Techdirt. Stories filed under "blocking"

Police In Japan Are Asking ISPs To Start Blocking Tor

Mike Masnick — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 05:04:40 PDT

The National Police Agency in Japan is apparently asking ISPs in that country to "voluntarily" block the use of Tor, the well-known and widely used system for anonymously surfing the internet.

An expert panel to the NPA, which was looking into measures to combat crimes abusing the Tor system, compiled a report on April 18 stating that blocking online communications at the discretion of site administrators will be effective in preventing such crimes. Based on the recommendation, the NPA will urge the Internet provider industry and other entities to make voluntary efforts to that effect.

This is an extreme and dangerous overreaction. Yes, some people abuse the anonymity of Tor to do illegal things. Just as some people abuse the anonymity of cash to do bad things. But we don't then outlaw cash because of this. There are many, many reasons why people have good reason to seek out an anonymizing tool like Tor to protect their identity. What if they're whistle blowing on organized crime or corruption (say) in the police force? As for the fear that it's being used for criminal activity, that doesn't mean that police cannot identify them through other means. We've seen time and time again people leave digital tracks in other ways when they're committing crimes. Yes, it makes life more difficult for police, and it means they have to do actual detective work, but that's what their job is.

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Motion Picture Association: The Cloud Is A Threat To Us And The Best Response Is Censorship

Mike Masnick — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 07:33:09 PDT

The Motion Picture Association is somewhat notorious for flipping out over every new technology and how it will, without doubt, mean death for them. Most famously, of course, the prediction that the VCR would be the "Boston Strangler" to the movie industry a mere six years before home video revenues outstripped box office revenues. However, this seems to be somewhat instinctual behavior. Everything new must automatically be classified as a threat, and the best response is to kill it outright. The latest version of this appears to be the threat of (gasp!) "cloud computing." At a get together in Hong Kong, in which the movie industry was supposed to be talking about "protecting the screen community in the cloud era" apparently there was the typical predictions of doom with little in the way of suggestions. But there were some. Frank Rittman, the SVP of the Motion Picture Association, explained that the cloud was evil and censorship was the answer:

The news was even worse from Frank Rittman, SVP of the Motion Picture Association, Asia Pacific, who stated that potential pirates have all the digital tools they need to make illegal media sharing more viral than ever. “Digital online technology has enabled new channels of delivery for entertainment media,” he said. “The cloud also represents a threat in that it facilitates piracy, and the pirates seem to have gotten into this space first.”

The answer to both problems, Rittman believes, is pushing for Internet Service Providers to block sites known to be troublemakers when it comes to Internet piracy. He pointed to examples of the practice in Europe, Indonesia, Malaysia, and South Korea as models of how this has worked as a low-cost way of cutting down on piracy that has met with some success.

He also complains that Hong Kong won't pass a law like this because the process has been "hijacked by extremists." Well, that's one way of looking at it. The alternative way is that arguing that flat out censorship of entire sites because you have been too slow to adapt, is crazy talk and is significantly more extremist than anything anyone else has been arguing. If you want to go after direct infringement, go after that. But censorship of entire sites is going way too far. And, contrary to his claims, it has not "worked" nor has it "met with some success." It hasn't driven people back to paying for movies.

Really, Rittman's statements are an example of the problem. Here are people so focused on "stopping piracy" that they don't care about the consequences of their own actions on innovation, nor do they care about whether or not it helps their own bottom line.

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European Parliament Considers Banning All Pornography, Blocks Emails From EU Citizens Protesting Against Censorship

Glyn Moody — Thu, 7 Mar 2013 10:44:19 PST

A few weeks ago we wrote about Iceland's thoroughly daft idea of trying to block porn there. Bad proposals for the Internet always seem to spread, and so it should perhaps come as no surprise that the European Parliament will be considering a similarly unworkable proposal, but in a rather more covert way, as the Pirate Party politician Christian Engström noted on his blog:

Next week in Strasbourg, probably on Tuesday, the European Parliament will be voting on a Report on eliminating gender stereotypes in the EU. To promote gender equality and eliminating gender stereotypes are of course very laudable goals, so my guess would be that unless something happens, the report will be approved by the parliament, possibly by a very large majority.

That would be a good thing, were it not for the following detail: Article 17 of the report says (with emphasis added):
17. Calls on the EU and its Member States to take concrete action on its resolution of 16 September 1997 on discrimination against women in advertising, which called for a ban on all forms of pornography in the media and on the advertising of sex tourism;
There's no definition of "the media", but it's hard to believe that the digital world would somehow be exempt. Of course, banning pornography in this way simply won't work, but it will cause huge collateral damage to freedom of speech online in the EU. As if that weren't bad enough, the way the report wants this put into effect is deeply problematic too: the resolution we will be voting on next week has other things to say about the internet. Article 14 reads (again with my highlighting):
14. Points out that a policy to eliminate stereotypes in the media will of necessity involve action in the digital field; considers that this requires the launching of initiatives coordinated at EU level with a view to developing a genuine culture of equality on the internet; calls on the Commission to draw up in partnership with the parties concerned a charter to which all internet operators will be invited to adhere;
This is quite clearly yet another attempt to get the internet service providers to start policing what citizens do on the internet, not by legislation, but by "self-regulation". This is something we have seen before in a number of different proposals, and which is one of the big threats against information freedom in our society.
This is another example of "voluntary" measures that will in fact by compulsory, since any ISP that refuses to implement them will doubtless find itself responsible instead. As we've noted before, this allows all kinds of dangerous ideas to be implemented in ways that are not subject to judicial review or even challenge.

It's important to note that this is not a law as such, but a report, as Engström explains:

This means that it does not automatically become law even if it is adopted, but is just a way for the European parliament to express its opinion.

But the purpose of these own initiative reports are to serve as the basis for the Commission when it decides to present legislative proposals to the parliament. If this own initiative report is adopted by the parliament, it will strengthen the Commission's position if and when it wants to propose various"self-regulation" schemes in the future.

Equally, if the report is defeated next week, it will weaken later attempts by the Commission to bring in self-regulation. Recognising this, people like Rick Falkvinge have been asking Europeans to write to their representatives to urge them to reject the report, as Techdirt user rudeholm pointed out. But as Engström now reports, emails on these censorship plans are being blocked by the European Parliament's tech department: around noon, these mails suddenly stopped arriving. When we started investigating why this happened so suddenly, we soon found out:

The IT department of the European Parliament is blocking the delivery of the emails on this issue, after some members of the parliament complained about getting emails from citizens.
This is exactly what happened with ACTA, when the Parliamentary authorities decided that all emails on the subject would go straight into the spam folder. It's extraordinary to see how quickly politicians forget that hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to defend their online rights back then, and how unceremoniously dumping their emails in the spam folder only made things worse.

Discussions have been taking place on Twitter around the hashtag #mepblock (disclosure: I've been part of these), and an e-petition has been created, calling on European politicians to drop their censorship and to listen to their constituents as they are supposed to, instead of just ignoring them. There are still a few days before the vote next week, so there's plenty of time for further developments in what looks like becoming an increasingly heated debate.

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Why Is The UK Blocking Access To Sites Without Any Hearings?

Mike Masnick — Fri, 1 Mar 2013 18:38:15 PST

We already wrote about the UK court letting the BPI decide what sites the court would order all UK ISPs to block access to, but as more details come out about the process, the scarier it is. As Duke noted in our comments, the whole process lacked any sort of due process:

For those interested the full judgment is here: EMI Records Ltd & Ors v British Sky Broadcasting Ltd & Ors [2013] EWHC 379 (Ch)

The law is a bit worrying (I haven't read it in that much detail but I think it goes slightly further than previous ones) - the main concern is that, again, there was no hearing, no defence, no cross-examination of evidence etc.. Without seeing the witness statements I can't be sure, but I think the judge just accepted everything the BPI had to say at face value.

That's not justice - not in an adversarial court system.

The Open Rights Group (ORG) in the UK has quite reasonably expressed its concern about how such blockades are likely to stifle speech, especially when there is no one allowed to argue against the blocking.

We are concerned that these orders are not protecting speech, are overblocking forums and discussion, and are prone to error as the actual block lists are private.

Furthermore, users and the public interest have not been represented in the processes

It amazes me that anyone thinks it's reasonable to shut down a site without any sort of due process in the form of an adversarial hearing, in which multiple sides can be presented. The opportunity for widespread abuse and the stifling of free expression is massive.

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Norway To Get Its Own SOPA

Mike Masnick — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 03:15:04 PST

The latest in the global merry-go-round of the legacy entertainment industry seeking to put in place draconian legislation is apparently Norway. A couple years ago, I went to Norway for Nordic Music Week, and had a great time talking to musicians, managers and labels, about all of the opportunity for new music business models. It was a fun and optimistic event, seeing everyone looking at all of the opportunities out there. But, of course, these were mostly independent artists. The major labels stayed away. And that's because the only "opportunity" they seem to see is in drafting the latest version of draconian laws that will do little to stop infringement, but which will have tremendous unintended consequences, including the potential to stifle widespread legitimate forms of expression.

TorrentFreak reports on the latest anti-piracy bill being put forth in Norway, which includes site-blocking provisions:

In May 2011 the Ministry of Culture announced that it had put forward proposals for amendments to the Copyright Act which would “..give licensees the tools they need to follow-up on copyright infringement on the Internet, while protecting privacy.”

The key proposals included making it easier for rightsholders to identify infringers from their IP addresses and amendments to the law to allow ISP-level blocking of sites deemed to be infringing copyright.

The article quotes people who are quite worried about what this will mean in practice. When every copyright holder can seek to completely shut down a site, the likelihood of trouble is immense. Already, here in the US, we see regular abuse of the DMCA to take down specific content that people deem infringing, but which is often just content they don't like. Imagine the ability to do that on a larger scale, such that it doesn't just take down the content, but entire sites.

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Danish Court Orders Spanish Site Blocked Because It Uses Trademarked English Word 'Home' As Part Of Its Name

Glyn Moody — Mon, 7 Jan 2013 03:33:43 PST

Daft trademarking stories are common enough, but it's always fun to come across new variations on the theme. Netzpolitik points us to this story from Denmark, where a Spanish-owned property site called HomelifeSpain.com ran into trouble because the word "home" was trademarked in Denmark by the Danish property site home.dk. This resulted in the rather incredible remedy of the website itself being banned entirely. As Netzpolitik notes, this is classic function creep: such web blocks were introduced to fight -- you guessed it -- child pornography, and yet here they are being applied in the rather less serious matter of trademark infringement.

Moreover, it's hard to see why such a common word as "home" was allowed as a trademark in the first place. It's true it's in English, rather than Danish, but even so, trademark examiners would surely have known that granting one company an exclusive monopoly of the common English word "home" in Denmark for certain domains was bound to cause problems somewhere down the line, given the globalized nature of business today. The fact that a Spanish company is now being blocked there because of a Danish trademark granted on an English word proves the point nicely.

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Israeli Bill Would Allow Secret Courts To Issue Confidential Warrants To Block Web Sites Allegedly Involved In Copyright Infringement

Glyn Moody — Wed, 2 Jan 2013 09:41:39 PST

One of the most depressing developments in recent years has been the gradual adoption of legal approaches to tackling copyright infringement that a few years ago would have been regarded as totally unacceptable, and the hallmarks of a tinpot republic run by some ridiculous dictator. Here's another example, this time from Israel, involving secret courts and inscrutable judgments, as Jonathan Klinger explains:

Israel is to attempt, again, to pass a bill that authorizes police officers to issue warrants to Internet service providers to block or restrict access to specific websites involved either in gambling, child pornography or copyright infringement. The bill itself proposes that such administrative procedures shall be clandestine and that court decisions shall be made ex-parte, where some of the court's ruling will not be even disclosed to the owner of the website, and the court may hear and use inadmissible evidence.

So not only are we talking about a process that can be conducted in secret, based on "inadmissible evidence" and in the absence of the accused (ex-parte), but one where core aspects of the final judgment may be withheld from the individuals affected, who will therefore have no way of knowing what they stand accused of, and hence no way of challenging the block.

Some might regard this as proportionate when combatting crimes as serious as child pornography; but undermining basic principles of law to tackle gambling sites, or those allegedly providing unauthorized access to copyright materials, seems an incredibly high price to pay for very little benefit. It's yet another indication of the way in which a continuing but unwinnable war on sharing has seriously damaged fundamental aspects of how justice and society now function.

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Australian Government Announces That It Is Dropping Mandatory ISP Filtering...But Still Wants Filtering

Glyn Moody — Thu, 8 Nov 2012 14:30:17 PST

Techdirt has been writing about Australia's plans to join the online censorship club for almost three years. Now, in a surprise move pointed out to us on Twitter by @Asher_Wolf, the Australian government has announced that it is dropping the plans -- sort of:

The Federal Government has formally abandoned plans to introduce legislation for mandatory ISP filtering, closing a dark chapter in politics concerning Australia's internet.

However, confusingly, it does still want Australian Net feeds to be filtered: Instead, internet service providers will be directed by the Government and the Australian Federal Police to block "child abuse websites" that feature on an INTERPOL block list.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said in a statement that "Australia's largest ISPs have been issued notices requiring them to block these illegal sites in accordance with their obligations under the Telecommunications Act 1997".
Most people would probably approve of blocking that particular class of sites, but there are some wider issues here. First, it's a little disingenuous of the Australian government to claim that it is dropping plans to censor the Internet, since it plainly still intends to do that, albeit in a specific area. As we know from experience elsewhere, once the apparatus of censorship is in place, there is always pressure to add sites unrelated to the original blocking list.

The other issue is whether this nominal climbdown was part of the plan all along. After all, it's a standard tactic to make totally outrageous initial demands so that anything less seems almost reasonable by comparison. Or perhaps this was Plan B: try to push through ISP filtering as Plan A, and if that fails, drop back to "limited" censorship.

Since it seems unlikely that those who fought against the general censorship plans will be able to muster much support for the idea of not blocking child abuse sites, the key question now is whether it will be possible to stop this approach turning into precisely the kind of ISP filtering that the Australian government claims to have abandoned.

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Sticking It To The (Camera) Man: Inventor Develops License Plate Frame That Defeats Red Light Cameras

Tim Cushing — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 15:48:00 PDT

Tech is all about disruption. When a problem presents itself, someone will find a way to route around it. Red light cameras, the controversial jackpot generators favored by certain law enforcement agencies, are the problem. The solution?

Jonathan Dandrow has developed noPhoto, which renders the pix snapped by those revenue-generating robo-cams useless. The technology behind noPhoto is fairly simple. At the top of the gadget, which doubles as a license plate frame, there’s an optical flash trigger that detects the flash of the traffic-light camera. That trigger sets off one or both xenon flashes in the sides of the noPhoto, so when the traffic-light camera opens its shutter, there’s too much light and the picture of your license plate is overexposed. Big Brother can’t read your plate.

Some will argue that technology like this will only be used by scofflaws wishing to run red lights. But as the inventor points out, there's plenty of shady activity on the other side of the camera, not the least of which is some more erosion of civil liberties.

“I just had a lot of reservations about the cameras,” Dandrow says. “They are trying to circumvent the constitution.”

As Gary Biller, the president of the National Motorists Association, recently wrote in U.S. News and World Report, traffic-light cameras violate “several key tenets of a citizen’s due process rights,” because there is “no certifiable witness to the alleged violation,” and so therefore, “the defendant loses the right to cross-examine his accuser in court.”

This isn't just an overreaction from minor league anarchists. Once the camera has "decided" you're guilty, that's it. Arguing your innocence is next to impossible. Case in point: this woman's ordeal with being falsely accused by a red light camera.

The New Star-Ledger’s Bamboozled column has the story of a woman whose license was suspended by authorities in New Jersey for a red-light ticket, even though the car in the photo is clearly not hers — oh, and she hadn’t even been in the Garden State in more than a year when the violation occurred.

Despite having moved from New Jersey to Colorado 18 months before being ticketed, she still had to jump through a ridiculous number of hoops to clear her record and get her suspended license back. Starting with the city staff in Edison Township calling her a liar and a long game of paperwork tennis between the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission and the township, it finally reached the point where the driver realized it would be easier to pay the fees than travel 1800 miles for a court date. Appealing the ticket runs $75 plus fees and a personal appearance. The final breakdown? $200 to restore her license plus $81 for the ticket and $33 in court costs. $314 to clear a ticket issued to the wrong person.

Despite the obvious flaws in the "camera-as-cop" system, there's a very good chance Dandrow's noPhoto will be forced off the market before too long. There's already a law against obscured license plates. But will that hold when the license plate is only obscured when being photographed? The other angle will likely be "concern" about "safety," as if this bit of civil disobedience will lead to rampant red-light running. Will some people ignore red lights if they have this equipped? Sure, but I doubt they'll use it to drive through heavily-trafficked intersections against the lights. This will most likely result in a few more "California stops" at quiet intersections. If the cops don't like this, maybe they should consider the example they set when they flip the light bar on momentarily to blow through traffic signals.

If this disruption hastens the demise of the rightfully-maligned red light camera, so much the better. The cameras, which some municipalities adore for their money-making ability, have been linked to increased accidents and shady law enforcement activity, like issuing tickets signed by a deceased patrolman, lowering the yellow light time to increase the chance of violations, and lying about the length of a red light to hide the fact a bogus ticket had been issued. Fighting back against technology being used badly for lousy ends with a simple, effective solution is the best kind of disruption.

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Empirical Data Suggests That Website Blocking Is A Useless Weapon Against Infringement

Ben Zevenbergen — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 10:28:42 PDT

Calls for evidence-based policy-making in the copyright domain are increasing on both sides of the Atlantic. How do we best regulate the fair remuneration of artists? How do we enforce it? Evidence based on sound methodologies and research is slowly but surely appearing. Now the highly respected Institute for Information Law (IViR) of the University of Amsterdam joins the league of evidence-givers with a new report, Filesharing 2©12, Downloading in The Netherlands, about how blocking websites is not a worthwhile remedy (The report is in Dutch, but the executive summary is translated. It was an initiative by the IViR itself and was partly financed by the Ministry of Culture, Education and Research, some ISP's, Dutch society for professionals in the book industry and done in collaboration with several other institutes. Small disclaimer: I did my masters at this institute).

Economist Joost Poort explains his main findings:

"The most surprising result for me is that the act of downloading from an unauthorized source seems to have peaked and is now declining. This is most likely due to the actions of the music industry, who have been successfully experimenting with new business models."

There you go, music industry! You're doing it right! It seems like everyone is winning in the Netherlands: illegal downloads decreasing, new business models (streaming, advertising) successfully competing with abundant free supply, and paying customers. In fact, the study shows that some two thirds of consumers are willing to pay around the current retail prices for content. I can't back this up, but it seems reasonable to suggest that this is the same amount of people who would have shelled out cash back in the day of optical discs, or CD's as those clumsy shiny discs used to be called. Remember all those thieving fans who proudly owned huge tape collections with self-decorated covers of the copied albums? If you don't, you must be younger than 25. However, not all is good news. Poort continues:

"The downloading of films and series from unauthorized sources is on the rise. This shows that enforcement is not the reason for decreased downloading of music, since successful enforcement would not only have an effect on music, but on all media offered by blocked websites, such as the Pirate Bay"

Note that ThePirateBay.org is blocked in the Netherlands, pending appeals in several cases. Poort elaborates:

"The reactions from consumers show clearly that the blockade of the Pirate Bay website is not relevant to about 75% of them. This is because they never downloaded from illegal sources anyway, or stopped downloading since legal services have taken off or they had enough money to pay for content. The other 25% seems fairly unaffected by the injunction. Only 5% have indicated they actually started downloading less, not a shockingly large effect to put it mildly."."

To say this is an interesting finding is an understatement of epic proportions. This finding gives decisive evidence that blocking access to websites, services or content distribution methods is a bogus way of addressing an innovating customer base. To repeat, but in more joyous terms: Hey Policymakers! Honorable Judges! Here's the evidence you've been waiting for! Ha, turns out that blocking websites is an ineffective way to change consumer behavior after all. Gosh, if only someone had predicted this before... Would've saved us all quite some hassle, right?!

Well then, now this is settled, time to focus all the wasted litigation and lobbying money for restrictive measures on R&D. The legal services are still in their infancy and have so much potential. The better they get; the more people will pull out their wallets to pay for access. You wouldn't want to be the only kid left behind who can't access all the great content made available through 4G network phones and super fast broadband by really easy to use services, would you?

Thinking about it this way, affordable, user-friendly and all encompassing services for music, films and books may even increase the paying user base from 67% to... 100%?! Maybe not quite 100%, but more research is needed for this new and possible social phenomenon of peer-pressure to pay for media and at the same time the reversal of the old media model: huge paying consumer bases for the cultural sector due to abundant and ubiquitous availability, instead of artificial scarcity and thriving "piracy". Record execs must be throwing money at their screens by now, reading about this not-quite-so-hypothetical but under-researched gap in the market.

Of course, we must not forget that part of the financing team is currently in appeal for a court ruling, which forced ISP's to block ThePirateBay.org. This blogger is happy to keep you updated of any developments in the already legendary Dutch copyright fisticuffs of 2012!

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Indian ISP Penalized For 'Overblocking' In Obeying Court Order To Try To Stop Infringement

Mike Masnick — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 07:47:51 PDT

We've written a couple of times about Indian ISPs overblocking websites in response to vague court orders to try to prevent copyright infringement of a particular film. The responses seemed like massive overkill, such as blocking complete access to certain sites -- including sites like Vimeo -- that have perfectly legitimate reasons for existing. It seems that this overkill may be coming back to haunt some ISPs. Airtel has now been penalized by a Consumer Forum in India for going too far with its blocks. Airtel was ordered to pay one of its customers 20,000 rupees (or about $360) for "deficiency in Internet service, thereby causing mental anguish to the complaintant."

The order said that Airtel misinterpreted the original court order, and couldn't justify its actions by hiding behind it.

“By misinterpreting the Madras High Court order, Airtel blocked entire websites. It is needless to say that the company’s actions amount to deficiency in service as well as unfair trade practice,” said the forum.

Of course, the article goes on to note that there has been some confusion over what was originally asked to be blocked. The anti-piracy company, Copyright Labs, who asked for the block order, claimed that it had only asked for specific infringing URLs to be blocked, but a freedom of information request revealed that it had actually asked for blocking of entire websites.

All in all, this highlights some of the many problems that occur when you give copyright holders the power to order outright censorship. It's good to see some push-back. If other customers in India file similar complaints, perhaps ISPs will think twice before engaging in widespread censorship.

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Justice Department IT Staff So Incompetent They Block All Webex Conferences

Mike Masnick — Fri, 3 Aug 2012 05:20:17 PDT

We've heard all sorts of random stories about over-aggressive IT staffs or filters that block random websites for no good reason, but sometimes the situations are truly bizarre. For example, a friend sent over an announcement concerning a webinar from the DC District Court about the Electronic Case Filing (ECF) system. Obviously this is a useful thing for lawyers and law enforcement to understand. So it struck us as interesting to see the following tidbit in the emailed announcement:

SPECIAL NOTE TO DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE ATTORNEYS/STAFF:
The WebEx web conferencing website is not accessible to DOJ attorneys/staff due to internet blocks set in place by your IT department, therefore you are unable to register for a webinar training class or participate in the WebEx training room session itself. However, the option to participate in only the teleconference portion of the training class is available and will still prove useful.

Really, now? We've already had reasons to question the technical competence of the DOJ, but to do a complete block of all Webex webinars? Overkill much?

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Danish Police Accidentally Censor Over 8,000 Sites As Child Porn... Including Facebook & Google

Mike Masnick — Mon, 5 Mar 2012 07:24:18 PST

Reminiscent of the mooo.com screwup in the US, where Homeland Security's ICE division "accidentally" seized 84,000 sites and plastered them over with a warning graphic about how they'd been seized by the US government for child porn, the Danish police similarly "accidentally" had 8,000 legitimate sites declared as child porn sites that needed to be blocked. Among the sites listed? Google and Facebook. Visitors to those sites, from ISP Siminn were greeted with the following message (translated, of course):

The National High Tech Crime Center of the Danish National Police [NITEC], who assist in investigations into crime on the internet, has informed Siminn Denmark A/S, that the internet page which your browser has tried to get in contact with may contain material which could be regarded as child pornography...

Upon the request of The National High Tech Crime Center of the Danish National Police, Siminn Denmark A/S has blocked the access to the internet page.

And people wonder why so many people around the world were so concerned about the threat of something like SOPA -- which would make DNS blocking at the ISP level a lot more common.

So how did this "accident" happen?

According to NITEC chief Johnny Lundberg, it began when an employee at the police center decided to move from his own computer to that of a colleague.

“He sat down and was about to make an investigation, and in doing so he placed a list of legitimate sites in the wrong folder,” Lundberg explained. “Before becoming aware of the error, two ISPs retrieved the list of sites.”

It would seem that there's a problem in this process. The fact that just one employee can change the list seems wide open to abuse. And the fact that the list seems somewhat automated beyond that is even more problematic. You know what would solve this problem? A little thing called due process. What a concept.

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Ireland Signs Controversial 'Irish SOPA' Into Law; Kicks Off New Censorship Regime

Mike Masnick — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 16:08:32 PST

Remember how EMI sued the Irish government for failing to pass a SOPA-like law that will force ISPs to act as copyright cops and censor and block access to websites that the entertainment industry doesn't like? Well, apparently, the end result is that the Irish government has now signed the bill into law. This happened despite widespread protests in Ireland against the bill.

The Irish Minister for Research and Innovation, Sean Sherlock, is insisting that the final version of the bill is much more limited than earlier proposals, and that it took guidance from recent EU Court of Justice rulings that say ISPs shouldn't have to be proactive about blocking. That still means that copyright holders can petition to force ISPs to block all access to various websites, and as we've seen in other countries in Europe, you can bet that the major record labels and studios will be doing just that very soon (if they haven't already) -- though their track record on properly calling out infringement isn't very good.

Sherlock, apparently realizing just how bad this looks to the citizenry, is trying to balance this announcement out by also saying that he's launching the "next stage" of the process to review copyright in Ireland, with the goal of "removing barriers to innovation." This is an ongoing process that we first wrote about last year, when the country realized that existing copyright law was holding back innovation.

Of course, the end result is that the government appears to be trying to move in two different directions at once. On the one hand, it's catering to the legacy entertainment industry interests and hindering the internet as the platform that enables new business models... while at the same time paying lip service to how it has to increase such innovation. Here's a tip: the first thing towards increasing innovation in business models online is not putting misplaced liability on service providers, not setting up a censorship regime, and not removing the incentives for the entertainment industry to actually embrace innovative business models.

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The Pirate Bay May Get Blocked In The UK; That'll Stop The Infringement

Mike Masnick — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 13:59:00 PST

Now that the UK has decided its fine and dandy to censor websites because they might help someone somewhere find some infringing content, they continue to try to broaden that censorship ability. The latest target, not surprisingly, is The Pirate Bay, who is likely to be blocked following a ruling that slams the site for failing to make any efforts to stop infringement (though, it's not clear why it's TPB's responsibility to fix the entertainment industry's broken business model).

The full ruling is an interesting read, though it notes that no one from TPB was there to defend the site. It also appears to get basic facts wrong -- on information that is widely, publicly available, such as in claiming that Carl Lunstrom was an "operator" for the site. He was not. That said, it seems totally pointless to block TPB, because the site can (and will) spring up with its entire same contents on another domain (or many, many domains) minutes after such a block is in place. It's not just a game of wac-a-mole, it's encouraging more moles and more holes. It makes you wonder what the point of this really would be.

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Two Contradictory Paths In The UK When It Comes To Copyright Issues

Mike Masnick — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 23:56:41 PST

It's been a bit hard to understand what's been going on in the UK concerning copyright reform when we keep hearing two very contradictory messages. On one side, there's the ridiculous Digital Economy Act, which was proposed by the unelected, debated by the ignorant and voted on by the absent in order to put in place much stricter copyright laws, including putting much of the burden on online service providers. That process is continuing to expand with plans to make the censorship part of the bill even clearer. Those behind the law, when pressed, admitted that they had absolutely no evidence to support the claimed need for this law.

And yet, while all of this was happening, there was also the Hargreaves Report, which was a very reasonable look at copyright issues, which listed out a bunch of pretty tame recommendations (so tame that creating a "fair use" policy was seen as too controversial). Of course, it also was pretty clear that the UK should stop its faith-based copyright regulating, and no more changes should be made to the laws without solid economic evidence.

So guess which process is getting attacked? You guessed it. The latter process, as Member of Parliament (MP) Peter Wishart apparently went on the attack against the Hargreaves report and the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) that commissioned it. Peter Bradwell, over at the Open Rights Group, hits back by noting that it's pretty ridiculous to question the IPO while ignoring everything going on with the Digital Economy Act, which came out of a different part of the goverment: the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). Bradwell's article breaks down the differences here:

So to caricature the two departments: one is asking for evidence and consulting widely and openly. One has spent the past few years consulting narrowly, opaquely, and with no evidence or analysis to speak of.

The IPO come under fire in Peter Wishart's speech for being sloppy with evidence and ignoring the creative industries. DCMS' proposals are to be 'got on with'. He calls the IPO 'a bureaucratic front to devalue the people whom it is supposed to support' which the Government must 'get to grips with'.

That is slightly strange. The issue of policy making for copyright involves managing a complex mix of evidence, principle and opinion. Disagreement, and the management and channeling of that disagreement in the formulation of policy, are two separate things. Whatever position one takes on the substance of this debate about IP, there is a right way and a wrong way to make public policy. It has to be democratically legitimate, open, transparent and involve proper debate. Over the past 12 months, the IPO has beaten DCMS hands down on that metric.

Yeah, but being open, transparent and relying on actual evidence isn't just hard work -- the big content gatekeepers don't like it when that happens. And we have to support them at all costs, apparently...

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If The RIAA Wants To Talk About Misinformation Campaigns, Let's Start With The RIAA's Misinformation Campaign

Mike Masnick — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 07:08:11 PST

We already walked through the ridiculousness of RIAA boss Cary Sherman claiming that the reason SOPA/PIPA were defeated was because of a "misinformation" campaign on the part of some tech companies. Tons of folks who have followed the RIAA for years probably broke out in open laughter when we saw this statement from Sherman:

Misinformation may be a dirty trick, but it works.

Because, if anyone knows that "misinformation works," it's Cary Sherman, who is famous for his ability to run vast misinformation campaigns to get bills passed. Thankfully, Ernest Falcon, over at Public Knowledge decided that if Sherman wanted to open the door to discussing "misinformation campaigns" concerning SOPA/PIPA, we might as well focus on the biggest one of all: the claims by the MPAA and RIAA that DNS blocking was no big deal:

During the legislative hearing on SOPA, House Homeland Security Subcommittee Chairman on Cybersecurity Rep. Dan Lungren (R-CA) questioned MPAA Exec. Vice President Michael O’Leary about the cybersecurity problem. In response he received the standard misinformation campaign line of there was no cybersecurity problem and that this type of activity “occurred all the time.” To bolster their misinformation campaign, the content lobby worked hard to manufacture the “truth” by highlighting the work of the very small number of individuals (a grand total of three) who wrote “technical rebuttals.” These were not so much rebuttals as they were well orchestrated advocacy pieces that ignored the engineering and distorted the studies they utilized in order to dupe Members of Congress to believe the legitimate concerns were in fact unsupported.
Part of the RIAA and MPAA misinformation campaign centered on the argument that DNS filtering and secure networks (DNSSEC) could both exist in the same network. This was despite the fact that top experts in the field provided an extensive explanation why that would not be technologically possible (a couple of these individuals actually saved the Internet in the past). In the end, when Comcast (a SOPA supporter) announced they had to shut down anything that filters DNS traffic when they activated DNSSEC and the White House Cybersecurity Coordinator stated that the bills “pose a real risk to cybersecurity,” the jig was up.

Lastly, claiming that censorship concerns in regards to DNS filtering were misplaced completely ignores the fact that SOPA and PIPA moved America closer to censorship oriented regimes. If these bills were enacted into law, American broadband providers would have been required to install the same filtering technology used in China, Iran, United Arab Emirates, Armenia, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Bahrain, Burma (Myanmar), Syria, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam. This reality triggered the outpouring of opposition from the international human rights community who fight censorship overseas every day and point to the United States as the model. Summing up the well informed reasoning behind their opposition, Julian Sanchez with the Cato Institute points out that enacting SOPA and PIPA would mean the “only difference between the Unites States and China is what's on the blacklist.”

Part of the RIAA's favorite tactics is to pull out all the dirty tricks in the book... and any time people call them on it, to accuse the other side of using the dirty tricks that were really being used by the RIAA. It's a classic DC-insider move, but in this day and age, where the internet can route around lies, it's going to backfire, as it did here. All you have to do is look at the comments on the original Sherman NY Times piece, where upwards of 90% of the comments call Sherman out for his ridiculous claims. Sherman has the old playbook, the one where those who knew the truth couldn't speak back. If he had paid attention at all to what happened in the SOPA/PIPA debate he would have know that playbook doesn't work any more. But, it's all he knows. If the major labels were smart (don't laugh), they'd dump Sherman and put someone in place who actually gets the internet.

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The End Of The Global Internet? Google's Blogger Starts Using Country-Specific Domains To Permit Local Censorship

Glyn Moody — Wed, 1 Feb 2012 13:43:45 PST

Twitter has taken quite a lot of heat for putting in place the capability to block tweets on a geographical basis. This begins to look a little unfair in light of the fact that Google quietly adopted a similar policy before Twitter. That's shown by the answer to a question on Google's Blogger site about blogs being redirected to country-specific URLs, which at the time of writing was last updated on 9 January 2012. Here's what it says:

Q: Why am I seeing a URL change?
A: Over the coming weeks you might notice that the URL of a blog you're reading has been redirected to a country-code top level domain, or "ccTLD." For example, if you're in Australia and viewing [blogname].blogspot.com, you might be redirected [blogname].blogspot.com.au. A ccTLD, when it appears, corresponds with the country of the reader’s current location.

Google is quite frank about why it is doing this: Q: Why is this happening?
A: Migrating to localized domains will allow us to continue promoting free expression and responsible publishing while providing greater flexibility in complying with valid removal requests pursuant to local law. By utilizing ccTLDs, content removals can be managed on a per country basis, which will limit their impact to the smallest number of readers. Content removed due to a specific country’s law will only be removed from the relevant ccTLD.
This is not only what Twitter is doing, but employs exactly the same topsy-turvy logic: by enabling local censorship, we are promoting free expression. That in itself is obviously troubling, not least because Google may be setting off down a slippery slope that sees all of its services segmented by geography to avoid local problems. But there's an even deeper issue.

If more and more companies follow the lead of Google and Twitter, as seems quite likely, it could represent the beginning of the end of the truly global Internet. In its place will be an increasingly balkanized online world subject to a patchwork of local laws. Looks like geography just made a comeback.

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Misguided Twitter Protests... And Why Twitter Could Have Explained Itself Better

Mike Masnick — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 02:36:48 PST

Last week, Twitter announced that it now had the ability to block tweets geographically, if necessary. As we noted at the time, this appeared to be a way to limit the impact of censorship to certain countries. That is, rather than completely taking down content (as it would do before), instead it would limit the blocks to just the geographic region. On top of that, it would be quite transparent about this -- posting all info to ChillingEffects, and trying to let users know if they were visiting the page of a censored tweet.

Unfortunately, many people interpreted this as Twitter giving in to censors and allowing censorship. But that's a misreading of the situation. Again: Twitter already takes down content when required by law. Now it's trying to limit such takedowns. However, because people interpreted this to mean it was getting into the censorship business, there were protests against Twitter, which I think missed the point entirely.

The folks over at EFF have a good explainer post that details why this policy actually means less censorship, not more.

That said, Twitter still deserves some of the blame for the way in which it presented this. While it mentioned it in passing, it should have focused much more heavily on the fact that this was an attempt to limit the ability of countries to more widely censor info. Of course, there are some who believe Twitter should simply stand up against any and all attempts to take down content -- but the fact is that there are legal situations in which content is ordered to be taken down via a court order. In this case, Twitter is providing a lot more info and transparency than it was before. That's a good thing... but it's really not how they positioned their own story.

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Twitter Decides To Censor Locally, Rather Than Block Globally, In Response To Government Demands

Mike Masnick — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 20:01:00 PST

Twitter just announced that it has set up the ability to block content on a country specific basis (e.g., if Germany demanded some content be taken down, Twitter can now just have that content blocked in Germany). I know some people saw this and got upset about "censorship!" but looking at the details, it actually looks like Twitter is doing a smart thing here. You could argue that the proper response would be to stand up to local governments and say, "sorry, we don't block anything" -- and I'd actually have sympathy with that response. But the truth is that if a government is demanding censorship, then Twitter is likely going to have to comply or face complete blocking. The solution that it came up with is somewhat more elegant: it will just block the specific content in the specific location and (importantly) will try to let users know that the content is blocked while also sending as much info as it can to the Chilling Effects website so that people can learn about what's being censored. This is a lot more transparent and hopefully actually shines more light on efforts to censor Twitter.

As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression. Some differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there. Others are similar but, for historical or cultural reasons, restrict certain types of content, such as France or Germany, which ban pro-Nazi content.

Until now, the only way we could take account of those countries’ limits was to remove content globally. Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country — while keeping it available in the rest of the world. We have also built in a way to communicate transparently to users when content is withheld, and why.

We haven’t yet used this ability, but if and when we are required to withhold a Tweet in a specific country, we will attempt to let the user know, and we will clearly mark when the content has been withheld. As part of that transparency, we’ve expanded our partnership with Chilling Effects to share this new page, http://chillingeffects.org/twitter, which makes it easier to find notices related to Twitter.

Oh, one useful tidbit of info? While it says it hasn't had to use this country by country blocking yet... and it uses the example of Nazi-related content, the place where it's already been censoring content... is in the US, in response to DMCA complaints as per Danny Sullivan:

Twitter’s already been pulling content where piracy or copyright claims are lodged, under the existing DMCA law. Today’s announcement isn’t changing that, though potentially, Twitter might begin disclosing DMCA takedowns within its own search results and Twitter timelines. That doesn’t happen yet, but Twitter says it hopes to do so over time.

We've covered some of those activities in the past, and if this actually brings more attention to highly questionable takedowns (such as many we've seen issued to Twitter...) that might actually be a good thing.

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Blocking The Net 'Not The European Option' -- EU Commissioner Reding

Glyn Moody — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 04:06:39 PST

One of the useful side-effects of the groundswell of protest against SOPA and PIPA is that a surprising number of people in positions of power have come out against their approach, notably in Europe. First, we had Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda for Europe, who tweeted:

Glad tide is turning on #SOPA: don't need bad legislation when should be safeguarding benefits of open net.

And now she's been joined by her colleague, Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship: "The protection of creators must never be used as pretext to intervene in the freedom of the Internet," Reding told an international Internet conference in the southern German city of Munich, noting the "heated debate" surrounding the issue.
That's an interesting comment to make when the European Commission-supported ACTA is arguably doing precisely that. For example, the academics Douwe Korff and Ian Brown prepared a report on ACTA in October last year at the request of the Greens/European Free Alliance group in the European Parliament. Here's what they wrote in on the topic of ACTA and fundamental rights in their conclusion: Overall, ACTA tilts the balance of IPR protection manifestly unfairly towards one group of beneficiaries of the right to property, IP right holders, and unfairly against others. It equally disproportionately interferes with a range of other fundamental rights, and provides or allows for the determination of such rights in procedures that fail to allow for the taking into account of the different, competing interests, but rather, stack all the weight at one end. This makes the entire Agreement, in our opinion, incompatible with fundamental European human rights instruments and standards.
In her comments at the German conference, Reding went on to make an even more interesting statement: "You'll never have from Europe a blocking of the Internet -- that's not the European option," she said.
If she meant it, then that's an extremely important line in the sand given that the blocking of sites has already started in Finland, the Netherlands, and the UK. It will be interesting to see if she and her colleagues back those words up with any action.

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Indian Judge Tells Google And Facebook To 'Check And Remove Objectionable Material' Or Be Blocked

Glyn Moody — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 12:20:00 PST

A few weeks back, Techdirt reported on an Indian minister asking Internet companies to do the impossible:

The Indian government has asked Internet companies and social media sites like Facebook to prescreen user content from India and to remove disparaging, inflammatory or defamatory content before it goes online, three executives in the information technology industry say.

At the time, you could dismiss this as just the usual grandstanding by a politician trying to score points with the home audience. It now seems that things are much more serious than that. koolhead17 sends us news that an Indian High Court judge is not only asking for pretty much the same impossible things, but threatening to block sites "like in China" if they don't: The Delhi high court today warned social networking site Facebook India and search engine Google India that websites can be "blocked" like in China if they fail to devise a mechanism to check and remove objectionable material from their web pages. "Like China, we will block all such websites," Justice Suresh Kait said while asking counsel for Facebook and Google India to develop a mechanism to keep a check and remove "offensive and objectionable" material from their web pages.
Worryingly, this lack of comprehension about what is technically possible is not confined to India, as the debates around SOPA have revealed only too painfully.

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Paul Vixie Explains, In Great Detail, Why You Don't Want 'Policy Analysts' Determining DNS Rules

Mike Masnick — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 15:50:42 PST

There's been plenty of talk, obviously, about the problems with SOPA and PIPA and how they treat DNS as a tool for blocking, despite the massive problems it causes for security efforts like DNSSEC. Every single working engineer who's spoken out on this issue (that we've seen, at least), has made this same point. We've even heard from techies within the government saying the same thing. And, of course, even Comcast itself (despite supposedly being in favor of the bill) proudly admits that DNS blocking is incompatible with DNSSEC. Even as the House and Senate are trying to punt on DNS issue, they still fully expect to put it in place at a later date, so it's important to discuss why it's a bad, bad idea.

So far, the "pro-SOPA/PIPA" folks haven't been able to find a legitimate working technologist who says that these plans make sense. Instead, they've brought out some "policy analysts" who have some basic technology background, but not a deep understanding of DNS. But, because they can toss around some tech terms, SOPA/PIPA supporters think they sound credible. However, in his latest post on the subject, Vixie walks through a step-by-step explanation for why each suggested method of DNS blocking won't work and/or breaks DNSSEC. Basically, these "policy analysts" keep suggesting different ways that they think DNS blocking could work, and Vixie explains why they're wrong each time, and points out the importance of actually having DNS engineers do DNS engineering -- not policy analysts.

For example an early draft of this legislative package called for DNS redirection of malicious domain names in conflict with the end-to-end DNS Security system (DNSSEC). Any such redirection would be trivially detected as a man in the middle attack by secure clients and would thus be indistinguishable from the kind of malevolent attacks that DNSSEC is designed to prevent. After the impossibility of redirection was shown supporters of PIPA and SOPA admitted that a redirection (for example, showing an "FBI Warning" page when an American consumer tried to access a web site dedicated to piracy or infringement) was not actually necessary. Their next idea was no better: to return a false No Such Domain (NXDOMAIN) signal. When the DNS technical community pointed out that NXDOMAIN had the same end-to-end security as a normal DNS answer and that false NXDOMAIN would be detected and rejected by secure clients the supporters SOPA and PIPA changed their proposal once again.

The second to latest idea for some technologically noninvasive way to respond to a DNS lookup request for a pirate or infringing domain name was "just don't answer". That is, simulate network loss and let the question "time out". When the DNS technical community explained that this would lead to long and mysterious delays in web browser behavior as well as an increased traffic load on ISP name servers due to the built in "retry logic" of all DNS clients in all consumer facing devices, we were ignored. However when we also observed that a DNSSEC client would treat this kind of "time out" as evidence of damage by the local hotel or coffee shop wireless gateway and could reasonably respond by trying alternative servers or proxies or even VPN paths in order to get a secure answer, the supporters of SOPA and PIPA agreed with this and moved right along.

The latest idea is to use the Administrative Denial (REFUSED) response code, which as originally defined seemed perfect for this situation. To me this latest proposal as well as the road we've travelled getting to this point seems like an excellent example of why network protocols should be designed by engineers....

And yet... it's not being designed by DNS engineers at all. It's being designed by policy people, with a smattering of help from some former technologists who don't really understand DNS. That seems like a pretty big problem.

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Insane Entitlement: EMI Sues Irish Gov't For Not Passing SOPA-Like Censorship Law

Mike Masnick — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 10:49:05 PST

The sense of entitlement exhibited by the legacy players in the entertainment industry is now reaching positively insane levels -- highlighted by the news that major record label EMI (in the process of being acquired by Universal Music to make it the largest record label by far) is suing the Irish government because it feels the Irish government is taking too long to pass a SOPA-like law that would require ISPs to censor the internet and block access to sites it doesn't like. I'm not kidding. Apparently, because the legislative process is too slow, it feels the need to sue.

In another article on the lawsuit, EMI Ireland's CEO complains that the length of time it's taking the government to craft such a censorship bill is "leading me to believe it’s unlikely to satisfy the music industry’s requirement for injunctive relief."

Think about that for a second. The major record labels have such an insane sense of entitlement, they think that any bill they declare that they "require" must become law, or they can sue the government. More specifically, EMI is effectively confessing here that it's upset that the government isn't sharing the bill ahead of time with EMI or others in the industry. Again, the massive sense of entitlement of these guys is such that they expect that they get to write the laws, and when they're left out of the process, they get to sue over it. And yet, on every one of these laws, the people actually impacted by them -- the public -- get no real say or can't see them. Remember ACTA? The public was left totally in the dark, while RIAA/MPAA officials and others had pretty detailed access and the ability to help craft the bills. And yet, when EMI doesn't get to see a draft of a bill, and it makes them think that it won't go the way they want, they sue? Damn.

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Dutch ISPs Told To Block The Pirate Bay

Mike Masnick — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 15:44:41 PST

For a few years now, some Dutch ISPs have been fighting a court order that demanded they block the Pirate Bay, trying to appeal to basic common sense of not making a third party liable:

"The basic principle of the Internet is that ISPs pass on traffic to their customers unfiltered, they are merely a gateway," says Niels Huijbregts, spokesman for XS4ALL. "The Pirate Bay website is not hosted on a Ziggo server, so Ziggo can't be held responsible for restricting access to the website. BREIN is targeting the wrong people."

Unfortunately, it appears the Dutch courts have no time for common sense, as they've rejected this argument (in Dutch) and given ISPs 10 days to figure out how to block sites or face huge fines (10,000 euros per day, and potentially a total of 250,000 euros).

Of course, we've seen this game before. Multiple times. Some technologically clueless court orders a block... and within a very short period of time (sometimes before the blocking even begins) services start springing up to get around the block. This leads to some free advertising for the site, but no apparent decrease in infringement.

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