict an attorney’s public speech only when there is actual evidence that speech will materially impact an impending trial. The further away a trial is, the more difficult it is to carry that burden. An opposing party’s general complaints of negative media coverage are not enough. And even when some statements do meet the high bar of being prejudicial, the court must limit any restrictions on an attorney’s speech to the least burdensome means available. Gag orders like the one imposed on Mr. Horwitz must be a last resort.

For more than two years, CoreCivic has managed to silence Daniel Horwitz. The district court has done all it can to help CoreCivic shut up Horwitz by repeatedly refusing to revisit its ruling or address any filings made in cases affected by this gag order. That leaves Horwitz with the unenviable option of suing the court directly to force a ruling on the merits of his constitutional challenge. For 26 months (following the deletion of months of social media posts), Horwitz has been unable to discuss his cases publicly, rejecting multiple requests from media outlets covering the ongoing litigation.

The only winner here is CoreCivic. And it’s a completely unearned victory. As this lawsuit notes, the rule of procedure is overbroad. On top of that, the way the court has applied it to Horwitz strongly suggests any litigator discussing their (publicly-available) litigation or the targets of their lawsuit in public will likely see themselves silenced as other lawsuit defendants begin to notice Rule 83.02(a)(2) is neat little anti-speech cheat code.

It’s an essential lawsuit. And this complaint is a fun one to read, especially the middle section where Horwitz and the IJ discuss (in a publicly-filed document) all the stuff CoreCivic has managed to prevent Horwitz from disclosing in interviews or via his social media accounts. For instance:

But for Rule 83.04, Mr. Horwitz would have informed the public about how CoreCivic has repeatedly violated his clients’ civil rights, such as recounting:

a. The details of how LaEddie Coleman—the decedent in Tardy—was stabbed to death in a severely understaffed, unsupervised pod at a CoreCivic facility mere minutes after another inmate was stabbed near-fatally in the same unsupervised pod.

b. The details of how Mr. Burchard was knocked unconscious and raped in an understaffed and unsupervised pod in a CoreCivic facility after Mr. Burchard had warned guards of the specific danger he faced, yet they took no steps to protect him..

c. The details of how Mr. Gordon was murdered in an understaffed CoreCivic facility that guards knew was riddled with contraband weapons; how guards knew Mr. Gordon’s life was in danger but took no steps to protect him; and how guards viewed Mr. Gordon’s murder live on a surveillance monitor but did not intervene to save his life as he bled out in an unsupervised pod.

d. The details of how a guard at a CoreCivic facility intentionally slammed a cell door shut on Mr. Shaw’s hand so hard that it severed his finger, and how the guard stood by and laughed at the maiming rather than getting Mr. Shaw immediate medical attention.

e. The details of how guards at a CoreCivic facility knew that an inmate was dangerous, had just assaulted a nurse, and had threatened to do something to get himself sent to maximum security unless CoreCivic transferred him there; and yet CoreCivic still placed that dangerous inmate alone in Mr. Farrar’s cell without bothering to search him for weapons.

You know, stuff like that. Evidence Horwitz plans to introduce in court and, once introduced, the court can then decide whether or not it’s relevant or prejudicial. And, at that point, the burden of proof will be where it should be: CoreCivic will have to demonstrate why this is prejudicial as it’s being presented. It simply should not be given the option to prevent anyone litigating against it from discussing the case at all, much less sharing information about other similarly terrible incidents occurring under the CoreCivic brand.

But it’s tough to get a court to change its mind about its own rules of procedure. And it’s going to be a lot tougher to convince it that it can’t enforce the rule this way without violating litigants’ First Amendment rights. Horwitz is asking for this clause of Rule 83.04 to be struck down for vagueness, as well as its seemingly unconstitutional shifting of the burden of proof to those being targeted with gag orders. Hopefully, he’ll get what he’s asking for. And while he’s litigating this one, hopefully he’ll keep filing motions and briefs containing all the other stuff this gag order has prevented him from saying.

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02:00 AM

Trump Campaign Actually Does With ExTwitter What It Falsely Accused The Biden Campaign Of Doing Four Years Ago [Techdirt]

There is a widely believed but totally false claim by Trumpists that the “Biden administration” told Twitter to “censor” the NY Post article about the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop four years ago. Indeed, just a few weeks ago, Donald Trump himself accused the Biden administration of doing as much:

Of course, in 2020 Donald Trump was in the White House. So either he’s a very confused old man or he’s accusing himself of rigging the election against himself.

Of course, none of this is actually true. As we’ve covered extensively, there remains zero evidence that the Trump White House or even the Biden campaign put pressure on social media to block that story. What did happen was (1) the FBI sent generic warnings to social media to be on the lookout for foreign adversaries conducting hack-and-leak operations to impact the election, but took no stance on the Hunter Biden story, and (2) the Biden administration made a few requests to social media sites solely asking the companies to remove nude selfies that Hunter had on his laptop (i.e., nothing political).

Still, if just a month ago Trump was claiming that any effort to ask Twitter to limit access is proof of an election being “rigged,” you’d have to imagine that he’s furious that [checks notes] his own campaign reached out directly to Elon Musk to get him to remove any link to the hacked-and-leaked internal Trump campaign dossier on JD Vance.

You will recall, of course, that hackers from Iran supposedly social engineered their way into the Trump campaign system and have been trying to get the media to share the docs. They finally found a rando Substacker willing to do so, and then he was quickly banned, as were all links to the document on ExTwitter. As we noted at the time, basically everyone seemed to switch their positions on whether or not this was okay.

Supporters of Elon and Trump insisted that this banning and blocking was absolutely aboveboard and necessary. Supporters of Harris insisted that this was awful, terrible censorship and election interference. Neither seemed willing to recognize that the scenario was effectively identical to four years ago.

Except, it was even more extreme. The NY Times reported late last week that — unlike four years ago — the Trump campaign actually did call Elon to get the content removed.

The relationship has proved significant in other ways. After a reporter’s publication of hacked Trump campaign information last month, the campaign connected with X to prevent the circulation of links to the material on the platform, according to two people with knowledge of the events. X eventually blocked links to the material and suspended the reporter’s account.

So, if you’re paying along at home, the Biden campaign did not do anything to get Twitter to block the original story. But to Trumpists, it proves that they “rigged the election” against Trump. Yet here, we now have the same platform, now controlled by someone who has explicitly come out in favor of Donald Trump and revamped the site to basically push pro-Trump material over and over again.

And when a similar situation developed, this time the Trump campaign did reach out to ExTwitter and got them to put in place much more restrictive blocks on the content (old Twitter only blocked one link for 24 hours before reversing course).

Once again, we’re seeing how this works: if Trump does it, it’s perfectly reasonable and no problem. If anyone else is accused of doing it (misleadingly) in favor of a Democrat, it’s treason and election interference.

What a fucked up, stupid situation.

Even worse, as the Washington Post’s Philip Bump has noted, when JD Vance is asked whether or not Trump won the 2020 election, he is now trying to blame the government “censorship” (that did not happen) of the NY Post story as a retort.

“Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?” he was asked.

“Did big technology companies censor a story that independent studies have suggested would have cost Trump millions of votes?” he replied.

This is his parry, the idea that one couldn’t say the 2020 election was fair because there was an effort to censor this determinative story. It is, as we’ve noted in the past, a way for people unwilling to echo Trump’s wilder election-fraud claims to instead point to something less easily falsifiable, this idea that anti-Trump forces put their thumbs on the scales.

But what Vance says here is falsifiable. It is not the case that tech companies censoring a story — specifically, a New York Post story about an email attributed to a laptop owned by Joe Biden’s son Hunter — cost Trump the election.

This is a seven-layer cake of lies. Vance is lying about almost everything here to paint a totally false picture and to avoid admitting what he knows is true: that Donald Trump lost the election in 2020.

12:00 AM

It’s not easy to see time [Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect]

Consider a simple graph of the temperature of the Earth over time.

There’s nothing interesting about any frame of this graph. But when we pause for just a few seconds for it to load and render, we can see 150 years unfold and then the truth becomes apparent.

The snapshot is a useful way to capture a moment. But moments rarely offer as much insight as seeing something shift over time.

Is time hiding from us, or are we deliberately ignoring it?

Time and strategy are intertwined.

Fossil Fuel Companies Use Fake Consumer Groups And Fake Local News Orgs To Derail Solar Efforts In Ohio [Techdirt]

A favorite tactic of U.S. corporations looking to dismantle consumer protection reforms (or anything they don’t like, really) is to create entirely fake consumer groups custom-built to confuse voters and journalists. Such groups are usually used in combination with think tanks and other pseudo-objective organizations to muddy the waters, confuse constituents, and mislead the press when it comes to reform.

Cable giant Charter, for example, recently created a fake consumer group in Maine specifically tasked with lying to locals about the benefits of community-owned broadband efforts. AT&T funds more than a dozen different think tanks, all tasked with trying to convince the public and policymakers that dismantling U.S. corporate oversight will somehow result in effervescently efficient “free markets.”

The goal is to create a sound wall of fake pseudo-academic and public support against what are usually broadly popular reforms (basic corporate oversight, expanded use of solar, community owned broadband, more competition, whatever).

These tactics have been a cornerstone of cable, broadband, and telecom giants for years. But it’s also a the backbone of major energy companies’ in their efforts to undermine renewable energy reforms. Like in 2016, when a major Florida utility was caught using a fake consumer group it made up — combined with a “free market” think tank it funds — to derail efforts to ramp up solar use.

Utilities were caught again in 2023 creating fake consumer groups in Eugene, Oregon to try and derail the city’s efforts to ramp up the use of more efficient heat pumps. And now ProPublica tells the tale of yet another group of fossil fuel companies that are using fake local news orgs, think tanks, and fake consumer groups to undermine efforts to deploy solar across Ohio.

The fossil fuel industry was opposed to efforts to build a large solar farm in Knox County, Ohio. So to undermine the efforts, they began seeding local news outlets with criticism of the project, a lot of it coming from fake consumer groups like “Knox Smart Development,” developed by Ariel Corporation to spread lies about the effort to the local populace:

“The man who registered the group as a business — and who is its sole member and spokesperson — was an Ariel Corporation employee two decades ago and remained an acquaintance of a top executive there, Tom Rastin. The group’s website was owned for a time by a woman working as an executive assistant at Ariel.

And one of Knox Smart Development’s larger funders is Rastin, a Republican megadonor and a retired executive vice president at Ariel, according to records and sworn testimony. Rastin’s father-in-law founded Ariel and, until recently, Rastin and his wife, Karen Buchwald Wright, led the company. Wright is still the chairman, and her son operates it now. Rastin and Wright did not respond to questions for this story.”

Read the whole ProPublica story when you have a moment. It really explains in wonderful detail how this sort of modern sleazy influence effort works.

Telecom and energy giants gleefully exploit the slow death of local journalism, usually replacing it with a variety of pseudo-news gibberish mostly focused on propping up corporate interests. They then use these fake consumer groups to seed fake (or just lazy and understaffed) local news orgs with all manner of misleading bullshit designed to undermine anything they don’t like.

In a lot of areas, like in Knox County, local news outlets are being replaced with so-called “pink slime” fake local newspapers. A large chunk of them (including the ones involved in this story) are being financed and orchestrated by a company called “Metric Media,” which ProPublica describes as such:

“Metric Media’s nonprofit arm has received $1.4 million “for general operations” from DonorsTrust, a dark-money group that has received significant funding from Charles and David Koch, who made their billions in oil pipelines and refineries. The eight-company network that Metric is part of also has ties to conservative billionaires, including oil-and-gas-industry titan Tim Dunn, shipping magnate Richard Uihlein and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel.”

So at the same time you’ve got a fake consumer group seeding the fake local press with fake arguments about a project, you’ve got think tanks (pretending to be objective academic enterprises) also peppering local policymakers with the same arguments. At the same time, companies hire K Street firms to hammer regulators with a lot of fake comments from fake (and sometimes even dead!) people, opposing reform.

These groups all work to stock local meetings with misinformed locals, pepper the region with misleading ads and fliers, and generally saturate a community with corporatist bullshit.

In addition to lobbying local, state, and federal officials, this can all be done relatively inexpensively, and if you hadn’t noticed, it’s very effective. Policy and government folks don’t seem to have the slightest interest in reining in any of it (with transparency laws, campaign finance reform, or much of anything else), so this kind of influence just continues — and continues to get steadily worse.

On the plus side, genuine local support for popular reforms can still overpower these kinds of sleazy efforts (like in community broadband, where local anger at Comcast or Charter often outshines any effort to mislead locals), but it’s indisputable that this kind of sleazy gamesmanship makes implementing even basic progress and reform much, much harder and time consuming than it has to be.

A Deep Dive on Weaponized Polling [The Status Kuo]

I’m writing today for The Big Picture substack, with a deep dive into weaponized polling out later this afternoon. Here’s a teaser:

* * *

Election analyst Simon Rosenberg recently noted that of the last 15 general election polls released for Pennsylvania, a state viewed by both sides as key to any electoral victory, 12 have right-wing or GOP affiliations. Rosenberg warned,

“Their campaign to game the polling averages and make it appear like Trump is winning—when he isn't—escalated in [the] last few days.”

What does the GOP and the Trump campaign gain by polluting the poll averages with bad data? In today’s piece, I review what happened with the polls during the 2022 midterms and what lessons we ought to have learned. Then I’ll give some examples of some of the more egregious partisan weaponized polling today to demonstrate how the GOP has sought to put its fingers on the electoral scales.

I’ll discuss three broad reasons why it’s to their advantage to prove the race is “tied” rather than that Trump continues to trail. Finally, I’ll offer some guidance on how we push back against the negative poll vibe and maintain our collective sanity and sense of determination as the election draws to a close.

* * *

To receive the whole piece in your inbox when it publishes later today, be sure you’re subscribed to The Big Picture. To sign up (for free, or even better was one of our valued paid supporters), click the button below!

Yes! Subscribe me to The Big Picture

One more thing:

On Tuesday October 22 at 8pm ET / 5pm PT, I will be hosting a live stream with attorney and activist Robert Hubbell as part of Substack’s Election Dialogues, featuring many of the top political writers on this platform. I’m looking forward to a robust discussion about how legacy media is failing this moment, where the election stands today, and how to survive the anxiety and angst around it!

I read three other newsletters every morning: Heather Cox Richardson, Joyce Vance, and Robert Hubbell. If you’re not subscribed to Today’s Edition by Hubbell, I highly recommend it.

To attend the livestream, you’ll need the Substack app. If you don’t have it yet, you can download the app at the store. We’ll be broadcasting live from within it, heaven help us. It’s my first attempting any such a joint live stream, so I appreciate your grace and understanding! Hope to see you live next Tuesday—

Jay

Tuesday 2024-10-15

08:00 PM

After Historic Win, MPA Battles Endless FMovies, Soap2Day & 123Movie Clones [TorrentFreak]

Six years ago when attention was focused elsewhere, the MPA warned that lacking legislation and rising broadband penetration would eventually transform Vietnam into a major online headache for rightsholders.

Yet perhaps not even the MPA expected sites like FMovies and Aniwatch to attract hundreds of millions of visitors every month. Coupled with a complex and politically sensitive environment in Vietnam, where established anti-piracy principles seemed to carry little to no weight, at times Hollywood’s prospects of countering this unique threat seemed uncharacteristically hopeless.

Then seemingly out of nowhere, after FMovies and sister sites Bflix, Soap2day, and Sflix had switched to another set of fresh domains, technical issues at FMovies led to its disappearance mid-July. Sites linked to FMovies shut down just a few weeks after.

Historic Win For MPA/ACE, Familiar Morning After Headache

With seemingly relevant information pointing to MPA/ACE involvement, official confirmation arrived late August.

Shutting down the world’s biggest movie and TV show sites in such difficult circumstances was undoubtedly a big win for the studios; yet in some respects, they’d been here before.

Most likely operated by the same group in Vietnam, 123movies shut down in 2018 only to reappear stronger than ever. Another example involved anime giant Aniwatch; ostensibly shut down by ACE while operating as Zoro in 2023, it simply rebranded to Aniwatch and casually pulled in record-breaking traffic.

Track Record of Deviating From Agreements

Whether anything similar is happening now in respect of FMovies and the other brands is difficult to say with complete certainty. However, with a few hundred million visits per month instantly available, it’s safe to say that sites with similar branding to those recently shut down are fighting for a share.

Some domains quickly scooped up millions of extra visits but keeping track of so many moving targets, especially those involving domain switches and/or rebranding, can be extremely challenging. Luckily, the MPA employs people to do the heavily lifting.

Threats Revealed in Site-Blocking Actions

Not long after Fmovies, Bflix, Soap2day, Sflix, and other connected sites switched domains late May, the MPA moved to have domains blocked by ISPs in the UK.

Around 100 of those domains seem potentially relevant to events in Vietnam due to the nature of the sites and familiar naming conventions. A further 100 potentially relevant domains were blocked in July, and after a break in August, 33 domains were blocked in September and a further 84 thus far in October.

The scale of the problem is illustrated below, although not every domain requested for blocking appears here.

Some domains blocked by the MPA

The majority feature well-known branding, either directly linked to the shuttered domains (FMovies, Bflix, Soap2day, etc), historically linked (such as 123movies/movies123 and gomovies), or linked by single/mixed branding also used by other sites operating in the same niche.

To make the list manageable, domains with low traffic, no obvious link to events in Vietnam, or operating in a different niche, were removed in advance. Those that remain must be operating as full pirate sites since that’s a requirement for blocking in the UK.

Domain Pattern	#Block (June)	#Block (July)	#Block (Sept)	#Block (Oct)	#Total Blocked
123movies/movies123	34	31	17	28	110
fmovies/fmoviez	8	13	5	10	36
soap2day	9	12	3	5	29
flixer/flixtor/wave/braflix	3	6	–	12	21
solarmovie	9	2	–	3	14
gomovies	3	5	2	3	13
putlocker	10	2	–	1	13
primewire	4	4	1	3	12
watchseries/watch	2	5	1	3	11
hurawatch	–	6	–	1	7
lookmovie/lookmovie2	4	1	–	–	5
bflix	3	1	–	1	5

Total (inc.sundry others)	~100	~100	~33	~84
Notes: Proxy-only, torrent sites, non-relevant and sundry other domains, have been removed. There are no records to indicate the MPA requested any blocking in August. The UK has no official public blocklist, so data should be considered potentially incomplete, and all figures as estimates

While FMovies was the most popular single site ever seen in the movie and TV show streaming sector, it appears that isn’t enough to detract from the popularity of 123movies/movies123 branding which takes the top slot at considerable distance.

Another surprise is an apparent lack of interest in Bflix, at least in respect of domains that become popular enough to be considered a blocking threat. It’s worth pointing out that while Bflix may seem insignificant here, more than 300 domains are currently listed as registered, with the majority still unexpired.

For Fmovies the number of domains previously registered rises to 1,400 and for 123movies/movies123 variants, around 3,500 seems like a reasonable estimate.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

12:00 PM

Kanji of the Day: 居 [Kanji of the Day]

居

✍8

小5

reside, to be, exist, live with

キョ　コ

い.る　-い　お.る

同居 (どうきょ) — living together
居る (いる) — to be (of animate objects)
入居 (にゅうきょ) — moving into (house)
居酒屋 (いざかや) — izakaya
住居 (じゅうきょ) — dwelling
別居 (べっきょ) — separation
芝居 (しばい) — play
新居 (しんきょ) — new home
鳥居 (とりい) — torii
紙芝居 (かみしばい) — kamishibai

Generated with kanjioftheday by Douglas Perkins.

Kanji of the Day: 傍 [Kanji of the Day]

傍

✍12

中学

bystander, side, besides, while, nearby, third person

ボウ

かたわ.ら　わき　おか-　はた　そば

傍ら (かたわら) — side
傍聴 (ぼうちょう) — listening (to a lecture, hearing, parliament session, etc.)
傍聴席 (ぼうちょうせき) — visitor's gallery
傍らに (かたわらに) — beside
傍から (そばから) — as soon as
傍観者 (ぼうかんしゃ) — onlooker
傍観 (ぼうかん) — looking on
傍目 (おかめ) — looking on from the side
傍若無人 (ぼうじゃくぶじん) — behaving outrageously as though there were no one around
傍聴人 (ぼうちょうにん) — observer

Generated with kanjioftheday by Douglas Perkins.

11:00 AM

Pluralistic: Dirty words are politically potent (14 Oct 2024) [Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow]

Today's links

Dirty words are politically potent: Why "enshittification" took hold.
Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
This day in history: 2009, 2014, 2019, 2023.
Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
Recent appearances: Where I've been.
Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
Colophon: All the rest.

Dirty words are politically potent (permalink)

Making up words is a perfectly cromulent passtime, and while most of the words we coin disappear as soon as they fall from our lips, every now and again, you find a word that fits so nice and kentucky in the public discourse that it acquires a life of its own:

http://meaningofliff.free.fr/definition.php3?word=Kentucky

I've been trying to increase the salience of digital human rights in the public imagination for a quarter of a century, starting with the campaign to get people to appreciate that the internet matters, and that tech policy isn't just the delusion that the governance of spaces where sad nerds argue about Star Trek is somehow relevant to human thriving:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/04/small-change-malcolm-gladwell

Now, eventually people figured out that a) the internet mattered and, b) it was going dreadfully wrong. So my job changed again, from "how the internet is governed matters" to "you can't fix the internet with wishful thinking," for example, when people said we could solve its problems by banning general purpose computers:

https://memex.craphound.com/2012/01/10/lockdown-the-coming-war-on-general-purpose-computing/

Or by banning working cryptography:

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/09/04/oh-for-fucks-sake-not-this-fucking-bullshit-again-cryptography-edition/

Or by redesigning web browsers to treat their owners as threats:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/open-letter-w3c-director-ceo-team-and-membership

Or by using bots to filter every public utterance to ensure that they don't infringe copyright:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/09/today-europe-lost-internet-now-we-fight-back

Or by forcing platforms to surveil and police their users' speech (aka "getting rid of Section 230"):

https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act/

Along the way, many of us have coined words in a bid to encapsulate the abstract, technical ideas at the core of these arguments. This isn't a vanity project! Creating a common vocabulary is a necessary precondition for having the substantive, vital debates we'll need to tackle the real, thorny issues raised by digital systems. So there's "free software," "open source," "filternet," "chat control," "back doors," and my own contributions, like "adversarial interoperability":

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability

Or "Competitive Compatibility" ("comcom"), a less-intimidatingly technical term for the same thing:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/competitive-compatibility-year-review

These have all found their own niches, but nearly all of them are just that: niche. Some don't even rise to "niche": they're shibboleths, insider terms that confuse and intimidate normies and distract from the real fights with semantic ones, like whether it's "FOSS" or "FLOSS" or something else entirely:

https://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/262/what-is-the-difference-between-foss-and-floss

But every now and again, you get a word that just kills. That brings me to "enshittification," a word I coined in 2022:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

"Enshittification" took root in my hindbrain, rolling around and around, agglomerating lots of different thoughts and critiques I'd been making for years, crystallizing them into a coherent thesis:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

This kind of spontaneous crystallization is the dividend of doing lots of work in public, trying to take every half-formed thought and pin it down in public writing, something I've been doing for decades:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/09/the-memex-method/

After those first couple articles, "enshittification" raced around the internet. There's two reasons for this: first, "enshittification" is a naughty word that's fun to say. Journalists love getting to put "shit" in their copy:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/15/crosswords/linguistics-word-of-the-year.html

Radio journalists love to tweak the FCC with cheekily bleeped syllables in slightly dirty compound words:

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/projects/enshitification

And nothing enlivens an academic's day like getting to use a word like "enshittification" in a journal article (doubtless this also amuses the editors, peer-reviewers, copyeditors, typesetters, etc):

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=enshittification&btnG=&oq=ensh

That was where I started, too! The first time I used "enshittification" was in a throwaway bad-tempered rant about the decay of Tripadvisor into utter uselessness, which drew a small chorus of appreciative chuckles about the word:

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1550457808222552065

The word rattled around my mind for five months before attaching itself to my detailed theory of platform decay. But it was that detailed critique, coupled with a minor license to swear, that gave "enshittification" a life of its own. How do I know that the theory was as important as the swearing? Because the small wave of amusement that followed my first use of "enshittification" petered out in less than a day. It was only when I added the theory that the word took hold.

Likewise: how do I know that the theory needed to be blended with swearing to break out of the esoteric realm of tech policy debates (which the public had roundly ignored for more than two decades)? Well, because I spent two decades writing about this stuff without making anything like the dents that appeared once I added an Anglo-Saxon monosyllable to that critique.

Adding "enshittification" to the critique got me more column inches, a longer hearing, a more vibrant debate, than anything else I'd tried. First, Wired availed itself of the Creative Commons license on my second long-form article on the subject and reprinted it as a 4,200-word feature. I've been writing for Wired for more than thirty years and this is by far the longest thing I've published with them – a big, roomy, discursive piece that was run verbatim, with every one of my cherished darlings unmurdered.

That gave the word – and the whole critique, with all its spiky corners – a global airing, leading to more pickup and discussion. Eventually, the American Dialect Society named it their "Word of the Year" (and their "Tech Word of the Year"):

https://americandialect.org/2023-word-of-the-year-is-enshittification/

"Enshittification" turns out to be catnip for language nerds:

https://becauselanguage.com/90-enpoopification/#transcript-60

I've been dragged into (good natured) fights over the German, Spanish, French and Italian translations for the term. When I taped an NPR show before a live audience with ASL interpretation, I got to watch a Deaf fan politely inform the interpreter that she didn't need to finger-spell "enshittification," because it had already been given an ASL sign by the US Deaf community:

https://maximumfun.org/episodes/go-fact-yourself/ep-158-aida-rodriguez-cory-doctorow/

I gave a speech about enshittification in Berlin and published the transcript:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/30/go-nuts-meine-kerle/#ich-bin-ein-bratapfel

Which prompted the rock-ribbed Financial Times to get in touch with me and publish the speech – again, nearly verbatim – as a whopping 6,400 word feature in their weekend magazine:

https://www.ft.com/content/6fb1602d-a08b-4a8c-bac0-047b7d64aba5

Though they could have had it for free (just as Wired had), they insisted on paying me (very well, as it happens!), as did De Zeit:

https://www.zeit.de/digital/internet/2024-03/plattformen-facebook-google-internet-cory-doctorow

This was the start of the rise of enshittification. The word is spreading farther than ever, in ways that I have nothing to do with, along with the critique I hung on it. In other words, the bit of string that tech policy wonks have been pushing on for a quarter of a century is actually starting to move, and it's actually accelerating.

Despite this (or more likely because of it), there's a growing chorus of "concerned" people who say they like the critique but fret that it is being held back because you can't use it "at church or when talking to K-12 students" (my favorite variant: "I couldn't say this at a NATO conference"). I leave it up to you whether you use the word with your K-12 students, NATO generals, or fellow parishoners (though I assure you that all three groups are conversant with the dirty little word at the root of my coinage). If you don't want to use "enshittification," you can coin your own word – or just use one of the dozens of words that failed to gain public attention over the past 25 years (might I suggest "platform decay?").

What's so funny about all this pearl-clutching is that it comes from people who universally profess to have the intestinal fortitude to hear the word "enshittification" without experiencing psychological trauma, but worry that other people might not be so strong-minded. They continue to say this even as the most conservative officials in the most staid of exalted forums use the word without a hint of embarrassment, much less apology:

https://www.independent.ie/business/technology/chairman-of-irish-social-media-regulator-says-europe-should-not-be-seduced-by-mario-draghis-claims/a526530600.html

I mean, I'm giving a speech on enshittification next month at a conference where I'm opening for the Secretary General of the United Nations:

https://icanewdelhi2024.coop/welcome/pages/Programme

After spending half my life trying to get stuff like this into the discourse, I've developed some hard-won, informed views on how ideas succeed:

First: the minor obscenity is a feature, not a bug. The marriage of something long and serious to something short and funny is a happy one that makes both the word and the ideas better off than they'd be on their own. As Lenny Bruce wrote in his canonical work in the subject, the aptly named How to Talk Dirty and Influence People:

I want to help you if you have a dirty-word problem. There are none, and I'll spell it out logically to you.

Here is a toilet. Specifically-that's all we're concerned with, specifics-if I can tell you a dirty toilet joke, we must have a dirty toilet. That's what we're all talking about, a toilet. If we take this toilet and boil it and it's clean, I can never tell you specifically a dirty toilet joke about this toilet. I can tell you a dirty toilet joke in the Milner Hotel, or something like that, but this toilet is a clean toilet now. Obscenity is a human manifestation. This toilet has no central nervous system, no level of consciousness. It is not aware; it is a dumb toilet; it cannot be obscene; it's impossible. If it could be obscene, it could be cranky, it could be a Communist toilet, a traitorous toilet. It can do none of these things. This is a dirty toilet here.

Nobody can offend you by telling a dirty toilet story. They can offend you because it's trite; you've heard it many, many times.

https://www.dacapopress.com/titles/lenny-bruce/how-to-talk-dirty-and-influence-people/9780306825309/

Second: the fact that a neologism is sometimes decoupled from its theoretical underpinnings and is used colloquially is a feature, not a bug. Many people apply the term "enshittification" very loosely indeed, to mean "something that is bad," without bothering to learn – or apply – the theoretical framework. This is good. This is what it means for a term to enter the lexicon: it takes on a life of its own. If 10,000,000 people use "enshittification" loosely and inspire 10% of their number to look up the longer, more theoretical work I've done on it, that is one million normies who have been sucked into a discourse that used to live exclusively in the world of the most wonkish and obscure practitioners. The only way to maintain a precise, theoretically grounded use of a term is to confine its usage to a small group of largely irrelevant insiders. Policing the use of "enshittification" is worse than a self-limiting move – it would be a self-inflicted wound. As I said in that Berlin speech:

Enshittification names the problem and proposes a solution. It's not just a way to say 'things are getting worse' (though of course, it's fine with me if you want to use it that way. It's an English word. We don't have der Rat für englische Rechtschreibung. English is a free for all. Go nuts, meine Kerle).

Finally: "coinage" is both more – and less – than thinking of the word. After the American Dialect Society gave honors to "enshittification," a few people slid into my mentions with citations to "enshittification" that preceded my usage. I find this completely unsurprising, because English is such a slippery and playful tongue, because English speakers love to swear, and because infixing is such a fun way to swear (e.g. "unfuckingbelievable"). But of course, I hadn't encountered any of those other usages before I came up with the word independently, nor had any of those other usages spread appreciably beyond the speaker (it appears that each of the handful of predecessors to my usage represents an act of independent coinage).

If "coinage" was just a matter of thinking up the word, you could write a small python script that infixed the word "shit" into every syllable of every word in the OED, publish the resulting text file, and declare priority over all subsequent inventive swearers.

On the one hand, coinage takes place when the coiner a) independently invents a word; and b) creates the context for that word that causes it to escape from the coiner's immediate milieu and into the wider world.

But on the other hand – and far more importantly – the fact that a successful coinage requires popular uptake by people unknown to the coiner means that the coiner only ever plays a small role in the coinage. Yes, there would be no popularization without the coinage – but there would also be no coinage without the popularization. Words belong to groups of speakers, not individuals. Language is a cultural phenomenon, not an individual one.

Which is rather the point, isn't it? After a quarter of a century of being part of a community that fought tirelessly to get a serious and widespread consideration of tech policy underway, we're closer than ever, thanks, in part, to "enshittification." If someone else independently used that word before me, if some people use the word loosely, if the word makes some people uncomfortable, that's fine, provided that the word is doing what I want it to do, what I've devoted my life to doing.

The point of coining words isn't the pilkunnussija's obsession with precise usage, nor the petty glory of being known as a coiner, nor ensuring that NATO generals' virgin ears are protected from the word "shit" – a word that, incidentally, is also the root of "science":

https://www.arrantpedantry.com/2019/01/24/science-and-shit/

Isn't language fun?

Hey look at this (permalink)

Risks vs. Harms: Youth & Social Media https://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2024/10/09/risks-vs-harms-youth-social-media.html
Privacy Policies of Sex Worker Directories https://sexworkersear.ch/2024/09/11/privacy-policies/
"Small Yard, High Fence": These four words conceal a mess https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/small-yard-high-fence-these-four

This day in history (permalink)

#15yrsago Finland makes broadband a right https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/finland-makes-1mb-broadband-access-a-legal-right/

#10yrsago Dead Set: Richard Kadrey’s young adult horror novel https://memex.craphound.com/2014/10/14/dead-set-richard-kadreys-young-adult-horror-novel/

#10yrsago Gamergate as a hate-group https://memex.craphound.com/2014/10/14/gamergate-as-a-hate-group/

#10yrsago Lamar “SOPA” Smith dispatches GOP commissars to National Science Foundation https://gizmodo.com/the-gop-intensifies-its-attacks-on-the-national-science-1645733575

#10yrsago Paolo Bacigalupi’s “The Doubt Factory” https://memex.craphound.com/2014/10/14/paolo-bacigalupis-the-doubt-factory/

#5yrsago What it would cost to build Trump’s snake-and-alligator border moat https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2019/10/snake-and-alligator-border-moat-budget-analysis/160350/

#5yrsago German bank robber staged a 5-day fillibuster with his legally guaranteed right to a post-sentencing “final word” https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/09/europe/bank-robbery-five-day-speech-intl-scli-grm/index.html

#5yrsago Apple told TV Plus showrunners to avoid plots that might upset Chinese officials https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alexkantrowitz/apple-china-tv-protesters-hong-kong-tim-cook

#5yrsago China’s new cybersecurity rules ban foreign companies from using VPNs to phone home https://memex.craphound.com/2019/10/14/chinas-new-cybersecurity-rules-ban-foreign-companies-from-using-vpns-to-phone-home/

#5yrsag Orban humiliated: Hungary’s crypto-fascist Fidesz party suffers string of municipal election defeats https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/13/opposition-parties-candidate-wins-budapest-mayoral-race

#5yrsago Proof-of-concept supply-chain poisoning: tiny, undetectable hardware alterations could compromise corporate IT https://memex.craphound.com/2019/10/14/proof-of-concept-supply-chain-poisoning-tiny-undetectable-hardware-alterations-could-compromise-corporate-it/

#1yrago Leaving Twitter had no effect on NPR's traffic https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/14/freedom-of-reach/#ex

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

OKFN Tech We Want Online Summit (Remote), Oct 18
https://okfn.org/en/events/the-tech-we-want-online-summit/
SOSS Fusion (Atlanta), Oct 22
https://sossfusion2024.sched.com/speaker/cory_doctorow.1qm5qfgn
Eagle Eye Books (Decatur), Oct 23
https://eagleeyebooks.com/event/2024-10-23/cory-doctorow
TusCon (Tucson), Nov 8-10
https://tusconscificon.com/
International Cooperative Alliance (New Delhi), Nov 24
https://icanewdelhi2024.coop/welcome/pages/Programme
ISSA-LA Holiday Celebration keynote (Los Angeles), Dec 18
https://issala.org/event/issa-la-december-18-dinner-meeting/

Recent appearances (permalink)

Speciale intervista a Cory Doctorow (Digitalia)
https://digitalia.fm/744/
Was There Ever An Old, Good Internet? (David Graeber Institute)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6Jlxx5TboE
Go Fact Yourself
https://maximumfun.org/episodes/go-fact-yourself/ep-158-aida-rodriguez-cory-doctorow/

Latest books (permalink)

The Bezzle: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (the-bezzle.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3062/Available_Feb_20th%3A_The_Bezzle_HB.html#/).
"The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3007/Pre-Order_Signed_Copies%3A_The_Lost_Cause_HB.html#/)
"The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).
"Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com. Signed copies at Dark Delicacies (US): and Forbidden Planet (UK): https://forbiddenplanet.com/385004-red-team-blues-signed-edition-hardcover/.
"Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
"Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The Washington Post called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html
"How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59?sk=f6cd10e54e20a07d4c6d0f3ac011af6b) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)
"Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html
"Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.

Upcoming books (permalink)

Picks and Shovels: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books, February 2025
Unauthorized Bread: a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2025

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

Enshittification: a nonfiction book about platform decay for Farrar, Straus, Giroux. Friday's progress: 768 words (63193 words total).
A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING
Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS FEB 2025

Latest podcast: Spill, part one (a Little Brother story) https://craphound.com/littlebrother/2024/10/06/spill-part-one-a-little-brother-story/

This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

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"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla

It’s Manipulation, Plain and Simple [The Status Kuo]

Our office is closed today, so I don’t have my regular installment today. But I did want to amplify something I posted yesterday on social media which gained some traction and which perhaps a lot more people need to hear today.

Trump needs us to believe the race is close, not only because it will help him claim election fraud later, but because a close race gives a permission structure for people who are still undecided to excuse the worst of Trump’s attributes. After all, everyone else is still supporting him, right?

Here’s what I wrote, with some images added to help make my point.

***

Why is the GOP flooding us with so many partisan polls to make it seem like the race is far better for Trump than it is? What’s the point of all that?

Many of you have answered that question yourselves already without realizing it, just by wondering aloud, “Why is the race tied?!”

You see, if people are led to believe it is tied, then it must also be true that half of America thinks it’s somehow okay to pick Trump, despite everything we know about him. It normalizes him. It tells us all that these horrific things don’t matter, and we begin to believe that because the polls are telling us so.

But the polls are bunk. The GOP knows from internal polling that Trump’s in trouble, and that they have to shore him up. That’s why they’re flooding us with partisan polls—60 GOP leaning ones, all paid for by Republicans and dropped into the mix recently, all in the battleground states.

Don’t buy into it. The majority of Americans believe Trump has disqualified himself in fundamental ways from a second term and will vote that way—IF we don’t collectively give into despair and normalize Trump’s fascism and hate. Weaponized polls are trying to demoralize us, but we can push back and call them out for it.

High quality, non-partisan polling show the race has really not moved in a month. It’s remarkably stable, and that is a key fact.

This is true in the battleground states as well as nationally. Harris has a narrow but discernible lead, and it’s likely bigger than the polls show.

So, deep breath. Their flood of polls is a sign of weakness and desperation. If we vote like we did in 2018, 2020, and 2022, we win.

Subscribe now

I added in a comment to that post:

If the polls were consistently showing Trump is losing, then the media would have to explain why that is. It’s because he’s a terrible candidate: a felon, a sexual assaulter, a fascist, a racist, a misogynist, a blithering fool.
Instead they report that they are tied when they are not, and they report on his enduring strength with voters.
See how that works?

Today and tomorrow, I’m working on a substantive piece for The Big Picture substack, to be published Tuesday afternoon. It covers a bit more of the recent history of poll weaponization, what some experts are saying about why else it’s being deployed, and how it’s affecting the media and our national psyche. If you’d like to receive it in your inbox but aren’t yet subscribed to The Big Picture newsletter (which I write for once a week or so), you can do so here so you get my full analysis. It’s free, but of course we cherish and appreciate our voluntary paid supporters!

For now, understand that the GOP is manipulating the data, which is manipulating the media, which in turn is driving many people into bouts of anxiety. The race has not fundamentally changed in anyway. They’re trying to vibe shift it, and we should understand that. The antidote to this cynical ploy is action. Donate. Organize. Vote.

If we show up, we win.

Jay

Tor Browser 13.5.8 is now available from the Tor Browser download page and also from our distribution directory.

This version includes important security updates to Firefox.

This is an unplanned release which backports the remaining Android-specific security fixes from Firefox 131 to Tor Browser 13.5. This is due to a release-process failure on our part during the 13.5.7 release.

How did this happen?

The fundamental issue that led to us missing patches in the previous release is that we have two different ways of prepping Android releases, and we forgot a step.

To elaborate, Tor Browser 13.5 is based of Firefox 115. This version of Firefox uses a separate source-code repository for the Android-specific functionality. Tor Browser 14.0 is based off of Firefox 128 which has integrated Android and Desktop source-code into a single repository. So, to prep a 13.5 release we have to update two source-code tags, while in 14.0 we only have to update only one.

Since we have been mostly prepping 14.0 alpha-channel releases in recent weeks, this extra tag update was overlooked and these Android-specific updates never made it into the final release.

The good news is that this particular error won't happen again as we will not need to release any more Tor Browser 13.5 for Android after this because Tor Browser 14.0 will stabilise soon.

Send us your feedback

If you find a bug or have a suggestion for how we could improve this release, please let us know. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/131.0.3/releasenotes/

Full changelog

The full changelog since Tor Browser 13.5.7 is:

Android
- Updated NoScript to 11.4.42
- Bug tor-browser#43099: YEC 2024 Takeover for Android Stable
- Bug tor-browser#43173: Backport security fixes from Firefox 131

05:00 AM

Rightsholders Seek U.S. Help to Collect $1.4 Million Piracy Judgment Against Cloudflare [TorrentFreak]

Popular Internet infrastructure service Cloudflare has come under pressure from copyright holders in recent years.

The company offers its services to millions of customers including multinationals, governments, but also some of the world’s leading pirate sites.

These pirate sites have proven to be quite a headache for Cloudflare. For example, rightsholders continue to complain that the company helps pirates conceal their hosting locations and identities, as was made clear again in recent submissions to the European Commission.

In some countries, rightsholders are using the legal system to address their gripes. This resulted in site blocking orders in Japan, Italy, and Germany. At the same time, Cloudflare has also been sued directly for its association with pirate sites.

Cloudflare’s Moldovan Piracy Lawsuit

In Moldova, for example, book authors Eugeniu and Radu Turuta, sued Cloudflare and several of its customers, including the anonymous operators of file hosting platform doku.pub. The authors accused these services of sharing pirated copies of their book “5000 Integrated Circuits Power Audio Amplifiers”.

When the authors sent Cloudflare a takedown notice, the company responded that it doesn’t host any content for doku.pub, clarifying that it operates as a ‘pass-though’ CDN provider. Instead of taking any direct action, Cloudflare said that it would inform its customers about the allegations.

This response is typical for Cloudflare. The company generally forwards DMCA takedown notices and only takes direct action if it permanently hosts the allegedly infringing material.

However, in the Moldovan case, the authors argued that Cloudflare had the technical capacity to block access to the infringing content on doku.pub, but failed to do so despite being notified. This inaction, they claimed, made Cloudflare complicit and directly contributed to their financial losses.

In 2022, the Chisinau Court dismissed the authors’ claim. The court held that Cloudflare, as a CDN provider, merely acted as an intermediary and was not directly involved in hosting or distributing the pirated content.

This ruling was appealed, with the higher court taking a different stance, emphasizing the responsibility of CDNs to actively combat copyright infringement within their networks.

$1.4 Million Piracy Judgment

The Court of Appeal’s ruling puts Cloudflare on equal footing with other Internet providers. Essentially, it concluded that it doesn’t matter whether Cloudflare merely passes on traffic or if it hosts content as well.

“The company Cloudflare Inc does not provide data transmission services over the internet to the https://doku.pub website, but it does provide data transmission services between the https://doku.pub website and the end users, and this fact is confirmed by Cloudflare Inc., which claims to be a pass-through network.

“[T]he court finds that, by reproducing the content of the works (books) in dispute, without the consent of the authors, there has been a violation of the patrimonial copyright of the plaintiffs,” the Court of Appeals added.

Based on these conclusions, the Court held that Cloudflare is liable for copyright infringement, ordering the company to pay €1.27 million (approximately $1.4 million) in damages to the authors.

Authors Ask U.S. Court to Enforce Judgment

The judgment was undoubtedly a major setback for Cloudflare. In particular, it conflicts with the different types of safe harbors for Internet providers in the United States, where pass-through services are treated differently from hosting platforms.

Despite the court of appeal’s order, the issue isn’t fully resolved yet. According to the authors, Cloudflare has yet to pay any damages. To ensure that this will happen, they took the matter to the U.S. legal system.

At a U.S. federal court in California, the rightsholders point out that the judgment from the Chisinau court of appeal is final, adding that Cloudflare has yet to pay. They therefore ask the court to recognize this foreign order as a valid judgment, so the damages can be collected.

The case was initially filed at the Superior Court of the State of California but was transferred to the federal court this summer, where it’s still pending. Cloudflare has yet to file a detailed response, but it will likely point to the safe harbor protection U.S. copyright law provides.

In theory, the outcome of this case could have far-reaching implications for copyright holders and CDNs worldwide. If the US court recognizes and enforces the Moldovan judgment, it could inspire other copyright holders to pursue similar legal actions against CDNs.

However, enforcing foreign judgments in the U.S. is complex and certainly not guaranteed. The U.S. court will consider various factors, including whether the Moldovan court had jurisdiction and whether the judgment violates U.S. public policy.

In addition to the liability and jurisdiction questions, Cloudflare will likely protest the scale of the damages award as well. In the United States, the maximum statutory damages for a single copyrighted work is $150,000, which is a fraction of the Moldovan award.

—

A copy of the legal paperwork, which is currently pending at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, is available here (pdf)

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

02:00 AM

All donations to the Tor Project matched 1:1, now through Dec 31 [Tor Project blog]

Each year during this season, the Tor Project holds a fundraiser during which we ask for your support. We do this because the Tor Project is a nonprofit organization, powered by donations from our community. Donations make it possible for the Tor Project to build tools powered by people—not profit.

Over the next few months, we’ll be sharing stories from some of the millions of people you’re helping when you support Tor, the impact we've made this year, details about what’s coming next to our suite of privacy and censorship circumvention tools, and ways you can help make privacy online easy and accessible.

Now is a great time to give and spread the word about the Tor Project because through the end of the year, all donations will be matched by our supporters at Power Up Privacy. That means when you donate $25, you’re making a $50 impact. Plus, we’ve introduced a brand-new item to our list of gifts you can receive in return for making a donation. 👀

A picture of a black cap with an embroidered purple onion

Below is a short preview of the events we’re hosting for you from now until the end of the year. We hope you will save these dates and choose a way to contribute or spread the word about the Tor Project today!

Upcoming events

Global Encryption Day: Distribute(d) trust – The key to global encryption access (Monday, October 21)
- For many vulnerable Internet users, the Tor network is the only way to gain access to encrypted services. It's made possible by relay operators, the thousands of volunteers who donate their time, technical expertise, and hardware. Join us for a roundtable discussion with individual and institutional relay operators to learn more about the ins and outs of powering a safer, more equitable internet. The virtual live event is part of Tor's contributions to Global Encryption Day.
- 📺 Stream live on our YouTube channel
State of the Onion – the Tor Project (Wednesday, November 13)
- The State of the Onion is the Tor Project's annual virtual event where we share updates from the Tor Project and the Tor community. The event on November 13 will focus on the Tor Project and the organization’s work.
- 📺 Stream live on our YouTube channel
State of the Onion – Community (Wednesday, November 20)
- The State of the Onion is the Tor Project's annual virtual event where we share updates from the Tor Project and the Tor community. The event on November 20 will focus on organizations in the Tor community and their work.
- 📺 Stream live on our YouTube channel
Human Rights Day (Tuesday, December 10)
- Every year on December 10, we celebrate the UN’s adoption and proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948. The UDHR outlines privacy as one of the human rights everyone should be free to exercise.
- 📎 Keep an eye on the blog and newsletter for event updates.

Ways to contribute

Make a donation: Donate through our website (or any other method listed on our FAQ) and your donation will be matched, 1:1, up to $300,000.
Ask the company you work for if they will match your donation: Many corporations will match their employees’ donations to charitable organizations. Ask at work if your company will match your gift.
Share on social media: Let the people in your networks know that all donations to the Tor Project are currently being matched. You can easily share a post from our social channels: Mastodon, Bluesky, X, and more.
Subscribe to Tor News: No ads. No tracking. Just low-traffic Tor updates via email.

fundraising

Monday 2024-10-14

10:00 PM

Some simple rules for source control [Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect]

Collaborating on documents and projects has never been easier, which is why we screw it up so often. Sharing and interacting with intent will save you heartache and wasted time. Some things to consider:

Naming: Begin by naming your file with a digit and concept and a date. Something like “1 Book Presentation October 24”.

And then, with each substantial edit, hit SAVE AS and increment the number. It’s very clear that “3 Book Presentation October 24” is a more recent edit.

Never name a file with “Final” because, as we all know, final is an elusive construct.

Who has the conn? While some cloud-based services like Google docs do a pretty good job of allowing shared edits, it pays to announce who has the controlling, official document. When two people edit different versions of a document at the same time, all that work is wasted. “Cheryl, it’s yours now, I won’t touch it until you send it back.”

Suggested edits: In Google docs, the default is to edit the document (the little pencil). You can switch this (top right corner) to the option for ‘suggesting.’ The beauty of this is that it allows the controlling editor to see the changes that are being offered and to accept or reject them. It creates a more thoughtful flow to creation. Endless conversations via the comments panel almost always lose important information.

A shared doc is better than an email thread: If you know that you’re working toward something, start a Google doc and outline the proposition. Then invite others to edit and improve it. This will lead to a final agenda or outline or proposal. The problem with email threads with multiple contributors is that nuance is lost and contradictions persist.

The original format: The original document is better than a PDF, and a PDF is better than a screenshot. If you start with a spreadsheet, take a screenshot, put the image in a Powerpoint and then email it to someone as a PDF, you’ve pretty much guaranteed that editing it going forward is going to be a mess. Always include a folder of the underlying documents, properly named.

I’d ask for edits and improvements to this post, but this is the wrong format for that. Feel free to copy and paste and share… you have the conn.

04:00 PM

Why a Pirate IPTV Seller’s 4-Year Prison Sentence Means Little Without Context [TorrentFreak]

Prosecutions of those involved in the sale of pirate IPTV subscriptions appear to be on the rise, not just in the UK, but also in the EU and beyond.

Resources made available for these cases are in limited supply but by carefully selecting those with the best chance of success, there appears to be a high rate of conviction, despite attitudes to infringement differing in various regions.

A persistent difficulty when attempting to compare similar cases, is whether aggravating or mitigating factors played a significant role in sentencing. Whether a sentence is too harsh, not harsh enough, or simply par for the course, becomes almost impossible to determine when this relevant information is excluded.

Husband and Wife Team Sentenced

On Friday, the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) reported on the sentencing of a man and woman from County Londonderry for IPTV-related offenses. Cormac McGuckin (38) and Maura McGuckin (34), a married couple from Bellaghy, had appeared on FACT’s radar before the anti-piracy group referred the matter to the police. That led to a “lengthy and complex investigation” by detectives which FACT says concerned the sale of subscriptions “with more than £700,000 involved.”

FACT’s report notes that on June 4, 2024, Cormac McGuckin pled guilty to charges including participating in a fraudulent business between January 1, 2016 and June 18, 2020. “He also admitted possessing articles for use in fraud on June 18, 2020. He also pled guilty to charges of converting criminal property, possessing criminal property and transferring criminal property,” FACT notes.

At Omagh Crown Court on Friday, Cormac McGuckin received a four-year sentence, two years to be served in prison with the remaining two years spent on license.

On the same day, Maura McGuckin pled guilty to “converting criminal property on holiday-related expenses and car payments, and possessing criminal property,” FACT reports. For these offenses, committed between April 21, 2017 and June 18, 2020, the 34-year-old received a 12-month prison sentence, suspended for two years.

Too Long, Too Short, Or About Right?

In IPTV piracy cases, how much the offenders “made” is often interpreted as profit by the media but usually relates to the total amount customers paid, with no costs taken into consideration.

In this case, FACT’s comment of “more than £700,000 involved” is a reference to the total sum of money involved in all of the charges to which the defendants pled guilty. Our best estimates suggest the following;

• ~£737,000 was transferred into and out of a joint PayPal account (total amount)
• ~£684,000 of total relates to charges of ‘transferring criminal property’ (five counts)
• ~£367,000 of total relates to charge of ‘possessing criminal property’
• ~£30,000 in seized cash relates to charge of ‘possessing criminal property’
• -Seized laptops/mobile phones relate to a charge of ‘possessing items for use in fraud’

The charges of converting criminal property against Maura McGuckin (and Cormac) initially reported by FACT concerns around £45,000 in finance payments for high-end cars and around £26,700 spent on holidays. When combined, that’s over £70,000 spent on obvious luxuries. The Court didn’t buy the claim that McGuckin failed to grasp her husband’s line of business but with an otherwise clean record, 12 months’ prison suspended for two years isn’t especially surprising.

The same can’t be said about a laundry list of aggravating factors relevant to the sentencing of her husband.

IPTV Offenses Occurred Shortly After Release From Prison

The investigation into McGuckin’s activities led detectives to the El Paso Burrito Bar in Dungannon, a takeaway/delivery restaurant owned by McGuckin at that time. When police eventually swooped, searches took place at both the takeaway and at McGuckin’s home.

Evidence seized included electronic devices and information that showed IPTV sales to around 2,000 subscribers. If 2,000 customers paid £7.50 per month and subscribed every month for four years, that’s £15,000 for 48 months, to a grand total of £720,000. Of that amount, it’s estimated that £475,000 represented profit. In broad terms, the figures sound about right.

Less easily consumed is the fact that McGuckin’s pirate IPTV-related offenses began soon after he’d been released from prison after serving eight months, while still on license for a fraud offense the court described as “shocking.”

In 2012, McGuckin had been working at a company selling wine. There he befriended a customer, a 71-year-old pensioner suffering with Alzheimer’s. Through abuse of the customer’s account at the wine company and writing out fraudulent checks to himself or his soon-to-be wife, the pensioner was conned out of at least £17,000. He only found out when the bank called about a £10,000 overdraft he knew nothing about.

After being arrested and interviewed twice, on both occasions McGuckin claimed the money was a loan. He later admitted that part of the money was used to pay for his wife’s wedding dress and bridal accessories, a local news outlet reports.

Involved in Other Criminality?

Anti-piracy groups like FACT push specific messaging to the public through repetition, but mostly without practical examples that would serve to make those claims more credible. One key claim is that many of those involved in the sale of pirate IPTV are often involved in other criminality too.

Yet despite that clearly being the case here, with previous convictions mentioned in court as an aggravating factor, the above received no mention. The same applies to a one-month prison sentence (suspended for two years) in 2012 for one count of fraud and 13 of theft for using a former employer’s credit card to steal around £1,000.

Not even impersonating a police officer, in order to have his wife’s wedding tiara released from a shop, when the shop had refused to release it because of police inquiries into credit card transactions, made it as background. According to an Irish News report, McGuckin has 23 previous convictions for fraud and dishonesty, including the theft of £17,000 from the 71-year-old which the paper says was partly used to replace money stolen from his then fiancée, now wife.

Conclusion

That the IPTV-related offenses took place while on still on license following another conviction for fraud, is clearly problematic. The report claiming 23 previous convictions for fraud and other dishonesty-based crimes not only shows a prolific offender, but one that the courts could’ve stopped longed ago, but failed to do so.

To that background and the money sums involved, two years in prison seems unlikely to act as a deterrent and tends to make the justice system appear somewhat weak. A comment from Detective Sergeant Robinson thanked FACT for its support and reminded everyone that piracy is not a victimless crime. It also came with a warning, most impactful if read in isolation, less so in the context of the above.

“Users and subscribers of illegal services should also be aware that they too are committing an offense for which they can be identified and prosecuted,” Det Sgt Robinson said.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

12:00 PM

Kanji of the Day: 面 [Kanji of the Day]

面

✍9

小3

mask, face, features, surface

メン　ベン

おも　おもて　つら

画面 (がめん) — screen (of a TV, computer, etc.)
面白い (おもしろい) — interesting
場面 (ばめん) — scene
面白 (おもしろ) — amusing
面倒 (めんどう) — trouble
面接 (めんせつ) — interview (e.g., for a job)
面白さ (おもしろさ) — interest
当面 (とうめん) — current
面積 (めんせき) — area (measurement)
仮面 (かめん) — mask

Generated with kanjioftheday by Douglas Perkins.

Kanji of the Day: 伸 [Kanji of the Day]

伸

✍7

中学

expand, stretch, extend, lengthen, increase

シン

の.びる　の.ばす　の.べる　の.す

伸び (のび) — growth
伸びる (のびる) — to stretch
伸ばす (のばす) — to grow long (e.g., hair, nails)
延伸 (えんしん) — stretching
伸び伸び (のびのび) — comfortably
伸び伸び (のびのび) — comfortably
伸び率 (のびりつ) — growth rate
続伸 (ぞくしん) — continuous rise (in market price)
伸び悩む (のびなやむ) — to be sluggish
背伸び (せいのび) — standing on tiptoe and stretching one's back to make oneself taller

Generated with kanjioftheday by Douglas Perkins.

Six Dumb Misconceptions About The Economy (that the Politicians Want You To Believe) [Mr. Money Mustache]

Well, it looks like we’re here in another US election year already.

As Advanced Mustachians, we already know that the ongoing battle of Harris vs. Trump should not be consuming much of our time. Sure, we do our research and cast our votes but after that we move right on to focus on other things within our own circle of control.

But out of all the things the politicians like to bicker about, there’s one area where MMM does need to set the record straight, and that area is of course money. Your money, the economy in general, and the overall wealth of the nation.

Politicians are already not known for being the sharpest tools in the shed when it comes to technical stuff like science, technology, or economics. But this year the discourse has become particularly dumb, as our candidates try to manipulate undecided voters in swing states with ideas that are based on irrational emotions rather than sound economic sense.

For one particularly funny example, you may have noticed that the competing party (Trump in this case) is attacking the incumbents (Biden/Harris) over the “bad economy.” When in fact the US economy is stronger than it has ever been, with the lowest unemployment we’ve ever seen as well.

It’s hard to imagine a better situation than we have right now, and in fact the recent bout of higher inflation is a sign that things have been going too well, and we needed to step on the brakes with the help of higher interest rates.

But somehow the people still seem to believe that we have a “bad” economy. Take a look at this Gallup poll showing that while most people (85%) are doing really well right now, they assume that it’s just their own good fortune – only 17% believe the economy is doing well.

This is mathematically impossible, because if most people are doing well, that’s the definition of a good economy! And suspiciously enough, this widespread wrongness correlates quite nicely with the rise of social media misinformation.

So the politicians and the news have been doing the opposite of what they should be doing in an ideal situation (sharing accurate information). And sure, we can always just ignore their speeches and go on with our lives. But when it comes to economics, knowledge is power (and money). The more accurately we understand how things really work, the wealthier we will all become.

So with all that in mind, I hereby present you with my list of the…

Top Dumb Things Politicians Want You To Believe About The Economy

1: The President Controls the Economy

If there’s a recession, the opposition party likes to blame it on the current president. If the economy is booming, the current president likes to give himself (or possibly soon herself) credit for all of that success. But really, the US economy is way too big – and thankfully way too free – for the president to control or really even influence all that strongly.

In reality, our economy is a gigantic machine which converts labor and materials into things like iPhones, hospitals and pumpkin pies. And although we’re the biggest economy at 26% of the planet, we are still heavily influenced by that much bigger 74% of economic activity that the other 7.6 billion people on Earth are busy producing everywhere else.

When we have our inevitable little boom and bust cycles, they are mostly caused by the normal cycle of irrational exuberance (and greed) like the 2007 housing boom, followed by brief periods of extreme fear and pessimism like the 2008-2012 financial and housing crash.

The government does play a role too, by setting tax rates and other rules. But the effects of these policies are usually so delayed and unpredictable, that you can’t draw a straight line between today’s president and today’s economy. In other words, the government does its best to adjust the rudder on our giant ship, but in the short term our economy lurches around on the waves and storms of the ocean.

2: The President Controls Interest Rates

This one is especially funny to me, as our candidates feign sympathy for the hard life of middle class Americans, who now face higher borrowing costs on their credit cards and car loans and mortgages. They claim they will fight to bring the interest rates down. Trump even goes as far as bullying our Federal Reserve board members (who can only do their jobs if we allow them to function as independent experts) and suggesting that he would take over the whole department, if elected.

The real story is that while monetary policy would be a terrible tool to leave in the hands of a sitting president (see Argentina), it does function as an excellent set of gas and brake pedals for the economy if used properly. When things slow down and unemployment gets too high, a cut to the interest rates will produce a boost in everything from new jobs to stock prices. But if things get too hot, you get rapid inflation which can mess up the system.

3: Inflation has Made Life Harder for Americans (and the President Can Magically Reverse it)

This line of reasoning is even dumber than the last one. For a couple of years after the Covid era, we had rapid inflation. It was caused by a rare combination of a goods shortage caused by things like factory closures and remote work, plentiful demand from government stimulus spending and low interest rates. These factors have since ironed themselves out, and inflation is back down to an ultra-low 2.4%.

Steve Ballmer explains the inflation vs wages debate in his useful new video series called USA Facts (see note below)

But most significantly, wages have still risen faster than inflation so we are all better off than before! Since 2019, overall prices are up 19% and our wages are up 21%. So even after all that inflation, we are still doing just fine. But the candidates are still bickering over inflation as if it’s an actual problem, and even worse promising to “bring prices back down”. And they’ve managed to convince the electorate that “higher wages and prices” is the same thing as “a bad economy”. Which is just plain wrong.

Bonus dumbness: politicians also occasionally blame “greedy corporations” for increasing prices to hoard profits. While price increases are totally acceptable in a market system (as a business owner you are free to set prices wherever you like), in reality it doesn’t usually happen because our markets are too competitive. For example, a recent deep analysis from NPR showed that no, grocery stores haven’t made any windfall profit at all off of this recent bout of Covid-fueled inflation.

4: The President Controls Housing Prices

One important thing that has changed over the past ten years is that US house prices and rents have both risen much faster than general inflation and even wages. On the positive side, interest rates have also risen which tends to make houses feel more expensive and is supposed to help bring house prices down. But it hasn’t happened yet which means we have the double whammy of higher prices and higher interest costs for mortgage borrowers.

The dumb part is that our candidates are proposing things that would make the problem even worse, like subsidies for first-time homebuyers or schemes to reduce the interest rates. When really the solution is to increase the supply of housing, which I personally think will happen if we stop putting up roadblocks for homebuilders (myself included) to build housing.

Things like faster and cheaper permits, less onerous and expensive building codes, eliminating suburban-style zoning and setback and car parking rules, and changing laws so that NIMBYs no longer get any say over what other people do with their own land could all help reduce the cost of building a house by about 50%, quickly and permanently.

5: The President Controls Gas Prices, and They Are Currently “High” and We Want Them Lower

Ahh, gasoline! The most ridiculous of things to worry about and the fuel for many of MMM’s rants since 2011.

First of all, on an inflation-adjusted basis, gasoline is still about the same price as it was in 1950: in the $3-4 range per gallon, in today’s dollars.

Secondly, it is so cheap that even with our huge inefficient American vehicles, the average household is still only spending 2.5% of their disposable income on the stuff! (The funny part is that they spend many times more on the rest of the car ownership experience while thinking gas is the part that is expensive)

Third, gasoline has been obsolete for almost a decade now. You can get a used electric car for less than the price of a comparable used gas car, or if you’re a fancypants money waster like me, new EVs are also cheaper than their gas counterparts. You get a faster, nicer car that almost never needs maintenance OR gasoline, and save money.

So why are we even still talking about this antique fuel of a previous era? Why aren’t the candidates also arguing over the price of Kodak film or typewriters or fax machines?

6: The Economy is Something We Should Even Worry About

The funniest part about all this economic talk is that we’re focusing on the wrong thing. While hard work and business and advancing the frontiers of human knowledge are all fun things, the reality is that we passed the point of having “Enough” decades ago. When the American middle class complains about how hard we have it these days, it’s like a bunch of overfed people at a buffet wishing they could just have one more flavor of donuts stacked onto the table.

Yes, we have income and wealth inequality so that the rich tend to get richer more quickly. And yes, we should keep that in check with a somewhat progressive tax system because a more equal society tends to be a more peaceful and happy one.

But have you noticed that as the rich people get richer, they don’t get any happier? It’s because after you pass the point of “Enough”, adding more money doesn’t really help much.

And “Enough” is much more defined by your mindset (and your collection of life skills) than your paycheck. So if the politicians really cared about improving our happiness and wellbeing, they’d be preaching the Principles of Mustachianism rather than pandering to the specific requests of coal miners or billionaires.

But alas, winning an election is a very different thing than proposing stuff that is actually best for the country. And for that reason, we cast our votes for the best party and then tune back out until the next election.

Happy voting!

In the Comments: Has the election season been getting you down, pumping you up, or just giving you a thorough dose of “Meh”?

Further Reading/Watching:

While researching economic stats for this article, I came across a quirky but informative series of videos called USA Facts by none other than Microsoft co-founder Steve Ballmer. It seems that he had the same frustration as me: Americans are fighting over a bunch of opinions and misinformation without even bothering to look up the actual facts. So he made a well-produced series of videos that just share the facts without the baggage of political hype on top of them. I wish our politicians could do the same thing!

Bonus Podcast based on this article!
Thanks to the magic of AI, you can direct the wizardry within Google to generate a custom-made podcast on almost anything on the Internet. A reader just emailed me this take on this episode – remarkably human-like and even entertaining!
https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/0e1d0af8-8888-466c-abe4-8b1da8986773/audio

10:00 AM

A Little Pumpkin to Brighten Your Day [The Status Kuo]

One of the most amazing things about being a new dad is watching your little baby develop day to day, week to week. Lately, Riley began having the faintest hint of a smile, which really looks more like a surprised face, but when she displays it, she is indeed delighted!

It’s been hotter than normal in NYC, but it’s finally starting to cool off. My cat Shade finds the pumpkins satisfactory.

We’ve got some fall decor up, including one curiously shaped gourd…

Okay, if you have a dirty mind, then here’s the deal: To atone, you must donate one last time to the Kamala Harris Victory fund! I’m half serious, and I swear this is my last ask. Collectively we already raised $125,000, and I’m hoping to get to $150K in this last push!

This money goes straight to grassroots get out the vote efforts that are highly targeted, so your contribution could make a key difference in a critical battleground state, where the election could be decided by a few thousand votes!

Yes! I’ll help this one last time!

Have an amazing and restful Sunday! And thanks to all who made this last donation campaign a success.

Jay

06:00 AM

Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt [Techdirt]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is DisgruntledAnonymous with a comment on our post about Elon Musk seizing people’s Twitter accounts to promote Donald Trump:

This just solidified my decision to delete and deactivate my accounts (primary and burner) on that site. I would advise those who haven’t fallen into the thrall of 45 to do the same.

In second place, it’s Stephen T. Stone with another comment on that post, this time in response to a commenter who thought they were pointing something out which had in fact been covered:

Someone didn’t read past the “Claim” part of the article.

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with a comment from Sayyadina responding to another commenter who objected to our post about Musk’s free Starlink for Hurricane Helene victims not being free, and also raised some nonsense about FEMA:

Offering a service for free but charging for the hardware required to enable that service is a de facto charge for the service. Entire internet scams used to be built on this exact move.

FEMA “interfered” because unauthorized civilian pilots were flooding the airspace in defiance of FAA regulations and creating an extremely hazardous environment that could’ve caused even more death and destruction. They were protecting people, as they’re supposed to do.

What a shit apologist you are.

Next, it’s a comment from Thad about why Amazon Prime gets away with being such a terrible streaming service:

Cable TV didn’t come with two-day shipping.

I would wager that the vast majority of Prime subscribers are there for the shipping perks, and Prime Video is a secondary concern at best. I suspect that grants Amazon more leeway to enshittify its streaming service than its competitors that only offer video streaming.

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is Toom1275 with another comment about Elon Musk seizing the @America account:

“Lazy African immigrant steals from honest hardworking American!”

In second place, it’s Thad with a comment about Cloudflare’s total and absolute victory against a patent troll:

Cloudflare Destroys Another Patent Troll, Gets Its Patents Released To The Public, and Hears the Lamentations of Their Women

For editor’s choice on the funny side, we start out with an anonymous comment about the state lawsuits against TikTok and the history of “save the children” moral panics:

Hmm. Perhaps these lawsuits are retroactive evidence that the sugar cereals do cause behavioral issues as evidenced by these lawsuits being filed. After all, there’s a strong probability that the people involved actually grew up on those cereals.

Finally, it’s tanj with a comment about the failure of Musk’s “Twitter no longer exists” defense in Australia:

It might have worked if he was wearing Groucho Glasses.

That’s all for this week, folks!

05:00 AM

DSA-5791-1 python-reportlab - security update [Debian Security]

https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/DSA-5791-1

DSA-5790-1 node-dompurify - security update [Debian Security]

https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/DSA-5790-1

Sunday 2024-10-13

09:00 PM

Amplifying the fringes [Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect]

Culture is: “People like us do things like this.”

We might even have a chance to choose our group. Hipsters do this, hippies do that. People in this town wear this outfit, students at this school hang out here on Saturdays…

We might be born into a culture. Less agency, but just as much identity.

There’s a built-in status quo here. Most groups want stability and the peace of mind that comes from being in sync. That’s why we join a group in the first place.

Of course, every culture also has neophiliacs, folks that find status and affiliation in embracing the new. They are most comfortable with novelty, not tradition.

Ideas spread from the ones who embrace the new to the folks who want to stay in sync.

But some cultures change more quickly than others. Some stagnate, others accelerate.

When change happens too fast, the culture gets stressed.

One factor in the speed of cultural change is the control of the media and distribution.

In an authoritarian environment, gatekeepers and censorship ensure that the culture changes very slowly. This includes most scientific journals, large organizations and spectrum-limited forms of media. This is a country with state-controlled media, but it’s also a community where the people who are most fearful of change also have power.

If there are only a few TV channels or radio stations, the programmers are going to become conservative, because they don’t want to lose market share. If the cost of being seen as too edgy is perceived as very high, the gatekeepers will stay in the center.

The Billboard Top 40 and pop music exists because a jukebox couldn’t hold every record, and radio stations didn’t want to risk losing a listener who wanted to hear what everyone else was listening to.

The other factor is the algorithm. How is attention parceled out?

You can probably see where this is heading.

The newspaper and the radio station determined the algorithm. A few surprising items, but mostly, the center.

And then social media arrived. And they intentionally turned the algorithm inside out.

They tweak what gets promoted and spread based on what is likely to grab our attention, to play with our emotions, to generate outrage or surprise. They do this without regard for truth or the stress that the idea might cause. They simply want to drive short-term attention.

The fringe. That’s where outrage and fear and novelty live.

And so creators of content responded. They discovered that in order to get the attention they craved, they had to run from the center and toward the edges. Even if they didn’t believe in what they were saying, or especially then.

The fringe, amplified, stops being the fringe.

So the next wave of fringe must be even fringier.

This is a fundamental shift in the world as we know it. One where a flywheel of ever more challenging cultural change continues to arrive, without balance.

It’s no wonder people feel ill at ease. Instead of the ship adding ballast to ensure a smooth journey, the crew is working hard to make the journey as rocky as possible.

Piracy Shield May Reduce Illegal Sports Streaming, Traffic Analysis Suggests [TorrentFreak]

Piracy Shield’s first birthday is still several months away so the appearance of a study into its effectiveness came as a surprise but not an unwelcome one.

Commentary by Italian telecoms regulator AGCOM, mirrored by top-tier football league Serie A and streaming service DAZN, hasn’t been at all useful for those seeking answers to the two most important questions:

1) How effective is Piracy Shield at denying access to pirate live sports streams?
2) What is the effect (if any) on new subscriber uptake and customer churn?

Thus far, success has been expressed via the number of domains and IP addresses added to the system for blocking. With roughly 25,000 domains and IP addresses currently blocked, and huge numbers added week after week, the need for more blocking is just as easily framed as a measure of failure.

How Effective is Piracy Shield?

A study to measure how effective Piracy Shield is at blocking was recently conducted at the University of Padua. Graduate student Maffei Davide and Prof. Alessandro Galeazzi, with support from Dr. Giacomo Quadrio and Dr. Enrico Bassetti of the SPRITZ security group, opted for an analysis of network traffic via the university’s VSIX[g] node.

“The project was born from the need to collect information on the functioning of Piracy Shield, as well as on the evaluation of its effectiveness. Through the analysis of network flows, we want to be able to distinguish video flows from other types of traffic and identify the differences between ordinary and pirated traffic,” David Maffei explains.

Using traffic analysis, the researchers examined various characteristics such as communication protocols (TCP, UDP), network ports commonly associated with streaming services, stream duration and size, and packet flags signaling successful transmission and reception.

Through the analysis of these and other characteristics, the researchers aimed to isolate video streaming traffic from other network activity. The next task was to isolate likely legal streaming traffic, from traffic likely to be illegal.

Identifying Legal Streaming Traffic

To identify streaming traffic likely to be legal, the researchers needed to establish which companies hold the broadcast rights for the sporting events being analyzed. After identifying Sky and DAZN, the next step was to discover their Content Delivery Network (CDN) partners; in this case, both Sky and DAZN mainly use Akamai.

The next stage required the researchers to determine the IP addresses generating network traffic coinciding with football match broadcasts. The paper provides additional detail but in broad terms, the researchers considered i) average traffic rate (between 1 and 20Mbps), ii) consistent traffic patterns (to exclude addresses with high traffic peaks unrelated to streaming), and iii) significant difference in traffic during match time, when compared with the two-hour slots before and after a game.

After identifying the Content Delivery Network (in this case Akamai) used for legal broadcasts and finding the corresponding Autonomous System Numbers (ASN), the researchers were able to reconstruct the legal streaming traffic to generate a legal traffic baseline, as illustrated in the image below.

Legal traffic baseline (May 2024)

This baseline allowed the researchers to compare legal traffic with suspected illegal traffic.

Identifying Suspected Illegal Streaming Traffic

The researchers began by identifying the most-used network ports used during the match period; overwhelmingly ports 443 (https) and 80 (http) in the top 50.

The data generated by these high-traffic ports was analyzed to detect network flows with similar characteristics to those associated with video streaming, following the pattern of legal traffic established in the baseline. To facilitate identification, traffic graphs were generated for each port, with port 41122 producing a very similar profile to the legal baseline.

Among many checks carried out to ensure that traffic was actually illegal, the researchers compared this traffic with traffic generated by ASNs linked to websites previously blocked for copyright infringement. Again, the finer details are available in the full report.

Piracy Shield: Effective or Not?

When referencing Piracy Shield, the researchers appear to take the whole system into consideration, from the detection and identification of pirate streams by affected rightsholders, to the eventual blocking of domains and IP addresses by ISPs.

Key metrics the researchers wanted to consider but were forced to leave out, include detection rates, false positive rates, response times, and efficient management of IP addresses and availability. The researchers cite limited data availability and a general lack of transparency throughout the system as obstacles to more comprehensive research.

To evaluate the effectiveness of Piracy Shield, the researchers compared legal traffic with suspected illegal traffic. The image below shows data reconstructed from traffic generated by ASNs associated with IP addresses blocked by Piracy Shield (orange) and separately identified legal traffic (blue).

“The graph highlights that illegal traffic presents significant volume peaks at football match times, indicated by the vertical dotted lines. These peaks coincide temporally with the start an end of sports events, suggesting a strong correlation between presumed pirate traffic and the unauthorized transmission of sports content,” the report notes.

The paper notes difficulties in identifying specific patterns related to illegal video streaming (orange), although a clear pattern typical of streaming did emerge. On the other hand, legal traffic (blue) shows smaller fluctuations.

A more concerning finding for rightsholders is the volume of suspected illegal streaming, which at times overlaps with legal streaming traffic, further complicating the task of distinguishing legal from illegal traffic. More sophisticated algorithms and filtering techniques may be needed to improve identification accuracy.

Conclusion: “Some Effectiveness”

Overall, the results of the traffic analysis suggest that Piracy Shield demonstrated “some effectiveness” in reducing illegal traffic but the scale of the impact – and of course any effect on subscription uptake – is beyond the scope of the study.

The continued availability of pirate sites and the ability of users to circumvent blocking are cited as key concerns, along with strong negatives concerning the platform itself.

Rightsholders’ ability to implement blocking without supervision, meets a lack of transparency and scrutiny in general, and the suggestion of unaccountability. Implications for net neutrality are also raised as a concern.

Whether “some effectiveness” justifies the imposition of the many negatives on everyone except Italian football, will remain a lively topic of debate. There seems little here to inspire confidence that it’s all been worthwhile, but that may be challenged once the first comprehensive rightsholder-funded research sees the light of day.

Evaluation of the Effects of Piracy Shield Through Video Stream Analysis and Its Operation (pdf)

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

12:00 PM

Kanji of the Day: 服 [Kanji of the Day]

服

✍8

小3

clothing, admit, obey, discharge

フク

洋服 (ようふく) — Western-style clothes (cf. traditional Japanese clothes)
服装 (ふくそう) — attire
克服 (こくふく) — conquest (of a difficulty, illness, crisis, etc.)
制服 (せいふく) — uniform
服用 (ふくよう) — taking medicine
不服 (ふふく) — dissatisfaction
私服 (しふく) — ordinary clothes (i.e., non-uniform)
着服 (ちゃくふく) — embezzlement
衣服 (いふく) — clothes
服する (ふくする) — to obey

Generated with kanjioftheday by Douglas Perkins.

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News

Wednesday 2024-10-16

06:00 AM

Nexon Targets Discord with DMCA Subpoenas

Discord Draws a Line

Prepared to Fight

05:00 AM

02:00 AM

12:00 AM

Tuesday 2024-10-15

08:00 PM

Historic Win For MPA/ACE, Familiar Morning After Headache

Track Record of Deviating From Agreements

Threats Revealed in Site-Blocking Actions

12:00 PM

11:00 AM

Today's links

Dirty words are politically potent (permalink)

Hey look at this (permalink)

This day in history (permalink)

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

Recent appearances (permalink)

Latest books (permalink)

Upcoming books (permalink)

Colophon (permalink)

How to get Pluralistic:

09:00 AM

07:00 AM

06:00 AM

How did this happen?

Send us your feedback

Full changelog

05:00 AM

Cloudflare’s Moldovan Piracy Lawsuit

$1.4 Million Piracy Judgment

Authors Ask U.S. Court to Enforce Judgment

02:00 AM

Upcoming events

Ways to contribute

Monday 2024-10-14

10:00 PM

04:00 PM

Husband and Wife Team Sentenced

Too Long, Too Short, Or About Right?

IPTV Offenses Occurred Shortly After Release From Prison

Involved in Other Criminality?

Conclusion

12:00 PM

10:00 AM

06:00 AM

05:00 AM

Sunday 2024-10-13

09:00 PM

How Effective is Piracy Shield?

Identifying Legal Streaming Traffic

Identifying Suspected Illegal Streaming Traffic

Piracy Shield: Effective or Not?

Conclusion: “Some Effectiveness”

12:00 PM