Exactly how far can overly protective trademark owners go before the wider public wakes up to what a shitstorm trademark has become? It's a question I find myself asking often, given the type of stories we cover around here. It seems any progress made on that front is slow, however, and the ridiculous stories keep on rolling in. You may recall that the Premier League, the UK's famous soccer/football/whatever league, has already proven itself incapable of making any kind of sense while enforcing its intellectual property rights. Well, perhaps taking its cue from its parent league, the also-famous Arsenal soccer club is reaching across the pond to try to block a trademark application for a small bar in the suburbs of Pittsburgh.

When Arsenal Cider House filed for a trademark application, lawyers with the football club tried to stop them.

“I really don’t understand it completely. I know that they don’t have their name on alcohol that I know of, that I can find on the internet, but somehow they’ve justified opposing our trademark,” said Arsenal Cider House owner Bill Larkin.

Reviewing the myriad of iconography for Arsenal compared with what few images I found for Arsenal Cider House, any similarities between the branding appear to be minimal at most. They share the name, and Arsenal Cider House has a cannon in some of its branding, as does the soccer club. Other than that, everything else appears to be different: the colors, the logos, the fonts. Which means this appears to be all about the "Arsenal" name.

As Larkin notes, the soccer club doesn't appear to be involved in the liquor business, so it's not clear how the trademarks would either compete with one another or cause any customer confusion. For the latter, add to it that one entity is a massively well-known sporting team and the other is a local drinking spot and it's pretty clear there should be no confusion between the two. It's not like Arsenal Cider House was named after the team, either.

Larkin says he came up with the name because he was originally located across the street from Arsenal Park.

Yet, here is another small business owner forced to deal with a trademark opposition from a company an ocean away all the same.

If police culture is truly going to change, it needs to start at the bottom. Years of DOJ investigations and consent agreements have done almost nothing to root out the deep-seated problems found in many law enforcement agencies. The change has to come from within each department -- a much longer, slower process that requires those leading the reforms to put their careers on the line. They will be opposed by many of their fellow officers and villainized by police unions for any attempts to bring more accountability to policework.

There are probably more law enforcement officials out there with the same mindset as Austin (TX) police chief Art Acevedo. Unfortunately, very little of what they've done or said makes its way into the public eye without being strained through several filters. Acevedo's private comments to Austin PD commanders, however, arrive in the form of a leaked recording.

Acevedo was addressing the criticism he took for firing Geoffrey Freeman after the officer shot and killed a naked, unarmed, mentally-ill 19-year-old as he ran down a residential street. Acevedo addressed many issues during this talk and made it clear the APD isn't going to keep heading down the same limited-accountability road and end up just another law enforcement agency more known for its misdeeds than its law enforcement efforts. (h/t PINAC)

“I have given nine years of my life to the Austin Police Department,” Acevedo told his commanders. “Nine years aren’t going to go down the drain because we have people in this room that don’t want to do the hard lifting, that don’t want to be the bad guys. Sorry, we have to be the bad guys sometimes.

And the problem ain't the cops. It's the leadership.”

Directly addressing the shooting, Acevedo had this to say:

“If you can’t handle a kid in broad daylight, naked, and your first instinct is to come out with your gun, and your next instinct is to shoot the kid dead, you don’t need to be a cop. I don’t give a shit how nice you are,” Chief Acevedo told the group.

“The union got all pissed off because I fired Freeman. Some of you might have gotten pissed off. I’m going to tell you right now. If we have another Freeman tomorrow, that is what’s going to happen.”

He also addressed another controversial arrest -- one Acevedo only heard about after he started being questioned by media reps about it. "Contempt of cop" arrests will apparently no longer be tolerated.

“I am sickened that somehow people are still trying to justify Richter,” Acevedo said on the recording. “Nobody wearing stripes, or bars or stars should even think about justifying a woman — that the reason that woman got pulled out of that car is because she had the audacity to tell him to hurry up."

"She wasn’t going with the program,” he said. “You know what? Millennials ask questions, so get over it. If you are going to order somebody to do something, you better have a damn good reason if you are going to take them to jail.

“That was such an easy stop to de-escalate.”

Acevedo followed this up with something his commanders (and officers below them) can't have been happy to hear: massaging the paperwork to generate an exculpatory narrative is bullshit.

“Who cares what [Officer Richter] wrote?” Acevedo said. “Because I think we have this attitude, of I’ll just cover it in the report and I’ll be good to go … Anybody can do creative writing. Does that make sense to you guys?”

While these comments may have been spurred by recent events, Chief Acevedo is actually in the middle of an ongoing effort to reform his police department. The Austin Statesman points out that eleven internal affairs investigations have been opened on APD commanders in the last two years, leading to six reprimands and "several" resignations.

While resignations are hardly the ideal outcome, they're a better solution than allowing a poisonous influence to remain in the department. True, this move sidesteps accountability, but the intended outcome is still reached: the removal of a "bad apple," or at least a "bad apple" enabler.

Chief Acevedo will probably find himself out of a job, though. Complaints against him are already bubbling up from the lower ranks, with some commanders accusing him of refusing to consider their input. This may actually be a feature rather than a bug. Those complaining about his refusal to listen aren't providing much detail about the content of their input. If much of it was just more of the usual -- attempts to lower accountability for themselves and the officers they command -- it's hardly surprising Acevedo isn't implementing their ideas.

This is the sort of leadership America's law enforcement agencies need: commanders who are willing to start gathering up the slack given to officers over the years. Unfortunately, this can often lead to damaged or destroyed careers, which is why we see so few officials willing to do what Acevedo is doing. There's almost nothing to be gained personally from doing so, and an almost infinite amount to lose.

The big news earlier this week, of course, was AT&T;'s announced plans to purchase Time Warner. As we, and plenty of others, were careful to point out, Time Warner is a different and totally separate company from Time Warner Cable (which Comcast famously tried to takeover not that long ago). Yes, at one time they were the same company, but that was a long, long time ago. They've been separate since 2009. And yet, lots of people still get them confused. In fact, soon after the announcement of the deal, AT&T; had to do a special filing with the SEC to clarify which Time Warner it was buying. Really. Apparently, the Senate didn't get the memo (literally). The Senate Judiciary Committee's top four members (from both parties) put out a press release from the antitrust subcomittee, saying that it was going to hold hearings on the merger, and that the CEOs of both companies would be testifying. But they named the CEO of Time Warner Cable, not Time Warner.

Despite striking an $85.4 billion deal with AT&T; Inc. over the weekend, [Time Warner CEO Jeff] Bewkes was unceremoniously left out of a release from the Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee, which said the CEOs of both companies would testify at a hearing on the proposed deal.

The reason? The four top Republicans and Democrats leading the Senate Judiciary Committee and its antitrust subcommittee accidentally invited Time Warner Cable’s former CEO Rob Marcus instead.

“Both Randall Stephenson, the CEO of AT&T;, and Robert Marcus, the CEO of Time Warner, will testify,” the release said. The hearing announcement was sent by Sen. Chuck Grassley, Sen. Patrick Leahy, Sen. Mike Lee and Sen. Amy Klobuchar.

You'd think someone would have checked that.

Oh, and it's even worse than it seems, because Rob Marcus isn't CEO of either Time Warner or Time Warner Cable. He left Time Warner Cable after Charter Communications completed its deal.

And this is why so few people trust Congress. Congress is quick to opine on stuff that it regulates without doing even having the most basic understanding of what's going on. Summoning the wrong CEO of the wrong company is a pretty impressive flub.

Earlier this year, we noted how traditional utilities were playing extremely dirty in Florida to try and derail efforts to ramp up solar competition and adoption in the state most likely to benefit from it. After all, the vision of a future where competition is rampant, customers pay less money, and solar users actually get paid for driving power back to the grid gives most of these executives heartburn. As a result, utilities have gotten creative in the state, launching fake solar advocacy groups that actually function to pollute public discourse and derail any amendments intended to help solar grab a larger foothold in the state.

The key group in question is "Consumers For Smart Solar," which is funded by traditional utilities, but has actually been fighting tooth and nail against solar-friendly legislative efforts in the state that would lift the ban on the sale of solar panels by third parties. The group's website describes the organization this way:

"Consumers for Smart Solar is a diverse, bipartisan coalition of business, civic, and faith-based organizations working to promote solar energy without sacrificing commonsense consumer protections. We believe Florida needs more solar and that we have to do it the right way. That means protecting consumers from scam artists, rip-offs and long-term contract traps while ensuring that those who do not choose solar electricity are treated fairly, too."

The bogus pro-solar competition group hasn't just been fighting new legislation that would expand solar adoption in Florida (where thanks to AC the average household spends $1,900 a year on power, 40% higher than the national average), it has actively been pushing Amendment 1, regulation crafted by the utility industry the group claims "guarantees your right to place solar panels on your home." Except it does nothing of the sort, and was crafted specifically to protect incumbent utilities from competition once they eventually get around to embracing the future in 2050 or so.

That Amendment 1 is a ruse being pushed by incumbent utilities and a bogus solar advocacy group has generally been common knowledge in the state for much of the year. But in an amusing twist the last few weeks, a leaked audiotape exposed one local utility-tied Florida think tanker admitting that Consumers for Smart Solar Choice and Amendment 1 was a giant ruse to keep actual pro-solar competition supporters on their heels:

"(James Madison Institute in Tallahassee's Sal) Nuzzo called the amendment, which has received more than $21 million in utility industry financing, “an incredibly savvy maneuver” that “would completely negate anything they (pro-solar interests) would try to do either legislatively or constitutionally down the road,” according to an audio recording of the event supplied to the Herald/Times.

...“To the degree that we can use a little bit of political jiu-jitsu and take what they’re kind of pinning us on and use it to our benefit either in policy, in legislation or in constitutional referendums — if that’s the direction you want to take — use the language of promoting solar, and kind of, kind of put in these protections for consumers that choose not to install rooftop."

The tactic of using think tanks and fake consumer groups working in concert to derail threatening legislation (or pass awful, protectionist legislation of their own) is something the telecom and other industries have engaged in for years, but it's just complicated enough to confuse the lion's share of voters. In this instance, Florida's utility think tank pals apparently decided to make things easier on consumers by admitting on tape the entire thing was a sham. Unsurprisingly, the "free market" think tank in question was forced to issue a statement claiming Nuzzo "misspoke":

“At an event with an unfamiliar, national audience, Mr. Nuzzo generalized his commentary and misspoke in reference to JMI partnering with Consumers for Smart Solar in any capacity,” McClure said in a statement.

Yeah, whoops a daisy.

Over the past week, we've been talking a lot about the need for more transparency and user control for privacy on the internet, so it's only fitting that the FCC has officially adopted its new privacy rules for ISPs that will require broadband providers to be much more explicit concerning what information it collects and shares with others, and provide (mostly) clear "opt-in" requirements on some of that data collection. This isn't a surprise. It was pretty clear that the FCC was going to approve these rules that it announced earlier this year. And, of course, the big broadband providers threw a giant hissy fit over these rules that just ask them to be more transparent and give users at least a little bit of control over what data is collected.

Comcast has caused these proposals "irrational" and various think tankers paid for by the broadband providers tried to tell the world that poor people benefit from a lack of privacy. And magically new studies came out claiming that broadband providers are cuddly and lovable, rather than snarfing up everyone's data.

And, of course, the various broadband providers want to blame Google for the rules, because everyone wants to blame Google for everything. The issue here is that the broadband access providers have these rules, while online service providers, like Google and Facebook do not. There are, of course, a few responses to this. The first, is that the FCC doesn't have authority over those sites, like it does have over the access providers under the Telecom Act. The second is that users are much more locked in to their broadband access provider, and there is much less competition. Switching is much more difficult. The third argument is, basically, that Google and Facebook don't have nearly the same history as the broadband access providers of really nasty privacy violations. Hell, just as these new rules were coming, Verizon was being fined for stealth zombie cookies. Finally, the simple fact is that broadband access providers have the power to spy on a lot more internet activity than Google or Facebook. Yes, those other services are in more and more places, but it's not difficult to block them. With your ISP everything goes through their pipes, and unless you carefully encrypt your traffic via a VPN, they get to see everything.

Frankly, the new rules are not that crazy and shouldn't be controversial at all. Here's how the FCC explains them: This isn't that complicated, and should move broadband providers towards being more transparent and open. And if what they're offering is truly beneficial then why should they complain about that? It's only when what they're doing is sneaky and underhanded and they know they can't convince people it's worthwhile that they might have a problem. So, yeah, guess why they were so opposed to these rules?

We've seen all manner of silly claims by copyright licensing groups as to what requires what kind of license in every kind of circumstance. These licensing groups have gone after children's charities. A UK collection society had the strategy of calling up local businesses and demanding payments should they hear music playing in the background. The Author's Guild once claimed that reading a book out loud constituted the need for a separate license, while ASCAP asserted with a straight face that the ring of a mobile phone was a public performance. This panoply of idiocy might be funny, except for the very real harm done through this kind of harassment.

Even the good stories in this vein weigh heavily in that they are necessary at all. For instance, the advocate general for the EU's Court of Justice recently wrote an opinion advising that hotels didn't need a copyright license just to have televisions within guest rooms. It's a good ruling, but conjures the frustrating question as to why it was needed in the first place. The answer, of course, is because a collection group was attempting to collect from hotels for just that reason.

On Monday, Court of Justice of the European Union advocate general Maciej Szpunar published his opinion on a case brought by the Verwertungsgesellschaft Rundfunk, a royalty collecting and copyright management company comparable to the BPI in the UK or MPAA in the US. The collecting company had asked a local court to force a hotel to pay extra licensing fees because guests were watching TV in their rooms. Vienna's Commercial Court, in its turn, sought guidance from the CJEU on how EU copyright law should be interpreted in this case.

At issue in this case was an EU directive on rental and lending rights, which affords broadcasters the right to allow or not allow the rebroadcasting of their content to the public. Specifically, the law states that this right applies only when an entrance fee to view such content is levied by the rebroadcaster. What the collection society argued was that hotels were levying such a fee, because it included televisions in rooms for which they were charging guests. That isn't remotely how the law was supposed to be applied.

But Verwertungsgesellschaft Rundfunk made the argument anyway, because facts and truth have no place in the realm of a collection society, where the only goal is to seek as much rent as possible in every circumstance, while providing as little value as possible. Again, it's a good opinion, but it's not a ruling in the case. That ruling will be taken up by the other justices on the court and they will take Szpunar's opinion on the matter into account. The general feeling appears to be that the court will side with Szpunar's opinion, which is also good.

But all I can think about is why is this necessary to begin with?

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As Techdirt reported last year, the problematic "right to be forgotten" -- strictly speaking, a right to be delisted from search results -- took a really dangerous turn when the French data protection regulator told Google that its orders to delist results should apply globally, not just in France, a view it confirmed twice. The latest development in this saga is the submission of a petition to the French Supreme Court against the global reach of delisting, made by the Wikimedia Foundation, the organization behind Wikipedia. As its blog post on the move explains:

Although the [French data protection authority] CNIL's case is directed towards Google, the gradual disappearance of Wikimedia pages from Google search results around the world ultimately impacts the public's ability to find the invaluable knowledge contained within the Wikimedia projects. Search engines have played an important role in the quest for knowledge -- roughly half of Wikipedia visits originate from search engines.

The CNIL's most recent order, if upheld, threatens the capacity to write and share important information about history, public figures, and more. It undermines the public's ability to find relevant and neutral information on the internet, and would make it exceedingly difficult for projects like Wikimedia's to provide information that is important for society.

The fact that half of Wikipedia's visits come from online searches emphasizes the point that delisting a page from search results effectively removes it from the Internet. The Wikimedia post goes on to make all the obvious -- and completely valid -- arguments why global delisting is such a bad idea. It also mentions the following:

As part of our efforts to bring more transparency to these requests, when we receive notice that a Wikipedia article was removed from a search engine due to a "right to be forgotten" delisting request, we publish the notice in a public index for the Wikimedia community's reference.

The page not only includes interesting statistics about delisting notices, but also helpfully provides copies of the notices themselves. From these we can see the Wikipedia articles that are no longer listed in search engines, which allows us to guess the names of those who don't want information about them to be readily available, and inevitably encourages us to speculate why that might be.

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We've discussed the amazing bullshit known as Hollywood Accounting many times here on Techdirt. This is the trick whereby big Hollywood studios basically get out of paying anyone royalties by claiming movies (including big, mega-famous ones) are not profitable. The most simple version of this trick is that the big studio sets up an independent corporation to represent "the film." It then "sells" services to that corporation, which it owns, at exorbitant prices. So, for example, it will charge a "marketing and distribution fee," which may actually be many multiples of the film's actual budget. No cash changes hands here. It's just a paper transaction, but because of those "fees" any money made from the film remains with the big Hollywood studio, and is not passed on to anyone who has "participation" in the net profits from the film.

Things can get more complex than that, but that's a basic version of the scam. This has come out a lot in the past few years, thanks to a series of lawsuits. It's how we know that a Harry Potter film that brought in basically a billion dollars in revenue still declared a $167 million "loss". It's why one of the highest grossing films ever, Return of the Jedi, still claims to be in the red, when it comes to paying out residuals. That's a film that's made $33 billion (with a b). Not profitable, under Hollywood accounting. Another film whose books were opened up in a lawsuit was Goodfellas, where Warner Bros. was not only accused of charging $40 million in interest on the $30 million cost of production, but also of hiding over $100 million in revenue.

In another bizarre case from a few years ago, two subsidiaries of Vivendi went after each other over Hollywood accounting -- with StudioCanal suing Universal for pulling such an accounting trick on a bunch of famous movies. Universal hit back by claiming it actually overpaid StudioCanal.

Those companies have all come up in a new lawsuit, filed by the well known actor/singer/voice-actor Harry Shearer over the iconic and classic movie This is Spinal Tap. Shearer claims that various Vivendi subsidiaries, including both StudioCanal and Universal played various Hollywood accounting games to screw him and his Spinal Tap co-creators (Chris Guest, Michael McKean and Rob Reiner) out of millions of dollars. The complaint is pretty short and straightforward. The headline grabbing numbers that everyone's picking up on are these:

... according to Vivendi, the four creators’ share of total worldwide merchandising income between 1984 and 2006 was $81 (eighty-one) dollars. Between 1989 and 2006 total income from music sales was $98 (ninety-eight) dollars. Over the past two years, Vivendi has failed to provide accounting statements at all.

Obviously, that's just merchandising and music royalties. But... still. Shearer claims that Vivendi played some Hollywood accounting tricks via various subsidiaries, including bundling various unsuccessful films with Spinal Tap to basically hide the profits from the film.

Those profit participation statements, Plaintiff has recently discovered, reflect anti-competitive and unfair business practices in their cross-collateralization of revenues between different Vivendi subsidiaries; unfairly bundle and cross-collateralized unsuccessful films in the Embassy catalogue with TIST; were not delivered to other creators; and fraudulently underreported the revenues owed to Plaintiff and other members of STP. Over the last two years, Vivendi and Canal have failed to account at all on TIST revenues.

Unfortunately, while there are hints and allegations about all of this, the full details are not revealed... yet. If the case continues, they may eventually come out.

There are a few other interesting tidbits in the lawsuit. Shearer, Guest and McKean created the Tap characters and many of the songs many years before the movie. But apparently one of the studios trademarked the name and has tried to block Shearer from using Spinal Tap or his character's name Derrick Smalls, unless he pays them for a license. Shearer argues that the studios have abandoned the trademarks, because they didn't oppose a brewery from registering "Spinal Tap" for a beer product (that's not quite how trademark abandonment works, so this seems pretty weak). Either way, Shearer wants the court to give a declaratory judgment of non-infringement.

The other interesting tidbit is that the complaint twice mentions that Shearer is filing for copyright assignment termination on the songs and the film itself. We've written many times about termination rights in copyright as well. These are the rights (which cannot be contracted away) that allow the original creators to reclaim any copyrights that they have assigned to others after 35 years. The recording industry has been freaking out about this over the past few years, and now it looks like Hollywood may need to wake up to the issue as well. It's not entirely clear why it's even relevant to this lawsuit, but it is a potentially big deal. Shearer (and, I assume, the other Tap creators) may soon be able to take back the copyright on the film and the music themselves.

We've been noting for the last year how the latest front in the quest to bring competition to the broadband market is the boring old utility pole. Under the current model, a company like Google Fiber needs to request an ISP move its own gear before Google Fiber can attach its fiber lines. Given that ISPs often own the poles, and have little incentive to speed a competitor to market, this can often take six months or longer -- worse if gear from multiple incumbent ISPs needs moving. Google Fiber notes this has quite intentionally slowed its arrival in cities like Nashville.

As such, Google Fiber has been pushing cities to pass new "one touch make ready" utility pole attachment reform rules, which let a single licensed and insured technician move any ISP's gear (often a matter of inches), reducing pole attachment from a 9 month process, to one that takes as little as a month. Needless to say, ISPs like AT&T feel threatened by anything that could speed up competition in these stagnant markets, so it has been suing cities like Louisville and Nashville for trying to do so.

Comcast has decided to join the fun, and has now filed its own lawsuit against the city of Nashville (pdf), claiming that these reform efforts "upset the existing, carefully designed make-ready process" allowing "encroaching attachers" to move Comcast gear with "only" fifteen days previous notice. This, Comcast claims, will result in "significant, irreparable injury" to the cable giant:

"...Comcast will suffer significant, irreparable injury to its property, operations, and customer relationships. By departing from the carefully balanced approach to the make-ready process embraced by Comcast’s contract with Metro Nashville and the comprehensive Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) regulatory framework, Metro Nashville’s Ordinance exposes Comcast’s network equipment to serious risk. It permits third parties to encroach upon, move, and potentially damage Comcast’s equipment, thereby imposing significant costs on Comcast and threatening interference with customers’ services and emergency communications—while offering Comcast no way to protect against these harms or even seek recourse after the fact.

Well, no. These aren't just errant idiots running around ripping and replacing expensive telecom gear like meth-addicted copper thieves. These are licensed and insured contractors doing the work; in many instances likely the same exact technicians Comcast uses for its own pole work. Comcast previously has tried to claim that network outages would jump 50% or more if this reform passes, but there's really no evidence to support this claim.

AT&T, meanwhile, has tried to accuse Google Fiber of government favoritism for pursuing these reforms, ignoring not only that the plan has the overwhelming support of the public, but the fact that AT&T has enjoyed decades as a government-pampered monopolist that quite literally gets to write protectionist state telecom law (when it isn't busy bone-grafting itself to the country's ever-expanding domestic surveillance apparatus).

Of course these incumbent ISPs can't just come out and say they oppose utility pole reform because they're terrified of competition, so instead we get entirely-unnecessary lawsuits that not only waste taxpayer dollars, but delay long overdue broadband infrastructure improvements.