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Today's court ruling invalidating the anti-blocking and anti-discrimination rules in the Federal Communication Commission's Open Internet Order was not a surprise to observers who were aware of one inconvenient fact—the FCC really screwed this one up.

The company that pushed an "online shopping cart" patent into the courts—and successfully made tens of millions of dollars off it—has finally been stopped.

The Federal Communication Commission's net neutrality rules were partially struck down today by the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which said the Commission did not properly justify its anti-discrimination and anti-blocking rules. Those rules in the Open Internet Order, adopted in 2010, forbid ISPs from blocking services or charging content providers for access to the network. Verizon challenged the entire order and got a big victory in today's ruling. While it could still be appealed to the Supreme Court, the order today would allow pay-for-prioritization deals that could let Verizon or other ISPs charge companies like Netflix for a faster path to consumers.

MPHJ Technology Investments quickly became one of the best-known "patent trolls" of all time by sending out thousands of letters to small businesses—16,465 of them, we now know—saying that if the business did not pay a licensing fee of $1,000 or more per worker, it would be sued for patent infringement. MPHJ claimed to have patents that cover any networked "scan-to-email" function.

Almost everyone I've spoken to (on both sides of the net neutrality debate) more or less expected the ruling that came down this morning in the DC circuit, in which the appeals court struck down the FCC's net neutrality rules because the the FCC had no mandate under the rules it used to issue that ruling. Basically, this is exactly what lots of us said at the start of this whole process. I've seen a bunch of reports overreacting to this today, from people saying that it's "the death of the internet." It's not. There are problems on both sides here. The telcos absolutely do want to abuse things to effectively double charge both sides. And that could clearly create significant issues with the basic end-to-end nature of the internet.

In the week leading up the two-year anniversary of the SOPA blackout protests, EFF and others are talking about key principles that should guide copyright policy. Every day, we'll take on a different piece, exploring what’s at stake and and what we need to do to make sure the law promotes creativity and innovation...

Copyright used to be a pretty specialized area of law, one that didn’t seem to affect the lives of most people. But with the proliferation of digital technologies and the Internet, a funny thing happened: copyright policy became speech policy, and it started to show up in all sorts of unexpected and unwelcome places.

Day 1: Transparency

Copyright policy must be set through a participatory, democratic and transparent process. It should not be decided through back room deals or secret international agreements.

A few months ago, the US Supreme Court said it would take up a controversial and divided case regarding software patents. Now, the high court has agreed to take up two more patent cases—both of which could potentially overturn current rules that many in the tech sector see as too lenient for patent owners.

Last week, we wrote about the MPAA joining the W3C almost certainly as part of its ongoing effort to push for DRM to be built into HTML5. Cory Doctorow has a beautifully titled blog post about all of this, saying that "we are Huxleying ourselves into the full Orwell." It's a great way to think about it, and Cory's quite pessimistic about the outcome:

Max Eddy, over at PC Mag, has a very interesting article about the experience of Nico Sell, of the company Wickr, talking about how an FBI agent casually approached her to ask if she'd install backdoors in her software allowing the FBI to retrieve information. As the article notes, this is how the FBI (much more so than the NSA) has acted towards many tech companies ever since attempts to mandate such backdoors by law failed (though, they're still trying). Some companies -- stupidly -- agree to this, while many do not. Those that do may think they're helping fight for "good," but the reality is different.

No discussion of the year's events would be complete without including Ed Snowden's NSA document leaks. Sterling's opening salvo addressed the NSA, pointing out how its ethos directly contradicts the utopian internet ideal.

Even before it was announced, rumors of AT&T's plan led consumer advocates to say that it violates the principles of network neutrality. However, AT&T believes the plan does not violate the Open Internet Order, the Federal Communication Commission's net neutrality regulation.

AT&T is no stranger to making a mockery of net neutrality rules. It heavily influenced the rules themselves and has several times taken advantage of loopholes to push its favored apps and services. AT&T is now making another attempt to further subvert the concept of net neutrality with its "sponsored data" plan...

... But it's what's tacitly admitted by this program -- something AT&T avoids addressing -- that's the most interesting. Giving providers and developers the option to pay freight on data exposes these data caps for what they are: an arbitrary limit that exists only as new source of revenue.

A batch of patents alleged to cover simple scan-to-email functions gained notoriety last year when they were used to demand $1,000 per worker from small businesses around the country. The anonymously owned MPHJ Technology Investments has been denounced in Congress and held up as a poster child for a system run amok.

A year after purchasing the Linksys home networking division from Cisco, Belkin today brought back the design of what it called "the best-selling router of all time" but with the latest wireless technology.

The official website for the widely used OpenSSL code library was compromised four days ago in an incident that is stoking concerns among some security professionals.

While plagiarism scandals pop up every so often, there are a variety of standard responses -- usually involving some sort of apology and then someone laying low for a while before reappearing (just ask Joe Biden). LaBeouf initially appeared to be following the same script... tweeting out apologies, before people started realizing that the apologies themselves were "plagiarized." That includes using Tiger Woods' apology after his scandal: "I have let my family down, and I regret those transgressions with all of my heart." Also, former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's famous apology concerning his role in the Vietnam War: "I was wrong, terribly wrong. I owe it to future generations to explain why."

As they do every year, unfortunately, the good folks at the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke have put together a depressing list of what should have entered the public domain yesterday. As you hopefully know, until 1978, the maximum amount of time that work in the US could be covered by copyright was 56 years (you initially received a 28 year copyright term, which could be renewed for another 28 years). That means, back in 1957, everyone who created the works in that list knew absolutely, and without a doubt that their works would be given back to the public to share, to perform, to build on and more... on January 1, 2014 at the very latest. And they all still created their works, making clear that the incentive of a 56 year monopoly was absolutely more than enough incentive to create.

Tired of that shiny new game console you opened up on Christmas morning already? Looking for gameplay that's a little more timeless? Maybe you just want to show your ingrate kids what gaming was like back when you were young. In any case, The Internet Archive has got you covered with dozens of emulated ROM images of games for classic game systems of the '70s and '80s running right in your browser.

In 2008, the British Library, in partnership with Microsoft, embarked on a project to digitize thousands of out-of-copyright books from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Included within those books were maps, diagrams, illustrations, photographs, and more. The Library has uploaded more than a million of them onto Flickr and released them into the public domain. It's now asking for help.