broken – Techdirt (original) (raw)
Stories filed under: "broken"
ExTwitter Broke Yet Again, Disappearing Nearly All Images From 2011 Through 2014
from the humanity's-what-now? dept
A few days Elon Musk tweeted that “X as humanity’s collective consciousness” and then pinned that meaningless platitude that would only sound profound to a stoned high schooler.
Anyway, if you’re going to be “humanity’s collective consciousness” you should maybe try to to avoid making years worth of images inaccessible. But that’s what Musk did a day after tweeting that.
It was first noticed by Tom Coates who claimed that Musk had “removed” all media posted before 2014.
And, indeed, if you look at most (but not all) such old tweets, the images associated with them don’t show up at all. However, it does not appear that the images have been deleted, but that exTwitter screwed up it’s t.co link shortener (again, since it broke in March as well), which is used in association with media postings. And whatever broke made all of those old t.co links stop working, which has the impact of making all those tweets no longer show the images.
The Verge is reporting that some images have been restored, including the famous (infamous?) Oscars selfie that Ellen Degeneris and Bradley Cooper took at the 2014 Oscars which, for some period of time, was the most retweeted tweet on the platform. However, when I look at that tweet at time of writing, I still see it displayed as broken:
Anyway, I’m guessing that this is yet another bug on a platform that is now regularly full of bugs. It will hopefully get fixed soon if it’s not by the time this post goes live. And, yes, things break all the time, but the frequency with which major and important things break on exTwitter is quite phenomenal and again should raise questions about why anyone trusts the platform for, well, anything, let alone having anything to do with “humanity’s collective consciousness.”
Filed Under: broken, elon musk, history, images, link shortener
Companies: twitter, x
Rockstar's GTA Retro Games Was Completely Broken And Support Was Ghosting Everyone
from the more-like-grand-theft-notto-amirite? dept
You may recall that a couple of months ago we discussed Rockstar and Take2, the game studio and publisher behind the Grand Theft Auto series, taking down a fan-made GTA4 mod that aimed to put all of the cities from previous games in one massive map. While this was a labor of love by dedicated fans of the GTA series, it escaped nobody’s attention that this action was taken on a mod started in 2014 just as Rockstar was about to release GTA Trilogy, consisting of remastered versions of GTA3, Vice City, and San Andreas. The very cities the mod looked to input into GTA4. In other words, the fan project was only shut down when the game companies decided to try to make money off this retro love themselves.
So how’s it going? Well, not too fucking great on the PC side considering that the PC version was pulled down basically everywhere.
Something has gone very, very wrong since yesterday’s launch of GTA Trilogy on PC. As of last night, all mention of a PC version has been removed from Rockstar’s own site, and the Rockstar Games Launcher app has gone completely offline. Anyone who bought the remastered collection before it vanished is currently unable to play.
It has been at least 18 hours since the sudden disappearance of the PC’s GTA Trilogy, and Kotaku can confirm that the Launcher is not working. Which means all Rockstar PC games, including Red Dead Redemption 2 and GTA Online, are currently impossible to play.
You read that right. The PC Rockstar Launcher, responsible for letting gamers play the games they bought, was borked. On Twitter, Rockstar’s support had only been so transparent as to say that the launcher is down due to “maintenance”. Unscheduled or unannounced maintenance, as it turns out. And maintenance that lasted several days. Now, you could get the launcher to work in offline mode… for those who know how to do that. But paying customers were left to figure it out for themselves because Rockstar’s support only sent two tweets out during that downtime with barely any details.
As of Monday, Rockstar finally got its launcher working again and the GTA Trilogy back to being available for purchase and play. But as to what caused all of this, Rockstar is as opaque as ever. Whether something related to the GTA Trilogy title is somehow related to all of this isn’t entirely known…
…but it is the case that people recently bought those titles and couldn’t play them. Bad communication from the company to the public is compounding, at least in this writer’s head, with the effort it put into shutting down a fan-made work and labor of love that would have given GTA fans some retro thrills.
And to make matters a bit stranger, Rockstar had previously delisted its PC version from all 3rd party marketplaces.
For whatever reasons, Rockstar chose to remove all versions of GTAs III, Vice City, and San Andreas from alternative PC stores—including Steam—ahead of this launch, meaning its bespoke software is now the only way to buy and play the games. Or indeed, the only way to not play it.
And so Rockstar customers were left to the tender mercies of a company that doesn’t seem to feel like telling them what’s going on. All while trying to prevent fan-made game mods from being a thing. Not a great look.
Filed Under: availability, broken, customer support, gta, gta trilogy, video games
Companies: rockstar games
Remembering That Xbox Wanted Always Online DRM For Its Console In The Wake Of Major Xbox Live Outtage
from the got-lucky dept
Nearly half a decade into the current generation of gaming consoles, you will be forgiven if you don’t recall some of the consternation surrounding Microsoft’s initial plan to make the Xbox One have an “always online” requirement to play the games customers purchased. Microsoft initially floated this concept ahead of the console’s release, perhaps testing the public waters for the requirement. If that was indeed the plan, the instinct to take the public’s temperature on it was a good one, as the backlash was both swift and severe, particularly in light on Sony taking every opportunity to remind consumers that the Playstation 4 would have no such requirement. Predictably, at least to this author, Microsoft caved and removed this “feature”, even as company employees who should have known better made insulting comments about how always online was the way of not just the future, but the present, and everyone should essentially shut up and get used to it.
Well, as many Xbox users will already know, Xbox Live had a major outtage this week. The service was down for somewhere between five and eight hours, depending on who you ask. And I mean completely down.
Xbox Live is experiencing some serious downtime at the moment, with many owners unable to play games or even sign in.
Microsoft acknowledged that both core services and purchasing was impacted before service was restored somewhere around 1am. Multiplayer games were affected, including major titles like Overwatch and Destiny. This is to be expected for online gaming when the online service is down. Single-player games, however, could still be played by putting the Xbox in “offline mode.”
And that’s great, except it’s worth remembering that offline mode wasn’t going to be a thing in Microsoft’s initial plans. And, sure, five hours of being separated from a customer’s legitimate purchases isn’t a major travesty, but this outage demonstrates that even these minor inconveniences can be helpfully avoided by simply not requiring always online DRM. Had Microsoft had its way, paying customers would have been at best annoyed for several hours, unable to play the games they bought and certainly not being offered any recompense for their troubles.
More importantly, this episode should highlight several things. First, this is Microsoft we’re talking about, and they were down hard for several hours. Let’s acknowledge that it could have been worse. What if the service were down for several days? Second, what if this wasn’t Microsoft we were talking about, with all of its riches and resources, but a smaller entity unable to recover so quickly? How long would the service have been down, keeping paying, legitimate customers from their valid purchases? Third, all of this real and potential damage to legitimate customers had been achieved for what? The Playstation, as we’ve noted, doesn’t have this requirement, yet it is making money hand over fist. What good would Microsoft’s original plan have done for all of this potential damage?
Those questions aside, Microsoft ought to be writing love letters to the fans that revolted against its always online plan. It’s that backlash that helped keep this minor inconvenience for online gamers from being a full-blown PR nightmare.
Filed Under: always on, broken, connectivity, copyright, drm, xbox
Companies: microsoft
EU's Own Survey On Internet Regulations Broken; Please Urge Them Not To Break The Internet Too
from the *sigh* dept
Last week, we wrote about an important survey put online by the EU Commission, asking for feedback on its plans to regulate certain key aspects of the internet. We noted that the survey itself was cumbersome and confusing, and because of that, via the Copia Institute, we set up our own guide to filling out the survey called Don’t Wreck The Net. We were a little mocking of the survey, as it does seem a bit silly that the people in charge of potentially putting all sorts of regulations on the internet… have a poorly designed and confusing survey (including the fact that depending on how you answer certain questions, the survey will appear quite different for you than it might for others). However, to some extent, we get it: government bureaucracies have some limitations on what technologies they can make use of.
Thankfully, many of you went to the Don’t Wreck the Net website and, from there, did complete the EU Commission’s survey. However we started receiving reports that after filling out this long and cumbersome survey, people were submitting it only to get the submission “rejected” with the following error message:
Worried about this, I reached out to the European Commission, and got back the following response, admitting that their survey had an absolutely ridiculous bug:
The problem comes from an incorrect address the participants are using. Please make sure that they use the following link:
https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/Platforms
It is very important that there is no slash (“/”) at the end of the link. Please inform your users and ask them to double check the address before clicking on Submit. As a workaround it is also possible to first click on “Save as draft” and then submit the survey afterwards.
We apologize for the problem. The bug will be fixed in the next version of EUSurvey.
We looked, and indeed, in some of our links, we included that trailing slash. But here’s the thing: SO DID THE EU. On its own official page about the survey, the only link on that page went to the URL with the slash on the end that breaks their own survey.
In other words, if you went to the EU’s own website and followed the only official link to the survey, and then filled it out and submitted it… you would get the error page.
I alerted the Commission to this and they have since fixed the link on their own website… but still.
First: it’s absolutely ridiculous that the survey would not work with the trailing slash. Second, it’s ridiculous that even though it would not work, it still displayed the survey and let people fill out the whole thing only to dump the results at the end. Third, it’s a complete travesty that they linked to this very same wrong link in their own consultation page, potentially leading many, many people to fill out this long and confusing survey and have the results dumped into the garbage can.
I’ve spoken to a few people at the EU Commission about this, and I get the feeling that they are (reasonably) embarrassed and apologetic about this, but they have not said anything publicly at all, nor have they publicly explained to people why their survey results may not have been submitted. I have asked if they would consider extending the survey a few more weeks, given this mistake on their own platform, but I have not heard a response yet.
All that is to say: as much as it pains me to tell you this, if you filled out the survey as requested last time, only to get a “forbidden” error at the end, please do so again using the proper links (and make sure you “save” your draft first). Multiple people at the EU Commission that I’ve spoken to insist that they really need and want to hear from as many voices on this as possible (and no, you don’t need to be European). They insist that they really do want to hear all sides, and don’t want to end up with policies that will create real problems for the internet. So it’s super important that you fill out their survey — which I hope is actually working now.
So, please, let the EU Commission know that they shouldn’t wreck the internet.
Filed Under: broken, competition, don't wreck the net, eu, eu commission, innovation, intermediary liability, privacy, survey
SimCity Always-Online DRM Lets Hackers Play Godzilla With Anyone's Cities
from the go-go-godzilla dept
It seems that everyone is giving EA and Maxis quite a bit of grief over the SimCity debacle. The game’s launch was, um, not great. The backlash against the game’s producers was worse, all the more so once the lying began. But late last week, new evidence was uncovered that suggests perhaps we’ve all been a little bit unfair to EA and Maxis. What if I told you that the always-online game architecture enabled you to be what all of us have secretly wanted to be since we were very, very little children?
Well, hello, childhood fantasy o’ mine. I didn’t see you standing there.
Image source: CC BY 2.0
Yes, as Kionae alerts us, one (unplanned?) consequence of requiring online saves for your SimCity games is that anyone with a bit of hacking skill can visit your city, put some Blue Oyster Cult on in the background, and wreak the kind of havoc normally reserved for Japanese nuclear monsters. See, you can, were you so inclined, enter the save game city of another person, and then completely edit or destroy their loving creation like some kind of digital psuedo-god.
Pictured: Omnipotence
Just so we’re clear, this is only possible because of the EA always-online requirement.
It’s still awesome because this hack is only as destructive as it is because of EA’s decision to make the game always-on. If the game hadn’t had always-on DRM then this hack wouldn’t be half as devastating as it is. Having EA delete these kind of topics from their forums is great damage control but don’t be surprised if there’s another furor when people start raging on the forums when some hacker decides to go through and Godzilla everyone’s town. Enjoy.
Enjoy indeed, as long as that enjoyment happens outside of EA’s forums. As noted above, the company is enforcing their TOS rules on their forums and deleting all topics relating to these kinds of hacks. Why? Well, because when a dingo is chewing on your arm, the best defense is to place your noggin lovingly into some sand to make it all just disappear. Or, if that doesn’t work, you could always just apologize for what is becoming the greatest video game debacle this side of a Duke Nukem game, but I’m not holding my breath.
Filed Under: broken, destroy cities, godzilla, hacking, simcity
Companies: ea, maxis
Judges Realize Aereo's Setup Is Insane Technologically… But May Get The Wrong Message Out Of It
from the that's-unfortunate dept
A few months ago, we wrote about law professor James Grimmelmann’s awesome article about how copyright law for media streaming was completely insane from a technological standpoint:
Suppose I could offer you a choice of two technologies for watching TV online. Behind Door Number One sits a free-to-watch service that uses off-the-shelf technology and that buffers just enough of each show to put the live stream on the Internet. Behind Door Number Two lies a subscription service that requires custom-designed hardware and makes dozens of copies of each show. Which sounds easier to build—and to use? More importantly, which is more likely to be legal?
If you went with Door Number One, then you are a sane person, untainted by the depravity of modern copyright law. But you are also wrong. The company behind Door Number One, iCraveTV, was enjoined out of existence a decade ago. The company behind Door Number Two, Aereo, just survived its first round in court and is still going strong.
The issue, of course, is a series of lawsuits that have really only displayed how copyright law written for legacy technologies has no idea how to deal with streaming media. After each one, companies try to figure out how to make a legal service, which seems like a noble goal. However, because of all the ridiculous specifics in rulings where judges contort themselves to come up with a way to fit a ruling into their preconceived notions of what’s legal and what’s not, the end result is that if you want to design a legal service, you have to set up a truly twisted and confusing setup… like Aereo’s.
That issue has come up in the appeal on the district court Aereo decision. The TV networks are trying to convince the appeals court that the lower court was wrong. There was a lot of focus on trying to distinguish Aereo from the same court’s ruling in the Cablevision case four years ago, which said that a remote DVR offered by Cablevision was legal. However, apparently there was an interesting exchange in which the judges seemed to realize that Aereo’s setup was technologically insane:
The judges also questioned Hosp on why Aereo needed to have all those antennas. “Why not one? Is there a technological reason? Any legitimate business reason?”
Aereo’s lawyer, David Hosp, admitted that the reasons were legal. This is the point at which people should realize that this demonstrates one of the many ways that copyright law is broken, because it forces companies to go through all sorts of convoluted technological decisions to deliver the same experience that could be delivered much more easily and efficiently otherwise. Instead, the judges seemed concerned in the other direction, that if the decisions were done for a legal reason it was somehow a sign of ill-intent:
One judge also observed, “You say your model is built around Cablevision. Isn’t that like organizing your business affairs to avoid taxes?”
That, of course, is a ridiculous analogy — and thankfully Hosp responded correctly: following what the court said was legal in earlier cases isn’t about “avoiding” anything, it’s about following the court’s instructions on how to stay legal!
“The plaintiffs say it is a bad thing to follow the law,” he said. “I believe the 2nd Circuit got it right in attempting to strike the right balance between public and private performances that lawmakers wanted.”
Anyway, it wouldn’t be surprising to see the court overturn the district court ruling, no matter how ridiculous a result that would be. It really feels like a lot of these cases are judged based on a judge deciding what he “feels” should be legal, and then trying to work in a justification later.
Filed Under: broken, copyright
Companies: aereo
Final Stats On Heartland Payment Systems Class Action: 1,925To11People,1,925 To 11 People, 1,925To11People,600k To Lawyers
from the class-action-system-is-broken dept
We’ve been discussing for years just how broken the “class action” lawsuit system is in the US. The idea behind it sounds like it makes sense: if a company wrongs a bunch of people, the ability to bundle them all into a class, and get recompense via a single lawsuit seems like a good idea. But, in practice, class action lawsuits have basically just become a feeding trough for lawyers to become rich, with very little done to help those wronged. In some cases, the end results of class action lawsuits are completely laughable. Years ago, for example, we highlighted how Netflix “settled” a class action lawsuit by giving everyone a free one-month “upgrade,” but if you failed to downgrade by the end of the month, you were kept on the higher plan and charged for it. As I said at the time, that wasn’t a “settlement” so much as a marketing program. And, oh yeah, the lawyers who brought the lawsuit against Netflix got $2.5 million.
Law professor Eric Goldman, who’s spoken out about the broken class action system in the past, has another ridiculous example, this time involving Heartland Payment Systems. You may recall Heartland as being the company that had the largest security breach ever (at the time), losing data on over 100 million credit cards. A class action lawsuit (of course) followed, and Heartland agreed to pay up to anyone who could show that they were a victim of fraud from the loss. The company didn’t have cardholder addresses, so it spent $1.5 million to advertise the settlement, and estimated that over 80% of the potential class saw an ad at least 2.5 times. Either way, not too many claims came in. A total of 290 claims were made, but only 11 were found to be valid.
Heartland had to pay a maximum of 175tothoseindividuals.Assumingitdidpaythemaximum,thatmeansthe“victims”ofthebreachgotagrandtotalof175 to those individuals. Assuming it did pay the maximum, that means the “victims” of the breach got a grand total of 175tothoseindividuals.Assumingitdidpaythemaximum,thatmeansthe“victims”ofthebreachgotagrandtotalof1925 (perhaps less). According to the settlement agreement, Heartland was supposed to pay out at least 1milliontovictims(andupto1 million to victims (and up to 1milliontovictims(andupto2.4 million). If less than 1millionworthofvictimswerefound,therestwouldgotonon−profitorganizationsfocusedonprotectingconsumerprivacyrights.Thatleaves1 million worth of victims were found, the rest would go to non-profit organizations focused on protecting consumer privacy rights. That leaves 1millionworthofvictimswerefound,therestwouldgotonon−profitorganizationsfocusedonprotectingconsumerprivacyrights.Thatleaves998,075 for those non-profits.
So, let’s summarize:
- Actual victims got: $1925
- Heartland spent 1.5milliontofindthepeopletogiveoutthat1.5 million to find the people to give out that 1.5milliontofindthepeopletogiveoutthat1925.
- Somewhere around $998,075 goes to non-profits
- The lawyers who brought the lawsuit? They got $606,192.50. For helping 11 people get less than $200 each. Nice work if you can get it.
That 600kisactuallya“discount.”Thecourtrecognizestheabsurdityofusingthefull600k is actually a “discount.” The court recognizes the absurdity of using the full 600kisactuallya“discount.”Thecourtrecognizestheabsurdityofusingthefull1 million in calculating the “settlement,” so it knocks down the “value” (but not the payment) of the money going to the nonprofits, and then uses a bunch of random magic to award the attorneys that 600+k.And,ofcourse,Heartlandalsoendeduppayingitsownlawyersaton.Intheend,thissysteminvolvedHeartlandpayingmanymillionsofdollars…tobenefita“class”of11peopleandgivingthemlessthan600+k. And, of course, Heartland also ended up paying its own lawyers a ton. In the end, this system involved Heartland paying many millions of dollars… to benefit a “class” of 11 people and giving them less than 600+k.And,ofcourse,Heartlandalsoendeduppayingitsownlawyersaton.Intheend,thissysteminvolvedHeartlandpayingmanymillionsofdollars…tobenefita“class”of11peopleandgivingthemlessthan2,000.
As Goldman notes, the whole thing seems bizarre:
Thus, it appears they spent over 130,000togenerateeachlegitimateclaim.Surprisingly,thecourtblithelytreatsthe130,000 to generate each legitimate claim. Surprisingly, the court blithely treats the 130,000togenerateeachlegitimateclaim.Surprisingly,thecourtblithelytreatsthe1.5M expenditure as a cost of doing business, but I can’t wrap my head around it. What an obscene waste of money! Add in the 270kspentonclaimsadministration,anditappearsthatthepartiesspent270k spent on claims administration, and it appears that the parties spent 270kspentonclaimsadministration,anditappearsthatthepartiesspent160k per legitimate claimant. The court isn’t bothered by the 270kexpenseseither,eventhoughthatcostabout270k expenses either, even though that cost about 270kexpenseseither,eventhoughthatcostabout1k per tendered claim (remember, there were 290 total claims).
Something is broken with the system.
Filed Under: broken, class action, lawyers, settlement
Companies: heartland payment systems
That's A Lot Of Non-Working Technology
from the stuff-breaks dept
The latest study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project says that while plenty of people are buying new gadgets and technology, an awful lot of them are having trouble getting or keeping it working. According to the survey, 48% said they need others’ help in setting up new devices. Additionally, plenty of folks noted that when their stuff broke, it was a pain to fix it. In fact, 15% of people said they just gave up and left devices not working when they had troubles. While some may see this as an opportunity for various “home geek services” operations, it seems more like an alarm for the consumer electronics and technology industries that they have to start making stuff that isn’t so confusing to set up and use.
Filed Under: broken, frustration, support, technology
Copyright Has Stretched So Far That It Has Broken
from the not-what-it-was-meant-for dept
The Cato Institute is running a series of articles on “The Future of Copyright,” a subject that the think tank has been discussing for a while now. The first piece in the series, by Rasmus Fleischer, is an absolutely fantastic read, detailing all of the reasons why those pushing for stronger copyright laws are doing so, and why copyright itself is being stretched way beyond its initial purpose. He goes over the history of copyright, and how it was really initially only intended to protect printed works, but as that coverage has expanded over the centuries, you run into some really awkward scenarios where this square peg no longer comes close to fitting into the round hole:
This change has taken place because previously distinct media are now simulated within the singular medium of the Internet, and copyright law simply seems unable to cope with it. Consider radio broadcasting and record shops, which once were inherently different. Their online counterparts are known respectively as “streaming” and “downloading,” but the distinction is ultimately artificial, since the same data transfer takes place in each. The only essential difference lies in how the software is configured at the receiving end. If the software saves the music as a file for later use, it’s called a “download.” If the software immediately sends the music to the loudspeakers, it’s called “streaming.”
However, the receiver can always choose to transform a stream to a digital file. It’s simple, legal, and not very different from home taping. What now fills the record industry with fear is the possibility that users could “automatically identify and separate individual tracks from digital transmissions and store them for future playback in any order.” In other words, they fear that the distinction between streaming and downloading will be exposed as a big fake.
For example, Swedish company Chilirec provides a rapidly growing free online service assisting users in ripping digital audio streams. After choosing among hundreds of radio stations, you will soon have access to thousands of MP3 files in an online depository, neatly sorted and correctly tagged, available for download. The interface and functionality could be easily confused with a peer-to-peer application like Limewire. You connect, you get MP3s for free, and no one pays a penny to any rights holder. But it is fully legal, as all Chilirec does is automate a process that anyone could do manually.
So, what happens? Well, the entertainment industry that’s focused on protecting its old and increasingly obsolete business model, keeps pushing for new legislation that tries to force that square peg into that round hole — and each time, the new legislation just makes things worse. So they push for more legislation, that just makes things even worse again.
This domino effect captures the essence of copyright maximalism: Every broken regulation brings a cry for at least one new regulation even more sweepingly worded than the last. Copyright law in the 21st century tends to be less concerned about concrete cases of infringement, and more about criminalizing entire technologies because of their potential uses. This development undermines the freedom of choice that Creative Commons licenses are meant to realize. It will also have seriously chilling effects on innovation, as the legal status of new technologies will always be uncertain under ever more invasive rules.
But the situation is only going to get worse for entertainment companies that don’t learn to embrace the changing market. Every attempt to legislate things back to the past will only fail — and that failure will become even more and more profound as you follow the rather obvious trendlines of technology:
One early darknet has been termed the “sneakernet”: walking by foot to your friend carrying video cassettes or floppy discs. Nor is the sneakernet purely a technology of the past. The capacity of portable storage devices is increasing exponentially, much faster than Internet bandwidth, according to a principle known as “Kryder’s Law.” The information in our pockets yesterday was measured in megabytes, today in gigabytes, tomorrow in terabytes and in a few years probably in petabytes (an incredible amount of data). Within 10-15 years a cheap pocket-size media player will probably be able to store all recorded music that has ever been released — ready for direct copying to another person’s device.
In other words: The sneakernet will come back if needed. “I believe this is a ‘wild card’ that most people in the music industry are not seeing at all,” writes Swedish filesharing researcher Daniel Johansson. “When music fans can say, ‘I have all the music from 1950-2010, do you want a copy?’ — what kind of business models will be viable in such a reality?”
So as the industry tries to fight this, it just keeps focusing on more and more draconian laws, that do an awful (and I do mean awful) lot more than just strengthen copyright. They chill innovation, outlaw important and useful technologies and remove important civil liberties:
Yet in the name of ISP responsibility, virtually any Internet user might be called to account by the recording industry. Here’s why: In discussions about so-called ISP responsibility, it is crucial to remember that big telecom companies are far from the only existing “operators of electronic communications networks and services.” This is the actual definition of an ISP, used within the European Union bureaucracy, but by this definition, you may be one, too. The U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act is equally vague: It defines a “service provider” as a “provider of online services or network access, or the operator of facilities therefor,” leading many to wonder whether libraries, employers, or private individuals operating routers might also qualify as ISPs.
Given such a broad definition, any company or person sharing connectivity, as well as anyone hosting a blog or a web forum, could, in the name of “ISP responsibility,” be obligated to register the identities of users and to deliver them to copyright enforcers on request. The range of possible abuses is enormous. Attempts to save an already broken policy will mean an ever more absurd sequence of follow-up regulations.
There’s plenty more beyond those snippets here that make the entire piece worth reading. I’m looking forward to additional pieces in the series as well.