Deep Dive Shows FCC's Covid Response Was Largely Theatrical Nonsense
from the you're-not-helping dept
Back in March, the Trump FCC put on a big show about a new "Keep America Connected Pledge" to help broadband users during COVID. In it, the FCC proudly proclaimed that it had gotten hundreds of ISPs to suspend usage caps and late fees, and agree to not disconnect users who couldn't pay for essential broadband service during a pandemic. The problem: the 60 day pledge was entirely voluntary, temporary, and because the FCC just got done obliterating its consumer protection authority over ISPs at lobbyist behest (as part of its net neutrality repeal), was impossible to actually enforce. It was regulatory theater.
The rather meaningless pledge has since expired despite the pandemic only getting worse. And because this FCC doesn't actually care about consumer protection (it literally doesn't even collect data on who is getting kicked offline for nonpayment during a plague), many ISPs simply ignored the pledge, and kicked users offline anyway; even disabled Americans who were told repeatedly by their ISPs that they wouldn't be booted offline for nonpayment during the crisis. Meanwhile, most ISPs have also restored their bullshit, arbitrary usage caps, making them a pretty additional penny during a crisis . .
It's all part of a deep ideological delusion that exists in many corners and is propped up by a massive industry of telecom-linked monopoly apologists. Folks who would have you believe that if you mindlessly pander to natural monopolies, freeing them from "burdensome regulations" (read: absolutely anything that could help real people, markets, or competitors at the cost of monopoly revenues) it somehow results in near-Utopian outcomes. In reality, with neither competition nor adult oversight to constrain them, natural monopolies inevitably just double down on the same bad behavior.
There's literally forty years of history making this point abundantly clear, yet the U.S. seems utterly intent on learning absolutely nothing from history or experience.
Filed Under: broadband, competition, covid, covid-19, digital divide, fcc, keep america connected pledge,
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Cyberpunk 2077's Stream-Safe Setting Option For Its Music Failed To Keep Streamers Safe
from the whoops dept
In November, as we were finally coming to the day when CD Projekt Red's newest opus, Cyberpunk 2077, was going to be released to the world, we wrote about how the developer had included a setting for the game specifically to keep streamers safe from copyright strikes. Essentially, the setting was meant to strip out all licensed music from the game and replace it with music that wouldn't land streamers in copyright jail while doing let's-plays. On the one hand, it was nice to see a developer so in favor of having its games streamed do this sort of thing. On the other hand, the fact that CD Projekt Red had to do so showed both what a failure Amazon/Twitch and the like have been at supporting their streamers through music licensing deals and, more importantly, what a hellscape copyright enforcement has become that all of this was even necessary.
Well, as it turns out, that hellscape is so complete that even the game's stream-safe setting failed to keep streamers safe. . . Wouldn't it be easier if we all just admitted that hearing music, licensed or otherwise, playing in the soundtrack of a game being streamed isn't a damned threat or replacement for the actual original music? Nobody was going to out to buy "Track X" from iTunes only to hear it on a let's-play and decide instead not to. That isn't a thing.
Instead, we have this absurd reality to deal with.
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Apple, Cloudflare Join Forces To Encrypt DNS
from the long-overdue dept
Each time you visit a website, your browser interacts with a domain name system (DNS) resolver that converts web addresses to an IP address understood by the machines along your path. Historically however this traffic exchange isn't encrypted, making it possible for your broadband provider or another third party to monitor your browsing data based on your DNS queries. DNS inventors in the 80s didn't really bet on a future where all DNS queries would be tracked, monetized, or weaponized by third parties.
Experts for a while have been arguing (including here at the Techdirt Greenhouse policy project) that it's important that we start encrypting these pathways to bring a little more security and privacy to the equation. Companies like Mozilla have been at the forefront of implementing "DNS over HTTPS," a significant security upgrade to DNS that encrypts and obscures your domain requests, making it more difficult (though not impossible) to see which websites a user is visiting. Recently, even Comcast (a company that's no stranger to monetizing your online habits) joined Mozilla's efforts to take the idea mainstream. . .
Cloudflare told TechCrunch that several partner organizations are already running proxies, allowing for folks to give the system an early spin if they use Cloudflare's security-focused 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver. Everybody else will need to wait until the new protocol comes standard as part of your OS or browser, which depends on how long it takes for the Internet Engineering Task Force to finalize the proposal. That could take months or years, but in a world where your every waking online movement is increasingly tracked and monetized, it should be a welcome shift whenever it finally drops.
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Can Broadband Policy Help Create A More Equitable And inclusive Economy And Society Instead Of The Reverse?
from the newfound-urgency dept
25 years ago, then NTIA Administrator Larry Irving warned that the rising importance of the internet had the downside of creating what he coined a “digital divide."
15 years later, the National Broadband Plan reported that as “more aspects of daily life move online and offline alternatives disappear, the range of choices available to people without broadband narrows. Digital exclusion compounds inequities for historically marginalized groups.” In light of these trends, the plan warned “the cost of digital exclusion is large and growing.”
Judging by the limited government response to those described dangers, both warnings arguably were ahead of their times. In those eras, many viewed internet access as a luxury and saw many other needs as higher priorities for government funds.
That changed this past spring. COVID accelerated the momentum of the economy and society towards "remote everything," revealing that the divide was more costly and urgent than the country had realized. This then launched countless editorials from a wide spectrum of political views, that called for government action to get networks everywhere, get everyone on them, and use them to improve the delivery of essential public goods like education, health care and job training.
That is progress but it is still far from an achievement . . .There is no silver bullet for closing any of the three gaps. All three require multiple actions by multiple government institutions across different jurisdictions. By my rough and preliminary estimate, there are over 100 federal government actions that would useful in addressing one of the key questions for government in the next decade: how can we use the tools of the information society to create a more equitable and inclusive economy and society?
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House Passes PACER Bill As Budget Office Says It Will Cost Less Than $1 Million A Year To Provide Free Access To Court Documents
from the court-system-seems-to-have-embraced-Hollywood-accounting dept
We're one step closer to free access to federal court documents. The House has passed the Open Courts Act of 2020, moving it on to the Senate, which will decide whether the bill lands on the president's desk.
Yes, this sort of thing has happened before. And previous efforts have always died on their way to the Oval Office. But this one might be different. A growing collection of case law says the US Courts system has been overcharging users and illegally spending funds meant to improve the PACER system and, yes, lower the cost for users.
This latest effort has a bit more momentum than its predecessors. And that seems to worrying the US Courts, which has fought back with dubious assertions and even more dubious budget estimates. The court system claims it will cost at least $2 billion over the next several years to overhaul PACER and provide free access to documents. Experts say it will cost far less. . .
ICE Withdraws Demand For Journalists' Sources After Having Its Unconstitutional Demand Outed By BuzzFeed
from the government-is-kindly-invited-to-go-fuck-itself dept
They say "sunshine is the best disinfectant." Sometimes, though, sunshine is the best RAID. When you've got government cockroaches (feel free to pronounce it like Tony Montana) trying to crawl all over your stuff, the best thing you can do is point all the wattage/candlepower you can on its indiscretions.
Earlier this month, ICE tried to pull some fucked up shit. It sent a subpoena -- one issued by its office, not a judge -- to BuzzFeed. It asked the journalists there to turn over information on their sources, apparently in hopes of closing the loop on internal investigations into leaked documents.
BuzzFeed refused. Even better, BuzzFeed posted the bullshit "request" ICE made -- one that asked the site's journalists to remain silent in the face of government overreach . . .
ICE has no legal right to demand information on BuzzFeed's sources. It seems highly unlikely any court would allow this incursion on First Amendment protections. Bypassing the court by issuing its own paperwork shouldn't be allowed. But somehow it is. Journalistic concerns know these requests are worth less than the paper they're printed on. The problem is that not everyone knows that and degenerates like ICE are counting on people being ignorant of their Constitutional rights and protections.
BuzzFeed knows what the government can and can't do without judicial blessing. So it published its refusal along with ICE's faux "demand" it remain silent about the agency's attempted Constitutional bypass. In response to its garbage being made public domain, ICE has rescinded its attempt to turn confidential sources into government witnesses/prosecution targets.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said Wednesday that it would not enforce a subpoena issued last week demanding BuzzFeed News identify its sources, a retreat from its earlier, stunning attempt to interfere with a news outlet operating under the protections of the First Amendment.
By "won't," ICE means "can't." It would be the rare judge that would approve of ICE violating long-held First Amendment protections for journalists and their sources. Even if they found a compliant judicial pawn, any challenge by BuzzFeed would see this bogus subpoena tossed onto the trash heap of ICE's trash history by the next judge down the line.
The government cannot do this. And the government knows this. That ICE even tried indicates it's been huffing whatever the Trump administration has been shoving into its paper bags. Just because the outgoing Prez has a hard-on for booting brown people out of the country doesn't change the Constitutional calculus.
Filed Under: dhs, ice, journalism, protecting sources, sources, subpoena
