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1 06:27 AM 15 Comments Expand 
Dish’s New 5G Network, Created By Trump Regulators To Justify Rubber Stamping T-Mobile Merger, Looks Like A Silly Dud
from the dysfunction-junction dept
"A few years ago the Trump DOJ and FCC rubber-stamped the Sprint T-Mobile merger without heeding expert warnings that it would stifle competition, kill jobs and slowly raise rates. Working closely with T-Mobile and Dish, the FCC and DOJ “antitrust enforcers” unveiled what they claimed was a “fix” for these problems: they’d cobble together a fourth major replacement wireless carrier in Dish Network.
As we noted a few times, the proposal was never likely to succeed. One, because Dish had no track record in this space outside of a parade of empty promises. Two, because the remaining three providers (AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile) and Wall Street want less price competition and would be incentivized at every step to ensure it fails. And three, because an incompetent and feckless FCC (displaying various degrees of said incompetence and fecklessness under both parties) would not likely dole out more than wrist slaps should Dish miss major build out milestones. . ."
2 09:35 AM Impossibility Theorem Strikes Again: YouTube Deletes January 6th Committee Video
from the impossibility-theorem-never-fails dept
"Content moderation at scale is impossible to do well says my impossibility theorem. And, basically every day we see more examples of this in action. The latest is that the NY Times reports how YouTube took down a video that the January 6th House Select Committee had posted to the site, detailing many of the lies Donald Trump made about the 2020 election.
The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot has been trying to draw more eyes to its televised hearings by uploading clips of the proceedings online. But YouTube has removed one of those videos from its platform, saying the committee was advancing election misinformation. . ."
3 10:48 AM UK Approves Extradition Of Julian Assange, Allowing The US Government To Continue Criminalizing Journalism
from the publishing-leaks?-that's-a-prosecuting. dept
"It appears all but inevitable that Julian Assange will be receiving an all-expenses-paid (except for his defense!) one-way trip to the United States to face espionage charges for, mostly, performing acts of journalism.
The Wikileaks founder has done plenty of self-inflicted damage to his reputation over the past few years, but his organization was instrumental in uncovering plenty of abusive behavior by the US government that had been perpetrated in secret.
Leaks are an instrumental part of government accountability, even if governments often treat leaks as criminal acts. And while it’s abhorrent to see the government punish whistleblowers who found the accepted whistleblowing routes inadequate, it’s even worse to see the US government engaged in a prosecution that threatens press freedoms in the home of the First Amendment. . .
[ ] Why the Biden Administration is allowing this to continue isn’t clear. Perhaps the Biden DOJ feels the espionage charges are legit. Maybe it feels it should silence Assange before he does any more damage to the federal government. Maybe it feels it should punish an ally of Trump (and a seeming supporter of Russian disinformation campaigns) before he can wreak any more havoc on democracy in general.
Whatever the case, the prosecution continues. And, as Trevor Timm points out in his post for Freedom of the Press Foundation, you don’t have to be a supporter of Assange to understand extradition and prosecution over the publication of leaked documents will do severe damage to journalists in the United States, and anywhere else in the world the US government has extradition agreements in place.
You don’t have to like Assange or his political opinions at all to grasp the dangerous nature of this case for journalists everywhere, either. Even if you don’t consider him a “journalist,” much of the activity described in the charges against him is common newsgathering practices. A successful conviction would potentially make receiving classified information, asking for sources for more information, and publishing certain types of classified information a crime. Journalists, of course, engage in all these activities regularly.
There’s precedent for this, unfortunately. But it’s the sort of precedent the Biden DOJ shouldn’t willingly embrace. Timm notes that the extradition announcement falls on the anniversary of the Pentagon Papers trial, one instigated by a president whose downfall was the result of journalists publishing leaked documents.
What many do not know is that the Nixon administration attempted to prosecute Times reporter Neil Sheehan for receiving the Pentagon Papers as well — under a very similar legal theory the Justice Department is using against Assange.
Thankfully, that prosecution failed. And until this one does too, we continue to urge the Biden administration to drop this prosecution. Every day it continues to further undermine the First Amendment.
You’d think any administration would actively avoid replicating nearly anything instigated by the Nixon Administration. But here we are, fifty years later, experiencing deja vu as our government spends millions of our dollars to threaten long-held First Amendment protections."
Filed Under: 1st amendment, espionage act, extradition, free speech, journalism, julian assange, leaks, uk
Companies: WikiLeaks
4 12:14 PM Giant Private Prison Company Goes To Court To Try To Get Lawyer To Stop Tweeting About Them
from the you-can't-control-speech-outside-of-prison-too dept
"CoreCivic is one of the nation’s largest private prison companies. And while it should already be concerning that we even have private prison companies, CoreCivic appears to be particularly awful. Just last week, CoreCivic was in the 9th Circuit appeals court trying to overturn a dismissal of its SLAPP lawsuit that it filed against investment firm Candide Group and a Forbes writer, Morgan Simon, for making claims about the company that turned out to be pretty accurate. In the process, CoreCivic is trying to undermine California’s useful anti-SLAPP law by saying it can’t be used in federal court (something the 9th Circuit has already allowed in other cases).
But, back in Tennessee (CoreCivic’s home state), the company is looking to suppress speech in a different way: literally asking a court to issue a gag order on lawyer Daniel Horwitz, who is representing the family of Terry Childress, who died in one of CoreCivic's hellholes. . .
. . .
Yeah, maybe the reason news organizations are picking up on them is that they are newsworthy? Is CoreCivic really arguing that news organizations can’t cover a case or it will prejudice a jury? There are easy ways to deal with that during the voir dire process in determining whether or not any potential juror follows Horwitz or has seen any of these news stories.
Anyway, CoreCivic needs to learn that while it may be able to shut up the prisoners in its private prisons, outside of those prisons free speech still exists."
Filed Under: 1st amendment, anti-slapp, daniel horwitz, free speech, marie newby, prior restraint, private prisons, public records, slapp, terry childress
Companies: corecivic
5 01:38 PM Senators Ask Amy Klobuchar To Fix The Content Moderation Loophole In Her Antitrust Bill
from the just-do-it dept
We’ve been pointing out for a long time now that the main antitrust bill making its way through the Senate has a hidden content moderation trojan horse in it. Indeed, it seems likely the main reason the bill has significant Republican support is that they know the bill will be abused to file vexatious lawsuits over content moderation decisions, attempting to get around Section 230 by claiming the decisions were actually anti-competitive. Senator Ted Cruz has admitted he supports the bill because it will “unleash the trial lawyers” to file lawsuits about content moderation against internet companies.
The Democrats supporting the bill more or less know this. The bill’s author in the Senate, Amy Klobuchar, had a chance to fix these issues, but instead chose to pander even more to Republicans by carving out the finance and telco sectors from the bill’s impact, while leaving in the problematic language that will be abused for content moderation purposes. . .
6 03:39 PM Twitter Successfully Quashes Sketchy Copyright Subpoena Over Billionaire’s Critic On Twitter
from the call-me-anonymity-protection-bags dept
You may recall that, last fall, we wrote about a truly bizarre legal fight, in which a little-followed pseudonymous Twitter account @CallMeMoneyBags had tweeted out some images of a woman, suggesting a few times that the woman was the mistress of billionaire Brian Sheth. The account put out lots of tweets generally mocking people in the private equity space, including Sheth. Sometime after the tweets including those photos, Twitter received a DMCA subpoena from a company called Bayside Advisory, which had basically no presence online, claiming it held the copyrights in those photos and demanding identifying information on Money Bags.
The most obvious assumption was that Bayside was connected to Sheth and this was a way of finding out who this anonymous critic was. Twitter stepped in to the case to seek to quash the subpoena, noting that this did appear to be an attack on anonymity - and also noting that this was an obvious fair use of the images . . .
. . .So whoever is actually behind Bayside remains a mystery. But, thankfully, so too is whoever is behind Money Bags.
Now, the question is whether or not whoever is behind Bayside wants to push their luck, and appeal to the 9th Circuit…"
Filed Under: 1st amendment, 512h, anonymity, brian sheth, callmemoneybags, copyright, criticism, dmca, free speech, lawrence hadley, supboenas
Companies: twitter
7 08:00 PM Appeals Court Tells Police Union Its Contract Doesn’t Supersede State Public Records Laws
from the it's-the-people-that-own-you,-not-the-other-way-around dept
Cops love secrecy. When a citizen does something wrong, it’s a public record. When cops do the wrong thing, union contracts, internal policies, and multiple public records exemptions often allow law enforcement agencies to keep the public from learning about misconduct.
Things have been changing, though. California recently amended its public records law, making police misconduct records publicly available for the first time in the state’s history. New York recently repealed a law that allowed law enforcement to keep misconduct records secret.
The same thing happened in Connecticut. Shortly after the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, the legislature passed a law that nullified state Freedom of Information Act exemptions that allowed law enforcement agencies to withhold certain misconduct records. . .
. . .The Appeals Court says the public’s interests were being served by the state legislature — a legislature that was understandably compelled to increase accountability and repair the damaged trust created by years of lax oversight and law enforcement’s tendency to control the narrative by restricting access to misconduct records. All the law did was undo the damage done by the union contract. And that’s simply not enough to create a constitutional violation."
Filed Under: 2nd circuit, connecticut, foia, transparency
Companies: cspu
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