Daily Archives: July 28, 2017

Politicians’ social media pages can be 1st Amendment forums, judge says – Ars Technica

Posted: July 28, 2017 at 6:54 pm

We've been covering a recent First Amendment lawsuit targeting President Donald Trumpa novel legal argumentin which Twitter users claim their constitutional rights were violated because the commander-in-chief blocked them from his personal @realDonaldTrump Twitter handle.

To be sure, it's a digital-age-basedconstitutional theory about social media rights in a day and age when politicians, from the president on down, are using their private accounts to discuss public affairs.

Now there's some legal precedent on the matter. It comes from a federal judge in Virginia who said that a local politician had violated the First Amendment rights of a constituent because the politician briefly banned the constituent from the politician'spersonal Facebook account.

"The suppression of critical commentary regarding elected officials is the quintessential form of viewpoint discrimination against which the First Amendment guards," US District Judge James Cacheris wrote Tuesday in a suit brought by a constituent against Phyllis Randall, the chairwoman of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors in Virginia.

The judge didn't issue any punishment against Randall, as the Facebook ban for constituent Brian Davison only lasted about 12 hours. That said, the judge noted Randall committed "a cardinal sin under the First Amendment" by barring the constituent who posted about county corruption. What's more, the judge pointed out from the first sentence of the ruling that "this case raises important questions about the constitutional limitations applicable to social media accounts maintained by elected officials."

Randall's Facebook page, the judge ruled, "operates as a forum for speech under the First Amendment to the US Constitution."

This suit, at its most basic level, is nearly identical to the one lodged against Trump two weeks ago. Like the Virginia suit, the lawsuit against Trump names the chief executive's private account, which Trump uses on an almost daily basis as his political mouthpiece to the world.

"The @realDonaldTrump [Twitter] account is a kind of digital town hall in which the president and his aides use the tweet function to communicate news and information to the public, and members of the public use the reply function to respond to the president and his aides and exchange views with one another," according to the lawsuit (PDF) filed in New York federal court.

The Trump suit was brought by a handful of Twitter users Trump blocked after they posted critical comments. The lawsuit, to which Trump has yet to respond in court, seeks a ruling that the president's actions were unconstitutional.

Meanwhile, Judge Cacheris noted that Randall still had the right to moderate Facebook comments and that it's not always unconstitutional to block commenters.

"Finally, government officials have at least a reasonably strong interest in moderating discussion on their Facebook pages in an expeditious manner. By permitting a commenter to repeatedly post inappropriate content pending a review process, a government official could easily fail to preserve their online forum for its intended purpose," the judge wrote.

What's more, the judge said that allowing online speakers to hijack or filibuster online conversations would "impinge on the First Amendment rights" of other forum participants.

"Given the prevalence of online 'trolls,' this is no mere hypothetical risk," the judge said.

Judge Cacherishad recently tossed a similar lawsuit from Davison, a software consultant. In that suit, Davisonclaimed his First Amendment rights were breached because a prosecutor had removed hiscomments from the prosecutor's official Facebook page. The judge noted that the deletion of the comments was acceptable because they were "clearly off-topic" comments.

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Michael Flores: Attacks on our First Amendment need more attention – Madison.com

Posted: at 6:54 pm

Dear Editor: There have been issues on campuses across the U.S. on free speech. As the argument of hate speech versus free speech continues, many speculate that public campuses have liberal biases. This is due to disproportionate numbers of conservative speakers getting rejected to speak on campuses compared to liberal speakers. A CNN article titled War on campus: The escalating battle over college free speech suggests that these speculations are true: The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education maintains an incomprehensive database of more than 300 attempts to disinvite campus speakers since 2000. About three-quarters of the attempts involved pressure from liberals.

In Wisconsin, GOP representatives have responded to these issues by proposing free speech policies on the UW System. These policies are suggested as precautionary, threatening future speech disrupters with suspension and/or expulsion. But such policies are criticized as damaging the rights of those who oppose the views of speakers and minorities.

The relationship between Americas future leaders and the United States First Amendment must continually be closely observed.

Currently on the Press Freedom Index, the United States is ranked at the 43rd position. Obamas onslaught on whistleblowers and Trumps attempts to thwart press coverage are listed as problems that contribute to the United States position.

Media conglomerates are an obstacle to press freedom. A statistic from morriscreative.com shows that in 2012, six media companies owned 90 percent of American media, compared to 50 companies that owned 90 percent of American media back in 1983.

These attacks on freedom of speech and press threaten one of our most sacred rights. People should care more about free speech.

Michael Flores

Madison

Send your letter to the editor to tctvoice@madison.com. Include your full name, hometown and phone number. Your name and town will be published. The phone number is for verification purposes only. Please keep your letter to 250 words or less.

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Michael Flores: Attacks on our First Amendment need more attention - Madison.com

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Are Google Piracy Links Protected by the First Amendment? – Digital Music News

Posted: at 6:54 pm

Last month, Digital Music News reported on a controversial court ruling against Google. The Canadian Supreme Court ordered the search giant to remove specific piracy links not just in Canada, but worldwide. Now, Google has fought back, this time in a California courtroom.

In 2014, a Canadian court ruled that Google would have to remove a Canadian firm from its search results. Through Equusteks ex-employees, Datalink Technologies illegally sold their competitors products. Employees would set-up sites indexed on Google to sell the goods, sharing a strong percentage with Datalink.

After losing the initial court battle in British Columbia, Google filed, and subsequently lost, multiple appeals. Last month, the Canadian Supreme Court ruled against the search giant. It determined that Google was a determinative player in harming Equusteek.

The high court ruled that the search giant would have to de-index links from its search engine worldwide.

Now, Google has fought back. The search giant filed an injunction on Monday with the US District Court for Northern California. Digital Music News has obtained the documents.

Google filed the injunction to prevent enforcement of the Canadian ruling in the United States. It believes that the Canadian Supreme Court has compelled the search engine to wrongfully censor its information.

The Canadian trial court recognized that Google is an innocent bystander to the case. Nevertheless, it issued a novel worldwide order against Google, restricting what information an American company can provide to people inside of the United States and around the world.

Lawyers for the company claim that the court singled out Google, while leaving other search engines alone. They claim that people can still find links to the infringing sites through Yahoo and Bing.

In the complaint, lawyers for the company claim that Google is not the internet. It doesnt have the power to take down sites, as the ruling would suggest. Yet, the Canadian Supreme Court only found the search engine liable, leaving alone other websites.

Google is not the internet. The vast majority of internet websites are hosted by and operated through service providers other than Google. The entities with the technical ability to remove websites or content from the internet altogether are the websites owners, operators, registrars, and hostsnot Google.

Lawyers for the company laid out three causes of action.

In the first, the First Amendment protects search engine results. The complaint reads,

Enforcing the Canadian ruling in the United States would violate the companys First Amendment rights. The Canadian ruling, claims Google, furthers no compelling interest (nor a substantial interest). The existence of Datalinks search engine results remain a matter of public record.

Equustek has filed a claim only against the search engine; it has yet to file claims against Bing and Yahoo. It also hasnt gone after third-party websites that prominently display the infringing links, including social media and press websites. Equustek also hasnt filed a claim to stop the sale of Datalink products on Amazon.

For the second cause of action, Google cites the Communications Decency Act. This act provides clear legal immunity to providers of computer services for content on their services created by others. The Communications Decency Act reads,

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

Equusteks initial filing is grounded in Canadian trade secret law, not US federal intellectual property or trade secret laws. Therefore, it cant enforce the order against Google in the United States. Once again, enforcement of the ruling will cause the search giant irreparable injury absent injunctive relief.

For the third cause of action, the search giant claims that enforcement of the ruling trespasses on comity. Siding with Google, the Canadian Attorney General said that the order constitutes an impermissible exercise of extraterritorial enforcement jurisdiction. The Canadian Supreme Court disregarded this statement, however. Instead, it declared that the Internet has no bordersits natural habitat is global. By saying this, the high court justified its global injunction against the company.

Equusteks counsel argued on the same principle.

Google calls the Canadian order repugnant to US public policy surrounding the First Amendment. The First Amendment gives the search giant immunity against imposing liability. Once again calling the order repugnant, the company claims that the high court singled it out. It issued an order against an innocent non-party for the sake of convenience.

Continuing on, lawyers claim,

Canadian courts failed to extend proper comity to the United States. Thus, the United States does not need to defer the order.

Google requests that the US District Court rule the Canadian order unenforceable in the United States. It also wants the court to issue a ruling in Googles favor and against the defendants, Equustek. Finally, lawyers want the court to grant the company preliminary and permanent injunctive relief from further enforcement.

You can read the injunction below.

Image by Ed Uthman (CC by 2.0)

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The Left’s War on the First Amendment – FrontPage Magazine

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FrontPage Magazine
The Left's War on the First Amendment
FrontPage Magazine
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical left and Islamic terrorism. Once upon a time there was a liberal media. Like most left-leaning institutions it ...

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AMD: Cryptocurrency Mining Isn’t ‘A Long-Term Growth Driver … – CoinDesk

Posted: at 6:52 pm

Chip maker AMD has seen its sales buoyed in recent months by big demand for graphics cards by cryptocurrency miners.

According to its latest financial report, AMD recorded $1.22 billion in revenue duringthe second quarter of 2017, up 19% compared to the same period last year. This increase, the company said, is being spurred "by higher revenue in the computing and graphics segment."

Yet cryptocurrency mining isn't part of its long-term strategy for growth, accordingto Lisa Su, the firm's president and CEO, who remarked on the phenomenon during a Q2earnings call this week.

However, that state of affairs could change depending on how the situation progresses in the months ahead.

Su said during the call:

"Relative to cryptocurrency, we have seen some elevated demand. But it's important to say we didn't have cryptocurrency in our forecast, and we're not looking at it as a long-term growth driver. But we'll certainly continue to watch the developments around the blockchain technologies as they go forward."

Mining is an energy intensive process by which new transactions are added to a blockchain. In return for adding a new blocks, miners are awarded with new tokens, with the profits being derived from the difference between the energy expended and the prevailing exchange rate of those tokens.

Much of the demand for graphics cards, or GPUs, is being driven by ethereum miners. Bitcoin mining, by comparison, is accomplished through special-purpose computers designed for that singular purpose.

Graphics cardsimage via Shutterstock

The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is an independent media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. Have breaking news or a story tip to send to our journalists? Contact us at [emailprotected].

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Secretive Cryptocurrency Hedge Fund Metastable Examined – Bitcoin News (press release)

Posted: at 6:52 pm

Fortune has published an examination of a secretive cryptocurrency hedge fund that is backed by some of Silicon Valleys top venture capital firms. The fund was co-founded by Naval Ravikant, Joshua Seims, and Lucas in 2014, and has produced returns of over 500%.

Also Read:Hedge Funds Are Quietly Investing in Bitcoin

Metastable Capital is a cryptocurrency hedge fund that has attracted investment from many top venture capital firms despite largely shunning publicity since its inception in 2014. Metastable was co-founded by Angellist CEO, Naval Ravikant, cryptography expert, Lucas Ryan, and former angel investor, Joshua Seims.

Fortune has reported that Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Union Square Venture, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Founders Fund are among Metastables major investors all of whom participated in Polychain Capitals fundraiser earlier this year.

Metastable takes a long term perspective when assessing the markets, aiming to invest in projects that it expects will be profitable over the course of at least a decade. Theres a handful of, say between five and 10 of these major use cases that could be trillion-dollar blockchains, Seims told Fortune. Its all very long-term focused, and we think were in super early days right now. It really comes down to which do we think is the strong enough technology, that we think can win.

Metastables website describes two funds offered by the firm, Metastable Balanced, and Metastable Edge. The Balanced fund seeks to take a value-investor approach to investing, guided by deep technical understanding of the protocols to select a portfolio that we believe will deliver the greatest returns, holding a large portion of bitcoin, in additional to several smaller sized positions in major altcoins. Edge is designed for investors that already have substantial Bitcoin holdings, and holds ETH and a variety of smaller coins from more recent ICOs, although the ETH portion fluctuates based on whether we believe that the value from new coins is going to accrue to the new coin or to ETH.

Metastables flagship cryptocurrency hedge fund has yielded impressive performance throughout 2017. At present, Fortune asserts that Metastables Balanced fund is invested in approximately a dozen different markets, including bitcoin, ethereum, and monero of which it is reported to own roughly 1% of total supply. During mid-March, Metastable reported returns of 539%, however, since March, bitcoin, monero, and ethereum have more than doubled prompting Fortune to estimate Metastables returns since inception are greater than 1,000%. On June 23 it is alleged that Metastable reported total assets of $69 million.

Metastable requires a minimum investment of $1 million, and charges a 2% management fee and a 20% performance fee.

Do you think that cryptocurrency funds will continue to out perform mainstream hedge funds in coming years? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!

Images courtesy of Shutterstock and Wikipedia

Need to calculate your bitcoin holdings? Check ourtoolssection.

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Moroccan Police Arrest Alleged Cryptocurrency Investment Charlatan – ETHNews

Posted: at 6:52 pm

News world

An unidentified source reported that Moroccan authorities have arrested Renwick Haddow, a British man charged with securities fraud in the United States. The US SEC alleges that Haddow, a former New York resident, solicited investors for a non-existent bitcoin trading platform, duping them out of their money.

According to an unidentified source, on Wednesday, July 26, 2017, Moroccan police in Tangiers arrested Renwick Haddow, a man charged with securities fraud by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). After appearing before the public prosecutor in Tangiers, Haddow was taken to a prison in Sal, close to the Moroccan capital, Rabat. The Moroccan Court of Cassation will consider his extradition.

On June 30, 2017, the SEC filed charges against Haddow, accusing him of failing to register his firm as a broker-dealer and creating front companies for an investment scam. Haddow solicited investors for two fake companies, Bitcoin Store, a purported bitcoin trading platform, and Bar Works, a flexible workspace firm.

According to Andrew M. Calamari, director of the SECs New York Regional Office, Haddow created two trendy companies and misled investors into believing that highly-qualified executives were leading them to quick profitability.

The SEC alleges that these executives never existed. The SEC further asserts that Haddow siphoned approximately $5 million using the front companies Bar Works and Bitcoin Store, and diverted the funds to offshore accounts in Mauritius and Morocco.

It appears that Haddow exploited bitcoins name to solicit investors chasing terrific returns. The charges against him, however, are not related to the SECs recent report on token offerings and securities.

Over the next few years, for every successful token offering and subsequent powerhouse company, there may be a handful of companies that will falter. In the cryptocurrency community, its vital to distinguish between classic cases of financial fraud (like Haddows) and actual companies that fail to deliver on their promises.

Matthew is a writer with a passion for emerging technology. Prior to joining ETHNews, he interned for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as well as the OECD. He graduated cum laude from Georgetown University where he studied international economics. In his spare time, Matthew loves playing basketball and listening to podcasts. He currently lives in Los Angeles.

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Washington’s New Cryptocurrency Exchange Rules Are Now in Effect – CoinDesk

Posted: at 6:52 pm

New regulations for cryptocurrency exchanges have gone into effect in the U.S. state of Washington.

Following the passing of Senate Bill 5031 into law at the weekend, the state's money transmitter laws now apply to exchanges, meaning that they need to obtain a license fromthe Washington State Department of Financial Institutionsand must provide a third-party audit of their data systems.

Among other requirements, the law also mandatesa new transmitter bond requirement, with the figurebeingtied to the amount of currency exchanged during the previous year.

Lawmakers finalized the measure in April, sending it to the desk of Gov.Jay Inslee, who signed it days after work on the bill was completed. According to public records, the law went into effect on Sunday, July 23.

As CoinDesk haspreviously reported, lawmakers in the western U.S. state have been working since January to develop regulations for exchange startups.

The bill's passage wasn't without controversy, however. Cryptocurrency exchanges Poloniex and Bitfinex declared that they would would stop serving customers there, citing the new regulations.

At the same time, startupssuch as New York-based exchange Gemini moved in the opposite direction, obtaining approval to begin serving customers in the stateearlier this year.

Washington State Capitol imagevia Shutterstock

The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is an independent media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. Have breaking news or a story tip to send to our journalists? Contact us at [emailprotected].

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Cryptocurrency ICOs Are Making Bitcoin Startups Richer than VCs Ever Did – Fortune

Posted: at 6:52 pm

When initial coin offerings emerged as a new way for startups to raise money a few months ago, there was much speculationand some doubt about whether the cryptocurrency crowdfunding method could disrupt or even replace the traditional venture capital industry .

Now, the early numbers are in, and there is no question that ICOs , an unregulated form of fundraising by which companies can sell their own form of digital currency or tokens to investors, are winning this race, at least in the blockchain industry.

ICOs have now raised nearly four times as much money as bitcoin companies raised in venture capital dollars so far this year. Thats according to PitchBook, which tallied up the latest numbers: ICOs have raised almost $1.3 billion in 2017 so far, while only about $358 million in traditional VC money went to blockchain startups over the same period.

And that's at a time when venture capital is booming among blockchain companies. Last quarter was the best quarter for blockchain and bitcoin VC funding on record, more than doubling the amount raised in the first quarter and up 89% year over year, according to CBInsights.

But ICOs are growing much faster, having already raised almost six times as much this year as they raised in all of 2016.

Now, a fundraising method that you likely had never heard of until a few months ago is on track this year to exceed all prior VC investment in blockchain, which has totaled a cumulative $1.7 billion over the past eight years, PitchBook says.

To underscore just what a whirlwind trend this has become, even entrepreneurs doing their own ICOs are astonished by the craze.

At a panel discussion hosted by BlockchainDriven Thursday night, Morgan Hill, an investor at Attis Capital, announced that he was launching a new cryptocurrency hedge fund called AxionV in August. But unlike the crypto hedge fund startup MetaStable , which recently received funding from Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund, Union Square Ventures and Bessemer Venture Partners, AxionV has a different plan. It will do an ICO itself, targeting a $30 million fund, which it will then use to invest in other ICOs, Hill said.

He also told a story of another hedge fund manager in London who was planning to launch an ICO of a company that aims to put the entire Quran online, and use the new cryptocurrency to compensate people who contribute to the digitization of the religious text. Hills take: The first thing I thought was, this is categorically insane.

He later came around, he said, acknowledging religion is a very important piece of information and that the project actually does provide a huge value.

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Sony’s a7S II stuns with 4K footage from outside the International Space Station – TechCrunch

Posted: at 6:49 pm

Sonys lineup of full-frame mirrorless cameras is impressive, and have become a staple for videographers and photographers worldwide. But now, the a7S II has gone beyond just our world, capturing amazing 4K footage from outside the International Space Station.

The a7S II was mounted on the ISS on the KIBO Japanese Experiment Module created by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Japans space agency, after the organization determined that it was durable and reliable enough to survive outer space conditions, including vacuum, radiation and extreme temperature swings of up to almost 400 degrees Fahrenheit depending on whether the camera is oriented towards the sun or not.

The surprising thing about the a7S IIs environmental resistance is that its basically unmodified JAXA says theres a radiator and a heater built in to its mounting hardware to help with the temperature variance, but that the cameras hardware itself is almost untouched.

JAXAs original plan was to use an a7S on the external mount, but they swapped in the a7S II in their plans in 2016 because of its ability to record 4K video internally. The high sensitivity full-frame sensor, which works great in low light situations, also makes possible excellent night shooting, whereas the system its replacing didnt work at all in nighttime conditions.

The camera will also be used to capture stills, which JAXA says will be better for applications like comparing changes in the color of oceans and forests over time because of its improved tone reproduction vs. video. But the video capture is super interesting for docking operations, or for recording mesmerizing clips like those above.

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