On The Arrest Of Julian Assange

Legal Issues

from the this-is-what-we-cover? dept

To date, I had avoided all of the stories both about the allegations against Julian Assange in Sweden, as well as his arrest this morning. But people keep asking us to cover it. Frankly, I’m not sure what to say about it. Assange’s former lawyer’s writeup for Crikey, in which he presents a compelling, if extremely one-sided view of how Sweden appears to be “making it up as it goes along,” is an interesting read but, again, it is extremely one-sided. Slate’s more level-headed analysis of questions concerning consensual sex laws is also worth reading.

The reason I have not covered this is, while this whole thing has obviously become political, these charges do not, officially, have anything to do with Wikileaks. Perhaps the two cannot be separated but there’s a lot of FUD flying from all sides on this right now and it seems rather early to comment on all of this.

However, I think the larger point is that too many are looking to connect this issue more closely to Wikileaks than it deserves to be connected. We’re interested in Wikileaks from a public policy perspective and what it means for free speech, whistleblowing and journalism in a distributed world. I have no idea what happened between Assange and those two women in Sweden and it’s difficult to see how adding any commentary on the matter at this stage really adds anything to the discussion.

Filed Under: arrest, julian assange, sweden, uk, wikileaks

Interpol Really Couldn't Find A Photo Of Julian Assange In Issuing An Arrest Warrant?

Too Much Free Time

from the gee,-sounds-rushed... dept

As you’ve probably heard by now, Interpol has issued a “red notice” for the arrest of Wikileaks’ Julian Assange, stemming from the sexual assault charges against him in Sweden. I’ll leave it to others to analyze the actual merits of the charges against Assange, or the fact that Interpol has gotten involved at this stage, but did want to highlight one oddity. Assange has been everywhere lately and is all over the news and the internet. How is it possible that Interpol couldn’t dig up a photo of him to include with the notice?

Filed Under: arrest, julian assange
Companies: interpol

Details In Mulve Arrest Highlight How Weak The Case Is

Copyright

from the so-why-so-quick-on-the-arrest? dept

Last week, in talking about how one of the guys behind Mulve was arrested by UK police, we noted the similarities to the arrest a few years ago of OiNK administrator Alan Ellis on “conspiracy to defraud” charges that were eventually thrown out as Ellis didn’t actually break the law.

TorrentFreak now has the details of the Mulve arrest, where police are using the exact same charges, even with a failure to get those charges to stick against Ellis. And, the article details why such charges are even weaker against the Mulve guy they arrested. First of all, he had nothing to do with the software itself, but merely registered the domain and created the video highlighting how to use the software. But, much more interesting are the details behind Mulve. It’s not even a search engine by itself. It’s simply an interface for an existing search engine on a Russian social network, which anyone could sign up for and get access to already. In other words, going after Mulve totally misses the point, and it’s difficult to see how Mulve itself actually violates UK law.

Of course, in pushing authorities to arrest the Mulve guy, it appears that all that’s really happened is the recording industry has drawn a lot more attention to how Mulve works, leading to multiple clones of the software quickly popping up. You would think the industry would know by now how this whole hydra process works, but apparently they still haven’t gotten the message.

Filed Under: arrest, conspiracy to defraud, interface, mulve, search engines, uk
Companies: ifpi, mulve

UK Police Arrest Mulve Operators

Legal Issues

from the um,-what? dept

Over the last few weeks, there’s been a lot of talk about Mulve, an application that was released that apparently made it quite easy to download all sorts of music for free. We didn’t write about it, because we don’t tend to write about new apps like that, but it has been interesting to watch the reaction to it. The Mulve software itself is really a search engine, apparently searching a cache of music found on a Russian social network. The RIAA was able to take Mulve down briefly, but it quickly came back up. Now, TorrentFreak is reporting that Mulve’s operators have been arrested by the UK police.

Details are pretty scarce at this time, but I can’t fathom any criminal provision that could stick here. This reminds me a lot of when UK police arrested OiNK’s admin, Alan Ellis, and only afterwards realized that it didn’t look like OiNK actually broke any laws. So, it tried to charge him with “conspiracy to defraud the music industry.” After a few wasted years, a jury finally found him not guilty.

Either way, arresting these guys seems like pure overkill. The software is a search engine. Yes, the search engine finds and lets people download music (from elsewhere on the internet) in an unauthorized fashion, but so does Google. At the very least, let a civil trial happen. It’s difficult to see how this should involve the police and any sort of criminal lawsuits.

Filed Under: arrest, copyright, uk
Companies: mulve

Guy Who Helped Mod Cable Modems Arrested By The FBI

Legal Issues

from the freedom-to-tinker? dept

What a world we live in: if you tinker too much with the electronic equipment you buy, you might get charged with a crime. That seems to be what happened to a guy in Oregon who helps mod cable modems. Now, clearly, some people can and do use modded cable modems to access cable service that they haven’t paid for, but there are plenty of legitimate reasons to hack your own hardware or to buy modded hardware. Just like unlocking a mobile phone should be perfectly legal, the same is true of unlocking a legally purchased cable modem. As the article linked above explains, most of the indictment seems to focus on the actions of others in this guy’s forums, which should lead to an easy Section 230 dismissal (as he shouldn’t be responsible for their actions). The only “questionable” issue for the guy is a request for certain information that could potentially have been used to gain unauthorized access — but that’s not evidence that he actually did so. All in all, this seems like an attempt to crack down on anyone interfering with artificial locks put on legally purchased hardware by the cable companies. And, if that’s the case, why is the FBI involved at all? Shouldn’t this just be a civil issue involving the cable companies?

Filed Under: arrest, cable modems, hacking, modding, tinkering

Missouri Continues Arresting Cyberbullies: Don't Be An Online Jerk In Missouri

Legal Issues

from the free-speech? dept

As tends to happen, it appears that Missouri has decided to overcompensate for the mess with the whole Lori Drew/Megan Meier tragedy. After realizing that Lori Drew hadn’t committed any actual crime, Missouri passed a new law making it a potential felony for being a jerk online. And, of course, with that new law in place, Missouri prosecutors have wasted little time in filing charges against all sorts of people. The latest involves the arrest of a teenager for creating a mean website about another student. Now, I’m not condoning the behavior of this student, which does seem despicable — but arresting the kid seems really extreme. Aren’t there less draconian methods for dealing with this sort of thing? Kids can be mean and, yes, they do stupid things at times — but arresting kids every time they’re a jerk online is going to lead to a pretty busy judicial system.

Filed Under: arrest, cyberbullies, missouri

No Freedom To Tinker: Arrested For Modding Legally Purchased Game Consoles

Legal Issues

from the no-innovation-allowed dept

This is hardly a new issue, but it’s still troubling every time we hear a story like this. For years, there’s been a fight over whether or not it should be legal to modify a legally purchased game console. Those in favor of the right point out that if you’ve legally bought something, you should always be free to tinker with it. That’s just common sense. Those against it say that modifying a gaming console is done mainly to play pirated games or to cheat, which can cause problems for legit players. I find the latter responses unpersuasive, as those are technological or business model issues that can be solved in other ways, rather than a legal issue. But, thanks to that good old DMCA, that’s now how the law works.

Instead, we get stories about students getting arrested for “jailbreaking” a video game console. It’s interesting to see the use of the word “jailbreaking” here, as that’s more commonly been applied to iPhones — where it’s common. Usually, this action has been referred to as “modding” or “modchipping” when it came to consoles. But the basic fact is that the actions are effectively the same — and both should be perfectly legal. Modifying legally purchased hardware should never be against the law. It’s possible that you could then use that modified hardware to break the law — and no one’s saying that’s okay. But the act itself of modifying the devices should never be against the law — especially where it could lead to a ten-year prison sentence, as in this case.

This particular case involves a student who would modify game consoles to let people make use of backup copies of their own games on the consoles. Making a backup copy, by itself, has been well established as being perfectly legal. The problem here (once again) is the DMCA’s anti-circumvention clause, which makes it illegal to circumvent any kind of DRM, even if it’s for a totally legal purpose. It’s difficult to see how that’s constitutional. Making it illegal to do something that’s perfectly legal, just because someone puts any kind of DRM in the middle doesn’t make any sense at all. It’s a ridiculous scenario that this kid is now facing 10 years in jail for making video game consoles more useful, allowing people to use perfectly legal backup copies of their games. But, such is the state of the DMCA and copyright laws these days.

Filed Under: arrest, copyright, dmca, game consoles, modding, video games

Kentucky Election Officials Arrested For Changing Votes On E-Voting Machines

Scams

from the security... dept

While there have been plenty of conspiracy theories over the years concerning e-voting machines, none have been particularly compelling. The evidence looked like plenty of incompetence, with buggy machines that had huge security flaws that could be exploited — but we hadn’t heard of any cases of anyone actually being caught tampering with or trying to tamper with votes. That isn’t to say it didn’t happen. It’s possible that it happened and the perpetrators weren’t caught — but it’s a big leap from it “could” happen, to it “did” happen. So, most of our coverage here has been very much on the bugs and the flaws, rather than any of the conspiracy theories that floated around.

However, it appears that a group of Kentucky election officials, the circuit court judge and the county clerk, were arrested for changing votes in various elections between 2002 and 2006 on e-voting machines. The details suggest that there were two parts to the vote changing. First, there was traditional vote buying — where they paid people to vote in a certain way. However, the second involved actually changing voters’ votes on ES&S e-voting machines.

It didn’t involve any hacking or direct security flaws — but the elections officials made use of the confusing user interface and process of the e-voting machines to trick voters into leaving before their votes had been cast. That’s because there’s a “vote” button, that some people (silly them!) assumed meant they actually voted. Nope. It turns out that just gets you to a page to review your vote and then confirm it. However, these elections officials told people that once they hit vote they had voted — and were then able to go in and change the actual votes.

Filed Under: arrest, changing votes, corruption, e-voting, kentucky, vote buying, voting

High School Girl Arrested For Refusing To Stop Texting In Class

Legal Issues

from the whatever-happened-to-school-discipline dept

Thanks to everyone who sent in this story, about a 14-year-old girl in Wisconsin, who apparently refused to stop text messaging in class… and was arrested because of it. Yes, the teacher apparently called the cops, and they arrested her for “disorderly conduct.” Obviously, the girl was being insubordinate in class, but isn’t that what detention/suspension/etc. rules are for? Calling in the cops (and then having the girl arrested) seems a bit extreme.

Filed Under: arrest, class, discipline, texting