13 December 2011
How the US censors the world's internet, and the imminent law change which would make it far worse
Last week they backed down over a single site, dajaz1.com, a popular hip hop blog. They had mistakenly shut it down for over a year, denied all due process, and hid all the details. Despite their obvious lie that none of their seizures were being challenged, they had refused to respond to requests for basic information from dajaz1's lawyer for the entire time. Now that the domain is released, the RIAA continues to threaten dajaz1 with legal action, despite no evidence of wrongdoing, for daring to compete with their business.
This isn't just problematic for reasons of fair competition, due process, and free speech, but also for privacy, as ICE's method is also a means of internet surveillance.
Today the popular sharing website Megaupload announced it is suing Universal for taking down its content from YouTube - content that Universal has no rights to whatsoever. It is this kind of thing which causes thousands of videos to be wrongfully removed every day - YouTube's takedown policy is "shoot first, ask questions never". Usually the rightful uploader can't afford the legal fees, so it's nice to see rare instances like this where the issue gets a chance in court.
These examples from the last week are excellent demonstrations of situations which will be made far worse if US laws like SOPA and PROTECTIP are passed. I previously blogged about PROTECTIP, under which US citizens could get 6 years jail for uploading a video of themselves singing a copyrighted song. SOPA, an even more draconian law, is being debated in the House of Representatives on Thursday. Here's an infographic summary of SOPA, and another summarizing the legal battle. SOPA could destroy the internet - and my language is not too strong.
The imminent passing of SOPA is highlighting the ridiculous hypocrisy of the White House on internet issues that I blogged about in August, and mainstream media is beginning to catch on to the duplicity.
While Chinese users appreciate the irony of SOPA, MPAA boss Chris Dodd actually asked, "If the Chinese censor the internet without a problem, why can't the US?".
Update 14 December: Amendments have been introduced that water down SOPA a bit - the jist of it remains, but it's not quite as insane. It now targets only non-US sites (since US sites can already be dealt with legally) - although for the end-user it's not at all obvious whether a site is foreign or not, and US sites will still be required to self-censor references to those foreign sites. Breaking the internet's DNS system is no longer required, but optional. Also,
Under the amended plan, which was released late Monday, a judge would have to order ad networks to stop doing business with a site “dedicated” to infringing activities. Under the original proposal, a rights holder could make those demands on an ad network or payment processor and effectively kill off the site.
The amendment, however, still gives legal immunity to financial institutions and ad networks that choose to boycott "rogue" sites."
And there are other reasons it's still a very bad law.
Update 10 January 2012:
- The controversy over SOPA has been almost completely ignored by the US TV networks. Not surprising as they all enthusiastically support the bill, and more public attention is unlikely to help their cause. Since October 1, there has only been a single segment covering the issue, by CNN (which did not disclose its parent company Time Warner's support for the bill). Surely this will change as SOPA is becoming an election issue.
- Every member of congress has received more campaign money from supporters than from opposers, usually significantly more (10-70 times as much). So far, supporters have given $92m and opposers $7m. Despite the fact that the opposing internet companies make far more in profits than the big media companies driving the bill.
12 August 2011
Fined for using the internet? Possible as of yesterday in NZ
I'm considering leaving Posterous for something better: Wikia! I'm still working it out, until I do I'll cross-post the links to here.
Full post from yesterday
(This is the sequel to last week's post, "From next week, P2P in New Zealand is illegal".)
3 August 2011
From next week, P2P in New Zealand is illegal
Well, it won't actually be illegal - but you could get fined anyway.
Thanks to a Facebook discussion on the 3strikesNZ page, I've discovered yet another reason the NZ copyright amendment is bad. Non IT-geeks can skip the next paragraph, to summarize it: some rightsholders are targeting not just infringing files, but potentially any user using some kinds of peer-to-peer filesharing software.
Apparently some rightsholders are using the BitTorrent DHT (distributed hash table) to find infringing users. This is terrible practice, because a BitTorrent client, simply by running (even if it has never downloaded or uploaded anything, let alone anything infringing), participates in the DHT and passes on information about which peer to get files from - and some of those files may be infringing. A rightsholder using this method can't distinguish between clients simply participating in the DHT, and those actually sharing the file.
This applies to not just BitTorrent, but any other P2P software using a DHT, eg. eMule, LimeWire, BearShare, Shareaza, giFT clients...
We can reasonably expect these infringement notices to get through the Copyright Tribunal unchallenged, because to challenge it the accuser needs technical knowledge of how their P2P software works. Otherwise all they can say is "I don't know why you think I infringed, I just know I didn't", which of course won't hold up since it's not evidence. People in that situation probably won't bother going to the Copyright Tribunal, they'll just pay the fine.
Come September, it is possible that people will be fined simply for using P2P software.
Hopefully this will help highlight the problems with the new law - despite rightsholder groups pointing to their innocent victims and saying "look how many people we've caught infringing!"
To lazy / non-technically minded people, to be totally safe you should uninstall all your P2P programs. Or, if you're careful and you have some basic knowledge, read the next paragraph:
If you want to be certain to avoid infringement notices, you have to ensure you never run P2P programs using DHT, except through a proxy (which may have a signigicant negative impact your speeds). Don't use BitTorrent through Tor - since you should to be careful that all data goes through Tor, not just the initial connection to the tracker, which slows down both your connection, and everyone else's on the network. If you're not using a proxy for all your data, you you need to either disable DHT (which will also slow you down as you won't connect to as many peers), or stop such P2P programs from running on startup or ever. You could still file-share using a seedbox, or filesharing software designed to be anonymous, like OneSwarm or I2P.
It's worth starting to do this on Thursday (August 11th) rather than September 1st, since you can get notices for activity 21 days before the notice is sent. Tony Eaton, director of NZFACT (NZ Federation Against Copyright Theft), representing the MPAA, says they won't backdate notices from September 1, but the law isn't stopping them or other rightsholders from doing so.
It's ridiculous that I'm giving such advice. I'm a big fan of peer-to-peer for legitimate filesharing, especially in isolated countries like New Zealand, as it means less bandwidth usage, faster download speeds, and better content discovery. Too bad.
There's another important ramification: Don't let any untrusted or ignorant person use your computer or your connection, since they could run a file-sharing program, and even a few seconds of use is enough for the rightsholders' tracking software to potentially find you.
More essential reading on the new copyright law:
Update (1 day later): This doesn't seem to be at all common - it may have happened a few times, but you're unlikely to be caught this way. Still it is a possibility, so if you want certainty, you should take this into account. I've made edits to highlight that.
Sequel (1 week later): This pales in comparison to how rightsholder groups could get people fined just for using the internet... Fined for using the internet? Possible as of today in NZ
6 July 2011
US Senators propose law jailing people for lip-syncing to popular music
Sign this to protest
I never thought I'd be considering voting Green, but they're the only party with an informed stance of any kind on issues of the interwebs - you know, those ethereal pipes where we now spend half our lives.
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