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Newly anointed Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler said this week that it would be OK for Internet service providers to charge Netflix and other companies for a faster lane to consumers.

Wheeler's stance is surprising given that it appears to contradict the FCC's Open Internet Order, passed under his predecessor in 2010. That order, which sets out the country's network neutrality rules, says that fixed broadband providers may not "unreasonably discriminate" against any type of traffic. The order specifically calls out pay-for-play arrangements as being potential violations.

Back in May 2012, Judge William Alsup (yes, he's popular today) issued a very good and very thorough ruling explaining why APIs could not be covered by copyright. Alsup, who claimed he learned to program in Java to better understand the technical details of the case, went into a fair bit of detail in his ruling, which looked like it was clearly designed to explain basic programming concepts to an appeals court who would surely be hearing the case -- and almost certainly with judges who had less (if any) programming knowledge. The appeal was officially heard by the Federal Circuit appeals court (CAFC) today and there are some reports suggesting that the judges are skeptical of Alsup's ruling and may be leaning towards overturning it.

A case that went before the Supreme Court yesterday has a very long history. Lexmark sued Static Control Components in 2002, arguing that SCC shouldn't be allowed to reverse-engineer its printers and help others create replacement toner cartridges, because of copyright law. In 2004, an appeals court ruled in favor of SCC, and that ruling has become a cornerstone of DMCA-era copyright law.

A month or so ago, a PR person sent me a ridiculously misleading (to potentially dishonest) Forbes piece by Ev Ehrlich, former undersecretary of commerce for President Bill Clinton, arguing against net neutrality. The piece was so ridiculous that I asked the PR person whether or not Ehrlich, in his current job as a consultant/think tank person, was working with any broadband providers. The PR person said he didn't know, and I figured I'd just ignore the piece. However, having now listened to a radio debate on KCRW about net neutrality that included Ehrlich making the same basic argument in a discussion with Tim Lee from the Washington Post, Harold Feld from Public Knowledge and Alexis Ohanian of Reddit, it seems worth highlighting just how confused and, well, wrong, Ehrlich is.

For many years we've been incredibly critical of the famous Bayh-Dole Act, which was passed in 1980 with the idea that it would encourage greater innovation by pushing universities to patent the research they were doing. The theory -- based on a rather ignorant view of innovation and research -- was that patents would create a market, which, in turn, would enable easier knowledge transfer from academia to industry, leading to a research boom. The actual results have been a near total disaster. What's actually happened are two very bad things.

Among the words that the movie studios cannot use in describing Hotfile's activity: "piracy," "theft" and "stealing." We've been pointing out for many years how the industry has been using these kinds of misleading terms to influence pretty much everyone to their side, even though the terms are not even remotely accurate. Hotfile had reasonably argued that such terms could negatively influence the jury:

But the one thing that worries me quite a bit about the German internet scene is its very dangerous view of secondary liability -- in that German law and courts tend to lean towards blaming the intermediary for the actions of their users. I learned this the frightening way on stage at conference in Germany, under some very hot lights (in a decommissioned airport) where a somewhat angry questioner in the audience insisted that some comments written on Techdirt by some of our users were "illegal in Germany" and that, under German law, I was liable for them.

Fox News, the unmitigated authority in open source technology, gave its viewers the gift of knowledge yesterday with its explanation of GitHub. Thanks Fox News!

Tim Lee, over at the Washington Post's The Switch, has an excellent, detailed look at why the USTR seems to think that patent and copyright maximalism is in the best interests of America. There are two key reasons, which I'll paraphrase as (1) the employees at USTR have strong connections to copyright and patent maximalists, and there's a constant revolving door between USTR and IP maximalists, and (2) they're basically ignorant of how the digital world works today.

The reasoning given by Google is that the CyanogenMod Installer violates the Google Play Store's developer terms by actively encouraging Android users to "void [the] warranty" on their devices. As our Android expert Ron Amadeo noted, the CyanogenMod Installer is mostly a "one-way street," without a quick way to return the device to its stock state—it's certainly possible, but not with the same level of ease.

Researchers have discovered a Linux worm capable of infecting a wide range of home routers, set-top boxes, security cameras, and other consumer devices that are increasingly equipped with an Internet connection. Linux.Darlloz, as the worm has been dubbed, is now classified as a low-level threat, partly because its current version targets only devices that run on CPUs made by Intel, Symantec researcher Kaoru Hayashi wrote in a blog post published Wednesday. But with a minor modification, the malware could begin using variants that incorporate already available executable and linkable format (ELF) files that infect a much wider range of "Internet-of-things" devices, including those that run chips made by ARM and those that use the PPC, MIPS, and MIPSEL architectures.

As last year's What Linux Users Need To Know When Holiday Shopping For PC Hardware article was quite popular, here's my thoughts on the latest PC components and recommendations for those that may be purchasing (or hoping to receive) new computer hardware this holiday season and intend to use it on Linux.

When Valve laid out a range of performance tiers for the 300 Steam Machine prototypes it would be sending to beta testers, the company was clear that other hardware makers would be revealing their own designs for SteamOS-powered gaming rigs in the future. Custom PC maker iBuyPower has now become the first company to unveil a prototype for one of those designs, laying out a $499 white box with a GPU that’s comparable or slightly better than those found in the recently launched PS4 and Xbox One.

There's a reason why patent trolls love east Texas -- and big part of that is that the juries there have a long history of favoring patent holders, no matter how ridiculous or how trollish. That was on display last night, when the jury in Marshall, Texas sided with patent troll Erich Spangenberg and his TQP shell company over Newegg. As we've been describing, Newegg brought out the big guns to prove pretty damn thoroughly that this guy Mike Jones and his encryption patent were both not new at the time the patent was granted and, more importantly, totally unrelated to the encryption that Newegg and other ecommerce providers rely on. Having Whit Diffie (who invented public key cryptography) and Ron Rivest (who basically made it practical in real life) present on your behalf, showing that they did everything prior to Jones' patent, while further showing that what Newegg was doing relied on their work, not Jones', should have ended the case.

MARSHALL, TX—Newegg, an online retailer that has made a name for itself fighting the non-practicing patent holders sometimes called "patent trolls," sits on the losing end of a lawsuit tonight. An eight-person jury came back shortly after 7:00pm and found that the company infringed all four asserted claims of a patent owned by TQP Development, a company owned by patent enforcement expert Erich Spangenberg.

The jury also found that the patent was valid, apparently rejecting arguments by famed cryptographer Whitfield Diffie. Diffie took the stand on Friday to argue on behalf of Newegg and against the patent.

Last week, AOL announced the impending death of Winamp, saying that the 16-year-old media player would be shut down within a month.

But fans of the venerable software have launched a "Save Winamp" website and petition asking AOL either to keep Winamp alive or to open source its code.

Previously, Newegg made the risky choice not to put on a damages expert, but Baldauf took the issue on in his closing.

The jurors had seen a retail giant like Target pay just $40,000 to get out of the TQP lawsuit, so Baldauf asked jurors to consider the hard math of patent litigation. "Let's say you're in charge of litigation at Target," he said. "It's $2 million to $3 million to defend yourself. I think most people in that situation would decide to settle." But it doesn't mean that Target respects the patent, said Baldauf. "I can't imagine anyone at Target thinks this patent is valid or infringed."

MARSHALL,TX—"Imagine you're sitting at home minding your own business," said Newegg lawyer Kent Baldauf in opening statements earlier this week. "Someone knocks on your door and tells you—or demands from you—millions of dollars for a service that you're already paying someone else for."

Imagine the service is cable television and that you're already paying the cable company. "But this person tells you, 'We own a patent on cable TV, and you owe us too for all the years you've been watching cable TV,'" Baldauf continued. "Then you look into it, and you find out, wait a minute, this patent really doesn't cover what they say it covers. What would you do? My guess is you [would] do exactly what Newegg has done here. You would say: That's not right. I want my day in court."

And, yes, the patent (which has since expired) is highly questionable in the first place. While Spangenberg's lawyers (representing his shell company called TQP) tried to claim that the inventor, Michael Jones, was some sort of visionary genius who predicted the world of e-commerce, there's no actual evidence to support this. Newegg (thankfully) has famed cryptography expert Whitfield Diffie on hand to call bullshit on the claims that Jones (a) invented anything special or (b) that his invention is even remotely in use on e-commerce sites today. Diffie, of course, is one of the inventors of public key cryptography, which happened prior to Jones' invention, and is what is actually used online.

Francis Gurry, the head of the World Intellectual Property Organization, seems to be running from scandal to scandal these days. While it has shown brief moments of enlightenment, for the most part, WIPO tends to be an organization very supportive of the copyright and patent maximalist agenda. Last year, we wrote about two incredible scandals that directly involved Gurry. Despite WIPO being a part of the UN, Gurry apparently defied UN sanctions against both North Korea and Iran to give them computers, in the wacky belief that those countries would use the computers to bolster their local patent system.