Cultivated Compendium

At least three cable companies are considering circumventing the billions of dollars of retransmission fees they have to pay to broadcast TV companies by capturing free broadcast-TV signals themselves, Bloomberg reports. The cable companies would be mimicking the business model of Aereo and FilmOn X, which have developed Internet streaming services in which they retransmit free broadcast programming to subscribers through individualized antennas. A case in which Aereo's business model was found not to violate copyright law is now pending before the U.S. Supreme Court for the high court to consider hearing the appeal.

Bloomberg also reports that "retransmission fees in the United States are expected to double to $6.1 billion in 2018 from $3.01 billion this year."

The Wisconsin Supreme Court heard oral argments last week in a case in which conservative plaintiffs argue the state's domestic partner registry violates the state constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. The Wisconsin Supreme Court has a conservative-leaning majority, The Associated Press reported. The registry gives legal rights to same-sex couples like "the right to visit each other in hospitals and make end-of-life decisions for each other," the AP also reported.
 

The Washington Post reports that a defendant in a terrorism case has been informed by the U.S. Department of Justice that federal prosecutors want to use evidence generated from warrantless surveillance against him. The case is expect to generate a constitutional challenge. The case also could generated a U.S. Supreme Court test case. The Supreme Court rejected prior challenges to warrantless surveillance because the "lawyers, journalists and human rights organizations who brought the suit could not prove they had been caught up in the surveillance. As a result, they did not have legal standing to challenge the constitutionality," The Washington Post also reports.

AP Editor William J. Kole writes that reason that his news organization requested the tapes of 911 calls made about the school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., is because it would be in the public interest to examine "the law enforcement response to one of the worst school shootings in U.S. history." But, while Kole said a prosecutor's refusal to release the records breaks the law, he also points out that the AP may not use the 911 calls: "It’s journalism’s dirty little secret: Just because we have information doesn’t necessarily mean we’re going to use it."

The New York Times' Jim Dwyer makes the point that confessions, but not entire interrogiations, are recorded in New York. But it's documenting entire interrogations that could stop people being wrongfully convicted after they give false confessions. Dwyer writes: "They’ve been recording confessions for years — true confessions, false confessions, they pretty much all look the same. But after so many people who confessed were proven innocent with DNA tests, we now know that it’s not the confession part that tells you whether to believe someone — it’s that first 12 hours in custody, or whatever it was before the camera went on, that tells you how he or she got to 'I did it.'" Cops can feed details to innocent suspects that only the murderer would know. Then the innocent suspects feed it back to them.

The Federal Trade Commission is set to regulate connected devices that share consumer data. Or as GigaOm more pithily says it: the Internet of Things. Why does this matter? GigaOm reports: "There are two issues at play here, one being the privacy of consumer data and the other being the security of the networks delivering that data. The privacy issue, however, also contains a security dimension since the devices can share things that affect a person’s safety — such as where they live and whether or not they are home."

Moreover," EPIC, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, argues that the privacy implications of connectivity start with the devices, which could allow a person to be tracked continuously across a variety of networks," GigaOm also reports.

GigaOm's Stacey Higginbotham argues for a middle ground between stifling a new industry and consumer privacy.

Even as China's economy continues to thrive, issues with consumer safety have arisen not only with products sold abroad in the United States but domestically. In a promising sign that the rule of law is catching up to China's economic growth, Chinese consumer safety rules have been tightened. The changes, Reuters reported, "increase consumer powers, add rules for the booming Internet shopping sector and stiffen punishments for businesses that mislead shoppers."

The Second Circuit has rejected a $150,000 cap on individual donations to political action committees and independent-expenditure groups, Newsday reports. The ruling rises out of legsl action by supporters for NYC Republican Mayoral Candidate Joe Lhota.

The court granted injunctive relief on the grounds of the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United holding "that the government has no anti-corruption interest in limited independent expenditures," The New York Law Journal reported. Their story:  http://www.law.com/jsp/law/index.jsp#ixzz2ijtPbEjn

The Guardian has another scoop based on documents leaked by Edward Snowden: during the second term of the Bush presidential administration the National Security Agency memorialized that it tapped the phone calls of 35 world leaders after getting their numbers from a U.S. official in another department. The secret document stated no actionable intelligence arose from all that surveillance, The Guardian also reported.

The New York Times reported that the U.S. Department of Justice is contemplating entering a deferred-prosecution agreement with JPMorgan for the Wall Street bank allegedly turning a blind eye to Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme. There is no record of any other investment bank entering such an agreement to resolve criminal charges, The Times also reported.

The consequences of bringing criminal charges against JPMorgan is potential harm to the financial markets. Is JPMorgan not just too big to fail but too big to indict? But U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara argues '"I don’t think anyone is too big to indict — no one is too big to jail,”' The Times also reported.

JPMorgan was Madoff's primary bank.