It will soon be easy to "click to cancel" subscriptions after the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) adopted a final rule on Wednesday that makes it challenging for businesses to opt out of easy cancellation methods.
“Too often, businesses make people jump through endless hoops just to cancel a subscription,” FTC chair Lina Khan said in a press release. “The FTC’s rule will end these tricks and traps, saving Americans time and money. Nobody should be stuck paying for a service they no longer want.”
The heart of the new rule requires businesses to provide simple ways to cancel subscriptions. Under the rule, any subscription that can be signed up for online must be able to be canceled online. And cancellation paths for in-person sign-ups must be just as easy, offered either by phone or online.
A sequence of images captured by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope showed how much the giant storm changed shape as it traveled within the planet’s atmosphere.
Three years ago, we updated Vizzini’s list of “classic blunders” from The Princess Bride to include “never try to patent troll Cloudflare.” That was when the company announced that patent troll Sable Networks had made that mistake and now needed to be taught a lesson. That lesson is now complete, and Cloudflare has successfully destroyed a patent troll (and embarrassed it along the way) so much that the troll has agreed to declare its entire patent portfolio open and free for the public to use.
First, some history: over a decade ago, the e-commerce site Newegg was getting sick of patent trolls and decided that it needed to take a “never settle” approach to fighting them. The thing with patent trolling is that it’s asymmetric warfare. Trolls get low quality patents and then shake down companies, knowing that it’s cheaper to just pay some smaller amount to settle than to take the matter to court and win. But, as Newegg’s leadership surmised at the time, settling only leads to more patent trolls and more shake down payments. Making it clear you’ll never ever settle (and being very public about that) should eventually lead patent trolls to look elsewhere.
Since then, a few other companies have embraced this strategy, but none has done so with quite the same gusto, zeal, and commitment to absolutely crushing the souls of patent trolls as Cloudflare.
In 2017, Cloudflare announced its plan to completely destroy a patent trolling firm, Blackbird. It launched something it called Project Jengo, which offered up rewards to anyone helping them to completely obliterate Blackbird’s patents. The campaign was a huge success. Cloudflare won in court (and on appeal) and it appeared it greatly limited Blackbird’s ability to keep trolling.
Sable Networks didn’t bother to educate itself on this before trying its trolling efforts on Cloudflare. Cloudflare opened up the same playbook on Sable (owners of a bunch of old terrible Caspian Networks patents that it bought for a song). Cloudflare fought back and won in court earlier this year.
And it wasn’t just a “you didn’t infringe” kind of win. They actually got a jury to invalidate the patent at issue (the lawsuit had started with many claims over multiple patents, but by the time it went to trial, it had been narrowed down to one claim on one patent, and Sable couldn’t even make that one stick).
Juries very rarely invalidate patents. They are much, much, much more primed to believe that any patent is legit and not realize how many junk patents there are. They also are generally unaware of patent trolling and abusive behaviors by patent trolls that amount to little more than extortion. But here, the jury was convinced that the patent was bogus:
Perhaps it was because Cloudflare dug in during the trial and made Sable look like the extortionate troll it is. From the transcript, you see that Cloudflare’s lawyers got Sable to admit that its only actual business was suing people:
Q. I mean, that’s your business. Let’s don’t beat around the bush. You’re in the business of filing lawsuits, true?
A. Yes.
Q. And you would agree with me that you’ve been in that business for a while, right?
A. Yes.
Also, Cloudflare got Sable to admit that it does little to no research before filing its lawsuits.
Q. You believe it would be responsible, reasonable business practice to sit down and talk to folks before you sue them, right?
A. Yes.
Q. You didn’t do that here, did you, sir?
A. No.
Q. And you don’t do that as your practice, right?
A. That’s correct.
Q. You told this jury not 20 minutes ago that you sue every time. You don’t talk to anybody. That’s what you told them, fair?
A. Fair.
Q. And what you stood up here and told this jury is everybody in this industry, including me, sues first and talks later, correct?
A. Correct.
Q. But that’s just not true, is it, sir? The responsible business people in this business actually sit down and talk to folks before they sue them, fair?
A. Fair.
Q. And you don’t do that, do you, sir?
A. No.
I mean, that’s a thing of beauty.
Anyway, beyond just winning the case, Cloudflare has gotten Sable to (1) pay Cloudflare $225k for having to defend this nonsense lawsuit and (2) much more importantly, agree to release its entire patent portfolio to the public for anyone to use so that Sable can never sue over them again:
If you can’t see that screenshot from the agreement, it says:
DEDICATION TO THE PUBLIC OF THE SABLE PATENTS; ROYALTY FREE LICENSE AND RELEASE; PAYMENT BY SABLE TO CLOUDFLARE
2.1 Dedication To The Public Of The Sable Patents. Within twenty-one days of the Effective Date, the Sable Parties shall dedicate the Sable Patents to the public, including by filing and recording the appropriate document(s) and paying any applicable fee(s) with the United States Patent and Trademark Office pursuant to 35 U.S.C. § 253. For the avoidance of doubt, this Section 2.1 requires the Sable Parties to disclaim and dedicate to the public the entire term, or any terminal part of the term, of the Sable Patents granted or to be granted.
Now, I believe many of Sable’s patents are close to running out anyway. But still, what a huge victory, and one that should be celebrated. Cloudflare has truly gone past NewEgg’s “don’t settle” standard, to this impressive “don’t settle, and we will make you regret patent trolling, and do everything possible to stop you from ever patent trolling ever again, and we’ll make you feel bad too, because you deserve it.”
This Little Free Library on Morningside Drive in Iowa City has been registered as banned book-friendly. — Sid Peterson/Little Village
All of the “Big 5” publishing houses are now suing Iowa to overturn the state’s school book ban signed into law by Gov. Kim Reynolds in May 2023. Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, MacMillan Publishing Group and Simon & Schuster have joined Penguin Random House as plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit challenging the book ban.
The lawsuit was originally filed at the end of November 2023 by Penguin Random House, four authors whose books were removed from schools seeking to comply with the book ban — Laurie Halse Anderson, John Green, Malinda Lo and Jodi Picoult — as well as an Iowa high school student, three Iowa educators and the state’s largest teachers union, the Iowa State Education Association (ISEA).
The book ban was included in SF 496, a wide-ranging education bill that was pushed through the Iowa Legislature with only Republican votes during the 2023 legislative session. It mandates that all public school districts remove any book with “descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act” except for approved science or health class texts. The bill also exempts the Bible and other religious texts with references to sex from its ban.
It was obvious during discussions of SF 496 in the Iowa House and Senate that the bill was aimed at LGBTQ books, but the ban needed to be broader to make it more likely to survive a legal challenge.
SF 496 also prohibits “any program, curriculum, test, survey, questionnaire, promotion or instruction” that references sexual orientation or gender identity in K-6 classes, and forbids all teachers and other school personnel from using a student’s preferred name or pronouns without written permission from parents if they are “different than the name or pronoun assigned to the student in the school district’s registration forms or records.”
On Nov. 28, the ACLU of Iowa and Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of Iowa Safe Schools and seven students from around the state.
“The suit argues that SF 496 as a whole, and in its ‘Don’t say gay or trans,’ book banning and forced outing provisions, violates Iowa’s students rights under the First Amendment, the 14th Amendment and the Equal Access Act,” ACLU of Iowa staff attorney Thomas Story said at the time.
Two days later, attorneys for Penguin Random House, the ISEA and their fellow plaintiffs filed their lawsuit in federal court, challenging SF 496’s book banning provision.
Federal District Court Judge Stephen Locher decided to combine the two challenges and held a hearing on them on Dec. 22. Five days later, he issued a preliminary injunction stopping enforcement of the book ban and the prohibition on any instruction or materials related to sexual identity or gender orientation. The judge did allow the provision requiring written permission from parents before using a student’s preferred name or pronouns, if they do not match school records, to go into effect.
Beaverdale Books owner Hunter Gillum sitting next to a table of books commonly banned in U.S. schools (including some Iowa school districts) on Oct. 4, 2023. — Isaac Hamlet/Little Village
In his ruling, Locher found the book ban was so “incredibly broad” it likely violates the First Amendment.
“Indeed, the court has been unable to locate a single case upholding the constitutionality of a school library restriction even remotely similar to Senate File 496,” he wrote about the book ban.
Locher also found that the prohibition on any instruction or materials mentioning sexual identity or gender orientation was “wildly overbroad,” and likely to be struck down as unconstitutional.
The state appealed the ruling, and on Aug. 9, a three-judge panel of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals lifted the temporary injunction and sent the cases back to the district court.
In its order, the appeals panel instructed the district court to use the four-part test on the constitutionality of speech restrictions created by the U.S. Supreme Court in Moody v. NetChoice as the standard in the cases. Of course, Locher could not have relied on Moody v. NetChoice, because the Supreme Court announced its decision six months after he issued the injunction.
“Today, the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit confirmed what we already knew — it should be parents who decide when and if sexually-explicit books are appropriate for their children. Here in Iowa, we will continue to focus on excellence in education and partnerships with parents and educators.”.
In addition to the four other large publishing houses that joined Penguin Random House in the book-ban lawsuit, the amended complaint filed on Monday also added the Authors Guild as a plaintiff. The guild is the country’s largest and oldest professional organization for writers.
“We must continue to stand together — alongside educators, librarians, students, authors, and readers — to protect the freedom to read and fight against the unconstitutional censorship measures being imposed by the state of Iowa,” the five publishers and the Authors Guild said in a joint statement. “We will do everything we can to strike down SF 496’s remaining book ban provision and defend the fundamental rights of Iowans to read, think, and learn freely.”
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