Techdirt has written about earlier moves by India to block Web sites and censor Twitter accounts. The central concern seems to be that inflammatory online activity might stoke or provoke local outbreaks of violence of the kind seen recently in Assam. Now The Times of India is reporting that the Indian government wants to go further, and actively monitor who's saying what by setting up a new agency:

"The agency will have an effective monitoring system, comprising duly tasked and technologically empowered cyber monitoring and surveillance agencies, which can report build-up in time and forewarn government of any malicious use of the internet and social media," said an official. Such a central agency will, however, be set up only after putting in place a legal regime to take care of the issue of individuals' privacy and citizens' freedom of speech/expression.

Although it's good that legal safeguards will be put in place to safeguard privacy and freedom of expression, the devil is in the details: the fact that the Indian government has already shut down Web sites and Twitter accounts suggests that political fears are likely to override concerns about human rights if tensions begin to rise. The same story's quotation of a comment from a recent government meeting on the subject, with its references to "graded response and graded penalty to perpetrators", does not augur well:

"This will introduce predictability with regard to what kind of content is liable to be regulated and for how long, the structure and process for such regulation, proactive dissemination of information to counter false propaganda as well as a system of graded response and graded penalty to perpetrators," the minutes of the meeting said.

Meanwhile, Rebecca MacKinnon points us to news on the Net Prophet blog that Kyrgyzstan also wants to ramp up its censorship:

The only parliamentarian republic in Central Asia -- Kyrgyzstan -- has become the scene of a growing attack on Internet freedom. In the beginning of September, parliamentarians and security services proposed two new measures which, according to opinion leaders and experts, would increase censorship in an already restricted Internet landscape.

The reason -- of course -- is to "protect the children":

Online media and television often contain information accompanied by scenes of violence, pornography, and the promotion of drugs. That can affect the outlook of a child and lead to disastrous consequences. Such rules have been in place for a long time in other countries and have been known to work efficiently.

In particular, the Kyrgyz proposal seems modelled on the Russian approach, as the Net Prophet story notes:

the information portal Kloop cites human-rights activists emphasizing the similarities between the current law and the one passed a few weeks ago in Russia. The activists have found many similarities between the two laws.

This is the law that Techdirt reported on back in July. What this underlines is the way that bad laws have a habit of spreading, as successive countries bring in similar laws. That's not least because, rather than being able to take the moral high ground by offering clear examples of how to preserve freedom of speech on the Internet, Western countries are now widely perceived as hypocritical when it comes to censorship.

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For years we've talked about how many patent holders these days have two cracks at anyone they accuse of infringing: through the courts and then separately through the ITC, which can issue an injunction (but not monetary awards) that block a product made elsewhere from entering the US. The ITC doesn't have to follow the same rules as the courts. So, for example, it doesn't need to abide by specific Supreme Court precedent, which can lead to some wacky outcomes. But, really, it's just one more example of a broken patent system.

It's interesting to see that in a high profile case that the ITC is handling, between Intel and X2Y Attentuators LLC -- which describes itself as "an intellectual property company" -- various members of Congress are so worried about the possibility of an injunction issued against Intel, that they've specifically sent a letter to the ITC urging it to "consider the broader public interest" before making a decision. Two letters were sent -- one from the two Senators and all five House reps from Oregon, and another from the two Senators and all eight House reps from Arizona -- telling the ITC that a ruling against Intel would have a "detrimental effect" on the workforce and such an injunction could "discourage" US production and "could do more harm than good with respect to the public interest."

While they're right, this does seem like blatant pandering to constituents. Intel has very large presences in both states (16,000 employees in Oregon and 11,000 in Arizona). However, as the National Law Journal article linked above notes, this is becoming pretty standard, any time a large tech company faces an injunction from the ITC. Its Congressional reps get together and send the ITC a letter. While I agree that these injunctions can do serious harm and the economy, and innovation is much better without the ITC issuing them, it's troubling to me that these elected officials are resorting to pressuring the ITC, rather than doing what they should: recognizing this is just one small symptom of a truly broken patent system. Instead of trying to pressure that one symptom, why not focus on actually fixing the problems of the patent system? If they want a starting point, we've got some ideas.

If only interstellar travel were as easy as it is depicted in movies and TV shows like Star Trek... While we won't be traveling beyond our solar system anytime soon, there are already plenty of efforts underway to develop the technologies needed to make interstellar travel a reality. Here are a few examples.

• DARPA is funding the "100 Year Starship Initiative" which aims to make long-distance space travel possible within the next century. The initiative will focus on identifying and driving advancements in the technologies needed for interstellar flight, as well as using them to improve the quality of life on Earth. [url]
• According to an estimate of how much energy would be needed to make interstellar travel possible, it will be at least another 200 years before humans will have enough to trek to the stars. For example, a mission to send 500 people on a one-way trip into space would require 10¹⁸ Joules of energy for rocket propulsion. In comparison, a shuttle launch requires 10¹³ Joules of energy. [url]
• NASA's Glenn Research Center has compiled a list of some ideas for interstellar travel that are based on scientific knowledge that exists today. To make interstellar travel practical, we'll need to be able to control gravitational/inertial forces, travel faster than light, find ways to harness the energy in the vacuum of space, etc. [url]
• Icarus Interstellar Inc. is working on the concept of using powerful lasers to generate antimatter from the vacuum of space. The large amount of energy produced through matter-antimatter annihilation could then be used for interstellar propulsion. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

It's no secret that the newspaper industry has been in quite a decline lately. But a graphic put together by econ professor Mark Perry really highlights the massive size of that decline. It shows newspaper advertising revenue adjusted for inflation from 1950 to 2012 (with 2012 being estimated), and also includes a second line adding in online newspaper ad revenue. The situation is pretty clear: As Perry puts it:

It's another one of those huge Schumpeterian gales of creative destruction.

Jay Rosen helpfully points out that the peak was the same year that blogging software came on the scene. Though, I'm doubtful that's the "cause" here. You could probably make a stronger argument that the introduction of Craigslist, which really came on the scene in San Francisco in the late 90s before spreading elsewhere in 2000, contributed to this, as did tons of other online services.

But, here's the thing: for years we keep hearing about how the "decline" of the newspaper industry is supposedly happening because they put their papers online for free. But this chart certainly suggests a very different story. As we've said for a while, the real problem wasn't "free" but the newspapers failure to innovate. Going free online, if anything, should have increased ad revenue, not decreased it, since it would have increased inventory (though potentially decreased the prices).

We've pointed out for many years that the "real" business of newspapers was never "news," but collecting together a community and then selling their attention. The problem that newspapers came up against wasn't that they were suddenly giving out content online for free, but that there were very, very quickly millions of other "communities" that people could join online, such that the community of folks reading the newspaper started to go down, and with it, the attention went away. Thus, advertising in a newspaper became a lot less valuable. In fact, it became even more pronounced because, at best, newspaper advertising was targeted around (a) the general location where the newspaper was published and (b) perhaps the section of the newspaper in which the ad was placed. But, again, the internet changed the equation there, where you could start to target the attention of various communities based on a variety of other factors, some of which were seen to be much more lucrative than a crapshoot towards "all people in this city."

Making matters even worse, as various online communities focused on providing more "community" oriented features and content, newspapers seemed to go in the other direction. In part, this was because they kept insisting they were in the business of providing news, not in the business of aggregating a community's attention. So they took the somewhat elitist view that the community didn't matter much -- often to the point of acting in almost insulting ways towards the community. Things like paywalls, overly intrusive advertising, limited community functionality and the like just made newspapers less and less relevant. And when you're less and less relevant to a community, their attention goes elsewhere... and with it, advertising revenue.

And, in fact, it does not appear that the money that used to be spent on newspaper ads went away. While there are a number of different sources that seek to calculate total ad revenue over time, here's a chart showing overall US ad revenue from 1919 up to 2007, in which you see that it has a pretty consistent upward trend (admittedly, this is not corrected for inflation). That same chart also shows advertising as a percentage of GDP... and that has been pretty consistently stuck between 2.0% and 2.5% since the early 1980s. Various other metrics seem to show something similar. US advertising, as a whole, continued to generally expand over the past decade and a half while newspaper advertising collapsed. Looking over some more data, it looks like the big winners since 1998 were, of course, the internet, direct mail, cable TV and "out of home" advertising. Also "miscellaneous."

In other words, the newspapers suddenly faced a lot more competition for ad dollars, and they did nothing to convince the market to stick with them. So, the market went elsewhere.

Time for a pop quiz: get out your no. 2 iPads and see if you can figure out which steps in this process are out of order.

It's election season, a time when man's (and more recently, woman's) thoughts turn towards shutting off the TV, radio and phone until mid-November. But! Things must be voted on, including such controversial issues as legalizing medical marijuana and authorizing dispensaries. As an opponent of weed-based medicines, you vow to fight this with every ounce/gram of your being. You set your plan in action.

1. Pick a name for your committee. ("No on Question 3")
2. Pick out a suitable URL ("votenoonquestion3.org")
3. Get your committee and its pertinent information added to the official voters' guide (both print and online.)
4. Register URL.
5. Become aghast.

Can anyone point out where Vote No on Question 3 went wrong? Here are some visual aids, taken from votenoonquestion3.org:

You see, the internet is like magic. And like most magic, it can be used for entertainment purposes. All the do-gooding in the world doesn't amount to much if you forget to register your URL. While you're busy enjoying that "new ink" smell of freshly printed Voter's Guides, someone quicker on the draw is undermining your "marijuana is bad" propaganda proselytizing information with hilariously over-the-top headlines. 

The good news is that the online voters' guide sports the corrected URL: mavotenoonquestion3.com

The bad news is that the paper version will carry the old URL permanently. Of course, very few people are willing to type in a URL by hand, but as news of this blunder spreads, the fake site with the real URL will be receiving much more attention, voters' guide correction or no.

Here's the official reaction from No on Question 3 spokesman, Kevin Sabet:

"It's funny and upsetting, I guess, at the same time."

Yeah. Largely the first part. And to think, the committee can't even blame a late afternoon smokeout for the mental slip.

This statement, however, seems both more on point and more disingenuous:

The group sent out a press release saying proponents of medical marijuana were tampering with the democratic process through “underhanded efforts.”

Sabet admits the committee made a mistake and yet, the press release attempts to paint No on Question 3 as the victim of villainous pot smokers rather than treating it like the self-inflicted wound it is.

Oh, and here's more bad news for the "No" side:

The Globe notes that the No on Question 3 campaign has managed to collect all of $600 so far, compared to the $1 million or so that supporters of the initiative have received from Peter Lewis, a longtime patron of drug policy reform.

Maybe it's time to admit your fears of a weed-loaded America are overblown, especially when you've just been outmaneuvered (and outspent) by a bunch of stoners.

Like many folks, I saw the news today about the always-wonderful Internet Archive offering up a treasure trove of TV news broadcasting and thought it was a great thing. They're basically making available every TV news recording they could get from 2009 forward, including all of the major TV networks, the news channels (CNN, Fox News, etc.), etc. They'll also have a bunch of local TV broadcasts as well, which is cool. All in all, it's launching with 350,000 clips. They'll even have recordings of The Daily Show as a part of the archive -- which seems fitting, since Internet Archive mastermind Brewster Kahle noted that with this collection, they can "let a thousand Jon Stewarts bloom" by letting them find interesting (or contradictory) news clips.

You can go check out the TVNews Search & Borrow site right now. The search feature is pretty cool, combing through closed captions to find the relevant content. So it's neat to do a quick search on topics of interest and see what they turn up. Of course, there are still a few kinks to work out. Out of curiosity, I did a search on SOPA, and got back some relevant news stories (including the Jon Stewart story about blackout day. But... I also got a bunch of Spanish-language programs about soup. Even when I limited the language to English. I assume those things will get better over time. Each clip is split into 30 second increments, so it's not like you're automatically getting the full broadcast, though you can piece together the clips.

And it's not just a "historical" archive. They're going to continue to add to it, with new clips being available 24-hours after they air.

Of course, all of this made me wonder about the copyright issues involved. The NY Times had this somewhat cryptic statement:

The act of copying all this news material is protected under a federal copyright agreement signed in 1976. That was in reaction to a challenge to a news assembly project started by Vanderbilt University in 1968.

I was curious about that, and a few people pointed me to 17 USC 108 (f)(3), which notes that:

nothing in this section shall be construed to limit the reproduction by lending of a limited number of copies and excerpts by a library or archives of an audiovisual news program subject to [a few other clauses concerning archives]...

This is based on the Vanderbilt Television News Archive, which the Internet Archive directly calls out in its own announcement as being the inspiration for this new project. Inspiration... and legal helper.

Here's a bit of historical perspective from Historians.org:

Indeed, in the early days of the archive, CBS had sued for copyright infringement, claiming that broadcasts could not be recorded without the permission of the networks. At the time of the lawsuit, Congress was in the process of revising the copyright law. Congress recognized the growing importance and influence of television media on American culture, thought, and politics, and felt that news broadcasts should have special protection under the copyright law, to allow the American people access to their own history. Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee introduced an amendment to the 1976 U.S. Copyright Act to give universities and archives the right to record news broadcasts off-air and to make a limited number of copies for research purposes. Following the enactment of the new law with this provision, CBS and Vanderbilt mutually withdrew from the lawsuit.

But does that really make the Internet Archive legal? I'm not so sure the TV guys are going to see it that way. That same report at Historians.org notes that Vanderbilt is not allowed to share nearly all of its collection online -- and it also notes that "The advent of the Internet and the consequent possibility of making digital copies and lending them online have, however, raised new legal problems that need to be resolved." I would imagine that a key one among them is whether or not the Internet Archives' setup qualifies as "lending a limited number of copies."

One would hope that an informed court would recognize that this fits with the intent of Congress in creating this kind of exception, though I fear that the networks are likely to fight pretty hard on this one, even as it seems like this service could really benefit them as well as others, rather than really take away from anything they do.

Updated: At 5pm ET, the USPTO called Jamie to say that a contractor had set this up, and after reviewing their policies, they had stopped blocking such sites...

Well this is bizarre. Jamie Love from KEI was over at the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for a meeting about "global negotiations on intellectual property and access to medicine." The meeting itself was held in a room that it uses for the USPTO's Global Intellectual Property Academy (GIPA), and there is free WiFi for people to use. Love tried to log onto his own website... and found that it was being blocked as a "political/activist group."

Access Denied (content_filter_denied)

Your request was denied because this URL contains content that is categorized as: "Political/Activist Groups" which is blocked by USPTO policy. If you believe the categorization is inaccurate, please contact the USPTO Service Desk and request a manual review of the URL.

For assistance, contact USPTO OCIO IT Service Desk. (io-proxy4)

Love then checked a bunch of other sites... and noticed a rather distressing pattern. For public interest groups who advocate that the existing copyright/patent system is broken, the websites were all blocked. ACLU, EFF, Public Knowledge, Public Citizen, CDT... all blocked. However, if you're a lobbyist for maximalism? No problem! MPAA, RIAA, IIPA, IPI, PHRMA, BSA... come on through. They do allow Creative Commons. Thankfully (for us, at least), they don't seem to block blogs that talk about this stuff. Techdirt is allowed, as are things like BoingBoing, Groklaw and Larry Lessig and Michael Geist's blogs. Though, oddly, a bunch of political sites (DailyKos, TPM, RedState, Rush Limgaugh's site) are blocked.

It may be an "over active" filter -- but it does seem particularly disturbing that all those groups who fight for the public's rights on the very issues the USPTO is dealing with on a regular basis have their sites completely blocked.

We've been quite reasonably bothered by the FBI handing out its seal to copyright holders to falsely imply that mere personal copying is a criminal offense that might get you sent to jail. However, it appears that this handing off of government law enforcement threats to private parties goes much, much further. Over the weekend, the NY Times wrote about the amazingly common practice of local district attorneys' offices allowing debt collectors to send threat letters on their stationary and signed by the local DA -- effectively threatening those who, for example, passed a bounced check, with potential jailtime if they don't pay up.

The DAs office, it appears, is literally selling the use of their stationary. In exchange for letting debt collectors appear both a lot more official and for falsely suggesting that law enforcement is pursuing criminal action, the debt collectors "sell" a "financial accountability" class, from which some of the proceeds get kicked back to the DAs' offices.

The practice, which has spread to more than 300 district attorneys’ offices in recent years, shocked Angela Yartz when she was threatened with conviction over a $47.95 check to Walmart. A single mother in San Mateo, Calif., Ms. Yartz said she learned the check had bounced only when she opened a letter in February, signed by the Alameda County district attorney, informing her that unless she paid $280.05 — including $180 for a “financial accountability” class — she could be jailed for up to one year.

The NYT includes images of some of the documents in question, and they really do look quite official, despite the fact that the DA's office usually is not even aware of the particulars of anyone's case, and is unlikely to pursue any sort of law enforcement activity. As you can see, it certainly looks likes it's coming from the DA's office, and looks extremely "official" even though it's only down in the fine print that it's mentioned that it's actually sent "on behalf" of the office by a third party. Even then, unless you were really aware of what was going on, you would probably think this was law enforcement going after you.

What's really ridiculous is to see various DAs offices defend this kind of thing.

“I view it as quite a win-win,” said Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott D. Shellenberger. “You aren’t criminalizing someone who shouldn’t have a criminal record, and you are getting the merchant his money back.”

Scott Greenfield's response to this ridiculous claim is dead on:'

Check bouncers should be held accountable. But only in a way that the law provides, after the people in whom we repose trust and responsibility ascertain that a crime has been committed, and after the accused has been afforded the opportunity of a full and fair hearing before a neutral magistrate. Whether the merchants deserve to get money back or not is the end result, not the starting point. It's a burden to do things right? 'Tough nuggies. That's why they pay you the big bucks.

He similarly finds offensive the claim from another (former) DA in the article that these shakedown programs are fair because actually having law enforcement would "overburden the court system or the resources of the district attorneys." Again, Greenfield points out that you don't get to avoid due process just because it's a hassle:

After all, who would want to "overburden the court system or the resources of district attorneys" by expecting them to do their jobs? Who would want courts and prosecutors to afford citizens due process? Instead, let's defer to the excellent judgment and trustworthiness of businesses and debt collectors. They would never lie. They would never get it wrong.

We've talked a lot about problems with forms of "crony capitalism" where businesses have undue power over government, and it happens at pretty much every level of government these days. But, at the very least, we shouldn't just be handing over the power of law enforcement to private parties. Law enforcement agencies are already prone to abuse. Giving it to private, for-profit companies? You're just asking for serious trouble.

Update: Liberty McAteer points out that the offices doing this likely are violating the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) in a very, very big way... Update 2: Some more comments point out that there appear to be direct exemptions in the FDCPA for this kind of thing. Doesn't make it right, but probably not illegal under the act.

Julia Schramm is one of the rising stars of the German Pirate Party: in April, when she was just 27 years old, she was elected to the national party's executive committee. No surprise, then, that she is against copyright: in a podcast she described intellectual property as "disgusting" (original in German.) More surprising is that, despite this, she signed a contract with Knaus-Verlag, part of the publishing giant Random House group, to write a book. Perhaps the $130,000 advance had something to do with it.

The book is called "Click me: confessions of an Internet exhibitionist", and sells for around $22 ($18 for the Kindle version), which seems a bit pricey for just 208 pages. That wouldn't matter if the contents were of particularly high quality. Alas, it seems that many feel they are not: at the time of writing, the book has 10 one-star reviews on Amazon.de, some of which are pretty damning -- "it's really a shame about the trees that were cut down for this book" -- just two five stars, and one three stars. The German magazine Der Spiegel called the book "a disaster."

Schramm can probably live with the reviews (after all, she still has that $130,000 advance.) What's slightly more problematic for her career as one of the top Pirates is the fact that just one day after the book appeared, her publisher sent a takedown request to a site that was hosting a, er, pirate copy -- and in her name:

"This file is no longer available due to a takedown request under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by Julia Schramm Autorin der Verlagsgruppe Random House."

Given her background and stated views, some might say that's pretty, well, disgusting....

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For all the rhetoric we hear that pirates are evil, thieving scum, they sure do have a massive positive impact on creators who choose to work with them. Take for instance the recent success held by Sosowski, the creator of recent indie hit McPixel. When Sosowski found his game on the Pirate Bay, he didn't flip out, he didn't curse, he embraced the pirates there and turned them into an opportunity for success.

If you dare risk a visit to the Pirate Bay and specifically the page for McPixel, you can see exactly what Sosowski did. He first thanked pirates for uploading the game and then gave away free gift codes.

Yay! My game is here! As weird as it sounds I am actually excited about this.

Anyways, I am not any average video game company, I am just one man making games for a living, so feel free to give me all your money if you like the game!

I get it that in some countries PayPal doesn't work, or the price might seem really high for some of you, so here are some gift codes for you:
[gift codes snipped]

Most of all, enjoy the game, tell your friends about it, and throw some coins in my general direction if you like it!
All the best,
Sos

This little heart felt message not only led to a lot of people on the Pirate Bay to think more highly of the developer, but it also led the Pirate Bay to seek out Sosowski in order to promote his game on its Promo Bay service.

As a result of the developer's unusual reaction, The Pirate Bay tracked down Sosowski and the two teamed up to promote the title through the torrent site's Promo Bay initiative which it launched earlier this year.

The site has been offering a link over the weekend directing visitors to McPixel's site whilst Sosowski has been running a pay-what-you-want offer on the game. Visitors have also been allowed to torrent the game for free over the weekend to try before they buy.

These two events working in conjunction with each other led to two great benefits for this one man development shop. The first is that the pay-what-you-want sale ended with a total of 3,043 copies sold at an average price of $2.56, with the top price paid being $140. The second benefit is that McPixel is one of the first ten games to be selected by Valve through its new Greenlight service. It is no secret that being accepted by Steam is often a major milestone in an indie developer's career.

This is yet another story in how piracy can often act as free advertising for artists. This story follows a very similar trend to that of Dan Bull when he used the Pirate Bay to help his single make the charts. There have been a lot of other great stories about artists taking piracy in strides and still managing to be successful. The trick is to accept that pirates are not your enemies, but potential customers who need the right reasons to buy.

1999: Realizing the inevitable, the RIAA convinces member labels to set up all-you-can eat buffets. All music available as DRM-free downloads, $5/mo. 100M of storage, additionally available for increased monthly fee. The RIAA uses superior marketing muscle to "drown out" competing "free" alternatives, insists people should only download from "legitimate" sources to ensure data integrity and security. It recommends the gradual reduction in the production, marketing, storage and sales of CDs, vinyl and tape, keeping only a small reserve capacity*.

2000: RIAA negotiates a small increase in financial support from labels' substantial savings from physical media reductions to create the Online Strategy Group (OSG), hiring engineers, programmers, technologists, musicologists and a futurist or two. The OSG's first suggestion is FoM, Future of Music, which the RIAA incorporates, initially to handle the growing subscription business.

2001: On OSG's advice, the RIAA convinces member labels to cross-offer artists by genre in sites with fun names like, "soultology.com", "hitsnmisses.com", "netrockstar.com", "eargasm.com", etc. A marginally increased monthly fee ($1 more for each sub-site) gets download access and membership in forums, discounts on t-shirts, tickets, posters, etc. FoM takes over all revenue-generating ventures and negotiates equitable profit-sharing deals with the labels and reaches out to independent artists. FoM buys Creative and, with help from the OSG brain-trust, designs and sells a fantastically popular line of MP3 players.

2002: Capitalizing on the psychology of "sharers", OSG introduces memberships that encourage people to find and upload obscure and out-of-print audio. Uploaders compete for discounted memberships, back-stage passes, artist access and the most important prizes: minor fame, street-cred and a custom avatar. The RIAA creates work-arounds for copyright issues removing limits on fan's abilities to upload, modify and share work.

2003 - 2005: Recognizing the growth of social media, the OSG introduces groups and messaging. Higher-access users get expanded pages on OSG sites and are encouraged to rate and critique music. OSG makes available interaction with music journalists, holds contests for album & t-shirt art, gives prizes for mashups with highest votes by the communities. The OSG makes "Locker" space available, 1G free, $1/mo for each additional gigabyte. OSG introduces "Rip Me" - user puts a factory CD in the computer drive tray, and is given the option to rip/upload tracks or have recording company copies put in his/her locker. (Subsequent attempts to upload the same CD from another computer is allowed with a minimum new subscription)

2006 - 2010: FoM buys Pandora, iTunes, YouTube, RIM, Turntable.fm, Facebook and a controlling interest in Sirius. OSG helps FoM branch the Blackberry, creating the "Rockberry", a consumer-oriented "mobile media sharing device". OSG solicits auditions from all musicians everywhere, showcasing the best on YouTube. FoM makes record profits from tours, downloads, streams, hardware, music licensing and merchandise. Cary Sherman becomes fifth richest man in the US.

2011: *FoM introduces choice "retro" vinyl, CD and tape catalogue for hipsters worldwide. OSG and RIAA move into "palatial" FoM office campus in Los Angeles, work begins on 30-story FoM tower in Manhattan.

Cross-posted from botaday.com

Not much has been said about the Aaron Swartz case over the past year as the wheels of "justice" slowly grind their way to an eventual court date. Swartz, the executive director of Demand Progress, was charged with violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, a catch-all designation for "computer activity the US government doesn't like."

Swartz had accessed MIT's computer network to download a large number of files from JSTOR, a non-profit that hosts academic journal articles. US prosecutors claimed he "stole" several thousand files, but considering MIT offered this access for free on campus (and the files being digital), it's pretty tough to square his massive downloading with any idea of "theft."

Not only that, but JSTOR was not the entity pressing charges. It had stopped the downloading and secured the "stolen" content, along with receiving assurances from Swartz that the files would not be distributed. Despite this, the feds felt compelled to arrest Swartz and charge him with four felony counts (one each for Wire Fraud, Computer Fraud, Theft of Information from a Computer and Recklessly Damaging a Computer). At this point, Swartz was looking at a possible 35-year sentence and over $1,000,000 in fines.

Whoever's pushing this case must really dislike Swartz and/or his activities. A "Superseding Indictment" (pdf) has been filed, raising the number of felony counts from four to thirteen. Seth Finkelstein at Infothought has a brief rundown of the new charges (h/t to Nate Hoffelder for the link):

There are now 13 felony counts in the new indictment, derived from claims of multiple instances of breaking those four laws. In specific:

Wire Fraud - 2 counts
Computer Fraud - 5 counts
Unlawfully Obtaining Information from a Protected Computer - 5 counts
Recklessly Damaging a Protected Computer - 1 count

It's beyond my pay grade to figure out how many years in prison that all could be, when taking into account the complexities of sentencing law. Let's leave it at a large scary number. Enough to ruin someone's life.

The new filing basically realleges all the original charges but ups the felony count by providing specific dates for each action, turning each marked date into its own felony charge. The allegations refer to Swartz's "repeated" actions as spanning several months, but the feds have pulled some arbitrary dates into the mix to add years and dollars onto his possible sentence. And, again, we have to ask: for what?

JSTOR only showed up because it was subpoenaed and if anyone's the "victim" here, it would be JSTOR. MIT has remained silent on the whole issue. So, either someone's got a deeper interest in this case than they're willing to admit publicly, or the feds found someone with enough "hacking" activity under their belt that they feel comfortable turning the defendant into an "example." Or perhaps this is a belated payback for his thorough gaming of the PACER system during a "free trial" period, something the feds briefly investigated him for back in 2009. It went nowhere as the documents involved were public records, but it had to gall them a bit that he managed to download nearly 20 million pages of text, about 20% of the entire database, before being stopped. (The government likes to collect 8 cents a page for PACER documents, meaning Swartz's stunt "cost" it nearly $1.6 million, assuming you have no idea how to properly measure "costs.")

So, how do the new charges stack up in terms of a sentence? Tough to say. Each of the charges carries the possibility of a fine and imprisonment of up to 10-20 years per felony. Depending on how many of the counts Swartz is found guilty of, the sentence could conceivably total 50+ years and fine in the area of $4 million. All this over publicly accessed research documents that JSTOR doesn't even feel the need to pursue further than it did.

Last week, we wrote about a leaked copy of an executive order being worked on by the White House to deal with the lack of "cybersecurity" legislation being passed. We've since learned that this is one of two different executive orders being worked on concerning this issue. We are working on getting the other, more focused, draft as well. That said, we noted numerous problems in the draft we did see, including the broad definition of "critical infrastructure," which basically leaves it pretty open for the feds to declare almost anything "critical infrastructure," thereby putting tremendous pressure on private companies to comply with a set of rules that may not make much sense.

This is, quite reasonably, raising some concerns. Senator Ron Wyden has sent a letter to the White House's Cybersecurity Czar Coordinator, J. Michael Daniel, to point out that there's a pretty big difference between things like nuclear power plants and social networks online -- and any executive order that fails to take that into account seems problematic. The full letter is embedded below, but a snippet:

In the case of interactive computer services, such as networks that facilitate commerce, provide search services, or are platforms for social networking and speech, vulnerabilities are unlikely to constitute threats to our national security. It should be clear in any executive order related to cybersecurity that there is a fundamental difference between networks that manage infrastructure critical to public safety, like energy, water, and transportation systems, and those that provide digital goods and services to the public. It would be a profound mistake to subject our growing digital economy to onerous new cyber rules and regulations that stifle innovation, creativity, and job growth. Such rules will not serve to combat the real threat to the nation's critical infrastructure and national security.

Indeed. While we tend to agree that various internet services are important to our economy, to argue that social networks are somehow the equivalent of energy systems, water treatment plants or the like seems obviously ridiculous. All it ends up doing is leaving a massive opening for the feds to seek much greater access and control over the internet services we use every day than they really need.

There are reasonable fears that some in the government are really using scare stories about planes falling from the sky due to cyberattacks to really open up access to private communications systems on the internet for surveillance purposes. Given what we've seen with other spying efforts, such worries seem quite justified. This is not unlike supporters of SOPA using the very narrowly focused issue of fake drugs as an excuse to pass expansive copyright laws dealing with file sharing online. In this case, it seems like those who really just want access to online communications may be using claims of "threats" to "critical infrastructure" to backdoor their way in. And the trick is just to define "critical infrastructure" really broadly. Hopefully people recognize that the definitions here really do matter, and that any executive order is very narrowly focused towards actual critical infrastructure.

Just in case anyone needed another reminder that Britain's "Free Speech" laws are more about what's not included than what is, a UK citizen has just been found guilty of "sending a grossly offensive communication," a crime under the Malicious Communications Act of 1988.

Azher Ahmed posted a message on his Facebook page in response to the news that six British soldiers had died in an Afghanistan IED attack. His message was as follows:

People gassin about the deaths of Soldiers! What about the innocent familys who have been brutally killed. The women who have been raped. The children who have been sliced up! Your enemy's were the Taliban not innocent harmful familys.

All soldiers should DIE & go to HELL! THE LOWLIFE F****N SCUM! Gotta problem. Go cry at your soldiers grave and wish him hell because that's where he is going.

Recognizing the fact that the UK does not have the same sort of free speech protection that the US does, it's still somewhat troubling that a Facebook post of this nature is considered a criminal act. The message is ugly and completely devoid of sensitivity (or logic), but is it so offensive as to be a criminal offense? The district court certainly believes it is.

A lot of terminology was used by both parties in an attempt to draw the line between what's acceptable and what's arrestable. Ahmed felt the message was "distressing" but not "offensive." The judge said his remark was "derogatory, disrespectful and inflammatory."

The comment could certainly be considered all of the above, but pursuing cases like this in an effort to keep the public from being distressed or offended is an exercise in futility. There's no shortage of statements people find offensive, but the defining line is subjective. There's no true baseline for "offensive," and yet the judicial system somehow believes "offensiveness" can be objectively determined and enforced.

This puts the judicial system in the position of forming opinions on behalf of its citizens. Ahmed himself met with plenty of opposing opinion soon after posting his message. As his account of the event shows, the "court of public opinion" had already rendered a verdict.

Ahmed told the court he immediately started to receive critical comments on his page and realised the second half of his post was "unacceptable".

Ahmed told the court he was only trying to make the point that many other deaths in Afghanistan were being ignored. He said he had no idea it would cause so much upset and as soon as he realised what reaction it was having he deleted it.

When someone deletes a post because of negative comments, the system has already worked. This doesn't excuse the person writing the post, but in Ahmed's case, he'd already received plenty of feedback on the "wrongness" of his opinion, and acted on the feedback.

Ahmed said: "I didn't intend to insult them at the time.

"When I read back on it, that's when I realised I had actually insulted and upset a lot of people."

He said he replied with apologies to many people who commented on his page and when some told him they had lost relatives in Afghanistan he realised how serious it was.

"That's when I realised it was unacceptable for them to see something so upsetting and distressing, to write something like that," he added.

Including the demonstrations at his court appearances, derogatory Facebook pages and threats being made against his employer as well as against an unrelated "Azhar," it seems almost redundant for a court to step in a render a verdict. The severe limits imposed on speech in an effort to protect people from "offensive messages" has had enough of a chilling effect that most UK-hosted articles dealing with this court case have their comments shut off. (Comments are available on this editorial at The Guardian, but the thread appears to be heavily moderated.)

Enforcing a national "niceness" is an impossibility, but its unintended consequences include criminalizing the most basic human trait of all: stupidity. The general population already has very effective ways of dealing with those who are "stupid in public," especially those who are "stupid on the internet." Despite the fact that the law was conceived to deal with a digital age, at no point does it seem to have been crafted to deal with nuances like opinion, emotion or venue. It only encourages citizens to engage the legal system every time they've been offended.

One of the more frustrating things in watching policy debates concerning the internet is the assumption that "internet infrastructure" means the telcos (and, to some extent, the cablecos). There are a lot of other players who really build the nuts and bolts of the internet, and their views do not always match with AT&T's and Verizon's. So it's great to see the launch of a new trade group, called the Internet Infrastructure Coalition, made up a bunch of those "other guys." That includes web hosting firms, domain registrars, and tool providers for those infrastructure providers (like cpanel). The coalition came together out of a group of companies like this who helped fight against SOPA and PIPA, knowing that such laws were bad for infrastructure providers (AT&T and Verizon, in the meantime, remained mostly quiet on SOPA and PIPA). At the very least, having these players stand up and speak out about how the internet infrastructure is made up of a bunch of players beyond the big telcos would be good. Too often those guys drive the discussion, often at the expense of other important players...