Feds Demand Over Half A Million Dollars To Fulfill A Freedom Of Information Act Request

from the well-that's-one-way-to-avoid-it dept

When President Obama took office, one of the very first things he did was declare that all government agencies should default towards openness in dealing with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. It looks like some are trying to sneak around that a bit. Wired has the story of an FOIA request where the government is demanding $522,886 in order to fulfill the request. This certainly gives off the appearances of pretending to be open while figuring out a nice way to toss up a huge roadblock. Oh, by the way, that single bill would just about equal the entire cost that the US gov't charged for all FOIA responses in 2008. Why so expensive? That's not particularly clear. Apparently, the guy filing the request even knows which file cabinets the information he needs is in, so it's not like the gov't has to go searching for it...

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Administration Succeeds In Delaying The Release Of Telco Lobbying On Immunity

from the transparency-is-good-in-theory... dept

So much for that new Obama administration "transparency" claim, huh? After three unsuccessful attempts at stalling a court order to release documents concerning who lobbied for telco immunity in warrantless wiretapping lawsuits, the administration has succeeded in its fourth attempt, delaying the release of the documents at least until next year. Of course, by the time this is decided, it should be long after Congress is done debating the whole warrantless wiretapping issue... so that's convenient. I'm still trying to figure out who or what the administration is trying to shield. It seems pretty obvious that the telcos would lobby for immunity, so that's not revealing much. So what's so important to keep secret?

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AT&T Asks Employees To Hide AT&T Affiliation While Protesting Net Neutrality Laws

from the disclosure? dept

We've been having some discussions lately about the FTC's new guidelines for "disclosure," and some of our regular critics have been gleefully insisting that the reason I don't like those rules is because I don't disclose stuff, and I'm scared the FTC is going to crack down on the site. I find this pretty funny, because I am a huge believer in the importance of disclosing stuff, and on the rare occasion we've been in a situation where disclosure was necessary, we have no problem disclosing, even to the point that it's almost silly. Almost nothing in those rules impacts us directly. My real complaint with the rules is that the FTC rules aren't needed and raise serious First Amendment issues. First, most blogs and other social media efforts are conversational, not publishing, and a whole different set of social cues matter there. Second, anyone stupid enough not to disclose their affiliations on certain things is going to face pretty serious backlash when it comes out (as it certainly will).

Take, for example, the backlash today on the news that AT&T's chief lobbyist sent out an email to all AT&T employees urging them to protest any new net neutrality laws and hide their AT&T affiliation as they do so. AT&T has confirmed the email, which has numerous factual errors (and remember, I actually agree that net neutrality laws don't make sense). But, more importantly, the mainstream media is now calling AT&T out for this outrageous effort to have employees pretend they're not employees in protesting these rules.

Transparency on conflicts makes a lot of sense. It's something that people should do because it makes you more trustworthy -- not because the FTC threatens to fine you. The problem with the FTC rules is that it creates a weird chilling effect and threat of action on things where the rules aren't at all clear. As AT&T is learning today, trying to hide that kind of thing just creates a lot of backlash. It makes AT&T appear like it doesn't have a strong legitimate case, and needs to resort to underhanded techniques to make its argument.

Oh, and to make the FTC and our critics happy: Full Disclosure: I use AT&T DSL at home, and while I pay for it, a few years back there was a long outage, and AT&T agreed to give me a credit of $35 off my next bill. I also know some people who work at AT&T. My wife uses an iPhone, which I assume must run on AT&T's network, but it's provided by her employer (oh, crap, do I need to disclose who that is too?), and so we never see the bill -- so maybe the FTC thinks it's provided for free? I once sat on a panel with a representative from AT&T, and while I disagreed with him on most things policy-wise, I thought he was a nice guy, and at times I've talked to him about why AT&T should be more involved in online conversations (like this one!). Anything else?

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So What's Wrong With Transparency Again?

from the trying-to-understand dept

I have to admit that I've now read Larry Lessig's article in The New Republic, Against Transparency, three times, and I still can't figure out what he's trying to say. He seems to be arguing against the concept of transparency because (1) it doesn't solve everything and (2) some bad stuff can happen from transparency as well. Finally, his argument seems to rest on the idea that if transparency doesn't solve everything, then people are going to push back against it. I don't find this argument particularly compelling. The thing is, it feels like a strawman. I haven't seen anyone who suggests transparency by itself is the end goal. Pretty much everyone seems to recognize that transparency is the first step in a process. Once you have the transparency, that enables others to build on that transparency -- whether it's analysis or tools for analysis. Lessig's piece seems to suppose that the point of transparency is that everyone will dig into the raw data -- which is an obviously silly notion. But if that data is exposed, then more people can actually provide those valuable tools and insights on top of it. And I don't see how that's a bad thing.

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US Opens Up All Sorts Of Gov't Documents

from the this-is-good-news dept

While we've been disappointed by some moves by the Obama administration (on copyright, federal shield law, civil liberties, warrantless wiretapping, etc.), one area where the administration has made really big strides is on opening up formerly locked up gov't information. The latest is that the Government Printing Office and the Office of the Federal Register have just opened up the "Official Journals of Government" -- a document that used to cost a mere $17,000/year and is now available for free, online -- and made the Federal Register (basically the list of what the federal gov't is doing every day) XML enabled, so that anyone can do cool stuff with it. Ed Felten's team at Princeton has already created FedThread, which let you not only search the Register, but also annotate and create customized feeds. This is really great...

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Same Economy, Different Bubble

from the and-it's-going-to-pop dept

Last year, The Onion (which has a knack for predicting the future in really scary ways) had an amusing article: Recession-Plagued Nation Demands New Bubble To Invest In. In the immortal words of Homer Simpson: "It's funny 'cause it's true." And, indeed, one of the big fears we've had since the beginning of the government's response to the financial crisis is that it hasn't been doing anything to solve the real problem of a lack of transparency. Pumping more money into the system without fixing that simply meant that we'd repeat the cycle, with the money eventually finding some bubble again.

At this point, it's worth taking a step back, and understanding why these sorts of bubbles occur. Sometimes, investment bubbles can actually be quite beneficial. In markets of true innovation, where a clear success story or business model hasn't yet been worked out, a bubble allows a lot of money to be thrown at the problem at once. From that, you get a lot of ideas tested in the marketplace very rapidly. Many of them fail once the bubble collapses, and many investors lose money, but the ideas that do work and do stick around tend to takes us forward in leaps and bounds. Bubbles in innovative technologies function as a form of speeding up the innovation process and getting lots of infrastructure built and ideas tested rapidly. It's no fun if you're caught on the wrong side of the investment, but for society, it can be a net gain.

However, that's not what happened in the last economic crash. That was built on a different sort of bubble, based not on funding innovation, but on a series of arbitrage plays where bankers actively worked to obfuscate risk, so that it could be passed on to the latest sucker. Basically, they kept taking riskier and riskier assets, and packaged them in a way that they looked less risky. Then, by making it so no one could really look at (or understand) the true risk, they could sell these super risky investments off to suckers at prices as if they were safe. And, since such a house of cards takes a while to collapse, it doesn't take long for everyone to pile in, feeling like they have to match those returns.

So, the answer to this is to increase transparency. If you could really get the information out there, such that people could look at the underlying details and properly calculate the risk, not based on random clueless rating agency employees, but in a true market, then it would be that much more difficult to pass off and misprice super risky vehicles as safe.

But that's not what's happening. Without any efforts at increasing transparency, combined with pumping a ton of new cash into the market, we're getting another bubble. The bankers are still operating the same way they did in the past -- which is looking for ways to obfuscate the risk and find new suckers to take the risk off their hands without really understanding how to price that risk. It may be securitizing life insurance or it may be in the carry trade. It doesn't really matter. The money is looking for a new bubble and a focus on short term profits over long term sustainability -- and that's enabled by allowing banks to play "hide the risk."

This is really quite worrisome. It's been over a year since the financial crisis went into panic mode (even if the actual recession and problems significantly predated that). And while the "worst case scenario" did not occur, there's been little evidence of real fixes to the economy or any attempt to really fix the factors that resulted in the original problem. Instead of creating transparency and a long term strategic focus, we're just pumping cash into the economy to try to help suckers find the next bubble.

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USTR: We Can't Be Open About ACTA Because We Promised We Wouldn't Be (*Lobbyists Not Included)

from the missing-the-point dept

The US Trade Rep apparently has a thing on their website called "ask the ambassador" and Robin alerts us that recently a "James from Virginia" asked a rather important question:

"If the United States government gives all other governments in the ACTA negotiation a copy of a text, what is the rationale for keeping this a secret from the American public? Why would a negotiation at ACTA be less transparent than negotiations at World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) or the World Trade Organization (WTO)?"

The USTR's answer is really a convenient non-answer. It basically says that it can't reveal the details because everybody promised not to do so. Of course, that doesn't explain why so many lobbyists have such detailed access to the info, and why other countries have revealed the details of the negotiations. The answer that "this is how we do things" isn't particularly reassuring when corporations and diplomats are basically negotiating basic civil rights.

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Obama Administration: New State Secrets Rules = Really, You Can Trust Us

from the uh... dept

So, we keep seeing more of what the promised "transparency" of the Obama administration means in real terms. Despite campaigning against warrantless wiretapping, the administration has come out with new rules for how it will use the "state secrets" privilege that amount to "no, really, we'll only use it when we need to... just trust us" and continued to insist that evidence over warrantless wiretapping should be tossed out for state secrets reasons. And it's left up to a former comedian, now politician to remind the Justice Department of the Fourth Amendment? The "just trust us, we won't abuse the system" justification isn't particularly comforting, especially when that clause is being used to cover up what is almost certainly illegal activity by the federal government.

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The Good And Bad Of Banks Too Big To Fail Getting Bigger...

from the not-all-bad,-but... dept

Ever since the whole financial crisis began, and the concept of "too big to fail" became a common phrase, I've been wondering why the US gov't didn't set up a simple provision in any bailout procedure: if you are too big to fail, and because of that need a gov't bailout, then a part of that bailout means you need to become small enough to fail. I think it's a perfectly reasonable suggestion that has been pretty much totally ignored.

So, when news came out that the biggest banks, the ones deemed "too big to fail," are now getting even bigger, you might think that I'd view that as a bad sign. And... partly, I do. But not for the reasons you might expect. The issue of "too big to fail" isn't the bottom line size of the bank, it was about how interconnected it was in the rest of the economy, and how any ripple effects of a failure would damage (significantly) other parts of the economy. But, since the government has done pretty much next to nothing to actually deal with that sort of systematic risk (and, no, putting in place a "systematic risk" manager, as we keep hearing, isn't going to fix the problem), it should come as no surprise that these banks still have such risks.

But, the fact that, by themselves, these banks are growing isn't a bad sign. Given what the government has done, it's actually a good sign. You should be a lot more upset if, after the government gave these banks so much money, they went out and lost it all. Instead, many of them have at least put it to good use (and some have returned money to the government at decent interest rates -- though, the amount returned still is a blip compared to the amount at risk).

The real issue isn't the size of the banks, but how interconnected they are. But little to nothing has been done to take on that problem -- which is a bad thing. However, given that, it's at least a decent sign that these banks we've given so much money to are actually doing better these days.

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Why Is The Administration Fighting Transparency On TARP?

from the this-is-not-good dept

We haven't written that much about the economy lately, as others seem to be doing a great job on it, but back when the TARP program first came about, we were quite concerned with the nature of the program, and specifically the lack of transparency. With the change in administrations -- especially to one that insisted transparency was a key factor, we hoped that things would get better. Now, it's no secret that we've been upset about some of the new administration's failure to live up to its own transparency promises. But there had been some evidence lately that it really was becoming increasingly transparent with how some taxpayer funds are being spent.

Apparently, that doesn't apply to the bailout, though.

Here's a disturbing story about the guy who's in responsible for being the independent watchdog over how the TARP money is being spent. While he's a long-term Democrat and Obama supporter (so his views aren't political), he's been quite critical of how the administration is not being at all transparent concerning how TARP is being used. He wanted the administration to force the banks to explain what they were doing -- and was told that was impossible. So he did it himself -- and asked the banks to let him know how the funds were being used, which they did. He used that and some other info to put out a report, suggesting that the funds aren't being used as was expected. That sounds exactly like what the independent watchdog should be doing.

But the administration (mainly the Treasury Department) has been fighting him, and is now trying to have it declared that the independent watchdog actually is under the control of the Treasury Department -- which would basically take away the whole "independent" part. That seems to go against the very concept of the transparency we were promised. It's great that this guy and his very small team of folks are actually monitoring what's happening with our taxpayer money (whether you agree with how it was used or not). It's not a good sign that the Obama administration is now trying to muzzle him. That's not transparency people can believe in.

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Isn't There Something Ironic In An Anonymous Exec Demanding Transparency From Google?

from the entitlement-culture dept

It really is amazing sometimes to see how many people think that Google "owes" them something. For example, we've had a few different stories about companies suing Google because they don't like how Google ranks them. That makes little sense. Google doesn't owe anyone a spot in its index. It determines its index by figuring out what it thinks people will like best, and it's always tweaking it. If it fails to figure that out properly and someone else (like Microsoft) does figure it out, then Google will lose business. So, it seems a bit odd that some anonymous "well known exec at one of the largest sites on the Internet" is suddenly demanding transparency into how Google ranks content, suggesting that it's somehow unfair and arbitrary in its rankings -- and only by opening up the details of its algorithm will "fairness" be restored.

Ryan, who alerted us to this story, has written up a biting, but reasonable, response, where he notes that being ranked highly in Google is no one's right. And demanding that Google be transparent about its algorithm is meaningless (while being especially ironic, given that this "well-known exec" is demanding transparency while wanting to remain anonymous himself). The key point Ryan makes:

You want an algorithm, here it is:
1.) Sites that are useful to visitors will rank high.
2.) Popular sites that are useful to visitors will rank higher.
3.) Sites that don't offer any value to the web or are irrelevant to the query won't rank well.
4.) Sites that are harmful or spammy won't be included in the index.

Seriously, that's Google’s algorithm in plain English. There's your disclosure. The weighting factors and code behind it don't matter -- these principles are all you really need to know.

Indeed. Create useful sites with useful content that people use, and don't be spammy, and you'll most likely rank well in Google. You don't need to force Google to reveal the nuts and bolts of its algorithm. That doesn't change anything. If you're trying to craft your websites to the specifics of the algorithm, you're already lost. If you're creating websites that match the "plain English" code above, you're going to be just fine.

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What Does Radical Transparency In Government Look Like?

from the well,-this-is-a-start dept

We've certainly complained when the new administration has failed to live up to its "transparency" promises, but the hiring of Vivek Kundra as federal CIO and Aneesh Chopra as federal CTO has put two real believers in transparency and openness in charge of the technology side of our federal government... and we're starting to see the very first results of that. It's still early, but it's actually quite impressive how much Kindra has accomplished in a very short time. Tim O'Reilly details the new federal IT spending dashboards that can be found at USASpending.gov, and it's really impressive for a gov't project put together in an incredibly short period of time. It actually shows each (participating) departments' projects, including goals and how close they are to meeting those goals. Real accountability? In government? Wow. The whole thing is built in drupal and data feeds are open to the public, so others can take the data on build on it. While it may be a small thing at this point, it's a huge step directionally in showing a commitment to more openness and transparency.

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How Difficult Is It To Post A Bill On The White House Website For Five Days?

from the come-on... dept

It seemed like a pretty straightforward campaign promise by President Obama: all non-critical bills that were passed by Congress would be placed on the White House website for five days for people to review before the President would sign or veto. It was a mostly symbolic gesture, since, once passed, there's not much that would likely happen to change the bill, but it could allow some to make the case, one way or another, for how President Obama should respond to the legislation. We were disappointed when, at the first opportunity, Obama totally ignored this promise and signed a bill just a day after Congress passed it.

Since then? It hasn't gotten any better. The NY Times is reporting that Obama has ignored this rather simple promise on nearly every bill put before him. That's not the "transparency" we were told to expect. Even worse, the White House has now "changed the terms" of the promise (which sure sounds like "breaking the promise"), saying they'll put draft bills on the website earlier and start the "five day" clock ticking then -- even though legislation may change before Congress votes on it.

And then... there's the bizarre claim that the White House couldn't fulfill the promise due to "unexpected technical hurdles." Really? Putting up the details of a law? And waiting five days? What kind of technical hurdles are we talking about. I recognize that there are campaign promises that get broken, but there are usually at least decent reasons why. In this case, it seems to be because no one in the administration actually cares. And that's disappointing.

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Too Big To Fail Isn't The Problem... It's The Hidden Risk That's The Problem

from the as-if-that's-possible dept

Duncan Watts has a thought provoking writeup in the Boston Globe talking about the problems of systematic risk, and why no one could successfully see exactly how the various dominoes would fall, leading to our current (and still ongoing) economic financial crisis. Basically, his argument is that the system has become too intertwined and complex, such that no one can really manage the risk. This is hardly a new idea. Watts' suggestion (which, again, is not necessarily new, and has been discussed by many, including Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner) is that perhaps we need a "systematic risk manager" within the government, whose job (like anti-trust folks) is to look at various companies and determine if they're too big to fail -- and then see how to change things such that they're no longer too big to fail.

It's a nice idea... in theory. In practice, it's a lot harder. The very reason systematic risk is such a problem is that it's so hard to even imagine the scenarios taking place. The idea that Lehman Bros. failing would have so much impact elsewhere is simply beyond the scope of what most people could have even imagined -- and that would almost certainly include any "systematic risk manager." While I agree that it's a problem that we end up with companies that are "too big to fail," I tend to think, in the long run, it's futile to try to predict ahead of time who's really "too big to fail," but that such an issue should only come up in the event of a gov't bailout. Thus, if you need to take gov't money to stay alive because you are deemed "too big to fail," then it should be required that as a part of the terms of the deal, you need to work out a plan that makes you small enough to fail.

Otherwise, you end up in a situation where companies who are successful get penalized for it. The only time "too big to fail" is a problem is when such a company fails. We shouldn't necessarily be penalizing a company that's too big to fail if it's not going to fail.

Separately, Watts notes that this idea of trying to prevent "too big to fail" is a way of avoiding systematic risk. I'd argue he has the equation a bit twisted. Too big to fail isn't the problem. It's the hidden risk that leads a company that is "too big to fail" to fail that's the problem. The answer to that is not breaking up successful companies -- it's increasing transparency into actual risk. That means increasing openness and data sharing, rather than the status quo of quarterly reports with the real details hidden and buried beneath complexities, combined with Wall Street putting together packages whose sole purpose is designed to hide the actual risk. Make the real data transparent (and real-time) and let anyone access and mess around with the data, and you get a much more accurate view of the risk, and you avoid situations where "healthy" investments suddenly turn sour.

Watts has the right idea that systematic risk is a problem, but the wrong solution. Companies that are too big to fail failing is a symptom of a lack of transparency over the actual risk. The answer isn't to stop companies from getting so big. It's to provide more transparency into the actual risk.

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Yet Another E-Voting Glitch; This One Adds 5,000 Phantom Votes

from the oops dept

Another election using e-voting machines... and another set of stories concerning massive problems. Slashdot points us to the news that a local election in Rapid City, South Dakota, was about to go to a runoff after no one hit the 50% mark, when someone finally noticed that the 10,488 vote total seemed a bit high. So, they went back and recounted the actual ballots, and discovered only 5,613 people voted, but the software added up the votes incorrectly. Once again, we're left wondering why it's so difficult to do simple arithmetic -- and why e-voting companies like ES&S are so against allowing experts to look at their source code and maybe help catch some of these bugs before they totally screw up an election.

ES&S, of course, has been especially bad when it comes to transparency, despite numerous stories of glitches. It's also the company that had an employee stop by here on Techdirt, call us all "idiots" while insisting that the machines were perfectly fine and that the machines are "extremely scrutinized and very reliable" and anyone questioning their reliability was simply relying on "conspiracy blogs." Of course, his focus was on the idea that the machines were "hacked" -- a charge we never made. Our concern -- and the concern of many others -- are that the machines are unreliable, prone to errors and have serious security and process flaws. Considering how many stories we've seen of problems with those machines in real elections, that seems to be proven fact -- not "conspiracy."

And yet, ES&S has always resisted any real scrutiny. When California looked to investigate e-voting machines more fully, ES&S was the one vendor who held out for months beyond the deadline, before finally submitting its source code along with a threatening letter about how it would personally sue the Secretary of State if any of its trade secrets got out. Of course, soon after this, we found out that even its certified code didn't much matter, since it had given California machines with uncertified code for an election. In the end, not surprisingly, ES&S machines were found to have significant problems, and were decertified in California. Perhaps South Dakota should have taken note.

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US Trade Rep Promises Transparency... But Actions Speak Louder Than Websites

from the I'll-believe-it-when-I-see-it dept

The US Trade Representative has finally finished the long overdue task of relaunching its website. Among such spiffy new features as a blog and an interactive map, the USTR has promised to fulfill Obama's pledge "to advance the social accountability and political transparency of trade policy." And while these are nice and all, the promise rings somewhat hollow.

Even though Obama's nominee, Ron Kirk, had just begun his term as the new US Trade Representative, the 2009 Special 301 that was released in April continued the ridiculous fallacies of years past. Even worse, for an organization pledging transparency, the process of researching and writing the Special 301 reports is notoriously secretive, blocking out NGOs, consumer groups and citizens. Instead, IP maximalist industry groups collaborate with USTR bureaucrats to write draconian US government reports that serve to alienate nations and harm innovation around the world. If Ambassodor Kirk and Obama want a USTR that does advance social accountability and political transparency, it would do well to be open in substance, not style. Perhaps a good place to let them know would be their new "Ask the Ambassador" feature.

Kevin Donovan is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Kevin Donovan and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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New White House Initiatives Take A Big Step Towards Participatory Gov't

from the good-news dept

I'll admit that I was pretty hard on the new Obama administration when, early on there were news articles playing up how the administration was using its large social network of connections for "participatory gov't," but the details suggested they were really just using the people to sell policies, not give actual input on policies. While it was still early, there was enough talk about how sending out emails to people on a mailing list and begging them to talk up the new budget was somehow "participatory gov't," to make me worried that that was as far as the new administration would go. Thankfully, that's not the case. While it still remains to be seen how far this will go in actually creating and driving policy, the White House has rolled out some new efforts on the web that really do appear to be trying to enable more participation and transparency. While I don't see it yet, the Whitehouse.gov site will apparently "become a repository for citizen suggestions and discussion regarding new open-government policies." And, more importantly, Data.gov has launched, and the administration is working to get various gov't agencies to open up as much data as possible. These are both big steps forward. There's always more that can be done, but it's good to see that sending out emails to supporters wasn't what the administration was really thinking about when it promised "participatory" government.

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New FTC Chair's Views On Google, Broadband Competition And Behavioral Advertising

from the sounds-decent-so-far... dept

We've been receiving a series of different reports from different folks about a recent interview that new FTC boss, Jon Leibowitz, gave on CSPAN. Leibowitz has been in the FTC for a while, though, he's yet another former entertainment industry lobbyist in the administration (he was VP of Congressional Affairs for the MPAA from 2000 to 2004). So far, however, he seems to be taking quite reasonable positions on a variety of topics (though, some questionable views on other areas). Questioned about Google's dominance in the market (something that the FTC has been investigating for a while now), he pointed out that dominance is "the American way" and not necessarily an antitrust violation:

Google has certainly has a dominant position in search advertising. There's no doubt about that. From our perspective, just having a dominant position doesn't in any way violate the law. It's if you do something -- as the Justice Department in the 1990s alleged that Microsoft did -- to exclude competitors illegally, that's when it becomes a problem.

If you get to a dominant position or a monopoly position by virtue of your own acumen, that's really the American way.

Then there's broadband competition, where he definitely does appear to be concerned about the lack of competition and the lack of transparency from current broadband providers:

We believe consumers need to have notice and consent about what they're getting. It's very, very important that these providers tell consumers about the speed they're getting, and whether (ISPs) are making any types of management decisions in terms of the network that affect consumers....

In a perfect marketplace where you had more competitors, you wouldn't need the government necessarily to be terribly involved. Particularly in the consumer protection area, we have a big roll to play. Broadband is a deregulated product. That's good, we like deregulation generally. But when you have deregulation, you also have law enforcement to make sure people do the right thing.

And, then, there's the question of behavioral advertising, where he believes that opt-in, rather than opt-out, makes a lot of sense:

I think some of the more enlightened companies do do opt-in. I think a lot of them don't. I think the better practice is always opt in.

On the whole, then, he seems to not be too quick to bash companies for being successful, and seems to recognize that competition and transparency are important issues. Those are all good things. There are some fears however, that he's a bit quick on the trigger when it comes to regulating over that behavioral advertising issue, and doesn't seem to mind metered broadband, so long as customers know what they're getting.

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Canadian Parliament Threatens People For Posting Video Of Proceedings Online

from the how-dare-you-want-transparency dept

It would appear that the Canadian Parliament is no big fan of transparency. When some activists started posting video and audio of various Parliamentary committee proceedings online, in order to both increase transparency and to comment on those proceedings, lawyers apparently sent them a cease and desist, claiming it was "contempt of Parliament." They've also been sending takedowns to YouTube and other video hosting sites, claiming that this content is somehow proprietary, covered by "crown copyright" (something, thankfully, we don't have in the US) and subject to severe licensing restrictions. While it sounds like some Canadian politicians recognize the need to change, in the meantime, they're making a travesty of any sense of governmental openness.

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Remember How ACTA Wasn't Supposed To Be A 'Major' Change To Copyright Laws?

from the yeah...-not-so-much dept

One of the excuses given by the various trade representatives negotiating the ACTA treaty for the fact that they were keeping it quite secret, was that it wouldn't represent any significant change to copyright laws, and thus it was no big deal. Yet, the various drafts of the proposed treaty have suggested otherwise. TorrentFreak examines one of the latest leaked drafts and notes that it would require agreeing nations to change copyright laws concerning damages, pushing judges to consider every unauthorized file to be considered as a lost sale for the calculation of damages. This is a key point that plenty of folks have made clear over the years: assuming that every shared file would have been a lost sale is absolutely false. Putting that into the law and suggesting judges use that false concept as a basis for calculating damages is quite troubling. In the meantime, we're still trying to figure out why ACTA is even necessary? And... on top of that, no one has yet explained why industry lobbyists have been integral to the negotiations, but the public and public interest groups are being blocked from any information based on bogus national security claims.

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