<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<rss version="2.0"
xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/"
xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/">
<channel>
<title>Techdirt. Stories filed under &quot;forgery&quot;</title>
<description>Easily digestible tech news...</description>
<link>http://www.techdirt.com/</link>
<language>en-us</language>
<image><title>Techdirt. Stories filed under &quot;forgery&quot;</title><url>http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gif</url><link>http://www.techdirt.com/</link></image>
<item>
<pubDate>Fri, 6 Jul 2012 07:07:00 PDT</pubDate>
<title>Def Leppard Covers Its Own Songs With 'Forgeries' To Fight Back Against Universal Music</title>
<dc:creator>Mike Masnick</dc:creator>
<link>http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120706/04162619600/def-leppard-covers-its-own-songs-with-forgeries-to-fight-back-against-universal-music.shtml</link>
<guid>http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120706/04162619600/def-leppard-covers-its-own-songs-with-forgeries-to-fight-back-against-universal-music.shtml</guid>
<description><![CDATA[ As we recently noted, there are <a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120704/19004819580/throwing-rocks-through-your-windows-cover-artists-beating-original-artists-to-market.shtml">compulsory licenses</a> for doing cover song recordings, such that you don't need to ask for permission.  It appears that the band Def Leppard is now taking advantage of that in an attempt to fight back against Universal Music (who they feel owe them royalties) by <a href="http://www.billboard.com/news/def-leppard-recording-forgeries-of-old-hits-1007484752.story#/news/def-leppard-recording-forgeries-of-old-hits-1007484752.story" target="_blank">re-recording their entire back catalog</a> (sent in by a bunch of you) and re-releasing them.  They're referring to their own re-recordings as "forgeries."
<blockquote><i>
With newly recorded "forgeries" of "Pour Some Sugar on Me" and "Rock of Ages" now available, the quintet has begun a series of re-recordings of its catalog material and "wrestled control of our career back" from the Universal Music Group, which frontman Joe Elliott says the band refuses to deal with "until we come up with some kind of arrangement" over compensation, especially for digital downloads.
 <br /><br />
"When you're at loggerheads with an ex-record label who...is not prepared to pay you a fair amount of money and we have the right to say, 'Well, you're not doing it,' that's the way it's going to be," Elliott tells Billboard.com. "Our contract is such that they can't do anything with our music without our permission, not a thing. So we just sent them a letter saying, 'No matter what you want, you are going to get "no" as an answer, so don't ask.' That's the way we've left it. We'll just replace our back catalog with brand new, exact same versions of what we did."
</i></blockquote>
Of course, you'd have to imagine that someone else still holds the publishing rights, but if the new "forgeries" -- which apparently take quite some time to get exactly right -- sell well, the band could end up keeping a much larger share of the money.  Either way, this seems like yet another story in a very, very long line of such stories, of bands reporting on the many ways in which the major labels have screwed them over.  Makes you wonder if there are any acts who feel they weren't screwed over by their major label...<br /><br /><a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120706/04162619600/def-leppard-covers-its-own-songs-with-forgeries-to-fight-back-against-universal-music.shtml">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120706/04162619600/def-leppard-covers-its-own-songs-with-forgeries-to-fight-back-against-universal-music.shtml#comments">Comments</a> | <a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120706/04162619600/def-leppard-covers-its-own-songs-with-forgeries-to-fight-back-against-universal-music.shtml?op=sharethis">Email This Story</a><br />
 ]]></description>
<slash:department>well,-that's-one-way-to-do-things</slash:department>
<wfw:commentRss>http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20120706/04162619600</wfw:commentRss>
</item>
<item>
<pubDate>Wed, 17 Aug 2011 16:08:00 PDT</pubDate>
<title>Paul Ceglia To Facebook: I Didn't Forge A Contract, You Did!</title>
<dc:creator>Mike Masnick</dc:creator>
<link>http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110817/14471315563/paul-ceglia-to-facebook-i-didnt-forge-contract-you-did.shtml</link>
<guid>http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110817/14471315563/paul-ceglia-to-facebook-i-didnt-forge-contract-you-did.shtml</guid>
<description><![CDATA[ We just wrote about how, during the discovery process in the lawsuit in which Paul Ceglia claims he only recently discovered a contract giving him more than 50% of Facebook, Facebook found an original contract with identical handwriting on it, that <a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110816/04160615542/original-contract-used-paul-ceglia-to-claim-facebook-ownership-doesnt-mention-facebook.shtml">has nothing to do with Facebook</a>, suggesting that Ceglia forged the contract at the center of the dispute.
<center>
<a href="http://i.imgur.com/70l6U.jpg"><img src="http://i.imgur.com/70l6U.jpg" width=560/></a>
</center>
Ceglia has now responded with the not-particularly-believable claim that he didn't forge the contract, but that <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/exclusive-paul-ceglia-says-facebook-is-doing-the-forgery/2707" target="_blank">Facebook forged that "original" document and placed it on his computer</a>.  Even better, he suspects that perhaps Mark Zuckerberg himself was the one who placed it there:
<blockquote><i>
Ceglia&rsquo;s main argument appears to be that the original &ldquo;authentic contract&rdquo; Facebook says it found is really just a Photoshopped image the company planted on his computer. He says he and his lawyers reportedly knew about it for some time and willingly handed it over to Facebook. He declares that his team will prove the image in question &ldquo;has no authenticating properties whatsoever.&rdquo;
<br /><br />
Ceglia speculates it could have been Zuckerberg himself, or the US law firm Orrick, Herrington &#038; Sutcliffe that may have done the alleged dirty work. He also says Facebook co-founder Eduardo Savrin accused Orrick of &ldquo;conspiring with Zuckerberg to deprive him of his shares during his case.&rdquo;
</i></blockquote>
The rest of the article is pretty funny.  As we've mentioned in the past, Ceglia has had trouble keeping lawyers, as most of his lawyers have ditched him after becoming more aware of the details of the case.  That's generally a huge warning sign that the lawyers don't believe the client.  In this article, Ceglia claims that he's looking for a more "collaborative" law firm, and is trying to open source his defense via a wiki (good luck with that).  Nothing in the claims that Ceglia makes in this article make him sound any more credible.  He's about to lose this lawsuit.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110817/14471315563/paul-ceglia-to-facebook-i-didnt-forge-contract-you-did.shtml">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110817/14471315563/paul-ceglia-to-facebook-i-didnt-forge-contract-you-did.shtml#comments">Comments</a> | <a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110817/14471315563/paul-ceglia-to-facebook-i-didnt-forge-contract-you-did.shtml?op=sharethis">Email This Story</a><br />
 ]]></description>
<slash:department>nice-try</slash:department>
<wfw:commentRss>http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110817/14471315563</wfw:commentRss>
</item>
<item>
<pubDate>Thu, 10 Feb 2011 13:41:16 PST</pubDate>
<title>Lobbyists Forge Letters To Pretend There's A 'Grassroots' Interest In Derivatives Reform</title>
<dc:creator>Mike Masnick</dc:creator>
<link>http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110210/12363113040/lobbyists-forge-letters-to-pretend-theres-grassroots-interest-derivatives-reform.shtml</link>
<guid>http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110210/12363113040/lobbyists-forge-letters-to-pretend-theres-grassroots-interest-derivatives-reform.shtml</guid>
<description><![CDATA[ This story actually comes from back in November, but I just found out about it due to a recent Planet Money episode all about <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/02/08/133594091/the-tuesday-podcast-writing-the-rules" target="_blank">the regulatory scramble to rewrite our banking rules</a>.  The whole podcast is interesting, but there's a bit in the middle about one of the tactics used by lobbyists to influence the rules: they <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-30/forged-comment-letters-sent-to-u-s-regulators-writing-derivatives-rules.html" target="_blank">totally forged letters from individuals and small businesses</a> to make it seem like there was "grassroots" support for a particular position on derivatives reform.  
<br /><br />
We've seen similar things before, where various DC lobbying groups make "deals" with various groups to put their name on letters.  A few years ago there was a <a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080611/1735371380.shtml">disturbing quote</a> from someone who did this for a living who explained how it works:
<blockquote><i>
"You go down the Latino people, the deaf people, the farmers, and choose them.... You say, 'I can't use this one--I already used them last time...' We had their letterhead. We'd just write the letter. We'd fax it to them and tell them, 'You're in favor of this.'"
</i></blockquote>
Except, in this latest case, the subcontractor of the subcontractor of the lobbying firm didn't even do that last part.  They just forged the letters entirely -- including from a small Burger King franchise and a circuit court judge who <i>was <b>not</b> happy</i> about her name being used this way.  It appears the only way this was actually noticed was because a Bloomberg reporter was lazily scanning the letters to the CFTC (the Commodity Futures Trading Commission) and was surprised to see what looked like very out-of-place letters.  Everything else was from big banks and big financial institutions.  Letters from a Burger King franchise seemed odd.  So the reporter called... and the franchise had <i>no idea</i> what the CFTC was, let alone why its name was on a letter pushing the CFTC in a particular direction about derivatives reform.
<br /><br />
And yet, these kinds of letters do influence regulatory decisions -- which is a big part of the problem.
<br /><br />
The Planet Money podcast discusses how these regulators need lobbyists to actually understand what they're regulating.  And, it's absolutely true that the regulators don't really understand the issues at all, while those in the industry do understand what kind of impact regulatory changes will have.  But, really, that's an argument for taking a rather light regulatory touch on these issues, since the regulations are going to be driven by lobbyists who understand the issue better than the regulators.  Thus, the end result is almost always going to be in the favor of big players in the industry who can afford lobbyists (whether they do underhanded things like forge letters or just do more aboveboard lobbying).  This is the concern that many folks have.
<br /><br />
Yes, there are problems with a light regulatory touch.  But the assumption that we need heavy regulations ignores how bad people are at regulating most industries, and how much regulatory capture there is in the rulemaking.  The end results of aggressive regulation, driven by lobbyists, can often be worse than no regulation at all.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110210/12363113040/lobbyists-forge-letters-to-pretend-theres-grassroots-interest-derivatives-reform.shtml">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110210/12363113040/lobbyists-forge-letters-to-pretend-theres-grassroots-interest-derivatives-reform.shtml#comments">Comments</a> | <a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110210/12363113040/lobbyists-forge-letters-to-pretend-theres-grassroots-interest-derivatives-reform.shtml?op=sharethis">Email This Story</a><br />
 ]]></description>
<slash:department>that's-called-scamming</slash:department>
<wfw:commentRss>http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20110210/12363113040</wfw:commentRss>
</item>
<item>
<pubDate>Thu, 29 Jul 2010 12:19:37 PDT</pubDate>
<title>Forging Science: The Story Of How Famed Painting Authenticator Likely Duped The Art World</title>
<dc:creator>Mike Masnick</dc:creator>
<link>http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100729/01335510404.shtml</link>
<guid>http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100729/01335510404.shtml</guid>
<description><![CDATA[ A couple years ago, on a whim, knowing nothing at all about the movie, I rented the documentary <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_the_*$%26%25_Is_Jackson_Pollock%3F" target="_blank"><i>Who the #$&#038;% Is Jackson Pollock?</i></a>.  It's a really amazing documentary.  Compelling, well-done and really entertaining.  The <a href="http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/who_the_and_is_jackson_pollock/" target="_blank">reviewers loved it</a> too.  It tells the story of a truck driver woman, who bought a painting for $5 at a garage sale, and is convinced that it's actually done by Jackson Pollock.  The movie has numerous amusing scenes with famed art experts staring at the painting and dismissing it in the most... condescending of tones.  Eventually, the "hero" of the film is a guy named Peter Paul Biro, who matches a fingerprint on the back of the painting to one he found in Pollock's (still preserved) studio.  The movie ends and you're <i>absolutely convinced</i> that the painting is really by Pollock -- even if the art world won't recognize it.  At the end of the film, the truck driver who bought the painting has turned down a $2 million and a $9 million offer for the painting, holding out for the $50 million she's sure it's worth.  I highly recommend watching it (though, oddly, I can't seem to find <i>any</i> video clips of it online -- not even a trailer for the flick).
<br /><br />
Remembering that, I was fascinated to see that <i>The New Yorker</i> recently did a <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/07/12/100712fa_fact_grann?currentPage=all" target="_blank">long feature piece on Peter Paul Biro</a> and dove in to read it.  The first half of the article covers Biro's rise to fame.  How a few of these "fingerprinting" authentications had made him quite famous, with that documentary ratcheting up his fame level even higher.  The key point that everyone keeps noting is that, rather than the traditional form of authentication -- the condescending art experts in the documentary who are ripe for mocking and use what often feel like extremely subjective techniques -- this involved <i>science</i>.  After all, if the fingerprints matched, how can you question that?
<br /><br />
But, then, the article takes a turn.  There are a few cracks in the story, and someone who knows Biro well suggests that the reporter, David Grann, look a bit more deeply into Biro's (and his family's) history.  It turns out that they were involved in several lawsuits years earlier involving selling what were later found to be forged artwork.  Of course, painting forgeries are nothing new, but as Grann dug deeper and deeper he kept coming across evidence that Biro's "authentications," may have involved questionable practices -- including <i>planting</i> faked fingerprints on some of the paintings he was supposed to be authenticating.  It's an amazing and gripping article -- and totally calls into question pretty much all of Biro's work.  At the end of it, I was just as convinced that the truck driver's "Pollock" painting is not by Pollock, as I was that it was by Pollock at the end of the documentary!
<br /><br />
But I found most interesting of all was the reasons why so many people were convinced that Biro's authentications were real.  It wasn't just the use of "science."  And it wasn't just that people had this <i>natural</i> inclination to believe that so-called "art experts" don't know what they're talking about, but that Biro appears (and, for what it's worth, Biro denies the allegations in the article) to have used what are effectively social engineering tricks to make this work.  There's a certain brilliance in realizing that rather than forging paintings, there may be money to be made in authenticating works by effectively <i>forging fingerprints</i> on top of other works -- which then gives it the air of legitimacy-via-science.  Honestly, the whole idea that someone would go in and forge fingerprints on top of a piece of art work just doesn't seem in the realm of possibility, and so most people didn't even consider it.
<br /><br />
I had started reading the article last week (as mentioned, it's pretty long), but ended up finishing it up now, because I was thinking some more about the recent story of those <a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100728/00124510389.shtml">glass negatives</a> that have been "authenticated" as being from Ansel Adams -- which Ansel Adams' estate is <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/celebrity.news.gossip/07/28/ansel.adams.negative.dispute/?hpt=C2" target="_blank">vehemently denying</a> are Adams' work.  After reading <i>The New Yorker</i> piece, it's difficult not to be increasingly skeptical of the claims of these new negatives, even with all of the "scientific" evidence that has been mentioned by the team involved in the authentication.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100729/01335510404.shtml">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100729/01335510404.shtml#comments">Comments</a> | <a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100729/01335510404.shtml?op=sharethis">Email This Story</a><br />
 ]]></description>
<slash:department>fingerprint-this</slash:department>
<wfw:commentRss>http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100729/01335510404</wfw:commentRss>
</item>
<item>
<pubDate>Thu, 8 Oct 2009 12:19:02 PDT</pubDate>
<title>Peter Sunde Brings Criminal Charges Against BREIN, Claims They Falsified Documents Against The Pirate Bay</title>
<dc:creator>Mike Masnick</dc:creator>
<link>http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091008/1038336461.shtml</link>
<guid>http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091008/1038336461.shtml</guid>
<description><![CDATA[ You may remember, back in July, that a Dutch court made an odd ruling <a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090730/1019425716.shtml">against The Pirate Bay</a> at the behest of BREIN, the local anti-piracy group.  Now, there was a lot of things odd about the case.  BREIN has always been quite aggressive in demanding that sites be blocked or that ISPs be forced to block sites, but this case went really far.  BREIN was able to bring the case without even letting any of the four defendants (the same four who were on trial in Sweden) know about the case.  However, BREIN told the court that the defendants were fairly summoned, despite no evidence that was true at all.  BREIN also claimed that The Pirate Bay had launched a DDoS attack on BREIN's website, and seemed so close to the court that when the defendants themselves asked the court for the very ruling made against them, the court told them that they could only get the copy directly from BREIN.
<br /><br />
Of course, after all this happened, a second problem cropped up.  Swedish authorities did an investigation and came to the conclusion -- as the four defendants had said all along -- that those four guys did not actually own The Pirate Bay.  Instead, it was a company called Reservella, information that came out to the public after the attempt by GGF to <a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090630/0104135410.shtml">buy</a> The Pirate Bay (which has since collapsed).
<br /><br />
BREIN wasted little time in adding Reservella to its lawsuits... but then did something strange.  It came up with a credit report that purports to prove that one of the four defendants, Fredrik Neij, is the CEO and a director of Reservella.  However, there were some oddities in that credit report, and Peter Sunde (one of the other defendants, better known as brokep) began investigating and has <a href="http://blog.brokep.com/2009/10/08/fail-in-nl/" target="_new">rather detailed evidence that the entire credit report is a fake</a>.  Almost none of the information on the report checks out, and the companies listed -- including Experian, who supposedly supplied the credit report, claim that they have no record of this particular credit report at all.
<br /><br />
Sunde is now filing criminal charges against BREIN and its boss Tim Kuik, claiming that they forged a document and used it for fraud (trying to get money out of these four defendants).  As Sunde notes, such charges seem to be far more serious than inducing copyright infringement.  The evidence that Sunde lays out certainly looks convincing that the document is fake, but what's still not clear is how BREIN got the document, and whether it was responsible for creating the document, or if it was merely convinced that the fake document was real from someone else.
<br /><br />
Still, it doesn't look good for BREIN to be caught using what appear to be faked documents in its lawsuit.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091008/1038336461.shtml">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091008/1038336461.shtml#comments">Comments</a> | <a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091008/1038336461.shtml?op=sharethis">Email This Story</a><br />
 ]]></description>
<slash:department>spectrial-indeed</slash:department>
<wfw:commentRss>http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20091008/1038336461</wfw:commentRss>
</item>
<item>
<pubDate>Thu, 4 Dec 2008 07:42:00 PST</pubDate>
<title>How To Steal The Empire State Building</title>
<dc:creator>Mike Masnick</dc:creator>
<link>http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081204/0201473020.shtml</link>
<guid>http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081204/0201473020.shtml</guid>
<description><![CDATA[ <a href="http://consumerist.com/5101536/you-can-steal-the-empire-state-building-in-only-90-minutes" target="_new">Consumerist</a> points us to a story about how The Daily News newspaper in New York was able to quickly forge some documents <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/money/2008/12/02/2008-12-02_it_took_90_minutes_for_daily_news_to_ste.html" target="_new">and get the deed to the Empire State Building</a> handed over, no questions asked.  Apparently, there's really no verification process at all.  As the paper points out, while most folks probably would notice this with the ESB, for plenty of other buildings it's an effective scam for someone who wants to take out a bogus mortgage (and then disappear).  You would think, in this day and age, there would be a somewhat more involved process and checks before simply handing over the deeds on any building, let alone a landmark like the Empire State Building.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081204/0201473020.shtml">Permalink</a> | <a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081204/0201473020.shtml#comments">Comments</a> | <a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081204/0201473020.shtml?op=sharethis">Email This Story</a><br />
 ]]></description>
<slash:department>90-minutes-and-a-fake-stamp</slash:department>
<wfw:commentRss>http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20081204/0201473020</wfw:commentRss>
</item>
</channel>
</rss>