anarres 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Federal Revenge Porn Bill Not As Bad As It Could Have Been, Still Probably Unconstitutional

    anarres ( profile ), 15 Jul, 2016 @ 12:31pm

    What means promote or solicit content?

    "unless such provider intentionally promotes or solicits content"

    CDA excludes any services providers, and there is no explicit exception for "promoting" content, even if that content may be otherwise considered defamatory or whatever. The introduction of "promotes or solicits" in this law limits that. Is a provider "promoting" if their website has a rating systems for users to vote posts up? Is it "promoting" if they have a Recent Posts section where the content appears briefly?

    I think "promotes" and "solicits" is due to courts decisions where certain activities of providers make them contribute materially to the content. But promoting and soliciting don't seem to be in CDA. In the words of CDA, only these activities make internet service providers be "information content providers" in the same time:
    The term “information content provider” means any person or entity that is responsible, in whole or in part, for the creation or development of information provided through the Internet or any other interactive computer service.

    Promoting is not the same with responsible for the creation or development of content.

    These terms do sound familiar to me though, I just don't recall where in the hundreds of cases they were discussed. Anyone has a pointer to precedents where "promoting" or "soliciting" were in relation with CDA 230?

  • On the post: Why Is The UK's Intellectual Property Office Praising National Portrait Gallery's Copyfraud Claims Over Public Domain Images?

    anarres ( profile ), 15 Jul, 2016 @ 12:01pm

    Show, don't tell

    I imagine UK IPO discussed at a round table (or less round), and came to the conclusion that photographs meant to depict faithfully public domain images are not covered by copyright.

    Not everyone was happy at that table. Having lost the argument, Dan Anthony might have thought, hey, why not just go on and write a happy article set in the world I want to create? Just state as fact that public domain images are copyrighted, and highlight the "work" the copyright management must be.

    Also don't forget to spice the discourse with happy phrases about the "national treasures" and relate that value to rights. It isn't like we can ever have value without someone to own rights and "manage" them.

  • On the post: Pam Geller Sues The US Gov't Because Facebook Blocked Her Page; Says CDA 230 Violates First Amendment

    anarres ( profile ), 14 Jul, 2016 @ 02:40pm

    Re:

    "Heavily influenced" doesn't make it an agent.

    And how you prove "heavy influence", or what does it even mean?

  • On the post: Pam Geller Sues The US Gov't Because Facebook Blocked Her Page; Says CDA 230 Violates First Amendment

    anarres ( profile ), 14 Jul, 2016 @ 02:21pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    That makes sense. I don't know the cases, I should review them. Thanks for the followup and info!

    I'd just add that, as a website administrator, I would find unworkable some regulation to require me to keep random posts up, or accounts active, at the expense of my resources and of the kind of community I want to offer a service to. Unless I freely contracted to, of course. But that's on the "small company" extreme.

    I'm not so sure when we're talking about spaces that almost have a monopoly over avenues of communication such that, if you want to know something, you go there or most of the time there. That said, I'm halfway through this complaint, and their argument makes no sense...

  • On the post: Pam Geller Sues The US Gov't Because Facebook Blocked Her Page; Says CDA 230 Violates First Amendment

    anarres ( profile ), 14 Jul, 2016 @ 01:24pm

    Re: Re: Another example

    I'm not sure who you were talking to, but I can give an example I had in the past.

    In 2013, Goodreads site was already a worldwide well known reviews platform, which had advertised itself as a "site for readers" exclusively. It had made many public statements interpreted like: it'd never remove readers' opinions (unless illegal, i.e. "obscene, defamatory" etc). It kept its promise until 2013.

    In 2013 Amazon bought it. In the first months, Amazon changed reviews policy, and removed reviews that were criticizing the author, rather than the contents of the book. Before you think that's totally okay, consider one example: reviews of a chidren's book whose author was a convicted pedophile. People were writing reviews in warning to their friends and the public, saying that the author of this CHILDREN book is a convicted pedophile, and they refuse to ever buy it.
    Amazon removed such information.

    What we had there was a case that should have never happened IMO: a major bookseller like Amazon shouldn't have bought a fully-reader oriented reviews website like Goodreads. But it did. Today most of the reviews licensed and displayed by major booksellers like Google Books and Amazon (...) come from ... Goodreads and Amazon. The overwhelming majority.

    Those reviews revealing the convicted pedophile may still live on reviewer's blog, but they don't have anymore the visibility they used to. People may still have a voice, but when Amazon doesn't like it, that voice will be hardly heard.

    I don't know if Amazon should have been forced to keep reviews that weren't illegal (nor immoral!). I know it didn't sound right to me at the time, although I didn't go as far as say that it "must" keep them.
    But I think the concern is warranted: the more major websites become virtually "the" place to go for something (i.e. user reviews), the more it looks like them usurping the public square. Since it's private though, there's nothing we can do about it. Or is there?

  • On the post: Pam Geller Sues The US Gov't Because Facebook Blocked Her Page; Says CDA 230 Violates First Amendment

    anarres ( profile ), 14 Jul, 2016 @ 01:00pm

    Re: Re: Re:

    From the linked article:
    [blockquote][i]The Supreme Court has held that large organizations, such as cable operators or universities, might be required to convey messages on behalf of other organizations with which they disagree. But Hands On Originals is a small owner-operated company, in which the owners are necessarily closely connected to the speech that Hands On Originals produces. In this respect, the owners of Hands On Originals are much closer to the Maynards in Wooley v. Maynard, whose “individual freedom of mind,” 430 U.S. at 714, secured the right not to help distribute speech of which they disapproved.[i][/blockquote]

    Well, does Facebook qualify more as "small owner-operated company, in which the owners are necessarily closely connected to the speech" or "large organization"?

  • On the post: Pam Geller Sues The US Gov't Because Facebook Blocked Her Page; Says CDA 230 Violates First Amendment

    anarres ( profile ), 14 Jul, 2016 @ 12:35pm

    Re:

    Playing Devil's advocate, what they are trying to say is that these services have become a social necessity and first amendment protections should apply. I kind of agree.


    Yes. I was thinking just that while I was reading the article.

    Who the person is or what speech is in question shouldn't matter much; the principle is the same for every speech Facebook doesn't like.

    It is true that private companies can and should be able to offer their services to who respects their terms and not offer it to who doesn't; in the general case. However, in several cases of extremely popular providers one has to wonder, at which point do they become de facto public spaces?

    That they're still privately owned doesn't change that they can become the "public squares" we go to. And whatever used to be public square becomes "the old park no one ever goes to anymore".

    I don't know where the tipping point is. It seems to me worth considering seriously that it can be a tipping point /somewhere/.

  • On the post: Pam Geller Sues The US Gov't Because Facebook Blocked Her Page; Says CDA 230 Violates First Amendment

    anarres ( profile ), 14 Jul, 2016 @ 04:03pm

    Why section 230?

    OK, I finally finished the complaint, after many breaks and bewilderment. I'm left with only one question: why do the plaintiffs pick on section 230?
    It has nothing to do with Geller's complaints. If she feels she should be entitled to publish certain materials on FB despite FB not wanting her to, then killing section 230 would only make sure she won't be able to publish on FB much MORE materials than those.

    For example, she says:
    By its own terms, § 230 permits Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube “to restrict access to or availability of material that [they] consider[] to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable.”

    No, it doesn't. There are other laws that restrict some of those, and there's one more: freedom of speech. FB, Twitter and YT rely on their freedom to publish speech they want to transmit to third parties.

    Or this:
    Section 230 permits Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to engage in government-sanctioned discrimination and censorship of free speech.

    No, it doesn't. Freedom of speech enables an actor other than government to choose who they allow in their house and/or what speech they spend resources to communicate further to others.

    Geller's argument is that section 230 created the right of FB to remove messages from their platform. No, it didn't, FB already had that right. Section 230 made it so that engaging in it, on the internet, doesn't make them responsible for the speech they keep online.

    Otherwise they would be responsible for the speech they keep online, and then, they would surely get a powerful incentive to reject ANY problematic or potentially problematic or remotely not in agreement with their view. They would likely remove any speech that they're not willing to stand for, themselves. It would result in LESS speech being accepted, not, as Geller seems to imagine, in more.

  • On the post: Checking In: Blizzard Still Suing Hack/Cheat Makers For Copyright Infringement? Yup!

    anarres ( profile ), 13 Jul, 2016 @ 03:44pm

    Re: Strangely insufficient allegations

    Apart from the (wrong IMO) allegation that users make derivative works by playing with an overlay, and Bossland and "freelancers" induce them, contribute etc.

  • On the post: Checking In: Blizzard Still Suing Hack/Cheat Makers For Copyright Infringement? Yup!

    anarres ( profile ), 13 Jul, 2016 @ 01:41pm

    Re: Re: Re:

    Copyright is an exclusive right to copy, make derivative works of, distribute, publicly display and perform, a work.

    If what you do is not copying, making derivative works, distributing them, and such, then you're not infringing copyright. It's that simple.

    If Blizzard had been wronged here in some other way, then they deserve a ruling to compensate them. But not under copyright law.

    Some wrongful interference with the contract between Blizz and players sounds right.

  • On the post: Checking In: Blizzard Still Suing Hack/Cheat Makers For Copyright Infringement? Yup!

    anarres ( profile ), 13 Jul, 2016 @ 03:40pm

    Strangely insufficient allegations

    The complaint is surprising. Basically Blizz sees three categories of wrong-doers and sues two of them, for several reasons:
    (1) reverse engineering:
    Blizzard's asserts that Bossland and "freelancers in US" must have reverse engineered the games, in particular their Warden. If they can prove it, and if it goes as I suspect (full copies during reverse engineering), Blizz may have a case. Purpose is illegitimate in this case, I'd say, although I'm not sure how one would prove that. Maybe via point (2).
    (2) interference with contract (the EULA). Agree.
    (2) unfair competition. Can't comment much, but I note that Blizzard asks for injunction.

    The most interesting thing is what Blizz doesn't say: who are these "freelancers" or why does it believe that there are some freelancers in US who reverse engineer the games or Warden? At this stage, if Blizz doesn't know who they are, OK, but do they know anything that would seem to relate individuals in US to reverse engineering or otherwise obtaining in some unspecified way and copying the games?

    I can't just go to court and start a lawsuit against "1-10 Does" who copied my work in an unauthorized way without saying something, anything that makes me believe that. Like, Blizz might have seen some forum names claiming they're in US and giving technical advice to Bossland on inner workings, or anything with *some* specificity.

    Clearly, Blizz needs some defendants in US, but to just add Does to the complaint and state "they're doing it too!" can't suffice.

  • On the post: Checking In: Blizzard Still Suing Hack/Cheat Makers For Copyright Infringement? Yup!

    anarres ( profile ), 12 Jul, 2016 @ 12:52pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    He misses to explain one simple tenant of law: When you are proposed with a EULA (End User License Agreement) will violate and thus terminate your LEGAL USE of Blizzard's COPYRIGHTS (as well as patents and trademarks relative to the game), and the user CLICKS THROUGH the EULA, he is in fact, legally ACCEPTING the terms of use! Thus, in ANY court of law, the user is now LEGALLY HELD RESPONSIBLE for his actions, which in this case, have been intentionally listed by Blizzard.

    No. In US copyright law, there is a limitation explicitly for copyright over computer programs, which says that the copy the program does in the normal course of running, is not covered by copyright.

    That means that merely running the program, even if you accept the EULA, is not infringement, as a normal user merely starting it, no matter if companies claim otherwise in their EULA (they shouldn't anyway).

    Think about it, how could it be otherwise? If you buy a game, and your sister comes to your computer and clicks on the icon to start your game, it would be copyright infringement. That would be absurd in my view. Mind you, she might be greeted with the login page, and since you didn't and shouldn't share your account with her, she's unable to play. That's expected. So she will just close the game. But in Blizzard's theory, she's infringing copyright. And if you told her to go to your computer and look at your games, then you could be deemed contributory infringement under this crazy theory.
    Remember such EULA is typically personal, non-tranferrable.

    That's one of the troubles with Blizzard's claim of "infringement" for any act not explicitly allowed in EULA.
    I don't think it's the law: there are acts people do which don't amount to infringement even if EULAs don't allow them explicitly. I don't think it should be the law, either.

  • On the post: Checking In: Blizzard Still Suing Hack/Cheat Makers For Copyright Infringement? Yup!

    anarres ( profile ), 12 Jul, 2016 @ 12:17pm

    Re: Cheats destroy Games

    The issue is not that Blizzard wants to stop cheaters. The issue is that Blizzard claims their actions (and users') are copyright infringement.

    It's like I'm unhappy you entered my garden and don't want to get out, and instead of suing you for trespassing or something, I sue you for violation of the patent I have on the locking mechanism of my garden's gate.

  • On the post: Techdirt Podcast Episode 75: What Happened At The Oracle Google Trial?

    anarres ( profile ), 31 May, 2016 @ 07:30pm

    You forgot the SavaJe phone

    You know, the one that was poised to rule the world :)