Posts Tagged ‘copyright’
May 8th, 2013
Today’s impressively short Queen’s Speech contained two nuggets of interest for Index readers. Firstly, there was the mention of intellectual propety:
A further Bill will make it easier for businesses to protect their intellectual property
The debate over copyright and free speech has been fraught, with widespread criticism of governmental attempts to create laws on copyright on the web. (Read Brian Pellot on World Intellectual Property Day here here and Joe McNamee’s “Getting Copyright Right” here.)
This is something the government will have to treat very carefully, and the consultation should be fascinating.
Further in, the speech addressed crime in cyberspace:
In relation to the problem of matching internet protocol addresses, my government will bring forward proposals to enable the protection of the public and the investigation of crime in cyberspace.
Here’s more detail from the background briefing:
The Government is committed to ensuring that law enforcement and intelligence agencies have the powers they need to protect the public and ensure national security. These agencies use communications data – the who, when, where and how of a communication, but not its content – to investigate and prosecute serious crimes. Communications data helps to keep the public safe: it is used by the police to investigate crimes, bring offenders to justice and to save lives. This is not about indiscriminately accessing internet data of innocent members of the public.
As the way in which we communicate changes, the data needed by the police is no longer always available. While they can, where necessary and proportionate to do so as part of a specific criminal investigation, identify who has made a telephone call (or
sent an SMS text message), and when and where, they cannot always do the same for communications sent over the internet, such as email, internet telephony or instant messaging. This is because communications service providers do not retain
all the relevant data.
When communicating over the Internet, people are allocated an Internet Protocol (IP) address. However, these addresses are generally shared between a number of people. In order to know who has actually sent an email or made a Skype call, the
police need to know who used a certain IP address at a given point in time. Without this, if a suspect used the internet to communicate instead of making a phone call, it may not be possible for the police to identify them.
The Government is looking at ways of addressing this issue with CSPs. It may involve legislation.
Eagle-eyed observers will note that this echoes what Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg told LBC listeners on 25 April, after announcing that the dreaded Communications Data Bill (aka the “Snooper’s Charter”) was to be dropped. Clegg suggested then that IP addresses could be assigned to each individual device.
As I wrote at the time, “New proposals for monitoring and surveillance will no doubt emerge, and will be subject to the same scrutiny and criticism as the previous attempts to establish a Snooper’s Charter.”
Well, here we are.
Padraig Reidy is senior writer for Index on Censorship. @mePadraigReidy
April 26th, 2013
Does copyright do more to enhance free speech than to stifle it? This question comes into sharp focus every 26 April on World Intellectual Property Day, which aims to “promote discussion of the role of intellectual property in encouraging innovation and creativity”.
This year’s theme is “Creativity: The Next Generation”. Debate around whether copyright encourages or actually hinders creativity has intensified in recent years as laws designed to address offline infringement have struggled to keep up with digital technologies and the internet. Also struggling to keep up are artists, most of whom have seen slower revenue streams due to mass online piracy of their work. Many copyright laws and treaties already exist or are in the works to protect artists and the broader intellectual property industry against digital piracy, but some of their implications for free speech are troubling.
The 1998 US Digital Millenium Copyright Act criminalised the production, distribution and use of tools that can circumvent digital copyright controls. It also limited the liability of internet service companies for their users’ copyright infringing activities if the companies agreed to implement notice and takedown procedures for copyright holders to seek redress.
Circumvention tools can be used for fair use activities that do not infringe copyright, making the criminalisation of tools without regard for intent potentially chilling in its broadness. Copyright holders from the recording and film industries also sometimes abuse notice and action systems by flooding them with bogus claims where fair use is clearly protected. The undue burden this places on service providers can encourage them to over-comply with requests in order to stay on the safe side of copyright laws. Such over-compliance can mean unnecessary censorship. The Centre for Internet and Society documented this to be the case in India, sending flawed takedown requests to seven web companies, six of which over-complied and removed more content than legally required under the country’s Information Technology Act.
Major companies including Google, Twitter and most recently Microsoft issue regular reports showing how many copyright removal requests they receive and comply with. Google received nearly 20 million URL removal requests on its search product alone last month, the majority of which came from copyright owners in the recording and motion picture industries and organisations that represent them. A big company like Google might have the resources to sort legitimate requests from the rest, but many small companies certainly do not.
A recent flurry of intellectual property bills and treaties on both sides of the Atlantic pose further challenges to freedom of expression. The Stop Online Piracy Act and PROTECT IP Act both failed in the US, and the European Parliament rejected the the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement in 2012 following global campaigns by internet activists and web companies opposed to their provisions. These bills and treaties have all been put on the backburner but run the risk of flaring up again if legislators move to push them forward a second time. The US bills would create a blacklist of websites accused of providing illegal access to copyrighted content, which could kick off a digital witch hunt from overprotective copyright holders that wish to censor sites even in cases of fair use. ACTA aims to shift the current IPR debate from international fora to secretive backrooms. It would also increase intermediary liability, making websites more responsible for user activity and more likely to restrict users’ online expression.
Important to note is that many people simply don’t understand copyright, causing them to unknowingly break these laws. About half of participants in a recent survey were confused about the legality of uploading and downloading copyrighted materials online. Major prosecutions, including that of a US woman who was fined $1.9 million for illegally downloading 24 songs in 2009, have increased awareness of copyright laws and their sometimes disproportionate consequences. A new Copyright Alert System in the US aims to do the same, relying on ISPs to voluntarily slow down internet speeds for users who regularly pirate copyrighted content.
Legal reforms and public knowledge alone will not stop pirating. Artists who have traditionally relied on rich patrons, governments and organised industries to bring their work to fruition are experimenting with new funding and marketing models to meet online challenges and to take advantage of new opportunities. Small donations from more than 3 million people on the crowdsource funding platform Kickstarter have financed more than 35,000 creative projects, bringing in $500 million in the past four years. Many musicians are also shifting their business focus from singles to concert sales, an experience that cannot yet be replicated online and that many fans are still willing to pay for.
Artists need to eat, and pirates should be punished. But for this to happen, copyright laws and their enforcement should to be just and proportionate and new funding models for creative industries should be pursued. Perhaps next year’s World Intellectual Property Day theme should focus on reforming copyright laws and exploring new business models to safeguard the next generation’s creativity and freedom of expression.
March 12th, 2013
“Digital” means copying. Attempts to defend copyright the old-fashioned way could have unforeseen consequences for the web, says Joe McNamee.
This article was originally published on Open Democracy, as a part of a week-long series on the future digital freedom guest-edited by Index
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March 6th, 2013
Freedom to Connect, a conference that usually addresses the “nuts and bolts” of internet connectivity, focused sharply this year on fundamental freedoms.
Conference organiser David Isenberg attributed the need for this shift to recent developments, most notably the January suicide of computer programmer and internet activist Aaron Swartz. Swartz delivered the keynote speech at last year’s conference. At the time of his death, he faced up to 35 years in prison and $1,000,000 in fines for violating the US Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.
Power and its subversion were central themes at the two-day conference.
Darcy Burner, a Washington state Democrat and former Microsoft executive, delivered the opening “After Aaron” lecture commemorating Swartz. She argued that for the purposes of inciting meaningful change, network power built on consent is much stronger than economic, political or military power.
Glenn Greenwald, Guardian writer and Freedom of the Press Foundation co-founder, said Aaron Swartz and WikiLeaker Bradley Manning were both victims of prosecutorial excessiveness and abuse. He added that increasing state surveillance “threatens to turn the internet into a weapon that shields, protects and strengthens power” rather than subverting it. Other speakers reiterated this notion that the internet can be both a tool for democratising discourse and a weapon for control and censorship.
Dan Gilmor, director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship, discussed corporate abuse of power. He said consumers often prefer convenience to liberty when technology is concerned. Convenience, or perhaps dependence, explains why users opt in to restrictive terms of service and sacrifice elements of their privacy to use certain online platforms and services like Facebook and Twitter.
Christopher Soghoian, who works on the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, argued that US telecommunications providers are among the worst corporate abusers of power. Soghoian argued that telcos want power over software without assuming responsibility for updating it, leaving consumers vulnerable to cybersecurity breaches. Access Now highlighted the most egregious violations by wireless carriers in its recent Telco Hall of Shame competition.
Former Republican staffer Derek Khanna spoke on Democracy Now!, which broadcast live from the conference both days, about his campaign to reverse a recent US decision that made unlocking cell phones illegal. My Index post from January explains the policy, which AT&T and Verizon pushed for, but which the White House announced Monday it favours overturning after an online petition against it garnered more than 100,000 signatures.
Khanna was recently fired for arguing in a House Republican Study Committee report that the US copyright system should be reformed to expand fair use and limit copyright terms. Copyright was another recurring theme throughout the conference, touched on by artists, entrepreneurs and psychedelic soul legend Lester Chambers.
Gwenn Semmel, an artist, decided not to show the audience where she drew inspiration from for her paintings, saying, “I don’t want to call down the wrath of the copyright gods, because they are temperamental and expensive.”
Ben Huh, CEO of the lolcats and internet meme empire Cheezburger Network, Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit, and Mike Godwin, famed internet lawyer, discussed their fight against the 2012 US copyright bills SOPA and PIPA.
One of the most interesting presentations came from dominatrix, performance artist and blogger Mistress Clarissa who made the free speech pitch for porn, arguing that the industry pushes cultural boundaries and provides invaluable opportunities for expression and self-exploration.
Several speakers promoted community-owned networks, arguing that the internet represents critical infrastructure that should not be left solely in the hands of self-interested monopolies. Nineteen US states currently impose legal barriers that restrict the building of community-owned fibre broadband systems.
Vint Cerf, famed “father of the internet” and Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist, wrapped up the conference by criticising new copyright alert systems in the US and France, the lack of fair and open ICT competition in many regions, and troubling internet governance developments to come out of December’s World Conference on International Telecommunications in Dubai. Cerf will move to London for six months later this year to concentrate on developments likely to affect our freedom to connect in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In an increasingly connected world, regional debates have unavoidable global implications.
Freedom to Connect’s increased focus on political freedoms and free speech comes amid increased obstacles to an open and uncensored internet. Taking action on our discussions at this conference will be crucial if we wish to continue preserving and promoting digital freedom of expression.
December 3rd, 2012
Online irreverent political protest is here to stay. But, asks Gabriella Coleman, what will be the legacy for digital freedom? (more…)
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Tags: Tags: ACTA, anonymous, copyright, digital freedom, file sharing, Gabriella Coleman, hacking, Internet Governance, online censorship, Volume 41 number 4,
November 12th, 2012
As Index launches a policy note ahead of the Internet Governance Forum, Marta Cooper asks if can we keep the internet free (more…)
January 18th, 2012
As Wikipedia and other websites begin blackout to protest against US anti-piracy laws, Index and the international human rights community speak out on PROTECT IP Act
Sen. Harry Reid
Majority Leader
United States Senate
522 Hart Senate Office Bldg
Washington, DC 20510
Dear Majority Leader Harry Reid,
As human rights and press freedom advocates, we write to express our deep concern about S. 968, the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), and the threat it poses to international human rights. Like H.R. 3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), PIPA requires the use of internet censorship tools, undermines the global nature of the internet, and threatens free speech online. PIPA introduces a deeply concerning degree of legal uncertainty into the internet economy, particularly for users and businesses internationally. The United States has long been a global leader in support of freedom of speech online, and we urge the Senate not to tarnish that reputation by passing PIPA.
Today, some of the world’s most repressive countries, like China, Iran, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and Syria use DNS filtering as a means to silence their citizens. As over 80 human rights organizations recently wrote in a letter opposing SOPA, “institutionalizing the use of internet censorship tools to enforce domestic law in the United States… creates a paradox that undermines its moral authority to criticize repressive regimes.”[1] In fact, PIPA would send an unequivocal message to other nations that the use of these tools is not only acceptable, but encouraged.
DNS filtering is a blunt form of censorship that is ineffective at achieving its stated goal, while causing collateral damage to online communities on a massive scale. But while DNS filtering is trivial for users to circumvent, this technology would fundamentally undermine the integrity of the global internet, making users more vulnerable to cybersecurity attacks and identity fraud. Additionally, any legislation that mandates filtering of websites is prone to unintended consequences, such as overblocking. For example, in early 2011, when the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency seized the domain mooo.com, it accidentally removed the web addresses of 84,000 (almost exclusively legal) connected domain names.[2] Moreover, once the technical infrastructure enabling censorship is in place, it allows future governments (and private actors) to block virtually any type of content on the web, making the provisions of this bill prone to mission creep.
The attempts at due process provisions in this bill do not respect the global nature of the internet. The network effects of the internet are realized when users and innovators are able to connect around the globe. However, creating a mechanism that requires a representative of a website to make a court appearance in the U.S. in order to defend themselves against an allegation of infringement would disproportionately impact smaller online communities and start-ups based abroad that do not have the capacity to address concerns in the United States. These websites would risk losing access to advertising services, payment providers, search engine listings, and their domain name. Together, these pieces of the bill would drive international innovators away from depending on U.S. services as a hedge against legal threats, while missing what should be the target of this legislation: preventing large-scale commercial infringement.
PIPA further creates a double jurisdiction problem, whereby non-U.S.-based sites must determine whether a site is legal in both the country it is operating in and the United States. This raises serious concerns about the scope of the bill, as foreign websites falling under PIPA’s definition of infringement may be perfectly legal in other jurisdictions. For example, the domain of a Spanish site, rojadirecta.org, was seized in early 2011 by U.S. authorities without adequate due process, notification to the site’s owners, or an option to defend themselves, despite having been declared legal by two Spanish courts.[3]
The definition of “information location service” is overly broad and would have a chilling effect on online speech. PIPA would make nearly every U.S.-based actor on the internet, including not only blogs, chat rooms, and social networks but users as well, potentially subject to enforcement orders of the bill. Additionally, the requirement that these service providers act “as expeditiously as possible to remove or disable access” to an allegedly infringing website imposes an unprecedented burden on any service that contains links, incentivizing the screening and removal of content in order to avoid being caught up in legal proceedings. Further, even if an accused website is later found to be innocent, links to that website could have effectively disappeared from the web, having been permanently removed when the court notice was served.
PIPA is also vague with respect to how links would be defined, including if all links associated with a domain or subdomain would be required to be blocked and if this would apply to future attempts by users to post content. This provision could potentially be interpreted in a way that would force services that allow users to post links to proactively monitor and censor the activities of their users, dramatically altering the role of these platforms in promoting free speech and setting a dangerous precedent for other countries.
We understand the pressure that lawmakers face in passing copyright enforcement legislation, and agree that protecting the rights of creators is an important goal. However, enforcement should not come at the expense of free speech or due process. This bill is fundamentally flawed due to its wide range of restrictive and potentially repressive measures. Even if individual elements of the proposal, such as DNS filtering are modified, postponed or amended, the legislation as a whole represents a precedent that is a real danger for human rights on the internet. We must remain conscious of the fact that the internet is a key enabler of human rights and innovation, and decisions over its governance should not be made hastily and without full consideration of collateral consequences.
We strongly urge the Senate to stand for human rights, defend the open internet, and reject the PROTECT IP Act.
Sincerely,
Access
AGEIA DENSI
Amnesty International
Asociatia pentru Technologie si Internet (ApTI)
Association for Progressive Communications (APC)
Article 19
Bits of Freedom
Bytes for All Pakistan
Centre for Internet and Society – India
Communication is Your Right!
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
Creative Commons Guatemala
ONG Derechos Digitales – Chile
Demand Progress
Digitale Gesellschaft e.V.
Eduardo Bertoni on behalf of iLEI/CELE UP (Iniciativa Libertad de Expresión en Internet, Centro de Estudios en Libertad de Expresión, Universidad de Palermo, Argentina)
Electronic Frontier Finland (EFFi)
EsLaRed
European Digital Rights (EDRi) (an association of 27 privacy and civil rights groups in Europe)
FGV/CTS
FoeBuD
Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII)
Free Network Foundation
Free Press Unlimited
Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE)
Fundación Karisma
FUNREDES
German Working Group against Internet Blocking and Censorship (Arbeitskreis gegen Internet-Sperren und Zensur, AK Zensur)
Hiram Meléndez-Juarbe on behalf of the New Technologies, Intellectual Property and Society Clinic University of Puerto Rico Law School
Human Rights Watch
Index on Censorship
Instituto Nupef
Internet Democracy Project – India
Iuridicum Remedium o.s.
Julia Group
Guardian Project
La Quadrature du Net
MayFirst/People Link
Net Users Rights Protection Association (NURPA)
Open Rights Group (ORG)
Open Source Initiative
Palante Technology Cooperative
Panoptykon Foundation
People Who
Public Sphere Project
Quintessenz
Reporters Without Borders
Vrijschrift
WITNESS
wlan slovenia, open wireless network
August 4th, 2011
The UK government’s dropping of blocking plans are to be welcomed, says Peter Bradwell. But there are questions over what happens next with online copyright
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