It's something of a truism that the courts take time to catch up with technology, especially in the fast-moving world of the Internet, but Thomas Steen points us to a recent court decision in Norway where the gulf between law and life is particularly wide. The case concerns a blogger called Eivind Berge who was arrested recently on account of some statements on his blog that allegedly "glorified and encouraged the killing of policemen" as a report on the Dagbladet newspaper site puts it (Norwegian original.) Moreover:

Berge also wrote that he "planned" to attack a policeman with a knife on a Saturday evening at Torgallmenningen in Bergen, and in police questioning, he confirmed that he supports the killing of policemen as a tool in the fight against male feminists.

The Gulating court had to consider whether Berge's writings were criminal under the Norwegian Penal Code, and came to the following, rather surprising, conclusion (Google Translation):

"In the present case we hear of statements the accused has made [on] his "blog" on the internet. This can be read and commented on [by] others, in that they seek and log onto the blog. The Court can not see that this means such a reproduction as the law requires," according to today's ruling.

As the Norwegian journalist Martin Grüner Larsen points out (Google Translate of Norwegian original):

This means in brief that a mass medium that can reach absolutely everyone in the world, which is publicly known, [with] many readers, is searchable by Google and that despite what it says in the ruling does not require authorization by any means, [is] not public.

Indeed, Larsen believes that the ruling as it stands might even apply to any Web site, not just blogs:

Gulating Court of Appeal in short, just know that the expression on the Internet are not public, regardless of deployment size, nature or amount of reading.

The Dagbladet piece says that the police are expected to appeal to Norway's Supreme Court. Assuming that happens, the lower court's ruling seems likely to be overturned, since it is based on an almost complete misunderstanding of how blogs work and Net dissemination takes place.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Language matters. In debates we see over copyright and other issues, it's often amazing how the industry has really twisted the language to their advantage. A few years ago, Bill Patry wrote an excellent book all about how the entertainment industry inserted its preferred language into all of the debates over copyright, such that they can claim the moral high ground on an issue that is really a business model/economic one for the most part. Of course, those of us pushing for fixing problems in copyright law unfortunately sometimes fall into the same traps. Just recently, for example, we talked about how we should stop calling things "orphan works," and more accurately describe them as they are: hostage works.

I was thinking about this while watching Jamie Love's recent interview with Alan Adler, the VP of Legal & Gov't Affairs for the Association of American Publishers. We already discussed the substance of the discussion around various international agreements for "limitations and exceptions" to copyright law. "Limitations and exceptions" has been standard terminology for things like fair use, fair dealing and other "valves" to stop copyright from being completely oppressive. However, as I watched Adler, some of his comments around those things bothered me. You can watch it below, but I'll call out a few quotes:

"For publishers, they really don't have a business, unless they own intellectual property assets, that they're able to use, control and exploit in the marketplace. So the threat of piracy and the threat of restrictions, limitations, exception to their rights as copyright owners is always a concern to them, because it effects the way they do business. The WIPO is now looking at creating international instruments addressing a number of different things -- but all of them have one thing in common: they would cut back on the rights of publishers as copyright owners by introducing new limitations and exception to those rights..."

"Interestingly, our interest and concern about whether it's a treaty or some other form of international agreement, probably would not have been much of a problem if we were only working on the issue of print disabilities. But with the effort to develop supposed proposed treaties on limitations and exceptions for educational uses and also a separate effort moving parallel to this, to develop a similar treaty on limitations and exceptions for uses by libraries and archives. The problem we have in the area of print disabilities is we really don't want to establish a precedent of developing a series of treaties that specifically focus on trying to set forth minimal limitations and exceptions to the rights of copyright owners. Up until this proposal with respect to print disabilities, generally the treaties and other international agreements that have been devised by the WIPO have been to establish the minimal rights of copyright owners -- not the limitations and exceptions to those rights. And the notion that now, because of the concerns of developing countries and some of the agreements that have been made to pursue an agenda of issues that are of concern to developing countries, we're now beginning to focus on limitations and exceptions."

I have to admit that it's somewhat refreshing that Adler comes right out and says this honestly: that the companies he represents are worried that it might change their business models, rather than making any kind of unsupported moral claims or suggestions that these "limitations and exceptions" are somehow going to destroy content.

That said -- and this comes through strongly in that second quote above -- it's a bit disturbing the way he seems to think that the only thing at issue is the rights of copyright holders, and the way he only describes limitations and exceptions in terms of how they take away rights from the copyright holders. That's incredibly misleading. These "limitations and exceptions" with things like fair use are actually rights of the public. Copyright has always been a restriction on the rights of the public. We can argue over whether or not it's a reasonable or appropriate restriction, but that's what it is. When we flip the language and call things like fair use -- which give back some rights to the public -- "limitations and exceptions," we're unfortunately playing into the language framing of copyright holders, and allowing Adler to say things like he does above and have them sound marginally reasonable.

Yet, if you changed around what he said to make it more accurate by noting that these limitations and exceptions are really about increasing the rights of the public, you begin to realize that what he's saying is pretty crazy:

"For publishers, they really don't have a business, unless they hold government-granted monopoly privileges, that they're able to use, control and exploit in the marketplace. So the threat of infringement and the threat of the public regaining some of their own rights is always a concern to them, because it effects the way they do business. The WIPO is now looking at creating international instruments addressing a number of different things -- but all of them have one thing in common: they would increase the rights of the public by restoring their ability to make use of those works...

"Interestingly, our interest and concern about whether it's a treaty or some other form of international agreement, probably would not have been much of a problem if we were only working on the issue of print disabilities. But with the effort to develop supposed proposed treaties on the public's rights to use works for educational uses and also a separate effort moving parallel to this, to develop a similar treaty on the public's right for uses by libraries and archives. The problem we have in the area of print disabilities is we really don't want to establish a precedent of developing a series of treaties that specifically focus on trying to set forth expanded rights for the public. Up until this proposal with respect to print disabilities, generally the treaties and other international agreements that have been devised by the WIPO have been to take away and limit the rights of the public -- not to expand and clarify those rights. And the notion that now, because of the concerns of developing countries and some of the agreements that have been made to pursue an agenda of issues that are of concern to developing countries, we're now beginning to focus on the rights of the public."

That is a lot more accurate version of what he's saying when you realize the nature of what's really being discussed. So even as we're happy that at least there's been a lot more talk of "limitations & exceptions" (even by the USTR in the TPP negotiations), it seems wrong to cede the framing of the discussion to special interest industry folks. These aren't "limitations and exceptions," they're the public's right to access, to create and to express themselves.

As Techdirt noted recently, policy-making behind closed doors is no longer acceptable. Until the end of the 20th century, it was hard for the general public to make their views heard, and so governments didn't really bother asking them. But that's no longer the case: the Internet has blown government wide open, and there is now no excuse for not consulting as widely as possible -- including the public -- before passing legislation or signing treaties.

That's a lesson that the Australian government seems not to have learned yet, judging by the following story:

The Federal Government has reportedly held a second closed door meeting held between the content and telecommunications industries to address the issue of illegal file sharing on the Internet through avenues such as BitTorrent.

The first meeting took place at the end of last year, and is part of the content industries' attempt to circumvent the Australian courts' refusal to order ISPs to act as a private copyright police force.

According to another report, the argument now seems to be mainly about who will pay for a proposed "graduated response" (three-strikes) scheme:

one source familiar with the discussions said local film industry representatives are concerned that the cost of operating graduated response schemes is too high.

Another source said the content industry’s response was to try to push the cost of managing infringement notices -- and an appeals mechanism for customers who felt they had been wrongly accused -- onto internet service providers.

Never mind the fact that the content industries not only want this kind of extra-judicial punishment, they want it for free: what's really appalling here is that "three strikes" seems to have been settled upon without any qualms about whether it is fair or would work, or whether it might be a good idea to conduct some research to find out. It's the usual evidence-free policy making that has bedevilled this area for decades. But that's hardly surprising, since the most important stakeholder here -- the public -- wasn't invited to the meetings to offer its views on moves that would have a major impact on using the Internet, on privacy and on civil liberties.

That's not only unacceptable, it's extremely unwise in view of what the Australian government plans to do next:

If the content and internet industries reach agreement on a scheme to deal with copyright infringement, the Attorney-General’s department is expected to put a draft proposal out for public consultation.

Given the way that such a draft proposal is being drawn up, any public consultation is likely to be seen as a sham, since the terms of the debate have already been set. And when the draft with a few token but irrelevant tweaks finally becomes law, guess how much public support that is going to have?

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Yesterday, we noted that it appeared that the "GoDaddy boycott" concept may have been losing steam, thanks to the company's decision to move away from supporting the bill... combined with a new aggressive advertising campaign. Finally, on Thursday morning, the company went a step further: saying it hadn't just stopped supporting SOPA but now directly opposed SOPA. Even though the company notes that it saw "a spike in domain name transfers," it looks like the actual "boycott" day fizzled out. Looking at the results from DailyChanges shows that GoDaddy actually had a strongly positive day, netting 20,748 more domains at the end of the day than the beginning. On transfers alone, there were nearly double the number of transfers in as out (27,843 in to 14,492 out) as well as more new registrations than deleted domains (43,304 new registrations compared to 35,907 deletions). This isn't that surprising, really. There was a big burst last week, which is what resulted in GoDaddy changing its stance on the bills. In other words, it seemed like most people jumped to make the move immediately, rather than waiting a week. On top of that, GoDaddy's change in position very likely did ease the concerns of many. And, many made the quite reasonable argument that continuing the boycott after GoDaddy officially changed positions would be counterproductive, since it would discourage other companies from changing their position as well. Of course, a counter argument would be that the goal of the boycott was less about convincing others on the list to change positions as it was to make sure that no other companies decided to support SOPA or any similar future regulations.

Either way, it appears that for those who were hoping for a big boycott on Thursday, that didn't happen. I'm sure some SOPA supporters will use this as fodder to suggest the whole effort was a failure, but that's ridiculous. The whole thing still got a large company that was a huge supporter of these terrible bills to switch its position and recognize that it can't run roughshod over the wishes of its customers. It also helped draw more attention to the overall issue, and helped in getting other companies to back away from supporting the bill. It also got some attention among elected officials about how supporting this bill could get the internet activated. It may not be enough to kill the bills yet, but more politicians are aware of the issues. All in all, getting GoDaddy to change its position was a huge victory against SOPA and PIPA, but remains just one battle in a long and still ongoing war.

Update: There are a bunch of comments insisting that this can't be true, and I'm happy to see more data. NameCheap claims that it had 32,000 domains transfer in, and it's true that Daily Changes isn't a perfect proxy for domain transfers -- but it's a pretty good one. Some are suggesting that delays in processing will show more transfers over the next few days. We'll be watching. It's possible that there were a lot more transfers, but just because people want it to happen, doesn't mean it actually happened. Update 2: NameCheap says in the last week they've received around 80,000 transfers.

Well, today was the day originally scheduled as the GoDaddy boycott day, in which people who had registered domains with GoDaddy were going to transfer them out. With GoDaddy officially dropping support for SOPA, there have been some questions about whether or not that boycott will still happen in significant numbers. There have already been some high profile transfers, such as from the Imgur folks, and there are still plenty of people talking about going through with the boycott as planned.

However, GoDaddy seems to be focusing on what's worked for it in the past: advertising with scantily clad women (and Danica Patrick in particular). Apparently it's been putting full page ads in the NY Times (and other papers?) with Patrick covered strategically by a sign.

And... the strategy may have worked so far.

While tons of domains transferred out at the end of last week, this week has been a bit of a different story. On Monday, it looks like GoDaddy basically broke even, with 18,401 new registrations and 14,853 transfers in... vs only 8,862 transfers out and 24,120 domains deleted. That netted out to an increase for GoDaddy of 272 domains. Tuesday was even more positive for the company. Even though another 16,662 domains were transferred out and another 27,564 were deleted, there was a big bump in new registrations: 31,574 (perhaps driven by new ads?) and another 15,452 transferred in. Net change? 2,800 in the plus column for GoDaddy. Finally, that same trend continued for Wednesday: an impressive 33,251 new registrations and 17,549 transfers in. That goes against 15,524 transfers out and 30,634 deletions. Net: 4,642 more domains under GoDaddy control.

Left unanswered: is this a lull before a bunch of transfers today? Or has the whole boycott issue subsided?

As the public backlash continued to grow -- and GoDaddy's support of it seemed entirely tone deaf to what people were saying -- you knew something had to break eventually. GoDaddy has just announced that it no longer supports SOPA. From the press release they just sent, they say they'll only support future version of the bill if the internet community supports it too:

Go Daddy is no longer supporting SOPA, the "Stop Online Piracy Act" currently working its way through U.S. Congress.

"Fighting online piracy is of the utmost importance, which is why Go Daddy has been working to help craft revisions to this legislation -- but we can clearly do better," Warren Adelman, Go Daddy's newly appointed CEO, said. "It's very important that all Internet stakeholders work together on this. Getting it right is worth the wait. Go Daddy will support it when and if the Internet community supports it."

Go Daddy and its General Counsel, Christine Jones, have worked with federal lawmakers for months to help craft revisions to legislation first introduced some three years ago. Jones has fought to express the concerns of the entire Internet community and to improve the bill by proposing changes to key defined terms, limitations on DNS filtering to ensure the integrity of the Internet, more significant consequences for frivolous claims, and specific provisions to protect free speech.

"As a company that is all about innovation, with our own technology and in support of our customers, Go Daddy is rooted in the idea of First Amendment Rights and believes 100 percent that the Internet is a key engine for our new economy," said Adelman.

In changing its position, Go Daddy remains steadfast in its promise to support security and stability of the Internet. In an effort to eliminate any confusion about its reversal on SOPA though, Jones has removed blog postings that had outlined areas of the bill Go Daddy did support.

"Go Daddy has always fought to preserve the intellectual property rights of third parties, and will continue to do so in the future," Jones said.

I would imagine that, for many, this will be too late, but as SOPA support continues to crumble, it's going to make it very difficult for Congress to claim that this bill really has much support out in the real world.

It seems that plenty of people are still having trouble understanding that most things posted to Twitter are posted in public. Apparently a local newspaper in Michigan ran into some angry community members when a writer for the paper dared to quote some Twitter comments without first contacting the people in question for permission. The newspaper stands by its usage of the comments, noting that they're fair game, and Caroline McCarthy over at News.com (where I found the original story) makes the point succinctly:

But here's somewhere to start: If something is public, it's quotable. If you don't want to be quoted, don't say it on the Internet. If you have a public Twitter account and say something, then, yes, it's public. Should Twitter users expect to be contacted and asked for permission to have their tweets reprinted? Don't count on it.

Still, as noted, it is interesting to see how people seem to perceive something like Twitter as being more private. I'm guessing that may change over time, but it does suggest the sort of level of intimacy that Twitter creates among many people who use it.

As the next round of negotiations for ACTA begin -- with no clear statement on whether or not the results will be made public or kept secret again -- it's time for people to speak up about the problems with ACTA. We already highlighted a letter put together by a group of folks, who are heavily involved in these issues, but it would be good if more people weighed in on their own as well. Public Knowledge has set up a system to make it easy to let the Obama administration know your thoughts on ACTA. There is recommended text, but I highly recommend writing up your own thoughts in your own words. When people just reuse the same text, it makes it much easier for others to discount or discredit the effort.

Geraldine Juarez writes in to let us know of her experience attending what was billed as a "public hearing" about the ACTA treaty in Mexico (link in Spanish, Google translation here), which sounded really messed up. First, despite it being a public hearing, originally those putting on the event wanted attendees to sign nondisclosure agreements. After pushing back on this, they finally agreed to remove that requirement, but there was a lot of confusion about it and it may have kept people with serious questions about ACTA from attending. The room, then, was mostly industry people, who were apparently concerned as to why everyday citizens were in attendance, and they even booed a lawyer who questioned the human rights angle. As for Geraldine, she tried twittering the event, and the industry folks demanded she leave (and had a guard escort her out). It's almost like they're trying to make themselves into a caricature of businesses plotting to harm the public. When others asked where the actual ACTA discussions in Mexico would be held, they were told that was "confidential." It appears that the public is certainly not welcome.

One of the more stunning realities that has become clear in watching the entertainment industry, as it responds to people who are actually impacted by ever more draconian copyright laws, is the fact that the industry doesn't view other positions as worth hearing at all. To the industry, copyright law has one purpose and one purpose only: to protect the big players in the content making business. Everyone else is secondary. Unfortunately, those big industry players have powerful lobbyists. That's why it was so nice to see Canada at least hold an open process to hear from the public. Of course, we were skeptical if those voices would really be heard, and stories about the industry itself stacking the deck at public gatherings did not bode well.

Separately, with so much pressure coming from other countries, we wondered if Canada would be able to resist implementing ever more draconian copyright laws, which would be a serious drain on the Canadian economy. So far they have resisted, but the pressure from outside continues to be fierce. We recently noted that US lobbyists and lawyers were insisting that Canada needed to be dragged into the 21st century, and now European trade negotiators are pushing hard on Canada to change its copyright laws despite no actual evidence of any problem with existing laws.

But what's most troubling of all is that these trade reps don't seem to care at all what Canadian citizens had to say. Despite receiving thousands of well-argued, well-thought-out statements concerning Canadian copyright law, EU trade negotiators are dismissing the whole process as "a tactic to confuse." To confuse who? About what? Holding an open discussion with citizens, rather than just backroom deals to protect a small group of companies? I'd argue that's the very opposite of a tactic to confuse, but rather it's a tactic to enlighten.