Marian Call will be spinnin' the discs for KRNN this Wednesday night for a couple of hours from 8pm PST (11pm EST).

She says she'll be playing "music by [her] favorite artists — several Alaskans, several utterly obscure artists, and a few very popular ones".

MC puts the work in 'quirk' and the cover in 'discovery' and the fun in 'latifundium'! So if you're so inclined and you've got the time, feel free to stream netwise at http://krnn.org/ .

All of Popehat's Prenda coverage is collected here.

Watchers of the Prenda Law saga have been waiting for United States District Judge Otis D. Wright II to issue an order in the wake of his apocalyptic hearing on proposed sanctions against Prenda Law, its putative client entities, and its lawyers. During that wait, doubt has set in. Could Judge Wright's order, after all this drama, possibly live up to expectations? Could any dry memorandum capture the jaw-dropping antics that have come before?

Yeeeeop.

Continue Reading »

Dear y'all,

We're using WordPress. From time to time, we have tinkered with caching software. At the moment, we're using none because we enjoy our banning software more, and cache seldom plays nicely with ban. Our server also offers caching for interpreted php modules, but we've turned that off. None of the other plugins we employ makes conspicuous use of caching, and we're presently not (knowingly) relying on a CDN. (The server bills at a flat rate, not by the mile.)

Nevertheless, folks occasionally report that they're encountering a ban notice on the front page or on a given post. Typically, these are not folks we've banned (whether directly or by ip range). So far, the false ban message seems to affect only, say, 5 visitors in 20k.

In every case, we've asked these victims of technology to clear their browser's cache and to revisit the site. In every case, this has worked.

We're currently investigating whether the hosting provider employs a pagespeed or caching module in their preconfigured, managed web server. We're also probing the logs to see whether the false bans happen to follow closely on attempted visits from folks actually banned. Meanwhile, if you suddenly find yourself banned and have no reason to think you deserve it, then go ahead and force a reload (CTRL + F5 on Windows; Apple+R or AzaleaBlossom+R on Mac; F5 or CTRL+F5 or meta+F5 on Linux) and see whether that fixes the problem. More aggressively, go to your browser's settings and explicitly delete your local web cache (Option+AzaleaBlossom E on Mac).

Once we're done troubleshooting and making this annoyance go away, I'll report back. And of course, if you're comfortable with the Dreamhost/Debian/Apache/Wordpress stack, feel free to make troubleshooting suggestions in the comments below!

Update! Tickets on sale now!

If you'll be in the Los Angeles area this June, and if you enjoy Golden Age detective stories, then the Hollywood Fringe Festival will be offering a special treat just for you: Kill A Better Mousetrap. This one-act comedy (with a legal twist!) by actor/writer Scott Ratner will be playing every Saturday that month.

It's time for the Popehat Signal. I'm looking for attorneys admitted in Massachusetts to represent both named and anonymous online commenters. They've been sued by a man named Jonathan Graves Monsarrat based on a series of LiveJournal posts and comments.

Monsaratt's lawsuit is here. You can see LiveJournal threads talking about the lawsuit here and here.

The lawsuit targets posts and comments about Monsarrat's January 2010 arrest. Various sources reported that police arrested Monsarrat when they found him at a loud Somerville party that featured (gasp) underaged drinking. The charges against Monsarrat were later dismissed. Monsarrat was already known locally. Some of his fame was benign — he ran a whimsical message board called the "Wheel of Questions" where people could leave notes and have them answered. Some of his fame, on the other hand, was not positive. In 2003 the MIT and Harvard student papers reported complaints by participants in a Harvard-MIT-Wellesley matchup program he created and operated; participants asserted that Monsarrat chose people he wanted to meet from the matchup he was running and persistently contacted them in a way they found harassing. He was quoted thus:

Monsarrat, who also participated in the matchup service, said that he had heard of complaints about his personal use of data from the service, but said “I kind of don’t get that. I signed up like everybody else. There was no privacy policy.”

These reports led to a certain amount of internet infamy, including an unflattering entry on Encyclopedia Dramatica.¹ Monsarrat filed a DMCA notice against Encylcopedia Dramatica seeking to remove among other things, pictures of him they posted in the course of ridiculing him.

When Monsarrat's arrest broke in 2010, people began writing about it, and him, and his past, on LiveJournal. People writing about it referred to past stories about him in connection with the matchup incident, and other critiques of him. As is common online, many criticisms were vivid and accusatory and hyperbolic. That's the basis of Monsarrat's suit against two named defendants (a blogger and a poster on LiveJournal) and multiple anonymous commenters.

Monsarrat's complaint cites some statements made about him which, if untrue, could be defamatory. So why do I think this case is worthy of the Popehat Signal? It's because the complaint is overtly censorious and abusive of the legal process in multiple ways.

First, the complaint jumbles allegedly false statements of fact together with clear statements of opinion and insulting rhetoric. The former can be defamatory; the latter is protected by the First Amendment.

Second, the complaint jumbles together numerous defendants and suggests that they are all jointly responsible for each others' words. But under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act content providers — like bloggers — can't be held liable for the words of their commenters. Moreover, Monsarrat's conspiracy theory appears to be a method to target people for protected speech (like insults or statements of opinion) on the theory that the protected speech was connected to non-protected speech (like false accusations of fact). Practically speaking, that theory means if you post an insult or opinion about someone in a thread that also contains a false statement by someone else, you could be sued for conspiracy to defame. The chilling effects are obvious.

Third, the complaint suggests that bloggers, and commenters, cannot report and comment based on stories published in newspapers. There can't be any dispute that a local paper reported on Monsarrat's arrest and that student papers reported on the matchup incident. Misstating what's in those articles can be defamatory, but suing people for repeating what was published in the paper — without any basis for asserting they knew it was false — seems overtly censorious, and faces substantial legal barriers.

Fourth, Monsarrat cites some commenters merely for linking to other sites, like Encyclopedia Dramatica and the Harvard student paper. But there is — thankfully — an emerging legal consensus that linking to content does not constitute republication of that content for defamation purposes.

Fifth, for some reason, it appears that Monsarrat has waited to the very ragged edge (if not beyond) of Massachusetts' three-year statute of limitations for defamation actions. That does not support the assertion that he was actually harmed; it appears tactical.

Sixth, Monsarrat's non-defamation causes of action appear highly dubious. His "common law copyright" claim is based on uses of content that are clearly intended to critique or satirize. His commercial claims seem to rely on the highly dubious proposition that the defendants were involved in commercial activity. In short, the other claims appear to be a kitchen-sink approach. And, of course, there's Butthurt In the First Degree, also known as Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress.

The Streisand Effect may yield results that Monsarrat will regret. He needs to prove that the things said about him are untrue. A lawsuit like this seems designed to generate widespread publicity and encourage any witnesses that might support the defendants to come forward.

The complaint is highly vulnerable to attack. The named defendants need legal help. One of them — Ron Newman — helps maintain a LiveJournal community. Like many Americans, he's out of work, and like almost all Americans, he'd find it impossible to fund the defense of a lawsuit. Lawsuits are ruinously expensive to most folks — which is exactly why merely the threat of a defamation suit can silence people, and why plaintiffs can abuse the legal system to chill expression.

Someone may have uttered false and genuinely defamatory words against Monsarrat; I don't know. I do know that defamation cases — particularly ones where the plaintiff is pursuing extravagant legal theories that threaten everyone's speech — are best resolved with vigorous and capable counsel on both sides. Here Monsarrat's complaint, whatever elements of merit it might have, is framed in a way that should be of grave concern to anyone who values freedom of expression and opposes legal bullying.

So: if you are a Massachusetts lawyer, please consider helping the named defendants. I suspect that First Amendment lawyers across the country will be willing to offer support and advice. In addition, the anonymous commenters require counsel to help them oppose discovery calculated to pierce their anonymity.

Thanks, as always, for standing up to defend free speech.

This is Free Trader Beowulf, calling anyone…Mayday, Mayday…we are under attack…main drive is gone…turret number one not responding…Mayday…losing cabin pressure fast…calling anyone…please help…This is Free Trader Beowulf…Mayday….

Got home late tonight and found a package on the front porch.

AWW YEAH!

footnotes:

1, 2, 3

#old_school

A common and tedious refrain amongst some modern conservatives is "these days you're not allowed to criticize X," where X is gays or African-Americans or whatever group the conservatives believe to be unreasonably elevated in modern society this week. By "not allowed to criticize," they don't mean that they'll be arrested or sued or deported; they mean they might be subjected to rough criticism, which as well all know is tyrannical.²

On some occasions these conservatives may have a point: bad behavior should be criticized whatever the hue or orientation of a bad actor. Other times, they're wrong, and their logic absurd.

Take the strange case of Niall Ferguson.

Niall Ferguson is an historian and Harvard professor. If you teach at Harvard or study there, you'll find that you can coast a great distance on the Harvard name with little effort. Ferguson is determined to reject such complacency and make his own mark as an asshole entirely on his own merits. Asked about economist John Maynard Keynes, Ferguson had this explanation for why Keynes was insufficiently future-focused:

Ferguson responded to a question about Keynes’ famous philosophy of self-interest versus the economic philosophy of Edmund Burke, who believed there was a social contract among the living, as well as the dead. Ferguson asked the audience how many children Keynes had. He explained that Keynes had none because he was a homosexual and was married to a ballerina, with whom he likely talked of "poetry" rather than procreated.

. . .

Ferguson, who is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, and author of The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die, says it’s only logical that Keynes would take this selfish worldview because he was an "effete" member of society.

Ferguson later apologized abjectly. We can all say very stupid things sometimes. It's entirely possible his comments were a poorly-thought-out seat-of-the-pants response to a question, not a reflection of a genuine hostility to people based on sexual orientation. Perhaps he's not a irredeemable oaf like, say, Dean Chambers, who suggested that Nate Silver's electoral number-crunching ought not be trusted because he's "a man of very small stature, a thin and effeminate man with a soft-sounding voice."³

Whatever Ferguson is, and whatever he really meant, his apology and the criticism that preceded it has enraged some on the right, who have used it as an example of how you are just not allowed to criticize gays without, you know, people saying mean things about you, which is hurtful. Some have gone further to say that Keynes should be roundly damned because he was a racist and anti-Semite and supported eugenics. Take, as a sample, Robert Stacy McCain:

A friend on Twitter informs me that John Maynard Keynes was an anti-Semite who was also head of the British Eugenics Society, which under ordinary liberal custom would be enough to render someone historically radioactive. However it seems the new rule is that being gay — or, as was apparently the case with Keynes, being nominally bisexual — is sufficient to silence all criticism.

Niall Ferguson says, in effect, “John Maynard Keynes was a bad economist who was wrong about everything and also, he was gay, which might be relevant to the problem.” OUTRAGE!

Well, here you go: Jeffrey Dahmer was a serial killer and a cannibal, and also, he was gay, which might be relevant to the problem.

What's amazing is that McCain and people advancing the "Keynes was an awful person" argument don't seem to grasp that this makes Ferguson look worse, not better.

Assume, for the sake of argument, that Keynes was indeed a racist and an awful anti-Semite and an advocate of eugenics, the practice of compelled selective breeding to weed out "undesirables." Niall Ferguson was asked to offer a criticism of Keynes and his view of responsibility towards the future. Ferguson didn't say "Keynes' anti-Semitism, the rot at the root of many disordered economic theories, characterized his failed thinking about peoples and nations." Ferguson didn't say "Keynes was an advocate of eugenics, a sign that he saw people as instruments rather than as individuals whose autonomy is its own good end." No, instead, Ferguson went with the "he was a childless effete who read poetry rather than screwing his wife." That line of argument is not, in fact, a flattering defense of Niall Ferguson. Similarly, when someone who is black or gay is an utter cad, and your critique of them centers on their identity as black or gay, it's ridiculous to complain when people don't focus on your target being a cad.

Since McCain brought up serial killers, I'll now explain the title: what would you think of someone who, asked what they thought of John Wayne Gacy, said "I hate his clown paintings?"

Week 12.

Period One: Advanced Placement English. Discussion continues on Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Students will consider the moral ramifications of Adolf Eichmann's defense that he participated in genocide on orders from higher authority. The instructor is expected to question students on the distinction between lawful action and moral action, with emphasis on agency and personal responsibility. The lesson should lead into issues raised by the following reading assignments, Joseph Heller's Catch-22, and Franz Kafka's The Trial.

Period Two: American History. The study of the life of George Washington continues. Having concluded examination of Washington's policies as President, students will discuss the popular history and lore surrounding our nation's founding father. Parson Weems' story of the cherry tree, in which Washington honestly admitted to wrongdoing, will be discussed. Questions students should consider include: Was Washington's father right to forgive his son for cutting the cherry tree in light of the son's forthright admission? Is Washington to be admired for his integrity and honesty, or to be condemned as a tree killer? And how did this episode affect Washington's  future development as a general and statesman?

Period Three: Advanced Placement Mathematics. Symbolic logic is introduced. Through word problems, students will reduce complex concepts to mathematical formulae, with allowance for variables and contingencies. Sample problem:

North Carolina General Statute 14-269.2 makes it a Class I Felony to knowingly possess a weapon on school property. However, the charge shall be reduced to a Misdemeanor when the weapon is unloaded, is in a vehicle, and is kept locked. Cole mistakenly brings an unloaded shotgun to school after a weekend of sport shooting, in a vehicle which is locked. When Cole discovers his mistake, he confesses and asks for permission to return the shotgun to his home. Explain, in logical terms, why it is appropriate to charge Cole with a crime at all, and why it is appropriate to charge Cole with a Class I Felony, rather than a Misdemeanor?

Period Four: Film Criticism Elective. This week's material is Spike Lee's controversial 1989 film, Do The Right Thing. Parental consent is required to view the assignment. Matters to be explored include Lee's use of contemporary hip hop music as a leitmotif, Lee's cinematography as an exemplar of the early "New York independent" school of film editing, and the moral implications of the death of Radio Raheem and the burning of Sal's Pizzeria. Students should discuss how these tragedies could have been avoided, had the characters embraced the spirit of neighborhood and compromise that formerly characterized relations between the people who inhabit this city block.

Lunch Break: This week's cafeteria offerings: Monday, Salisbury Steak. Tuesday, Stuffed Cabbage. Wednesday, Ham Loaf. Thursday (in honor of National Sweet Potato Week), Yam Surprise. Friday, Salisbury Steak.

Period Five: Physical Education. Dodge Ball.

Period Six: Student Assembly and Study Hall. This week's assembly will feature an address from Principal Kirk Denning, on the topic, "With Actions Come Consequences." Principal Denning will also discuss our school's longstanding "zero tolerance" policy toward drugs, as applied to cough syrup.

Period Seven: Earth Science. Students will study metals, and their uses in technology and industry. The instructor will discuss the characteristics of iron as an exemplar metal, explaining its properties as the most rigid, unbending, inelastic, unyielding, obdurate, stern, unchanging, obstinate, stubborn, unswayable, hard, inflexible, and stupid of metals.

…and yet, I did.

The Daily Currant is a parody news site, right?

Too bad – I wish that this was true.

http://dailycurrant.com/2013/05/02/bloomberg-refused-second-slice-of-pizza-at-local-restaurant/
Bloomberg Refused Second Slice of Pizza at Local Restaurant

May. 02, 2013

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was denied a second slice of pizza today at an Italian eatery in Brooklyn.

The owners of Collegno's Pizzeria say they refused to serve him more than one piece to protest Bloomberg's proposed soda ban,which would limit the portions of soda sold in the city.

Bloomberg was having an informal working lunch with city comptroller John Liu at the time and was enraged by the embarrassing prohibition. The owners would not relent, however, and the pair were forced to decamp to another restaurant to finish their meal.

Read the rest through the link.

Over in the insanely long religious thread (362 391 comments and counting!) @Adrienne and I had a bit of a back and forth.

I expressed some thoughts on whether various believers all worship the same God or not, and @Adrienne took me to task.

Now, a quick note: I really don't want to clutter up this thread with theology. I'm not the theology blogger here, Popehat is not – despite the name! – a theology blog, most people don't care about theology. So, for the love of (cough) God, please don't use this thread to talk theology; keep it in the other thread!

What I do want to discuss here is how a society deals with three-, four- and five-deviation-from-the-mean opinions.

I quote @Adrienne's most recent comment:

I absolutely do not believe that the law should prohibit basically any sort of speech… I think hate speech laws, in particular, are horrifying.

Excellent, glad to hear it.

However, many things that are (and should remain) "okay" in a legal sense are "not okay" in a social sense, an ethical sense, or both.

100% agreed.

Certain thoughts and ideas and statements by and large make their possessor or speaker appear to be a complete asshole.

Yes, I agree.

However I note three things:

1) appear – verb – 3: to have an outward aspect

2) appearance is in the eye of the beholder, and beholders vary widely.

Saying that Jews are non-human and can be exterminated without moral qualm would not raise an eyebrow in Germany c. 1941, but saying it in 2013 would exclude you from polite society.

Saying that fetuses six months after conception are non-human and can be exterminated without moral qualm would not raise an eyebrow in Germany c. 2013, but saying it in 1941 would exclude you from polite society.

3) Most people don't read any books in a given year. Most people watch four hours of TV per day. Half the populace has an IQ under 100, and 99.8% of it has an IQ under 145.

What I take away from all of this is that I really don't care if my ideas – reasonably well-thought out, somewhat researched – make me appear to be an a-hole to 99% of people.

I'm not going to speak what I consider lies or refrain from speaking what I consider truth because the masses are bad at thinking and rarely experience any idea outside of of the comfortable bubble of two-major-parties / late-night-TV-comedy / approved US history.

I additionally believe that certain statements are irresponsible to make on a widely-read and well-respected blog such as Popehat

I strongly disagree.

I don't think that the marketplace of ideas is good in theory but bad in practice – I think it's good in theory and good in practice.

Here's how I engage in the marketplace of ideas :

1) I say things that may or may not make me appear to be an a-hole.

2) Anyone who wants to can leave a comment questioning my facts, my sanity, or my rationality.

3) I will engage with those people, striving to calmly respond to each and every one of them.

At the end of the day I may end up changing my opinion, one or more of them may end up changing their opinions, or no one will be swayed, but we will all be better off for having explored each other's premises and logic.

I would be enthusiastically in favor of your being socially shunned because of your statement.

I have been socially shunned for my opinions, and I've survived. The fact that I'm an nerdy INTJ who's extremely (perhaps pathologically) capable of sticking to his opinions even in the face of social opprobrium that has allowed me to explore lots of ideas, argue about them out loud, and change my mind dozens of times, so the causality implied by the previous sentence is backwards: it's not that I'm tough that has allowed me to survive the shunning, it's that I knew up front that I could survive the shunning that allowed me to explore ideas and embrace fairly crazy ideas like voluntaryism, transhumanism, modified Newtonian dynamics and Catholicism.

I would be totally okay with the New York Times printing your statement, your real name, and your photo on page one.

Interesting example. In fact, the New York Times has quoted me (under my real name) saying things that are outrageous to conventional prejudices. Twice. Neither, sadly, made page one. Both resulted in dozens of emails from people who went to the work of tracking me down and telling me that I'm terrible.

I think what you said is detestable and that you should face social consequences for it

I would not oppose your being fired from your day job (whatever your day job is) because of it.

I note that you don't merely say that it's OK if I face social consequences – you chose the word "should". You want me to be punished for expressing ideas that I have reached honestly.

That being the case, you don't really believe in a marketplace of ideas, do you? You want people to be punished for saying non-conformist things, you just want to keep your hands clean (or, rather, to claim that your hands are clean. You want your intellectual enemies to go hungry, but you want to be able to say that you didn't do it to them).

The goal here is – what? To raise the cost of speaking non-conformist ideas, so as to lower the total quantity of non-conformist ideas produced? I personally like the idea of an open society with intellectual ferment, but it seems like you do not.

Further, you're in favor of pretty extreme punishments: you'd like to see my lose my income, and because of that, inevitably, my house and my ability to support my family. You'd like to see that happen, and all because I dared to reach and then say out say out-loud an unpopular conclusion.

I consider that to be a shameful stance on your part.

…

However, I note that I don't want you to lose your job or your house, or go hungry because of your opinion. I'm glad you said it out loud, because it lets me see what you think.

What I want is to engage you, change your mind, and change the minds of anyone who might agree with you.

But we don't love a few of you.

This is to advise that I have conducted our first mass banning, for intolerable rudeness to other commenters, ninnyhammery, and general jackanapery. If you can read this, congratulations! You have survived to fight another day.

I shan't name names. The guilty know who they are, or will soon. As for the innocent, keep fighting the good fight! Politely.

You may review our comment policies here. You may discuss my decision below.

Politely.

The Streisand Effect is one possible bad consequence of a legal threat designed to remove content from the internet.

But it's not the only possible bad consequence.

Battlefoam makes storage containers for miniatures used in wargaming. If you don't know what that means already you'll just be irritated if you try to find out, so don't bother. Battlefoam's exec Romeo Filip was angry at some things someone wrote at a site called The Blood of Kittens Network. That site is "devoted to spreading a heritical understanding of the Warhammer 40k universe to neophytes and devotees alike." Again, if you don't know what that means, you very likely don't want to know. Just nod your head and move along.

Anyway, Battlefoam and Filip got some Arizona lawyers to write a very blustery cease and desist letter. It's not the worst cease-and-desist I've ever seen — it does some things to avoid the Streisand Effect, like specifying particular statements that Battlefoam thinks are false — but its language and demands are extravagant. It also offers a short drop-dead date for capitulation.

Lawyers offer short deadlines hoping to convey seriousness and determination. Sometimes it works. Other times, it conveys "there's no point in negotiating with these people."

As followers of The Oatmeal saga will recall, a subject of blustering legal threats need not stay on the defensive; there are offensive options as well. That's exactly the approach Blood of Kittens and its owner, Nicolas Hayden, took. They siezed the initiative and filed a strong declaratory relief action in Northern California, seeking a court determination that the posts about Battlefoam and Filip are protected by the First Amendment. They are being represented pro bono by First Amendment badass Marc Randazza and his colleague Gil Sperlein, also a notable First Amendment practitioner.

Now, unless Battlefoam can get the action dismissed or moved, Blood of Kittens has chosen the forum, the time, and the framework of the litigation, and is represented by two exceptional First Amendment practitioners.

Had Battlefoam's lawyers written a less blustery, less demanding letter, this might not have happened. They could have written a polite but firm letter saying they wanted to discuss resolution of concerns about false statements. They could have avoided purple prose and demands for things they could never get in court. Then Hayden might not have been able to attract two of the nation's best defamation defense attorneys to work for him for free. He might not have attracted anyone to file a declaratory relief suit, and indeed the grounds for such a suit (the clearly presented immediate controversy) might have been unclear.

But Battlefoam's lawyers decided to please their client with a take that type of letter.

Hey guys. Was it worth it?

Edited to add: Thanks to a commenter, I see that Romeo Filip did a podcast yesterday. At about the 60 minute mark he talks at length about the litigation, demonstrating that he doesn't understand declaratory relief, attorney fees, or the law. Plus, in a case in which he says it is defamatory to say he physically assaults critics, he shrewdly jokes (Kind of — I think) about punching critics in the face. Genius. Sheer genius. I presume his attorneys didn't know he was making their job so much more difficult. If he has meritorious claims — if Blood of Kittens posted false statements of fact with the requisite intent — he just significantly reduced his chance of winning. Clients.

The U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Massachusetts has just filed two criminal complaints arising from the Boston Marathon bombing investigation. One complaint is against two men, Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov. The other complaint is against one man, Robel Phillipos.

Documents are already available on PACER.

The current docket (the record of court actions in the case, with links to documents) is here in the case against Kadybayev and Tazhayakov. The complaint cover sheet against them is here. The affidavit in support of the complaint against them — which has an FBI agent's statement of the evidence supplying probable cause — is here.

The docket in the case against Pillipos is here. The complaint against him is here. The affidavit — which appears at a brief glance to be the same one from the case against the other two men – is here.

The first complaint charges Kadybayev and Tazhayakov with a conspiracy to violate federal law in violation of Title 18, United States Code, section 371 — the generic federal conspiracy statute. The object of the conspiracy — the federal law the defendants are alleged to have conspired to violate — is destruction of evidence in a federal investigation in violation of Title 18, United States Code, section 1519.

The second complaint charges Phillipos with making a false statement to the government in violation of Title 18, United States Code, section 1001.

Read the affidavit yourself. Very briefly, the affidavit alleges that Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov saw emptied-out fireworks in accused bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's room, concluded that he was one of the Boston Marathon bombers, and decided to dispose of the container of hollowed-out fireworks, apparently to protect Tsarnaev. Phillipos, the FBI alleges, gave multiple statements and initially lied about what he knew of actions by Dias Kadyrbayev and Azamat Tazhayakov.

A few points:

1. They may or may not have their first appearance today, May 1st. here's what I wrote about how a first appearance works and what happens next.

2. Why did they charge Phillipos separately? It's too early to say. They may be cutting him out from the other two to testify against them, they may be avoiding "misjoinder" (putting together different charges and defendants that don't belong together) even though it's premature to worry about that before the indictment, or there may be some other strategic reason.

3. Remember how I said earlier today that you should shut up rather than talk to the feds, because you'll just wind up (1) confessing, (2) making a stupid false statement that will make you look guilty, or (3) make a stupid false statement that will get you charged with making a stupid false statement? Yeah. This is what I was talking about.

4. The same magistrate judge signed off on the complaints. I'm going to have to come up with more conspiracy theories.

Back in July 2012 Patrick announced that, though we still won't run advertisements, we'd started an Amazon Associates program to defray costs. The Amazon Associates link is on the right-hand sidebar, or through here. If you follow it, and buy something at Amazon, we get a cut.

I'm writing with an update.

1. You've ordered 1,255 items through the link, at a cost of $27,417.50, and we've gotten a cut of $1,680.14.

2. There's no way to tell who ordered what; we can only see what's been ordered in the aggregate. Some of you have awesome tastes. Some of you have terrible taste, defined as "different than mine." Some of you are either having a lot of sex or need to lubricate an aircraft carrier drydock.

3. Our costs are hosting and traffic monitoring. Earlier we were on a virtual server; lately we are on a private server. This has dramatically improved general reliability and performance during high-traffic periods. It's more expensive, though.

4. I'm still calculating the total costs during the period since July. Once I do, I'll report it. Anything above the hosting and traffic monitoring costs will be donated to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. If there's not enough left for the FIRE to please me, I'll net it up out of my own pocket to at least $500.

5. Nothing from the Amazon Associates program is going to stay in our pocket for beer or barbecue or movies or anything. I'll use it to repay out-of-pocket hosting and monitoring costs, and send the excess to FIRE. I'm not using it to reimburse other hard costs, like PACER and telephone calls and the like.

6. We very much appreciate the people who have used Popehat's Amazon Associates link. As traffic has increased the monetary costs of running Popehat have grown into the that-makes-a-dent range. The social and soul-related costs are another story.

It's my best piece of advice — and the advice most consistently ignored. If you're dealing with the government, and you are in any doubt, why won't you just shut up?

Yesterday at Ars Technica, Nate Anderson had a great piece about the FBI's capture of a couple of meatheads who were extorting a professional poker player with nude pictures hacked from his email account. Some people may walk away with the lesson, "you're a fool to keep your naked pictures online." Some may walk away with a Coen Brothers type of lesson that some criminals are stupid and doomed to failure. I walk away with the same lesson as always: shut your damnfool mouth and stop trying to convince law enforcement of anything.

Nate's article tells about two defendants — Keith Hudson and Tyler Schrier. The FBI confronted them both in a manner well-calculated to scare the living shit out of them, rousting Hudson at gunpoint at his home and yanking Schrier out of his dorm room in his underwear. Most people have a hard time thinking straight under those circumstances. They forget things, they misread signals, they judge poorly, and they let their desperation to control the situation overcome whatever minimal good sense they have. The only good approach is to shut up. Hudson and Schrier didn't. They both talked, and both started with a series of stupid and easily countered lies, before blundering around towards the truth.

"The FBI does not fly us out here and we don't break into your door to talk to you if we don't have a substantial amount of evidence against you," said one of the FBI agents to Hudson. Actually, the FBI goes off on a wild tear based on lousy evidence all the time. But this much is true: when the FBI shows up to interrogate you, there is an excellent chance they already know the answers to their questions (or think they do) and already have evidence lined up to back their beliefs. When you run your fool mouth, you are probably doing one of three things: (1) incriminating yourself by admitting to parts of their case, (2) telling stupid and easily disproved lies, which make you look guilty, thus making you easier to convict, and (3) telling stupid and easily disproved lies that the government will use to pile additional charges onto you.

Indeed, in this case, when the feds indicted Hudson and Schrier, they added a charge under 18 U.S.C. section 1001 against Schrier for lying to the FBI during his interrogation. They did that even though the FBI agents knew it was a lie at the time and had the evidence they needed to disprove it and it didn't slow or deter the investigation by a hair. Now, that extra charge probably didn't have much impact on Schrier's sentence — it's really chickenshit rubble-bouncing — but it's an additional federal felony that makes his case more complicated, needlessly.

Some people are sociopaths and would try to fast-talk God Almighty. Some people talk compulsively under any pressure. And some people have somehow picked up a foolish notion that if they don't talk, if they don't cooperate, if they don't show the cops that they're good citizens, they'll be hustled off to a cell even if they've done nothing, or that they will lose a chance to divert the cops from the something they have done. Here's the truth: maybe, possibly, there could be a scenario where your long-term interests will be hurt if you refuse to talk to law enforcement. Maybe, possibly, in some extremely unlikely scenario, you could do actual harm to your fortunes by asking to talk to a lawyer before you talk to the cops. But those remote and hypothetical scenarios are vastly outweighed by the strong likelihood that you will make your situation much worse by talking. The "I better talk to the cops right now or things might get worse" approach is like deciding to jump off a bridge because you might get struck by lightening if you keep standing on it.

Shut up. For the love of all that is holy just shut up.