Five Years Ago

This week in 2012, we were watching as the House of Representatives got ready to move forward with extending the FISA Amendments Act despite huge problems and a worrying lack of information about secret interpretations of the law. Of course, it quickly passed — basically thanks to lots of lying and misrepresentation about what the bill actually contained. Meanwhile, having failed to get new cybersecurity legislation passed, the White House was looking to tackle the issue with an executive order, the draft text of which was leaked at the end of the week. Of course, we were also worried about efforts to make cybersecurity enforcement the job of the ITU, an idea with a whole host of problems of its own.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2007, we were appalled at (and slightly amused by) the pathetic attempts at "innovation" on display in the legacy recording industry, such as the hype around the "ringle" — a combination of a single and a ringtone! Imagine that! Similarly, Universal Music seemed to have gotten the message that subscription services are a good idea, but gotten the details of the implementation entirely wrong. It was also around this time that we started to hear complaints from sound engineers and audiophiles about iPods and earbuds destroying the sound quality of music — though perhaps that was just a way to get press, much like blaming Facebook for destroying the economy. Meanwhile, Prince, unpredictable as always, decided to sue eBay, YouTube and The Pirate Bay for copyright infringement.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2002, the bizarre blanket ban on video games we mentioned last week quickly started to fail in the courts, the battle between China's censors and Google heated up then fizzled out, and a well-known AP writer joined the ranks of people totally misunderstanding the digital music debate. The music industry was doing its best to paint Kazaa and Morpheus as infringers, while Morpheus was seeking summary judgement saying it doesn't violate copyright law. And one on-the-money essay explained how the industry was killing the goose that lays the golden eggs by trying to destroy digital music.

Okay, here's a fun post for a Friday evening: Earlier this week, I was at World Hosting Days, where I gave a keynote speech about the importance of CDA 230 and things like intermediary liability protections -- and why they are so important to protecting free speech online. The emcee of the event was Mike Godwin, who (among his many, many accomplishments over the years as an internet lawyer and philosopher) coined Godwin's Law. The organizers of the event, realizing that they had the guy who coined Godwin's Law and the guy (me!) who coined the Streisand Effect in the same place at the same time, thought it might be fun to have the two of us talk about these two memes.

And, voila. Here's the video of the two of us discussing it. We're also planning to release this as a podcast soon, so if you already listen to the Techdirt podcast and want to wait for that, feel free... But, if you want to skip ahead and watch/listen now, go for it.

Concentrated attacks on technology tools that can sometimes, but not always, be used for nefarious purposes have quite a long history, from Google and Wikipedia, to suing online sites like Craigslist over how users use the service. Even torrent technology itself, having become a four-letter-word that the content industry has managed to tether to copyright infringement, is nothing more than a tool with plenty of legitimate uses.

Well, it appears that the latest target in the music industry's crosshairs are sites that rip YouTube videos into MP3 format.

Last week the major record labels managed to take out YouTube-MP3, the largest ripping site of all. Still, there are many like it that continue business as usual. For many music industry insiders, who see streamripping as one of the largest piracy threats, this is a constant source of frustration.

In the UK, music industry group BPI worked hard to tackle the issue proactively. Last year the organization already signed an agreement with YouTube-MP3 to block UK traffic. This limited the availability of the site locally, but the group believes that YouTube itself should take responsibility as well.

The crux of the plan, according to industry insiders, appears to be to get YouTube involved to block these sites from ripping its content into audio format. Between complaining that YouTube hasn't threatened enough legal action of its own and some rather silly complaints revolving around Google "steering" traffic to ripping sites via autocomplete on Google searches of all things, something of a full court press appears to be on. And, in one sense, it's understandable. Music groups that allow their music to be on YouTube look for the advertising revenue that comes along with it. One imagines that running a video through these ripping sites doesn't trigger that same ad revenue, otherwise nobody would be complaining.

But here's the thing: there are a ton of legitimate uses outside of the music business to use these sites. I use them all the time. I primarily use them for videos that are essentially speech-based content so I can listen to them on the go. History lectures, public debates, reviews: they're all on YouTube, they're all perfectly listenable in audio format, and none of the makers of that content are shouting about YouTube MP3 rips.

So what we're left with again is the content industries attacking a tool with legitimate uses simply because some percentage of the public uses it in a way they don't like.

Back in 2011, you might recall that AT&T and Verizon stopped offering users unlimited wireless data plans. Taking advantage of a lack of competition at the time, the duo worked in concert to shove users toward confusing, metered plans that imposed a usage cap, then socked users with overage fees upward of $15 per gigabyte. When users refused to migrate to these plans, both companies spent years making life as difficult as possible for these subscribers, AT&T going so far as to block users from accessing Facetime until they switched to these more expensive, metered plans (but who needs net neutrality rules, right?).

All the while, both companies repeatedly insisted that nobody actually wanted simpler, unlimited plans. That was until increased competition from T-Mobile (thanks in large part to regulators blocking AT&T's attempted acquisition of the company) forced both companies to bring back their unlimited data plans. And while Wall Street has been whining for months that competition is preventing these companies from nickel and diming their customers, consumers generally like the return to unlimited data.

Case in point: a new study by JD Power and Associates indicates that unlimited data customers are consistently more impressed with the performance of their connections than their capped and metered counterparts. More specifically, users on unlimited data plans state that they experience fewer network problems of all kinds than metered users:

Unlimited data emerges as great equalizer for wireless network quality: Customers with unlimited data plans experience an average of 11 overall network quality problems per 100 (PP100) connections vs. an average of 13 PP100 among customers with data allowances. They also have lower incidences of data problems (15 PP100 vs. 16PP100, respectively); messaging problems (5 PP100 vs. 6 PP100); and calling problems (12 PP100 vs. 15 PP100). This trend holds true among both power users (100 or more network connections in the previous 48 hours) and lighter users (fewer than 100 network connections in the previous 48 hours).

That said, the study does proceed to note that this may be based, in part, on the "perception" by consumers that they have a better connection, not necessarily that the network is performing better. In other words, customer perception of a network's performance may be shaded by the fact they don't have to constantly worry about whether they're about to go over their usage restrictions:

“Whether a customer has unlimited data or a data allowance on their wireless plan should not really affect their overall network quality, but our data shows that—consistently—wireless customers who are not worried about data overages have a much more positive perception of their network’s quality,” said Peter Cunningham, technology, media, and telecommunications practice lead at J.D. Power. “This is a critical insight into wireless customer psychology for carriers who’ve been engaged in battle over unlimited data plans for the past several months.”

The meters used by fixed and mobile customers are notoriously unreliable, one study claiming carriers routinely over-bill consumer mobile data usage by between five and seven percent. Despite this, there's nary an effort from any regulator here in the States to ensure that usage is being metered accurately, and that's certainly not changing with the current FCC. And while it's nice to see competition forcing these carriers to actually listen to subscribers, a wave of merger mania in the sector means that this competition -- and the unlimited data resurgence it spawned -- may not be sticking around for long.

Harvard is one of the most prestigious universities in the world (and its graduates often feel the need to remind you of that). But apparently Harvard is more worried about protecting its reputation from the elite than actually fulfilling its stated mission of "educating the citizens and citizen-leaders for our society." In an act of utter cowardice, it withdrew a Visiting Fellowship that it gave to Chelsea Manning just a couple days after announcing it -- all because the CIA and its friends got upset. Harvard caving in to the CIA is not a good look.

Two days ago, Harvard's Institute of Politics at the Kennedy School announced that Chelsea Manning would be a "Visiting Fellow" for the 2017-2018 school year. She was joining others -- including former Trump press secretary Sean Spicer, former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook. The Visiting Fellows program is basically a high falutin' way of saying that these people would come give some talks at the school. But the point of the program -- in theory -- is to expose people to a variety of ideas from a variety of different perspectives. Personally, I think honoring Spicer, Lewandowski and Mook is fairly ridiculous, but I respect and support Harvard wishing to bring them -- or anyone -- in to talk about their experience

But, of course, anything having to do with Manning is controversial to some -- mostly those who have bought into a misleading line of tripe from cable news. And thus people freaked out that Harvard was including her. Among those most triggered by Harvard planning to have Manning come talk to students was the CIA. On Thursday, former CIA depute director (and former acting director) Michael Morell resigned from his own fellowship (in a different program) at the Kennedy School in protest. His letter is full of debunked bullshit.

Unfortunately, I cannot be part of an organization -- The Kennedy School -- that honors a convicted felon and leaker of classified information, Ms. Chelsea Manning, by inviting her to be a Visiting Fellow at the Kennedy School's Institute of Politics. Ms. Manning was found guilty of 17 serious crimes, including six counts of espionage, for leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents to Wikileaks, an entity that CIA Director Mike Pompeo says operates like an adversarial foreign intelligence service.

Senior leaders in our military have stated publicly that the leaks by Ms. Manning put the lives of US soldiers at risk. Upon her conviction, then Rep. Mike Rogers and Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, the top Republican and Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee at the time, praised the verdict, saying "Justice has been served today." They added "Pfc. Manning harmed our national security, violated the public's trust, and now stands convicted of multiple serious crimes."

This statement is hogwash. Yes, she was convicted of various crimes including espionage, but only because the Espionage Act is a complete unconstitutional joke that makes no distinction between leaking to the press and spying for a foreign government -- and under which you're not allowed to share your motives for leaking information. Saying she was "convicted of espionage" without context is misleading bullshit and Morell, of all people, knows that and is exploiting it.

The claim that Pompeo now says that Wikileaks is acting like an "adversarial foreign intelligence service" is bullshit and misleading in two ways. First, Pompeo is not exactly an unbiased observer. He's long been a massive surveillance state cheerleader -- who was one of the biggest supporters of having the NSA illegally spy on nearly every American, and who has a long history of grandstanding against those with the courage to blow the whistle on the unconstitutional activities Pompeo himself has championed (more on him in a moment).

Separately, even if you accept Pompeo's recent statements about how Wikileaks acts today, anyone with any knowledge of the history (which Morell certainly has) knows that Wikileaks was a very different kind of operation back when Manning first leaked the documents to the site. Manning's leaks to Wikileaks were really its first big "government" leak. Earlier leaks had been more targeted at corporate malfeasance, and the site's reputation at the time was as a general home for hosting whistleblowing documents of all kind.

As for Ruppersberger and Rogers' statements, they are in the Pompeo camp as long time defenders of the surveillance state. Ruppersberger's district was where many NSA employees lived, and Rogers' reputation was largely built around acting like a tough guy on "law and order" and surveillance. So, big whoop.

The really obnoxious and bullshit part of Morell's letter, though, is the claim that "our military have stated publicly that the leaks by Ms. Manning put the lives of US soldiers at risk." Note Morell's careful choice of words. He didn't say that she put people's lives at risk. Or that anyone was harmed by Manning's whistleblowing. He says that some in the military publicly stated that lives were put at risk. His careful choice of words is because he knows full well that at Manning's sentencing hearing, those same military officials admitted there was no evidence of any lives harmed as a result of the leaks. It was also admitted that the earlier claims of harm were misleading, in that some of the names that the military had claimed had died... had actually died before the Wikileaks disclosures.

Back to Pompeo. Soon after Morell's letter became public, CIA director Pompeo refused to give a planned speech at Harvard, giving a similarly bullshit statement:

"My conscience and duty to the men and women of the [CIA] will not permit me to betray their trust by appearing to support Harvard's decision with my appearance at tonight's event," Pompeo wrote, referring to the Thursday engagement. "Ms. Manning betrayed her country and was found guilty of 17 serious crimes for leaking classified information to Wikileaks."

"Leaders from both political parties denounced Ms. Manning's actions as traitorous and many intelligence and military officials believe those leaks put the lives of the patriotic men and women at the CIA in danger," Pompeo continued. "And those military and intelligence officials are right."

Again, this is bullshit for all the same reasons that Morell's letter was bullshit.

But Harvard, as an academic institution that supports differences of opinion and free speech, stood up to these CIA spooks, right? Nope, they immediately caved and withdrew the fellowship, but tried to appease people by saying she could still come to speak.

We are withdrawing the invitation to her to serve as a Visiting Fellow — and the perceived honor that it implies to some people — while maintaining the invitation for her to spend a day at the Kennedy School and speak in the Forum.

I apologize to her and to the many concerned people from whom I have heard today for not recognizing upfront the full implications of our original invitation.

What a bullshit, cowardly statement in response to concern trolling from surveillance state supporters with actual blood on their hands. Mike Morell, among his many claims to fame, defended torture, and droning innocent civilians.

Here's something else: Morell has accepted responsibility and apologized for playing a large role in providing incorrect intelligence that led the US to attack Iraq, leading to the actual deaths of thousands of US soldiers. For Havard to rescind its offer to Manning, over false claims of putting US soldiers at risk from a guy who has admitted his own decisions lead to the deaths of thousands of US soldiers, is a total travesty.

What's more, this comes just a day after it came out that Harvard administrators deliberately overruled a decision to admit a woman who was about to be released from prison for killing her child. The story is heartbreaking in many ways -- but it reminds us that prison is supposed to be a place of redemption, but the cowards at Harvard overruled what some said was "one of the strongest candidates in the country last year, period," over fears of how it would look. One of the quotes from a Harvard professor in the article is quite incredible:

But frankly, we knew that anyone could just punch her crime into Google, and Fox News would probably say that P.C. liberal Harvard gave 200 grand of funding to a child murderer, who also happened to be a minority. I mean, c’mon.

It takes courage to stand up for what's right. It takes courage to stand up for redemption after one has served their time for crime. Harvard has no courage. Harvard is made up of cowards.

As an aside: last night was the EFF's Pioneer Awards, in which I had the honor and privilege of standing with Chelsea Manning, who gave a truly inspirational speech about redemption and the ability to face adversity with dignity, just minutes before Harvard showed that it had no dignity at all.

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Senator Ron Wyden, as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, spent half a decade trying to get President Obama's Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, to answer some fairly straightforward questions about NSA surveillance on Americans. As you may recall, this got so bad that Clapper flat out lied to Wyden in an open Senate hearing, which inspired Ed Snowden to leak documents to Glenn Greenwald. With the Trump administration, Dan Coats took over Clapper's job... and Clapper's role of obfuscating in response to important questions from Wyden concerning NSA surveillance. Despite promises to the contrary, Coats (like Clapper before him) has refused to share just how many Americans have their information sucked up under Section 702. Since that program is up for renewal later this year, that kind of information seems quite relevant to the debate.

However, as we noted back in June, Wyden has also been asking a different, and much more specific question of Coats. At a hearing in June, Wyden asked:

Can the government use FISA Act Section 702 to collect communications it knows are entirely domestic?

This seems like a kind of important question. 702 on its face, says that it can't be used to target domestic communications. Literally, the law says this: "An acquisition authorized under [this statute]... may not intentionally acquire any communication as to which the sender and all intended recipients are known at the time of the acquisition to be located in the United States."

But, as we've learned, when Senator Wyden asks an "is this happening?" question -- the answer is always "yes." And, once again, it appears that Coats is playing games. Coats responded to that question at the time saying: "Not to my knowledge. It would be against the law." That seems like a pretty clear and definitive answer: "no." Which is as it should be.

But then... something weird happened. The very next day, Coats' office put out a "clarifying" statement (ruh roh...), saying that Coats had "interpreted" Wyden's question to be referring specifically to Section 702(b)(4) (the part that says you can't spy on domestic communications). But, that's not what Wyden had asked. He had asked about the entirety of 702. So this "clarification" certainly seemed to suggest that Coats' original answer was incorrect in regards to the actual question, and instead, his staff was rewriting Wyden's question to make sure he had answered it accurately.

In other words, it appears that Coats put himself in a Clapper-position, of mistakenly claiming that the NSA isn't spying on Americans under a specific authority when it absolutely is -- and the reinterpretation of the question was his retroactive attempt to make his answer "truthy."

Not surprisingly, this didn't please Wyden, who quickly asked Coats to officially answer the original question with a yes or no, and not the reinterpreted question his office claimed he had answered.

Coats has now sent "an answer" but not a good one. He's now claiming that it's classified, and also takes some weird shots at Wyden for asking such a question in the first place:

Dear Senator Wyden:

In response to your letter of July 31, 2017, I would note that I responded to your question publicly both at the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's open hearing on June 7, as well as in an unclassified letter to you on June 8. However, in further conversations with you and your staff, including at a closed budget hearing on June 15, it became clear that you already had the specific information that you were seeking, but this information was classified. In an effort to be responsive to you, I committed to assessing whether the sources and methods information you were asking for could be publicly released.

After consulting with the relevant intelligence agencies, I concluded that releasing the information you are asking to be made public would cause serious damage to national security. To that end, I provided you a comprehensive classified response to your question on July 24. This response also discussed, at length, why the information is properly classified and cannot be publicly released.

I want to stress that the Intelligence Community takes seriously its obligation to faithfully execute collection under Section 702 consistent with the Constitution and statutory requirements. We also take seriously our obligation to ensure Congress has all the information - both publicly available and classified it needs to conduct oversight of this program. While I recognize your goal of an unclassified response, given the need to include classified information to fully address your question, the classified response provided on July 24 stands as our response on this matter.

Sincerely,

Daniel R. Coats

Now, for those of you thinking "okay, it makes sense that we can't reveal classified information that might harm national security," let me remind you of the question that Wyden asked:

Can the government use FISA Act Section 702 to collect communications it knows are entirely domestic?

Okay. So please explain how a simple yes or no answer to that can be classified -- especially given the plain language of the law itself? And, of course, this answer -- or, more specifically, the refusal to say "no" -- more or less confirms that the answer is a resounding "YES!" the government believes that it can use Section 702 to collect purely domestic communications, in clear contradiction to the plain language of the law.

Furthermore, if this question is so scary and so dangerous, why didn't anyone -- including Coats himself -- have any problem answering it when it was initially posed back in June? It didn't seem like such a risk to national security then. It's only a risk to national security after Coats' staff realized he misspoke? How, exactly, does that work?

As you might imagine, Senator Wyden is not pleased with this turn of events:

It is hard to view Director Coats' behavior as anything other than an effort to keep Americans in the dark about government surveillance. I asked him a simple, yes-or-no question: Can the government use FISA Act Section 702 to collect communications it knows are entirely domestic?

What happened was almost Orwellian. I asked a question in an open hearing. No one objected to the question at the time. Director Coats answered the question. His answer was not classified. Then, after the fact, his press office told reporters, in effect, Director Coats was answering a different question.

I have asked Director Coats repeatedly to answer the question I actually asked. But now he claims answering the question would be classified, and do serious damage to national security.

The refusal of the DNI to answer this simple yes-no question should set off alarms. How can Congress reauthorize this surveillance when the administration is playing games with basic questions about this program?

This is on top of the administration's recent refusal even to estimate how many Americans’ communications are swept up under this program.

The Trump administration appears to have calculated that hiding from Americans basic information relevant to their privacy is the easiest way to renew this expansive surveillance authority. The executive branch is rejecting a fundamental principle of oversight by refusing to answer a direct question, and saying that Americans don't deserve to know when and how the government watches them.

So, uh, who in the NSA is going to play the role of Snowden this time? Once again, it appears we have a Director of National Intelligence claiming no surveillance on Americans under a specific authority, when everything that Wyden is saying indicates that he damn well knows that's not true. Sooner or later someone's going to leak the fact that the intelligence community is lying to the American public in order to spy on the American public.

For years one of the greasier lobbying and PR tactics by the telecom industry has been the hijacking of minority and civil rights groups to help parrot awful policy positions. Historically, such groups are happy to take financing from a company like Comcast, in exchange repeating whatever memos are thrust in their general direction -- even if the policy dramatically harms their constituents. The tactic of creating or "co-opting" such groups helps foster the illusion of broad support for awful, anti-consumer policies, whether that's support for the latest competition-killing merger or support for the assault on net neutrality.

Because this cozy quid pro quo is implied but never put into writing, ISPs traditionally respond with breathless indignance to the mere suggestion they're using minority voices as policy props. But Comcast has found that tactic consistently so successful, a few years back it went so far as to give its top lobbyist, David Cohen, a new title: "Chief Diversity Officer." Said title not only lets Cohen profess the company's unwavering dedication to minorities with one hand while undermining them with the other, but helps him skirt the government's flimsy restrictions on lobbying.

A few weeks back boss Ajit Pai announced the creation of a new "Advisory Committee on Diversity and Digital Empowerment," a group Pai insisted was established to champion the voice of every American, “no matter their race, gender, religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation." But as we've noted before, Pai's breathless support of closing the digital divide is utterly illusory, as his policies (ranging from gutting popular consumer protections to protecting the cable industry's monopoly over the cable box) consistently involve undermining consumer interests while encouraging industry rate hikes.

Pai has appointed Julia Johnson, president of a consulting firm called NetCommunications, to lead the Advisory Committee. Not too surprisingly, The Intercept was quick to highlight how Johnson has a long history of actively undermining minority interests on behalf of the Multicultural Media, Telecom & Internet Council, a Comcast, AT&T and Verizon funded vessel specifically designed to help provide illusory minority community support for these companies' positions:

"Shortly after Trump named Pai to lead the FCC, the Multicultural Media, Telecom & Internet Council — a nonprofit chaired by Johnson and funded by Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, and other large telecom firms — released statements praising Pai’s appointment and endorsing his strategy for unwinding the net neutrality protections secured during former President Barack Obama’s administration. MMTC’s pro-Trump administration statements, cast as being made on behalf of communities of color, are typical of Johnson’s approach. Over the years, Johnson has used racial minorities as a cudgel to disingenuously lobby on behalf of industry."

It should go without saying, but mindlessly cheering for competition-killing mega-mergers raises rates and harms consumers -- minority or otherwise. As does advocating for the destruction of popular net neutrality and broadband privacy rules. Such protections, however imperfect, help prevent large, incumbent ISPs from abusing the obvious lack of competition in the broadband market. With little to no competition, we've watched as companies like AT&T have tried to charge users a steep premium for privacy, and companies like Comcast have slowly but surely imposed arbitrary and unnecessary usage caps.

We've also noted how this lack of competition has resulted in a large number of minority communities being left behind completely when it comes to next-generation broadband. Groups like the MMTC and dollar-per-holler allies like Johnson have consistently undermined efforts to actually do something about these problems. And getting them to admit their financial ties to giant ISPs has long proven comical, as Ed Markey found out in a 2006 hearing when he tried to uncover whether Johnson was being paid by the telecom industry to oppose policies aimed at forcing ISPs to expand broadband coverage to disadvantaged areas:

Markey: Is your organization financially supported by the Bell [telephone] companies in any way?

Johnson: No, we’re not.

Markey: At all.

Johnson: Yes, and let me elaborate upon that too. We’re a relatively new organization.

Markey: No, that’s OK. I can go along with that answer. That’s fine. Thank you. And are you compensated in any way by the Bell companies?

Johnson: I have a consulting firm that works for a variety of companies, generally in the regulatory space.

Markey: But are the Bell companies amongst those companies that pay you?

Johnson: Yes.

Traditionally the media hasn't shown much of an interest in connecting what are often fairly-obvious dots, a major reason this disinformation and lobbying tactic has been so successful over the last decade. Knowing this all too well, the FCC appears poised to lean on this tactic heavily as it works to kill net neutrality and eliminate most meaningful oversight of one of the least competitive markets in American industry. All while groups like the MMTC and industry allies like Johnson proclaim that gutting consumer protections will somehow aid the very communities these decisions will harm the most.

First, let's all just take a moment to drink in that headline above. 2017, people: it's a weird time to be alive. In any case, you likely have heard of Netflix's hit original show, Narcos. The show follows the exploits of Pablo Escobar's drug organization and was once the subject of Escobar's brother demanding a billion dollars from Netflix over the portrayal. Netflix, of course, was the disruptive new streaming service for movies and television that has since decided to go the route of copyright protectionist now that it is producing its own original content. It's a strange look for a company that exploded on a model of convenience over piracy, raking in tons of legit dollars by simply being an option better than or comparable to pirating films and television. Rather than continuing to compete in that arena, the company has begun to go the way of Big Content, firing off all kinds of DMCA notices.

And now threatening to shoot people and their families for pirating Netflix content? Well, not really, of course. I'm sure the folks at Netflix thought it would be funny to have actors from Narcos do so in character in France. But watch the video Netflix put out for yourself.

If you cannot see the video, the TorrentFreak link above has a nice summary of it.

“Hey you, yes you, do you think you’re smart? Do you think we didn’t see you Googling ‘Narcos season 3 download’? Don’t be a fool. Narcos is a business,” Pepe begins.

“If you want your entertainment. If you want your show. You’re gonna pay the Cali Cartel, ‘hijo de puta’,” Pacho adds, using the strong language one expects from a cartel leader.

“Do you think we’re like Hadopi? Do you think we’re going to send you a nice and polite letter first? Please, sir / madam, could you please not illegally download Narcos? We don’t do courtesy letters.”

“There is no please, no por favor, no s’il vous plait,” Pepe adds.

“There’s bullets for you, your family, and all the people you send to watch Narcos on all those shitty websites full of questionable pop-ups,” Gilberto says.

“You know where to find us. Don’t mess around ‘hijo de puta’,” his brother adds.

It's just uncomfortable. Nobody is mistaking Netflix actors for actual hitmen, but it's worth putting this sort of thing in the context of the past decade, in which people really have had their lives ruined in retribution for copyright infringement. The threat letters from copyright trolls really do go out across Europe, looking for all the world like the legal arm of some extortion ring or mob organization. Threats to out people for their pornography of choice really have happened. Within that landscape, to joke around about shooting those who pirate a television show misses the mark on humor entirely, and coming from a company like Netflix it's downright creepy.

Various authority figures have attempted to define journalism, usually excluding their critics. A recent post here covered a police chief who decided he could determine a journalist's credibility based almost solely on their web presence. Trimming down the definition of "journalist" allows government officials to limit their accountability by treating only certain outlets as credible.

So, we already have government authorities attempting to define what is or isn't a "real" news outlet. Jonathan Peters of the Columbia Journalism Review reports a government authority is attempting to define what is or isn't news. In this case, it's the Vermont State Police.

It recently revised a “Press Release and Public Information Policy” that provides guidance for police officers regarding how, what, and when information should be given to the press and public. The revisions came in July, and local journalists aren’t happy.

“The policy leaves it up to individual state troopers to determine what is news and what isn’t,” Michael Donoghue, the executive director of the Vermont Press Association, tells CJR. “Crimes, including sexual assaults, armed robberies, arsons, burglaries, embezzlements, drugs, and more are not required to be disclosed. Vermonters want to know if they are safe in their homes and out on the streets.”

The new policy [PDF] prefers ambiguity to clarity and transparency. Worse, it allows officers and police officials to make subjective calls on newsworthiness, which is obviously going to make policing the police that much more difficult. This part is particularly problematic, as it restricts dissemination of information to that which is subjectively defined as "significant public interest."

Press releases will be issued as soon as practicable for significant incidents of public interest, including, but not limited to arrests, citations, road closures, hazardous scenes and motor vehicle crashes.

Beyond that, VSP will withhold all info that "could identify" victims of crimes. This would include those who are on the receiving end of criminal activity by law enforcement officers. As Peters points out, this may nod to privacy, but does very little for public safety. (Not to mention accountability…) This would allow officers to withhold information that might be actually useful to the public, like the areas where repeated criminal activity is being observed.

Even as it places more limits on dissemination, the State Police is playing up its supposed "consultation" with local journalists when revising its policy. That's as much of a sham as the new policy.

While the police say they consulted the press (the state public-safety head wrote in a July letter-to-the-editor that the police “met with and had several discussions with and solicited input from” local journalists), the press association didn’t receive a final draft of the revisions before they were implemented.

Donoghue says the formal consultation amounted to one meeting with two officials. Another press association leader then asked to meet with the public-safety head, who hadn’t attended the meeting except to offer a brief welcome. That request wasn’t granted, and there was no follow-up meeting involving the press.

When asked directly about the changes (and their tendency to make dissemination of information even less likely), the Police spokesman offered up some talking points, but little in the way of clarity. He told Waterman the policy tries to strike a balance between the public's right to know and individual privacy and the integrity of criminal investigations. The spokesman also pointed to the department's 14 press releases a day as evidence that it's all over this transparency thing. But, as is pointed out by the policy's critics, 14 releases a day isn't much when there are more than 300 officers on staff. The VSP issues press releases for things like driving with a suspended license and other misdemeanors. If this minutia is supposed to be evidence of transparency, what are the other 300 officers doing with their time?

The faux consultation and the broad language attempt to disguise the self-interested policy rewriting. Law enforcement agencies are rarely paragons of transparency. The new rules the State Police wrote itself with almost zero consultation will only serve to keep more information out of the public's hands.