Anonymity Online Under Attack: China And Australia

from the anonymity-rights? dept

For the most part, the US has recognized that the right to be anonymous is a form of protected free speech -- and yet, anonymity is constantly under attack. Of course, the right to be anonymous is not absolute, but there is value in allowing anonymous speech to occur. With the right to anonymity under attack in the US, it's even worse in other countries, where such rights aren't even seen as vital as it is in the US. China, for example, is now requiring news websites to force all commenters to reveal their real identity. Apparently, the government issued a directive demanding such info from all commenters, though, they don't want to admit it. Even though the newspapers are claiming that they're doing it to increase "civility" and "social responsibility," quietly they admit that it's the government. As for why the gov't won't just come out and say it's for civility and social responsibility (even if it's to quiet critics), apparently the government is afraid of public backlash:

"The influence of public opinion on the Net is still too big."

I guess that's why the idea is to silence them.

Meanwhile, as reports came in last week suggesting that Australia's latest plan to censor the internet is just about dead, Slashdot notes that Scientologists down under are asking the Australian gov't to implement severe restrictions on what they refer to as "Religious Vilification" (which, one assumes, means any anti-Scientology comments, among other things). The proposal also suggests that any such site should not be allowed to be operated anonymously. Apparently, Scientologists took the name of the group "Anonymous" that organized protests against the group quite literally.

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Anonymous Might Not Be So Anonymous; Member Pleads Guilty To Scientology DoS

from the so-much-for-that-plan dept

While I can sympathize with the concerns that some folks have over Scientology, it did seem like the massive denial of service (DoS) attack against the group put on by "Anonymous" (basically a group of griefers from some online message boards) seemed to go a bit too far (and, yes, I recognize that many griefers think that their whole reason for being is to "go too far"). Now it appears that one of the kids involved in the denial of service attack has been arrested and agreed to plead guilty for the attack, meaning that at least some members of "Anonymous" aren't quite as anonymous as they believed. In the end, the whole thing seems to have done nothing much. It was a nuisance for Scientology, but allowed the group to portray itself as a victim, and certainly didn't do much of anything to slow the organization down.

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Thousands Of Anti-Scientology Videos Taken Down From YouTube Via DMCA Takedowns

from the there's-a-lawsuit-in-here-somewhere dept

The Church of Scientology is rather notorious for its heavy-handed responses to any critics -- often using copyright claims to stop them from criticizing the organization. The latest is that the EFF is reporting that over 4,000 critical videos have been taken down off of YouTube due to DMCA takedown notices issued by an organization named American Rights Counsel, LLC. Many of the folks who created the videos are immediately filing DMCA counter-notices, meaning that some of the videos are already back up, but it will be interesting to see where this goes.

The EFF hasn't been shy in the past in filing lawsuits against those who issue bogus DMCA takedown notices -- so if it turns out that these are bogus, then expect some lawsuits. In the meantime, it really does make you wonder what whoever issued the takedowns was thinking. This action will only serve to get a lot more attention directed at the critical videos, rather than do anything to silence them.

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Mormons The Latest To Make Their Secret Documents More Popular By Trying To Take Them Down

from the is-streisand-a-mormon? dept

A couple months ago, in discussing The Streisand Effect with a reporter, the reporter asked if I thought lawyers would one day be accused of malpractice for not informing their clients of the potential implications of demanding some content be pulled off the internet. While I doubt it will reach the point of malpractice, it certainly does make you wonder what some lawyers are thinking when there are such clear examples of what happens when you try to suppress material online. Earlier this year, the lawsuit that brought plenty of new attention to the concept of The Streisand Effect was when a Swiss bank, Julius Baer, convinced a judge to shut down the site Wikileaks for hosting some documents related to a lawsuit Julius Baer was involved in. Of course, not surprisingly, the attempt to shut down Wikileaks got those documents much more attention (and did the same for Wikileaks as well). Eventually, the judge reversed the order and Julius Baer dropped the lawsuit. But the end result showed how badly the strategy backfired on Julius Baer. Before it demanded the documents be taken down, almost no one saw the documents or even knew that the bank was involved in a case that accused of it laundering money. Afterwards, a lot more people knew about the lawsuit and had seen the documents -- and they were still online.

That situation got so much publicity, you would think that anyone would think twice about going down the same path. No such luck. Last month, Scientology threatened Wikileaks for hosting Scientology documents, and this morning (as a whole bunch of folks have sent in) news is coming out that the Mormon Church is threatening Wikileaks as well, for hosting church documents. In this case, the Mormon Church isn't just going after Wikileaks, but also threatened the WikiMedia foundation and document hosting site Scribd. It went after WikiMedia because WikiNews ran an article about the document and linked to them (which is hardly copyright infringement). Scribd was apparently hosting a copy of the documents as well (since taken down). Wikileaks, however, true to its charter, is refusing to take down the documents.

While you can understand why the Church might not like it's documents being made public, it does seem ridiculous that whoever decided to start threatening everyone didn't do the most basic research to recognize what would happen as soon as they threatened sites. Given what happened with Julius Baer, it should have been abundantly clear that threatening Wikileaks would almost guarantee that the documents were both more widely seen than before and copied widely across the internet.

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