Google Was Gagged For Four Years From Talking About Fighting The Wikileaks Investigation

from the harassment-all-the-way dept

Reporter, activity and security guy Jacob Appelbaum has been harassed by the government for years for helping with Wikileaks. We’ve written before about how he gets detained at the border and is ordered to hand over all of his electronic equipment. A few years ago, we wrote about the ridiculous legal fight in which the Justice Department demanded that Twitter hand over Appelbaum’s messages without telling anyone, as part of the still ridiculous grand jury investigation into Wikileaks (which still isn’t over!).

If you recall, as part of that discussion about the legal fight with Twitter — in which we gave kudos to Twitter for standing up for its users’ privacy — it also came out that similar demands for information were also sent to Google and Sonic.net in trying to access Appelbaum’s details. Sonic.net quickly said that it fought the request — but Google gave no comment. We found this to be disappointing at the time.

However, late last week, it was finally revealed — four years later — that Google not only fought the order, but was gagged from talking about it until just recently. Reading through the full set of released documents (300 pages) is quite incredible — as are Appelbaum’s own comments as he reads through the document himself.

If you don’t recall the big legal fight with Twitter, the DOJ refused to get a warrant, but instead got what’s known as a 2703(d) order, which has a much lower privacy protection standard. A warrant, as you know, requires probable cause. A 2703(d) order just requires “reasonable grounds to believe that the contents [of the email] are relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation.”

This whole thing started in late 2010 when the grand jury investigation sent those 2703(d) orders out — each accompanied by a gag order. Twitter fought the gag order and was able to get a judge to unseal it in early January 2011 for the sake of alerting the users in question, to see if they would protest (which they did, though unsuccessfully). Twitter alerted a few users, including Appelbaum, that the feds had requested information. While many had assumed the feds had used a warrant or a traditional subpoena, it was quickly revealed that it was the 2703(d) process, raising many more concerns. The fact that there were also a number of mistakes in the order raised further concerns. The revelation of this order got a lot of press attention, which the DOJ hated.

In fact, that’s what much of the (now revealed) argument between Google and the DOJ is discussing. Google points out that the identical order in the identical investigation was made public concerning Twitter’s involvement, and thus, there is no reason not to make it public for Google too. The DOJ responds about just how incredibly harmful the press attention of the Twitter order is… though they fail to explain a single way it is harmful, other than that some online internet commenters were kinda mean to them. First, the DOJ insisted that it was important that Google be gagged, and then said that Twitter’s ungagging “seriously jeopardized the investigation.”

The Order should remain sealed at this time. The Order satisfies all statutory and constitutional requirements, and the [REDACTED] subscriber would not have a valid basis for challenging it even if Google did provide him with notice. Furthermore, unsealing and permitting disclosure at this time is not in the best interest of the investigation. Unsealing and permitting disclosure of the Twitter Order has already seriously jeopardized the investigation and the government believes that further disclosures at this time will exacerbate this problem.

Of course, the DOJ never actually goes into any detail about how revealing that it was digging for information jeopardized the investigation at all. It just makes these baseless claims. Later, it further argues that unsealing the Twitter order (which it had agreed to allow) was a mistake in hindsight:

Indeed, in light of the events that followed the unsealing and disclosure of the Twitter Order, had the government known then what it does now, it would not have voluntarily filed the motion to authorize it.

Why is that? Well, the only argument the government seems to make is that once the Twitter Order was public, people got mad and said not nice things about the DOJ. First, it points to this Glenn Greenwald article from 2011, in which he revealed more details of the original Twitter Order, including the name of the magistrate judge who signed off on it. The DOJ presents this as if it’s harassment, though read the article and see if that’s reasonable. And then it further claims that the US Attorneys were “harassed on the internet.” But the only evidence it provides is this:

So some kid gets angry and fires off an angry email to the DOJ with the Anonymous tagline at the end, and the DOJ gets all weak-kneed? Really?

Even more bizarre, the DOJ includes a long paragraph talking about how all of the praise that Twitter got after the Twitter Order was revealed explains why the Google Order shouldn’t be revealed. That is, the DOJ is explicitly saying “man, it would suck if actually protecting the privacy of users became contagious”:

That does not seem like a legitimate reason for a gag order. It sounds like the DOJ is unwilling to support due process and is afraid to actually have to defend its actions.

In response to this, Google quite reasonably points out that the government’s argument cancels out its own argument. At one point, for example, the DOJ pointed to one of the people it was seeking information on Tweeting to followers not to send direct messages, and another saying that it’s likely that Google and Facebook received similar orders. As Google points out, given that, the targets already suspect what is going on and thus it couldn’t possibly make sense to maintain the gag order. As for the “parade of horribles” above, Google rightly points out that none of them show how revealing the Google Order will exacerbate any of the “problems” it outlined.

The fight was put on hold while the individuals in question (including Appelbaum) fought the Twitter Order. And, when that failed, the case picked up again, with the DOJ saying “look, that failed, so this case is over.” Google responded, quite reasonably, that whether or not the individuals succeeded in stopping the information disclosure is a wholly separate issue from whether or not the gag order makes sense. Unfortunately, in the end, the court rejected all of Google’s arguments. The court relies heavily on the fact that Appelbaum (though, bizarrely, his name is redacted here) tweeted the following: “Do not send me Direct Messages – My twitter account contents have apparently been invited to the (presumably-Grand Jury) in Alexandria.”

To the court, this is evidence that any disclosure will lead to a change in behavior.

Furthermore, the court ridiculously buys into the claims by the DOJ that the “public campaign” supporting Twitter for standing up for the rights of its users is a form of witness intimidation. Really:

That concluding line is really incredible:

If the Google Order were unsealed, future service providers may do precisely what Google has done in this instance, namely resist compliance with a lawful §2703(d) order by bringing baseless legal challenges that have the effect of impeding the government’s progress in the Wikileaks investigation.

In other words, merely challenging the legitimacy of a gag order with an associated court order to hand over someone’s info — in other words protecting a user’s privacy is somehow seen as evidence of impeding an investigation. This is ridiculous.

Finally, as Lauren Weinstein points out in his own analysis of these newly released documents, this does show just how strongly Google fought the government to block the government from getting access to user info. There is this false belief out there that Google, in particular, has given the government free access to its servers (in part because of an incorrect interpretation of a Snowden document early on). Yet, this highlights how Google actually fought quite hard to protect its users’ info (and this all happened more than two years before the Snowden leaks). Indeed, in my original post, about the revelation that Google had received a similar order, we were disappointed that unlike Twitter and Sonic, Google refused to comment. We had no way of knowing that the company had been gagged.

Even Appelbaum — not exactly one to cheer on Google in most settings — now admits that he’s impressed by how strongly Google fought. A few of his tweets explaining this:

Separately, he notes that while we know about Twitter, Sonic and Google… we don’t know about Facebook or Yahoo, leading him to wonder what happened there:

No matter what, this seems like yet another example of the DOJ being out of control and trying to cover up its own actions to keep them out of the public debate, rather than for any legitimate purpose.

Filed Under: doj, free speech, gag order, jacob appelbaum
Companies: google, twitter, wikileaks

YouTube's Inane Response To Handing Popular YouTuber's Channel To Cosmetics Company: Blame The Algorithms

from the the-algorithms-did-it dept

Another day, another big tech company doing things wrong. Matthew Lush is apparently a super popular YouTuber, who has been on the platform since 2005 (yes, a decade ago). His YouTube name was “Lush” which makes sense, given that’s his name. But along comes Lush Cosmetics, and YouTube apparently just hands his channel over to the company. That’s ridiculous enough, but it gets even more bizarre, when reporters asked Google to explain:

Google said it was “sympathetic” to Mr Lush’s situation and that the decision was made by an algorithm.

Oh, come on. Yes, Google pointing to its algorithm making decisions makes sense when it comes to issues at scale around things like search results. But blaming taking away someone’s username on an algorithm just seems ridiculous.

And then there’s this:

[Lush Cometics] told the BBC it had not requested the change but would not say if it would give the address back.

Okay. So let’s just work through this:

1. Matthew Lush registers his YouTube name “Lush” in 2005.
2. He spends years building up a massive following.
3. A decade later, a cosmetic company that did not ask for it is simply given Matthew Lush’s popular YouTube username, based on “an algorithm” deciding this.
4. And Google insists there’s no way to fix this.

Really? Yes, I know some people fear that science-fiction future in which the giant AI in the sky makes algorithmic decisions about what’s best for us (“I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that”), but I hadn’t thought we were quite there yet. Because we’re not.

It seems likely that what’s missing from the BBC story is that there was some sort of naming conflict brought on by the various attemps to shift around YouTube naming conventions, integrate it with Google+ and all of that. In the end, there was probably some sort of conflict with two “Lush” usernames, and Google’s “algorithms” gave the account to the cosmetics company instead. At least that’s my interpretation of this statement:

Google said its algorithm decided which address Lush Cosmetics was given, based on data from YouTube, Google+, its search engine and other sources.

But if that’s the case, at the very last, Google could be a lot clearer and upfront about it. And it seems to be a mess brought on by the company’s own decisions about its username conventions. To play it off as just “well, those nutty algorithms again, nothing can be done” seems pretty ridiculous.

Filed Under: algorithms, customer service, matthew lush, names, user names, youtube
Companies: google, lush cosmetics, youtube

Google Says It Will Remove Revenge Porn Results From Search… Raising Some Questions

from the good-intentions,-but-will-there-be-bad-results dept

Earlier today, Google announced on its website that it will now be letting the victims of revenge porn request removals from the Google search index:

Our philosophy has always been that Search should reflect the whole web. But revenge porn images are intensely personal and emotionally damaging, and serve only to degrade the victims?predominantly women. So going forward, we?ll honor requests from people to remove nude or sexually explicit images shared without their consent from Google Search results. This is a narrow and limited policy, similar to how we treat removal requests for other highly sensitive personal information, such as bank account numbers and signatures, that may surface in our search results.

In the coming weeks we?ll put up a web form people can use to submit these requests to us, and we?ll update this blog post with the link.

We know this won?t solve the problem of revenge porn?we aren?t able, of course, to remove these images from the websites themselves?but we hope that honoring people?s requests to remove such imagery from our search results can help.

If I were in Google’s shoes, I would be quite tempted to institute the same policy — and I’m supportive of things that will actually end or limit revenge porn. So I hope that this works great and that it’s an effective solution both to help limit the damage to victims and in further decrease the “value” (whatever that might be) to the scum of the earth who run revenge porn sites (or who frequent them).

But… at the same time… I worry about the unintended consequences of this move. First, as Alex Byers correctly notes, this will only embolden Hollywood to mistakenly claim that this shows that Google can remove unauthorized content just as easily. That’s a silly claim, because Google already does exactly this for copyright holders, thanks to the DMCA, and it takes down millions of links per year thanks to such requests. So, in some sense, this shouldn’t give any more ammo to Hollywood, because all it’s really doing is expanding the DMCA process to revenge porn.

My second concern, though, is that this will then embolden lawmakers into thinking that “Oh, see, we can just expand the DMCA (or something like it) to cover revenge porn.” This looks like such an appealing solution if you’re a politician, and Google’s move will certainly be used to support it. But it’s not that easy as we’ll explain in the third concern. But giving politicians more reasons to expand these types of legal regimes is fraught with risk, and Google’s move will almost certainly be cited as evidence that it’s a perfectly reasonable strategy.

And that brings us to the third concern: this process will be abused. This is the big one. We know the DMCA is abused. It’s abused widely. Every day. We report on many of those abuses. Expanding the avenues under which takedowns can be abused is going to lead to more abuse. Some will argue that such abuse is a reasonable price to pay to protect the victims of revenge porn. Copyright holders frequently argue that the abuse of the DMCA is similarly no big deal, or a reasonable level of collateral damage for protecting their copyright. It’s still troubling, however, that legitimate and perfectly reasonable speech can be taken down.

Finally, the fourth big concern: in some ways, this is an extension of the “right to be forgotten” process that has gotten so much attention in Europe, though in a very specific class of cases. But, again, some will use this as evidence to argue for the expansion of the class of cases that it should cover, and that’s going to lead to an awful lot of judgment calls, some of which many people may have trouble with.

In the end, I’m conflicted, but worried. I’d love to see a way to stop revenge porn, but I still worry a lot about how wide a net any “solution” casts around it. Perhaps I’m being too pessimistic, and this will actually be effectively narrowly targeted. And if so, that will be fantastic. I hope I’m wrong. But for too long we’ve seen too many people looking to find ways to censor all sorts of content they dislike, and to find cracks in the dam to try to push censorship agendas. And thus, while I’m fully supportive of coming up with plans to actually end revenge porn, I’m nervous that wading into this territory will only open up a path to greater censorship and dangerous unintended consequences.

Filed Under: censorship, copyright, dmca, free speech, privacy, revenge porn, right to be forgotten, search, takedowns
Companies: google

DailyDirt: Passwords Suck, But What's Better?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Every service wants you to create a username and password… and it all begins to pile up after a while. Users try to make things easier for themselves by re-using passwords, but you’re really not supposed to do that. What are you supposed to do? Well, password management software exists, but only the truly paranoid folks spend the time to figure out which one of those is the one that works best for particular use cases and then actually set it up. (And then shit happens anyway.) Some companies are trying to figure out other solutions — here are a few of them.

• Apple has its fingerprint sensor, but a 4-digit PIN will be replaced by a 6-digit PIN soon. Yippee! It’s not much of an improvement, but a brute force attack will take a bit longer for the bad guys. [url]
• Would you want to replace a password with a brainwave measurement? Electroencephalograms (EEGs) could verify your ‘pass-thoughts’ for allowing access to a secure system. Maybe it’ll be harder to forget your ‘pass-thoughts’ or maybe it won’t? Or someone might say, “Don’t think about your password!” and run off with your EEG waves before you stop yourself from thinking… [url]
• Google is working on a way to identify users from their usage patterns — how different people type or swipe or interact. It’s supposedly “up to” 10x better than other methods, but what happens if you hurt your wrist or something? [url]
• Paypal is suggesting an ‘ingestible’ (embeddable or injectable) device to serve as a person identification dongle. Implanted devices better be painless to inject and remove! Is it safe? [url]

After you’ve finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: authentication, biometrics, brainwaves, brute force attacks, dongles, eeg, ingestibles, pass-thoughts, passwords, pin, security
Companies: apple, google, paypal

French Privacy Regulator Says Google Should Censor Global Internet Over EU Right To Be Forgotten Requests

from the nope dept

It’s been just over a year since the ridiculous and dangerous ruling in the EU that said that there was a form of a “right to be forgotten” for individuals who don’t like the Google results on their names. We’ve spent plenty of time discussing why this is such a bad ruling, so we won’t necessarily repeat them now. With no other recourse, Google began implementing it, but for Europe only. Since then, there’s been an ongoing push by some to say Google needs to enforce it globally, even in the US where such an interpretation of the law is clearly unconstitutional. Last July, soon after the initial ruling, there were rumblings that EU regulators wanted Google to expand the enforcement globally (and to stop telling publications that their links had been flushed down the memory hole). And, in December, the EU’s “data protection” group made a similar argument.

Now we can add France’s top privacy regulator to the list as well:

France?s privacy watchdog on Friday called on Google to apply a European data protection ruling to its global domains or face financial penalties.

[….]

French authorities are now increasing the pressure on the American company, saying that Google must apply the ruling across all of its domains in the next 15 days or face penalties including a one-off fine of up to 300,000 euros, or almost $340,000. Last year Google was fined €150,000 for failing to adhere to the country?s rules in a separate privacy case.

This, of course, comes right on the heels of the terrible Canadian ruling last week saying that Canadian courts can also censor the global internet.

The idea that courts in various countries now think that they have the right to determine what is “acceptable” for search engines to show in their results should frighten everyone. It will be interesting to see how far Google pushes back on these moves. While the classic response that many suggest whenever these issues show up is to say that Google should just stop working in those countries (and see how quickly citizens demand a fix), Google has generally avoided going that far. The few exceptions are much more narrowly tailored, such as when it shut down Google News in Spain after Spain passed a law requiring aggregators pay sites they link to.

What is still quite amazing is that supporters of such a “right to be forgotten” don’t seem to ever care to think through the consequences of what they’re advocating for. They all seem to think that deleting links to certain web pages is a no brainer that is obvious — and never even seem to acknowledge the dangers of having the ability to simply delete factual history. Still, it’s unclear what Google can do in this situation. If the company ignores the demand and France starts issuing fines, then what? Does Google pull its operations out of France (where it has many employees)? That would be a major step. But acceding to France’s demands that the global internet be subject to the whims of angry Europeans who want to hide true events from their past, should be a total non-starter as well.

Filed Under: censorship, france, jurisdiction, right to be forgotten
Companies: google

Austria Wants To Bring In Google Tax For Snippets — Including Single Words

from the how-low-can-you-go? dept

Here on Techdirt, we have been following with a certain bemusement attempts by a number of European governments to bring in laws that would grant newspaper and magazine owners a special “ancillary” copyright over snippets — actually a thinly-disguised attempt to tax Google. Despite the miserable failure of this ploy, Austria has decided it wants to join the club, as reported here by the Initiative Against Ancillary Copyright site:

The Austrian proposal is very similar to the German law. Producers of “newspapers and magazines” shall be granted an exclusive right only against commercial providers of search engines and news aggregators. As in Germany, this right is also supposed to only last for one year. But there remains one big difference: The draft does not include an exception for “single words and shortest text-snippets” which expands the scope of the right tremendously!

That’s something of an understatement.

Assuming Austria goes ahead and brings in this change (it’s currently a draft amendment to the country’s copyright law), it will surely learn the hard way that it doesn’t help publishers. What’s more worrying is that there is an amendment (number 204 – pdf) to the proposed revision of the EU copyright directive, that seeks to bring in this crazy idea across all 28 member states:

Notes that the current legal framework provides for neighbouring rights for performers, phonogram producers, film producers and broadcasting companies, but not for press publishers; calls on the Commission, therefore, to analyse whether neighbouring rights for press publishers can provide appropriate protection and remuneration for their work in a digital media world;

There’s an important vote on Tuesday that will determine whether that amendment is adopted, along with some of the hundreds of others that have been proposed. Let’s hope that the European politicians bear in mind how badly the idea has turned out every time it has been tried before.

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

Filed Under: aggregators, ancillary, ancillary rights, austria, copyright, germany, google tax, snippets
Companies: google

Canadian Court: Yes, We Can Order Google To Block Websites Globally

from the that-seems-like-a-problem dept

Almost exactly a year ago we wrote about a troubling lawsuit in British Columbia, where a court ruled that Google needed to block access to a website globally. The case involved one company accusing another of selling counterfeit or copied equipment, and despite Google not even being a party to the case, said that Google needed to make sure no one could find the site in question via Google anywhere in the world. As we noted, this had tremendously problematic consequences. For example, China doesn’t think anyone should be able to learn about the protests in Tiananmen Square. Can it now order Google to remove all links to such references globally? That result seems crazy. And, of course, there was a separate issue of how the court even had jurisdiction over Google, seeing as it does not have any operations, staff or servers in British Columbia. Google stepped in to protest the injunction at the appeals court.

Unfortunately, the court has now ruled against Google, using the same sort of logic the lower court did — basically arguing that because Google is available in British Columbia, the court has jurisdiction, and because it’s trying to stop what it deems to be illegal actions from reaching Canada’s shores, it has every right to order Google to block things worldwide, lest someone from British Columbia decide to type “google.com” into their browser to avoid the “google.ca.” On the question of “doing business” in BC, the appeals court basically accepts the lower court’s confused understanding of things:

While Google does not have servers or offices in the Province and does not have resident staff here, I agree with the chambers judge?s conclusion that key parts of Google?s business are carried on here. The judge concentrated on the advertising aspects of Google?s business in making her findings. In my view, it can also be said that the gathering of information through proprietary web crawler software (?Googlebot?) takes place in British Columbia. This active process of obtaining data that resides in the Province or is the property of individuals in British Columbia is a key part of Google?s business.

Google says that even if it is concluded that it carries on business in British Columbia, the injunction was not properly granted, because it did not relate to the specific business activities that Google carries on in the Province. In my view, the business carried on in British Columbia is an integral part of Google?s overall operations. Its success as a search engine depends on collecting data from websites throughout the world (including British Columbia) and providing search results (accompanied by targeted advertising) throughout the world (including British Columbia). The business conducted in British Columbia, in short, is the same business as is targeted by the injunction.

In other words, if you don’t want to be subject to the laws of BC (with control over your entire global operations) don’t index websites based in BC? That’s crazy. While I doubt it will happen, it’s got to be tempting for some at Google to just say “okay, no more Google for BC or any website in BC.”

Now as for the nutty idea that a court in BC has jurisdiction over all of Google’s global operations, again, the court doesn’t seem even remotely concerned about that. It’s response is basically “yeah, so?”

Google raises the specter of it being subjected to restrictive orders from courts in all parts of the world, each concerned with its own domestic law. I agree with the chambers judge that it is the world-wide nature of Google?s business and not any defect in the law that gives rise to that possibility. As well, however, the threat of multi-jurisdictional control over Google?s operations is, in my opinion, overstated. Courts must, in exercising their powers, consider many factors other than territorial competence and the existence of in personam jurisdiction over the parties. Courts must exercise considerable restraint in granting remedies that have international ramifications.

And it notes that previous cases have said that, sure, BC courts have “worldwide jurisdiction.”

At one time the courts of this Province refrained from granting injunctions that enjoined activities outside of British Columbia…. In 1988, however, the English Court of Appeal held that it had jurisdiction to issue a worldwide Mareva injunction…. It is now over 25 years since the Supreme Court of British Columbia first issued a worldwide injunction…. The jurisdiction to do so was re-confirmed …. and is, today, well-established.

Google, quite reasonably, points out that while injunctions make sense against parties that actually break the law, it makes no sense to issue an injunction against a third party that has nothing to do with the party that actually broke the law. The court goes on a long and winding road saying “sure, but… in this case, it’s okay.”

Finally, the court addresses another concern raised by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, noting that banning access to a website worldwide has serious free speech consequences. Once again, the court says “sure, but, we don’t care in this case.”

For that reason, courts should be very cautious in making orders that might place limits on expression in another country. Where there is a realistic possibility that an order with extraterritorial effect may offend another state?s core values, the order should not be made.

In the case before us, there is no realistic assertion that the judge?s order will offend the sensibilities of any other nation. It has not been suggested that the order prohibiting the defendants from advertising wares that violate the intellectual property rights of the plaintiffs offends the core values of any nation. The order made against Google is a very limited ancillary order designed to ensure that the plaintiffs? core rights are respected.

I note, as well, that the order in this case is an interlocutory one, and one that can be varied by the court. In the unlikely event that any jurisdiction finds the order offensive to its core values, an application could be made to the court to modify the order so as to avoid the problem.

In short, sure, banning speech around the globe from one court in British Columbia, Canada could have serious global free speech concerns, but… we really don’t like this website, so we’re not going to change the ruling. In fact, later in the ruling, the court basically says “hey, the idea that there may be some ‘legitimate’ speech on this website we’re ordering blocked globally is totally speculative”:

There has, in the course of argument, been some reference to the possibility that the defendants (or others) might wish to use their websites for legitimate free speech, rather than for unlawfully marketing the GW1000. That possibility, it seems to me, is entirely speculative. There is no evidence that the websites in question have ever been used for lawful purposes, nor is there any reason to believe that the domain names are in any way uniquely suitable for any sort of expression other than the marketing of the illegal product. Of course, if the character of the websites changes, it is always open to the defendants or others to seek a variation of the injunction.

And, thus, British Columbia believes it can order global blocking of any website its courts deem problematic in BC. One wonders if we’ll start to see “censorship tourism” migrating to BC courts now that its doors are open for global censorship orders.

Filed Under: british columbia, canada, counterfeits, global injunction, injunction, jurisdiction
Companies: equustek solutions, google

YouTube Silences Six Hours Of DARPA Robotics Finals… Because Of One Song Briefly In The Background

from the fun-with-contentid dept

As you may have heard, DARPA, the wonderful government agency folks who helped bring us the precursors to the internet and self-driving cars, held a giant robotics competition this weekend, known as the DARPA Robotic Challenge, or DRC. It was full of amazing robots — though everyone seems focused on the ones that fell over, despite the amazing advancements in robotics that were on display.

One bit of “robotics,” whose best work is not on display, is the robotic nature of YouTube’s ContentID copyright censorship. If you go to check out the six hour YouTube video of the DRC Finals Workshop on YouTube you’ll get to witness everything, but not hear a damn thing. Because, apparently, there was a copyright-covered song playing somewhere in the background, YouTube muted the whole damn thing:

So, yup, rather than learning about the latest advancements from our soon to be robotic overlords, we’ll just silence everything so someone’s copyright isn’t infringed because it was playing quietly in the background at a daylong event.

Filed Under: contentid, copyright, darpa, darpa robotics challenge, mute, robots, youtube
Companies: darpa, google, youtube

What The Oracle-Google Copyright Fight Has To Do With Klingon… And Lots Of Other Innovations

from the a-language-is-only-useful-if-it's-shared dept

We’ve already written plenty on the Obama administration’s absolutely ridiculous filing in the Oracle/Google case concerning the copyrightability of APIs. As we noted, the entire filing shows what appears to be a willful misunderstanding of the difference between “software” and an “API.” That’s problematic on many levels. In trying to explain this, we kept describing the API as something of a “recipe” — which is not covered by copyright — and how that’s different from the actual food. But Charles Duan has come up with potentially an even better comparison, noting that an API is quite like an invented language, and wondering what would happen if the creators of Klingon tried to claim copyright against anyone using Klingon.

…according to Oracle, copyright can protect a language and prevent others like Google from speaking it.

That?s the connection of the Oracle v. Google case to Klingon and other constructed languages like Esperanto or Lojban: If broadly read, the ruling against Google, which is where the case currently stands, could also deem the speaking of such languages to be copyright infringement.

This is actually quite interesting. Getting beyond Klingon, Duan mentions Lojban, which is a kind of proof of the problems this kind of thing can cause. Lojban is actually a re-created language, building off the ideas in Loglan, whose creators tried to lock it up claiming ownership. In that case, the creator, James Brown, tried (and failed) to use trademark law to block others from using “his” language.

But this is a key thing: languages are only useful if they’re shared and used more widely. The idea of locking up a language itself under copyright is almost nonsensical, but that’s exactly what the appeals court did and it’s what the Obama administration has now advocated for, based on a failure to understand the difference between an API and software.

And, of course, the impact on this goes beyond “languages” as Duan notes:

And it?s not just the linguists and Trekkies who should be concerned.

Invented languages are the foundation of all sorts of innovation. Most prominently, computer networking technology depends on languages, like the Wi-Fi protocol, so that multiple computers can communicate and understand one another. Those protocols also include formally defined commands (vocabularies) and rules of operation and syntax (grammars), making them languages almost exactly on par with the Java API. Other fields, such as medicine, engineering, and sports, rely on well-known jargon for efficient communication of specialized concepts.

Languages and APIs are how we communicate. Languages may be how humans communicate with one another, while APIs are often how computers communicate with one another. Copyrighting the very language of communication seems not just nonsensical but actively counterproductive when you think about it that way.

It’s just tragic that the lawyers working for the President didn’t think about it that way.

Filed Under: apis, copyright, klingon, languages
Companies: google, oracle