One of the most consistent aspects of lawyers who crusade against copyright infringement is just how inconsistent their views on "the law" are. Copyright trolls regularly skirt the law while claiming to fight for justice for copyright holders. Hell, some trolls, that would have you believe they are bullwarks against piracy, have been found out to have essentially committed and encouraged the very piracy they sued over themselves.

The point is that it's all a panoply of monied interests and shifting levels of ethics perfectly calibrated to let the copyright lawyer do as he or she pleases on any given day. You can see this in practice yet again, with Kerry Culpepper, Hawaiian IP attorney, deciding to register a bunch of trademarks for piracy related terms and then going around and shutting down accounts for "pirate" services on social media sites.

Through the recently incorporate Hawaiian company 42 Ventures, he helped to register several piracy-related trademarks. The current trademark portfolio of the company includes the popular brands “YTS,” “Popcorn Time,” and “Terrarium.” In addition, 42 Ventures also claimed the trademark for the Showbox arrow logo. All trademarks are registered under the same description, “downloadable computer software for downloading and streaming multimedia content images, videos and audio.” The same description also applies to the pirate sites and apps.

The trademarks were only recently registered which brings up the issue of prior use. Popcorn Time, Terrarium, and YTS have been using their brands for years, and could technically object to any enforcement efforts. 42 Ventures, however, stresses that it has its own legal “Popcorn Time” website at Popcorntime4u.com, which links to content from the YouTube channel Popcorned Planet.

And from there, we find that 42 Ventures has partnered with Andy Signore, who is behind Honest Trailers, among other things. The idea I suppose is to try to claim that 42 Ventures is suddenly and recently using these marks in commerce, the only way it would have a valid trademark. That, however, is bullshit. The terms and actual content creators were already long using those marks, as were the holders of the social media accounts 42 Ventures is busy taking down. In other words, Culpepper appears to be perfectly willing to abuse trademark law in his efforts to enforce copyright law. That isn't exactly a consistent respect for intellectual property now, is it?

Culpepper has also found his way onto our pages before. Last time we saw him, he had accused a 72 year old man of pirating over a thousand movies on the internet... only to drop that accusation when the media got wind of it and interviewed the bewildered elderly gentleman. This, again, shows an inconsistency in the application of the law. Either the evidence used against a 70 year old, the same evidence used against plenty of others, was sound or it wasn't. If it was, why drop the accusation? If it wasn't, why use it elsewhere?

Because consistent and ethical application of the law is entirely besides the point. There's no respect for intellectual property in any of this. Only a way to milk dollars in the name of the law.

Not many people noticed this, but last week, the FTC announced that it was sending more than $1 million in "refunds" to people duped by the scam company "World Patent Marketing" that would try to sucker people who thought they had big ideas to pay WPM to either help them patent their "invention" or to "promote" their patented invention. In reality, it turned out (as with many of these companies) it was just a scam to get the company's CEO quite rich:

As millions poured in, the firm's tough-talking CEO, Scott J. Cooper, boasted about trips to remote islands on his yacht and lashed out in expletive-laden tirades at inventors who complained. In screeds posted online and emailed to customers, the company bragged about its security team composed of ex-Israeli special forces trained in Krav Maga and threatened critics with lawsuits — or worse.

The FTC seems happy that it was at least able to get some money back for victims of the company.

According to the FTC, consumers paid Scott Cooper and his companies, World Patent Marketing Inc. and Desa Industries Inc., thousands of dollars to patent and market their inventions based on bogus “success stories” and testimonials promoted by the defendants. But after they strung consumers along for months or even years, the defendants did not deliver what they promised.

The FTC is providing 5,503 refunds averaging about $185 each to victims of the scheme. Most recipients will get their refunds via PayPal, but those who receive checks should deposit or cash their checks within 60 days, as indicated on the check.

Conveniently, the FTC leaves out the fact that our previous US (Acting) Attorney General, Matt Whitaker (who was AG between Jeff Sessions and current AG William Barr) was on the "advisory board" of WPM and appeared to use his former government prosecutor credentials to scare off victims of WPM trying to find out what happened to their money. In 2015, Whitaker sent this email to a complaining victim:

Mr. Rudsky:

Scott forwarded me your emails and I am concerned about what you are trying to communicate to Scott Cooper and WPM.

I am a former United States Attorney for the Southern District of Iowa and I also serve on World Patent Marketing's Advisory Board.

Your emails and messages from today seem to be an apparent attempt at possible blackmail or extortion. You also mentioned filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and to smear World Patent Marketing's reputation online. I am assuming you understand that there could be serious civil and criminal consequences for you if that is in fact what you and your "group" are doing.

I am familiar with your background and your history with Scott. Understand that we take threats like this seriously. Perhaps you can email me and specifically explain to me exactly what your intentions are with regards to World Patent Marketing so I can respond accordingly. I can be reached at this email address.

Please conduct yourself accordingly.

"Mr. Rudsky" responded, appropriately, to Whitaker: "stop with your bullshit emails. You are party to a scam that is driving allot [sic] of traffic to WPM site... You will be exposed..." And while WPM was exposed, and now that its victims are at least getting some of the money back, it appears that Whitaker got off free, despite his role in the whole scam. At the very least, it still should raise questions as to how the hell he became our Attorney General, even if only in an acting capacity.

With increased regulatory pressure surrounding the platform's ability to help distribute disinformation (often to bloody and disastrous effect), Facebook owned Whatsapp this week announced it would be more tightly restricting how app messages can be forwarded. Under the new system, if a user receives a "highly forwarded" message – one which has been forwarded more than five times – that user will only be able to send it on to a single chat at a time. Previously, users could forward these messages on to five people at a time, a limit that was implemented last year.

It doesn't block all message forwarding (you can still smash the forward button individually as many times as you like), but it does implement a little "friction" in a bid to slow mass forwarding in general. Over at the Whatsapp blog, the company explains its thinking:

"Is all forwarding bad? Certainly not. We know many users forward helpful information, as well as funny videos, memes, and reflections or prayers they find meaningful. In recent weeks, people have also used WhatsApp to organize public moments of support for frontline health workers. However, we’ve seen a significant increase in the amount of forwarding which users have told us can feel overwhelming and can contribute to the spread of misinformation. We believe it’s important to slow the spread of these messages down to keep WhatsApp a place for personal conversation."

Last year, Whatsapp says it introduced double arrow labels to indicate that forwarded messages were not from a "close contact," trying to make it clearer which messages were effectively from someone you trust, versus mass forwarded memes or spam. It's not entirely clear yet how impactful this will be in places like India, where, for several years, misinformation has helped fuel violence against religious minorities.

But as we've noted previously, these problems often go well beyond just Whatsapp, making it illogical to place the entire onus for fixing the problems squarely on Whatsapp's shoulders. There's also a mountain of cultural and technical issues (like managing what's sent inside of encrypted messages) that makes the assumption that Whatsapp can "just fix this" overly simplistic. Still, with the app now being used to spread bogus Coronavirus information, the stakes have grown higher, and the calls from regulators and governments to "do more" have grown exponentially.

But again, there's numerous factors at play, and it has long been clear that any solution is likely complicated and multi-faceted.

In many countries, social media applications have been conflated with the internet itself, creating a walled garden "internet" that consists of just a few apps and sources, creating a less open echosphere where it's easier than ever to spread disinformation. Often that's by design as we saw with Facebook's "Zero Basics" program, which attempted to help the company corner developing nation ad markets by offering free access to a Facebook "curated" selection of content -- but not access to the full internet. Add in government censorship, and it gets even more complicated.

That's not to say Whatsapp shouldn't continue to experiment with ideas to slow the spread of mis and disinformation. The company has helped promote a World Health Organization bot aimed at providing more accurate information, and it recently donated $1 million to the International Fact-Checking Network.

But because of the scope and complexity of the problem, it's going to take a hell of a lot more than just Whatsapp tweaks to fix a global, surging disinformation problem. It's going to require a cooperative, global shift in media literacy and critical thinking -- combined with mass collaboration between governments, platforms, academics, and users -- with nary a single silver bullet anywhere in sight.

Last week we talked about just how insane it was that hospital administrators were threatening and/or firing doctors and nurses for speaking out publicly on social media about just how unprepared America's healthcare system has been for the COVID-19 pandemic -- and now we find out it gets even worse. Business Insider has seen a memo sent around by the country's largest hospital provider, HCA Healthcare, noting that they changed their social media guidelines just as the pandemic got really cooking, to tell those healthcare professionals on the frontline that telling the truth in public might cost them their jobs:

HCA Healthcare, which has 185 hospitals in 20 states, sent an email to employees on March 24 that added new guidelines for social media and media inquiries during the pandemic. The email said HCA employees could get disciplined or even fired for posting information on social media about its policies about treating patients with COVID-19, the illness caused by this coronavirus. The health system also barred employees from speaking to journalists about the virus without explicit permission from HCA's communications director.

One nurse, Jhonna Porter, told Business Insider that HCA Healthcare had already suspended her for violating these new guidelines and did so retroactively, for her activity before March 24. Porter, a charge nurse at West Hills Hospital in California, said HCA Healthcare suspended her without pay on March 25, a day after sending the email updating its social-media policy.

The situation with Porter seems particularly ridiculous. She was talking in a private Facebook group with her colleagues, and that's why she got suspended:

Porter said HCA Healthcare issued her suspension over a phone call and told her it was for talking to her colleagues in a private Facebook group about a floor the hospital had turned into one for treating patients with COVID-19. Porter said the health system said her social-media activity was a violation of the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, commonly known as HIPAA, which mandates that healthcare workers keep patient information private.

Porter said her post did not name the health system or mention sensitive patient information. Rather, she said, she was being punished for being a whistleblower who called out equipment shortages and other hospital issues.

It is true that HIPAA rules are (often overly) strict, and that does limit what healthcare providers can share, but this seems like trying to pin a false HIPAA violation on what is actually embarrassing whistleblowing in the midst of a pandemic.

It's ridiculous how many times it needs to be said, but, in the midst of a pandemic, accurate and transparent information sharing is the key to actually getting a handle on this and minimizing the damage. That our hospitals are doing the opposite is not just scary, it's literally putting lives in danger. Meanwhile, I'll just toss this paragraph here:

HCA Healthcare is publicly traded, with backing from the private-equity firms Bain and KKR, which took the system private in a $33 billion deal in 2006, at the time the largest leveraged buyout in history. Its market capitalization on Monday was nearly $30 billion.

You don't say.

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Content moderation at scale is impossible to do well. The latest example? Facebook's rules to takedown content deemed to be people trying to price gouge medical supplies like face masks resulted in tutorials on how to make your own face masks being taken down:

Facebook’s systems threatened to ban the organizers of hand-sewn masks from posting or commenting, they said, landing them in what is colloquially known as “Facebook Jail.” They said it also threatened to delete the groups. The issue has affected do-it-yourself mask makers in states like Pennsylvania, Illinois and California, they said.

As the NY Times notes, Facebook, like most other social media sites, has been aggressively trying to block price gouging medical supplies:

At the top of its list were ads for masks, hand sanitizer and others looking to profit from the sale of safety equipment. Facebook banned advertising for such equipment last month, and has taken down nearly all posts related to the sale of masks across its Craigslist-like section, called Marketplace.

But as the company ramped up efforts to crack down on scammers and other miscreants, volunteer coordinators may have been caught in the crossfire.

“The automated systems we set up to prevent the sale of medical masks needed by health workers have inadvertently blocked some efforts to donate supplies,” Facebook said in a statement. “We apologize for this error and are working to update our systems to avoid mistakes like this going forward. We don’t want to put obstacles in the way of people doing a good thing.”

This is not an attack on Facebook, but, once again, it's important to recognize just how impossible it is to do these things well, especially at scale, and especially in the midst of a pandemic where things are changing daily. With the US only changing its recommendations on face masks last week, demand for any kind of face mask, including homemade ones, has sky-rocketed. And if you trying to build systems that are trained to look out for posts "advertising" things having to do with face masks -- which was important in the first few weeks of the pandemic -- they're inevitably going to lead to false positives flagging those who are actually trying to help.

Conspiracy theories have always plagued the deployment of new wireless technology. WiFi has no proven impact on human health, yet it has been a bogeyman for the better part of the last fifteen years. Fast forward to 2020, and social media is filled with "internet famous" folks claiming new fifth-generation (5G) wireless is part of a vast mind control conspiracy or a massive threat to human health. Russia, and likely other countries, have incorporated 5G for a few years into its online trolling operations, apparently believing it's another wedge issue that can be used to amplify already heated divisions in western countries.

During the coronavirus, the conspiracies surrounding 5G have exploded, with many "famous" Twitter users falsely linking 5G directly to the coronavirus. And in recent months, a lot of these bogus claims have been amplified by the likes of U.S. celebrities, who appear to be getting their health and science information from the "healing with crystals" set. Like Woody Harrelson, who last week vaguely suggested that 5G and the coronavirus are somehow linked. Or M.I.A., who in March doubted a COVID-19 link but falsely told her 650,000 followers 5G could slow down human healing:

Our susceptibility to bullshit is driven by a general, well-founded distrust in every last corner of the steadily eroded American establishment.

Folks are right not to trust the wireless industry, which engages in self-serving lying on pretty much a daily basis. They're right to not trust captured U.S. lawmakers and regulators from the FDA to the FCC. They're right to often distrust the courts, which have also been clearly hijacked in the service of myopic greed. And they're right to raise a skeptical eyebrow toward press outlets that, again more often than not, parrot press releases (this merger will be great! This surveillance technology has no downside!) in a way that uniformly winds up coming back to bite readers on the ass.

We've undermined any number of American institutions in a relentless quest for profit and power, so it shouldn't come as a surprise when the public now finds celebrities and internet randos a better source of authority and reason than our oldest institutions. If we want to fix the global disinformation problem, telling unqualified celebrities to shut up is a good start, but restoring the integrity of our institutions has to take priority.

Well, it took a pandemic to normalize domestic surveillance by [checks notes] employers. Not sure if this is the dystopia we needed or the one we deserved, but the shelter-in-place policies that have turned lots of office workers into telecommuters has led to incredible growth in one particular market sector.

With so many people working remotely because of the coronavirus, surveillance software is flying off the virtual shelves.

“Companies have been scrambling,” said Brad Miller, CEO of surveillance-software maker InterGuard. “They’re trying to allow their employees to work from home but trying to maintain a level of security and productivity.”

Axos spokesman Gregory Frost said in a statement that “the enhanced monitoring of at-home employees we implemented will ensure that those members of our workforce who work from home will continue” to meet quality and productivity standards that are expected from all workers.

This new surveillance obviously doesn't extend to the executive levels of these companies. It's the rank-and-file that will feel it the most -- the same that have been subjected to always-on monitoring of their computer and internet use while at the office.

It's another system -- one that can be gamed just as easily as those deployed in the workplace. Actually, these will probably be gamed even more easily considering some companies are using weird metrics like "emails sent" to gauge worker productivity.

But there's more to it than virtual bean-counting and hall-monitoring. The spyware that works-from-home will also alert clients if employees engage in certain behavior.

Managers using InterGuard’s software can be notified if an employee does a combination of worrisome behaviors, such as printing both a confidential client list and a resume, an indication that someone is quitting and taking their book of business with them.

Companies that don't want to pay extra for snooping software are relying on existing systems to make sure their employees are earning their paychecks. But these methods are even more intrusive than software specifically crafted to track telecommuter productivity.

“I’ve heard from multiple people whose employers have asked them to stay logged into a video call all day while they work,” said Alison Green, founder of the workplace-advice website Ask a Manager.

Slightly less intrusive than this low-tech "solution" is a new product that acts like a low-power CCTV camera installed by proxy in every telecommuting employees' home.

In order to keep productivity high while working remotely, some companies are turning to tools like Sneek. The software features a "wall of faces" for each office, which stays on throughout the workday and features constantly-updating photos of workers taken through their laptop camera every one to five minutes.

Welcome to micromanagement hell:

If a coworker clicks on their face, Sneek's default settings will instantly connect the two workers in a live video call, even if the recipient hasn't clicked "accept." However, people can also configure their settings to only accept calls manually — and only take webcam photos manually — if their employer allows it.

Chances are, none of these employees were subjected to supervisory visits to their desks every few minutes while at work. There's no reason for them to be subjected to it now just because they're working from home. The only reason this is happening is because it can happen. It's seamless, automated, and makes zero physical or mental demands from their employers.

If you can't trust your employees to work remotely, you probably can't trust them at the office either. And if there was any mutual respect between the employer and its employees, efforts like this will erode that very quickly. Employees who feel their employers don't trust them aren't too motivated to add value to the company they work for. Always-on surveillance isn't going to result in productivity. It will result in pointless busywork and a shit-ton of resentment.

Sneek's CEO Del Currie issued one of stupidest defense of pervasive surveillance of employees while defending his product from critics.

The purpose of Sneek isn't surveillance, Currie said, but office culture.

Currie claims a wall-of-faces that's continuously connected to each other (as well as their mutual supervisors) will keep people from feeling "isolated" while working from home. Currie may sincerely believe his remote work tool is better for employees' wellbeing, but it's doubtful most of the companies signing up for Sneek accounts to deal with newly-minted teleworkers are concerned about anything more than ensuring no one's getting paid to do nothing -- even if they've paid for plenty of hours of zero productivity back when everyone was under one roof.

Things aren't going to go back to normal once the coronavirus is under control. Employers may find they can still get work done without needing everyone in the same building breathing the same air. Some will find they can get the same amount done with fewer employees. The only constant will be the ability to invade their employees' homes to "ensure productivity" or "build office culture" or whatever. That will be here to stay.